Is this the Most Anti-Woman Administration in our Nation’s History?
A Peek Inside the First 100 Days of Trump’s Women’s Agenda: Funding cuts, mass firings, pricey eggs, questionable appointments, a baby boom, and pure chaos.
Depending on which women you ask, the Trump Administration’s Women’s agenda is viewed as either going exceptionally well or really, really badly. For the women and families I care about most, it’s the latter rather than the former.
From the appointment of male-identified pick-me women to cabinet positions, to the mass firings of government workers, to continued attacks on women’s healthcare and reproductive rights, to the promise of a Trumpian Baby Boom, and much more—hands down, this is the most anti-woman Administration in the history of the country.
Although the twice-impeached president is no stranger to controversy or infamy, he will undoubtedly find a way to spin being crowned the most anti-woman president in U.S. history as a good thing. The truth, however, is that women’s progress and hard-fought gains were already in freefall before Trump took office; the Administration’s actions during its first 100 days of governance have only accelerated this decline.
Inside Trump’s First Week in Office + 100 Days
In the first 100 days of Trump's presidency, he signed 140 Executive Orders, including those that shuttered the White House’s Gender Policy Council, reinstated the global gag rule, and affected the LGBTQ+ community, signaling the B.S. he and his Administration would be on for the next four years.
These orders and the establishment of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by the unelected Elon Musk, underscore the Administration’s willingness to bypass Congress, defy courts, and bend the rule of law to advance its social, cultural, and political agenda.
What Do Women Think: They Are Unapproving, and for Good Reason
Approximately 64 percent of women disapprove of Trump’s performance during his first 100 days in office (not a shocker), reflecting the general sentiment of the country on this issue. Since taking office, his approval rating among women has dropped 7 points.
With the Most to Lose and Fewer Rights than Previous Generations, Younger Women Reject Trump
Trump’s disapproval rate is significantly higher among Gen Z women, at 76 percent. If we continue on the current trajectory, they stand to lose the most and will have fewer rights and protections than previous generations of women. Forty-five percent of Gen Z men support Trump, representing the most significant generational political gap in decades.
Just over half of Americans (52%), including the majority of both Democrats and Republicans, say that Trump’s second presidency will fundamentally change the country in a lasting way.
Here are the Top 15 Ways the Trump Administration’s Policies and Actions are Hurting Women and Families in Its First 100 Days:
More than $102 billion in Funding Cuts to women-and-family-focused Programs, Services, and Research
In its first 100 days, the Trump Administration has or is projected to cut more than $102 billion in funding to programs, services, and research focused on women, families, and LGBTQ + individuals and communities.
These cuts are harmful because they eliminate various services and programs for women, families, and vulnerable communities, both domestically and globally. They also create undue stress and burden on organizations, states, and countries to fill funding gaps and continue providing services.
His Cabinet Picks: One-third of Trump’s cabinet picks are women, but that’s no cause for celebration.
The MAGA elite is filled with thirst buckets who will do or say just about anything for power and a seat at the table. Alina, Kelly, Tulsi, Linda, Brooke, Kristi, Susie, Karoline, Pam, and Lori—now some of the most powerful women in America, thanks to Trump — are no exception. Alongside their MAGA male counterparts, they are responsible for upholding and enforcing harmful policies, legislation, and executive orders that undermine women’s health, economic security, well-being, safety, and their ability to provide for their families.
As proof, to cement her “tough-guy” status, Kristi Noem, head of the Department of Homeland Security, has participated in immigration raids and posed for pictures in front of caged men in El Salvador. For her part, Tulsi Gabbard has threatened to investigate and prosecute whistleblowers who alert the public to the Administration’s wrongdoing. And not to be outdone, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon is diligently working to dismantle the Department of Education, including Head Start, an early education program that benefits thousands of children and families, while also resuming aggressive student loan debt collections. It’s the lack of humanity for me.
Halting Millions of Dollars for Routine & Critical Health Care Services for Women, including Planned Parenthood Affiliates
In March, the Administration halted millions of dollars in Title X funding to at least nine Planned Parenthood affiliates and other health care providers, representing a little more than a quarter of all Title X funding. Other federal family planning program providers received less than half of what they requested, while others received nothing.
This is not new: In Trump’s first term, his Administration banned Title X providers from referring patients for comprehensive reproductive health care, mandated separate facilities for certain services like abortion, and funded faith-based centers that did not provide condoms or birth control.
Due to the rule changes, 225,688 fewer patients received oral contraceptives, 49,803 fewer hormonal implants, and 86,008 fewer intrauterine devices. In 2021, the Biden administration eliminated Trump’s Title X rule. However, health care providers never fully recovered.
