The Return of Morally Bankrupt Governance
In Trump’s second term, cruelty, corruption, and ethical detachment aren’t anomalies — they’re policy
We’ve seen this movie before, but the sequel is somehow worse. In his second term, President Trump has abandoned even the pretense of moral leadership. Policies are shaped not by principle but by spite. Decisions prioritize spectacle over service, vengeance over vision. The machinery of government no longer merely stumbles past ethical lines — it barrels through them with intent. And while the consequences for the most vulnerable mount, those in power seem less interested in governing than in punishing.
Yet another culture war wedge
A demographic factor — declining birth rates — has become yet another culture war wedge. Instead of recognizing the structural economic, ecological, and cultural realities shaping family decisions, Trump’s advisers, led by ideologically-obsessed figures like Stephen Miller, are spinning a nativist fairy tale: that the solution to a low birth rate is to bribe “real Americans” into having more children while slamming the doors on immigrants. This is not policy — it’s propaganda, dressed up as patriotism.
Like many of the administration’s initiatives, it’s a deeply ethnocentric and ahistorical oversimplification, disconnected from global realities. It is also counterproductive, since it ignores the one clear, data-driven solution to population stabilization in a modern economy: well-managed immigration coupled with economic policies that support working families. Instead, Trump’s inner circle offers a nostalgic fantasy — part “Leave It to Beaver,” part Brave New World — in which American birth rates are to be lifted by sheer nationalist will, government bonuses, and just enough state propaganda to feel dystopian.
A demographic trend becomes a political weapon
Birth rates are declining across much of the industrialized world. In wealthy, developed nations, this is neither surprising nor necessarily catastrophic. As societies become more educated, more urbanized, and more economically secure, couples tend to have fewer children. Women who can pursue careers, education, and self-determination often choose smaller families — or choose to delay or forgo childbearing altogether. This isn’t a failure of national will or values — it’s the natural byproduct of progress.
But to Stephen Miller and his ilk, a lower American birth rate is an existential threat that can only be countered with nationalist fertility drives and closed borders. The “solution,” they argue, is not to welcome immigrants into the workforce and the community but to reshape American culture itself, to incentivize childbirth through tax schemes and baby bonuses while demonizing the very diversity that keeps the U.S. economy afloat.
They are wrong on the data, wrong on the economics, and deeply wrong on the morality.
Tariffs on toys and theology in public health
At the same time Trump’s administration is wringing its hands over falling fertility, its economic and public health policies are actively making parenting more expensive and more dangerous. Tariff policies have driven up the cost of everything from strollers to car seats to infant formula. Cuts to federal programs that support safe infant sleep and immunization have left new parents concerned and confused.
In communities around the country, outbreaks of preventable diseases like measles are on the rise, fueled in part by the influence of Trump’s Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has promoted vaccine skepticism and misinformation for years. Even as Kennedy insists he is “pro-safety,” the practical result of his rhetoric has been to erode public trust in lifesaving medicine. And the administration’s response? More executive orders about baby bonuses. Less science. More spin.
When the government’s own health policies make it harder and scarier to raise children, offering a $5,000 check per baby is not a solution — it’s a cynical trade-off. It’s telling that even Trump himself recently dismissed the financial strain of parenting under his tariffs with a callous line: “Maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30.” A man born into wealth, who has spent taxpayer money on golf trips and gaudy hotels, now lectures working-class families on living with less for the sake of his trade wars.
The real solutions are staring them in the face
If the administration were truly concerned about America’s demographic and economic future, it would embrace the two tools that every economist, demographer, and historian agrees work: 1) sustained, equitable immigration, and 2) policies that reduce wealth inequality and support working families. But that would require confronting some uncomfortable truths: that wealth hoarding at the top is stifling opportunity, that affordable child care and paid family leave matter more than jingoistic slogans, and that most American families today need two incomes to survive.
Immigrants, who are generally younger and have higher birth rates than native-born Americans, help replenish the labor force and grow the economy. But rather than welcome them, Trump’s team wants to wall them out — unless they come from white South Africa— or with seven-figure bank accounts. Meanwhile, economic policies skewed toward the ultrarich have made it harder for American families to afford homes, education, and healthcare — all key variables in deciding whether to have children.
Birth rates aren’t declining because Americans have forgotten how to procreate. They are declining because they can’t afford the lives they want.
Culture war parenting and the politics of fear
Trump’s advisers understand one thing very well: fear motivates voters. Vaccine misinformation. Food additive conspiracies. Warnings about the “death of the American family.” They’re not trying to govern so much as galvanize. And in Robert F. Kennedy Jr., they’ve found the perfect avatar — a man who combines pseudoscientific fear mongering with populist appeal. He tells people to “do your own research” while ignoring the reams of peer-reviewed studies that contradict him. He urges people to trust their instincts over medical consensus. And Trump’s administration has handed him the reins of national health policy.
It’s no surprise that Facebook groups for parents are now hotbeds of anxiety. When the government dismantles trusted public health programs and replaces them with influencer-style advice and YouTube science, parents are left to fend for themselves — and to panic. The administration has taken the most intimate part of many people’s lives — raising children — and turned it into another battlefield in the war on facts.
The price of ideology over practicality
It’s important to understand what this really is: an ideological campaign disguised as family policy. The Trump administration’s approach isn’t about making parenting easier or safer. It’s about controlling the narrative around who should parent, how they should parent, and what kind of nation those children will inherit. It’s about centralizing power, weakening pluralism, and stoking identity politics under the guise of “family values.”
And it is failing. Not just morally — but practically. The U.S. economy needs immigrants. American families need support. Science needs to guide public health. No amount of spin or “baby bonuses” can fix what the administration is breaking.
Reclaiming the conversation
Democrats have an opportunity — but only if they learn to speak plainly and act boldly. The party of science, economic fairness, and civil rights cannot afford to be scattershot in the face of coordinated disinformation. Voters need to hear how Trump’s policies are not just abstract threats, but immediate burdens on their daily lives. They need stories, not statistics. They need clarity, not caution.
And they need to understand that while parenting may feel personal and apolitical, it has become one of the most consequential arenas of this presidency.
Let the record show: this administration is not pro-family. It is pro-fantasy, pro-fear, and pro-inequality. And it’s time to push back.
