The Institute for Free Speech promotes and defends the First Amendment rights to freely speak, assemble, publish, and petition the government through strategic litigation, communication, activism, training, research, and education. Our dedicated professional staff works tirelessly to protect political speech under these freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment. We are the nation's largest organization dedicated solely to protecting First Amendment political speech rights. Free political speech guaranteed by the First Amendment is the most important right. It is the right that allows citizens to criticize, challenge, and ultimately improve their government. Despite its importance, the Institute for Free Speech is the only organization with a dedicated professional staff and mission seeking to promote and defend American citizens' First Amendment political speech rights.
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Climate change is driving a hidden crisis: rising sexual and gender-based violence. This analysis explores how disasters, displacement, and resource scarcity are increasing risks for women and girls—and why climate policy must address it.
Why Earth Day 2026 Demands Joint Climate and Gender Justice Action
Apr 29, 2026
Climate change and sexual violence are interconnected crises
As the world marks Earth Day 2026 during Sexual Assault Awareness Month, the intersection between climate change and sexual violence has become impossible to ignore.
Climate change is intensifying the conditions in which sexual violence occurs worldwide. While climate advocates have focused on emissions and environmental protection, and gender justice advocates have focused on legal reform and survivor support, both movements are responding to the same underlying systems of inequality, resource scarcity, and governance failures.
When climate stress increases, so does the risk of sexual and gender-based violence. It’s time to work together to curb climate-related sexual violence.
What is climate-related sexual violence?
Sexual and gender-based violence linked to the climate crisis refers to any form of sexual, gender-based violence, including rape, sexual assault, harassment, or abuse, ranging from exploitation to forced marriage, that is exacerbated by climate change and environmental crises.
While sexual violence is a human rights violation in any context, the climate crisis intensifies the risks and exposes new vulnerabilities, creating situations where women, girls, and other marginalised groups are disproportionately harmed.
These forms of violence occur when climate impacts intersect with social, economic, and structural inequalities, including:
Extreme weather and environmental shocks
- Floods, droughts, fires, cyclones, and heatwaves often amplify risks of gender-based and sexual violence like assault, trafficking, and exploitation during and after disasters
- Displacement into crowded shelters with poor lighting and a lack of privacy increases exposure to harassment and abuse, while weak complaint systems let it go unchecked
- Economic losses push people toward harmful coping strategies such as early or forced marriage, transactional sex, or exploitative jobs. When men lose income or status, violence at home often rises
- Climate shocks disrupt health care, legal aid, and GBV services, cutting survivors off from contraception, post-rape care, or justice pathways. Lost documents make reporting and reparations more challenging
- Climate shocks can interrupt healthcare, legal aid, and protection services, leaving survivors without support, documentation, or pathways to justice
Slow-onset changes
- Over time, climate-related resource scarcity can disrupt livelihoods and can gradually fuel conflicts, where sexual violence can be used to control or displace communities
- As climate-related stressors accumulate over time, through displacement, economic instability, and reduced access to services, the risk of violence against women increases
Resource scarcity
- As water, firewood, and food get harder to find, women and girls travel farther through unsafe areas, increasing assault risks
- Competition over scarce land or work can escalate household and community violence, with men tightening control over women’s movements or choices
“Climate change is more than an environmental issue. It acts as a threat multiplier, interacting with existing social and economic systems in ways that deepen long-standing inequalities,” Nina Masore, Legal Advisor, End Sexual Violence at Equality Now of the impacts of climate change on women and girls in South Sudan.
Across regions: different climate disasters, similar risks
In drought and flood-affected communities, women and girls must often walk further to find clean water as nearby sources have dried up or been contaminated. Longer journeys mean greater risk of harassment and assault. Water scarcity also increases exposure to sexual exploitation and coercion by those controlling access to water sources.
In a displacement camp, a teenage girl may share a shelter with dozens of families, separated only by thin fabric, with no lock, no light, and no privacy.
A family facing crop failure or displaced from home due to an extreme weather disaster may decide to marry off their daughter early so they have one less mouth to feed, or in the hope that marriage may protect her from sexual violence and unwanted pregnancy while unwed.
These are not isolated problems. Instead, they reflect the consistent, systemic pattern of gender based violence being fuelled by the climate crisis in communities worldwide.
