For Immediate Release: July 3, 2025
Media Contact: [email protected]

WASHINGTON, D.C. – In response to the House of Representatives passing Trump's tax and spending bill, Bend the Arc: Jewish Action CEO Jamie Beran issued the following statement:

"If budgets are moral documents, this is the least moral document I’ve seen in my lifetime. If lawmakers are to make laws, these lawmakers just funded a criminal enterprise. And if a government should be led by its people, this government has fully turned on its people. Even the people who voted for it.

So many people will struggle because of this bill. People will die because of this bill.

We are taught that being in the dark is scary, but the dark is where we were all born. In darkness we grow faster than we ever will, and in darkness we see the cracks. Let us meet at the cracks of light: outside where neighbors are standing with neighbors against abductions and family separation; inside union halls where workers are building power; at kitchen tables where candidates are planning the next upset; and across synagogues, temples, churches and mosques, where people of faith are redoubling efforts to build a nation that is truly home to all those created in the image of G-d — everybody.

The ground from which we organize will change dramatically, with more obstacles.

A budget like this one, designed to defund everything that keeps us safe and healthy in order to fund even more handouts to the ultra wealthy, is not only a recipe for devastating harm. It’s not only a recipe for a failed state. It’s also a recipe for fueling antisemitism and all bigotry like never before. When people grow angry at missing neighbors, skyrocketing prices, people dying or going bankrupt because they lose their medicare, violence on the streets, attacks on constitutional rights, crumbling transportation, schools that can’t afford books or to keep teachers, and water, food and air that is no longer safe, those who profit from these policies will redirect blame to Jews, Muslims, immigrants, Black and brown people, trans people, the unhoused, and those with disabilities.

The ground from which we organize will change dramatically, with more opportunities.

Like all bad budgets, this one will disproportionately impact the most vulnerable. But it will also spare no one. Not red states, not MAGA voters, not straight, white Christians — nobody. Not even many of those being led by Fox News to celebrate this moment. And when those people wake up — shaken from the self-poisoning myth of white supremacy — they will either be misdirected to hate the scapegoats placed before them or, with luck and with work, moved to reevaluate everything they’ve been told about who is to blame.

From mass calls, to visits and letters, and investing in long-term relationships with lawmakers, Bend the Arc: Jewish Action is proud to have contributed to making sure not even one Democrat voted to support this budget. While it is not enough, the MAGA movement will now have to take complete and total ownership of a moment that will live in infamy across generations.

Bend the Arc is made up of progressive American Jews. We show up for each other, for our friends and neighbors, and for our broader communities — and we will continue to. We will continue to build widely, across powerful multifaith, multiethnic coalitions as we plan to take Congress back. We will continue to build deep roots to weather attacks by a rogue White House while keeping each other safe on our blocks.

And we will continue to take action loudly, in the streets and through the halls of power, to make clear that leaders who put profits over people and who choose white supremacy will soon find themselves out of all jobs but one permanent position: a permanent position in the textbooks of our kids, as a story of an era never to repeat, sitting on a bookshelf in a thriving school, built in a green and safe neighborhood, bustling with joy and community.

We will build a country where all are safe and supported. Because we — and every person living in America who is harmed by this bill — will organize to make it so.

Jamie Beran
CEO, Bend the Arc: Jewish Action"

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