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Peter Rossi, peter@patrioticmillionaires.org, 714-337-9358
This Wednesday, October 14, The Patriotic Millionaires are launching the national Tax the Rich Roadshow, a series of engaging, informative virtual events featuring a lineup of over a dozen different members of Congress (with more to come). Each event will consist of a quick, engaging presentation on how the US tax code is currently rigged to benefit the rich and powerful, followed by a conversation between the Patriotic Millionaires and a member of Congress on how to fix it.
For a full list of events with all of the speakers listed above, click HERE.MORE INFORMATION HERE.
For more information, email Peter Rossi at peter@patrioticmillionaires.org.
The Patriotic Millionaires is a group of high-net worth Americans who share a profound concern about the destabilizing level of inequality in America. Our work centers on the two things that matter most in a capitalist democracy: power and money. Our goal is to ensure that the country's political economy is structured to meet the needs of regular Americans, rather than just millionaires. We focus on three "first" principles: a highly progressive tax system, a livable minimum wage, and equal political representation for all citizens.
(202) 446-0489"Many more parents of young children enrolled in Medicaid themselves will be at higher risk of losing coverage as work reporting requirements and added red tape come along in 2027."
The number of young children without health insurance in the US rose sharply between 2022 and 2024 and is set to continue surging as the Trump administration implements work reporting requirements and other changes expected to kick millions—adults and kids—off Medicaid.
A report published Monday by the Center for Children and Families (CCF) at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy found that nearly 220,000 additional children under the age of six were uninsured in 2024, a 23% increase from 2022. During that period, the total share of young children without health insurance rose to 5.3%—the highest rate in almost a decade.
The new report argues the rising uninsured rate among young children is "at least in part" attributable to the unwinding of pandemic-era protections that allowed people to remain on Medicaid without undergoing routine eligibility checks. The analysis found that Texas, Florida, and Georgia accounted for more than half of the increase in young children without insurance between 2022 and 2024.
Elisabeth Wright Burak and Aubrianna Osorio, researchers at CCF, wrote that "these data provide a major warning sign for what’s to come, as states grapple with the onslaught of Medicaid cuts from [the 2025 Republican budget law] and new coverage restrictions."
"One in 4 children in the US have at least one parent who was born abroad," the researchers wrote. "For these children, the vast majority of whom are citizens, harsh anti-immigration policies and rhetoric are already leading to missed doctor appointments, on top of the ongoing fear, uncertainty, and overall stress that can compromise healthy development of young children. Fears of safety and separation have made more parents afraid to enroll their eligible, citizen children in programs like Medicaid and [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program], exposing children and families to additional financial risk and food insecurity."
"Many more parents of young children enrolled in Medicaid themselves will be at higher risk of losing coverage as work reporting requirements and added red tape come along in 2027," they added. "We know as parents lose coverage, their children are also at grave risk of losing access to health care through the 'unwelcome mat' effect."
CCF's report came as the Trump administration rolled out a new rule that will dictate how states implement Medicaid work reporting requirements included in the 2025 Republican budget law, which contains around $900 billion in cuts to Medicaid over the next decade.
Advocates warned the rule will result in millions of people, including many children, losing coverage by creating onerous bureaucratic barriers to obtaining and keeping Medicaid coverage. CCF estimated last week that, as of April 2026, roughly 2 million fewer children were enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program compared to January 2025, the start of President Donald Trump's second White House term.
"This is terrible news because when child enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP goes down, the child uninsured rate goes up," wrote Joan Alker, CCF's executive director. "And the child uninsured rate was already going up when President Trump took office, yet we have heard nothing about this from them. Federal officials should be scrambling to figure out the root cause of this coverage loss for children as income eligibility levels did not change and the unemployment rate has been inching upward since President Trump took office."
"Banning journalists from the press office in the Pentagon, where they worked professionally in previous administrations, is simply a sign that current DOD leadership fears accountability," said one reporter.
The Trump administration's "asinine attempts to silence objective journalism just hit a new low," said one press freedom advocate late Monday after the Pentagon announced that the US Department of Defense would mark its press office as a classified area, banning journalists from the space where they've previously talked openly with DOD officials.
Reporters on the military are currently largely banned from the building altogether as litigation is ongoing over the administration's requirement that journalists have an escort to move about the Pentagon, but the new policy means that should they be able to return, they would be even more limited in their access to public affairs officers whose job it is to keep the press and public informed.
"For multiple administrations, Pentagon reporters have used the press office to meet with public affairs officers and have open conversations about what America's armed services are doing in order to keep the public informed," said Ben Grazda, an advocacy manager for Reporters Without Borders North America.
Calling Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth "petulant" and pointing to his unsuccessful demand that journalists sign "loyalty pledges," Grazda added that "journalists will continue their tenacious reporting and hold the Pentagon accountable for the money, operations, and lives they impact every day."
The Washington Post reported that Pentagon speechwriters will be moved into the public affairs office, which will be equipped with the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, or SIPRNet, which is used to transmit classified information.
“This is the most transparent war department in history. No amount of spin from the Fake News media will change that. The Pentagon Press Office has been redesignated as a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility due to speechwriters from the Office of the Secretary of War sharing the facility," said Jose Valdez, the acting Defense Department press secretary, on social media on Monday, referring to Hegseth by the title he prefers.
Despite Valdez's claims, journalists referred to the decision as "Orwellian" and noted that Hegseth is further curtailing press access to the Pentagon as the US is mediating talks to end the war the US and Israel started against Iran in February.
