In many ways the Democratic party in Florida feels dead to progressives, but their fighting spirit is still intact. Protests continue to pop up across the country, and yesterday in Pinellas, members of Indivisible North Pinellas gathered across the street from U.S. Rep Anna Paulina Luna’s office to hold a die-in.
“Since January 20th, the current federal administration has made sweeping changes in American laws and policies. They have restricted a host of civil liberties from bodily autonomy to free speech to due process,” the group wrote in a release.
Signs at the rally mourned women’s healthcare, due process, Head Start programs, Habeas Corpus, DEI, cuts to USAID, veterans affairs programs, and more.
Luna—who became the 12th lawmaker to give birth while serving in the House—has broken with Republican leadership over allowing proxy voting for new parents in the House of Representatives. But last week she sided with GOP colleagues in congress by voting yes on Trump’s so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill” which passed by just one vote and includes significant cuts to Medicaid, including changes to work requirements for anyone enrolled in the taxpayer-funded entitlement program.
In a New York Times op-ed, Secretary of Health And Human Services, Dr. Oz the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Brooke Rollins the Secretary Of Agriculture, and Scott Turner is the Secretary Of Housing And Urban Development claimed that some Medicaid recipients “do not work at all or they work inconsistently throughout the year.”
But as Vox pointed out, “based on the best available estimates and past experience, Medicaid work requirements likely won’t achieve what Republicans want.”
Kaiser Family Foundation—a nonprofit focused on researching healthcare issues in the U.S.—also reports that most people on Medicaid are children, seniors and people with disabilities who collectively make up 57% of recipients. KFF also found that only 22% of adults on Medicaid are not working due to caregiving, illness, or disability.
