My Daughter Was in the Mass Shooting at Brown, and I Wasn’t Trained for What to Do

PUBLISHED 12/16/2025 by

The text, from a fellow ER doctor and former Brown University faculty member, arrived at 4:27 p.m. on Saturday: “Active shooter near Brown engineering building? Is Hannah ok?” Within seconds, I looked on my phone for my daughter’s location—she was on campus in Friedman Hall. I texted her. It was real. There was an active shooter. She was hiding in a bathroom with her four best friends. For the next 24 hours, I lived every parent’s nightmare while learning hard lessons about a reality even I was not trained for.

As an emergency medicine physician with over 20 years of experience, I’ve operated from positions of information and authority in mass casualties before. This weekend, I had neither. I was simply a mother trying to keep my daughter safe from 150 miles away, armed only with a phone and whatever guidance I could piece together. I want to share what I learned, because on Saturday, thousands of students were in lockdown texting their anxious parents, and I realized how unprepared we are for this side of the experience.

No, Abortion Pills Aren’t Polluting U.S. Waterways

PUBLISHED 12/16/2025 by and

Abortion pills are a critical option for people seeking to end a pregnancy, especially those living in U.S. states with abortion bans who cannot travel out of state for care. In 2023, medication abortion accounted for 63 percent of all clinician-provided abortions in states without total bans.

Given the pivotal role of these medications in preserving abortion access, antiabortion policymakers and advocates are resorting to increasingly unscientific, unconventional tactics to spread mis- and disinformation about medication abortion and about mifepristone, one of two drugs used in most medication abortions in the United States.

In a disturbing new strategy, antiabortion policymakers are attempting to weaponize environmental laws and regulations, citing false claims that medication abortion pollutes U.S. waterways and drinking water.

Following Tragic D.C. Shooting, Afghan Allies Face a New Wave of Enforcement and Fear

PUBLISHED 12/16/2025 by

The shooting in Washington, D.C., that left one National Guard member dead and another critically wounded on Nov. 26 quickly became a major focus of U.S. media. In the days since the shooting, the national conversation has focused almost entirely on the suspect’s identity as an Afghan refugee. Yet those who knew him describe a man who appeared to be struggling long before he drove across the country to Washington, D.C. One volunteer who worked closely with his family said he became increasingly withdrawn, isolated and overwhelmed by the challenges of resettlement. They noted that his behavior reflected profound distress, not radicalization or hostility toward the United States.

Despite these documented struggles, the current administration immediately cast the shooting as a failure of vetting by the Biden administration and threatened to punish an entire community for the crime of one individual. That framing ignores the basic fact that the suspect had been vetted repeatedly. It also ignores the testimony of those who interacted with him in the U.S. and saw no signs of ideological motivation.

Internal directives show ICE has begun targeting more than 1,800 Afghans with past deportation orders and is tracking arrests and removals in daily reports. Officials are also reassessing Afghan vetting programs created after the 2021 withdrawal, despite the fact that the suspect himself was granted asylum during the Trump administration after already receiving extensive screening.

The policies signal a retreat from those commitments and send a dangerous message to future partners: Support for the United States may not translate to safety once U.S. needs are met.

The tragedy in Washington stands as a devastating loss. It deserves a full investigation and a clear accounting of what shaped the suspect’s unraveling. But it must not be used to justify policies that abandon allies, ignore humanitarian obligations and dehumanize an entire community.

bell hooks Taught Us to Imagine Freedom. Universities Are Forcing Us to Fight for It.

PUBLISHED 12/15/2025 by

On the day bell hooks became an ancestor, four years ago today, my beloved friend, comrade and co-conspirator Black feminist sociologist Shawn McGuffey and I were consoling one another over text when he wrote, “We should do something.” “Say less,” I replied.

We had institutional support from Northeastern University at a time when universities and other institutions were publicly and ceremoniously committing to funding DEI related initiatives in the tidal wave of so-called racial reckoning that occurred in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death. The first symposium took place two months later on a cold and clear February morning in 2022. This annual gathering became an important tradition that we looked forward to each year.

This week, we mark four years since the woman born Gloria Jean Watkins, a Black feminist writer, academic, professor and activist became an ancestor. But in 2026, there will be no bell hooks symposium at my university. Due to university wide fiscal austerity, we will not mark the anniversary this year in any official way. It is a tremendous loss, for our students and for our community locally, nationally and internationally.

As I grappled with my own grief over this loss, I had to also reflect deeply about what it means to be a Black feminist scholar in the academy today.

