Environmental Justice

The environmental justice movement, championed by people of color, is aimed at ensuring that everyone has equal rights to environmental protections and benefits and equal opportunities to shape community policies. Those who experience America’s most polluted environments are most commonly people of color and people living in poverty.

Climate Change Hits Women Hardest. It’s Time Our Solutions Reflected That.

PUBLISHED 7/19/2026 by

Imagine being nine months pregnant with no clinic to give birth in and no skilled birth attendant anywhere within reach. This was the reality for 73,000 women who were weeks away from their due date in my native province of Sindh, Pakistan, when catastrophic floods submerged the region in 2022. At that moment, there were a total of 650,000 pregnant women living in the disaster zone. Those women were not a statistic to me; they were my community members. What happened to them is what happens to women everywhere when climate disasters strike, and most countries are not prepared for it.

Decades of working in women’s health and human rights have made one thing clear: Climate change is not gender neutral. Climate change accelerates violence against women. It accelerates poverty that disproportionately affects women and young people. And it puts women and girls at profound reproductive health risk, especially in communities where rights and resources are already fragile. Treating this as a footnote is not just a moral failure; it is a strategic one.

Policymakers and governments must ensure disaster response plans treat gender-based violence as a public health emergency. They need to ensure climate adaptation plans protect girls’ access to education, because when schools close after a disaster, it is the girls who don’t return. They need to ensure that when climate disasters strike, access to contraception and reproductive healthcare does not disappear overnight. And they need to make sure that when they talk about climate resilience, they are prioritizing the health and safety of women and girls.

The climate movement has fought hard and made strides. But a movement that does not center the people bearing the heaviest burden is an incomplete one. Climate leaders, negotiators and policymakers must do more than acknowledge that women are disproportionately affected; they must build solutions into every plan, every policy and every dollar spent. The infrastructure and the expertise exist. What is missing is the political will, and the funding, to match the scale of the crisis.

The World Cup Is Here—But Who Is It For?

PUBLISHED 6/23/2026 by

Soccer is one of the most beloved sports in the world, and the 2026 FIFA World Cup—the largest in the tournament’s history—has drawn millions of fans across the globe. This year, for the first time, the event is being jointly hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico, with matches and related events taking place across North America.

FIFA stands to earn billions of dollars from the tournament.

But as the organization reaps record revenues, many host communities are bearing significant costs. Soaring ticket prices, displacement, labor concerns and aggressive immigration enforcement have raised questions about who truly benefits from the World Cup. For many working-class residents—and even lifelong soccer fans—the tournament is out of reach.

To better understand those impacts, I spoke with Jennifer Li, co-director of the Center for Community Health Innovation at the O’Neill Institute and director of Dignity 2026, a coalition of labor and human rights organizations working to protect communities most at risk during the World Cup.

Soccer “is very much an immigrant sport, let’s face it,” said Li, “and by extension, a sport for people of color, diverse communities. It is a sport that’s not expensive to play, but very expensive to watch, apparently. So, the question then becomes: Who is this for?”

War in the Middle East Is Devastating the Global Aid System, and Women and Girls Are Paying the Price

PUBLISHED 4/13/2026 by and

In the weeks since the U.S. and Israel launched an attack on Iran, the conflict has not only generated massive humanitarian need—it has fractured the global aid system itself.

The renewed U.S. blockade of Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz marks a shift from fragile reopening to active restriction, choking already limited shipping routes and delaying the delivery of food, medicine and fuel.

Even before the blockade, many vessels avoided the strait amid fears of mines and retaliation; now, with access further constrained, the consequences are immediate and far-reaching.

As these disruptions compound, it is women and girls who continue to bear the heaviest burden when humanitarian systems break down.

The closure and continued instability of the Strait of Hormuz have sent shockwaves through global supply chains, driving up oil prices, inflating food costs and straining already underfunded aid operations. These economic shocks reverberate far beyond the region, deepening poverty and food insecurity in places where women already face structural disadvantage.

From rising fertilizer costs that threaten crop yields to surging prices for staple goods, the impacts land hardest on women—who are more likely to live in poverty, eat last in times of scarcity, and rely on fragile aid systems for survival.

