Ben Johnson | The Washington Stand
A sprawling, $1.2 trillion government funding bill includes funding for abortion facilities, as well as LGBTQ activist centers that carry out transgender injections, target minors, hold drag shows, and help illegal immigrants who identify as gay or transgender gain U.S. citizenship — a bill one congressman calls “a total, total abomination.”
The “Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024” funds the Departments of Defense, Education, Health and Human Services (HHS), Homeland Security (DHS), Labor, and State until the end of the fiscal year, September 30. Congressional leadership released the text of the 1,012-page bill at 2:30 a.m. Thursday, giving members of Congress just hours to read before an anticipated vote to head off an impending government shutdown at midnight Saturday.
As of this writing, the bill contained the following earmarks:
- $400,000 requested by Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) for Briarpatch Youth Services in Fitchburg, Wisconsin. The group promises to hide minors’ struggle with gender dysphoria from their parents while indoctrinating teens in extreme gender ideology. Its “Queer 101 Training” promises to teach “an intersectional understanding on queer oppression” and aims “to demonstrate how limiting the ‘male’ and ‘female’ binary is.” The organization offers “individual counseling services” for children “ages 12-17,” in which a “[c]ounselor can work with children on exploring identity, resiliency, and creating a Gender Support Plan for school support and advocacy.” The group’s website says, “Youth do NOT need parent/guardian permission to join Teens Like Us. We understand not all youth are at a point in their lives where they can safely and confidently ‘come out.’” (Emphasis in original.) The group’s “Queer 101 Training” aims “to demonstrate how limiting the ‘male’ and ‘female’ binary is.”
- $400,000 requested by Senator Bob Casey (D-Pa.) for the Mazzoni Center in Philadelphia, which carries out transgender hormone shots, clears the way for transgender surgeries, advertises transgender services for minors, and holds drag show fundraisers. Mazzoni carries out cross-sex hormone injections and provides medical letters for transgender surgeries. The center begins targeting teens with its Pediatric & Adolescent Comprehensive Transgender Services (PACTS). Its “Youth Drop In,” which is held each Wednesday night, is aimed at teens “ages 14 to 24” and notes, “Patients under 18 can receive confidential care regarding sexual and mental health without parental permission.” The Mazzoni Center both contributes to and profits from the LGBT movement. Mazzoni invited donors to mingle with “a wide range of acts that include drag queens, drag kings, trans-identifying, bearlesque, and burlesque performers” at its December 3 Code Red fundraiser. “In December, fundraising for Mazzoni Center truly was a drag,” the center cracked. “Drag entertainer Cherry Pop and her fabulous friends united for the 10th annual Code Red fundraiser, a drag/variety show,” which it described as a “powerful night” for a “vital cause.”
- $1,808,000 requested by Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Jack Reed (both D-R.I.) for Women and Infants Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island, which carries out first- and second-term abortions at its Family Planning Clinic. “If you need to discuss abortion care for pregnancy, please feel free to contact the Family Planning Clinic,” states its website. Its “services” include “[s]urgical abortion under general anesthesia in the operating room for people up to 22 weeks pregnant” and “[m]edication abortion (the ‘abortion pill’) for people up to ten weeks pregnant.” The facility will also implant a potential abortifacient inside women after the abortion, advertising a “[p]ost-abortion IUD or contraceptive implant.”
- $650,000 requested by Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) for Dartmouth Hitchcock Nashua in New Hampshire. “We routinely provide both medication and procedural abortion care up to 22 weeks of pregnancy,” the group declares. The facility describes surgical abortion as a procedure “ending a pregnancy by having the pregnancy removed by doctors.”
- $780,000 requested by Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) for Amador Health Services in Las Cruces, New Mexico, which boasts that it “can provide transgender/gender non-conforming (GNC) health education, therapeutic counseling and referrals, and additional LGBTQ+ support that puts your safety and comfort first. If you’ve felt rejected by family and loved ones, isolated from your community, or are just in need of an ear to listen, we’re here.” It also decries the “social stigma” surrounding “undocumented immigration” (e.g., illegal immigration). “[W]e’re working every day to eliminate that stigma and make all feel like they belong.”
- $146,000 requested by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) for Apicha Community Health Center, for facilities and equipment. Apicha’s two locations in Manhattan and Queens advertise “transgender and gender-affirming services” — specifically “initiation and maintenance of hormone replacement therapy,” “letters of support for gender-affirming surgeries” and “help with name change process.” They also distribute potential abortifacients Plan B and IUDs.
- $706,000 requested by Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.) for Entre Hermanos, an LGBT group that helps put illegal immigrants on a path to U.S. citizenship. It offers legal counseling and “free immigration clinics” to illegal immigrants who identify as LGBTQ to obtain U.S. citizenship and hosts workshops on “the many identities” under the transgender “umbrella” and strategies to minimize “transphobia.” The group’s website currently advertises the upcoming “Drag Brunch” on April 28.
- $850,000 requested by Rep. Ayanna Pressley, and Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) for LGBTQ Senior Housing, Inc. (“The Pryde”), in Massachusetts, a controversial funding provision that House Republicans stripped out of a Transportation funding bill last year.
Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.), chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, also listed the following concerning earmarks:
- “Sen. Bennet (D-CO), $845,000 – Envision: You, CO (SAMHSA) – LGBTQ advocacy.”
- “Sen. Shatz (D-HI), $550,000 – Hawaii Health and Harm Reduction Center, HI (SAMHSA) – LGBTQ services and syringe exchange.”
- “Sen. Schumer (D-NY), $1,000,000 — SAGE, NY (ACL) – LGBTQ advocacy.”
The “earmarks in it for abortion facilities” make the bill a “total, total abomination,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) told Steve Bannon’s “War Room” on Thursday.
“We continue to fund abortion tourism, we continue to fund transgender surgeries at the Department of Defense,” Roy continued. “It busts the [spending] caps … funds the FBI headquarters, doesn’t secure the border, funds the World Health Organization.”
Even these dedicated funding streams do not cover the full extent of the bill’s harmful funding, say its critics. “I have multiple concerns, among them are the many new social services that this bill would create for the millions of illegal immigrants streaming across our border. Additionally, it would fund facilities providing routine abortion services, including late-term abortions,” said Aderholt.
Experts say the short time frame legislators have to review such massive legislation makes it more likely wasteful or immoral spending will find congressional approval. “Lawmakers are using arbitrary deadlines and shutdown politics to extort the American people and force lawmakers to vote for a bill they don’t have time to read,” said Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation. “Conservatives were told that the days of omnibus spending bills shrouded in secrecy were over. But this process and the bill it produced are indistinguishable from typical Swamp behavior that’s taken our economy and country to the brink of disaster.”
Principled lawmakers seem to agree. “This is not the bill that my subcommittee produced and supported,” the chairman added. “The Senate has taken liberties with their Congressionally Directed Spending requests that would never stand in the House.”
“Under no circumstances should [House Republicans] vote for this bill,” said Roy. “A vote for this bill is a vote against America.”
“In good conscience, I cannot and will not vote for these projects or this bill,” Aderholt concluded.
SOURCE: THE WASHINGTON STAND
Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.
