Financial Feminist - 194. How Project 2025 Will Affect Women, LGBTQIA+, Abortion Rights, and More with Journalist Amanda Becker

Episode Date: October 21, 2024

Today's episode is an important one, and the contents will affect every woman you know. I chatted with Amanda Becker — a seasoned journalist who has covered national politics for nearly two decades — about the unprecedented nature of our current political scene. We took a critical look at Project 2025 by the Heritage Foundation, a plan proposing significant changes to LGBTQ rights, gender policies, reproductive rights, and education. We broke down who's behind it and what it could mean for healthcare, labor policies, and American families. This isn’t just about politics; this is about the power of grassroots democracy and the importance of civic engagement. We share practical advice on how you can get involved and make your voice heard. Plus, we include powerful stories about reproductive healthcare and community organizing that I think will resonate with you. So, if you're ready to be informed and inspired, this is an episode you won't want to miss. Read transcripts, learn more about our guests and sponsors, and get more resources at https://herfirst100k.com/financial-feminist-show-notes/194-how-project-2025-will-affect-women-lgbtqia-abortion-rights-and-more-with-journalist-amanda-becker/ Amanda’s links & additional resources: Get Amanda’s book: YOU MUST STAND UP, The Fight for Abortion Rights in Post-Dobbs America Project 2025 and its affect on women—see article: https://19thnews.org/2024/07/project-2025-women-education-lgbtq-workforce Are you registered to vote? https://vote.org/ Not sure where to start on your financial journey? Take our FREE money personality quiz! https://herfirst100k.com/quiz Special thanks to our sponsors: Thrive Causemetics Get an exclusive 20% off your first order at thrivecausemetics.com/FFPOD Squarespace Go to www.squarespace.com/FFPOD to save 10% off your first website or domain purchase. Masterclass Get an additional 15% off any annual membership at masterclass.com/FFPOD. Rocket Money Stop wasting money on things you don’t use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to RocketMoney.com/FFPOD. This is Small Business Check out This Is Small Business, an original podcast from Amazon, on your favorite podcast app.

Across almost every facet of this plan, every department of the federal government, they would be trying to curtail LGBTQ rights. Barring the EEOC from even tracking kind of like sex discrimination in the way that it's been tracked. Eliminating, collecting data on what they call DEI efforts, diversity, equity, and inclusion. They want to create a department of life that will collect data on people who have abortion. They would try to rescind a Biden administration guidance

that an emergency medicine law that requires hospitals provide abortion care in emergencies. And then getting into education, I mean, there's just a lot. Hi, financial feminists. Welcome to the show. I'm excited to's just a lot. Hi, financial feminists. Welcome to the show. I'm excited to see you as always. I am foregoing my usual intro because we have two weeks until the election. Now, I've said it before, I will say it again a million times, the presidential election

is very important. Your local elections are arguably even more important. Who you elect to be governor, who you elect to Congress in your state, who you elect to city council, all of these elections are very crucial. And as we discuss with our guests today, these policies that are being proposed

by the conservative right will affect every single person regardless of where you live. I live in Washington state. It is a blue state. I live in a blue city. I am not safe. This is not fear-mongering, but I have to tell you, we'll talk about it more in the episode, that these sorts of policies would affect every single person, regardless of where you live, regardless of whether you're on the coasts or not, regardless of whether you live in a blue state or a blue area or not. I also need to implore you, your husband will not know who you're voting for. Your father will not know who you're voting for. Anybody in your life who disagrees with you,

they're not going to know who you're voting for. You can quietly, without a lot of fanfare, vote for the type of candidate and the type of policies that protect you and that protect your children and that protect your community and that protect the other people in your life that you care about. You can just do it.

No one's going to know. No one's going to know. If this is the most radical act that you can do is just with your vote, vote according to your values, I love that for you. I love that for me. I love that for us. I would really, really thank you. The community of women would really, really thank you. The community of women would really, really thank you for standing up for yourself and for standing up for other women

and for standing up for other marginalized groups that need it. We're talking about Project 2025 on the show today. If you have not heard about Project 2025, boy, oh boy, the Too Long Didn't Read a Project 2025, and we discuss it more in the episode, is a borderline handmaid's tale sweeping amount of policies and legislation aimed at control. It's all about control. It's about controlling not only women and women's bodies, but controlling how LGBTQ plus people live their lives and really almost completely eliminating their rights

and their safety. Talking about access to education, access to critical race theory, access to DEI policies within companies and at schools. All of this is on the line. If you know a bit about Project 2025, you might be thinking, this is all crazy. There's no way this is gonna happen.

This is in fact, some of the only actual concrete policies that Donald Trump has laid out. I have concepts of a plan. This is some of the only actual plans he has laid out. So today's guests and I get into how harmful Project 2025 would be not just for the next four years, but for lifetimes and generations to come. And we talk about how you can be informed in order to make a smart choice when you go voting. Amanda Becker is a journalist based in Washington, D.C., who has covered national politics in some capacity for nearly two decades. Her byline has appeared in the New York Times, The Washington Post, Glamour Magazine, USA Today, and other publications. She was a 2023 fellow with the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. And her first book, You Must Stand Up, The Fight for Abortion Rights in Post-Dobbs America, was published last month by Bloomsbury. We've

talked about Project 2025 and its effect on women. We talk about its effect on young people, Project 2025's impact for people of color, for the LGBTQ plus community. And we also talk about abortion access or lack thereof. I'm gonna give this to you right off the top too, in case for whatever reason, you don't listen to the whole episode. This is a very personal thing for me.

We've discussed it in interviews that I did at the DNC, but my mother, when she was trying to get pregnant and have a child, she suffered from an ectopic pregnancy. And what that means was the pregnancy or the egg was fertilized and it dropped into the fallopian tube, but did not drop all the way down. So the fertilized egg started expanding in her fallopian tube. This is an ectopic pregnancy and the only way to save a mother who is experiencing an ectopic pregnancy is technically through an abortion. The pregnancy is not viable. The life of the mother is at risk.

