I’ve always loved the Fourth of July. As a native Southwest Philadelphian, I have early childhood memories of taking the trolley with my mother to watch the fireworks from the Belmont Plateau. We also made frequent visits to Independence Hall, the Betsy Ross House, and other iconic Philly landmarks. My mother always emphasized our amazing good luck that her father and grandparents had escaped Eastern European pogroms to find refuge and freedom on these shores.

When I was little, my mother took me into the voting booth with her, always emphasizing the great privilege I would later have to vote for people to represent us. My mother taught me well. From the time I was of age, I have voted in every single election — primary and general.

As an adult with successive jobs leading universities in Arizona, Alaska, and Illinois, I almost always made a Fourth of July pilgrimage back to Philadelphia. (Full disclosure: Having children and grandchildren here was also an incentive.) In 2020, when I retired from my last university presidency, my husband and I moved back permanently to our birthplace — the city of our heart.

As I anticipate this year’s Philadelphia July Fourth celebrations, I am overcome with sadness. This city reflects everything I love about the holiday, but I’m heartbroken that the fundamental principles of July Fourth are being systematically undermined.

Walking in Independence Mall, I can hear echoes of colonial citizens affirming, “Taxation without representation is tyranny.” Frankly — and for the first time in this patriot’s life — I am paying taxes without feeling represented by my government. I do not see my elected representatives bravely fighting tyranny in an unequivocal American tradition.

Social Security and the Declaration of Independence

Like all senior citizens who have paid Social Security taxes throughout my working life, I have a right to prompt and helpful access to necessary information. I can affirm that pre-DOGE, I always got decent service. Sometimes I had to wait 10 or 15 minutes for a representative to respond to my questions, but that was acceptable. Then DOGE, led by billionaire Elon Musk and a bunch of recent college graduates with offensive nicknames, swept in with a hacksaw and made the Social Security Administration (SSA) dysfunctional.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports, “For a ‘real lesson in torture,’ try calling your local Social Security Administration (SSA) office with a question,” says Marcia Chestnut, a disabled 62-year-old former housekeeper from West Oak Lane. She was told that her benefits would be cut off in April. Phoning her local SSA office in Germantown every weekday for two months, she was put on hold for four hours or longer and then disconnected. In addition to financial loss, her stress levels are extreme.

Where are elected officials, particularly in Congress, standing up for Americans like me who feel unrepresented?

While SSA did not provide Philadelphia layoff numbers to The Inquirer, SSA staffing has been reduced by 57,000 nationwide, cutting the staff almost in half, when, according to Jonathan Stein, former general counsel at Community Legal Services (CLS), “staffing levels had already been at their lowest level in 50 years.”

Marcia Chestnut’s payments have been threatened in the name of undocumented “waste, fraud and abuse.” In my opinion, the real strategy is to discourage and delay payments to as many legitimate Social Security recipients as possible.

These Social Security tactics are in the same anti-July Fourth spirit as “death by a million papercuts” being imposed or proposed to make all government dealings more difficult, from recently married women proving citizenship under their new names to Pell financial aid recipients having to go through lengthy and unmanageable verification processes.

Stamp Act of 1765, anyone? The Stamp Act, a strong motivation for the Declaration of Independence, required colonial printers to jump through many hoops, paying a tax on documents used or created in the colonies and proving that they were not engaged in waste, fraud or abuse by affixing an embossed revenue stamp to the documents.

Modern taxation without representation

There is so much more to rebel against today. But as a longtime university president, I’ll focus on the oppression of higher education — what the Declaration of Independence would call “a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” Across the nation and in Philadelphia in particular, the Trump administration has been exercising tyranny over higher education.

I’ve written before that the far right wing is at war with colleges and universities nationwide, smashing the First Amendment by trying to take over the curriculum and banish vocabulary from websites; exerting pressure to fire university presidents, with the president of the University of Virginia being the latest victim; and inflicting as much financial pain as possible on institutions from community colleges to the Ivy League.

Our city, from the time of Ben Franklin’s founding of the University of Pennsylvania, has been famous for its eds and meds. So it is particularly heartrending to witness the tens of millions of dollars in research funding capriciously cut from Philadelphia-area universities and research institutes. The Inquirer reports, “Federal officials have offered little explanation of the criteria that go into selecting grants for termination.” I can’t help but think of unstable King George III.

… as we celebrate this year’s Fourth of July, let’s move beyond fireworks and hoagies to petition our elected officials to remember the original rallying cry, “No taxation without representation!”

I’ve written about the big ugly budget bill that hurts students. The Senate version is less horrible than the House bill. But should we settle for less horrible?

Where are elected officials, particularly in Congress, standing up for Americans like me who feel unrepresented? In my mind, I hear the Simon & Garfunkel song asking, “Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.” I’ll paraphrase: Where have you gone Goldwater, Rhodes, and Scott (the three Republican U.S. legislators who visited Richard Nixon on August 7, 1974, and told him he had done wrong by the American people)? Hugh Scott, the Senate Minority Leader, by the way, represented Pennsylvania.

Where have you gone, Senators McCormick and Fetterman? If you see nothing else, can’t you recognize how Philadelphia is being afflicted by Trump administration policies? Shifting Medicaid, SNAP, and other funding responsibilities to the Commonwealth simply results in less state money to address the SEPTA disaster, remove asbestos from Philadelphia schools, and, by the way, make up for cuts in National Park funding threatening Philadelphia’s ability to create a worthy semiquincentennial next year. Fourth of July 2026 should be generously funded in the city where we first bravely proclaimed independence from tyranny.

Meanwhile, as we celebrate this year’s Fourth of July, let’s move beyond fireworks and hoagies to petition our elected officials to remember the original rallying cry, “No taxation without representation!”

What we can do

    • Bombard the offices of Senators McCormick and Fetterman and all PA House Representatives, demanding that they stand up for us.
    • Remind everyone that patriotism comes in both blue and red colors.
    • Work toward a more representative Congress in 2026.

Elaine Maimon, Ph.D., is the author of Leading Academic Change: Vision, Strategy, Transformation. Her long career in higher education has encompassed top executive positions at public universities as well as distinction as a scholar in rhetoric/composition. Her co-authored book, Writing In The Arts and Sciences, has been designated as a landmark text. She is a Distinguished Fellow of the Association for Writing Across the Curriculum.

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