Take Action Now: Stand Up for Public Benefits

Take Action Now: Stand Up for Public Benefits

Take Action Now: Stand Up for Public Benefits

Learn more about Trump’s harmful budget cuts, stand up for housing justice, and protect workers’ rights.

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In his $4.8 trillion budget proposed yesterday, Trump promised to slash safety net programs from student loan assistance to housing to Medicaid, while expanding defense spending and border enforcement. We need to support organizations taking action on the ground to fill in the gaps and tell our representatives to stand up for public benefits.

This week’s Take Action Now helps you fight back against Trump’s harmful cuts by educating yourself about what’s at stake, standing up for housing justice, and defending workers’ rights.

Take Action Now gives you three meaningful actions you can take each week whatever your schedule. You can sign up here to get these actions and more in your inbox every Tuesday.

NO TIME TO SPARE?

Since coming into office, Trump has repeatedly slashed housing programs—cutting investment in affordable housing, imposing work requirements on public housing tenants, and destabilizing programs to address homelessness. Sign up to receive advocacy alerts from the National Alliance to End Homelessness so that you can tell your representatives to stand up for people who are homeless. Then, submit a comment to regulators telling them to protect the Community Reinvestment Act from the White House’s attempts to gut it and reverse decades of anti-redlining policy.

GOT SOME TIME?

As budget cuts threaten to make life harder for people who rely on a wide range of government programs, it’s crucial that we educate ourselves about what’s at stake. Register to participate in Coalition on Human Needs webinar on the new budget to learn how Trump’s proposals will affect low- and moderate-income people through cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, housing, disability assistance, public health programs, and more. Or, check out and share the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ analysis of the budget.

READY TO DIG IN?

When social safety net programs are under attack, low-wage workers are the first to feel the effects. Donate to the National Center For Law and Economic Justice to support their litigation and advocacy on behalf of low-income people. Volunteer your time with organizations that stand up for workers’ rights, like the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, a branch of Jobs With Justice in your area, or a worker justice group fighting to end wage theft.

We cannot back down

We now confront a second Trump presidency.

There’s not a moment to lose. We must harness our fears, our grief, and yes, our anger, to resist the dangerous policies Donald Trump will unleash on our country. We rededicate ourselves to our role as journalists and writers of principle and conscience.

Today, we also steel ourselves for the fight ahead. It will demand a fearless spirit, an informed mind, wise analysis, and humane resistance. We face the enactment of Project 2025, a far-right supreme court, political authoritarianism, increasing inequality and record homelessness, a looming climate crisis, and conflicts abroad. The Nation will expose and propose, nurture investigative reporting, and stand together as a community to keep hope and possibility alive. The Nation’s work will continue—as it has in good and not-so-good times—to develop alternative ideas and visions, to deepen our mission of truth-telling and deep reporting, and to further solidarity in a nation divided.

Armed with a remarkable 160 years of bold, independent journalism, our mandate today remains the same as when abolitionists first founded The Nation—to uphold the principles of democracy and freedom, serve as a beacon through the darkest days of resistance, and to envision and struggle for a brighter future.

The day is dark, the forces arrayed are tenacious, but as the late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

I urge you to stand with The Nation and donate today.

Onwards,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

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