Evening, Meteor readers,

We’re approaching the most important event of the New York City social scene this weekend. I am obviously talking about the Puerto Rican Day parade. *horns blast in the background* *Marc Anthony begins to sing softly* For anyone wondering why a parade like this still matters, I remind you that it was once illegal to display the Puerto Rican flag in Puerto Rico, and to this day, the island exists under a smothering blanket of colonialism.

In today’s newsletter, Rebecca Carroll speaks with author Prentis Hemphill four years after the uprisings of summer 2020. Also: the new attacks on birth control, and your weekend reading list.

Despierta, borinqueño,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

Controlling birth control: Perhaps you were wondering why there was a 20-foot inflatable IUD in Washington, D.C. yesterday? It wasn’t feminist performance art (at least, not in the explicit sense); the IUD was erected by Americans for Contraception, a nonpartisan advocacy group, to bring attention to the Right to Contraception Act, which Democrats took to the Senate floor yesterday—and which Republicans blocked from consideration. (Sen. Chuck Schumer was the sole Democrat to vote no, but purely for procedure, so he can re-introduce the bill.)

This was all part of the plan: Dems knew that Republicans would filibuster a bill that guarantees access to contraception and introduced it to make a point in an election year. (The House passed it in 2022.) As Sen. Maizie Hirono, one of the bill’s sponsors, put it after the vote: “Once again, Republicans have shown they’re more interested in controlling women’s bodies than protecting our freedoms.” Republicans have also shown that they love to lie, with Sen. Rick Scott and 21 of his extremist colleagues stating that the bill would force churches and elementary schools to hand out condoms. That's absurd (it unequivocally doesn't), but so is claiming that IUDs are a form of abortion—which is what Christina Francis, a Republican-affiliated, anti-abortion gynecologist, told Sen. Patty Murray on Wednesday in a hearing about the bans. (Asked point-blank whether she believes IUDs and the morning-after pill Plan B are abortifacients, Dr. Francis responded that she does. In truth, both work to prevent pregnancy.) This is all part of the right-wing agenda to demonize contraception overall, including the evangelical right's ongoing disinformation campaign against The Pill.

Meanwhile, Republican senators continue to insist that they really, truly, pinky-swear don’t want to touch the right to contraception: Josh "Jan. 6" Hawley scoffed at the bill, telling NBC, “Nobody's going to overturn Griswold. No way”—a reference to the Supreme Court decision protecting contraceptive use. (He also went on to claim, erroneously, that the bill’s passage would make the abortion pill mifepristone “available in all 50 states no matter what the law is.”) But given the court’s current makeup, enshrining protections for the rights we most take for granted is crucial: “We are kidding ourselves,” Sen. Schumer said on the floor, “if we think the hard-right is satisfied with simply overturning Roe.” A vote on the IVF bill is next.

AND:

• The Israeli military carried out an airstrike on a UNRWA-run school that was sheltering displaced Palestinians early Thursday morning, killing at least 40 people. Reportedly 14 children are among the dead in what was allegedly a targeted attack on militants.

• Three years ago, Evanston, Illinois, became the first U.S. city to execute a government-funded reparations program—which, since its inception, has paid out almost $5 million to residents. But now, a conservative group has filed a discrimination lawsuit against the program and is seeking to shut it down. What precedent are they using? The Supreme Court’s dissolution of affirmative action last summer.

• Last week we told you about a win for good in the nasty war on DEI. Well, this week, a loss: A Georgia appeals court has halted Fearless Fund's program offering small business grants to Black women, citing a Reconstruction-era law ironically meant to curb discrimination against Black people.

• The Southern Baptist Convention is preparing to vote on whether to officially ban churches with women pastors—which would disproportionately affect churches with majority-Black congregations, where women work more frequently in the position.

WE LIKE THIS NEWSLETTER, TOO

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ABOUT THAT “RECKONING”

“What We Do in the Streets Is a Way of Grieving”

BY REBECCA CARROLL

On the fourth anniversary of the Black Lives Matter uprisings, author Prentis Hemphill offers a new way of looking at things, and what's next

VIA PRENTISHEMPHILL.COM

Four years after George Floyd’s murder, I realized that I simply do not have it in me to write another piece about Black pain, patterns and cycles of violent racism, and the endless trauma that continues to course through our bodies and bloodlines. I’ve literally written hundreds of them. I’m tired. And it feels like nothing ever changes.

But years ago, I asked the late civil rights activist Julian Bond how he managed to stay hopeful in the face of what often feels like little progress. He said, “There are enough victories to keep hope alive, and that’s what activism is.” And so I keep looking for the victories, which lately has meant having conversations with folks, particularly younger folks, who are deep in the work with fresh eyes, bright minds, and open hearts. Prentis Hemphill is one of those folks, one who, right on time, has a new book out called What it Takes to Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World. The author, therapist, and organizer spoke with me about the power of collective grief, finding the small openings of possibility, and the necessity of visual longing.

Rebecca Carroll: Your book begins, “When Trayvon Martin was killed, I had just started working at a community mental health clinic in Los Angeles, one of three Black therapists on a staff of nearly fifty.” How do you hold the grace to write about the fact of yet another Black body being killed?

Prentis Hemphill: The only way is by being in community that can feel, and grieve, and strategize, and celebrate. That’s the only thing that actually sustains me. I can only face things because I’m held, and because I’m also holding. Every time someone in our community is killed in this way, it reverberates. We have memories of people in our communities that were killed that way, people in our families that were killed that way. The ongoing violence against Black people, it reverberates through all of our grief and all of our pain. Even though we as a people have made it this far because we reach for each other, I think we also try to—and have to—shoulder more than is ours to bear.

I was just having a conversation with a dear friend and organizer, Malkia Devich-Cyril, about how our grief has been criminalized and that part of what we do in the streets is a way of grieving. But because of what is projected onto us as Black people, our actions are never read as grief rituals; they are often labeled as violent, disruptive, inconvenient.

By “what we do in the streets,” I take that to mean being collectively loud, actively creating movement culture, and just being Black—does it matter whether we know that we are simultaneously grieving?

BLACK LIVES MATTER PROTESTORS TAKING TO THE STREETS OF NEW YORK CITY, JUNE 2020. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) 

That’s a great question. Having been at a lot of protests and on the ground in so many different places over the last 15 years, I think a lot of people know that their grief is present. But there’s the connective piece—the collectivizing of the experience of “I feel this pain”—that we don’t talk about. We know it’s our grief, but we also narrow it, because that’s what we’ve had to do to get by. I am interested in starting to unlock how [our grief] can be bigger, because that’s the truth of what we’re holding.

