Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) decried Republican efforts to discredit medication abortion in an interview Wednesday with Mother Jones, saying that “the only reason they’re going after mifepristone is because it is the way most women get their abortive care.” Mifepristone is one of the pills used in medication abortion, which in 2023 accounted for 63 percent of all terminations in the United States.  On Wednesday morning, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions held a hearing on “protecting women” from the “dangers of chemical abortion drugs.” Chaired by Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, the hearing centered on conservative demands for further regulation of abortion medication; two of its three witnesses were medication abortion opponents, including Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, who on Tuesday pushed to extradite a California abortion provider on felony charges, accusing him of sending abortion pills into her state. Democrats taking part, including Sen. Murray, argued that the hearing wasn’t geared toward protecting women but discrediting settled science. In November, Murray led the Senate Democratic Caucus in sending a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and FDA Commissioner Martin Makary expressing concern over the Trump administration’s review of mifepristone. “Republicans are holding this hearing to peddle debunked junk ‘studies’ by anti-abortion organizations which have no credibility and have been forcefully condemned by actual medical organizations,” Murray said in her opening statement. The hearing, she continued, was “really about the fact that Trump and his anti-abortion allies want to ban abortion nationwide.” According to a New York Times review of more than 100 studies spanning 30 years, abortion medication is safe and effective; mifepristone, used both in medication abortion and to treat miscarriage, has had FDA approval for more than 25 years. In October, the FDA approved another generic version of the pill. “You can see that they’re just pulling straws from absolutely everywhere, because they want to obscure the whole goal” to “ban abortion nationwide,” Murray said to me. Republican officials insisted that medication abortion is too easy to get. Yet in 13 states, abortion is banned in nearly all circumstances. Another seven states have enacted time restrictions earlier than what was outlined in Roe v. Wade. At the same time, maternity care deserts are expanding across the nation. According to a 2024 report by infant and maternal health nonprofit March of Dimes, more than a thousand US counties—together home to more than 2.3 million women of reproductive age—lack a single birthing facility or obstetric clinician. Since 2020, 117 rural hospitals have stopped delivering babies, or announced that they would stop before the end of 2025, according to a December report from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform. A National Partnership for Women & Families analysis from June warned that 131 rural hospitals with labor and delivery units are at risk of closing altogether due to Republican-led cuts to Medicaid through President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.” I asked Sen. Murray about requiring consultations for medication abortion—and why pregnant people aren’t going in person to seek out that route.  “It’s pretty stunning to watch these Republicans talk about this with a straight face,” she told me. “The reason many women don’t,” Murray continued, “is the abortion bans that in Republican states don’t give women the option to see a provider.” Murray expressed concern, “especially after we have a hearing like this, where we heard so much misinformation,” that an already confusing landscape for those seeking abortion could be further obscured. And a new study, published Monday in the leading medical journal JAMA, found that the FDA has repeatedly reviewed new evidence about mifepristone and reaffirmed its safety. Abortion medication, Murray pointed out, is less deadly than both penicillin and Viagra. “We didn’t have a hearing today on Viagra,” she told me. “We had a hearing on mifepristone, so their whole thing about safety and all this is just hogwash.”

Despite years of voter suppression efforts by the state’s Republican Party, Virginians have spoken: It’s time for GOP gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears to “go somewhere and sit down.” Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat who represented the state’s 7th District in Congress until this year, defeated Earle-Sears in a highly anticipated race to become the first female governor in the Commonwealth’s centuries-long history. > VA Voter: Spanberger. She out there doing what she's supposed to do. That > other lady? She needs to go somewhere and sit down. pic.twitter.com/72dNcvPWCT > > — Acyn (@Acyn) November 4, 2025 Spanberger beat Earle-Sears by a staggering 12-point margin with close to 80 percent of votes counted, according to Associated Press projections. The 56-44 win—representing well over 300,000 votes—comes at a precarious time for the Democratic Party, with Virginia serving as a critical bellwether for the country’s feelings on President Donald Trump before national midterm elections next year. For years, Virginia Republicans have been working overtime to suppress the state’s Democratic voters, including a blatantly illegal voter roll purge in 2023 orchestrated by then-Gov. Glenn Youngkin. In 2024, the Supreme Court’s conservative bloc ruled in Youngkin’s favor, forcing nearly 1,600 voters to fight for their registration to be reinstated. A year later, shortly after Trump’s re-election, the Justice Department voluntarily dismissed a lawsuit originally brought forth by the Biden administration that once again challenged the purge. Spanberger’s victory is a promising sign for Virginia’s effort, alongside other Democratic-led legislatures, to redraw district lines after states like North Carolina and Texas were subjected to extreme gerrymandering by Republican legislators that functionally disenfranchised a huge swath of their voters. Alongside the governorship, all 100 seats in Virginia’s House of Delegates, the lower chamber of its state legislature, are also up for reelection—which will determine the GOP’s chances of leaving Democratic redistricting dead in the water.