South Asia: After the storm
In parts of South Asia where flooding and cyclones regularly displace communities, women and girls report increased harassment in temporary shelters and heightened pressure to marry early as families struggle financially.
Research following cyclones in Bangladesh found increased reports of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and early marriage linked to displacement and economic stress, while disruptions to policing and legal services reduces justice system accountability.
Latin America and the Caribbean: Slow-onset displacement
Across the region, climate change looks like gradual displacement. Rising costs, land loss, and gentrification are pushing communities out of their homes.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has recognized the right to a healthy climate as a human right, affirming that climate responses must include gender and intersectional approaches. These include:
- Ensuring safe housing, even without formal land titles
- Integrating gender into climate policy
- Guaranteeing the participation of women and girls
However, while the Court acknowledges gender-based violence in disaster contexts, it does not yet provide detailed standards on preventing sexual violence in climate emergencies, leaving a critical implementation gap, particularly in addressing how climate-related displacement increases vulnerability to sexual violence.
North America: Disasters and disruption
In North America, wildfires and hurricanes often displace communities into emergency shelters where privacy is limited and support services are disrupted. After these emergencies, spikes in domestic and sexual violence have been reported in the shelters and temporary housing settings.
Even in well-resourced settings, systems are not always designed to prevent or respond to sexual violence during crises.
Climate change in Africa: Sudan snapshot
In Sudan, like many other conflict-affected settings, climate stress compounds instability. Resource scarcity and displacement increase the likelihood of sexual violence, including its use as a tactic of war, while weakening already fragile justice systems.
With nearly 900,000 people impacted by flooding and repeated cycles of drought and extreme heat, the country illustrates how climate instability translates into protection risks:
- Displacement into overcrowded shelters, sometimes housing up to 40 families in a single open space, creates environments where privacy and safety are severely compromised.
- School closures due to extreme heat (up to 45°C) increase girls’ exposure to early marriage and exploitation.
- Loss of livelihoods drives documented increases in transactional sex and forced marriage as survival strategies.
Climate change is also reshaping traditional transhumance routes in Sudan, as pasture and water sources shift or disappear, pushing herding communities into new or overlapping territories with farmers and other groups, including in areas bordering the Central African Republic. As competition over land and water escalates, communal clashes and militarized responses increase, and women and girls are exposed to sexual violence during attacks, along migration routes, and at contested grazing and water points. In these remote transhumance zones, where services are limited and oversight is weak, survivors face important barriers to reporting, and sexual and gender-based violence is often normalized and goes unpunished.
Eurasia: Increased vulnerabilities
Across parts of Eurasia, climate change is amplifying vulnerabilities for women and girls in both rural and urban areas. Extreme weather events, such as floods, droughts, and heatwaves, disrupt livelihoods, displace populations, and increase economic pressures, creating conditions where sexual and gender-based violence is more likely.
Regional experts in Azerbaijan stress that climate adaptation strategies must integrate gender-responsive protections, such as safe shelters, livelihood programs, psychosocial support, and inclusion in decision-making, to reduce compounded risks and ensure that responses to climate emergencies also uphold women’s safety and rights.
Across all regions
Ending climate-related sexual violence requires urgent, systemic change, starting with mapping global patterns to ensure no one is left behind.
Protection from sexual violence must become a standard component of disaster response, ensuring it’s addressed in both sudden disasters and slow-onset displacement in policy frameworks.
Stakeholders from across regions must work together to ensure continuity of survivor services during and after climate events and include women and girls in climate decision-making at all levels.
The United Nations Spotlight Initiative found that climate change could be linked to tens of millions of additional cases of gender-based violence by 2050 if no action is taken.
The law must catch up to climate reality
International frameworks like the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) have specific recommendations on the rights of women and girls to live free from gender based violence in disaster contexts and ensure access to justice and services.
But in practice, climate and legal systems operate in silos.
Few national climate policies explicitly address sexual violence. Few disaster response plans include clear accountability mechanisms for protection failures. And few justice systems are equipped to function effectively during climate disruptions, leaving critical implementation gaps.
