MAGA Republicans are back in the White House, and Project 2025 is their guide—the right-wing plan to turn back the clock on women’s rights, remove abortion access, and force women into roles as wives and mothers in the “ideal, natural family structure.” We know an empowered female electorate is essential to democracy. That’s why day after day, we stay vigilant in our goals to dismantle patriarchy at every turn. We are watching, and we refuse to go back. This is the War on Women Report.
Since our last report…
+ Dolores Huerta, the labor organizer at the helm of United Farm Workers and one of the most powerful women in the movement, passed away on Oct. 28. She was 96. Huerta was also a board member of the Feminist Majority Foundation, the publisher of Ms. In March of this year, at the age of 95, she revealed that in the 1960s, Cesar Chavez sexually assaulted her. She kept silent at the time because she feared the truth would hurt the farmworker movement she dedicated her life to. As Kathy Spillar wrote this week for Ms., “Consider what that means. Every rally. Every negotiation. Every photograph. She carried it through all of them, and set it down only when setting it down might help someone else. We do not count that as a footnote to her feminism. We think it tells you most of what you need to know.”
+ Abortion bans may be linked to approximately 135 excess homicides among women of reproductive age between 2023 and 2024, a new study suggests. Homicide is a leading cause of death during pregnancy, often at the hands of an intimate partner. The findings expose another chilling dimension of America’s reproductive rights crisis: Restricting abortion access may not only strip women of bodily autonomy, but also leave those experiencing domestic violence with fewer opportunities to escape dangerous, potentially deadly relationships.
+ Federal agents searched the home of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) in the last few weeks of her reelection bid. The Justice Department provided few details to the public but Omar called the search an “attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement.”
Let’s not forget what else was sent our way this month…
Wednesday, Oct. 7: Arizona Congressional Candidate Reports Sexual Assault While Repairing Campaign Sign
Bernadette Greene-Placentia, the Democratic candidate challenging Republican Rep. Abe Hamadeh in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District, says she was raped while repairing a campaign sign in Sun City on Aug. 14. According to her account, Greene-Placentia was struck in the head and lost consciousness, later waking to discover evidence of a sexual assault. She recalled one of her alleged attackers calling her a “Democratic bitch” before leaving the scene with another man.
Greene-Placentia reported the alleged assault to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, which is investigating. She has since spoken publicly about the experience, describing the fear and trauma that initially made coming forward difficult.
The allegations draw attention to the threats of gender-based violence and harassment facing women in politics, particularly those campaigning in highly polarized environments. Sexual violence and intimidation can have consequences far beyond individual survivors, threatening women’s ability to participate freely and safely in public life.
Monday, Oct. 12: Trump Hires Antiabortion Extremist to White House Role
Katie Zacharia served as President Donald Trump’s press secretary for only five days in October, beginning on Oct. 12 and serving in the role until Trump reportedly asked her to leave on Friday, Oct. 16. However, despite Zacharia’s very brief stint, her initial appointment as press secretary suggests Trump is more willing than ever to give powerful positions to aggressive opponents of abortion.
Before her White House role, Zacharia served on the advisory board of White Rose Resistance, an antiabortion extremist organization known for its harassment campaigns against abortion clinics and providers. According to reporting by Jessica Valenti, White Rose Resistance has called for women who have abortions to be “executed in the public square” and argued that pro-choice candidates should lose their right to hold public office. The group’s founder, Seth Gruber, has said that abortion involves “demonic pagan rituals” and that antiabortion advocates should “make the death penalty great again.” White Rose Resistance is also connected with extremist activist AJ Hurley, who was charged with felony stalking of an abortion provider in San Francisco in 2022.
Zacharia herself has echoed common misleading antiabortion talking points, including connecting abortion to Nazi Germany and baselessly claiming that mifepristone uses the same chemicals used in Nazi concentration camps.
Trump’s appointment of Zacharia as press secretary—one of the Trump administration’s most public-facing roles—suggests his administration is not hesitating to give platforms to people with what even the broader antiabortion movement once considered extremist fringe views. Historically, most antiabortion advocates have shied away from advocating for punishment for women who have abortions, let alone the death penalty. In Trump’s second term, his administration has actively supported antiabortion extremists, as exemplified by Trump’s January 2025 pardoning of 23 antiabortion activists who were in prison for invading and blockading reproductive healthcare clinics across the country.
