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As the Supreme Court has acknowledged in discussing the Freedom of Information Act, an "informed citizenry" is "vital to the functioning of a democratic society" and "needed to check against corruption and to hold the governors accountable to the governed." (Photo: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff/Flickr/cc)
The new revelations of widespread use of personal email for official business by Jared Kushner and five other White House advisers are no minor indiscretion. Rather, they represent the latest episode in a critical systems failure in the Trump presidency -- one that strikes at the heart of our democracy.
At issue is the Presidential Records Act, a post-Watergate statute Congress enacted to establish public ownership of presidential (and vice-presidential) records. It obligates the White House and those who work there to preserve all records relating to their official duties. Despite these legal requirements, the first eight months of President Trump's administration have been marked by stories of deleted presidential tweets, by the use within the White House of messaging applications that destroy the contents of messages as soon as they are read, and now by White House staff using personal email accounts to conduct government business.
Initially there may have been room to argue that the president and his team were simply ignorant of their record-keeping responsibilities, but the emerging pattern makes clear these are the actions of public officials who fail to respect and observe the rule of law. (Disclosure: That is why our organization, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, along with the National Security Archive, sued the president and Executive Office of the President in June to enforce the PRA.)
Trump, like all presidents since 1978, must comply with the PRA. This means he must document and maintain "the activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of his constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties" -- basically everything he does as president, whether it is from the Oval Office or Mar-a-Lago, whether he is using his official Twitter account, @POTUS, or his personal one, @realDonaldTrump.
Just as important, the president can destroy presidential records only after completing a carefully formulated multistep process. First, he must affirmatively determine the non-personal records "no longer have administrative, historical, or evidentiary value." Second, he must obtain the written views of the archivist of the United States that the archivist does not intend to take contrary action. And third, once he has obtained the archivist's views, the president must notify the appropriate congressional committee 60 days before the proposed disposal date.
From the president's own deletion of tweets to the reported use by six members of his senior staff of personal email accounts to conduct White House business, administration members have shown contempt toward these responsibilities. Their actions provide us with little confidence that the president is deleting presidential records only after complying with the PRA's mandatory three-step process, or that Kushner and other senior staff are taking care to preserve in the White House record-keeping system their emails sent through private email accounts.
These and other lapses are not simply "technical" violations of a somewhat obscure law; they have real-life consequences on matters of great public interest and urgency. Failure to comply with the PRA deprives congressional investigators and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III of a full factual record from which to evaluate claims that Trump's campaign colluded with Russia in influencing our electoral process, or allegations that the president obstructed justice in his efforts to terminate the FBI's ongoing investigation. The same failure to follow the PRA may frustrate judicial review of presidential actions; the true purpose of the travel ban Trump imposed by executive order was revealed through presidential tweets. And it leaves the public with a gaping hole in our national history, making it that much more difficult to learn from past mistakes.
While minor, occasional violations of federal record-keeping laws may be common across administrations, the Trump administration has shown a flagrant disregard for these laws, and the result is a systemic pattern of violations. Nor do comparisons to Hillary Clinton's conduct excuse this behavior. Although she also improperly used a private email account, she admitted her mistake and apologized. The Trump campaign attacked her fiercely and repeatedly for that use, yet top campaign officials such as Kushner went on to knowingly do the same.
The role of transparency in a democracy cannot be overstated. As the Supreme Court has acknowledged in discussing the Freedom of Information Act, an "informed citizenry" is "vital to the functioning of a democratic society" and "needed to check against corruption and to hold the governors accountable to the governed." The court stressed that for citizens knowing "what their Government is up to" "defines a structural necessity in a real democracy."
These principles are being sorely tested by a president who seeks to cloak his administration in secrecy to avoid public scrutiny and criticism, whether through the use of hidden unofficial email accounts, the destruction of presidential records, or the refusal to disclose records of visitors to the White House and the "winter White House," Mar-a-Lago. We can take some comfort in the existence of a legal structure to counter at least some of these actions at the agency level, through statutes such as FOIA and the Federal Records Act. But the president is exempt from these laws, leaving only the PRA as a safeguard against document destruction. It is now up to the courts to hold the president accountable to those he governs by affirming his and his staff's obligations to maintain and preserve records. Our democracy itself is at stake.