Women are the fast-growing population of incarcerated people. And if Republicans get their way, more pregnant women will be joining their ranks. That’s because conservatives are behind a growing push to criminalize pregnancy outcomes nationwide, in part by giving full rights to fetuses. And while abortion opponents have long claimed they do not want to criminalize abortion-seekers themselves, since the Supreme Court’s 2022 overruling of Roe v. Wade, a growing number of conservative lawmakers have begun introducing bills that would treat abortion as homicide and criminalize abortion-seekers. These laws will likely put more Black and Latina women behind bars, who are already imprisoned at higher rates than white women.  President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown is also ensnaring pregnant immigrant women: A report issued last month by the office of Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) alleged that officials identified more than a dozen credible reports of the mistreatment of pregnant women in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, which included not receiving adequate, or even urgent, medical care and being denied food. The Department of Homeland Security has disputed those allegations, saying in part, “Detention of pregnant women is rare and has elevated oversight and review.” These recent events make Rebecca Rodriguez Carey’s new book, Birth Behind Bars: The Carceral Control of Pregnant Women in Prisons, incredibly timely. Based on in-depth interviews with nearly three dozen women who were incarcerated in prisons throughout the Midwest while pregnant, the book provides rare insight into the experiences of pregnant women behind bars—an issue that lacked federal data until the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) issued its first report on the state of pregnant women in prisons earlier this year. But even the exact number of pregnant women in prisons remains unclear, in part because incarcerated women do not always have access to pregnancy tests: The BJS report, for example, cites more than 320 in state and federal custody in 2023, but past research from scholars and advocates has estimated about 3,000 pregnant people are admitted to U.S. prisons annually. “This invisibility,” Rodrigeuz Carey told me, “really contributes to systemic neglect.” In her book, Rodriguez Carey, an associate professor of sociology and criminology at Emporia State University in Kansas, counters this historic invisibility by relaying women’s experiences being pregnant, laboring, and giving birth while in prison. Some stories convey the despair and desperation you may expect: Some women recounted purposefully committing crimes in order to be pregnant in prison rather than on the streets; others recalled falling into postpartum depression after being separated from their babies after giving birth while incarcerated. But the book also spotlights the surprising ways women managed to cultivate hope, by hosting makeshift baby showers and making plans for how they would make their children proud once released. I spoke with Rodriguez Carey via Zoom last month about the state of abortion access in prisons post-Roe, the persistent problem of shackling incarcerated people during childbirth, and what most surprised her during the course of her research. This interview has been lightly condensed and edited.  I was struck by the fact that some of the women you interviewed deliberately committed crimes in order to have their basic needs for food, shelter, and medical care met in prison during their pregnancies. What do these women’s experiences indicate about the state of pregnancy care in the US more broadly? Well it’s really, really bad care when you have women who are seeking refuge in a carceral system. And that’s not to say that that the care in prison is optimal care by any means, but for those who are living at the margins of society, who are in extreme poverty and don’t know where their next meal is coming from, don’t know where they are staying each night, for them the mark of being a good mother is to ensure that those basic needs are met. And so that means turning to our criminal legal system. It’s really interesting to me that the incarcerated population are the only group of people in the US that are constitutionally guaranteed health care—that really says something.  > “There’s an absence of a social safety net, and we have people turning to the > criminal legal system to ensure their basic needs are met. “ You have some prisons being more progressive with their efforts to provide wraparound services, but then you have other prisons where there’s not a lot of prenatal and postpartum care, and so there’s really just a wide variation of care there from state to state, and even from facility to facility. I think that speaks to the larger picture of inequalities in the US. There’s an absence of a social safety net, and we have people turning to the criminal legal system to ensure their basic needs are met. Even before the Dobbs decision that revoked the constitutional right to abortion, accessing it in prison was difficult. Only two percent of participants in the BJS report had abortions; other research has found an even lower rate. What sort of barriers did incarcerated people face when Roe was still the law of the land? Many states have laws that prohibit any sort of state funding to go toward abortion. That includes travel—so if an incarcerated woman is looking to access an abortion out of state, typically you have to have a correctional officer accompany that woman. That would require state funding, to be in a correctional van for transportation and to provide the salary for the accompanying correctional officer. Many women who are incarcerated may not know that they are even pregnant until they come to prison, if they are living on the streets, for example, and haven’t had access to routine health care in some time. And so by the time they learn of their pregnancy, it’s often too late, because many states have laws that regulate the number of weeks that an abortion can be performed. Many pregnant women in custody remain shackled while laboring and giving birth despite the fact that leading medical groups have denounced this practice. What did your interviewees say this experience was like for them?  They felt like they were caged animals. When you are in the state of giving birth, you are extremely vulnerable. You’re not necessarily at a risk of fleeing; there have been no documented cases to date of a woman trying to escape while in labor. Many of the women that I interviewed had cesarean sections, so they were on the operating table, numb from the waist down—you are not going anywhere at that moment. Most women who are incarcerated are there on non-violent crimes, and even if a woman is pregnant who committed a violent crime, she’s not necessarily posing a risk to society while you’re in that vulnerable state of childbirth, where your legs are in stirrups and you have a correctional officer often in the room. Many of these correctional officers are men, and a lot of the women I interviewed talked about how they had experienced sexual abuse growing up, so that adds just another layer of harm when you’re in this very vulnerable state, often in layers of undress or completely naked. Most states have laws on the books now restricting shackling during delivery. But how widespread of a problem does this remain?  It’s really hard to say. A state may have a policy, but then we know that the policy is often different from the reality of what takes place. Many states that have issued restrictions on shackling still leave it up to correctional officers if there is a point of threat or perceived harm. And I think when we look at the different layers here, of who is more likely to be considered harmful or posing a risk to society, that’s women of color. So you still have these tropes that are persisting behind bars. What about prison nursery programs that allow mothers to parent their newborns in prison—what benefits do they offer and why aren’t they more common? [Editor’s note: There are currently eleven state-run prison nursery programs, plus two more operated by the federal Bureau of Prisons.] The first prison nursery program has actually been in place since 1901, so this is not necessarily new. Women who go through a prison nursery program and have access to that oftentimes there are reduced recidivism rates, there’s improved maternal mental health and fetal health outcomes. Otherwise they’re meeting their children, and they’re saying goodbye all in a span of 24 hours, and so that’s going to have negative health implications for years to come.  