On Election Day, the much-hyped red wave didn’t crest quite as high as some polls predicted it would, with Democrats scoring key victories in several states. Yet it was far from a total wash for Republicans—and in a few places, they made historic advances. In Florida, for instance, incumbent Governor (and likely presidential candidate) Ron […]
Author: Kiera Butler
Polio? Measles? Florida Is Flirting With an Anti-Vaccine Apocalypse
Dr. Mobeen Rathore has spent the better part of his career trying to protect the children in his practice from contracting deadly diseases like measles, whooping cough, and polio. As chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and Immunology at the University of Florida’s College of Medicine, Rathore remembers a time—just a few decades […]
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s District Is Bluer Than You’d Think
Deep in northwest Georgia, in what was once a patchwork of forest and farms, sits Paulding County, a quiet collection of towns that straddle two worlds. Less than an hour’s drive southeast is the sprawl and thrum of Atlanta; just to the north are the state’s mountainous rural communities, where life still moves at a […]
DeSantis Is Slamming Covid Vaccines. Here’s Why.
It wasn’t so long ago that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was publicly singing the praises of Covid vaccines. “If you are vaccinated—fully vaccinated—the chance of you getting seriously ill or dying from Covid is effectively zero,” he said at a July 2021 press conference. “These vaccines are saving lives.” Fast forward a year or so […]
Moms Against Libraries
During a Moms for Liberty summit session called Gender Ideology in Our Schools, a presenter introduced a term I’d never heard before: “rapid-onset gender dysphoria.” She cited the work of a former Brown University physician and researcher named Lisa Littman, who, in a 2018 study published in the journal PLOS One, had argued that the […]
Inside Anti-Abortion Groups’ Campaign to Sell Women on Unreliable Birth Control “Alternatives”
About five years ago, Kat decided to stop taking her birth control pills. She wanted to give her menstrual cycle a chance to return to normal before trying to get pregnant in the future—and anyway, she was beginning to have some doubts about the Pill. Her friends had been talking about what they saw as […]
Pre-K Went Virtual During the Pandemic. For Some, It May Stay That Way.
Back in July 2019, the New York Times ran a story on an education nonprofit, Waterford.org, that had a novel idea: online preschool. I did a little digging and found that the organization was urging school districts to pick up its virtual program, Waterford Upstart. This seemed unlikely to fly. Surely no reasonable superintendent (let […]
The Most Powerful Moms in America Are the New Face of the Republican Party
It is the first full day of the inaugural Moms for Liberty Joyful Warriors National Summit, and 500 such warriors are listening raptly as Florida governor Ron DeSantis delivers the keynote address. They fill tables in the grand ballroom of the Tampa Marriott, waving “Mamas for DeSantis” signs, and wearing T-shirts bearing the slogans “I […]
Now the Far Right Is Going After School Counselors
When Tara Kierstead finished her presentation at the annual conference of the American School Counselor Association in July, she was elated. Her slides—about how best to support students who were transgender or nonbinary—had gone over well. Colleagues came up to her afterward to tell her how much they had learned. Kierstead was well prepared for […]
Inside the Powerful Anti-abortion Campaign to Convince You That Everything Is Just Fine
Late last month, shortly after the US Supreme Court stripped away federal protection for abortion rights, Dr. Christina Francis, an OB/GYN based in Fort Wayne, Indiana, took to Instagram with an urgent message: She wanted her followers to know that even in states where abortion will soon be illegal, doctors still would be able to […]