Greetings, Meteor readers,

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

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

For the quiet ones,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AND:

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

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

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

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

WEEKEND READING 📚

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

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

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

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Hey there, Meteor readers,

I don’t know about the rest of y’all New Yorkers, but it has been extremely tense in my house as the Knicks take my entire family on an emotional journey through the playoffs. Peace be with the fans.

YOU JUST KNOW THIS MAN'S BLOOD PRESSURE IS OFF THE CHARTS. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) 

In today’s newsletter, we’re taking a look at the GOP's obsession with stay-at-home moms. Plus, three questions on wellness with writer Amy Larocca.

Knicks in five,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

From WAHM to SAHM: Last month, we wrote about Trump’s pro-natalist plans to solve the declining birth rate in the U.S., which pretty much added up to, Here’s a little extra money and a medal, have some more kids. No, thanks! But, not one to let a bad idea go, the GOP is tackling the issue from an incredibly old angle: encouraging more stay-at-home parents (more than 80 percent of whom are moms).

Instead of investing in federally funded childcare, the administration has proposed cuts to Head Start and fired hundreds of workers at the offices of Child Support Services, Child Care, and Family Assistance. Conservatives claim these moves don’t contradict their natalist stance; they merely want to encourage parents to spend more time with their children. Republicans in Congress have proposed expanding child tax credits to help parents afford to stay home, eliminating daycare tax breaks, and offering new credits to families that use relatives as caregivers—all solutions designed to, as Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) put it to the New York Times, “give parents the opportunity to…actually raise [their] kids.”

So what’s wrong with that? First, Hawley’s assertion that parents who send their children to daycare are not actually raising them would be laughable if it weren’t so infuriating. Daycare employees are providing a structural and educational foundation for children that, frankly, many parents don’t feel equipped to offer, even if they were given a $5,000 tax credit. Would that money go a long way toward helping some families? Absolutely. Would it be enough to allow one parent to quit their job? No, and I cannot emphasize this enough, fucking way.

And then there’s the basic assumption underlying these policies: that, as conservatives have argued for years, children who stay home with mom flourish more than those who do not. There is no definitive study that proves that to be the case; other factors like poverty and food insecurity are far more relevant to whether kids will thrive. The fact that Republicans aren’t even pretending to address those factors is incredibly telling. They aren’t interested in supporting families’ childcare choices. They’re certainly not interested in making sure impoverished children have access to resources. But they are interested in pressuring mothers–especially ones who can afford it, with or without a tax credit–to get out of the office and go back to being barefoot and pregnant.

AND:

• This weekend, Rumeysa Öztürk, a Tufts graduate student who was arrested in March by plain-clothes ICE agents, was released on bail from a detention facility in Louisiana. Öztürk has returned to her home in Massachusetts, where she plans to continue her education while her immigration case makes its way through the courts. Öztürk has not been charged with a crime, but is still facing potential deportation as the government claims she supports Hamas, presumably because of an op-ed she coauthored in the Tufts paper about divestment. Öztürk implored the public, “Please don’t forget about all the wonderful women” still imprisoned in detention centers across the country.

ÖZTÜRK AT A PRESS CONFERENCE FOLLOWING HER RELEASE. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

• The federal criminal trial against Sean “Diddy” Combs is underway. Today, Diddy’s former longtime girlfriend, Casandra Ventura, known as Cassie, took to the stand at eight-and-a-half months pregnant, sharing the abuse she endured during their relationship. “Make the wrong face, and the next thing I knew, I was getting hit in the face,” Ventura said. Combs has pleaded not guilty to racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking, among other charges. If convicted, Combs could face 15 years to life in prison.

• Since January, Puerto Ricans both on the mainland and the island have organized public demonstrations against the forthcoming Project Esencia—a destructive multi-billion dollar luxury development—with the most visible protest taking place last month in New York’s Columbus Circle. But how detrimental is  Project Esencia, really? For many living on the island, it’s the beginning of the end.

• A massive bronze statue of a Black woman was erected in Times Square yesterday and to absolutely no one’s surprise, racists hate it. The statue, titled “Grounded in the Stars,” was created by Thomas J. Price to “disrupt traditional ideas” about what a “triumphant figure” looks like, according to his website. Price has made a number of sculptures of Black people doing everyday things. Speaking to Art News, he said of his work, “They’re not looking to engage [with the viewer] for validation. They exist whether or not the viewer is there.”