WEEKEND READING 📚

On strange bedfellows: Would it surprise you to learn that Planned Parenthood’s cybersecurity is managed by Raytheon? Just like all relationships, it’s complicated. (Prism)

On talking to the dead: AI is creeping its ways into all facets of everyday life. But a new AI company, Eternos, wants to make it part of death, too. (Fast Company)

On bad takes: The good news? Everyone is talking about women’s basketball. The bad news? Everyone is talking about women’s basketball. (The Atlantic)

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Hey hey hello,

It's your girl, reporting to you from the wilds of perimenopause, which is supposedly cool now. That's easy to say when you're not on the receiving end of a hot flash (who installed this faulty radiator in my body?!), but I am very happy that at least these days, there is more reporting about the subject—including this op-ed published last week by Sadhvi Siddhali Shree and Alyssa Milano—as well as the beginning of government action. When I started looking into it a few years ago, all I found was, and this is a technical term, nada.

More importantly, in today's newsletter Cindi Leive speaks with Amanda Zurawski, the lead plaintiff in the suit against Texas's inhumane abortion policy, about her next steps now that the Texas Supreme Court has decided to uphold the ban. Spoiler: it was a devastating blow, but Zurawski has exciting plans to fight back. Plus, Simone Biles makes history (again), and OpenAI employees confirm that AI is kinda as bad as you think.

Let's do this,

Julianne Escobedo Shepherd

WHAT'S GOING ON

• Current and former employees of OpenAI have published an open letter warning the rest of us of the risks of AI, from “further entrenchment of existing inequalities, to manipulation and misinformation, to the loss of control of autonomous AI systems potentially resulting in human extinction.” The letter asks AI companies to commit to more oversight and feedback from employees, and work with scientists and policymakers who can mitigate those risks. Risks such as: human extinction???

• President Biden is using the same 1950s law which underpinned Trump's "Muslim ban" order to close U.S. borders to most asylum seekers. The ACLU is going to sue. What are we doing here, exactly?

• Hulu released a new trailer for Diane Von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge (out June 25), a documentary about the feminist designer's remarkable 77 (so far) years. Her life in the '70s was notoriously glamorous and free, but the film—directed by Oscar winner and Meteor collective member Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy—also delves into how DVF dealt with sexism as a pioneering businesswoman, the sorrow of losing her first husband to AIDS, and the generational trauma that affected her and her mother, who survived Auschwitz.

• On Sunday, gymnastics GOAT Simone Biles won her ninth U.S. all-around championship, making her the first gymnast ever to do so. This win will vault her straight to the Olympic trials later this month, where she is almost certain to secure a spot on Team USA.

THE GOOD FIGHT

“They Don't Look at Us As Human Beings”

BY CINDI LEIVE

Lead plaintiff Amanda Zurawski on the Texas Supreme Court’s decision to uphold a ban that almost killed her—and why she’s planning to run for office herself

"LET'S LIGHT SOME FIRES," SAYS AMANDA ZURAWSKI (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

We’ve grown accustomed to courts acting coldly, but last Friday’s Texas Supreme Court decision seemed especially and brutally devoid of compassion. In Zurawski v. State of Texas, the court had heard from 20 women who had been denied abortion care when experiencing pregnancy complications—women who had hemorrhaged, been forced to carry babies without skulls, and nearly died. And yet, the justices still ruled not to change or amend Texas’s abortion ban, which has forced doctors to deny patients vital medical care out of fear of prosecution. (What this says about the state’s regard for the vastly greater number of people who need abortions for less “medically necessary” reasons—such as, you know, not wanting to be pregnant anymore—is a story for another time.)

Over the weekend, I called Amanda Zurawski, the woman who lent her name—and the last year and a half of her life—to the lawsuit. I first met Amanda in the fall of 2022 when a doctor whispered to one of my Meteor colleagues that there was a woman in Austin who’d been through hell and might be willing to share her story. She did, detailing her harrowing experience for the world, but then went on to do much more, testifying before Congress, speaking up for other patients—and taking on her own state’s government.

Cindi Leive: This decision felt like a punch in the face to so many women—but for those of you who testified, and your families, it was so personal. What measure of justice were you and [your husband] Josh expecting? How much was this a surprise to you?

Amanda Zurawski: It wasn't a huge surprise because we know that the Texas Supreme Court is full of conservative Republicans—[all] nine of [the justices] are conservative Republicans. And then, after the ruling in the Kate Cox case [in which the court denied the December 2023 abortion request of a Texas woman whose fetus had no chance of survival], that was a signal of how our case was going to go. So we had time to prepare for a loss.

What we weren't expecting, and what we were really surprised by, was the way that they wrote the decision—that they literally wrote out most of the plaintiffs by not even using their name. [Only three patients and two doctors were referred to by name in the ruling.] And that felt unnecessarily cruel and offensive…To me, it means they don't care about us and they don't look at us as human beings. They don't care about our trauma, our grief, our loss. They don't want to acknowledge us. Because as long as they can ignore us and pretend like we don't exist—just like my Senators [Ted Cruz and John Cornyn] did when I testified in front of Congress—they can pretend like the problem isn't real.

We did a press call right after the ruling came out, and there were 11 plaintiffs that could join. And seeing their faces and hearing their voices and how heartbroken they were—that was really gutting.

AMANDA ZURAWSKI (CENTER IN WHITE) LAST MARCH WITH SOME OF HER FELLOW PLAINTIFFS AND LAWYERS FOR THE CASE (VIA GETTY IMAGES) 

You said that that was the hardest part for you. Why?

I want to acknowledge my name was used in the Supreme Court’s decision. They did acknowledge what happened to me personally, and they didn’t for anyone else. And that feels very unfair and very unjust. And I also feel a little bit like…people were counting on me, I think, because I was the first one to file, because it was my name on the suit…I do feel a little bit like people were depending on me, and I feel a little bit like I let them down.

You said on Friday, “We will continue to fight.” Tell me how. 

Well, I don’t think our lawsuit can do much more. People keep asking me if it’s going to go to the U.S. Supreme Court, and I want to make it very clear that…likely, this is the end. But we can keep fighting in other ways. Personally, I will continue to campaign to get people to vote for pro-choice candidates. We can continue to share our own stories and to share other people’s stories. We can donate our time and our money to abortion providers and organizations.

