niyad
niyad's JournalT####'s Support Erodes as Women, Workers and Even Republicans Push Back
T####’s Support Erodes as Women, Workers and Even Republicans Push Back
PUBLISHED 7/28/2025 by Kathy Spillar
The ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ isn’t landing—and the backlash is building.
Demonstrators during a May Day rally at Grant Park on May 1, 2025, in Chicago. (Scott Olson / Getty Images)
It seems like with each week, Trump just keeps getting more and more unpopular—even among those who are most primed to like him. Trump’s approval rating is currently the lowest it’s been this term, seeing a significant decline among Independents and even some decline among Republicans, according to polling from Gallup and The Economist/YouGov.
(YouGov)
“At 100 days, Trump was once again the most unpopular president since modern polling began, with 61 percent of Americans disapproving of his handling of the economy and 60 percent disapproving of his handling of foreign affairs,” reports contributing editor Carrie Baker in Ms. “According to polling by Fox News, he’s even lost ground with white men without a college degree—his approval rating fell 22 points by April 21 with his primary demographic.”
And the “Big Beautiful Bill” has played no small role: Polling by Navigator shows that majorities of voters continue to disapprove of the Republican economic plan. Seventy percent are concerned about cuts to Medicaid (which, by the way, remains overwhelmingly popular in the polls), regardless of when those cuts go into effect—indicating that the Republican strategy of delaying the cuts’ implementation till after the midterm elections might not be working. Meanwhile, the final report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office indicates that over the next decade, the bill stands to increase the federal deficit by $3.4 trillion—and has the potential to cause 10 million people to lose their health insurance. Navigator’s polling also shows that a majority believe that the bill will overwhelmingly benefit the rich—not everyday Americans. And the more they learn about the bill, the more they are against it, especially among independents, passive news consumers, and even among Republicans, especially non-MAGA Republicans.
Baker reports further on how Trump’s cuts and actions specifically impact women—from the Medicaid and SNAP cuts, to the implementation of Project 2025 and rescinding of Biden-era Title IX rules and more—in her piece (which you can read here). Not even a year into Trump’s second term, the hits are coming fast, and I know it can be hard to remain hopeful. But fortunately, we aren’t operating without a playbook. We’re learning from the past to fuel our fight forward, on our latest podcast from Ms. Studios, Looking Back, Moving Forward—in the latest episode, host Carmen Rios traces the feminist fight for bodily autonomy with guests Renee Bracey Sherman, Michele Goodwin, Angie Jean-Marie and Amy Merrill, Susan Frietsche, and Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey.
. . . . .
https://msmagazine.com/2025/07/28/trump-support-big-beautiful-bill-unpopular/
Poverty is a Policy Choice--and Women Deserve More
(definitely worth a read or listen)
Poverty is a Policy Choice—and Women Deserve More
PUBLISHED 8/1/2025 by Carmen Rios
In the third episode of Looking Back, Moving Forward, economists and advocates break down how our economy is leaving women behind and lay out strategies for advancing a feminist economic future.
In the wake of Trump’s so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill” being rammed through Congress, experts in the latest episode of “Looking Back, Moving Forward” weighed in on the longstanding policy failures that have pushed women into poverty and diminished women’s work. (Photo by Michael Nigro/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)
“When you see the injustices that there are in low-income communities and people-of-color communities and [for] women in general,” legendary labor organizer and feminist leader Dolores Huerta told me in the latest episode of Looking Back, Moving Forward, “then you realize that this is not right, and that we should do something to change it. This is what has perpetuated me into this lifelong struggle.” “We’re not done yet, Huerta added. “There’s still a lot more work to do.”
The third episode of Looking Back, Moving Forward—a Ms. Studios podcast tracing the intertwined histories of the magazine and the larger feminist movement—explores the transformations in women’s economic lives Ms. has chronicled in the last 50-plus years, and where we go from here in the fight for economic justice. I spoke to Huerta and other economists, advocates, and movement-builders for this episode—collecting their visions for a feminist economic future and exploring, in our conversations, the myriad gaps in our current economic system.
. . . .
