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April 13 - April 15, 2025
Trump would also likely ban fetal stem cell research. And don’t be surprised if they come for contraception next. House Republicans voted overwhelmingly against federal protection for birth control after Dobbs, and extremists on the Supreme Court want to revisit Griswold v. Connecticut, which legalized contraception for married couples in 1965.
First, follow the money. The Republican Party has always been the party of Big Business and a vehicle for the super rich to advance their economic agenda. Everything else is secondary.
Undermining democracy was at the heart of this decades-long project. These forces invested heavily to restrict voting rights, remove restrictions on corporate money in politics, and prevent the moderate majority of Americans from stopping their extreme agenda.
Christian nationalists are particularly hostile to women’s rights and empowerment, some even vocally envisioning an America where women don’t vote and are subservient to their husbands, stay home to rear children instead of pursuing an education or career, and have their most personal medical decisions dictated by biblical edicts.
Handmaid’s Tale isn’t a cautionary tale; it’s an aspiration.
he wants “to go back to the America where women couldn’t vote.” (Interesting electoral strategy, Mark.) While advocating for an anti-abortion bill in Oklahoma, Republican state legislator Justin Humphrey said pregnant women’s bodies aren’t their own because they are “hosts.”
he declared that a “wife is to voluntarily submit” to her husband.
In the Christian nationalist worldview, women should know their place, and it’s not to have a career or a say in the direction of the country; it’s to serve men and procreate. That’s it.
this selective, partisan version of Christianity is a naked power grab using religion to impose political control.
History tells us that a well-funded, highly motivated minority (in this case, Christian nationalists) can prove more politically potent than a complacent majority.
‘Will the majority be able to be heard?’ ”
new kind of authoritarian presidential order.” The Princeton historian Sean Wilentz told the Washington Post, “I think it would be the end of the republic.” Harvard’s Steven Levitsky, co-author of How Democracies Die, predicted, “He’s going to come in like an authoritarian autocrat on steroids.”
Holding out hope for relief from the courts is another pipe dream. Do you think the Supreme Court majority that struck down Roe, gutted the Voting Rights Act, made it much harder for government agencies, scientists, and other experts to stop polluters and check corporate power, refused to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment’s prohibition on insurrectionists holding high office, and invented sweeping new legal immunity protections for Trump was suddenly going to hold him accountable?
the decision in July 2024 to grant immunity to official acts gave a green light for Trump’s future criminal acts.
What about the “adults in the room” in the White House and the Pentagon who sometimes managed to redirect Trump’s wildest moves during the first term? Gone. Weeded out in the transition by loyalty tests and a rigorous screening process to ensure no one but hard-core MAGA loyalists get close to power.
When it comes to his policies, “cruelty is the point,” as the writer Adam Serwer memorably put it. Well, incompetence is also the point.
Republicans make our government dysfunctional, that only bolsters their argument that the “deep state” is the problem and the only solution is a leader who uses dictatorial power to get things done.
Trump has repeatedly said he would be a “dictator on day one” or his previous calls to “terminate” the Constitution.
After the 2016 election, I worried that many of the people who poured their hopes into my campaign—especially young people all over the country—would be so discouraged and deflated that they would disengage from politics altogether.
But I understand how difficult it can be to sustain this kind of engagement over years and years of unrelenting political warfare, especially if it seems like there’s no end in sight. Exhausting us is part of the authoritarian playbook. They unleash a torrent of lies not because they think we’ll believe all of them, but because they hope we’ll eventually be so overwhelmed that we’ll give up on the idea of truth and justice completely. They tell us the game is rigged so we won’t bother playing. They sling as much mud as they can and say that everyone is corrupt because they want us to get
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Here’s my advice for when you start to feel overwhelmed or out of gas: First, put down your phone and go outside. Take a walk. You don’t have to tramp around in the woods for hours like I do. It might be enough to just walk around the block. Take a deep breath and think about the people you love and the hopes you have for the future.
don’t give up on the news entirely. Be a savvy media consumer. Find journalists you trust who will give you the straight story and
Pat Schroeder used to say, “You can’t wring your hands and roll up your sleeves at the same time.”
There are millions of Americans working to defend our democracy every day, in ways big and small. They’re volunteering, organizing, donating, even running for office themselves. And history tells us that when our nation faces the greatest perils is when our people find their greatest strengths. So I’m not giving up, and I hope you won’t, either.
We’re all tired. It’s been a long few years. It’s easy to feel powerless or like our efforts and our voices don’t matter. They do. We can’t stop throwing ourselves over and over again into the tumult of the world. It’s the only way to prevent the bleak future we fear and build the better country we deserve.
Anasuya Sengupta. It was called “Silence.” All these years later, I still can’t get it out of my head. It begins like this: Too many women in too many countries speak the same language of silence.
all the kids were asked what they wanted to get us moms for Mother’s Day, and Chelsea said, “Life insurance.” After the congregation began to laugh, she said she thought it meant I would live forever.) I knew that Chelsea, almost a
My parents raised me and my brothers in the Methodist tradition of “faith in action.” At church, we were taught to be “doers of the word, and not hearers only.” That meant rolling up our sleeves and being of service. And not grudgingly.
“Service is the rent we pay for living.”
There’s no retirement from doing good, no statute of limitations on our call to service.
It is not easy to let go of wounds, slights, and disappointments. It is human nature to look for people to blame—and sometimes they deserve it. It is human nature to blame ourselves. Sometimes we deserve it, too.
the General Conference also banned gay clergy. A prohibition on using church funds to “promote acceptance of homosexuality” meant that congregations were barred from even supporting suicide prevention efforts for LGBTQ+ youth.
As the founder of CharityWatch said, “If Hillary Clinton wasn’t running for president, the Clinton Foundation would be seen as one of the great humanitarian charities of our generation.” Instead, it became a punching bag. Donations dried up. Staff had to be let go. CGI shut down. Impactful programs had to cut back or end altogether. Needy and vulnerable people all over the world paid the price.
My mother was born before women had the right to vote, and she lived long enough to cast her ballot for me in the 2008 primaries.
“The women who launched the movement were dead by the time it was completed; the women who secured its final success weren’t born when it began.” But no one gave up. They kept marching. They fought hard to make the dream of equality a reality.
As the Talmud says and Shaina wrote into her script: “You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”
