Thieves in the Temple.

Action: concerning fascism, unionization, and banksters.

Long story short: tell President Biden to do what he can to stop our next President from using our military for political purposes, tell Amazon and Whole Foods bosses to stay out of the way of their workers' unionizing efforts, and tell our FDIC to release the results of their probe of 2023 failed banks. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Civic Shout helps you tell President Biden to issue an executive order preventing Presidents from deploying our military within our borders for political purposes. Because our President-elect wants to do that! To protestors, to immigrants, to whomever won't suck up to him! Would our President-elect seek to undo that executive order once he's in a position to issue his own executive orders? It sure seems likely! But let's at least make him do it. And let's also consider the possibility that he'll pretend he "can't" do it, so he can continue to stoke right-wing rage against everyone who's not them! Seriously, what else can his kind do anymore?

More Perfect Union helps you tell Amazon and Whole Foods executives not to interfere in Whole Foods workers' efforts to unionize and bargain collectively for better pay, better benefits, and safer workplaces. Because since Amazon bought Whole Foods, Amazon has been trying to make Whole Foods more and more like Amazon warehouses – they make everyone work too fast, they push workers to the point of injury, and they spy on their workers. Hence Whole Foods workers in Philadelphia – who make $16/hour in a city where you really need to make over $22/hour to survive – want want to organize. Maybe the bosses ought to get the hell out of the way of that effort.

Finally, Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell our Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (or FDIC) release the results of their internal probe of the major bank failures of 2023. So we can maybe prevent what happened that time from happening next time! And if it reflects badly on banksters, who cares? Right-wingers love telling you that your real feelings about oppression and injustice are totally invalid, but then won't STFU about the "feelings" of banking executives who don't care about anything but their unearned millions or billions. As the 2024 election taught us, Americans have got to get their heads straight about this, too.

Action: concerning corruption, deepfakes, and taxes.

Long story short: tell Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA) to step down as ranking member of our House Ways and Means Committee, tell your House Reps to pass the DEFIANCE Act and the TAKE IT DOWN Act, and tell your Congressfolk to reject any further IRS funding cuts. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Patriotic Millionaires helps you tell Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA) to step down from his post as ranking member of our House's Ways and Means Committee. Because his son has made six figures as a lobbyist for corporations that have business before Ways and Means, and because Mr. Neal has fairly cozy relationships with big corporations to the point where hedge fund bankster Blackstone has become one of his biggest donors. Folks hate corruption, and they hate money being the sole basis for all decisions in America. Mr. Neal's time, if he ever had one, has long passed, and he should step aside.

Accountable Tech helps you tell your House Reps to pass the DEFIANCE and TAKE IT DOWN Acts, which would, respectively, give folks the right to sue over non-consensual, sexually-explicit, "deepfaked" images and mandate that internet platforms remove all such images whether they're faked or not. These are such obviously good bills that they've already passed the Senate with significant Republican support – Ted Cruz sponsored the latter bill, no lie! – and if you've seen explicit, faked images of Taylor Swift or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez floating around our internet, you know that could be you or your daughter or granddaughter or niece getting hurt like that, so how about we put an end to it?

Finally, Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to prevent any further cuts to IRS funding in the year-end government appropriations bill. Apparently one of the conditions of the last stopgap spending bill was a further $20 billion cut in IRS funding, and you remember how well trashing expanded IRS funding worked for Republicans at the ballot box in 2022? It did not; no one feels as much rage about expanded IRS funding to go after rich tax cheats as a Republican politician. It is certainly a curious stance for law-and-order polticians to take! But their tantrums tantrums don't demand our acquiescence.

Action: concerning tax cuts for the rich and funding cuts to programs we all need.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to reject cuts to programs America needs just to fund yet more tax cuts for the rich, and tell your Congressfolk to specifically reject cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any legislation that cuts services good Americans need in order to pay for yet more tax cuts for the rich and for corporations. They want to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, veterans' health care, renewable energy infrastrucure, and many more things that benefit all Americans – all so the rich and corporations can have yet more unearned money. No one believes supply-side arguments anymore, so they'll either lecture us about "living within our means," or they’ll simply deny what they're doing. Neither one of those things justifies more stupid tax cuts for folks who don't need them and who hurt us every day of our lives.

Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk to specifically reject any effort to cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. They need to hear us generally about tax cuts for the rich, but they also need to hear us specifically about Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Our President-elect said he'd never make such cuts, but you cannot believe a promise that man makes – why, he proposed Social Security and Medicare cuts in every budget he put out, and during the pandemic tried to stop collecting payroll taxes. Naturally our Vice President-elect and many Congressional Republicans have also said they'll try to cut these programs. So we need to get in their grills about all of that.

Finally, the Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any cuts to food stamps. The food stamp program was a TFG whipping boy during his first Administration, and you can see why: too many Americans still think of food stamps as something Those Other People Get. But they're not! White folks comprise almost 63% of food stamp recipients, for example, and really, Americans need to grow up about this shit – any of us might fall on hard times, and thus need food stamps, at any time, so we should ensure we have a vigorous, well-funded food stamp program, not just for other folks, but for ourselves.

Action: concerning transgender soldiers, voting rights, and financial predators.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to protect gender-affirming care in appropriations bills, stop preventing prisoners and ex-prisoners from voting, and stop trying to destroy our CFPB. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

The National Women's Law Center helps you tell your Congressfolk to protect gender-affirming care for our soldiers and their families. Transgender people exist, everywhere! At least half of America just needs to fucking get over it! At least half of America also needs remedial education in How Not to Be Cruel, but I'll try to avoid piling on and instead just say, like Rep. Casar of Texas, that transgender soldiers didn't deny your health insurance claim – your health insurance corporation did, and they did it with the help of those same Republican politicians who throw tantrums about taxpayer money going to trans soldiers. I might also add that taxpayer money pays for everything our government does. I hope that clarifies things for the benighted! But I won’t hold my breath.

The Vera Institute of Justice helps you tell your Congressfolk to ensure that folks in prison can vote. Tolerate no dick-thumping about how we always need to get tough on crime – rights are rights, and if everyone doesn't have them, then no one has them. Getting tough on crime doesn't mean taking voting rights away from criminals or making it harder for them to vote, either – getting tough on crime means making sure the real sociopaths can't hurt us anymore, which in practice means putting polluters and Medicare fraudsters and financial predators in jail. Besides which, if our government doesn't want us to vote, they'll just invent new crimes and put us all in jail! Hey, if I thought of it, you know theyhave. Especially TFG.

Finally, Civic Shout helps you tell your Congressfolk to keep their grubby mitts off our Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (or CFPB). Politicians have this hard-on for getting rid of a government agency that actually works on our behalf! How do I know they work on our behalf? Not just because they've returned billions of dollars to good Americans hurt by financial scams – but because Elon Musk says he wants to "delete" our CFPB (he's such a good little Cyberman!) because it's "duplicative." If it worked badly, he'd surely have said so! And not for nothing, but a Black President created this agency, and I'm pretty sure that's at the front of right-wingers' minds (including that of the apartheid diamond mine heir!) when they say they hate our CFPB.

Action: concerning destroying bad government and creating good government.

Long story short: tell your Senators to reject the so-called Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, pass the PRESS Act, confirm as many federal judges as possible, and re-confirm Lauren McFerran to our NLRB. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Win Without War helps you tell your Senators to kill the so-called Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, or, as Win Without War calls it, the Non-Profit Killer Act If we give Presidents absolute power to declare non-profit organizations "terrorist-aligned" and revoke their tax-exempt status, then our government could come for any of us, at any time. You think they'll stop at revoking their tax-exempt status? Next they'll designate any of their contributors "terrorist-aligned"! Hey, if I thought of it, then you know they thought of it. And not to belabor the obvious, but the next President will be an asshole, and assholes shouldn't get all the say about everything. Or anything.

Demand Progress helps you tell your Senators to pass the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying (or PRESS) Act, a bill so obviously-needed that our Republican-held House passed it earlier this year – and a bill so obviously-needed that our President-elect has demanded that our Senate kill it. The PRESS Act would make it a lot harder for our government to force journalists to give up their sources – an act which itself often means death for those sources. Could it be that our President-elect doesn't like the PRESS Act because it would keep him from oppressing journalists? After all, he is on a revenge bender against anyone who’s ever opposed him. Soon that could be everyone!

Finally, the Labor Force helps you tell your Senators to re-confirm National Labor Relations Board Chair Lauren McFerran, while MoveOn helps you tell your Senators to confirm as many federal judges as possible before TFG takes office. If our Senate re-confirms Ms. McFerran, TFG won't be able to appoint anyone new to our NLRB until late 2026, and if our Senate fills the 15 or so remaining federal judicial openings, then TFG won't be able to put at least that many knuckle-draggers on our federal courts. These will both be victories for the rule of law in America, and also for basic human decency and empathy. Yes, I said that last thing to trigger right-wingers.

Action: concerning food safety, banking regulations, and social media.

Long story short: tell our FDA to get the lead out of our food, tell our CFPB to protect us from bank transfer scams, and tell big corporations to stop advertising on Twitter. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Consumer Reports helps you tell our Food and Drug Administration (or FDA) to limit lead in our food. There shouldn't be any lead in any food or water, but we can at least use New York state's standard of one part per million and reduce the damage we cause to our children. This'll be yet another thing that the incoming Administration won't want to do, because "all regulations are bad." But we should still communicate our will to our FDA, not least because if our FDA does nothing, we can sue them for not following our laws, because our laws don't let federal agencies do any damn thing they like, but mandate that they follow procedures. But if we say nothing, there'll be nothing to sue over.

Consumer Reports also helps you tell our Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (or CFPB) to protect us from bank transfer scams. Some crooks pose as bank clerks and (using stolen personal info) scam good Americans into wiring them money – and then banks won't reimburse them for their losses! Our CFPB can impose some common-sense protections on our behalf, but of course the incoming President is completely hostile to our CFPB – and bank executives share his hostility, throwing tantrums whenever our government forces them to do right by us. But again, if we tell them what we want, we can more easily defeat them in court when they ignore us.

