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MORE THAN A MAGAZINE, A MOVEMENT
Today at Ms. | May 21, 2025
With Today at Ms. —a daily newsletter from the team here at Ms. magazine—our top stories are delivered straight to your inbox every afternoon, so you’ll be informed and ready to fight back.
Profiles in Courage: Jocelyn Samuels and the Fight to Save the EEOC [[link removed]]
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(Robb Hill / The Washington Post via Getty Images)
By Sheree L. Williams and Eleanor Wesley | Ms.‘ Profiles in Courage spotlights women in the Department of Justice, federal agencies and the military whose careers have been defined by integrity, resilience and reform. Their quiet heroism—often at personal cost—reaffirms the enduring role of public servants who choose justice over self-interest. Through their stories, Ms. pays tribute to a tradition of service that safeguards democracy and inspires the next generation to lead with courage.
As a commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Jocelyn Samuels spent a lifetime defending democracy and workers’ rights. Now she’s fighting to protect the agency she helped lead.
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Why Democracy Needs Data—and What Happens When It Vanishes [[link removed]]
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(Emily Alpert-Reyes / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
By Kate Bahn and Jamila K. Taylor | In the first few months of Donald Trump’s return to the presidency, one thing has become crystal clear: The war on gender and racial equity is being waged in a new arena—on the battleground of data.
This fight isn’t waged with tweets or soundbites. It’s carried out through budget cuts, shuttered research programs and disappearing federal surveys. It’s a quiet but devastating assault on the tools we rely on to tell the truth—and to hold those in power accountable. And the message is chilling: If we can’t measure inequality, maybe we can pretend it doesn’t exist.
When race is stripped from maternal health reports, we overlook the crisis facing Black mothers. When LGBTQ+ identity is erased from youth surveys, we lose critical insight into mental health and safety. When disability status is omitted from labor market data, inequities in access and pay go unaddressed.
We need a renewed federal commitment to the research infrastructure that allows us to see and solve inequality—not ignore it.
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Federal Court Considers Removing Medically Unnecessary FDA Restrictions on Abortion Pills [[link removed]]
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(Elisa Wells / Plan C / AFP via Getty Images)
By Carrie N. Baker | The FDA maintains burdensome, medically unnecessary restrictions on mifepristone, which is used in combination with another medication—misoprostol—for early pregnancy termination. This combination of medications is safer than Viagra and Tylenol and is now used in approximately two-thirds of all abortions in the United States.
Over the last decade, the FDA has removed some of the restrictions on mifepristone, including a requirement that the medication be dispensed in person by doctors, but the agency still requires prescribers and pharmacies to register with the drug maker and requires patients to sign a counseling form with redundant, inaccurate and confusing information, all of which has decreased access to the medication.
To remove these requirements, the Center for Reproductive Rights filed a lawsuit in May 2023, Whole Woman’s Health Alliance v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, asking a federal district court in Charlottesville, Va., to order the FDA to lift these restrictions on mifepristone.
On Monday, May 19, 2025, the court heard oral arguments on cross motions for summary judgment in the case. “The Trump administration has made it clear that they do not care about science, or our health and safety,” said CRR on social media. “They only care about taking away our rights. But we refuse to let that happen. We’re ALL IN on this fight.”
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[link removed] [[link removed]] Tune in for a new episode of Ms. magazine's podcast, On the Issues with Michele Goodwin on
Apple Podcasts [[link removed]] + Spotify [[link removed]] .
In this emergency episode, we’re ringing the alarm bells: We just learned that in the state of Georgia, a woman named Adriana Smith, who passed away in February, and has been declared brain-dead, is being forcibly kept on a ventilator due to the state’s strict abortion ban, against her family’s wishes. Dr. Michele Goodwin breaks down Adriana Smith’s case, and the cases of other women who, like Smith, have been disrespected and desecrated in death thanks to abortion bans and pregnancy exclusion laws.
We hope you'll listen, subscribe, rate and review today!
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