Tell the EPA to keep dangerous chemicals out of our water!

Sunday Dose of Democracy:

VIDEO OF THE DAY: Trump humiliates himself in unhinged commencement speech
The president gave the customary commencement speech at West Point, and predictably went entirely off the rails. He compared himself to Al Capone, praised foreign dictators, brought up his favorite tangent asserting that stealth planes are literally invisible and went on a bizarre tirade about rival real estate developer Bill Leavitt's divorces, trophy wives, and yachts. He then left without shaking the hand of a single cadet. Now that's what we call #leadership.

Take Action: Demand Congress protect our veterans from DOGE cuts!

The Democratic Party is literally dying
Jeet Heer, The New Republic: "In theory, the Democratic Party is a political organization aimed at gaining power and implementing an agenda. In practice, the Democrats more closely resemble a hospice, if not a funeral home. An inordinately large number of party leaders are so old and infirm they are at death’s door. This is most notoriously true of the party’s most recent standard-bearer, former president Joe Biden. A recent media controversy over a new book alleging that Biden’s inner circle had covered up his infirmity was overshadowed on Sunday by revelations that he suffers from an aggressive form of prostate cancer. On Wednesday, Democratic Representative Gerry Connolly—a lightning rod in the debates over his party’s gerontocracy when in December 2024 he defeated the much younger Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to be the top Democrat in the House Oversight Committee—died of cancer at age 74. Connolly’s cancer had been made public last November. His victory over AOC—who is nearly four decades his junior, free of life-threatening diseases, and one of the most telegenic of elected officials in modern politics—was a dramatic illustration of how much the Democrats value seniority above all other considerations. Connolly’s brief tenure as ranking Democrat in the Oversight Committee abruptly ended in April after his cancer prevented him from doing the job. Sadly, instead of being a career highlight, Connolly’s truncated time at that post relegated him to the growing list of American public figures who didn’t know when to quit. In a post, the political analyst Lakshya Jain listed some startling facts showing just how sharply elected Democrats skew towards the elderly: Three of the 215 House Democrats have died this year, all from states that Trump won (TX/AZ) or have a Republican Governor (TX/VA). Six House Democrats have died since April 2024. The last eight House members to die in office have been Democrats, going back to 2022. 11 of the 14 House members over 80 are Democrats. Jain is right to insist that the Democratic Party gerontocracy is a result of choice, not just coincidence. While both Republicans and Democrats have elderly members, Democrats in particular have elevated seniority to a governing principle, meaning that party leadership is dominated by the aged. Their devotion to seniority makes clear that gerontocracy is merely a symptom of a deeper issue: The Democrats have no guiding ideology or principles holding them together. The party is a heterogenous coalition of centrists and progressives that has failed to define a core goal. Even anti-Trumpism, which served as an effective glue for holding the faction-ridden party together from 2016 to 2024, is no longer effective. In a democracy, politicians exist to serve the public; the public does not exist to serve politicians. It’s a sign of democratic decline if politicians live and die like warlords, clinging to every last ounce of power. Democrats need to define what they stand for as a party so their elected officials can once more be genuine public servants and not mere warlords."

Take Action: Demand Congress save our Head Start programs!

Iowa mechanic fights to put a spine back in the Senate
Nathan Sage for Senate: The GOP Senate’s utter refusal to do ANYTHING to stop Trump from trampling our rights and the rule of law makes it clear we need to put a spine back in Washington. That’s why mechanic, marine veteran, and local Iowa sports host Nathan Sage is launching a bid to unseat Trump-enabler Joni Ernst, fight for the needs of working-class Americans, and be the xxxxxx against the tides of fascism unleashed by Trump and his cronies. Will you chip in to help jump-start his campaign? A new poll has him leading by two points, 47-45!

