Good evening Meteor readers,

So I assume we’ve all taken a look at Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan by now and had time to run our own numbers and shake our fists at the sky, wondering why this man won’t hit the delete button on everyone’s student debt. Perhaps that’s overly idealistic of me—but it’s equally idealistic for federal loan programs to believe paying $400 a month until the year 3000 is any way to live.

BIG SHOUT OUT TO THE ONE PERSON ON THE RIGHT WHO BROUGHT SNACKS TO THE STUDENT LOAN BORROWERS RALLY IN DC THIS WEEK. (IMAGE BY PAUL MORIGI VIA GETTY IMAGES)

But a win is still a win, and this was a win since activists have been working to bring this possibility to life for over a decade. When some of us first started college, “loan forgiveness” wasn’t even a phrase anyone used. And now, it’s the talk of the town! Imagine how much we could get if we pushed for a few more years…But I digress. (Trust me, I could drone on for days about this.)

Today we’re loaning you our overview of the news at an introductory rate of 0% interest for the full term of your time here. Let’s roll.

Swiping my abacus,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

Idaho again: A judge has placed an injunction on a portion of Idaho’s near-total abortion ban. Although most of the ban goes into effect today, the portion of the law allowing felony charges for physicians providing abortion services is on hold. According to Politico, it “does not provide adequate protection for physicians who perform abortions during a medical emergency, and therefore runs afoul of federal law guaranteeing patients the right to treatment when their health or life is at risk.” But people who help abortion patients in Idaho can still be sued for $20,000, and nearly all abortions are now illegal in the state. You can always help by donating to the state’s local abortion fund.

The blue wave that could: The results are in from Tuesday’s primaries in New York and Florida. And surprisingly, it’s not all bad news! Staten Island (which I’m being told is part of New York???) had its highest turnout for a Democratic primary ever. In Florida, an Afro-Cuban Gen Z nominee, Maxwell Alejandro Frost, is almost assured to be the first Gen Zer in Congress after beating out more experienced candidates. And Aramis Ayala, who went toe to toe with former Florida governor Rick Scott over the death penalty, secured the nomination for her state’s attorney general. We have a long way to go before November 8—but this is promising. It shows that people are fed up and ready to fight back.

What the actual fuck: A Missouri school district has reinstated corporal punishment (specifically, hitting with paddles) as a last resort to discipline students. And if that’s not wild enough for you: this proposal was brought to the district by parents who wanted their children to be physically disciplined at school and asked for a vote on reinstating the policy. (Families will still be able to opt-out of the new “paddling” policy by filling out a form.) Now I have no children, so maybe I am missing some sort of logic here, BUT I did once write a lengthy piece about the roots of child-hitting, which go back to the time of colonization and enslavement. The TL;DR is that hitting as a form of discipline in the U.S. arose as a direct response to acculturation and fear of worse violence enacted by the “dominant racial group.” Parents, specifically parents of color, feared what would happen to their children if they misbehaved in front of white authority figures. So the behavior was curbed (to the extreme) inside the home in the hopes of achieving some degree of safety. So what exactly are we teaching kids in Missouri (a state with a 31% Black and Latine population) about themselves when we allow them to be hit in school by an authority figure? Make it make sense.

AND:

• The police chief who grossly mishandled the response to the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, has been fired after a unanimous vote from the school board. The real shock here is that this man still had a job to vote on after that tragedy.

• A young athlete named Fischer Wells helped start a girl’s field hockey team at her school in Louisville. But because she is transgender—in fact, the only openly trans athlete in her state—she’s banned from playing on the team.

• The political director of anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life has been arrested on suspicion of soliciting a minor, Jessica Valenti reports. In response to the arrest, the group has been removing all mention of the former director from their website.

• An LA Times investigation has unearthed two years of text messages between racist police officers who “joked” about killing Black children. To borrow an oft-repeated line from my youth: “Hell is hot.”

WHAT WE'RE READING, WATCHING, AND LISTENING TO THIS WEEKEND

If you don’t plan to spend your weekend watching the MTV VMAs (yes, that program is still running, and sadly I live quite close to where it’s happening), here are some culture offerings we’re enjoying on our days off:

• There’s lots to unpack as far as thoughts and opinions on Biden’s loan forgiveness plan. Here are some interesting takes to consider.

• “Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist,” is streaming on Netflix. It covers the story of college football player Manti Te’o, who infamously played through the deaths of his grandmother and girlfriend, only to later find out that his girlfriend never really existed. Even if you lived through this particular news story the twists and turns it takes are absolutely wild and even polarizing.

• Getting pumped for the U.S. Open? Enjoy this story about Black tennis players keeping the sport alive as they compete and train in underfunded facilities.

• Season 3 has already been out for a few weeks, but Mindy Kaling’s “Never Have I Ever” on Netflix is a feel-good comedy with low stakes—but high drama—that will make you laugh and cry with its hilarious depiction of the South Asian American teen experience.

• This week’s excellent episode of “UNDISTRACTED” features two doctors explaining precisely what we’re getting wrong in our response to the latest epidemic.

• I know that you are absolutely foaming at the mouth to support women’s sports and your time has arrived. There are two WNBA playoff games this Sunday, Seattle vs. Las Vegas and Connecticut vs. Chicago. You can catch both games on ESPN.

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Valar morghulis Meteor readers,

If that greeting confused you, then I gather you’re not one of the 10 million viewers who tuned in to watch House of the Dragon (the Game of Thrones prequel series) on Sunday. Which is fine, we all have our own thing, and apparently, my thing involves fawning over Matt Smith in a long flowing white wig as he’s waffling between villain and unloved elf man.

My doctoral thesis on how this fictional universe is not anti-feminist is forthcoming. For today’s edition, we’re flying our dragons over the glittering sea of news, so let’s get to it.

