May 22, 2025 - MAGA Murder Budget: Now With Medicare Cuts
Plus the constitutional collapse spreads, Trump gets his sky palace, COVID vaccines get inaccessible and police accountability suffers defeats
🚨 Join and the crew for a phonebank to stop the One Big Billionaire Bailout starting at 7PM Eastern here! And find more ways to fight the MAGA budget here 🚨
Contact all members of Congress:
By phone: (202) 224-3121
By email: Congress.gov
By US mail: Representatives / Senators
By Resistbot: Resist.bot
If you have questions, comments, and especially submissions for actions, please email us at roganslisttips@gmail.com!
MAGA MURDER BUDGET MOVES TOWARDS HOUSE PASSAGE
After 22 hours, Republicans cobbled together enough of a deal on reconciliation to pass through the Rules Committee. The updated bill has now reached the floor, where it is being debated as of 3AM - Democrats led by Jim McGovern (D-MA) had thrown some procedural wrenches in the works. Mike Johnson has expressed confidence they will have enough votes to pass the bill soon and several holdouts are now on board.
So what’s changed? One bit of good news: the sale of a half-a-million acres of public lands in Nevada and Utah has been removed. But mostly the Republican objectors got their wish and made the MAGA murder budget even worse for working people, speeding up both the electricity bill-raising rollback of clean energy tax credits and the Medicaid cuts. They also increased tax breaks for high-income families, gave $12 billion to states to reimburse them for “border security expenses” and plan to ban Medicaid from paying for gender-affirming care and insurance on Obamacare exchanges from covering transition. (More changes here.)
We’ve also learned from the CBO that in addition to costing 15 million Americans their health care and 11 million households food on the table to pay for tax cuts for billionaires, the bill is expected to increase the debt by $2.3 trillion – so much it will trigger nearly $500 billion in Medicare cuts.
Even if this version gets through the House, the Senate is not yet on board and is unlikely to accept the House bill as is, so there is still plenty of work ahead of us. Let’s get to it. Let’s call our reps and our senators today and tell them we say no to paying for billionaire tax cuts with our health care and food assistance. And let’s commit to taking at least one action over next week’s recess to spread the word on the dangers of the MAGA murder budget – we can find options on the Rogan’s List action page (now with a new set of talking points!) here.
🚨 BREAK GLASS IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, CONGRESS 🚨
We have a responsibility not to look away from the constitutional collapse, and sometimes we don’t have a choice. In the last few days alone, we’ve seen Trump’s personal lawyer charge a Democratic member of Congress with crimes for trying to do her job; a federal judge ruling the administration violated a court order blocking them from deporting immigrants to countries where they might not be safe; a cabinet secretary suggesting the president can suspend fundamental rights at will and lying about what they are and the President call for celebrities to be investigated for endorsing his opponent. We’ve seen no movement on the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia or Daniel Lozano-Camargo, and we’ve learned at least one in five of the men being held in a foreign concentration camp without due process are legal immigrants.
Even on Capitol Hill itself, we’re seeing Republicans gutting the filibuster and holding hearings in the dark of night to sneak through legislation that would cut services we rely on to pay for billionaire tax cuts. As we speak, they’re trying to strip judges of the power to enforce the law when it might stop Trump. This is not business as usual. Our elected officials – especially those in the opposition – need to act like it.
Let’s reach out to them and once again demand they pull out all procedural tools to grind the gears to a halt in Congress. The GOP agenda badly needs to be slowed down so Americans have time to organize, and it will help signal to the public that we are in an emergency. We can find scripts and language to use here.
