Keeping Score: Senators Grill Hegseth, Call Trump Pick Unfit to Lead DOD; Pregnancy Doubles Homicide Risk for Women; Federal Judge Strikes Down Biden Title IX Rules

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.


Lest We Forget

“Our adversaries watch closely during times of transition, and any sense that the Department of Defense that keeps us safe is being steered by someone who’s wholly unprepared for the job puts America at risk, and I am not willing to do that.

“[Americans in the military] deserve a leader who can lead them, not a leader who wants to lower the standards for himself.”

—Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) during Senate hearings for Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick to to lead the Department of Defense. Hegseth faces criticism for his lack of relevant experience and character and conduct issues, including an allegation of sexual assault and inappropriate behavior towards women, excessive workplace drinking and financial mismanagement.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth questions Pete Hegseth, Trump's nominee for Defense secretary, during Hegseth's confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill on Jan. 14, 2025
Sen. Tammy Duckworth questions Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for Defense secretary, during Hegseth’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill on Jan. 14, 2025. (Alison Robbert / AFP via Getty Images)

“You have to change how you see women to do this job well, and I don’t know that you can.”

—Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) to Hegseth during the hearings

“Four years ago, the world watched as Donald Trump directed a violent mob that stormed our Capitol, attacking law enforcement and threatening our democratic institutions. The peaceful transfer of power is a hallmark of our democracy—especially when elections do not turn in our favor. Democrats remain steadfast in our support of the democratic values our country was founded on and will always work to ensure that our democratic processes and institutions continue to function in service of the American people, whether we win or lose.”

—DNC chair Jaime Harrison on the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol

“I was in excruciating pain, like screaming and crying pain. I didn’t even know I could bleed that much. I think they were waiting for me to get in bad enough health. They did ultrasounds and all that, but they didn’t help make sure that the miscarriage was completing. We kept telling them, ‘Hey, can y’all just do this D&C, so like we can be done with this pain?’ They wouldn’t answer.

“For me to have a miscarriage for the first time, it’s already a very scary process. You go to a hospital, you expect care, you expect some type of answers on what’s going on. And I didn’t get that.”

Tabitha Crowe experienced a miscarriage while visiting her parents in Louisiana. She was given misoprostol but denied a D&C procedure to complete the miscarriage, possibly due to the state’s strict abortion ban. Crowe drove four hours home to Florida, where she received the needed D&C.

“On Jan. 20, 2021, little girls worldwide watched in awe as the daughter of a mother from India and a father from Jamaica placed her hand on the Bible of the late civil rights icon and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and she took the oath to serve in one of the highest offices in the land. During a time when America faced a pandemic, there was hope, and many saw the promise of what could be in Vice President Harris.

“For as long as I have known her, she has always been a fighter. … Now I know the election outcome was not what we wanted or fought for. But believe me when I say she made a difference in the history of this nation. And I could not be prouder of her strength and resolve during the campaign. 

“Vice President Harris said, ‘The light of America’s promise will always burn bright as long as we never give up and as long as we keep fighting.’ Madam Vice President, you have been and always will be the light of America’s promise. You have given voice to the voiceless, made those who felt invisible feel seen, and fought for those unable to fight for themselves. It has been a true honor to work and serve with her over these years. I thank her for her service to this country. We are all the better for it.”

—Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) honored Vice President Kamala Harris in a speech on the Senate floor.

“Our attorney general, Jeff Landry, sent us all a letter saying, ‘I will put you in jail if you break these rules.’ Literally, ‘I am out to get you, so don’t break these rules.’ So, you do feel a little bit like there’s a target on your back—because you want to do what’s right for the patient. And these aren’t situations that happen infrequently, these aren’t clinical scenarios that happen once a year. They happen all the time. Every time I’m on call, I have a patient that’s considered to potentially be in a life-or-death situation.”

—A maternal-fetal medicine specialist in Louisiana, explaining how the state’s strict abortion ban has had a chilling effect on healthcare providers. Pregnant people in Louisiana are now being forced into dangerous unnecessary C-sections, and denied medically necessary prenatal care and miscarriage treatment.

Milestones

+ Vice President Harris presided over the official certification of Donald Trump’s win in the 2024 election, on the four-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Vice-President, Kamala Harris, showing the world today what integrity and respect for the Constitution looks like.

