What does Independence Day look like for us now?

If Independence Day is your jam, take a moment this July 4 to think about what “independence” means in this country, in the most patriotic of terms.

Being able to make a good living and provide for your family used to be the American Dream. And thanks to the fight for civil rights, that Dream was possible for people who had been deliberately excluded from it. 

But now, the Trump Administration has spent its first six months dismantling protections for women’s economic independence. 

It decimated a key reason women were able to enter the workforce: access to safe, legal abortion and reproductive healthcare. Across the country, this government has made motherhood more dangerous and scrubbed reproductive health information from government websites. 

Trump’s servants have decimated the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, which monitored pay discrimination. Trump’s orders erased federal recognition of gender expansive workers and weaponized the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to intimidate employers promoting workplace equality and fairness. The Administration is now threatening to close the 105-year-old Women’s Bureau, which supports women workers.

This week, Congress handed a Trump a blank check in the form of a budget reconciliation bill passed by both houses that strips women and other Americans across the country of their health care. (Read my statement here.) The bill will transfer $800 billion from Medicaid, SNAP, and other support programs regular families need to make ends meet in order to lower taxes for billionaires. The rest of us? Most will have to pay more in taxes.

While we see the American Dream of opportunity for all disappear for all but the billionaires, we’ll also see ICE’s budget increase by 1,200% — putting more secret, masked, and unidentifiable “agents” on our streets to round up, imprison, and deport our neighbors, terrorize our communities, and tear families apart.

This is not Independence. It’s not patriotism or freedom. This is tyranny. So on this Independence Day, let’s recommit to doing every single thing we can to fight the discrimination, exploitation, and terror of the Trump Administration. There’s more than one way to join this fight. Please visit ERA’s Action Center to do your part and thanks for supporting our work.

When you fly your flag this week, let’s be proud of the country we are taking back, together.