Greetings, Meteor readers,

I had a delightful and tear-inducing conversation with a young woman today (read some of it below) that reminded me just how much many of us suffer in silence. If that’s you, please know: We hear you even if you’re whispering.

In today’s newsletter, the clock is counting down on the Summer Willis Act, a Texas bill that could reshape the future for sexual assault survivors. Plus, a heartbreaking case in Georgia and your weekend reading list.

For the quiet ones,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

Codifying consent: In just about two weeks, the 89th Texas legislature will adjourn and will not return until January of 2027, meaning that any bills that aren’t voted on during this session will remain in limbo for two years. For Summer Willis–a Texas mom of two, endurance athlete, and fierce advocate for an anti-rape bill making its way through the State Senate–that’s two years too long.

You may have heard of Summer Willis: She ran the course of the New York City marathon (on International Women’s Day) last year while carrying a mattress to raise awareness about sexual abuse. For her, it was personal: When Willis was a sophomore at University of Texas-Austin in 2014, she says, she was drugged and raped at a frat party. She didn’t go to the police or school at the time. But later, she learned that what had happened to her was not even classified as rape because of the murkiness of Texas’s sexual assault law. Because one person had given her a spiked drink and a different man raped her, she says, the latter could not be tried since he didn’t “voluntarily intoxicate” her. The lack of legal clarity around consent means that many assaults, especially ones committed on college campuses, effectively disappear.

“My rape is not considered rape in Texas right now,” Willis says. “Neither are the [rapes of] thousands of Texans.”

She tried to bury the trauma until two years ago, shortly after the birth of her second child. In the thick of postpartum, she says she looked her boys in the eyes and said, “I promise y'all I will try to become the woman I used to believe I could be.” She took up running, believing that it would “make me strong and resilient and find all the answers I’ve been seeking for 10 years.” When she began sharing her story of survival with other runners and moms, she was shocked by how many of them relayed similar stories. “I was never planning on being an advocate,” she says. “But I just met too many survivors.”

WILLIS CROSSING TOWER BRIDGE AT THE LONDON MARATHON, WITH MORE JOY THAN ANYONE WOULD EXPECT FROM SOMEONE DOING THIS MUCH RUNNING. SUPER HUMAN. (COURTESY OF SUMMER WILLIS) 

In February, Willis crawled half the distance of the Austin Marathon and ran the rest, the starting point of her run just across the street from where she was assaulted. (She told Runner’s World that the crawl was a metaphor for the difficulty survivors face in the search for justice.) Afterward, HB 3073’s sponsors informed Willis they would be renaming the bill in her honor. If passed, the law would codify and provide a legal definition of consent, including a stipulation that there can be no consent if a victim is intoxicated or unaware an assault is happening. “I feel the weight of all survivors in Texas on my shoulders,” she says. Although Willis thinks simply defining consent is “not enough,” the bill “will finally tell so many survivors that their rape counts.”

Although HB 3073 passed the House earlier this month with overwhelming bipartisan support and is (shockingly) a top priority of Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s sexual assault task force, the clock is ticking before the legislative session ends on June 2. So what can we do? Texans can contact their senators, and Willis says the two men who need to really feel the love for this bill are Mike Ward (R-TX) and Pete Flores (R-TX). You can also find resources and follow Willis’ work by supporting her organization, Strength Through Strides.

AND:

• A stunningly cruel violation of bodily autonomy is happening in Georgia. A 30-year-old woman named Adriana Smith, who was declared brain-dead after suffering blood clots more than 90 days ago, is being kept alive by the state because she’s pregnant. Georgia has a six-week abortion ban with very limited exceptions, which doctors apparently believe renders the family’s wishes irrelevant. “This decision should’ve been left to us,” Smith’s mother, April Newkirk, told Atlanta’s 11Alive. Smith, who’s a registered nurse and has a young son, had fallen ill at nine weeks pregnant; she’s now 21 weeks, and the hospital now plans to keep her on life support until 32 weeks gestation. According to Newkirk, Smith’s doctor said that there is fluid on the fetus’s brain, which means he may not be able to see, walk, or even survive. “Now we’re left wondering what kind of life he’ll have—and we’re going to be the ones raising him," said Newkirk, who characterized the last few months as “torture.” (In case you’re wondering: No, the state will not be paying the family’s mounting medical bills.) In reaction to the story, Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong, told Newsweek: "Black women must be trusted when it comes to our health care decisions…Our lives are on the line, and our human right to bodily autonomy has been violated."

• Today, the Supreme Court heard arguments brought by the Trump administration over whether or not lower courts can continue halting executive orders. The case specifically addresses Trump’s EO seeking to overturn birthright citizenship—the right that any person born in the United States is automatically a citizen regardless of their parents’ status—but it could have much larger implications. The Court is divided over the scope of injunctions and how they impact nationwide policy, but Justice Elena Kagan saw the administration’s challenge for what it was: a complaint from a team that keeps losing in the lower courts. “If I were in your shoes, there’s no way I’d approach the Supreme Court with this case,” she said.

• On this day, 77 years ago, 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly removed from their homes in what is now known as Al-Nakba, an Arabic word which translates to “the catastrophe.” As yet another set of catastrophes continues to be inflicted on the Palestinian population, we share with you the words of Dr. Shirin Zarqa-Lederman, who wrote for The Meteor in 2022: “In our homeland and across the diaspora we fight, and rally, and shout, and above all we remember. We remember and we hold the pain of our elders so that the Indigenous people of Palestine—no matter their religion—are not forgotten.”

