The War on Women

Trump and MAGA strike again

Credit: Getty Images

We are constantly bombarded by propaganda posing as news from this administration. Every day, the egomaniacal president demands attention — and gets it — dictating his agenda to an all-too-often pliant press. The president speaks and the media reports, no matter the quality or the veracity of what he says. That’s the reality of Washington today.

But so much is happening beyond the periphery of the president, especially in like-minded circles, that you need to know about. Look no further than Project 2025 to understand how right-wing ideology can quickly become policy. That is especially true for women’s rights.

Trump’s campaign promise to protect women, “whether the women like it or not,” has become more of a threat. His policies and executive orders undermine women’s economic and reproductive freedoms while pushing them out of the workforce and into the home.

The president wants to defund Planned Parenthood, saying it only provides abortions. In reality, it delivers high-quality, affordable reproductive healthcare, including cancer screenings and prenatal care, at a time when millions of women have been forced off of health insurance because of Trump’s cuts to Medicaid and his refusal to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits.

Trump’s Department of Labor has targeted programs that help women attain high-paying jobs in male-dominated fields. His Department of Defense has killed programs expanding women’s roles in the military. And the Department of Health and Human Services is actively emphasizing “natural family planning,” while eschewing medical birth control.

And then there is the SAVE Act, which Trump refuses to let die, though it has so far not passed in the Senate, and likely won’t. The SAVE Act is a voter suppression bill that would disproportionately disenfranchise women. Eligible voters would be barred from registering to vote if their legal last name does not match their birth certificate. Millions of women change their last name when they marry. A Pew Research study found that 79% of women take their husband’s name and 5% hyphenate their last names.

With policies like these, it is no wonder Trump has widened the gender gap. While he improved his standing with women voters from the 2020 to the 2024 election, that support has slipped steadily since he took office. The president’s approval rating nationally is hovering just below 40%. Among all women, it is around 29%, and among women under 30 years of age (Gen Z), it is even lower.

The MAGA wing of the Republican Party is hellbent on keeping power, even after Trump, their founder and standard-bearer, has gone. To do so, they need to stem the tide of defectors from the Trump camp, starting with Gen Z women, the most anti-Trump demographic.

So the president, with the help of the Heritage Foundation and the MAGA coalition, is actively trying to appeal to young women, though the message and their methods make that challenging.

Much of the rhetoric revolves around birth rates, which have been in decline for two decades, down 20% since 2006. Teen pregnancies have seen the biggest drop, down 80% since their peak in the 1990s. Trump & Co. are preying on women’s patriotism, telling them it is their civic duty to have more children.

The president is also trying to buy his way to higher birth rates, financially rewarding parents for having babies. The “Trump Accounts” initiative deposits $1000 into investment accounts for American children born between 2025 and 2028. He has proposed the National Medal for Motherhood, a financial incentive for women to have families of six or more children.

The Heritage Foundation, author of Project 2025, is out with a new plan called “Save America by Saving the Family.” The crux of the lengthy report is the belief that America will be saved by pushing women to marry young, have large families, not work outside the home, and solely rely on their husbands for financial security.

Turning Point USA (TPUSA), a conservative group founded by the late Charlie Kirk to recruit young people to the MAGA cause, has clearly read the report. Now helmed by his widow, Erika Kirk, TPUSA held its curiously named “Women’s Leadership Summit” earlier this month.

Several thousand young women gathered in San Antonio, Texas, to celebrate submission to men, demonize contraception, rail against feminism, and advocate for “household voting” where only the husband has the right to cast a ballot.

During the opening ceremony, Mrs. Kirk echoed her husband’s beliefs, chief among them that feminism leaves women “lonelier, resentful, confused and weaker than before,” and that, according to feminists, motherhood is a “burden,” marriage a “trap,” and men are “the enemy.”

“For years, Charlie Kirk used this event to lecture young women on the importance of ‘biblical womanhood’ and organizing their early life around attracting a husband. His approach was consistently belittling and dismissive. He once told a 14-year-old girl in braces she should only go to college to get an ‘Mrs. degree’” wrote Madeline Peltz, author of “Good Girls and Alpha Males: How Conservative Media Is Targeting Gen Z.”

Ground zero for the war on women has been the battle for reproductive rights.

Four years on from Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court’s decision that overturned the federal right to abortion, that battle has only escalated. The latest salvo in this fight is over who is legally culpable when an illegal abortion is performed.

Since Dobbs, 41 states have limited abortion, and 13 have near or total bans. Yet the number of abortions in America has increased, up more than 20% annually since the decision was handed down. If the goal of the Court’s decision was to eliminate abortions in America, then Dobbs has been a disaster.

That increase is thanks mostly to the availability of medication abortions, even in states that ban surgical ones. Up until now, women who get abortions are spared legal repercussions, while doctors and abortion providers are not.

A growing number of frustrated anti-abortion activists have decided to endorse a controversial position, according to The New York Times. Sixty anti-abortion leaders and conservative influencers recently signed a petition to remove the “legal immunities” that protect women, believing the only way to stop the practice is to arrest those who get abortions. No mention of the men who get them pregnant.

Doctors and abortion providers have long been the target of the anti-abortion movement. But now this new idea— prosecuting women who have abortions— is gaining traction. So far, Republican politicians and candidates are silent on the proposal. Earlier this month, the Texas Republican Party endorsed repealing the state’s legal protections for women who get the procedure.

This draconian change in the fight against abortion rights is part of a larger campaign to exert control over half the population.

Here’s the reality: Women make up a majority of college graduates and the workforce. Seventy-seven percent of jobs created under this president have been taken by women. Imagine what would happen to the U.S. economy if all those women were home having babies. It feels nonsensical to imagine the rollback of rights envisioned by so many conservative groups. But, as we’ve seen from this president and right-wing groups who support him, nonsensical can suddenly become reality.

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Stay Steady,
Dan