The American Trends Panel survey methodology

Overview

Data in this report comes from Wave 160 of the American Trends Panel (ATP), Pew Research Center’s nationally representative panel of randomly selected U.S. adults. The survey was conducted Jan. 8-19, 2025, among a sample of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) U.S. adults. A total of 3,959 eligible, LGBTQ adults responded out of 8,951 who were sampled, for a survey-level response rate of 62% (AAPOR RR3). This includes 585 respondents from the ATP, 2,297 from the SSRS Opinion Panel (OP) and 1,077 from the Ipsos Knowledge Panel (KP).

The cumulative response rate accounting for nonresponse to the recruitment surveys and attrition is 1%. The break-off rate among eligible panelists who logged on to the survey and completed at least one item is 2%. The margin of sampling error for the full sample of 3,959 respondents is plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.

SSRS and Ipsos conducted the surveys for Pew Research Center. SSRS conducted the ATP and OP surveys via online (n=2,821) and live telephone (n=62) interviewing. Ipsos conducted the KP survey online only. Interviews were conducted in both English and Spanish.

To learn more about the ATP, read “About the American Trends Panel.”

Panel recruitment

Since 2018, the ATP has used address-based sampling (ABS) for recruitment. A study cover letter and a pre-incentive are mailed to a stratified, random sample of households selected from the U.S. Postal Service’s Computerized Delivery Sequence File. This Postal Service file has been estimated to cover 90% to 98% of the population. Within each sampled household, the adult with the next birthday is selected to participate. Other details of the ABS recruitment protocol have changed over time but are available upon request. Prior to 2018, the ATP was recruited using landline and cellphone random-digit-dial surveys administered in English and Spanish.

A national sample of U.S. adults has been recruited to the ATP approximately once per year since 2014. In some years, the recruitment has included additional efforts (known as an “oversample”) to improve the accuracy of data for underrepresented groups. For example, Hispanic adults, Black adults and Asian adults were oversampled in 2019, 2022 and 2023, respectively.

Sample design

Weighting

Sample sizes and sampling errors for other subgroups are available upon request. In addition to sampling error, one should bear in mind that question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of opinion polls.

For detailed information about our survey methodology, refer to the full survey methodology.

American Community Survey methodology

The analyses of couples’ region of residence, education, employment, income and family characteristics come from the American Community Survey (ACS). The ACS is the largest household survey in the United States, with a sample of more than 3 million addresses. Collected by the U.S. Census Bureau since 2001, it covers the topics previously included in the long form of the decennial census. The ACS estimates the size and characteristics of the nation’s resident population.

The ACS microdata files used for this analysis were provided by the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) from the University of Minnesota. IPUMS standardizes variable names and coding across years as much as possible, making it easier to analyze the data over time.

In examining where couples live, we analyzed couples of all ages. In examining education, we analyzed couples where the older partner was age 25 to 64. In examining employment, income, and family characteristics, we analyzed couples where the older partner was age 18 to 64.

The ACS does not capture all cohabiting relationships. The ACS only identifies cohabiting partnerships that include the head of household. The household head is the person in whose name the home is owned, being bought or rented. Most cohabiting relationships do involve the household head. To remain consistent across married and cohabiting relationships, we focus on marriages and cohabitations that involve only the head and their spouse or unmarried partner.

Another census data product, the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC), does capture all cohabitors. In the 2024 ASEC, 93% of all cohabiting adults are either the household head or the unmarried partner of the head.

Adjusted household income for this report follows the methodology from Pew Research Center’s previous work on the American middle class.

A document the Department of Health and Human Services sent to lawmakers to support Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to change U.S. policy on covid vaccines cites scientific studies that are unpublished or under dispute and mischaracterizes others.

One health expert called the document “willful medical disinformation” about the safety of covid vaccines for children and pregnant women.

“It is so far out of left field that I find it insulting to our members of Congress that they would actually give them something like this. Congress members are relying on these agencies to provide them with valid information, and it’s just not there,” said Mark Turrentine, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Baylor College of Medicine.

Kennedy, who was an anti-vaccine activist before taking a role in the Trump administration, announced May 27 that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would no longer recommend covid vaccines for pregnant women or healthy children, bypassing the agency’s formal process for adjusting its vaccine schedules for adults and kids. The announcement, made on the social platform X, has been met with outrage by many pediatricians and scientists.

The HHS document meant to support Kennedy’s decision, obtained by KFF Health News, was sent to members of Congress who questioned the science and process behind his move, according to one federal official who asked not to be identified because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The document has not been posted on the HHS website, though it is the first detailed explanation of Kennedy’s announcement from the agency.

Titled “Covid Recommendation FAQ,” the document distorts some legitimate studies and cites others that are disputed and unpublished, medical experts say.

HHS director of communications Andrew Nixon told KFF Health News, “There is no distortion of the studies in this document. The underlying data speaks for itself, and it raises legitimate safety concerns. HHS will not ignore that evidence or downplay it. We will follow the data and the science.”

HHS did not respond to a request to name the author of the document.

One of the studies the HHS document cites is under investigation by its publisher regarding “potential issues with the research methodology and conclusions and author conflicts of interest,” according to a link on the study’s webpage.

“This is RFK Jr.’s playbook,” said Sean O’Leary, chair of the Committee on Infectious Diseases for the American Academy of Pediatrics and an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. “Either cherry-pick from good science or take junk science to support his premise — this has been his playbook for 20 years.”

