You’ve heard of Project 2025: the manifesto that has become the de facto guiding light for the second Trump administration. Its twisted Christian-nationalist agenda has brought us a wave of ICE raids across America, tax cuts for billionaire, gutted climate policies and using the FBI to prosecute and harass political opponents. Project 2025 was written by the conservative DC think tank, the Heritage Foundation, which recently released a new vision for women’s role in society called “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years” that aims to severely curtail women’s rights, including the right to divorce and maybe even vote. To talk about it today I’ve brought on the New York Times opinion columnist and author of the book “Screaming on the Inside: The Unsustainability of American Motherhood” Jessica Grose onto the show today.
Scott Carney All right, let’s just start with like the most basic of questions. What is the Heritage Foundation?
Jessica Grose The Heritage Foundation is a conservative think tank . ah It has become more conservative, I would argue, over the past 10 years um in terms of its... ah Sorry, back up. The Heritage Foundation is a conservative s think tank and it has an outsized influence on the Trump administration.
Scott Carney what else is like the Heritage Foundation been known to do lately?
Jessica Grose So any sort of... socially conservative policy that you see coming out of the Trump administration was in Project 2025, which was thought of by the Heritage Foundation. It’s a document that Trump himself disavowed, said, what are you talking about? um And we are here today to talk about this new paper that they just put out, which is 164 165 pages And it has a lot of incredibly retrograde ideas about how men and women should mate, marry, be educated or not educated . um They think gay marriage should never have gone through and that that was a major moment in the past half century that set America on the wrong course . ah In other documents, they have come come out against contraception . um You know, they really wanna to bring us back either 50 years or 100 years.
Jessica Grose I can’t really tell. The document is very contradictory, so we can kind of talk about that. But...
Scott Carney Yeah, it’s it’s called Saving America by Saving the Family, a foundation for the next 250 years, which is not quite a thousand year hike Reich, it’s just a 250 year Reich . um So, you know when you look at these policy documents, sometimes you’re like, you know you can just write anything you want in a document. You can have any opinion piece you want. Why do we need to take this stuff seriously?
Jessica Grose Because they have such an influence on so many cabinet members . um I think immediately of Sean Duffy, who is ah father of nine himself, and he is the head of the Department of Transportation. And he has put in policy that ah his department should favor counties where people have a higher birth rate. So they should be putting transportation dollars into places that have more children.
Scott Carney Mm-hmm.
Jessica Grose And he by having that policy knows that cities and urban areas, which a lot of conservatives are just knee jerk against cities and lots of different kinds of people coming together, um that will defund transportation projects in where most Americans live um in order to just promote wherever is the highest birth rate. So these have already real world implications. um
Scott Carney So it’s not like transportation based on like where a city will grow to. It’s just based on this arbitrary factor of birth rate, not immigration or migration or like like actual demographic projections. It’s like how many breeders we got.
Jessica Grose Yeah, the number, it doesn’t matter the number of people there. It does not matter if their particular infrastructure is in need of repair. You know, is this bridge about to fall through? That’s not the consideration here. It is favoring places where the birth rate is already highest. So rewarding them for their fertility.
Scott Carney Wow. So like this sort of like, you’re using that example because it’s just like one thing in transportation, but you’re saying that basically these ideas inflect basically everything. There’s going to be military.
Jessica Grose Yes.
Scott Carney I mean, I was looking, I was reading it this morning and he was saying that men need to be brave protectors of the country and become soldiers where women are the providers and caretakers of the families that help these men come into existence to defend ourselves. Like that’s like a sentence right in the first like four pages of this, of this document.
Jessica Grose Yeah, it’s a lot. And that’s a very old idea ah in ah around the Civil War ah between basically between the Revolution and the Civil War. There is this idea that women’s role as citizens was to create the next generation. That was our whole purpose. Obviously, this was before we had the right to vote, but it is ah ah ah foundational idea that i thought, you know, we had maybe moved beyond, but.
Jessica Grose Yeah.
Scott Carney Yeah, that’s like the that’s like the feeling I get reading this over and over again is that it’s like were like, I guess I had this idea of progress, of like um like America and the war. I grew up, I went to like a liberal, a small liberal arts college, right? I don’t know if it was liberal, but it was liberal arts, right? And I had this idea of like American progress. Like we have these bad ideas, like, I don’t know, slavery or serfdom or total war and all these things in our past that we’ve sort of like, decided that maybe we should ah evolve past them. And when you read this stuff, it’s like, no, we’re we’re going back . and like And so let me just quote your opinion piece. So you wrote this great opinion piece in the New York Times. And you said, the second Trump administration wants to take a time machine back to a time when women were financially dependent on men and gay marriage was not legal, but the authors can’t decide how exactly how far back they want to go.
Scott Carney So explain to me what you can make of their vision for the future of the American family.
