President Donald Trump has cracked down on transgender procedures for kids since returning to office. But that hasn’t stopped the federal government from funding a radical doctor’s $3 million study on puberty blockers. The National Institute of Mental Health approved $728,119 in February 2026 for a project on puberty blockers based out of the Research Institute Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. One of the principal investigators of the project, Dr. John Strang, is closely affiliated with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. WPATH has faced criticism over its shoddy science and accusations that its recommendations are driven by ideology. Strang’s project entails 132 “transgender adolescents” at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., and Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago, according to its description. Half of the kids would be on puberty blockers while the other half would not, according to researchers. Researchers leading the project hope to “clarify its potential protective and risk effects to support optimization and personalization of treatment protocols.” The Department of Health and Human Services has determined that puberty blockers are not safe for gender-confused children, and has issued several directives going after hospitals and doctors that push transgender procedures on kids. But HHS downplayed the radical nature of the grant in a statement to The Daily Wire, saying that the project in question does not involve giving puberty blockers to kids, but recruits patients from gender clinics considering going on puberty blockers. “HHS continues to fight to protect America’s children from irreversible harm outlined in the Department’s peer-reviewed report,” an official told The Daily Wire. “These detrimental procedures do not meet professionally recognized standards of health care, and practitioners who perform sex-rejecting procedures on minors would be deemed out of compliance with those standards.” In total, the project has been awarded $3,741,119 in federal funding between 2021-2024 and 2026. The project did not get funding in 2025, a decision that appears to have been made in March 2025, according to spending records. The American Accountability Foundation, which has sued the NIH for more information on its transgender experiments, said that the funding shows the need for increased oversight. “DOGE did some great work, but I’ve been around Washington long enough to know that if you don’t keep your eyes on the deep state they’ll resume the same bad behavior the moment you look away,” Tom Jones, the organization’s president, told The Daily Wire. The Trump administration suspended 1,800 NIH grants determined to be related to DEI or other radical topics between February 2025 and June 2025. The NIH later agreed to review grants on a standardized case-by-case basis in a settlement after a lawsuit from a number of organizations that lost federal funding. Many of the projects impacted were kept sealed from the public record, making it difficult to determine exactly which grants were involved. Nothing in the agreement “diminishes or enlarges NIH’s discretion over the decision to award funding, or creates a final agency action where a final agency action would not otherwise exist,” the settlement agreement said. The puberty blocker project’s public description notes that puberty blockers are “endorsed” by WPATH and claims that initial studies show “mental health benefits for transgender youth” put on puberty blockers. Puberty blockers can seriously impact bone density, sexual development, and fertility, and can cause vision issues and lead to brain swelling. Many medical experts have rejected the claims of advocates for transgender procedures that puberty blockers are fully reversible. Strang runs the gender and autism program at Children’s National and is on faculty with the Global Education Institute for WPATH. The gender program at Children’s National currently does not provide so-called “gender-affirming care” medical treatments because of “escalating legal and regulatory risks,” but it does offer “mental health” services. Before Trump took office, the hospital performed multiple transgender surgeries and had 47 patients on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, according to the Stop the Harm database. Throughout 2025, Strang participated in a number of WPATH workshops for health care professionals “committed to advancing affirming care for transgender and gender-diverse” patients. Additionally, Strang contributed to the standards of care produced by WPATH that recommended that doctors tell adolescents about “chest binding and genital tucking,” put girls on “menstrual suppression agents” if they don’t want to go on testosterone, and leave the door open for doctors to recommend “puberty suppression, hormone initiation, or gender-related surgery for gender diverse and transgender adolescents.” Other researchers on the project include Dr. Diane Chen and Dr. Eric Nelson, who is listed as the project leader. Nelson is a principal investigator at Nationwide Children’s Hospital’s Center for Biobehavioral Health and is a professor at Ohio State University College of Medicine. He is the co-author of a study on mental health concerns for gender-confused youth. Chen is a researcher and doctor with the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine, where she has focused on transgender issues. At Lurie, she “has worked clinically with transgender, nonbinary, and gender-diverse young people and youth and young adults with differences of sex development/intersex variations since 2013.” Chen was involved with a seperate expansive $9.7 million NIH-funded study that experimented on kids by giving them puberty blockers. In February 2023, Chen published a study based on research funded by another NIH grant claiming that giving kids cross-sex hormones improves their “mental health.” “Our results provide robust scientific evidence that improved appearance congruence secondary to hormone treatment is strongly linked to better mental health outcomes in transgender and nonbinary youth,” she said at the time. That assessment contrasts directly with the conclusions reached by the Trump administration in May 2025 that medical interventions for minors experiencing gender confusion are not supported by science and that the risks of the procedures are high.

