EXCLUSIVE: Trump Admin Nukes Biden Rule Pushing Foster Kids Into LGBTQ Homes

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump’s administration nuked a Biden-era rule requiring children struggling with gender issues to be placed with pro-LGBTQ families, The Daily Wire can first report.

On Tuesday morning, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families officially removed the April 2024 rule, which required federal agencies to ensure children who “self identify with an alternative sexual orientation or self-identify as something other than their sex in foster care” are placed with families who would affirm that identity.

“The message that we think it sends is that all families are welcome,” Assistant Secretary Alex Adams explained in a phone interview with The Daily Wire. “We have too few foster families nationally. We must roll out the red carpet, and we must ensure that there’s homes waiting on kids, not kids waiting on homes.”

Though the Biden rule never actually took effect since it was vacated by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, the Trump administration is removing the provisions that remain in the Code of Federal Regulations to “ensure clarity,” a final nail in the coffin of the effort.

Adams explained to The Daily Wire that the move builds on first lady Melania Trump’s “Fostering the Future” initiative and related executive order charting a “whole-of-government approach to improving child welfare and foster care.” Part of this is Adams’s “Home for Every Child” campaign, which focuses on increasing the ratio of foster homes to foster kids.

“Nationally, we have a shortage,” he explained. “We only have 57 homes for every 100 kids coming in, so we can and must do better to ensure that there’s enough homes for kids because when there’s not enough homes, kids end up in short-term rentals, hotels, government office spaces, etc.”

Families most likely to step forward and offer to foster children are those with sincerely held religious beliefs and moral convictions, Adams said, arguing that the message that HHS sends to families of faith is extremely important since it will “either make or break your recruitment and your retention of existing foster homes.”

“The 2024 designated placement rule was one of those things that we think sent the wrong message,” he explained. “It would have segmented families into those that are ‘LGBTQ-friendly’ and those that are not.”