Across the United States, a quiet but consequential rewriting of sex education is underway. In school districts from Georgia to Wyoming, lessons that once acknowledged the existence of transgender and non-binary youth are being erased line by line. It is not teachers or parents driving this change, but a directive from the Trump administration, one that has forced states to choose between inclusivity and federal funding.As first reported by The Guardian, at least 11 states and two US territories have agreed to comply with the administration’s demand to strip all references to gender identity from the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) — a $75 million federal initiative that educates adolescents about relationships, contraception, and the prevention of sexually transmitted infections. Those who refused faced the threat of losing millions of dollars in federal grants.
A federal push with ideological undercurrents
The Guardian’s report revealed that in April 2025, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and its agency, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), ordered all states and territories receiving PREP funds to submit their curricula for a “medical accuracy review.” Four months later, letters were sent to 46 states and territories declaring that their materials contained “content outside the scope” of the programme’s authorising statute, specifically what the administration termed “gender ideology.”Even inclusive directives asking educators to show “respect for all participants, regardless of personal characteristics, including race, religion, sexual orientation or gender identity,” were ordered removed. The administration’s justification, as cited by The Guardian, was that “federal funds will not be used to advance dangerous ideological agendas.”
Lines of compliance and defiance
The Guardian reported that Alaska, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Wyoming, along with the US Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands, have either complied with or are in the process of complying with the administration’s directive.
The human cost behind policy battles
The Guardian’s report also cited data from the Williams Institute at UCLA, which estimates that more than 120,000 transgender individuals aged 13 to 17 live in the states complying with the administration’s order. For these adolescents, the removal of gender identity from curricula is not merely symbolic, it shapes how they see themselves reflected in education and society.A 2024 survey by The Trevor Project, cited by The Guardian, found that nearly half of transgender and non-binary youth in the US had seriously considered suicide in the past year. The study linked supportive school environments and inclusive teaching with lower rates of mental health distress and self-harm. The administration’s directive, critics argue, threatens to dismantle those safeguards.
California’s costly defiance
California became the first state to lose its PREP funding after refusing to comply. As reported by The Guardian, the administration revoked nearly $12 million in grants that had sustained sex education programmes in public schools, juvenile detention centres, and foster care facilities. The state has appealed the decision, but so far, its health department has been unable to secure replacement funding.The Guardian further noted that the Trump administration has extended similar restrictions to two additional federal initiatives, the Sexual Risk Avoidance Education (SRAE) programme, valued at $50 million, and the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (TPPP), valued at $101 million. Both have faced legal challenges, and federal judges have issued temporary injunctions halting changes to these programmes in Democratic-led states.
What the battle really reveals
As The Guardian observed, this dispute extends beyond sex education. It represents a broader struggle over federal authority, ideological influence, and the right of young people to receive comprehensive and inclusive instruction. By tying federal funding to ideological compliance, the Trump administration is effectively redrawing the moral and factual boundaries of classroom teaching.The result is a fractured educational landscape, one where the same topic can be discussed openly in Massachusetts but silenced in Mississippi; where acknowledgment of identity becomes a political act. The courts have offered a temporary reprieve, but the larger question endures: In a nation divided by belief, who decides what truth looks like in the classroom?
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