About

Transgender Mice refers to a viral debate and discourse about a segment in President Donald Trump's address to the joint session of Congress in early March 2025, during which the President criticized the Biden administration for reportedly spending "$8 million for making mice transgender." The statement was supposedly in reference to funding allocated for research involving "transgenic mice," where "transgenic" refers to genetically modified mice, unrelated to human gender identity. However, later claims showing studies involving hormonal experiments on mice also circulated amid the debate. The statement from Trump prompted discussions and memes online from numerous internet users who found Trump's confusion amusing and appalling, while others praised the move.

Origin

On December 21st, 2024, the White Coat Waste project^[8] released a blog post outlining what they described as $10 million in taxpayer money being "wasted to create transgender mice and monkeys."

Republican South Carolina Representative Nancy Mace referenced the aforementioned investigation during a subcommittee hearing on February 6th, 2025, marking the earliest notable use of the phrase "transgender mice."^[9]

Your tax dollars were used to castrate mice and monkeys.Only in America. DOGE</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/GOPoversight?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">GOPoversight pic.twitter.com/CDUAHBidOp

— Rep. Nancy Mace (@RepNancyMace) February 6, 2025

On February 10th, Redditor^[11] /u/DrewidN reposted a Facebook post about Mace's statement to the subreddit /r/facepalm, clarifying that she likely misunderstood "transgenic" mice to mean "transgender" mice.

On March 4, 2025, during his address to the joint session of Congress, President Donald Trump criticized government spending, highlighting an expenditure of "$8 million for making mice transgender."^[1] The speech was streamed live on the official White House YouTube^[4] channel that same day.

This remark referred to funding allocated for research involving transgenic mice to study the effects of androgens on hormonal regulation. Specifically, one study utilized transgenic mice to test whether male-level androgens acting via androgen receptors in kisspeptin neurons are necessary and/or sufficient for androgen inhibition of luteinizing hormone (LH) pulse parameters, including pulse frequency, and the estrogen-induced LH surge.^[2]

The term "transgenic" refers to genetically modified organisms with foreign DNA inserted into their genome. In this case, scientists used transgenic mice to study how androgen hormones affect reproductive biology.^[3]

Spread

On March 4th, 2025, the X^[5] account Autism Capital posted a clip of President Trump saying that the Biden administration spent $8 million on making mice transgender, gathering over 200,000 views and 6,000 likes in a day.

The clip was reposted by X user @ClayTravis^[6] and the Libs of TikTok account,^[7] who each gathered over 6,000 likes in a day.

🚨TRUMP: "$8M for making mice transgender. This is real." 💀 pic.twitter.com/JgxVWsrJY6

— Autism Capital 🧩 (@AutismCapital) March 5, 2025

On March 4th, X^[10] user @GarbageHuman24 posted an image of Representative Al Green heckling Trump, gathering over 5,000 likes on a meme that read, "I was promised transgender mice in Zambia."

TikToker^[12] @debunktionjunction posted a video on March 4th attempting to debunk Trump's claim about money being spent on researching transgender mice, gathering over 1.5 million views and 270,000 likes on a video discussing what transgenic mice means, and the uses of such gene-splicing research.

The video was reposted to Twitter / X^[13] by user @MAGACult2 on March 5th, gathering over 700,000 plays and 18,000 likes in a day.

Also on March 5th, 2025, X^[14] user @robbystarbuck made a post linking to a different study^[15] supposedly aimed at researching puberty blockers for transmasculine youth, gathering over 2,000 likes in a day.

Search Interest

External References