“It Is Going to Kill People”: Disability Rights Activist Speaks Out on Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill”
Over two dozen disability rights activists were arrested on Capitol Hill last week when they protested the Trump-backed Republican budget bill and its cuts to Medicaid, affordable housing and more. “We’re putting our bodies on the line [because] our bodies are on the line,” says Julie Farrar, an activist with ADAPT, which organized the protest. “It is blood on the hands of the GOP and the president and the administration, that they want this big, beautiful bill for billionaires that will kill poor people [and] disabled people.”
“A Big, Ugly, Destructive, Deadly Bill”: Bishop William Barber Slams Bill Cutting Medicaid, Medicare
As a Republican-sponsored budget bill advances through Congress, we hear from Bishop William Barber about how the bill hurts low-income people. “It is about death-dealing and destruction to the poor and the elderly and the youth of our country,” says Barber, citing the bill’s cuts to essential social services like Medicaid and paralleling those cuts to the government’s funding of defense and deportation initiatives. “We have to start talking about this budget as a form of social and political murder.” Barber has been arrested with other faith leaders twice in the past month while protesting cuts, including in the Capitol Rotunda.
Tax Revolt: Arjun Singh on the Roots of Trump’s Push for Massive $4.5 Trillion Tax Cut for the Rich
As President Trump pushes House Republicans to support a sweeping budget bill that gives massive tax breaks to the rich while slashing spending for Medicaid, food stamps and subsidies for clean energy, we look at a new series for The Lever's podcast Lever Time, which covers the history of the Republican anti-tax movement and how their anti-government influence is impacting Trump's attempts to build power. The anti-tax activist wing “has made it impossible for this party to raise taxes, which then makes it very difficult to actually govern when you’re the party in power,” explains Lever Time co-host Arjun Singh, who breaks down the roots of the movement and its impact in the MAGA era.
