“I hope before the midterm elections we have lowered the price of infertility drugs to have a lot of Trump’s kids.” This bizarre quote was recently posted by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz.
After four years of Trump’s first administration and nearly a year of his second, many of us have become desensitized to such comments — but not black women. When we hear the quiet part, we know it was said loudly.
Dr. Oz’s comments might be dismissed as a joke, but the real undercurrent of his words is anything but funny. This administration will stop at nothing to ensure white political dominance in this country.
Oz’s remarks were not a gaffe, but a revelation of strategy
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz speaks in the Oval Office of the White House on December 18, 2025 in Washington, DC.
By dismantling the federal social safety net, repealing Medicaid, increasing barriers to maternal health care, and more, this administration is creating a perfect storm to control who can and who cannot have children.
The “Trump babies” born before the 2026 midterm elections won’t vote until 2044, but after decades of hearing phrases like “welfare queen,” we know these words are a dog whistle as soon as we hear them. Understanding this moment requires looking across generations.
More than 60 years ago, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act and the Immigration and Nationality Act. We cannot underestimate the impact of that generation’s landmark moments on what is happening today.
As New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb recently reported, these two influential 1965 laws “democratized ideas about who could be an American” and who could vote.
Viewpoint: Americans are increasingly not wanting to have children. I worry about our generation.
Twenty years from now, the proportion of white people in the United States will fall below 50%. There are already more non-white births than white Americans, and there are more non-white children under the age of 15 than white children.
By 2050, the white population will become just another subgroup in an increasingly diverse country. The demographic shift toward a non-white majority is inevitable.
This reality should lead to a more inclusive democracy. Instead, white supremacists see it as an existential threat.
As numbers dwindle, people cling to power
The MAGA movement aims to preserve power at all costs. Its four-part plan to stop this demographic tsunami includes voter suppression, undermining reproductive justice, drastically reducing the number of non-white children who grow up to become voters through targeted deportations, and incentivizing births into “traditional families” in America.
The first is to strategically disenfranchise Black and Latino voters by repealing the Voting Rights Act, removing us from the voter rolls, and gerrymandering to eliminate congressional seats representing Black and brown districts.
Second, low-income parents do not have the financial and reproductive autonomy to choose family size. The cost of raising an American child born in 2015 to age 18 is estimated at $320,000, and with families of color facing disproportionate poverty, cutting safety net programs will only make it harder for people in our communities to have children.
In fact, a recent state poll from Our Own Voices found that economic insecurity is the top concern of black adults and the reason they don’t support their families. This situation will only intensify as federal budget cuts and inflation make basic necessities like child care, housing, and nutrition increasingly difficult to meet.
In the early morning hours of November 16, 2025, an Indiana hospital forced an Illinois family to leave the hospital minutes before mother Mercedes Wells gave birth to daughter Alena.
At the same time, the quality of care in our health system is poor, as highlighted by the recent experiences of two Black women — Kari Jones in Texas and Mercedes Wells in Indiana — who were fired from their jobs during childbirth, demonstrating how dangerous and unequal the path to parenthood has become.
Cutting Medicaid for millions of people would cut critical care for more than a quarter of Black and Latina women, more than half of Black girls, and the shift is too significant to ignore, cutting critical care for two-thirds of Black newborns.
Third, we are witnessing our government’s brutal abduction and deportation of Black and Brown immigrants of childbearing age and their children. In addition to attacking birthright citizenship, restricting international student visas, and admitting only white Afrikaners as refugees, these nativist policies set the stage for a path toward shrinking America’s nonwhite population.
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Fourth, white families must have more children. While the administration’s early ideas – $1,000 “baby bonuses” and medals for mothers of six – may sound innocuous, they point to a worrying rise in the birth movement in the United States.
In clear echoes of eugenics, white, religious, conservative advocates are pushing married heterosexual couples to have more children and to modify children with high intelligence and other so-called desirable characteristics.
Against this backdrop, promoting a new generation of “Trump babies” fits neatly into a broader strategy of deciding who gets born, who stays, and who ultimately participates in American democracy.
Viewpoint: Liberals don’t have kids, conservatives do. This is important.
Long-term strategies require appropriate responses
It’s long past time for the opposition to stop reacting to executive orders, shutdowns, and political theater and start listening to Black women’s voices. The rhetoric and ideology of “Trump babies” portends the erosion of democracy and deep inequality.
So let’s call it what it is: an intergenerational war waged by those clinging to power to “make America great again” by asserting white dominance of American political, economic, and cultural life; to drastically reduce black and Latino birthrates and suffrage; and to eliminate demographic tipping points that would permanently end white majority status in America.
Because this is an intergenerational strategy, it requires a generational response—one rooted in truth, organized power, and an unwavering commitment to the dignity, agency, and future of Black, brown, and immigrant communities.
Regina Davis Moss is a public health expert and author who specializes in Black maternal health and is the president and CEO of Our Own Voices: A National Reproductive Justice Agenda for Black Women.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: ‘Trump babies’ reveal Republican’s long game: Voter suppression | Opinion