• Fans of the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer, we summon thee. A new slayer has been chosen for the Hulu reboot. But don’t be too worried; Sarah Michelle Gellar will be there to impart her vampire-killing wisdom.

WEEKEND READING 📚

On going when you need to: One trans man spent a lifetime avoiding public bathrooms, damaging his bladder in the process. But now he’s finally ready to stop holding it all in. (Cosmopolitan)

On the “magic pill”: For some–especially pregnant people–the anti-nausea medication Zofran is a lifesaver. So why isn’t this safe, quick, effective drug sold over the counter? (The Cut)

On inherited worries: “At thirty-six, I have never been sweeter, smarter, or hotter than I am now.” Angelica Jade Bastién has a message for women already flagellating themselves over aging. (Madwomen & Muses)

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Hey there, Meteor readers,

Hearty congratulations are in order for Meteor collective members Dawn Porter and Tanya Selvaratnam, both of whom are nominated for News and Documentary Emmys this year: Porter for The Sing Sing Chronicles and Documenting Police Use of Force; and Selvaratnam for Love to the Max. Watch if you haven’t!

In today’s newsletter, we’re strolling down the blue carpet of last night’s Met Gala with Julianne Escobedo Shepherd—and taking a moment to celebrate midwives.

Still thinking about this,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

CARDI B AND HALLE BERRY. NO NOTES. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) 

Fashion’s dandiest night: Whatever your feelings about the Met Gala, this year’s theme, Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, was an important one. It was selected by Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton last year after he read the 2009 book Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, by Barnard professor Monica L. Miller, now chair of the college’s Africana Studies Department. Inspired by its deeply researched history of the way formerly enslaved Black people reclaimed the frippery they were forced to wear into their own distinct style, Bolton asked Miller to become the Costume Institute’s first guest curator in his ten-year tenure.

The exhibit itself lasts for nearly half a year, long after the last bit of carpet is rolled up. Superfine looks at the lineage of Black style in “the Atlantic diaspora,” and cites Zora Neale Hurston’s “Characteristics of Negro Expression,” an essay from 1934. “The will to adorn is the second most notable characteristic in Negro expression,” Hurston wrote. “Perhaps his idea of ornament does not attempt to meet conventional standards, but it satisfies the soul of its creator.” In other words: Black fashion evolved as a form of resistance against the way white culture expects Black people to be, but it doesn’t matter whether the clothes please anyone but the wearer.

Aesthetically speaking, this year contained the best fashion at the Gala in years, its “tailored for you” dress code encouraging attendees to show up and show out as themselves. Co-chair Teyana Taylor wore a long red cape embroidered with the words “Harlem Rose,” created by costume designer Ruth E. Carter, who in 2018 became the first Black woman to win an Oscar for Best Costume Design, for Black Panther. Rihanna donned a deconstructed suit—part jacket, part bustle, part waist-as-lapel—its regal pinstripes channeling the spirit of Ida B. Wells, assuredly strutting into her newspaper job at the New York Age in the 1890s.

DO WE THINK SHE'S HIDING R9 UNDER THAT HAT? (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

While the glitter of the Met Gala may seem out of touch in these violent times, it feels significant that Black creativity was celebrated at such a major institutional event, in a moment when institutions are being all but purged of Black people and other people of color. We’ve already seen how the Trump administration’s blatantly white supremacist agenda has affected the Kennedy Center, all cabinet-level departments, and state universities; he has promised to next come for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, PBS, and other government-funded institutions that bring alive the history of Black and brown people. Those institutions have only just begun to help this country grapple with its historical atrocities; now, thanks to the administration’s war on what it derisively refers to as “DEI,” the small progress that’s been made is being literally erased.

Don’t just talk about it, be about it, goes a common phrase in African American Vernacular English (AAVE). The long national project of what that means politically is being cut off at the knees, thanks to these attacks on Black history in classrooms, libraries, government websites, and museums. So it’s huge that “fashion’s biggest night” at the country’s most renowned art institution was about Black history and Black people reveling in Black fashion as resistance. It was emphasized across every major publication, every tabloid and blog, and all over every social feed—Black fashion history everywhere. As Professor Miller put it to Lala Anthony in an interview on the carpet last night: “I’ve never had such a big classroom.”

–Julianne Escobedo Shepherd

AND:

• Yesterday was International Day of the Midwife, and this year’s theme was “Midwives: Critical in Every Crisis.” According to the United Nations Population Fund, midwives are often the first and only responders providing care to pregnant women during conflicts or humanitarian disasters (care that’s threatened by the shuttering of USAID). And in the U.S., midwifery is essential in a climate where pregnancy is criminalized and maternal health outcomes are getting worse. In fact, research shows that midwife care improves birth outcomes and can help address health disparities. Shafia Monroe, a veteran midwife and activist in Portland, Ore., sees Black midwives as “the first line of defense” for protecting the health of Black mothers, who are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women. “The deaths of Black women are often due to not being listened to by doctors and hospitals,” Monroe says. “A Black midwife is going to listen to you.” (For more on why midwifery is so key to Black women’s reproductive justice, check out our video on the subject.) Monroe finds hope in the “slow but sure resurgence” of her profession: Even though our country’s medical system sought to marginalize midwives–and especially Black midwives–in the 20th century, midwives now attend 11% of births in the U.S., as opposed to only 1% in 1980.

• Immigration advocates are calling for renewed investigations into inhumane conditions at detention centers after three more immigrants died in April, bringing the total to seven deaths in ICE custody since the start of the second Trump administration. Detention centers are overrun as the administration denies bond to immigrants who are trying to appeal their deportations. ICE claims that it is providing appropriate medical attention to all those who need it, but Katie Blankenship of Sanctuary of the South tells Truthout, “They are putting lipstick on a pig to get the press off their back.”

