Environment

What to Know About How Hurricanes and Voter Purges Are Affecting Early Voting

PUBLISHED 10/15/2024 by and | UPDATED 10/24/2024 at 7:17 A.M. PT

In less than a month, Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton have caused record storm surge and damage in multiple southeastern states, including Florida, North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee. With Election Day just weeks away (and early voting starting much sooner), will the storms force voters away from the polls in the South?

Meanwhile, the hurricanes aren’t the only challenge facing would-be voters. Right now, voters in states from Texas to Ohio are facing the additional threat of racist voter purges. In the wake of Donald Trump’s baseless comments about migrants in Springfield, Ohio, third-party groups are attempting to challenge voter registration lists with unfounded claims that non-citizen immigrants are voting illegally.

Do You Remember the First Time You Voted?

PUBLISHED 10/9/2024 by

The first year I could vote, the choices for president were Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater or the incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson. LBJ won—the largest landslide in U.S. history. Voting for him as a first-time voter felt consequential.

This year, I’ll be voting with two very special first-time voters: my twin granddaughters, in the swing state of Georgia. Our daughters’ and granddaughters’ future is in danger.

Keeping Score: Childcare Costs Top Pre-Pandemic Levels; Sharp Rise in Texas Maternal Mortality; Oct. 3 Marks Latina Equal Pay Day

PUBLISHED 10/3/2024 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: a Georgia judge strikes down the state’s six-week abortion ban; JD Vance and Tim Walz debate; childcare costs rise after pandemic-era grants expire; Senate Republicans again block IVF protections; school superintendants are overwhelmingly male; Kentucky governor bans conversion therapy; nonbinary adults face violence and discrimination at work; Aisha Nyandoro, founding CEO of Springboard to Opportunities, is on the TIME 100 Next list; University of Pennsylvania professor Dorothy Roberts (host of the Ms. podcast Torn Apart) has won a prestigious MacArthur Foundation “genius” award; and more.

The Paranoid and Unhinged Rhetoric of Project 2025

PUBLISHED 7/25/2024 by

Project 2025 is a wishlist of rightwing policy goals for the next conservative president.

I took a dive into the Project 2025 cesspool and fished out some of the choicest morsels, which I’ve organized into several categories: rebuilding the patriarchal family; ending sex discrimination … against men; reproductive rights and wrongs; demonizing our enemies; oil and gas will save the country; and eliminating government as we know it. Enjoy!

Climate Regulation and Reparations Should Focus on Fair Conditions for Pregnant People and Children

PUBLISHED 7/17/2024 by , and

The climate crisis is already quietly killing millions. It, along with other ecological crises, is set to potentially kill a billion humans and countless nonhumans—those least responsible for causing it. But here is a truth you will rarely hear: The death count predictions are premised on the current reproductive rights models, the ones that caused the crisis to begin with.

A Call to Protect Mexico’s Women Climate Leaders

PUBLISHED 7/10/2024 by and

Exactly 12 years ago, Mexico enacted the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists law, a legislative promise to protect activists and reporters from violence and repression. Today, this promise remains unfulfilled.

Mexico remains one of the most dangerous places for human rights defenders, particularly for women climate leaders—who face targeted violence, threats, and attacks, with little to no effective protection from the state. Just last month, Mexico elected its first female president, Claudia Sheinbaum, an environmental scientist who has led on climate change throughout her career. While this election may mark a shift towards better protection and support for women climate leaders, there is a tremendous amount of work to be done to protect them—not only for their sake but for the future of our planet. 

From Rachel Carson to Wangari Maathai—Meet the Women Who Ignited Environmental Movements

PUBLISHED 4/22/2024 by

The environmental and feminist movements have grown like stems and branches of a twisting vine or tree. Sometimes merging, sometimes growing apart. At times they have strengthened each other, yet at other times they have grown distant. Ultimately, they both address similar forces of oppression and exploitation. They share a common goal of dismantling the “status quo.” Their shared vision is the thriving of both women and nature. Climate change is not just an environmental crisis—it is a feminist crisis as well. 

Planet Versus Plastics: The Climate Crisis, Girls and Ice Cream

PUBLISHED 4/19/2024 by

Girls have been systematically erased from conversations about the climate crisis. For many, this erasure has happened despite the life-changing impacts it is already having on their lives. Climate change is a crisis for girls’ rights as it exacerbates pre-existing risk-factors and heightens them to dangerous extremes.

What will it take for decision-makers to be convinced that girls should not just be a focus of responses. but also at the forefront of change?

Not One Woman on the List

PUBLISHED 1/25/2024 by

Earlier this month, Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev announced the organizing committee for COP29, which will be held there in November. The list included 28 appointees, including Azeri government ministers of energy, health, finance and economy, among others. What the list did not include: women. Not one woman on the list.

The backlash was swift and thunderous. Global women leaders are speaking out: “Many of the key successes of the COP process, including the Paris Agreement, were delivered by women leaders, working closely with their male colleagues.”