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.
I feel like they’ve buried the lead.
In addition to its directives related to marriage and babies, the Transportation Department’s memo blocks recipients of federal money from implementing “mask mandates,” a reference to requirements that transit agencies followed to limit the spread of infection during the height of COVID-19.
The memo also requires recipients to comply with federal immigration enforcement in order to receive funding — the latest effort by the administration to target undocumented immigrants, conduct mass arrests and deportations, and deny federal transportation funds to so-called sanctuary cities.
So (1) no ability for public transport systems to implement measures to stop pandemics (which will be important since avian flu is around the corner) and (2) no federal funding for transport to sanctuary cities (of which Washington D.C. is arguably one).
(just fyi, it’s “buried the lede”)
Thanks. Just did a quick search and it seems that spelling is more prominent in the US than elsewhere, which is probably why I’m not familiar with it.
Well apparently your spelling was perfectly fine, and neither of us were aware both spelling were acceptable, so we both learned something
Both spellings are correct and do not impact the meaning. “Lede” has only this one meaning whilst “Lead” can mean a few different things.
I didn’t realize! I thought in this context lede was the only correct spelling, I suppose I should thank Cunningham’s Law for learning something
But “burying the lede” is a common term in journalism for exactly this kind of thing. “Burying the lead” is common only in that it’s a mistake people say because it’s phonetically similar (plus “lede” is an uncommon word, I’ll admit)
Kind of like should’ve vs should of. Have and of are both words, but one is very wrong.
No. I’m sorry, you are wrong. Both spellings are equally valid. In English-speaking newsrooms across the globe either spelling is acceptable.
For more context, the phrase started as “lead” then was changed by journalists to “lede” in the 70’s to help differentiate between “lead”, “lead”, and “lead”.
In the US, yes, definitely. Across the globe it’s more of a mixed bag. I encounter both regularly.
The right wingers are just so chock full of rage-filled idiots. Wearing a mask IS annoying, but you aren’t some kind of freedom-fighter to not wear one and go out of your way to disrupt public health, FFS.
But that’s how all of these assholes see themselves: vanguards of “freedom”. By completely ruining any chance of a sane response to a pandemic.
Both of those are illegal. The president cannot impose extra strings on federal funding.
I know it’s possible for conditions to be tied to federal funding (like how interstate funds were withheld from Louisiana until they raised their drinking age to 21), so is it just that the Executive branch can’t impose that? (Genuinely asking since I’m not sure.)
So, fun fact, that was also illegal. The MADD campaign was just so pervasive that nobody cared. Extra fun fact, it wasn’t a teenager problem, it was an education problem and is much reduced. The remaining people who drink and drive, or drink underage, just don’t care about the laws, so there’s no reason to keep the drinking age laws except for tradition at this point.
I’m sorry to tell you this but there will be fewer workplaces in the future.
There have been three significant developments throughout human history:
- agricultural revolution
- heavy industrial revolution
- information technology
I’m afraid there won’t be a third wave, and technological progress will slow down. I’m sure it will lead to a decline in well-paying employments, and wages will go down. An effective counter-measure would be if the number of workers in the country would also drop, as that would lower supply in workforce and increase prices for labor (a.k.a. wages).
I’m sure people at the agricultural and heavy industrial stages said the same thing. Maybe stop roleplaying you can see the future?
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”?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ah I figured more funding for areas with more kids would mean more lanes for cars, so less walkability. This being the US we’re talking about
I’m hoping parents mostly want less cars around their neighorhoods but could be wishful thinking.
Is there some problem with underpopulation? The qons were always saying “America is full” when it comes to refugees.
They’re just going to need more people in general, so they can let us die sooner and replenish the workforce.
This. They need fodder
Gotta be the rwhite color…
Not that surprised. You have three options:
- Make babies above the replacement rate. This tends to be hard to control/enforce in general.
- 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.
- Have an aging and shrinking populace and with it tax base, GDP, and several other things that are pretty important at a national scale.
Since Trump is actively rejecting 2 and 3 is suicidal to a nation, that leaves 1 - promote people having kids above replacement rate.
