Michael Collins, USA TODAY
Updated Sat, February 1, 2025
WASHINGTON – It was an astounding revelation, one that Donald Trump’s White House was eager to share with the American public.
The Trump administration, eager to stop wasteful government spending, halted the distribution of $50 million in taxpayer dollars set aside to buy condoms to be sent to Gaza, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced at her first press briefing Tuesday.
The next day, Trump drew chuckles from the crowd gathered for a bill signing in the White House East Room when he repeated a variation of the same story, claiming his administration had “identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas.”
The problem: There’s no evidence it’s true.
“You are not finding any evidence of that because it simply cannot be true,” said Matthew Kavanagh, director of Georgetown University’s Center for Global Health Policy and Politics.
President Donald Trump
For years, the U.S. government has provided millions of dollars worth of condoms and other contraceptives to foreign countries as a way to help prevent the spread of AIDS and HIV and to make sure that family planning is available in developing nations.
The U.S. Agency for International Development, the government agency responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance, said in a report last April that it had spent $61 million in 2023 to provide condoms and other contraceptives to other countries.
But just $8 million of that went for the purchase of condoms, the report said. And not a cent was used to send condoms to Gaza.
Between 2016 and 2022, the agency spent $118 million to buy condoms for 60 countries – an average of about $17 million per year, according to a separate report released in 2023. None of those went to Gaza either.
More: Trump floats plan to 'just clean out' Gaza, move Palestinians to Egypt and Jordan
Asked to back up its claim, the White House referred to a State Department statement that said the administration had stopped “two $50 million buckets of ‘aid’” headed to Gaza through the International Medical Corps, a nonprofit humanitarian assistance organization based in Los Angeles.
“The $100 million for these programs included contraceptives,” the statement said. “Condoms have traditionally always been used for family planning in developing countries by USAID.”
The White House did not respond to an inquiry about how much of the $100 million it paused was to be used to purchase condoms.
The answer: None of it, according to the International Medical Corps.
The organization has received $68 million from USAID since 2023 to support its operations in Gaza, including two large field hospitals that provide medical care to roughly 33,000 civilians a month in a dangerous environment where the healthcare infrastructure has been decimated, said Todd Bernhardt, the group’s spokesman.
The corps provides lifesaving activities such as surgical and post-operative care for trauma, emergency maternal and newborn care, neonatal intensive care and pediatrics, orthopedics, pulmonology and cardiology care, Bernhardt said.
“No U.S. government funding was used to procure or distribute condoms,” Bernhardt said.
Humanitarian groups defend the use of government funding to send condoms and other contraceptives to foreign countries, saying they are essential to stopping the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases and making sure that people have access to family planning in countries where it otherwise may not be available.
Most of the condoms and contraceptives purchased with government funds have gone to countries in Africa that are still dealing with a significant AIDS epidemic. Some of the contraceptives have been distributed through the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, a global health initiative started by George W. Bush.
“Ensuring that people in Africa, but also in other low- and middle-income countries, have access to condoms is one of the most important parts of the AIDS response and one that the United States has been funding and should be funding,” said Kavanagh, the Georgetown global health expert.
More: Judge temporarily blocks Trump policy that aimed at freezing federal grant funding
Family planning is also important to help women survive in countries where poverty and the maternal mortality rate are high or in places where quality health care is unavailable, said Beth Schlachter of MSI Reproductive Choices, which works to make sure contraception is accessible around the world.
“If you are a woman living in Gaza over the last year, it’s not the ideal time to get pregnant,” said Schlachter, a former population policy adviser for the State Department. “Providing family planning or contraceptives is a routine part of humanitarian assistance because women bring their uteruses with them when they are in a time of crisis and they still need all the reproductive health care they would need at any other time in their life.”
Even so, humanitarian groups said the administration’s claim that $50 million was about to be spent to send condoms to Gaza is absurd.
“Condoms cost four cents (to make), so $50 million in condoms is over a billion condoms,” Kavanagh said. “There’s only a million adults in Gaza. I did a quick calculation, and I think on average that would be three condoms per day for every adult in Gaza. That’s not happening.”
Michael Collins covers the White House. Follow him on X @mcollinsNEWS.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY
No Evidence Hamas Used US-Funded Condoms for Bombs as Trump Claimed
Nur Ibrahim
Fri, January 31, 2025 at 4:49 PM MST·6 min read
153
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
In late January 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration made a claim that they stopped millions of taxpayer dollars from being used to fund condoms in Gaza. On Jan. 29, 2025, Trump said, "We identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas. … And you know what's happened to them? They've used them as a method of making bombs."
Trump made the claim at the 15:00 mark in the video below:
As Snopes reported on Jan. 29, 2025, there is no evidence that $50 million was spent to buy condoms for Gaza. As such, there is no proof that such U.S.-funded condoms are being used by the militant group Hamas to make bombs. However, we came across reports of Palestinians in Gaza using condoms, balloons and other items to airdrop small incendiary devices into Israel in 2020, during the last Trump administration. Those actions took place at a different time, and there is no evidence tying them to Trump's claims in early 2025.