Finally, Inequality Media helps you tell big corporations like Walmart, the NFL, and the Washington Post to stop advertising on The Corporation Formerly Known as Twitter. Because Twitter's become a right-wing hate site! And it's become a right-wing hate site by design of its owner! And why would anyone want to reach people who spew filth there? We should be shunning such people and forcing them to interact only with their own kind, not giving them a lifeline in the form of advertising money. One day, Mr. Musk's venality will earn him the shame and shunning he deserves, but how about we help that process along?

Action: concerning corporate taxes, federal judges, and workers’ rights.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to reject another corporate tax cut, and tell your Senators to confirm as many federal judges as possible and re-confirm Lauren McFerran to our NLRB. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to fight yet another tax giveaway for corporations. The incoming President wants to lower the corporate income tax to 15%, when corporate taxes should go up, not down. Corporations want you to think they need lots of profits in order to hire more people, but that's the exact opposite of how it works! Corporations would replaces us all with mounds of dung if they could – but if you tax them hard enough, they'll spend more money on jobs and products because money you spend isn't profit, it's an expense! So brook no stupidity from right-wingers – or your Congressfolk! – about this. Corporations already enjoyed record profits mostly from inflation, so they surely don't need any more handouts.

The Juggernaut Project helps you tell your Senators to confirm as many federal judges as possible before TFG takes office. Democrats have 51 Senators at present, and Republicans can't filibuster judicial nominations, so for once they have the upper hand, and can use it to actually help people. Yes, better judges help people! When we sue the incoming Administration for all the harm they do to us, we'd better have some judges who'll actually apply the law and listen to us, instead of judges who'll just make up legal arguments that benefit rich people. Those are the kind of judges the incoming President will appoint, and we have long seen the harm they'll inflict – from destroying abortion rights to declaring free annual physicals "unconstitutional." Bad judges hurt people, so let's keep them out.

Finally, the Labor Force helps you tell your Senators to re-confirm National Labor Relations Board Chair Lauren McFerran. NLRB terms run five years, not four, and don't run concurrently with Presidential elections, so re-confirming Ms. McFerran to our NLRB will prevent TFG from nominating anyone to our NLRB until late 2026! That's a boon, folks! Just like our recent NLRB ruling declaring "captive meetings" illegal is a boon! You don't need your employer tearing you away from your work just to lie to you about how "bad" unions are. And buying a couple pizzas on Friday doesn't make up for low wages, wage theft, worker safety violations, and worker abuse – but unions can protect us from all of that! And so can our NLRB, if good people serve on it.

Action: concerning awful Presidential nominees, stupid “anti-terror” bills, and government oppression of journalists.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to reject all of TFG's Cabinet nominees, reject the so-called Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, and pass the PRESS Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

I've been getting numerous email alerts about rejecting TFG's Cabinet nominees, but you might as well call your Senators and tell them to reject all of them, because they're all trash. How do I know they're all trash? Because Matt Gaetz – who opposed monopolies and forced arbitration in Congress – was the best of them. Now the best of them is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who supports Medicare-for-All health insurance but who is so absurdly wrong about almost everything else that more people would die if he were HHS Secretary. (You mean he's actually better than Dr. Oz? Dr. Oz would privatize Medicare, so yes, but this is like distinguishing between the pile of dung the flies have found and the pile of dung they haven't yet found.) I don't care that any next slate of nominees would be only slightly better; we need to make our will known, and we need to be a pain in the ass to our Congressfolk.

Civic Shout helps you tell your Senators to oppose H.R. 9495, the so-called Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act. Because, as Rep. Doggett (D-TX) said, "This bill is not about terrorism — it’s about giving Donald Trump unlimited authority to label his opponents as terrorists." You want TFG to have that power? His entire life is a monument to greed, selfishness, and venality! His entire m.o. is "whenever someone inconveniences you, hurt them"! And if we give him the power to revoke the tax-free status of any non-profit he deems "terrorist-affiliated," you think he won't move on you if you make charitable donations to such organizations? Of course he will! And you think he'll stop at organizations that, say, donate food to Palestinians? No – the Public Citizens and Common Causes and Consumer Reportses of the world will all be next! So we should get in our Senators' grills until they remember who's boss around here.

Finally, Free Press helps you tell your Senators to pass the PRESS Act, which would hamstring our government's ability to oppress journalists by (among other good works) prohibiting our government from forcing journalists to reveal their sources. Usually revealing sources puts those sources at risk of death, but with TFG as President, you'd best believe he'd be happy to order those sources' deaths himself! Because nothing stops him from hurting other people! Especially now that he's actually won the popular vote (though not with 50% of the vote, even), for the first time in three tries! Of course he's lately told the Senate they should block passage of the PRESS Act, even though our House passed it in an actually-bipartisan manner ten months ago. Let's not give TFG what he wants, OK? Especially since what he wants isn't what we want – nor is it what we need.

Action: concerning freedom of the press, health care, and Congressional ethics.

Long story short: tell your Senators to pass the PRESS Act, and tell your Congressfolk to pass the Pharmacists Fight Back Act and the ETHICS Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Free Press helps you tell your Senators to pass the PRESS Act, which would prevent our government from putting reporters in jail for not revealing their sources, among other evils. But of course, since this bill would prevent evil – forcing reporters to reveal sources who could be killed as soon as their own being so obvious an evil that our House has already passed the bill in an actual bipartisan manner – our President-elect, who loves nothing so much as hurting people (and has a list of journalists he wants to hurt as we speak), wants our Senate to block final passage of the bill. So many of today's journalists are self-absorbed clowns that we often forget how many journalists have made this country better, so how about we not hurt the good ones? How about we not hurt own country?

More Perfect Union helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Pharmacists Fight Back Act. Fight back against what, you ask? Against the Pharmacy Benefit Managers (or PBMs) that are slowly killing them, that's what! PBMs are, you guessed it, middle-men who keep you from getting the drugs you need to be healthy – and keep your pharmacists from making enough money to stay open without being chained to a giant multinational corporation like CVS, which is, of course, firing as many pharmacists as it can so its executives can gild the plumbing in their 19th vacation homes. The Pharmacists Fight Back Act would make PBM reimbursements fairer and keep PBMs from owning pharmacies, and these are good first steps. What, you think TFG will solve this? Ha ha ha ha no! It's up to us, as always.

Finally, Civic Shout helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the ETHICS Act, which would ban lawmakers in Congress from owning or trading individual stocks, and assess stiff penalties for contravening that ban. Because owning individual stocks is an obvious conflict of interest for a lawmaker! It's really not that damn much to ask that they don't trade on their influence and their knowledge of legislation about to pass in order to enrich themselves. And these clowns all make upwards of $174,000 a year; if they can't live on that, maybe they should stop eating avocado toast. The ETHICS Act would prevent Congressfolk from buying new stocks immediately and would make them divest from all individual stocks and related assets by the start of 2027; that's more than enough time to get themselves right with the people.

Action: concerning government spending, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to hold on to their Constitutionally-mandated spending functions and not to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or food stamps. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Bowers News Media helps you remind your Congressfolk that they, and not some extra-governmental "Department of Governmental Efficiency," initiate and approve all spending legislation. Our Constitution is pretty plain on that! Of course it could get even worse: our incoming President-elect could simply refuse to spend funds as Congress has appropriated, and use the Impoundment Control Act to demand that Congress rescind those funds. All so a bunch of assholes can ram through spending cuts to hurt hundreds of millions of good Americans and protect billionaires. How about we throw sand in those gears?

In a related note, Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk not to cut Social Security or Medicare, while the Juggernaut Project helps you tell your Congressfolk not to cut Medicaid. They'll claim America's broke – hell, they'll make America broke! – and then claim we just "have to" cut programs that help tens of millions of Americans, instead of, you know, bringing back the 91% tax bracket on millionaire income that created the greatest middle class in history. Those 77 million self-absorbed Americans who hate being told they're wrong about anything will see very shortly that their pet monster only hurts people. I hope their pain is instructive.

Finally, the Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to strengthen, not cut, food stamp benefits. Right-wing politicians have such a hard-on for cutting Medicaid and food stamps, don't they? It's like they know they're good programs that help a lot of people. They impose all these work requirements and felony requirements on them under the guise of "stopping fraud," but these things don't stop fraud but mercy. Seriously, what a leader would to is a) make sure everyone has what they need and b) put fraudsters in jail. No one seems to understand what leadership is anymore. And they watched Joe Biden for four years, so they have no excuse.

Action: concerning Social Security, food for poor seniors, and confirmations.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass the Social Security Fairness Act and fully-fund the Meals on Wheels program, and tell your Senators to confirm as many judges as possible and re-confirm Lauren McFerran to our NLRB. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

The Alliance for Retired Americans helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Social Security Fairness Act, which would allow good Americans to collect Social Security benefits and government pensions or pensions and disability plans from employers that did not collect Social Security taxes. Seems to me if you've earned all of these things, you should get them, without some boss somewhere pretending to worry about "double-dipping." No, they're pretending – all they really worry about is "saving money," which is all bosses worry about, since they have no vision for making money other than cutting pay and services to the bone. This is actual bipartisan legislation, by the way, the kind we're not going to see for a while, so let's get it done.

The Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to save the Meals on Wheels program by fully-funding the Older Americans Act. Meals on Wheels delivers over 250 million meals to over two million seniors every year, but now virtually all Meals on Wheels programs report challenges to completing their work, and one in three programs report waiting lists of 90 days or longer, so clearly Congress needs to do more. I'm sure Meals on Wheels will be the target of much Musk/Ramaswamy meme-based ridicule in the coming months, but they're ridiculous human beings from whom no one should get guidance about moral or spiritual matters. I'd rather adhere to the Baltimore Catechism, which instructs us that "feed(ing) the hungry" is one of the seven Corporal Acts of Mercy. And our government should do the same.

