Trump admin cancels $68M in teen pregnancy prevention grants, citing promotion of premarital sex

The Trump administration has canceled millions of dollars in federal grants to organizations running teen pregnancy education programs nationwide, alleging that the widely effective underage pregnancy prevention services were inappropriately promoting premarital sex.

According to a government fact sheet, the funding did not align with the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health's outlined priorities, which specified that the office would not support "content that encourages, normalizes or promotes sexual activity for minors."

One organization scrutinized by the assistant secretary—South Carolina nonprofit Fact Forward—was accused of including lessons with "advice on making condom use more pleasurable" and promoting discussions that normalize "use of pornography," according to a copy of the letter obtained by The New York Times.

"That information was just not true," Rena Dixon, who runs the group, told the Times. Dixon added that Fact Forward had never used the lessons or materials to which the assistant secretary referred.

Other program directors who spoke with the Times also said the government had distorted the materials they were using to make erroneous claims about their education plans. Several noted that the grants they won required them to use "courses from a federally approved list shown by research to be age-appropriate and effective," according to the Times.

Background on the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program

The federal government first became involved in preventing teen pregnancy in 2010, allocating roughly $100 million to the cause and eventually creating the Office of Adolescent Health and the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (OAH).

At the time, teen birth rates were already in decline, yet the program's influence caused rates to fall faster than ever. The government-funded programs advanced the waning trend by investing in proper sex education and increasing access to reproductive health care in communities suffering from disproportionately high rates of teen pregnancy.

Trump Administration's Actions

Donald Trump and his allies have nonetheless opposed the effort. Last month, a spokesperson for Health and Human Services revealed that the agency had canceled 53 out of 67 grants—totaling $68 million—allocated to the pregnancy prevention program. The impact was broad, affecting more than two dozen states across the country.

Legal Uncertainty

It remains unclear if the effort will hold up in court. Trump took similar actions during his first term, suddenly canceling dozens of grants issued under the Obama-era program in 2017, though his efforts did not succeed.

In April 2018, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson—then a U.S. district judge—ruled that HHS had violated its own regulations by prematurely ending the grants without an adequate explanation, ordering the agency to restore the terminated funds.

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Sikh Family Questions Son's Elimination from Presidential 1776 Award Competition

The Presidential 1776 Award competition was established by the Trump administration to honor America's 250th birthday with a civics contest for high school students.

But the family of 15-year-old Aangad Singh believes he may have been kept out of the competition's final because of his Sikh background and visible turban, NOTUS reports.

Singh, a rising high school junior who lives in Connecticut, entered the competition in February like other high school students around the country. He scored well enough to reach the finals in Washington, D.C., at the end of June and make the final eight. But his elimination after that left his family—and many of his competitors—puzzled.

The Singh family did not believe Aangad had performed poorly, but there was no live scoreboard. Other contestants told them after the competition that they were sure Aangad had won and were shocked that he was not in the top three. When Aangad's mother, Ramandeep, asked an official with the Department of Education, which helped run the contest, for the final scores, the official told her that was proprietary information.

The Singh family waited until the...