“I was fourteen years old.” “I was sixteen years old.” “I was seventeen years old.”
These women, all survivors of convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, have a message: They were children, and like victims of any age, they deserve justice.
In a new video made by the organization World Without Exploitation, they ask Congress to release the full files, regardless of political considerations. The House is expected to vote on the issue tomorrow, with the Senate to follow (if the House vote passes).
You can reach your own members of Congress through the link in our bio.
Video: @worldweus .
It’s Banned Books Week. Celebrate with us by reading the very books they’re trying to strip off of shelves.
Right now, our country is facing a wave of book banning worse than anything we’ve seen in decades. From “Gender Queer” and “The Diary of Anne Frank” to “Everyone Poops”—the newest report from PEN America (@penamerica ) details that over 10,000 books have been banned in the US in the past school year alone, censoring children from crucial information about topics that range from tender and silly to truly life-saving.
In the face of censorship, we keep reading.
Last year at @themeteor ’s Meet the Moment event, an array of artists honored the voices and stories of banned authors. Organized by Jamia Wilson (@jamiaawilson ) and Amber Tamblyn (@amberrosetamblyn ), readings featured @tonyapinkins bringing Sold by Patricia McCormick to life, Amanda Seyfried (@mingey ) sharing This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki (@marikotamaki ) and Jillian Tamaki (@jilliantamaki ), and Jamia Wilson reading from her original work Young, Gifted, and Black, illustrated by Andrea Pippins.
Head to pen.org/undistracted to help turn the page on book bans.
Did you know that there’s an environmental cost to asking as few as 5 questions on ChatGPT? Turns out there is…and it’s high.
“If you go and you’re playing around with this chatbot, that’s using 500ml—one water bottle,” said @The.Markup CEO @NabihaSyed in conversation with @CyberCollectiveOrg founder and CEO @TechWithTazin at our #MeetTheMoment event. “It’s great to talk about experimentation, but we need to calculate in what is the water footprint of this? What’s the carbon footprint of this?”
Stay tuned for more conversations, poems, and readings from some of the most inspiring people we know.
It’s an idea so silly, so out of pocket that you would think it hardly merits discussion…and yet!
There are a growing number of people (women included) willing to say publicly that women should not have the right to vote as individuals—and their calls for “household voting” are gaining ground on the right. Next month’s Turning Point USA Women’s Leadership Summit will even platform influencer Savanna Stone, who went viral for advocating for “household voting” online.
Something this ridiculous may seem easy to shrug off—but in the age of algorithms rewarding extreme rhetoric, fringe ideas are increasingly becoming mainstream. “The worry shouldn’t just be that someone like Savanna Stone is going to Turning Point to talk about this,” Shannon Melero explains. “We should worry more about how easily the same idea has been sliding into television and social media as an aspirational way of living.”
Link in bio for more from Shannon in the Meteor newsletter.
Tomorrow, Americans are marching from Selma to Montgomery across the Edmund Pettus Bridge—just like they did in 1965 on Bloody Sunday.
“This march isn’t just a protest,” says @drdavidjohns . “It is a statement about who we are.” The All Roads Lead to the South march will mark a national day of action for voting rights to protest the recent Supreme Court decision and current wave of restrictive measures throughout the South.
On this week’s episode of UNDISTRACTED, @mspackyetti and Dr. Johns linked up to talk about what’s happening. Head to the link in bio for the full episode—and to learn more about tomorrow.
10/10. No notes. 🎯
@repbeccab took a moment on the House floor this week to call out Dr. Oz, the current Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator, for calling Americans “under-babied” at a press conference Monday. She also exposed the hypocrisy of the Trump administration for harping on about a so-called “fertility crisis,” all while failing to address the economic crisis their policies have created for American families.
“Americans are overworked, they’re underpaid, they’re struggling to get by,” Balint asserted, “while you, among the rich and powerful, stand and lecture them in a gold-plated room.”
Is this the right time to remind everyone that diplomatic talks have been proven to work better with women in the room 🧐
📷: a bilateral meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping and their teams today in Beijing
Don’t come for Pramila Jayapal 🔥
@RepJayapal isn’t afraid to take on the Epstein files, voter suppression…or mansplaining lawmakers. On this week’s episode of UNDISTRACTED, she talks to @mspackyetti about why some politicians still refuse to grasp the urgency of this political moment—and why she doesn’t plan to stop speaking out.
Link in bio to watch the full episode on YouTube, listen wherever you get your podcasts, and subscribe to stay UNDISTRACTED.
Nearly three-quarters of Americans oppose the building of data centers in their communities, according to a brand-new Gallup poll. And now they have a champion: THEE Erin Brockovich, who has launched a map to collect information about where AI data centers are being constructed and what citizens of those communities are seeing.
"The race to build AI infrastructures is unfolding town by town across America," Brockovich said in a post. "A whole lot of people...don’t even know what’s happening, until the permits are already signed." And with concerns high about the tolls these centers take on energy use, water supply and human health, understanding the risks is key. "This new map is intended to give us all a bird’s-eye view," she says.
Brockovich is quick to point out that "this is not about attacking AI....We need to make sure that the infrastructure powering AI doesn’t come at the expense of the people living around it."
Link in bio to see her map (and find out what's happening near you)
Women's ambition is trending. So maybe we don't all want to be tradwives after all?
Backstory: The Devil Wears Prada 2 and Yesteryear are dominating movie theaters and bookshelves, respectively. After consuming both back-to-back, Meteor editorial director Nona Willis Aronowitz (@theothernwa ) saw a common thread: the power of women’s ambition—and the dangers of suppressing it.
In DWP2, Nona was struck by “how happy the lead women seem to be when they’re working hard,” a marked contrast from Yesteryear’s Natalie, who is “selling a life premised on domestic bliss, but experiences very little genuine happiness throughout the book.”
“The villains of The Devil Wears Prada 2 are unambitious men messing with the careers that powerful women painstakingly built,” she writes. “In the funhouse-mirror world of Yesteryear, the antagonists are men, yes, but also women enforcing the rules. Perhaps the runaway success of both projects shows that we know that work can make us happy—as long as we’re the ones making the rules."
Link in bio to read Nona’s full essay and to RSVP for our May 20 Yesteryear book club. Because y’all…there’s so much more to say.
“We are once again being called to meet this moment with collective action.”
In red states across the south, Republican lawmakers are working at breakneck speed to redraw their district maps after the Supreme Court’s decision last month gutting voting rights. Their goals? Diminish Black voting power—and consolidate conservative control.
On Saturday, activists and organizations nationwide are gathering in Selma and Montgomery, Alabama to protest the rollbacks of protections for Black voters and the rushed efforts to disenfranchise Black voters. (You can organize a local action, too.) Link in bio to learn more about the All Roads Lead to the South day of action.
Even the president isn’t excited about his new, supposedly “groundbreaking” women’s health site.
The very first resource offered on Moms.gov, which the White House launched on Mother’s Day, is a locator for “pregnancy centers”—the same fake clinics that lure patients inside with deceptive advertising and offer them misinformation when they’re seeking abortion care. (Next up? Promotions for Trump accounts and TrumpRx, of course.)
If you’re looking for *real* resources and support on your own pregnancy journey—or for the mama-to-be in your group chat—head to the link in bio, where we’ve rounded up information on exploring your options, defending your rights, navigating care, and expert advice and insights from @plannedparenthood , @pregnancyjust , @npwf , and @ACOG_org .
🎥 via the White House
