Don’t Let Trump’s Cuts Destroy the Government That Works For You

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Welcome to Assembly Required.

I'm your host, Stacey Abrams.

Another week, another look at the Trump administration's attempts to not only dismantle our government and eradicate our values, but to do so under the guise of efficiency.

But before we jump into that, I want to start the show with something important that's on my mind, but rarely gets attention.

I am a romance writer.

Some of you know this, many don't, but my very first published fiction was in the romance space, romantic suspense.

I wrote a Selena Montgomery, and I have eight novels to my credit.

But why I started writing romance is why I want to talk to you.

You see, I believe in happily ever after, but I know it takes work.

And right now, there is work to be done.

Every three seconds, a young girl is being forced into marriage.

12 million girls around the world, including some in our very own country, are subject to child marriage, which not only steals their childhood, it robs them of a future.

And the reason I started by talking about romance is that I am proud to be in partnership with Vow for Girls, which you should visit, because we've just launched a joint effort to raise awareness and raise funds and create the next opportunity for girls to write their own stories.

So if you care about how women and girls design their own futures, visit Vow for Girls and learn all about our initiative.

Okay,

now let's dive into our main topic of conversation today.

As we've discussed, one key objective of this administration seems to be about making it harder to serve the American people.

Since the Reagan administration, we've been trained as Americans to believe that too many people work for the government, meaning we believe that too many people work for us.

But let's look at the numbers.

In 1980, the U.S.

population was about 225 million people, and the federal workforce had about 2.2 million people doing everything from food safety inspection to delivering the mail to serving our military veterans.

45 years later, the U.S.

has more than 330 million residents and 2.4 million federal workers.

Roughly an additional 200,000 people have been hired to serve the needs of 105 million more Americans.

To put that into context, that's like your local Starbucks adding the population of New York City as customers and then cutting the number of baristas and eliminating some chairs.

What are you going to get?

You're going to get chaos, dissatisfaction, and real harm.

But after all, that's the point.

What they are trying to do is to make us believe that we're not entitled to more, entitled to better.

Republicans are gutting agency after agency.

The Department of Energy, including those who oversee nuclear facilities, the Department of Education, where kids' civil rights are often protected, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, because banks might not always look out for their customers.

Then you add the CDC, the EPA, HUD.

Taking away those who work to make our lives better only makes sense if you think we don't need prevention from pandemics, pollution, or to, I don't know, answer to an affordable housing crisis.

These mass layoffs started with probationary employees, but it's not going to stop there.

They started with probationary employees because these are folks who may be brand new, but they might have worked in the federal government for decades and just started a new role that subjects them to the probationary status for one to two years.

That means that those fired could be seasoned professionals who understand how businesses that don't like being regulated try to skirt the laws.

How are Republicans deciding who to keep and who to fire?

Well, according to NPR, which spoke to supervisors at these federal agencies, no one consulted with them first.

No one bothered to ask what jobs the employees performed, if there was urgent business where their skills were valuable, or even if losing losing them could put American lives at risk.

And the employees were certainly not given due process.

Many had less than an hour's notice before they had to leave the building.

The business of the U.S.

government is to serve the needs of the people, all of them.

Which has meant that we created departments, positions, and processes to ensure that Americans would have employees looking out for their interest.

Yet, due to Republican fecklessness and Trump administration recklessness, we are now all in danger.

We will be feeling the impact of losing experts and research and actual humans in a thousand different ways, from losing the experts' heat to help farmers protect against disease or the termination of National Park Service personnel who spot potential wildfires before they destroy communities.

The headlines are just the beginning.

The consequences will be felt in communities for years to come.

And then there's the harm done to faithful public servants who are suddenly out of a job and are already worried about putting food on the table and paying the rent next month.

Regardless of the excuses used, the attack on federal workers has nothing to do with saving money or improving services.

To the contrary, as I said at the top, the destruction is the point.

