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.
Lest We Forget
“I think I’m living proof that Democrats can and should be winning everywhere. The most important emotion for people to feel about any campaign is hope. It’s hope for a better country, hope for a better life. Every campaign ought to be about how we can do better, how we’re going to better the lives of the American people. And I think when a campaign gets it right, people feel that hope. We’ve got to get out there and make sure that we win the next election, that we elect people everywhere from school board all the way up, to make sure we’re delivering for the American people. Tuesday gave us all a whole lot of hope.”
—Gov. Andy Beshear (D-Ky.) spoke at Crooked Con about the 2025 elections and how Democrats can win elections across the country.
“There is a financial incentive structure on the right for investing in media that changes political outcomes. They know that media is the whole thing, that if you don’t win the information war, you do not win the political war. We do not have the investment on our side, because there’s no financial incentive. [Right wing media] had enormous investment on the front end to build to the point of being profitable.”
—Tara McGowan, founder and publisher of COURIER Newsroom. At Crooked Con, she spoke on a panel about how billionaires invest in right wing media to influence elections, while progressive media sources often struggle to stay afloat and keep their message from being drowned out by far-right “slop”.
“The message New Jersey has sent is clear. Democracy is alive and well in America. Voters still embrace good candidates who speak to their concerns. There is a limit to what they will tolerate from Trump. Nothing is written or certain about our future, and there is no need to give in to fear.”
—Former New Jersey Rep. Tom Malinowski after Mikie Sherrill won the state’s governor race by over 13 points.
“There is yet life kicking in this broken democracy. It is our job to coax the fragile remains of the systems of resistance still available to us into a force that can effectively fight Trumpism. I do not know if Trump’s march to full-on dictatorship can be stopped. But I am certain that if we stop fighting, it will not be stopped.
“So let us all stay vigilant and on offense and demand the same of our leaders. We have flexed our muscles. We have demonstrated resilience and determination, and that’s good. Because this battle is far from over. We need to keep the pressure on. Protesting, boycotting, speaking out, recording unconstitutional stops, protecting our neighbors, demanding that our leaders stand strong and not blink.”
—Civil rights attorney and Howard law professor Sherrilyn Ifill on takeaways from the 2025 elections.
“North Carolina Republicans just bent the knee to Donald Trump once again, going along with his scheme to rig the state’s Congressional map and further dilute the power of Black voters. North Carolina is already one of the most gerrymandered states in the country. Donald Trump rigged North Carolina’s map even further because he knows his disastrous first year will cost him the 2026 midterm elections. His ‘signature’ policy priority, the Big Ugly Bill, kicks almost half a million families off their health care in North Carolina and puts five rural hospitals on the brink of closure. Democrats won’t stop fighting Trump’s attempts to cheat because every North Carolinian deserves fair representation.”
—Reyna Walters-Morgan, DNC vice chair for civic engagement, after North Carolina passed a new congressional map to give Republicans an easier path to flip a House seat. The new map dilutes Black voters in District 1 from 40 percent to 32 percent of the population.
“There’s very little visibility inside the [ICE] detention centers in the United States. And I can tell you that the conditions are horrific. Horrific. I have a constituent who is a leukemia patient. She is a green card holder that was detained back in February. She has lost 70 pounds while inside this detention center, bruises all over her body, I saw her vomit blood. It took us months of advocacy and public pressure from a member of Congress for them to allow her to see an oncologist. It wasn’t until Oct. 8 that ICE finally let her see an oncologist.”
—Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) detailed the inhumane conditions in ICE detention centers while speaking at Crooked Con.
“In the United States of America, in 2025, we should not be having a conversation about refusing to release funds that hungry people are relying on…. It’s very important that people understand that there is no way that private organizations, that churches, that food pantries, can ever fill the gap that is created by the loss of SNAP benefits. So many families rely on this. It is the most effective anti-hunger program we have.”
—Rep. Jahana Hayes (D-Conn.) spoke out in support of SNAP at a MAZON briefing. Forty-two million Americans receive SNAP benefits, but the Trump administration is violating court orders by refusing to release contingency funding during the government shutdown.
“If we get the House and Senate [in the 2026 midterm elections], we have to deliver on affordability: childcare, housing, healthcare. The second bucket is on structural reforms: We’ve got to fix the Voting Rights Act, we have to deal with the money in politics, we have to deal with the Supreme Court and we need immigration reform.