Friday, Oct. 16: Apple Strengthens Ban on “Nudify” Apps in a Significant Victory for Survivors
Apple has strengthened its App Store guidelines to explicitly address AI-generated intimate images created without consent, including those produced by “nudify” apps. These applications use artificial intelligence to manipulate photographs of real people into sexually explicit images, with or without consent.
The updated policies require platforms hosting user-generated content to proactively prevent and remove nonconsensual intimate imagery. The changes follow mounting scrutiny of technology companies for allowing applications capable of facilitating image-based sexual abuse to circulate on their platforms. Earlier this year, San Francisco officials pressured Apple and Google to remove such applications from their stores. According to Apple spokespeople, Apple reviews every app before it is published and removes apps if a developer is found to have misrepresented any of its features during the review process.
The strengthened restrictions represent an important step toward protecting survivors of technology-facilitated sexual violence, which disproportionately affects women and girls. However, the effectiveness of these protections will depend on consistent enforcement and whether technology companies meaningfully prioritize consent and user safety over the continued proliferation of abusive AI tools.
Tuesday, Oct. 20: University of Arizona Sexual Assault Allegations Expose the Dangers of the Campus ‘Red Zone’
A University of Arizona sorority member has reported being sexually assaulted by two men at a Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity house on Aug. 26. According to police records, the student recalled drinking alcohol and consensually kissing one of the men but did not remember consenting to sex. She reported the alleged assault to university police the following day and underwent a forensic examination. The investigation remains ongoing.
The allegations emerged amid broader scrutiny of fraternity misconduct at the university, which had temporarily suspended activities at all 21 fraternities following reports of hazing, assault and alcohol-related violations.
The incident occurred during what sexual violence prevention advocates call the “red zone,” the period during the first months of the academic year when students, particularly first-year women, face an elevated risk of sexual assault. The persistence of the “red zone” is an indictment of campus culture that normalizes sexual violence as a predictable feature of college life, rather than confronting it as an urgent institutional failure demanding accountability and systemic change.
Thursday, Oct. 22:
+ Pennsylvania Nurses Secure Historic Paid Parental Leave Victory
In a landmark victory for working families, Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County has become the first county in the nation to establish a countywide paid parental leave requirement. Following an 11-4 County Council vote on Oct. 20, county executive Sara Innamorato signed the legislation into law on Oct. 22, guaranteeing eligible workers 12 weeks of paid parental leave.
The legislation emerged from a grassroots campaign led by nurses at Pittsburgh’s UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital, who joined forces with parents, labor unions and community advocates. Under the new policy, eligible employees of businesses with at least 15 workers will receive paid leave following childbirth, adoption, foster placement or stillbirth. The policy is expected to be implemented over the next year.
As The 19th reported, neonatal intensive care nurse Jean Stone helped lead the campaign after witnessing parents return to work while their newborns remained hospitalized, often saving limited leave for when their babies could finally come home.
The victory comes as the United States remains the only industrialized nation without a federal paid parental leave policy. By organizing beyond their own workplace, nurses like Stone demonstrated how collective action can advance reproductive justice, maternal health and economic security for working families.
+ Trump Administration Has Scaled Back Campus Sexual Assault Investigations, New Report Finds
During Trump’s second term, the U.S. Department of Education has drastically reduced its investigations of sexual assault and other civil rights violations at schools and colleges, even though the number of complaints has not slowed. According to a new analysis from ProPublica, the department’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) has launched an average of 100 investigations per month between January 2025 and July 2026—as opposed to approximately 310 per month during the Biden administration. Under the second Trump administration, the OCR has also removed its publicly available list of schools it was investigating and the reasons for those investigations (including sexual violence as well as discrimination based on race, sex and disability), but ProPublica has published the data.
This sharp decline in investigations has drastically reshaped how the OCR handles investigations into sexual violence cases. Of the 200 complaints alleging rape, assault and sexual abuse, the Trump administration has opened investigations into only 29 of them. (Typically, there used to be about 60 school sexual violence cases investigated per year.)
