|
Use Indivisible’s new Stop TrumpCare June toolkit to plan your coordinated visits and sit-ins at your Senator’s office.
Michigan U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg says God will “take care of' climate change.” Read the Detroit Free Press.
See John Oliver’s Take on Gerrymandering.
Read Justices Agree to Hear Major Challenges to Partisan Gerrymandering.
The U.S. Has One of World's Worst Health Disparities. Read The Atlantic.The U.S. has one of the largest income-based health disparities in the world, according to a new paper in the journal Health Affairs. Among the poorest third of Americans studied, 38.2 percent report being in “fair or poor” health, compared with 12.3 percent of the richest third. Only Chile and Portugal have a larger income-based gap in the health status of their citizens.
How 40 Michigan Families Made Donations of $44 Million in the last Political Cycle. Read Michigan Campaign Finance Network.
The Case for Immigrants as Satire in the New York Times. Neo-con, Bret Stephens, makes wonderful satire arguing for deportation of native born Americans rather than those born elsewhere.
A Nation of Immigrants or Intolerants? Read the editorial by The Free Press editorial page editor.
The perils of “Governing by Spreadsheet.” An automated system put in place by Gov. Rick Snyder falsely accused nearly 50,000 Michiganders who'd applied for unemployment benefits between 2013 and 2015 of fraud, using a flawed system that, fundamentally, presumed applicants were liars. Read in The Free Press.
Education Department closes transgender student cases as it pushes to scale back civil rights investigations. Read The Washington Post article.
Science Calls Out Jeff Sessions on Medical Marijuana and the "Historic Drug Epidemic." Places where the U.S. has legalized medical marijuana have lower rates of opioid overdose deaths. Scientific American
Six members of President Trump’s advisory council on HIV/AIDS have resigned. Its members are concerned that the Trump administration doesn’t seem have a strategy, writing in an op-ed published in Newsweek that they can no longer be effective under a “president who simply does not care.” The Verge
Rural divide: The political gap in America is more cultural than economic, new poll finds. Small-town Americans share economic challenges with residents of big cities, but their views frequently diverge on questions of culture and values. They are at odds on immigration, helping in part to explain Donald Trump's election. The Washington Post
Imagining what kind of candidates would be drawn to a job in a part-time Legislature
We may grumble at our inexperienced lawmakers, but most of them genuinely want to do the right thing and even under term limits have accumulated some experience. If we flush that away, what remains to take up the slack? The Bridge
🌐🌐🌐🌐🌐🌐🌐🌐🌐
Trump’s Presidency - insights by Ellen Halter
Many of us remember the quivering moments following the presidential election when we faced the reality of Trump’s victory, a man we viewed as crazy, whose finger would have first crack at the nuclear button. Immediately, the news media reported his right wing appointees like Steve Bannon and Mike Flynn. With clenched fists, many of us vowed to fight the rise of the right and the alt-right. In a flurry of commitment, we called representatives, gave money to special elections, ACLU and Common Cause.
Nearly five months since his inauguration, many of our worst fears have materialized. Trump managed to push through the Senate a right wing Supreme Court justice and filled his cabinet with people who had reputations for wanting to dismantle the very agencies they now head.
But other than initiating a botched raid on Yemen, there has been no nuclear war. Not yet.
My point is that it is too easy to watch our nightly “Who Done It?” at CNN and MSNBC, cross our fingers and hope for impeachment. Complacency is our worst liability and the strongest weapon of the right. Nor can we rely on Trump’s dwindling support. According to Claire Malone at fivethirtyeight.com, Trump retains a solid base of support, people who approve of his handling of health care and the economy and who believe the media has blown up Trump’s relationship with the Russians.
Trump also has a solid base in Congress, who in the interest of passing their conservative agenda on tax reform and repealing Obamacare, are unwilling to tamper with his presidency.
In other words, if we don’t keep up our fight, our democracy will continue to lose.
|