Valar dohaeris,

Shannon Melero (of house Targaryan)

P.S. If you’re a New York, Florida, or Oklahoma resident, it’s an election day for you. If you haven’t already, find your polling station and VOTE. You can take this newsletter with you and read it in line. 

WHAT'S GOING ON

We’re going to miss you: Dr. Anthony Fauci, a beacon of hope and common sense during the early days of COVID, announced Monday that he would be stepping down from his position as White House Chief Medical Adviser in December. He is NOT retiring but simply “[pursuing] other directions” in his career—which is impressive because he is fully 81 years old and has committed five decades of his life to public service. But in the government, at least: his watch has ended (sorry, last Thrones reference, I promise). Naturally, haters in the Republican party are still threatening an investigation into Fauci’s exact role in the government’s less-than-stellar pandemic response. Here’s what I know: it wasn’t this elderly man who was encouraging me to drink bleach and continue working as if COVID wasn’t real.

AND:

• Cara Chance, a librarian in Lafayette Parish, Louisiana, is at risk of losing her job after creating an LGBTQ+ book display in June for Pride month. Chance was told that her arrangement of titles such as Lawn Boy and Princess Princess Ever After violated a policy forbidding “cultural displays.” Her supporters have been extremely vocal and are awaiting the final decision from the local parish library board. These are houses of free books, for Pete’s sake!

• Four years after his conviction, rapist Brock Turner is back on the radar as TikTok and Facebook “whisper networks” are popping up in Ohio to warn women of Turner’s whereabouts. One post reported by VICE reads, “He is frequenting bars in [Dayton]. Do not let him leave with an intoxicated woman. Inform the women who he is.”

• New York’s largest utilities provider, Con Edison, has been dumping hot, toxic wastewater into the Hudson River, a New York Times investigation reveals.

• Another massive win for the National Women’s Soccer League! The League’s championship game will be aired on CBS during primetime instead of its previous death-sentence time slot of noon. How’d this happen? INVESTMENT. Ally Financial increased its “media investment” with CBS in order to secure a better time slot for players and fans and to really drive the point home to all those assholes who say no one watches or cares about women’s sports. The game airs on October 29, so mark it in your calendars right now and take the time to show up for athletes still fighting for better wages.

• Congratulations to our neighbors across the pond; England and Wales will now permanently allow pregnant people to order and access abortion pills from home without having to go to a clinic. Cheers!

• The Biden administration is closing in on a student loan relief planwhich may cancel up to $10,000 in debt for borrowers making less than $125,000 annually. Please, Joe, my guy, my brother in not-Christ, just cancel it all. My bank account and I are begging you.

• Twitter’s former security chief is blowing the whistle on the bird app’s “negligent security practices” and failure to “properly estimate the number of bots on its platform.” With elections (and election disinformation) coming up: Eyes wide open, friends.

LET KIDS CHOOSE

Teens also need abortion rights. Why have we made it so hard for them? 

BY CINDI LEIVE

A CALIFORNIA TEEN HAVING TO DO THE HARD WORK OF FIGHTING FOR HER RIGHTS BECAUSE THE ADULTS KEEP DROPPING THE BALL. (IMAGE BY RONAN TIVONY VIA GETTY IMAGES)

You probably read the headlines last week: A “parentless” 16-year-old in Florida had been denied the right to end her pregnancy by a court that found her “too immature” to make that decision. “I have no words…just rage,” read one typical comment on The Meteor’s post on the subject. “Too immature to have an abortion but mature enough to be a mother at 16?” asked another. “DA FUCK is this ruling?”

Excellent question, but if you think that the answer starts on June 24, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade—nope. For decades, teens have had to jump through flaming hoops of humiliation to end their pregnancies. Florida, in fact, has not outlawed abortion—but it is among the at least 36 states with measures requiring teens to notify or secure the permission of one or both parents in order to receive care.

The first time I got enraged about this was almost three decades ago, in the 1990s, when, as a fresh-out-of-college editorial assistant, I sat in an editorial meeting at Glamour magazine and pitched a story on the newly emerging parental notification laws. (The knowledge that I wouldn’t have been at that conference-room table at all without the abortion I’d been able to get my freshman year was a motivating if unspoken factor.) Since then, most states have rolled out notification or consent laws—with “judicial bypass” exceptions that allow teens who don’t want to or can’t tell their parents to petition a judge instead for permission to end a pregnancy. The laws became the norm, and many Americans got used to them—an apparently “acceptable” infringement of rights, like the repro equivalent of a drinking age.

Except they’re not. The American Academy of Pediatrics opposes these restrictions, pointing out that most teens who can tell a parent about their abortion decision do (I did), and those who opt not to have solid and sometimes terrifying reasons. Plus, the judicial bypass process, meant to make things better, is only as good as the judge you get: In one study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health in 2019, teenagers who went through that system in Texas described it as “intimidating” and “scary,” full of judges who “preached” at them. “We found the bypass process functions as a form of punishment and allows state actors to humiliate adolescents for their personal decisions,” concluded the authors. Just six months ago, another Florida judge denied a 17-year-old an abortion, citing her low GPA as justification. (Don’t try to think through the logic.)

Now the horror of post-Roe America has made things worse. For one thing, judicial bypass could disappear as an option, potentially even in states where abortion is legal. And if abortion is illegal in a state, teenagers there are less likely than adults to have money to travel out of state; less likely to be able to rent a car in their name; and less likely to be able to find a telehealth option, usually only available to those over 18.

In other words, it’s bad. But—it’s been bad. And this is another reminder that, as Monica Simpson of SisterSong puts it, Roe was the floor. We don’t want to return to a world where legal abortion exists only for the wealthy, the white, or the appropriately “mature,” whatever that means. We want, and need, access for everyone, teenagers included.

