I agree with President Trump that Graham’s most memorable moment as a Senator — and perhaps his real lasting legacy — was his performance in the confirmation hearing back in 2018 to make sure Justice Brett Kavanaugh would end up on the bench. Speaking at his memorial, Trump called it Graham’s “finest hour.”

I was working as a reporter on Capitol Hill at the time and remember watching part of the hearing with my colleagues on a tiny monitor in our little “booth” workspace above the Senate chamber. All of us huddled together.

It is easy to forget that Christine Blasey Ford was sympathetic and relatable. She did not come across overly partisan or vindictive. She sounded like someone we all knew. Her testimony was easy to follow. I saw women in the Capitol that day fight back tears listening to her story. That sense of “me too” hitting in a very real way.

So, when Graham rallied his Republican colleagues, when they came back to the hearing room after a break with a clear pivot and change of tack — when, following his lead, they so abruptly, so unrelentingly went on the attack — it was dizzying. Would it be too aggressive, too mean, too unapologetic? Graham did not look back. He fought with such tenacity, he tipped the balance that day by sheer force of will.

Many people have written about Graham’s reversal on Trump himself, but I have also been thinking about Graham’s changing policy positions in the Trump era and what his personal slide says about how far debates have shifted in our national politics.

At the same time as the Kavanaugh hearings, the beginning of Trump’s first term, I also remember covering Graham’s support of DREAMers in the country, those immigrant Americans brought to the US as children. Trump had come into office and immediately attempted to rescind protections for them. Graham and a lot of Republicans at the time argued that the way President Obama had used unilateral executive orders for DREAMers was bad policy, but that they did deserve to be shielded from deportation.

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“These young people have lived in America since they were children and built their lives here,” Graham wrote in a press release back in 2017 introducing legislation. “There is support across the country for allowing Dreamers -- who have records of achievement -- to stay, work, and reach their full potential. We should not squander these young people’s talents and penalize our own nation. Our legislation would allow these young people – who grew up in the United States – to contribute more fully to the country they love. They have a powerful story to tell and this may be an area where both parties can come together.”

I remember talking to voters in Texas while working on another story at the time. And Republican after Republican, MAGA voters, all agreed DREAMers should be allowed to stay.

I remember my team and I were struck by the conversations as anecdotal as they were. Graham seemed right that there was support across the country on the issue.

He went on to re-introduce that bill for four consecutive times in 2017, 2019, 2021, and 2023. (Back in 2013, he had been in favor of a major immigration reform package too).

Fast-forward to last year, Graham ditched his long standing support of the DREAMer bill. In December 2025, he said, “Yeah, there will be no Dream Act… Not until you deal with the millions of people here illegally.”

He was trading in his support for immigrants who have lived in the US since they were kids, who have known no other country, in order to double down on Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

NOTUS wrote about how Alaska’s Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski introduced the bill with Democrat Dick Durbin instead. Durbin blamed Graham’s re-election campaign for complicating things, as if to say that with the prospect of a Republican primary Graham could not possibly be seen as supporting DREAMers.

I wonder if Graham’s calculus was right. Gallup’s most recent polling on immigration from just this month found that 81% of Americans favor “allowing immigrants, who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, the chance to become U.S. citizens if they meet certain requirements over a period of time.” In the same poll only 39% said they favor “Deporting all immigrants who are living in the U.S. illegally back to their home country.”

But public opinion does not make policy and the policy debates today, especially within the Republican Party on Capitol Hill, seem far, far from protections for DREAMers.

There were headlines this week that ICE was surging arrests at airports, targeting spouses of Americans with visas that may have expired.

And, like so many Americans, I am still thinking about the deaths earlier this month of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo (pursued by unmarked vehicles) in Houston and Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero (not even the subject of the ICE warrant) in Maine, both shot inside cars.

I spoke at length with a former DHS attorney who kept repeating to me how ICE, working in the interior, has no previous experience doing traffic stops. He reminded me that lawmakers at the state and national level should continue to question what legal authority ICE is using to justify conducting traffic stops at all.

All the while, despite the violence, Republicans like Graham have doubled-down on getting out of Trump’s way and funding ICE operations.

Graham’s reversal on DREAMers is indicative of how the GOP has hardened on immigration and the most extreme versions of Trump’s agenda.

In a new survey from The Kitchen Table project last week, 35% of Americans cited grocery prices as the single biggest source of financial pressure.

In a study done by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, one in 10 American families in the month of February alone were food insecure and reported missing meals for lack of food.

One in 10.

Costs are so high in this country right now many, many working families are struggling day in and day out with how to put food on the table. I think it is an underreported, devastating issue. As a mom, especially, I cannot imagine what it would feel like to be stressed about paying for food for my family.

There was a moment on an episode from The Daily podcast back in March — a young veteran and dad was talking to the reporter about the impact of high gas prices on his family’s budget. He said it was cutting into their grocery budget, and then added — with a matter-of-fact tone that gave me chills — that he and his wife had been skipping meals so they could make sure their kids could eat.

Listen here for that clip — (15:45 in) I have been thinking about it since I heard it.

Skipping meals.

I have heard of some on the right defending the war in Iran — and the ripple effects from that war on prices here — by urging others to consider fasting. Fasting as an acceptable way to handle income inequality and cost of living in this country?

To add insult to injury, we know that as a nation we also waste an incredible amount of food.

Local and federal agencies agree that any given year as much as 30 or even 40 percent of food produced in this country is actually wasted… Wasted while families and children struggle with hunger.

A few years ago, I started volunteering with a group that pairs businesses willing to donate food with nonprofits eager to accept it. Through a super easy app, volunteers just “claim” a rescue, basically sign-up to drive the food from point A to point B. You can do as few (or as many) as you like, whenever you’d like. I found that during maternity leave, it was a super easy way to volunteer — basically just driving food around town, often on routes I was already going to take.

The local chapter of the national Food Rescue organization recently spun-off to broaden out their work and scope a bit, but the volunteer experience is the same. I spoke yesterday with the founder of DC Food Rescue about her work, the unique challenges of food insecurity in the nation’s capital, how she got started (and how you can form a new chapter or do some of this work too!)

All told, here in DC they facilitate 375 “rescues” a week varying in sizes from a few pizzas to truckloads, making sure less food is wasted and more is distributed to people who need it instead.

I learned a new term from our conversation: “food apartheid.”

I have found food rescue to be a wonderful way to further support nonprofit organizations I already love and work with too, by making sure they get food donations when they are available.

Listen to my conversation above with Kate Urbank — and sneak peak, my baby (and his colorful blowout!) makes an appearance about 19 mins in.

A huge thank you to Kate Urbank, founder of DC Food Rescue, for talking to me, doing this work, and answering questions despite a fussy baby in the background.

Please share your own creative ideas for fighting hunger in this country.

Transcript of my conversation with Kate Urbank, founder of DC Food Rescue:

MaryAlice:

I am so grateful to be joined today by Kate Urbank talking to you about a new venture here in DC. I want you to tell me a bit about your work and the unique challenges of fighting hunger here in DC.

Kate Urbank:

I my my tenure has been 10 years, so it’s a new program, but it’s got a lot of legs from people like you who volunteer for us.

And so to the point of hunger and food waste in the DMV, you know, it’s it’s very illogical. I find that when people learn that there’s a way to donate surplus food from local businesses, initially there might be some hesitation. I think that’s changed a lot over the past 10 years. There was concern at one point about liability — is there protection for food donors, so they’re not concerned that they might end up with a lawsuit. There are two federal laws that protect businesses that donate food under the right circumstances, which we abide by. So we like to take that concern off the table. We make it very easy for food donors to donate their food because, as I’ve told people, we spend all week making sure we can figure out how to get food from here to there, so it’s not going in the waste.

And so the businesses leave that to us and we manage that process. We have, let’s see, 200 businesses basically that donate locally. We have more than that in our app, and some of them are a one-off or a very occasional, but we have really about 200 active businesses that have found us and have elected to work with us rather than waste. And we have about the same amount of we’re talk calling them community partners who are the agencies that receive the food. We leave that to the people who most understand their local communities. So, we get food to agencies, to to nonprofits, to mutual aids, and those directors are the ones that know how to get the food to those who are at risk in the community.

MaryAlice:

Yeah, and I apologize if you hear my little guy, my four-month-old I was telling you, is right next to me at my feet and he’s starting to coo, but he seems in a happy mood.

As you mentioned, I found you guys and have been volunteering the last few years. I actually found you when my first son was about exactly this age. I was home on maternity leave and unable to kind of do some other volunteer work that I had typically done, but feeling, you know, pent up with a newborn and like I had time on my hands. Maybe you remember babies love to sleep in cars. And I was like, this is the easiest way to give back. This is like silly simple. And I loved that.

So you know, just sort of drawing it out again for people that are trying to understand, the app is so easy. You basically just sign up for one of these routes. Often it’s like moving food a few blocks, half a mile, maybe a mile, picking it up from a big law firm or a or many restaurants around town. Restaurants I know and love. Just pulling up in their back, you know, sort of alley, knocking on the door, saying you’re from food rescue. There were a lot of times I did it with my little guy in the car, and I just like popped the trunk and texted someone that I was there. Sometimes I didn’t even get out of the car.

I’d say, “Babies in the car, like let’s pop the trunk.” Or knock on the door, and then drive the food and drop it off. And same thing, like knock on the and say, “Hi, I’m here with five boxes of bagels for your organization.” The sort of daily soup kitchen/ food bank that is run out of my church had also started to partner pretty early on with food rescue. And so I think I told you that I would search the night before for any outstanding ones that hadn’t been claimed yet that we’re gonna go to Charlie’s place in DC that I love and know really well.

Kate Urbank:

I apologize for all the dings. This is food rescue at work. I should have turned this off, but people are like firing away with new opportunities or cancelled rescues.

MaryAlice:

No, it’s good.

You’re keeping track of it all. And it’s remarkable. I mean, it’s remarkably easy. And and I think I so I love that it was easy. And I selfishly, that was great. And loved that, I don’t know, the like the feel goodness, which is probably not why you should do volunteer work, but the feel goodness was on two fronts, right? It was and is still, I should say, I still do this quite a lot. but it is.

Knowing that food is getting to people who need it and organizations who need it and are in the community and are distributing it and are just and have those relationships already, those systems already for distributing food to those who need it. And that food was not going to be wasted. That kind of the feeling good on both fronts was quite nice. You know, I so anyway, that’s my story and how I got connected with you and how I really came to admire the organization.

Can you talk to me again about just DC? You mentioned organizations, companies worried about liability protection if they donated food. But what else about the nation’s capital? Or maybe there’s nothing. Maybe there’s nothing unique here. This is just a nationwide issue where hunger is still too prevalent and we have this disconnect between wasted food and those who need it. Or you know, talk to me broadly. Is it about the national picture or if there’s unique challenges in DC?

Kate Urbank:

Well, I think that there are some unique challenges in DC. The term is food desert, but the the newer way to describe that is a food apartheid because a desert is a naturally occurring thing in nature and a food desert as we know it now has to do with the fact that grocery stores are not built in certain communities and there’s literally a dearth of available food sources. So we do have that situation in Ward 7 and 8, and frankly, pockets all across DC. And we also work in Northern Virginia and a little bit of Montgomery County and PG County as well. So we do have a challenge. I think it’s one in five families in DC are food insecure. And in the nation’s capital, that just seems really absurd.

I did want to comment back on what you said, MaryAlice, on the feel-good nature of it, because it really is that’s how I started this frankly. I was a volunteer for the Connecticut flagships when they first originated way back in 2012. And I’d like to say that it was pretty amazing. You’d pick up and they were so grateful to see you there. I’ve heard that it improves morale in the kitchen. There are potential tax benefits.

It we do social media love, with permission, that we can boast about the businesses that elect to donate and then dropping off, as you say, five minutes, ten minutes down the road. And nonprofits that might have a food budget and usually they’re quite small typically are able to redirect some of those funds to other needs that they might have because we’re getting them free food. And another thing we do is we place if it’s prepared food, we would get that to a place that can properly serve prepared food. Maybe they don’t have a kitchen, but they have a kitchenette and and they have a supervisor. If it’s raw foods, we get it to a place that has a kitchen and can cook it up. If it’s individually packaged, we get it to a place like Downtown Day Services Center where unhoused individuals will come to the door literally looking for ⁓ something to eat and they’re able to pass them right on.

MaryAlice:

Right, making that connection in a way that makes sense. And not only just like you said, sort of on location to location, so that it’s easy for the volunteers and the food’s not traveling far across town, but so that you know, you’re not getting raw food to a place that that just needs to hand a sandwich out the door and isn’t gonna like cook all afternoon. I think it’s incredible. I think that the the numbers you’re talking about in DC are staggering.

One in five families is unbelievable. I was reading another stat that was provided by the New York Federal Reserve. So not some like liberal think tank. The New York Fed had done a study, and in February alone, the estimate was that one in 10 American families nationwide was food insecure. One in ten across the country. That number really stuck out. And the idea that it’s even worse here in the nation’s capital is remarkable and heartbreaking. You know, I think often, especially in DC and a lot of urban centers where you see people who are unhoused and experiencing homelessness, it’s easy to think that we’re only talking about that population or subset of the city. But being reminded that that’s not remotely the case, that one in ten families or even one in five families, then you’re hitting a broad portion of the city. Working families that are still really struggling with food insecurity.

And maybe you can talk to me about that, a little bit about that too. I’ve been thinking about so many articles lately, moments in podcasts and news sort of stories where there just seems to be this almost casual mention that working families are going without food, skipping meals, parents are skipping meals so their kids have food.

You know, it talk to me about that sort of perception gap that we’re that that everyday working families are also really struggling.

Kate Urbank:

I think most people are familiar with the term food insecurity, but that gets to your point. It’s kind of not knowing where your next meal might be. So that puts hunger in a whole different category and it widens the the possibility of how many people we have in this DMV who are food insecure. So yes, it you know, you hear about single mothers working three jobs and it’s just pains me, and so it really is what motivates us, our team.

Gallaudet University just started donating this week, and it’s very exciting. They’re sneaking in last minute rescues just as the holiday weekend hits. And every time, I mean today it was just a beautiful picture sent to me. “We have all this fried chicken and mashed potatoes.” And then a quick text to one of our new groups that actually dispatches their own volunteer to go pick up.

And they’re gonna have a Fourth of July meal based upon that. So, it’s it certainly isn’t just those who we consider to be the typical at-risk hungry individuals. It is much broader than that. And a lot of people are a paycheck away, you know, with all the layoffs in the city over the past couple of years. People who you would never expect are showing up at pantries and food distributions.

And we don’t often see those end users again, because we get our food using our app. I mean, I don’t know if we’ve discussed the app yet, but it’s built around an app and that’s why we’re able to do what we do, which is 1500 rescues each month. And that’s, you know, 375 rescues a week, which sometimes I like to say that’s the opportunity for there to be a potential mishap on the pickup and drop off. So that’s why my name and number are at the end of every one. We’re always on guard to be able to make sure that things run smoothly.

MaryAlice:

Wait, say that again? 375 rescues a week. That’s remarkable. And and the ones I’ve done vary in size. Sometimes it’s been like seven pizzas that I’m carrying out the door. And sometimes it’s bags and bags and bags of baked goods that I can barely fit in my trunk in my back seat. So when you think about just the quantity of food, then I mean it’s massive.

Kate Urbank:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. For years, we kind of started off with food for twenty. And some other food rescue sites might do larger rescues and put their energies there, which is great. We kind of are a a hybrid of all. We can pick up a bag of pastries from a Tatte Cafe, and then we also are very happy to hear when the Whole Foods Warehouse calls and says we have four pallets of chicken and it’ll be 9 PM and he says, “We’d love you if you could get you off get them off our dock by 9 AM tomorrow.”

So indeed we have rescues large and small we actually do bicycle rescues. It’s nice, you know, no carbon footprint with a bicycle. So we like to be able to give our bikers an opportunity and some of them can, you know, really carry quite a bit of food. So we have bicycle rescues, then we have small car all the way up to like an SUV with the seats down, and then we have our trucks and vans, and we’re able to kind of

gauge what the amount of food might be. And sometimes we do specific tailored outreach if we know we need a truck to those agencies that we work with that do have trucks. The majority of our rescues are really done by volunteers who are clicking and claiming in the app. That’s the other nice feature — You self schedule. We are not calling you and saying, “Are you free for a shift from three to seven next Tuesday?” People look in the app and they self select their food rescues. So it’s it’s which makes for a very nice volunteer experience.

MaryAlice:

It’s incredible actually that way. Like I have multiple times clicked on a rescue, because it’s easy. It’s like 9 to noon, and I’m like, good, I can do it after I drop off little guy, on my way home. It’s completely tailored to just how much that week I’d like to volunteer or not. And it doesn’t even feel like volunteering. It’s like being the Lyft driver for some bagels.

Talk to me about the experience of setting up a new organization. Any words of wisdom to folks that are thinking, gosh, what can I do where I live?

Kate Urbank:

Well, talking about my own personal experience, having been a volunteer at the Food Rescue US site in Fairfield County, Connecticut, where I lived, where I fell in love with this. I just thought, I mean, again, you said it earlier that the the the accolades you get from the pickup and drop off. I mean, it doesn’t hurt to have you to get appreciation for your volunteer time. But I moved back to DC where I’d gone to college and I was looking for a job and I thought I’m gonna go do food rescue.

Because what a great way to reacquaint myself with the DC community. And I realized that there was not a program just like this. People do great work in Food Rescue, but using the app and having it, the program that we set up, that I set up 10 years ago is now, it’s now gonna have longevity, which is really amazing. And so what I did was I called the office up in Connecticut and I said, “Hey, I know you want to grow. I’m in DC. Well, how would I start a site?”

And so some site directors are paid eventually, but a lot of them start off as volunteers. We have turned ours into a real, you know, it’s a job. It’s it’s a nonprofit job. But in the beginning, I was just kind of winging it, trying to figure out how do I make this happen. I went to DC Food Policy Council meetings, got some energy there. There’s a group called the DC Food Recovery Working Group. They tend to be more about waste, which is another quick point.

People come to this either from a background concerned about hunger or waste or a little bit of both. But it’s just so interesting when they come with the waste piece and then they see, my goodness, these people were hungry and same thing with people who concern about hunger and they’re thinking, If I didn’t come here, this would have gone in the trash.

MaryAlice:

I mean, it just breaks your heart. You’re reading these stats about hunger and you’re thinking about — every one of us has been at one of those banquets where you’re like, “who’s gonna do something with all this food at the end?” Also, I just have to apologize. My I my my little guy just wants you to know that he’s a big fan.

So, you just started talking to organizations to line up partners.

Kate Urbank:

Yeah, I just did and then Laura Hayes, who’s wonderful and she’s now at World Central Kitchen, but she was a writer, and one of my volunteers pitched her a story. Laura actually said it was one of the best pitches she ever got, and she reached out to me. This was back in 2017. We started in 2016, so pretty early on. And I give Laura a big shout out for helping us, because she wrote a piece and and then things started happening and then, you know, you get on a listserv in somebody’s neighborhood and and then the next thing you know, volunteers are starting to sign up.

So how do you start a site? You know, there are other food rescue apps. We are now an independent licensee using the Food Rescue US app. I think it’s the best, but there are other ones as well. So you need to find out in your community if there already is some kind of either fledgling or a mature food rescue organization. But it really is something that a couple of committed people can kind of get together and get determined and then reach out to a local grocery store or a pizzeria, and then find that there’s a shelter down the street and before you know it you start to put it all together and you have a program.

MaryAlice:

Yeah. Wow. it’s inspiring and fabulous. Talk to me a bit about the biggest challenge for you right now. Is it still just getting enough food donations from places? Is it volunteers to pick up food? You know, do you have organizations that say we would take even more food if you can get it to us? You know, where where are the gaps still?

Kate Urbank:

You’ve mentioned three. So yes, we do have a bit of a waiting list and it it’s wonderful when I get a phone call from somebody saying, I hear you run this program and we really need food. And I mean like I I love that the word is getting out there and so we’re trying to have a real kind of sense of triage about how we can help. And sometimes somebody will slide in and they happen to be at the perfect location, which is five minutes from a place that doesn’t have a lot of other places to donate food.

So sometimes it just comes together very quickly.

It’s really about capacity. You know, I’ll drive down a city street, and I’ll say, “They could be donating, they could be donating.” I mean, you just look around and you see all the businesses. And so there’s plenty of food out there. It’s a matter of us having enough bandwidth, enough staff to be able to try to bring it all in because it it can be a pretty easy sell when we get hold of people, but indeed it’s about really how to stretch ourselves to be most effective. We sometimes wonder — what about some of the smaller rescues we do? Should we kind of reassess that and and try to have bigger impact? But again, this is something that builds community. This is people who are happy to get in their car and pick up two bags of pastries or pick up four pizzas. So we don’t want to there’s no reason to shut that part down, but it is kind of a a dilemma. A good dilemma. How do we have more impact going forward? So I think that funding is always an issue and increasing our staff.

