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'We Will Organize Those People,' Anti-Poverty Crusader William Barber Says of Millions Set to Lose Medicaid
"They will not kill us and our communities without a fight."
Jul 02, 2025
Armed with 51 caskets and a new federal analysis, faith leaders and people who would be directly impacted by U.S. President Donald Trump's so-called Big Beautiful Bill got arrested protesting in Washington, D.C. this week and pledged to organize the millions of Americans set to lose their health insurance under the package.
Citing Capitol Police, The Hill reported Monday that "a total of 38 protestors were arrested, including 24 detained at the intersection of First and East Capitol streets northeast and another 14 arrested in the Capitol Rotunda. Those taken into custody were charged with crowding, obstructing, and incommoding."
The "Moral Monday" action was organized because of the "dangerous and deadly cuts" in the budget reconciliation package, which U.S. Senate Republicans—with help from Vice President JD Vance—sent to the House of Representatives Tuesday and which the lower chamber took up for consideration Wednesday.
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the megabill would result in an estimated 17 million Americans becoming uninsured over the next decade: 11.8 million due to the Medicaid cuts, 4.2 million people due to expiring Affordable Care Act tax credits, and another 1 million due to other policies.
"This is policy violence. This is policy murder," Bishop William Barber said at Monday's action, which began outside the U.S. Supreme Court followed by a march to the Capitol. "That's why we brought these caskets today—because in the first year of this bill, as it is, the estimates are that 51,000 people will die."
"If you know that, and still pass it, that's not a mistake," added Barber, noting that Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.)—one of three Republican senators who ultimately opposed the bill—had said before the vote that his party was making a mistake on healthcare.
Moral Mondays originated in Tillis' state a dozen years ago, to protest North Carolina Republicans' state-level policymaking, led by Barber, who is not only a bishop but also president of the organization Repairers of the Breach and co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.
This past Monday, Barber vowed that if federal lawmakers kick millions of Americans off their healthcare with this megabill, "we will organize those people," according to Sarah Anderson of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).
In partnership with IPS and the Economic Policy Institute, Repairers of the Breach on Monday published The High Moral Stakes of Budget Reconciliation fact sheet, which examines the version of the budget bill previously passed by the House. The document highlights cuts to health coverage, funding for rural hospitals, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
The fact sheet also points out that while slashing programs for the poor, the bill would give tax breaks to wealthy individuals and corporations, plus billions of dollars to the Pentagon and Trump's mass deportation effort.
"Instead of inflicting policy violence on the most vulnerable, Congress should harness America's abundant wealth to create a moral economy that works for all of us," the publication asserts. "By fairly taxing the wealthy and big corporations, reducing our bloated military budget, and demilitarizing immigration policy, we could free up more than enough public funds to ensure we can all survive and thrive."
"As our country approaches its 250th anniversary," it concludes, "we have no excuse for not investing our national resources in ways that reflect our Constitutional values: to establish justice, domestic tranquility, real security, and the general welfare for all."
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Pentagon and Immigration Spending in GOP Bill Could Instead Protect Medicaid Coverage
"Stealing money away from life-sustaining programs to fund war, weapons, and death should be an immediate nonstarter for every member of Congress," said one advocate and author of a new report.
May 23, 2025
With the House GOP's Medicaid-slashing reconciliation bill now headed to the Republican-controlled Senate, a trio of groups on Thursday highlighted that the tens of billions the reconciliation legislation allocates for the Pentagon and the Trump administration's immigration crackdown efforts could instead be used to protect and expand health insurance access for millions.
House Republicans' reconciliation bill includes $163 billion for the Pentagon and for mass deportation and border-related expenses that U.S. President Donald Trump has requested be allocated in fiscal year 2026. Those dollars could instead go toward providing 31 million adults with Medicaid, or providing 71 million people with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, according to a report titled Trading Life for Death: What the Reconciliation Bill Puts at Stake in Your State.
The report is a joint publication from the progressive watchdog Public Citizen, the progressive policy research organization the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), and the National Priorities Project (NPP), which is a federal budget research organization and a project of IPS.
In a statement on Thursday, Lindsay Koshgarian, program director at NPP and one of the authors of the report, framed the reconciliation package as a "direct redistribution of resources from struggling Americans to the Pentagon and militarization."
The reconciliation bill, which passed 215-214 in the House of Representatives on Thursday, includes tax cuts tilted toward the wealthy that would add $3.8 trillion to the national debt, a roll back in clean energy tax credits, sweeping cuts to Medicaid and SNAP to the tune of nearly $1 trillion, and an increase in the maximum payment available through the child tax credit until 2028—though the bill is designed so that it would block an estimated 4.5 million children from accessing the credit, according to the Center for Migration Studies.
Under the legislation, an estimated 8.6 million people would lose Medicaid coverage over the next 10 years, according to a May 11 analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that 11 million people would be at risk of losing at least some of their food assistance under the changes to SNAP.
Millions more could lose their healthcare due to Obamacare decisions/provisions.
