Childcare

The Heritage Foundation’s New Policy Guidebook Wants to Push Women Out of Public Life

PUBLISHED 3/13/2026 by

In honor of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the right-wing Heritage Foundation—developers of Project 2025, the policy guidebook written to influence the Trump administration’s legislative priorities—has issued a 168-page position paper, “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years.”

The document is intended to “restore the family,” by elevating a male-led, heterosexual model of social relations. 

The report is both absurd and terrifying—which is why the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) is sounding an alarm about it. Emily Martin, the NWLC’s chief program officer and Amy Matsui, its vice president of childcare and income security, spoke to Ms. reporter Eleanor J. Bader about “Saving America by Saving the Family” in late February

How ICE Enforcement Is Driving Black Domestic Workers Out of Public Spaces

PUBLISHED 3/5/2026 by

Like many domestic workers in New York City, Felicia has built a strong network of other working professionals who meet at local parks to socialize and share their experiences. Over the two decades she has spent caring for New York families since arriving from St. Lucia, those conversations have grown into friendships—friendships she says have become a lifeline.

For years, the park has been one of the only places Felicia felt she could exhale. That has all changed under the second Trump administration.

Felicia hears it constantly: fewer nannies at the park, fewer informal gatherings in play spaces, fewer familiar faces lingering in bookstores to warm up with kids on cold days. People are staying indoors, shortening their routes and avoiding public places that were once part of the workday. That’s because fear has gotten louder. The process feels unpredictable and unchecked. “No one knows,” Felicia says. “ICE can kidnap you.”

One Year In: 53 Ways the Second Trump Administration Is Harming Women and Families

PUBLISHED 1/20/2026 by

A sweeping, year-one rundown of how Trump’s second-term power grabs and policy rollbacks are eroding women’s rights, healthcare and economic security, including—from dismantling the Women’s Bureau at the Department of Labor and shuttering reproductive health clinics, to passing historic cuts to the Medicaid program and sowing mistrust in abortion pill safety.

Keeping Score: Renee Good Fatally Shot by ICE; Women Work Longer and Are Paid Less Worldwide; N.Y. Fights Back Against Federal Childcare Freeze

PUBLISHED 1/15/2026 by

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:
—”We had whistles. They had guns,” said Becca Good, wife of Renee Good, who was killed in Minneapolis by ICE agent Jonathan Ross.
—In central Texas, five months after the Sandy Creek flooding, “many are still homeless, and only 36 percent of FEMA claims in our area have been approved,” said survivor Brandy Gerstner. “FEMA must be independent, fully funded and strengthened—because when it fails to function, real families pay the price.”
—Anti-Muslim and anti-South Asian hate increased around the election of NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
—The Department of Veterans Affairs announced new abortion bans.
—Meta has removed the social media accounts of dozens of reproductive health and LGBTQ groups.
—Women worldwide earn just a third of what men do when unpaid domestic labor is taken into account.

… and more.

Social Services Cuts Will Mean More Women Stop Working—and Maybe That’s the Point

PUBLISHED 1/9/2026 by

The current federal administration is very pro-family—they tell us that all the time. One of JD Vance’s first public appearances as vice president was his speech at the antiabortion March for Life rally in January 2025, where he called for more births in the U.S. and framed his agenda as both “pro-life” and “pro-family.” Trump reaffirmed that position in March, where he reiterated that this was a pro-family administration.

But at the start of this year, on Jan. 6, 2026, alleging concerns about fraud in state-run social services programs (even though the only concerns that have been raised—not proven—are in Minnesota), the Trump-Vance administration’s U.S. Department of Health and Human Services suspended three programs that provide support to children—not only in Minnesota, but also in California, Colorado, New York and Illinois. Those states, all led by Democrats, will lose access to billions in funding through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, the Child Care and Development Fund, and the Social Services Block Grant program. To be clear, these funds are the backbone of services-provision for families living in poverty in most communities, Republicans and Democrats alike.

This announcement comes days after the administration moved to eliminate a rule that had capped childcare copayments for low‑income families at 7 percent of their income.

It also comes after last year’s efforts to eliminate support for Head Start, quality and affordable education and other services for young children living in poverty.

All this from the pro-family party.

RFK Jr. Wants to Scrutinize the Vaccine Schedule—But its Safety Record Is Already Decades Long

PUBLISHED 1/5/2026 by

The U.S. childhood immunization schedule, the grid of colored bars pediatricians share with parents, recommends a set of vaccines given from birth through adolescence to prevent a range of serious infections. The basic structure has been in place since 1995, when federal health officials and medical organizations first issued a unified national standard, though new vaccines have been added regularly as science advanced.

Vaccines on the childhood schedule have been tested in controlled trials involving millions of participants, and they are continuously monitored for safety after being rolled out. The schedule represents the accumulated knowledge of decades of research. It has made the diseases it targets so rare that many parents have never seen them.

But the schedule is now under scrutiny.

In Norfolk, Va., Parents and Community Members Took Children’s Education and Safety Into Their Own Hands

PUBLISHED 12/28/2025 by and

In Norfolk, Va., parents were worried about their children’s safety while getting off school buses, after noticing an uptick in gun violence that coincided with school dismissal times. In response, community members—organized by nonprofit advocacy group New Virginia Majority—launched the “Take Back the Bus Stop” campaign, petitioning for emergency call boxes and mobilizing neighbors to show up in force. In the Calvert Square and Young Terrace neighborhoods, organizers and residents were physically present at bus stops each afternoon—greeting students as they arrived home and helping to deter violence through collective care and visibility.

(This essay is part of a collection presented by Ms. and the Groundswell Fund highlighting the work of Groundswell partners advancing inclusive democracy.)

Santa Is a Woman

PUBLISHED 12/22/2025 by

As Americans prep for the holidays and the time off from paid work that comes with them, I suspect many working moms are steeling ourselves for a season that feels anything but restful.  

The weight of society’s expectations of working moms on a normal day is crushing. As the mother of two young children, an attorney fighting for due process for immigrants in the second Trump administration and a clinical law professor, I know this firsthand.

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.