Dorchester presser comes as Trump continues war with Iran and proposes $1.5 trillion military budget while exacerbating affordability crisis and attacks on immigrant communities<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is much easier instead for this man to scapegoat immigrants, to vilify our neighbors, than to make good on his promises\u2026 It\u2019s much easier to inflate the military budget to $1.5 trillion and throw our country deeper into an endless war with Iran than to create lasting peace.\u201d<\/p>\n
BOSTON\u00a0\u2013 Yesterday, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (MA-07) joined Massachusetts Peace Action and Dorchester community leaders for a press conference to call for a fundamental shift in our nation\u2019s priorities\u2014away from war, militarism, and repression and toward the urgent human needs of people, families, and communities.<\/p>\n
The press conference comes as Trump\u2019s war with Iran continues and the Trump Administration proposes an unprecedented expansion of military spending while families across Massachusetts struggle with the cost of housing, healthcare, groceries, and other necessities.<\/p>\n
A transcript of the Congresswoman\u2019s remarks is available below and the video is available here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Transcript: Pressley, Community Leaders Call for Shift in National Priorities: Away from War, Toward Our Families<\/p>\n August 12, 2026<\/p>\n Boston, MA<\/p>\n For those of you who don\u2019t know me well, quickly, I represent the Massachusetts 7th Congressional District. I\u2019ve been in Congress now for eight years.<\/p>\n I represent a district that is vibrant, diverse, and dynamic, and deeply unequal. And it is addressing those inequities and disparities that drives my work every single day to improve the legacy and change the outcomes of this district, where in a three-mile radius from Cambridge to Roxbury, life expectancy drops by 30 years, and median household income by $50,000.<\/p>\n That is the question that is at the core of my work every single day. I am also a lover of poetry, and so I\u2019ll begin my remarks with the words of the great immortal poet Tupac Shakur, \u201cthey got money for wars, can\u2019t feed the poor.\u201d<\/p>\n And so that\u2019s what brings us here today, because every day I\u2019m hearing from community members about how they\u2019re struggling to make ends meet, to afford rent, to keep food on the table, you know, they\u2019re rationing inhalers and rationing insulin.<\/p>\n And not only do these choices that are forced upon our neighbors infuriate me, but what really upsets me is that these injustices are not naturally occurring. They are man-made. They are manufactured. They are the results of intentional policy and budgetary choices.<\/p>\n And so, when we say equality is the point, we mean it. Because yeah, we get it, elections have consequences, but the fact that this is what you choose to do with your power and your authority and a governing majority. This is what you choose to do: to kick people off of health care, to deny hungry people food?<\/p>\n You know, Coretta Scott King said, \u201cStarving a child is violence. Medical neglect is violence. Contempt for the working man is violence.\u201d This is violence. These choices are violent.<\/p>\n Today, thanks to Trump\u2019s Big Betrayal of a Bill, nearly 175,000 of our most vulnerable neighbors in Massachusetts have lost access to SNAP benefits. We\u2019re just talking about $6 a day, $2 per meal, and then over 320,000 of our neighbors are estimated to lose their health insurance.<\/p>\n So we\u2019re here today in condemnation of this, in rejection of this, in resistance of this. We\u2019re here in solidarity with our neighbors and in defiance of these policies, and we must be defiant.<\/p>\n Donald Trump is a dictator, and history has shown us that appeasement does not work. The only way to be a dictator is with defiance.<\/p>\n And so, again, you could have been anywhere else today. I thank you for your defiance in showing up here today. You know, in the midst of what is a war of choice, it is a manufactured illegal war unauthorized by the Congress that has destabilized a region, impacting over a dozen countries.<\/p>\n This war has claimed at least the lives of 18 American service members, hundreds of innocent Iranian children. This is state-sponsored terror and a complete failure.<\/p>\n And moreover, even people who voted for Donald Trump didn\u2019t vote for this. He said he was going to be a president of peace. He\u2019s renamed the Department of Defense the Department of War. He\u2019s out here making reckless decisions that this is some sort of video game and not people\u2019s real lives.<\/p>\n He continues to peddle chaos and fear to distract us from his incompetent leadership.<\/p>\n It is much easier instead for this man to scapegoat immigrants, to vilify our neighbors, than to make good on his promises.<\/p>\n It\u2019s much easier to inflate the military budget to $1.5 trillion and throw our country deeper into an endless war with Iran than to create lasting peace.<\/p>\n It is much easier to strong arm Republicans in Congress to authorize a no-strings-attached $70 billion check for rogue, murderous agencies abducting our immigrant neighbors than to fix our broken immigration system.