There are no national mandates or standardized policies governing the incarceration of pregnant women. As a result, it’s up to individual states—and even specific correctional facilities—to decide whether to invest in such programs. Unfortunately, awareness among policymakers remains limited. Prior to the 1900s, reformatories often emphasized family bonds, allowing incarcerated women to live with their newborns—much like today’s prison nursery programs. But by the 1970s, most states moved toward a more punitive approach, passing legislation that effectively eliminated many of these programs. Some of your interviewees used their incarcerations during pregnancy as a “transformative period” and sought to “optimize pregnancy and birth outcomes” despite their circumstances. Can you say more about how they did so?  Many of the women that I interviewed had been pregnant before. Some of them had also been incarcerated before, but this was the first time they were both pregnant and incarcerated. Many of them talked about how being pregnant and incarcerated was rock bottom, and that this was very much a wake up call to do right by their unborn child. Many of the women interviewed talked about how during previous pregnancies they were out on the streets, doing drugs, getting into trouble left and right. And so when they were in prison, it was really this time where they could focus on their pregnancy. So that was really special for them, and it was a time where they were doing their best to take advantage of different programs and initiatives that they maybe had access to in their prisons, like pregnancy support groups, for example, reading all the books and trying their best to implement that advice. The women talked about how when you’re incarcerated, all you have is time to think and make the best choices for your unborn child. Is there anything that surprised you in doing this research? I think one of the biggest takeaways from me was how much hope is found inside prisons, where you have women coming together, given the absence of maternal healthcare, given the absence of institutional resources and support, creating their own networks of community and care. Food was a huge topic; pregnant women in prison don’t have access all the time to regular and nutritious foods. So you have other women who are incarcerated helping them out and coming together and saying, “Hey, I don’t want my baked potato, you can have it because I know you’re pregnant and you need these calories.” Women are also taking pregnant women, especially the younger ones, under their wings, and saying, “be sure to get a job in the kitchen while you’re incarcerated, because that way you have regular access to food.” So you see these informal networks of support. After a woman gives birth, she’s sent back to prison, often within 24 to 48 hours of giving birth and asked to fall back in line as if nothing has happened, even though her world has just been rocked. So you have women who are incarcerated really coming together and rallying around the pregnant women to provide that support and care. What gives you hope for pregnant people in prisons and their newborns?  The Kansas Children’s Discovery Center in Topeka has a program called Play Free, which allows incarcerated mothers and grandmothers to spend a day at the children’s museum playing with their kiddo, free of these cages and environments that are not child- and family-friendly at all. It’s been really great to see the transformation, where it started just as a partnership with the Topeka Correctional Facility, and has since expanded to the men’s facilities in Kansas. You have incarcerated fathers as well, and centering the children in all of this is important.

Speaking at the Museum of the Bible on Monday, President Donald Trump repeated one of his favorite falsehoods as of late: That his deployment of the National Guard in Washington, DC has virtually eliminated crime in the nation’s capital. That is, of course, not true. But if that outright falsehood was not egregious enough, consider that Trump also complained that reports of domestic violence are inflating crime statistics and implied they should not be considered “crimes” at all. “Things that take place in the home, they call crime,” Trump said. “They’ll do anything they can to find something. If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say this was a crime, see? So now I can’t claim 100 percent.” > Trump minimizes domestic abuse during a talk at the Museum of the Bible: > "Things that take place in the home, they call crime … If a man has a little > fight with the wife, they say this was a crime, see?" > > — Phil Lewis (@phillewis.bsky.social) 2025-09-08T15:44:26.977Z Dawn Dalton, executive director of the DC Coalition of Domestic Violence, told me on Monday: “We don’t agree with what the president is saying.” Nearly half of women in DC, and more than 40 percent of men, have experienced intimate partner violence or stalking in their lifetimes, according to statistics the coalition compiled last year. Nationwide, an average of two dozen people per minute are victims of rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner, according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline. “There have been federal and local statutes in place for decades that does name domestic violence as a crime,” Dalton added, “and we know that domestic violence is often a precursor to other crimes, including domestic violence homicides as well as mass shootings.” Indeed, research has found that in nearly 70 percent of mass shootings, perpetrators had a history of domestic violence or had killed at least one partner or family member. “The frequency and the harm [of domestic violence] is not paid enough attention to, and remarks such as the president’s certainly underscore that truth,” Dalton added. Abigail Jackson, a spokesperson for the White House, said in a statement provided to Mother Jones: “Of course the President wasn’t talking about or downplaying domestic violence—and any Fake News hacks trying to use this as a political cudgel against the President are doing a great service to actual domestic abusers and criminals around the country.” In fact, Trump has not only downplayed domestic violence through his speech, but also through his actions: His administration has cut millions of dollars in grants earmarked for victims of crime, including domestic violence, and has tried to force domestic violence service providers to agree to hand crime victims over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in order to receive federal dollars. A statement like the one Trump made is also not surprising when you consider the man that uttered it has himself been accused of rape by his ex-wife, Ivana Trump. She later claimed she did not mean it “in a literal or criminal sense,” adding that she “felt violated.” (Trump denied the allegation.) Trump has also stacked his cabinet and surrounded himself with men who have faced similar accusations. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s own mother called him “an abuser of women,” in a 2018 email, though she told the New York Times last year that she subsequently recanted and apologized for it. Hegseth has also been accused of rape and sexually inappropriate behavior, charges which he denies. (Hegseth paid the woman who made the rape accusation, the Washington Post reported, but he alleges the interaction was consensual.) Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was accused of groping a babysitter in the late 1990s. While running for president last year, he texted her to apologize and said he had no memory of the incident. Ex-Department of Government Efficiency head and Trump frenemy Elon Musk was accused of sexual misconduct by a SpaceX flight attendant in 2016, but he denied the claim—after Business Insider reported that the company paid her $250,000 in 2018 to keep her from filing a lawsuit. And Rob Porter, a top White House aide, abruptly resigned during Trump’s first term after two of his ex-wives came forward with domestic abuse allegations, which Trump himself cast doubt on. While there is ample evidence that the police do not always protect domestic violence victims or respond adequately to domestic abuse, it seems very unlikely that this is what Trump was referring to. The man is, after all, about the furthest thing from an abolitionist: His so-called One Big Beautiful Bill allocated more than $100 billion to ICE—the same agency that has created a chilling effect for immigrant survivors of domestic violence seeking help, as I previously reported. And the president has repeatedly threatened to send the National Guard to take over other cities after doing so in DC and Los Angeles. Instead, his latest comments are a throwback to the infamous Access Hollywood tape. Trump seems to believe that, if you’re a man, “you can do anything” to women—and that you deserve to get away with it.

