Justice & Law

91% of Voters Support a National Paid Leave Program. How Do We Make It Happen?

PUBLISHED 6/2/2026 by

The United States is one of only seven countries lacking a federal mandate for paid maternal or family leave. Within the country, only 13 states and D.C. have paid family and medical leave programs, acting as a lifeline for families.

Often considered by lawmakers to be a program too expensive to start, it’s the cost of inaction that lawmakers should be concerned with, according to Dawn Huckelbridge, executive producer of a new short film Lifelines and founding director of Paid Leave for All. 

“A lot of people miss their baby’s first smile. … They’re not there to hold their parent’s hand because they can’t get the time off work. … However it is funded in the long run, it is putting money back into the economy. It is saving jobs.”

War on Women Report: Abortion Access, Academic Freedom and Trans Rights Under Fire

PUBLISHED 5/31/2026 by

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:

—President Trump lost his latest appeal effort against paying New York writer E. Jean Carroll an $83.3 million defamation judgment.
—The government is using family separation as an antiabortion tactic via Child Protective Services.
—The House passed HR 2616, the so-called Stopping Indoctrination and Protecting Kids Act, with support from eight Democrats; if enacted, the bill would bar federally funded public elementary and middle schools from acknowledging transgender students and require educators to notify parents if a student identifies as transgender at school.
—A reminder: People can order abortion pills from all 50 states, no matter what the courts decide.

… and more.

Judge Stops Trump Administration From Funding Antiabortion Extremists, for Now

PUBLISHED 5/30/2026 by

On Friday, in response to a lawsuit brought by Democracy Forward, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s “anti-weaponization” fund—which would have directly funded the work of antiabortion extremists. The $1.8 billon fund’s announcement explicitly identified antiabortion extremists convicted of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act as presumptive recipients—the same FACE Act violators Donald Trump pardoned in January 2025.

The restraining order against the fund is intended to make sure that no funds are distributed before the lawsuit brought on behalf of the National Abortion Federation; Andrew Floyd, a former Jan. 6 prosecutor; professor John Caravello of New Haven, Conn.; and Common Cause, a government accountability group, has a chance to play out. It will pause the fund’s establishment until at least June 12.  

“President Trump wants to take your hard-earned tax dollars and hand them over to criminals, cronies, and insurrectionists,” said Common Cause president and CEO Virginia Kase Solomón in a statement announcing the lawsuit against the fund. “It’s unconscionable, and more importantly, it’s illegal.”

Your Tax Dollars Are Funding the Trump Administration’s Patriarchal Family Agenda

PUBLISHED 5/28/2026 by

“One in three Americans are under-babied,” declared Trump’s Medicare and Medicaid chief Dr. Mehmet Oz last week, echoing JD Vance’s contempt for “childless cat ladies.”

Guided by evangelical supporters, the Trump administration is eroding longstanding civil rights protections, restricting access to contraception and abortion, and weakening support systems for single mothers and their children. The goal is clear: to pressure women into marriage and motherhood while making the patriarchal family the center of American life.

The administration’s policies closely track the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 agenda, which seeks to incentivize what it calls “natural marriage”—a heterosexual household with a breadwinner father, stay-at-home mother and biologically related children.

Meanwhile, the administration’s new Moms.Gov website directs pregnant women to antiabortion organizations that that have been widely criticized for their misleading information about options and for their collection of patients’ sensitive personal information.

Taxpayer dollars are increasingly being used to advance a vision of society rooted in patriarchal family structures and reproductive coercion.

Three Ways Trump’s Weird Fixation on DEI Is Hurting Women

PUBLISHED 5/28/2026 by

The Trump administration’s obsession with diversity, equity and inclusion has moved far beyond rhetoric. It is now reshaping how women’s stories get told, whose health crises are allowed to be named, and what kinds of research are permitted to survive.

Across history, healthcare and science, women are watching decades of hard-fought progress become collateral damage in a culture war designed to erase people in real time.

That damage is already visible.

Republicans derailed long-awaited progress on the American Women’s History Museum by inserting provisions policing which women count as women and handing Trump appointees sweeping control over the museum itself.

Meanwhile, the newly reintroduced Momnibus legislation—created in response to the maternal mortality crisis devastating Black women and families—has been forced to strip much of the word “Black” from its language in order to survive politically under an administration openly hostile to DEI initiatives.

And the consequences are not abstract: NIH grants focused on women’s health have reportedly dropped by 30 percent, while words like “women” and “gender” themselves are becoming liabilities in funding proposals.

Women’s health was already chronically underfunded and misunderstood long before Trump returned to office. But the administration’s escalating war on DEI is accelerating that neglect—and making clear just how much is at stake when political ideology begins dictating whose lives deserve to be studied, protected and remembered.

