Howdy, Meteor readers,

I’m going to start this newsletter the same way I’ve been starting every conversation I’ve had since Sunday: Have you seen the new Spider-Man?

Okay, hear me out before you scroll down to the adult conversation! This is not your average comic book superhero film. It is a moving, thoughtful, visual experience and an absolute feat in physical and racial diversity. I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone, but the Spiderverse literally has a Spider-person for everyone. I can honestly say that I haven’t left a theater on such a high since I saw Black Panther.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way: In today’s newsletter, we’ve got more bans than we know what to do with—and, finally, some happy news from our AI overlords. (No, it’s not that they’ve thought twice about killing us).

Spidey-sense tingling,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

When transphobia backfires: I regret to inform all of you that Greg Abbott has Greg Abbott-ed once again: On June 2nd, the Texas governor signed into law a bill that bans gender-affirming care for trans kids, making Texas the 18th (and largest) state to do so. On its heels quickly followed a similar ban in Louisiana, once presumed dead but resurrected by Republican shenanigans. And it won’t be the last: seven other states are considering bans just like it.

However, some recent court cases suggest that these bills’ rhetoric may work against them in the long run. US District Court Judge Robert Hinkle issued a preliminary injunction today against Florida’s brand-new ban, likely precluding its enforcement. Hinkle’s ruling directly cited “bigotry” (yes, he used the actual word! In a court document!) as part of the decision. He claimed the ban had “no rational basis” and referenced the moment when Rep. Webster Barnaby (R) called trans people “mutants” and “demons.”

That kind of language actually pops up frequently in right-wing legislation: A recent ACLU lawsuit challenging Idaho’s gender care ban references several examples of bigotry from Idaho lawmakers, including likening trans people to “Frankenstein.” Journalist Erin Reed, who records many of these statements, tweeted that getting Republicans to “say the quiet part out loud” can be an effective tool for dismantling these bans in court.

So keep telling us what you think lawmakers—it may be your undoing. As civil rights attorney Alejandra Caraballo pointed out, “Twitter talking points don’t hold up in court.”

AND:

• In related, promising news: Tennessee’s proposed drag ban—which would have eliminated all public drag shows held in locations where children might be able to see them—has been deemed unconstitutional. On Friday a federal judge ruled that the ban was vague and a violation of performers’ First Amendment rights.

• If you’re reading this, you’ve lived long enough to witness the dawn of the most important technological advancement since the discovery of the wheel. Apple is releasing an “AI-powered upgrade” to its autocorrecting software that will no longer change fucking to ducking. Never thought we’d see the duckin’ day!

• For the first time in history, the United Nations’ weather agency is being led by a woman. Celeste Saulo, an Argentine meteorologist, has ascended the ranks of weather nerds across the globe and can now officially call herself the HMIC (head meteorologist in charge). Just don’t ask her if there’s a 30% chance it’s already raining.

• This fascinating report from The 19th outlines exactly how reproductive justice and climate change are intricately intertwined—and how the EPA has the power to improve both.

• It looks like we’re going to be watching a whole lot of nothing this fall television season. As writers head into the 7th week of the Writers Guild of America strike, actors may be the next in the picket line. SAG-AFTRA voted to start striking by the end of June if their union can't come to a deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Learn how to support striking writers here.

• Someone submitted a request for a Utah school district to ban the Bible and it actually worked, which is understandable when you consider that mid-way through the book, they (spoiler ahead) brutally murder the main character. The school district says it doesn’t know whether the submission was sent in as a genuine concern or as a bit of satire, but the Bible has been removed from elementary and middle school bookshelves. Next book up for review? The Book of Mormon. I shit you not.

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This newsletter was brought to you by Shannon Melero and Bailey Wayne Hundl who would really love it if you filled out this reader survey. Thanks! 

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Happy Monduesday, Meteor readers,

For some of us, today is a particularly tricky day. We are now two days removed from the series finale of “Succession” and, according to TV etiquette, it is allowable to discuss spoilers (apparently things are bad for the eldest boy??).

However, some of us (me) are still a few episodes behind and would like for everyone to stop running their mouth like cousin Greg!

If you’re wondering why I’m so behind on the biggest show in town, it’s because I did something else this weekend: I went to an actual movie theater to watch The Little Mermaid. Reviews have been mixed, but when I tell you that Alan Menken put his whole menkussy into revamping this movie!! Halle Bailey’s performance brought me to tears three separate times. You must go see it. And if, like me, you have very strong thoughts about that one Lin-Manuel Miranda addition to the soundtrack, my DMs are open.

In today’s newsletter we’re turning our attention to a surge in racism against athletes, the coming AI overlords, and the hawt summer we’re about to have.

Still humming “Under the Sea,”

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

“Something I will continue to deal with”: During a post-match press conference yesterday, tennis star Sloane Stephens commented on the growing racism facing athletes, saying, “It has never stopped. If anything, it’s only gotten worse.” The data backs her up, alas: While racism in sports isn’t exactly a new phenomenon, a 2021 study showed a 200% increase in acts of racism in sports from 2019-2020.