For example, this is from a Heritage Foundation memo.

Quote, institute on Inauguration Day a total freeze on federal hiring, except political appointments, accompanied by a 3% across-the-board administrative cut.

This is the kind of blunt instrument approach needed if your goal is to be accomplished, end quote.

The putative goal?

A major privatization and contracting out initiative.

Basically put,

take the needs of the the American people and put it up for sale to the lowest bidder.

But here's the thing, that quote that I read you isn't from Project 2025.

It's from a memo that the Heritage Foundation wrote to President-elect Bill Clinton in 1992.

You see, they've been at this for a while, but now it's time for us to catch up and fight back.

To help us out, today we're going to talk about labor, what workers and unions can do to demand fair treatment, and how taxpayers can demand that Republicans not option off our health and safety.

There are few folks better able to have this discussion than the president of the largest federation of unions in America, Liz Schuler of the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations.

Liz Schuler, President of the AFL-CIO, welcome to Assembly Required.

Thanks for having me on the show.

I'm so honored.

Well, you know, I always look for excuses to hang out with you.

Absolutely.

This will be fun.

Thank you.

Okay, so by some estimates, Liz, up to 200,000 federal employees could be impacted just with the recent focus on eliminating probationary employees.

As a labor leader and as someone who has been at the AFL-CIO for 28 years,

Do you believe that they're going to stop with probationary employees?

What's the end goal?

Absolutely not.

They won't stop with just probationary.

And what we've seen so far is just an absolute assault across the government, an attempt to demoralize and dehumanize our federal workforce.

And whether it's probationary employees, whether it's USAID,

whether it's the FAA.

So it absolutely is a ripple effect.

It is happening in the federal government now, but we know with the Project 2025 agenda that this administration is now implementing page by page, this is a part of the playbook and it won't stop there.

It'll cascade out across our economy.

Since Republicans like to say that they're running government like a business,

and as someone who has spent her career navigating both the public and private sectors, how would you grade the business that they're running right now?

Well, so far, it's been a scattershot approach.

It is like every efficiency effort that we see in workplaces all across this country, where you bring in a bunch of so-called experts who don't really know how things work or how to do the job.

And they take a hatchet,

you know, and dismantle without really knowing the impacts as they're doing it.

And so that's what we're seeing with an unelected billionaire, Elon Musk, who is trying to run the federal government like he runs SpaceX or like he runs Twitter or X,

which is apples to oranges because our government is here to serve the people of this country.

And it's not a you know, a service like posting a tweet.

It's actually delivering social security checks to people who need it.

It's delivering food safety to folks in this country who want to be able to eat safe food and drink clean water and breathe clean air.

So it's truly in terms of a grade, I would say so far, we're looking at, you know,

when I was in grade school, a D or an F was you never want to take that home to mom, right?

It's just the carelessness with which they're approaching this and really no concept of the impacts that it will have on real people in real communities.

And I think that's a perfect lead into my next question, which is

people don't really always understand the context of what's happening.

We see this litany of people who are being fired.

There's this often misleading, if not intentionally

mendacious tweet about what was accomplished that has nothing to do with reality.

And we know that the work that you are doing, the work you're leading at the AFL-CIO, really focuses on protecting all workers, including those who are not union members, in both the private and the public sector.

So I want people to understand why it matters that the workforce is being attacked.

Well, absolutely.

We in the labor movement, we are at the AFL-CIO, a collection of,

you know, 53 unions that

work all across the economy in all kinds of jobs to bring a more powerful voice of workers to balance the scales of corporate power.

We're seeing this economy more and more is not working for working people.

It's working for a small group of people, a group of billionaires that run companies and enrich themselves, while the people who actually do the work are getting the crumbs.

And so this idea of coming together more powerfully together in collective action through a union helps us have a voice and a seat at the table and to really demand our fair share.

And this economy has been broken for a long time and it continues to evolve and change with technology.