And did you say that some of the Texas Supreme Court justices are up for reelection?

Yes! There are three up for reelection [Jimmy Blacklock, John Devine, and Jane Bland]. I think we know now very clearly how they feel about…a woman’s right to choose, so I’m really hoping that we can get the word out before November and not get them reelected. It feels really good to be able to say that so clearly, because for a year and a half I couldn’t, because we had an ongoing lawsuit. [Now] I’m like, let’s light some fires.

I’ve been thinking about what’s happened in Texas since you first filed your lawsuit. You were the first [plaintiff], and then there were five women, and then 20. And I don't know if you saw this thread, but just two weeks ago, Ryan Hamilton, a musician and DJ, tweeted that his wife, who had been pregnant with their second child, was denied abortion care in a very similar situation to yours. Despite the baby no longer having a heartbeat, she was repeatedly sent home. She lost so much blood that he found her unconscious on the bathroom floor. She almost died. This happened in Texas two weeks ago. How does it feel knowing that while the Supreme Court is making this decision, claiming that doctors are able to do the right thing [under existing Texas law], the number of women who have been exactly where you were continues to climb?

RYAN HAMILTON SHARING HIS WIFE'S HEARTBREAKING STORY. (SCREENSHOT VIA CBS NEWS)

That story makes me sick to my stomach. And it's going to keep happening, because lawmakers aren't doing anything to fix it. It's infuriating that the Supreme Court of Texas had the opportunity to fix this—had the opportunity to make things better—and they did nothing. And when the Supreme Court says, “Doctors can practice medicine, this isn't a problem, the law is clear”—clearly that's not the case! Listen to our stories. Listen to what's happening to us. Listen to doctors. They refuse to hear us, and I don't know what it's going to take for them to wake up and realize that people are dying because of this. Or if they haven't yet, they're going to.

There's an enormous amount of suffering happening in Texas and similar states, and they need to fix it.

Three months ago, when the Alabama Supreme Court was deeming embryos people, you said that you worried that Texas was going to do the same, and that you were going to move your embryos out of state. The irony is incredible: You need IVF because the state's laws impacted your fertility, and now the state is making that path to having a family more difficult. How has that process felt? 

It was pretty upsetting, because moving embryos is, as you can imagine, incredibly complicated. It is very expensive. And from my understanding, things don't go wrong very often, but if they do, it's catastrophic—you lose your embryos. As we [were] going through it, I'm like, this is terrifying, because I feel like we're on a ticking clock, because Texas [could] make this decision [to criminalize IVF] any day. By the way, there now is a case about embryonic personhood that the Texas Supreme Court is deciding whether or not to hear…[and] depending on how they rule, it could do the exact same thing that happened in Alabama and threaten IVF access. Fortunately, our [embryos] are now safe, but if Trump is reelected, we're scared that it won't matter where your embryos are, because he'll institute national bans or laws that are going to affect their safety. It's just a really troubling, scary time right now to be trying to plan a family.

Last question—what gives you hope right now? Is there anything?

You know, in our press call, my fellow plaintiff, Dr. Austin Dennard, said that she likes to think that people are good. And I agree with her. I think that most people at their core want to do the right thing. And when we're speaking out about what happened to us, we do see a lot of goodness in most people. And I see the people who are fighting in their communities. I see people who are running for office because they're trying to protect women. And I think there's a lot to be hopeful about. I do think we're going to fix this. It's going to take a lot of work, but we can do it.

You mentioned women running for office. I can't get off the phone without asking you the same question that America Ferrera asked you onstage at our event a year and a half ago. Any further thoughts about you running for office? 

Oh, yeah… That is probably going to happen. I've started trying to figure out what office might be a good fit for me. I’ve talked to a lot of different organizations; I’ve talked to a lot of different individuals. I think the next step would be fundraising. But Zurawski ‘26 is probably something you’ll see.

Zurawski 2026. Amazing. We’ll leave it there.

The plaintiffs in the case are: Patients Amanda Zurawski, Lauren Miller, Lauren Hall, Anna Zargarian, Ashley Brandt, Kylie Beaton, Jessica Bernardo, Samantha Casiano, Austin Dennard, D.O., Taylor Edwards, Kiersten Hogan, Lauren Van Vleet, Elizabeth Weller, Kristen Anaya, Kaitlyn Kash, D. Aylen, Kimberly Manzano, Danielle Mathisen, M.D., Cristina Nuñez, and Amy Coronado; and health care providers Damla Karsan, M.D. and Judy Levison, M.D., M.P.H. Read their stories on the Center for Reproductive Rights site.

THE METEOR IRL

Phoenix friends! We'll be out in front of the Arizona State House on Saturday with all kinds of fantastic people like Deja Foxx, singer Lauren Jauregui, Busy Philipps, and more—advocating for bodily autonomy (in the state that resuscitated an 1864 law, no less). Come say hello!

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Hello and wow,

Where were you when a New York jury found Donald Trump guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the so-called Stormy Daniels hush-money case? I was relaxing on my couch, thinking about the Disaster Girl meme. Sentencing will occur July 11—four days before the Republican National Convention. Each count carries a penalty of up to four years in prison, though the presiding judge, Justice Juan M. Merchan, may instead choose to sentence Trump to probation, fines, or house arrest. In any case, Trump’s inevitable appeal is unlikely to be wrapped up before the 2024 election, but he’ll always be known as the U.S. president who became a convicted felon over using campaign funds to suppress a National Enquirer story to influence the 2016 election. We got the reality-show president we wanted, I guess!

While we let all this sink in, today’s newsletter focuses on another consequential election—the one in Mexico, where citizens are likely to elect its first woman president. Plus, the hypocrisy of a Supreme Court Justice basically going “mah wife,” a really great song to get you through the hard times, and some of our favorite reads by AAPI authors for the final weekend reading list of AAPI Heritage month.

Orange is his color,

Julianne Escobedo Shepherd

WHAT'S GOING ON

An election referendum on femicide: This Saturday, Mexicans will head to the polls to elect a new president, with two women at the forefront: progressive former Mexico City mayor Claudia Sheinbaum and her opponent, currently behind her in the polls, conservative candidate Xóchitl Gálvan. Sheinbaum is considered the protegée of current president Andrés Manuel López Obrador and is part of the Morena party, which elevated him to power; she has run, in part, on uplifting citizens from poverty and increasing security through social welfare. And, in addition to the seemingly Sisyphean task of curbing cartel violence and combating widespread corruption, whoever is elected must address the epidemic of femicide in Mexico, where ten women on average are murdered every day by intimate partners or other family members.