What needs to happen
- Governments need to embed sexual and gender-based violence prevention and response into climate laws and policies
- Governments need to conduct gender and protection impact assessments for all climate-related programs
- Governments need to ensure justice systems operate during crises, including through mobile courts and remote reporting mechanisms
- International and regional human rights mechanisms need to develop clear international guidance on addressing sexual violence in climate emergencies
What is Equality Now doing to end sexual violence?
Equality Now is working to end sexual violence by transforming laws and improving their implementation to ensure that survivors have access to justice.
We partner with legal experts, activists, and policymakers to advance consent-based definitions of rape across jurisdictions and support the development and implementation of survivor-centred laws and protocols.
We also work to challenge stigma, stereotypes, and rape myths by equipping journalists, educators, and the public with the tools to change how sexual violence is understood and addressed in all contexts.
Our goal is clear: to build legal systems that protect survivors, hold perpetrators accountable, and ensure justice is accessible to all.
Why Earth Day 2026 Demands Joint Climate and Gender Justice Action was originally published by Equality Now and is republished with permission.
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After Virginia Special Election, The Gerrymandering War Escalates Again
Gerrymandering: The Maps Shaping Power Ahead of the 2026 Midterms
Apr 28, 2026
Gerrymandering, the strategic manipulation of voting district boundaries to benefit certain political parties or candidates, has once again taken center stage as this year’s primary elections approach. Though redistricting is typically marked by the decennial census, mid-decade redistricting has become more common across the U.S. since the early 2000s.
The aim of redistricting is to ensure that representative assemblies within a state continue to accurately represent their constituents as population demographics shift over time; however, since the early 1800s, this system has been exploited by U.S. political parties seeking to manipulate voting outcomes in their favor. The same can be said about the current election cycle.
Ahead of the 2026 Midterms, five states have proposed and passed new congressional maps to date. Virginia is poised to be the next state, if the state’s Supreme Court approves its new congressional maps.
On Monday, the Virginia Supreme Court heard oral arguments about the legality of the congressional maps the state’s Democrats proposed. The maps were approved by voters last week with a slim 51.45% majority, but Republicans challenged their plan. If the new maps are approved, it could grant Democrats four additional seats in the U.S. House.
Current (top) versus new (bottom) boundaries for Virginia’s congressional districts. The new map would reflect 10 strong Democrat seats and 1 strong Republican seat, whereas the current map has 7 strong Democrat seats, 3 strong Republican seats, and 1 flip. See here for more comparisons. Image source: AP News.
This is just the latest in the national redistricting battle, with both Democrats and Republicans fighting for control of the chamber come November. Though North Carolina and Ohio were the first to pass new congressional maps in October 2025, the GOP’s bid to retain control kicked off after President Donald Trump pressed Texas Republicans to redraw their congressional maps. Texas did so, and in return, the GOP hopes to flip five seats in the House following the 2026 Texas Midterms.
Florida will be the next to participate, as Gov. Ron DeSantis (R ) called for a special session to address congressional redistricting. This is set to begin on Tuesday, April 28.
Nationwide gerrymandering has created the potential for nine extra seats Republicans are poised to win across Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio. Democrats are expecting to win six seats from redistricting efforts in California and Utah, and a grand total of 10 if the new congressional maps are approved in Virginia.
Though the legal situation is complex and ongoing, the stakes are high for both parties: the GOP, egged on by President Trump, is fighting to retain the slim majority it holds in the House, while the Democrats are doing whatever they can to flip it.
This goes to show that gerrymandering is more than the way district lines are drawn. It is the product of a power-and-control struggle that can impact everything from political priorities to the strength of the public’s vote, and for voters trying to understand why election outcomes sometimes feel inconsistent with public opinion, the answer may lie not in the ballots but in the boundaries.
- YouTube www.youtube.com
Britton Struthers-Lugo is a journalist and visual storyteller. She currently works as a Digital Content Producer across The Fulcrum and the Latino News Network.
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How political rhetoric, religion, and digital media are reshaping American democracy. From Trump’s rise to the erosion of civil discourse, Rev. Dr. F. Willis Johnson examines polarization, the power of language, and the urgent need to restore humane and ethical public speech.
