Ivanka Trump’s Trusted Advisor On Family Leave, Maggie Cordish, Quits

Ivanka Trump’s friend and close advisor on family leave policy, Maggie Cordish, has left her role at the White House, reports Politico. There are no current plans to replace her, which would seem to not bode well for the passage of a bill that would help families, though a spokesperson for the White House disagrees with that portrait. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” said an official to the website. “Staffers from the Domestic Policy Council and the Office of Legislative Affairs, the official said, will continue working on paid leave, reporting to Ivanka Trump,” according to Politico. The official insisted that is how it’s always been and it will continue that way.

At the White House, Cordish was one of Ivanka Trump’s closest allies, especially since the two women have known each other as both attended the University of Pennsylvania. She leaves just as Republicans, including Ivanka Trump, “struggle to get paid leave legislation off the ground. Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) have been working on a bill that would let people borrow from Social Security to fund paid leave,” says Politico, though as of now the bill hasn’t been introduced. Support for it has been minimal with mainly conservatives on board, but Democrats and even some Republicans aren’t in favor because they don’t want to take a chance of putting Social Security at any more of a financial risk.

Getting the legislation for paid family leave has been very important to Ivanka Trump. Back in July of 2017, she wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, in which she championed a national guaranteed paid-leave program, saying that it is “an investment in America’s working families.” As The Hill pointed out, she referenced her father’s 2018 budget that had six weeks of paid leave for families after they had an addition to the family, whether it was by birth or adoption.

“The policy outlined in the administration’s recent budget proposal emphasizes the need for mothers and fathers to have access to paid leave to encourage both parents to share parenting responsibilities and to strive toward minimizing hiring biases,” she wrote.

All of this comes on the heels of the president’s daughter being accused of faking her concern for children and families’ issues. As previously reported last week by the Inquisitr, Emily Jane Fox, who authored a book about the Trump children called Born Trump: Inside America’s First Family, claimed that Ivanka’s unwillingness to stand up to her father’s agenda shows that her caring about what families are going through is a sham.