Mr. Trump's nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions as Attorney General is bad enough, and his widely-reported zeal for slashing the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division is even worse, but his nomination of John Gore to head up the Civil Rights Decision also demands our opposition. Why so? Because Mr. Gore has had his name on some of the most horrible right-wing anti-civil rights initiatives of the past few years -- he's defended Republican redistricting from New York to Florida, defended Florida Gov. Scott's racist voter purge of 2012, and even defended North Carolina's notorious "bathroom bill" in court. My guess is that the Trump team will say this guy really understands civil rights!, but understanding how to subvert civil rights laws is nothing to brag about. The next few years are going to be very, very hard, but we don't have to take that lying down. Hence People for the American Way helps you tell your Senators to oppose the Gore nomination
Meanwhile, with the ascension of Mr. Trump to the Presidency, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (or ANWR) has become a thing again, and though Sen. Stevens is no longer with us to wear his Incredible Hulk tie to ANWR votes, Alaska's current Senatorial delegation (Sens. Murkowski and Sullivan) are still anxious to open up the area to oil drilling, though estimates of oil reserves in ANWR have never been all that impressive, and though drilling there would injure the wildlife (it is a wildlife refuge, after all!) and the native Americans who live there. But why should Mr. Trump care, when there's unearned money to be squeezed from somewhere? Make no mistake, ANWR drilling is only a thing because some CEO will make money from it. And that's before we get to the problem of where the polar bears are going to live, now that climate change has decimated their more northerly habitats. The Alaska Wilderness League helps you tell your Senators to vote against any bill that would open up ANWR to drilling.
Finally, the FDA currently focuses on salt and fat when evaluating "healthy" labels on food, but while salt and fat are important, we also know that other factors figure into whether or not we can call a food "healthy" -- like added sugar content, use of chemical pesticides, antibiotic abuse, and using "whole" ingredients more than highly-processed ones. Using genetically-modified organisms shouldn't earn a food a "healthy" label, either, if for no other reason than that GMOs usually indicate the overuse of pesticides. I can already hear folks say that if you believe a "healthy" label on a food product, you're a fool. But why should it be that way? Cynicism sure does make you feel better for a moment or two, but it's no way to change the world. Hence the Sierra Club helps you tell the FDA to make sure "healthy" food labels tell you a lot more about that food than they currently do.
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