Trump Sneaks Dangerous Rights for Fetuses Into Executive Order

A flurry of executive orders that President Donald Trump signed into place Monday night included one that cemented language at the executive level to delegitimize transgender identities. But within the fold of that order, titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” lay another damaging detail: the elevation of fetal personhood to the national stage.

“‘Female’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell,” the order reads in part. “‘Male’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.”

Unfortunately, there seems to be a misunderstanding by the executive order’s authors: All fetuses have phenotypically female genitalia until they reach six to seven weeks of gestation, at which point some fetuses can start to be visually differentiated as male, according to the National Institutes of Health.

By describing a fetus as a person from conception, Trump has legitimized fetal personhood. Pro-abortion activists have long warned that fetal personhood, an ideology that calls for providing equal human rights to a fetus (even if it’s a cluster of cells), will effectively strip pregnant people of their own rights. The legal language employed by fetal personhood also effectively categorizes any person receiving an abortion at any stage as a murderer.

But the concept of fetal personhood is not only weaponized to limit abortion access—it’s also been leveraged at the state level to restrict in vitro fertilization access for intended parents in places such as Alabama, and even used to limit access to forms of birth control. In May, the Texas GOP attempted to transform fetal personhood into law, claiming that “abortion is not healthcare, it is homicide,” and called on lawmakers to extend “equal protection of the laws to all preborn children from the moment of fertilization.”

Republican lawmakers in Kentucky, Georgia, and South Carolina introduced similar legislation in 2023. All of those bills were defeated, with even some state Republicans deeming them too extreme.

Defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth’s former sister-in-law accused him of making his second wife fear for her safety, according to an affidavit shared with the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday.

The stunning new allegations once more raise questions about the FBI’s background check on Hegseth, which reportedly failed to speak to multiple witnesses.

Danielle Hegseth submitted the affidavit after the ranking member on the committee, Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed, issued a letter to her requesting her knowledge of the Fox News star’s “fitness to occupy this important position,” NBC reported.

“As I have said for months, the reports of Mr. Hegseth’s history of alleged sexual assault, alcohol abuse, and public misconduct necessitate an exhaustive background investigation,” Reed said in a statement, adding that the behavior would disqualify any service member from a position of leadership, let alone running the Pentagon. “I have been concerned that the background check process has been inadequate, and this sworn affidavit confirms that fact.”

Danielle’s affidavit described “volatile and threatening conduct” from Hegseth that made his wife at the time, Samantha Hegseth, fear for her safety, according to NBC. In a statement to the network, Samantha Hegseth dismissed the allegations, refusing to comment on her marriage to Donald Trump’s defense nominee, and saying that she did not believe the information shared in the affidavit was accurate.

“First and foremost, I have not and will not comment on my marriage to Pete Hegseth. I do not have representatives speaking on my behalf, nor have I ever asked anyone to share or speak about the details of my marriage on my behalf, whether it be a reporter, a committee member, a transition team member, etc.,” she told NBC in an email.

“There was no physical abuse in my marriage,” she continued. “This is the only further statement I will make to you, I have let you know that I am not speaking and will not speak on my marriage to Pete. Please respect this decision.”

Hegseth, a 44-year-old former infantry officer, has been under fire since Trump tapped him to lead the Pentagon. The heat has primarily stemmed from a shocking 2017 police report that revealed the Army veteran was accused of raping an attendee at a Republican women’s conference in Monterey, California. Hegseth has also admitted to several other scandals, including five affairs that he had during his first marriage.

But Hegseth’s FBI background check ahead of his Senate hearing barely touched on the scandals, failing to interview Hegseth’s ex-wives or the woman who accused him.

This story has been updated.

Trump’s U.N. nominee, Elise Stefanik, bent over backward in her confirmation hearing Tuesday to avoid admitting that Elon Musk did indeed perform a Nazi salute. 

“What do you think of Elon Musk, perhaps the president’s most visible adviser, doing two ‘Heil Hitler” salutes last night at the president’s televised rally?” Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy asked Stefanik. 

“No, Elon Musk did not do those salutes,” Stefanik answered disdainfully. “I was not at the rally, but I can tell you I’ve been at many rallies with Elon Musk, who loves to cheer when president Trump says ‘We need to send our U.S. space program to Mars.’” 

“Elon Musk is a visionary,” Stefanik continued. “That is simply not the case. The American people are smart, they see through it, they support Elon Musk.”

But when Murphy pivoted to reading positive reactions to Musk’s salute from white supremacists and others on the right, Stefanik seemed to fumble. 

“Lemme share with you what a few Americans have said about it,” Murphy began. “Evan Kilgore, a right wing-political commentator, wrote on X, ‘Holy crap! Did Elon Musk just Heil Hitler at the Trump inauguration rally? This is incredible, we are so back.’ Andrew Torba, who’s the founder of the right-wing Christian nationalist social platform Gab said, ‘Incredible things are happening,’ as he amplified the visual. The Proud Boys chapter in Ohio posted the clip on a Telegram channel with the text ‘Heil Trump.’ The chapter of the white nationalist group White Lives Matter posted on Telegram ‘Thanks for hearing us Elon, the white flame will rise again.’ I could keep going. Over and over last night, white supremacist groups and neo-Nazi groups in this country rallied around that visual,” Murphy said. 

