A letter to the Democracy Alliance community from president Pamela Shifman

Dear Partners:

Women’s History Month has always been a chance to remember the women whose brilliance and leadership have made our country stronger. But this year especially, it is crying out for so much more: an unvarnished truth about what is happening to women right now.

Along with the usual commemorations, this month has delivered a deluge of disturbing headlines that illuminate a crisis hiding in plain sight. As a pro-democracy community, it is essential that we connect the dots and understand the stakes.

Start with the federal workforce. The impact of DOGE’s racist and sexist purge is coming into sharper view. A devastating and essential story in Hammer & Hope makes the data clear: Black women have been fired from the federal work force more than any other group. The numbers are shocking. Black women comprise 6 percent of the overall U.S. labor force and 12 percent of the federal labor force. But of the almost 300,000 federal jobs slashed in 2025, Black women were a full 33 percent of those cuts.

Thanks to deposition video also released this month, we also got a closer view of some of those behind the destruction: DOGE staff in their twenties with little experience, using ChatGPT to randomly cancel federal grants simply because they used words like “BIPOC,” “LGBTQ,” or “equity.”  

DOGE failed spectacularly in its stated purpose: federal spending actually increased under its watch. But the impact of the cuts will reverberate for generations – in families and communities, and across a government stripped of immensely skilled workers with a deep commitment to public service.

We also got more evidence that the racist and misogynist ideology that helped drive DOGE is surging across our government, especially among young men. Nick Fuentes, who has openly called for women to be imprisoned in “breeding gulags,” is now one of the most important figures of mainstream conservative youth culture. Fuentes once summed up his views as, “Jews are running society, women need to shut the f— up, Blacks need to be imprisoned for the most part, and we would live in paradise.”

Here again, the emerging picture is shocking: one insider estimates that 30 to 40 percent of Republican congressional staffers under the age of 30 are Fuentes followers. They’re called “groypers” – and they are not a fringe. They are the next generation of a movement that has set its eyes far beyond Donald Trump.

Amid all of this came a new reminder of a very old truth: violence and misogyny are not limited to the right.

A New York Times investigation found that César Chávez had sexually abused women and girls over decades, including girls as young as 12 years old. The survivors include the extraordinary Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers, and one of the greatest organizers our country and the world has ever known. 

This isn’t a story about the past; it’s a window into the present. The Chavez investigation arrived amid the continuing fallout of a story that has come to define our era: the Epstein network of abusers and accomplices. As the scale and reach of the Epstein files moves from the shadows to the light, it serves as yet another reminder that neary 1 in 3 women have experienced sexual violence across our country. Gender-based violence is an epidemic, and the culture that fuels it is present across the political spectrum.

This Women’s History Month, we need to find the courage to confront – and act – on the truth. The deep culture of misogyny and violence that has always silenced and sidelined women is getting worse, not better. As the threats grow, Black women, Indigenous women, and women of color are at the center of the bullseye. The women who have done the most to build and sustain democracy in this country are under growing attack and facing multiple assaults at once. 

This is a time for renewed clarity: there will never be a path to an inclusive democracy without gender and racial justice at the core. The right understands this well; it’s why they are hell bent on destroying the progress we have made over the last 50 years. We must be just as focused and relentless in our commitment to make gender and racial justice a reality. Everything we are fighting for depends on it.

Thank you for everything you are doing to ensure we meet this moment with the clarity and urgency it demands, and for your work to build an inclusive, just democracy that works for all.

Pamela

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