The Vermont Conversation with David Goodman

This week marks the 25th anniversary of civil unions, which were the most sweeping grant of rights to gay couples in the nation when they became law on July 1, 2000.

Civil unions grew out of a lawsuit filed by three gay and lesbian couples who had been denied marriage licenses in Vermont. The lawsuit was known as Baker v. Vermont. In December 1999, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled unanimously that gay and lesbian couples were entitled to the same benefits of marriage as heterosexual couples. The court ordered the Vermont legislature to craft a law that would satisfy the ruling, either by legalizing same-sex marriage or by creating an equivalent partnership structure. 

Vermont Supreme Court Chief Justice Jeffrey Amestoy wrote that the decision, “is simply a recognition of our common humanity.” 

It would take until 2009 for Vermont to legalize same-sex marriage. 

To mark the milestone, I spoke with four of the key participants behind civil unions. Stacy Jolles and Nina Beck were two of the six plaintiffs in Baker v. Vermont. Chief Justice Amestoy wrote the decision. Gov. Howard Dean signed civil unions into law. (Rep. Bill Lippert recounted how the Vermont legislature passed the historic law on The Vermont Conversation in an interview in April.)

Just five months after being sworn in as president, Donald Trump has embroiled the U.S. in a shooting war in the Middle East, a trade war with our allies and neighbors, and a culture war with those who oppose his policies. 

Trump has deployed the National Guard and the U.S. Marines into the streets of a major American city over the objections of a mayor and a governor, and unleashed masked agents to snatch unsuspecting immigrants off the streets and ship them off to foreign prisons. 

This seemed like a good moment to check in with Rep. Becca Balint. Balint, D-Vt., was elected to Congress from Vermont in 2022 and is a member of the House Judiciary Committee and the Budget Committee. She serves on the Congressional Progressive Caucus as Vice Chair for New Members and as a Co-Chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus. 

She spoke to me on Tuesday, June 24, from her congressional office in Washington D.C. 

What do Nazis, fascists, incels, skinheads, misogynists, insurrectionists and Proud Boys all have in common? Many of them confide in reporter Elle Reeve.

It was around 2015 and Reeve was reporting for Vice News about the rise of the “alt right,” a term coined by its leader, Richard Spencer. She spent time on internet message boards like 4chan and 8chan where far right activists communicated, trolled liberals, and began to coalesce as a movement. These were often ordinary people who increasingly embraced conspiracy theories and violence.

This was during the presidency of Barack Obama, when many people were imagining that the U.S. was in the glow of a “post-racial” era. Reeve knew better. 

“Racism wasn’t dying off with an older generation,” she told the Vermont Conversation. “There was a strong beating heart right there on the internet.”

In 2017, Reeve was there when the alt right burst out of obscure Internet chat rooms and into public consciousness in a violent attack in Charlottesville, Virginia. Her documentary account, “Charlottesville: Race and Terror,” earned her and Vice News Tonight a Peabody Award, four Emmys and a George Polk Award.

In 2019, Reeve became a correspondent for CNN, where she works today. She was at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 reporting on the attack on Congress by Trump supporters, many of whom she knew well.

Why do they talk to her? “They want to tell their story, they want to confess, they want to unburden themselves,” she said.

Reeve has a new book, “Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics.” The title refers to how far right activists speak of taking the “black pill” of nihilism to justify their cruelty and violence. “It’s this dark nihilism that the world is doomed. There’s nothing you can do to change it, and you at best, can hope for it to collapse.”

Reeve traces how far-right rhetoric has moved from the fringes to the mainstream, with Donald Trump and J.D. Vance channeling extremist ideas and language.

Vance has denounced the “woke ideology” of “white women who are miserable about their own lives, enforcing codes about racial justice, gay rights on other people to make other people miserable, to account for how miserable they are in their own lives,” Reeve explained.

Vance’s use of the term “childless cat ladies” is another far right meme. “I’ve read that on 4chan six or seven years ago,” said Reeve. “It has trickled upward.”

Another far right notion that is now embraced by mainstream Republicans is that diversity is bad. “They think that racial and ethnic and gender diversity makes us weaker. It makes us fools. This is just something that they ridiculed all the time.”

