Governor Kathy Hochul today proposed a comprehensive plan that would expand protections for New Yorkers regardless of immigration status, safeguard basic rights and hold federal immigration officials accountable. Earlier this year, Governor Hochul introduced several proposals to protect New Yorkers amid an unprecedented escalation in aggressive federal immigration enforcement. Building on her previous proposals, this comprehensive package would enhance protections and safeguard the rights of New Yorkers from the overreach of rogue federal immigration authorities.
“New York prides itself on being the place that immigrants come to build a better life and we will not stand for senseless actions that stand in the way of that promise,” Governor Hochul said. “My top priority is keeping New Yorkers safe, which is why I’m proposing new measures to stop ICE’s flagrant abuse of power under the guise of public safety. By safeguarding basic rights and expanding protections that keep our communities safe, we are fighting to reassure every New Yorker that we will protect them from ICE overreach. The time to act is now.”
Bans Law Enforcement from Wearing Masks
The Governor’s proposal would prohibit state, local and federal officers from wearing face covering while interacting with the public. This excludes tactical equipment, sunglasses, or medical masks from the definition of face covering. Willfully violating the statute would be a misdemeanor.
Refocuses Local Law Enforcement on Local Crimes
This proposal would prohibit state and local law enforcement from coordinating with federal immigration enforcement for non-criminal violations like jaywalking or minor vehicle and traffic violations. The proposal would also limit law enforcement officers from asking, collecting or sharing information about immigration status unless it is legally required or relevant to a crime.
The Governor’s proposal would also prohibit local governments, state and local police, and state and local corrections from entering 287(g) Agreements or similar agreements with the federal government that allow for state and local resources to be used for civil immigration enforcement purposes. Local governments would also be barred from paying or otherwise contributing to the costs related to constructing, owning, or operating an immigration detention facility. They would also be prohibited from changing zoning to allow for construction or use of buildings as immigration detention centers without public input.
Holds Federal Law Enforcement Accountable for Constitutional Violations
Currently, New Yorkers can sue state and local government officials for a violation of their constitutional rights under federal civil rights law but actions against federal officials are much more limited. The Governor’s proposal would establish a state law under which New Yorkers can bring a lawsuit against federal, state, and local government officials for a violation of their constitutional rights.
The Governor’s proposal would prohibit state, local and federal officers from wearing face covering to conceal their identities while interacting with the public. This would exclude tactical equipment, sunglasses, or medical face coverings.
Safeguards Interactions with Public Employees
The Governor’s proposal would strictly prohibit the use of state, local or school resources—including employee time—for immigration enforcement activities. This includes a ban on questioning or investigating individuals solely for civil immigration purposes, as well as inquiring about a person’s citizenship or country of origin unless required by a federal judicial warrant. Proposed legislation would also prohibit officials from disclosing personally identifying information to immigration authorities, granting them access to non-public areas of public facilities or using immigration officers as interpreters, and would prohibit the release or transfer of a student into immigration custody even if a parent has been detained, unless specifically mandated by a judicial warrant or court order.
Additionally, SED would develop a model policy for schools regarding interacting with immigration authorities.
Keeps Immigration Authorities Out Of Sensitive Locations
The Governor’s proposal would prohibit all state, local and school employees (including higher ed and k-12) from permitting access to any non-public area of a state-owned or operated facility to immigration authorities without a judicial warrant. That means any state or municipally owned, or operated facility including housing accommodations, parks, childcare facilities, preschools, hospitals, schools, dorms, healthcare facilities, community centers, libraries and shelters, cannot grant or facility access to any non-public areas of their facilities to immigration authorities without a warrant.
The Governor’s proposal would also empower privately owned or operated sensitive locations, including hospitals, daycares, schools, housing accommodations and houses of worship to do the same.
Protecting Every Student’s Right To A Free Public Education
In addition to protecting schools as sensitive locations, the Governor’s proposal would ensure immigrant students can access education, codifying the right to a free public education regardless of immigration status.
The proposal prohibits various practices, particularly around data collection and disclosure regarding immigration status, that could chill the exercise of that right by undocumented students.
“We will always help federal law enforcement when it comes to tracking down, apprehending and assisting in the prosecution of individuals who are accused of violent crimes, serious crimes — always have, always will,” Governor Hochul stated. “There is no deviation in our policy on that. But we will not let them go in and terrorize our cities, go after our neighbors because of the color of their skin, as we saw unfold in many cities across the country. We don’t want families to have parents afraid to send their children to school — as has been happening — or go to worship, and not go after neighbors just because of where they come from.”
More than 100,000 gathered in New York City – they were among at least eight million nationwide at a record 3,300+ protest events in big cities and small hamlets in all 50 states, participating in the nationwide No Kings 3, the largest single day peaceful protest in America’s 250 years since achieving independence from monarchy.
What was remarkable as people crowded together for the slow, mile-long march down Seventh Avenue was how polite, kind, good humored everyone was.
There was joyfulness, a sense of release that comes after waking each day depressed and awaiting the inevitable three-punches-to-the-gut that occur with the latest outrage and offense inflicted by this deranged, demented dictator wannabe sociopath and his enablers.
There was the comfort of joining together in community and mutual commiseration, reinforcing the sanity of opposing this corrupt administration, that in just 15 months, has managed to overturn and upend every value that America was founded upon. Living with the feeling of having your world turned upside down, like being tossed into the Red Queen’s domain of Alice in Wonderland. More than one carried a sign saying, “Make Orwell Fiction Again.”.
Each of the three No Kings protests and the “Hands Off” protest before, has been larger than the one before as the grievances pile up and are layered on.
This, No Kings 3, brought out at least an additional one million – more than 8 million people in 3,200+ No Kings events – by adding the anti-war layer. No money for healthcare, but $200 billion ($1 billion a day) for an illegal, unprovoked war that seems only to serve his Big Oil donors and his buddies Putin and Netanyahu. (Meanwhile, he continues to undermine Ukraine, actually giving Putin a new lease on life to wage his war despite aiding Iran against the US, while insulting Zelensky who has tried to help the US combat Iranian drones). In the process, Trump has undermined our alliances – NATO, the European Union – already fraying with his unhinged tariff policy, threats to take over Greenland, Panama, now Cuba (“I can do anything I want”), and unleashing the war against Iran without so much as a heads-up for the allies he now chides as “cowards”.
Meanwhile, he is letting the nuclear testing treaty lapse and announcing new testing, only reinforcing recognition by North Korea and Iran and anyone else of the necessity of having a nuclear weapon as the only real deterrent against this new imperialism by a leader of a former superpower with ambitions of being not just a dictator, but Emperor. Rather than America as the Superpower and the beacon of democracy for the world, Trump has turned USA into America Alone, a pariah.
His tariff policy had already undermined the US economy which (no surprise) was the strongest on the planet (thanks to Biden’s policies getting us out of a deadly pandemic, restoring supply chains and domestic manufacturing), re-triggering inflation. But now, the Iran War is triggering a global oil and food crisis of historic proportions. Trump’s reaction? “Hormuz doesn’t affect us. Doesn’t concern us. I don’t care.” But he has taken to calling it the “Strait of Trump.”
The climate action people were out in force, recognizing that everything this corrupt administration has done has been to force the US off the track to clean, renewable energy and back into dependency on dirty fossil fuel (and back into wars for oil) – not just rescinding the tax credits, but actually trying to shut down wind power projects already well under construction. Most recently, he has turned the Environmental Protection Administration into a misnomer, unilaterally repealing the “Endangerment Finding,” basically saying they don’t care how many people will sicken or die because of air or water pollution, contract cancer from chemical toxins, or the health, economic and geopolitical impacts of global warming that will produce some 200 million climate refugees due to sea level rise, drought and famine.
The Epstein files and Trump’s unaccountability seem also to have inspired many first-time protesters, pushed to the breaking point of “enough is enough.”
But probably what pushed many more over the edge in the growing list of unconstitutional, illegal actions was embroiling the United States (and the world) in an illegal, endless war without any discussion, let along authorization of Congress or collaboration with allies or even an explanation (that makes sense) to Americans. In fact, the administration deceived the Congress and betrayed the Iranians who mediators said were making progress in good faith negotiations. Trump blithely said that Cuba was next on his hit list (after Venezuela and Iran, a war he has already become “bored” with (“I can do anything I want”).
If the first No Kings had much to do about yielding over to the oligarchs, the Trump Crime Syndicate’s Putin-style kleptocracy has become obvious, as Trump has managed to personally profit by over $1 billion in just this first year, his family enterprise billions of dollars more. They don’t even hide it, with their cybercurrency scams, the boys’ “new” drone factories getting federal contracts, their donors getting 2 and 3x the market rate to purchase warehouses to detain migrants, terrified children (without due process) in inhumane conditions that mass murderers on death row don’t experience.
Add on the obvious efforts at voter suppression, purging voter rolls, likely election subversion, and extorting Congress to pass his SAVE Act which will disenfranchise millions of women, minorities, disabled, homeless and the most vulnerable most in need of salvation from this tyrannical kleptocracy, because, as he admits, he and his enablers are desperate to keep power to prevent Democrats from taking control of Congress and impeaching him for an unprecedented third time and holding his cabinet of criminals accountable)
As several posters wrote: “All my outrage can’t fit on this sign.”
