While Trump’s over-the-top military parade—a made-for-TV display of dominance on his birthday and the ceremonial birth of American fascism—takes place in Washington, D.C. on June 14, Americans in the rest of the country will be celebrating No Kings Day, a nationwide day of defiance that rejects authoritarianism and shows the world democracy in action. Our Members of Congress must amplify this difference every way they can.

Despite a decline in maternal deaths since COVID, our mortality rate’s still the highest of any developed nation, although 80% of these deaths are likely preventable.

Pregnancy is not a luxury, and safe childbirths not a partisan issue, but, even before the House MAGA Murder Budget Bill passed, too many women died because our healthcare system failed them. The bill’s massive cuts to Medicaid, Planned Parenthood, and ACA coverage will only make this crisis worse.

If you care about healthy moms and babies, about rural communities surviving and the basic dignity of safely giving birth in America, you cannot support this bill. You and your colleagues must reject these cruel and unconscionable cuts and push instead for legislation preventing maternal deaths and improving health outcomes for mothers—positions endorsed overwhelmingly by your constituents.

Although Trump suspended all refugee admissions for those fleeing famines, wars, and natural disasters in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East on Day One, on May 12, he welcomed the first of many groups of Afrikaner farmers who’d already been granted refugee status, while simultaneously eliminating protected status for Afghans who had risked their lives alongside American troops fighting in Afghanistan.Our MoCs must contest the administration’s blatant racism and perversion of our immigration laws.

The highly unpopular and un-American Maga Murder Budget passed the House 215-214 with no Democratic votes in the wee hours Thursday. If enacted, it would be the largest ever upward transfer of wealth. To prevent this attempt to decimate America’s social safety net to make the few at the top that much richer and to fund Trump’s unconstitutional mass deportation regime, the Senate must kill it.

The vast majority of individuals detained by ICE are held and processed through private for-profit immigrant detention facilities and prisons that stand to earn billions for their involvement in a system of gross injustice, physical violence, and abuse. And your tax dollars are paying for it.

The Senate may begin voting on the controversial GENIUS ACT (S.394), crafted by tech oligarchs seeking to tie cryptocurrency to the dollar and create a regulatory framework, as early as tomorrow morning (May 9). It would require that stablecoins hold reserves of liquid, safe assets like Treasury bills, issuers follow anti-money-laundering and terrorism finance rules and coin holders get priority to recoup their money in a bankruptcy.

Thank you for cosponsoring the End Crypto Corruption Act, which, if included in S.394, would stop Trump’s corrupt behavior somewhat. Nevertheless, because S.394 does not provide the necessary real guardrails against market manipulation, untraceable bribes, money laundering, and endless cryptocurrency scams, I urge you to vote against cloture and convince your colleagues to do likewise.

Trump is following Hitler’s playbook, using the Gestapo-like ICE as his personal secret police to round up, detain, and exterminate through rendition brown and black communities—just as their Nazi equivalents did to Jews and gypsies. Daily we witness ICE’s cruel, violent, illegal acts—not just terrorizing communities, tearing families apart, and disappearing innocent people, but also targeting political dissidents and public officials rather than the hardened criminals Trump promised to deport. 

Our MoCs, if serious about stopping fascism, must do everything they can to prevent ICE’s further expansion and empowerment, while warning about accountability when they retake the House in 2026.

Trump and the MAGA Republicans are up to their usual Robin Hood-in-reverse scheme, proposing a ‘Big Beautiful’ reconciliation bill that will severely cut the Medicaid program to make room for unnecessary tax breaks for Elon Musk and the wealthiest people on the planet.  These cuts to health care for our disabled, elderly, and poor families come at a time when marginalized communities are already living on the edge of poverty.

America is in the midst of a decades-long, severe, widespread, worsening housing crisis. The MAGA response of scapegoating the homeless, reducing funds and eliminating agencies, and replacing the highly effective Housing First strategy with criminalization and forced treatment only makes things worse. Congress must change course and commit to solving this crisis, before more unnecessary trauma and deaths occur.

No one in 2024 voted to destroy the USPS, a critical nation-building institution serving and belonging to the American people and the second most popular American institution. The people’s post offices are not for sale, and Trumps’ efforts to privatize the USPS must be defeated.

The Trump-Musk “DOGE” mass firings and SSA office closures have created jammed phone lines, long wait times, and a website on the verge of collapse, but confirmation tomorrow of Frank Bisignano, a self-proclaimed “DOGE person” and ultra-rich former Wall Street executive, as Social Security Administrator will make everything worse.

Senators Wyden and Merkley, I implore you to impress on your Democratic colleagues the need for a united front–on this and all subsequent nominations–to demonstrate the Democratic Party is truly working for the American people. Right now that message is muddled. If Trump is destroying our institutions and democracy, how could all Democrats have voted to confirm Marco Rubio? Or 16 Democrats to confirm election-denier David Perdue–including Cory Booker who spoke eloquently against the administration for 25 hours just days earlier? 

To express outrage at the Trump administration’s cruel, unconstitutional behavior, you and your colleagues must also use all available Senate procedures to stall every nominee and regularly find creative ways to keep its excesses front and center, like today’s Hands Off Social Security Rally.

Trump and his ICE gestapo, lying to the American people about the illegality of their mass deportation activities, continue to run roughshod over the Constitution, the rule of law, and the right to due process the courts insist they obey—sending noncitizens and citizens to El Salvador gulogs to be tortured and even killed, improperly detaining and deporting families seeking asylum, plucking foreign students and faculty off the streets and trying to deport them because Trump dislikes their opinions, and using underhanded, illegal methods to convince noncitizens to self-deport.

While the Trump administration has not yet implemented the dangerous Insurrection Act, we must prepare for this eventuality by constructing a detailed response to prevent fear tactics from dividing us and by being ready to demand our MOCs immediately challenge this abuse of power.

Trump and the MAGA Republicans continue their fascist power grab: ruling by the bullies, for the billionaires. Their reconciliation bill will give massive tax cuts to billionaires, further bloat the military, and pay for more kidnappings and deportations.  To fund it, they intend to deprive Americans of the basic necessities we need to prosper. Their bill slashes food and health programs, causing thousands of preventable deaths. Meanwhile they continue to kidnap our neighbors and send them to gulags in El Salvador. This is not the America we want to live in. Our Members of Congress must use all legislative and performative tools available to whip up popular resistance to its many atrocities and prevent its passage.

Trump and his MAGA Congressional allies have used unproven charges of systemic anti-Semitism and “illegal protests” on campus to stifle dissent and try to turn universities into the ideological arm of their authoritarian state-in-the-making. The administration’s unlawful, unprecedented misuse of federal funding and civil rights enforcement authority to undermine academic freedom and free speech on university campuses must be challenged. Congress cannot allow these pernicious attacks to continue.