Trump administration

Happy Tuesday, Meteor readers,

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In today’s newsletter, it’s confirmation time again, and we’re at the edge of our seats. Plus, some pardons you may have missed.

Serving surveys,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

Maybe say no this time?: Tomorrow the Senate confirmation hearings begin for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is in line to become the next Secretary of Health and Human Services. This guy is a sack of contradictions: Before he became a Trump loyalist, RFK, Jr. was an environmentalist warning consumers about the dangers of pesticides and a co-founder of the Waterkeeper Alliance. Cool. But he also led an anti-vaccine advocacy group and has repeatedly spouted theories that go against longstanding science and medical research. His greatest hits include: Wi-Fi causes cancer, chemicals in water cause “sexual dysphoria” in children, and HIV is not the sole cause of AIDS. (Tell that to this French virologist.) So he’s not exactly suited for any job at Health and Human Services, let alone the top one.

Of course, he wouldn’t be a Trump nominee if there wasn’t also an allegation of sexual assault dangling over his head. During RFK, Jr.’s bid for president, as we’ve reported before, his family’s former nanny Eliza Cooney alleged that he groped her multiple times in the late 1990s. The Washington Post also reported today that RFK Jr.’s cousin, Caroline Kennedy, spoke out against his nomination, calling him a “predator” who targeted parents of sick children. In a letter to lawmakers denouncing her cousin, Kennedy added that HHS employees “deserve a stable, moral, and ethical person at the helm of this crucial agency. They deserve better than Bobby Kennedy—and so do the rest of us.”

In other words, senators will yet again be sitting down with an unqualified and potentially dangerous white man to assess whether or not he is fit to have a job that the average American and 24,000 physicians can plainly see he cannot do. But there is still some hope here.

Last week’s confirmation of alleged abuser Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense was a 50/50 vote, with Vice President J.D. Vance casting the tie-breaker. If every Democrat and even a small handful of Republican senators vote no on Kennedy, then the confirmation won’t pass. (Here are all the members of the Senate Finance Committee, if you’re wondering who to call.) A report from the Wall Street Journal has already identified two GOP senators who could go either way on the vote: pro-vaccine senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and James Lankford (R-OK), an anti-abortion senator who’s wary of RFK, Jr.’s previously pro-choice stance. Polio survivor Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has also warned that any nominee should “steer clear” of undermining the polio vaccine and reportedly refused to meet with RFK, Jr. Even Mike Pence is opposed to this appointment, and it’s infuriating that any of us have to agree with Mike Pence on anything.

To those senators still on the fence, I also have to ask: Is approving this man worth the message it sends to the millions of women like Eliza Cooney who have to sit and watch their abusers continue to rise? As Cooney put it: “We can do better.”

AND:

• Since we’re on the topic of not giving men jobs they shouldn’t have, let’s talk about the Wisconsin Supreme Court election. This April, a seat will be opening up on the bench in the cheese state, and two judges are in the running. The first is Susan Crawford, a circuit court judge who, during her time as an attorney, represented Planned Parenthood in the fight for abortion access in the state. On the other hand, there’s Brad Schimel, a “tough on crime” candidate who is in favor of enforcing Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban, which is currently on hold until the state high court can weigh in. Wisconsinites, you literally have all the power here, so mark it on your calendars right now: Election Day is April 1.

• The situation is growing increasingly grim for immigrants in the United States. In the last week, ICE has carried out a number of raids across the country, including in Puerto Rico,  resulting in around 2,000 arrests. At least one of these raids was reportedly conducted without a warrant. Adding to the fear many immigrant communities are facing is the end of humanitarian parole programs, which allowed temporary legal status to anyone fleeing violence in their home countries, some of whom had sponsors in the U.S. Overnight, those who held humanitarian visas were recategorized as “undocumented” and are now vulnerable to detention and deportation.

• As the legal fight over birthright citizenship takes shape, pregnant women are increasingly at the forefront. Women in Maryland, Massachusetts, and Washington are suing the Trump administration for its attempts to render their children “a citizen of nothing,” as one plaintiff, a pregnant woman from Venezuela named Monica, put it. As of today, the executive order that could undo birthright citizenship is being temporarily blocked by several state AGs who also filed lawsuits.

• Last week, during the maelstrom of executive orders and proclamations, you may have missed that Donald Trump also pardoned 23 people who were found guilty of harassing and attacking patients outside of abortion clinics. One of those people was Lauren Handy, who was sentenced to five years in prison for blockading a Washington abortion clinic in 2020 and who was notoriously caught hoarding multiple fetuses in her refrigerator.

• If you, like me, keep forgetting what day it is, then boy, do I have some amazing news for you. Tonight is the first installment of Real Housewives of New York’s two-part reunion, where we get to witness franchise history as Jenna Fuckin’ Lyons shows up to the reunion in a literal bathrobe and hair towel. This is the only thing keeping me going right now.