Jessica Grose So it’s really conflicted because they have two warring impulses. One is to make women dependent on men and subordinate. But two, they really do not want to pay for any welfare. So they want to dismantle the welfare state. And you can’t do both. You need, in our modern economy, ah most families need two people working. And obviously, if you are a single parent, which they hate, ah you need a person working. And ah they are really for strong welfare to work protection. So forcing parents, you know, primary caregivers into the workforce . um So you can’t they can’t straight up say all women should just stay home and be mothers because they would have to be more generous in terms of the aid that they were giving to families to make that true.
Scott Carney Mm-hmm.
Jessica Grose So it’s really sort of interesting to see themselves kind of tie themselves in knots . to push both agendas, which are in deep conflict . um And so they’ll you’ll they’ll have a moment where I’ll be like, well, remote work is great. Women should be doing remote work and companies should do that . and And companies should provide paid leave basically out of the goodness of their hearts as if they’re just going to do that, which we know that they aren’t . um So I don’t know if that is a function of the fact that their paper had multiple art authors. I think it had like four or five people. But you can see the sort of battling against those two priorities . um And it just is is kind of a mess because it doesn’t actually acknowledge the real problems facing American families, which affordability, safety . i would say those are the two biggest ones, but there are so many others. So it is this sort of backward looking document while also trying to occasionally acknowledge that we do live in the year 2026.
Scott Carney Yeah. So how do you like, like, if you were going to, you know, use your crystal ball and figure out how they’re going to resolve this fundamental conflict, like, is this like, we have lip service to one, but actually we just want to cut social services and like, or, or is it like actually a heartfelt thing that they’re actually wrestling over? Do you think?
Jessica Grose um I think it’s total lip service. I think what they really believe is that people should either be incredibly successful or suffer. So one detail that stood out to me and I talk about in the piece is that they are valorizing the Brady Bunch, right? A fictional family where in real life, the dad in the Brady Bunch was gay.
Scott Carney Hmm. Hmm.
Jessica Grose So that’s hilarious, honestly, that the real life actor is like some something that they don’t approve of . um But they had six children, if your’re if your viewers are not familiar with the Brady Bunch. It’s a blended family, six children, and all six children share one bathroom. And they put this together as an example of the sort of sacrifice that people used to be willing to make. And families now just want too high a standard of living, and that’s why they’re not having more kids. And I just think that... families desiring more than one bathroom per six children is not some sort of frivolous materialistic desire of a way of living.
Scott Carney Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jessica Grose um And so there’s little moments like that when you see their real sort of desire that like everyone should be suffering except the super successful people like us who I’m for have more than one bathroom per six people. I don’t know . and’ve I’ve not asked the bathroom status of every one of those authors . so
Scott Carney Oh, that would be a great little investigation, right? Check that out.
Jessica Grose Yeah.
Scott Carney You know, it’s funny, um in ah the Brady Bunch, Carol Brady was eventually, you know, these are two divorced people, right? Carol Brady and... ah
Jessica Grose I think they’re widowed. They might be widowed.
Scott Carney No, no, Carol is divorced.
Jessica Grose That’s maybe what, no, Carol’s divorced. Okay.
Scott Carney That came out in a later season.
Jessica Grose Okay.
Scott Carney i looked this up before the show because I saw the Brady Bunch thing . i so so and and But yet Heritage is has like very specific views on divorce in this paper.
Jessica Grose Okay, good, good.
Scott Carney like ah Divorce comes up over and over again. In particular, they have disdain for no-fault divorce . um Explain to me why what their views are and why what the implications are for women.
Jessica Grose So they think it should be much harder for people to get divorced. And they think that divorce rates should be more like they were in the 50s, where um I can’t remember, maybe there were, you know, two to 5% of American families got divorced.
Scott Carney You should.
Jessica Grose um And we know from the work of economists who tracked some of the women who did get divorced in the 60s and 70s, that being able to get out of a violent marriage is literally life saving for women . um And when you make divorce so much harder to come by, it is dangerous. And I’m not suggesting that every couple that gets divorced is because, you know, the every heterosexual couple that gets divorced has a violent spouse.
Scott Carney Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jessica Grose I’m not suggesting that at all. But there are unintended consequences when you make divorces harder to get. And by the way, i am very, very sure that Donald Trump does not want to make divorce harder to get. I would bet money on that.
Scott Carney No, he’s on marriage number three.
Jessica Grose Yes.
Scott Carney And, you know, I’m i’m divorced as well. And I would say that, i you know, I got married young. It was a relationship that was she was a fine lady. It was really, really good for both of everyone’s mental health. Everything was better because of because the divorce was possible . and And it seems that if you lock people in this institution, you’re actually having the state decide how people should interact with one another, which seems like pretty draconian.
Jessica Grose Yes. It does. And I also think it doesn’t acknowledge that marriage now is different than it has ever been in the history of the institution because people live so much longer.
