Trump officials axe period research after false claim it was about ‘menstrual cycles in trans men’

Misinformation regarding transgender men has led to officials axing federal research into finding safer period products. 

President Donald Trump has already made false statements about the Biden administration creating transgender mice and sending “eight million dollars to promote LGBTQI+ in the African nation of Lesotho.”

Now, he has supported claims that a government grant to the Southern University and A&M College, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, that aids research into period products, was being used to support trans men who menstruate. 

US secretary of agriculture Brooke Rollins took to X/Twitter on Saturday (8 March) to reveal that his department was cancelling a $600,000 (£465,000) grant to study “menstrual cycles in transgender men”. 

Grant does not fund research related to trans men

Rollins linked to an article in the College Fix, which claimed that American Principles Project, a conservative group, had flagged the grant it its Funding Insanity: Federal Spending on Gender Ideology under Biden-Harris database. 

The department of agriculture (USDA) did make the grant but the college said on Sunday (9 March) that the money was not used to research menstrual cycles in transgender men, although the university’s research proposal did say: “It is important to recognise that transgender men and people with masculine gender identities, intersex and non-binary persons, may also menstruate.”

The grant, which which was to fund work between 2024 and 2027, aided research into disposable feminine hygiene products, known as period products – a fact included in its proposal to the USDA, Snopes reported.

A university spokesperson added that the study aimed to “develop sustainable, reusable and disposable feminine hygiene products” from alternative natural fibres. 

‘There are only two sexes,’ says conservative group

American Principles Project’s communications director, Cailey Myers, told Snopes: “When Southern University agrees that there are only two sexes, male and female, and that men cannot menstruate, we’d be happy to push for the Department of Agriculture to reinstate their funding.”

A spokesperson for the USDA told CBS News that the project’s “mission certainly does not align with the priorities and policies of the Trump administration, which maintains that there are two sexes: male and female.”

It comes after Trump signed an executive order declaring that the US recognises “only two sexes”.

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