And if my mom would have waited even a day to go and have received care, she would have died. And I would not exist because I came after the sick topic pregnancy. This is what's happening to women across the United States right now, is they are not getting access to life-saving care. They are dying, they are bleeding out,

they are going through traumatic amounts of emotional and physical suffering and pain. And doctors are scared to perform these abortions. They're scared to give this life-saving, absolutely needed healthcare because they're worried about being prosecuted. They're worried about their own safety too. This is a real thing.

This is not a pie in the sky, small group of people who are a little nuts on the outskirts, the fringes of society. This is already happening, and it will continue to happen. Women like my mom are dying. And I just need you to vote. I just need you to vote. I just need you to vote. Even if it's privately, even if you're scared of somebody else finding out, I just, I need you to vote. I need you to vote.

And if you can do more, donate, call. I also want to say, and I've been wanting to say this for a while, there is no perfect candidate. We've talked about this on the show previously, but I know even so many of our audience are even more progressive than a lot of the folks running for office right now. And I will say I am included in that. I am more progressive than Kamala Harris and her policies. I am more progressive than a lot of the current candidates at the local level. And I can see this happening where people don't vote because of the war in Gaza, because of other issues that are important to them. And trust me, I understand,

it's something that I've grappled with. I've said it on the show before though, and I will say it again. I view politics as a bus. I am getting on the bus that though, and I will say it again. I view politics as a bus. I am getting on the bus that gets me closest to my destination. Politics is not an Uber. It does not drop me off in front of my house.

There is no absolute perfect candidate that a hundred percent represents me. The only candidate that a hundred percent represents me is me. So if you want an Uber in politics, run for office. If you're pissed off about your selections, run for office. Please, please run. The other thing that has brought me comfort

is an interview that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did where she talked about who do you want to organize under? Who or what system or policies do you feel safer organizing under? Who or what system or policies do you feel safer organizing under? So if you don't like what's currently happening, what representatives do you feel like are more likely to listen to you, or more likely to give you a voice, or more likely to be competent enough to navigate a lot of the really challenging things that the United States faces on a day-to-day basis. I don't like everything either. I'm pissed off too. I want to keep demanding change and keep demanding progress and keep demanding safety of every single person, not just Americans.

And also, I am choosing to vote and to get on the bus that gets me closest to my end destination. Okay, let's listen to the episode. But first, a word from our sponsors. This episode of Financial Feminist is sponsored in part by Rocket Money, This Is Small Business, Masterclass, Thrive Cosmetics, and Squarespace. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that tracks your spending, cancels unwanted subscriptions, and lowers your bills. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com. This Is Small Business podcast gives you the expert tips you need to start, grow and succeed in business.

Listen to This is Small Business on your favorite podcast app and take your business to the next level. Learn from the best to become your best with Masterclass. Get 15% off any annual membership at masterclass.com slash FF pod. Thrive Cosmetics lets you refresh your everyday look with foolproof vegan products made with clean, skin loving ingredients. Get an exclusive 10% off your first order at thrivecosmetics.com slash ffpod. Build a beautiful website to get your message out into the world with Squarespace. Go to squarespace.com slash ffpod to save 10% off your first website or domain purchase. Where in the country are you at right now? Washington, DC.

Okay, cool. Yeah. I always love asking people that question, but particularly now we're recording this while the hurricanes are happening and I'm just like, I hope everybody's safe and everybody's okay. Yeah. Really excited to have you on the show. Yeah, thanks for having me. You started your career, obviously, continued to be a journalist, but was there a moment where you remember thinking this is what I want to do? I want to be a journalist. This is what I want to do for my career. journalist, this is what I want to do for my career. You know, I wish I'd had a moment like that. When I was an undergrad, I majored in political

science. I didn't know what I wanted to do after and I went to Indiana University, which had a really good journalism program. And so I ended up just because I had some like credits left over to do whatever I wanted. I ended up getting a certificate in journalism, but I actually was focused on the graphic design side then, which is really funny because I've never been involved in visuals now that I'm a journalist. Moved to New York City, was working at a law firm, you know, like whatever every liberal arts grad who doesn't know what they're going to do except, you know, they're thinking, maybe I'll go to law school. Realized law school was not for me and started interning in a magazine there called Absolute that's no longer around.

It was kind of a magazine about culture and fashion and all of that. And that was like the clarifying experience that I had that I was like, okay, this is what I want to do. Now, if you ask my mom, she will tell you that she's known since I was five years old, I was going to be a writer in some capacity. I wish she'd let me in on that because it took me a lot longer to figure it out. That's very, very funny. When we're looking at your work and the state of the country at this particular moment, for context, we were recording this October, it feels like I have to say the exact date because so many things change so quickly.

Yes. Who knows what could change by tomorrow? Truly, it's October 10th. How does the covering this election season feel different compared to previous election cycles? Wow. I mean, well, nothing about this election cycle has been normal, right? This is my third or fourth presidential election. I covered 2012 a little bit, but then really started covering presidential politics

in earnest in 2016. And that was, of course, I was embedded with Hillary Clinton's campaign for two years. She was the first woman to be a major party nominee. So that in and of itself was an unusual election. And that was obviously the rise of Donald Trump and the election of Donald Trump.

This cycle, I mean, the period of time from mid July to the end of August was just wild. Who could have seen any of that coming? I mean, we had an assassination attempt. Assassination attempt. You know, Biden stepping down from reelection and the party coalescing behind Kamala Harris in a way that I've never seen Democrats be so organized the entire time I've covered politics, really. You know, the Democratic Party is by nature what they call a big tent. It's pretty messy.