Scott Carney Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jessica Grose when the life expectancy for most people was 40 or 50 and marriages were more of a financial arrangement. It wasn’t about love. It wasn’t about the way we conceive marriage today . a different can of worms, right? And I did a follow-up piece on the original piece you mentioned where there is actually some evidence that a lot of couples that were married on paper in the first half of the 20th century were actually permanently separated because divorce was so hard to come by.
Scott Carney Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jessica Grose It wasn’t like the heritage idea of the two-parent family who are... you know, there for the children and it’s this beautiful, you know, nuclear vision. Actually, you know, the father had split and just never returned and or the mother had split and never returned. And because divorce was so stigmatized then and so hard to come by, um they weren’t recording that. They weren’t legally actually getting divorced, but for all intents and purposes, this was no longer a couple that was together . um And so i think that sort of nuance, I read a ton of history and I swear every biography I read, that’s the story.
Scott Carney Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jessica Grose It’s like somebody was an alcoholic. Somebody spent all the family’s money. Like it’s not all rose colored love. And I remember there was like, There was an amazing Twitter thread once um where people were talking about their like grandparents or great grandparents marriages. And it was all like, yeah, she my grandpa was cheating on my grandma and she hit him in the head with a cast iron skillet. Like was not, you know, again, this beautiful idealized thing when people who probably shouldn’t have stayed together did.
Scott Carney Yeah, you know, it’s funny when my my my grandmother, ah my parents divorced when I was 16. And one of the conversations that my grandmother, who was my father’s mother, had with my mother afterwards was that, you know, it’s it’s so brave of you to get divorced. I wish I’d been divorced on my wedding night. That would have been, you know, when the, And she endured a marriage for 50 years more, 60 years at that point, which she did not want to be in.
Jessica Grose Wow.
Scott Carney And that is, it’s it’s heartbreaking that that would have happened.
Jessica Grose Yeah. Yeah.
Scott Carney I mean, admittedly, I wouldn’t be here if she had divorced. So there is ah there is a ah little bit of conflict, but I feel so bad for her. And I think that women...
Jessica Grose Yeah.
Scott Carney And and anyone should not be forced to to wallow in their mistakes, which will also probably make them poorer and less successful and and like worse for the economy too, if you just want to take a non-emotional look at things.
Scott Carney Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jessica Grose Well, I think I often think about my own grandmother who was in a, you know, by all accounts, pretty happy marriage, um but she didn’t work.
Scott Carney Mm-hmm.
Jessica Grose And she told me a woman should always have her own money.
Jessica Grose It always really bothered her that she could not buy anything without my grandfather’s permission.
Scott Carney Mm-hmm.
Jessica Grose And he was, you know, a kind person, but very cheap.
Scott Carney Mm-hmm.
Jessica Grose It drove her crazy. You know, he was not abusive at all. He was not financially controlling, but she just couldn’t freely spend any money at all. And she absolutely hated it. and So this was the advice that she, again, oh multiple times, my grandmother would say, a woman should have her own money. So...
Scott Carney Well, women weren’t allowed to have credit cards until like the 70s. Is that right?
Jessica Grose seventy four 74. 74 was when they could start having access to their own credit and mortgages and all of that. Previously, you would need a signatory, so either your father or your husband, usually. Okay.
Scott Carney I mean, why would we ever want to go back to, like, that’s the, like, it’s it’s so baffling to me that that any man would want a subservient, well like like, I just don’t, I fundamentally don’t understand it. um And i maybe we need, like ah like, someone from the manosphere to come in to explain it to me, but I just don’t get it.
Jessica Grose Well, here’s the thing. When you look at the statistics, most people don’t want those relationships because just not even talking about feminism or anything, you want to be able to make ends meet. they don’t You don’t want to be vulnerable to someone’s illness or um bad luck, somebody losing a job. you know we People want to be financially stable. um And I think that’s not political.
Scott Carney Thank
Jessica Grose That’s just like, especially if you have kids, having a disruption to your health insurance, having you know this is just practicality. We’re not even we’re not talking about you know what people should do, which we can get into that later. the Every statistic I’ve ever seen shows that the majority of men and women both want to be able to earn a living. Regardless, I’m not talking Democrat, Republican, Independent, whatever. um Because they want to be able to pay their mortgage. They want to be able to put food on the table. Right. We’re past that. And i think it’s worth pointing out that even when women did not have access to their own credit, all these things, women always worked. Working class women always worked. Women of color always worked. Like the i the fantasy that it was the stay-at-home mom and the dad going out, that’s it just, I always think of this book titled by the historian Stephanie Kuntz. She is a great historian of marriage and coupling. And she has a book called The Way We Never Were. So it’s the way we never were.