Finally, MoveOn helps you remind your Senators to confirm as many judges as possible before TFG takes over, while the Labor Force helps you tell your Senators to re-confirm National Labor Relations Board Chair Lauren McFerran. Confirming judges ensures that at least some judges will listen to us over the next four or so years, while re-confirming Ms. McFerran to our NLRB ensures TFG won't be able to appoint anyone to that board until the end of 2026, meaning our NLRB, too, might listen to us a little better than the Insane Clown Posse TFG will install in our Executive branch agencies. Things will get very, very uncomfortable for good, decent, and moral Americans over the next four or so years, but that doesn't mean we should neglect the civilization we've built over the previous 250 years.

UPDATE. I experienced some mild annoyance trying to sign the MoveOn petition from the previous paragraph, but it worked on the second attempt.

Action: concerning “terrorism,” Presidential nominees, and taxes.

Long story short: tell your Senators to kill the so-called Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act and refuse to rubber-stamp our President-elect's nefarious nominees, and tell your Congressfolk to keep funding our IRS so it can keep going after rich tax cheats. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Our House passed the so-called Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act last week – though with fewer votes than expected – so both Common Cause and 350.0rg help you tell your Senators to kill that damn bill. No President – especially the monster the American people elected earlier this month – needs the power to declare non-profits as "terrorist-affiliated" because he doesn't like them, but this bill would give him that power, so our Senate must kill the bill. Do not admit the "but the bill gives American hostages in Israel a break on the taxes they can't file" argument. They could have made that its own bill. You already know why they didn't.

The National Women's Law Center helps you tell your Senate to refuse to rubber-stamp TFG's awful nominees who will all hurt good Americans with their evil acts. I hope I'm being perfectly clear about how I feel about all of this! People tell me I hold back on my emotions a lot! We're telling our Senate not to be a rubber-stamp because a) a rubber-stamp is about all that'll get these clowns confirmed and b) our House may well be planning to make a motion to adjourn in advance of our Senate, which would (per Article 2, Section 3 of our Constitution) give TFG the authority to adjourn both Houses indefinitely. Your Senators need to hear from you that this is evil – and that no President should be so afraid of the popular will that he resorts to such evil.

Finally, Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to stop cutting funding for our IRS. Let it be known that nobody voted for TFG so that our IRS could have less funding; if that were true, surely Republicans would have done better in the 2022 midterms, when they whined about increased IRS funding non-stop. But more than that, we need to communicate as clearly to our Congressfolk as possible that we want to make rich people stop cheating on their taxes, and increased IRS funding collects $6 more in unpaid taxes for every $1 spent. Taxes pay for things we all need, after all! Even when right-wingers call that socialist! You know, there’s another name for cutting IRS funding: defunding the police. Go ahead and use their words against them.

Action: concerning government subversion, working families, and law and order.

Long story short: tell your House Reps to refuse to collaborate with our President-elect's plans to ram his Cabinet nominees through without Senate confirmation, tell your Senators to re-confirm Lauren McFerren to our NLRB and pass the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Apparently President-elect TFG has been concocting a scheme – one blessed by our Constitution, apparently – to adjourn Congress indefinitely so he can ram his repugnant Cabinet nominees without a Senate vote, and he'd need the help of our House to do that. Could it be that nominating actual piles of dung to important government positions is a bad look? I was starting to think nothing, no matter how disgusting, was a bad look to Americans anymore. Anyway, Bowers News Media helps you tell your House Reps to do their damn jobs and foil TFG's plans to ram his Cabinet through without our scrutiny. (Senators work for us, after all. Right?).

The Labor Force helps you tell your Senators to re-confirm National Labor Relations Board Chair Lauren McFerren now. Why? Because then President-elect TFG won't be able to appoint anyone to our NLRB until 2026! (NLRB members get five-year terms.) And then our NLRB might actually be able to defend working families from corporate predators while TFG sets fire to everything else! Our NLRB recently outlawed "captive meetings," in which employers force employees to sit through anti-union propaganda. I've got a damn job to do, bossman; maybe stop interfering with it? Seems reasonable – to everyone but a boss.

Finally, Demand Progress helps you tell your Senators to pass the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act, which would prevent private data brokers from selling our personal data to law enforcement, so that law enforcement can skip getting a warrant for that data. What kind of Kafkaesque hell is this, where our government can use our taxpayer money to buy our data so they can oppress us? It's so Kafkaesque, apparently, that our House has already passed the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act; we only need our Senators to act, and we will get ourselves some breathing room from government oppression. You may have heard that America elected an asshole to the Presidency again, so of course we’re worried about that.

Action: concerning the debt limit, non-profits, and federal judges.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to raise the debt limit without drama, tell your Congressfolk to reject the so-called Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, and tell Democratic Senators to confirm as many judicial nominees as possible. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

We hit the debt ceiling again on January 2, so today is a good day to call your Reps and Senators and tell them to lift the debt ceiling before then without any poison pill drama. Why? Because, as Dave Troy reported in the Washington Spectator back in July, the incoming Administration might allow a government default to happen, simply because it might financially benefit one of the Vice President-elect's pals, the notorious Peter Thiel. You'd hate to think the incoming Administration would simply ignore the calls of literally every corporate executive in America that a default would lead to depression, millions of lost jobs, and trillions of dollars of wealth disappearing. But you would also be a fool to count on the incoming Administration to be rational! Best to count on ourselves and our good works.

We thought the so-called Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act died an ignominious death last week, but now Republicans (and way too many Democrats!) want to bring it back — because what zombie don’t they want to bring back? Thus Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject the "non-profit killer" bill. Our President-elect just spent an entire election cycle telling everyone that he would get revenge on anyone who had ever wronged him; why would we give him more power to do that, specifically by letting him revoke tax-free status from certain non-profits he would designate as "terrorist-supporting"? And anyway, what the hell is "terrorist-supporting"? What a mealy-mouthed term! And one we certainly shouldn't leave up to TFG to define.

Finally, the Juggernaut Project helps you tell Senate Democrats to confirm as many judicial nominees as possible before TFG takes over. Because you don't want him filling judicial vacancies! And it's not like Senate Democrats have anything else to do, and I would want to distract them from all the navel-gazing they're doing about what went wrong with the election. Here's what went wrong: 77 million Americans voted for selfishness, venality, and drama because that's what gets them hard, and at least six million other Americans wouldn't vote for the Black woman because she's a Black woman. How do you make all that meaningless? Oh, I've only been telling everyone how to do that for almost 20 years now – you pass policies that actually help working families and that keep rich sociopaths from hurting them. Democrats won't be able to do any of that for at least two years, so they ought to give us some judges who will at least consider the inevitable lawsuits over the evil TFG is about to do.

Action: concerning pollution, bogus spending commissions, and tax cuts for the rich.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to reject any effort to repeal Biden Administration rules that benefit all of us, ignore the Musk/Ramaswamy cost-cutting commission, and let the bad parts of the 2017 tax "reform" expire. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

The Lever reminds us that the incoming Congress would just love to repeal as many Biden Administration rules as possible, so now would be a good time to call your Congressfolk and tell them to oppose any effort to repeal said rules. These include our EPA's lead pipe rule (which would result in cleaner water and less brain damage for our children) and methane emissions rule (methane, as you recall, packs a much bigger climate change punch than coal emissions). Republicans hope you don't remember that, you know, you hate pollution, and you like clean air and water and a non-burning planet. But will remind everyone if we have to.

Common Cause helps you tell your Congressfolk to ignore the so-called Department of Governmental Efficiency (or DOGE), particularly since such a Commission would have no Constitutional power to do a damn thing (since spending laws can only come from Congress). Even our President-elect says it will "provide advice and guidance from outside of government," which sure doesn't sound like big talk. And isn't it strange that our President-elect promised to put Elon Musk at the head of the DOGE – and then put Vivek Ramaswamy at the head of it, too? Putting two egomaniacs at the head of a commission sure sounds like a recipe for disaster! Still, we can't count on fantasies of realpolitik; we can only count on ourselves speaking out.

Finally, More Perfect Union helps you tell your Congressfolk to let all the worst aspects of the 2017 tax "reform" bill expire. They weren't all bad – expanding the personal exemption was good, and we should expand it further – but even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and massive corporate tax cuts and tax cuts for the rich (all of which were bigger than any tax cut you or I got!) were terrible. These people don't need more tax cuts! They already have enough money! And cutting their taxes will mean one thing down the road: a manufactured "crisis" leading our government to try to take everything from us, like our Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. If we don't speak out, we can kiss all of that goodbye.

Action: concerning our military, press freedom, and tax enforcement.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to stop our President-elect from convening a military review board designed to make our military loyal to him rather than the American people, tell your Senators to pass the PRESS Act, and tell your Congressfolk to fully fund our IRS so we can keep catching rich tax cheats. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

With news that our President-elect plans to convene a "review" board supposedly to remove generals who "lack leadership" but which we all know means "aren't loyal to President Bigbaby," now's the time to call your Reps and Senators and tell them to oppose this vigorously, because Presidents who want to make everyone take loyalty tests should be stopped. Furthermore, he could create a military who'd bless an unconstitutional third Presidential term, and we had better err on the side of caution where that's concerned. Strangle this baby in its crib, before President Bigbaby gets his way.

Defending Rights and Dissent helps you tell our Senators to pass the Protect Reporters from Exploitive State Spying (or PRESS) Act, which would prevent our government from forcing journalists to hand over the identities of their sources (except when our government can prove it's necessary to stop an imminent attack). Because usually our government demands sources just to harass journalists and sources! And surely we don't think our government will do less of that under President Bigbaby! Our Senate must pass this bill, not least because our House, in a fit of actual bipartisanship, has already passed it! You never see actual bipartisanship anymore, especially for good! So let's grab that while we can.

Finally, Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to ensure they fund our IRS to it can continue to catch rich tax cheats. Because we need to spend money to do that, since rich tax cheats will spend big money on lawyers! But for every dollar we spend on enforcement, we get six dollars back – to the tune of over $1.3 billion in back taxes just since last fall. And not just that! Average phone wait times are down from 28 minutes to 3 minutes and our IRS now handles 65% more phone calls than it did before; doesn't customer service mean something to conservatives? I kid, of course – there are no conservatives in the Republican Party anymore.

Action: concerning good judges, real disaster relief, and education funding.