Reeve explained the far right context of Trump’s attacks on people of color. “If a white person commits a crime in their world, it’s because they’re a bad guy. But if a Black person commits a crime in their world, it’s because they’re Black.”

Reeve warned that many people “are vulnerable to those ideas. I just interviewed a ton of people who were so nice to me at a Trump boat parade. They were so nice to me, and then they started talking to me about how it’s not right to eat people’s cats, and these people do animal sacrifice, and they’re dirty and they bring disease.”

“It’s not all crazy people who believe this stuff. It’s regular people and your neighbors,” said Reeve. “You have an obligation to push back against that, whether or not they’ll listen to you.”

Reeve said about the future, “There has been an escalating radicalization among the Republican elite and a softening among the voters… People speak freely about civil war. That is dangerous.”

“I don’t like it but I don’t know where that balance ends up after the election. You can’t do something like Jan. 6 without a feeling that there’s an army behind you of supporters who will back you up.”

Hunger stalks the Green Mountains like a silent and stealthy predator. Two out of five people in Vermont experience hunger, according to Hunger Free Vermont. And the problem may soon get much worse.

The Trump administration has proposed sweeping cuts to SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, the nation’s largest food assistance program. The Senate is currently considering a budget reconciliation bill passed by the House that includes billions of dollars in cuts to SNAP and Medicaid. Up to 13,000 Vermonters may have their food assistance reduced or eliminated if the measure is approved. Many legal immigrants, including refugees and asylees, will no longer be eligible for food benefits, according to Ivy Enoch of Hunger Free Vermont.

To find out what this means to the people who will be directly affected by the potential cuts, I visited the largest food shelf in central Vermont, located at Capstone Community Action in Barre. The food shelf is open three days a week. When I visited, a steady stream of people of all ages came through the doors, quietly but gratefully filling grocery bags of food. Volunteers buzzed about helping.

Emmanuelle Soumailhan, coordinator for Capstone’s food shelf, said that the food shelf gets about 800 to 1,000 visitors per month, double the traffic it received before the Covid pandemic. The potential for federal cuts has her concerned that “we're not going to have enough food and we're going to see a surge of people … (and) we're just going to run out of money.”

Stephanie Doyle came to the food shelf to get food for her family. She said that her SNAP benefits did not cover her family’s food needs for the month. “You just can't afford getting fruits and vegetables and all that stuff that you need to do to be healthy, especially when you have a child that you're taking care of.”

Doyle wants to ensure that her teenage daughter is “fueled really well in school so that she has a chance to thrive and get a good education just like all of the other kids who have more.”

Leslie Walz, a retired school nurse from Barre, was volunteering at the food shelf. She was outraged by the prospect that SNAP funding would be slashed.

“I don't know what's going to happen to these people that are dependent on the food shelf here,” she said. “Many of them don't have a place to live. They're living out of their cars. They were living in motels. It's essential. It can't be cut, not if we have a heart.”

Liz Scharf, director of community economic development and food security at Capstone, insisted that philanthropy and charity can not replace lost federal funds. She is hopeful that the most draconian cuts will be avoided.

“I just hope that in the end we're a country that decides to make sure our people are cared for, rather than giving money to the highest wealth individuals in this country through tax breaks,” said Scharf.

Disclosure: David Goodman's wife, Sue Minter, was the executive director of Capstone Community Action from December 2018 to January 2025.

In 2010, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange released a secret video of a U.S. helicopter attack on Iraqi civilians. U.S. authorities charged him with disclosing state secrets and demanded his extradition to the U.S. Assange took refuge inside the Ecuadorean embassy in London and spent a dozen years first inside the embassy and later jailed in the U.K.’s high security Belmarsh Prison. He was released last year after pleading guilty to a single charge under the Espionage Act and now lives in Australia.

Last week, Julian Assange returned to the international stage, walking the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival alongside Vermont filmmaker Eugene Jarecki. Jarecki’s new film, “The Six Billion Dollar Man,” chronicles Assange’s crusade to reveal inconvenient truths that governments seek to bury. Jarecki’s new film has been garnering awards, receiving the first-ever Golden Globe Award for best documentary, and taking the special jury prize of the L’Oeil d’or, or Golden Eye award, the documentary film prize at Cannes.

