EJF Newsletter — Are Neo-cons taking control of domestic policy too?

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EJF abstract: Under current laws men have to be functionally insane to marry and a drooling idiot to sire a child.

May 15, 2025 — A disturbing side seems to be emerging from the Trump administration.

Many people have already noticed this in its foreign policy. But it is becoming clear that a similar trend, with a similar origin, is striking the Administration's domestic policy, which is more central to Trump's program and more important to his core constituency. Strange as it may seem to phrase it this way, it appears that domestic policy too is falling under the influence of neoconservatives. If they do not yet dominate it, they are at least in a position to derail Trump's program and replace it with something more to their liking.

In foreign policy, Donald Trump campaigned on a pledge to end the Ukraine war, and he now tries to distance himself from the conflict, calling it “Biden's War.” But he missed the opportunity early on to simply walk away from it, and so Biden's war is now effectively Trump's war, and the same might be said of recent Middle Eastern conflicts. This debacle in itself could destroy his presidency, much as the Vietnam War destroyed that of Lyndon Johnson, and LBJ's war then became Nixon's war.

Something similar now appears to be happening in domestic policy. Key issues are being commandeered or neglected.

Some may question the term “neocons.” But if we go back to the origins of neoconservatism, in the 1970s, we find that the early neocons defined themselves in terms of the two most pressing issue areas of the day: the Cold War in foreign policy and welfare reform in domestic policy.

In fact, the early neocons provided some cogent critiques of the welfare experiment, synthesizing conservative and liberal criticisms in an effort to find enduring solutions. Daniel Patrick Moynihan issued one of the most profound prophecies about the destructive effects of welfare on American society.

But then something devastating happened to the next generation of neocons in the 1990s. They lost their nerve and dropped it abruptly. Why? Not because it was reformed. No, the neocons got cold feet because a new ideology had arrived on the scene that intimidated and paralyzed them. The welfare system passed from liberal control to control by feminists, who realized the political potential in what was already a matriarchy and made it a vehicle for “empowering” women. Ever since then, feminists have imposed a chill (some might say a freeze) on any meaningful reform — not only welfare reform, but reform of almost every other major area of domestic policy. Almost all domestic spending today is caused by social pathologies bred by welfare and proceeding from fatherless, single-parent homes: including budgets for law enforcement and incarceration, health, and education. The feminists generate these social ills through not only welfare but also divorce, which expanded the welfare “deep state” dramatically to cover the rest of the population.

The latest proposal from the Trump administration reflects a tendency to seek cheap, band-aid remedies to gaping social wounds. The silly notion of paying women to have babies reflects this ongoing, debilitating fear of feminists, and it prevents us from grasping the nettle and searching for lasting solutions. Cowardice is not a trait we normally associate with Donald Trump, but then many bold, alpha males become simpering sissies when faced with the disapproval of women.

This proposal is not merely foolish but reflects larger contradictions emerging within the administration. Does Trump plan to create and fund a new federal agency to administer this program? Or will he expand an existing one?

Either way, it will not work. It has not worked anywhere else: France, Hungary; Poland has proposed it. $5,000 or whatever is on offer is nowhere near sufficient to offset the cost of raising a child today. As many suggest, tax incentives are more logical, but even that is unlikely to make much difference.

But more largely, it reflects a crude approach to a complex systemic problem. If we are failing to reproduce the species, we need a serious examination to understand why. [EJF note: as of 2025 women are only having approximately 1.6 children each on average. A minimum of 2.1 children per human female is required simply to maintain the population.]

Two reasons stand out above others:

As long as women are enlisted into the workforce, whether by choice or necessity, they will postpone having families and forgo them altogether. That is the stark choice, and there is no getting around it.

But women are not the only ones facing this dilemma.

Men too are foregoing families, though for different reasons. They know the injustices that can be visited upon them by the corrupt family courts the moment they have a child: involuntary divorce, confiscation of their children, parental alienation, expropriation, penury, incarceration (without trial), homelessness, and death.

But no government has had the fortitude to face this, and so far the Trump administration is no exception.

We either address these issues or we do not. But cheap gimmicks will only make the problem worse. If some women accept this bribe, the men are unlikely to go along with a proposal that contains nothing for them, so the result will only be more single mothers. (Welfare already provides more generous bribes, after all, and this is precisely the result.) This will not make America prosperous again, but precisely the opposite. It will impoverish us further with welfare and taxes, not to mention unproductive people.

We do not need more dysfunctional children who are dependent on the state and taxpayers - children with proclivities for crime, substance abuse, truancy, prostitution, more single-motherhood, and more. We need properly educated and civilized children raised in stable two-parent families.

Yet the federal government is full of negative incentives against marriage, two-parent families, and happy, well-adjusted children. In fact, government policies make these all-but-impossible. On the principle that government policies should “first, do no harm,” it makes far more sense to first remove the policies that are causing the harm before embarking on new, untested and questionable experiments to undo the pernicious effects of the existing policies.

Let's try correcting the following (and despite the federal government having zero authority to meddle in family policy, these are problems that can be corrected on the federal level):

• Allowing states to violate the Contract Clause of the Constitution with “no-fault” divorce. The federal government and federal courts are well within their legitimate constitutional authority to enforce this clause.

• The federal child support enforcement program incentivizes women to have children out of wedlock and to divorce. It also incentivizes government officials to incentivize women to do this. It dis incentives men from having children at all, which means it disincentives families.

• The Violence Against Women Act facilitates family breakup by encouraging women to bring false accusations of domestic violence against their spouses, usually to gain advantage in divorce-custody disputes. This disincentivizes men from even associating with women, let alone starting families with them.

• The Mondale Act incentivizes state governments to fabricate or exaggerate child abuse accusations against both fathers and mothers and remove children from their parents. This also disincentivizes both men and women from having families in the first place.

Trying to devise government policies to remedy the perverse effects of existing government policies is the height of foolishness and waste. It epitomizes the redundancy, ineffectiveness, and downright fraud with which governments today maximize their power and spending. It also reflects cowardice by politicians and the rest of us: enacting policies to please one constituency and then trying to combat their undesirable consequences by enacting the opposite policies that please another constituency.

Supposedly, we elected Trump in order to show some backbone and put an end to the practice of heaping one layer of redundant policies and redundant functionaries upon another. If Trump cannot summon the resolve to do this then he is defeating the purpose for which he was elected and betraying the people who elected him.

If the rest of us cannot compel him to summon this resolve, then we must ask ourselves: Are we any better?

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