In a party-line vote, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions advanced Acosta’s nomination today, putting 160 million American workers one step closer to having a protector-in-chief whose views are largely unknown. During his hearing, Acosta fought to keep his opinions concealed. He repeatedly dodged questions about the department’s most significant recent activities, including updating overtime rules, reducing exposure to deadly silica dust, and requiring retirement advisers to act in their clients’ best interest.

But, despite his relative silence on labor issues, Acosta’s past has a giant red flag.

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From 2003 to 2005, when Acosta was leading the Civil Rights Division of George W. Bush’s Department of Justice, the division became intensely politicized. An investigation by the Office of the Inspector General found the division violated federal law and DOJ policy by conducting hiring based on candidates’ political and ideological affiliations. Although the report did not find Acosta directly responsible for illegal behavior, former DOJ employee Kristen Clark wrote, “This egregious conduct played out under Acosta’s watch and the Inspector General found that, despite the special litigation section chief informing Acosta of the wrongdoing, Acosta failed to take sufficient action to address the illegal and unprofessional actions.”

Acosta’s worrisome record doesn’t end with turning a blind eye to illegal activity. During his tenure at DOJ, Acosta himself was accused of partisan meddling. Just days before the 2004 presidential election, Ohio Republicans challenged and purged the voter registration of thousands of mostly African-American voters through a practice known as “voter caging.” When the case was challenged in federal court, Acosta took the unusual step of sending a letter to the court claiming that the purge was allowed under the Voting Rights Act. Typically, federal agency chiefs go out of their way not to influence elections—but if this behavior sounds like déjà vu, you can thank FBI Director James Comey.

In other words, when the interests of the Bush administration—which favored restrictions on voting rights—conflicted with his responsibility as a civil rights chief, it appears Acosta chose to use his authority to push the administration’s agenda.

And if he is confirmed as labor secretary, Acosta will once again be tasked with protecting a marginalized group of Americans—workers. One of his first tasks will be deciding whether he will enforce a spate of new rules that are designed to protect workers, passed during the end of the Obama administration. The rules themselves are straightforward: companies would have to disclose worker exposure to a cancer-causing dust often found in construction, federal contractors would have to disclose labor law violations, and employers would have to pay overtime to additional eligible workers.  But in some cases, Trump has already criticized them.

If his previous actions are any guide, Acosta will likely place partisan loyalty above enforcement of his agency’s mission. And when he repeated during last week’s hearing that he’d defer to Trump as the “boss,” he gave little assurance that he won’t place ideology above the labor rights and civil rights of working Americans.

By the time Carson was confirmed last month, there had been a shift. Media coverage softened, as some newspapers moved from being incredulous about his qualifications to arguing that his health background made him uniquely suited to running the department. During his confirmation hearing, Carson made that case himself by noting “good health has a lot to do with a good environment.” Some housing advocates, in turn, were hopeful he could be a good partner to their communities.

Less than a month into his tenure as HUD secretary, Carson is already beginning to undercut this argument. The Trump administration’s FY 18 budget, released today, proposes a $6.2 billion cut to the HUD budget—targeting programs that keep families housed and healthy.

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Today’s “skinny budget” was light on detail, so it didn’t account for all of the resources that would be slashed as a result of the 13.2 percent cut to HUD’s funding. According to earlier documents, about $1.5 billion of the cuts would come from the funds local governments rely on to clear public housing of mold and lead. That would add to the backlog of major repairs needed for public housing, which already stands at  $26 billion. The budget does propose a $20 million increase in funding specifically for lead remediation, but that restores less than 1 percent of what is being cut.

The budget also cuts programs that help prevent and alleviate homelessness, which is associated with health problems due to weather exposure, untreated conditions, and inconsistent medical care. About 200,000 low-income households could lose the rental assistance they need to afford housing, and the development funds that local governments use to prevent homelessness stand to be gutted. These programs have reduced homelessness by 10 percent since 2010— including a 15 percent reduction in family homelessness, and a 33 percent reduction in veteran homelessness.

The cuts also eliminate programs that support entire communities in their effort to provide a healthy environment for children. Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) and Home Investment Partnership (HOME) grants build and fix affordable housing, finance health care centers, and create community centers that give children safe places to play. In 2013 alone, 9.8 million people lived in areas that benefited from CDBG-funded projects, and HOME grants have helped build or saved 1.2 million affordable homes since the program was created in 1990.

