Trump has been relentlessly attempting to scrub the government of any program associated with President Obama and an extremely popular program meant to help educated girls and young women around the world has become the latest victim.
Characteristically, Trump’s administration gave zero defense for cutting the program, just a flat announcement that it was finished.
“Moving forward, we will not continue to use the ‘Let Girls Learn’ brand or maintain a stand-alone program,” read an email sent to Peace Corps employees this week by the agency’s acting director Sheila Crowley.
Despite the self-created obstacles, the Peace Corps promised to continue attempting to educate young girls around the world through other means. It doesn’t seem likely that they will get much input from Trump, who has not signaled that he cares about girls education one way or the other.
One person not involved in this mess is Ivanka Trump – which is weird. Republicans and pundits have spent months insisting that Trump’s daughter is a rebel feminist working to push her father and his administration into a more pro-woman direction. The evidence for this take on Ivanka is nonexistent. And Trump’s dismantling of a program meant to educate girls seems like a perfect opportunity to put up or shut up. Her big moment to stand up for women and she is dead silent.
Ivanka’s imaginary check on her father didn’t prevent him from going after Michelle Obama’s efforts to improve school lunches, either. Obama’s initiative was meant to combat America’s obesity program and help kids have better access to healthy options while in school. Those reasonable goals were savaged by Republicans who by that time had spent so long hating everything the White House did that they rarely stopped to ask themselves whether the things they were after were bad.
Trump inherits that knee-jerk opposition to Obama, but now as president he has the ability to actually act on it. And the one person who might have the influence to stop him proves she’s all talk.
Feature image via Bill Ingalls/NASA via Getty Images
