Politics

Hundreds of Organizations Rally Behind SPLC Ahead of Congressional Hearing: ‘The Civil Rights Community Will Be Watching on May 20’

PUBLISHED 5/19/2026 by

Civil rights organizations are sounding the alarm ahead of a May 20 House Judiciary Committee hearing targeting the Southern Poverty Law Center, warning that the proceeding is part of a broader campaign by the Trump administration and congressional Republicans to weaponize the federal government against dissenting voices and nonprofit watchdog groups.

The hearing, scheduled for Wednesday at 10 a.m. ET, comes as more than 400 national, state and local organizations prepare to release a joint sign-on letter condemning the administration’s criminal charges against SPLC and urging Congress to investigate what advocates describe as escalating abuses of executive power targeting civil society organizations.

“This is a coordinated strategy to consolidate power by seeking to eliminate institutions capable of challenging it.”

The hearing also comes just days after thousands of voting rights advocates gathered in Montgomery, Ala.—the same city where the SPLC is headquartered—on Saturday, May 16, for the “All Roads Lead to the South” national day of action.

No Women Were Present at the U.S.-China Negotiations. This Is By Design.

PUBLISHED 5/15/2026 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:
—Mexico continues to bet the U.S. on women’s political representation.
—A brief explanation on the Supreme Court’s attack on voting rights.
—In a 2028 presidential nomination poll, women lead among Democrats.
—Denise Powell earns a primary nod in a hotly contested Nebraska congressional race.

… and more.

A Government for Big Tobacco and Bigger Families

PUBLISHED 5/14/2026 by | UPDATED 5/17/2026 at 7:40 A.M. PT

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) made multiple headlines last week—starting with the apparent implosion of Dr. Marty Makary’s tenure as Food and Drug Administration commissioner. But beneath the chaos lies something more troubling: a federal health apparatus increasingly shaped by antiabortion pressure campaigns, pronatalist messaging and culture-war governance masquerading as public policy.

From the Supreme Court fight over mifepristone access to the Trump administration’s bizarre new moms.gov initiative—complete with links to antiabortion crisis pregnancy centers and rhetoric about Americans being “under-babied”—the week offered a revealing snapshot of where U.S. health policy is headed. Meanwhile, flavored vape approvals for Big Tobacco sailed through the FDA, even as reproductive healthcare access remains under constant attack.

Chaos may be Trump’s currency, but the throughline here is ideology: rewarding conservative allies, policing reproductive autonomy and repackaging motherhood as a nationalist project while offering little meaningful material support to actual families.

Keeping Score: Supreme Court Blow to Voting Rights Will ‘Silence Our Voices’; Conservative Judges Try to Restrict Mifepristone; Moms Worry About Putting Food on the Table

PUBLISHED 5/14/2026 by | UPDATED 5/15/2026 at 10:38 A.M. PT

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:
—The Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, slashing protections against racially discriminatory voting laws.
—A record high amount of books were censored from libraries in 2025, often due to LGBTQ characters or plotlines addressing racism.
—A third of moms living on low incomes have gone into debt or skipped meals so their kids could eat.
—Just 22 percent of American voters have significant confidence in the Supreme Court.
—In 2025 the number of abortions in the U.S. remained stable, but more patients in states with bans turned to telehealth services instead of traveling out of state.
—The Department of Justice announced plans to expand the use of the federal death penalty.
—An Epstein-Maxwell survivor, who asked to remain anonymous, laments, “I kept my identity protected as Jane Doe. I woke up one day with my name mentioned over 500 times. While the rich and powerful remain protected by redaction, my name was exposed to the world.”
—The Trump administration launched a Moms.gov site on Mother’s Day that refers pregnant people to unregulated crisis pregnancy centers.
—A Ms. piece on solitary confinement by Kwaneta Harris and her daughter Summer Knight won Kwaneta second place in the Collaboration category of the Stillwater Awards for prison journalism.
—Liberation, a play about 1970s feminism by Bess Wohl, won the Pulitzer Prize for drama. It was also nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play. Wohl was inspired by her own life: Her mother, Lisa Cronin Wohl, was an early Ms. contributor.

