The Dictatorship
Trump’s megabill suggests to rural women that punishment is the point
Let’s call the Republicans’ so-called ‘big beautiful bill” what it is: a legislative double-barreled shotgun aimed at the bodies of women, especially Southern women and women who are Black, brown and low-income. One barrel blasts Medicaid access. The other guts Planned Parenthood. The result? A deliberate attempt to kill reproductive freedom, strip women of their basic dignity and destroy what progress this region has made in maternal health outcomes.
This isn’t just policy. It’s punishment.
This isn’t just policy. It’s punishment.
Cutting Medicaid while attacking Planned Parenthood isn’t fiscal responsibility. It’s a targeted cruelty that hurts women nationwide. But particularly for women in the South — where health systems are already under-resourced, rural clinics are vanishing and maternal mortality rates are similar to those in developing nations — it’s nothing short of a death sentence for them and their babies.
Let’s talk facts.
In 2023 in Mississippi, 57% of births were covered by Medicaid. In Louisiana, it was 64%. These aren’t just statistics. These are lives — sisters, daughters, mothers and aunties — trying to survive a system designed to abandon them.
In many rural ZIP codes, Planned Parenthood is the only accessible provider of cancer screenings, contraception, prenatal maternal care and postpartum care. Gutting its funding while simultaneously choking Medicaid is like setting fire to the only lifeboat in a flood. Let’s be even more real: If you are a woman living in rural Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas or Alabama, this bill doesn’t just inconvenience your access to care. It incinerates it.
In rural Southern counties, hospitals have shut down their labor and delivery units in droves. Some counties don’t have a single practicing OB-GYN. That’s not a policy failure — that’s an egregious policy choice being carried out with surgical precision.
Imagine being six months pregnant, with no car and no public transit and with the closest provider two hours away — if it’s even taking Medicaid patients. That’s not health care. That’s sanctioned neglect.
Rural women — especially Black, Indigenous and Latina women — have been treated like afterthoughts for generations. But now, they’re being treated like collateral damage in a culture war they didn’t ask to be in. This is structural racism at is deadliest.
If you’re a lawmaker who’s gutting access to women’s reproductive while smiling for photo ops at church on Sunday, understand this: Every rural woman who dies from a preventable complication, every baby born undernourished because its mother couldn’t access prenatal care, every ZIP code that loses a clinic because of these budget cuts is your fault.
These attacks aren’t incidental. They are ideological. They are part of a long game to control women’s bodies while criminalizing their autonomy — especially in Black and brown communities. It’s no coincidence that the same states eager to shred Medicaid expansion are the ones leading the charge against abortion rights, denying gender-affirming care to trans youths and standing opposed to the very notion of care as a public good.
What’s left when the clinic closes, the OB-GYN relocates and the Medicaid card is worthless?
That’s exactly why we released “Shift the South,” groundbreaking report rooted in the lived realities and leadership of women and girls of color across the American South. It maps the merciless, maniacal movement to suppress autonomy, erase reproductive justice and underfund communities into silence. But it also lifts up the blueprint for transformation — investing in Southern women as agents of change, not casualties of policy. It’s more than data — it’s our declaration. And in the face of cruelty disguised as governance, we offer clarity, courage and counterstrategy.
What’s left when the clinic closes, the OB-GYN relocates and the Medicaid card is worthless?
Silence. Suffering. Stillbirths.
We’ve been here before. But we refuse to die quietly this time.
At the Women’s Foundation of the South, we refuse to act as if women are disposable. We know that maternal health, reproductive access and community wellness aren’t luxuries — they are basic rights.
This bill? It’s not just bad policy. It’s a betrayal.
We will fight it — not just with data and dollars, but with the righteous rage of every grandmother who buried a daughter too soon, every mother who had to drive 200 miles for care and every young girl growing up in a state that sees her more as a womb than a whole human being.
Republicans Thursday passed their bill that cuts Medicaid and defunds Planned Parenthood, and Friday, President Trump signed it into law. They should all be aware, though, of the rage they’ve unleashed in women — in the South and across the country — who don’t plan to sit around silently and die.
Carmen James Randolph
Carmen James Randolph is the founding president and CEO of the Women’s Foundation of the South (WFS), a groundbreaking philanthropic force unapologetically investing in women and girls of color across the American South. She was named one of the Top 50 Women Leaders of Louisiana for two consecutive years. Under her leadership, WFS released the Shift the South Reporta bold, data-driven blueprint spotlighting the systemic challenges and policy shifts needed to transform the region. Join the community and the conversation at @womensfoundationsouth and sign up for our newsletter at womensfoundationsouth.org.
The identities of several members of the militia created by New York GOP gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman have reportedly been revealed.
Blakeman’s quest to stand up a force of armed and deputized citizens in his capacity as Nassau County executive — to help with purported “emergencies” — has garnered comparisons to Nazi brownshirts. The Long Island militia has also been likened to the Ku Klux Klan and slave patrols during the era of chattel slavery, both of which deployed militias filled with civilians to terrorize Black people.
A onetime umbrella-holder for Donald Trump and a devout MAGA loyalist, Blakeman has said he will never disagree with Trump in public. He also has said that his militia of “special deputies” — which could be unleashed at his whim — might be used to quell civil rights demonstrationssaying it would be available “if there was a riot.”
Democrats have sounded the alarm that some of the militia members were unqualified and, in some cases, had run into issues with the law themselves. Such fears were seemingly confirmed by a recent court filing by Democrats who are suing to thwart the militia, as reported by Newsday.
The list of deputies includes Zachary Cohen, a nephew of Blakeman’s who, according to Newsday, “has no law enforcement or military experience.”
Per Newsday:
According to the documents, Zachary Cohen obtained his pistol license in the spring of 2024 but is without law enforcement or military experience. His résumé indicated he manages his family’s real estate portfolio as president and CEO of AMZ Management in Rutherford, New Jersey.
Cohen writes in his cover letter: ‘I am extremely interested in serving my community and following in the footsteps of my Uncle Bruce Blakeman.’
Cohen could end up working alongside a former New York Police Department officer whose manhandling of a suspect led to a massive civil settlement by New York City in 1995. (The officer was acquitted of assault.)
In the application Donald Alesi submitted to join the volunteer program he touted his decorated service with the FBI and the NYPD’s narcotics division, recently released court documents show. Omitted are dozens of allegations and complaints throughout his time as an officer in the 1980s and 1990s, including having been one of two Brooklyn officers charged with assaulting the driver of a passenger van, leaving the man paralyzed from the neck down.
While Alesi and the other officer were acquitted in the criminal case, the city paid a $16.6 million civil settlement, according to news reports. Newsday found the information in a search of police misconduct records using Alesi’s name.
Newsday did not obtain comment from Cohen or Alesi. When asked for comment on the names being released, a Blakeman spokesperson told Newsday that the judge in the case had ties to Democrats and should recuse himself.
The list reportedly includes a bunch of other people whose expertise on matters of law enforcement is questionable — to say the least. For example, there are several registered gun owners listed, including a former team dentist for the NHL’s New York Islanders, a former member of Blakeman’s transition team and a tractor-trailer driver.
A dentist. A truck driver. A Blue Light News. Sounds like a fine group of people if you’re looking to haul cargo, write a press release or replace a cavity. But nothing about this bunch of gun-toting volunteers suggests they have any competency more useful in this case than their willingness to take orders at the behest of a Trump sycophant.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
Today’s edition of quick hits.
* An understandable reaction: “During his press briefing today, Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, reacted to Trump’s Easter Sunday post threatening to destroy bridges and power plants if Iran doesn’t make a deal soon. ‘We were alarmed by the rhetoric, seen in that social media post that threatened American attacks on power plants, bridges and other infrastructure should Iran not agree to a deal,’ Dujarric said.”
* Crisis conditions in Lebanon: “More than 1.1 million people, which is more than 20% of Lebanon’s population, are now displaced within the country’s borders as Israel continues its military offensive, the U.N. said in a report today. A third of those affected are children.”
* Artemis II: “NASA’s Artemis II mission made history on Monday by sending humans farther from Earth than ever before.”
* Keep an eye on this one: “Almost immediately after an immigration agent shot and wounded a Venezuelan immigrant in Minneapolis this winter, the federal government cast the injured man as an attempted murderer and the agent as the victim of a brutal beating. That version of events began unraveling when prosecutors dropped felony charges against the injured man, Julio C. Sosa-Celis, and one of his housemates, Alfredo A. Aljorna, who had fled from immigration agents. Yet video footage of the shooting, newly obtained by The New York Times, raises questions about why it took weeks for the government’s case to fall apart.”
* The latest on the Bannon case: “The Supreme Court on Monday granted the Trump Justice Department’s request to vacate an appeals court ruling against Steve Bannon, after the Department of Justice told the high court that it wants to dismiss the matter that was brought against the Donald Trump ally during the Biden administration.”
