In late January – the U.S. State Department published three new regulations dramatically expanding the highly damaging Mexico City Policy—also known as the “Global Gag Rule.” The policy was originally enacted in 1984 and sought to limit the promotion of abortion using U.S. foreign aid funds. The new rules go much further and seek to prevent U.S. non-profits, international organizations like the United Nations and governments around the world from saying things President Trump disagrees with about racial or gender discrimination.

The consequences will be deadly. The complicated regulations have already created massive disruption in the aid sector. According to the Trump administration itself the new regulations will lead to hundreds of millions of dollars in new costs for humanitarian aid organizations resulting in a direct reduction in life-saving services to the most vulnerable. The bureaucratic red-tape of implementing the rule will create massive service disruptions to Maternal and Child Health, HIV, Tuberculosis, Nutrition and other programs all in service of globalizing America’s culture wars.

In short: The rules are another devastating blow to the rights of people who are already facing oppression, violence, and persecution, including women and LGBTQIA+ people.

How does the new Mexico City Policy trample free speech and kill people?

Although President Trump entered office promising to end what he called left wing attacks on free expression, declaring that “government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society,” these new rules are perhaps the most aggressive attempt by any modern administration to control which viewpoints are allowed to be uttered all across the globe.

• The new policies condition all non-military U.S. foreign assistance – which goes to governments, non-profit organizations, and international entities such as the United Nations - on whether these entities promote certain ideas, even if those ideas are expressed with private, non-U.S. funds.
  
• The rules require recipients to certify that they will not promote concepts - newly invented in U.S. regulations by the Trump administration - known as “discriminatory equity ideology” or “gender ideology”. Framed as safeguards for taxpayer dollars, these requirements reach well beyond how funds are used, operating as ideological tests for participation in foreign assistance itself.

The impacts could be dramatic and far-ranging. The immediate impacts will be felt first by the most vulnerable, including women, girls, and LGBTQIA+ people, but will ultimately be much more far-reaching. It will prevent lifesaving humanitarian aid from reaching the people who need it most and bully local religious groups and first responders to sign contracts promising not to utter certain ideas that the Trump administration, and any future administration opposes.

The Trump administration itself has estimated that the red tape will cost organizations providing lifesaving services $48 million for “one-time familiarization costs,” plus an additional $340 million annually. Ultimately that means nearly $400 million in a single year to pay for lawyers and overhead instead of lifesaving food, water, medicine, or other services.

The first Trump administration instituted a Global Gag Rule that was less restrictive than the one put in place earlier this year – and even that version had devastating impacts for people around the world. A Government Accountability Office report found that $153 million worth of lifesaving programs couldn't be delivered as planned, leading to significant disruptions in services.

Deputizing the State Department to police speech everywhere

This updated Mexico City policy deserves condemnation from conservatives and liberals alike. Leaving aside legal questions about whether the government even has the authority to set conditions like this on its funding, these rules risk normalizing ideological conformity as a tool of foreign policy. Once the United States declares that organizations or countries may receive assistance only if they align with Washington’s approved beliefs about race, gender, or social theory, it establishes a principle that speech and belief themselves are legitimate targets of control.

That logic will not stop where its authors intend.

• A future administration could just as easily define “market fundamentalism” as an extremist ideology and deny funding to any organization that argues markets allocate resources better than governments.
  
• It could label “colorblindness” or opposition to redistributive policy as disqualifying belief systems.
  
• Conservatives who applaud these rules today may find tomorrow’s standards written by officials who view free enterprise, national sovereignty, or traditional social views as dangerous ideologies rather than legitimate perspectives.

Supporters argue that the regulations merely prevent U.S. dollars from subsidizing “radical” views. But they are completely impractical. For example – the rules seek to prevent aid providers from expressing ideas or promoting speech that, “treats individuals as members of preferred or disfavored groups, rather than as individuals.” But imagine a church group is running a program to provide shelter to people who have fled their homes because they are being violently attacked and persecuted for their ethnicity and religious beliefs. Are they supposed to pretend people are not being persecuted as a group? Sounds confusing!

The structure of the rules suggests they have a more nefarious purpose: to control discourse itself by leveraging financial power. Even where the regulations gesture toward restraint—allowing U.S. NGOs to express prohibited views with non-Federal funds outside the scope of U.S.-funded programs—the practical effect is chilling. Organizations must fragment their operations and silence staff to avoid the risk that an official deems their ideas noncompliant.

More broadly, this approach positions the United States as the global speech police scouring the globe for banned utterances. If it is legitimate to deny funding to groups that promote “gender ideology,” it becomes just as legitimate to deny funding to groups that argue one religion is more correct than another, that traditional family structures are morally preferable, or that private property is a natural right. In that world, U.S. foreign assistance ceases to be about saving lives, supporting economic opportunity, or fostering global stability. It becomes a mechanism for exporting whichever moral orthodoxy happens to dominate the federal government at the moment.

The irony is unavoidable. The same president that defines “discriminatory equity ideology” as treating people as members of groups, routinely engages in group-based reasoning himself, denigrating entire religions, referring to some groups of Americans as “garbage”, while also lamenting the “reverse discrimination” suffered by white people seeking higher education. His administration has repeatedly implemented policies that either favor or target entire groups of people based on their religion or ethnicity.

It’s time for Congress to block the new Mexico City policy

Conservatives have long warned against governments using their power to decide which beliefs are acceptable. These regulations put government coercion of speech on steroids and hand future administrations a powerful weapon that may be aimed squarely at conservative ideas next.

Congress should act now to block the gag rule before it irreversibly disrupts lifesaving services. If President Trump truly believes free expression is a foundational value, he should reverse these rules and ensure that recipients of U.S. lifesaving aid are free to speak and advocate on matters of life and death without fear of financial retaliation. Anything less is censorship by contract, with deadly ramifications.