Despite their historic roles as women candidates in a country entrenched in machista culture, both Sheinbaum and Gálvan’s statements on combating femicide have been vague, and some Mexican feminists are concerned about their ability to make a substantive difference. One skeptical activist recently told Ms. that she sees Sheinbaum as disinterested in “working on a comprehensive solution to femicide or bringing justice to the families of victims. We don’t expect a profound change or any real progress on the cases.” Furthering fears are both women candidates’ fuzzy proposals on other important topics like abortion and LGBQTIA rights. In an excellent new report by The World, feminist lawyer Patricia Olamendi offered one solution: “Mexico has a unique opportunity for change with a female president. The most urgent issue to tackle by the next administration is the creation of a prosecutor’s office specializing in femicides to deliver justice.” Until the next president accomplishes at least that, the valiant feministas of Mexico will continue pushing for change in the streets. As one feminist from the radical Black Bloc told AFP, “If we have to burn everything, we burn everything.”

CLAUDIA SHEINBAUM STUMPING, GESTURING IN CDMX (VIA HECTOR VIVAS/GETTY IMAGES)

  AND:

• Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has finally addressed the upside-down flag hanging outside his house on January 6, first trying to blame it on a neighborly beef which actually happened a month after the flag was up, then just shunting all the blame onto his wife, Martha-Ann Alito. “She makes her own decisions,” he said in a letter to Congress, “and I have always respected her right to do so.” Oh really?, a coven of women around the country whispered in witchy unison.

• Rolling Stone’s Cheyenne Roundtree and Nancy Dillon have published a blockbuster investigation into Diddy’s history of physical and sexual abuse allegations, which reportedly dates at least back to his time as a student at Howard University in the late 1980s. With some truly awful details, the report gives us yet another chilling look at how an entire industry can know about one powerful man's allegedly abusive behavior for more than 30 years. As one source said of witnessing Diddy verbally abuse Cassie in public, “Why is nobody saying anything? Are they that scared of him?”

• In April, a talented singer from Toronto named Jennarie shared some of “Never Been Small,” a song she wrote in response to fat-shaming and other abuse she’s experienced online. The message (and her gorgeous voice) went viral; today, the full song is available and I can’t stop listening to her tale of survival and self-acceptance. This is the kind of track you blast when you’re at your lowest to give yourself the energy to pull through. Her other music is also amazing!

• Fortune reports that Hello Alice, a company that helps small business growth, has prevailed against a lawsuit over a grant it had been offering with Progressive to Black-owned commercial transportation businesses. The suit, brought by racist lizard Stephen Miller’s legal firm on behalf of a white male trucker alleging discrimination, was thrown out by an Ohio judge, who determined the trucker was unable to prove injury—which, like, yeah.

• Speaking of posi vibes… The Moana 2 trailer dropped. Auliʻi Cravalho reprises her role as the title character, who this time around embarks on a very cool-looking journey to Oceania in order to “reconnect our people across the entire ocean.” Disney intra-Pacific Islands decolonization narrative? We'll see (it’s out in November), but writer/director David Derrick Jr., whose family is Samoan, apparently got his grandfather's tapa cloth in the scenery!

• And on that note of family fashion: If you saw the beautiful Michael and Hushi keffiyeh dress Bella Hadid wore at Cannes, don’t miss the Palestinian-American supermodel’s brief explainer about the history of the pattern, and what the fishnet, olive leaves, and sea waves mean to Palestinian history and resilience.

WEEKEND READING 📚

For AAPI Heritage month, three of our editors share their summer reading recommendations.

Living For Change: An Autobiography by Grace Lee Boggs

An activist for all of her prolific, world-changing 100 years (she wrote her final book, The Next American Revolution, at age 95), of course you’d want to know how the legendary Grace Lee Boggs conducted her beautiful, politically engaged life. In Living For Change, she chronicles it all: her birth in 1915 above her father’s Chinese American restaurant in Providence, her union with her beloved husband (fellow activist Jimmy Boggs), her work in the civil rights and labor movements in 1960s Detroit, publishing the leftist labor journal Correspondence. If you need some inspiration to get out there and Do Something, this is pretty great at lighting a fire. - Julianne Escobedo Shepherd

The Loneliest Americans by Jay Caspian Kang

There is a certain je ne sais quoi that I feel brings together a lot of Otherized groups living in America, and it goes beyond race and ethnicity. The Loneliest Americans, which explores both Caspian’s personal history and the larger story of Asians in the U.S., spoke to my own struggles with identity—specifically the ways in which people of color are taught the value of mimicking whiteness while also being asked to carry on cultural traditions. It’s an uncomfortable dance between two lives, two versions of yourself, neither of which seem to fit quite right, and Caspian adeptly describes what it’s like to exist in the middle of that. - Shannon Melero

They Called Us Exceptional by Prachi Gupta

I must disclose my bias—I worked with Prachi for years and consider her a friend—but this moving memoir, written in the format of letters to her mother, is so much more than the recollections of a life. Through her struggles against violent patriarchal culture, she bucks against the model minority myth and makes cogent, heartfelt demands towards liberation—of her mother, of South Asian American women. Along the way, she finds her own self-acceptance. It’s harrowing. It’s beautiful. It will make you cry.  - Julianne Escobedo Shepherd

Stay True by Hua Hsu 

This won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Memoir, and it is one of my favorite books. I read it shortly after I lost a dear friend, who was South Asian, to an unexpected death. What I saw in this book was profound grief and how it interweaves with our identities. It read to me as much as an Asian American coming-of-age story as it was a love letter to a childhood friend and the time the author knew him. It forced me to sit with the nostalgia of good times and the joy and agony of that remembering. - Samhita Mukhopadhyay

Lies and Weddings by Kevin Kwan 

I became a Kevin Kwan stan after the first few pages of Crazy Rich Asians, and with this latest story of wealth, high drama, love, and status, he proves that he simply does not miss. Kwan once again weaves together a tale with such vivid description, I feel like I’m in the room with his characters—although, since I don’t have the correct pedigree, they’d wonder why I was in the room at all. The sensation I get from Kwan’s work is very similar (I imagine) to what people in the 1800s must have felt reading Jane Austen for the first time. It reveals the inner workings of a world we don’t truly know while still giving some sense of familiarity through the universal trials of love and familial expectation. - Shannon Melero

BONUS: The End of Imagination by Arundhati Roy

Though Roy is not Asian American, her book The End of Imagination illustrates the profound impact of the actions of the U.S. on countries across Eastern and Western Asia, including Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and India. After Roy’s speech last year about the demise of democracy in India, I was moved to pick up this 2016 compendium of her essays and speeches. It’s a guided tour through her generosity and powerhouse mind as she critiques the machinations of democracy, empire, justice, war, peace, even art itself—big, sweeping topics that, in her hands, become tangible human concerns. She moves the reader to action by the strength of her words and the clarity of her thought. - Julianne Escobedo Shepherd

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Hello Meteor Readers!

