Vance announces aid restrictions for groups that promote diversity, transgender policies abroad

Vice President JD Vance on Friday said the United States will stop funding any organization working on diversity and transgender issues abroad.

Vance called the policy, which has been widely expected, “a historic expansion of the Mexico City Policy,” which prevents foreign groups receiving U.S. global health funding from providing or promoting abortion, even if those programs are paid for with other sources of financing.

President Donald Trump reinstated the Mexico City Policy last year, following a tradition for Republican presidents that Ronald Reagan started in 1984. Democratic presidents have repeatedly rescinded the policy.

“Now we're expanding this policy to protect life, to combat [diversity, equity and inclusion] and the radical gender ideologies that prey on our children,” Vance told people attending the March for Life in Washington, an annual gathering of anti-abortion activists on the National Mall.

The rule will cover every non-military U.S. foreign assistance, making the Mexico City Policy “about three times as big as it was before, and we're proud of it because we believe in fighting for life,” Vance said.

That means that any organizations receiving U.S. non-military funding will not be able to work on abortion, DEI and issues related to transgender people, even if that work is done with other funding sources.

POLITICO reported in October that the Trump administration was developing the policy. The State Department has yet to publish the details of the new funding restrictions.

Vance accused the Biden administration of “exporting abortion and radical gender ideology all around the world.” The Trump administration has used that argument to massively reduce foreign aid since it took office a year ago.

Vance said the Trump administration believes that every country in the world has the duty to protect life.

“It’s our job to promote families and human flourishing,” he said, adding that the administration “turned off the tap for NGOs whose sole purpose is to dissuade people from having kids.”

Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican who chairs the House Foreign Affairs’ Africa Subcommittee, called the new aid restrictions “the best and most comprehensive iteration” of the Mexico City Policy since Reagan. Smith, who opposes abortion, was also speaking at the March for Life.

But domestic and international groups deplored the expanded policy, noting that it would make women and girls in some parts of the world more vulnerable.

“History shows that the Mexico City policy not only diminishes access to essential services for women and girls, but also breaks down networks of organizations working on women’s rights, and silences civil society,” the International Crisis Group, which works to prevent conflicts, said in a statement.

“This expansion will amplify those effects and is set to compound the global regression on gender equality that we have seen accelerate in the last year,” the group added.

The expanded Mexico City Policy, which international groups have called the ‘global gag rule’ because of the restrictions it imposes, will limit how humanitarian groups and other organizations “can engage in advocacy, information dissemination and education related to reducing maternal mortality, sexual and reproductive health, and reducing stigma and inequalities anywhere in the world, with any funding they receive,” said Defend Public Health, a network of volunteers fighting against the Trump administration’s health policies.

“This would effectively coerce them into denying that transgender, nonbinary, and intersex people exist,” the group said.

Alice Miranda Ollstein contributed to this report.