Today at Ms. | September 15, 2026 - With Today at Ms. —a daily newsletter from the team here at Ms. magazine—our top stories are delivered straight to your inbox every afternoon, so you’ll be informed and ready to fight back.
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Don’t Let AI Become the New Sex Educator for Adolescents
By April Bell | A 16-year-old asked me this during a recent conversation with Black adolescents about where they turn for health information. Her answer was striking, but hardly surprising.
As traditional sex education faces cuts in schools and reproductive health services become harder to access, particularly for young people of color in underserved communities, adolescents are increasingly looking elsewhere for answers. AI chatbots offer something schools, clinics and even trusted adults often do not: information that feels immediate, private and judgment-free.
Now is the moment to act. As AI adoption accelerates across all sectors, we still have an opportunity to shape how these tools are used and what values guide their development.
AI developers and public health leaders must co-create culturally responsive, bias-audited tools for sexual and reproductive health education. Schools and health systems must incorporate digital literacy and online safety into sex education. And Black girls need to be at the center of this work.
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MAGA Is Using Kai Trump and Usha Vance to Soften Trump’s Anti-Woman Image. Don’t Be Fooled.
By Caitlin Hu | Women like Kai Trump and Usha Vance, who appear nontraditional and apolitical, are helping soften the Trump administration’s image and make it more approachable to new audiences.
Through social media and personal stories, these women create a sense of intimacy and relatability that belies the administration’s deeply anti-woman agenda. On the surface, there is nothing overtly political about a teenager filming golf videos with her grandfather or a second lady reading stories to children. They may seem harmless, even comforting. But they are doing real political work.
Whether or not it’s a deliberate strategy, the effect is the same: Audiences who say they don’t care about politics still end up trusting the people behind deeply political policies.
Don’t be fooled. Democracy depends on evaluating governments by what they do, not by how relatable or comforting we find them.
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A Midterm Liability for Republicans: Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Is Deeply Unpopular
By Giovanna DeStefanis | It’s been over a year since President Donald Trump signed the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill (HR 1) into law, a sweeping 2025 budget-reconciliation package that extends and expands tax cuts, funds defense and immigration enforcement, cuts or restructures major safety-net programs, rolls back some clean-energy spending, and raises the federal debt limit.
Trump and congressional Republicans promised the bill would provide economic relief for American families. New polling suggests the legislation has failed to win over the public, with many voters saying the law has done little to improve their financial situations, while others remain unsure what the bill does at all.
As Americans continue to face rising costs and reduced access to programs that support working families, the administration’s signature domestic policy is increasingly becoming a political liability rather than the legislative victory Republicans hoped it would be.
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Tune in for a new episode of Ms. magazine's podcast, On the Issues with Michele Goodwin, at MsMagazine.com, ([link removed]) Apple Podcasts ([link removed]) or wherever you listen to podcasts.
In this special episode, Dr. Michele Goodwin reflects on Gloria Steinem’s courageous life and enduring legacy. Steinem died peacefully at her New York City home on Sept. 2, 2026, at the age of 92, surrounded by people who loved her.
Goodwin traces Steinem’s lifelong fights for contraception and abortion rights, women’s political power and participation, equal pay for equal work and ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment—featuring archival audio from President Barack Obama and Steinem herself. Goodwin recalls Steinem’s unwavering sense of justice and powerful truth-telling, from her groundbreaking journalism and organizing alongside Dorothy Pitman Hughes to her role in co-founding Ms. with a collective of feminist journalists. Unlike any popular magazine before it, Ms. centered women’s social, economic and political perspectives and exposed the discrimination they faced. It took women seriously. It spoke directly to their concerns—and women were hungry for it. The magazine’s preview issue sold out in eight days.
Gloria Steinem lit a revolution. What will it take for all of us to carry its torch forward?
[link removed] We hope you'll listen, subscribe, rate and review today!
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