Trump Holds Housing Aid Hostage to Force GOP Support for Voting Restrictions

PUBLISHED 6/27/2026 by

This week, Trump cancelled a planned signing ceremony for the bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act—which would help address the worsening housing affordability crisis—and said he won’t sign it unless Republicans in the Senate vote to pass the SAVE America Act. If you recall, the SAVE Act would implement sweeping voting restrictions, including necessitating proof of citizenship to vote, and in doing so, make it much more difficult for millions of women who changed their name at marriage to vote.

His fixation on the SAVE America Act isn’t about safeguarding the elections for Americans—it’s about rigging the elections to ensure a Republican win, by suppressing the votes of those who disagree.

10 Must-Read Stories on Women in Politics This Week: Title IX Anniversary, AI’s Anti-Women Bias and Ranked-Choice Voting Victories

PUBLISHED 6/26/2026 by

Weekend Reading on Women’s Representation is a weekly compilation of stories about women’s representation in politics, on boards, in sports and entertainment, in judicial offices and in the private sector in the U.S. and around the world—with a little gardening and goodwill mixed in for refreshment! Published every Friday.

—This week marked the 54th anniversary of Title IX.
—As the Taliban approaches the five-year mark of its return to power this August, a rare protest in western Afghanistan last week laid bare both the brutality of its rule and the resilience of those living under it.
—A woman will replace Eric Swalwell in California … but for not two more months.
—A study of 133 AI systems found that 44 percent demonstrated gender bias, and more than a quarter showed both gender and racial bias.

… and more.

America’s Roman Holiday: Prime Day and the Price of Convenience

PUBLISHED 6/26/2026 by

Amazon Prime Day has become one of the biggest shopping events in the country, but its success tells a story far bigger than discounts.

In an economy where families are struggling with the cost of groceries, rent, healthcare and childcare, the appeal of lower prices is understandable. Yet the massive scale of Prime Day also raises a harder question: What does it mean when one of America’s defining consumer rituals depends on a labor system that workers, regulators and advocates have repeatedly described as dangerous, underpaid and deeply unequal?

Amazon’s influence extends far beyond its own warehouses. By normalizing ever-faster delivery, constant surveillance and relentless productivity, the company has helped reshape expectations across the retail economy.

As billionaire wealth continues to soar and labor protections face renewed political pressure, Prime Day reveals the growing divide between those who profit from convenience and those whose labor makes it possible.

With Latest Immigration Decisions, the Supreme Court’s Conservative Majority Rewrites Immigration Law, One Word at a Time

PUBLISHED 6/26/2026 by

Just days after World Refugee Day, the Supreme Court issued two immigration decisions that dramatically narrow protections for asylum seekers and Temporary Protected Status holders: Mullin v. Al Otro Lado and Mullin v. Doe.

Although the cases address different legal questions, they share a troubling approach: The conservative majority isolates individual words from their statutory context to expand presidential authority while limiting humanitarian protections Congress intended to provide.

In one decision, the Court allows the Trump administration to revive a policy that turns away asylum seekers at the border before they can present their claims. In the other, it shields the administration’s termination of TPS for hundreds of thousands of Haitians and thousands of Syrians from meaningful judicial review.

Powerful dissents from Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan argue that the majority ignored both the broader legal framework and the real-world consequences of its rulings.

These opinions are about far more than technical questions of statutory interpretation. By reading immigration law out of context, the Court is reshaping who can seek protection in the United States—and how much power the executive branch has to decide their fate.

Peace Without Women? Ongoing Peace Talks and War Negotiations Keep Leaving Women Behind

PUBLISHED 6/25/2026 by

As negotiations over conflicts across the Middle East continue, one pattern remains stubbornly familiar: women are largely absent from the room. From Gaza to Iran, women are bearing the costs of conflict, repression, displacement and economic collapse even as negotiations over security, governance, reconstruction and political transition move forward without their meaningful participation.

This exclusion has consequences far beyond representation. Decisions about who governs, who receives aid, who returns home and who is protected shape whether societies emerge from conflict more secure or more fragile. When women are kept outside these processes, transitions risk reinforcing the inequalities and grievances that helped drive conflict in the first place.

