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Hunger stalks the Green Mountains like a silent and stealthy predator. Two out of five people in Vermont experience hunger, according to Hunger Free Vermont. And the problem may soon get much worse.
The Trump administration has proposed sweeping cuts to SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, the nation’s largest food assistance program. The Senate is currently considering a budget reconciliation bill passed by the House that includes billions of dollars in cuts to SNAP and Medicaid. Up to 13,000 Vermonters may have their food assistance reduced or eliminated if the measure is approved. Many legal immigrants, including refugees and asylees, will no longer be eligible for food benefits, according to Ivy Enoch of Hunger Free Vermont.
To find out what this means to the people who will be directly affected by the potential cuts, I visited the largest food shelf in central Vermont, located at Capstone Community Action in Barre. The food shelf is open three days a week. When I visited, a steady stream of people of all ages came through the doors, quietly but gratefully filling grocery bags of food. Volunteers buzzed about helping.
Emmanuelle Soumailhan, coordinator for Capstone’s food shelf, said that the food shelf gets about 800 to 1,000 visitors per month, double the traffic it received before the Covid pandemic. The potential for federal cuts has her concerned that “we're not going to have enough food and we're going to see a surge of people … (and) we're just going to run out of money.”
Stephanie Doyle came to the food shelf to get food for her family. She said that her SNAP benefits did not cover her family’s food needs for the month. “You just can't afford getting fruits and vegetables and all that stuff that you need to do to be healthy, especially when you have a child that you're taking care of.”
Doyle wants to ensure that her teenage daughter is “fueled really well in school so that she has a chance to thrive and get a good education just like all of the other kids who have more.”
Leslie Walz, a retired school nurse from Barre, was volunteering at the food shelf. She was outraged by the prospect that SNAP funding would be slashed.
“I don't know what's going to happen to these people that are dependent on the food shelf here,” she said. “Many of them don't have a place to live. They're living out of their cars. They were living in motels. It's essential. It can't be cut, not if we have a heart.”
Liz Scharf, director of community economic development and food security at Capstone, insisted that philanthropy and charity can not replace lost federal funds. She is hopeful that the most draconian cuts will be avoided.
“I just hope that in the end we're a country that decides to make sure our people are cared for, rather than giving money to the highest wealth individuals in this country through tax breaks,” said Scharf.
Disclosure: David Goodman's wife, Sue Minter, was the executive director of Capstone Community Action from December 2018 to January 2025.
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In 2010, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange released a secret video of a U.S. helicopter attack on Iraqi civilians. U.S. authorities charged him with disclosing state secrets and demanded his extradition to the U.S. Assange took refuge inside the Ecuadorean embassy in London and spent a dozen years first inside the embassy and later jailed in the U.K.’s high security Belmarsh Prison. He was released last year after pleading guilty to a single charge under the Espionage Act and now lives in Australia.
Last week, Julian Assange returned to the international stage, walking the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival alongside Vermont filmmaker Eugene Jarecki. Jarecki’s new film, “The Six Billion Dollar Man,” chronicles Assange’s crusade to reveal inconvenient truths that governments seek to bury. Jarecki’s new film has been garnering awards, receiving the first-ever Golden Globe Award for best documentary, and taking the special jury prize of the L’Oeil d’or, or Golden Eye award, the documentary film prize at Cannes.
At the Golden Globes, the award Jarecki received recognized his work for “combining the skills of a journalist with the voice of a poet.” The statement added, “At a time when truth is under pressure, Eugene’s work reminds us of the power of storytelling to provoke, enlighten, and ultimately defend democracy itself.”
Eugene Jarecki has won Emmy and Peabody awards for his previous films, including documentaries about Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger, and the military-industrial complex.
Jarecki lives in Vermont and co-founded the Big Picture Theater in Waitsfield. I caught up with him in Europe.
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In 1998, brothers Mateo and Andy Kehler bought a piece of land in the Northeast Kingdom town of Greensboro that would become home to Jasper Hill Farm. Within a few years, the brothers were producing award-winning cheeses and had created an iconic Vermont brand. Among the numerous accolades received by Jasper Hill are Best American Cheese from the World Cheese Awards, gold medals from the International Cheese Awards and Best of Show from the American Cheese Society.
Today, Jasper Hill, the largest employer in Greensboro with 85 employees, is confronting headwinds. Its lucrative Canadian markets have completely dried up. Canadians are boycotting American-made products in response to President Trump’s tariffs and his threats to make Canada the 51st state. And Vermont’s housing crisis is making it extremely difficult for Jasper Hill’s employees to live and for the company to grow.
The local housing crunch is so severe that Jasper Hill has bought 11 properties and is subsidizing rent so its employees can afford to live.
"The folks that are living in our houses can't find anywhere to live. There's nothing to buy and there's nothing to rent,” said Kehler.
But despite the town’s dire need for moderately priced housing, Greensboro residents recently voted down a plan to redevelop its derelict and underused town hall into affordable housing. As VTDigger has reported, the plan was for the nonprofit Northeast Kingdom housing agency RuralEdge to invest $10 million in rehabilitating the town hall and create up to 20 units of affordable housing.
Greensboro, with about 800 year-round residents, is one of the wealthiest communities in Vermont. It has the highest rate of second home ownership in the state. In 2019, Greensboro’s town plan and a housing needs assessment detailed Greensboro’s “great need” for moderately-priced housing.
Jasper Hill Farm co-founder Mateo Kehler described his neighbors' rejection of the affordable housing plan as “soul crushing.”
I visited Jasper Hill Farm to talk with Kehler about cheese and the challenges confronting his renowned business. When I arrived, he was outside in large rubber boots washing out a milk truck. Kehler invited me inside for a walk around the creamery. We were soon standing among gleaming stainless steel pipes and large copper tanks. The air was thick with the distinctive sweet and sour smell of fermenting cheese.
Kehler described what has happened to his Canadian sales. “We were expecting to sell nearly $1 million worth of cheese to Canada and Montreal, which is our closest metropolitan market and is the best cheese market in North America.”
“It went from going gangbusters to a zippo in just a few—the span of a month,” he said.
“I don't think you can overstate the consequences for small businesses on the border here,” he said of the shutdown of Canadian business. “It's been a disaster.”
Kehler said that he has received some blowback as a result of his vocal advocacy for affordable housing. “Everybody loves Jasper Hill until we start talking about housing. And everybody wants housing in theory, but almost nobody here wants housing in practice.”
“Families with children … are the way that communities replicate themselves,” said Kehler, “and Greensboro has lost its capacity to replicate itself.” He said that Greensboro has erected a metaphorical gate that keeps out young people.
Jasper Hill Farm is “going to be fine, but … Greensboro is not going to be fine,” he continued. The housing crisis “is not existential for us but it probably is existential for the nursing home, and it is absolutely existential for the school, and it's going to be a huge problem for the town when there's nobody to volunteer for the fire department” and other town organizations.
Kehler is now advocating for affordable housing on a statewide level. He said that Vermont needs a new model of multi-unit housing.
“The days of single family homes spread out and in the middle of nowhere on the back end of dirt roads is basically over,” he asserted.
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Karen Kevra was passionate about playing the flute as a child. But in college, she became disillusioned and walked away from classical music. Her long and winding journey brought her back to music, and in the process, transformed the music scene in Vermont.
