In her first press briefing as White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt falsely claimed that Trump stopped $50 million worth of condoms from being delivered to Gaza. Michael Brochstein/ZUMA Press Wire
At her first White House press briefing on Tuesday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed that the Trump administration had paused $50 million in funding for “condoms in Gaza.” Leavitt called the money a “preposterous waste” and the pause an example of how the new administration is safeguarding “tax dollars.” The next day, President Donald Trump repeated the point.
But there is no evidence to support the claim that the United States was going to send $50 million in aid for “condoms in Gaza.”
“No US government funding was used to procure or distribute condoms.”
In response to a request for comment, a State Department official told Mother Jones on condition of anonymity that the “Trump administration stopped two $50 million buckets of ‘aid’ for Gaza via the International Medical Corp [sic].” The official said that some of this money would have gone to family planning “including emergency contraception; Sexual healthcare including prevention and management of sexually transmitted infections (STIs); and Adolescent sexual and reproductive health.” The official added that “Condoms have traditionally always been used for family planning in developing countries by USAID.”
To summarize: Funding was set to go to Gaza to assist International Medical Corps; some unspecified portion of it was for family planning and contraceptives; condoms are “traditionally always” part of that. That is radically different from what Leavitt said on Tuesday. And it does not appear to be true, either. International Medical Corps said in a press release, “No US government funding was used to procure or distribute condoms, nor to provide family-planning services.”
It also is not correct that condoms are “traditionally always” distributed to support US government reproductive health programs, particularly in the Middle East. A report from USAID covering the 2023 fiscal year stated that the agency has not provided any funding for condoms in the Middle East in recent years. (As CNN and the Guardian have made clear, the only contraceptive funding for the region was the less than $50,000 that went to Jordan for oral and injectable birth control.)
Leavitt’s claim also leads to preposterous conclusions. Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post showed that the United States has spent 3.3 cents per condom on average in recent years. For Leavitt to be right, USAID would have been planning to send more than 1.5 billion condoms to Gaza. That works out to more than 700 condoms per person there.
While there is no evidence the United States was about to pay for condoms in Gaza, there would be good reasons for doing so. “Notwithstanding the absurdity of this particular claim, contraceptive access *is* an important health issue in crisis settings like Gaza,” Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International, wrote on X. “Unplanned pregnancies in a context of starvation and displacement can be hugely challenging and carry health risks.”
More importantly, the funding pause Leavitt touted at the press conference could have devastating consequences for Gazans in desperate need of medical attention.
Among other things, International Medical Corps said that the money helps maintain one of only three neonatal intensive care units operational in Gaza and supports the delivery of 20 babies per day. The group added about its work in Gaza:
International Medical Corps has received $68,078,508 from USAID to support our operations in Gaza since October 7, 2023. With the generous support of USAID and the American people, we’ve used these resources to operate two large field hospitals currently located in central Gaza—one in Deir Al Balah and one in Al Zawaida—offering a combined total capacity of more than 250 beds, including 20 in the emergency room and 170 in the surgical department. These facilities provide 24/7 lifesaving medical care to roughly 33,000 civilians per month, in a highly dangerous and insecure environment where healthcare infrastructure has been decimated.
If the USAID stop-work order is kept in place, the group has said that it will only be able to continue providing life-saving aid in Gaza for about a week.
On Fox News on Tuesday, host Jesse Watters retroactively claimed another reason for the funding stop: “they are making condom bombs.” Trump echoed that claim on Wednesday, saying that “condoms to Hamas” had to be stopped, because “they’ve used them as a method for making bombs.” (In past years, Israeli media sources have reported that militants in Gaza allegedly used condoms to make improvised incendiary devices.)
That makes it even less likely that the United States was planning to send condoms to Gaza. In reality, the Trump administration is using a made-up premise of vast condom spending to block life-saving medical work.
