An "Attack on Diplomacy Itself" and the Women Left Behind
  July 1, 2025 Hi friends— Cindi here, filling in for Nona and Shannon on what is not just a normal Tuesday in end-times America but a birthday blockbuster: Both Princess Diana (who should have been turning 64 today 💔) and Missy Elliott (blowing out 54 candles) were born on this day. Also on this day, back in 1972, the first standalone issue of Ms. magazine was published. That makes it an excellent time to shamelessly plug “Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print,” which airs on HBO tomorrow. My fellow producers and I hope you get a chance to watch. Meanwhile, in today’s newsletter, everything from wedding-dress tariffs to a fascinating interview about the history of the word “like.” But first, an important piece about the real cost of the Trump administration’s dismantling of a lifesaving State Department office—by a woman who worked there. Xo, Cindi  WHAT'S GOING ONThe U.S. is Abandoning Women’s Rights. The Women it “Honored” Are Paying the Price.BY VARINA WINDER In March 2024, Agather Atuhaire stood on the White House stage, honored for her work as a human rights lawyer and anti-corruption journalist in Uganda. A year later, she was allegedly tortured and brutally assaulted, and left at the Tanzanian border, after being arrested and prevented from attending the trial of an arbitrarily detained politician. The response from the Trump State Department? A four-line statement from the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania calling for an investigation. At the same time, back on Capitol Hill, Secretary Marco Rubio was doubling down on his intention to dismantle the very office that would normally lead the charge on helping Atuhaire—the Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues. The elimination of that office, in which I proudly served for more than a decade, is scheduled to occur this very week. Along with the dismantling of USAID and the Department of Labor’s Women’s Bureau, it is a clear signal that the U.S. is regressing wholesale on women’s rights. And governments like Tanzania’s have already taken note of the new latitude they have to do the same.  THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION HONORED WOMEN THIS SPRING, EVEN AS IT PLANNED TO SHUT DOWN THE OFFICE. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) Women like Atuhaire—who trusted that American recognition meant American support—now face retaliation with no meaningful backing from the U.S. Our message to human rights leaders is now: we will honor you on our stage—as Rubio did at this year’s International Women of Courage (IWOC) Awards Ceremony—but when you need us most, we will turn our backs on you. More than 200 women from 90+ countries have received this award over the past 19 years. It’s not just a glass plaque and a ceremony; IWOC has been a living commitment to women’s rights - and has long created new opportunities to make meaningful progress, as quiet, coordinated U.S. diplomacy did together with one of Atuhaire’s fellow honorees, preventing a reversal of a ban on female genital mutilation in the Gambia. Now, human rights organizations worldwide question whether association with America makes their staff and beneficiaries targets—rather than protecting them. The very concept of American soft power—our ability to influence through shared values rather than coercion—depends on us standing by those values. The Tanzanian government's alleged willingness to torture and rape a woman the United States honored on its highest stage is a clear sign of just how much the estimation for America’s purported human- rights values has already fallen.  WOMEN IN KENYA WORKING AGAINST GENITAL MUTILATION WITH THE SUPPORT OF UNICEF AND THE WOMEN'S ISSUES OFFICE. (PHOTO COURTESY OF VARINA WINDER) This institutional dismantling of my former office follows the same non-logic of the self-imposed destruction of USAID. This is not about efficiency: our tiny staff is the only dedicated, expert staff on these issues, as a mere 8 percent of State Department bureaus and offices globally have someone with “women’s rights” as a dedicated part of their job, along with an average of nine additional duties. This is not about efficiency or cost savings; our $10 million budget is spent by the Pentagon in the time it takes to watch a YouTube video. This is a coordinated, multi-front attack on women’s rights, the organizations that support them, and the leaders who believe in them. It’s also an attack on diplomacy itself. When we eliminate the infrastructure, the people, and the office that support our values, we don't just lose a dedicated office; we lose credibility and trust. As Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) said in an SFRC budget hearing with Secretary Rubio in May, “Beijing is making the case that they are a more reliable, credible partner than the U.S.” The path forward requires more than defending the Office of Global Women's Issues - which we each must be calling on the Senate and House to do. It also demands acknowledging that our retreat from human rights leadership has real victims with names and faces and bodies. Atuhaire's brutal rape and torture may have happened in Tanzania, but the failure of accountability is America’s. She trusted us; we failed her. Varina Winder is the former Chief of Staff and senior advisor in the Secretary of State’s Office of Global Women’s Issues. AND:
 Three Questions About...Like, Words and StuffJournalist Megan Reynolds takes up the most derided word in the dictionaryBY SHANNON MELERO  IT'S JUST LIKE, A REALLY INTERESTING BOOK. (COVER IMAGE COURTESY OF HARPER COLLINS, AUTHOR PHOTO BY CHRIS BERNABEO) Megan Reynolds has always had a way with words, which I experienced firsthand when we worked together at Jezebel, and she told me I could always go to her with any questions. Big mistake, huge! I’ve been pestering her since 2019, and now I have yet another reason: Megan—who has made everything from beach chairs to a really big mall come alive with her deft use of language,—has a new book, Like: A History of, Like, the World’s Most Hated (and, Like, Misunderstood) Word. In it, she traces the word’s origins all the way back to the 1600s, and also writes a love letter to the way women, particularly teen girls, have shaped language. As is our routine, I darkened her door with my queries. So even though women are the ones making fetch happen when it comes to language, this book exists because there’s so much pushback and policing over women’s use of “like.” So I guess my question is, why can’t we just, like, talk how we please? The answer is absolutely “sexism,” but that is a pat response for a situation that is much more nuanced and complex. Sometimes the call is coming from inside the house—for all the professional men out there who write earnest LinkedIn blogs about filler words, power, and corporate communication, there are just as many professional women doing the same thing. The policing comes in many forms, [including] the voice in your own head, but I’d say that it is most evident in the aforementioned blogs on LinkedIn and op-eds in various newspapers around the world. And, if you watch the season premiere of the most recent season of The Kardashians on Hulu, you’ll find the entire family policing Kourtney for saying like, like, all the time. On the surface, any policing of women’s language looks like and definitely is sexist, but underneath, is also the issue of intelligence and whether or not saying “like” a bunch when you talk means you’re not. And yes, this is a battle that both men and women face, but women (I assume) are more concerned with not sounding stupid, whereas men will happily open their mouths and share the first thought that comes to mind. One thing I love is that you described "like" as a word that does a lot of emotional labor, and it's been doing so since before either of us was born. Have you come across a word that is taking on that same labor for the next generation? Or will "like" continue to be a timeless linguistic accessory? Language moves faster than any of us are interested in thinking about, but I think that “like” will never go out of style—and that’s actually good? It means that it’s become an inherent and natural part of speech, and for that, we are forced to stan. However, the youth of today are saying words in ways that I never could have imagined. The meaning of “literally” has changed in recent years due to young people using it in unorthodox ways, and I think a lot of people are pressed about that for reasons unbeknownst. Technically, “literally” does mean just one thing, and often, it’s used in situations that are decidedly not literal. And like “like” can function as an intensifier, “literally” does the same thing. You write about how Serious Feminists™ of the past were also a part of the anti-Like movement. Is there still a sense that we need to sound important if we want to be important? Like with most things in life, the answer depends on the person. I’ve worked with women who are younger than me but much more “professional,” hewing closer to the traditional and generally accepted definition of what that sounds like. To me, this doesn’t matter at all. And because I’m generally not that “professional” by any commonly-held, old-fashioned standard, my aim in writing this book was to communicate that we don’t need to care about this! It doesn’t matter! If someone is or isn’t going to take you seriously in the workplace or anywhere else, I’d wager that they’ve already made that decision before you even opened your mouth, anyway.   FOLLOW THE METEOR     Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
Happy Birthday, Mr. President
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  June 12, 2025 Howdy, Meteor readers, This weekend is Father’s Day, and while it’s not my favorite holiday (dead-dad girlie 💁🏽♀️), in this moment when fathers are being ripped away from their families unjustly, it feels like the right time for us all to be a little pro-dad. Here’s a little love to some real ones: Al Berrios, thank you for not leaving me in the woods; to Anthony, Tito, Diop, Fya, and Littlefinger, your friendship and fatherhood have changed my life. And to Ruben, whose love has made one little girl the happiest in the world. In today’s newsletter, we help you get ready for a protest-heavy weekend. Plus, Nona Willis Aronowitz asks author and journalist Megan Greenwell three questions about the impact of private equity on our lives. Johnny’s daughter, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONEverybody’s workin’ for the weekend: When