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Like every authoritarian before him, Trump is working to co-opt news sources and control what the public sees and hears. Too many corporate outlets are bending the knee—but not Common Dreams. We will never be intimidated, and we will never compromise the core values that define our community: social justice, universal human rights, equality, and peace. Because we are funded by ordinary people like you, our editorial freedom is guaranteed.
All communities must realize that funding for domestic violence resources is not just charity—it’s an investment in public safety, community health, and the future stability of families.
Another school shooting? Shooting of a social media conservative advocate? In a nation where children can be murdered at church or school, an activist like Charlie Kirk can be assassinated at a campus event, and a man can kill a pregnant teen because of “road rage,” it is a daily challenge to prepare for the worst and simply hope for the best.
I wonder if I will become a victim to my circumstances or a survivor with a cautionary tale.
Despite US President Donald Trump recently dismissing domestic violence as "a little fight with the wife," 1 out of every 2 women are subjected to gender-based violence by an intimate partner in the US. This means every employer employs survivors and we all know someone affected.
Despite its prevalence, the silence and stigma surrounding this issue continue to isolate survivors. Equally concerning, survivors face overwhelming financial obstacles, unlivable wages, reduced access to essential services, and now recent funding cuts to domestic violence services. Nonprofit organizations that support survivors are being asked to do more with fewer resources.
The fact is economic security for survivors is not just about preventing them from returning to abusers—it’s about investing in a safer, healthier, more resilient society for everyone.
In this political climate, it feels audacious to hope for government budgets to include the kind of holistic, wraparound services that support communities’ most vulnerable populations. From the highest levels of government there have been thousands of layoffs including the US Agency for International Development, the Internal Revenue Service, the Education Department, the Defense Department, health agencies, the National Park Service, and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
In light of these devastating layoffs and funding cuts, survivor-serving organizations have lost most, if not all, government funding and must pivot to sustain themselves. In an ideal situation this may transpire into leveraging complimentary community resources, exchanging services, and collaborating to build grassroots, organic networks of support.
This can also look like survivors of domestic violence left alone with shame, fear, and confusion on what to do next. The window of opportunity for survivors to access support is narrow.
Without immediate emergency support, survivors are forced to return to unimaginable circumstances and some never make it out. Research is clear: Economic security is one of the greatest pathways to helping individuals break free from the cycle of abuse; without stable housing, income, or childcare, survivors are often forced back into unsafe situations.
As a survivor, I acknowledge the privilege I have by being the breadwinner. Once I broke free from the mental bondage and fear of physical abuse, I was fortunate enough to have my career (although I almost lost it), a home with my name on the lease (and $15,000 in back rent), and just enough fight left to obtain a restraining order and full custody of my son.
I tried utilizing what services existed in my area but ran into agencies with reduced staffing and hours. The providers did their best to support me over the phone, but they were also overwhelmingly busy and forgot to send follow-up emails, so I did the best I could on my own with a lot of faith and just a little spark of hope. Statistics and experiences show most survivors aren’t that lucky.
All communities must realize that funding for domestic violence resources is not just charity—it’s an investment in public safety, community health, and the future stability of families. When someone makes the courageous decision to leave an abusive environment, their path forward must not be blocked by scarcity and closed doors.
I share my experience to help others. I speak up to destigmatize talking about domestic violence and its correlation to economic security. I offer to take care of survivors' children while they figure out what to do next and sometimes just provide a safe space to process.
No one wakes up and decides to become a victim, nor does a person wake up and decide to be a batterer—however this happens at a frequency equal to 24 people per minute and 10 million people per year in the United States.
By focusing on the most vulnerable populations, there will be positive residual consequences for everyone. There is an estimated $7.73 billion cost of domestic violence in my home state of California alone.
Nationally, “One study estimated the cost of intimate partner violence against women to US society, including health costs and productivity losses," would be $12.1 billion n 2025 dollars.
This affects everyone as economic insecurity is widespread: 77% of US adults report they don’t feel fully financially secure. The fact is economic security for survivors is not just about preventing them from returning to abusers—it’s about investing in a safer, healthier, more resilient society for everyone.
