How MAHA Is Coming for Women

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Welcome to Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams from Crooked Media.

I'm your host, Stacey Abrams.

My deepest appreciation to those of you who have already joined the 10 Steps campaign, ready to recognize what's unfolding, activate to fight back, and build the country we deserve.

Assembly Required was launched with this goal in mind, and though I didn't expect the real world test to be the rise of authoritarianism in 2025, I know we have the ability to meet it.

But as we discussed here, we are obliged to confront the issues, know why they matter, and then find solutions.

One of the most pernicious and seductive keys to the autocrat and his ilk is the use of propaganda.

But to make it work, you have to weaken access to the truth and reality and then fill in the vacuum.

So imagine a woman at a grocery store.

She's only buying organic whole foods.

She keeps her kids away from the lucky charms and other TV-friendly cereals.

She has a vitamin cabinet stockpiled with natural herbal remedies, and she has hundreds of videos saved with information they don't want you to know, quote unquote.

Once understood primarily as a lifestyle choice that could mean either crunchy left or yuppie right, The woman I described has been targeted by what is now commonly referred to as Maha, short for the Trump-aligned Make America Healthy Again movement.

Several complex dynamics have weaponized this set of decisions and their consequences for this woman and her family.

Women have long been underserved by our medical system, and women face constant judgment about how they take care of their own bodies, how they parent, how they take care of their households.

So cue, in no particular order, the advent of social media algorithms that proliferate fear-based, misleading healthcare content and Insta experts who found a secret the government is hiding from you.

Then marry that to COVID vaccine skepticism and rampant disinformation about the causes of autism, and you have a ready-made potion for right-wing propaganda disguised as revelation.

That's what makes Secretary Robert F.

Kennedy Jr.

such an effective frontman for this facet of regime change.

After his 2024 presidential campaign failed, Kennedy struck up an allyship with Donald Trump in the run-up to the election.

And he brought his followers and adoring fans to the MAGA movement as he guts our public health infrastructure.

Now the online right and the vast segments of the health and wellness sphere have merged.

Maha moms villainize vaccines and other scientifically backed health interventions.

They ignore public health guidance and they go beyond questioning the medical establishment to outright rejection of evidence-based health care.

The Maha Mom is one of the many right-coded archetypes that have emerged for women on social media and become a recruitment tool for younger generations.

We have had trad wives, anti-vaxxers, cottage core girls, and much, much more.

It's a constellation of imagery and content that is influencing young women with messaging about how to discard science and ultimately, feminist ideology.

To understand why that clip keeps playing in your feed, this week on Assembly Required, I brought in two experts, New York Times reporter Emma Goldberg and content creator and podcast host, Kate Glavin, to walk us through how these issues are connected.

They will help explain the Maha movement's growing influence on women and how we can understand and combat the health and wellness misinformation and the disinformation influencing their radicalization.

Emma Goldberg, Kate Glavin, welcome to Assembly Required.

Thanks so much for having us.

Thank you, Stacey.

Excited to be here.

I hope you feel that way by the end because I want to start with the origins of the wellness to right-wing radicalization pipeline.

And Emma, I'm going to start with you.

Can you describe the rise of the misleading health-focused content online and talk a little bit about its particular appeal to women?

Is this accidental?

Was it intentional?

Tell us how we got here.

It's a really fascinating question because something I encounter sometimes when I'm in the field interviewing young people about the Make America Healthy Again movement and its confluence with the right is the very common question: wait, aren't the crunchy moms associated with the left?

And people would be forgiven for thinking that because for many years, even decades, there was a kind of deep conversation going on on the left about regulating big food, regulating big pharma, and thinking very intentionally about the kind of sustainability and healthfulness of what we were putting in our bodies.

But in more recent years, and particularly since the pandemic, there's been a really rapid acceleration on the right of a conversation about

rethinking the type of foods people eat, the type of pharmaceuticals they put in their bodies, even the type of vaccines that they themselves are comfortable taking or giving to their children.

