During the interview, Trump spoke to The Sun about his upcoming visit on Monday to Buckingham Palace. Although he’ll meet again with the Queen—and multiple other members of the royal family during scheduled events like lunch with Prince Harry—Markle reportedly won’t be joining.
Of course, Markle’s still officially on her maternity leave. However, in 2016, before she became a royal, she also spoke out about her dislike for Trump and his politics, calling him “misogynistic” and “divisive.”
During his latest interview with The Sun, the reporter told Trump about what Markle said in her old interview. According to the tabloid, Trump replied, “I didn’t know that. What can I say? I didn’t know that she was nasty.”
Trump also said he thought she would be “very good” in her role in the Royal Family. However, he apparently wasn’t aware he wouldn’t be meeting her at Buckingham next week until his interviewer told him. The President mentioned too that he’d be bringing Ivanka, Eric, Donald Junior, and Tiffany with him because he wants them to hold a “next-generation” meeting with Prince William and Prince Harry.
Trump also spoke about meeting the Queen again, after a 2018 visit in which he reportedly broke royal protocol not just once but a few times (he kept her waiting for 15 minutes and walked in front of her after forgetting to bow to her). “It will be great seeing the Queen for the second time,” he said. “We had a very good talk the first one. We had a lot of interesting things to say. It really was a great visit. My mother also loved the Queen.”
Just now, politicians in Georgia voted to ban abortion after six weeks. Georgia is now the third state to pass this harmful restriction this month. (Fifteen states have filed similar bans in this legislative session alone.) You don’t have to look far to understand just how these introduced abortion bans—up by 63 percent in states in 2019—affect real people.
Jennifer, a Planned Parenthood patient in Georgia in her early forties, told us that after she’d missed a period, she knew immediately she was pregnant. Jennifer didn’t wait. She called a nearby health center to schedule her abortion. But the medically unnecessary restrictions that limited the number of providers and available appointment times delayed her care by weeks. Despite knowing she was pregnant just after a missed period and deciding she wanted an abortion immediately, by the time Jennifer received care, she was eight weeks pregnant.
Imagine if this were any other aspect of medicine. Imagine if your ability to receive treatment was limited by when you were diagnosed with the condition. Chances are you wouldn’t even know you had the condition by the time it was too late to receive the treatment that you wanted. And if you did get diagnosed in time, you might still have to travel hundreds of miles, find child care, get time off from work, and face protesters—just to receive that medical care.
That’s what happens to women in need of abortion access in places like Georgia. These six-week abortion bans affect many women before they know they’re pregnant. Even if they are one of the rare few—like Jennifer—who know earlier than six weeks, these women still find it almost impossible to access an abortion within that time frame. These bans fundamentally infringe upon a person’s right to bodily autonomy.
We’re less than three months into the 2019 state legislative session, and at least one disturbing trend has emerged: Anti-women’s-health politicians have doubled down on their efforts to take away the right to safe, legal abortion. Already, more than 250 bills have been filed that directly restrict abortion access, and nearly half of those restrictions have been abortion bans—outright attempts to prohibit people from making their own health care decisions.
Politicians are directly interfering with medical practice and endangering women’s lives. We know this statistic, but it bears a repeat mention: Abortion is a safe, legal medical procedure that nearly one in four women will have in their lifetime, and it’s part of the full spectrum of reproductive health care. We are at an all-time low for unintended pregnancies because of birth control and evidence-based sex education. Politicians wishing to reduce unintended pregnancies and the need for abortion should invest in women’s health. Instead, their actions directly go against public health and public will. We know the cost: It’s women’s lives.
At Planned Parenthood we see the effects of these attacks firsthand. In the last eight years, there have been more than 420 laws passed that directly restrict abortion access. These harmful laws have shuttered health centers and turned entire regions of the country into abortion deserts. Women are forced to travel hundreds of miles for health care, and those who cannot—women who can’t afford the travel, who can’t find child care and time off from work, who live in rural communities without access, who are often people of color—will just go without. In fact, people in six states have only one abortion provider left, exacerbating an already challenging landscape for reproductive health care.