Despite whoever is pushing this, doesn’t it make sense? Communities with a lot of children need public transport more than others.
The money that is cut from welfare programs isn’t going to be spent on helping people and we all know it.
Said marriage rate too… that shouldn’t be a factor, just a bias marker. More kids? Yeah public transit, more people? Yeah public transit. More public transit. This is just cherry picking it.
Creatives: produces warnings
Conservatives: Hey check out this cool instruction manual I found!
At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from the classic sci-fi novel, Don’t Create The Torment Nexus
It’s not a surprise. The oligarchs are going to need more slaves after they send the army out to kill us.
I know we like to shit on Trump for his dumb ideas, but why is this idea bad? I would remove the marriage rates, but prioritizing communities with many children, especially families with young children seems to me like a sane idea, this is where help is needed the most and where you make the most impact for the future generations or am I missing something?
Thank you for taking the heat of the hive mind, I genuinely didn’t understand the problems either.
If the criterion is to prioritise funding to areas that need the most why not just say higher population density? We already know republicans use “traditional family values” as a propaganda tool. Can you seriously not see how this can be abused by Trump administration after news like ordering to retract the word “gender” from medical articles published by CDC:
https://insidemedicine.substack.com/p/breaking-news-cdc-orders-mass-retraction
In my mind it was because children are expensive, so high birthrates - less “free” income, means higher reliance on public services like transportation. At least here in Germany highest birthrates are usually low income, low education, often immigrant areas that would profit greatly from having a broader support from the public.
Can you seriously not see how this can be abused by Trump administration after news like ordering to retract the word “gender” from medical articles published by CDC:
https://insidemedicine.substack.com/p/breaking-news-cdc-orders-mass-retraction
Well now I obviously do, but like I mentioned, I am from Germany, I try to keep up with rapid-fire bullshit machine that is governing the US right now, but unfortunately we are also in a dire situation here right now. And I wouldn’t expect the whole world to automatically understand all the details of what is happening in our government right now, for example how terrifying and dangerous the last three days were for our democracy. I am happy to answer that for anyone asking genuinely btw. Hence why I was happy someone asked the questions that I had in mind while reading the article.
yes but birthrate is the derivative of population over time. trying to base this prioritization on birthrate only is like claiming you can understand where a car is going by only looking at velocity and not knowing anything about its position.
obviously the best way is to base this on multiple relevant criteria which includes population, birth rate and amount of development already present. but the more precisely you layout conditions for spending of course less open it is to abuse for popularism.
One thing to note about the US is that this funding directive means that funds will go to areas that oppose public transportation, as well as keeping funding from cities that could use it.
During the creation of the national highway system (which, apart from destroying much of the public transport in the country, destroyed many immigrant and black neighborhoods and replaced them with highways), there was a designer in New York City who expressly designed the bridges near his home to be too low for busses to go under to keep black kids from being able to take the bus to the beach near his house. His words, not mine. This funding will go to rural, conservative areas, who hate bikes, buses, trains, and outsiders.
Add in the marriage rate part (which goes hand in hand with the poor and uneducated), and the possibility of repealing gay marriage, and it’s obvious to everyone here that this is about denying funding to cities and liberal states, not actually improving communities.
🤦
Can you explain that reaction to me? OP posted a question that I also had about this thing, it didn’t seem disingenuous to me.
I forced some pushback on me by attacking the reactions as “hive mind”, which is lazy and combative, I understand that, fair enough.
What I fail to understand is the push back on the original question.
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First of all - thank you for taking the time!
I totally understand, we’re all on the edge right now, my antennas are also sensitive to that kind of “just asking questions” disingenuous bullshit. But this didn’t feel like it to me, it felt like a genuine question, because I had the same thoughts before someone explained it.
I am from Europe, I suppose OP is also from a non-US country and at least to me it wasn’t quite clear that the group with highest birthrates are white evangelical Christians for example, like now I know and it makes sense, but without that context it’s hard to understand.
For example here in Germany, if I would read about our DOT making the same policy, I would think (without looking too much into actual data) - yeah okay, highest birthrates here are usually low income, low education, often immigrant families who are very reliant on public transportation to manage their day-to-day life - totally makes sense to support those areas with a higher budget.