And what I've found is that particularly since the ascent of RFK Jr.

and then his appointment to be health secretary in the Trump administration, there's been a real coming together of the Wellness and Make America Healthy Again space with the right.

And what I've found in so many of the reporting conversations that I've had on the ground is that there are young people who are listening to wellness influencers and wellness podcasters, and Maha is becoming for them a gateway to MAGA.

So they are listening to influencers on the right who are telling them to reject vaccines, to reject birth control, and then along with that, to reject seed oils and food dyes and other ultra-processed foods.

And that kind of conversation is becoming for them a bridge to the broader political right.

And I think we'll get into this, I'm sure, later in the conversation.

But from my perspective, it really seems like the grain of truth here is that the personal is political and political is personal.

So when people hear from influencers who tell them a political message that is very much about their own lives, their health, their fitness, and their routines, it becomes a very appealing way for them to kind of rethink their political worldview.

And we are going to go into more detail, but I want to stick with one thought that you raised for me.

Which came first?

Did they co-opt this line of thinking or did they create a new line that folks who thought they were going in one direction found themselves sort of diverted into?

That's a great question.

I think it's the acceleration of an idea that's long been present, which is that people need to look with a healthy dose of skepticism at what authorities and particular sort of money authorities tell them about what's best for their health and their bodies.

And I think that's it's a skepticism that we've seen on the left, we've seen sort of across the political spectrum, like, are we asking enough questions of big pharma and big food?

But RFK kind of took that message, ran with it, and then when he found an alliance with Trump, brought it straight into Trump world in the Trump White House.

Kate, which brings us to you, because you occupy a very interesting position as an influencer and podcaster in the health and wellness space.

So when did you start to notice a change in the way, in particular, young women, were talking about health and wellness?

And just to layer that with my question to Emma, which came first?

Yeah, that's a great question.

I think I've noticed this kind of trend since COVID.

I think a lot of people were very, you know, worried about their health for the first time, maybe, or their family's health, or their kids' health.

I think this space really preys on women and mothers a lot.

And I think during COVID, there were all these insecurities and very real fears about health.

But at the same time, there was so much information on social media about vaccinations, about the CDC, about the FDA.

And that was almost the perfect opportunity for I think the right wing to really sweep into this space that they haven't really been involved in, like Emma said.

It used to be a crunchy, lefty thing to take care of your health.

And I think one thing I have been fascinated with, I would say more in the last year or so since RFK and the Maha movement have really picked up steam, is how these alt-right pipelines work.

Because I think a lot of people in America are not inclined to watch, let's say, like a political podcast.

They might swipe past something as soon as it seems like it's giving them the news or political ideology.

But I think the way that the wellness influencers work so well in these spaces is first they're selling you something like

don't have toxic uh cleaning supplies in your household because it's bad for you it's bad for your kid then it gets into the anti-vax stuff then it gets into the anti-government stuff so i think it's very nefarious because it's feeding into this like anti-government anti-science do your own research ideology and i think a lot of people didn't think they were getting ideology.

They just thought they were getting non-toxic household cleaning advice or something like like that.

So I think that the right-wing movement is new, but I do think it has origins to like, let's say, the Reagan era of individual responsibility, anti-government rhetoric, but now it's being applied to individual health.

And how does this, in your experience, relate to the TikTok algorithm and how we're seeing who gets promoted?

Because you referenced there's a self-selection of influencer content that is non-political, but how does the algorithm, especially in this moment, accelerate and exacerbate that dynamic?

Totally.

It's scary.

As someone who does TikTok, you know, I've done it for the past five years now.

I think in, I can't speak too much to men's spaces, but one that I know that happens to men is like fitness pipelines can get you down very manosphere alt-right thinking pretty quickly.

First, you're getting a video about wanting to go to the gym and taking care of your body and your personal well-being.