Scott Carney Sure. And I remember reading a book called um Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert also about sort of the history of marriage, and which is, you know, thinking about marriage is like where it has gone from, like honestly, property. It’s really about retaining property at its in its oldest versions ah versus like what we want out of marriage, which is more than that, right? It’s ah it’s ah it’s ah it’s love. it’s it’s It’s caring. It’s like these other things other than just purely how can we How can we combine our fortunes to to surpass? it’s um and And when you know the the document starts out, and yeah as you as you start out your New York Times piece, you say, the founding fathers, the Heritage Foundation starts out by saying, like the found the founding fathers were were literally fathers. They all had six children. And you astutely note that that some of that is maybe not the the best characterization of what that means.
Jessica Grose Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Yeah, so, you know, this is in slight dispute, though the Jefferson Foundation says that the history is closed on this. But Thomas Jefferson had ah six children by a woman he enslaved, Sally Hemings, right? So I don’t think that a model of a relationship for anybody in 2026. The piece was already getting too long, but I had previously had some stuff in there about how, you know, many of their wives died in childbirth. Like there were multiple wives. Many of the children did not make it to adulthood because the infant death rate was so high. I mean, if you made it past your fifth birthday, you were very lucky in 1776. So why are we even talking about their family structures as if they are relevant to our lives today? I mean, that doesn’t mean that they weren’t very admirable people in other ways that had qualities that we should care about or that you know we’re ungrateful for the founding of the country. Like, certainly, but why are we using them as a model in this way is bizarre.
Scott Carney Mm-hmm. you know it’s interesting that you bring up the the infant mortality because, so this document was written by six authors, Rogers, ah Severino, Jay Richards, Emma Waters. Those are from the Heritage foundation Foundation. And then we have three people from um the DeVos Foundation, which I think is a subsection of the Heritage financial Foundation. Anyway, Roger Cervino, ah main author on this also wrote the project the section in Project 2025 about healthcare care system and why Anthony Fauci was the worst person in the world. and like and And so it’s interesting that you’re talking about infant mortality being sort of a part of this. And these people are also literally writing healthcare care policy for for how the America comes together.
Jessica Grose I am honestly so depressed about healthcare right now, about the fact that we have an anti-vaccine head of HHS. It is honestly breaks my heart every day. There is no reason that we should be having a measles outbreak of this magnitude um when we have vaccines that are safe and effective. And ah I’ve thought long and hard about how to get accurate information to people who are skeptical of all of this. And I know COVID was really hard and I have sympathy and empathy for people who had a rough time during that period. um But I truly despair and I’m feel lucky that my children are older now. If I was having babies now, I would be afraid. i’ would be afraid to take my kid outside um if I lived in a state where there was an outbreak until they could be vaccinated. And I’ve heard lots of reports of parents, you know, asking to get the full slate of vaccinations early because they don’t want their child to have literally die or have a permanent disability because these are very bad diseases. It’s like, I i wish we could have the effects of diphtheria be required reading for every American because I’m sure most of them don’t even know what that disease does. And it is a truly nightmarish way to die.
Scott Carney Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. yeah or polio. like Like we had a president who had polio. Like we had we have like like these diseases, which we think were but you know eliminated, they were eliminated because we had a ah good public health system. And where there’s so much attention to like longevity and like bro science in this world, like at how to like grift your way, especially if you’re rich. to optimize every nutrient in your body to live longer. But but what they what they neglect and what makes me, I think, equally as angry as you is that were would they actually neglect the systems that actually made the society live longer and get these these orders of magnitude. I mean, 34 years was the average life expectancy in like the fifteen hundreds like like we could go back if we if we just abandoned our progress, which brings me back to that progress question that ah that i’d I’d risen earlier.
Jessica Grose Your stroke closes up. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. yes Yeah.
Scott Carney I thought we’d come forward, but reading these documents, it just puts us right back in the past. And one of these things that I wanted to ask you about. So the paper spends, a lot of times with this convoluted ideology. And and they astutely note some some facts that we, and we have to agree on some facts. And they they find this one fact. There’s this correlation between lowly paid and undereducated women having more children. And their stated goal is to have America, have a lot more kids. So then they come up with this cockamamie idea, which is that, well, in order to have more kids, we just have to undereducate women. We have to be sure that they don’t have economic opportunities, and then we’re going to ensure a a stronger, more fertile America. I mean, just tell me I’m wrong in my reading of that, because maybe I’m just bad at reading.