We should never have gotten used to less.

Everyone needs abortion funds. Teens really need abortion funds. Find your local one at abortionfunds.org.

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Hello, hello, hello Meteor readers,

I’m sliding into your inbox this evening in a reflective mood for two very good reasons. The first being that I’m currently reading a book about breathing (recommend), and it’s really got me wondering if I’ve been doing it wrong the entire time.

The second is the Q&A in today’s newsletter, which has been like a perfectly cooked steak for my mind since I read the first draft; I just keep coming back to it. My wonderful and talented colleague Samhita Mukhopadhyay spoke to journalist Nona Willis Aronowitz about her latest book,  “Bad Sex: Truth, Pleasure and an Unfinished Revolution.” It’s a conversation about the philosophical dilemma of being a heterosexual feminist, (which, yes, is possible).

But before all that exciting stuff, an amuse bouche of news.

Questioning everything,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

Say what ya need to say: Once again, Mike Pence is being given a chance to be more than a stain on history and is doing everything in his power to screw it up. Speaking at a college conference on Wednesday, Pence said that he would consider testifying before the January 6 committee if invited. But he stopped short of giving an absolute yes, despite admitting that “the American people deserve to know what happened.” We do, Mike! And this will I won’t I game you’re playing isn’t cute or noble or anything other than frustrating. If you want the good guy points, get in the chair and tell us the truth.

Bad brother: Embattled former New York governor Andrew Cuomo will be allowed to keep the $5 million he earned from his book about leading the state through season one of the pandemic. In case you can’t remember why this is a big deal: Cuomo used state resources to write the book, including having some of his staff work on it during office hours, an ethics committee ruled that the profit should be put back into state funds. And contrary to the account he gave in his masturbatory memoir, Cuomo was also found to have mismanaged the pandemic. Also, we’ve really given up on questioning him about that whole serial sexual harassment thing, huh?

Let's never talk about this again: The NFL and NFLPA have come to a final settlement agreement with Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson. Originally, an arbitrator had ruled to suspend Watson for six games due to the 24 civil lawsuits filed against him alleging sexual misconduct (nearly all of which have been settled outside of court). After an appeal process initiated by commissioner Roger Goodell, Watson will now have to miss 11 games and be hit with a $5 million fine. As someone who perpetually holds out hope that all sports can be better, this is not enough. I understand the punishment is lenient because there were no criminal charges or arrests made but at some point, the NFLPA should draw a line in the sand (I repeat 24 civil lawsuits). It is disappointing they felt anything less than a full season suspension was adequate. Watson still maintains his innocence and claims that he “never assaulted or disrespected anyone.”

AND: 

• Liz Cheney is taking her primary loss on the chin and considering a run for an even bigger office.

• A 🏳️‍🌈Wisconsin 🏳️‍🌈 school 🏳️‍🌈 board 🏳️‍🌈 has 🏳️‍🌈 banned 🏳️‍🌈 teachers 🏳️‍🌈 from 🏳️‍🌈 displaying 🏳️‍🌈 the 🏳️‍🌈 pride 🏳️‍🌈 flag.

• Angelina Jolie is suing the FBI over their failure to fulfill a Freedom of Information Act she filed in 2016 pertaining to an incident of alleged child abuse carried out by Brad Pitt (that he denies).

• In a surprising display of solidarity, USA Gymnastics president Li Li Leung is saying there is “no question” that a state’s abortion laws will factor into whether it can be chosen to host major competitions.

• Book banning is still happening, and it’s getting weird. A school district in Texas has pulled 41 books, including all versions of the Bible, a graphic adaptation of “Anne Frank’s Diary,” and “The Bluest Eye.”  Parents and the local school board first challenged every book on the list last school year after state officials launched an investigation into the presence of sexually explicit books. All 41 pulled books are now undergoing a second review to see if they are safe enough to be returned to shelves. But I gather once the school board figures out the allegorical references made in the book of Psalms, the Bible won’t be making any reappearances.

• The Puerto Rico Status Act—a bill providing the framework for a vote on Puerto Rico’s independence or further annexation by the U.S.—is stalled due to so-called “outsiders.” One such outsider is Power 4 Puerto Rico, a group representing people from the island and the diaspora, has asked that the proceedings be discussed in public and made available in Spanish, so voters know what precisely is being offered in the act. Doesn’t sound like stalling, as much as asking for a fair process

LET'S TALK ABOUT SEX

When “Men Are Trash” Is Not Enough

According to Bad Sex, if you are going to date men and be a feminist about it, you should ask yourself why.

BY SAMHITA MUKHOPADHYAY

THE TRUE MAGIC OF BOOKS THAT MAKE YOU THINK. (PHOTO BY COURTESY OF NONA WILLIS ARONOWITZ)

Feminists have generally been interested in—and for—women’s sexual freedom. But what happens when sexual liberation—understood as women’s freedom to choose how, when, why, and with whom she has sex—is not enough? That’s exactly what my good friend Nona Willis Aronowitz’s new book “Bad Sex: Truth, Pleasure and an Unfinished Revolution” tackles. Part memoir, partly reported, part historiography, the book investigates a brutal truth: how can we sometimes be as free as can be and still unsatisfied in our sexual and love lives?

I talked to Nona last week at her book launch. This is a shortened version of our riveting (if I do say so myself!) conversation.

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: At what point did you realize you wanted to write a book about s-e-x?

Nona Willis Aronowitz: I consider myself a journalist. I've written on a lot of different topics, but ultimately I kept coming back to gender and sexuality over and over again, especially around 2017 when my life was a total mess and also #metoo was happening, and there was this renewed conversation about sex and pleasure.

The book is a seamless combination of memoir and history. What was the process of piecing that together?