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Greetings, Meteor readers,

I am roughly two days away from finishing a Christmas sweater I started knitting in 2022, so please know that when it’s done you will be receiving a special newsletter that is only pictures of this sweater. I will not be stopped!

In today’s newsletter, we are picking ourselves up and reminding ourselves who’s really in charge in this country. Plus a call to greater action for GBV survivors in Kenya and your weekend reading list.

All the way from sleeve island,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

The bad boys club: Donald Trump’s horrifying picks for key government positions continue apace. There’s Stephen Miller for deputy chief of staff, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for health secretary, Pete Hegseth for defense secretary, and the pick that has produced the most mouth-frothing of all: Matt Gaetz for attorney general.

By now you likely know many of the reasons this newly former congressman should not get this job. The alleged sex trafficking for which he was being investigated by the House Ethics Committee. The terribly kept secret of his relationships with underage girls. The legal experience so thin that the Wall Street Journal wrote that his law degree “might as well be a doctorate in outrage theater.” His blindingly white teeth and startling Botox. (Fine, those don't really matter, but they do look freaky.) The one saving grace here, small though it may be, is that even some Republicans say they cannot see a path to Senate confirmation for Gaetz.

THESE TEETH JUST DO NOT OCCUR IN NATURE. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) 

But! And this is an enormous, Godzilla-sized “but”: Anyone who lived through the Brett Kavanaugh hearings—in which Susan Collins and other Republicans wrung their hands over the accusations of sexual assault, but then voted to confirm him—is right to be cynical about these protestations. Besides, the outrageousness of nominating a potential sex offender to run the justice department means that Trump is doing something intentional here: This is an explicit test of which senators will be loyal to him.

But if it’s a test for them, it is also a test for us. Government officials do not work or exist in a vacuum. At least as of today, they are still civil servants, and if we want to stop them from becoming lords of a fiefdom then we must continue the work of demanding better. Organizer Sandra Avalos wrote in Truthout this week, “Our communities are not new to hardship — but we have survived even the harshest conditions, and in those moments, built even more power. We know how to organize, how to protect one another, how to support those facing the brunt of the threats.”

In this case, it’s worth remembering that the “what are you going to do? They’re all crooks” reaction to the nomination of Matt Gaetz may be legitimate—but it also lets the Senators whose job it is to do the right thing off the hook, and they don’t deserve that pass. If you live in a state with one of those Republicans expressing even tepid doubts, it’s worth calling them. Quote those doubts back to them. Demand thorough hearings. Pressure your House members to release the ethics report into Gaetz. Remind them in any way you can that they work for us.

AND:

• In just the last three months, 97 women have been murdered in Kenya. According to a new report from Nation Africa, the increase in violence against women has reached crisis levels, with one hospital treating 4,000 cases of gender-based violence per month. In response, the Kenyan government is launching a national campaign to raise awareness and “establish and improve support systems” for victims of violence. But some activists say it’s not enough: “The government, parliament, and all other relevant stakeholders do little to contain this menace,” one woman’s representative told Nation Africa. “We need to see action and perpetrators being brought to book…Justice delayed is justice denied.”

• The Iranian government has announced it will be launching a “hijab removal treatment clinic” to offer “scientific and psychological treatment” for women who have chosen to go against the state’s mandate on head coverings. “It won’t be a clinic, it will be a prison,” one woman in Iran told The Guardian. “We are struggling to make ends meet and have power outages, but a piece of cloth is what this state is worried about.”

• On this week’s episode of UNDISTRACTED, Brittany Packnett Cunningham is in conversation with abortion rights activist Cecile Richards and journalist Paola Ramos on  the “maddening and heartbreaking” results of the election. Richards, in particular, speaks to the importance of building up a coalition of women across racial divides, in spite of what we saw at the polls. “For too long, the fight for abortion rights was an exclusive club to some extent,” she tells Cunningham. “And we can't do that anymore.”

• Elder millennials, dust off your eyeliner pencil: We’re going out. The iconic band My Chemical Romance has announced a 2025 tour and there could not be a better time to be standing in an arena screaming, “I’m not okay.”

WEEKEND READING 📚

On men: Looking for a break from toxic masculinity? You may be surprised to find respite in The Golden Bachelorette. (Slate)

On the internet: The phrase “your body, my choice,” recently popularized by a Hitler-admiring self-described incel, didn’t come to life overnight—it has a dark and longstanding history, Jia Tolentino explains. (The New Yorker)

On the images we keep: One writer’s practice of collecting images from Gaza preserves both the unspeakably bad and the brief moments of good. (The Baffler)

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Hola, Meteor readers,

I am both excited and terrified for this weekend. On Saturday, I’m doing my first ever Polar Bear Plunge which, if you’re not familiar, is where people jump into the ocean in the middle of winter, sometimes for charity and sometimes for fun. (I am not in the latter group.) It’s going to be 37 degrees on Saturday. And did I mention I can’t swim?

