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Yahoo
3 days ago
- Climate
- Yahoo
75 million Americans under heat advisories; New Orleans braces for deluge
Almost 75 million Americans in the East and South were under heat advisories July 17 as intense summer weather gripped much of the nation, the National Weather Service said. New York City was under a heat advisory for a second straight day, and residents were urged to call 311 for help finding cooling centers and obtaining "Beat the Heat" safety tips. The National Weather Service warned that seniors and those with chronic health problems or mental health conditions faced increased risk. As the planet warms, heat-related deaths are increasing in the U.S., according to a study published last year in the American Medical Association journal JAMA. The study, which reviewed federally reported data since 1999, said more than 2,000 heat-related deaths have been reported annually in recent years. "We're not done with this heat just yet!" New York Mayor Eric Adams said in a social media post. "Be sure to hydrate, use one of our cooling centers, and check on your pets and vulnerable neighbors. Together, we can all Beat the Heat!" Storm tracker: Forecasters warn of rainy tropical system along Gulf Coast Storm could dump almost a foot of rain in Louisiana A dangerous weather system hovering over the northern Gulf probably won't develop into a tropical depression but could still produce flash flooding in the region, the National Hurricane Center said in a forecast issued July 17. Forecasters had earlier warned the system could grow more powerful as it approached the Louisiana coast, and New Orleans could soon be in the storm's crosshairs. Mayor LaToya Cantrell ordered city buildings closed to the public on July 17, 2025, although city services will remain available virtually. However, the most recent wind data and surface and rader observations indicate the swath of low pressure "remains quite disorganized," senior hurricane specialist Philippe Papin wrote. "While some additional development of this system remains possible over the next 12-24 hours, its current structure suggests its chances of developing into a tropical depression before it reaches the Louisiana coast later today are decreasing," Papin wrote. Child killed in lightning strike at NJ archery range One person was killed and 14 injured − including children − in a lightning strike at a New Jersey archery range July 16, authorities in Jackson said. The lightning strike killed a 61-year-old instructor, city officials said. 'Eight of the victims were juveniles,' Jackson Mayor Michael Reina said. 'It looks like the victims were with (Scouting America) or Cub Scouts. Unfortunately, every single one of the 14 were taken to hospital.' The strike at Black Knight Bowbenders range occurred in the evening, shortly before a severe thunderstorm warning was issued for the area, according to Joseph Candido, Jackson public safety information director. The club was hosting a competition for the scouts, Candido said. − Erik Larsen and Lisa Robyn Kruse, Asbury Park Press Louisiana residents fill sandbags, prepare for flooding In St. Charles Parish, 20 miles west of New Orleans, parish President Matthew Jewell said emergency preparedness personnel were closely monitoring the storm. He warned residents that 3-5 inches of rain could be expected by July 19, and there is the potential for up to 10 inches in some areas. Sand for sand bags was being provided at multiple locations; residents were told to bring their own shovels and proof of residency. Amanda Babbin, one of the first in line, has seen flooding before at her parish home. 'Two weeks ago, that heavy rain, my backyard flooded," Babbin told "The water started coming into the back half of my house, my garage and all." Katrina survivor taking no chances In Plaquemines Parish, 60 miles south of New Orleans, Joanne McClelland was stocking up on essentials at the Breaux Mart. McClelland, who said she was also shopping for her mother in her 90s, told she has lived through numerous storms including Hurricane Katrina. That Category 5 storm slammed onto shore in 2005 on a path of destruction that killed more than 1,300 people and was blamed for damage in excess of $100 billion. "Hopefully it won't be too bad," McClelland said of this week's storms. "But once it goes into the Gulf, warm waters, you can't take chances." How much rain could fall in New Orleans? Papin also said the storm would bring heavy rainfall to the region regardless of how well it organizes, and a flood watch was in effect for the region through Friday night. The National Weather Service in New Orleans said several rounds of heavy rainfall were forecast through at least Friday night. Up to 2 inches and some isolated higher amounts had already fallen early on July 17, and an additional 2 to 4 inches was forecast. Locally higher amounts up to 8 inches were possible. Rainfall rates in excess of 2 to 4 inches per hour are likely with some storms. What is a tropical depression? Some clusters of thunderstorms over warm ocean waters develop well-defined centers and thus become tropical cyclones. A tropical depression is a tropical cylcone with maximum sustained surface winds averaging less than 39 mph. A tropical depression becomes a named tropical storm when sustained wind speeds reach 39 mph. When winds reach 74 mph, the storm officially becomes a hurricane. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 75M Americans under heat advisories; New Orleans braces for deluge Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
07-07-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Alabama QB Ty Simpson's Father Issues Two Word Message For Peyton and Eli Manning
