Rep. Clarke Brought Fire to Townhall at Wingate High School

By Mary Alice Miller
Eager and engaged constituents of the 9th Congressional District flocked to Wingate High School Campus to witness Congresswoman Yvette Clarke give a brutal outline of the changes the Trump administration has made to the federal government in just his first six months in his second term. The town hall meeting was fact-based and informative.

The question-and-answer period allowed Clarke and panelists to address constituent fears and concerns while providing an action plan. Clarke was joined by panelists James Lopez, an Immigration Attorney at Make the Road, Diego Fernandez Pages, a Workplace Justice Attorney at Make the Road, and Maya Wiley, President and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

NYC Public Advocate Jumaane Williams introduced Rep. Clarke. “There are a lot of things going on from the White House to City Hall. I am proud to work with our congress member. The congresswoman is in the belly of the beasts in the United States right now fighting for us and for the nation,” said Williams. “Some of us drank the orange Kool-Aid last year because we thought it would happen to other people. My belief is we all learned, and we are going to get through this together.”

Representative Clarke’s plainly laid out the issues the nation faces from the Trump administration and what the American people can do about it.
The national election of 2024 dealt a quite significant blow to the Democratic Party. And we House Democrats saw our shortfalls and are adjusting accordingly.

“In the aftermath of the 2024 election Republicans now control the White House. They hold the majority in both the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate. And the Supreme Court.

We are dealing with a trifecta.
And for Congressional Democrats this means we have no control over things like bills that come to the floor for a vote, or the topics of committee hearings and investigations.
It means we have in place a hostile administration that is often non responsive to our requests for information.

In just 160 days in office the Trump administration has unleashed terror, confusion, chaos across this nation at a level not like any before in our nation’s history, implementing the 2025 manifesto by alienating the functionality of Congress, enforcing unconstitutional executive orders, hiring billionaires and loyalists to serve as secretary over our nations top federal agencies, most of whom have no prior governmental experience, while giving them government contracts under the table and purging the federal workforce;
Unlawfully eliminating and dismantling federal agencies and implementing mass firings of the federal workforce without a real justification for their actions;
An unconstitutional mass deportation scheme is underway, unleashing a nationwide dragnet against immigrants with no due process.

Revoking temporary protected status for migrants from primarily Black and brown countries, and implementing racist travel bans against Haiti and Cuba, several nations on the continent of Africa, including the Republic of Congo, and just announced Nigeria and Ghana among other countries.

The One Big Ugly Bill has passed the House of Representatives by one vote and is now in the United States Senate.
And if passed, it would decimate programs such as Medicaid, SNAP, and end the provision of critical aid and support domestically and internationally, all of which is to maintain trillions of dollars in tax cuts to billionaires in perpetuity and widening the economic wealth gap for this and future generations to come.

We are experiencing the unlawful implementation of tariffs imposed on our foreign allies and neighbors, destroying the economy, crashing the stock market, and escalating costs on everyday essentials for American families, devastating the working and middle class, and making it hard for small businesses to stay afloat.

Eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion, also known as DEI initiatives, in our federal agencies and our courses, and threatening school systems, colleges, universities, and corporations for anything that they may perceive as DEI. The attack on DEI is an attack on progress and American values in action.

These policies and tax scams were never meant to help the American people, but were implemented to line the pockets of the rich with tax breaks and take from the less fortunate all under the guise of waste, fraud, and abuse.

They don’t want you or anyone else to know they are doing this because House Republicans pushed the passage of Trump’s Big Ugly Bill in the dead of night to deter you from watching their every move.

This so-called Beautiful Bill will strip away life-saving health care for 17.3 million Americans, nearly 7 million, or one in three New Yorkers who rely on this program.
In New York’s 9th District, this amounts to over 65,000 people over the age of 65, over 24,000 disabled children and adults, over 146,000 young adults, over 149,000 children, and over 11,000 pregnant women.

These are the people who will be affected by the gutting of Medicaid.
House Democrats are working diligently to hold the Trump administration accountable by educating, litigating, legislating, and communicating the disastrous policies and executive orders that the Trump administration has already enacted, as well as all those lying in wait.
It is critical that I keep you informed.

We need you. We are in this battle together. We cannot do this alone. This fight belongs to all of us. We must do everything to push back against these unlawful, cruel, draconian, and authoritarian measures and empower one another to weather this storm.

In order for us to stop this administration, we have to encourage everyone to vote.
What we can do is use our voices, use our platforms as elected officials. We are doing everything in our power to bring attention to the illegal, immoral actions taken by the Trump administration. Sunshine is the best disinfectant, and public outrage is one of the best ways to push back against this administration.”