The way work is being done differently

is demanding more of us and we're seeing people work harder and harder for less and less.

I don't think people realize 60% of people in this country live paycheck to paycheck.

I think it's 40% can't afford a $400 emergency.

People are working two and three jobs.

We think that's wrong in the wealthiest country in the world that everyone should be able to have, make a decent living, to work a job that commands respect and dignity, and maybe someday allows us to retire, and that can support our families.

And so coming together collectively in a union, we think is the best way to do that.

But as you point out, we're advocating for all working people across the economy.

It's not just union members because we know that a rising tide lifts all boats.

So if a unionized company in a community is making a higher wage, that ripples out across

all kinds of businesses and the supply chain, if you will, or that concentric circle around that plant.

And it really does benefit all working people.

So the idea that we are more powerful together is what unions are all about.

And I want to stick with this for a second because we know that the next act in the playbook as the AFL-CIO, as AFGE, the American Federation of Government Employees, as labor becomes louder and louder, they're going to start to demonize you more and more.

We're seeing them do that with teachers already.

And for people who aren't a member of a union, who aren't in jobs where they think union protections matter to them, you just talked about the ripple effect, but can you give a few more examples of protections that we take for granted that we can attribute to the efforts of organized labor beyond the five-day work week?

Yeah, we always say,

you know, if you want more power, join a union.

And that's what we've seen across history is, you know, even as early as the turn of the century where working people were working in

brutal conditions without safety protections,

you know, for 12, 14, 16 hour days.

And it wasn't until workers came together to form unions and demand changes in our laws that we were able to get the eight hour day.

And we always talk about thanking the labor movement for the weekend.

But we're in a different era now and a lot of people take those protections for granted that, oh, well, we've got laws now.

We don't need unions.

But it's quite the contrary.

Unions have never been more relevant than in a time like now where companies are looking to make profits and cut corners.

And unless there's someone there to hold their feet to the fire to enforce those laws,

you know, they often try to take advantage of workers and just to make more money and to make Wall Street happy.

So as we're seeing the economy change, as we're seeing, for example,

new industries emerging, technology and the advent of artificial intelligence,

it has become even more clear that workers need a voice.

Workers need a seat at the table to make sure that those changes, those impacts actually work for working people.

We don't all want to show up to a job where we're being managed by an algorithm or we're being fired by an app.

We want to have a voice.

We want to have,

you know, make sure that those systems are actually working for us, not just the wealthy or the bosses.

So technology is one example, I think, of the future of work.

climate impacts.

We're seeing that now working people are working in punishing conditions with heat.

I was just with our letter carriers where they're out delivering our mail to our doors, often in the summertime, you know, without water, without protection from heat, unless they have a union to actually enforce those working conditions and make sure that the job can be done safely.

And then on top of that, advocating for standards at the Department of Labor,

the Occupational Safety and Health, to issue a heat standard, standard which we were advocating for

just before the change in administrations which we hope we can continue to push for changes in those regulations so that's just one small example of so many things that we take for granted that

that we know if we didn't have a watchdog that if we didn't have a way to come together to make our voices more powerful that workers would be taken advantage of abused disrespected and would be voiceless and powerless

I want to talk about something that you launched in early February, what feels like three and a half years ago.

And

that is that the AFL-CIO launched the Department of People who work for a living, DPWL.

And this was in response to Trump and Musk's creation of DOGE, which I from here on out will pronounce as Dodge, because that seems the most appropriate way to call it.

And in your press release, you stated that the goal of the DPWL is to hold Dodge accountable.

And you said, quote, make sure the federal government is responsive to working people, not just the whims of CEOs like Musk.

Now, I also want to point out that there was a New York Times article just today that points out that we're not even sure if Musk is in charge of Dodge because they seem to be disavowing him.

And I don't want people to get confused.

It doesn't really matter if he's in charge or not.