And then you'll get more targeted videos that are about, you know, you're a high-value man, you're a high-achieving man, you don't need women in your life.

And then slowly these men are going down these pipelines.

If I were raising a son in America right now, I would be so worried about the messaging that my son is getting.

It's something like 30 minutes into a young boy making a YouTube page that they're going to be recommended alt-right.

male content like a Joe Rogan or an Andrew Tate.

So I think that's very scary.

I think in women's spaces, it happens a lot about wellness.

Someone that might be interested in eating clean or having clean beauty, these are very loaded terms that can get you to right-wing thinking.

Because as I mentioned earlier, I think a lot of young women are not interested in reading the news, which is a very like privileged position to have, of course, but they will watch it through a lifestyle influencer that packages this ideology in like a very cute Pilates type of way that might be more appealing to them.

Em, I see you nodding.

I was just going to jump in.

I think another example of how the algorithm is operating in these spaces is in the conversation about birth control.

So, I recently did some reporting about the rise of young women who are starting to question whether they should get off of hormonal birth control.

And a lot of this is rooted in TikTok misinformation.

So, I interviewed more than a dozen young women in different parts of the country who had all started to see their social media feeds overtaken by videos that were encouraging young women to ask the question, quote unquote, who am I without birth control?

And a lot of these videos included misinformation, for example, saying that birth control could cause infertility or disease.

And very few of these videos are from medical or healthcare professionals.

And I spoke with public health researchers who have studied this.

And what they've found is that the majority of TikTok content about birth control is encouraging women to question and to be skeptical of hormonal birth control.

And then what I found is that some of these young women were going to their doctors and saying that they had this sort of new, abstract, amorphous sense of doubt about birth control.

And I interviewed one young woman who, because of that, decided to go off of birth control and four months later was pregnant, though she told me that she had not yet felt ready to have a child.

And this is occurring, this rise of social media stigmatization of birth control is occurring at the same time as there are increasing legal moves to restrict legal access to contraception.

So I think we need to think about the way that the algorithm is colliding with a political and legal landscape that's constricting access as well.

And I want to complicate this by asking both of you to now speculate about the coming transfer of TikTok to American hands that have already been part of the authoritarian rise.

We know that Oracle, which is owned by Larry Ellison, who just helped his son David buy Paramount.

And as a part of that,

the speculation is that they had to cancel Stephen Colbert, that there's a universe of trouble that is portending.

And that if TikTok is owned by this new consortium, the algorithm is going to accelerate this current regime's belief system.

When you all think about TikTok, when you think about what the algorithm is going to say to these young women, what are you afraid of?

And are you seeing a counterweight coming from the left?

Well, one conversation I think about when I think about the TikTok algorithm is I came across one account where a young woman had gone on TikTok and called birth control, quote unquote, evil.

And so I tracked her down and called her and asked what had prompted her to call it evil.

And she told me, and this really stuck in my mind, she said, of course, I was exaggerating, but you can't have a lukewarm take on TikTok.

And that really stuck with me because it reminded me that the social media content that young people is encountering is inherently the sort of extreme, exaggerated version of people's actual belief systems.

So what's influencing people's decisions over their own body and over their own health is what influencers themselves will concede is a kind of exaggerated version of their own beliefs.

I also think about a a lot of the right-wing women influencers who I have interviewed in recent months.

And one very popular one is Alex Clark.

And Alex Clark is a podcast host with Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk's, now Erica Kirk's organization.

And her content often comes up on people's feeds.

And when I've interviewed young women about why they're going to certain right-wing events, they've told me what drew them into those spaces is encountering Alex Clark's content on their feeds.

And she is someone also who, and some of her, I've seen clips of her go viral where she talks about birth control and she says it's linked to infertility.

And when I interviewed her about that, she told me that actually what she meant is that when young women are prescribed birth control, it can mask the symptoms of certain underlying conditions that they have.