Taylor Swift warned us that a cruel summer was imminent, she may not have been referring to the president setting off a war on this country’s most basic rights. But alas, here we are. As anti-ICE protests spread across the country this week—Seattle, Spokane, Chicago, New York, St. Louis, and San Antonio have all seen action—the administration is threatening a harsher, implicitly violent position against people exercising their First Amendment rights. Elected officials like Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) and, most recently, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) have become targets of GOP ire simply for challenging false narratives around immigration policy. On the bureaucratic front, Republicans in Congress are doing their part to quash freedoms by launching an investigation into 200 NGOs that provide food, shelter, and legal services to immigrants.  SENATOR ALEX PADILLA WAS FORCIBLY REMOVED FROM A PRESS CONFERENCE HELD BY HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY KRISTI NOEM AFTER ACCUSING NOEM OF EXAGGERATING THE SITUATION IN LOS ANGELES. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) But this weekend will be a true test of just how far Trump is willing to go to silence his detractors. Saturday, June 14, is his birthday, and to celebrate, he’s hosting an incredibly expensive military parade in D.C., a move that reeks of authoritarian pageantry. The president has warned that “those people who want to protest” will be met with “very heavy force.” (Yes, you read that right–simply protesting merits violence.) Considering the number of “No Kings” rallies scheduled for that day, it’s highly likely he and his tanks will come across some protesters. While many of the protests we’ve seen have been peaceful, Trump’s antagonistic stance has stoked a long-simmering fire. Many of us were raised on the schoolyard adage of don’t start a fight, but be sure to finish it or the very adult adage of knuck if you buck. The administration is bucking. So if you’re planning to hit the streets this weekend (or anytime) and have concerns about encountering police tactics like gas or rubber bullets, here are a few safety basics to keep in mind:
Perhaps being outside in this way is not your ministry. No judgment! You can still support the cause by donating to one of the NGOs being targeted by the administration. Stay safe and never forget, somos semillas. AND:
 MILDRED DIDN'T JUST WRITE LETTER SHE ALSO SERVED LOOKS. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)
 Three Questions About...Private EquityIn her new book, author Megan Greenwell humanizes the horrors of a secretive industry. BY NONA WILLIS ARONOWITZ  COURTESY OF MEGAN GREENWELL When journalist Megan Greenwell scored her dream job as the editor-in-chief of the sports website Deadspin, she hadn’t thought about private equity at all. She had never done any finance reporting, and she had only the vaguest sense of what private equity even did. But when, in 2019, Deadspin was being destroyed by the firm that owned it, she wrote a scorched-earth resignation letter and resolved to learn more about the human cost of this ubiquitous and insidious industry. Her resulting book, Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream, tells the story of four people whose lives were upended by private equity–and how they all fought back. John Oliver once said, “If you want to do something evil, put it inside something boring.” Your book is not boring, but I think for many of us, our eyes glaze over at financial terms we don’t know. How do you explain private equity to get laypeople to care? The only way I wanted to write this book was if it was for people who have some sense that private equity is important and has negative consequences, but have zero idea what that means. Here’s how I describe it: The engine of the private equity machine is leveraged buyouts, which are when a private equity firm pools money from outside investors–pension funds, university endowments, ultra-wealthy individuals, what have you–and combines that money with a huge amount of bank loans, then uses that combined fund to buy companies. The trick is that the debt from the loans is assigned not to the private equity firm but to the company it is acquiring. That’s the detail I think gets people scandalized. They take companies that are pretty strong in a lot of cases and turn them into companies absolutely hamstrung by debt payments, and as a result, 10 times as many companies owned by private equity declare bankruptcy than other kinds of companies. The private equity firms themselves don’t take on any risk, but this has horrible effects on communities, workers, tenants, patients, everybody. The book’s subtitle mentions “the death of the American dream.” How did this theme play out in your reporting? (Also, I have to ask: Was it just a coincidence that three out of four of your protagonists were women, or do you think there’s a throughline there?) I picked the industries first, and I landed on media, healthcare, retail, and housing. Private equity didn’t cause the root problems in these industries; instead, they capitalized on those problems for their own gain. Once I had my protagonists, the interviews drove the American Dream theme rather than the other way around. One is a Mexican immigrant who