Federal Government
EXCLUSIVE: Trump admin blocks $1.25 million in LGBTQ, DEI grants, which may violate federal law
‘A separation of powers issue,’ that raises questions about Impoundment Control Act
The Trump administration has withheld $1.25 million in congressionally appropriated funds from 20 organizations focused on projects related to LGBTQ and other underrepresented groups in a move that may violate federal law, according to multiple sources.
The National Park Service in January publicly announced the grants, noting that Congress created the Underrepresented Communities Grant Program in 2014 and that it “has provided $8.25 million to State and Tribal Historic Preservation Offices, Certified Local Governments, and nonprofit organizations to expand the National Register of Historic Places through historic surveys and nominations.”
The 2025 grants included three for LGBTQ-related projects.
But within days of that NPS announcement, President Trump took office and signed executive orders halting all federal grants for review by a newly created agency, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Its mission: to root out diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and purge what Trump has called “woke” programs from the federal government.
Among the funding now frozen is money for the National Park Service. Established more than a century ago by President Woodrow Wilson, the NPS was tasked with preserving the nation’s natural and cultural resources “for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations.”
The Recognizing Historic Underrepresented Communities initiative was meant to provide long-overdue support for projects highlighting marginalized communities whose histories had often been ignored. Funding was approved for 20 projects across 17 states and D.C.
Officials from the three organizations focused on LGBTQ-related work confirmed to the Blade that they have not received a penny of their grants — or even heard from NPS about when, or if, the money will arrive. In Washington, D.C., the Preservation League was awarded $75,000 to document LGBTQ+ historic resources in the city. In Providence, R.I., the Preservation Society was slated for $74,692 to conduct an LGBTQ+ survey and prepare a National Register nomination. And in New York, the Fund for the City of New York, Inc., was awarded $32,000 to nominate the residence of Bayard Rustin — the iconic civil rights and LGBTQ activist — as a National Historic Landmark.
If these congressionally appropriated funds are not dispersed by Sept. 30 — the end of the fiscal year — the move would appear to violate the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. One expert on the issue told the Blade that the deadline has already passed because it takes time for the government to distribute funds.
Rebecca Miller, executive director of the D.C. Preservation League, saw funds withheld for LGBTQ-related historical recognition — $75,000 that she called a “tremendous grant.”
“A number of years ago, around 2017, the DC Historic Preservation Office received a grant to do a historic context study, which basically documents the history of the gay movement in D.C.,” Miller told the Blade. “[The historic context study] lays out the groundwork for further identification of spaces that are significant under that particular historic context.”
Some of the landmarks mentioned in that $1.25 million grant included well-known institutions that have supported the D.C. LGBTQ community for decades.
“Specific designated landmarks in D.C. that came out of the context study [include] the Furies collective, the Kameny house, the Slowe-Burrill House, and Annie’s Steakhouse is also designated,” she added.
Those significant locations are integral to understanding LGBTQ history not only in the city but the nation as well, Miller said.
“You can’t tell the nation’s history without telling everyone’s history, and I think in Washington in particular, our grant was supported by Capital Pride and SMYAL, two of the foremost LGBTQ organizations in the city, and it would really be a disappointment to all of us if we can’t continue on with these types of projects.”
“I think D.C. is an inclusive environment, and our goal is to tell the full story of the history of the city of Washington, and you can’t do that without this particular group that’s been so important to its history,” Miller added.
Dr. Marisa Angell Brown, executive director of the Providence Preservation Society, told the Blade the organization received notice that it was chosen for a grant — and then nothing.
“We had a notification of an award, but there was no fund transfer,” Brown said. “With the NPS, that email just never came. And as we were emailing the contact people to ask for more information … it was just silence.”
Brown explained that the funding was going to be used to gain a better understanding of the robust queer history of Providence.
“Basically, what we were going to be able to do was hire a consulting historian to, for the very first time, produce a survey of sites that are associated with LGBTQ+ history in the broadest sense in the city of Providence.”
She added that by withholding the funding specifically for LGBTQ-related projects, the Trump administration is attempting to selectively choose the history it wants to be remembered and preserved.
