Three recent developments reveal how private equity—and Cerberus Capital Management in particular—has gained influence inside the Trump administration’s Pentagon, from defense leadership to procurement to a new $200 billion investment initiative.
Economic Justice
How One Haitian Mother Rebuilt Her Life After Gang Violence—with Courage, Determination, Enterprise and a Small Loan
Over the past 25 years, I have had the privilege of working alongside communities in Haiti, traveling there 35 times through my work with the Raising Haiti Foundation. I have met many people like Mirlanda Sully—women and men whose resilience, dignity and determination challenge the way we understand hardship. Her story is extraordinary, but it is not unique.
After armed gangs overtook her hometown, Sully fled with her husband and young son, leaving behind their home, business and possessions.
Arriving in a remote mountain community with nothing, she rebuilt her life through a women-focused microcredit program that provided small loans, business training and a network of support.
Today, she runs a thriving market business, mentors other women and helps ensure her neighbors can access essential goods closer to home.
Again and again, I have seen that lasting change does not come from outside solutions. It comes from investing in the strength, ingenuity and leadership that already exist within communities.
Sully’s story is a powerful reminder that transformation often begins with something small—a loan, an opportunity, a belief in what women can accomplish when given the tools to succeed.
Black Women Political Candidates Are Expected to Be ‘Likable,’ Qualified and Tireless. Men Aren’t.
What I experienced during my 2014 run for office wasn’t entirely unfamiliar to me.
The year before, I had run for president of the Young Democrats of America (YDA), a national political party office role, against a popular opponent. The opponent was a Black man, so race wasn’t a factor in the election; however, gender was.
Before my campaign, I was vice president of YDA and had heard only good things about my service: my fundraising efforts, the partnerships I had engineered with progressive organizations, and programming coordination for the membership. However, when I decided to run for president, I instantly became ‘difficult to work with’ and ‘mean.’
Research on women candidates confirms that voters are less likely to vote for a woman if they don’t like her; by comparison, voters don’t need to like men to elect them. But when I was running as the Black woman candidate in a seven-candidate primary for public office, with two other women in the race, I noticed almost nothing about my being ‘difficult’ and more about my ability and work ethic.
My experience running for public office reflected the systemic bias and double standards not just for women candidates, but Black women candidates who dare to aspire to any sort of political leadership—and that needed to change.
We need more progressive Black women in public office for a myriad reasons, but we also specifically need the younger generation of Instigators in office, candidates who understand the times in which we live currently.
Electing more Black women will take real investment in changing the biases and attitudes (conscious and unconscious) of mostly white donors, media, campaign staff, consultants and institutional leaders to help shift the culture and systems. But this support needs to be substantively increased so that we can rebuild an inclusive, multiracial democracy with the leaders we want and need.
(Excerpted from The Instigators: How Black Women Have Been Essential to American Democracy by Atima Omara.)
Conservative Justices Resurrect the Comstock Act, Threatening Abortion Access Nationwide
On May 1, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the mailing of mifepristone, one of the most widely used abortion medications in the country, threatening access for patients already facing a shrinking number of clinics nationwide. Although the Supreme Court temporarily stayed the ruling earlier this month, Justice Clarence Thomas’ dissent revealed something even more alarming: a renewed effort to resurrect the Comstock Act, a 19th-century anti-obscenity law once used to criminalize the mailing of abortion- and contraception-related materials.
The Comstock Act’s history is deeply tied to censorship, moral policing and attacks on marginalized communities. Under its broad and subjective definition of “obscenity,” authorities targeted contraception, abortion information, sexual health materials, queer literature and even works of classical art. Its reproductive restrictions disproportionately harmed poor and working-class women, who were often cut off from the safest and most affordable forms of care.
Today, antiabortion activists are once again looking to Comstock as a tool to restrict abortion nationwide—this time through the courts. Thomas’ explicit invocation of the law in the mifepristone fight signals how far-right legal movements are attempting to revive long-discredited morality laws to roll back reproductive freedom and other established rights.