Sec. Carson knows that living in poverty makes children sick. Living in structurally unsafe, substandard housing places children and families at a higher risk for fire-related injuries, asthma, and lead poisoning. It is also responsible for more than 18,000 preventable deaths each year. Carson has acknowledged this time and time and time again over the years. And, in one of Sec. Carson’s first messages to staff and the housing community last week, he pledged to “use every fiber of [his] being to work to improve America’s neighborhoods.” So, where is he this week when communities and families need him to defend the vital dollars they rely on?

During his confirmation hearing, Carson told U.S. senators, under oath, that he no longer supported the extreme cuts he had once campaigned on for President. He called such cuts “cruel and unusual punishment.” His support of this budget breaks his oath to Congress, and it calls into question the ethical oath he swore to live by when he became a physician: to do no harm.

Carson’s decision to support the current budget would dishonor his lifetime Hippocratic creed to uphold the human dignity of the people he serves—the people, families, and communities that rely on HUD. They deserve housing that keeps them safe from winter storms and summer heat. They deserve roofs without leaks, paint without lead, and walls that aren’t bubbling with black mold. They deserve to be able to turn the stove on without worrying if the apartment will catch fire.

They deserve to be healthy.

No such luck.

Tuesday night, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Tom Price and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Seema Verma issued a letter to the nation’s governors laying out their vision for Medicaid. In the letter, they indicate a willingness to waive longstanding rules that are designed to protect low-income Americans from coercion, poverty, and exploitation.

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Price and Verma assert that “rigid and outdated implementation and interpretation of federal rules” hinder the Medicaid program from accomplishing its goals. They reiterate a popular (and false) conservative talking point that by providing states additional funds to expand Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act discouraged them from addressing the needs of people with disabilities on traditional Medicaid. Finally, they lay out HHS’s willingness to grant almost every ill-advised “flexibility” request in the right wing’s wish list on Medicaid—many of which place people with disabilities, seniors, and low-income Americans at extraordinary risk.

Making Medicaid Harder to Access

The letter indicates the Trump administration would be willing to let states introduce premiums and higher cost-sharing for Medicaid beneficiaries.  These measures were rejected under the Obama administration, since they interfere with the program’s ability to serve low-income people. But based on Price’s letter, they now look likely to sail through.

In particular, Price and Verma suggest states may wish to apply for permission to allow “emergency room copayments to encourage the use of primary and other non-emergency providers for non-emergency medical care.” It’s a laudable goal, but in rural areas where there is a shortage of clinicians who accept Medicaid patients—a common problem due to the program’s low reimbursement rates—emergency rooms are often the only practical option for low-income people. Policies that make emergency room visits more expensive are likely to simply discourage people from seeking necessary care.

Price and Verma also suggest states explore charging Medicaid beneficiaries premiums. Such measures ignore the underlying reality that Medicaid serves the deeply poor, who cannot sustain these costs by definition. Still, the suggestion is familiar to Verma—under her leadership as a health policy adviser to then-Governor Mike Pence, Indiana introduced monthly premiums in 2015. Failure to pay them was grounds for losing coverage, or having less access to vital health care services.

This newfound flexibility would also make it possible for states to enact damaging policies that they have been requesting for years. Arizona, Indiana, Kentucky, Montana, and Arkansas have all previously requested permission from the federal government to impose work requirements on Medicaid, which would deny people access to the program unless they are employed.

Arizona is also pursuing a five-year cap on Medicaid benefits. Under the plan, an individual must either be working full time or be receiving disability benefits from the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Disability program in order to keep Medicaid benefits past the five-year cap.

Both work requirements and time limits are likely to disproportionately impact people with disabilities. Even though the time limit proposals provide exemptions for people who are receiving benefits through SSI,  many disabled adults qualify for Medicaid on the basis of their income—not their disability status with the Social Security Administration. That’s because many disabled people are unable to navigate the Social Security Administration’s complex bureaucracy or, particularly among people with psychiatric disabilities, may not be fully aware of their own disability. As of 2009, 1 in 5 adults eligible for Medicaid on a basis other than disability (2.3 million people) and 1 in 10 children eligible on a basis other than disability or child welfare assistance (about 3 million children) had a mental health diagnosis.