The most notable recent occurrence of this involved Spanish soccer team Real Madrid’s Vinicius Junior, who this month reported his tenth incident of racial abuse before the league he plays under (LaLiga) actively got involved—a move that only came to pass because of the immense success Vinicius has had since he started playing.

But that let’s-try-to-fix-this energy isn’t as present in women’s sports, where there are only hundreds of thousands of eyeballs being drawn, vs the millions Vinicius commands. Despite the efforts of Althea Gibson (in the 1950s), the Williams sisters (in the ‘00s), and Naomi Osaka (now), the next generation of Black tennis stars are still fighting a Sisyphean battle.

“Obviously it's been something that I have dealt with my whole career," Stephens said during the press conference. “It’s only continued to get worse…and something I will continue to deal with, I'm sure. That's that.”

(If you're looking to show some support, Stephens' next match is tomorrow at 8:15 AM ET.)

AND:

• Did you know that America’s first known Memorial Day celebration was put together by recently emancipated Black people in South Carolina who were honoring fallen Union soldiers? It’s okay if you didn’t. According to The Washington Post, white South Carolinians loyal to the Confederacy—including women’s groups like the Daughters of the American Revolution—rewrote the day’s narrative to exclude this key fact.

• A new law in Uganda targeting the LGBTQ+ community could see citizens facing life sentences just for having sex.

• For a case study on how abortion bans are affecting all kinds of care, take a look at this profile of one women’s health clinic in Alabama from Politico.

• I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that climate change may not kill us after all! The bad news is that that’s only because we won’t live long enough to see the earth melt—according to a new warning from hundreds of leading technologists, AI may take us all out way before that. This isn’t the build-up to some new sci-fi thriller; it’s a real, must-read alert about yet another area we desperately need to push our governments to take seriously.

• Taylor Swift was right; it is going to be a cruel summer. And by cruel, we mean hotter than the last three decades: The New York Times put together this handy map to let you know if you’re going to be in one of the states where warmer than usual weather can be expected.

• This New Yorker story about the rise in Latino white supremacy hits uncomfortably close to home. And while I’d love to drop several bars about how Latines in America have been racialized and brainwashed into desiring proximity to whiteness, I already did that in 2020 in an interview with author Laura E. Gomez. If all that is a little TL;DR for you, this guy sums it up pretty well.

• Elizabeth Holmes, who was convicted of fraud for her false claims about her company, Theranos last year, started her 11-year prison sentence today. Before you know it she’ll be looking for seed money for her new toilet wine company.

• A young woman was stabbed to death in Delhi, India, while bystanders watched silently and failed to intervene. “Delhi has become extremely unsafe for women and girls,” an official told news outlet ANI.

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Heeyyoooo Meteor readers,

Friends! I’ve come back to you from the wilderness of maternity leave on this lovely Thursday to reclaim my ergonomic newsletter writing throne. Now I know what you’re thinking: What could possibly drag me away from my very cute child perched upon her Boppy? I think we all know the answer to that.

That’s right, I am here with a piping hot 2,000-word essay on Scandoval and its implications, not just on the reality TV landscape (which is now forever changed) but on the sixth wave of feminism, launched by Ariana Madix and Katie Maloney.

Just kidding! I save those thoughts for the unhinged voice notes I send my friends late at night. In today’s newsletter, we’re talking about the WNBA, Gen Z’s contributions to feminist theory, and sports bras.

But first, let’s get through This Week in GOP Tomfoolery.

It’s all happening,

Shannon Melero

P.S. It would be such a great welcome-back-to-work gift if you filled out this survey, all about how this newsletter can better serve you. More deets below!

WHAT'S GOING ON

Let (straight) Kids Be Kids: Yesterday possible antichrist Gov. Ron DeSantis set a horrifying new record for Largest Group of Anti-LGBTQ+ Bills Passed At Once in Florida, signing four into law. And if you think they’re bad, you’d be wrong. They’re fucking horrendous:

• The Pronoun Ban, aka HB 1069: This bill requires classrooms to teach that “it is false to ascribe to a person a pronoun that does not correspond” with the gender they were assigned at birth. It also bans educators from sharing their pronouns with their students if those pronouns don’t match their assigned gender at birth.

• The Drag Ban, aka HB 1438: This bill, much like the one passed in Tennessee in March, makes it a crime to expose a child to any “adult live performance” deemed “patently offensive to prevailing standards.” And though the text of this bill didn’t specifically ban drag shows, First Lady Casey DeSantis made sure to clarify on Twitter that they were included.

• The Bathroom Ban, aka HB 1521: This bill requires people to use the restroom and locker room that coincides with their assigned gender at birth. Quick question: How are they planning on enforcing this one? Are we doing genital checks for everyone who enters the bathroom? You know, to make sure no one feels violated.

• The WTF, aka SB 254: Not only does this bill prohibit state funds from being used to support any type of gender-affirming care, and ban minors from receiving that care at all—this bill also grants state courts “temporary emergency jurisdiction over a child” who has received gender-affirming care. In other words: The state can take your kid if they’re trans.