A COALITION OF FEMINIST, MIGRANT AND LEFT GROUPS IS PREPARING TO OPPOSE THE ANNUAL CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALIST MARCH IN LONDON ~ Blade Runner ~ This Saturday, 6 September, the annual anti-abortion March for Life UK will once again take place in central London. The event began in Birmingham in 2013, moved to London in 2018, and now attracts thousands. It is backed by US-linked groups such as ADF UK—the British arm of the US-based rightwing hate group Alliance Defending Freedom—which in 2024 spent over £1 million on legal cases and lobbying. March for Life is part of an international Christian fundamentalist project that grew in confidence after the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the US, and is increasingly tied to the wider far right in Britain. A coalition of feminist, migrant, and left groups is organising a joyful counter-demo. We asked one of the organisers four quick questions. What is happening? “March for Life is part of a global and organised attempt to change the political environment to become more right-wing and socially conservative, which we have seen the results of around the world. The campaign to end abortion in the US took many years, but now they have achieved their goal of obstructing access to abortion in America, and that funding is now freed up to focus on other countries, including the UK.    “Each year, they organise a big anti-abortion political church service in the Emmanuel Centre followed by a conference and then march to Parliament Square, where they have a stage with Christian rock bands, a huge sound system, and hate speeches. “March for Life is part of a broader far right, including anti-trans, pro-Israel, incel/alt-right, and anti-migrant ideas. In the US, they brought Trump to power; they are now trying to emulate this in the UK with Reform and neo-Nazi groups.   “We plan to hold a fun and joyful counter-demo with drumming, dancing, and generally making noise and having fun”.   Who is taking part? “The counter-demo is organised by feminist, migrant, and left groups, including Feminist Fightback, Feminist Assembly of Latin Americans (FALA), Brazil Matters, Razem, Anti-capitalist Resistance, RS21, Socialist Women’s Union (SKB), Young Struggle, and Hackney Anarchists.  “We have also been working with the wider antifascist movement, who will be supporting with their presence. We need as many numbers as possible on the counter-demo to keep one another safe, and we also think this is an important part of getting together as a broad movement to counter fascism in the coming year”.  What happened in the past?  “March for Life has been going on for several years. In the past, the demonstrators were made up of nuns and older people, but in the last two years, we have noticed more young people and alt-right streamers getting involved, spreading their hateful message online and across generations. This increases the threat to younger women, girls, and queer/trans people.  “Two years ago, it was pretty big, and we managed to block them. They were aggressive, violent, and scary, but we held our place. We performed ‘A Rapist in Your Path’, a Chilean feminist dance. The lyrics address the structural and state-based nature of sexual violence”.  Why is it important? “The movement is part of the dangerous, growing fascist coalition. In the UK, we are seeing an emboldened far-right, with St George’s crosses across towns and cities, and racist assaults against migrants on the rise. Mainstream fascists are expected to attend, in coalition with the fundamentalist Christians. It’s critical we hold our ground and stop them dictating the narrative.  “The narrative from the far right is about protecting children and even foetuses. However, patriarchal violence against women and children is endemic, and by bringing their kids along to March for Life, they are exposing them to the violence they perpetrate against migrants, queer people, and women, encouraging their kids to grow up and do the same”.  The post Countering the far-right ‘March for Life’ appeared first on Freedom News.

You could say that Taylor Swift and NFL player Travis Kelce’s engagement, announced Tuesday in an Instagram post that has 17 million likes and counting, broke the internet. And right-wingers immediately started talking rings and talking cradles. News outlets sent push alerts. Celebrities and politicians sent their congratulations. “Taylor Swift engaged” was the number one trending search topic on Google, with more than two million searches by early afternoon. The news also ricocheted around right-wing corners of the internet, where leading conservatives said they hoped Swift’s engagement would help achieve some of their top goals, now backed by the Trump-administration: Inspire a nationwide boost in (heterosexual) marriage and birth rates. Ben Shapiro, co-founder of the right-wing Daily Wire news site, called Swift and Kelce’s engagement “unironically an excellent thing” in post on X to his nearly eight million followers. “I hope many other single people follow their example,” he added. Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA, said he hopes Swift and Kelce “have lots of kids and end up very happy!” in a post to his five million followers. On his podcast Tuesday, Kirk said he hoped that marriage might make Swift more conservative: “Taylor Swift might go from a cat lady to a JD Vance supporter, and we should celebrate that…she should have more children than she has houses.” > Congratulations @taylorswift13 > > I can't wait to go see a Taylor Kelce Concert! > > To listen to the full podcast — and for daily drops, subscribe to The Charlie > Kirk Podcast on Apple or Spotify! > > LINK https://t.co/Xi9hTbH4hv pic.twitter.com/Do8zmyIV0Q > > — Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) August 26, 2025 Kristan Hawkins, president of the anti-abortion group Students for Life, wrote to her more than 92,000 X followers that she hopes Swift’s engagement “inspires young women to see the joy and purpose in getting married, starting a family, and committing to one person for the rest of their lives.” A bit later, Hawkins followed up with another take, claiming, “America is heading into its “get married & have babies” era.” Lila Rose, a fellow leading anti-abortion activist and founder of the group Live Action, told her more than 394,000 X followers: “Marriage is the best and tons of women look up to Taylor. So happy to see her embracing it.” Brad Wilcox, a sociologist at the University of Virginia and author of Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization, said to “expect a spike in marriage” following the news. That MAGA would rush to claim this news as a win is not surprising when you consider how hard they have been pushing for more marriage and babies in the second Trump…era (see what I did there?). The Trump administration—and particularly Vice President JD Vance and Elon Musk—are obsessed with boosting the declining birth rate, as my colleague Kiera Butler has chronicled. (The president’s promise to make IVF more widely available as part of this, on the other hand, has pretty much gone nowhere.) In the Christian nationalist worldview that shapes many of these right-wing thought leaders, marriage is, of course, a necessary precursor to procreation. A new generation of so-called trad (short for “traditional”) wives are thriving online, extolling the virtues of marriage and motherhood and calling for a return to more traditional gender roles. And federal officials have also signaled their