Politics

Texas A&M’s Women’s and Gender Studies Closure Signals a Wider Crackdown on Academic Freedom

PUBLISHED 2/24/2026 by

Texas A&M University’s decision to eliminate its women’s and gender studies program is not happening in a vacuum. For years, the university has steadily rolled back programs, courses and resources tied to gender and LGBTQ+ studies, leaving students and faculty with fewer spaces to learn, teach and engage with these subjects.

Now, with the program gone and new classroom restrictions in place, the impact is being felt directly by the people who rely on these courses to study, teach and understand the world around them.

For many students and educators, this moment feels like part of a much larger shift unfolding across the country. As universities scale back programs and limit discussions around race, gender and sexuality, what can be taught—and who feels supported in the classroom—is rapidly changing. The closure at Texas A&M reflects a growing national pattern: one that raises urgent questions about the future of academic freedom in public higher education.

The SAVE Act Isn’t About Election Security. It’s About Blocking Women, Young and Low-Income Voters

PUBLISHED 2/23/2026 by

The SAVE Act—the Republicans’ attempt to strip voting rights from millions of Americans under the guise of “safeguarding” elections that are already quite safe—is now headed for debate in the Senate, and President Donald Trump is pushing hard for the bill. Top Democrats say the GOP’s real aim is to “rig the system” by putting paperwork and ID barriers in front of millions of currently eligible voters, and that the bill is part of a larger, ongoing effort to undermine trust in elections and reshape rules in Trump’s favor.

Under the SAVE Act, people would have to show “proof of citizenship,” in the form of a passport or a birth certificate, in order to be allowed to register to vote.

But 21.3 million people (more than 9 percent of Americans) don’t have these documents readily available, and at least 3.8 million don’t have them at all, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Just over half of Americans (51 percent) lack a passport, a document that is time-consuming and costly to acquire or replace.

The SAVE Act will also disproportionately impact women who have changed or hyphenated their names—which is over 80 percent of women married to men.

Likewise, elderly voters, young voters and voters without the financial means to acquire these documents will be overwhelmingly impacted.

In Mississippi, Parents and Community Groups Are Feeding the Kids the State Left Behind

PUBLISHED 2/22/2026 by

For three years now, the state of Mississippi has chosen to opt out of Summer EBT, now called SUN Bucks, which is a federally funded program that would provide an additional $120 in grocery benefits per child to families who qualify for free and reduced lunches. The decision means that this summer, 324,000 Mississippi children will go without these benefits—joining more than 9 million kids nationwide who are left hungry because of political choices, not policy gaps.

For the past two summers, Jackson-based nonprofit Springboard to Opportunities has stepped in with its own summer cash program to fill the gap—providing direct cash assistance to families, trusting them to make the best choices for their children.

As we mark Black History Month, we’re reminded that the story of food insecurity in Mississippi, and across this country, is also a story about structural racism.

The Heritage Foundation’s Plan to Keep Women Uneducated, Pregnant and Subservient

PUBLISHED 2/20/2026 by

Since Trump’s re-ascendance to the White House, the reactionary conservative movement has become the most aggressive and unfettered it has been in my lifetime. And they are getting very, very clear on what they think an acceptable life looks like for women:

—Settle for any man who decides he wants you.
—Don’t go to college.
—Marry early.
—Have as many babies as possible.
—Quit your job (or don’t pursue one in the first place) to stay home full time and depend financially on your husband.
—Shoulder the blame if you wind up married to a jerk.
—Wind up impoverished if you divorce.
—Face social condemnation if you fail to follow the tradwife script.
—Contraception should be illegal or at least hard to get; same for IVF and other fertility treatments.

This isn’t hyperbole. It’s a plan they wrote down and published: Last month, the Heritage Foundation published “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years.” Think of it as Project 2275, a detailed plan that is mostly about how America can spend the next two and a half centuries undoing the feminist progress we’ve made.

Celebrating Black Americans’ Commitment to Democracy, From Jesse Jackson to Dorothy Height to Shirley Chisholm

PUBLISHED 2/20/2026 by

Weekend Reading on Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation in politics, on boards, in sports and entertainment, in judicial offices and in the private sector in the U.S. and around the world—with a little gardening and goodwill mixed in for refreshment!

