According to Fox News, the governor’s state budget for the 2025-2027 fiscal period calls for changes of other gendered terms. For instance, it pushes to substitute “wife” and “husband” for “spouse,” to use “parent” in place of “father,” and to change “mother” to “parent who gave birth to the child.”
The budget was presented by the Wisconsin Senate’s Joint Committee on Finance on Tuesday. Wisconsin radio host Dan O'Donnell posted the bill language, and Senator Mike Lee, (R-UT), responded to the post with the simple comment, “Red flag!”
In a statement from the Republican Governor’s Association, the group condemned the changes, saying, “Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers’ latest left-wing push isn’t just out of touch, it’s offensive to mothers. Being a mother is the greatest privilege I will have in my lifetime, and every mother I know feels the same. If Tony Evers can reduce motherhood to an ‘inseminated person’ then our society is lost."
While presenting the budget, Evers did not address the language change.
The issue of gendered language has sparked intense debate in recent years, with terms like "chestfeeding" instead of "breastfeeding" and "birthing person" instead of "mother" becoming points of tension related to “woke” policy ideas. President Donald Trump used the topic of males playing in women’s sports as a focal point in his campaign.
On his first day back in office, Trump took a strong stance with an executive order titled, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” The order said that the government’s policy to recognize the two sexes male and female, and that they are “not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.”