And so then they might put off getting those looked into and might then struggle later on down the line to conceive.

So again, I feel like like there are all these examples where the sound bites young people encounter on social media are the

most sort of extreme 15-second takes on something.

And the amount of time it actually takes to really unpack what people mean is not the version that goes viral on TikTok and on Instagram.

And yet, the sound bites are what is driving people's decision-making and even driving them to sort of attend political events or get involved with certain political organizations.

So, that's what I think about when I think about the way that some of these platforms are already sort of driving people's decision making.

Kate?

Yeah, I 100% agree.

I think I've noticed in the past year or so, I think since the first TikTok ban was proposed, I have seen a lot of creators that I follow, as well as myself, talk about how they feel like their content is getting suppressed.

Just generally speaking, if they are talking about politics, the news, I think social media since 2020 has radically changed.

I think about the power of social media during the Black Lives Matter movement, how people were sharing resources, where protests are, information.

And now a lot of that same political content in infographics and resources, it gets suppressed by the algorithm.

So it's a very scary place.

And I think, especially as it relates to public health messaging in the left, I think it's much harder to talk about a like research study and get it into a 15-second TikTok video than to say something like you mentioned, Emma, of birth control is evil.

So I really worry not only about what information people have access to with this upcoming TikTok decision, but also what messages are going to get promoted.

to young women.

I can imagine a lot of anti-birth control rhetoric is going to get pushed on the algorithm.

A lot of trad wife content is going to get pushed to women on the algorithm.

So it's kind of like fighting with two different weapons, I feel like, when it comes to information and disinformation as it relates to health and wellness.

And it's really challenging as a creator to get people out of these pipelines.

I've seen a lot of creators recently being like, we need to make alt-left pipelines to get people to leftist compassionate thinking about these things.

That is a little bit more nuanced, but it's something that's definitely challenging when it does feel like the algorithm overwhelmingly biases right-wing thinking.

And I'm really worried about that.

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Emma, you have written recently about how more and more young women are identifying as conservative.

How are these issues impacting voting behavior?

It's a really good question.

And one thing that got me interested in reporting on this is that young women have been traditionally considered just a reliable liberal stronghold.

One of the most reliable sort of demographics that is entrenched in the left.

But in the last election in 2024, we saw that demographic of young women start to shift a little bit right along with the rest of the country.

And there was a lot of ham-wringing in the wake of the election about the manosphere and the sphere of podcasts like Joe Rogan and Theo Vaughn and others who had reached millions and millions of young men by talking to them about very simple things like weightlifting, supplements,

you know, political correctness, their lives, comedy, but then had slowly started to play more and more of a political role, including having Donald Trump on their podcasts or even throwing their support behind him in his presidential bid.

And I was wondering, is the same thing going on in the sphere of women and women's media?

And what I have found is that there is a fast-growing sphere of women influencers who are doing the same thing on the right, but targeting that demographic of young women.

And that includes people like Alex Clark, who is, again, a turning point USA podcaster, a very big supporter of Charlie and Erica Kirk.

It also includes Ali Beth Stocky, whose audience is more of religious young women as opposed to Maha.

And it even includes more recently, Katie Miller, who is the wife of Stephen Miller, the top White House aide.

And

when she decided to no longer be the kind of top operative for Elon Musk in Washington, because Elon Musk was saying goodbye to Washington, she decided to launch a podcast.

And I think her launch video is a very sort of interesting text in reading this moment, because what she said while sitting in her living room is that she was not going to talk about so only about politics.

She was going to talk about being a parent of young kids, about being a woman who is trying to balance a career and parenting and fitness and social life and all of these things.

And yet her first interview was with Vice President J.D.

Vance.

And so she, I think, is a sort of really interesting example of how someone can sort of say they're going to be largely focusing on lifestyle, focusing on health and wellness and personal life, and yet have a lot of politics imbued within that.

And, you know, for many, many decades, we've seen the right talk a lot about this idea of personal responsibility, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.

