Evening, Meteor readers,

I missed you! Thank you for asking, I did indeed have a great six-week sabbatical launching my new book, The Myth of Making It. I’m grateful to the inimitable and absurdly brilliant Julianne Escobedo Shepherd for holding down the fort with Shannon Melero for all of you.

But now, I’m back! And what a week to return to: the aftermath of political violence, the continuing pressure for now-COVID-positive President Joe Biden to step aside as the nominee, and the Republican National Convention in full swing. Maybe I need to take another break.

Today, we decode what’s happening at the RNC (we don’t include an investigation into Matt Gaetz’s dermatology routine; we’re better than that), cheer for some historic Emmy nominations, and learn what Black women really think about this year’s upcoming election.

Save me,

Samhita Mukhopadhyay

WHAT'S GOING ON

WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

Ah, the Republican National Convention—where the conservative leaders of our time, dedicated to rolling back as many of our rights as possible, come together to discuss how exactly they will get that done (and try to convince us that the youth is for it). As we anticipate former President Donald Trump’s speech tonight, here are a few takeaways from the RNC thus far:

They want to convince us they are the party of the working “man.”

J.D. Vance took the stage on night three of the RNC to deliver a bold message to Americans: “We need a leader who is not in the pocket of big business but answers to the working man, union and nonunion alike.” (The word “man” is no accident, since the VP candidate apparently doesn’t believe women should be encouraged to work outside the home.) But for the hard-working men of America, the RNC has spent the last few days making pro-union and pro-labor overtures—which is usually something reserved for the DNC, but here we are.

But was Vance talking about paid family leave, a minimum wage, or universal healthcare? No—for the most part, the RNC’s discussion of jobs focused on how immigrants are allegedly taking them. On the first night of the convention, Sen. John James (R-Michigan) told the audience, “Black people were sold on hope; now our streets are rife with crime. Our kids can’t read. And illegals are getting better help from Democrats in four days than we’ve gotten in 400 years.” If you’re wondering what 400 years refers to: Well, we’re pretty sure they’re referring to 1619 when the first slave ship arrived in America, but since the GOP discourages the teaching of that, it’s hard to say for sure.

THIS HARDWORKING AMERICAN MAN IS A FORMER VENTURE CAPITALIST WHOSE FIRST BID FOR OFFICE WAS FUNDED BY PETER THIEL. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

They’ve got the Senate in their sights.

As far as the RNC is concerned, the White House is theirs come November. But they want more. They want to flip the Senate and, this week, trotted out seven candidates currently running for Senate. (They were Kari Lake of Arizona, Eric Hovde of Wisconsin, Bernie Moreno of Ohio, Sam Brown of Nevada, Hung Cao of Virginia, Nella Domenici of New Mexico, and Mike Roger of Michigan.) If you’re in those states, we highly recommend this link.

Trump haters for Trump!

Almost every politician who’s taken the stage over the last three days has, at some point before the convention, either vocally spoken out against Trump or been a subject of the former president’s incredibly public ridicule. And yet there they are, smiling and ignoring their quibbles in order to present a united front to voters. But much like The North, I, too, remember. I remember J.D. Vance calling Trump unfit to be president. I remember Senator Ted Cruz calling Trump a “pathological liar” and warning the entire country that “nominating Donald Trump would be a train wreck.” I also clearly recall Nikki Haley calling Trump unqualified to lead.

And considering that a number of conservative politicians (Trump included) are trying to distance themselves from Project 2025, the latest GOP bible, that unity is coming off faker than Marco Rubio’s tan.

Donald Trump, convicted criminal? Nah‚ he’s just like us.

And one final RNC theme: Trump is a regular ol’ person. Not just any kind of person, but a considerate friend (according to Sarah Huckabee Sanders) and a loving grandpa (according to his teenage grandchild, Kai, who said “A lot of people have put my grandpa through hell and he is still standing”. Girl…be for real.) And who doesn’t want to vote for grandpa?

We don’t. We don’t want this grandpa. We’ll take the cat ladies.

AND:

• Just a few hours after President Biden told BET that he'd consider dropping out of the 2024 race if he had a “health condition,” it was announced that he is mildly sick with COVID. And today The New York Times reports that some of the president's loyal allies—including Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and Jamie Raskin—have communicated that he should bow out for the sake of winning not just the presidency, but the House and Senate too, and that Nancy Pelosi has told the President she feels "pessimistic" about his chances of beating Trump. Now, Axios predicts that the President could heed the calls to exit the race as early as this weekend. Buckle up!

• And speaking of President Biden, survey results from The Cut are in, and we now have an idea of how Black women feel about Biden’s performance. According to the findings, older Black women (those 35 to 55) view the president more positively than younger women (18-34). But approval ratings aside, 64 percent of all Black women polled said they will be voting for Biden in November.

• Award shows often seem to be doing the least when it comes to honoring women of color, but the Emmy nominations yesterday heralded a few nice surprises: the excellent Lily Gladstone and Kali Reis became the first-ever Indigenous women nominated for acting Emmys (for Under the Bridge and True Detective: Night Country, respectively), while Nava Mau became the first-ever transgender Latina nominated for a Supporting Actress Emmy (for Baby Reindeer). As a television obsessive who has seen all three of these series, I can confirm they deserve these accolades and each and every win.

EMMY HOEPFUL, NAVA MAU. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

• A new Commonwealth Fund study ranking healthcare for women by state has found that the states at the bottom of the list—Mississippi, Texas, Nevada, Oklahoma, and Arkansas—are, for the most part, united by one simple thing. Can you guess what it is? Nevada, the one state on that list which doesn’t have a near-total ban on abortion, ranks low in part because of the lack of Medicare coverage for undocumented immigrants. (Nevada also imposes greater obstacles to affordable healthcare than other states.) But wait—there’s good news! The top five best-performing states for women’s healthcare are Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, all of which have abortion protections.

• Here’s a fun reading list of feminist caper novels as chosen by Tess Amy, author of The Confidence Games.

• ICYMI: Julianne’s take on Alice Munro’s daughter, Canadian writer Andrea Robin Skinner’s allegations of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather and society’s failure to believe children is a must-read.

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Evening, Meteor readers,

So, I trust everyone had a relaxing, uneventful, downright mundane weekend void of any alarming or paradigm-shifting news? We wish. Let’s get straight to it.

In today’s newsletter, we’re jamming to J.D. Vance’s greatest hits, including his number one single, “Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office.” Blast it through the speakers. We’re also asking media critic Jennifer L. Pozner three questions about how to stop the spread of disinformation during violent moments.

Is this real life,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

JAMES DAVID VANCE. OUR COLLECTIVE NIGHTMARE IN HUMAN FORM. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

J.D. Vance (the D stands for “Don’t let this man in the White House”): As you’ve probably heard by now, Donald Trump has chosen author and Ohio junior senator J.D. Vance as his vice president. There’s already been a bit of ink spilled about Vance and his…policies, if we want to call them that.

But what are the thoughts rattling around in his anti-abortion, isolationist, anti-LGBTQIA+, conspiracy theorist, far-right head? Well. He certainly isn’t a fan of women or their bodily autonomy:

On abortion

In a local Ohio cable news interview in 2021, when asked if abortion bans should have exceptions for rape or incest, Vance said, “It’s not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term, it’s whether a child should be allowed to live, even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society.” A year later, Vance (out loud where people could hear!!) also likened abortion to slavery. Ahead of being announced as the choice for VP, Vance conveniently softened his abortion talking points in an interview with Meet the Press. The entire nation calls bullshit.

On domestic violence

In a 2022 anti-abortion forum, Vance said, “The entire idea that you can discard your husband or your wife like a piece of clothing is one of the most dangerous assaults that we’ve ever seen on the family in this country. If we want children to grow up with healthy, happy lives, we should be reminding them that the most important thing that we can do for our kids is make sure they grow up with a mom and dad at home.” In other words: Domestic violence is not a reason to get divorced. His assertion that children are only going to be healthy and happy if a “mom and dad” are present also underpins his anti-LGBTQ+ stances.

