A few months ago, I was packing for a flight and heading out the next day to shoot a World Cup commercial when I got a call from my agent: “They’re pulling you from the spot.”

The brand had recently implemented AI software that flagged potential talent for “risk.” Mine was that I spoke in support of trans rights. Anti-inclusion politicians have made the conversation around trans athletes in sports so muddied and full of false fearmongering that brands lacking moral clarity are running from mere association.

The truth is, trans people have been competing in sports for decades, and will continue to participate as this smoke screen from bad faith legislators and anti-LGBT groups cloak the real damage being done. As with so many other manufactured issues we fall for, women and girls will suffer the most.

While bills being brought across the country tape a "protect women and girls" banner over their sexist laws, women across the country are being stripped of reproductive rights and being left to bleed out in hospital parking lots.

A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling affirmed the wave of draconian state controls on who can play girls' sports when it decided athletic eligibility can be based on a person’s biological sex. These laws are some of the most intense political assaults on LGBTQ+ people in recent years, and they are turning back the clock on our rights, including revived threats against marriage equality.

How do you enforce who is “girl enough” to play sports? In my home state of Washington, the most extreme proposal of its kind is before voters on the November ballot. Measure I-638 would require all girls—but not boys—to be medically sex certified before they can play sports.

In a country rife with sexual assault, young girls would have to undergo invasive inspections of their genitals, or pay for a DNA or hormone test, as part of their school sports physicals. Doctors say genital inspections are not only medically unnecessary to play sports, they can traumatize and physically harm young girls.

In their witch hunt for a few trans kids in the entire state who play school sports, I-638’s backers will drive thousands of girls out of sports because their parents cannot afford the necessary testing or refuse to submit their daughters to genital inspections.

That’s a feature, not a bug, of these laws. Preventing girls from playing sports is the whole point. Spaces that leave girls and women feeling empowered are the spaces they want to constrict—and then eliminate.

These policies make all girls and women less safe. They create new ways to question and control women and girls, and that affects all of us.

Imagine you’re 13 years old and worrying: Am I the "wrong" kind of girl to play sports? Am I too tall, too boyish, or so fast that politicians will question whether I am girl enough to play on a team with my friends?

I was that girl at 13. I didn't fit the stereotypes of how some people think a girl should look, act, and compete. If today’s state laws policing girls who play sports had been in place then, I might have never joined a soccer team and never went on to win two FIFA World Cup titles and an Olympic gold medal—all because I wasn’t the right kind of girl in the eyes of some politicians.

Even if I had not become a professional athlete, my life would have been dramatically different without the joys, friendships, and life lessons that came with playing sports. Every girl deserves to have that experience, and no girl deserves to be discriminated against. That’s why all girls, including trans girls, should be able to play with their classmates in the sports they love.

Girls of color are the first to be targeted and questioned about their bodies. We can all name Black and Brown athletes who’ve been harassed for how they look or how well they perform in their sport. Girls with short hair or low voices, girls who are taller or stronger, girls who don’t fit someone else’s expectation of femininity, will face further harassment and new demands to prove their eligibility by pulling down their pants.

Attacks on trans girls are feints to throw us off balance and distract from the real issues impacting all Americans, like the costs of groceries and gas, healthcare, and housing. If we really cared about safety and fairness in sports, we’d be breaking down barriers facing girls at every level, protecting them from sexual violence and harassment, and paying professional women athletes on the same scale as their male counterparts.

But they don’t want us to focus on the real issues in women and girls’ sports. It’s no surprise that the man who is bankrolling Washington’s I-638 is a mega-millionaire and major Trump donor. He has no background in women’s sports, yet he claims to be speaking on behalf of women and girls in need of his protection. We don’t need to be “protected” by people like him, and we can speak for ourselves.

Standing up for our trans siblings and welcoming them on the field sends a powerful message to these politicians that we reject their hate and division—and to keep their hands off of our bodies.

This Fourth of July, America turns 250—and while she does look good for her age, some of us aren’t feeling particularly celebratory this year. There are plenty of reasons to feel disaffected by the state of the union, from the war with Iran to the attacks on trans people to the flood of book bans sweeping the nation. So if you're feeling disillusionment, you're certainly not alone. We put together a reading list for those looking to skip (or at least step away from) the BBQs and fireworks—but still hoping to get engaged and think more expansively about the U.S.

Below you’ll find Independence Day book recommendations featuring histories that deserve more attention, memoirs that grapple with American identity, and nonfiction that tackles some of the biggest political issues facing the country today. These books remind us of where we've been and offer perspectives on how we can shape the country's future.

In a year marked by shifting conversations around sustainability, leadership, and innovation, the Cartier Women’s Initiative recently delivered a powerful reminder of what progress can look like when women are given the resources to lead.

Founded in 2006, the Cartier Women’s Initiative began with the belief that “empowered women transform society.” Two decades later, the proof is in the progress: the program has supported over 330 women impact entrepreneurs from 67 countries and awarded more than $14 million in funding to businesses that are tackling some of the world’s most urgent issues, including environmental and social causes.

To honor this year’s cohort of 30 fellows from around the world, Cartier held a week-long celebration in Bangkok, Thailand that included a series of dialogues, an immersive art exhibition, and opportunities for the fellows to connect with mentors, alumni fellows, and industry leaders. The theme of “Women Lighting the Path” illuminated the idea that women are often the spark for remarkable change.

The week’s events concluded with the Impact Awards ceremony held at Chulalongkorn University, where Amal Clooney delivered a keynote address to a room of over 700 people.

“We’re here to celebrate this year’s 30 Cartier Women’s Initiative Fellows, a formidable group of women entrepreneurs driving change across diverse sectors,” Clooney said. “I’ve seen how the Cartier Women’s Initiative fellowship not only accelerates these brilliant women’s careers but also creates a sisterhood committed to helping each other through its powerful community.”

At the Awards, each fellow was awarded a grant to continue their work. Among them are women like Vanessa Castañeda Gill, who founded Social Cipher to help neurodivergent children embrace their identities through games; Alba Forns, who is enabling everyday people to invest in renewable energy projects through her company Climatize; and Keely Cat-Wells, whose platform Making Space is helping companies train, hire, and retain disabled professionals.

“The Cartier Women's Initiative has been a profound validation of the work we're doing at Making Space, and meeting fellow founders from across the globe in Bangkok reminded me that the barriers people face in the workforce are universal, even when the solutions must be local," Cat-Wells said. "The recognition opens doors with funders, employers, and policymakers who can help us close the disability employment gap at the scale the problem demands. What I hope to accomplish is simple to say and hard to do, which is to build a world where disability and ambition belong together, where careers and dreams grow with the right access, belief, and opportunity behind them.”

While grant money is an important part of the Cartier Women’s Initiative, the program’s impact extends well beyond financial support. All fellows participate in a year-long fellowship program that includes executive education, leadership training, mentor opportunities, and access to a global network of entrepreneurs and experts.

It’s a formula that’s working: 66 percent of businesses that Cartier has supported are still operating, while 9 percent have been acquired or merged. Meanwhile, 76 percent of recent fellows have increased their revenue.

Next year, the program will take place in Amsterdam, where a new group of fellows will be introduced and honored. Proving that for Cartier, supporting women entrepreneurs is more than a moment—it’s a movement.

New York Knicks fans started lining up at 2:30 a.m. to catch a glimpse of their favorite NBA star at the championship parade on June 18. I would've done the same if I was a New Yorker, but only for NYC's First Lady, Rama Duwaji. Mayor Zohran Mamdani's wife instantly became my style MVP when she debuted a parade outfit made of Knicks T-shirts.

Duwaji's husband rode the entire one-mile route on an open-top bus, before reuniting with his wife in front of City Hall. They matched each other's energy in the team's signature shades, but the activist tapped 2026 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund finalist Miss Claire Sullivan for something custom. Now that's what I call committed.

The New York City designer upcycled a T-shirt dress of Knicks fans' dreams from white, cobalt blue, and orange graphic tees. Each NBA Finals-branded top looked fresh from a local merch stand, but the silhouette they created in tandem was one-of-a-kind.

It all started as a one-shoulder bodice, before Sullivan stitched blue-and-orange tees together to make an asymmetrical mini skirt. Duwaji draped the makeshift hemline over a black, crinkle-effect balloon skirt. The midi's calf-sweeping hemline promised her freaky It shoes weren't hidden.

It seems she stacked matching crew socks into Maison Margiela's cult-collected Tabi Mary Janes. Perhaps she was inspired by fellow Knicks fan Kylie Jenner, who pedaled a Manhattan Citi Bike in split-toe ballet flats on championship parade eve.

For one final slam dunk, Duwaji coupled her signature gold necklace stack with spiky, basketball-shaped stud earrings.

Fashion girls know Duwaji keeps a close eye on emerging fashion designers. Last November, while Mamdani delivered his victory speech, she stood beside him in a laser-cut denim top from Zeid Hijazi, a Palestinian-Jordanian designer based in London. It's no surprise she sourced one of Sullivan's newest creations, which debuted on Instagram just days after the Knicks defeated the Spurs in Game 5.

Sullivan told Vogue she was inspired by the Knicks gear turning the city's street style scene blue and orange. "My entire family is from New York, but have all since moved away, and everyone was texting me about wanting Knicks shirts,” she said.

Her friends helped her track them down, which wasn't easy over the weekend the team ended its 53-year championship drought. "When I saw how many colors there were, I was inspired to get one in every color and turn them into a dress.”

Sullivan originally sculpted the T-shirt dress over a pancake tutu, which featured pops of gingham and polka-dot prints. Turning theatrical tutus into streetwear is quickly becoming one of her house codes. (Addison Rae, Lady Gaga, and Rosalía are making them a pop star rite of passage for 2026 performances.)

She even wore the graphic tee and tutu combination to celebrate the Knicks' win last Saturday, June 13. Less than a week later, Sullivan had a sisterhood of the traveling Knicks merch moment with the first lady of New York City.

Rama Duwaji's T-shirt dress marked Miss Claire Sullivan's first foray from pop star to politician styling. In recent years, her designs have been spotted on Doechii, Rihanna, Dua Lipa, Ice Spice, PinkPantheress, Camila Cabello, and more. New York royalty like Sarah Jessica Parker and Chloë Sevigny also joined her celebrity clientele.

But dressing Duwaji introduced a whole new audience to Sullivan's empire. "I can’t express how much of an honor it is to dress the first lady of New York City,” she told Vogue. “I respect Rama so much. She's an incredible artist with so much grace and dignity. I could not be more proud of our city and everyone representing it right now.” Sullivan took the words right out of my mouth.

It's Juneteenth weekend, and while we believe you should be reading books by Black authors all year long, the three-day weekend is the perfect time to crack open an unputdownable work of Black history.

Juneteenth commemorates the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas were informed of their freedom—nearly two years after President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation—marking the official end of slavery in the United States. Though June 19, 1865 marks a significant victory, it is also a stark reminder of how those in power can manipulate the truth to maintain the status quo. Alongside the celebrations, you can honor the legacy of this day by spending time with stories by Black authors about Black American life and history.

Whether you’re looking to read a buzzy new book or check out that classic you’ve never gotten around to, the list below features fiction and nonfiction books that cover a wide range of Black American experiences from 1915 through the 1990s.

The documentary filmmaker Ivy Meeropol had never heard the name "E. Jean Carroll" when she read the writer's now-famous essay accusing Donald Trump of assault. Meeropol remembers where she was when she saw the piece had been published in New York Magazine. That feature was an excerpt from Carroll's book What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal, and it described an incident in the mid-1990s in which she said Trump attacked her in the dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman.

I remember the essay's publication, too. Except I knew just who E. Jean was. I grew up reading her and had worked with her at ELLE magazine. She was its advice columnist. I was fresh out of college and dumbfounded to be in her orbit. She was, and remains, one of the most iconic advice columnists of all time. Plus, a towering wit and a hilarious interlocutor. I was walking out of an appointment when I saw a barrage of texts. Had I seen the article? I devoured it in one sour gulp, awed that E. Jean had found the words to describe something so violating without compromising even one iota of her usual flair and humor.

After the article—and her book—came out in 2019, Trump would claim the assault she described could not have happened because E. Jean was not his type. She took him to court over that comment and several others, claiming that his disparagement of her amounted to defamation. Juries agreed. In 2025, a federal appeals court later upheld the $83.3 million judgment against him. It was and remains one of the few times the legal system has managed to impose a real and personal penalty on Donald Trump.

Back in 2019, Meeropol was astounded and impressed. She reached out to E. Jean long before the trial started, hoping to convince her to participate in a film. She succeeded, and the result is the documentary Ask E. Jean, so named after her brilliant and longstanding ELLE column. It's now playing in select theaters nationwide, premiering in May 2026—the same month that news broke that the Justice Department would open a criminal investigation into its subject, exploring whether E. Jean had lied under oath about how she was financing her case against the president. The film has continued to expand to new theaters in the weeks since.

The timing is "suspicious," Meeropol tells Marie Claire. And also frightening and shocking and, in a sense, validating. This film—and its message—matters.

At the beginning of their collaboration, Meeropol remembers E. Jean telling her that one of the things that most hurt her was that Trump had reduced her entire life to three minutes in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room. So Meeropol made sure the film is more expansive. It's a recounting of her singular life and career. Her trailblazing work. And of course, her ultimate triumph.

Below, Meeropol tells Marie Claire how she convinced E. Jean to agree to a documentary, the challenge of getting the project off the ground, and how she nailed its tone.

Marie Claire: Let’s start with the obvious: How did this story end up on your radar and why did you decide to make a documentary about it?

Ivy Meeropol: I read the excerpt in New York Magazine from [E. Jean’s book,] What Do We Need Men For? And somehow, I didn't really know who E. Jean was, but I was really struck by how she told that story. It wasn't just about the assault in Bergdorf Goodman. It was about her voice and her writing. I just found it so galvanizing. She has the most distinct voice, and she's hilarious and a vivid storyteller. I was horrified and kind of entertained at the same time. I felt like, God, I really needed that, and who is this person? So that was the hook.

It took a little while to persuade her to even speak with me. A mutual friend actually said to her, “Ivy Meeropol is trying to get to you. You should consider her. You should look at her work.” So E. Jean watched the film I made about Roy Cohn, because that had really just come out the same year. And then she watched my first film, Heir to an Execution, which is so personal [about the execution of my grandparents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg]. So it's almost like she got to know me a little bit through that, and then she decided she would speak with me. After that, in true E. Jean fashion, she jumped into it.

MC: You mention the style of her writing, which is so funny and so enraging. Early in the film, there is that moment where E. Jean remembers telling her friend what happened. She says she thought her friend would laugh. You see it almost dawning on her how other people are going to see this story.

IM: Yes, and that's such an important point, because you almost can't say you're laughing without having people say, "Oh, well then you must've been having a good time." It’s a dangerous thing to admit that you were laughing and only to admit it, but to say, "This is totally normal. This is how a lot of women cope."

MC: Totally, but also I think there’s now a pressure on women to tell the worst stories in the worst possible way to make it clear how bad things have gotten. It's almost like we lose a certain kind of right of authorship because the only thing that breaks through is total despair and heartbreak. You obviously decided that you wanted to keep humor in this story, and E. Jean made that same decision. How much did you grapple with the tone of the film?

IM: You're putting your finger on what made the edit and the actual construction of this film so challenging. It was like, Okay, how are we laughing now and then we're crying here or horrified here or enraged? But we had to do that because that's the truth. She's just a brilliant writer. When I started to spend time with her, we were just laughing all the time. She makes me laugh. I sometimes make her laugh. I felt like we needed to see the whole picture.

And why not? I mean, it's not like we've stopped laughing because we've had horror in our lives. That's E. Jean's bigger message in a lot of ways too. She's like, "I'm never supposed to have had fun again?" There isn't one right way to be a victim.

MC: At the same time, the film really makes clear that E. Jean had to put a lot of thought into how she presented herself. She has a hairdresser. She needs to wear the right clothes. Why did you want to include those scenes of her preparing for the trial?

IM: We're not supposed to care about our looks, but everyone cares. And not only that, it was essential for her. The team had to make sure that the jury saw who she was because they were getting all this input from Trump saying, "She's not my type, and she's older." And how do we imagine that she was attractive to him? So she kept showing pictures of her looking incredibly gorgeous. Her clothes became armor.

I could never have predicted, of course, what exactly she would say about it or that it would be so powerful to hear her say, "I had to look fuckable." It's just so E. Jean. When the film screens, you can hear the gasps in the audience. There's uneasy laughter; sometimes cheering. It's real, and it's powerful.

MC: You could have made the film only focused on the trial, but you really told this full story of E. Jean's life and career. I grew up reading her writing, but I had no idea she had a talk show. I didn't know she was on Oprah. How did you decide how to frame her in the documentary and how much to include of her life before the trial?

IM: I really wanted to show that she was ahead of her time and that she really was a self-made woman. She had all these very traditional female roles: cheerleader, sorority sister, beauty queen. She married young, moved to Montana. But the minute she had an opportunity, she was working. She had this dream. She leaves her marriage. She goes to New York. She becomes one of the first female editors at these male-dominated magazines and a gonzo journalist.

I wanted to show that she was someone who was pushing the boundaries for women in that time period and still was subject to this incredible degree of sexism. To me, she was representative. Through her whole experience, we're able to understand this trajectory of feminism. How far we've come, but also where it stops and where it's almost worse than ever, from the exploitation of women and children's bodies to rape culture becoming normalized.

MC: In a way, this story is ongoing. You couldn't have anticipated that the Department of Justice would be opening an investigation into E. Jean. How did you respond to that news?

IM: When I first heard it, I was shocked. I mean, I shouldn't be, but I was. I was worried. I was worried about her. But I do feel like it's even more important that we're releasing this, because he's calling her a liar again—again. This film is the antidote to those accusations. I would like to find one person who comes out of watching this film and doesn't believe her. We use the actual depositions; he's under oath, and she is honest. So yes, I am glad the film is here to meet this moment.

MC: It's expensive to make and release a documentary. We know that so many companies are afraid of running afoul of this administration. Did you find that people were afraid of the story that you were telling?

IM: Well, those dynamics definitely affected how long it took to come together. Look, I had really hoped that I would be able to go to a streamer and get a budget and really just focus on the creative and the hard work of making a film like this. That didn't happen. I don't know if it was fear at that point, because I don't know if he'd fully established himself as this vengeful, erratic, dangerous person. But I do think there was a feeling that people were kind of burnt out on Trump and burnt out on MeToo. I heard a lot, "Its moment is over. It had its moment." But to me this wasn't even a MeToo story. This was a singular story about E. Jean. There was hesitation. I was confronted with it over and over while we were making the film, as we tried to find people who would support us. And when we were locking the picture, there were people who wanted their names off for various reasons—personal, political, a partner or a husband or a wife telling them, "I don't like this. I'm nervous about it."

It had an effect on those of us who stayed put. But it also made us feel even more like, "This is even more important." It just becomes more and more important.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Princess Kate and Prince William have several royal homes, including an apartment in Kensington Palace in London. According to a new report, the Prince and Princess of Wales have had to deal with a difficult investigation after police officers at the residence were accused of making "inappropriate" comments.

According to the Sun, five armed officers "have been banned from royal residences following a complaint from a female member of staff at Kensington Palace." The outlet continued, "[An] investigation was launched into allegations of misogynistic behavior by [the Metropolitan Police's] Royalty and Specialist Protection officers."

Per the publication, a female staff member reported the officers for making "inappropriate" comments while at the property. One source told the Sun on Sunday, "Comments from the officers were perceived as misogynistic though the allegations were tame and none were sexual in nature."

While Princess Kate and Prince William are reportedly aware of the investigation and subsequent ban, they "had no direct involvement" in the decision, the outlet shared.

A statement from the Met Police explained, "As a result of our internal investigation into this matter, the officers received reflective practice to consider their actions and identify learning for the future."

The statement continued, "It remains a priority for the Met to ensure all officers and staff uphold the highest standards of professionalism, so we can continue to build trust and confidence with those we serve."

Kate and William recently moved their family out of Adelaide Cottage in Windsor and into their "forever home," Forest Lodge. The couple's Kensington Palace apartment remains their London residence.

The first call came just before eight o’clock. Then the second, then the third. It was a Monday in May last year, and LaMonica McIver, a 39-year-old first-term congresswoman from New Jersey, stood in the lobby of her hotel in Washington, D.C., frozen mid-step on her way out to dinner. Her attorney, her chief of staff, her colleagues—everyone who kept her life running, flooding her phone like a five-alarm fire. She was being charged with federal crimes—including assault on an officer—over a confrontation with ICE agents during a congressional oversight visit to a detention facility in her district just a few days prior. The charges came courtesy of Alina Habba, Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, who was then serving as the top federal prosecutor in McIver’s home state. If convicted, the congresswoman faces up to 17 years in prison.

These people are nuts, McIver thought. They can’t charge me—I didn’t do anything wrong. Seventeen years, her daughter—assault on a federal officer!—for what, doing her job? Habba’s office had floated some threats in the past few days, sure, but threats are the weather in Trump’s Washington, and no sitting member of Congress has ever been charged for conducting oversight. That McIver, who had been on the job for all of eight months, would be the one to change that was laughable. Certainly not at eight o’clock on a Monday; the clerk’s office closes at five. No matter—Habba, resourceful as ever, had simply posted the charges on Twitter and let the courts catch up in the morning.

The shock bought McIver just enough time to do the next normal thing: catch an Uber to Circa, a bistro in D.C.’s Foggy Bottom neighborhood, where a handful of congresswomen were expecting her for dinner. She told herself the charges were a joke, that the whole thing would collapse under its own absurdity, that someone would catch it, fix it, and she’d get on with her life. Instead, the year ahead would bring legal fees approaching a million dollars, racist bile and threats online, confrontations with Republican colleagues in the building where she still shows up to do the job that got her charged in the first place—and a fight that, as of this writing, is still ongoing. The hardest moments orbit a single thought: her nine-year-old daughter, Zaya, who would be 26 by the time her mother came home if the worst played out in the courtroom. It is a conversation she still cannot bring herself to have with her husband. “I sometimes drive myself crazy thinking about the end result of this all.”

McIver didn’t know it yet, standing in that lobby with her phone still buzzing, but the lifeline she’d need would not come from any institutional safety net. It was already at that table she was heading to. In the months that followed, the circle would widen into a network of congresswomen spanning four decades and every level of power in the Democratic Caucus, from Nancy Pelosi and Bonnie Watson Coleman to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar. They brought money, legal expertise, their platforms—and once, a bucket of slime for a nine-year-old’s birthday party. Their support stretched from the House floor on Capitol Hill to a federal courtroom in Newark to group chats that never went dark. It needed to, because the Democratic establishment—as McIver would learn the hard way—had no playbook for a fight like this. So the women built one themselves, with the understanding that any one of them could be next.

Marie Claire interviewed 13 congresswomen for this story. What emerged is a portrait of an administration that has shattered every precedent for how it treats its opponents—and a frontline of women who answered with a precedent of their own.

That fall, McIver is sitting in a federal courtroom in Newark, facing two felony counts of assaulting a federal officer and one misdemeanor count of the same, watching her lawyers make the argument that prosecuting a congresswoman for conducting oversight violates the Constitution. The case has reached open court after she pleaded not guilty and her lawyers filed motions to dismiss over the summer. Her life is now a revolving door of legal briefs and caucus meetings, the congresswoman and the defendant living in the same skin. “I don’t get days I can just be in my bed and be depressed,” McIver tells me. “But every day I have to pick myself up.” At school, a classmate recently told her daughter that her mom was going to jail. McIver responded with the simplest version of the story she could muster: “I’m in a battle against Donald Trump right now.”

But she is not alone, not in this courtroom. In the rows behind her are congresswomen who have no district-level reason to be in Newark on a Tuesday morning: Ilhan Omar, Jasmine Crockett, Sara Jacobs, and Yvette Clarke. Before the hearing, they had told McIver’s chief of staff they were going to speak to the crowd outside before going in, “and then we’re going in and we’re going to sit there.” The congresswomen understood that silence from colleagues could read, to the public, as its own kind of verdict. Letting McIver appear to stand alone was “a non-starter,” Crockett would later tell me, and Jacobs wanted “LaMonica to know she wasn’t alone in that room.” It worked: McIver sat facing forward the whole time, but she could still feel them behind her. “That helped me feel at least a little sigh of relief,” she says. “I’ll never forget that.”

In the months leading up to that court date and since, a network of congresswomen has made McIver their business. Emilia Sykes sends her Reels all night long. Lateefah Simon walks to her seat on the House floor every day just to be near her—“an energy transfer,” she tells me, “just to get some of that goodness.” Pramila Jayapal’s support always starts with a hug—“a physical, ‘I’m here for you’”—followed by the same question: “What do you need from me?” Jahana Hayes checks in before every recess and after every return. But what McIver has also come to learn is that beyond this circle, the support largely ends. The party’s national organizations—the DCCC, the DNC—have no system in place for a situation like this. What hurts “bigger than the charges,” McIver tells me, “is the support that I just have not gotten.”

McIver hadn’t always had a network to fall back on. In September 2024, she walked onto the House floor for her swearing-in, sporting a teal suit, round tortoise glasses, and a healthy dose of holy shit. Until recently, she had been a city councilwoman in Newark, fighting for federal housing dollars from the other end of the phone. Now she was here, having won a special election to fill the seat left by the late Donald Payne Jr., making her the first Black woman to represent the district and the youngest woman New Jersey had ever sent to Congress. She stood at the podium, one hand on the Bible, and took the oath. Her husband and their then-eight-year-old daughter watched from the gallery.

“I have to remind myself like, ‘Girl, you’re The Congresswoman!’” McIver tells me, smiling and shaking her head. We are at a café tucked inside a historic banking hall in Lower Manhattan, all vaulted ceilings and marble pillars, the city muted behind tall glass windows. “I was taking it in, but it was hard to believe that it was happening.” Pelosi came up to welcome her: “And I’m like, welcome to me?” Then Maxine Waters said hello and she short-circuited again. “Are you talking to me?!”

Sweet. Now figure it out. Since she’d won a special election, there was no freshman orientation or transition period. She was voting within the hour, and by the next morning, she was sitting in a Homeland Security committee hearing with no idea what was on the agenda. She lost count of the number of people who assumed she was someone’s new staffer. “You get thrown into the fire,” she says. “They’re like: ‘swim your way through on your own.’ You don’t even know how to swim.” Congress is also, she discovered quickly, a building full of cliques. “People have their favorites, they have their regulars. If you haven’t been here for a long time and you’re a newbie, that’s hard to navigate.”

