Leaked Memo: Trump Administration Wants to Slash Birth Control, Promote Fertility Awareness
Nine months into Trump's presidency, progressives continue to comfort themselves with the hope that his policy agenda is stalled. While a Hawaii judge just temporarily blocked the latest version of the Muslim travel ban and he can't seem to get a single piece of legislation through Congress, many of Trump's goals are being achieved through executive orders, and his administration is working overtime to roll back decades of progress on issues from civil rights and health care to foreign aid.
Now a leaked memo from the White House's Domestic Policy Council, obtained by Crooked Media—the burgeoning podcast empire and news website started by former Obama staffers—reveals the wishlist of white nationalism and misogyny that the White House is eager to unleash by an administration "defined by ideological extremism, and tempered by incompetence," notes Brian Beutler.
The DPC, which functions like an "internal think tank" Beutler says, does not have immediate legal weight, but does "hold considerable sway over the content of [Trump's] budget, which makes them useful proxies for the White House’s thinking and priorities."
The document makes multiple references to promoting "fertility awareness" instead of birth control. In a move straight out of "The Handmaid's Tale," the Trump admistration aims to "halve federal funding for Title X, the grant program that provides family planning and prevention services to the poor, and divert the money into programs to promote 'fertility awareness' methods of birth control—popular among socially conservative contraception foes—which fail annually for a quarter of couples."
The White House also wants the U.S. to refrain from funding the "touchier-feelier programs” at international universities that receive U.S. funding to educate women, except, the DPC memo notes, in "Muslim countries, where we need to do a check of the curricula at the schools we’re supporting to weed out jihadism.” In addition, notes Beutler, the memo's "call to scrutinize organizations in 'Muslim countries' bears an uncomfortable resemblance to Trump’s election-season call to prohibit Muslims from entering the United States, along with subsequent efforts to codify the ban."
Other sections of the memo call the World Health Organization a "corrupt, hostile bureaucracy that achieves no actual [public health] capacity in countries." Apparently providing vaccines and critical health care around the world is antithetical to the priorities of the Trump administration. White House staffers apparently also want to slash funding for Michelle Obama's program to reduce childhood obesity.
Read the entire memo and Crooked Media's report.
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