On guns

And since we all have gun violence at the top of our minds this week, what has Vance said about that? “I think that we have to ask ourselves: What is the real gun violence problem in this country, and are we legislating in a way that solves fake problems? Or solves real problems?” This was in response to a proposed bump-stock ban (which he voted against). As far as solving “real” gun problems, Vance has rejected a number of measures that would make it harder to obtain a firearm and said he was in favor of dismantling the ATF, which (you guessed it) seizes illegal guns. Define real problems, James David.

TL;DR: This is not a viable vice presidential candidate; this is a nightmare, and a clear sign that the now-formally-nominated Donald Trump has no plans to modify his far-right stances in a second term.

AND:

• Today is Amazon’s annual Prime Day. Before you click “Add to cart” on things you probably don’t need or can find elsewhere, check out this report about the 23.5 million pounds of Amazon plastic packaging waste that entered the ocean and other waterways in 2020 alone. Bezos doesn’t need your money.

• Actress Shannen Doherty died on Saturday after a long bout with breast cancer, which had spread to her brain and bones. While she will be remembered for her career-making roles in Beverly Hills: 90210 and Charmed, she will also be remembered as a woman who sought to educate others about a disease that still affects 1 in 8 women.

THE ONE AND ONLY SHANNEN DOHERTY (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

• Also, in health news: Autoimmune diseases in women, particularly women of color, are becoming increasingly common, and recent studies have found that stress and unexpressed anger are making women sicker. One research team found that “women of color who strongly agreed with statements like ‘I rarely express my anger to those close to me’ were 70% more likely to experience increased carotid atherosclerosis, a cardiovascular plaque associated with higher risk of heart attack.” So for the sake of your health, please: Tell your enemies to fuck all the way off.

• J.D. Vance’s wife is South Asian. That had some outlets jumping for joy at this possible first (lady). There’s a lot to say about that argument (um, first of all, no politician who is invested in stripping rights from disenfranchised people gets a diversity medal), but comedian Pooja Reddy put it best: If you crave desi diversity in the upper echelons of government, “This is not it.”

• The Vera Institute of Justice has found stark differences between incarcerated women’s access to college education and that of their male peers. Vera’s research found that “in over half of all states, men’s prisons offer more access to Pell Grant-eligible courses than women’s prisons do…In 11 states, Vera found there were no college programs at all in women’s prisons.”

• Transgender Floridians have recently been unable to update their gender markers on their birth certificates, something they have been able to do for about a decade. Applicants trying to update their birth certificates tell The 19th that there hasn’t been any statewide notice explaining why so many applications are being denied or outright ignored.

• Is Charli XCX’s irreverent pop album Brat shifting the zeitgeist in favor of messy, irreverent, even punk femininity that, as The Guardian’s Zoe Williams posits, “rejects the social surveillance that requires all young women to be the same way”? Read her take on whether embracing trashiness (and thus irreverence) via Charli’s girl-centric vision might be a brash reaction to the “clean girls” and tradwife archetypes on the internet; at the very least, Brat summer is a refreshing retort to the trope of womanly perfection, and a perfectly-timed response to the fall of Tory conservativism in the UK.

• Over the weekend, NASA transmitted a hip-hop song into space for the first time ever. With so many options available, the choice must have been difficult, but they landed on something we earthlings can be proud of: Missy Elliott’s “The Rain.” Missy shared the announcement on Instagram, writing that the song had been broadcast as far as her favorite planet, Venus.

Three Questions About...Disinformation

Last Saturday was a moment of mass panic. One feminist media critic has ideas about what could have gone differently.

BY SAMHITA MUKHOPADHYAY 

NO COMMENT. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

When the mass shooting at the Trump rally happened on Saturday, I was unclear how to respond. Disbelief and adrenaline coursed through me, and the moment I logged onto Instagram, the content was flying: everything from earnest (“This is not who we are!”) to snark (“This is why Democrats need access to guns!”) to cries of “It’s a hoax!” As a journalist, I knew this should be a wait-and-see moment, but instead, I was faced with the reality of how quickly unhelpful—and downright untruthful—messaging can spread.

What gave me solace was a measured list of media literacy strategies posted by my friend Jennifer L. Pozner, a journalist and long-time media educator with an upcoming graphic novel about critical media literacy. So, I called to ask her to elaborate.

What was the first thing you noticed when the news broke about the shooting?

Jennifer Pozner: The first piece I saw from a credible outlet was on NPR’s website, and the comments under the story included someone telling NPR it was their fault, another implying that it was staged, and a third laughing at Trump’s bloody ear. Legitimate news reporting is a time-consuming process. During chaotic events, ethical reporters have to vet sources, fact-checkers need to do their best to confirm the story, and they all need to work carefully to ensure that they’re giving the public accurate information.

You know what takes no time at all? Bullshit. Bullshit is instantaneous. Rumor, propaganda, bots, and bad actors always pop up right away, flooding the zone with disinformation and conspiracy theories to fill every short-term information vacuum.

This is a collective societal problem, but we contribute to it individually when we react without thinking critically… That’s dangerous because disinformation is sticky. When disinformation infuses the immediate narrative, it can be hard to convince people of reality even after the facts have been verified.

You had a great social post about what to do instead of posting immediate reactions. Can you summarize what you suggested people do in a moment like this and why? 

It’s important to wait for verified reporting to establish the facts. And we should denounce political violence without condition—even when the target has often encouraged political violence against his perceived enemies. Don’t share false stories, even to mock them: You may think something is so outrageous no one could possibly believe it, but many do…Those potshots could just end up reinforcing the disinformation to others.

Outrageous claims need air to multiply; suffocate conspiracies by depriving them of attention. Debunk, don’t distribute: Share accurate information and analysis in plain language and explain how you know particular falsehoods are untrue (without sharing the original lies themselves).

Bad actors (including domestic propagandists, Russian and Chinese troll farms, and money-motivated bot operators) use moments like these to pit Americans against one another and foment hate. Don’t fall into those traps. Lower the volume. Don’t debate those who aren’t engaging in good faith, and moderate your social feeds to block trolls and anyone who seems sketchy from poisoning the dialogue.

Remember, everything we say publicly can impact other people and possibly contribute to an escalation of violence or conspiracy (and screenshots are forever). Fears, ugly thoughts, and dark humor are deeply human, and it’s OK to express them. But if we want to avoid doing harm, we should really only share them with our “inside voice”: offline in the context of conversations with trusted friends.

What is your take on political violence and how we should and shouldn’t talk about it? I thought this was astute in making the case that attacks on politicians are par for the course in the U.S. 

Looking to the public record and to history can often provide crucial context, as it does here. The Times usefully reminds us that four U.S. presidents have been murdered, along with at least six serious failed additional assassination attempts. What it doesn’t mention is that while this violence has been aimed at both parties’ heads of state, only Trump and the GOP have been explicitly encouraging political violence against “the other side.” Everyone seems to have forgotten that Trump himself made a not-so-subtle assassination threat/dog whistle against his rival, Hillary Clinton, at a 2016 campaign rally.

Many journalists, politicians, and historians have accurately situated Trump and the MAGA movement’s policy agendas, statements, and behaviors as consistent with fascism. It’s a routine project for autocratic regimes to threaten violence against their rivals, discredit the press, encourage the public to distrust truth itself (remember “alternative facts”?), revel in mockery and intimidation of minority groups, and paint reasonable disagreement as tantamount to treason—all of which Trump and his acolytes have done. Now, the GOP wants us to believe that acknowledging the history and workings of fascism is so inflammatory and dangerous it must be the reason a 20-year-old lone gunman shot the former President and killed another rallygoer. All their social media posts and press interviews flogging this point aim to distract from clear fact: America is a nation plagued by mass shootings carried out by angry, young gunmen, and Democrats and progressives have not been the ones calling for political violence.

