Get Into Good Trouble

What does it mean to get into “good trouble” in today’s America?

In this episode of Rethinking Freedom, we examine recent federal and Texas legislation and the real-world consequences these policies have for millions of Americans. From voting rights and education to healthcare, the economy, and civil liberties, we explore how laws passed by elected officials shape our daily lives and determine who benefits and who bears the burden.

This conversation is not about political parties. It is about accountability. Democracy works best when informed citizens pay attention, understand the impact of public policy, and use the power of their vote to hold elected officials accountable.

Every election is an opportunity to decide whether those in office have represented the interests of the people or prioritized the interests of powerful donors, special interests, and wealthy elites. Your vote is your voice, and your voice has the power to shape the future.

As the late Congressman John Lewis reminded us, “Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”

Join the conversation, stay informed, and be part of building a democracy that works for everyone.

Subscribe for more episodes of Rethinking Freedom exploring history, politics, race, economics, and the issues that shape our communities.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Good morning and welcome back to Rethinking Freedom. This is a place where we don't just talk about freedom. We are asking you to rethink what it means to you and what actions you are going to take to bring about the freedom that you said you want. I am your host, Aya Fobarianelli, and today's episode is a little different from our usual format. A few weeks ago, on July 17th, to be exact, I stood up at the John Lewis Day of Action in Belton, Texas and gave the call to action remarks for the event. It was built around something that I don't typically do behind the mic, you know, from behind the mic when I'm giving a presentation in that way. But I wanted to make it very interactive and I wanted to bring home the reasons why we should all be actively engaged in what is happening with us civically, politically at this time, and making plans for how we will take back the powers to bring about the freedom that we, many of us, at least those of us who care about ourselves and our common humanity, to bring about the freedom that we say that we want. And so what I did as part of this speech was I brought up real legislation after real legislation, some of it federal, some of it specific to Texas. And what I asked the entire audience to do was I asked them if they were able to stand up. And for each policy that I read, I wanted them to take a physical step forward if that policy was going to benefit them, or take a physical step backwards if that policy was going to harm or hurt them and the people that they loved, right? And so policy after policy after policy that was read to a random group of people, really. This was at a park open to whomever showed up. And people started to get concerned that if I kept reading off more policies, they would have stepped back so much that they would have fallen into the creek. Well, I want you to listen to that speech today and to see where you stand on these policies. And I'm going to come back at the end of the speech and add a few more policies that I was not able to get to in the speech because it's just going to make it a little long, right? But what we're trying to do here is to get you to actively engage what is happening in our government, understand that you have the power to decide who sits in those seats and therefore impact what legislation they're passing, and to understand how critically important it is that all of us get off the sidelines and we get into the fight for our freedom. So here, listen. All right. Good evening, everyone. So I know you've been sitting and listening, and I want to thank all the speakers that came before me, and I don't know why y'all put me behind Reverend Payne, but that's okay. So here's what we're going to do: we're going to have some audience participation with this. Because this is not about performance and not about. Can you guys hear me okay? You can? No? Okay. Um, because this is not just about watching someone else perform or make you feel good. How many of us have gone to church, left church, or maybe someone else has, and you ask them, how was it? And they say, Oh my god, it was so amazing. The pastor was, oh, preach the house down. And then you say, Well, what did the pastor preach about? And then they say, Oh, you had to have been there. While that's a great endorsement of the pastor, what that tells me though is if you can't remember what you heard, then you can't implement what you heard, and you therefore cannot teach anyone else, and then we don't see any change. So, for those of you who are able to, at some point I'm going to ask everybody to stand up, and you we are all going to participate together in this speech. Is that okay? All right. So, John Lewis. John Lewis said that the vote is the most important tool that we have to fight in a democracy. And he gets quoted on that a lot. But we often don't hear the other part. And that is where he said that freedom is not just a state of mind, it is an act. And the question is: what actions are we willing to take today, moving forward, to bring about the state of freedom we say we want. I'm so glad that as the United States of America celebrates its 250th year anniversary, that you went back to that declaration of independence. But here's the deal, and that is what MAGA is running on. We the people did not include you, did not include you, did not include you, may not have included you if you didn't have money already. If you were not a white man of wealth, I can't tell you from your hue. But I'm just saying, we the people did not include most of the people around here. So when they were declaring their independence and their rights, they were not counting me and most of you in that number. And what the white nationalists, I don't know why we keep using this word conservative, words matter. I'm actually pretty conservative. What they're doing is not conservation, it's not being