On Friday, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins bragged on social media platform X about the cancellation of a $600,000 grant for Southern University in Louisiana, touting that her department had revoked funds for a study into “menstrual cycles in transgender men.” The only problem? According to the department’s website, that’s not what the grant was intended for.
According to reporting from CBS News, citing the project’s publicly filed documentation posted on the USDA website, the goal of the study, titled “Farm to Feminine Hygiene,” was to examine the potential health risks posed by synthetic feminine hygiene products and to develop alternatives using natural materials.
In her social media post, Rollins thanked the American Principles Project for the “tip.” The conservative think tank flagged the grant as part of its database of federal spending on what they call the “Gender Industrial Complex.”
Critics pointed to a single sentence in the grant document that referenced “transgender men and people with masculine gender identities, intersex and non-binary persons.” In a statement to CBS News, a USDA spokesperson said the grant was revoked because it “prioritized women identifying as men who might menstruate.”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 spokesperson said.
But, as a statement from Southern University’s Agriculture and Research Center made clear, “The term ‘transgender men’ was only used once to state that this project, through the development of safer and healthier [feminine hygiene products], would benefit all biological women.” Throughout the grant document, the authors made repeated references to women and young girls, including explicitly stating that one of the study’s major objectives was to “educate young women and adolescent girls about menstrual hygiene management through an extension outreach program.” Southern University is a public, historically Black land-grant institution located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. As part of the project, researchers planned to establish the first fiber processing center in the state, according to Dr. Samii Kennedy Benson, who oversaw the program. In July, she told Louisiana First News the center would be especially beneficial for “local farmers who often grow fibers on a smaller scale.” USDA’s decision to revoke the grant is part of a much wider effort within President Donald Trump’s administration to slash government spending, often with little consideration for the actual consequences of those cuts. USDA also recently cut more than $1 billion in funding for programs that help schools and food banks purchase food from local farmers and has fired nearly 10% of the United States Forest Service workforce ahead of wildfire season.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW.
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