By providing stable economic foundations, it is possible to create a world where leaving isn’t a leap into the unknown—it’s a step toward a future filled with hope and opportunity.
"Underneath shiny motherhood medals and promises of baby bonuses is a movement intent on elevating white supremacist ideology and forcing women out of the workplace," said one advocate.
The Trump administration's push for Americans to have more children has been well documented, from Vice President JD Vance's insults aimed at "childless cat ladies" to officials' meetings with "pronatalist" advocates who want to boost U.S. birth rates, which have been declining since 2007.
But a report released by the National Women's Law Center (NWLC) on Wednesday details how the methods the White House have reportedly considered to convince Americans to procreate moremay be described by the far right as "pro-family," but are actually being pushed by a eugenicist, misogynist movement that has little interest in making it any easier to raise a family in the United States.
The proposals include bestowing a "National Medal of Motherhood" on women who have more than six children, giving a $5,000 "baby bonus" to new parents, and prioritizing federal projects in areas with high birth rates.
"Underneath shiny motherhood medals and promises of baby bonuses is a movement intent on elevating white supremacist ideology and forcing women out of the workplace," said Emily Martin, chief program officer of the National Women's Law Center.
The report describes how "Silicon Valley tech elites" and traditional conservatives who oppose abortion rights and even a woman's right to work outside the home have converged to push for "preserving the traditional family structure while encouraging women to have a lot of children."
With pronatalists often referring to "declining genetic quality" in the U.S. and promoting the idea that Americans must produce "good quality children," in the words of evolutionary psychologist Diana Fleischman, the pronatalist movement "is built on racist, sexist, and anti-immigrant ideologies."
If conservatives are concerned about population loss in the U.S., the report points out, they would "make it easier for immigrants to come to the United States to live and work. More immigrants mean more workers, which would address some of the economic concerns raised by declining birth rates."
But pronatalists "only want to see certain populations increase (i.e., white people), and there are many immigrants who don't fit into that narrow qualification."
The report, titled "Baby Bonuses and Motherhood Medals: Why We Shouldn't Trust the Pronatalist Movement," describes how President Donald Trump has enlisted a "pronatalist army" that's been instrumental both in pushing a virulently anti-immigrant, mass deportation agenda and in demanding that more straight couples should marry and have children, as the right-wing policy playbook Project 2025 demands.
Trump's former adviser and benefactor, billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk, has spoken frequently about the need to prevent a collapse of U.S. society and civilization by raising birth rates, and has pushed misinformation fearmongering about birth control.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy proposed rewarding areas with high birth rates by prioritizing infrastructure projects, and like Vance has lobbed insults at single women while also deriding the use of contraception.
The report was released days after CNN detailed the close ties the Trump administration has with self-described Christian nationalist pastor Doug Wilson, who heads the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, preaches that women should not vote, and suggested in an interview with correspondent Pamela Brown that women's primary function is birthing children, saying they are "the kind of people that people come out of."
Wilson has ties to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whose children attend schools founded by the pastor and who shared the video online with the tagline of Wilson's church, "All of Christ for All of Life."
But the NWLC noted, no amount of haranguing women over their relationship status, plans for childbearing, or insistence that they are primarily meant to stay at home with "four or five children," as Wilson said, can reverse the impact the Trump administration's policies have had on families.
"While the Trump administration claims to be pursuing a pro-baby agenda, their actions tell a different story," the report notes. "Rather than advancing policies that would actually support families—like lowering costs, expanding access to housing and food, or investing in child care—they've prioritized dismantling basic need supports, rolling back longstanding civil rights protections, and ripping away people's bodily autonomy."
The report was published weeks after Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law—making pregnancy more expensive and more dangerous for millions of low-income women by slashing Medicaid funding and "endangering the 42 million women and children" who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for their daily meals.
While demanding that women have more children, said the NWLC, Trump has pushed an "anti-women, anti-family agenda."
Martin said that unlike the pronatalist movement, "a real pro-family agenda would include protecting reproductive healthcare, investing in childcare as a public good, promoting workplace policies that enable parents to succeed, and ensuring that all children have the resources that they need to thrive not just at birth, but throughout their lives."
