“We lowered (the price of) infertility drugs to make lots of Trump babies, hopefully by the midterms.” This bizarre remark was made recently by Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Four years into the first Trump administration and nearly a year into the second, many of us have become desensitized to these kinds of comments — but not black women. We know the quiet side speaks loudly when we hear it.
Dr. Oz’s remarks may be written as a joke, but there is nothing funny about what his words actually mean. This administration will stop at nothing to ensure the political dominance of white people in this country.
Oz’s remark was not a blunder, but a revelation of strategy
Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, speaks in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC on December 18, 2025.
By gutting federal social safety nets, gutting Medicaid, raising barriers to maternal health care, and more, this administration is creating the perfect storm to control who can and can’t have children.
The “Trump babies” born before the 2026 midterms won’t vote until 2044, but after decades of hearing phrases like “welfare queens,” we know a dog whistle when we hear one. To understand this moment, it helps to look across generations.
More than 60 years ago, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act and the Immigration and Nationality Act. The impact of that generation’s monumental moment on what is happening today cannot be understated.
This seminal pair of 1965 laws “democratized the idea of who could be American” and who could vote, as The New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb recently reported.
Opinion: Americans are moving away from wanting children. I’m worried about my generation.
In twenty years, the white population of America will drop below 50%. Non-white births already outnumber white Americans, and non-white children under 15 already outnumber white children.
By 2050, the white population will become just another subgroup in an increasingly diverse nation. The demographic shift to a non-white majority is inevitable.
This reality should lead to a more inclusive democracy. Instead, white supremacists see him as an existential threat.
People cling to power as their numbers dwindle
The MAGA movement intends to retain power at all costs. His four-part plan to stop this demographic tsunami includes voter suppression, undermining reproductive justice, drastically reducing the number of non-white children growing up to become voters through targeted deportations, and boosting US births among “traditional families.”
First and foremost is the strategic disenfranchisement of black and Latino voters by gutting the Voting Rights Act, removing us from the voter rolls, and managing to eliminate seats in Congress that represent black and brown constituencies.
Second, low-income parents lack economic and reproductive autonomy to choose their 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 levels of poverty, cutting safety net programs will only make it harder for people in our communities to have children.
In fact, a recent statewide survey from In Our Own Voice found that financial insecurity is a major concern among black adults about why they’re not growing their families. This will only be exacerbated as federal budget cuts and inflation make basic needs such as childcare, shelter and food further and further out of reach.
An Indiana hospital forced an Illinois family to leave the hospital minutes before mother Mercedes Wells was due to give birth to her daughter Alena in the early morning hours of November 16, 2025.
At the same time, the poor quality of care in our health care system, highlighted by the recent experiences of two black women, Karrie Jones of Texas and Mercedes Wells of Indiana, both of whom were fired while in active labor, shows how dangerous and uneven the path to parenthood has become.
Cutting Medicaid for millions will cripple critical care for more than a quarter of black and Latina women, more than half of black girls and, in a shift too significant to ignore, two-thirds of black births.
Third, we are witnessing brutal abductions and deportations of black and brown immigrants of reproductive age by our government and their children. Along with attacking birthright citizenship, limiting international student visas, and admitting only white Afrikaners as refugees, these nativist policies paved the way for the narrowing of pathways for America’s non-white population.
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And fourth, white families must have more children. While the administration’s early ideas — a $1,000 “baby bonus” and medals for mothers of six — may seem innocuous, they point to the troubling growth of America’s pronatalism movement.
With unmistakable echoes of eugenics, its white, religious and conservative champions push for more births among married, heterosexual couples and for children engineered for high intelligence and other so-called desirable traits.
In this context, the push for a new generation of “Trump babies” fits neatly into a larger strategy to dictate who will be born, who will stay, and who will ultimately participate in American democracy.
Opinion: Liberals don’t have children, conservatives do. That matters.
An adequate response is needed for a long-term strategy
It’s long past time for the opposition to stop reacting to executive orders, shutdowns, and political theater and start listening to women of color. The remark and ideology of the “Trump babies” foreshadows a weakened and deeply unequal democracy.
So let’s call it what it is: a generational war of those clinging to power to “Make America Great Again” by preserving white supremacy over American political, economic, and cultural life; the dramatic decline in black and Latino births and voting; and neutralizing a demographic tipping point that will permanently end the white majority in the United States.
Because this is a generational strategy, it requires a generational response—one based on truth, organized power, and an unwavering commitment to the dignity, agency, and future of Black, Brown, and immigrant communities.
Regina Davis Moss, public health expert and author with a specialty in Black maternal health, is president and CEO of In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: ‘Trump babies’ reveal GOP’s long game: voter suppression | Opinion