In the wake of the so-called “Big, Beautiful, Bill” being rammed through Congress by the President and his henchmen in Congress—enacting policies that experts warned will initiate the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in history—the conversations I had with experts for this episode of “Looking Back, Moving Forward” shed light on the longstanding policy failures that have pushed women disproportionately into poverty and led to the widespread diminishment of women’s paid and unpaid labor. “Poverty is the result of systems that have been intentionally put in place that the majority of us benefit from,” Aisha Nyandoro, founding CEO of Springboard to Opportunities, home to the Magnolia Mother’s Trust guaranteed income program, told me. “That’s why poverty exists. Individuals are not poor simply because they are not working hard enough, simply because they are not educated enough, simply because they are not doing whatever the things are we tell ourselves individuals are not doing.
Poverty is a systemic failing, not an individual failing.”
A child sits in a shopping cart amid a National Welfare Rights Organization protest in Boston on Oct. 14, 1969. NWRO founder Johnnie Tillmon wrote in the first issue of Ms. that “welfare is a women’s issue“—connecting the dots between racism, sexism, and class warfare in the U.S. (Sam Masotta/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Gaylynn Burroughs saw those systems at play when she was an attorney at the Bronx Defenders, representing poor women of color whose children were in the child welfare system simply because they couldn’t make ends meet. “We could’ve just provided the food,” she said. “We could’ve just helped people get medical care. Why don’t we just provide the support people need? Why do we have to traumatize these families?” Now the Vice President of Education and Workplace Equality at the National Women’s Law Center, Burroughs is leading strategic work to build a better economy. “There is this trend that we have seen that women are just more likely to live in poverty and to experience hardship,” she asserted. “It’s not like this is inevitable. The fact that women are disproportionately more likely to live in poverty is a choice that we have made as a society.”
. . . . .
https://msmagazine.com/2025/08/01/gender-poverty-policy-feminist-economics-history/
t#### as the go-to word for evil, horrible. . .every negative word. Assuming
we survive him, that is. Looking at one of the newest clever names, pedofuhrer, for this orange waste of resources, it occurred to me that at some point, there will be no need for extra words to describe someone who is horrible, rotten, disgusting, evil. .etc. The single invective "t####" (I refuse to even type the name), will convey to everyone what is meant, just as "is he dead yet?" does.
JULY ONLY mass shooting* data: 62 shootings, 60 dead, 280 wounded.
*mass shooting defined as 4 or more dead or wounded, including the gunman.
WE'RE NUMBER ONE!!!
Day 212 of the year (to 31 July): Mass shootings* SO FAR: 262.
Dead: 258. Wounded: 1, 162
*mass shooting defined as 4 or more dead or wounded, including the gunman.
WE'RE NUMBER ONE!!!
Today marks my official 22nd DUnniversary. ( had lurked for quite some time
before actually signing up). I just want to thank this amazing community for your gifts of friendship, community, solidarity, infomation, arts, trivia. . .in short, for being the amazing and wonderful beings that you are. What little bit of sanity I have left in this new millenium is thanks, in large part, to all of you.
Plese join me in a toast to one of the very best communities on the web. I love you all, (some more than others, of course)!
"UNDERAGE WOMEN" is an oxymoron. "UNDERAGE GIRL" is redundant.
A WOMAN is a legal adult. A GIRL is a female CHILD, a legal minor, by definition "underage". I am sick unto death of the twisted, rape-enabling, misogynistic, patriarchal, sexist, propaganda and psychological manipulation of "underage woman". The usages are deliberate, and intentional, designed to cover up crimes against females.
The media and the popaganda machines will not stop doing it, but that does not mean that good people continue to enable it by their own usage.
How the global trade in donkey skins threatens the lives of women and girls
How the global trade in donkey skins threatens the lives of women and girls
This cruel, largely unregulated industry in the global south undermines UN goals of gender equality and poverty reduction, writes Marianne Steele of The Donkey Sanctuary
Thu 3 Jul 2025 13.04 EDT
Last modified on Thu 3 Jul 2025 13.30 EDT
Re your editorial (The Guardian view on China, Africa and disappearing donkeys: an unexpected crisis offers a clue to perils ahead, 25 June), last year, The Donkey Sanctuary revealed at least 5.9 million donkeys are slaughtered for their skins every year to produce ejiao, a traditional Chinese medicine. Donkeys suffer at every stage – from capture and transport to brutal slaughter. With China’s donkey population depleted, the industry has turned to other countries in the global south.
Despite its scale, this cruel trade remains largely unregulated and invisible, and it is women and girls who suffer most. For many, donkeys are much more than animals – they are co-workers and companions. When a donkey is stolen, household income can fall by 73%. In one Kenyan region, over 90% of women have experienced donkey theft. Children – especially girls – are taken out of school to do the “donkey work”.