Karen Kevra is founder and artistic director of Capital City Concerts (CCC), which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. It has become one of Vermont’s premier and most beloved chamber music series, holding concerts in Montpelier and Burlington. Kevra is a Grammy-nominated flutist who performs at each of the CCC concerts. She has shared the stage with members of the Emerson String Quartet, the Paris Piano Trio, the Borromeo String Quartet, the Boston Chamber Music Society and Trey Anastasio of Phish.
Kevra has performed throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe, including performances at Carnegie Hall and the French Embassy in Washington D.C. When the Covid pandemic closed down performance venues, Kevra turned to telling stories. She launched a podcast, Muse Mentors, a series of beautifully crafted interviews with artists, activists and thinkers in which she explores the transformative role that mentors have played in their lives. She is on the music faculty of Middlebury College.
Kevra credits her own mentor with changing the course of her life. As an adult, Kevra sought out a teacher, Louis Moyse, a renowned flutist, composer and co-founder of the Marlboro Music Festival. She was introduced to Moyse by Jim Lowe, the longtime arts editor of the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus, who has advised Kevra over the years. Lowe shared a recording of Moyse with the aspiring young flutist.
“I'd never heard flute playing like that before, and I'd never heard music making like that before, and so that was it," says Kevra. "I finally decided to screw up my courage and pick up the phone and make a phone call to go and play for Louis Moyse, in hopes of being able to study with him.”
Moyse and Kevra instantly bonded. Louis and his wife moved to Montpelier and he encouraged Kevra to launch Capital City Concerts. “Invite your friends to come and play,” he counseled. Their musical relationship blossomed into a lifelong friendship that lasted until Moyse’s death at the age of 94 in 2007.
Kevra says of her 25-year long music series: “These concerts are kind of a respite from all of the difficult stuff that's going on in the world and the news. We're offering a kind of salve for the soul.”
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Mohsen Mahdawi is a free man. That has not come easily. It has taken a national human rights campaign to free Mahdawi and keep him free. He is among the first people in the country to be freed from detention under President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Mohsen Mahdawi is a Columbia University student and Palestinian activist who was arrested in Vermont by immigration agents last month at what he was told would be a citizenship interview. Mahdawi, 34, grew up in a refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank but is now a legal permanent resident living in Vermont. He is a practicing Buddhist and was president of the Columbia University Buddhist Association and he co-founded Columbia's Palestinian Student Union.
Mahdawi’s immigration interview on April 14 was supposed to be the last step in his 10-year journey to become a U.S. citizen. But it was a trap. Upon completing his interview, he was whisked away in unmarked SUVs by armed and masked federal agents. He was accused by the State Department of posing a threat to national security over his pro-Palestine campus activism.
Mahdawi was keenly aware of President Trump’s ominous crackdown on immigrants. Other international students who were in the U.S. with valid student visas or were legal permanent residents were being snatched off the street and quickly shipped to a prison in Louisiana, where judges were more sympathetic to the Trump administration’s effort to deport them.
Mahdawi alerted Vermont’s congressional delegation to his fear of being arrested and he contacted attorneys to act swiftly in the event he was detained. Just as he anticipated, the federal agents who arrested him hustled him to the Burlington airport where he was to be put on a plane to Louisiana. This followed a well-worn script — until Mahdawi missed his flight. That gave time for his lawyers to make an emergency appeal to Vermont federal Judge William Sessions III, who immediately issued an order blocking the Trump administration from removing him from Vermont. Mahdawi was in immigration custody in Vermont for 16 days. On April 30, Vermont Judge Geoffrey Crawford ordered Mahdawi’s release on bail, comparing his arrest to the unlawful repression of free speech under McCarthyism.
The Trump administration is continuing its effort to deport Mahdawi. For now, he can continue his fight for freedom outside of prison. (Disclosure: the ACLU of Vermont, where I am a board member, is part of Mahdawi’s legal team.)
Mohsen Mahdawi is planning to attend his graduation from Columbia University next week and to begin graduate studies at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs in September.
I met Mohsen Mahdawi near his home in the rural Upper Connecticut River Valley. He said he preferred to be outside in nature, his sanctuary. He asked me to join him on a favorite hike through a forest and up a hillside with beautiful views.
Following is an excerpt of our Vermont Conversation edited for length and clarity. You can hear the full conversation at the audio link at the top of this article.
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Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark recently filed her fourth lawsuit in two weeks against the Trump administration, this one to stop Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., from dismantling the health agency.
It is the 13th lawsuit that Clark has filed against the Trump administration in its first 100 days (see VTDigger’s online tracker of Clark’s actions). These are multistate lawsuits brought in conjunction with other Democratic attorneys general.
Clark's lawsuits include challenging the gutting of the departments of Education and Health and Human Services, dismantling AmeriCorps, anti-DEI rules, tariffs, Elon Musk’s unchecked power, and anti-LGBTQ+ rules in the military, to name a few.
Clark, who was reelected in November to her second term as attorney general, accuses President Donald Trump of violating the U.S. Constitution that he was sworn to defend.
“Every single time Donald Trump violates the constitution or federal law and Vermont has standing, we are suing,” she said.
Trump has been on a remarkable losing streak. Nationally, more than 200 lawsuits have been filed against the administration so far, and judges have fully or partially blocked implementation of most of Trump’s actions. During Trump's first term, Vermont participated in 62 lawsuits and won a favorable outcome in 60 of those cases.
What is the point of taking actions that are struck down by courts?
Clark points to Trump’s record as a businessman, in which he declared bankruptcy six times.
“I think some people would feel embarrassed if they had a business model that was going to have a lot of failures,” she said. “And he just doesn't. He's not oriented that way. He doesn't necessarily see a failure as a loss. I think he sees these as tools to understand what his power is and to stretch his power by intimidation.”
“He's using these extreme cases to test the boundaries of his power and also to gain power for himself,” she added.
Clark said she is especially concerned about Trump’s attacks on poor people, such as slashing the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program and Head Start, the early education program for low-income people, both of which benefit thousands of Vermonters.
“It isn't for the administration, the executive branch, to decide how to spend the taxpayers’ money,” Clark said. She insisted that Congress “created these programs, and they have funded these programs, and Donald Trump needs to deliver the money to the programs.”
What if Trump ignores the courts, as he seems to selectively be doing? Clark has a warning for Trump’s lawyers who defy court orders.
“There are consequences: It's disbarment. It's being in contempt,” she said. “At some point, lawyers who disobey will be punished.”
Numerous Trump attorneys have been disbarred in recent years.
The attorney general said her biggest concerns are apathy and the erosion of the media, which are interconnected problems. “There's apathy because people actually don't understand what's going on from a non-biased source.”
Many people “are getting their news not from journalists, but from entertainers,” she said.
Clark advises Vermonters to "hang in there.”
“Our country is strong (and) was literally designed to protect itself from someone who wanted to be king,” she said.
The attorney general said people must "do our part as citizens: voting, participating in democracy, protesting, speaking up. That's my message to Vermonters.”
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This week marks the 25th anniversary of the historic passage of the civil unions law in Vermont.
On April 25, 2000, after a remarkable four-month marathon of public hearings, legislative maneuvering, protests, counter-demonstrations and statewide soul-searching, the Vermont House of Representatives voted 79-68 to pass the civil unions bill, the most sweeping grant of rights to gay couples in the nation.
The law allowed same sex couples to form civil unions, the legal equivalent of heterosexual marriage. Gov. Howard Dean signed it into law the next day.