Another study cited in the document is a preprint that has not been peer-reviewed. Under the study’s title is an alert that “it reports new medical research that has yet to be evaluated and so should not be used to guide clinical practice.” Though the preprint was made available a year ago, it has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

The FAQ supporting Kennedy’s decision claims that “post-marketing studies” of covid vaccines have identified “serious adverse effects, such as an increased risk of myocarditis and pericarditis” — conditions in which the heart’s muscle or its covering, the pericardium, suffer inflammation.

False claims that the 2024 preprint showed myocarditis and pericarditis only in people who received a covid vaccine, and not in people infected with covid, circulated on social media. One of the study’s co-authors publicly rejected that idea, because the study did not compare outcomes between people who were vaccinated and those infected with the covid virus. The study also focused only on children and adolescents. The HHS document omitted numerous other peer-reviewed studies that have shown that the risk of myocarditis and pericarditis is greater after contracting covid for both vaccinated and non-vaccinated people than the risk of the same complications after vaccination alone.

O’Leary said that while some cases of myocarditis were reported in vaccinated adolescent boys and young men early in the covid pandemic, the rates declined after the two initial doses of covid vaccines were spaced further apart.

Now, adolescents and adults who have not been previously vaccinated receive only one shot, and myocarditis no longer shows up in the data, O’Leary said, referring to the CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink. “There is no increased risk at this point that we can identify,” he said.

In two instances, the HHS memo makes claims that are actively refuted by the papers it cites to back them up. Both papers support the safety and effectiveness of covid vaccines for pregnant women.

The HHS document says that another paper it cites found “an increase in placental blood clotting in pregnant mothers who took the vaccine.” But the paper doesn’t contain any reference to placental blood clots or to pregnant women.

“I’ve now read it three times. And I cannot find that anywhere,” said Turrentine, the OB-GYN professor.

If he were grading the HHS document, “I would give this an ‘F,’” Turrentine said. “This is not supported by anything and it’s not using medical evidence.”

While members of Congress who are physicians should know to check references in the paper, they may not take the time to do so, said Neil Silverman, a professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology who directs the Infectious Diseases in Pregnancy Program at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “They’re going to assume this is coming from a scientific agency. So they are being hoodwinked along with everyone else who has had access to this document,” Silverman said.

The offices of three Republicans in Congress who are medical doctors serving on House and Senate committees focused on health, including Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, did not respond to requests for comment about whether they received the memo. Emily Druckman, communications director for Rep. Kim Schrier, D-Washington, a physician serving on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, confirmed that Schrier’s office did receive a copy of the document.

“The problem is a lot of legislators and even their staffers, they don’t have the expertise to be able to pick those references apart,” O’Leary said. “But this one — I’ve seen much better anti-vaccine propaganda than this, frankly.”

C.J. Young, deputy communications director for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, confirmed that Democratic staff members of the committee received the document from HHS. In the past, he said, similar documents would help clarify the justification and scope of an administration’s policy change and could be assumed to be scientifically accurate, Young said.

“This feels like it’s breaking new ground. I don’t think that we saw this level of sloppiness or inattention to detail or lack of consideration for scientific merit under the first Trump administration,” Young said.

On June 4, Rep. Frank Pallone, D-New Jersey, and Schrier introduced a bill that would require Kennedy to adopt official vaccine decisions from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP. Young said the motivation behind the bill was Kennedy’s decision to change the covid vaccine schedule without the input of ACIP’s vaccine experts, who play a key role in setting CDC policies around vaccine schedules and access.

Kennedy announced June 9 on X that he would remove all 17 members of ACIP, citing alleged conflicts of interest he did not detail, and replace them. He announced eight replacements June 11, including people who had criticized vaccine mandates during the covid pandemic.

We’d like to speak with current and former personnel from the Department of Health and Human Services or its component agencies who believe the public should understand the impact of what’s happening within the federal health bureaucracy. Please message KFF Health News on Signal at (415) 519-8778 or get in touch here.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

The Handmaid’s Tale and The Righteous Gemstones reveal how women’s strategic submission within patriarchal Christianity—from tradwives to televangelists—can reinforce systems that ultimately strip them of power and autonomy.

Prestige television’s focus on U.S. Christianity is relevant, often provocative and perhaps both worryingly prescient and instructive. 

The popular and critically acclaimed series The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu, 2017–2025) and The Righteous Gemstones (HBO, 2019–2025) each recently wrapped a successful series run. Aside from a focus on U.S. Christianity, the two series have little overlap at first glance.  

Adapted from Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel, Handmaid’s centers a dystopian theocracy in which women have no rights or bodily autonomy. This includes Serena Joy Waterford, an architect of the society that now silences her.  

Meanwhile, Gemstones focuses on a wealthy and dysfunctional televangelist family and megachurch culture—showing how sisters-in-law Judy Gemstone and Amber Gemstone each wield power within a system that seeks to exclude women. 

While some critics have described Handmaid’s‘ story of the rise of a totalitarian theocracy in the U.S. as hysterical and implausible, Gemstones has been praised as an accurate albeit over-the top depiction of wealth, power and Evangelicalism.  

Despite these differences, both series critically explore the consequences of women’s complicity in patriarchal, religious regimes.  

Judy and Amber Gemstone represent two versions of U.S. Christian women who embrace restrictive institutions. Judy craves power and recognition as a church leader alongside her brothers; however, enmeshed in traditional familial and religious structures, she demands personal power while leaving intact systems that marginalize women. 

