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FIRST ON FOX: An office within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) terminated a federal grant funding California’s sex education program aimed at preventing teen pregnancy and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases after the West Coast state reportedly refused to remove “radical gender ideology” from its curriculum, Fox News Digital exclusively learned Thursday.
“California’s refusal to comply with federal law and remove egregious gender ideology from federally funded sex-ed materials is unacceptable,” acting assistant secretary at the Administration for Children and Families Andrew Gradison said in comment provided to Fox News Digital Thursday. “The Trump Administration will not allow taxpayer dollars to be used to indoctrinate children. Accountability is coming for every state that uses federal funds to teach children delusional gender ideology.”
The Administration for Children and Families — which is an office under HHS’ umbrella that funds state, local and tribal organizations to provide support for families such as child care — announced Thursday morning that it was terminating the funding to California’s Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) grant.
The PREP program aims to educate California’s youth, ages 10–19, on preventing teen pregnancy and the spread of sexually transmitted infections, which the state says has led to students in the program “delaying sexual activity, increasing condom or contraceptive use for sexually active youth, or reducing number of sexual partners.”
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“Program services are engaging, nonjudgmental, medically accurate and tailored to the unique needs of youth participants and their communities,” PREP’s website states. “Services are offered in a range of settings, including schools, juvenile justice facilities, homeless shelters and foster care group homes. CA PREP activities also include community engagement and promotion of clinical linkages to youth-friendly reproductive health services.”
PREP specifically aims to assist those who “reside, attend school or receive reproductive health services in a high-need geographic area; are homeless and/or runaway; attend an alternative or continuation school; are in or emancipated from foster care; are in the juvenile justice or probation system; identify as LGBTQ; are receiving treatment for mental health or substance abuse issues; have special needs; live in migrant farmworker families or are expectant/parenting female youth up to age 21.”
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The PREP grant has been under scrutiny by the Trump administration since at least March, when the ACF requested program leaders send copies of its curriculum and other relevant course materials to them for review. The probe was initially launched to ensure the state’s sexual education programming is medically accurate and age-appropriate.
Previous grant funding shows California’s PREP program received just under $6 million from the federal government in fiscal year 2022. All in, California could lose $12.3 million in funding that it has not yet received, covering multiple years, according to HHS.
The Administration for Children and Families reviewed the program’s curriculum and other teaching materials, and found a lengthy list of subjects and language deemed to fall outside the program’s “authorizing statute,” in particular references to “gender ideology.” In June, Fox News Digital reported Administration for Children and Families gave the sex education program a 60-day deadline to remove all references to gender identity or face potential termination of its funding.
The 60-day deadline just ran dry, with the Administration for Children and Families subsequently terminating the funding and sending a letter to Sydney Armendariz, the division chief of Maternal Child, and Adolescent Health Division at the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), and Matthew Green, the deputy director of the Center for Family Health at CDPH, declaring it was “terminating all California State Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) awards and suspending the funding effective August 21, 2025.”
The letter sent Thursday reported that following Administration for Children and Families’s June request to remove what it said was radical gender ideology from PREP teachings, California refused in a letter of its own.
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“CDPH will not make any such modifications at this time for several reasons,” the California Department of Public Health said in a letter to ACF earlier this week, according to HHS. “The listed reasons were: 1) PREP materials had already been reviewed and approved by ACF; 2) the materials are medically accurate; 3) the gender ideology content is relevant to purposes identified in the authorizing statute, specifically the adult preparation subjects listed at 42 U.S.C. § 713(b)(2)(C); and 4) ACF does not have authority to take an enforcement action.”
Among the materials Administration for Children and Families found amid its review of the curriculum was a lesson for middle school-aged students that sought to introduce them to the concepts of transgenderism, Fox News Digital previously reported.
“We’ve been talking during class about messages people get on how they should act as boys and girls—but as many of you know, there are also people who don’t identify as boys or girls, but rather as transgender or gender queer,” the lesson states to students. “This means that even if they were called a boy or a girl at birth and may have body parts that are typically associated with being a boy or a girl, on the inside, they feel differently.”
Other flagged lessons in the materials included curriculum for high school-aged students included instructions on what it means to be “nonbinary” and language that informed students “gender-identity” is “essentially a social status.”
“In a disturbing and egregious abuse of federal funds, California has been using taxpayer money to teach curricula that could encourage kids to contemplate mutilating their genitals, ‘altering their body … through hormone therapy,’ ‘adding or removing breast tissue,’ and ‘changing their name.’ It instructed teachers to ‘remind students that some men are born with female anatomy,’” HHS said in a Thursday press release of the teachings.
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The Administration for Children and Families also had raised concerns over materials for teachers within the program, including lessons on avoiding misgendering individuals.
“All people have a gender identity,” the teacher training materials stated, Fox Digital previously reported. It also instructed educators to refer to people who identify with their sex “assigned at birth” as “cisgender,” and added that those who are not “cisgender” may identify as “non-binary, agender, bigender, genderfluid, [or] genderqueer.”
Gradison’s letter to the California health leaders Thursday underscored that ACF’s decision to terminate the grant is final unless California health leaders file an appeal.
“This is the final decision of the Administration for Children and Families. It shall be the final decision of the Department unless, within 30 days after receiving this decision, you submit a notice of appeal to the Departmental Appeals Board (DAB),” the letter reads.
Fox News Digital’s Alec Schemmel contributed to this report.
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