Jessica Grose No, that’s pretty much true. I mean, I saw someone be like, oh, was teen pregnancy really that big a problem? And I’m like, listen. Most people are not mature enough to have kids when they’re teens. I’m sure some people are, right? Like everyone is entitled to their own body autonomy. And if they want to become teen parents, that is fine. But I think that we most people can agree that it has been a societal good to have fewer teen parents. That I thought we were all on the same page about that. In the 90s, we definitely were all on the same page about that. um So it has been shocking to see some very conservative people be like, was teen pregnancy so bad? um So what’s interesting is this main document does correctly identify some problems that I think we, you know, if we’re talking about facts that we can all agree on. College loans are out of control, that they are preventing people from you know starting their adult lives, from buying homes, from you know feeling secure in their jobs, that they’re making enough money. And it would maybe be good if more employers would hire people without college degrees. But that’s on the employers, right? So I think... give benefits, give incentives for employers to consider people with other degrees. But they’re not going to do that. They’re the ones that are requiring this to, you know, get a good job. And I will you will never hear me dismiss education for its own sake. So they have fully bought into this idea that um the only value of education is to get a good job. Now, I don’t think it’s fair to ask young people to go into severe debt to get a good job. That’s not fair to them. At the same time. We do not value education in this country. And I think all young people should have the ability to get an education for its own sake, because it is valuable, because curiosity and knowledge are things that we should be inculcating in young people in society. Right. So that’s a value that I hold. But I agree with them that college loans are out of control. So their solution is nobody goes to college. ah And just starts having babies ASAP. And I’m like, I don’t know That’s not how I think that should go. And I just want to point out, as much as I think there’s been this such a concerted effort from the right to dismiss and defund higher education, a college degree in the long run is still worth it. um every available piece of evidence that we have shows that you will earn more in in your lifespan, and be more financially secure, have better health outcomes if you are college educated. So I just don’t know what to say. we it just feels like we’re in this mirror world where, again, we can agree on certain facts, on certain problems that we have as society, and the solutions just could not be more different. And I think that their obsession with the birth rate is ultimately creepy because you can’t make people have children. Even the most authoritarian countries um that have tried haven’t been able to do it. I mean, the the biggest example, and they use they talk about it in the paper, is Hungary, right? Hungary, I think, spent 10% of their gross domestic product to entice people to have more children and to get married. And they still did not get above the replacement rate. So they did still did not get above two kids per person. And the United States, again, would never. Do you think we are going to use our defense budget to encourage, to give a generous welfare state to children and families? We’re not doing that. ah So they don’t know. We don’t know what encourages people to have more babies or whether that should be the main goal of family policy. And I personally don’t think it is.
Scott Carney Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well, that’s Well, that’s my question here. is like you know there’s There’s been a lot of consternation in the conservative world and and and also the liberal world. I don’t mean like lefty. I just mean like the liberal economics world that that we’re we’re fearing declining sperm client counts. We’re fearing that the population might start declining in the globe. And I just can’t wrap my mind around the fact that why that’s a bad thing, because we have almost 8 billion people, maybe 9 billion people on the on the planet, And it seems to me that maybe that’s unsustainable. So what’s so wrong with maybe possibly acknowledging that that maybe we have too many people and not having kids might not be that bad.
Jessica Grose So, I mean, I think that there’s two separate problems. Most of our economic systems are built on The birth rate growing. So things like Social Security being solvent, it’s going to be a problem if we don’t have enough more kids in the United States. Now, should we solve that instead of pressuring people to have more kids? I think we should. And then there is another question of are people having fewer children than they want to have? That to me is an open question. I can’t tell. People certainly don’t. The average person does not want six children. That I can tell you definitively. Are people having one kid when they would really want have two? Are they having two kids when they would want to have three? How much... societal energy should we be giving towards towards this idea that people are having fewer children than they want to? I think that’s an open question. I think it’s worth talking about. I think it’s sad to me if people want children and are not able to have them, but to force people who don’t want kids or who have the amount of kids that they want or to coerce them in any way through policy to have children that they don’t want is, ah that’s not freedom to me. So I think that there’s economic challenges, there’s personal challenges that, you know, are worth talking about ways policy can help. um But in terms of the environmental, like, do we need more people? No, we don’t. I mean, need more, what does that even mean? Like, is there like a specific amount of people that we should have? don’t, don’t think that that’s a thing.
Scott Carney Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So I was Googling, not Googling, I was searching through the document, right? And I wanted to see how often ah domestic violence comes up because obviously if you’re curtailing divorce, you’re also going to be, you know, domestic violence is a big thing. And the word ah violence shows up several times in regard to urban violence, we code word, black people being violent to their kids or whatever, but domestic violence doesn’t show up really at all. There’s one paraphrased quote with, I think it’s with with ah with the the Pope mentioning domestic violence, but but this issue is just completely absent from the vision of the 250 why would they just omit that do you think
Jessica Grose Yeah. Yeah. I don’t think that it’s a conversation that they want to have um because In their worldview, um and I can’t speak to every person on that report, but many people affiliated with the Heritage Foundation um have a view of marriage that the husband is the head of the household, the wife answers to the husband, that’s it. And if that is your worldview, domestic violence is not one of your priorities as something to solve because if the woman is just supposed to be doing what her husband says to begin with, um that’s not really a framework where violence against that woman is going to be something that you care a whole lot about. um And it also, I think, is ah uncomfortable for them to grapple with, because I’m not saying that they, any of them and think that it’s okay to be violent. um But I think in the structure that they’ve created, you’re not really giving women who are victims of domestic violence a lot of options. And so even if they are sympathetic, which again, i don’t know what’s in their hearts, um they have created they they are proponents of a structure that makes female independence and solvency much harder.