Alabama QB Ty Simpson's Father Issues Two Word Message For Peyton and Eli Manning originally appeared on Athlon Sports. Alabama Crimson Tide quarterback Ty Simpson recently visited the Manning Passing Academy and showed off his throwing skills. Advertisement He also got a chance to meet Peyton Manning and Eli Manning during this event. His father, Jason Simpson, captured the moment and captioned it aptly, "Great Experience." During the visit, Simpson's deep pass managed to get the applause of 2x Super Bowl Champ, Peyton Manning. Alabama Crimson Tide quarterback Ty Simpson is one of those rare talents who sat out on the bench for three years in this transfer portal, NIL era. He redshirted his freshman year and then backed up Bryce Young and Jalen Milroe, patiently waiting for the starting role. Alabama quarterbacks Ty Simpson (15), Dylan Lonergan (12), Cade Carruth (16), Jalen MIlroe (4) and Austin Mack (10) wait for a drill to begin during Cosby Jr.-Tuscaloosa News / USA TODAY NETWORK The Crimson Tide rewarded his patience by giving him the starting position this year despite other young contenders. Advertisement Simpson is uniquely positioned for this job as he's grown up learning the x's and o's from his father, Jason Simpson. Jason has been the head coach at the University of Tennessee at Martin since 2006. His father is still his biggest cheerleader. Both his father, Jason, and mother, Julie, are seen at games, and they were even heavily involved in the recruitment process. Nothing came easyily for Simpson. Even this year, he had to battle it out with Austin Mack and Keelon Russell to win the starting role. But from now on, he will have a lot of help. On left tackle, he has NFL-calibre protection with Kadyn Proctor and standout wide receiver Ryan Williams giving him the leeway to make deep throws. Advertisement Alabama will need Simpson to make big plays, and keep the ball safe. Their success this year largely depends on how the quarterback develops, and Simpson will not have a lot of room for error and he'll have a constant reminder of that. He'll just need to look at the sideline at the two elite backups waiting for an opportunity. Related: Former Alabama Star Says Kalen DeBoer is Not Trying to 'Replace' Nick Saban This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Jul 2, 2025, where it first appeared.
CNN
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
Celebrity drama, wellness and right-wing politics: A new crop of magazines and influencers is appealing to young women
Gabrielle, who is 24 and lives in Alabama, is a fan of Rachel Zegler. Naturally, wherever she goes online, she gets served a lot of social media posts about the actress. Recently, she saw one that she thought was weird. The post was about how Zegler had not only ruined the 'Snow White' remake — but that she'd also ruined the 'Hunger Games' prequel, too, mostly by 'rejecting' femininity. Zegler, for those who don't follow online dramas, had dared to call the original 'Snow White' film's ideas about women 'extremely dated,' and this spiraled into a proxy fight about being a woman. Gabrielle says she'd been recommended content from this particular publication before, typically articles about beauty trends. She now began to realize this was no ordinary women's magazine. Digging around, she found posts from the publisher that used 'woke' as a pejorative, and other writing that was cruel about trans people. She felt she was being lured in with perky pop culture content, only then to be exposed to right-wing propaganda. 'I found what they posted to be hateful and trying to trick people into reading their views,' Gabrielle tells CNN. This was Evie Magazine, a publication and website founded in 2019 by married couple Brittany and Gabriel Hugoboom. The magazine has characterized itself as a 'conservative Cosmo.' Some, pointing to its record of publishing conspiracy theories, vaccine misinformation and tradwife nostalgia, have characterized it as 'alt right.' (Evie Magazine did not respond to requests for comment.) At first glance, though, you might not pick up on any of this at all. On Evie's TikTok account, there's a recent post about WNBA drama and another about Dua Lipa's engagement. Articles on its website contain recipes for iced Starbucks dupes and wedding trend reports that could be found in any mainstream women's magazine. (You'd be forgiven for thinking you're reading Elle — Evie was recently sued over allegations that its logo was nearly identical.) Evie's culture and lifestyle content, as well as past comments from its co-founder and editor-in-chief, suggests that the publication is attempting to appeal to a broader audience of young women. It's hardly alone. Over the past few years, a new wave of right-leaning magazines and influencers has been courting female audiences by covering celebrity gossip, wellness and fashion — a landscape that includes Jayme Franklin's magazine The Conservateur, Alex Clark's popular wellness podcast 'Culture Apothecary' and Brett Cooper's eponymous YouTube show. Like the ecosystem of right-leaning 'bro' podcasters who successfully reached disengaged men in the 2024 US presidential election, this burgeoning conservative women's media sphere is connecting with audiences on subjects that aren't overtly political. If these outlets and influencers cultivate that relationship successfully, they could prove to be powerful, says Jessica Maddox, an assistant professor at the University of Alabama whose research focuses on social media platforms and internet culture. Not only could they shape how young women engage with pop culture, she says, but they could also shape how they see the world. Allison Thompkins, a 27-year-old in Missouri, recalls Evie surfacing in her TikTok feed in February. She unwittingly tapped the heart button in response to a montage of celebrities sporting natural teeth onscreen. 'Off the bat, I was like, 'Yeah, I agree with that. I think veneers are kind of a scourge, and they make everyone look the same,'' she says. 