Federal health officials awarded $86 million in teen pregnancy prevention funds to a single consulting firm with ties to Trump regime officials, NPR reported
The award came months after the regime canceled most of the program’s grants and moved it toward an abstinence-only approach
Democrats in Congress demanded the money be returned, and Connecticut programs have lost the federal funding before
Months after the Trump regime canceled more than $60 million in grants supporting the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, which has helped reduce birthrates by as much as 66% in Connecticut, new reports indicate almost all of the program funding was diverted to a contractor linked directly to President Trump.
Since 2010, the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program funded organizations that gave teens information and programming to help them avoid pregnancy. In that time, teen birth rates fell by more than 70% nationally and by as much as 66% in Connecticut.
Over the summer, the Trump regime announced it canceled the program’s grants, then said the program would shift to an “abstinence-only approach,” Capitol Dispatch reported in July.
The canceled grant funding was diverted from the TPPP to Guidehouse, a “global AI-led professional services firm” owned by Bain Capital, according to a recent NPR report. These funds were provided to Guidehouse by Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families; a leader of that Administration joined the Trump administration directly after working at Guidehouse, NPR found.
The funds were also given to Guidehouse on the last day of the fiscal year, with a protest filed by a former grantee in an attempt to stop it.
In late September, 92 members of Congress wrote a joint letter demanding the return of the funds to the program. They noted that just $579,499 of the program’s $101 million appropriation had been released this year.
The Trump regime previously said the grants normalized sexual activity among minors and had gone to groups that “promote radical leftist ideology,” according to NPR.
In August, CT News Junkie reported the TPPP was previously a target for funding cuts by the first Trump administration in 2017, and that many programs in Connecticut, including in New Britain and Avon, lost funding.
The latest moves also came after Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz noted that in 2023, more women in their 40s gave birth than teenagers for the first time.