McIver was not the first woman to come to Congress without the usual pedigree and find herself alone in it. Just ask Ocasio-Cortez and Omar, who arrived in Washington to enormous public fanfare but almost no institutional guidance. “When you don’t come in with a conventional political background, no one’s grooming you, no one’s mentoring you, no one’s showing you what to do,” Ocasio-Cortez tells me. “You’re kind of left on your own.” When I ask Omar about those early days, she smiles like she can still see herself trying to figure it out. “This town is strange,” she tells me. “I cannot overstate just how incredibly challenging it is to come here without connections to the institution.”

For Black women in particular, the challenge compounds, in part because there are still so few of them. Crockett is only the 56th Black woman ever elected to the House. “We are still very, very, very new to this body,” she tells me. “When I was [McIver’s] age, I never could have imagined doing the things that she has done already.” But McIver was there, figuring it out—young, new, Black and without the kind of safety net that would matter most when everything went sideways.

Enter Watson Coleman. Eighty-one years old, a stalwart of the Congressional Black Caucus, and the only other Black woman in the New Jersey delegation, she had been close with McIver’s predecessor and spotted his successor on sight. “I just kind of took ownership of her,” she tells me. “Come sit here, come sit with us.” Watson Coleman had played a similar role for Ayanna Pressley years earlier, and when she told Pressley about the young woman coming to fill Payne’s seat, Pressley reached out immediately. She pulled McIver aside and asked if she knew where to get her hair done in Washington: “Would seem a strange question for the woman with alopecia who has no hair, but that wasn’t always my reality.”

The Congressional Black Caucus brought others into her orbit—and a second home base emerged through the under-40 dinners, where, as Jacobs tells me, the youngest members of Congress get together to “commiserate” about the particular indignity of their place on the generational totem pole. At her first dinner, McIver had the whole table in stitches: “Those relationships just grew over time,” she tells me.

McIver was finding her footing, but she had come to Washington to work on what she calls her “love languages”—housing and affordability, issues she’d been reckoning with long before she was legislating them. The oldest of four and the first in her family to go to college, McIver was raised by a mother who struggled with substance abuse, and had watched what happens to a neighborhood when the federal investment doesn’t come. Her entry into politics came at ten, passing out campaign literature for her fifth-grade teacher, Ras Baraka, the future mayor of Newark, who would help shepherd her career from city council to council president to Congress. By November, she was holding town halls, planning legislation around childcare and federal housing funding, and feeling like the work was finally beginning.

Oh, and Kamala Harris was definitely going to win the election. “We’re going to have this first Black woman president,” she remembers thinking. “It’s going to be wonderful and things are going to be great.”

Within weeks of Trump’s second inauguration, the administration’s immigration crackdown landed in McIver’s district. Executive orders were “flowing out of the sky, like Skittles,” she tells me—ICE raids in Newark, parents afraid to send their kids to school. When a private detention center called Delaney Hall opened without proper clearance from the city, and lawyers couldn’t reach clients detained inside, McIver, Watson Coleman, and Congressman Rob Menendez decided to visit on May 9th.

In the accounts McIver and Watson Coleman gave me of what happened next, the details come fast and out of order, the way memories do when the body takes over. What they agree on is this: they arrived around 1 p.m. and waited over an hour to get inside while ICE agents filled the waiting room. Mayor Baraka, who had been trying for weeks to inspect the facility himself, arrived for a press conference the members had planned for after the tour. A guard let him onto the premises—and then government agents confronted him and accused him of trespassing. Baraka agreed to leave and walked out through the gate, but agents moved to arrest him anyway, on orders from the deputy attorney general. The three members rushed toward the mayor, urging them not to, and a scuffle ensued. McIver grabbed the back of Watson Coleman’s trench coat to keep her from falling and reached toward Baraka with her other hand. Agents in tactical gear were pulling and pushing, one with a gun drawn. “Please do not touch us. We are federal officials,” McIver kept saying. Baraka was arrested and taken away.

The members were shaken by the incident, and McIver’s side was sore from all the shoving, but none of them thought it would go further than that. In fact, they completed the tour—were allowed to, even after all of it—escorted by ICE agents through a facility where the elevator was malfunctioning, the phones didn’t work, there was no smell of food, and women detained inside told them they couldn’t connect with their lawyers or get medical care. Of the two and a half hours they spent at Delaney Hall that day, the government’s case against McIver would come to rest on 68 seconds of body-camera footage. The images are murky, but federal prosecutors say they show her slamming her forearm into an agent trying to handcuff the mayor. Watson Coleman, who was inches away through all of it, is unequivocal about what she saw: “I didn’t see her go after anybody. I didn’t see her assault anybody. I just saw her protecting us and using her body and her arms to keep people away from us.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey declined to comment for this story.

Two networks activated the night the charges dropped: one physical, one virtual. At Circa, a handful of congresswomen were already working the problem before McIver walked through the door—Crockett, a criminal defense attorney, was running through statutes in her head, Sykes thinking through logistics for McIver’s daughter and her schedule, Hayes ready to tell her she wouldn’t be facing this alone. McIver walked in and saw their faces. “They done heard the news too by now,” she says, laughing. Meanwhile, the Democratic Women’s Caucus group chat—“probably the fastest place to tap into a network that gets galvanized super quick,” according to Omar—was lighting up. What do you need? How can we help?

Ocasio-Cortez was on the phone with McIver shortly after seeing what she described as “bat signals” on the group chat, and her call came with a directive: “You’re going to need money.” She was right. Members of Congress cannot accept pro bono legal defense for cases like this, and no institutional fund exists to cover one. “LaMonica was one of the first members of Congress to take on ICE and put literally herself and her body on the line,” she tells me. “A pat on the back and congratulations and praise is not enough. If a woman is going to take risks, she needs money, resources, and solidarity, period.” She helped McIver raise over $15,000.

Pelosi moved to the mechanics. She had known McIver’s district long before McIver held it—Donald Payne Sr. was a dear friend, and she had campaigned for him there; when his son inherited the seat and then passed, she felt a responsibility to whoever came next. She donated immediately, then urged McIver to set up a legal defense fund so supporters could give beyond what campaign contribution limits allowed. “That’s how they want you to feel your pain,” she told her. “Not only do we love you and care about you, but let us tangibilize that.”

The funding and the strategy have been critical to McIver as a defendant. What’s held her together as a person, though, is the daily rhythm the women fell into afterward. “It’s really been a strong base of women who have really been amazing,” McIver says, “and I feel like I can count on.” Prayer Zooms, baby pictures exchanged on the House floor, hugs in the hallways, heads-ups on legislation before her own staff sees it. On the group chat, when McIver mentioned needing slime for her daughter’s birthday goody bags, an alarming number of congresswomen immediately reported for goop duty.

“I think that they thought they could move in ways that are cruel, targeted, and unprecedented, and that maybe no one would care,” Pressley tells me. They were wrong. It endures, she says, “in the pull-asides on the House floor that are just a check-in. It endures with early morning and late night phone calls. It’s essential to our sanity.” Crockett, who has told McIver she plans to make herself available to her legal team after she leaves Congress in January, is blunt about why: “I have trust issues and I look at her as my own family. That’s how serious this is for me.” Pelosi, for her part, sums up the entire pact in three words: “With you, babe.”

Through all of it, McIver has kept showing up—voting, legislating, flying home to her family on weekends. The pace, she tells me, is its own kind of mercy. “I’m busy working, but also I’m momming and trying to do everything else. You kind of don’t really have a lot of space to self-pity party every day.” Watson Coleman, who sits near her on the House floor, watches her do it week after week. “It doesn’t stop her from speaking up, and she’s there to do her job every day,” she says, pausing. “But I know that in her quietest hours, the possibility of the absurdity of all this has got to weigh on her.”

McIver is on a train home from Washington in December, texting a senior staffer about going to prison. The motions to dismiss that her lawyer had filed over the summer had been denied, and the road ahead had gotten longer. “I don’t have a ton of faith,” she writes in messages shared with Marie Claire. “I’m just a Black girl from Newark. It honestly means nothing to this DOJ, this president to throw me in jail, let alone find me guilty. It’s a scary thought, but I’m preparing myself for the worst.” Her staffer sends her a heartbreak emoji and McIver shoots back with heart hands.

The charges are no longer breaking news, yet the case still follows her everywhere. Hateful messages pour in from strangers online; her husband makes the mistake of reading the comments and can’t unsee them. “Our families don’t deserve to be drowned in what we do,” McIver tells me. During a House Homeland Security hearing earlier this year, Republican congressman Eli Crane of Arizona noted, without naming her, that a member of the panel had assaulted an ICE agent. McIver fired back: “Mr. Crane, I don’t know what your obsession is with me, but I am so tired of you mentioning me, and you should take that obsession and need to put it to the people of Arizona.” And while not a single sitting Republican has publicly spoken out in her defense, one Republican congresswoman recently pulled McIver aside and asked if the charges were still happening. When McIver said yes, the woman told her: “That’s some BS.” McIver was stunned. “I wanted to say, ‘Why don’t you say that out loud?’” she tells me.

The women she works with can hold the edges together, but they can’t make the charges disappear. And while the love is real, so is the fury. Every congresswoman I spoke to has taken McIver’s case as a warning. “Today is LaMonica,” Clarke says, “tomorrow it’s me.” Omar calls the precedent “very scary.” Crockett calls it “bullshit.” “Their goal is intimidation and the financial strain, the mental strain,” she says.

None of the them think it’s a coincidence that the charges landed on McIver. “They knew she was going to be effective,” Pelosi tells me. “She came in, she was young, she was [in the] minority. They’re going to take her down.” She has been on the other end of it for decades. “I knew what I was getting into, and I knew that all the things that they did to paint me as a devil—with cloven feet and fangs and flaming hair—and the rest of that, which led to the assault on my husband,” she says, pausing. “I wish they had gotten me instead of him.”

Clarke names another layer: “This administration has made it a point to go after Black women in authority. There’s no ifs, ands, or buts about that.” Simon pulls the lens further back, past the incident and the administration, to the building itself: “I don’t know if the founders ever imagined Black women being in the dome with these jobs that we have. Enslaved Americans helped to build the Capitol, but I think we still feel that at a cellular level.”

The administration created the crisis. But the party, it turned out, had no system in place to meet it. When another member was threatened months after McIver was charged and came to her asking how she’d found a lawyer—“Is it the DCCC?”—McIver had to tell her the truth: “No one helped me. We did this on our own. And there was no system set in place.” Sykes has tried to sound the alarm. On a call with Democratic leadership, when the chair started urging members to fight harder, she cut in: LaMonica did that, and now she’s looking at 17 years. “Now what’s the next thing we’re going to cheer on,” she says, “and who’s the next person we’re going to sacrifice so that we can say you all fought appropriately?”

Ocasio-Cortez puts it in terms anyone with a job would understand: “It is a total failure and an indictment of our systems that this member has to fundraise for the legal defense of conducting her own constitutional responsibilities. Imagine showing up to your job and someone sues you personally for doing your job. That’s supposed to be the company.” McIver, she says, was asked to take a risk and then left to carry the cost alone: “Once you’ve stuck your neck out and done a courageous thing, you are largely left to fend for yourself.” But she’s done accepting that. “I just don’t want to live in that world anymore—so we started by building it with each other.”

There is a theory, shared by more than one of the women I spoke to, about what the building they work in does to the people inside it. “If you are already a kind and genuine and decent person, you will be more kind and more genuine and more decent because the environment calls for it,” Hayes tells me. “If you are not, just walking on these hollow grounds is not going to make you that person. Congress reveals who you are.” Omar has watched McIver prove it. “She is still so soft and so graceful,” she tells me, “because this place does destroy people.”

McIver’s case is now before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Oral arguments are set for June 24—the last chance to get the charges dismissed before a trial, barring an appeal to the Supreme Court. She is still raising money for her defense, still working, fighting, and planning her life around the possibility that she could lose it. Despite everything, she has brought back over $10 million to her district for community projects. “When you have an administration who’s working so hard to stop you from doing the work on behalf of the people that you represent, I take that personally,” she tells me. “‘Nothing has faded.”

None of the women are ready to entertain the worst-case scenario for McIver. “If that were possible, that means that our whole system is completely broken,” Watson Coleman tells me. But if it ever did come to that, she adds, McIver’s daughter Zaya “would grow up to be the next generation of it, because she would be so fortified by community and family.”

Simon told me about a picture McIver carries of her daughter—“the cutest little girl in the world, with these little cute glasses.” Zaya has since seen the Delaney Hall footage on the news, McIver says. She looked at her mother and said: “Mom, if I would’ve been there, I would’ve had your back.” McIver told her that wasn’t necessary. “Girl, I had it by myself.” But her daughter held her ground.

She sounds, McIver might notice, a lot like some women she works with.

King Charles and Queen Camilla recently completed a visit to the United States, where they spent time with Donald and Melania Trump. During the trip, The King delivered a speech to the United States Congress, in which he made some pointed political remarks.

The Daily Mail's royal editor, Rebecca English, said of the royal visit, "The monarch's trip has widely been lauded as a triumph in helping to revive the so-called special relationship [between the U.K. and the U.S.], while gently delivering some home truths to Trump on contentious issues."

A royal aide told English, "The word historic is much overused and we always hesitate to use it in the palace but I think one could use that term for this visit...It was a high-stakes address to Congress."

English subsequently noted that "The King took the bull by the horns and raised issues including the role of NATO at a time when Trump has shown nothing but contempt for the alliance."

As for why King Charles chose to discuss such challenging issues, the royal aide explained, "It's a measure of how much he personally cares."

The royal aide elaborated on why King Charles decided to cover difficult issues, which could have negatively impacted his relationship with Trump.

"First, what The King says will always be guided by the truth," the aide shared. "Two, it will be guided by conscience. And three, they're all observable facts. Everything that is in that speech is an observable fact. So, I think we felt very comfortable with The King speaking as he did."

Luckily, King Charles's visit to the United States appeared to strengthen his bond with Trump.

"Given some of the issues that have presented themselves, you'd think it might all be a bit tricky," the royal source told the publication. "But far from it."

The royal aide continued, "The warmth you see in public is absolutely the warmth you see in private. That meeting in the Oval Office, there was an awful lot of warmth and laughter."

In spite of any potential disagreements, Charles and Trump appear to have a positive working relationship.

Royal biographer Robert Hardman was granted a special audience with Donald Trump during this week’s U.K. state visit to the White House, and during his private meeting with the president, the author gained insight on the success of The King and Queen's trip.

Hardman previously met President Trump at Mar-a-Lago while he was researching his new book Elizabeth II: In Private. In Public. Her Story, and was invited to present the president with a finished copy. Writing for the Daily Mail, the royal author said that he met with Trump the evening before The King and Queen departed, and the president had nothing but positive things to say about Their Majesties.

“We've done a good job with the King, right?” President Trump told Hardman, who replied “that the British team seem overjoyed by the success of this trip.”

The president then summed up the state visit in three words, stating, “It's been unbelievable.”

“He's a great guy, he really is,” Trump said of King Charles, with Hardman adding that the president also gave “warm tributes to the Prince and Princess of Wales.”

According to the outlet, Prince William and Princess Kate have been extended an invitation to the White House this summer, and Trump told Hardman, “William, he'll be a good King, won't he? He's very nice. A great guy. I like him.” Trump was also full of praise for Princess Kate, asking the author, “How's she doing? She's so great. She was sick, people said crazy things about her and she was so brave.”

In his book, Hardman shares details on Trump's first state visit to the U.K. with Queen Elizabeth, and the author shared that section with the U.S. president during his visit this week.

“I pointed out that she had found him, according to those close to her, 'charming, tall, tanned, big, courteous, mid-century' and also 'amusing,'” Hardman said. As for the president, he replied, “'I've had better,” adding, “and I've certainly had worse.”

King Charles and Queen Camilla have finished their historic visit to the United States to celebrate the country’s 250th birthday, and First Lady Melania Trump made sure to let Prince William and Princess Kate know she was thinking of them, too.

President Trump and the First Lady paid a formal farewell to The King and Queen on April 30, with the two couples sharing warm wishes before Charles headed on to Bermuda and Camilla returned to the U.K.

“Good luck with everything, and enjoy yourself,” the First Lady said, as lip reader Nicola Hickling told the Sun. “Send my love to Catherine and William and their children.”

Melania has a particular fondness for the Princess of Wales, who she attended a U.K. scouting event with last September during the U.S. state visit to Britain. And according to the Daily Mail's Richard Eden, President Trump and the First Lady have invited Prince William and Princess Kate to visit the United States this summer.

“Melania wants Catherine, in particular, to come,” a U.S. source told the columnist. ”She admires her greatly and would love her to visit.”

Hickling said that the president was eager to see Their Majesties again, asking King Charles if he was coming to Turnberry, Trump’s golf resort in Scotland. Although The King said no, President Trump said to The Queen, “It’s been very good to have you here. Have a safe flight. I’d like to see you again when we come over.”

Another lip reader, Jeremy Freeman, claimed President Trump told The King that their visit “was fantastic” and sent his best wishes to Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis.

“I look forward to seeing you again. Thank you for making it a success. Love to the grandchildren,” the president reportedly said.

When I was pregnant, one of the questions I was asked most often—by friends, relatives, even the occasional acquaintance—was whether I planned to breastfeed. Unlike so many of the more loaded questions that orbit pregnancy, this one never bothered me. My answer was always yes. Not because I had thought deeply about it, but because I hadn’t.

Then, last September, my daughter was born three and a half weeks before her due date. She was healthy—just shy of full-term—but she was small, which meant that in those early days, it was even more important to get calories into her.

At home, I spent long stretches on the couch, pumping every few hours to try and increase my supply. When I got anxious about my supply drying up, or hit some other breastfeeding snag, I found myself in an exhausted haze, going down a TikTok rabbit hole. There, I watched moms give tours of their breast milk stashes; deep freezers packed with carefully labeled bags of breast milk, hundreds of ounces stacked in tidy rows. I always found myself asking: How?

The answer was almost always found in a product. And before long, I had spent close to $1,000 on what felt like every tool imaginable for my breastfeeding arsenal. According to the gospel of 2 a.m. Reddit, if I just had that one very specific flange insert, it would change everything. I had standard electric pumps and wearable pumps and hand pumps. I had nipple ointments of every variety, hot and cold packs, and a whole bunch of other fancy items that promised to turn the drip and drop of my boobs into a full-on milk geyser.

Breastfeeding has always taken work, but what feels different now is how quickly that difficulty becomes the reason to buy something, try something, pay someone—and the subtle message that comes along with it; that with enough gear, guidance, and money, you should be able to keep going.

For something that has always been touted as natural, there are tools to increase supply, catch letdown, relieve soreness, prevent clogs, measure output, analyze milk, and optimize every step in between. There are wearable pumps and smart pumps and manual backups; lactation cookies, supplements, powders, gummies, and drinks. There are even products for your products, like pump bags disguised as work totes. Beyond that, there are the pricier layers of support: night doulas, concierge lactation consultants, text access to experts, subscription services, and apps.

Emily Oster, an economist and the founder of ParentData, tells me that a lot of this stems from both real need and rising expectations. “There is a lot of value to many of these technologies if you want to make this work,” Oster says. “And yet, it has also led to people feeling like, well, okay, there’s no excuse.”

Feeding a baby can quickly become something discussed in ounces, output, and gear. The moms on TikTok show exactly how much they pump in each session, along with the right pump, a power-pumping routine, or a lactation treat to get there.

As Oster puts it to me, once breastfeeding becomes something measurable—something you can count, log, store, and compare—it also becomes “something to monitor,” “something to worry about,” or “a way to compete.”

What all of these products are really filling, sociologist Caitlyn Collins tells me, is a much deeper lack of support. In the U.S., new mothers are often left alone to figure things out—without enough time off, without consistent, affordable help, and without the kind of built-in support from family or community that would make those early months, and the questions that come with breastfeeding, more manageable. The result is that many women end up piecing together answers on their own, often before their bodies, schedules, or feeding plans have fully stabilized. In Collins’s words, “Products and services do not make a community. They help ease the hurt of living without one.”

There are the emotional costs—and also the financial ones. A 2023 study from Yale researchers found that when you account for supplies, extra food, and the time required to sustain breastfeeding, it can cost mothers upwards of $10,000 a year—hardly the free, natural arrangement it’s made out to be.

And that number still doesn’t fully capture the intangible, from lost time and income to the mental load of breastfeeding. A feeding or pumping session can last 15 to 30 minutes, often six to eight times a day early on; over time, that labor starts to resemble a part-time—if not full-time—job. As Oster notes, “Breastfeeding's not free unless you think people’s value of time is zero.”

To be fair, some of these newer tools really do help. For a long time, mothers were expected to make do with products that felt clinical, clunky, or barely designed with them in mind. In many cases, women-founded brands have stepped in to make things that feel less awkward and more usable. One friend used the same wearable device across multiple kids, making it possible to pump for one while sitting in the school drop-off line for another. Another swore by a few well-designed nursing basics and a pillow that made feeding more comfortable—small things, but enough to keep her going well past the six-month mark she had set for herself. There's also the reality that women's lives have shifted—they have careers and are going to back to work—and that means their needs have, too. Many products have emerged to help fill those gaps. For these women, it's the tools that make breastfeeding possible.

By the end of those early postpartum months, what felt clearest to me was not that any of it was bad, but that once a system offers parents enough products, strategies, and expert interventions, it can begin to feel as though there is no acceptable reason to stop looking for the next best thing.

Lucy Jones, author of Matrescence tells me she wished she could have let go of the idea that breastfeeding not working out meant she was failing her child “in this extremely catastrophic way.” She adds, “Not everyone can actually fix or improve their breastfeeding experience, and that might be sad, but it’s okay.”

That is what makes perfectionism especially cruel in early motherhood: it can so easily disguise itself as devotion. For all the products out there, mothers can still be left startlingly alone, asking at nearly every turn whether they’re doing enough. It will take a culture shift to change that, and well, that's not something you can buy.

Government-funded child care in the United States has long been considered a political long shot. But Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico has a habit of breaking from expectation, and decided to take an unconventional approach to make it happen.

When she took office in 2019, making child care accessible was among her biggest goals. Although it took six years (“I didn’t get to free overnight,” she says via Zoom), the governor kicked off the process with unwavering determination—and a little help from her then-3-year-old granddaughter, Avery.

“I had my granddaughter on my lap, and I testified in the committee, which you don't do as a governor," she says of the 2019 legislative session. "I’m a mom. I'm a grandmother. I know how important pre-K and early childhood investments are to families and children.”

As Avery colored in her lap, Lujan Grisham advocated for both pre-K and universal child care, asking if anyone on the committee disagreed that “pre-K helps close achievement gaps and is good for kids." She also called attention to the state's piecemeal approach: "Does my granddaughter get to have early childhood [education]—or is it yours?”

She was prepared for a long fight ahead, knowing that legislators had been unsuccessful in passing state-funded pre-K for more than a decade. But ultimately, her path to success was smoother than anyone could have anticipated.

“They basically just appropriated $320 million into a trust fund [the New Mexico Early Childhood Trust Fund] for pre-K and child care,” she says—an unprecedented move in and of itself.

Rather than push immediately for universal child care, the governor first turned her attention to state-funded pre-K—a "runway" to her end goal, she says now. Then, in 2022, she and other lawmakers succeeded in directing a percentage of revenues from the state's oil and gas reserves to the Early Childhood Trust Fund. As oil and gas prices climbed, the Fund grew from $320 million in 2020 to a jaw-dropping $9 billion in 2024.

By November 2025—six years after the governor's legislative session alongside her three-year-old granddaughter—Lujan Grisham was able to roll out universal child care, making New Mexico the first state in the nation to do so.

“All I had to do was build a jet, put people in it, fly them, and land it," Lujan Grisham says now. "Because I had the infrastructure. That was the turning point.”

As the first state to offer universal child care, New Mexico is also the first state to reap the benefits of doing so. Per the Bipartisan Policy Center’s 2026 National and State Child Care Data Overview, American families spend an average of $13,128 per child on care each year. The high costs and lack of appropriate alternatives have led to many moms dropping out of the workforce—a consequence estimated to cost the United States up to $329 billion in lost revenue over the next decade.

In New Mexico, poverty rates are among the highest in the country. Child care costs are often the difference between a parent being able to work outside of the home or not, Lujan Grisham says—and, in some cases, being able to afford children at all. Though universal child care is still in its infancy in New Mexico, it's already created game-changing opportunities, she adds, allowing families to afford safer housing, have a second child, or chase a new career.

“I had a [constituent] who always wanted to be an entrepreneur in advanced energy and high-tech work,” she says of Santa Fe-based Julia Wise. “She worked for one of our national labs, has two kids, couldn't afford to leave the lab, couldn't afford child care and all the other costs. She couldn't take a risk.”

That changed once child care became universally accessible. “With both boys in school, we were paying over $30,000 per year for child care,” Wise says. “What would you do with $30,000 almost overnight? It de-risked so much.”

Wise left her job and chased a more entrepreneurial role. As a result, "five additional scientists moved to New Mexico, largely because they want to work with [Wise], and secondarily, they're going to have access to free child care," the governor says. "So she's building that ecosystem."

In Lujan Grisham's view, the takeaway is simple: When child care costs are no longer a barrier, families and economies can function more effectively.

But universal child care is just one piece of a broader agenda. As a longtime state employee—Lujan Grisham worked her way up to leading the New Mexico Department of Health and the Department of Aging and Long-term Services before becoming governor—she struggled to even take six weeks off from work after giving birth to her first child. With her second, she was “back at work in two weeks.” The experience stayed with her. “I didn’t want state employees to have to navigate any of that."

So, when she took office in 2019, New Mexico introduced 12 weeks of paid parental leave for government employees. The time off, available to both parents, is a first for the state; the goal is to expand the benefit to all workers statewide. (Though her gubernatorial term will expire next year, “I’ve got 20,000 advocates who will help make sure that the next governor has every tool he or she is going to need to get paid leave a statutory requirement," she says.)

Another piece of the agenda: free meals at school. Under the state's 2023 Healthy Hunger-Free Students Bill of Rights Act, all K-12 students, regardless of income, receive free breakfast and lunch at school.

“New Mexico went from 50th in childhood poverty to 23rd, and I think we're actually even better," Lujan Grisham says of the efforts. As she awaits the latest set of data points, Lujan Grisham says she’s “expecting to be in the teens.”

While she admits that New Mexico is in a unique position due to its natural resources, she believes other states can find their own paths forward, whether it’s through tax credits, corporate partnerships, or alternative funding strategies. “States have to figure out different pools of resources, and then they have to create economic opportunity that's linked to that." In New York City, for example, Mayor Zohran Mamdani is asking city philanthropists to donate to the cause of universal child care.