We analyzed the first part of Trump's claim: that U.S. funding paid for condoms in Gaza. In our past reporting, we looked at recent data from U.S. Agency for International Development and U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, and spoke to representatives at Anera and the International Medical Corps, which are relief organizations that received U.S. funding for health care in Gaza.
We learned that no funds were sent from USAID to Anera or the International Medical Corps for contraceptive purposes or condom purchases in the 2023 fiscal year. The organizations were focused on providing basic medical facilities on the ground after Israeli military bombardments destroyed most of Gaza's health care facilities.
We then looked into the second part of Trump's claim: that Hamas was using U.S.-funded condoms to build bombs. Given that there is no proof the U.S. was funding condoms in Gaza in the first place, the claim that Hamas was using them to create bombs is outlandish at best.
However, it is likely that the claim emerged from 2020 reports about Palestinians in Gaza who used a range of items to send incendiary devices into Israel, including balloons and condoms. According to a Washington Post report from March 2020, over several months, balloons and condoms were launched from Gaza with small explosives attached to them. None of the devices caused injury or death.
One person interviewed by the Post in Gaza said he was not affiliated with Hamas and was part of "a loose cell of young men launching balloons," and he knew of 10 groups involved in such activities. However, political observers told the Post that such groups took orders from Hamas.
We found photographs on Getty Images of Palestinian men attaching these devices to balloons and sending them into the air. The caption of one of the images states: "Palestinians prepare incendiary devices attached to inflated condoms to be directed and flown towards Israel, near Rafah along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel on August 21, 2020."
(SAID KHATIB / AFP/ Getty Images)
Another photograph shows men attaching the devices, with the caption: "20 January 2020, Palestinian Territories, Bureij: Masked Palestinians attach incendiary devices and flammable material to refrigerant gas-filled condoms before being released to be propelled by wind into Israeli territory, near the Israel-Gaza border."
(Mohammed Talatene/Getty Images)
We are unable to determine the exact source of the condoms being used as flotation tools to send explosive devices into Israel in 2020.
According to Israeli news outlet The Jerusalem Post in a February 2020 story, the use of condoms for aerial bombs had been ongoing for two years, and Israeli authorities banned their imports to Gaza as a result of the threats:
Condoms in Gaza are generally supplied by either local Palestinian organizations or through international programs. The helium used to fill them up, which is intended for medical purposes, including operating MRI machines, is imported into the Gaza Strip with Israel's approval.
When first faced with the explosive condom threat, Israel's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories limited the import of condoms, balloons and helium into the Hamas-run coastal enclave. The ban remains in place.
Were any of those condoms funded by the U.S. in 2020? We found this to be highly unlikely. As we previously reported, there were no USAID shipments of contraceptives to the Middle East from 2019 until 2023. The first such shipment occurred in the 2023 fiscal year, in which $45,680 was spent on oral and injectable contraceptives designated for Jordan. The Jordanian government was responsible for its distribution. This shipment did not include any condoms.
Thus, it is impossible that Gaza received any USAID-funded condoms in the 2020 fiscal year as well as in subsequent years.
Sources:
"20 January 2020, Palestinian Territories, Bureij: Masked Palestinians..." Getty Images, 20 Jan. 2020,
Accessed 31 Jan. 2025.
"Gaza Terror: How Condoms Became a Weapon against Israel." The Jerusalem Post | JPost.Com, 5 Feb. 2020,
"Gaza Terror: How Condoms Became a Weapon against Israel." The Jerusalem Post | JPost.Com, 5 Feb. 2020,
Accessed 31 Jan. 2025.
Hendrix, Steve, et al. "Gaza Militants Target Israel with Party Balloons Bearing Bombs." The Washington Post, 8 Mar. 2020,
Hendrix, Steve, et al. "Gaza Militants Target Israel with Party Balloons Bearing Bombs." The Washington Post, 8 Mar. 2020,
Accessed 31 Jan. 2025.
Ibrahim, Nur. "No Evidence US Govt Allocated $50M To Send Condoms to Gaza." Snopes, 30 Jan. 2025,
Ibrahim, Nur. "No Evidence US Govt Allocated $50M To Send Condoms to Gaza." Snopes, 30 Jan. 2025,
Accessed 31 Jan. 2025.
"LIVE | President Trump Signing Laken Riley Act as First Legislation." Fox 9, 30 Jan. 2025,
"LIVE | President Trump Signing Laken Riley Act as First Legislation." Fox 9, 30 Jan. 2025,
Accessed 31 Jan. 2025.
"Palestinians Prepare Incendiary Devices Attached to Inflated Condoms..." Getty Images, 21 Aug. 2020,
"Palestinians Prepare Incendiary Devices Attached to Inflated Condoms..." Getty Images, 21 Aug. 2020,
Accessed 31 Jan. 2025.
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