There's a lot of different groups. There's a lot of different groups. There's a lot of coalition building. And I've just never seen kind of across coalitions, them coalesce behind someone this quickly. And then we know we went into a convention where I write about gender and women and politics and policy all day. And even I never thought in my career, even working for the place that I work for, which is called the 19th,

named after the 19th Amendment, which is women voting. I never thought I would be in a convention hall where person after person was taking the stage, talking about issues like sexual assault, abortion, IVF, fertility treatments. It's been like nothing I could have anticipated. Yeah. I was there at the DNC and I had the same feeling where it was one, you know, historic of nominating a woman, woman of color, especially as quickly as that happened. But then really talking about the policies, that was the thing that really

struck me was just how many conversations were happening around all of the issues that affect women, including not directly women, but so many of our audience's mothers, and they're worried about gun violence, they're worried about sending their children to school. And that was a massive, massive part of the DNC was talking about gun control. And yeah, I was I was similarly moved thinking, wow, okay, we're really talking about this stuff in a way that's really significant. Never seen anything like it. Yeah. When you talk about in your work, the connective tissues of our democracy? Can you share what you mean by that? I think too often when we cover politics as a profession, so just speaking broadly about

journalists and newsrooms, everything is kind of siloed, right? You have somebody assigned to cover Harris's campaign. You have someone assigned to cover Trump's campaign. You have someone assigned to cover Trump's campaign. You have someone assigned to cover the White House. You have someone assigned to cover reproductive health care. You have someone assigned to cover education. But the reality is there are groups and entities and people in this country that are working across all of those fronts.

And so that's what I mean by the connective tissues. It's like you can't understand, for example, you know, an issue like abortion rights and reproductive rights without looking across those things, because it's all interrelated at the end of the day. And it's also, you know, related to kind of our structures of democracy and things like gerrymandering and the electoral college and lifetime appointments for Supreme Court justices. All of these things converge to create policy. And so I think we really do everyone a disservice by looking at things in the siloed way that sometimes we do.

And I understand why that happens, but it's a much more complicated story to kind of look at it across all of those things. But I do think it's really necessary to understand our democracy and why things are happening in our democracy. Oh, I couldn't agree more with that because one of the things I think about a lot

running this show, we have always said that we're a feminist show that talks about money. We're not a financial show that happens to be feminist. So we're talking about any issue that affects women. But abortion, let's take that, right? People want to silo that as like a woman's issue or like reproductive freedom. And like, yes, that is, you know, an issue of healthcare. It's also a financial issue. Getting an abortion and access to abortion is expensive. Traveling state lines, having to take time off work, having to, you know, put yourself in a hotel for a night to get the care that

you need. That is a financial issue. The climate change, a financial issue. It costs billions and billions of dollars, right? We're recording this as hurricanes are happening. Like that is a financial issue. Gun control, we lose billions and billions of dollars to the lack of gun safety in the country. Like all of these things, you're exactly right, are like, I get the black and whiteness of like organization of like, okay, it's easier to cover this beat. But at the same time, like all of these issues are interwoven and interconnected and they all affect the economy, which people are vastly saying is their number one issue this year for the election.

Absolutely. And you know what, I was talking about this with some colleagues recently, you know, in the context of polling, showing that overall, the economy is the number one issue for voters. It's almost always the number one issue for voters. But I think within that, what people are thinking about when they think about the economy is different. And I think it's actually probably gendered. And unfortunately, I've looked for polling that kind of breaks this out. And none of them are asked kind of in the exact way I would need to delve further into this.

But so the economy could mean, what is the Fed going to do with interest rates? The economy can also be, are you able to afford childcare? Right. And so I think, you know, probably when a lot of people in this country are looking at those polls and checking off kind of what is the most important thing to me, they have very different ideas about what the economy is. Well, and I'm the nerd that listens to all the political podcasts and reads all the polls and all of that. And like, the interesting thing, especially, I mean, this is every single

election, but particularly this election is the people who say they're undecided. They say things like, you know, oh, I don't like Donald Trump. He's too bombastic. He's racist. He's whatever. but the economy was better under him, right? And what they mean by the economy is they mean their own lives. They think their lives were less expensive. They're not looking at, you know, the rate of monthly jobs added, right? They're not looking at what the Fed did.

They're worried about what is the cost of eggs and what is the cost of rent and what is the cost of childcare. And even after the first election, it was the New York Times, the run-up podcast interviewed a couple undecided voters. And Kamala Harris during the debate was talking about, oh, we're going to give a credit to first-time home buyers, we're going to do all these things. And she was talking very particularly about these economic policies. And one of the couples that were interviewed that were undecided were like an older couple. And they're like, okay, all of that sounds great, but that doesn't affect us. Right? That's like, that's helpful, but it doesn't affect us. And I think, not to get too far into it, because I could talk to you for three hours about this, but I do feel like it's very

interesting in such a individualized country where we often don't view ourselves as a collective, we view ourselves as individuals or as family units. It's very easy to look at, okay, well, that policy is not going to help me as opposed to, wow, that policy does help somebody. And I want to vote for policies that help people. I don't know. Can you talk to me about that? Like that collectivism versus the individual of like, okay, but what exact policy is going to help me and my life? So that is a very American thing. Yeah. But one thing that struck me when I was looking at polling, and this is probably six or eight months ago, when you ask people, how is your financial situation? How was your financial

situation? They would actually family's financial situation? They would actually say it was pretty good. And then when you start to ask more questions, they would start to say, but you know, I don't think it's as good for other people. You know, it might not be as good for my neighbors or the people who live down the street. And so that to me showed that on some level,

people were thinking beyond kind of their own selves and their family unit about other people. But you're right, there is this like particularly American thing sometimes of, well, I had to struggle to do this. So why can't everybody else just do the same? It's kind of like, but wouldn't it have been nice if you didn't have to struggle? I also mean it in the fact that a lot of the issues that feel very important to this election don't feel as acute to people. Abortion is a huge issue. And there's a huge chunk of people who are like, that's not my primary issue because

it's not affecting my life. I don't need an abortion at this moment. Or I'm not thinking about access to that as an immediate need. But I am thinking about paying my rent. And so I think that is an interesting viewpoint. And something that I think is really difficult is like one of the main issues that Democrats are running on is abortion. And it feels acute, I think, to a lot of women, but it doesn't feel acute if that's not an issue that's directly impacting you on a day to day basis. Yeah.

