Donald Trump’s Presidency Is a Nightmare

As president, Trump has done everything in his power to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that affirms the constitutional right to safe and legal abortion. Trump has asserted that the case was wrongly decided, and has packed the Supreme Court and lower federal courts with justices and judges who he hopes will gut constitutional protections for abortion.

The implications for reproductive rights are grave: Trump has placed more than 200 new judges on federal courts across the country. Scores of his appointees — including Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — have records opposed to reproductive rights and abortion.

In one of his first acts in office, Trump also reinstated and strengthened the “global gag rule,” which prevents foreign organizations that rely on U.S. global health assistance from providing information, referrals, or services for legal abortion or advocating for access to abortion services in their country — even with their own money.

This policy jeopardizes the health and well-being of millions of people around the world, and disproportionately hurts women and girls.

Senate Democrats just voted against legislation to prevent the killing of newborn infant children. The Democrat position on abortion is now so extreme that they don’t mind executing babies AFTER birth....This will be remembered as one of the most shocking votes in the history of Congress. If there is one thing we should all agree on, it’s protecting the lives of innocent babies.

@realDonaldTrump

Twitter, Feb 25, 2019

State politicians across the country have refused to expand Medicaid under the ACA, leaving millions of people without coverage in the middle of a deadly pandemic while contributing to the closure of hospitals that serve rural, low-income communities.

Instead of striving to cover more people under Medicaid, Trump has fought to make Medicaid harder to access. His administration has encouraged states to impose work requirements on people, with the proven effect of causing tens of thousands of people to lose their coverage. Medicaid is the biggest source of coverage for reproductive health care in the country.

Because of centuries of systemic racism and barriers to care, women of color have been disproportionately harmed by reductions in access to Medicaid.

From the first moment of his presidential campaign through the present day, Trump has made clear his animus toward immigrants — especially those from countries largely populated by people of color. Now backed by the powers of his office, his bigotry against immigrants has exacted a grim cost in health and lives. His infamous policy of family separation inflicted cruelty on parents and children seeking refuge in the United States, and caused lasting, foreseeable harm to children in a malicious effort to impose “consequences” on parents.

Under Trump, the federal government has neglected its duty to care for undocumented immigrants in its custody. Multiple detainees, including young children, have died from the lack of timely medical attention. Asylum seekers have been held in crowded, unsanitary, freezing cold and scorching hot conditions. The Department of Homeland Security has refused to vaccinate detainees against the flu, and rejected offers by outside doctors to give vaccinations for free. Even as the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps the globe, the U.S. government has accelerated the spread of the virus into Central America by maintaining a breakneck pace of deportations. 

Fighting the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19 requires securing access to health care for every person in the United States. The Trump administration, however, has pursued an opposite course. Through his cruel public charge rule, Trump has intimidated families with non-citizen members into forgoing health care through public programs such as Medicaid — for fear of compromising relatives’ ability to become American citizens or permanent residents. Public health officials believe Trump’s rule could weaken America’s response to COVID-19 by preventing immigrant families from seeking health care. Indeed, in communities of color hard-hit by COVID-19, reports indicate that people vulnerable to the virus feel reluctant to seek treatment because they fear that getting care would put their status in the U.S. in jeopardy.

The health and safety of those who seek care at Planned Parenthood is a top priority. Racial profiling and lethal state-sanctioned mistreatment of Black people by police is a public health crisis — one that has claimed the lives of George Floyd, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor, Philando Castile, Atatiana Jefferson, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Rayshard Brooks, and so many others. Inequality and over-policing are the antithesis of the standards envisioned by Planned Parenthood for our bodies and lives.

Trump, who first made headlines in the 1970s over federal accusations that he discriminated against Black apartment seekers, has done nothing to address this crisis of racial injustice. Instead, he’s made it worse. His former attorney general, Jeff Sessions, took repeated action to end federal oversight of local police departments — asserting that scrutiny of pervasive civil rights violations “undermine[s] the respect for police officers.” William Barr, the current attorney general, went even further — insinuating that “communities [that] don’t give that support and respect” to local police “might find themselves without … protection.” 