moved here in middle school, not speaking a word of English, and who managed to become a professional journalist. Another grew up poor in Texas, and his version of the American dream was becoming a community doctor who provided care to his neighbors. Another was a woman who escaped public housing (and a lot of other things), so for her, living in her apartment complex really was the Dream. And the last woman is an Alaska native who moved to the mainland and supported a family of five on a Toys “R” Us retail salary so her husband could go to pharmacy school and make a better life for all of them. In each case, private equity ended up tearing down the things that were most important to these people. [And about the three-out-of-four women factor,] it’s not surprising to me that women were the majority of people I ended up talking to–not just [of] the four, but the 150 to 200 people I spoke with before I found my protagonists. In part, it’s because there are specific vulnerabilities of being a woman in 21st century America [like poverty] but also because I chose people who were fighting back, and women seem to be more involved in these community fights. Yes–all of your subjects actively resist their circumstances to varying degrees after private equity shatters their lives. What can someone whose job or industry is being eviscerated by private equity learn from the people in your book? The four characters in my book all fight back in very different ways. Some put pressure on elected representatives [to regulate private equity]–although there are limitations to that at the federal level, because fully 88% of members of Congress and the Senate take private equity donations. Another character does some lobbying in front of pension funds to get them to stop investing in private equity firms that hurt workers. There’s some true grassroots community organizing to build something new. Some of the most interesting reporting I did was in the media section, where the focus is on people who are trying to create a new nonprofit system. Is that at a big enough scale now that it is fully replacing private equity-owned corporate media? No. But some startup nonprofit local news sites are doing really, really well economically and are becoming amazing sources of news in places that didn’t have news. I think about Mississippi Today, which did not exist until a few years ago, but which won a Pulitzer by exposing a massive scandal in the governor’s office involving Brett Favre. That’s genuinely inspiring to me.  WEEKEND READING 📚On what you just read: It may take you longer than a weekend, but Megan Greenwell’s Bad Company is certainly worth the extra time. (Bookshop) On dark humor: Singer and activist Joan Baez has a really good joke about what it’s like living under Trump. We’ll let her tell it. (Rolling Stone) On “stillness and homogeneity”: Liv Veazey reports on the unsettling vibes in New York City’s immigration court. (n+1)  FOLLOW THE METEOR     Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
Moms Don't Need Jobs, Right?
  May 13, 2025 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 ONFrom 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:
 ÖZTÜRK AT A PRESS CONFERENCE FOLLOWING HER RELEASE. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)
 YOU CAN VISIT "GROUNDED IN THE STARS" THROUGH JUNE 17. (GETTY IMAGES)  Three Questions About...WellnessAmy Larocca, author of a big new book on the industry, separates the harmless from the hoaxesBy 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.  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
Is “Divine Intuition” a Health Fix?
  May 8, 2025
Greetings, Meteor readers, It’s my daughter’s third birthday this weekend, and she has requested–in her exact words—“a pink beautiful sparkly glittery jewel-y dress” so she can look “extra-princess-y!!!” It really does start this young, y’all. Time for me to revisit Peggy Orenstein’s Cinderella Ate My Daughter. Today we’re digging into Trump’s new and disconcerting pick for Surgeon General. Plus, a new (American!) pope, and an interview with author Amanda Hess about how technology mediates our experience of pregnancy and motherhood. Happy sparkly Mother’s Day to me, Nona Willis Aronowitz  WHAT'S GOING ONThe wellness-to-MAGA pipeline: Did you think the stream of horrifying Trump nominees was over? Not quite. Yesterday, President Trump announced that he was withdrawing his pick for Surgeon General, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, and replacing her with far-right wellness influencer Dr. Casey Means. In his announcement, Trump praised Dr. Means by touting her “impeccable ‘MAHA’ credentials,” and he isn’t wrong: The nominee and her brother, former lobbyist Calley Means, are vocal allies of Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and were close advisors during his 2024 presidential bid. But here’s the real issue: Dr. Means–who has an inactive medical license and dropped out of her surgical residency program–regularly expresses skepticism of mainstream medicine, including vaccines, fluoride, raw milk bans, and birth control, which she has called a “disrespect for life.” (In fact, she’s become the nominee because her predecessor, Nesheiwat, had been targeted by Trump confidant Laura Loomer and other far-right activists for praising the COVID vaccines.) She frequently casts doubt on the value of science itself: “Of COURSE we should trust our heart intelligence and divine intuition instead of BLINDLY trusting ‘the science,’” Dr. Means wrote in an Instagram post last year. Putting “science” in scare quotes…not exactly a reassuring sign.  