Note: This piece was originally a list of Trump’s anti-woman actions in his first 100 days as President. But his misogyny and harmful agenda doesn’t stop at day 100, so we have made this piece an ongoing list.
Here’s a recap of the steps Trump has taken so far to enact a dystopian agenda that will make sure women remain second-class citizens in our country and around the world:
Day 1: Trump starts moving to take healthcare away from millions of Americans
On his first day in office, Trump started working to take away healthcare from millions of Americans by directing agencies to stop enforcing certain aspects of the Affordable Care Act, the landmark healthcare law which has saved women $1.4 BILLION per year by making it possible for millions to afford health insurance and providing them with critical health benefits such as well-woman visits, maternity care and no-cost birth control.
Day 4: Trump revokes funding from foreign NGOs that so much as speak about abortion
Not even 48 hours into his administration, surrounded by a group of white men, Trump signed an order reinstating the global gag rule, which denies funding to organizations and clinics around the world that so much as mention the word “abortion.” This draconian policy will lead to the deaths of thousands of women and will actually result in 2.2 million more abortions a year.
Day 12: Trump makes good on his promise to appoint Supreme Court justices who will work to overturn Roe v. Wade by nominating Judge Neil Gorsuch
During the campaign, Trump promised over and over that he would appoint someone to the Supreme Court who would overturn Roe v. Wade. He appointed Neil Gorsuch to fulfill that promise. Gorusch is an extreme, conservative judge backed by extreme, anti-choice groups who’d like to jail women for seeking abortions and outlaw birth control. He also thinks that women manipulate their employers for maternity leave and is shocked everybody else doesn’t know that.
Through the People’s Defense, millions of Americans resisted Gorsuch’s nomination. Thanks to Senate Republicans changing the rules to put him on the court, Gorsuch will bring his extremist views to the court for decades to come.
Day 21: Noted racist and anti-choice politician Jeff Sessions becomes attorney general
Sessions boasts a decidedly racist and anti-choice record. From going after voting rights activists, to letting perpetrators of anti-abortion violence evade financial responsibility for their actions, to voting against the Violence Against Women Act, to claiming it’s not sexual assault to “grab a woman by the p***y” — it’s only fitting that Trump and Senate Republicans made him the highest law enforcement official in the country.
Day 22: Staunch healthcare opponent Tom Price becomes Secretary of Health and Human Services
During his time in Congress, Price repeatedly voted to defund Planned Parenthood and championed legislation that would make abortion illegal nationwide and outlow most common forms of contraception. He has spent his years in Congress denouncing the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid and Medicare. Price’s position gives him broad power to weaken these policies he despises that help women and their families.
Day 46: Trump “offers” to maintain funding for Planned Parenthood — if it stops providing abortion services
We all know that abortion is a critical part of women’s health care and vital to our bodily autonomy. So, NOPE.
Day 47 to Day 64: Trump and House Republicans try (and fail) to take healthcare away from millions and strip Planned Parenthood of federal funding
Trump and House Republicans’ plan would have left millions of people without access to basic healthcare, including cancer screenings, birth control, STI testing, and abortion care. In true “pro-life” fashion, the plan would have also gutted prenatal care coverage — you know, the thing that allows women to survive pregnancy and give birth to healthy children. Thanks to the huge resistance campaign waged by everyday Americans, Trump and Congressional Republicans failed to pass this stinking turd of a bill.
Day 50: Trump nominates anti-choice conservative Scott Gottlieb to lead FDA
Gottlieb is a vocal critic of the Affordable Care Act, calling it a “rolling failure of public policy” (it’s not), and doesn’t think it should cover birth control, despite the fact that 70% of Americans support full contraceptive coverage. He is also against Planned Parenthood, because why wouldn’t you be, as a person in charge of protecting public health?