'Then I looked at who posted it and did a double take.' Thompkins, who describes her politics as 'pretty far left,' quickly unliked the video — which, to date, has 2.8 million likes, as well as tens of thousands of comments and shares — but says she was alarmed to see Evie on her feed. She associates the publication with a worldview that is increasingly gaining support on the right: That women should return to traditional gender roles. Last year, Evie selected homesteading influencer and mother-of-eight Hannah Neeleman, better known as Ballerina Farm, as its annual cover star. The brand also sells a 'raw milkmaid dress' that evokes a tradwife aesthetic and nods to the right-wing movement around unpasteurized milk. Then there are headlines like 'The Spiritual Economics of Staying Home With Kids' and '3 Surprisingly Common Ways Women Disrespect Their Husbands (Without Meaning To).' Editorial choices like these reflect an emerging cultural and political shift toward conservatism in the US. Though a majority of women 18-29 voted for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, more young women identified as conservative and Republican in 2024 than they did in 2020, per data from the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University. As youth researcher Rachel Janfanza writes, some of these shifts, like attitudes on gender roles, are ideological. Others, like the reemergence of 1950s silhouettes or concerns about 'toxins' in our food and environment, are reflected through aesthetics and lifestyle. In this conservative women's media sphere, modern feminism is seen as anti-men, casual sex and nontraditional relationship structures are viewed as detrimental, and being a wife and a mother is considered a woman's highest purpose. These outlets and influencers implore their readers to embrace a long-lost femininity and reclaim control over their bodies through their nutritional and medical choices. Julie Mastrine, a 33-year-old in Pennsylvania and a former contributor for Evie, experienced this political and cultural transformation personally. During her six years in San Francisco, she says many of her peers experimented with polyamory and open relationships, practices she felt hindered them from forming healthy bonds. That was among the experiences that led Mastrine to eventually conclude that a flourishing society needed more, not fewer, constraints. Once a self-identified liberal feminist, she now identifies as a conservative. 'When I found Evie, I was like, 'Finally, there's a women's magazine that is not going to be smutty, promote hookup culture, promote certain ideals that I had found in my life were not working well,'' she says. Mastrine says she doesn't agree with the right on everything (for one, she feels the tradwife movement doesn't account for the realities of modern life), but she's glad that a publication like Evie exists. As she and others in this sphere see it, this wave of conservative outlets and influencers is catering to an audience that isn't otherwise represented in women's media. Jayme Franklin, 27, grew up reading glossies like Teen Vogue and Marie Claire. But around Donald Trump's election in 2016, she says she noticed that these publications started getting political. It wasn't Vogue's Hillary Clinton endorsement or glowing write-ups of Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that bothered her, she says, but rather content that she found to be 'anti-men, anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-free speech, very rabidly pro-feminist.' As someone who is Catholic, anti-abortion and who believes in 'more traditional values,' she says she felt alienated. After stints in the first Trump White House and at Fox News, Franklin launched The Conservateur in 2020, a media and lifestyle brand that she says is aimed at modern, yet traditional-minded women in liberal hotspots. The Conservateur doesn't shy away from politics — in April, it hosted the sold-out America Is Hot Again party in DC, and the brand sells a pink 'Make America Hot Again' hat that's been spotted on Lara Trump. Even so, Franklin says the website's culture coverage is first and foremost, with plans to launch a culture-focused podcast next month. At a time when a majority of young women are liberal (and have moved more to the left on some issues), Franklin is making a strategic play for the minority on the other end of the political spectrum. While the top podcasts catering to men — 'The Joe Rogan Experience,' 'The Tucker Carlson Show,' 'This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von' — have a conservative bent, Franklin notes that there isn't really an equivalent for women. ('Call Her Daddy,' one of the most popular podcasts among young women, typically avoids politics, but its host Alex Cooper has been outspoken about reproductive rights and interviewed Kamala Harris ahead of the 2024 presidential election.) 'We're igniting a counterculture within this female space, where there's 'Call Her Daddy,' there's Teen Vogue,' Franklin says. 'We're The Conservateur, and we will offer the exact opposite that a Cosmopolitan or an Alex Cooper is offering.' Franklin might be following Joe Rogan's approach, but there are some notable differences between the 'bro' podcast sphere and the conservative women's media landscape. Unlike Rogan, a comedian whose politics don't neatly cohere into a particular ideology, Franklin and other young women in this niche have backgrounds in right-wing politics. Brett Cooper, who left The Daily Wire and launched an independent YouTube channel, has amassed more than 1.5 million subscribers through videos about what's happening with Justin Bieber or the latest in the Diddy trial. Alex Clark, host of the podcast 'Culture Apothecary' and an influencer for the Charlie Kirk-founded student organization Turning Point USA, has built her following by talking about wellness topics like parenting and chemicals in food. Candace Owens, the far-right political commentator, has found new audiences through her deep dive coverage of the Blake Lively-Justin Baldoni case, and has since launched a women's media brand that includes a book club and fitness app for new moms. If these influencers are introducing young women to conservative ideas through pop culture and wellness, they don't always acknowledge it as a calculated strategy. Cooper and Owens both tell CNN they have long covered pop culture alongside politics as a matter of personal interest. Clark calls the Make America Healthy Again ideology that she promotes on her podcast 'nonpartisan,' adding 'if it has become a tool to bring women into the conservative right-wing…there is no one to blame but the Democratic Party.' Franklin, though, does see The Conservateur as a vehicle to attract young women to the MAGA right. 