During the signing ceremony, DeSantis celebrated his attempts to keep Florida “a refuge of sanity and a citadel of normalcy” (gross) behind a podium with a sign reading “Let Kids Be Kids.” But studies have found that providing trans youth with gender-affirming care strongly decreases the risk of suicide and depression. Let trans kids be trans, too—or they might not live to be adults.

 AND:

• GOP problem child Marjorie Taylor Greene announced Thursday afternoon that she will be bringing forth articles of impeachment against President Biden. Yes, you read that correctly. The Georgia representative cited Biden’s “[refusal] to enforce immigration laws” as the driving force behind the articles, saying the current administration has been working to “systematically destroy this country” since inauguration day. Obviously, this is a little desperate. But the far right’s main candidate in the upcoming election is a sexual abuser who already lost this shit once, sooo…

• Pearl Bar, Houston’s only lesbian bar, was denied an insurance policy for the first time since opening ten years ago due to the “risk” of the bar including drag shows, according to an email from an insurance underwriter. This denial comes hot on the heels of the ever-advancing drag ban making its way through the Texas legislature.
• SUR isn’t the only workplace rife with uncomfortable drama. The WNBA has sanctioned Las Vegas Aces coach Becky Hammon after an investigation found she violated the league’s Respect in the Workplace policy. Hammond was accused of intentionally trading a pregnant player off the team and asking inappropriate questions about the pregnancy. Hammon faces a two-game suspension and the Aces will lose the first pick in the 2025 draft. The player in question is Dearica Hamby who announced she was pregnant last year while the Aces celebrated their championship win. In January Hammon traded Hamby to the Los Angeles Sparks and added Candace Parker, Alysha Clark, and Cayla George to the Aces roster. Hammon stands by her decision and says the move was strictly business. Meanwhile, Hamby is back to work for the Sparks less than three months after the birth of her child. 🤯 We’ll see who has the last laugh when Hamby goes up against her former team this weekend.

DEARICA HAMBY AND HER HAMBABIES. (SCREENSHOT VIA INSTAGRAM)

• Major fashion moment for greater accessibility: Last week, British Vogue editor-in-chief Edward Enninful announced that the magazine’s May 2023 edition will be available in Braille!

• I’ve never had anything nice to say about the Philadelphia Eagles until today. In an effort to keep young girls active in youth sports, the Eagles are becoming the first NFL team to include sports bras in the equipment kit provided to girls in their flag football league. Okay, now everybody do it!

• Just when you thought you were caught up on every different flavor of feminism, a new one emerges. Refinery29 gets young people to explain “sex-negative feminism,” to the olds. (Me, I’m the olds.) It’s essentially a response to the lets-go-to-the-local-slut-walk brand of feminism popularized by millennials. As one Gen Z-er told the outlet, “It’s women being disillusioned with the overt abuse and enforcement of patriarchal standards of womanhood” made even more visible by depictions of oversexualized teens in shows like Euphoria.

• Namibia has finally decided to recognize same-sex marriages, as long as they happened in another country. Feels like they could have skipped that last part, but still! Progress!

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Hello hello, Meteor readers,

Everyone wish a happy birthday to Bobi, the world’s oldest dog. Today he celebrates 217 (dog) years of being a very good boy—or 31 human years, if you don’t feel like doing the math.

Today’s newsletter features a story we’ve got to stop becoming familiar with: a Texas woman forced to develop sepsis due to the state’s restrictive abortion ban. Plus, we’ve got Martha Stewart on Sports Illustrated, Planned Parenthood taking a stand, and Naomi Osaka shutting down some bullshit.

Let’s get into it,

Bailey Wayne Hundl

WHAT'S GOING ON

A WOMAN PROTESTS FOR ABORTION ACCESS (PHOTO BY IRFAN KHAN/LOS ANGELES TIMES VIA GETTY IMAGES)

“There’s literally nothing they could do”: Once again, Texas’ draconian abortion ban has caused a woman to develop sepsis.

Last January, Kristen Anaya, a Texas resident, was elated to hear that her in-vitro fertilization had been a success. But only four months into her pregnancy, her water broke. Anaya rushed to the hospital, but, by the time she’d arrived, had lost nearly all of her amniotic fluid. She began shaking uncontrollably, vomiting, and spiking a fever—all signs of an infection that could lead to sepsis. But the doctors were unable to perform a dilation and curettage to help her; the baby’s heart was still beating.

According to Anaya’s medical records, she went on to wait 22 hours before doctors were allowed to induce labor to deliver the unviable fetus. Medical personnel first had to contact the hospital’s termination committee—a team of hospital administrators who must approve any abortion care at the hospital—and build a case for the life-threatening nature of her pregnancy.

“I was crying, asking for help,” Anaya told ABC News. “And I remember them literally not saying anything. [The doctors and nurses] would just literally look at me and look at Stephen and they’re just blank. There’s literally nothing they could do.”