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Good evening, Meteor readers,

Do you have a moment to talk about our lord and savior, Arlette Amuli? No, but seriously. I know a lot of you are fans of dating shows, and Amuli is the creator and host of the most riveting dating show I have seen since Blind Date (the original, not the reboot). It’s called Pop the Balloon or Find Love. You can catch it on YouTube and thank me later, especially after you’ve gone through the emotional roller coaster that is “Doctor Elom.” IYKYK.

In today’s newsletter, we wade gently into the murky waters of President Biden’s campaign. While some Democrats are standing firmly with him, others are looking over his shoulder to see who might be next (we do have a vice president, right?). Plus, Scarlett Harris talks to writer Emma Specter about her new memoir More, Please, and your weekend reading list.

🧷🎈♥️,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

Dance of Democrats: The will-he-or-won’t-he saga of President Biden’s 2024 run might feel like a breezy House of the Dragon subplot if only the entire concept of representative democracy in the U.S. weren’t at stake. This week, calls for Biden to step aside for a more viable and virile candidate increased, with multiple Democratic congresspeople weighing in. Even George Clooney, of married-to-Amal fame, wrote an op-ed about how Biden should make way for a new nominee, which is notable since Clooney raised $28 million for Biden just three weeks ago. “We can put our heads in the sand and pray for a miracle in November,” he wrote, “or we can speak the truth.”

So far, Biden has doubled down in response to the growing fears over his ability to beat Trump and the Project 2025 army, but there are signs of tiny cracks in his resilience: the New York Times reported today that the campaign is conducting a survey about whether voters might prefer Vice President Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket in a match-up against Trump. And as the Times notes, a lot rests on the (unscripted) news conference Biden is delivering tonight in the wake of the NATO summit: If it goes the way of the debate, party leaders might defect from Biden. (Harris, or Gretchen Whitmer, or Gavin Newsome, or JB Pritzker have all been floated at various times as Biden replacements.) There’s also the question of whether the Democratic Party would have already asked Biden to step aside if VP Harris were white and a man—even though a recent poll showed her chances of beating Trump are better than Biden’s. (Some progressives have even been rallying around the “KHive” on social media, which has been flooded with enthusiastic jokes about loving context and coconut trees.) Either way, the Democratic Party needs to straighten out its shit quick—there are only about 16 weeks until the election, and beating an autocratic rapist felon should simply not be this fraught. Democracy, as the DCCC texts keep reminding me, hangs in the balance.

—Julianne Escobedo Shepherd

AND:

• Researchers have found that women in the workplace experience more burnout than their male counterparts, mostly due to the expectations placed on women to succeed at work while taking on the bulk of household responsibilities. So, has anyone shown this research to the members of Congress who voted against a national paid family leave policy? Asking for a (tired) friend.

• Shelley Duvall, The Shining scream queen and Popeye's perfect Olive Oyl (among many other roles) has died of diabetes complications. Playing “He Needs Me” in her memory.

SHELLEY DUVALL (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

• Doctors and weapons experts are finding “many of the deaths, amputations and life-changing wounds” afflicted on children in Gaza are due to “fragmentation” weapons fired by the Israeli military in crowded civilian areas. These kinds of weapons are designed to “maximize casualties” by sending shrapnel flying; more than a thousand children in Gaza are now amputees, and an estimated 7000 or more have been killed.

• The Environmental Protection Agency has ordered Marathon Oil to pay $241.5 million, the largest-ever civil penalty for violating the Clean Air Act, for polluting air in the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation with its oil and gas plants there. Marathon is also expected to severely reduce its carbon emissions as part of the judgment. Meanwhile, the people who actually live at Fort Berthold—the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation—are reclaiming their history as farmers by building a huge greenhouse to remedy its isolation from fresh produce, an effort to create food sovereignty and feed people on their and other reservations—and they're using the natural gas emissions of their exploited land to heat said greenhouse.

• Katy Perry's new single and video for “Woman's World” drops tonight, and she’s already gotten a legitimate bit of flak for collaborating on a woman's empowerment anthem with Dr. Luke, the longtime producer who Kesha accused of drugging and raping her (and then refusing for years to let her out of their recording deal). One person who should not be getting flak, though, is actor and advocate Abigail Breslin, who called out the song and, more generally, working with abusers—and now says she is getting death threats for it. To quote Kesha… this party sucks.

• Scientists are inching ever closer to reviving the extinct wooly mammoth. It would be great if scientists took this level of fascination and funding and applied it to something less Jurrassic Parky, like, oh, I don’t know, understanding menopause.

BOOK TALK

Giving Oneself Permission to Want More

Writer Emma Specter on her new memoir about binge-eating, coming out, and fat acceptance.

BY SCARLETT HARRIS

EMMA SPECTER ENJOYING DESSERT WITH A SIDE OF HER NEW BOOK (SCREENSHOT VIA INSTAGRAM)

Landing a culture-writer position at Vogue five years ago was a dream job for Emma Specter. But on their first day, they had to call out sick after a particularly brutal binge-eating session, a disorder they’ve struggled with since childhood. “My eating disorder was so out of control that I’d managed to let it rob me of my first day at Vogue,” Specter writes in her thoughtful, unflinching new memoir, More, Please: On Food, Fat, Bingeing, Longing, and the Lust for “Enough.”

Since then, Specter has carved out a niche at Vogue which she calls “the body beat,” helping to bring body-positive content to a publication that has historically been anything but. “I’m glad to say that offering something different has been really rewarding,” Specter tells The Meteor. “I think there is a hunger within women’s media for stories that… speak to a larger range of experiences.”

In More, Please, Specter explores how they began “coming around to the idea that more can be good. While Specter is delighted by the early praise for More, Please, she “hope[s] that we get to a point where this book is no longer relevant because it’s not newsworthy that a fat person is vaguely at peace with themselves.”

Scarlett Harris: This book is not only the journey of your binge-eating disorder and fat acceptance, but of coming to terms with your queerness. Did you always know you wanted those ideas to be intertwined in the narrative of this book?

Emma Specter: Before I started writing, I hadn’t really thought of queerness and disordered eating as being as linked as they were. But it was impossible to move into a phase of my life in which I was dating the people I wanted to date, being aware of my sexual and gender identity…and not also want to investigate why I’m consistently making choices with food that feel bad and hard for me. The [binge eating] behaviors weren’t necessarily new or specific to when I came out, but the desire to understand them more and have them become less frequent definitely felt linked.

You write about all the ways you tried to whittle yourself down to a certain mold women are taught we should fit, especially when you were dating cishet men. You’ve since found happiness and acceptance in your body and the queer community, but did you have a similar feeling when you were first dating women? 

I thought I would be, but when I actually started dating and having romantic and sexual experiences with people whose bodies looked similar to mine or were sorted on the same gender scale as mine, it really was the last thing on my mind. There was plenty of anxiety around coming out for me, but as an out and fat person now, I do feel a sense of relief that I don’t have to sort my life around trying to appeal to men anymore. No queer relationship freed me from that forever—it’s still something I have to negotiate—but it’s an incredible freedom to acknowledge that I was living my life chasing the approval of men and be able to release that.

You quote in the book a 2022 study by the Trevor Project that found that members of the LGBTQIA+ community are more likely to experience eating disorders. Did learning about that change how you [thought about] your own eating disorder?

I had this wrong idea when I settled into queer identity…that since I was out now, everything else in my life must fall into place, because that was the answer I was searching for my whole life of why I didn’t feel like I fit in in certain places, or why I didn’t feel comfortable in my own body, or why I didn’t have a good relationship to sex. But coming out was just the beginning.

I wish it weren’t the case that it’s such a common thing among queer, trans and gender-nonconforming people to feel bad inside your body. Food or exercise or messing with how your body looks and feels is always accessible, and is there for you when it feels like nothing else is. It’s such a common response to a systemic problem.

So often when we think of those who suffer from eating disorders, the image we have in our minds is of an underweight person. How important was it for you to highlight that eating disorders come in all forms and particularly how they affect fat people?

