May 29, 2025 - Billions for Deportation (From Our Health Care)

Plus: Trump nominates corrupt dealmaker for a judgeship, anti-DEI push robs rural America, how to build a voter's guide for school boards, and more

🪧 There are now more than *1200* No Kings demonstrations scheduled for June 14th… let’s make sure we know where we’re hitting the streets! 🪧

🛑 STOP THE MAGA RECONCILIATION BILL’S WAR ON IMMIGRANTS 🛑

Among the many deplorable policies sought in the MAGA murder budget are massive expansions in funding and power for the deportation machine, including:

• $80 billion for the construction, running, and filling of immigration detention camps

• $69 billion for border wall construction

• $5 billion to deploy the military to enforce civil immigration laws

• $12 billion in “reimbursements” to Texas and other states for “border spending expenses”

• Indefinite detention of immigrant children

• Charging families $3,500 to reunite with a child who arrived at the border alone

• Onerous application fees for seeking asylum and work authorization

• Billions of dollars in cuts to states that provide health care to immigrants

• Ending federal health care and food assistance to legal immigrants without green cards

Our Members of Congress of both parties need to hear that we oppose the further growth of ICE’s attacks on our communities and the rule of law. Let’s contact them today. We can use this script from 5Calls or language from this Resistbot opposing financial support for mass deportation and mass detention.

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🤳🏽 PHONEBANKING TO SAVE LIVES FROM MAGA 🤳🏽

We could (and will) highlight a new danger imposed by the MAGA murder budget every day. If passed this bill will bring pain to millions of American lives, all while the wealthy celebrate a new windfall. The good news is, we’ve still got room to defeat it – the bill passed the House by one vote, and we should see plenty of fight in the Senate with Republicans pulling both ways on Medicaid cuts and some finally objecting to how they’ll be exploding the deficit. Any changes would need to be approved by the House again. Our mission is clear: we need the phones ringing off the hook on Capitol Hill, demanding our electeds vote no.

Indivisible is holding a training TODAY for new phonebankers to get them familiar with the process of connecting voters in key areas to their reps. We can sign up to join them – or suggest folks we know who want to get more involved do so – here.

If we’re already ready to go, there’s plenty of phonebank shifts available today:

• 11AM-12:30PM ET with

  Indivisible
  , sign up here

• 3PM-5PM ET with

  MoveOn
  , sign up here

• 5PM ET with Medicaid Defenders, sign up here

• 5:30PM-10:15PM ET with Grassroots Democrats HQ and

  Chop Wood, Carry Water
  , sign up here

• 5:30PM-10:30PM ET with Together for CA Health, sign up here

• 6PM-9PM ET with People’s Action, sign up here

And we can find more phonebanks, along with neighbor-to-neighbor and friend-to-friend outreach and tools for telling our stories and pressing for media coverage, in the Rogan’s List action guide here.

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⚖️ TRUMP NOMINATES KEY FIGURE IN ADAMS SCANDAL TO FEDERAL JUDGESHIP ⚖️

Emil Bove was Donald Trump’s personal attorney and was handpicked by him to impose his will on the Justice Department. In his time as a senior official, he has been a central player in the White House’s efforts to use law enforcement as a political weapon. Bove notoriously ordered federal prosecutors to drop charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams after Adams’ attorneys promised he would assist with the Trump’s priorities on immigration. Seven professional prosecutors ultimately resigned rather than dismiss the case, refusing to play their part in the quid pro quo, and a federal judge suggested Bove had violated “the basic promise of equal justice under the law.” Bove also led a purge of career officials at Justice and the FBI and attempted to investigate thousands of agents who worked on prosecuting insurrectionists.

Now Trump is nominating him for a seat on the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals. This sort of blatant corruption and abuse of the justice system cannot be rewarded with a lifetime appointment to a job that requires honesty and fairness. Let’s reach out to our senators and tell them they need to reject Bove’s nomination. And especially if they’re on the Judiciary Committee, they need to need to use his hearings to publicly hold him to account for his role in the Adams quid pro quo. We can find scripts and language here or send this Resistbot message by texting SIGN PECZAF to 50409.

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💻 INTERNET ACCESS EXPANSION GETS CAUGHT IN ANTI-DEI PUSH 💻

Digital access and literacy is essential for individuals to function in a society that’s only growing more internet-permeated. The Digital Equity Act of 2021 identified underserved groups in the population (the elderly, veterans, the incarcerated, the disabled, rural people, people with a language barrier, people living in poverty, people in ethnic minorities) and allocated funding to expand high-speed internet coverage and close the digital divide. The current administration’s widespread attack on anything having to do with diversity, equity, and inclusion has brought this program into their crosshairs, with Trump calling it “woke handouts based on race” and announcing his intent to stop it.

But as we can see on this map from Democracy Labs, this is going to come at a significant cost, hitting rural broadband programs especially hard. Every red state government had submitted proposals to get funding through this program. Maine’s congressional delegation and Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois are appealing for funds to be unfrozen, but we’re going to need more of our leaders to speak up. Let’s ask our reps to support the fight for Digital Equity Act funding. We can use this language on Resistbot from the New York State Digital Equity Network for our calls or send the message directly by texting SIGN PUFUOW to 50409.

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🎒 BUILDING VOTER GUIDES FOR SCHOOL BOARD RACES 🚸

We’re facing an unprecedented wave of book bans and attacks on libraries from the right. And the best way to fight back is going to be organizing locally, including making sure we elect pro-public education, pro-inclusion, anti-censorship, pro-democracy folks to our local school and library boards. We have a crucial role to play in these very low salience elections – finding information about who they are isn’t always easy, and far too many people cast their ballots with little to go on. Texas Freedom to Read Project activist

Frank Strong

has been helping address this issue by building candidate guides, and he’s prepared some tips on how we can do the same for our area. Let’s check out the Book Loving Texan’s Guide to School Board Elections here, read a step-by-step guide to how Frank puts it together here, learn more about his process here, and consider taking on this sort of valuable work in our own communities!

We can also follow Frank on Substack at

Anger & Clarity

and keep engaged with fighting the book burners by subscribing to

kelly jensen

’s updates at Literary Activism here.

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🍵 STARBUCKS WORKERS UNION ALLIES CALL TONIGHT 🍵

Starbucks Workers United is continuing its fight for its first contract, and they’re bound and determined to secure one that truly invests in workers. In recent months, they’ve launched strikes, sit-ins, and walkouts at locations nationwide to get the message across to the company. Now they’re preparing for a bold campaign through the end of the year to secure victory for working folks. SBWU is holding a call for union allies TONIGHT at 8PM ET to preview their next steps and let us know how we can take action with them. Let’s sign up to learn more here. (We can also take the No Contract, No Coffee pledge here to promise to act in solidarity with the union!)

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