It remains to be seen whether Dr. Means will be confirmed by the Senate; Trump’s nomination of Dave Weldon for CDC head was jettisoned after concerns over Weldon’s claims that vaccines cause autism. (They don’t.) But assuming she does get the job, the question becomes: What do Surgeon Generals actually do? They aren’t directly involved in implementing health policy, but they can often set the government’s priorities. C. Everett Coop, Ronald Reagan’s Surgeon General, was famously influential in changing the public’s view on smoking and, according to the New York Times, “single-handedly pushed the government into taking a more aggressive stand against AIDS.” Some have tried pushing the limits: When Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders gave the thumbs up to masturbation and encouraged Americans to “get over their love affair of the fetus and start worrying about children,” President Bill Clinton fired her. More recently, President Joe Biden’s Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, made waves when he called for a warning label on social media. In other words: Surgeon Generals don’t make laws, but they are a major source of information and influence, which makes Dr. Means’ nomination all the more worrying. Will she further legitimize vaccine skepticism and accelerate measles outbreaks? Will she give a boost to raw milk amid a bird flu epidemic? Will she stigmatize birth control at a time when it’s already under attack? Time to once again call your senators; here’s a useful script from 5Calls. AND:
 POPE LEO AT HIS PREDECESSOR’S FUNERAL LAST MONTH. VIA GETTY IMAGES
  Three Questions About….Modern MotherhoodAmanda Hess’s new memoir interrogates how technology changes the experience of early parenting and pregnancy.From the moment her period app detected she was pregnant, journalist Amanda Hess experienced motherhood through the prism of her phone, from chirpy pregnancy apps to momfluencers on Instagram. Then, at 29 weeks pregnant, her son was diagnosed with a rare genetic condition called Beckwith-Wiedmann Syndrome, and everything changed. In her new memoir, Second Life, she grapples with deeply held assumptions–both society’s and her own–about normalcy, public performance, and disability. Let’s talk about that pivotal moment when your son is diagnosed with BWS. Can you describe some ways the diagnosis changed you? I did not realize to what extent I had absorbed all of these cultural messages about what pregnancy, motherhood, and babies are supposed to be like. For such a long time, I didn’t even care about whether or not I became a mom. But when I became pregnant, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t messing it up. I internalized this idea that it’s a woman’s job to reproduce healthy, normal, productive citizens–although I never would have put it that way. I was going to these sites and apps not even for advice–I didn’t do most of the stuff they suggested–but more to understand the role I was expected to play, even if I wasn’t necessarily complying. And then when my child was diagnosed late in my pregnancy, it struck me as a tragic thing to happen, as a crisis. Most pregnancy technology is geared toward a “normal” pregnancy, so the moment there was the slightest deviation in my pregnancy, I was out of the “normal” zone and initially felt very abandoned. It was only after my son was put in this human context, after he was born, that I could see him as my son and not a medical idea. And ironically, the internet helped with this: I found some other, helpful online communities–ones that were comprised of real human beings who were convening around BWS (as opposed to some app that only knew my due date and nothing else about me). As you mention in the book, pregnancy has long been a site of state surveillance, but that fact feels even more true lately. Does your research take on a more sinister cast in an era when pregnancy is increasingly criminalized? Yes, there is this ramping up on pregnancy surveillance and also surveillance of people with disabilities. Our medical information is seemingly being seized by government workers we don’t even know. What’s clarifying is that even as it’s changing technological shape, the ideologies are really similar to eugenic [and pro-natalist] thinking that were in vogue 100 years ago. I think we need to balance the new threats–the way all of our data can be scraped by young programmers who are working for Elon Musk–with the knowledge that [throughout American history] our doctors and hospitals have been giving up pregnant people’s information and long been using it to criminalize pregnancy and remove their children. Still, I do have more specific fears for my actual family than I did before. My book talks about how protective wealth and status and whiteness can be in these situations, but the intensity of surveillance now on anyone who has any kind of difference is at a new level, and it really implicates my family. One of the most absorbing parts of the book is when you talk about