Long story short: tell your Senators to confirm as many good judges as possible in the time left to them, and tell your Congressfolk to enact real disaster relief and reject education funding cuts. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

People for the American Way helps you tell your Senators to confirm as many good judges as possible before Big Baby Ball-Swinger takes over. We need halfway-decent judges who might actually apply the law and show some humanity, not cruel mindless automatons who just do whatever Dear Leader tells them to do. And we're only going to get that as long as we have 51 Democratic Senators, which we'll have for about another month and a half. So they've got to get to stepping.

The Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass real disaster relief for good Americans still suffering from the effects of Hurricanes Helene and Milton. Real disaster relief would include a food stamp expansion for hurricane victims (hurricanes do throw people out of work, after all), so don't brook any cruelty about how "people need to fend for themselves." And certainly don't brook any poison pill spending cuts. A lot of bad Americans screwed this election up for the rest of us, but we will not be their hostages.

Finally, Civic Shout helps you tell your Congressfolk to protect public education funding. Admittedly actually abolishing our Department of Education would be difficult, even for Big Baby Ball-Swinger, but we must also stand our ground against the idea of education funding cuts, because no doubt the evil bastards float the former so we get used to the latter. But we don’t have to get "used" to a damn thing. This is our country, no matter what Dear Leader wants.

Action: concerning taxes and law and order.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to reject any attempt to extend tax cuts for the rich and to pass the Clean Slate Act so good Americans can get back on their feet after paying their debt to society. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any attempt to renew the President-elect's infamous tax-cuts-for-the-rich-and-corporations law. It used to be hard to get rich! That's because we taxed millionaire income at 91%, so the rich couldn't compound their power without end! During the New Deal era we had one billionaire; now we have hundreds, and none of them contribute a damn thing of value to this world. Meanwhile health care workers and first responders and store clerks and baristas – not to mention scientists, philosophers, and artists – all go hungry, and our nation becomes so sick, immoral, and decadent we elect an overt fascist to the Presidency. Tax the rich like we used to and we stop all of that dead.

Civic Shout helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Clean Slate Act, which would seal federal records for criminal case dismissals and acquittals and – most importantly! – convictions for nonviolent offenses, so the good Americans who've paid the debt they owe to society can get on with their lives and contribute to civilization again. Also, if these folks can get on with their lives, they'll be less likely to go back to jail, though our private prison-loving President-elect might not see that as a good thing. I've long tried to turn law-and-order talk on its head – stop detaining drunks and street fighters and drug-users indefinitely, and start putting real sociopaths like polluters and pension-raiders in jail. The Clean Slate Act will contribute toward that worthy end, so we should support it.

Action: concerning “terrorism,” freedom of the press, and poverty.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to reject the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, pass the PRESS Act, and help our seniors better avoid hunger. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

MPower helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject the so-called Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, which would let our President designate non-profits as "terrorist" organizations and revoke their tax-exempt status more easily. The President-elect, you may recall, has vowed vengeance against anyone who's ever wronged him, and this bill would help wreak that vengeance when he should be working for us. The bill would also postpone tax deadlines for American hostages held abroad (i.e, by Hamas), but obviously Congress can pass such a tax deadline postponement without the poison pill attached.

Civic Shout helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying (or PRESS) Act, which would make it harder for our government to force journalists to give up their sources. Again, the man-child about to take office in January would stop at nothing to intimidate journalists, so this bill, if it becomes law, would at least put another law between him and his desires. The fact that we haven't made him pay for his law-breaking doesn't mean "laws are worthless" – it means we don’t have enough laws between an evil man and his evil deeds.

Finally, Care2 helps you tell your Congressfolk to strengthen the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (or CSFP), which helps over half a million senior Americans avoid hunger. If Congress expands this program now, they would also pre-empt Elon Musk's rein as Secretary of Cruelty or whatever, since he'll no doubt tell us in 2025 (after much "study") that we can't give food to hungry people if we want to stay afloat as a nation. Of course, that'd be evil – we can be both fiscally-responsible and humane. Particularly if we tax the talentless rich a lot harder than we're doing now.

UPDATE. The Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act has failed — our House tried to pass it more quickly with a suspension of debate rules, but under those conditions a bill needs two-thirds of the vote, not a simple majority, and this bill didn’t get that. The circumstances, of course, allow some folks to brag about voting for the bill they knew wouldn’t pass anyway, which is cynical, but we can always use their cynicism to our advantage. Let this be the first of many victories.

Action: vote!

Today is Election Day, though many Americans (in states that allow it) have already voted, either in-person or by mail. So if you have any problems voting today – including (but not limited to) finding your polling place, voter intimidation, accessibility issues, voting machine problems, and provisional ballot issues – call 1.866.687.8683, a.k.a. 1.866.OUR.VOTE. (In Spanish, that phone number is 1.888.839.8682, or 1.888.VE-Y-VOTA. See other phone numbers at the Election Protection website.) You may also call the U.S. Department of Justice's Voting Rights Hotline at 1.800.253.3931. I remain worried that bad Americans will harass good Americans at the polls, but if our enemies are smart (and, despite appearances, they are) they'll also try to obstruct the vote-counting wherever it happens, so you may want to go to your state's Secretary of State website, find out where they're counting the votes in your area, and call 1.866.OUR.VOTE if you see anything untoward. Don’t be skittish about making such calls, because our enemies sure aren’t skittish about preventing good Americans from voting.

Voting, as I've often said, is a citizen's minimum duty in America – this is our government, no matter how little it resembles a good government, and we must make it a good government, first on Election Day and then on every day thereafter. Our politicians would prefer that you vote for them on Election Day and then just shut your yap, but over the years, more and more of us have hounded our elected officials the way we should, and they listen more than they used to – certainly more than they did during the Bush/Obama years. The last four years have seen monopolies take a body blow from which they won't recover for at least six more years (when our FTC updates antitrust enforcement guidelines again); it was the right battle for Joe Biden to pick, and he most certainly paid for it by being hounded out of the Democratic Presidential nomination by his own party and by our "liberal" media. The last four years have also seen major climate change and health care reform legislation pass, as well as bipartisan infrastructure legislation that has at least made "government spending money to build good stuff" possible again, and a virtual neutering of House Republicans' ability to hold everyone hostage to stupid legislative demands. I wish I could say America is a more perfect union than it was four years ago, but only we can make it one, and I know for a fact it's a more perfect union than it would have been if we'd simply given up after 2016 – or "let Biden handle it" after 2020.

But while voting is our minimum duty, our work on every day thereafter will be much harder if we don’t turn all the bad politicians out of office we can. And there are only bad reasons for not voting. Negative campaigning is an especially bad one, though, frankly, the choice has been made easier by the major political parties this year, as Republicans have run mostly negative, empty, and angry ads and Democrats (perhaps having learned from Hillary Clinton's failed "just let Trump's ramblings write our ads for us" strategy) run mostly positive, substantive, and uplifting ads. So let's get out there and vote today – and then tomorrow, let's get back to giving our elected leaders, whomever they may be, the what-for they most definitely deserve. Sadly, that task will probably also include having to keep fighting for the electoral victories we’ve already won, as the Trump campaign plans to contest any vote-counting that doesn’t go their way. I expect, in fact, that their efforts will be worse than last time. But at least we can be prepared.

Action: concerning taxes, banksters, and corruption.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass the American Stability Act, the Stop Wall Street Looting Act, and the ETHICS Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Patriotic Millionaires helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the American Stability Act, which would (among other good works) raise taxes on the rich (though not as much as I would), raise the minimum wage to a $20/hour "cost of living" wage (which is a better way of putting it!), and expand the personal exemption to that $20/hour figure (resulting in a tax cut that would benefit working families considerably more than rich folks). I've already said what I'd fix (i.e., I'd create a 91% tax bracket for millionaire income like we had in the '50s), but the American Stability Act would make life better for most Americans, so we should pass it.

Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Stop Wall Street Looting Act, which would (among other good works!) prioritize workers, not shareholders, when winding down a bankrupt corporation, which all by itself would remove most of the incentive big banksters have when they try to kill a corporation with debt and then extract all the value of that corporation's husk for shareholders (i.e., themselves). You're seeing it with the end of Red Lobster – no, Red Lobster didn't die because of "endless shrimp" promotions but because hedge fund managers sold the land out from under them and made them lease it! Should civilized people stand for such shenanigans? No, we should not.

Finally, Win Without War helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the Ending Trading and Holdings In Congressional Stocks (or ETHICS) Act, which would (all together now: among other good works!) ban Congressfolk from ever holding or trading in stocks. Because a lot of corporations feed at the taxpayer teat, and Congress must make sure corporations don't waste that money – but how likely are they to do that job if they invest in the corporations they're overseeing? The answer is not very likely. Don't brook any nonsense about how you can trust Congressfolk to do the right thing, because trusting your elected officials is un-American. What's American, then? Holding your elected officials accountable, that's what.

Action: concerning taxes, pollution, and cruelty to animals.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to end the Trump tax cuts and pass working family tax cuts, reject the so-called Energy Permitting Reform Act, and pass the Snowmobiles Aren't Weapons Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Americans for Tax Fairness helps youtell our House's Ways and Means Committee to let the Trump "tax cuts" expire and focus on delivering real tax relief for working families. Because the Trump "tax cuts" delivered massive tax cuts for the rich and tiny tax cuts for working families, whereas the Child Tax Credit expansion under President Biden delivered $250 and $300 checks per child per month to qualifying families in 2021. Will Republicans do any of that? Of course not! But will it cost them politically if they ignore us when we get in their grills? Yes, it will. After all, tax cuts for working families are popular, whereas tax cuts for the rich are, er, not.

The Native Organizers Alliance Fund helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject the so-called Energy Permitting Reform Act, which would fast-track approval of fossil fuel projects – whether they're actually safe or not, what's the difference? – and would also open up more public lands to mining and oil and gas drilling. "Fast-tracking approval," of course, also means taking away tools good Americans have to stop pollution in their backyards. Too many Americans think faster is better with every damn thing, but faster isn't better when you're trying to avoid spewing filth into our air and water. I'd say you should err on the side of taking your time and doing things right, but gosh, that would sound awfully conservative of me.