desires to boost marriage rates: Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who is married with nine kids of his own, signed a memo in February recommending that his department prioritize “communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average.” Vance has also decried the decline in marriage among young people in a May interview with the New York Times. But, seriously, do the right-wingers who hope Swift will inspire a new army of trad wives know anything about the pop superstar? Even I, an avowed non-Swiftie, know all too well that Swift does not aspire to the MAGA model of marriage and motherhood that they’re hoping for. First, Swift endorsed then-Vice President and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris over Trump in the election, in an Instagram post featuring a photo of her with a cat—an obvious dig at Vice President JD Vance’s derision of so-called “childless cat ladies.” Secondly, while Swift has talked about wanting marriage and children, she has also spoken out against the pressure for women to think about having children once they turn 30. And perhaps most significantly, Swift has sung at length about resisting the double standards and traditional pressures women face. I mean…have they ever listened to “Lavender Haze“? > All they keep askin’ me (all they keep askin’ me) > Is if I’m gonna be your bride > The only kind of girl they see (only kind of girl they see) > Is a one-night or a wife > > […] > > Surreal, I’m damned if I do give a damn what people say > No deal, the 1950s shit they want from me Or “Bejeweled“? > They ask, “Do you have a man?” > I can still say, “I don’t remember” As Sam Van Pykeren, one of Mother Jones‘ resident Swifties, pointed out, the right-wing discourse around this proves that even Swift—one of the most famous and wealthy women in the world—can’t escape MAGA logic: Women only achieve their full value when they’re wifed up. Ruth Murai, Anna Yeo, and Sam Van Pykeren contributed reporting.

On Wednesday morning, the Labor Department quietly reposted grants aimed at getting women workers into fields like construction and manufacturing, tow months after DOGE sanctimoniously canceled the program. The move came as a shock to employees. DOGE previously eliminated dozens of the congressionally-mandated Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations (WANTO) grants, which support recruiting and training women in industries in fields like construction, manufacturing, and information technology. As Mother Jones previously reported, DOGE cancelled the funds, which it dismissed as “wasteful DEI grants,” back in May. The Labor Department is trying to spin the renewed availability of the $5 million grants as proof of the Trump administration’s support for women in the workforce, even though the administration is also trying to eliminate the congressionally-mandated, 105-year-old Women’s Bureau that administers them. Instead, employees at the department say the agency’s attempted spin is laughable and yet another example of the administration backtracking on cutting support for marginalized populations after public outcry. “The press release makes it sound like it’s something they came up with,” said Gayle Goldin, former deputy director of the Women’s Bureau under the Biden administration. “This is a multi-decade grant program that has had bipartisan support for years.” A DOL employee familiar with the work of the Women’s Bureau agreed, adding, “This seems to be on trend for them, taking credit for revamping programs when they are largely the same.” (The DOL employees who spoke to Mother Jones for this story were granted anonymity for fear of retribution, given that a department official previously threatened staff who spoke to journalists with “serious legal consequences,” including criminal charges, ProPublica reported.) In fact, experts say the extent to which the program has been altered merely dilutes its goals. Compared to last year’s detailed guidelines for the grant, this year’s eliminate prior references to prioritizing “historically underrepresented communities,” such as women of color, women with disabilities, and women at or below the federal poverty line, and transgender and nonbinary people. Another DOL employee called those changes “unfortunate,” pointing to recent federal data showing a rise in Black women’s unemployment. “To remove this focus on underrepresented communities, it just makes it less likely that the organizations that ultimately get awarded will intentionally make sure that they are reaching all women, including and especially the ones who frankly need it the most,” that employee said. Another major change in this year’s grants: It reduces the amount of funds that can be used for supportive services like child care for participants’ kids or transportation to help them get to training programs. “We know how critical supportive services are to recruiting and retaining women in these programs,” the DOL employee added. The previously cancelled WANTO grants, which will not be restored despite the new funding announcement, were used to support programs for getting women and nonbinary into construction in places like North Carolina and Mississippi. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, cited some of these details included in my previous reporting when she questioned Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer about the status of WANTO grants at a House Appropriations Committee hearing. (Chavez-DeRemer declined to comment on the specific WANTO cuts at that hearing.) Prior grantees and experts have mixed feelings about the latest development. Goldin, the former deputy director of the Women’s Bureau under Biden, said that on the one hand, “it is surprising, in a good way, to see the grant announcement back up.” “At the same time,” she added, “I feel like this administration is all over the place. Do they actually want women in the workforce? If so, I really hope organizations apply for this grant funding and that they go ahead and fund them.” Nora Spencer’s North Carolina nonprofit, Hope Renovations, which supports and trains women and nonbinary people to work in construction, lost about $300,000 of its $700,000 WANTO grant in May. “We have gone through all of this frustration and heartache from the grants being taken away,” she told me on Wednesday, “and now they’re back again with no notice to us.” Spencer is unsure if she will reapply, citing ethical concerns about seeking the funding when this administration does not want to support historically marginalized populations. Those requirements, she said, would “limit the people that we can serve.” Rhoni Basden, executive director of Vermont Works for Women, a nonprofit that supports women’s and young people’s career development, also does not know if she will reapply. She had the remainder of her organization’s $400,000 WANTO grant cancelled back in May, and she did not know that the grants had been reopened for applications until I contacted her on Wednesday morning. The application deadline is in less than a month, and her organization’s prior WANTO-funded work was focused on serving marginalized populations, which seem to conflict with this administration’s priorities. Using funds for support services to help participants in rural Vermont attend their programming or pay for childcare was also critical, she said. “For us specifically,” she said, “it feels dismantling and backwards.” Spokespeople for the Labor Department did not immediately respond to questions from Mother Jones.