Ultimately, Lujan Grisham says, the country must “believe in the power of supporting families and children.” If that shift happens, New Mexico won’t be an outlier for long—it will be a blueprint.

Kelly Sawyer Patricof and Norah Weinstein join our March Zoom call in infectiously high spirits. The Baby2Baby co-CEOs are bathed in Los Angeles sunshine, tuning in from their Culver City office at around 9 a.m. They tell me they’ve just come from their monthly all-hands staff meeting. “Every department shares their updates, and we do a lot of great work here, so those meetings always put us in a good mood,” Weinstein says.

Baby2Baby began in 2006 as a small grassroots L.A. resource for gently used baby items. But since Patricof and Weinstein—a former model and corporate lawyer, respectively—took over as co-CEOs in 2011, the organization has grown into a philanthropic empire reaching 1.5 million children living in poverty annually.

Over those 15 years, the nonprofit has distributed more than half a billion essential goods, from diapers and newborn formula to baby blankets and breast pumps. It has also amassed a slate of A-list supporters, known by Baby2Baby as “Angels,” who regularly write checks, post to their millions of Instagram followers, and personally hand out care packages to families in need. (In their Zoom background, I spy a photo of Patricof and Weinstein arm in arm with Kim Kardashian, Jessica Alba, Vanessa Bryant, and Olivia Wilde.) Baby2Baby’s annual fundraising gala in November has become a highlight on the West Hollywood social calendar; last year’s event honoring Serena Williams saw Prince Harry and Meghan Markle as guests and raised over $18 million for its mission.

But to label Baby2Baby as just another celebrity-magnet charity would be inaccurate. Its work is substantive, and Patricof and Weinstein, both mothers to two children, follow an unyielding “do-it-yourself” ethos. In addition to donating brand-name diapers, Baby2Baby manufactures its own. In 2020, Patricof and Weinstein teamed up with Governor Newsom to successfully lobby California to remove the sales tax on diapers. It’s since led to a domino effect, with 13 states following suit.

Every milestone, though, comes with a clear-eyed understanding of what’s left on the table and who still needs help. “We're so proud to have distributed 270 million diapers since our inception, but we have requests for 1.9 billion and still have a lot of work to do,” Patricof says. But as we continue our chat, I ask them to take this time to celebrate their wins. Here, we discuss several of them, from challenging the stigma that charity work is a “bored housewife activity” and enacting policy change, to the pure joy of handing out Hot Wheels to five-year-olds.

Diapers are, and have been since the beginning, a core pillar of Baby2Baby. Why is that?

Norah Weinstein: When we first joined, we held many meetings with other organizations, social service agencies, homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters, and hospitals, and learned that the need was for very basic essentials like diapers. What we understood then—and what has made more sense in the last 15 years—is that if a mom cannot meet her baby's basic needs, she can't take advantage of any of the phenomenal programs out there, private, government, or otherwise. She can't even fill out an insurance form in an emergency scenario. That was a light-bulb moment for us that we now use as a teaching point with our team: we should always be listening and responding, rather than prescribing what people need.

It was a parallel experience putting together the kits for our program to combat the maternal health crisis, which we started in 2023 in partnership with the Biden White House and is now being piloted in 21 states. Last year, we received a historic $9 million grant from New York to give kits to every woman giving birth on Medicaid in the state.

But first we had to decide what to put in those kits. There's only so much room in those duffel bags, so we did a lot of research to find out what the moms and babies could use. We’re continually improving and innovating; when we get feedback from the moms that the diaper rash cream was more important than the vitamin D drops, we take that into account. We try to be very intentional in giving out things that are meaningful to the people who are getting them, the people who are the most important.

Kelly Sawyer Patricof: When we joined Baby2Baby, one in three families was struggling to afford diapers for their babies. It's gotten worse; now, one in two families is struggling. Diapers are the fourth-highest expenditure for a low-income family, after food, rent, and utilities. They're $80 to $100 per baby per month and aren’t covered by SNAP, WIC, or any other government assistance.

We try to tackle diaper need from all angles. Our diaper manufacturing system allows us to produce and distribute five times as many diapers at 80 percent less than retail, and we donate them to hospitals, homeless shelters, immigration centers, and other places. We launched the Goop Diapér in 2022 as a funny way to get people to pay attention to the fact that diapers are taxed like a luxury item. On our very first day in 2011, back in our tiny 600-square-foot space, Edelman PR called and asked if we wanted to do an event with Huggies to give away 100,000 diapers and $100,000. Now, 15 years later, Huggies is one of the sponsors of our maternal and newborn supply kits and gives us $8 million in product and monetary donations.

What drew you both to Baby2Baby back in 2011.

KSP: I was modeling in New York, but in my free time, I volunteered at a Head Start center in Harlem. I was inspired by the children I worked with; they lacked basic essentials and couldn't get an education. That was when the light bulb went off for me.

NW: While I was doing my day job in litigation at my law firm in New York, I was also doing pro bono work representing mothers. I felt a strong pull toward that kind of work and wanted to make sure it was part of my primary role. As well as both of us wanting to do something in this space, we also had big entrepreneurial instincts, and that drew us together initially.

You run Baby2Baby more like a Fortune 500 than a charity. What does that look like day to day?

NW: We do have a bit of a chip on our shoulders about being pigeonholed as anything other than the successful business we feel so proud to be. There are a few differences in our tax status, in how we put money back into the business and into the families we serve. But aside from that technical nuance, everything about running Baby2Baby is the same as running a business, in terms of leadership, logistics, warehousing, growth, staff, and growing pains. We have over 70 employees. Ten warehouses across the country.

TIME recognized us as one of the most influential companies in the world [on the 2023 Time100 list], which meant a lot to us. They didn’t say, “Okay, here's Baby2Baby out on the side, doing something lesser than, different, or specific.” We're in the group with the big kids, where we deserve to sit, so that was meaningful.

KSP: There’s also a sexist stigma against philanthropy because yes, it is more of a women-led business, and women are drawn to it. But that just inspires us to work harder for the mothers we serve. In 2025, we raised $70 million in cash and distributed over $122 million worth of product donations. We're serving over a million children in all 50 states and have changed laws. We are pretty solid in the fact that we are doing the work. If people want to underestimate us, it'll make us keep working harder.

Women are at the heart and soul of what we do—from our colleagues and C-suite to our angel group and the mothers we serve—and I do think we've changed the narrative to show that that’s a very powerful thing. We want to make sure that people joining the workforce, who are intelligent, amazing humans, come to the nonprofit sector and don’t look at it as lesser than, because it isn't.

Tell me about Baby2Baby’s Angel network and the celebrity ambassadors you work with.

KSP: We don't shy away from the fact that we have a lot of celebrities involved because they move the needle in every way. Our annual gala is one of our biggest fundraising moments in large part because our Angels bring the spotlight onto Baby2Baby. Companies come to us not only because we can donate five million diapers and wipes, but also because we’ll host an event and one of our celebrity ambassadors will take photos and give the brand exposure.

NW: The women we work with show up and take pictures when needed, but they also roll up their sleeves and are substantively involved in our programmatic work. Jessica Alba and Nicole Richie were at our first Mother’s Day event 15 years ago. Julie Bowen flew with us to the state assembly to advocate for the removal of sales tax on diapers. It's people like Miranda Kerr and Kim Kardashian, who raise their hands at our galas to donate millions of dollars. It's women like Jen Garner, Jessica Alba, and Emma Grede, who give us millions of items from their companies, whether it's The Honest Company or Once Upon a Farm. It's women like Gwyneth Paltrow who, in the middle of COVID, wore masks and gave out items to people driving by in their cars. It's Vanessa Bryant, Ciara, Kelly Rowland, Olivia Wilde, Paris Hilton, and countless others, who, during the L.A. fires, were here every day packing bundles for families who had lost everything.

These women come to us because they connect with the mission. Issues certainly impact people to different extents, but some of these themes—like needing diapers and having sleepless nights—resonate across motherhood. When Ciara speaks to a mother at one of our events, they can both appreciate the vulnerability and difficulty of new motherhood, regardless of their different circumstances.

What are some of the standout moments that left an impression on you from your 15 years at Baby2Baby?

NW: The children themselves are so inspirational, and always looking out for their siblings and family members. At our events, we create these magical toylands where kids can take home any toy they want. You might expect they’d want them for themselves, but every time, even the smallest child of five years old, they make sure to take something for their sibling at home. It's a beautiful reminder that people of the least means, who are struggling the most, have been taught to give back, which is what Baby2Baby's all about.

KSP: From day one, time and time again, we hear one through-line message from the parents at our distribution events: when we're able to provide diapers, and they can pay rent that month, put food on the table, and keep their lights on, we're not only providing basic necessities that they need—we're providing hope.

We also get very proud when we hear a new state has removed its diaper sales tax and clap for each one. Then we realize there are 23 states left to go, that diapers are still so expensive, the need is getting even greater, so we stop clapping and get back to work.

Photographer Shane McCauley | Hairstylist for Norah Melissa Uehara | Hair Stylist for Kelly Julie Ferrante | Makeup Artist for Norah Christina Lee Adams

It was 8 a.m. on a Saturday last June, and Angelica Vargas was folding laundry while her girls ate breakfast at home in Downey, California. Her 15 and 16-year-old daughters, both student athletes, didn’t have any soccer games scheduled that day, and her graveyard shift at a youth shelter didn’t start until 11 p.m. Vargas, 34, had nowhere to be—just “one of those days where you catch up on all your stuff,” she tells me on a video call in March. In single-mother terms, it was a unicorn morning.

Then her phone rang. It was Vargas’ mother, her voice measured, calling to tell her that her older sister was at the Home Depot in Paramount when border patrol agents had swarmed the store. Her sister, who had simply been shopping, was trapped in the parking lot while people around her were being tear-gassed and grabbed without explanation. Vargas’ first instinct was disbelief. “I thought she was exaggerating because that's just my sister," she says. “She’s 10 years older than me, but she’s a big baby. I’m kind of the rebel.”

But it was early June 2025, and the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement campaign was beginning to hit Southern California. Federal agents had started raiding stores, factories, and construction sites across L.A., though the full scale of what was coming was not yet clear. By the time Vargas hung up, she was already moving. She told her daughters she’d “be right back” and drove the six minutes to Paramount—a commute she’d made a thousand times. Although she’d never seen the neighborhood like this.

What she saw was a multi-agency operation anchored by border patrol in full tactical gear, locking down the surrounding blocks. Police were staged at intersections, and a helicopter circled overhead. Paramount sits at the edge of Compton, a bridge away, and protesters had already flooded the surrounding streets. Water bottles and rocks flew one direction, pepper spray and rubber bullets the other. It sounded, she says, like a war zone.

Vargas had never been in a situation she couldn’t talk her way through, and a federal blockade was not going to be the first. She parked five blocks out (as close as they’d let anyone get) and started working her way in, determined to get to her sister. At the first perimeter, a sheriff’s deputy—who happened to be a Latina woman—told her she’d pretend she hadn’t seen her. “Go,” she said. “I’m going to look this way.” Vargas left her car parked crooked, before eventually making it past two more checkpoints. When she reached the Home Depot parking lot, she found her sister in her pickup truck, crying and tear-gassed, children coughing in their parents’ cars around them.

Standing in the parking lot, Vargas improvised an exit plan. Her sister would drive the pickup straight at the border patrol line. Vargas would ride on the outside, hanging off the side rail. And then, she’d simply ask to be let out. She was terrified—half wondering whether she’d be tackled, even shot—but she had a feeling that the worst thing she could do was show it. “Once you show fear to them, that’s where they can read that,” she says. So she didn’t—and somehow, it worked: The agents, perhaps too stunned to argue, gave them “three seconds” to go and her sister drove through. But as the truck cleared the perimeter, a protester shouted something that has been lodged in Vargas’ head ever since: “Why did she get to go? What about everybody else in there?”

It was a stranger’s question, shouted in anger, but Vargas couldn’t shake it. “They're right,” she remembers thinking. “I should be out here doing more for my community, not just my sister.”

She didn’t have to wait long for that opportunity. A few days after the Home Depot incident, she was driving through Downey to pick up coffee when she saw a border patrol agent in a green vest sprint around a corner, then tackle a man painting the outside of a gas station. Without thinking, she pulled in, coffee still in hand, and started recording. She told the agent what he was doing wasn’t okay, and asked the man for his name so she could let his family know he had been detained.

More agents arrived, including border patrol and ICE in plainclothes. When she got back in her car, they boxed her in with a Tahoe and an SUV. She rolled her window down: “We can sit here all day. I got my coffee,” she told them. After four minutes, they gave up and left, at which point, Vargas decided to follow them. (She hadn’t actually planned to, she says, but the fact that they boxed her in “truly pissed me off.”)

That night, she posted the footage to TikTok, and it went viral. Suddenly her phone was flooded with messages about reported ICE sightings from across Southern California. Her U.S. citizenship, she figured, gave her a margin that undocumented people don’t have, and the sheer volume of people reaching out compelled her to keep going. She started driving around looking for ICE agents on her own, learning where they staged each morning and what their vehicles looked like. But the best intel came from the community itself: people calling from work to tell her where trucks were, sending license plate numbers, flagging suspicious vehicles.

A system built itself around her, one tip at a time, and a GoFundMe she set up for gas money eventually raised over $122,000. “I just started posting what I was doing and people just started following and sharing,” she says. “I was like, Oh, okay, people actually like this.” And the need only grew: the enforcement campaign that had begun in California spread to Chicago in the fall of 2025 and to Minneapolis by early 2026, where the administration deployed 2,000 federal agents in what it called the largest immigration enforcement operation ever carried out, one in which two U.S. citizens were killed by federal agents. What Vargas had stumbled into on a coffee run was now a national crisis.

Today, she is known online as Angie the ICE Chaser, where her TikTok has hundreds of thousands of followers and tens of millions of video views and she documents her mission to follow ICE vehicles through the streets of Southern California, capture their movements, and post the footage for anyone who needs to know.

“My intention was never to grow on social media,” she says. “It was definitely to document the injustice that was going on within our communities and to alert people of what streets they were on or what city they were targeting.” But the mom with her Mercedes, who's a team manager for her daughters' soccer team and a mental health professional who does crisis intervention with teenagers, has no mission to slow down.

Vargas grew up in Lakewood, California—a suburb where she was, by her own description, the only Mexican girl on the block. Her father, a former professional soccer player, had built a flooring company and moved the family there, but made sure she never forgot where she came from, especially when it came to her grandmother. The family lore goes like this: A security officer once chased her father through their town in Mexico over a stolen piece of gum. When he got home, his mother came out, grabbed the officer’s baton, and started hitting him with it. He’d tell Vargas: “Everybody in that town was scared of your grandma. Your grandma was not a woman to mess with,” she says, smiling, “I guess it’s genetics.”

It’s a useful inheritance. When the Trump administration launched a sweeping immigration enforcement campaign in the summer of 2025, Vargas’ neighborhood was among the first to feel it. Protests erupted across L.A. after federal agents began raiding Home Depots, factories, and farms. In the span of a couple weeks, immigration teams arrested over 1,600 people in the L.A. region. Agents targeted places where Latino people work, shop, eat, and live.

For Vargas, whose entire family holds U.S. citizenship, the question she keeps getting is why she bothers. “Some people are like, ‘If your family’s not affected, why do you care so much?’” she says. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re a citizen or not. You should not be mistreated or targeted for looking a certain way.”

That principle has attracted company. Vargas is now part of a vetted rapid response network of roughly eight to ten volunteers coordinated through Siempre Unidos LA, a South Central nonprofit founded by 26-year-old Liz Ramirez. The group runs on a messaging chain: when a sighting comes in, whoever is closest and available goes. There’s an aftercare side, too, which includes connecting families of detained individuals with food, legal resources, and support.

In the months they’ve worked together, Ramirez has observed in Vargas a composure under pressure that the rest of the team has learned to rely on. “Angie’s definitely very fierce. She’s a very strong, courageous woman,” Ramirez says. It helps that the rest of Vargas’s life has been, in its own way, training.

Her nights at the youth shelter are spent de-escalating teenagers in the middle of the worst moments of their lives so far. “Kids throwing stuff around the room and I’m just like, ‘You’re going to be fine. Just take deep breaths.’ I practice that every day,” she says. On our call, Vargas shows the same unhurried calm, laughing through stories like she’s genuinely amused by her own life.

Her role as team manager for her daughters’ soccer club has paid off too: She has spent the better part of a decade coordinating schedules, organizing carpools, and building relationships with every parent on the sideline since her girls were three and four years old. Those parents now help her handle rides to practice and games when she can’t. Beyond her soccer mom crew, her mother stays with the girls overnight and helps cover pickups, and her boss at the shelter gives her flexibility when an emergency call comes in. “It’s a whole community that has been coming together for me to be able to be out here on the streets for my other community," she says.

So she keeps showing up. By her own estimate, Vargas has responded to roughly 200 ICE-related incidents since that Saturday in Paramount; at times, that has meant as many as three responses a week. The pace has eased from its peak, she says, but the calls haven’t stopped, and neither has the risk.

In January, while tailing an ICE truck near Alhambra, local police pulled behind her and intercepted her car, claiming her emergency lights were on (they weren’t, according to Vargas). Then federal agents parked in front of the police, got out, photographed her vehicle inside and out, and asked about her citizenship. In that moment, “I felt like this is it,” she says. Eventually, her team showed up and the agents left, but the encounter stayed with her, and her mother still worries every time she goes out. “[She’s] always like, ‘I don’t want them to try to shoot you,’” Vargas says.

But the hardest part of the work, she explains, is the people she can’t get to in time. Vargas was in touch with a fruit vendor who went to work every day despite the risk because she had no financial alternative. She was on medication, she’d told Vargas, and was hopeful she’d never get detained. One day, she called Vargas to say a car was circling her. Vargas was five minutes away, but “when I pulled up, her food stand was by itself.” The woman had been detained, and is still fighting her case.

Then there’s her best friend, a fellow activist who traveled to Chicago to document a protest and was ambushed by border patrol agents. He was held for a month and a half, was mistreated in custody, according to Vargas, and targeted because of his visibility. It took more than a month for her to get back on the streets after that. “When they target others is when it breaks me more mentally,” she says.

She’s had three days, total, where she considered closing her social media accounts and giving it all up: “I’ve just broken down and I’m like, ‘Dude, how am I doing this? This is so much on me. I need a break.’”

What gets her back on the road every time, she says, is her girls. In December, she brought both of them to a toy drive organized by Siempre Unidos. They helped run the booth, gave out gifts, and mingled with vendors. “I want them to know that they’re my inspiration, and they are what keeps me going. I hope that I leave enough for them to take on and do better than me,” she says. The older one has told Vargas she wants to be like her when she grows up because she’s “such a good person.” The younger one, on the other hand, isn’t interested in imitation.

“I’m going to pass you, mom,” she’s told her. “I’m going to help way more people.”

Photographer Sela Shiloni

In partnership with Moms First, a nonprofit fighting for the structural changes women need and deserve, Marie Claire is proud to present our second annual Power Moms List.

Our 2026 honorees are taking a stand—for their communities, their families, and themselves. Angelica Vargas, known on TikTok as Angie the ICE Chaser, tracks ICE agents through the streets of Southern California. Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham just made New Mexico the first state in the nation to provide universal child care. Jesmyn Ward writes unflinchingly about parenthood, a role she says "reveals elementally who we are as human beings." And then there's Power Mom Ashley Graham, who embraces the mess and chaos of motherhood—and whose candor about the whole experience helps banish its taboos.

They are just a few of the remarkable moms we're honoring. Read the full list, and their stories, below.

Ashley Graham

The model-turned-mogul is juggling motherhood, marriage, and a growing business empire—without pretending it’s pretty. In fact, she’d rather it wasn’t.

READ MORE

Angelica Vargas

How one soccer mom started tailing federal agents across Southern California—and turned a viral TikTok into a mission to protect her community.

READ MORE

Niecy Nash

On-screen, the actress wins Emmys for playing fierce, protective mothers. Off-screen, she and her family are partying through life.

READ MORE

Dr. Becky Kennedy

The clinical psychologist and millennial parenting guru opens up about her platform’s unexpected influence.

READ MORE

Kelly Sawyer Patricof and Norah Weinstein

Their nonprofit Baby2Baby is known for its A-list ambassadors and West Hollywood galas. But celebrity is just a means to an end, with the group donating half a billion items to the moms and babies who need them.

READ MORE

Jesmyn Ward

In an exclusive excerpt from her new memoir, the author writes about her experience growing up in a multigenerational family in rural Mississippi.

READ MORE

Elana Meyers Taylor

The bobsledding champion, who took gold in Milan this past summer, says motherhood is like sport: "You always have to focus on what's next."

READ MORE

Isabella Boylston

As she prepares for her first child, the ballet star reflects on timing, ambition, and returning to the stage with a new perspective.

READ MORE

Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham

How one governor played the long game to achieve free child care for New Mexico—the first U.S. state to ever provide it.

READ MORE

Entertaining members of the Royal Family must be pretty nerve-wracking, particularly as a plethora of rules are usually enforced. According to a royal author, one former American president was "horrified" during a visit from King Charles for a slightly embarrassing reason.

Speaking to Hello! magazine, David Charter—author of Royal Audience: 70 Years, 13 Presidents—One Queen's Special Relationship With America—explained, "Ronald Reagan was horrified when he had Prince Charles into the Oval Office and they brought him a cup of tea that still had the tea bag in it, and he could see that he wasn't drinking this cup of tea, and he thought he'd made a terrible faux pas."

Luckily, according to Charter, the "tea bag" debacle would be considered "a very small little faux pas" to members of the Royal Family. After all, a simple mistake is likely to "somehow only endear each side [the British and Americans] to the other a little bit more," Charter noted.

Per Hello! magazine, Reagan reflected on the error in a diary entry written on May 1, 1981. "He's a most likable person," Reagan said of Charles. "The ushers brought him tea—horror of horrors they served it our way with a tea bag in the cup."

He continued, "It finally dawned on me that he was just holding the cup and then finally put it down on a table. I didn't know what to do." According to Reagan, Charles later responded by saying, "I didn't know what to do with it."

So, if you're entertaining a member of the Royal Family anytime soon, remember to remove the tea bag from the cup before serving as a matter of importance.

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has experienced a multitude of changes in recent months. After being demoted by his brother, King Charles, Andrew lost his right to use any official royal titles, and he also vacated his home, Royal Lodge in Windsor. On his 66th birthday, the ex-Duke of York was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office due to information contained in the Jeffrey Epstein files—he was released after questioning. Now, a former politician is weighing in on some of Andrew's misfortunes.

Writing for the Daily Mail, the U.K.'s former prime minister, Boris Johnson, explained, "[T]he last conversation I had with Andrew—took place when I was PM, and I was for some reason deputed to tell him that he could not attend some big public ­ceremony, for fear of embarrassing his mother [Queen Elizabeth II] and the whole institution of the monarchy."

Johnson continued, "This time I had to go to Windsor to break the bad news...He was not thrilled. I tried to cheer him up." The former prime minister offered the ex-prince some advice while he was there. "Look, I said, he needed to be a bit humble," Johnson noted. "He had to understand how people felt about things, ever since that disastrous interview on Newsnight. He needed to build back his reputation."

Despite the slew of allegations that Andrew has faced following the release of the Epstein files, Johnson claimed to have some sympathy for the ex-royal. "But in a way I felt a bit sorry for him," he wrote for the outlet. "He was the second son in a system that insisted on male ­primogeniture. The result was that he didn't have a role."

Johnson also suggested that Andrew's failures had positively impacted the Royal Family. "Did you see the relief, the exuberance, with which the crowds greeted the Prince and Princess of Wales this week?" he wrote. "Is it possible that Andrew's ghastly pratfalls have actually intensified their enthusiasm? Like taking off a pair of ill-fitting ski boots, or suddenly basking in the sunshine after a sodden and miserable British winter, the pleasure is all in the contrast."

Whether or not there's any truth to Johnson's opinion remains to be seen. For now, at least, the former Prince Andrew is likely waiting to find out whether he will face any further repercussions for his association with Epstein.

More than 100 years after suffragists wore white in their quest for women to win the right to vote, their dress code is still a pointed styling tactic in the halls of the United States Congress.

Members of the Democratic Women's Caucus coordinated in white suits at President Donald Trump's State of the Union address on February 24. Their goal, Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-NM) told CBS News, was "to honor that fight that women have always had and to signal we are still in the fight." They chose the shade used by the suffragists in reference to new legislation seen as a threat to women's right to vote: the SAVE America Act, a bill making voter registration more difficult for married women and LGBTQ+ people.

Referencing the suffragists' legacy has been a popular form of fashion protest during both Trump administrations. Congresswomen first dressed in white suits for President Trump's 2017 address to a joint session of Congress. They've followed the same dress code for nearly every State of the Union since, with a few exceptions. Last year, Congresswomen faced another Trump address in pink suits, in a show of opposition.

"The suffragists marched, protested and starved themselves so that they could get the right to vote in 1920," Leger Fernández said to CBS News. "Here we are in 2026 and Republicans are trying to limit women's ability to vote. So we're going to be wearing white to honor the suffragists[.]"

Inside President Trump's nearly three-hour speech—the longest State of the Union ever presented—protest participants including Congresswomen Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Nellie Pou (D-NJ), Yvette Clarke (D-NY), and Jill Tokuda (D-HI). Some lawmakers who skipped the official address still wore white in solidarity to a counter "People's State of the Union" event outside on the National Mall.

White suits weren't the only way Democratic Congresswomen deployed their clothing as a form of dissent. Several lawmakers also wore white "Release the Files" pins—a reference to the trove of Justice Department files detailing abuses by sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein that were set to be shared with the public in December. (A new NPR report claims the Justice Dept. has withheld several files related to President Trump, a known associate of Epstein's.) Some of Epstein's victims were invited to attend Tuesday night's address alongside lawmakers, to protest the government's handling of the case.

President Trump said "our nation is back" at the start of his State of the Union address; the protestors in attendance, and at other recent events, would disagree. At New York Fashion Week, "ICE OUT" pins opposing the administration's violence against immigrants were worn by prominent designers, influencers, and editors.

The sentiment goes beyond insider events to the American public: A recent CNN poll found that the President's approval rating among U.S. women has declined another nine percentage points since January.

As press gathered around designer Rachel Scott backstage following her official runway debut as creative director for Proenza Schouler, it was hard to miss the pin on her oversized white shirt: a small white circle, stamped with "ICE OUT" in bold, black letters. On the biggest day of her career, she chose to make the message as visible as her collection.