‘A Warning Shot’: DOJ Indictment of Southern Poverty Law Center Sparks Outcry Across Civil and Women’s Rights Movement
The U.S. Department of Justice’s criminal case against the Southern Poverty Law Center marks a stunning escalation in the federal government’s attacks and aggression toward civil rights organizations. A grand jury has indicted the SPLC on charges of wire fraud, bank fraud and money laundering—allegations the organization has called false and politically motivated.
The charges are rooted in bad-faith characterizations of payments SPLC made to informants in extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan. Trump’s DOJ is attempting to argue these payments counted as financial support. In reality, the SPLC’s work helped dismantle some of the country’s most prominent white supremacist groups.
For feminist and civil rights groups, the indictment is the clearest sign yet of an escalating campaign to intimidate the nonprofit sector, criminalize civil rights advocacy and silence dissent. In their view, the administration is not only attacking outcomes or messages, but working to turn the machinery of government itself against advocacy groups: criminal law, regulatory scrutiny and national security frameworks.
Virginia Just Became the First Southern State With Both Paid Leave and Paid Sick Time
Advocates fought for paid leave in Virginia for more than eight years. The state’s former governor, Glenn Youngkin, vetoed paid leave bills two years in a row.
But the story changed when Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) took office in January 2026.
She not only called on the Legislature to pass these policies, but campaigned on paid leave as a core part of her platform. She also included paid leave as part of her plan to build “an economy where every Virginian can earn a good living, afford to take care of their families, and know they’ll have a secure retirement.” With the support of a strong coalition, Virginia’s Legislature responded by once again passing paid sick time and paid family and medical leave legislation.
Each year, American families lose $22.5 billion in wages due to a lack of paid leave. At a time when families are already struggling with rising costs of gas, groceries and housing, this is money that they cannot afford to go without.
A Government That Chooses War Over Childcare
President Donald Trump made his priorities unmistakable when he dismissed federal support for childcare, telling his budget director: “Don’t send any money for daycare. … We’re fighting wars.” In choosing to fund a costly, unpopular war in Iran over investing in families, the administration is treating childcare as optional—something states should handle alone—even as costs soar beyond what most households can afford.
That decision comes amid a deepening affordability crisis. Childcare now routinely exceeds $1,000 a month per child, and by the government’s own benchmark, true affordability would require families to earn close to $400,000 a year.
While federal dollars have historically helped states provide care, the administration is pulling back—and even targeting states that are trying to expand access. The result is a widening gap between what families need and what the government is willing to support.
Furious, Fearless and Defiant: Our Favorite Protest Signs From No Kings 3.0
On Saturday, March 28, 2026, millions showed up for the latest wave of No Kings protests, drawing an estimated 8 million people across more than 3,300 events worldwide.
The flagship event was held in Minneapolis-St. Paul, the site of a controversial immigration enforcement surge resulting in the deaths of two residents, Renée Nicole Macklin Good and Alex Pretti, at the hands of federal agents.
The Latest Cache of Epstein Files Haven’t (and Won’t) Spark Wall Street’s #MeToo Moment
In 2010, a 28-year-old woman working at the London branch of a Wall Street bank was leaving the office around 10 p.m. when a colleague pushed her against a wall and tried to forcibly kiss her. “A cab driver saw what was happening and physically pulled him off me,” the woman, who asked not to be named for fear of repercussions, told me. She reported the incident the next day to her manager, who told her she “should dress for the job I want” and not “like a stripper.” The women quit a month later. “I just wanted out,” she said. “I was mortified.”
What is notable about this story is how common it is. Even now, she said, you can speak to almost any woman who has spent time working in finance and she will know someone who has been harassed or assaulted. Often she has her own story.
That culture, and Wall Street’s willingness to perpetuate it, is back in the spotlight after the latest release of emails linked to Jeffrey Epstein, which are reviving scrutiny of his extensive connections across the industry.
The Heritage Foundation’s New Policy Guidebook Wants to Push Women Out of Public Life
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.