A 2023 HHS program review revealed that Title X providers served roughly a million fewer women and individuals than before the rule changes.
Making it Harder for Women to Vote
The House passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act earlier this month. If it clears the Senate and is signed by Trump, it could disenfranchise at least 69 million women whose married names no longer match their birth certificates. Given the razor-thin margins of the most recent elections, even a loss of 1-3 percent of women voters to the SAVE Act can affect the outcome of an election--and that’s the point. See who's bankrolling the SAVE Act.
More than $100 billion in Proposed Cuts to Medicaid and SNAP
To bankroll tax breaks for the wealthy, the Administration’s proposed budget includes significant cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). These programs support and reach over 113 million Americans, including many low-income women and families.
For approximately 18.5 million adult women (ages 19-64), Medicaid is their primary or sole source of health insurance, and the program covers 41% of all births in the U.S.
Cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, no matter how small, will exacerbate and increase health disparities for women and increase food insecurity for millions of individuals and families across the country.
A Trumpian Baby Boom and Elon’s Baby Mama Harem
The pro-natalists and birthers heard Trump loud and clear when he referred to himself as the fertilization president, even as he gutted the CDC’s IVF Research and Surveillance Team.
Since then, the birthers have been traipsing through the White House peddling schemes, programs, and incentives to boost the U.S. birth rate—none of which include paid sick and family leave, a robust safety net, expanded tax credits, subsidized childcare, free high-quality healthcare, flexible workplaces or schedules, increased wages, or anything else that would.
They also fail to address the real reasons that younger men and women cite for not wanting kids: time, money, and their ability to define success and happiness in ways different from their parents’ generation.
Instead, proposed efforts and incentives from pro-nationalists include a motherhood medal, a class to help women track their menstrual cycles (there’s an app for that), and a one-time $5,000 push present.
In the U.S., raising a child from birth to 18 years costs approximately $297,674, not the penny a day that conservatives imagine it to be.
The irony is not lost on me that the same Administration working to cut millions in funding to Medicaid, SNAP, and women’s healthcare is the same one proposing to hand out motherhood medals and teach classes on menstrual cycles. They don’t want to support families and children; they want to control women and their bodies. The pro-natalist and birther movements are coercive and fundamentally anti-woman.
Read about Elon Musk’s legion of babies, harem drama, and his use of X (formerly Twitter) to proposition women here. And also NatalCon.
The Termination of $811 million in Funding for Violence Prevention Programs
Trump Appointee and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi cheered funding cuts to violence prevention and safety programs, calling them “wasteful.”
Last week, 365 organizations received funding termination notices from the Department of Justice Office and the Office of Justice Programs totaling more than $811 million. This loss of funding will end or impair vital and life-saving programs for victims and survivors of gender-based violence, including trauma centers.
Organizations that lost funding include the Justice + Joy National Collaborative, National Organization for Victim Advocacy, and the National Network to End Domestic Violence, among many other local, state, and national programs.
Making it Harder for Women to File Complaints and Pursue Legal Action with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
On April 23rd, Trump signed an Executive Order targeting the disparate impact clause of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which will unravel more than 60 years of legal precedent, protections, and remedies available to women, Blacks, Latinos, and others in the workforce, housing, and in society.
As a result of the Executive Order, the EEOC, the nation’s federal agency responsible for investigating complaints, pursuing legal action, and enforcing laws against job discrimination and harassment, will have limited power and authority to pursue complaints or investigate bad actors.
From 1997 to 2018, close to 2 million discrimination complaints were filed with the EEOC. In 2017, 34 percent centered on racial discrimination, and over 30 percent on sex or gender.
Mass Firings of Federal Workers
The federal government employs over 3 million workers, nearly half of whom are women. Excluding the Postal Service, it is the nation’s largest employer, and fewer than one-fifth of workers live in Washington, DC. The effects of layoffs will be experienced in cities, neighborhoods, and states across the country.
Attacks on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (or whatever it’s now called)
The Administration issued a list of 199 banned words and phrases, including women, intersectionality, LGBTQ+, diversity, equity, and beast feed + person that federal agencies should erase, eliminate, or flag for scrutiny as potential waste. The complete list is too long to include here.
The only two “DEI” words not banned by the Administration are white and men. As someone said, now we will finally find out what’s going on with all of the white men in America.
The Administration has also threatened to withhold federal funds from public schools, organizations, state agencies, and higher education institutions with diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and practices.
