Meghan Markle’s passionate push for paid family leave in the United States continues. After writing an open letter asking Congress about paid family leave last month, Markle is cold calling senators of both parties to advocate for the issue. 

Democrats are moving to add paid family leave to a social spending and climate policy bill. The United States is currently one of the few countries without a paid family leave program. 

Senator Shelley Moore Capo, a Republican of West Virginia, recalled answering a call she assumed to be a standard work call, only to find out the Duchess of Sussex was on the other line. 

“I’m in my car. I’m driving. It says caller ID blocked. Honestly … I thought it was Sen. Manchin. His calls come in blocked. And she goes ‘Sen. Capito?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ She said, ‘This is Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex,’” Capo said, per Politico. “I couldn’t figure out how she got my number.” 

Senator Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, also got a call from Meghan Markle. According to Politico reporter Maianne LeVine, Collins said, “Much to my surprise, she called me on my private line, and she introduced herself as the Duchess of Sussex, which is kind of ironic.”

It turns out, Markle got the numbers from Democratic senator Kristen Gilibrand of New York. “She wants to be part of a working group to work on paid leave long term, and she’s going to be. Whether this comes to fruition now or later, she’ll be part of a group of women that hopefully will work on paid leave together,” Gilibrand said.

In October, Meghan Markle wrote a letter to Congress urging it to pass parental leave policies. “Paid leave should be a national right, rather than a patchwork option limited to those whose employers have policies in place, or those who live in one of the few states where a leave program exists,”  Markle wrote. “This is about putting families above politics.”

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Throughout Calarco’s qualitative studies on the state of mothers’ well-being during the pandemic, she found in heterosexual couples where both parents are working from home, when schedules conflicted, moms were more inclined to sacrifice a meeting or work time. “Even when dads are doing a lot, it’s those moments of conflict when we see mothers sacrificing their own careers, oftentimes because they make less than their husbands and feel like their job then matters less to the household budget as a whole,” says Calarco.

My own reality seemed to want to underscore all of this: During the various interviews for this story, my daughter wandered in just to say hi to whomever I had on the screen—one of her more mortifyingly unprofessional pandemic ticks—and practiced piano as I wrapped up my phone interview with Meng. As Grechen Shirley answered my questions, she simultaneously needed to nurse her infant son, who was refusing a nap.

We’re among the fortunate ones. We’re somehow still working.

“We know from research that an investment in high-quality, universal, affordable childcare is one of the best ways to get women back into the workforce and help them stay in the workforce,” says Calarco. More broadly, she says, until inequities such as the gender pay gap are addressed, women will keep finding themselves forced into difficult choices. During the pandemic, she’s interviewed women in-depth and found so many feeling guilt and frustrated with themselves. But guilt, she notes, turns one’s energy inward. “If we want to effect social change, we need that energy directed outward. We need rage instead of guilt, and it’s only through that kind of rage, I think, that we have a shot at demanding the kinds of policy changes that are necessary moving forward.”

When I asked former-teacher Williams-Coble, given her professional experience as an educator and what she has lived through as a parent during the pandemic, what sort of policies she thinks could help parents, she echoed a lot of what Meng, Warren, and Williams have proposed. Parents should have affordable, safe childcare options if they choose to work, and shouldn’t have “to ditch more than 40% of their income towards childcare.” She thinks funding should be available for parents who have opted to stay home and care for their children during the pandemic too, regardless of income level. She knows too well how many middle-class families have found themselves a few skipped paychecks away from the threat of homelessness. “I think we’re low-key trying to choke on this bootstrap mentality,” as if in the midst of all this, we also must pull ourselves up by our bootstraps without systems to help. “We’re strangling ourselves,” says Williams-Coble.

When I asked her if she would ever consider running for office herself—school board? Congress?—she laughed and talked about how much advocacy for education matters to her.

