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Call to Action: Support the Mission of the United States Postal Service
Americans rate the United States Postal Service as their favorite federal agency. Its workforce of more than half a million is scattered across the U.S., making it the biggest employer of any government entity except the military. And it will play an outsized role in Americansâ ability to vote safely during the worst global health crisis in 100 years. Yet the USPS is undergoing transformations, and not necessarily for the better. Its newly appointed postmaster general is implementing changes that have slowed mail delivery, which is problematic on at least three levels: First, the changes will damage the vote in terms of delivery time, votes held back, and a possible…
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Call to Action: Speak Out Against Federal and Executive Overreach
Regularly and repeatedly, and especially in the last few weeks, President Trump has threatened or exercised executive overreach to the detriment of the American peopleâs national representation, Constitutional protections, and First Amendment freedoms. Conservative legislators, often critical of executive and federal overreach, have been largely silent. Yet as Tea Party conservative and Republican Senator Mike Lee has said, âExecutive overreach â and abdication of Congressâs constitutional powers â is neither a Republican nor Democratic issue; neither a liberal nor a conservative one. Itâs an American one.â We agree that overreach is an American issue, and we expect our members of Congress to understand this as well. To do:Â Contact your…
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Protect the Vote? Damn Tootinâ We Can
Election Day is 100 days from today. One hundred days is very little time to prepare for the complexities of voting during a pandemic, made obvious by several recent tumultuous primary elections and a resurgence of absentee ballot requests from voters who donât want to â or canât â risk voting at the polls. Last month in Georgia, for example, thousands braved rain, heat, and virus exposure after their requested mail-in ballots did not arrive. An 80-year-old woman hoping to vote in Atlanta said, âWhat is going on in Georgia? We have been waiting for hours. This is ridiculous. This is unfair.â An investigation is looking into why the âcatastropheâ…
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Call to Action: Ask Your Senators to Provide Funding to Keep Our Elections Safe and Accessible
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted many facets of normal life and will likely have a disruptive effect on the upcoming November election. Voting, the very foundation of our democracy, requires a safe and secure environment in order to protect the vote, the voter, and the workers who administer the elections. These protections cost money. The pandemic has left states and municipalities fiscally compromised, and yet the onus of election security will still fall on states and local jurisdictions. We must call on Congress, specifically the Senate, to approve the $3.6 billion in funding necessary for states to protect the vote. To do: Contact your senators to let them know you…
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Call to Action: Speak Up for Transparency in COVID-19 Data
The Trump administration has ordered hospitals to bypass the publicly funded Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), requiring that, effective immediately, all COVID-19 patient information be sent to a privately operated central database in Washington. Although advocates such as CDC Director Robert Redfield argue the new process will streamline data, this change does not conform to any standard patterns of data collection and puts this data in private hands. An unprecedented and poorly managed shift in critical data processing adds burdens to overstretched medical establishments, could compromise or lose essential data, and increases the level of chaos in our national response to a rising health crisis. To combat the…
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Nonsensical: Withdrawing from WHO in the Middle of COVID-19
The World Health Organization (WHO), the leading global health agency, declared COVID-19 a pandemic in March 2020, and within weeks the world had seen more than half a million people infected and nearly 30,000 dead. Infections in the U.S. continue to rise. Yet President Trump has formally notified the United Nations that the U.S. will withdraw from the WHO, bringing its U.S. funding to a halt. The U.S. is, by far, the largest contributor to the WHO’s budget. Trump had initially demanded some changes after accusing the WHO of being both China-centric and slow in its coronavirus response â somewhat validly. However, he didnât get the response he wanted, so…
