The War Against Women and Families

As music rose at a Trump event on September 17th in Youngstown, Ohio, it was oddly familiar. It was a musical theme adopted by followers of QAnon. “The rally song is only the latest development in Trump’s apparent embrace of QAnon. Earlier this week, Trump posted to Truth Social a photo of himself wearing a Q lapel pin with the words ‘The Storm is Coming’ — another phrase used by the Q movement — superimposed on the image. The ‘storm,’ believers say, is a reference to Trump’s return to the presidency when he will punish his enemies in the Deep State.” Rolling Stone, Sept. 18th. QAnon: A nation where high-ranking Democrats are part of a global conspiracy, a Deep State, of pedophiles that God sent Donald Trump to punish.

Today, for whatever reasons, we now know that Donald Trump’s MAGA movement dominates the entire Republican Party. It is an uncomfortable reality for a number of GOP candidates who know better but cannot risk alienating Trump and his evangelical base. Think this is not real? “Even when his posts haven’t referred to the conspiracy theory directly, Trump has amplified users who do. An Associated Press analysis found that of nearly 75 accounts he has reposted on his Truth Social profile in the last month, more than a third have promoted QAnon by sharing the movement’s slogans, videos or imagery. About 1 in 10 include QAnon language or links in their profile bios.” Associated Press, September 18th.

In the meantime, the red wave that was sputtering a bit from recent GOP “successes” was seeking a traditional path traditionally used by autocrats to gain votes: find fear, create fear, rail against fabricated messages that suggest why “fear” is real, posit your political opponents and clearly identifiable racial, gender and/or ethnic classes as the cause of the reason for that fear and declare yourself as the only solution to the root cause of that fear. Call it “replacement theory” that Democrats are importing immigrants to replace White Americans, refer to that Deep State threat, say that the LGBTQ+ community is “grooming” (seducing, training and recruiting) children into their sexually “distorted” world, noting “they” are making children feel guilty over the sins of former slave owners or Jim Crow era discrimination against Blacks or even suggest that racial, ethnic, religious and gender discrimination still exist.

Even though there isn’t a school district in the United States that embraces a course of study that teaches that false sense of guilt or grooms children for what the parents fear is sexual “deviance,” we are told the “evil” is there and must be eliminated by conservative GOP action, under the guise of returning control of what is taught to parents. In addition to trying to blame inflation entirely on Joe Biden (that it is happening all over the world is irrelevant), the core of GOP mid-term policies is to and to declare that the culture wars need to be fought, anti-CRT policies need to be applied. There wasn’t a problem. No solution was required. But false fear is one of the fiercest planks of the midterm GOP strategy. Fear, real or not, is the battleground for selfish politicians. Benefit programs are the battleground for the people!

So, what is really going on under the GOP banner? Obviously, the reversal of Roe vs Wade abortion rights by a GOP-appointee majority in the Supreme Court (in Dobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health Organization) was a strong clear message that MAGA policies have taken control over women’s bodies. Even as Republicans and the Court tried to portray Dobbs as merely shifting abortion decisions to the states, other Republicans – like South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham – were introducing legislation to place the entire nation under an abortion restriction (except where states are even more limiting). A fly in that GOP ointment: A direct vote on a Kansas’ constitutional amendment to enable the state legislature to impose restrictions on abortions resulted in powerful voter rejection of that effort on August 2nd by nearly a 20% margin. Hmmm.

Still, right-wing legislatures are/were tripping all over themselves to purge abortions from their red states. The latest: “West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R) signed an abortion ban into law on Friday [9/16] that will only permit the procedure in cases of rape, incest or medical emergencies… Justice said in a tweet announcing his signature that the legislation is a ‘bill that protects life… I said from the beginning that if WV legislators brought me a bill that protected life and included reasonable and logical exceptions I would sign it, and that’s what I did today,’ he said.

“Both houses of the state’s legislature approved the ban on Tuesday, with the state Senate passing it 22-7 and the state House passing it 77-17. With Justice’s signature, the law goes into effect immediately while its criminal penalties will go into effect in 90 days… West Virginia is the second state to sign into law an abortion ban following the Supreme Court’s June ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, which protected abortion rights nationally. Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb (R) last month signed into law a ban that went into effect Thursday [9/15]… More than a dozen states had ‘trigger bans’ go into effect once Roe was overturned that severely restricted abortion access.” The Hill.com, September 16th

Democratic midterm chances began to rise. As gasoline prices began to moderate, voters were looking at other measures that Republicans were battling… even as Dems offered clear benefits to ordinary Americans. Biden’s initial $1.75 trillion Build Back Better bill, under pressure from conservative Dems (with unanimous GOP opposition to childcare support), Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, eliminated provisions that would have provided for paid family leave and expanded the childcare tax credit for only a year. Those “family” costs are truly inflationary!

Writing for the September 15th, Yahoo!finance, Tanya Kaushal, describes the plight for most working women: “The U.S. is facing an ongoing ‘crisis of care’ — a child care crisis — exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic and ensuing economic fallout… Women were among those hardest hit by job losses as a result of COVID, with over 5.4 million net jobs lost between February 2020 and January 2022. At the same time, the cost of child care has been steadily rising in part due to inflation.

“‘Child care is one of the biggest challenges for women in the workforce,’ Mark Suzman, CEO of the Gates Foundation, told Yahoo Finance. ‘It is one of the reasons why job losses during COVID were disproportionate to women. It is not just the economic gap — it's also that they are more likely to leave the workforce when you have challenges like COVID because there are more child care needs.’…

“Over the past year, child care has gotten more expensive for 63% of parents, according to Care.com's 2022 Cost of Care survey, which also found that 51% of parents are spending more than 20% of their household income on child care, and 72% of parents report spending 10% or more. These numbers are higher than pre-pandemic levels in 2019.”

For lower and middleclass families, the other huge drain on their finances has been the dramatic rise in the cost of post-secondary education. Student debt exceeds credit card debt, but as Joe Biden found a statutory basis to forgive between $10,000 and $20,000 each of federal student debt for financially eligible students… money that will be spread out over the balance of the outstanding loan… the GOP propaganda machine swung into action.

It was a giveaway to the rich (who were specifically not provided with forgiveness!), they said, even as rich Republicans in Congress or elected to state office had helped themselves to COVID loans, sometimes in the millions each, that were also forgiven. Forgiving student debt was inflationary, they cried, even though the cost was way below one percentage point of the federal budget. And so, 22 red state governors wrote the President to demand that the loan forgiveness program be terminated immediately, and several red state attorneys general sued the federal government toward forcing that goal. So much for women or families. The rich, well, income inequality has spread to the widest level in modern American history.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if you think you will not be impacted by those provisions to serve ordinary needs in the new Inflation Reduction Act, opposed by every Republican in Congress, and all the above Democratic programs, think again.