More Than A Magazine, A Movement
As Trump moves to dismantle the Department of Education, echoes of Jim Crow remind us what happens when states are left to decide who deserves an education—and who doesn’t.
Programs like Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare and the GI Bill exist because certain rights are too fundamental to be left to the whims of individual states or marketplaces. Education is one of them.
The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, a case that could determine whether Medicaid patients have the right to sue when states deny them access to qualified healthcare providers like Planned Parenthood.
While the legal question is narrow, a ruling in favor of South Carolina could embolden other states to cut off Medicaid funding for reproductive healthcare, disproportionately impacting low-income patients and people of color.
Medicaid is a lifeline for millions of women, covering essential healthcare needs like pregnancy care, elder support and long-term care.
Proposed cuts to the program would not only harm women but also ripple through families, workplaces and communities—driving up healthcare costs and deepening economic instability.
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: Trump pulled university funding and arrested student leaders over pro-Palestine protests; a Texas midwife faces felony charges for providing abortion care; Congress members avoid town halls after Department of Education and other federal agencies were decimated; abortion bans threaten the lives of Black mothers; and more.
Over the course of a week in early March, five antiabortion pregnancy clinics in Arkansas had an eye-catching visitor: a huge mobile billboard, in Handmaid’s Tale-red, reading:
CAUTION!
Pregnancy Help Clinics in Arkansas DO NOT OFFER ABORTION.
HIPAA PRIVACY PROTECTIONS MAY NOT APPLY.
The first-of-its-kind digital billboard tour was the brainchild of Mayday Health—which the Arkansas Times dubbed “a zero-fucks-given nonprofit”—whose mission is to share information on how to access safe abortion pills and gender-affirming care, and empower people to make their own informed decision about their own bodies.
If you’re like me, you were following the drama around the Republican funding bill that played out on Friday in the Senate, just hours before the government was set to run out of money. A continuing resolution to fund the government—constructed entirely by Republicans who refused to negotiate a bipartisan bill with Democrats—was finally passed, over nearly unanimous Democratic opposition. Once again, programs that make a profound difference in the lives of women and their families were sacrificed in a high stakes political game, played by people who won’t experience any the real-world impacts.
With time, the resistance movement against Trump’s dangerous agenda will grow to include low-wage white workers, a third of whom live in the South and were perhaps initially pro-Trump, according to a prediction from Bishop William Barber II.
“The only way a king becomes a king is if you bow. And we cannot bow,” Barber said. “Bowing is not in our DNA. We have to stand in this moment.”
President Trump’s first seven weeks back in office have been spent abandoning the American people—tearing apart vital programs, withholding funds that save lives and purging the federal workforce. Last Tuesday, he addressed a joint session of Congress for the first time in his second term. Throughout the speech, he boasted about abandoning international agreements, expediting environmental deregulation and gutting federal resources.
Republicans’ proposed Medicaid cuts would strip healthcare from millions, including half of U.S. children, one in five Americans, and 40 percent of all pregnant women.
With so much at stake for America’s women and families, representatives in Congress should be working to strengthen and expand Medicaid and the coverage it provides, rather than decimate a program that touches the lives of over two-thirds of this country. The fact that these cuts are even proposed, let alone have passed, is a sign that we are in an unprecedented moment of extremism.
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.