PRESS RELEASE: New Report: $230 Million in Federal Grants Tied to Intersectionality Could Fuel Race- and Sex- Based Discrimination

WASHINGTON—A new report from the Defense of Freedom Institute for Policy Studies (DFI) and the Legal Insurrection Foundation (LIF) examines how federal agencies and funding recipients use intersectional ideology to embed unlawful race- and sex-based preferences in grantmaking.

The report, “Federal Spending on Intersectionality: The Case for Executive Action to End Identity-Based Preferences in Federal Grantmaking,” argues that intersectional frameworks enable federal agencies and grant recipients to favor or disfavor individuals based on race, sex, or combinations of protected characteristics in violation of civil rights law.

DFI and LIF identified approximately 250 federal assistance award records through a USAspending.gov keyword search for “intersectionality.” Those records represent approximately $230 million in reported obligations and $140 million in reported outlays. Many of the awards have performance periods extending into 2027, 2028, 2029, and 2030.

The awards span the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Food and Drug Administration, Department of Justice, Department of Defense, Department of State, and other federal agencies and components.

Projects described in the report include:

• $1,033,209 to the University of California, San Francisco, for “Women, Intersectionality, Substance Use and HIV”;
• $1 million to the Georgia State University Research Foundation for “Intersectionality and Mentoring in the Professoriate”;
• $982,345 to the University of New Mexico for “Intersectionality in Building STEM Entrepreneurship Capacity”;
• $799,904 to the University of North Texas for “Inclusion, Identity and Intersectionality”; and
• $510,597 to the University of New Mexico for “Intersectionality as Inquiry and Praxis.”

The report does not conclude that every intersectionality-based project identified in the search lacks a lawful public purpose; instead, it calls for federal agencies to determine whether otherwise legitimate programs are awarded, scored, conditioned, administered, or reported through unlawful identity-based preferences.

“This report shows just how deeply intersectional ideology has become embedded in the federal grantmaking apparatus,” said Robert S. Eitel, President and Co-Founder of DFI. “Federal agencies must ensure that grants are used to advance the purposes Congress authorized and address real public needs, not bankroll an ideological framework designed to divide Americans into categories of privilege and oppression.”

“Race-obsessed ‘Intersectionality’ doctrine provides the toxic fuel for radical anarchist groups like the Turtle Island Liberation Front, and is the mothers’ milk for destructive anti-American and anti-capitalist agendas that dominate campuses,” said William A. Jacobson, Founder and President of the Legal Insurrection Foundation and its Equal Protection project. “Amazingly, we have discovered that the federal government has been funding the Intersectionality movement. This has to stop. Having eliminated CRT and DEI from federal grants, the Trump administration should close the Intersectionality loophole and stop federal grantmaking for programs that promote Intersectionality.”

The report recommends that President Trump issue an executive order directing federal agencies to review active and pending awards for intersectional terms and practices, take immediate measures to cut off federal financial assistance for the discriminatory application of intersectionality, and prevent new grant solicitations from relying on unlawful intersectional criteria. Additionally, as the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) finalizes regulations prohibiting discriminatory DEI in grantmaking, it should include language ensuring that agencies and institutions cannot evade these rules by basing awards and projects on composite intersectional categories that do not explicitly refer to race, sex, or other protected characteristics. Agencies should issue guidance documents translating the order and regulations into operational rules for federal funding opportunities.

To read the report, click here.

To learn more about DFI’s and LIF’s work on combating intersectionality, be sure to read
“Intersectionality: The Rise of a Dangerous Anti-American Ideology and How to Stop it.”