“What preservation really is is a kind of decision making about whose history deserves space and resources, and so a lot of the history of preservation has been preserving sites that are associated mostly with white men,” Brown said. “I absolutely think that these kinds of moves are direct attempts to curtail civil rights. … Good history contributes to the expansion of civil rights, and that is what we were hoping to do with this project.”
Other groups also confirmed they had not received the funding, including the Diocese of Georgia and the City of Denton, Texas.
Ken Lustbader, co-founder of the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project, said it also has not heard anything from the National Park Service.
“I know that we were awarded on paper, but I don’t have a contract,” Lustbader told the Blade. “The fund doesn’t have a contract at this point.”
Walter Naegle, Bayard Rustin’s longtime partner, told the Blade he was not aware of the grant application and that his emails to the organization about the status of the grant have not been returned.
Robert L. Glicksman, a law professor at George Washington University, said without notifying Congress of a recommendation to change the grants — and a subsequent passage of legislation to reappropriate the funding — this might constitute a violation of the Constitution.
“The president has no inherent authority to refuse to spend funds appropriated by Congress,” Glicksman said. “Congress has the control of the purse under Article I of the Constitution. Any attempt by the president to ignore congressional instructions to spend funds presents a separation of powers issue.”
He added that if the Trump administration is doing this without complying with the law, the implications are serious.
“If he is just doing this without complying with the procedures of the Impoundment Control Act, it seems to me it’s an exercise of authority that’s outside his powers in Article II of the Constitution, and it’s infringing on Congress’s Article I power of the purse.”
“If the president is unilaterally refusing to spend money that a statute requires the executive branch to use, that’s a separation of powers problem,” Glicksman said. “It’s the president usurping power that the Constitution delegates to the legislative branch and not the executive branch.”
He also pointed to the broader stakes of Trump’s move.
“What seems to be going on here is the president’s determination that he knows better about what federal money should be spent on than Congress does. He just doesn’t have the prerogative to make that determination.”
And on why these particular grants matter: “The fact that these properties are all supposed to be dedicated to historical acknowledgments of past improper treatment of minorities and underserved communities seems to me to at least arguably indicate this ideological cast to the decision to not spend these particular funds.”
The Blade reached out to the National Park Service for comment on the status of the grant funds. The agency responded with a short email: “Pending financial assistance obligations are under review for compliance with recent executive orders and memoranda.”
Trump’s second violation of Impoundment law?
The concept of checks and balances has been central to the United States federal government since the Constitution’s creation — born out of the founders’ determination to guard against a king, or an oligarchy, taking hold. But the Trump administration is chipping away at the institutions designed to uphold those checks, as the Blade uncovered, by withholding payments to agencies that support ideas it doesn’t like.
In Federalist No. 51, written by James Madison in 1788, he laid out the system clearly: the legislative branch creates laws, the executive executes them, and the judiciary interprets them. To prevent tyranny, the founders layered in limits on each branch’s powers, hoping to make it impossible for any one leader to impose their will unchecked.
Anyone who sat through civics class might recall one of Congress’s most important roles: the power of the purse. Raising money through taxes and deciding how it gets spent falls squarely on lawmakers — with occasional oversight from the Supreme Court when disputes arise.
That idea appeared again in Federalist No. 78, in which Alexander Hamilton described Congress as holding “the will,” the executive “force,” and the judiciary “merely judgment.” The “will,” Hamilton explained, meant not only making laws but financing them.
That balance was tested in the 20th century. President Richard Nixon, like Trump decades later, began impounding — or withholding — funds that had been explicitly allocated by Congress but clashed with his own views. In response, Congress passed the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, making it illegal for any president to block congressionally approved funding except under very narrow circumstances.
Trump ran into this law before. In 2019, he attempted to withhold congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine unless its government agreed to investigate his political rivals, most notably Hunter Biden, the son of then–Vice President Joe Biden. That decision triggered Trump’s first impeachment trial, which became less about the law and more about Republican loyalty to the president.
Fast forward to 2025 and Trump is at it again, this time targeting domestic programs.
Federal Government
Holiday week brings setbacks for Trump-Vance trans agenda
Federal courts begin to deliver end-of-year responses to lawsuits involving federal transgender healthcare policy.