“And the third thing is something around the accountability of the pain and lawlessness of this administration. That does involve accountability around January 6 for sure. But also, I think a lot of us, me included, thought we had a lot more in place to stop a lawless authoritarian. What I’ve realized is we have a lot more norms, and a lot fewer actual tools. And so, we’ve been doing a lot of thinking in the House about what are the changes we need to make so we can get that kind of accountability, and what is the process we have to go through for the country to heal.”
—At Crooked Con, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) laid out her first priorities for when Democrats regain power in Congress.
“The thought of my not receiving my SNAP benefits is very overwhelming. I have three children plus myself and with my being a full time student I can’t work as much as I wish I could. Thanksgiving is coming up and our menu will be limited if my benefits don’t come. Even though as a mother I would never let my children go without, if I did the process, got approved and all, why should me and my family be used as a pawn in the stupid game the government is trying to play?”
—Mom of three Javonica emphasized the harm of denying SNAP benefits. Now that the government reopened, it’s essential the administration distributes full November payments immediately.
Milestones
+ On Election Day last week, Democratic candidates outperformed polls and won many historic races:
- Abigail Spanberger will be the first woman governor of Virginia.
- Mikie Sherrill was elected the first Democratic woman governor of New Jersey.
- Ghazala Hashmi, the new lieutenant governor of Virginia, is the first Muslim woman ever to win a statewide election.
- Zohran Mamdani will be New York City’s first Muslim and first South Asian mayor, and the youngest mayor in more than a century.
- Mary Sheffield was elected the first female mayor of Detroit.
- Kaohly Her will be the first woman and first Hmong mayor of St. Paul.
- Dorcey Applyrs is the first Black mayor of Albany.
- Sharon Owens is the first Black Mayor of Syracuse.
- Helena Moreno is New Orleans’ first Hispanic woman mayor.
- May Nivar is Virginia’s first Chinese-American legislator.
- John Ewing Jr. will be the first Black mayor of Omaha.
- Two Georgia Democrats ousted incumbent Republicans on the Public Service Commission.
- Two Mississippi Democrats flipped seats in the state Senate, breaking the Republican supermajority.
- California voters approved Proposition 50, paving the way to create five U.S. House districts more favorable for Democrats in 2026.
+ Despite multiple judges ruling the Trump administration must release contingency funding to cover SNAP payments in November, they appealed and continued to avoid paying the benefits. “The Trump administration recklessly and unnecessarily drove millions of people into hunger, anxiety and despair as they lost their critically-needed SNAP benefits,” said MAZON president and CEO Abby J. Leibman.
+ Eight Democratic senators joined Republicans to pass a deal to reopen the government. Despite Democrats holding the line for weeks, the final deal doesn’t include any guarantees to extend the ACA tax credits. The deal funds most of the government through Jan. 30, and funds SNAP and WIC through September 2026.
+ Trump signed the deal Wednesday night after it was passed by the House, officially reopening the government after a record 43 days.
+ Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has an all-female transition team, led by Elana Leopold.
+ The Texas Supreme Court allowed judges to refuse to perform same-sex marriages. Brian Klosterboer with ACLU Texas warns, “this rule change allows public officials to discriminate against us based on who we love, where we’re from, what we look like, or how we worship.”
+ Media conglomerate Condé Nast announced that Teen Vogue, known in recent years for its progressive political coverage aimed at young people, will be folded into Vogue.com. The politics editor and five other editorial staff were laid off, the majority of them women of color or trans people. When union officers sought answers about the merger, four of them were laid off.
“Newsrooms are contracting and closing. And media companies that used to prioritize politics and policy news for women, LGBTQ+ people and young audiences are retreating from it,” warned Emily Ramshaw, co-founder and CEO of The 19th.
+ Michigan patients, patient advocates and medical professionals are suing over the Pregnancy Exclusion Act, which denies incapacitated pregnant people the right to refuse life sustaining treatment. Kansas, Alabama, Indiana, Missouri, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin have similar laws that completely disregard advance directives and end-of-life decisions when someone is pregnant.
+ The Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to prevent trans people from updating their gender marker on passports, reversing a lower court’s injunction. They ignored the harm of forcing trans people to travel with documents that out them, and claimed that the ban doesn’t violate equal protection principles.
+ Students at Concordia University Irvine (CUI) are suing the school for violating Title IX. Women are given fewer athletic opportunities than required, while the school attempted to further cut teams. The students have already won a preliminary injunction reinstating swimming and tennis teams and temporarily preventing CUI from eliminating any other women’s varsity teams.
+ Idaho declined all of its $1.5 million Title X funding this year, leading to 28 family planning clinics closing and eliminating all contraception services in at least one district.
+ Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) introduced the Insurrection Act of 2025 to reform the president’s ability to deploy troops for law enforcement within the U.S.
+ A new Nonprofit Legal Defense Network (NLDN) was launched by Alliance for Justice and We the Action, and is designed to connect nonprofits with pro-bono attorneys for legal guidance and defense.
+ Abortion Access Front celebrated their 10-year anniversary and honored E. Jean Carroll and abortion providers Renee and Lara Chelian with Fearless AF Awards.
+ Sasha Suda, the CEO of the Philadelphia Art Museum, was suddenly fired after longtime board members expressed disagreement with her focus on inclusion. Earlier this year, Suda launched the Brind Center for African and African Diaspora Art.
+ A federal court ruled that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) violated the law by imposing unnecessary restrictions on mifepristone. The decision affirms that the FDA needs to consider the overwhelming evidence proving its safety and not unduly burden patients by restricting access. The FDA already regulates mifepristone more stringently than 99 percent of prescription medications.
+ The Supreme Court declined to hear Kim Davis’ case challenging the constitutional right to same-sex marriage.
+ New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a motion to dismiss the federal fraud case against her. She argued that the Trump administration is targeting her for political reasons and vindictive prosecution. The Trump administration’s case against James follows a pattern of the administration legally attacking its critics, as well as prominent Black women.
+ Nancy Pelosi announced that this term in Congress will be her last. She has served in the House for 38 years and is the only woman to be Speaker of the House, from 2007 to 2011 and 2019 to 2023.
+ ICE handcuffed a pre-K teacher, who was legally able to work in the U.S., in front of her daycare students in Illinois. Child care centers were previously considered “sensitive locations” where ICE was not allowed to conduct enforcement, but Trump removed that protection on his first day in office.
+ The New York Times ran an opinion piece titled “Did Women Ruin the Workplace? And if so, can conservative feminism fix it?” After backlash they changed the title slightly, but the content remains full of harmful messages that misrepresent feminism and criticize “wokeness” and #MeToo.
+ Girls Learn International and Feminist Majority Foundation are looking for student delegates to attend the 70th annual Commission on the Status of Women (CSW 70) at the United Nations in March. Apply here!
How We’re Doing
+ Gen Z women aged 18 to 28 were the most Democratic voting group in the 2025 elections. In Virginia and New Jersey, almost 81 percent backed Spanberger and Sherrill, who both won with about 57 percent of the total vote. In New York, 84 percent of young women supported Mamdani, and 85 percent voted for Proposition 50 in California.
+ In 18 states where abortion is legal, orders for telehealth medication abortion have doubled since Roe was overturned. The most common patients have had a previous abortion, live more than 100 miles from a clinic and are less than 6 weeks pregnant.
+ Trump’s popularity among Hispanic adults has fallen since the beginning of the year, as the demographic experiences disproportionately high levels of financial stress. Twenty-five percent of Hispanic adults had a favorable view of Trump in October, compared to 44 percent just before he took office.
+ More than a third of voters believe Trump is not trying to fulfill any of his campaign promises. Nearly two-thirds think he has worsened the economy. A year out from the 2026 midterms, 47 percent of registered voters said they’d vote for a Democrat in their district if the election was today, compared to 42 percent for Republicans.
+ Over 18 million people in the U.S. have a history of cancer, and this is expected to reach more than 22 million by 2035. Access to IVF is a critical tool for cancer patients to preserve their fertility, if they wish to have biological children.
“Patients diagnosed with cancer already face extraordinary challenges, and worrying about whether they will have the chance to build a family should not be another burden,” said ASRM President Dr. Elizabeth Ginsburg. “The U.S. must mandate insurance coverage for IVF and fertility preservation treatments to ensure no cancer patient needs to choose between treatment and building a family.”
+ More than 50 popular lubricants do not meet safety requirements for vaginal health. Weaving Voices for Health & Justice created a database to educate and inform consumers on which brands contain harmful ingredients.
+ The Urban Resource Institute found their intervention program for abusive partners reduced recidivism when 124 men took a 26-week accountability and empathy curriculum. Within a year of completing the accountability and program, participants were less likely to be re-arrested and none had received prison sentences, compared to 3 percent of the sample group.
+ U.S. employers cut over 150,000 jobs in October, increasing 183 percent from September. The 2025 total is 1.1 million jobs, the highest since the pandemic.
+ ICE’s average daily arrests have more than doubled under Trump, with one in four happening in Texas. Arrests of people not convicted of a crime have increased from 42 percent under Biden to 59 percent under Trump. More than half of voters think the process of deporting people has not been fair.
