HHS Terminates California’s ‘Wasteful’ DEI Grants

The federal Department of Health and Human Services has terminated more than $330 million in “wasteful” DEI and gender research funding in California. Taxpayers and researchers coast to coast have a right to wonder why HHS apportioned these grants in the first place.

HHS handed Stanford $3,692,048 for “Sex hormone effects on neurodevelopment: Controlled puberty in transgender adolescents.” UC San Francisco got $2,554,402 for “Structural Racism and Discrimination in Older Men’s Health Inequities,” with UCLA pulling down $822,539 for “Buddhism and HIV Stigma in Thailand: An Intervention Study.” California’s public universities were not the only beneficiaries.

HHS put out $1,319,024 for “#TranscendentHealth—Adapting an LGB+ inclusive teen pregnancy prevention program for transgender boys.” The grant recipient was the Center for Innovative Public Health Research (CiPHR), a non-profit previously known as “Internet Solutions for Kids.”

President Michele Ybarra comes billed as “a recognized researcher in technology-related health issues for young people.” Her current projects include “a national longitudinal survey of youth that aims to identify youth characteristics related to the emergence of sexual violence over time,” and “the development and testing of a text messaging-based teen pregnancy prevention program for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and other sexual minority teen women.”

That sounds like the one HHS terminated, and many of the others. The $330 million went for studies on “multilevel and multidimensional structural racism,” “gender-affirming hormone therapy in mice,” “microaggressions” and so forth. An HHS spokesman said the terminated grants “are simply wasteful in studying things that do not pertain to Americans’ health to any significant degree, including DEI and gender ideology.” The agency is too kind.

Pregnancy prevention programs for transgender boys and gender-affirming hormone therapy in mice are better described as reality dysphoria. As it happens, California is a pioneer in this field.

Convicted murderer Rodney Quine, a father of two daughters, suddenly claimed he thought he was really a woman from the age of nine. Federal judge Jon Tigar not only believed Quine but ordered the state to pay for the murderer’s “sex reassignment surgery.” Taxpayers who watch “Forensic Files” might find that confusing.

When Quine pleaded innocent, the court did not simply take his word that was true. The court took sworn testimony, examined the physical evidence, and found his claim false. Accepting Quine’s claim of womanhood is like agreeing with a mental patient who claims to be Napoleon, Joan Crawford, or John the Baptist.

Forcing taxpayers to pay for the murderer’s surgery is madness, like the grants HHS is now terminating. As taxpayers should understand, California is not being singled out.

HHS also terminated Emory University’s $1 million grant to study, “microbiome mediated effects of gender affirming hormone therapy in mice.” Vanderbilt got $5 million to “achieve more racial and ethnic diversity among our scientific research faculty.” And so on, ad nauseum.

Investigate Shady Grants

This waste came on the watch of Biden HHS director Xavier Becerra, a former congressman, California attorney general, and once on Hillary Clinton’s short list as a running mate. If taxpayers thought the grants were basically handouts to political allies it would be hard to blame them. New HHS director Robert F. Kennedy Jr. isn’t having it, and his effect could be more far reaching.

Kennedy is the author of The Real Anthony Fauci, which charts Dr. Fauci’s drug tests with foster children in New York City and several states. Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) forced AZT and other toxic drugs on the children, who were not provided basic protections or advocates.

In one study, researchers reported a “disturbing” higher death rate among children who took higher doses of a drug. This could be the unnamed crime for which Joe Biden pardoned Dr. Fauci. On the other hand, the pardon could have been for something during the Covid pandemic, a time of massive death, suffering, and fathomless waste.

RFK Jr. should look into it and so should Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, smeared by Fauci and National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins as a “fringe epidemiologist.” The Stanford professor, who is also an economist, was recently confirmed by the Senate, so the people will see how he handles wasteful grants that do not pertain to Americans’ health, including DEI and gender ideology.