Texas Rep. Al Green was absolutely justified for challenging Donald Trump during the wannabe dictator’s March 4 speech to a joint session of Congress.
George Wallace–whose Alabama state troopers clubbed voting rights protesters in Selma 60 years ago–couldn’t have given a more racist speech than Trump did.
When Green, a Black member of Congress, declared “you have no mandate to cut Medicaid,” he was defending 72 million people who depend on the program for their health care. Millions more qualify for it but are not signed up.
Medicaid covers 62% of those living in nursing homes. It pays the bills for 41% of all births in the U.S.
Nearly half of New York City’s population is enrolled in Medicaid.
Donald Trump and his co-president Elon Musk want to destroy Medicaid. The billionaire tag team is seeking to wreck Medicare and privatize Social Security as well.
Arkansas and Idaho have already enacted cruel and demagogic “work requirement” legislation that’s designed to kick thousands of poor people off Medicaid. So have Georgia and Ohio.
If people were able to find jobs–with health insurance and accessible by public transit–they wouldn’t need Medicaid in the first place. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that 36 million people are in danger of losing their Medicaid benefits under cutbacks being proposed in Congress.
Democratic Party uselessness
After the Republican Speaker Mike Johnson ordered Al Green be taken off the floor, the more than 200 Democratic representatives and senators in attendance should have surrounded Green. It was their duty to defend the 77-year-old disabled Black man while an almost all-white mob of Republicans was mocking him.
Some Democrats, including California representative Maxine Waters, had the good sense and decency to boycott Trump’s speech to his Reichstag deputies.
The least the Democrats could have done was to walk out in solidarity with Al Green. That’s what Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a member of the Black Congressional Caucus, did.
A few days later, 10 Democrats joined with every Republican in the House of Representatives to censure Al Green. Fortunately, several members of Congress drowned out House Speaker Mike Johnson by singing “We Shall Overcome.”
Johnson tweeted beforehand that Green “disgraced the institution of Congress.” It’s Mike Johnson and every other Trump supporter who’s a disgrace.
Just as bad was the official Democratic Party response to Trump’s speech given by Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin. The former CIA analyst, who served three tours in U.S.-occupied Iraq, actually praised racist Ronald Reagan in her talk.
When he was California governor, Reagan called his buddy Richard Nixon in the White House and described African delegates to the United Nations as “monkeys.” Later as president, Reagan invaded the Black Caribbean island of Grenada.
Tens of thousands of people died because Reagan ignored the HIV/AIDS crisis.
The washed-up matinee idol deliberately started his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, calling for “states’ rights.” Reagan uttered this white supremacist slogan near where the Black and Jewish martyrs James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan.
Even John Oliver thought that praising Reagan was stupid. The comedian said the two positive things about Reagan were “like, he was our only president to make a movie with a chimp. Or, he’s dead.”
When she was still a representative and later as a newly elected Senator, Slotkin voted for the misnamed Lankin Riley act. This hate legislation used the murder of a Georgia college student to allow immigrants who have been arrested, not convicted, to be deported. This takes away the presumption of innocence–a fundamental democratic right of anyone facing trial–from those not citizens.
Slotkin was selected to give the rebuttal to Trump just because of her pro-war and anti-immigrant stances.
Repulsive, bigoted slander
Trump told one lie after another in his 100-minute long speech to Congress. He even claimed that the U.S. spent $8 million to make mice transgender–a whopper similar to the claim of nutjob Alex Jones that frogs were turning gay.
While Hitler blamed Jewish people for every problem, Trump murders Palestinians and uses transgender people and immigrants as scapegoats.
Many of Trump’s biggest lies were about Black people and Africa.
With no proof whatsoever, he accused Stacey Abrams–the well-known Black political figure from Georgia–of stealing from a $1.9 billion government program.
Trump mocked Lesotho, claiming that no one has heard of the African country of over two million people. This was also a not-so-disguised swipe at South Africa, whose territory surrounds Lesotho.
While Trump wants to kick out millions of immigrants, he’s offering U.S. citizenship to the white Boer farmers in South Africa who have exploited Black people for centuries.
Trump also bragged that “we’ve ended the tyranny of so-called diversity.” One of Trump’s first acts after being inaugurated was to revoke a 60-year-old executive order establishing affirmative action in hiring by the U.S. Government.
He and Musk are trying to fire hundreds of thousands of government employees. Black workers account for 18.6% of overall federal employment. Twenty-nine percent of the 640,000 post office workers are Black.
Trump’s allies in Congress want to cut $1 billion from the budget of nearly half-Black Washington, D.C. They’re forcing the city to paint over its Black Lives Matter plaza.
Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, it will take even more millions in the streets to stop Trump, Musk and all the other billionaires. We can’t depend on the Democratic Party leadership–who just capitulated to Trump by not stopping his budget in the Senate–to save us.
That’s our job. We need to follow the example of Los Angeles activists who are stopping ICE from launching many deportation raids. More demonstrations are needed to protect the post offices and VA hospitals.
May Day marches have to be organized to defend immigrants and all working and poor people. The labor movement should call a new solidarity day.
Only the power of the people can stop Trump and Musk.