As for work requirements, people with disabilities are more likely than other Medicaid recipients to be unemployed. These measures would place them at risk of losing the health care coverage that would help them enter or return to the workforce. Indeed, where Medicaid has been expanded, research has shown that participation in the workforce for disabled adults has increased.

Weakening Protections Against Institutionalization

In their letter, Price and Verma also indicate an intent to weaken vital Obama administration protections for seniors and people with disabilities.

In 2014, the Obama administration issued a rule designed to protect seniors and people with disabilities who receive home and community based services. The Home and Community Based Settings Rule helps ensure that when states fund community services for people with disabilities, they do so in a manner that promotes integration instead of replicating the isolation and control of institutional environments.

The Settings rule requires every state to ensure that those receiving community supports have the right to do basic things like invite visitors into their own home, choose when they eat or what they do during the day, have legally enforceable rights under a lease, and possess options as to where to live other than group homes and other ‘disability-specific settings.’ States have until 2019 to comply with the Settings rule, and a broad range of flexibility to implement it in a way that best meets the needs of their residents.

The rule is designed to protect individual liberty, so that Americans will not lose control over their most basic choices by virtue of old age or disability. Prior to the Settings rule, states were moving to fund community-based services on the grounds of old institutions or by organizing segregated villages “clustering” adults with intellectual disabilities all in one place, limiting contact with the broader society. The Obama administration rightly recognized that these “gated communities” grouping people with disabilities together to get services were institutions by another name, so it limited states’ ability to fund them with scarce community services dollars.

But Price and Verma intend to move the implementation date from 2019 to an unspecified period in the future. Beyond that, their letter also calls for rolling back federal oversight, placing individuals with disabilities at greater risk of warehousing by state governments that are too often willing to defer to service providers about the level of rights their disabled residents should be afforded.

Elsewhere in the letter, Price and Verma express interest in revisiting 2016 Obama administration regulations governing how and under what circumstances states can contract out the operation of their Medicaid programs to private insurance companies, while fast tracking further state requests for “flexibility” in Medicaid.

Advocates at the state level must seek to organize in order to stop the worst of these ill-advised “flexibility” requests that are emerging from state legislatures and state Medicaid agencies. And governors in both parties must be told in no uncertain terms that taking advantage of the Trump administration’s offer to allow the gutting of Medicaid will not be viewed kindly by their voters.

Though this administration fails to recognize it, the rights of people with disabilities deserve federal protection. Just as states frequently fail to protect the rights of racial and ethnic minorities, women, and the LGBTQ community (all constituencies who are also under attack by the Trump administration), so too are state governments frequently willing to compromise the rights of disabled Americans for the sake of cost, convenience, or prejudice.

We can’t afford to be flexible when it comes to freedom and basic access to health care for every American.

These allegations may be what ultimately derail Puzder’s path to confirmation, but it’s actually his virulently anti-worker behavior that should disqualify him from being the nation’s top advocate for working people.

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Despite Trump’s often-repeated campaign promise to stand up for working Americans, his nominee is a longtime advocate for gutting worker protection laws and silencing workers’ voices on the job. While this may be good news for CEOs in fast food and other low-wage industries, it’s bad news for the people Trump has sworn to protect.

Even though Americans’ wages have been stagnant for years, Puzder opposes government policies that would increase wages and improve job quality. He opposed the recent rule that would expand overtime so that it would reach 4.2 million more workers, he has scoffed at the idea that workers may need to take rest breaks over the course of their shift,  and he has argued that “some jobs don’t produce enough economic value” to justify raising the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour.

Carl’s Jr. practices in other countries undermine Puzder’s argument that the market couldn’t bear a higher wage.  At its 20 locations in New Zealand, the chain must pay at least the federal minimum wage of $15.25 per hour (or $11.07 in American dollars). The chain is also planning to open up 300 stores in Australia, where the law requires that adult fast food workers be paid at least $19.44 per hour (nearly $15 in American dollars) with hourly pay premiums for overtime and night shift work.

But here in the U.S., Puzder’s company may have failed to even comply with the existing federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.  In a 2014 investigation of a corporate-owned Hardee’s in Alabama, government investigators alleged that workers were being paid less than the federal minimum wage because CKE was paying workers with fee-laden prepaid debit cards. And just last week, two Carl’s Jr. employees filed suit against CKE and its franchises, claiming that the companies use “no-hire agreements” that prevent managers from moving to new jobs with higher pay. The company released a statement saying it will not comment on the specifics of the lawsuit.