"If I have any form of audience, I absolutely need to say something," Scott told Marie Claire. "It's a responsibility."

From the Golden Globes to the Grammys, celebrities including Billie Eilish, Tessa Thompson, and Justin and Hailey Bieber have accessorized their awards season looks with "ICE OUT" and "BE GOOD" pins. They were provided by organizers Nelini Stamp, Director of Strategy of Working Families Power, and Jessica Morales Rocketto, Director of Maremoto, who rallied a coalition alongside organizations like the ACLU. The pins are meant to raise awareness and signal solidarity with people affected by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) violence, including Renee Good, Alex Pretti, Keith Porter Jr., and more, who have died at the hands of immigration law enforcement.

When Congress passed the Trump administration’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” (H.R. 1) in July 2025, it set aside over $170 billion for immigration- and border enforcement-related spending, making ICE the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the U.S. In President Donald Trump’s first year back in office, nearly 400,000 immigrants have been arrested—even though fewer than 14 percent have been charged with or convicted of a violent offense, per CBS News. The nonprofit Transaction Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), which publishes federal government data for the public, found that there are over 70,000 people in ICE detention as of January 2026.

The initial "ICE OUT" campaign at the Golden Globes came together days after Good was shot and killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis, according to Stamp. She and Morales Rocketto started reaching out to people they knew who were nominated or expected to attend. After seeing how many celebrities embraced the pins at the Globes, they rallied for the Grammys, and identified other major events that would draw the same attention.

"We didn't want any cultural moment to pass us while ICE was being an occupying force in our communities, responsible for killing more than two people last month," Stamp told Marie Claire. That included New York Fashion Week.

This week, people like artist and organizer Sarah Sophie Flicker and content creator Nicolette Mason came in to facilitate the "ICE OUT—BE GOOD" campaign’s growth and visibility in fashion. Brands, influencers, and the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) are coordinating pin distribution efforts, placing them in the most visible corners of fashion, from street-style lapels to the runways themselves. Collina Strada creative director Hillary Taymour, Zankov founder Henry Zankov, and Maria McManus's eponymous founder wore them at their respective shows and presentations. High-profile industry names like Paloma Elsesser and Ella Emhoff have also participated from the front row.

"The fashion community are natural fits for this kind of cultural outreach," said Jessica Herman Weitz, National Director of Artist & Entertainment Engagement at the ACLU. "This industry knows better than anyone that the cultural fabric of our country is built on immigrants."

Several labels on the CFDA's official New York Fashion Week calendar were founded by immigrants or their descendants, from Carolina Herrera to Prabal Gurung. Proenza Schouler's Scott is another: She immigrated to New York City from Jamaica, and frequently weaves references to the Caribbean diaspora into collections for her first brand, Diotima.

Fashion week can feel removed from the day-to-day realities of working class New Yorkers, Stamp said, but it's also an intrinsic part of the city's fabric, from the historically immigrant-led workforce of the Garment District to the global impact its residents have had on trends. New York has also been a target of ICE operations across all five boroughs, so "having people at fashion week wearing 'ICE OUT' pins is both a statement to where we are as a country [and] particularly a statement to people in New York," Stamp said.

McManus—an "off-the-boat Irish" immigrant, as she puts it—told Marie Claire over email that the “ICE OUT” pin she wore to her salon-style presentation “may well have been photographed more than the velvet dress with vintage pearl ribbon, a hit from the fall collection.”

"If more people understood how hard immigrants work to get here, and how deeply we commit to contributing once we arrive,” she continued, “the national conversation might sound very different."

Taymour of Collina Strada has been championing immigration rights in her collections since at least 2020, when she designed an "Abolish ICE" shirt for her Resort collection. "I stand by it," she told Marie Claire after her show. "I casted models for one of my first shows solely from countries that were on Trump's banned list during his first term. It's important to take action every day."

This season, she’s seen more designers step into the conversation. "It’s been powerful seeing others wear the pin in recent days on social media—it shows that this is something that is at the forefront of the conversation," she said.

Fashion consultant Julie Gilhart, a regular at New York Fashion Week, got her new "ICE OUT" pin from the CFDA. "I think it’s important to wear it on a daily basis," she told Marie Claire from her front-row seat at TWP, "to remind us not to forget [or get] caught up in the moment of other things."

When coalitions with cultural capital speak out politically, organizer Morales Rocketto said, they can shape policy, especially the decisions that directly affect ICE operations. In fashion week's home state, "The Senate Majority Leader is Senator Chuck Schumer, and when one of the biggest industries in his state, at one of the biggest moments that they have, is talking about 'ICE OUT,' I don't think that's just ambient noise, actually," she said. "I think that's something that his office is paying attention to."

It also reaches people who might not have a direct connection to the industry, or who don't follow fashion too closely. Stamp offered herself as an example: "I have appreciation for fashion week, but I'm not paying attention to each show—but I will see something like [Taymour and Scott] wearing a pin at the end of the runway," Stamp said. "In my mind, fashion has always been political. Even if people want to deny that. Culture is political, culture shifts politics—not the other way around."

On Feb. 12, the second official day of New York Fashion Week, Democrats in the Senate blocked a DHS funding bill, priming the agency for a temporary shutdown. The same day, border czar Tom Homan announced ICE agents are withdrawing from Minnesota after the agency reached an agreement with local authorities.

These are some of the outcomes activists have hoped for. Still, Morales Rocketto stressed that they shouldn't treated as the end of the conversation, especially while ICE operations are ongoing in other parts of the United States. "We're really hoping that when you hear about this [campaign], it's going to motivate you to support immigrants' rights in your community, to call Congress, to be engaged in mutual aid," she said.

In other words, an “ICE OUT” pin isn’t meant to be a temporary fashion-week trend. "I can imagine the impact of young people who want to be in the industry, write about the industry, or even just are appreciative of it, seeing a designer, a model, or a makeup artist they follow wearing that 'ICE OUT' pin," Stamp said. "I actually fundamentally believe we need that because it changes hearts and minds."

Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect the full titles of Nelini Stamp and Jessica Morales Rocketto.

Jennifer Siebel Newsom leads me through her Sacramento home on a gray mid-December morning, replaying the first few years as California’s first family in quick, vivid scenes: This is where her son used to sprint to the backyard. That’s where her daughters played with their ever-expanding menagerie of cats, ducks, sheep and chickens. Here’s the bedroom where Koa, their Australian shepherd, darted out, a surprise on the carpet in his wake. We’re inside, then out, the house giving way to the yard, the yard folding back into the house.

Newsom, 51, is a filmmaker, and she moves like one. She’s light on her feet—talking fast, laughing easily—guiding me from room to room like she’s cutting between takes on set. For Newsom, the house is less a place than it is a feeling. “We had incredible memories here; we raised our children here,” she says. The family moved to the Fair Oaks home in 2019, a few months after Gavin Newsom was sworn in as California’s governor. But as the kids got older and school pulled them toward the Bay Area, they moved to Marin County—a two-hour drive away—and the Fair Oaks house turned quiet, becoming little more than a crash pad for work and events.

“The past seven years have been full of so many challenges,” she says. “This was sort of an oasis that really nurtured us and gave us the energy and the clarity of what really matters, what’s really important, and then refueled us so that we could go back out into the world and fight the good fight.”

The good fight has reached a turning point. Outside these walls, the country is louder and more volatile than it was when Newsom first stepped into public life. There have been wildfires and protests, a pandemic and a recall campaign, a hostile political climate, and a White House that casts her home state as hostile territory and her husband as Public Enemy Number One. Governor Newsom has responded by suing the administration, challenging executive orders, and trolling President Donald Trump with a gleeful precision.

That kind of spotlight comes with a price—one that follows you home, tests your marriage, and seeps into your children’s memories. But talking to Jennifer Siebel Newsom, you get the sense she’s been training for this moment her whole life.

As a filmmaker in her early thirties, making her case to a room full of strangers, Newsom had heard it all: “This film has been done before.” “Who are you to make this film?”

She’s sitting across from me in an armchair, in a bright open space off the living room, describing what it took to make her first documentary, Miss Representation. At the time, Newsom was a Stanford-educated MBA who’d spent the past few years as an actress—a career she’d stumbled into at business school, of all places. She was one of few women in her class, and when a statistics professor kept cold-calling her, she’d freeze, then blush, then turn “bright red,” ashamed of the blushing. So she started slipping into the drama building next door at night for acting classes, “just as a way to face my fear.”

Eventually, she picked up small roles on shows like Mad Men and Numb3rs, with a longer run on the crime drama Life—but something kept nagging at her. Hollywood kept sending her out for the same parts: “the trophy wife, or the girlfriend, or the victim, or the kind of seductress.” She saw powerful women everywhere in the real world, and almost none of it reflected on screen.

That’s when the idea for Miss Representation, a film interrogating sexism in the media industry and its impact on women and girls, took shape. Newsom had already been putting her MBA to work on the side, fundraising and managing crews on indie productions while she acted. She started reaching out to documentary filmmakers to direct. “They thought it was such a great concept, but they all said nobody would hire them afterwards,” she says. “And I think that just lit a fire in me. I was like, Are you kidding? Okay, well then I have to do this myself.”

The subject matter had a way of following her off screen. “I went through all these trials and tribulations of fundraising, of asking for $2,500, $25,000, whatever you would,” she says, recalling the blunt put-downs that came with that process in 2008. Even after she managed to secure the funding, the scrutiny followed her into production. At one point, a man she hired for the project “tried to take over and laughed at me when I gave him feedback,” she says. “I literally almost couldn’t finish the film.”

But she kept going, powered by “this stubbornness and this knowingness.” When Miss Representation finally premiered at Sundance in 2011—and went on to earn major festival recognition and awards—a woman she’d interviewed for the film asked what the experience had taught her. “I discovered my voice,” she recalls telling her. “And I think the feminine voice is really important right now. I was sort of late to the game of realizing I had a voice.”

Her grit had deeper roots than most people realized at the time. In 2022, she took the stand in an L.A. courtroom to testify against Harvey Weinstein about an assault that took place 17 years earlier, when she was still working as an actress. Her case was already outside the statute of limitations, but prosecutors believed her account was credible and could help bolster other women’s, so she chose to take the stand anyway.

It wasn’t only the assault, she explains, but everything wrapped around the trial. “I couldn’t believe what the defense attorneys got away with. I couldn’t believe the way they treated me. I couldn’t believe what they called me in the courtroom,” she says, her voice steady but heavy. She describes what it revealed to her in plain terms: “the myriad of ways we silence women’s voices.” “In different forms, I’ve experienced various traumas in my life,” she says. “But I refused—refused to be suffocated by it.”

While she admits she’s not fully healed, not entirely at peace with any of it, she has kept that promise to herself. “I really believe things don’t happen to us, things happen for us,” she says, describing how those experiences deepened her empathy and compassion. Those instincts, she adds, have fueled her larger purpose: to “create policies and a culture that can hear women, that can believe women.”

And so, she’s continued to tell stories. Her second documentary, The Mask You Live In, examined how toxic masculinity warp boys before they become men, with ripple effects for the women around them. A third, The Great American Lie, traces how the U.S. economy sets families up to fail, hitting women—especially women of color—the hardest.

Newsom brought that same lens into policy as First Partner. She convened a working group on sexual assault after testifying against Weinstein, aimed at strengthening the system for survivors and stopping repeat perpetrators from skating by. Her nonprofit, The Representation Project, uses film, campaigns, and advocacy to push back against gender stereotypes in the media. And through California for All Women, a gender-equity initiative launched by Newsom, she has pushed for changes on issues like closing the pay gap and expanding paid family leave. All of this work circles back to the same premise: that women are “the backbones of their families, their communities, and the American economy.”

Newsom grew up in Marin County, one of five girls in a wealthy conservative family that valued propriety and composure, where “presentation matters.”

At times, those values felt empowering. “Because my dad didn’t have sons—and he was a college athlete and drafted to be an NBA player, but ultimately ended up veering into business instead—we were all athletes,” she says. “I grew up thinking I could do anything boys could do, and I could compete with them, whether it was tennis, soccer, or basketball, horseback riding, skiing, dancing—you name it. I felt like I could do it. I wasn’t afraid.”

But alongside that message was another one: that certain things weren’t meant to be talked about. “My parents were very private. Even talking to you right now, I’m like, Oooh, they’re not going to like that,” she says, laughing softly like she can already hear them. Then her smile fades. “After my sister died,” she adds, “very private.”

When Newsom talks about her sister, her voice drops into a whisper. Stacey Siebel was eight when she passed away, just days before Newsom turned seven, in a golf cart accident on a family trip to Hawaii. The loss pulled the family inward. “I think my mom and dad were in so much pain,” she says, her eyes filling, “and they couldn’t be there for me.”

And so she learned early on how quickly a life can tilt, how little control you sometimes have over the ones you love, and how to find anchors when the people you rely on most are breaking too.

Animals were one of those anchors. Newsom’s mother had experience with horses, and her father had a ranch in Montana. After Stacey died, her parents bought Newsom a white pony named Sugar, and a trainer named Marian Nelson taught her to jump hay bales and “to be fearless.” Nelson is still teaching, and years later, when one of Newsom’s daughters was struggling emotionally, she brought her out to ride too. “I was so excited. I was like: Oh, Marian is going to help my daughter be brave!” Newsom says.

Another lifeline was the women around her, who simply filled in where they could. “When we lost Stacey, I somehow was held by all these women,” Newsom says, listing off the women in her community who kept her close. “I think that’s what trauma does, and sexual assault does, and losing my sister did, is you feel very alone,” she says. “What gives me hope, though, is the sisterhood—all the angel women around me who are in this with me.”

On a call in mid-January, Governor Gavin Newsom can’t resist returning to the blind date where he met his wife. The date was set up by a friend, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, in the fall of 2006, and Jennifer arrived “an hour, two, three late.” He was freshly divorced from Kimberly Guilfoyle, the former California prosecutor turned Trump-world fixture, and the whole premise felt like a nonstarter.

“There’s a reason it’s a cliché—because it’s true and it’s so universal—but it was at a time when the last thing I was really thinking about was finding someone I would end up with, or even someone that I would date,” he tells me.

All that resistance vanished soon after she arrived. “It’s one of those curious things where it was just so comfortable and conversational,” he says. They started tracing their “concentric circles of friends,” realizing they’d run parallel for years without colliding. Then fate added one more practical joke at the end of the night: she walked back to the parking garage and found it closed. “So she was forced to spend—a very platonic night, for the record—with this stranger,” he says, “the mayor, at the time, of San Francisco.”

What struck him first was her kindness, a sense of genuine warmth and empathy. He now understands those qualities were shaped by her own “personal history,” and that they carried more weight than he realized on that first date. For the governor, that was “more precious for me, because those were more challenging times.” Beyond the divorce, his mom had recently passed away, and he was about to head into a reelection. “I mean, there was so much going on, so much transition in my own life, that Jen just fell into place—and was able to receive all of that with a grace that marked a real sense of comfort.”

Newsom, too, talks about that connection like she still can’t quite explain it. “We had so much in common, I felt like he was my best friend,” she says. “It was weird.” Beyond the obvious attraction, what stood out to her was how quickly they seemed to recognize each other, the feeling that they spoke the same emotional language, the kind you learn when you’ve been through it at a young age. She points to the instability he grew up with: a single mother working multiple jobs, dyslexia, bullying, a boy who learned early on how to take care of himself. “His heart. His soul. He’s a really, really kind, gentle human being.”

The couple got engaged in December 2007 and were married by the following July. The wedding was pointedly un-Washington, held on Newsom’s family ranch in Montana under open sky, with horses nearby. Before they met, she’d never been in a rush to have kids—she’d imagined adopting from around the world someday—but that soon changed, with the couple eventually welcoming four children: Montana, now 16; Hunter, 14; Brooklynn, 12; and Dutch, 9. Newsom had moved from L.A. to San Francisco, but kept fundraising, producing, and championing the causes she’d been exploring in her films.

Looking back on the move, the marriage, the kids, the speed of it all, Newsom frames it as a kind of leap of faith. At the time, she was still deep in Miss Representation, with no plans for a life in government. Both Hollywood and politics were “men’s worlds,” she’d come to learn. “In some ways, I was in one only to end up in another.”

Spend a morning with Newsom, and you realize warm memories are often woven with darker ones. She tells me about Sugar, a fluffy white chicken with the same name as her childhood pony. Then she’s pointing to the road at the edge of the property, where an armed man once lingered in a van. Standing at a wall of family photos, she mentions the time far-right provocateur Laura Loomer broke into the Governor’s Mansion grounds.

None of that is lost on her husband, who puts it bluntly: “Our politics have changed. Trump, 1.0, 2.0, makes people feel free to shove again. And California’s been on the receiving end of a lot of that. I certainly have, and she has. She’s had to absorb a lot of it. This hasn’t been a quiet six, seven years,” he says. The renewed focus on him, his family, and the state has only “raised the stakes and the scrutiny.”

In the past year, California’s standoff with the Trump administration has snowballed into a near-constant legal and political brawl: a first-in-the- nation lawsuit challenging Trump’s sweeping tariffs; litigation after Trump federalized California’s National Guard in L.A., and a multistate suit over efforts to cut off Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood.

Although Governor Newsom tells me he has never doubted his wife’s “grit and resiliency,” there’s a muted sadness in the way he describes how his work follows her into the most ordinary parts of the day, from figuring out “novel ways” to leave the house because “we couldn’t go through the back, couldn’t go through the front,” to “people confronting her when she’s walking the dog—because of me, my policies.”

There’s also the issue of raising kids in this environment. “They don’t love the security around them, but sadly they need it,” he says. “They don’t like having other kids know that they’re the governor’s son or daughter, and that people are whispering behind their backs, or that they’re friends of theirs for the wrong reason or hate them for the wrong reason.” What haunted him most was not the kids, but the adults. “We infamously had to homeschool my oldest because it got totally out of hand. Some of the parents that met with the principal basically said, ‘I’m glad my kid’s going after your kid.’”

When I ask Newsom about the impact on her kids, she pauses to collect herself before she answers. “I think being the children of politicians is hard. They don’t choose this,” she says. “My kids are tough. They’re super sensitive, they’re super kind. They’ve been through more than they deserve to have been through.” She calls it a dance—being present without hovering, setting expectations without enabling. “I’m far from perfect. I make mistakes all the time,” she says. “But they know how loved they are.”

For Newsom, there are the personal stakes that the circus of politics brings, but also larger cultural ones. “I am disturbed by the fact that we have a president who is not only a predator and has gotten away with it, has not only bankrupted company after company and has gotten away with it, but now is the most corrupt president in our nation’s history,” she says. “What is this teaching our kids?”

It’s a question she returns to often. And it leads her, again and again, to the same conclusion: that today’s battles about media, gender, power, and technology are already materially shaping the lives of the next generation, and adults who view those as abstract policy issues are late to the conversation. It’s why her agenda stretches from child online safety and tech accountability—through the California Partners Project—to farm-to-school efforts, and other work that shapes the foundation of family life.

It’s a conviction Newsom carries so deeply that Lily Riesenfeld—a close friend of hers for more than a decade—tells me she’s had to physically stop her from giving her cell phone number to strangers on the street who mention a problem. Any problem. “Because she just wants to fix and solve everything. And we’re like, ‘Can you not do that?!’” Riesenfeld laughs. She describes Newsom as the kind of friend who shows up in sweatpants and clears your dishes before you notice, and the kind of mother who’s on top of four kids’ schedules, moods, and injuries.

That instinct is also how she’s pushed her husband. “On many occasions, she’s been very critical” of the way their operation defaulted to a policy-only posture, especially on social media, the governor told me. He admits that he used to fight it—until he saw what she was getting at: people understood their agenda faster when it was explained in real-life terms, with faces, consequences, and the family and partnership front and center.

That said, there’s never been daylight between them when it comes to the current administration. Newsom describes her husband as fair-minded to a fault—“it takes a lot for him to cut you off”—someone who will keep trying to find common ground until the ground drops out beneath you. With the president, it did. “Trump screwed us in California. Trump got super personal and lied and lied and lied and lied and lied,” she says, repeating the word lied eight times in one breath, like a tally she’s been waiting to deliver. “And so it was like, I’m with my husband—enough is enough. Knock it off.”

The night before our December interview, Newsom stood under the dome of the State Capitol rotunda alongside her husband and their children, ushering in the holiday season with speeches and lights. There they were: a glittering portrait of an American family, radiating an old-school glamour that drew the room toward them, constituents leaning in as if to take in the whole picture at once. It was hard not to see a preview.

The question hovering over the Newsoms now—inside Sacramento, inside Washington, inside every group chat where political obsessives play armchair strategist—is whether Gavin Newsom is heading for the White House in 2028. If he is, it will put Newsom’s model of the political spouse to the test.

Ask her husband to picture it, and he doesn’t hesitate. “Look, she doesn’t suffer fools,” he says. “She’s not a fly on the wall. She is not passive.” What makes her “formidable,” he adds, are her sharp instincts and a deeper grasp of the country’s challenges than most people in politics ever develop. That’s why, he says, “I think she’d be extraordinary in that role, even if she married someone else and they ran for that office. So forget me is all I’m saying.”

Ask the women in her life, and they light up like they’ve been waiting for someone to ask. Riesenfeld will have you know that “she’s not going to just be decorating the hallways with Christmas trees.” Michele Jawando, a philanthropy executive and seasoned Washington operator who’s worked with Newsom on policy initiatives, says, “What I tell people is politics is actually just people, and what I think Jennifer understands innately is people and how to be a storyteller and ways to bridge gaps across difference. I don’t know if she gets enough credit for that.”

Nancy Pelosi, who has seen every kind of political spouse, views the First Partner as a strategic mind. When I meet with her in her Washington office, the Speaker Emerita—a longtime friend of the Newsoms—points to how Newsom has used film to change how people absorb truths about power and representation. “I have to give her so much credit for that, because she understood that if this is your goal, there’s a creative path to go down to get it done. She’s made a very special contribution to this whole subject. And it’s a real challenge. So she’s the full package.”

For her part, Newsom is candid about the urgency of the moment. “It feels really early, but it also feels important to stand up to what’s happening in our country. And so obviously I’m supportive of that,” she says. She’s also clear-eyed about the influence that role could bring, calling it “an incredible platform” to push her agenda around women as power brokers in American life, at home and far beyond it. Still, she stresses that it’s “ultimately a family decision”—and speculative for now.

Weeks later, in the course of my reporting, I stumbled on an archival online listing for Newsom’s high school yearbook, offered in “very fine used condition.” It includes a scan of her senior page: a teenage Jennifer L. Siebel, smiling in snapshots, a pony in one frame. The seller’s description, seemingly posted before Newsom was even California’s First Partner, offers a small but strangely confident prophecy: “Mrs. Gavin Newsom may very well be our First Lady either in Sacramento or Washington.”

One down.

In Exit Interview, Marie Claire has a candid conversation with someone who’s left their job. We learn all about their experience—both the good and the bad—plus why they decided to move on and what life looks like on the other side.

Here, we speak with Nancy Pelosi, who is walking away from Congress after building one of the most formidable careers in U.S. politics. The 85-year-old California Democrat made history as the first woman to wield the Speaker’s gavel and led her party in the House for two decades. Last November, she announced she won’t run for reelection when her current term ends in January 2027. We sat down with Pelosi in her D.C. office this January to talk about the new generation of women claiming power, what keeps her up at night about this moment in Washington, and whether someone like her can ever truly leave politics behind.

What do you see when you look at the women in Congress today?

This is one of my favorite subjects, because when I came to Congress, there were only 23 women. I—having been chair of the California Democratic Party—knew how to elect people. And I said: “We're going to make a change here.” So part of the mission was to make sure that women had the opportunity, the confidence, the support that they needed to come here. If there had not been many women members, there would never have been a woman Speaker. This was not a place that was looking to advance others. You just had to go take the power. People say to me: “Well, you have five children, and you went to Congress and you became a Speaker.” But I did it sequentially. Mine were almost [all] in college. These women are raising their children while they’re doing this. And that’s quite remarkable.

What did it mean to be the first woman Speaker?

When I had my first meeting as Speaker, that’s a big deal. I mean, it was a very big deal. And people said to me after: “Do you realize how different that meeting would’ve been if a man had run it?” I mean, how many times have women said, “I was at the table and I made a suggestion and everybody was quiet, then a man made the same suggestion and they said, oh, that’s a great idea.” That has happened to women over and over. But I have concluded that the reason that happens is because they don’t listen to the women. Now we got the gavel. It’s a whole different deal. They listen.

Were there parts of yourself you had to change to lead in the way you have?

It’s important to know I never intended to run for office. People came to me and asked me to run, and I was like: “I have no ambition to run. I’m the chair of the party. That’s important to me because I like to promote other people, but I’m not one to be in the arena.” You know what changed? We lost in ’94, ’96, ’98. And it was like: “Wait a minute. We’re losing. We’re just losing!” I know how to win elections, so people said to me, “Now you have to take responsibility.” And then I did—because quite frankly, I was tired of losing. I never thought of any change in me about it, except that I wanted to win. I went to my daughter who was going to be a senior in high school and said, “Mommy has been asked to run for Congress. I had never had that ambition, but people are insisting that I run. I want to leave it up to you because you have one more year at home, Alexandra. If I win, I’d be gone like three nights a week when Congress is in session, and often for Christmas and all those holidays.” To which she said, “Mother, mother, get a life. What teenage girl doesn’t want her mother out of the house three nights a week?” So she and my husband get along just fine.

What do women in politics need to hear right now?

It’s the authenticity. I say this to women all the time: whatever it is—in terms of your upbringing, the environment in which you were raised, the education you have, the set of values that you bring to it—there’s nobody like you. So when you come here, your authenticity is what is important. Be you, be ready for what comes along. Have your vision, know what you’re talking about so you command respect, and have a strategy that attracts other people, and also shows them what is in your heart. The sincerity, the authenticity, the concern you have about other people. [If] you’ve listened to them, you’ve incorporated their concerns and aspirations into the solutions, you’ll succeed.

There’s a lot of anxiety around women’s rights right now. What do you think people aren’t fully grasping?

I think that a lot of people do not fully understand how it was before Roe v. Wade, and most of us didn’t, but we knew that it was necessary in the history of America. As a Catholic—[who had] five children in six years and seven days—my husband and I are thrilled with our family, but that’s our decision. I’m excommunicated from the church as a Catholic because I support a woman’s right to choose. And it is just amazing to me that so many people in the Congress don’t. And so many women in the Congress don’t support women’s right to choose. And when you eliminate something like that, it’s not just about terminating a pregnancy. It’s about what healthcare providers can provide for somebody who’s in a dangerous situation. This is what I will fight for, because it makes me almost cry to think what women have to undergo—because some guys decided that a woman shouldn’t have a right to choose.