• And another high five! Over the last few years, the outlet ProPublica has been doing the difficult and necessary work of exposing the extreme consequences of abortion bans. Yesterday, it received a well-deserved Pulitzer Prize for public service for Kavitha Surana, Lizzie Presser, and Cassandra Jaramillo’s series “Life of the Mother,” which, among other things, examined two preventable deaths of pregnant women in Georgia and analyzed the impact of Texas’s abortion ban when the state neglected to. Reporting matters.

• When Maine governor Janet Mills refused to comply with Trump’s executive order banning transgender athletes from women’s sports, the administration fired back by freezing funding for nutrition programs, including free school lunches. Instead of acquiescing, Mills and the state’s AG took the administration court and won. You love to see it.

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Howdy Meteor readers,

A reminder that as of next Wednesday, you will need a REAL ID for air travel within the U.S. Why am I bothering with this PSA? Because it’s a pain in the ass: I wasted several hours of my own life at the motor vehicle commission, only to be told that the stacks of paperwork I brought were not enough to confirm my identity. Apparently, that’s a pretty common problem, especially for married women, so…best of luck out there.

In today’s newsletter, we parse through the most dangerous medical lies of the week. Plus, a long overdue honor is bestowed, and your weekend reading list.

Standard ID girlie,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

Pure malarkey: 👏🏼Stop 👏🏼spreading 👏🏼misinformation 👏🏼about 👏🏼 our 👏🏼health. This week, two major instances of misinformation made the rounds. First up is Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s claim that MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccines contain “aborted fetus debris.” To be clear: These vaccines do not, at all, contain parts of fetuses or fetal cells. What he is referring to is the widely accepted and longstanding use of fetal cells to develop vaccines, which involves introducing a virus or bacterium to human cells and then inactivating or killing the virus.

The original fetal cells used to develop the vaccines we now rely on were harvested in the 1960s from two elective abortions. Like all cells, they’ve continued to multiply over the years, and scientists have been using the same line of cells for generations. But as the vaccine education center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia explains, no vaccine injected into a person contains fetal cells. After the vaccine viruses are grown, the manufacturers “purify the vaccine viruses away from the cells.”

So why peddle this falsehood at all? RFK Jr. is a notorious flip-flopper on vaccines. One week, he supports them, the next he doesn't, but no matter what, he casts baseless doubt on their efficacy at every turn—even in the middle of a measles outbreak in Texas. What better way for a vaccine skeptic to dog-whistle conservative-leaning parents than to say there are dead babies floating in the vaccine liquid? (So far, two children have died in Texas as a result of the outbreak, which is two too many.)

On to the next big lie of the week. A new “study” titled “The Abortion Pill Harms Women” was released by the conservative think tank Ethics and Public Policy Center, which advertises itself as “working to apply the riches of the Jewish and Christian traditions to contemporary questions of law.” I will not provide the link to the actual study because, as we’ve written before, we should not share links to false or misleading information for any reason. But that didn’t stop Fox News from doing this tomfoolery.

Deep breath. Here are the facts: This “study” was not conducted by doctors, whereas the rigorous clinical testing for mifepristone’s FDA approval was conducted by multiple doctors over years. (We spoke to two of them last year.) Instead, it was compiled by data analysts reviewing health insurance claims. What they say they found by reviewing claims’ procedure codes is that nearly 11 percent of women who used mifepristone had at least “one serious adverse event” in the 45 days after taking the pill. But as journalist Jessica Valenti points out, the study does not provide evidence that the “serious adverse events” are directly caused by or even related to the use of mifepristone—they simply happened within 45 days of use. And these “serious adverse events” are loosely defined; for instance, according to Valenti, they include “hemorrhaging,” which could include the heavy bleeding that can be normal after a medication abortion.

So why even talk about this “fart” of a study, as Valenti hilariously characterized it?  Because it calls on the FDA to “further investigate the harm mifepristone causes to women,” on the grounds that the pill is “considerably more dangerous to women than is represented” on the label. Politicians have already started to parrot that narrative. The new FDA head, meanwhile, is anti-abortion.

For the kabillionth time: Abortion pills are safe!

AND:

• Yesterday, detained Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi was released on bail after nearly a month in a Vermont jail. He is, however, still facing possible deportation and will have to return to court to block the government from sending him to his birthplace, the West Bank. It’s a fight Mahdawi is prepared for: “To President Trump and his Cabinet: I am not afraid of you,” he said after his release. The judge who ruled that Mahdawi be released compared the targeting of students to 1950s McCarthyism, saying, “The wheel has come around again.” Should Mahdawi and the remaining detained students win in court, it could be the first strike in stopping that wheel.

MAHDAWI AT A CAMPUS PROTEST IN 2023. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

• The Supreme Court heard oral arguments this week in the case of Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond, which seeks to allow for the creation of a religious charter school funded by the state. Court watchers suspect that SCOTUS will rule in favor of St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School in Oklahoma. Justice Brett Kavanaugh seemed particularly into the idea, likening religious public schools to those that specialize in environmental studies or Chinese immersion.

• Two weeks after a ruling from the UK’s highest court defining “women” as a category based only on biological sex, the English Football Association (FA) has announced that transgender women will no longer be allowed to play on women’s soccer teams beginning June 1. Previously, the FA did allow for trans women to play at the amateur level, as long as they were below a certain level of testosterone. There are 20 trans women registered for the upcoming soccer season, out of hundreds of players, and all 20 will be asked to leave their teams.