Workers have filed dozens of other complaints against Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. stores for wage theft, overtime violations, sexual harassment, and unfair labor practices. A spokesperson for CKE restaurants said the company will not comment on the pending litigation, but argued—despite a recent report to the contrary—that the franchise restaurant owners are “solely responsible for their employees, management, and adherence to regulations and labor practices.”

In addition to opposing a living wage and basic worker protections, Puzder has made it clear that he prefers workers who do not—or cannot—advocate for better conditions. As an employer, he has reasoned that immigrant workers make better employees since they have what he refers to as a “‘Thank God I have this job’ kind of attitude,” which presumably translates to a hesitance to speak up when there are problems. He also looks forward to one day operating completely automated employee-free restaurants since machines are “always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there’s never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex, or race discrimination case.”

These individual anti-worker beliefs and practices culminate in Puzder’s desire to silence the voice and power of working Americans by dismantling unions. He is a vocal critic of the Fight for $15, and he opposes reforms that would hold franchisors accountable for discrimination against workers who participate in protests and strikes. At least one former Hardee’s franchise employee alleges that she was fired for her involvement in protests to demand higher wages and a union.

Puzder’s disdain for unions extends beyond the fast food industry where he has a clear self-interest. When Walmart announced last year that it would close 154 stores (the vast majority of which were smaller stores) in an effort to focus on supercenters and e-commerce, he ignored Walmart’s own statement and blamed workers for the closures. With no evidence to back up his claim, Puzder penned an op-ed faulting a worker group for the closures.

This sort of right-wing opposition to unions and workers’ collective voice isn’t new—but with a Republican-controlled White House and Congress the stakes are higher. The government will likely debate legislative proposals and administrative changes that could cripple unions by cutting their funding and membership.

If Puzder continues to take aggressively anti-union positions as labor secretary, it will not just be bad for union members. Unions help raise wages, reduce inequality, and boost economic mobility for all workers—whether or not they’re in a union. And without organized labor, working people lose negotiating power in the workplace and in government—whether it’s their ability to negotiate for higher wages or to defend policies like Social Security and Medicaid that protect the middle class.

So much for Trump’s promise to protect and fight for American workers.

Much of the conversation around the Affordable Care Act—and its potential repeal—has focused on numbers and figures: bending the cost curve, lowering the insurance rate, or slowing health care inflation. But lost in this conversation are the millions of people who owe their medication, treatment, preventive care, and in many cases their lives to the Affordable Care Act.

Representative Tom Price, Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services and oversee the ACA repeal, has proposed a replacement for the law that would leave young people, Americans with pre-existing conditions, women, and people with disabilities at the mercy of the health insurance industry. This would quite literally put the lives of his own constituents at risk.

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Below are the stories of three people from Tom Price’s district in Georgia who owe their health coverage to the Affordable Care Act.

1. Vicki Hopper

Vicki Hopper had been uninsured for nearly two years before she purchased health insurance on ACA exchanges in Georgia. Two days later she went to have a mammogram and was told to come back for a more extensive evaluation. Two days after that, she found out she had breast cancer. Since then, she has had 10 surgeries, including biopsies, a double mastectomy, and reconstructive surgery.

In Vicki’s case, the Affordable Care Act may have quite literally saved her life. Mammograms, let alone cancer treatment and surgeries, are incredibly expensive and would have likely been impossible without health insurance coverage. Even if Vicki had found out she had breast cancer, insurance companies would have been able to charge her exorbitant rates or outright deny her coverage because cancer qualifies as a pre-existing condition. But under the ACA, routine health benefits like cancer screening, treatment, and follow-up care are required.

As Vicki told us, “If it wasn’t for Obamacare, I would be homeless.”

2. The Kush Family

Patricia Kush knows exactly how devastating an ACA repeal would be, because she remembers what life was like before Congress passed the legislation. In 2004, Patricia’s husband was diagnosed with diabetes. He was working over 40 hours a week, but his employer didn’t offer health insurance. He tried to get individual coverage through the insurance market, but insurance companies refused to cover his diabetes-related expenses. Because he couldn’t afford an expensive insurance plan and the out-of-pocket costs for diabetes medications, he went without health insurance.

