Trump (Still) Needs a Social and Family Policy

His first administration neglected this to its cost (and ours), as sexual ideologues further consolidated their control. Elsewhere Trump seems to be learning from past mistakes, but so far not here.

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.

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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)

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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.

1. 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.

2. 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.