And I think the reason we're seeing people who have had personal experiences with abortion come onto the stage at the DNC and in commercials that we're watching is what they're trying to do is drive home for people that this might not be you now, but it could be you next month, it could be you next year, it could be your daughter in a couple weeks, it could be your, you know, son's girlfriend in a couple of months, it could be your wife, you know, when she can't get life-saving miscarriage care because they're worried about it showing up as an abortion in a state with a ban. And so that's why we're seeing people tell these personal stories in a way that we've

rarely seen in this country. People talk about their reproductive health care like this because they are trying to connect it back to, this might not be a concern you have in this moment, but it will affect you at some point. Well, Amanda, the big reason you're here today and I wanted to lead up to this is to talk about Project 2025. And I think it's one of those things that feels very acute and also to a certain group of people feels like a pipe dream. It feels unrealistic, like that's never going to happen, or that doesn't affect me right now. So this is a really big focal point in the election cycle, especially on social media.

First of all, how have you seen platforms like TikTok and Instagram play a part in shaping the political conversation and really like mobilizing youth who are typically maybe disinterested about these issues. Yeah, so I wrote my first like kind of big story on project 2025 back in July. And I will just say, you know, that it had been on my radar because I, you know, I am for better or for worse, kind of a DC insider at this point. I live in the swamp, I cover politics.

It had been on my radar for a while. And I had been talking about it with my editor and she was saying, this just seems kind of inside baseball. I'm not sure that this is something that people are going to care a lot about. Our audience seems really insider-y because on the one hand, this is a document that the Heritage Foundation has put out. It's called the Mandate for Leadership. They've been putting it out since the early 1980s.

So this isn't a new thing, right? We've never seen it come to the fore like this. And I think there's a few reasons why it's different this year. First, it's very extreme. It's very, very far to the right. It's very kind of white Christian nationalists in kind of scope. Two, we're in a campaign where, especially on the Republican side, we don't have a lot

of policy details from the campaign. If you go to the Trump Vance website and look at what their policies are, it is a list with bullet points. And none of them are filled in. And then it links to the Republican Party's platform, which is- I have concepts of a plan. Yeah. A couple pages.

So, you know, this is a couple page document that we're supposed to extrapolate how the entire federal government would be run. Great. So people are turning to Project 2025 as more of an insight into what his second, you know, potential administration might do in the absence of those details. Now, he's tried to distance himself from this. And so I think as it started to catch on, it was people responding to the extreme nature of this, the lack of details from former President Trump, and also his disavowal of it. Because this was created by hundreds of people who served in his first administration. So if you haven't put out

your own policies, and you have people who were in your last administration who are probably high on the list to serve in the next one, putting out a 920 page document that goes into very, very minutiae details about what they would like to enact across the federal government. I think people started to pay attention. And then it was starting to be mentioned on award shows and on late night television. And it just kind of took off from there. And that is when I was seeing it kind of take off

on social media and I was like, okay, clearly this is something people are paying attention to. So I want to get out kind of an analysis of kind of the most essential parts of this for our audience because kind of the most essential parts of this for our audience. Because, you know, it's the most, you know, insightful look we have into what a second Trump administration could be like. Starting a business can feel really, really hard.

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or maybe you're a few years in and you're ready to grow, this show covers it all. Learn more about how to start and grow your small business. Check out This is Small Business, an original podcast from Amazon and your favorite podcast app. And a big thanks to This is Small Business for sponsoring our show. If you're trying to start a business, you need a website. That was actually the first investment I ever made in her first 100K was buying a domain, getting a website, making sure that people could actually find me in my services. And we chose Squarespace. Squarespace is a super easy to use website platform.

It creates beautiful websites without you needing to know how to code at all. You can sell content on your site by adding a paywall to sell memberships or courses. You can also manage your clients and invoices on Squarespace. And you can also make sure with their flexible payment tool that you get paid via credit card, PayPal, or Apple Pay. Whether you're just starting out or managing a growing brand, Squarespace makes it easy to create a beautiful website, engage with your audience, and sell anything from products

to content to time, all in one place, all on your own terms. Head on over to squarespace.com slash ffpod for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash FF pod for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash FF pod to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Okay, so let's get into it. Let's talk about the like too long, didn't read guide to project 2025. What are the big takeaways? Like what are they trying to do within the document? Yeah, okay. So I actually pulled up my story here because I myself, though I've read all

920 pages, cannot remember all of it. So a big one is, you know, they're going to, they're very focused on gender and gender identity, LGBTQ people across almost every facet of this plan, every department of the federal government, they would be trying to curtail LGBTQ rights. This would take a number of forms. And it also would be implemented in ways that would affect straight cis women. Because it's, for example, barring the EEOC from even tracking kind of like sex discrimination in the way that it's been tracked. It is eliminating collecting data on what they call DEI efforts, diversity, equity, and inclusion,

and women are often included in that. On the front of reproductive rights, they want to create a Department of Life that will collect data on people who have abortion using, and this is a quote, every available tool, including the cutting of funds to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother's state of residence, and by what method.

They would try to rescind a Biden administration guidance that an emergency medicine law that requires hospitals provide abortion care in emergencies. They would ask the FDA to reverse the 2000 approval of the medication abortion drug, Mefa Priestone. And then getting into education, I mean, there's just a lot. They would rescind a Biden era revision to a 1972 civil rights law that prohibits sex-based

discrimination by educational programs. So that would include discrimination against women. That would be rescinded. And education directly relates to kind of your economic outlook for the rest of your life. Going to college and what degrees you have and what training you have would rescind the public service loan forgiveness program. So that's people who work in federal, state, local or tribal governments or for a nonprofit.

Guess what? That's teachers. That is, you know, a field that's disproportionately staffed by women. So really, the scope of this cannot be understated. It is a vision to remake American life kind of in the view of far-right Christians. — One of the things I've also heard with Project 2025 is they want to track pregnancies. — Yeah, so that's the Department of Life that I was talking about. Yep.