In 2007, Patricia’s husband was hospitalized for serious complications from his illness. He survived, but his time in the hospital cost the couple almost $30,000. “We were lucky, Patricia says, “He didn’t die. The hospital forgave a chunk of the costs, and because of good credit, we were able to get a 10-year loan to pay off the rest of the medical bills. But not everyone is as lucky as we were.”

These days, Patricia’s husband is on her health insurance, but their future is far from secure. “If something happened to me, or I lost my job, and Obamacare had been repealed, he would be in real trouble,” Patricia says. Because he has a pre-existing condition, insurance companies would not be required to cover him if Obamacare were repealed outright. “Even though we don’t currently use the health care exchanges, I feel as if it is very important to tell our story from when my husband wasn’t able to get insurance,” she told us. “It would be devastating for so many families if Obamacare is repealed.”

3. Josh Carter

When his son was born in 2014, Josh was working in a stressful and difficult job. According to his wife Sarah, the anxiety and long hours were placing a major strain on the whole family, but they needed the job to be able to support themselves. By the time their son turned one, Josh’s health and the family’s quality of life were suffering. Josh was eventually able to find a contract job to provide for his family, with one major catch—it didn’t include health benefits. But because Obamacare provides people with access to insurance marketplaces, he was able to find health coverage for him, his wife, and his baby through the exchanges and take a new job.

As important as coverage was for Josh, it was even more important for his son. Since the ACA was passed, nearly 2 million kids have gained health insurance that includes essential screenings and immunizations. Josh’s son benefited from blood pressure screening, vision screening, lead screening, and oral health risk assessments.

“My husband would never have been able to take this opportunity if it wasn’t for the ACA and the ability to buy affordable health insurance outside of his employer,” his wife Sarah says. His contract job turned into a permanent job that he loves—an opportunity he would not have had without access to safe, affordable health care.

If Tom Price listened to his constituents, he would hear thousands of stories like these. Vicki, Patricia, Josh and their families all benefited from coverage under the Affordable Care Act. In Vicki’s case, it probably saved her life. Repealing the Affordable Care Act without a replacement that covers the people who currently depend on it would simply cost lives.

If Tom Price is going to continue his plot to repeal the Affordable Care Act, he owes people like Vicki, Josh, and Patricia a plan that ensures they can continue to get the coverage they need.

Now that his administration is taking shape, the answer is becoming very, very clear. His nominee for Attorney General has called the NAACP “un-American,” his nominee for the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development has referred to desegregation as “a failed socialist experiment,” and his chief strategist led the website credited with making blatant racism mainstream again. Now, with the nomination of Scott Pruitt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Trump is signaling an attack on public health—which has pronounced health hazards for communities of color.

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Pruitt’s confirmation hearings begin on Wednesday, and his record is providing ample questions for the process. As Attorney General for Oklahoma, Pruitt has spent much of his career trying to dismantle the EPA. He led state attorneys general efforts to sue the EPA over its Clean Power Plan, which aims to reduce carbon pollution from dirty-fueled power plants. As Attorney General, he eliminated the office’s Environmental Protection Unit. He has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in political donations from oil and gas interests, and then repeated their calls to allow greater pollution—almost verbatim—to the very agency he is nominated to now serve. An investigation found him to be part of a secret, collaborate alliance between attorneys general and the energy industry. He also denies the science of climate change, despite global scientific agreement.

“Pruitt personifies environmental injustice,” according to Earl Hatley, Grand Riverkeeper and co-founder of the Oklahoma-based nonprofit Local Environmental Action Demanded Agency. Hatley expects Pruitt to provide the oil and gas industry exemptions from air and water protections—first by targeting the Clean Air Act, and then by remove fracking regulations. “Oklahoma is an oil state; it always has been,” says Hatley. “We’re trying to fight it, but with people like Pruitt, the pushback is really hard.”

Pruitt’s record of attacking public health, clean air, and safe drinking water safeguards should concern everyone, but African-American and Latino communities face some of the most serious health risks. Due in part to the enduring legacy of discriminatory housing policies, communities of color are more likely to have lead poisoning or contaminated water, be exposed to hazardous levels of air particle pollutants, and have their homes damaged during extreme weather.  In 2007, nearly half of all people of color in the United States—an estimated 46 percent to 48 percent—lived within six miles of a hazardous waste facility.

