Florida

Ahead of the Country: How Florida’s Progressive Fight Against Authoritarianism Is Setting the Tone

PUBLISHED 10/31/2025 by

Like many others across the nation, people gathered outside the Duval County Courthouse in Jacksonville, Fla., on Oct. 18, 2025, to send a message: No Kings. People played music and danced. Kids found space to throw a football. People ran into old friends. 

“What really stood out to me was how much fun it was. I mean, people were enjoying themselves. You had people in frog costumes and other things. You had some pretty funny signs,” says Larry Hannan, communications and policy director for State Voices Florida, who attended the No Kings rally in Jacksonville. 

While Florida has trended red in the last decade, its voters have consistently favored progressive measures. In 2024, Florida’s Right to Abortion Initiative, as well as the state’s Marijuana Legalization Initiative, received 57 and 56 percent of the vote, respectively. Even though both measures were supported by the majority of voters, both initiatives were struck down because they failed to meet Florida’s 60 percent supermajority.

“In a lot of ways, the better we fight back here, the better the country is. Because a lot of people are saying, ‘Oh, I can’t believe this is happening.’ And us in Florida are saying, ‘Yeah, this happened a few years ago,’” says Hannan, who noted that Florida has served as a rough draft for the conservative MAGA movement, since many of the president’s current advisers are former Florida officials. 

Our Favorite Protest Signs From No Kings 2.0

PUBLISHED 10/21/2025 by , and | UPDATED 10/23/2025 at 1:13 P.M. PT

On Saturday, Oct. 18, 2025, millions of Americans poured into the streets for the second No Kings protest this year. Organizers from hundreds of national and local progressive groups say nearly 7 million people participated in about 2,700 different No Kings events. In every state, in cities big and small, protesters used signs, costumes and chants to double down on democracy and accuse President Donald Trump of behaving more like a monarch than an elected official during his first 10 months back in office.

Marchers carried “We the People” signs and references to the U.S. Constitution, including: “The Constitution is not optional,” “Democracy not monarchy” and “No kings since 1776.” Signs and chants varied by region: In New York City, protesters dressed up as the Statue of Liberty; in Florida, signs said the Florida heat would melt ICE; in Texas, marchers called for Gov. Abbott and Sen. Cruz to stand up to the Trump administration’s abuses of power.

Here are some of our favorite signs from Saturday’s No Kings protests.

Keeping Score: Trump’s Dangerous Claims About Tylenol; Government Shutdown Begins; Diddy’s Four-Year Sentence

PUBLISHED 10/9/2025 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:
—Doctors push back against Trump’s dangerous claims that Tylenol in pregnancy increases the risk of autism.
—The U.S. entered a government shutdown, affecting millions of federal workers.
—Sean “Diddy” Combs was sentenced to four years in prison.
—Zoologist and anthropologist Jane Goodall died at age 91.
—University of California students and faculty are suing the Trump administration for violating free speech rights.
—Student activists are stepping up to get around birth control bans on campus.
—Louisiana admits non-citizens voting is not a systemic problem.
—The ACLU and religious freedom organizations are suing to block 14 more Texas school districts from implementing a law requiring classrooms to display Ten Commandments posters.

… and more.

Texas’ Newest Abortion Restriction Tells Us What We Already Knew: It Was Never About States’ Rights

PUBLISHED 9/25/2025 by

In a move that surprised no one, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott recently signed HB 7 into law, allowing private citizens to sue anyone who manufactures, distributes or mails abortion medication to Texas residents. But this law is more than just another restriction—it signals that Texas isn’t content to enforce its near-total abortion ban within state lines. With HB 7, the state is now targeting out-of-state actors, making clear that antiabortion lawmakers are determined to export their bans beyond Texas and reshape abortion access nationwide.

This tactic exposes the lie at the heart of the “states’ rights” argument that fueled the fight to overturn Roe v. Wade. The goal was never to return abortion policy to individual states; it was always to prevent access wherever abortion is legal. Post-Dobbs, patients have continued to travel or use telehealth to obtain care, and states like Texas are responding with aggressive measures—state “trafficking” laws and multi-state lawsuits—to block access across borders. HB 7 is just the latest example of how far antiabortion states will go to control abortion nationally.

The War on Children

PUBLISHED 9/5/2025 by

American children die at stunning rates because of policy choices, and mostly because of policy choices made by the “pro-life” right.

The Republican Party has long claimed the mantle of defending life. The new Republican Party has promised to make America healthy again. Instead, they’re leaving kids sick and dead.