A Global Telehealth First: Women Help Women Begins Producing Abortion Pill Combipack

PUBLISHED 12/14/2025 by

The feminist telehealth provider Women Help Women is redesigning how abortion pills are packaged to reflect what users actually need: a combination pack that includes one mifepristone tablet and eight misoprostol tablets for use up to 12 weeks of pregnancy.

“It’s a huge revolution of who actually gets to decide when, how and with the support of whom they can have an abortion and until when,” said Women Help Women coexecutive director Kinga Jelinska. “It centers the needs of users rather than institutions or markets. The underlying notion is that abortion can be friendly, and abortion can be easy.” 

Self-managed abortion is disruptive. We were told that abortion is a difficult decision; that it has to be difficult to access, and that only doctors control it. Self-managed abortion subverts that,” said Lucía Berro Pizzarossa, fellow coexecutive founder.

Project 2026 Declares Open War on Women’s Rights

PUBLISHED 12/13/2025 by

When The Heritage Foundation released its new policy blueprint for 2026 this week—an extension of the now-infamous Project 2025—it did so with the calm confidence of an institution convinced no one will stop it. The document is shorter than last year’s 900-page “Mandate for Leadership,” but no less dangerous. It is, in fact, more candid.

Project 2026 lays out a government redesigned to control women’s bodies, erase LGBTQ+ lives, dismantle civil rights protections and roll back decades of hard-won progress. Wrapped in the language of “family,” “sovereignty” and “restoring America,” it is a direct attempt to impose a narrow, rigid ideology on an entire nation.

Make no mistake: This is a plan for forced motherhood, government-policed gender and the end of women’s equality as we know it.

But Project 2026 is not destiny. It is a warning—and one we must answer with the full force of a movement that has never accepted a future written for us by someone else.

Women in Politics Weekly Roundup: Miami’s First Woman Mayor; Congress Moves to Reform How We Vote; Forbes Ranks World’s 100 Most Powerful Women

PUBLISHED 12/12/2025 by

Weekend Reading for Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation in politics, sports and entertainment, judicial offices and the private sector—with a little gardening mixed in!

This week:
—A seachange in New Mexico’s new women-majority legislature.
— The Ranked Choice Voting Act has been introduced in Congress, which would require RCV for all primary and general congressional races beginning in 2030, allowing voters to express their ranked support for multiple candidates.
—Eileen Higgins is elected as Miami’s first woman mayor. She ran on a platform of structural reforms: affordable housing, climate resilience, improved municipal governance and expanded representation.
—Australia enacts a nationwide ban on social media accounts for children under 16.
—Forbes 2025 ranking of the world’s 100 most powerful women spotlights an increasingly diverse and influential generation of female leaders across business, politics, technology, media and culture.

… and more.

Reza Khandan: A Year in Prison for Supporting Women’s Rights

PUBLISHED 12/12/2025 by

It has been a year since 60-year-old Iranian human rights activist Reza Khandan was arrested in what was clearly another official attack on his family. Political prisoners in authoritarian regimes are meant to disappear into hopeless silence, but Reza has become a force to be reckoned with.

“The crime for which Reza Khandan is in prison is the crime of love,” writes Ariel Dorfman, author and friend of Khandan and his wife, activist Nasrin Sotoudeh. “Not just love of his country and its culture. Not just love of humanity and our rights to be human. Not just love for the future. But also, the real reason why he is being punished: Reza loves the extraordinary Nasrin with whom he shares a life, a land, and a cause. How those who persecute Reza must fear his loyalty and steadfastness. He will prevail.”

“I will continue until I achieve legal rights, restore my family’s dignity, and change the conditions of the prison administration,” Khandan wrote. “May the shadow of terror and tyranny be removed from our beloved country one day. And finally, I would like to add: ‘I object to the compulsory hijab!’” 

Trump’s Anti-Diversity Crusade Claims Two Campus Magazines

PUBLISHED 12/11/2025 by

I recently discovered two glossy magazines published by and for young people: Alice, which focuses on fashion, beauty, personal health, wellness and lifestyle; and Nineteen Fifty-Six, which brings a Black cultural lens to coverage of news, style and the arts.

Both are student-run publications housed at the University of Alabama. And on any other day, they would make one think the future of journalism look very bright indeed. Except that the sole reason I found these magazines at all is because they are now officially suspended. Last week, campus officials announced their permanent shuttering. Yet another casualty of the Trump administration’s attacks on free speech and public higher education—all in the name of stamping out supposed diversity, equity and inclusion.