Considering where we are politically right now, how do you feel about stepping away?

When I first came, [to Congress] I mean, we disagreed on issues, but that was the dynamic—to have the debate. That’s not the way it is now. But I do believe that when our founders founded this country, and even some of the early presidents, talked about the goodness of the American people. We have to believe in their goodness. So I have these bracelets that say faith, hope, and charity. When they ask me “Where is hope?,” I say hope is where it always has been—between faith and charity. And if you believe in the goodness of the American people, that gives people hope. And so what we have to do in politics is think more in terms of the goodness of the American people—and not this freak show that we’re in right now.

Are you really done with politics, or just done with Congress?

Right now, I’m still in Congress for one reason: to win the house for the Democrats. That’s it. And my position enables me to do it in a stronger way than if I had retired by now. So that’s what I’m here for. I’ll always kind of be making judgments about races, as to whether they’re owning the ground, disciplining them, disciplining the message. And that’s the word that they’ll probably use for me—I am a disciplined person on that. When you make a decision to be in this, you make a decision to win. At the end of the day, I have three “nos”: no wasted time, no underutilized resources, and no regrets the day after the election that you could have done more.

Have you thought about what you’ll miss?

The first time I saw the Capitol, I was only about five years old, and it left a lasting impression on me. And I love looking at it every day. And to see what happens under the Capitol is very important. So I guess I would say what I would miss... I hadn’t thought about missing anything, quite frankly. But I know that I will miss the people, that’s for sure. But I can see them. It’s not as if they’re going away too. Maybe this will be some clarity for you: People in California do not get Potomac Fever [D.C. slang for politicians’ obsession with staying in power]. We live in heaven on earth, so there’s no regrets about going home to California. And every week when I would get off that plane and they’d say we’re landing in San Francisco, I’d be like: “oh my God, how wonderful.” And so the timing is right.

In her first official appearances as First Lady of New York City, artist Rama Duwaji shared her spin on classics every New Yorker appreciates on a freezing New Year's Day: timeless winter coats.

Duwaji joined her husband, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, for both a private inauguration ceremony (at midnight on New Year's Day) and a public swearing in (in the afternoon on New Year's Day), for his historic debut as the city's first Muslim mayor. On both occasions, she and her spouse styled understated, but polished, winter outerwear. Puck reports the pair has worked with stylist Bailey Moon, who previously styled former United States First Lady Jill Biden; for the inauguration, Duwaji reportedly worked with stylist Gabriella Karefa-Johnson.

First, at a closed City Hall subway station in Lower Manhattan, Duwaji participated in Mayor Mamdani's swearing in ceremony in a short black coat—vintage Balenciaga, borrowed from the Albright Fashion Library—and Frankie Shop tailored shorts. (During the official swearing-in, Duwaji held the Quran while Mamdani took his oaths of office, officiated by New York Attorney General Letitia James.) She coordinated the all-black set with mid-calf, lace-up boots by Miista, a London-based shoemaker that emphasizes sustainability-minded production practices.

Later that day, Duwaji arrived hand-in-hand with Mamdani at City Hall for the public New York City mayoral inauguration. She traded out her quiet black coat for a more ceremonial piece: a funnel-neck coat in warm brown, styled like a winter dress. Its source? Palestinian-Lebanese designer Cynthia Merhej's label Renaissance Renaissance. Chocolate brown fur lined the coat's cuffs and hem, the latter in a stack of three layers. The new First Lady's only visible accessories included chunky silver earrings and mid-calf, lace-up boots.

Duwaji once again held the Quran as Mamdani was sworn in by Senator Bernie Sanders. Following his oaths of office, the incoming mayor delivered an inaugural address to thousands of New Yorkers. "Standing together with the wind of purpose at our backs, we will do something that New Yorkers do better than anyone else: We will set an example for the world," he said. A block party open to the public followed his 25 minute address.

Even when exact credits behind Rama Duwaji's inauguration coats were not available in full at press time, her outerwear was already making an impression with ceremony viewers. "Rama Duwaji is wearing that coat!" one commenter posted on X. "Boho style icon," another wrote, "and I usually don't care about fashion."

Her first look as First Lady was bound to make an impression. Duwaji is known for her distinctive approach to getting dressed, championing vintage shopping and small-batch designer brands. Both were ultimately present in her inauguration day looks.

"I love fashion, and I love being creative and putting things together and styling things," she told The Cut in a recent profile. (In her cover shoot for the outlet, for example, she styled a mix of New York City designers like Diotima with vintage pieces.)

When Mamdani clinched his October victory in the mayoral race, Duwaji joined him for his election night victory speech in a meaningful look: a top by Palestinian designer Zeid Hijazi paired to a skirt by New York City designer Ulla Johnson. Speaking to The Cut, she mentioned noticing the conversation around her styling choices—and wanting to use her clothing to start dialogues about causes she believes in. "It’s nice to have a little bit of analysis on the clothes because, for instance, during the general-election night, it was nice to send a message about Palestinians by wearing a Palestinian designer," she said.

Keep watching her First Lady wardrobe as Mamdani's term continues. Odds are, she'll continue starting conversations that matter to her with each look.

Editor's note: This post has been updated to include full outfit and styling credits.

This year, working women across the U.S. hit a breaking point. More than 450,000 have left the workforce since January—one of the sharpest declines in recent history, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And, overwhelmingly, the women most likely to walk away are mothers with young children.

The forces pushing women out of their jobs aren’t mysterious. They’re the same ones that have been building for years: childcare that’s both unaffordable and hard to secure, workplaces pulling back on flexibility, and the reality that the U.S. remains the only developed country without national paid leave. While millions more women are still clocking in each day, the strain of holding everything together is getting harder to hide.

Which is why today, some of them are finally saying so out loud. Not in op-eds or protests, but in their out-of-office replies.

Workers across industries will be updating their auto-replies and flooding social media with screenshots of their real OOO reasons. Instead of “Offline for the long weekend,” inboxes will be lighting up with sick toddlers, hospice updates, and the everyday chaos women usually gloss over in polite auto-replies.

It’s all part of “Out of Office for Care,” a coordinated national action organized by the Paid Leave for All campaign. Marie Claire was provided several of these messages ahead of today’s launch.

The idea is simple: set your real OOO, screenshot it, and share it. Throughout the day, the organization will be pulling those posts into a sprawling “Digital Wall of Care,” appearing everywhere from Instagram feeds to airport screens in D.C. and New York to billboards in Times Square. Every message gathered will ultimately be delivered to Congress.

At the center of the effort is Dawn Huckelbridge, the founding director of Paid Leave for All, who says the campaign grew out of a frustration that has been building.

“It’s just the sense of exasperation that this has been unsustainable for so long, and it’s getting worse,” she tells Marie Claire. “So many of us are caring not just for children, but for multiple family members and for ourselves. Without simple policies like paid leave, it’s burning us at both ends.”

The idea for the OOO messages struck her team as Thanksgiving approached and the latest jobs data came out. It felt like “an opportunity to do a little bit of storytelling” that captures the honest, messy, heartfelt accounts of what caregiving looks like in real time, Huckelbridge explained.

And the irony of the campaign isn’t lost on her: “So many people cannot [even] go out of office. We can’t take the time for the care that we need to give.”

Huckelbridge is also blunt about the political reality. “We don’t expect bills to be passing anytime soon in this Congress,” she says. Even so, she sees visibility as its own form of pressure: “Advocacy is never letting up the momentum or the pressure or asking for accountability. So we will continue demanding and making voters' voices heard no matter who is in Congress.”

And by flooding inboxes, social feeds, and public spaces with the truth about caregiving, she hopes the crisis becomes harder to ignore.

“We see the numbers, we see the stats, but Americans are going through a lot of financial devastation right now,” she adds. “If we had paid leave and basic care policies, everybody wins. It would be a world where you had the freedom to control your own life and be with your family and pursue work of your choosing.”

When Deja Foxx walked onto the Democratic primary debate stage at the Arizona Public Media studio this summer, she was ready to be a voice for generational change—and she looked the part.

At 25, the digital strategist was running for Arizona’s 7th Congressional District, vying for the Democratic nomination and a chance to become the youngest lawmaker on Capitol Hill. She wore a thrifted pinstriped suit she “adores,” likely from the late ’90s or early 2000s; the pants “way too long,” she says on a call in October.

The oversized suit stood out—that was the point. “I don’t shy away from self-expression,” Foxx says, noting that women of previous generations in Washington were often “cautioned to pare down” and suppress their individual style. “And I, in so many ways, embody a rejection of that.”

Foxx isn’t wrong. For decades, the city’s unspoken dress code has favored discretion over personality by design. Business attire is technically required on the House and Senate floor, and long-serving officials tend to choose inoffensive, modest colors and shapes, dressed up with a pearl necklace or an American flag pin. Even when representatives are “protesting” a given administration, they do so in the same old suiting, albeit in colors like highlighter pink or suffragette white. In a city where bureaucracy rules and consensus is key to getting anything done, young politicos are incentivized to not deviate from the norm, both in politics and in fashion.

Now, a new generation of D.C. up-and-comers like Foxx are done blending in. On the campaign trail and in the halls of Congress, where the average age is 58, the old uniform is giving way to looks that feel more joyful and revealing of the person inside them, from bold patterns and colors to funky thrifted items. That shift isn’t universal (plenty of D.C. wardrobes still skew buttoned-up or even “trad wife” conservative), but the contrast only makes this new wave stand out more.

And their message is clear: Personal style can be a form of power. And in Washington, sometimes the boldest thing a young person, or a woman of color, can do is simply be seen.

That was the case for Yemisi Egbewole, a 33-year-old political consultant, commentator, and former chief of staff and advisor to the Biden White House Press Office. When she first arrived in Washington, she says her idea of what it meant to be a working politico came straight from The West Wing, NBC’s marquee political drama that ran from 1999 to 2006. The show’s stars wore buttoned-up, neutral looks that wouldn’t draw attention, just like their real-life inspirations, so Egbewole followed suit. As one of the few Black women in the room, she sensed additional pressure to blend in.

Ultimately, she decided not to let the formality of her position hinder or shrink her personal style. Barbie-pink suiting and bold prints became frequent favorites in her White House wardrobe. “To me the rule was, listen, if [Joe] Biden’s not in the room, I’m going to wear and dress whatever I want and take risks, and so I did,” she says. “A lot of times as a minority, you’re raised to do the work and not be the conversation. Now, I am one of the conversation makers and I’m on TV, and I think that’s given me permission to experiment.”

For many rising political voices, identity sits at the heart of their style decisions, especially at a time when marginalized groups are seeing their histories challenged or erased. For Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), who represents much of Chicago’s northwest side, that means wearing a gold butterfly brooch—a small but powerful gesture of solidarity with Latinos and immigrants fearing separation from their families.

“Butterflies oftentimes [represent] evolution of self, but it’s also symbolism of standing with immigrants who have been on the move always,” says Ramirez, 42. “Particularly as we think about the monarch butterfly, who every single year makes that journey from Michoacán, Mexico to Canada, and then they migrate back—it’s my way of being able to demonstrate that I am a proud daughter of immigrants.”

The Illinois congresswoman also favors a specific piece of outerwear for her Capitol Hill wardrobe. She has a kaleidoscopic collection of capes ready for any constituent meet-and-greet or congressional hearing, which is an offshoot of her longtime fascination with superheroes. “Being able to wear that cape, it’s a representation of this mission of public service, of being a champion of justice,” Ramirez says. “When I put that cape on—I know it sounds cheesy—I feel stronger.”

Fashion serves a similar purpose for 26-year-old activist Sophie Schwartz. As a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, Indigenous Peoples’ Initiative and Erased No More Foundation, she often wears Indigenous accessories hand-crafted by various Native artists, including her mother, an avid and talented beader.

“I view that as a way to not only express, appreciate, and represent my culture and other Native cultures, but also as a way to think very critically about where I’m spending my money and who it goes to,” says Schwartz, who is also a public policy graduate student at Georgetown University. “Supporting local Native artists and Native economies is a very real and direct action I can make in terms of political expression and supporting sovereign economies and tribal economies.”

It’s also true that fashion has always mirrored the moment, from the power suits of the ’80s to the pink pussyhats of 2017. And for many young Washingtonians, this moment feels like exhaustion. In an era defined by outrage cycles and performative politics, getting dressed has become a small act of optimism and, in some cases, of resistance.

According to Libby Rasmussen, co-owner of Vintage Vintage Vintage, D.C.’s largest vintage collective, young Washingtonians are searching for “any bit of joy they can find” amidst an ongoing government shutdown and a relentless cycle of political upheaval. Irrespective of job title or party affiliation, many cultivate that joy through vintage fashion and more intentional shopping habits.

“While D.C. is far from a monolith, the Gen Z folks I interact with really prioritize their individuality and values,” Rasmussen says. “In a moment when everything feels chaotic…wearing what you already own, or something you found at a vintage store, your mom’s closet, or a clothing swap, feels like a political statement on its own.”

Personal style aside, there are also practicalities. Dressing for power in Washington has never been cheap, and younger staffers and lawmakers are quick to point that out. When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was first elected, she spoke openly about struggling to afford the expensive pantsuits expected of new members of Congress, a reality that still rings true for many newcomers.

As costs of living climb, 13 percent of Gen Z say they regularly purchase from thrift shops or resale sites, according to a survey by the International Council of Shopping Centers. That trend is showing up across D.C. wardrobes too: Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.), 28, for instance, tells us he turned to secondhand shopping for a formalwear refresh after becoming the first Gen Z member of Congress in 2023. The ties people often compliment, he says, were “$3 or $5 at a thrift store.”

Bringing one’s entire self to D.C. can have its professional downsides, though. Foxx says being a young woman in politics means she’s “always running the risk of being trivialized.” Sometimes, detractors target her wardrobe as a means of minimizing her accomplishments.

“It’s something I’ve come up against time and time again,” she says. “I’m often described as an ‘influencer’ [even] though I’ve been an activist and advocate for a decade, a strategist full-time on Kamala Harris’s campaign, and [ran] a congressional campaign of my own, raising a million dollars.”

In the end, Foxx and her secondhand suit didn’t make it to a Capitol Hill office. The Tucson-born activist, who began her advocacy work at 15, ultimately lost the seat to Rep. elect Adelita Grijalva. (As of press time, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to swear her into her congressional seat.)

Despite the loss, Foxx’s first campaign run reinforced her zeal for both living, and dressing, out loud. “I don’t think the way I dress, my body, or my personal story is distracting from my political beliefs or advocacy,” she says. Instead, it’s the first way for potential voters to see exactly who she is.

If politics is about who gets to decide what matters, last night proved that women already have the answer.

Across the map, voters backed candidates who have consistently supported women’s rights, reproductive freedom, and policies that make everyday life more affordable. But it was young women, especially, who showed up and moved the needle. NBC Exit polls showed that 84 percent of women under 30 voted for Zohran Mamdani in New York City, 81 percent for Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, and 82 percent for Abigail Spanberger in Virginia.

The backdrop is impossible to ignore. Tuesday’s off-year elections, including governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey, the mayoral race in New York City, and other local and state races, served as an early barometer of the national mood under a second term of the Trump administration. Since returning to office, the administration has moved quickly to scale back federal protections for abortion and contraception, revoke guidance requiring hospitals to provide emergency abortion care, and dismantle gender-equity initiatives across federal agencies.

Call it a response or a reckoning, but last night, women across the country drew a line.

In Virginia, Abigail Spanberger made history as the state’s first woman governor, defeating an opponent who backed a 15-week abortion ban. Her campaign framed reproductive rights alongside cost-of-living and access issues, pledging to pursue a constitutional amendment protecting abortion and contraception.

“When the Dobbs decision was made, it became clear that state after state would move to restrict abortion access, as my opponent has previously supported,” Spanberger said during an October debate. “In states where they further restricted abortion access, women have died—women pregnant with very wanted children, women with ectopic pregnancies who were sent home.

Mikie Sherrill brought that same urgency north to New Jersey. Sherrill, a former Navy pilot, inherits a state already seen as a safe haven for abortion access, but argues that rights alone don’t amount to equality unless they’re paired with affordable childcare, paid leave, and fair wages.

“I have three teenagers and a 20-year-old, and I worry about the world we’re leaving them and whether they can all move back to New Jersey,” she said in her debate opposite Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli. “Our mission is to drive down costs for families, keep people safe and healthy, and make sure every child has a shot. Despite the chaos, we can do better.”

New York City had its own kind of breakthrough led by Zohran Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim and South Asian mayor. The 34-year-old campaigned on free public transit, higher wages, and universal childcare, policies that speak directly to the burdens working women carry in one of the world’s most expensive cities.

“In this moment of political darkness, New York will be the light,” he said in his victory speech Tuesday. “Here, we believe in standing up for those we love—whether you are an immigrant, a member of the trans community, one of the many Black women that Donald Trump has fired from a federal job, a single mom still waiting for the cost of groceries to go down, or anyone else with their back against the wall. Your struggle is ours, too.”

Two more firsts rounded out the night. In Detroit, Mary Sheffield became the city’s first woman mayor. Her agenda on housing and infrastructure finally brings the work Detroit’s women have done for decades to the center of City Hall. And in Virginia, Ghazala Hashmi became the nation’s first Muslim woman elected to statewide office, stepping into the lieutenant governor’s seat she once dreamed of after first being inspired to run by Trump’s Muslim ban.

Together, their victories made one thing clear: the era of women asking for power is over. Now, they’re simply taking it.

It's an image that will go down in New York City history: mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and Rama Duwaji, his wife, waving to cameras at the conclusion of his November 4 victory speech. The Democratic Socialist is the youngest candidate in a century to lead the biggest city in the United States, and the first Muslim to hold the position, beating former governor Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa in a race that captured nationwide attention.

"[O]ver the last 12 months, you have dared to reach for something greater," Mamdani told the crowd gathered at his Brooklyn victory party (and everyone else watching from afar). "Tonight, against all odds, we have grasped it. The future is in our hands. My friends, we have toppled a political dynasty."

By his side, Duwaji didn't make public remarks of her own. However, what she chose to wear for her first appearance as the incoming first lady spoke volumes.

Duwaji appeared on stage in a square-neck, laser-cut denim top from Zeid Hijazi, a Palestinian-Jordanian designer based in London. According to Hijazi's website, his pieces blend his Palestinian heritage with "Middle Eastern craftsmanship [and] couture elements." Duwaji layered the piece over a black skirt by New York Fashion Week regular Ulla Johnson, and added earrings by jeweler Eddie Borgo.

Even without knowing the brands behind them, Duwaji's outfit reads like an atypical choice for a politician's spouse: Think of a first lady, and your mind will likely go to Jackie Kennedy-esque skirt suits or the J.Crew sweaters of Michelle Obama's era at the White House. Even if the person getting dressed doesn't identify as a conservative politically, their clothing tends to read more modest than modern. Duwaji's, by contrast, look copied and pasted from the streets of Brooklyn, where she works as an artist and illustrator.

Dialing into the specific designers reveals Duwaji's understanding of the spotlight she now occupies as New York City's inaugural Gen Z first lady. Ulla Johnson and Eddie Borgo are both based in the city Mamdani is set to lead; wearing local designers is Duwaji's way of supporting the local fashion community, who are now a segment of her husband's constituents. (Given the 28-year-old's attendance at Rachel Scott's Diotima show in September, an affinity for NYC-based brands isn't necessarily a surprise.)

Her top by Zeid Hijazi, meanwhile, alludes to her passions as an artist and her personal convictions. Duwaji, who is of Syrian descent, often uses her work to explore the lives of Middle Eastern women; in recent years, her art has focused on Palestinian women in Gaza. “With so many people being pushed out and silenced by fear, all I can do is use my voice to speak out about what’s happening in the US and Palestine and Syria as much as I can,” Duwaji said in an interview with Yung, an arts magazine.

The Mamdani campaign faced intense pressure for his views on the war in Gaza. The mayor-elect was also subject to Islamophobic attacks on his religion and heritage. Wearing a designer of Palestinian descent on election night allowed Duwaji to reaffirm her views while backing her husband's.

Back in May, Mamdani shared a message about his wife alongside photos of their wedding ceremony on Instagram. “Rama isn’t just my wife, she’s an incredible artist who deserves to be known on her own terms,” he wrote.

In her official introduction as the incoming first lady of New York City, Duwaji made clear she's bringing her entire identity into the position.

This week, Hurricane Melissa—described as a "disaster of unprecedented catastrophe" by the Red Cross—devastated multiple countries, including Haiti, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba.

The full fatality count is not yet known, with Reuters reporting that 49 people have died so far in the hurricane. Along with mass flooding and landfall, Hurricane Melissa has destroyed people's families and homes, wrecked power lines and infrastructure, and caused irreparable damage to communities.

Individuals and families have begun attempting to rebuild by receiving necessary healthcare, accessing food and water, and seeking safe refuge. Relief efforts will likely be ongoing for years to come in the worst-hit areas, making contributions and donations more important than ever.

Here are some trusted charities and aid groups that are supporting those affected by Hurricane Melissa.

CARE

CARE is accepting donations for the Hurricane Melissa Response Fund to help "deliver lifesaving relief in Jamaica and other areas in the Caribbean." The nonprofit organization is focusing on urgently providing "first aid, hygiene supplies, emergency food rations, water and water treatment kits, and other shelter supplies" to individuals affected by Hurricane Melissa.

Americares

Based out of Stamford, Connecticut, Americares is a charity responding to emergencies, disasters, and crises all over the world. Currently, the nonprofit is "preparing to send a team" to help those impacted by Hurricane Melissa, where they will "work alongside local partners and assess health needs" to provide critical healthcare and support to anyone in need.

UN Crisis Relief

The United Nations is working alongside organizations and governments in Jamaica, Haiti, and Cuba to "provide life-saving assistance to those in desperate need." Donations are collected by the UN's Central Emergency Response Fund, and used to provide essentials such as food, water, and healthcare to individuals affected by Hurricane Melissa. Meanwhile, the UN's World Food Program (WFP) is providing critical food packages in response to the disaster.

Community Organized Relief Effort (CORE)

Actor Sean Penn co-founded charitable nonprofit CORE, which was initially formed to respond to a disastrous earthquake in Haiti. Since then, the organization has continued to provide assistance within the region and internationally. CORE has already "deployed air cargo ships of essential relief supplies" to Jamaica. Donations will help provide everything from hygiene kits to water and generators, as well as financial assistance and medication, following Hurricane Melissa.

Direct Relief

Donations to Direct Relief aid victims of Hurricane Melissa on a short and long-term basis. The nonprofit has already committed emergency funding to the value of $250,000, along with sending "100 field medic packs and 250 hygiene kits, to Jamaica's Ministry of Health and Wellness." Longer-term plans include using the Caribbean Resiliency Fund to improve health infrastructures, increase disaster preparedness in the Dominican Republic, and build much needed medical facilities throughout the region.

Airlink

Donating to Airlink contributes to aid in the aftermath of disasters around the globe, including in countries affected by Hurricane Melissa. Airlink supports relief workers traveling to areas impacted by emergencies, to offer their help on the ground. As well as transporting people, the Washington, DC-based nonprofit makes sure that humanitarian aid cargo is delivered where it's needed most, as soon as possible.

Although donations to Airlink aren't allocated to any particular emergency, the organization is already "actively responding" to Hurricane Melissa by working "with over 30 NGO and INGO partners, thanks to support from several airline partners."

American Friends of Jamaica (AFJ)

The American Friends of Jamaica (AFJ) Disaster Relief Fund is providing "critical support when natural or humanitarian disasters impact," ensuring help is available before, during, and after emergencies in the region. In the wake of Hurricane Melissa, AFJ's board of directors announced the creation of a "$1 Million Matching Fund to support critical relief and recovery efforts in Jamaica," supporting both individuals and communities.

Global Empowerment Mission (GEM)

With teams already working in Kingston, Jamaica, GEM is seeking donations to provide assistance to communities hit by Hurricane Melissa. Based out of Florida, the nonprofit has committed $10,000,000-worth of funding towards supporting those affected by Hurricane Melissa, with cargo planes and supplies already in transit to Jamaica and Haiti.

Give Directly

Noting that "50,000 people have been displaced and 500,000 have been left without power" in Jamaica, Give Directly is collating donations to provide cash assistance to people in the country. The US-based nonprofit works by giving money directly to recipients to help pay for essentials like food, water, medicine, and diapers, along with emergency accommodation and crucial bills. Currently focused on responding to Jamaica, Give Directly is also "assessing the impact of the hurricane in Haiti and other Caribbean countries and may expand [their] response" in due course.

World Vision

World Vision's Disaster Relief Fund focuses on supporting children and families affected by emergencies around the world. Responding to Hurricane Melissa is one of the charity's current focuses, with a view to providing "immediate support during this devastating storm."

Good360

Good360 is accepting donations as they prepare to respond to Hurricane Melissa "as soon as it is safe to do so." The organization is "working closely with local and national partners to ensure a coordinated and effective response, delivering the right goods to the right people at the right time." They're also monitoring Hurricane Melissa, to make sure they can support those most affected by the storm.

The Center for Disaster Philanthropy

Through the Atlantic Hurricane Season Recovery Fund, the Center for Disaster Philanthropy will use a multifaceted approach to respond to the destruction caused by Hurricane Melissa. The fund will aid in "rebuilding homes" and "connecting survivors to disaster case management," while also providing legal support to anyone in need, now and in the future.

American Red Cross

The American Red Cross is accepting donations towards responding to disasters all over the world. The charity has already started working throughout the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, Haiti, Jamaica, and Cuba to aid in emergency evacuations and by providing shelter to victims. Essential medical equipment, such as mobility aids and medication, is also being supplied by the nonprofit, along with immediate healthcare.

Lisa Vedernikova Khanna is a Democratic candidate for Congress in Virginia’s First District. This essay marks the first public announcement of her pregnancy.

Days after I launched my campaign for Congress, I found out I was pregnant.

We had been trying for a few months, but I still wasn’t expecting it. I’d taken a test the week before and gotten a negative result. But here I was, a few days later, with two lines on a pregnancy test staring back at me. My husband and I were thrilled, and I was especially excited to share the news with my mom. When I called earlier in the spring to tell her I was running, she admitted she half-expected I’d say I was pregnant. I couldn’t wait to tell her that her hunch wasn’t too far off.