My journey is genuinely connected to reading about all this stuff at the same time things were happening to me. I was up in the library reading about Emma Goldman [and her nonmonogamy] just as I was grappling with nonmonogamy, and I was reading about Dana Densmore and the celibates [who believed the path to feminist liberation was to withhold sex from men] just as I was taking a break from sex. So it was actually an intellectual journey coupled with an emotional journey.

My mother, Ellen Willis, was a pro-sex feminist from the sixties and seventies and eighties and nineties, and her legacy was all over this topic. She died in 2006, and I'd been grappling with her work ever since, but this was sort of the deepest, most visceral way that I was grappling with it because finally, I was her age when she was writing, in my thirties and going through some of the same things that she [had been] going through. So I really felt like, for the first time, we were dialoguing rather than me as 22-year-old reading stuff from my mom.

CHEERS TO BESTIES WITH BOOK DEALS. (PHOTO COURTESY OF NONA WILLIS ARONOWITZ)

I don’t think many people are in a situation where they report out a close relationship. Talk a little about that experience: emotionally and technically going into your mom’s archive, talking to her ex-boyfriends, etc. 

Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting because I’d known all my life the two ex-boyfriends I spoke to for this book. She was the type of person to keep exes in the mix as friends. I learned a lot of new stuff while technically interviewing them for this, but I knew both of these men.

What really was amazing and fascinating was talking to my dad’s ex-wife, Jane. She was very generous with her story. We don’t know each other very well, and she told me some painful things about a dad I didn’t even recognize. So I also did reporting on my dad’s life, my dad’s early life, which, I mean, both my parents grew up in the forties and fifties, respectively. So this is a long ass time ago. So the socialization was different, and they both had to reinvent themselves, and some of those early versions of them, I truly didn’t recognize.

I couldn’t help but wonder while reading the book, “God, it could have been so different for me if my parents didn’t put so much pressure on me to get married and so much shame on me about my sexuality.” You had the opposite experience. 

Yeah, although my parents didn’t apply the pressure. My mom gave me a lot of latitude when it came to being a teenage girl who made mistakes and did whatever I needed to do. She gave me the privacy that I think some teens really dream about.

So what I think happened was not shame around sexuality, but shame around not being this perfect sexual feminist because some of my earliest idols were Samantha from Sex in the City and Lil Kim and Foxy Brown and stuff, these very seemingly invulnerable, but obviously not truly invulnerable women who are just like, “I’m going to get that. I’m going to get my pussy ate,” or whatever. I wanted to be them. So I didn’t have shame around my desires, but I did have shame around just not living up to some sort of straw woman expectation of feminism [that casual sex was enough when it wasn’t always].

YOU KNOW A BOOK IS GOOD WHEN THE BACK COVER LOOKS LIKE THIS. (PHOTO COURTESY OF NONA WILLIS ARONOWITZ)

In the late 90s and early 2000s, there was a lot of pushback on traditional ideas of marriage, and there was more cultural space to be like “I want to be nonmonogamous” or “I want to be casual” or whatever. But, I remember when my friends started to get married, they’d say to me, “I know I’m a really bad feminist, but” trying to make this historically sexist institution feminist in some way.

I mean, I thought that I could escape the binds, expectations, and privileges of marriage by just having this irreverent marriage for health insurance. I couldn’t. Marriage gives you status. Marriage gives you heft with old people. It gives you benefits. There are all kinds of crutches and ways in which marriage sort of bumps up your status that’s hard to let go of, even if you’re supposedly a leftist, radical, or free spirit.

So, the book is out in the world, and people are responding to it. And not everyone is going to understand it. Some people argue that if women want marriage and monogamy, feminists should be okay with that or that traditional ideas of courtship are actually more feminist than the lack of accountability that might come from casual sex, etc. You addressed some of this backlash to sex-positive feminism in a recent New York Times op-ed. Nona, what else do you have to say to your haters?

Well, I do agree that there’s something very wrong with what ‘sex positivity’ has turned into. The premise of the book is that not only the patriarchy but also a certain strain of [sex positive] "feminism" has put a lot of pressure on women. I just disagree about the solutions. Many people are saying there need to be more rules and boundaries. I’m saying there actually needs to be more freedom.

I’ll take monogamy as an example—or, let’s say, commitment. People say that a lot of women want commitment [from a partner], but they’re afraid to ask for it, they’re suppressing their true feelings, and their emotional needs are not met by hookup culture. It’s not like I would disagree with that—but I would also say, “Okay, you can’t just take desire at face value.” There are socially constructed reasons why you desire what you desire. That’s true for monogamy. There’s a lot of internalized messaging from a very young age that people aren’t respecting you unless they’re monogamous.

I’m not saying that non-monogamy is the real feminism or that monogamy is the real feminism. I’m saying interrogate your desires as much as you possibly can.

To me, the core of this book is exploring how to be heterosexual and a feminist…which for a lot of women is simply the default that “men are trash, but we love them anyway.” 

I don’t think the ‘men are trash’ paradigm is helpful. I think it can be cathartic: Anger towards men is legit; patriarchy sucks. But what does that mean for your life if you say men are trash and still endeavor to love and partner with them?

Actually, it’s interesting. Heterosexual women are the only marginalized or oppressed identity who are meant to partner with and fuck and love their oppressors. In most other contexts, you can be a separatist, and there were lesbian separatists, of course, but then it’s like, how do you continue society? We do need men. And, if you truly are heterosexual and you really do want to have loving relationships with men, it’s worth investigating why and how. So ultimately, fine. Have your ‘men are trash’ moment, but then push further—ask yourself why I am attracted to men and why do I want to be with them.

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Greetings Meteor readers,

I wish I could say it’s a great day to be here—but polio is back, and cleaning solution has been found in Capri Sun packets. I don’t know how much I believe in the End Times, as explained in The Book of Revelations, but I could be convinced if we get hit with one more plague.

