Immigrants make our communities stronger: Tell Congress to reject the “No Bailout for Sanctuary Cities Act”
On the day of his inauguration for a second term, Donald Trump issued a flurry of Executive Orders targeting the LGBTQ community, civil rights protections, and immigrant communities. Meanwhile, Congress is echoing the new administration’s attacks on immigrant communities with a proposal to punish whole cities or states if they choose not to join in the attack.
The No Bailout for Sanctuary Cities Act would force cities and state governments across the country to participate in mass deportation actions or potentially risk losing money for programs such as:
Department of Education grants, National School Lunch Program funding, and other forms of federal support for schools, which are not allowed to refuse enrollment by undocumented students.
Emergency Medicaid, which provides states with funding for emergency care for people ineligible for Medicaid due to their immigration status. In the case of public hospitals run by a city or county, all federal funding for uncompensated care, such as Medicaid Disproportionate Share Hospital Payments, could be at risk.
The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program, Commodity Supplemental Food Program, Emergency Food Assistance Program, and other nutrition programs that support food banks and other community partners that do not restrict help by immigration status.
Violence Against Women Act grants, such as those supporting violence crisis centers that do not turn away people based on their immigration status.
Cutting funding for these programs would take away critical care for tens of thousands of people.This would disproportionately impact low-income and marginalized Black and Brown communities, further deepening poverty and widening inequality.
This overreach by the federal government would be devastating to community programs and set a dangerous precedent on how cities and states are allowed to operate autonomously. We must stop this overreach before it can be implemented.
The 100 million vaccinations in 100 days edition. President Biden plans a vigorous response to the coronavirus pandemic. He has proposed a sweeping national plan to make tests and vaccines more abundant, make schools and travel safer, and help states pay for efforts to control the virus. Biden’s strategy includes aggressive use of executive authority to protect workers, advance racial equity, and ramp up the manufacturing of test kits, vaccines, and related supplies. The President envisions the creation of mass vaccination sites, including in stadiums, gyms, and community centers, along with a program to build the public health workforce to help with testing, contact tracing, and outreach.
We welcome President Biden and Vice President Harris with high emotion. We are grieving many losses: people lost to the coronavirus, people lost to racist violence, to too many guns, to overdose, to suicide. President Biden understands our grief and is committed to presiding over a government that strives to lessen its causes. We celebrate President Biden’s swift actions to combat the four intertwined crises of pandemic, economy, systemic racism, and climate. Members of the Coalition on Human Needs are ready to join Americans nationwide to support and advance this essential work.
Eliza Navarro, a nurse in San Benito, Texas didn’t want to leave her job back in April. But when she couldn’t find child care for her two children, home from school because of COVID-19, she felt she had no choice. Like many working mothers, she has felt the pandemic’s blow to America’s already fragile and dysfunctional child care system.
The it’s-always-darkest-before-the-dawn edition. On Thursday, January 14, 238,390 new COVID-19 cases were confirmed – up 27 percent from two weeks prior. An additional 3,973 deaths were reported – up 39 percent from two weeks ago (but down from 4,400 reported on Tuesday, January 12). The national COVID-19 death toll is approaching 400,000. Still, hope is on the horizon in two forms. First, President-elect Biden Thursday evening announced a robust proposal to corral COVID-19 and resurrect our sputtering economy. Also: after a sluggish rollout, reports suggest that the number of vaccines administered daily is on the rise. As of late this week, 28 states plus D.C. were offering the vaccine to Americans 65 years of age and older.
“With COVID-19 cases surging and U.S. deaths approaching 400,000, President-Elect Biden is meeting our national emergency with caring and determination. His American Rescue Plan has the necessary scope to halt our current decline and protect millions from hardship and harm. The President-Elect and his team have done the clear-eyed analysis to know that we cannot free ourselves of this combined health and economic disaster without ramping up an ambitious schedule of vaccinations and disease prevention alongside a robust package to help our people meet basic needs
Yesterday, we witnessed a shocking act of domestic terrorism that should shake every one of us to our core. At this moment, we can be nothing less than honest about what we saw. A conspiracy-crazed mob, incited by lies championed by the 45th President of the United States — at a rally organized to disrupt the solemn last step in the constitutional process of validating the federal election — invaded our sacred seat of American democracy, the People’s House – the United States Capitol building.
Last weekend, 45 faith leaders signed a letter encouraging President-elect Biden to include expansion of low-income tax credits in his soon-to-be-released COVID-19 relief package. “Of the many challenges you face, one of the most urgent is helping all Americans emerge from the chaos, despair, and economic devastation wrought by the coronavirus-19 pandemic,” the letter states. “The pandemic has caused untold economic devastation to millions of Americans, particularly Brown and Black Americans, and while there are many policy options at your disposal we believe that expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC) can play an instrumental role in assisting millions of Americans struggling to make ends meet.”
President Trump has acted in violation of his oath of office and the law by inciting violent mob action and failing to take swift steps to protect lives and our nation’s democratic institutions. He has shown himself to be “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” and should be removed, either by actions of Vice President Pence and the cabinet to invoke the 25th amendment to the Constitution, or by impeachment in the House of Representatives and conviction in the Senate.
The they-warned-us-and-we-didn’t-listen edition. For months, medical experts warned us that COVID-19 cases likely would spike in the winter. It is happening. 4,112 new COVID-19 deaths were reported in the U.S. on Thursday, January 7 alone – the first time deaths in a single day exceeded 4,000. The daily death toll in New Hampshire, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania also set records. Illinois became the fifth state to record its one millionth case since the pandemic began. In Arizona, which right now has a higher infection rate than any other state in the U.S., hospitalizations and deaths set records in the past few days; the state has seen more than 8,000 new cases a day, more than double the summer peak.
Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021 never had to happen. And yet, given the obstruction of some elected officials — from the outgoing President to some members of Congress — it was almost inevitable. By now everyone knows the storyline. Protestors, egged on by Trump and encouraged by obstructionists in Congress, overran and occupied the U.S. Capitol – the first time the 220-year-old building had suffered such sacrilege since British troops partly burned it in 1814.
Just days after Christmas, some Americans awoke to a nice surprise: the new $600 stimulus payments had begun to show up in their bank accounts via direct deposit. While smaller than some advocates had hoped for, in some ways, this stimulus program was superior to the $1,200 checks approved by Congress last spring. One reason why: unlike what was passed last time around, mixed status families are now eligible for the payments – not only that, but they retroactively qualify for the $1,200 payments that were denied them last time.
Food scarcity – already a problem in the U.S. in pre-pandemic times – is on the rise. We’ve all seen the miles-long lines of cars waiting to receive assistance at food banks. This holiday season, numerous major media outlets have published or aired stories about Americans going hungry, including all of the major TV networks. So it came as good news when Congress on Monday, December 21 voted on a COVID-19 relief package that includes $26 billion for nutrition assistance and agriculture and rural programs.