Per the report, the militarized spending increases for 2026 would more than enough to fund Medicaid for the millions who are at risk of losing their health insurance under the bill, and the millions at risk of losing their SNAP benefits.
In addition to highlighting that the bill includes a huge cash injection for the U.S. Department of Defense, the report argues the Pentagon does not need more money. "The United States is already the world's largest military spender, allocating more taxpayer dollars to the Pentagon than the next nine countries combined," according to the report, which also notes that the department has never passed an audit.
The three groups also quantify the tradeoffs between defense spending and healthcare at a more granular level.
For example, the bill includes a $25 billion initial investment in Trump's "Golden Dome" project, a multilayered defense system that Trump has said will be capable of "intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world and even if they are launched from space," according to CBS News.
In just one congressional district, Tennessee's 2nd District, taxpayer funds going toward the investment in the Golden Dome could instead be used to put 12,310 people on Medicaid, according to the report. In Texas' 21st District, taxpayers' funds redirected to support the Golden Dome could provide Medicaid to 13,589 people.
"If implemented, this budget would rip the rug out from under everyday Americans relying on Medicaid and SNAP to survive, just to further enrich Pentagon contractors," said Savannah Wooten, People Over Pentagon advocate at Public Citizen and report co-author, in a statement on Thursday. "Stealing money away from life-sustaining programs to fund war, weapons, and death should be an immediate nonstarter for every member of Congress."
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Report Details Who Will Pay the Highest Price for Trump's Postal Service Privatization Push
"Without competition from our public Postal Service, for-profit firms would jack up delivery fees on as many customers as possible."
Apr 15, 2025
As U.S. President Donald Trump and his centi-billionaire ally Elon Musk revive the right-wing dream to privatize the public mail system, an analysis released Tuesday details how the pain already inflicted on over 100 million Americans by the for-profit delivery industry will only get worse if Trump's plan succeeds.
Americans already have the option of using private companies like FedEx and UPS to mail packages, and in about 25,000 ZIP codes where 102 million people live—about a third of the U.S. population—the corporations already pile on extra charges for deliveries, according to the report by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).
Some of the ZIP codes lie in Alaska and Hawaii, where sending mail from the contiguous U.S. is predictably more expensive.
But private carriers also charge "remote surcharges" to about 8% of all U.S. ZIP codes because they are in mountain communities, ranchlands, and other remote areas that are home to nearly 4 million people. According to IPS, people pay up to $15.50 for deliveries in these regions when they use FedEx or UPS, but with the USPS universal service obligation, they pay nothing if they use the public mail carrier.
Thirty-five percent of U.S. ZIP codes are in rural areas where 35 million people pay up to $8.30 in "extended area surcharges" when they use a private delivery company. The companies also charge up to $6.20 for deliveries to certain suburban areas and smaller towns that are home to 19 million.
"Today's higher FedEx and UPS delivery rates are just a taste of what would come if the Trump administration succeeds in privatizing the U.S. Postal Service," said report author Sarah Anderson, director of the Global Economy Project at IPS. "Without competition from our public Postal Service, for-profit firms would jack up delivery fees on as many customers as possible."
Without USPS, the companies could also add to the various extra charges they already impose on customers for Saturday deliveries, fuel, and residential deliveries.
The rural communities that are currently served by USPS at no cost to residents would face a wide range of impacts if Trump moves forward with a reported plan to disband the Postal Board of Governors and place the service under the control of the Department of Commerce—a likely first step toward privatizing the agency.
"Today's higher FedEx and UPS delivery rates are just a taste of what would come if the Trump administration succeeds in privatizing the U.S. Postal Service."
On top of higher costs, these communities would lose postal jobs that pay decent wages with benefits as rural post offices would close. Military veterans, who use USPS to get 84% of their prescriptions and more than 25% of whom live in rural areas, would face potential disruption of essential services, and rural residents would could lose the ability to vote by mail.
Small businesses could face higher shipping costs, leading to lower profits or higher prices for their customers.
Privatizing USPS "could jeopardize our entire system of universal postal service," said Anderson.
The report was published weeks after Musk told a group of Wall Street bankers that USPS is a top target as he seeks to privatize the federal government "as much as possible," and after a Wells Fargo report laid out a five-step plan for privatizing the service.
The bank included in its framework raising USPS parcel service prices by as much as 30%-140%, to "generate economic parcel profits on a standalone basis," selling the service's parcel business to private investors, selling postal real estate to commercial bidders, imposing mass layoffs on USPS' 600,000 workforce, and repealing the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, which converted the USPS into an independent agency.
IPS warned that postal privatization would "destroy a vital and truly democratic public service."
"This extensive, centuries-old network helped build up America's democracy and economy by spreading information and goods to every corner of the country," said IPS. "Over its 250-year history, USPS has continually reinvented itself in response to changes in technology and the evolving needs of our society. Rather than selling this public treasure off to the highest bidder, we should explore opportunities for strengthening the Postal Service to deliver even better services to the American public in the 21st century."
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