Scott Carney Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. yeah the so At the same time that this was circulating, and this came out sort of late last year, um There were also lots of other salvos against women’s rights. That’s sort of the theme, one of the many themes of the Trump II. One thing that I wanna just focus on, because it seems to be at least ideologically connected to the Heritage Foundation is the SAVE Act, which if it became law, the SAVE Act would require Americans to provide a birth certificate, passport, or other their citizenship adopt citizenship document in order to register to vote. Now, according to the Guardian, an article that came out around the time this was originally circulating. Women who changed their name when they got married may also face a logistical nightmare. Reports show that as many as 69 million women who have taken their spouse’s name don’t have a birth certificate that matches their legal name. This seems like just straight up disenfranchisement. um is Is that the goal? is or is this hyperbolic?
Jessica Grose I’m not really of all the things I’m worried about happening for women. This is not ranking super high for me, only because i would imagine that a lot of Republican voters took their husbands names. So it would be a tremendous self-own to disenfranchise um so many women who would otherwise vote for you. um i don’t I mean, i I think actually the majority of women who get married still to this day take their husband’s names. But I would guess that if you compare their registration, there would be more Republican women who had taken their husband’s names than Democrat women. So um i I don’t think it will happen not out of any trust in the powers that be, but more just because it would actually hurt them.
Scott Carney ah You’re hanging your hat on a narrow peg there.
Jessica Grose ah ah Yeah, I’m not, again, it’s like every day when I wake up, I’m like, what are the top five worries today that might happen in our waning democracy? That’s not one of them. That’s never been one of them. i’ve ah I have other fears. Yeah.
Scott Carney um You know, there was this other document put out by the Heritage Foundation. This came out, I think, in December of last year. It was called The Rights, Duties, and Relations Toward a Pro-Woman Feminism for the 21st Century. I’m going to read you the beginning of that. I just love your reaction to it. And maybe you’ve probably read this document as well. Feminism, understood as the peculiar modern ideology of the 20th century, has reached its self-destroying zenith in the erasure of women in gender ideology and in the putative right to intentionally end the life of one’s developing unborn child. But despite its popularity and influence among young and unmarried women, this form of feminism is not true advocacy for women. And then she goes on to say that second wave feminists historically equate women’s rights with sexual license, radical autonomy and abortion rights. And in doing so, feminism as a modern ideology has recklessly undermined the true interests of women for the very purpose of rights.
Jessica Grose Mm-hmm. Well, I mean, my first reaction is if you don’t have bodily autonomy, you don’t have real rights. So if we’re talking about equality, i think that’s just built in. Although I am not someone who ah is very guarding of the term feminism. If someone who is not pro-choice wants to call them themselves a feminist, be my guest. I don’t own that term. It is baseline dictionary definition. You believe in the equality between men and women. And so, you know, I don’t find it interesting to sort of police the term um I would say also, you know, most of the people who are making those arguments are religious Christians and I’m Jewish and my religion does not say that life begins at conception. So um I thought they loved religious freedom, like which religion’s freedom are they into? um And I think that we’ve seen it play out so tragically. um in states that have curtailed abortion rights, where women who desperately want to have babies and are pregnant have lost their lives because ah their doctors cannot treat them, because they have to consider ah the fetus, which wouldn’t survive outside its own, and um There’s just been, honestly, I mean, ProPublica <unk> does the best journalism on this. I’ve just been so impressed with the absolutely heartbreaking stories of women who have lost their lives because of these laws. And so losing your life because of a law about what you can and cannot do with your body doesn’t seem very equal to me. um So yeah, that’s my that’s my gut reaction to all of that. And i just... I don’t know what to say about abortion rights anymore. I’ve been so kind of dispirited at how, i mean, there’s just too much going on You know, there’s so many rights of so many people that are being trampled. um But i think the fire behind the movement is pretty low right now. um and it it’s just, I think the outcome will be that the experience of living in different states is going to be really different for women going forward. um i you know I’m lucky enough to live in New York State, so I’m not worried about my access, but I am worried for anyone who does not live in a state with laws like the state that I have. so
Scott Carney Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It seems to me that the theme of the of of this document and you know other heritage documents as well is that they’re they’re trying to create this language about responsibility. Like it’s a woman’s responsibility to take care of the family. And that responsibility is also a ah right. And they’re they’re sort of combining this like here’s things you have to do, but that’s also what freedom is. That’s sort of at the same time. And yet you also note that that it In a way, it’s effectively shifting the burden of of who who does this. And you so you talk about people being having a harder time raising the families because now it’s their responsibility to do it, not the state’s responsibility to step in.
