To ensure government-wide compliance with President Donald Trump’s executive orders, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget directed all federal agencies in a
Jan. 27 memo to “temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance.”
Although a Biden judge quickly
blocked Trump’s plan to pause federal funding, certain organizations’ access to funding was nevertheless impacted.
Federally qualified health centers were reportedly among the organizations affected by the attempted freeze.
Key supporters and administrators of the health centers, of which there are roughly
1,400 nationwide operating over 15,000 service sites, bemoaned the temporary loss of access to taxpayer funds through a granting program administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Resources and Service Administration — access a HRSA spokesman told Blaze News was the result of technical issues that have been resolved.
For critics, however, the fleeting defunding of FQHCs — specifically those based in public schools — appeared to be a prayer answered.
Parents and parental rights advocates have, after all,
sounded the alarm in recent months both about the perceived transformation of certain American schools into incubators for future Big Pharma clients and the ability of clinics in certain states to administer life-changing “care” to kids without the knowledge or consent of their parents.
Alvin Lui, president of the parental rights advocacy group Courage Is a Habit, recently made the case for defunding and removing health centers from schools.
While health centers generally appear to provide significant value to Americans off-campus and could potentially aid the Trump administration in advancing its Make America Healthy Again agenda — something for which Amanda Pears Kelly, CEO of Advocates for Community Health, told Blaze News they are “perfectly positioned for” — the risk of abuse and secrecy in schools may warrant the Trump administration’s reconsideration of schools as eligible bases of operation.
The centers
FQHCs are primary care clinics
first established in 1965 during the Johnson administration.
The initial goal with the clinics, which are usually
run by nonprofits but in some cases by public agencies, was to furnish populations in poor and rural areas with cost-effective health care regardless of their insurance status, immigration status, or ability to pay.
According to the HRSA, over 31 million people relied on FQHCs for care in 2023, including 1.4 million homeless people; 24.7 million uninsured, Medicaid, and Medicare patients; and over 9.7 million rural residents.
The U.S. federal budget for fiscal year 2025
provided $8.2 billion for the health centers.
Increased funding in recent decades for the health centers, which are awarded federal grants through the HHS’ HRSA and are certified by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, has meant more centers — including in schools, which saw over 1.1 million patients in 2023 alone.
Case study: Maine
The Maine-based nonprofit HealthReach has, for instance, opened dozens of in-school clinics across the Pine Tree State that apparently offer students birth control, vaccines, mental health care, and possibly sex-change medications.
“We’re a primary care office just like you would go to your normal primary care office,” HealthReach assistant director of operations Diandra Staples
said in her October sales pitch on WGME-TV. “We’re just located in a school.”
Maine Department of Health and Human Services spokeswoman Lindsay Hammes delivered her own hard sell to the Kennebec Journal last year,
stating, “The school-based health centers enhance educational outcomes for students by limiting missed instructional time for external appointments, reducing absenteeism from chronic conditions, and decreasing disciplinary actions among students needing behavioral or medical support.”
‘They keep letting them ruminate on their feelings then start diagnosing them with ADD, and anxiety, and depression.’
There is a clear desire to increase the number of health centers in the state and to see more schools fitted with the glorified pharmacies and psych wards.
Board members for Maine School Administrative District No. 11, for instance, appear interested in opening a FQHC at Gardiner Area High School and have attempted on multiple occasions to bring the matter to a vote, sometimes in a surreptitious manner.
Alvin Lui and his parental rights advocacy group Courage Is a Habit have, however, helped raised awareness both about the board’s repeatedly rescheduled vote as well as about possible downsides to having another health center down the hall from kids’ classrooms.
For example, Lui highlighted Staples 2023 admission that seven out of 181 students served at the HealthReach center inside Lawrence High School in Fairfield, Maine, kept their parents in the dark about services they received at the clinic.
“They are doing the, ‘It’s not happening, it’s not happening that much, but it’s good it’s happening a lot,’ line of dishonest manipulation,” Lui previously
told Blaze News. “The reason they gave for the seven children they had to treat without parental consent (parents are ‘unsafe and abusive’) will be the same reason they give for the next 70 children, the next 700, and eventually all children whose parents do not agree with transgender ideology and/or birth control.”
Lui suggested further that when it comes to the mental health services offered at the centers in Maine, parents could see their children put on an “affirm-only” path to social or medical transvestitism.
“These clinics are quite literally seeding their own customers,” Lui recently told Blaze News. “They’re getting the kids into therapy, and the therapists push them onto that transgender train or they keep letting them ruminate on their feelings then start diagnosing them with ADD, and anxiety, and depression — then they prescribe them those [addictive] medications.”
Despite these concerns, the MSAD 11 board is moving ahead with a vote next month to pursue implementation of the health center.
Blaze News reached out to HealthReach and to MSAD 11 superintendent Patricia Hopkins for comment but did not receive responses by deadline.
“The reason we pick on a district like MSAD 11 is because it’s blue,” said Lui. “It’s very blue, and the school board — they’re very nasty to the local parents.”
Defunding some, not all FQHCs
Federally funded health clinics in other blue states have provided “care” in schools that might conflict with Trump’s executive orders or at the very least give pause to elements of his administration.
La Clinica de La Raza, which
has received millions in federal taxpayer dollars through the HRSA, has a center at San Lorenzo High School in San Lorenzo, California.
Parents Defending Education
reported that while making no mention of such services on its website, the San Lorenzo health center offers students access to chest binders, “gender-affirming hormone therapy and other types of medical transition services”; “support with name/pronoun changes and transitioning socially, legally, etc.”; and “help connecting queer youth with resources.”
Blaze News reached out to the HRSA regarding health centers’ compliance with recent presidential executive orders and observance of parental rights.
A spokesman stated that “health centers are required to follow all applicable federal, state, and local laws, including any laws applicable to parental consent and health care,” and indicated further that changes to the “Health Center Program Compliance Manual are made on an ongoing basis as needed.”
The relative weakness of parental rights in blue states could pave the way for the use of federal funds by FQHCs in a manner at odds with Trump’s orders.
For example, Democrats passed a
law in Maine permitting health professionals to provide sex-change drugs and “follow-up care” to minors without obtaining the consent of the patient’s parent or guardian, which the Kennebec Journal noted applies to all of the state’s school-based health centers.
Blaze News reached out to the White House about whether it might defund school-based FQHCs, particularly those found to be improperly using federal tax dollars, but did not receive a response.
While it is unclear what the Trump administration might do, Lui indicated this is largely parents’ fight.
Lui suggested that parents must effectively take on the role of local departments of government efficiency — auditors ready to raise concerns with their school boards; push back against the installation of in-school health centers; underscore to other community members the inevitability of municipal and state tax hikes to sustain such clinics; and highlight potential violations of federal policy.
While proponents of the school clinics may engage in emotional blackmail “trotting out a couple kids going, ‘I need the medical clinic,'” seek to silence parents, and/or characterize critics as racists and bigots, Lui said parents must remember that when it comes to the school-based health centers, “You’re spending your own money to trans your kids or other people’s kids.”
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