• On Tuesday, in a moment that was long overdue, the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion was honored with the Congressional Gold Medal. (If you’re surprised that this honor was bestowed in the Trump era, Congress voted on this back in 2022, and it’s taken three years to get the ceremony on the books.) The battalion, known as the Six Triple Eight, was the only all-Black, all-women’s unit to serve overseas during World War II, and while many of the women have died, 300 of their descendants were present at the Capitol when the family of Lieutenant Colonel Charity Adams Earley received the medal. If you want to learn more about these unsung heroes, check out their fascinating documentary on PBS or pick up Earley’s memoir, One Woman’s Army.

LT. COLONEL ADAMS (FRONT LEFT), A MAJOR AT THIS TIME, WITH CAPTAIN MARY KEARNEY BEHIND HER AS THEY INSPECT THE FIRST RECRUITS TO THE 6888 IN 1945.  (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

WEEKEND READING 📚

On bad buys: Women are still learning about the dangers of multi-level marketing schemes the hard way. (The Cut)

On childhood fame: Piper Rockelle, the kid-fluencer at the center of the Netflix documentary Bad Influence, finally breaks her silence. (Rolling Stone)

On something you may have missed: This heartwarming, tear-inducing excerpt from Tina Knowles’ memoir, Matriarch. (Vogue)

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Salutations, Meteor readers,

Before we get into it today, exciting news: We’re going to the Tribeca Film Festival! This summer, you can catch the world premiere of Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print; our very own Cindi Leive served as an executive producer. The film—from McGee Media in partnership with HBO—looks back on Ms. magazine’s 50+-year history to tell the story of how it defied the odds and brought feminism to the masses. Plan to be in New York in June? Grab a ticket!

In today’s newsletter, we provide perhaps the only positive take you’ll read about the past 100 days. Plus, Rebecca Carroll talks to Dr. Connie Wun about the 50th anniversary of the end of the war in Vietnam.

Counting the days,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

The worst of times: A mere 100 days ago, Donald Trump took office, and it has been a vengeful, embarrassing, and violent presidency thus far. It has also been a test for the American people—so today, we’re heralding the ways women have spent this time fighting back against an overgrown playground bully. Hats off to…

• Skye Perryman: Serving as CEO and president of Democracy Forward, which has filed over 600 legal actions dating all the way back to Trump’s first term, Perryman and her team have stood up for libraries, federal employees, and immigrants. Just last week, they blocked the administration from carrying out its threat to prosecute or cut funding to schools teaching history classes that referenced race or racism. And yes, the administration likes to ignore court orders—but Perryman and her peers are taking the extra steps to ensure court oversight.

• Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX): The rising sophomore has taken on the task of saying what a lot of us are thinking. When discussing the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man mistakenly deported on suspicion of being a gang member, Crockett noted that Garcia was “a lot less criminal than the person that’s sitting in the White House.”

• Sarah Inama: A sixth-grade history teacher in Idaho, Inama had decorated her classroom with a sign that read “Everyone is welcome here”; it featured drawings of raised hands, all in different skin colors. Her school district sent her a letter to remove the sign because it deemed it “controversial,” according to the Trump administration’s executive order on DEI. Initially, Inama felt pressured and removed the sign. But then, she told Today, the directive “sounded like racism,” and she decided to put it back up. Controversy ensued—but ultimately the sign stayed, and so did Inama.

• Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA): She recently launched the Resistance Lab, a series of online gatherings to teach people “the best tools and tactics and frameworks to fight back” against attacks on democracy. The first one drew about 1,500 participants. She’s hoping to do another lab with a focus on “nonviolent training” for peaceful protests. “Think Selma church basements and the kind of training that they did to prepare people…Because that moment is coming,” she told The Nation. Here’s how to be alerted to the next Resistance Lab and other actions happening in your state.

• Erin Reed: The administration has mounted an astonishing war on the press—using its power to file lawsuits against media companies and shutting down US-funded news outlets around the world. Which makes the fearless journalism that reporters keep producing all the more impressive. To name just one impressive outlet: Erin Reed in the Morning tracks news and legislation targeting the LGBTQ+ community. Team Trump has been working since day one to erase trans people from existence, and at every turn, every action, the Erin Reed team has been there to act as a speed bump and keep its 120,000 readers informed.

These leaders—and thousands more—are doing the work that needs doing, at one of the hardest times to do it. More of this over the next 1360 days!

AND:

• A Wall Street Journal investigation found that AI “digital companions” created by Meta are engaging in sexually explicit conversations with minors. The bots, some of which use celebrities’ voices to speak to a user (you can’t see John Cena but you can hear him), were reportedly rushed through production by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who encouraged developers to “loosen the guardrails around the bots to make them as engaging as possible,” sources told WSJ, “including by providing an exemption to [Meta’s] ban on ‘explicit’ content as long as it was in the context of romantic role-playing.” Fortunately, since the investigation broke late last week, Instagram has blocked minors from accessing the bots.

• Conservatives don’t want poor students to go to college—or at least they don’t want them to be able to pay for it. Yesterday, the GOP-led Committee on Education and Workforce introduced a new budget proposal that restructures the financial aid system and changes eligibility requirements for Pell Grants. The suggested changes for Pell would require students to take on more credits per semester to maintain the grant, unfairly targeting low-income students who already divide their time between school, work, and family responsibilities.

• On Sunday, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced its 2025 inductees. This year’s honorees include LGBTQ+ advocate Cyndi Lauper and the OG sex-positive trio Salt-N-Pepa—a nice reminder that not everyone is afraid of celebrating icons of cultural progress.

