I was struck by Senator Raphael Warnock’s recent speech on the Senate floor. He was responding to Donald Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” and its devastating cuts to Medicaid and SNAP – cynical legislation to line the pockets of the uber rich on the backs of America’s poor and middle class.
“I rise tonight in a moral moment in our nation – as we debate this bill, so much is on the line,” Senator Warnock said. “The healthcare of over 16 million Americans, 750,000 of them Georgians, is on the line. Food for our hungry children in a wealthy nation where 1 in 5 children are already food insecure—their livelihood, their wellbeing is on the line. The wellbeing of seniors and nursing homes and the disabled who rely on Medicaid, and those who care for them, is on the line.”
Of course, this debate is happening against the backdrop of ICE raiding communities throughout the country. Snatching and disappearing people – even abducting an unsuspecting Iranian woman in New Orleans who has been in the country for close to 50 years. Terrorizing communities as people avoid buses and stay inside. Making neighborhoods feel like ghost towns. Violating due process at every turn. We saw protests in Los Angeles and, recently, in Atlanta. And I suspect more are to come.
As ICE raids, the Supreme Court gave even more space for Trump to implement his cruel agenda as the Court curbed nationwide injunctions, opening the door for the partial enforcement of Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship and diminishing the ability of the courts to check executive power. Americans need to brace themselves for what’s to come.
As the Supreme Court issued its rulings, Palestinians in Gaza were being slaughtered with American weapons. The crisis with Iran remains. And the world finds itself deeply unsettled by the American administration that seemingly lacks basic competence and is, all too willing, to lie at the drop of a dime.
All of this constitutes the backdrop of the debate around a bill that will devastate ordinary Americans and transfer even more wealth into the pockets of the robber barons. With this legislation, there is no doubt, at least to me, that we find ourselves in a second Gilded Age.
It is here that Reverend Warnock’s speech caught my attention. He ended with this exquisite riff that foregrounded the moral stakes of our current malaise and invoked what can be described as the prophetic tradition.
“This is a moral moment, and a budget is a moral document,” he said. And he directly challenged people of faith, particularly Christians, and admitted that sometimes he wonders, no matter the different politics, if they are reading from the same book. “The book I know says I was hungry, and you fed me. I was sick and in prison, and you visited me. I was a stranger, and you welcomed me. In as much as you do it to the least of these, you have done it also unto me.”
Here Senator Warnock locates the moral moment in his Christian tradition, but what he insists upon, and what I want to suggest to you, is that we find ourselves in a moment in the history of the nation, faced with a moral choice about who we take ourselves to be. And that choice centers around whether we will accept cruelty as the norm, whether we will embrace hatred as the guide, and whether we will allow oligarchs to fleece the country while they revel in their cruelty and hatreds. Ours is a moral choice, not simply a political one.
It looks like Trump and the Republicans will win with regards to this mean-spirited legislation. Suffering and harm will deepen in the land, because of it. If and when Trump signs this bill into law, we must be prepared to announce a different moral choice. On the day or in the days after the bill becomes law, we must call a general strike. We must do something dramatic to refuse what Donald Trump, the uber rich, and those who support them are trying to force down our throats. Shut the country down for a day or say no to it all.
And remember, as Senator Warnock invoked in his closing remarks, the words of the prophet Micah. “I heard the prophet Micah say he has already told you what is good. And what does the Lord require, but that you do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.”
Dr. Eddie,
My heart aches this afternoon in anticipation of how Trump’s cruel bill will affect the children and families of our country. I taught 50 years in the underserved communities of Cleveland and East Cleveland. When I retired in 2018 , many children’s best meals were those eaten at school. Poverty isn’t an accident, it’s man made. God help us all if this bill passes!
Usually, I have so much to say. But not today. I am shook by all of it. It's too much. What is wrong with the Republican party? Why are they so obsessed with kissing Trumps butt? Why are they so afraid of him? I honestly can't grasp the lure. Wow. I don't know what happens next, but sure we'll mobilize, we'll boycott, we'll protest... but... will it change anything without some good powerful people to also chime in? Why are Senate Republicans okay with any of this? Why is the Supreme court? This is ridiculous. It's daunting. It's depressing and I hate my country more and more every day. 😔