We can also:
Push them to call for charges against Rep. McIver to be dropped immediately, language here and email tool here
Demand to they act in response to Trump’s continued violations of court orders, language here and email tool here
Insist they remove provisions stripping judges of power to enforce contempt of court rulings from reconciliation, language here and email tool here
🗣️ MEANWHILE, TRUMP WANTS TO SPEND $1 BILLION OF OUR MONEY ON HIS BRIBE 🗣️
Trump officially has his Qatari sky palace, as the Pentagon announced they have accepted a $400 million super luxury jumbo jet as a “present” from the royal family of Qatar. Now it’s on to the Air Force, who have been asked to find a way to rapidly upgrade it so Trump can use it as the new Air Force One… at least until the end of his term, when it would be transferred to his presidential library foundation. It’s free for Trump, but expensive for us: the cost of these improvements and security sweeps to the taxpayer was already anticipated to more than a billion dollars and it’s likely to be even higher if Trump wants to fly it before the end of the year. And all while they’re claiming we can’t afford Medicaid and SNAP.
Democrats have been trying to push back on this corrupt deal, and it’s time to raise the pressure. Let’s tell our members of Congress we don’t want a dime of our money spent on sprucing up Trump’s personal plane. They need to vote to block Trump from accepting this bribe whether through a stand-alone bill or amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act. They must also prevent any taxpayer funds from being used on it, and continue to press for answers on what Qatar thinks they’re getting in return. We can find language to use here or send this Resistbot by texting SIGN PIQXHS to 50409.
💬 LIMITING COVID VACCINE ACCESS – COMMENT BY TOMORROW 🗨️
Last year, more than 47,000 Americans died of COVID, including more than 200 children. The Trump Administration seems determined to see even more lives lost. Political appointees overruled scientists at the Food and Drug Administration and are limiting approval for seasonal vaccines to those above 65 and other high-risk groups – with no exceptions for caregivers. They are now demanding expensive and time-consuming extra trials before signing off on shots for everyone else.
We have until TOMORROW to submit public comments to the FDA opposing these limitations. Let’s make our voices heard for vaccines. We can find tips and sample language from the here.
As of mid-March, community groups could also order free COVID tests in bulk – learn more here. (H/t Julia Smith)
📞 FIVE YEARS AFTER GEORGE FLOYD, THE FIGHT GOES ON 📞
As we approach the fifth anniversary of the police murder of George Floyd on Sunday, true justice seems farther away than ever. We just saw Tyre Nichols’ killers being acquitted by an all-white jury from outside Memphis, and now the Trump Administration is now actively rolling back some of the victories movement leaders won. They announced yesterday they are cancelling police reform settlements reached with Minneapolis and Louisville and retracting the findings of six other Biden-era Justice Department investigations into civil rights violations by police departments.
The people in power must be met with the power of the people. One place we can start is another courtroom in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Earlier this month, a mistrial was declared in the second-degree murder trial of Christopher Schurr, who as a police officer shot a Congolese refugee named Patrick Lyoya in the back of the head while he was on the ground after a traffic stop for expired license plates. Patrick’s family has called on Kent County Prosecutor Chris Becker to refile charges, but Becker has not yet announced a decision. Let’s have their backs. We can contact Becker here to urge him to continue to seek justice for Patrick Lyoya.
We can also make sure our leaders in DC know we have not given up. The Justice Department deleted the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database (NLEAD) after an executive order by Trump, allowing officers with histories of misconduct to once again transfer between departments without background checks. We saw the tragic consequences of the failure to hold these folks accountable with officers involved in the murders of Tamir Rice, Breonna Taylor, and Sandra Bland who had troubling records but were able to continue working in law enforcement. Let’s use this tool from MomsRising to urge our members of Congress to restore the NLEAD.
KEEPING AN EYE ON…
Thank you for giving us actionable steps ~ sometimes it all feels so hopeless!
🔥Sec 70302 of the bill is the MOST DANGEROUS part.
If the bill CANNOT pass or he WILL be 🤴
The quiet behind all the noise is what will DESTROY the nation.
They're trying to ignore Sec 70302 of the bill and hide that part so people won't pay attention. That will give him keys to the kingdom. That is the most DANGEROUS part of that bill.
While project 2025 takes the country back to about the 1850's Gilded Age and their Christo-fascist Theocracy new rules and laws. No more constitution. No more rights. Oligarchs and a King.
And No on the 10 year moratorium on state AI laws.