What Accountability for Epstein’s Network Would Require

PUBLISHED 10/9/2026 by

[The final installment of The Pipeline to Predators, a four-part Ms. investigation into the modeling industry’s connections to Jeffrey Epstein and survivors’ fight for accountability.]

From July to August 2025, senior White House and Justice Department officials, including Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer and then deputy attorney general, met repeatedly in the White House Situation Room to strategize about the political fallout—treating the Epstein files not as a legal, accountability or transparency crisis, but rather as a messaging crisis to be managed.

Every survivor we spoke with agrees on the first and most important step toward real accountability: the full release of the Epstein files.

New Mexico is one prototype for meaningful investigation. There, the state legislature unanimously created a bipartisan “Truth Commission” to examine alleged criminal activity connected to Epstein’s Zorro Ranch. The commission has issued roughly 24 subpoenas thus far to law enforcement agencies, financial institutions, state agencies and multiple U.S. attorneys’ offices.

Virginia Giuffre remains a touchstone for many, who say they are finding healing by coming together and honoring her fight.

From Mormonism to Ms. Magazine: A Former Tradwife’s Story of Unlearning Submission and Reclaiming My Voice

PUBLISHED 10/9/2026 by

The decades-long Christian nationalist movement and second Trump administration have vigorously pushed tradwife ideology to encourage vulnerable young women to abandon their autonomy in favor of a promised “easy life.”

As a former devout Mormon housewife—and now as a PhD student in history focusing on gender and sexuality and a feminist activist—I see tradwife propaganda, not as an innocent internet subculture, but as a calculated political ideology with a lived understanding of the harmful psychological socialization of these messages.

By sharing my journey from a devout Mormon to the pages of Ms., I hope to offer a stark warning to the young women being targeted by today’s algorithmic propaganda. 

‘After-School Care Was Helping Me Work’: A Mississippi Mom on Raising Children, Running a Business and Navigating Cuts to Support

PUBLISHED 10/8/2026 by

Front and Center is a groundbreaking series of op-eds created in partnership with the Magnolia Mother’s Trust, which aims to put front and center the voices of Black women most affected by the often-abstract policies currently debated at the national level. The series highlights the success of Springboard to Opportunities’ trust, which since 2019 has given $1,000 per month for 12 months to about 100 families per year, all headed by Black women living in federally subsidized housing.

What possibilities could open up for low-income families if financial survival weren’t always top of mind? What dreams would these mothers and families be able to pursue? What activism and community leadership might arise? The series will answer these and other questions, by placing one mother’s story front and center.

Karlonda is a cosmetologist, mother of two daughters with a son on the way, and the recipient of one year of guaranteed income from the Magnolia Mother’s Trust. She runs her own business from home and has also worked in dental assisting and childcare.

“I have a dental assistant certification and a personal assistant certification. I have also worked in childcare. … I was never offered paid time off or benefits in those jobs. … When I had my daughters, I did not get paid parental leave. I had to save money while I was pregnant because I knew I was not going to get any paid leave. I took six weeks off, but I was penny-pinching because I still had to provide and pay bills.

“Six weeks is not a long time. I feel like I missed out on bonding with my babies because I had to go back to work so quickly.

“Every job should offer maternity leave. Most jobs do not really care about people who are pregnant or what they may be going through. …

“My SNAP was recently cut by about $400. At that time, it felt like everything was getting cut: vouchers, SNAP and other help. Sometimes you do not know what is going on unless you go up there and ask for yourself. Normally, you might get a letter in the mail, but I did not get an explanation.”

‘The Story Is Not Finished’: Robin Morgan, Feminist Pioneer and Former Ms. Editor in Chief, in Her Very Last Interview

PUBLISHED 10/8/2026 by

I had the privilege of interviewing Robin Morgan this summer. It turned out to be her last ever interview, as it was only a few weeks for her death.

On a hot afternoon in August, I arrived at Morgan’s New York home, situated on a tree-lined block. “Come in, come in!” she exclaimed, gesturing with her hands from her front door.

Then there were the rows upon rows of books lining nearly every wall, all neatly organized. There were no nooks and crannies in Morgan’s apartment, only books. “I wish I’d written more,” she said to me quietly, looking at her overstuffed shelves. “I should have written more. I know I’ll be on my deathbed thinking, ‘I should have written more.’”

As we walked outside, she smiled and gestured at the true source of her pride: her garden. I marveled at the lush greenery and took great pleasure sitting under the shade of a large, ancient-looking linden tree while listening to the gentle bubbling of a small water fountain.

“I used to sleep out here,” Morgan said, pointing to a reclining day bed and smiling wistfully. Parkinson’s disease had reshaped her body, her speech, the ability to travel freely and her relationships. She was trying to “make something of the disease, rather than what it would make of me.”

Her formal politicization, not surprisingly, was rooted in the liberal left—and then it was not. The left, like all ideological political groups in those days, was male dominated. She joined leftist movements believing in shared liberation and thinking the genders “were marching together toward freedom and we were all equal—but we weren’t,” she said.

“The women were doing all the shit work, and the men were running around being leaders and heroes. It made me furious.” Her fury lit a spark under her and she wrote “Goodbye to All That,” a direct name-naming attack on the male left.

