Revolutionary Feminist Gloria Steinem Passes Away at 92

Trailblazing women’s rights leader Gloria Steinem has died.

She passed away peacefully in her New York City residence, according to a statement posted Thursday on her Instagram account. She was 92.

“Gloria’s near-century on earth were years well-lived, and she continued working for equality until the very end,” the statement read. “Gloria’s greatest gift was her ability to listen to others, to make others feel seen and heard. Her words, actions, and example gave people permission to be their truest selves. Gloria lived true to her independent spirit, always with curiosity and a great sense of humor.”

Steinem emerged as a leader of the second-wave feminist movement through the 1960s and 70s. She often served as the face of a movement that—in no small part due to her influence—witnessed the development of Title IX, laws and regulations guarding women’s legal and financial rights, the passage of Roe v. Wade, the first UN World Conference on Women, and the national expansion of rape crisis centers, turning what had previously been a private issue into a political debate on equality.

Steinem’s journalism career was similarly profound. She broke into the national writing scene in 1962 with a feature for Esquire on contraceptive use that became a vehicle for Steinem to argue against the contemporary demands placed on women, forcing them to choose between having a career or having children.

Her star shone even brighter the following year when she published “A Bunny’s Tale” in Show magazine, exposing the exploitative labor conditions, unsafe working environment, and abysmal pay rates offered to New York City’s famed Playboy Bunnies. To write it, Steinem went undercover for a year, applying to a classified ad under a pseudonym (Marie Ochs) to work at the city’s Playboy Club.

In interviews throughout her career, Steinem explained that it was a 1969 abortion rally that changed the trajectory of her life, morphing her from a nascent journalism star into a public activist. Steinem had gotten an abortion herself years earlier—in 1957—when the procedure was illegal.

Steinem had no biological children but is survived by the four step-children she gained from her husband David Bale, one of which is actor Christian Bale.

This story has been updated.

It’s been exactly one year since the Trump administration began indiscriminately attacking small watercraft traversing the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean.

In that time, the U.S. military has killed at least 227 civilians in some 65 strikes, according to an analysis published Wednesday by The Intercept.

“It’s been a year of murders,” a defense official told the outlet. “The Trump administration has normalized murder.… It’s absolutely criminal.”

The White House has insisted the violence is justified, broadly accusing the boats of trafficking narcotics to the U.S. from Venezuela and Colombia. A classified opinion penned last summer by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel attempted to shield the forthcoming attacks by claiming that suspected drug boats amounted to legitimate military targets.

But U.S. lawmakers have been more than skeptical on the matter. That’s partly due to the fact that several of the targeted boats were thousands of miles away in international waters at the time that they were struck by U.S. forces. Another reason is because the vast majority of the attacks were conducted without prior investigations or interdiction, leaving little ability to gather evidence that could support or refute the government’s allegations.

The administration’s lawless behavior has even restructured foreign governments. After blaming Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro for the attacks and the alleged drug pipeline, U.S. forces stormed Caracas and abducted Maduro in the early morning hours of January 3.

The strikes themselves have been criticized as extrajudicial killings.

“There is no plausible legal justification for the strikes. They’re obviously not occurring in the context of an armed conflict and outside of armed conflict, the term for premeditated killing is murder,” Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer and specialist in counterterrorism issues and the laws of war, told The Intercept.

The first ever Republican midterm convention is being fueled by a dark-money web with a MAGA super PAC at its center.

The unprecedented gathering will take place on September 9 and 10 in Dallas. But the private group organizing the conference, a nonprofit known as the Dallas 2026 Host Committee, has not yet disclosed any of its donors (federally mandated filings that would offer such transparency still aren’t due for several months). The only insight available as to who’s behind the multimillion-dollar operation stems from the nonprofit’s address.

An OpenSecrets investigation published Tuesday found that the Dallas 2026 Host Committee shares an address with Make America Great Again Inc., a super PAC formed in 2022 to back Donald Trump and his endorsed candidates.