'Politics is downstream from culture, as Andrew Breitbart once said,' she says. 'That was really apparent in this last election — that if you want to succeed in pushing values and politics, you need to be intimately involved in culture.' Right-leaning women's media don't merely express political perspectives. In some instances, publications and podcasts veer into pseudoscience, conspiracies and misinformation — and it's easy for unsuspecting users to get drawn in. Researchers for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue found that searching terms such as 'organic skincare' and 'nutrition' on Instagram could quickly lead a user to Clark's wellness content. Engaging with her content, in turn, led Instagram's algorithm to recommend accounts that promoted election denialism and other far-right ideas. Another prominent example is in the right-wing campaign against birth control. While negative attitudes around birth control aren't confined to the right, they've become a hallmark of a 'crunchy' conservatism that raises skepticism around conventional medicines and vaccines and that has culminated in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s movement to Make America Healthy Again. Evie Magazine has published numerous negative articles about the pill, IUDs and even condoms, instead promoting 'natural' birth control methods that can be less effective at preventing pregnancy. (Evie's founders also own the Peter Thiel-backed app 28, which offers fitness and nutrition recommendations based on where you are in your menstrual cycle. A representative for 28 told the Washington Post last year that the app has 'never been marketed as an alternative to hormonal birth control.') Clark has said she's 'on a mission to get young women off this pill,' claiming it causes a host of negative health outcomes and describing it as 'poison.' Cooper has echoed similar claims, telling her viewers the pill 'chemically alters the very hormones that make a woman a woman.' When asked about medical experts' assertions that such statements are untrue, both Clark and Cooper say they are operating out of concern for women. 'I am listening to and sharing the stories of women who've experienced things that often get dismissed or ignored,' Cooper writes in an email. 'Calling that perspective 'misinformation' shuts down a much-needed conversation about how we treat women's bodies,' says Clark. Hormonal birth control can certainly cause side effects in some users, and physicians don't always adequately communicate the risks to patients before prescribing it. But medical experts note that many influencers overexaggerate the risks and omit key context about a medication that has proven to be safe and effective for contraception and treating some medical conditions. 'People get on the internet and they just absolutely fearmonger, and they do it from a place of not caring who that could hurt or acknowledging the nuance that's required to have a really level-headed discussion about contraceptive pills,' Dr. Danielle Jones, an obstetrician-gynecologist and online educator, said in a recent Twitch stream. Misleading messaging around birth control can have political consequences. Republican lawmakers around the US have falsely conflated emergency contraceptives and IUDs with abortion, sometimes resulting in legislative efforts that threaten contraception access. Maddox, the University of Alabama researcher, sees this rhetoric as inherently connected to political attacks on reproductive rights. 'A magazine having an article about the natural method of birth control on the surface isn't that problematic,' she says. 'But when you situate it within a moment where Roe v. Wade has been overturned, where states are implementing these absolutely draconian anti-abortion laws, where women's bodily autonomy is under threat … I think about those as speaking to these larger political projects that are actually abuses of power.' The readerships of Evie and The Conservateur still pale in comparison to women's magazines like Bustle, Glamour or Vogue. But their hundreds of thousands of combined social media followers, and the even greater reach of influencers like Cooper and Clark, suggest that conservative views on gender, relationships and wellness are resonating among some young women. After years of being on the fringe of mainstream women's media, conservatism is having a cultural moment. Jess Rauchberg, an assistant professor at Seton Hall University whose research explores digital media cultures, characterizes this as a reaction to the 'girlboss of the 2010s' — a shorthand for that decade's prevailing ethos that women merely needed to advocate for themselves to reach new professional heights. Despite the liberating ideas at their core, the girlboss trope and other aspects of 2010s culture had their limitations, adds Maddox, the University of Alabama researcher. Grinding at work didn't necessarily translate to financial security, nor was it as fulfilling as spending time with loved ones. Dating app algorithms and casual sex left some women feeling degraded and lonelier than before. Conservative women's media offers one answer to these problems in its embrace of traditional ideas around gender roles. But Maddox says influencers who speak fondly of eras like the 1950s don't usually account for how people of color or the LGBTQ community fared back then. 