Democratic lawmakers are demanding Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer preserve the Women’s Bureau following recent reporting from Mother Jones that the Trump administration is seeking to eliminate the 105-year-old, congressionally-mandated office charged with supporting women in the workforce. On Monday afternoon, 34 members of the Democratic Women’s Caucus sent Chavez-DeRemer a letter demanding the Labor Secretary “immediately restore the Women’s Bureau to its full function and funding, fulfill the terminated grants, and abandon all efforts to eliminate the Bureau.” The letter cites Mother Jones‘ story from earlier this month, which was the first to report that both the White House’s and Department of Labor’s (DOL) budget requests to Congress propose eliminating the Women’s Bureau. It also cites a Mother Jones story from last month that was one of the first to report that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) killed more than two dozen grants administered by the Bureau, many of which were congressionally-mandated and aimed to increase women’s representation in trades like construction, manufacturing, and information technology. “The proposed elimination of the Women’s Bureau and termination of grants that support women in the workforce is a total betrayal of women across the country,” the letter states. The letter is the second the Democratic Women’s Caucus has sent Chavez-DeRemer expressing their concerns over the gutting of the Women’s Bureau: They previously wrote to her in April urging her “to preserve current staffing and strengthen the Bureau’s capacity to fulfill its mandate, as Congress intended”—but she never responded, according to several lawmakers involved. (Spokespeople for the Labor Department did not respond to questions from Mother Jones on Monday.) The Trump administration has already managed to undermine the Bureau’s work without eliminating the office entirely. Nine current and former Labor Department staffers previously told me that the Bureau has lost about half of its approximately 50-person staff through a combination of buyouts and resignations, and that their work has essentially been at a standstill since Trump resumed office. In the past, the Bureau’s critical work has included regularly researching women’s workforce participation by county, the gender wage gap by race and occupation, and child care prices nationwide; briefing federal lawmakers to help inform policies to support women workers. The Bureau’s work helped pass laws, including the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 and the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993. The office also hosted in-person training sessions nationwide to help workers learn their rights, and partnered with other federal agencies to implement programs to support women’s well-being and equity at work. Despite all this, in the budget brief calling for its elimination, the Labor Department dismissed the Women’s Bureau as “an ineffective policy office that is a relic of the past.” The current and former DOL staffers previously told me they see the move as reflective of the Trump administration’s ambitions to drive women out of the workforce and back into their homes to raise children. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.), one of the lead authors of the letter, sees the administration’s attack on the Bureau as “turning back the clock in ways that are really pretty outrageous,” she told me by phone on Monday. The Women’s Bureau, she added, is “just as important [now] as it ever was.” Data supports this. The gender wage gap widened for the first time in 20 years following the pandemic, and women’s labor force participation rate has decreased since peaking in the 1990s. Citing these facts, the letter states that the DOL characterization of the Bureau as “‘a relic of the past’ is not only incorrect, it is completely ignorant to what the data shows and the struggles of working women everywhere.” Bonamici, who has advocated for expanding access and affordability to childcare, said she has relied on the Bureau’s database of prices of childcare by county, which the DOL has said is the most comprehensive database of its kind. “When we have this information, it helps us pass policies,” she said. Bonamici also pointed to the important work of the Oregon Tradeswomen, a nonprofit organization that has relied on the now-canceled Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations (WANTO) grants that the Bureau administered to enter the trades. “You can see women getting good jobs to turn their lives around,” she said. “That, to me, is a great use of federal resources.” Both Bonamici and Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.), another lead author of the letter, said they want to see their Republican colleagues step up to oppose the efforts to eliminate the Bureau. “We need our Republican colleagues to be forceful with the constitutional responsibility that we have to be the lawmakers and to be the overseers,” Houlahan said, adding that she is “enormously disappointed” in her GOP colleagues. “They’re allowing the president to run roughshod over the country.” But asking them to reverse course to defend the Women’s Bureau could be a tall order. House Republicans unsuccessfully tried to eliminate it for the first time in at least a decade back in 2023. Project 2025, which has proven to be an instruction manual for how the Trump administration is running the government, alleged the Bureau “tends towards a politicized research and engagement agenda that puts predetermined conclusions ahead of empirical study” and said it should “rededicate its research budget towards open inquiry, especially to dissentangle the influences on women’s workforce participation and to understand the true causes of earnings gaps between men and women.” The DOL admits in its budget brief that department officials aim to work with Congress to repeal the statutes mandating the existence of the Women’s Bureau as well as the WANTO grant program that was already canceled. The Democratic lawmakers say that would be their best shot at fighting to preserve the office, and recruiting their GOP colleagues to join in. “If they bring a bill forward to eliminate the Women’s Bureau,” Bonamici said, “we will fight it with everything we have.”