On the other hand, Amber’s identity and place within the family and church resembles real world tradwives. Amber embraces her role as a Christian wife, helpmate and mother. She positions herself as the family’s moral compass while deferring to her husband (the church’s associate pastor and Judy’s older brother) on all public matters.  

The Gemstone women accept and even normalize patriarchal constraints. They submit to men strategically, all the while working within and around patriarchal systems to carve out their own authority based upon ambition and desire for accolades. For example, in private, Amber guides her husband and helps position him as heir to the family’s religious empire.  

While Judy and Amber adeptly manage restrictive religious and social systems to their benefit, The Handmaid’s Tale considers long-term consequences of women’s deference (even if performative) and willingness to prop up systems rooted in misogyny.

Judy Gemstone and Amber Gemstone—along with real-world tradwives—should be read as the precursor to the anti-feminist villain Serena Joy Waterford. 

The former conservative activist and Gilead architect also worked to normalize and advance a deeply misogynist religious and political system. Yet, unlike the Gemstone women, Serena Joy loses her ability to wield power behind the scenes. Strategic submission leads to a loss of autonomy and expected subservience. 

Like the Gemstone women, Serena Joy attempts to work within conservative cultural boundaries to claim status and power. Demonstrating her piousness while appealing for women’s rights, Serena reads aloud from the Bible in public. Her finger is cut off as punishment for resistance because Gilead forbids women from reading and writing. 

As the series progresses, Serena’s status as a high-ranking Commander’s wife, her ambitions and her ability to manipulate public perception lead her to believe in the possibility of a better life for herself on the periphery of Gilead.

While Serena sees opportunity for herself within an oppressive system, Gilead’s male leaders see her as a rogue woman who needs to be put in her place. In Gilead, Commander’s wives embody the tradwife identity. They have been conditioned—some more willingly than others—to accept that women submit to men.

Serena only realizes she cannot escape the painful realities of subjugation in the regime she built when her second husband brings a handmaid into their home against her wishes. 

Serena, Amber and Judy each work to uphold systems that degrade women. While Gilead is far more brutal and deadly than the Gemstone megachurch, the two systems parallel one another and the contemporary tradwife movement.  

The tradwife movement and many characters in these series similarly treat submissive femininity as reflective of God’s will. Men are protectors and providers and can only fulfill their sacred duty if women devote themselves to homemaking and childcare. Ultimately, the success and growth of the tradwife movement relies upon women’s participation and enforcement of patriarchal norms.  

Judy and Amber Gemstone submit to men strategically, maintaining some individual choice and control. In turn, the women of Gilead live with the abusive and dehumanizing consequences of women forsaking bodily autonomy, economic independence and personal choice. 

When placed in conversation, The Righteous Gemstones and The Handmaid’s Tale expose the dangerous consequences of women participating in anti-feminist cultural backlash. The tradwife ideologies that Amber and Judy negotiate, and that Serena Joy once embraced in theory, become a totalitarian nightmare for all women in The Handmaid’s Tale.

Yet women surrendering choice—not only for themselves but for others—is not a hyperbolic fictional threat. As the tradwife movement gains influence, more women are experiencing the consequences of romanticizing traditional gender roles—often without questioning how submission can masquerade as choice within coercive systems.

In the past couple of weeks Trump’s administration has doubled their shameless quota of daily detentions to 3,000. Since then we have witnessed unbridled brutality and a complete lack of shame from the blatantly racist and anti-immigrant ICE and DHS agencies. Our neighbors and families are under attack. ICE agents across the country have been deployed en masse into our communities to carry out cruel, senseless and violent deportations.

The law has been broken and due process overlooked. Families have been violently split apart and the DHS and White House mock their victims, proliferating blatantly bigoted propaganda, encouraging their reactionary lackeys to harass and rat out their neighbors. But as Trump escalated his attacks, the people did not sit idly by.

In Los Angeles, communities across the city mobilized to mount resistance against ICE, filming them, calling them out, preventing them from conducting their illegal searches, and launching protests to obstruct them. Eventually, the resistance was so effective that on Friday, the federal government declared they would deploy 2,000 National Guard troops and as of today 700 Marines to violently suppress the uprising. All in service of escorting and protecting ICE agents while they carried out the policy of the Trump administration, a policy of kidnapping, displacement and family separation.

This is the natural conclusion of the Trump administration’s policy; a policy that utterly dehumanizes and demonizes the undocumented, a policy that lacks any regard for due process and constitutional rights, a policy meant to purvey white supremacy, oppression and unbridled hatred.

The detainment centers subject undocumented people to dismal conditions, a lack of food, intense overcrowding, preventing visits from close family, stripping away what little dignity these people had left. And now, these mass raids seek to add countless hundreds more to the swelling numbers of innocents trapped within these centers.

It is no mistake that the raids singled out a city like L.A, notable for its large long standing Chicano and Latino community and its status as a large sanctuary city. Trump wants to make an example out of it, wielding fear like a whip, he wants to cow other cities like L.A. into submission. His targeting of sanctuary cities such as L.A. and Chicago is an attempt to crush progressive policies won through decades of people’s struggle. It is exactly because of this that we must mobilize and fight back twice as hard. By joining and leading alongside mass mobilizations, we can show the Trump administration that their fear tactics don’t work. Cops won’t stop us, ICE won’t stop us, and the National Guard will not stop us from standing with our undocumented brothers and sisters as they face an unprecedented wave of oppression. Nothing will stop us from standing with them!

