Keeping Score: Executive Orders Attack Trans Community; Americans Need Paid Leave and Childcare Policies; Unvaccinated Measles Cases Soar

In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in this biweekly roundup.

This week: Trump’s executive orders continue to threaten trans people’s safety, jobs and rights; policies like paid family leave and universal preschool are incredibly popular; measles spreads among unvaccinated populations; Congress signals their plan to cut SNAP and Medicaid; women’s college basketball teams will be paid for March Madness games; almost a quarter of Gen Z adults are part of the LGBTQ community; and more.

Sundance 2025: ‘Cutting Through Rocks’ Is a Groundbreaking Film on Rural Iran and a Woman Who Dared to Lead

Cutting Through Rocks, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, follows Sara Shahverdi, the first female council member of a remote village in northern Iran, as she battles for women’s rights and community progress. Despite resistance from men who dismiss her as an exception, Shahverdi strives to change the lives of local girls, advocate for property rights, and improve village infrastructure.

This intimate documentary captures her triumphs and setbacks, offering a powerful portrayal of breaking barriers in a deeply traditional society.

March 2025 Reads for the Rest of Us

The best feminist books written by women, Black, brown, AAPI, LGBTQ, Native, disabled, trans, nonbinary writers in March 2025

Each month, I provide Ms. readers with a list of new books being published by writers from historically excluded groups.

And so we begin a busy season for books! There are always so many new books released this time of year that it’s hard to keep up. It is even harder to narrow them all down to a list of 20.

Women’s History Month: Five Groundbreaking Researchers Who Mapped the Ocean Floor, Tested Atomic Theories, Vanquished Malaria and More

Behind some of the most fascinating scientific discoveries and innovations are women whose names might not be familiar but whose stories are worth knowing:

—Marie Tharp revolutionized oceanography by mapping the seafloor, uncovering a rift valley that helped prove plate tectonic theory.
—Margaret Morse Nice transformed ornithology with her empathetic study of song sparrows, pioneering methods still used today.
—Tu Youyou led groundbreaking research in Maoist China, extracting artemisinin from traditional medicine, which became a lifesaving malaria treatment.
—Emmy Noether, a mathematical genius praised by Einstein, overcame systemic barriers to make foundational contributions to theoretical physics.
—Chien-Shiung Wu, an atomic physicist, played a critical role in the Manhattan Project and experimentally disproved a long-standing nuclear theory … though her male colleagues received the Nobel Prize for the discovery.

Sundance 2025: ‘Prime Minister’ Shows What it Looks Like When a Leader Prioritizes Compassion Over Politics

If you want a glimmer of hope that there are still sane, compassionate and intelligent politicians in the world, Prime Minister—winner of the Audience Award in the World Cinema Documentary Competition—will offer just that and more.

Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s sure-footed and community-minded approach to leadership shines through in this inspiring documentary directed by Michelle Walshe and Lindsay Utz.

‘Anora’ Took Hollywood by Storm. Here’s What It Says About Power, Class and Sex.

Sean Baker’s Anora invites our capacities for feelings, not judgment, to accompany one young, female sex worker through a few roller-coaster, genre-defying weeks in her life. Like all of Sean Baker’s films, it refuses an ending that tells us what to think. It doesn’t tie things up and lead us to a morally unambiguous conclusion but to the perfect, emotionally right one. And the magic of it is that it does it without much being said.

While the comic parts of the movie, like classic screwball comedies, are full of characters whose talk bumps into each other, jostling for our attention and laughter, the last movement has hardly any dialogue at all. And it will stay with you for a long time.

Montana’s Latest Anti-Trans Bill Has Disturbing Parallels With 19th-Century Eugenics Laws

HB 446 is just one of a new generation of social purity laws being presented across the country, using fears of “social contagion” from over a century ago that still ring true for many Americans.

Understanding this history is vital to unpacking the danger—often connected growing white supremacist movements—of these laws and the social fears they represent. 

From Fear to Power: Women’s True Crime Podcasts Fight Back

For generations, true crime media served as a tool for men’s control over women, using lurid stories of violence to encourage women’s fear and submission. From Victorian penny dreadfuls to mid-20th-century pulp magazines, these narratives reduced female victims to passive objects while often subtly suggesting they were somehow responsible for their victimization.

Today, women are seizing control of these narratives and transforming them into powerful vehicles for resistance and collective action. Through podcasts, social media and community organizing, women reclaim the true crime genre that once sought to frighten them into submission, using it instead to build networks of solidarity and survival.

Sundance 2025: Are the Kids All Right? In Docs, ‘Speak.’ and ‘Sugar Babies,’ Gen Z Strive to Imagine Their Futures

Two Sundance documentaries, Speak. and Sugar Babies, explore how Gen Z navigates ambition, identity and economic survival in an uncertain world.

Speak. follows high school debate champions using their voices to advocate for change, while Sugar Babies profiles a young woman leveraging online relationships to fund her education.

Though their paths differ, both films highlight the resilience and resourcefulness of a generation determined to carve out their own futures.

(This is one in a series of film reviews from the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, focused on films by women, trans or nonbinary directors that tell compelling stories about the lives of women and girls.)