The policy was also announced as The New York Times reported that Hegseth had blocked the promotions of nine Navy officers who had been selected by senior Navy admirals, appearing to "violate the rules governing a promotion system that is supposed to be apolitical and merit-based."
"Banning journalists from the press office in the Pentagon, where they worked professionally in previous administrations, is simply a sign that current DOD leadership fears accountability," said Times reporter Trip Gabriel.
The decision to close the press office to members of the press comes eight months after hundreds of journalists walked out of the Pentagon in protest of a new policy barring them from seeking information that the Trump administration had not authorized for release.
That policy was struck down by a federal court earlier this year, but the government has appealed the ruling.
The National Press Club called the Pentagon's newest policy "a remarkable and troubling escalation in the Defense Department’s ongoing effort to restrict independent reporting."
"This move does not occur in isolation," said Mark Schoeff Jr., a reporter at CQ Roll Call and president of the organization. "It follows a troubling pattern of escalating restrictions on Pentagon coverage, including efforts to limit journalists to pre-approved information, revoke credentials for routine reporting practices, and physically remove reporters from long-standing workspaces and access without an escort."
"Calling a press workspace ‘classified’ does not make the government more transparent," said Schoeff. "It creates yet another obstacle between journalists and the information Americans have a right to know, especially at a moment when the public needs clear, unfiltered information about the US military."
"Independent reporting on the US military is not optional," he added. "When journalists are pushed farther from the institutions they cover, the American people are left with less information, less transparency, and less oversight. Any effort to restrict that access should alarm everyone who values a free and informed society."
The Trump administration on Monday unveiled a rule that is expected to push millions of low-income people off Medicaid by imposing complex bureaucratic barriers in the form of work reporting requirements, which have proven disastrous at the state level.
The rule, released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), marks a key step toward enacting the Republican budget reconciliation package that President Donald Trump signed into law last summer. That measure included around $900 billion in cuts to Medicaid, with new work requirements projected to account for nearly $330 billion of that total.
The new rule will dictate how states must implement the budget law's Medicaid work mandates and who is exempt from the requirements. States are already spending tens of millions of dollars hiring new staff and upgrading technology in preparation for the mandates taking effect next year.
Broadly, the Trump-GOP law requires adults without disabilities between the ages of 19 and 64 to demonstrate at least 80 hours of work, community service, or other "qualifying activities" per month to keep their Medicaid coverage.
Exemptions to the work reporting requirements include people who are pregnant, caregivers to children under the age of 14, or "medically frail." The CMS rule defines the latter category as those with "physical or behavioral health conditions that significantly impair their ability to consistently work or participate in other community engagement activities."
Advocates warned that the rule will force many sick people off coverage. The rule states that people with HIV/AIDS, end-stage renal disease, and cancer would not necessarily be exempt from the work reporting requirements.
According to The New York Times, "states had expected that people with certain serious diagnoses would qualify for the exception, and they had been developing ways to match applications with existing medical records to identify most such people automatically."
"Nebraska’s Medicaid program, which began enforcing a work requirement last month, developed a list of exempted conditions that is nearly 300 pages long," the Times reported. "The state will now need to adjust."
"When these requirements go into effect at the beginning of next year, it’s going to be a complete train wreck for America."
Anthony Wright, executive director of Families USA, said Monday that "far from protecting the vulnerable, this guidance significantly raises the barrier for demonstrating medical frailty, meaning many patients in the middle of treatment will have the new hassle of proving their condition, over and over, with any mistake or gap being penalized by the loss of their healthcare and coverage."
"Through this rule," said Wright, "CMS is requiring duplicative documentation and prohibiting states from taking full advantage of consumer-friendly tools like self-attestation."
During the first year of the work reporting requirements, which are set to take effect nationwide in January 2027, people will be allowed to attest in Medicaid applications that they meet one of the exemptions, according to administration officials.
"Beginning in 2028, states will be expected to verify the exemptions," NBC News reported. "The temporary flexibility, the officials said, is intended to give states time to build systems that can verify exemptions using claims data and other records."
The advocacy group Protect Our Care warned that the new rule "creates a labyrinth of paperwork, reporting mandates, and rigid eligibility rules designed to ensure people lose healthcare, even when they should qualify to keep it."
“Instead of lowering costs or making care more accessible, Republicans are weaponizing government bureaucracy against the American people," said Brad Woodhouse, the president of Protect Our Care. "They are betting that if they make the process confusing and exhausting enough, millions of people will fall through the cracks and lose the care they depend on to survive. Hospitals will suffer, providers will be pushed further to the brink, and families across the country will pay the price while Republicans once again put wealthy donors and corporate greed ahead of the health and well-being of everyday Americans.”
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has projected that, over the next decade, the Trump-GOP work reporting requirements will push nearly 3 million people off Medicaid.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement that the CMS rule "is the dark heart of the Republican plan to kick millions of working Americans and their children off their health insurance by placing a mountain of paperwork in front of them."
"These barriers are designed to prevent Americans from getting affordable healthcare, while providing a profit bonanza for the corporate consultants who get paid millions to build bureaucratic booby traps," Wyden added. "The Republican plan for healthcare is to kick people when they are down, making sick people sicker and hard times even harder. When these requirements go into effect at the beginning of next year, it’s going to be a complete train wreck for America, and not just for the Americans caught in the bureaucratic maze Republicans have created: Every community will be left with worse healthcare."