In today’s newsletter, we dig into another thing striking fear in my heart: Project 2025. Plus, a win for menopausal Brits, student loan forgiveness for some, and your weekend reading list.

Icicle-y yours,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

What Project 2025 involves: Ever wonder what the Republicans would do if they secured the presidency this fall? Well, wonder no more because they’ve announced their plan to the world. Project 2025, as you may have heard, is an extensive “four-pillared” transitional plan to create a more conservative government. It’s long, it’s terrifying, and it’s real: Project 2025 wasn’t developed by some grassroots, far-fetched, no-name fringe group but by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank and well-organized Beltway mainstay.

So which action items do they want the next conservative president to pursue? Here’s the TL;DR on some of the suggested policies from their mandate book:

• They want to “delete the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights” from “any piece of legislation that exists.”

• They want to eliminate the White House’s Gender Policy Council, because they believe it supports, among other things, “comprehensive sexuality education… and the new “woke” gender ideology.”

• They want to “rescind regulations prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, and sex characteristics.” This, by the way, was in the healthcare reform section.

• In terms of reproductive rights, Project 2025 includes the expected end-abortion-in-all-instances talking points. But beyond that, the plan brings anti-abortion policy into every single corner of government, including to “promote pro-life workplace accommodations”—whatever those are. Public schools, healthcare plans, and child welfare services would also be required to utilize anti-abortion education and methodology, including classes for teens that would emphasize the importance of heterosexual marriage and couples counseling as a barrier to obtaining government assistance for families with children.

• And! They want to “permanently codify both the Hyde family of amendments and the protections provided by the Weldon Amendment”—both of which limit federal funds for abortion.

• Some of Project 2025’s more long-term goals (and there are MANY) include eliminating the Department of Education entirely and stopping any research that involves the use of embryonic stem cells.

The core goal of Project 2025, as outlined in the “four promises” section of the mandate book, is to reform the government by enacting policies that prioritize the American family—which, out of context, sounds lovely. But in abundantly clear terms, the Project specifies that the American family it's referring to consists of two straight cis-gendered people, preferably ones who adhere to Judeo-Christian values. The authors of Project 2025 shape their agenda around conservative evangelical Christian teachings with the kind of precision the leaders of Gilead would envy.

So, what have we learned from this glance into a literal conservative playbook? In the words of Whoopi Goldberg, “Molly. You in danger, girl.” We are all Molly right now.

AND:

• Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of recently deceased Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, is promising to carry on her husband’s work holding President Vladimir Putin to account. In a video posted on Monday, Navalnaya alleged that Putin was responsible for the death of her husband, who had been imprisoned in a Siberian penal colony. “In killing Aleksei, Putin killed half of me, half of my heart and half of my soul,” she said. “But I have another half left, and it is telling me I have no right to give up.”

• Nineteen different aid groups—including Save the Children, UN Women, Mercy Corps, and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights—have signed a new letter asking for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, along with a list of demands which would make it possible for aid groups to help vulnerable communities. “No amount of humanitarian response will make up for the months of deprivation that families in Gaza have endured,” the letter says. “This is our effort to salvage the humanitarian operation so that we can provide, at the very least, the bare essentials: medicine, drinking water, food, and shelter as temperatures plummet.”

• The Biden Administration has forgiven $1.2 billion in student loan debt under the president’s SAVE plan. This will cover about 153,000 borrowers who will be informed about their loan forgiveness via email. (hits refresh on inbox)

• Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission has determined that employers must make reasonable accommodations for employees experiencing menopause. Those who feel they have been discriminated against because of their menopausal symptoms will not be able to sue for damages.

• This weekend marks the two-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In a series of photos, The Atlantic chronicles what life has been like for Ukrainians.

LET'S (VIRTUALLY) GET TOGETHER!

Doing anything fun on March 5? We are! The Meteor’s head of impact (and Mother of Swifties) Tara Abrahams will be in conversation with Chelsey Goodan, author of Underestimated: The Wisdom and Power of Teenage Girls, and award-winning filmmaker and Meteor collective member Sarah Jones. Join them for a discussion of the book—and the future young girls are working to create now. The event is totally free and you can register for it right here. See you in cyberspace.

WEEKEND READING

On-screen, off the rails: Wesley Morris has written the only review of Jennifer Lopez’s new “film” you need to read. (The New York Times)

On the front lines: Lawyers, patients, and advocates in abortion ban states are fighting tooth and nail to weaken those laws. But just how does anyone win that battle? (The Cut)

On the court: Thousands of young girls dream of one day making it to the WNBA. And so does this very skilled 84-year-old baller. (The Athletic)

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Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? Subscribe using their share code or sign up for your own copy, sent Tuesdays and Thursdays.

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