100 days out, and here's what's actually true
— A WEEKLY NOTE FROM LEAH DAUGHTRY —
Black
Lady
News
What matters this week.
For the women who move the world.
Issue No. 014
Friday, July 31, 2026
A NOTE FROM LEAH
We lost Betye Saar this week, four days before her 100th birthday. I want to sit with that for a second before we get into the numbers, because a woman who spent seventy years turning what this country threw away into something holy deserves a full breath. May her memory be a blessing.
But the numbers are waiting, and they don't wait gently. A hundred days out, and I've spent this week watching a map get redrawn under a congressman in Memphis, casting a vote by proxy on where our voice counts first in 2028, and reading that Medicare premiums, along with gas, healthcare premiums, and housing costs, are all climbing for millions of people who did nothing wrong except get older, or sicker, or just try to live in this country. None of it is separate. All of it is the same fight, wearing different clothes.
Let's get into it.
THE HEADLINE
100 Days. Here's What's Actually at Stake.
One hundred days. That's what's left between today and November 3, and every one of the 435 House seats is on the ballot that day. So are 35 Senate seats and 36 governorships. Not some of it. All of it. Every seat matters. Every vote in it does too. If you want to know what that means for Black women, don't start with what Washington is telling you. Start with what we're telling the pollsters.
The Black Women's Roundtable just dropped its 2026 "Power of the Sister Vote" survey, and it tracks something the 2024 version didn't: what's changed. Cost of living is still up there, still 91 percent rating it a top concern. Fighting discrimination and racism, still 91 percent. But three things moved into the top tier this year that weren't there before. Protecting voting rights. Bringing down healthcare and prescription costs. Reducing Black maternal deaths in childbirth. And sitting at the very top, higher than any of it, 92 percent: protecting Social Security and Medicare.
Meanwhile, House Democrats launched their own hundred-day push on Sunday. Democratic House Leader Hakeem Jeffries delivered it in Pennsylvania's 7th District, alongside Governor Josh Shapiro: "Fighting for an Affordable America," a Weekend of Action with four hundred events in battleground districts. Billed and delivered as an affordability speech — groceries, gas, housing, healthcare costs — it's a real answer to real concerns. Cost of living and healthcare costs are both in the survey's top tier.
Social Security and Medicare, discrimination, voting rights, and Black maternal health round out what Black women are telling pollsters matters most this cycle. All five threads are live right now, this week, regardless of which headlines lead.
Take Medicare. Yesterday, the Trump administration announced it's ending a subsidy program that's kept Medicare Part D drug plan premiums stable, a year ahead of schedule. By the administration's own numbers, a quarter of the nearly 25 million people on these plans see no change. The rest see their premiums climb, some by single digits, close to half by as much as $20 a month. It's real money out of real pockets, on the exact issue the survey says matters most.
And it's not just Medicare. Since Trump took office in January 2025, gas is up 31 percent. Healthcare premiums, for people buying their own coverage, are up 58 percent on average. Grocery prices are up modestly, auto insurance is up, and housing costs — driven mostly by what it costs to own rather than rent — are up too. The mortgage rate is the one real exception; it's actually eased. Whatever the campaign trail promises, on the ground it's mostly moving one direction.
That bigger picture is showing up in the redistricting fights too. Four days ago, a federal panel let Tennessee's new map stand. It was drawn to eliminate the state's only majority-Black district, splitting Memphis into three pieces. State Rep. Justin Pearson, who was already running in that district's Democratic primary, is campaigning on the new lines anyway, calling it what it is: an erasure of Black political power. Missouri did something similar to Rep. Emanuel Cleaver's Kansas City seat, redrawing it to stretch nearly 200 miles east and turn a district he's held for two decades into one Republicans think they can win. The state's Supreme Court upheld that map in May. Cleaver's running anyway too.
Alabama is worse off than it was: the Supreme Court let the state use its old, already-found-discriminatory map for this election, with a retrial not scheduled until next year. Louisiana's new map passed too, one Black-plurality district left standing out of six.
Not every fight went that way. South Carolina Republicans backed off their plan to dismantle Jim Clyburn's district, and it survives intact. Virginia's map is settled too, the 6-5 Democratic advantage holds through 2030. Mississippi's redraw is paused, not cancelled, waiting on next year's session.
