Oct. 4, 2025

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - We certainly live in challenging times.

Shortly before RFK, Jr.’s hand-picked CDC panel met last week to abandon its COVID-19 vaccine recommendations, Senator Adam Schiff publicly asked insurers to cover routine vaccines for illnesses, no matter what the group recommended. I applaud Sen. Schiff for continually fighting the good fight.

Throughout my time in Congress, I was also a lifelong advocate for health equity. I spent decades fighting to make healthcare more accessible in underserved communities like the one I represented in Brooklyn. It was both an opportunity and a challenge to fight these inequalities.

But lately, some of our health equity challenges are quietly morphing into crises right before our eyes. I’m talking about pharmacy deserts, which continue to expand as pharmacies close in our cities and surrounding neighborhoods.

Take Sen. Schiff’s efforts, for instance. If pharmacists aren’t around to administer vaccinations, insurance coverage of these COVID-19 shots won't matter for the millions of Americans stuck in pharmacy deserts. 

Pharmacies are closing at an alarming pace. Across America: CVS closed 900 stores between 2022 and 2024, and they will close 270 more stores in 2025; Walgreens is shuttering 1,200 stores; and Rite-Aid, which recently filed for bankruptcy, closed more than 310. 

I cannot sit on the sidelines and watch as pharmacies, the lifelines of community healthcare, vanish before our eyes. These pharmacies are essential institutions that serve as trusted, accessible points of care for millions of families with nowhere else to turn.

Nationwide, local drugstores are shutting their doors. These aren’t just a loss for businesses big and small; they are a loss for entire communities. For many, especially in under-resourced areas, these pharmacies are where people fill prescriptions, get vaccinated, manage chronic conditions, and ask health questions they can’t afford to take to a doctor. They’re a pillar of public health.

So why is this happening?

One major reason is a coordinated attack by the pharmaceutical industry on the very companies, the so-called middlemen that help keep drug costs down. These are the organizations that negotiate discounts, enable mail delivery, and manage the logistics that make medicine more affordable and accessible. Despite their role in lowering prices, they’re being blamed in ads, in the press, and in legislation. But without them, drug prices will rise and the pharmacies serving vulnerable neighborhoods will keep disappearing.

When lawmakers pass bills that strip away these providers' ability to negotiate or operate pharmacies, the effects are swift and severe. Just look at Arkansas, where a new law is shutting down pharmacies and cutting off health care access in communities already struggling to meet basic needs. Other states are considering similar legislation, and minority communities will be hit first and worst.

This expanding patchwork of pharmacy deserts is not just inconvenient. It is a looming public health emergency that puts our communities at risk. Already, one-third of neighborhoods in major U.S. cities lack a local pharmacy, and those hardest hit are Black and Hispanic communities. If this trend continues, millions more will lose access to medications they need to stay healthy, manage diabetes or heart disease, or treat depression and anxiety. The list goes on.

We can’t afford to let that happen. Yes, our medicines must be cheaper. I am a lifelong Democrat. And when Republicans and President Trump are wrong, I hold them accountable. As such, the President deserves some acknowledgement with his recent executive order that aims to stop big drug companies from charging Americans the highest prices in the world. As did President Biden, who fought to allow Medicare the power to negotiate lower drug prices. But the real problem is that big drug companies are responsible for high drug prices, not the companies working to deliver medications affordably and efficiently. Tearing down the system that negotiates lower drug costs is like smashing a fire alarm because it’s too loud. It doesn’t stop the fire. It creates chaos and puts more people in danger.

Let’s stop attacking the parts of the system that are helping people. Parts that our everyday communities rely on. Let’s protect the pharmacies, services, and tools that keep our most vulnerable neighbors connected to care. Because once a pharmacy leaves a neighborhood, it rarely comes back, and the consequences can last a lifetime.

To Be Equal 
October 4, 2025

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - “What is at the center of this fight? … 20 million Americans are going to see their health care costs skyrocket. Fifteen million people are going to be jettisoned from Medicaid. They're going to decimate Medicaid. This is historic. This has not happened in U.S. history. In addition, your hospitals were shut down. Nursing homes shut down, clinics.” – U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro

If the Affordable Care Act’s enhanced premium tax credits are allowed to expire, premium payments for the more than 20 million Marketplace enrollees will more than double in 2026.  At least 4 million Americans could lose health care coverage altogether.

If the healthcare cuts in the “Big Ugly Bill” are allowed to stand, 700 rural hospitals – one in three – could shut down, and another 15 million Americans could become uninsured.