Trump has heaped insult after insult onto those injuries: denouncing peaceful demonstrations against police violence, restarting the flow of military equipment to local police, and blatantly encouraging government violence against demonstrators after the death of George Floyd. Trump’s words and actions make clear that there will be no justice for violations of Black people’s civil rights — and no peace from police violence — as long as he remains president.

....These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!

@realDonaldTrump

Twitter, May 29, 2020

Since taking office, President Trump has repeatedly proposed cutting hundreds of billions of dollars from core federal health care programs such as Medicaid — cuts of such a magnitude that millions of people in the United States would lose health coverage. Even now, the Trump administration presses on with its cruel agenda; its proposed budget for fiscal year 2021 would cut, over the next 10 years, $900 billion from Medicaid and about $500 billion from Medicare. The same budget would also slash funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) by 16%, even as the nation remains in the throes of a deadly pandemic. 

Without access to coverage through public programs, many people with low incomes or people who live in rural areas would have no options to cover the cost of their health care, leading to delayed testing and care for treatable, survivable conditions.

Diane Foley, the Trump administration official who oversees birth control and sex education programs, is an opponent of safe, legal abortion and evidence-based sex education. Foley formerly ran Life Network, a group of fake women's health clinics also known as so-called “crisis pregnancy centers.” Life Network offered an abstinence-only curriculum to Colorado public schools that omitted instruction on obvious health protections such as condom use — because, Foley insisted, demonstrating how to use a condom could be considered sexual harassment.

Before working for Trump, Foley repeatedly advanced misinformation with no basis in science — such as the debunked claim that “post-abortion syndrome” leads to mental health problems, as well as demonstrably false claims about abortion’s complication rate, despite the fact that abortion is one of the safest medical procedures in the country. 

As Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) warned when the Trump administration moved to place TPPP under Foley’s control: “It is difficult to understand how this reorganization does anything other than … prioritize ideology over the needs of the women, teenagers, and children the affected programs serve.” 

In 2019, Trump issued an unethical “gag rule” on Title X, the bipartisan federal program that provides affordable birth control and sexual and reproductive health care to people with low incomes, including people who couldn’t otherwise afford health care services on their own. The rule banned health care providers from telling people how they can safely and legally access abortion, forcing Planned Parenthood health centers and numerous others out of the program — and made clear that the administration is more interested in pushing Trump's ideology on the American people than it is in protecting their health, livelihoods, and freedoms.

Prior to being forced out of the program, Planned Parenthood health centers served over 40% of the 4 million patients who get preventive, reproductive health care through Title X. Now, 1.5 million people who used Title X at Planned Parenthood are unable to go to Planned Parenthood for free or reduced-cost preventive care through Title X — which may cause them to delay or forego care altogether. In some communities, Planned Parenthood is the only provider of affordable reproductive health care — which means that the gag rule may leave many patients cut off from access to free or low-cost birth control, STI screenings and treatment, and other basic care. 

Undermining the Title X program makes it harder for millions of people to get the care they need. To name just one example, 40% of Black women between ages 18 and 44 say they can only afford to pay up to $10 per month for birth control out of pocket. Research shows that when people have access to birth control, they can take better care of themselves and their families, support themselves financially, complete their education, and advance in their careers.

Under Trump’s direction, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) rescinded Obama-era guidance that made clear that people have the right to use their Medicaid coverage to access preventive care at the provider of their choice, including Planned Parenthood health centers.

The move threatens to embolden state officials to try to exclude Planned Parenthood from Medicaid reimbursement for preventive care services.

Following its move to embolden states to “defund” Planned Parenthood, the Trump administration allowed Texas to get millions of dollars in federal Medicaid funding while blocking patients who use the Medicaid program at issue from getting preventive care at Planned Parenthood health centers. Other states could follow suit.

In his first year in office, Trump was the first U.S. president to propose a federal budget that singled out Planned Parenthood for "defunding" from all federal funding streams — and he has continued to do this in all of his presidential budgets. 

The administration supported measures to block patients from care at Planned Parenthood health centers within its many efforts to repeal the ACA.