We know what happens when politicians cut access to vital health care services: Patients delay care or go without it. When Texas eliminated Planned Parenthood from its family planning program, 30,000 fewer women accessed health care. In Iowa, when four health centers closed, 12,000 people went without care and the rates of STIs skyrocketed. A recent study from Texas showed when the state enacted abortion restrictions, it didn’t end abortion care in the state. The restrictions just meant delayed care and increased the number of second-trimester abortions.
When I first heard two years ago that Beto O’Rourke, a relatively unknown Texas congressman from El Paso without any flashy national legislative wins, was running against swamp monster Ted Cruz for the latter’s Texas Senate seat, I had a similar reaction to a lot of people: Go for it, dude. Why not?
And like a lot of people, when I saw the lavish magazine profiles and never-ending Facebook Live videos and sweat-soaked blue button-downs, I got excited. Texas needed this win. Democratic organizers in states put for decades in the “Lean Red” and “Solid Red” columns needed this win. And with so much on the line in the 2018 midterms, progressives nationwide needed this win. I believed Beto O’Rourke’s message could inspire action from generation of activists and voters for years to come. And even after he lost, I hoped we’d see him again in the future.
As a candidate in the Texas Senate race, O’Rourke radiated promise and optimism, an avatar for Democrats who’d had little to cheer for in such a historically conservative state. As a candidate on the national stage, however, he looks a lot less like the future we’d hope for. Even against just the other white men in this race (or about to get in it) like former Vice President Joe Biden, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Mayor Pete Buttigieg, it’s hard to say what Beto O’Rourke brings to the table other than potentially a Best Personality™ superlative.
It’s hard not to be skeptical, too, about O’Rourke’s personality-driven bid when former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and former Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum are putting their post-election efforts towards initiatives like rebuilding Georgia’s entire election system and creating a voter registration group in Florida, respectively. (Abrams may yet announce a run for higher office, but if and when she does, it’ll be backed up with clear policy objectives that she’s detailing now.) If O’Rourke truly wants to do the “greatest good” for America as he claims, why not focus on uprooting structural inequality on the ground and making it easier for the most vulnerable Americans to have their voices heard and their needs met? What does running an ambiguous presidential campaign achieve?
There’s a big difference between O’Rourke running unopposed against Ted Cruz, one of the more unpopular members of Congress, and O’Rourke running against a slate of candidates in one of the most diverse primary fields—both in terms of identities and ideology—in presidential campaign history. Against Cruz, the common criticism that O’Rourke was low in ideological direction, policy proposals, and legislative accomplishments faded into the background. Now it’s unmissable. To his credit, O’Rourke has tried to better define where he stands—but his platform seems mostly to draw on the ideas that more liberal-leaning peers have put forward, with few signature ideas of his own. He’s supported a few more progressive efforts like the Green New Deal and ending narcotics prohibition and legalizing marijuana, though he’s also rescinded his support of single-payer healthcare for a more moderate option called Medicare for America.
Some see this mix-and-match politics as a positive. “Him being so focused on talking to people, listening to people, and inspiring people at the start of this campaign in combination with sharing those policies is an important balance for me,” says New York-based editor Olivia, who asked not to use her last name. “I can see how it is energizing young people in the party and even people beyond the party and that excites me—I feel like that should be something we’re all cheering on, whether he’s our number-one choice or not.”
Ivanka Trump has faced criticism for staying silent amid some of her father’s most controversial moments, despite positioning herself as an advocate for women’s rights and for families in America. But in a rare interview on Good Morning America on Friday morning, she essentially told people not to expect her to speak out against some of the administration’s more sexist policies because she’s not “president of all women’s issues” and it’s not her job to share her opinion when it diverges from her father’s.
In the interview, Abby Huntsman asked Trump how she reconciled her support of certain women’s empowerment initiatives with the White House’s decision to enact practices like the zero-tolerance program that led to the separation of thousands of families at the U.S. border. Many people had called Trump out because she wasn’t more vocal, although months later she referred to it as a “low point.” Donald Trump also revealed to lawmakers that it was his daughter who encouraged him to sign an executive order to end the separations.
“My job as a member of this administration is not to share my viewpoint when they diverge,” she told Huntsman. “Subsequently, I was asked the question and I gave an answer. But my role in this regard is not to—is not ‘president of all women’s issues’ or running all women’s issues across the United States government.”