Rescues, you know, people have last minute change of plans and Jenna and I will wake up and there’ll be seven open rescues and we’re starting our morning going, how are you gonna get through the day? We have a new thing called the “quick responders,” and we like to promote the fact that people can check a box and then that means that — because we don’t do a lot of push notifications — but if you say you’re a quick responder, then we feel that until you cry uncle, we can text you in a group and say, “Anybody free to, you know, go to, you know, Washington International School tomorrow.” (Which, by the way, I need a volunteer for that)

MaryAlice:

But it sounds like what you’re saying with capacity is that you feel like if you had more companies and organizations donating food, there would be a place to receive that food.

Kate Urbank:

For sure.

So yes, I would like to get food to every group that’s looking for food. I’d like to onboard more businesses. One thing that I don’t know if we kind of talked about, we do a lot of corporate cafeterias. You mentioned large law firms before, but we do a lot of prepared food that not every organization here in the DMV does that type of pickup work. But I think it’s because we’re nimble, we have cars and and bikes and we can get around and pick that food up and and move it forward.

So there’s so many corporate headquarters in the DMV that you know we should be reaching out to. But it’s always a case of we have to have a balance of volunteers, places that receive food, and food donors. And they all have to kind of rise. If we start to see we’re low on volunteers, and we start to say we gotta pump push that up a little bit, if it’s we’re getting more donors.

We never say “no” to a donor, frankly. We just don’t. We make it happen. But it is important for our sanity sometimes to just keep it so that our team isn’t running around doing rescues because if we tell the World Bank that we’re gonna pick up food on a Wednesday and a Friday, we’re not gonna leave twenty five, thirty pans of food on their loving dock. We go get it.

MaryAlice:

Talk to me a little bit more too about the waste component. It was interesting what you said. People kind of find you from both angles. I’m very concerned about hunger in this country. I mean, everyone is, but I was thinking about that.

But it makes so much sense that other people were thinking about the climate impact and waste and just the frustration of food waste. (Okay, little one, I’m asking a few more questions.)

Kate Urbank:

They are the champions, you know, the the composters of the world. We always like to say, let’s get the food donated before we compost it. The last thing should be to go into landfill. So yes, I think we need to beef up the climate change aspect of what food waste what avoiding food waste can do to improve our beautiful planet. So we’re gonna we’re gonna make sure people understand that by being a food rescuer, you are helping your community and you’re helping those who are hungry and you are keeping food out of landfill, which is bad for the environment.

MaryAlice:

Thank you. Thank you for putting up with this crazy.

It’s really great to talk to you.

Kate Urbank:

I appreciate the opportunity to talk about the work.

I am so sorry for the long and unannounced hiatus from my newsletter.

My family and I just returned from a six-week, four state, two-island walkabout.

All told, we traversed over 11,400 miles mixing some important work and lovely vacation time. It was a bit of an epic journey - a challenge at times - and a real joy to get to be together as a new family of four, with our three-year-old and four-month-old.

((Skip ahead for some of my tips and tricks for traveling with little ones!))

Highlights of our time away:

Washington and Oregon

• Meeting my new niece in Tacoma!

• Watching my three-year-old son get some serious cousin time

• A Rainiers game on a beautiful PNW summer evening, lunch at Skamania Lodge

• Hawaiian class for young keiki with the Seattle Hawaiian civic club

• Paddleboarding, with my son in tow, on Lake Washington

Hawai’i

• Taking both my boys in the ocean, in Hawaiian waters, for the first time!

  (ok, we only dipped the baby’s toes in, but still, it was a gorgeous evening on the North Shore… and I cried)

• Swimming in Waikīkī and watching my son’s pure joy in the waves

• Seeing many, many honus in Ko Olina, Nāpili, and Kapula

• The moment on the hopper plane between Oahu and Maui when someone asked my son where he was from, and he said, “The pink hotel!” (Yes, we would all like to live here now)

• Getting a toddler on a lookthrough boogie board in the waves — had cutout so he could see fish

  (I may be four months postpartum, but my years of water polo treading did not let me down )

• My son’s excitement over fire knife dancers at his first lūʻau

• Getting caught in an absolute downpour at the lūʻau and running splashing in the puddles

(My dad always said on Maui, “No rain, no rainbows”)

California

• Lazy days at the marina in Ventura

• Donuts on the beach, building sand castles and stick forts, and Rumfish

• Trolley rides in San Diego and (omg!) the San Diego Zoo! The polar bears! the hippos! the giraffes! — we had the best time. Better than Disneyland with toddlers

• The old man in the Coronado Navy Base commissary who made my son promise to always love his brother

… and not to be missed, especially if you have three-year-olds…. the San Diego Model Railroad Museum

Now traveling with kids is not a walk in the park, but everywhere we went I was buttressed by kind strangers. Thank you to…

• the young man who graciously helped when we passed a baby back and forth over him and across an airplane aisle

• the mom who helped me convince an overtired, melting-down toddler to get out of the pool in San Diego when I could not chase him one more time

• the dozens and dozens of strangers who offered to hold a coffee cup, grab a towel, lift a suitcase, or help wrangle a stroller up stairs/down stairs/ and on the sand

• the many parents who had extra balls or pool toys on different days, in many parks, along the way

• the adults who paused to let my demanding toddler press an elevator button

• the grandfather in the Ventura park who had a cool kite and explained it to kids all morning long

Kindness

It is so easy to think about all the ways we are divided and sad and angry in the country these days, but travel (which forces you to be with strangers, of course!) let us experience again how patient, caring, and helpful people really want to be with each other. A reminder to all of us to notice parents and families, especially, in every place and give a smile or lend a hand.

Our trip was not all sunshine and cocktails. To the grandma who moved the lawn chair with my sleeping baby (and woke him up!) after I told her ten times that he was fine… well, I am still thinking about that moment. Please, everyone, trust moms.

But a big thank you to the friends who came to my rescue on zero notice when I had a toddler puking off the side of the freeway while stuck in LA traffic!

… and an even bigger thank you to the supportive nurses at the Maui Emergency Room (everyone is ok — just a scare — every journey has its bumps along the way).

Coming up…

Hard, awkward pivot here, but now that I am back and writing again, I wanted to preview that tomorrow I will speaking with the head of the newly formed nonprofit, Every Neighbor United for Food (a spin off of the original DC Food Rescue organization).

During all of our travels, especially, it was impossible not to be thinking about the high cost of living and overwhelming cost of groceries (and diapers) in the country right now. This week many are writing on our country’s history and legacy, but I am thinking so much about the basics. How we take care of each other. Hunger and food insecurity remains an urgent issue in our wealthy nation and an issue this summer I want to talk more about.

So, stay tuned for my interview with Kate Urbank, Founder of DC Food Rescue and Every Neighbor United for Food.

… and now…

Tips and Tricks… for traveling with littles

1. Snacks are the best activity on the plane (I aim to pack at least one big snack for each hour of a flight)

2. Dress babies in separates (no onesies!) on the plane — makes cleanup much easier at 30,000 feet after inevitable blowout

3. For ears on a flight — always have babies/littles nursing, eating or with a binkie during takeoff and landing. For other meltdowns — The Happy Song, by Imogen Heap

4. Your car seat bag is a great place to pack extra big items — we fit my little guy’s scooter in it this trip

5. That said, consider bringing your infant’s stroller and car seat all the way to the gate and asking for a seat with an open middle seat next to it. We have gotten really lucky several times with great gate agents willing to find us extra seats, so we can bring our car seat onto the plane and have a place to put our baby (lap infant) down! If no luck, then just gate check both stroller and car seat.

6. You will need way, way fewer clothes than you think — pack light and wash out clothes in the sink, if needed. (Also goes for kids’ toys... pretty unnecessary when traveling)

7. Absolutely no loose gear/items when going through security, everything in a bag. We use an extra large carabiner clip to secure bags to the stroller.

8. Diaper wipes take marker off of airplane walls, so don’t worry so much, let them draw!

9. Consider boarding separately — one caregiver takes kids and other handles stuff (we have also sometimes sent one ahead with stuff to get the seat all set, and then second boards later with kids)

10. Don’t keep the pile of baby clothes you brought in (pee) range of the makeshift changing table you just set up on the road

BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY -- just start!
Traveling gets easier each time (some flights or car rides will be awful and some will be fine) You’ll get into a rhythm, find the bags that work for you, and have kids less anxious the more you… GO!

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The immediate reaction to the Supreme Court’s landmark voting rights decision yesterday was essentially twofold:

• that the Voting Rights Act had been hugely gutted (and racial discrimination in voting would now be so much harder to enforce and remedy)

• and that this decision opened the floodgates to even more partisan gerrymandering than what we have seen already around the country this year.

I spoke with Jonathan Diaz, the Director of Voting Advocacy and Partnerships at the Campaign Legal Center, at length yesterday about the ins and outs of this decision and especially that second potential impact.

How will the case change a state’s ability to engage in gerrymandering for partisan gain in a way that is different from what we have already been witnessing?

“During this rash of mid-decade redistricting that we’ve seen those states engage in, they have still, so far, been limited by the Voting Rights Act,” Diaz told me. “They have not been able to draw those maps in a way that dilutes the voting power of minority voters beyond a certain point. And so, those guardrails are gone, or at the very least severely weakened.

What I would say to somebody who says, “It was already bad…” is, “Yes, it definitely was, and this is gonna make it worse.”

Diaz explained how, in this case, a group of self-described “non-black” voters had challenged a new congressional map in Louisiana, saying that the state had impermissibly used race to draw the district lines. The new map had been developed in order to protect — to not dilute the minority black vote — but in so doing, the challengers argued, the state violated the Equal Protection clause of the Constitution.

The court agreed.

I asked Diaz if that means the court was now demanding states be basically colorblind, and not use race even when trying to remedy a race-based injustice?

Take a listen to our conversation — transcript below cleaned up for clarity.

After the Supreme Court’s decision yesterday, in the voting rights case, Louisiana v. Callais, I spoke with Jonathan Diaz of the Campaign Legal Center:

MaryAlice:

I want to get this right. The facts of this case revolve around a Louisiana map, a congressional map adopted in 2024. It was actually adopted because a federal judge said that a previous map likely violated the Voting Rights Act and diluted minority vote, the black vote, there in Louisiana. So, the state adopts this new map that creates essentially two majority-minority congressional districts.

And it’s that map that then faced additional challenges and worked its way up through the court. Can you talk to me a bit about sort of the facts of the case as you saw them and understood them and how this case made it to the Supreme Court in this way?

Jonathan Diaz, Campaign Legal Center:

Yeah, that’s exactly right. So this case really began after the 2020 census when Louisiana, like almost every other state, had to redraw its congressional map to adjust for population differences. And they drew a map that had one majority Black district that was challenged by a group of Black voters and by the NAACP and others as a violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

The Voting Rights Act is a federal statute that has been around since the 1960s. It was kind of the culmination, the crown jewel of the civil rights movement. And it essentially prohibits race discrimination in the voting and electoral process. And that includes in the drawing of electoral maps for Congress, for state legislatures, city council, school board, you name it. And so Louisiana’s congressional map was challenged.

And the challengers argued that the map as drawn by the legislature unlawfully diluted the votes of Black Louisianans by splitting them up amongst too many districts such that they were unable to elect candidates of their choice. And that a congressional map could have been drawn with two districts that would have allowed Black Louisianans to have more of a say in who represented them in Congress. Louisiana lost that case defending its map. The challengers won.

And so in response, in order to comply with the Voting Rights Act, Louisiana drew a second map that had two majority black districts, and they drew it in a way that also protected Republican incumbents, like Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, Steve Scalise and others.

MaryAlice:

…and two Democrats were elected.

Jonathan Diaz, Campaign Legal Center:

Yes, yes, we should say that map was in place for the 2024 elections and two black democrats were elected elected in those districts. And then a group of self-described “non-black” voters challenged the new map saying that Louisiana had impermissibly used race to draw the district lines and in so doing violated the Equal Protection clause of the Constitution.

And so essentially the argument that the challenges were making in this case is that, you know, the remedy to fix a Voting Rights Act problem, that that remedy was itself racially discriminatory.

And this is something that had been bubbling at the Supreme Court for many years, this kind of tension between a race-conscious remedy under the Voting Rights Act and general kind of skepticism by the current Supreme Court of, you know, any kind of race-conscious action by the government. And so, you know, the Supreme Court heard a Voting Rights Act case just a couple of years ago out of Alabama called Allen v Milligan. And in that case, the court upheld Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. But there were some tea leaves in that decision from Justice Alito, who dissented and from Justice Kavanaugh who wrote a separate concurrence that the longevity of the Voting Rights Act might be in question.

And so then this morning when they issued their decision in Callais, you know, they really have, I don’t want to overstate how significant this decision is, but they really have eviscerated one of the last remaining protections in the Voting Rights Act against race discrimination in drawing district lines.

This is the culmination of what has been a 20 year project by the Roberts court to dismantle the VRA and to make it harder to protect minority voters. And this is, know, just the latest in this kind of death by a thousand cuts that this court has taken to the Voting Rights Act.

MaryAlice:

The Campaign Legal Center put out a statement today. I was going to read a bit of it: “The court’s decision today threatens to turn back the clock on the progress we’ve made as a nation in eliminating racial discrimination and voting nationwide. The disputed Louisiana map was created to comply with the VRA like you were talking about to ensure that black voters in Louisiana could have an opportunity to elect the representatives of choice….”

It talks about that history there and then says, “the Supreme Court’s decision will clear the way for Louisiana and other states across the nation to continue to engage in the discriminatory practice of vote dilution.” My question, I guess, is one, does that mean that it that it just is now free reign, that absolutely there’s nothing stopping a state from dividing up a black neighborhood, the black downtown urban center?

And, if I’m understanding you right… the Supreme Court is demanding that states be colorblind, even if the question at hand is protecting a racial minority and making sure that they have fair representation?

Jonathan Diaz, Campaign Legal Center:

So I’ll start with the last question. I think the answer is functionally yes. The court has made it really, really difficult to consider race in the districting process, even if you’re doing that to remedy past discrimination. I don’t know about you, I think it would, exactly. It’s really hard to remedy discrimination without taking race into account when you’re structuring what the solution is. So yeah, they’ve really kind of taken a sledgehammer to what was left of the Voting Rights Act after the past 15 years of decisions that they’ve issued, making it already very, very challenging to succeed in a Voting Rights Act case or to use the protections of the VRA to ensure that not just Black voters, but Latino voters, Asian voters, Native American voters have an equal say, an equal representation in the government.

You know, as far as what this means for every other state and whether it’s kind of a free for all…You know, we’ve already been seeing kind of unprecedented redistricting battles going on this summer. First, Texas, then California, you know, Ohio, Virginia, now Florida.

You know, and one of the things that was keeping a lot of states, especially in the deep south, from engaging in mid-decade redistricting was the fact that they had the Voting Rights Act as a stopgap. They had districts that were either created as a result of Voting Rights Act litigation or that they intentionally created to avoid liability under the Voting Rights Act for diluting the votes of their minority populations.

And that protection is not entirely gone as a result of this decision, but is much, much weaker. Fortunately, there are still limitations on redistricting state constitutions. Many of them have limitations on when and how state legislatures can redraw their maps. Political realities will make it hard for many states to redraw their maps this year in time for the midterms, especially states that have already held primaries.

But we’ve already seen today within hours of that decision coming down, the Florida legislature passed a new map that would eliminate several majority minority districts across the state for explicitly partisan goals.

Because one of the things that Justice Alito says in the Callais majority opinion is that if the state is drawing lines around minority communities, to achieve some kind of partisan goal, that’s ‘okay’ in the court’s view, which is kind of baffling. But they can use, as long as they have some kind of race-neutral goal that they are pursuing, including plain partisan advantage, they can draw lines in a way that disadvantages minority voters without running afoul of the Voting Rights Act.

MaryAlice:

But part of the political reality in our country where minority voters tend to vote on a partisan divide, the downtown urban centers more likely to vote blue than the rural sort of red neighboring parts of the state. That’s part of what’s at play here, right? Because the state can say essentially that they are, like you said, engaged in partisan gerrymandering and as much as that might gross out voters, it’s permissible even if the reality then becomes diluting the racial minority’s voting block.

Jonathan Diaz, Campaign Legal Center:

Yeah, that’s one of the things that’s so frustrating about this decision is that you can’t really disentangle race and partisanship in the way that the court kind of wants us to in crafting this decision, because race and partisanship are so intertwined in American politics. It’s like putting a partisan kind of fig leaf over a map that dilutes votes based on race, you know, is a fiction that the court has just kind of like constructed.

You know, it’s there are reasons, not just historical reasons, but contemporary reasons that voters of certain ethnic and racial groups gravitate from one party to another and allowing the parties or the legislature to discriminate on the basis of party affiliation ignores the fact that that’s basically a proxy for race in many cases. And so, you know, it’s really hard to apply kind of consistent logic to this decision, especially in light of what the Voting Rights Act actually says.

And it’s just another example of the court kind of substituting its own political judgment for the statutes passed by Congress.

MaryAlice:

Which is essentially what Justice Kagan wrote in her dissent. She talked about the legacy of the Voting Rights Act. She wrote it was bringing “this nation closer to fulfilling the ideals of democracy and racial equality,” but then said that “only Congress should have a say that the Voting Rights Act is no longer needed, not the members of this court.”

Was that a part of this decision, as you interpreted it, that the majority of the court was saying, in their opinion, it just wasn’t needed in the same way.

Jonathan Diaz, Campaign Legal Center:

That is something that Justice Alito says in the majority opinion. He says, social and political conditions have changed, especially in the South, which I think might come as a surprise to a lot of people living there. And I think that’s also a dig at Chief Justice Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion in Shelby County v Holder back in 2013, which similarly eviscerated a different part of the Voting Rights Act, the pre-clearance structure.

That required certain jurisdictions with a history of discrimination in voting to get any changes to their election laws pre-approved by a court or by the Department of Justice. You know, like I said, this decision, you really have to view it…as part of a continuum of decisions by John Roberts Supreme Court, starting with Shelby County in 2013, which eliminated the formula that determined which states were subject to pre-clearance [and] through a decision called Brnovich in 2021 that made vote denial claims under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act much harder to prove…now Callais making vote dilution claims hard to prove.

The court under John Roberts, with lots of help from Justice Alito, has really hollowed out the Voting Rights Act. They’ve never gone so far as to say the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional. They always try and put this like nice wrapping paper around it to say ‘the VRA is still very important, and it still exists, and we’re not saying it’s unconstitutional,’ but they’ve interpreted that law in such a way to make it effectively impossible to enforce and functionally meaningless to many of the voters that it was designed to protect. And this is something when John Roberts was like a young DOJ attorney during the Reagan administration in the 1980s, he argued for this exact thing. He argued that the VRA and the remedies that it required were in themselves discriminatory and should be considered unconstitutional. That argument didn’t win the day in the 80s when he was, you know, in the Reagan Justice Department, but it did today.

And so he and, you know, his allies on the court have been, you know, kind of working their way towards this moment for decades. And, you know, the real losers in all of this are going to be the, you know, Americans of color who are going to lose the ability to choose their own leaders and choose their own representatives and have a say in the ways in which their government is structured.

I think there’s going to be lot of attention on the changes to the congressional maps, understandably, because of the nationwide impact of those things. But I think in some ways, this decision is going to be even more [sweeping]. It’s going to eliminate representation for minority communities on school boards and city councils and state legislative districts and in all of the different representative bodies that affect people’s day-to-day lives kind of most directly. So. it’s going to be, I think the impact of this decision, obviously, will take some time to shake out, but no matter what, will be very far reaching and very dramatic and really devastating for American democracy.

MaryAlice:

What do you say to the American that reads the headline and I wouldn’t blame them, rightfully think, “weren’t they already doing this? Didn’t we already have a last year of partisan gerrymandering? How is diluting the voting power of minorities — how does it functionally feel all that different than the partisan gerrymandering we have been debating all year?

Jonathan Diaz, Campaign Legal Center:

I mean, I would say that these partisan gerrymandering wars are also only happening, because the Supreme Court has removed protections from the redistricting process. A 2019 case called Common Cause v. Rucho, a case that we litigated at CLC, the Supreme Court said that ‘partisan gerrymandering is bad, is not something that we want in a democracy, is damaging to the democratic process, but they also said that federal courts can’t do anything about it.’ That is not something that the federal courts can address.

And if not for that decision, which was 5-4, you wouldn’t have the kind of back and forth between Texas and California and Virginia and all of these states that we saw, that we’ve seen over the last couple of months.

And even still, during this rash of mid-decade redistricting that we’ve seen those states engage in, they have still, so far, been limited by the Voting Rights Act. They have not been able to draw those maps in a way that you know dilutes the voting power of minority voters beyond a certain point. And so, you know those guardrails are gone, or at the very least severely weakened. So,what I would say to somebody who says, “It was already bad…” is, “Yes, it definitely was, and this is gonna make it worse.”

MaryAlice:

Can you break down for me just the term that you’ve used a few times, specifically ‘Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act? What is that in particular? And this idea that you’ve mentioned that it might still be on the books, but now is not enforceable?