In all, those waving the placards that say “No Kings since 1776,” are right to be concerned. This is an inflection point. In just this brief time, Trump and his thugs have pushed America back before the 1960s (the Golden Age toward civil and human rights and the first glimmer of a true democracy), before the 1860s (they are re-writing history to make slavery a noble endeavor).
“This regime has used threats, intimidation, and a constant deluge of atrocities to heighten fear and cynicism so that the American people would not fight back as it shreds our Constitution, disappears our neighbors, steals from us, and turns our country into a pariah rogue state,” write Indivisible co-directors leaders Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin.
“But the people are fighting back — and in larger numbers than ever before. We can now estimate that at least 8 million people protested today, making this the largest protest in US history. That means that over a million new people joined us this time around — and we’re hearing stories from all over of people who didn’t just attend their first No Kings protest — they attended their first-ever protest.”
Organizers point to the building of a movement that goes beyond showing up on a day and waving a sign.
Now they point to continuing to build the grassroots infrastructure to overcome the voter suppression and election subversion aimed at preventing an overthrow of MAGA rule, and retake at least the one “co-equal” branch of government and make it do its job of checks-and-balances and oversight of a corrupt administration.
Despite bringing the protests to their doorsteps (rather than concentrating protest in Washington DC when the lawmakers are not even there), clearly, the Republicans in Congress are more fearful of Trump (who has taken control of the war chest) than they are of their voters, smug in their confidence in their voter suppression, gerrymandering, election subversion will keep them in their jobs.
In this 250th anniversary year of the beginning of the march toward a “more perfect union,” we are either looking at a revived “We the People” revolution or the restoration of rule by a deranged, demented tyrant.
Some 400 organizations coalesced to support the No Kings protests including Indivisible, Moveon, ACLU, May Day Strong, 50501,
“Because here is the truth: No single day—not even the largest day of protest in U.S. history—stops authoritarianism. What stops authoritarianism is what comes after the march. The sustained organizing. The community building. The first-time marcher who felt something shift in them yesterday but doesn’t know where to go,” says Moveon.org.
Indivisible, which has spearheaded the No Kings events, announced nationwide organizing meetings to welcome protesters into ongoing political organizing. “We’ll be launching nationwide community meetings — hosted by protest organizers and attendees — to help people politically awakened by No Kings get involved with sustained local actions around ICE monitoring, election protection, and noncooperation. They’ll be a great way to connect folks with Indivisible groups and existing networks and foster new groups and leadership building.
Gearing up for a national day of economic disruption on May Day. “We always say mass mobilizations are just one tactic. Economic disruption is another tactic. And it’s most successful when you’ve done the work to build a large, broad-based coalition of folks ready for higher-level actions. So now, the ground is laid for May Day Strong’s national day of ‘No school, no work, no shopping’ to put the oligarchs enabling Trump’s power grabs on notice.”
What may be the largest protest in Nassau County history, an estimated 5,000 turned out for the No Kings protest in front of the steps to the Supreme Court building in Mineola, one of 16 No Kings protests on Long Island.
“It feels so good to be doing something,” said Roseanna, a Bellmore resident but originally from Italy, who was attending her first protest.
“We refuse to remain silent as our neighbors are arrested without cause or due process by masked men and then held in detention centers under inhumane conditions and as communities are terrorized and families torn apart,” the organizers, Engage Long Island, Show Up Long Island and Long Island Network for Change, declared, laying out the mounting grievances against Trump and his administration.
“We raise our voices against an administration that has ripped healthcare coverage away from millions of Americans, gutted disease research funding and environmental protections and has given unqualified individuals the power to make critical recommendations and place the health of our children in peril. We protest the administration’s rolling back of women’s rights and voting rights. We speak out against a war declared unconstitutionally, placing the lives of our military personnel at risk without first making the case to the American people; A war that is costing one billion dollars every day to wage while oil prices surge for families already struggling with soaring prices. Civil liberties are weakening, constitutional checks and balances are faltering and we are experiencing a significant and rapid decline in democratic norms. We the People will continue to stand up and speak out to save our democracy.
“As the president continues to push the limits of his power towards authoritarianism, We the People say loudly and clearly that this country belongs to us; the Power of the People is greater than the people in power,” declared organizer Halle Brenner-Perles.
The rally served to protest the escalating signs of authoritarianism being displayed by this President and his administration, the organizers explained. “More and more people are coming to understand the nature of this threat to our democracy and they are showing up in greater numbers than ever, here on Long Island and across the country,” and looking for ways to express their outrage and frustration, to show support for one another, and cultivate the movement to end the march to authoritarianism.
“The No Kings movement can’t be stopped,” said Civil rights attorney Fred Brewington. “Make America what it should be, not what they have turned it into. We need to take back America. When we take over Congress, make him the impotent person he is.”
After October’s No Kings protests drew 7 million in the biggest single day of peaceful protest in US history, Trump claimed the No Kings protests were small, ineffective, the protesters “wacked out.”
Since October, things have only gotten worse – cruel, masked ICE thugs killing civilians Renee Good and Alex Pretti in the street, children separated and kept in horrific conditions, a war costing $1 billion a day; 2 million who can’t afford health care. “We are here for hope, for the nation and the world we want for our families,” said Engage Long Island organizer Halle Brenner-Perles, lauding the Nassau County high school students who conducted ICE Out walkouts. “The power of people is always stronger than the people in power. Take back America, make it better than ever before. Because that’s what peaceful protesters do.”
Dr. Eve Meltzer Krief, Vice President Long Island, Queens Brooklyn Chapter American Academy of Pediatrics and candidate for Suffolk County Legislature, knows what it means to push back. She joined the lawsuit against “Health” Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. to overturn his revised vaccination standards for children and won.
“I worry for the future. This government can’t pass common sense gun laws when guns are the #1 killer of children. Trump dabbled with authoritarianism last year, this year, embracing at a new level.”
He is arresting and detaining people without due process. Family separation 2.0 – children are afraid their parent will not be home when they come home from school. Americans shot point blank. In the most Orwellian fashion, Noem called Good a domestic terrorist and Alex Pretti a would-be assassin.
The administration deports parents without letting them take their children as young as 2 months old with them, yet US citizen children are being deported against the wishes of their parents, – including a child with brain cancer, she said. Some 4,000 children have been imprisoned since January 2025, hundreds detained without their parents. Parents have been taken from 11,000 children and placed in detention facilities far away. Parents afraid to take their child to health visits.
“Does any of that make us greater, safer? “Enough of disregarding basic human rights. The power of people is stronger than people in power.”
The gathering also served to collect food for local pantries (2,400 pounds were collected at the last No Kings rally, this one collected 4600 pounds – more than two tons! – and $1300 in cash), and for voter registration.
The Mineola Rally was organized together by Engage Long Island, Show Up Long Island and Long Island Network for Change. The League of Women Voters of Huntington is a co-sponsor.
The repeal of Roe v. Wade by the ultra-right majority Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in 2022 not only overturned women’s ability to control their own body, decide their own future, even save their own life, but the next phase, endowing a fertilized egg, embryo or fetus with personhood, essentially strips women of their personhood, altogether.
Women are not just second-class citizens, without the right to self-determination as a man is entitled to, women are mere brood mares, a slave of to the state, not much different than a beast of burden, without any rights at all – not the right to life, due process, equal protection, privacy, cruel and unusual punishment.
And the SAVE Act will make it difficult for women to regain their rights, their personhood by putting up discriminatory barriers to voting.
“Didn’t we already fight these battles?” one asked at a recent ReachOut America-Long Island meeting hosting Lynn M. Paltrow, the founder and former executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women (now Pregnancy Justice), now a leader of The Beacon for Democracy, who has been fighting these same battles since the 1960s.
In 13 states with absolute abortion bans, women no longer have the same protection under Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 to keep their sensitive health information private from vigilantes, bounty hunters, spurned partners or prosecutors who are arresting women for using abortion medication and even women who have suffered a miscarriage.
Women who are on the brink of death, suffering in pain, or losing their ability to ever have a baby, no longer have the same right to Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), mandating care, or for that matter, the same protection against cruel and unusual punishment as a mass murderer awaiting capital punishment.
And to make sure a woman has no ability to obtain reproductive health care, they are prosecuting doctors, nurses, healthcare workers – even those out of state where abortion care is legal.
The result is to create “maternity deserts” – places that no longer have doctors, healthworkers, too afraid of prosecution for providing care – and a rise in maternal and infant mortality. So much for “pro-life.”
Even when abortion was theoretically protected under the Constitution, states built barriers to access – requiring abortion clinics to meet unnecessary standards, allowing protesters to intimidate patients and healthworkers, even forcing pregnant women to undergo invasive probes and to look at the image of the fetus in their womb to shame her into abandoning her intention to abort. You would think that would violate the 4th amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches.
Or how about banning doctors from giving factual information about reproductive health – a violation of their First Amendment right to free speech?