And yes, that would apply. And what they're going to try and do is use that data to curtail abortion. So this is even in states where it would remain legal because right now it's an issue left up to the states. So it doesn't matter if you're in California or New York where abortion is protected and will remain so for the foreseeable future probably. They would also be collecting data on you to use to try to stop abortion. Yeah. A quick aside and then I have more questions for you, but I think some of our listeners know this. My mom had to have an

ectopic pregnancy because one of the fertilized eggs did not drop from the fallopian tube, so it had fertilized and was growing. So she had to have a medical abortion. The pregnancy was not viable. It was at a risk to her life. If she would not have gone to the hospital as soon as she did, she would have died. She would have died. I would have obviously not been born afterward. This is something that feels very acute to me because this is what's happening. We're having women die in their cars or bleed out because regardless of if you want to terminate a pregnancy for other reasons, but this specifically of this is truly life-saving healthcare, and they are trying to either completely eliminate it or restrict it to the point where, and this is already happening, where doctors do

not feel comfortable performing these procedures because they're worried of legal repercussions. So this is already happening because of the overturning of Roe v. Wade. And with something like Project 2025, it's only gonna get worse. I don't know if you have anything to add there, but I always like to make the kind of, the document very personal. And this is very, very personal to me and to my family. And this is very real.

I mean, just this week that we're recording this, it's just a few days after Supreme Court said it wouldn't take an emergency appeal out of Texas. To break that down as simply as I can in 30 seconds, the Biden administration had challenged Texas's abortion ban, which is a very strict abortion ban, saying, even though you have this abortion ban, there's still this federal law on the books that hospitals that receive federal funds have to treat people in emergency situations. Sometimes in an emergency situation, that means providing abortion care. And Texas said, no, that's not how we interpret our abortion ban. And so it's winding its way through the federal courts right now because it's related to a conflict between a state abortion ban and federal emergency medicine law.

And what the Supreme Court did by not taking that at this point, it left an injunction in place where women in Texas and people who are pregnant in Texas do not have access to that emergency medical law. So if you present at a hospital and it's, maybe you'll survive this, but maybe you won't, they don't have to give you an abortion right now. Because it's already been through a couple stages of the legal process, presumably, according to the lawyers I've talked to, that would apply to

the circuit in the federal system. So it's now, in theory, in place, it hasn't been challenged, but it's in theory also in place in Mississippi and Louisiana. So that's already three states that, by the way, have abysmal maternal healthcare outcomes, particularly for women of color in those states, where you can show up in an emergency room and not know if they're gonna be able to help you. I just gotta take a breath, I'm really mad.

Yeah, I mean, I have to say writing my book, everyone was like, wasn't it depressing? I'm gesturing because it's behind me, but it was, you know, it actually filled me with rage a lot of days when I was writing this book and listening to what people have had to go through in order to both get care and because my book focuses on doctors on to a large extent, what they've had to go through to continue providing care to their patients. Yeah.

Well, and while the courts are debating, you know, whether or not it's going to be legal or not, women are dying or women are having traumatic events. Well, and the depressing joke of it all is, is Alito wrote in the Dobbs decision, Justice Alito wrote, you know, well, this now removes the question of abortion from the courts. And now the courts won't have to be involved anymore. And obviously, what we've seen is the exact opposite. You know, there are dozens, if not hundreds of cases pending right now across this country related to abortion bans.

Yeah. Okay. So we talked about this before. Project 2025. It seems, it just seems nuts. It seems crazy. It seems so backwards. I think it can be very easy then to go, well, so this is so crazy, it's not gonna happen. Or it's a small group of people. This is very serious, everybody. Like, this is not one of those things that is like, a small group of people have these crazy ideas. Like, these are the people who are donating

to Donald Trump and other conservatives' campaigns. These are people who are swaying those kind of elections. So debunk that for me. Oh, it's too crazy. So it's never gonna happen. I mean, as I said, there's 140 or more people who worked on project 2025 that served in some capacity under Trump.

One example, Roger Severino with the Heritage Foundation, because the Heritage Foundation is the organization that puts out this report every election. He was his DHHS secretary, Department of Health and Human Services. So that would be the federal entity that oversees things like healthcare, which would include reproductive healthcare. Who's to say he wouldn't be DHHS secretary again? You know, it's hard to say that second H because there's also a department of Homeland security. So DHHS. And who's to say that he wouldn't implement the vision he's just

laid out in project 2025. So, you know, Donald Trump and JD Vance are doing all they can to distance themselves from Project 2025. But the reality is, Trump employed a lot of these people before. He's likely to do so again. He rides on, you know, private planes to go speak at conferences to these people. He's on video praising Project 2025 as they were working on it and what a vision it would be.

Well, and like, don't get it twisted. The reason he's trying to distance himself from it is everybody's like, this planet's crazy. Well, it's wildly unpopular. You know, this is not what the American people want. And the same thing with abortion rights, too, which is directly related to Project 2025, is the reason this man is so wish-washy on abortion is because he goes wherever the money is. He goes wherever the money is. And a lot of the money is in Christian nationalists, evangelical Christians who do not want any kind of abortion access or want it so limited. But the vast majority of the American people don't want that. So that's why he's so back and forth about all of these things,

because he says, no, I'm pro-abortion, or I'm pro this week, number of weeks. And then everybody who's donating to his campaign gets mad, so he has to backtrack. I often, I've started saying former President Trump is not trying to have it both ways on abortion. He's trying to have it always. And like look at IVF is a really good example. And he's not the only one doing this, by the way. A lot of Republicans are doing this. Yeah. The Republican Party in their platform was, you know,

only a few lines on reproductive health care. You might have seen headlines. Republican Party softens its stance on abortion, because for the first time in a long time, they didn't have a line in there that said something like, Congress should pass a 20-week ban. They just left Congress out of it. During the one debate that Donald Trump had with Vice President Kamala Harris,

one of the only accurate things he said in the answer on abortion was that neither one of them were likely going to have the votes in Congress to pass either legislation protecting abortion rights or banning abortion federally. That's probably the case unless there's something on the radar with the Senate that no one has seen thus far. Now they could change the filibuster, but that's a whole other conversation. So they don't need to have in their platform anything about federal legislation if it's not going to happen either way, right? But what they did have in their platform, and he has complimented the platform and said

it's beautiful, I believe is the word he used, is that they would love to see states and that they will support states enacting 14th Amendment rights for everyone after 51 years, which is a direct reference to Roe that they couldn't do this when Roe was in place and to make to break to draw the straight line for everyone 14th Amendment rights for fetuses embryos and sometimes even fertilize eggs depending on who you're talking to in the anti-abortion movement, would basically mean that those embryos and fetuses have the same legal rights as you or I under the Constitution. And so that is something called fetal personhood.