Katie Phang (@katiephang.bsky.social) 2025-01-06T19:59:09.240Z

+ President Biden has appointed a record 40 Black women to serve lifetime federal judgeships, compared to the two Trump appointed in his first term. In total, Biden appointed 235 federal judges, the most in a single term since the Carter administration. 

“This isn’t just about fairness—it’s about better decision-making and restoring public trust. The research shows that when you have more judges with different perspectives—because they’ve worked on different types of issues or come from different communities—it improves decision-making and certainly boosts trust in these institutions. So, ensuring that we have fair-minded judges at all levels is really important,” said Lena Zwarensteyn, senior director of the fair courts program at the Leadership Conference.

+ After months of Republican-led pushback at the state and federal level, a federal judge in Kentucky struck down Biden’s entire Title IX rules. U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves said that the rules overstepped the president’s authority and were “fatally” tainted by legal shortcomings. The judge’s decision effectively reverts the interpretation of Title IX to its previous status, undoing the Biden administration’s attempts to expand protections for LGBTQ+ students and modify how educational institutions handle sex-based discrimination complaints.

+ The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case against TikTok, and indicated that they may uphold the law that will lead to a U.S. ban. The ban will go into effect on Jan. 19 if it’s not sold by its Chinese parent company, Byte Dance.

+ The Republican-controlled North Carolina Supreme Court blocked the certification of the election of a Democratic justice. After Republican judge Jefferson Griffin lost the election to sitting Justice Allison Riggs by 734 votes, he asked the court to throw out over 60,000 ballots, in an effort to overturn the result despite two recounts already confirming Riggs’ win.

Jefferson Griffin, a defeated candidate for NC Supreme Court, is one of four losing NC GOP candidates trying to overturn election results by tossing out ballots from eligible North Carolinian voters. @anne-tindall.bsky.social, Special Counsel, had this to say:

[image or embed]

— Protect Democracy (@protectdemocracy.org) January 2, 2025 at 1:08 PM

The Democratic National Committee weighed in last week, filing a brief urging the court to reject the request to throw out ballots. DNC chair Jamie Harrison wrote, “For months, North Carolina Republicans have attempted to steal an election in plain sight at taxpayers’ expense, seeking to throw away some 60,000 lawful votes cast in the race for North Carolina Supreme Court justice. While Republicans attempt to suppress the votes of their constituents, Democrats will use every tool at our disposal to ensure that voters determine elections—not politicians.”

Allison Riggs speaks at a rally on Sunday, Jan. 5, in support of her candidacy.
Allison Riggs speaks at a rally on Sunday, Jan. 5, in support of her candidacy. Riggs was appointed to serve on the North Carolina Supreme Court in September of 2023 and ran for a full term 2024; multiple recounts show Riggs ahead of her Republican opponent, but he still refuses to concede. (Jenny Warburg)

+ Fifty-one men have been convicted of raping or attempting to rape Gisele Pelicot, including her husband Dominique, who drugged her and facilitated years of abuse. Dominique Pelicot was sentenced to 20 years in prison, but the other 50 men received between three and 15 years, below the national average and the prosecution’s request.

+ Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued a doctor in New York for providing telehealth abortion care. The case will likely go to the Supreme Court, and is designed to challenge “shield laws” that protect providers in 23 states from out-of-state abortion bans.

+ A Fifth Circuit Judge upheld access to trans healthcare under the Affordable Care Act, reversing a lower court decision that sex discrimination does not include sexual orientation or gender identity.

+ The Supreme Court will hear a case against South Carolina for disqualifying Planned Parenthood from Medicaid funding. A lower court previously agreed that South Carolina violated the rights of Medicaid patients to choose their medical providers.

+ Despite an attempt by 25 Democratic senators to amend the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the bill passed with language that will deny access to gender-affirming care for the transgender children of military members. In the end, 37 Democratic senators and 81 Democratic representatives voted for the NDAA with the transphobic provision included.

+ Montana’s ban on gender-affirming care for trans minors will remain temporarily blocked, after the state Supreme Court unanimously agreed that the law likely violates the state’s constitutional right to privacy. The case will now go before District Court Judge Jason Marks, who previously agreed that the ban would harm the mental and physical health of minors with gender dysphoria.