ALL THREE MEMBERS OF SALT-N-PEPA (SANDRA "SALT" DENTON, DJ SPINDERELLA, AND CHERYL "PEPA" JAMES) AT THE 2018 ESSENCE FESTIVAL. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)  

• Vatican watchers are preparing for the big day next Wednesday, when Conclave, the process to choose a new pope, begins. Seven cardinals are considered front-runners, including Filipino cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, who has been called the “Asian Francis.” If elected, Tagle would be the first pope from Southeast Asia. But one expert suggests there’s a candidate we’ve all been overlooking.

Three Question About...The End of the “U.S. War in Vietnam”

Five decades after the conflict’s end, Dr. Connie Wun reflects on generational trauma and the battles we’re still fighting.

BY REBECCA CARROLL 

THE VIETNAM VETERANS MEMORIAL IN WASHINGTON, D.C. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) 

Tomorrow marks the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War—a conflict that remains both controversial and divisive. Here in the U.S., the first televised war brought pushback against the draft, and a feeling that America shouldn’t be intervening in a conflict between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. By the time Soviet-backed North Vietnam invaded Saigon and declared victory in 1975, the protracted war had claimed the lives of as many as 3 million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians, as well as 58,000 American soldiers.

Dr. Connie Wun, the executive director of AAPI Women Lead, was raised in Oakland by Vietnamese refugees. We sat down on the 50th anniversary of the exact day that her grandmother and mother were forced to leave Vietnam, to talk about her personal connection to the war, why remembering it matters, and the fight against war on every battleground.

In some ways, it feels counterintuitive to commemorate war, but why do you think it’s important to commemorate the Vietnam War in particular?

Here [in America] we call it the Vietnam War. In Vietnam, they call it Reunification Day [marking the liberation of southern Vietnam and its reunification with the North after “the U.S. war in Vietnam.”]. And across the globe, it’s called the Fall of Saigon. So, depending upon who you ask, there are various interpretations of what April 30th, 1975, means. Some people are commemorating and honoring the three million-plus people who were killed, and the slow, ensuing deaths that followed. Trauma from the war was among the main causes of my grandmother’s cardiovascular diseases.

And that’s the case for many Vietnamese people today. We have high rates of chronic health illnesses, diabetes, and depression, and these are all underreported. My grandmother passed away after having triple bypass surgery. Many of us are permanently displaced and are commemorating the loss of our homeland. I have family members who fought with the Viet Cong, and then people who fought with the South. We are commemorating loss, we are commemorating tragedy.

When my grandmother was forced to leave, she left with my grandfather, my mom, aunt, and uncle; my grandmother’s cousins as well as their nieces and nephews. More than 20 people left with them on the flight to the refugee camps in Guam, and then the Philippines. According to our family stories, our family was a part of Operation New Life [a military-led humanitarian effort for refugees who evacuated Vietnam before the end of the war]. Over the past few years, I’ve been collecting our family's stories—I have inherited centuries of warfare.

How do you find a definition of solidarity for yourself and the work that you do?

The premise of solidarity for me is about surviving, resisting, and ending global and domestic wars. So that’s global and domestic wars against Black peoples, global and domestic wars against Indigenous peoples, global imperialist wars, and colonial wars. Modern civilization is premised upon global and domestic warfare. What I don’t know is if we’ve learned as a whole, and I don't know if we’ve agreed to care about, is that war and its implications are forever.  

How do we see through to a time when we don’t have wars?

We have to undo modern civilization. That’s the task at hand. The way through is to submit to the fact that we’re under warfare. Which is why my grandmother passed away some 20 years after leaving Vietnam. My job, having inherited her legacy, is to keep fighting and to demand that I get to stay alive. I will be one of the people who is going to overthrow what’s taken so many people’s lives. That has to be our commitment to each other—undoing, overthrowing, and building something else.

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Howdy, Meteor readers,

I know everyone is talking about Sinners, but I am what you would call a certified scaredy-cat; I still suffer from Scream. But a bunch of fellow scaredies online say it’s not too bad if you watch it during the day so I’ll see y’all at the afternoon matinee.

In today’s newsletter, we investigate sex miseducation in Indiana. Plus, Nona Willis Aronowitz remembers her “feminist fairy godmother.”

Meow,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

Virginity education: Yesterday, Indiana’s House and Senate voted in favor of SB 442, titled “Instruction on Human Sexuality.” You might have heard of it (on our Instagram feed and elsewhere) because of a debate over whether that “instruction” should include the idea of consent. The bill’s author, Sen. Gary Byrne (R-IN), had removed a requirement that teachers address consent earlier this week, arguing that the subject could be seen as “controversial.” (Research from the Indiana Department of Health shows that 56 percent of sexually active high schoolers had experienced some form of sexual violence, with 11th grade girls making up most of that group.) After public outcry, though, the consent requirement was re-added to the bill yesterday—your latest reminder that yelling works.

But here’s the thing: The bill is still light on the education part of sex education. In addition to consent, it requires sex-ed classes in Indiana to teach four things: abstinence, abstinence (yes it’s listed twice), instruction that the best way to avoid STIs is a “mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage” (we remind you, these are children and teens), and the viewing of a high-definition ultrasound video, at least three minutes long, depicting the development of organs in a fetus. It’s giving Catholic-school health class, and I would know, as someone whose sex-ed was having to watch the movie Riding in Cars with Boys.

Let’s linger on the video for a second. These kinds of videos—most notably the notorious “Baby Olivia”—have cropped up over the last two years as a tool of the anti-abortion movement and are more often than not, medically inaccurate and meant to elicit an emotional response rather than be strictly educational. When pressed about the video requirements by Democratic senators yesterday, Byrne insisted he was not specifically suggesting “Baby Olivia,” IndyStar reported, and that school boards would be able to choose which films get shown to students. “There’s plenty of examples of videos,” he argued. (When pressed to name them, he could not.)

