[[link removed]] Ms. Memo: This Week in Women's Rights
August 13, 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.
With Democracy at Stake, It’s No Time to Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight [[link removed]]
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(Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)
By Stephen Rohde | George Washington’s family seal bore the motto Exilus acta probat, borrowed from Ovid, which translates as, “The outcome is the test of the act.” Some see Machiavelli’s advice in The Prince as a later variation: “In the actions of all men, especially of princes, where there is no court to appeal to, one looks to the end,” for “the means will always be judged honorable, and will be praised by everyone.”
Adages like these come to mind as more than 50 brave Texas Democrats have invoked the quorum break, fleeing to Democratic strongholds around the country to block a cynical move by Republican state legislators to obediently carry out President Trump’s plan to rig the 2026 and 2028 elections by radically gerrymandering Texas’ congressional map. One Texas Democrat, Rep. Ann Johnson, defended the exodus by explaining plainly that the “quorum break is a tool that the founding fathers of Texas put in place for when a minority party knows that the majority party has gone off the rails and is doing something against the interests and will of the voters.”
Texas Republicans currently hold 25 out of 38 congressional seats. By transforming a special legislative session, originally called to provide disaster relief, into a rare mid-decade redistricting opportunity, they hope the new map will increase their total to 30—all in constituencies that Trump won last November by at least 10 points. The new map would, among other things, redistrict the Rio Grande Valley and combine two districts in the state capital of Austin currently held by Democrats. In northern Texas, it would expand a district currently held by U.S. Rep. Julie Johnson (D-Texas) to include rural Republican strongholds. It would also redraw four Houston-area seats, including one held by outspoken Democrat: Rep. Al Green.
Republicans currently occupy 219 out of 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives—a razor thin margin of only one vote. If Texas succeeds in doing Trump’s bidding, other Republican-controlled states will likely fall into line, frustrating the Democrats’ strategy of taking back Congress in the 2026 midterms and winning the White House in 2028.
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Trump’s Anti-Voter Agenda Crystallizes [[link removed]] U.S.-Funded Contraceptives Meant for Crisis Zones Are Headed for the Furnace—Unless Congress Acts [[link removed]]
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What Happens When Doulas Write the Law? New Mexico’s Medicaid Win Shows How to Fight Back [[link removed]] ‘If You’re Not Centering the People Who Are Most Impacted, Your Policy Solution Will Fall Apart’: Gaylynn Burroughs Is Fighting for Economic Justice at the Intersections [[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:
* "Parents don’t need to try harder – to ease parenting stress, forget self-reliance and look for ways to share the care” — The Conversation [[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]] .
Trump has been in office for 200 days. In those 200 days, important institutions core to democracy have been dismantled. But we’ve also seen a coordinated effort to resist him, with millions across the country taking to the streets again and again to protest on behalf of the rights of their neighbors, their families, and themselves. Attorneys and advocates are also stepping up, demanding courts to defend our rights. Two hundred days in, what have we learned—and what’s the playbook for the next four years?
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