The Trump Administration Isn’t Just Ignoring Violence Against Abortion Clinics—It Wants to Fund It

PUBLISHED 5/26/2026 by | UPDATED 5/29/2026 at 9:37 A.M. PT

The numbers are staggering: Between 2024 and 2025, death threats against abortion providers more than doubled. Stalking incidents more than doubled. Clinic blockades surged by 500 percent. There were four arsons. A planned assassination attempt against a Montana provider. And in the background of all of it, a federal government that has made unmistakably clear whose side it’s on.

Now, in an unprecedented move, the Trump Administration may be about to start writing checks to fund violent extremists. As part of a settlement to resolve his $10 billion lawsuit against his own Department of the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the creation of a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” The Fund is framed as compensation for people who claim they were targeted by politically motivated prosecutions under previous administrations, excluding Republican administrations.

After Historic SNAP Cuts, America’s Hunger Emergency Is Already Here—and Trump’s Proposed Budget Would Make It Worse

PUBLISHED 5/22/2026 by

Even as communities across the country grapple with the fallout from last year’s devastating SNAP cuts, the White House’s proposed Fiscal Year 2027 budget threatens to deepen an already escalating hunger emergency.

The administration is pushing another $6 billion in cuts to SNAP, while also targeting WIC benefits, including proposals that would restrict access to fresh fruits and vegetables for women and children.

Rather than repairing the damage already done to America’s food assistance programs, the budget doubles down on policies that are pushing more families toward crisis.

The consequences are already unfolding nationwide. More than 4 million Americans have lost SNAP benefits over the past year, while states struggle under the unprecedented financial burdens shifted onto them by Republicans’ earlier cuts.

Some states are now considering whether they can continue participating in SNAP at all, raising the possibility that millions more people could lose food assistance simply because of where they live.

At the same time, congressional negotiations over the farm bill have largely failed to address the growing strain on hunger programs or the widening cracks in the nation’s social safety net.

(This essay is part of an ongoing Ms. series examining the real-world impact of President Donald Trump’s proposed fiscal year 2027 budget. Across sectors—from healthcare and childcare to immigration enforcement and food assistance—the series explores what the administration’s funding priorities reveal about who government serves, and who it leaves behind.)

Beyond American Exceptionalism: What the Success of the Green Wave Can Teach U.S. Abortion Activists

PUBLISHED 5/21/2026 by and

While the idea of the U.S. as a bastion of moral superiority has always been a myth—evident, for example, in efforts to shield Jim Crow laws from scrutiny in the founding of the United Nations—the overturning of Roe v. Wade is one of the latest reminders of this fallacy, particularly as it pertains to global health and women’s rights. It is also a cautionary tale for the rest of the world about the fragility of reproductive rights.

As states across the U.S. have banned abortion post-Dobbs, advocates and experts here have been forced to look outside of our borders for assistance, recognizing that other nations have recently mobilized to legalize abortion and have much to teach us, particularly those that have done so by enshrining abortion as a human right.

Ms. Global: From Ukraine to Lebanon to Sudan, Women Are Bearing the Brunt of Escalating Global Conflict

PUBLISHED 5/21/2026 by

Around the world, escalating armed conflict, political repression and humanitarian collapse are reshaping daily life for women and girls—often with devastating consequences. From drone warfare in Sudan, to internet blackouts in Iran, to attacks on healthcare infrastructure in Lebanon and Gaza, women are navigating intensifying threats while also sustaining families, communities and survival networks under extraordinary strain. At the same time, women-led organizations and feminist movements confronting these crises increasingly face funding cuts, political repression and shrinking civic space even as demand for their work grows.

Globally, over 676 million women and girls live within 50 kilometers of armed conflict, representing about 17 percent of the female population. This staggering figure—a 74 percent increase since 2010—is tracked and analyzed by the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security in partnership with PRIO.

But we also know: Feminist movements around the world hold answers to some of the world’s most urgent crises. Ms. Global is taking note of feminists worldwide—and the gendered realities shaping conflict, displacement, political repression and survival.

Conservative Justices Resurrect the Comstock Act, Threatening Abortion Access Nationwide

PUBLISHED 5/21/2026 by

On May 1, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the mailing of mifepristone, one of the most widely used abortion medications in the country, threatening access for patients already facing a shrinking number of clinics nationwide. Although the Supreme Court temporarily stayed the ruling earlier this month, Justice Clarence Thomas’ dissent revealed something even more alarming: a renewed effort to resurrect the Comstock Act, a 19th-century anti-obscenity law once used to criminalize the mailing of abortion- and contraception-related materials.

The Comstock Act’s history is deeply tied to censorship, moral policing and attacks on marginalized communities. Under its broad and subjective definition of “obscenity,” authorities targeted contraception, abortion information, sexual health materials, queer literature and even works of classical art. Its reproductive restrictions disproportionately harmed poor and working-class women, who were often cut off from the safest and most affordable forms of care.

Today, antiabortion activists are once again looking to Comstock as a tool to restrict abortion nationwide—this time through the courts. Thomas’ explicit invocation of the law in the mifepristone fight signals how far-right legal movements are attempting to revive long-discredited morality laws to roll back reproductive freedom and other established rights.