In October 2020, Amtrak plans to cut all long-distance routes to run three times a week. The claim is that this is in response to COVID-19 and that "some long-distance service" would be restored when there's demand, but this logic doesn't hold up—the majority of the pandemic will almost certainly have passed by October, and every part of Amtrak's history shows that temporary cuts to service almost always become permanent: every year, Congress tries to cut Amtrak's funding, and the reduced ridership that would result from these service cuts would result in a decrease in funding, thereby making it impossible to restore full daily services

As such, this appears to simply be the latest attempt to gut long-distance services for the sake of profit, at the most-likely-permanent expense of the communities that use Amtrak as a lifeline and the people who need to cross the country but are unable to drive or fly. We can't let this happen: as America's only national rail service, Amtrak's responsibility is to be a viable option for all of us.