YOU CAN VISIT "GROUNDED IN THE STARS" THROUGH JUNE 17. (GETTY IMAGES) 

Three Questions About...Wellness

Amy Larocca, author of a big new book on the industry, separates the harmless from the hoaxes

By Cindi Leive

AMY LAROCCA (COURTESY OF PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE)

One of the many developments of the last decade—along with the rise of AI, Trumpism and tradwives—is the vast and varied world known as “wellness,” which includes everything from that meditation app on your phone to billion-dollar biohacking. Journalist Amy Larocca has spent seven years making sense of it all, and her book, How to Be Well: Navigating our Self-Care Epidemic, One Dubious Cure at a Time, is out today. Despite its skeptical subtitle, Larocca understands that “wellness culture is too big for us to be either completely for or against it.” So where did she land? I wanted to know.

Your book investigates the recent rise of wellness culture. But back in the ‘80s, there were grapefruit diets and aerobics classes and all kinds of physical expectations. What’s different now?

A lot of it in the ‘80s was about looking good, or slimness—I can still picture the Dexatrim box! But there wasn't a lot of thought about health in mainstream culture. I really started to notice the rise in wellness culture when I was working as a fashion editor [at New York Magazine in the 00s-10s]. Fashion was becoming more democratic—you could stream the shows, you could shop online. But at the same time, health was becoming more and more expensive and out of reach. Basic healthcare was not being treated as a right in the United States, but as a luxury commodity. And I could see that it was being marketed using all of the same language as the fashion industry that I'd been covering. And how weird is it that the new luxury good is our health, something that isn't extra, right? A handbag or a pair of shoes or a lipstick is something that's extra, but our health shouldn't be extra.

You started writing this book seven years ago—when, yes, there were colonics and juice cleanses, but you could still go to the CDC for solid information about what worked or didn’t. Now our top public health leaders are trafficking in disproven myths about vaccines and cancer and birth control and fluoride. Did you see this coming?

I feared that it would get as bad as it has gotten. And one of the reasons that wellness culture has been able to rise in the way that it has, especially for women, is there's a real absence of experts. The writer Maya Dusenbery [has] said that it drives her crazy when women seeking wellness care are described as seeking “alternative solutions.” Because these aren't alternatives: We don't really have other choices! Women are going online looking for advice from other women for managing their autoimmune conditions because autoimmune disease and other diseases that have disproportionately affected women have been very underfunded and understudied. So when women are using this relatively new resource called the internet to speak to each other and discuss what has worked for them and how they've managed—that's not alternative. That's just us actually trying to find some relief because the mainstream channels have let us down. [And] given the current political situation, I don't see that getting any better.

Your book makes it really clear that progress and bullshit are really intertwined in wellness. Meditation is incredibly helpful to a lot of people and it’s being oversold as a solution. Our health-care system does need to focus more on menopause and there’s now a lot of menopause-related crap being sold to us with cutesy names. So is there a wellness development that you find really promising, and one that feels particularly BS-laden at the moment?

For years, there was a conversation about [hormone replacement therapy] being very, very, very dangerous for women, so women stopped taking HRT. Then NAMS re-released its research and talked about HRT being safe for women—that coincided with the rise of telehealth [in COVID] and suddenly you had a number of telehealth startups making HRT very, very, very easily accessible. So you combine all that in a perfect storm and you get a lot of women with very high expectations for what HRT is going to be able to do for them during perimenopause—and all this is doing exactly what wellness culture has the potential to do in the worst possible way: It oversimplifies matters with a profit motive behind it all.

The real story of HRT is: Here's a treatment that can help some women with some symptoms some of the time, but the only narratives that seem to gain any traction are “It will kill you!” or “It will save you, hurl down your crutches, Oh Lord, I can walk!” And neither of those stories seem to me to be the correct story of HRT, but no one seems to have any tolerance for anything in the middle.

Part of that seems to be driven by how much money there is to be made. Part of it seems to be driven by the appetite for a good story. Part of it seems to be driven by a lack of patience for complexity, and how boring medicine can actually be. But it really started to freak me out—the expectations that people seemed to start having for what HRT was going to do for them, and the amount of money that a number of business people were excited to suddenly make. And that's wellness culture in a nutshell.

I’m breaking the rules of this column with a fourth question. Is there one particular wellness habit you've picked up while writing the book that you will keep? 

Breathing. It’s free. I do 4-7-8 breathing. I'm big on all the free stuff: I walk everywhere, and I sleep. Sleep as much as you possibly can, and never, ever, ever feel guilty for going to bed.

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Hey there, Meteor readers,

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

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

Still thinking about this,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

–Julianne Escobedo Shepherd

AND:

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

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

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

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

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Howdy Meteor readers,

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

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

Standard ID girlie,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

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

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

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

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

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

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

For the kabillionth time: Abortion pills are safe!

AND:

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

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

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

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

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

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

WEEKEND READING 📚

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

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

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

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Salutations, Meteor readers,

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

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

Counting the days,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AND:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BY REBECCA CARROLL 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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