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Melissa Gira Grant

Melissa Gira Grant is a staff writer at The New Republic, the author of Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work (published by Verso), and the co-director of They Won’t Call It Murder (executive produced by Field of Vision). She was a senior reporter at The Appeal, and a contributing writer at The Village Voice and Pacific Standard.


All Articles
October 25, 2023
Melissa Gira Grant
The Absurd Lawsuit That Could Bankrupt Planned Parenthood
An anti-abortion activist and Texas’s attorney general have teamed up to try to force the organization out of the state—and now an anti-abortion judge has advanced their cause.
October 24, 2023
Melissa Gira Grant
DeSantis’s War on “Woke” Colleges Gets Even More Absurd—and Dangerous
A proposed rule for Florida’s public campuses would muzzle advocacy of issues “that polarize or divide society among political, ideological, moral, or religious beliefs.”
September 28, 2023
Melissa Gira Grant
The Transphobia Hidden Inside the Latest Online Safety Bills
What looks to some like a rare form of bipartisan agreement to rein in Big Tech is also a method of scrambling actual accountability—with a broad, dangerous “save the children” crusade.
September 27, 2023
Melissa Gira Grant
The Judge Who Wants to Drag Us Back to the Victorian Era
Christian-right law projects have both laid the groundwork for Christian nationalist legal theories and paved one judge’s way to the federal bench.
September 20, 2023
Melissa Gira Grant
How the Anti-Trafficking Movement Gave Cover to Opportunistic Men
What’s the future of the anti-trafficking charity-celebrity complex, with both Ashton Kutcher and Tim Ballard out of their respective groups?
September 15, 2023
Melissa Gira Grant
Librarians Didn’t Sign Up to Be Queer Activists—but This Year, They Are
Anti-LGBTQ activists are increasingly targeting public reading spaces—and librarians are our best defenders.
September 7, 2023
Melissa Gira Grant
The 113-Year-Old Law Behind Anti-Abortion Activists’ Latest Scheme
The Christian right is pushing a slate of laws to stop a new, vague offense they have dubbed “abortion trafficking.”
August 30, 2023
Melissa Gira Grant
The GOP’s Drag Bans Aren’t Meant to Be Good Laws. They’re Meant to Cause Chaos.
What if the point of state-level drag bans is not the legislation itself but rather the scapegoating of queer and trans people as enemies?
August 17, 2023
MagazineMelissa Gira Grant
Moms for Liberty Recruits a New Class of Aggrieved Mothers
The burgeoning group, which has scored hundreds of school board election victories, is busy drafting more “joyful warriors” to take control of the Republican agenda.
August 2, 2023
Melissa Gira Grant
Republicans Are Fooling Democrats on Kids’ Online Safety
A bill before Congress would help the far right advance its ideological war—but Democrats apparently haven’t noticed or don’t care.
July 25, 2023
Melissa Gira Grant
A Real Wedding Website in a Fake Gay Wedding Website Case
An archive shows that the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case did once design a wedding website, contrary to what her lawyers presented during her legal challenge.
July 6, 2023
Melissa Gira Grant
The Straight Man in the Gay Wedding Website Case Is Not the Real Problem
The Christian group behind the Supreme Court wedding website case would rather stoke controversy about the fake inquiry than have us look at how its own story has changed.
June 30, 2023
Melissa Gira Grant
The Supreme Court Doesn’t Care That the Gay Wedding Website Case Is Based on Fiction
It still feels unnerving to some, even those caught in the crossfire, to see injuries invented wholesale and lies accepted by the highest court in the land.
June 29, 2023
Melissa Gira Grant
The Mysterious Case of the Fake Gay Marriage Website, the Real Straight Man, and the Supreme Court
In filings in the 303 Creative v. Elenis case is a supposed request for a gay wedding website—but the man named in the request says he never filed it.
June 28, 2023
Melissa Gira Grant
The Christian Right Is Making Up Wedding Websites to Attack LGBTQ People
What’s curious about the 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis case is that no actual offense to religious freedoms occurred in the first place.
June 20, 2023
Melissa Gira Grant
The Far Right and Catholics Team Up to Protest Baseball
Portraying the Dodgers game protest as one led by “religious groups” is technically correct, but it fails to communicate the threat of political violence some of the organizers openly embrace.
June 14, 2023
Melissa Gira Grant
Trump’s Fascist Troops Have Dispersed, Not Disappeared
The big crowd in Miami for Trump’s arraignment failed to materialize. But his foot soldiers are at work across the country.
June 12, 2023
Melissa Gira Grant
Why Conservatives Are Losing Their Minds Over Biden’s Pride Flag—and Ignoring Pro-DeSantis Neo-Nazis
Some on the political right see only authoritarian goals in the power of the state.
June 8, 2023
Melissa Gira Grant
The Origins of the Right’s War on Target
Target has put up Pride displays since 2015. What’s so different about this year?
May 31, 2023
Melissa Gira Grant
How to Stop Neo-Nazis From Crashing Pride Month
The far right is mobilizing against LGBTQ events. But activists are getting ready as well.

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