So important. It’s really hard to see yourself making your way to a place of recovery when you feel like you’re not represented in recovery narratives. There is an erasure of dignity [in] society’s incredulosity that a fat person struggles with an eating disorder. I feel that everyone struggling with disordered eating should be afforded a level of respect for the process of healing that, unfortunately, most of us don’t get.

The title, More, Please, and part of the subtitle, “The Lust for Enough,” have multiple meanings. Can you talk a little about that?

My editor Rachel Kambury pointed out the many meanings that More, Please could have—not just [about wanting more food] but also wanting more from my personal life, wanting more from my professional life, and giving myself permission to want more. I’m coming around to the idea that more can be good. It’s a celebration of saying: What if I was open about my desires?

WEEKEND READING 📚

On broken promises: Ahead of the Olympics, Paris has been much praised for its strides to clean up the city and lessen the carbon emissions from the games. But part of that plan has included busing unhoused people out of Paris, luring them with the promise of housing elsewhere. An investigation found something much different. (The New York Times)

On the meaning of words: Why are we still using the word “porn” to describe sexually explicit non-consensual images? (The 19th)

On bad influences: The extremist anti-abortion activist whose draconian, self-published book is shifting Republican politics. (ProPublica)

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Greetings, Meteor readers,

Wow, is it hot in here—or is it just the planet’s core temperature rising to levels that are becoming unsustainable for human life? The last few days on the East Coast have been the hottest of my lifetime, and Texas is being battered by Hurricane Beryl. I and the entire Meteor team hope that wherever you are you’re staying cool and, above all, safe.

In today’s newsletter, Cindi Leive asks Nelini Stamp, the national organizing director at the Working Families Party, three questions about democracy—and finds out the difference between “fascism lite” and “fascism 5G.” And speaking of important questions, we’re also asking ourselves and the universe why there’s a Gladiator sequel coming out.

All we can do is smile back,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

• Last week The Lancet, one of the most respected medical journals in the world, published research estimating that the death toll in Gaza is close to 186,000, a higher count than previously reported. Researchers point out that it has been difficult to ascertain the exact number of deaths because of the destruction of infrastructure, and the fact that the violence has “degraded” the Gaza Health Ministry’s ability to put out detailed reports: “[The Ministry] now reports separately the number of unidentified bodies among the total death toll…However, the number of reported deaths is likely an underestimate.”

• On Monday morning, the Russian military fired a barrage of missiles over several cities and hit the largest children’s hospital in Ukraine, which is known for treating children with cancer. Russian officials deny aiming their missiles at a civilian location.

• The GOP is switching tactics in its ongoing effort to enact a nationwide abortion ban. Instead of going for a sure-to-be-unpopular outright ban at the federal level, The 19th reports, Republicans are adopting a policy platform that “supports states establishing fetal personhood through the Constitution’s 14th Amendment”—the amendment which granted citizenship to formerly enslaved people. This tactic would, yes, outlaw abortion at conception.

• Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, the noted civil rights scholar and director of the African American Policy Forum, is better positioned than most to clearly see this country’s mounting authoritarian threat; as one of the founding scholars of critical race theory, she spent the last few years watching the right demonize an academic concept that at its core is just about equity. “Wherever there’s been a move to authoritarian rule, it’s come through attacks on history, ideas, and the political power of marginalized groups,” she told Capital B in a must-read new interview. “What we’re dealing with now is the fact that we’ve existed in this mythological space of ‘it can’t happen here’ for so long that it’s almost been a race with time for us to acknowledge that it is happening here.”

• Sha’Carri Richardson got a Vogue cover (it’s digital-only, but still) and administered some choice quotes about how ready she is for the Olympics: “I don’t just mean I’m a better runner [now],” she told writer Maya Singer. "It’s beyond that. I’m better at being Sha’Carri. I’m better at being myself.” Yeah, this woman is going to win.

• In this week’s installment of my non-existent series “Who Asked for This,” I’m staring into the smoldering eyes of Pedro Pascal and wondering: Who asked for a sequel to the 2000 film Gladiator? In my humble opinion, the original is a near-perfect movie, and when Maximus Decimus Meridius gave his life for the Republic, it was a fine and acceptable ending. Now we’re back, 20 years later, to check in on old characters and meet some new ones. But why? Don’t we have enough present-day imperial decline to worry about?

Three Questions On... Democracy

Political organizer Nelini Stamp breaks down our election reality, and the danger of “fascism 5G”

BY CINDI LEIVE

NELINI STAMP ROCKING THE STAGE FOR DEMOCRACY (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

It’s been a tumultuous few weeks for anyone who cares about this country’s future. Extreme Supreme Court rulings! That terrifying debate! Fast-flying opinions on whether Biden should step down to avoid a Trump victory, and who’s supporting him or isn’t as he decides. (This, on the Kamala of it all, was especially good.) But one of the few people on my feeds who has seemed calmest through it all is Nelini Stamp, the national organizing director of the Working Families Party. Naturally, I had questions. (Per the rules of this column, three of them.)

Cindi Leive: I’ve been following you the last few weeks [since the debate] and noticed you are not freaking out. Why?

Nelini Stamp: I guess I sort of feel like: We have what we have. I think that we all knew from 2020 that these would be the two [candidates] that would probably match up. And so as a person who does electoral politics, I've been holding the complexities of this moment for quite some time.

To me, the strategy is, we block this awful, awful, awful authoritarianism that is coming down the pathway—Project 2025—and we build infrastructure so that it doesn't happen to us again. Political and electoral infrastructure that allows us to put what I see as the actual future of our society in office: young people in office, more diverse voices in office. More progressive voices in office! We need to build the infrastructure of folks who will fight for working people, LGBTQ people, for reproductive justice, and for the world we want to see.

To me, this election is about blocking terrible stuff and finally saying that we have to create alternative [structures]. The Working Families Party is a third party. But we are also pragmatic: It takes a lot of resources and infrastructure to get [a third-party candidate] on the ballot. And we would have to fight secretaries of state in places that are not too kind. Given the terrain that we’re on—the Supreme Court and all that—is that something that I feel uneasy with? Of course. Do I feel uneasy with Biden and Trump both running? Of course. But that is the reality that we’re living in right now.

You’re talking about the "block and build" theory. Can you explain that?

To be quite frank, pre-Israel/Gaza I was ready to be the most red-white-and-blue I've ever been. Because Biden has been the most worker-oriented president in my entire lifetime….and there has not been one president since FDR that was able to move such a [worker] agenda, with climate at its focus too. And so I was right here, bells and whistles, give it up for Biden, give me that Dark Brandon shirt! And then October 7 happened. It was a tragedy among tragedies, and what we’ve seen unfold as the response to it has been a tragedy among tragedies. At the Working Families Party, we were like—what is our strategic orientation? A lot of us don’t want to be bells and whistles for Biden, but we need to block right-wing authoritarianism so we can build the future we do want to see.

Look, I know how many cycles we have been saying, “You have to vote for this person to stop this person.” But now we know, in writing, with Project 2025. We know the agenda. Before it was like, Abortion is at risk. But now it is a full frontal attack on all of our lives. It is an attack on workers. It is an attack on people who can get pregnant, it is an attack on women. It is an attack on LGBTQ rights—everything we’ve gained in my lifetime will be gone in a moment. And in those conditions, on that terrain, what are we going to be able to build? We're going to be on defense mode. We want to be able to block that—and build infrastructure that is not just controlled by the Democrats or Republicans.

A lot of people say, “I don’t want to vote for any of these candidates.” But we must use all the tools in our toolbox. A [vote] doesn’t mean that you are endorsing the system.

We also need to think about the world that fascism actually brings. I was on a panel with my friend Nadya, who was one of the founders of Pussy Riot….[and it made me think], in the United States, we have “fascism lite.” Like, the NYPD acts like fascists a lot. People who can get pregnant are under fascism. Trans people are under fascism. We all deal with it in certain parts of our lives, but we do not understand what full-blown fascism is like: There is not one single artist in Russia that is not locked up right now! We really don't understand what fascism over every single part of everyone's life is like. I think the people in this country who understand fascism most are incarcerated and formerly incarcerated folks. The government literally has a different set of laws for them. But for most people, right now, we have...fascism lite. We don’t have fascism 5G. We have a beta version. And I do not want to see the fully cooked version.

