Tim Walz on JD Vance: ready for debate
Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz campaigned with Kamala Harris on Tuesday – and said he was looking forward to the debate with JD Vance.
Fox – 2 Detroit
A word about tampons, if you have a moment.
When I was in high school in the dark 1990s, getting your period at school was an embarrassing ordeal, and it happened more often than anyone would have liked. If you were lucky, you remembered to pack tampons or pads in your backpack. If you were even luckier, the teacher would let you go to the bathroom when you needed to go. But honestly, it was all just luck.
One day in high school, a male teacher allowed me to use the bathroom but wouldn’t let me take my purse with me – which was the whole point. Being a bit of an idiot, I grabbed a tampon from my purse, waved it like a torch, and marched out of the classroom.
But it was degrading and humiliating – for me and for the millions of American women and girls who have had similar experiences.
And none of this had to happen.
Everyone is talking about Project 2025. Here’s what they’re missing.
As governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, now Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ running mate, signed a bill requiring school districts to provide tampons and pads in girls’ bathrooms in schools from grades 4 to 12. (Yes, some girls get their periods as early as fourth grade. No, that’s not fair.)
And what you have read is true – the law, initiated by a group of students, required that tampons in all School restrooms, including the boys’ restroom, for use by transgender boys and nonbinary students. When a Republican lawmaker introduced an amendment to limit the products to only restrooms marked for girls and nonbinary students, the amendment failed, and the Republican lawmaker voted for the bill as presented, deeming the need too important to withhold his support.
Since Harris nominated Walz for vice president earlier this week, some Republicans have decided that this is an excellent target for political attacks and have dubbed Walz “#TamponTim.” Oh, how funny! He is a guyAnd Tampons are for Girl, Right?
Friends, this attack will backfire.
I was wrong about Kamala Harris. And that is a huge problem for Donald Trump.
Too many American women and girls have had the humiliating experience of managing their periods in a world where periods are all too often still viewed as something gross. Too many of us have secretly tried to stuff a tampon or pad into our pockets, been ashamed to share the exact reason for our bathroom breaks, or anxiously tried to limit the damage when we were caught off guard.
The Minnesota law addresses a pragmatic need by stocking school bathrooms with essential products like hand soap and toilet paper. But it does something else too: It reduces the stigma surrounding menstruation.
Menstruation is normal and inevitable for about half of us. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, and we should be able to talk about it with the same conversational ease as any other routine health care. Minnesota’s law classifies these products as normal public use, like drinking fountains or hand sanitizer. And it’s OK for boys who don’t need tampons or pads to know about these products and see them in a school bathroom. (Surely many of them see such items in their bathrooms at home?)
Here in Michigan, we only repealed the pink tax in 2021; before that, tampons and pads, unlike most other health items, were subject to the 6% state sales tax. In 2023, the state budget allocated funding for a pilot program to provide free tampons and pads in restrooms in eight school districts. We should immediately expand this program to all Michigan schools.
If there had been tampons and pads in the bathrooms at my school, I could have just walked out of the classroom that day. On the many occasions I arrived at school unprepared because my period had started, I would have been spared the hassle of asking my friend group for a pad or calling my mom to pick up my kids early when I couldn’t find one.
And maybe, just maybe, if schools acknowledged, normalized, and prepared for periods, students wouldn’t have to beg for autonomy to manage their periods.
Nancy Kaffer is editorial page editor for the Detroit Free Press. Contact: [email protected]. Send a letter to the editor to freep.com/letters and we may publish it online and in print.
