Trump's attacks on our core freedoms continue

It is to our democracy’s peril if we lose sight of the ways comparable regimes worldwide regularly and deliberately target women’s and LGBTQ equality.

By Jennifer Weiss-Wolf

Gender and democracy—some headlines might fly under the radar amid all the chaos, but the stories are fundamental to core freedoms:

Abortion: The courts. The Trump administration might wish to be seen as treading lightly—think leaky faucet versus gushing fire hydrant—but do not look away from the drip, drip, drip effect to tee up dramatic damage. The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently swiped at abortion as follows:

· The DOJ dropped a lawsuit against Idaho about whether the state’s near-total abortion ban conflicts with the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA)—relinquishing the argument the department made under the Biden administration that federal law requires emergency-room doctors to provide health- and life-saving abortions.

· The Solicitor General petitioned to join an upcoming (April 2) Supreme Court case about whether states can cut Medicaid funding for services provided by Planned Parenthood—not only abortion but all other care, from contraception to cancer screenings. The Trump administration has asked for ten minutes of time in oral arguments, alongside the Alliance Defending Freedom (described by The Guardian as the “powerhouse Christian legal group that was the architect of much of the conservative attack on abortion and LGBTQ+ rights”).

· As part of the administration-wide commitment to reviewing all mifepristone-related litigation, the DOJ requested and received an extension to file briefs in a Texas lawsuit challenging the longstanding approval of abortion pills by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Quick refresh: This is the same case the Supreme Court unanimously tossed last year on the ground that the plaintiffs had no standing. Another set of plaintiffs—a trio of state attorneys general from Idaho, Kansas, and Missouri—were since permitted by District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk to join the lawsuit. According to UC Davis Law Professor Mary Ziegler, the stakes are sky high given their invocation of the Comstock Act of 1873, a long-dormant anti-obscenity law that could prohibit abortion pills—and pretty much any product used to perform any abortion—from being transported by mail.

Democracy Docket reported on still other potential fallout: “[The case] could be a vehicle for the administration to try to roll back access to mifepristone via the courts should the FDA decline to take action itself. Project 2025 calls on the FDA to revoke its approval of mifepristone and, short of that, revert to 2016 regulations requiring in-person dispensing and limiting use to the first seven weeks of pregnancy, not 10. The lawsuit is asking courts to do basically the same thing.”

The DOJ now has two months to “familiarize” itself with the Texas litigation issues; its brief is due May 5.

Watch this space. These cases will likely be the top stories of the summer.

Abortion: Whose protest is protected? Among the earliest executive orders, Trump pardoned 23 people convicted of blockading abortion clinic entrances in D.C., Tennessee, Michigan, and New York City in violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. During last week’s speech at DOJ—throughout which Trump ranted, raged, and rattled off grievances, including, by name, Norm Eisen—“elderly Christians and pro-life activists” were among those avenged for being “[put] on trial for singing hymns and saying prayers.” (Note: while conspiring against civil rights and violating federal law.) This same band of lawbreakers is now “vowing to launch a new wave of civil disobedience,” urging others to join them—just as the administration directed federal prosecutors to all but cease enforcement of FACE.

It is hard not to trade notes with Trump’s response to the “Tesla Takedown”—anti-DOGE, anti-Musk demonstrations (covered by The Contrarian’s Democracy Movement series) calling on investors to divest in Tesla stock and consumers to ditch the brand. (According to Forbes, there have been instances of vandalism at Tesla dealerships.) Trump denounced anyone “harming a great American company,” labeling protestors “domestic terrorists” who will “go through hell.” From Attorney General Pam Bondi: “If you’re going to touch a Tesla … you better watch out because we’re coming after you.”

Thank you to independent journalist Jessica Valenti for putting it bluntly: “You would be better off being a car than a woman in Trump’s America.”

The [not so] Hidden Motive Behind Attacks on Trans People. This is the headline of M. Gessen’s latest New York Times column, which I read hours after visiting Anne Frank: The Exhibition in New York City. If you still are skeptical about the devastating parallel, I recommend immersing yourself in both.

Gessen wrote: “A country that has pushed one group out of its political community will eventually push out others. The Trump administration’s barrage of attacks on trans people can seem haphazard, but as elements of a denationalization project, they fall into place.”

And continues: “You know how this column is supposed to end. I rehearse all the similarities between Jews in Germany in 1933 and trans people in the United States in 2025: the tiny fraction of the population; the barrage of bureaucratic measures that strip away rights; the vilifying rhetoric. The silence on the part of ostensible allies. (Trump spent about five minutes of his recent address to Congress specifically attacking trans people and 10 minutes attacking immigrants; the Democratic rebuttal mentioned immigrants once and trans people not at all.) Then I finish with the standard exhortation: The attacks won’t stop here. If you don’t stand up for trans people or immigrants, there won’t be anyone left when they come for you.”

Here is the kicker: “But I find that line of argument both distasteful and disingenuous. It is undoubtedly true that the Trump administration won’t stop at denationalizing trans people, but it is also true that a majority of Americans are safe from these kinds of attacks, just as a majority of Germans were. The reason you should care about this is not that it could happen to you but that it is already happening to others. It is happening to people who, we claim, have rights just because we are human. It is happening to me, personally.”

I write for the Contrarian because I believe that as we face the arrival of authoritarianism, it is to our democracy’s peril if we lose sight of the ways comparable regimes worldwide regularly and deliberately target women’s and LGBTQ equality. They do so to consolidate and exert power. They acknowledge the correlation with brazen certainty.

And, therefore, so must we.

As I keep beating this drum, I hope that Contrarian readers will similarly train their eyes to look for the connection, to call it out, to stand up to it. Because, indeed, it is happening—here and now. Already. To all of us. Personally.

Jennifer Weiss-Wolf is executive director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center at NYU School of Law. She also leads strategy and partnerships at Ms. Magazine.

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