Jonathan Diaz, Campaign Legal Center:

Yeah, so the Voting Rights Act is a big, big statute. It’s got lots of different sections that do lots of different things. But the most important remaining piece of the Voting Rights Act is Section 2, which basically says that any voting practice or system or procedure that denies or abridges the right of Americans to vote on account of race or color is prohibited, and it includes some additional language about how courts are supposed to determine whether or not a voting practice or procedure denies or abridges the right to vote. They have to look at the totality of the circumstances and determine whether or not it has the effect of discriminating on the basis of race. It is specifically not an intent test. You don’t have to intentionally discriminate on the basis of race to violate Section 2.

A voting law just has to have the effect of doing that. And so that piece of the Voting Rights Act is how lawyers would bring claims to challenge state voting laws or electoral maps. And we would say, you know, this map or this law violates Section 2 because it abridges the right to vote based on race under the totality of the circumstances. And there’s a whole bunch of tests that courts supply to kind of assess those claims.

So, what the court has done in both this decision in Callais today, and in Brnovich a couple of years ago, is to say, in both of those decisions, both written by Justice Alito, the court says, Section 2 is still the law. It still exists. But they have raised the standard for what you need to prove in order to succeed on a Section 2 claim. And so you have to bring more and more evidence. And they’ve kind of put not even like a thumb on the scale, but like a whole hand on the scale in favor of the state defending its laws. So, it made it harder for challengers to succeed when they’re trying to prove that a law is discriminatory on the basis of race.

And in this case in particular in Callais, the court kind of ignores the effects portion of Section 2 and essentially requires challengers to prove that maps are drawn intentionally to discriminate on the basis of race, which is really difficult to prove.

The court has also made it in many cases very difficult to prove intent when it comes to discrimination claims. The bar is very high. So even though the law is still technically valid, they’ve made it much, much harder to succeed when you bring a challenge under Section 2 of the VRA.

And even before this, a Section 2 challenge takes years is very expensive. It requires a lot of technical experts, expert witnesses, historians. A voting rights trial bringing a Section 2 claim is a really labor and resource intensive process. :ike we talked about at the beginning, these are maps that were adopted years ago, and this decision just came out today. And all the while, even if a map were found to be in violation of Section 2 after many years, you’ve been holding elections under the unlawful map all that time.

And so, you know, it really is just stacking the deck in favor of the states, giving them way more leeway to be able to draw these electoral maps however they want and making it a lot harder for voters of color to challenge those maps as being racially discriminatory.

MaryAlice:

Yeah, and if they do challenge them still as being racially discriminatory, this question about whether race can be used as part of the remedy.

And fundamentally, just to circle back to what you were saying, today they said, “No, that that not only did they raise the bar about what would constitute sort of a challenge or how you would show that there was a real issue that you’re being discriminated against based on race, but that the remedy to that could not be a solution that also used race to sort of fix the initial problem.”

Jonathan Diaz, Campaign Legal Center:

And today they said, it can’t.

Yeah, I mean, like just to drill down into the details a little bit, know, race discrimination is illegal, it’s unconstitutional, right? But, you know, one of the ways that the government can justify the use of race in the law is if that law is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest. That’s the test for ‘strict scrutiny’ under the constitution.

And for the last 40 years, the courts have assumed that compliance with the Voting Rights Act is a compelling government interest that justifies the use of race in that remedy process. And today, Justice Alito says, ‘No, it’s not.’ In the majority opinion, and that the government does not have a compelling interest in remedying past discrimination, or just kind of societal discrimination as a whole. Which is, you know, shocking and galling when you think about the way that this court in the 1960s was kind of a bulwark against race discrimination in the era during which the Voting Rights Act was passed. When you think about like Brown v Board of Education and then, you know, that era of the Supreme Court, to have the court come out and say today, ‘that it’s not government’s job to remedy race discrimination’ is appalling. But that’s what the decision of the court today, know, functionally rests on.

MaryAlice:

And it raises a question about, what’s the point of having a law to try to eliminate racial discrimination if there aren’t sort of, if it’s not the government’s responsibility to try to remedy it?

Jonathan Diaz, Campaign Legal Center:

Especially when the Constitution forbids race discrimination in voting in the 15th Amendment and specifically gives Congress the power to enforce that prohibition through appropriate legislation. It is up to Congress to decide what is appropriate to remedy race discrimination in voting. But the court doesn’t think so.

MaryAlice:

Thank you for talking it all out with me. I am grateful. We’ve already seen, like you said, Florida move quickly, elected officials from Tennessee with a call to action to redraw maps based on this decision, immediately based on this decision. I can barely wrap my head around the idea of states still trying to do new maps ahead of November, but it doesn’t seem like it’s sort of being ruled out.

Jonathan Diaz, Campaign Legal Center:

Yeah, some of them will definitely try. Florida doesn’t have primaries until August, so they have a little bit more runway than some of the other southern states where primaries are either four or five weeks away or have already happened. But obviously, even beyond these midterms looking ahead to 2028, this is going to have kind of long ramifications going forward. And this is something that Congress could fix.

Congress has the power to ban partisan gerrymandering. You know, they just haven’t done it, because members of both parties are interested in drawing maps for, their own political gain. But hopefully the events of the last couple of months have shown them that a race to the bottom doesn’t really benefit either of them in the long run. But there are certainly things Congress can do. There are certainly things, you know, the states can do to kind of pull authority to draw maps out of the hands of legislators. Some states have independent redistricting commissions that give citizens the power to draw the maps. And there are still litigation tools available to us that I know my team is kind of feverishly pulling together. But, you know, this is certainly, you know, a pretty dark day for voting rights and democracy. And, you know, unfortunately, not the only one we’ve gotten from from this court in recent years.

MaryAlice:

Jonathan, thank you for your insights and your opinions and I really appreciate it.

At Christmas when there are cards to send and packages to mail, and I text my family that I went to the Post Office twice in one day, they know that I am not being facetious or sarcastic. They know I mean it was a great day.

I look forward to those visits.

I have often wondered where my love of the Post Office started. I remember clearly a time in high school — 2003 or 2004 — I was sending a care package to a friend deployed in Iraq. Those of you who have sent such packages know they go through centralized processing points here in the States. I got to the front of the line and the Post Office employee took one look at the address on the box and his expression completely changed. With a supportive and understanding smile, he asked me who I was sending the box to. I told stories about my friend, Rod. The employee was kind and eager to listen. He wanted me (and Rod, really) to feel seen in that moment.

When I was 18 years old, I moved from Tacoma, Washington to Brighton, England, and I have lived my entire adult life at least 3,000 miles away from home. Maybe it is that simple — I use the Post Office regularly. I rely on it. Mailing cards and small gifts has helped me send love across oceans and feel closer to the people I miss.

Recently, my mom developed a new theory about my passion. She found an old children’s book of mine called, The Jolly Postman. I recognized it immediately and have now read it a few times to my three-year-old son. It’s a sweet and very fun book about a postman who travels through fairy tales delivering letters, magazines, and birthday invitations to Goldilocks, Cinderella, and the Wicked Witch. Each page has an envelope and the reader gets to experience that little joy that comes with anticipating and then discovering what’s inside the mail. Maybe the book started my love affair as a child.

After COVID lockdowns took such a toll on her mental and physical health, I remember how much my Grandma relished one guaranteed social interaction… the visit from her postman. I know it sounds crazy, but she would watch for him to come, go outside, and wait on the street to hand him letters or receive her mail. She knew all about his life, family, and career with the USPS. He was a lifeline in her final years.

Fast-forward to today, I know several Post Office employees by name (at several different locations) and appreciate the sense of community that comes with my local office. I collect stamps (makes sense as philately combines history, politics, geography, government, and art — all things I love!) And I have very strong opinions about which stamps are appropriate for which pieces of mail. I pride myself on finding clever or, at least, pretty stamps for certain cards.

Big picture, I like the Post Office, because it is a government service that is straightforward, affordable, and works. We need examples of that. Yes, we all have horror stories about some rude employees or that one package lost in the mail, but overall it is amazing that for 78 cents I can send a letter to rural Alaska from Washington, DC and have a great deal of confidence it will get there. That sort of service is simply not the case in most of the world. (And I can use a forever stamp from 15 years ago that I purchased for 44 cents — I mean, that’s incredible!)

This is a long preamble to say I have been closely following the saga over the Post Office’s funding and financial woes for years, and I am simply biased in this debate.

I think a lot more should be done to preserve this public service and institution.

In case you’ve missed it, the agency’s bleak finances have been back in the news lately. Speaking to Congress last month, the Postmaster General warned without intervention or big changes to its financing obligations the Postal Service will run out of money within a year. The Service has had net losses in the billions the last several years, all while prices have gone up and delivery rates for many have slowed.

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What is causing it?

The American Postal Workers Union, members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, and experts in this space say fundamentally the problem is a lack of reform. The USPS has had the same financial model (and most of the same congressionally-mandated restrictions) since the 1970s, when the agency was first moved from a cabinet-level department (funded by taxpayers) to a independent agency expected to be self-sustaining.

Obviously letter mail has fallen sharply and the USPS faces new competition for package mail as well. But in addition, the Postal Service is hamstrung not only by universal service obligations (very vital and important obligations to deliver to every address for universal prices) but also restrictions on how it borrows money and pays out retirement.

A reform act in 2022, relieved the Post Office of a wildly expensive policy of having to pre-fund retirement health accounts, but in 2025, new policies from the Office of Budget and Management required the Post Office to once again set aside huge portions of its operating budget for future pension liabilities (not how most federal retirements are funded — its an obligation calculated outside the control of the Postal Service).

By law, the Postal Service’s assets also can only be invested in US Treasury securities, which experts agree have resulted in the agency missing out on huge earnings due to low returns.

“An OIG analysis found the Postal Service could have had $1.2 trillion in retirement assets at the end of fiscal year (FY) 2022, had it invested retirement funds in a mix of 60 percent stocks and 40 percent bonds.” (https://www.uspsoig.gov/reports/white-papers/historical-analysis-usps-retirement-fund-returns)

The 2022 reform act mandated a six-day delivery week, which has led to significant documented losses as well.

On top of all of it, the Brookings Institution lays out how the Post Office is in the middle of implementing a “multi-year modernization effort.”

“This effort includes modernizing its vehicle fleet, processing operations, and facilities. These changes are intended to improve operational efficiency and reduce long-run costs….” But, under statute, the agency can also only borrow from the US Treasury and has a strict borrowing limit.

In short, the USPS has been asked to operate like a private, self-financing business, while it is also handicapped by public statutes and requirements.

What to do?

During the recent congressional hearing, I was reassured to hear Democratic members, in particular, argue that efforts towards privatizing the Post Office should be rejected. The Post Office and its mandate of universal delivery provides an essential public service, especially to rural communities. Of course a private company would just drop expensive, unprofitable routes.

Brookings has made several strong recommendations to help with the agency’s financial crisis, including that Congress update how retirement benefits and pensions are financed to give the USPS more flexibility, lifting the borrowing cap especially in this moment of mandated reforms, and potentially an explicit taxpayer-funded appropriation to help cover the cost of maintaining the public service the Post Office provides through its universal service obligation.

The American Postal Workers Union has long advocated the USPS be allowed to offer more non-postal services too. The 2022 reform act opened the door for this, but more could be done to incentivize and embrace this idea — and to me, it makes so much sense. In the same way, the Post Office helps the State Department by offering passport photos and processing passport applications, why not work with state/local/tribal governments to also provide hunting and fishing licenses, ship alcohol, or offer other services?

In this vein, the possibility of postal banking should also be seriously considered.

Somewhere between 5 and 7 million households do not have bank accounts, according to recent surveys. While the numbers have been falling, the lack of access to basic financial services remains a major issue for some of the poorest and most vulnerable Americans and their families. I think about that truism, “It is expensive to be poor.”

Those who are unbanked spend hugely in fees to cash checks or transfer money and are often the victims of extreme predatory lending. The theory behind postal banking is to let post offices provide very basic banking services, like cashing checks, hosting ATMs, or offering small dollar saving accounts. It is not a new idea. The country had a postal saving system until the 1960s, which was fairly popular, especially during the Great Depression.

Post offices in most countries, including in Europe and throughout the developed world, offer services like these. They can generate helpful revenue, and… it’s logical. There are already post offices in nearly every community across America, including the smallest towns, where there may not be a bank. And even though people complain about the cost of stamps, they like the Post Office. Year after year, the USPS is rated among the most trusted and favorable public institutions in the country.

Some very limited pilot programs around postal banking were funded by Congress recently, but Congress should look into this option more fully.

In a moment where we know our society needs more connectivity, community, and personal service, we should double-down and rally behind the USPS.

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Postmaster General’s prepared testimony before House Oversight Committee last month:

https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Steiner-Written-Testimony.pdf

More from Brookings:

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-us-postal-services-fiscal-crisis/

Q&A with APWU President from earlier this week:

https://apwu.org/news/watch-apwu-livestream-are-we-broke-or-is-there-hope/

It’s been about 10 weeks since a sewage pipe collapsed in Montgomery County, MD, sending hundreds of millions of gallons of raw sewage into the Potomac River and C&O canal. With spring here and warm days that feel like summer, I wanted a reality check about whether the river really is safe to use, where we are in the clean-up process, and what full restoration will look like.

I spoke to Betsy Nicholas, President of the Potomac Riverkeeper Network, a local organization that works to protect the river and surrounding watersheds by lobbying lawmakers, holding clean-ups, and monitoring water quality.

Her organization successfully put out some of the first water quality data sets after the spill, days before government organizations made data publicly available.

Her take on going back out on the river? It’s complicated.

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“I think that there’s pretty good data just from our sampling to show that areas downstream are getting back to safe recreational levels. That doesn’t mean that there wasn’t still a massive sewage load dumped into them,” she told me.

She went on to highlight some of the unique conditions around the spill that make her worried about water quality heading into the warmer months.

“[The spill] started just a few days before we had that massive freeze here. And it was also drought conditions. So there wasn’t a lot of water in the river at the time, which means — not a lot of water and super cold — the solids drop out really quickly from the sewage that was there. And a lot of them then get sort of buried in the bottom of the river. Those can be pushed back into the river and sort of reactivated by things like a big storm that might come through.

And we’ve in fact seen that happen in Baltimore Harbor. Where you could test the surface water, and it looks great, safe for recreation, but you get in a big storm event that churns all of that up and reactivates it in the water … and the bacteria levels could suddenly turn really high.”

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Nicholas said the elevated levels of E. coli, staph, MRSA (antibiotic resistant forms of staph) they had seen after the spill had come down, but she reiterated her worry about solids getting churned up into the river again down the road.

Her organization has been pushing local governments to do daily monitoring, so people could make informed decisions about using the river. So far, that has not happened. Instead, there is patchwork of data coming from various jurisdictions (DC, VA, MD, counties, cities, etc) all monitoring the river. She said while there was horrible finger-pointing between the various jurisdictions at first, lately one of the upsides of so many different government stakeholders has been some additional monitoring. Virginia, for example, collected data further downstream out of concern for those who harvest oysters, which was helpful, she said.

The EPA just a few weeks ago announced it would take over and consolidate more regular testing, but, according to Nicholas, they have not made any data public yet.

In our conversation, she gave her personal advice for using the river and precautions she plans to take around the C&O canal, which was used as a bypass for weeks to dump the overflowing raw sewage while the busted pipe was being repaired.

I learned that the same 60-year-old pipeline that collapsed actually crosses the river, and so the spill could have been so much worse had the rupture happened at a different spot. It was lucky the canal could be used to divert and catch the sewage.

Big picture, she told me the spill felt preventable. This was aging infrastructure that was not being maintained and inspected as well as it should have been.

As for next steps? First, she told me, there needed to be serious work done updating the area’s pipelines.

“The fact that it could have a catastrophic rupture like it did in one place, doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen in another place. So, really moving up the timeline for maintenance and repairs and inspection of the rest of that entire pipeline is of utmost urgency,” she told me. She said too that she has real questions about why and how DC Water did not recognize the threat of this old pipeline sooner.

Second, she said the various governments in the area have to figure out better emergency planning, so if a rupture or spill does happen again, it does not take days and days to adequately address it.

And last, she talked about the long and hard process of ecological restoration that will be needed to get the river back to how it was before the spill.

“Usually the best way to fix a natural system is with natural solutions. Obviously right out of the gate there’s going to be some kind of mechanical structural aspects of fixing this pipe and getting all of the collected solids out of the C&O canal, and kind of reshaping the canal back to its normal state.

But then we need to think about the vegetation that we’re putting in there — having natural, native vegetation, rebuilding any wetland areas that may have been destroyed through this, and using things like freshwater mussels in the river to help clean out that extra nitrogen and phosphorus,” she said.

“It’s not going to be fixed right away.”

The Potomac Riverkeeper Network will train you to help monitor the river and do water quality testing. You can also join them for their cleanup and advocacy work.

Transcript below of my interview with Betsy Nicholas, President of the Potomac Riverkeeper Network —

MaryAlice: Betsy, you come to this conversation with a wealth of knowledge, not only in your current role, but you’ve basically spent your entire career in environmental and clean water protection. I was reading how you were a founder of the Waterkeepers Chesapeake’s Fair Farms Campaign. You’d been a trial attorney at the Environmental Natural Resources Division of the DOJ for several years. Obviously you have this important role at the Potomac Riverkeeper Network right now, which has been at the forefront of pushing the city of DC to frankly be better and on top of the sewage spill. So I’m really grateful that you were willing to chat with me. Thank you.

Betsy Nicholas:
Happy to be here.

MaryAlice:
A little bit of a recap for people that haven’t been following this as closely. It’s been a second. Or people are outside the DMV. But back in January, a sewage line collapsed in Montgomery County, Maryland, near Glen Echo. It’s pretty close to where I live actually about five miles upstream from DC. My understanding — and Betsy, please correct my quick summary — but my understanding was it took several days for kind of a bypass solution to move the sewage. And then several weeks to fully contain the mess. There were still some overflow issues into February. I was reading by some estimates there were as many as 300 million gallons of raw sewage that poured into our river. And it’s now being considered truly one of the largest incidents of this kind in US history. Is that an accurate sort of summary of what happened?

Betsy Nicholas:
Yes. The pipe can carry up to 60 million gallons a day, but on an average day it’s usually around 40 million. And all of that, when it ruptured, was going straight into the Potomac River. And that was for about six days.

After that, the teams from DC Water were putting into place the bypass that eventually a few days later, they got to pretty much fully move the sewage into the C&O Canal as a backup option. So think of it sort of like a detour that you see on the highway. So they, from right above where the rupture took place, had these bypass pipes that were then dumping into the canal. And then a little bit further down past where the collapse happened where the pipeline was solid again they piped them back into the pipe.

We had estimated around 300 million gallons a day just based off of the normal supply that’s running through there. DC Water came out and said that it was about 243 [million]. So we weren’t far off. But there have been other small issues since.

One of the smaller issues was still 60,000 gallons of raw sewage. And that was actually on Super Bowl Sunday after one of the bypass pipes had been clogged from the quote unquote flushable wipes that should not be flushed down toilets at all.

MaryAlice:
Wow. A good reminder for everyone, including parents like myself, goodness. But now fast forward — Talk to me about the current status of the cleanup, the restoration, the remediation. What is happening right now?

Betsy Nicholas:
About two weeks ago, they were able to restore the flows back to the interceptor line. So they had to clear out where all the debris and where the collapse was and then reconnect the sewage line through there. And it’s a good bit underground. The whole thing is buried. So we don’t see it, which is nice. And it’s not a giant obstacle, because it’s 54 miles long and about six feet wide. So it’s a really big pipeline. The flow has been restored, which is great and greatly reduces the chance of problems going forward.

Now, it’s cleaning up the mess that was made in the first place with this, both the use of the C&O canal as the bypass, as well as the six or seven days where the sewage was just moving all over the ground and into the Potomac River. But there’s additional work that needs to be done because the entire pipeline there is 60 years old. And the fact that it could have a catastrophic rupture like it did in one place doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen in another place. So, really moving up the timeline for maintenance and repairs and inspection of the rest of that entire pipeline is of utmost urgency.

MaryAlice:
And in addition to it being old, I was reading about just the placement too, the large rocks. The city is literally saying, ‘there are big rocks that are making it hard to fix.’

Betsy Nicholas:
Yes, absolutely. There are worse places this could have happened. In fact, that pipeline crosses the Potomac River twice. So if it happened where it was right in the river, the entire, it was more than a billion gallons that flowed through the C&O canal as the bypass pipeline in the weeks after the event until just about two weeks ago when they were able to get it back into that system.

So if there hadn’t been the opportunity to use the canal, and it happened in one of those other places, there would have been nothing that we could do to keep that out of the river.

MaryAlice:
Wow, it would have been even worse, so much worse. So the first week of March, DC lifted the health advisory. I see the Potomac every single day, and I remember that first day I saw crew teams back out on the river. And my first thought, gotta tell you, my first thought was, “Wow, I don’t know how I would feel if that was me or if that was my daughter out on that boat.”

You know, I think that there’s a trust issue. There’s just like a gross factor that’s probably completely devoid from actual data. So I guess bring some actual data for all of us. How do you feel about people being back on the river? How did you feel about the lifting of some of these advisories?