But now we're seeing podcasters, influencers, voices with not only millions of listeners, but people spending dozens and dozens, if not hundreds of hours with their voices kind of streaming into their ear while they're driving, while they're showering, while they're cooking.

And so we're seeing again that

personal responsibility imbued with politics.

And where I saw this really operationalized was in June when I went to the largest gathering of conservative young women in the country.

It was in Dallas and it was hosted by Turning Point USA.

And what I thought was fascinating was Charlie and Erica Kirk came on stage when the conference was opening and they said they were going to do a Q ⁇ A, but they didn't really want to talk about politics.

They wanted to talk about their lives.

And they had young people coming up and asking them about their observance of the Sabbath, about the way that they construct their marriage, about how they think about parenting.

So again, it was starting with the most visceral, the most intimate, just the way that people find a blueprint for building their lives.

But of course, all of it was suffused with the political.

And they encouraged women over and over to put marriage before career.

And Charlie Kirk memorably said, like, that nowhere in the Bible does it say go forth and become CEO of a shoe company.

And, you know, they had the two of them talking about how important it was to,

if possible, get married before 30.

And Charlie Kirk looked at the room and asked everyone to raise their hands if their purpose every single day was finding a husband.

And then he said, you know, like every hand in the room should go up.

So I think that conference was a prime example of the way that influencers across the right

are basically taking that personalist political, the personal responsibility idea and running with it by talking about marriage, wellness, fitness, health, and then often kind of positioning that as a gateway to the broader political right.

And I think the last election when young women did shift slightly to the right, in spite of being a liberal stronghold for so long, is a kind of glimpse of that playbook at work.

Well, during previous episodes, I've talked about the rise of pro-natalism and its connection to plans in Project 2025 to force a return to traditional gender roles where a woman, preferably white, belongs in the home raising multiple children.

And what you've just described is certainly emblematic of that.

And for both of you, how would you connect the dots between this Turning Points USA, these influencers, and what I would argue is this broader authoritarian playbook?

And Emma, I'll start with you and then Kate would love to hear your thoughts well.

So earlier in the year, I went to Natal Con to report from there.

And that's the basically in-person gathering of the pronatalism movement.

And it was really interesting to be there this year because the mood in the room, it was in Austin, and it was a lot of basically think tank figures,

podcasters, influencers, and then just people who generally identify as being interested in pronatalism.

Some of them because they themselves have large families or they homeschool and they're interested in seeing policy that basically encourages Americans, namely American women, to have more children and reverse the, you know, the declining birth rates.

And the mood in the room was very celebratory because people there kept saying they feel that they really have a welcome ear in the Trump White House.

And we have seen that and like reporting from my colleagues has also shown that people in the White House are considering proposals that would potentially encourage women to have more children.

And one thing that struck me was that at this conference, it was overwhelmingly male.

And when I asked people about why that was the case, some of them said they had invited more women and then those women got pregnant.

Or, you know, the women who we did see speak literally stood from the front of the room with a baby strapped on their back or a baby in their arms.

And so they were pretty clear that the role that they see for women in these spaces is to be out there having children.

Whereas the voices who are in the room, largely thinking about what policies will drive that, are men.

And we did see, I mean, at that conference, there were some speakers who took a pretty far-right approach to that and talked about how they do not see, these speakers said they don't see immigration as the answer to this because, you know, they spoke pretty clearly about seeing this as basically wanting there to be a sort of like bolstering of the West.

And so there was definitely like a far-right

sphere within that room and

within that circle who

were saying this is not just about any babies or not about using immigration or bolstering the workforce they saw this as like a far right movement but there there was also a broad spectrum of voices in the room so that was all um pretty wild to see kate

sounds

scary sounds like handmaid's tale and kind of going back to a lot of women that are opting out of birth control now i think that relates a lot to what we're seeing with women's kind of interest in tracking their own cycle and the rhetoric is like, I, funny enough, it's using abortion rhetoric of I want to take care of my own body.

