THE FOX NEWS GREEN ROOM, ROUGHLY 476 A.D. (The Daily Whatever Press)—Katie Miller would like all of us to know why the Roman Empire collapsed.
It wasn’t the civil wars. It wasn’t the plagues, the debased currency, the emperors murdering one another, or the Visigoths sacking the city in 410. It was us. The ladies. We got busy.
Here’s what she said this week on Fox News’s The Will Cain Show, as transcribed by Mediaite: “If more women put the same energy into their marriages and into finding a spouse that they do into their careers, you would see society have a lot more babies because, ultimately, that’s what led to the downfall of Rome—when women stopped having babies, and you started putting energy elsewhere.”
And then, for good measure: “That is where society just absolutely collapses.”
Girl.
Who is Katie Miller?
In case you’ve been living under a blissfully ignorant rock, Katie Miller is married to Stephen Miller, the top White House adviser behind the administration’s immigration crackdown. She’s also a podcaster. She hosts The Katie Miller Podcast, which she launched in August 2025 for—according to Fox News—busy moms.
And she is, herself, a woman with a career. A big one. She was Vice President Mike Pence’s press secretary, then his communications director. She was the communications director for DOGE. She was appointed to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board. Now she hosts a weekly show.
She also has four children, all of them under 6. Her fourth was born in June.
When she launched the podcast, she described her day as running from bath time and breakfast “to getting out the door for work and everything in between.”
Getting out the door. For work. With the energy.
So, Katie. Babe. You are the career energy.
A brief history of the world, part I
I love history. I’m a GenX word nerd; I grew up on Mel Brooks’s History of the World, Part I, where the Roman Empire is mostly a vehicle for Dom DeLuise as a ravenous Emperor Nero. Even Mel Brooks didn’t blame the fall of Rome on women with jobs.
You know who did think Roman women should have more babies? Augustus. In 18 B.C., the first Roman emperor passed the Julian marriage laws to push the upper classes to marry and have children, because he was worried the elite weren’t reproducing enough.
The Western Roman Empire fell in 476 A.D. That’s nearly 500 years after the government started telling Roman women to have more babies. If anything, the timeline suggests the pronatalist panic came first and the empire fell anyway. Huge if true. It isn’t.
Shermichael Singleton, a Republican strategist and CNN commentator, told her on X to pick up a few history books. We can make the case for strong families, he wrote, “without being historically illiterate.”
And he’s (uncharacteristically) not wrong.
The receipts on us
The actual numbers on American women and babies: the CDC reported 3,606,400 births in 2025, down 1%. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says 73.9% of mothers with kids under 18 were in the labor force last year. Most mothers work. Most mothers have to work.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump calls himself “the fertilization president.” Hang on, I’m gonna need to vomit in my mouth a bit now…
…
…
…
OK, that was unpleasant, but I’m back. His administration offers $1,000 “Trump accounts” for new babies. And it cut Medicaid, which pays for more than 4 in 10 births in this country.
So the plan is: have more babies, but on one income, without Medicaid, with less help, and also please stop being so career-focused, ladies, says the woman with a podcast, a résumé, and a husband in the West Wing.
It’s dystopian AF.
Would anyone say this to men? “Gentlemen, if you put the energy you spend on fantasy football into finding a wife, society wouldn’t collapse.” Could you even imagine that segment on Fox? No. Nobody blames the fall of Rome on men’s fantasy leagues.
About that energy
This isn’t new for her, either. Back in February, Katie Miller fired off a post on X telling women that “if women put that same career energy into dating it would lead to better outcomes.” That one was aimed at Meghan McCain, who had said a lot of women want to be mothers and “just haven’t found the right person.”
Okay, Katie.
I’m a midlife woman dating again. I can promise you the energy is not the problem. The energy is there. The energy is so there. The problem is the men who think a woman with a job is a society-ending event and say it on cable.
What makes a family possible is child care she can afford, health care that doesn’t vanish when her hours get cut, a partner who does half, and a government that doesn’t treat her womb like a policy lever.
Katie Miller has a career, four kids, a podcast, and a husband in the West Wing. She’s doing all of it. And she went on television to tell the rest of us to do less.
Rome didn’t fall because women had jobs, Katie. But your argument just did.
Hi, I’m Dana — and I Write Out Loud
I Write Out Loud is my primary home for cultural memoir, personal essays, and live conversations about the strange, brave process of becoming yourself in midlife. If you like essays with a point of view and apex pulse, you’ll find plenty to read there.
And if you enjoyed this story — why not buy me a coffee? ☕
{Make mine a decaf iced oat milk mocha, please!}
Thanks for stopping by!
We’re Dana DuBois and Lawrence Winnerman, lifelong BFFs and co-hosts of The Daily Whatever Show — our independent home for smart, irreverent conversations about culture, politics, media, creativity, relationships, aging, and whatever else is shaping modern life this week.
We’re live every Friday at 10am ET with thoughtful analysis, sharp interviews, cultural commentary, humor, and the kind of conversations that don’t pretend everything is fine when it clearly isn’t.
If you’re enjoying what we’re building, please consider supporting our work with a paid subscription. Your support helps us keep the show independent, book fascinating guests, and continue creating smart conversations with your morning coffee.
We love you — mean it!
Correct me but wasn't it because rome spent too much on wars and the peasants rose up as no food.