Day 56: Trump releases a radical budget proposal that would gut programs millions of women depend on
President Trump’s first budget proposal gave us a terrifying glimpse into his dystopian ideas for our country. In defunding countless programs that benefit low-income, rural, or marginalized communities, these radical and unprecedented cuts would leave women and families worse off by making it harder for them to access vital healthcare, including abortion, birth control, and other family planning resources.
Day 63: Trump appoints anti-choice Roger Severino to head the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights
Appointing Severino is very on-brand for President Trump, who apparently believes it makes sense to put people in charge of things they don’t believe in. Severino is vocally opposed to provisions in the ACA that protect women and LGBTQ individuals from discrimination in the healthcare system — so naturally he’s now in charge of those non-discrimination protections. He also opposes a huge number of policies that drive equality and social change: same-sex marriage, reproductive freedom, Planned Parenthood, and a woman’s ability to access birth control regardless of how her employer feels about it.
Day 74: Trump defunds critical UN family planning program
The Trump administration cancelled funding for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which provides crucial maternal health, family-planning, and other essential health services to some of the poorest women in the world. In recent years, U.S. support for UNFPA has saved tens of thousands of women from preventable deaths. By defunding UNFPA, Trump has put the health and lives of million women worldwide at risk to score his own political points. How very “pro-life” of him.
Day 84: Trump signs an order allowing states to discriminate against reproductive health clinics
Behind closed doors and surrounded by anti-choice leaders, Trump signed away access to birth control and critical preventative care for millions. Before President Obama left office, he passed a rule that would prevent states from discriminating against certain women’s health clinics, including Planned Parenthood, that provide abortions. By canceling this rule, Trump gave into a fringe element of his political base and made it harder for women and families across the country to access basic health care.
Day 85: Trump makes anti-woman Stephen Miller an advisor on women’s issues
Trump kept with his tradition of promoting more Steves than women to senior positions on his team in assigning misogynist Stephen Miller to head up women’s policy at the White House. Miller is against paid family leave, denies the existence of the gender wage gap — men make more money than women because they work harder and choose better careers! — and has an abysmally retrograde and misogynist view of a woman’s role in society. A man who isn’t “comfortable” laying eyes on female construction workers is now tasked with crafting policies that govern women’s lives, bodies, and opportunities.
Day 99: Trump names anti-choice leader Charmaine Yoest as HHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs
Charmaine Yoest has a long and disturbing record of undermining women’s reproductive freedom — and now she is in a position to turn her extremist views into policy. Yoest was the vice president of the Family Research Council and later became president and CEO of Americans United for Life (AUL), an organization that pushes for dangerous restrictions on abortion; including 20-week bans, mandatory-ultrasounds, and laws designed to shutter clinics providing abortion services. Yoest opposes ALL forms of birth control and has advocated for abortion to be banned in all circumstances, without exception. This is the woman Trump has selected to be the head spokesperson for U.S. health policy.
Day 102: Trump appoints a woman who doesn’t believe in birth control to run our family planning program
You thought Trump would stop at Charmaine Yoest? He also appointed Teresa Manning to become the next deputy assistant secretary for population affairs at HHS. She has previously for the National Right to Life Committee and the anti-choice Family Research Council. On several occasions, Manning has questioned whether or not birth control even works (spoiler alert: it does) and opposes federal government involvement in family planning — the program she will now direct.
Day 105 and forward: Trump tees up plan to gut ACA contraceptive-coverage policy
Trumpcare failed in the Senate, but that hasn’t stopped Trump from doing everything he can to undermine the Affordable Care Act. He signed an executive order beginning the process of dismantling the ACA’s popular contraceptive-coverage policy, allowing employers to refuse to cover birth control for any reason for their employees. As if that weren’t enough, the order provides Attorney General Jeff Sessions with sweeping authority to allow discrimination under the guise of religious freedom across the federal government — which hinders employees’ reproductive freedom by allowing bosses to decide whether or not to cover birth control and other reproductive healthcare they might object to. This will almost certainly trigger an unprecedented expansion of refusal measures for housing, employment, and more targeting of women, LGBTQ people, and others.