Word bans imposed by the federal government have a chilling effect on research, resources, and data collection. They encourage organizations and institutions to comply pre-emptively and to censor their efforts or work.
Women are some of the biggest beneficiaries of DEI and Affirmative Action programs. Whites hold 76 percent of Chief Diversity Officer positions, while Blacks hold just 3.8 percent.
In corporate America, white women occupy nearly 19 percent of all C-suite positions, compared to only 4 percent of women of color. While women-owned businesses have seen significant growth over the past few decades, white women have enjoyed greater access to capital, business loans, and government contracts than women of color.
The Trump administration’s anti-DEI and Woke crusade is less about effectiveness and more about reminding certain people—women, LGBTQ+ individuals, poor people, the differently abled, Blacks, Hispanics, immigrants, and AAPI folks- that they don’t matter.
It is a takedown of structures and dismantling of public policies established over the last half-century to expand opportunity and create a more inclusive America.
Scrubbing Women & Their Achievements from Federal Websites
Initially, I thought it was disinformation or my Deranged Trump Syndrome finally kicking in, until it was confirmed. An effort to curb DEI and comply with a list of 199 banned words and phrases from the Administration has resulted in removing women leaders and their achievements from federal websites.
NASA’s website, for example, was scrubbed and altered to remove references to inclusion, diversity, gender, and minorities, among other terms, and to eliminate Spanish translations. In a broad and haphazard sweep, Wendy Bohon, a geologist, was taken down from the NASA website, and a profile about Rose Ferreira, an intern whom the space agency highlighted, was also deleted.
An aircraft named Enola Gay was accidentally removed from the Pentagon’s website because it contained the word "Gay."
More than $1 billion in Funding Cuts to Research and Programs focused on Women’s Health
Historically, research on women‘s health and well-being has been underfunded in the U.S. It wasn’t until 1993 that clinical trials were legally required to include women and “individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds.”
Between 2013 and 2023, the NIH awarded only 8.8 percent of grant dollars to projects focused on women’s health.
In its first 100 days, the Trump Administration rescinded $1 billion in research on women’s health by shutting down the Gender Policy Council and cutting NIH funding to research centers and universities.
Projects affected include research on early breast cancer detection and long-term health outcomes for children born to mothers who contracted COVID-19 during their pregnancies. Additionally, a $400,000 project aimed at better studying intimate partner violence (IPV) during pregnancy was also terminated. A 7-year, $168 million initiative to investigate and improve maternal health outcomes is also under threat.
The Administration signed an anti-gender Executive Order, cut more than $125M in LGBTQ health funding, and canceled hundreds of grants.
On Trump’s first day in office, the Administration issued Executive Order 14168, impacting over 6 million LGBTQ+ individuals, particularly transgender, non-binary, and intersex people. The Executive Order undermined protections and encouraged discrimination regarding access to government identification, healthcare, and public accommodations.
Soon after, public health data vanished from agency websites, entire webpages went missing, and employees removed pronouns from email signatures. The Administration also cut research funding and canceled hundreds of grants to organizations and universities focused on LGBTQ+ individuals and communities.
Shuttering USAID and Cutting Funds to Global Women’s Health Organizations
The U.S. provides $8.2 billion each year for foreign humanitarian aid. For nearly a decade, Congress has appropriated $607.5m in foreign assistance for family planning, funding that experts estimate would have provided modern contraceptives to 47 million women and girls.
The U.S. has been a global health leader for the past five decades, providing nearly 40 percent of all international family planning donations, primarily via USAID. However, this is no longer the case.
Proposed Trump Tariffs Will Disproportionately Impact Women and Families
Trump’s trade war and proposed tariffs will raise the costs of clothing and goods, disproportionately impacting women and single-parent households.
Currently, tariffs on women’s clothing and products are approximately three percent higher than those on men’s, costing them over $2 billion annually.
Ninety percent of single-parent households are led by women, who spend roughly 40 percent of their income on goods. In contrast, the wealthiest 10 percent of households spend only about 20 percent of their income on goods.
If the Administration implements its planned tariffs, the prices of clothing and goods will rise even more for women and families. Additionally, tariff hikes, especially when combined with income taxes, shift the tax burden from higher to lower earners, disproportionately affecting single mothers.
That’s the End. This has literally never happened before on paper or in life—I’ve run out of words. I have reached my Substack word limit, but I believe I have said all there is to say about the most anti-woman Administration in the nation’s history.
Let’s plan to continue this conversation in the coming weeks. Not only have the past 100 days been head-spinning, but it’s also a real clarion call to do something BIG and consequential to change the tide.