At the Golden Globes, the award Jarecki received recognized his work for “combining the skills of a journalist with the voice of a poet.” The statement added, “At a time when truth is under pressure, Eugene’s work reminds us of the power of storytelling to provoke, enlighten, and ultimately defend democracy itself.”

Eugene Jarecki has won Emmy and Peabody awards for his previous films, including documentaries about Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger, and the military-industrial complex.

Jarecki lives in Vermont and co-founded the Big Picture Theater in Waitsfield. I caught up with him in Europe.

In 1998, brothers Mateo and Andy Kehler bought a piece of land in the Northeast Kingdom town of Greensboro that would become home to Jasper Hill Farm. Within a few years, the brothers were producing award-winning cheeses and had created an iconic Vermont brand. Among the numerous accolades received by Jasper Hill are Best American Cheese from the World Cheese Awards, gold medals from the International Cheese Awards and Best of Show from the American Cheese Society.

Today, Jasper Hill, the largest employer in Greensboro with 85 employees, is confronting headwinds. Its lucrative Canadian markets have completely dried up. Canadians are boycotting American-made products in response to President Trump’s tariffs and his threats to make Canada the 51st state. And Vermont’s housing crisis is making it extremely difficult for Jasper Hill’s employees to live and for the company to grow.

The local housing crunch is so severe that Jasper Hill has bought 11 properties and is subsidizing rent so its employees can afford to live.

"The folks that are living in our houses can't find anywhere to live. There's nothing to buy and there's nothing to rent,” said Kehler.

But despite the town’s dire need for moderately priced housing, Greensboro residents recently voted down a plan to redevelop its derelict and underused town hall into affordable housing. As VTDigger has reported, the plan was for the nonprofit Northeast Kingdom housing agency RuralEdge to invest $10 million in rehabilitating the town hall and create up to 20 units of affordable housing.

Greensboro, with about 800 year-round residents, is one of the wealthiest communities in Vermont. It has the highest rate of second home ownership in the state. In 2019, Greensboro’s town plan and a housing needs assessment detailed Greensboro’s “great need” for moderately-priced housing.

Jasper Hill Farm co-founder Mateo Kehler described his neighbors' rejection of the affordable housing plan as “soul crushing.”

I visited Jasper Hill Farm to talk with Kehler about cheese and the challenges confronting his renowned business. When I arrived, he was outside in large rubber boots washing out a milk truck. Kehler invited me inside for a walk around the creamery. We were soon standing among gleaming stainless steel pipes and large copper tanks. The air was thick with the distinctive sweet and sour smell of fermenting cheese.

Kehler described what has happened to his Canadian sales. “We were expecting to sell nearly $1 million worth of cheese to Canada and Montreal, which is our closest metropolitan market and is the best cheese market in North America.”

“It went from going gangbusters to a zippo in just a few—the span of a month,” he said.

“I don't think you can overstate the consequences for small businesses on the border here,” he said of the shutdown of Canadian business. “It's been a disaster.”

Kehler said that he has received some blowback as a result of his vocal advocacy for affordable housing. “Everybody loves Jasper Hill until we start talking about housing. And everybody wants housing in theory, but almost nobody here wants housing in practice.”

“Families with children … are the way that communities replicate themselves,” said Kehler, “and Greensboro has lost its capacity to replicate itself.” He said that Greensboro has erected a metaphorical gate that keeps out young people.

Jasper Hill Farm is “going to be fine, but … Greensboro is not going to be fine,” he continued. The housing crisis “is not existential for us but it probably is existential for the nursing home, and it is absolutely existential for the school, and it's going to be a huge problem for the town when there's nobody to volunteer for the fire department” and other town organizations.

Kehler is now advocating for affordable housing on a statewide level. He said that Vermont needs a new model of multi-unit housing.

“The days of single family homes spread out and in the middle of nowhere on the back end of dirt roads is basically over,” he asserted.

Karen Kevra was passionate about playing the flute as a child. But in college, she became disillusioned and walked away from classical music. Her long and winding journey brought her back to music, and in the process, transformed the music scene in Vermont.

