NWLC submitted a comment in opposition to a proposed rule that would weaponize federal funding to promote the Trump administration’s anti-equity, anti-trans, anti-woman, anti-abortion political agenda. This rule would jeopardize funding that goes to schools, health care, child care and early learning programs, domestic violence programs, and countless other critical programs and services across virtually every sector of society.

Under the proposed rule, funding recipients would be forced to comply with the administration’s ideologies and priorities or else lose their funding. That leaves many grantees with an impossible choice: comply with discriminatory requirements that may conflict with their mission and the laws they have to follow, or lose the federal funding that makes their work possible. Either way, people who rely on federally funded services—disproportionately women overall, women of color, women with low incomes, disabled women, and transgender people of all genders—will suffer if this rule is adopted.

Our comment details the numerous ways that this proposed rule would endanger essential programs and services and the people who rely on them. We also lay out the many other problems inherent in the proposed rule. For example, we explain why the rule is unjustified and flouts a wide range of laws, and we show that the rationales the agencies provide are likely pretexts for their true motive: enforcing this administration’s hostility to communities and viewpoints it disfavors. We demand that this fatally flawed rule be withdrawn in its entirety.

Our comment can be found here. You can read more about the proposed rule in our fact sheet at this link.