• Half the electorate doesn't vote. If your friends and family don't vote, urge them to do so, even if they disagree with you. The way to stop fascists is to (legally) overwhelm them at the ballot box in the same way Alabama voters rejected Roy Moore.
• Demand Congress reinstate the Voting Rights Act. Urge your Governor and State legislators to pass laws ensuring everyone legally eligible to vote is allowed to do so. America must abolish unconstitutional "Jim Crow"-style laws meant to discriminate against voters by age, skin color, or income. (Sign the petitions at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU); Change.org; Moveon.org; People for the American Way; and Public Citizen.)
• Insist Congress, your Governor, and your State legislators to implement the Brennan Center for Justice's recommedations to secure our voting infrastructure from hackers. (The Huffington Post reports that fifteen States still use eleven-year-old easily hacked paperless voting machines.) Congress and State legislators must require paper ballots in every election and mandate that every close election must be recounted by non-partisan experts. Passing the Securing America’s Voting Equipment (SAVE) Act, the Secure Elections Act, the Election Security Act, and the Protecting Our Democracy Act are the first steps. (Sign the petition.)
• Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands have set up countermeasures to fight cyberattacks and disinformation meant to manipulate their elections. The United States must follow their example.
• Make sure you are registered to vote before Election Day. Don't take anything for granted. Register at vote.org.
• The Electoral College was created over two hundred years ago to limit the power of populous States to elect a President without the consent of smaller States. In modern times, the Electoral College has caused the very situation it was created to prevent. Instead of a few large States forcing their choice on the smaller States the way the founders feared, a few swing States now force their choice on all the others. Because of the Electoral College, some Americans' votes have far greater influence than others -- because of what part of the country they live in. (For instance: a voter in Wyoming -- the nation's least populous State -- has five times the power of a voter in California, the nation's most populous State.) That's hardly fair. Insist Congress pass a Constitutional amendment abolishing the Electoral College and electing the President by popular vote. Write your State legislators and demand they pass such an amendment. Another way to accomplish this is to ask your Governor and State legislators to pass a law awarding the State's electoral votes to the candidate who wins the national popular vote. (Sign the petitions at Demand Progress, Moveon.org, and National Popular Vote.)
• Write Congress, your Governor, and your State legislators demanding they outlaw partisan gerrymandering. At present, our Congressional districts are more gerrymandered than at any other time in history. Many State legislators drew those districts to guarantee that politicians of their party will always win the general elections. Since the other party can't win, the only real competition takes place in the primaries between politicians from the same party. The only way for those politicians to win primaries is to appeal to the party's most extreme voters, regardless of what the real majority wants or what is good for the district.
  How did this happen? According to David Daley's book Ratf**ked, Republican legislators across all the states where they held legislative majorities worked together in a coordinated, national effort to draw Congressional districts that favored their party by packing Democratic voters into as few districts as possible. "Nationwide," Daley writes, "1.4 million more Americans cast their votes for Democratic U.S. House candidates than Republican candidates [in 2012], and yet Republicans still came away with a 33-seat advantage in the House. This lopsided spread allowed... Republican leaders to claim a mandate... even without a majority of the voters." In Ohio, "Democrats got more votes than Republicans in races for the state House -- but Republicans commanded a 60-39 supermajority of seats, despite getting less support at the ballot box." Wisconsin voters "cast 174,000 more votes for assembly Democrats than assembly Republicans, yet Republicans won 60 percent of the seats."
  The Atlantic reported that the same thing happened in Michigan. "In 2018, Democrats won an outright majority of the vote in Michigan. That sufficed to carry Gretchen Whitmer to the governor's mansion, but not to overcome Michigan's deep pro-Republican gerrymander. When the coronavirus struck, the Michigan government was divided between a majority-rule governor who favored aggressive action, and a minority-rule legislature skeptical of lockdowns and masking. This divide is what brought armed men into the Michigan legislature last April seeking to intimidate Democratic lawmakers -- and what ultimately inspired the plot to kidnap Whitmer."