Legislation pending in Congress could prevent this catastrophe and end the government shutdown that is devastating families and communities across the country.

It’s no wonder the Trump administration and its allies in Congress would rather fear-monger with lies about undocumented immigrants than confront the facts.

The fact is, as long as the shutdown continues, local communities are losing access to over $60 billion in federal funding, jeopardizing essential services and infrastructure.

The fact is, veterans are being denied transition assistance, career counseling, and outreach. Families aren’t even able to place headstones at their loved ones’ graves in veterans cemeteries. Active-duty military families, many of whom already struggle to make ends meet, are working without pay, making it harder to cover basic living expenses.

The extremists in the White House and Congress are willing to deny nutrition assistance to mothers and children who rely on the WIC program … to withhold surgeries and treatment from patients at military treatment facilities … to delay progress on life-saving research and public health initiatives at the NIH and CDC … to disrupt Social Security and Medicare services for seniors and vulnerable populations … to jeopardize the health and safety of our workforce while Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspections are ceased.

And all of this is happening in defense of an crusade to strip health insurance from millions of working-class Americans and leave vast swaths of the country without access to critical care.

To be clear: unauthorized immigrants are ineligible to purchase health insurance on government exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act. They are ineligible for Medicaid, Medicare and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. The legislation that could prevent the health care catastrophe and end the government shutdown does not make them eligible for these programs.  Anyone who claims that it does is not telling the truth.

The government shutdown is not simply a conflict between conflicting political ideologies. It’s a conflict between fact and falsehood. It’s a conflict between responsible stewardship of public resources and a reckless grasp of those resources for billionaires. We can continue to fuel bitter partisan division while working Americans continue to lose ground to the wealthiest among us, or we can work together toward and equitable, stable, and healthy future.

August 27, 2025

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The French philosopher Albert reportedly said, “Without work all life is rotten but when work is soulless, life stifles and dies. Now, historians are suggesting he may have not uttered or written those exact words but been paraphrased by one of his biographers.  No matter.  The sentiment is a pertinent one, especially as we lift up Labor Day, its history, and the role that Black women have played in the labor history of our nation.

There is meaningful work and there is soul-crushing work, and the challenge Camus poses is how to find meaning in routine, how to embrace joy in everyday tasks.  Why do we work?  Partly to make a living, to earn money, to live, to provide the means to pursue our joy.  Why do we work?  Because our work makes a difference when we are organizers, cultural workers, paid activists.  We all struggle to find meaning in our work, but this is mostly a late 20^th century/21^st century phenomenon.  Historically, many worked because they had no choice, and meaning was a footnote, not central.

Consider the Black woman “domestic”.  More than half of all Black women held such jobs into the 1940s.  We didn’t love this work.  It was all we could get.  We nurtured white children without having the luxury to nurture our wone.  We were the backbone of white household, cooking, cleaning, and more.  And in the process of our work we were demeaned, often given used clothing instead of wages, often sexually assaulted by depraved white men who headed household.  But we worked because we had to.  We worked because we wanted our babies to live.

       Our nation has been celebrating Labor Day since 1994, after New York’s Central Labor Union drew public attention to the ways that many worked. Then, many workers, children included, worked from sunup to sundown (and beyond) six or seven days a week.  There were strikes, labor actions, and eventually Labor Day, a recognition of workers.  Sadly, a focus on Black workers was absent in these initial celebrations.

Most workers were exploited. In 19o4, the National Child Labor Committee (which I once chaired) was founded to visually document the way that children, and I mean little children, were treated as workers, in the mines, in the fields, and elsewhere.  Children lost their lives and also lost their childhoods when they did back breaking, bone chilling work.

Louis Hine did an exceptional job in documenting children at work.  A challenge, though, was the fact that those who were passionate about labor and about the rights of laborers too often excluded the contributions of Black workers.  If we want to recognize Black workers, we must start with enslavement and the unpaid work of Black people that provided a foundation for this nation.  At every juncture in our nation’s history, we find the work of Black people, including Black women, pivotal.

The flawed leadership of our nation would currently erase this history and celebrate American exceptionalism, but the reality is an inconvenient truth.  Not only would there be no America without the labor of enslaved people, but there would also be no wartime victories without the work of Black women.  I am thinking of the invisible warriors, the Black women who were “Rosies”, women who worked in wartime industries as welders, machine assemblers, riveters, and other assembly line workers.  They faced discrimination on all sides, especially from their white “sisters”, who even protested the fact that they had to use the same bathrooms as Black women (our nation’s obsession with toilets is another story).  The stories of the Black Rosies have mostly been swallowed, and there are those who would lift it up because it is important.  As many as 600,000 Black women were part of the war effort. 