conservative. What they're doing is cruelty, it's evil, it's malicious, they are despicable people, and we need to start using the right language. So we have white nationalists running the government who want to go back to 1776. Not all peoples are equal because they don't see your humanity to begin with. So at this point, what I'm going to ask you to do is to please stand. And I want to go through just some of the policies, some of the legislature, um legislations that are out there. And what I'm going to ask you to do is pay attention if you can stand, and if you can, please, please don't. You can just maybe put your hand up and down. I want you to kind of pay attention to where you start. And for each policy that I mention, I want you to, if it's going to be a policy, this piece of legislation, if this policy goes into effect, and many of them have already gone into effect, if it's going to benefit you and the people you care and love, care care of care for and love, I want you to take a step forward. Maybe some of you will get to that white wall. We're about to find out. If on the other hand, that policy or that piece of legislation will harm you or people you care for, I want you to take a step backwards. And I want you to just kind of gauge a little bit. Initially, I was gonna just have a glitch, you know, like maybe 15 volunteers. But I think it's better for all of us to participate. Because, see, we hear these policies, we hear things like the the SAVE Act, and we don't drill into it, we don't understand what it means. So when we are exhorted to go out and teach, how are you gonna teach what you haven't paid attention enough to to understand yourself? But once you start understanding that these are not just policies, just paper writings on paper, but how it affects you day to day, then you are in a position to convince other people, to help other people understand. So you're not just saying, Oh, have you voted? You know you should vote, you know you should vote. And people are primarily thinking, what's in it for me? So this exercise is for us to figure out what's in it for you right now if we don't take action. And what's in it for those that you love? You all ready? Thank you so much for participating. All right, and of course, here comes the wind, but that's okay. Because um, if you marched across that Edwin Pettis bridge, you went through whatever you needed to go through. All right, so let's start with. Let's see which one. Oh, let's start with this one. Congress caught Medicaid by an estimated $625 billion over the next 10 years and added new paperwork and work reporting requirements for adults to keep their coverage. So step back if that's going to hurt you or someone you love, or come forward if it's going to help you or someone you love. Congress cut food stamp snap by nearly $295 billion, shifted more of the cost onto states, and added new work requirements for adults up to age 65. Step back if you think that will hurt someone you know or people you love in your community. Step forward if it's going to help you. Congress lets enhanced health care premium tax credits expire. So millions of people who were buying their own insurance on the marketplace are seeing premiums double, triple, and quadruple. And anyone who underguesses their income now has to repay the full subsidy out of pocket. Will that help or hurt you or the people you know? Step forward or step back. Starting this year, and I, for the life of me, don't understand why we're not an R up in arms on so many of these, but let me talk about this one because I have three children in college. Listen to this one. Starting right July 1st of 2026, students enrolled less than full-time can only borrow federal aid in direct proportion to their course load. So working students who can only take a few classes at a time get less aid and not more time. Step forward or step backwards. If you know a young person who needs financial aid to go to college. Now, in addition to that, there are new federal caps on graduate and professional student loans. Any of you ever gonna need a doctor? Any of you who maybe need an engineer, an architect, you know, maybe a lawyer, okay. Um, not to mention that they downgraded what degrees actually um qualifies for some of these loans. Okay, but so there are now new federal caps on graduate and professional student loans, and one of the safety net repayment plans, income-based repayment for those with financial hardship, has been restructured. Will that help or will that hurt? By the way, for those of you who are interested in like law school, medical school, things like that, they've cut how much you can qualify for by 50%, even as schools are raising tuition rates. All right. The 2017 tax cuts were made permanent, the big bullshit bill. Sorry for the little kids listening. Independent analysis from the Brookens Institution found that by 2027, the top 20% of earners will receive about 65% of the total benefits of that tax cut. So if you're in the top 20% of earners, I need you to step forward because this is gonna benefit you. The rest of you, you need to take a step backwards. All right, let's keep going. I can't even go through all of these, but we'll we'll we'll do a few more just so we can we can hit home with this. All right, the Save Act. A bill called the SAVE Act would require every American to appear in person with an original document, a U.S. passport, or a certified birth certificate just to register to vote, or to fix any error on an existing registration. Those of you who are married and your names don't match anymore, or those of you who made the mistake or had the great fortune of getting married multiple times, you're seriously messed over with this one. But anyway, let's carry on. It passed the House in February 2026 and is being pushed again through budget negotiations. 