Jessica Grose Right. um I mean, so they would really prefer that it’s the church’s responsibility. So they think that all sort of support ah that for the poor, for people who need help, you should have to belong to a church to have access to it, which... That doesn’t sound very American to me. um And you see it in not just, you know, all of these incursions on the rights of women, but they’re going after public schools. um They are, I mean, you talk about the DeVos Foundation, they are not shy about um the way that they talk about public education and the way that they talk about teachers. And it just, disgusts me, to be honest. I mean, my kids were so were seven and three when the pandemic started in 2020. And I don’t know how any parent came out of that situation without the utmost respect for what public school teachers do or any teachers. But I mean, my kids were in public elementary at the time. And um I tried to teach second grade and I was horrible at it for one child. ah So just this idea that there should be no community that is funded by anybody outside individuals or maybe the church. I mean, that is their whole ethos. So whether it has to do with women or children or anybody, um that’s that’s their whole worldview. um And um I think for families in particular, ah One thing that really pisses me off about their framing is, you know, liberal feminists hate the family, liberal feminists hate children, they’re indoctrinating young women into not wanting families and children. And it’s like, first of all, truly the biggest story of last year was Taylor Swift getting engaged, a Kamala voter, you know, like the idea that the culture, they just keep saying without evidence over and over again in this document, the culture is against marriage and it’s like is it though like the hallmark channel is literally an entire channel dedicated to the marriage plot and more people watch it than cnn so i just think that they’re watching a few tiktoks of you know some people who say they’re liberal feminists and are against marriage which fine like God bless. But the idea that there’s some like head of the movement that hates marriage and children and is working against them it is not true, has never been true. um And there have been so many feminists who have worked for family policy to get more funding for children and families to get health care. i mean, the idea that you could lose your health care six months after you give birth. And there’s so much that your body is still recovering in those months and years after you give birth. And that there’s this entire sort of working group of working poor that will know and they’re cutting more funding to Medicaid and Medicare. You know, I mean, it’s just like make it make sense. Like, There’s so much liberal policy that has been pushed and embraced by feminists that would, that is meant to help families. Maybe it’s not helping families in the way that they would prefer, but the idea that we’re anti-family, we’re trying to tear it apart. It just, just makes me absolutely furious. Like,
Scott Carney Hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. it seems like we want, like when I have these conversations, I have lots of conversations, sort of like this similar-ish themes on the channel that we point out hypocrisy, right? Ah, they’re inconsistent, they’re hypocrites. And it just logically doesn’t come together. On the other hand, I sort of feel like, well, maybe hypocrisy is the point. Like maybe they want to have, like like, oh yeah, you can logically deduce whatever I want, but it’s really ultimately about what um you know, Stephen Miller said, it’s all about ultimately about power. And their their actual rhetoric is totally irrelevant. um which Which brings me to the question that I have in in various forms asked, I think in the last like four interviews on this channel, but it galls me so much that I have to bring it up. You know, why are... in this case, we’ll we’ll phrase it around this particular conversation, you know, why are women supposed to have like more responsibilities for the family? Meanwhile, the rich and powerful, as clearly demonstrated by the Epstein files and Trump’s three marriages, why do they seem to be able to act immorally with impunity?
Jessica Grose Yeah. Yeah. of course. Because they can, because they can get away with it. You know, it’s like morals and sacrifice are for the little people. um i actually think a lot about J.D. Vance in this because all of his comments about childless cat ladies and, you know, you’re not going to get satisfaction working 90 hours a week at the New York Times or Goldman Sachs, I believe was another quote of his. And look at his incredibly impressive, brilliant wife, who I’m sure was working very long hours in her 20s at law firms, as a clerk for you know Supreme Court. Like, this was not a woman who was staying home. They did not have kids until their 30s, much like many of the liberal cat ladies that they... you know, make fun of and put down. um And so he’s out here preaching a life that he himself didn’t lead. And so it’s just, again, it’s ah they don’t care. they this is a fantasy of what they think other people should do and a way that will accrue control for themselves. But of course, they don’t have to actually follow those rules.
Scott Carney Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So what is the takeaway of of doing this sort of work, of raising awareness out of this? Like, what are we supposed... if you you You already told me that you were felt despondent right now. And I also understand. i also feel despondent right now. And we’re going talk on the internet and we’re going to put something on YouTube and then things are going change. I don’t know. um What are we supposed to do? or Do you have anything that that we should think about?
