Trump Inauguration and March for Life

By Peter Wolfgang ( bio - articles - email ) | Jan 25, 2025

I wear many hats. One of them is being a board member for March for Life Action, the c4 lobbying wing of the March for Life. Having just returned from a whirlwind week in Washington, I wanted to don another of my hats, Catholic Culture columnist, and share my thoughts with you, gentle reader.

First, the inauguration. I was not in town yet. But, like many of you, I was glued to my television. I have been following politics for nearly 50 years, literally since I was six years old, and I think this was the most I ever watched one.

I never agreed with the elite disdain for Trump’s “American Carnage” first inaugural speech in 2017. It felt as if the media and politicians were clucking their tongues at it from within their gated communities. But many Americans live among the very desolation Trump described. For them—for us—Trump’s description rang all too true. The disdain expressed for it simply widened the chasm between what Peggy Noonan had called “the protected” and “the unprotected.”

But this speech? Even better. “Golden age” does indeed beat “American carnage.”

Trump was reelected to stand up to the establishment folks sitting right there during his inauguration and I was glad that he called them out to their faces, even more than last time. My impression is that Trump is very ticked off. He didn’t shy from references to what was done to him, including the bullet to the head. I initially did not understand why the Left went the “fear and trembling” route in response to Trump’s 2024 victory instead of the “rage and resistance” route they chose in 2016. I understand it now. They are right to be afraid. The whole “drain the swamp” thing is real this time in a way that it was not last time. They brought this on themselves. Regardless of his claims to the contrary, Biden’s preemptive pardons of his family and others was indeed an admission of guilt.

I like that Trump called out the weaponization of the Department of Justice. The attacks on free speech. The inanity of DEI, gender ideology, and so forth.

There will be good people in the four years ahead who will make reasonable objections to this Trump policy or that Trump consequence. But we have arrived where we are because of the real norm-breaker, the real threat to democracy, that resided in the White House these past four years. I wish our betters had spoken up against him when they could have.

Consider what happened to the U.S. bishops when they tried, on the very day of Biden’s inauguration. They were undercut by a few of their number and by Rome. The Catholic Biden then went on to be the biggest persecutor of Catholics that we have ever had in the White House. As George Weigel has ruefully asked, “What are those Gómez critics thinking now?

Pope Francis, for his part, sent a gracious note to Trump on his second inauguration. There will, understandably, be disagreements between the Trump Administration and the Catholic Church in the years ahead. The U.S. bishops, for their part, would do well to heed the sage advice of Catholic Culture’s Thomas Mirus as to how to communicate those differences to their own flock.

And what about the week since? As many have said, Trump is “flooding the zone.” I, for one, am elated.

I was back stage at the March for Life, up front at the Rose Dinner, and practically ruined my toes on the trek in-between. It was worth it. The excitement among pro-lifers was palpable, beyond even anything we felt during Trump’s first term.

Trump freed the pro-life political prisoners the night before the March for Life. Pause on that one for a moment. Political prisoners. In the United States of America. The mind reels.

Trump restored biological sanity to federal policy on his first day in office. He—and the Republican Party—made the Democrats own their infanticide extremism the day before the March. While we were at the March for Life’s Rose Dinner, Trump restored the Mexico City Policy forbidding federal funding of abortion abroad and signed another executive order ending federal funding of abortion at home.

At the March itself, Trump spoke to us by video and Vice President Vance spoke to us in person. The Vance speech was notable for combining the pro-life message with the Catholic-influenced language of the new populism. When have we ever heard a Republican Vice President denounce “radical individualism” before? Or argue for social programs to make it affordable for young families to have more babies?

Notably, Vance referenced “federal” legislatures as playing a role in the pro-life fight. And Trump, in his speech, said for the first time that Roe’s repeal sent the issue back to “the people” rather than “the states.” Is the Trump-Vance Administration signaling a willingness to back away from the campaign compromises that disheartened pro-lifers?

It is too soon to tell. As David G. Bonagura, Jr. warned before the March for Life, the Trump actions we are applauding are things we ought to expect from any Republican Administration.

But it has only been a week. And the fact that we ought to expect more is due to the opportunities created by Trump himself, when he set in motion our long-sought goal of repealing Roe v. Wade. So stay tuned and buckle up. It’s going to be a wild ride.

Peter Wolfgang is president of Family Institute of Connecticut Action, a Hartford-based advocacy organization whose mission is to encourage and strengthen the family as the foundation of society. His work has appeared in The Hartford Courant, the Waterbury Republican-American, Crisis Magazine, Columbia Magazine, the National Catholic Register, CatholicVote, Catholic World Report, the Stream and Ethika Politika. He lives in Waterbury, Conn., with his wife and their seven children. The views expressed on Catholic Culture are solely his own. See full bio.
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