After it launched in the early 1970s, Ms. magazine became a leading voice in the fight for equal rights for women and other issues that came to define feminism. In 2020, equality at the ballot box became one of the leading issues for the media platform's editors.
So it's no surprise that the 2020 list of "top feminists" includes a number of women who played critical roles in the democracy reform movement. Here's a look at some of the women on the list.
Stacey Abrams
"Stacey Abrams was a powerhouse in the fight for fair elections this year. After the 2018 elections in Georgia were marred with controversy, voter suppression and disenfranchisement, Abrams founded Fair Fight, an organization dedicated to mobilizing voters, advocating for election reform, and educating voters about fair elections.
"During the 2020 elections, Abrams and Fair Fight played a pivotal role in grassroots organizing for Joe Biden, and proved to be major factors in Georgia's flipping blue for the first time since 1992. Abrams then presided over Georgia's Electoral College votes, and ... helped to lead a massive get out the vote effort on the ground in Georgia in thel... Senate runoffs on Jan. 5."
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Attorney General Dana Nessel
"Michigan officials Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Attorney General Dana Nessel found themselves at the center of an unwanted spotlight this year, after President Trump attacked 'those women from Michigan' after they had the audacity to ask the federal government for the medical supplies they needed to address the COVID-19 pandemic.
"But despite Trump's condescension and belittling, Whitmer, Benson and Nessel made it clear that they would not back down from standing up for their state. They listened to public health experts and enforced COVID-19 safety restrictions, even as the Trump administration attempted to undermine their decisions, and right-wing terrorists attempted to kidnap Whitmer(which Trump refused to condemn).
"And they helped lead the movement for fair and secure elections this year, mailing absentee ballot applications to every registered voter in Michigan, greatly increasing voters' abilities to make their voices heard safely."
Kristen Clarke
"Kristen Clarke is the president and executive director of the National Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. She criticized the rushed confirmationof Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and pointed out that Justice Coney Barrett has repeatedly attempted to dismiss and avoid the issues of voter suppression and disenfranchisement, particularly of communities of color.
"In the lead-up to the 2020 election, Clarke raised awareness about voter suppression and fought for policies like absentee ballots that allowed voters to make their voices heard safely during the pandemic."
President-elect Joe Biden has selected Clarke to be assistant attorney general for civil rights.
Vanita Gupta
"Vanita Gupta is the president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. As a part of her "All Voting is Local" campaign, she worked with state legislators to expand voting options during the pandemic, fought against illegal voter purges, and registered and mobilized new voters.
"On top of fighting for a fair election, she also wrote about the unprecedented attacks on the 2020 census, and pushed for census integrity and accountability for the many communities of color that were missed or underrepresented."
Gupta has been nominated to be an associate attorney general in the Biden administration.
LaTosha Brown
"In 2016, LaTosha Brown recognized the importance of Black votes, particularly in the South, where traditionally red states have been slowly turning blue. She co-founded Black Votes Matter to mobilize Black voters and fight for policieslike early voting and no ID requirements that expand access to voting rights.
"This year, the organization went town to town on a bus tour in several Southern states, partnering with local organizations, helping rural communities access ballots, and reminding Black communities of the power of their votes."
Eric Trump, the newly appointed ALT5 board director of World Liberty Financial, walks outside of the NASDAQ in Times Square as they mark the $1.5- billion partnership between World Liberty Financial and ALT5 Sigma with the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell, on Aug. 13, 2025, in New York City.
Why does the Trump family always get a pass?
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche joined ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday to defend or explain a lot of controversies for the Trump administration: the Epstein files release, the events in Minneapolis, etc. He was also asked about possible conflicts of interest between President Trump’s family business and his job. Specifically, Blanche was asked about a very sketchy deal Trump’s son Eric signed with the UAE’s national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon.
Shortly before Trump was inaugurated in early 2025, Tahnoon invested $500 million in the Trump-owned World Liberty, a then newly launched cryptocurrency outfit. A few months later, UAE was granted permission to purchase sensitive American AI chips. According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, “the deal marks something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.”
“How do you respond to those who say this is a serious conflict of interest?” ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked.
“I love it when these papers talk about something being unprecedented or never happening before,” Blanche replied, “as if the Biden family and the Biden administration didn’t do exactly the same thing, and they were just in office.”
Blanche went on to boast about how the president is utterly transparent regarding his questionable business practices: “I don’t have a comment on it beyond Trump has been completely transparent when his family travels for business reasons. They don’t do so in secret. We don’t learn about it when we find a laptop a few years later. We learn about it when it’s happening.”
Sadly, Stephanopoulos didn’t offer the obvious response, which may have gone something like this: “OK, but the president and countless leading Republicans insisted that President Biden was the head of what they dubbed ‘the Biden Crime family’ and insisted his business dealings were corrupt, and indeed that his corruption merited impeachment. So how is being ‘transparent’ about similar corruption a defense?”
Now, I should be clear that I do think the Biden family’s business dealings were corrupt, whether or not laws were broken. Others disagree. I also think Trump’s business dealings appear to be worse in many ways than even what Biden was alleged to have done. But none of that is relevant. The standard set by Trump and Republicans is the relevant political standard, and by the deputy attorney general’s own account, the Trump administration is doing “exactly the same thing,” just more openly.
Since when is being more transparent about wrongdoing a defense? Try telling a cop or judge, “Yes, I robbed that bank. I’ve been completely transparent about that. So, what’s the big deal?”
This is just a small example of the broader dysfunction in the way we talk about politics.
Americans have a special hatred for hypocrisy. I think it goes back to the founding era. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in “Democracy In America,” the old world had a different way of dealing with the moral shortcomings of leaders. Rank had its privileges. Nobles, never mind kings, were entitled to behave in ways that were forbidden to the little people.
In America, titles of nobility were banned in the Constitution and in our democratic culture. In a society built on notions of equality (the obvious exceptions of Black people, women, Native Americans notwithstanding) no one has access to special carve-outs or exemptions as to what is right and wrong. Claiming them, particularly in secret, feels like a betrayal against the whole idea of equality.
The problem in the modern era is that elites — of all ideological stripes — have violated that bargain. The result isn’t that we’ve abandoned any notion of right and wrong. Instead, by elevating hypocrisy to the greatest of sins, we end up weaponizing the principles, using them as a cudgel against the other side but not against our own.
Pick an issue: violent rhetoric by politicians, sexual misconduct, corruption and so on. With every revelation, almost immediately the debate becomes a riot of whataboutism. Team A says that Team B has no right to criticize because they did the same thing. Team B points out that Team A has switched positions. Everyone has a point. And everyone is missing the point.
Sure, hypocrisy is a moral failing, and partisan inconsistency is an intellectual one. But neither changes the objective facts. This is something you’re supposed to learn as a child: It doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing or saying, wrong is wrong. It’s also something lawyers like Mr. Blanche are supposed to know. Telling a judge that the hypocrisy of the prosecutor — or your client’s transparency — means your client did nothing wrong would earn you nothing but a laugh.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.