Julianne Escobedo Shepherd here; I'm on newsletter duty this summer, filling in for the genius Samhita Mukhopadhyay while she promotes her genius book. When I tell you that I'm thrilled to be here, please let's keep it real: I am legit psyched. And I will try not to curse a bunch.

In today's newsletter, we debut a new column: Three Questions About _____, a quick interview about a topic of great interest to us. This week, Rebecca Carroll speaks to Soraya Chemaly about her latest book, The Resilience Myth, and the ways that the idea of resilience—staying strong, bouncing back, keeping on, etc.—may both help and harm us. Plus, the women journalists of Gaza and the climate impact of binge-viewing.

I missed you though,

Julianne

WHAT'S GOING ON

Supreme micromanagers of the United States: Though it was overshadowed by a deluge of news, on Thursday the conservative Supreme Court majority ruled that South Carolina could continue using its gerrymandered map—which is to say, a racist voting map that the NAACP charges discriminates against more 30,000 Black voters. In Justice Elena Kagan's dissent, cosigned by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson, she accused her peers of “micromanaging” and also noted that they're acting like they don't even know what the hell they're doing.

“The majority picks and chooses evidence to its liking; ignores or minimizes less convenient proof; disdains the panel’s judgments about witness credibility; and makes a series of mistakes about expert opinions,” she wrote. “On page after page, the majority’s opinion betrays its distance from, and lack of familiarity with, the events and evidence central to this case.” Justice Kagan also noted the real danger of the decision—that it’s a big fat present to state legislators and mapmakers who “might want to straight-up suppress the electoral influence of minority voters… Go right ahead, this Court says to States today.”

AND:

• Over the weekend, Israel carried out an airstrike in Rafah, killing 46 civilians living in a displacement camp; the death tolls are expected to rise. The camp was populated largely by women and children, several of whom were burned alive. Social media was flooded with graphic videos from the scene captured by citizen journalists and Palestinians pleading for help. But one clip, filmed before the strike by Palestinian photographer Duaa Tuaima, has also gone viral. The video shows some of the children living in the camp prior to the attack; Tuaima notes, “We don’t know if they’re alive.” Tuaima's video is a stark reminder that despite the extent to which the conflict is dominating our news cycles, relatively few journalists are actually on the ground in Gaza. And as the International Federation of Journalists noted in March, at least 13 women journalists have already been killed there since October 7. But through the work of women like Tuaima, Bisan Owda, Youmna El Sayed, and Hind Khoudary, we continue to witness in near real-time the reality of these attacks.

• Cartoon villain Ron DeSantis is making a change to his “Freedom Summer” plan (which is a lot less fun than it sounds). Initially, Freedom Summer was meant to be a tax holiday tied to summer-y purchases like outdoor gear and park admission—an effort to save Floridians a little money on what they planned to buy anyway. But the state’s Department of Transportation recently announced that DeSantis’s Freedom Summer includes an order that bridges and skyways in the state can only display red, white, and blue lighting throughout the summer. Why do we care about decorative lights? Because Freedom Summer means there will be no rainbow lights displayed on bridges during Pride—a reflection of the anti-LGBTQIA+ policies DeSantis is trying desperately to be famous for.

• If you spent any part of the long weekend binging a television show, it turns out there’s a very specific way that viewing habit contributes to climate change. In her latest newsletter, journalist Arielle Samuelson offers a comprehensive and fascinating breakdown of how that works and why we all need to take a binge break.

• Speaking of climate change, a “brutal heat dome” is making its way toward the southern portion of the U.S. from Mexico. The heat in some Mexican states has been so severe that people and wildlife are dying as a result.

• A small Montana town figured out a smart way to remedy its teacher shortage and enrich its community by simply opening a daycare center alongside its K-12 schools. It's not the only solution to the national teacher shortage—higher wages are definitely in order—but it's the kind of support that can be life-changing for working parents.

THREE QUESTIONS ABOUT...

Resisting the Resilience Trap

Author Soraya Chemaly dispels the myth of bottomless grit.

BY REBECCA CARROLL

VIA INSTAGRAM

Most of us hear the word “resilience” and immediately think: individual strength and the ability to survive pretty much anything, at all cost—and like that’s a real flex. It is, and it isn’t, argues Soraya Chemaly in her new book, The Resilience Myth: New Thinking on Grit, Strength, and Growth after Trauma. As someone who considers myself resilient AF, I was eager to sit down with Chemaly to talk about the ways in which we misconstrue its meaning, how it privileges white women, and what it’s doing to our bodies.

Rebecca Carroll: What is the biggest misconception about resilience? 

Soraya Chemaly: The biggest misconception is that resilience is a thing that we contain inside of us—as this extreme version of hyper-individualism, in that we’re supposed to think of it as a trait [we have], or a skill we can learn. All of that is a relatively small portion of what resilience really is. Because in order for us to act in those ways of being self-sufficient and personally strong, we’ve had some level of care, love, and support from someone who gave us a sense of possibility for ourselves in life.

The connection between resilience and hyper-individualism is interesting, especially to me as a Black woman, because Black women are almost always expected to be strong and resilient without any kind of a net. Whereas white women have this entire infrastructure that supports and emboldens their fragility, often considered to be a kind of resilience itself. Can you speak to that? 

The way I try to describe it in the book is that for women, but particularly for Black women, their role is to be resilience resources for other people. They don’t actually get the right, the dignity, or the care that is expected from them. Structurally speaking, white women's fragility requires the flexibility and the shock-absorbing factor from the Black women around them. The mandate of resilience as a societal goal, or even as a personal goal, is often constructed in a way that makes its toll on others invisible. Because if the way you cope and you adapt is positive, but everyone else around you is suffering and exhausted, maybe you’re just an entitled asshole. Let's at least get our words straight here and say what it is we mean. Because the mandate of resilience as a goal, as a societal goal, or even as a personal goal, is often constructed in a way that makes its toll on others invisible.

