Greetings, Meteor readers,

Welcome to the Mamdaniverse, where hope is alive and all foods have seasoning you can actually taste.

Today’s newsletter is just like my high school: all girls, with a couple of body slams to end the night. Should be fun!

Growl power,

Shannon Melero

WHAT’S GOING ON

Super graphic ultra modern girls: The numbers are in, the Blue Wave has risen, and riding atop the crest on their vote-shaped surfboards are thousands upon thousands of women. According to exit poll data from the AP, in Tuesday’s three key races (New York, New Jersey, and Virginia), roughly 8 in 10 women supported Democrats, compared to 6 in 10 men. Young women in particular—and yes, we do mean Gen Z even though the rest of you are still young at heart—showed up and showed out for their candidates.

What was it that rallied women under 30 to the polls this year? “They want a leader who is going to push back on the misogynist rhetoric coming from these conservative leaders,” explains Rachel Janfaza, the founder of The Up and Up, a research and strategy firm focused on Gen Z. “The way that women have been talked about, especially in some of these right-wing ecosystems, has really pissed women off.”

Janfaza’s research also shows that younger women “are really taking their vote seriously…[and] their civic engagement seriously,” which doesn’t surprise her. Young millennials and Gen Zers are struggling under an economy that’s been unstable for years—economics and cost of living were the highest priority issues for a majority of voters this election cycle—and also grappling with the rollback of abortion rights.

“This is an issue-driven block of women,” Janfaza says. “They’ve grown up with less rights, which is very motivating, and they’re looking to back candidates who will show up and fight for them.”

AND:

• Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) announced that she will be retiring in 2027 after a 40-year political career. While she has made a number of contributions over four decades of service—including becoming the first female Speaker of the House—she now adds another important one to the list: gracefully stepping aside to make way for a new generation of leaders.

(VIA GETTY IMAGES)

• Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, is pressing charges against a man who groped her as she was walking to a meeting on Tuesday. Sheinbaum said she chose to take a stand against because “This is something I experienced as a woman — something all women in our country experience. No man has the right to violate that space.”

• Before passing away earlier this year, reproductive rights pioneer Cecile Richards co-founded the organization Abortion in America. This week, Fortune broke the news that, in the spirit of Richards’ legacy, the group is now launching a legal arm that will defend “individuals who have been harmed by abortion bans.”

• Residents of Colorado have done something the federal government hasn’t managed: voted to feed school children. On Tuesday, Coloradans passed Proposition MM, which increases taxes on the wealthy and uses that money to guarantee free breakfast and lunch for all public school students.

• Yesterday, in front of a room full of preschoolers and their parents, ICE entered a daycare facility in Chicago without a warrant and detained a teacher, forcibly removing her from the building. Parents who were present during the arrest say that ICE had been following the teacher and waited until she was inside her workplace to arrest her. “As they were doing so, she said, ‘I have papers,’” one parent told Book Club Chicago.

• The film Toy Story turns 30 years old this month. If you remember watching the original film at home on VHS, it’s time to start incorporating mobility exercises into your daily routine.

The Future of Women’s Wrestling Is Big and Bright in Texas

Welcome to Metroplex

BY SCARLETT HARRIS

WRESTLER AND METROPLEX OWNER, ATHENA (COURTESY OF METROPLEX WRESTLING)

On the last Sunday in October, in a suburb nestled between Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas, a group of women came together for an all-women’s wrestling show hosted at Metroplex Wrestling, a woman-owned wrestling school. Titled Who Runs the World?, the show was the brainchild of All Elite Wrestling star Athena, and it followed a rousingly successful inaugural show in August; both shows featured some of the biggest names in independent women’s wrestling, including Mercedes Moné, Nyla Rose, and Kris Statlander. A third production is scheduled for January 2026, and will also stream on Twitch.

This sequence of events on the indie scene—three all-women shows in six months!—is a welcome contrast to the mainstream entity World Wrestling Entertainment, which has staged just two all-women wrestling shows in its 70 year history.

A TAG TEAM BATTLE BETWEEN GIGI REY & LADY BIRD MONICE MONROE AND ANARKID ASH & LONDYN DIOR (COURTESY OF METROPLEX WRESTLING)

Progress for women in WWE has been slow and fitful. Earlier this year, WWE hosted Evolution 2, the much-anticipated sequel to its 2018 show of the same name. In an industry dominated by polarizing macho figureheads like the late Hulk Hogan, both Evolutions were hard-won victories in what we can call wrestling’s second-wave feminist movement, which began in earnest a decade ago and coincided with the growing popularity of women in other sports. And the wrestling on display was an evolution from the slaps, hair pulling, and derisive use of the term “Diva” that characterized women’s appearances in WWE in the decades prior. Trust that there was no sudden awakening, though. For 40 years, WWE was helmed by Vince McMahon, who has been accused of sexual abuse and is currently embroiled in a sex trafficking lawsuit. Despite the fact that current WWE leaders Paul “Triple H” Levesque and Stephanie McMahon have been congratulating themselves for  platforming women’s wrestling, most wrestling fans—40 percent of whom are women—credit progress to star women wrestlers themselves, including Becky Lynch, Charlotte Flair, and Mercedes Moné (known as Sasha Banks in WWE, which she left acrimoniously in 2022).

Meanwhile, in the independent wrestling scene, women competitors have been thriving for years—in promotions like Japan’s Stardom, London’s Pro Wrestling EVE (which just crowned its first transgender women’s champion in Nyla Rose), and Chicago-based Shimmer, just to name a few. “Without Shimmer, we might not be where we are today,” says former wrestler and Shimmer manager Allison Danger. “We were able to bring a lot more variety. Having different people from different backgrounds, different races, was making women’s wrestling more diverse.” (Danger is clear to credit past icons, though, “like Mildred Burke, the Jumping Bomb Angels, the Glamour Girls, Madusa, Trish and Lita.”)

THE ICONS WHO PAVED THE WAY, TRISH AND LITA (VIA GETTY IMAGES) 

The future of women’s wrestling can often be difficult to see because of the long shadow cast by the WWE, a behemoth that seems to only be getting bigger as it aligns with entrenched power. (Levesque has been a frequent visitor to the White House.) The WWE also seems to be getting more shameless: Many fans were turned off by the return of wrestler Brock Lesnar, who is named in the sex trafficking lawsuit against disgraced former WWE chairman Vince McMahon; and WWE has announced that WrestleMania 44 will be held in Saudi Arabia in 2027, even as the kingdom continues to be accused of sportswashing its human rights atrocities.

It remains to be seen whether these all-women’s wrestling shows will have staying power. Shimmer has been on hiatus since 2021, and former WWE wrestler Mickie James has experimented with partnering with different promotions—and even different countries—to find the right fit for her all-women shows. It took WWE seven years to produce a second Evolution, despite having all the money in the world and a wealth of talent (most other WWE premium live events are annual). But do these shows need the backing of large companies like WWE? Sure, it would be great to get an annual Evolution, but women like Athena, James, and Danger remain relentless and collaborative, doing the hard work with a fraction of the resources to bring women’s wrestling to fans hungry for it.

And they’re optimistic about the future. Danger points to the rise in platforms where wrestling can be consumed (a far cry from the tape-trading days when Shimmer was first launched), and says streaming has democratized the sport. Who Runs the World? streams on Twitch.

There’s more opportunity than ever, she contends—and the next generation of wrestlers and promoters will seize it. Says Danger: “We’re in great hands.”

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