She also said that when she does come forward, it‘s probably because people aren’t listening in the White House. “I think that when you hear me start to speak publicly on an issue that’s active, it’s because my voice isn’t being heard privately,” she said.
Trump’s view of her job likely won’t sit well with her detractors, who noticed how forthcoming she was about her relationship to parenting and women’s rights back when her father was campaigning. Her repeated absence during polarizing debates, like the Christine Blasey Ford hearing and allegations of her father’s sexual misconduct, also suggests that Trump frequently taps into her self-identified role as “wife, mother, sister, daughter” when it serves the administration—but not always when women and families actually need her to exert her influence.
Huntsman also asked Trump about the FBI’s probe into the administration’s involvement with Russia and wondered if she’s concerned about “anyone in your life that you love being involved.” Trump was uncharacteristically firm as she declared “no.”
“There’s nothing there, yet it’s created weeks and weeks and months of headlines,” she said. “So no, I have zero concern.”
Earlier this week Kamala Harris entered the 2020 presidential race. Her announcement was the expected conclusion to the will-she-won’t-she conversation that has surrounded her since she was elected to the Senate in 2016, announced her well-timed memoir in 2018, and raised millions to support progressive candidates in the midterm elections in November. As was true for Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand, who also formalized their candidacies in recent weeks, the fact that Harris has decided to join this raucous, crowded campaign season had started to feel inevitable. Of course she would run.
Kamala Harris is qualified, popular, and charismatic. Sure she has her flaws, but she polls well. Her sharp critiques of the Trump administration have raised her national profile. Even her facial expressions have gone viral.
Warren had a similar reception. When she announced in late December, news outlets blared that she’d done what we all knew she would and made it “official.” The noted wonk was a committed populist before some Bernie Bros were born. She’s an ardent progressive, a vanquisher of corporate influence! Of course she would run.
Gillibrand, too: She launched her own initiative to inspire women to run for office in 2012 called “Off the Sidelines.” She’s been a vocal advocate for survivors of sexual assault and pushed lawmakers to pass bills on the issue months before the Me Too movement exploded. It was a no-brainer. If not her, then who? Of course, of course, of course she would run.
With Warren, Gillibrand, and now Harris in the contest, the top three frontrunner candidates in the Democratic race for president are women. Count Tulsi Gabbard, and just under 50 percent of all the candidates who’ve jumped in so far are female. (As for their male counterparts—who can even name them?) Read this sentence twice. Read it six times. Shout it from an open window. The women are in.
For more than two centuries, men have occupied the Oval Office. In that time we’ve seen one woman sit atop either of the two main parties’ tickets and just a handful of women run for president at all. Harris nodded at one example when she made her announcement 47 years to the week after Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman ever to seek the position.
After Hillary Clinton’s loss and the historic midterms, the presidential race, too, should feel like a revolution. Instead what’s remarkable is how the 2020 battle feels so obvious. Routine. Sublime, spectacular, triumphant—but also, normal. When I saw that Harris had announced, as predicted, on live television I didn’t drop a coffee mug or break a plate or scream. I smiled for a second and then went back to breakfast. It was just another 8:00 A.M. in America, with just one more ambitious woman in contention for the White House. As we were! This is our life now.
What’s remarkable is how the 2020 battle feels so obvious. Routine. Sublime, spectacular, triumphant—but also, normal.
“This field of wildly qualified, incredibly impressive women is making the most consequential political race of our lifetime look and feel more like the reality we all aspire to—basic equality—and that is such a positive thing for the American public to be witnessing,” writes Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, in an email to Glamour. Despite eons of entrenched sexism, four women have decided to throw their hats into what will be a wild, intense race. At least one other woman seems poised to join them. For those of us who refused to take part in the class POTUS unit in third grade because no woman had ever served, the future looks bright.
It was just a few months ago that pundits wanted to know whether the millions of women who’d marched in 2017 would vote, let alone win. It was two dozen or so months before that some worried Clinton’s defeat in 2016 would put a generation of women off elected office. It turns out women do vote and women can win. Who else but us delivered the most diverse class of lawmakers ever to take their seats in the House of Representatives, with 102 women elected to the chamber (and three dozen brand new members)? More than 20 were first-time women candidates, a record.
