‘Freeing Black Girls’ and ‘Loving Black Boys’: Tamura Lomax on Revolutionary Mothering During Troubled Times

PUBLISHED 10/23/2025 by

Tamura Lomax, a trailblazing Black feminist religious scholar, is on a mission to deliver a “Black feminist Bible on racism and revolutionary mother” with two companion books. The first, Freeing Black Girls, was published this year (2025); the second, Loving Black Boys, comes out next year.

Ms. contributing editor Janell Hobson spoke with Dr. Lomax about her latest works and the radical vision of “revolutionary mothering” that guides them.

“Black feminist mothering becomes this experiment. If people can teach sexism and hatred and racism, can we teach Black feminist politics? Is that possible? If we just do it from birth, and it’s just normal everyday talk it’s not this lesson that happens once at the dinner table but it’s just part of our everyday living. Can we do that the same way that we teach hatred?

“Revolutionary mothering is teaching those Black feminist politics everywhere—in the car, on the couch, during movie night, after the basketball game, in the football stands. It’s teaching a radical politics of our rights, our collective right to bodily autonomy first and foremost.”

Russia Was Once a Revolutionary Feminist Motherland

PUBLISHED 10/22/2025 by

Russia’s hostility to feminism today stems not from its foreignness, but from memory. A century ago, it was Russian women who lit the first sparks of revolution. On International Women’s Day in 1917, factory workers filled the streets of Petrograd demanding bread, peace and equality—an uprising that toppled the Romanovs and pulled the world into modernity. Under the Bolsheviks, women won the right to vote, divorce became accessible and abortion was legalized. For a brief, radical moment, the Soviet experiment made women’s liberation a pillar of the state.

Julia Ioffe’s book, Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy, reminds us that today’s Russia rejects feminism precisely because it once knew what it could do: ignite revolutions, upend hierarchies and reimagine power itself.

One in Three U.S. Women Is Stalked. A Harvard Study Is Finally Talking About It.

PUBLISHED 10/22/2025 by

When Tammy was being stalked by her ex, she didn’t know what to do or where to go. Tammy said it was the roughest part of her life, mentally and physically. Soon after, Human Options, a nonprofit based on Orange County, Calif., became her outlet and a safe haven for her to receive legal counseling and housing.

Tammy’s case is not isolated. In a recent study out of Harvard, 66,270 women were studied over a nearly 20-year period to determine the health effects of stalking: Women become more susceptible to heart disease.

Why the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Matters—and How to Make Your Voice Heard in the Ongoing Election

PUBLISHED 10/22/2025 by

The Nov. 4 Pennsylvania Supreme Court will determine Pennsylvanians’ access to education, protections for workers in the workplace, LGBTQ+ civil rights and gender equality, among other key issues.

Retaining the current justices on the state’s supreme court is crucial, especially after recent fights in the state over the 2030 census. The redistricting from the census could mean that states like Pennsylvania may have one less congressional seat. As of now, Pennsylvania has stable abortion access, but flipping the court could disrupt access to Pennsylvanians.

Millions Face Sharp Increases in ACA Premiums if Enhanced Tax Credits Expire

PUBLISHED 10/21/2025 by , , and

Affordable Care Act (ACA) enhanced premium tax credits—first introduced in 2021 and extended through 2025 by the Inflation Reduction Act—are set to expire at the end of this year. These tax credits have made Marketplace coverage far more affordable for millions of Americans, both by increasing financial assistance for low-income enrollees and by extending eligibility to many middle-income families for the first time. Since their introduction, enrollment in the ACA Marketplace has more than doubled—from about 11 million to over 24 million people.

If Congress allows the enhanced tax credits to expire, most Marketplace enrollees will face steep premium hikes. According to new analysis by KFF, the average enrollee’s annual premium payment would more than double—from $888 in 2025, to $1,904 in 2026. Some families would lose eligibility for any financial help at all.

A 60-year-old couple earning $85,000, for example, would see their premiums rise by over $22,600 next year—nearly a quarter of their income.

Without congressional action, millions could lose access to affordable coverage, threatening one of the ACA’s most significant achievements: making health insurance accessible to Americans across income levels.

‘DILF (Did I Leave Feminism?)’ Is a New Transmasculine Manifesto

PUBLISHED 10/21/2025 by

An excerpt from Jude Ellison S. Doyle’s new book, DILF (Did I Leave Feminism?), out Oct. 21:

Transmasculine people are one of feminism’s biggest blind spots. No one knows quite what to do with us, so it’s easier to pretend we’re not there. Books on “male feminism” or “feminist men” mostly teach men how to be allies to women’s struggle—the idea that there might be men who actually experience pregnancy, or abortion, or being cat-called or sexually harassed or pay-gapped or any of the other things we traditionally call “women’s issues” is not accounted for. Books on trans feminism understandably stress the importance of feminism for trans women—which is important, what with them being women and all—but do tend to reinforce the assumption that feminism is just for girls.