Speaking of, in today’s newsletter, we’re talking about Harriet Hageman, the Wyoming Republican who is projected to win her primary tonight against U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney. Hageman is just the latest addition to our frightening era of right-wing politics, so we’re especially grateful to have Meteor editor and Wyomingite Julianne Escobedo Shepherd give us the full breakdown from the state that out-Trumps them all—and explain what Hageman’s potential win means for the rest of the country.

But before that, let’s run through some news.

Eyes peeled for the seventh seal 👁,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

The Gem State: Last Friday, the Idaho Supreme Court ruled that the state’s extreme abortion ban can still go into effect despite the lawsuits filed against it, including one from the Biden administration. Beginning August 25, Idaho will enforce a near-total abortion ban with some exceptions for rape, incest, or preserving the life of the pregnant person. However, a different law also tied up in suits will go into effect immediately: Under this one, “potential relatives” of a fetus aborted after six weeks can now sue abortion providers for $20,000. That means a person’s grandmother, or a partner’s parent, can complain on behalf of a grouping of cells they never met. You can donate to abortion funds in Idaho here.

Explain the logic: A 16-year-old in Florida who is reportedly “parentless” asked a court to grant her permission to seek an abortion, per Florida laws requiring minors to have parental consent to obtain one. The court said no, an appeal was filed, and the appellate court upheld the original decision, stating that the 16-year-old “had not established by clear and convincing evidence that she was sufficiently mature to decide whether to terminate her pregnancy.” So she’s not mature enough to make a decision over her own body but is mature enough to carry a pregnancy to term? Something I, at 30, don’t feel entirely mature enough to do? Make it make sense!

AND: 

• Brittney Griner’s legal team has filed an appeal on her behalf, claiming that Russian officials violated some of her rights during her arrest and throughout the subsequent investigation into drug-related charges. Griner’s lawyers are looking to have her nine-year prison sentence reconsidered as she awaits news on a potential prisoner swap.

• The bright spot of the week: Megan Rapinoe in conversation with Ada Hegerberg (if you don’t know Ada, watch this). Two soccer icons who risked it all for equal pay.
• This week, Bloomberg reported that Google Maps is still inadvertently leading patients searching for abortions to religious anti-abortion organizations posing as “crisis pregnancy centers” instead. According to the report, “When users type the words “abortion clinic” into the Maps search bar, crisis pregnancy centers account for about a quarter of the top 10 search results.”
• The crowds may have dissipated, but Afghanistan’s Women’s National Team, which fled to Australia after the Taliban returned to power one year ago yesterday, is still showing up and showing out on the soccer field.
• Scotland made history yesterday as the first country in the world to offer period products for free. *Checks flight prices to Edinburgh*

HOME ON THE RANGE

Harriet Hageman Will Be a Nightmare for Wyoming

Liz Cheney is a staunch conservative, but at least she believes in democracy.

BY JULIANNE ESCOBEDO SHEPHERD

THE FUTURE OF WYOMING WEARS A LOT OF APPROPRIATIVE TURQUOISE. (PHOTO BY NATALIE BEHRING VIA GETTY IMAGES) 

It should come as no surprise if Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming—who has made it her mission to carve a path for anti-Trump Republicans—is ousted in today’s primary election by virulently conservative, pro-Trump Cheyenne lawyer Harriet Hageman.

But for me, as a born-and-raised Wyomingite, this race has been especially excruciating to watch. First of all, it has been psychically painful to feel vaguely protective of any member of the Cheney family—let alone the staunchly conservative Liz, daughter of Wyoming’s Dark Father Dick. Is this how ass-backward national politics have become that I, a Xicana with progressive-left politics and a Brooklyn zip code, am rooting for Liz Cheney to win her primary simply because she has the huevos to stick up for democracy?

But I am because the alternative—Cheyenne lawyer Harriet Hageman, an election and climate-change denier and federal government hater—is certainly much worse. And I’m not alone: some Wyoming Democrats, who don’t have a chance in national contests, have switched their party affiliations to cast their primary votes for Liz.

How did this happen? Cheney is a Republican stalwart by any measure—she’s anti-abortion and pro-fossil fuels and generally espouses historically popular values in the sparsely populated state. (In the last 70 years, the only Democratic president Wyoming sided with was Lyndon B. Johnson.) But Wyoming has also prided itself on a kind of libertarian ethos that falls squarely in the mythical bootstraps-pulling framework of “rugged individualism,” making it more susceptible to right-leaning “populist” movements that disdain entrenched politicians and the federal government overall. And that susceptibility has only increased. By 2015, a study at the University of Wyoming found that nearly four in 10 Wyomingites agreed with the Tea Party, the right-wing precursor to the MAGA movement. Today, Wyoming is the most pro-Trump state in America, with 69.9% of the vote going toward him in 2020.

WHO WOULD'VE THOUGHT LIZ CHENEY WOULD BE A REASONABLE CHOICE? (PHOTO BY BILL CLARK VIA GETTY IMAGES)

And because Cheney has been unwilling to capitulate to Trump, the state’s rightward tilt has cast her as a careerist “RINO.” Last year after she voted to impeach Trump, she was excommunicated from the state’s Republican Party by its chair, Frank Eathorne, a former cop and alleged January 6 participant affiliated with the white supremacist Oath Keepers militia. To a lot of people in my home state, Cheney’s opposition to Trump’s election lies and inaction on January 6—despite having voted with him over 92% of the time—has been received as unforgivable heresy. (Last month, I took a reporting trip through some of Wyoming’s most rural areas and lost count of how many supersized “Trump 2024” and “Fuck Biden” flags I saw, most planted right next to the entrance signs for million-dollar ranches.) In 2021, Eathorne told Steve Bannon that “Western states have the ability to be self-reliant” and flirted with the idea of Wyoming seceding from the United States entirely if Texas were to lead the effort.