Gregory Cook has amplified the work of the Black Rosies in his film, The Invisible Warriors.  His mom was one of the Rosies and he was moved enough by her story to document it.  In his work, he has lifted up the Black women whose silent contribution to the war effort has been overlooked, sometimes maliciously.  There are those who would erase this contribution to our nation, which is why we must life it up.

Dr. Julianne Malveaux is a DC based economist and author.  Juliannemalveaux.com

August 25, 2025

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - For those of us who are not living in poverty, we may not fully understand the plight suffered by those who are poor. Unless we have been there ourselves, we cannot understand life and survival totally from their perspective. This is true despite having degrees of empathy and compassion. It takes a lasting moral commitment to become sensitive to recognizing and addressing the systemic barriers that keep people impoverished. However, we can never intimately relate to the hardships without experiencing them.

Breaking the cycle of poverty means that discrimination and racism need to be discerned and confronted at every turn. Breaking the cycle of poverty means addressing the root causes, such as lack of access to housing, education, healthcare, transportation, and economic opportunities. Insight into these challenges will enable fair-minded policymakers to propose effective social programs and economic policies that will provide a reliable safety net, reducing suffering. In doing so, these lawmakers are fulfilling a moral and social responsibility by addressing the root causes of poverty. Unfortunately, not all policymakers are fair-minded and moral. While immoral lawmakers may also have a degree of insight, they have proven to be strategic and proactive in crafting ways to cut the social safety net.

Many of us are not in a situation where we have to deal with the issue of family remittances. Millions of migrants support their families and communities of origin through the money they send back home (remittances). Remittances impact 1 in 8 people worldwide. About 200 million immigrant workers support 800 million family members in their home countries each year. While Haitian immigrants face economic challenges, they continue to send a significant portion of their earnings home, often at a personal sacrifice by working multiple jobs or foregoing their own needs to support relatives abroad. “Haiti is literally being held together by those of us who are outside of the country and sending money back home,” said Guerline Jozef, co-founder of Haitian Bridge Alliance. Haiti’s decades-long humanitarian crisis deepens each day, forcing immigrants to send record-high payments back home in recent years. Each Haitian immigrant living abroad supports a dozen or so friends, family, or community members in their home country, many of whom rely on those payments to survive, Jozef says. Remittances make up a significant portion of Haiti’s economy, representing more than 22% of its GDP. For many families, it determines whether children can attend school.

While the pain resulting from the gutting of foreign aid from USAID is still fresh, the recently enacted 1% U.S. tax on cash remittances as part of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” hurts even more. Typically, remittances increase when foreign aid is cut, but that will not be as easy since many countries are hit by cuts in foreign aid and taxes on money transfers. A 1% tax may appear small, but the consequences are massive.

In this case, the specific target of this surcharge will inflict additional emotional and financial pain on people who are already suffering and can least afford another deliberate hit to the safety net, which will disproportionately impact poor families. Most low-income and undocumented migrants use cash-based services such as Western Union, which are subject to the tax, while wealthier individuals who use bank transfers are exempt. Haiti is not alone. In over 60 countries, remittances make up more than 3% of the GDP. In some places, remittances make up over a quarter of the entire economy. Haitians could lose about $61 million annually in direct payments for food, shelter, and healthcare, according to the Center for Global Development. Globally, the losses will amount to approximately $4.5 billion.

Lawmakers and lobbyists who developed the details of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” are fully aware of how cash remittances serve as a vital financial lifeline and safety net for many of the world’s poorest families. “The purpose is not to be mean,” said Ira Mehlman, who works at the anti-immigrant Federation for American Immigration Reform. The group lobbied hard for the 1% tax, which Mehlman hopes will encourage immigrants to self-deport. Actually, this is being mean-spirited and another way of waging war against people experiencing poverty and immigrants. The wealthy receive their tax cut while the poor receive a tax increase that will have little impact on the budget over the next decade. “It’s really a drop in the bucket for this country, but elsewhere, that kind of money is transformative,” said Dulce Guzman, executive director of Alianza Americas, a network of immigrant-serving groups based in Chicago. Again, another hit from the party that believes in “family values and cohesion.”

David W. Marshall is the founder of the faith-based organization TRB: The Reconciled Body, and the author of the book God Bless Our Divided America.