Jessica Grose Yes, I will say multiple things. Number one, most people don’t have internet brain worms. So that is something I tell everyone because I’m sure you have... a I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t have friends who are not... working in the media, it’s like you need to be friends with some normal people who are not looking at politics all day long. Most people are happier than that, right? Like, I don’t think it’s good ah to be. So i we do it for a living, right? so at least we’re getting paid. Most people are not paying that close attention. Most people ah don’t know who the Heritage Foundation is, right? Most people are just trying to live their lives, make ends meet, spend time with their family and friends. That is what... people want, that’s what I want at the end of the day, right? To like live a healthy, happy life surrounded by loved ones, have work that I, you know, pay as well enough and that I don’t hate to do. That’s it. That’s all most people want. So I think that is number one to remember. Like, yes, these people have a megaphone and a lot of power, but they don’t speak for the majority of people. And most people don’t even know that they exist. ah The other thing that I would say is um, Most people, like I said earlier, have no problem with women working, have no problem with no-fault divorce. these are not Most people certainly do not want their access to contraception curtailed, especially among young people, people in their 20s and 30s. These are not popular ideas, right? so Whether or not they’re illegal or will happen, i amm i am actually really bad at telling the future. So I’m not even going to you know weigh in on whether I think it’s actually going to happen. um But most people truly do not want those things to happen. And you know we’ve seen where things have gone too far There are some recent bright spots where there’s been a counter reaction. So we are talking the day after ah there was just a race for a state legislator seat likeure a state legislature seat in Texas, right? It was won by a Democrat in a district where Trump had won 17 points. And part of the reason this guy won is because his opponent was a woman who was very vocal for Moms for Liberty. So book banning super far right ideas into schools. And this district of of Texas, it’s a suburb of Fort Worth. This is not a bright blue liberal stronghold. This is a very red district. And a lot of people who are just normal, you know, they’re Republicans, but they’re not like that. They all were like, we don’t want this. This is too much. We just want our kids to go to school school and learn algebra, right? Like, so I do think that So much of what we’re seeing now that is so extreme and does not reflect how the majority of Americans, regardless of their political beliefs, want to live their lives, it’s going to take time to to pull out from where we are right now. It’s not good. I don’t want to mean to suggest like Pollyannishly, everything’s going to be fine in four years. It won’t. But I am confident that the majority of Americans don’t want this. So that’s what I would say. And in terms of us you know yapping on the internet and whether it’s helpful, I don’t know Can’t hurt.
Scott Carney Okay, great. Okay. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jessica Grose Is it helping? I don’t know. I hope so.
Scott Carney Well, it might hurt. it i hurt It might hurt us, a friend of mine who does the same thing that I do, just got his global entry ah removed. So like, yeah, Quadzilla, he he was on this week’s show that that we’re recording, but it will be for you viewers last week’s show. um yeah Yeah, he had his global entry removed because he was, you know, rightfully upset about things that are going on in this country. So I do, ah part of me does wonder how long, freedom of speech will truly continue on the internet. I mean, we just saw ah four black journalists um arrested for reporting on the on the ah protests in Minneapolis. So it’s dicey, it’s dicey here. But i’m I’m very grateful for the work that you do on the New york Times. I read your your piece, look out for Jessica Gross’s columns on on ah New York Times. And also you have what, four books, am I right? Five books?
Jessica Grose It might hurt us. Oh, geez, really? Yeah. I have four books. ah Two of them are novels. So if you want to read about ah yoga cults Devil Wears Prada.
Scott Carney I love yoga cults.
Jessica Grose Yeah.
Scott Carney I wrote a book about a yoga cult too. We could be yoga cult buddies.
Jessica Grose Oh, I literally all day long, I love cults. I just am completely obsessed. So yes, ah we’ll talk offline about that. ah And then my most recent book, which you mentioned, Screaming on the Inside, The Unsustainability of American Motherhood. um You know, it’s sort of a cheeky title, but it’s really about how we make parenting in the United States so much harder than it needs to be and how we can make it better. So, you know, I’ll leave you with this, which is really positive. This book was written in 2022. Things were less depressing in 2022 in a lot of ways. But one of the things that really moved me ah was there was a lot of bipartisan agreement on things like paid leave and child care. And at the state level, you were really seeing so many more bills passing after COVID because so many people legislators, again, regardless of their political affiliation, saw their constituents really suffering during the time where there was no child care to be had in 2020. And it it woke them up to the fact that this is, um again, just something that the everyday working people that we serve are struggling with and how can we help them? And so i would just leave your viewers with that. Like there, there are so many people who understand that families are struggling right now and do want to help them. Um, so I just hope that more of them come out of the woodwork in the coming years.
Scott Carney Thank you. well, thank you so much for being on the show and everyone who’s viewing, you know, you know where to to to find Jessica. There’s going links down in the comments and there’s also Google. It’s a great website to find anything you want. um You know, this was Scott Carney Investigates in Denver, Colorado, and thanks for being here. All right, hit stop.
Jessica Grose Thanks for having me.