That's how you often hear it talked about. They don't like to use those words anymore because fetal personhood is not popular with the American people. But so if you start to bury it under like legalese and like constitutional rights for everyone, well of course that sounds amazing. It's fetal personhood. Then in the third part of that sentence in the platform it says, but you know we also support IVF because we saw what happened over, you know, earlier this year when the Alabama Supreme court said that, you know, their fetal personhood law in that state prevented IVF. You saw the Republican controlled legislature in that state scramble to try

and fix it because IVF is very popular among people. And so you have a variety of Republicans right now, including Donald Trump saying, well, don't worry, we support IVF, but it is fundamentally impossible, according to legal experts, to support fetal personhood and support IVF. So when you saw those headlines potentially, after that platform came out, Republican party softens its stance on abortion, they've just changed the path that they want to restrict abortion. They haven't changed the underlying goal and it would absolutely prohibit or at best

case scenario make it very difficult to get reproductive healthcare services like IVF. Can you name every single subscription you have? I can't name mine. I'm out here with so many streaming services and I feel like I am paying for everything and over 74% of people are like me and have subscriptions they've forgotten about. With Rocket Money, I don't have to remember every subscription or worry about forgetting any or worrying about canceling some because I can see them all laid out in front of me. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that can help you find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitor your spending, and help lower your bills so you can grow your savings. They give you a clear view of your expenses across your accounts.

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Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com slash ffpod. That's rocketmoney.com slash ffpod, rocketmoney.com slash ffpod. One of the other big things in the plan is that they're suggesting in Project 2025 to eliminate the Department of Education and impose strict parental permission in schools. So child labor restrictions would be relaxed under the plan. This could cause some huge ramifications, especially for women and children. What is the end goal of this part of the plan? I mean, it's hard to say what their end goal is, but if you look at all of the evidence, you know, I'm not in their brains, I don't know what's, you know, what they're talking about when they're in groups of twos and threes and there's no cameras or recording present.

Yeah. But, and we heard this a lot from particularly JD Vance, Trump's running mate at the Republican National Convention. particularly JD Vance, Trump's running mate at the Republican National Convention. This is a plan to remake what constitutes an American family, how families function, who has power within those families, how you can build your family, what type of family qualifies as a family, and it skews to being And it skews to being nuclear intact heterosexual families led by a man with a woman who, you know, the government will incentivize to stay home by either making it harder to work, or by making it easier to stay home, sometimes both. Part of the Project 2025's plan for education is to get rid of Head Start, which is a program for early childhood education

up to five years old, that is people for low and middle income. And if you're having to then pay for childcare for three to four more years than you would have normally, that affects your ability to be in the workforce. If you can't afford, child care is like $2,000 a month in expensive cities. And so if your kid can no longer go to head start when they're three years old and four years old, that's two more years that you're going to have to cough up $24,000 a year to put your kid in childcare in order to work.

If you're not able to participate in the workforce, you lose power. You know, you not only lose earnings, you not only lose paying into your Social Security and your retirement, you lose power in how our world functions by not being able to do that. Yeah, and that's one kid, right? That's the cost of one kid. If you have two kids, if you have three kids, if you have four, like, yeah.

Okay, let's talk about the financial side of Project 2025. You've kind of already dropped some things, but let's talk about ways this potential legislation would impact women financially. Yeah, so I just opened up the workforce section of my story. So Project 2025 believes that there has been a quote DEI revolution at the Department of Labor, and they want to undo it. And this is a quote directly from Project 2025. Under this managerialist left-wing race and gender ideology, every aspect of labor policy became a vehicle with which to advance race, sex, and other classifications and discriminate against conservative and religious viewpoints on these subject and others, including pro-life views. So what does this mean? They want to prohibit the federal government from implementing any sort of critical race

theory trainings, prohibit racial classification and quotas. They want the EEOC to stop collecting employment data based on race and ethnicity. They want to prohibit the collection of this data from both private and public employers. They don't even want to collect the data on what it's like for women and women in color in the workforce. If you don't have data, there's absolutely no way to assess whether things are fair. That's why the EEOC exists. Discriminating against women would be easier if they're not collecting the data because

there's no data to back up your claims when you try to bring a case. So that's just one of the many, many ways that could have tangible impacts on kind of women's ability to participate in the workforce and care for their families. I mean, it also, as you mentioned earlier, would relax restrictions on child labor and, quote, amend its hazard order regulations to permit teenage workers access to work in regulated jobs with proper training and parental consent. So, you know, there was a series of stories this year or last year by the New York Times about minors working in hazardous conditions in meat packing plants. You know, these are rules that we put in place related to children a hundred years ago

that they're now trying to undo. And so, you know, a hundred years ago we had children working in dangerous factories and things like that. We decided as a country that's not something we wanted to do. They want to take us back to that time where children are able to perform that work and would feel probably pressured to perform that kind of work because households are going to need other sources of income

if they don't have access to Head Start and they don't have access to all these other programs. And it's a mom who's saying, maybe my 13-year-old needs to go to work. My 14- 13 year old needs to go to work, my 14 year old needs to go to work to help even just fund the childcare of the younger kids. We mentioned briefly the impact to LGBTQ plus folks. What other concrete things is Project 2025 trying to do to control this particular group of people?