Texas and Alabama are among the states that are trying to ban pregnant women from traveling out of state to places like New York State, even prosecuting family members who might provide aid. It doesn’t matter, as the Justice Department is now arguing, that the Constitution protects the right to travel across state lines and engage in conduct that is lawful where it is performed and that states cannot prevent third parties from assisting others in exercising that right. Florida was monitoring girl athletes’ menstrual cycles.
There’s a Pregnant Workers Fairness Act that went into effect in 2023 (thanks Biden-Harris) that requires employers to give reasonable accommodation to pregnant women, but Texas has decided it can ignore it.
And none of these have anything to do with “protecting life” (if that were true, these same people wouldn’t be blocking gun control even preventing doctors from inquiring whether parents store their gun safely, despite the fact gun violence is the greatest killer of children). Rather, it is about controlling, disenfranchising, disempowering and dehumanizing women.
“Abortion laws were a way of controlling women without seeming to. But abortion is about a medical procedure and ending pregnancy,” said Lynn M. Paltrow, an attorney and activist on behalf of reproductive justice, who has been fighting for reproductive justice since the 1960s/before Roe.
Indeed, while the anti-abortionists like to portray women seeing reproductive care are Jezebels, wanton or promiscuous women (no mention of those who are raped or victims of incest), six in 10 are already mothers and half have two or more children. As Paltrow noted, women seek abortion care for many different, personal reasons including not being able to afford more children or having health issues that would be compromised by pregnancy. Also, one in four pregnancies result in miscarriage, which requires a procedure, dilation and curettage (D&C), that falls under the same definition (and ban) as “abortion,” while 80 percent of pregnancy deaths are preventable, according to the CDC.
The United States, already with the highest rate of maternal and infant mortality of any high-income country due to the lack of universal health care, is seeing these rates surge in states that have total or near total bans on abortion. And yet, the number of abortions is not going down – only access to prenatal care and to legal, safe abortions.
Right wingers use abortion to rally the Christian Right, waving the banner of “pro-life.” Reproductive Rights activists made a mistake by framing the issue as the right to abortion rather than a woman’s human rights, Paltrow maintained – an echo of Hillary Clinton’s famous speech in Beijing 30 years ago, “Women’s rights are human rights,” the First Lady declared.
“The movement tends to narrow everything down to abortion rights but the issue is not defending particular medical procedure, it’s about defending the people who sometimes need to have the procedure as a full, whole person…Abortion laws were a way of controlling women without seeming to. But abortion is about a medical procedure and ending pregnancy,” said Paltrow.
But the most serious an assault on women’s rights, freedom, liberty and self-determination is the Religious Right’s crusade to establish the personhood of an embryo, fetus – essentially giving this entity, that cannot exist on its own, more rights than the mother whose own “personhood” becomes irrelevant.
Since the embryo or fetus cannot speak for itself, this gives the state authority and power over the woman – making her nothing more than a breeder cow or literally a slave of the state. (You would think this would violate 13th amendment, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.”)
She notes that personhood – or citizenship – according to the Constitution’s post-Civil War amendments, applies to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States…No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
You would think that equal protection and due process would apply to the mother (and should have been used to establish Roe v. Wade, instead of the right to privacy), but if an embryo or fetus has “personhood rights”, the woman does not.
A Catholic judge ruled that the expectant mother “has placed herself in a special class of persons who are bringing another person into existence. I submit a woman who carries a child to viability is in fact a member of a unique category of persons.”
What does “a unique category of persons” mean in practical terms? Fewer rights, no bodily autonomy.
Persons in this “unique category,” Paltrow said, lose their right to life, liberty, freedom of religion, due process of law (procedural), bodily integrity (medical decision making), privacy in medical information, privacy in reproductive decision making, being free of unreasonable searches and seizures and being free of cruel and unusual punishment, their right to reasonable bail, counsel, right to parent, right to equal protection of the law (race and sex), right to freedom of speech and conscience, as well as human rights more broadly.
In other words, a slave of the state.
What does that mean? It gives the state, the authorities, some nasty neighbor the ability to prosecute a woman for her behavior during pregnancy – if she has a glass of wine, uses marijuana, smokes a cigarette, goes skiing, even drives a car or falls down the stairs – while women are forced by the state to come to the brink of death or lose their future futility without receiving health care.
Between 1973 (the year Roe v. Wade was decided), up to 2005 (32 years), there were 413 arrests of women who miscarried. Between 2006 and 2022 (17 years), there were 1387 arrests – that is three times the incidents in less than twice the time interval. But in just the two years since 2024, the year Dobbs overturned Roe, there have already been 412 arrests of women who miscarried – a number equal to the 32 years.
Among those prosecuted: a woman who fell down steps while pregnant, went to the hospital for treatment, was reported and arrested on her way home to her two other children, for attempted feticide.
Paltrow provided some horrifying examples from cases she fought:
Pamela Rae Steward Monson had a baby that died shortly after birth. She was arrested for medical neglect – not getting to the hospital quickly enough on the day of delivery, not getting prenatal care early enough. And when she did go to the doctor, everything the doctor told her became a weapon against her. Ultimately, she was found to be at fault because “she subjected herself to the rigors of sexual intercourse.”
Though Paltrow won the case (it was featured on “Nightline,”) “it launched hundreds of cases because prosecutors saw arresting a woman for something she did or did not do during pregnancy as a way of getting on TV.”
Another case involved Angela Carter, who had survived childhood bone cancer but had lost a leg. But after she was pregnant, she found a tumor the size of a football. “She wanted to live, so wanted to have the chemo or surgery that would save her life, even if it posed a risk to the fetus” Paltrow related. Instead, her desires were ignored and a judge – who never met her – appointed a lawyer to represent the interests of the fetus and ruled that she would have to undergo a Caesarean section to remove the 25-week old fetus – which in those days, had little chance of survival – even though the operation could kill Angela. Though she refused the C-section, the judge ordered it anyway. The baby lived two hours then died; Angela lived two days, then died.
In 2008, Jennifer Jorgensen, a Long Islander, was pregnant when she was involved in an automobile crash that killed two others. She was arrested and charged with driving while intoxicated and manslaughter, and though the baby was born alive, the prosecutor couldn’t convict her for anything but her behavior while pregnant that caused the accident. “They couldn’t convict her for the two who died, but violating her special obligation to unborn child.”
But this is New York State. Patrow’s group, National Advocates for Pregnant Women and Pregnancy Justice, filed an amicus brief in state Supreme Court arguing that there is no state law that says a woman can be held criminally liable for something she did or didn’t do while pregnant.
In a 2011 case (Dray v. Staten Island University Hospital), a Northwell Hospital had a secret policy allowing a doctor to overrule a mother’s decision if the doctor felt the fetus was at risk. That led to a woman being given a c-section against her will.
Since then, New York has passed an Equal Rights Amendment to the state constitution, outlawing discrimination on the basis of sex, pregnancy, or pregnancy outcome. “Abortion can’t be banned in New York State and women cannot be held criminally liable for doing something in pregnancy that somebody else doesn’t like.”
In contrast, 80% of arrests and prosecution of pregnant women that NAPW documented come from states that have passed abortion bans, like Mississippi and Texas.
“Blaming women is particularly cruel because, thanks largely to the abortion bans, there are now ‘maternity care deserts’. Since August 2023, more than 5.6 million women live in counties with no or limited access to maternity care services.
“They have nowhere to go because doctors don’t want to be in a state where they can be prosecuted for addressing a woman’s pregnancy crisis.”
Not surprisingly, the United States has the highest rate of maternal mortality of any high-income nation, and the rates of maternal and infant mortality are highest in states with abortion bans.
“Over 80 percent of those deaths are preventable. MAGA wants to lock up women as murderers – South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky and Oklahoma are proposing to make homicide laws applicable to women who have abortions.”
A Nebraska teenager who had a medicinal abortion was sentenced to 90 days in jail. A Texas woman, Mallori Patrice Strait, 33, was arrested (the charge was abuse of a corpse) and spent nearly five months in jail after a December 19, 2024, incident where she experienced a miscarriage in a Whataburger bathroom in Converse, Texas. (The charge was later overturned for lack of evidence, but still.)
“If fetuses are declared children, they will be covered under criminal law,” she notes, citing a case where a woman who had a cocaine addiction, gave birth, and was convicted of delivery of drugs to a minor through her umbilical cord.
There is also renewed effort to extend abortion bans to banning contraception as murder.
If the “pre-born” have personhood and a right to life, “we lose our right to life.”
“The push to have fetus as person – fetal rights – is an argument based on fantasy that fertilized egg, embryo, fetus inside woman’s body are really outside” and have more constitutional rights than any person (including mother).
Instead, “make [reproductive justice] a conversation about our personhood, our experience, someone who needs to be treated with a right to healthcare.”
Feeling empowered to deny a woman’s personhood, though, goes back to the fact this country was founded on the notion that one could own and control people (slavery). After being shipped to America, slave women were raped – forced reproduction was a primary way slaveholders made money – producing more slaves to sell, she said.
“We need to change the conversation [from abortion] to personhood… We win when we make argument that this isn’t just about abortion, it is about women being recognized as people.”
The nearly 50 years of legal abortion made a huge difference for women – their lives were better, maternal and infant mortality went down.
Before even before 1973 when abortion was illegal, as many as 12 million were having illegal abortions – “a form of mass civil disobedience.”
