By Candece Moteil
TO BE EQUAL
“My greatest fear is that one day we may wake up and our democracy is gone.” — John Lewis
On Tuesday, November 4th, Americans took the first step toward turning the page on this dark chapter of our history by voting for state and municipal leaders committed to our advancement, our democracy, and standing up to an increasingly authoritarian government.
2025 has been an emotional year for Americans. It began with wildfires that brought one of our most beautiful cities to a standstill, followed by the inauguration of an administration that immediately began turning back the clock on American life as we’ve come to know it.
In the first nine months of this administration, we’ve seen planes crash without remorse or consolation from our leadership, the erosion of our privacy at the benefit of big tech and surveillance, our cities invaded by our military, the federal workforce and military leadership gutted, and executive orders that dismantle the equity principles that define what it means to be American. Perhaps the most broadly felt pain has been the continued assault on our economy by tariffs and unregulated artificial intelligence that has led to record unemployment on the heels of the most extended government shutdown in American history.
In the face of this devastation, the Urban League movement has remained steadfast in our commitment to fill the chasms caused by this unrelenting chaos stemming from all three branches of government. Our D3 platform to Defend Democracy, Defeat Poverty, and Demand Diversity was echoed by voters of all backgrounds from every corner of this country.
We have watched our current leadership take brazen steps to silence us with corporate intimidation tactics, pressuring our legacy media companies, colleges, and universities into complicity through questionable legal action, and the Supreme Court signaling that it may be willing to gut section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, effectively greenlighting discrimination at the ballot box.
Redistricting efforts to strip Americans of their right to fair representation were met with a successful proposition in California to keep ideological balances in Congress. Newly elected governors, attorney generals, and mayors who championed platforms to make their cities and states more affordable, their schools and public spaces safer from acts of random violence, and protect their constituents from federal law enforcement overreaches won with impressive margins over their opponents who aligned themselves with the current administration’s most heinous, un-American positions without compunction.
This week, America shouted loud and clear that enough is enough.
Make no mistake. This current and its extremist movement will not go out in silence. At this very second, our government, vital programs like SNAP, payments to TSA agents, our military, and some of the hardest working among us are still being held hostage by a radical Congress that is compelled to let subsidies that keep our healthcare die. And extremists continue to mobilize and threaten political and physical violence against leaders and communities fighting for equity at alarming rates.
The Urban League movement and the Civil Rights community are not strangers to this rhetoric, and we are emboldened to not only raise the alarm on these inequities and injustices, but fight against with our programming, our policy efforts, and through building coalitions with political leaders like those who won this week who remain committed in the fight to protect our Democracy, are working to ensure that our systems and institutions reflect the people of this country, not a small, privileged few, and believe that by working together we can eradicate poverty from the wealthiest nation that has ever existed in the history of the world.
We will continue fighting and emerge from this dark era into a new day.
less — increases that would force about 150,000 to drop their insurance, according to the S.C. Hospital Association.
And with ACA open enrollment set to begin on Nov. 1, Polkey said it’s critical to get subsidies back in place quickly.
“We’re too close to open enrollment for the entire system to be teetering on the edge with this kind of uncertainty,” he said. “This has got to stop, because it’s giving the insurance companies no other choice but to publish these super-inflated price projections that [put everyone’s] backs against a wall.”
That’s a concern shared by S.C. Small Business Chamber of Commerce President Frank Knapp, who noted that only 21 % of S.C. businesses with fewer than 50 employees can afford to provide health insurance for their employees.
“The Affordable Care Act is how these small business owners and their employees get their health insurance,” Knapp told Statehouse Report on Oct. 16. “And if those enhanced subsidies go away, we’ll have thousands of people who simply can’t afford their
health insurance.”
Meanwhile, with the federal shutdown set to move into its17th day, University of South Carolina economist Joseph Von Nessen warned that the state would begin to see widespread economic impacts if a deal isn’t reached soon.
“Once we get out past the 30-day mark, we start to see the potential for significant disruptions,” Von Nessen said in an Oct. 16 interview. “That’s when more businesses are likely to be affected due to suspended government contracts and where federal employees begin to miss paychecks, which affects spending in the local economy.”
But for his part, S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster said he doesn’t believe we’re going to get to that point.
“I think the shutdown’s not going to last much longer,” McMaster told reporterson Oct. 15.
At press time, there were no public indications that Republicans and Democrats were in active negotiations to resolve the impasse.
https://charlestoncitypaper.com/2025/10/17/600000- in-s-c-face-huge-health-insurance-spikes/