AMY GOODMAN: With President Trump’s massive new tax and spending law now in effect, states are preparing for its devastating impacts on healthcare, with nearly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, as well as cuts to food assistance, housing and education. At the same time, the bill supercharges Trump’s budget for immigration and border enforcement by more than 300%.

Democrats, like Congressmember Yassamin Ansari on the border state of Arizona, hosted a read-in of a thousand pages of the bill at the Capitol last week, before the Senate narrowly passed it the same morning, and Trump signed it into law on July 4th. This is Congressmember Ansari.

REP. YASSAMIN ANSARI: To my Republican colleagues, I have a genuine question for you. I’m sure all of your constituents would like to know: Have you read this bill? … Letting this bill pass will be a death sentence for many in this country. And the fact that you can all sit here so callously, not caring at all and doing whatever it is that Donald Trump tells you to do, is disgusting.

AMY GOODMAN: Arizona Congressmember Ansari’s district includes Phoenix. The larger Phoenix area has the largest number of constituents in Arizona who receive Medicaid and will be impacted by the cuts. She’s joining us now from Washington, D.C. She’s a member of the House Oversight Committee and Natural Resources Committee, was elected to Congress last year. Before that, she served as vice mayor of Phoenix, was the youngest woman ever elected to the Phoenix City Council. A climate activist, she’s the first Iranian American Democrat in Congress and the youngest female member.

Congressmember Yassamin Ansari, welcome to Democracy Now! There’s so much to talk to you about, from the U.S. bombing Iran to you going into the detention centers to talk to women who are jailed there. But let’s begin with the budget. The budget has been passed. You led a read-in. It was read by union activists, by students. It went on for — well, it’s a thousand pages. But it’s been passed. What’s your plan now?

REP. YASSAMIN ANSARI: The most important thing that we have to do right now is hold the Republicans that voted for this bill accountable for the devastation that they are causing and the lives that will be impacted by the passage of this bill. In Arizona in particular, there will be hundreds of thousands of people impacted by the Medicaid cuts. There will — there are tens of thousands of jobs that are lost because of the rollbacks in clean energy tax credits. And I have spoken with conservative labor union leaders, I have spoken with physicians, owners of hospitals, who are extremely concerned about what’s coming next.

And the fact that we have members of Congress in Arizona who, for months, and, let’s say, years — one of them, David Schweikert, talked about how he’s concerned about the deficit going up. That is the number one thing that he has been talking about as a member. This raises our deficit by $3.3 trillion. And you have another member of Congress, Juan Ciscomani, who had said very vocally that he doesn’t support cuts to Medicaid, that he doesn’t support rolling back investments in clean energy. These two members of Congress happily voted for this bill, because that’s what Trump asked them to do.

So, accountability is going to be extremely important. I’m going to be doing town halls not just in my district, but across Arizona, to make sure people know, because we do know that still the majority of Americans are unaware of this budget bill and what it entails.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Congresswoman, at the same time, the bill also has increases for both the Defense Department and extraordinary increases for immigration enforcement, $170 billion for immigration enforcement and border security. Your concerns about these priorities?

REP. YASSAMIN ANSARI: Look, there are two themes that I think describe this administration thus far. It’s corruption and authoritarianism. And both of those apply when you look at the budget increases for the Department of Homeland Security, the corruption first and foremost. The private prison industry gave significant amounts of funding to Donald Trump and to helping him secure the presidency this time around. They have already made billions of dollars in profits, because this administration is trying to quadruple detention center capacity across the United States. I visited a center in Eloy, which is about an hour outside of Phoenix. The conditions were devastating. And let’s be very clear: This administration is not going after serious criminals, as they say. They are going after everyday, hard-working people who are powering this country, especially in Arizona.