'When promises are unmet today, the past seems appealing because the past indicates a time when promises were met,' she says. 'Of course, then the problem goes: Promises met for who?' Conservatism's current appeal also reflects a recurring push and pull between progress and backlash, Maddox adds. Young women coming of age today might not fully understand why some of their predecessors fought so hard for ideals like sex positivity or body positivity — without that context, ideas to the contrary can seem more attractive. In a few years, Rauchberg notes, the pendulum may very well swing back again. 'As our current political administration in the US continues to make certain decisions that are impacting women in ways that maybe they did not anticipate, we will see maybe a disavowal or a step away from what these magazines or these influencers say,' she says.
CNN
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
Celebrity drama, wellness and right-wing politics: A new crop of magazines and influencers is appealing to young women
Gabrielle, who is 24 and lives in Alabama, is a fan of Rachel Zegler. Naturally, wherever she goes online, she gets served a lot of social media posts about the actress. Recently, she saw one that she thought was weird. The post was about how Zegler had not only ruined the 'Snow White' remake — but that she'd also ruined the 'Hunger Games' prequel, too, mostly by 'rejecting' femininity. Zegler, for those who don't follow online dramas, had dared to call the original 'Snow White' film's ideas about women 'extremely dated,' and this spiraled into a proxy fight about being a woman. Gabrielle says she'd been recommended content from this particular publication before, typically articles about beauty trends. She now began to realize this was no ordinary women's magazine. Digging around, she found posts from the publisher that used 'woke' as a pejorative, and other writing that was cruel about trans people. She felt she was being lured in with perky pop culture content, only then to be exposed to right-wing propaganda. 'I found what they posted to be hateful and trying to trick people into reading their views,' Gabrielle tells CNN. This was Evie Magazine, a publication and website founded in 2019 by married couple Brittany and Gabriel Hugoboom. The magazine has characterized itself as a 'conservative Cosmo.' Some, pointing to its record of publishing conspiracy theories, vaccine misinformation and tradwife nostalgia, have characterized it as 'alt right.' (Evie Magazine did not respond to requests for comment.) At first glance, though, you might not pick up on any of this at all. On Evie's TikTok account, there's a recent post about WNBA drama and another about Dua Lipa's engagement. Articles on its website contain recipes for iced Starbucks dupes and wedding trend reports that could be found in any mainstream women's magazine. (You'd be forgiven for thinking you're reading Elle — Evie was recently sued over allegations that its logo was nearly identical.) Evie's culture and lifestyle content, as well as past comments from its co-founder and editor-in-chief, suggests that the publication is attempting to appeal to a broader audience of young women. It's hardly alone. Over the past few years, a new wave of right-leaning magazines and influencers has been courting female audiences by covering celebrity gossip, wellness and fashion — a landscape that includes Jayme Franklin's magazine The Conservateur, Alex Clark's popular wellness podcast 'Culture Apothecary' and Brett Cooper's eponymous YouTube show. Like the ecosystem of right-leaning 'bro' podcasters who successfully reached disengaged men in the 2024 US presidential election, this burgeoning conservative women's media sphere is connecting with audiences on subjects that aren't overtly political. If these outlets and influencers cultivate that relationship successfully, they could prove to be powerful, says Jessica Maddox, an assistant professor at the University of Alabama whose research focuses on social media platforms and internet culture. Not only could they shape how young women engage with pop culture, she says, but they could also shape how they see the world. Allison Thompkins, a 27-year-old in Missouri, recalls Evie surfacing in her TikTok feed in February. She unwittingly tapped the heart button in response to a montage of celebrities sporting natural teeth onscreen. 'Off the bat, I was like, 'Yeah, I agree with that. I think veneers are kind of a scourge, and they make everyone look the same,'' she says. 'Then I looked at who posted it and did a double take.' Thompkins, who describes her politics as 'pretty far left,' quickly unliked the video — which, to date, has 2.8 million likes, as well as tens of thousands of comments and shares — but says she was alarmed to see Evie on her feed. She associates the publication with a worldview that is increasingly gaining support on the right: That women should return to traditional gender roles. Last year, Evie selected homesteading influencer and mother-of-eight Hannah Neeleman, better known as Ballerina Farm, as its annual cover star. The brand also sells a 'raw milkmaid dress' that evokes a tradwife aesthetic and nods to the right-wing movement around unpasteurized milk. Then there are headlines like 'The Spiritual Economics of Staying Home With Kids' and '3 Surprisingly Common Ways Women Disrespect Their Husbands (Without Meaning To).' Editorial choices like these reflect an emerging cultural and political shift toward conservatism in the US. Though a majority of women 18-29 voted for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, more young women identified as conservative and Republican in 2024 than they did in 