Rep. Bill Lippert was the lone openly gay Vermont legislator in 2000 and led the fight for passage of civil unions and later same-sex marriage. I was a reporter covering these historic events for Mother Jones. Lippert invited me onto the House floor moments after civil unions passed in 2000 to interview him and other supporters of the bill.
I described how Lippert made a beeline across the House floor to thank Rep. Bill Fyfe, an 84-year-old former jail warden and Republican state representative from Newport City. His wife was in the hospital, and Fyfe was due to have surgery the following day. But he made sure to be in the Statehouse to cast his vote for civil unions.
I asked Fyfe why he had voted for the bill. He looked at me through his thick glasses and his eyes began to water.
“Because he’s one of my better friends here,” he said, motioning to Lippert. “And there were two ladies who were my next-door neighbors for many years …” He broke into a soft sob. “They were treated terrible. I’m just glad I could do something to help.”
Lippert squeezed Fyfe’s shoulder to comfort him, “People can be cruel, Bill,” Lippert said.
Vermont’s civil unions law passed four months after the Vermont Supreme Court ruled in Baker v. Vermont that gay and lesbian couples were entitled to the same legal rights and benefits of marriage as heterosexual couples. The court ordered the Vermont legislature to craft a law that would satisfy the ruling, either by legalizing same-sex marriage or by creating an equivalent partnership structure. The decision, wrote Chief Justice Jeffrey Amestoy, “is simply a recognition of our common humanity.”
Vermont’s civil unions law was a tipping point for the national movement for LGBTQ+ rights. In 2009, Vermont became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage through an act of the legislature, overriding a gubernatorial veto to do so.
In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4, in the landmark case Obergefell v. Hodges, that same-sex couples could wed throughout the country.
Today, LGBTQ+ rights are under attack. President Donald Trump has targeted transgender people with a slew of executive orders. Hundreds of bills aimed at restricting LGBTQ+ rights have been introduced in state legislatures and in Congress. Many people fear that a conservative U.S. Supreme Court could roll back LGBTQ+ rights, including the right to marry.
Bill Lippert was living in Philadelphia when he first visited Vermont in 1972 to hike the Long Trail. He had just come out and recalled that he had trouble finding even one other gay man in the state. Lippert became active in Vermont’s small gay rights movement and went on to serve 28 years in the Vermont House of Representatives from 1994 to 2022 as the representative from Hinesburg. He served as chair of the House Judiciary Committee for a decade and then chaired the House Health Care Committee.
Lippert, 75, is now retired and working on preserving Vermont LGBTQ+ history, including recounting his own experiences as a gay activist and gay legislator in Vermont.
Lippert acknowledged that winning civil unions was viewed by some gay rights advocates — including lead attorney (now federal judge) Beth Robinson — as a defeat.
Lippert said that he knew that “this fight for marriage equality in Vermont was going to be the biggest gay rights fight perhaps of our lifetime.” But he said that as a legislator for six years, “I could tell what was achievable and what wasn't. It was clear (that) full marriage equality in the year 2000 was not feasible. It was not going to happen.”
Lippert insisted that civil unions “was an important step that brought us ultimately to full marriage equality.” And he was determined to build that bridge.
“When civil unions passed, I made a personal commitment to myself that if I could continue to be re-elected, I would stay in the Legislature until we achieved full marriage equality, and that happened in 2009,” he said.
Lippert says that today’s political attacks on trans people has a familiar ring.
“Trans people are being used as a target because it's the ‘unknown,’” he said. “Gay and lesbian people used to be the scary unknown, but that doesn't work anymore in the same way.”
I asked Lippert what concerns him most today.
“The taking away of our basic democratic rights,” he said. “The shocking willingness to detain and deport people who have every right to be here because they've been granted that right.”
“I am an optimist by nature, but this is a frightening time, and I've participated in more protests and demonstrations in the last month than I had in the last 10 years,” he said. “And I think it's important that we do that. We deserve to have the country that some of us have fought for … by fighting for civil rights, for LGBTQ+ rights, rights for women, rights for religious freedom.”
The passage of civil unions came at a price. Seventeen legislators who supported civil unions in 2000 were defeated in elections the following November as part of the “Take Back Vermont” movement. Lippert takes inspiration from those elected officials.
“One of the lessons that I take from civil unions is that there are still people of tremendous personal moral courage and political courage,” Lippert said. He mentioned defeated Republican legislators John Edwards, Marion Milne, Diane Carmolli and Bill Fyfe.
“When you're not part of the same ‘despised minority’ but you say it's wrong to have discrimination against them, it's wrong to be prejudiced against them — you get attacked as well. And they did so,” he said.
“They did the right thing. They chose to stand up,” Lippert said. “That girds my hopefulness.”
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Jeff Sharlet spends a lot of time going where most people fear to tread: into the heart of militant right-wing movements, where he comes back with unforgettable stories and personal insights about conspiracy theorists and people who want to shatter modern society and remake it in a Christian nationalist image.
Sharlet is a professor of writing at Dartmouth College, a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, and the New York Times bestselling author or editor of eight books. His 2023 book, “The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War,” was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist for Nonfiction, and his book, “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power,” was the basis for a 2019 Netflix documentary series, for which he was narrator and executive producer. Sharlet’s writing on current politics can be found on his Substack, Scenes from a Slow Civil War.
Sharlet describes his work as “reporting on the intersection of religion and politics.”
He no longer characterizes the current state of politics and polarization as a “slow civil war.”
“When I talk to young trans people, they're not paranoid when they say their state wants them not to exist. They are correct. That's sped up. The removal of books, the erasure of history, the threat to the universities, which is a hallmark (of) authoritarianism — this is textbook.”
“Everything Trump has said he was going to do, he has attempted to do. It's time to lay aside the ‘this is just negotiating tactics.’ He's going to negotiate us right down into full fascism.”
Sharlet has written about the carefully crafted imagery of authoritarianism that is on display right now. He singled out Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem's visit to a notorious prison in El Salvador, where she posed "in tight athleisure" outfit while wearing a $50,000 Rolex watch in front of a backdrop of caged shirtless men who had allegedly been deported from the U.S.
"It's very powerful theater," he said. "Authoritarian movements do not make policy recommendations. They put on theatrical productions. They do not persuade with arguments. They bludgeon with images."
Sharlet recently returned from reporting trips to Idaho and upstate New York, in Rep. Elise Stefanik’s district. I asked how MAGA supporters whom he encountered were feeling about Trump’s performance, including the predicted economic impact on red states of tariffs, social security and Medicaid cuts, inflation, government layoffs, and the price of eggs – up 60% compared to a year ago.
“There's a lot of people who are pleased with this and there is an increasing radicalization,” he said.
“There used to be a Q-Anon slogan called ‘trust the plan,’ and that's the ethos of the politics: trust the plan.”
MAGA supporters told him that “they're pleased about crackdowns on trans people. A lot of people are really, really happy about crackdowns on colleges.” He described how a member of a church that he visited in Spokane, Washington, “were thrilled. They feel like religious freedom is finally being established.”
"I think people are taking false reassurance of saying, 'Well, he's hurting his own base'. Of course, he's hurting his own base. Fascism is not a good deal. It's not a good deal for anybody. But you break government, and then you have your complete control over it. The goal is power, and with power comes the ability to enrich those who are close to you. It comes with the power to satisfy both your own ideological projects and those of your allies."