Getty Images, stellalevi
Resurrecting Rhetoric and Restoring Democracy
Apr 28, 2026
To speak of rhetoric today is to speak of a force that shapes our politics and our identities. The main argument is that the American experiment relies on words, not just to persuade, but also to build public life and connect citizens. This is not the first time the nation has faced a rhetorical crisis. Previous eras, such as the McCarthy period or the Civil Rights era, were also marked by battles over public speech, truth, and belonging. Just as then, this foundation faces serious challenges today. Public language is destabilizing, personality cults are growing, and democratic norms are eroding. As a result, speech now serves mostly to confront, not to understand.
Trump as an instructive figure matters. He matters not just for what he has said and done. He matters for what his rise reveals about our collective appetites: a desire to use sacred language and symbols for political ends. Invoking sacred language for political aims is not new. Yet, today's openness blurs boundaries between state power and religious authority. Public rallies now look like religious ceremonies. They feature hymns of allegiance and faith in a leader. The use of theological symbols in politics shows how spiritual longing and public confession sanctify power.
This dynamic is not just due to the leaders above. It rests on anxiety below. People fear that institutions are rigged and enemies are everywhere. Salvation is now something to seize, not await. The administrative state used to concern policy wonks. Now it is cast as a cosmic adversary or an ever-present villain. Each bureaucratic decision and each judicial ruling is seen through a lens of persecution and deliverance. These views turn complex realities into mythic stories. They push us to see only us or them, righteous or wicked.
Here, rhetoric takes its most insidious turn. Language stripped of nuance becomes a weapon, not a bridge. Talking about "enemies within" and "taking our country back" affects more than politics. These words echo ancient patterns of scapegoating, which often come before violence. The danger is not just excess in speech. It is the creation of a climate in which cruelty is justified, and dissent is betrayal. In this context, humane engagement is urgent, not optional.
Digital technology makes the challenge harder. Social media was once seen as democratizing. Now it is a source of outrage and affirmation. Algorithms curate our feeds. They do not reward careful reasoning or honest doubt. They reward vivid loyalty and contempt. Performance and participation blur together. The loudest voices drown out quieter wisdom. Conflict is a spectacle, often confused with civic life. The digital square was imagined as a new commons. Now it often feels more like an arena. Here, the stakes involve not just ideas, but identities.
Against this backdrop, rhetoric informed by theology is not abstract. It is a call for rehumanization. We are urged to treat each person with respect and to remember their vulnerability. At their best, theological traditions teach that truth is not the property of any one group. The work of theologians like Reinhold Niebuhr, Martin Luther King Jr., and Dietrich Bonhoeffer illustrates how prophetic speech questions the powerful and avoids self-righteousness. Niebuhr emphasized humility and the limits of certainty in public life, while King drew on the tradition of love and redemptive suffering as a critique of injustice. Bonhoeffer, resisting totalitarianism, called for truth-telling and repentance even when it was risky. True prophecy means truth-telling and repentance. It resists the pull of certainty.
This work is slow and often lonely. It demands counter-cultural habits. Practice patience when provoked. Be curious about those you distrust. Show a willingness to change. Resist tribal loyalty and moral superiority. Cultivate silence not as escape, but as preparation. Employ it for honest, generous speech that faces reality’s complexity.
These practices do not happen by accident. They are taught, learned, modeled, and copied. Leaders in government, media, and the pulpit must show the virtues they want to see. This means doing more than denouncing others’ excesses. It includes facing our own faults and admitting our part in damaging patterns. We must name the idols in our own camp. Civic and spiritual reconciliation start with humility. Admit you might be wrong. See that opponents might teach you. The world is more complex than our slogans.
None of this is glamorous. It rarely goes viral. It will not please those who want quick victories or clear defeats. Some argue that strong, even divisive, rhetoric is necessary to rally supporters, build solidarity, and energize movements. Particularly when urgent injustices seem to demand bold action and clear lines. There is truth in the power of language to mobilize, and a longing for clarity when the stakes feel high. Yet, history shows that when confrontation becomes the norm, it often deepens polarization, hardens identities, and risks justifying cruelty in the name of righteousness. Even in moments that call for urgent action, we must ask what kind of public life we are creating. Only by pursuing a rhetoric that honors truth and love can we build politics that endure beyond momentary victories. Reviving rhetoric is not a return to any golden age. It means forging new habits in speech and listening. These habits can support our differences without leading to enmity.