Betsy Nicholas:
Yeah, I think that there’s pretty good data just from our sampling to show that areas downstream are getting back to safe recreational levels. That doesn’t mean that there wasn’t still a massive sewage load dumped into them. And some of the weird characteristics of this based on when it happened was it started just a few days before we had that massive freeze here. And there were also drought conditions. So there wasn’t a lot of water in the river at the time, which means not a lot of water and it was super cold. The solids drop out really quickly from the sewage that was there. And a lot of them then get sort of buried in the bottom of the river. Those can be pushed back into the river and sort of reactivated by things like a big storm that comes through. And we’ve in fact seen that happen in Baltimore Harbor, where you could test the surface water and it looks great, safe for recreation, but you get in a big storm event that churns all of that up and reactivates it in the water and the bacteria levels could suddenly turn really high.

That’s part of the reason that we’re pushing for daily monitoring, at least through the recreational season this year, but continuing now because there still are people, crew teams, you said, kayakers. I personally prefer warmer temperatures before I get out there on the water, but it was just 75 degrees yesterday.

MaryAlice:
Yeah, our weather’s been wacky. We had that freeze and then we had some gorgeous days that felt like summer.

Betsy Nicholas:
Exactly. Using the data is the best that I think I would recommend for people, but also take standard precautions. There’s always some live bacteria in river systems. So if you’ve got a cut, cover it with something waterproof, wash your hands, your feet, your equipment, anything like that before getting in contact with food or anything like that. I know I have certainly been out kayaking a bunch of times and you get hungry and stop for a snack, but you need to take into account that your hands have been in contact with the water. So bring some sterilizing spray or wipes or anything like that with you to make sure that you’re not exposed to any present bacteria. And that’s probably true for most of the river.

The one area I would say is a different case is right around the area where this happened. The massive amount that was flowing all over the ground, as well as all the equipment moving and then all of the raw sewage that was in the C&O canal. That area is a big mess right now.

And I would avoid direct contact with the ground unless you’re going to be able to, you know, sterilize your shoes and boots there.

And as someone who really likes to run that stretch of the river through Mather Gorge, some people call it the Potomac Gorge, but down from Great Falls, it’s just beautiful. I always say it’s like going back into Jurassic Park. You just don’t see people there. And you know, these big giant cliffs and trees and beauty. So usually where I do that run we take out at Lock 10 where this rupture occurred. I can say from my personal plans, I’m going to take out above that this year at Carderock.

MaryAlice:
I know that your organization has also been doing quite a lot of monitoring. Can you tell me a little bit about that and what you guys have found?

Betsy Nicholas:
Yes. So every year from the beginning of May to the end of September, we do weekly monitoring for bacteria. That’s when people are going to be out on the river recreating. And that’s really with the thought of giving people some guidance on when it’s safe to be out there. We want people out enjoying the river. That’s the best way to get people to engage with it and protect it, is to know it and use it as a recreational source. So we already have what’s called a tier-three certified lab. But what that means without numbers and acronyms is that we meet the level of a state lab in terms of our practices, procedures and certifications there. So we just started doing that immediately after going out to the site and were able to get the first data out to people. In fact, the first and second set of any monitoring data came from our organization 10 days before we were getting anything at all posted from DC Water about what the levels were and weeks before we got them from any of the government agencies out there.

We do that weekly because that’s what our capacity allows, even with a huge host of volunteers that we use for that, just because it takes a lot of time to go and collect the samples and bring them to the lab and analyze them. But we really are hoping that with the variety of governmental bodies involved, as well as with groups like ours participating in it, we could get that daily for the summer months in the areas where we might have any concerns about impacts from this spill.

And our data, like I said, is based on bacteria. So E. coli is what we’re testing for, because if you have E. coli showing up in higher levels above the recreational limit, you’re going to have all the other things that you should be concerned about with sewage. In partnership with the University of Maryland, we saw things like staph aureus, which most people have had staph infections at some point. It can be anything from eyes and skins, but it’s contact-based. Usually pretty treatable with antibiotics, but there’s also the antibiotic resistant form, is MRSA. We also found MRSA in our areas of testing. Now those can be in a river system. It could be there on its own, but the levels at which we saw it were well beyond what we would typically expect to see. So those, now we’re not seeing that anymore with our testing. But again, some of them could still be there, those bacteria, especially if they were part of the solids and kind of dropped into the river bottom and could get churned up again.

MaryAlice:
So you said that you were urging the city to do daily monitoring. My sense is that has not happened.

Betsy Nicholas:
Yes. That has not happened yet. We have had a little bit of a patchwork of testing and that’s in part the multi-jurisdictions here. So when we got DC Department of Health, Virginia Department of Health, Maryland Department of Health, all out there testing, you can put the patchwork together and see a pretty good array of maybe not daily, but every other day testing.

What we’re hoping is that we could get that consolidated and consistent throughout the entire summer to make sure that people can get back out there and rebuild their love and trust for the river as it’s healing and recovering from this disaster.

MaryAlice:
That’s interesting. In some ways, the jurisdictional complexities that are always an issue in DC, and feel especially an issue with the river, are actually in the river’s favor, you’re saying. There are more jurisdictions trying to test. We heard at the time there was so much finger -pointing between jurisdictions. the White House finger pointing, the federal response, the local response, let alone Virginia, Maryland, DC. Did it just really hamper some of the response? And is there a way to make sure that actually, since so many different entities have some claim to the river that it can actually help with, like you said, helping the river heal?

Betsy Nicholas:
Yeah, I think it hindered response time for sure. There was finger pointing, which was not helpful. Took a little bit for that to blow over and get people refocused on protecting communities. I can tell you that the people who are entering the river from Alexandria and then getting in the river aren’t thinking about, well, Maryland actually has jurisdiction over the river there.

MaryAlice:
Right.

Betsy Nicholas:
That doesn’t in any way protect them from unhealthy bacteria levels in the river to say, well, you know, that’s Maryland’s issue and I’m from Virginia. And so that was really frustrating to see for a while of that finger-pointing and not just thinking about how we focus on protecting public health and cleaning up the river.

One benefit I would say is that for Virginia, they were testing further downstream because in Virginia, there’s a lot of people growing and harvesting oysters further down in the river. So recognizing that interest, they actually went further downstream to test those areas. And like I said, it was kind of a patchwork, right, of the areas that were getting tested, but it did provide overall good coverage.

EPA has now said that they’re taking over all the testing, which could be good, except that they announced that they were taking over all the testing and then what I haven’t seen is test results.

MaryAlice:
That’s worrisome.

Betsy Nicholas:
Yes, yes it is. So really hoping that that’s going to get fixed soon. And in the interim, we may still need to rely on the patchwork that we might be able to get through our states and DC working together on this.

MaryAlice:
So besides the testing and the monitoring, what else are you all urging DC Water to do differently — and some of the other jurisdictions — when it comes to cleanup, but also prevention?

Betsy Nicholas:
This to me seems like something that would have been pretty preventable. This is a 60-year-old pipe. Somebody must have known that it was constructed this way where they used boulders that they had extracted when they were digging it as some of the fill material that was surrounding the pipe. But besides that, I can tell you from having worked in this area, this field for a long time, most of what we’re dealing with is aging infrastructure that isn’t properly maintained, isn’t inspected frequently enough. DC Water had several years ago requested a big budget allocation that they worked towards, and they had in hand when this happened millions for upgrading and fixing older pipes and maintaining them.

So I have questions there as to how they didn’t recognize this threat sooner.

And hopefully they’ll be able to answer that at some point. I understand right now they’re focusing on trying to fix this, which I think is what they should be doing. But really the next step is to see how can we prevent this from happening again. And to the extent something like this ever does happen, how can we keep it from being weeks before the governments get their coordination in line and actually start moving forward and protect the communities first.

So that’s certainly a big concern. And we don’t know at this time how long term some of the impacts could be. When it gets warm this summer, we know that this is dumped a bunch more nitrogen and phosphorus basically into the river, which can lead to greater algae blooms. So if we get a really hot summer there may be more of this organic matter and these nutrients in there that could make algae blooms worse. Well, when you get algae blooms in addition to the problems with them themselves and some of them containing sometimes poisonous algae levels that are just not safe to even come around for people.

And will they create hypoxic conditions where we lose the oxygen in the river and nothing can live there? That’s really been the issue that was the driver for the Chesapeake Bay cleanup plan is those hypoxic conditions, because it would create a dead zone where nothing could live in the river. So we may have more of that this summer than we have in the past. We’re gonna have to sort of wait and see on that.

But we need to make sure that the ecological restoration matches the effort put into fixing this pipeline, because there’s a lot that needs to be fixed there and we truly need to restore this to the conditions it was in before this happened.

MaryAlice: What does ecological restoration look like for such a range of communities?

Betsy Nicholas:
It’s going to be a little trial and error most likely. Usually the best way to fix a natural system is with natural solutions. Obviously right out of the gate, there’s going to be some kind of mechanical structural aspects of fixing this pipe and getting all of the collected solids out of the C&O canal, and kind of reshaping the canal back to its normal state.

But then we need to think about the vegetation that we’re putting in there, having natural, native vegetation, rebuilding any wetland areas that may have been destroyed through this, and using things like freshwater mussels in the river to help clean out that extra nitrogen and phosphorus.

It’s not going to be fixed right away.

MaryAlice:
We’ve talked a lot about being on the actual river, but anything else people should know about being around the canal.

Betsy Nicholas:
Yes, in the area between Lock 10 and Lock 14, that’s where the canal was serving as essentially the de facto pipeline, but without the top on it. And that’s where all the mess is. In fact, if you want, DC Water did a good flyover with a drone that shows the whole layer of impact. And it looks kind of like you might think. It looks muddy and maybe kind of poopy and like a big mucky mess over there. So watch the progress on that.

Be cautious if you’re taking your dogs on walks right in that area. Keep them out of the mud. Don’t let them drink out of any puddles that may come up around there because there’s still a lot of bacteria in that area and it’s going to be a while before it gets cleaned up.

MaryAlice:
Yeah. Well, as a DC resident who loves this river, I am just very grateful that you guys have been on it, that you’re continuing to post information. I saw that next week, people can join you to learn how to help you monitor, which I thought was so cool. Be a part of your army and take care of this river into your own hands.

Betsy Nicholas:
Thank you, it’s my pleasure. And we’re a small organization and cannot do it without the members and supporters out there taking action, lifting up their voices, helping us monitor the waterways. So thanks for all the people who support and participate and enjoy the river.

My interview with Liza Lieberman, Vice President of Public Affairs for MAZON, a leading anti-hunger organization, on SNAP changes going into effect this spring

The city of Washington, DC just announced that starting May 1st, it would begin implementing expanded federal work requirements for all SNAP beneficiaries. That means thousands of city residents who rely on the food assistance program will need to check and make sure they are meeting the new qualifications and have their paperwork in order … or risk losing aid.

A reminder, Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill, signed into law last summer, made a number of changes around who qualifies for SNAP and who will have to show they are working, volunteering, or in a training program in order to continue to receive benefits.

For example, veterans, youth transitioning out of foster care, and parents with teenagers at home will all now need to prove they are working or looking for work.

Across the country, over 40 million Americans rely on the SNAP program to afford food. Many states have already begun the process of enforcing the new requirements. The government shutdown this fall bumped back the timeline for some states and others have been suing the federal government around the restructuring of the program. So, the changes have not been implemented evenly /at the same time across the country.

Big picture, many blue states have been trying to slow-roll the changes to give people more time and add more qualifying volunteering and training opportunities. But millions of Americans are having to navigate these new rules and requirements now. And many will likely be cut off from food aid as the bureaucracy proves challenging.

I talked to Liza Lieberman, Vice President of Public Affairs for MAZON, a leading anti-hunger organization, about the policy changes and how it is going in the states so far. She summed up her view of the changes to the program this way, “It’s like using hunger as a motivator for work, which we’ve always thought was really a distorted worldview… We’ve been enraged for quite some time.”

We talked about the lack of guidance from USDA on these policy changes, the misinformation around undocumented immigrants in the program, the stress on older Americans (many who are already retired but will now have to go back to work to get assistance), and state budget shortfalls around the country that are reaching a crisis-point.

I first met Liza a few years ago when working on stories about hunger in the military. When talking to her this week, I kept thinking about that old adage, “Show me your budget, and I’ll show you your values.”

The Pentagon said the war in Iran had cost more than $11 billion in the first week. That’s about one-tenth of SNAP’s annual budget, though the new law also included general cuts to the program’s operating budget over the next 10-years.

How many people will lose their benefits under the new, expanded work requirements? Early indications out of Arizona suggest... A LOT. 40 percent?

https://www.kjzz.org/politics/2026-02-26/about-380-000-arizonans-were-removed-from-or-left-snap-program-since-july

Scroll down for the transcript of my conversation with Liza (audio above). Also, excuse my audio, which was not great at times. I was rocking my screaming baby during part of our conversation. ((We talked on St. Patrick’s Day, and I had worked hard to make sure there was leprechaun dust and green milk for our toddler in the morning. We got distracted dancing to Celtic music and before I knew it, my husband was taking him into daycare later than normal. It’s ok — worth it! <3 ))

Transcript of my conversation with Liza Lieberman, Vice President of Public Affairs for MAZON, A Jewish Response to Hunger below.

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More on SNAP changes from liberal think tank, Center for American Progress: https://www.americanprogress.org/press/release-the-big-beautiful-bills-historic-snap-cuts-could-lead-to-70000-avoidable-deaths/

As well as Georgetown University: https://www.georgetownpoverty.org/issues/snap-changes-will-upend-state-budgets/

And Harvard: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-research/policy-topics/social-policy/explainer-understanding-snap-program-and-what-cuts

Also, interesting update… Kai Newkirk, who you may remember I interviewed as a part of my first Substack post about resistance leaders, announced he is running for Congress in Arizona’s 4th congressional district.

He is challenging the sitting Democrat, Congressman Greg Stanton. The Arizona primaries are July 21st. In his announcement and email to me, he wrote: “Status quo ‘leaders,’ conventional politics, and legalized corruption won’t save us. We need Democrats who will flip some tables, as James Talarico says. We must fight Trump’s authoritarian assault like our democracy depends on it. End ICE and its reign of fear once and for all.”

Diaper diaries

Thank you to all of you who reached out about the birth of our little guy and especially those of you who shared your own stories of tough pregnancies and deliveries. Like with so much in life, I find it helpful to know I’m not alone facing some of these challenges. It was wonderful to have the chance to share.

Our family is doing well — tired and definitely still in that newborn haze, but making it through and starting to get into a bit of a rhythm.

We had a rough first week home:

• baby had one awful night when he would not eat and got dehydrated (super stressful)

• I had a weird episode of chills and shakes after breastfeeding one night, and we had EMTs in the house taking my blood pressure

• a few days later, I had a blood clot in my arm where my IV had been… woof!

BUT as I write this, baby is snuggled on my chest, balled-up and so close, and there is just no greater feeling. This sh— is HARD, but we wouldn’t have it any other way!

Transcript of my conversation with Liza Lieberman, Vice President of Public Affairs for MAZON, A Jewish Response to Hunger

MaryAlice: So, needless to say, you and your organization were not exactly in favor of new work requirements for SNAP, to put it mildly. You just said that you’ve been feeling enraged. Can you just tell me more about your stance and sort of your view, big picture, on this policy that’s now going into effect around the country?

Liza Lieberman, MAZON: Yeah, I was going to ask you if we could start there, because it honestly we’ve been enraged for quite some time since they started talking about these changes. The work requirements, in particular, is a battle we’ve been fighting for a while, like in the last farm bill, which sets the policy for SNAP policy. The work requirements were a big theme, and they have been in statehouses across the country for a long time, too.

So we knew that when the Republicans took power, they would, you know, they’ve clearly wanted to expand [work requirements for a long time]. And it’s important to note for your readers, I think, that SNAP has had work requirements and has for a very long time. But these efforts we’re talking about now are to expand the work requirements, and we’ve actually started talking about them as time limits, because it’s not just that it’s a work requirement and like a encouraging people to get work… It’s actually that people who cannot prove that they’re working the same, you know, in the right way to the right people in the right moment, are cut off from SNAP benefits. So it’s like using hunger as a motivator for work, which we’ve always thought was really a distorted worldview.

MaryAlice: So, the reason you guys have been fighting against this is — and I don’t want to put words in your mouth — but just to clarify, is because fewer people could stay on benefits that they already rely on.

Liza Lieberman, MAZON: Yeah, and that it’s hard to look for a job when you’re in a difficult situation where you’re facing food insecurity. And our contention is that every person, regardless of circumstance, maybe that circumstance is that they can’t patch together enough hours in gig economy, or they lost their job, or they’re in an area where the economy is still recovering from many crises ago, or they lack transportation to get to a job, or they’re a veteran that has disabilities or circumstances that are not recognized and they can’t keep a job. So for all of that, we would like there to not be work requirements for food assistance in this country because people need food and then hopefully they can find work as well. But the way that it’s being discussed right now and actually the Republicans in Congress, I think it was last Congress, if not two Congresses ago, they actually changed or they amended the definition of SNAP.

We know SNAP as a anti-hunger program and frankly, like one of the most important tools we, our government, has to fight hunger. And they’ve been talking about it as a work program, right? As something that is important to help people find work. And like, listen, there’s great dignity in work. We want people to be working, but SNAP is an anti-hunger program. And that’s how it should be seen first and foremost.

MaryAlice: So that’s interesting.

Liza Lieberman, MAZON: So that change of definition that they tried to sneak in was actually really worrisome for us. So this is a fight we’ve been fighting for a long time. They just really took it to new levels, I would say, with the budget reconciliation law passed last summer. So, and it’s important to note that the work requirements are one piece of that. They’re a very important piece of that, that they were expanded in a really dramatic way.

Perhaps arguably the bigger piece of it is the structural changes that they made to SNAP, which they’re very related to because the same people who are trying to implement these unwieldy, harshened work requirements are also trying to understand and grapple with the changes to SNAP’s funding structure.. It’s two things. It’s referred to as the state cost shift. So first of all, it’s important to note that SNAP has always been — the administrative cost of administering the program has always been a 50-50 split, 50 % federal government and 50 % states — and that was really hard for a lot of states to maintain and a lot of them due to like really old infrastructure or staffing issues or a whole host of issues, they have been struggling to administer the program and keep up with that.

This one big, beautiful bill act changed it so that the federal government will now only pay 25 % and states will be on the hook for 75 % of the administrative cost. And that goes into effect on October 26th, October 2026. So states have to budget for that.

MaryAlice: Right as the administrative task is harder because of all the work requirements.

Liza Lieberman, MAZON: Yes, exactly. But the bigger piece, in addition, the biggest cost shift is that the federal government has always until now paid all of the cost of benefits. So the actual money that people get on their EBT cards. And now what this bill did, and this is the biggest structural change, is that they are punishing states for their error rate. So any state with an error rate above 6 %,,, And there’s been a lot of talk about these error rates. It’s not a fraud rate. It’s actually overpayments or underpayments. And to me, indicates an error rate indicates that state needs more support in administering the program. But instead, they are having states pay for a cost for a portion of the actual benefits that go to people. And this is like hugely untenable for almost every state.

And they don’t have a budget line for this. Like they literally have to budget for this for the first time ever. And some states have already indicated that this will likely be too great of a financial burden that they might not be able to offer SNAP in their state. At all. At all.

MaryAlice: Just at all? Wow.

Talk to me a little bit about the, as you said, sort of the expanded work requirements. The one that really has caught my eye maybe because I’m just in mom mode is that is changing the age for like the, that counts as a dependent. So if you, you if you had, if you had kids at home that was a different kind of work that counted as work. Now, any teenager essentially, over 14, doesn’t count in the same way. So basically, a parent home with teenagers, my understanding is sort of disqualified, or that doesn’t count anymore as sort of meeting that requirement.

Liza Lieberman, MAZON: Exactly. That’s exactly right. So they changed, they did a few things. They changed the age of a dependent child for whom a caregiver is exempt from the work reporting requirements. So it used to be age 18 and now it’s age 14. So if you have a kid 14 and up, then you are subject to the work requirements, meaning you have to work a certain number of hours per month in order to receive SNAP. And if you can’t do that, then you will be cut off the program for three years in some cases. And also it’s important to note, because I also heard this from a mom’s perspective and they really showed us their cards during the budget reconciliation markup. Because the House bill that was harsher than the Senate that then was negotiated, the house bill wanted to change that age from 18 to age 6.

They wanted to say that anyone with a 6 or 7-year-old at home would be subject to the work reporting requirements.

They also raised the age of those subject to work requirements. So it was age 54 and now it’s age 64. So there’s a lot of concern about that population as well. People having to work in order to receive benefits in their 60s.

MaryAlice:Yeah, I had read about some people who had formerly retired from their jobs and are now working again.

Liza Lieberman, MAZON: Yep. Exactly. And then the other one that I think would be interest to you from a military family, they removed a previous exemption. You know, we’ve done a lot of work on military and veteran hunger. And this was especially egregious to me. Veterans, along with two other categories of people, unhoused individuals and youth exiting the foster care system — Those three categories of people were previously exempt from the work reporting requirements, because there was some bipartisan understanding that they have a hard time finding and maintaining work and should receive food assistance, and they struck that.

