Red, White, and Uninsured

It's the Fourth of July Holiday weekend here in America. We hope that those who have time off can enjoy it, wherever they may be!

It's also a time when the one big beautiful bill (OBBBA) has passed .... which has a lot of implications. These include… estimates of 17 million people will lose health insurance, according to KFF. This is primarily due to cuts to Medicaid and changes to the Affordable Care Act marketplaces. The combined effect of these changes is estimated to lead to a substantial increase in the number of uninsured Americans. The OBBBA also reverses bipartisan SNAP paperwork-requirement exemptions for vulnerable groups of Americans, including veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and youth aging out of foster care, that were passed into law in 2023. The CBO estimated this change would kick 270,000 people in these categories off of their food assistance for three years for not being able to comply with the burdensome task of constantly providing proof they are working enough hours. The OBBBA provides nearly $30 billion to immensely expand enforcement and deportation operations of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), tripling its 2024 annual budget. It will also seriously damage our clean energy future, and have a variety of other damaging impacts on our environment.

So this is a hard moment for many, many people.

If you are being impacted by any of this: we feel you.

We understand that it can feel overwhelming. There may be feelings of grief, disappointment, and even despair. We want you to know you are not alone. We hope you find moments of community and solidarity in the months ahead.

We know we will need to find more and more ways to care for one another. This will increasingly be best done at local and sometimes state and regional levels. We encourage you: to reach out, to share resources and questions, to listen to neighbors and community members; to stretch into new configurations of care.

We want to share a series of recent podcasts and articles that we’ve found helpful, on a variety of topics.

5 cool books:

• Regenerating Earth: Farmers Working with Nature to Feed Our Future - Kelsey Timmerman

• The Food Forward Garden: A Complete Guide to Designing and Growing Edible Landscapes - Christian Douglas

• The Last Sweet Bite: Stories and Recipes of Culinary Heritage Lost and Found - Michael Shaikh

• The Nightcrawlers: A Story of Worms, Cows, and Cash in the Underground Bait Industry - Joshua Steckley

• Green with Milk and Sugar: When Japan Filled America's Tea Cups - Robert Hellyer

Podcast and articles

• The Mamdani Effect - Conspirituality

• Does America Need a Hero? - Throughline

• Iran and the U.S., Part Three: Soleimani's Iran: Throughline - NPR

• What the Supreme Court Does in the Shadows - NPR

• A Nation's Story: What to the Slave is Fourth of July? - National Museum of African American History and Culture

• Visionary Activist with hostess Carolyn Casey talks with Sara Jolena Wolcott on the Indigenous Roots of American Democracy - From KPFA radio

• 5 ways Trump's bill will limit medicaid - NPR

• On Powers, Great and Small (podcast) - The Emerald

• Congress approves reversal of US Climate Policy - Grist

• Coal miners are fighting Trump's safety cuts - and winning - Grist

• California rolls on with electric trucks - despite Trump - Grist

• A Palestinian Love Story with Devin Atallah and Sarah Ihmoud - How to Survive the End of the World

Resources on healing/self-care (not specifically written for this moment)

• Managing stress and building resilience -Mind

• Self-Care Tips for Student Activists, Advocates, and Allies - University of Michigan, University Health and Counselling

• 5 ways to manage politically induced stress - University of Michigan, Michigan Medicine

• How to Take Care of Your Mental Health While Tackling the Climate Crisis - Sierra Club

• Healing Systems - Stanford Social Innovation Review