But then she paused and said, “I haven’t considered it, but since you asked, I’m going to.” She wondered aloud where one would start—alderman? She’s not sure but adds, “I won’t limit myself…. There’s still a lot of healing and learning, but I’m not afraid anymore to tell my story and come forth and speak from my experiences, because I’m not the only one who’s gone through this…. We’re not by ourselves.”

Sarah Stankorb is an award-winning writer in Ohio. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Marie Claire, Glamour, O Magazine, and The Atlantic, among others.

When we sit down for this interview over Zoom, it’s been two weeks since insurrectionists stormed the Capitol, and Mitchell is still, as she puts it, “shattered.” The perils of a fragile democratic government, the weakness built into its foundations that bad actors can expose and exploit—that’s what she covers in other countries. It’s not that she thinks the United States is above reproach. It’s more that holding leaders to account has instilled real reverence in her for the responsibilities that government has. To see it desecrated? It shook her. “Congress is the third branch of government, and it’s just stunning that it was assaulted for the first time since 1814,” she says. “And it happened in front of our eyes. And it was completely preventable. And it was all based on a lie.

“We have had lies told from the briefing room podium in the White House, from the State Department, from other institutions,” she says. “There’s always been political spin but, in my experience going back 50 years of reporting and more than 40 years in Washington, officials in most cases don’t lie. They try to present the facts as favorably as they can for their principals, but they don’t lie flat out and just twist reality. And what has happened in the last four years has completely destroyed that. And it creeps on you little by little. People have been warning, but what we saw at the Capitol was the culmination of all of that. Now it can either shock the system and shock us all into awareness so that we can try to reorder it, or it can, as many people are now doing in the debate, drive people to keep arguing false realities.”

Mitchell understands the temptation—perhaps found in some parts of the Biden administration—to declare it a new morning in America and to put the ugliness of the recent past behind us, but journalists do not as a group tend to leave things be, Mitchell least of all.

Kristen Welker—who was named the chief White House correspondent for NBC News at the same time Mitchell was awarded her new title—remembers how Mitchell “helped me find my sea legs” in Washington when she arrived, without ever lowering the bar of her own expectations. When the two both covered the 2016 presidential election, Welker would hear whispers ripple through the press corps when Mitchell attended an event. It was not so much awe as a little competitive frustration. Mitchell was known to race to the candidate as soon as their remarks ended to squeeze a question in, leaving the others behind. “She is someone who is so passionate, and she perseveres, and she doesn’t back down. She is still the one to beat,” Welker says. “The other reporters would be like, ‘Oh, God, Andrea’s here, I have got to get to the rope line.’”

But like a true endurance athlete, Mitchell is most focused on beating her own best time. In 2012, George Clooney was about to be arrested at a protest. Mitchell and her staff were glued to their monitors. “She looks at me and goes, ‘That’s 10 minutes down the road. I can make it,’” Andrea Mitchell Reports executive producer Michelle Perry recalls. “I said, ‘It’s happening too fast.’ And she is like, ‘Wanna bet?’ We’re all still watching on TV and at the exact moment Clooney is cuffed, we see this blonde head poke out of the bushes. There is a crush of people and somehow she presses up against them and gets the interview. She’s a warrior; I don’t know how else to put it.”

A $600 stimulus check may be coming your way over the next few weeks…as long as you fit the right criteria.

On Sunday, December 20, the GOP and Democratic Party finally agreed on their $900 billion bipartisan coronavirus relief package, which, after significant back and forth, does include a second stimulus check. After receiving $1,200 in the spring as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, many Americans have been on their own financially as the country’s fought COVID-19—and the rising unemployment rates that have come with it. 

Now lawmakers have finally agreed on the second round of stimulus checks as part of this new relief package. However, the bill, which is expected to be signed by the Senate, House of Representatives, and President Donald Trump on December 21, has cut the original check in half—and only if you make $75,000 or less. 

Per CBS, single people who earn up to $75,000 will receive the full $600, while couples earning up to $150,000 will receive $1,200. The only increase since the CARES Act will go to families with children. “Child dependents” will receive $600 each, up from the $500 originally provided. 

