
Donald Trump’s Presidency Is a Nightmare
America needs a president who tells the truth, keeps people safe, and puts the public interest first.
We need a president who can unite the country, not divide it with destructive, racist provocations.
President Trump has been a disaster for Americans’ health and rights. His insensitivity and ignorance have spawned attempts to take away access to health coverage and care — including attacks on Planned Parenthood and other sexual and reproductive care providers; racist and fear-mongering comments; and a failure to heed scientific advice and prepare federal agencies for an orderly response to COVID-19. His bigoted policies and incompetence in office have cost lives and plunged many into uncertainty and misery.
America needs a president who tells the truth, keeps people safe, and puts the public interest first. We need a president who will fight to expand access to health care, not take it away.
People in the United States have suffered under Trump’s flailing, cruel, chaotic administration for more than three years.
Here’s what his actions have confirmed:
Trump has never cared about you, and he never will. Trump is out for only one person: himself. He’s beholden to special-interest groups — such as those that want to take away our health care to support their bottom line, and those that would end safe, legal abortion at home and abroad.
Trump weakened our public health programs — not only hindering our response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but actively making it worse. The Trump administration has sabotaged the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — landmark legislation thanks to which 20 million more people are insured than would have been without it — and doubled down on efforts to overturn it, a move that would cause millions to lose their health insurance and eliminate protections for tens of millions of people with pre-existing conditions.
Trump has attacked the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP (commonly known as ‘Food Stamps’), Medicaid, and other programs that keep people healthy, blocked access to Planned Parenthood health centers and other critical providers, and dismantled vital public health operations such as the White House global health security office.
With the stakes this high, we can’t afford another four years. For more than three years, Trump has used every tool at his disposal to undermine our democracy, nominate judges with records that are hostile to reproductive rights, target communities of color and people with low incomes, and stack the federal government with officials devoted to taking away reproductive health services, including abortion access, and people’s health coverage and care.
Trump v. Biden
When it comes to the two major presidential candidates, the comparison is stark.
Trump has been a nightmare. He and the administration he leads have brazenly undermined policies and programs we care about, and undone protections for the people we care about. His policies have hurt Planned Parenthood patients, immigrants, the LGBTQ community, people of color, and everyone who needs affordable health care.
In comparison, Joe Biden has championed our health and rights throughout his political career, and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Barack Obama during the creation of the historic Affordable Care Act. Biden supports access to sex education and reproductive health care — including birth control, safe and legal abortion, and care at Planned Parenthood health centers. We can count on Biden to continue fighting for what's right.
Mike Pence: A Dangerous Extremist
As vice president in the Trump White House, Pence has done everything in his power to actively control people’s bodies.
Eroding Access to Abortion
Trump’s vision of the United States is one where abortion is no longer safe and legal.
I am pro-life and I will be appointing pro-life judges.
– Donald Trump, Oct. 20, 2016
Trump, who has bragged for a decade about being “pro-life,” called for a nationwide abortion ban while campaigning for president in 2016 — and even said that pregnant people who obtain abortions should be subject to “some form of punishment.”
After taking office, Trump hired numerous anti-abortion ideologues and activists to help him realize that agenda — and became the first sitting president in U.S. history to address the annual March for Life anti-abortion rally. On the campaign trail and in office, he has repeatedly engaged in fear-mongering, and spread medically inaccurate information about abortion later in pregnancy.
Undermining Access to Birth Control
During its first year, the Trump administration issued rules to allow employers and health insurers to refuse to cover birth control on the basis of religious or “moral” objections — which sought to reverse ACA protections designed to guarantee access to contraception at no out of pocket cost.
Those rules reflect the extreme beliefs of key Trump administration staffers, many of whom have spread misinformation about birth control throughout their careers. Before joining the Trump administration, an appointee to run family planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) groundlessly claimed that “incidents of contraception use and the incidents of abortion go hand in hand” — and falsely claimed there were “new abortion-inducing drugs disguised as contraceptives.” Another official baselessly wrote that birth control causes “miscarriages of already-conceived children,” and “ruin[s] your uterus for baby-hosting.”
