#common cause

Common Cause

Mercadia City's troops are at their best when they have no enemy to fight.

These images are for you to share as you like. My purpose is make ideas extra clear and memorable. This is the time for being loud and brave.

Below are many places to put your good energies. For the children who now will die because of Trump. For the ideals and values he could never understand but will trample in the name of insatiable greed.

Robert Hubble:

We must keep hammering our representatives in Congress to rise to the moment. Their muted, business-as-usual approach to date is unacceptable. If you are looking for immediate steps to take, follow Jessica Craven on Chop Wood Carry Water, and become involved in Indivisible, Swing Left, and other grassroots movements. Or support Democracy Forward, Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the Brennan Center for Justice, Lawyers Defending American Democracy, Common Cause, the ACLU, and other justice organizations.

Laura Conwesser:

These are very difficult times. Although there are no quick fixes, there are some things we can do to make our voices heard. According to people who know a lot more than I do, the number one issue is preventing Russell Vought from getting Senate approval to run the OMB (Office of Management and Budget). Vought is the architect of Project 2025 and the evil mastermind behind all the moves Trump has been making to fire career government employees and replace them with MAGA flunkies. He will withhold constitutionally mandated funding from organizations and programs that he doesn't like. He must be stopped. So item #1 on your to-do list is to call your Senators and voice your opposition to Vought and the funding freeze that was implemented last week. You can use Indivisible's tool here.

There is another tool for calling your representatives that many people prefer to Indivisible's tool. 5 Calls. They have a long list of issues to address in your calls, in addition to Vought. And there is one more dialing tool for calling your Senators about Vought, Patel, Gabbard and RFK, Jr. Nix the Noms

Indivisible is suggesting that it could be more effective to actually go to your Senator's office. Clearly, we aren't all going to DC to do that, but Senator's have local offices, too. If you live in NYC and are interested in doing this, please let me know. We can go to Schumer's and Gillibrand's offices this Wednesday or Thursday. If you are not in NYC or want to organize something on your own, you will find these tools helpful. here and here. If you are in the DC area, there is going to be an in-person action there this Tuesday. Let me know if you are interested and I will get you more information.

For those of you who live in swing districts, you can sign up here for more information.

There is going to be a phone bank Monday 2/3, to tell Congress to stop the budget cuts that are hurting working families. You can sign up for that here.

And last, but not least, please sign this petition urging Republicans not to cut federal aid. It's quick and easy. petition

There are rumors of demonstrations this Wednesday, 2/5, and on Presidents Day, 2/17. More soon.

Republican strategist Thomas Hofeller was probably best known for using race-based gerrymandering in an attempt to solidify Republican political dominance by diluting minority votes. In North Carolina, for example, multiple federal courts--including the U.S. Supreme Court itself--ruled that Hofeller’s gerrymandered political maps were unconstitutional due to racial discrimination.

Republicans, of course, have always protested that they weren’t being racist or partisan. After Hofeller died, however, it turned out that some of his files contained proof of the contrary, such as expressly stating that his proposed district maps “‘would be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites,’ and would dilute the political power of the state’s Hispanics.”

Hofeller’s daughter Stephanie produced those incriminating files in response to a valid subpoena. When Republicans realized their contents, they immediately demanded that the court order the files permanently sealed or even destroyed. They lost; the files were admitted into evidence at trial, and they became part of the basis for the court’s final judgment against the GOP last September.