A Trump Cabinet Member Endorsed a Pastor Who Wants the 19th Amendment Repealed, and the Danger Is Growing

PUBLISHED 8/13/2025 by

Once a fringe warning, the threat to women’s right to vote is now out in the open—and in the halls of power.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reposted a video on Aug. 7 with the endorsement “All of Christ for All of Life,” in which a far-right conservative pastor, Doug Wilson, co-founder of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), argued that women should not have the right to vote.

As Wilson told the Associated Press, “He was, in effect, reposting it and saying, ‘Amen,’ at some level.”

But a deeper dive into CREC reveals troubling gender politics where women cannot hold church leadership positions and married women are expected to submit to their husbands.

RFK Jr.’s HHS Slashes Healthcare Access and Safety Net, Putting Both Citizens *and* Immigrants at Risk

PUBLISHED 8/12/2025 by

The Trump administration has pulled the rug out from under America’s safety net: In mid-July, the Departments of Health and Human Services, Justice, Labor, Education and Agriculture issued notices barring many legal immigrants, as well as those without legal status, from using numerous public services funded with federal dollars. Should these policies go into effect—reversing 30 years of law—critical programs including Head Start, community mental health services, suicide hotlines and emergency housing assistance could be shuttered, and millions, including U.S. citizens, could be denied help when they need it most.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called the policies necessary to end the diversion of “hardworking Americans’ tax dollars to incentivize illegal immigration.” A coalition of state attorneys general has called the revision an unmitigated crisis in public health and safety, bringing suit to block the changes, which are temporarily on hold until mid-September.

The new rules mark a dangerous and seismic shift in interpretation of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996, legislation born of a broader agenda to vilify the poor and others accused of gaming the system.

At its core, this is an extension of the administration’s relentless desire to close the border—a tool to sow discord and consolidate power.

‘Care Is Baked Into a Healthy, Functioning Economy’: Economists Lenore Palladino and Rakeen Mabud on How to Advance Economic Justice

PUBLISHED 8/12/2025 by

The experts and Ms. contributors assessed the state of the U.S. care crisis and women’s economic inequality in the latest episode of the Ms. podcast Looking Back, Moving Forward—and broke down why investing in women and care workers is good policy. 

Rakeen Mabud: “We’re at a really pivotal moment and a really complicated moment. We have conservative, pronatalist voices, with more institutional power than they have ever had, at least in modern times. They are advancing an agenda of deep progressive patriarchy, whiteness—and wealth, frankly, is the third prong of that. And they are co-opting progressive policy ideas to do it.”

Lenore Palladino: “There are schools, and there are childcare centers, and there are hospitals being shut down right now. Investing in those would be a really important way to move this whole conversation forward. … Within economic policy, there’s such bifurcation. There’s tax policy over here. There’s care over here. It’s still a women’s issue.”

“Economics is still seen as a man’s game. Women actually make most financial decisions in households, but men are the ones who are seen as the experts, and our financial system is shaped around their life cycles.”

Listen to the latest episode of Looking Back, Moving Forward, “Women Can’t Afford to Wait for a Feminist Economic Future (with Premilla Nadasen, Rakeen Mabud and Lenore Palladino, Aisha Nyandoro, Gaylynn Burroughs, and Dolores Huerta)” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

FX’s ‘The Bear’ Season 4 Embraces Feminist Leadership, Challenging Aggressive Masculinity and Reimagining the Workplace

PUBLISHED 8/12/2025 by

The renowned show’s newest season is carving a new, feminist path for recognition of women-led workplaces, in spite of a history of white, male dominance.

Cultural depictions of feminist leadership, even when fictional, can help us both imagine and demand better. We need not settle for egotistical, unpredictable, manipulative leaders who focus on personal gains and grievances.

Will the SCORE Act Sideline Women Athletes? Title IX Advocates Push for NIL Protections

PUBLISHED 8/12/2025 by

Members of the Democratic Women’s Caucus are pushing Congress for explicit Title IX protections for women student-athletes in a proposed national law related to name, image and likeness (NIL)—and long-time gender equity advocates hope they succeed.  

