The Hubert H. Humphrey Building, the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C., as seen on Nov. 23, 2023. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration demanded Tuesday that dozens of states remove from sex education materials any references to a person’s gender departing from their sex assigned at birth, or lose federal funding.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families warned in letters to 40 states, the District of Columbia and several territories that they could lose a total of $81.3 million in remaining federal funds for the Personal Responsibility Education Program, or PREP, if they do not get rid of these references within 60 days. 

The policy appears to target any reference to transgender or nonbinary people. For example, in a letter to an adolescent health program specialist at Alaska’s Department of Health and Social Services, the federal agency asked that a definition of transgender and related terms be deleted from school curricula.

In a statement shared with States Newsroom, Laurel Powell, a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, said the move was part of Trump’s “all-out fight to erase government recognition of transgender people.”

“Sexual education programs, at their best, are age-appropriate, fact-based and informative at a time when young people need this information to keep themselves healthy,” Powell said. “When they do not acknowledge the existence of trans people they fail in their goal to inform, and cutting this funding denies young people the information they need to make safe, healthy, and informed decisions about their own bodies.” 

PREP focuses on preventing teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, and targets youth who are experiencing homelessness or in foster care, or reside in rural areas or places with high rates of teen birth, according to the agency. 

The states that HHS sent letters to Tuesday are: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming. 

Latest demand

The demand marks the latest effort from the administration to do away with “gender ideology,” which the administration says includes “the idea that there is a vast spectrum of genders that are disconnected from one’s sex.” 

GLAAD, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group, noted in a fact sheet that “gender ideology” is “an inaccurate term deployed by opponents to undermine and dehumanize transgender and nonbinary people.”

The letters came less than a week after the administration terminated California’s PREP grant after refusing to remove “radical gender ideology” from the education materials. 

Failure to comply with this demand, the agency said, could result in the “withholding, suspension, or termination of federal PREP funding.” 

“Accountability is coming,” Andrew Gradison, acting assistant secretary at HHS’ Administration for Children and Families, said in a statement. 

Gradison added that the administration “will ensure that PREP reflects the intent of Congress, not the priorities of the left.”

The effort also comes as the administration continues to crack down on gender-affirming care.

Trump signed earlier executive orders that: restrict access to gender-affirming care for kids; make it the “policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female;” bar openly transgender service members from the U.S. military; and ban trans women from competing on women’s sports teams. 

White House budget director Russ Vought speaks with reporters inside the U.S. Capitol building on Tuesday, July 15, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The White House budget office has until Friday to republish a website detailing the pace at which it plans to spend money approved by Congress, following a federal court ruling. 

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in an opinion filed Saturday denied the Trump administration’s request to halt a lower court’s ruling that required it to once again post information about spending decisions called apportionments.

The 27-page opinion, written by Circuit Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, said that to “grant the Executive a stay pending appeal in this separation-of-powers standoff would effectively cut the Congress’s purse strings.”

“No President would allow a usurper to command our armed forces. And no Congress should be made to wait while the Executive intrudes on its plenary power over appropriations and disclosure thereof,” Henderson wrote. “The public interest is best served by maintaining the separation-of-powers balance struck by the Constitution and especially so if the challenged statutes keep the citizenry abreast regarding duly appropriated expenditures.”

Henderson was nominated to the Circuit Court in 1990 by then-President George H.W. Bush, a few years after then-President Ronald Reagan nominated her as a federal district judge in 1986.

Cerin Lindgrensavage, counsel for Protect Democracy Project, one of the organizations that filed the lawsuit, released a statement cheering the Circuit Court’s decision.

“Restoration of this website could not have come at a more important time — over the last two weeks journalists have broken story after story of OMB holding back funds using apportionment footnotes — and once this website goes back online we should all have a chance to learn where else OMB has been holding up money that — under law — should be spent,” Lindgrensavage wrote.

The Office of Management and Budget did not immediately respond to a request for comment from States Newsroom on Monday. The Department of Justice replied “no comment” when asked if they planned to appeal the Circuit Court’s decision.

OMB pulled down website

Congress began requiring OMB to publicly post information about how quickly, or how slowly, the executive branch was spending taxpayer dollars during the Biden administration.

White House budget director Russell Vought opted to pull down that website in March, leading to two separate lawsuits — one from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, and one from Protect Democracy Project.

U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled in late July that OMB must republish the website, writing that Congress “has sweeping authority” to require the president to detail how his administration doles out taxpayer dollars throughout the year.

“As explained in this Memorandum Opinion, there is nothing unconstitutional about Congress requiring the Executive Branch to inform the public of how it is apportioning the public’s money,” he wrote. “Defendants are therefore required to stop violating the law!”

The Trump administration appealed that ruling and asked for the district court’s decision to be put on hold while the case played out in the circuit court.

The weekend ruling from Henderson denied that request. 

New townhomes are under construction this year in Minnesota. Milwaukee joined two Minnesota counties along with dozens of cities and counties suing over Trump administration threats to tie federal funding for housing and other programs to local policy on immigration enforcement; diversity, equity and inclusion; and abortion. (Photo by Ellen Schmidt/Minnesota Reformer)

Twenty-eight cities and counties including Baltimore, Los Angeles, Milwaukee and Rochester, New York, joined a lawsuit July 10 challenging Trump administration attempts to withhold federal funds because of local policies on immigration enforcement; diversity, equity and inclusion; gender equity; and abortion access.

Funding for housing, transit, health care, civil rights and other essential programs has been threatened by new grant conditions, according to the lawsuit, which now includes 60 cities, counties and other entities.

U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein issued a restraining order in May against tying unrelated federal funds to ideological conditions, saying the Trump administration was forcing the local governments to “choose between accepting conditions that they believe are unconstitutional, and risking the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grant funding.”

The first places to sue in early May were three counties in Washington state, two more in California, plus Boston, Columbus, Ohio, and New York City. Since then, 52 cities, counties and other entities have joined from states including Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Wisconsin.

Two of the latest to join are Ramsey County and Hennepin County in Minnesota, where Minneapolis and St. Paul and located. Hennepin County has almost $272 million in federal funding for this year for things such as emergency shelter and road projects, all threatened by new grant conditions imposed by the Trump administration, according to the court filing.

“Communities shouldn’t have to lose critical services because of the Trump administration’s political agenda,” said Jill Habig, CEO of Public Rights Project, a nonprofit legal organization doing work in the case. “These federal funding conditions aim to strip billions of dollars from local governments working to help people thrive.”

Lawyers for the Trump administration opposed the injunction, saying the court had no authority to require the federal government to pay local governments grant money.

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.