So those three groups are again going to be subject to the work reporting requirements.

MaryAlice: And can you tell me how it works for people who want to work, want to work, but, um, oh my gosh, I have a very angry baby right now…

But talk to me about how it works, if people with any of those categories want to work, are looking for work and just can’t find work. Can you prove that you’re looking? I mean, you’re talking to a journalist in DC, there’s a whole lot of journalists who are looking for work.

Liza Lieberman, MAZON: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

MaryAlice: That’s real. Like, how does that play out? On the ground, if people want jobs but just can’t find them, they’re penalized still?

Liza Lieberman, MAZON: You can show that you’ve been looking. So there it varies by state. So the whole thing about SNAP is that it’s a federal program, though I don’t know if it’s arguable to call it a federal program anymore, but historically, you know, it’s a federal nutrition assistance program administered by USDA, and then it’s carried out by the states. So each state historically has been some state flexibility in how they administer it how they issue waivers for the work requirements, how they kind of operationalize it on the ground.

So it’s actually interesting to your point also, like there are some states that have always had a statewide waiver. So like California, for instance, because of their rate of unemployment…I think it was unemployment for California… they have not had to kick people off of SNAP due to these work reporting requirements for a long time, because the state wants and has applied for these waivers and knows how to get these waivers. Or Illinois is one that right now, because of this law, for the first time they have to start implementing it and that’s like a huge undertaking for these state administrators.

But in most states you can show that you’re working or you can show that you have applied for jobs or that you are in, you’re enrolled in an education program or there’s like SNAP E&T (employment and training) programs that you can do. But it’s not perfect.

MaryAlice: Yeah, mean, that’s tough. I could just imagine how tough it would be to show someone that you’re trying to find a job. But I read that here in DC, they are going to try to expand some of those volunteer opportunities and like you said, career development programs, basically the city trying to give you more avenues to qualify. Have we seen that elsewhere? I would imagine especially in some blue states, people are trying to find more options for folks.

Liza Lieberman, MAZON: Yes, exactly. Some states are trying, but again, are trying to implement, they’re trying to, know, how to say this nicely… some states want to help their people connect to food assistance in creative ways, right? And some states are really like moving heaven and earth to try to help people connect to the benefits that are available.

Other states, are frankly welcoming these changes and have been trying to chip away at this program for a long time in some really sneaky ways. So they are not trying to connect people to resources. Another group, it’s separate from the work requirements, but there’s a lot of concern about immigrants losing benefits under the new bill. That one’s very fraught, because there’s a lot of misinformation that undocumented immigrants can get SNAP benefits. That is total lie. They never have been able to and they cannot.

So USDA keeps issuing these press releases like, “We finally are making it so that illegal aliens can no longer get SNAP.” And that’s total false pretenses. They never could.

MaryAlice: And what were you gonna say about veterans? Actually, wait, I have a question first on what you were saying about just some states that are working to continue to expand access versus states that aren’t. In my head, that would fall on partisan lines, right? But is that the case, generally? Are there any exceptions that would surprise me or surprise people?

Liza Lieberman, MAZON: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I think that it is largely partisan lines of those that are kind of like welcoming this versus those that are expressing concern and, you know, blowing the siren about this.

But it is definitely across party lines that they’re needing to budget for this in new ways that no one has ever thought was going to be possible, frankly. So there really is a lot of concern and advocates, frankly, are trying to grapple with these changes and understand the way that different states are doing it. So there’s a big fight in Ohio right now that they are interpreting the law in one way that advocates are like, “no, no, we need to make sure you’re interpreting it in the correct way.”

And the big elephant in the room is that there has been no guidance from USDA for many reasons. There has been very minimal guidance from USDA for many reasons. One is that they are on skeleton staff, from what I understand, because so many people were RIFed. They’re trying to move them all out of DC.

There was a shutdown that really disrupted everything right when this minimal guidance was coming out. And states and counties, in ten states, SNAP is administered by counties, which makes it even more complicated. So states and counties are literally begging USDA for guidance on how to deal with all of these changes. And there really is not much coming out at all.

Under normal circumstances, there would be FAQs and webinars on every single one of these changes and more that we haven’t discussed. And there has been like crickets.

They’re focusing all their energy on this MAHA issue, know, on MAHA stuff. And they’re doing a lot, but on issues that are not, you know, they’re really not focusing on implementing. And frankly, like Congress designed it to be so massive that it would have been hard for even a fully staffed USDA to implement these massive changes. But yeah, it’s really like a cluster.

MaryAlice: You were going to say something else about vets?

Liza Lieberman, MAZON: Yeah, this was another example of like we’re exploring ways that veterans who are about to be potentially cut off SNAP to perhaps keep getting SNAP with a different exemption from the work requirements. So for instance, one positive thing that the bill did is that there’s a new exemption from the work requirements for American Indian and Alaska Native beneficiaries.

And that’s really interesting. And so, you know, there’s a huge number of Native American veterans. So now we’re like, okay, so if someone is cut off because they’re a veteran, maybe they can be reinstated with their status as an American Indian, Alaska Native.

MaryAlice: So much of what the conversation is, and this seems to apply here, is just about not necessarily if people will technically qualify or not qualify, but just having to go through the legwork, the paperwork, the bureaucracy of arguing that you qualify in one way or the other. Yeah.

Liza Lieberman, MAZON: Yes. Yep. Exactly. And there are some states, I can tell you, there’s been a lot of reporting about Arizona that like the state officials there, they’re all right. I think this was reported. I don’t think I’m sharing anything out of turn, but there was already like a huge drop in SNAP beneficiaries, like 40 percent, I think. And like the the call wait times are like three hours. It’s like a full-time job to even try to get food assistance and advocate for yourself.

MaryAlice: Can I ask kind of a broader picture question too, which for you that works in this every day might seem a little silly, but obviously people want to root out fraud, obviously people have concerns with these huge government programs… I mean, I live in DC. We know that there’s plenty of government inefficiencies and errors. But I guess my bigger, bigger picture question is like, Is food assistance still needed at the same level? Like what do you say to someone that says like, “These programs were bloated… we have to root out fraud.” Like is there a way to quantify the need still?

Liza Lieberman, MAZON: Yeah, well, that’s a really interesting question because another thing USDA has done that gives me rage is that they have canceled their annual food security reports that we’ve all been relying on, whether we know it or not, to measure and therefore try to end hunger in this country.

So this is what gives us that figure — we know that 47 million Americans are struggling with food insecurity. So obviously, we know how many people have received SNAP, but this is how many people are potentially struggling without the help of SNAP too. And they are, they unilaterally just decided one day they’re not going to collect this information, which is a huge concern from advocates and others, researchers of like.

I’m sorry, you’re not even going to measure this anymore. That’s, that has been such a central role of USDA’s research arm for decades.

To your other question of if it’s needed — it’s yeah, I think you look at affordability, you look at the cost of food, also relatedly the emphasis on healthy foods and nutritious foods, which I would like to support, but there’s no recognition that healthy food is often more expensive. And, you I would love to see everyone getting organic produce at farmers markets across the country, but that is not the reality for most Americans. It’s just not. You know, when people are money poor, they’re often time poor, and that doesn’t mean they can cook a fresh meal for their families for every meal. So this is all interrelated. I think there absolutely is still need at the same level. I think those trends have we’ve seen over history that that food security rates go down or stay level when there are government investments in food assistance.

So like the example is most recently is COVID. Those rates, I mean, we all saw the lines at food pantries, out the door, on the highway, right? Like there was huge need, but Congress and the administration at the time chose to invest. They did a few things. They made boosts and SNAP benefits. They got rid of the work requirements temporarily.

They started a whole summer EBT program for child nutrition programs. Like there were clear investments that were made and flexibilities that the figures showed that hunger did not skyrocket during that time because people were able to get food assistance.

There also are similar models from the Great Recession. And there are times that it shows that if we were able to institute flexibilities and boost assistance, that really, really helps… So I think there’s a huge concern that food assistance is needed more than ever. At the same level, perhaps at higher levels, of course, I agree with what you said about fraud and abuse and bad actors and that’s real, but this is not the way to do it. So this is, I mean, the word that keeps coming to mind is this is just like reckless.

MaryAlice: So what comes next for people, for folks that are struggling to maintain their benefits, but also for advocates like yourself? I’m curious if there’s a certain part of the bill that you think could get rescinded? Is there a certain part where you feel like you will focus your attention and advocacy or legislative vehicle where you feel like you will focus on? Just where are you going to put your time and energy? Obviously you are going to keep fighting against some of these changes.

Liza Lieberman, MAZON: Yeah, absolutely. So there are a couple of things. On the state level, a lot of states are now in session and looking at their budgets and many states have two-year budgets. So there are a lot of us that are trying to combat even more bad stuff in the states that we do every year. But also there’s a huge effort trying to educate state lawmakers that, again, have really never had to pay all that much attention to SNAP from a funding perspective. Maybe they should have been paying better attention all along or we should have been doing a better job of that. But really they need to pay attention and understand that there is gonna be this funding gap and how much is on the line here.

So, we and a lot of our partners have been trying to educate state policy makers. I can send you, there was a really interesting letter. Well, this kind of gets to the big federal piece that we’re working on. But there was a letter from National Governors Association, National Association of Counties, a bunch of like local, state and local officials begging Congress to, it was during the CR, it was a couple months ago when the government funding, the last round, bout of government funding as opposed to the current bout, but they were basically begging Congress to institute a two year delay of the state cost shift. And so lot of our energy has been on that. There is a bipartisan call from state policymakers to delay the implementation of that cost shift because states are right now scrambling to make up for that.

MaryAlice: I think there is so much news right now, obviously, and so much of our news is national and international right now. But this is the kind of stuff that is happening today, like impacting those lives today. And if they don’t know that they need to go make sure they qualify or redo paperwork or that their states have already started rolling some of this out and into effect, I mean, it will impact their families today. And I just don’t want to lose sight of those sorts of stories, because it’s easy to do. There’s so much going on. There’s so much else in the news.

Liza Lieberman, MAZON: Yeah, no, I thank you so much for bringing awareness to this…I mean, part of our ask right now for like the media is like, keep hunger in the news. Hunger was in the headlines for sure during the shutdown… But then, you know, the next thing hits and it’s like, part of it is just like keep hunger in the headlines, because it’s happening. It’s getting worse every day.

MaryAlice: Yeah, yeah. And in some ways it is indirectly. We talk about food costs every day. We talk about energy and oil costs. We talk about things that have ripple effects and spill into hunger or create hunger when everything costs more or when just cost of living increases. And we talk about state budget battles, sure, and I think in a lot of ways states frustrated by having to implement federal policy, you know, that’s like a tale as old as time, but the fact that this is, like I said, it was in a bill that feels like it was passed forever ago, even though it wasn’t forever ago, a really crowded news cycle and where it’s being implemented differently at different times in different ways across the country. I think makes it harder to keep track of.

Liza Lieberman, MAZON: Yeah, absolutely.

MaryAlice: The good news is now Little Baby Mackenzie has calmed down. He’s awake and fine and sweet. So no more screaming child as I wrap this up.

Liza Lieberman, MAZON: I hear that. Oh my gosh. Well, you know, you just have to sleep when the baby sleeps, right? It’s so easy.

MaryAlice: That idea is such a joke when you also have a toddler. My mom calls me and like, oh, “So like when he finally went to bed, you able to get some sleep this morning?” I’m like, “Yeah, until six when Patrick got in bed with us!” No, it’s a happy time.

Some big, personal news from me — 

Our family has officially grown.

We are excited to introduce Mackenzie Louis Parks Kimmel 💛 born Saturday morning with the help of the incredible, thoughtful, dedicated staff at the Washington Hospital Center. We think he is beautiful and perfect.

Our three-year-old son, Patrick, helped choose the name (told it means “fire born,” which I love, and “Louis” is in honor of Chris’s dad and grandfather). 

Watching Patrick step into his new role as a big brother has melted our hearts and brought even more joy than we could have imagined. When meeting Mackenzie at the hospital, he whispered to him, “I’m here now. I’m here to keep you safe.” And I cried. 

Two boys in this house – watch out world!

We are feeling deeply blessed and have been spending these days at home recovering, trying to rest, soaking up snuggles, and figuring out the craziness of being a family of four. 

So sadly, I gave myself a break this week. No original reporting from me today.

But a few more thoughts —

This second pregnancy of mine was not easy…

I ended up in the ER twice during the first trimester, after I could not keep the vomiting under control.

I worried about dehydration, took lots of Zofran, spent entire weeks barely getting off the couch and then got really down about that.

The pregnancy definitely threw a wrench in my job search and figuring out next steps of my career.

((Why do we hide so many things, women?!))

But of course, these last several months were also a time of great joy… I felt blessed to be able to get pregnant at 40 and to have time together, cherishing our growing family.

I firmly believe we do not talk nearly enough about the hardships, happy moments, and real tough parts of pregnancy, labor, delivery, and motherhood.

So please know that I am here for ANY conversations (My DMs and Substack chats are open!) about:

-Getting pregnant at 40

-Doctors that make you feel bad about taking medicine better during pregnancy

-How to feel better during pregnancy

-How hard it is to look for jobs while pregnant (omg more on this to come!) 

-My decision to try for a V-bac (TOLAC) and why that’s not right for everyone.

-My horrendous experiences with anesthesia 

-Medical trauma and how we don’t talk about that enough

-Breastfeeding struggles and why my family will do a combo with formula

-How growing a family does not mean I have any less interest in my career and how that’s OK for me (and maybe you too)

I found this Stateline article just yesterday interesting about how many million more Americans are now covered by paid leave policies as state legislatures have stepped up. 

Nearly one-third of the nation’s private sector workers are covered by paid leave programs as more states require employers to provide medical and family leave, according to a new analysis released this week.

And it is not just blue states (though, ok, it’s mostly blue states) making changes to support families in this way.

Mississippi’s Republican governor signed into law a new measure, which went into effect this year, requiring paid parental leave for state employees. 

And Nebraska voters approved a ballot initiative in November 2024 to force the state’s hand on requiring employer-provided paid sick leave.

Will he bash the Supreme Court justices attending his speech? Make demands of lawmakers? Defend ICE tactics?

Will he effectively make a case continuing the use of tariffs or present any new ideas for bringing down the cost of living for Americans?

Watch along with me and my former ABC News colleague as we give live analysis and context to the president’s big speech.

Watch here — on YouTube

Under California’s “top-two” primary system, the top vote-getters in June’s primary will advance to the general election regardless of party.

I spoke last week to one longtime, senior democratic advisor, Rebecca Katz, who is working for the billionaire entrepreneur Tom Steyer in the high-profile race.

Katz is one of those Democrats I have always found super intriguing, because she has a track record of beating the odds. She worked on Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman’s race in 2022 and then Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego’s race in 2024. When Democrats took a beating everywhere, Gallego got over the finish line in Arizona even though Trump also won the state by over 5%.

I think Rebecca’s take on candidate quality, messaging, and connecting with voters has been ahead of others like her for quite some time, and so I was eager to reconnect with her as this midterm cycle heats up and very curious about her thoughts around Steyer.

Last year, when so many Democrats were still in shock and grieving, Katz started a new consulting firm, Fight Agency. They worked this year on NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s race, local races in Pennsylvania, and more. In some ways, Steyer feels like an outlier for them.

But we talked about her thoughts on Democrats needing to address both an affordability crisis in this country as well as civil liberties and, as she put it, “thuggery” from ICE agents in the streets. We talked about how Democrats had spent way too much time and energy the last few years chasing white, well-to-do “Liz Cheney”-type voters and leaving working class voters feeling left out.

“Democrats have been like in search of the “Never Trumpers” for years,” she told me. “I just think DC hates populism, like they hate populists, right? They hate them. But I think that is where this country is going.”

And she previewed key congressional races she is working on this year as well.

Transcript from our conversation here:

MaryAlice: Last year, when everyone else, it felt like, in your Democratic party… were still licking their wounds, still in kind of a grief and shock mode… you guys started a brand new firm. And that was very interesting to reporters like me who wanted to watch what people like you, who had sort of beaten the odds before, would do in this moment where Democrats really had to pick up the pieces. Would they be able to pick up the pieces?

So now we were just talking about how you celebrated your one year anniversary with this new firm, fight agency.

So at one year in, what have you learned? What have you learned that other Democrats should know?

Rebecca Katz: Well, I mean, let’s I guess I would say let’s back up a little bit. So right after the November elections, I met up with Tommy McDonald. He and I worked on Fetterman 2022 in Pennsylvania together. He was our chief media strategist and really helped us kind of all over the state to think differently. A Pennsylvania native.

And and it just felt like Democrats weren’t learning their lessons of some of these races. Like we lost big, and have you noticed there’s this like lack of an autopsy every time like we lose? And then we’re just like, “let’s not worry about the past. Let’s just move forward.” But, as they say, those who don’t learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.

So it’s just like instead of instead of making the same mistakes, like let’s think differently. What kind of candidates win? What’s different? We then partnered with Julian Mulvey, who was the chief ad maker from the Bernie 2016 race. My favorite ad of all time is the “America” ad from Bernie Sanders with the Simon and Garfunkel.

It doesn’t just say poll tested language. It actually doesn’t say anything, but it makes you feel something.

We kept running candidates that might say the right thing, but didn’t leave the person feeling anything. And I think at a time like this, people wanted to know there was a political party that is fighting for them that is going to help make their life better. That isn’t just talking about themselves, but just talking about them.

Ruben Gallego in Arizona is a perfect example. He was a working class kid. He grew up with nothing. He got himself into Harvard. He was a Marine during the war. He some of the bloodiest combat of the whole war. You didn’t have to tell him what to say when he was talking to working class voters. It was in him.

We have lost our way in terms of like just poll tested language and getting candidates to just like be robots a little bit.

You don’t have to tell them what to say that they understand overall who they’re fighting for and whose side that they’re on. And they understand the villains, right? And we launched last January and we had a couple of races. We’re based in Philadelphia, which is different than a lot of these firms.

Then we partnered with Morris Katz. He was doing Zohran Mamdani. He took a risk on Zohran when a lot of people were like, I mean including me at first, were like, “this guy? like this dsa candidate? like how are you going to win this race?”

But you know, part of this is also not being 100 years old, right? Morris is 26 said, “You know like [Mamdani] speaks to me. Something is happening here on the ground, and we should be part of it.

So it’s just like: what kind of candidate can like expand the electorate, get people excited, get people wanting to vote for them, not just about who they’re running against, but what they stand for. And get people like engaged in politics.

MaryAlice: You have talked about how there’s a real desire for candidates who are laser-focused on the affordability crisis. Obviously, we saw that big conversation after the special elections in November. But I’m thinking now in this moment where two Minnesotans have been killed on the streets in the hands of ICE and border agents.

Do you still feel like every candidate needs to be laser-focused on the affordability crisis? How do you balance your advice right now, nine months before voting day, before midterms, between these moments that feel so focused and critical around immigration, around border enforcement, about the Constitution, civil rights and civil liberties, also voters wanting, like you mentioned, a candidate that’s focused on affordability and bringing costs down?

Rebecca Katz: I mean, two things can be true at the same time, right? I think right now, so many Americans are struggling, just like barely keeping their head above water, they’re like, the bills are just out of control, right? Whether that’s the cost of housing, the cost of electricity, going to the grocery store, whatever it is, like it’s too much, right? So like, if you were running for office, this year, you have to talk about that, because that is on everybody’s mind. That’s one.

Two, the chaos in our streets, the thuggery from our government, the tactics that they’re using to intimidate and to terrorize American citizens is out of control, right? And if you are serious about being a leader for the next generation, you cannot just say, “this just has to be reformed and we’ll take care of it.” We need to protect our people, and we need to keep them safe, and it seems right now that also means keeping them safe from the American government that is set on going into the streets of Minneapolis and and literally terrorizing our American citizens.

And I don’t think you can run for office right now without talking about that in a real way and addressing it.

MaryAlice: You hinted at something that drives me crazy as a political reporter, when people so quickly try to ascribe these labels to folks, right? And often on this debate too, there’s a sense of like a more “moderate” Democrat will be focused on gas prices and the “progressive” Democrat is focused on ICE or something, right? Or somehow it would be, it would all get written in that like simplistic language. And I can’t tell, you how many times I’ve talked to other political operatives like yourself who just get frustrated by thes labels. Like what do you mean by the word progressive? What do you mean by the word moderate?

Rebecca Katz: If you do a focus group and like and I been in politics for decades, so I’ve seen my share of focus groups… Normal people do not know what the f— a progressive is versus a populist versus. They don’t speak in that language. Sorry for cursing.

They don’t speak in that language, right? They speak in like, “Is this person going to fight for me? Does this person care about like people like me? It’s not this whole like Washington centrist thing. It’s like how there were all these “Never Trumpers,” right? That exist very much in DC. But Democrats have been like in search of the “Never Trumpers for a year, you know what I mean?

I just think DC hates populism, like they hate populists, right? They hate them. But I think like that is where this country is going. And if if the Democrats in power want to — or there’s no Democrats in power right now— if Democrats in Washington want more power, they have to bring in this part of the party that that wants a more populist government.