And now Wyoming will likely elect Harriet Hageman, who’s currently 30 points ahead of Cheney in the polls. Though Hageman is a former friend of Liz and a former opponent of Trump, she is currently an election denier assisted by Trump campaign goon Bill Stepien, and who courted the former President’s endorsement in an effort to further her own political career, previously defined by a failed 2018 bid for governor (third place in the primary).

Hageman’s victory would be a nightmare for Wyoming, particularly for constituents interested in maintaining the ecological integrity of public lands. Hageman prides herself on her 20-year war with the Environmental Protection Agency and has launched campaigns against endangered species, the Clean Water Act, and “radical environmentalists,” which led activists to nickname her the “Wicked Witch of the West” in the early 2000s. Having grown up on a ranch, she is adamant about protecting Wyoming landowners from “federal overreach” but would seemingly prefer its beautiful landscape be tended by the protective hands of the coal, oil, and gas industries. Last week she described Biden’s climate-change efforts as a “war on fossil fuels.”

WHAT IS SHE GOING TO DO TO THAT FARMER? (IMAGE COURTESY OF JULIANNE ESCOBEDO SHEPHERD)

More recently, she has acted as senior litigation counsel to the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a right-wing law firm that might sound innocuous enough but is on the wrong side of history in every issue imaginable. They’ve represented the losing employers in the landmark LGBTQ+ discrimination case Bostock v. Georgia, which held that employers could not discriminate against gay and trans workers; they’re currently crusading against vaccine mandates and helping a professor use Title IX’s gender discrimination clause to defend himself from the consequences of a student’s rape allegation.

In July, Hageman ran a local TV ad that featured her standing alone in the plains, wearing boots and a dress and a king’s ransom’s worth of turquoise jewelry, simultaneously casting her as a rugged white homesteader—an image that carries great weight in Wyoming—and vaguely and confusingly invoking Native Americans. (What is it about horrible conservative white women wearing Native jewelry?)

At the end of the clip, Hageman intoned menacingly: “As we so often say here, you’re in Wyoming. Act accordingly.” (For the record, we don’t actually say that.) Ostensibly “act accordingly” was a dig at Cheney’s refusal to genuflect at Trump’s altar, but it also seemed directed towards voters, instructing them to fall in line “or else.” I saw the ad incessantly on local TV throughout early July, but it was replaced with a slightly less portentous clip by early August.

But Hageman’s main selling point to Wyomingites is, simply, that she will lick Trump’s jackboots. It’d be foolish for the rest of the country to ignore the tenor of right-wing extremists in the least populous state; as election deniers gain ground in the midterms across the U.S., it behooves us all to know what we’re up against. Wyoming’s unique political landscape is a microcosm of hardliner thought, and what happens there is a warning bell for the rest of the country.

It’s ringing real loud.

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Dear Meteor readers,

It’s the day before, the day before the weekend, which means it is a good day!

We’ve seen stories about how our personal data can be used against us in post-Roe America, but it's all a little confusing. In today’s newsletter, writer and security nerd Shamira Ibrahim explains how it happens and why we should care. There is a good chance you will finally delete those apps.

But first, the news, some of which is actually quite entertaining.

Turning off all location services,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

TV rules: While states, companies, schools, and pretty much everyone else living in a state that has banned abortion are in a free-for-all scrambling to figure out how the overturn of Roe applies to them—TV industry workers have questions of their own. Two weeks ago, nearly 1000 TV creators and writers signed a letter to major production studios asking them to “establish clear health and safety policies for employees in anti-abortion states.” Wednesday, Vulture reported that an additional 400 directors have sent their own letter in support of their colleagues demanding “safe, subsidized reproductive health-care access.” According to The Hollywood Reporter,  several networks and studios submitted a joint response clarifying that some insurance partners are adding coverage amendments in states where abortion has been restricted. The studios have been in contact with workers affected by any policy changes. Great! Now, I don’t have to cancel all my subscriptions. (Yet.)

Where do babies come from? This week a man named Dave Alvord of the Salt Lake City Council wrote in a tweet to Kamala Harris that a fetus is not connected to a woman’s body because “the umbilical cord and placenta do not directly connect to the woman. The baby floats inside the woman.” Usually, when I hear things this nonsensical and hysterical I throw myself on the floor and have a good laugh but as there’s a fetus currently just floating around loose somewhere in my innards—utterly disconnected from me, its life source—so I guess I’ll just wait until it crawls out of its own volition before I move around too much. Perhaps the people that make laws about our bodies should have a basic understanding of how they work.

  AND:

• Naomi Osaka has withdrawn from the National Bank Open due to a back injury. It’s unclear whether she’ll be at full health in time for the U.S. Open, which begins later this month.

• According to the trend gawds at the New York Times, some folks are rebelling these days by embracing Catholicism. Don't get me wrong, I love Catholics (they’ve got all the good stolen art). But if you really want to rebel, “try Islam, sweetie.”

• For the last time: Leave Britney alone!

• The must-read of the week: “How People Get Caught for Self Managed Abortions—and Who Tips Off the Police.” The most shocking part? Patients who were investigated by police received tips on who to look into from healthcare providers.

•  The Meteor is excited to announce we’re developing a podcast with abortion rights activist Renee Bracey Sherman and journalist Regina Mahone. Thanks to the Pop Culture Collaborative, this podcast will investigate the ongoing implications of the overturn of Roe and how we move forward from here.

• Beto O’Rourke wasted zero minutes checking a heckler who laughed while he talking about the massacre in Uvalde, Texas. Don’t mess with Beto “Knuck If You Buck” O'Rourke.

