This Republican Administration (and its supporters) are anti-life. They have actively and forcefully implemented policies and taken actions that have already killed thousands of people and will eventually kill millions. They are billing these murderous actions as mere “policy changes” that will be “more efficient” and “save money.”
Republicans claim to only be interested in eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse,” but they have used this meaningless slogan for decades as an excuse to cut programs that actually help people. (While always strongly supporting the wasteful and fraud-filled Pentagon budget – which helps wealthy corporations).
The dismantling of USAID
One of the first, and probably the deadliest, actions in this administration’s war against life was the defunding and dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID). This agency was established in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy to end extreme poverty and build strong, democratic societies abroad.
Working through partnerships with local governments and organizations in more than 100 countries, USAID provided assistance with health, food security, economic growth, and democracy-building. Because USAID helped people in need, it sent a strong message of hope, and of the essential goodness of the United States, to people around the world.
No longer. The United States has abandoned the people beyond its shores. People are now starving and dying (nearly a half million so far) of treatable diseases because the United States has walked away from helping them. Poor and developing countries are now desperately looking for other allies – and China is very likely to step in to the void we left.
The politicalization of women’s health care
The Republican party long ago strategically adopted “anti-abortion” as a political position, not out of any real moral concern, but because it could be used to inflame and politically activate a large group of conservative “Christians.” When the Republican-stacked Supreme Court overthrew Roe v. Wade in 2022, the authority to regulate or ban abortion fell to the states.
Republican legislatures immediately created a myriad of confusing, and sometimes quite punitive, laws dictating what doctors can, and cannot, do to help save women’s lives – even in medical emergencies. In many states, fetuses, and even embryos, now have more rights and legal protections than the mothers of whom they are a part.
Yes, in these states women have died, and will continue to die, because of ignorant, and self-righteous, Republican political interference in what should be private medical decisions.
The defunding of Medicare and Medicaid
We’re going to love and cherish Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
— DJT, January 31, 2025
The Republicans have consistantly opposed Medicare and Medicaid since they were created. Knowing that the programs are popular, the current Republican President has promised to protect them many times.
However, his “big, beautiful, bill” will now cause deep cuts to both Medicare and Medicaid – which will lead to benefit losses, increased paperwork requirements, rural hospital closures, and an increase in preventable death. Especially hurt by this Republican bill will be people with disabilities.
The politicization of medical science
The Republican party has long been a home for anti-intellectualism and conspiracy-mongers. During the Covid pandemic, its leaders discovered that they can easily stir the lesser-educated into a frenzy by railing against protective masks.
This pseudo-issue twisted the natural fear of disease and death into a right-wing political issue by positioning the medical profession, with its uncomfortable masks and (briefly) painful vaccinations as a controlling elitist group trying to “take away our freedom.”
Of course, many anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers ended up dying from Covid-19. The exact number of preventable deaths is not known, but it was well over 100,000.
The elimination of medical research and expertise
This anti-scientific nonsense has now been institutionalized with placing of conspiracy theorist and anti-vacine activist RFK Jr. as the Secretary of Health and Human Services. He has fired key public health officials, canceled medical research, gutted government health agencies, and promoted misinformation.
RFK Jr. has dismissed every member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), and fired thousands of employees across HHS agencies – including the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Where he has replaced people, he has appointed anti-vaccine conspiracists and/or people who promote debunked medical theories. These people have little to no medical or scientific background or experience.
RFK Jr. has canceled funding for mRNA vaccine research and severly restricted access to COVID-19 vaccinations. Following this lead, the right-wing Surgeon-General of Florida, who was hand-picked by Gov. Ron DeSantis, has now announced his intent to end all vaccine mandates in the state – particularly the ones that protect school children. He compared vaccine requirements to slavery.
Meanwhile, the measles outbreak that began in Texas is spreading across the country. This is a disease that was declared “eliminated” in the US in 2000. Children have already died and more certainly will.
The militarization of our cities.
In addition to promoting starvation, denying health care to women, the poor and the elderly, and destroying medical research, the Republicans are allowing armed, masked, ruffians to harass and kidnap people off our streets, in our businesses, and even in our courthouses, and “disappearing” them without due process, and then sending them to privately-profitized concentration camps in distant states.
The next step, already begun, is to put armed military personnel, with armed vehicles, on the streets of American cities that happen to have elected Democratic leaders. This is blatently illegal, but the Republicans either support the idea or are busily looking the other way.
The goal is to provoke some type of violent confrontation with protesters that will justify even more repression. That something violent will eventually occur is inevitable because neither these newly-hired ICE bullies, nor our soldiers, are trained in such police matters as de-escalation, crowd control, and civil rights.
The Department of War
Now the Orange Man has declared that the Department of Defense will henceforth be called the “Department of War.”
His Secretary of “War,” the alcoholic former FoxNews host, Pete Hegseth, recently redefined our military’s mission as “maximum lethality, not tepid legality.” This “tough guy” language may appeal to many, but it completely ignores history, diplomacy, and mature responsibility. It redefines America as the world’s biggest bully.
What could possibly go wrong?
Picture Note:
Yes, the AI-generated picture at the top of this post is disgusting. Yes, it blatantly steals both its imagery and its font-style from a 1979 Hollywood film. Yes, this picture literally threatens a military attack on an American city by the American military led by an American President.
The important point is that the President himself posted this picture on his social media site. It reminds me of that picture of a shirtless Vladimir Putin riding a horse. Are these examples of strength? or of pathetic narcissism?