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The new revelations of widespread use of personal email for official business by Jared Kushner and five other White House advisers are no minor indiscretion. Rather, they represent the latest episode in a critical systems failure in the Trump presidency -- one that strikes at the heart of our democracy.
At issue is the Presidential Records Act, a post-Watergate statute Congress enacted to establish public ownership of presidential (and vice-presidential) records. It obligates the White House and those who work there to preserve all records relating to their official duties. Despite these legal requirements, the first eight months of President Trump's administration have been marked by stories of deleted presidential tweets, by the use within the White House of messaging applications that destroy the contents of messages as soon as they are read, and now by White House staff using personal email accounts to conduct government business.
Initially there may have been room to argue that the president and his team were simply ignorant of their record-keeping responsibilities, but the emerging pattern makes clear these are the actions of public officials who fail to respect and observe the rule of law. (Disclosure: That is why our organization, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, along with the National Security Archive, sued the president and Executive Office of the President in June to enforce the PRA.)
Trump, like all presidents since 1978, must comply with the PRA. This means he must document and maintain "the activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of his constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties" -- basically everything he does as president, whether it is from the Oval Office or Mar-a-Lago, whether he is using his official Twitter account, @POTUS, or his personal one, @realDonaldTrump.
Just as important, the president can destroy presidential records only after completing a carefully formulated multistep process. First, he must affirmatively determine the non-personal records "no longer have administrative, historical, or evidentiary value." Second, he must obtain the written views of the archivist of the United States that the archivist does not intend to take contrary action. And third, once he has obtained the archivist's views, the president must notify the appropriate congressional committee 60 days before the proposed disposal date.
From the president's own deletion of tweets to the reported use by six members of his senior staff of personal email accounts to conduct White House business, administration members have shown contempt toward these responsibilities. Their actions provide us with little confidence that the president is deleting presidential records only after complying with the PRA's mandatory three-step process, or that Kushner and other senior staff are taking care to preserve in the White House record-keeping system their emails sent through private email accounts.
These and other lapses are not simply "technical" violations of a somewhat obscure law; they have real-life consequences on matters of great public interest and urgency. Failure to comply with the PRA deprives congressional investigators and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III of a full factual record from which to evaluate claims that Trump's campaign colluded with Russia in influencing our electoral process, or allegations that the president obstructed justice in his efforts to terminate the FBI's ongoing investigation. The same failure to follow the PRA may frustrate judicial review of presidential actions; the true purpose of the travel ban Trump imposed by executive order was revealed through presidential tweets. And it leaves the public with a gaping hole in our national history, making it that much more difficult to learn from past mistakes.
While minor, occasional violations of federal record-keeping laws may be common across administrations, the Trump administration has shown a flagrant disregard for these laws, and the result is a systemic pattern of violations. Nor do comparisons to Hillary Clinton's conduct excuse this behavior. Although she also improperly used a private email account, she admitted her mistake and apologized. The Trump campaign attacked her fiercely and repeatedly for that use, yet top campaign officials such as Kushner went on to knowingly do the same.
The role of transparency in a democracy cannot be overstated. As the Supreme Court has acknowledged in discussing the Freedom of Information Act, an "informed citizenry" is "vital to the functioning of a democratic society" and "needed to check against corruption and to hold the governors accountable to the governed." The court stressed that for citizens knowing "what their Government is up to" "defines a structural necessity in a real democracy."
These principles are being sorely tested by a president who seeks to cloak his administration in secrecy to avoid public scrutiny and criticism, whether through the use of hidden unofficial email accounts, the destruction of presidential records, or the refusal to disclose records of visitors to the White House and the "winter White House," Mar-a-Lago. We can take some comfort in the existence of a legal structure to counter at least some of these actions at the agency level, through statutes such as FOIA and the Federal Records Act. But the president is exempt from these laws, leaving only the PRA as a safeguard against document destruction. It is now up to the courts to hold the president accountable to those he governs by affirming his and his staff's obligations to maintain and preserve records. Our democracy itself is at stake.
The new revelations of widespread use of personal email for official business by Jared Kushner and five other White House advisers are no minor indiscretion. Rather, they represent the latest episode in a critical systems failure in the Trump presidency -- one that strikes at the heart of our democracy.