Indiana is, of course, not the first state to introduce such narrow requirements for sex-ed classes or to inject what sound like conservative Christian views of sex into a secular public school system. Currently, 37 states have laws that require abstinence as part of sex education, while only 18 require teachers to share information about birth control. As far as education around consent? Only 12 states—13 if the Indiana bill passes—require that it be mentioned. But studies show that simply telling teenagers not to have sex doesn’t protect them from STIs or unwanted pregnancies. What does work, according to the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, is comprehensive education that includes consent, contraception, STI prevention, and sexual health for LGBTQ+ communities.

AND:

• The Women’s Health Initiative, a landmark federal project dedicated to studying women’s health, lost a huge portion of its funding this week as a result of the Trump administration’s cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services. Largely known for its contributions to understanding menopause, the WHI also conducted research on chronic disease in older adults. Jean Wactawski-Wende, who led a WHI research branch at the University of Buffalo, told NPR, “It's been one of the most productive studies in history. And to really understand older women's health — dementia, heart failure, frailty — we are the study to do that. And it's been eviscerated right now because of these budget cuts.” Another researcher said there was a “glimmer of hope” that WHI’s work could continue but that nothing was certain.

• On a recent episode of her podcast, former First Lady Michelle Obama discussed why she chose to skip Donald Trump’s inauguration, and the very simple answer was: She didn’t want to go. “I'm here really trying to own my life and intentionally practice making the choice that was right for me,” she said. “And it took everything in my power to not do the thing that 'was right,' or was perceived as right, but do the thing that was right for me.”

OBAMA AT A LIVE TAPING FOR HER PODCAST, "IMO." IN HER LEFT HAND, SHE CAN BE SEEN HOLDING ALL OF HER DESIRE TO CONTINUE BEING A PEOPLE PLEASER. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

• This week, Sportico released its list of the 50 highest-paid athletes of all time; topping the list is Michael Jordan, who has earned roughly $3 billion since turning pro in 1984. That’s not surprising—but what is is that there’s only one woman on this list, coming in at number 40. Can you guess who it is? Some hints: she retired in 2022 and did not play a team sport. Click here for the answer.

• The Department of Education is set to resume student loan collections beginning May 5, ending a five-year pause that began as part of pandemic relief. This will be especially troublesome for women borrowers. So what does it mean for you? If your account is in default or is very close to being in default (you can determine your status here if you’re not sure), then the DOE will move your loan into collections. Once in collections, you can either try to arrange a payment plan or, in the worst-case scenario, the Treasury Offset Program could authorize “involuntary payments” from your paycheck. May the finance gods be with us all.

• Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum has had enough of Kristi Noem’s mierda. After ads featuring U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Noem threatening to “hunt down” Mexican immigrants ran on Mexican television, Sheinbaum responded by asking her government to approve a measure that would ban “foreign governments from carrying out political and ideological propaganda in our country.” Sigue jodiendo para que vea.

• Feminist journalist Karen Durbin died last Tuesday at the age of 80. She was a widely revered critic who ran The Village Voice in the 90s, famously putting an image of a woman with an exposed tampon string on the magazine’s cover in 1995. The Meteor’s Nona Willis Aronowitz, whose mother was close to Durbin, remembers Durbin “as a dishy, witty auntie figure, a bottle-redhead who loved girly things like shopping and celebrity gossip but also was a dead-serious feminist and journalist who steered me toward foundational pro-sex essays when I was writing my college thesis on 70s porn. She was one of my first feminist fairy godmothers.”

DURBIN IN 1994. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

WEEKEND READING 📚

Online: When we said we wanted a “womanosphere” this is not what we meant. (The Guardian)

On history repeating itself: Historian Greg Grandin explores Latin America’s journey from “fighting to facilitating fascism.” (Democracy Now)

On mixtapes: Have a cry with writer Jill Mapes, her dad,  and a shared appreciation for good music. (Hearing Things)

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Greetings, Meteor readers,

It’s Earth Day! And also, it’s Taurus season! May we all feel some stabilizing, comforting energy over the next few weeks because boy, do we need it.

In today’s newsletter, Nona Willis Aronowitz explains what’s behind the administration’s “make more babies” plan. Plus, we bid farewell to the pope.

Bulls up,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

Baby bust: Yesterday, the New York Times reported that the pro-natalist Trump administration, concerned about the U.S.’s falling birth rate, has been brainstorming ways to get American women to have more children. Some of their ideas include five-thousand-dollar baby bonuses, menstrual-cycle education, and a National Medal of Motherhood (a tactic you might recognize from the Nazis). Notably missing: plans to subsidize childcare, parental leave, or any other crucial improvements actual families have been requesting for generations. Lots of incredulous reactions across the internet made that exact point: “How can you expect us to have more babies without a strong social safety net?”

As someone who yearns for free daycare and paid maternity leave, I’m tempted to say the same. Yes, it’s darkly ironic that the Trump administration is calling for more babies even as it has made deep cuts to maternal and child health and opposed any repair of the U.S.’s woefully inadequate family policies. But the thing is, offering benefits to families doesn’t actually boost birth rates. In fact, many countries that provide robust support for parents, like Finland, Norway, and Germany, have birth rates below ours. There’s no evidence that Trump’s proposed policies would work, either. “Even the richest, savviest, most committed governments” are stumped, a history professor told Vox in 2023. “If such policies were discoverable, I think someone would have discovered them.”