Karen Kevra is founder and artistic director of Capital City Concerts (CCC), which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. It has become one of Vermont’s premier and most beloved chamber music series, holding concerts in Montpelier and Burlington. Kevra is a Grammy-nominated flutist who performs at each of the CCC concerts. She has shared the stage with members of the Emerson String Quartet, the Paris Piano Trio, the Borromeo String Quartet, the Boston Chamber Music Society and Trey Anastasio of Phish.

Kevra has performed throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe, including performances at Carnegie Hall and the French Embassy in Washington D.C. When the Covid pandemic closed down performance venues, Kevra turned to telling stories. She launched a podcast, Muse Mentors, a series of beautifully crafted interviews with artists, activists and thinkers in which she explores the transformative role that mentors have played in their lives. She is on the music faculty of Middlebury College.

Kevra credits her own mentor with changing the course of her life. As an adult, Kevra sought out a teacher, Louis Moyse, a renowned flutist, composer and co-founder of the Marlboro Music Festival. She was introduced to Moyse by Jim Lowe, the longtime arts editor of the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus, who has advised Kevra over the years. Lowe shared a recording of Moyse with the aspiring young flutist.

“I'd never heard flute playing like that before, and I'd never heard music making like that before, and so that was it," says Kevra. "I finally decided to screw up my courage and pick up the phone and make a phone call to go and play for Louis Moyse, in hopes of being able to study with him.”

Moyse and Kevra instantly bonded. Louis and his wife moved to Montpelier and he encouraged Kevra to launch Capital City Concerts. “Invite your friends to come and play,” he counseled. Their musical relationship blossomed into a lifelong friendship that lasted until Moyse’s death at the age of 94 in 2007.

Kevra says of her 25-year long music series: “These concerts are kind of a respite from all of the difficult stuff that's going on in the world and the news. We're offering a kind of salve for the soul.”

Mohsen Mahdawi is a free man. That has not come easily. It has taken a national human rights campaign to free Mahdawi and keep him free. He is among the first people in the country to be freed from detention under President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. 

Mohsen Mahdawi is a Columbia University student and Palestinian activist who was arrested in Vermont by immigration agents last month at what he was told would be a citizenship interview. Mahdawi, 34, grew up in a refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank but is now a legal permanent resident living in Vermont. He is a practicing Buddhist and was president of the Columbia University Buddhist Association and he co-founded Columbia's Palestinian Student Union.

Mahdawi’s immigration interview on April 14 was supposed to be the last step in his 10-year journey to become a U.S. citizen. But it was a trap. Upon completing his interview, he was whisked away in unmarked SUVs by armed and masked federal agents. He was accused by the State Department of posing a threat to national security over his pro-Palestine campus activism. 

Mahdawi was keenly aware of President Trump’s ominous crackdown on immigrants. Other international students who were in the U.S. with valid student visas or were legal permanent residents were being snatched off the street and quickly shipped to a prison in Louisiana, where judges were more sympathetic to the Trump administration’s effort to deport them. 

Mahdawi alerted Vermont’s congressional delegation to his fear of being arrested and he contacted attorneys to act swiftly in the event he was detained. Just as he anticipated, the federal agents who arrested him hustled him to the Burlington airport where he was to be put on a plane to Louisiana. This followed a well-worn script — until Mahdawi missed his flight. That gave time for his lawyers to make an emergency appeal to Vermont federal Judge William Sessions III, who immediately issued an order blocking the Trump administration from removing him from Vermont. Mahdawi was in immigration custody in Vermont for 16 days. On April 30, Vermont Judge Geoffrey Crawford ordered Mahdawi’s release on bail, comparing his arrest to the unlawful repression of free speech under McCarthyism. 

The Trump administration is continuing its effort to deport Mahdawi. For now, he can continue his fight for freedom outside of prison. (Disclosure: the ACLU of Vermont, where I am a board member, is part of Mahdawi’s legal team.) 

Mohsen Mahdawi is planning to attend his graduation from Columbia University next week and to begin graduate studies at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs in September.

