From The Center Square

By Bethany Blankley

More than $128 million of federal taxpayer money was spent on at least 341 grants to fund gender ideology initiatives under the Biden administration, according to an analysis of federal data by the American Principles Project.

In, “Funding Insanity: Federal Spending on Gender Ideology under Biden-Harris,” APP says it “found how the federal government has been spending hundreds of millions of YOUR MONEY on the Gender Industrial Complex!”

APP says it identified the grants by searching the USA Spending database. The data, which is available for free, is categorized by federal agency; notable grants are highlighted.

The U.S. Health and Human Services Department awarded the greatest amount of funding totaling nearly $84 million through 60 grants.

The Department of State awarded the greatest number of grants, 209, totaling more than $14 million, according to the data.

Other agencies awarding taxpayer-funded gender ideology grants include:

• U.S. Agency for International Development, nearly $18 million through 8 grants;
• National Endowment for the Humanities, more than $2.6 million through 20 grants;
• Department of Justice, $1.9 million through three grants;
• Institute of Museum and Library Services, $1.87 million through 13 grants;
• Department of Education, $1.67 million through two grants;
• Department of Agriculture, $1.6 million through five grants;
• Department of the Interior, more than 1,000,000 awarded through two grants;
• U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, more than $548,000 through 4 grants;
• Inter-American Foundation, more than $490,000 through two grants;
• National Endowment for the Arts, $262,000 through 13 grants.

APP also identified 63 federal agency contracts totaling more than $46 million that promote gender ideology. They include total obligated amounts and the number of contracts per agency.

The majority, $31 million, was awarded through USAID. The next greatest amount of $4.4 million was awarded through the Department of Defense.

The Trump administration has taken several approaches to gut USAID, which has been met with litigation. The Department of Defense and other agencies are also under pressure to cut funding and reduce redundancies.

Notable grants include:

• $3.9 million to Key Populations Consortium Uganda for promoting “the safety, agency, well-being and the livelihoods of LGBTQI+ in Uganda;”
• $3.5 million to Outright International for “the Alliance for Global Equality and its mission to promote LGBTQI+ people in priority countries around the world;”
• $2.4 million to the International Rescue Committee for “inclusive consideration of sexual orientation, gender identity, and sexual characteristics in humanitarian assistance;”
• $1.9 million to the American Bar Association to “shield the LGBTQI+ population in the Western Balkans;”
• $1.4 million for “economic empowerment of and opportunity for LGBTQI+ people in Serbia;”
• $1.49 million to Equality for All Foundation, Jamaica to “Strengthen community support structures to upscale LGBT rights advocacy;”
• More than $1 million to Bandhu Social Welfare Society to support gender diverse people in Bangladesh.

One of the grants identified by APP, which has since been cancelled, was $600,000 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to Southern University Agricultural & Mechanical College in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to study menstruation and menopause, including in biological men.

According to a description of the grant summary, funding would support research, extension, and teaching to address “growing concerns and issues surrounding menstruation, including the potential health risks posed to users of synthetic feminine hygiene products (FHP);” advancing research in the development of FHP that use natural materials and providing menstrual hygiene management; producing sustainable feminine hygiene sanitary products using natural fibers; providing a local fiber processing center for fiber growers in Louisiana, among others.

It states that menstruation begins in girls at roughly age 12 and ends with menopause at roughly age 51. “A woman will have a monthly menstrual cycle for about 40 years of her life averaging to about 450 periods over the course of her lifetime,” but adds: “It is also important to recognize that transgender men and people with masculine gender identities, intersex and non-binary persons may also menstruate.”

All federal funding was allocated to state agencies through the approval of Congress when it voted to pass continuing resolutions to fund the federal government and approved agency budgets.

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum held a joint appearance in south Louisiana Thursday to tout the restart of the growth of America’s liquefied natural gas(LNG) industry.

The event celebrated the kickoff of a planned $18 billion expansion of the existing Plaquemines Parrish LNG export facility operated by Venture Global. It also served to symbolize the end of what was frankly one of the dumbest policy actions ever invoked by executive order – then-President Joe Biden’s “pause” on permitting for new LNG export infrastructure.

Reversed by President Donald Trump on day 1 of his second term in office, Biden invoked the year-long pause in January 2024 on the flimsiest of pretenses, a preposterous claim by anti-natural gas activist researchers that US LNG emissions exceed those of coal-fired power plants. Worse, that claim was not made in findings of a peer-reviewed scientific study, but in an early “preview” of a study that fell apart on close inspection.

The unpleasant task of defending this dumb policy action fell largely on the shoulders of Biden’s hapless Energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, who assured the attendees of the annual CERAWeek conference in Houston in March 2024 that the “pause” would be “in the rearview mirror” when they met again in 2025. That prediction turned out to be accurate, but not due to any action taken by her or Biden. Instead, Granholm did her best to hype the Department of Energy’s(DOE) own study when it was released in November, making claims about its findings in a letter leaked to The New York Times the day before that turned out to not be accurate.

Even more concerning, Democrat nominee Kamala Harris consistently supported the pause and concerns increased throughout the campaign that, if elected, she would most likely move to turn the pause into permanent policy, thus ending America’s dominant position in the global LNG export business. But voters had different ideas, choosing instead to elect Trump for a second time in November, bringing his plans for American Energy Dominance along with him.

Burgum, who chairs Trump’s newly-created American Energy Dominance Council in which Wright also participates, told workers and executives assembled for Thursday’s event that, “One of our pathways to energy dominance is just unleashing the incredible resources that we have in this country: getting the red tape, getting the federal government off the back of the worker, off the back of companies.”

In an interview from the Venture Global site with Will Cain on Fox News, Wright, pointing to an LNG tanker behind him, said, “In less than 24 hours it’ll be loaded and sailing back to Germany; 100,000 homes in Europe can be heated and supplied with gas for a full year just in that one tanker behind us. This is unleashing American energy to the benefit of Americans and to the benefit of our friends and allies abroad. This is the way to peace.”

And so, Biden’s absurd pause comes to a richly-deserved end. Again, this entire fake controversy had zero basis in fact or real science. That’s how close America came to losing what has been one of its major growth industries of the last decade.

It is almost unimaginable that this could have happened in the United States of America, with its supposed system of checks and balances. But, as Elon Musk’s DOGE operation is revealing on a daily basis, so much of Biden’s administration appears to have been built on a foundation of a complex web of scams and money laundering schemes, with his energy and climate policies playing a leading role. This LNG pause episode almost pales in comparison to some of the multi-billion-dollar grants handed out by both DOE and the EPA in the administration’s final months.

But it’s all in Granholm’s imagined rearview mirror now, as is Granholm herself. America’s LNG industry is back, poised for rapid expansion and ready to resume its place as the dominant player in the global market.

Elections do matter.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.