At issue is the Presidential Records Act, a post-Watergate statute Congress enacted to establish public ownership of presidential (and vice-presidential) records. It obligates the White House and those who work there to preserve all records relating to their official duties. Despite these legal requirements, the first eight months of President Trump's administration have been marked by stories of deleted presidential tweets, by the use within the White House of messaging applications that destroy the contents of messages as soon as they are read, and now by White House staff using personal email accounts to conduct government business.
Initially there may have been room to argue that the president and his team were simply ignorant of their record-keeping responsibilities, but the emerging pattern makes clear these are the actions of public officials who fail to respect and observe the rule of law. (Disclosure: That is why our organization, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, along with the National Security Archive, sued the president and Executive Office of the President in June to enforce the PRA.)
Trump, like all presidents since 1978, must comply with the PRA. This means he must document and maintain "the activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of his constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties" -- basically everything he does as president, whether it is from the Oval Office or Mar-a-Lago, whether he is using his official Twitter account, @POTUS, or his personal one, @realDonaldTrump.
Just as important, the president can destroy presidential records only after completing a carefully formulated multistep process. First, he must affirmatively determine the non-personal records "no longer have administrative, historical, or evidentiary value." Second, he must obtain the written views of the archivist of the United States that the archivist does not intend to take contrary action. And third, once he has obtained the archivist's views, the president must notify the appropriate congressional committee 60 days before the proposed disposal date.
From the president's own deletion of tweets to the reported use by six members of his senior staff of personal email accounts to conduct White House business, administration members have shown contempt toward these responsibilities. Their actions provide us with little confidence that the president is deleting presidential records only after complying with the PRA's mandatory three-step process, or that Kushner and other senior staff are taking care to preserve in the White House record-keeping system their emails sent through private email accounts.
These and other lapses are not simply "technical" violations of a somewhat obscure law; they have real-life consequences on matters of great public interest and urgency. Failure to comply with the PRA deprives congressional investigators and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III of a full factual record from which to evaluate claims that Trump's campaign colluded with Russia in influencing our electoral process, or allegations that the president obstructed justice in his efforts to terminate the FBI's ongoing investigation. The same failure to follow the PRA may frustrate judicial review of presidential actions; the true purpose of the travel ban Trump imposed by executive order was revealed through presidential tweets. And it leaves the public with a gaping hole in our national history, making it that much more difficult to learn from past mistakes.
While minor, occasional violations of federal record-keeping laws may be common across administrations, the Trump administration has shown a flagrant disregard for these laws, and the result is a systemic pattern of violations. Nor do comparisons to Hillary Clinton's conduct excuse this behavior. Although she also improperly used a private email account, she admitted her mistake and apologized. The Trump campaign attacked her fiercely and repeatedly for that use, yet top campaign officials such as Kushner went on to knowingly do the same.
The role of transparency in a democracy cannot be overstated. As the Supreme Court has acknowledged in discussing the Freedom of Information Act, an "informed citizenry" is "vital to the functioning of a democratic society" and "needed to check against corruption and to hold the governors accountable to the governed." The court stressed that for citizens knowing "what their Government is up to" "defines a structural necessity in a real democracy."
These principles are being sorely tested by a president who seeks to cloak his administration in secrecy to avoid public scrutiny and criticism, whether through the use of hidden unofficial email accounts, the destruction of presidential records, or the refusal to disclose records of visitors to the White House and the "winter White House," Mar-a-Lago. We can take some comfort in the existence of a legal structure to counter at least some of these actions at the agency level, through statutes such as FOIA and the Federal Records Act. But the president is exempt from these laws, leaving only the PRA as a safeguard against document destruction. It is now up to the courts to hold the president accountable to those he governs by affirming his and his staff's obligations to maintain and preserve records. Our democracy itself is at stake.
"Mr. Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, is making it impossible for us to regulate these life-threatening emissions," one activist said.
As smoke from Canadian wildfires triggered an air quality alert for New York City and Long Island on Sunday, activists with Climate Defiance disrupted a speech by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin in the Hamptons.
The disruption came four days after reports emerged that Zeldin's EPA was set to repeal the 2009 "endangerment finding" that greenhouse gas emissions "threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations." It is this finding that has given the EPA the authority to regulate climate emissions under the Clean Air Act.