On the left, Sharlet said “there's much more tuning out than the first Trump administration.”
He said that people opposed to Trump “have to build coalitions that are not just the people who have the right political ideas. We have to have coalitions with people who don't normally think about politics, who don't even have an opinion on it.”
“Whatever we're doing, it’s not enough. So good. Let's do more.”
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Vermont has been thrust to the center of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
On April 14, Mohsen Mahdawi, a student at Columbia University and a legal permanent resident of the U.S. who lives in the Upper Valley of Vermont, traveled to Colchester for his naturalization interview, the final step in becoming an American citizen. Mahdawi was born in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has lived in the U.S. for a decade and holds a green card.
Mahdawi has been a Palestinian rights activist at Columbia, though he did not participate in the student protest encampment there last spring. He is set to graduate next month. He suspected that his immigration appointment was a “honey trap” meant to lure him out to be deported, as happened to his friend, Mahmoud Khalil, a green-card holder and a fellow Palestinian student activist at Columbia.
Before traveling to Colchester on Monday, Mahdawi alerted his attorneys, Vermont’s congressional delegation, and journalists in the event that he was arrested. When he showed up for his naturalization interview, he was taken by hooded plainclothes officers who placed him in handcuffs before he could leave the building.
Mahdawi has not been charged with a crime. According to his attorneys, he was detained under an obscure law that permits foreign nationals to be deported if they pose "serious adverse foreign policy consequences." Mahdawi's attorneys argue that he is being punished for protected speech in violation of the First Amendment and his right to due process. In response to an emergency petition filed by Mahdawi's lawyers, Vermont federal Judge William Sessions ordered the Trump administration not to deport him or move him out of the state while he reviews the case.
A CBS News crew interviewed Mahdawi the day before his arrest. He told them, "If my story will become another story for the struggle to have justice and democracy in this country, let it be."
Also on Monday, attorneys for Rümeysa Öztürk, a graduate student at Tufts University, argued before Judge Sessions in Burlington that Öztürk’s arrest on March 25 violated the law. Öztürk, a former Fulbright fellow who is from Turkey and is in the U.S. on a student visa, was grabbed off the street in Somerville, Mass., by masked plainclothes men, a scene that was captured in a now-viral video. She was whisked to Vermont that night before being flown to Louisiana the following morning. A federal judge in Boston ruled that her case should be heard in Vermont. Judge Sessions is now considering the matter.
Öztürk's attorneys assert that the Trump administration secretly revoked her student visa and targeted her for co-writing an op-ed in Tufts’ student newspaper that criticized university leaders for their response to demands that the school divest from companies with ties to Israel.
Both Mahdawi and Öztürk have been targeted by shadowy right wing pro-Israel groups. Mahdawi was named by the militant Zionist organization Betar US, which placed his name on a “deport list” that it gave to the Trump administration.
Öztürk was targeted by Canary Mission, a right-wing group that claims that she “engaged in anti-Israel activism,” an apparent reference to her op-ed piece.
Vermont’s political leaders denounced Mahdawi's arrest. Rep. Becca Balint, and Senators Peter Welch and Bernie Sanders issued a statement saying that Madahwi’s arrest “is immoral, inhumane, and illegal.” They demanded that he “must be afforded due process under the law and immediately released from detention.”
Gov. Phil Scott stated, “Law enforcement officers in this country should not operate in the shadows or hide behind masks.”
On Tuesday, Democratic leaders in the Vermont Senate demanded that Vt. Gov Phil Scott terminate an agreement that allows federal immigration authorities to lodge detainees in state prison.
The Vermont Conversation spoke with two attorneys at the center of these cases.
“The larger concern here is one's right to free speech,” said Cyrus Mehta, an immigration attorney based in New York and an adjunct professor of law at Brooklyn Law School. He is part of Mohsen Mahdawi's legal team.
“The Supreme Court has long held … that everyone in the United States, whether they're citizens or non-citizens, including green card holders, have a First Amendment right to free speech. The free speech might not be to your liking. You may not agree with it. But as long as it's lawful, as long as you're not engaging in criminal conduct, that speech should be protected under our First Amendment.”
“It is against the interests of the United States to harshly go against students, treat them like criminals -- even worse than criminals by detaining them, not giving them bond -- and their only offense has been speech that has not particularly been favored by this administration.”
Mehta warned that denying rights to green card holders “will slowly extend to U.S. citizens, we will all lose this cherished First Amendment right to express ourselves.”
Grabbing people off the street by masked plainclothes officers “absolutely bears many of the hallmarks of a kidnapping,” said Lia Ernst, legal director of the ACLU of Vermont, who is on Rümeysa Öztürk's legal team. (Disclosure: I serve on the board of the ACLU of Vermont).
“The notion that the administration — with no due process, with no judicial review — can sneak someone around the country, as happened in our case, and then, as has happened in these other instances, out of the country, and then claim they are powerless to do anything about it, is utterly foreign to the American legal system. It's utterly foreign to the rule of law, and it is abhorrent.”
"It's just horrifying, and I believe intentionally. The government is not trying to just punish Rümeysa for her speech. It's trying to tell everyone else they better only express opinions with which the government agrees. And that cannot be in the United States of America.”
As President Trump and his allies stymie court orders, will the legal system hold?
“I have to believe that it will, but it will not do it on its own,” replied Ernst. She cited the importance of recent protests.
“There is real power in the people standing together and demanding adherence to the rule of law … and to stand up to this administration and to say that its refusal to abide by the constitution and to abide by the rule of law will not be tolerated. But the legal system can't do it by itself.”
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Journalist Garrett Graff is sounding increasingly urgent alarms about America’s slide into authoritarianism.
He said that what is happening under the Trump administration is not a constitutional crisis, which “normally means that there's some sort of tension in the system, disagreements between the two branches.” Instead, he insisted that the tension is absent because “what we are seeing is a Congress that is willingly abdicating many of its constitutional and statutory authorities to the President.”
What is happening now is “a constitutional crash. And I mean that in the medical sense, where we are seeing the unwinding of our constitutional system writ large, and sort of a collective failure of checks and balances across the board.”
“Checks and balances only work if Congress actually cares,” Graff continued. “And what we're seeing right now is Congress just not caring what the President does... They seem unwilling to stand up for both their traditional role and also their own personal power in Washington, lest it basically anger Donald Trump's hoards of supporters and turns MAGA against them.”
Garrett Graff, a former editor of Politico and Washingtonian magazines, is a frequent guest on television news shows and a regular contributor to the op-ed pages of the New York Times and Washington Post. His oral history of the 2008 financial crisis, “The Weekend That Shook The World,” was published this week in the Washington Post op-ed section.
“I think the 2008 financial crisis is a moment that we have not fully reckoned with in terms of how it shaped and changed the trajectory of our country,” noted Graff. “It caused an enormous loss of faith in the system and in institutions among voters and Americans. It launched the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party, which we have seen go in the years since from the fringe to the mainstream of the party.”
“The fact that there were no Wall Street executives who were publicly held to account in criminal prosecution — basically that there were no CEOs who were perp walked on TV — caused a lot of people to rightly feel that the system was not working for them, that basically the powerful were being protected and they were being made to pay the price as ordinary mortgage holders or shareholders across the country. It also a big part of the rise of Donald Trump, who, in the wake of the financial crisis, begins his regular commentary for Fox News as this businessman and entrepreneur, and begins the way that he moves to the center of gravity in the Republican Party.”