… and more.

‘They’re Taking Our Humanity Away’: Kimberlé Crenshaw on Her Memoir, America’s Future and Why the Fight for Justice Requires ‘Backtalking’

PUBLISHED 5/14/2026 by

For decades, pioneering legal scholar and activist Kimberlé Crenshaw has shaped the language we use to understand systemic injustice—from coining the term “intersectionality” to helping launch the #SayHerName movement.

In her new memoir, Backtalker: An American Memoir, Crenshaw traces the personal and political experiences that shaped her work, while warning that the attacks on critical race theory, feminism and Black women are inseparable from the broader erosion of democracy itself.

In this wide-ranging interview, Crenshaw reflects on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, “intersectional failure,” the backlash against Black women leaders and the dangers of what historian Timothy Snyder calls “anticipatory compliance.” She argues that today’s political moment—from attacks on independent journalism to the dismantling of civil rights protections—demands a more expansive understanding of solidarity and resistance.

“The other side doesn’t want us to feel empathy,” Crenshaw says. “They’re taking our humanity away, the thing that makes us humans and not a machine.”

Crenshaw also speaks candidly about the personal costs of “backtalking” to power, the unfinished grief that continues to shape her activism, and why she still believes collective action and moral clarity matter.

“One step forward can lead to five or 10 steps back,” she says. “When we see the forces of retrenchment coming on the horizon, we must pick up every weapon we have to fight against it.”

There Is Danger in Silence: How to Mobilize Your Friends and Neighbors Into an ‘I Will Not Be Quiet’ Chapter

PUBLISHED 5/12/2026 by

In 2016, just after Donald Trump was elected to his first term, a small group of women gathered in a Brooklyn apartment to talk through what they had been afraid to say out loud. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, balancing mugs in their hands, they created a space not for debate, but for listening. What emerged from those conversations became —a growing network of talking circles designed to help people find their voice in uncertain political times.

“It felt like a dam had been broken, and all this fear and anger was pouring out into the open,” said co-founder Adrianne Wright. “But underneath all of that noise, I noticed that there was something else: this impenetrable silence. It was a silence of people who didn’t feel safe enough to say I don’t really know, or I don’t know everything about this topic.” Over time, the circles expanded across the country, from Seattle to Atlanta, creating spaces where people could process political fear, connect with others and channel those conversations into action—from voter outreach to rallies supporting survivors of gender-based violence.

Wright says the idea behind the circles is rooted in a long history of collective organizing. “From Black churches during the Civil Rights Movement, to women’s groups in the 1960s, these spaces helped people name what they were living through and turn that into collective action,” she explained. “There’s a real pattern there: When people are given the space to speak truthfully about their lives, movements begin.” Today, the organization encourages anyone to start a local chapter using its free toolkit. “If we don’t feel like we belong, we can’t speak up,” Wright said, “and if we don’t speak up, it’s very hard for us to realize our power.”

A Reparations Blueprint for a New Era of Civil Rights Rollbacks

PUBLISHED 5/12/2026 by

For more than a century, the survivors and descendants of the Tulsa Race Massacre have carried not only the trauma of racial violence, but the burden of fighting to prove that what was stolen from Greenwood was never fully repaired.

Civil rights attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons reflects on the organizing, coalition-building and collective determination behind the modern reparations movement in Tulsa—and why local movements rooted in community power may offer the clearest path toward justice.

Solomon-Simmons introduces “ThinkGreenwood,” a framework for reparatory justice grounded in self-determination, collective economics, mutual care and resilience.

“ThinkGreenwood is my gift to every Black town, neighborhood and community in this country where people seek to repair past harms and give themselves and their children a fair chance at a better life. It’s a blueprint for Black Power in the modern era that any group can use to build the same indomitable foundation that’s enabled Tulsa’s community to stay strong and united through decades of setbacks and disappointments.”

