Make Families Great Again

It is one week after the “most important election of our lives” and the American people have decisively voted for the New Right agenda of Donald Trump and JD Vance. Conservatives will hold not just the White House but the Senate and the House of Representatives as well. All three branches of government; a true mandate to govern.

As the demographics of this election begin to crystallize, it is evident that this victory was not achieved by merely capturing supposedly racist rural white voters, as the left-wing explanation for the Trump phenomenon goes, but by persuading droves of Black, Latino, Indigenous, and other non-white voters. This is clearly something of a shock to the Left. Tweet after tweet laments minority voters foolishly voting against their own interests; some even wish for them to be deported. The progressives rationalize that these voters are too sexist to accept a female president; that they have internalized white supremacy; that they’ve become culturally white. These racist, patronizing claims fundamentally misunderstand the American voter.

Many of us simply voted for our families. Vice President Kamala Harris was the candidate of the machine, carefully workshopped and focus-group tested, a product of the powerful elites who run the Democratic Party. She ran on normalcy, the continuance of Biden’s policies, and “vibes.” Former President Donald Trump, meanwhile, was uncouth but real, vibrant, and sympathetic. Harris told you your problems weren’t real and your family wasn’t suffering. Trump said your problems were real, and he’s going to fix them.

One of the only clear positions Harris’s team seemed to allow her to take was on abortion, and she could not have been more radical. The Women’s Health Protection Act of 2022, the legislation championed by President Biden and Harris following the demise of Roe v. Wade, would have eliminated all state-level restrictions on abortion, at any stage of pregnancy. Harris has opposed parental consent for abortions since she was the San Francisco DA in 2006. While serving as the Attorney General for California in 2015, she co-sponsored the Reproductive FACT Act (since invalidated by a decision from the Supreme Court), which sought to crack down on pregnancy crisis centers, and she has suggested the filibuster be eliminated so that abortion protections can be passed. Most damning, in her last-minute interview with NBC News’s Hallie Jackson, amongst droves of non-answers, she was emphatic that there should be no limitations on who can be compelled to perform abortions—not even religious conscience exemptions for healthcare providers. Nuns, evidently, should consent to provide abortions or get out of healthcare. An otherwise dull and lifeless campaign animated on only this point sends a clear and disturbing message that families should expect no reprieve for their children but death.

I am the mother of three children, the eldest of whom was born with significant medical needs when I was just 16 and living in deep poverty. I am grateful every day for the healthy, incredible 17-year-old that baby has become, and that I lived in a state that provided the support my family needed to thrive under adversity. I am deeply and sincerely sympathetic to the plight of marginalized mothers, many of whom seek abortion out of fear that they will be unable to provide for their child, or forced to raise their child without a partner or community support, or potentially lose ground in their careers. I was this type of soon-to-be mother, too, and I have served them and their children throughout my career in education and child welfare.

American families deserve more than death for our children. We want the freedom to have children without catastrophic sacrifice, the freedom to choose to work or stay at home with them, to send them to schools where they are instructed and not indoctrinated, to send them to doctors who will treat them and not experiment on them. We want to be allowed to raise our children in our cultural and faith traditions, to be free to follow our own consciences in making choices for their wellbeing. We want our children to be able to play outside safely, to get online without being bombarded with porn, and to be spared from violent crime. We want to enjoy functional public spaces like libraries, buses, and parks, and we want to be able to walk into a store to buy formula without waiting for someone to open a cage. We don’t want to lose even one more child to fentanyl, and we don’t want our children to have to live with the heartache of loved ones lost to it.

We want good jobs for ourselves so we can comfortably support our families and be proud of our contributions to our communities, and we want to be confident our children will have the same or better. We want rigorous, affordable higher education to send our children to, and we want them to have the option to skip college and pick up a valuable trade if that’s what suits them. We don’t want to watch our most vulnerable children turn to sex work and crime to survive early adulthood. We want, in short, for our children and communities to flourish.

This is the promise of the “New Right” wing of conservatism, one focused on supporting families and workers rather than corporate interests. The “multi-ethnic, multi-racial, working-class coalition” has arrived, and it holds the promise to Make Families Great Again. This work will not be easy, or fast. The New Right may be reflected on the ticket, but resistance even amongst our friends is substantial. The many millions of first time Republican voters will be watching closely to see if we will use this unitary power to deliver on our promises. The voters who opposed this administration will also be watching, and it is important to remember most of them also simply want good lives for their families, but do not trust us to deliver. Their trust can be earned.

The most substantial impacts for families are likely to come from priorities which everyone is familiar with, but which are slow-moving. As President-elect Trump campaigned on, we need to rebuild domestic manufacturing, empower the American worker, and reinvigorate our economy; we need to return healthcare decisions about children to their parents; and we need to secure the border to stem the flow of deadly fentanyl into our communities.

However, many of the “softer” pro-family proposals advanced by this new type of conservative—things like free child birth and child tax credits—are likely to do more to build public confidence in the sincerity of this administration’s pro-family posture. These tend to be the most controversial among our more anti-tax peers, but at the end of the day, they should accept that these policies are broadly popular, fundamentally conservative, and supported by Trump.

One real strength of conservatism is that it recognizes the need to balance individual desires with the greater good. Let us debate on the floors of Congress how best to make raising the next generation affordable, how to give families more choice in who can be paid to care for children, what role public and private education should play, and how to best address the mental health and drug abuse crises. Let us put our best minds to these tasks, let us combine our will and our enthusiasm to transform American childhood and motherhood. Let us center the American family in all we do. In doing so, we can build the society our children so richly deserve.