Over the weekend, the Democratic leadership let the CDC's national health emergency moratorium on evictions expire, just as we face a frightening new upsurge in COVID infections and transmission rates.
Yesterday, in an emergency measure, the CDC issued an order extending the moratorium through October 3 for individuals who cannot afford rent and/or who face homelessness in areas that the CDC defines as having “substantial or high rates of community transmission levels” of COVID-19. While this mitigates the disastrous failure of the Democrats to protect those most vulnerable to evictions, it’s not nearly enough to counter the economic effects of the pandemic. And given that the Supreme Court seems to have ruled that only Congress has the right to impose an eviction moratorium, Congress needs to act before the CDC’s order is litigated and potentially overturned.
Meanwhile, Manchin's Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework (BIF) has now reached the Senate floor as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill (BIB). It is a sad shadow of what President Biden originally proposed. Our Members of Congress (MoC) need to amend it and prevent Republicans from making it worse.
In order to gain some Republican support so it could be called “bipartisan,” the negotiators agreed that all BIB programs must be fully paid for without deficit spending. They also stripped out Biden's proposals for new revenue streams and a rollback of some Trump tax cuts. And they eliminated increased funding for the IRS that would allow it to recover $100B by cracking down on illegal tax evasion by the same rich corporations and wealthy individuals who benefited from the Trump tax cuts.
All the provisions that Biden proposed for helping people and families (“human infrastructure”) were dropped, leaving only construction and repair projects that, while important and necessary, are favored by corporate interests eager to reap hefty profits from government contracts. And now Republicans are demanding that the longstanding “prevailing wage” standard be eliminated for projects funded by BIB – meaning a race to the bottom for wages and working conditions as corporations turn funding into higher profits for shareholders rather than the “good-paying union jobs” Biden originally proposed.
Contact your Members of Congress to insist that they extend the eviction moratorium, restore IRS funding to ensure that everyone pays their fair share of taxes, and adamantly reject Republican efforts to eliminate the “prevailing wage” standard.
Continue the fight for voting rights - prevent election subversion!
Last week, the Department of Justice (DOJ) launched a task force to handle violent threats against election officials, which have increased since the 2020 election. A Brennan Center for Justice survey of election officials this April found that nearly 1 in 6 respondents received threats of violence, and almost 1 in 3 said they felt unsafe because of their job. We haven’t seen this kind of violence against election officials since the end of the Reconstruction Era. The violent acts that inspired the creation of the new DOJ task force reinforce the urgency of protecting our voting infrastructure by passing the For the People Act (HR.1/S.1).
In addition, last week Senate Leader Schumer called in several key Senators, including Manchin, to discuss a more limited Voting Rights Bill. While Manchin’s original compromise didn’t include it, any compromise bill must include prohibitions in the “Preventing Election Subversion Act” making it a crime to harass or intimidate election workers, setting mandatory distance minimums for poll watchers, and banning partisan bodies, such as state legislatures or election boards, from removing local election supervisors without cause.
Contact your Senators and tell them to prevent election subversion!
The Recall Election starts soon! Are you ready to vote?
The recall is upon us! Right-wingers are trying to remove our Democratic Governor from office, and we need to turn out to stop them. Make a plan now to vote in the recall election next month.
Start by checking your registration, and registering to vote if you need to, so you can receive your ballot in the mail on or around Monday, August 16. Read more about the recall election on our blog!
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All are welcome to join our events!
ISF Federal Working Group meeting (note updated date): Thursday, August 12, 7:30–9 PM. Register here for a Zoom meeting to help us develop strategies to influence our Members of Congress and the Biden administration to enact a progressive agenda.
Text Bank to #StopTheRecall with Swing Left SF: TODAY Wednesday, August 4, 2- 4 PM.
Join Swing Left San Francisco and Swing Left Peninsula to oppose the Republican Recall of Governor Newsom. Register here.
Phone Bank with San Franciscans Against the Republican-Led Recall of Gov. Newsom IN PERSON at Manny's: Saturday, August 7, 10 AM - 1 PM. Register here to join the San Francisco Democratic Party and grassroots Democrats as we make calls to ask voters to vote NO on the Republican-led recall of our Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom.
Location: Manny’s, 3092 16th St. (corner of 16th St. & Valencia St.)
About this week’s photo
If you’ve seen our newsletter posts on Twitter and Facebook, you might have noticed that we include a photo or graphic with each issue. This week’s graphic is a photo by Leah Millis for Reuters of signs left behind after a gathering protecting a tenant from eviction in Maryland in August of 2020. The image is featured in yesterday’s article from Reuters about the revised moratorium extension.
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Keep Fighting,
The Indivisible SF Team
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