MaryAlice: Is that part of the lesson learned from 2024? You talked about this lack of an autopsy, the lack of a willingness to admit things that went wrong. Is that part of what you think Democrats need to admit went wrong?

Rebecca Katz: I would have liked a full autopsy, so we could say all the things that went wrong, but like I would have loved an autopsy after 2016, right? Like, we never learned those lessons. We didn’t learn the lessons of the 2016 campaign. It would have been much better for our country if we did. But I mean, in my mind, we just like lost our way a little bit in 2024.

Like it was just like we were in search of a very specific, white suburban well-to-do voter and kind of forgot about working class voters that had been the backbone of the party.

I think the Harris team had a very, very hard job for the last hundred days of the election to try and figure it out. And it did feel like there were some things that were going much better in that campaign that had been in the Biden campaign, right? But I think the vice president herself wanted these voters, like would say the Liz Cheney voters or whatever.

MaryAlice: The Nikki Haley voter.

Rebecca Katz: Yea and and I just don’t think there just were as many of them as there were working class voters, and they didn’t feel like they had a place in our party. And we lost them, and it is my hope that we win them back this cycle.

MaryAlice: You talked about trying to win them back with better candidates, who can speak authentically to them…

Rebecca Katz: Yeah. Candidate quality is really important.

If you were a class president and have wanted to be president your whole life, you will probably never be president. Life is hard right now and people want candidates who have lived a loop, who have something they’ve done, who have experiences that have shaped them in a way that is not just like they were a PoliSci major.

MaryAlice: The way you said it landed with me, made a lot of sense. The candidate where you don’t have to explain to them how to talk to people.

But I guess my question is, what else? It can’t only be someone’s resume, the candidate quality.

Rebecca Katz:

They have to know what they believe in, right? They have to have core values. Know who they’re fighting for, like what is right and what is wrong in government.

With Corporations and where we are in this world right now with like lot of people making a lot of money. We got to do better. We got to make a better playing ground, playing field for our folks and do better.

MaryAlice: What about from a messaging standpoint? I mean, you guys make ads, you run campaigns. You’ve talked about trying to hit different people through different platforms, through different kinds of messaging. What does that look like in the next nine months?

Rebecca Katz: We find people where they are. I think one of the biggest problems that we’ve had with some of our elected officials is how they mock social media.

Like, I mean, we felt that a lot with Mayor Mamdani. Where they kept saying like, “well, this guy’s on TikTok. Like, I don’t know what he’s TikToking about or whatever.”

It just seems so disconnected. Like, do they think everyone who’s coming together at dinner and watching Walter Cronkite on the news? That’s not happening anymore. TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, like that’s where people are getting their news. So if you want to connect with voters, you got to be where the voters are.

And that’s on basically like all these different social media platforms. You have to figure out how to how to talk to them in a way that works on these different platforms. And when these like elderly politicians mock younger elected officials for connecting with voters, that kind of condescension, like no, that’s that’s completely wrong. That’s not where we need to go as a party.

MaryAlice: You’re working on the Tom Steyer campaign. Busy race over there, busy field. What is going to define that race?

Rebecca Katz: Nurses union endorsed him. That was very exciting…

I think this is another race about whose side are you on, right? Whether it’s talking about, know, what we see with the wealth tax and that’s had some division over there, but mostly I think affordability is going be huge issue in that race. I think housing. You know, we’ve got to build a lot more, lot more homes.

We’ve got to make California a top 10 education state. We’ve got to reduce utility costs. California has so much to offer, but there’s still a lot of challenges for the people who live there. And Tom Steyer is running to make it more livable.

MaryAlice: The Pennsylvania-based firm will no doubt work on some Pennsylvania congressional races, I imagine.

Rebecca Katz: Yes, I would say look out for Bob Brooks running in PA7, like Lehigh Valley, and Paige Cognetti, the current mayor of Scranton, who is going to be running for that seat. So it is pretty an exciting time in Pennsylvania for sure.

MaryAlice:

Are there other spots on the map that you think will be that people should pay attention to? Obviously we’ve had such a conversation about the map itself, but which races are gonna define this?

Rebecca Katz: I would say everything is on the table this year. Like let’s have good candidates in every race we can, because this is a kind of year where if Democrats can get our act together, we can win big. So we should be focused on winning big, and it’s an “on” year, so that means like it’s election time. Let’s come together. We have to have our primaries. We have to, you know, figure out which candidates are going to be the nominees. But once we get those candidates, let’s fight like hell to make them win.

MaryAlice:

Okay, my last question for you then — what about election integrity and election security?

Rebecca Katz: Thankfully for most people I am not the person preparing for that, because I feel like we need lawyers we need to figure out what’s going on out there. But I mean I think it is scary. You see what they’re doing with ICE. Are they going to be doing that into that kind of intimidation on Election Day? That’s something to be really worried about.

And I hope that the people in power are doing something, not just the people in power, but the people who are fighting for power to make sure that we have real protections on Election Day and heading into it.

MaryAlice: Have you had candidates express concern about that?

Rebecca Katz: I think everyone’s concerned about it… But hopefully we’ve seen so much courage from the people of Minneapolis as they’ve come out. Everybody needs to vote. Like it might be intimidating, you know, but we have, everybody has to come out and vote. That’s the only way it gets better.

I spoke with Janti Soeripto, President and CEO of Save the Children US, about the program, its controversies, and the many remaining questions about how it will be implemented. She did not shy away from uncertainties around the roll-out but remained optimistic about the program’s potential.

Established under the President’s new tax law, the pilot program will provide $1,000 from the government to each baby born during President Trump’s second term. The money is to be invested in index funds and function like IRA retirement accounts, available to the children when they turn 18-years-old for specific purposes, like going to college, starting a business, or eventually retiring.

The idea, to help all American children accumulate some savings, is not new and leaders from both parties have proposed and tested similar ideas over the years. But this current program is only temporary and will need to be renewed by Congress soon. With tax season now officially open, Save the Children is trying to get the word out to make sure families do not lose out on the opportunity and to prove to lawmakers that the program is worth continued investment — an argument made a lot easier if people participate.

“We know that children with savings are more likely to graduate high school to have better education outcomes. It makes access to financial opportunities, wealth creation more equitable,” Janti Soeripto, President and CEO of Save the Children US, told me during a recent phone interview. “So we really are pushing and advocating for widespread adoption.”

But one of the biggest concerns right now is that the program could actually increase income inequality, if only wealthier and more educated families take advantage. Save the Children had hoped that the program would be an opt-out vs an opt-in model and is still encouraging policymakers to make that change should the program be renewed. If poorer parents do not have the wherewithal or experience needed to set-up an account and opt-in, millions of the most vulnerable children in the country could be left out.

“In terms of implementation, we would say it is really important to go for automatic enrollment, because otherwise some people will know about it and others will not. It’s usually people who have fewer resources who won’t know about it, or will have other issues, or will need support in order to understand how to apply for them, to make it happen,” Soeripto added.

“We will certainly do a lot of that dissemination and communication, certainly, within the schools and the over 250 rural communities where we work. [But] of course, we don’t reach all families in the United States. So we really encourage this administration to now think hard about implementation and making it as easy as possible, as simple as possible, and ideally as automatic as possible.”

Soeripto acknowledged another potential challenge to the program — the fact that right now many Americans simply might not feel comfortable giving the federal government any additional private information or claiming a government benefit, especially people of color and/or families with mixed immigration status.

“Absolutely,” Soeripto said, agreeing that that concern is real. She talked about Save the Children’s work in California after the historic wildfires last year. She recalled many people unwilling or too fearful to apply for FEMA help.

“It is important to understand, not make up all these assumptions for them, but truly understand where their concerns are, and then see if we can help them overcome those concerns and issues. But look, all those activities here — the crackdown immigration, the segregation, the separation of families and children from their parents, etc. All those have a chilling effect. There’s no doubt,” she told me.

Save the Children’s position shows a remarkable balancing act organizations are trying to walk with this administration, both acknowledging and pushing back on historic and devastating funding cuts to social services and humanitarian programs, while also standing up for policy ideas that are in line with their values. This time last year, in the wake of astronomic and disorderly cuts to USAID and US foreign aid, Soeripto was speaking out against the administration’s moves and warning about the dire consequences of such cuts. At one point, Save the Children had had to cut over 100 of their programs worldwide impacting more than 10 million people. Over a third of their funding was on the line as federal dollars for foreign aid was slashed.

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Contributions to the new Trump saving accounts will be available starting in July 2026, but parents can get the process going by filing needed paperwork as a part of their 2025 taxes now. Individuals and employers can contribute up to a total of $5,000 per child per year, and both the administration and private groups like Save the Children have said they hope states may also step-up and add to federal government contributions.

A growing number of private philanthropists have said they plan to contribute to the program, though there is a concern among some humanitarian organizations that this administration has a tendency to rely on private dollars where government funding instead would be better, more equitable and sustainable.

The fact that the accounts will likely be held by private financial institutions raises serious questions too about data privacy and government support of select asset managers, but on the other hand, Soeripto noted a public-private partnership could help some families feel more comfortable with setting-up new accounts.

And big picture, she hopes the program could also help with overall financial literacy for families. While millions of Americans have next to zero saving, it could be frustrating to watch a savings and investment account grow but know there are restrictions for when and how the funds can be used. But, Save the Children says that any savings is positive, and it is a separate question about how to help families become aware of other resources and safety nets in times of need.

“Look to have this savings account is much better than not having it. The question then is how do you help people understand what to do in times of crises and what other options are available to them,” Soeripto added.

Beyond the Trump Accounts, Save the Children also celebrated the inclusion of the child tax credit in the new law, a dependent care tax credit, and an employer provided child care credit.

“[Child care] is a workforce issue. So employers have a real incentive to support childcare so that they can keep their employees and employees can stay engaged. We think that these are some really comprehensive tools in this new bill that ultimately make things easier for our working families and their children,” she said.

What else I read:

In light of the gutting WaPo layoffs, I was moved by this inspiring note from a former colleague of mine at ABC, for all of us in moments of new beginnings:

There’s a quote by David Bowie I keep coming back to:

“If you feel safe in the area you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in… when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.”

Many of us were comfortable. And comfort can quietly suffocate creativity. Some of us were in places where that creativity wasn’t rewarded, so we stopped trying.

This moment — painful as it is — can also be one of freedom. Create with abandon. Start the Substack. Launch the YouTube series. Learn new tools. Try new ways of working. Work with different people.

Cat's Corner

What stopped me this week… ICE

This week didn’t call for nuance — it called for honesty…

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7 months ago · 4 likes · Catherine McKenzie

And I am still thinking about this piece from Adam Serwer in the Atlantic —-

“In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive—because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/the-neighbors-defending-minnesota-from-ice/685769/

But even if Republicans agree to each one of Democrats’ stipulations, what guarantee do Democrats (or community members) have that immigration agents will follow through with new standards put in place? Especially when over the last year immigration agents have repeatedly been called out in the courts for failing to meet even current policies and standing laws.

In Minnesota last week, the chief federal judge blasted ICE for a pattern of violating court orders and listed 96 instances in January alone (which he said was likely an understatement) where ICE agents had disobeyed judicial directives, writing that the list was more than “some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.”

“This list should give pause to anyone — no matter his or her political beliefs — who cares about the rule of law,” Judge Patrick Schiltz went on.

Simply put, the courts keep saying immigration agents are breaking the laws now, so what good are new laws/policies without some corresponding plans for enforcing them?

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Over the last few weeks, some ideas for how to better enforce laws have been floated.

First, would be to “codify Bivens.” (I am not a lawyer, but I have heard many Democratic lawyers use this jargon in the last few weeks…)

Basically, in the 1971 case, Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, the Supreme Court sided with the victim, of an unconstitutional search by federal agents and allowed the victim, Bivens, to sue the federal government, in theory, for damages. Fast-forward fifty years — the decision had been chipped away at and then in 2022, the Supreme Court all but gutted it.

In the case of Egbert v. Boule, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court wrote that only Congress can and should green-light lawsuits against the federal officials for constitutional rights violations, especially in cases dealing with immigration enforcement.

After that case, federal agents arguably could enjoy a sense of civil impunity. Add on top of that an administration like this one, which is clearly disinclined to explore criminal charges against federal officials too, and the concern is federal agents could broadly work without fear of any consequence.

So, the thinking is, Congress should at least let the people sue.

If someone had a good case that their constitutional rights might have been violated, why should they have to hope the federal government will bring criminal charges? At least they could sue civilly and agents and agencies would feel on the hook potentially for damages.

Yesterday, the New York Times’ Adam Lipton wrote about another possibility. In a rather wonky article, he talked to law professors and experts about the potential for states, not just Congress, to authorize lawsuits against federal agents for constitutional rights violations as well. He ticked through some of the few, new state laws in California, Maine, Illinois and that are trying to get at this but are relatively untested.

Either way, these questions of how best to enforce laws and restrictions for federal agents feel very relevant for lawmakers right now as they head into negotiations around reforms, especially if they genuinely want to see changes on the ground.

Share Voice Memos from MaryAlice Parks

I was struck by Democrats’ demand that ICE and border patrol agents seek judicial warrants (signed by a judge and thus a higher bar to meet) instead of relying on administrative warrants (signed only by DHS officials).

As I mentioned last week, I spoke with leading immigration litigators in DC who sued the government last fall and won a preliminary injunction, in part on the grounds that immigration agents were not meeting the standards for legal arrests. The federal judge agreed with the plaintiffs that agents needed to either have warrants (even just administrative ones) or established probable cause the person is in the country illegally and that they are a flight risk.

“What’s different (on the ground) is the massive amounts of agents, often new untrained agents, flooding the streets and carrying out arrests without warrants,” Austin Rose, a managing attorney with Amica Center for Immigrant Rights and a leading attorney on the case, told me.

“Just to be clear, an ICE warrant is not even a judicial warrant. It’s just an administrative warrant signed by an ICE officer. But they’re not even doing that, because they’re not arresting people often that they actually know about, right?”

In the DC case, agents approached the named plaintiff, Jose Escobar Molina who has been in the country for 25 years, outside of his apartment building. They arrested him without even seeming to know his name or who exactly he was. He tried to explain that he has Temporary Protected Status that is still active, but the agents ignored him.

“[Border agents] don’t know who the person is before they speak to them. So, they’re going up to random people that they perceive to be immigrants for a wide number of reasons and investigating whether they are non-citizens and then arresting them based on very limited information,” Rose went on.

Democrats can demand immigration agents obtain a higher standard of warrants, but when there is evidence from the DC case and others that immigration agents have systematically failed to obtain even the lower standard of warrants for arrests as often as needed — one central question remains: What happens if ICE doesn’t? What is the enforcement mechanism?

Even though I talked to Rose right before Pretti was shot and killed, I think he still shared valuable insights into ongoing litigation against ICE, the impact of increased immigration enforcement on communities, and personal stories from plaintiffs in their class action lawsuit.

So, I decided to post our conversation here with the caveat, of course, that the news and stakes changed dramatically since we spoke with Pretti’s death and the nation’s response to his killing.

During our conversation, Rose argued that holding the government accountable through the judicial system felt doubly difficult right now.

“Essentially, these days we have to both win a lawsuit and then we have an entire second step, unfortunately, of making sure that the government complies with said lawsuit,” he said. “There’s not much precedent for that. You shouldn’t have to worry about the government complying with the law and judicial orders, but unfortunately you have to with this administration.”

He went on to talk about his real fear that ICE is acting like a “lawless agency” with little to no deterrents or checks at this point.

“You know, suing ICE doesn’t provide a deterrent to them doing anything. This is a lawless agency that doesn’t care about the law. The only thing you can do is hold them accountable directly through a federal judge, right? So we’re under no illusions that our litigation will deter them from doing certain things in the future in other areas. All we can control is to make sure they comply with the injunction in DC.”

We talked about the case of Liam Conejo Ramos, the five-year-old in the bunny hat detained by ICE. Rose argued there was no reason someone like Liam’s father should have been arrested in the first place. Evidence showed that the dad entered at a port of entry and lawfully sought asylum. He was pursuing his case.

“There’s absolutely no reason to detain him in the first place, and then once you’ve detained him, it’s not inevitable that that child had to be detained as well. These are deliberate choices… this doesn’t have to be happening. We can still have policies at the border if people want to keep too many people from entering. It doesn’t mean that we need to be going into communities and tearing families apart. This doesn’t need to happen. And I just wish people viewed this not as inevitable, but as a deliberate choice that I don’t think most Americans agree with.”

We talked about a man named Elias in DC, who was a part of their case against ICE and was detained while on his way to receive life-saving dialysis treatment. (Rose’s team argued Elias was illegally detained.) Missing that single treatment that day, set off a rapid decline in Elias health, according to his family. He died in late November just before the DC preliminary injunction came down.

“There’s long-term effects (to this enforcement) — emotional trauma, and actual physical effects, whether that’s to the family’s finances, to their health, to their well-being,” Rose said.

“I think that there’s obviously contradictions with voters, right? I think they see the enforcement, they say it’s gone too far. But they have this assumption that like, well, it’s a necessary evil essentially because we got enforced the law. But the problem is that they’re not enforcing the law. They’re actually breaking the law in our view, right?”

If Rose is right, then again, how are Democrats’ new proposed laws going to help?

[[Just days before Senator Minority Leader Schumer made his demands around ICE reforms public, news broke that ICE agents were being told internally they could also enter people’s private homes with just an administrative warrant too, instead of a judicial one, which had been policy. That’s a whole separate can of worms about legal standards for private property search and seizure.

At this point, it is unclear what exactly Democrats will accept when it comes to an overall reforms package. Are they prioritizing requirements around border agents entering homes versus changing the requirements for arrests on the streets? There’s likely still disagreement among Democrats about how many reforms to push for and how hard to push.]]

I hope you’ll listen to my interview with Rose here, again it taped before Pretti was killed.

Transcript

MaryAlice Parks:

Can you just take a step back, sort of walk me through the process of bringing the case? What initially pushed you guys to bring the lawsuit?

Austin Rose, Managing Attorney, Amiga Center for Immigrant Rights:

Absolutely. So yeah, we’re facing unprecedented levels of immigration enforcement. We’ve never seen anything like this even under the first Trump administration. What’s different is the massive amounts of agents, often new untrained agents, flooding the streets and carrying out arrests without warrants. So just to be clear, an ICE warrant is not even a judicial warrant. It’s just an administrative warrant signed by an ICE officer. But they’re not even doing that, because they’re not arresting people - often - that they actually know anything about, right? They don’t know who the person is before they speak to them. So they’re going up to random people that they perceive to be immigrants for a wide number of reasons and investigating whether they are non-citizens and then arresting them based on very limited information.

MaryAlice Parks:

So, you felt like you saw that happening. You had stories and sort of examples of that happening here in D.C. that led you to bring the case is what you’re saying.

Austin Rose:

Exactly. ICE has been jumping around the different areas in August, as was very prevalent in the news. They initiated essentially a federal takeover of D.C. and that coincided with a massive increase in the amount of immigration enforcement in the city, not only by ICE, but essentially by every other or almost every other federal law enforcement agency partnering with ICE. Customs and Border Protection, which includes Border Patrol, the FBI, other agencies. And because of the massive increase in arrests without warrants in DC, we felt the need to respond with litigation.

MaryAlice Parks:

Can you talk to me about some of the plaintiffs that you had in your case, some of the stories of people’s personal experiences.

Austin Rose:

Absolutely. We had four plaintiffs, three of them proceeded under initials, but one used his name, the lead plaintiff and the namesake of the lawsuit, Jose Escobar Molina, who is kind of the embodiment of the DC immigrant population. is Salvadoran. There’s a large population of people from El Salvador and DC. And he has what’s called Temporary Protected Status. He’s been in the United States for 25 years. This status protects him from being removed to El Salvador.

And unlike other temporary protected statuses, it is still active. It has not been terminated by the administration. Nonetheless, agents approached him outside of his apartment building in a predominantly Latino neighborhood and arrested him without asking him any questions or even seeming to know his name. He pled with them that he had status. They ignored him. They said, ‘Shut up, bitch. You are illegal.’ He is our lead plaintiff, and he bravely stepped forward to help us lead this lawsuit. So he experienced what many others, hundreds of others experienced as well.

MaryAlice Parks:

I was talking about the preliminary injunction you guys won in December. Can you give me an update on the situation? In your opinion, has ICE been complying? Has it changed the lived experience of folks on the ground?

Austin Rose:

So, it’s a complicated question where the preliminary injunction has been successful to some extent in the sense that we have seen arrests decrease rather substantially in the District of Columbia, which could be for a variety of reasons.

However, we are continuing to monitor the government’s compliance with the injunction. Part of the injunction is that every 30 days, they have to provide us, ICE does, or the federal government does, with all of the arrest reports for people who are arrested without a warrant. And we are seeking to ensure that they are complying with the injunction. And so that’s kind of where we are in the lawsuit right

MaryAlice Parks:

Early days as you kind of see how it’s being enforced or not, I guess. Talk to us a little bit about the overall impact on communities here in Washington, DC that you’ve seen. It’s one thing to have very specific stories, very specific plaintiffs willing to come forward, but the ripple effects across communities as people have been detained, as you said, there’s been a surge of arrests. Can you just tell me broadly with your work what it has been like for folks?

Austin Rose:

Yeah, it’s been really, really hard. I’ve seen people leave DC, move to the suburbs of Maryland and Virginia because of fear of just living and being just existing in DC. People stop going to work, taking their kids to school, any number of things, because for a while there, any person, essentially any person who appears to be Latino could be picked up at any time for any reason. That has decreased to some extent, and I think people feel a little bit more comfortable and safe because of the preliminary injunction and because of the decrease of enforcement. But of course, that fear is still there. It’s across this whole country because immigration enforcement agents are acting with impunity and just seeking to fill their quotas.

MaryAlice Parks:

I think there’s this sense from Americans watching the news that every time the Trump administration does anything, there’s this myriad of lawsuits from all angles. Can you talk to me about what the experience was just building this case?

Austin Rose:

Sure. I mean, the reason that there’s lots of lawsuits against the Trump administration is because they’re constantly doing things that are illegal, right? So, that’s why we sue, because it’s unprecedented, evidently illegal actions that obviously often the government can’t even mount a meaningful defense to. What’s interesting about this lawsuit is that the people who brought it -- the plaintiffs brought it to help people in the future — not necessarily to directly benefit them, because what we asked for and got was a prospective injunction, essentially saying that going forward ICE cannot continue to carry out this policy and practice of arresting people without a warrant.

So, it was brave people who came forward not for themselves, but to protect their immigrant communities and also to protect themselves from future arrest because they knew that they could be arrested at any time even though they had been arrested and released previously.

MaryAlice Parks:

Leaning on your expertise and your experience here in DC, can you give us an impression of the lawsuits you’ve seen in Minnesota? Are there some that really feel similar to what ⁓ you guys were fighting in the courts here in DC?

Austin Rose:

So, the lawsuit in Minnesota is pretty different from ours. There’s one claim that they brought. They brought many claims. One of them overlaps with what we brought. But it’s very different because we are not a state, right? We are representing individual plaintiffs seeking an injunction class-wide to prevent these arrests in the future.

The lawsuit in Minnesota is the state of Minnesota, and I believe some cities, suing over issues of essentially state sovereignty. So their primary argument is under the 10th Amendment saying that ICE as a federal government can’t come in and basically co-opt the state’s powers in the way that they’re doing. So it’s different players, different arguments.

I’m really glad the state stepped up, because I think that states, especially blue states with immigrant populations who understand that those immigrant populations are vital to their communities, (need to) step up to fight back against what’s going on.

MaryAlice Parks:

That’s interesting. So that is a very different legal argument, and the ramifications would be different if they are successful. But still you won a preliminary injunction that impacts, in theory, how ICE was operating. Was there any evidence that when they then did surge in Minneapolis, they changed some of their behavior around having warrants or not? I mean, I feel like from what we’ve seen anecdotally, my guess is you’re gonna say, “no.” We’ve seen anecdotally so many instances caught on camera where it looks like they’re approaching people on the street.

Austin Rose:

Yeah, so I think the (border) enforcement going on in Minneapolis is even more aggressive than what we saw and have seen in DC. It’s a whole other level of fascism in my view. You know, suing ICE doesn’t provide a deterrent to them doing anything. This is a lawless agency that doesn’t care about the law.

The only thing you can do is hold them accountable directly through a federal judge, right? So we’re under no illusions that our litigation will deter them from doing certain things in the future in other areas. All we can control is to make sure they comply with the injunction in DC. And we are going to make sure that they are doing that.

And of course, it’s a preliminary injunction, so the litigation is continuing. And we are going to continue to fight for a final judgment. Essentially, these days we have to both win a lawsuit and then we have an entire second step, unfortunately, of making sure that the government complies with said lawsuit. There’s not much precedent for that. You shouldn’t have to worry about the government complying with the law and judicial orders, but unfortunately you have to with this administration.

MaryAlice Parks:

Of course, DHS pushes back on the idea that agents are behaving lawlessly, like you said. I mean, we saw just a few days ago in Minneapolis, Vice President JD Vance took questions and said over and over that they’re complying with the law. They’re not racially profiling folks in Minneapolis. He was asked that question in particular. So, tell me again your response to that pushback from the administration.

Austin Rose:

Just hollow words.

Often what’s stunning is that when they respond, they don’t even seem to know what they’re responding to. So when we sued them in DC, Tricia McLaughlin came out with one of her absurd statements and said, “We use reasonable suspicion to make arrests.” It’s literally the wrong legal standard. They openly admitted that they make arrests based on reasonable suspicion, which is a lower standard than probable cause. We brought forward that evidence in court and the federal judge put the government attorney to task and said, “You’re saying your agency is literally saying that you think you can make arrests based on reasonable suspicion. That’s not what the immigration laws say.”

They have no defense for these kinds of things, right? So when Trump or JD Vance or Tricia McLaughlin says these things, I don’t take it seriously, because they don’t actually know what they’re talking about. And just them saying they’re complying with the law doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t play out on the ground.

MaryAlice Parks:

I can see the other side, especially ICE saying, ‘Look, no law enforcement is perfect. There’s going to be moments of mistakes, but we are doing what we were asked to do.’ I hear a lot of Republicans say things like, ‘This is what voters wanted.’ What do you kind of say to this idea that no agent is perfect, but they are following instructions and they’re doing their job.

Austin Rose:

Yeah, I mean, they’re not mistakes, though, right? They’re the policy of the administration, right? So arresting a child is not a mistake, right? It’s the policy of the administration to arrest as many people as possible, to meet their quotas, and in some apparent effort to send a message to people that they shouldn’t come to the United States. I mean, that seems to be their expressed wish. So these aren’t isolated mistakes. These are policies and sure the ICE agents are following the policies, but the policies are illegal, right? That’s what we’re arguing. In DC, the policy we alleged and the judge found was the case that they have a policy of making warrantless arrests without probable cause that their agents are encouraged to go out and do that. So in the agent’s eyes, they’re just doing what they’re asked.

In my view, that’s cowardly, because they’re just trying to keep their jobs. But it’s not so much about the individual ICE agents, it’s about the policies that we view as illegal.

I think that there’s obviously contradictions with voters, right? I think they see the enforcement, they say it’s gone too far. But they have this assumption that like, well, it’s a necessary evil essentially, because we’ve got enforced the law. But the problem is that they’re not enforcing the law. They’re actually breaking the law in our view, right?

There’s no reason that someone like the father of this five-year-old boy should have been arrested in the first place. From the public information I gathered, he entered at a port of entry and lawfully sought asylum. The Biden administration released him into the interior, because that’s what you’re supposed to do, and he was pursuing his case. There’s absolutely no reason to detain him in the first place, and then once you’ve detained him, it’s not inevitable that that child had to be detained as well.

These are deliberate choices. They’re not mistakes. And this doesn’t have to be happening.

We can still have policies at the border if people want to keep too many people from entering. It doesn’t mean that we need to be going into communities and tearing families apart. This doesn’t need to happen. And I just wish people viewed this not as inevitable, but as a deliberate choice that I don’t think most Americans agree with.

MaryAlice Parks:

I’m curious if you have coordinated or talked at all to folks in other cities. I’m wondering if it’s not just reporters like me, if there are lawyers like yourself in Maine, in Seattle... who are seeing ICE come, or think that they might be coming and are now knocking on your door for thoughts and ideas about legal strategies to push back? Is there a coordinated effort at all in some of these other blue cities?

Austin Rose:

Yeah, us immigration litigators were few and far between, so we gotta stick together. And, you know, we do that a lot. So our lawsuit was not brought in a vacuum. It was similar to a lawsuit that folks in Chicago had brought under the first Trump administration. We built on their success. There was a similar lawsuit in California. And then just before ours, there was a similar preliminary injunction in Colorado. So to the extent we can, we’re coordinating to raise these similar arguments. And as new cities come under attack, they’re going to people who’ve experienced it for help, which we try to offer.

We received help from others, and then we try to help others in their efforts. Because really it could happen in any city, right? It’s largely random, in my view, where they pick to go next. And so it could happen anywhere. I actually don’t live in DC anymore, I moved to Pennsylvania. It could happen to where, it could happen here, right? It’s important to be prepared and to find ways to push back within the confines of the law.

MaryAlice Parks:

I was talking to one activist, a democratic activist who lives in Minneapolis, actually just three blocks from where Renee Good was killed. And she said that in her opinion... she felt like she was anxious that her city was being used as a training ground, that she kept using this language like other cities, should take some sort of warning that they’re practicing here. What do you make of that? What do you make of that argument? Is there any truth to that?

Austin Rose:

It’s certainly concerning how their behavior seems to be escalating. Every lawsuit we win or every big story that comes out about something particularly egregious, it seems like they dig in and do even worse things. And I think if anyone is denying that there are clear elements of fascism here anymore than they’re kidding themselves, right? This is a fascist regime, and it is extremely concerning to see. And we need to fight back even when sometimes we’re not successful, we have to fight back against this, because if we accept this, it’s just gonna continue to escalate. That’s what it seems to have happened in the last couple of months.

MaryAlice Parks:

What do you mean when you use that word, a ‘fascist’ regime?

Austin Rose:

Yes, I mean a cult of personality that utilizes its law enforcement to advance the aims of a person, President Trump, that is not accountable to the judicial system that openly defies, often, federal court orders — that uses propaganda to lie to its citizens, that’s what I mean by a fascist regime. And I think that there’s clearly elements of that going on right now. And it’s really concerning.

MaryAlice Parks:

Any final thoughts, what you’d like to share about your work… where you plan to put your energy going forward?

Austin Rose:

No, just that, you know, I’m going to continue to do this work for as long as I can. And I think anyone who can join in the effort should. It takes a village like the lawsuit in D.C. It’s not just lawyers, it’s amazing organizers who are plugged in on the ground and gave us information. It’s brave people like our plaintiffs who stepped up. That’s what it takes. And I see people fighting back in Minnesota, and I think that’s great. My heart goes out to them and what they’re experiencing.

Late Monday, we saw Chief Border Patrol Agent Greg Bovino (who had become the poster child of federal immigration agents’ most ruthless and controversial tactics) get demoted. Border Czar Tom Homan was sent to Minnesota to oversee operations instead.

President Trump dialed back his language about Democratic Governor Tim Walz and said they had a “very good call.” Some administration officials started to walk back from the most egregious and unfounded claims Stephen Miller and DHS Secretary Kristi Norm had used over the weekend about Pretti (that he was a domestic terrorist) and knee-jerk defense of the agents on the ground.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fox News, “I don’t think anybody thinks that they were comparing what happened on Saturday to the legal definition of domestic terrorism.”

It remains to be seen whether anything on the ground will actually change or whether staffing shake ups and new talking points are just for the sake of appearances.

Then there is the question of whether Alex Pretti’s killing could be a tipping point politically, a line crossed that drives people away from Trump, his administration, or his mass deportation campaign. If Alex Pretti’s killing will be remembered as a defining moment for civil liberties and the basic constitutional rights of protesters and Americans writ large?

It might be. It’s impossible to know now. A big part of the answer will be whether there is any impartial investigation, accountability, or justice for Alex sought.

A growing number of Republicans on Capitol Hill, from North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis to Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, have called for an investigation.

The NRA sounded so sure and adamant in their statement, declaring, “As there is with any officer-involved shooting, there will be a robust and comprehensive investigation that takes place to determine if the use of force was justified.”

We will see.

People have good reason to be skeptical. Local investigators in Minneapolis had to go as far as to get a warrant to access the crime scene, and then claimed they were still denied entry by federal agents.

The lines from Miller and Noem, so quickly defending the agents and impugning Pretti, suggest any investigation would be far from impartial or prejudged. And, of course, just a few weeks ago, there was the news that federal prosecutors in Minnesota were asked to look into Renee Good’s wife instead of what happened in her killing.

—

I spoke last week to a lawyer with the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, Austin Rose, who had been a lead attorney on a major lawsuit against ICE filed last fall here in Washington, DC. While our conversation was before Alex Pretti’s killing, he argued a distinction between mistakes vs policies, and it reverberated with me all weekend.

I was asking him to respond to lines from Republicans and those who are quick to defend law enforcement who argue, ‘no system is perfect… there are going to be mistakes, etc.’

He dismissed any idea that ICE’s actions were “mistakes” and argued they were “policies.” He was talking about warrantless arrests, separating children from families, bulldozing through neighborhoods to arrest as many people as possible to meet quotas. His team sued ICE around the idea that those aggressive tactics were not isolated mistakes, but policies from the administration — illegal policies. His team, alongside the ACLU DC, National Immigration Project, CASA and more won a preliminary injunction against ICE in DC federal court.

—

Fast-forward to today — I think so many Americans are holding their breath, waiting for any sign to help make this same distinction…. Any clue as to whether Alex’s killing will be treated as a possible mistake (a horrible and even criminal mistake) or an example of a state-sanctioned policy where the use of lethal force against a protester is acceptable, no questions asked.

Americans are grappling with the many horrendous details of Alex’s killing: the fact that he is not seen brandishing a weapon, but instead holding a phone; that he is pinned to the ground by multiple agents; that agents appear to be using some kind of pepper spray at close range to subdue him; that he appears to have been disarmed by law enforcement agents before he is shot.

But those facts only matter if there’s an investigation, an adjudication — if basic constitutional rights are still taken into account and considered.

Without a thorough investigation, without accountability, we are talking about something much darker and drastically different. In that scenario, the early false claims from the administration (easily refuted from videos and eye-witness accounts) about Alex are signs of a policy. A policy that defends federal agents to such a degree that they have a green light to use lethal force against protesters if they like, with impunity.

It is a scenario hard for Americans to even wrap their heads around, because such a policy of state-sanctioned violence, of total impunity, would call into question whether the right to protest, to oppose the government, or to live still exists for everyone.

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What else I read…

I thought this part of NOTUS’s morning newsletter was strong. It was talking about the right to film federal agents. Sadly Alex’s death raises a bigger question of whether the administration is trying to redefine the right to protest/live too:

Can Trump redefine bystanders’ rights? … Before Trump returned to power last year, Americans’ rights routinely frustrated the people in power. But this White House is trying to turn those frustrations into action and redefine what the public’s rights actually are. Namely, administration officials are cheering efforts by federal agents to clamp down on citizens filming their actions.

I also liked a bit of my former ABC colleague, ’s, Sunday poem:

“So we say his name plainly. We say what he did plainly. We say what was done to him plainly. Not because our words can redeem his blood, but because the lies the government is telling about Alex Pretti are a second violence upon him. Our silence would be a third.”

And ’s data:

“Indeed, in our tracking, Trump’s net approval rating on immigration has declined by about 4 points since the day before Good’s death until today. Meanwhile, his overall approval rating has declined by 2 points and is near its second-term lows.”

So what happens next?

• We will see if the calls for an impartial investigation grow and are respected.

• We will see if unfounded claims from the administration about Pretti and quick defense of what happened before a full investigation continue.

• We will see if more members of Congress fly to Minneapolis and join a fight to guarantee justice for Alex. (Vermont Rep. Becca Balint and others did after Good’s killing)

• We will see if calls for Noem’s impeachment grow.

• Hard to imagine the House Democrats who voted for DHS funding (yes, it was before Alex’s killing, but still) do not face primary challenges on this issue alone. Co-founder of RunforSomething, Amanda Litman wrote:

And with this story - like always - we thank independent reporters on the ground acting so courageously to bring the world facts.

A huge debt of gratitude to the Minnesota Star Tribune.

There was no shortage of ideas for the year ahead: mass boycotts, acts of civil disobedience on a historic scale, blue states possibly withholding federal taxes. But they said they planned to work too on getting to know their neighbors more and building local mechanisms for mutual aid.

There was also no shortage of criticism from the group for Democratic Party leaders, who they think should be turning away from “corporate” money, offering more concrete policy solutions to combat the high cost of living in the country, and communicating a game plan to oppose Trump and stand up for human rights in a more strategic way.

At the local level, they applauded leaders willing to join them in the streets, but they thought Democratic-held statehouses should be working quicker to codify residents’ constitutional rights, like many did after the fall of Roe v. Wade.

All three guests pushed back against criticism from Republicans that protesters — especially in clashes with ICE agents — had gone too far in some cases or have impeded the work of law enforcement.

“We are using nonviolence as a means of resistance. Filming ICE agents is our right. I’m not one who’s able to rattle off the Constitution, but I know that much,” said Carrie H., author of the popular newsletter What Can I Do?, based in Seattle. “We have a legal right to record what ICE is doing. Many of the things that people are doing are not getting in the way. [ICE] is not operating by the rules.”

Sarah Burt, a longtime campaign and community organizer from Minneapolis, who lives just three blocks from where Renee Good was killed, said she feels like her city got thrown into an ICE and Border Patrol marketing campaign.

“Everywhere that [Chief Border Patrol Agent] Greg Bovino goes in Minnesota, he has people filming what they’re doing. And the most violent things are happening when he shows up. It feels like it is, once again, a message directly to extremists in this country, ‘Hey, you should sign up for ICE, because this is how we’re treating folks in blue states and brown people.’”

“That is in our face,” she went on. She argued that, in her experience, most potential protesters showing up are simply concerned about their neighbors or law enforcement action they see in their communities.

In the conversation, Kai Newkirk, co-chair of the Arizona Democratic Party Progressive Council, argued that the country has a long tradition of civil disobedience and that nonviolent protest was as American as apple pie.

He referred to the work and message of Dr. King as inspiration for those protesting the Trump administration, especially over this holiday weekend.

“Sometimes there is a great gap between the law and the purpose of the law … and there have been many, many times in history in our country and in other countries where people have had to be willing to peacefully and nonviolently break unjust laws in the service of the spirit of the law or justice, or to break neutral laws that are upholding injustice. People said when students in Greensboro sat in at the lunch counter in 1960 to say, ‘We are human beings, we deserve to be able to be here just like anybody else,’” Newkirk said. “I think that that’s what we have to do here and now, and that’s what many people are doing all across the country.”

Newkirk said he was focused this next year, in part, on preparing for “whatever levels of nonviolent civil resistance are going to be necessary to prevent Trump from anything that could stop us from a free and fair election.”

Whereas, Burt talked about finding new ways to bring voters who are engaged on issues right now into the voting booth and keeping them plugged in with the Democratic Party.

And she agreed with Carrie H. that there was room for anyone in their movement — from “keyboard warriors,” as they put it, to lawyers, as well as people willing to put their bodies on the line to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience, and especially the filming of ICE agents.

(*apologies to those who listen to the video, Kai Newkirk’s audio is subpar. Total user-error on my part learning a new recording app)

Below is an transcript of our conversation, edited for length and clarity —

Where the resistance is headed next

MaryAlice Parks:

We are one year into President Trump’s second term. And there are going to be a lot of stories about what exactly he has done, what he hasn’t done, if he’s made good on campaign promises, how the economy is doing. But I’m also interested in this moment on frankly, the other side, the opposition. This is a marker for their movement too, for the so-called resistance.

So, I’m grateful to be joined by three very interesting guests who are grassroots mobilizers, real organizers, the boots on the ground, field marshal types who get people to events, get people out to vote, who work on campaigns. That is what all three of my guests have in common…

I want to get to a larger conversation about this last year, what you all have learned, where you see your movement and your work going over the next year, but Sarah, I have to start with you and just the latest of everything you’ve seen and experienced on the ground there in Minneapolis.

You told me that you live just three blocks away from where Renee Goode was shot and killed. We are obviously pre-recording this interview, and it is a dynamic fluid situation with a lot changing, but looking big picture, how are you doing? How is your community doing?

Sarah Burt, staff with Education Minnesota and longtime community and campaign organizer:

Sure, you know, it’s been pretty devastating. Broadly, we’ve experienced quite a bit of political violence this year since Donald Trump was elected. We had the assassination of Speaker of Emerita, Melissa Hortman, this summer, and it just feels like things have compounded, and we are a target here. So basically what I’m seeing in my community and what I’m hearing statewide is that federal agents are everywhere, breaking the law. They are racially profiling folks in every community where they are. They’re not discriminating whether people are citizens or not citizens. And there is just a lot of fear here in Minnesota right now, and it’s pretty difficult.

MaryAlice Parks:

I know you wrote in an update, newsletter to friends and family about how overwhelming it has been for you to look at video after video of the behavior of ICE agents there in your neighborhood, videos of neighbors tackled to the ground.

Talk to me too about the news and sort of the latest around the investigation — the sense that it’s very unlikely the agent will be criminally charged. And the updates that it seems the federal investigators are much more interested in looking into Renee and her wife than into investigating what actually happened on the ground.

Sarah Burt:

Yeah, clearly the federal government has a different agenda when it comes to what happened to Renee Good. It was helpful to see six US attorneys resigned yesterday from DOJ. They couldn’t say a lot about why they were resigning, but it was known that they were asked to look into the background of Renee Good’s widow, and that was just too far. So the federal government has a perspective on what happened. And here in Minnesota, we are trying to get justice for Renee and everyone else who is being impacted by this terror that we’re seeing everywhere that’s unlawful. Full stop.