The next week, on my way to meet with a voter, a wave of nausea washed over me and wiped every talking point from my mind. It dawned on me that this was what the next nine months would be: building a campaign and a human at the same time.

It didn’t take long for the questions to creep in: Do I tell people now, or wait until I’m showing? Will voters see this as a strength or a liability? Would my opponents use it against me? In politics, nothing stays private for long. Every joy, every heartbreak, every decision is out in the open for the public to see. At home, my husband and I spent the evenings trying to work through the logistics: how we’d handle health insurance, child care, and parental leave. The same kitchen-table issues I’d heard from voters had suddenly landed on my own.

These worries extend far beyond my own home and district. They belong to millions of women across the country who go to work pregnant, raise kids without affordable child care, and spend late nights searching for a doctor who takes their insurance. A recent University of Kansas study found that in early 2025, mothers of young children saw the steepest drop in labor-force participation in more than forty years. We are the only wealthy nation without national paid leave, and we lead the developed world in maternal deaths. These aren’t “women’s issues.” They’re the foundation of a functional economy, and the U.S. continues to fall short.

When child care collapses, parents are pushed out of the workforce. When prenatal care is far away or unaffordable, complications rise, and so do costs. When less than a third of U.S. workers have paid family leave, babies and parents suffer, and employers lose talent. When politics punishes women for being mothers, everyone pays for it. The solutions aren’t complicated: Guarantee paid family leave so no one has to choose between a paycheck and caring for a newborn. Protect rural hospitals and expand maternal care. Strengthen Medicaid, which already covers 40 percent of U.S. births. Cap child care costs, pay early educators fairly, and support modern maternal care through telehealth, doulas, and midwives.

We don’t lack these basics because they’re hard. We lack them because too few lawmakers know what it’s like to live without them. I do.

My mom came to America from Soviet Russia before the fall of the Soviet Union, searching for freedom, fairness, and opportunity. She raised me on her own, working as a housekeeper and nanny to keep us afloat, and was undocumented for years before finally receiving her green card two years ago. I grew up watching her stretch every dollar and do whatever it took to make ends meet. From an early age, I worked right alongside her, cleaning houses, juggling odd jobs, and learning what hard work really means. We faced eviction and bankruptcy, but programs like Medicaid, free school lunch, and Pell Grants opened countless doors for me.

Those programs made it possible for me to attend public school, learn English, and eventually build a career, from working at the New York Times to the DNC to Instacart. I’ve lived the promise of the American Dream, but I’ve also watched those same opportunities slip away for too many families. That’s why I decided to run: to make sure that safety net is stronger, not smaller, and to give other families the same shot at stability and opportunity my mom fought to give me.

Once the campaign was in full swing, I realized just how much those first few months had taken out of me. Running for office is isolating enough on its own—long days on the road, back-to-back events, rooms full of people that can still feel lonely. Doing it while pregnant added a different kind of weight, both literal and emotional. There’s no handbook for that, no group chat of pregnant candidates trading tips on debate prep or compression socks. Fewer than fifteen women in American history have ever given birth while serving in Congress. I’m grateful for the women who’ve broken that ground, but there still aren’t many examples of what it looks like to campaign while becoming a mom for the first time.

Ultimately, running while pregnant hasn’t been a setback. If anything, it clarified my purpose and reminded me why I chose to do this. People will make their own judgments about my timeline, my body, my choices. I can’t control the optics, but I can control what I do with this experience. And for me, that means leading with the fact that I’m running for office while carrying a baby, not hiding from it.

So, I’ll keep showing up. I’ll keep making the case that when we build a country that works for families, it works for everyone. That’s the campaign. That’s the work. That’s the future I want to give my child.

On his first day back in the White House, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to limit birthright citizenship, a constitutional right in place for more than a century. Then came the foreign-aid cuts, which left mothers and children around the world without emergency medical care. The ICE raids soon followed, hollowing out homes across the country; parents and caregivers vanished in an instant. Simultaneously came a ban on books, gender-affirming care, and reproductive healthcare. Meanwhile, issues such as affordable childcare, paid leave, and improvements to the education system are nowhere on the agenda—illuminating the fact that this legal assault on families is not affecting just a select few. An alarming number of people are at risk.

But if Trump’s presidency began by throwing down the gauntlet on families, it may end with mothers leading the fight to defend them. Their resistance stretches from federal courthouses to soccer-field sidelines, from late-night strategy sessions at the kitchen table to early-morning school runs. They rush from daycare drop-offs to court hearings, file motions between doctor’s appointments, and spend their days fighting to protect families, all while holding together their own. Here, the mothers who are pulling second (and third) shifts as attorneys and activists reflect on the challenges they face, what the fight against these policies has been like, and what motivates them to keep putting in the work.

The Foreign Aid Litigator

Lauren Bateman, 37, Washington, D.C.

“I’m lead counsel on two high-stakes constitutional cases; one challenges the administration’s cuts to foreign assistance funding, and another targets the dismantling of USAID [a federal agency that provides humanitarian aid around the world].”

“I found out I was pregnant in March, and in my first trimester, I was corresponding with a USAID worker whose pregnant wife had been denied a medical evacuation after the administration began dismantling the agency. That kind of evacuation would have been completely routine before January 20 but was abruptly denied. She’d started hemorrhaging; both she and the baby were at risk, and they were only living in that location because her husband was serving our country.”

“That case isn’t an anomaly. It’s the kind of fallout we’re seeing across the board as a result of the foreign assistance freeze. One report I came across described toddlers being abruptly cut off from antidiarrheal medication after the freeze took effect. Just the idea of babies being sentenced to one of the most grisly possible deaths—that has really stuck with me.”

“At times, litigation can be a dry exercise of filing briefs before a court, but these two cases affect so many people, both here and abroad. You definitely don’t have to be an expectant mother, of course, to internalize the want and cruelty of what the administration has done. But for me, it did add a new lens: What if my family were fated to death or disease by a faraway government that’s run by a petty tyrant? I would hope that the people in that country were fighting back.”

The Constitutional Challenger

Sidra Mahfooz, 33, New York, New York

“I came to the U.S. from Pakistan when I was 7, and I grew up in Long Island watching people in Muslim communities around me be targeted within our mosques, asked questions, and arrested after 9/11. That experience led me to law.

“Now, as a staff attorney at the ACLU, I focus on cases challenging executive overreach—from representing activists targeted for deportation to pushing back against the expansion of expedited removal and the use of the Alien Enemies Act.”

“I’m also raising two little ones of my own: a toddler and an infant. The personal and the professional are always overlapping. This spring, I helped secure the release of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian man who had been separated from his pregnant wife and detained without cause. He had missed the birth of his son, Deen. A judge finally ordered his release in June. Reading his letter to Deen while feeding my own kids—it broke me. It made everything a lot more real.”

“The stakes feel deeply generational. It’s definitely for the now, but it really is shaping the world we want our kids to be in. Whether they might have to face challenges based on certain Supreme Court precedent or whether we can stop some of the abuses that are happening and create case law that actually protects vulnerable communities—that’s the question.”

“I want my children to be able to look back at this moment and say, ‘Hey, my mother helped so many people in this situation.’ I want them to feel proud of that. I want them to do the same.”

The Border Defender

Rochelle Garza, 40, Brownsville, Texas

“I live and work in a town along the U.S.–Mexico border, where I lead a team of 60 attorneys and advocates as president of the Texas Civil Rights Project. I’m also Chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and the mother of two kids under 4. My days are filled with meetings, hearings, and the chaos of toddler life. I wear different hats, and I try to nourish all of it.”

“One of the families we’re representing right now includes 11-year-old Sara, a U.S. citizen who recently had a brain tumor removed. She needs ongoing medical treatment, but in February, she was deported along with her four siblings, three of whom are also U.S. citizens, and their undocumented parents, even though she’d previously been allowed to cross the border checkpoint for care. The Texas Civil Rights Project has filed a humanitarian request for Sara, her parents, and her one sibling. We’re still waiting on a response from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services [as of July].”

“Long before I took the helm at TCRP, I represented a teen in immigration detention who had been denied abortion access under the Trump administration. That case reached the Supreme Court and led to what’s now known as the Garza Notice, affirming the rights of detained immigrant teens to reproductive care.”

“The stakes are incredibly high. And they feel even higher when you’re pregnant, when you give birth, when you’re mothering a child. The weight of parenting—of what the world looks like, not just now but in the future—is heavy. Having a hand in shaping that through your work…it’s a lot to carry.”

The Asylum Attorneys

Melissa Crow, 60, Washington, D.C.

Blaine Bookey, 44, San Francisco, California

Crow and Bookey are colleagues at the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, which serves as co-lead counsel in Al Otro Lado v. Trump, a recent challenge to new asylum restrictions imposed by the Trump administration. The case targets the administration’s January 2025 proclamation that shut down asylum processing at the U.S.–Mexico border overnight. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of advocacy groups and individual asylum seekers, argues that the policy violates federal law by denying people access to the asylum process.

One of those people is “Maria,” a plaintiff who fled cartel violence in the Mexican province of Michoacán and now hides in a Tijuana shelter, afraid to leave. Her husband was murdered, her son and granddaughter disappeared. Her plea is for a life in the U.S., where she will be safe. “The families we represent are often in dire straits,” Bookey says. And so, as she sees it, she has “no choice” but to try and help.

Both women are Jewish and view their work as a direct extension of their values. Crow calls it tikkun olam, the Jewish principle of repairing the world. Bookey’s own grandfather came to the U.S. as a refugee, and an earlier generation of her family fled Eastern Europe seeking religious freedom. She wants that same right for everybody.

The fight is long and often contentious, but Bookey hopes the way she explains her work to her children holds a message that anyone can understand: “What we’re trying to do is keep families together. Imagine if you had to be separated from me—that’s what I’m doing, trying to get these families back together.”

It’s that mission that keeps them going, even when good news seems elusive. “I’ve learned so much from our clients,” Crow says. “They’re part of our community. And if they’re not, they should be.”

The Birthright Plaintiff & Lawyer

Conchita Cruz, New York, New York

Monica, Venezuela

While some mothers are fighting to defend long-standing rights on U.S. soil, others are battling for the right to belong at all. Monica—a Venezuelan medical doctor seeking asylum—was eight months pregnant at the time of reporting. She is a plaintiff in CASA v. Trump, the case challenging President Trump’s effort to curb birthright citizenship; the outcome could determine whether her baby receives a U.S. passport.

She and her husband fled Venezuela in 2019 amid political persecution and, as of July, were still waiting for an asylum interview as well as for the Supreme Court to decide the merits of the Executive Order on Birthright Citizenship.

“I’ve not been able to live a [normal] pregnancy because of all of this stress; it’s been very hard on me,” she says. “We cannot return to Venezuela because our lives have been threatened. We love our country, but it is not free.”

Her attorney, Cruz—co-executive director of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project and a mother herself—says the case strikes at the heart of what it means to raise a child in America. “Until now, a U.S. birth certificate has been enough to prove citizenship,” she says. “What happens when that’s no longer true?” Cruz also has family members seeking asylum in the U.S. “That is a source of pride for me, to know that my work can and has helped my own family.”

For Monica, the lawsuit is an act of protection and solidarity with other women who are in situations like hers. “I want my child to know that what motivates us is the love that we have for him and the love that we have for all of the mothers that feel the same way about their babies.”

She’s holding on to what she hopes her child will inherit—not just a passport but a principle: “to fight for justice.”

This piece originally appeared in Marie Claire’s 2025 Changemakers Issue. Since our reporting:

• Lauren Bateman’s cases remain active. The foreign aid lawsuit is on appeal after the Supreme Court allowed the Administration to withhold $4 billion in funding, and the USAID dismantling case is also on appeal following a lower-court dismissal.
• Rochelle Garza’s clients are still waiting in Mexico; Sara recently suffered a seizure, and her health is deteriorating, according to officials.
• Melissa Crow and Blaine Bookey’s asylum case is ongoing, with a class certification motion now before the court.
• Conchita Cruz and Monica’s case saw a major milestone in August, when the court granted class certification and a preliminary injunction protecting all U.S.-born babies; the government has since asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on birthright citizenship.

Karen Ortiz never expected to become a symbol. For years, the New York–based federal judge and public servant was known for her quiet diligence and commitment to civil rights law. But this spring, Ortiz was fired from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) after vocally opposing an agency directive to deprioritize cases involving gender identity discrimination, a shift issued in response to a Trump executive order declaring only two “immutable” sexes. Ortiz had called the move both unethical and unlawful in an agency-wide email that eventually went viral.

The EEOC claimed she was terminated for “unprofessional” conduct, citing internal messages she sent criticizing leadership, including Acting Chair Andrea Lucas, and warning of a growing “hostile environment” for LGBTQIA+ complainants. But Ortiz, who is now pursuing legal claims of whistleblower retaliation and discrimination, says the real reason is clear: she refused to stay silent. (The EEOC declined to comment, citing its policy not to discuss personnel matters.)

This week, civil rights groups sued the EEOC, accusing it of abandoning protections for transgender workers, and adding new urgency to the fight Ortiz had been waging from the inside. Now, Ortiz is speaking publicly about what it cost her to take that stand—and why she’d do it again.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

What led you to send the email urging your colleagues to resist the EEOC’s new directive on trans discrimination cases?

I’d just come back from visiting my mom and was still feeling raw. Mid-flight, I checked my email and saw yet another directive telling us to deprioritize trans discrimination cases. And I thought, this is bullshit. I typed out a message to my district colleagues—measured, legal, but clear: This isn’t normal. By the time I landed, the email had vanished from my outbox. Someone had deleted it. That’s when I realized, they weren’t just ignoring the law. They were actively silencing dissent.

That Monday, I walked into the office and sent a second email—this time to Acting Chair Andrea Lucas and copied over 1,000 colleagues. The subject line was “A Spoon is Better than a Fork.” I questioned her fitness to lead, let alone practice law. It said, essentially: I will not compromise my ethics. I knew the risks. But I couldn’t stay silent.

What has been the hardest part of that decision?

The silence. Not from the public, but from inside the EEOC. From colleagues I thought would stand up with me. This is civil rights work. If you can’t speak up when people are being harmed, what are you even doing here? It’s not enough to say you believe in justice. You have to act on it. And yet, the silence has been deafening. However, the trans and queer communities have checked in on me regularly. They don’t owe me anything, and still they reach out. I’ll be in a low moment, and I’ll get a message from someone just saying, ‘We see you.’ That lifts me. It reminds me that this is about more than me. It’s about all of us.

What were you told when you were fired, and what grounds did the agency give for your termination?

The first thing that went through my mind was, they know not what they do, and that management is absolutely spineless. The agency accused me of “conduct unbecoming a federal employee” for calling out illegal behavior by Andrea Lucas, and claimed I couldn’t be “rehabilitated.”

You’re now challenging your termination through the legal process. Can you share what legal claims you're bringing and what outcome you're hoping for?

I have two active cases: a whistleblower claim before the Merit Systems Protection Board, and an EEO complaint for discrimination and retaliation, which is still under investigation. If either isn’t resolved internally, my legal team—Incendii Law, a fierce, female-led firm—is prepared to take the fight to federal court.

Ultimately, I want to force real change in the agency’s leadership, which has been compromised by Andrea Lucas and this lawless administration. I’d like a public apology from the EEOC for the harm done to trans and nonbinary communities—and to me. I believe I can still help repair the damage, whether by returning as a judge or serving as a Commissioner. These cases take time, but I’m a former marathon runner. I have stamina.

Why did you decide to take legal action rather than walk away quietly?

I may be an introvert, but I don’t stay quiet when I see harm being done. Legal action forces the agency—and the government—to face what I’m exposing. This isn’t just about me. It’s about refusing to let them walk away quietly while attacking the rights of trans and nonbinary people. I’m just the vehicle pushing this into the headlines, and hopefully into people’s hearts. By taking this public, I’m saying—loudly and on the record—that trans and nonbinary people deserve the same rights and dignity as everyone else.

Did you ever imagine that speaking out against the EEOC’s new directive would put you in the national spotlight?

Not at all. I wasn’t grandstanding, I was just saying, “This isn’t legal.” But in some ways, I’ve been training for this my whole life. In high school, some boys toilet-papered our yard and spelled “FAT NYMPHO” in front of our house—to shame me for my body, my race, and for having sex. I didn’t call the police. I went to each of their homes and told their mothers what happened. That taught me early: People count on your silence. When you take that away, they panic.

I grew up as one of the few minorities in Garden City, Long Island. Even when I was liked, it felt conditional. I was still “Other.” Later, at Columbia, I could finally breathe. I stopped shrinking to fit. I’ve been unlearning and unpeeling ever since.

You’ve been through profound loss in the past few years. How has that reshaped your sense of identity?

I’m 53 now, and the layers keep falling away. My marriage ended. I lost my stepdad to brain cancer. My mother’s dementia advanced. Every one of those losses stripped something away, and what was left underneath was this steady, unwavering sense of self. I’m not afraid anymore—not of what people think, not of losing a title or a job. I’m just not. And that freedom? It’s everything.

You were fired for resisting what you saw as an unlawful directive. And yet you still speak about compassion for everyone involved. Why is that important to you?

When I say I care about people—even those who are harming others—I mean it. I can want consequences for them and still hold space for their humanity. That’s not weakness. That’s clarity. That’s strength. I don’t want to be the kind of person who loses compassion in the fight for justice. The point is to stay human. I don’t regret a thing. Not a single word. I know what I’m doing. And I know why. It’s not about ego. It’s about alignment. I’d rather live on cornflakes and community than keep a job that costs me my soul.

What would you say to other federal workers who feel like they’re being asked to compromise their values?

If they’re really your values, it shouldn’t be hard to stay true to them. Values aren’t meant to be convenient—they’re the truth of your soul. That truth is your North Star. Let it guide you, and you’ll never be lost. And don’t mistake clout for character. Just because you don’t have a management title doesn’t mean you can’t speak truth to power.

So what comes next, short term and long term for you?

Now that I have more time, I’ve been doing volunteer work in my community—I walk dogs through an organization called PAWS. I’m also working on a site called Feds Against Fascism to connect with other public servants who feel like the system has lost its way. And yes, my legal team is preparing to sue the EEOC. That’s the next immediate step.

Long term? I’m seriously considering running for office, specifically the Senate. I have the experience, the heart and soul of a public servant, and the audacity to throw my hat in the ring.

It was on a visit to Zion National Park and the Grand Canyon when Evelynn Escobar noticed it. She was 23, road tripping to a national park for the first time, and realized that among the crowds there was no diversity—no one who looked like her. "I saw nothing but white people," she says, remembering how she clocked the stares. "I'm Black and Indigenous to Guatemala. My ancestors are from just south of there, and yet I'm the one who looked out of place."

After returning home to L.A., Escobar learned she wasn't alone in feeling like an outsider in the outdoors: Nearly 70 percent of today’s outdoor enthusiasts are white, creating what she refers to as the "nature gap," a lack of diversity on trails and in parks, in part because of racial and economic disparities affecting access.

Addressing those inequalities inspired her to forge a new path, and became the guiding force behind Hike Clerb—a collective Escobar began in 2017 to "reimagine a more equitable and inclusive outdoors." The group offers guided day hikes, overnight backpacking trips, gear workshops, trail stewardship days, and community socials—all in the spirit of providing Black and brown people with the opportunity to connect with nature, and ultimately, find healing through the land.

Since its inception, Hike Clerb has grown from a ten-person inaugural trek to Griffith Observatory in L.A. to a coast-to-coast movement with over 45,000 digital club members and regular programs in L.A., New York City, and the Bay Area. It's joined forces with brand like Timberland and The North Face to expand its community, including the ability to provide gear grants to first-time hikers.

But Escobar isn't done. “I want people to use their imagination and help build a world where the most excluded are actually the most included,” she says. Below, she shares what's next for Hike Clerb, the progress she's seen since she first began, and why movement is medicine.

What were you doing before Hike Clerb, and what inspired you to change gears?

My background is in social media management. I was working for different fashion and beauty brands while I was building Hike Clerb, and while it felt fun from the expression standpoint, I just didn’t feel totally fulfilled. That shift crystallized during a moment of curiosity after my visit to Zion; it set off this big moment of clarity of just like, Why is it like this? I wanted to bring other women like myself to come together and take up space in the outdoors. I was able to channel my social media knowledge and skills into actually creating a community that is very social-first. That was the catalyst.

A big part of Hike Clerb's mission is obviously to get people out hiking, but it's also much bigger than that. Can you share any moments that illustrate that?

Someone recently told me they met their best friend at one of our events, and then attended her wedding. Parents in our family program say their kids now connect every camping trip back to Hike Clerb. It’s become this really beautiful thing where we’re a fixture in people’s core memories, and that’s my favorite piece of it.

Moments like that show we’re not just logging trail miles; we’re flipping the script on who gets to belong outside. We center women, femmes, and non-binary folks precisely because the trail hasn’t, but anyone who’s down to reimagine the outdoors is welcome to lace up and come along.

You have grown from an Instagram account to a full-fledged nonprofit. What has funding and leadership looked like for you as a woman of color?

When it comes to for-profit businesses, Black women get about one percent of venture-capital dollars—in philanthropy, it’s even less. A lot of what I’ve done has been making the impossible possible with limited resources. Imagine what we could do if someone actually said, ‘Here’s the capital, we’ve got your back.’

I was a reluctant leader—introverted, shying from attention—but the work taught me to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Real self-care isn’t a spa day; it’s prioritizing my wellness so the community can thrive. I’ve learned to ask for help, honor my bandwidth, and lead with vulnerability and honesty. Nature has also been integral to my journeys in mental health and motherhood.

I’m world-building; creating the place I want my kids to exist in. I’ve led hikes while seven months pregnant, I bring my daughter, and I make space for every age to be out there. If you hear a kid having a tantrum or crying, that’s just them being them. It might feel weird at first because it’s not normalized to be in community with children, but they’re people too, and they need to be out here. Showing that parenthood belongs outdoors has also been liberating for me and for others who see it.

What does the future of the outdoors look like when the people who were once left out are welcomed?

We’re leaving a legacy of healing, curiosity, exploration, and changing narratives about who takes up space. If you care about nature, you connect it to everything: climate, justice, community, wellness. This journey has fundamentally changed my life in every way. The blueprint we’re leaving shows people taking their own healing seriously and giving their kids the opportunities they never had.

How did you picture inclusivity on the trail back in 2017, and what does it look like now?

There’s absolutely been a positive evolution. We’re breaking the stereotype of what an outdoorsy person looks like; people are embracing their own version of nature and naming the healing piece—mental health, self, and community care. I wanted to bring the fashion and the cultural part in, and make the trail itself a kind of creative expression. But I still go to places like Yellowstone and think, Wow, it feels like no work has been done here. There’s a ton left to do.

I want to get to the root. Hiking is our vessel to surface the challenges we see in society, ground them, and inspire action. Without political education, we can’t dissect why these spaces look the way they do.

Where do you see Hike Clerb in the next few years?

We’ve accomplished so much in eight years, but when I look to the future, I envision a Hike Clerb that is well-resourced and [even better] supported. One that is activating across the globe, tapping into more unique cultural experiences that connect people to the land in exciting new ways, led by the people of those cultures. Instagram is our biggest funnel into the Hike Clerb universe, and that digital momentum keeps fueling growth on the ground. We’ve done a lot with limited resources, but real funding would let us scale our impact even further for the long haul.

When California Governor Gavin Newsom’s TikTok account posted a “f*** around and find out” meme aimed at the Department of Defense, it wasn’t just a bold move—it was perfectly timed.

The post dropped alongside the state’s announcement that it was suing the Trump administration over its June 7 order to deploy National Guard troops to Los Angeles for immigration raids. The 25-year-old staffer behind the account had been sitting on the idea of using that meme for weeks, waiting for the perfect moment to deploy it. That same week in June, Governor Newsom's posts generated 79.5 million TikTok impressions—including 17.2 million on the governor’s video address alone.

That viral hit wasn’t a fluke, but the product of a small team of staffers in their twenties helping one of the country’s most powerful governors resonate online. “We don't shy away from using edgy audio or riskier language,” the staffer who runs Governor Newsom’s TikTok account tells Marie Claire. “That’s what’s cutting through the noise.”

Still, for all the public attention their posts receive, the people behind them remain largely anonymous. Out of concern for safety and privacy, the governor’s office has asked that staffers not be named in full. That paradox—being culturally influential while personally invisible—captures a deeper truth about where political power is moving. Just a few years ago, members of Congress were giving tutorials on how to tweet. Today, a compelling social strategy is as essential to a politician’s image as a policy agenda or fundraising machine. And the people shaping it aren’t high-profile pundits or elected officials—they’re the ones in the group chat, the minds behind the meme, the hands on the phone at 2 a.m.

Newsom’s team is a case in point: a small crew of video editors, rapid-response experts, and visual storytellers who meet twice a day and stay in constant contact through a group chat. They’re led by a 29-year-old Latina digital director who describes her colleagues as “a tight team of folks from California who are just chronically online and follow pop culture.”

And it shows. When California surpassed Japan to become the world’s fourth-largest economy, they marked the moment with the “periodt” meme—Photoshopping lashes, lips, and acrylic nails onto a state map. When Trump insulted Newsom on Truth Social, they fired back with a TikTok set to Taylor Swift’s “You Need to Calm Down.” “We’re young people. We listen to this music in the club on Saturday nights. We know what sounds are going to hit,” the digital director says.

But it’s not just about vibes. The team moves with intention: every TikTok goes through legal review, they track breaking news in daily syncs, and they’ve built a crisis workflow for same-day approvals. They’re also deliberate about tone and timing. “There are ICE raids—families are being torn apart,” says the digital director, describing how they sometimes hold back to calibrate their messaging in moments of real-life crisis.

The team credits Governor Newsom for backing a strategy rooted in speed, cultural fluency, and trust. Long before TikTok became a political battleground, he wrote Citizenville, a book about digitizing civic life. According to his staff, he followed through as governor by building a younger digital team that reflects the audiences they’re trying to reach. “We didn’t merely adopt the internet—we were molded by it,” one staffer says.

Take the staffer running the TikTok account, who previously worked on Kamala Harris’s 2024 campaign. He’s soft-spoken and serious about the stakes. His “very online” humor—sly, biting, often irreverent—isn’t just a political strategy, he says, “it’s a way to cope” in dark times. “It’s not about going viral. It’s about being real,” he tells Marie Claire.

That’s where the team sees other political operations fall short: chasing trends that don’t fit the moment and failing to invest in young, diverse staffers who actually understand the culture. “That’s why it doesn’t land as well.” And when bold ideas get watered down in layers of review? “It dies."