While many Americans took the week of Christmas to rest and relax, LGBTQ politics in the U.S. continued to shift. This week’s short recap of federal updates highlights two major blows to the Trump-Vance administration’s efforts to restrict gender-affirming care for minors.
19 states sue RFK Jr. to end gender-affirming care ban
New York Attorney General Letitia James announced on Tuesday that the NYAG’s office, along with 18 other states (and the District of Columbia), filed a lawsuit to stop U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from restricting gender-affirming care for minors.
In the press release, Attorney General James stressed that the push by the Trump-Vance administration’s crusade against the transgender community — specifically transgender youth — is a “clear overreach by the federal government” and relies on conservative and medically unvalidated practices to “punish providers who adhere to well-established, evidence-based care” that support gender-affirming care.
“At the core of this so-called declaration are real people: young people who need care, parents trying to support their children, and doctors who are simply following the best medical evidence available,” said Attorney General James. “Secretary Kennedy cannot unilaterally change medical standards by posting a document online, and no one should lose access to medically necessary health care because their federal government tried to interfere in decisions that belong in doctors’ offices. My office will always stand up for New Yorkers’ health, dignity, and right to make medical decisions free from intimidation.”
The lawsuit is a direct response to HHS’ Dec. 18 announcement that it will pursue regulatory changes that would make gender-affirming health care for transgender children more difficult, if not impossible, to access. It would also restrict federal funding for any hospital that does not comply with the directive. KFF, an independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism, found that in 2023 federal funding covered nearly 45% of total spending on hospital care in the U.S.
The HHS directive stems directly from President Donald Trump’s Jan. 28 Executive Order, Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation, which formally establishes U.S. opposition to gender-affirming care and pledges to end federal funding for such treatments.
The American Medical Association, the nation’s largest and most influential physician organization, has repeatedly opposed measures like the one pushed by President Trump’s administration that restrict access to trans health care.
“The AMA supports public and private health insurance coverage for treatment of gender dysphoria and opposes the denial of health insurance based on sexual orientation or gender identity,” a statement on the AMA’s website reads. “Improving access to gender-affirming care is an important means of improving health outcomes for the transgender population.”
The lawsuit also names Oregon, Washington, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin as having joined New York in the push against restricting gender-affirming care.
At the HHS news conference last Thursday, Jim O’Neill, deputy secretary of the department, asserted, “Men are men. Men can never become women. Women are women. Women can never become men.”
DOJ stopped from gaining health care records of trans youth
U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon blocked an attempt by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to gain “personally identifiable information about those minor transgender patients” from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), saying the DOJ’s efforts “fly in the face of the Supreme Court.”
Journalist Chris Geidner originally reported the news on Dec. 25, highlighting that the Western District of Pennsylvania judge’s decision is a major blow to the Trump-Vance administration’s agenda to curtail transgender rights.
“[T]his Court joins the others in finding that the government’s demand for deeply private and personal patient information carries more than a whiff of ill intent,” Bissoon wrote in her ruling. “This is apparent from its rhetoric.”
Bissoon cited the DOJ’s “incendiary characterization” of trans youth care on the DOJ website as proof, which calls the practice politically motivated rather than medically sound and seeks to “…mutilate children in the service of a warped ideology.” This is despite the fact that a majority of gender-affirming care has nothing to do with surgery.
In United States v. Skrmetti, the Supreme Court ruled along party lines that states — namely Tennessee — have the right to pass legislation that can prohibit certain medical treatments for transgender minors, saying the law is not subject to heightened scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because it does not involve suspect categories like race, national origin, alienage, and religion, which would require the government to show the law serves a compelling interest and is narrowly tailored, sending decision-making power back to the states.
“The government cannot pick and choose the aspects of Skrmetti to honor, and which to ignore,” Judge Bissoon added.
The government argued unsuccessfully that the parents of the children whose records would have been made available to the DOJ “lacked standing” because the subpoena was directed at UPMC and that they did not respond in a timely manner. Bissoon rejected the timeliness argument in particular as “disingenuous.”