When you think back on everything that you’ve watched on television in 2018, are there any emerging themes that comes to mind? So often, we see our real-life interests reflected back at us on screen (all those royal references in entertainment right now.) Other times, they’ll offer us a glimpse of an alternate reality, one not too far off from what we know—like how, in 2018, more shows envisioned what a female U.S. president might look like.
After a landmark year for women not only running for political office in the U.S., but also winning elections, this subject was more prescient than ever. The memory of Hillary Clinton’s loss was still fresh—and though she was certainly not the first to run for the highest political office in the land (Shirley Chisholm did so in 1972, as did Victoria Woodhull a full century before her), she broke new ground as the first female candidate nominated by a major party and as winner of the popular vote. Globally, there are and have been plenty examples of women leading countries, from German Chancellor Angela Merkel to British Prime Minister Theresa May. And what we’ve seen for them and female political leaders stateside is that, unlike their male counterparts (save for the time Barack Obama donned a khaki suit on Easter), their wardrobes play a significant role in the public’s perception of them and their performance. We may not have had a female POTUS yet, but we can imagine what kind of scrutiny she would face for her fashion choices.
PHOTO: David Giesbrecht/Netflix
President Claire Underwood in House of Cards.
In 2018, we’ve seen various interpretations of how this would play out—and how she would dress—on television. On the sixth and final season of Netflix’s House of Cards, Claire Underwood (played by Robin Wright) has settled into the role of POTUS, after her husband, Francis Underwood (Kevin Spacey), was killed off—a result of the actor’s firing following allegations of sexual abuse. The role is a significant change for the Underwood matriarch: She was Vice President in season five, but this new position bestows her with more power and as much force and fire as ever. It also gives viewers a sense of what politics might look like in the U.S. if a woman was in charge. Yes, that means a lot of suits.
“We knew Claire was going to be president at the end of season five, so I immediately started researching past and present world leaders, both men and women,” says Kemal Harris, who has dressed the character since the show’s third season and also styles actress Wright in real life. She looked at what White House employees would wear day in, day out, to inform what President Claire Underwood’s “everyday suit” would look like: “It was still form-fitting, with easy pieces like a suit jacket and skirt or pants and dresses, but with militaristic details, like gold buttons.”
“Whereas in the past we’d go for three-quarter sleeves, I went for a higher neckline and longer sleeves,” Harris continues. “This season, she’s ready for battle.”
PHOTO: David Giesbrecht/Netflix
President Underwood in House of Cards.
President Underwood takes the classic suiting look, but wears it in her own way: tailored to uplift and showcase the female form, accented with those military-esque elements that reflect the battle for power that she would have to wage, and very high-fashion for a highly-visible leader (though never in a way that detracts from her purpose.) These aren’t simply pantsuits—they’re sartorial weapons, used to convey power, but also to persuade.
“For Claire, it’s always been about power, control, trust, trying to win everyone over to her side,” Harris adds. “She wants to be streamlined and unfussy and her wardrobe really reflects that.”
This is but the latest as-seen-on-TV female POTUS wardrobe: Underwood joins Homeland’s President Elizabeth Keane and Scandal’s President Mellie Grant, which have paved the fictional landscape before her. And viewers will recognize a lot of the same sartorial references on House of Cards as they saw on Homeland and on Scandal.
To outfit President Keane, costume designer Katina Le Kerr says that, like Harris, she looked at the clothing of current politicians, as well as that of female leaders from different industries— “community leaders across the country, Washington D.C. pros, international leaders, and Fortune 500 CEOs”—throughout history. “I studied which women wore pant suits, which wore skirt suits,” she recalls.
PHOTO: Antony Platt
President Elizabeth Keane, left, in Homeland.
Lyn Paolo, who was responsible for all things fashion on Scandal, focused on transitioning Mellie from First Lady to President Grant, much like Underwood and Harris are doing now: “We went from a lot of dresses with shrug cardigans to more of a suited look with a jacket and a dress combination,” she explains. “After her election win—and once she stood on the Seal of the US, in her Oval Office—we made a transition to a pantsuit.”