Every shocking statistic and voice of anguish in our report Stolen Donkeys, Stolen Futures is evidence that the donkey skin trade is undermining progress towards UN sustainable development goals of gender equality and poverty reduction. It is not only African donkeys that face an existential threat from the skin trade. In Brazil, the donkey population has dropped by 94% in the past 30 years, from 1.37 million in 1996 to around 78,000 in 2025. But there is hope. Legislators in Brazil have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to protect their donkeys when a bill banning their slaughter goes to its national congress.
At the Pan-African Donkey Conference in Côte d’Ivoire last month, leaders across the continent called for coordinated action to protect donkeys and the communities they support. We must remember that this isn’t just about banning the skin trade for the sake of livelihoods – it’s about creating a better world for donkeys. These intelligent, sentient beings deserve respect, compassion and protection.
Marianne Steele
CEO, The Donkey Sanctuary, Sidmouth, Devon
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/jul/03/how-the-global-trade-in-donkey-skins-threatens-the-lives-of-women-and-girls
Happy Anniversary Of The First Women's Rights Convention!
Happy Anniversary Of The First Women's Rights Convention!
Great in some ways, not so great in others!
Robyn Pennacchia
Jul 19, 2025
Happy weekend!
Today is the 177th anniversary of the first womens’ rights convention. As you probably know, the convention was the brainchild of Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who decided it was time for one after they, and several other women, traveled all the way to London for the World Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840 (which appears to have been, at best, about 98 percent white men) and were told “no girls allowed.” (Having organized with male activists before, I am not remotely surprised by this)
Eight years later, they managed to gather 300 people — 260 white women, 39 white men, and one Black man, Frederick Douglass — in Seneca Falls, New York, to have a chat about how perhaps women should have some rights. Less than fun fact, it was really a toss-up as to whether “voting” was even going to make it in there. There were many women, including Mott, who were worried that doing so would scare the menfolk and make them think they were full-on radicals. But they did, and a mere *checks notes* 72 years later, the 19th Amendment was passed and all women across the United States gained the constitutional right to vote. Technically. Maybe not so much in practice. (Sadly, despite having gotten their start in the abolitionist movement, a whole lot of the suffragettes — Stanton in particular — were racist AF)
To celebrate this momentous event, allow me to present you with Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Connecticut) reading the Declaration of Sentiments
https://www.wonkette.com/p/happy-anniversary-of-the-first-womens
Feminist icon Gisele Pelicot awarded France's top civic honour: Report
Feminist icon Gisele Pelicot awarded France’s top civic honour: Report
Pelicot has been praised globally for her courage during trial, which forced changes to France’s rape law.
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Gisele Pelicot arrives at the courthouse in Avignon, France, on December 19, 2024, to hear the verdict against the 51 men found guilty of raping her [File: Clement Mahoudeau/AFP]
Published On 13 Jul 202513 Jul 2025
Gisele Pelicot, who has been internationally hailed after testifying against her husband and dozens of other men who raped her, has been awarded France’s top civic honour. Pelicot, 72, was named knight of the Legion of Honour on a list announced before France’s July 14 national day, the AFP news agency reported on Sunday. She was among 589 people named for the honour, which recognises merit-based national service.
Pelicot refused to remain anonymous and publicly testified at a trial in 2024 against her former husband, Dominique Pelicot, who drugged her and arranged for her to be raped by dozens of men over a decade. His co-conspirators tried to claim they were unaware that the acts were not consensual and blamed the husband. Gisele Pelicot at the time called it a “trial of cowardice” and asserted there was no excuse for abusing her when she was unconscious. Her testimony gripped the world and led to Dominique Pelicot and 50 co-defendants being found guilty in the mass-rape case.
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A woman holds a poster honouring Pelicot during a demonstration to mark International Women’s Day in Madrid, Spain, March 8, 2025 [File: Susana Vera/Reuters]
Lauded for her courage in exposing the case, which forced a change in France’s rape law, she has since been named among the world’s most influential people in international lists.
Gisele Pelicot has not spoken further since the trial. She is focusing on writing a book, scheduled for release in 2026, that delves into her perspective of the ordeal, according to her lawyer.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/13/feminist-icon-gisele-pelicot-awarded-frances-top-civic-honour-report
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