Dear John,

Much of the nation’s attention turned this week to the once-in-a-century deadly storm sweeping the country. Millions in Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma struggled to keep warm, simultaneously confronting power outages, bursting water pipes and the resulting lack of clean water. Texas’s governor blamed Democrats and clean energy initiatives for the total breakdown of the state’s energy grid. But the hypocrisy prize goes to Senator Ted Cruz, who blamed his two daughters for his decision to flee the brutal weather in Houston for a trip to Cancún, Mexico. 

Though it seems much longer, it was only last Saturday that the Senate was hearing arguments in Trump’s second impeachment trial. In his closing challenge to the Senate, lead House Manager Jamie Raskin quoted Tom Paine, “The times have found us,” and asked, “Is this America? What kind of America will this be?” Despite overwhelming evidence presented in the trial, 43 Senate Republicans voted to acquit Trump of inciting the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol, leaving the final tally 10 votes short of the 67 needed to convict.

In national polling, 71% of the public were less ambivalent about Trump’s role in the insurrection, believing he was at least partially responsible for the attack, including just under half of Republicans. About half the country thought Trump should be convicted of inciting insurrection and barred from holding public office again. Support for conviction was significantly higher among women – 59% of women compared to 42% of men – a 17-point gender gap. And 65% of women compared to only 44% of men, believed Trump should be barred from ever holding elected office again – a 21-point gender gap. 

The insurrection, as well as Trump’s path to power, was built on the politics of grievance, perfected and fueled for decades by right-wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who died this week. His homophobic and racist rants were legend. Early in his nationally syndicated show, Limbaugh began referring to feminists as “feminazis.” Limbaugh “preached an anti-feminist message against political, economic, and social equality of the sexes. He helped conservative men believe that feminism was a weapon intended to emasculate them and by elevating the danger of a liberated woman, he paved the way for a toxic trap like Trump,” Melissa Scholes Young writes this week for Ms.

But Limbaugh’s sexist commentary backfired when he attacked Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke, calling her a “slut” and mocking her testimony before a House committee hearing supporting birth control coverage as a health care benefit in the ACA. Feminist groups launched a “Flush Rush” campaign that caused multiple corporations to pull their ads from his show, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.

This week saw continued progress against the pandemic, with COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths decreasing as the Biden administration’s vaccine rollout gained momentum. But in a sober reminder of the toll the pandemic has taken, nearly half a million people in the U.S. have already died, driving down life expectancy in the U.S. by a full year in the first half of 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Black and Hispanic males suffered the largest declines, dropping by 3 years and 2.4 years respectively. Black females’ life expectancy declined 2.3 years, and 1.1 years for Hispanic females.  

Congress now turns its attention to debate over the Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan that will launch a ‘whole of government’ response to the pandemic. As former Vermont governor Madeleine Kunin writes in Ms., the Rescue Plan “is ambitious, big and bold; it is just what we need to heal us from the COVID-19 malady.” The bill contains $40 billion in emergency funding to stabilize the child care system, described by leading women’s groups as a down payment on meeting the country’s full needs for universal child care and early childhood development programs. Biden’s Rescue Plan also includes $170 billion for the safe reopening of schools. And the bill provides tax credits to businesses that provide paid leave to employees during the pandemic. Again, a start, but not the “real paid leave” we need to bring the U.S. up from its last place position among the countries of the world in providing paid sick leave. 

Advocates are looking to the Administration’s Recovery Package to provide both the child care investments and paid leave so critical to women’s ability to participate fully in the economy and to pulling the country out of the worst economic crisis since the Depression. Women have faced the largest net job loss (5.4 million), with many leaving the workforce to compensate for school closures or a lack of child care.

And finally this week and month, we are celebrating the work of Black feminists, past and present, such as Pauli Murray—featured in a new documentary reviewed for Ms. by Aviva Dove-Viebahn—and suffragist and racial justice activist Mary Church Terrell. This progress—including work by Black women state legislators to make abortion more accessible—is worth celebrating, even during dark times. 

With progress now beginning, this is not the time for any of us to look away from politics. As Congressman Raskin said, “The times have found us. Is this America? What kind of America will this be?”  Staying vigilant is the only way to ensure a more just future for us all and the America we want. 

For equality,

Kathy Spillar
Executive Editor