Hudson Crozier
President Donald Trump’s freeze on foreign aid has led to three transgender clinics shutting down in India as liberal causes around the world lose taxpayer funding.
Mitr Clinic, the country’s first health institution “exclusively for the transgender community,” closed three facilities on Jan. 24 after Trump cut most of its budget, Indian news outlets reported Sunday and Monday. The clinics almost fully relied on American taxpayer funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), an entity the left has defended as Trump’s administration moves to dismantle it.
Former President Joe Biden’s State Department celebrated Mitr Clinic’s opening in 2021 along with the premiere of a documentary “Mitr Clinic – Pride and Beyond.” Biden’s USAID used a federal AIDS relief program to help open the clinic in partnership with Johns Hopkins University.
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“As the White House report released on November 20 [2021] to memorialize the Transgender Day of Remembrance noted, the U.S. government is taking essential steps to address the root causes of anti-transgender violence, discrimination, and denial of economic opportunity,” a U.S. diplomat said in the State Department’s news release. “These clinics, which provide community-led comprehensive health care services to the transgender community, are a big step toward building a more inclusive society for the LGBTQI+ persons.”
The funding stemmed from former President George W. Bush’s “President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)” program and amounted to around $2,290 in Indian currency per month, according to the State Department and the Indian Express.
A clinic official told the Indian Express that “the gender affirmation services constituted just 1% of our clientele” while other services focused on “basic healthcare for the trans community, who are otherwise ostracised in the society.” One facility was based in Old City, a majority-Muslim neighborhood in the city of Hyderabad.
India’s Tribune newspaper reported that patients with more conventional medical needs such as HIV treatment are being directed to other institutions that treat them.
Trump aims to dissolve USAID over what he considers wasteful spending, having closed down its Washington, D.C., headquarters, laid off its staff and cut 90% of its foreign grants. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) leader Elon Musk and other conservatives have criticized the agency’s history of letting taxpayer money go toward terrorist organizations, leftist advocacy groups and efforts to spread LGBTQ ideology around the world. Federal judges so far are allowing Trump to move forward with a 90-day pause on foreign aid that began Jan. 20 despite lawsuits.
The State Department also cut 45% of its grants and is considering plans to take on whatever functions of USAID Trump may keep.
Musk reacted to the news of the Indian gender clinics in a Friday X post that said, “That’s what American tax dollars were funding.”
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