"We are in a climate crisis largely caused by the burning of fossil fuels," the first activist to disrupt the speech said, according to video footage shared by Climate Defiance. "And Mr. Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, is making it impossible for us to regulate these life-threatening emissions."
Zeldin's speech took place at the Global Breakfast Forum, held at The Hamptons Synagogue.
"What are you going to say to your children when the Hamptons are underwater?"
Several of the young Jewish activists who disrupted the speech referenced their faith.
"The Torah commands us to be stewards of the Earth, not the oil industry," one activist said.
The audience largely responded with boos and jeers, and one attacked two of the activists with a chair, according to Climate Defiance video footage.
However, the Climate Defiance activists emphasized that Zeldin and the pro-fossil fuel Trump administration were the forces that would ultimately disrupt life and community in the Hamptons.
"History is going to remember you as a monster," one yelled out to Zeldin.
Another said: "Lee Zeldin, you have taken half of a million dollars from fossil fuels. What are you going to say to your children when the Hamptons are underwater?"
The disrupters also referenced Project 2025 and the broader Trump administration. According to the Project 2025 Tracker, Zeldin's EPA has achieved 57% of the Heritage Foundation road map's objectives.
"Lee Zeldin is carrying out the plans of Project 2025 and fossil fuels to a T," one said. "Your orange overlord does not care about any of you. All of you will be suffering from the rising seas and the worsening climate crisis."
A member of Extinction Rebellion NYC, who assisted with the protest, said in a statement: "Heritage has long been helmed by fossil fuel interests like Koch Industries, which has done some of the heaviest lifting to make sure nothing is done on climate change in the U.S. The majority of these wishes have been executed by Zeldin himself, and through Trump, who asked for $1 billion from oil companies in a dinner at Mar-a-Lago during his campaign. His Big, Beautiful Bill is a wish list directly penned in Project 2025. And when we hit 4°C of warming this century, we will know the true cost of these deadly practices."
Protesters also referenced the repeal of the endangerment finding, climate-fueled extreme weather events like Hurricane Sandy, and the smoke pollution clouding the region as Zeldin spoke.
"There is smoke in the air for another summer," one said. "This is only going to get worse and worse."
Both New York City Emergency Management and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation issued Air Quality Health Advisories through 11:59 pm Eastern Time on Sunday as smoke poured into the region from Canadian wildfires. Air quality was listed as "unhealthy for sensitive groups," and at 11:00 am Eastern Time on Sunday, New York City had the eighth worst air quality of any city on Earth.
The smoke recalled the thick orange haze that blanketed New York and other parts of the Northeast during the record-breaking Canadian wildfire season of 2023. The climate crisis makes wildfires more frequent and extreme.
"There is nothing humane or tactical about letting a trickle of aid in after a man-made famine has started while continuing to bomb starving men, women, and children, even in so-called safe zones," one advocate said.
The Israeli military began instituting tactical pauses in its assault on certain sections of Gaza on Sunday, as part of a plan to allow what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as "minimal humanitarian supplies" to enter the besieged enclave.
Several humanitarian organizations and political leaders described the Israeli approach as vastly insufficient at best and a dangerous distraction at worst, as Palestinians in Gaza continue to die of starvation that experts say has been deliberately imposed on them by the U.S.-backed Israeli military.
"Deadly airdrops and a trickle of trucks won't undo months of engineered starvation in Gaza," Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam policy lead for the Occupied Palestinian territory, said in a statement on Sunday. "What's needed is the immediate opening of all crossings for full, unhindered, and safe aid delivery across all of Gaza and a permanent cease-fire. Anything less risks being little more than a tactical gesture."
Israel announced a plan to institute a daily 10-hour "tactical pause" in fighting from 10:00 am to 8:00 pm local time in the populated Gaza localities of Gaza City, Deir al-Balah, and Muwasi, as The Associated Press explained.
"These actions are not pauses—they are part of an ongoing genocide that the world must act to stop."
