Trump administration prepares for layoffs in government shutdown
The White House is asking federal agencies to prepare plans for mass firings if the government partially shuts down next week, the latest clash in the high-stakes confrontation between President Donald Trump and congressional Democrats.
- The lawsuit argues the policy represents an unlawful overreach of executive authority and targets transgender youths.
- Rhode Island stands to lose approximately $600,000 in grant funding for its Personal Responsibility Education Program.
- The program educates young people on abstinence and contraception to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.
Rhode Island is among a coalition of Democratic-led states that filed a lawsuit Sept. 26 seeking to block President Donald Trump’s administration from requiring them to remove all references to “gender ideology” from sexual health education curricula in order to receive federal grant funding.
Sixteen states and the District of Columbia in a lawsuit filed in federal court in Eugene, Oregon, argued that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ new policy is unlawful and usurps Congress’s authority over spending in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
They argued the administration unlawfully wanted them to “rewrite sexual health curricula to erase entire categories of students,” as part of its latest effort to target transgender youth.
HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The department adopted the policy after the Republican president on his first day back in office on Jan. 20 signed an executive order directing the government to recognize only two sexes – male and female – and required agencies to ensure that grant funds do not promote what he dubbed “gender ideology.”
HHS on Aug. 26 sent letters to 46 states and territories demanding they remove all references to “gender ideology” contained in sexual education curricula and materials funded through the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP).
What’s at stake for Rhode Island
In Rhode Island, approximately $600,000 in PREP grant funding is at risk, according to a news release from the office of Attorney General Peter F. Neronha.
“This federal funding is not the President’s to withhold, and he knows it,” Neronha said in the news release. “… This Administration is attempting to overwhelm our democracy by slowing normalizing the President’s authoritarian tendencies with every unlawful overreach.”
The program educates young people on abstinence and contraception to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, with particular focus on children who are homeless or living in foster care or in areas with high teen birth rates.
The Aug. 26 letters from HHS warned that recipients of grants from the PREP and the Title V Sexual Risk Avoidance Education programs could not teach students “that gender identity is distinct from biological sex or boys can identify as girls and vice versa.”
HHS also terminated California’s PREP grant after the state failed to meet its demand to modify its educational materials.
In the Sept. 26 lawsuit, the states said the administration’s policy was at odds with the requirements Congress set when it created the two programs and put them at risk of losing at least $35 million if they do not remove “medically accurate, non-discriminatory information within those programs.”
“The federal government’s far-reaching efforts to erase people who don’t fit one of two gender labels is illegal and wrong – and would deny services to millions more in the process,” Washington Attorney General Nick Brown said in a statement.
Joining Rhode Island in the lawsuit are the attorneys general of Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia.