How The Right’s “Conservative Cosmo” Is Influencing Young WomenAlso inside: the DNC is buying ads about releasing the Epstein files, TX Republicans are trying to draw Rep. Jasmine Crockett outside of her Congressional district, and more
This newsletter is brought to you by the donor acquisition approach that helps you turn $1 into $2.
Hi folks, Scott here again. 👋 This week, I took a closer look at a rising star in the world of right-wing media aimed at persuading young women. With trad-wife aesthetics, birth control skepticism, and millions of dollars invested, Evie Magazine is blending lifestyle content with culture war conservatism. We’ll unpack what it is, who’s funding it, and what lessons it offers for reaching new voters. More on that below, but first… Digital ad spending, by the numbers:FWIW, U.S. political advertisers spent about $9.3 million on Facebook and Instagram ads last week. Here were the top ten spenders nationwide:
The American Chemistry Council (ACC) caught my eye with ads focused on recycling as not “just sorting bottles” but as something that powers manufacturing and creates jobs. Behind the curtain, the ACC is the major U.S. trade association representing chemicals and plastics and is often considered part of the Big Oil lobby. Meanwhile, political advertisers spent just over $2.3 million on Google and YouTube ads last week. These were the top ten spenders nationwide:
Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi cracked the top 10 digital spenders with ads running in Illinois introducing his Senate run to voters and creating a contrast with President Trump. First elected in 2017 with the slogan “just call me Raja,” he’s posted impressive fundraising this year, hauling in over $3 million in both Q1 and Q2. The race to replace Senator Dick Durbin is heating up, with other declared candidates including House Rep. Robin Kelly and Lt. Governor Juliana Stratton, who was already endorsed by Gov. Pritzker and Sen. Duckworth. On X (formerly Twitter), political advertisers in the U.S. have spent around $5.6 million on ads in 2025. According to X’s political ad disclosure, here are the top spenders year to date:
The Insurance Watchdog Coalition entered the top 10 this week with a powerful ad featuring the story of a father watching his son pass away from a fatal asthma attack after insurers denied his medication. The ad appears part of the broader push against pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and their role in determining which medications are and are not covered by insurance. …and lastly, on Snapchat, political advertisers in the U.S. have spent around $954,750 on ads in 2025. Here are the top spenders year to date:
Tired of burning money with Care2 or Meta ads?
How The Right’s “Conservative Cosmo” Is Influencing Young WomenA week ago, American Eagle introduced their controversial “Sydney Sweeney has great Inspired by the positive reception to our previous post about the Rockbridge Network, I wanted to explore examples of culture-first conservative organizations that Rockbridge would invest in. Meet Evie Magazine - a female-focused publication that, in the words of their founder, is “classier than Cosmo, sexier than Refinery29, and smarter than Bustle.” In 2024, Trump was propelled to victory partially by overperforming with young male voters. Now, conservatives are turning their attention to winning back young women, and Evie Magzine is undoubtedly part of that plan. In this article, we’ll explore what Evie Magazine is and what lessons the Left can learn from it.
Let’s start with the basics. Evie Magazine was founded in 2019 by Brittany Martinez (now Brittany Hugoboom) and her husband, Gabriel Hugoboom. Brittany launched the site with an op-ed in Quilette titled ‘Women Needed a Magazine that Doesn't Lie to Them. So I Started One’. She is the editor-in-chief, while Gabriel is the COO. Recently, Brittany was profiled in the New York Times. Numbers-wise, Evie earned roughly 1.5 million page views in April 2023. In June 2025, it brought in roughly 370,000 page views. It has 225,000 followers on Instagram, 80,000 on Facebook, and 74,000 on TikTok. In February 2025, the Evie team estimates that their social content brought in over 100 million views. Here’s some of their most-liked Instagram content according to InsTrack:
Content-wise, Evie is trad-wife central. Their most recent cover girl is Ballerina Farmer Hannah Neeleman, and it’s not hard to find other trad-wives like Nara Smith highlighted. Fittingly, their hottest merch is this “raw milkmaid dress.” But beware, Brittany says the dress’s side effects may include unplanned pregnancy. Yikes. Unsurprisingly, conservative influencers like Steve Bannon, Brett Cooper, and Candace Owens love Evie Magazine. Because among more benign topics, their team doesn’t shy away from the tough issues. Should women to get married? Obviously. Is abortion bad?? Definitely! Has feminism has gone “too far”??? DUH! In addition to reliably hitting conservative talking points, they even tackle some fun new issues like being against hormonal birth control. Speaking of hormones and cycles, Brittany and Gabriel haven’t limited themselves to just writing about it. They’ve released a “femtech” app called 28 Wellness designed to help women live a healthy life based on where they are in their “natural cycle” (as opposed to any kind of birth control or contraception or medical care…) By now, you may be wondering: who’s funding this?? While most of their investors are not public, guess who is! That’s right - Peter Thiel. In 2022, Thiel Capital announced they would lead a $3.2 million funding round - $2 million of which came Thiel personally. They say politics is downstream from culture, and at a time when the culture is drifting to the right, Evie Magzine is well-positioned to help conservatives win. So, what can the Left learn from this? The core takeaway is that this is what it looks like to actually go after new voters. Sure, Evie draws lines about who is and is not in their tribe. But it’s not talking down to its readers; it’s drawing them into its worldview. It’s not hard to imagine a teenage girl who’s developing her identity finding Evie and falling down a rabbit hole. If the Left is to win back voters or turn out new ones, they must invite them in. Liberal funders need to make investments beyond the explicitly political. As we talked about last week, the majority of the Left’s top-performing content comes from trusted outside voices. As practitioners, we need to recognize that bringing new people in requires us to stand proudly on what we believe without talking down to those not previously with us. We need to find answers that cater to a majority of the population. Or better yet, we need to improve at persuading the culture to move in the Left’s direction. Evie Magazine is playing the long game to win new voting blocs. That’s a lesson we can all learn from. And we better learn it soon, because if we don’t, we’ll have more to worry about than what American Eagle meant by the word “jeans”. Tired of burning money with Care2 or Meta ads?
More from around the internet:
That’s it for FWIW this week. This email was sent to 24,488 readers. If you enjoy reading this newsletter each week, would you mind sharing it on X/Twitter, Threads, or Bluesky? Have a tip, idea, or feedback? Reply directly to this email.
|
