Last Friday, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins stated on X that a $600,000 grant to Southern University in Louisiana was being revoked for studying “menstrual cycles in transgender men,” in the latest mischaracterization of a grant that was then canceled by the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency team, known as DOGE.
DOGE highlighted the Rollins post, reposting it on the official doge.gov website and on X.
The grant was actually intended for research on the potential health risks posed by synthetic feminine hygiene products and for developing alternatives using natural fibers and fabrics, according to the project’s documentation, which was publicly filed on the USDA website.
According to that documentation, the goals of the grant were to develop sustainable feminine hygiene products using regenerative cotton, wool, and industrial hemp while enhancing education through an extension program that teaches women and girls about menstrual health and reusable products. It also would have funded a fiber processing center for locally grown fibers in Louisiana — potentially benefiting a state with some of the highest unemployment and poverty rates in the country.
The USDA’s decision to cancel the grant appears to have been a result of the grant being flagged to the Trump administration by the American Principles Project, a conservative think tank.
Cailey Myers, a spokesperson for the American Principles Project, said in an email to CBS News, “This grant clearly denies biological reality — men don’t menstruate,” but did not provide any evidence the grant funded research into “menstrual cycles in transgender men.”
A USDA spokesperson confirmed this reasoning in a statement emailed to CBS News, saying the taxpayer-funded education component of the grant “prioritized women identifying as men who might menstruate.”
“This mission certainly does not align with the priorities and policies of the Trump Administration, which maintains that there are two sexes: male and female,” the statement said.
While the grant language does include a single sentence acknowledging that transgender men are among those who menstruate, there was no indication that they were the focus of the grant or even part of it. The passing reference to transgender men in the original grant application appears to be the sole justification for its cancellation.
The description of the grant’s goals, objectives and project methods contains no mention of prioritizing transgender men and focuses solely on the development of menstrual products made from natural fibers. The grant repeatedly notes that it would focus on efforts to “educate young women and adolescent girls” about menstrual hygiene products.
The USDA, asked in a follow-up question whether it had any evidence that the study prioritized transgender men, did not respond.
The true purpose of the project, according to the grant, was to “address the growing concerns and issues surrounding menstruation, including the potential health risks posed to users of synthetic feminine hygiene products.”
According to 2022 study published in the journal Current Environmental Health Reports, there have only been limited studies on the risks of environmental contamination from synthetic hygiene products, despite the potential for toxic chemical exposure. Some of the concerns include whether exposure to heavy metals and PFAS chemicals could be harmful or cancer causing.
Dr. Samii Kennedy Benson, who oversaw the program, told the local NBC affiliate WVLA the program held potential for U.S. farmers.
“Our local fiber processing facility will benefit local farmers who often grow fibers on a smaller scale and so we’ll also have that ability to provide something local,” Benson said.
CBS affiliate WAFB in Baton Rouge also covered the project.
In an email, Benson told CBS News that she received notification her grant had been canceled on Saturday but had not been aware of why until contacted by CBS News.
Southern University, which is a public historically Black land-grant university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, told CBS News “the term ‘transgender men’ was only used once to state that this project, through the development of safer and healthier FHPs [feminine hygiene products], would benefit all biological women.”
A statement from Southern University said the grant was reviewed by researchers from throughout the country before going forward.
Although the overall dollar amount of the grant is small in the larger context of government spending, it was posted by a Trump Cabinet secretary and re-shared by DOGE. As a result, the tweets reached over 5 million people on X by Sunday evening. It was also covered by Fox News and other conservative outlets.
Since DOGE first began posting to its “wall of receipts,” news organizations have found numerous mistakes in both the claims of money saved and the descriptions of programs being shut down.
In one instance, a contract was alleged to have been worth $8 billion, but was in fact worth just $8 million. Additionally, hundreds of millions of contracts and grants have been removed from the “wall of receipts” after reporters exposed errors including double or triple postings of the same contract.
DOGE has also claimed credit for the sale of a building in Washington, D.C., that was sold at auction under the Biden administration.
Hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts have been canceled due to inclusion of phrases or words that the Trump administration believes are associated with diversity, equity or inclusion, or DEI — initiatives Mr. Trump is seeking to ban by executive order — or for conflicting with his executive order declaring that the federal government recognizes only “two sexes, male and female.”
