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.
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.