Fascism 5G is a terrifying concept. So last question: What is making you feel hopeful right now, if anything? 

I’m hopeful about all the gains that workers have made—the UAW workers, auto workers, are continuing to organize new members because they had momentum, and they had a good NLRB [National Labor Relations Board] on their side. I know that that’s very wonky, but they had the terrain on their side to win the most gainful things that auto workers have won in [a long time]. These are things that make me hopeful.

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Hello, Meteor readers,

Emphasis on the hell, amirite? The last few weeks have been a horrific look into how far our now exceedingly right-wing Supreme Court will go to decimate the government in service to one aspiring autocrat (and their own billionaire benefactors). So much has happened since even yesterday; the disastrous debate feels like a million years ago.

But! We’ve got you covered, with an explainer on what exactly the Supreme Court presidential immunity ruling means. (Spoiler: its whole point is chaos.) And overseas, Mariane Pearl illuminates the far-right victories in France’s snap elections and why President Macron even called a snap election in the first place. (Spoiler: he is a dumbass.)

All you fascists bound to lose,

Julianne Escobedo Shepherd

WHAT'S GOING ON

King for a day (or forever): Yesterday, as you surely know, the Supreme Court weighed in on the concept of presidential immunity from prosecution—which, when a convicted felon is running for president, feels quite pressing. In a 6-3 decision, the Court ruled that presidents have full immunity for “official” acts, but not for “unofficial” acts—and it is up to the lower courts to determine what differentiates one from the other. There’s a lot of talk about the long-term implications of such a ruling and what the “official”/“unofficial” divide even means. But let’s be honest: This whole thing is confusing.

So let’s look at it in the simplest terms possible. First, there is the immediate effect of the ruling: Donald Trump is already trying to overturn his hush-money conviction in New York. As a result, his sentencing will be delayed while the courts wait for the appeals process to sort itself out. And his charges related to January 6 probably won’t be brought to trial until after the election—or ever—as Washington, D.C. Judge Tanya Chutkan hears whether he was acting in an “official” capacity when he tried to block Biden’s presidency from certification.

Then there’s what this means in the long term. In 2016, Trump infamously said that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. Let’s apply the ruling to that statement to better understand the fresh hell the Supreme Court hath wrought.

PROTESTORS GATHERED OUTSIDE THE COURT YESTERDAY TO VOICE THEIR THOUGHTS ON THE DECISION. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

If Trump, as president (🤮), shot some guy he didn’t like on Fifth Avenue himself, that would not be an “official act,” and he would be open to prosecution. But if Trump, as president (again, 🤮), called Seal Team 6 from the White House and said, “There’s a man I think is a terrorist on Fifth Avenue, take him out,” that is an “official” act, even if the man on Fifth Avenue was not a terrorist—and it would technically fall under immunity. (I’ll come back to this, stay with me.)

But here’s the big hitch in the giddyup: Because the Supreme Court chose to lob this back down to the lower courts, they’ve given any future president something more potent than immunity—and that is cloud cover. Ostensibly, any president will now be emboldened to act in any horrific manner they see fit and simply claim that they’re doing so in an official capacity. And knowing how high the bar is to bring forth a charge, they can rest safely in the feeling of immunity. Bringing back the Seal Team 6 example: Say Trump instructs them to shoot a random guy on Fifth Avenue. Trump is, in the immediate, immune. But say the victim’s family wants to seek justice. Prosecutors would first have to prove the act was “unofficial,” untangle the immunity web, and land a favorable ruling; only then could they bring a charge. That’s months or years of legal work just to BRING FORTH A CHARGE. [The infamous “we’re talking about practice” speech begins to play in the background. IYKYK.] The wheels of justice were never meant to turn this slowly.

In other words, as Justice Sonya Sotomayor wrote in her dissent: “In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”

—Shannon Melero

  AND:

• In 2022, Congress passed the PUMP Act, which requires employers to provide private accommodations for employees to pump breast milk. Unfortunately, not everyone has stepped up to the plate, so now a slew of lawsuits are rolling out against companies who have been in violation of the Act. Tits out for justice!

• It is more difficult to be chosen as a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader (DCC) than it is to make it into the NFL. And yet, a new Netflix documentary has exposed just how poorly the women of the DCC get paid. Cheerleaders earn roughly $400 per game. Every NFL team plays 17 games in a regular season, not including play-offs or the Super Bowl, which LOL the Cowboys don’t even know what that is. So a cheerleader is looking at about $6,800 before taxes, which, when added to their hourly rate of $12 per hour for practices and appearances, comes to an annual salary of just over $20,000. Did we mention the Cowboys are worth $9 billion? With a B.

• Want to hang out in real life and talk/complain/learn? If you’re in New York, you’re in luck! Next Tuesday, July 9, The Meteor’s Cindi Leive and Samhita Mukhopdhyay will be in conversation with Flow Space editor-in-chief Gallina Espinoza. Click below to reserve your seat.

BONJOUR! 

Why Are French Women Voting Against Themselves?

Ahead of the second snap election, Marine Le Pen's anti-feminist, far-right party gains power

BY MARIANE PEARL

SOME PEOPLE HAVE HUNGRY EYES AND SOME PEOPLE HAVE FASCIST EYES. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

As the U.S. faces an impending election and threats from the far-right, an ally across the ocean grapples with its own extremist resurgence right now. On July 7, France will vote in the second round of its snap parliamentary elections, which President Emmanuel Macron called to try to undermine the success of the far-right National Rally (RN) party, led by the charismatic, fascistic, anti-feminist Marine Le Pen. During the European elections in early June, Le Pen secured a third of the votes—twice more than the President himself. The snap election, then, is a risky gamble through which Macron hopes to reassert his political authority by gaining a clearer majority at the National Assembly—the French equivalent of the U.S. House of Representatives. Unfortunately, it's not going well. The first round of elections on June 30 put the RN ahead with about a third of the votes. (The leftist New Popular Front came in second, with Macron's centrist alliance in last place.)

It looks increasingly likely that the presidential alliance will lose its relative majority in parliament to Le Pen's party—and that women voters are a determining factor, with 33 percent voting for the RN in a 2024 poll, compared to 30 percent of men. (That's a 12 percent increase in female support from 2019.) Even if the RN doesn't win an absolute majority, it could still become the largest party in the country—and thus have Jordan Bardella, Le Pen's 28-year-old protegé, become prime minister, a role whose political power is second only to the president.

Like Le Pen, Bardella is pushing for the party’s “de-demonization”—a strategy meant to normalize a group traditionally known as fascist insurgents—and he's especially focused on women, stoking anti-immigration and anti-Muslim fears while reframing them as supposedly feminist. His language plays on extreme nationalism and the trope of Western supremacy; in a 2023 speech to the European parliament, he declared, “Our European values will always be outstandingly superior to those which enslave women [and] imprison them behind headscarves."

Ahead of the snap elections, thousands of people rallied in Paris against the RN's regressive stance on women's rights—particularly reproductive rights. The National Rally, which has opposed women's rights since its founding in 1972 and more recently opposed enshrining abortion rights in the French constitution, has historically voted to stop funding family planning organizations, moved against gender equity in the workplace, and proposed subsidizing women who want to stay at home to raise their children. In LePen's 2017 political manifesto, she mentions the word "woman" only twice across 144 proposals, and only in reference to family and safety. For feminists, such a fact is revealing enough. As the French philosopher Camille Froidevaux-Metterie wrote this month in Le Monde, “For women, voting for the RN is like pointing a gun at yourself.”