Day 110: Anti-ACA activist Scott Gottlieb is confirmed to lead the Food and Drug Administration
We now have an FDA commissioner who is opposed to the Affordable Care Act and coverage for birth control, has persistently attacked reproductive healthcare and Planned Parenthood, and pointed to the deceptively edited videos intended to defame PPFA as “proof.”
Day 111: Trump nominates anti-choice former member of Congress to lead USAID
President Trump announced his intention to nominate Mark Green for director of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Green is a former U.S. representative from Wisconsin, and during his eight years in Congress, then-Rep. Green managed to keep up a 100% anti-choice voting record on reproductive rights.
Day 116: Donald Trump escalates his attack on global reproductive healthcare access
Trump racheted up his attacks on women’s rights with an unprecedented and even MORE dangerous expansion of the Global Gag Rule, applying the standard to a wider variety of programs that receive $8.8 BILLION in U.S. aid.
Day 138: Trump names yet another “abstinence-only” activist to top HHS position
Valerie Huber joined the slew of anti-choice and anti-contraception Trump appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services as chief of staff to the assistant secretary for health. Huber advocates for abstinence-only programs, which are proven to be ineffective and risky for young people’s health. She has called the successful federal Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program “a colossal waste of taxpayer dollars” and has called LGBTQ-inclusive sex education an “agenda” that has “nothing to do with optimal sexual-health decision making.”
Day 174: Trump administration abruptly shortens reproductive-health grants
The Trump administration, without any notice or explanation, shortened the project periods for reproductive-health grantees. The Office of Adolescent Health cut short dozens of grants under the highly successful Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (TPPP), shutting down five-year grants two years early. In addition, the Office of Population Affairs has cut short grants under the successful Title X family-planning program and research grants on reproductive health. This means that researchers and service providers working on reproductive health and family planning will have their work cut short and stall progress for women across the country.
Day 175: Trump comments on the First Lady of France’s Appearance: “You’re in such good shape”
During a meeting between Trump and the first couple of France, Trump commented on the French first lady, Brigitte Macron, in the way you might talk about a used car: “You’re in such good shape. She’s in such good physical shape. Beautiful.”
Day 181: Trump names anti-choice, extremist radio host as USDA Chief Scientist
Trump managed to even put an anti-choice extremist in the Department of Agriculture. Sam Clovis, White House advisor and former conservative radio host, was nominated to the position of undersecretary for research, education, and economics for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Clovis wants to ban abortion with no exceptions. He has also parroted false anti-choice propaganda about Planned Parenthood, argued that marriage equality could lead to the legalization of pedophilia, called progressive leaders and people of color “race traders” and “race traitors,” and repeated conspiracies pushed by the racist “birther” movement on his blog.
Day 189: Trump goes on a sexist Twitter rant against Mika Brzenzinski
In an especially on-brand move for the misogynist-in-chief, Trump responded to “Morning Joe” host Mika Brzenzinski’s criticism of his Twitter tirades by going on a Twitter tirade about her. His series of tweets were a grab-bag of sexist jabs and stereotypes: He said that she called her “low IQ,” and “Crazy Mika” and even made up a story about how he once saw her “bleeding badly from a face-lift.” In the past he has called Brzenzinski “neurotic and not very bright,” “insecure,” and “very dumb.”
Day 221: Trump confuses two Finnish women journalists during a press conference
The president awkwardly revealed to the world that he can’t really tell the difference between blonde women. In a joint press conference with Finnish President Sauli Niinistö, Trump appeared seemingly irritated when his counterpart called on what he thought was the same reporter twice. “Again? You’re going to give her the same one?” he asked. The Finnish president had to explain that they were actually two different women. The Finnish journalist clapped back with: “We have a lot of blonde women in Finland.”
Day 238: Trump White House calls for ESPN to fire a black women who called him out for being a white supremacist
Just a month after the horrifying acts of violence and terror by white supremacists in Charlottesville (and Trump’s appalling claim of “violence on both sides”) Trump’s White House called for the firing of a black woman who critiqued his involvement in and contribution to white supremacy. Jemele Hill, a commentator on ESPN, had posted tweets calling Trump out for his racist behaviors and policies. As some noted on Twitter, “The White House is more offended by someone using the term white supremacist than someone being a white supremacist.”
Day 243: Trump retweets a joke condoning and making light of violence against women
Trump started his morning by tweeting an image of him hitting Hillary Clinton in the back with a golf ball, causing her to fall over. The tweet came from a Twitter user who adheres to misogynist conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton. It goes without saying that this is inappropriate and dangerous behavior coming from someone who not only sits in the Oval Office, but who has a large hand in shaping the policies that govern women’s bodies and lives.
September 22, 2017 (Day 248): Betsy DeVos and the Trump administration announced that they would withdraw Obama-era guidance.
The guidance was designed to support survivors in their attempts to seek justice on-campus. One in 5 women will be sexually assaulted on a college campus. All survivors deserve to be heard, believed, and provided the ability to seek justice. Trump and DeVos rescinding survivor protections was a slap in the face to sexual assault survivors everywhere.
October 6, 2017 (Day 262): The Trump administration released a sweeping rule that lets employers decide whether women should have access to affordable birth control.
This rule would make it easier for employers to to refuse to comply with the contraceptive coverage benefit in the Affordable Care Act, which guarantees access to birth control without a copay. More than 62 million women are covered by the contraception benefit, and this sweeping attack on the birth-control benefit means a woman’s boss will be back in charge of whether she can get affordable birth control and consequently affect her ability to decide whether, when, and with whom to have a child.
October 13, 2017 (Day 269): The Department of Health and Human Services Releases Extreme Anti-Choice Draft Strategic Plan.
The plan reflects HHS’s roadmap for the next 5 years, and demonstrates the administration’s deep hostility towards both the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and reproductive rights. The plan is full of language and objectives synonymous with anti-choice rhetoric, such as assertions that life begins at conception, emphasis on religious refusals and partnerships with faith-based organizations, and research restrictions on fetal tissue are all part of the plan.The draft plan excludes support for the ACA among its goals and objectives, and the plan makes no mention of contraception or abortion.,
October 14, 2017 (Day 270): The Trump Administration Institutes New Policy Banning Providing Abortion Care for Young Women in U.S. Immigration Shelters.
A court case brought forward by the ACLU revealed a Trump administration policy effectively banning abortion care for pregnant young women who entered the United States alone and are being held in government custody. The policy, apparently implemented in March, states that the so-called “immigration shelters” housing these young women may not release minors for abortion care unless they have the approval of the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement. The Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, Scott Lloyd, has made it clear he will not allow young women to seek abortion. Advocates have had to file federal lawsuits on behalf of four women in order to allow them to get the care they need Federal courts have demanded the Trump Administration allow young women to access the care they need 3 times in a row.
November 13, 2017 (Day 300): Trump nominates Alex Azar to serve as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Azar said he is “committed” to “protecting the health & well-being of the unborn,” oversaw testing of an erectile dysfunction drug on children, is an outspoken opponent of the Affordable Care Act, and has donated money to many anti-choice politicians.
November 16, 2017 (Day 303): Trump Appoints Abstinence-Only Proponent Dr. Alma Golden to USAID Position.
Trump appointed Dr. Alma Golden, a longtime proponent of ineffective and risky abstinence-only programs, to the position of deputy assistant administrator for Global Health at USAID. Golden who once led a Texas abstinence-only group and was deputy assistant secretary for population affairs at HHS during the George W. Bush Administration, where she denounced a report that criticized abstinence-only-until-marriage curricula, saying advocating for accurate and complete sexual education “is a disservice to our children.”