Before Roe, she said, 20-25 percent of pregnancies ended in abortion.
Today, post Dobbs, despite the bans, the number of abortions has actually increased – because there is safe, effective medication and groups organized to get it – a post-Roe abortion “underground railroad”. (Actually, more than 50 percent of abortions are through medication and not that gruesome surgical procedure the anti-abortionists love to display.)
“Research shows restricting reproductive freedoms does not lead to fewer abortions- abortion bans only make abortion dangerous as people turn to unregulated back alley procedures. Maternal, infant mortality rise especially in marginalized communities.”
How ironic that other countries have seen a green wave of abortion rights. Over the past 30 years, more than 60 countries and territories – many Catholic conservative countries like Ireland – liberalized their abortion laws.
(After Dobbs, France amended its Constitution to make sure women would have their reproductive rights. “The rights of women are reversible — you are never sure to have really won,” said Geneviève Fraisse, a French feminist philosopher. “The proof is in the United States.”)
Meanwhile, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) just this month (Women’s History Month) introduced legislation in the Senate that would revoke FDA approval of mifepristone and make it illegal to distribute nationwide. The bill builds on legislation Hawley introduced last year that targeted mifepristone access through the mail.
The Mississippi House and Senate voted to advance House Bill 1613 that creates criminal penalties for anyone who manufactures, sells, distributes, dispenses, or prescribes medication abortion, including mifepristone and misoprostol. House Bill 1613 takes Mississippi’s already extreme abortion ban a step further by seeking to criminalize any manufacturer or provider of abortion medication, punishing any violation of this law with up to 10 years in prison, and empowering the state’s attorney general to sue people for violating the law and to recover monetary damages. (Wouldn’t you love this kind of penalty for manufacturers of assault weapons that are used in mass murder?)
Last year, Texas initiated legal action against New York doctor Maggie Carpenter for mailing mifepristone to a Texas resident, marking a major legal test of state abortion bans vs. shield laws. New York officials refused to enforce the $100,000 judgment due to state shield laws. (So just imagine if a Republican, like Bruce Blakeman, defeats Kathy Hochul for governor.)
So, with 60 percent of Americans saying abortion should be legal in all or most cases (38% say it should be legal) and 55 percent supporting medication abortion, to succeed in nationalizing abortion bans and dehumanizing women, they have to strip or suppress voting rights – fundamental to protecting every other right – especially by women, a majority of whom consistently vote Democrat.
The SAVE Act would require every American citizen to show a passport or birth certificate and government ID with the same name to vote. While 146 MILLION Americans do not have a passport (which is expensive, and is akin to charging a poll tax in the Jim Crow days; also passports take weeks to get, Trump has shut down thousands of places that issued them, are valid for 10 years during which a person could get married/divorced/remarried), 69 MILLION women do not have a valid birth certificate due to surname changes -a clear violation of 19th Amendment, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”
Under the SAVE Act, with exception of NY, WA, VT, Mi, MN, your RealID driver’s license would not be acceptable proof of US citizenship; the birth certificate will not be proof of citizenship if the name does not match; a marriage license will not be acceptable proof of the change of name from the birth certificate and RealID, a woman would have to have her name legally changed. And while already registered women might feel secure, the act would allow purges of voters without notification and time to correct any error.
And just as there is more control over a woman’s uterus than an assault weapon, the same party that blocks universal background checks or any regulation of gun ownership when “gun” or “firearm” is NEVER used in the Constitution (“arms”, which in 1781 meant any weapon worn on the body, is used once), but “vote” and “voting” is used 37 times in the Constitution, in order to set up a government “by the People, for the People,” it will be easier to buy an assault weapon than to vote.
Come out March 28 for the third No Kings protests.
This would be the third No Kings protest – each one bigger than the last, with ever more grievances to protest (ICE/deportations, military in the streets, launching wars without Congress, suppressing free press, public education, free speech, voting rights, environment and climate destruction).
But what is disturbing is that Women’s Rights have kind of receded into a background (it was more prevalent at the earlier Hands Off! Protests).
On March 28, bring Women’s Rights back to the forefront.
Go to www.nokings.org to find a protest to join. So far, close to 3,000 protests are planned.
Less than a full day before the murder of a 37-year old Minneapolis ICU nurse at the hands of ICE, thousands of New Yorkers were out on the street rallying and marching in support of removing ICE from Minneapolis, in solidarity with the unions, workers and businesses that walked out and shut down the city on January 23rd under the banner, “ICE OUT FOR GOOD National Day of Solidarity.”
They unified in horror and outrage after the murder of 37-year old mother and activist Renee Good, but mere hours later, there was yet another, as 37-year old ICU nurse Alex Pretti, acting as a monitor and assisting a woman assaulted by ICE, was also brutally murdered even after he was thrown down by half dozen agents, in a volley of bullets at close range, in the back of his head. It looked more like an execution than a “law enforcement action.” Because that is what it was. The feds immediately blocked out medical aid and state investigators, and had to be mandated by a judge not to destroy evidence.
Organized by DSA, Hands Off NYC, the NY Immigration Coalition, 1199SEIU, Make the Road NY, UFT, New York Working Families Party, Rise and Resist, DC37, Indivisible NYC, and dozens of partners, the protesters numbering the thousands were representative of every race, ethnicity, and age group – a reflection of New York City.
They spoke out against rising fascism and to pressure corporations, including Target, Amazon, Home Depot, and Palantir, “to stop collaborating with would-be authoritarians and instead stand up for our communities.”
“Every week sees a new escalation — they are arresting children and local movement leaders in Minneapolis! It’s vital that we stand together and speak out against these attacks on our rights and our people.”
“Silence is too costly,” declared one of the faithleaders. “They are killing our neighbors, our souls…March for justice. Enough is enough.”
“No more family detentions, detentions for profit. Reject cruelty of greed. We want justice now. Abolish ICE,” another said.
Gathering in front of a statue of George Washington, they decried a wannbe king and a society where lives are cheap but property sacred.”Stand up against the most sinister enemy.”
A Hands Off Coalition leader, a teacher and climate organizer and mother of two, said, “We are heart broken at the lawless, violence ICE assaults, who murdered a mother in cold blood, raid schools and day care centers, tear gas protesters, separate children from parents, detain a five year old in the cold.” And not just in Minneapolis, but in New York City. “These innocent children will never be the same. This regime is waging war on families, cutting funding for food, education, health care, violating the environment” for the benefit of corporate greed of Amazon, Palantir, and Home Depot.
Palantir is particularly singled out as an accomplice to the violence, using its super-duper AI data collection and spying technology at hospitals, schools, transportation systems it sells to government to target immigrants and activists, so ICE can kidnap, corporations can replace workers with machines, and governments can bomb and Peter Thiel and Alex Karp can make more money in one week, propping up the dictator wannabe Trump, than the average worker earns in a lifetime of toil.
“I refuse to live in a country where the feds terrorize, families are torn apart.,” Brendan Griffith, President of the New York City Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO, told the crowd. “Stand together. An attack on one is an attack on all… NYC stands with Minnesota. Nearly 50 percent of NYC workers are immigrants. NYC is a union town. We want a country where workers can move through their lives with dignity.
Another speaker equated what is happening as tantamount to the Fugitive Slave Act. “No Slave Patrol 2.0, profiting off rounding up people based on the color of their skin. This isn’t about citizenship. It’s about creating a white ethno state.”
They implored every level of New York government to stand up for immigrants, defend our people.
One of the striking NYC nurses urged the state government to keep our immigrant patients safe, refuse to collaborate, and protect the immigrants who are the medical and health care providers. One fourth of New York’s healthcare workforce are immigrants. “Our staff fears ICE.”
They are advocating for the state to pass the New York for All Act (S2235/A3506), proposed state legislation restricting cooperation between local/state law enforcement and federal immigration authorities (ICE/CBP). It would prohibit local agencies from inquiring about immigration status, sharing sensitive information with federal agents, or facilitating detentions, aiming to protect immigrant communities – in other words expanding the Sanctuary City to the state.
Trump has used sanctuary cities and states to justify withholding federal funding in the billions.
The acceleration of violence and lawlessness by federal agents, hyped up by Trump aide Stephen Miller, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and Greg Bovino who commands the enforcers to believe they are above all law and can disregard civil rights with impunity, has prompted Senators, Congressmen and Governors to lash out (but not until after the House, helped with seven Democratic votes, passed increasing funding for ICE, hopefully prompting Senate Democrats to take a stand).
Governor Kathy Hochul, who has sued the Trump administration for withholding billions of dollars in appropriated funds to New York to extort support for his mass deportation policies, came out forcefully against ICE, after the latest horrific killing of Alex Pretti,and called for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who repeatedly lies and covers up her agency’s criminality, to resign.
“Videos don’t lie. And don’t stop believing what your eyes tell you,” Governor Hochul declared. “Their cruelty, these instances, what is going on and unfolding in streets of America today shocks the conscience of every human being with a heart.
“When federal agents use lethal force against civilians and then prevent state authorities from fully investigating, it violates the basic principles of a democracy. What it does is makes everyone feel unsafe — everyone. Nationwide over the last 13 months, ICE has detained hundreds of U.S. citizens, and dozens of people have died in their custody.