Graff was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his 2022 history of Watergate. He is the author of numerous books about history and national security, including “When the Sea Came Alive: An Oral History of D-Day,” “The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9-11,” and “UFO: The Inside Story of the US Government’s Search for Alien Life Here ― and Out There,”
Graff also shares his writing about current politics in his online newsletter, Doomsday Scenario.
Recently, Graff, who lives in Burlington, turned his lens closer to home. He is the editor of a new book from the Vermont Historical Society, “Life Became Very Blurry: An Oral History of COVID-19 in Vermont.” (Disclosure: VTDigger reporter Erin Petenko was interviewed for “Life Became Very Blurry.”
Graff wrote that “it’s possible that Covid will prove as transformational a moment for the (Vermont) population and culture as the back-to-the-land movement of the 1960s and 1970s.”
He predicted that the “national revolution around remote work” will benefit Vermont in the long term" and bring "a new generation of Vermonters to the state who can make successful careers here.”
Graff notes that nationally, the pandemic gave rise to nostalgia that has fueled Trump's promise to return the country to a mythical past, even to a time when the U.S. was ruled by a king.
"Right now, hour by hour, we are watching the court cases play out about whether the President can rendition people without criminal records to torture gulags in El Salvador and then declare them beyond the reach of US courts for any sort of due process whatsoever. It does not take a law degree to note that that is one of the most fundamentally unconstitutional sentences I could have possibly uttered, and goes against sort of every American tradition in the legal process and due process in our 250 year history. It sounds much more like something King George III was doing to the colonists when they declared independence than anything that we have seen a US president do ever since."
Are we on the road to authoritarianism?
"I think we are in a moment where we are trying to answer that question anew almost every single day."
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Dr. Mark Levine retires as Vermont’s health commissioner this week after an eight year tenure marked by historic events. Dr. Levine is best known as the steady hand guiding Vermont’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, which by many measures was one of the most successful in the nation. Vermont had the second lowest Covid fatality rate, after Hawaii. According to the Vermont Department of Health, 1,283 people died from the Covid pandemic in Vermont.
During the dark days of lockdown in 2020 and 2021, Dr. Levine stood alongside Gov. Phil Scott and reassured anxious Vermonters about how to stay safe, the need for masking and social distancing, and the critical importance of vaccinations. His grandfatherly baritone voice conveyed wisdom and compassion.
In announcing Dr. Levine’s retirement, Gov. Scott said, “I will be forever grateful for his advice and counsel over the years, but especially during the pandemic, as he appeared with me daily at press conferences during those difficult days, giving much comfort to Vermonters as our very own ‘Country Doc'.”
Sen. Peter Welch said that Dr. Levine “helped Vermont through those incredibly challenging times, and saved many lives.”
Prior to Dr. Levine’s appointment as health commissioner in 2017, he worked as a primary care physician and as a professor and associate dean at the University of Vermont’s Larner College of Medicine, where he still teaches.
Dr. Levine, 71, steps away from health care leadership at a fraught and uncertain moment. Public health and science itself have come under unprecedented attack by the Trump administration. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the country’s newly appointed secretary of Health and Human Services, has been derided for being a conspiracy theorist and one of the top purveyors of medical misinformation. This week, Kennedy announced the layoffs of 10,000 health workers and $11 billion in cuts to public health grants dolled out to states. This includes a $7 million cut in aid to Vermont that state health officials said would “negatively impact public health in our state.”
All of this comes as measles is infecting unvaccinated children in the U.S. in what is already being described as the worst outbreak of this century.
Dr. Levine reflected on how Vermont compared to other states in managing the Covid pandemic. “Our economy looks like many of the states that had far worse outcomes from Covid and prioritized their economy more in terms of keeping a lot of sectors open. When you look at the bottom line in the end, our economic status and theirs don't look very different, yet our public health status looks much, much better. And I'm going to hang my hat on that as very, very important for the way we approached the pandemic here in Vermont.”
“You know, there isn't a hell of a lot I would have done differently, to be honest,” said Levine.
Levine insisted that there are not many critics who say “you shouldn't have had vaccines. You shouldn't have masked us up. You shouldn't have closed down things. When you close them down, they kind of understand that the major outcome was that Vermont fared much better as a state than many other states. So it's hard for me to have too many regrets.”
Why did Vermont fare better than other states?
“We come from a culture here in Vermont where people look out for their family, they look out for their community, and they work collaboratively,” said Levine. “The second thing is that in public health, we always say, be first, be right, be credible. And the communication that the governor and I and the rest of the team had was frequent, it was with integrity about what we knew and what we didn't yet know, and it was with great transparency … revealing the data every time and showing what we were responding to.”
Levine leaves his post with deep concern about what lies ahead for public health. “When disinformation comes from the top, whether it be the secretary of (Health and Human Services) or the president, it has an impact and it makes our job much harder.”
Levine noted that even when Trump administration officials are trying to control the measles epidemic, “they always manage to sort of agree, but then say the wrong thing and let you know that they really aren't completely aligned, which is a problem I am very concerned about."
Levine says that federal budget cuts could have a serious impact on Vermont, where “40 percent of my budget is related to federal grant money.”
If the latest cuts “are a signal of what's to come, then they are of tremendous concern. And the problem is, of course, we're not seeing broad visions and huge strategic plans with discrete timelines associated. We're seeing abrupt moves by the federal government that basically say, today your grants were stopped, and by the way, we're interested in chronic disease prevention. But they haven't actually shown us the vision and the timeline and what the resources will be and (where they) will come from.”
Dr. Levine said of his legacy, “People will always remember Covid, and I'm fine with that, but I hate for that to be the defining moment because public health is so much more than that. One thing I'm very proud of is work we've done to protect our children's health.”
“I'd like to be remembered that we've now turned the curve on the opioid overdose death rate, and it's clearly on the way down. It's not a mission accomplished. There's still a lot of work to be done. But at least it's going in the right direction.”
As he retires, Levine lamented the rise in the “great anti-science bias” and the movement of those who are “vaccine resistant, or at least hesitant.”
“We do in public health as much as we can to provide what we consider not the alternative viewpoint but the actual evidence-based viewpoint. But the recipients of that have to be willing to receive that information, and we're in a time where many people get their information from one set of resources and they won't veer from those resources to others. So it's a challenging time for public health, indeed.”
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This Vermont Conversation was originally published on May 15, 2024.
Nicholas Kristof has been an eyewitness to some of the most iconic political and social transformations of modern times. As a reporter and columnist for the New York Times for the last four decades, Kristof has been telling searing stories about revolutions, genocides, and the impact of global inequality. His work has garnered the top prizes in journalism, including two Pulitzer Prizes. The first was in 1990 for his coverage of the Tiananmen Square protests in China that he shared with his wife, reporter Sheryl WuDunn, the first Pulitzer awarded to a husband-wife team. They have also co-authored five books.
Since 2001, Kristof has been a regular op-ed columnist for the Times. His powerful dispatches about the genocide in Darfur earned him a second Pulitzer in 2006. The former head of the International Rescue Committee said that Kristof’s coverage saved hundreds of thousands of lives in Sudan.
Kristof has now written a memoir, “Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life.” He tells the story of growing up on a sheep and cherry farm in rural Oregon, and then attending Harvard and Oxford. He continues to focus his reporting on human rights, global health, poverty and gender inequality.