your obsession with the free-birthing movement, where women give birth without any medical intervention or prenatal care. What was so intriguing to you about them? On the one hand, our experiences of pregnancy could not be more different. My pregnancy ended up being intensely medically monitored: I gave birth in a specific hospital so we could have access to this higher-level NICU–which I came to see as such a blessing. This group of women were on the opposite extreme; many of them don’t get traditional prenatal care. But there were places where our two experiences overlapped. I had this overwhelming need to try to control the uncontrollable by deep-Googling medical information. With them, it was much more about these holistic practices like sunbathing or whatever, but we were both practicing these different modes of control. And those two practices and ideologies both have this tenuous relationship to disability. In this highly technological space I was in, I saw a lot of erasure of the reality of disability, and the assumption that you’d want to avoid it at all costs…[but] then there was this idea in the natural-birth communities that any medical care was unacceptably unnatural, and that some children are fated to die in the womb or at birth because it’s what God intended. Both are eugenic ideas, in their own ways.  WEEKEND READING 📚On the new normal: Everyone is cheating their way through college with ChatGPT, and professors have no idea what to do about it. (New York Magazine) On realism: Writer and illustrator Mona Chalabi explains how she created the hijabi mom character in the animated TV show #1 Happy Family USA. (The Guardian) On mifepristone: You may have been pleasantly surprised to hear that the Trump administration recently defended the abortion pill against a lawsuit. Don’t get too excited, warns law professor Mary Ziegler. (Slate) An earlier version of the headline contained an error; Dr. Means wrote of “divine intuition,” not “divine intervention.”  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
There's No "Fetus Debris" In Your Vaccine
  May 1, 2025 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 ONPure 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:
 MAHDAWI AT A CAMPUS PROTEST IN 2023. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)
 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)  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
The Longest 100 Days Ever
  April 29, 2025 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 ONThe 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…
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:
 ALL THREE MEMBERS OF SALT-N-PEPA (SANDRA "SALT" DENTON, DJ SPINDERELLA, AND CHERYL "PEPA" JAMES) AT THE 2018 ESSENCE FESTIVAL. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)
 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.  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
You Can't Pay Us to Have More Kids
  April 22, 2025 Greetings, Meteor readers, It’s Earth Day! And also, it’s Taurus season! May we all feel some stabilizing, comforting energy over the next few weeks because boy, do we need it. In today’s newsletter, Nona Willis Aronowitz explains what’s behind the administration’s “make more babies” plan. Plus, we bid farewell to the pope. Bulls up, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONBaby bust: Yesterday, the New York Times reported that the pro-natalist Trump administration, concerned about the U.S.’s falling birth rate, has been brainstorming ways to get American women to have more children. Some of their ideas include five-thousand-dollar baby bonuses, menstrual-cycle education, and a National Medal of Motherhood (a tactic you might recognize from the Nazis). Notably missing: plans to subsidize childcare, parental leave, or any other crucial improvements actual families have been requesting for generations. Lots of incredulous reactions across the internet made that exact point: “How can you expect us to have more babies without a strong social safety net?” As someone who yearns for free daycare and paid maternity leave, I’m tempted to say the same. Yes, it’s darkly ironic that the Trump administration is calling for more babies even as it has made deep cuts to maternal and child health and opposed any repair of the U.S.’s woefully inadequate family policies. But the thing is, offering benefits to families doesn’t actually boost birth rates. In fact, many countries that provide robust support for parents, like Finland, Norway, and Germany, have birth rates below ours. There’s no evidence that Trump’s proposed policies would work, either. “Even the richest, savviest, most committed governments” are stumped, a history professor told Vox in 2023. “If such policies were discoverable, I think someone would have discovered them.” So the question you’re probably wondering is: What’s so bad about the birth rate falling? Most countries in the world are now below the “replacement rate” of 2.1, and the trend is most pronounced in the richest nations; the United States is at about 1.6, a drop of more than 20 percent in the last decade. Seen one way, fewer babies is a success story of women truly having control over their own lives, and—thanks to contraception access, education, and career opportunities—being able to make choices