“Now, Donald Trump’s handpicked leader of the Department of Homeland Security has proven to be unable and unwilling to follow the law to stop these killings. Kristi Noem has referred to these peaceful protesters as “domestic terrorists” and lied about the shooting victims being the aggressors. She told law enforcement officers to put on masks and military fatigues to basically treat the American public as the enemy.
“[Noem] has shown a profound disregard for human life and created a culture where people feel unrestrained in how they’re handling encounters with the people in this country. Kristi Noem has forfeited her right to lead, and I’m calling on her to resign as Secretary of Homeland Security or Donald Trump to do the right thing and just fire her. And if not, she must be removed or impeached. And Gregory Bovino — who has helped lead, and defend and escalate these operations — should also be fired.
“It’s a shame I have to say this in America, but no one is above the law. No one, not an ICE agent, not a federal officer, not the President of the United States. And make no mistake, when these people who have abused the power entrusted to them by their offices are finally out of power, states, including New York, will hold them accountable.”
New Yorkers stood in frigid cold on January 20, 2026, marking one full year since trump’s return to office, under a “Free America Walk Out” umbrella. A crowd swelled to hundreds across the street from trump tower on Fifth Avenue – one of multiple demonstrations across the city and more than 600 across the country – to chant, sing and sneer, waving signs calling for ICE OUT NOW, stay out if Greenland and impeach tRump.
An hour later an even more animated crowd organized by the Party for Socialism & Liberation, rallied in front of the New York Public Library to call for revolution by workers to throw out the imperialists, capitalists here and around the world, and remake America to work for and by the people. They gave more of a vision of what might happen if Congress doesn’t rein in trump’s daily abuses of the Constitution and dismantling of the institutions that are foundational to a functioning democracy in the United States. They are calling for a general strike, beginning on Friday, January 23, in support of Minneapolis’ plan to strike.
Protesters decried the deployment of unconstitutional attacks on Americans in the course of his mass deportation crusade by ICE and other federal agents, decried the invasion of Venezuela and pirating of oil, and his latest threats to take over Greenland whether or not Greenlanders want to be acquired. (No where in his remarks about Greenland does he even suggest that Greenlanders have a say.)
A review of trump and his administration’s actions during this first year of enacting his Project 2025 shows some predominant themes: extortion and bullying and using gangster tactics to force, intimidate, threaten governments, corporations, universities, law firms, media companies to his will; defying the Constitution and court decisions; use of military force abroad (bombed 7 countries including Venezuela, iran, Nigeria and threatening Greenland) as well as in American cities; not to taking actions for his personal enrichment; unleashing a retribution campaign that overturns the Rule of Law, including pardoning the 1600 January 6 insurrectionists responsible for 5 deaths and injuring 140 Capitol police and turning the entire Justice and law enforcement apparatus for his own benefit, while giving a go-ahead to every fraudster, drug trafficker, domestic abuser who pays him a toll , including selling pardons for millions of dollars. Rule of Law? Pshaw.
Here’s a bit of a Year in Review of what you may have forgotten:
Day One, tRump signed (no doubt using an auto-pen!) 1,600 pardons for the January 6 insurrectionists who tried to overturn the 2020 election, in the process causing 5 deaths and injuries to 140 Capitol officers. With that action, trump sent a message that illegality in the service of Trump will be pardoned (next up, 2026 midterms, then 2028 election!).
He has continued to sell pardons to every fraudster, drug and human trafficker, and domestic abuser who pays him $1 million or more, as well as those who commit violence in support of him.
He breaks the Constitution’s prohibition against emoluments by on a daily basis accepting gifts and favors from those who then get favors from his administration, including accepting a $400 million “gift” from Qatar of a jet to be reconfigured for Air Force One at a cost to taxpayers of $1 billion, which he has said he would keep after (if ever) he leaves office. That set the stage for a parade of gifts from billionaires, corporate executives, government heads, climaxing with Machedo bestowing her Nobel peace prize on trump in the hopes he would support her to take over Venezuela’s government (fat chance), on top of the billions of dollars from foreign sources and criminals to purchase and bolster the value of his crypto crap, winning his okay on everything from arms sales and relief from his onerous and unconstitutional tariffs. In justt his first year, he has squeezed $1.4 billion from the presidency for his own pocket, not counting the millions in selling pardons (for which he has forgiven over $1 trillion in restitution to the victims).
He has unleashed tariff war (in violation of Constitution which gives that power to Congress), using tariffs to extort countries and companies to do his bidding, while pushing up financial desperation of Americans who pay the tariffs like a tax.
Unleashing DOGE to fire 20% of the federal workforce, shut down agencies, research, and public services, pushing out experts in everything from climate change to public health to cancer research, and decimating the entities that gave the USA “soft power” across the world, such as USAID (shutting it down has already caused 600,000 deaths and growing), and shutting down Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia and Radio Liberty (now moving to force Stars & Stripes to only report positively on Pentagon, while shutting out media entities that did not take a pledge to the Pentagon).
Trump has cancelled billions in grants, funding to blue states and municipalities (while he charges Democrats who call for police reform as “defunding police” he is the only one who has actually defunded law enforcement), to extort them to follow his anti-immigrant and anti-DEI vendettas.
While tRump inherited from President Biden the strongest economy on the planet, his policies have resulted in the loss of 1 million jobs and a breathtaking $2 TRILLION increase to the national debt – even without a global pandemic or Great Recession.
Meanwhile, Americans suffer from inflation that has not come down where Biden brought the rate to, 3%.
He has withdrawn from every international climate action, immigration, human rights organization and treaty, and is bullying other countries into throwing out the migrants that have sought asylum.
He has unleashed retribution campaign on political enemies, while shifting focus of every law enforcement agency from international crime, cybercrime, election interference, political corruption, drug cartels, human and drug trafficking, domestic violence to his mass deportation crusade, at the same time he has overturned any concept of Rule of Law, fair and equal justice for all, and justice “without fear or favor” – hallmarks of a functioning democracy.
He has extorted universities, law firms, media to end DEI and pay him homage – systematically trying to undue and remake the culture that over the last 30 years has become accepting and respectful of differences in race, religion, ethnicity, gender and age. Instead, he has shut down the civil rights division, overturned police brutality consent decrees and instructed the DoJ to instead invite white males to sue for some fantasy of being discriminated against in education or jobs.
He has reversed any steps toward environmental protection and climate action – forcefully undoing standards and funding in order to reestablish fossil fuels as the predominant energy of the economy, while also undermining public health. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has basically said that lost lives would no longer be considered in evaluating environmental regulation. Think about that.
His tax policy has shifted trillions of dollars to the top 1% who now have more wealth than the bottom 90% of Americans, while taking away health care from 22 million people, and threatening to topple the entire health care system. He doesn’t care.
He has gone after every alliance that has prevented the outbreak of a World War III, and enabled unprecedented prosperity – that is, until he took power. Showing he is merely Putin’s Puppet, he is bringing NATO to the brink of collapse, while he policies have incentivized Putin to continue his genocidal war against Ukraine and Netanyahu to continue his aggression against Gaza (while trump promised he could end the war on his first day, it is Kamala Harris who would have ended the war in Ukraine and in Gaza within months of taking office.)
And he has provoked war without notifying Congress, let alone get the authorization required under the Constitution (so much for his claim of “ending 8 ½ wars”, spending billions and billions of dollars in order for him to giddily watch the violence unfold on a video screen. And he basically said that because Norway snubbed him for the Nobel Prize, he felt no obligation to pursue peace.) Actually, he is itching to provoke a war because he desperately wants to be a War President, cementing power using Martial Law and the Insurrection Act, let alone having the fantasy of the country patriotically rallying around his flag.
Rather than “Make America Great Again” trump’s policies are incentivizing all our allies, from Europe and the United Kingdom, to Canada, Mexico and Brazil to detach from the United States – making new deals with China and Latin America. “America Alone.”
Trump at Davos has embarrassed the United States, yet again, and caused the rest of the world to mock and distrust Americans for bringing back this corrupt, ignorant, degenerate, deranged megalomaniac sociopath to office.
In response to Canadian PM Mark Carney describing the tearing apart of the Canada-US alliance as “a rupture, not a transition,” Trump chided, “They should be grateful to us. Canada lives because of the United States, remember that…”
And he mocked European leaders, and dismissed the sacrifices that Europeans made in World War II, and that NATO members, including Greenlanders, made on behalf of the United States after 9/11 – the only time in history when Article 5 was triggered.
If there is a bottom line, it can be summed up this way: Billionaires added more than $1 trillion in wealth in 2025, surging by 16 per cent, three times faster than the past five-year average, to $18.3 trillion The wealthiest 1% of U.S. households held 31.7% of all wealth – $55 trillion– the highest percentage (and the greatest wealth gap) since tracking began in 1989, and exceeds the combined wealth of the bottom 90%. Elon Musk, alone, has more wealth than the combined wealth of the bottom half of the population. The gap is now as great as it was in France at the time of the French Revolution, and during the Gilded Age (before income tax and unions).