The issue is what is he being permitted to direct.

But

does your work, how does DPWL confront Dodge and help protect Americans?

Well, I mean, as soon as Trump won the election, Elon Musk announced that Dodge,

his, you know, unaccountable pseudo-government department was created to make the federal government work, quote, more efficiently.

When I said earlier, you know, delivering meals for children, delivering on programs like Social Security and Medicare,

we know how important those are to real people.

But he was content to have everything on the chopping block, right?

Except for the things that benefit him, by the way,

because he's actually receiving support from our government as a businessman while he's overseeing a lot of this, quote, efficiency.

But we've seen this movie before, right?

As workers, you know, the efficiency experts come in, as I said,

and that's just code for making us work harder for less, usually.

We saw that quickly Congress stepped in line.

They formed their own Dodge caucus.

They have an official subcommittee, actually, to receive Musk's ideas.

The White House renamed the digital service as the U.S.

Dodge Service.

Musk has free rein, and we were watching this happen.

And we knew that we would have to fight back.

We would have to actually respond directly to Musk's attacks and the narrative, frankly, that he was putting out there about what government efficiency, so-called efficiency, was.

So, that's why we thought if he can launch his own fake department, then working people should have their own department, right?

The department of people who work for a living

and to hold him and the Dodge accountable.

And so, it's really a resource, we hope, for all working people to get the facts, because I think it's so confusing and overwhelming what's happening out there.

We need a place for people to go to unpack that.

So that's number one, right?

Number two is we want to translate what it means for workers and how these cuts are going to impact you.

Why should you care?

Well, here's, you know, we'll tell that story.

We want to bring a human face to what these cuts cuts mean.

And then number three is to actually report out to these various structures that have been set up.

What do working people see as what efficiency means?

Because we're on the front lines.

We see what can be done better, right?

And so just last week, Marjorie Taylor Greene, the congresswoman from Georgia, actually held a hearing.

on quote efficiency and unemployment benefits because she was you know talking about the waste the fraud the abuse.

Well, everybody knows that we can find waste, fraud, and abuse.

But has anyone on this committee ever applied for unemployment insurance?

Do you know how inefficient that process is?

Well, we at the Department of People who work for a living gave a dozen ideas of how they could actually make that system more efficient.

So that's what we hope will give us standing to bring real ideas forward, to translate what is happening, and to bring a human face to what it is they're doing.

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Last week, we broke down the major repercussions of Dodge gaining access to private data, which has now expanded to include private taxpayer data, which is protected by the IRS over the weekend.

And then just today, we learned that the Social Security Administrator has resigned in protest because of their attempt to infiltrate that information.

You all have expanded lawsuits to protect data at the Department of Labor, the CFPB, the Department of Health and Human Services.

Can you talk a bit about your legal strategy and how that dovetails with what we're watching happen happen to workers on a daily basis?

Sure.

The legal strategy is basically to,

you know, stop the forward motion of what we believe is a hostile takeover of our government.

And the fact that they're infiltrating private data,

gaining access to valuable data, and we don't know what they're going to do with it is a major, major problem.

And so we're not going to sit by idly and let this happen and allow allow workers to take it on the chin just to pay for more tax giveaways to wealthy corporations.

That's what this is about.

They're trying to squeeze down the services and what the government provides to our citizens and our taxpayers and people who live and work in this country

while they're going to use that data for who knows what, right?

So we have filed as lead plaintiff in some lawsuits.

We have filed as supporters and joined with others, coalition partners, to say, you know, not so fast, right?

And so the legal piece of this is one piece of the fight back strategy, but we know that it can't just happen in the courts.

While that's an important fight, we also have to be playing on multiple playing fields and have a multi-pronged strategy to fight back and make sure that working people's voices are heard.

And so we're actually taking this outside of Washington too because not many people realize that the, you know, I think it's 80 or 85 percent of the federal government workers who are impacted are outside of Washington, D.C.

