-
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 people’s 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, “Executive overreach — and abdication of Congress’s constitutional powers — is neither a Republican nor Democratic issue; neither a liberal nor a conservative one. It’s an American one.” We agree that overreach is an American issue, and we expect our members of Congress to understand this as well. To do: Contact your…
-
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…
-
Call to Action: Contact Your Elected Representatives About the Commutation of Roger Stone’s Sentence
On Friday, July 10, 2020, President Trump commuted the sentence of his longtime friend and advisor Roger Stone, who was convicted of federal crimes (seven felony counts, including obstructing a congressional investigation, tampering with a witness, and five counts of lying to Congress) and then sentenced to 40 months in prison. While this is within the legal bounds of the president’s powers, it is unethical and corrupt to abuse those powers to commute the sentence of someone convicted in an investigation into that president’s own campaign. To do: Contact your members of Congress and ask them to call out this latest action for the self-serving corruption it is. In less…
-
Call to Action: Protect Democracy by Ensuring Government Oversight
On June 20 the president continued his pattern of weekend firings by unexpectedly terminating Geoffery Berman, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Berman had been overseeing many high-profile investigations, including one into President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani. Berman’s firing, while legal, did not follow regular norms and patterns. In conjunction with other recent firings, it raises questions about Trump’s repeated removal of government officials actively investigating claims against his administration and his associates. In April and May, President Trump fired five inspectors general, including those looking into allegations of impropriety at the State Department, Department of Defense, and Department of Health and Human Services. Congress has…
