USDA secretary, DOGE misrepresent feminine hygiene study

"CANCELLED: $600,000 grant to study 'menstrual cycles in transgender men,'" Rollins, Trump's appointed head of the Department of Agriculture (USDA), said in a March 7 post on X.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Trump administration's cost-cutting team spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk, shared Rollins's post on its website and X.

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Screenshot from X taken March 12, 2025

Similar posts reverberated across X and other platforms such as Facebook, amplified by Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace and media outlets including Fox News.

The posts follow Trump's efforts to enforce recognition within the federal government of only two sexes, with an executive order signed on his first day in office that ordered agencies to remove statements, policies and other communications promoting "gender ideology" and restricted federal funds to projects that did so. 

The USDA secretary credited the discovery of the grant to the American Principles Project, a conservative political advocacy organization, which highlighted the award in a "funding insanity" database on its website aimed at identifying federal spending on "gender ideology" under former president Joe Biden's administration.

"The USDA obligated $600,000 in grants to Southern University A&M to study menstrual cycles in 'transgender men and people with masculine gender identities, intersex and non-binary persons,'" the database says.

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Screenshot from the American Principles Project taken March 12, 2025

But the group's summary of the project -- and Rollins's claim -- is inaccurate.

The program, named "Project Farm to Feminine Hygiene," was designed to "address the growing concerns and issues surrounding menstruation, including the potential health risks posed to users of synthetic feminine hygiene products," according to its documentation on the USDA website (archived here, here and here).

The documentation says the main purpose of the grant was to explore how regenerative cotton, regenerative wool and industrial hemp could be used to develop feminine hygiene products including pads, liners and underwear. It also involved educating women and girls about menstruation and the various products available to them through an extension outreach program, and establishing a local fiber processing facility for growers in Louisiana, where Southern University is located.

Southern University's Agricultural Research and Extension Center said in a March 9 statement that the project was "not a study on or including research on menstural cycles. 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" (archived here).

The Center told AFP it had no additional comment.

'Uninformed'

The description of the project's goals, objectives and project methods makes no reference to studying menstrual cycles. 

The sole mention of the word "transgender" in the documentation comes in its "non technical summary," which says: "It is also important to recognize that transgender men and people with masculine gender identities, intersex and non-binary persons may also menstruate."

Sharon Donnan, the founder and director of Acadiana Fibershed, a regional fiber producing initiative whose regeneratively grown Acadian Brown Cotton was one of three fibers being assessed under the grant, rejected the claims about the study focusing on transgender men as "uninformed" (archived here).

"It's such an attack on women," Donnan told AFP March 12. "It's morally wrong and it's inaccurate. This study is not about menstrual cycles of transgender men. It is not. It has absolutely nothing to do with that, and it's not studying menstrual cycles. That's a given -- that's why we use these products."

The project "is 100 percent concerned about women's health, and that the products that are available to women contain what they say they contain and will cause no harm."

Donnan said she had cried "tears of joy" when she was asked to assist with the research because she felt she was "serving, in the best possible way, women around the world who would finally be able to trust the products that they're using."

The nonprofit had supplied one pound of its cotton to absorbency and other testing as of March 12, she said.

She said cancelation of the grant would also hurt the small farmers working for Acadiana Fibershed, and that she and other women were preparing to launch a phone campaign to keep it going.

Neither the American Principles Project nor the USDA provided evidence that Southern University's work focused on studying transgender menstrual cycles, when contacted by AFP.

Cailey Myers, a spokesperson for the American Principles Project, said in a March 11 email: "This grant clearly denies biological reality -- men don't menstruate. Federal grants should not be funded if they support this preposterous notion; it's disqualifying in and of itself."

A USDA spokesperson further claimed the project's educational components prioritized transgender men, again without offering proof.

"On a surface level, this award focused on studying the health risks of synthetic fibers and exploring natural fiber alternatives. However, the education component, funded by the taxpayer, prioritized women identifying as men who might menstruate," the spokesperson said in an email.

"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."

AFP has previously documented other inaccuracies in the Trump administration's claimed savings, including here and here.