In this time of confrontation with federal agents from ICE, Homeland Security Investigations, or even the FBI, it is important for us to know our rights and what to do in the event of a visit or detention attempt. ICE is trained to lie – taught “ruse techniques” – in order to lure immigrants out of their homes, citing “informal meetings” or other excuses.
You don’t need to open the door for ICE or HSI (Homeland Security Investigations), nor should you ever reach out to them or call them back. If they visit you or leave a card for you, you should let them know your lawyer will get in touch with them and you won’t be speaking without one. Secure a lawyer (and groups like ours can help you) and have them investigate why ICE is trying to contact you and unravel whatever plot they have. It is important to never speak to ICE or other federal agents. One lie alone to an HSI, ICE, or FBI agent can carry up to 5 years of prison time.

We call on all our chapters to join local protests, as well take up calls to participate in rapid response networks. For those chapters still organizing on their campuses, we encourage you to take up or help push forward existing demands for sanctuary campuses. We will show the brave communities of L.A. that they are not alone in their struggle against ICE, that even as Trump uses military force we remain ready to fight onwards as ever, and that an attack against any one of us, is an attack against all of us!

Legalization for All!
Solidarity with the People of LA!
Down with Deportation, up with Liberation!

It is the world’s most downloaded ride-hailing app after Uber, and inDrive’s founder and chief executive Arsen Tomsky wants to go bigger.

Since its founding in Yakutsk in Siberia more than a decade ago, inDrive has grown to be present in nearly 900 cities in Central Asia, Africa, Latin America, and elsewhere. Now, Tomsky has his sights on turning it into a super-app that offers multiple services including food delivery, groceries, and financial products. 

Unlike its rivals such as Uber, Lyft, and Didi, inDrive doesn’t automatically match passengers and drivers. Instead, the algorithm recommends prices to drivers making bids for passengers, based on their origin and destination. Passengers select from these bids, and drivers can accept, decline, or counter with another offer. This model, with people setting the prices, is fairer and more transparent, and gives passengers and drivers more freedom than prices set solely by algorithms, Tomsky believes. Some drivers, though, have complained that they are often forced to agree to lower fares.

InDrive recently launched financial services, and entered the grocery business in Pakistan. Tomsky also set up Ayta AI, which helps people with a stutter sound natural on video calls. On the sidelines of the Web Summit in Rio de Janeiro in April, Tomsky spoke to Rest of World about his strategy and the role of artificial intelligence in his business. 

On what makes inDrive’s peer-to-peer fare model unique

It is a fair and transparent model, while our competitors have artificially low fares by giving heavy bonuses and incentives to drivers, and a lot of free rides and discounts to passengers. But they have high commissions or they sometimes increase fares — surge pricing, when the fares go up two or three times even. The algorithms are not transparent.  

We take just about 12% commission and we don’t set the fares, the people do — the customers and the drivers. In our system, drivers and passengers see the full information. The drivers see what price is proposed, and they can skip it if they don’t like it. Or they can use special filters: “I don’t want to see too cheap fares.” They have full freedom of choice. And they will not have any negative consequences for skipping. It’s a very different feeling, like being small entrepreneurs.  

On how AI is used in the inDrive app

Of course, we are also using AI. Within our app, the algorithm works to determine recommended pricing. Our drivers and passengers have the final say on prices they agree on, with each having the freedom to accept or reject. In some cities, we offer the alternative of not having to negotiate, letting the algorithm decide on a fare. It is a second option, not the main option. We are just testing it, and we will slowly introduce it in some cities. 

Human connection and negotiation will always be at the core of our product. I don’t want to build one more small Uber.

On inDrive’s expansion plans, and building a super-app 

We are entering new segments because we see a lot of injustice from large companies, and monopolies in too many fields. We are beginning to enter the dark store [a shop that exists only to fulfill online orders]. We are testing it in Kazakhstan, where we invested in a dark-store player called Ryadom. We will then go to other countries. 

And step by step, we are going to build something like a super-app. It’s very logical for us as we continue to expand and diversify beyond mobility. We have an official goal, to impact at least 1 billion people by 2030. We want to be across the last mile of delivery, and also in the fields of education and health care. I don’t know now how health care and education will fit into this super-app. It won’t be like a Chinese super-app. But I am sure we will find a way. We are looking to pilot in select markets.

On inDrive becoming profitable 

This year we are going to become net profitable. As I said, we avoid bonuses, discounts, promotions, and so on. And we are lean — we don’t have thousands of software engineers in Silicon Valley. We have almost 3,000 people in 28 offices around the globe. In 2022, we moved around 1,000 people from Russia because of the war, to Cyprus and Kazakhstan. We also have 300–400 people in Mexico. Brazil, Colombia, India, Indonesia, and Pakistan are our other major hubs.

On exiting Miami, and entering new markets

We launched in Miami [inDrive’s only U.S. market] in 2023 and left in 2025. It was a test launch for us, and we realized that operating in the U.S. is very expensive because of the increase in insurance prices. We can relaunch there in the future, but not for now. For us it makes more sense to be in developing countries, where people are more price-conscious, they value each dollar. We entered Southeast Asia recently, and we are now active in six countries there, including Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand. 