that may or may not involve children. Maybe those decisions “shouldn’t scare us,” writes feminist writer Jill Filipovic, “but should inform us that when women have more options and opportunities, women’s desires become far more varied.” Still, experts across the political spectrum agree that a shrinking population with more old people than young presents huge economic and humanitarian challenges. An aging society means fewer workers to keep society functioning—to grow our food, to build our houses, to care for the elderly. For many, the story of South Korea, which has the lowest birth rate in the world, provides a disconcerting glimpse of what happens when so few babies are born: 1 in 5 people in South Korea are over 65, and nearly 40 percent of those elders live in poverty. But no matter how valid these concerns are, Trump’s “solutions” are both demeaning (ugh, that medal) and historically familiar: The one way governments have temporarily bumped up birth rates throughout history is by oppressing women. Think Nazi Germany and its Lebensborn program, which used women as incubators for 20,000 “Aryan” babies. Or Ceausescu's Romania, which severely restricted abortion and birth control access to devastating effect. Even our own “baby boom” in the repressive 1950s partially relied on pushing women into domesticity. This brand of pro-natalism—promoted by people like J.D. Vance, Tucker Carlson, and Elon Musk—often goes hand-in-hand with racism and anti-immigrant sentiment. While immigration is often touted as a short-term solution to the U.S.’s low birth rate, the Trump administration’s cocktail of natalism and xenophobia makes clear that they don’t want more babies of all kinds, just white, Christian babies in heterosexual nuclear families. So, yes, I agree that we should seriously grapple with how to reshape society in the face of population decline. I just don’t trust this administration—with its blatant disregard for families and basic human decency—to do it. —Nona Willis Aronowitz AND:
 POPE FRANCIS DELIVERED HIS FINAL EASTER SERMON AT THE VATICAN THE DAY BEFORE HE DIED. VIA GETTY IMAGES
 COLUMBIA STUDENTS AND ALUMNI CHAINED THEMSELVES TO THE UNIVERSITY'S MAIN GATE LAST WEEK TO PROTEST THE DETENTION OF STUDENTS. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)
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The Secret War on Birth Control
  April 15, 2025 Hello, sweet Meteor readers, Happy Tax Day! This year I learned about the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit, which sounded heavenly given that my family spent fully $15,000 on daycare last year. Imagine my disappointment when I found out that the maximum credit you can claim is 20% of $3,000…i.e. $600. Womp womp. (And Republicans have contemplated dropping even this piddling credit.) The state of childcare in this country is enraging. Today, we’re tracking the sneaky, scary erosion of birth control rights in America. Plus, Harvey Weinstein is back in court, and the “broligarchy” gets a dressing-down. Nona Willis Aronowitz  WHAT'S GOING ONThe secret war on birth control: From the moment the high court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, one Supreme Court justice signaled that birth control access was in danger. In a concurring opinion back then, Justice Clarence Thomas urged the court to re-examine “demonstrably erroneous decisions” like Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 ruling which granted Americans a constitutional right to birth control. So what’s happened to birth control since that fateful ruling? Last week, the National Women’s Law Center released a report addressing that question, and it finds that our right to contraception is indeed eroding. Since 2022, some lawmakers have wasted no time proposing or musing about bans on some forms of birth control; a nominee for Michigan attorney general compared emergency contraception to fentanyl. But there’s one big obstacle in their way: Birth control is incredibly popular. Upward of 90% of Americans believe it should be legal. So policymakers have turned to less obvious tactics to restrict contraception.  BIRTH CONTROL PILLS SHOULD BE AS CONTROVERSIAL AS DANGLY EARRINGS. VIA GETTY IMAGESLawmakers “know that they can’t attack birth control publicly or on paper, so they’re doing it secretly,” said Kimi Chernoby, senior counsel for reproductive rights and health at the National Women’s Law Center and the primary author of the report. Chernoby pointed to an innocuous-sounding bill called the Medical Ethics Defense Act, passed just last week in the Tennessee Senate that has a good chance of passing the House, given that a subcommittee already approved it. Not once does it mention birth control. But the legislator who sponsored the bill later said in an interview that the law would allow pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control. This sneakiness can reach the point of absurdity: Texas senator Bryan Hughes, the guy who crafted the state’s abortion ban, just presented a bill that would test wastewater for abortion medication and hormones found in birth control, because of the supposed health risk it poses “especially for pregnant women and children.” Oh, the irony. And to avoid political blowback, birth control opponents are also going after people on the margins, namely teens (by introducing parental consent laws for birth control) and low-income people (by restricting Title X and Medicaid recipients’ access to contraception). It’s a strategy the report calls “the anti-abortion playbook” because it mirrors anti-abortion activists’ journey from Roe to Dobbs: Start by targeting people who hold less political clout, and inch toward the mainstream from there. They’re also focusing on certain kinds of birth control like emergency contraception, which has been endlessly (and erroneously) attacked by rightwing lawmakers and institutions as a form of abortion, despite the FDA’s explicit clarification in 2022. “Some people are making a conscious decision not to listen to science,” Chernoby said.  