14 states have already passed similar laws. Under some versions, election workers who help register someone whose paperwork later turns out to be wrong could face criminal penalties. Please step back or step forward. Now understand that there are still people living who are eligible to vote, who were born at a time when they were not born in hospitals and they did not get certified certified birth certificates. You all understand that. Understand that getting a passport is equivalent to getting a poll tax. I encourage everyone to get a poll tax or to get a passport, but it costs money. And when you are barely making it, you see how that can be a deterrent to voting. All right. Um, well, let's look at this. In 2025, the Texas legislature redrew its congressional map mid-decade at the felon-in-chief's request, 30 more-time felon, and he's out here harassing people, calling them criminals, but you're an adjudicated sexual offender? I mean the irony of it all. Okay, let me carry on. Okay. A federal district court reviewed the evidence and found that the new map intentionally targeted the districts of five black and Latino members of Congress, but the Supreme Court allowed Texas to use the map anyway for 2026. The Supreme Court that is supremely compromised when you look at monies and so on. All right. So if you are in support or if you think racial gerrymandering and all these changes happening across the states are going to benefit you and your loved ones, please step forward. If you think it's going to hurt, step backwards. Oh, let's talk about ICE workplace raids. Immigration enforcement has expanded into workplaces. I thought we were going after the illegal immigrants who were causing all the crimes. Okay? But no, we're going to construction sites and restaurants and hotels. We're going to meat packing and food processing plants. We're going to old people's homes. I don't know who's going to take care of some of y'all's parents soon. Anyway, um, independent economic research has found these raids reduce employment for both undocumented and US-born workers in the surrounding area. And of course, we cannot even talk about the psychological effects on the children in the community, including children themselves who are U.S. citizens. So if you think these ice raids, if you think the fact that people are being racially profiled, that at any point in time you can be pulled over, if you have a loved one or if that could possibly affect you, feel free to step backwards. If you think it's going to benefit you and make you safer in the United States of America, please step forward. Why nobody coming forward? What's wrong with y'all? These are the people you voted for. These are the policies we are accepting, right? All right. Oh. 13 states now ban abortion at every stage of pregnancy. In June 2025, the administration rescinded federal guidance that had told hospital emergency abortion care is required under federal law when needed to stabilize a patient, even in states with bans. So that protection is not there anymore. So if you think that the current restrictions on abortion and women's rights to their own bodies and ability to get health care when they are pregnant, if you think that these these the this erosion is in your favor and benefits your loved ones, please step forward. If you think it's gonna hurt your loved ones, please step backwards. Oh, we got some young people here. Well, imagine this: the peace president, the president who stopped eight wars, right? And was never going to start any other war. Okay. Well, right now, in December 2025, that felon-in-chief, Bones for President, signed the annual defense policy bill, and it included a change to how the military military draft pool works. Until now, young men had to register themselves for selective service when they turned 18. Now the government will automatically, the government will automatically register any young man, any any man 18 years and older. Accept it, no, no, they'll have both first, and they will have doctors to back it up and all of that. And so when you're talking about, oh, ground invasion in Iran, oh, let's go take over Cuba. Oh, um, kind of the 51st straight. Oh, Grinland, whose children get sent to war? All right. I don't want y'all out in the creek yet, so I'm gonna stop soon. Here's the deal. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Many of us like to give him credit for ending slavery. He did not free anybody because that emancipation stay where you are, don't come yet. Yep, be uncomfortable. Because that emancipation proclamation applied to those enslaved in the Confederate states, which he didn't have any control over. The people enslaved in the Union states that he had control over, he did not free. So it took how many years for us to get that. Well, we have the information, but it was like, how do you move forward if there's no enforcement? It was 1865 when black people saw a little light and they said, let's go for it. And right here in the state of Texas, we had over 500 black-run towns. We created our own communities, we were building, we were going for our education, and so on and so forth. And I'm sorry to say, but I'm not sorry, because truth is truth. Some white folk, hopefully none of your ancestors, looked around and said, wait a second, after all we've done to keep these people down, still they're rising, still they're progressing. They some of them are richer than us. And you have things like the Slocum Massacre right here in Texas. You can talk about rules, but there's so many stories. Oh, wait a second, right where we started the march, Henry Gentry was lynched. By the way, those of you who want to work with me to get a historical marker, let me know because that's something we're working on. So then the Ku Klux Klan was created for what purpose? To terrorize and intimidate and kill and run people off. Is there a group that exists now that is also masked that kind of reminds you of that? I mean, if you're representing our country, why can't we see the face? What are you so ashamed of? And it's our taxpayer dollars. Now we had what we call the Reconstruction period from 1865 to 1877, a mere 12 years. And white folk who had killed and enslaved and bred and done all kinds of things to black people said that's enough freedom for them. In just 12 years, and from 1877 till 1965, 88 years, it took for black people to get back to a place where we can vote. Now, some of you are gonna say, I'm not black, this ain't got nothing to do with me. If you are a woman, women's rights rode the back of the black civil rights movement. If you're a gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, that movement rode the backs of the black civil rights movement. If you are disabled, that movement rode the backs of the black civil rights movement. If you're talking the arm Hispanic, whatever it is, you rode the backs of the black civil rights movement. And I'm telling you, if we don't take action now and we allow these white nationalists to keep the House and the Senate and the presidency at these midterm elections, we may be looking at another 88 year fight. Who wants to leave that legacy for their children? That's why I said stay standing where you are. Let's be a little uncomfortable because we we need to get serious about this. You know why they're not more people here? How many of us called people and said, I'm coming to pick you up, let's go? Understand what I'm saying? We've got to be serious about what is at stake here. And it's not cute. And we can't be all respectability politics anymore. Because they are playing without any rules. But what is at stake is our literal life. As women are dying here in the state of Texas because they cannot get the health care that they need. As a woman who's had poor miscarriages, oh my God. If I was going through that at such a time as this in this state. Alright, so I know y'all want to sit. I'm gonna wrap up. Actually, come on, you can come sit. You can come sit. There have been a lot of calls to action. First of all, give yourselves a round of applause. So next time you're talking to people about why they should vote, I hope you have a better sense. You know, just taking these movements, it it sinks in a little different. We're not just talking about words. It's not just, oh, well, I only care if my gas prices went up. We have terror rights. You know, America likes to call everybody else terrorists. But if we're really honest about it, if we're really honest about it, and I am an attorney, and you know, they might come for me, but I'm gonna speak the truth because that's what John Lewis did. America right now is the biggest terrorist organization in the entire world. Is that the legacy we want? Do you not want to have people in office that you can actually be proud of? That you can actually tell your children, yes, look up to this person. You can emulate this person. Okay, I'm trying to I'm trying to keep my law license. I'm gonna be, I'm I'm gonna up to point. All right, so there have been lots of calls to action. I'm gonna give you some more. You don't have to do them all, but you do have to choose to do something. Because as John Lewis said, freedom is an act. Freedom is an act. So, what action are you gonna take? So here are cups, here are some things you can do. Before you go to bed today, identify three people who are not registered to vote and talk them into a plan to get registered. I like to take my children's friends. You're not registered? Come on. I haven't gone to good to get my vote voter register packet this time, but usually I have one. Like, yeah, I can register you right now. And on election day, I'm calling them. I'm calling them before then, I'm talking to them, and I will pick them up and take them with me. So can each of us in here, we're talking about 32%, who's gonna do this work? Can each of us in here find three people in our community who are not registered and help them go through that process? Because sometimes people think it's so much more complicated than it is. I will recommend to just be proactive and get it just in case. We're gonna fight and pray that we don't need it, but we definitely don't want to wait till the end because this is what's gonna happen. All of a sudden, USPS is gonna take three months to get your package. Do you remember when two-day overnight used to be overnight? And two-day priority would actually get there in two days. Now it's five days, seven days, right? I'm a business owner. I'm like, what is going on? So let's be proactive and talk to the people that you know who are voters, and they need to be proactive as well. I just reordered my birth certificate. I do have a passport, but I need to go, you know, I'm checking everything because my maiden name is different from my married name. Listen, we need to stop changing our names, ladies, and then no offense to the men, but these guys are making it difficult for us out here. As Teresa already said, use that information, and I didn't even know she was gonna do this. Use that information on the back of the um program that you had and contact your congressperson today. Like, we text, we do all kinds of other things. You can do that right now. As a matter of fact, what if you got three more people to do the same thing with you? I mean, we share sales, we share all kinds of other stuff, we certainly share gossip. What if you got three more people? So that it doesn't matter how many are here, it's how we amplify. All right, join one of the organizations here. Who's running for office here? Can you raise your hand? Go up to them and give them a donation. I have run for office. I almost didn't feed my children because these things cost a lot of money and people want pamphlets and this and your signs and t-shirts and all of that. Well, where am I supposed to get it from? Especially when the billionaires are pumping money into the people that are passing all those laws, those policies that have y'all almost in the creek. So we have to fund the candidates that we believe in. And we have to volunteer with their campaigns. They need that. Is there any candidate here? Can you all, candidates, can you all stand up so you can be seen? All of them, if we're serious and we're taking action, all of them should leave with a little bit more money today than they came here with. I don't care if it's $5, $10, Cash App, whatever. Every penny makes a difference. And then I'm going to say support the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and support the ACLU. These people these organizations are actively in the courts, and we need them in the courts. And again, it takes resources. So if you can go to Starbucks, you can skip Scott Starbucks one day and make that donation to the ACLU or the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and it will make a difference. See, the thing is, we keep