Trump doubles down on false claim that Biden administration spent millions making mice transgender

The Trump administration has doubled down on the bizarre (and false) claim that the previous government spent millions of dollars to make mice trans.

During an address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday (4 March), Trump claimed that the Department of Government Efficiency had found $8 million (£6.2 million) set aside by Joe Biden’s administration to make mice transgender.

“This is real,” the president claimed, during a speech which better resembled one of his campaign rallies.

It was, in fact, not real. CNN fact-checkers have clarified that, between 2021 and 2022, $477,121 (£370,000) was set aside for research into how feminising hormones can affect the immune system, which involved tests on monkeys.

However, the White House has now repeated the claims in a press release, calling CNN’s fact-checkers “fake news losers,” and proclaiming that “president Trump was right (as usual)”.

Trump’s claim seems to focus on research papers, one of which received $3 million (£2.3 million) funding and examined how “sex-specific inflammatory mechanisms controlled by hormones” might contribute to asthma. Another study, which received $1.2 million (£930,000), used transgenic – not transgender – mice.

Other projects included a $2.5 million (£1.9 million) fertility study and a $300,000 (£233,000) analysis of breast cancer risks for trans men, which used mice in clinical tests.

What are transgenic mice?

A transgenic mouse is one that has had its genome altered for the purpose of studying gene functions, and for genetic engineering tests.

The first genetically engineered mouse was created in 1974 by American embryologist Beatrice Mintz and biology professor Rudolf Jaenisch, by inserting a DNA virus into a mouse embryo. While it was a scientific breakthrough, the mice did not pass the modified gene on to its offspring.

Transgenic mice have nothing to do with being transgender or relate to non-cisgender identities in any way.

Recently, scientists in Dallas managed to create transgenic mice with woolly fur, as part of tests to create woolly mammoth traits in mammals.

The experiment, according to the company behind the tests, Colossal Biosciences, said, this could enable scientists to discover whether specific DNA sequences and physical traits enabled the mammoth, which last roamed the planet about 4,000 years ago, to survive in cold climates.

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