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Why Democracy Needs Data—and What Happens When It Vanishes

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In the first few months of Donald Trump’s return to the presidency, one thing has become crystal clear: The war on gender and racial equity is being waged in a new arena—on the battleground of data.

This fight isn’t waged with tweets or soundbites. It’s carried out through budget cuts, shuttered research programs and disappearing federal surveys. It’s a quiet but devastating assault on the tools we rely on to tell the truth—and to hold those in power accountable. And the message is chilling: If we can’t measure inequality, maybe we can pretend it doesn’t exist.

When race is stripped from maternal health reports, we overlook the crisis facing Black mothers. When LGBTQ+ identity is erased from youth surveys, we lose critical insight into mental health and safety. When disability status is omitted from labor market data, inequities in access and pay go unaddressed.

We need a renewed federal commitment to the research infrastructure that allows us to see and solve inequality—not ignore it.

Adriana Smith and the Legal Horror of Reproductive Servitude in the U.S.

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Three months ago, 30-year-old Adriana Smith was declared brain-dead. But a hospital in Georgia is keeping her “alive” on life support because of the state’s strict abortion ban.

“In what universe does a hospital in Georgia … believe that they can take ownership of Adriana Smith’s body?” asked Michele Goodwin on a recent emergency episode of On the Issues: Fifteen Minutes of Feminism. “According to the hospital, she is now an incubator. … This is not science fiction, though I wish that it were.”

“I think every woman should have the right to make their own decision,” Smith’s mother, April Newkirk, said. “And if not, then their partner or their parents.”

FDA Review of Abortion Pill Signals First Step Toward Nationwide Ban

In a stunning move that could mark the first step toward a nationwide ban on abortion pills, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has ordered the FDA to reevaluate its decades-old approval of mifepristone—a medication used safely by over 7.5 million Americans over the last quarter-century for abortion and treatment of miscarriages.

The directive, based on a single junk-science report from an antiabortion group, signals a dangerous shift: the politicization of FDA policy and a coordinated push to strip access to medication abortion across the country.

She Was Tracking Post-Roe Abortions. The Trump Administration Just Pulled Her Funding.

Diana Greene Foster is responsible for landmark research on the effects of abortion access—a massive 10-year study that tracked thousands of people who had an abortion or were denied one. But funding for a follow-up to her seminal Turnaway Study has just been cut as part of a wave of canceled health policy research. 

Foster received a MacArthur “genius grant” for the Turnaway Study. That piece of research, which examined the impact of restrictions even before the fall of Roe v. Wade, helped shape public understanding of how abortion access can affect people’s health and economic well-being by finding that people who were denied abortions were more likely to experience years of poverty compared to those who could terminate their unplanned pregnancies.

‘It Takes a Village’—But What If You Don’t Have One?

Front & Center began as first-person accounts of Black mothers in Jackson, Miss., receiving a guaranteed income. Now in its fourth year, the series is expanding to explore broader systemic issues affecting Black women in poverty, including the safety net, healthcare, caregiving and overall well-being.

“I’m part of the Magnolia Mother’s Trust this year, so that money will help me offset the lost income of going back to school part time. It was a revelation to be able to cover multiple things in one day that I would’ve had to space out for weeks before. I bought diapers, paid my car note and the light bill. That feeling of being able to take care of things has relieved a lot of stress. Before, it was so hard. I would cry in the shower so my kids wouldn’t hear me.

“I didn’t have paid leave for the first four weeks after DeMarcus was born. … That experience really opened my eyes to how important it is to have better family leave policies in this country. It is not enough to just offer a few weeks of leave. We need to support mothers’ mental health as well. Pregnancy care is focused on prenatal care, but there needs to be more mental health support. I went through postpartum depression myself, and it was so bad that I didn’t want anyone to see my baby. It takes a village to raise a child, but not everyone has that village.”

Scientists Understood Physics of Climate Change in the 1800s—Thanks to a Woman Named Eunice Foote

Long before the current political divide over climate change, and even before the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865), an American scientist named Eunice Foote documented the underlying cause of today’s climate change crisis.

The year was 1856. Foote’s brief scientific paper was the first to describe the extraordinary power of carbon dioxide gas to absorb heat—the driving force of global warming.

Caroline Herschel Was England’s First Female Professional Astronomer, but Still Lacks Name Recognition Two Centuries Later

Most people today haven’t heard of Caroline Herschel, the first English professional female astronomer. Despite having several astronomical objects—and even a satellite—named after her, she doesn’t have the same name recognition as the other astronomers of her time. Her story reflects not only the priorities of astronomy but also how credit is assigned in the field.