How can we reenvision the idea of resilience in healthier ways moving forward?

The idea of resilience that we hold in such high esteem is actually brutalizing to people’s bodies. [It usually] has to do with growth mentality, optimism, and mental toughness. But if you think about the word mental toughness, its inversion is physical frailty. Mental toughness denigrates dependence, need, physical want, and material poverty. And if you think that people can power their way through anything with their mind, then you’re much less likely to be investing in the social structures and institutions that sustain people at just the bare minimum. If, for example, instead of self-sufficiency, we saw vulnerability as a strength to us all, because we take care of each other, we would have a different vision of what it means to be resilient. If what we want out of resilience is the ability to cope with crisis or to adapt to adversity in a positive way, resilience is not the word we should be using.

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Greetings, Meteor readers,

Please join me this evening in wishing a fond see ya later to fellow editor and fearless Meteor leader Samhita Mukhopadhyay, who is off today on a mini-leave to promote her forthcoming book The Myth of Making It. I will miss seeing her notes in the margins, especially the ones that just say, “Shannon. No.”

Great, now that she’s finally gone! Please also join me in saying hello to my internet fairy godmother, Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, who will be shepherding the newsletter this summer. Time to rave.

In today’s newsletter, we review what you can do about unethical Supreme Court justices and marvel at the feat of a Nepalese climber. Plus, your weekend reading list.

Faking it till I’m making it,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

How to stop a SCOTUS gone rogue: Yesterday, The New York Times reported that a flag associated with the Christian wing of the Stop the Steal movement was seen wafting in the breeze last summer over a vacation home owned by Justice Samuel Alito. The “Appeal to Heaven” flag, closely associated with the Christian right and used by some January 6th insurrectionists, is especially troubling given that Alito and his fellow Robed Ones are currently presiding over cases related both to the insurrection and to Trump’s immunity. This is the second instance of Alito flying a flag that raises questions about his personal bias, and House Democrats are calling on him to recuse himself from all upcoming insurrection cases.

It’s easy to feel fatalistic about all this. After all, Ginni Thomas sent some questionable texts about the 2020 election, and her husband sits on the court and rules on those subjects. And then there were those interesting gifts given to Justices from wealthy people invested in the outcomes of SCOTUS cases, and still, nothing happened.

So is there anything the average person can do about an appointed Justice who may or may not want to make America theocratic again (I can see the MATA hats now)? Actually, yes! We’ve got some suggestions.

• Support ethical oversight: Congress actually has the power to regulate SCOTUS, and to institute rules around the behavior of the justices. It’s just forgotten how to do those things. Alex Aronson, co-founder of the advocacy group Court Accountability, charges that Congress has “atrophied muscles” on this score, and the only thing that will change that is—you got it!—us. “The path out of this lies in our hands, in the power of movement mobilization,” he told Dahlia Lithwick on Amicus in February. In other words: Ask your current rep what they’re doing about Supreme Court ethics, and specifically whether they’re supporting this piece of legislation. Oh, and also….

• Hold officials accountable: Let your elected officials know that in order to secure your vote they need to be actively involved in enforcing the existing SCOTUS ethics protections, which have been in place since since 1948 and establish the expectation that Justices should recuse themselves from cases where their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”

• Keep up with the reform movement: Demand Justice is an excellent resource on everything related to reforming the Court—which, yes, can be done.

AND:

• Yesterday, the Louisiana House passed a bill that would classify abortion pills as “dangerous controlled substances”—a move that effectively criminalizes them. If the bill is signed into law as expected, anyone found in possession of abortion pills without a prescription can be fined or jailed. Because the pills used in medical abortions have different uses (like preventing ulcers), doctors are arguing that this bill could “needlessly delay care for patients” throughout the state.

• Singer Cassie Ventura has released a statement on social media—her first since the release of a 2016 video in which she is seen being physically abused by her former boyfriend, Sean “Diddy” Combs. In her statement, Ventura thanks her fans for the outpouring of support and makes one simple request, “Open your heart to believing victims the first time.”  We will.

CASSIE AND HER HUSBAND, ALEX FINE, REMINDING US THERE IS MORE LIFE AND JOY TO BE FOUND ON THE OTHER SIDE OF SURVIVAL. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

• The power of the Swfities has finally compelled the Department of Justice to sue Live Nation and Ticketmaster in an effort to break up what it calls an illegal monopoly over live events in the U.S. 🎶These things will change, can you feel it now?🎶

• The internet’s one-time favorite website, Buzzfeed, is now partially owned by failed presidential candidate and enemy of the “woke industrial complex” Vivek Ramaswamy, who wants to force a “shift in the company’s strategy.” Should we be expecting quizzes on which MAGA candidate is your true soulmate based on your coffee order or something more ominous?

• A great fictional man once said, “You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” Amber Rose, once a hero of sexual empowerment, has announced she will be voting for Donald Trump.  Welcome to your villain era.
• Phunjo Lama, a Nepalese climber, broke the women’s record for the fastest ascent up Mount Everest. She reached the summit of what she calls “Mother Goddess” in an astonishing 14 hours and 31 minutes—almost 11 hours shorter than the previous record-holder.

PHUNJO LAMA AT MT. EVEREST BASE CAMP (VIA INSTAGRAM)

WEEKEND READING 📚

On AAPI month: We can thank Asian-Pacific Islanders for paving the way in environmental activism. (Atmos)

On money: How our “cultural ambivalence” toward working moms is screwing our pay. (The New York Times)

On speaking out: Nicole Brown Simpson’s sisters remember her on the 30th anniversary of her murder. (People)

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Greetings, Meteor readers,

My sincere condolences to all the New Yorkers reading this who suffered through another disappointing end to the Knicks’ playoff run this weekend. But look on the bright side: Now you have so much free time to cheer on the Liberty. It’s what Jalen Brunson would want you to do.

In today’s newsletter, a word on the importance of Indigenous journalists from Connie Walker. Plus, the AI overlords strike again.

Better luck next year,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

• It appears no one is safe from the encroachment of AI, not even Scarlett Johansson. Last week, the actress was “shocked, angered, and in disbelief” when she learned that ChatGPT 4.0 was using a voice for its program that sounded just like hers. Johansson had already turned down the company’s CEO Sam Altman, who’d proposed using her voice for the program as a nod to his favorite film, Her, in which Johansson voices an AI assistant. But without her consent, a demo was released using the Johansson-esque voice. After multiple complaints, OpenAI suspended the feature, but the incident doesn’t exactly engender trust in an industry prone to robbing women of control over their own images.