Finally, the Endangered Species Coalition helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Snowmobiles Aren't Weapons Act, which would, as its title implies, ban using snowmobiles to murder animals on public lands. Because who would do that? Some asshole in Wyoming, apparently, who ran over a female wolf with his snowmobile and then paraded her not-dead-yet body around a bar before finally shooting her. But this bill is so obviously a lay-up that it's nine House co-sponsors include four Republicans, including the bill's main sponsor, Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, and the otherwise-notorious Matt Gaetz of Florida. But too often a no-brain Congress forgets to pass no-brainer bills, so we should still speak out.

Action: concerning vote suppression, jobs, and electioneering.

Long story short: tell our Justice Department to investigate Florida's government for intimidating pro-choice voters and Elon Musk's SuperPAC for allegedly bribing people to register to vote, and tell Boeing's CEO to stop laying off workers and invest in them instead. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Civic Shout helps you tell our Justice Department to investigate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis's anti-choice voter suppression tactics, including sending cops to the houses of folks who favor a ballot initiative that could enshrine the right to an abortion in the state constitution. On what probable cause? I kid, of course – those who know they're about to lose everything will do anything, law and order and morality be damned. America is full of law-and-order type who'll break the law and then say but my case is different! But this is only different in that it's overtly fascist to send cops to scare people into voting differently. So let's make sure he loses that vote – and let’s also hold him accountable for his fascism.

Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell Boeing's CEO to stop laying off workers and start investing in them instead. Let me guess: the Boeing machinist union strike is causing the layoffs! Because, after all, when you're already down workers, the obvious solution is to lay more off! They're really laying off workers, of course, so they can goose up stock prices and profits and indulge in more stock buybacks, none of which has anything to do with building planes that don't fall out of the sky. Would it be piling on to note that Boeing has gobbled up nearly $150 billion in corporate welfare handouts? No, it would not. Clearly Boeing needs us to help it see the light.

Finally, Public Citizen helps you tell our Federal Elections Commission (or FEC) to investigate Elon Musk's SuperPAC for possible illegal electioneering. Apparently he's been paying Trump-leaners to register to vote in swing states, although these benighted folks are really getting a chance at a big payoff if they register; I guess that's how he'll claim it's not really a "payment," but a chance at a pile of money is still a bribe. We outlawed paying people to vote in the first place because the people with the most money can literally buy the outcome they want. Anyway, don't worry about exacerbating Mr. Musk's persecution complex; he'd find a way to do that anyway, and were he still so emotional, he could cry into his $200 billion.

Action: concerning Medicare.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to expand Medicare to cover long-term, home-based care, and to reject any of Project 2025's plans to privatize Medicare. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk to expand Medicare so that it covers home-based, long-term care. We're all probably going to need it when we get old! But Medicare, despite covering health care costs that, you know, old folks have to pay, doesn't cover it, and don't let anyone tell you the private sector can just take care of it, because the crap-ass long-term private sector care costs six figures a year. Of course the situation is even worse than that – only Medicaid currently covers long-term care, and you have to spend all your money and sometimes even get divorced to qualify. No one should have to do all of that! It's cruel and evil! So let's get to stepping.

Social Security Works also helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject Project 2025's nefarious plans for Medicare. Which are to make Medicare Advantage – the privatized Medicare health insurance plans that don't cover your needs and siphon off taxpayer money we'd better use to improve real Medicare -- the default option for all new Medicare enrollees, meaning that when you get old enough, they'll automatically put you in a crap-ass Medicare Advantage program that only delivers "advantages" to their executives. “Advantages” in the form of money they don't pay to cover your needs that they redistribute upward to themselves, in case I'm not being clear! So we've got to put a stop to that.

Action: concerning banksters and taxes.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass the Stop Wall Street Looting Act and the American Stability Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Stop Wall Street Looting Act. I guess a bill with the words "stop Wall Street looting" could be about anything, but this bill concerns what happens when banksters buy corporations like Red Lobster and then suck all the money out of them like the vampires they are. The Stop Wall Street Looting Act, among other things, would prioritize workers, not shareholders, when corporations go bankrupt – which would pretty much take away banksters' incentive to do the whole saddle-them-with-debt-then-distribute-assets-to-shareholders two-step. Corporations wouldn't take care of workers unless you made them, so why would we expect more from banksters?

Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the American Stability Act, which would raise the minimum wage to a living wage of $20/hour and raise taxes on millionaire income. The bill would also raise the personal exemption on your income taxes to that same living wage of $20/hour, which means working families get a massive tax cut. (Rich people would get that cut, too, but it wouldn't help them nearly as much.) Of course I quibble with raising the rate on millionaire income only to 40% and the rate on income over $15 million to 43 percent. They both need to be 91%! Like they were back when we had a thriving middle class! But this bill would improve lives, and thus deserves our support.

Action: concerning health care and right-wing drama.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass the Global HER Act and expel Rep. Higgins from our House. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Global Health, Empowerment, and Rights (or Global HER) Act, which would kill the notorious Global Gag Rule dead forever. The Global Gag Rule – generally imposed by Republican Presidents and rescinded by Democratic ones on their first days in office – prevents taxpayer money from going to any foreign organization providing health care in a foreign land if they dare to mention "abortion" or provide abortion-related services; the Global HER Act would allow foreign organizations to receive such money if they abide by U.S. federal law and the laws of other host nations. The Global Gag Rule is just one of many right-wing dramas I want to end, and if we pass this bill, we can end it.

Speaking of right-wing dramas, Civic Shout helps you tell your Congressfolk to expel Rep. Clay Higgins (E-LA) from our House of Representatives. Most people were disgusted by the Trump/Vance ticket's promotion of completely false and racist stories about Haitian immigrants eating other people's pets – but not Rep. Higgins! He doubled down on the drama, repeating the false stories and further saying they should "get their mind right and their ass (they only have one ass? No wonder they’re a menace!) out of our country." He's said stupid, hateful crap like this his whole life, even as a police officer, and it's about time he paid for it. No, our First Amendment doesn't guarantee you a House seat if you say stupid, hateful crap.

Action: concerning executive pay and betting on elections.

Long story short: tell our government to crack down on federal contractor CEO pay and outlaw betting on elections. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

The Other 98 helps you tell President Biden to crack down on excessive CEO pay in corporations that contract with our government. Because once you take taxpayer money, you have to play by taxpayer rules! And our laws already empower President Biden to mandate that federal contractors narrow the gap between executive pay and typical worker pay. What on Earth can right-wingers reasonably say to that? Nothing, but we'll still get a load of nanny-state-American-Caesar-kill-innovation-kill-jobs-wokeness nonsense. Just remember: we taxpayers should make the rules about how our government spends our money. And seriously, nobody likes overpaid bosses!

Public Citizen helps you tell federal regulators to outlaw betting on elections. You know how your friends and co-workers all say their favorite sporting events are rigged after they lose bets on them? Think of how bad that'll get when we start letting everyone bet on elections – and people in power will absolutely rig those, particularly if a lot of folks bet a certain way. Alas, the D.C. Court of Appeals just allowed betting corporation Kalshi to start taking bets on which party will control the House or Senate next year; Pandora never did anything so foolish. We already treat political races too much like they're sporting events, and if we don't start giving our democracy more respect, we'll be ruled by assholes forever.

Action: concerning pollution and racism.

Long story short: tell our EPA to protect communities from the hazards of vinyl chloride, and tell a Texas county to stop reclassifying Native American history as "fiction." Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

The Hip Hop Caucus helps you tell our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) to protect communities from the evils of vinyl chloride. You remember vinyl chloride from its featured role in the East Palestine (OH) train disaster in early 2023? Well, our EPA has already designated vinyl chloride as a "high priority chemical," and scientists have told us vinyl chloride causes cancer. And the corporations manufacturing vinyl chloride tend to neglect communities they displace of build through, hence we demand that our government step in. You think corporations will do the right thing on their own? Ha ha ha corporations are like children without the charm.

The National Campaign for Justice helps you tell Montgomery County (TX) to stop reclassifying Native American history as fiction. Just when I think they can't sink any lower! Montgomery County told libraries to stick Colonization and the Wampanoag Story in the fiction section, though it is actual history written by an actual historian, after secretly creating a "Citizens Review Committee" and keeping actual librarians off said "committee." I guess the exercise was "say 'we never oppressed Native Americans' without actually saying it." But too many assholes already tell too many of us that our lived experience and heritage is fiction, so how about we prevent a local government from getting away with that particular evil?

Action: concerning voting rights, price-gouging, and worker safety.

Long story short: tell our government to investigate Ohio's recent voter purge, tell airline CEOs to stop using hurricanes as an excuse to price-gouge, and tell Tennessee to investigate hurricane-related worker deaths. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Civic Shout helps you tell our Department of Justice (or DOJ) to investigate the Ohio state government for its recent voter registration purge. Brook no silliness about "a government's duty to purge voters who no longer live in Ohio," because purging voters from Black and Brown neighborhoods disproportionately (which several civil rights groups allege Ohio has done) is not part of that duty, and anyway no one should lose a right simply because they haven't exercised it in a while. "Oh, but they can just go re-register!" Ah, not if they don't know the state has de-registered them, and besides, making people jump through extra bureaucratic hoops just makes it harder for them to vote. Is that right?

More Perfect Union helps you tell airline CEOs to stop price-gouging for flights out of the way of incoming disasters like Hurricane Milton. It's a shame we even have to say such things out loud, but apparently United and American have done this exact thing, despite the fact that we now live in an age where virtually anyone with an internet connection can discover them doing this exact thing. If anyone tells you this is just how the "free" market "works," ask them how they'd feel if it were their own family members facing this kind of price-gouging. Some people love saying grandma needs to be "sacrificed" to make burdens lighter for the rest of us, but those folks don't mean their own grandma.