On why fairness in business matters

I’m obsessed with the question of fairness because I’ve met with a lot of injustice in my life. We can begin with the fact that I was born in the coldest city in the world [Yakutsk]. You can call that a form of climate injustice. I’m a stutterer — that is another injustice. I’ve had domestic violence in my family, and that’s one more kind of injustice. And now I have a real chance to change this for other people with my business and philanthropy.

Less than two years ago, the administration of President Joe Biden announced what tribal leaders hailed as an unprecedented commitment to the Native tribes whose ways of life had been devastated by federal dam-building along the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest.

The deal, which took two years to negotiate, halted decades of lawsuits over the harm federal dams had caused to the salmon that had sustained those tribes culturally and economically for thousands of years. To enable the removal of four hydroelectric dams considered especially harmful to salmon, the government promised to invest billions of dollars in alternative energy sources to be created by the tribes.

It was a remarkable step following repeated failures by the government to uphold the tribal fishing rights it swore in treaties to preserve.

The agreement is now just another of those broken promises.

President Donald Trump signed a memorandum on Thursday pulling the federal government out of the deal. Trump’s decision halted a government-wide initiative to restore abundant salmon runs in the Columbia and Snake rivers and signaled an end to the government’s willingness to consider removing dams that blocked their free flow.

Thursday’s move drew immediate condemnation from tribes and from environmental groups that have fought to protect salmon.

“The Administration’s decision to terminate these commitments echoes the federal government’s historic pattern of broken promises to tribes,” Yakama Nation Tribal Council Chair Gerald Lewis said in a statement. “This termination will severely disrupt vital fisheries restoration efforts, eliminate certainty for hydro operations, and likely result in increased energy costs and regional instability.”

The government’s commitment to tribes, however, had been unraveling since almost when the deal was inked.

Key provisions were already languishing under Biden. After Trump won the presidency, his administration spiked most of the studies called for in the agreement, held up millions of dollars in funding and cut most of the staff working to implement salmon recovery. Biden’s promise to seriously consider the removal of dams gained little traction before it was replaced by what Trump’s energy secretary, Chris Wright, called “passionate support” for keeping them in place.

The chair of the White House task force to implement the agreement quit in April because of what he saw as Trump’s efforts to eliminate nearly everything he was working on.

“Federal agencies who were on the hook to do the work were being destroyed through untargeted, inefficient and costly purges of federal employees,” Nik Blosser, the former Columbia River Task Force chair, told ProPublica and OPB. “When I left, most things were on hold or paused — even signed contracts were on hold, which is a disgrace.”

Trump’s White House announcement called the Biden administration’s commitments “onerous” and said the president “continues to deliver on his promise to end the previous administration’s misplaced priorities and protect the livelihoods of the American people.”

“President Trump is committed to unleashing American energy dominance, reversing all executive actions that impose undue burdens on energy production and use,” the announcement read.

But the decision could also have some unintended consequences, experts say.

Trump signed an executive order in April to “restore American seafood competitiveness” but in revoking the Columbia River agreement has canceled millions of dollars to support the programs that seed the ocean with fish to catch. He signed a separate executive order on his first day in office to “unleash American energy dominance” but has now reversed a commitment, made under the Biden salmon deal, to build new sources of domestic energy. This week’s action has sent federal agencies back to court, where judges have repeatedly shackled power production at hydroelectric dams because of its impact on the endangered fish.

“It’s tempting to comment at length on the absurdity of the President’s order, including the fact that what he says he wants — stability for power generation — is in fact put more at risk by this action,” Blosser wrote in a post on LinkedIn. “Instead, I’ll look for inspiration to the mighty salmon, who don’t stop swimming upstream when they get to a waterfall.”

Back to Court

Before they began negotiating the Columbia River Basin agreement in 2021, federal agencies had been losing in court over the hydropower system for more than 20 years. Judge after judge ordered the federal government to use less water for making electricity and instead let more of the river spill through the dams’ floodgates so that fish could more safely ride the current past them.

The accord with states and tribes guaranteed up to a decade without those lawsuits. Trump canceled that.

The Bonneville Power Administration, which sells the hydroelectricity from federal dams, had more at stake than the rest of the agencies in the deal. When the government signed it, Bonneville Administrator John Hairston said it provided “operational certainty and reliability while avoiding costly, unpredictable litigation in support of our mission to provide a reliable, affordable power supply to the Pacific Northwest.”

In its most recent annual report, Bonneville credited the agreement for giving it the flexibility to increase hydropower production during times of high electricity demand, which helped stem the losses in an otherwise difficult financial year.

A major component of the agreement was the acknowledgment of the region’s dependence on hydropower and the need to build new sources of energy before removing the dams. It offered no guarantee of dam removal.

The Biden White House had pledged to help tribes develop enough renewable energy sources to replace the output of four dams on the Snake River, which salmon advocates have long wanted to remove. The administration also planned an analysis of how to meet the region’s energy needs without sacrificing salmon.

The Biden administration never followed through. Even tribally backed energy projects that were already in progress ran into bureaucratic quagmires. When Trump took office and slashed thousands of jobs from the Department of Energy, the commitment for new energy sources died too.

Proponents of Columbia River dams, including the publicly owned utilities that buy federal hydroelectricity, criticized the Biden administration for leaving them out of the negotiations that led to the agreement.