  Throughout American history, voters have rejected politicians who refuse to work with the opposition by voting them out of office in favor of candidates willing to compromise. However, after 2010, Republican state legislators used gerrymandering to create uncompetitive or "safe" districts drawn along party lines. Politicians from these radicalized districts cannot compromise with the other side, even if it's in the district's best interest. If they do, the partisan voters will reject them in the next primary in favor of an uncompromising extremist. (Trump used this to finish purging moderates from the Republican party after he was voted out of office in 2020.) Also, with so many "safe" seats that Democrats have no chance of winning, billionaire Republican donors can pour all their contributions into winning the few competitive seats.
  For most of American history, legislators of both parties worked together and compromised for the good of the country. The Republican plan to gerrymander themselves into a permanent legislative majority even when most voters reject them had the unintended side-effect of purging the party of centrists and moderates. Gerrymandering destroyed the American tradition of legislative compromise and made extremism the new "normal." Abolishing gerrymandering is the only way to stop the extremists controlling the Republican party. Until our country fixes gerrymandering, it will be impossible to get "back to normal."
  Urge your State legislators to draw common-sense Congressional districts that don't favor a political party. In Iowa, for instance, a non-partisan Legislative Service Bureau draws district lines. According to Daley, Iowa's strict law requires those districts to "divide the population evenly [with no] split counties [or] split cities. No political data [can] be used. Incumbents... receive no special protection." Whenever possible, vote for candidates opposing gerrymandering to serve in the State legislature and support legislation that eliminates gerrymandering altogether. (Sign the petitions at MoveOn and DemandProgress.)
  In 2020, a group of middle school students developed a mathematical algorithm to detect and fix gerrymandering. Urge your state legislature to adopt the students' plan so our voting districts are fair to everyone.
• Tell Congress, your Governor, and your State legislators to strengthen the penalties for candidates who violate campaign finance laws. Candidates who break the law must be disqualified and removed from the ballot, and their campaigns must pay for the printing of new ballots. Charging them fines is not enough. Those who break the law while running for office must not be allowed to serve in government.
• Ask Congress to combine Election Day and Veterans' Day into a single federal holiday. Our veterans fought and died to preserve our God-given rights. One way we can honor them is to hold all non-primary elections on November 11. (Sign the petition.)
• In many States, the official in charge of supervising elections (usually the Secretary of State) often takes a second job working for one of the candidates. Insist that Congress, your Governor, and your State legislators make this blatant conflict of interest illegal. (Sign the petition.)
• Brian Kemp became Georgia's Secretary of State in 2010. He spent the next eight years removing over two million voters from the rolls -- then ran for Governor and won by 55,000 votes. Tell Congress, your Governor, and your State legislators to make this blatant conflict of interest illegal. If a State's election supervisor runs for another office, he or she must resign. No official should have the power to oversee their own election.
• Voter fraud (including voting twice) is illegal, and people who do that go to prison. It should also be a crime to purge innocent American citizens from voting rolls, with the penalty of one year in prison for every person wrongfully removed. If Brian Kemp faced a year in prison for every innocent citizen he tried to stop from voting, he'd think twice before doing it.
• Tell Congress, your Governor, and your State legislators to lower the voting age to sixteen. If someone is responsible enough to drive a car, they're responsible enough to vote. (Sign the petition.) The voting age is sixteen in Austria, Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Malta, and Nicaragua. It's absurd that people in other countries have more voting rights than we do in the United States of America.
• Rhode Island and California passed laws requiring all candidates for President to release ten years of their tax returns in order to appear on the ballot. Other States must follow their example. Likewise, every President must continue releasing their tax returns every year they're in office. Tell Congress to pass the Protecting Our Democracy Act.
• Tell Congress to pass the Foreign Influence Reporting in Elections bill that would require campaigns to report any foreign manipulation to the FBI and the FEC. (Sign the petition.)
• Maine instituted ranked-choice voting, where voters select their first, second, and third choices from a field of candidates. Other States can follow this example.
• Tell Congress, your Governor, and your State legislators to establish criminal penalties for anyone who conspires to steal, undermine, or overturn a free and fair election. Candidates who do so must be automatically rendered ineligible and must be removed from the ballot.
