Defending democracy and health care

The weekend events in Los Angeles remind us that the fight to preserve the nation's inadequate social safety net is part of the broader fight to defend democracy.

I’ve spent much of the past two days mulling the significance of the Trump regime sending National Guard troops into Los Angeles. Gov. Gavin Newsom did not ask for them. Mayor Karen Bass did not ask for them. The tens of thousands of city and state police available to Newsom and Bass were more than adequate to curtail the vandalism perpetrated by some demonstrators during the weekend’s protests against the large-scale ICE raids in the city.

Anti-ICE protesters blocked L.A. freeway this morning, 6-9-25.

Trump’s action has only one precedent in recent history. In March 1965, President Lyndon Johnson ordered the National Guard into Alabama against the wishes of Gov. George Wallace. LBJ felt compelled to act to protect civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama, who had been viciously attacked and beaten the previous week by state and local police.

Richard Nixon didn’t order the National Guard onto the campuses of Kent State and Jackson State during protests against the Vietnam War in the spring of 1970, which resulted in the deaths of six students. Ohio’s Gov. James Rhodes and Mississippi’s Gov. William Winter were responsible for those unnecessary and ultimately tragic actions.

Trump’s order — unjustified, lawless, a gross violation California’s rights — raises the serious question, as much as anything that he has done to date, of whether we still live in a free country. On a number of fronts, the Supreme Court has allowed his flagrantly illegal actions to proceed unimpeded despite lower courts ruling them either illegal or unconstitutional. Congress lays supine.

The checks and balances envisioned by this country’s founders are no longer operative. They are not providing the basic protections on which freedom depends, which includes above all the government adhering to the rule of law and our elected leaders upholding the constitution they swore to defend.

This morning, Newsom promised to sue the federal government. He raised the specter of witholding federal taxes should Trump follow through on his threat to withold government payments to the state (which would be a net plus for California like most heavily blue states, which send more to the federal government than they receive in return).

Those of us who live in major urban areas with large immigrant populations worry that our cities and our states may become the next targets of large scale ICE raids, which will inevitably provoke a reaction from justifiably outraged young protesters. Let’s not forget that urban economies (as well as many rural agricultural and meat-processing areas) are heavily dependent on the 11 million undocumented workers the Trump regime wants to deport.

Even if a narrow majority of the general public (about 55%) back stricter enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws, a far larger majority backs adherence to the rule of law. A Pew Research Center poll in April found 78% of Americans wanted the Trump administration to follow federal court rulings, which included 91% of Democrats and 65% of Republicans. The overall number rises to 88% for Supreme Court rulings.

This coming Saturday, while Trump holds a Soviet-style military parade in downtown Washington, there will be mass protests across the country. People will be carrying banners declaring “No More Kings.” I’ve volunteered to be a marshall to help assure that no misguided demonstrators or agents provocateurs provide a pretext for police action. I encourage all my readers to take part.

But protests are not enough. Only an engaged citizenry can defeat the reactionary forces here at home that threaten the values that truly made America great: equality, fairness, compassion, and equal justice before laws that everyone, including the president of the United States, adheres to.

Health care on the line

With that thought in mind, I hope that you will take time over the next few weeks to let your Senators know that you oppose the vicious cuts to Medicaid and Obamacare subsidies included in the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” The Congressional Budget Office last week predicted just those sections alone will result in around 15 million people losing health insurance over the next decade.

Let’s put that number in perspective. There are currently around 28 million uninsured in the U.S. or about 8% of the population, which is down from 17% when Barack Obama took office in 2009. The 2010 Affordable Care Act, for all its flaws (which I won’t go into here), was tremendously successful in achieving its main goal of reducing the U.S. uninsured rate. Add 15 million more people to the ranks of the uninsured and that rate will soar back to at least 12%.

Who will pay for the costs of those people when they show in the emergency room needing health care that they can’t pay for? You and your employers, who will wind up paying higher rates for private health insurance to pay for the cost of hospitals’ and physicians’ uncompensated care.

Rural hospitals, who are heavily dependent on Medicaid funding, will get hurt the most because states where most of those hospitals are located cannot afford to make up for the cutbacks in federal support. The destitute elderly in nursing homes will also suffer as their staffs get cut due to the proposed law’s ending of the Biden administration’s minimum staffing rule.

And to what end? The work requirements that Republicans claim are merely aimed at getting shirkers off the roles is a smoke screen to hide the bill’s true intent: To keep alive unnecessary tax breaks for the most well-off people in this country. That $4 trillion-plus giveaway is so large that even after making massive cuts in health care and other domestic spending, it will still increase the federal deficit by over $2 trillion over the next decade.

You can find all the information you need to contact your senators by clicking here.