As the war’s effects ripple outward, they do not simply linger; they intensify. Environmental damage, displacement and collapsing infrastructure are compounding crises that further erode access to clean water, healthcare and safety. For women and girls, these overlapping shocks mean increased exposure to violence, exploitation and long-term instability.

Without urgent efforts to secure humanitarian access and center the needs of women in response strategies, the consequences of this conflict will continue to deepen inequalities and entrench suffering well beyond the battlefield.

The Heritage Foundation’s Plan to Keep Women Uneducated, Pregnant and Subservient

PUBLISHED 2/20/2026 by

Since Trump’s re-ascendance to the White House, the reactionary conservative movement has become the most aggressive and unfettered it has been in my lifetime. And they are getting very, very clear on what they think an acceptable life looks like for women:

—Settle for any man who decides he wants you.
—Don’t go to college.
—Marry early.
—Have as many babies as possible.
—Quit your job (or don’t pursue one in the first place) to stay home full time and depend financially on your husband.
—Shoulder the blame if you wind up married to a jerk.
—Wind up impoverished if you divorce.
—Face social condemnation if you fail to follow the tradwife script.
—Contraception should be illegal or at least hard to get; same for IVF and other fertility treatments.

This isn’t hyperbole. It’s a plan they wrote down and published: Last month, the Heritage Foundation published “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years.” Think of it as Project 2275, a detailed plan that is mostly about how America can spend the next two and a half centuries undoing the feminist progress we’ve made.

Congress Went on Recess. Americans Got Higher Healthcare Bills.

PUBLISHED 12/22/2025 by

Congressional discussions on extending the Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits, which are set to expire Dec. 31, remain deadlocked as Congress begins its winter recess. Now, millions will see their premiums increase as a result: Payments will more than double on average—some even quadrupling—for enrollees who were eligible for the tax credits.

Without the extension, more and more ACA marketplace enrollees will drop their increasingly costly health insurance plans. This comes at a time when the ACA is more popular than ever—recent polls show that across the political spectrum, three quarters of voters support extending the tax credits.

Could the administration’s latest attack on transgender young people be the administration’s way of deflecting attention from the disaster unfolding in real time for millions of families in need of healthcare?  

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.

As Trump Targets Portland, a New Report Shows How the City Became a Model for Women’s Representation

PUBLISHED 10/10/2025 by

Weekend Reading for Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation in politics, sports and entertainment, judicial offices and the private sector—with a little gardening mixed in!

This week:
—How did Portland, Ore., achieve one of the mosdt representative city councils in the country? Through structural reform and community-driven organizing.
—A woman will be Ireland’s next president.
—Japan is posed to make a historic shift in women’s leadership.
—For the first time, a woman will lead one of Christianity’s oldest institutions.
—We celebrate the life of Jane Goodall.
—We mark what would be Eleanor Roosevelt’s birthday. She helped craft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—insisting that freedom must include not only political rights, but also the right to food, housing and dignity: “You cannot talk civil rights to people who are hungry.” In the midst of Cold War tension, Roosevelt’s words were a quiet but radical act—a reminder that peace often begins not in policy or power, but in empathy and connection.

… and more.

Memory, Medicine and Law: Reflecting on the 20th Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina @ Washington, D.C., Sept. 11-13

PUBLISHED 9/3/2025 by | UPDATED 9/9/2025 at 10:53 A.M. PT

This fall marks 20 years since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, leaving more than 1,800 people dead and hundreds of thousands displaced. Katrina was not just a natural disaster—it was a political, legal and public health catastrophe that exposed deep inequities in the United States. Women, low-income communities and communities of color were hit hardest, and the failures of government response left lasting scars that continue to shape policy and memory today.

To reflect on these legacies, Georgetown University will host a three-day symposium, “Memory, Medicine and Law: Reflecting on the 20th Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina,” from Sept. 11-13, 2025, at its Capitol Campus and adjoining Law Center, located at 125 E Street NW in Washington, D.C.

The symposium is free and open to the public, but registration is required.