"The administration's deep hostility toward these pro-family policies," said Martin, "tells you all that you need to know about pronatalists' true motives.”
"Do you know how many working families are chased out of New York City every day because they can't afford housing, they can't afford groceries, they can't afford groceries?" said the Democratic senator.
Before joining New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani at an event focusing on childcare in the largest city in the U.S., Sen. Elizabeth Warren appeared on CNBC where she feigned concern for New York's richest residents—those who aren't being centered in Mamdani's campaign focused on making housing, groceries, and other essentials more affordable for the city's working class.
"Oh dear, are you worried that billionaires are going to go hungry?" the Massachusetts Democratic senator asked anchor Dan Faber when he inquired whether raising taxes on the richest residents is how Mamdani's far-reaching economic justice initiatives should be funded.
Faber responded that rich New Yorkers will leave the city if Mamdani becomes mayor and succeeds in establishing city-owned grocery stores and universal childcare by raising the corporate tax rate to 11.5%—the rate that already exists in neighboring New Jersey and that would raise $5 billion—and instituting a 2% tax on households earning above $1 million annually.
"Do you know how many working families are chased out of New York City every day because they can't afford housing, they can't afford groceries, they can't afford groceries?" Warren asked Faber.
She later added that billionaires have repeatedly threatened to leave the city at various times. Real estate brokers have expressed doubt that wealthy New Yorkers like Gristedes magnate John Catsimatidis and hedge fund manager Bill Ackman will follow through on their threats, and state tax data has shown that recent shocks like the coronavirus pandemic and tax code changes have not pushed the rich away.
Data also backs up Mamdani's warnings that more and more families in New York are having an increasingly hard time affording life in the city, with Columbia University and the anti-poverty group Robin Hood reporting earlier this year that 1 in 4 New Yorkers can't afford essentials like housing and food.
"You want to have a workable city?" asked Warren. "You want to have a city that's vibrant, you want to have a city where the streets are full, where there are things for sale 24 hours a day, then you need people who can live here and work here."
Warren's comments preceded her appearance with Mamdani, currently a state assemblymember who represents parts of Queens, at the headquarters of District Council 37, the city's largest public employees union, where they spoke about childcare challenges for families in New York. Parents in the city pay nearly $3,000 per month on average for full-time childcare, and more for an infant.
"We know that it is our responsibility to move beyond the broken politics of the past, of our city and our state, and start to offer an alternative across this country to what it could look like to be a people that fight for the families that raise us," said Mamdani at the event.
The progressive candidate has pledged to make childcare free for all New York City families with children aged 6 weeks to 5 years.
Warren said at the event that following Mamdani's surprise victory against former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary in June, the city "is the place to start the conversation for Democrats on how affordability is the central issue, the central reason to be a Democrat, and that delivering on it in meaningful, tangible ways that will touch working families is why we're here."
The senator endorsed Mamdani days after his primary victory—a step that powerful establishment Democratic figures in the assemblyman's home state, such as U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and Gov. Kathy Hochul—have yet to take.
"The way I see it, Zohran ran a campaign that inspired people, that actually got people on their feet," said Warren on Monday. "And the issue he focused on? Affordability."
Mamdani's primary success, said Warren, raises the question: "Why are billionaires and Wall Street CEOs pouring millions of dollars into a race to stop Zohran?"
In an article in Rolling Stone, the senator noted that Mayor Eric Adams—who is running as an independent and is currently in fourth place in general election polls, with just over 12% of the vote compared to Mamdani's 35%—"raised $1 million in a single night from donors with ties to big law firms, commercial brokerages, and big real estate developers who could lose their iron-fisted grip on New York in a Mamdani administration."
Ackman has also played Cuomo and Adams against each other, she wrote, holding "back-to-back meetings" so the candidates could "tap dance for the 'hundreds of millions of dollars' he has said he will spend" to defeat Mamdani.
"In a democracy, billionaires should not be able to buy our elections and control our politicians," wrote Warren. "Elected officials should work for their constituents, not use their government offices to hand out favors to a well-connected few."
Mamdani, she said in a video posted on social media, is "not afraid to take on the billionaires and the giant corporations to make New York more affordable."