Here are more photo highlights of the day’s events:
WASHINGTON—The Century Foundation and Nate Schenkkan, Freedom House’s former director of research, announced the development of a new democracy index, United States Democracy Meter, which finds that the U.S. government under Trump in 2025 “slid well into authoritarianism.” While other established indices have previously found the United States to be gradually declining over the past twenty years, no measure has yet tracked the historic collapse of U.S. democracy on the scale we’ve seen in the last 12 months.
Based on in-depth analyses of the health of state institutions, non-state sectors, individual rights and elections, Century’s Democracy Meter scored the U.S. at a 57 out of 100 this year, down from 79 in 2024—an astonishing 28 percent drop in just one year, a decline so large that it’s typically only seen when countries have coups, our researchers say. To put this in context, our analysis suggests U.S. democracy is at greater risk than at any time since Watergate, and it may even be approaching its pre-Civil Rights Movement lowpoint.
“It’s no secret to anyone watching the world around them that America is suffering from a surge in authoritarianism,” said Nate Schenkkan, the report’s lead author. “But seeing it all laid out—especially against the backdrop of what’s happened in 2026 so far—is staggering and should force everyone to think about how seriously we take preserving and restoring our democracy.”
“Our democracy is not self-executing. Failing to vigorously defend and improve it only sows the ground for authoritarian movements and actors,”said Thanassis Cambanis, Director of Century International and coauthor of the report. “While it’s clear that authoritarianism has taken hold in America, we are not without recourse through elections and mass mobilization.”
The report reveals that the core problem for the United States is the expansion of the executive branch’s powers, aided by a Republican-controlled Congress’s acquiescence and abetted by a highly ideologically aligned Supreme Court. More than half of America’s overall drop in score was in the evaluation of the category “state institutions,” which covers the executive branch, Congress, the judiciary, and grand corruption. This category fell from 22/30 points to 10/30.
The only category that did not have a decline was elections, with the score holding at 12/15 both years, as the lack of federal authority over election administration has so far prevented the Trump administration from changing the rules of the game. Elections can still be a means of contesting and changing power.
“American democracy is at greater risk than at any time since Watergate, and it may even be approaching its pre-Civil Rights Movement lowpoint.
“The U.S. government has become authoritarian in its intentions and its practices, even if it cannot always achieve its authoritarian goals.”
Alarming but Not Irreversible
“The swift decline of U.S. democracy this year is alarming. It is the result of choices by the right wing of American politics, which is committed to transforming the state from the inside out, and complacency, particularly from elite institutions, about the risk of authoritarianism. Importantly, however, the right wing has not yet succeeded in consolidating an authoritarian system. The United States’ size and diversity, tradition of independent civil society, its wealth, and its decentralized electoral system all make it difficult to keep power.
“The typical post-World War II democracies to which the United States is most often compared—Canada, Japan, and those in Europe—have not had these sorts of democratic declines. Other less healthy democracies have experienced similar collapses, but only after coups, attempted coups, or major shocks. The democratic decline in the United States over the last year is remarkable in modern history.
“The first priority for action is to defend the areas that are still robust, and will be needed for democracy to make a comeback. Media, civil society, and the protection of individual rights are essential to halting and then reversing democratic decline. For the opposition to have a chance of winning power, the electoral system needs to be sustained. These institutions need to be protected through legal campaigns, but also through protests, donations, and individual choices.
“The second priority—possible to pursue if there is a change in political power—must be to remedy the gaping structural weaknesses in the U.S. system. The executive’s ability to enact such rapid and extralegal changes in such a short time has been conditional, first and foremost, on the Supreme Court’s highly partisan tilt and the Republican Congress’s abdication of its role. Neither branch has acted to check the executive, and have mostly supported it running roughshod over the law and the constitutional order. When even federal judges are no longer extending to the government the “presumption of regularity,” and are expressing frustration that the Supreme Court operates without clear reasoning, the system is broken.
“Democracy is not self-implementing. Without decisive action to address these issues, it will remain vulnerable to concerted efforts to undermine it. The first responsibility is to defend democracy, and the second one is to rebuild it.”
See the report: https://tcf.org/content/report/centurys-new-democracy-meter-shows-america-took-an-authoritarian-turn-in-2025/
This fact sheet was provided by Reproductive Freedom for All(formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America) which for 55 years has fought to protect and advance reproductive freedom at the federal and state levels—including access to abortion care, birth control, pregnancy and post-partum care, and paid family leave—for everybody. Reproductive Freedom for All is powered by its more than 4 million members from every state and congressional district in the country, standing up to protect the rights of the 8 in 10 Americans who support legal abortion:
2025 affirmed critical truths that will be at the forefront of our fight in 2026—voters continue to reject abortion bans and support reproductive freedom champions at the ballot box; anti-abortion actors are escalating, not retreating, despite their proven unpopularity; and the human cost of abortion bans is mounting while the full damage is still untold.
Here are the topics that shaped 2025—and how we’re expecting them to play out in 2026:
1: GOP Attacks on Medication Abortion as Proxy for a National Ban
Trump and his allies spent this year mounting coordinated attacks on mifepristone, making clear that restricting medication abortion is the most immediate path to a national abortion ban. By targeting mifepristone through courts, federal agencies, and obscure laws, anti-abortion extremists are attempting to override state protections, medical consensus, and public opinion—and we expect them to double down in 2026. But the reality remains: Medication abortion is safe, effective, and widely used. While abortion bans have devastated access in many states, care persists thanks to telehealth and shield laws, and medication abortion is on the rise.
Key Moments in 2025:
● This year marked 25 years since the FDA approved mifepristone, which has been rigorously studied and used by more than 7.5 million people.
● Renewed litigation as states like Florida, Texas, and Missouri aim to further restrict mifepristone.
● Movement in Missouri v. FDA—GOP-led states’ attempt to revive a dismissed challenge and restrict mifepristone access. This comes after federal district Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk (in Texas) transferred the case to the Eastern District of Missouri, which is conveniently stacked with Trump-appointed, anti-abortion judges.
● Continued reliance on junk science as anti-abortion groups ramp up their outlandish, unscientific claims to stigmatize and surveil medication abortion.
● Quiet groundwork by the Trump administration to misuse the Comstock Act to ban the mailing of mifepristone.
2: “Leave It Up to the States”: Shield Laws vs. Criminalizing Abortion Care
2025 revealed a direct and growing clash between states protecting abortion care and states attempting to criminalize care within and beyond their borders. Shield laws protected patients and providers from extraterritorial legal actions by states that have banned abortion. This prompted aggressive backlash from anti-abortion extremists who have made it crystal clear that they never actually intended to leave abortion access up to individual states.
Key Moments in 2025:
● Sixteen Republican attorneys general urged Congress to override state shield laws.
● Texas enacted HB 7, yet another bounty-hunter abortion ban that encourages private individuals to sue manufacturers, distributors, and providers of medication abortion to receive a minimum of $100,000 in damages.
● States like Texas and Louisiana attempted to bypass other states’ shield laws, while California, New York, Vermont and other blue states strengthened and expanded protections for abortion providers and patients.
● New data from the Society of Family Planning showed an increase in telehealth-provided medication abortion care in the first half of 2025, including from legal shield-state providers.
What We’re Watching in 2026:
● Escalating interstate legal conflicts and congressional efforts to preempt shield laws as the GOP continues to pursue a national abortion ban.
● Copy-cat legislation as anti-abortion lawmakers in state legislatures across the country seek to replicate Texas’s HB 7, the new bounty-hunter ban targeting manufacturers, distributors, and providers of medication abortion. Some states will go even further and attempt to target people who help others access medication abortion care.
3: The GOP-Manufactured Health Care Crisis
Republicans used 2025 to advance a broader assault on health care access—gutting coverage, defunding providers, and driving up costs to push care even further out of reach. As we head into 2026, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) enhanced premium tax credits are set to expire, threatening coverage for more than 22 million people, and more health care clinics and rural hospitals across the country are at risk of closing.
Key Moments in 2025:
● In July, Trump and his allies in Congress passed a deeply unpopular budget bill that defunds Planned Parenthood, decimates Medicaid, and ultimately strips health coverage from 15 million people.
● In September, Congressional Republicans shut down the federal government for 43 days—the longest in history. While ignoring calls for a bipartisan spending bill to mitigate their manufactured health care crisis, they did find plenty of time to keep attacking abortion.
● Anti-abortion Republicans slashed funding for Title X, the nation’s only federal funding program dedicated to family planning.
What We’re Watching in 2026:
● An expected January vote on House Democrats’ clean three-year extension of the ACA enhanced premium tax credits. As the ACA fight continues, expect Republicans to keep pushing anti-abortion misinformation to distract from skyrocketing health care costs and their refusal to extend the tax credits.
● The Supreme Court potentially taking up Planned Parenthood Federation of America v. Kennedy—yet another case that threatens Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood and other providers that offer abortion care.
● Intensifying scrutiny of increased public funding for anti-abortion centers, especially as legitimate medical providers lose critical resources.
