California

In Landmark Case, California Argues False Abortion Pill Reversal Claims Aren’t Protected by the First Amendment

PUBLISHED 11/6/2026 by

On Sept. 17, following nearly three years of litigation and a six-week trial, California’s Department of Justice delivered its closing arguments in a landmark case against RealOptions Obria and Heartbeat International, seeking to stop their use of “false and misleading claims to advertise abortion pill reversal” (APR), as Attorney General Rob Bonta described it in a press release.

APR is the unproven and potentially dangerous flooding of the body with a high dosage of progesterone after taking mifepristone, the first pill in the FDA-approved medication abortion protocol, but before taking misoprostol, the second approved pill in the sequence.

APR has become an increasingly central tactic in CPCs’ relentless post-Dobbs efforts to persuade what they call “abortion-vulnerable” pregnant women to carry their pregnancies to term.

The trial court is expected to issue its ruling by Dec. 16, within the 90-day period allotted under California law. Given the evidence presented at trial, a ruling in California’s favor could mark a significant victory in efforts to hold CPCs accountable for promoting false and misleading claims about a procedure that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has denounced as “unproven and unethical.” Such a decision would also send a powerful message: The First Amendment does not give organizations a free pass to mislead pregnant women about their medical care.

Rest in Power, Dolores Huerta. She Never Waited for Permission—and Neither Should We

PUBLISHED 10/28/2026 by and

We lost Dolores Huerta on Wednesday, Oct. 28. She died at home in Bakersfield, Calif., surrounded by family. She was 96.

You know the words she left us: “Sí, se puede”—“Yes, it can be done.” People print them on T-shirts now. Dolores never meant them as a slogan; she meant them as an instruction.

Before the strikes, before the boycotts, before the contracts and the awards, she taught school in Stockton, Calif. The children came to her hungry, and some came in clothes too thin for the season. Their parents worked long days in the fields for wages that covered neither.

After watching this for a while, she reached a conclusion most people would have kept to themselves: She could do more for those children by organizing their parents than by teaching them. So she left the classroom. That was the first time she declined to stay where she had been put—but it was not the last.

She helped build what became the United Farm Workers. When she negotiated, growers signed contracts that covered healthcare, retirement and safer working conditions. When she organized the grape boycott, 17 million Americans stopped buying grapes. (Seventeen million!)

We first heard her speak at a convention of the National Organization for Women in the late 1980s. By then, Dolores had spent three decades as the woman nobody had planned for. We asked her to join us in a new venture: a national effort to put more women in elected office. Dolores said yes. She stayed nearly 40 years, becoming an adviser to Ms. magazine after the Feminist Majority Foundation took over publishing it in 2001.

The election is six days away. For 70 years, Dolores knocked on doors to tell people one thing: Democracy works only when you show up. If you want to honor her this week, do what she would have asked. Vote. Then bring someone with you. She would have preferred that to flowers.

Big Money Is on the Ballot: Voters Could Reshape Campaign Finance Laws in Multiple States

PUBLISHED 10/27/2026 by

Record spending on state and federal races is defining the 2026 election cycle, with an unprecedented share of the money coming from billionaire megadonors, corporations and “dark money” nonprofits that don’t disclose their donors.

Voters are angry about the corrupting influence of big money in politics and are hungry for solutions. But this year, voters in key states will have the chance to vote directly on campaign finance reforms.

In Alaska, 72 percent of voters in August approved Ballot Measure 1, which sets individual donor limits at $2,000 and organizational donor limits at $4,000 per candidate per election.

In November, Alaska voters will now weigh in on Ballot Measure 2, which asks whether to repeal the state’s enhanced campaign disclosure law requiring any person or group that spends more than $2,000 on an election in Alaska to reveal its donors. A similar effort was narrowly defeated in 2024, but this year’s “yes” campaign is well-funded. It has received $1.5 million from Elon Musk, with most commentary centering on the ranked-choice voting provision.

In Michigan, voters will decide whether to limit political contributions by state contractors and utility companies and crack down on dark money.