<\/p>\n Now, let me also just say this: two sides of the same evil for-profit coin. Whether you\u2019re talking about the incentivizing, for-profit incentivizing of criminalizing and incarcerating low-income and Black folks and our mass incarceration system\u2014the same corporations are motivated and benefit by mass deportation, mass kidnapping, mass detainment.<\/p>\n So if you care about mass incarceration, you should also care about mass kidnappings. That\u2019s what they are, because it\u2019s a complete violation of constitutional rights. Mass detainment and deportation. This is a for-profit system, two evil sides of the same coin.<\/p>\n Today, Trump has spent over $260 billion in this mass deportation campaign. Your money, your tax dollars, are being used to harass, abduct, abuse, and to murder law-abiding people, most of whom have no criminal record and have lived in the United States for decades and contributed to our communities.<\/p>\n When I have visited these detention facilities, these concentration camps, I\u2019ve met people that were disappeared, kidnapped on their way to church, on their way to work, on their way to exercise, on their way school shopping.<\/p>\n They were roofers, landscapers, delivery drivers, daycare providers, Dreamers, undocumented workers, TPS holders from Haiti, Nepal, El Salvador, and Venezuela.<\/p>\n So these are our neighbors, the people that we love, the people that we live with, and work and worship with.<\/p>\n The same folks who care for our elders, build our homes, and are the backbone of our economy.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s why we can\u2019t stand idly by.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s why I\u2019m here, not just as a neighbor, not just as your Congresswoman, but just as a human being who gives a damn about other human beings.<\/p>\n And I\u2019m so grateful to Massachusetts Peace Action, to the various advocates for justice, who believe another and a better world is possible-one that is war-free.<\/p>\n And that is also why I was proud to vote yes on the War Powers Resolution to stop Trump\u2019s war on Iran and upon the constitutional power of Congress to authorize a war.<\/p>\n That is also why I was proud to partner and to work with all of you to pass my bill to extend TPS for Haiti, even in a Republican majority.<\/p>\n And that is exactly why I\u2019ll continue holding the Trump Administration accountable to end this illegal war, to protect our communities from chaos and harm of an authoritarian administration.<\/p>\n So again, thank you all for making it easier for me to practice the discipline of hope.<\/p>\n Thank you all for being the light in the midst of so much darkness.<\/p>\n And I also want to thank you, not only for your partnership, but I thank you for holding me accountable.<\/p>\n I thank many of you in this room for being teachers to me in this broader movement and the work of peace.<\/p>\n Thank you.<\/p>\n As Trump pushes the United States deeper into a Congressionally unauthorized, illegal war with Iran, his administration is proposing an unprecedented expansion of military spending while families across Massachusetts struggle with the cost of housing, food, health care, child care, and other basic necessities. The administration\u2019s FY2027 budget proposes<\/a> increasing total defense resources from roughly $1.05 trillion this year to $1.5 trillion next year\u2014an increase of approximately $445 billion, or 42 percent, in a single year.<\/p>\n At the same time, immigrant families who have lived, worked, paid taxes, raised families and built communities in Massachusetts are facing an increasingly aggressive campaign of detention and deportation. The termination of Temporary Protected Status for Haitians and Syrians has stripped people of their ability to legally live and work in the United States and put them at risk of deportation. Approximately 45,000 TPS holders<\/a> live in Massachusetts, while more than 300,000 Haitian nationals nationwide have depended on TPS protections.<\/p>\n Moreover, the upcoming termination of TPS for El Salvador, means that thousands more\u00a0 are now at risk of falling victim to a for-profit system of mass deportation.<\/p>\n Congresswoman Pressley has also been an outspoken critic of Trump\u2019s war in Iran<\/a> and repeatedly voted in favor of a War Powers resolution<\/a> to stop Trump\u2019s war in Iran and affirm the constitutional power of Congress to authorize a war. Congresswoman\u00a0Pressley\u00a0has also been a leading congressional advocate for all TPS holders and immigrant families.\u00a0As Co-Chair of the House Haiti Caucus, she has fought efforts to terminate protections for Haitians and other TPS recipients and has pushed Congress to protect people who have established lives, families and careers in the United States. In April of 2026, the House passed a Pressley-led measure to redesignate TPS for Haiti. The companion bill awaits further action in the Senate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dorchester presser comes as Trump continues war with Iran and proposes $1.5 trillion military budget while exacerbating affordability…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106733,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-812483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=812483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=812483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=812483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=812483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}