ANOTHER ANTI-FASCISM RALLY IN TOULOUSE AHEAD OF THE SECOND ROUND OF PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)  

None of this started with Marine herself; in fact, the National Front—the RN’s original name, until it was rebranded in 2018—is a family business. Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine’s father, founded the party with former Nazis who fought with the extremist Waffen SS during the second world war, as well as former members of the OAS, a far-right paramilitary organization which conducted terrorist operations during the Algerian war. Jean-Marie Le Pen is well-known for his xenophobic, Islamophobic, and misogynistic views; he once stated that the Nazis’ gas chambers were but “a detail” in the history of WWII, and that the idea that women should have ownership over their bodies was “ludicrous.”

Marine Le Pen took over for her father in 2012 and has since proven herself much shrewder, particularly in the way she weaponizes her gender. In 2016, for instance, she wrote that “the migrant crisis signals the beginning of the end of women’s rights.” Le Pen regularly demonizes Islam, linking the hijab and burqa with religious oppression; with the RN’s victory on June 30, French women who wear hijab are terrified of what’s next. “Knowing that 10.6 million people voted for a party promoting the ban of the veil in the public space is hurtful,” one 22-year-old told Al Jazeera this week. “I am feeling betrayed by France.”

A GLOBAL RIGHTWARD SHIFT

France and the U.S. aren’t alone: Hard right governments and parties are advancing around the world. This week alone, Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni has made plans to rewrite the country’s constitution in order to gain more power. In Germany, the far-right AfD—which has mimicked Nazi slogans, excused the actions of the SS, and repressed protesters at its annual conference—came in second in the European Parliament elections. The Netherlands has just ushered in its own far-right government, and last month, Spain’s hard-right Vox Party held a rally with far-right leaders from around the world, including Argentina’s Javier Milei, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, and Israel’s Amichai Chikli.

One thing these political parties have in common is their vicious Islamophobia, and, relatedly, their virulently racist views on immigration and regressive approaches to the role of women. History tells us that fascism starts with the demonization of the most vulnerable among us—and that one of the surest antidotes is the political organization of progressive women. “It is not a coincidence that women’s equality is being rolled back at the same time that authoritarianism is on the rise,” wrote Erica Chenoweth and Zoe Marks in Foreign Affairs. “Aspiring autocrats...have good reason to fear women’s political participation: when women participate in mass movements, those movements are both more likely to succeed and more likely to lead to more egalitarian democracy.”

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Evening, Meteor readers,

The Robed Ones have been busy this week, so let’s jump straight into it and save you a little time (since we’ve all got a debate to attend).

In today’s newsletter, we’re talking about the latest decisions coming down from SCOTUS, plus Scarlett Harris gives us a primer on climate fiction, a sci-fi genre which deals with the climate crisis. Just in time for the fiery apocalypse… I mean, July.

Makin’ popcorn,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

The Supreme Court is dismantling the government: As SCOTUS winds up before the summer break, its late-term decisions are increasingly aimed at federal regulatory agencies. In this week’s decisions alone, SCOTUS ruled that the EPA can’t regulate interstate air pollution (Ohio v. EPA); that the SEC can't impose civil penalties on a violator without a jury trial, limiting the agency’s ability to punish securities fraud (SEC v. Jarkesy); and that a federal law preventing elected officials from accepting bribes should be weaker to make way for a “gratuity” loophole. (In a rare break from this trend, SCOTUS dismissed the case about whether pregnant people in Idaho could obtain an emergency-room abortion if they were not yet on their deathbed, but by punting it, Justice Jackson argued they abnegated their duty.)

All of these decisions chip away at government agencies and rules designed to protect Americans. What’s more, these agency-weakening decisions dovetail with Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s anti-democracy, Christian nationalist proposal for Trump’s second term and the far-right government his acolytes have been dreaming about. One of Project 2025’s major goals is eliminating some federal regulatory agencies, like the Department of Education, and stripping others for parts, including the Department of Labor and the Environmental Protection Agency. To be clear, these aren’t liberal agencies by any means—the EPA was formed in 1970 by President Nixon in response to out-of-control air and water pollution, and President Taft (a hero of none other than Justice Scalia) created the DOL. But by ruling against agencies meant to curb corruption and otherwise protect the public, SCOTUS’s right-wing majority is already handing the far-right the tools to dismantle them.

These decisions restrain the actions of everyday Americans while allowing wealthy corporations to run amok. And the right’s usual argument that they’re just advocating for smaller government isn't particularly believable given that they’re perfectly fine with state legislators deciding when doctors can save pregnant people’s lives, or whether a parent can help their teen access healthcare. What they really mean is that protecting the people doesn’t matter, and they’re going to gut the laws that make it mandatory.

AND:

• The United States Women’s National Team Olympic roster has been announced, and much of the soccer world is shocked to see that veteran Alex Morgan will not be donning the crest this year. But perhaps the least welcome surprise for fans is the inclusion of Korbin Albert— a talented midfielder who had to issue an apology after engaging with homophobic social media posts about Megan Rapinoe.

• And while we’re on the Olympics, take a look at this year’s official Pride House on the Seine. The Pride House will be a safe space for queer athletes and fans from all over the world to eat, drink, be merry, and watch the Games in community. “Nobody has to hide who they are,” one of the organizers told Time.

• The trial for FKA Twigs’s lawsuit against former boyfriend Shia LeBeouf for sexual battery, assault, and emotional distress is scheduled for October in Los Angeles, but discovery is ongoing and going poorly: LeBeouf’s lawyers have asked for Twigs’s complete medical history and financial statements from 2017 to the present—which implies they may be making the argument that her emotional distress is tied to whether she is making money, rather than whether he repeatedly abused her during their relationship as she claims. As Twigs’s attorneys wrote in court documents, “A person’s ability to make money, particularly how much money, is not correlated to a person’s emotional distress damages.”

• Executive producers from The Bachelor are finally owning up to the years of racism that created a firestorm around Matt James, the first Black Bachelor, and one of the most uncomfortable seasons in the franchise’s history.

IT'S GETTING HOT IN HERE

Reading for the End of the World

Your summer “cli-fi”—that’s climate fiction—guide.

BY SCARLETT HARRIS

A NON-FICTION CLIMATE MARCH IN BRUSSELS. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)  

Climate fiction—or “cli-fi,” a subgenre of sci-fi and speculative fiction that deals with the climate apocalypse—has cropped up in the last 15 years or so, with authors like Alexandra Kleeman and C Pam Zhang writing about the ways we might deal with our shared future. It's a newish development in fiction, though Octavia E. Butler presaged the cli-fi movement by 30 years with Parable of the Sower, her classic novel of the post-apocalypse. And recently, an emerging topic within cli-fi is how the climate crisis intersects with parenthood, particularly as the planet's worsening conditions play a huge role in real-life decisions around having children. For instance, in author Alison Stine's 2021 novel, Trashlands, she tackles the question of just how much we can protect our children when it feels like we’re approaching the end of the world (which is the setting of her book). “I’m interested in the ones who don’t give up—who can’t give up,” Stine told me. “And often, that’s a mother.”

It makes sense that cli-fi authors like Stine—as well as those included in The Meteor’s cli-fi reading list, below—would focus on the role of parenting in the climate apocalypse; climate change most grievously affects mothers and pregnant people, with extreme weather events linked to premature- and still-births. The UN characterizes climate change as a “threat multiplier,” having cumulative effects on gender-based violence, sex trafficking, and poverty. Stine sees some of this in her work as a climate justice editor at Non-Profit Quarterly, and it shaped Trashlands. I won’t give too much away, but the novel’s protagonist, Coral, is forced into birthing her son, Shanghai. (Stine’s characters are all named for places and things that climate change has or will affect.) “Forced parenting is an arena where I hadn’t read much fiction,” Stine says. “The same is true of fiction about difficult parenting situations: where a mother loves their child very much, but they’re living in poverty, or they’re alone, unsupported. So much writing idealizes motherhood, which isn’t realistic or sometimes very helpful.”

