Perhaps the only benefit to being a Democrat politician today is that you get to claim the insanity defense; that is, what you believe is so deranged that many simply assume Republicans are lying when describing your own positions.
Such was the case when Donald Trump spoke about Kamala Harris’s support for taxpayer funded sex reassignment surgeries for prisoners during their first and only debate before her spectacular loss. On social media many liberals mocked Trump for suggesting anyone could advocate for something so cartoonishly absurd - and yet it’s something Harris had done.
Again this was the cas when Donald Trump said during his speech to Congress on Tuesday that the Biden admin spent $8 million to “make mice transgender” - a claim that CNN said was false…. Before updating their “fact check” to admit it was true.
As the Daily Caller’s Thomas English noted:
“Trump falsely claimed that the Department of Government Efficiency identified government spending of ‘$8 million for making mice transgender,'” CNN’s original fact check read.
The White House then released a statement listing six NIH grants for studies on hormone treatments in mice, a combined total of $8,290,053.
CNN’s initial fact check Wednesday morning focused narrowly on three NIH studies… The outlet later updated its page, changing “Trump falsely claimed” to “This claim needs context.” The outlet also explicitly acknowledged its earlier error, writing “An earlier version of this item incorrectly characterized as false Trump’s claim about federal money being spent for ‘making mice transgender.'”
“The White House list made clear what Trump, in the speech, did not: The studies were meant to figure out how these treatments might affect the health of humans who take them, not for the purpose of making mice transgender,” McPhillips wrote, adding “context” to the initially false article.
The White House’s breakdown of that $8 million in spending included the following:
- $455,000: “A Mouse Model to Test the Effects of Gender-affirming Hormone Therapy on HIV Vaccine-induced Immune Responses”
- $2,500,000: “Reproductive Consequences of Steroid Hormone Administration”
- “These mice manifest defects in ovarian architecture and have altered folliculogenesis.”
- $299,940: “Gender-Affirming Testosterone Therapy on Breast Cancer Risk and Treatment Outcomes”
- “We will compare the incidences and tumor specific survival in female mice (intact) and oophorectomized female mice receiving TT with their respective counterparts that do not receive TT.”
- $735,113: “Microbiome mediated effects of gender affirming hormone therapy in mice”
- $1,200,000: “Androgen effects on the reproductive neuroendocrine axis”
- “Aim 2 utilizes transgenic mice to test whether male-level androgens acting via AR specifically in kisspeptin neurons are necessary and/or sufficient for androgen inhibition of in vivo LH pulse parameters, including pulse frequency, and the estrogen-induced LH surge.”
- $3,100,000: “Gonadal hormones as mediators of sex and gender influences in asthma”
- “We will study the contributions of estrogens to HDM-induced asthma outcomes using male and female gonadectomized mice treated with estradiol…”
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