They are in our communities.

They are folks who are, you know, our neighbors and our families, and it'll have a ripple effect across so much of what we do day to day where we live.

Those court filings, again, are important.

We're going to fight those legal battles, but we also know that we need to take it to the streets and make sure that people realize this isn't just about Washington, D.C.

This is about all of us.

Speaking of why it's so important to understand that this goes beyond D.C.,

let's talk about the Department of Labor.

We know that Dodge's unfettered access to sensitive data at DOL has been of particular concern.

So can you talk a little bit about what the Department of Labor does for both private sector and public sector employees and what the AFL-CIO's typical relationship to the Department of Labor is?

The Department of Labor is our

watchdog, right?

Those of us who go to work every day and take for granted that we can show up to our jobs and have a clean environment, a safe environment, the ability if we are injured on the job to actually have a process to make sure that we're taken care of and in the form of workers' compensation to make sure that overtime laws are actually enforced.

Those are the functions that the Department of Labor is looking out for all of us every single day.

We have hardworking people who work in the agency and dedicate their lives to making sure that those laws are enforced and that they're bringing the voices of workers

into the government.

And it's

an agency that has a storied history.

If you think about the agency is named after Frances Perkins who was the first female secretary of labor under FDR who was the woman behind the New Deal and all of those programs that ushered in real protections for working people.

And so ever since we have held that agency sacred because we know that the majority of people, as I said, who show up to work every day expect to come home safely to their families at night.

And so if you're defunding an agency, if you're understaffing an agency, those laws that we think are there to protect us cannot be enforced.

So that, to me, is the first part of Dodge's attempts to undermine and let employers kind of have free reign and not have to abide by the law.

The second piece of this is, as you mentioned, the data.

Government data is some of the highest quality data.

And they say now data is the new oil, right?

It's almost like a commodity.

And so if you were to go online and actually try to purchase information about a worker, you would have to pay a lot of money to get that information.

But Elon Musk is actually accessing it for free and without any guardrails.

And so we think that, you know, data like whistleblower protections, that's very sensitive data.

If you are bringing a complaint against a company for not enforcing a safety regulation, you feel pretty vulnerable, right?

You're trusting that the government agency is going to have your back.

If you think about wage and hour violations when a company is not paying you your overtime, you need a traffic cop to be able to come in and say, not so fast, Mr.

Employer, you can't get away with that.

And certainly those safety protections, you know, I'm thinking about dangerous environments, places where people show up to work and expect that they're going to have

that process overseen by a neutral arbiter.

That's the government to make sure that your interests are protected.

And not to mention the wage information, the medical information.

There's a whole trove of data that the Department of Labor handles that is extremely sensitive and should not be publicly available to an unelected billionaire to do with what he wants.

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We know that there are human costs to what's happening.

And in fact, we have a clip.

It's from cricket reporter Matt Berg, and I'd like for you to take a listen.

Yeah, I haven't been great.

Today, to be quite honest, I spent most of the day in bed.

It took me so long to even get here and get some modicum of what I thought was stability.

And now it feels, you know, it feels like the rug's been pulled out from underneath me.

The idea that this is like, oh, you know, we're firing.

employees and saving money is ridiculous.

Like,

like nobody goes into the civil service because they want to make money.

You know,

I went into government because I wanted to serve the public.

And I would go back to the government if

I could.

You know, I'm just so scared, like, not only about what this means for me personally, but

what it means for the country.

Like, I've been talking to other people, and like half the jobs we did in the Federal Service don't even exist in the private sector.

Liz, among the firings, I mean, we just heard this young woman.

We also know that Trump has fired probationary workers at the Federal Aviation Administration, including personnel hired for FAA radar, for landing, for navigational aid and maintenance.

We know that they have fired scientists and that they are firing at a time of demographic upheaval, namely that we have this mass exodus of baby boomers from every facet of the workforce.