2020, per data from the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University. As youth researcher Rachel Janfanza writes, some of these shifts, like attitudes on gender roles, are ideological. Others, like the reemergence of 1950s silhouettes or concerns about 'toxins' in our food and environment, are reflected through aesthetics and lifestyle. In this conservative women's media sphere, modern feminism is seen as anti-men, casual sex and nontraditional relationship structures are viewed as detrimental, and being a wife and a mother is considered a woman's highest purpose. These outlets and influencers implore their readers to embrace a long-lost femininity and reclaim control over their bodies through their nutritional and medical choices. Julie Mastrine, a 33-year-old in Pennsylvania and a former contributor for Evie, experienced this political and cultural transformation personally. During her six years in San Francisco, she says many of her peers experimented with polyamory and open relationships, practices she felt hindered them from forming healthy bonds. That was among the experiences that led Mastrine to eventually conclude that a flourishing society needed more, not fewer, constraints. Once a self-identified liberal feminist, she now identifies as a conservative. 'When I found Evie, I was like, 'Finally, there's a women's magazine that is not going to be smutty, promote hookup culture, promote certain ideals that I had found in my life were not working well,'' she says. Mastrine says she doesn't agree with the right on everything (for one, she feels the tradwife movement doesn't account for the realities of modern life), but she's glad that a publication like Evie exists. As she and others in this sphere see it, this wave of conservative outlets and influencers is catering to an audience that isn't otherwise represented in women's media. Jayme Franklin, 27, grew up reading glossies like Teen Vogue and Marie Claire. But around Donald Trump's election in 2016, she says she noticed that these publications started getting political. It wasn't Vogue's Hillary Clinton endorsement or glowing write-ups of Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that bothered her, she says, but rather content that she found to be 'anti-men, anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-free speech, very rabidly pro-feminist.' As someone who is Catholic, anti-abortion and who believes in 'more traditional values,' she says she felt alienated. After stints in the first Trump White House and at Fox News, Franklin launched The Conservateur in 2020, a media and lifestyle brand that she says is aimed at modern, yet traditional-minded women in liberal hotspots. The Conservateur doesn't shy away from politics — in April, it hosted the sold-out America Is Hot Again party in DC, and the brand sells a pink 'Make America Hot Again' hat that's been spotted on Lara Trump. Even so, Franklin says the website's culture coverage is first and foremost, with plans to launch a culture-focused podcast next month. At a time when a majority of young women are liberal (and have moved more to the left on some issues), Franklin is making a strategic play for the minority on the other end of the political spectrum. While the top podcasts catering to men — 'The Joe Rogan Experience,' 'The Tucker Carlson Show,' 'This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von' — have a conservative bent, Franklin notes that there isn't really an equivalent for women. ('Call Her Daddy,' one of the most popular podcasts among young women, typically avoids politics, but its host Alex Cooper has been outspoken about reproductive rights and interviewed Kamala Harris ahead of the 2024 presidential election.) 'We're igniting a counterculture within this female space, where there's 'Call Her Daddy,' there's Teen Vogue,' Franklin says. 'We're The Conservateur, and we will offer the exact opposite that a Cosmopolitan or an Alex Cooper is offering.' Franklin might be following Joe Rogan's approach, but there are some notable differences between the 'bro' podcast sphere and the conservative women's media landscape. Unlike Rogan, a comedian whose politics don't neatly cohere into a particular ideology, Franklin and other young women in this niche have backgrounds in right-wing politics. Brett Cooper, who left The Daily Wire and launched an independent YouTube channel, has amassed more than 1.5 million subscribers through videos about what's happening with Justin Bieber or the latest in the Diddy trial. Alex Clark, host of the podcast 'Culture Apothecary' and an influencer for the Charlie Kirk-founded student organization Turning Point USA, has built her following by talking about wellness topics like parenting and chemicals in food. Candace Owens, the far-right political commentator, has found new audiences through her deep dive coverage of the Blake Lively-Justin Baldoni case, and has since launched a women's media brand that includes a book club and fitness app for new moms. If these influencers are introducing young women to conservative ideas through pop culture and wellness, they don't always acknowledge it as a calculated strategy. Cooper and Owens both tell CNN they have long covered pop culture alongside politics as a matter of personal interest. Clark calls the Make America Healthy Again ideology that she promotes on her podcast 'nonpartisan,' adding 'if it has become a tool to bring women into the conservative right-wing…there is no one to blame but the Democratic Party.' Franklin, though, does see The Conservateur as a vehicle to attract young women to the MAGA right. 'Politics is downstream from culture, as Andrew Breitbart once said,' she says. 