Melanie Stansbury: “Among the daily assaults on our communities, on our economy, and the daily distractions and absurdities that we see from…”

“Among the daily assaults on our communities, on our economy, and the daily distractions and absurdities that we see from this administration and from my friends across the aisle in this Chamber, it can be easy to lose track of the bigger picture of what is happening across our country right now and the historical inflection point on which we stand. If Members zoom out and look at the bigger picture and the larger movement of this moment, my colleagues can see the ways in which this administration is trying to roll back the clock on American history, to redefine whose histories count, whose languages count, whose cultures count, whose identities count, whose personhood counts, whose very civil rights count, and who belongs in this great country. We see it in this Chamber this week with a GOP that is trying to roll back the voting rights of Americans across the country, and we see it in the insidious rollback of civil rights across the administration, in our workplaces, in our schools, and all across this country, as the administration has armed itself with Project 2025 and has sought to redefine American society and roll back advancements of the civil rights era. We see it in the executive orders that Donald Trump signed in his first days in office, terminating diversity, equity, and inclusion across our Federal agencies, putting thousands of Federal workers on leave, shuttering offices and freezing Federal funds, and scrubbing websites of American history.…”