CONGRESS TRYING (AND FAILING) TO PROTECT THE RIGHT TO CONTRACEPTION IN 2022. VIA GETTY IMAGESSo what can you do? Since this erosion is mostly on the local and state level for now, Chernoby suggests reaching out to state legislators urging them to codify protections to birth control, which a handful of states have done in the wake of Roe’s fall (and Thomas’ warning). Be sure to call your representatives if you live in Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Wisconsin—all states that have blocked attempts to pass a Right to Contraception Act in the past. And if lawmakers don’t listen, make your outrage known. Chernoby said that when these issues get widespread coverage, restrictions often get reversed. For instance, in 2023, Iowa’s attorney general paused payments to hundreds of sexual assault victims for the emergency contraceptive Plan B. But she backed down after an outcry from Democrats and reproductive rights advocates, who pointed out that paying for pregnancy prevention should be the last thing survivors have to worry about. “When these attacks start happening more in the open,” Chernoby said (and she thinks they eventually will), “I predict there will be a lot of resistance.” Let’s make sure she’s right. AND:
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Death By 10,000 Layoffs
  April 8, 2025 Greetings, Meteor readers, Congratulations to newly crowned NCAA champions the Florida Gators and UConn Huskies. But more importantly, congratulations to me for winning my first bracket pool ever! It only took three years 🥴. In today’s newsletter, we look at the woman-specific impact of layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services. Plus, we’re all still thinking about The White Lotus. Shannon Melero 🏆  WHAT'S GOING ONDeath by (ten) thousand layoffs: Last week the Trump administration decimated the Department of Health and Human Services; in the words of one former employee, “shitshow is an understatement.” As a result, the organizations housed under HHS—the Center for Disease Control, National Institutes of Health, Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid— lost 10,000 staff members, effectively shuttering a number of departments. But not just any departments; the cuts will roll back decades of hard-won progress on women’s health research. Just take a look at what we’ve lost: Most of the CDC’s Division of Reproductive Health was laid off, including the team responsible for updating contraception guidelines and groups researching IVF and fertility clinics’ success rates (despite Trump’s promises to make the procedure more accessible). Three of the four branches of the Division of Violence Prevention were also eliminated. The division, established three decades ago, was crucial to framing violence as a public health problem, and yet last week, on the first day of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, all of the staff working on intimate partner violence prevention and sexual assault prevention programs were dismissed. The administration also fired all of the CDC scientists researching drug-resistant STIs. As is usually the case, these cuts will disproportionately impact Black, Latine, and lower-income women. The entire team working on the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, a project started in 1987 to reduce infant morbidity and mortality by offering maternal health guidance through the entire birth process, was laid off last week. “Black women in America are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women,” one expert told Rolling Stone, and “we know this in large part because of the data collected and analyzed by the CDC.” And the timing of the system’s shutdown couldn’t be worse, a public health professor explained to Mother Jones: It “jeopardizes women and infants’ health at a time when maternal mortality rates in the US have been rising and access to maternity care is increasingly difficult.” So what happens next and how can you help? Lawyers contend that many of the layoffs are on “shaky legal ground”; some state attorneys general have sued to block them. If your state hasn’t joined the lawsuit, file a complaint with your AG’s office online and ask them to fight back against these layoffs. If there is a local domestic violence shelter or rape crisis center in your area, it’s a great time to call them and ask exactly what they need. The government may not care, but we still can. AND:
 MY CHILD'S FAVORITE COUPLE, MS. RACHEL AND HER HUSBAND MR. ARON. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)
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