Summary
The Department of Transportation (DOT) has issued a memo prioritizing federal funding for communities with marriage and birth rates above the national average.
The directive, which applies to grants, loans, and contracts, also prioritizes projects benefiting families with young children.
A congressional aide criticized the policy, saying, “Considering fertility rates when prioritizing federal grants? We obviously have no idea what the full impact of that will be… It’s absolutely creepy. It’s a little ‘Chinese government.’”
The memo also blocks mask mandates and requires compliance with immigration enforcement.
I know we like to shit on Trump for his dumb ideas, but why is this idea bad? I would remove the marriage rates, but prioritizing communities with many children, especially families with young children seems to me like a sane idea, this is where help is needed the most and where you make the most impact for the future generations or am I missing something?
Yeah you definitely make an impact, if by making an impact you mean flooding the future labor market with quasi-slaves.
I mean why not just say higher population density and leave room for abuse? because they want room for abuse.
To summarize what everyone else is saying: It can (and therefore will) be abused to only benefit “the right people”.
Gay marriage will be used against areas. Fertility rates are higher in rural and conservative areas because of a lack of access to proper sex ed and contraception. Everything about this screams punish blue states, funding only for maga.
Who has marriage and birth rates higher than the national average? White evangelicals. This is a gift to the religious right.
Who’s that weird family with a ton of kids? They get all the money. Also, Utah.
Off the top of my head, it makes it desirable to cook the stats to get money, whether by banning abortion or simply prioritizing births vs children. Every funding metric is gamed, that’s why there’s arcane rules to enact change by hoping for a certain game strategy. In this case every strategy leads to misery.
Will it be implemented fairly across zip codes? Or are “Some pigs are more equal than others?”
Probably cause those are richer communities. If i had to guess.
Thank you for taking the heat of the hive mind, I genuinely didn’t understand the problems either.
If the criterion is to prioritise funding to areas that need the most why not just say higher population density? We already know republicans use “traditional family values” as a propaganda tool. Can you seriously not see how this can be abused by Trump administration after news like ordering to retract the word “gender” from medical articles published by CDC:
https://insidemedicine.substack.com/p/breaking-news-cdc-orders-mass-retraction
In my mind it was because children are expensive, so high birthrates - less “free” income, means higher reliance on public services like transportation. At least here in Germany highest birthrates are usually low income, low education, often immigrant areas that would profit greatly from having a broader support from the public.
https://insidemedicine.substack.com/p/breaking-news-cdc-orders-mass-retraction
Well now I obviously do, but like I mentioned, I am from Germany, I try to keep up with rapid-fire bullshit machine that is governing the US right now, but unfortunately we are also in a dire situation here right now. And I wouldn’t expect the whole world to automatically understand all the details of what is happening in our government right now, for example how terrifying and dangerous the last three days were for our democracy. I am happy to answer that for anyone asking genuinely btw. Hence why I was happy someone asked the questions that I had in mind while reading the article.
One thing to note about the US is that this funding directive means that funds will go to areas that oppose public transportation, as well as keeping funding from cities that could use it.
During the creation of the national highway system (which, apart from destroying much of the public transport in the country, destroyed many immigrant and black neighborhoods and replaced them with highways), there was a designer in New York City who expressly designed the bridges near his home to be too low for busses to go under to keep black kids from being able to take the bus to the beach near his house. His words, not mine. This funding will go to rural, conservative areas, who hate bikes, buses, trains, and outsiders.
Add in the marriage rate part (which goes hand in hand with the poor and uneducated), and the possibility of repealing gay marriage, and it’s obvious to everyone here that this is about denying funding to cities and liberal states, not actually improving communities.
🤦
Can you explain that reaction to me? OP posted a question that I also had about this thing, it didn’t seem disingenuous to me.
I forced some pushback on me by attacking the reactions as “hive mind”, which is lazy and combative, I understand that, fair enough.
What I fail to understand is the push back on the original question.
I think it is because for many, these tactics seem very thinly veiled and obvious, and so when someone says something like, “actually, I don’t see why eugenics is bad” the community, who knows history and to whom the answer seems obvious, can often assume that the person asking the question is disingenuous. We have all been on the internet long enough to have seen trolls and Nazi apologists pretend to be clueless to try to waste everyone’s time only to eventually just admit they hate everyone that isn’t an able bodied straight white man so the community just want to stop it in its tracks rather than engage cuz it just isn’t worth it.
First of all - thank you for taking the time!
I totally understand, we’re all on the edge right now, my antennas are also sensitive to that kind of “just asking questions” disingenuous bullshit. But this didn’t feel like it to me, it felt like a genuine question, because I had the same thoughts before someone explained it.
I am from Europe, I suppose OP is also from a non-US country and at least to me it wasn’t quite clear that the group with highest birthrates are white evangelical Christians for example, like now I know and it makes sense, but without that context it’s hard to understand.
For example here in Germany, if I would read about our DOT making the same policy, I would think (without looking too much into actual data) - yeah okay, highest birthrates here are usually low income, low education, often immigrant families who are very reliant on public transportation to manage their day-to-day life - totally makes sense to support those areas with a higher budget.