HIGH TECH

How Our Data Is Used Against Us In the Post-Roe World

It'll take more than deleting an app to protect the privacy of our personal decisions.

BY SHAMIRA IBRAHIM

FOR DATA BROKERS, WE'RE ALL JUST NUMBERS ON A SHEET (ILLUSTRATION VIA GETTY IMAGES) 

This week, a Nebraska teenager and her mother were charged with several felonies for allegedly purchasing an abortion pill and attempting to dispose of the fetus. The police arrested them after accessing the teen’s private Facebook messages where they allegedly discussed their plan. Nebraska PD obtained the messages through a search warrant to Meta (the parent company of Facebook) as part of an ongoing investigation.

It has been almost two months since Roe v. Wade was overturned, which protected abortion as a constitutional right via the Fourteenth Amendment. An unforeseen but deeply troubling fallout from the decision is the potential misuse of our online data to enforce state-level abortion bans. It’s not an entirely new phenomenon: a recent report from the Washington Post found that there have been more than 60 cases since the turn of the century involving individuals being investigated, arrested, or charged for allegedly ending their own pregnancy or assisting someone in doing so. And, “a number of those cases have hinged on text messages, search history and other forms of digital evidence.”

How your data is captured

Our data is regularly collected online—often in ways we don't realize. You know when you click on a website, you get a notification that states “by using this website, you agree to our use of cookies”? Those “cookies” capture information that advertisers and tech companies can use to track and monitor your activity to know your every move, your tastes, your choices, your purchases, and even your menstrual cycle. Companies often use that information to target you for ads and other types of content that they predict might be relevant to your interests.

While most sites have “cookie consent banners,” prompting users to either opt-in or out of being tracked, they are intentionally confusing: How many times do you just “accept all cookies” so you can keep it moving?

That information isn't just used to upsell you overpriced facial creams—it can also be used to track your interest in abortion. Recently, it was revealed by the Washington Post that the landing page for scheduling an abortion on the Planned Parenthood website itself cached a number of personal attributes that could potentially be subpoenaed or shared with third-party vendors including users’ IP addresses, ZIP codes, and selected method of abortion, amongst other private information.

And that’s just if you are using your computer. Mobile phones often share real-time location data captured through apps you may inadvertently have running in the background. Deleting your period app and requesting that the companies remove your personal data is one strategy to ensure personal security. Still, surveillance that could be used to track your reproductive health goes well beyond that. If not set up properly, other apps like Instagram or Peloton can still track your location. Tracking mobile devices that come within a reasonable radius of a location, a practice known as “geofencing,” is a common tactic to find where someone has been; The New York Times did this in 2019 and identified multiple public figures without much effort.

Your data is always on sale 

AT LEAST SOMEONE'S LOOKING OUT FOR THE LITTLE GUYS. (IMAGE BY PETER DASILVA VIA GETTY IMAGES)

In July, Gizmodo tech reporters Shoshana Wodinsky and Kyle Barr found an astounding number of companies already selling personal data to anyone with a checkbook. They report identifying “32 different brokers across the U.S. selling access to the unique mobile IDs from some 2.9 billion profiles of people pegged as ‘actively pregnant’ or ‘shopping for maternity products.’” And, “data on 478 million customer profiles labeled “interested in pregnancy” or “intending to become pregnant.’”

It wouldn’t be such a concern if these companies were just in bed with retailers but some contract with law enforcement agencies. Data broker Venntel counts ICE among their client roster to share location data, which can be used to initiate deportation processes. As Bennett Cyphers, a staff technologist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation explained in the same Gizmodo piece, data brokers’ publicly available tools are “a big risk” for abortion seekers. These companies “label people and put people into lists that make it easier for someone who is coming at it like a fishing expedition to narrow down who they want to target and subject them to more scrutiny or surveillance.”

As far back as 2015, digital marketing company Copley Advertising used “geofencing” to hone in on “abortion-minded” women, using location data to indicate they were likely in the waiting room of an abortion provider. With that information in hand, Copley’s clients were able to target groups who would then receive banner ads with information on abortion alternatives.

Vendors such as SafeGraph have location data on Planned Parenthood offices already prepared for sale, promising their clients information such as “how often people visit, how long they stay, where they came from, where else they go, and more.” And while there is no marker to indicate if someone obtained abortion-related services or was in the area supporting someone else;  in 2018, the New York Times was able to use this data to identify someone who had used Planned Parenthood’s services.

Other ways to track information by police include facial recognition technology, social media, and even DMV records. It’s also worth noting that if a law enforcement agency provides a search warrant to a company for a particular dataset (such as in the Nebraska case) that company is compelled to turn over any information covered under the warrant—privacy be damned. These tools used collectively help law enforcement investigate and prosecute abortion-seekers and their respective networks of support.

How to limit data tracking

The solution to this threat to our privacy has to come from the federal level and reach beyond reproductive legislation to privacy laws as a whole to protect our data from exploitation. These laws should apply to both corporate entities and law enforcement authorities seeking to manipulate the for-profit data model to obtain information that is more difficult to glean from a court-ordered warrant. The European Union took a major step forward by enforcing the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation in 2018), which, while not perfect, has been able to levy significant fines against Big Tech for privacy violations.

But until a wide-reaching, federal solution becomes available, there are steps that individuals can take to minimize risk:

• If you’ve already removed your period app but still want to track your cycle, use apps that do the most possible to protect your data, such as Cycle Tracking or FEMMN, and ensure your app-specific privacy settings are set properly.

• Consider using services such as NextDNS, which can help block ads, cookies, and other trackers while browsing.

• ProtonMail offers end-to-end encryption of all communications, should you need to email a clinic for services.

• For general browsing via search engines, Duckduckgo is the standard for private browsing as an alternative to Google.