* U.S. marshals waived training rules? “Members of Elon Musk’s private security team were deputized as federal agents last year even though some of the billionaire’s guards lacked the required training and law enforcement experience, according to newly released government emails.”
* It’s not at all clear why anyone would follow this executive order as binding: “President Donald Trump has signed a second executive order aimed at fixing college sports, this time laying out specific transfer and eligibility rules, limiting how athletes can be compensated for their name, image and likeness and threatening schools that violate rules with financial penalties, the White House announced Friday.”
* Noted without comment: “Just a few months after opening, the controversial Trump Truth Store in [Chicago suburb] Crystal Lake has temporarily shut down, citing a drop in sales amid the ongoing Iran war.”
See you tomorrow.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
An official in charge of privacy issues at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, which oversees voting rights laws, resigned last week as the Trump administration continues to pursue sensitive voter data for its voter suppression efforts.
NPR reported Friday on the resignation of Kilian Kagle, who worked in the division led by far-right lawyer Harmeet Dhillon:
Kilian Kagle was the chief FOIA officer and senior component official for privacy for DOJ’s Civil Rights Division before leaving his post in recent days. His resignation has not been previously reported. For nearly a year, the DOJ has been making unprecedented demands for sensitive voter data from most states — including voters’ driver’s license numbers, partial Social Security numbers, dates of birth and addresses — that some say violate privacy law.
In the past year, President Donald Trump has suggested that “we shouldn’t even have” midterm elections in 2026 and that Republicans should “take over” elections in parts of the country controlled by Democrats. And to help implement his autocratic ambitions, the president has installed election-denying zealots at the Justice Department, which has demanded sensitive voter information from states to feed into the administration’s error-prone SAVE voter eligibility tool. More than a dozen Republican-led states have complied with the demand, while other states’ attorneys general are suing in court — with good reason.
Kagle confirmed his departure to NPR but declined to comment. Neither Kagle nor the Justice Department responded to MS NOW’s request for comment.
Though he didn’t give a specific reason for his departure, Kagle joins scores of other former employees from the Civil Rights Division who have left as Dhillon has perverted it into an agency known for assaulting many of the rights it historically defended, including voting rights. In December, almost 300 now-former DOJ employees signed an open letter warning that Dhillon and her allies at the division were undermining civil rights and causing lasting harm to the department’s credibility.
They wrote:
Every election brought changes, but the fundamental mission of our work remained the same. That’s why most of us planned to stay at the Division following the 2024 election. But after witnessing this Administration destroy much of our work, we made the heartbreaking decision to leave — along with hundreds of colleagues, including about 75 percent of attorneys. Now, we must sound the alarm about the near destruction of DOJ’s once-revered crown jewel.
The first year of Trump’s second term has been a nightmare for privacy experts, who raised issues to NPR about the president’s efforts to acquire sensitive voter data.
Others have sounded the alarm elsewhere on other controversies, including the administration’s interest in high-tech surveillance tools that have been deployed by authoritarian governments.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
- Education Department rescinds previous Title IX agreements with schools over gender identity
- Trump suggests US could charge toll for Strait of Hormuz passage
- Trump brushes off questions about potential war crimes in Iran
- Trump doubles down on Tuesday night deadline for Iran to meet US demands
- Trump details rescue operation of missing F-15 airman in Iran: How it unfolded
- New York gubernatorial candidate’s militia reportedly exposed
- Monday’s Mini-Report, 4.6.26
- Privacy official resigns at DOJ’s Civil Rights Division as Trump menaces midterms
- Team Trump targets post-Watergate reforms, one by one
- Transgender veteran blasts administration over service ban: ‘They seem to hate us’
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoLuigi Mangione acknowledges public support in first official statement since arrest
-
Politics1 year agoFormer ‘Squad’ members launching ‘Bowman and Bush’ YouTube show
-
Politics1 year agoFormer Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron launches Senate bid
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoPete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse
-
Politics1 year agoBlue Light News’s Editorial Director Ryan Hutchins speaks at Blue Light News’s 2025 Governors Summit
-
The Dictatorship7 months agoMike Johnson sums up the GOP’s arrogant position on military occupation with two words
-
Uncategorized1 year ago
Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
-
Politics12 months agoDemocrat challenging Joni Ernst: I want to ‘tear down’ party, ‘build it back up’