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Headshot of Melissa Gira Grant
Melissa Gira Grant

Melissa Gira Grant is a staff writer at The New Republic, the author of Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work (published by Verso), and the co-director of They Won’t Call It Murder (executive produced by Field of Vision). She was a senior reporter at The Appeal, and a contributing writer at The Village Voice and Pacific Standard.


All Articles
May 8, 2026
Melissa Gira Grant
T​he Trans Idahoans Fighting an Extreme Bathroom Ban
A new legal challenge aims to prevent ​a​ punitive anti-trans law in the state from going into effect—and stave off a future where transgender people are at worst criminalized and at best objects of routine suspicion.
May 6, 2026
Melissa Gira Grant
The Right’s Upside-Down Argument Against the Abortion Pill
In Louisiana’s attempt to restrict the telehealth prescription of mifepristone, the lawsuit redefines reproductive freedom as “coercion” or “abusing women,” and genuine coercion as “states’ rights” or “protecting women.”​ It couldn’t be more wrong.
April 30, 2026
Melissa Gira Grant
How the FBI Turned a Custody Dispute Into Cheap Anti-Trans Fodder
When the FBI took over an alleged international kidnapping case from local law enforcement—and sent a plane to retrieve a child from Cuba—certain details of the story changed in telling ways.
April 23, 2026
Melissa Gira Grant
RFK Jr.’s Anti-Trans Policy Has Been Toppled for All the Right Reasons
It’s a relief to see the courts reject the Trump administration’s policies on the basis of the harm they do to people, not only the harm they do to the law.
April 20, 2026
Melissa Gira Grant
The Terrifying Convergence of Fetal Personhood Laws and Abortion Bans
A Georgia woman was charged with murder for an alleged abortion. “Fetal personhood” laws may be as much to blame as the state’s abortion ban.
April 13, 2026
Melissa Gira Grant
Idaho Is Ground Zero of Republicans’ Escalating War on Trans People
Ten years ago, bathroom bans inspired boycotts and celebrity opposition. Where’s the national outrage now?
January 13, 2026
Melissa Gira Grant
Trump and ICE Want You to Think Renee Nicole Good Deserved It
Since Good was killed, the administration and its right-wing allies have engaged in brazenly misogynistic attempts to defend ICE’s actions.
January 6, 2026
Melissa Gira Grant
The Tim Walz Saga Shows Why Debunking Conspiracy Theories Doesn’t Work
The Minnesota governor abandoned his reelection campaign due to the thinnest of right-wing stories about fraudulent childcare centers.
December 25, 2025
Melissa Gira Grant
Kristi Noem Is the Villain DHS Was Made For
The Department of Homeland Security has been grotesque and incompetent from the start. In Noem, the department finally has a leader cruel and campy enough to match its stated mission.
December 14, 2025
MagazineMelissa Gira Grant
Inside Chicago’s Neighborhood ICE Resistance
Residents have organized a formidable network to protect immigrant communities from Trump’s brutal deportation program. Their efforts are making a genuine difference.
December 3, 2025
Melissa Gira Grant
The Radical Honesty of Trump’s Racist New Immigration Policy
Kristi Noem is being pretty direct in her regurgitation of white nationalist talking points.
November 26, 2025
Melissa Gira Grant
When Is It Time to Flee?
Trans people and their families are facing hard questions and choices as threats to their safety and rights proliferate.
October 9, 2025
Melissa Gira Grant
Trump Is Waging War on an American City
The real threat to people in Chicago ​(and Los Angeles and Portland) is our maniacal president.
October 2, 2025
Melissa Gira Grant
A Grim New Report Shows How Pregnant People Have Been Policed Post-Roe
New research documents the myriad ways pregnancy outcomes have been criminalized in the post-Roe legal environment.
September 25, 2025
Melissa Gira Grant
The Right​’s Baseless​ Project to ​Link Trans People​ With Extremism
A campaign for the FBI to adopt a new designation of “transgender ideology–inspired violence and extremism” is less about law enforcement than politics.
September 19, 2025
Melissa Gira Grant
Trump’s Terrifying, Self-Serving Rebrand of Political Violence
Now it only counts when the left does it.
September 11, 2025
MagazineMelissa Gira Grant
The Native Activist Who Keeps Going Back to Alligator Alcatraz
Betty Osceola’s tribe, the Miccosukee, has joined a federal lawsuit challenging the “unlawful construction” of the detention camp on land tribal members consider their own.
August 19, 2025
Melissa Gira Grant
Federal Agents Are the New Proud Boys
It used to be far-right groups who flooded cities wearing masks and military gear, looking for a fight. Now it’s anonymous federal agents who are violently attacking people on the street.
August 14, 2025
Melissa Gira Grant
DHS’s Neo-Nazi Memes Show the Agency for What It Is
From the beginning, the Department of Homeland Security has downplayed the threat of white nationalism while focusing its law enforcement power on groups it deems a threat to an imaginary ideal America.
August 12, 2025
Melissa Gira Grant
Trump Is Taking Over D.C. Police Because He’s a Racist Thug
Trump doesn’t care about “crime.” He cares about the right white people being in charge.

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