• Do regular audits of your iPhone and Android privacy settings when you can.

• When possible, refrain from sharing details about plans of protests or services on any social media attached to your email, phone number, or physical device/IP address.

• Use Signal for encrypted texts and calls as opposed to iMessage or WhatsApp.

For more thorough and frequently updated guides, bookmark the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Surveillance Self-Defense Guide and the Digital Defense Fund’s Guide to Abortion Privacy.

Be sure to share this newsletter with any of your friends struggling to figure out how to protect themselves online. 

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Hey there Meteor readers,

It’s only Tuesday and yet it’s been a whole-ass week for my emotions. I’ll spare you an explainer on my own personal Jerry Springer-esque drama, but there’s also been the return of Donald Trump to the news cycle, confounding goings-on at the WWE—and the loss of the bright star that was Dame Olivia Newton-John, who died on Monday.

I was on the phone with Samhita when she told me the news and my immediate reaction was “shut the fuck up,” which is often not the way I speak to my superiors, but this was an occasion. Grease was the first non-cartoon musical I remember watching with my father, and it was one of our favorites. It was the movie that introduced me to the joy of musicals, and Sandra Dee taught me about the highs and lows of summer lovin’. After my father was gone, I clung to his Grease VHS cassette, finding comfort in Newton-John’s smiling face looking back at me long after the invention of DVD players. Eventually, I found my way to her music and was even more enamored. She always seemed to emit joy and I wanted so much to absorb that.

I hope wherever her spirit has gone, there’s a roller disco waiting for her.

WHAT A SMILE. (IMAGE BY EVENING STANDARD/HULTON ARCHIVE VIA GETTY IMAGES)

What’s waiting for you in today’s newsletter is the rundown of our week so far, from the new abortion restrictions in Indiana to Serena Williams’ retirement.

Vibing to 80s music,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

The Next Evolution for Serena Williams

BY SHANNON MELERO

THE GREATEST OF ALL TIME! (IMAGE BY STEVE RUSSELL VIA GETTY IMAGES)

Here is a sentence I thought I would never type: Serena Williams has announced her retirement from professional tennis, although she is referring to it as an “evolution” which feels much better to my ailing heart. In a deeply honest essay for Vogue, Williams, whose decades-long career includes 23 Grand Slam titles, says she’s stepping away from the sport to continue to grow her family and focus on other areas of her life.

“Believe me,” she writes, “I never wanted to have to choose between tennis and a family. I don’t think it’s fair. If I were a guy, I wouldn’t be writing this because I’d be out there playing and winning while my wife was doing the physical labor of expanding our family.”

As with everything she does, Williams fully owns her decision to retire. “I’ve been reluctant to admit to myself or anyone else that I have to move on from playing tennis.” And considering the scope of her achievements, who wouldn’t be?

Serena Williams is one of the greatest athletes of my lifetime. She not only changed the sport of tennis, but she also made it fashionable with her iconic (and troublesome) catsuits, tutus, and hairstyles. Through her dominance on the court, she also broke racial, economic, and gender barriers, creating the blueprint for a new generation of athletes like Naomi Osaka, Coco Gauff, Sloane Stephens, and Emma Raducanu. These women are making huge waves in the sport and in their business dealings—achievements made possible by the example of both Venus and Serena Williams.

The U.S. Open this month will be her final competition, and as ever we’ll all be cheering for her (but not when the ball is in play, have some respect). And whenever she takes that last wave, twirl, and walks off into her future, I’m certain I’ll be crying more than I am right now.

When I read the Vogue piece I had to stop myself from crafting a witch jar in the hopes of spelling my way into getting just one more year of Serena Williams. She’s been playing nearly my whole life. I literally don’t know a tennis world without her!

But that would be selfish (and spells can be time-consuming). Williams has given fans more than we deserve and the least any of us can do is send her off into the next chapter with love, support, and gratitude that she allowed us a small window into her life.

Hoosier horror: Indiana became the first state to pass an abortion ban since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade. The inhumane bill was signed into law by Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb last Friday and only allows for abortions “in cases of rape, incest, lethal fetal abnormality, or when the procedure is necessary to prevent severe health risks or death,” according to The Washington Post; further, the rape and incest exceptions are so narrowly written that in practice they actually exclude many survivors of both crimes. This is particularly dreadful as Indiana had recently served as a haven for patients in surrounding states such as Ohio that have already passed near-total bans. Incensed Democratic state leaders, employers, and activists who oppose the law are gearing up for the long fight ahead. We’re ready.

A FEW MORE THINGS:

• The FBI searched the home of Donald Trump in connection to missing records from the White House. And the comedy of this whole scenario is that Marjorie Taylor Greene was so incensed by it that she tweeted, “Defund the FBI!” Well, well, well, how the turn tables have turned, Ms. Greene. Who’s all about defunding the police now!!!????

• Gregory and Travis McMichael, two of the men convicted in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, have now been sentenced to life in prison on federal hate crime charges. This is their second life sentence after their initial guilty verdict.

• Meanwhile, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, four Muslim men have been killed over a span of months, and officials are now investigating whether the crimes may be linked. A suspect is in custody, but officials say it’s too soon to determine whether or not the killings can be classified as hate crimes.

• Gabby Petito’s family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Utah police, alleging that their negligence in a reported assault between Petito and her fiancè directly led to her death.

• A grand jury will not be pursuing an indictment against the white woman whose false accusation led to the lynching of Emmett Till in 1955. Her name is Carolyn Bryant Donham and whether she meets justice or not, she will never be able to remove that young boy’s blood from her hands.

• This long read from Caitlin Dickerson in The Atlantic is gutting but necessary on the impact of the Trump administration’s family separation policy—which stopped dominating the headlines but not the lives of the children and parents affected.

PLUS:

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