“I want to thank the President (Trump) for his decisive action to protect our dams,” Rep. Dan Newhouse, a Republican from Central Washington, said in a statement on Thursday. He said the Biden administration and “extreme environmental activists” would have threatened the reliability of the power grid and raised energy prices with dam removal.

Even critics of the Biden deal, however, acknowledge they do not want the issue to return to court, where judges’ orders have driven up electricity rates. When Bonneville can’t generate as much hydropower to sell, but still has to pay for hatcheries and habitat fixes for salmon, it has to charge utilities more for its electricity.

“I’m hoping that we avoid dam operations by injunction, because that doesn’t help anybody in the region,” said Scott Simms, executive director of the Public Power Council, a nonprofit representing utilities that purchase federal hydropower.

Earthjustice attorney Amanda Goodin, who represents the environmental advocates who signed the agreement, said the Trump administration’s actions would force a return to courts.

“The agreement formed the basis for the stay of litigation,” Goodin said, “so without the agreement there is no longer any basis for a stay.”

More Fish Will Die

The White House said that Trump’s revoking of the Columbia River deal shows that he “continues to prioritize our Nation’s energy infrastructure and use of natural resources to lower the cost of living for all Americans over speculative climate change concerns.”

Shannon Wheeler, chair of the Nez Perce Tribe, said the damage on the Columbia River is anything but speculative.

“This action tries to hide from the truth,” Wheeler said in a statement. “The Nez Perce Tribe holds a duty to speak the truth for the salmon, and the truth is that extinction of salmon populations is happening now.”

Wild salmon populations on the Columbia and its largest tributary, the Snake River, have been so sparse for decades that commercial, recreational and tribal subsistence fishing are only possible because of fish hatcheries, which raise millions of baby salmon in pens and release them into the wild when they’re old enough to swim to the ocean.

In some years, an estimated half of all the Chinook salmon commercial fishermen catch in Southeast Alaska are from Columbia River hatcheries, making them critical for “restoring American seafood competitiveness” as Trump aimed to do.

But some Columbia River hatcheries are nearly a century old. Others have been so badly underfunded that equipment failures have killed thousands of baby fish.

As ProPublica and OPB previously reported, the number of hatchery salmon surviving to adulthood is now so low that hatcheries have struggled to collect enough fish for breeding, putting future fishing seasons in jeopardy.

The Biden administration promised roughly $500 million to improve hatcheries across the Northwest. His administration never delivered it, and Trump halted all the funds before eventually canceling them with this week’s order.

Mary Lou Soscia, former Columbia River coordinator at the Environmental Protection Agency, said the administration’s dismantling of salmon recovery programs amounts to “cutting off your nose to spite your face.”

“We’re losing decades of accomplishments,” said Soscia, who spent more than 30 years at the agency.

“When the fish managers aren’t there to make real time river decisions, more fish will die,” she said. “Or the watershed restoration work will take a lot longer to happen because you won’t have funding and more fish will die.”

Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” marked a historic moment in country music. Following its release in March 2024, Beyoncé became the first Black woman to lead Billboard’s Top Country Album chart since it started in 1964. Her Grammy win this year for Best Country Album was another first for Black artists. “Cowboy Carter” asked mainstream listeners to consider how Black artists helped create and shape country music. It also sparked questions about its authenticity as real country. 

Many Beyoncé and Black country music fans alike hoped the attention would open doors to more diversity in the White-dominated commercial country music industry. The reality is more complicated.

On Thursday, Billboard reported that the 2026 Grammy Awards will include a new category: Best Traditional Country Album. Best Country Album is being renamed Best Contemporary Country Album. The Recording Academy, which presents the awards, celebrated the decision as an opportunity to create more space for different types of musical styles to be honored.

According to the a description of the category provided to Billboard, “traditional country includes country recordings that adhere to the more traditional sound structures of the country genre, including rhythm and singing style, lyrical content, as well as traditional country instrumentation such as acoustic guitar, steel guitar, fiddle, banjo, mandolin, piano, electric guitar and live drums.”

The news quickly drew criticism, with some Beyoncé fans on social media accusing the academy of gatekeeping in response to her barrier-breaking achievement. In an interview with reporter Phil Lewis, author of the “What I’m Reading” newsletter, an anonymous music executive said that the Recording Academy’s decision appears to be a clear reaction to “Cowboy Carter.”

The road to “Cowboy Carter” began with the 2016 release of her country song, “Daddy Lessons,” which despite its traditional arrangement and instrumentation, was immediately put to the “country enough” test. 

“All of the sudden, everyone’s acting like she’s moved to Nashville and announced that she’s country now. Just because of this song ‘Daddy Lessons,’” Alison Bonaguro, a critic for Country Music Television, wrote in a 2016 column headlined “What’s so country about Beyoncé?”

Later that year, Beyoncé’s viral performance of the song alongside The Chicks at the Country Music Awards led to more online debate unpacking what and whose music counts as “real country.” Those conversations are a throughline to “Cowboy Carter,” with some country fans disqualifying the album from their own definition of country because of its fusion with hip hop, blues and other genres. Despite the album topping country charts, the Country Music Association did not nominate the album for a single award at the 2024 Country Music Awards.  

But the Grammy victory — which came the same year that Beyoncé won Album of the Year for the first time — cemented the legacy of “Cowboy Carter.” Some researchers and country music fans say it also points to the particular novelty of Beyoncé’s success compared to that of other Black artists pursuing a place in the country music industry, which has taken deliberate steps to shut out artists of color for more than 100 years.

