{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://pressley.house.gov/2026/08/13/video-pressley-community-leaders-call-for-shift-in-national-priorities-away-from-war-toward-our-families/", "VIDEO: Pressley, Community Leaders Call for Shift in National Priorities: Away from War, Toward Our Families", "2026-08-13", "2026", "2026-08", "Democrat", "House", "MA", "Ayanna Pressley", "P000617", "pressley.house.gov", "pressley", "https://pressley.house.gov/news/", "scraper", "Transcript: Pressley, Community Leaders Call for Shift in National Priorities: Away from War, Toward Our Families\n\nAugust 12, 2026\n\nBoston, MA\n\nFor 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.\n\nI 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.\n\nThat 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\n\nAnd 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.\n\nAnd 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.\n\nAnd 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?\n\nYou 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.\n\nToday, 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.\n\nSo 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.\n\nDonald Trump is a dictator, and history has shown us that appeasement does not work. The only way to be a dictator is with defiance.\n\nAnd 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.\n\nThis 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.\n\nAnd 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.\n\nHe continues to peddle chaos and fear to distract us from his incompetent leadership.\n\nIt is much easier instead for this man to scapegoat immigrants, to vilify our neighbors, than to make good on his promises.\n\nIt\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.\n\nIt 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.\n\nNow, 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.\n\nSo 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.\n\nToday, 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.\n\nWhen 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.\n\nThey were roofers, landscapers, delivery drivers, daycare providers, Dreamers, undocumented workers, TPS holders from Haiti, Nepal, El Salvador, and Venezuela.\n\nSo these are our neighbors, the people that we love, the people that we live with, and work and worship with.\n\nThe same folks who care for our elders, build our homes, and are the backbone of our economy.\n\nAnd that\u2019s why we can\u2019t stand idly by.\n\nAnd 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.\n\nAnd 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.\n\nAnd 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.\n\nThat 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.\n\nAnd 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.\n\nSo again, thank you all for making it easier for me to practice the discipline of hope.\n\nThank you all for being the light in the midst of so much darkness.\n\nAnd I also want to thank you, not only for your partnership, but I thank you for holding me accountable.\n\nI thank many of you in this room for being teachers to me in this broader movement and the work of peace.\n\nThank you.", 1, "2026-08-14T06:13:05Z", "2026-08-14T06:14:08Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://pressley.house.gov/2026/08/13/video-pressley-community-leaders-call-for-shift-in-national-priorities-away-from-war-toward-our-families/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.2538050543516874, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}