Our Favorite Protest Signs From No Kings 2.0

PUBLISHED 10/21/2025 by , and | UPDATED 10/23/2025 at 1:13 P.M. PT

On Saturday, Oct. 18, 2025, millions of Americans poured into the streets for the second No Kings protest this year. Organizers from hundreds of national and local progressive groups say nearly 7 million people participated in about 2,700 different No Kings events. In every state, in cities big and small, protesters used signs, costumes and chants to double down on democracy and accuse President Donald Trump of behaving more like a monarch than an elected official during his first 10 months back in office.

Marchers carried “We the People” signs and references to the U.S. Constitution, including: “The Constitution is not optional,” “Democracy not monarchy” and “No kings since 1776.” Signs and chants varied by region: In New York City, protesters dressed up as the Statue of Liberty; in Florida, signs said the Florida heat would melt ICE; in Texas, marchers called for Gov. Abbott and Sen. Cruz to stand up to the Trump administration’s abuses of power.

Here are some of our favorite signs from Saturday’s No Kings protests.

Trey Reed’s Death—and Its Swift Labeling as Suicide—Demands the Scrutiny Ida B. Wells Called For

PUBLISHED 10/21/2025 by

Trey Reed, a young Black student, was found hanging from a tree on his college campus of Delta State University in Mississippi on Sept. 15, 2025. Trey Reed was a computer science major from Grenada, Miss., and a first-generation student, described as ambitious and eager to create a positive future for himself and his family.

Mississippi police and the Bolivar County coroner’s office have labeled the death a suicide. But Reed’s family members and other advocates, including Reps. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), activist and former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, attorneys Ben Crump and Vanessa J. Jones (both of whom are representing the family), are calling for further investigation. 

Cases like Reed’s awaken questions rooted in legacies of racial violence in the South. “While the details of this case are still emerging, we cannot ignore Mississippi’s painful history of lynching and racial violence against African Americans,” said Thompson in the days following Reed’s death. That history is not distant: Mississippi recorded more lynchings than any other state, and the echoes of those crimes persist in how the deaths of Black people are investigated and discussed. The reflex to dismiss possible racial motives—or to declare a death a suicide before all evidence is known—reflects a deeper national unwillingness to confront the full scope of anti-Black violence.

The Ripple Effects of the U.S. Retreat from International Reproductive Care

PUBLISHED 10/19/2025 by , and

The U.S. withdrawal of international reproductive health funding is already having devastating effects around the world. Clinics are closing, health workers go unpaid, and essential medications and contraceptives sit unused in warehouses while millions of women and families lose access to life-saving care.

These abrupt cuts are not just administrative—they are a direct attack on decades of global health progress, putting children, pregnant women and marginalized communities at heightened risk of preventable disease, unintended pregnancy and death.

Yet there is still a path forward. The infrastructure to deliver reproductive and public health services remains in place, and health workers are ready to act. If funding is restored, we can prevent the worst outcomes, safeguard global health, and ensure that the fundamental human rights to health, life and bodily autonomy are protected.

The global community must act urgently to reverse the harm and prevent a full-scale public health and human rights crisis.

Meet Dr. Lincoln, the Internet’s Favorite OB-GYN

PUBLISHED 10/18/2025 by

You may know—and love—Dr. Jennifer Lincoln already. If you are unfamiliar, she’s a board-certified OB-GYN and a famous content creator with 2.8 million followers on TikTok and large platforms on Instagram and YouTube. Dr. Lincoln is also a practicing OB-hospitalist who works in labor and delivery, night and day.

She makes content to dispel medical misinformation, a frequent tool of the patriarchy. As ‘MAHA’ influencers decry everything from birth control to Tylenol, at the expense of women, she’s pushing back with evidence-based information.

Like most Americans, I felt uninformed about sexual reproductive health, even after my in-school health classes. In high school, I searched YouTube for information about reproductive health, where I found my way to Dr. Lincoln, who not only provided the health class I never had, but also ignited my interest in reproductive justice. Without her influence, I likely would not have become a feminist writer at Ms.

Over Zoom, I had the privilege of chatting with Dr. Lincoln about her journey from OB-GYN to viral educator, how the post-Dobbs landscape has reshaped her work, and why she believes accurate, inclusive sex education is one of the most powerful tools we have for liberation. Our conversation spanned everything from social media strategy to Christian nationalism—and what it really means to fight misinformation with empathy.