A collection of this year’s most inspiring and infuriating things said by and about women. Some quotes hit like a shot, others a palate cleanser. Here they are in alternating fashion.
“Let me just tell you, you are an obnoxious—a terrible, actually a terrible reporter.“
—Trump to reporter Rachel Scott on whether he would direct Defense Secretary Hegseth to release video of a second strike that targeted the remains of a boat on Sept. 2.
“The world will try and convince you that you’re too much and not enough all at the same time. When you speak up, they’ll call you angry. When you organize, they’ll say you’re being manipulated, and when you win, they’ll call it luck. But here’s the truth: Your discomfort is your compass. The voice saying, ‘This isn’t right,’ that’s your power waking up.
“Yes, this work will break your heart. Some days, it will exhaust you, and still, you must continue, because here’s what the research ultimately shows: When younger people lead, democracy doesn’t just survive, it thrives.”
—Leela Strong, director, Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, at the Young Feminist Leadership Conference in April.
“We call it the ‘Hate America’ Rally that’ll happen Saturday. Let’s see who shows up for that. I bet you you see pro-Hamas supporters, I bet you you’ll see antifa types, I bet you you’ll see Marxists in full display, the people who don’t want to stand and defend the foundational truths of this republic. And we do.”
—Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) ahead of the peaceful, pro-democracy “No Kings” rallies in all 50 states.
“There is yet life kicking in this broken democracy. It is our job to coax the fragile remains of the systems of resistance still available to us into a force that can effectively fight Trumpism. I do not know if Trump’s march to full-on dictatorship can be stopped. But I am certain that if we stop fighting, it will not be stopped.”
—Civil rights attorney and Howard law professor Sherrilyn Ifill on takeaways from the 2025 elections.
“We don’t want to benefit Democrat governors. We want to help all the states, but we have governors that are from the Democrat [sic] party, let’s say New York, Illinois, big ones, and let’s say Gavin ‘Newscum,’ who’s done a horrible job in California. We want to benefit Republicans. They are the ones that are going to make America great again. The Democrats are destroying our country.“
—Trump wants to change his “Big Beautiful” reconciliation bill to only benefit Republican states.
“‘If it is to be, it is up to me.’ All of us have to think of those 10 words—10 two-letter words: ‘If it is to be, it is up to me.’ Because I believe generations from now will look back at this moment and have a single question: ‘Where were you? Where were you when our country was in crisis and when American people were asking for help? Help me. Help me.’ Did we speak up?
“I don’t know how to solve this. I don’t know how to stop us from going down this road. I am sorry. But I know who does have the power: the people of the United States of America. The power of the people is greater than the people in power.”
—Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) during his record-breaking 25-hour speech on the Senate floor, in March.
“Well, we are all going to die.”
—Sen. Joni Ernst’s (R-Iowa) flippant response to a town hall question highlighting the life-threatening cuts to Medicaid and SNAP in Republicans’ “Big Beautiful” reconciliation bill. Ernst doubled down in a sarcastic social media video, saying she “made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that, yes, we are all going to perish from this Earth.”
“One branch of government cannot check another branch of government without broader mobilization. And so it is time for Congress to wake up. It is time for the American people to demand that Congress wake up … And that’s not just Congress, it’s us. It’s mass mobilizations. It’s learning again how to strike and how to boycott and how to say that the people in this country still get to be in charge. We are going to have to learn to build those muscles.”
—Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, at the Texas Tribune Festival in September.
In my ideal society, we would vote as households. And I would ordinarily be the one that would cast the vote, but I would cast the vote having discussed it with my household.”
—Toby Sumpter, a Christian pastor, speaking to CNN about repealing the 19th Amendment (i.e., women’s suffrage), in an interview reposted to X by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
“They say they’re pro-life because they want the baby to be born, go to school and get shot in the school. Die in the school, die on the streets.”
—Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) called out the hypocrisy of “pro-choice” members of Congress in a House Rules committee meeting.
“One thing I do is, any student that protests, I throw them out of the country. You know, there are a lot of foreign students. As soon as they hear that, they’re going to behave.”
—President Trump to donors at an event, according to The Washington Post. His administration recently arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder whose spouse is a U.S. citizen, for his role as a pro-Palestinian activist at Columbia University.
“I sit here … and wonder how many more firsts will be sacrificed to the whims of the U.S. government, which denied me even the chance of furlough to attend your birth. How is it that the same politicians who preach ‘family values’ are the ones tearing families apart? …
“Deen, my love for you is deeper than anything I have ever known. … I hope one day you will stand tall knowing your father was not absent out of apathy, but out of conviction. And I will spend my life making up for the moments we lost—starting with this one, writing to you with all the love in my heart.”