+ Blake Lively filed a lawsuit against actor and director Justin Baldoni for repeated sexual harassment and retaliation on the set of It Ends With Us. After she raised concerns of a hostile work environment during filming, Baldoni allegedly hired publicists to destroy Lively’s reputation with coordinated PR and social media campaigns

Blake Lively attends the LACMA Art+Film Gala in Los Angeles on Nov. 2, 2024
Blake Lively attends the LACMA Art+Film Gala in Los Angeles on Nov. 2, 2024. (Etienne Laurent / AFP via Getty Images)

Lively’s fellow cast members and the SAG-AFTRA union have publicly supported her and spoke out against Baldoni, who was dropped by his talent agency. Now, Baldoni is suing the New York Times for libel, seeking $250 million for damages from their reporting on his retaliation campaign against Lively.

+ OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has been accused of sexual abuse by his sister. Her lawsuit against him notes that the abuse began when Sam Altman was 12 and his sister just 3, and continued until Sam was an adult.

How We’re Doing

+ For women under 25, getting pregnant more than doubles their risk of homicide. All young women are at increased risk during pregnancy, but Black women have much higher rates of lethal violence. The killer is likely to be the boyfriend or husband, as intimate partner violence often exacerbates when a pregnancy gives an abuser more control and makes it harder for women to leave relationships. 

+ About 75 percent of pregnancy-associated homicides are committed with a firearm, so policies that prevent domestic abusers from owning firearms could reduce deaths. Access to contraception and abortion can help women avoid being trapped in abusive relationships. Robust screenings for intimate partner violence during OBGYN visits, access to victims’ advocates through police departments and increased education on healthy relationships may also reduce homicide rates.

+ Ninety-six percent of children living through the war in Gaza believe their death is imminent, and 49 percent want to die as a result of the trauma they’ve experienced. The psychological toll is severe, with most children reporting nightmares, fear, difficulty concentrating, and 92 percent of them are “not accepting of reality.” Forty-four percent of the fatalities the U.N. Human Rights Office was able to verify in Gaza were children, and almost a million children have been displaced from their homes.

+ At least 68 journalists were killed in 2024, more than 60 percent of the deaths in countries in conflict. More journalists have died in conflict in the last two-year period than any since 2016/2017. However, journalists killed outside of countries in conflict dropped to the lowest amount in 16 years, largely due to a decrease in Latin America and the Caribbean.

+ Trump’s Cabinet will be the wealthiest in American history, with more billionaires than any other administration. His proposed administration will be worth over $380 billion, and his official Cabinet at least $12 billion. In comparison, the net worth of Trump’s first Cabinet was $6.2 billion, and Biden’s Cabinet was $118 million.

+ New CDC data found that almost a quarter of American adults experience chronic pain most or every day, and 8.5 percent have high-impact chronic pain that frequently limited their life. Women are 2 percentage points more likely to have chronic pain and high-impact chronic pain than men.

Chronic pain increases with age, and varies by race and ethnicity. Over 30 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native adults experience chronic pain, compared to just 11.8 percent of Asian and 17 percent of Hispanic adults. Americans in large cities are less likely to have chronic pain than those in rural areas.

+ Twenty-six states have banned access to gender-affirming healthcare for trans youth, although some of the bans have been temporarily blocked with lawsuits underway. 16 states and DC have enacted protections for trans healthcare.

+ Independent abortion clinics provide 58 percent of abortion care in the U.S., and over 60 percent of abortion clinics in hostile states are independent. They also provide the vast majority of abortion care in the second and third trimesters. Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, 76 independent clinics were forced to close or stop providing abortion care. Extremist violence and harassment, financial challenges and threats of criminalization are often the cause.

+ Hospitals across the country have reported new moms to child welfare authorities after positive drug tests—for medications given to them during labor. When patients are given pain, anxiety or even blood pressure medications during labor and C-sections, it can result in their newborn testing positive. Even when women tested negative when they were admitted to the hospital, they could still be at risk of unnecessary and intrusive investigations.

In 27 states, hospitals are required to alert child welfare agencies about positive drug tests. But no states require hospitals to review patients’ records and confirm test results before reporting. These policies increase surveillance on pregnant people and could have severe legal consequences.

About

Katie Fleischer (she/they) is a Ms. editorial assistant working on the Front and Center series and Keeping Score.