In Montana, Proposal I-194 would revise the state’s corporate code to eliminate the power of corporations chartered or doing business in the state to engage in campaign spending.

Rounding out the list of major initiatives is California’s Proposition 4, which asks voters to repeal the 1988 ban on the state and most of its localities using public funds for political campaigns. If adopted, Prop 4 would pave the way for public financing of elections.

In August, Missouri voters defeated a measure whose main objective was to curb the state’s initiative process, but that also included a provision to prohibit foreign spending on state ballot measures that received very little attention.

And in Arizona, voters in November will consider a provision that prohibits foreign spending on state elections as a part of a larger package of restrictive voting law changes.

As Trump’s Education Department Scales Back Campus Sexual Assault Investigations, a New Database Puts the Records in Public Hands

PUBLISHED 10/27/2026 by and

The civil rights arm of the U.S. Department of Education has dramatically scaled back investigations involving schools and colleges since the second Trump administration began, even as complaints continue to pour in.

The decline in investigations is especially dramatic for cases involving sex discrimination. More than 200 new complaints were filed with the office related to schools’ handling of sexual violence—rape, assault and abuse. But the Trump administration launched investigations in only 29 of them, finding fault with a school district only once, according to the newly obtained data. It’s typical for there to be at least 60 sexual violence investigations opened each year.

The department addressed fewer of these cases, despite continued concerns about the persistence of the problem—as demonstrated by the intense public scrutiny over how Cornell University addressed a student’s report of a 2024 gang rape.

Most Home-Based Childcare Is Run by People Over 50. Who’s Going to Replace Them?

PUBLISHED 10/23/2026 by

For more than 20 years, Sylvia Crews has worked in early childhood education, spending the last decade running her own home-based center. After buying a home in Washington, D.C., in 2015, she launched LTH Infants and Toddlers Center—an abbreviation for “loving, tender home”—shortly afterward. She is licensed to care for up to nine children ranging from 6 weeks to 3½ years old, overseeing four employees.

Crews said she wants to work “as long as the Lord will allow me to,” but she does worry about the likelihood of younger workers entering the sector.

“At a point, I know I’ll have to stop,” said Crews, 67. But as for the next generation, “How do we get them involved? We need to bring them in,” she said.

For many parents, home-based care is a vital alternative. Providers tend to offer more flexible hours than larger centers: Only 8 percent of larger childcare centers offer care during nontraditional working hours, according to federal data, compared to more than a third of licensed home-based childcare providers.

Smaller home-based centers may meet a family’s needs in other ways, too, such as providing care in families’ native language or offering a specific curriculum, like one focused on outdoor play, advocates said.

A federal report found that more than 97,000 small home-based providers—defined as one person serving as the sole caregiver—closed between 2005 and 2017.

After a Long Campaign, California Finally Banned Child Marriage. Survivors Made It Happen.

PUBLISHED 10/14/2026 by

I grew up around women who were wed while they were still children. My grandmother was married at just 10 years old and my aunt at 16. At school, friends of mine married. I watched their schooling stop, pregnancies that came too soon, choices made for them rather than by them. Relatives would ask, gently but pointedly, when I intended to do the same, as though delaying it only put off something inevitable.

What haunted me then still haunts me now is how ordinary everyone around us made it seem.

That ordinariness is how child marriage has survived for so long in the United States. California has now banned it.

On Sept. 30, Governor Gavin Newsom signed bill AB 1267, setting 18 as the minimum age for marriage with no exceptions.

California has just shown that what was once treated as ordinary does not have to remain inevitable. Eighteen states have now drawn a clear line.The rest of the country should follow. No child’s right to safety, freedom and a future of their own choosing should depend on the state in which they happens to live.

Female Student-Athletes File Title IX Lawsuit Against UC Davis for Sex Discrimination, Condemn Treating Women Like ‘Second-Class Citizens’

PUBLISHED 10/7/2026 by

On Sep. 29, 19 former members of UC Davis’ recently-eliminated female equestrian team filed a sex discrimination class action against the school.

The students allege the school discriminated against all its female student-athletes by depriving them of equal athletic financial aid, in violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.