—Mahmoud Khalil wrote a powerful letter to his newborn son while he was detained by the Trump administration for pro-Palestinian activism. Khalil was finally able to hold Deen one month after his birth, despite the Trump administration’s attempts to keep them apart. A federal judge was forced to step in after ICE denied a “contact visit” with his family and suggested he should instead self-deport. Khalil was released in June after spending over 3 months in detention.
“God has an order. The head of my household is my husband, Jonathan King. Period. If there’s ever a time that a decision has to be made and we don’t agree on something, he’s the head. It’s not hard to submit.”
—Televangelist Paula White, leader of the White House Faith Office, argued that women must submit to men.
“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 Pete Hegseth during his confirmation hearing in January.
“Quiet. Quiet, piggy.”
—President Trump to political reporter Catherine Lucey after she asked him why he refused to release the Epstein files.
“We are initiated into a sisterhood. We’re in a sorority that none of us asked to join, but we all stand here today, stronger together, because our collective voice is powerful.”
—Liz Stein, a survivor sex-trafficked by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, speaking outside the U.S. Capitol, which was, notably, interrupted by a military flyover arranged by the Trump administration, honoring a Polish pilot who died in a training exercise in Poland.
“That’s OK, you can just say yes. It’s easier. I don’t mind.“
—President Trump, answering for New York City’s mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani when a reporter asked if he stands by calling Trump a fascist.
“Pregnant women are vulnerable to a lot of harm in detention. I visited a pregnant woman in [ICE] detention recently who told me that she’d lost 25 pounds in just a month. I’m also working with another asylum seeker who hasn’t had a visit with an actual obstetric provider yet. Right before she got detained, she was told that she might be carrying twins. But there hasn’t been proper follow-up to determine whether that’s the case. If she is, that’s a high-risk pregnancy, which means that getting timely prenatal care with a specialist is extra-important. She is scared about her health and the health of the pregnancy. She doesn’t know what’s going to happen with her case. She’s an asylum seeker, so by definition, she’s afraid to return to Venezuela.
—Amanda Heffernan, a nurse-midwife in Seattle who works with pregnant migrants and has seen an uptick in detained pregnant people under the Trump administration. Many report inhumane conditions and no access to medical care or nutritious food.
“The president and his policy team continue to look at options on how to reduce the size of the Department of Education, if not abolish it completely. You heard the president say half jokingly but also serious, he wants Linda McMahon, who will lead that agency, to put herself out of a job.”
—White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. Linda McMahon was confirmed to lead the Education Department in March.
“Donald Trump loved to promise that other people would pay for his schemes. Mexico would pay for the wall. China would pay for the tariffs. Cute. Here’s the correction: Other people don’t pay. You do. Your kid. Your neighbor who works nights. The person at the hamburger joint sliding fries across the counter. Tariffs are a stealth sales tax—invisible, regressive, and perfectly designed to hurt people who can’t afford it.“
—Writer, pollster and political strategist Rachel Bitecofer.
“Twenty-four years ago a group of Muslims killed 2,753 people on 9/11.
Now a Muslim Socialist is on pace to run New York City.”
—Charlie Kirk on Twitter in June comparing 9/11 to Zohran Mamdani’s campaign.
“I will not whitewash the white supremacist that was Charlie Kirk. For someone so young, what an embarrassment of hatreds he left us to excoriate him with. … Kirk took the most repugnant white Christian nationalist zealotry from the places it festered in the odious margins and moved it to the Trumpian mainstream, becoming a millionaire who moved into a $4.75 million estate in the process. Speak ill of him. It is the truth.“
—Mona Eltahawy, writer
“We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”
—Elon Musk on X, as his work to dismantle USAID continues. Thousands of staff have been fired or put on leave, Secretary of State Rubio was named acting administrator, and DOGE officials forcefully gained access to classified USAID materials.
“Know this: Justice and accountability are not favors from the powerful. They are obligations decades overdue. This moment began with [Jeffrey] Epstein’s crimes, but it’s going to be remembered for survivors demanding justice, demanding truth, demanding accountability, and we will not stop until survivor voices shape justice, transform culture and define the future.”
—Jess Michaels, speaking at a September press conference alongside other Epstein survivors, some of whom shared stories of the sexual grooming and assault they suffered as teenagers and called for lawmakers to release more files from the federal investigation