WHY THIS MATTERS FOR US
Every map fight in this issue is really the same question: does Black political power grow or shrink over the next hundred days? Pearson and Cleaver are both still running, on maps built to make that harder. That's the stake underneath the polling numbers, no matter which campaign message is leading the news this week.
Nobody's saying affordability doesn't matter. It's the second-highest concern on the whole list. A hundred days out, with maps changing under our feet, costs climbing almost everywhere you look, and Black maternal mortality and voting rights rising into the top tier for the first time, there's a lot on this list, and all of it is worth tracking, not just the piece that made the headlines this week.
We're bringing the rest of it.
100 DAYS OUT · THE NUMBERS
What Things Actually Cost
Since Trump took office, Jan. 2025.
Nearly everything is up since Trump took office. The mortgage rate is the exception. Gas and healthcare premiums lead the way, and both are a broken promise.
Sources: AAA (gas), BLS (groceries, auto insurance CPI, shelter CPI), KFF (healthcare premiums), Freddie Mac (mortgage rate)
THE PROFILE
Betye Saar
Photo: Tracye Saar-Cavanaugh, courtesy Roberts Projects
WHO Betye Saar
WHAT Artist, Black Arts Movement pioneer
WHEN Died July 26, 2026, four days before her 100th birthday
ON VIEW "Betye Saar's Black Dolls," The New York Historical, through Oct. 4
Betye Saar died in her sleep on Sunday, July 26, in Los Angeles, four days before her 100th birthday.
She grew up in Watts, watching Simon Rodia build the Watts Towers out of broken dishes and scrap metal. She said later that's where she learned what found objects could become. She trained in design, worked as a social worker, and didn't turn fully to art until she was 35. Once she did, she spent the rest of her life taking the ugliest images this country made of Black people — mammy figures, Jim Crow-era memorabilia — and rebuilding them into something else entirely. Power. Liberation. A closed fist where there used to be a grin.
Her work is on view now. The New York Historical is running Betye Saar's Black Dolls through October 4, built around her promised gift of more than 100 dolls from her personal collection, alongside watercolors and assemblages spanning decades. It's part of a full centennial year of shows, alongside Drifting Toward Twilight at the Huntington Library and a wearable-art exhibition at her longtime gallery, Roberts Projects, in Los Angeles.
Her daughters, Alison Saar and Lezley Saar, are artists too. That's the throughline. Betye Saar didn't just make the work. She made room for the women who'd make it after her.
THE FIVE
Five things to know this week.
TRACKING CALLAIS · SEVEN STATES
Three outcomes: worse, held, and waiting
Tennessee: A federal panel let the redrawn map stand four days ago, ahead of the Aug. 6 primary. It eliminates the state's only majority-Black district, carving Memphis into three pieces. State Rep. Justin Pearson, already in the primary race, is running in the new district anyway.
Missouri: Rep. Emanuel Cleaver's Kansas City seat was redrawn to stretch nearly 200 miles east, turning a two-decade Cleaver-held district into a GOP-lean target. The state Supreme Court upheld the map in May. Cleaver's running anyway, ahead of the Aug. 4 primary.
Alabama: The Supreme Court let the state use its old, already-found-discriminatory map for this election. Retrial not scheduled until 2027.
Louisiana: The new 5-1 map passed. One Black-plurality district left standing.
South Carolina: Republicans backed off dismantling Clyburn's seat. It survives intact.
Virginia: The 6-5 Democratic map is locked through 2030.
Mississippi: The redraw is paused, not cancelled.
01 What Black women are actually saying.
The Black Women's Roundtable's 2026 "Power of the Sister Vote" survey tracks the shift year over year. Protecting Social Security and Medicare tops the list at 92 percent. Three concerns are new to the top tier this cycle: voting rights, healthcare and prescription costs, and reducing Black maternal deaths in childbirth. Cost of living and fighting discrimination hold steady at 91 percent each. This is the list the Headline runs against.
Black Women's Roundtable
02 The harassment beat, status check.
LaMonica McIver's bid to get her charges tossed is still under advisement at the 3rd Circuit, no ruling yet. Letitia James still isn't under indictment; two grand juries said no. Fani Willis's case against Trump was dismissed back in November, after she was disqualified and the state's Prosecuting Attorneys' Council took over and dropped it — but the pressure on her hasn't stopped: she's now suing over a new Georgia law widely seen as targeting Democratic officials like her, and was separately blocked from fighting Trump's demand for $16.8 million in legal fees. The pattern holds even where the original cases don't.