Given these risks, it is vital for communities of color to have an EPA Administrator who embraces the environmental justice movement, which fights to give communities of color equal access to clean air and water. The EPA has been criticized for ignoring this movement in the past, but in recent years the agency launched a series of actions to support it—including the EJ 2020 Action Agenda, which includes defining priority areas and engaging in community-based work, and provides roadmaps for outreach and engagement with tribes and communities. The EPA also released a mapping tool that illustrates exactly which communities are most exposed to pollution.

This provides some hope to communities of color, but the EPA has much more work to do.

In the wake of the water crisis in Flint, Michigan—and multiple cities throughout the United States—marginalized communities are relying on the EPA now, more than ever, to protect their health from the hazards of water and air pollution. The EPA needs leadership that will protect Americans from pollution and climate change impacts, rather than destroy the EPA’s mission to give people clean air and water.

If there was any question about President-elect Trump’s interest in helping communities of color, he answered it himself. He had the option to nominate an EPA Administrator who pledged to support the agency’s mission to set and enforce air and water quality safeguards, work to reduce air and water pollution, and continue to incorporate environmental justice efforts throughout the agency. Instead, he selected a nominee who wants to attack decades of environmental progress, with no record of helping communities of color fight for environmental equality.

With Scott Pruitt as EPA Administrator, we have a lot to lose.

And now he has nominated Andrew Puzder, the billionaire fast-food executive, to lead the Department of Labor.

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If Trump’s actual goal is to display utter contempt for American workers, then burger-czar Puzder is a pretty strong choice. He’s a key figure in an industry that’s notorious for labor abuses, including low wages and wage theft, and he has personally played a strong role in perpetuating those injustices. According to a recent Labor Department investigation, the majority of Puzder’s own restaurants—about 60%—were found to be in violation of labor laws.

And now Puzder will be tasked with enforcing the very laws he has repeatedly broken.

Puzder vocally opposes labor protections that are crucial for most Americans, including overtime pay, protections from workplace discrimination, and access to affordable health care. But his nomination deals a particularly violent blow to the nation’s most vulnerable and lowest-paid workers. Despite the fact that he makes more in a day than the typical fast-food worker earns in an entire year, Puzder believes that low-wage workers are paid too much. He has been an outspoken opponent of the minimum wage, which puts him at odds with more than 90% of Americans. And his claims that higher minimum wages lead employers to cut jobs runs counter to decades of rigorous research showing that moderate minimum wage increases boost family income without affecting employment.

Nowhere is Puzder’s nomination more devastating than in the 21 states where policymakers have refused to raise the minimum wage above the federal level of $7.25 per hour. The overwhelming majority of those states—19 out of 21—voted for Trump after he promised to be “a president who will protect them and fight for them.” They have been waiting more than seven years for a raise, and every year the purchasing power of their $7.25 shrinks—making it even more difficult to make ends meet. But with a Labor Secretary who thinks “some jobs don’t produce enough economic value” to justify a minimum-wage increase, a president who has declared that wages are “too high,” and a Republican Congress that has repeatedly rejected widely supported minimum-wage legislation, these workers will likely have to keep waiting.

If the federal minimum wage stays at its current level, by the end of Trump’s first term it will be worth 20% less than it was worth when Congress last increased it in 2009. That means a full-time minimum-wage worker would earn just $13,750 per year in today’s dollars—nearly 15% below the poverty line for a family of two.

Adding insult to injury, Puzder penned an op-ed last year that lambasted Americans who must turn to public assistance to make ends meet. But there’s a simple reason that low-wage workers are eligible for public assistance programs like food stamps and Medicaid: It’s because employers like Puzder pay their employees too little to survive.

It’s the height of hypocrisy that Trump—who sold himself as a champion for American workers—has crowned an anti-labor billionaire to be the nation’s chief advocate for working people. To preserve and protect American workers’ rights, security, and dignity—and to prevent the most vulnerable, lowest-paid workers from sinking further into poverty—lawmakers must take a strong stand against the coronation of this anti-labor secretary.

