Trump and Melania’s awkward speech on women’s health — and the comical hypocrisy behind it

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump signed an executive order on women's health Monday at a Rose Garden event, with the first lady promising sweeping change. The order emphasizes artificial intelligence and faster movement of research into clinical and community practice, and it recreates a White House task force. It also revokes Joe Biden's 2024 order on the same subject, plus a 2023 Biden order that had set up a similar task force, according to The Independent.

The president devoted much of the remarks to the garden's new granite surface, a heliport and the planned ballroom, before expressing disbelief that the NIH lacked a women's health division. The Independent notes that Biden's order, which had comparable goals, concentrated on research funding and access, grant accountability, and innovation at businesses and universities.

The Independent reports that since Donald Trump returned to office, federal agencies have flagged grants that mention women and pulled funding, hitting work on uterine fibroids, female cancers, Alzheimer's and pregnancy. It argues the new order does not empower the universities that do much of the needed research, and links the timing to the approaching midterms.

Summarized by PolitiKool from The Independent’s reporting. Read the full story at The Independent →