Bissoon, who was nominated to the bench by then-President Obama, is at least the fourth judge to reject the DOJ’s attempted intrusion into the health care of trans youth according to Geidner.
Federal Government
HHS ‘peer-reviewed’ report calls gender-affirming care for trans youth dangerous
Advocates denounce document as ‘sham science’
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Nov. 19 released what it called an updated “peer reviewed” version of an earlier report claiming scientific evidence shows that gender-affirming care or treatment for juveniles that attempts to change their gender is harmful and presents a danger to “vulnerable children.”
“The report, released through the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health, finds that the harms from sex-rejecting procedures — including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical operations — are significant, long term, and too often ignored or inadequately tracked,” according to a statement released by HHS announcing the release of the report.
“The American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics peddled the lie that chemical and surgical sex-rejecting procedures could be good for children,” said HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the HHS statement, “They betrayed their oath to first do no harm, and their so-called ‘gender affirming care’ has inflicted lasting physical and psychological damage on vulnerable young people,” Kennedy says in the statement.
The national LGBTQ advocacy organizations Human Rights Campaign and GLAAD issued statements on the same day the HHS report was released, denouncing it as a sham based on fake science and politics.
HRC called the report “a politically motivated document filled with outright lies and misinformation.”
In its own statement released on the same day the HHS report was released, HRC said HHS’s so-called peer reviewed report is similar to an earlier HHS report released in May that had a “predetermined outcome dictated by grossly uninformed political actors that have deliberately mischaracterized health care for transgender youth despite the uniform, science backed conclusion of the American medical and mental health experts to the contrary.”
The HRC statement adds, “Trans people’s health care is delivered in age-appropriate, evidence-based ways, and decisions to provide care are made in consultation with doctors and parents, just like health care for all other people.”
In a separate statement, GLAAD CEO Sarah Kate Ellis called the HHS report a form of “discredited junk science.” She added the report makes claims that are “grossly misleading and in direct contrast to the recommendations of every leading health authority in the world … This report amounts to nothing more than forcing the same discredited idea of conversion therapy that ripped families apart and harmed gay, lesbian, and bisexual young people for decades.”
In its statement announcing the release of its report, HHS insists its own experts rather than those cited by its critics are the ones invoking true science.
“Before submitting its report for peer review, HHS commissioned the most comprehensive study to date of the scientific evidence and clinical practices surrounding the treatment of children and adolescents for ‘gender dysphoria,’” the statement continues. “The authors were drawn from disciplines and professional backgrounds spanning medicine, bioethics, psychology, and philosophy.”
In a concluding comment in the HHS statement, Assistant Secretary for Health Brian Christine says, “Our report is an urgent wake-up call to doctors and parents about the clear dangers of trying to turn girls into boys and vice versa.”
President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed a bill that reopens the federal government.
Six Democrats — U.S. Reps. Jared Golden (D-Maine), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.), Adam Gray (D-Calif.), Don Davis (D-N.C.), Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), and Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) — voted for the funding bill that passed in the U.S. House of Representatives. Two Republicans — Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Greg Steube (R-Fla.) — opposed it.
The 43-day shutdown is over after eight Democratic senators gave in to Republicans’ push to roll back parts of the Affordable Care Act. According to CNBC, the average ACA recipient could see premiums more than double in 2026, and about one in 10 enrollees could lose a premium tax credit altogether.
These eight senators — U.S. Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), John Fetterman (D-Pa.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Angus King (I-Maine), Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) — sided with Republicans to pass legislation reopening the government for a set number of days. They emphasized that their primary goal was to reopen the government, with discussions about ACA tax credits to continue afterward.
None of the senators who supported the deal are up for reelection.
King said on Sunday night that the Senate deal represents “a victory” because it gives Democrats “an opportunity” to extend ACA tax credits, now that Senate Republican leaders have agreed to hold a vote on the issue in December. (The House has not made any similar commitment.)
The government’s reopening also brought a win for Democrats’ other priorities: Arizona Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva was sworn in after a record-breaking delay in swearing in, eventually becoming the 218th signer of a discharge petition to release the Epstein files.
This story is being updated as more information becomes available.
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