4: So-Called “Personhood” and Expanding Attacks Beyond Abortion
Republicans accelerated efforts to codify harmful “personhood” ideology—granting legal rights to zygotes, embryos, or fetuses—confirming what reproductive freedom advocates have long warned: Anti-abortion extremists were never going to stop at abortion. “Personhood” ideology lays the groundwork to restrict in vitro fertilization (IVF), contraception, stem cell research, and pregnancy management. Trump and his allies want these threats to fly under the radar because they know just how extreme and unpopular they are. While these laws are often framed as technical changes or isolated incidents, the policies are part of an insidious strategy to launder these unpopular and unworkable ideas, assert even more control over our bodies, and redefine reproductive health care out of existence.
Key Moments in 2025:
● Trump signed an executive order that targeted trans people and defined life as beginning at conception, inserting “personhood” ideology into official administrative policy.
● The self-proclaimed “father of IVF,” Trump confirmed he does not plan to require health insurers to provide coverage for IVF—after campaigning on making these services free.
● House Speaker Mike Johnson quietly worked to successfully remove IVF coverage for active duty military members from the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
● Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo vetoed SB 217, which would have expanded access to fertility care by lowering costs and protecting access amid GOP efforts to ban IVF.
● The South Carolina Legislature seriously considered SB 323, a total abortion ban that would have treated abortion as homicide and set the foundation to restrict birth control, IVF, and emergency contraception.
● The Trump administration destroyed $10 million worth of contraceptives, justifying it by falsely categorizing birth control as an “abortifacient.”
What We’re Watching in 2026:
● Renewed domestic gag rule threats (Trump already revived the global gag rule from his first term) that extend anti-abortion ideology into broader domestic health systems.
● The federal government’s continued attacks on birth control, including threats to falsely conflate IUDs and other forms of contraception as abortion care.
● Expanded criminalization efforts as states use laws based on “personhood” ideology to prosecute miscarriage and other pregnancy outcomes.
● Anti-abortion groups’ increased reliance on junk science to vilify IVF and providers who offer a full range of fertility care as part of their broader efforts to sow distrust in legitimate medical institutions and providers while pushing people toward the anti-abortion centers they fund.
5. Rigging the System from the Courts to the Ballot Box
Knowing 8 in 10 Americans support the legal right to abortion care, anti-abortion extremists have doubled down on consolidating power—stacking courts, rewriting rules, and manipulating democratic systems—to impose an unpopular agenda voters repeatedly reject. This strategy targets reproductive freedom alongside voting rights and democracy itself, even as voters continue to push back and are poised to do so again in 2026.
Key Moments in 2025:
● Abortion was a galvanizing issue that drove turnout and victories from coast to coast during the 2025 elections.
● After retaking office, Trump moved quickly to completely overhaul the federal government—stacking every level and branch with extremists ready to advance Project 2025’s priorities.
● The Trump administration also confirmed dozens of judicial nominees to the federal bench—including 13 that have extreme anti-abortion records. These confirmations have set the stage for judges to rubber-stamp Trump’s anti-abortion agenda in the courts.
● Californians overwhelmingly passed Prop 50 to push back against Trump’s redistricting in Texas and other attacks on democracy.
● In response to successful state abortion ballot measures, including in his home state of Missouri, Sen. Josh Hawley and his wife, Erin Hawley—an attorney and key figure in overturning Roe v. Wade—launched a dark money group to promote anti-abortion ballot measures across the country. The move reportedly sparked backlash even within the White House, underscoring just how politically toxic these efforts are.
● Anti-abortion lawmakers in Missouri passed legislation that puts a constitutional amendment on the ballot that, if approved by voters, would remove the abortion protections Missouri voters approved last year. Anti-abortion extremists in Arizona tried to do the same thing, but after advocacy led by Reproductive Freedom for All, this bill was defeated.
What We’re Watching in 2026:
● The 2026 midterms as a referendum on abortion bans and government overreach.
● Nevada’s Question 6, which aims to protect abortion rights in the state constitution, returning to the ballot for final voter approval after a decisive victory in 2024.
● Massive spending by anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which pledged millions to buy the Georgia and Michigan Senate seats.
● High-stakes redistricting and voting rights cases, including Louisiana v. Callaisbefore the Supreme Court, with major implications for representation and democracy.
6: Maternal Mortality and the Human Cost of Abortion Bans
The consequences of abortion bans became even more visible in 2025 as investigative reporting documented more heartbreaking and preventable deaths of pregnant people denied care. Maternal mortality rates are on the rise in states with abortion bans, yet those same states are making it harder to investigate by obfuscating and suppressing data.
Key Moments in 2025:
● Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old Black mother and nurse from Atlanta, was kept on life support for more than 90 days—against her family’s wishes, and long after being declared brain dead—because of Georgia’s extreme abortion ban and so-called fetal personhood ideology.
● Tierra Walker, a 37-year-old Black mother from San Antonio, died from preeclampsia after being denied an abortion during a high-risk pregnancy—despite repeatedly asking for care—under Texas’ extreme abortion ban.
● After Georgia dismissed all members of its Maternal Mortality Commission last year, the state is now keeping the new members secret.
● The Trump administration rescinded the 2022 Biden-era guidance that affirmed federal law protects emergency abortion care—putting lives at risk and creating confusion for providers who still have a legal obligation to provide this care.
What we’re watching in 2026:
● Continued erosion of emergency care protections.
● Ongoing suppression of maternal mortality data by anti-abortion extremists.
● More dangerous miscarriage and pregnancy outcomes in ban states, where emergency interventions and complications are rising.
The storylines that unfolded in 2025 have set the stage for 2026, and the stakes are clear: An extremist minority is escalating authoritarian efforts through every level of power—and our rights and freedoms are at risk. This next year will test whether democracy and science prevail over coordinated and escalating attacks, with control of Congress and the future of reproductive freedom on the line.
Shortly after penning an op-ed in the Times Union explaining how New York State Governor Kathy Hochul came to support medical aid in dying, she announced an agreement with the Legislature to make medical aid in dying available to terminally ill New Yorkers with less than six months to live after amending the legislation with safeguards and guardrails to prevent abuse or coercion. This comes after careful reflection and deliberation with the bill’s sponsors, advocacy organizations, and most importantly, everyday New Yorkers who shared personal experiences with the Governor, who is a devout Catholic. The bill, with the agreed-upon amendments, will be passed and signed in January, and the law will go into effect six months later.
Announcing the agreement, Governor Hochul stated,
“Such as life and so is death — two forces in life that are inevitable. And so I was moved by their courage and I wanted to help them put an end to a decades long journey and say, ‘You can rest now. Your loved one has been honored in a way that is profound. And to the extent that you’re still wounded, suffering, questioning yourself, may you rest in peace yourself in this life, may you not have that trauma and that angst any longer.’ That’s what I wish for all my friends here….
“That there could be coercion, duress, and pressure put on people. And I was concerned about that and I said, “How can we get out from under that?” That everyone will know that someone who makes that decision did it of free will, not under pressure. And so, those are some of the constraints I put around this….
“So we have our safeguards, you can read them all, but this is one of the toughest decisions I’ve ever made as Governor. So I spent a lot of time on this, talked to a lot of people, but I want these people behind me to know, it was their stories that touched my heart the most. Because who am I to deny you or your loved one what they’re begging for at the end of their life?
“I couldn’t do that any longer, and that is why I’m here to announce that we have reached an agreement, and I thank the legislators for listening to me and my concerns and to reconfirm that New York will always continue to be a bastion of freedom to worship, to speak your mind, freedom of choice. It’s time we finally extend those freedoms to the terminally ill and their families.”
Two and a half centuries ago, our founding fathers established a vision of a country based on limited government and broad individual rights that together protect rights of speech, worship, privacy and bodily autonomy. Proudly, New York has long led the fights championing the rights of individuals, from civil rights to labor rights, LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, and reproductive rights. In the true spirit of this country, government has a responsibility to protect, not interfere, with an individual’s deeply personal decisions.
This is the context in which I have considered the Medical Aid in Dying Act, a bill to allow suffering terminally ill individuals with less than six months left to live the right to medical aid to speed up the inevitable.
During this journey I listened to New Yorkers who are in the throes of pain and suffering. I heard from their children, who are watching a parent endure a slow, devastating decline. I heard stories of a parent or spouse pleading for an end to the suffering and how difficult it was to reply, “We can’t in New York.”
This was heartbreaking, and it hit close to home. I watched my own mom die from ALS. I watched that vicious disease steal away the strong woman who raised me as it took her ability to walk, to eat, to speak and, ultimately, to live. I am all too familiar with the pain of seeing someone you love suffer and feeling powerless to stop it.
At the same time, there are individuals of many faiths who believe that deliberately shortening one’s life violates the sanctity of life. I understand and respect those views. But as I have spoken with people tormented by pain, I have come to see this as a matter of individual choice that does not have to be about shortening life but rather about shortening dying. And I do not believe that in every instance condemning someone to excruciating pain and suffering preserves the dignity and sanctity of life.
I reflected on this during a Catholic funeral Mass for a family friend where the priest spoke of the welcome home to eternal life. I was taught that God is merciful and compassionate, and so must we be. This includes permitting a merciful option to those facing the unimaginable and searching for comfort in their final months in this life.
So after careful deliberation, I decided to support legalizing medical aid in dying in very specific circumstances and with significant protections included in the law to ensure it is not misused or broadly applied.
