Trump Defunds Teen Prevention While Hiding Epstein's Secrets

The Trump administration is engaged in a grotesque double game: publicly posturing as protectors of children while systematically dismantling the very programs designed to keep them safe and obstructing justice in one of the most notorious sex trafficking scandals in American history.

The evidence is mounting, and it paints a picture of an administration that talks endlessly about "parental rights" and "protecting children" while actively making young people more vulnerable to exploitation and forcing women to give birth to unwanted children.

The Prevention Purge

The Department of Health and Human Services has terminated 53 of 67 grants under the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, wiping out roughly $68 million in funding for universities, community organizations, city and state health departments, and Planned Parenthood affiliates across more than two dozen states.

The terminations took effect immediately, leaving grantees in Arizona, Montana, Michigan, Texas and West Virginia scrambling to salvage services that served thousands of teenagers.

One Philadelphia organization, AccessMatters, lost its entire $1.2 million grant and was told its programming "normalizes or promotes sexual activity for minors" — a rationale that public health professionals call a transparent pretext for pushing parental prerogatives over pediatric priorities.

"This is devastating for the youth that we serve," said Ayana Bradshaw, president and CEO of AccessMatters, whose Adolescent Health Initiative provided free sexual and reproductive health education to more than 1,100 teens. "It also impacts our staff and our partners."

The administration has simultaneously rolled out two new grant opportunities totaling $71.7 million that emphasize "body literacy" and "parental rights," while explicitly defining sex as biological male or female — language that echoes prior HHS guidance that federal courts have already blocked.

Last year, a judge vacated similar requirements after three Planned Parenthood affiliates sued.

A Pattern of Willful Blindness

But the defunding of teen pregnancy prevention is only half the story. At the very moment the administration is cutting programs that teach young people to recognize grooming, understand consent, and report abuse, it is also obstructing transparency in the Jeffrey Epstein case — one of the most significant sex trafficking scandals in modern history.

"The Epstein files have exposed not just a sex trafficking scandal but a centuries-old American pattern of selective outrage and incomplete accountability," said New Jersey women's rights advocate Lisa McCormick. "While political energy is consumed by attacks on comprehensive sex education — one of the most effective tools for preventing exploitation — the very systems meant to protect young people continue to fail those with the least power."

McCormick did not mince words about the administration's dual failures.

"The Trump administration's cancellation of 53 teen pregnancy prevention grants and its continued failure to fully release the Jeffrey Epstein files are not isolated incidents," she said. "They are two sides of the same coin, revealing a consistent and troubling pattern: an administration that actively dismantles the very tools designed to protect young people from exploitation while simultaneously obstructing transparency in one of the most significant sex trafficking cases in modern history."

In the aftermath of the Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health decision—a direct result of Trump's Supreme Court appointees—acute care surgeons are seeing more complications from self-managed abortions and forced pregnancies, especially in places with little to no maternity care.

They are legally and ethically bound to treat these patients, and abortion bans will only worsen these care shortages. Poor people and people of color will be hit hardest.

Surgeons in states that outlawed abortion must learn to treat both the immediate medical issues and the wider fallout of reproductive injustice—and they must speak out for abortion as essential healthcare.

The Epstein Obstruction

The Department of Justice, under the Trump administration, has been found to be in violation of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

A federal judge has ordered the DOJ to either release less-redacted files or explain why it cannot. The administration has been accused of "slow walking" the process and "illegally withheld" materials, including FBI interviews with a woman who accused the president of assault.

Reports indicate the president made clear he had "no interest in releasing anything related to Epstein," and his top advisers saw releasing the files as a "nonstarter."

The underlying motivation is transparent: to protect the president and his party from whatever damaging information the files might contain.

"At a moment when the Epstein files demand a reckoning with systemic exploitation, the United States is instead channeling its political energy into undermining comprehensive sex education — one of the few proven tools for preventing the very abuse the nation claims to abhor," McCormick said.

The Hypocrisy of "Protecting Children"

The contradictions are staggering. Teen birth rates have plummeted 72% since 2007, thanks to better access to contraception, comprehensive sex education, and more teens choosing to delay sexual activity.

Defunding the very programs that produced those gains will inevitably invite an increase in adolescent pregnancies — a prospect that, in effect, advances the very outcome the program was designed to avert.

"The administration is practically promoting parenthood among pupils by pulling prevention resources," said McCormick. "When you take away the tools that teach teens to make thoughtful choices, you leave them with trial and error — and error often means an unplanned pregnancy."

Rachel Fey, interim co-CEO of Power to Decide, said the cuts deny young people the high-quality sexual health education they need and deserve.

"To attempt to remake it into a funding stream for conservative ideology not only flies in the face of the congressional appropriators and the purpose of the program but also denies young people the high-quality sexual health education they need and deserve," Fey said.

The Legislative Assault

The assault on reproductive health extends beyond the grant cancellations.

In a 34-28 party-line vote, House Republicans advanced a 2027 spending bill that eliminates the Title X family planning program and the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, increases abstinence-only funding, and maintains the Hyde Amendment — a move reproductive health advocates decry as cruelly out of step with the more than 90% of Americans who support contraceptive access.

"The House Appropriations Committee's Republican majority approved a spending bill that zeros out Title X and teen pregnancy prevention while boosting abstinence-only programs," McCormick said. "This decision is wildly out of step with public opinion and harmful to millions who depend on federal family planning services."

Selective Outrage, Selective Justice

The Epstein files have exposed a painful American truth: outrage about sexual exploitation has always been selective, accountability has always been incomplete, and at the very moment we should be strengthening prevention — including comprehensive sex education — we are instead dismantling it.

"The Epstein files reveal that America's response to exploitation has always been selective and incomplete," McCormick said. "Rather than strengthening proven prevention tools like comprehensive sex education, we are tearing them down."

This is not the first time Team Trump has targeted teen pregnancy programming. In 2017, the administration terminated more than 80 grants early, only to be permanently enjoined after Democracy Forward sued and won.

Tara Mancini, director of public policy at Power to Decide, predicted that the current cancellations will likewise face legal challenges — and likely fail on similar grounds.

But in the meantime, the damage is done. Programs like AccessMatters, which served more than a thousand teens annually, are now pondering painful layoffs and program closures.

"This is devastating," Bradshaw repeated. "It's not just about numbers on a spreadsheet — it's about real kids who will now grow up without the knowledge they need to navigate their own futures."

The Uncomfortable Truth

What makes this moment so damning is not just the hypocrisy but the pattern. Predators depend on silence, confusion, and shame. Evidence-based sex education disrupts all three.

By defunding these programs, the administration is actively making it easier for predators to operate. By withholding the Epstein files, it is shielding the powerful from accountability.

"The Epstein files have exposed not just a sex trafficking scandal but a centuries-old American pattern of selective outrage and incomplete accountability," McCormick said. "The Trump administration is proving that pattern is alive and well — and that protecting children has never been the real priority."

McCormick said Americans should demand justice instead of the myths, misinformation, and Republican political talking points surrounding contraception, abortion, and sexual exploitation.

The question now is whether the American people will continue to tolerate an administration that talks about protecting children while actively making them more vulnerable — and whether the survivors of Epstein's network, and countless other victims of exploitation, will ever see the justice they deserve.

History is watching. And so are the survivors who deserve more than our temporary attention.