looking for this tsunami to make a difference. But all I control is me. And all you control is you. But if each of us does our part, we will have that tsunami. But if I'm waiting to see if Terrace does before I do, and Terrace is waiting to see if I do before she does, you see how these policies keep getting passed into law. So I want to thank all who showed up today because you all are truly the choir. I want to thank the organizers. I want to thank all who set up tables. And I want to say that I truly believe in the power of this we, the people. They may not have included us in that declaration, but we get to decide what kind of country, what kind of community, what kind of world we want, and we get to decide by the actions we take now. Thank you so much. That's the speech as it happened that evening. If you were in that park, you saw the line. If you're just hearing it now, most of the people who were standing, the real Texans, actually, there wasn't a person who was in a better place at the end of that speech than at the beginning. Everyone had taken multiple steps back. And I want to pick up right where that speech left off. There are eight more things I want to walk you through, four which we've talked about on this show before in passing, but we've we've brought them up, and four that are brand new to this conversation. So let's let's take them one at a time. Let's consider Texas school vouchers, dubbed the Texas Education Freedom Account, because you know they come up with these terminology that has that confuses so many of us. Well, a freedom account that must be something great, but we're not critically thinking and paying attention to the details. So last year, the Texas legislature passed Senate Bill 2, creating Texas first ever universal school voucher program. To do that, Gregory Abbott Abbott, who is now up for re-election as governor of the of the of Texas, sorry, um, and the Republicans went after one of their own so viciously, right? Um, what was his last name? Um, what? No, no, was it? Wasn't I'm trying to remember the last name of the this Republican of Shine. Um, they went after Shine, who had voted with the governor 90 plus percent of the time. But on the school voucher issue, he understood that that would be hurt in his constituents, and he refused to give his consent, his support on that. And they primaried him and put in a woman who bans books, who's against diversity, diversity, equity, inclusion, even though she's a woman herself. But that's what happens when people are stupid and don't pay attention to history and don't pay attention to how legislation affects them as well. But I digress. Let's talk about this Texas um school voucher. That's what it is, right? So um applications opened this past February, and the program went live for the 2026-27 school year. Eligible families under this bill can receive somewhere around $10,800 per student per year in public taxpayer money. And they get to take this money to spend on private school tuition, schools that are not subject to the same rules and regulations and oversight as the public school system, schools that can pick and you know, cherry pick and choose who they want to serve and who they don't want to serve, unlike public schools, right? So you can get $10,800 from taxpayers to go and pay for some private school tuition, right? Or other approved education expenses. Now, don't get me wrong, I homeschooled my children at some point. Oh, that would have been great money to have in my pocket, except I am concerned about all of our citizens, and I do not want to pull money out of what works for everyone just to benefit me. An example would be: oh, I feel I need extra security for my home. Therefore, we should pull out taxpayers' dollars that go to public safety so that I can withdraw a certain amount to be able to pay for my personal security. You see how absurd that sounds? Okay. So now here's the deal, still with this bill. Students with disabilities can qualify for up to $30,000 a year. It started as a $1 billion program, but the state's own legislative budget board projects that that cost will balloon to nearly $8 billion in just five years. Here's why this matters to you. If you're not currently shopping for a private school, that money comes out of the pot that funds the schools in your neighborhood. Those schools that, unlike private schools, are legally required to accept and serve every child who walks in the door, including kids with disabilities. In states that have run similar programs longer than Texas, the data is not encouraging. And our legislators knew this when the MAGAT, the white nationalist legislators, and those of you supporting them rammed this down the throats of Texans. This is what we see in North Carolina. A 2025 state report found that once income limits were lifted, nearly 90% of all of those who received vouchers were already enrolled in private school. Meaning the program was not opening doors for lower income kids. So much as it was subsidizing tuition for families who were already affording it. And in the meantime, it is sucking public dollars out of the public school system. And if you are paying attention in your school district across the state of Texas, schools are being closed in those less affluent areas, right? Because they simply don't have the resources to stay open, even when we have students that clearly have needs. Just look at our literacy rates here in the United States of America, and certainly in Texas. And Texas is ranked like in the lower quarter in terms of education of all the states in the United States of America. Well, let's go into another issue: Texas refusal to expand Medicaid and what it means for mothers. Um Texas has never expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act because, again, many of these white nationalists thought, oh, Obamacare, I'm gonna vote against my own interests. I'm gonna walk around with no teeth in my mouth because I have no um no dental insurance. I'm gonna walk around or have my children in class struggling because we don't even know how to access resources to assist them with vision care and so on and so forth. It happens. So Texas is one of only 12 states that still has