Welcome to the Media Round Up! This week we’re collecting and sharing our favorite gender + politics stories.

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In the Spotlight: Jen Kiggans
Virginia Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-VA) is carving out a moderate lane within her party on health care policy. She led a group of a dozen House Republicans in urging Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to extend soon-to-expire health care tax credits once the government reopens. The credits, set to lapse on Dec. 31, are a key sticking point in the shutdown standoff: Democrats want them renewed before agreeing to reopen the government, while Republicans insist talks wait until after. Kiggans is also sponsoring a bipartisan bill that would extend the enhanced credits for one year without changes to their structure.

Marjorie Taylor Greene Says What Everyone’s Been Thinking About Mike Johnson
Huffington Post

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is making headlines this week after speaking out against the Trump administration. She sharply criticized her own party leader, Speaker Mike Johnson, for failing to produce a GOP health care plan that could replace the Affordable Care Act, which Republicans have been unsuccessfully trying to dismantle for years. “I demanded to know from Speaker Johnson what the Republican plan for healthcare is to build the off-ramp for Obamacare and the ACA tax credits to make health insurance affordable for Americans,” Greene said. “Johnson said he’s got ideas and pages of policy ideas and committees of jurisdiction are working on it, but he refused to give one policy proposal to our GOP conference on our own conference call.”

The Winning Formula

On Wednesday, Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) and former Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) made a rare joint campaign appearance at a Zoom organizing rally put together by the Democratic National Committee. The Democratic candidates for governor in New Jersey and Virginia – who were both members of the 2018 freshman class that helped Democrats retake the House of Representatives – present themselves as centrists with “extensive military and national security experience.” Now, the two gubernatorial candidates are seen by some as a model for how Democrats can broadly appeal to the general electorate: if both Sherrill and Spanberger win their contests by reasonable margins, then their victories might send a signal to the Democratic Party that moderate campaigns “can be a winning formula.”

Kamala Harris Suggests She is Considering Another Presidential Run
The New York Times, Lisa Lerer

On “Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg,” a prime weekend political show in Britain, Kamala Harris discussed the future of her political career. In the interview, a part of her media tour promoting her book 107 Days, Harris made clear that her time in politics has not come to an end. “I am not done,” she said, “ I have lived my entire career as a life of service and it’s in my bones.” Harris stated that she is confident that a woman will become president one day, and that it could even be her, despite her lack of decision about a potential 2028 campaign. Early polls have shown her trailing in the crowded 2028 presidential field, however, she dismissed them as a part of her future decision.

Single moms in New Hampshire spend half their paycheck on childcare. Report finds other social and economic barriers for women
Concord Monitor

At the highest levels, women in New Hampshire are taking the lead, including positions in the U.S. Senate, one of the state’s two congressional seats, and the governor’s office. But a report released Tuesday shows that this leadership trend doesn’t always carry over locally. Women occupy just 8% of mayoral positions, and 39% of towns in the state don’t have a single woman on their select board. At the school board level, women make up the majority, holding 56% of seats. Meanwhile, 31% of judges in the state are women. The New Hampshire Women’s Foundation reported this and other information, including the strain that child care costs have put on families. Single mothers are being hit the hardest, with some reporting they’ve been spending almost half of their annual income on child care. More women in elective office may be part of the solution.  “Regardless of party, when women serve, they’re more likely to support policies that benefit women and girls in their community,” said Devan Quinn, policy director at the Foundation. “We see that in the State House every single day, women are more likely to seek bipartisanship and compromise than their male counterparts.”

Optimizing Physical and Financial Health for Older Women

While internet influencers have declared that the use of estrogen during perimenopause has been proven to dramatically reduce the risk of breast cancer, these conclusions are “very preliminary” according to Dr. Rachel Pope, who spearheaded the study on which they are based. Pope, the chief of female sexual medicine at the University Hospitals Urology Institute at UH Cleveland Medical Center, said that while the study results show slightly lower risks of breast cancer, heart attack and stroke for people beginning hormone therapy in perimenopause, there are still a lot of unknowns, with limitations based on potential errors in the database and the fact that patients in perimenopause are younger to start with. Older women are also concerned about their financial health, particularly Social Security. Focus groups conducted by AARP found that faith in Social Security may be decreasing. These results show both Democratic and Republican respondents expressed concern for the viability of Social Security, a marked departure from the long-standing confidence and trust in the program.

The Real Way To Boost Birth Rates
TIME, Stephanie Psaki

Amid growing concern over America’s falling birth rates, a “growing chorus” of conservative figureheads are imploring women to take a break from their careers and focus on childrearing. Some political leaders want to reverse the revolution in which women’s focus shifted from marriage and childbearing to building careers, envisioning a return to an era in which men were the sole breadwinners and women were the primary caretakers. This goal is largely a fantasy for many American families, who often cite financial pressures as a barrier to having more children: “the issue isn’t that women are choosing careers over motherhood. They’re trying to pay the rent.” Thus, political leaders who want women to have more children should focus on making parenting “more affordable and more compatible with working life.” 

MAGA Singles Are Looking For Love In Washington. It’s A Challenge.
Washington Post, Jesús Rodríguez

Newly arrived MAGA singles in the nation’s capital are facing a problem in the dating pool: 92.5 percent of the city voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. The conservative dating scene in Washington D.C. is “insular but active,” though many GOP women in the city lament the inability to find traditional, like-minded Republican men who value family and religion. The ability to find a “permanent” relationship in a town perpetually full of “transient professionals” also proves difficult for many of these women: though there may be a current influx of conservatives in the city due to the current administration, these men may just as easily relocate should the next presidential administration not align with their personal politics.