It’s now been one month since Anaya left the hospital. Since then, she has needed two dilation and curettage procedures to remove the placenta and stop her bleeding. Anaya says she is still experiencing pains and complications, as well as a still-dilated cervix. According to Dr. Aileen Gariepy, an OB/GYN and assistant professor at Weill Cornell Medical College, an early dilation and curettage could have more effectively removed the placenta while in the hospital and prevented further complications.

It would be easy to write off these horrific—but increasingly common—scenarios as a Texas thing. That’s where Amanda Zurawski was subjected to similar treatment while losing her pregnancy last summer; she’s now joined four other women in suing the state for the harms caused to them by the state’s abortion bans. But this is now an America thing: A new report from researchers at the University of California San Francisco details dozens more health complications caused by abortion bans across the country—including a patient who was denied an abortion for a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy and another who developed a severe infection after leaving the hospital.

“Medicine isn’t black and white,” said Daniel Grossman, the lead author of the report. “It’s not like suddenly you know that a patient is at a very high risk of dying in a certain situation. There’s a lot of gray and that risk will slowly change over time.”

RUDY GIULIANI DURING A REPUBLICAN GET OUT THE VOTE BUS TOUR (PHOTO BY MICHAEL M. SANTIAGO/GETTY IMAGES)

  AND:

• Birds of a feather: Rudy Giuliani, former New York City mayor and lawyer for Donald Trump, has been named in a sexual harassment suit filed by a former employee. Noelle Dunphy, who was hired to handle Giuliani’s firm’s business development, claims that when she asked if the firm had an HR department where she could file a complaint, she was told that no one would ever sue him because of his connection to then-President Trump. But Trump just lost a lawsuit for his own bad behavior, so…let’s see how well that holds up for you, Rudy!

• Nearly a year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood has officially endorsed a number of court reforms, including expanding the Supreme Court and setting term limits for justices. President and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson said “the courts have been used as a vehicle to advance a dangerous agenda against abortion rights.” Expanding the courts is a strategy many on the left—including Sen. Elizabeth Warren—have advocated for years.

• Don’t try it with Naomi Osaka! The four-time Grand Slam champion announced her pregnancy in January and had this to say for anyone doubting her commitment to her tennis career: “There are plenty of male athletes with kids that are significantly less accomplished, you might wanna worry about them instead.”

• Groundbreaking political leader Gloria Molina, the first Latina woman to hold a variety of offices (California State Assembly, Los Angeles City Council, and L.A. County Board of Supervisors, to name a few), passed away Sunday after a long battle with cancer. What an incredible life and legacy she leaves behind.

• Martha Stewart made history Monday by being the oldest woman—at age 81—to be featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated, seizing the record set by Maye Musk last year at 74. And she looks great! But as devoted SI readers know, the oldest Black woman on the cover was Tyra Banks at 45 (who, at the time, was only the third Black woman cover star). Basically I’m asking: When is Dionne Warwick’s shoot happening??

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Happy Bey Day, Meteor readers,

Last night was a huge spectacle, and no, I’m not talking about Trump’s CNN town hall—though more on that below. I’m talking about the first night of Beyoncé’s “Renaissance” tour: the sexy bee outfit, the enormous disco horse statue, and, of course, the loving homage to Black ballroom culture.

LIKE, COME ON! LOOK AT HER! (PHOTO BY KEVIN MAZUR/GETTY IMAGES FOR PARKWOOD)

In today’s newsletter, Rebecca Carroll sits down with Nicole Chung to discuss her new memoir about adoption and loss.

But first, the news.

Desperately clamoring for tickets,

Bailey Wayne Hundl

WHAT'S GOING ON

• For some reason, CNN thought it would be a good idea to let Trump speak on air for over an hour, just one day after he was found liable for the sexual abuse and defamation of E. Jean Carroll. (Predictably, he lied about everything from the 2020 election to January 6 to gun laws in Chicago.) CNN also thought it’d be a good idea to get Kaitlan Collins to moderate the discussion, a woman who until 2017 reported for the Tucker Carlson-founded news site Daily Caller (for which she wrote this skin-crawling article ranking Syrian refugees by their hotness). With less than two years to go until the presidential election, we have got to be better this time around.

• “White nationalists are bad” should be a very easy thing to say, right? Well, apparently not so for Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), who claimed in an interview published Monday, “Democrats are attacking the military [by] saying we need to get out the white extremists, the white nationalists.” When a reporter asked in response, “Do you believe they should allow white nationalists in the military?” Tuberville said, “Well, they call them that. I call them Americans.”

• Today, the FDA finally ended its decades-long restrictions against blood donations from gay and bisexual men, recommending instead a series of “individual risk-based questions” that will be the same for every donor, regardless of sexual orientation or gender.

• A new report from the National Abortion Federation released Thursday shows a dramatic increase in anti-abortion harassment from 2021 to 2022: namely, a 229% increase in stalking of abortion providers and clinic staffers, a 231% increase in burglaries, and a 100% increase in clinic arsons across the country. This increase may be sharp, but as Stassa Edwards reported for The Meteor earlier this spring, it hasn’t come out of nowhere; it’s been on the rise since the 80s.