On Monday, as ICE swept Los Angeles with raids in President Donald Trump’s escalating drive for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, a client of the Survivor Justice Center had an appointment for a court hearing.  The purpose was to secure a permanent, five-year restraining order against her abuser, who had already violated a temporary restraining order, according to Carmen McDonald, executive director of the organization, which supports immigrant survivors of domestic violence. The woman had been dealing with extensive physical abuse, McDonald said, which—coupled with her abuser’s violation of a prior order—made getting stronger protection critical. But on Tuesday, the day after the hearing was to take place, McDonald learned from a staffer that the survivor had not shown up. Based on the woman’s immigration status, prior concerns she had shared with staff, the fact that ICE has been ramping up arrests at courthouses, and the agency’s ongoing raids across LA, McDonald and her staff believe the woman was likely afraid of being detained. As of Thursday, their client remains missing—“likely back with her abuser,” McDonald says. If so, she could be in serious danger: Advocates say survivors wind up at increased risk just after they file for a restraining order or try to leave an abuser. “She literally had to choose [between] physical harm or potential [ICE] custody,” said McDonald, who added that the survivor had a pathway to citizenship independently from her abuser. McDonald believes that “it’s the fear and the tearing apart of families that kept her in a dangerous situation.”  > “She literally had to choose: physical harm or potential [ICE] custody.” McDonald is one of a half-dozen domestic violence service providers in the LA area who told Mother Jones that the increased presence of ICE over the past week is creating a chilling effect for their organizations and the undocumented survivors they serve. Despite President Donald Trump’s claims he would “protect women,” advocates contend that intense immigration enforcement in LA and elsewhere is putting women and LGBTQ people, who experience the majority of domestic violence, at increased risk by making them less likely to seek help for fear of being detained. A recent federal policy change allowing immigration enforcement at domestic violence shelters and similar organizations has also created more barriers for undocumented survivors, who advocates say already deal with abusers threatening to report them to ICE or take their children out of the country as means of control. “When you send enforcement agents into courthouses and you take such broad immigration actions, you’re actually making it less safe for survivors because of this chilling effect,” said Connie Chung Joe, chief executive officer of Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California. “Now victims are more scared about getting detained or separated from their children and family, and that becomes scarier than [not] being able to protect themselves against their abusers.” Local domestic violence advocates say the prospect of ICE appearing at shelters is their worst fear. That has become a more pressing concern since January, when the Trump administration rescinded guidance the Biden administration implemented characterizing domestic violence shelters and victim services centers, among others, as “protected spaces” where immigration enforcement should not take place due to the harm it could inflict on a community. The Trump administration’s updated guidance says ICE officials will make “case-by-case determinations regarding whether, where and when to conduct an immigration enforcement action in or near a protected area.”  According to Cristina Verez, legal and policy director at the immigrants’ rights organization ASISTA, the policy change led to “a flood of concerns and questions about what that meant for [domestic violence] orgs and how they could…protect everyone at those locations.” Several service providers in LA note that many of their staff are also from mixed-status families, making the concerns relevant to both staff and survivors.  > “It’s the fear and the tearing apart of families that kept her in a dangerous > situation.”  The policy change already appears to be having an impact. On Wednesday, LA city councilor Hugo Soto-Martinez said in a video posted to Instagram that ICE had shown up at a confidential domestic violence shelter, apparently in search of one person who was not present. “How they found out this information, we don’t know,” Soto-Martinez said in the video. (Federal laws protect individual survivors’ confidentiality, and many shelters keep their locations secret.) “These are places where people go and find refuge and try to be safe fleeing violence,” the lawmaker added. (His office did not immediately provide further information on the alleged incident; spokespeople for ICE, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and LA Mayor Karen Bass did not immediately respond to questions from Mother Jones.) Chung Joe, McDonald, and two other LA service providers say their organizations have seen increases just this past week in survivors calling and asking for advice on how to navigate ICE. “Our clients are calling and scared, asking, ‘Can I go to my doctor’s appointment? Can I go to this Pride event? Can I take my kids to school?’” McDonald said. She added that of the approximately 1,000 survivors her organization serves per year, 70 percent are immigrants and more than half of those are undocumented. Another LA-area service provider who is not being identified for fear of retaliation added: “Domestic violence programs, rape crisis programs, should be safe sanctuaries, and we can’t even guarantee that anymore.”  LA-area service providers said they have ramped up “know your rights” trainings and implemented pandemic-era precautions to avoid potential raids. One LA organization that supports South Asian survivors said that its staff has been working from home since Monday, leaving their in-person office temporarily closed. Two other organizations located in areas close to raids also reported closing physical spaces where survivors can typically drop in to get resources; one provider said her organization left a note on its door instructing survivors to call their help line for assistance, and started what she calls “difficult conversations” with clients in shelter about how to prepare for the worst-case scenario: line up emergency contacts, gather their documents, and designate someone safe to take care of their kids if they are detained. “We don’t know if we’re sending a client to sit in a lobby to wait for a service, [if] ICE will come in,” the provider said.  Some providers say their clients have also been afraid to appear in-person for court hearings—as McDonald believes her missing client was—and have instead opted for virtual appointments. In California, state courts do not deport undocumented people, who can access domestic violence restraining orders and other family court services regardless of their status. Immigrant survivors of domestic violence and related crimes can also often access pathways to citizenship through special visas. But these protections can feel meaningless for undocumented survivors in light of Trump’s mass deportation efforts coupled with ICE’s increasing presence in and near courthouses. “They can’t afford to be detained and separated from their children or their families, so they’d rather just stay with their abusers,” said Chung Joe. > “If we keep these individuals from walking through the doors to any of these > facilities because of fear, then as society, we have failed them.” Some lawmakers have floated special protections for domestic violence shelters that they say are newly relevant in light of what’s happening in LA. Susan Rubio, a Democratic state senator in California, has put forth a bill that would prohibit immigration enforcement in private sections of shelters for homelessness, human trafficking, and domestic violence, along with rape crisis centers, without a judicial warrant. “If we keep these individuals from walking through the doors to any of these facilities because of fear, then as society, we have failed them,” said Rubio, who is also a survivor of domestic violence. The legislation has passed the Senate and has been referred for committee hearings in the Assembly. Similar legislation was recently proposed in New York and signed into law in Maryland. Casey Swegman, director of public policy at Tahirih Justice Center, an organization that serves immigrant survivors, said she is “heartened that states are taking up the mantle,” adding that these bills “empower the staff at those agencies to leverage the law to better implement policies at their shelter.”  At the federal level, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) has reintroduced the WISE Act in this session of Congress, a bill that offers a slate of additional protections for immigrant survivors, including prohibiting protections at domestic violence shelters and similarly sensitive locations. “When ICE shows up at domestic violence shelters or arrests survivors seeking help, it only empowers abusers, who too often use immigration status as a threat to keep people in abusive situations. This also impacts public safety overall by making immigrants fearful of local police and less likely to report abuse,” Jayapal said in a statement provided to Mother Jones. As promising as those bills may be, advocates say they cannot stem the immediate fear facing undocumented survivors, in LA and across the country. “Our clients are already living in fear,” McDonald, from Survivor Justice Center, points out. “Now, they’re afraid at home and they’re afraid in the community.”  If you or someone you care about is experiencing or at risk of domestic violence, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline by texting “start” to 88788 or calling 800-799-SAFE (7233) or visiting thehotline.org. The Alliance for Immigrant Survivors also offers a list of resources, and the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence maintains a directory of organizations across the state.

