How MAHA Is Coming for Women

Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams

Crooked Media

Society & Culture

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 25 September 2025

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Propaganda is a powerful tool for an autocrat. It’s crucial to step six of the Ten Steps to Autocracy: weaken the truth and fill the void with propaganda and lies. And since RFK Jr. allied with Trump and the Republicans before the 2024 election, the Make America Healthy Again movement has grown into a juggernaut of misinformation. You’ve seen it on your feeds - one minute you’re watching a recipe video or checking out someone’s post about a new workout, and then suddenly you’re listening to a young woman talk about how birth control is impure or how vaccines are dangerous. To understand this phenomenon, its unique impact on women, and why it is so insidious, we’re talking to New York Times reporter Emma Goldberg and wellness content creator and podcast host Kate Glavan about the wellness to right-wing radicalization pipeline Learn & Do More: BE CURIOUS: Learning more about the history of women’s rights can help us combat efforts to erode our freedom. Backlash by Susan Faludi is a useful primer on the forces opposing women’s independence. The work of feminist scholar Andrew Dworkin can also provide useful context on the current moment. SOLVE PROBLEMS: Support accountability journalism that spotlights the truth about the MAHA movement and the ways that it is impacting our public health. Outlets like the New York Times, STAT News, KFF Health News, and Propublica are doing important work to expose right wing disinformation and replace it with the truth. DO GOOD: Support organizations like Reproductive Freedom for All and immunize.org that fight to promote accurate healthcare information and increase access.

Transcript

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1:04.9	around your neighborhood wherever you call home by going to joinbilt.com slash assembly. That's J-O-I-N-B-I-T.com slash assembly.
1:16.7	Make sure you use our URL so they know we sent you.
1:23.5	Welcome to Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams from Crooked Media.
1:31.4	I'm your host, Stacey Abrams.
1:33.7	My deepest appreciation to those of you who have already joined the Ten Steps campaign,
1:39.0	ready to recognize what's unfolding, activate to fight back, and build the country we deserve. Assembly required was
1:46.6	launched with this goal in mind, and though I didn't expect the real world test to be the rise
1:51.5	of authoritarianism in 2025, I know we have the ability to meet it. But as we discussed here,
1:57.7	we are obliged to confront the issues, know why they matter, and then find
2:02.6	solutions.
	...

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