this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2025
785 points (99.2% liked)

politics

19675 readers
3990 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Summary

The Department of Transportation (DOT) has issued a memo prioritizing federal funding for communities with marriage and birth rates above the national average.

The directive, which applies to grants, loans, and contracts, also prioritizes projects benefiting families with young children.

A congressional aide criticized the policy, saying, “Considering fertility rates when prioritizing federal grants? We obviously have no idea what the full impact of that will be… It’s absolutely creepy. It’s a little ‘Chinese government.’”

The memo also blocks mask mandates and requires compliance with immigration enforcement.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

This kind of sounds like government officials coming up with a more trump proof way of saying "build infrastructure in areas with predicted growth".

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

Not that surprised. You have three options:

  1. Make babies above the replacement rate. This tends to be hard to control/enforce in general.
  2. Import lots of people from outside. This tends to cause cultural drift, reduced social trust and various kinds of other complications if you aren't careful about it.
  3. Have an aging and shrinking populace and with it tax base, GDP, and several other things that are pretty important at a national scale.
[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 hours ago

“Considering fertility rates when prioritizing federal grants? We obviously have no idea what the full impact of that will be,” said this aide. “It’s absolutely creepy. It’s a little ‘Chinese government.’ [The Trump administration] would hate that comparison, but I don’t know where else I’ve seen a policy of ‘we need to incentivize baby-making.’”

Can't disagree there, it's very CCP like and creepy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

Yup, because people don't move around... Wait... Want it a DOT memo? LOL.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Cheap labor. Meat for the grinder.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago

Can't let their slave labor pool dwindle.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

Also

Wouldn't that just reward areas where the babies have already been made? It's not going to incentivize babymaking. Like what are they imagining? "Hey babe, let's make 5 more of them, we'll get better roads"?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

There's a movement in the American churches where members are told to fill their quiver, AKA have a lot of kids. I wouldn't be surprised if an order like this came from the christian nationalists with project 2025. They are wanting to build up their own communities and spurn the areas that they aren't populating.

Edit: those kind of people also say that allowing donations to churches to be tax deductible is god's way of rewarding them for tithing. They want the government to reward them for their beliefs.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

When people want tp have kids they usually will consider what is a good area for the next 20 years or so to raise a kid. Technically the messaging is correct but with trump its always whether he's being honest or not.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Ah, so they'd have to move to where there are a lot of kids already, in order to have the funding benefits actually do anything by the time they need to start driving their kids to school.

On the other hand, in an area with a lot of kids, you'd have more traffic jams so it's still kinda counter productive IMO.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

Generally people who are having kids want to be in areas with lots of other kids. I suppose it depends though how much a given family wants to use public services vs home schooling. Ideally you'd want walkable areas since cars dont like kids. Again it could be a good idea but coming from trump I guess we will have to wait and see what happens.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 hours ago

Me and my wife have been watching Handmaid's Tale over the years and we've been saying for some years now that America is way closer than what's comfortable to actually becoming that society. It's actually unreal to see it unfold.

[–] [email protected] 78 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Wait until conservatives find out that communities with high birth rates are not white.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 hours ago

The ones actually running the show don't actually care what skin color they have so long as they are able to work them hard with minimal labor protections and rock bottom wages.

If you look around at the news articles out there... nobody is talking about farmhands getting picked up by ICE. It seems to be exclusively people in major cities. Maybe someone has seen some articles talking about ICE arrests at places of work, but it seems like this time the goal is to nab them at church, the grocery store or when they are bringing their kids to and from school.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 hours ago

It's not a surprise. The oligarchs are going to need more slaves after they send the army out to kill us.

load more comments
view more: next ›