The rule could have heavy impacts towards trans people across society.
Last week, the Trump administration quietly released a sweeping new federal rule that would use funding threats to force institutions across the country to reject transgender people. The 400-page proposed regulation would codify the administration's anti-trans executive orders into binding federal policy, imposing a blanket prohibition on federal funds going toward "gender ideology"
The proposed rule, formally titled "Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance," rewrites the government-wide framework governing all federal grants across every agency. Among its most consequential provisions, it requires that before a federal grant recipient can receive money, the award must pass a "pre-issuance review" conducted by a political appointee—not a career expert or peer reviewer—to ensure it is "consistent with applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest." The regulation explicitly instructs these appointees to screen for "denial by the recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic." [...] An institution that acknowledges transgender people exist—through its policies, its training, its healthcare, its bathroom access, its HR procedures, its name-change processes—could be deemed to "deny the sex binary" or to “support the notion that sex is mutable” and have its federal funding blocked.
Importantly, the gender ideology prohibition has no age limitation—hospitals could be targeted not just for providing care to minors but for providing gender-affirming care to adults, because prescribing hormone therapy to a transgender patient of any age could be deemed promoting the belief that "sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic."
THIS IS OPEN TO COMMENT UNTIL JULY 13, 2026
This is all very bad and horrible, but I want to be clear that it’s worse and more sweeping than just eliminating trans research.
This torches everything. And I do mean everything.
A very abbreviated list of its ramifications include (but are not limited to):
ending funding for ALL DEI related initiatives
allowing the government to terminate grants at any point for any reason
preventing researchers from publishing, going to conferences, and being part of academic societies
requiring that topics must support the president’s agenda.
What this means, and if anything I’m under selling it, is the death of science and research in America. It allows the government to restrict any topic they please at a whims notice, putting officials who have no background in the topic in charge of deciding funding continuity. It controls what gets researched and if/how researchers are allowed to share their discoveries. There are no books to burn if the government never allows them to be written. This is fascism plain and simple.
Please, if you only ever write one public comment, this is the one to do.
Bringing back this guide to writing an effective public comment. This gives you the basics you need to know, what you need to include, a basic outline you can follow, etc.
Public comments are not a vote, it is a chance for you to say "here is an issue with this law I think you need to address" and provide justification for legal challenges if it goes forward:
"Comments raise the bar that agencies have to meet when making a rule; “if an agency fails to adequately respond to significant, relevant comments in a final rule, members of the public may seek to challenge the rule in court on that basis and claim it could be struck down.ˮ"
But also, if possible, don't stop at writing a comment. Don't stop at calling your representatives. You should ideally be talking to people in your community about this and organizing resistance on-the-ground; there is a good chance people are already doing that even if you aren't hearing about it.
Also, please keep in mind, this is 100%, without a doubt, wholly unconsitituonal. They will try to enforce it regardless, but that does not make it legal. Do not treat this as law because it is not.
My comment in full is below. I did not read the entire Proposed Rule because I could feel my blood pressure rising into a rage after the first few paragraphs, but you are welcome to copy/paste and use this if you change it a bit to be more relevant to yourself.
(Please for the love of god put in a comment of some kind.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------- I am an American citizen and I REJECT this proposed rule in the strongest possible terms.
The Proposed Rule is not presented in neutral terms. It is full of fearmongering, baseless accusations, blatant misinformation, and misrepresentation of both reality and the wishes of actual citizens, including me. It claims that it would improve efficiency and keep tax dollars from being misused, but this is false. The current Administration has overseen DOGE, the largest waste of American tax dollars in history, and even more recently, spent 13 million dollars on painting the Reflecting Pool of the National Mall blue. I have little faith in their budgeting priorities. It likewise claims that the majority of Americans do not believe in a "woke" agenda. Since it is never actually stated what that means, it is impossible to counter with facts, but as we see in every national election, the number of voters who desire progressive policies is about equal to those who don't, varying by issue. Gay marriage, legalized in America in 2005 (after many other countries), has a 65% approval rating in America as of May 2026 (Gallup polls). Protection from discrimination for transgender people has an approval rating of 56%.
Aside from being blatantly un-Constitutional, this Proposed Rule is ethically, morally, and spiritually wrong. The Federal government has never possessed the right to mandate that valuable social services discriminate against the citizens they are ostensibly bound to help. The distrust that this rule would engender in all those organizations that either willingly comply or are forced to because they cannot risk losing funding would destroy America's internal stability and credibility. What are you thinking? Do you imagine that it will not affect you, because you don't think you know any trans people? That's not how this works.
You'll see it in the lack of community. Trans people are just like you. They are working in factories and shops. They are soldiers, teachers, firefighters and police, politicians and farmers and artists. This Proposed Rule tells them: You don't matter. When people can't trust each other anymore, why should they be proud of a country that forces them to deny their neighbors what they need unless they adhere to a certain ideology? That is what this rule would do. You have no right.
Since I am a researcher, I want to mention something else in the proposed rule: the ability to pull funding from researcher projects whenever you want, for whatever reason, if they don't fit your agenda. We aren't researching because we have a political agenda. We are looking for knowledge. If you let us find it, we can make you stronger, but I for one am not pouring years of labor into something that might get canceled at the last second. You want brain drain? This is how you get it. Hardworking researchers who can't count on the government to keep multi-year projects funded will not stay here. The EU, Canada, and other countries have many good opportunities for stable research funding. Maybe even China, who knows?
In summary, this proposed rule is not only a cruelty to people who are no threat to you, and never have been; it is an embarrassment to America.
