By now you've noticed the wage of anti-gay and anti-transgendered legislation cropping up in state legislatures all over the country, and fighting them has been rather like playing a game of whack-a-mole with a pencil; hence the ACLU helps you tell all the nation's Governors to fight these pro-discrimination bills wherever they crop up. And they could crop up anywhere a state is having, say, budgeting troubles, which is, sadly, most states. The two so-called "religious liberty" bills that have successfully passed, in North Carolina and Mississippi, have provoked backlash from all over the country, just as Indiana's "religious liberty" bill did last year -- Paypal scrapped plans to build a headquarters in North Carolina, Charles Barkley has been vocal in urging the NBA to move its next All-Star Game out of Charlotte, and both Bruce Springsteen and Bryan Adams have canceled concerts in North Carolina and Mississippi, respectively. Certainly nothing prevents us from reminding other Governors that the backlash could hurt them, too.
Meanwhile, we have lately observed the third anniversary of the huge fertilizer plant explosion that killed 15 and injured dozens of others in West, Texas -- and the EPA is now welcoming public comments on its Risk Management Plan for chemical plants, which aims to prevent such explosions from happening and guide first responders in the event they do happen. The EPA has made some necessary changes, but needs to make more -- the plan needs to cover more chemical plants and needs to ensure chemical plants coordinate with local communities more, among other things. UCS is right to note that the EPA's plan directly affects communities of color, which sit next to chemical plants more frequently, for some reason. And the objections from right-wingers and corporatists? Let me guess: REGULASHUNZ BIG GUMMINT OVERREACHEZ SMALL BIZNIZZIZ COMMUNIZM SOCIALIZM NAZIZM!!!!!! The Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell the EPA to create the most vigorous possible Risk Management plan for chemical plants.
Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the United States Soccer Federation (or USSF) to start paying the U.S. women's national soccer team the same as it pays the U.S. men's national soccer team, then CREDO still helps you do that. The women's team has won three World Cup titles (1991, 1999, 2015) and four Olympic gold medals (1996, 2004, 2008, 2012), while the men's team got as far as the quarter-final round in World Cup play only once in the last quarter-century (2002); it's enough to make you ask, what's a woman got to do? Are you about to instruct me that the U.S. women's team does so well in the world only because America's Title IX funding far outstrips any support any other country gives to its women's sports -- or because more sports compete for male athletes in America than in other countries, or for female athletes in this country? You'd still have to explain why the women's soccer team should be paid 40% as much as the men's soccer team -- or, indeed, why women should ever be paid less for doing the same job.
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