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Impeachment The House has voted to proceed with impeachment. The vote went along party lines, with two Democrats voting against impeachment. Here’s how the voting went: www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/31/us/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry-house-vote.html?module=inline Action: Contact your Member of Congress to thank them or complain.
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Turkey - Sanctions On Tuesday, an overwhelming majority of the House voted in favor of a bipartisan bill imposing financial and travel sanctions against Turkey - H.R. 4695 PACT (Protecting Against Conflict by Turkey) Act. The Senate must now pass this bill. Action: 1. Contact your Senators and ask them to support H.R. 4695 PACT Act. 2. See how your Member of Congress voted, and then contact them to say thank you or to complain. Dreamers The DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program protects people who arrived in the U.S. as undocumented minors, shielding them from deportation and giving them a path to legal residency. The TPS (Temporary Protected Status) program protects immigrants from certain countries which are suffering from natural disasters or from serious political unrest and allows them to remain in the U.S. until the situation in their home country has improved. Over a million people are in these two programs. The Trump administration has tried to roll back or eliminate these protections, and while court injunctions are keeping Trump temporarily at bay, these programs are at risk. On June 4, the House passed H.R. 6 American Dream and Promise Act of 2019, which provides permanent legal protections and a pathway to citizenship for DACA and TPS recipients. The bill now moves to the Senate. Action: Contact your Senators and ask them to support H.R. 6 American Dream and Promise Act of 2019. Food for Thought Read about this pernicious trend in American business and financing. It takes less than 10 minutes to read, although a lot longer to get one’s mind around, never mind figuring out any kind of solution. http://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/november-december-2019/the-washington-redskins-even-more-awful-than-you-thought/ Action: Read the article. Family Separation, reprise On September 17, we contacted our Senators, asking them to pass H.R. 2203 Homeland Security Improvement Act, which had already been passed by the House. The bill, which establishes protections for migrants, especially children, is now being considered by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Action: 1. If either of your Senators sits on the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, contact them and ask them to make sure the bill is speedily brought to the full Senate for a vote. OR If neither of your Senators sits on the Committee, contact the Chair of the Committee, Ron Johnson (R-WI), and ask him to hurry the bill to the floor of the Senate for a vote. 2. Tell Mitch McConnell that you want the Senate to vote on H.R. 2203 SOON! Turkey On October 16, the House delivered a bipartisan rebuke to Trump over his decision to pull out the U.S. military in Syria, leaving the Kurds at the mercy of Turkish forces and opening the area to further incursion by ISIS. We must now pass legislation imposing sanctions against Turkey and providing humanitarian assistance to our allies, the Kurds. Action: Contact your Senators and your Member of Congress asking them to pass legislation which will impose strong sanctions against Turkey and provide emergency humanitarian relief to the Kurds. U.S. Senate: Senators Find Your Representative | House.gov Junk Insurance Trump has changed regulations to allow individuals to buy “junk insurance.” Junk plans are cheaper and are thus attractive to healthier consumers who are looking for a way to fulfil their requirement to buy insurance, but these policies discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions, do not cover many basic services such as prescription drugs and hospitalization, and have extremely high deductibles. Trump’s plan is to allow consumers to purchase these plans for up to three years, This will drive up costs for everyone else by removing healthier people from the pool of consumers in the for-real insurance market. It will also put those who do buy junk policies at risk of medical bankruptcy. The Senate is planning to use the Congressional Review Act to overturn this rule change. Action: Contact your Senators and ask them to vote in favor of S.J. Res. 52 to block the sale of junk health insurance policies. Election Interference Congress is due to vote this week on H.R. 4617, the SHIELD (Stopping Harmful Interference in Elections for a Lasting Democracy) Act. This act would amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 by:
Action: Contact your Member of Congress (preferably by phone, as the vote may be today), and ask them to support H.R. 4617, SHIELD Act. If they are a cosponsor, thank them. How Much Longer? DT has gone too far. Well, he went too far about 70 years ago, but this flipping off the female astronauts is insane. He can deny it all he wants. Who scratches their head with their middle finger? Action: Time to call on your Member of Congress again to demand impeachment. Our children are growing up watching this demented yob and possibly thinking, “This is how it’s done.”. No bueno. Tongass National Forest, reprise Trump is intent on despoiling Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, the largest intact temperate forest in the world. Tongass covers over 16 million acres, and under Clinton it was (and currently still is) protected by the “Roadless Rule,” which prohibits logging and the building of roads within the forest. Trump’s USDA Forest Service wants to remove half of Tongass from protection, which would open the area up to the danger of clear cutting. Although Governor Dunleavy and Senator Murkowski are in favor of the rule change, saying that Alaska’s economy is being stymied by the limitation on logging, in fact a very small proportion of Alaska’s economy depends on logging, the most significant sectors being fisheries and tourism. The USDA will be accepting public comments on six alternative plans, ranging from not changing the rule at all to their preferred plan of unrestricted open season on half of Tongass. Action: If you didn’t already email or mail your comments to USDA (or even if you did), the public comment page on the USDA site is now open. You can leave your comments on this page. (Scroll down the page to find the form.) Share the page on social media. https://cara.ecosystem-management.org/Public//CommentInput?Project=54511 |
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