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.

August 13, 2025

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - “The political philosophy of black nationalism only means that the black man should control the politics and the politicians in his own community. The time when white people can come in our community and get us to vote for them so that they can be our political leaders and tell us what to do and what not to do is long gone. By the same token, the time when that same white man, knowing that your eyes are too far open, can send another negro into the community, get you and me to support him so he can use him to lead us astray, those days are long gone too.”  Malcolm X – The Ballott or the Bullett- April 3, 1964

In theory, the fundamental premise of American democracy is “one man (or person), one vote.”  Under the original concept of Jeffersonian Democracy, in most states access to the franchise was limited to White males who owned at least a fifty-acre plot of land. Towards the end of the 18^th century and early into the 19^th century, states began lifting the property and education requirements for White males. African Americans were legally granted the right to vote with the ratification of the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1870.  Women were granted the right to vote with the ratification of the 19^th Amendment in 1920.

Even though the franchise had become constitutionally protected for African Americans, in many states, especially in the South and mid-West, African Americans faced state-enforced systemic disenfranchisement. Article I, Section 4, Clause 1, of the Constitution known as the "Elections Clause," gives state legislatures the power to prescribe the "Times, Places, and Manner" of holding elections for senators and representatives.  There are other constitutional provisions that address presidential elections.

For decades state-enforced, systemic disenfranchisement was the order of the day in many states across the country. Jim Crow laws enforced racial segregation from the late 19th to the mid-20th century. These laws affected all aspects of everyday life for African Americans, from impacting the ability to go to school, access to housing, employment, travel and access to public accommodations to voting.  The implementation of literacy tests, poll taxes, grandfather clauses and direct personal physical intimidation were all tools used to keep African Americans from voting.

Congress and the Supreme Court came to the rescue (or so it was thought) with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The 1964 Act outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin and eliminated many of the voter discrimination tactics that had been used to suppress the African American vote.  The 1965 Act prohibited racial discrimination in voting and empowered the federal government to oversee state elections. The 1965 Act is considered by many to be the most effective piece of federal civil rights legislation ever enacted because it changed the relationship between the federal and state governments relative to voting.

As America celebrates the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 it is important to realize that it and other acts before it are under attack. These acts primarily deal with the processes or “mechanics” of voting, not the “business” of electoral politics. 

For evidence related to the process or mechanics of voting being under attack you can turn to the work of investigative journalist Greg Palast. In his piece, Trump Lost. Vote Suppression Won. Palast documents how “…if all legal voters were allowed to vote, if all legal ballots were counted, Trump would have lost the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Vice-President Kamala Harris would have won the Presidency with 286 electoral votes… As in Bush v. Gore in 2000…this election was determined by good old “vote suppression,” the polite term we use for shafting people of color out of their ballot. We used to call it Jim Crow.”

Based upon Palast’s research, here are key data points that he was able to uncover related to mechanics of the process:

• 4,776,706 voters were wrongly purged from voter rolls according to US Elections Assistance Commission data.
• By August of 2024, for the first time since 1946, self-proclaimed “vigilante” voter-fraud hunters challenged the rights of 317,886 voters. The NAACP of Georgia estimates that by Election Day, the challenges exceeded 200,000 in Georgia alone.
• No less than 2,121,000 mail-in ballots were disqualified for minor clerical errors (e.g. postage due).
• At least 585,000 ballots cast in-precinct were also disqualified.
• 1,216,000 “provisional” ballots were rejected, not counted.
• 3.24 million new registrations were rejected or not entered on the rolls in time to vote.

In the context of the ‘business” of electoral politics, since the 2010 supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, corporations and unions have been granted the same First Amendment free speech rights as individuals. Corporations and other entities can spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns.  Hence, the “business” of electoral politics.

According to an April 2024 article in The Guardian entitled, Pro-Israel US groups plan $100m effort to unseat progressives over Gaza  – “The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is betting that $100m will be enough to fight back a wave of progressive dissent over Israel’s war in Gaza this election cycle… The 2024 election will be bellwether of the enduring impact of these groups on US politics amid shifting US public opinion on Israel.”

Many voters are confused. They can’t understand why in so many instances the individuals they elect to represent their interests, get to Congress and represent the interests of outside forces.  In the African American community many wonder if the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), originally known as the “Conscience of the Congress” has become unconscious? I published a piece to that effect in 2022, wherein I wrote, “Now is the time for the African American community to take stock, not of the original 13 members of the CBC, but of the current 58.  Are they in fact addressing the problems facing the African American community?  Are they taking effective “group-action”? Has the “conscience of the Congress” become unconscious? Have they devolved into a comprador class of relatively privileged, wealthy and educated natives of a colonized land that have been "bought" by the colonizers? More simply put by the late Glen Ford, have they become “the Black Misleadership Class”?”

Just look at the data. According to Open Secrets and the numbers for the 2023 - 2024 election cycle based on Federal Election Commission data, Rep. Ritchie Torres received $1,635,583 from the Securities & Investment industry and $535,798 from AIPAC. During that same period, House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jefferies received $866,425 from AIPAC. Rep. Gregory Meeks received $510,128 from the Pro-Israel industry (as classified by Open Secrets) and another $448,828 directly from AIPAC.  According to a 2024 report from JStreet, the JStreetPAC – the political fundraising arm of the pro-Israel advocacy group J Street – announced it has raised over $6M for the Harris-Walz presidential campaign.

It is important to understand that what is documented here is not illegal. This is “pay to play” politics in America aka “He who pays the piper calls the tune”.  As a result of the decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, corporations and unions have been granted the ability to use money as free speech.  

Listeners to my programs ask, “does my vote matter” and “what do I have to do to bring about change?” Yes, your vote does matter, but voting is not enough. Too many people believe that once the vote is cast the job is done. The reality is, that’s when the work starts.  Change takes constant pressure, engagement, and yes… finances.  Too many in the African American community continue to vote for representatives who are paid by outside forces to support issues that are not in the best interest of the community.  Simply put, the community does not control the representatives it elects because the community is not paying to play. That’s why, as Fred Hampton said, by engaging in this process in the prescribed manner you continue to, “… come up with answers that don’t answer, explanations that don’t explain, you’ll come up with conclusions that don’t conclude…” They can’t make it make sense.

As America celebrates the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, it is important to realize that it and other civil rights acts are under attack.  The fundamental elements of democracy are under attack.  Steve Bannon, the “Trump whisperer”, was very clear. They are engaged in “…a daily fight for ‘deconstruction of the administrative state…’” It’s a direct assault on the processes or “mechanics” of voting coupled with the “business” of electoral politics.  Don’t ever forget, “He Who Pays the Piper Calls the Tune!” Also, if you don’t pay for a seat at the table, you will probably be on the menu.

Dr. Wilmer Leon is a nationally broadcast radio talk-show host. Author of Politics Another Perspective. Host of the podcast Connecting the Dots w/ Dr. Wilmer Leon. Go to www.wilmerleon.com or email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. www.twitter.com/drwleon and Dr. Leon’s Prescription at Facebook.com © 2025 InfoWave Communications, LLC