We don't need Trump & Vance teaching us about periods in an attempt to have a “baby boom.”

The high cost of everything should not stand in the way of having kids, and if we make the right investments in healthcare, housing, child care, and education, it doesn't have to.

Last week I filmed a video about a new idea the Trump Administration is floating… teaching women about their menstrual cycles in an attempt to increase the number of babies born in the U.S. You can watch here. This Substack, Beyond the Whiteboard, lets me say more than I can fit in a minute on social media, so I hope you’ll keep reading.

This Trump initiative is about government pushing for a certain type of family:

Elon Musk talks about his “legion” of kids taking over the world. It’s creepy and feels like bad scifi, but he’s not the only person thinking this way. Many in the so-called natalist movement are worried about white people being outnumbered, and so let’s call this what it is—white nationalism. This is blatantly racist and bad, but for the sake of facts, I also want to point out that birth rates are declining across the globe. Beyond race—these natalists also want a certain type of family; married, straight, parents with a mom who stays at home and raises the kids. For those of us who don’t fit that mold, there’s an implicit condemnation of our parenting as somehow un-American.

If you want more children…lower the cost of having them!

Poll after poll shows that the reason some people are having fewer children, delaying having kids, or not having them altogether is because everything involved with raising them is too expensive. Our country has not invested in the things families with kids need: affordable child care, housing, health care and college. And those big expenses are on top of the rising cost of day-to-day things like diapers and groceries. When I posted my video, my thoughtful followers chimed in with all sorts of other roadblocks: like a lack of nationwide paid family leave and enormous hospital bills for giving birth.

Reproductive freedom is under attack:

Every person should be able to choose for themselves if and when to have kids. But JD Vance seems to think he knows best. From making it harder to get birth control to abortion bans, this isn’t about hypothetical actions—politicians already are eroding our rights to reproductive choice. Republicans have said they want to ban abortion nationwide, and less than 100 days into Trump 2.0 we are seeing they mean every word they’ve said. We must stay loud and vigilant to at LEAST keep abortion safe, legal, and accessible in states like California.

I’m a mom of three who loves my kids, and I want families who want kids to be able to thrive—that’s the American dream. The high cost of everything should not stand in the way of having kids, and if we make the right investments in healthcare, housing, child care, and education, it doesn't have to.

It’s maddening to me that Republicans want to spend taxpayer dollars telling Americans how to get pregnant and pushing their values, instead of investing in things that help parents and kids succeed.

Katie Porter