This is a war on children. It is also a war on women. The “women and children” framing can feel incredibly condescending, but the truth is that women’s and children’s lives and wellbeing are indelibly intertwined. Women make children with our bodies; if we are not well, they are not well. Women still do most of the work of raising and nurturing children; if they are not well, we are not well. This does not apply to every single woman on earth. But it applies to women as a class, and to children as a class.

Birth Control Fear-Mongering Prevents Women From Achieving Informed Bodily Autonomy

PUBLISHED 8/28/2025 by

The Republican attorneys general of Missouri, Kansas and Idaho—recently joined by Florida and Texas—are suing the federal government to restrict access to mifepristone, which is used in combination with misoprostol to terminate an early pregnancy, arguing that the abortion medication has lowered “birth rates for teenaged mothers” and is contributing to a population loss in their states, leading to a loss of political representation and federal funds.

You read that right: They want more teen pregnancies. It would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous. 

So where does that leave us? We must continue to fight all of these insidious tentacles as we work to ensure that women and gender non-conforming people of all races, ages, backgrounds and abilities can continue to tear down the systemic barriers that try to keep us from thriving and taking our rightful place in every arena.

Billboards, Trucks, Gas Pumps, Newspapers and Even a Boat: Mayday Health Advertises How to Access Abortion Pills Across the South and Midwest

PUBLISHED 8/22/2025 by

Boston-based Mayday Health’s in-your-face defiance of threats from red-state governors has ratcheted up in recent months. Mayday shares information on to access abortion pills in all 50 states, with the goal to “empower people to make their own informed decision about their own bodies.”

Taunting Ron DeSantis and Florida Republicans, Mayday is currently sailing a boat in the Gulf of Mexico along the beaches from St. Pete’s to Clearwater for the month of August advertising mifepristone and misoprostol.

From Alligator Alcatraz to National Guard Patrols: What Is the Cost of the Trump Administration’s Cruelty?

PUBLISHED 8/13/2025 by

Reserve forces of the U.S. Army, 800 National Guardsmen, and for some reason, 120 FBI agents, are being newly assigned by El Presidente to patrol our national capital—citing crime as his motive, though it’s dropped by a third in recent (Biden) years. He’s already done this in Los Angeles for the last 60 days and predicts other cities are on his list: Baltimore, Chicago, Oakland, New York City—all places that just happen to vote blue.

Early on, the Pentagon testified it would spend about $134 million for the LA deployment, which sounds like a low-ball figure to anyone who’s recently shopped for groceries to feed 5,000 hungry young men three meals a day. And now, California’s governor is asking for the total cost to taxpayers of this “unlawful” deployment—because whether it’s political theater or not, we’re the ones footing the bill.

Biting, Throwing, Burning and Whipping Children Is Still Legal in Many Parts of the U.S. Why?

PUBLISHED 8/7/2025 by

Growing up in an Orlando suburb, D remembers being stripped naked, bent over his parents’ laps and spanked with a plastic spatula that had “tough love” written on it in black Sharpie. This punishment persisted through D’s childhood, at times making it uncomfortable for him to sit the next day.

“Spanking evolved into things like grounding and taking things away, taking meals away, replacing meals with bread and water, kneeling on rice in a corner facing the wall,” says D, who asked to remain anonymous because he is afraid of retaliation from his mother for speaking out. Now 29 years old, D has permanent nerve damage and walks with a cane.

And while this abuse was emotionally and physically devastating, it was legal. This is because corporal punishment is legal nationwide inside the home and in public schools in 17 states. According to the World Health Organization, corporal punishment includes hitting, smacking, slapping and spanking children with a hand or an object such as a whip, stick, belt, shoe or wooden spoon. But it can also involve kicking, shaking, throwing, scratching, pinching, biting, burning or scalding children, as well as pulling hair, forcing children to stay in uncomfortable positions or forced ingestion.

Corporal punishment is illegal in 68 countries, with Thailand being the most recent to ban it. And since 1989, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has advocated for the end of the practice. But on American soil, it is estimated that over 160,000 children are subjected to these punishments at school every year.

Multiple studies suggest LGBTQ kids experience violence and emotional abuse from parents at a higher rate than their counterparts. “[Many parents] have this perspective that they don’t want their child to be LGBTQ, and that somehow this violence will help prevent them from becoming gay or trans.”

With Democracy at Stake, It’s No Time to Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight

PUBLISHED 8/6/2025 by | UPDATED 10/30/2025 at 7:56 A.M. PT

Trump and his Republican allies are manipulating the democratic process to rig the 2026 and 2028 elections—and unless Democrats are prepared to respond forcefully, they risk losing far more than congressional seats.

This is not a moment for procedural purity or political hesitation. As history shows, the outcome—the preservation of democracy—is the test of the act.