Viewers of President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night were left puzzled after he claimed that his administration had uncovered federal funds being used to turn mice “transgender.”
“[We found] $8 million for making mice transgender,” Trump said, pausing as laughter erupted among Republican lawmakers. He then added, “This is real.” The bizarre statement had media outlets scrambling to verify what Trump was referring to, with fact-checkers struggling to find any studies involving gender changes in mice.
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According to NBC News, Trump may have been referencing a House subcommittee hearing led by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) last month, titled “Transgender Lab Rats and Poisoned Puppies: Oversight of Taxpayer Funded Animal Cruelty.” During the hearing, Mace cited a report by the White Coat Waste Project, an organization that opposes government-funded animal testing.
The report claimed that $10 million in taxpayer money had been “wasted to create transgender mice, rats, and monkeys in university labs.” The report identified eight federally funded studies examining hormone therapy. One study focused on the effects of testosterone and estrogen treatments on wound healing to improve care for trans individuals and develop treatments for chronic wounds.
Another studied how anti-testosterone and estrogen therapy impacted the immune response of mice given an HIV vaccine. Additional studies explored hormone therapy’s effects on fertility and whether testosterone therapy could be reversed.
On the night of Trump’s address, CNN fact-checked his statement and found that the studies in question involved research on the effects of feminizing hormones on the immune system, but primarily in monkeys rather than mice. Despite the confusion, the White House defended Trump’s remarks in a press release issued the following day.
“Last night, President Donald J. Trump highlighted many of the egregious examples of waste, fraud, and abuse funded by American taxpayers, including $8 million spent by the Biden Administration ‘for making mice transgender,'” the statement read. “The Fake News losers at CNN immediately tried to fact-check it, but President Trump was right (as usual).”
The release listed six National Institutes of Health-funded studies totaling $8.2 million under the Biden administration, though none appeared to involve altering the gender of mice. Experts and scientists quickly debunked Trump’s claims. Some speculated that he had misread “transgenic mice,” a term used for genetically modified rodents commonly used in medical research, and mistakenly ran with it.
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“MAGA is in the stupid camp. Transgender mice? Are you kidding me?! It’s Transgenic*—Genetically modified mice used for scientific research, like cancer treatment,” one X user wrote. “TransGENIC mice are not TransGENDER. They are genetically altered to study diseases,” added Wes Wilson, a cancer researcher at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School.
“Some turn off a gene similar to human diseases. Some change their immune system to not reject human tumors. They revolutionized pre-clinical research since the 1980s. Not new!” With experts dismissing Trump’s claims as a misunderstanding, his remarks have fueled yet another round of debate over misinformation and political rhetoric in Washington.
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