The Trump administration is set to freeze more than $100 million in federal grants that cover family planning services for low-income people, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, adding that it could happen as soon as this week. The stated reason for the suspension is to investigate whether the money has been used for diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, or DEI. If it takes effect, it would either prevent people from getting the care they need or blow giant holes in the budgets of providers that participate, which includes state and local health departments and clinics like Planned Parenthood.
Alongside Medicaid, Title X is a source of federal money that Planned Parenthood receives, so Republicans continue to find innovative ways to attack it—anything to try and bankrupt the abortion provider. Planned Parenthood clinics in about a dozen states were set to receive about $20 million in Title X grants this year. Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, told the WSJ: “The Trump-Vance-Musk administration wants to shut down Planned Parenthood health centers by any means necessary, and they’ll end people’s access to birth control, cancer screenings, STI testing and treatment, and more to do it.”
Title X funds can’t be used for abortions, but Republican presidents since Ronald Reagan have restricted how health providers counsel pregnant patients who might be considering termination, through what is known as a “gag rule” on recipients. This policy prohibits them from making abortion referrals even if patients ask for one. Advocates expected that Trump would quickly reinstate the domestic gag rule—he did so in 2019; the Biden administration later rescinded it—but that requires following the arduous federal rule-making process to formally change the interpretation of the Title X statute. (This is how Trump let anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers qualify for Title X funding in 2019.) It seems that, rather than take that route first, Trump would rather find an absurd reason to freeze money that went out under the current interpretation of the law.
A spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, which distributes the grants, told the WSJ that the Title X funding freeze is because the agency is reviewing grant recipients to make sure they comply with Trump’s executive orders. Several sources told the outlet that it’s about orders on DEI. It’s unclear whether their bigoted witch hunt means looking only at recipients’ Title X programs for evidence of DEI or at their entire organization, but either way, it’s bad. And it’s stupid! Title X was created specifically to address inequities in healthcare so that no matter how much money someone makes, they can access basic reproductive care and decide whether and when to have children.
This administration has apparently taken DEI to mean the existence of, or provision of any services to, women and non-white people. But attacking things based on “DEI” will also hurt Trump’s own voters, alongside everyone else. HHS data shows that, in 2023, 50.4% of Title X patients identified their race as white and 35.8% identified their ethnicity as Hispanic or Latino. (These patients are mostly women: Of the 2.8 million patients Title X providers served in 2023, 85% were women, or nearly 2.4 million, and 15% were men, or close to 420,000.) Navigator research found in its analysis of the 2024 election that white women continued the pattern of voting for Trump, and while Kamala Harris won Hispanic women 57% to 36%, they shifted toward Trump by 19 points since 2020.
The Trump administration will certainly face lawsuits over this upcoming funding freeze, but it’s somewhat telling that they’re using DEI as a fig leaf to limit access to birth control and attack abortion providers. It’s almost as if they know people support reproductive rights more than they support Republicans.