“Does it concern you that those elements of the neo-Nazi and white supremacist element in the United States believe that what they say last night was a Neo-Nazi Salute?”  

“What concerns me is these are the questions you believe are most important to ask,” Stefanik responded. 

Anyone with eyes to see and an awareness of world history can deduce that Musk’s gesture looked much closer to a Nazi salute than it did a nervous tic.

Donald Trump’s executive order taking aim at birthright citizenship is already facing several lawsuits. 

On Monday night,  Trump was hit with lawsuits in federal court in both New Hampshire and Massachusetts, with more than a dozen Democratic states filing another lawsuit the following day. More lawsuits against the order are expected to be filed in California and Illinois, Politico reports. 

The lawsuits come after Trump on his first day as president signed an executive order ending the right to birthright citizenship for some children born in the United States. The order directs the Social Security Administration and other federal agencies not to recognize the citizenship of anyone whose mother was not a legal U.S. resident and whose father wasn’t a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident; people whose mothers only had temporary legal residency in the U.S.; and people with fathers who were not citizens or legal permanent residents when they were born. 

The lawsuits allege that Trump’s order violates the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment, as well as other federal law going back over 80 years, and may leave some children stateless. 

“Neither the Constitution nor any federal statute confers any authority on the President to redefine American citizenship,” the New Hampshire lawsuit states. “By attempting to limit the right to birthright citizenship, the Order exceeds the President’s authority and runs afoul of the Constitution and federal statute.”

Trump’s executive order came on the same day that he took an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Trump’s choice for attorney general, Pam Bondi, was evasive about protecting birthright citizenship during her first confirmation hearing last week, saying only that she would “study” the issue. But the language of the Fourteenth Amendment is explicit: 

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. 

Trump’s barrage of executive orders from his first day in office have been met with several lawsuits, including over his removal of certain employment protections and over the authority of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. 

Those lawsuits have now entered the federal court system, where their fates will depend on which judge will preside over them. During Trump’s first term, he appointed 234 federal judges, many of whom are now responsible for approving conservative priorities and defending Trump from legal action. Now Trump will depend on these friendly judges to rule against the lawsuits filed against his executive orders. 

President Biden and his fellow Democrats did prioritize appointing liberal judges over the last four years, throwing a snag into conservative hopes for a rubber-stamp judiciary. Ultimately, though, the decision over birthright citizenship will likely reach the Supreme Court itself, where conservatives enjoy a 6–3 majority. Will they be willing to disregard the Fourteenth Amendment altogether?

This story has been updated.

Tulsi Gabbard’s team scrambled to minimize the appearance of her 2017 meeting with former Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

Donald Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence has repeatedly come under fire for her defense of violent authoritarians, including Assad, the brutal dictator who fled Syria for Russia after opposition forces overtook Damascus in December.

Gabbard’s two meetings with Assad during her three-day trip to Syria in January 2017 were not originally on her itinerary delivered to the Ethics Committee. In fact, her schedule included no meetings with any Syrian politician or official.

Apparently, Gabbard’s team was also kept in the dark about her meeting, according to correspondence and files reviewed by the Post. Four staffers involved in discussions about the meeting told the Post that they were surprised to learn that Gabbard had met with the Syrian president at all. One of the staffers, who opposed the meeting, said that they had a difficult time getting Gabbard to provide answers about the details of her schedule.

Gabbard has claimed that while her meeting with Assad was not originally planned, she couldn’t pass up the opportunity once it arose.

One of Gabbard’s meetings with Assad on January 16, 2017, was scheduled to begin at 12:15 p.m. Her next appointment was with Assad’s wife at 3 p.m., according to a timeline reviewed by the Post. This differs from the report delivered to Congress, which detailed that her meeting with Assad had lasted only 90 minutes and her face time with Assad’s wife began at 2 p.m.

Once her staff learned about her meeting, they knew that it looked bad. Gabbard’s deputy chief of staff had warned that her meeting with the dictator seemed “rather long” and urged that “formalities” be skipped to “cut down on the time that it appears you two sat and talked.” Gabbard’s press secretary pitched grouping her meeting with others so it could “appear more like” one of many “protocol meetings.”

One of Gabbard’s former staffers recalled that the ex-representative’s first meeting with Assad was listed as “somewhere around three hours.”

“I remember thinking, ‘That’s insane,’” the staffer told the Post. “What do you talk about for three hours in a supposed unplanned meeting?”

Gabbard’s confirmation hearing is still forthcoming, but this report draws into sharp relief the efforts of nearly 100 former U.S. diplomats and intelligence and national security officials who urged Senate leadership to review the government’s files on Gabbard behind closed doors.

Officials said in December that her past actions “call into question her ability to deliver unbiased intelligence briefings to the President, Congress, and to the entire national security apparatus.”