And one of the ways we keep this country running is by training the next generation of workers

this very much feels antithetical to how you should run a business and as the young woman pointed out there are real pains and there is no private sector answer to a lot of the work that is done by public sector workforce members can you talk a bit about why

we should be not just upset, but what does this mean for Americans as we think about the consequences of who is being forced out of their jobs?

I just, it was heartbreaking listening to her talk about this because

here the fear, as she said,

that's what this has been designed to do is make people afraid, make people feel destabilized.

And, you know, it's just devastating.

But it really does humanize it as we've been talking about.

It brings it home that, as she said, our federal government is made up of real people who have dedicated their lives.

They could have gone to the private sector, made more money.

Everyone knows that people trade money for stability when you go to work for the government because the jobs generally pay less for their private sector equivalency.

And to know that you've dedicated service and you're out there protecting people, you feel like you're doing good in the world, and then to be just fired by an email, you know, with one or two lines with basically no justification in most cases, that it's just heartbreaking and it's wrong.

We've heard stories all across the federal sector in places where you would not believe.

You know, it's counterintuitive to be firing people at the FAA when we just had

the airline crashes of the last two weeks to to think about they already had an issue with this, I call the silver tsunami of the baby boomers who are retiring.

And all of that knowledge and that experience is going to be going out the door.

They were already facing shortages, they were already doing more with less, and then now they're going to actually reduce the workforce even more in this time of critical need, whether it's FAA, whether it's the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, who are responsible for public health, people who are disease detectors who do that for their jobs to keep us safe, food inspections, social security checks that are going to not show up in people's mailboxes.

I mean, these are real impacts that are being felt by the workers themselves, but we know are going to ripple across our communities.

And, you know, it is absolutely devastating and it's, yes, morally outrageous, but it's going to have a lingering impact on our ability to function as a country.

It's going to make us less competitive as a nation if we cannot provide services for our own people.

How are we going to actually compete on the global stage and the global economy if we can't even support sort of basic needs?

Not to mention the talent pipeline that is all going to be left on the cutting room floor if we're going to need to ramp back up again once they discover they've cut too deep or, oh, we didn't realize that program had this impact where are they going to find the talent where are they going to find the experience and the knowledge so we think this is going to have a devastating impact it's going to be you know systemic deep and far-reaching and long-lasting

so for those who hear you and believe you and want to take action for us who are satellite members of the department of people who work for a living

what do you want us to do?

How can we support your efforts or any efforts to help those who've lost their jobs, to help stabilize our country, to help stave off the coming disaster?

Give us some instructions.

What do you want us to do?

Well, certainly we want you to join DPWL and thank you, Madam Abrams, for joining us.

We are happy to have you on our team, but we definitely want not just union members, but members of the community who want to be a part of DPWL, the department of people who work for a living we encourage you to sign up to join the team i think it's dpt

of peoplehowork.org we also are on all the social channels of course as well if you've been fired or you have been let go as a probationary worker we want to support you so also At the Department of People Who Work for a Living, we have a place for you to tell your story.

And so we want to amplify that and enlist more people to be a part of this movement.

We also want to hear from people whose government services have been affected or cut because we think that whether it's through video, through narrative, amplifying those stories is actually what's going to strengthen this movement.

We also have a network of AFL-CIOs throughout the country.

So no matter what state you live in, no matter what town you live in, you can find your local AFL-CIO chapter.

It's a network all across this country for activism.

And this week, we are doing a week of action while Congress is home on recess to amplify the fight against all these federal cuts, but also to prepare for the tax fight that's coming, where they're going to try to extend these tax cuts that Trump did in his first term for the billionaires who do not need more tax relief.

And we are preparing to say, you know what?

This government needs to work for working people not billionaires and so we're going to be mobilizing like a drumbeat every month we're going to have weeks of action we'd love you to be a part of it liz shuler president of aflcio leader of the department for people who work for a living and all-around fighter for workers and those who need them.