A new Trump-backed attack on domestic violence services just dropped—and this time, it’s targeting survivors’ pets. Tucked inside the 1,200-page appendix to the White House’s budget request to Congress is a proposal to eliminate a grant program, funded by the Agriculture Department and administered by the Department of Justice, that provides domestic violence shelters with money to support survivors’ pets. Advocates say the program, known as PAWS, helps fill a critical gap despite its relatively small budget of $3 million: Many domestic violence shelters do not allow people to bring their pets with them, which can prevent survivors from leaving their abusers or lead them to return to them, according to a survey conducted by the Urban Resource Institute (URI) and the National Domestic Violence Hotline. “Survivors won’t leave, they can’t leave, if they’re going to leave their pets behind,” said Lauren Schuster, vice president of government affairs at URI, a New York City-based domestic violence service provider that lobbied for the creation of PAWS and received one of the program’s first grants. “Pets are often the only source of unconditional love that a survivor experiences when they’re in abusive relationships. So many leave [abusers] with little more than the clothes on their backs, their children and their pets, and to have them be forced to make a decision [to leave their pets] is too much for them to bear.” The PAWS funds were first distributed in 2020, after being authorized as part of the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill. Since then, more than 44 PAWS grants have been distributed to organizations across 26 states, according to Schuster and Nancy Blaney, director of government affairs at the Animal Welfare Institute, an organization that also lobbied for the creation of the program. URI received a $600,000 grant during the first year of PAWS’ distribution, which funded food supplies, and veterinary care, Schuster said. Now, all 24 of their New York City shelters are pet inclusive, thanks to private funding and some other government grants the organization has secured, she added. The proposal to eliminate the program comes as just the latest example of the Trump administration’s attacks on domestic violence services. The DOJ previously canceled hundreds of grants that were reportedly valued at more than $800 million and supported victims of domestic violence and other crimes. Some of those cancelations were subsequently reversed following repots from Mother Jones and other news outlets. The administration’s attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion and transgender people have also led domestic violence service providers to purge resources offering particular support for LGBTQ survivors. Trump’s short-lived federal funding freeze also threw the nonprofits providing services to survivors into disarray. The federal budget also proposes eliminating the office focused on violence prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While this is not the first time a presidential budget has proposed cutting the program—Biden’s proposed budget last year did, too—advocates say the threat feels more pressing now, in light of the ways the Trump administration has already undermined support for domestic violence service providers and survivors. Congress has signaled they could move forward with decimating PAWS. On Thursday, the House Appropriations Agriculture Subcommittee passed a version of their budget bill that lacks funding for the PAWS program. “It’s disappointing to see the failure to understand the importance of these grants to these individuals and how much it means to provide those resources so domestic violence survivors can get out of a dangerous situation,” Blaney, from the Animal Welfare Institute, said. The proposal to cut the funds is also puzzling in light of the fact that Attorney General Pam Bondi previously reversed grant cancelations that offered similar support for pets, and extended her personal appreciation to some of those service providers, NBC News reported. “Our understanding is that all the pets grants were reinstated as it is a passion area for the AG,” Jennifer Pollitt Hill, executive director of the Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence, which had its canceled grant for pet support restored, previously told me. Now, though, Bondi’s office could lose grants that offer similar critical support. (Spokespeople for the DOJ, the USDA, and the White House did not respond to questions from Mother Jones.) Democratic Whip Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), who sponsored the House version of the 2017 bill proposing the creation of the grant program, expressed her disappointment said in a statement provided to Mother Jones on Thursday. “By raiding the PAWS Act to give their mega-donors a tax break, Republicans aren’t just abandoning vulnerable animals—they are betraying women, children, and families.” Stephanie Love-Patterson, president and CEO of the National Network to End Domestic Violence, said that shelters often do not allow pets for a variety of reasons, including having lack of access to funds or because survivors may be scared of or allergic to certain pets. But that can have tragic consequences for survivors. Love-Patterson recalled an incident from her days working as an advocate at a domestic violence shelter that did not accept pets. When one of the survivors had to leave her golden retriever at home, and “her husband called her regularly just so she could hear him torturing the dog,” Love-Patterson told me. “She oftentimes had one foot in the shelter and one foot going back home,” she added. “That was her baby.”