MaryAlice Parks:

You told me how you feel like this is a moment where potentially the federal government and ICE agents are practicing for what they might be able to do or pull off in the rest of the country. Is this a training ground? Let’s keep talking over the course of this conversation about what you feel like you’ve learned even just in the last few weeks about organizing, in response to this administration.

But taking a step back -- to all of you -- like I said, we are pre-recording this interview but tagging it to one year into President Trump’s term. I’m thinking about the very beginning of his term, even really just the days right after the election in 2024. There was so much debate in the Democratic Party, I mean, there still is, about whether the Democrats had focused too much on Trump, too much on issues of democracy.

And so, I guess my first question to you is: did you plan immediately, as soon as you knew the results from the election, to focus your work on resisting this administration? Do you consider yourselves part of a so-called resistance?

Or was there instead a moment that you felt like something happened with this administration where it changed some of the work and what you were doing?

Carrie H, Seattle-based communications consultant and organizer who started the popular newsletter, ‘What can I do?’

Well, first of all, I feel very honored to be included with Kai and Sarah. It all sounds like you do some incredible work. I feel like as soon as the election occurred, you know, I’m not, I have not been an activist or an organizer. I’ve worked with nonprofits and definitely had my share of involvement in building a future and country I believe in. But I kind of went into high gear after the election and reached out to friends realizing that fascism breeds on isolation.

So I kind of planned to have a soup night right away and just brought people together. And no one had answers, no one knew what to do, but it was great to have people come together in that moment, people who were worried, who were reaching out. I think it didn’t really started -- people started waking up -- until the swearing in happened. And I kind of went into high gear.

Okay, I’m gonna come up with all the ways to take action and make it easy for people, because I saw a lot of people just kind of sinking back in disbelief and not really knowing what to do. So, I have communication skills. So, I tried to use that to make it easier for people to get involved. So for me, was yes, it was an immediate like, “let’s go people.” And there were people who were open to that and looking for that information to do anything they could to fight back.

Kai Newkirk, founder of For All, an Arizona-based center that does trainings on grassroots mobilization and nonviolent action:

I mean, I was in the highest gear I could get to during the election trying to stop what I thought was going to be a catastrophe for our country and our planet. So, there was definitely some just profound grief and sorrow about what was coming, a sense of failure, and trying to reflect and understand. And it’s strange because that gap time between the election results and inauguration is a substantial chunk of time, when you see this train coming down the track side, but it’s not yet there.

I think one thing that was noticeable to me was how clear it was that a lot of the initiative and the leadership to push back started from mostly outside of a lot of established organizers and organizations. Like, you know, 50-51 --what was that? Who was that? It was just some people that understood there was a need and took initiative and took action. I think it was telling or at least something to learn that for a some of us in that grief, in that space of reflection, and trying to understand what went wrong, other people swung to action now.

I think that as much as we expected it was going to be terrible, I’ve been surprised, many of us have, at some of the depths to which the Trump administration has gone.

MaryAlice Parks:

Thank you, both of you. Sarah, do you consider yourself part of a resistance movement? Is that how you talk about your work? And was there a moment for you where you felt like your work changed in this last year?

Sarah Burt:

You know, it felt like things got a lot more clarified. So, I work for a labor union and I think that one of the obvious dynamics happening here in this country right now is the vast expanse between the ultra wealthy and everyone else, right? So working for a labor union, feels very focused right now. Like we’re stepping into a conversation that people are having.

And one way that I’ve approached my work, especially since Melissa Hortman was assassinated, was like, okay, we have got to be extra vigilant right now, and we need to be taking action in every which way that we possibly can?

So, one example of that is, we all have some campaign background, and we hear from regular folks all the time, ‘Hey, you ask us to show up for Election Day, we get there, we vote, and then we don’t hear from you again?’ So being real action-oriented when we are in community with people and linking what their self-interest, obviously, to what’s happening in the moment. Then helping empower people to be engaged.

An example in my world is so we had a special election recently that happened after Election Day after things kind of shuffled around. This happened in St. Paul, and there had just been a referendum campaign where a lot of new parents had gotten involved around funding their schools.

We looked and we were like -- we want keep these parents who had just been involved in the referendum campaign, we want to keep them active. So, we were able to bring them into our campaign. It was a real natural, “Hey, you just learned about a lot of problems with school finance when you worked on that referendum campaign. The next thing we need to do is elect more folks to get involved at the state level, right? And be in positions of power where they can change how school funding works.”

And so we were successful, thankfully. The next goal is to get those folks activated both at the legislature, but then we need to take it to the next election, right? Like we need to elect Democrats in swing seats. I kind of refer to it as like “keeping the party going.” We’re going to grab folks and just kind of bring them along.

MaryAlice Parks:

You mentioned, obviously, your work with Melissa Hortman. I am curious if there are lessons specifically from her and her leadership you want to keep sharing with others, to help her legacy live on by what people like you learned from working with her.

Sarah Burt:

Yeah, absolutely. That’s a great question. So, Melissa was truly a larger than life political leader. She was the kind of person when you sat around a table with her and you were like, okay, ‘We need to get some movement on this issue.’ And if you brought your ideas, she oftentimes would say, ‘Of course, we can do the obvious thing here, but let’s try to do the thing that’s five times bigger. Let’s work towards that.’ And so she had just this really expansive view around let’s do the most good for the most amount of people. And she was just unrelenting in that task.

MaryAlice Parks:

Thank you for sharing more about her. Kai, you mentioned the word “surprised.” That one year in, you actually did have moments where you were surprised by this administration. I think a lot of Americans feel like that. I’m curious how the rest of you would sort of respond, but also, Kai, I’d be curious on the other side, what part of being a movement leader or being a grassroots organizer has surprised you this last year? Whether it was things that went well or didn’t go well.

Kai Newkirk:

Yeah, you know, it’s funny that one of the first things that came to mind was the inflatables in Portland and the success of bringing this kind of very whimsical, funny, creative, tactical innovation to the table, which I think it was done as a way to try to push back on Trump’s effort to characterize the movement as a force of violence and chaos.

It’s not something I would have thought of, but we have to create the strongest and most clear moral contrast between the ugliness and violence of Trump’s authoritarian mass deportation campaign, mass federal agents disappearing people off the streets and now shooting people in the streets, and a movement that is trying to protect our neighbors, our families, our communities.

And one of the things that I think that’s been reinforced is just the profound importance of courage. Folks talk about not complying with things, not conceding space. I was talking to my mom over the holidays and she’s talking about being afraid to go out to rallies and just talking with her about what our family has been through, the legacy of our ancestors, service to this country and that we’re not going to let Trump tell us what we can do or not.

And that courage, especially when you’re in situations of isolation. And sometimes there are big sacrifices to be made, like the folks that just resigned, the prosecutors in Minnesota. Every single act like that, whether it’s individually or collectively or coming out -- that courage to say, “This is scary, it is dangerous, we don’t know what’s going to happen, but we’re not going to let that fear win. We’re not going to let that intimidation win.

We’re going to be moved by love and care for each other in our country.” And I see that spirit in millions of people across the country.

MaryAlice Parks:

It was actually one of the questions I had on my list. Like, what do you say to people who perhaps want to be involved in what you guys are doing in your work, but consider themselves too nervous or fearful. Carrie, what about you? Are there moments that that have surprised you this last year with the administration or with your own work in what’s been effective, what’s caught on?

Carrie H:

Yeah, lots of things have surprised me. And I think just the adaptability of Americans. You know, a year ago, I had never used Signal, and now it’s the first thing I look at when I wake up and the last thing I look at when I go to bed. I mean, learning how to operate in different systems and move about organizing in a whole new way is really something that has surprised me about myself. And watching others come into this movement, older folks who might not be comfortable with technology kind of catching on and learning how to use things. I think, speaking to your point about people are afraid of putting themselves out there. There are so many different roles in this movement for everyone. You know, if you aren’t someone who wants to be on the front lines, there are many, many different things you can do behind the scenes. I consider myself to be typically a behind-the-scenes kind of person.

I’m helping set up systems for different grassroots groups and helping designing logos and websites and helping with communications. And we have lawyers who are guiding our work for understanding how to speak to ICE raids. I mean, there’s just really a place for everyone.

Carrie H:

What we need is for each person to step up and step in, you know. And that doesn’t have to be, I mean... I’m just blown away by the courage of the people in, now it’s Minnesota before it was DC and LA, just the pictures of people who look like my mom, just fighting ICE agents. It’s just like incredible, and there are people who are willing to do that. But there are also people who... there’s an important place for all us. If we’re at our computers, we can be keyboard warriors. I mean, it’s not gonna be, you’re just sending someone a letter anymore. There’s a level that we have to come up to realize we are fighting an authoritarian regime. And it’s not business as usual, what we’ve done in the past multiple decades is not going to work anymore. But there are roles and ways for each of us to get involved and that doesn’t have to be in the streets.

MaryAlice Parks:

Picking up on something you said there about women fighting ICE agents, what do you say to people who think it has gone too far in these moments? It’s one thing to engage in civil disobedience, another to obstruct the work of law enforcement.

What do you say to that idea that there’s a line of where resistance goes too far or is disruptive and unlawful?

Carrie H:

I mean, I would say we’re approaching this as nonviolent resistance. Every single group I work with, that is forefront for us -- we are using nonviolence as a means of resistance. Filming ICE agents is our right. You know, I’m not one who’s able to rattle off the Constitution, but I know that much.

We have a legal right to record what ICE is doing. Many of the things that people are doing are not getting in the way. They are not operating by the rules. And so I think a lot of it, I’d have to say, is the media who’s slanting it one way and making people who are exercising their constitutional rights look bad.

I just don’t feel like that’s even worth addressing, to be honest.

MaryAlice Parks:

Sarah, well, yeah, I’m curious, because that’s been, of course, the criticism from the other side, from government officials, from the White House that the tactics that are impeding law enforcement, tactics that cross the line.

Sarah Burt:

Well, you know, this feels like an attempt to push people to reject their humanity. Carrie made several good points around how these all of the things that we’re doing on the ground are absolutely legal. And it feels partially like we’re in the midst of a marketing campaign.

Everywhere that [Chief Border Patrol Agent] Greg Bovino goes in Minnesota, he has people filming what they’re doing. And the most violent things are happening when he shows up. So he’s filming these things, and it feels like it is once again, just a message directly to extremists in this country. ‘Hey, you should sign up for ICE, because this is how we’re treating folks in blue states and, and brown people.’ So, it just feels like this is a moment where that is one thing that is in our face that we’re being pushed towards.

And then you have folks like Carrie mentioned, who look like her mom, who are just concerned, and they’re not playing into that. We are choosing to be together in this moment as opposed to being divided. And that is palpable here in Minnesota at least. And it gives me some hope.

Kai Newkirk:

And we’ve got to be clear that we are exercising our rights and we’re also in a proud American tradition. Civil disobedience and standing up against injustice and recognizing that sometimes there is a great gap between the law and the purpose of the law, which is what is right, justice and morality. And there have been many, many times in history and in other countries where people have had to be willing to peacefully and non-violently break unjust laws, right, in the service of the spirit of the law of justice or to break neutral laws that are upholding injustice. People said when students in Greensboro sat in at the lunch counter in 1960 to say, ‘We are human beings. We deserve to be able to be here just like anybody else.’

I think that that’s what we have to do here and now, and that’s what many people are doing all across the country. And it is, we have to understand that, you know, there are no referees, right? Somebody saying, was it fair? It is unfair that in a situation where everybody across the country, you know, they see the videos of the murder of Renee Nicole Good and to see [DHS Secretary] Kristi Noem and Donald Trump talking about her as a domestic terrorist... is just beyond the pale reality for most people.

But they’re gonna do that. They’re gonna use their massive megaphones to do that. We have to understand we can’t give them an inch. We can’t give them anything to use, because they’ll take a grain of sand and try to turn it into a mountain and try to distract and obscure from the fact that they are at the helm of this force of just incredible fear and violence and hatred in the country and stirring up the worst in us and just terrorizing people across the country.

And we have to stand against that in a way where we hold and embody the promise of what Dr. King said of a loving community of a nation that can be at peace with itself.

MaryAlice Parks:

I want ask all of you about some of these standout moments from the left, from Dems, from grassroots organizers from the last year. You brought up the No Kings rallies across the country. I’m also thinking about the shutdown fight here in DC. Obviously, it was a big part of my city’s life and experience the last year.

Were there moments that you felt on a national level broke through and really mattered? Or, so much of what you guys have talked about is local work, documenting what ICE is doing, getting people on the streets, getting people involved in local campaigns.

Where do you see the need for local versus national energy? What were your takeaways from some of those moments that broke through on a national level?

Carrie H:

I see on a national level the push back against Disney. I mean, that was a really quick turnaround with Jimmy Kimmel. That was a great success for us, you know, to help individuals understand that we, the people, have power and our purchasing power really matters. Avelo Airlines just announced that they’re no longer deporting individuals through ICE. They ended that contract. Spotify is no longer airing ICE ads.

So, on the national level, I see us as a collective wielding our purchasing power to really push corporations to be on the side of democracy and not the regime.

I feel like that’s really important too, because most of where people spend their money these days is not locally. So, I think that’s a really important piece for us.

And yeah, the turnout for the No Kings 1 and No Kings 2 was huge. And to show up in force like that is super important. I think it’s both local and national. It’s not one or the other.

We have to give it our all. And what we need to do is really bring others along and that happens on all levels.

MaryAlice Parks:

Sarah, what do you think? Are there moments that have broken through on the national level that really mattered or is that part of the strategy going forward still? Or do you focus so much of your time still — and plan to focus so much of your time still — on standing up literally block by block, street by street, neighbor by neighbor?

Sarah Burt:

Yeah, right. So that is what feels immediate here in Minnesota in this moment right now. Certainly, we all are looking to our elected leaders to say, “Hey, what are you saying in this moment? Are you seeing the same things we’re seeing with our own eyes?” So, I know that certainly the collective action around boycotting things we’re just starting to see some of those things pay off.

But when we look towards what we need, we really do need are some national voices creating some real opposition to what is happening in this moment. I was very heartened - this wasn’t a national moment - but I was very heartened by how Mayor Mamdani campaigned and how he pulled in an affordability agenda and the simplicity around which he brought those things that he heard from New Yorkers. This didn’t come from him. It’s really clear when you follow him, he listened to the folks around him and brought forward, all right, ‘this is what our agenda here is in New York and this is what we’re working on.’

And he hit the ground running clearly on day one to start trying to achieve aspects of that affordability agenda. And that is what it feels like Americans are hungry for in addition to protecting our human rights.

MaryAlice Parks:

That in “addition part” is so key there. Like, I sort of said at the top, there’s been such a debate that continues to rage here, especially with sort of DC Dems about whether the party in particular is focused too much on Trump, on issues of democracy and human rights, whether voters really just want a conversation around affordability and cost of living and social services and how the government can work to bring costs down, bring inflation down.

I imagine that all three of you are probably in that camp of Democrats can “walk and chew gum at the same time” and offer both.... both opposition to actions of this administration that you all do not approve of or think go too far and need to be met with resistance and also a Democratic Party that can offer policy ideas for the average voter.

But talk to me about where that line is, who’s getting it right, where you see that balance going forward?

Kai Newkirk:

I mean, we’ve got to. It’s just dealing with the truth. And the truth is we are facing an authoritarian regime that’s the greatest threat to democracy in our country probably since the Civil War, maybe World War II. You can’t ignore that. We can’t ignore that. And also, everyday people are struggling to get by and falling behind. And there’s a crisis of cost of living and just profound and growing economic inequality in our country.

But it’s absolutely possible to respond to the truth and moment, right, address it and give leadership direction to can confront it all.

There’s no contradiction between that. And that’s the kind of leadership that we need from Democrats. A lot of it comes from the base, but it’s an interplay. Just like the local becomes national.

So I think what we need in the Democratic Party is, I think we’re still not seeing the level of leadership in terms of nonviolent civil resistance that we need across (the country). Lots of good things are happening, and the shutdown was an important step, but there’s much more that people could be doing.

From some modeling being out there, like I say, to Governor Walz, he should be out there. He should be out there standing with the people and saying, “If they’re going to do something, I’ll be with you.” And to be thinking about all the tools that can be used at every level of government. Maybe some big blue states need to come together and talk about collectively withholding taxes to the federal government or something like that, right?

At the same time we have to offer a vision agenda to meet the crisis and the cost of living in equality that gives people a sense that their lives are going to be much much better if we’re empowering them.

MaryAlice Parks:

Sarah, let me put it a little bit more simply. What are your hopes for the next step for this coming year for Democratic Party officials?

Sarah Burt:

Right, one place where we are being really successful standing up against the Trump administration is obviously in the courts. And so I understand that Democratic AGs across the country got together, they took sections of Project 2025, and they said, “all right, so we think in this jurisdiction, you should take on this issue. And here in Minnesota, we’re gonna take on these sets of issues.”

I think that broadly it would be great if there was more of a framework for democratic state legislatures — any chamber where you have a majority, to say, “Hey, why don’t you start passing bills where you’re codifying these human rights that we have in our constitution?” Let’s make sure it’s in the state level. We saw when Roe v. Wade went away, that as a movement we hadn’t been working on that issue strongly enough, right? And so we had many states that didn’t have those rights codified - jump into action when they could. So, those are just some ideas I have around like, nationally what we could be doing.

And it’s sort of along the lines of like, pick your lane, right? So we had the AGs stepping into this very specific lane for protecting our rights in the courts. And so how about we have some national Democrats also choosing specific issues, right? And just being out there ubiquitously standing up for what people are asking them to stand up for right now.

MaryAlice Parks:

Carrie, what are your hopes for this next year from the National Democratic Party or thought-leaders on the left?

Carrie H:

I hope they turn away from corporate money. I think right now national Democrats are driven by corporate interests. So, I hope that they really turn to the people and listen to us and take a stance and really stand up and fight for us, be more proactive, not reactive. I see that on the grassroots level, we’re organizing, you know, first it’s local, now we’re connecting with people across the country and comparing notes and really trying to do a Blue State Wall campaign here.

So really trying to perhaps… everything’s so decentralized right now, but I think we’re realizing that we need to be... just as authoritarians around the world have a playbook...

We, the pro-democracy movement also needs to really strengthen our playbook and come together. And so I am hopeful that we will work together to pressure our elected officials at all levels and not have it be so isolated, but really have our collective power.

So that we’re not just playing catch up, but we’re really moving us towards a democracy that invites people of all races and all social classes to be have equal rights and that the law treats them the same.

MaryAlice Parks:

We’ve gone long now, I really appreciate it. I’m going to give everyone though a final thought, on lessons learned from the last year or where you plan to put your energy in the year ahead.

Sarah, what about you?

Sarah Burt:

Yeah, it feels like there is a place for everyone in this moment that we’re all in collectively together, right? So like, when we think about our humanity, this is the thing that keeps us safe, right? The more you get to know your neighbors, the stronger you can be fighting against and standing up and actually building something together.

So, I think that we all come from different perspectives with how we’ve been organizing, but that seems like a foundational piece that we just can’t lose sight of. And from my perspective and campaigns, once again, it is taking the folks that are showing up and keeping them, keeping the party going together and staying connected.

Kai Newkirk:

I want to support us in thinking about going to whatever levels of nonviolent civil resistance is going to be necessary to prevent Trump from anything that could stop us from a free and fair election or violations of the constitutional order that would be very difficult to come back from.

And so I think we have to be thinking about things like mass economic noncooperation, boycotts and general strikes, mass nonviolent, civil disobedience on a historic scale in this country.

And it flows into the election, because if we can mobilize like that to protect our ability to elect our leaders and live with basic freedoms, then it’s going to help us to mobilize. And we need the biggest blue wave we’ve ever seen in the history of this country, right? So we bring Democrats into power nationally to give us a chance to stop what Trump is doing, to investigate all this criminality and corruption.

Carrie H:

Yeah, I mean, in all the ugliness that we see today, I do feel hopeful. And I feel hopeful because this has, I think, woken people up to, you know... we can’t keep going as we have been going. Neighbors don’t know neighbors. So, I do feel like this is about strengthening our own communities and turning towards building alternatives like mutual aid efforts and really supporting people in our own communities, our own neighborhoods, and thinking about how we’re going to go about living our lives and approaching democracy in a different way.

You know, democracy is a verb, and for a long time, many of us haven’t participated in it. So, I look at it as — this is our time to wake up and build something more beautiful, that is more inclusive.

When people are ready to activate, when they’re ready to get involved, to move from “maybe I’ll call my Senator this week” to really taking an active role and trying to figure out how to step into the movement — I really am working on helping organizations make that easier. So, welcoming them in and finding their place. Kind of being their matchmaker and saying, ‘Hey, where do you want to get involved? Great, welcome.’

And kind of pointing people in the right direction. I’m a very cynical person, but the hopeful approach I’m taking to this is that this is what we needed to wake us all up and build something different.

MaryAlice Parks:

Carrie, Kai, Sarah, thank you. Thank you so much for this conversation, for sharing your insights and for giving us a bit of a preview of where you plan to put your energy and time going forward. Thank you again.