When it comes to mimicking a presidential wardrobe, it’s about the small but consequential details that ensure the costumes read as authentic. “One thing I noticed about all of the past presidents and leaders is that they never carry a briefcase and you never see them with their roller bag,” Harris says. “Women in positions of political leadership don’t carry handbags, so I made a conscious decision to go without handbags for Claire in season six. She’s the president—she’s got people to carry her ID and her lipstick for her now.”
Then, there were the cufflinks: “In the past, the White House has made special cufflinks for each President, and you can buy replicas at the White House gift shop. So I reached out to figure out what was up with these cufflinks, because they were so intriguing—I didn’t even know they existed.” The White House Gift Shop sent her a prototype of a cufflink that had the presidential seal, but hadn’t been customized for any past president, so they became Claire’s. “She’s wearing them in almost every scene for every outfit,” Harris adds.
PHOTO: David Giesbrecht/Netflix
President Underwood in House of Cards.
But of all the items in their fictional closets, it’s the pantsuits that feel the most on the nose. For women in Washington, they’ve become a symbol of authority (thanks, in part, to Clinton and her penchant for suits of all kinds.) But the classic blazer-pant combo has gone from Capitol Hill to the red carpet in recent years, and is increasingly marketed by contemporary brands as a “power look” for shoppers who want to feel more in control. The language surrounding it can be complicated for some costume designers, though—as Le Kerr notes: “That word ‘power’ surfaces strangely, only when there’s a discussion about women wearing suits. When a man wears a suit, we don’t think of him wearing a ‘power’ suit—he’s just wearing a suit. The power is implied. With women having not had political power for so long…Well, someday we won’t be having these discussions.”
Still, Le Kerr believes that the pantsuit will continue to be the agreed-upon look of politicians, both male and female, both real and fictional. “Even if a woman has a certain style proclivity, the political arena isn’t the place to fully express it,” she says. “It’s an extension of the business world, where expressing personality takes the back seat to conveying intelligence, qualities of character, and leadership skills.”
Across all three characters, there’s a deliberate shunning of traditional “feminine” clothing, of the stuffy pencil skirts and pearl necklaces. That doesn’t mean femininity doesn’t play a role in imagining these women—in fact, it’s central to the way some of them communicate and assert their power. It’s just done in a much more subtle way.
PHOTO: Richard Cartwright
President Mellie Grant, left, in Scandal.
“She has this kind of quiet sensuality about her, without ever being in your face—you’ll never see [her in] a plunging v-neck or a mini skirt,” Harris says of Underwood. “We’re showing this disarming strength through her wardrobe without ever having to flash it in your face… That’s one of the ways Claire manipulates people around her.”
President Keane, on the other hand, was “a woman in a dark suit with very little time to stand in front of her closet wondering what she was going to wear,” according to Le Kerr. “Her wardrobe didn’t evolve—that was my intent. We dropped into a slice of this woman’s life and focused on her words and actions.” Harris also made an effort to make President Underwood an outfit repeater “because she’s a world leader now and it would look conspicuous if she showed up in a brand-new fancy suit everywhere she goes.”
This strategy is more reflective of how we imagine past (male) presidents’ approach to their wardrobe. It’s a double standard that Michelle Obama has talked about. “[Keane’s] costumes weren’t flashy, but that was the goal,”Le Kerr adds; her wardrobe was to be “believable and powerful.”
PHOTO: Antony Platt
President Keane in Homeland.
The conversation about how women in politics use their wardrobe is top of mind as a new class of Congresspeople are sworn in this January. For so many of them, how they dress speaks to their identity—like Ilhan Omar, who wears a hijab and was one of two Muslim women elected to the House of Representatives in November. It’ll also continue to play out on the small screen: The reigns of Presidents Grant, Keane, and Underwood are now over (for now—you can’t rule out a reboot), but a new female leader will be coming to Netflix, as Jennifer Aniston and Tig Notaro have signed on to play POTUS and FLOTUS , respectively, in the forthcoming movie First Ladies.
Though we know women lead and lead well whether they’re in a suit or a pair of sweats, the more we speak our power into existence, the more it will come to fruition. Here’s to more women leaders everywhere—no matter what they’re wearing.
