H.R. 3668, the Asuncion Valdivia Heat Illness and Fatality Prevention Act, would mandate that our Secretary of Labor, whomever that is, issue regulations that prevent workers from dying of heat exposure. Heat causes more deaths than any other weather-related phenomena, after all, and it'd be nice to have national standards that might protect workers from falling dead after 10 hours picking grapes in 105 degree heat, as Mr. Valdivia himself did in 2004. If you read the bill, you'll be pleased to see that it tells the Secretary of Labor to create a good heat exposure standard -- if the Secretary of Labor, whomever that is, decides, for example, to simply ignore the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health's 2016 recommended standard for heat exposure, then they'll run afoul of Sec. 4(a)(1) of the bill, and federal courts will strike it down. Hence the Sierra Club helps you tell your Congressfolk to protect workers by passing the Asuncion Valdivia Heat Illness and Fatality Prevention Act.
Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2214/S. 1123, the NO BAN Act, and thus repeal our President's infamous Muslim ban, then CREDO still helps you do that. The House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs Committees have begun hearings on this bill this week, so this might get to a full House bill in the coming months, and then get added to the list of bills we tell the Senate to pass even though "Mob Boss Mitch" won't let them come to a vote. Even if the bill dies in the Senate, we always do good when we communicate our will to our Congressfolk, and if they refuse to do our will, then we have them on the record as having failed us. The NO BAN Act wouldn't just roll back our President's Muslim ban -- which our Supreme Court blessed even though our President said, out loud, that he totally intended to single out Muslims -- but would greatly hamper his ability to issue future bans based on religion. And that is kind of the point of our Constitution, gang -- to prevent Presidents from having all the say about everything.
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