MEGAN THEE STALLION SHOWING UP TO COURT TO TESTIFY IN THE TRIAL OF TORY LANEZ (PHOTO BY JASON ARMOND/LOS ANGELES TIMES VIA GETTY IMAGES)

• Tuesday was truly such a win for victims of abuse: E. Jean Carroll got her $5 million from Trump; rapper Tory Lanez, who was found guilty in December of shooting Megan Thee Stallion, was denied a request for a new trial; and the judge for Marilyn Manson’s defamation case against former partner Evan Rachel Wood dismissed his claims that Wood and her friend “recruited” women to come forward with sexual assault allegations against him. Give a feminist litigator a kiss today!

• Speaking of feminist litigators: Shout out to British lawyer and activist Dr. Shola Mos-Shogbamimu for giving the world a perfect case study in how to respond when people fail (or refuse) to pronounce your name correctly.

• Quick health note: The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force now recommends regular mammograms for women over 40 (rather than 50, the previously recommended age)—especially for Black women, who have shown to be 40 percent more likely to die from breast cancer than white women are.

• And finally, event alert! Don’t miss The 19th Represents Summit, a three-day hybrid event next week from our friends over at The 19th, exploring the intersections of gender, tech, justice, and economic mobility. They’ve got Arlan Hamilton and Tarana Burke, y’all! You can RSVP to attend in-person (in Chicago) or online here.

CULTURE CHANGERS

On Loving and Losing Your Adoptive Parents

BY REBECCA CARROLL

Nicole Chung on her new memoir A Living Remedy

PHOTO COURTESY OF NICOLE CHUNG

Nicole Chung has established herself as a queen of the literary memoir. Born to Korean immigrants and later adopted by a white couple in rural Oregon, Chung’s first memoir, All You Can Ever Know, chronicled her experience as a transracial adoptee, and the search for her remaining birth family in the United States. Now, her latest, A Living Remedy, published last month, is already garnering rave reviews. It tells the gut-wrenching story of losing her two adoptive parents back to back, in 2018 and 2020. As a transracial adoptee, I am moved and astonished by how Chung continues to expand on the adoption narrative (or the perception of it) in such succinct and generous ways. I sat down with her for The Meteor to talk about all of it.

Rebecca Carroll: In your new book, A Living Remedy, you contemplate whether or not you would have become a writer had you not been adopted. What is it about your experience as an adoptee that made you become a writer? 

Nicole Chung: Maybe you’ll relate to this as an adoptee and a storyteller, but you're always telling that formative story over and over whether you feel like talking about it or not. There were certainly many years when I didn't want to share it or tried to find ways to share less of it. But even with the original story my adoptive parents told me about my adoption, which I later learned wasn't quite the truth, I was always struck by the power that can be found in retelling or reclaiming a story, if you're willing and brave enough to reconsider it.

RC: It makes me think that as adoptees, we are constantly trying to write our identities into existence. When did you know that you were going to become not just a writer, but a writer of such personal stories? 

NC: I grew up not seeing anything like my experience in literature. Even stories written about adoption where it's a plot point, I often find bears little to no resemblance to my experience. And it's hard because I was very worried about, and honestly still am, being pigeonholed as this Korean adoptee writer. At the same time, it felt as though I had to write the first book [All You Can Ever Know] before I could write anything else. I just needed to see something like myself in literature to write more of it.

RC: There are moments throughout A Living Remedy where you say, “as an adoptee…”—and every single time I read that, it was thrilling because it felt like you were writing directly to me, while also expanding the adoptee narrative. Were you writing to fellow adoptees specifically?  

NC: With my first book every time I started to lose my nerve or just think, “This is beyond me. I can't tell this story,” or “Who will care?” I thought about fellow adoptees, and that is what kept me going. A Living Remedy is completely different. It’s not that I didn't think about the wider audience with All You Can Ever Know—unlike some people in publishing, I was always convinced there was an audience for adoptee stories. A Living Remedy scared me, though, because it is just a much broader book. I'm writing about many things people call universal when white writers do it—grief, loss, illness. But because of my identity, I did wonder, will I be allowed to do this?

RC: Your main subjects, though, your parents, are white—how did that factor in?

NC: The story of my family until me is very much a white working-class story. But to be in the family and not have that same experience was one of the things that I wanted to write about, while not making either my race or my parents' race the focus. An interviewer asked me recently if my parents being white made me feel distant from them or their financial hardship, and I just didn't know how to respond. In every way, I thought of them as my parents, except for the basic biological facts. So, of course, I always felt I was part of their experience.

PHOTO COURTESY OF NICOLE CHUNG

RC: There’s a passage in the book when you’re in college, about to get married, and your mother accuses you of being embarrassed by them—she says you just see her and your dad as “poor white trash,” which took you off guard. How did you see them?

NC: I thought of them as my parents. I thought of them as the people who loved and raised me. I was just beginning to understand the educational and class differences that might happen. I think this is part of almost everybody's coming-of-age story, where you learn to see your parents as whole people, not just your parents. The changing nature of that parent-child relationship is a big part of the book, partly because of the caregiving role I had to step into when both my parents were ill.