The woke right wants to cancel Ms Rachel
Meagan Day, Jacobin: "A new group of big-feeling-intolerant snowflakes has emerged: the Right and the pro-Israel lobby, as demonstrated by their recent attacks on Ms Rachel herself. The popular children’s content creator, whose given name is Rachel Griffin Accurso, has become increasingly outspoken about violence against children in Palestine. Her advocacy consists entirely of observing the scale of Palestinian children’s suffering and making simple statements about its moral indefensibility. In response, conservatives are clutching their pearls over the immeasurable harm caused by her opinions. Since Israel began its military campaign in retaliation for Hamas’s October 7 attack, over fifteen thousand children have been killed in Gaza. The Israeli military has recently intensified ground operations and aerial bombardments, killing one hundred people in a single night last week, many of them children. One would expect a creator who devotes her life to children to be opposed to mass violence against them on this scale. But for the woke right, the harm incurred by children in Gaza is nothing compared to the harm incurred by supporters of Israel who are forced to encounter uncomfortable truths on Accurso’s social media feeds. The controversy began in May 2024, when Accurso announced a fundraiser for children in Gaza and other war zones. This prompted a wave of intense pro-Israel criticism that surprised and rattled her. But in a tearful video posted to Instagram, she reasoned that the public disapproval was a small price to pay for using her massive platforms to speak about the toll Israel’s offensive has taken on children. For the last year, she has continued to post about the conditions Palestinian children face to an audience of fifteen million on YouTube and ten million across TikTok and Instagram. These posts, which appear alongside potty training tips and phonics lessons, eschew geopolitical opinion for universalist moral appeals like 'We can’t let children starve. That’s not who we are' and 'We all know not to bomb and kill and starve children.' It’s a stark indicator of our times that pro-Israel forces so strenuously disagree. Her stated ethical motivations haven’t stopped the Right from branding Ms Rachel a covert operative pushing a sinister ideological agenda. In March, the New York Post ran an article about Accurso in print titled “Woke Brainwasher.” Its online headline was 'The left keeps coming after our kids — now via YouTube’s Ms. Rachel,' deploying the Right’s tactic du jour: implicitly or explicitly draw an analogy between ideas it opposes and 'grooming' or child predation. Pro-Israel organizations have taken the paranoia to even greater extremes. The organization StopAntisemitism penned an open letter to Donald Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, calling for an investigation into Accurso for alleged violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Several other Zionist groups echoed the allegations of Hamas funding. When the New York Times asked Accurso whether she is funded by Hamas, she responded, 'This accusation is not only absurd, it’s patently false.' But you never know which child content creators are rolling in Hamas cash, which is why you have to sleep with one eye open."

Trump’s barbarism is turning his biggest strength into a liability
Osita Nwanevu, The Guardian: "If you can bear to hear it, there are still more than 1,300 days remaining in the Trump administration. That’s an interminably long time given all the havoc the president has been able to wreak since January alone; the chaos and cruelty of the term so far also happen to have used up his political capital remarkably quickly. The New York Times average of polls, which found him at 52% approval on inauguration day, had him at 51% disapproval on Wednesday. That collapse is less a problem for Trump specifically ⁠– assuming, perhaps optimistically, that he won’t appear on a ballot again ⁠– than it is for the Republican party, which will have to answer for the mess he’s made in next year’s midterms and beyond. And one of the challenges they seem likely to face is a changed public opinion landscape on immigration ⁠– a strength that Trump’s barbarism, just as in his first term, seems to be turning into a liability. While it remains his strongest issue, polls have shown the public’s confidence in Trump on immigration declining steadily since January ⁠– averages suggest the public is newly and evenly split on his handling of it and some polls taken around the 100-day mark even found an outright majority of Americans disapproving. It’s no mystery why. The shock-and-awe campaign the administration is waging against immigrants legal and not has produced a steady stream of headlines that sound awful to all but Stephen Miller and the nativist fanatics driving Trump’s agenda. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents supposedly on the prowl for the thugs and thieves who’ve ruined communities and degraded our public infrastructure would be better off kicking down the doors of Congress than smashing the windows of asylum seekers. And, of course, if preserving law and order means that criminals who are sucking our public resources dry and who pose a danger to women ought to be dealt with harshly, we should insist on bringing the convict, grifter, and accused rapist in the White House to justice. The chief priority of his administration is terrorizing people for committing the crime of coming to this country and working harder for it than he ever has. His agenda here is corrosive to our values. It is degrading to our society. It materially profits no one. In important ways, it hurts us all. More and more Americans are wising up to this. Fewer and fewer are willing to stand for it."

Take Action: Denounce Trump's attacks on immigrants!

GOP lawmakers plot to kick millions off their healthcare
Care Can’t Wait: Lawmakers are coming for Medicaid — the program that covers more than 1 in 5 Americans. We’re talking kids, seniors, people with disabilities, caregivers, and millions of everyday folks who rely on it just to get by. The people who literally keep households running are being shut out of basic health coverage. Without Medicaid, essential doctor visits, medications, and basic care is out of reach for so many. Click here to tell your reps it’s time to fix that mess and DEMAND they take action to protect our healthcare!