• Tell Congress to pass a law making it a crime for a president who loses a re-election campaign to claim he won after the recount process has been completed and all 50 States have certified that he lost. If a president does this, he should automatically be made ineligible from serving in government ever again.
• Urge Congress to pass the Youth Voting Rights Act. The bill would enforce the 26th Amendment, allow student IDs to be used for voter identification, and help college students vote on campus.
  
• At the federal level, vote for candidates willing to impeach and remove Trump. Though the Democrats are far from ideal, it's mathematically impossible for any other opposition party to gain a congressional majority. Voters must vote anti-Trump Democrats into power and then force them to act. If we the people don't push for impeachment, it will never happen.
  In 1998, then-Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr recommended that the House of Representatives impeach then-President Bill Clinton over misconduct in his private life. Even though the majority of Americans disagreed with Starr, the Republican-controlled House impeached Clinton anyway. This backfired. Clinton had behaved disgracefully, but he had not committed "high crimes and misdemeanors." Clinton was acquitted in the Senate, the Democrats gained seats in the next Congressional election, and Clinton was more popular after his impeachment than before.
  Twenty years later, Donald Trump:

  • Covered up Russian dictator Vladimir Putin's manipulation of the 2016 presidential election;
  • Routinely broke campaign finance regulations and formed an advisory committee to keep minorities from voting;
  • Violated the Constitution's ban on receiving foreign emoluments;
  • Obstructed justice by firing FBI Director James Comey and Attorney General Jeff Sessions;
  • Broke the law by lying to Congress;
  • Threatened witnesses;
  • Told the Justice Department to prosecute his political opponents;
  • Illegally ordered the imprisonment of anyone requesting asylum along the American-Mexican border, and ordered their children taken to separate prisons hundreds of miles away;
  • Broke the Attorney General Succession Act by naming an "interim Attorney General" who had not been confirmed by the Senate; and
  • Tried to extort the President of Ukraine into helping with his re-election campaign.

  Republican leaders -- many of whom opposed Trump during the 2016 primaries -- have been appeasing him ever since he won the nomination.
  For nearly three years, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and her colleagues were afraid to even mention the word "impeachment" as they thought it would backfire, the way the Republican impeachment of Clinton backfired. Instead, they also pursued appeasement under the guise of "bringing the country together."
  What's the difference? Unlike Clinton, Trump actually has committed high crimes and misdemeanors. For instance, Trump's covering up the Russian cyberattack and the investigation into it constitutes obstruction of justice. His refusal to do anything to secure our election infrastructure against future cyberattacks constitutes dereliction of duty and aiding the enemy as an accessory after the fact. (Putin stated publicly that he will attack the 2020 election.) Trump's imprisonment of innocent people seeking asylum violates the Fourth, Fifth and Eighth Amendments. Furthermore, taking immigrant children from their parents constitutes conspiracy to commit child abuse and violates a court order.
  Some Democrats hope to win the 2020 elections by using the same strategies that failed in 2002, 2004, 2010, 2014 and 2016. They think that popular anger with Trump will convince Americans to vote for Democrats even if the Democrats don't do anything to oppose him.
  Though the opposition must not sink to Trump's level, neither must we allow his obstruction of justice and child abuse to go unchallenged. Appeasing Trump will not appeal to Trump voters. It only convinces progressive, moderate, and independent voters that the Democrats won't fight for them. If voters don't see any difference between the Democrats and Republicans, they won't see any point in voting and will stay home on Election Day. That's exactly what Trump wants.
  Democrats must pursue Trump's impeachment and removal from office, if for no other reason than his refusal to secure our election infrastructure in light of Putin's cyberattacks. Putin tried (and failed) to hack into American government computers and remove names from the lists of registered voters. Even though Congress, the FBI, the Justice Department, and all sixteen American intelligence agencies confirmed the cyberattacks happened, Trump has gone to great lengths to deny this and discredit anyone who says otherwise. Trump doesn't care about democracy and fair elections. If Americans don't secure our voting infrastructure, Putin's next cyberattack will be successful, and future elections will be a sham -- with Vladimir Putin pulling the strings.