“Beyoncé is in her own category of artists. She’s such a big star, she didn’t have to show deference to the gatekeepers of Nashville, the traditional gatekeepers of commercial country music,” said Amanda Martínez, a historian and assistant professor of American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This is not the reality for most Black artists looking to break into country music, she added.

“There have been a lot of conversations about creating more opportunities for Black artists, and I think that what we’re seeing is that chapter has passed. I think that we’re seeing a general moving away from pretending to be invested in creating opportunities for artists of color or addressing issues of diversity,” Martínez added.

“Cowboy Carter” included features from newer Black country artists like Shaboozey, Tanner Adell, Brittney Spencer, Tiera Kennedy and Reyna Roberts, who have leveraged that spotlight to reach broader audiences. Shaboozey, in particular, managed to have a breakout year as an independent artist in 2024, dominating the Billboard Hot 100 chart for a record-tying 19 weeks with his single, “Bar Song.” 

But these singers represent a small fraction of country radio airplay, which remains a powerful platform for the genre. In February, Ottawa University researcher Jada Watson posted updated data on social media finding that in 2024, women artists received 8.39 percent of country radio airplay — a decline from 11 percent in 2022 — and Black artists received 2.8 percent of airplay. White artists represented 94 percent and White men were 81 percent.

“Despite our urging for radio to build pathways for Black female country artists alongside [Beyoncé’s] ‘Texas Hold ‘Em,’ the format failed to platform Black women. Again,” Watson wrote on Bluesky earlier this year. “Radio played ‘Texas Hold ‘Em’ just as much as they needed… until they didn’t anymore.”

Throughout country music’s history, artists of color have been largely segregated and forced to challenge claims that their sound does not represent authentic country music. Black country artists and fans are doing what they can to create their own avenues. Record labels like Rosedale Collective and Origins Records were created to support Black country artists and other artists of color. The Black Opry is a community for Black artists and fans that produces country and Americana shows around the United States.

It’s unclear at this point whether the new change in Grammys categories will be used as another tool to police or undermine the artistry of musicians of color. Martínez said we will have to “wait and see” which artists are celebrated moving forward. When it comes to broader systemic changes, she said: “it’s hard to be hopeful about the prospects of whatever consideration Black artists will receive from the Grammys or the CMAs.”

Sydney Sweeney’s soap might not be porn—but it is the product of how porn positions women’s bodies as a public, commercial commodity.

“I need your thoughts on this.” Attached to this urgent text was a link my friend had forwarded to me: An article in The Cut by Elizabeth Gulino titled, “You Can Buy Sydney Sweeney’s Bathwater Now.”

My eyes widened, though I was, on the whole, unsurprised. Celebrity bathwater is no new concept, especially in the wake of the popular Saltburn-inspired candle labeled as “Jacob Elordi’s Bathwater,” which purported to smell like “vanilla, comfort spice and sea breeze.” We’ve even gone beyond the intimacy of bathwater in the candle department, as Gwyneth Paltrow sold one simply titled, “This Smells Like My Vagina.”

Sweeney is selling soap, not candles; and yes, according to Gulino, it is actually infused with her bathwater. Believe it or not, this isn’t even first instance of genuine bathwater bargaining on the internet. Infamously, Instagram star and gamer girl Belle Delphine sold out of jars of her own “Gamer Girl bathwater” in just a few days, resulting in seemingly infinite internet discourse.

Sweeney’s marketing approach was perhaps more thought out—but the premise is the same. In collaboration with the natural soap company, Dr. Squatch, Sweeney sat in a bathtub and allowed the company to extract that same water to then be infused into the soap, named “Sydney’s Bathwater Bliss.” 

Upon my first glance at the article, I found myself instinctually grasping for some feminist argument of the campaign, which Sweeney claimed to be fulfilling her fans’ persistent and frankly invasive requests for her bathwater. According to a GQ interview, Sweeney viewed the campaign as, “such a cool way to have a conversation with the audience and give them what they want.” 

I tried to read the statement beyond face value, as aware of its own absurdity, knowingly indulging men’s freakish desires to gain a leg up on them. And Gulino seemed to think so too, commenting, “If you can’t beat ’em … serve ’em your bathwater?”—a statement that’s delivered with an attitude of cheeky empowerment, but ultimately concedes to a disempowering reality. Whether or not it could be a knowing power play in the absurd game of male desire, the game itself is inherently degrading. There is nothing empowering about bargaining off your own bathwater to the patriarchy.

I have no desire to shame Sweeney, mainly because I can never know what she was thinking when she agreed to this campaign. For all I know, she knew it would sell and didn’t care about how people would assess her decision. I also have no desire generally to blame women who choose to engage in the disrespectful and at times disturbing sexual desires of straight men. 

However, the way our commercial society and the broader marketplace are structured encourages women to market themselves towards those often degrading desires and enables men to continue acting as if treating women as objects is acceptable. And the solution is not restructuring what we construe as feminism, but rather, resisting the urge to accommodate one’s power to what seems like inevitable exploitation.

Just because you are able to choose when you want to fulfill and profit off of men’s sexual desires does not mean that you are completely removed from patriarchal power dynamics informing those desires. 

