As I awoke on the morning of the Fourth of July, I realized that despite the fireworks and festivities that this is also a day of mourning: mourning the death of freedom and compassion.
This Fourth of July Trump signed into law a bill that, according to the CBO, cuts as many as 17 million people from Medicaid and the ACA and 3.2 million adults and children from SNAP. Rural hospitals are already closing because of funding cuts. People will die.
The bill funds a huge expansion of ICE, which will make it larger than the FBI, and it will become Trump’s personal army as we all witnessed in Los Angeles. According to CBS News, as of June 23, ICE has detained 59,000 people. According to Homeland Security, Cato Institute and CBS, at least half have no criminal records, and only 8% have violent criminal convictions. This policy rips apart families and inflicts unnecessary cruelty. Most of these people are law abiding and pay taxes. They work in industry, the service sector, and on farms — all needed to sustain and grow our economy.
Trump’s cruelty was on open display as he opened a detention center in the Florida Everglades — while joking with Florida’s governor about the “Alligator Alcatraz” T-shirts being sold.
Trump gutted the USAID. According to Boston University, as of the end of May, cuts to the agency cost 300,000 lives while medicines, nutritional supplies, and food assistance remained rotting in warehouses. The Lancet estimates as many as 2.4 million people will die annually as a result of these cuts.
According to JAMA, the Trump administration has terminated $1.18 billion in research funding for 694 grants for new medicines and protocols which could have alleviated disease and death for untold millions in the future.
The cowardice of the Senate, House and Supreme Court make Trump’s cruelty possible. Yes, this Fourth of July was a day of mourning for cruelty’s triumph over freedom and compassion.
Judith Larson, Centerville
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