Entries by Christina Ewig

Federal Block Grants Are Not Budget Neutral

Although President Trump has not yet proposed any specific policy plans regarding American safety net programs, he will need to build a collaborative, if not intentional, relationship with leading Republican officials such as House Speaker Paul Ryan in this policy area. Speaker Ryan’s signature interest focuses on safety net spending reform, and his 2014 Poverty Plan and his 2016 Better Way plan call for the creation of block grants: a strategy of welfare reform that we have significant experience with dating back to the 1960s. This history tells us that block grants are not budget neutral; people of color and those with low to moderate incomes are likely to be disproportionately negatively affected by block grants, and within these groups, those most affected will be single women-headed households with children.

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New President, Old Anti-Abortion Policy

On his third day in office, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that prohibits reproductive health NGOs that receive US family planning assistance from providing abortion services, information, or referrals, or participating in advocacy to liberalize abortion laws. Since its introduction by President Reagan’s administration in 1984 at the United Nations Conference on Population and Development in Mexico City, this policy been reinstated by Republican presidents (George H. Bush and George W. Bush) and rescinded by Democratic presidents (Bill Clinton and Barack Obama). In other words, it represents a way of signaling, during the earliest days of each new administration, the government’s stance on global and domestic abortion politics.

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Defending Human Rights in an Era of Retrogression

Given the misogynistic tenor of the discourse used by the President throughout his campaign, as well as the trend toward repudiating established supranational spaces, many of us are justifiably concerned about the roll-back of the legal and policy advances that we have won in the global arena over the past three decades in terms of women’s human rights and gender equality. In this section of the Report we will be watching how U.S. federal laws, policy, and diplomacy under the Trump administration will interact with various international systems related to the protection and promotion of human rights and gender equality and the direct and indirect impact on human rights on the ground.

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