JD Vance

‘I Thought Only First Pregnancies Could Go Bad’: When Allie Phillips’ Lawmaker Dismissed Her, She Decided to Run for His Seat

PUBLISHED 4/22/2025 by

“I decided to meet with my district representative in the state legislature,” said Allie Phillips. Her idea was a bill she’d called “Miley’s Law”—named after the child she’d lost—which would create an exception in Tennessee’s abortion ban allowing for the termination of pregnancies when the fetus has a fatal diagnosis. 

She said the meeting with her lawmaker, Republican Rep. Jeff Burkhart, was disturbing. “I quickly learned that these [Republican] lawmakers don’t know anything about reproductive care. He was confused because I had had a healthy first pregnancy, and then lost my second one. He told me, ‘I thought only first pregnancies could go bad.’”

Burkhart, a 63-year-old father, told Allie he’d set up a meeting for her with the state’s attorney general—but never followed through. 

“After that, my mom said, ‘Maybe you should run against him,’” Allie said. “And then my TikTok followers started to say the same thing.”

Trump Officials Trolling Journalists Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg

PUBLISHED 4/21/2025 by

When The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg revealed last month that he had inadvertently been invited into a Signal group chat of senior U.S. national security officials, the news dominated headlines, cable broadcasts and social media for several days.

While Democratic lawmakers called for an investigation into the incident, Trump officials set their sights elsewhere: on Goldberg himself. The harassment Goldberg faced was an unusually intense pile-on, but it underscores the increasingly common trend of targeting individual journalists by administration officials and even President Donald Trump.

“You can be a little heartened by the extent to which the administration is going after the news media, because it is probably the biggest threat to their agenda,” said Elisa Lees Muñoz, executive director of the Washington-based International Women’s Media Foundation. “It does speak to the power of the news media as the ultimate source of holding people to account.”

‘Make Motherhood Great Again’: Pronatalism Finds a Comfortable Home in the Trump Administration

PUBLISHED 4/15/2025 by

Once dismissed as fringe, pronatalism has moved into the mainstream—finding powerful champions in Trump, Vance and Musk, and gaining policy traction within the administration. Rooted in eugenics, antifeminism, and anti-immigrant sentiment, this ideology casts high birthrates as a patriotic duty and low fertility as a national threat.

Now, federal policies are beginning to reflect this dangerous worldview—one that sees women’s bodies as tools of the state and reproductive freedom as collateral damage.

Amid Right-Wing Attacks on Education, the American Association of University Professors Organizes for Academic Freedom

PUBLISHED 3/14/2025 by

When the right-wing Heritage Foundation released its Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise—better known as Project 2025—in 2023, its authors laid out a comprehensive framework for undercutting democratic governance. Moreover, its authors made no secret of their antipathy to both public education and trade unions, putting the National Labor Relations Act and Fair Labor Standards Act in their crosshairs. They also made it clear that they support the elimination of the Department of Labor Women’s Bureau which works to ensure workplace safety and increase opportunities for female job advancement. 

And then there’s education, pre-K through college. The Heritage authors put forward an agenda that includes broadscale book bans and curricular limitations on classes in African American, Latinx, LGBTQIA+, Feminist, Ethnic, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. In addition, they support the cancellation of the federal student loan program; the revocation of Title IX policies meant to protect students from sex-based harassment, discrimination and violence; and an end to faculty tenure.

The GOP’s Next Target? No-Fault Divorce and Women’s Right to Leave

PUBLISHED 3/10/2025 by

As the GOP ramps up its culture war, no-fault divorce is emerging as its latest target, with conservative politicians and activists calling for its restriction or elimination. While no-fault divorce has been law in all 50 states since 2010, its repeal would disproportionately harm women—especially survivors of domestic violence—by making it harder to leave unsafe or unhappy marriages. Framing divorce as “too easy,” right-wing leaders are pushing a regressive agenda that prioritizes traditional family structures over women’s autonomy and safety.

Budget Cuts, IVF Access and the Feminist Resistance: Dispatches From Week 1 of Women’s History Month in Trump’s America

PUBLISHED 3/6/2025 by

Beyond the sheer cruelty, Trump’s antagonism toward government—and the attempts to swiftly dismantle federal agencies’ productivity and purpose—is a simultaneous affront to and attack on women and LGBTQ communities. Make no mistake: That is by design. As Professor Tressie McMillan Cottom underscores: “By giving people a scapegoat, giving men a scapegoat … it says not only are women the enemy, are people of color and minorities the enemy, but the government is protecting them. So not only do we need to push these people out, but we need to delegitimize and gut the government that made them possible so it doesn’t happen again.” In the weeks and months to come, as we collectively continue to litigate and report and write and resist, we must not lose sight of this reality—because countering attacks on gender is foundational to the work of protecting and preserving democracy.

As today’s headlines highlight Trump’s withdrawal of aid to Ukraine and imposition of tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico—and the lowlights of his remarks to a joint session of Congress—here are stories that also warrant attention.

Trump’s Speech Was Full of Broken Promises, Lies, and Warnings of More Damage for Women and Families

PUBLISHED 3/5/2025 by

As President Donald Trump took the stage on Tuesday night for his joint address to Congress, the stock market is down, inflation is up, consumer confidence levels are at their lowest levels since August 2021, and a large majority of Americans believe the economy and their personal cost of living are on the wrong track.

Trump’s address to Congress was filled with falsehoods, broken promises and attacks on women and families, signaling more harmful policies ahead. He pushed tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of essential programs like Medicaid and Social Security, ramped up anti-immigration rhetoric, and prioritized culture war issues over real economic solutions.

Don’t Let Donald Trump and Elon Musk Talk Us Out of Democracy

PUBLISHED 2/14/2025 by

Trump and Musk are testing the limits, trying to sell America on being an authoritarian state—but they can’t do it unless we allow them to do so.

When Justice Department lawyers go to court, trying to defend many of Trump and Musk’s actions, DOJ has regularly lost—and often face tense moments in court before being dealt those losses.

On Monday, for example, Judge John Bates, a George W. Bush appointee, heard arguments over a group of doctors’ lawsuit challenging the removal of webpages and datasets by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and Department for Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of the government-wide censorship purge put into effect following Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order defining “sex” to exclude transgender people.