EXCLUSIVE: Trump Uses Reagan-Era Policy to Ban Taxpayer-Funded Gender-Transition Surgeries

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—President Donald Trump’s State Department will soon expand the scope of the Mexico City Policy, which prohibits the use of taxpayer dollars for abortions.

“The department will soon take additional steps to close loopholes that allowed taxpayer funding for promotion of abortion in previous iterations of the Mexico City Policy and expand the scope of the policy to ensure every penny of U.S. foreign assistance prioritizes American values, not the woke agenda,” a senior State Department official told The Daily Signal.

The expanded policy will prohibit U.S. funding for gender ideology, and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. For example, the State Department is ending a $2 million grant to fund gender-affirming operations in Guatemala.

The new provision restricts a broader range of nongovernmental organization programming, such as those for HIV/AIDS, President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), maternal and child health, nutrition, and infectious diseases like malaria and tuberculosis.

This scope of the policy will apply across all non-military foreign assistance.

“The State Department continues to advance President Trump’s ‘American First’ foreign policy,” the official said.

This means that all entities, including foreign and domestic NGOs, international organizations, and foreign governments and parastatals that receive U.S. foreign assistance cannot perform or promote abortion as a method of family planning, promote gender ideology, promote discriminatory equity ideology, or engage in any unlawful diversity, equity, and inclusion-related discrimination. 

On Jan. 24, Trump restored the Mexico City Policy. The first Trump administration significantly expanded the scope of the Mexico City Policy to apply to all global health assistance.

First established by President Ronald Reagan in 1984, the Mexico City Policy ensures “that no U.S. taxpayer money supports foreign organizations that perform or actively promote abortion in other nations.”

Since its establishment, the policy has been rescinded by each subsequent Democrat president and reinstated by the next Republican chief executive. Democrat President Joe Biden rescinded the policy his first week in office in January 2021.

Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill., said she’s “grateful President Trump and Secretary [Marco] Rubio are ending the taxpayer-funded abortion agenda and radical gender ideology overseas.”

“This decisive action defends life, protects families, and sends a message to the world: America stands for life,” she told The Daily Signal.

Americans don’t want their taxpayer dollars exporting woke agendas abroad, Rep. Mark Harris, R-N.C., said.

“Radical progressive Democrats in the last administration abused power and tax money to go towards wasteful pet projects like abortion, DEI, and woke gender ideology,” he told The Daily Signal. “But President Trump is returning to common sense. Let’s keep our values true to America.”