(Excerpted from Redeem a Nation: The Century-Long Battle to Restore the Soul of America by Damario Solomon-Simmons, out May 12, 2026.)

From the Halls of Congress to Out on the Trail, Women Beg the Question: Why Not You?

PUBLISHED 5/8/2026 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:
—Rachel Entrekin makes history by setting a new course record at the Cocodona 250 ultramarathon, becoming the first woman to win the race outright.
—Amy Acton could become Ohio’s first woman governor.
—Mother’s Day has always been about women’s political power.

… and more.

The First Mother’s Day Was a Protest

PUBLISHED 5/8/2026 by

Far from mimosa brunches and hallmark greetings, the first Mother’s Day in the United States occurred against the scourge of war. In 1870, abolitionist and suffragist Julie Ward Howe who still had the horrors of the Civil War on her mind and was disturbed by the plight of war abroad called for an international movement of mothers as a way to call for peace and to protest the devastation of war.

History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes. Mother’s Day comes this year as our nation and those across the globe are living with the dire consequences of a war with Iran Congress never authorized. The war has cost American lives as well as the lives of innocent children–including nearly 100 schoolgirls—in Iran. Former U.S. military officials have criticized the Pentagon’s strike and the lack of transparency around it. The president continues to threaten many of our global allies, as the rate of autocracies across the globe rise while democracies decline. All the while, costs continue to rise, making it harder and harder for working people to make ends meet. 

The only way this crisis will become a catalyst for change is if we commit not just to rebuilding our nation, but to reimagining it as a nation that can hold all of us and to demand that our leaders drive bold change to achieve true democracy and true change for the next generation. A nation where it is unacceptable for children to go hungry while others enjoy nation-building wealth. A nation where it is unacceptable to detain children and infants based on their skin color or who their parents are or where they are from. A nation where every person finds the courage to call out the cruelty. 

On this Mother’s Day, may we all be the mothers—and the fighters—our children need. If we don’t, who will? 

The Fifth Circuit Proves Abortion Is on the Ballot this November

PUBLISHED 5/7/2026 by | UPDATED 5/15/2026 at 10:41 A.M. PT

A highlight of being in Ireland has been following the local news, especially the robust abortion beat: Irish lawmakers have been waging a loud fight to expand abortion rights—in particular, to ensure unnecessary waiting periods don’t impede access to care.

Breaking headlines from the United States were a dark juxtaposition.

The U.S. is one of only four nations worldwide actively rolling back reproductive rights.

And now we’re threatened with yet another fight: The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling late last week aiming to create the most significant setback to abortion access since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision four years ago.

The three-member panel, two of whom are Trump appointees, blocked a 2023 FDA policy allowing mifepristone to be prescribed by telehealth providers and delivered by mail—a decision that applies to all states, whether abortion is legal or not, and where voters have mobilized to pass ballot measures and enshrine reproductive rights in their state constitutions.

This Fifth Circuit ruling is not the final word on the case. The two pharmaceutical companies that make mifepristone, Danco and GenBioPro, immediately filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court. On Monday, Justice Samuel Alito announced an administrative stay through May 11, meaning the decision is on hold until at least then, while the justices review the appeal and decide whether the medically unnecessary in-person dispensing requirements can be reimposed for the duration of the litigation.

In the spirit of the fighting Irish, readers should take heart that the community of U.S. abortion providers, advocates and support networks “have shown amazing resilience and tenacity since the Dobbs decision,” according to Kelly Baden of Guttmacher. “They will continue to do what they can do to ensure that everyone, regardless of where they live, can access the abortion care they need.”

So, for now, our citizen mobilization strategy must be twofold: Support those who directly deliver those services and get ready to get loud. The abortion fight shows that access to healthcare, the integrity of science, the rules of democracy, and the right to bodily autonomy are not only all interconnected, but they are all on the ballot this November.