However, on Sunday—the first day of the supposed pause—Israeli attacks killed a total of 62 people, Al Jazeera reported, including 34 who were seeking humanitarian relief. Another six people died of hunger, bringing the total death toll from starvation and malnutrition to 133, including 87 children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
"The Israeli government's so-called 'tactical pauses' are a cruel and transparent farce," said Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) national deputy director Edward Ahmed Mitchell in a statement on Sunday. "There is nothing humane or tactical about letting a trickle of aid in after a man-made famine has started while continuing to bomb starving men, women, and children, even in so-called safe zones. These actions are not pauses—they are part of an ongoing genocide that the world must act to stop."
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, meanwhile, called the pause "essential, but long overdue."
"This announcement alone cannot alleviate the needs of those desperately suffering in Gaza," Lammy said, as The Guardian reported. "We need a cease-fire that can end the war, for hostages to be released, and aid to enter Gaza by land unhindered."
The United Nations' World Food Program posted on social media that it welcomed the news of the pause, as well as the creation of more humanitarian corridors for aid, and that it had enough food supplies either in or en route to the area to feed the entire population of Gaza for nearly three months.
"A man-made hunger can only be addressed by political will."
Since the border crossings opened on May 27 following nearly three months of total siege, WFP has only been able to bring in 22,000 tons of food aid, about a third of the over 62,000 tons of food aid needed to feed the population of Gaza each month.
While it welcomed the pause, WFP did add that "an agreed cease-fire is the only way for humanitarian assistance to reach the entire civilian population in Gaza with critical food supplies in a consistent, predictable, orderly, and safe manner—wherever they are across the Gaza Strip."
Joe English, emergency communications specialist for UNICEF, emphasized that the limited pauses proposed by Israel were not the ideal conditions for treating serious malnutrition.
"This is a short turnaround in terms of the notice that we have, and so we cannot work miracles," English told CNN.
English explained that, while UNICEF can treat malnutrition, children who are malnourished require a course of treatments over an extended period of time in order to fully recover, something only truly possible with a cease-fire, which would allow the U.N. to reestablish the 400 aid distribution points it had set up across Gaza before the last cease-fire ended in March.
"We have to be able to reach people and also to reach people where they are," he said. "We can't be expecting people to continue to traverse many miles, often on foot, through militarized areas, to get access to aid."
In addition to bringing in food aid through trucks, Israel, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates all began air-dropping aid over the weekend. However, this method has been widely criticized by humanitarian experts as ineffective and even dangerous.
"The planes are insulting for us. We are a people who deserve dignity."
"Airdrops will not reverse the deepening starvation. They are expensive, inefficient, and can even kill starving civilians. It is a distraction and screensmoke," U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini wrote on social media on Saturday.
"A man-made hunger can only be addressed by political will. Lift the siege, open the gates, and guarantee safe movements and dignified access to people in need," Lazzarini wrote.
Palestinians in Gaza also complained about the air drops.
"From 6:00 am until now we didn't eat or drink. We didn't get aid from the trucks. After that, they said that planes will airdrop aid, so we waited for that as well," Massad Ghaban told Reuters. "The planes are insulting for us. We are a people who deserve dignity."
In a reminder of what is at stake in effectively delivering aid to Gaza, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Sunday that "malnutrition is on a dangerous trajectory in the Gaza Strip, marked by a spike in deaths in July."
WHO continued:
Of 74 malnutrition-related deaths in 2025, 63 occurred in July—including 24 children under 5, a child over 5, and 38 adults. Most of these people were declared dead on arrival at health facilities or died shortly after, their bodies showing clear signs of severe wasting. The crisis remains entirely preventable. Deliberate blocking and delay of large-scale food, health, and humanitarian aid has cost many lives.
WHO said that the search for lifesaving aid was itself deadly: "Families are being forced to risk their lives for a handful of food, often under dangerous and chaotic conditions. Since 27 May, more than 1,060 people have been killed and 7,200 injured while trying to access food."
Israeli solders have reported that they had been ordered to fire on Palestinian civilians seeking aid.
In the face of Israel's atrocities, CAIR's Mitchell called for decisive action: "No more statements. Our government, Western nations, and Arab Muslim nations must act immediately to end the genocide, allow unfettered humanitarian aid into Gaza, secure the release of all captives and political prisoners, and hold Israeli leaders accountable for war crimes. Every moment of inaction contributes to the unimaginable suffering of everyone in Gaza."
"All across the country we showed that when our families stick together, we are powerful," one organizer said.
