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Weekly Digest
Letter from an Editor | February 15, 2025
Dear John,
It’s been another week of dangerous and cruel cuts: to the funding of essential programs—we’re talking food assistance, Head Start and school lunch programs, domestic violence shelters, life-saving research, to essential government workforces—and even more. On Tuesday, in a bizarre Oval Office press appearance with Elon Musk and Musk’s 4-year-old son, Trump ordered U.S. agencies to significantly shrink their workforces, prompting mass firings across multiple federal departments. (Remind me again—what does this have to do with the price of eggs?)
Across the country this week, Americans are coming out by the thousands to protest the Trump Administration’s actions. Hundreds joined together on Tuesday in Upper Senate Park to protest Trump’s dismantling of government institutions and layoffs of federal workers—a protest that followed a similar gathering held Monday outside the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which the Trump administration is also attempting to shut down. Also last week, Democratic members of Congress raced to the doors of the Department of Education to meet with the acting secretary, alarmed by threats of the department being shut down. But they were locked out of the building by an unidentified person, claiming to be a federal employee with the department. For the record, over 60 percent of registered voters in this country oppose eliminating the Education Department.
In fact, polling shows that many of the administration’s policies and actions are unpopular, including plans for massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans. Over two thirds of Americans are concerned that Trump and the Republicans’ tax plans will “disproportionately benefit the rich and big corporations,” and four in five “see the Republican Party as looking out for wealthy Americans, big corporations, billionaires, and CEOs,” according to Navigator.
And in the face of an administration that is violating laws and the Constitution, Americans are demanding accountability from their elected representatives—showing up by the thousands to democratic congressional town halls. They’re even attending telephone town halls, with one in Mississippi recording over 20,000 in attendance.
Elected officials across the country are standing up for their constituents, too. This week, attorneys general from 21 states filed suit against the Trump administration over funding cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In response, the cuts were swiftly blocked by a federal judge—for now. This is just one of nearly 70 lawsuits against the administration thus far.
And in New York, the Governor and Attorney General are still refusing to turn over a New York doctor who is being charged with a felony under Louisiana’s strict anti-abortion laws for prescribing and mailing medication abortion pills to a woman in Louisiana. The Louisiana AG Liz Murrill signed an extradition order for Dr. Margaret Carpenter on Thursday—a move designed to test New York’s abortion provider shield law, which protects abortion providers from out-of-state investigations and prosecutions related to their provision of abortion medications. And in response to a lawsuit filed in December by Texas AG Ken Paxton, a Texas judge on Thursday ordered Dr. Carpenter to stop sending abortion pills to patients in Texas and to pay a penalty of over $100,000 for providing the medication to a Texas woman.
In a video statement, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she would “never, under any circumstances” turn over Dr. Carpenter to Louisiana.
May we all be just as uncompromising as Gov. Hochul in the fights to come.
Onward,
[[link removed]]
Kathy Spillar
Executive Editor
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This Week's Must-Reads from Ms.
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The Courts Blocked Trump’s Federal Funding Freeze. Agencies Are Withholding Money Anyway. [[link removed]] N.Y. Defies Louisiana’s Arrest Warrant for Abortion Provider Dr. Margaret Carpenter: ‘Never Cower in the Face of Intimidation’ [[link removed]]
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The SAVE Act Is Voter Suppression Disguised as Election Integrity [[link removed]] Funding Cuts Leave Domestic Violence Survivors Trapped with Their Abusers [[link removed]]
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