  Democrats can win by fighting for American values -- but in order to win, Democrats must fight.

• In the 2010 "Citizens United" case, the Alito Court infamously struck down campaign finance laws from the 1907 Tillman Act to the 2002 McCain-Feingold Act. Write Congress and insist they reinstate those campaign finance laws. Corporate and foreign contributions to candidates must be outlawed. (Watch former Labor Secretary Robert Reich's video. Politicians must vote in the interests of their constituents -- not businesses from other countries.) Congress and the State governments must have the authority to place reasonable limits on political donations and campaign spending. If that doesn't work, write Congress and your State legislators demanding they amend the Constitution. (Sign the petition at Moveon.org. Write to Congress at Public Citizen. Support the We The People Amendment.) In 2022, the State of Minnesota outlawed campaign contributions from foreign corporations. Other States must follow their example.
• Write Congress, your Governor, and your State legislators in support of a Constitutional amendment forbidding the people that serve in Congress from exempting themselves from laws that apply to everyone else. This amendment must also require that Supreme Court Justices follow the same ethics rules that apply to every other federal judge.
• Tell your Governor and State legislators to support a Constitutional amendment: for every day of a federal government shutdown, the President, Vice President, and every member of Congress should forfeit a month's worth of their total income.

• Demand Congress pass the Presidential Tax Transparency Act. This would force all Presidents and candidates to release their tax returns, something all Presidents -- except Donald Trump -- have done since 1945.
• Insist Congress pass the Presidential Conflicts of Interest Act. This would require Trump (and every other President) to avoid a conflict of interest by placing his business assets in a blind trust. Current law does not require the President to do this -- but every other President has done so since 1976. (Sign the petition.)
• Tell Congress to vote for Senator Jeff Merkley's revised Authorization for Use of Military Force.
• Congress must establish safeguards to prevent an unstable President from ordering an unnecessary nuclear launch that could murder millions of people. For instance: the Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Speaker of the House could all be required to give their consent before launching a nuclear strike. (Sign the petition.) Also: ask Congress to pass the Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act, which would make it illegal for the President to launch nuclear weapons without Congress first declaring war.
• Tell Congress to pass the Families Belong Together Act. Sign the petitions at Friends of the Earth, Moms Rising, and UltraViolet.
• Tell Congress to pass the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act allowing immigrants who came to our country as children and know no other home to stay here. (Sign the petition.)
• Tell Congress to outlaw the imprisonment of immigrant children. (Sign the petition.)
• Urge Congress to pass the Degrees Not Debt Act reducing college loans.
• Tell Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act helping women make the same wages as men for doing the same work. (Sign the petition at People for the American Way.)
• Demand Congress pass the USA Rights Act that will (on paper, at least) stop the NSA from spying on innocent Americans without search warrants.
• Urge Congress to pass Aaron's Law.
• Tell Congress to keep lead poison out of drinking water by passing the WATER Act.
• The Constitution guarantees religious freedom to every person and faith in our country. Religious freedom does not mean members of one church can use the government's power to restrict the religious freedom of members of another church. Tell Congress to pass the Do No Harm bill clarifying that.
• Urge Congress to pass the For the People Act. It would fight corruption, gerrymandering, and voter suppression, regulate large campaign donations, and reform the federal Election Commission.
• Urge Congress to pass the HEROES bill and the THRIVE bill.
• Tell Congress to pass a law making emoluments violations a crime. The President's policies are supposed to benefit the country, not his private businesses.
• Tell Congress to implement the January 6th Committee's recommendations.

• Insist Congress repeal the so-called PATRIOT Act (which is unpatriotic), the so-called Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention Act (that doesn't prevent bankruptcy abuse), the Military Commissions Act, and the so-called Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (which doesn't create jobs). (Sign the petition.)