Four years into student-athletes being able to capitalize on their NIL, 32 states have enacted their own laws. Now, there is a proposed bill before Congress, the Student Compensation and Opportunity Through Rights and Endorsements (SCORE) Act, which is designed to establish a national framework for collegiate athlete compensation, particularly as it pertains to NIL.

Something the SCORE Act doesn’t take into consideration is Title IX and gender equity. Earlier this year, the Department of Education Office of Civil Rights rescinded guidance put in place by the Biden administration, noting it was “overly burdensome” and effectively stating that Title IX, an educational statute that prohibits discrimination based on gender at any institution receiving federal funds, is inapplicable to NIL.

Green Dildos and Fragile Egos: Misogyny’s Latest Play in Women’s Sports

PUBLISHED 8/12/2025 by

The latest headline to make me question reality: green dildos thrown on the court during WNBA games.

Yes, that happened. And no, it’s not harmless.

When they can’t match our talent, they reach for props. When they can’t silence us, they try to embarrass us.

In an era when women’s rights are being stripped away—when reproductive freedom, bodily autonomy and basic equality are under siege—this is not the moment to shrug off “pranks” aimed squarely at women. We are already fighting to keep our resilience and focus intact. We cannot pretend that degrading women in the public eye—particularly women who have achieved power, visibility and influence—is just part of the game. It isn’t. It’s misogyny with a juvenile laugh track.

Terrified to Try: The Mental Anguish of Motherhood in South Carolina

PUBLISHED 8/12/2025 by

In a state where abortion bans endanger lives and strip away autonomy, one South Carolina mother shares how fear, grief and rage have made her question whether she can risk motherhood again:

“I had to leave the state, my support system and my young son just to access the healthcare I needed.”

(This essay is part of a collection presented by Ms. and the Groundswell Fund highlighting the work of Groundswell partners advancing inclusive democracy.)

Trump’s Anti-Voter Agenda Crystallizes

PUBLISHED 8/11/2025 by

Will voters have the final say in 2026?  

In recent years, despite the pandemic, violence and intense pressure, American elections were secure and their results were reported accurately. Election officials worked together across party lines. The system held.

This year, however, a new threat to free and fair elections has emerged: the federal government itself.

It’s now clear that the Trump administration has launched a campaign to undermine American elections. An important new Brennan Center analysis uses the facts to connect the dots. All of this is unprecedented. It’s often illegal. It’s alarming. And it has begun to unfold in plain sight.

Ultimately, it will be up to voters. It’s harder to rig an election when people are watching—and shouting. High turnout can overwhelm chicanery.

Texas’ Abortion Law Forced This Woman to Choose: ‘Watch My Baby Die or Flee My Home for Medical Help’

PUBLISHED 8/11/2025 by

Eighth-generation Texan Megan Bond recounted the stories of her dangerous pregnancies to Courier Texas writer Bonnie Fuller. Here’s what happened, in her own words:

“I was 15 weeks pregnant and had just had my anatomy scan. As my husband, Kevin, and I watched the technician, we could see for ourselves on the ultrasound screen that our baby boy, Teddy, had no amniotic fluid around him inside my womb. … The sound that came out of my mouth was not human. It was such a loud scream, like a banshee or something. … Our second desperately wanted baby was suffering from the same fatal fetal anomaly, bilateral renal agenesis, as our first baby. … This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“I asked my doctor if, in our case with this diagnosis, I could end the pregnancy in Texas and she said, ‘No, in Texas your only option is to carry to term.'”

‘In Whose Interests Are We Fighting?’ What Historian Premilla Nadasen Learned About Economic Justice from the Domestic Workers’ Rights Movement

PUBLISHED 8/10/2025 by

Nadasen, who teaches history at Barnard College, offered lessons from the domestic workers’ movement for the current moment in the latest episode of Looking Back, Moving Forward. “We, as feminists today, like domestic workers in the 1970s and in the early 2000s,” she told me, “need to think outside the box.”

Listen to the latest episode of Looking Back, Moving Forward, “Women Can’t Afford to Wait for a Feminist Economic Future (with Premilla Nadasen, Rakeen Mabud and Lenore Palladino, Aisha Nyandoro, Gaylynn Burroughs, and Dolores Huerta)” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.