In 2021, Kristof left the Times to run for governor of Oregon, but his foray into politics was cut short a few months later when the Oregon Secretary of State ruled that as a result of living and working out of state for years, he did not meet residency requirements. He returned to his job as a columnist for the New York Times.
Despite reporting from some of the world’s grimmest places, Kristof remains stubbornly optimistic. “One thing you see on the front lines, that I’ve seen, is that there has been a real arc of both material and moral progress, and that has left a deep impression on me,” he said. “Side by side with the worst of humanity, you end up encountering the best.”
Kristof has seen authoritarian regimes up close, only to come home to see authoritarianism creeping into American politics. Is he worried about the fate of democracy in the U.S.? “It’s not a binary question, but a spectrum,” he replied.
“I don’t think that the U.S. will become North Korea or China or Russia. But could we become Hungary? Or could we become Poland under the previous government? I think absolutely. I worry about political violence … DOJ, the military could all be heavily politicized, civil service. I worry about all that. I don’t think that I will be sentenced to Guantanamo. But could there be real impairment of democracy, of governance of freedoms? Absolutely. And I, you know, I’ve seen that in other countries.”
Kristof continues to report on human rights abuses and repression, but he insists that he is guided by hope. “I think of despair as sometimes just paralyzing, while hope can be empowering.”
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In the late 1960s, Will Patten was living in Berkeley, California, attending antiwar protests and shaking his first against capitalism and greedy businessmen.
Today, at the age of 80, Patten is a true believer in capitalism and a successful businessman.
He tells the story of his odyssey in a new book, “Rescuing Capitalism: Vermont Shows the Way.”
Will Patten grew up on a dairy farm in southern Vermont in the 1950s. After receiving a bachelor's degree from Johns Hopkins University, Patten attended UC Berkeley to get a doctorate in history. But after participating in the Summer of Love in 1967, he dropped out of grad school and headed back to Vermont to “keep the revolution alive.” He opened a natural foods café in Rutland to serve as a gathering place for like-minded radicals.
“In other words,” he writes, “I became the enemy: a businessman.” But Patten believed in a different kind of business, one that sought to bring about positive social change.
A few years later, Patten met Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, who wanted to use their ice cream as a vehicle for social change. Patten saw that they were kindred spirits. He opened one of the first Ben & Jerry’s scoop shops, and soon became director of retail operations overseeing more than 500 scoop shops in a dozen countries. He retired from Ben & Jerry’s in 2007, but quickly unretired to lead Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility. In 2012, he unretired again to open the Hinesburg Public House, a community-supported restaurant.
Patten now believes that capitalism has been hijacked by corporate profiteers. What can save it, and us? He insists that democratic capitalism, as he calls it, is the way forward, and Vermont has shown the way.
"(President) Ronald Reagan hijacked capitalism when he proclaimed that government was the problem, and that started a 44 year experiment in letting corporations pursue profits without caring about the earth or its inhabitants. So supply side economics is what hijacked capitalism, and it's been a disaster," said Patten.
Unchecked capitalism has led to "the collapse of our environment, a very hostile climate, and the unraveling of our social fabric. We are in a severe existential crisis, and the time to fix that is getting closer and closer. We're running out of time."
Why does he think that the solution to runaway capitalism is capitalism?
"Capitalism is the only functioning institution there is," said Patten. "Small business is the most respected institution in the country today. I'm not saying that capitalism is going to pull us out of the ditch, but I think — and there are signs that it's beginning — that it is in their own interest to do so."
Patten argues that Vermont's socially responsible businesses, including Ben & Jerry's, Gardeners Supply, and Green Mountain Power, offer a model of how business can support positive change. "The businesses that we have have always revered the environment and the and the communities and the people as much as they've revered profits."
Businesses can do good not just because "it's a moral imperative, but it's also an economic imperative. They're making money finding solutions to the crises we face."
What would Patten tell the '60s radical version of himself?
"I would probably tell him to do what I did, which was to get into the belly of the beast and change it from the inside."
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Americans have come to assume that heavy medical debt, unaffordable housing and lack of quality child care are normal features of life. Is there another way?
Journalist Natasha Hakimi Zapata traveled the world to find out how other countries are solving problems that plague the United States. From housing, climate change and public education, to addiction and health care, Hakimi Zapata found innovative and affordable approaches that do better. She reports on her globetrotting investigation in her new book, “Another World Is Possible: Lessons for America from Around the Globe.”
Natasha Hakimi Zapata is an award-winning journalist, university lecturer and translator. She is the former foreign editor of Truthdig, and her work has appeared in The Nation, Los Angeles Review of Books, In These Times and elsewhere.
Hakimi Zapata said she “took a crib-to-crypt approach to policy,” including a look at universal healthcare in the UK, family friendly policies in Norway, "public-housing-for-all in Singapore, universal public education in Finland, drug decriminalization in Portugal, ...internet as a human right policies in Estonia, renewable energy transition in Uruguay, biodiversity protections in Costa Rica, and then finally, sort of the end of a lifetime, with universal non-contributory pensions in New Zealand.”
Hakimi Zapata spoke about Portugal’s decision in 2000 to decriminalize personal drug possession. “Not only did addiction rates fall — overdose deaths fell, HIV/AIDS rates fell, but so did drug use.”
Portugal has demonstrated that “if you treat this as a public health issue … you allow people to reach out for help without the fear of incarceration.”
Hakimi Zapata noted, “There's this myth at the core of American society that somehow places like Norway can afford these great policies because everyone pays more taxes. And the truth is they have a more progressive stepped tax system than we do. They do not have off ramps for the wealthiest Americans or corporations to pay less, or nothing, like we do in the US.”
Hakimi Zapata insisted that progressive social policies often take root in difficult times. The National Health Service in the UK came “out of the ashes of World War II. You have Uruguay’s renewable grid transition coming out of long periods of literal darkness in which they couldn't keep the lights on in their own country.”
“At this moment, remember that things can change for the better nearly as quickly as they can change for the worse, and we can still make things better.”
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In Donald Trump’s world, friends and enemies trade places with breathtaking speed. Consider the case of Ukraine.
President Joe Biden hailed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “the man of the year” and pledged that the U.S. “will not walk away from Ukraine” in its war against Russia, which attacked Ukraine and annexed Crimea in 2014, and launched a full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Last week, President Donald Trump called Zelensky “a dictator,” falsely blamed Ukraine for starting the war with Russia, and effectively walked away from Ukraine by halting the delivery of weapons and stopping intelligence sharing. Trump has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin as “savvy” and a “genius.”
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed the whiplash that many are feeling about Trump when he said, "Today the United States launched a trade war against Canada, their closest partner and ally, their closest friend. At the same time, they are talking about working positively with Russia, appeasing Vladimir Putin, a lying, murderous dictator. Make that make sense."
Yaroslav Trofimov has long been making sense of a complicated world. He is the chief foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. Trofimov was born in Ukraine and has reported from the front lines there. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting in 2023 for his work on Ukraine, and in 2022 for his work on Afghanistan, and won the National Press Club award for political analysis in 2024. He is the author of four books, including “No Country for Love,” a historical novel set in Ukraine that was inspired by his family history, and was published this month.
Describing the disastrous meeting between Presidents Zelensky and Trump, Trofimov quoted Lech Walesa, the former trade union leader and president of Poland, who co-signed a letter with former Polish political prisoners saying that “the meeting in the Oval Office reminded him of the interrogations he had in the communist secret police rooms and in the kangaroo communist courts, where, as he said, we were also told we have no cards.”