RC: In one instance, you describe college as stepping into a foothold that your parents couldn't follow you into—what did you mean by that?

NC: I had never been away from my parents, where I grew up in this small town in Oregon for longer than a month at summer camp. I wasn't thinking about the fact that they couldn't go with me, or that if I gained education and class privilege, that I wouldn't be able to bring them with me. I was still thinking, “If I make it, they make it.” Of course, I had my own ambition, things that I wanted and hoped for, but I very much thought of myself as doing this for my family.

RC: Where did that ambition come from? Because you could have just stayed in the town.

NC: Oh, no, I could not have. After my first book came out, someone who had gone to my same church said, “I read your book. It was interesting. That's just not really what I think our community was like for me.” And I said, “Well, of course it wasn't like that for you. You are a white guy. There's a reason that you and I had very different experiences in that community.” Honestly, not to sound dramatic, I thought it might kill me if I stayed.

RC: How do you feel now about the place where you grew up?

NC: There are beautiful things about it…but it's not home. I never really belonged there, and I know that. I would rather not give racism this power in my narrative, but it's true that as soon as I started hearing slurs on the playground, I started thinking about leaving. I think also it was my parents, and especially my mother, who prepared me to go.

RC: I was so struck by your relationship with your mother, and the resolute way in which you write about her love—what  have you brought of her mothering to your own?

NC: She was a very devout woman. Her deepest faith was in God. But after that, she had so much faith in me as her child. It's not like our relationship was perfect. It was very complicated. Adoption was one of many things that complicated it. But I never doubted her love or her faith in me. And I think that made me braver than I would've been otherwise. If I can bring anything of her parenting to mine, that's what I think about the most. I want my kids to grow up with that sense of reassurance.

RC: In the book, you use the term “unadopted” to describe what it felt like, in part, to lose both your adoptive parents—can you say more about that?

NC: I'm not sure it's the term that I'd use now to describe my current state. But my mother was dying—my last link, the last person who knew me as a child or remembered what it was like for me growing up. It was just sinking in that I was going to be carrying these memories of my parents and my grandparents, all alone in a sense. What does it even mean to have lost two families—to have lost one family through adoption, and then the one that adopted me? What does it mean to be an adoptee when your adopted family is gone?

RC: If not unadopted, then what?

NC: I am still an adoptee. That will always be part of who I am. My parent’s love for me will always shape who I am. I was then and still am really sad that my time belonging to that family is over, and there's no getting it back. There's no finding it with other people. It's just over.

RC: How do you bear it?

NC: I think there was a time when I wasn't bearing it. I remember just this deep depression I fell into after my father died, and there were echoes of that when my mother was dying. Just the helplessness and the rage, and it felt unbearable. [But] I knew that by living, I could remember [my parents]. It finally became more important to me to be able to live and remember them than to live, punishing myself for what I couldn't do for them. And I think that's still how I bear it, because when I was able to do that and grieve in that way, they felt close again.

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Good evening, Meteor readers,

I’m coming to you live from Houston, Texas, where approximately five metric fucktons of water have poured from the heavens today.

But of course, that’s not today’s top headline: Trump has lost another court case and, thrillingly, a woman he abused has (finally!) gotten some measure of justice. We’ve got that story in today’s newsletter—as well as everything from feminist Pulitzers to trans romance.

Drenched yet overjoyed,

Bailey Wayne Hundl

WHAT'S GOING ON

Who’s the “complete con job” now?: After less than three hours of deliberation today, a jury unanimously found Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing and then defaming magazine writer E. Jean Carroll. Because this was a civil case, Trump faces no criminal consequences, but Carroll has been awarded about $5 million in damages.

Carroll had testified that in the mid-1990s, Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room. At the time, fear of retaliation kept her from coming forward, but as she testified Thursday, the stories of the #MeToo movement made her realize that “staying silent does not work;” in 2019, while Trump was still president, she came forward with her story. Trump denied the charges, calling Carroll “a complete con job” and her story “a hoax”—claims for which he’s now been found guilty of defamation.

The two-week trial has itself been gutting—not just because of the details about the assault itself, but because of Carroll’s unflinching candor about the fallout from the attack (she hasn’t had sex since, she revealed in her deposition) and from coming forward against a president (the social-media backlash was swift). “It’s very hard to get up in the morning and receive those messages, that you are way too ugly to go on living,” she said. The jury also viewed a deposition taken in October in which, among other things, Trump claims Carroll enjoyed being sexually abused. (Content warning.)

The trial wasn’t a complete win; the jury did not find Trump liable for rape. But headlines saying he was found “not guilty” are getting it wrong, as Philip Gourevitch of The New Yorker pointed out on Twitter; civil courts don’t issue guilty verdicts at all, and this judgment simply means that “the charge was not proven to the jury’s satisfaction.”

