Dem
47
GOP
53
Among all the orchestrated confusion, illegal mass firings, unauthorized impoundment of federal spending, and hostile takeover of the federal payment system, largely at the instigation of unelected South African Elon Musk, the efforts to subjugate women by controlling their fertility continues. Similar to the multi-pronged strategy to undermine democracy and impartial justice, undermining women's autonomy is also a top priority deployed across multiple agencies, even if that dimension isn't getting too much attention right now.
One example is at the Department of Transportation. Sean Duffy, the new secretary, doesn't know anything about transportation, but shares his fellow misogynists' ideas about "women's proper role." Duffy is a former lumberjack, reality TV star and Fox host—in other words, Donald Trump's ideal cabinet official to run, you know, whatever. Duffy is a staunch Catholic with nine children who believes women should be having more babies. Buried in a four-page memo misleadingly titled "sound economic analysis in DOT policies and programs," Duffy announced that federal transportation grants will be awarded with "preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average." Don't adjust your dial—you read that right. This aligns with the obsession of both J.D. Vance and Musk, who talk openly about wanting women to give birth more. As one official put it, "The idea that 'I think I'm going to have a baby because I'm going to get a better road outside' doesn't make sense to me." That's the least of the problems with this directive.
As with other conditions Trump officials have attempted to put on spending, such as requiring cooperation with immigration officials, holding up grant money unless women have more babies is patently illegal. While Congress can put conditions on how federal funds are spent, executive agencies do not have that authority, since they may only do what Congress authorized them to do. Under well-settled case law, an agency's discretion to place conditions on the funding must be approved by Congress and consistent with the statutory scheme established in the legislation. And with SCOTUS' new independent review standard, courts are expected to scrutinize this kind of rogue action very carefully against the language in the authorizing statute. Needless to say, Congress did not condition federal transportation grants on women's fertility.
But, as we've seen, the legality of such moves doesn't concern Trump's men (emphasis on "men"). This is one way to create an incentive structure to justify intrusions into women's reproductive health decisions, as well as the increasing criminalization of pregnancy. When viewed in the context of the administration's other early moves, the memo makes perfect sense. Attorneys General like Ken Paxton of Texas want access to women's reproductive health data so they can track and monitor women's pregnancies. In a move that seems to foreshadow removing current HIPAA protections that prohibit sharing reproductive health data with law enforcement, HHS has scrubbed information about those protections from its website. And the DOD has just announced that the Pentagon will no longer reimburse women who are forced to travel out of state for abortion care, fertility treatments, or reproductive healthcare, because of abortion bans in the states where they've been deployed.
The availability of birth control is also in these men's cross-hairs. Under current law, pharmacists cannot discriminate against women by denying them access to birth control. The guidance about that law has also been removed from the HHS website. Couple these efforts with the pardons of criminals who violently attacked abortion clinics, doctors and patients, and the directive to the DOJ to no longer enforce the FACE Act, and we're looking at taking the war on women to a completely different level. Recall, however, that women make up more than half the electorate. Clearly, like everything that goes on in this White House, they haven't really thought this through. (L)