Recent headlines about the “Cornell 7” gang rape case and a rape case involving an LSU football player highlight just how prominent sexual assault still is on college campuses. Twenty-six percent of women college undergraduates experience sexual violence during their time on campus, and women in college are three times more likely than women in general to be raped or sexually assaulted.
About the Department of Education’s decline in investigations, attorney Shiwali Patel said, “They just don’t care about women and girls.”
Friday, Oct. 23: Tennessee’s Botched Execution of Christa Pike Raises Questions About Cruel and Unusual Punishment
On Sept. 30, Tennessee attempted to execute 50-year-old Christa Pike by lethal injection, but after receiving two doses of the execution drug pentobarbital, Pike remained alive. She was transported to a hospital in critical condition, placed on a ventilator and suffered significant injuries to her arms following reported difficulties establishing intravenous access. The failed execution prompted Gov. Bill Lee to suspend the state’s remaining executions for 2026 and order an independent investigation.
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, committed when Pike was 18. Her attorneys had previously urged the state to consider her history of childhood abuse, sexual violence and mental illness, arguing that these circumstances warranted reconsideration of her death sentence.
New court filings reported by ABC News on Oct. 23 describe repeated difficulties administering the lethal injection. Pike has since returned to prison, where she continues to recover, although her attorneys remain concerned about potential lasting injuries.
The case has renewed scrutiny of the death penalty and the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment as well as deeper systemic problems in the criminal justice system.
Tuesday, Oct. 26:
+ Arizona Man Wins $67,500 Settlement After Ex-Wife’s Abortion
A judge in Arizona has ruled an abortion clinic must pay a man $67,500 in settlement fees related to his ex-wife’s abortion in 2018. In 2022, the man filed a “wrongful death” lawsuit against the Phoenix clinic, claiming the doctors failed to receive “informed consent” from his wife (as required by Arizona law) at her pre-abortion appointments. However, she filled out forms at the clinic affirming that she was seeking an abortion and checked the box confirming “I am comfortable with my decision to terminate this pregnancy.”
In a deposition, the woman said she and her husband were already talking about getting a divorce, and in 2022 she said, “I never wanted children and he knew that.”
The judge’s new ruling ignores extensive evidence of the woman’s ex-husband’s abuse during their marriage, an attorney for the clinic told Abortion, Every Day Not only must the clinic now pay him thousands of dollars, but advocates worry the ruling provides a roadmap for other abusive partners seeking to weaponize the law and profit off of their wives’ or girlfriends’ abortions.
Abusers frequently exert control by forcing their wives or girlfriends to remain pregnant and preventing them from accessing wanted abortions. Homicide by abusive partners is also the leading cause of death for pregnant women.
Stephanie Toti, attorney at The Lawyering Project, said the Arizona ruling is “an infuriating outcome” and that “this case really demonstrates the harm that laws like this [Arizona’s requirement for mandatory counseling before patients can access abortions] can do.”
+ A 28th Woman Accuses Donald Trump of Rape
A new report from House Judiciary Democrats includes an allegation from Beatrice Keul, former Miss Switzerland. Keul says that in 1983, Trump offered to help her secure a U.S. visa and admission to New York University, and invited her to a meeting at the Plaza hotel.
When she arrived at his hotel room, Trump allegedly raped her in an attack she describes as “brutal.” According to Keul, the assault tore her clothing and caused bleeding and bruising across her body, and Trump told her not to tell anyone about the rape.
At least 27 women have accused Trump of similar instances sexual assault. Earlier this year, Trump paid writer E. Jean Carroll $5.6 million after losing his appeals in civil court, where a federal court found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll.
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A note from Ms. editors: We want to hear from you for The Majority, a new campaign collecting stories about how reproductive freedom has enabled readers to build the lives they want and need.
Poll after poll shows a majority of Americans support reproductive healthcare access. Yet public debate overlooks the lives shaped by abortion access, contraception, IVF, miscarriage care, maternal healthcare or comprehensive sex education—countless women who chose to pursue an education, have children, not have children, protect their health and chart their own future. What’s your reproductive freedom story? Add your voice. Together, these stories will help show not only why reproductive freedom remains a majority value, but also what it makes possible.
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