Carroll—now 79—has thrown herself fully into this case, and the outcome could have huge ripple effects. First, on the presidential election, in which her assailant is still his party’s front-runner. And next, on society’s expectations of rape victims, who have often been dismissed if they don’t scream, or been judged for what they wear. Carroll’s calm dismissal of those biases (“he raped me, whether I screamed or not”) sends a powerful message to other survivors that they, too, may be believed.

And one last note: If Carroll had been assaulted in almost any other state, this trial may never have happened. She was only able to pursue legal action thanks to the 2022 passage of the Adult Survivors Act, which provides a one-year window during which sexual assault survivors can sue regardless of preexisting statutes of limitations. Such laws currently exist only in New York and California—but as this week proves, it’d be a good idea to pass them everywhere.

E. JEAN CARROLL LEAVES THE MANHATTAN FEDERAL COURT FOLLOWING HER TRIAL (PHOTO BY STEPHANIE KEITH/GETTY IMAGES)

  AND:

• A gunman killed eight people at an outlet mall in Allen, Texas, on Saturday. The shooter, a white supremacist with swastika tattoos, owned multiple guns, all of which were purchased legally. Of the eight victims, three were children; the youngest was 3-year old James Cho, whose parents were also killed. There have been over 200 mass shootings in the U.S. so far this year—one, on average, every 16 hours. Take action here.

• Also in Texas: In a surprise victory for gun reform, two Texas Republicans voted with Democrats Monday to pass HB 2744, which would raise the legal purchasing age for semi-automatic weapons from 18 to 21, onto a full vote in the House. It’s hard to see such a small win as significant—but it is.

• The livestreamed “Drag Isn’t Dangerous” telethon for LGBTQ charities raised over $500,000 on Sunday. ICYMI: Charlize Theron said she’ll “fuck anybody up who’s trying to fuck” with the queer community. Marcia Gay Harden revealed that all her children are queer. And Michelle Visage summed up the evening best: “Imagine a world where dancers are told they can’t dance; imagine a world where artists are told they cannot take paint to canvas…because it is ‘bad for children.’ That is what is happening to drag right now.” Watch the full livestream, donate to the cause, and enjoy.

• In related news: Zooey Zephyr, Montana’s first openly trans elected official, got engaged to her girlfriend at a queer prom event on Friday! It was ridiculously romantic.

• The WGA writer’s strike finishes its first full week today; by Parade’s count, 22 shows have already been taken off the air indefinitely, including favorites like Saturday Night Live, Abbott Elementary, Yellowjackets, and Stranger Things. Will studios let all of Hollywood close down just to avoid paying writers a fair wage? I guess we’ll find out!

• Finally, can we take a moment to recognize some of the phenomenal journalists who earned Pulitzer Prizes yesterday for crucial reporting on the issues we care about? Congratulations to The Washington Post’s Caroline Kitchener, who covers abortion; The Atlantic’s Caitlin Dickerson, who blew the lid off family separation, and podcaster Connie Walker, who investigated residential schools (listen to them both on our podcast last year); and finally, Meteor collective member Mona Chalabi, honored for her New York Times illustrations. Brava!

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Ahoy, Meteor readers,

Tomorrow is International Midwives’ Day. What’s it like to be a midwife at this particular moment in time in the U.S.? Dr. Heather Irobunda traveled to Texas to find out. In today’s newsletter, she reflects on her own family’s history of midwifery, and meets a woman at the center of it all.

But first, the news.

Celebrating midwives everywhere,

Bailey Wayne Hundl

WHAT'S GOING ON

Feeling safe vs. being safe: In a city with ever-diminishing access to affordable housing, a Black man named Jordan Neely entered the subway Monday night, lamenting the intense hunger and thirst people experiencing homelessness face. In response, a white man placed him in a chokehold; Neely was taken to a hospital, where he died from a “compression of neck.”

How did we become a society that views “behaving erratically,” the phrase many news outlets have used to describe Neely’s actions, as an act justifying killing? How have simple actions like ringing a doorbell or pulling into a driveway become threats? How was the man who was recorded putting Neely in a chokehold allowed to leave freely after some brief questioning? (The incident has since been ruled a homicide, two days afterward, but no criminal charges have been filed.)

As this tweet from Sara Hinkley points out, “people don't deserve to FEEL safe, they deserve to be safe. You don't get to dispense death to someone...because you were stopped from FEELING safe.” The New York Coalition for the Homeless released a statement Wednesday saying the fact that the alleged assailant faced no consequences “evidences the City’s callous indifference to the lives of those who are homeless and psychiatrically unwell.” You can donate to the Coalition’s efforts to provide food, housing, and crisis services to people experiencing homelessness here.

  AND:

• Canadian soccer player Janine Beckie, one of many players forced to sit out the 2023 Women’s World Cup as a result of an ACL tear, is calling for an increase in funding for research into women’s sports injuries—specifically, to study the question of why women athletes are up to six times more likely to suffer ACL injuries than men. Beckie told Reuters she believes that if men were experiencing the same rates, the research would have been done already: “You’re not giving the female players the same level of resources.”

