Hi, everyone. I'm Maggie McGrath, editor of Forbes Women. We have seen the Department of Government Efficiency, also known as Doge, make cuts to thousands of areas of the federal government. A lot of these areas affect women. My colleague, Emily Baker-White, has a new story on

Forbes.com, pointing out that the man, kind of in charge of Doge, Elon Musk, has long claimed

that civilization will collapse unless we raise the birth rate. But Doge is slashing billions in funding

for pregnant and nursing mothers and their children.

Emily, thank you for joining us to discuss this story.

I'm so glad to be here.

Emily, we've seen tens of thousands of government workers lose their jobs over the past few months.

So many programs have been cut.

We've been looking at U.S. aid.

We've seen cuts at NIH, CDC, and beyond. But you took a really comprehensive bird's eye view at everything we've seen from Doge. And you come to the conclusion that women and children are really affected. And this is counter to what Elon Musk and President Trump have said in their own personal lives and on the campaign trail.

Can you just talk about what drew you to this story?

Yeah, what drew me to this story was this bizarre tension.

I was looking at a list of all of these terminated grants to go do science and health care in a bunch of different ways.

And I kept seeing maternal and pregnant and other terms that sort of specifically looked at

helping people start families, helping people get pregnant, helping people deliver babies

safely. And I was like, why? This is the fertilization president. We've got like Elon Musk saying

civilization is going to fall if we don't all have more babies. Why are they cutting funding to

programs that are trying to help people get safely pregnant? And I did not find a satisfying

answer to that question, but I did talk to some of the people whose work has had to stop. And what's

really clear is whatever the intention of these cuts, they are affecting people who are trying to get

pregnant. They are making it harder for people to get pregnant safely, to deliver babies safely,

to go through the postpartum period safely. And it just does not make any sense.

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