Journalist and author Sophie Gilbert recently published a piece in The Atlantic entitled, “What Porn Taught a Generation of Women”—excerpted from her recently released novel Girl on Girl—which details how from the ’90s to the early 2000s, sex became the driving force of popular culture because of what she calls, “the defining art form of the late 20th century”: porn. During this period, which coincided with a genuine movement towards sexual liberation and destigmatization, as well as the third-wave feminist movement, Gilbert posits that women perceived the hypersexualization of culture as expectedly “empowering’” to them.

But perhaps this approach of empowerment was a veil for the driving purpose of sex in the late ’90s-early 2000s mainstream landscape: its ability to sell. Gilbert references Frank Rich’s New York Times Magazine story, “Naked Capitalists,”  from 2001, in which he argued that in a world where porn is a multi-billion dollar industry—worth more money than annual movie ticket sales and professional sports—the most immediate way for a woman to gain tangible power or recognition was to sexualize herself for public consumption.

And in the years since Rich’s article, the industry has only grown. According to a 2018 Guardian article, the conservative estimate for how much the online-porn industry makes in a year is $15 billion; that’s more than Netflix ($11.7 billion) and all of Hollywood as a whole ($11.1 billion). With its growing commercialization comes new technology and platforms to make for easier, more accessible production. OnlyFans, a U.K.-based platform where creators can post sexual and sexualized content tailored to their subscribers’ personal desires, is perhaps the most notable recent invention of the porn industry. The company is reported to bring in on average $10 million annually and has around 3 million creators around the world with 230 million subscribing “fans,” according to The Washington Post.

However, the platform is not as simple as the premise of creator-based porn would imply. In a 2019 New York Times article titled, “How OnlyFans Changed Sex Work Forever,” Jacob Bernstein points out a curious paradox in the platform’s nature: “The hottest site in the adult entertainment industry,” he said, “is dominated by providers who show fewer sex acts and charge increasing fees depending on how creative the requests get.” Indeed, while OnlyFans is certainly explicit in some areas, many creators are not regularly making what we’d consider straight-up porn, but rather, charging subscribers for smaller specific requests like dressing up in certain sexualized costumes, exchanging too-racy-for-Instagram images or squeezing sports-bra clad breasts in front of the camera. 

In some ways, this could be seen as progress from our preexisting exploitative porn industry that Gilbert references. Creators have far more control over the content they make and a certain amount of distance and power over those who demand it. 

However, perhaps OnlyFans is not so much a sign of progress as it is a marker of how decentralized and, subsequently, normalized the porn industry has become. It is casually invasive; just because you are able to choose when you want to fulfill and profit off of men’s sexual desires does not mean that you are completely removed from patriarchal power dynamics informing those desires. 

Many men engaging with porn are fed content that objectifies, dehumanizes and aggresses women: 69 percent of American men watch porn, and one study found that 88 percent of straight porn exhibits some amount of violence towards women. Therefore, this content signals to men that it is ok, even normal to objectify and assume ownership over women’s bodies. And now, there are structures in place, like OnlyFans, that encourage some women, from celebrities to everyday people trying to make a living, to indulge in that sexual objectification because, at least now, they have some semblance of control over it. 

But even so, you don’t have to be an OnlyFans star to feel the impact of warped male desire and ownership over women’s bodies in the bedroom. One study Gilbert references found that “38 percent of British women younger than 40 experienced unwanted violent behavior—including slapping, gagging, spitting, or choking—during consensual sex.” If that doesn’t come from porn, then I really can’t trace it.

Sydney Sweeney is not an OnlyFans creator, nor is she any kind of sexual entertainer by trade. She is an actress. And yet, I wouldn’t be surprised to find bathwater transactions on some sides of OnlyFans. Dr. Squatch is not a sexual soap brand, and yet, its primary ad campaign now is profiting solely off of an advertisement strategy that literally sells Sweeney’s sexualized body, or at least the bathwater traces of it.

Exercising the right to choice still often fails to question the nature of choices themselves. 

Ultimately, the soap is not porn, but it is the product of how porn positions women’s bodies as a public, commercial commodity. It is based on the knowledge that men—Dr. Squatch is a “men’s” soap company—want unfettered access to women’s private bodies and lives, and will gladly pay for it.

The demand to possess women as sexual commodities, stemming directly from porn culture, has infiltrated our commercial landscape to a dangerously diffuse degree; you can even find it in your soap aisle! And we cannot keep telling ourselves that women can and should accommodate their vision of empowerment to a commercial world created by and for men. Exercising the right to choice—as people like choice feminists have understandably attempted to prioritize—still often fails to question the nature of choices themselves. 

Just because Sweeney is in on the joke when it comes to her fans’ “bathwater” pleas does not mean that those pleas should be so easily capitalized on, or that they should be able to exist and succeed in the first place.

At one point, The Cut’s article quotes an Instagram comment, saying “I love you Sydney, but what the f*ck is this,” and another emphasizing, “I truly hate this world,” to which Gulino drily jokes, “God forbid a woman tries to get a man to shower!” Mind you, this is not a children’s soap brand—unless we’re talking about man-children.

Again, I have no interest in shaming or blaming Sweeney. But I balk at the cheekiness of the article’s reaction to the campaign, which suggests that there is nothing wrong with this at all. If the campaign is truly a vision of empowerment, a profit-filled mockery of absurd male desire …I don’t see it. Any kind of “empowerment” that involves women selling their bathwater to men inevitably misses the point. And we should not be afraid to call it as such—because defending bathwater products in the name of feminism will not lead us to the kind of liberation we could want for ourselves.