The difficulties of parenting in a time of extreme weather also inform Sarah Ruiz-Grossman’s recent novel A Fire So Wild. The book centers on three families in the lead-up to and aftermath of a wildfire in Berkeley: a family of wealthy lesbians and their son who are able to rebuild their mansion in the hills; a Latine family who are struggling with divorce, relocation, co-parenting, and the housing crisis; and an unhoused couple living out of a van with their dog. “The fire itself doesn’t discriminate in terms of who it impacts, but we discriminate as a society in terms of…who is able to come back from a fire like this,” says Ruiz-Grossman, who has a background in investigative journalism and climate reporting. “Fiction was a better way to be able to tell this whole story.”

Though Ruiz-Grossman says she’s a proud aunt to many of her friends’ kids, climate change was a big factor in her own decision to be child-free. But she’s not hopeless: She says that activist movements, such as landback initiatives and the Sunrise Movement, give her optimism —and so does cli-fi. She calls it “a gift of a medium through which we can explore the injustices of the world… but also the…more radical, beautiful future we can…reach for.”

SCARLETT'S CLI-FI RECOMMENDATIONS 📚

• Alexandra Kleeman, Something New Under the Sun 

Kleeman’s 2021 novel is about a screenwriter who abandons his family to join forces with a former child star to uncover the conspiracy at the center of the climate crisis—which also involves cults, because of course it does!

• Gabrielle Korn, Yours for the Taking

Former magazine editor Korn uses her experience in the girlboss world of women’s media as inspiration for a feminist billionaire who creates women-only refuges throughout the country.

• C Pam Zhang, The Land of Milk & Honey

In a world ravaged by climate change, a young, nameless chef mourns both the death of her estranged mother and the death of her profession as crops die and animals go all but extinct.

• Nick Fuller Googins, The Great Transition

It will take a drastic response to halt climate change and restore the damage we’ve already done. Fuller Googins shows the aftermath of that response, known as the titular Great Transition, in his futuristic novel.

• Diane Cook, The New Wilderness

In a similar vein, Cook’s 2020 novel is a mother-daughter story set in a markedly different future where the rare wilderness that is left is protected from humans. Mom Bea and daughter Agnes are part of a cohort sent into that wilderness to see whether humans can be trusted not to fuck it up—again.

• Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

An oldie and a goodie. The queen of sci-fi was an early pioneer of cli-fi, writing about an unrecognizable Los Angeles impacted by the climate apocalypse. We’ll try not to read too much into the fact that Butler’s 1993 opus is set in 2024…

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Hi Meteor readers,

Today marks two years since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade with its anti-abortion decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. On this anniversary, we bring you a special newsletter—with Mariane Pearl reporting, as part of the Free Future series, on how the Dobbs ruling has affected patients and providers in countries around the world, and why the fight for abortion care is global.

In solidarity,

The Meteor

TWO YEARS LATER

The Reproductive Ripple Effect

Thousands of miles away from Washington, D.C., activists, doctors and patients feel the consequences of U.S. abortion law

BY MARIANE PEARL

A PROTESTER IN BOGOTA, COLOMBIA, HOLDS A SIGN THAT READS, "WE ARE NOT HYSTERIC, WE ARE HISTORIC." (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

Two years after the Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health decision, which revoked the constitutional right to abortion in the United States, shockwaves are being felt far beyond U.S. borders. Around the world, and especially in the Global South, the ruling has inspired and emboldened an already well-organized network of anti-abortion organizations who are now campaigning aggressively, calling for rights reversal in more liberal countries and even more restrictive measures in conservative ones.

For reproductive-health advocates, the impact has been immediate. “The U.S. is a norm setter,” explains Giselle Carino, executive director of Fòs Feminista, an organization working for sexual and reproductive rights in 40 countries. Last winter, Fòs Feminista produced the first-ever report analyzing the global impact of Dobbs. The decision “goes against all the progress we have made in the last 50 years,” she says, creating a “chilling effect… on our partners everywhere.”

And it’s not just ideas which migrate from the U.S. abroad. Anti-abortion movements worldwide are largely funded by the United States: Open Democracy estimates that U.S. right-wing Christian organizations spent at least $28 million between 2016 and 2019 attacking abortion and LGBTQIA rights globally. “The opposition’s core strategy is to mobilize young people,” says Fadekemi Akinfaderin, global advocacy lead at Fòs Feminista. “They’re in schools, they organize protests targeting abortion but also gender and women’s rights, claiming that pro-abortion funding from the West is another form of colonization, [that] it’s population control.” Carino puts it this way: “If the U.S. keeps putting money to emulate Dobbs in other countries, the consequences on women’s lives will be shattering.”

Yet there are reasons to be hopeful. As in the United States, “there is a great critical mass on the frontlines—reproductive rights activists resisting the limitations of civil liberties,” says Carino. “I want to tell American women that we are ready. We have faith in our ability to stand together because our struggles are connected. And we have been resisting for so many years. Your fight is our fight. Count on us.”

Below, a snapshot of what activists see as the ripple effect of Dobbs around the world.

In Nigeria: A rollback of safe abortion guidelines 

Five days after the Dobbs decision in June 2022, the state of Lagos developed guidelines for safe pregnancy termination—essentially a manual for health providers to deliver abortion services. But just days after that, anti-abortion campaigners used Dobbs as justification to launch a vicious media onslaught, forcing the governor to revoke the guidelines. That was a real setback in a country where abortion is already heavily stigmatized, and only allowed if the health of the mother is at risk. “We have a lot of unwanted pregnancies, we have a high maternal mortality rate and gender-based violence is at an all-time high,” says Toyin Chukwudozie, director of the Abuja-based youth development organization Education as a Vaccine. She notes that the Dobbs effect is compounded by the global gag rule, which has for years limited U.S. funding for reproductive rights organizations which provide abortion services. “The U.S. holds a lot of power in the global conversation about reproductive rights,” says Chukwudozie. “As bad as it is for women in the U.S., it’s…worse for us, because we can’t travel to another state to get an abortion.”

In Kenya: A movement to stop progress

In May 2022, The High Court in Malindi had affirmed abortion as a fundamental right under the Kenyan Constitution—a ruling which drew from various international laws on abortion, including Roe v. Wade. Following the Dobbs decision, however, opposition groups successfully persuaded the Court of Appeal to halt its implementation. “The news about the Dobbs decision spread like bushfire,” says Monica Oguttu, Executive Director of Kmet, which promotes quality health and education services across Kenya. “We were in the middle of an effort to include rape and incest as a legal cause for abortion; Dobbs put a hold on that.”

Health providers who receive U.S. funding are compelled by the global gag rule to deny abortion services, according to Oguttu. “It’s really difficult when you have a raped women in front of you and all you can tell her is what the law says. The women end up doing an abortion anyway and they come back to us bleeding or with a ruptured uterus,” she says. “The cost of treatment becomes much higher than if we had provided her with safe abortion options in the first place.” Yet Kenya’s pro-choice movement has also adapted, creating innovative strategies like home-based care, abortion pills, and a 24-hour hotline to deliver safe abortion services to the most vulnerable.

In Italy: Legislative barriers and religious control

Dr. Elisabetta Canitano, a gynecologist and director of the reproductive health NGO Vita di Donna, doesn’t believe the Dobbs ruling changed Italy’s landscape for reproductive rights. “We had our problems before Dobbs and we have them after,” she says. “The Catholic church has almost succeeded in controlling our country and we are seeing the erosion of the lay state. It should serve as a cautionary tale for America.”

Though abortion is legal in Italy, seven out of 10 gynecologists refuse to perform the procedure on moral grounds. And last April, the Senate approved a plan to allow anti-abortion groups to access clinics, where they try to deter women from abortions by forcing them, for instance, to listen to the fetus’s “heartbeat.” In response, activists are organizing through WhatsApp to connect patients who need abortions with doctors who are willing to perform them.

In El Salvador: Jail time for miscarriages 

El Salvador—like Nicaragua, Honduras and the Dominican Republic—bans abortion completely. So the Dobbs decision didn’t necessarily worsen things—but to activists there, it looked very familiar. Helena Guerillera, the regional coordinator of the gender justice organization Mundubat, sees a parallel between the election of El Salvador’s fundamentalist president in 2019 and the political landscape that produced the Dobbs decision. “There was a general climate of disillusion and loss of faith in political parties,” she recalls. “People in the U.S. shouldn’t be fooled. It’s enough to have an ultra-right government, an active church, and emboldened pro-life organizations. The combination of the three is scary.”