• On Monday, the lead prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, formally applied for arrest warrants for leaders of Hamas and Israel. Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, who was one of the advisors to Khan, said in a statement, “We unanimously conclude that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, including hostage-taking, murder and crimes of sexual violence. We unanimously conclude that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity including starvation as a method of warfare, murder, persecution and extermination.” Now, a three-judge panel will decide whether or not to issue the warrants and allow a case to begin.

• Caitlin Clark, who has yet to win her first WNBA game, just made history. Again. Clark signed a multi-year deal with Wilson for a signature basketball collection. The only other athlete to ever get this kind of collection? Michael Jordan. 😛

CLARK AT A RECENT APPEARANCE AGAINST THE LIBERTY. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

• On Sunday, Sean Diddy Combs issued a vague apology in response to the video footage of him physically abusing singer Cassie Ventura in 2016, which went viral last weekend. (The link above includes stills from that video; please consider your mental health before clicking.) It’s worth mentioning that when Ventura first accused Diddy, he denied all wrongdoing and his friends supported him in that lie. For legal reasons, Ventura has remained largely silent. But as her partner Alex Fine posted on Instagram, “Men who hit women aren’t men….I want to raise my daughters in a world where they are safe and loved.”

• Reporters on the abortion beat have been breaking news ferociously since the fall of Roe v. Wade almost two years ago. And now they’re writing books. Abortion Every Day’s Jessica Valenti has one out in the fall; and today, The 19th’s Shefali Luthra publishes Undue Burden: Life and Death Decisions in a Post-Roe America. You can read an excerpt of it here.

• Speaking of books: Penguin Random House is letting go of two of its top imprint editors, Lisa Lucas and Reagan Arthur. Both oustings are raising eyebrows, particularly that of Lucas, one of the rare Black women in a top publishing job. As author Keise Laymon, posted, “A publishing world without Lisa Lucas is achy and hollow.”

LESS THAT ONE PERCENT

What Happens When Indigenous Women Tell Their Own Stories?

The crisis of violence would look completely different, says Pulitzer-winning Cree journalist Connie Walker.

BY SHANNON MELERO

Demonstrators march for Red Dress Day in Edmonton, Canada to commemorate the lives of missing and murdered Indigenous women. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

In 1995, a Saulteaux woman in Regina, Saskatchewan, was brutally beaten to death by two young white men who had spent the night drinking and were looking for an “Indian prostitute.” Those were the exact words used by the killers—and then repeated by the media and the presiding judge in the case of Pamela George, a mother of two and a member of the Sakimay First Nation.

Words matter: According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the justice  “reminded the jury George ‘indeed was a prostitute’ when they considered if she had consented to sex.” That assertion that she must have done so (even though one of her killers was hiding in the trunk when she was picked up by the other) “was the key to the two being found guilty on the lesser charge” of manslaughter. The men were sentenced to six and a half years, but one of them, Steven Kummerfield, whom news outlets described as a “university basketball star,” was released on parole after only four years.

As this story unfolded and as Native women’s groups grew more outraged by the case, a young Cree teenager, Connie Walker, was witnessing it all. She was so moved by Pamela George’s mistreatment in news media that she wrote about the case for her high school newsletter—and began what became a barrier-breaking journalism career, eventually winning a Pulitzer, a Peabody, and hosting the podcast Stolen about unsolved cases of murdered or missing Indigenous people in North America.

Last year, at the global summit Free Future 2023, Walker reflected on the impact that coverage of the original case had on her. “They didn’t talk about the fact that she was a single mother,” she noted. She found herself wondering, “Are there any Indigenous people in these newsrooms?”

WALKER DURING HER PANEL AT FREE FUTURE (COURTESY OF FORD FOUNDATION)

Statistically, there aren’t: The Columbia Journalism Review reported as recently as 2019 that less than one percent of journalists working at major newspapers or online publications are Native American. The report also found that most newsrooms don’t have a designated beat to cover “Indian Country,” the still commonly used legal term that encompasses all of the reservations in the United States and non-reservation communities with high concentrations of Indigenous people.

A report released the following year by the Native American Journalists Association tracked how frequently Native news was covered in a single year across five major outlets (Washington Post, NPR, The New York Times, The Guardian, Fox News) and found that of the 87 articles that mentioned Native communities, a majority were written by non-Native reporters. How many Native reporters were found to have worked on one of those 87 articles? Six. 

That absence of representation has unique implications for reporting on sexual violence. In the United States, 56% of Indigenous women have experienced sexual violence, according to Amnesty International. In the U.S. alone, there are more than 5,000 reported and unsolved cases of missing or murdered Indigenous women, girls, two-spirit and trans people (MMIWG2T).  As Dr. Sarah Deer said in 2017. “While there are over 560 federally recognized tribes in this country, each with a unique history, culture, and language, the constant for all native people is the inevitability of rape.”

Who tells these stories matters. While we have long been told that reporting is about being “objective,” Walker points out that that has never really been true. “One of the things that I'm grateful is happening right now [is]...a recognition of how subjective journalism is, and has always been,” she has said. “And I think that for so long—in Canada, the United States, everywhere—that those stories have been told by people who aren't representative of the societies that they're reporting on.” Her work changes that—as does the work of journalists like Brandi Morin and Chelsea Curtis and initiatives like the IWMF’s Fund for Indigenous Journalists or the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center.  

 “There’s a power in being able to tell a story,” says Walker. “There’s a responsibility in that.”

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,

Hoping everyone is having a blessed week except for this man right here.

In today’s newsletter, we check in on Florida, salute teenage activists in Ecuador, and share our weekend reading list.

Kickin’ it,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

Florida!!!: Ron DeSantis never ceases to amaze me with his insistence on pretending the things he dislikes simply do not exist. First, it was his war on Black history, then it was “Don’t Say Gay”, and now Ronnie is disappearing his latest enemy: climate change.

Yesterday, the Florida governor signed new legislation that, according to The Washington Post, “removes most references to climate change in state law” and deprioritizes the issue in policy decisions. DeSantis’s explanation for this new legislation, which goes into effect this summer? “[This will] keep windmills off our beaches, gas in our tanks, and China out of our state…We’re restoring sanity in our approach to energy and rejecting the agenda of the radical green zealots,” he told a local Florida outlet. (It’s worth mentioning here that there are no wind turbines on the beaches, nor is Florida even windy enough to warrant them. The state is better suited to solar power.)

