The War on Women is in full force under the Trump administration. We refuse to go back, and we refuse to let the administration quietly dismantle the progress we’ve made. We are watching.
This is the War on Women Report.
Since Our Last Report
+ On July 20, the Trump administration instructed health clinics that receive Title X funding to submit “action plans” by mid-August outlining how they will comply with the administration’s new abortion gag rule. The gag rule targets clinics that receive federal funding to serve low-income patients, forbidding them from referring patients for abortion care. According to the guidance sent to clinics Saturday, the clinics will also be required to prove their compliance with the gag rule by mid-September.
+ In a thoughtful Just Security opinion article published July 23, professor Catherine Powell and researcher Rebecca Hughes argued that, far from discouraging human trafficking, the Trump administration’s punitive approaches to immigration (like installing a border wall) force migration underground, where human traffickers thrive. If the President were truly invested in reducing trafficking, a human rights crisis that he appears to recognize exclusively when promoting his border wall, he should nurture international partnerships to crack down on multinational trafficking and backtrack policies that intimidate victims of violence, among other things, Powell and Hughes wrote.
+ In the wake of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony last week on his investigation into President Trump, one of the women who alleged the president sexually assaulted her is calling for a shift in public attention. “Mueller! I admire the effort, the brains, the hard work, and the $40 million spent on this investigation! I just wish to God that the women accusing the President of sexual travesties, got 1/20th of that congressional focus!” renowned columnist and writer E. Jean Carroll tweeted on July 24. Carroll made headlines last month when she published an excerpt of her memoir recounting a violent sexual attack she suffered at the hands of Trump.
+ In a notice published July 22, the Trump administration announced it will drastically expand the definition of asylum seekers that can be subject to expedited deportations. The brutally swift deportation process previously affected undocumented immigrants who lived within 100 miles of an international border and had been in the U.S. under 14 days, but now asylum seekers from around the country who have lived in the U.S. for up to two years could fall victim to expedited deportation too. Under the new guidelines, DHS and ICE officers will also have “sole and unreviewable discretion” to decide whether an asylum seeker merits an expedited deportation – a change that critics say puts undue burden on the individual to prove their legal residency in the country.
Monday, 7/29
+ A Center for American Progress report published Monday found that LGBTQ+ students are not being afforded the same protections under the Trump White House than during the Obama administration. The report revealed that student’s claims of discrimination are far more likely to go uninvestigated under the Trump administration than in previous years. It also reported that the student complaints of discrimination were less likely to lead to the school being required to take action to fix the situation. Just weeks before, the Department of Education released a memo claiming that data collected by the department showed a significant improvement in serving students.
Tuesday, 7/23
+ Trump’s nominee to serve as the U.S. Representative to the United Nations came under more fire this week. Andrew Bremberg helped write the administration’s expanded Global Gag Rule, and he has committed to voting against any measure providing support and resources for survivors that includes access to abortion.
Thursday, 8/1
+ In a harrowing article published Thursday, Ozy reporter Josefina Salomon investigated the exceptionally dire effects that the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration has on transgender asylum seekers. Since the fall of 2018, nearly 300 transgender migrants were stopped at the U.S. border, the highest number in years. Yet by July 2019, all but 145 had been deported back to home countries where they live under constant threat. Those who remain detained in the U.S. face dehumanizing treatment—only one of the 32 detention centers that house them have a unit specifically for trans women, forcing them to be detained with men.
