[[link removed]] Ms. Memo: This Week in Women's Rights
February 12, 2025
From the ongoing fight for abortion rights and access, to elections, to the drive for the Equal Rights Amendment, there are a multitude of battles to keep up with. In this weekly roundup, find the absolute need-to-know news for feminists.
The Courts Blocked Trump’s Federal Funding Freeze. Agencies Are Withholding Money Anyway. [[link removed]]
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(Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)
By Jake Pearson and Anjeanette Damon, ProPublica | When the federal courts first blocked the Trump administration’s funding freeze, Jessyca Leach was cautiously optimistic.
For days, the pause had prevented her from accessing the money she needs for her Phoenix health clinic to serve thousands of at-risk people, most of them poor and many of them members of the LGBTQ+ community. Things had gotten so bad that she had to lay off three employees and cut the salaries of her leadership team, including her own.
So when the funding started to flow again last week, days after the court orders, Leach hoped her ordeal would be over. It wasn’t.
Her federal dollars were accompanied by an ominous note from the payment processing arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Citing “Executive Orders regarding potentially unallowable grant payments,” the agency said that it would continue “taking additional measures to process payments” and that its reviews “will result in delays and/or rejections of payments.”
“If it’s not there,” Leach said of the federal money that covers the salaries for 40 percent of her staff, “things get really bad, really fast.”
The notice Leach received was one of several indications over the past week that the Trump administration is not backing down in its fight to slash spending and dramatically reshape the federal government, despite multiple court orders explicitly restraining the president’s sweeping executive actions.
In some cases, to get around the judges’ rulings, the administration has cited a memo that it says is not subject to the existing orders. In others, it denied funding to organizations because their granting agencies are not defendants in one of the ongoing legal challenges. In others still, it has withheld funds by citing the agencies’ own judgment, not the president’s directives.
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Rolling Up Our Sleeves, Part 4: Staying Afloat While Trump Weaponizes Federal Funding [[link removed]] USAID’s Reproductive Health Funding Has Saved Millions of Lives. Now It’s Gone. [[link removed]]
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Physicians Sound the Alarm: The Data Is Gone, But the Need Isn’t [[link removed]] Trump’s Administration Seems Chaotic, But He’s Drawing Directly from Project 2025 Playbook [[link removed]]
What we're reading:
Because it's hard to keep up with everything going on in the world right now. Here's what we're reading this week:
* "What Justice Jackson Warned About in the Trump Immunity Case Is Coming True” — Mother Jones [[link removed]]
[link removed] [[link removed]] Tune in for a new episode of Ms. magazine's podcast, On the Issues with Michele Goodwin on
Apple Podcasts [[link removed]] + Spotify [[link removed]] .
Welcome to The Magazine, our mini-pod, which gives a peek into Ms. magazine’s forthcoming and current issues. In this episode, listeners hear about the Spring 2025 issue—which delves into the feminist resistance to the second Trump administration—as it hits newsstands.
We hope you'll listen, subscribe, rate and review today!
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