Twitter, of course, had a lot to say about this news, ranging from earnest disgust to sardonic commentary. #LetThemEatCake was trending on the platform December 21. 

Some people were upset by Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s statements describing the $600 stimulus checks as “significant.” “Nancy Pelosi, who described $600 as a ‘significant’ stimulus for working families, has a [reported] net worth of more than $100 million,” one person tweeted. Another added, “Nancy Pelosi makes over $220,000 a year.” 

Others defended Pelosi, though, saying the anger should be directed at the GOP: 

Per CNN, it will take at least two weeks before checks appear in Americans’ bank accounts. 

President-Elect Joe Biden will make another historic nomination as he continues to fill out his cabinet. Per multiple outlets, Biden has officially tapped Representative Deb Haaland for secretary of the interior, a move that would make her the first Native American to hold that position in its entire 171-year history.

If confirmed by the Senate as secretary of the interior, Halaand would be in charge of the department that oversees the country’s natural resources, including national parks and tribal lands. The 60-year-old currently serves as the U.S. representative for New Mexico’s First District and is an enrolled member of Pueblo of Laguna.

“It means a lot to a group of people who have been here since time immemorial to know that they’re truly being represented,” she told NPR in November while discussing the potential nomination. “I think it would really change the way people see our federal government.”

Halaand first made history in 2019, when she was one of the first two Native American women elected to the House of Representatives. She is also a former chairwoman of the Democratic Party of New Mexico.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi expressed her support for the nomination on December 16. “Congresswoman Deb Haaland is one of the most respected and one of the best members of Congress I have served with,” she said in a statement, calling Halaand “an excellent choice.”

Many people on Twitter are also thrilled about Biden’s latest appointment. “This is monumental, historic, and she is the right choice to lead the Interior Dept at this time,” Sherrilyn Ifill, the president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, tweeted. 

“This is a big deal,” Halaand’s colleague Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “Historic appointment. A visionary Native woman in charge of federal lands. Unequivocally progressive. Green New Deal champion. Exquisitely experienced.”

“@RepDebHaaland sister, you are going to do such a great job,” Ocasio-Cortez concluded. “I am so proud of you and the movement.”

Well, Congress has finally revealed its latest COVID-19 relief proposal, but one thing is glaringly missing (aside from the lack of cash stimulus checks). 

The bipartisan Senate coalition’s suggested $900 billion stimulus outline was unveiled on Wednesday, December 9, and it’s no surprise that the bulk of the proposal is geared toward protecting businesses. However, what is frightening is the lawmaker’s blatant disregard for working families. 

Not only is a new round of stimulus checks still up in the air, but there is currently no language suggesting the plan will extend the paid family- and sick-leave provisions that are set to expire at the end of December.

As it currently stands, the family-leave policy passed in the March 2020 stimulus bill guarantees 12 weeks off for parents with children attending school virtually or who can’t be sent to daycare. Only 10 of those weeks are partially paid time off. With no extension insight, what are working moms and dads meant to do next?

While advocates for paid family leave suggest that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and multiple special interest groups are lobbying for the inclusion of these protections, they warn that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans are acting as roadblocks. 

“This is just another example of how Senate Republicans continue to dismiss and ignore what women and families need,” Shilpa Phadke, vice president of the women’s initiative at the Center for American Progress, told The Huffington Post. 

USA Today and The 19th recently released a report that more than 865,000 women dropped out of the workforce in September, compared with 216,000 men, deepening what the nonprofit organization describes as “the nation’s first female recession.”

“As parents and caregivers know, we’re juggling a lot right now,” Chelsea Clinton wrote in a Glamour op-ed back in November. “From work to virtual or hybrid learning to potty training to our kids’ nightmares to tough, important conversations about the world with even our young children. For essential workers who aren’t able to work from home or for people who have lost their jobs, it’s downright impossible.”

Frankly, working moms are at a breaking point and this potential relief bill does little to help.

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