Trump Can Reverse the Decline of America's Families — and the Main Cause of the Decline of America
Elon Musk at DOGE and RFK, Jr. at HHS are key, if they are up to the challenge
Donald Trump and the rest of us have a rare opportunity to decisively reverse the decline of America’s families and with it the decline of America itself. He can cut the Gordian Knot of family deterioration with an action that is feasible and cost-free — one consistent with the bold Trump style.
Trump has two appointments that carry immense consequences but receive zero attention in the media — including the alternative media and even from MAGA Republicans:
Administration for Children and Famiies (ACF)
Office of Child Support Services (OCSS)
Both are bastions of feminism and administer programs that are enormously destructive of families (as well as men, children, communities, America…). Both need real leadership, not hacks offering business as usual.
Both fall under the Department of Health and Human Service (HHS), so RFK, Jr. is ultimately in charge. But while he has a clear agenda and expertise on the “health” side, he has shown less interest or understanding of what happens in “human services”, which is the side that administers welfare and social work and that destroys families, fathers, children, low-income communities, black men, other men, and more by the millions. Who serves under him in these offices is critical.
These offices are also prime candidates for the ax of Elon Musk at DOGE. If Musk is serious about rooting out government waste, he cannot avoid welfare and family policy, and that means confronting ACF and OCSS.
But with tragic irony, Musk has some personal challenges of his own right now when it comes to matters of paternity. Musk is not the first prominent conservative politico to fall into the clutches of the child custody gestapo. He would also not be the first to prioritize his own survival rather than going public with his personal experience and speaking out against its injustices, thereby helping other men, their children, the society, and his country. I have encountered many such high-profile men over the years: bold alpha males elsewhere, but cowards on this.
So will this honeytrap inhibit him from fulfilling his responsibility at DOGE to confront and reform this most egregious case of government fraud and chicanery?
In any case, I am not sure we can count on Musk or Kennedy to undertake the necessary changes themselves. That is why these appointments are critical.
But Kennedy’s limitations and Musk’s compromised status means that the Administration may be responsive to suggestions for nominees direct these agencies. You can be sure that the feminists are taking a keen interest in who fills these posts, so if Kennedy and Trump follow the path of least resistance (especially Kennedy, with his Democrat background), they might simply defer to the feminists' choices by default.
That is why action is needed. We need to inundate the Trump administration with telephone calls urging them to appoint men who will reform these offices and force them to respect the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Very soon, I will follow up this post with another, outlining what we must demand.
Below are my previous posts on Trumps neglect of family policy, which will give you more background.
Trump (Still) Needs a Social and Family Policy
February 14, 2025
The first 3+ weeks of the new Trump Administration has certainly been a whirlwind: directives and executive orders, mobilizing IT wizards to infiltrate and dissect federal finances, and of course the scalpel (or meat cleaver) of Elon Musk and DOGE.
But one area apparently still remains off-limits: the third rail of US politics, where every administration fears to tread: family policy. So far, this adminstration is no exception. It has said nothing about social and family policy. While RFK, Jr. (confirmed yesterday as HHS Secretary) is determined to eviscerate the corrupt “health” establishment within the Department of Health and Human Services, no one seems too hurried about confronting the gargantuan “human services” side of the HHS behemoth.
This avoidance is conspicuous to those of us who remember that for decades reforming social and family policy — welfare above all — was the Republicans’ top priority. (No reform ever took place.) What happened?
Simple: the feminists took control of social policy and politicized it. No longer a simple question of controlling government waste and inefficiency (in which case it would be a straightorward matter for DOGE), the welfare matriarchy was mobilized as a vehicle for “gender equality” and the “empowerment of women”. This makes male policymakers tremble. With the (partial) exception of abortion, conservatives fear to touch anything that will anger feminists. Accepting the principle that "To learn who rules over you, find out who you are not allowed to criticize", we are not ruled by Globalists or Deep State functionaries, but by superannuated female adolescents with green hair. As always, “The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world.”1
Radical sexual ideologues took control of the family policy machinery in the 1990s, giving themselves control over how much of the next generation is raised (breeding more adolescents with green hair). Trump and MAGAs generally show no signs of realizing this or, if they do, no stomach for confronting it. Even with the Globalists disarmed and the Deep State neutered, the Kamalas and Swifties could return in ever-greater numbers.
Donald Trump and his new administration have shown a lot of courage in a lot of matters. But no voting bloc became more deranged by Trump’s election in the first place, and he and his team will have to show still more spine to effectively take on angry cat ladies.
One such oversight is forgivable. Refusing to confront an impending danger is something no one can attribute to Trump: cowardice. But men who courageously face down physical danger from other men then wilt before disapproval from women.
Below is a post where I elaborate on this topic, originally published last November, and it links to several articles I published (some in mainstream media) going back to the first Trump Administration. Nothing has changed.
Trump Needs a Social and Family Policy
November 14, 2024
Donald Trump has never developed a plan for addressing social and family issues or for reforming the wasteful and counterproductive government machinery. Yet it is arguably the most pressing overall crisis in America, since the ongoing destruction of the family — foremost by the very government agencies that claim to serve their welfare — underlies and exacerbates all the others.