Why Does Getting Menopause Care Still Require So Much Work?

PUBLISHED 10/8/2026 by

Around her 50th birthday, Oprah Winfrey began having heart palpitations so frightening she thought she might die. She went to five doctors; none connected her symptoms to menopause.

She happened to pick up a book that finally gave her a possible explanation. “Heart palpitations and sleeplessness were indications that The Change was coming,” Winfrey writes. “But no one, including my trusted doctors, had warned me (did they even know?), and when my symptoms showed up, we looked for the most dire explanation—heart disease—instead of the most likely.”

Later, a friend’s experience prompted Oprah to ask her doctor about getting on an estrogen supplement. “After I started hormone therapy, the world returned to technicolor. … For the first time in years, I was sleeping the whole night through.”

That sequence—doctor, book (or article), friend, doctor again—will sound familiar to many women who have had to assemble their own understanding of this major health transition that remains underfunded and underdiscussed, despite affecting 51 percent of the world’s population.

It also runs through two new books arriving this month: Jennifer Weiss-Wolf’s When in Menopause: A User’s Manual and Citizen’s Guide and The Book of Menopause: Real Talk, Real Science, Real Strategies for Your Next Chapter, from the editors of Oprah Daily.

Restricting Mifepristone Access Could Empower Abusers

PUBLISHED 10/7/2026 by

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments on Sept. 9 in Louisiana v. FDA, one of three cases threatening nationwide access to mifepristone, the medication used in the majority of abortions in the United States. 

While its stakes center on access to mifepristone generally, survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) may be among the hardest hit by a national restriction on the abortion care drug.  

Already living under extreme, sometimes life-threatening, circumstances, survivors have vanishingly few options to care for themselves in the event of a pregnancy. Telehealth treatment and access to mifepristone by mail have been one of the few reprieves offered thus far, and their restriction could pose grave consequences to survivors nationwide.

Female Student-Athletes File Title IX Lawsuit Against UC Davis for Sex Discrimination, Condemn Treating Women Like ‘Second-Class Citizens’

PUBLISHED 10/7/2026 by

On Sep. 29, 19 former members of UC Davis’ recently-eliminated female equestrian team filed a sex discrimination class action against the school.

The students allege the school discriminated against all its female student-athletes by depriving them of equal athletic financial aid, in violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.

“We were devastated when UC Davis eliminated the equestrian team, which was successful and thriving,” said Anna Donovan, a UC Davis senior and award-winning former equestrian team member. “Then, we were stunned even more when the school tried to defend its decision by releasing a consultant’s report showing it was depriving women athletes annually of hundreds of thousands of dollars in equal athletic financial aid.”

The Difference Between His Safety and Hers

PUBLISHED 10/7/2026 by

I recently saw a social media post that I can’t stop thinking about: “If a man was severely intoxicated around seven women, he would actually be in the safest place he could possibly be. He’d be taken care of on every level. He’d be hydrated, fed, given meds and a cozy place to lay down. I can’t stop thinking about that difference.”

Neither can I.

I am tired of women being hurt, watched, harassed, questioned and doubted. I’m tired of women being handed an ever-growing list of precautions, then asked what we did wrong when we’re harmed.

Women don’t need another lesson in how to protect ourselves. We’ve had a lifetime of them.

Imagine if instead of teaching our daughters how to stay safe from men, we could trust men not to harm them and to help keep them safe. Isn’t that the world we want—one where our daughters won’t have to think about this difference at all? It’s time for men to step up and take responsibility.

Close the Victim-Blaming Loophole the Cornell 7 Exposed

PUBLISHED 10/6/2026 by and

Ten years ago, Judge Aaron Persky sentenced Stanford University student and swimmer Brock Turner to six months in county jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman behind a dumpster at a frat party. He served three months.

Feminists didn’t just get angry—we organized. Two years later, we recalled Persky with nearly 62 percent of the vote.

Now the same crisis has arrived at Cornell. It is time to organize again.

Under New York penal law, a person too intoxicated to consent counts as “mentally incapacitated” only if the substance was given to them without their consent. Unless they are unconscious or physically unable to communicate, a person who is stumbling, slurring and incoherent is treated as capable of consent, so long as they took the drink or the drug willingly.

Look at what that rule assumes: If someone else spikes your drink, the law says you could not consent. If you poured it yourself, the law says you could, however incapacitated you were. That is consent manufactured out of a decision to drink. It rests on the oldest victim-blaming idea there is: A woman who gets drunk is asking for it. The only natural consequence of drinking too much is a hangover. Sexual assault is not caused by alcohol. It is caused by rapists choosing to rape, and nothing else.

We cannot allow political gatekeeping to preserve a law that protects perpetrators and abandons victims. Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie must stop blocking progress and bring the voluntary intoxication bill to a vote immediately. New Yorkers deserve to know where each of their elected officials stands on victim blaming.

In a year when feminist victories are few and far between, this is one we can help win. Take two minutes to send Speaker Heastie an email and demand a vote on this bill. You can also call his office at 518-455-3791.