John,

I am excited to tell you about my new legislative push in Congress. I’ll give you a hint: it involves fair pay, climate change and never letting orange skies become the norm.

If you live in California (or Hawaii or many other states) you know how bad wildfires can get. Families fleeing their homes. Kids getting sick from the smoke. The effects are absolutely terrible. And yet I’m incredibly frustrated that Congress is doing very little to actually help.

A few years ago I found out something inexcusable: federal firefighters on the frontlines putting out these massive fires weren’t even making minimum wage in California. 18 hour days, living in remote areas for weeks away from their families, putting their lives on the line and they get $12/hour. No wonder we had a massive shortage of federal firefighters.

I knew we had to do better. So I fought to get them a pay increase and better health benefits for the first time in decades - and we got it done!

But now the bad news. The pay increase we negotiated was temporary and it expires on September 30th. That means without more legislative action our firefighters would actually receive a PAY CUT. The National Forest Service estimates up to 50% of our 11,000 federal firefighters could leave the force. Think about the safety ramifications of that.

That’s why I introduced emergency legislation, the Wildland Firefighter Paycheck Protection Act, to make this pay increase permanent. We even have Republicans co-sponsoring the bill. Now we need the full Congress to get on board and pass this before September 30th.

I’m hoping to show a swell of support for this bill (especially in California, but also across the country). Would you sign on as a citizen co-sponsor and tell Congress we have to pass this bill and prioritize fighting wildfires?

I’m hopeful we can get this done,

Josh