not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. The result? Texas has the highest uninsured rate, the highest uninsured health rate of any state in the country. About 16% of all Texans have no health insurance. Now, if you're a small business owner, that needs to concern you when your employees cannot get access to the health care that they need and what impact that has, right? If you are the one who doesn't have health care or you're paying through your nose to be able to afford healthcare, you understand what impact that has on you. And all because of political ideologies, these white nationalists, um Abbott and the MAGA Republicans and those of you supporting them, you have chosen that it is better to turn down the federal money that could keep rural hospitals open, that could ensure that more Texans um have the insurance that they need. And what do you think happens when someone really needs medical care that they could have gotten from maybe a primary care physician, but they put it off because they didn't have health care and now it's become an emergency? We end up still absorbing it, even as your hospitals in rural areas are closing. All right. And you should know this that the eligibility rules for parents who do try to qualify are absurdly strict in the state of Texas. In most cases, a parent has to earn below roughly 12% of the federal poverty. So you have the federal poverty level, and then you have to be another 12% underneath that. And for a family of four, that's about $230 a month to be able to even qualify for the help for this health care in Texas. Layer maternal health on it, Medicaid pays for close to half of all births in Texas. Nationally, research has found that states that haven't expanded Medicaid use, right? That haven't expanded Medicaid, see maternal rate, the death rates roughly 50% higher than states that have. Why? Because if you've expanded Medicaid, people can actually go, women can actually go and get the health care they need when an issue first shows up, or it can be detected before it becomes a major issue. So for those of you who say, Oh, I'm pro-life, pay attention to your other choices. You cannot be a one-issue voter because you're literally killing other members of your community, and that might soon come home and bite you in your own home. Within Texas, black women face a maternal mortality rate that researchers have found to be more than double the rate for white women. I will give more of this information later. This is a state policy choice made year after year by the same legislature that just passed those voucher accounts. Despite the polling that showed that a strong majority of Texans across party lines actually support expanding Medicaid. Despite that, they have chosen to do what they want to do, and it is time to vote them out, starting with the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott. Now, let's talk quickly about the Texas Senate Bill 4, state and local police enforcing immigration law. Now, again, some of you get into well, you know, they should only be here legally if they didn't come. You know what? Have a heart. If a child is brought across the border under any circumstances, asylum, fleeing for a better life, just like many of your immigrant parents did when you came and they took over the land that belonged to the Native Americans and then enslaved Africans to work it. Like if you're not full-blown Native American, you are an immigrant here as well. But just imagine you are brought over the border, you're two, three years old. This is the only place you know. You've gone to school here, you've been an upstanding citizen, you paid taxes, and all of a sudden, your workplace, your um, your school, your home is raided, and here are these Ku Klux Klan adjacent people. Yes, because why would you be in law enforcement and need to cover your face? Why can we not see your identity? And all of a sudden you swoop this person up, you're warehousing people in for-profit prisons, no due process, but we call ourselves the land of the free home of the brave right. You don't want people to even have their day in court, and then you're deporting them to countries that they've never lived in, sometimes have absolutely no connection to. And you think this is humane? So, my speech covered ICE workplace raids, federal agents showing up at job sites, terrorizing, traumatizing children at schools, killing innocent people. Right? But Texas took its own separate action on this front. Senate Bill 4 passed in 2023 gives Texas state and local police the authority to arrest people they suspect of entering the country illegally between official ports of entry. Something that constitutionally has always been treated as exclusively a federal responsibility. The law story since then has been a legal CSOR, blocked, reinstated, blocked again. And as of this recording, as of the time that I'm sharing this with you, arrests for illegal entry, so-called illegal entry, is in effect. While four other provisions remain blocked by federal injunction, and the ACLU of Texas and the Texas Civil Rights Project have a new class action lawsuit moving through the courts right now. So here's some piece of advice. If you or someone you know is stopped by the police in Texas, you do have the right to remain silent about your immigration status, specifically, even while state law requires you to give your name, date of birth, and address. Let's talk about yet another policy. On the federal level, Social Security Administration staffing cuts. Over the past 14 months, actually, the Social Security Administration, since the felon in chief's regime, second time around, talking about the one who is tearing up the people's house in DC, the Social Security Admission administration has lost more than 8,000 workers. The largest one-year staffing reduction in the agency's 90-year history. Now, what do you think happens when your favorite grocery store loses 40% of its workforce? What do you think the quality of customer service will be? What do you think your shelves are gonna look like? How responsive do you think your grocery store is going to be to your needs? By January of 2026, the Social Security Administration had fewer employees than at any point since 1967. A year when the agency was serving. 