This week:
—We celebrate the impact of Jesse Jackson.
—A new poll shows that Kamala Harris would defeat Donald Trump in a rematch.
—What the Heritage Foundation’s war on gender equality means for women’s representation.

… and more.

Midlife Women Are a Sleeping Giant Voter Bloc in 2026—Even as the SAVE Act Puts Them at Risk

PUBLISHED 2/20/2026 by

Since 2024, there has been handwringing among politicos about the rightward shift of young male voters in the United States. And now, a new report from the centrist think tank Third Way predicts many of the “swingy, moderate, low-propensity young men” who support Donald Trump will sit out the midterms this year.

At the same time, it’s crickets when it comes to understanding the political engagement of midlife and older women. Even as “organized gangs of wine moms” dominated headlines in recent weeks, I’ve found vanishingly little interest in analyzing how that demographic energy might translate to electoral clout.

How to Find Your Nearest No Kings Protest on March 28

PUBLISHED 2/20/2026 by and

On Saturday, March 28, the third round of No Kings will take place in cities and towns across the United States. The protest comes in response to the Trump administration’s recent crackdowns on immigration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s systemic violations of proper law enforcement procedures. The organizers are optimistic that millions of Americans will take part in demonstrations, marches and rallies, and predict it will be the largest nonviolent protest in American history. 

To find a protest close to you, No Kings has created a map to locate a nearby protest site.

The protest’s flagship event will be hosted in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota’s Twin Cities.

Josh and Erin Hawley’s ‘Love Life Initiative’ Signals a New Phase of the Antiabortion Fight

PUBLISHED 2/18/2026 by | UPDATED 2/20/2026 at 7:34 A.M. PT

Erin and Josh Hawley’s new dark-money group, the Love Life Initiative, arrives at a moment when abortion opponents are shifting tactics. With Roe overturned and sweeping bans already in place across much of the country, the focus is now on cutting off the remaining paths to care—through ballot measures, advertising campaigns and state-level policy fights designed to reshape public opinion and law from the ground up. The Hawleys frame this effort as a moral crusade to restore a national “culture of life.”

But in practice, it is an escalation of a post-Dobbs strategy that has already restricted access across wide swaths of the United States.

The consequences of that strategy are increasingly stark. Pregnant women in states with abortion bans are dying after being denied care, and people living in those states face significantly higher risks during pregnancy, with women of color bearing the brunt.

At the same time, public support for abortion rights has grown, and abortion-protective states have moved to shield providers and patients from out-of-state enforcement.

The Love Life Initiative reflects a movement determined not only to defend its legal victories but to reverse that growing acceptance—by reshaping the political and cultural terrain on which the abortion debate now unfolds.

In a Scorching Order, Federal Judge Rejects Trump’s Attempt to Trample the First Amendment and Rewrite America’s Antebellum Past

PUBLISHED 2/17/2026 by

In a sharply worded order, U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe instructed the Trump administration on Monday—George Washington’s birthday—to reverse course and restore exhibits that depicted and paid homage to the enslaved people who labored at Washington’s home in Philadelphia. Citing George Orwell’s novel, 1984, Judge Rufe (first appointed by President George W. Bush) chastised the administration for operating as if the U.S. has a “Ministry of Truth” whose motto is “Ignorance is Strength.” 

The panels in question were installed at the President’s House in the early 2000s, after years of advocacy by local Black leaders and activists, to commemorate the nine men, women and children enslaved by Washington there: Ona (Oney) Judge, Hercules Posey, Richmond Posey, Christopher Sheels, Joe Richardson, Austin, Giles, Moll and Paris.

However, last month—a week before the start of the United States’ 100th anniversary of Black History Month—NPS workers arrived unannounced at the historical site in Philadelphia and removed these panels and video exhibits.

This case is not just about the erasure of slavery—which on its own is historically important. It’s also about the separation of powers and the First Amendment, which the Trump administration repeatedly violates.

The Strange Hopefulness of Growing a Human While the World Burns

PUBLISHED 2/14/2026 by

As I write this, I’m in my third trimester, anxious and excited for my daughter’s arrival, which feels imminent.

Yes, it’s an extremely dark time, but that’s not exactly a historical outlier. People have been making babies throughout the worst of them. And nothing motivates me more to build a better future for all of us than this little girl—who, like every child, deserves safety, stability, love and care, and a world equipped to give it to her.

I can’t wait for her to see it.