In a digital landscape often dominated by right-wing meme accounts and influencer outrage, Governor Newsom’s TikTok punches back without losing its sense of humor. The governor’s reaction to the team's work? “‘Y’all are killing it. Keep going!’” the digital director says, laughing.

It’s hard to argue with the results. The New York Times called Newsom’s social strategy a megaphone that “could galvanize Democrats.” The Guardian dubbed it a “rapid response blitz,” and The Sacramento Bee described a “steady stream” of memes, fact-checks, and GIFs cutting Trump’s messaging down to size.

The reason for that success, they say, comes down to two things: authenticity—and the freedom to take risks. “We’re dealing with people who are actively spreading lies and misinformation and baseless attacks on us,” says the staffer behind Governor Newsom’s TikTok. “So we need to really meet fire with fire.”

Update—October 6, 2025: Since this story was first published, the founders of People Over Papers have relaunched their ICE-raid tracker at https://iceout.org/en. Their original Padlet-hosted map was taken offline following public pressure from right-wing influencer Laura Loomer.

It all started with a screenshot on Inauguration Day.

Celeste, a 30-year-old California-based digital creator and second-generation Mexican immigrant, was scrolling TikTok when she saw a post listing locations where people had spotted ICE agents. “I thought, there's got to be a better way to do this,” she recalls. “Or at the very least, visualize it—pick up on patterns or anything like that.” She decided to start a Google form where people could submit ICE sightings. She manually reviewed each submission and plotted it on Google Maps. Within hours of posting the link on social media, the map was gaining traction.

Just a few days later, on the other side of the country, Kat, a Latina educator and mother of four, was stuck at home on a snow day when she stumbled across Celeste’s account.

“Everything had started unraveling with the targeting of immigrant communities,” says Kat, 43. “I was so overwhelmed with all the information and felt like I needed to do something. So I reached out to her immediately. And I was like, ‘Look, I don't know what I can do, but I'm a quick learner. I'm pretty good with Excel and things like that. Whatever I can do, I want to help.’”

The manual mapping system Celeste had set up was cumbersome, so when Kat connected with her, she suggested they move everything over to the website Padlet. The virtual bulletin board-style platform, which Kat had used in her work as an educator, made it easier to organize submissions and update the map in real time. It gave the project a more stable home, and a way to quickly scale up their operation.

That collaboration marked the beginning of People Over Papers, a digital tool that is now one of the most widely used civilian resources for tracking ICE activity in the country. Six months in, it has logged more than 37 million views and nine million unique visitors. What started as a grassroots experiment has grown into a full-fledged operation, with more than 40 volunteers working across time zones to verify and map community-submitted ICE reports in real time. And all of it has been built independently, without outside funding or formal institutional support.

Demand for the map has surged in recent weeks, for obvious reasons. ICE has been carrying out sweeping workplace raids in cities like L.A., Chicago, and Newark, targeting industries from agriculture to hospitality and arresting hundreds. After protests erupted in L.A., the Trump administration responded by federalizing the California National Guard and deploying Marines, the first such move since 1965. Although the agency briefly paused non-criminal enforcement in some sectors following backlash, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem made clear the campaign was far from over. “This is only going to continue until we have peace on the streets of Los Angeles,” she said at a news conference last week.

These escalations have only reinforced what Celeste had sensed from the beginning: people weren’t just scared, they were desperate for real-time information. “The truth of the matter is I didn't plan this at all. I wasn't strategic about it,” Celeste says. “The idea was to inform people. And the most popular form of information is: Where is ICE right now?”

Now, the team asks people submitting reports to include details based on the SALUTE method—Size, Activity, Location, Unit, Time, and Equipment—which helps volunteers verify the information before adding it to the live map. Volunteers, most of whom found the project through TikTok or Instagram, help verify submissions against photos, timestamps, and on-the-ground observations. Unreliable reports get filtered out, confirmed sightings are marked as such, and submissions that are strong but not definitive are labeled accordingly.

A recent post from Dallas, for example, described officials in green uniforms conducting an “operativo” near a wholesale market, with photos attached and the time logged as 7:40 a.m.—enough to meet the threshold for a probable ICE sighting, even if not yet fully confirmed.

Submissions have skyrocketed since launch—from around 50 early on, to 30 to 50 per day in March and April, to more than 1,000 in the past week alone. According to Kat, they post about 85 to 90 percent of what’s submitted.

Celeste estimates she works at least six hours a day on the project while juggling her full-time job in IT. She’s also maintained a steady presence on TikTok, where her following has grown to more than 50,000 as she continues sharing immigration updates and project news. Kat, by contrast, keeps a lower profile online and is more private about her involvement. While Celeste focuses on day-to-day operations and managing the map in real time, Kat has taken the lead on the organizational backbone, from handling logistics and tech issues to managing their business plans.

Their workload is dizzying: “I’ve had to disconnect for a little bit because I do have a full-time job, I have children, so I had to find a balance for my own mental health,” Kat says. “I always remind Celeste to take a break. You can’t pour from an empty cup.”

But for Celeste, stepping back isn’t easy. Her commitment to the work is deeply personal. “I have family members and friends who are undocumented, friends that grew up in the same exact situation as me—same school, same town, same everything. And the only thing that makes their life harder than mine is that they don't have documents,” she says.

That divide became painfully real earlier this month, she says, when her brother was on his way to work one morning. He had stopped to pick up a coworker when an unmarked truck cut them off and three more surrounded their car. According to Celeste, ICE agents stepped out and detained his coworker on the spot. “It, unfortunately, is getting closer and closer to home,” she says.

The headlines that followed only intensified that feeling. Last week, a WIRED report revealed that Army intelligence analysts had flagged tools like People Over Papers as potential national security threats.

To Kat and Celeste, the government’s response only underscored why the tool was needed. “We have a First Amendment right to have a tool like this,” Celeste says. “It’s raising awareness and gives a stark visual of what is happening right now.”

Their work continues, but they have added new precautions: contributors now sign NDAs, and the team is working on a more formal vetting rubric to ensure consistency.

Still, loved ones of both women have expressed concerns about their safety. “To be honest, I think I was very hesitant and wary. Out of everybody in my family, I was the most cautious,” says Kat’s 20-year-old daughter, Alexandra, who is training to volunteer with People Over Papers. She explains that she offered hands-on support in the early days of the project, including by helping her mom set up a VPN for security purposes. “I feel a roller coaster of emotions—of being scared and then proud. I’m seeing friends of mine posting [the map] on social media, and nobody knows it’s her.”

Though they’ve never met in person, Kat and Celeste have built a bond that’s carried them through the ups and downs of this journey. They joke on video calls, tease each other about music tastes (Celeste’s obsession with Bad Bunny is a recurring bit), and check in constantly. “She’s very Type A,” Kat says. “I’m totally not. But I think we complement each other really well.”

“She’ll remind me to touch grass,” Kat laughs. “I’ll remind her to take a break.” In the process of building a lifeline for others, they’ve built one for each other, too.

Despite the looming fear of government surveillance, the emotional toll, and the constant pressure from loved ones to stay safe, Kat and Celeste have kept going. To people like Noemi Jimenez, that determination says everything.

A founding steward of the grassroots immigrant advocacy group Vecinos Unidos DFW, Jimenez first connected with Celeste online and later became a moderator for People Over Papers. She now helps spread the word on the ground in Texas.

To her, the map’s popularity reflects a broader crisis of trust. “People do not trust the activity of ICE,” she says. “Or even worse—we are certain that they are not doing things lawfully.”

Jimenez, who teaches Know Your Rights block walks and does courthouse observation, says she knew from the start that this project had likely been created by women—because of how intentionally it prioritized safety, accuracy, and community. “They had what it took,” she says. “And what it took was ganas”—a Spanish word for grit, resilience, and the deep conviction to get it done.

That conviction is now propelling the founders into their next chapter. They’ve applied for nonprofit status and hope to expand the project’s capabilities: to add trusted referrals for immigration attorneys, protest safety info, and more searchable archives. “We just want to provide a safe space for historically marginalized communities,” Kat says.

Their hope is to one day make the project sustainable enough that they can work on it full-time. “We want to keep this women-based and Latina-owned,” she later adds. “We're all college educated, and it's so empowering. I want that to be the legacy too.”

Editor’s note: Kat and Celeste are being identified by first name only due to safety concerns. Alexandra is a middle name.

For days, thousands of people have flooded the streets of L.A. to protest a wave of immigration raids by the Trump administration. As ICE agents showed up to workplaces, tore families apart, and threatened to enter schools, women have emerged as a powerful presence. They led marches and confronted authorities, visibly determined to protect themselves and their community from the threat of deportation. Their signs were pointed: “ICE Melts in LA,” “Families Belong Together,” “No Human Being Is Illegal.”

There was an unmistakable urgency to the demonstrations, which began after ICE agents swept a Home Depot parking lot and a local clothing factory, arresting more than 40 immigrant workers on Friday. The following day, police deployed tear gas as unrest spread throughout the city. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump ordered 2,000 National Guard troops to the area. Mayor Karen Bass has since called the city a “tinderbox.” What began as whispered concerns in community centers and kitchen tables had clearly erupted into something much larger.

Marie Claire sent photojournalist Allison Lau to spend time among these demonstrators, capturing the resilience and anger of the women at the heart of the movement. Here, in their own words and images, is the story of their fight.

“I’m here in solidarity,” says Annika.“It really upsets me seeing kids torn from their families. I hope [us mobilizing] can start the ball rolling on getting Trump out of office.”

“My father was once deported. I know what it’s like to have your family ripped apart,” says Cynthia Carlos. “I have a voice for myself, for my parents, and for my son who’s going to grow up [in this country].”

“We’re here to say: ‘We’re not scared,’” says Araceli Martinez. “All these people—the working class people that were welcome to the country, that were already in this country and on this land—we all built this. ”

“We have the right to migrate on our own ancestors’ land,” says Libertad, calling out the lack of historical context in the crackdown. “Whether you’re detribalized or not, we all have the right to be here.”

"I am a child of immigrants—one parent was deported when I was 10, and that had a lasting impact. By the time he came back, I was already a mom and he was a grandpa. You can never get that time back," says Monica De Leon.

Scenes from the Streets

Beyond the interviews, signs, expressions, and small moments told their own story.

One wrong turn in Mallorca, and Suset Laboy was texting 70 other mothers for help.

She was driving her four-year-old twin daughter to school earlier this year when she swerved to avoid a serious crash, but still got rear-ended. She was fine. Her daughter was fine. But her heart was racing, and she had no idea what to do next in a country with rules she didn’t fully understand. Back in Brooklyn, where she’d lived for 14 years before moving abroad, she would’ve known exactly how to handle it. In Spain, she opened WhatsApp.

The thread she turned to wasn’t just any group chat—it was Mother Euro, a growing community and relocation service founded by two American moms to support women who’ve left the U.S. behind in search of something better. Part concierge, part lifeline, Mother Euro connects moms with everything from visa lawyers to pediatricians to the best iced coffee in town. The network currently includes 80 members, and while most are based in Spain, the U.K. is their second-largest hub, with plans to expand across other European markets.

“I didn’t feel comfortable living in the U.S. anymore,” says Alice Kim, an American citizen and Mother Euro member who moved from California back to her birthplace, Seoul, before settling in Barcelona with her husband and two-year-old son. “I was worried about the political climate. My friends raising their kids there would talk about gun violence and how the kids would have to prepare for breathing without their chest moving. Our American dream really got shattered.”

Kim isn’t alone. A growing number of Americans are considering or actively planning to relocate to Europe, driven by concerns over political and social issues, including racial equity and LGBTQ+ rights. Relocation firms have reported increased inquiries, citing political polarization, threats to personal rights, and safety concerns. Applications for British citizenship by Americans have reached record highs. The day after Trump’s second election, Google searches for how to leave the U.S. spiked by over 1,500 percent. Even celebrities have made exit plans: Rosie O’Donnell moved to Ireland in March. Ellen DeGeneres reportedly relocated to the U.K. last fall, as did Courtney Love.

For mothers in particular, the push factors are hard to ignore. The U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed countries, and since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, access to life-saving care can depend on your zip code. Meanwhile, child care costs have soared—averaging $11,582 annually, according to Child Care Aware of America—and in many places, the cost of caring for two children now exceeds the cost of housing.

So last fall two American moms, Emily San Jose, 34, and Maggie Gavilán, 32, launched Mother Euro, a membership-based community designed to help women navigate the move abroad and build a life once they’re there. Aspiring members pay $1,500 a year for full relocation support, while Resident members who are already living abroad pay $500 annually to join a network of local moms and access the group’s resources, meetups, and ongoing assistance. It’s part WhatsApp hive mind, part on-the-ground network for everything from kids’ weird rashes to the best local cafés to hit with toddlers in tow.

It’s also where a member can seek advice when, say, she’s rear-ended in a new country and not sure how insurance works in Spain.

“We’re not just a relocation service. We're a village,” says Gavilán. “We want to build each other up. A traditional relocation specialist is going to be, you know, the guy that your dad's company set you up with. He's gonna show you, you know, the best moving company. And we have all those things, but we bring in the emotional factor that we know is so important as women and as moms.”

In addition to real estate agents and top-notch immigration lawyers, Mother Euro connects members with nutritionists, multilingual therapists, and barre studios. When I mention someone who moved to Spain to access IVF, which is significantly cheaper there than in the U.S., Gavilán jumps in: “Do we have a partner for IVF? Not yet. But if you need one tomorrow? We’ll find them.”

Most moms hear about Mother Euro through San Jose, the Madrid-based cofounder better known as @MamaInMadrid. The Oregon native moved to Spain immediately after college, with a plan to stay for a year, make money as an au pair, and travel in her free time. One month later, she met her Spanish husband. They eventually moved back to the Pacific Northwest for five years, but returned to Spain in 2021 to be closer to family.

Online, San Jose is poised, mixing aspirational ease with dry humor in near-perfect Castilian Spanish. Take, for example, the blackout in Spain and Portugal in April. In a post about it on Instagram, San Jose tells the camera she was in the gym when it happened—aspirational!—and says, “I went into flight or fight mode. My husband says that that is a very American reaction, to sort of catastrophize things. Fine with me if that’s going to be my reaction in this situation.” Relatable!

Among 30-something U.S. expats, San Jose is a bit of a celebrity. Proof: When I told a Spanish acquaintance that I was interviewing American moms in Madrid, she squeed, “Do you know MamaInMadrid?!” Further proof: Gavilán, Mother Euro’s cofounder, DMed San Jose last year when she was considering moving to Madrid, too. She has dual citizenship and wanted to be closer to her family. “I saw this really pretty blonde girl living in Spain, speaking fluent Spanish, and I was like, maybe she’ll be my friend,” she says. They met for drinks the next time Gavilán visited, shut down the bar, and took a few blurry two a.m. selfies.

Gavilán got pregnant soon after, and started seriously planning her family’s relocation. “Raising children and even just being a pregnant woman in the States, transparently, felt really scary,” she says. “So I wanted to give my kids and myself, selfishly—and I can be selfish—a better life.”

Of course, moving to Europe isn’t always as romantic as it sounds. There are visas to secure, cultural nuances to decode, and costs to consider. (Gavilán estimates relocation costs around $15,000, though it varies widely.) As she navigated her own move, friends and strangers began reaching out for advice.

“I'm telling you, I was on the phone until two a.m. sometimes trying to help moms with finding the right attorney or with the right education consultant because they didn't understand the nuances between the US and EU system and how that would work, which, I didn't either when I was figuring it out,” she says.

That’s when she realized there was a real need for a service that could guide women through it—not just logistically, but emotionally. “People want to do this,” she says. “But they want to feel as though they're in community with somebody doing it, either at the same time, or who has already done it—and also somebody who they want to hang out with.”

Though most of the Mother Euro action happens online, the group hosted its first IRL event in April: a dinner party in Madrid to celebrate the official launch. Thirty women flew in from Costa Brava, Mallorca, and London.“There were so many badass women there,” says Kim, who traveled from Barcelona to attend. During an icebreaker, members were first instructed to “step in” if they were born in the U.S. For the second prompt, they were asked to take a step in if they were a business owner. “I think three-fourths of the room stepped in,” she says. “After that I was like, I’m going to have to step up my game.”

She sat next to Heather, an American mom who’s lived in Europe for 17 years, and peppered her with questions about schooling. Heather insisted on local schools over international ones. “Now I’m leaning local too,” Kim says. “Because more and more I feel like I don't want my son to go to a U.S. college after living all his adolescence in Europe. It would feel like a back step.”

Mother Euro is expensive, on top of all the other costs that go into moving your life somewhere else, and it’s not not luxury service. But it’s one that 200-plus women are willing to pay; that’s how many applicants Gavilán says they’ve been receiving per month. One aspiring member, who is planning a move to Madrid after her second child is born, says her membership has already been worth it. She explained that it was especially helpful for navigating Spain’s Beckham Law, which allows foreign workers to pay significantly less in income tax than Spanish citizens, and far less than they would in the U.S.

Still, upending your life to relocate to Europe isn’t a panacea, nor is it easy. Moving abroad is a privilege and a struggle—both things can be true. Even the founders are still figuring things out as they go along: Gavilán is currently weighing public versus private hospitals in Madrid for her C-section; Laboy misses the diversity of Brooklyn.

But for Laboy, the hardest part has been leaving her sister and parents behind. “It feels sad, and at the same time, it feels like the right choice for us at this very moment,” she says, tears forming. “It’s very important for me to recognize that this move is a privilege that not everybody has.”

“Still,” she adds, “living here feels like an exhale.”

Mother Euro affirms something mothers around the world have always known: When women are part of the conversation, everyone wins. “[Our launch dinner party] reminded us that mothers will travel near and far to be seen, supported, and celebrated by their communities,” Gavilán recapped over email after the event. “Listening to everyone share their stories on why they moved, what they’re seeking, and how they’re building their lives abroad—it was a powerful affirmation of why we created this space.”

It also proves that no matter where you are, whether you’re figuring out tax residency or just daycare culture, motherhood still takes a village. Like when Kim’s son came home from his Spanish daycare with a goodie bag. “I was like, ‘Wait, was there a birthday party I didn’t know about? Am I missing something? Do I need to send a gift?’”

So she hit up the Mother Euro chat, where San Jose explained that in Spain, the birthday kid gifts their friends—instead of the other way around. The same goes for adults: if you host the dinner, you pick up the check.

“This community really helps me mentally,” Kim says. She’s since made a real-life friend in Barcelona through Mother Euro, and the two are going to an Imagine Dragons concert this summer. “Making friends when you're older is harder, but within Mother Euro, we all have so many commonalities that it just helps us click. I'm confident that whoever is in it shares the same values.”

And after arriving in Spain in February, she hasn’t looked back.

If Trump’s proposed tariffs are giving you worry lines, buckle up: how you treat them might be hit next. Everything from Botox to the syringes that deliver it are facing potential price increases—and the aesthetics industry is bracing for financial impact.

As part of President Trump’s broader plan to effectively raise taxes and (theoretically) reduce reliance on foreign imports, the most recent proposal includes a universal 10 percent tariff on all non-North American countries, 20 percent on goods from the European Union, 25 percent on South Korea, 31 percent on Switzerland, and a whopping 145 percent rate on Chinese imports. That’s just at the time of writing, though–the numbers are ever-changing.

But as you’ve likely seen in headlines, the ripple effect could seriously disrupt any industry dependent on global supply chains, impacting the brands that make everything from your cars, phones, to perfumes—and yes, even your Botox and filler.

The Global Economics of Looking Good

“The aesthetic medicine industry remains largely dependent on international manufacturing—especially when it comes to injectables,” says Pooja Rambhia, MD, FAAD, a board-certified cosmetic dermatologist at UnionDerm in New York City. “Many of the most widely used neuromodulators and fillers, including those from AbbVie, Galderma and Teoxane, are produced in Europe, Canada, and other international locations—even when distributed by U.S.-based companies.” (AbbVie manufactures Botox while Galderma makes Dysport, Restalyne, and Sculptra.)

In other words: The aesthetics industry is just as globally dependent as the more frequently spotlighted auto and tech sectors—though it doesn’t always get the same attention. (Funny how that happens when the primary consumer base is women.)

And those consumers are already feeling it. “Patients are becoming increasingly conscious of costs,” says Anetta Reszko, MD, PhD, a board-certified dermatologist and dermatologic surgeon in New York City. “We’re seeing a growing interest in things like prepayment options and manufacturer rewards programs to help manage expenses.”

The Real Cost of Feeling Like Yourself

While it may seem trivial to focus on beauty given the current political and social climate, the truth is that, for many patients, these treatments are far from frivolous. Rather, they’re part of a broader self-care routine—tied to confidence, aging, and identity.

“For many people, injectables are a routine part of their self-care, similar to getting their hair or nails done,”says Sheila Malek Kassir, MD, a board-certified plastic surgeon and co-founder of New York City’s Kassir Plastic Surgery and Inside Beauty Spa. “The idea that prices could rise because of something like international policy or tariffs feels disconnected from their daily lives, yet it’s affecting them directly.”

That it is—and for providers, too. “I’ve noticed about a 20 to 25 percent increase in the cost of supplies like syringes, gloves, gauze, and other medical supplies that I routinely order,” says Kristina Kitsos, RN, a Beverly Hills-based nurse injector. “I’ve also noticed an approximate 10 to 20 percent increase in the cost of the individual injectable products.”

So, can clinics just stock up now to avoid potentially price hikes? Not really. Kassir says expiration dates make bulk-buying nearly impossible—at least not without risking waste or using expired product.

Where Aesthetic Products Are Made—And Why That Matters

So what’s driving all the price hikes? It all comes down to where these products—and the tools used to administer them—are actually made.

“Tariffs are essentially taxes on imports,” explains Anne Villamil, PhD, an economics professor and Henry B. Tippie Research Fellow in Economics at University of Iowa. “They raise the cost of goods—especially for elective procedures. Brands like Botox may be able to pass those increases on quickly, and that means patients feel it almost immediately.”

And considering most injectables are manufactured in Europe—Botox in Ireland, Dysport in the UK, Xeomin in Germany, and fillers like Juvederm and Restylane across the EU—the category is more exposed than many realize.

To put that into perspective, Dr. Kassir estimates that “well over 80 percent” of her practice’s supplies are sourced internationally. “Injectables, tools, skincare products—they’re all tied back to global suppliers,” she says.

One exception? “Daxxify by Revance Therapeutics, [is] a botulinum toxin that is manufactured domestically in the U.S.,” says Dr. Rambhia. But even U.S.-made injectables rely on globally sourced components—like syringes, needles, gauze, and packaging—often imported from China, South Korea, and the EU.

“Even for companies manufacturing in the U.S., critical components—like bottles and caps—are often imported,” says David Navazio, CEO of Gentell, a U.S. medical supply company. “This issue touches almost every personal care brand and leads to limited availability and rising costs.”

Translation? A “Made in the USA” label doesn’t guarantee anything when it comes to pricing stability, despite what your aunt on Facebook claims. "Most people don’t realize that every product involved in a single treatment—right down to the gauze—is touched by international trade,” Kitsos says.

Pharmaceuticals Could Be Next

While some uses of Botox can qualify as medication (like for hyperhidrosis, or excessive sweating) and are currently exempt from tariffs, that protection might not last. On April 14, President Trump told reporters the possibility of tariffs on imported medication could arrive in the “not too distant future,” claiming that “we don’t make our own drugs anymore” as the “drug companies are in Ireland, and they’re in lots of other places, China.” (The company that makes Botox is, indeed, based in Ireland.)

Two days later, the Trump administration filed a notice announcing a formal investigation “to determine the effects on the national security” of foreign-made drugs.

Some experts see this as the first step toward making those drug tariffs a reality—and it’s one that could ultimately impact injectable pricing, too. “About 50 to 55 percent of Botox is used for aesthetic procedures like smoothing wrinkles and facial contouring,” says Villamil. “The remainder is for medical uses, including chronic migraines, overactive bladder, and spasticity.”

In other words: nearly half of Botox’s global usage could be exposed to the kind of tariff-related price hikes for which providers and patients are already bracing.

What Does the Future Hold for Cosmetic Procedure Costs?

So, where does this leave the aesthetics industry now? “Providers could face rising costs on imported products, leading to higher treatment prices, potentially reducing patient demand or compressing already tight operating margins,” says Kimber Maderazzo, a marketing professor at Pepperdine University and former senior beauty executive who led global strategy and innovation for brands like Proactiv, Procter & Gamble, and Estée Lauder.

But while some injectors say patients are budgeting carefully, others assert theirs remain invested. “Our patients are pretty committed to their treatments,” says Tara Adashev, APRN, head nurse and injectables specialist at Neinstein Plastic Surgery. “They see this as part of their long-term wellness routine.”

Maderazzo agrees—to a point. “Consumers are more likely to accept a price increase when there’s a luxury or high-quality product,” she says. “But price-sensitive patients may stretch treatments or switch to lower-cost alternatives.” Really, it comes down to how much cash you have to spare to maintain your beauty routine.

Providers may have to change their approach, too. “These ripple effects—regulatory changes, import restrictions, geopolitical tensions—can lead to price hikes, treatment delays, and even temporary shortages,” says Dr. Reszko. And that’s just the beginning.

Innovation, Interrupted

According to Maderazzo, trade instability can inadvertently slow the pace of medical–and aesthetic–innovation. “Companies cut budgets in research and development (R&D) and regulatory submissions to offset tariff-related expenses,” she explains. “That means fewer breakthrough innovations and more limited product selection.”

Innovation in medicine and aesthetics isn’t just exciting–it’s essential. And losing it could set entire industries back in ways we don’t yet fully understand. “This is really a moment that highlights how intertwined aesthetic medicine is with the global economy,” Dr. Kassir concludes. “Global trade and policy decisions can seem abstract, but they have very real consequences.”

I guess we just assumed that the repercussions of Trump's tariffs wouldn't show up on our faces.

Meet the Experts

Sali Christeson, founder and CEO of the women's workwear brand Argent, wasn't tuned in when President Trump unveiled his "Liberation Day" tariffs last Wednesday, April 2, but it didn't take long for the news to hit her text messages with the same jolt that shook the global stock market.

The executive tells me she spoke with at least twelve other founders, specializing in everything from casual wear to ballet flats, within the first day of the announcement. Internally, a "dark cloud" hung over her meetings with Argent's suppliers and team members. Christeson and her fellow business owners saw critical suppliers for their labels on the long list of countries subject to so-called reciprocal tariffs, including Vietnam, China, Cambodia, and European Union nations like Italy and France—and realized that business was about to become more challenging than ever.