'That was really apparent in this last election — that if you want to succeed in pushing values and politics, you need to be intimately involved in culture.' Right-leaning women's media don't merely express political perspectives. In some instances, publications and podcasts veer into pseudoscience, conspiracies and misinformation — and it's easy for unsuspecting users to get drawn in. Researchers for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue found that searching terms such as 'organic skincare' and 'nutrition' on Instagram could quickly lead a user to Clark's wellness content. Engaging with her content, in turn, led Instagram's algorithm to recommend accounts that promoted election denialism and other far-right ideas. Another prominent example is in the right-wing campaign against birth control. While negative attitudes around birth control aren't confined to the right, they've become a hallmark of a 'crunchy' conservatism that raises skepticism around conventional medicines and vaccines and that has culminated in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s movement to Make America Healthy Again. Evie Magazine has published numerous negative articles about the pill, IUDs and even condoms, instead promoting 'natural' birth control methods that can be less effective at preventing pregnancy. (Evie's founders also own the Peter Thiel-backed app 28, which offers fitness and nutrition recommendations based on where you are in your menstrual cycle. A representative for 28 told the Washington Post last year that the app has 'never been marketed as an alternative to hormonal birth control.') Clark has said she's 'on a mission to get young women off this pill,' claiming it causes a host of negative health outcomes and describing it as 'poison.' Cooper has echoed similar claims, telling her viewers the pill 'chemically alters the very hormones that make a woman a woman.' When asked about medical experts' assertions that such statements are untrue, both Clark and Cooper say they are operating out of concern for women. 'I am listening to and sharing the stories of women who've experienced things that often get dismissed or ignored,' Cooper writes in an email. 'Calling that perspective 'misinformation' shuts down a much-needed conversation about how we treat women's bodies,' says Clark. Hormonal birth control can certainly cause side effects in some users, and physicians don't always adequately communicate the risks to patients before prescribing it. But medical experts note that many influencers overexaggerate the risks and omit key context about a medication that has proven to be safe and effective for contraception and treating some medical conditions. 'People get on the internet and they just absolutely fearmonger, and they do it from a place of not caring who that could hurt or acknowledging the nuance that's required to have a really level-headed discussion about contraceptive pills,' Dr. Danielle Jones, an obstetrician-gynecologist and online educator, said in a recent Twitch stream. Misleading messaging around birth control can have political consequences. Republican lawmakers around the US have falsely conflated emergency contraceptives and IUDs with abortion, sometimes resulting in legislative efforts that threaten contraception access. Maddox, the University of Alabama researcher, sees this rhetoric as inherently connected to political attacks on reproductive rights. 'A magazine having an article about the natural method of birth control on the surface isn't that problematic,' she says. 'But when you situate it within a moment where Roe v. Wade has been overturned, where states are implementing these absolutely draconian anti-abortion laws, where women's bodily autonomy is under threat … I think about those as speaking to these larger political projects that are actually abuses of power.' The readerships of Evie and The Conservateur still pale in comparison to women's magazines like Bustle, Glamour or Vogue. But their hundreds of thousands of combined social media followers, and the even greater reach of influencers like Cooper and Clark, suggest that conservative views on gender, relationships and wellness are resonating among some young women. After years of being on the fringe of mainstream women's media, conservatism is having a cultural moment. Jess Rauchberg, an assistant professor at Seton Hall University whose research explores digital media cultures, characterizes this as a reaction to the 'girlboss of the 2010s' — a shorthand for that decade's prevailing ethos that women merely needed to advocate for themselves to reach new professional heights. Despite the liberating ideas at their core, the girlboss trope and other aspects of 2010s culture had their limitations, adds Maddox, the University of Alabama researcher. Grinding at work didn't necessarily translate to financial security, nor was it as fulfilling as spending time with loved ones. Dating app algorithms and casual sex left some women feeling degraded and lonelier than before. Conservative women's media offers one answer to these problems in its embrace of traditional ideas around gender roles. But Maddox says influencers who speak fondly of eras like the 1950s don't usually account for how people of color or the LGBTQ community fared back then. 'When promises are unmet today, the past seems appealing because the past indicates a time when promises were met,' she says. 'Of course, then the problem goes: Promises met for who?' Conservatism's current appeal also reflects a recurring push and pull between progress and backlash, Maddox adds. Young women coming of age today might not fully understand why some of their predecessors fought so hard for ideals like sex positivity or body positivity — without that context, ideas to the contrary can seem more attractive. In a few years, Rauchberg notes, the pendulum may very well swing back again. 'As our current political administration in the US continues to make certain decisions that are impacting women in ways that maybe they did not anticipate, we will see maybe a disavowal or a step away from what these magazines or these influencers say,' she says.
