The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Tuesday threatened to cut funding to Vermont and 39 other states for a program aimed at preventing teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases if states do not remove “all references to gender ideology” from curriculum materials supported with federal dollars.
President Donald Trump’s health department cut funding to California last week for that state’s participation in the nationwide program, called the Personal Responsibility Education Program, or PREP. In a press release Tuesday, the department said it could do the same for other states — as well as U.S. territories and Washington, D.C. — if health authorities there did not ax what the feds called “delusional” curriculum language within 60 days.
In Vermont, that puts about $670,000 of federal funding at risk, according to data attached to the health and human services department’s release. The program distributes about $80 million nationwide.
“Accountability is coming,” Andrew Gradison, acting assistant U.S. health secretary, said in the release. “Federal funds will not be used to poison the minds of the next generation or advance dangerous ideological agendas.”
Gradison wrote a letter to the Vermont Department of Health on Tuesday outlining what he said were examples, taken from curriculum used in the state, that “fall outside of the scope” of federal laws governing the sex education program. The feds asked Vermont to provide curriculum used for the program in April, according to the letter, and Gradison on Tuesday thanked the state for a “timely response.”
The letter cited language from Vermont’s sex education materials stating that asking young people “to tell you their pronouns is a way of creating a safe space for transgender or gender nonconforming youth,” as well as material that included an explanation of differences between the terms “gender,” “gender identity” and “gender expression.”
The letter also cites material from Vermont stating: “Transgender women and cisgender women are both women. Transgender men and cisgender men are both men. The use of cisgender helps clarify that gender identity exists in both cisgender and transgender people.”
Gradison called the language “irrelevant” to the purpose of the PREP grant program, which he said is to educate young people about abstinence and contraception. He said the program’s federal statute “neither requires, supports nor authorizes teaching students that gender identity is distinct from biological sex or that boys can identify as girls and vice versa.”
The letter directed Vermont to remove “these and all similar language” from curriculum used for PREP in the state or risk losing funding.
In a statement Tuesday afternoon, Kyle Casteel, a spokesperson for the state’s Department of Health, said of the letter that his colleagues were “working to understand it in real time.”
“While we don’t know the full scope of the potential impacts yet, the Health Department affirms our commitment to evidence-based public health programs that reflect the needs of all Vermonters, including the LGBTQ+ community,” Casteel said.
Olivia Gieger contributed reporting.
