From Chinese Prostitutes To ‘Oppression’: The Woke Research Taxpayers Still Fund

Despite the Trump administration’s crackdown on DEI, federal funding for some grievance-focused research continues through a loophole two watchdog groups want closed. 

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has continued funding for research centering on intersectionality, a key plank of Critical Race Theory, with new approvals in 2025 and 2026 for projects focusing on Chinese prostitutes and xenophobia’s impact on the mental health of nurses. Funding for these projects appears to be flying under the radar because they use the parameters of “intersectionality” and not the widely scrutinized diversity, equity, and inclusion criteria. 

The funding was flagged in a report first shared with The Daily Wire by the Legal Insurrection Foundation and the Defense of Freedom Institute.

“What we’re finding is that under the rubric of intersectionality, discriminatory federal funding continues despite the administration’s best efforts to rid grant programs of diversity, equity, and inclusion,” Legal Insurrection Foundation President William Jacobson told The Daily Wire. “Intersectionality, which is the core of critical race theory and diversity, equity, and inclusion, both historically and ideologically, is a loophole that needs to be closed.”

As of September 2026, watchdogs flagged up to $257,019,995 in federal spending obligations and $156,344,735 in outlays for intersectionality-related research. Intersectionality involves measuring so-called oppression by looking at the various racial or sexual group identities. 

An executive order signed by President Donald Trump on the first day of his second term targeted “all discriminatory programs, including illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government, under whatever name they appear.”

Jacobson believes that this order and related ones should be tweaked to make clear the policies extend to the ideology of intersectionality. He described intersectionality as “essentially a hierarchy of victimhood, and a higher … way of looking at the world that focuses on your group identity, not who you are as an individual.”

Defense of Freedom Institute President Bob Eitel told The Daily Wire that the funding ties “show that intersectional ideology continues to permeate the federal grantmaking apparatus despite the administration’s significant progress in combating unlawful DEI.”

“Taxpayers should not bankroll an ideological framework that divides Americans into categories of privilege and oppression, and federal agencies must ensure that otherwise legitimate research and public programs do not become vehicles for unlawful identity-based preferences,” Eitel added. 

Programs approved in recent months include a project for $3.27 million approved in June 2026 for Johns Hopkins University to study the impacts of “racism, sexism, and xenophobia” on the mental health of female nurses.

“Women are twice as likely to report depression and anxiety than men, and face stressors related to interlocking systems of oppression such as racism, sexism, and xenophobia,” the project’s description reads. “Interlocking systems of oppression can exacerbate inequalities in mental health by manifesting an unequal distribution of women’s resources and result in symptoms of depression and anxiety like exhaustion, hopelessness, and loss of interest.”

The project will “examine how structural gendered racism-related policies impact depression and anxiety through intersectional social-structural factors among US- and foreign-born Black, Latina, and white women.” It will also identify policies researchers determine to be “supportive” and “harmful policies that perpetuate systemic inequities.” The project is slated to run until June 2030.

Another project, funded at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) for over $251,000, aims to recruit “historically minoritized students” from Monterey Peninsula College into biomedical research and education programs at UCSC. 

The project, slated to run from August 2026 to July 2031, will involve programs offered by the UCSC STEM Diversity office to “leverage a strong, established community of minoritized scholars with a focus and celebration of the intersectionality of their identities.”

The Daily Wire reached out to the project’s manager to learn how the term “historically minoritized” was defined, but has not received a response at the time of publication.  

A third project flagged in the report was from NYU Grossman School of Medicine to reduce stigma for Chinese immigrant prostitutes. This project focused on “addressing intersectional stigma, focusing on Chinese immigrant female sex workers (FSWs) in New York City (NYC).”

The project, slated to receive over $777,400 in federal funding, is scheduled to be active until 2028. The report also listed other projects across the country that point to intersectionality in their descriptions. 

Jacobson said that the report put no “blame on the administration” for the funding, but suspected that the intersectional framework was evading scrutiny because of the focus on more explicit DEI. 

“This evidence presents a practical opportunity for the Trump administration to strengthen its record of civil rights enforcement by closing a remaining loophole,” the report found. “A supplemental executive order addressing ‘intersectionality,’ followed by agency guidance and award-specific review, would prevent identity-based preferences from persisting under intersectional terminology while preserving lawful research and legitimate need-based programs.”

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