The bill passed by the Legislature already allowed individual doctors and religiously affiliated health facilities to decline to offer medical aid in dying. In my view, those protections were essential but not sufficient. I proposed additional guardrails that also protect family members, caregivers and doctors, and I am pleased that the bill’s sponsors and legislative leaders agreed to include them in the bill I will ultimately sign once the Legislature returns to Albany and approves the amended language.
These guardrails address the concerns of some who fear that vulnerable populations, including those with disabilities or the elderly, will be pressured into a decision they would not have made on their own. Confirmation from a medical doctor that the individual truly had less than six months to live, and from a psychologist or psychiatrist that the patient is capable of making the decision and not under duress, will now be required.
There will be a mandatory five-day waiting period to provide the patient the chance to change their mind, and both a written and recorded oral request to confirm free will is present, with anyone who may benefit financially disqualified from being a witness or interpreter.
Outpatient facilities associated with religious hospitals may elect not to offer medical aid in dying, and the effective date of the bill has been extended to ensure time for regulations and training.
Finally, this is a right afforded to New Yorkers only.
These are fundamental protections to ensure vulnerable people aren’t pressured, misled or left without alternatives.
The Medical Aid in Dying Act will afford terminally ill New Yorkers the right to spend their final days not under sterile hospital lights but with sunlight streaming through their bedroom window. The right to spend their final days not hearing the droning hum of hospital machines but instead the laughter of their grandkids echoing in the next room. The right to tell their family they love them and be able to hear those precious words in return.
I am grateful to the advocates, families and legislative supporters, especially bill sponsors Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal and Assemblymember Amy Paulin, who worked hard to make this happen in a thoughtful and responsible way. And I hope those who are disappointed by this outcome know this was a difficult decision for me personally. It was not made lightly. It was guided by a genuine and deeply held belief that government must respect the rights and will of the people it serves. I hope that those who oppose this legislation will be able to look with compassion on those who may make a choice they would not make for themselves. And isn’t that, at heart, what the choice and freedom our young nation promised its people 250 years ago is all about?
New York City, one of several anchor protests among some 2700 “No Kings” protests and rallies nationwide, drew an estimated 350,000, stretching three miles down 7th Avenue. In all, some 7 million participated in what is considered the largest peacetime protest against a sitting president in history.
They represented the diversity of everyday New Yorkers and carried signs declaring they are taking back the inalienable rights of Americans. Signs mocked Trump, the Trump Administration and MAGA Republicans who tried to brand the protesters as “un-American,”, “unpatriotic” and “antifa” (“Aunt Tifa says No Kings”) with a broad coalition standing perhaps for different interests (science, public education, women’s rights, immigrant rights, due process and law and order, climate and the environment) but all with the same message: they are proudly anti-Fascist, just like 1776 and 1941 and want to reclaim democracy, inalienable rights, the rule of law, “We the People” and “Justice for All.”
They were reacting to armed military in the streets and descending from Blackhawk helicopters in the night; individuals snatched up by masked men wielding assault weapons without warrants but based on what they looked like, wore or where they lived or worked; children as young as six handcuffed and taken or left alone on the street; protesters gassed and violently assaulted for exercising their freedoms. They were reacting to billions of dollars and tens of thousands of federal workers slashed from healthcare, public education, research, environment and infrastructure to give billionaires tax credits and fund the emerging police/military state. They were reacting to malicious prosecutions of political opponents, charges against fund-raising groups of financing terrorism, labeling Democrats, liberals and progressives as “terrorists.” They were standing up to protect their “inalienable rights” of free speech, free press, to protest and assemble, and most significantly, the right to vote. They were standing up for “We the People” and “justice for all” just as the founding documents promised.
What was striking is that these were ordinary, everyday people. Families with their young children, young, middle-aged and old, every race and ethnicity.
There was good cheer, good humor, clever signs and costumes! Many reflected the desire for America to return to a place of kindness, compassion, empathy (“Make America America Again”) and the marchers manifested that with their own kindness, civility, compassion for each other.
Meanwhile (as MSNBC reported), it was “business as usual” for Trump – going to his Mar-a-Lago estate (where he illegally stored stolen classified documents), fundraising and playing golf, as he reveled in the hardship, suffering of others by keeping the government shut down and uses it as an opportunity to attack Democrats and kill “Democrat programs” – you know, things like healthcare, public education, clean energy, violence prevention, counter-terrorism, cancer research, climate change mitigation and disaster aid.
Trump is also cutting billions of dollars in previously allocated funding for infrastructure projects in Blue states and cities (including the $18 billion Hudson Gateway Tunnel) and on Friday, cancelled $11 billion more projects in New York City, Baltimore, San Francisco and Boston, prompting many in the Blue “donor” states (which send more tax dollars to Washington than they get back in federal funding) to start talking about withholding federal tax money, since Trump is weaponizing Democrats’ tax money against them. (His attempt to withhold funding for counter-terrorism in NYC was stalled by a court but Trump feels he has an ace in the hole with his Imperial Supremes.)
There was also a sense of urgency to take back rule of law, due process, and democracy before they are lost altogether. People worry that Trump is already rigging the midterms and will only build on what he tried to do on January 6, 2021 to keep power (why else is he building a $250 million ballroom at the White House, paving over the Rose Garden, building arches in Washington DC, and spending $1 billion to retrofit the Qatari Air Force 1?). But there is also the urgency of now because so much of the damage has already been done – to our world standing, to our economic power, to peoples’ livelihoods and lives, to our leadership in technology and innovation as the US faces the kind of brain drain that Germany experienced with the rise of Nazism.
As if to prove the point, Trump put an exclamation mark on it by his latest demonstration of pardoning criminals who support him and prosecuting and persecuting anyone who opposes him, criticizes him, or dares to prosecute his criminality and abuse of power. He had just freed the fraudster George Santos (forgiving the $350,000 in restitution Santos owed his victims) and bombed yet another vessel in Caribbean waters, continuing to extra-judicially assassinate people he claims are “narco-terrorists” without evidence, yet sent back two survivors to their home countries (so not really drug traffickers?), and gleefully declares that fishermen are now too afraid to put their boats in the water. And as his tariffs bankrupt American soybean farmers and his Big Beautiful cuts to healthcare cause health insurance premiums to double and triple, causing millions to lose their healthcare altogether, he is doling out $40 billion to Argentina to prop up its corrupt president, spending $172 million on private luxury jets for Kristi Noem, and millions to gild the White House and hold a vanity military parade.
Americans are worried that Trump’s militarization of the streets is aimed at provoking violent response to give him the excuse he craves to invoke the Insurrection Act and unleash martial law to intimidate people from going to the polls in the midterms so that Republicans keep control of the House and Senate. Actor and activist Robert DeNiro, a major supporter of the No Kings protest, said on MSNBC these massive No Kings protests, showing solidarity and community, are meant to make people feel comfortable, empowered and determined to exercise their right to vote.
The question remains what Trump’s enablers, the Congressional Republicans, see. Do they even care about voters or do they have confidence the elections are sufficiently rigged? They clearly don’t care about their constituents who are suffering because of their complicity in Trump’s unconstitutional abuse of power, from his illegal tariffs that are tanking the economy and inflating prices, to sending military to fire upon Americans in their communities, to firing federal workers, to cancelling billions of dollars of their own Congressionally appropriated funding to Democratic states, cities and universities, to his rampant, corrupt pay-to-play deal making, to the malicious, vindictive prosecution of his enemies, obstruction of justice and evisceration of due process and the rule of law.
We know what the dictator wannabe Trump sees. He proudly posted images of himself and Vance wearing crowns and Jeffries and Schumer wearing sombreros (which should show Latinos who elected him in 2024 how he disrespects them), and when the New York Times asked for his comment, White House spokesman Abigail Jackson responded in an email, “Who cares.”
That’s the statement of someone who doesn’t care about votes, or elections, or courts because he believes he is all-powerful. It’s the “Whadya gonna do ‘bout it” principle of governance. As he told Christians in the 2024 campaign just vote for him once more and “you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote” and warmly embraced Chief Justice Roberts at the State of the Union, telling him “I won’t forget.”
Trump’s authoritarianism should come as no surprise, though. In the 2024 campaign, Trump said he wanted to tear up the Constitution and be a dictator on Day 1.
Trump and the MAGA Republicans have demonstrated that their interest is ruling, not governing and they seem quite comfortable in believing they will be able to suppress the vote and control elections (and the vote count) enough to maintain control (gerrymandering to eliminate Democratic districts, instituting stringent ID requirements, tampering with mail-in voting, making polling places less accessible, and now, the major electronic voting machine company, Dominion, has been taken over by a Republican operative, so like all their accusations, “They are rigging the election” is a confession.)
Nationwide, organizers (some 200 groups led by Indivisible, Moveon, 50501) estimated a 7 million (topping the 5 million of the June event) in 2700 cities, towns and villages across all 50 states, making it the largest peacetime protest in history. Rallies were also held in other countries.
“Today, millions of Americans stood together to reject authoritarianism and remind the world that our democracy belongs to the people, not to one man’s ambition,” Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg, co-founders of Indivisible, which helped organize the event, said in a statement.
Notably, the New York Police Department reported zero arrests.