Forbes
16-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
New Alabama Law Bans Smokable Hemp And Regulates Hemp Products
A new Alabama law bans smokable forms of hemp and regulates other consumable hemp products. Alabama Republican Gov. Kay Ivey this week signed legislation to ban smokable forms of hemp and regulate other consumable hemp products. Ivey signed the bill over objections from representatives of the Alabama hemp industry and some state and local officials, who argue the new law threatens the viability of small businesses. The Alabama House of Representatives approved the measure last month, followed by passage in the state Senate on May 6. Ivey signed the bill, HB 455, on Wednesday, according to a report from Alabama Reflector. The legislation authorizes the Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board to regulate consumable hemp products, which are broadly defined to include any finished product for human or animal consumption that contains any part of the hemp plant or hemp derivatives. The board is tasked with issuing licenses to oversee the manufacturing, distribution and sales of hemp consumables, similar to the agency's oversight of the state's alcoholic beverage industry. According to the text of the new law, 'any smokeable hemp product' not limited to 'plant product or raw hemp material that is marketed to consumers as hemp cigarettes, hemp cigars, hemp joints, hemp buds, hemp flowers, hemp leaves, ground hemp flowers, or any variation of these terms to include any product that contains a cannabinoid, whether psychoactive or not' are prohibited by the measure. Republican state Rep. Andy Whitt, the sponsor of the HB 445, noted that the measure also prohibits hemp THC vaporizers. 'Also outlawed within this bill are the smokables, the inhalables; such as your vapes that had THC, your buds, your flowers,' said Whitt. The measure also restricts sales of consumable hemp products to adults aged 21 and older. Sales will only be permitted by retailers that are licensed to sell alcoholic beverages and stand-alone shops that do not permit access to minors. Online sales of hemp THC products are prohibited by the measure, as is the on-site consumption of such goods. The legislation also levies a tax on consumable hemp products. HB 445 also sets a limit for individual consumable hemp products of 10mg THC, the cannabis compound primarily responsible for marijuana's psychoactive effects, with a limit 40mg THC per package. Whitt said the legislation was necessary to protection children from unregulated intoxicating hemp products. 'It is putting guardrails on an unregulated and unlicensed product in the state of Alabama that's preying on our youth,' he said. The Alabama Reflector reports that it is unclear whether the new law prohibits CBD, and non-intoxicating cannabis compound found in many hemp products. Representatives of the state's hemp industry lobbied against the measure, saying it will threaten Alabama small businesses. 'I feel that it will destroy the hemp industry here in Alabama,' Joe Resha, CEO of the Apothecary dispensary, told WVTM 13 television news. 'The only thing we'll be able to sell will be ten-milligram drinks, ten-milligram edibles that are individually packaged; everything will have to go. There will be no more on-site consumption, there'll be no more deliveries, no more e-commerce.' Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey The bill was also opposed by some state and local officials. Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin had encouraged Ivey to veto the bill, saying that it would return Alabama to 'an era of cannabis criminalization, overregulation, and lost opportunity.' 'By limiting access to legal hemp products, burdening small businesses with excessive restrictions, and imposing punitive taxes, this bill doesn't just regulate — it criminalizes,' Woodfin said. 'It locks out entrepreneurs, particularly Black and brown business owners who are often first to be policed and last to get licensed. It creates barriers where we should be building bridges — to opportunity, to equity, and to public health solutions that actually work. Alabama should be investing in the future of this industry — not regulating it into irrelevance.' Alabama's hemp industry is expected to file suit against the new hemp regulation law, according to media reports.
