Biden Admin Quietly Turned A Little Known Gov’t Agency Into An Arm Of The Trans Lobby. Trump May Dismantle It

THE DAILY CALLER | Published January 24, 2025

Under the Biden administration, a little-known federal mental health agency quietly transformed into a hub for transgender activists, handing out millions in grant funds to researchers and activists for programs to support LGBTQ-identifying youth and adults.

Nearly $360 million in Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) grants over the past four years were awarded to projects including the keyword “transgender,” according to government data reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

 

President Donald Trump’s day one executive order recognizing there are only “two sexes” instructed agencies to ensure grant funds are not used to promote gender ideology, making SAMHSA a likely target.

A portion of these SAMHSA grants, primarily funded through the LGBTQI+ Family Support grant opportunity, fund “therapy” programs aimed to convince parents to affirm their child’s gender confusion. Nearly $6.8 million went towards these programs between 2023 and 2024, according to an agency press release.

“Most [SAMHSA] dollars don’t go to serious mental illness (like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder) but, rather, community mental health aimed at the ‘worried well’, prevention efforts (even though we don’t know how to prevent mental illness, or suicide for that matter), and other educational/awareness campaigns on common issues and normal distress, or whatever faddish issue of the day is, like improving emotional wellness for ‘LGBTQIA+,’” Carolyn D. Gorman, Paulson Policy Analyst at the Manhattan Institute, told the DCNF.

 

SAMHSA’s annual budget has doubled over the past decade, rising from $3.4 billion in 2014 to $7.4 billion in 2024. Gorman, who recently suggested President Donald Trump should abolish the agency, believes gender identity is only the latest iteration of problems that have persisted since the agency’s establishment in 1992.

Funding ‘Activist Researchers’

SAMHSA’s recent LGBTQI+ Family Support grant opportunity funded a project targeting the children of military families, aiming to convince parents that they should actively support their child’s desires to live as the opposite gender. Another grant went to a Michigan organization that intends to enlist public school districts in locating students to refer to its program, the DCNF previously reported.

 

The grant opportunity is one way the agency has become a major funder of efforts to make unquestioningly affirming children’s feelings about their gender the dominant approach to treating mental health issues.

In 2020, SAMHSA issued a $3.5 million grant to launch the Center for Excellence in LGBTQ+ Behavioral Health Equity (CoE LGBTQ+ BHE), which is now housed at the University of Connecticut. SAMHSA frequently points to resources developed by the center on its website.

Two women who run the center — Marlene Matarese and Angela Weeks — also received a $10 million grant from the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) in 2016 to launch a center that piloted several “interventions” for LGBTQ-identifying youth in foster care agencies nationwide that strong-arm parents into affirming their child’s gender confusion.

Interventions previously developed using government funds, such as a program designed to improve “affirmative caregiving attitudes” among parents called Affirm Caregiver, are now promoted by the SAMHSA-funded CoE LGBTQ+ BHE.

Affirm Caregiver pushes parents to “to recognize that being affirmative is not simply the absence of homophobia and trans-phobia, but instead is the presence of clear, explicit, and consistent identity-affirming attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors,” one study of the program explains.

The center, through a partnership with Affirmative Research, offers training sessions to help individual therapists and organizations learn how to use the interventions.

Programs, like Affirm Caregiver, are listed as suicide prevention tools by the CoE LGBTQ+ BHE.

Manhattan Institute policy analyst Joseph Figliolia told the DCNF that these “shaky studies” funded by the agency are used “to shore up the narrative that affirmation is always a net good regardless of an individual’s unique circumstances or mental health needs, and to influence public opinion and policy in that direction.”

 

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SOURCE: www.thedailycaller.com

 

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