Second, authoritarianism, look at what is happening. While they’re ripping away healthcare from 17 million Americans, they want to increase the funding for ICE and DHS by billions of dollars so that they can continue to terrorize communities. Why is the National Guard in Los Angeles? Why are masked ICE agents parading around parks in Los Angeles, raiding farms and small businesses and going into schools and snatching people, kidnapping people off of the streets? This outrageous, and this should not be the United States of America in the year 2025. I’m the daughter of two immigrants who fled authoritarianism in Iran, growing up learning about the fact that you cannot take democracy for granted. And before my eyes, we are seeing this happen in the United States of America with the state-sponsored violence that the Trump administration is leading.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And in terms of the Medicaid and SNAP cuts, are there any possibilities at the state level to mitigate or fend off some of the worst of these cuts?

REP. YASSAMIN ANSARI: It’s extremely difficult, because the states are already suffering. In Arizona, we, you know, have a Democratic governor, a Republican Legislature. We rely on federal support for Medicaid. We already have a lack of access to healthcare, especially in rural communities. When I visited community health centers, for example, in my district, they made very clear many months ago that with these cuts to Medicaid, there’s not just the direct impact of the people who will lose their insurance. There’s also the hospitals and the community health centers that will be forced to shut down because they will not have as many patients coming to them. So, when you lose access to community health centers in a place like South Phoenix, for example, in my community, that will make it extremely difficult for many to be able to seek healthcare, to afford healthcare, and it’s going to continue to worsen the divide and the wealth inequality and just the health disparities that we are seeing in Phoenix and across the country. You know, I don’t see this — the states and municipalities, we rely on federal support, and this was the bare minimum that we were doing in the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: Before we talk about Iran, I wanted to ask you to expand more on the Eloy Detention Center, the ICE jail you went to in central Arizona. You said of the visit, and I want to quote you, “What I encountered today was sickening — so many of the detainees shared that they do not have reliable access to basics like food and water or essential medical care when they are in crisis. Detainees described overcrowded, moldy cells, forced and dehumanizing marches outside in the Arizona heat, constant berating from guards, conditions worse than prison.” And you particularly talked to women detainees. You know, a lot of congressmembers are going to these ICE jails and being turned away. You got in, and these are people you’re talking to. So, if you can share them with the world right now in this global broadcast?

REP. YASSAMIN ANSARI: Yes, and you’re absolutely right. There are members of Congress being turned away, and that is against the law. I got lucky. I went to the detention center, and I will say that getting in was relatively smooth. And I was given a tour for about three hours of the entirety of the detention center. I was definitely being given talking points. And then, when we got to the portion, about halfway through, of being in the cafeteria where women were having lunch, I asked the man who was giving me a tour whether I could speak with the women. And at first, you know, he happily agreed. So, myself and my staff member who was with me went to speak with the women.

And when I say to you that they were extremely eager to come tell me their stories — when some saw me sitting down, others rushed to me to very quickly tell me what was going on — I’m not even slightly exaggerating. The women described specific stories. Many of them told me the exact same story of how they were forced outside. They pointed to the man who forced them outside, who was in the cafeteria, and said, “He regularly dehumanizes us. He forces us outside in the heat to march around in circles over and over and over again, until one woman fainted.” They told me that he was screaming and yelling things like, quote, “This is the price of the American dream.” I have never heard something more dehumanizing in my life. Arizona is deadly in the summer, by the way, so any sort of forced march in the heat can lead to health issues. And it did. Others described issues with the AC, purposeful shutting down of air conditioning. And they would say that when they would ask for more air conditioning or to turn on the air conditioning, then the, you know, staff would turn on the AC so high and so cold that people would freeze and get sick. And, you know, the rooms are very much like prison cells. You don’t have a lot in there.