I don't want the government controlling me.

All of these sentiments are now being used by the right as women are talking about wanting to take this ownership of their health.

And we found out that a lot of these period tracking apps are selling data.

Aura Rang recently came out that there's contracts with Palantir.

So at the same time that women might think that they have this autonomy over their body, we live in a surveillance state where a lot of these apps are harvesting your data.

And it's a very scary time to be a woman that wants to make these medical decisions.

We know that women are being criminalized for what they choose to do with their body in certain states based on the reproductive laws.

So, I think this move to take care of your own individual well-being, it might sound good, but there's a lot of sinister forces in the back.

And particularly, these messages to get off birth control and just take things into your own hand don't necessarily mean that you are free from this authoritarian overreach, like you said.

And I think one thing that's particularly sinister about what RFK Jr.

is doing within health and human services is that now we are seeing individual wellness practices be supplemented for public health measures.

Like I think a lot of the way that these wellness influencers talk about health is like if they're talking to a friend.

You should try this supplement.

You should sleep more.

You should eat more vegetables.

You should go to Pilates.

That's not equal to a public health response that we need to have research, that we need to have scientists.

We need to have the development of new vaccines and pharmaceuticals to keep a population safe.

You're seeing the total dismantling of the CDC, FDA, HHS, and people are just taking to their own account to optimize their own health.

And we're lacking a lot of infrastructure we used to have.

Well, staying with that, we know that the Trump administration led by Kennedy today is planning to make an announcement.

We're recording this on Monday, but there's a pronouncement to be made about how Tylenol is linked to autism.

and it's not based on real science.

Can you talk a little bit more, Kate, about what it means when we watch the CDC and HHS dismantled?

And in particular, how are your colleagues and allies in the health and wellness social media sphere, how are they thinking about their role as truth tellers when we see the official truth tellers start to lie?

Yeah, that's a great question.

And I think this, I'm nervous to see this comment as someone who speaks with a brother with disabilities.

It's so discriminatory towards those communities or any parent who has a child that may have certain disabilities to see this rhetoric echoed by people in power.

It's not crazy bloggers.

These people now have authority to create government policy.

And I think it's really challenging, I think, to kind of combat pseudoscience because as soon as you platform whatever RFK says, you're kind of taking that to be a meritable thing to debate.

And I think oftentimes with the left, we repeat these lies that the right wing is saying and we platform them like it's just a difference of opinions when we know that this is coming out of nowhere, that this has no factual basis, no research, no evidence.

And I think the first mistake is really treating these things like they are evidence-based.

But it is hard when that person is in government, right, to kind of combat that misinformation.

So I think the biggest thing that I have been pushing with people that are also in these social media spaces is really emphasize the fact that like you doing a Google search for 20 seconds is not gonna be the same as someone who's dedicated 10 plus years of their life to practicing and studying medicine and doing all of this work.

And I think that's one of the most difficult and frustrating things with messaging at the time, that anyone can have a platform.

It's a great thing, but it's also created so many problems in the public health space as it relates to this information.

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Emma, one of the tricky things about these conspiracy theories, especially when they come from the White House, from this administration, from this broader political space, is that they often start with a grain of truth.

Some women do experience side effects from birth control.

IVF can be physically and emotionally grueling and doesn't always work.

How do we rescue honest truth from this conspiracy spiral that seems to be so out of control?

This is what I actually have heard a lot of doctors wrestling with because I've interviewed doctors who are based all over the country about how they're dealing with basically an influx of patients who are coming into their exam rooms, raising questions that they feel is rooted in misinformation and particularly social media-driven misinformation.

And what some of them told me is that they're newly grappling with how important it is to kind of slow down and have these one-on-one conversations with patients and with young women to kind of recognize that, like you said, there's all kinds of truths that are wrapped up in this misinformation.

