Trump Expands the Global Gag Rule and Contracts the Family Planning Budget
Written by Brian Dixon, Senior Vice President for Governmental and Political Affairs | Published: June 8, 2026
Vastly expanded Global Gag Rule takes effect
On January 27, the Trump-Vance administration published three new rules in the Federal Register to expand the odious Global Gag Rule to include more funding, more entities, and more activities.
Collectively named (presumably as an homage to George Orwell) the Promoting Human Flourishing in Foreign Assistance policy, the rules apply to all non-military foreign assistance. One of the provisions expands the entities covered by the existing Global Gag Rule. The second rule prohibits recipient countries, private organizations, and multilateral agencies from providing “sex rejecting procedures” or “promoting radical gender ideology.” And the third requires recipients to agree to not “promote discriminatory equity ideology” or “engage in unlawful DEI-related discrimination.” The rules also allow for, but don’t promise, waivers from these requirements in certain, unexplained circumstances.
The new policies took effect on February 26. Unsurprisingly, they have created chaos and confusion. The State Department has been unable to explain how the rules are implemented or how the waiver process works. At a hearing on April 15, the US Ambassador to the United Nations (UN agencies that receive voluntary contributions from the US are subject to the new rules) responded to a question from Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) on how these rules are being implemented, saying only that the administration was “engaging on implementation.”
What does seem clear is that the policy is designed to weaponize US foreign assistance in support of the administration’s ongoing promotion of rigid and outdated gender roles and its creepy obsession with forcing women to have more children.
Democrats in both houses introduced legislation to block the implementation of the expanded policy on April 29. The Protecting Human Rights and Public Health in Foreign Assistance Act was introduced by Sens. Shaheen and Rosen in the Senate (S.4436) and by Reps. Meng, Frankel, DeGette, Jayapal, Jacobs, and Meeks in the House (H.R.8582).
White House budget continues assault on family planning and contraceptives
The White House sent its 2027 budget proposal to Congress on April 3, more than a month late (presidents’ budgets are due the first Monday in February for the following fiscal year). As the adage goes, budgets are more about values than dollars. This budget is disturbing on both counts.
It eliminates all investment in international family planning and reproductive health programs, dismissing it as harmful and wasteful. It excludes support for Gavi, the global program to provide vaccines, and rejects efforts to combat climate change and shift toward green energy. It promises that the United States will not support “unfettered access to birth control.” Examples given of global health programs being eliminated include efforts “promoting reproductive health education and access to birth control and other harmful programs couched under ‘family planning’ in Ghana” and “promoting health equity and providing condoms and contraception in Kenya.”
In its Congressional Budget Justification document, the Department of State lauded the budget’s elimination of “global health activities that do not make America safer, such as family planning and reproductive health.”
It doesn’t get any better on the domestic side. The budget eliminates funding in place since 2024 for the development and evaluation of an online tool called ContraceptionForAll, which researchers at Arizona State University are creating to help trans and gender-nonconforming people choose a contraceptive method best suited to their individual needs. It defunds the Teen Pregnancy Prevention program, specifically dismissing as wasteful activities designed to promote sexual health and equity among young people experiencing poverty. This shouldn’t be a surprise after a number of MAGA figures bemoaned the latest data showing that the teen birth rate in the United States has fallen by more than 80% since the recent peak in 1991. Katie Miller, wife of senior White House aide Stephen Miller, said that this was “killing population growth” and that girls’ “biological destiny is to have babies.”
And once again, the president proposes the elimination of Title X, the domestic family planning program. At the same time, recent guidance sent by the Department of Health and Human Services makes clear that, should Congress disagree and again appropriate funding, the administration wants to shift the focus of the program.
Title X was created under the Nixon administration to help lower-income Americans get affordable contraceptives and family planning care. It has been remarkably successful despite being woefully underfunded for decades. The Trump-Vance administration is now seeking to shift the mission to one of promoting childbearing. They are suggesting downplaying modern, safe, and effective contraceptives and to instead focus on “fertility education” and unproven “restorative” fertility medications. In effect, they’re proposing turning the program upside-down. They’re taking a proven and much-needed family planning program and morphing it into a pro-natalist propaganda outfit.
It’s extremely unlikely that Congress will approve this presidential budget as-is. House Republicans have begun their work on FY 2027 appropriations bills. The first draft of their State Department funding bill provides funding for international family planning, albeit significantly reduced from the level appropriated for 2026. But it also includes a provision to write the Trump-Vance expanded Global Gag Rule into law. Democrats in both houses are likely to offer amendments in the Appropriations Committee to strike this provision. And such a provision is unlikely to be approved by the Senate, even if it does make it through the narrowly divided House.
Email Brian at bdixon@populationconnection.org