Finally, Care2 helps you tell the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to, well, investigate Impact Plastics of Erwin, TN for telling their employees not to leave as Hurricane Milton was hammering them. At least three people died because their bosses told them the emergency just wasn't bad enough for them to evacuate, and then they were all trapped, and then when they tried to escape anyway they found themselves in the middle of a catastrophe. But good managers foresee catastrophes (like a hurricane whose approach has already been on the news for several days!) and plan for them. So we should keep demanding accountability for those who do not plan, and who kill their employees as a result.

Action: concerning the Israel/Palestine war, food stamps, and taxes.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to stop further arms sales to Israel, reject food stamp cuts, and fully fund our IRS. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Jewish Voice for Peace helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject further arms sales to Israel. Now Iran has gotten involved, a move pretty much predetermined the moment Mr. Netanyahu decided to kill as many Palestinians as possible without hurting Hamas, though of course, this being Iran, they waited a very, very long time. But that doesn't mean we’re all suddenly pro-genocide! And it sure doesn't mean "Donald Trump should be President"! He'll rattle his saber at Iran, but ultimately do nothing, because that’s what Mr. Putin wants. We'd do much better to force an end to the Netanyahu stratagem, and that'll only happen when we stop giving him weapons. Certainly let’s not count on Donald Trump to do that!

The Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to put families first and reject cuts to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (or SNAP), better known as food stamps. I'll keep saying "food stamps," I don't care! There's no shame in getting help from your government, since you fund your government. Why, food stamps are rather like insurance! But, of course, right-wingers want you to think we should be ashamed, because you don’t want to be Those People, do you? But we should not be ashamed! And we should not be cruel to those who've lost their job, or (more likely these days!) those whose job doesn't pay enough. Maybe we should go after corporate farm subsidies instead of hurting working families?

Finally, Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to fully fund our IRS's efforts to find and punish wealthy tax cheats. Somehow, Congressional Republicans have made this the hill they'll die on! But did all that whining about our IRS help them win the 2022 midterms? No, it did not: to review, Republicans lost a net of one Senate seat and we only knew they'd narrowly won the House after another week of vote-counting. But if we want to find and punish rich tax cheats, the kind who hire rich lawyers to get them off, then we need to fully fund our IRS. Why, it's almost like Republicans are objectively pro-rich tax cheat! They certainly don’t love the poor tax cheat.

Action: concerning labor, campaign coverage, and worker safety.

Long story short: tell Marathon to bargain with striking workers, tell the New York Times to stop "sanewashing" Trump coverage, and tell our Department of Labor to enact a vigorous heat standard for workers. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

More Perfect Union helps you tell oil refinery corporation Marathon Petroleum to bargain with striking workers. Whose contract ran out nine months ago, and who were working without a contract until it became obvious management wouldn't talk to them. Marathon made almost $10 billion in profits last year, and has indulged in $35 billion in stock buybacks just over the last three years, but can't break off any of that for the good folks who make their wealth possible – though they can pay scabs twice the going rate! Need I mention that oil refining is actually difficult work requiring workers of some experience and skill? I guess Marathon will find that out, but if they’d just deal fairly with their workers, they wouldn't have to.

Civic Shout helps you tell the New York Times, one of our "papers of record," to stop "sanewashing" their coverage of Donald Trump. Are they simply numb to the onslaught of obnoxious behavior from Mr. Trump or do they want to pretend this should be a race? It matters not, because civilized people treat assholes like, well, assholes; we don't just hand out respect to Presidential candidates (or Presidents!) unless they earn it. I mean, this is America, dammit! And our "liberal" media have called his claims the 2020 election was stolen from him the "Big Lie," so I must presume they are capable of calling out Mr. Trump's obnoxious behavior. Now all they need to do is start doing it.

Finally, More Perfect Union also helps you tell our Department of Labor to enact its heat standard for workers. Broadly, this standard would require bosses to make sure their workers don't die of heatstroke; more precisely, it would ensure workers have enough shade, breaks, and water, particularly since a lot of farmworkers don’t get the kinds of protections other workers get under the National Labor Relations Act. I suppose right-wingers will challenge the standard by saying that Congress expressed its intent by excluding farmworkers from that bill, thus making the DOL's standard "unconstitutional." But why would anyone want to put that kind of work before the Lord on Judgment Day? Defending the powerful sure ties a mind in knots!

Action: concerning Medicare, taxes, and voting rights.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to protect Medicare from privatization, pass the American Stability Act, and ban guns from polling places. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk to protect Medicare from Project 2025's privatization efforts. The notorious Project 2025 leaves a trail of slime wherever it goes, and when it goes to health care policy, it's no different! Project 2025 advocates making private Medicare Advantage plans the default option for new Medicare enrollees, although Medicare Advantage plans have rather notoriously denied or delayed coverage and pushed seniors' doctors out of their networks, all so corporate executives can redistribute even more income upward to themselves. Health insurance is supposed to be there for the people who need it, not just corporate executives.

Patriotic Millionaires helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the American Stability Act, which would raise the minimum wage to a "cost-of-living" wage of $20/hour and raise the personal exemption for federal income taxes to the same amount, plus it would hike taxes three percentage points on millionaire income (and five points on income over $15 million). I’ve said many times that I'd go at this problem a whole lot harder than that! I want the 91% tax bracket back on all income over a million bucks! But the American Stability Act would still do working families a lot of good, so we ought to do it.

Finally, Common Cause helps you tell your Congressfolk to ban guns from all polling places. Hard to believe we have to do that, but we do, and who needs to bring a gun to the polls? Probably the same people who bring guns to the supermarket! (Who also rather incongruously call themselves "tough guys.") Brook no nonsense from the folks who say their right to bring a gun anywhere they want is absolute. Bringing a gun to the polls is a threat! Anyone who brings a gun to the polls intends it as a threat! And it ain't that far a walk from bringing a gun to the polls to waving it around at people you think won't vote the way you want them to.

Action: concerning striking workers and financial predators.

Long story short: tell port CEOs to accept striking portworkers' demands, and tell your government to protect us from financial predators in the green lending industry. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

More Perfect Union helps you tell port CEOs to accept portworkers' demands. 45,000 port workers went on strike this week to protest low pay (no, really, only $20/hour for that work?) and automation (ho hum, corporations making billions in profits want to give as many jobs as possible to robots). On occasion, legitimate, life-improving technological progress forces people out of work, but robots ain't that – robots will screw everything up while CEOs make even more money forcing the world to accept incompetence. These CEOs deserve to fail – but they won't, unless we pressure them to give in to their workers' demands.

Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell various federal agencies to protect good Americans from financial predators in the green lending industry. Lending programs that help folks deal with pollution and climate change are relatively new – which means they probably have a disproportionate number of scam artists, since new areas of our economy tend to get the necessary regulatory scrutiny much later than more established ones. And you know right-wingers stand ready to declare the green lending industry "unreliable." Their hell will be just as hot as ours, but why should any of us live in hell?

UPDATE. Port strikers have reached a tentative agreement with management, one that would raise pay 62% over the next five years but does not address automation. Go ahead and send your message anyway, amending it as you need to. Once you win, you need to keep fighting to keep your wins, and big bosses need to know we’ll do that.

Action: concerning hurricanes and health care.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to fund FEMA and stop our government from making privatized Medicare plans the default option for new enrollees. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

The National Campaign for Justice helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass immediate disaster funding. They're out of session right now, which is usually a good thing, but as you know, a Category 4 hurricane just slammed Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, and our Federal Emergency Management Agency (or FEMA) has run out of money after Congress stripped $10 billion in the last authorization bill. So, they need to get back to Washington, D.C. with a quickness and help good Americans again. And brook no stupidity about cutting school lunch funding or renewable energy funding to pay for more FEMA funding! We are not hostages in America!

Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk not to let the nefarious Project 2025 impose its will on our Medicare benefits. That's right, there's nowhere that Project 2025 doesn't leave its trail of slime, and Project 2025 would (among other "reforms") make privatized Medicare Advantage plans the default option for new Medicare enrollees. If you've read all the news reports about Medicare Advantage plans denying care to our seniors – or, you know, if you're one of those seniors – you will want to get on the horn with your Congressfolk about this, before they decide no one will ever hold them accountable for their evil.

Action: concerning voting rights and health care.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and expand (not repeal!) Medicare drug price negotiation. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

People Power United helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. The first bill would standardize early and mail-in voting, ban gerrymandering, and force disclosure of big campaign donations, while the latter would give our government the power to investigate and end racist voting practices more vigorously and allow our Justice Department's ability to pre-clear voting law changes in any state or locality that has established a record of vote suppression. Who's against these bills? Self-serving Republicans, and approximately no one else. Must they win again? If we speak out in numbers they can't deny, they'll lose, and we'll win. It's that simple.

Drug Prices Are Too High helps you tell your Congressfolk to let Medicare negotiate prices for more drugs not fewer. Because "fewer" is the Republicans' preferred position, apparently! Many Republicans are actually running on repealing Medicare's ability to negotiate prices for a few drugs beginning in 2026. Taking such a position, in public, used to end political careers, but not in this sick, immoral, and decadent world; how do we begin to bring a sane, moral, and decent world back? By demanding that Medicare should be able to negotiate the price of any drug, on behalf of both seniors and taxpayers, since that's our tax money they're spending. If we speak out enough, our Congressfolk will heed our will.

Action: concerning health care and nativism.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass the Health Over Wealth Act and expel Rep. Higgins from our House. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Health Over Wealth Act, which would make it harder for bankster hedge fund managers to take over nursing homes and strip the money out of them. Seriously, they buy nursing homes, cut services and jobs, load them up with debt, and eventually redistribute all the wealth upward to themselves when they "have to close" a "badly-functioning" nursing home – leaving seniors out in the cold! The Health Over Wealth Act would outlaw such asset-stripping and require DHS approval of nursing home sales – among other reforms! It ain't everything we'd want, but it'd make things better for our seniors, a class of people that will, ideally, one day include all of us.