"My conversations are all just like...what the f–ck?" Christeson says. "We really are a small community, especially female founders. We're constantly doing risk mitigation. That is our entire existence." Navigating the Trump administration's tariffs—a campaign trail threat framed as retaliation against other countries and "medicine" for the United States—has proven more difficult, with little advance warning and tangled global supply chains to reassess. "We're still getting our arms around it. The challenge right now is that so much is in flux that has very real implications for us from a business perspective."

Brands like Argent—independent and women-led—stand to lose significantly as major fashion sourcing regions face extensive taxes whenever they go into effect. (The tariffs were initially set to hit on April 9, but President Trump announced a 90-day pause beyond a 10 percent baseline tax.) Remember, tariffs are paid by the importing company, not the country from which the goods originated. With the United States importing approximately 98 percent of clothing and 99 percent of shoes, according to the Business of Fashion, every corner of the industry will pay up in one way or another. Most likely, by raising prices for consumers, whether or not the designers want it to happen.

Rebekah Kondrat, managing partner of the retail expansion agency Rekon Retail, describes the tariffs as a "tipping point" for women-led brands. They may have been on a trajectory toward opening stores or expanding their audiences, but even the best indie brands lack the same margins as global powerhouses like Nike, Gap, or H&M. Multinational corporations have the flexibility to absorb tariffs before passing costs on to consumers or completely changing vendors. Decade-old shoe and handbag brands with a single storefront do not.

"Women-owned brands are already starting from a [disadvantage]: they don't get as much capital, they don't have as much clout with vendors," Kondrat explains. Before the tariffs, these labels were fighting for a mere two to three percent of all venture funding. Growth required effort, and every dollar mattered. Now, "These brands are going to be hit pretty hard because, of course, all the components, textiles, and everything come from a region that is heavily tariffed. This situation does not bode well for some of these more bootstrapped brands."

One brand stands out: Labucq, a footwear label known for its chunky boots and sculptural flats, all handcrafted in Tuscany, Italy. Their unique selling point—Italian heritage infused into founder Lauren Bucquet's aesthetic—now costs them a 20 percent tax on all European Union exports. She spent six to eight weeks exploring potential tariff outcomes with her team. While she believes the uncertainty was worse than the actual announcement, it nonetheless caused a fundamental shift in her brand. "It's existential. It changes absolutely everything," Bucquet states.

A similar story is unfolding at M.M.LaFleur, where founder Sarah LaFleur states that one hundred percent of her products are made overseas. And at Freja, an emerging handbag brand with operations already so lean, founder Jenny Lei doesn't see any way to lower costs further. She hopes that planned launches of more premium items will make price increases seem worthwhile, since the value is rising along with the actual cost.

Adjusting to a timeline that founders didn't choose is neither easy nor welcome. "These were not costs we forecasted in our budget," LaFleur says. "With ample notice, these are changes we could have worked through. But the suddenness of it leaves very little room to maneuver except increasing prices and cutting costs."

"I think the reality is sinking in now: we’ve built our entire model on something that isn’t resilient," says Beth Esponnette, co-founder and chief product officer of Unspun, a fashion manufacturing company that specializes in localized, 3D weaving technology. Unspun not only produces some of its own garments but also licenses its equipment to clients worldwide who are looking to reduce emissions and fabric waste. By design, it's less exposed to risk, yet it sources yarns and other components from abroad.

Esponnette explains that the even bigger issue is "how these tariffs impact the brands we partner with. In the past few weeks, we’ve had 15 brands, ranging from global giants to smaller independents, reach out to us asking how to diversify and mitigate risks in their manufacturing," she notes.

One reason tariffs were introduced, according to the Trump administration, was to encourage more "Made in America" products. But adjusting to a new economic reality isn't as straightforward as moving production back to the United States. Workers must be trained, and facilities must be constructed. Many of the raw materials required for certain brands' standout products simply aren't sourced here. (For example, the silks used in some Argent blouses, which can only be produced in China.)

A number of labels cut and sew their pieces in workshops in New York City or Los Angeles, but they have no option other than to import the fabrics. Ergo, they're impacted by tariffs. That's the case with Argent, as Christeson says: "Maybe 40-50% of our business is American-made, so the fact that we are so severely impacted is really disheartening."

Adjusting to tariffs will hinder more than just the clothes' production; they'll affect the entire shopping experience. Kondrat states that clients are requesting store builds that exclusively source domestic production, but the components for shelving, fitting rooms, and clothing racks also have to come from somewhere. "Pretty much all lumber in the US comes from Canada, all mechanical components come from China, and a lot of textiles come from China," she explains. "You can't get away from it: Even if you do produce in the US, your raw components come from outside the US, so it is a little bit unavoidable. "If domestic manufacturing is the future, it will take a long time for a new footwear brand or manufacturer to catch up," Bucquet says. "The infrastructure in the US is just not set up to support it."

Nearly every business owner interviewed by Marie Claire expressed a sense of frustration about the entire situation. Countrywide, Christeson says, "It's all self-inflicted problems we'll face." Economists agree: The predicted recession heading for the United States this year could be a result of the new tariffs, according to Bloomberg.

In the aftermath, "My concern is that the burden is falling on brands—especially smaller ones who have the least margin to absorb extra costs," Esponnette says. "At the same time, there has been almost no investment from the government to support domestic manufacturing. We’re being told to move production home, but no one’s giving us the tools to actually do it. We’ve done it with EVs [electric vehicles], solar, and semiconductors, and subsidized the establishment of these industries, too—why is apparel always left behind?" Christeson also wondered why the government hadn't offered grants or sufficient warning to support new infrastructure if relocating apparel production to the United States was such a priority for the current administration.

Kondrat says the long-term effects on women-owned labels are still hard to predict. Given remaining uncertainty over how long tariffs would stay in effect—and a bipartisan proposal to axe them entirely—double the founders who participated in this article declined to comment on it. Similar to the COVID-19 crisis, there could be widespread layoffs and store closures as brands struggle to manage increasing costs. Nevertheless, every business owner and operator who spoke with Marie Claire agreed it's hardly time to throw in the towel.

"For me, it's a lot more about looking forward to seeing what opportunities lie ahead," Lei says. The United States is now Feja's biggest market, but international expansion has always been a priority for boosting profitability. Plus, the label has navigated tough times before, with a growing fanbase to show for it. "We survived our first year trying to sell a work bag in the midst of a global pandemic, and we will survive this," she says.

In a fast fashion, instant gratification-dominated market, gaining shopper support for one of the most immediate effects- higher prices- is a challenging endeavor. Bucquet states that her brand's followers have largely been supportive of her recent announcement. There have been complainers, too, but she brushes them off. "It’s not important to me how people feel about it, what’s important is how our market reacts to higher prices," she says, "and whether we can sustain a healthy business going forward."

Christeson sees a silver lining in the collective realization Americans are experiencing as they watch the news unfold. Finally, the general fashion public is beginning to understand how challenging it is to start, let alone maintain, a footwear or apparel brand. But that's not yet enough to outweigh the still-unknown effects of tariffs. It currently feels as though brands are being set up to fail. "The government should play a more productive role in our success. They should not take away from our ability to thrive. We're employing people, we're growing a company, we're bringing so much to our local and national economy," she says.

In an ideal world, her female founder group chat would focus more on upcoming collections and store expansions. "Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that we would have to contend with decisions that are very detrimental to American businesses." For now, they're planning as best they can—and pushing forward together.

Editor's note: This story has been updated.

With extreme weather events happening more and more frequently, it can be hard to know how to best support those affected. Here, seven people who’ve experienced a climate disaster share what they wish others knew.

When the fires broke out in the Palisades, I organized two pop-up donation centers and spread the word through a call to action on Instagram. I reposted GoFundMe pages for elderly people who didn’t have access to social media or didn’t know how to use it. When I heard about an Altadena man who moved into a motel after losing his home of 50 years, I reached out and asked what he needed. His family said they had a GoFundMe for him, but it wasn’t doing well. With their permission, I posted the link and helped raise $36,000.

If you’re helping an individual, ask how you can be of assistance, but also respect their experience and be sensitive to families who have lost everything. Think about what kind of information you would want to see. Fear, conspiracy theories, and misinformation are all awful ways to fuel your following. Help has to come from your heart.

Pilina in Hawaiian means “relationship.” As a doula, I have built a pilina with many of the women in my community. Our togetherness is what kept our spirits up during the Maui fires. Rebuilding isn’t just about structures; it’s about healing hearts, holding space, and remembering that, even in loss, we rise. As families from our community sought refuge in hotels, I offered to help watch their kids. If I saw another mom on the street, I tried to connect with her and ask how she’s doing. I often invited other families to come over for dinner.

If you’re in the thick of it right now, know that you’re not alone. Find what grounds you first, then build genuine relationships with women around you. Share resources. Offer emotional support. Healing doesn’t mean forgetting, it means finding a way to carry the love forward.

After Hurricane Helene ended, so did some of the help and attention to those who still needed assistance. Though the hurricane moved on, people’s suffering and loss did not. When the roads cleared up, my family and I signed up to volunteer at a distribution site three times a week. A month and a half later, I applied for a small grant and decided to spend that money on clothes, shoes, coats, blankets, and toys for those who lost their homes and were still living in tents or trailers. We all shared a common trauma experience, but some were less fortunate in their ability to recover.

Reassure people you haven’t forgotten them. Keep up with their needs, which changes depending on recovery progress and how much time has passed since the disaster. First, people need supplies, care, and motivation. But after three or four months, those who have lost property need funding and money. Don’t give up on supporting survivors, because the process of healing and recovery can take years.

When Hurricane Harvey hit, I tried driving to work, but the roads were all underwater. I was devastated, but I had no choice other than to turn around for my own safety. Back home, all I could think about was my co-workers, who were riding out the storm at the hospital and in desperate need of relief and sleep. There was still flooding and torrential rain the next day, but my dad drove me in his pickup truck through rising waters. I worked for three days straight, sleeping at the hospital until the roads were clear and safe enough to drive again. The lengths we all went to in order to care for the babies was incredible. One of my colleagues even rode a dump truck through the flooded streets to get into work. There isn’t anything nurses wouldn’t do for their patients, and it’s often thankless work.

Be patient with frontline workers during disasters. Be kind to them. If you have friends who are nurses or doctors, offer to check on their property or pets, since sometimes we’re at the hospital for days. We also appreciate being sent treats or food after long shifts, because we’re usually extremely tired.

I have lived through many storms and hurricanes, but never one as strong as Hurricane Maria. In 2017, Maria devastated Puerto Rico in such a way that, even today, the island has not fully recovered. There were deaths, destroyed homes, landslides, floods, entire communities underwater, plus a lack of drinking water, food, electricity, and many other basic needs. Hurricanes, which are so common in our territory, pose significant risks to mental health, access to housing, and general healthcare—and that’s especially true for the LGBTQ+ community. The transgender community, in particular, continues to be marginalized and rejected, putting them in constant danger during crises like hurricanes.

It’s important to identify organizations that align with your experiences; put time and effort into those spaces, and speak with people who can relate to you about what challenges might arise. Smaller community organizations exist to support individuals, and engaging with them can ensure people have the right kind of help during a disaster. Those who inherently understand what you need are often the best resources to connect you with essential services and programs.

During the Los Angeles fires, many animal facilities burned to the ground. Some animals unfortunately did not make it. With the loss of facilities and people losing their homes, those willing to foster or adopt a pet are often needed. Caring for an animal is a huge responsibility, and some people end up bringing rescues back. If you aren’t 100 percent ready to adopt or foster a pet, help by donating money to animal shelters or volunteering your time to play with the animals. Ask organizations what they need. Protecting pets is just as important as protecting people.

The hurricanes in Florida have tested my resilience—and also brought out the best in my community. After losing my apartment on Davis Islands, I listened to the song “Apologies” by Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, and read the book You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life by Jen Sincero. In times of uncertainty, turn to the things that bring you comfort. Offer to send those impacted art, so they can draw strength from books and music and inspirational quotes.

This article appears in Marie Claire's 2025 Craftsmanship Issue.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration made significant cuts to the Department of Education. Around 1,300 employees were laid off, leaving the agency at roughly half of its previous size. And now, President Donald Trump is threatening to sign an executive order—as soon as today—that abolishes the Department of Education entirely.

The cuts are part of Trump and Elon Musk's plan to reduce spending across the federal government. And while it's reported that the order directs Education Secretary Linda McMahon to "take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure (of) the Department of Education and return education authority to the States, while continuing to ensure the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely," it's not a done deal yet.

Eliminating the Department of Education has proven unpopular amongst parents, education advocates, civil rights groups, and lawmakers, and to officially abolish the agency would require congressional legislation.

One of those legislators, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), sat down with Marie Claire to discuss the latest developments, what it means, and why she won't support closing the Department.

President Trump has said that he wants to eliminate the Department of Education. Can you speak to exactly what that means and who will feel the immediate impact?

So think of it this way, the Department of Education has three main jobs that it carries out every single day: One is to make sure that every kid in America gets access to a good public education, so even if you live in a rural area and it’s expensive to send a bus for you, they’ve got to do it. [The agency] makes sure that brown children and Black children and white children all have an opportunity to go to good public schools. That’s part one.

Part two, the Department of Education makes sure that children who have significant disabilities—maybe they need an aid to be with them for part or all of the day—to make sure that those children still have an opportunity to go to school, and the federal government picks up the ticket so there will be money to hire an aide for that child. That’s part two.

Part three, the Department of Education is there when a family is ready to send a kid off for more education after high school, whether it’s technical school, two-year college, four-year college, maybe even graduate school, but the family doesn’t have enough money to write a single check for it, the Department of Education is there to administer the student loan program. Those are the ways in which we make sure we have a strong public education system, not just for a handful of really rich people or a handful of people who live over here or live over there, but a strong public education system for everyone, and that is what Donald Trump is trying to dismantle.

You were a public school teacher. How did you see the Department of Education working for students? And what do you think is most at risk now if the agency were to be abolished?

I don’t want to do this as “most” because it’s all so very important, but I will say this from my own personal experience—I worked with special needs kids. The children I worked with were four to six years old and had some pretty significant challenges. Most of them, for example, could not express themselves. But because we had help from the federal government, and they could get assistance and get the kind of one-on-one care they needed, those children had a better opportunity to build a real future; to be able to acquire the skills to take care of themselves, and for some of them to be able to get a job and support themselves.

Public education is about honoring each child, so that each child has an opportunity to build out who they can be and to have an opportunity to build a future that’s secure and that has a lot of independence. We make those investments early early on with our littlest learners and we know from the data that it pays off down the line. That more children are able to get a better education, more of them are able to take care of themselves and to live lives that are independent—to cut that off is not only an economic failure for this country, it is a moral failure for this country.

There are many who say you can measure a country by how it treats the most vulnerable among us, and for me, that is true just ten times over when we’re talking about the mission of the Department of Education to make sure that every one of our children has a real opportunity to build a future. Donald Trump and Elon Musk are trying to take that away and we’ve got to fight back.

The Trump Administration has said that the Education Department isn’t working; that it’s hindered by bureaucratic bloat. I’m a parent, and I live in a neighborhood in New York City where the public schools are under resourced and many families don’t have confidence their children are getting a good education. Does President Trump have a point?

I think you put your finger on it—to the extent that the Department of Education is not able to carry out its mission, a large part of that is based on the fact we don’t give it the resources to be able to do that. It takes money to pay our teachers, to pay our teacher’s aid, to make sure the children have transportation to get to school. In order to support our public school systems, we need to be willing to make the investment, because we have learned that when we do make that investment it pays off in the long run. It pays off for children who stay in school, it pays off for children who go ahead and have long careers—it pays off for our nation.

The idea of undercutting it—I gotta tell you, I know that Donald Trump says, No, no it’s not doing its job. Do you know what the cuts to the Department of Education are really about? Right now Donald Trump and Elon Musk and the spineless Republicans in Congress are trying to find places that they can cut spending so that they will have more money available to be able to give tax handouts to billionaires and billionaire corporations. The Department of Education is one of the places to see it most clearly. It is the billionaires versus the kids of America. Donald Trump and Elon Musk side with the billionaires. I side with our kids and I think that’s where most of America is.

One of the things that people may not realize is that these cuts don’t just affect public schools, many of Trump’s cuts at the Department of Education could have an impact on financial aid and even civil rights. Let’s start with financial aid. What do these cuts mean for people who have student loans or may be seeking student loans?

Of course you’re not going to be surprised to hear this: Donald Trump is causing enormous chaos in that system. The student loan program is complex because it was layered up over the years. But a big part of the student loan program, part one, is if you need the money, the money will be there from the federal government, so don’t decide not to get that technical degree or that two-year college certification or that four-year diploma; don’t give up on your dream of becoming an engineer or public school teacher. Don’t give up on that—the American people will make an investment in you by lending you the money you need to get that diploma. That’s part one and Donald Trump is hacking away at that.

But part two is a promise within that that says, for example, once you get that degree and you are a teacher or you’re a nurse or you’re a social worker or you just go to work for a town clerk, if you work in public service, and you work for a certain period of time and you make all the payments on your student loans, a grateful nation will say to you the rest of your debt is canceled. We appreciate that you took that education and instead of going out in the private sector and making a maximum amount of dollars that you could, you gave back to your community, you gave back to our children, you gave back to our public safety; police and fire fighters. You gave back, and therefore after you pay for a certain period of time, the rest of the debt will be canceled.

Donald Trump is going after that program, trying to take it away from the very people who did exactly what we asked them to do—got an education, worked in public service, and now expect a portion of their loans to be forgiven. So what he’s undermining here is truly the basic American contract, and that is you work hard, you play by the rules, and you’re going to have an opportunity to build a future and Donald Trump is trying to take that.

And what about civil rights?

The Department of Education is the place that steps in and says you’ve got to create opportunity for everyone. It’s the Department of Education that makes sure that Black kids, white kids, brown kids, all can go to school together and all have the same opportunity; the science labs, after school programs, and a good library. It’s to make sure that we honor that fundamental notion of what it means to be an American and that is that everybody gets a chance starting out. The Department of Education is the place where that chance is watered and blooms.

Our readers vote. They call and email their representatives in government. How else can they get involved on issues, like these, that matter to them?

Now is the time for the friends of the Department of Education, the friends of public education, to stand up and make their voices heard. You said it right, call your senators, call your representatives—that’s very important—but there’s more. There are two more things you can do for sure that make a big difference.

Tell the stories. Tell them in a personal way. Talk about if you have a child that has significant challenges and has received federal help. Tell about what it was like to have your student loan debt canceled after working as a teacher for more than a decade. Talk about the parts of the work that the Department of Education does that have touched you, touched your neighbors, touched someone in your family. The reason for that is we’ve got to build a movement from the grassroots up, and just describing it as the Department of Education—you and I may be on board—but to get other people on board, it’s a reminder that these are real children who are affected. This is our future that is affected. So that’s something else we can do.

The other thing I want to add to that, do not underestimate the power of organization. That means joining political groups, you bet, I’m all in. But think of everything you belong to. Think of your Facebook group, think of your PTA group, think of the group you went to school with and now you all kind of stay together and they are scattered all over this country. The more we get the stories pushed out, pushed in the blue states, purple states, red states, the more we get to them in every community—and here’s the virtuous circle—get more people calling their senators and their reps, the better we can protect the Department of Education.

The Department of Education has been there for our children for generations, and many of us without even knowing it, have had real opportunities in this life because of the work of the dedicated people at the Department of Education have done every single day. Now they need our help and now is the time we need to get in that fight.

Whether it’s Mark Zuckerberg lamenting the “culturally neutered” workplace, or a new State Department appointee arguing that “competent white men should be in charge,” the anti-DEI coalition clearly shares a motivating belief: that women’s progress has cost men, and the only way forward is to dismantle it.

Self-interested? Absolutely, but not in the way you think. The Zucks and the Trumps have nothing to personally gain from getting rid of DEI policies; they’re already some of the most powerful humans on the planet. But they have an awful lot to gain from strategically sowing discontent in our already fraught gender relations. That gender war keeps our attention occupied, “flooding the zone” while they wield their power unchecked.

Or, to put it bluntly, they’re lying to us. But I’ll tell you the truth: reversing women’s progress—by dismantling DEI, or otherwise—will do absolutely nothing to help the vast majority of men. And if we continue to fall for their con, we’ll all be worse off.

These very rich, very powerful men have tapped into a very real resentment that’s been brewing for decades. When it comes to gender relations, our economic reality has flipped. In 1980, white men without a college degree made more than the average worker; today, they make less—and college-educated women make more.

That economic shift is entangled in a social one: the dating drop-off. As men and women diverge politically, academically, and economically, fewer of them are getting married—a decline that’s happening twice as fast for Americans without a college degree. It’s no wonder that one third of Republican men believe women’s gains have come at their expense.

Combine that antipathy with modern-age-induced anxiety and depression, and you get a bleak outlook for young men. Women may be understandably reluctant to admit this, lest it take away energy and attention from women’s fragile progress, but there is no denying the facts: Men are hurting. They're dying by suicide at four times the rate of women. They’re dying of overdoses at a rate two to three times that of women. They bear the burden of the loneliness epidemic, too, with 15 percent of men saying they have no close friends—five times more than in 1990.

So how does dismantling progress for women and non-white people solve the systemic crises men face—their loneliness, their deaths of despair, their (relatively) dwindling economic and romantic prospects?

It doesn’t.

In fact, the hyper-masculine culture that Trump and his ilk push can actually compound these crises: research shows that men with deep-seated beliefs in gender norms, like machismo, are more depressed, anxious, and angry. Because of that same shame and stigma, men are less likely to seek help with their mental health, perpetuating a cycle of struggle impossible for any individual man to break.

Men aren’t suffering because women are working. It’s because the singular script men have been taught all their lives—if you work hard, you can provide for your family—no longer universally applies. For better and for worse.

The answer, then, isn’t to undo our progress. It’s to redo men’s scripts—and write some new ones.

Yes, women have been systematically denied opportunities for generations, but so have men. Men and women alike expect boys to fulfill certain expectations of masculinity, which shuts them out of certain jobs, experiences, and even emotions.

When I was building Girls Who Code, I thought a lot about women who wanted to be engineers or software developers, but had never seen someone like them in those roles. They didn’t have the scripts. But now, when I look back, I think about the boys’ scripts. Did they need someone to give them a cultural permission slip to pursue a profession historically held by women? Should we have built Boys Who Nurse, too?

And even though I now lead an organization called Moms First, I’m thinking about the dads’ scripts. Only 13 percent of employers provide paid paternity leave to all of their male employees, and there are “unspoken rules” that keep men who do have paid leave from taking full advantage. Yet fathers who worked from home during the pandemic loved the newfound time they got with their children; one survey found that more than two-thirds of dads felt a closer connection with their kids. Dads need a new script, too: one that expands the definition of what “providing for your family” really means.

And, of course, I’m thinking about my sons’ scripts. I want them to know that they can cry, be vulnerable, confide their dreams and fears in the people closest to them, all the things I’ve always done with my girlfriends without thinking twice.

At the end of the day, it comes back to choice. If men want to be bodybuilders, or farmers, or tech bros who actually want to be astronauts, they should do it! But like women, they deserve the right to choose—another career, another lifestyle, another way of being a man.

These attacks on our progress are just a shiny object, a catch-all for everything Trump doesn’t like, a racist and sexist culture war to distract us from the wars worth waging. If we can see this con for what it is, maybe we can write new scripts for men and for women—and turn the tides on the real issues Americans face. Until then, let's not fall for it.

On Wednesday, following the disappearance of federal resource reproductiverights.gov—a move that occurred on the same day President Donald Trump assumed office—founders and co-CEOs of theSkimm Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin republished the now-offline site on theSkimm's website.

"Whether [the disappearance] is temporary or permanent, we don't know," explained Weisberg in a video shared to Instagram.

Zakin noted that the former federal resource, launched in 2022 by the former administration's Health and Human Services, had been critical for those looking to learn about their rights "post-Roe v. Wade being overturned."

The page included information on accessing reproductive health care without insurance, how to file civil rights complaints, and more. It noted, "While Roe v. Wade was overturned, abortion remains legal in many states, and other reproductive health care services remain protected by law."

Following its disappearance, "theSkimm has taken over reproductiverightsdotgov.com," Weisberg confirmed in the video. She explained that the domain will redirect readers to a reproduced version of the federal resource, hosted by theSkimm. "That is a way to keep directing women towards the resources they need and should have access to."

In a statement to Axois, the Health and Human Services Administration did not directly address the offline resource—but noted it has "paused external communications and public appearances" as the new administration rolls out new processes.

"Women will save this damn country," wrote one commenter on theSkimm's Instagram announcement. Another wrote: "Information and knowledge is power and the more we can grow that, the better we will become."

On January 20, 2025, Michelle Obama skipped Donald Trump's inauguration. Instead, she took to Instagram to honor MLK Day, and encouraged her followers to remember Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "legacy of service."

"Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy of service always inspires me," Obama wrote on Instagram. "This #MLKDay, I hope you'll join me and @WhenWeAllVote in honoring Dr. King's life and legacy by getting involved in your community." She continued, "Whether you're mentoring students at your local school or volunteering for a cause that matters to you, it all helps make a difference. Tell me how you're giving back today in the comments."

The Becoming author also shared a poignant quote from King, which said, "The time is always right to do what is right."

While Michelle chose to skip Trump's inauguration, her husband, former president Barack Obama, was in attendance. As for why Michelle decided to swerve the event, a source told People, "There's no overstating her feelings about [Trump]. She's not one to plaster on a pleasant face and pretend for protocol's sake." The source continued, "Michelle doesn't do anything because it's expected or it's protocol or it's tradition."

The outlet's source also alleged that Michelle disagreed with many of Trump's comments, both about her family and about people of color, which led to her decision not to attend. "She served in the public eye and did all the public good that she could for eight years as first lady," the source claimed. "You'll see her when she has a project or cause to promote but she doesn't feel the need to be a public figure anymore."

Michelle previously revealed her feelings regarding Trump's presidential win in 2016. As Michelle and husband Barack were leaving their roles in the White House, it was necessary for her to take part in a handover to the new president and his wife, Melania Trump.

"I have to be honest and say that none of this was easy for me," Michelle wrote on Instagram in November 2020. "Donald Trump had spread racist lies about my husband that had put my family in danger. That wasn't something I was ready to forgive. But I knew that, for the sake of our country, I had to find the strength and maturity to put my anger aside." She continued, "So I welcomed Melania Trump into the White House and talked with her about my experience, answering every question she had—from the heightened scrutiny that comes with being First Lady to what it's like to raise kids in the White House."