A RECREATION OF ONE OF RON DESANTIS'S NIGHTMARES. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

So why is the failed presidential candidate railing about “green zealots” and imaginary wind turbines, despite the fact that his constituents are some of the most vulnerable in the country to the effects of climate change? The same reason my kid throws her dino nuggets on the floor: to get attention.

DeSantis clearly aspires to be more than a governor, and in order to endear himself to the GOP base, he’s got to prove he is willing to defy things like science and logic. According to the Post, “environmentalists said the new law is the latest example of DeSantis’s eagerness to use climate change as a culture war issue such as abortion and transgender rights to bring national attention to himself and hit the right notes with right-wing voters.”

But here’s the saving grace: A majority of Floridians agree that climate change is happening, and they want state and federal governments to do something about it. With that in mind, here is a list of offices up for election this year in the state. Vote like your planet depends on it (because it does).

AND:

• Teenage girls in Ecuador are leading a fight against the government for failing to protect them from the noxious gas filling the air from oil extraction projects in the Amazon. Leonela Moncayo, a local 14-year-old activist, told The Guardian, “We are fighting for our future because we want our future to be better – to not live with the danger that just by breathing the air we are being contaminated.”

• The president of California State University, Sonoma has been placed on leave after coming to an agreement with students at the school’s pro-Palestinian encampment which included pursuing divestment from Israel. The school’s chancellor called the agreement “insubordination.”

• You may think that school segregation is a relic of the past, but it turns out in Virginia, it’s making a concerning comeback.

• If you’re a millennial mom and things have been feeling harder than usual, it’s not all in your mind. You might be suffering from what the New York Times is calling a Millennial Mother Midlife Crisis.

• An Indiana judge has ruled that tacos and burritos are, in fact, sandwiches. For the record, I object to this ruling and will be moving to Indiana to file an appeal.

• The bear or man debate has inspired some heartbreaking art in New York:

(SCREENSHOT VIA INSTAGRAM)

WEEKEND READING 📚

On history repeating itself: Twenty years ago, thousands of people across the globe came together under the slogan of Save Darfur. Now, Darfur is facing a new genocide and the West is responding with “indifference.” (The New York Times)

On something bigger: Three journalists dig deeper into the “meaning of Caitlin Clark.” (The Washington Post)

On the brain: Student loan debt isn’t just a financial burden; it’s now becoming a mental health burden. (Teen Vogue)

On implosions: Something strange is happening at Miss USA and it’s causing queens to quit. (Slate)

On Baby Reindeer: Is the Netflix hit a much-needed exploration of trauma, or kinda weird about queerness? Spoilers if you click. (NPR)

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Greetings, Meteor readers,

I never say this on a Tuesday, but we’ve made it to the best day of the week: Tonight marks the start of the WNBA regular season, and I am thrilled. Tonight’s schedule is jam-packed with games, including the New York Liberty vs. the Washington Mystics and the much-anticipated Indiana Fever vs. Connecticut Sun. Make this the year you get super into women’s basketball, friends.

In today’s newsletter, we look at a confounding IVF case in Texas and ponder Katie Britt’s definition of success.

And 1,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

IVF back in court? Potentially!: You may recall that back in February, the Alabama high court ruled that embryos produced during IVF were “extrauterine children.” The implication that those embryos had the same rights as actual children briefly shut down the state’s fertility clinics till the legislature (seeing the wild unpopularity of this bonkers situation) intervened to allow IVF to resume. Settled? Not quite. While IVF clinics and doctors are safe from criminal prosecution in Alabama, the fetal personhood court ruling still stands, leaving patients uncertain about what they are liable for if anything happens to their embryos.

And now, thanks to a messy divorce, IVF is back in the legal spotlight in another state: Texas.

Briefly: A couple in Denton, Texas, Gaby and Caroline Antoun, underwent IVF treatment and signed a contract agreeing that in the case of divorce, Gaby (the husband) would keep any leftover frozen embryos. In 2022, they did get divorced, and the court awarded Gaby the embryos because they were considered property and thus subject to basic contract law. But then Roe was overturned and everything changed.

Caroline and her lawyers appealed the original decision, arguing that Texas abortion law now suggests that embryos should be treated as children—making the contract she signed null and void, and meaning that the only way to settle the question is to go to trial for custody.

The jokes for this situation write themselves: Who gets the embryos on Saturday? Where will they go for Christmas? But the consequences are real and decidedly unfunny: Caroline wants to take this to the Texas Supreme Court, which is allowing both sides to brief them on the case before deciding whether or not to take on the issue.

In an amicus brief presented to the court, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine wrote, “Recognizing ‘personhood’ status for a frozen embryo…would upend IVF in Texas…[and] inject untenable uncertainty into whether and on what terms IVF clinics can continue to operate in Texas.”

AND:

• Over the weekend, Alabama Senator Katie Britt (‘memba her?) and 12 other Republicans—the majority of whom are men— introduced the More Opportunities for Moms to Succeed Act, which, if you didn’t read past the headlines, sounds great! However, the MOMS Act would “help” America’s mothers by tracking and tricking them: It would create a federal database of pregnant people, whom it would then provide with resources like the location of the nearest pregnancy crisis center and advice on adoption. The Act also carves out money to provide grants to anti-abortion organizations. Some Democratic senators have already issued a denouncement. Next!

• The Bumble app is undergoing a rebrand, and let’s just say it’s not going well. Who could have guessed that a billboard shaming people for choosing celibacy would be a bad idea? (Everyone. Everyone could have guessed.)

• Tomorrow, Olympic runner Caster Semenya will have her biggest day in court to date. Semenya, who was born with a genetic condition that increases the level of testosterone she produces, was banned from competing in women’s running competitions in 2019 after she refused to take medication to alter the hormone levels in her body. Now her discrimination case will be heard by the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights. As Semenya said on the podcast Flame Bearers, “You are born with your differences, I'm born with my differences...We need to celebrate one another.”

• Nobel Laureate and short story writer supreme Alice Munro died on Monday at the age of 92. You can read one of her best works, “The Love of a Good Woman,” here.

• May 15th marks the 76th anniversary of Al-Nakba, the first expulsion of Palestinians from Palestine in 1948. Psychologist Dr. Shirin Zarqa-Lederman wrote for The Meteor in 2022 about her father’s experience living through Al-Nakba—her words have special resonance this year as many Palestinians see the “great catastrophe” carry on.

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