“Zelensky told Trump that I'd like to sign an agreement, but what is the guarantee that Putin won’t attack again? And Trump's response was basically, Trust me bro.”
Trump’s “priority is not a peaceful settlement in Ukraine. His main priority seems to be to open up relations with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, economic, political, geopolitical,” said Trofimov.
“Zelensky is just a chip to be traded, and it looks like the administration will be perfectly happy for the war to end on Russia's terms, meaning that Ukraine will fall back on the de facto Russian rule (under) Russian authority as long as its mineral wealth is sent over the United States.”
What is behind Trump’s warm embrace of Putin?
Trofimov explained that Putin “has always believed that big powers like Russia have the right to a sphere of influence, to arrange things in the neighborhood, and that it's a natural right. And President Putin has described his policy as the Monroe Doctrine 2.0, which is the American version of this 19th century imperialism.”
Similarly, Trump is “laying claims on Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal, which is very similar to the language that Putin is using against Ukraine or the Baltic states. It is also kind of aided by changes inside the American Conservative ... MAGA movement, where a certain fetishization of Russia has taken hold.”
“In the, in the collective imagination of parts of MAGA, Russia is seen as this beacon of Christian family values, traditional values, this antidote to the woke virus. It couldn’t be further from the actual Russia that exists, which is a country with one of (the highest) abortion and divorce rates, with rapidly shrinking population, with endemic corruption.”
What will happen to Ukraine if the U.S. ends its support?
Trofimov believes that “Ukraine will not fold … and Europe, if it really wants to, can sustain Ukraine,” noting that “the European economies are about 12 times the size of Russia.”
“There is a growing realization in Europe that allowing Russia to win in Ukraine will cause much bigger pain in a few years. … Perhaps that will be the end of Europe.”
That is why Europeans are dramatically boosting defense spending. “Obviously, it's much easier with the United States on board, much, much easier. But it doesn't mean that Ukraine or Europe are doomed if the U.S. decides to play for the other team.”
I asked Trofimov whether he was optimistic or pessimistic about Ukraine’s future. He replied by quoting a popular Ukrainian song from the 1920s. “Crying has never brought freedom to anyone. So it's not the time to be despondent or pessimistic. It's the time to do things. Ukrainians are doing things, and the Europeans are starting to do things, and if they keep doing things, then they will be okay.”
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Mirna Valerio, aka The Mirnavator, would like you to join her outside her comfort zone.
That’s where I found her when we were both backcountry skiing at Bolton Valley recently. I immediately recognized her from Instagram, where she has 165k followers at @themirnavator. But when I called her an “influencer,” she quickly corrected me. She said she prefers “possibility model.”
Valerio, 49, is a former school teacher and author of the acclaimed blog, Fat Girl Running. The resident of Winooski is now a full-time professional athlete who has attracted legions of fans for her humor and honesty as she takes on big challenges, including multi-day ultramarathons. A self-described large woman and slow runner, she is a champion of body positivity. She hopes that as a Black women participating in what have been traditional white spaces — such as skiing, running and endurance sports — she can show people that being active and joyful do not know bounds of color, size, age, ability or any other difference.
Valerio has been profiled in numerous national news outlets including NBC News, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, Runners World and the Today Show. She was recognized in 2018 by National Geographic as an Adventurer of the Year.
Valerio has a book, “A Beautiful Work in Progress,” that she also hopes will inspire and motivate people.
Valerio explained that it was 2015 when she started getting attention for her blog “about me being a plus size Black ultra marathoner.” It was “just me doing long distance in the body that I have, and crushing stereotypes of being of a fat person doing sports.”
Valerio has a message to others. “People will always have something to say and an opinion about what you look like, the things that you do, what they think you should be doing, what they think you shouldn't be doing, and all of that's going to keep existing. But you can make a choice as to whether or not you are going to let that run your life.”
“I say, you know, let curiosity be your guide. …And do the things that you need to do for yourself. Even though all of that other negative talk, it might be negative self talk too, even though all of that exists, you go out and do what you need and want to do for yourself.”
Valerio, who is an unapologetic advocate of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), says, “When I show up in a space that has traditionally not seen someone like me in that space, whether it's because of my body size, my gender or my race, I am sending a message, and it's not always easy. …Nature is for everybody. These lakes, these reservoirs, these camp spots, are for everyone. And I want everybody to be able to experience the delight and wonder of being out of nature. So if that means that I step into a space that's primarily white or that has previously been hostile to Black people or people of any other sort of non white identities, then I'm going to keep doing it, just so people can see me and know that they're going to be okay too.”
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Is President Donald Trump staging a coup?
“It's certainly an attempted coup, for sure,” Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt, told The Vermont Conversation.
As Trump and billionaire Elon Musk tear through Washington firing thousands of federal workers and shuttering federal agencies, Balint has been drawn out of the halls of Congress to protest in the streets. She joined Congressional Democrats in front of the Department of Education to denounce taking “money away from our kids to give it to billionaires,” and protested in front of the Treasury Department decrying a “hostile takeover.”
Speaking outside the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau last week, another agency that Trump is dismantling, Vermont’s second term congresswoman said she was there to “represent rural America” and that the CFPB “is protecting all of us from the kind of fraudsters and scammers that are in the White House right now.”
Balint, who is the vice ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, has implored people to “tune in” to what Trump and Musk are doing. “Authoritarians win when we stop paying attention,” she said at the Treasury.
Balint spoke with The Vermont Conversation while she was in Vermont this week.
“These executive orders, these sweeping orders, many of which run afoul of federal law and the Constitution, it is difficult to look at what is happening and not come to the conclusion that in fact, they are trying to seize power away from everyday Americans, but also power away from the other two branches of government,” she said. “And we saw (Vice President) J.D. Vance this past week making statements that the president actually didn't need to listen to rulings of the court. And of course, if we don't have a checks and balances system here, then we don't have democracy as our founders envisioned it.”
Balint said that her Republican colleagues have acquiesced to Trump’s power grab. “Some of them seem absolutely comfortable with this because they believe in the mission of a Christian nationalist vision for this country. Some of them go along with it because they are afraid of losing their own power.”
Balint bristled at the suggestion that Democrats bear some responsibility for the political turmoil. “It sticks in my craw a little bit when people talk about the Democrats, because we are not a monolith.”
Vermont’s lone congressional representative conceded that Democrats did not effectively address economic disparity in the runup to the 2024 election. “We have a disgusting, unconscionable wealth gap in this country, and I think that we should have been singularly focused on the needs of families who were struggling to make ends meet and continue to struggle.”
Who will lead the resistance? “I understand the frustration and people are looking for one voice, and I think this is a time that is unprecedented. We are trying to fight a battle on so many different fronts right now, and so I'm really putting my head down in my two committees and figuring out how I can continue to push myself, my team, and my colleagues to be much more engaged with the people, because that is how we're going to right the ship right now. As you know, Democrats don't have the House, they don't have the Senate, they don't have the White House. We need three Republicans in the House to have a conscience right now, just three. So we're very focused on that.”
“I can't tell people not to be angry or frustrated. I'm angry and frustrated,” said Balint. “I am absolutely frightened and chilled by where we are right now, and I'm not going to go along as if it's business as usual there.”
