More Than A Magazine, A Movement
The U.S. ranks as the 19th most dangerous country for women, 11th in maternal mortality, 30th in closing the gender pay gap, 75th in women’s political representation, and painfully lacks paid family leave and equal access to health care. But Ms. has always understood: Feminist movements around the world hold answers to some of the U.S.’s most intractable problems. Ms. Global is taking note of feminists worldwide.
This week: News from Iraq, Jamaica, the EU, Cambodia and Thailand, and more.
The convergence of stand your ground, open carry and national reciprocity marks the culmination of a 20-year experiment in armed citizenship.
The results are clear: more people armed, more shootings and more deaths “justified.”
The question now is whether the rest of the nation will follow Florida’s lead.
A new national survey reveals that rising prices are forcing working-class families to skip meals, delay care and rely on high-cost debt to survive.
An unprecedented 19 states have introduced three dozen bills to improve menopause care and treatment; eight of those bills are now law.
At the federal level, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration finally removed the “black box warning” on estrogen products, ushering in a new era for menopause care whereby women and their doctors can make decisions without the unnecessary fear the prior label engendered.
And so, we kick off the new year with a mighty impressive track record. Can we expect more of the same in 2026? My prediction is a resounding yes. This is only the beginning of a long overdue and much deeper series of demands. Here’s my forecast for what to expect in the weeks and months ahead.
A few days before Christmas, the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo featured an abhorrent caricature of esteemed journalist, author, filmmaker, and activist Rokhaya Diallo. The grotesque image, which we will not reproduce here, shows a half-naked Diallo dancing on stage dressed in a banana skirt. Her features were exaggerated in the manner of time worn racist propaganda—contorting her nose, mouth, and eyes for a minstrel-like effect. Next to the image was an audience pointing and jeering underneath a sign that read “The Rokhaya Diallo Show: she ridicules the separation of church and state all over the world.” There is no question that Diallo was targeted for her widespread international success and renown as an antiracist activist, as well as her prominence as a Black feminist voice decrying racial injustice, sexism, and misogynoir in France and abroad. The timing felt insidiously intentional— the magazine chose to end the year with a decidedly harmful message to Black French women as a holiday send off.
Vice President JD Vance gave the closing keynote speech at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest 2025 conference in Phoenix on Dec. 21. It was the first TP gathering since the right-wing organization’s co-founder, Charlie Kirk, was killed in September, and thus bound to attract an extraordinary amount of media coverage and commentary.
His speech cycled through a laundry list of right-wing Christian nationalist gripes about Democrats and the “left.” It’s certainly his right, and prerogative, to share his views. But it’s up to us—his audience—either to accept or push back on those takes.
That’s what I’m doing here.
Mary (not her real name) tells her story to Bonnie Fuller:
“Texans don’t give up easily, and I’m a Texan. I’m in my second year of medical school in Texas, and I’m studying to be an OB-GYN.
“I grew up in Texas, and I’m open-minded about staying in the state to practice obstetrics and gynecology after I graduate, despite the laws that ban most abortions from conception. A lot of the people that I love are in Texas, and there’s this big draw to stay here because it’s my community. I really want to care for other women.
“But what worries me most about practicing here is that I won’t be able to provide certain types of care because of the laws. I worry about the moral distress I’ll feel if I’m unable to act in particular cases—especially in emergency situations when a woman might need a termination and the law says that you can’t do one.”
In 1916, two adventurous, gutsy women—Alice Snitjer Burke, 39, and Nell Richardson, 25, both members of the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association—were determined to spread the message about the importance of women’s suffrage. With support from NAWSA, they volunteered to make an epic car trip across the country and back in a small Saxon roadster for “the cause.” At the time, few women drove cars, and automobiles were a big part of a major cultural shift from horses and buggies. Such a trip would be symbolic on many levels.
Their journey often made front-page news due in part to the novelty of seeing a woman drive a car, but Alice and Nell kept the focus on “votes for women.”
The U.S. childhood immunization schedule, the grid of colored bars pediatricians share with parents, recommends a set of vaccines given from birth through adolescence to prevent a range of serious infections. The basic structure has been in place since 1995, when federal health officials and medical organizations first issued a unified national standard, though new vaccines have been added regularly as science advanced.
Vaccines on the childhood schedule have been tested in controlled trials involving millions of participants, and they are continuously monitored for safety after being rolled out. The schedule represents the accumulated knowledge of decades of research. It has made the diseases it targets so rare that many parents have never seen them.
But the schedule is now under scrutiny.
So you and your polycule have found a cute little house to rent, and you’re finally going to build the queer commune of your dreams. All that’s missing is the rainbow flag in the window and the “In Our America…” sign on the lawn.
While it would be all too easy to subscribe to the idea that your very existence is a form of resistance, we should all be mindful to avoid this trap. It’s true, for those of us in blended, non-normative, queer and chosen families, our ability to succeed and thrive is something to celebrate.
However, our existence alone is not enough to challenge the oppressive systems we live under.
However, our existence alone is not enough to challenge the oppressive systems we live under.
(This essay is part of a collection presented by Ms. and the Groundswell Fund highlighting the work of Groundswell partners advancing inclusive democracy.)