Happy Friday! Welcome to our Media Round Up. Each week, we’re collecting and sharing gender + politics stories. Here’s what caught our eye this week:

Biden picks female admiral to lead Navy. She’d be first woman on Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Lolita C. Baldor, The Boston Globe

President Biden has chosen Admiral Lisa Franchetti to lead the Navy, an unprecedented choice that, if she is confirmed, will make her the first woman to be a Pentagon service chief and the first female member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Biden’s decision goes against the recommendation of his Pentagon chief. But Franchetti, the current vice chief of operations for the Navy, has broad command and executive experience and was considered by insiders to be the top choice for the job. In a statement Friday, Biden noted the historical significance of her selection and said, “throughout her career, Admiral Franchetti has demonstrated extensive expertise in both the operational and policy arenas.”

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Emily’s List launches Madam Mayor program to support local women leaders

Grace Panetta, The 19th News

Emily’s List, which works to elect Democratic women who support abortion rights, is launching a new initiative, Madam Mayor, to elevate, champion and establish resources for woman mayors. “The battle for reproductive freedom and our very democracy is playing out on a local level every single day — and these women stand at the frontlines, working to make their communities a better place and standing up to Republican extremism in the face of a relentless onslaught against our freedoms,” Emily’s List President Laphonza Butler said in a statement.

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On the GOP side of competitive Senate races, it’s mostly men

Grace Panetta, The 19th News

As the 2024 Senate primaries get closer, it looks increasingly likely that the Republican nominees in most or all competitive Senate races will be men. Advocates for electing Republican women told The 19th earlier this year they hoped the number of competitive seats, combined with the success of Republican women in recent election cycles and top Republican leaders’ focus on nominating electable candidates, would lead to more women running for Senate seats. “I think it’s a tough year for Republican women to run in the Senate,” said Jennifer Pierotti Lim, co-founder and executive director of Republican Women for Progress, an organization that promotes Republican women and facilitates them to receive candidate training through a partnership with the Campaign School at Yale University. “On the Democratic women’s side, they have a lot of great incumbents running,” she added. “And in a lot of these seats that are open in 2024 where Republican women are running, a lot of those women have challengers.”

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In N.H., Nikki Haley is asked if women should be punished for illegal abortions

Jazmine Ulloa, New York Times

At town halls and political events in New Hampshire, where she has made far more campaign stops than her rivals, Nikki Haley has mostly sidestepped any discussion of abortion, a fraught issue for the Republican Party. As the GOP activist base tries to pull state lawmakers further to the right in curbing access to abortion, moderates worry that the hardline stance has already handed electoral wins to Democrats and could have dire consequences in 2024. Haley, a former governor of South Carolina and United Nations ambassador, has tried to pull off a difficult balancing act on the issue, and her attempts haven’t always resonated — partly because, her critics say, she has avoided discussing details.

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Fewer than 20 Black women physicists in the U.S. have earned tenure. This scholar just joined the club.

Nadra Nittle, The 19th News

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein still remembers how appalled her father was when she pointed to a stream of light spanning the sky and inquired, “What is that?” “My dad just looked at me like, ‘What. . . is wrong with you?’” Prescod-Weinstein recalled with a laugh. “That’s the Milky Way,” he told her. Neither one of them knew for sure during their camping trip among the giant sequoias nearly three decades ago that Prescod-Weinstein, then 14, would grow up to be a theoretical physicist specializing in early universe cosmology, though the teenager had already expressed an interest in the field. Spending her youth in light-polluted Los Angeles, however, had robbed Prescod-Weinstein of the opportunity to study the night sky, so it took driving hours out of the city to finally see the Milky Way. Today, the teen who didn’t recognize her own galaxy is not only an expert on the cosmos but also a trailblazing scholar. In June, she received tenure from the University of New Hampshire (UNH). That feat makes her the first Black woman in the nation to earn tenure in particle theory or cosmology theory, according to African American Women in Physics, Inc. (AAWIP), which celebrates the achievements of Black women in physics, including how many have doctorates or work in the discipline.

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