I met Mohsen Mahdawi near his home in the rural Upper Connecticut River Valley. He said he preferred to be outside in nature, his sanctuary. He asked me to join him on a favorite hike through a forest and up a hillside with beautiful views. 

Following is an excerpt of our Vermont Conversation edited for length and clarity. You can hear the full conversation at the audio link at the top of this article.

Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark recently filed her fourth lawsuit in two weeks against the Trump administration, this one to stop Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., from dismantling the health agency. 

It is the 13th lawsuit that Clark has filed against the Trump administration in its first 100 days (see VTDigger’s online tracker of Clark’s actions). These are multistate lawsuits brought in conjunction with other Democratic attorneys general.

Clark's lawsuits include challenging the gutting of the departments of Education and Health and Human Services, dismantling AmeriCorps, anti-DEI rules, tariffs, Elon Musk’s unchecked power, and anti-LGBTQ+ rules in the military, to name a few.

Clark, who was reelected in November to her second term as attorney general, accuses President Donald Trump of violating the U.S. Constitution that he was sworn to defend.

“Every single time Donald Trump violates the constitution or federal law and Vermont has standing, we are suing,” she said.

Trump has been on a remarkable losing streak. Nationally, more than 200 lawsuits have been filed against the administration so far, and judges have fully or partially blocked implementation of most of Trump’s actions. During Trump's first term, Vermont participated in 62 lawsuits and won a favorable outcome in 60 of those cases. 

What is the point of taking actions that are struck down by courts?

Clark points to Trump’s record as a businessman, in which he declared bankruptcy six times. 

“I think some people would feel embarrassed if they had a business model that was going to have a lot of failures,” she said. “And he just doesn't. He's not oriented that way. He doesn't necessarily see a failure as a loss. I think he sees these as tools to understand what his power is and to stretch his power by intimidation.”

“He's using these extreme cases to test the boundaries of his power and also to gain power for himself,” she added.

Clark said she is especially concerned about Trump’s attacks on poor people, such as slashing the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program and Head Start, the early education program for low-income people, both of which benefit thousands of Vermonters. 

“It isn't for the administration, the executive branch, to decide how to spend the taxpayers’ money,” Clark said. She insisted that Congress “created these programs, and they have funded these programs, and Donald Trump needs to deliver the money to the programs.”

What if Trump ignores the courts, as he seems to selectively be doing? Clark has a warning for Trump’s lawyers who defy court orders. 

“There are consequences: It's disbarment. It's being in contempt,” she said. “At some point, lawyers who disobey will be punished.” 

Numerous Trump attorneys have been disbarred in recent years. 

The attorney general said her biggest concerns are apathy and the erosion of the media, which are interconnected problems. “There's apathy because people actually don't understand what's going on from a non-biased source.”

Many people “are getting their news not from journalists, but from entertainers,” she said.

Clark advises Vermonters to "hang in there.” 

“Our country is strong (and) was literally designed to protect itself from someone who wanted to be king,” she said.

The attorney general said people must "do our part as citizens: voting, participating in democracy, protesting, speaking up. That's my message to Vermonters.”

This week marks the 25th anniversary of the historic passage of the civil unions law in Vermont. 

On April 25, 2000, after a remarkable four-month marathon of public hearings, legislative maneuvering, protests, counter-demonstrations and statewide soul-searching, the Vermont House of Representatives voted 79-68 to pass the civil unions bill, the most sweeping grant of rights to gay couples in the nation. 

The law allowed same sex couples to form civil unions, the legal equivalent of heterosexual marriage. Gov. Howard Dean signed it into law the next day.

Rep. Bill Lippert was the lone openly gay Vermont legislator in 2000 and led the fight for passage of civil unions and later same-sex marriage. I was a reporter covering these historic events for Mother Jones. Lippert invited me onto the House floor moments after civil unions passed in 2000 to interview him and other supporters of the bill. 

I described how Lippert made a beeline across the House floor to thank Rep. Bill Fyfe, an 84-year-old former jail warden and Republican state representative from Newport City. His wife was in the hospital, and Fyfe was due to have surgery the following day. But he made sure to be in the Statehouse to cast his vote for civil unions.