His first administration made no effort to reform social and family policy, and so the family policy apparat remained and remains a bastion of the radical left. In fact, they used it as a base from which to launch attacks that helped defeat his re-election in 2020. (And think tanks and “NGOs” that advocate for “the family” are mostly bastions of neocons that collude with the Left.)2 Not so long ago, family policy and welfare reform were the main priority of the Republican Party. But since it became dominated by radical feminists, who terrify conservative men and reduce them to simpering sissies, the Republicans cannot seem to run away from it fast enough.
The government’s family policy bureaucracy is by far the most intrusive into private life. In many ways it was where “the Swamp” began (as I demonstrate in my new book, Who Lost America? ). The welfare state was the original “Deep State” that first brought the power of the state into private life and then brought the Left to power.
I have also demonstrated this in several Substacks:
“The Origins of the Deep State” (June 2023)
”The Origins of the Deep State (cont'd.)” (June 2023)
”How They Invented the Deep State While No One Was Looking” (Sept. 2024)
Twice in major publications, I have proposed specific, practical measures for the Trump administration to adopt that will stop state functionaries from destroying families. I see no need to update them now, because nothing has changed or diminished the urgency since those pieces were published:
"Draining the Swamp Must Include Social Policy and Welfare" (Epoch Times, 2022)
"A Social Policy for Donald Trump" (Daily Caller, 2016)
If you want to read more analysis that will push you to think “outside the box,” you will find it in my new book, Who Lost America? Why the United States Went "Communist” — and What to Do about It — available from Amazon.
Stephen Baskerville is Professor of Politics at the Collegium Intermarium in Warsaw. His books and recent articles are available at www.StephenBaskerville.com.
One obvious solution is to grasp the nettle that has stung successive administrations of both parties: fatherlessness. Even amid Covid, recession, election rigging, and war, former gang leader John Turnipseed still calls fatherlessness “the biggest problem we have in the nation”, and Jason Whitlock, Candace Owens, and Larry Elder say the same. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis recently showed, yet again, how to evade it.
A little known fact that I describe in the book (p. 135): ‘Neoconservatism’ today mostly refers to the aggressive American foreign policy, especially since the Cold War. But when the term originated in the 1970s, the other preoccupation which defined it was welfare policy. Early neocons produced some cogent critiques of welfare, but they lost their nerve in the 1990s, when feminists took advantage of the Republicans’ failure to reform it by politicizing it and making criticism hazardous.
Fine piece.
'But men who courageously face down physical danger from other men then wilt before disapproval from women'
The American Epitaph. Now, that's a big epitaph. But America is a big country.
The nation will rise or fall on this issue, correctly called the 'third rail' in the OP. The unwillingness of man to stand up to woman caused the Fall from Paradise also, so it's not a new problem.
The Right -- at long, long last, these fifty years and running -- has asserted itself under Trumpocracy. But so far none have dared touch the searing Third Rail: direct assault against Institutional Feminism and its attack on masculinity, fatherhood, and the father-led family . . . a course which exactly zero (0) politicians in America support publicly.
Well-stated that the Muskrat can either save himself, or his brothers and his country. That'll test him, as it has tested some of us already.
In the past decade, the manosphere has affected national politics profoundly but indirectly, to the point where the proposed Disinformation Governance Board of the DHS and Nina Jankowicz specifically targeted us as U.S. Enemy Number One . . . but was suspended under public (internet) outcry.
That proved that DHS and the gyno-government in general fear us, sufficient to identify us in public documents as their specific target. We have arrived. We are an entity now, with liminal, but real, power. Time to turn the heat up.
Both Kennedy and Musk have been given tasks that involve welfare, the most poisonous of the left's bailiwicks. From food stamps to Social Security the Obamacare the programs designed for our welfare are tools of our repression. The oft quoted ,"Give a Man a Fish, and You Feed Him for a Day. Teach a Man To Fish, and You Feed Him for a Lifetime" of unknown origin, is a bit of wisdom that most know but few believe.
Giving to the poor is nearly universally believed to be good to do. But hardly anyone recognizes the harm it does to the recipient. Jesus taught that charity is a prime duty of his followers. Far less understood is his reaction to the crowds who followed him, "They follow me because I fed them." Many of those whom he had fed, no doubt, were in the crowd who screamed, "Crucify him! We have no king but Caesar!"
You won't see "scientific studies" about unearned sustenance, because such studies will reveal the true nature of welfare. Deep down, the recipients know how harmful they are, and resent and eventually hate the givers. The men realize more quickly how demoralizing they are. The women are slower on the uptake, because historically they have been dependent on men and others through pregnancy and child rearing. Children are dependent for long periods and are mostly aware of their status, but naturally tend, as they grow, to be anxious to become independent and come to more and more resent being held in dependence.
Nor will you see studies of those who hold others in dependency. Especially those who are hired to administer welfare very quickly come to despise those who they "serve," including the vaunted teachers. Volunteers in soup kitchens are not exempt. And the "we're from the government and we're here to help you" crowd often become downright abusive of those whom they "help." Witness the egregiousness of the Roman officials who supervised the bread and circuses.
Very few start out demoralized, neither givers nor receivers. Givers often start out benevolently and receivers with gratitude. But most of us are not by nature dependent nor deprivers of independence. Most crave independence, and charity is its natural enemy. To make it national policy is to make government slave-drivers and make the governed slaves. It is the right thing to do to root it out.