So for example, hormonal birth control might not be right for everyone, that it does sometimes come with different side effects, whether it's mood swings, water weight gain,

or even, you know, clotting and other issues.

And so doctors, the way they've put it to me is that they're trying to basically tell every patient there is no one size fits all approach.

And every conversation is about finding, for example, the method of contraception or

whatever else the conversation is that's healthiest, safest, and most effective for that specific person.

But where the challenge is is that so many of these conversations are wrapped up with historic levels of distrust.

There is for young women and particularly women of color, for example, the history of feeling like their concerns and their pain is brushed off by the medical system.

But then for historians, there's these echoes of something being stigmatized as a way to then restrict legal and political access to it.

So for example, a legal historian I interviewed told me that what she sees is echoes of

the efforts by the anti-abortion movement to frame abortion as not only, you know, shaky on religious or political or legal grounds, but some anti-abortion advocates tried to tell women that it was just unhealthy or impure or bad for them.

And so this legal historian heard echoes of that in the conversations that are stigmatizing birth control as unhealthy or unsafe or simply impure.

And it's such a loaded term.

But so I think there's a lot of history that's wrapped up in this moment.

So there's all kinds of echoes.

And I think what doctors and experts are seeing is the need to slow down, recognize the ambivalence and the uncertainty, and then reply to it with a conversation that kind of honors people's concerns and skepticism.

And Kate, can you talk a little bit about the racial dynamics for women of color and racialized medical disparities?

We know that

as Emma lifted up, women of color have long faced racism in the medical space.

We know that women have also faced misogyny in the medical space.

But would love to have you talk a little bit, particularly from someone in these online spaces, how are the racial dynamics playing out in this broader conversation?

I think typically in the wellness space, you see a lot of white women leading the charge.

I think when you think about who's buying supplements and leaning into these lifestyle things they're pushing on social media.

I mean, Emma, you probably know this through your reporting better than I, but I do think a lot of these faces are predominantly white women.

And it's such an interesting, this whole conversation is so interesting, like you've mentioned, because women have likely had a bad experience with their doctor or healthcare provider, let's say,

in their personal experience.

But I think my issue is like, if you've had a bad experience with birth control, that doesn't mean that you go on the internet and say that no one else should take birth control.

Like, that's where the issue is.

I think it's also very common and normal and real to want to find community and want to find other women that have experienced the same pain and issues that you have had to find solutions.

But the one precautionary tale I will say as it relates to the wellness industry that is preying upon women's insecurities and fears and pain points is that the wellness industry is a trillion-dollar industry.

All of the supplements, all of the gadgets, all of the things you could buy online.

Supplements are not regulated by the FDA.

Pharmaceuticals are.

And so I feel like when people see supplements advertised on podcasts or by influencers, they think, oh, this multivitamin or, oh, this sleep aid, I'm just going to take it.

And there can't be bad effects, right?

right if you were to take tylenol or something you would see all of the potential side effects and so i think a lot of people think supplements are this category where you can't have negative health effects it can't interact with other medication there was a big one i think last summer there's a supplement called ashwagandha and it really negatively interacts with ssris and so that was something that a lot of women didn't really consider prior to taking that herbal supplement.

So there can be a lot of complications from supplements.

And so my perspective on it is: you know, you should be an agent for your own individual health and go to the doctor and ask questions and find that individualized health plan, like Emma said.

But I think the internet is not this like perfect

solution for issues you might have had with your doctor.

You, of course, can find information, you can find community, but I think it's not going to replace a doctor that knows your blood work, knows your medical history, your family history, because they have that in-depth knowledge of you and your body.

Well, both of you have been fonts of very useful non-conspiratorial information.

And on Assembly Required, we like to leave our listeners with actionable steps to take so they can push back against harmful narratives like those we were discussing are coming out of Maha and coming out of this administration and this authoritarian regime.

So, Kate, how have you used your platform to try and combat misinformation?

