Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Starbucks is issuing new guidelines on Pride decorations, Kim Kardashian’s fast-growing brand Skims is opening brick-and-mortar stores, and Fortune’s Maria Aspan shares how a new executive order will address some of the barriers to birth control access turned up by her reporting. Happy Wednesday!
– Birth control breakthrough? A year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, we have some rare good news for the 73 million U.S. women of reproductive age.
It’s maddeningly, unreasonably difficult for women to get access to the right birth control, as I reported in this April investigation for Fortune. One of the most infuriating problems is that insurance companies are widely ignoring federal law. The Affordable Care Act requires private insurers to fully cover any contraception that a woman’s doctor deems medically necessary—but in practice, my investigation found, many insurance companies regularly refuse to cover some contraceptives. As a result, many women are unable to afford the birth control they want (and their medical providers prescribe), while the companies that develop and sell new kinds of contraceptives have struggled to stay in business.
Now President Joe Biden is taking action to address the very problems Fortune’s investigation highlighted. On Friday, Biden issued a wide-ranging executive order on contraception. The president specifically ordered federal agencies “to consider new guidance to ensure that private health insurance” covers all contraceptives.
(And we’re going to take a little bit of credit here: In announcing the executive order, White House advisers acknowledged they were “tracking some of the reports out there about [insurers’] failure to comply” with the Affordable Care Act, Stat News reported on Friday.)
Biden’s executive order did not discuss a specific deadline for federal agencies to take more action, and a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services declined to provide more specifics on timing. But many of my sources, including reproductive-health advocates and contraceptive industry executives, say the president’s mandate could finally break through this years-long logjam.
“I’m really hopeful,” Mara Gandal-Powers, director of birth control access and senior counsel for the National Women’s Law Center, told me. “It certainly indicates that this is really high priority for the president—and I do think that the agencies listen when these kinds of things come out.”
Read my investigation here, and my full story about President Biden’s executive order here.
Maria Aspan
[email protected]
@mariaaspan
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- New standard. Starbucks will issue new guidelines around Pride decorations after some union workers went on strike this weekend, accusing the company of discouraging the display of Pride decorations. “As we reaffirm our previous commitments and standards, it will be even clearer to all who we are and what we stand for,” said Starbucks president of North America Sara Trilling. Starbucks also filed a complaint against the union for misrepresenting the company's stance on Pride decorations, which union representatives called a PR stunt. Wall Street Journal
- Being the first. Delaware State Sen. Sarah McBride, a Democrat, is running to become the first openly transgender member of the U.S. Congress. She was also the first trans person to work at the White House and the first transgender state senator nationwide. She says she is confident she can move past the attacks on trans people to represent her constituents. New York Times
- Say cheese. Ask A.I. to generate an image of a rich person, and 98% of the time it will spit out a man. A new campaign by the personal finance company SoFi featuring a photo booth in New York City aims to teach A.I. that women excel in their financial lives too. Fortune
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Margo Cook will be co-chair of Bridgewater's board of directors. Liliahn Majeed has been named as chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer, at L'Oréal, North America. Claire-Marie Coste-Lepoutre is leaving her post as CFO at Allianz SE to be head of Allianz Group actuarial, planning and controlling, and group chief actuary.
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- Low poll. Vice President Kamala Harris has received the worst approval rating of any vice president in the history of NBCNews's poll. Forty-nine percent of voters have a negative view of her, which some experts say shouldn't be surprising given her position as the first woman in the White House. VP approval ratings are also tied to public opinion of the sitting president. Axios
- 'The next Apple store.' Kim Kardashian's brand Skims will open its first permanent brick-and-mortar stores next year in Los Angeles and New York. The company is eyeing international footprints too; 20% of Skims customers live outside the U.S. With a recent swimwear expansion, the line has seen rapid growth this year trending at 75% year-over-year and its estimates to make $750 million in 2023, up from $500 million last year. Bloomberg
- Affordable for Toronto. Emerging from a pool of 102 candidates, Olivia Chow is the first woman of color to be elected mayor of Toronto. In a special election, she ran on making housing more affordable in the city of 3 million, where rent and home prices have soared. Chow previously represented a part of the city in Canada's federal parliament. Bloomberg
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