Blog Post

The State of Our Union

On Tuesday, January 30, President Trump will deliver his first State of the Union after a year in office. And what a terrible year it’s been. He’s spent a year exploiting visceral partisan divides to undermine the civil rights of women and girls and endanger women’s health and financial security. But, during the State of the Union, he may try to paper over this by bragging about passing tax cuts for the very wealthy and big corporations, or he may try to sell his bigoted immigration plan or an infrastructure plan that represents another giveaway to big corporations and the private sector, rather than a meaningful investment in our country’s infrastructure to create good jobs.
Rather than make America great again, he’s making America less safe, less secure, less healthy, and less equitable for women and families.  Here are just a few of the ways:

• 2: the number of President Trump’s nominees for the 5-member Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) who refuse to commit to the EEOC position that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity is discrimination;
• 2: it’s also the number of courts that have blocked Trump’s illegal and discriminatory rules that allow virtually any employer to cite religious or moral objections in order to deprive employees of critical birth control coverage;
• 4: the number of women the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) publicly sought to block from receiving a safe, legal abortion under a harmful new policy that threatens the rights of hundreds of pregnant, undocumented women in ORR custody;
• 30: the percentage oftop violators of workplace safety and wage laws who receive federal contracts and can now force victims of sexual harassment into arbitration and refuse to show employees they are being paid for their hours;
• 122: the average number of Dreamers who lose their status every day because the Administration ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program;
• 9 out of 10: the number of campus sexual assault claims that the head of the Office of the Civil Rights of the Department of Education disparaged and dismissed as false accusations;
• 2008: the year Eric Dreiband, President Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, testified against legislation that would help women challenge pay discrimination;
• 13 million: The number of individuals who will lose health insurance coverage in the next 10 years because the GOP tax bill gutted a key piece of the Affordable Care Act;
• 17 million: the number of women currently enrolled in Medicaid whose access to health care, including preventive care, maternity care, and mental health services, is threatened by the radical changes to Medicaid being pushed by the Department of Health and Human Services;
• 71 million: the number of students whose civil rights are under attack by Betsy DeVos and the Department of Education (e.g., transgender students, sexual assault survivors, students with disabilities, students of color);
• 92 million: the number of families who will see a tax increase over the next ten years because Trump prioritized tax cuts for corporations over tax and budget policies helping everyday women and families;
• $1.7 billion: the amount Trump’s 2018 budget proposed slashing from vital programs essential to women and families, compared to about $1.5 trillion in tax cuts primarily going to millionaires, billionaires, and wealthy corporations; and
• $4.6 billion: the amount women who work in tipped jobs will lose each year if a rule proposed by the Trump administration to allow employers to take their employees’ tips goes into effect.