Balint urged people to re-engage with politics. “I know people are exhausted. I understand why you just want to take care of you. But as much as we can encourage our friends and family, I always say just to check back in about what's happening because the stakes are incredibly high right now, and it's going to take all of us.”
“I very much fear that we're heading towards a time when Trump is going to openly and actively defy a Supreme Court ruling. And we must take to the streets, all of us, we must. That's why I need people to check back in so they know what's happening.”
“I feel absolutely a sense of purpose and focus right now, and that is helping me. I feel like I know what they're trying to do, and I'm not going to let them.”
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Trudy fled her home in Africa in fear for her life. Her “crime” was supporting a candidate for president who was running against the incumbent leader. As her friends and family were being kidnapped, tortured and killed, Trudy decided to save herself and her 1 year old daughter. Seven years ago, she left her country. She arrived in the U.S., applied for and was granted political asylum, and is now a permanent resident in Vermont. Citing concerns about the safety of her relatives, Trudy asked to be identified by her first name.
One of President Donald Trump’s first acts was to shut down asylum and refugee admissions, accusing migrants of staging an “invasion.” The American Civil Liberties Union has since filed a federal lawsuit accusing the Trump administration of violating legal obligations to offer refuge to those fleeing persecution.
“Those changes were introduced for the purpose of chilling the system, of scaring everyone into hiding, into retreat, into inaction, into panic, into self-deportation or self-harm,” said Jill Martin Diaz, an immigration attorney who is executive director of Vermont Asylum Assistance Project (VAAP), a legal services and advocacy organization. “Even though a lot of these executive actions will not survive scrutiny in court, just having passed them and created fear in our communities is already having a really chilling effect.”
Martin Diaz explained that there have recently been a number of arrests in Vermont by agents of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Agents have reportedly been showing up at supermarkets, gas stations and Western Union offices where migrant workers are known to frequent. VAAP has a form on its website to report ICE activity.
Vermont is home to several thousand asylum seekers, according to Martin Diaz.
Trudy explained that had she been sent back to her country, she considered giving up her daughter for adoption and then returning to "face the consequences.”
“When I got asylum, I got my life back,” Trudy said. “You have no idea what it feels like to be in a state where you don't know. Because most people who leave their countries to come here don't leave because they want to. For example, for me, I had everything. I had a good job, I'd gone to school. I don't come from a very poor family. I came here because of security reasons for my child and for me.”
Once she received asylum, “a whole burden fell off of me. I started my recovering process.”
Trudy now works as a business office manager and her daughter is in third grade.
“We are moving forward. We are looking towards the future. We are hopeful. We are happy. We are fine. We are really fine.”
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President Trump’s gusher of executive orders upending government and targeting vulnerable people is spreading fear and anxiety. In just the last week, Trump has issued orders that would ban gender-affirming health care, effectively close the US Agency for International Development and threaten to close the federal Department of Education, fire career federal prosecutors, freeze some $3 trillion in federal grants, end birthright citizenship, block people from seeking asylum, and construct additional detention centers in Guantanamo Bay for thousands of immigrants to be held.
A headline in today’s New York Times proclaims, “Trump Brazenly Defies Laws in Escalating Executive Power Grab.”
Yale historian Timothy Snyder is more direct: “Of course it’s a coup,” he proclaimed in his Substack.
And this is just the third week of Trump’s presidency.
Resistance has been steadily building, especially on the legal front. More than two dozen lawsuits have been filed by Democratic attorneys general, including Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups. A number of the legal challenges have succeeded in stopping Trump’s more audacious moves. A federal judge blocked the attempt to end birthright citizenship, declaring that it was “blatantly unconstitutional.”
James Lyall is executive director of the ACLU of Vermont (full disclosure: I am a board member of the ACLU of Vermont). Nationally, the ACLU has already sued the Trump administration over fast track deportation and restrictions on trans youth health care, birthright citizenship and asylum.
Lyall acknowledged the fear that has gripped vulnerable communities including immigrants and LGBTQ+ people and that his office has seen a sharp uptick in calls. But he believes there is reason for hope.
“The fact that so many people want to help and are reaching out to figure out how to support their neighbors and their communities when they feel so threatened right now, that's incredibly powerful,” he said.
“As difficult as it is in moments of uncertainty and fear and even chaos, it's that determination of everyday community members to support one another and to find a way forward that's just really powerful. That is what solidarity looks like.”
“Trump can say whatever he wants. It doesn't necessarily make it so. It's really important to remember that we have strong protections on the books,” he said. He urges people to know their rights.
“For all the progress we've made in recent years in Vermont, legislators can and do more to shore up our state-level defenses,” he advised.
Lyall urged people “not let ourselves or others just be overwhelmed by the chaos. Because that's an intentional part of their strategy.”
“Those who would seek to divide us or sow fear — we know how to get through this, and it's together,” he said. “That is what Vermont — the state of freedom and unity — that's what we are designed for. I just have a lot of faith in the state and its people to come together to get through hard times, and this is certainly one of them.”
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Numerous refugees living in Vermont have lost support for food, rent and other basic needs after a funding freeze imposed by the Trump administration. Refugee assistance organizations lost access to federal funds on Monday, only to have a judge block the order on Tuesday, and have the government rescind the order on Wednesday. The situation has caused confusion and panic among newly arrived refugees, who are legal immigrants who often arrive here with nothing.
The federal refugee program assists people who have escaped war, natural disaster or persecution. Refugees typically receive reception and placement (R&P) funds in their first 90 days in the country. Newly arrived families in Vermont receive $1,650 in R&P funds that enables them to pay for initial housing, medicine, clothing and other basic needs.
Last week, the Trump administration halted refugee admissions, stopped R&P payments, and suspended nearly all foreign aid.
The president of Oxfam America denounced the halt in foreign aid as “a cruel decision that has life or death consequences for millions of people around the world."
On Wednesday afternoon, facing furious backlash, the Trump administration rescinded its order that froze trillions of dollars in federal grants and loans. But this did not restore the reception and placement funding, leaving 59 recently arrived families with few resources on which to survive. And as of Wednesday afternoon, some Vermont refugee groups were still unable to access federal funds to support their general operations.
On Tuesday afternoon, we spoke about what is happening to refugees in Vermont with Molly Gray, the executive of the Vermont Afghan Alliance, Yassin Hashimi, a program manager at the organization, and Sonali Samarasinghe, Field Office Director for the Vermont office of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI).
“What we've seen over the last week is a systematic abandonment of Afghan allies and refugees more generally,” said Gray. More than 600 people from Afghanistan, many of whom helped the U.S. in its diplomatic and military missions, have settled in Vermont following the withdrawal of U.S. troops and the collapse of the U.S.-backed government in 2021.
Samarasinghe said, “It is undeniable that our capacity is being diminished but we are fighting back to continue to support these efforts, to support our clients at least, and we are confident that with the support of Vermonters on the ground here, and we are beyond grateful for their generosity of spirit each and every day, we can meet these challenges.".
Yassin Hashimi was working on a project for the U.S. Embassy in Kabul before fleeing Afghanistan and coming to the U.S. in 2023. His parents have received approval to come to the U.S. but are stuck in Pakistan due to the Trump administration’s freeze on refugee programs. Hashimi has already rented an apartment around Burlington in anticipation of their arrival, but does not know when or if they will arrive.
“Sometimes we have to be ready for the worst situation,” he reflected.
But he added, “We should not give up and we should keep fighting for the things which is right.”
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