Probably cause those are richer communities. If i had to guess.
Isn’t poverty strongly correlated to higher birth rates? Education is very much known to cause lower birth rates and poorer areas lack (access to) education.
Yes but my counter point would be not when people are taking BCs or doing abortions. No one In right mind has children that can’t afford if they can help it, which is a issue globally. Plus the stress of caring for someone in uncertain times.
Box of condoms way cheaper than a child. I would bet if you gave poor countries free BCs, you would see a sharp decline in pops in a few years.
Eh, I’d argue for birth control to be effective the knowledge how to use it and have safe sex is pretty important - which relies on education (though in a sex-ed and not tertiary education kind of way).
Increasing education spending directly results in a lower birth rate, much more so than “just” providing free birth control. Ideally both should be provided though.
Lol this feels like chicken and egg convo.
Education leads more people wanting to take BC Vs Bc allow more people to get educated.
I mean why not just say higher population density and leave room for abuse? because they want room for abuse.
Which makes no sense when beep boops are around the corner. Every company is talking about AI this and AI that.
“Sooo you don’t need more workers, lets scale down the pops so we have more resources to share, got it!”
And all I hear is “oh not like that”
and where you make the most impact for the future generations or am I missing something?
Yeah you definitely make an impact, if by making an impact you mean flooding the future labor market with quasi-slaves.
Off the top of my head, it makes it desirable to cook the stats to get money, whether by banning abortion or simply prioritizing births vs children. Every funding metric is gamed, that’s why there’s arcane rules to enact change by hoping for a certain game strategy. In this case every strategy leads to misery.
To summarize what everyone else is saying: It can (and therefore will) be abused to only benefit “the right people”.
Gay marriage will be used against areas. Fertility rates are higher in rural and conservative areas because of a lack of access to proper sex ed and contraception. Everything about this screams punish blue states, funding only for maga.
Who has marriage and birth rates higher than the national average? White evangelicals. This is a gift to the religious right.
Who’s that weird family with a ton of kids? They get all the money. Also, Utah.
Yup, because people don’t move around… Wait… Want it a DOT memo? LOL.
Prioritize funding for places with higher birth rates, you say? So… Communities with loads of immigrants. Got it.
the “white” was implied
They don’t even have to imply it!
They can just define it with congressional districts or some arbitrary measure that clusters their desired groups and fragments their undesired groups.
Even if this wasn’t the actual, real end to even the charade of U.S. democracy, it would take at least a generation or two to “prove” those policies are hurtful in the courts.
What then? The damage is done. Infrastructure built. Certain groups given generational advantages, certain groups left behind.
They were removed from the calculation after Elon was given network access and privs to the US government.
This is going to benefit communities with a lot of hispanic families, lmao.
Inb4 non-white children born only count as three fifths
They will have more work to do and it will be closer to home. Win win!
Gonna solve that 101 freeway issue right quick
They’ll find some way to draw up a beneficial neighborhood map that excludes black and brown neighborhoods.
Wouldn’t be surprised if it gets tied to income
They already messed with the 2020 census, so red states will benefit from everything more.
Good point. Maybe it will be something like: ‘Households already receiving benefits will be ineligible for this program’, and they will count something like food stamps or a child attending public school will keep them out.
As someone else has said, I’m afraid we are giving them ideas.
Maybe they’ll even draw the lines in red
They would probably make the lines blue, because they are trying to continue that, and avoid the possibly negative SEO of Red Lining.
Not to mention, blue means democrat. If the lines are blue they can blame it on the democrats when things go wrong!
“This neighborhood has too high of a birth mortality rate, let’s pick this white neighborhood instead”
Nah, it will be more racist than that. It will just say “High birth rates of people, PS, we don’t consider non whites to actually be people.”
Utah enters the chat…
Do illegal marriages count?
This kind of sounds like government officials coming up with a more trump proof way of saying “build infrastructure in areas with predicted growth”.
“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.
Wait until conservatives find out that communities with high birth rates are not white.
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.