Civic Shout helps you tell your House Reps to expel Rep. Clay Higgins (E-LA) for his most recent comments about Haitian immigrants. Mr. Higgins obviously thinks it's OK to say just any old thing, no matter whom it hurts, as long as you get attention for it. And while I would say he has absolute First Amendment rights to post his vile rhetoric on his Facebook page to his private (not public!) groups of friends and followers, he does not have a First Amendment right to a House seat while doing that. In fact, I'd say we have a duty, as civilized people, to keep him out of our government while he's doing that – and brook no cynicism about how “all politicians are bad,” because cynicism invites and enables bad behavior.

Action: concerning the Israel/Palestine war and health care.

Long story short: tell Congress to stop arming Israel, tell a big pharma CEO to make his drugs more affordable, and tell PA state legislators to expand health care access. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to stop a $20 billion weapons sale to Israel. You have noticed, I trust, that Israel has, ah, expanded the war on Palestine into Lebanon by blowing up pagers? That turned out to be about as "surgical" as the November air strikes on Gaza. And it's also more evidence, if we needed it, that Mr. Netanyahu has no intention of eliminating Hamas or (even) securing Israel from their enemies, but only wants to create more crises that require the people of Israel to cleave to him. And we're helping him do that! So we should stop helping him do that.

More Perfect Union helps you tell the CEO of Novo Nordisk to stop price-gouging good Americans for weight loss drugs. If you know anyone who responds by saying well people should just stop getting fat ha ha ha snort, then, well, here are three things you can say: 1) one of those two drugs, Ozempic, helps diabetics, 2) our subsidization of high-fructose corn syrup has made our obesity problem much worse, and 3) "I can see you ain't missin' no meals." I'm guessing at the last one, but I bet I'm not wrong. Also too, they charge Americans for these drugs more than they charge the British. Which is another oblique argument for a Medicare-for-all health insurance system, I suppose.

Finally, Pennsylvania residents, take note: Health Care Voices helps you tell your PA state legislator to help ensure that big health care corporations actually provide care for good Pennsylvanians. Specifically, you'd tell them to pass HB 2344, which will help good Pennsylvanians speak out against hospital mergers and closures that affect their community (right, former Hahnemann patients?), and HB 2339 would make hospitals publish prices and fees so good Pennsylvanians can know what they're getting into. These bills would make health care better, so they deserve our support.

Action: concerning Medicare privatization, workplace heat standards, and saving our Post Office.

Long story short: tell New York City's mayor to stop forcing city employees onto Medicare Advantage, tell our Department of Labor to institute its proposed heat standard, and tell our government to reject Postal Service privatization. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Be a Hero helps you tell New York City Mayor Eric Adams to stop forcing city employee retirees to use Medicare Advantage instead of traditional Medicare. Because the only advantage to Medicare "Advantage" is that private health insurance executives make more money while denying more care – and, of course, siphoning off taxpayer funds that could have gone to traditional Medicare! Remember when they said Eric Adams was the future of the Democratic party? Well, this marks him as the same-old same-old. So let's fight him, and protect folks who paid into Medicare all their lives and deserve the best Medicare they can get.

More Perfect Union helps you tell our Department of Labor to implement its heat standard rule now. Why now, as fall is upon us? Because the next President might be a whiny, traitorous asshole who will shit all over this rule, just to please bosses who think being cruel to their workers is their "right"! Also too, in some parts of the country (i.e., the South), it's still pretty hot, and Southern workers could use all the help they can get. If you hear anyone say this rule will mainly help illegal immigrants, back away from them, slowly, and maybe stop talking to them. Even if that were true, which it’s not, no living being deserves to die of overwork and heatstroke. As civilized people, we should do better.

Finally, Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell our government to reject any effort to privatize our Postal Service. Postmaster General DeJoy, who really needs to be fired and replaced with someone not-evil, has lately said, after he cut services, raised prices, and slashed jobs, that our Postal Service is in a "death spiral"! That is, of course, the nature of power in these times – take over something that works, fuck it all up with your incompetence and greed, and then position yourself as the "only person who can fix these problems." Come to think of it, I've just described the entire George W. Bush Administration. Want to be done with all of that stupidity? Then we've got to get to work.

Action: concerning price-gouging, monopolies, and public lands.

Long story short: tell our government to stop big pharma corporations from price-gouging, investigate Uber and Lyft for breaking antitrust law, and avoid building solar on public lands where wildlife thrives. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Demand Progress helps you tell the Biden Administration to finalize its "march-in rights" rule, which would enable our government to "march in" and license drug patents to other corporations if patentholders continued to price-gouge good Americans. Which they totally do! And if they knew they'd lose more money if they gouged good Americans, they'd stop doing it! That's what "government working for you" looks like. And yes, our Supreme Court might say it's unconstitutional, but let's make them do it, and earn even more bad will for themselves! If Brett Kavanaugh can't go out for coffee because he's afraid people will shame him, that's just how civilization works.

More Perfect Union helps you tell our Federal Trade Commission (or FTC) that the Uber/Lyft business model actually violates our antitrust laws. How? With secret algorithms that pay drivers differently, based on factors they won't let anyone see, even if drivers use the exact same route as other drivers – all resulting in, per one researcher, "algorithmic wage discrimination." You know how cab rates have been historically fixed on time and distance? No longer! Now drivers never know how much money they're going to make! And Uber and Lyft can only get away with it because they have monopoly power in the first place! So, yeah, our FTC needs to know about this.

Finally, the Center for Biological Diversity helps you tell our government to put solar panels on already-degraded public lands, not public lands with thriving wildlife populations who might be hurt or killed by solar projects. We want a more renewable future, but we don't want to hurt living beings to do it! Right-wingers try to use this truism against us whenever they whine about "windmills being eyesores" or "windmills making noise" or "windmills killing birds," all of which they greatly exaggerate, and all of which they use to get you to oppose good things you wouldn't ordinarily oppose. But, as I've suggested in the first sentence, there is always another way to do the right thing.

Action: concerning high drug prices and Congressional corruption.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to lower drug prices and stop playing the stock market. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Drug Prices Are Too High helps you tell your Congressfolk to expand Medicare drug price negotiation so that good Americans pay less for more drugs. Republicans in Congress have lately said, out loud, that they will repeal Medicare drug price negotiation if they win back the Presidency and both houses of Congress! How a candidate could say I will make you pay more for drugs and therefore probably make you die faster and expect that people will like him I don't know. Of course, so many seats are so gerrymandered that candidates can demand mass murder of foreigners and still win, and it sure doesn't help that Democrats never run ads about such things. Maybe they should. Maybe I should.

Civic Shout helps you tell your Congressfolk to ban themselves from owning stocks. What's that I hear? You will never get them to do something that will make them less money ha ha ha I snort at your naïveté? And yet quite a few Congressfolk – apparently even they listen to good Americans more than the cynical do! – have been proposing stock bans of varying strength these last few years, and though none have passed, that isn't a cue to throw up our hands and declare defeat, it's a cue to speak out louder. Congressfolk should never own or trade stock! It's an engraved invitation to corruption! Never let cynics tell you that you shouldn't bother doing the right thing. But remember, also, that many cynics (though not the professional ones, of course) guard painful wounds.

Action: concerning worker safety and book banning.

Long story short: tell our government to protect workers from heatstroke, and tell local officials to stand strong against professional book-banners. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

More Perfect Union helps you tell our Department of Labor to implement its workplace heat standard with a quickness. Heatstroke workplace deaths do tend to make the news, as you know, and while farmworkers may feel the need for these standards more acutely than most of us, working, as they do, in 100-degree heat without adequate water breaks, Jesus Mary and Joseph I've put up with excessive heat at my job, and I wouldn't want to give any employers any ideas. Corporations need to stop using us as workjars they way they use us as moneyjars. But all they'll do is use us, until we make them stop, using our government as our tool.

Civic Shout helps you tell your local elected officials to stop placating book banners. Even the Washington Post tells us that 11 people filed 60% of all book challenges during the book-banning heyday of 2021-22, and that fact alone should tell us that the book-banning movement is horseshit. Enough with the concern trolling about TEH KIDZ!!!! already. We won't put a permanent end to this particular right-wing tantrum without getting good Americans back on school boards, but we can surely lend some steel to the spine of local elected officials by communicating our will – a will they'll surely understand, since we still tend to associate book banning with Nazi Germany.

Action: concerning AI abuse and voting rights.

Long story short: tell California's Governor to protect citizens from AI abuse, and tell Georgia's Governor to investigate ethics complains against that state's election board. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Accountable Tech helps you tell California Gov. Newsom to sign legislation protecting us from AI abuse. If you need more convincing: big tech corporations hate it, and a legislature can always improve law in the future. Indeed, this is why right-wingers have always fought any voting expansion, because they knew once we gave (for example) non-land-owning men the vote, then everyone would eventually get the vote. Right-wingers don't like that, for some reason, just like big tech corporations don't like anyone telling them they can't just run roughshod over our laws.

Civic Shout helps you tell Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to investigate ethics complaints against Georgia election board members who just gave themselves the power to nullify election results. You might be saying to yourself: self, we're counting on Brian Kemp for this? But he's already survived the Wrath of Trump, having easily beaten back a Trump-blessed primary challenger/ex-U.S. Senator in 2022, and with Mr. Trump looking ever more vulnerable, Mr. Kemp may see political value in pushing him over. Of course he should just do the right thing for the right reason, but I want to help you imagine why he might.

Action: concerning labor, food safety, and pollution.

Long story short: tell Boeing to give its workers a fair contract, tell our FDA to keep lead out of cinnamon, and tell our EPA to keep nurdles out of our water. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

More Perfect Union helps you tell Boeing that their striking machinists deserve a fair contract. Our "liberal" media have been telling you that Boeing workers went on strike after rejecting a proposed 25% pay hike. Surprise, surprise: that's not the whole story. Boeing workers are hunting far bigger game: they aim to challenge the entire corporate culture at Boeing, the culture that puts mammon above safety and quality, the culture that puts shareholder “value,” executive pay, and stock buybacks above planes being safe to fly. This could be a watershed moment in our history, like Reagan breaking the traffic controllers' union but in reverse, because if the Boeing workers win, they'll show the world that we can beat the culture of mammon, and workers all over America will suddenly find themselves more powerful than they've been in about half a century. So, yeah, we should help them do that.

