Dear friends,
When I was seven, I got my first pair of glasses. It was as if someone had washed all the windows and suddenly, I could see clearly.
I still like those moments when a fog lifts, or the tears stop, or I clean my glasses(!) and things get clearer.
As we wait for the folks who are trying to take down democracy to stop insisting that other people were trying to steal the 2020 election, here’s a sliver of clarity: one of the local officials who participated in the insurrection on January 6 has been removed from office by a New Mexico judge.
The county commissioner who lost his job, Couy Griffin, is also the founder of Cowboys for Trump. Griffin was convicted of criminal trespass when he disregarded the barricades and pushed his way into the Capitol.
“This just went from being theoretical to being something that is legally recognized and legally possible,” said Noah Bookbinder, director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonpartisan watchdog organization that filed suit against Mr. Griffin on behalf of a group of New Mexico residents. “That’s hugely significant. It could have real implications for protecting the country from people associated with the effort to overturn the last election.”
This isn’t the first time that a legal challenge under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment has been made against an officeholder involved the attempted coup, but it’s the first success.
Call on Congress to block insurrectionists from serving in Congress. This action has been updated!
There isn’t yet a date for the next January 6 Committee hearing, but they have been mighty busy gathering evidence. Jamie Raskin has set his sights on an array of potential witnesses, including Mike Pence, Ginni Thomas, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
The two primetime hearings had huge audiences — 18-20 million viewers — and I believe they are having a clarifying effect on how we tell the story of that day and the events that got us there.
Call on the TV networks to show the next hearing during primetime! This quick action comes from Courage California.
I often sing the praises of young people. Nothing brings me more joy than the smalls — babies and little kids in the park, on the street, and on the subway — and nothing gives me more hope than folks in their teens and twenties who are inheriting a mess and figuring out how to salvage humanity.
In 2016, [Lefteris Arapakis] launched a nonprofit focused on sea cleanup. Once the fishers brought the plastic ashore, he would recycle it and pay them for their trouble. Six years into the project, he has signed up more than half of Greece’s large-scale fishing fleet — hundreds of ships — to pull in the plastic they gather as they ply the Mediterranean. This year, after Arapakis spread his efforts across Greece and much of Italy, he expects to gather nearly 200 tons of plastic.
The problem is enormous, of course. AND that’s not a reason to do nothing.
Here’s something we (kids, too!) can do in NYS to make sure that our governor prioritizes funding to implement the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act:
Sign up to participate in Thursday’s call relay, organized by NY Renews; there’s a phone number, a simple script, and you choose a time for your call!
The tentative settlement prohibits the company from marketing to youth, from funding education in schools and misrepresenting the level of nicotine in its products. Juul had already discontinued several marketing practices and withdrawn many of its flavored pods that appealed to teenagers, under public pressure from lawmakers, parents and health experts a few years ago when the vaping crisis was at a peak.
One website that sells thousands of vape liquids still markets one of the banned flavors — sunset sherbert — which is a best seller.
The FDA needs our help to see the problem more clearly.
Use the online portal to report potential tobacco-related violations, including the sale of tobacco and e-cigarette products to minors to the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products.
An Appeals Court issued a temporary stay, so the products remain on the market. The FDA is pursuing additional review of the chemical additives.
Contact the FDA to ask for an update on the review of chemical additives to e-cigarettes.
The Dobbs decision, which opened the way to abortion bans in many states, has helped to clarify the dramatic importance of voting.
The states with the biggest surges in women registering post-Dobbs were deep red Kansas and Idaho, with Louisiana emerging among the top five states. Key battleground states also showed large increases, including Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio, which all have statewide races in which the fate of abortion access could be decided in November.
Read Tom Bonier’s piece about the surge of female voter registration.
Republicans aren’t pulling in the big campaign dollars. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, under Rick Scott’s leadership, was looking for new online donors.
The Republican group entered August with just $23.2 million on hand, less than half of what the Senate Democratic committee had ahead of the final intense phase of the midterm elections.
So-called ‘dark money’ has been poisoning our political system. It helps when we can see what’s going on.
Call on the president to require federal contractors to disclose political spending. This action is from Public Citizen.
with love,
L