The Missouri Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the state’s new congressional map, handing Republicans a significant legal victory ahead of the 2026 midterms. Two groups of voters had sued to stop the map, arguing that the newly drawn voting districts were not properly shaped, did not make sense geographically, and did not have equal populations. However, the high court agreed with a lower court’s decision, ruling that the challengers failed to present sufficient evidence to overturn a map drawn by lawmakers. The decision came the same day Florida Republicans won a similar legal battle. In that state, a judge rejected a last-minute attempt by liberal groups to block Florida’s new congressional map before the 2026 elections. The dispute in Missouri was over a 2025 law called House Bill 1, which replaced the state’s older voting map with a new one. The critics argued that the new map violated state constitutional rules, which require that voting districts be tightly packed and equal in population. Most of the fighting was about Districts 4, 5, and 6 around Kansas City. Critics—including Kansas City Democratic Mayor Quinton Lucas—argued that the map unfairly split the city and cut neighborly communities apart. The Missouri Supreme Court, however, made it clear that its role was limited to determining whether the map complied with constitutional requirements, not whether it was politically fair. The lawsuit did not allege partisan gerrymandering. During a four-day trial, experts used math formulas to measure how tightly packed the districts were. The data showed that the new map was actually shaped just as well as, or better than, Missouri’s older maps from 2012 and 2022. In fact, the new map kept local areas together better by splitting up fewer counties and cities than the previous map. Ultimately, the judges reviewed all the evidence—including population figures, local history, and expert opinions—and concluded that the map complied with the rules. The Florida win could give the GOP four additional seats; the Missouri win could provide another one.

The Trump administration’s “Trump Accounts” investment program for children is launching a mobile app on Thursday, The Daily Wire has learned. While the app itself will go live immediately, investment activity within the account is set to begin on July 4. Once active, families will be able to monitor account growth, track the government-funded seed investment, and make additional contributions directly through the platform.   The app will also launch with eight core financial literacy modules that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent personally required as part of his broader financial literacy initiative aimed at improving financial education for young Americans. A Treasury Spokeswoman told The Daily Wire that the educational features were a “top priority” for Bessent, who has previously described financial literacy as “fuel for the American Dream.” The platform was designed by Joe Gebbia, the co-founder of Airbnb, who currently leads President Donald Trump’s National Design Studio. Gebbia’s goal is to make government applications easy to use.  Two things that don’t get enough coverage: Trump Accounts and President Trump’s National Design Studio. Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia leads the studio and his latest project turned the Trump Account signup from a clunky PDF to a simple online intake form. Simpler signups could… pic.twitter.com/bhzBwhx3oV — Brecca Stoll (@breccastoll) February 9, 2026 Under the program’s structure, Bank of New York Mellon (BNY) will oversee the program’s financial infrastructure, including account administration and custody of funds. Robinhood will operate as the brokerage partner and provide the consumer-facing technology platform that families will use to access and manage their accounts The broader Trump Accounts initiative has already generated significant interest. According to Treasury Department figures, more than 5 million children have already been enrolled in the program, as reflected in IRS filings. Eligible children born between 2025 and 2028 will receive a $1,000 federal seed investment from the Treasury Department. The accounts are designed to function as long-term, tax-advantaged investment vehicles tied to broad market index funds. Parents, relatives, employers, and others can collectively contribute up to $5,000 annually to each account. Once beneficiaries turn 18, they may use the funds however they choose, including starting a business, paying for college, or buying a house.  Previously, The Daily Wire crunched the numbers to analyze how the accounts could grow over time under various contribution scenarios.   The analysis found that if a child had received a Trump Account in 2007 and left the original $1,000 investment untouched, the account would be worth roughly $5,907 by age 18. With additional contributions, however, the totals grew dramatically. If a parent’s employer contributed $2,500 annually, half the allowed yearly contribution, the account would have grown to roughly $183,933 by adulthood. A child receiving the maximum $5,000 annual contribution would have accumulated approximately $361,959 by age 18, according to the analysis.  