You've alluded to some of it, but would love to hear you talk about how your audience can engage with you and engage online to spread the truth instead of misinformation.

Yeah, it's definitely needed right now.

I think I'm a big nonfiction book person.

I could create a list for everyone, but I think really understanding the origins of not only like wellness trends that you might see on social media, but understanding the origins of the healthcare system, pharmaceutical industry, I think that gives a lot of perspective.

That can be great.

I also think understanding the history of reproductive justice in this country can give you a lot of knowledge to understand these conversations of like, wait, they're trying to get me off birth control at the same time, they're passing all these anti-abortion laws to connect those dots better.

So I definitely think reading and staying educated.

Another point I think about a lot is like self-care is something that was actually coined by the Black Panther movement.

And now it's been totally co-opted in different ways.

And a lot of their political prognosis was like free health clinics, a free free lunch program.

So I think learning about the history of health can be something that can better situate you to the present.

So just reading.

I feel like that's my one biggest piece of advice right now when you feel powerless.

Well, I'm going to ask you to send us that list that we can post it on Assembly Required because I need some new things to read.

So let's do that.

Emma, what trusted resources would you recommend for accurate health and wellness information?

And what do you want our audience to do about that information when they have it?

Absolutely.

I think first of all, like supporting accountability journalism in this moment,

not only, you know, subscribing to the New York Times, although of course I am a big fan of that,

but ProPublica, stat news,

you know, health and health journalists who are reporting right now on the CDC and the kind of chaos in the health system and on the Maha movement.

I think all of that is just critical in this moment.

And then I would also, you know, echo what Kate said.

I'm a big fan of not only reading, there's so many great books that are coming out right now, but looking to the past to see where we've seen echoes of this moment before.

You know, I often reread Backlash by Susan Faludi, which looks at the backlash to women's rights in the 80s.

Andrea Dworkin's work on, for example, right-wing women in the 70s.

There's so much great history and historical journalism that informs, I think, the way we can make sense of this moment.

Okay, so I need your book list as well.

Emma Goldberg, Kate Glavin, thank you both so very much for being here with us on Assembly Required.

Appreciate your time.

Thank you for having us, Stacey.

That was delightfully in tune.

Yeah, we coordinated it.

As always on Assembly Required, we're here to give you real, actionable tools to face today's biggest challenges.

First, 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 Andrea Dworkin can also provide useful context on the current moment.

Next, solve problems.

Support accountability journalism that spotlights the truth about the Maha movement and the ways that it's 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.

And of course, we've got to do some good.

Support organizations like Reproductive Freedom for All and Immunize.org, both of which fight to promote accurate healthcare information and increase access.

As always, always, if you like what you hear, be sure to share this episode and subscribe on all your favorite platforms.

And to meet the demands of the algorithm, please rate the show and leave a comment.

You can find us on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you go to listen and learn.

Please also check out my sub stack, Assembly Notes, for more information about what we discussed on the podcast and other tools to help us protect our democracy.

And in the next few weeks, we're going to continue talking about the 10 Steps campaign, which you can find at 10stepsCampaign.org.

I'd love to hear more about what you're going to be doing and what tools and resources would be helpful.

If you have a report, a question, or a comment, send it to me.

You can start with an email to assemblyrequired at crooked.com or leave us a voicemail and you and your questions and comments might be featured on the pod.

Our number is 213-293-9509.

And that wraps up this episode of Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams.

Be careful out there, and I'll meet you here next week.

Assembly Required is a crooked media production.

Our lead show producer is Lacey Roberts, and our associate producer is Farah Safari.

Kirill Polaviev is our video producer.

This episode was recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis.

Our theme song is by Vasilis Photopoulos.

Thank you to Matt DeGroote, Kyle Seglin, Tyler Boozer, Ben Hethcote, and Priyanka Muntha for production support.

Our executive producers are Katie Long and me, Stacey Abrams.

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