If we ask whether Donald Trump’s presidency caused an increase in domestic violence, we’re asking the wrong question—like asking whether a match caused a fire or simply ignited an already gasoline-soaked room. The more important question isn’t about causal statistics; it’s about cultural permission. Trump’s influence on domestic violence operates by normalizing what was once unspeakable, validating what was once shameful, and gradually eroding the protections that safeguard survivors.
Consider what happened in the forty-eight hours after Trump’s 2024 electoral victory. The phrase “your body, my choice,” a grotesque reversal of the reproductive rights slogan, spread rapidly across social media. An analysis by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue observed how the phrase went from fewer than 20 mentions per day to nearly 2,000 the day after the election, marking a 4,600 percent increase on the platform X alone.1
“Your body, my choice.”
If misogyny were a stock, these numbers would show the kind of explosive growth that would make venture capitalists salivate. But the only thing being built here is a permission structure for men to voice what they once felt they should keep to themselves. Men weren’t suddenly inventing new forms of misogyny; they were simply expressing what they always felt, now with the confidence that comes from having their worldview validated at the highest levels of American power.
The Permission Structure
This is how the permission structure functions. When a man proven liable for sexual abuse, accused by more than twenty women of misconduct, who boasted on tape about grabbing women “by the pussy” wins the presidency—twice—it sends a message far more powerful than any policy memo. It demonstrates to men that their dominance over women is not only acceptable but could even be rewarded with the nation’s highest office. It tells survivors that their pain doesn’t matter—that the country they live in values their bodies less than it values tax cuts, immigration enforcement, or whatever issue voters claimed was more important than character.
The psychological impact on survivors has been consistently documented. Research published by the London School of Economics examined how the 2016 election affected intimate partner violence, with shelter workers reporting that many survivors said Trump reminded them of their abusers.2 This wasn’t metaphorical. These women were experiencing real trauma responses—nightmares, panic attacks, flashbacks—triggered by seeing the president on television. One survivor described waking up “drenched in sweat to the sensation of someone strangling her” after dreaming Trump was trying to grab her.3
Dismantling the Safety Net
But Trump’s impact goes beyond the psychological. His administration has systematically dismantled the infrastructure meant to protect women from violence—done so with a level of efficiency that might be admired if it weren’t used to undermine the safety net keeping women alive. The 19th documented how, within the first 130 days of Trump’s second term, the administration endangered the domestic violence safety net through funding pauses, cuts, firings, and information purges, directly threatening over 2,485 domestic violence shelters and 1,300 rape crisis centers nationwide.4 The National Domestic Violence Hotline removed resources for LGBTQ+ survivors from its website to comply with executive orders banning discussion of “radical gender ideology.”5
The CDC’s Dating Matters program—a long-term prevention effort that had shown clear success in reducing dating violence, sexual violence, harassment, substance use, and delinquency among middle schoolers by the time they reached 11th grade6—was cut in January after Trump took office, and its entire team was laid off by April 2025.7 One scientist whose career was dedicated to this work simply said: “Dating Matters consumed a lot of my life and it was destroyed for no reason whatsoever.”
These aren’t mere bureaucratic adjustments; they’re ideological purges executed with the precision of someone ticking off items on a list titled “Ways to Make America More Dangerous for Women.” The Trump administration’s initial budget proposal included eliminating the team responsible for rape prevention and education.8 Hundreds of grants already awarded by the Office of Justice Programs were suddenly canceled.9 The Office on Violence Against Women removed all open notices of funding opportunities from its website on February 6, 2025.10 State domestic violence coalitions took their websites offline, fearing that their messages supporting LGBTQ+ survivors could jeopardize federal funding.11
The cruelty of this method becomes clear once you understand what these programs do. Domestic violence shelters don’t just offer temporary housing — they provide legal advocacy, counseling, safety planning, job training, and the kind of comprehensive support that enables someone to leave an abusive relationship for good. When these services are gone, survivors are left with no options. They remain in dangerous situations because they have nowhere else to turn.
When the President Says It’s Not a Crime
Trump understands this. His comments about domestic violence being “much lesser things, things that take place in the home” weren’t mistakes. They reflected his philosophy. During a speech at the Museum of the Bible on September 8, 2025, Trump argued that crime statistics in Washington, D.C., would appear even lower if authorities stopped counting domestic violence. “If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say, ‘This was a crime, see?’ So, now I can’t claim 100 percent” crime reduction, he said.12
The presidency gave him a platform to argue that violence against women shouldn’t even be seen as violence. You can imagine him refining this idea: “What if we just ignore the crimes we don’t like? Brilliant! Why didn’t anyone think of this earlier?” The reality, of course, is that they did—it’s just that we used to call it “corruption” instead of “policy innovation.”
This marks a significant shift in how we perceive domestic violence. For years, advocates have worked to raise awareness that intimate partner violence is not simply a private matter but a societal issue. Trump’s rhetoric and policies aim to reverse this progress, re-privatize violence against women, and categorize it as “domestic disputes” that authorities should not intervene in.
From Rhetoric to Police Reports
The impact spreads outward. When shelter workers describe Trump’s election as creating “a cataclysmic change in their jobs,” they’re referring to something tangible. One Iowa shelter worker explained, “Former President Trump broke all the norms. So when things stopped working, when they stop even the idea of civility, the most vulnerable are hurt the most.”13 The framework of “you can do anything” that Trump expressed didn’t stay abstract. It appeared in police reports. Perpetrators directly cited Trump’s language to justify their abuse.14
Here we face a bitter irony: Trump’s lasting impact on American political discourse might be showing that words do matter—just not in the way civics teachers hoped. It turns out you can indeed incite action through rhetoric, normalize the abnormal with repetition, and give social permission for violence through presidential statements.