Yes. So right off the bat, the plan calls for the newly named agency, which they're referring to as the Department of Life, which would be the new name of the Department of Health and Human Services. So DHHS, I won't have to figure out how to say that acronym anymore because it's going to be the Department of Life. They want that department to take the official stance that the definition of a family is that it's made up of a married father and mother and children and to redirect federal

funds to support a biblically based definition of family. It calls for replacing policies related to LGBTQIA equity with those that quote, support the formation of stable married nuclear families. Real world impacts, it would protect the ability of adoption and foster care services to refuse to work with LGBTQ couples. Their plan states that children should be raised by their quote, biological fathers and mothers because the quote male female dyad is essential to human nature. So they want to literally deny the existence of LGBTQIA families under project 2025. They equate the act of being transgender

to pornography and declare that it should be outlawed. Real world impact, they would cut federal funding for gender affirming care for both children and adults. At the Department of Justice, Project 2025 suggests, revisiting the Biden administration's assertion that transgender minors have the right to gender affirming care when their parents are on board. So they're actually trying to take away choice from parents of children who are LGBTQIA,

particularly trans children, to get them the health care that they need because they're denying that that is a gender identity and equating it to pornography. This episode needs to come with access to a rage room. Like, I talk to you, I go smash a few TVs. Okay, I ask this whenever I'm fucking pissed off at everything going on at the policy level, which is what can we do about it? The most obvious thing we can do about it is vote and to volunteer for campaigns

that don't support Project 2025. What else can we do? So it's too late for this one, but I would say that to the extent, especially depending on what state you're in, participating in party primaries is really important, right? If you're out there thinking, I always consider myself a moderate, maybe even conservative leaning, but you know, I really can't get on board with some of the things that I'm hearing from the Republican Party right now. A really good way to impact the future of your party,

which therefore impacts the future of your country, is to get involved in party primaries, because that is where Republicans who are more moderate, who look like the Republicans we had 10 years ago or 20 years ago or 30 years ago, when our parents were coming up, they're having trouble getting through their primaries because this far right wing

has all these kind of litmus tests for them and these hurdles that they have to jump over. And then we're getting candidates in some cases that are pretty extreme. Now states have different rules about this. Sometimes, you know, anyone can participate in primaries. Sometimes you have to be registered as a party. So I would first and foremost encourage people to figure out what the situation is in your particular state and going forward, you know, participate at that earlier time. That's kind of like the easiest lift you could possibly do in terms of upping your

engagement in politics. Since we're past the primaries, other things you could do. First of all, when you see kind of your friends and family sharing misinformation or disinformation on social media, find a way to respectfully get them better information or share better information with the same group of people. This doesn't have to turn into a fight. You know, I, I'm like probably a lot of you, I kind of just avoid Facebook during election seasons because it can just get to me too much and I'm watching everybody argue and it does seem a little bit less this year than

it was in like 2016, which is interesting to me. Maybe just the algorithm is different so I'm not seeing some of it. But you know, try and get good information to the people in your lives because, you know, we'll get into this in a second, but kind of face-to-face conversations about politics and policy are the most effective way to kind of motivate people and get people out and engaging in politics. Beyond your own immediate, you know, circle, go canvassing. Find a candidate or a cause that you really care about. And again, face-to-face conversations are the best way that you can, you know, communicate on politics and policy.

And canvassing tends to work when you're the canvassers going door to door are a member of the community or related to the community in some way. So if there's an issue you care about, whether it's gun violence or reproductive rights, and you don't see yourself as somebody who would do that for a candidate, go out with people working on that cause and talk to your neighbors, you know, go to the neighborhood over. It's really easy. In my book, actually, I follow two women in Kentucky who were doing that ahead of a ballot measure there a couple of years ago related to

reproductive rights. One of them had done it before, the other one had never done anything except for vote and post on Facebook. And she just decided, this feels so important to me. I can't stay on the sidelines anymore. And so she showed up on a Saturday, spent a couple hours with her friend. It's really easy.

Most of the groups have a thing. It loads on your phone, like a list of addresses. You have like limited information about the doors you're going to, and they tell you, you know, some facts. They arm you with information so you can go and talk. Because it's much easier to ignore someone on Facebook than it is when they're at your door and they're your neighbor and they're a member of your community and they're willing to talk to you and engage with you. And so I would say, you know, primaries and kind of getting involved in that kind of like grassroots work of democracy.

It works better than phone banking. It works better than writing postcards. And you know, I don't give money to anything political because I'm a journalist. But, you know, even when my family asked me kind of what should I give money to, I actually say like more important than sending 50 bucks to kind of some national organization is getting involved in your community to the extent that you're able and you have the resources and the privilege to do that. I want to touch on your book because you share story after story of abortion care and what it looks like when that access to care is barred. Is there a story that you found the most impactful that you'd like to share with our audience?

I think Arizona, because the book is called, You Must Stand Up. That's actually a quote from a doctor in Phoenix, Arizona, Dr. Gabrielle Goodrick, who you may hear on other new shows. I just was listening to a podcast this morning, and I heard her. And I was like, I love starting my day with Dr. Goodrich.

She owns a reproductive health care clinic in Phoenix. This was a state that had three different anti-abortion laws in place when the Dops decision came out. Not even the Republicans could agree on which law was in place. There was a 15-week ban. There was a personhood statute, there was also a law from before Arizona was a state that was a full abortion ban that had been on hold

because of Roe for close to 50 years. And that state has gone through multiple iterations of access just in two years. And I really think abortion impacted the outcome of their governor's race that year. The Democrat barely won. I'm talking by like hundreds of votes, not thousands. So again, vote every time.

But they have an abortion ballot measure on their ballot this year that is pulling phenomenally high, like in the high 70s, the last time I looked. And so that is a situation where people in a state decided this isn't what we want and they organized and it looks like they're going to do it. My home state of Ohio is another example. So the Republican legislature had just gotten rid of this August special election around the time Dobbs was decided and no one was voting in them, low participation, and they decided let's just stop doing this. But then after Dobbs, abortion rights supporters, and this is a

red state by the way, this is a state that used to be a swing state that is now a conservative leading state. Abortion rights supporters started getting signatures to put an abortion rights amendment on their November ballot. The Republicans in the state house who are overrepresented because of gerrymandering, Ohioans have had to vote with maps that are unconstitutional. They're so bad. They're like, this is gonna pass

if this gets onto the ballot. And so they were trying to figure out ways to actually circumvent the people. So they immediately brought back the old special election that they've just gotten rid of so they could have another ballot measure that would make it harder to pass ballot measures. So it would make it harder to get them onto the ballot

because it would, you know, it's signatures from various counties and it would change that equation. And then it would raise the threshold for passage. So they actually tried to circumvent the will of the people, make participating in direct democracy harder. Ohioans batted that down, and then they went on to pass the abortion rights amendment.