52 million fewer beneficiaries than it serves today. Internal planning documents show that the agency, due to the cuts that they've received, now aims to cut in-person field office visits in half for this fiscal year. Now, I don't know about you, but if you've ever had to go to the Social Security office or taken a loved one or your caregiver, you know that it takes a while to get those appointments. You get there, you're sitting, at least that was my experience. Now they're talking about cutting in-person field office visits by an additional 50%. So depending on your status or the status of the people that you love, this is not an abstraction. It's a longer hold time on the phone. It's a field office that used to be 20 minutes away, that is now an hour if it's not closed outright. It's longer times waiting in line even when you're in the fiscal location. It's less ability to get the service that you need. And for the most vulnerable population in our country, right? Well, let's bring it back to Texas. Let's talk about redistricting one more time. In 2025, at the president's request, the Texas legislature redrew its congressional map mid-decade, adding Republican favorable seats. A federal district court reviewed the evidence and found the new map intentionally targeted the districts of five black and Latino members of the Congress. And guess what? The Supreme Court let Texas use that map anyway. Because we'll do another show on the Supreme Court. But um, in the history of the United States of America, we've had moments where you have those courts that just decide we don't care about the Constitution. We are serving a white nationalist, a white supremacist agenda, and that's what how we're going to rule. But I want you to let this sit a little longer. This spring, the Supreme Court went further and weakened section two of the Voting Rights Act itself, the exact legal tool that had been used to challenge maps like Texas's in the first place. That ruling did not just affect one map, it changed the rules for every redistricting fight going forward in every state. Texas is roughly 40% white, and white voters now hold about 73% of the state's congressional seats. And we say this is a democracy, and white voters, at least enough of them, seem to be fine with this and want to entrench that even further. Kind of sounding like South Africa and an appetite state right about now. But we get to change that if we choose to pay attention, get into some good trouble, go out and vote in November, and get out these white nationalists and get people in office who care about the humanity of everyone. And I'm going to just address just a couple more policies here as we wrap up. But our goal again is to make sure that you have the information to make informed decisions, right? All right, so let's talk about this. The Texas classroom restrictions, from critical race theory bans to college classrooms. Back in 2021, Texas passed House Bill 3979, which said teachers couldn't be required to discuss widely debated and currently controversial issues, and restricted how race and history could be taught without ever clearly defining, well, what counts as controversial, Lil? What counts as widely debated? Is it debated on TikTok? Is it debated in the news? Is it debated in textbooks? Like, what is the standard here? It caused enough confusion in districts across the state that one North Texas administrator reportedly told teachers they need to present an opposing perspective on the Holocaust. In other words, oh yeah, six million Jews were killed. But let's look at it from Hitler's perspective. Let's look at it from the Nazi perspective. What good was done as a result of exterminating so many people? That's the absurdity of what is going on in Texas right now. And let me just put a pin here and say, if you live in Central Texas and you are still voting for Brad Buckley, what is wrong with you? If you are supporting Hillary Hickland, do you not care about truth and fairness and justice? Because if you do, Brad Buckley voted for this anti-CRT bill. He is supporting these bans in college classrooms that are affecting how our professors are able to teach, as though we do not feel that if we provide all the information to our citizens that they can think critically for themselves and make their own decisions. No, you want to force your point of view on them. No longer freedom of speech. It's only the speech that we allow that should be taught, right? So what's happened is that there has been a misapplication of the law because it's so vague, and because teachers, and understandably so, are concerned about being scapegoated or losing their jobs. Everybody's trying to make a living. The law did not stay still, though. This past year, the legislature passed Senate Bill 3, which goes further. It requires at least one teacher and one campus administrator at every Texas school to complete a state-approved civics training program, and it triggered a full rewrite of the state social studies curriculum standards for the 2025-26 school year, and enforcement has gotten more aggressive. The Texas Attorney General, the impeached Texas Attorney General, is now suing and has already sued a school district, accusing it of continuing to teach critical race theory in violation of state law. And let's just start off with the fact that critical race theory is really only taught in law schools and even then, not at every law school. So this was a total smoke and mirrors deal where essentially what they're trying to do is to ensure that the truth about American history is not told. Right? Well, let's carry on. It hasn't stopped at K-12. This year, Texas Tech, the university, issued new restrictions on faculty that go further than almost any other state. They bar graduate students from writing theses or dissertations focused on sexual orientation or gender identity and limit how professors can teach those topics at all. So today it's the LGBTQIA plus community. Tomorrow it's going to be African Americans and Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans and Indigenous peoples and white women. Don't you think you are going to go unscathed? This is what happens. It is time to fight back by