Persisting in this work is an act of hope. Hope that words can still heal. Hope that public life can show neighborliness instead of animosity. Hope that dignity exists in others, never erased by political difference. Such hope is not naive, I believe. It is a radical kind of realism. If we lose humble speech and listening, we lose more than democracy. We lose our common humanity.
Rev. Dr. F. Willis Johnson is a spiritual entrepreneur, author, scholar-practioner whose leadership and strategies around social and racial justice issues are nationally recognized and applied.
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Elon Musk’s xAI company is challenging AI regulations in Colorado after losing in California, arguing that limits on artificial intelligence violate free speech. As Connecticut enforces its own AI law, this case could shape the future of AI regulation, corporate accountability, and constitutional rights in the United States.
Getty Images, Alexander Sikov
xAI Pushes Free Speech Theory Into New AI Lawsuits
Apr 28, 2026
Elon Musk's AI company, xAI, is on a legal road trip. After losing in California, it filed suit in Colorado asking a court to declare the state's artificial intelligence regulations unconstitutional. The argument is essentially the same one that already failed. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
For Connecticut residents, this is not just the next state in the alphabet that has passed AI legislation. Connecticut was one of the first states in the nation to adopt an AI law, requiring companies to disclose when AI is being used in critical decisions like employment, housing, credit, or healthcare. That law is already drawing scrutiny from the technology industry. What xAI tried to do in California and now in Colorado is a preview of what we may face in Connecticut.
Echoing its unsuccessful claim in the Colorado suit, xAI alleges that regulating AI violates freedom of speech. They argue that requiring AI systems to avoid discriminatory outputs is essentially the state engaging in unlawful discrimination. While it’s a creative position, it is wrong.
At the heart of this case is an attempt to give a software program constitutional rights that exclusively belong to human beings. xAI wants a court to treat Grok, a chatbot that runs on algorithms and training data, as the legal equivalent of a human being with First Amendment protections. Whether one applies a textualist or pragmatic approach to constitutional interpretation, knighting software as humans is so far from what the Framers envisioned that it simply does not compute. The court in California didn’t buy xAI’s argument, and the Colorado court likely won’t either. We should gird ourselves in Connecticut for xAI to come for us also.
Just as Grok was created by humans, so was your smart oven. It also runs on software and algorithms. If it overrides your temperature setting and burns your dinner, has it exercised a constitutional right? If its algorithm sets the kitchen on fire and burns the house down, is that protected expression? Or is it simply a dangerous product that needs to be regulated?
We regulate dangerous products like pharmaceuticals, cars, medical devices, and financial instruments, not to silence anyone, but because products affect real people, and real people deserve protection. Software, not so much. When an AI model produces discriminatory outputs by denying someone a loan, misidentifying a face that leads to arrest, or steering housing opportunities away from protected groups, those outputs cause real harm to real people. Connecticut lawmakers understood that when they passed our AI law. Preventing that harm is not censorship, and it certainly doesn’t deny anyone’s right to free speech. It is the government doing exactly what governments exist to do.
The First Amendment protects people and, to some extent, corporations. But those rights do not extend to the products they make. A car company can lobby against safety regulations, but the car cannot claim a right to run red lights. xAI can argue in every courtroom in America that AI regulation is bad policy. They’re entitled to their opinion, and we can applaud their right to express it and give them their day in court. But a chatbot does not have a constitutional right to generate discriminatory content without government oversight.
This litigation isn’t really about free speech. It is about money. Meaningful AI regulation requires companies to be transparent about how their systems are trained, what data they use, and what their models actually do. That slows deployment, which translates into lost profit potential. Calling regulation censorship is a strategy for avoiding those obligations, not a principled stand for civil liberties.
A spoon does not have rights. A range does not have rights. A chatbot does not have rights. Connecticut residents affected by what those tools produce is a different matter entirely.
Monique Mattei Ferraro is a Watertown-based cybersecurity and privacy attorney and Adjunct Professor at Albany Law School Computer Crimes and Electronic Evidence Lab, teaches cyber law, and is a regional co-leader for Lawyers Defending American Democracy’s Meeting the Moment initiative in New England. Her work focuses on cybersecurity, privacy and artificial intelligence.
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