December 1, 2017 (Day 318): The Republican tax bill includes anti-choice, extremist “personhood” language.
It wasn’t enough for the GOP to craft a tax bill that would give an additional $300 billion to the already-wealthy and corporations, and would result in about 13 million fewer people having insurance over the next 10 years. Republicans in Congress also included language designed to act as a backdoor attempt to ban abortion in their college savings plan.
December 4, 2017 (Day 321): Trump endorses Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore.
In the midst of the #MeToo movement, survivors shared their stories of being assaulted and molested by Roy Moore when they were as young as 14 years old. Trump — who has been accused of sexual assault himself — endorsed Moore in his Senate race, who was defeated by now-Senator Doug Jones.
December 15, 2017 (Day 332) The Trump administration issues a list of “forbidden” words for the Center for Disease Control.
The list was clearly designed with an extremist, anti-choice and anti-equality agenda in mind. It included words like “transgender” and “fetus,” which would effectively erase an entire segment of the LGBTQ community and shame women who access abortion.
December 20, 2017 (Day 337): Trump Announces Ninth Batch of Lower-Court Nominees.
Trump has so far named 68 nominees to our federal courts. None of them have a documented pro-choice record, and 18 are demonstrably anti-choice. Of those NARAL opposes, seven have been confirmed: Greg Katsas to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, Don Willett to the Fifth Circuit, John Bush and Joan Larsen to the Sixth Circuit, Amy Coney Barrett to the Seventh Circuit, Steve Grasz to the Eighth Circuit, and Allison Eid to the Tenth Circuit. Other notable nominees still pending include Kyle Duncan, nominee to the Fifth Circuit, who served as lead counsel in Hobby Lobby’s challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive-coverage policy, and Howard Nielson, nominee to the District of Utah, who submitted an amicus brief in support of egregious Texas TRAP laws in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt.
January 18, 2017 (Day 363): HHS Launches New Office Promoting Discrimination in Healthcare.
The Office of Civil Rights at HHS, led by anti-choice advocate Roger Severino, announced the creation of a new “Conscience and Religious Freedom Division.” The new office will focus entirely on giving healthcare workers a license to discriminate against patients seeking certain services, like reproductive healthcare or care for LGBTQ people. HHS also released a new rule sanctioning and expanding discrimination and healthcare.
January 19, 2018 (Day 364): HHS revokes protection for Planned Parenthood.
On the day Trump became the first sitting president to address March for Life, his administration also revoked guidance that prohibited states from blocking clinics that provide abortion services from participating in Medicaid, based solely on their willingness to provide the full range of reproductive healthcare. This move could encourage states that are hostile to abortion to attempt to defund Planned Parenthood.
January 19, 2018 (Day 364): Trump Becomes First Sitting U.S. President to Address March for Life.
Shortly before the anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, President Donald Trump became the first sitting president to address the March for Life — an annual rally against abortion rights. In a speech broadcast from the White House, Trump said he was “honored and really proud” to speak and called the rally a “beautiful cause.” He also bragged about his reinstatement of the global gag rule and encouraged the Senate to pass a 20-week abortion ban, which would put the lives of countless women in danger.
January 20, 2018 (Day 365): Trump tweets that the Women’s Marches were celebrating his “historic milestones”.
Trump’s tweet was designed to diminish the outraged voices of women and activists who gathered around the country to defend their rights, and was especially appalling given his long history of misogyny and allegations against him around sexual assault.
January 23, 2018 (Day 368): Trump calls on the U.S. Senate to pass a 20-week abortion ban.
Just days after Trump spoke to the March For Life, Trump called yet again on the U.S. Senate to pass a federal ban on abortion after 20 weeks in pregnancy. Trump has promised to sign the bill into law — which would put the lives of countless women in danger.
