Author: Mariah A. Lindsay

Mariah A. Lindsay is an attorney who specializes in civil liberties, civil rights, and equal justice. Her research spans women's health and rights, racial justice, and the judiciary. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2025, she was named a Ms. Studios editorial fellow, bringing her expertise and passion in feminist discourse, journalism, podcast production, and copyediting back to Ms. magazine and Ms. Studios.

The World Cup Is Here—But Who Is It For?

Soccer is one of the most beloved sports in the world, and the 2026 FIFA World Cup—the largest in the tournament’s history—has drawn millions of fans across the globe. This year, for the first time, the event is being jointly hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico, with matches and related events taking place across North America.

FIFA stands to earn billions of dollars from the tournament.

But as the organization reaps record revenues, many host communities are bearing significant costs. Soaring ticket prices, displacement, labor concerns and aggressive immigration enforcement have raised questions about who truly benefits from the World Cup. For many working-class residents—and even lifelong soccer fans—the tournament is out of reach.

To better understand those impacts, I spoke with Jennifer Li, co-director of the Center for Community Health Innovation at the O’Neill Institute and director of Dignity 2026, a coalition of labor and human rights organizations working to protect communities most at risk during the World Cup.

Soccer “is very much an immigrant sport, let’s face it,” said Li, “and by extension, a sport for people of color, diverse communities. It is a sport that’s not expensive to play, but very expensive to watch, apparently. So, the question then becomes: Who is this for?”

Election Conspiracies Are Moving From Rhetoric to Government Action

Attacks on the legitimacy of U.S. elections are no longer confined to conspiracy theories circulating online—they are increasingly shaping government action at the local level.

In Riverside County, Calif., Sheriff Chad Bianco seized roughly 650,000 ballots from a 2025 special election based on fraud allegations that election officials say stem from misleading interpretations of preliminary voting data. Courts have since intervened, with the California Supreme Court ordering the investigation paused while litigation continues.

I spoke with Jill Garvey, co-director of States at the Core, about what these escalating “election integrity” efforts mean for democracy and public trust.

Garvey says many of the activists driving these claims understand election systems far better than they let on—and are intentionally using confusion around technical election data to sow distrust in the voting process.

Even when election officials fully explain the data and publicly refute the allegations, she said, demands for investigations continue, helping fuel a broader narrative that elections cannot be trusted.

Garvey sees these efforts as part of a larger strategy testing how far local officials can go in challenging election systems and democratic norms.

But she also points to growing community-level organizing and civic engagement in response. The groups advancing these claims, she noted, are relatively small compared to the hundreds of thousands of voters affected by their actions—a reminder that local communities still have significant power to push back against efforts to undermine confidence in elections.

‘Ms. Book Club’ Miniseries: Four Must-Listen Conversations on Black Women, U.S. History and the Law

Our podcast platform Ms. Studios has launched a newly updated miniseries: Ms. Book Club, examining the last 250 years of U.S. history through a feminist lens and asking what the nation’s founding ideals have meant in practice for women, Black Americans and other historically marginalized communities.

Across the four-part series, Dr. Michele Goodwin—host of On the Issues and executive producer of Ms. Studios—speaks with four leading scholars and authors whose recent books explore how gender, race, law and power have shaped American life from 1776 to today: Keisha Blain, Dorothy Roberts, Khiara Bridges and Patricia Williams.

Each episode features an in-depth conversation between Goodwin and the author about how their work reframes dominant narratives of U.S. history—and challenges listeners to reconsider what, exactly, America is celebrating at its 250-year mark.

Women Attorneys General Are Not Backing Down

In the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, there have been concerted efforts in states across the country and by the Trump administration to further limit access to abortion, but also to reproductive healthcare access and rights more broadly.

These efforts have not gone unchecked. A coalition of Democratic state attorneys general across the country have been working in concert to counteract many of these measures and to protect access to reproductive healthcare within their states—through enacting safe harbor or shield laws, defending state laws and constitutional provisions providing residents with the right to provide and obtain abortions, and filing lawsuits against the Trump administration and other states where necessary, to name a few.

Within this coalition, another pattern emerges: the role of Democratic women attorneys general fighting back against efforts to undermine reproductive justice. This group of attorneys general includes Vermont AG Charity Clark, Arizona AG Kris Mayes, Delaware AG Kathy Jennings, Massachusetts AG Andrea Campbell and Michigan AG Dana Nessel.

A New Supreme Court Term Brings Familiar Trouble

The Supreme Court’s 2025–’26 term opens under the shadow of the Trump administration’s growing influence over the judiciary. Last term, the Court issued 140 emergency rulings—many of them unsigned—compared to just 55 full opinions. These “shadow docket” decisions often favored the Trump administration, even in cases where the stakes included the rights of transgender people, immigrants and federal employees.

Now, with several Trump-backed cases on the merits docket, legal experts Michele Goodwin and Steven Vladeck warn that the Court’s deference to presidential power could deepen.

From conversion therapy bans to voting rights and gender-affirming care, the consequences of this term’s decisions will reverberate far beyond the courtroom.

What Renee Bracey Sherman Wants You to Know About Liberating Abortion and the People Who Make It Possible

Renee Bracey Sherman and Regina Mahone recently released their co-authored book, Liberating Abortion: Claiming Our History, Sharing Our Stories, and Building the Reproductive Future We Deserve. In it, they offer a new perspective on the history of abortion and imagine a future where reproductive justice is realized.

Bracey Sherman and Mahone ask us to build a better future that begins with building community around abortion and reproductive freedom now.

Ms. sat down with Renee Bracey Sherman to discuss her new book, Liberating Abortion, the history of abortion and where we go from here.