Tens of thousands of people in more than 225 towns and cities across the U.S. came out on Saturday as part of the Families First National Day of Action to protest Trump administration and Republican policies that defund the safety net while funneling unprecedented amounts of cash toward immigration enforcement.
The day of action came around three weeks after the U.S. House passed and President Donald Trump signed a budget bill that would strip 17 million of Americans of their health insurance and 2 million of their food aid while making Immigration and Customs Enforcement the highest-funded federal law enforcement agency in U.S. history.
"Yesterday marked the 35th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. And we are just days away from the 60th anniversary of Medicaid and Medicare at the end of this month. These policies represent a promise we made to each other: that no matter the ups and downs of life, our ability to take care of our families, from one generation to the next, should be supported," Ai-jen Poo, executive director of Caring Across Generations and president of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, told Common Dreams on Sunday.
"But a big ugly budget bill just passed," Poo continued, "that breaks that promise by making historic cuts to programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and SNAP, by using our tax dollars to stoke fear and rip families apart simply due to their immigration status. This is not what families want, and those who passed it must know that the vast majority of us want our tax dollars to go to healthcare and food, a safety net for families, supporting public funds for families, health, food, and the economic security for all of us, not billionaires."
"To show our power and resolve for a better future we came out in the thousands all across the country."
Families First is a coalition made up of over 75 organizations including Caring Across Generations, National Domestic Workers Alliance, MoveOn, Community Change Action, MomsRising, Planned Parenthood, People's Action Institute, Family Values @ Work, Families Over Billionaires, Fair Share America, Working Families Power, and labor unions like the Service Employees International Union (SEIU); American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees; American Federation of Teachers; and the National Education Association.
"To show our power and resolve for a better future we came out in the thousands all across the country, hosting over 225 events where we peacefully protested, to show the intergenerational face of those of us prepared to hold the ones who passed this bill accountable every day, and to take action. From spelling out the word 'familia' on the beach in California, taking a Medicaid Motorcade through the state of Indiana, to a rally in D.C. on the National Mall at the seat of power," Poo said.
Here are some highlights from Saturday's day of action.
On the National Mall across from the U.S. Capitol building, organizers capped a 60-hour vigil opposing Medicaid cuts with a rally at 12:00 pm ET.
Jennifer Wells, the director of economic justice at Community Change, spoke at the rally on the important role that Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) played in her life.
"I'm here both as an advocate and organizer and as someone who has lived the realities we're fighting to change, as a person who has been directly shaped by the programs that are currently under attack," Wells said. "I was a Medicaid kid, I was a SNAP kid. These programs kept me and my mom and my brother healthy, alive, and moving forward when we had nothing to fall back on."
Families gathered in Newark's Military Park to protest the budget cuts.
"Congress is helping the rich get richer while cutting healthcare, education, and support for working families," New Jersey Citizen Action wrote on social media. "We're making sure everyone knows who's responsible. We're fighting for a country where every child is cared for, no one goes hungry, and we all have access to the healthcare we need to live."
The Indiana Rural Summit planned a "Motorcade for Medicaid" to drive by rural hospitals across the state.
"We're using the event as a touchpoint to demonstrate the importance and value of local hospitals that are at risk of closing because they have historically relied on Medicaid for financial viability," organizer Michelle Higgs told The Republic. "We want to amplify the voices of those who are impacted, whether they're disabled, have a chronic illness, or are elderly."
Union members took to the streets from Miami, Florida to Seattle, Washington.
SEIU members marched in cities including Tampa; Orlando; Miami; Washington, D.C.; Allentown, Pennsylvania; New York City, Boston; and Las Vegas. Meanwhile, hundreds of union workers protested in downtown Seattle.
In Connecticut, SEIU members marched to the Brennan Rogers Magnet School, which closed due to a state funding shortfall.
"Cleaners, healthcare workers, construction workers, we are the ones that make this country run and we ask for no special privileges in return. but we are under attack," Ciro Gutierrez, a 32BJSEIU Connecticut commercial member, said.
Reflecting on the day of action, Poo concluded: "All across the country we showed that when our families stick together, we are powerful. When we share our stories, we break through. When we stand side by side—from small towns to big cities—we can't be ignored. And we won't be divided."