The Trump administration is now clarifying its’ claim to have stopped $50 million worth of condoms from being shipped to Gaza as a broader crackdown on grants meant to help an international nonprofit provide services to the population there rather than a hold on a massive shipment of latex prophylactics.
On Tuesday, Donald Trump’s new 27-year-old press secretary Karoline Leavitt raised eyebrows by claiming that Trump backer Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency and the White House Office for Management and Budget had found and blocked “$50 million taxpayer dollars that went out the door to fund condoms in Gaza” and called the alleged expenditure “a preposterous waste of taxpayer money.”
It was a blockbuster claim that seemed to exemplify the exact sort of profligate spending that Trump’s self-styled “America First” administration was elected to prevent.
Yet what Leavitt said about the alleged condom shipment did not appear to match what the government had previously said about its aid efforts in Gaza.
A September 2024 U.S. Agency for International Development report says not one dollar of the $60.8 million used to fund condoms and contraceptives distributed by the agency worldwide last year was allocated to the Palestinian territory.
The same report shows that the only contraceptives sent to the Middle East were distributed to the Jordanian government in the form of $45,680 worth of oral and injectable medications — not condoms.
A White House official who spoke to The Independent about the contraceptive controversy conceded that the administration had not actually blocked a grant for $50 million worth of condoms — a massive number that would have represented roughly $23 spent on the contraceptives for each of the 2.1 million residents of Gaza.
They noted that what had been blocked was actually two separate $50 million “buckets” of foreign aid meant to help the International Medical Corps provide medical services in Gaza.
Among the services intended to be funded by those grants were “Family planning programming including emergency contraception; Sexual healthcare including prevention and management of sexually transmitted infections (STIs); and Adolescent sexual and reproductive health,” said the official, who stressed that the combined $100m in grants for the International Medical Corps’ efforts “included contraceptives,” a broader category that included condoms because they “have traditionally always been used for family planning in developing countries by USAID.”
The official also said the $100m in funding for the IMC was “a gross misuse of taxpayer dollars” which “does not serve President Trump’s goal to promote peace in the Middle East.”
The Trump administration’s clarification tracks what Andrew Miller, the ex-Biden administration State Department official who served as deputy assistant secretary for Israeli-Palestinian affairs, told The Times of Israel on Wednesday.
In an interview, he said that Leavitt’s claim about $50 million in condoms bound for Gaza was “outlandish” and “a feverish dream” on the part of the new administration.
“It’s possible that $50 million is put aside for sexual health or something of that nature, which would include gynecology and many other services, but definitely not condoms alone,” he said.
Musk, who is also the owner of X, posted that the false condom expenditure was the “tip of the iceberg” for waste and claimed that “a lot of that money ended up in the pockets of Hamas.” There is no evidence to support either of those assertions.
Leavitt also announced on Tuesday that the Trump administration had blocked a $37 million pending payment to the World Health Organization after the president signed an executive order cutting ties with the global health body on his first day in office.
The blocked funds are being withheld under an Office of Management and Budget memo that White House officials have said temporarily pauses grants, loans and federal assistance programs so they can be reviewed to see if they align with Trump’s political priorities.
Leavitt’s condom comments came at the top of her first White House press briefing, during which she said that “new media voices” including “independent journalists, podcasters and social media influencers” would be welcomed into the sessions held in the iconic James Brady Briefing Room. The room has always been open to any person who asks for and receives a “day pass” to enter the White House grounds for the purpose of attending briefings.
She also announced that she’d be allocating two seats normally used by staff for podcasters, influencers, and other “new media” outlets that aren’t among the news organizations that have been assigned use of one of the room’s 49 seats that are managed by the White House Correspondents Association.