Staunch opposition to birth control also characterizes the records of several of Trump’s nearly 200 appointees to the federal courts. One judicial nominee outlandishly mischaracterized regulations that protect patient access to emergency contraception as “government’s mandate to kill, cut, or medicate another human being.” Another nominee once promoted fake science, suggesting that women who use birth control pills are more likely to die violent deaths.
Sabotaging Health Coverage, Undermining Health Equity
After Trump and his congressional allies repeatedly tried and failed to repeal the ACA — a move that would have wrecked access to health care for tens of millions of Americans — his administration set off on a campaign to sabotage the ACA that continues to this day, even as the COVID-19 pandemic rages across the country. Trump has made it harder for people to get health care through the ACA by drastically curbing enrollment assistance, slashing the length of the enrollment window, and allowing junk health insurance plans on the marketplaces. As a result, the percentage of Americans who lack health insurance is climbing again — and as COVID-19 sickens millions of Americans, the administration refuses to reopen the federal marketplace to help people without insurance get covered.
In fact, while he continues to botch the federal effort to control the pandemic, Trump has redoubled his support for a lawsuit that, if successful, would entirely repeal the ACA, eliminating the coverage and protections it established — including health coverage for youth up to 26, guaranteed birth control coverage and maternity coverage, and protections for people with preexisting conditions.
Debasing Sex Education
Quality sex education, taught by trained educators who cover topics such as relationships, consent, decision making, gender identity, birth control, and more, had federal support before Trump became president — but his administration quickly moved to undermine funding for those programs. The ideologues who surround Trump have used their positions in the U.S. government to steer money away from quality, evidence-based approaches to sex education and toward abstinence-only-until-marriage programs.
In budget after budget, Trump has sought to eliminate the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (TPPP). Those efforts have failed — but the Trump administration also attempted to end five-year TPPP grants two years early, even though the program was set to provide 1.2 million young people with evidence-based sex education. When those efforts were blocked by the courts, the administration then tried to remake the TPPP into an abstinence-only program through its grant-making process — but that attempt, too, was largely blocked by the courts.
Redirecting millions to abstinence-only programs that research shows don’t work, while draining money from programs with a proven record of increasing safer sex and helping young people prevent unintended pregnancy, denies young people opportunities to explore their values and beliefs about sex and relationships while gaining skills to navigate relationships and manage their own sexual health.
Attacking Access to Care at Planned Parenthood Health Centers
Since coming to power, Trump has tried to cut off people’s access to Planned Parenthood in every way possible — in presidential budgets, ACA repeal plans, tax reform legislation, federal resolutions and regulations, nominations of judges with records that are hostile to reproductive health and rights, and appointments of anti-Planned Parenthood government officials. Trump has repeatedly and consistently targeted Planned Parenthood with disinformation in speeches, ads, and in the platform of his political party.
All these attacks have one goal: close Planned Parenthood health centers, and block access to care for roughly 2.4 million Planned Parenthood patients — many of whom would be left with nowhere else to turn for health care.
Trump’s efforts have not shut down Planned Parenthood health centers; their doors are still open. Planned Parenthood continues to serve as the nation’s largest provider of sex education, and continues to be a leading provider of high-quality, affordable health care. But Trump remains bent on ending that.
We Decide 2020
Trump isn’t slowing his attacks on health care access. In fact, he’s doubling down on putting people's rights, health, and lives in danger, even during a global public health crisis. We can’t let him keep doing it. Lives are at stake.
Abortion, birth control, and affordable heath care access are all in grave jeopardy. Those who stand to lose the most are those already excluded, by legacies of discrimination and systemic racism, from opportunities to thrive: Black people and other people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ people, and women.
We won’t let Trump decide how to run our country anymore. We won’t let Trump decide our future. With our votes this year, we — not Donald Trump — decide what is best for our health and our communities.
Join the Fight
Planned Parenthood Votes will mobilize millions of voters in battleground states this fall.