Public Health Under Fire: Military Flu Outbreak Illustrates the Danger of Politicizing Vaccine Policy

PUBLISHED 6/25/2026 by

Few medical advances have saved more lives than vaccines. Yet the Trump administration continues to undermine that success by politicizing public health and discrediting decades of scientific evidence. The recent flu outbreak at Lackland Air Force Base—which sickened nearly 300 service members after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ended the military’s longstanding flu vaccine requirement—offers a stark reminder of what happens when ideology replaces evidence.

This is not an isolated incident. From weakening federal vaccine recommendations under Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to fueling distrust in routine immunizations, the administration’s anti-science agenda is already contributing to preventable outbreaks and declining vaccination rates.

Public health should never be a partisan project, and the costs of treating it as one are measured in illness, lost readiness and lives put at unnecessary risk.

TV Still Has a Lot to Learn About Abortion

PUBLISHED 6/25/2026 by

Four years after Dobbs, television has become more willing to acknowledge the legal and political barriers to abortion care—but too often, it still reinforces harmful myths.

While shows like Grey’s Anatomy have depicted the devastating consequences of abortion bans, others continue to fall back on familiar tropes. In And Just Like That, the show largely sidesteps abortion as a normal, legitimate choice—especially for an affluent married mother in New York. And recently, the critically acclaimed Margo’s Got Money Troubles builds its entire premise around a young woman rejecting abortion despite pressure from those around her.

Those storytelling choices matter. Research shows that accurate abortion storylines can increase public understanding, reduce stigma and even help people feel more confident in their own reproductive healthcare decisions.

Yet television still rarely reflects the reality of abortion today—from the fact that most abortion patients are already parents, to the widespread use of medication abortion.

In an era of widespread confusion and misinformation, TV has the power to inform millions of viewers, but only if it moves beyond outdated narratives and portrays abortion as the ordinary healthcare decision it is for so many people.

Keeping Score: Abortion Bans Cost $140B Per Year; Federal Courts Protect Trans Youth and Incarcerated Trans Women; Feminists React to FBI Raid on Ohio Voting Rights Organization

PUBLISHED 6/24/2026 by

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:
—Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D-Texas) is working to get Republicans on the record on the Right to Contraception Act.
—ICE has already reported the deaths of 18 detainees this year, on pace to surpass the highest number of deaths in decades.
—Abortion restrictions could cost the U.S. economy $140 billion annually in lost earnings.
—”I love the inflation,” says Trump.
—The EEOC will no longer require federal agencies to report on race, ethnicity, sex or gender identity.
—83 percent of American voters agree that emergency contraception should be easily accessible.
—Abortion ban states are slowly losing a generation of women medical students and doctors.
—More than 770,000 children have already lost access to SNAP benefits after last year’s funding cuts.
—A new study found trans women athletes have no significant physical advantages over cis women.
—Missouri has restored access to medication abortions after a Jackson County judge struck down key state restrictions, allowing clinics to resume providing the service and marking the first time medication abortion has been available in Missouri since 2018.
—Republicans passed a reconciliation bill that provides roughly $70 billion for ICE and CBP, sending it to President Trump’s desk. (This is on top of more than $140 billion Republicans already provided for those agencies last year.)

… and more.

Four Years After Dobbs, Women’s Healthcare Is a Scarce Resource

PUBLISHED 6/24/2026 by and

This week marks four years since the Supreme Court revoked the federal right to abortion, catapulting the nation into an era of state-sanctioned deprivation of bodily autonomy for American women.

On this anniversary, we write to take stock of one of the underreported outcomes of Dobbs: the growing number of individuals and families for whom access to healthcare is diminishing because of a rise in medical deserts.

It’s common sense—there is no reason for highly mobile professionals to remain in places where they find themselves increasingly facing the prospect of personal risk for practicing medicine.

Not surprisingly, medical deserts are prevalent in conservative and rural states; the downstream pressure suggests it soon will become an issue for blue states, too.

The impact on America’s unconscionable maternal and infant mortality rates cannot be overstated. The United States has the highest maternal mortality rate of any wealthy country; as rates continue to drop worldwide, they climb higher here, with Black women more than three times more likely than white women to die in childbirth. Infant mortality has risen specifically in states that enacted abortion restrictions since 2022, again with impacts worse among Black infants.