I asked Fyfe why he had voted for the bill. He looked at me through his thick glasses and his eyes began to water. 

“Because he’s one of my better friends here,” he said, motioning to Lippert. “And there were two ladies who were my next-door neighbors for many years …” He broke into a soft sob. “They were treated terrible. I’m just glad I could do something to help.”

Lippert squeezed Fyfe’s shoulder to comfort him, “People can be cruel, Bill,” Lippert said.

Vermont’s civil unions law passed four months after the Vermont Supreme Court ruled in Baker v. Vermont that gay and lesbian couples were entitled to the same legal rights and benefits of marriage as heterosexual couples. The court ordered the Vermont legislature to craft a law that would satisfy the ruling, either by legalizing same-sex marriage or by creating an equivalent partnership structure. The decision, wrote Chief Justice Jeffrey Amestoy, “is simply a recognition of our common humanity.”

Vermont’s civil unions law was a tipping point for the national movement for LGBTQ+ rights. In 2009, Vermont became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage through an act of the legislature, overriding a gubernatorial veto to do so.

In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4, in the landmark case Obergefell v. Hodges, that same-sex couples could wed throughout the country. 

Today, LGBTQ+ rights are under attack. President Donald Trump has targeted transgender people with a slew of executive orders. Hundreds of bills aimed at restricting LGBTQ+ rights have been introduced in state legislatures and in Congress. Many people fear that a conservative U.S. Supreme Court could roll back LGBTQ+ rights, including the right to marry.

Bill Lippert was living in Philadelphia when he first visited Vermont in 1972 to hike the Long Trail. He had just come out and recalled that he had trouble finding even one other gay man in the state. Lippert became active in Vermont’s small gay rights movement and went on to serve 28 years in the Vermont House of Representatives from 1994 to 2022 as the representative from Hinesburg. He served as chair of the House Judiciary Committee for a decade and then chaired the House Health Care Committee.

Lippert, 75, is now retired and working on preserving Vermont LGBTQ+ history, including recounting his own experiences as a gay activist and gay legislator in Vermont.

Lippert acknowledged that winning civil unions was viewed by some gay rights advocates — including lead attorney (now federal judge) Beth Robinson — as a defeat.

Lippert said that he knew that “this fight for marriage equality in Vermont was going to be the biggest gay rights fight perhaps of our lifetime.” But he said that as a legislator for six years, “I could tell what was achievable and what wasn't. It was clear (that) full marriage equality in the year 2000 was not feasible. It was not going to happen.”

Lippert insisted that civil unions “was an important step that brought us ultimately to full marriage equality.” And he was determined to build that bridge.

“When civil unions passed, I made a personal commitment to myself that if I could continue to be re-elected, I would stay in the Legislature until we achieved full marriage equality, and that happened in 2009,” he said.

Lippert says that today’s political attacks on trans people has a familiar ring. 

“Trans people are being used as a target because it's the ‘unknown,’” he said. “Gay and lesbian people used to be the scary unknown, but that doesn't work anymore in the same way.”

I asked Lippert what concerns him most today. 

“The taking away of our basic democratic rights,” he said. “The shocking willingness to detain and deport people who have every right to be here because they've been granted that right.”

“I am an optimist by nature, but this is a frightening time, and I've participated in more protests and demonstrations in the last month than I had in the last 10 years,” he said. “And I think it's important that we do that. We deserve to have the country that some of us have fought for … by fighting for civil rights, for LGBTQ+ rights, rights for women, rights for religious freedom.”

The passage of civil unions came at a price. Seventeen legislators who supported civil unions in 2000 were defeated in elections the following November as part of the “Take Back Vermont” movement. Lippert takes inspiration from those elected officials.

“One of the lessons that I take from civil unions is that there are still people of tremendous personal moral courage and political courage,” Lippert said. He mentioned defeated Republican legislators John Edwards, Marion Milne, Diane Carmolli and Bill Fyfe.

“When you're not part of the same ‘despised minority’ but you say it's wrong to have discrimination against them, it's wrong to be prejudiced against them — you get attacked as well. And they did so,” he said.

“They did the right thing. They chose to stand up,” Lippert said. “That girds my hopefulness.”