8 House Democrats Join GOP in Vote to Defund Schools That Support Trans Youth |
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On Tuesday, May 19, the U.S. House passed H.R. 2616, the “Stopping Indoctrination and Protecting Kids Act,” by a vote of 217-198. The bill would hand the Trump administration enormous leverage to strip federal funding from any school that “teaches or advances concepts” related to transgender people, codifying into federal law the anti-trans definitions from Trump’s executive order 14168, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism.” It would also require public schools to forcibly out transgender students to their parents before using their pronouns or chosen names. The bill is significant on its own terms for the harm it would inflict on transgender youth if it became law. But what made Tuesday’s vote especially notable was the eight Democrats who joined every Republican to pass it — the largest Democratic defection on any standalone anti-trans bill of this Congress.
The bill’s most consequential clause is its second section, which amends the federal education code’s existing list of “prohibited uses of funds” to add: “to teach or advance concepts related to gender ideology, as defined in section 2 of Executive Order 14168 (90 Fed. Reg. 8615; relating to defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the Federal Government).” That single sentence slots an anti-trans line item into Section 8526 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the foundational federal law governing K-12 education in the United States. Adding “concepts related to gender ideology” to that list places the existence of transgender people on the same legal footing as activities the federal government considers prohibited. And by tying the definition of “gender ideology” to Trump’s executive order rather than the statute itself,........