“We were devastated when UC Davis eliminated the equestrian team, which was successful and thriving,” said Anna Donovan, a UC Davis senior and award-winning former equestrian team member. “Then, we were stunned even more when the school tried to defend its decision by releasing a consultant’s report showing it was depriving women athletes annually of hundreds of thousands of dollars in equal athletic financial aid.”

Why Blaming Sydney Sweeney Misses the Point

PUBLISHED 9/19/2026 by

If you follow the mainstream press and social media, you would assume that Sydney Sweeney is an amazingly powerful 29-year-old woman. With her new hypersexualized ad for Novig, she stands accused of single-handedly debasing women, especially female athletes, and has, according to The New York Times, reversed decades of progress.

But if Sydney Sweeney refused to do the ad, thousands of other women would have happily taken her place.

It’s much easier to blame the individual woman—as we see in the media frenzy against Sydney Sweeney—than the real culprits: the violently misogynistic porn industry.

How Can Feminists Advance Racial Equity in a Post-DEI World? Join Book Talk With Ralina L. Joseph [Sept. 10 @ Ms. HQ in LA]

PUBLISHED 9/2/2026 by

As attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion intensify across the U.S., how can feminists deepen their commitment to racial justice—and sustain that work without succumbing to exhaustion?

On Thursday, Sept. 10, at 6 p.m., Ms. will welcome author and scholar Ralina L. Joseph for a special evening examining the interconnectedness of race, equity and feminism. Joseph will discuss her new book, Racial Exhaustion: How to Move Through Racism in the Wake of DEI, in conversation with Sarah Banet-Weiser, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

The event is at Ms. magazine headquarters: 433 S. Beverly Drive, Beverly Hills, Calif. RSVP today!

Dispatches From Daisy Chain: Olivia Rodrigo’s Feminist Festival Brought Together Music, Reproductive Freedom and the Power of Women

PUBLISHED 9/1/2026 by

On Saturday, Aug. 29, more than 45,000 music fans traveled to Irvine, Calif., for the first-ever Daisy Chain Fields music festival, organized and headlined by Olivia Rodrigo, where 100 percent of the proceeds went to organizations supporting women and girls. Under the sweltering SoCal sun, an all-women lineup—including sets from Mitski, Doechii, Garbage, Chappell Roan and others—fundraised for 10 nonprofits: Baby2Baby, Black Mamas Matter Alliance, Center for Reproductive Rights, FreeFrom, Jhpiego, Johns Hopkins Center for Indigenous Health, National Domestic Workers Alliance, National Institute for Reproductive Health National Women’s Law Center and Planned Parenthood.

The all-day festival, inspired by Sarah McLachlan’s Lilith Fair of the 1990s, raised $10 million in ticket sales. Then, during her set at the end of the day, Rodrigo announced (to massive applause) that Melinda French Gates was matching every dollar raised—bringing the festival’s total donation to $20 million for diverse nonprofits supporting sexual and reproductive health, children in need, Black mothers, gender-based violence survivors, Indigenous communities and more.

I was lucky enough to go to Daisy Chain Fields and cover the festival for Ms. In the “Daisy Chain Reaction Village,” I spoke with several of the organizations that will receive Daisy Chain Fields funds.

“We wanted to come to the festival because we feel really passionately about connecting with new audiences on the issue of reproductive rights, particularly younger audiences who may not be as aware or knowledgeable about the national and international state of reproductive rights and bodily autonomy,” said Esme Lowe from the Center for Reproductive Rights. “It’s just super exciting because we’re engaging with people we might not [otherwise] even get to talk to.”

In line outside the Daisy Chain Reaction Village, sisters Madison and Mackenzie Wong said they were excited to attend the festival in their home city of Irvine, and happy to see a lot of younger fans of Olivia Rodrigo there to learn about the causes Daisy Chain Fields was supporting. 

“I think it’s important for big artists who have a platform to use their voice,” Mackenzie said. “They have so much influence anyway, so no matter what they say, it’s going to have a broader impact.”