• In 2018, Trump imposed a "gag rule," forbidding clinics that receive federal funds from mentioning abortion. If a woman suffers from an ectopic pregnancy -- as did singer Vanessa Carleton and actress Nicole Kidman -- Trump's gag rule prevents doctors from telling their patients that the only way to save their lives is to end the pregnancy. It also forbids doctors from warning patients to avoid unsafe abortions. Tell Congress to outlaw Trump's rule, and tell the Department of Health and Human Services to rescind it. (A court order has temporarily blocked Trump's gag rule.)
• Trump has abused a law allowing the President to set emergency tariffs to protect national security. Congress must repeal this authority.
• As former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin point out, the "debt ceiling" is obsolete and should be abolished. (Sign the petition.)
• In March 2017, Trump signed a law allowing Internet Service Providers to collect customers' browsing history and sell it to advertisers. Minnesota promptly banned the practice. Other States must follow their example, and Congress must repeal the law. Tell Congress to pass the Consumer Data Protection Act.
• Congress must pass a law overturning the vague 1886 Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Supreme Court decision that has since been used to justify the idea that corporations are people.
• Congress must repeal the Comstock Act. (Sign the petition.)
• Congress must repeal the so-called Alien Enemies Act, the obscure law that was used to imprison innocent American citizens of Japanese descent during World War II. (Sign the petition.)

• Urge Congress to prevent banking fraud by reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act separating commercial and investment banking. (Sign the petition.)
• Demand Congress reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. Television and radio -- along with professional stations that broadcast over the internet -- must give both sides equal time. As Voltaire said, "those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." (Sign the petition.)
• Tell Congress to restore Clinton-era tax laws. End the days of "the more money you make, the less taxes you pay." (According to ProPublica, the 25 richest people in America have paid almost no taxes for years.)
• Four of the ten richest Americans paid no taxes at all for most of the last decade. Tell Congress to make them pay their fair share.
• Tell Congress to close the Carried Interest Tax Loophole that rewards corporate raiders.
• Urge Congress to reinstate the Independent Counsel law.
• The United States must reinstate the Iran nuclear deal.
• When the Trump Administration cancelled net neutrality, California, Oregon, Vermont and Washington reinstated it -- but only in their States. Though a 2024 FCC decision restored net neutrality, the vote was 3 to 2 -- indicating that Congress must codify the decision into law. Demand they do so.
• In January 2019, several telecommunications companies were caught collecting their customers' smartphones' location data and selling it. Tell Congress to outlaw this practice.
• Tell Congress to pass a law forbidding the federal government from hiring contractors with a history of civil rights violations.
• Congress must pass a law reinstating President Ford's executive order banning assassinations of enemy leaders without Congress first declaring war.
• Congress must fully fund the Center for Disease Control and reinstate the National Security Council's pandemic response team.
• In 2014, the Obama Adminstration introduced basic safety regulations for freight trains -- only for the Trump Administration to remove them. Tell President Biden to reinstate Obama's railway safety rules, and tell Congress to codify them into law. In the meantime, tell your Governor and your State legislators to codify them into law in your State.
• Congress must reinstate the regulatory power of executive departments -- such as the Environmental Protection Agency -- that the Alito Court struck down in June 2024. (Sign the petition.)
• Urge Congress to codify the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision into law. (Sign the petition.)
• In a shocking July 2024 ruling, the Alito Court declared that the President cannot be prosecuted if he commits crimes, retroactively legalizing Richard Nixon's crimes and potential future Trump crimes. Congress must immediately pass the No Kings Act affirming that the President is not above the law. (Sign the petitions at MoveOn and UltraViolet.)
• Shortly after taking office in January 2025, Trump withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization (!) Urge Congress to pass a law overriding Trump's sick decision.

• Ask Congress to implement the counter-terrorism measures recommended by security expert Gavin de Becker in his book Fear Less: Real Truth About Risk, Safety, and Security in a Time of Terrorism and by counter-terrorism expert Richard A. Clarke in his book Your Government Failed You.
• Demand Congress reform the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). First: Replace the full-body scanners that don't work with metal detectors that do. Second: TSA agents must be trained to follow the same laws against sexual harassment that apply to everyone else. Implement a zero-tolerance policy: any agent who abuses his or her power must be fired. Third: Discontinue the TSA's so-called Quiet Skies program that spies on innocent travelers. (Sign the petition.)