getting into some good trouble, getting registered, engaging friends and family members, joining an organization that is fighting for our political rights, donating to organizations that are fighting for our political rights, actually helping to campaign for those candidates who are fighting for our common humanity, who care about all of us and not just some, and who are not in the pockets of oligarchs. So, a survey of Texas professors and researchers last fall found that a quarter of them are actively looking for jobs outside the state. And more than 60% said they would not recommend a colleague or graduate student to come to work in Texas. When the states start deciding which questions can and can't be researched at a public university, that's a different kind of harm. And it says who is allowed to teach the next generation at all? And we need to be very concerned. Okay, I did say one last one, but I've got to touch on this one because so many of you are going to be interested in this. I see this in court every day. Um, this is federal, it's the quiet dismantling of consumer protect protection. If you've never been sued, if you've never had an issue with fraud with your account or whatever, you might think, oh, not my problem. But you need to understand that if you have a credit card, a car loan, a student loan, or a bank account, this could impact you. Since February of last year, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the federal agency created after the 2008 financial crisis, specifically to stop banks, lenders, and debt collectors from cheating ordinary people. Well, it has been dismantled from the inside. They have cut the staff from 1,700 employees down to fewer than 200 for the entire nation. Contracts are canceled, offices were closed, investigations were shut down. The same reconciliation bill that cut Medicaid and SNAP in that speech that you heard earlier is also the one that has cut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau funding in half. The agency has since closed 40% of its pending investigations, and it has stopped pursuing cases built on discrimination theories like redlining altogether. You're on your own. As of this time, as I'm speaking to you, the Justice Department has told the federal court that the agency may run out of money completely sometime in 2026, right? To put what's at stake in perspective, since its creation, this agency brought nearly 400 enforcement actions and recovered close to 20 billion for roughly 195 million American consumers. They clawed money back from predatory mortgage lenders, from abusive debt collectors, and deceptive student and auto loan servicers. That entire enforcement engine is now running at a fraction of its former capacity. Right as household debt and predatory lending complaints are climbing. One last one, and this one really hits home for me. Here's what the data shows regarding um legislation that has impacted women's access to health care in the state of Texas. Okay since Texas abortion ban took place, and of course the near total post-um-dobs ban in 2022, in the first full year of Texas abortion ban, maternal mortality rates rose, listen to this, 56%, and among white mothers specifically, it rose 95%. While maternal mortality rates increased just 11% over the same period nationwide, by 2023, the Texas maternal mortality rate was still running about 33% above its pre-ban baseline. Broken out by race, maternal deaths per 100,000 live births rose from 14.5 to 18.9 for Hispanic women and nearly doubled from 20 to 39.1 amongst white women and rose from 31.6 to 43.6 among black women between 2019 and 2022. A pro-publica um publica and um analysis of seven years of Texas hospital discharge data found that the sepsis rate among women hospitalized for a second trimester pregnancy, for a second trimester pregnancy loss rose from 2.9% before the ban to 4.5% after it took effect. That's a 55% increase. Now, for those of you who've never had children, don't care about children, although you claim you're pro-life, this might seem like what's the big deal? But if you're pro-life, why are you putting women's lives, children's lives at risk? The same analysis identified at least 120 in-hospital debts of pregnant or postpartum women in 2022 and 2023, and dozens more than in a comparable pre-pandemic period. Now, some may argue we don't know what those debts were tied to, but anytime you limit access to health care, anytime health providers, medical practitioners are afraid of providing care because they might get sued or their licenses revoked, you put women in harm's way. So I just wanted to bring all of this to bear for you today, to ask you to really think about where you stand in terms of freedom, not just for yourself, but for all of the members of your community. It is time for all of us to get into some good trouble, like John Lewis would say. In addition to some of the suggestions I made in my call to action, please consider calling your Texas state representative and state senator, not just your member of Congress. Let them know what you disagree with. If you vote by mail in Texas, double check the current ID and cure window rules before you send your ballot. Don't assume that the process is going to work the way that it used to work. Please support the MALDEF alongside the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the ACLU, because the MALDF is a group currently asking the Supreme Court to take up the fight over who's allowed to help a voter fill out their ballot in Texas. That affects our elderly. That affects our fellow citizens who have disabilities. If you or someone you love depends on Social Security or has ever dealt with a predatory lender or debt collector, sign up for updates from a watchdog group like the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities or the National Consumer Law Center so that you understand what's going on. So that's the episode. Again, we thank all of you who've been supporting us. Please continue to like, continue to leave your comments because it helps with the algorithm. Share. And if you so please, please donate to the work that we're doing here. And until next week, re think freedom and act on it. Let's get into some good trouble.