Today in El Salvador, at least 182 women who suffered miscarriages or obstetric emergencies are facing prison sentences of up to 40 years. Medical professionals are even required by law to call the police in cases of miscarriage. Mujeres Libres El Salvador’s Teodora del Carmen Vásquez, who was jailed after having a stillborn baby, knows these restrictive laws firsthand: “When I was about to give birth, I fainted. Then I managed to call an ambulance but when they arrived it was too late,” she says. “They took me to jail, and I was sentenced to 30 years in prison for aggravated homicide.” (She served over a decade.) Meanwhile, the Salvadoran authorities have removed reproductive rights and sex education from school curriculums. “It’s forbidden to even talk about it, which makes it dangerous for organizations like ours,” says Guerillera, who uses a pseudonym to protect her safety. Still, she is committed to the work.  “Feminist and LGBTQ rights NGOs are being threatened, but we won’t back down.”

In Colombia: Riding the Green Wave 

With abortion permitted up to 24 weeks, Colombia has some of the most permissive laws in Latin America—thanks to 2022’s Green Wave movement, which helped decriminalize the procedure in that country, along with Argentina and Mexico. After the Dobbs ruling, anti-abortion activists began targeting privately owned clinics and leading protests—but Maria Vivas, of reproductive health organization Oriéntame, isn’t worried: “Our laws are robust,” she says. “They are inspired by a collective of 100 NGOs that came up with 95 arguments on why the right to abortion shouldn’t even be in the penal code.” Today, activists in the U.S. are seeking inspiration from Latin America (despite the “colonialist mentalities” that Vivas says often keep that from happening). “There is an effort to look at the Green Wave and understand how we did it," says Vivas. “We have great leadership down here.”

This series is a collaboration between the Gender, Ethic, and Racial Justice - International program at the Ford Foundation and The Meteor. 

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Evening, Meteor readers,

All morning, I was stressed about something trivial. But at noon, I read the following headline: A nearby black hole just woke up and devoured a whole galaxy. So that puts things in perspective! Also, RIP to galaxy SDSS1335+0728… we hardly knew ye.

Back on planet Earth, we paid a visit to Washington, D.C. for a conversation between Chrissy Teigen and Vice President Kamala Harris about abortion access two years post-Dobbs. Plus, your weekend reading list.

Waiting for the asteroid,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

CHRISSY TEIGEN, VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS, AND THEIR EXCELLENT CHEEKBONES IN CONVERSATION (SCREENSHOT VIA THE WHITE HOUSE)

The Meteor’s SOL spent this afternoon at the White House listening to a conversation between Vice President Kamala Harris and Chrissy Teigen. (John Legend and all four of the pair’s children were in attendance; Wren, their youngest, had turned a year old on Juneteenth.) The event was timed to the anniversary, coming up Monday‚ of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. The impact of that decision, VP Harris said, “is not just that it offends some intellectual or conceptual or academic notion. The harm, the actual harm that has occurred to real people, every day since that decision came down is immeasurable.”

Teigen became an advocate after seeing that harm. Today, she spoke about her own experience having an abortion due to complications from a pregnancy in 2020, and a more recent experience touring Feminist Women’s Health Center, an abortion clinic in Atlanta. (Some of its doctors were also in attendance at the White House.) Here, three of the most moving things Teigen shared:

• On her own experience: “For those of you that don’t know, in 2020, I finally got naturally pregnant. All these little beautiful babies that are here on the front row today came about by IVF, but I found myself pregnant naturally for the first time. So we were very excited. We learned we were having a baby boy. I started having complications pretty early on… I ended up having a placental abruption and was bleeding out, essentially, but felt no pain—it was [a] very odd, unique experience, because I always imagined if you’re losing a baby, you would feel some sort of cramping or pain. I just remember going to the hospital and really feeling like things were going to be okay. We didn’t really feel like anything was gonna go wrong, but things turned bad very quickly. I needed blood transfusion after blood transfusion. I remember feeling so lucky that I had the care that I had, and the ability to make decisions with my doctor. We ended up having an abortion. And it’s so weird to say, because I didn’t realize that until the Dobbs decision.”

• On the importance of using the word “abortion”: “I had no idea. That language wasn’t used in the room that I was in; it was never said by my doctor; it was never said by anyone around me. I just assumed that I had miscarried. I didn’t even realize. And [later] I honestly felt so ignorant for not having known that for so many years: I didn’t know what was happening to my own body. But I think that word is so scary to people. It’s so taboo to talk about…and humanizing this taboo subject is so important.”

• On the reality of abortion care: “The Right loves to call [Planned Parenthood] an abortion clinic, because it makes it seem so targeted and so evil. What I experienced [at Feminist Women’s Health Center] was nothing like that. The amount of not just physical care, but mental care, going in and knowing that you have privacy, that you have somebody that’s looking into your eyes. I thought I was gonna make it through the tour okay, but I started crying once I saw this beautiful mural of butterflies above the operating suite. And I looked over at [a doctor there] and she looked me in the eye and she said, ‘You could have had butterflies.’ It really stayed with me, and it stays with all those people that have come through…clinics across America, to have that kind of care and that warmth….And all the women deserve to have the same thing.”

Teigen went on to point out that there are risks to all Americans—not just those in states with abortion bans. “We’ve seen calls for a national abortion ban [and] a push to restrict access to contraception and IVF.” You can watch more of SOL’s day—and the conversation with the Vice President—on our Instagram stories.

AND:

• A UN fact-finding team is investigating allegations of sexual slavery in detention centers in Sudan, which has been locked in a brutal civil war for more than a year. Millions of people have been displaced, and earlier this week, diplomats at a UN Security Council meeting accused the UAE of quietly supplying weapons to paramilitary squads in the region.  

• Louisiana has passed a law requiring public school classrooms and state-funded colleges to display a poster with the Ten Commandments—yes, the ones from the Old Testament. The justification for this move is that the commandments are the “foundational” laws of the nation. OK, but one of the commandments is “thou shalt not steal,” and land theft is the actual foundation of this nation. So in addition to the whole separation-of-church-and-state thing, not sure this explanation holds any water, does it?

• Cameron Brink, the number two WNBA draft pick and one of the rookies bringing more eyeballs to the W, tore her ACL during a game on Tuesday and will miss the rest of her rookie season—and the Olympics.

CAMERON BRINK COMING OFF THE COURT AFTER HER KNEE INJURY. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

• Every day, there is a frightening new story about just how deadly extreme weather is becoming, and today is no different. This week, when temperatures in Saudi Arabia exceeded 120 degrees, more than 1000 religious pilgrims died in Saudi Arabia while performing Hajj, a journey to Mecca which forms one of the five pillars of the Muslim faith.

• Girls may be going through puberty much earlier than they once did, per a new study in the medical journal JAMA Network Open. The study found that since 1950, "the number of people experiencing early menarche (defined as younger than age 11) nearly doubled to 16 percent." Research is still needed, and factors may range from food quality and rising obesity rates to COVID to endocrine-disrupting chemicals (like phthalates), but the outcome is the same: higher risk for breast cancer, adult obesity, and cardiovascular disease, as well as higher instances of mental health challenges. As to the latter, NatGeo’s coverage of the issue had an essential  tip for parents of children developing early menarche: Try “normalizing the experiences as best they can.”

WEEKEND READING 📚

On preserving history: Nestled in a corner of an ever-changing Brooklyn sits Toñita's, the last Puerto Rican social club in the borough. (HellGate)

On queer liberation: An intimate look behind the scenes of the world’s first Arab and anti-Orientalist drag festival. (Atmos)

On getting into the 'ton: The regency romance show “Bridgerton” has created a space for characters of color in a story that could have easily been entirely white. But one Latina writer asks, “Why can’t it include us?” (Remezcla)

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