There were women in there who were DACA recipients. One of them, you know, was married to a U.S. citizen in Chandler, which is another city in Arizona. These were not criminals. This is what I want to emphasize. The administration is lying. They are going after immigrants across the board. I saw in your headlines you mentioned, you know, the getting rid of TPS status for so many individuals from a variety of countries. This is happening. We have a travel ban. We have the stopping of the refugee admissions program, going after Afghan refugees who have, you know, supported the U.S. military. When you have domestic national security policy and immigration policy being led by somebody like Stephen Miller, this is what you’re going to get, and it’s devastating.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Congresswoman, I wanted to ask you, on another note, the situation in Iran. Last month, the U.S. joined Israel’s war on Iran, using bunker-buster bombs, 30,000-pound bombs, 14 of them, as well as Tomahawk cruise missiles. You condemned this attack. Could you talk about why you took this stand and called for an emergency session of Congress?

REP. YASSAMIN ANSARI: Absolutely. First and foremost, I condemn the attack because I do not believe that the president of the United States should be conducting unilateral military action without authorization from Congress. At the bare minimum, a briefing to Congress or, you know, an explanation to the American public of why this is essential. Donald Trump conducted, and is still conducting, the entirety of his foreign policy decision-making as it pertains to this issue via posts to Truth Social. He has caused significant chaos within the country and devastation in terms of civilian lives lost on both sides.

And then, second, now that some time has passed, I think another very important point is we still do not know the effectiveness of this strike. There are misleading and oftentimes conflicting talking points coming out of the administration. You’ll have the intelligence agency, led by Tulsi Gabbard, saying one thing, and then the Department of Defense, led by Pete Hegseth, saying another. That’s extremely concerning. And when it comes to policy pertaining to a country’s potential nuclear ambitions, it is very possible that what the United States’s unilateral action has now caused is an Islamic Republic regime in Iran perhaps even more emboldened, perhaps even more intent on building a nuclear weapon, because they see that even negotiations, when you’re in the midst of negotiations, you may get bombed by your adversary. So, that’s what I’m concerned about.

We also know that reports from inside Iran demonstrate that the regime is cracking down in a big way on the civilian population. The regime is not the people. The people of Iran are vehemently against the regime. They have tried to protest and demand freedom from this regime, and it’s so difficult, because this regime is entrenched across many facets of society. So, there are layers of issues to this. But again, from a U.S. national security perspective, I always think congressional authorization is vital, and then a clear plan and a clear outcome and defined outcome, and that did not exist in this case.

AMY GOODMAN: Congressmember, we just have 30 seconds. You were known as young climate activist before even you got into the Phoenix City Council, not to mention Congress. Can’t end this without talking about the horrific flooding in Texas. Over a hundred people are now dead. People are saying, “Who could have predicted this?” But isn’t that the definition of climate change: unpredictability?

REP. YASSAMIN ANSARI: Yes, climate — the climate crisis is very much here. And what we have to understand is that we are locked into devastating impacts and climate catastrophe, and people are going to be seeing this across the world. It is imperative that at all levels of government, at the local level, county, state and federal, we significantly ramp our resilience efforts, our proactive emergency management plans. And that’s why I am so concerned to see that President Trump is continuing to mess around with FEMA, because not only do we need FEMA at its current capacity, we need to ramp up FEMA, because climate change will continue to affect us in the United States. And we’re going to continue to see climate refugees in the United States. When you have extreme floods, extreme heat killing people, tornadoes, sea level rise, this is going to be an issue not just internationally, but here for us domestically.

AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, speaking of climate refugees, the Honduran refugees from Hurricane Mitch in 1999, a quarter of a century ago, now could lose their status to remain in this country. Yassamin Ansari, I want to thank you so much for being with us, Democratic congressmember from Arizona.

Next up, Trump and the Israeli prime minister had dinner last night at the White House. Netanyahu promised President Trump — or, presented him with a document that Israel has nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize, and talked about the Palestinians’ free choice to leave Gaza. We’ll speak to Peter Beinart of Jewish Currents. Back in 20 seconds.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Hog of the Forsaken” by the late folk singer Michael Hurley, performing in our Democracy Now! studio a few years ago.