• Demand Congress expand Medicare to cover all American citizens. (Sign the petition at Indivisible.) According to Business Insider and Salon, if Medicare covered everybody, Americans would get better service than we're getting now for about a third of what we're currently paying the health insurance providers. In the meantime, veterans must be automatically enrolled in Medicare regardless of their age.
• Tell Congress to pass the Medicare Negotiation and Competitive Licensing Act, which would allow the government to negotiate with drug companies instead of paying the asking price. (Sign the petition at Social Security Works.)
• No one should have to choose between going to work sick and not being able to afford to buy groceries and pay rent. Write Congress, your Governor, and your State legislators and tell them to institute mandatory paid sick leave for all American workers.
• Write your Governor, your legislators, and your representatives in Congress and urge them to mandate free medical care for anyone who has a bad reaction to a vaccine.
• In February 2019, Trump declared a bogus national emergency in order to seize money from the treasury to build a wall along the United States' southern border. Tell Congress to overturn Trump's declaration. (Sign the petitions at Democracy for America and People for the American Way.)
• Congress must reform the National Emergencies Act to prevent Trump -- or any other President -- from declaring a national emergency when there is no emergency. Tell Congress to pass the Protecting Our Democracy Act.
• Congress must make it illegal for the President to share classified intelligence with a hostile foreign power.
• Congress must make it illegal for the President to take selfies with undercover operatives and post them to social media.
• The Federal Elections Commission (FEC) is usually comprised of three Democrats and three Republicans -- and is generally deadlocked. The current commissioners should be dismissed, and a new body of seven non-partisan retired judges should take their place.
• Though it's unconstitutional for customs officials to search the smartphones, tablets or laptops of American citizens returning home after a trip abroad, they do this routinely. Tell Congress to require customs officials to get a search warrant just like every other law enforcement agency. (Sign the petition.)
• In 2012, the Alito Court ruled that police can conduct strip searches of anyone with unpaid parking tickets. Congress must pass a law overturning this decision.
• In 2014, President Obama signed an executive order forbidding the federal government from giving weapons of war to police departments. Trump reversed that order three years later. Police officers protect civilians, stop criminals, and investigate crimes. Soldiers protect the country from enemy invasion. These are vastly different jobs and require different tools. Congress must overrule Trump and codify Obama's order into law. (Sign the petition.)
• The State of Illinois banned police officers from lying to children during interrogations. Other States should follow their example.
• The United States must use our economic and diplomatic power to push all the world's nations to eliminate land mines.
• Fossil fuel companies are among the richest in the world. Congress must stop subsidizing them. (Send a message to Congress and sign the petition.) Congress must also pass a law forbidding the fossil fuel industry from passing the cost on to consumers for 20 years. The fossil fuel companies are already wealthy and can afford it.
• Active duty military personnel should make the same salary as people in Congress.
• Public school teachers should make the same salary as their State legislators.
• According to the Dallas Morning News, the New York Times, Buzzfeed, and the Los Angeles Times, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials unconstitutionally detained hundreds of innocent American citizens for weeks because ICE assumed they were undocumented immigrants. These American citizens included a Marine veteran and a Texas-born teenager. Incredibly, the ICE officials refused to look at the papers proving the detainees were citizens -- even when they had their papers with them when they were detained. (One of the victims was kept in custody longer for "falsely claiming to be an American citizen," even though he was an American citizen.) If ICE can do it to them, they can do it to any of us. They can do it to you.
  Fortune reports that ICE has gone to courthouses and deported undocumented immigrants who were waiting there to testify in criminal cases. With the witnesses deported, the district attorneys were forced to drop charges against the criminals and let them back on the streets.
  According to CNN, Salon, and WJTV, in August 2019, ICE raided several factories in Mississippi and detained nearly seven hundred undocumented workers. (ICE illegally detained a few American citizens in the process.) Many of these workers had been living in the United States for a decade and had no criminal records.
