What the ‘Wicked’ Weight-Loss Discourse Gets Wrong

PUBLISHED 12/17/2025 by

We can’t afford to look away from changing beauty norms in our society, and how they are fueling eating disorders. 

Jennifer Rollin, an eating disorder therapist based in Maryland, says, “What I hear from a lot of clients is that when they are trying to recover from their eating disorder in this society, it almost feels wrong, because ‘everyone around me is talking about Ozempic,’ and ‘all the celebrities are talking about their big amount of weight loss.’”

But while it can feel cathartic to criticize or distance ourselves from prominent women who seem to be conforming to dangerous beauty standards, that criticism is harmful and does not bring us any closer to addressing the problem.

Greg Abbott Vows to Put Turning Point USA Chapters in All Texas Schools

PUBLISHED 12/17/2025 by

Texas has officially launched a partnership with Turning Point USA—an organization that advocates for far-right, conservative politics co-founded by the late Charlie Kirk—to create chapters on every high school and college campus in the state. 

But petitions calling for the removal of Turning Point chapters in public schools across the country have emerged, and higher education faculty in Texas are facing harassment thanks to the organization’s watchlist targeting instructors it claims have views contrary to Turning Point’s.

Although conservatives praise TPUSA as a champion of free speech, critics say that the group not only targets LGBTQ+ people, women, people of color and educators, but that Abbott and Patrick are focusing on the wrong issues.

“Do you know what I’d like to see on every high school campus in Texas? Water fountains without lead in them. Qualified, certified teachers in every classroom. Gun safety measures that would make sure our kids came home at the end of the day,” said Zeph Capo, president of the Texas American Federation of Teachers. “Instead, the governor and lieutenant governor are directing their resources and the entire state apparatus to put their fingers on the scale for one organization while fighting tooth and nail to keep others off campus.”

“Gov. Abbott praises clubs like these as champions of ‘religious freedom’ and ‘free speech,’ yet in the same breath, he targets student groups he disagrees with,” said Felicia Martin, executive director of the Texas Freedom Network.

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.