Dec. 29, 2025, 5:07 a.m. ET

“We’ve dropped (the price of) the infertility drugs to make lots of Trump babies, I’m hoping by the midterms.” That bizarre remark was made recently by Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

After four years of the first Trump administration and nearly one year into the second, many of us have become desensitized to this kind of commentary – but not Black women. We know the quiet part spoken out loud when we hear it.

Dr. Oz’s remarks may get written off as a joke, but there is nothing funny about the undercurrent of 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 wasn’t a gaffe, it was a strategy reveal

By eliminating federal social safety nets, gutting Medicaid, increasing barriers to maternal health care and much more, this administration is creating the perfect storm to control who is able to have children, and who is not.

“Trump babies” born ahead of the midterm elections in 2026 won’t vote until 2044, but after decades of listening to 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. One cannot underestimate the impact of that generation’s monumental moment on what’s happening today.

This seminal 1965 pair of laws “democratized the idea of who could be an American” and who could vote, as recently reported by The New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb.

Twenty years from now, the White population in America will fall below 50%. Non-White births already exceed those of White Americans, and non-White children under age 15 already outnumber White children.

By 2050, the White population will become just another subgroup in an increasingly diverse nation. The demographic shift toward a non-White majority is inevitable.

That reality should usher in a more inclusive democracy. Instead, White supremacists see it as an existential threat.

People are clinging to power as their numbers decrease

The MAGA movement intends to preserve power at all costs. Its four-part plan for stopping this demographic tsunami includes voter suppression, undermining reproductive justice, drastically reducing the number of non-White children who grow up to be voters through targeted deportations and incentivizing U.S. births among “traditional families.”

First is the strategic disenfranchisement of Black and Latino voters by gutting the Voting Rights Act, culling us from voter lists and gerrymandering the elimination of congressional seats representing Black and Brown constituencies.

Second is pricing out low-income parents from having the economic and reproductive autonomy to choose their family sizes. The cost to raise a U.S. child born in 2015 to age 18 is estimated to be $320,000, and with families of color facing disproportionate levels of poverty, slashing safety net programs will only make it harder for people in our communities to have children.

In fact, recent state polling from In Our Own Voice found that financial insecurity is a top concern among Black adults as to why they are not growing their families. This will only be exacerbated as federal budget cuts and inflation make basic necessities like childcare, shelter and nutrition increasingly out of reach.


At the same time, the poor quality of care in our health system, underscored by the recent experiences of two Black women, Karrie Jones in Texas and Mercedes Wells in Indiana, both of whom were dismissed while in active labor, shows how dangerous and unequal the path to parenthood has become.

Slashing 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 our government’s brutal kidnappings and deportations of Black and Brown immigrants of reproductive age and their children. Along with attacking birthright citizenship, limiting international student visas and admitting only White Afrikaners as refugees, these nativist policies set the stage for shrinking pathways for America’s non-White population.

And fourth, White families must have more babies. While the administration’s early ideas – a $1,000 “baby bonus” and medals for mothers of six – may sound harmless, they point to the concerning rise of America’s pronatalism movement.

With unmistakable echoes of eugenics, its White, religious, conservative champions are pushing 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 squarely within a broader strategy to dictate who gets to be born, who gets to stay and who ultimately gets to participate in American democracy.

Proper response needed for 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 Black women. The “Trump babies” remark and ideology foreshadow a weakened and deeply unequal democracy.

So let’s call this what it is: a generational war by those clinging to power to “Make America Great Again” by preserving White dominance of American political, economic and cultural life; dramatically reducing Black and Latinobirths andsuffrage;and neutralizing a demographic tipping point that will permanently end White majority in the United States.

Because this is a generational strategy, it demands a generational response – one rooted in truth, organized power and an unwavering commitment to the dignity, agency and futures of Black, Brown and immigrant communities.

Regina Davis Moss, a 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.