Federal authorities have arrested two Minnesota women accused of orchestrating a $21.1 million Medicaid fraud scheme tied to autism treatment programs, the latest bombshell case in what Trump administration officials describe as a deeply entrenched culture of public assistance fraud in the state. The Department of Homeland Security announced this week that Homeland Security Investigations, alongside federal partners, arrested Shamso Ahmed Hassan and Hanaan Mursal Yusuf on charges including conspiracy to commit health care fraud, eight counts of health care fraud, and two counts of money laundering. “These Minnesota residents have been accused of stealing more than $21 million from the American taxpayer,” Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said in an exclusive statement to The Daily Wire. “Their Medicaid fraud scheme started during the COVID pandemic and lasted for four years.” “HSI continues to zero in on the rampant fraud in Minnesota,” Bis added. “Under Secretary [Markwayne] Mullin, we will end the defrauding of the American people.” According to prosecutors, Hassan was a beneficial owner of Smart Therapy Center LLC and Star Autism Center LLC, both of which were enrolled in Minnesota’s Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention program, commonly known as EIDBI. Federal authorities say the two women carried out the fraud scheme between May 2020 and December 2024 by submitting Medicaid claims for autism treatment services that were never provided. The indictment claims that Hassan and her co-conspirators recruited parents to enroll children in the autism programs regardless of medical necessity and paid families monthly kickbacks ranging from roughly $300 to $1,500. Between 2020 and 2024, prosecutors say Hassan billed Minnesota Medicaid for approximately $46.6 million and ultimately received around $21.1 million in taxpayer funds. Authorities allege portions of the money were used to purchase property, while additional funds were transferred overseas. Hassan pleaded not guilty Tuesday morning to charges of health care fraud and money laundering. She was not taken into custody following her court appearance, according to local reporting. Neither Hassan nor her attorney answered questions while leaving the courthouse. The case stems from a broader federal investigation into Minnesota fraud networks that intensified following the infamous Feeding Our Future scandal, the $250 million pandemic food-aid fraud scheme that drew national attention. Federal agents previously raided Smart Therapy Center’s Minneapolis office and Star Autism Center’s St. Cloud location in December 2024. One of Smart Therapy Center’s other owners later pleaded guilty to wire fraud charges. The arrests also come days after federal prosecutors announced charges against 15 additional defendants accused of stealing more than $90 million through multiple Minnesota Medicaid and social service programs. During a press conference in Minneapolis earlier this month, Trump administration officials described Minnesota as ground zero for large-scale fraud involving taxpayer-funded programs intended to serve vulnerable populations, including disabled individuals, homeless residents, and children with autism. Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald called the fraud uncovered in Minnesota “shocking,” warning that state-managed benefit systems had become targets for organized criminal schemes. Autism-related Medicaid programs became a central focus of the press conference, with prosecutors noting that one such program reportedly ballooned from roughly $600,000 annually six years ago to nearly $400 million today. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. previously described the Minnesota autism fraud operations as “the largest autism fraud bust in American history.” “This was organized theft that exploited the most vulnerable children in America,” Kennedy said. Federal officials have tied the Minnesota investigations to the Trump administration’s broader anti-fraud initiative spearheaded by Vice President JD Vance, which has focused heavily on rooting out fraud, waste, and abuse in public assistance programs. “Fraud is going to bleed our social programs dry,” White House Anti-Fraud Task Force Vice Chair Andrew Ferguson warned during the Minneapolis press conference. “Stopping fraud is how we save these programs.” The investigation is being led by the FBI with assistance from Homeland Security Investigations. Both suspects are expected to remain in federal custody pending further judicial proceedings.

Former first lady Jill Biden said she feared President Joe Biden was “having a stroke” during his disastrous 2024 debate performance against Donald Trump. “I was frightened,” she told CBS News. “I had never, ever seen Joe like that before or since. When I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh my God, he’s having a stroke.’ And it scared me to death.” CBS released a 30-second preview clip on Wednesday ahead of the full interview, which will be broadcast on Sunday. Former first lady @DrBiden said she was “frightened” by her husband Joe Biden’s performance at the 2024 presidential debate. “As I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, he’s having a stroke.’ And it scared me to death,” Biden told CBS News Sunday Morning’s Rita Braver in an… pic.twitter.com/1wS5oGDYyX — CBS Sunday Morning