sense many experienced with DEI initiatives in the workplace. Both working class and professional people experienced poorly architected programs, oftentimes led by ideologues, that were hard to operationalize and difficult to explain. As a result, they took on the characteristics of an unnecessary agenda of the chosen few, or at other times a quota system, that could never quite receive the buy-in necessary for success.
Whether or not this was true, by emphasizing skills over whether you were a member of a particular group, Trump could appeal to workers who lost their jobs to companies overseas. He could also, through anecdote, tell stories that would resonate with people worried about how they might protect their livelihood, support their family, and provide opportunities for their sons and daughters.
An emphasis on law and order was part and parcel of this argument, as it extended protections of the family into the community at large. Just as it was argued immigrants were flowing across the border to take jobs, so too it was argued immigrants were flooding our streets with drugs such as Fentanyl and killing innocent Americans like Laken Riley. With the media running stories on such each day, Trump was tapping into the zeitgeist in a way Harris was not. Digging up dirt related to her activities and positions surrounding issues involving possible defunding of the police, it was Trump who became viewed as the law-and-order candidate and not Harris who was the former Attorney General of California.
Abortion and Transgender Rights
Trump then pushed the fear and anger even more by diving into abortion and transgender rights, precisely because those subjects played to control over personal and family rights.
Take the case of abortion. By arguing that states should have the right to make these determinations and not the federal government or the U.S. Supreme Court, Trump could make the personal claim that he did not want a federal ban on abortion (though flip flopping over the years, Trump now claims to be opposed to abortion, except – like Reagan – in the case of rape, incest, or threat to the life of the mother). But equally, he could also take credit for overturning Roe by appointing the pro-life judges who ultimately overturned Roe through the Dobbs decision.
People may not realize how beholdened pro-life groups and more conservative individuals are to Trump, not only because Roe was overturned but the effects of that decision had an immediate impact. Since the court overturned Roe on 24 June 2022, the following changes have taken place:
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But overturning Roe had consequences that went beyond just the number of abortions. Justice Thomas, writing in his concurrence, “explicitly placed the legal theories that had underpinned Roe v. Wade in question.” This is important because these theories also underpin decisions that legalized contraception in the United States. Here again, by pushing the decisions away from federal protection back into the states, states could “enforce bans on specific methods of contraception that opponents, contrary to medical evidence, believe are abortifacients. That includes IUDs, oral contraceptives and emergency contraception.”23
According to CU-Boulder’s Amanda Stevenson, “states that have banned abortion are suing the federal government saying that their state abortion bans should supersede the
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