3rd Circuit · Georgia courts
03 Nashville, this week.
The National Urban League's Annual Conference runs July 29 through Aug. 1. This issue publishes on the convention's next-to-last day. Their lane runs economic — jobs, entrepreneurship, and community investment. Fuller wrap in Issue 015.
National Urban League
04 The calendar is set.
The DNC's Rules & Bylaws Committee voted Friday afternoon, July 24, to set the 2028 presidential primary calendar. Six states make up the early window, in order: South Carolina, Jan. 22; Nevada, Feb. 1; New Hampshire, Feb. 8; New Mexico, Feb. 15; Michigan, Feb. 22; and Virginia, Feb. 29. The early window — sometimes called the pre-window — is the period before the calendar officially opens. Only these six states may hold contests before that date; every other state has to wait until the window opens to hold theirs. The committee calls it a window, not a strict ranking, though the dates sequence them. Jim Roosevelt and Minyon Moore chair the committee. The full DNC ratifies the calendar at its Summer Meeting in Austin, Aug. 13-15.
A note: I serve on the DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee. I was represented by proxy for Friday's vote, since I was speaking at the Closing Plenary of the AKA Boule in Las Vegas that same day.
DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee
05 The mail-in voting fight has two dockets now.
Trump v. California and Alabama v. California are both in front of the Supreme Court, both assigned to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Full details in The Watch, below.
SCOTUS
THE WIN
Dr. Ayanna Howard
Photo: courtesy Spelman College
WHO Dr. Ayanna Howard
WHAT 12th President, Spelman College
WHEN Takes office Aug. 1, 2026
Dr. Ayanna Howard steps into office August 1 as Spelman College's 12th president, the first scientist and engineer ever to lead the school. She's a roboticist and AI researcher who spent years as dean of Ohio State's College of Engineering, did a stint at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and co-founded Black in Robotics to open doors in a field that rarely opens them. Fifteen years before any of that, she was building her career right down the road at Georgia Tech.
Now she's back in Atlanta, leading the nation's top-ranked HBCU into a future she's spent her whole life building tools for. Spelman's students get a president who doesn't just study the next era of technology. She's helped invent it.
THE WATCH
What we are watching next.
The fight over Trump's mail-in voting executive order now has two emergency applications in front of the Supreme Court, both assigned to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson as the circuit justice overseeing the 1st Circuit. The administration filed first, Trump v. California, asking the Court to lift the block on an order that would create a "state citizenship list" and limit mail ballots to people on it. Alabama, one of twelve red states that intervened backing the order, filed its own application, Alabama v. California, seeking the same relief.
Jackson has already turned down an immediate administrative stay and ordered the states suing to respond within seven days, landing around August 3. Nothing is decided. We're watching for what she and the full Court do next.
ONE THING TO READ (OR ELEVEN)
For your weekend.
Looking for a new read (or a good book)? TheGrio rounded up this month's strongest new titles from Black authors — fiction, memoir, and a couple of picks that speak directly to the moment. Full list and descriptions here: thegrio.com.
"The Revelation of Dionne Daphne," Mara Brock Akil — TV creator turned novelist, a story of secrets, healing, and reinvention.
"Runner," Ashton Lattimore — Prohibition-era rumrunners fighting to protect their own.
"From Presence to Power," Rashad Robinson — a strategist's field guide to building and keeping political power.
"Black Earth Wisdom," Leah Penniman — Black environmentalists on land, climate, and ancestral knowledge.
"Good Morning Means I Love You," Kendra Allen — a debut novel of love, motherhood, and family built on her own terms.
"Tales from Cabin 23: The Boo Hag Flex," Justina Ireland & Hanna Alkaf — middle-grade horror rooted in hoodoo legend.
"Lonely Crowds," Stephanie Wambugu — two friends, three decades, one complicated bond.
"The Jailhouse Lawyer," Calvin Duncan & Sophie Cull — a wrongful conviction, decades in Angola, and a self-taught legal fight.
"Hallie's Rules for a Recovering Romantic," Jessica Lewis — YA romance about swearing off love and failing beautifully.
"Colorism," Dr. Sarah L. Webb — a psychologist unpacks skin-tone bias and paths toward healing.
"The Haul: A Heist Novel," Gary Phillips — one last job, one retired thief, one billionaire's bunker.
Stay rooted.
— LD
Black Lady News is a weekly curation by Leah Daughtry.
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