And so my book, I look at it, yes, it's about abortion on its face, but it's really using the issue of abortion to examine democratic erosion in our country and how various places in our country are addressing that erosion, and making sure that our democracy returns to being at a healthier place.

And so that is kind of what Ohioans did, in my view, by rejecting that attempt to make it harder for them to participate in their own democracy and make sure that Ohio, to some degree, still answers to what the electorate in that state wants. So, you know, that is kind of a high point, I think, and also seeing what's happening in Arizona and back to the primary, you know, voting in primaries advice that I gave earlier, Arizona is a really interesting electorate.

It's a third Democratic, it's a third Republican, it's a third independent. Those independents aren't necessarily moderates. They're kind of all over the spectrum politically. They have partisan primaries. So there's actually also an effort this year by a bipartisan coalition to open up the primary process. So it's nonpartisan because right now there's a third of the electorate that can't help pick the candidates that end up in general elections. And so other states like California have addressed that by having what's called like a jungle

primary or top two primary. I've never understood why it was a jungle primary. It's a top two. So if you're voting in the primary, you don't need to pick one Democrat or one Republican, depending on your party. You just pick who you like the best. And then the top two vote getters move on to the general election. So these kind of like structural reforms that I see happening around our country are really exciting to me because, you know, I think the more people participating in politics, the better at the most levels. And those are kind of two, two bright spots that I just mentioned. My last question for you. We've said it on the show many times. I want to highlight presidential elections are important.

Local elections, I would argue, for the day-to-day person or your day-to-day life is going to be even more important. We have less than 30 days until the election. Give us a pep talk. The next 25 days, what are we doing? How can we feel when we're feeling really potentially angry and dejected and stressed? Get us through this next 25 days. That's a lot to put on you, I'm sorry. But please help me. I generally think, at least personally, I like to do something. Like, I don't like to sit there and wait for something to happen to me. I mean, it's probably not an accident that I chose the quote to name my book that I did, you must stand up because I do think, you know, that applies across our lives.

You have to stand up for yourself and politics and personal situations, everything. Find a way to do something, find a way to get out there and work for something that matters to you. So no matter what happens in November and know that we probably won't know the results right away and you know people need to just hang in. But until election day, people are already voting early. Get out there and find a way to be involved. Help do education. Help do GOTV. Get out the vote. Like in the last couple of weeks before an election,

it's really important to get out the vote time. It's making sure people know where their polling locations are, helping drive senior citizens or people without transportation to vote. There's programs like that in every community. So rather than just sitting around and waiting for the sky to fall, I would personally like to distract myself in those types of situations by getting out there and making myself feel useful. So, you know, when the time comes,

I know that I did what I could. I've been doing the same thing. That's my same thing, is every time I feel stressed or anxious, I do something. I donate a little money to the campaign. I post on social media. I sign up to phone bank. I volunteer somewhere else.

Like, yeah, locating my nearest polling location, like those are all things that make me feel a little bit better knowing that like, okay, regardless of what happens, I did everything I could. Yeah, and also make sure your plan is in place to vote. Your own? Yes, yes. You'd be surprised.

I actually checked mine the other day. So I worked for a place called the 19th. We are involved in kind of good government, like voting efforts, like check your polling location, check your registration. I checked my own registration. I've been marked inactive. And I have no idea why because I vote. Mine was at a different address. I checked it two months ago. Is that a different address? So I have to call the Board of Elections, get it updated. Now, luckily, like DC has liberal voting laws. So and I mean that in expansiveness, not in politics, not in a political sense. So I think I could have just cast a provisional ballot on election day had I shown up, but I would much rather not have to do that. And so I made sure

that my registration and now, you know, if I was, you know, not a journalist covering this campaign, once I got my own voting plan in place, I would be making sure everybody around me had their voting pin in place. Yeah. Thank you for your work. Thank you for being here. Tell me about your book. Plug away my friend. Yes. So it's called You Must Stand Up, The Fight for Abortion Rights in Post Ops America. It is on pretty much any website that you would buy books. It's on bookshop.org if you want to support your local bookstore. It's on Barnes and Noble. It's on Amazon. It was even on sale on Amazon because you know it's been a couple of prime days recently. Those will be over

by the time you're listening to this. It's in a lot of your local bookstores, depending on what area of the country you're in. People have been sending me photos from library shelves. So reserve it at your library or ask your library and then they can order a copy if they don't have it. I cover politics in this election for 19th news, 19thnews.org. We're covering not only the presidential,

but a lot of the competitive Senate and House races, gubernatorial races, and also has information on a lot of our stories about how to check your registration and make sure you're ready to go. I love it. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Yeah, loved it. Thank you. Thank you so much to Amanda for joining us and her incredible work. You can get her book, You Must Stand Up, anywhere you get your books, especially at your local bookstore. Please support them. Team, can't wait to see you at the polls.

Thank you for being here. Thank you for supporting our show. Please send this episode to someone in your life who you feel like could use this information. I'm just with you. I appreciate you. I want to hold each and every one of you. I also need to be held, so that would be nice, because I'm you. I want to hold each and every one of you. I also need to be held, so that would be nice because I'm stressed. I just appreciate it. Thank you for listening to the show, supporting the show, for always giving me space and hearing

me out. I hope you have a great rest of your day. I'll talk to you very soon. Bye. Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, a Her First 100k podcast. Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap, produced by Kristin Fields and Tamesha Grant. Research by Sarah Shortino, audio and video engineering by Alyssa Medcalf, marketing and operations by Karina Patel and Amanda LeFeu.

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