Earlier this month, when rumors of erstwhile presidential candidate Ben Carson’s role in a future Trump administration started flying, Carson made it clear that he wasn’t interested in an agency appointment. In the words of his business manager, “Dr. Carson feels he has no government experience, he’s never run a federal agency. The last thing he would want to do was take a position that could cripple the presidency.”

A lot can change in a month.

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Despite Carson’s earlier objections, last week it seemed like President-elect Trump was on the verge of nominating the former neurosurgeon as Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). And Carson, citing the fact that he once lived in a city, now believes he’s up to the task.

Here’s the problem: HUD is a critically important federal agency with a budget of almost $50 billion, 9,000 employees across the country, and programs that affect the lives of millions of people. The Secretary of HUD isn’t a vanity appointment to be bestowed upon any half-willing volunteer.

Here are six reasons why the agency deserves a qualified leader who is up to the task.

HUD Makes It Possible for Families of Color, Middle-Income Families, and Millennials to Buy Homes

One of HUD’s core missions is to help families buy a home, which is critical for building wealth. That’s why it manages the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), which insures private mortgage loans against the risk of default by the borrower. That makes financial institutions more willing to provide credit—particularly to groups who have been historically excluded from homeownership, like families of color.

FHA has insured more than 40 million homes since it was established in 1934, and it’s becoming even more important in the current tight credit environment.  FHA’s market share of single-family purchase loan originations more than doubled between 2004 and 2015, and many of those loans are going to underserved communities of color where conventional credit continues to be limited.

HUD Makes Sure Low-Income Families Have Access to Housing

For many years, the private market has failed to provide enough affordable rental housing for low-income families. HUD helps fill this gap through a variety of rental assistance programs—from public housing to housing vouchers—in order to ensure that more low-income families have a decent, safe, and affordable place to live. More than 5 million low-income households use federal rental assistance, and without it, many of these families would likely experience homelessness.

HUD Promotes Economic Mobility for Whole Communities

HUD is working to break up the concentrated poverty and de facto segregation that put some communities at a major disadvantage. Last year, the department finalized a rule that requires local governments that use HUD funding to examine patterns of poverty and residential segregation—and to put forward a credible plan for addressing these challenges. That’s essential in a country that is becoming increasingly diverse—and where discrimination in housing is still alive and well.

Through programs such as the Housing Choice Voucher Program, HUD also helps many families move out of distressed neighborhoods to higher opportunity areas, where there is better access to jobs and good schools.

HUD Addresses Discrimination in the Housing Market

HUD is able to process significantly more housing discrimination complaints than any other government agency—an average of 9,201 per year from 2010 to 2013. The complaints are typically rooted in someone’s race or disability, and nearly a third result in some form of penalty against an offending lender or landlord.

There are a few other agencies that share some of the responsibility for enforcing fair housing law—specifically the Justice Department’s Housing and Civil Enforcement Section—but they are not set up for efficient, large scale enforcement. As a result, the Justice Department’s annual case load is a tiny fraction of what HUD processes each year.

HUD is the Biggest Source of Funding to Prevent Homelessness

HUD provides more funding for homeless assistance than any other federal department. The department has also been responsible for the development of tens of thousands of housing units to house people who are homeless, or at risk of homelessness. HUD also helps to ensure that residents living in these units receive the social support services they need to get back on their feet, and to avoid homelessness in the future. Since hundreds of thousands of Americans still experience homelessness every day, these services are critical.

Too often, the root cause behind homelessness is domestic violence. Through its Office of Special Needs Assistance Program, HUD plays a key role in rapid re-housing and in providing homeless families and survivors of domestic violence with options that let them transition into safe, stable, and affordable housing.

HUD Helps Rebuild Communities After Natural Disasters

HUD serves as an important partner to communities rebuilding after disasters have struck. For example, the department played a major role in the recovery of the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina displaced more than 1 million people, through the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) Program.  The department invested $20 billion in affected states, which supported the long-term recovery of the region’s housing stock, economy, and infrastructure.

HUD can deploy CDBG-DR funds in the case of any presidentially-declared natural disasters, as long as funds are available. Just this fall, HUD deployed $500 million to help communities in Louisiana, West Virginia, and Texas recover from historic flooding. As extreme weather events increase in frequency, HUD’s role in rebuilding communities will be even more vital.

