Our Constitutional rights were on public exhibition this past weekend as hundreds of patriots gathered at the Dartmouth Mall to protest the injustices committed by President Donald Trump and Congress.

 

That I attended the rally amazes me, a longtime Republican official who served as Vice Chair of Massachusetts for Trump in 2020, as I co-organized a rally at that very same location.

 

I felt drawn to the rally due to the disgraceful actions of Trump and Congressional Republicans. Protestors have an ever-increasing litany of abuses and usurpations, yet it is the mortal threat to America’s healthcare that motivates my opposition. The callous denialism of medical science is disgusting – and it’s metastasizing as the irrational fanaticism endangers American lives!

 

Congress passed a continuing budget resolution for Fiscal Year 2025, signed by President Trump in late March and it decimated the National Institute of Health within the Department of Health and Human Services. Likewise, funding for pancreatic, lung, kidney, and brain cancer research was eliminated completely from the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program of the Department of Defense. Pancreatic cancer, the second deadliest cancer in Massachusetts and third across America (forecast to become second deadliest by 2030) had its sole source of research funding eliminated - cut from $15 million in FY’24 to $0 in FY’25. Two decades of pancreatic cancer progress was annihilated! Lung cancer – the deadliest cancer in both Commonwealth and country – was cut from $25 million to $0.

 

Preserve, protect, and defend the health and well-being of We, the People of the United States of America by contacting our federal legislators (Congressman Bill Keating, Senator Elizabeth Warren & Senator Ed Markey) and urge them to restore the critical cancer research funding. The lives of your family and friends may someday depend on your actions today!   

 

Sincerely, 

 

Brock N. Cordeiro