WASHINGTON – Despite President Trump's reversal of Obama-era policies on transgenderism, his administration still is spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on transgenderism research, the government watchdog Judicial Watch warns.
In August, Trump rescinded an Obama-era policy allowing the military to recruit transgender people. The president also banned the Department of Defense from using its resources to provide medical regimens for transgenders currently serving in the military, citing the "medical costs" as the primary driver of his decision.
In February, the Trump administration ended Obama's order that public schools open their bathrooms and locker rooms to people according to gender "identity."
The administration concluded that the transgender bathroom issue should be determined by states.
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The left responded to Trump's reversal of Obama's transgender mandates with charges the commander-in-chief is "cruel," "un-American" and "discriminatory."
Yet, the Trump administration is allocating hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to research how "non-conforming" transgender people cope with the stress of being "minorities," according to a U.S. government grant announcement.
The federal government is providing $200,000 to the National Institutes of Health to examine children and adults who are transitioning from one gender to the other.
"This group encompasses individuals whose gender identity differs from the sex on their original birth certificate or whose gender expression varies significantly from what is traditionally associated with or typical for that sex," the government announcement states. "Investigations of the social determinants of health in these populations are needed, including understanding the impact of stigma, the high impact of HIV, minority stress, education, employment, violence, homelessness, and incarceration.
"More information is needed on relationships with partners and family, as well as on sexual and reproductive health," the government document states. "Successful aging, including the impact of life events, experiences, and interventions such as hormone therapy and surgery are other important topics to investigate. It will also be important to learn more about brain development, resilience, and end-of-life issues."
Judicial Watch investigater Irene Garcia asserts that the Trump administration is spending just as wastefully as his Democratic predecessor.
"This just seems to be government overreach. This is the kind of thing we saw a lot of under the Obama administration, and of course many were hopeful would stop under Trump. Clearly it isn't. This is $200,000 allocated to this. And the wording in the grant speaks for itself," Garcia told WND Tuesday.
"Government programs with this much money and very little oversight – there's going to be waste, there's going to be fraud and Judicial Watch tries to expose that," she said.
NIH will also investigate whether diagnosis of gender dysphoria is stigmatizing, the effects of hormone therapy on the fertility of transgender and gender nonconforming individuals, and the health consequences of body fillers such as silicone.
The language used in the grant is ambiguous, Garcia explained, making the funding allocated to the research likely to be abused and frivolously spent.
"If you look at the way the grant announcement is written, it's difficult to kind of justify it. It talks about individuals who 'may' transition. It identifies them as individuals whose gender identity differs from the sex on their original birth certificate or whose gender expression varies significantly," she said.
"What if I said, I don't want to be a woman anymore, I want to be a rock? Are we going to allocate taxpayer dollars to research women born as women on their birth certificates, but identify as a rock? Where do we draw the line?
"The government could spend the money on something more productive, and we will see, because we are going to follow through and see what this research leads to – what these $200,000 of these taxpayers' money is going to buy us. That means usually more money is coming," she said. "We'll monitor this."
The NIH's new transgender research is hardly the first time American taxpayer dollars have been directed toward "gender dysphoria." President Obama's health-care law required American taxpayers to finance gender-reassignment operations for transsexuals.
The Department of Justice, under the Obama administration, ordered all federal prisons to treat an inmate's "gender dysphoria" as a medical condition and threatened to take legal action against state prisons that didn't comply.
Trump may be taking hard-line stances on key issues, such as gender, for show, Garcia argued, claiming the president's rhetoric doesn't match up with where government funds are being allocated.
"It appears that way based on this particular grant and that's certainly been the case when it comes to immigration," she said. "Judicial Watch has lots of sources on the southern border that have told us – inside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and homeland security agencies –Trump is saying one thing, and a completely different thing is what is actually being done. Sources have given us documented incidents in which the border control has really not changed from the Obama administration, yet the rhetoric has been different."
She said the Border Patrol union, for the first time, endorsed a president, Trump, "and yet they are feeling very disappointed because the management is still kind of implementing these Obama policies."