As much as the Trump administration claims to care for families and wants to encourage having childrenyou wouldn’t know it from its actions. In its latest move to make life harder for federal employees, the termination of union contracts for roughly 400,000 employees at the Department of Veterans’ Affairs leaves expectant parents in the lurch.
Lower courts blocked President Donald Trump’s March executive order purporting to be able to arbitrarily cancel union contracts covering hundreds of thousands of federal workers. But federal appeals courts lifted those injunctions earlier this month, so Trump gets to do this while the litigation proceeds. The VA was the first agency to terminate nearly all its union contracts, but since Trump’s executive order had a carveout for unions that support him, VA police, firefighters, and security guards did not have their contracts terminated.
With that contract revocation at the VA came the revocation of all approved maternity and paternity leave, including taking it away from people days away from giving birth. Making it more ridiculous, this is unpaid leave. Under the union contract, employees were entitled to an additional four weeks of unpaid parental leave on top of the 12 paid weeks required by law. Real pro-family move there, forcing people back into the workforce early instead of letting them have more time to take care of and bond with their baby.
The explanation about this could not be smugger. Per VA spokesperson Pete Kasperowicz, this is much fairer: “Now that VA has terminated collective bargaining agreements for most employees, its parental leave policy is much more equitable.”
Huh?
Yes, because now all VA employees can request leave subject to the needs of the agency. So, in Trumpland, a contract that gives everyone the same benefit is unfair, but a policy that lets your employer unilaterally decide if you get that benefit of extra leave is totally fair. Sure.
This is another front in the administration’s comprehensive war on children and families. Much of that focus has been on eliminating programs that provide children from lower-income families with such frivolities as heat, education, and health care. But the swiftness with which it was happy to snatch away parental leave from federal employees shows they have no intent of limiting those attacks.
Just look at how the Department of Education has killed most investigations of civil rights complaints in schools. Or how at the start of July, the administration arbitrarily withheld $6 billion in funding for after-school and summer programs for things like child care and English-language instruction. That money also funded teacher development. It was only after Republican senators pressured the administration that the money was released three weeks later.
Never one to shy away from being terrible, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. definitely has a big role here in making the world worse for children. In April, the agency canceled $11.4 billion of funding used for immunization clinics and appears to be planning to remove the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for children under five.
Amid this frenzy of attacks on families, Trump and other creepy natalist types in his administration are running around talking about how important it is for (white) people to have more babies, including the genius idea of giving mothers a medal for having six or more children. Vice President JD Vance is a full-fledged natalist, complaining about how we are ruled by a childless elite and such, so you’d think he’d want to ensure people get a bit more time off caring for their newborn, but you’d be wrong.
What about how if Trump won in 2024, he promised to mandate coverage for in vitro fertilization, with Trump saying he’d either require the government to cover it or require insurers to do so. Well, that’s not happening anymore, with an administration official recently saying that the president couldn’t mandate IVF without Congress passing legislation about it. Of course, since the administration has flouted Congress’ authority at every turn, it’s just a convenient excuse here.
The sole pro-family effort the administration can point to is the establishment of “Trump Accounts,” a onetime payment of $1,000 for every child. Gosh, a whole $1,000? That’s sure to make a huge difference when the cost of raising a child to age 18 these days regularly tops $300,000. Somehow, $1,000 doesn’t really seem like enough of an incentive.
There is no actual desire on the part of the administration to support children or families. It’s happy to make life harder for everyone.
