The underlying dynamic is straightforward, explains Robert P. Jones, the chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute, in his book “The End of White Christian America”: “Trump’s promise to restore a mythical past golden age — where factory jobs paid the bills and white Protestant churches were the dominant cultural hubs — powerfully tapped evangelical anxieties about an uncertain future.”

There’s no restoring that past. But with his nomination of conservative judges — and Mitch McConnell’s successful drive to confirm them in the Senate — Trump has given white evangelicals and their Republican representatives the opportunity to pass the laws and measures that reflect their ultra-traditionalist ideals.

So even if Trump distances himself from any particular law, that’s how one should understand the new wave of abortion restrictions — as direct attacks on the social and economic autonomy of people who can become pregnant designed to strengthen strict hierarchies of gender. The Georgia law, for example, would open a woman to criminal prosecution and jail time (including life imprisonment) if she ended a pregnancy after the first six weeks.

The Ohio and Alabama laws do not include exceptions for rape or incest, and Alabama allows a sentence of up to 99 years in prison for any doctor convicted of providing an abortion. A world where these laws stand is one where, for example, an 11-year-old girl is forced to bear the child of her 26-year-old rapist. It’s a world where predatory men are practically empowered to commit sexual violence.

It’s also a world with even more avenues to enforce racial hierarchy. The criminal justice system is already weighted against black and brown communities, which bear the brunt of police violence and mass incarceration. And when it comes to medical care and reproductive health, black women are particularly disadvantaged, with far worse outcomes than their white counterparts. There’s no question that these laws will lead to the criminalization of black and brown women above and beyond what already exists.

Never mind the jobs or economic growth, what “Make America Great Again” looks like in practice is the imposition of social control on groups that threaten a regressive, hierarchical vision of the country. MAGA is the Muslim ban; MAGA is child separation; MAGA is a woman in handcuffs for thinking she had the right to her own body.

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