So the question you’re probably wondering is: What’s so bad about the birth rate falling? Most countries in the world are now below the “replacement rate” of 2.1, and the trend is most pronounced in the richest nations; the United States is at about 1.6, a drop of more than 20 percent in the last decade. Seen one way, fewer babies is a success story of women truly having control over their own lives, and—thanks to contraception access, education, and career opportunities—being able to make choices that may or may not involve children. Maybe those decisions “shouldn’t scare us,” writes feminist writer Jill Filipovic, “but should inform us that when women have more options and opportunities, women’s desires become far more varied.”

Still, experts across the political spectrum agree that a shrinking population with more old people than young presents huge economic and humanitarian challenges. An aging society means fewer workers to keep society functioning—to grow our food, to build our houses, to care for the elderly. For many, the story of South Korea, which has the lowest birth rate in the world, provides a disconcerting glimpse of what happens when so few babies are born: 1 in 5 people in South Korea are over 65, and nearly 40 percent of those elders live in poverty.

But no matter how valid these concerns are, Trump’s “solutions” are both demeaning (ugh, that medal) and historically familiar: The one way governments have temporarily bumped up birth rates throughout history is by oppressing women. Think Nazi Germany and its Lebensborn program, which used women as incubators for 20,000 “Aryan” babies. Or Ceausescu's Romania, which severely restricted abortion and birth control access to devastating effect. Even our own “baby boom” in the repressive 1950s partially relied on pushing women into domesticity. This brand of pro-natalism—promoted by people like J.D. Vance, Tucker Carlson, and Elon Musk—often goes hand-in-hand with racism and anti-immigrant sentiment. While immigration is often touted as a short-term solution to the U.S.’s low birth rate, the Trump administration’s cocktail of natalism and xenophobia makes clear that they don’t want more babies of all kinds, just white, Christian babies in heterosexual nuclear families.

So, yes, I agree that we should seriously grapple with how to reshape society in the face of population decline. I just don’t trust this administration—with its blatant disregard for families and basic human decency—to do it.

—Nona Willis Aronowitz

AND:

• Following the death of Pope Francis on Monday, the news cycle was flooded with praise and in-depth examination of his polarizing legacy. Over his 12 years of service, Francis was a champion of immigrants and the poor, modeling his papacy after his namesake St. Francis of Assisi. In his final months, he also spoke out staunchly against the violence in Gaza, even using his final Easter sermon to call for peace. Still, as he himself pointed out multiple times, Pope Francis was the head of a corrupt church that even under his watch continued to abuse children, protect predators, and deny the sacrament of matrimony to same-sex couples. Did he bring the massive reform that many Catholics were calling for? No. But did he, as Phillip Picardi explained last year, create, for many faithful, “an opportunity for healing or reconciliation after a lifetime of religious-based trauma” through declarations and sermons? Yes. And that may be his true legacy.

POPE FRANCIS DELIVERED HIS FINAL EASTER SERMON AT THE VATICAN THE DAY BEFORE HE DIED. VIA GETTY IMAGES

• In March, Ricardo Prada Vásquez called a friend from a Texas detention center to let him know he was being deported to El Salvador. But Vásquez never made it there, and his family, friends, and the U.S. government have no record of where he was deported to. An attorney with the National Immigrant Justice Center working to locate Vásquez told the New York Times that the story was “incredibly tragic—and we don’t know how many Ricardos there are.” (The story of Kilmar Abrego Garcia implies there may be many.)

• In related news, Dr. Noor Abdalla, who is married to detained Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, gave birth to the couple’s first child yesterday; her husband remains a political prisoner at a facility in Louisiana. In a statement, Abdalla wrote, “Despite our request for ICE to allow Mahmoud to attend the birth, they denied his temporary release to meet our son. This was a purposeful decision by ICE to make me, Mahmoud, and our son suffer.”

COLUMBIA STUDENTS AND ALUMNI CHAINED THEMSELVES TO THE UNIVERSITY'S MAIN GATE LAST WEEK TO PROTEST THE DETENTION OF STUDENTS. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) 

• Yesterday, Kenyan long-distance runner Sharon Lokedi won the women’s elite division of the Boston Marathon, completing it in two hours and 17 minutes, breaking the record previously held by Buzunesh Deba. We’ve come a long, glorious way from the first official run of Kathrine Switzer.

• The Mississippi Supreme Court has upheld a judge’s decision that trans people in the state may not legally change their names until they’re 21, even with parental consent. The ruling comes after a trans teenager and his parents filed for a name change in their county and were denied. But as writer S. Baum points out, girls in Mississippi can get married and change their last names to match their husbands…at age 15. Make it make sense.

• Still trying to figure out what the hubbub is about AI? Well, some scientists and researchers are currently using it to rescue all of us from a potential “sixth mass extinction.” Not as fun as turning yourself into a Studio Ghibli character, but who am I to yuck anybody’s AI yum?

• Let’s leave on a high note! Last year at our Free Future event, held in partnership with the Ford Foundation, former Hallandale, Florida, vice mayor Sabrina Javellana recounted her harrowing story of being targeted with deepfake porn images made and circulated without her consent. Local law enforcement told her the violation was “heinous,” but that there was nothing they could do. But Javellana persisted, and “turned my pain into advocacy,” getting a law passed to make creating any kind of nonconsensual deepfake a felony. Watch—and cheer for her—here.

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Dearest Meteor readers,

I’m feeling tender this week and I’m gonna blame Dying For Sex, the new FX miniseries about actual death, the little death, and ride-or-die friendship. The final episode had me in a puddle the other day. Highly rec’d if you’re a fan of Michelle Williams and/or catharsis.