Housing is one of the biggest determinants of where and how we live, and it is intimately linked with broader issues of wealth and poverty. HUD’s vital role necessitates engaged, qualified, and experienced leadership.  Ben Carson—by his own admission—is simply not up to the task.

If you were wondering whether Donald Trump would keep his promise to protect Medicare from cuts, you just got your answer. Trump’s choice for Secretary of Health and Human Services is none other than Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), one of the country’s leading advocates for turning Medicare upside down.

Over the course of his campaign, Donald Trump assured voters that he would not take an ax to Medicare. In May of last year, he made that particularly clear when he told the Daily Signal, “I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid.” That fits in well with Trump’s allegedly populist campaign message—in fact, it would fit even better if he pledged to expand Medicare and other social safety net programs.

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But with the election just three weeks in the rearview mirror, Trump is already wrapping his arms around various proposals to gut the social safety net that conservatives have long advocated for—including schemes to weaken Medicare. Price’s appointment is just the latest signal that the incoming administration is willing to put seniors’ health care on the chopping block.

Price has spent his career attacking Medicare. In 2009, he marked Medicare’s 44th anniversary by bashing it. “Nothing has had a greater negative effect on the delivery of health care than the federal government’s intrusion into medicine through Medicare,” Price wrote. Two years later, Price introduced a bill to shift more Medicare costs onto seniors by partially privatizing the program.

After Trump’s election, Price said that he hoped to have a Medicare overhaul “within the first six to eight months” of the Trump administration. He’s planning on using a process called budget reconciliation—which would allow conservatives to push through major policy changes without needing to secure a filibuster-proof, 60-vote majority in the Senate.

Privatizing Medicare has been on conservatives’ wish list for years—Speaker Ryan advocated for it as a way to cut the program’s costs as early as 2010. In a budget proposal that year, Ryan pushed the idea of “premium support,” which would effectively swap out the current Medicare system—where the government pays hospitals, doctors, and other healthcare providers—for one where every person essentially gets a check to buy their own insurance on a private market. Effectively, the plan takes power away from Medicare enrollees and puts it squarely into the hands of private insurers. Ryan’s most recent version of the plan would not eliminate traditional Medicare right away, but it would undermine the program and raise the eligibility age.

The devil is, as always, in the details, and so far Price and Ryan have declined to specify exactly what their Medicare overhaul would entail. But the consequences are potentially very grave: previous proposals would hollow out the current program and replace it with one that covers fewer people, offers its enrollees fewer benefits, and opens the door to charging much higher premiums to seniors facing the most significant challenges to their health.

Despite his campaign promises, it seems Trump is now falling in line . Price’s appointment follows a statement the president-elect put out on his transition website, where he pledges to “modernize Medicare, so that it will be ready for the challenges with the coming retirement of the Baby Boom generation—and beyond.” In the world of political parlance—especially after an election where Trump made a number of explicit attacks against many groups of Americans—this may not sound like much. But in fact, this phrasing strongly suggests that Trump is getting ready to join conservatives’ long-running effort to gut Medicare as we know it.

This is what makes Trump’s pivot on Medicare so disconcerting: It appears to be yet another example of how the populist rejection of establishment politics that defined his campaign’s narrative was just a ruse. Another broken promise originally made in bad faith.

My late grandfather, a New Deal Democrat who proudly cast his first vote for Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s third term in 1940, taught me many things: The airy pleasure of crooners Bing Crosby and Perry Como, how to handicap a horse race, the importance of being on time. (Incidentally, I’m still working on that last one.)

One lesson in particular is sticking out as we get more information on President-elect Trump’s plans for office. It went something like, “A person breaks a promise every single minute. If they’re acting in good faith, you give ‘em another chance. But if you know they aren’t, just go ahead and throw the first punch.”

If there’s a silver lining, it’s that the American people appear to be ready to throw a punch. They happen to like their Medicare the way it is, and fiercely oppose turning it into a premium support-based system. According to a June 2015 poll, only 26% of respondents support transitioning Medicare to a premium support model. In contrast, an overwhelming 70% of respondents said they preferred keeping Medicare structurally as it is.

There is no doubt Donald Trump was wise to the popularity of Medicare when he promised not to cut it a year and a half ago. Now that he seems likely to join in Speaker Ryan’s barrage of attacks on the social safety net, he may be surprised by how his supporters respond.