Further still, the treasurer of MAGA Inc.—Charles Gantt—is also the listed custodian of the convention’s nonprofit, according to a Federal Election Commission filing and an IRS letter that tied Gantt to the self-advertised “nonpartisan” nonprofit.

Last month, the Dallas 2026 Host Committee told The Dallas Morning News that it raised $45 million in just 27 days from various independent and corporate contributions. That sum didn’t include the revenue expected from sales for the ticketed event, which requires even invited House members to pay a minimum of $25,000 to walk in the door with a guest.

The committee did not elaborate on who’s been filling its coffers.

The group’s nonprofit status legally prohibits it from sponsoring political candidates or aiding elections. Instead, organization leadership told the newspaper that the money it obtained would go toward aiding Dallas’s local economy and covering government costs.

“This Dallas Host Committee, if it stuck to just promoting Dallas, making Dallas look good, that would be permissible—as long as it’s not crossing that line to making contributions to the RNC or the state party,” Shanna Ports, senior legal counsel for campaign finance at Campaign Legal Center, told OpenSecrets. “Then, it would be operating within the realm of campaign finance laws and tax status.”

But that doesn’t seem to be the primary motivator for the GOP conference. Trump and Vice President JD Vance are both expected to deliver speeches to the conservative assembly, which has been strung together at the eleventh hour to give Republicans a boost ahead of a contentious midterm cycle.

President Donald Trump appeared to short-circuit Wednesday during a meeting with travel executives in the Oval Office.

“On 11 separate days, more than three million travelers flowed through the American flies, they, they, uh … American skies were loaded up with planes,” Trump, 80, said while seated at the Resolute Desk.

It’s clear that Trump meant to say “American skies,” but that his brain got in the way. The meeting was ostensibly supposed to be a chance for the president to brag about high levels of tourism in the U.S. over the summer, but not only did Trump fumble his lines, Americans have actually spent a lot less money on vacations these past few months. Flights and road trips have also declined compared to last year. Foreign tourism into the U.S. has also dropped sharply since Trump resumed office.

Trump’s ongoing cognitive decline seems to be getting worse each day. He’s fallen asleep dozens of times throughout his second term as president, frequently slurred his speech, and last month seemed to forget how to spell the word “dumb” at a speech in Las Vegas with cameras rolling. Just last week, the president fell asleep during a health care announcement at the White House.

Meanwhile, Trump’s decisions are increasingly erratic, from abruptly signing an executive order to rename Lake Ontario to “Lake America” to his continued poor handling of the ill-advised war with Iran. Hours before his meeting Wednesday, Trump proposed renaming the Strait of Hormuz after himself. All of this clearly points to a man who is not well, yet has just over two more years of being president left.

President Donald Trump wants to rename the Strait of Hormuz, which the U.S. doesn’t control, after himself.

“Now that we have it under U.S.A. control, should we change the name Hormuz Strait to TRUMP STRAIT??? Like America itself, it would be ‘hotter’ than ever before! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP,” the president posted on Truth Social Wednesday morning.

The move wouldn’t have any support beyond his fans, and it is a terrible idea due to Iran currently being able to throttle maritime traffic through the crucial narrow waterway. Trump’s executive order to change the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America” last week was unpopular with Canadians and many Americans, although Google and Apple decided to bow to Trump’s demand by renaming the lake on their map services.

Trump has sought to rename everything from buildings to aircraft carriers after himself in his second term as president, and even has his sights on renaming New York’s Penn Station. Florida just renamed Palm Beach’s airport after him: it’s now officially the President Donald J. Trump International Airport, complete with the code DJT.

At a time when Trump claims to want a deal with Iran, changing the strait’s name would undoubtedly hurt the prospects for peace. It’s not likely to go over well with the other countries in the region, such as Oman and the United Arab Emirates. If Trump is serious, the move is sure to invite more comparisons between him and historical dictators who also sought to rename everything.