Thank you for joining us here on Assembly Required.

Oh, thank you so much for having me and let's do this together.

As always on Assembly Required, we like to give our audience actionable tools for facing the challenges of today.

So here's this week's toolkit in which we will encourage you to be curious, solve problems, and as always, do good.

Number one, unions have played such an important role in this country's history.

And believe it or not, there have been times throughout American history when the standards we've created here became examples for other countries.

So if you have the time, I suggest reading up on labor history.

One of my favorite books, Beaten Down, Worked Up, The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor.

This is by Stephen Greenhouse.

And if you would rather watch a movie, you can watch the classic film on labor, Norma Rae, starring Sally Field.

Number two,

The reason unions exist is to advocate for workers and give them collective power.

So as Liz said, if you're aware of mistreatment at a workplace or people who are being taken advantage of, folks who've lost their jobs, maybe it's time to become an organizer or maybe just help an individual advocate for themselves.

There is power in speaking up and helping others find support.

To learn how to better lift up your voice, I encourage you to check out Unite and Win, the Workplace Organizers Handbook, or you can visit workerorganizing.org.

It's for labor, but the tips inside can work for anyone.

And remember, you can find the toolkit recommendations online for each topic, including the links given to us by Liz Schuler.

And because we know it's hard to remember everything, especially if you're listening on the go, we're going to make sure we post everything.

On the podcast website, you can click view episode for all the details.

If you're watching us on YouTube, just expand the episode description and you'll find recommendations to learn more and do more.

And now we're going to be joined by Farah, our fantastic producer.

Farah, welcome.

Hi, Stacey.

Thank you so much for having me on the show.

Absolutely.

I just wanted to say that we get so many comments from so many listeners who are so grateful to have the show to help guide them through this really dark time in history and in America.

And I know over the past couple of weeks, we've been talking about Trump's full-on government takeover.

And

it's been very scary to hear about, and it also has really dark real-life consequences.

Thousands of people are facing unemployment.

The number of ICE raids have increased, and we're being told that in the United States, we only recognize two genders, which is horrible and disgusting.

And it's so easy to get overwhelmed and just tune out of the news and give up altogether on the premise of everyone's bad, right?

Democrats, Republicans, the left, and the right.

So, my question to you is, how do we combat this cynicism and how do we stay optimistic?

Fair, thank you for the question.

And I want to begin by acknowledging the legitimacy of how people feel.

This is a dark time.

This is a hard time.

The values that we have been taught to believe in are under attack by the very people who should be protecting them.

And it seems every day there's a new assault, a new moment where we are told we are less than or we are divided from.

And that's hard.

And it is a natural instinct to want to move away from, to hide from, or just be angry at everyone.

I don't look at this as a conversation of cynicism versus optimism.

Cynicism acknowledges just how hard things are.

And sometimes optimism pretends it's not as bad as it is.

Cynicism pretends things aren't as hard as they are.

And sometimes optimism suggests that things aren't as bad as they are.

I tend to believe in something else.

And that is you acknowledge what is wrong and you work towards what must be made right.

But you can only measure what you're doing by the effort you're willing to put into it.

Not everyone can give up 24 hours a day to focus on fighting fascism.

Sometimes you can't even give up an hour because you've got so many other things on you.

But with whatever time you have,

use that to build something better.

You see, they only win when we decide that darkness is all there is.

And that can sound very idealistic, but here's what that means.

It means, yes, you can listen to the news, but make sure you watch something that makes you happy when you're done.

Yes, you can.

commiserate with someone about how tragic the moment is, but offer them also a moment of peace and grace.

Decide that you're going to go and volunteer.

Make that phone call to an elected official.

Show up at a board meeting.

And if you can do more, absolutely.

But they only win.

They only overwhelm us when we decide that we are defeated.

And that's why I do this show.

That's why I live the life I live.