Today, we dig into a surprising new statistic about young women and drinking. Plus, affirmative action for white men and justice for Black mothers.

Still sniffling,

Nona Willis Aronowitz

WHAT'S GOING ON

A sobering new study: If your image of a young binge-drinker is a frat boy doing keg stands, you’re out of date, according to a new analysis in the Journal of the American Medical Association. While drinking among young people is declining overall and older women still drink less than older men, women ages 18 to 25 now binge-drink slightly more than their male counterparts. (Binge-drinking is defined as regularly having more than four drinks in one sitting for women and more than five drinks for men; the study compared data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health between 2017-2019 and 2021-2023.)

Women’s drinking habits have been catching up to men’s for decades, and scholars, journalists, and public health advocates have been noting the results: Women are increasingly dying, getting sick, and going to the ER from drinking. And why are we drinking more? It’s partly  because of stress. (Research indeed shows that women are more likely to drink in order to cope than men. See also: “Mommy wine culture.”) The pandemic seems to have compounded the problem; articles and studies have abounded since 2020 showing how much more women were drinking to get through their days. Women, some have concluded, “need an intervention.” (Others, as one Meteor commenter put it a few months back, are “tired of being targeted for all the things.”)

But what accounts for younger women binge-drinking more than younger men? The study was careful not to draw conclusions; the authors say that because the groups analyzed in each time period are not the same people, they don’t know whether we’re seeing an actual rise among young women or, perhaps, a decline among men. But Susan Stewart, a professor of sociology at Iowa State University who studies alcohol use among women, has an initial hypothesis: “I think it has to do with women’s independence,” she says. “Young people are dating and having sex at lower rates, and less interested in serious relationships. Women are doing their own thing, which includes partying.”

Stewart also points out that young women have higher rates of college completion than men, and college students binge-drink more than their non-college peers. It’s too early to tell whether this will be a longterm trend, Stewart says, but it could just be a side effect of an otherwise encouraging phenomenon: “women exercising a greater latitude of freedom.”

In any case, it doesn’t hurt to familiarize yourself with the most recent health guidelines on drinking. And yes, alcohol can be a source of great pleasure—but in case you are struggling, there’s help to be had.

AND:

• Yesterday, the UK Supreme Court issued a unanimous and definitive ruling that the terms “women” and “sex” in the UK’s Equality Act refer only to biological sex. The case was brought by the campaign group For Women Scotland (bankrolled by notorious transphobe J.K. Rowling) after two Scottish courts rejected the group’s claim that the definition of a woman was limited to people born biologically female. The decision could have wide-ranging consequences on sports, prisons, hospitals, and schools. Ellie Gomersall, a trans woman and Scottish Green Party activist, told the Guardian she’s “gutted”; she expects some will “use [the decision] as justification or vindication to discriminate further against trans people, and that makes me really worried for my community.”

THE TRANS RIGHTS MOVEMENT IN SCOTLAND HAS BEEN FIGHTING FOR YEARS. VIA GETTY IMAGES

• A new analysis finds that 38 of 43 experts purged last month from the boards that review the science and research of the National Institutes of Health are female, Black or Hispanic. That’s an astounding number, and radically affects the boards’ diversity: The cuts removed fully half of the Black and Hispanic women serving, and a quarter of all women—some of whom served during the first Trump administration with no incident. But only six percent of white men serving on the boards were let go. (It almost seems like the government thinks white men need all the help they can get…you might even see it as….affirmative action??) A civil rights lawyer called this data “rather compelling” and asked the obvious question: “Is there any way to attribute this to something other than race and gender?”

• Various Fox News pundits have been bending over backwards to tout Trump’s tariffs as “manly” and the key to solving the “crisis in masculinity.” Please enjoy this video by friend of The Meteor Liz Plank, wherein she asks men at Bernie Sanders’ War on Billionaires rally how they’re feeling about their impending assembly line jobs. (Spoiler: A little nervous!)

• And now for a surprisingly likeable billionaire: Melinda French Gates (owner of exactly zero space-tourism companies!) has released her second book, The Next Day, about life transitions, including her own divorce from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, her partner in marriage and philanthropy for decades. The most touching parts? Her reliance on her close circle of female friends, honesty about the “grief” she felt at divorcing, and her slow realization that anxiously overpreparing for every meeting was neither necessary nor healthy. “These days, I’m no longer driven by the same kind of insecurity,” she writes. “I finally believe that it’s okay if…the limits to my knowledge reveal themselves. Now that I’m finally okay showing up as no one but myself, I no longer treat every appointment on my calendar as a referendum on whether I deserve to be there. It’s a much gentler way to live.”

• Today is the last day of Black Maternal Health Week, an excellent time to spotlight the fact that Black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related reasons as white women. Some wisdom from the Meteor archives on that subject: Rebecca Carroll’s interview with Tonya Lewis Lee about her documentary on the subject, Aftershock; and this UNDISTRACTED episode with podcasters Gabrielle Horton and Martina Abraham Iluga, along with host Brittany Packnett Cunningham, on having a baby while Black.

WEEKEND READING 📚

On the bigger picture: The CEO of the Society for Women’s Health Research breaks down exactly how Trump-era NIH cuts will affect women’s health. (XX Factor)

On the man at the center of a crisis: Here’s what to know about Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man unjustly trapped in a notorious prison in El Salvador. (The Guardian)

On playing the game: Fox Sports host Joy Taylor talks to Irin Carmon about work, beauty, and those sexual harassment lawsuits. (The Cut)

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