A 2016 laboratory study found that exposure to Trump’s rhetoric about women led men to behave more aggressively toward women in controlled settings.15 This wasn’t about political parties—it was about permission. When influential men display certain behaviors without consequences, others see those behaviors as acceptable. The Trump administration’s choice to restore gun rights to convicted domestic abuser Mel Gibson16 sends a clear message: abusing women is not disqualifying.
The Authoritarian Project
The gender-based aspect of Trump’s efforts to minimize violence is linked to his larger authoritarian agenda. Women who exercise independence—deciding whether to have children, supporting themselves financially, making personal choices—pose a threat to authoritarian systems that rely on traditional hierarchies. This is why the Trump administration both reduces funding for domestic violence services and promotes pronatalist policies like $1,000 baby bonuses. It also established a White House Faith Office that ostensibly aims to “protect women and children” but in reality seeks to “strengthen marriage and family”—code for returning women to male-led household roles.17
The Orwellian language might be impressive if it weren’t so obvious. “Protecting women” actually means defunding the shelters that help them. “Strengthening families” ends up making it harder for women to escape abusive situations.
What the Numbers Tell Us
According to CBS News analysis of FBI data, domestic homicides more than doubled from 2019 to 2024, increasing from 1,065 to 2,339.18 The COVID-19 pandemic definitely played a role in this rise—lockdowns kept victims with their abusers, and economic pressures heightened tensions. But the pandemic ended, and the numbers haven’t dropped back to pre-pandemic levels. Why? Because the cultural permission structure that Trump established still persists.
The problem isn’t that Trump invented misogyny or domestic violence. The problem is that he made it acceptable to openly express what had once been whispered, to act on impulses that had previously been restrained by social consequences, and to dismantle the systems that had offered survivors a way out.
The Toll on Survivors
According to the CDC’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, about 41% of women and 26% of men have experienced contact sexual violence, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime.19 Over 61 million women and 53 million men have faced psychological aggression by an intimate partner during their lives.20 Data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics reveal more than 1.8 million domestic and intimate partner violence victimizations in 2024 alone.21 Every day in America, three women are killed by intimate partners.22 When a gun is present in a home experiencing domestic violence, the risk of a woman being killed increases fivefold.23
The question isn’t whether we can connect Trump’s election to specific acts of violence. The real question is what it signifies when a nation appoints as its highest leader a man who treats women’s bodies as his property, who dismisses domestic violence as “a little fight with the wife,” and who systematically cuts funding for services that protect women’s lives. The truth is that we’ve prioritized valuing women less than whatever Trump symbolizes to his supporters. And this choice has lasting effects, now becoming deeply embedded in our culture. It feeds abusers’ confidence and fuels the despair of survivors who see their country as unwilling to protect their safety.
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1 Institute for Strategic Dialogue analysis as reported in Melissa Noel, “’Your Body, My Choice’ X Post Goes Viral As Women Report Increased Misogyny Post-Election,” Newsweek, November 9, 2024; Rebecca Jennings, “’Your body, my choice’: The post-election attack line, explained,” Vox, November 13, 2024.
2 Olivia Storz, “’You Can Do Anything’: Intimate partner violence and the 2016 US presidential election,” LSE Women, Peace and Security blog, December 13, 2021.
3 Carly Lanning, “Donald Trump is a Trigger,” Ms. Magazine, November 28, 2016 (updated February 3, 2024).
4 “The Trump administration is making the country less safe for domestic violence victims,” The 19th, May 30, 2025.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid. (Reporting on CDC’s Dating Matters longitudinal study on 6th-8th graders across four cities, showing reduction in dating violence, sexual violence, harassment, substance use, and delinquency by 11th grade.)
7 Ibid. (Resources deleted in January 2025 to comply with executive order on “radical gender ideology”; entire team laid off by April 2025.)
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 “Trump questions whether ‘lesser’ crimes such as domestic violence should count toward DC crime statistics,” ABC News, September 9, 2025; Mychael Schnell, “Trump suggests domestic violence shouldn’t count in DC crime stats,” The Hill, September 9, 2025; Emily Davies, “Trump downplays domestic disturbances in speech at Bible museum,” The Washington Post, September 9, 2025.
13 Olivia Storz, “’You Can Do Anything’: Intimate partner violence and the 2016 US presidential election,” LSE Women, Peace and Security blog, December 13, 2021.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Rita Smith, “How Trump’s America Is Normalizing Violence Against Women,” Ms. Magazine, April 28, 2025.
17 Leigh Gilmore, “Reducing women’s rights — in the name of protecting them — is central to Trump’s agenda,” Cognoscenti (WBUR), May 30, 2025.
18 “Millions of Americans have reported being victims of domestic violence. Experts say we need to talk about it more,” CBS News analysis of FBI data, December 9, 2025.
19 “About Intimate Partner Violence,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, September 3, 2025, citing Leemis, R.W., et al., “The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2016/2017 Report on Intimate Partner Violence,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, 2022.
20 Ibid.
21 Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Criminal Victimization, 2024” (NCJ 307554), April 2024.
22 Dale Margolin Cecka, “Trump’s comments highlight our failures on domestic violence,” The Hill, September 16, 2025.
23 Ibid.