100 Days of Horror

This Saturday marks 100 days in office for President Trump—which sounds more like the opening line of a horror story than a significant political milestone. From the signing of the Global Gag Rule on Day 1, right through to today’s appointment of a prominent anti-abortion leader to Health & Human Services, the Trump Administration’s actions have hurt women, immigrants, the LGBTQIA+ community, low income families, and communities of color in ways we are only beginning to feel.

To recognize Trump’s first 100 days, we decided to recap all the actions he has taken against issues of human rights and reproductive justice.

Here’s a run-down of what’s happened so far:

• January 23: On his first full day in office, President Trump reinstates the “Global Gag Rule,” blocking U.S. foreign aid to international family planning organizations that provide, counsel, or give information about abortion, crippling clinics and hurting millions of women in developing countries who rely on these clinics for sexual and reproductive health services and preventive care.

• January 27: President Trump signs an executive order (later overturned by federal courts) blocking entry to the US of any resident from seven majority Muslim countries for 90 days and prohibiting entry by Syrian refugees indefinitely, tearing apart families and removing support structures for members of already disenfranchised communities.

• February 7: The Senate confirms President Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, who donated $10,000 to an advocacy group whose mission is to make it harder to discipline college students accused of campus sexual assault. She and her family have also donated significant amounts of money to groups that advocate for gay conversion therapy for students and oppose anti-bullying legislation.

• February 8: The Senate confirms President Trump’s nominee for Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, a former Alabama senator who supported eliminating Violence Against Women Act grants and was rejected for federal judgeshipbecause of his racism.

• February 10: The Senate confirms President Trump’s pick for Health & Human Services Secretary, Tom Price, a Senator from Georgia dedicated to repealing the Affordable Care Act and opposed to its requirement that insurance plans must cover birth control. famously stated that “there’s not one woman” in America who cannot afford to pay out of pocket for birth control.

• February 14: President Trump’s nominee Linda McMahon, the last of only four women in President Trump’s cabinet(comprising a miniscule 17% of appointed posts) is confirmed.

• February 22: The Trump administration withdraws guidelines implemented by President Obama which protect trans and gender nonconforming students from discrimination.

• February 23: President Trump declares his support of “military operations” (ICE raids) on the homes of undocumented immigrants.

• March 6: President Trump signs his second travel ban executive order, differing only slightly from the first. It still remains in the appeals process, having been blocked by a federal judge in Hawaii.

• March 24: The first attempt to repeal and replace the ACA is scrapped at the last minute. The bill, dubbed the American Health Care Act, would have ended Medicaid expansion, effectively dismantled all insurance coverage for abortion care, barred Planned Parenthood from accepting Medicaid reimbursements, and revoked Medicaid coverage from new mothers who haven’t found a job within 60 days after giving birth.

• March 27: President Trump quietly signed an executive order undoing President Obama’s “Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces” order, which included provisions meant to benefit women. One of these provisions involved wage transparency, ensuring the government could evaluate whether companies were paying men and women equally, and one stopped companies from covering up sexual harassment, assault or discrimination claims in the workplace.

• April 5: President Trump defends Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly, a man accused by at least six women of sexual harassment, by saying “I think they [the accusations of sexual harassment] are unfounded just based on what I’ve read. Totally unfounded, based on what I read.” This is said just days after he declares April Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month.

• April 7: The Senate confirms Neil Gorsuch to the US Supreme Court. Gorsuch is an anti-choice judge from Boulder who has a record of voting in favor of “religious freedom,” and allegedly stated to one of his law classes that women abuse maternity leave and should be asked prior to hire if they plan to have children.

• April 13: President Trump signs legislation into law that allows states to deny Title X family planning funding to providers who also offer abortion care. Title X funding helps provide reproductive healthcare services such as birth control and cancer screenings to low-income patients for little or no cost. As the only Title X family planning provider in the state of Colorado that also provides abortion care, Women’s Health is uniquely at risk from this action.

• April 26: House Republicans propose an even more predatory draft of the AHCA, which would allow insurance companies to charge sick people more and provide them with less coverage. Luckily once again, they didn’t have enough votes to bring it to the floor. In addition, a current draft of his proposed budget cuts the budget of the Global Women’s Issues ambassador from $8.25 million to zero. This comes the day after Ivanka Trump is booed after stating that her father has been “a tremendous champion of supporting families and enabling them to thrive” at a women’s panel Germany.

• April 28: President Trump appoints a prominent leader of the anti-abortion movement, Charmaine Yoest, to a post at the Department of Health & Human Services. Yoest opposes birth control, thinks the IUD has “life-ending properties,” and believes that abortions cause breast cancer, contrary to all medical and scientific evidence.