Every Republican president since Ronald Reagan has implemented the "Mexico City Policy," most recently Donald Trump on January 24, 2025. Every Democratic president, beginning with Bill Clinton on January 22, 1993, has rescinded the policy, most recently Joe Biden on January 28, 2021.

The U.S. State Department has announced that it has finalized an expansion of the Mexico City Policy that will withhold funds from foreign NGOs, and U.S.-based NGOs operating overseas, that promote gender ideology or DEI policies.

The new rules cover all nonmilitary foreign assistance. They prohibit U.S. NGOs from engaging in the following activities outside the United States, regardless of funding source: providing abortion as a method of family planning, providing "sex-rejecting procedures," or engaging in "unlawful DEI-related discrimination.

The Trump administration's turning off of the foreign aid spigot to some recipients of foreign aid should come as no surprise. Republicans have over the years called for foreign aid to be withheld from one country or another to punish them for doing something particularly egregious or to persuade them to follow a particular course of action.

But Republicans have no philosophical opposition to foreign aid. Just like they have no philosophical objection to government grants to the arts unless it funds blasphemous or pornographic art, no philosophical objection to welfare as long as it has some work requirements, and no philosophical objection to antidiscrimination laws as long as they don't include discrimination against sexual orientation and gender identity. Republicans generally don't even have any objection to government funding for Planned Parenthood as long as the funding is not used to provide abortions.

It is a myth that President Trump has ended foreign aid. Although he has gutted the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), foreign aid is still flowing via the U.S. State Department. As Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced last year: "As of July 1st, USAID will officially cease to implement foreign assistance. Foreign assistance programs that align with administration policies — and which advance American interests — will be administered by the State Department, where they will be delivered with more accountability, strategy, and efficiency."

Certainly, any reduction in foreign aid is always a good thing no matter the reason for the reduction. If President Trump gets mad at the leader of country x because he said something critical of him, and cuts off that country's foreign aid, then that is a case of the right policy for the wrong reason.