• Before her Monday night concert in Nashville, Tennessee, singer Hayley Kiyoko was warned by local law enforcement that including drag performers in her act could result in legal action against her. So what did the lesbian icon do? She put them onstage anyway, saying on Instagram afterwards, “We will find ways to continue to be our authentic selves…no matter how hard they make it.”

• Remember Tricia Cotham, the North Carolina state representative who switched to the Republican party out of nowhere last month? Yesterday—exactly one year after tweeting in favor of codifying Roe—she voted in favor of a 12-week abortion ban. Whatever happened to the person who once told lawmakers the decision to have an abortion is “not up to any of you in this chamber”?

• Britain’s having their first coronation in 70 years this Saturday. Seems like a great time to re-listen to this episode of UNDISTRACTED with Brittany Packnett Cunningham about why the royals still exist, anyway.

• Wanna see some joyful defiance? The Resistance Revival Chorus occupied Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Tallahassee office on Wednesday, protesting Florida’s creeping march of anti-LGBTQ legislation by singing a chorus of, “This love that I have, DeSantis didn’t give it to me.” Take us to CHURCH!

MODERN MEDICINE

“Midwives are for all of us”

BY DR. HEATHER IROBUNDA

For International Midwives’ Day, an OB-GYN reflects on her grandmother’s work—and meets a San Antonio midwife providing the same care now

THE AUTHOR'S GREAT-GRANDMOTHER, A “GRAND MIDWIFE,” SURROUNDED BY FAMILY (PHOTO COURTESY OF DR. HEATHER IROBUNDA)

In Jamaica, many years ago, my great-grandmother Helen Case was a midwife—what some people would call a Grand midwife or a community midwife. I didn’t know anything about her work until the last couple of years, though: Her history was erased, even within my family, despite the fact that she had delivered all of her grandchildren, many great-grandchildren, and a lot of folks in the community.

There was just so much stigma attached to both Black midwives and to the people who used them; the idea was that only poor folks had their babies in homes with “unskilled” midwives and that, if you could afford it, you should go to a hospital.

As an OB-GYN, I think about that history and wonder what she would think of the fact that I am a physician who does the same type of work that she did so many years ago. Obviously, in her day, there weren’t many opportunities for a woman, let alone a Black woman, to go to medical school, and delivering babies in Black communities was work for women who looked like us. I think she would find it interesting that that work has become very regulated and formalized, because the Grand midwives learned from the traditions passed down by those before them, not formal schooling.

And I think she would find it strange that despite that formal training, outcomes for Black birthing people are so poor.

But her history should allow us to recognize that we all—doctors, certified nurse midwives, and doulas—have roles to play in providing good reproductive healthcare, even if those roles are different. (Doulas, for example, can provide important support to patients but cannot deliver babies.)

It may sound odd coming from an OB-GYN, but I personally think midwives should be the entry point into obstetric health care for a lot of patients. That’s how it is in many other countries (especially in Europe) if you don’t have other medical issues; it's only if a pregnancy gets more complicated that you see an obstetrician.

Here’s why: The medical model of providing obstetric care is very much problem- and solution-based. But pregnancy is not a problem, it's a condition. It's just what a body does. And in midwifery, I’ve found that care can be more focused on the idea of pregnancy as one of the body’s natural conditions.

So, during births, midwives are usually lower intervention, and can use certain techniques that may make it a bit more comfortable for patients having vaginal births.

And, just as midwives are able to understand how to care for normal pregnancies and birth, Black midwives in particular have insight to our communities and some of the social factors that impact our pregnancies and birth experiences.

That’s one reason why, as midwife Nikki McIver-Brown pointed out when I visited her in her San Antonio birthing center last fall, it’s so urgent that we make space for more Black midwives. (The other is that the maternal mortality rate for Black patients is more than twice as high as for white women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.) Midwives can help—but only seven percent (up from 2% a few years ago) of them, according to the American College of Nurse-Midwives, are Black.

WATCH: DR. HEATHER IROBUNDA MEETS NIKKI MCIVER-BROWN AT HER BIRTHING CENTER.

There is, however, a stereotype that using a midwife is something white people and people with money do. But we need to know that midwifery is not only accessible to people with money. Midwives are often covered by insurance, including by Medicaid. I also want people to know that, even when a pregnancy becomes medically complicated—which is the case with some of my patients—doctors can work in tandem with midwives. (I’m personally lucky enough to work in a hospital with a strong midwifery department, and most of our patients birth their babies with a midwife’s assistance.)

And, as with my great-grandmother, there is a rich history of Black midwifery in the States which is only just now being excavated. Seeing more Black certified nurse midwives today would be an important bridge to celebrating the contributions of the Grand midwives.

Tomorrow is International Midwives’ Day. On it, I’m thinking of my grandmother, and of the many midwives—like Nikki, whose video I hope you’ll watch—who have followed in her footsteps.

Midwifery belongs to all of us. We just have to learn about it, like I did.

Dr. Heather Irobunda is an OB-GYN in Queens, New York, and one of the founders of Obstetricians for Reproductive Justice.

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