Dear Friend,

As the Chair of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, I published a new op-ed in Newsweek that dives into the Trump administration’s vision for our country in contrast to our vision focused on economic security, affordable and equitable health care, and the safety of all women and girls. 

I’d love for you to give it a read and let me know what you think! 

Women deemed second-class citizens. Women forced to submit to men. Women existing only to make babies. Women without the right to vote. It sounds like a nightmare. It sounds like hundreds of years ago. It's 2025. It seemed obvious we'd never go back to that.

Right?

But this month, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, one of the most powerful men in America, publicly shared his support for this vision. He uplifted a group who proudly believes women shouldn't vote, should submit to their husbands, and "are the kind of people that people come out of."

This should scare folks, and it did. But seven months into the Trump administration, it's also not shocking. The policies and actions pushed by Donald Trump and Republicans make the future look like a backward nightmare, a far cry from the American Dream.

Last month, Congressional Republicans passed Trump's unpopular budget into law with the largest cuts to Medicaid and SNAP ever—it's particularly hard on women, who rely on Medicaid from childbirth to nursing home care.

House Republicans passed a voting bill that would make it hard for women who changed their name in marriage or otherwise to register and vote.

Thanks to Trump's Supreme Court, states are denying women prenatal care and critical abortion care—even after death. Congressional Republicans are cutting federal funding for basic women's health care and preventing women soldiers from traveling to access abortion care in states where it's legal.

Donald Trump himself is covering up files on his friend, Jeffrey Epstein—a notorious pedophile who harmed countless women and children. Trump cut funding for survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence.

Who is this all for? Whose lives does it improve?

Not the families who've begged Trump to lower costs.

Not the women who won't have health care during pregnancy without Medicaid.

Not the seniors and working Americans who worry Social Security won't exist for them.

Mr. Trump, your administration doesn't benefit anyone, other than your billionaire donors.

You've betrayed your voters, and women can't afford your policies or your backward-looking agenda.

Women and families across the country need to know a different, better future is possible.

The Democratic Women's Caucus has a vision for that better future, where every woman is safe, healthy, and financially stable. It looks like the following:

We can afford healthy food, doctor visits, child care for our kids, and elder care for our parents and grandparents.

We each decide whether to have children—and can access reproductive health care either way and wherever we live.

We have a safe and affordable place to sleep at night, where we dream about our future and wake up to work for it.

The Democratic women in Congress have a plan that makes all of this possible. We're not just fighting back against Trump. We know America's promise is a future that makes the good life possible for ourselves, our children, and our communities.

Trump, Secretary Hegseth, and Republicans' vision is the opposite of our plan—and it's a setback. By questioning women's right to vote, cutting basic needs programs, and striking access to modern health care, they are trying to take us back to 1900.

Life at that time was objectively worse for women and for all hardworking Americans.

In 1900, women's life expectancy was only 58 years old.

Legal protection from domestic violence was decades away.

Mothers, many of whom didn't have health care, were 100 times more likely to die in childbirth.

Workers faced low pay and deadly working conditions.

We didn't have the right to vote and were jailed for demanding it.

We can't and we won't go back to that.

Secretary Hegseth can keep his sick vision of America to himself. We're dreaming of a better future for Americans—and fighting every day to make it reality.