Joe Biden and the Biden Administration

Black Voters Prepare for Backlash Ahead of Election Day

Through her nonprofit Project Say Something, voting rights activist Camille Bennett urged city officials to remove a Confederate monument in front of the local courthouse in Florence. Throughout Trump’s presidency, as support grew across the country to topple and rename Confederate monuments, the former president continued to defend the racist remnants of the past. Organizers like Bennett say they can’t afford another Trump win. “The power belongs to the people,” said Bennett. “If we choose to mobilize and really lift our voices as a nation, we can get a lot done. And that’s the hope that I carry on—no matter what happens, we can’t be afraid.”

“Make no mistake about it, if [Trump] is reelected, this is going to further embolden his supporters to express their racial hostility, their racial grievances, and also continue to further inspire people to engage in hateful tactics,” said Emmitt Riley, president of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists. “Some folks are sick of Trump, but this election is going to really be another test as to whether or not a nation who has lived under four years of chaos is ready to return to that dysfunction and chaos.” 

War on Women Report: 27 Women Accuse Trump of Sexual Assault; Louisiana’s Controlled Substances Law Criminalizing Abortion Medication Takes Effect

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U.S. patriarchal authoritarianism is on the rise, and democracy is on the decline. But day after day, we stay vigilant in our goals to dismantle patriarchy at every turn. The fight is far from over. We are watching, and we refuse to go back. This is the War on Women Report.

Since our last report:
—Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the city of Austin over its abortion travel fund.
—The number of women who have accused Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump of sexual assault is now up to 27.
—Louisiana’s law reclassifying the abortion medications mifepristone and misoprostol as “controlled dangerous substances” took effect on Oct. 1.
—In Manhattan, a 20-year-old woman is facing criminal charges for miscarrying in a restaurant bathroom.

Biden-Harris Administration Proposes Most Significant Expansion of Contraception Coverage Under ACA in Over a Decade

The Biden-Harris administration last week announced a new proposed rule that would significantly expand access to no-cost birth control under the Affordable Care Act. The rule would require private health insurance to cover all forms of contraception without co-pays, including over-the-counter contraceptives.

This expansion of contraception coverage is important in light of steep declines in prescriptions for birth control and emergency contraception in states banning abortion.

Keeping Score: Federal Judge to DeSantis, ‘It’s the First Amendment, Stupid’; N.Y. Woman Investigated for Pregnancy Loss; Abortion Is #1 Issue for Women Voters Under 30

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: Abortion is the number one election issue for women under 30; a record-breaking 300,000 Georgians cast their ballots on the first day; equal pay trailblazer Lilly Ledbetter died at age 86; X (Twitter) fails to quickly remove revenge porn; less than 1 percent of U.S. abortions happen after 21 weeks; and more.

Greedflation: Corporate Profits Are the Driver of High Prices

Depending on who’s doing the talking, inflation can be blamed on President Joe Biden or on his predecessor, Donald Trump. But one—and perhaps the greatest—driver of higher prices lies under the radar: corporate profits.

Women are the majority of the population, the majority of registered voters and the majority of those who actually show up at the polls. Let’s hope they do their homework and remember in November which candidates are coziest with the profit-mongering corporations picking their pocketbooks.

(This article originally appears in the Fall 2024 issue of Ms. Join the Ms. community today and you’ll get issues delivered straight to your mailbox! )

Feminist Future, or Return of the Strongman? The Young Men’s Vote and the Fate of the Nation

The political commentariat has paid more attention to gender during this campaign cycle—especially masculinity—than ever before.

The roots of this gap preceded Trump’s entrance into presidential politics, but the larger-than-life presence of the misogynous and bombastic blue-collar billionaire has widened and deepened the gap into a chasm. It’s especially notable among 18-29 year-old voters, where a recent Harvard poll showed a 30 point difference between young women and men’s support for Harris.

As we get closer to Election Day, a key question for Democrats is whether Democratic-aligned organizations, and the Harris-Walz campaign itself, can provide substantive policy proposals—like support for entrepreneurship, funding for technical colleges and job training, marijuana decriminalization and “freedom” messaging on abortion rights—and stronger, more assertive messaging that speaks directly to young men.

Republican AGs Want Access to Health Records of Out-of-State Abortion Seekers. Texas’ Ken Paxton Is Leading the Charge.

Since the fall of Roe, cross-border abortion travel has doubled. To guard against the threat of having—as President Biden put it—the medical records of abortion patients “used against them, their doctor, or their loved one just because they sought or received lawful reproductive healthcare,” a new HIPAA rule issued last year enhances the privacy protections for reproductive healthcare.

Attorneys general from 19 abortion-hostile states submitted a formal letter to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra in opposition to the proposed enhanced privacy rule, based on its disregard for fetal personhood. The AGs failed in their mission to prevent the proposed 2024 rule from becoming final—so Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton took matters into his own hands. The Texas challenge will be heard by Republican appointee Judge James Wesley Hendrix in Lubbock, Texas. It is anticipated that he will be sympathetic to the state’s position.

How Project 2025 Seeks to Obliterate Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights

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Project 2025 promotes a presidential agenda that rolls back civil and human rights and implements extremist conservative policies across every federal department and agency. Its sweeping far-right policy framework, by the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, includes numerous attacks on sexual and reproductive health and rights. 

This fact sheet enumerates some of the agenda’s most serious threats to sexual and reproductive health and describes potential effects.

Half a Century After Title IX, Universities Are Still Failing Survivors: The Ms. Q&A With Nicole Bedera

Ms. spoke with Bedera about her research for her newly released book, On the Wrong Side: How Universities Protect Perpetrators and Betray Survivors of Sexual Violence, and how Title IX has fared in the 52 years since its passage.

Her findings are appalling.

“The average college expels just one perpetrator of sexual assault every three years.

“One of the administrators … told me that he hesitated to consider something as rape unless it involved ‘a stranger jumping out of the bushes.’ Survivors’ experiences were consistently misunderstood and minimized.”