I've never been an optimist or a pessimist.

I call myself an ameliorist, which is a completely made-up word.

And what I mean is this, I can't stop the bad from happening, but I can make sure the good fights hard.

I will ameliorate the harm by doing as much good as I personally can.

And each of us has to be the one who determines what good feels like, what good looks like.

And that's why we have these shows.

That's why we have these organizations.

That's why we have each other.

But we fight back.

We win when we decide that we're not going to stop working at making things better.

Yeah, that's beautiful.

I would also just like to say you have such an advanced vocabulary that I was like, after this recording, I will Google what Amelia.

I was like, I should know that.

Okay, so I took it from the word ameliorate, but there is no such thing as an ameliorist.

I just made that part up.

Beautiful.

I still need to Google what that word is.

Okay, let's get into the listener question.

This one comes from Marisca, who really enjoyed your episode and conversation with Senator Booker around what kind of of communication is needed to combat the false narratives of the Trump administration.

One thing that she struggled with is that so much communication and outreach these days is done using the very social media platforms that are now actively funding, if not part of, this fascist takeover.

So her question is, and it's a two-parter, how do we balance utilizing the tools we have and meeting people where they're at without perpetuating the information systems that got us here?

And do you have suggestions of other online alternatives for organizing and engagement outside of the meta and muskverse?

Which personally, I really love the term muskverse, and I will now be using it.

So, thank you, Mariska.

See, new words all the time.

New words.

Okay, so I'm going to take these actually together.

Part of sharing information is being where people are, and you acknowledge that.

So, we do have an obligation to show up in the spaces that are also part of the harm.

But we we can do some small things, like make sure you go into your settings and you turn off their ability to track your ads.

Make certain that when you repost, you only post things that you like that benefit you.

And if you want to cut and paste it and drop it into a different medium, do that.

Taking those small acts of

social media disobedience, they matter and they add up.

So I don't say abandon Twitter, I don't, or whatever they want to call it.

I don't abandon places, but I make sure I

bend those places to what I need them to be.

And so we do have alternatives.

You've got Blue Sky as an alternative.

You've got Substack, and there are so many people

who are building their platforms on Substack.

You've got TikTok.

But no matter where you go.

They're going to be there because they know that's where the money is.

And we can't abandon the playing field to them.

We can't abandon our world to them.

They may control it now, but the more of us there are that can outnumber who they are and what they get from it, the better we will be.

So do the small things you can, but know that small things add up.

Know that what you're doing does matter, but know that the most important thing is that you're out there putting good information in when bad information wants to win.

That was the listener question of today.

So thank you so much for having me on the show, Stacey.

Thank you so much for being here.

A reminder: we can be found wherever you get your podcasts, including on YouTube.

And if you want to tell us what you've learned and solved, send us an email at assemblyrequired at crooked.com or leave us a voicemail, and you and your questions and comments might be featured on the pod.

Our number is 213-293-9509.

Before I let you go, I want to to read a note from Barbara, who decided to share with us how she's taken action.

She says, and I quote, I joined a Massachusetts group created to solve the problem of new immigrant families that are sleeping in airports and on the streets because there's no room at the shelters.

We're a cluster of homes that host families for one to two weeks at a time until they're placed in shelters.

Barbara, thank you for taking action.

Thank you for telling us what you've done.

And thank you for inspiring more out there to follow your lead.

And with that, we are going to wrap up this episode of Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams and I will meet you here next week.

Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams is a crooked media production.

Our lead show producer is Alona Minkowski and our associate producer is Paulina Velasco.

Kirill Polaviev is our video producer.

This episode was recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis.

Our theme song is by Vasilius Fatopoulos.

Thank you to Matt DeGroote, Kyle Seglin, Tyler Boozer, and Samantha Slossberg for production support.

Our executive producers are Katie Long, Madeline Haringer, and me, Stacey Abrams.

Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

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