How Trump’s New Global Gag Rules Will Undermine US Interests Abroad

(Ari Shaw and Laurel Sprague – Just Security) For four decades, the Mexico City Policy—commonly known as the Global Gag Rule—has been a political ping pong. Republican presidents impose it; Democratic presidents rescind it. The policy blocks U.S. funding to foreign organizations that provide or promote abortion, even if those activities are funded by separate, non-U.S. government sources. Until now, its scope was always limited to reproductive health programs. On Jan. 27, the Trump administration published three final rules that represent the broadest overt application of ideological conditions on U.S. foreign aid in history, together called the Promoting Human Flourishing in Foreign Assistance policy. This policy conditions about $40 billion dollars in non-military aid—global health programs, humanitarian assistance, refugee services, development funding—on compliance with the administration’s positions on abortion, “gender ideology,” and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programming. The expanded policy is categorically different from previous iterations of the Mexico City Policy in both scope and ambition. It has taken the Gag Rule model and applied it across nearly all core domains of U.S. foreign assistance, exporting the United States’ culture war over gender identity and DEI through the machinery of U.S. foreign aid. While this article focuses on how the new policy will affect LGBTQI+ populations in particular—communities explicitly targeted by the gender ideology rule and likely to bear significant consequences from all three—the operational problems that the rules create will compromise the effectiveness of U.S. foreign assistance and undermine American strategic interests more broadly. – Trump’s Global Gag Rules Will Undermine U.S. Interests Abroad