Consumer Reports helps you tell our Food and Drug Administration (or FDA) to limit lead found in cinnamon. This has been in the news lately, as all manner of food poisoning tends to be; one quarter-teaspoon of cinnamon contains more lead than anyone should ever have in a day, and lead leads directly to brain damage and maldevelopment in children, so our FDA should do at least as good a job as the state of New York, which limits lead to one part per million in spices. Oh, at the risk of piling on, the Project 2025 agenda would make sure our government could never keep our food safe again, so we must act now.

Finally, PIRG helps you tell our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) to ban corporations dumpling nurdles into our clean water. Nurdles! They sound so cute! Reader, they are not: used to make virtually any plastic product, they find their way into our oceans and not only kill animals who literally starve to death with bellies full of them and that is a cruel, cruel death, but they can find their way into our own bodies as well, and wreak havoc on our health. Again, not to pile on, but Project 2025 would prevent our EPA from keeping such things out of our water, so we must act now.

Action: concerning arbitration fairness, real tax cuts for working families, and food stamps.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to end forced arbitration and expand the Child Tax Credit and food stamps. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal (or FAIR) Act. Because forced arbitration is an injustice! Corporations used forced arbitration clauses to herd people with legitimate disputes into arbitration hearings where they almost always lose, instead of a court of law, where they're far more likely to win. Ignore those who say "people win more money in arbitration than in court," because people don't win, period, often enough for that to mean a damn.

The Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to expand the Child Tax Credit (or CTC). You know the drill: Democrats in Congress enacted a major expansion of the CTC in 2021 which put $250 and $300 checks per child, every month, into working families' bank accounts. And then Republicans plus Joe Manchin let it expire, because we can't have nice things in America. CHN will help you advocate for a return of sizable monthly checks in your email to Congress.

Finally, the National Women's Law Center helps you tell your Congressfolk to improve, not cut, the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP, better known as food stamps. Because any one of us could fall on hard times as quickly as we get hit by a car or let a major health problem go one day too long because we're working all the time, so brook no silliness about Those People Who Get Food Stamps. And brook no silliness about "rampant fraud," either. The solution to fraud is prosecute and jail the fraudsters, not take food out of the mouths of good Americans.

Action: concerning price-gouging, our Postal Service, and climate change.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to fight price-gouging, save our Postal Service, and reject Project 2025. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to impose a windfall profits tax on price-gouging corporations. No, this is not "punishing success," it's punishing greed. Corporations brag about how they're taking advantage of high inflation to push prices even higher and people still say that's just the free market? Jesus Mary and Joseph who do they think free markets should be free for? Should it be free only for the most corrupt corporations? Or for all Americans?

Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Congressfolk to stop Postmaster General DeJoy from privatizing our Postal Service. Mr. DeJoy drove up prices, he cut services, and he slashed jobs, and surprise, surprise, now he says our Postal Service is in a "death spiral." But that's just the nature of power now: people fuck everything up and then posit themselves as having "the solution.” Here's a better solution: rebuild the house without “help” from the guy who burned it down.

Finally, the CCAN Action fund helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject all of Project 2025's climate-related proposals. Read the list at the link, because it's horrifying, but long story short: Project 2025 would kill pretty much any agency related to weather or climate or protecting Americans from harm, because BIG GUMMINTZ BADZ!!!!! Good Americans would miss the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. We'd also miss clean water regulations.

Action: concerning government spying, corporate taxes, and debt limit dramas.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to protect journalists from government spying, raise corporate taxes, and end all debt limit dramas forever. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

The Center for Rights and Dissent helps you tell Sen. Schumer to bring the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying (or PRESS) Act up for a vote. The PRESS Act already passed our House; it would forestall Project 2025's efforts to force journalists to disclose sources. Is there nowhere Project 2025 doesn't leave a trail of slime? And the PRESS Act would also protect ISPs and social media outlets; no matter how stupid or sensationalist our media seems to be, they still need protection from government spying, just as we do.

Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any effort to cut corporate taxes. But we can also demand that they hike the corporate tax rate to 55%, as it was in the New Deal era, because that high tax rate forced corporations to spend money creating jobs and products. (Expenses aren't taxable profits, after all.) These days we pretend that handing out corporate welfare tax breaks does that, which is like giving kids cookies before they do their homework! If it doesn't work at home, why would it work in our economy?

Finally, Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Debt Ceiling Reform Act, which would not only end the debt limit "crises" that right-wingers in Congress constantly manufacture, but would protect Social Security and Medicare from such crises. Sadly, we have to do that, because our House Speaker has called Social Security and Medicare "the greatest threat to our national security" (and not right-wing domestic terrorists? Interesting!). But really, enough hostage-taking! Enough drama!

Action: concerning Israel and Palestine, voting rights, and bankster bonuses.

Long story short: tell our government to stop arming Israel, tell our DOJ to investigate Texas's Attorney General for vote suppression, and tell our Federal Reserve to stop banksters from giving themselves big bonuses for their risky behavior. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Demand Progress helps you tell our government to stop arming Israel's attempt to blow Palestinians out of existence. Yes, the terrorist attack of October 7 was evil, but so is the Israeli response, and because Israel is much more powerful than Palestine, the response will do more harm, almost as if Hamas intended that all along. And of course Benjamin Netanyahu has no intention of destroying Hamas – he needs an enemy so he can con good Israelis into clinging to him! Cut off his weapons and this house of cards will collapse.

Public Citizen helps you tell our Department of Justice (or DOJ) to investigate Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for attempting to harass and intimidate voters. Which is against the law! Lately Mr. Paxton has threatened to sue Harris County and Bexar County over their plans to make sure eligible but unregistered voters get registration forms. Sounds like a frivolous lawsuit? It gets better – both counties have large Latin-American populations! No use arguing "prosecutorial discretion" when that "discretion" always seems aimed at non-whites.

Finally, the Juggernaut Project helps you tell Fed Chair Jerome Powell to finalize rules prohibiting bankster CEOs from getting big bonuses for taking absurd risks with their customers' money. I'd say "finally finalize" if it didn't sound corny, but fact is the Dodd-Frank law authorized this rule almost 15 years ago, so our government's got to get to it! Otherwise we could have another bankster Armageddon like we had in 2008, and there might really be torches and pitchforks this time.

Action: concerning robocalls, monopolies, and taxes.

Long story short: tell our FCC to crack down on AI robocalls, tell the Biden Administration to keep Lina Khan exactly where she is, and tell your Governor to opt in to our IRS’s free Direct File program. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Consumer Reports helps you tell our Federal Communications Commission (or FCC) to crack down on AI robocalls. But wait, you say, haven't they cracked down on robocalls generally? AI robocalls give their makers the illusion that "nobody" made them (even though someone did most certainly make the AI program that makes the calls), so they're not subject to previous robocall regulations! That argument might convince a fourth-grader or a right-wing judge, but not civilized adults like us, so we must act.

Demand Progress helps you tell the Biden Administration to stand behind FTC Chair Lina Khan. A month ago, a major Kamala Harris donor said, out loud, after donating millions of dollars to her campaign, that she had to fire Ms. Khan if she won the election. I'd have thought you'd make that threat before donating the money! But Ms. Khan has done a great job standing between monopolists and total control of our economy, and no matter how many times they say that like it's a bad thing, it's a good thing.

Finally, the Coaliton on Human Needs helps you tell your Governor to opt in to our IRS's Direct File program. Because working families deserve to file their taxes for free, instead of pay some middleman hundreds of dollars to do it! But these tax-filing corporations still have enough power that they've made our government put obstacles in front of free tax-filing, like making state Governors opt in on their citizens' behalf. And some of them don't want to do it! Which is why we get in their grills about it.

Action: concerning banksters, school lunches, and jobs.

Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell our Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (or CFPB) to roll back so-called "Earned Wage Access" loans. "Earned Wage Access" schemes promise to give you some of your paycheck before payday if you need it, but then slam you with 300% interest rates and usurious junk fees, meaning they're just another payday loan. No use arguing that these loans give good Americans more "choice." In a civilized society, there should be no "choice" to be some rich bankster's prey.

More Perfect Union helps you tell our U.S. Department of Agriculture (or USDA) to limit sugar (and calories from sugar) in school lunches. The "added sugar" part of our food labels is a relatively recent development, and our USDA's proposed sugar limits would be the first-ever. But of course big sugar corporations don't want this to happen! We first started adding sugar to food to conceal that food's spoilage; hundreds of years later, we’ve made it a mania, and no CEO's "right" to more unearned money can change that.

Finally, More Perfect Union also helps you tell Stellantis to honor its contractual promise to re-open the Belvedere, IL plant it closed in 2021. The United Auto Workers (or UAW) union fought Stellantis (owner of Jeep and Chrysler) tooth and nail to get the Belvedere plant reopened, but now Stellantis's CEO wants to delay reopening until 2028 – after the UAW contract expires. So clever! Thus it’s time for the Big Stick of Bad PR to come out. Shame still works, or Donald Trump wouldn’t call it a tool of totalitarianism.

Action: concerning banksters, Project 2025, and election workers.

Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Stop Predatory Investing Act, which would close tax loopholes that enable big banksters to buy up homes and jack up rents, which keeps those homes out of working families' reach both coming and going. Vice President Harris has voiced her support for this bill, but don't get complacent, because the only voice that really matters in America is the American people's voice, and if the American people don't speak up, then bad actors can drown us out.

The Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any of Project 2025's proposed cuts to nutrition and education programs. Project 2025 isn't just about installing Trump loyalists everywhere in our government! It's also about destroying our government's ability to help make our lives better, and if fewer working families can get food and schools all become private, how is that "government helping us"? Spoiler alert: it is not.

Finally, Civic Shout helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Election Worker and Polling Place Protection Act, which would establish fines and prison sentences for folks who intimidate and interfere with vote-counting. One wishes we could have had a law like this during the infamous "Brooks Brothers Riot" of 2000. Or during the 2020 election! Hopefully, punishing people who hurt election workers isn't some big moral leap for our law-and-order Congressfolk.