  The raids happened while the workers' children were at school. The children, who were mostly American citizens, arrived home to locked houses to find their parents had vanished without a trace. Babies and toddlers were left at daycare with no one to pick them up. Just under half the workers were released the next day, but some of those released still (at this writing) have family members in custody. Under Mississippi law, if the parents had abandoned their children of their own volition, they would be charged with desertion of a child (a felony) and imprisoned for up to five years.
  ICE must be reformed to prevent abuses of power. Any ICE official who detains an American citizen must be fired. All ICE officials must be trained to protect the Constitutional rights of all detainees, to comply with the law, and to treat everyone in their custody with respect, dignity, and compassion. If ICE arrests parents with minor children, they must inform relatives or Child Protective Services. If ICE cannot uphold the Constitution, the department must be abolished.
• 510(c)(4) "nonprofits" are Political Action Committees masquerading as charities. Current law allows donors to write off contributions to these "charities" on their taxes -- so long as the "nonprofit" spends less than half its income on elections. Millionaires and corporations contribute millions of dollars to these "charities," who then give the money to candidates with no limits and without ever disclosing their donors to the public. For instance: a company contributes $100,000,000 tax-free to one of these "nonprofits." The "nonprofit" then donates $49,999,999 to a friendly candidate's election campaign. That's legal -- as long as the "nonprofit" donates $50,000,001 to something else. No one ever finds out where the money came from.
  Tell Congress, your Governor, and your State legislators to outlaw SuperPACs and ban all political spending by nonprofits and charities. Laws separating nonprofits and Political Action Committees must be vigorously enforced.
• Walmart is the largest company in the United States. Its owners, the Waltons, are the richest family. Yet Walmart's workers are among America's poorest. Why? Under current law, Walmart does not have to pay its two million employees benefits because they all work part-time. The company also forces its employees to work unpredictable schedules, thus preventing them from getting second jobs. Walmart then encourages its workers to apply for food stamps and welfare -- thus making taxpayers pay for their food and health care.
  Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed a law requiring Walmart (and companies with a similar business model) to repay taxpayers for the exact amount we pay for Walmart's employees to live on public assistance. If Walmart does not want to pay this tax, all they have to do is what other companies do: hire their workers full-time, pay them a living wage, and provide health benefits. Tell Congress to pass Sanders' proposal.
• The President's National Security Advisor is neither elected nor confirmed by Congress. Congress must abolish the position and assign all its duties to the National Intelligence Director.
• Tell Congress to save money by folding the Commerce Department and the Agriculture Department into the Interior Department.
• The United States must lead the world in establishing debt forgiveness for Third World democracies.
• The Senate must ratify the Arms Trade Treaty to keep weapons out of terrorists' hands.
• Congress must pass a law requiring the President to nominate a new Cabinet-level Secretary within two weeks of the position becoming vacant. If the President does not do so, the Deputy Secretary should be automatically nominated, and the Senate should confirm or reject them.
• Congress must legislate that Cabinet-level Secretaries must be experts in their fields. For instance, the Secretaries of Defense and of Veterans Affairs should be veterans. The Attorney General must have a law degree. The Secretary of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency Administrator must be scientists. The Secretary of Education must be a public school teacher. The Secretary of Health should be a doctor or a nurse. The Director of National Intelligence must have a background in intelligence or law enforcement.
• Tell Congress to pass a law forbidding the Border Patrol from being used for domestic law enforcement.
• Insist Congress pass legislation requring federal agents to wear visible identification, prohibiting them from using unmarked vehicles, and limiting their deployment without permission from a mayor or governor. Tell your senator to vote for this legislation.
• Tell Congress to change Presidents' Day back to its original name: Washington's Birthday.
• Congress must establish tax incentives for businesses that engage in profit-sharing.
• Federal tax law allows American citizens to write off a few thousand dollars per year for basic living expenses. The average American taxpayer needs to write off about four times the allowed amount in order to live at the poverty line! Tell Congress to update the write-off amount to reflect modern living expenses -- not what living expenses were sixty years ago.
• Urge Congress to pass the Junk Fee Protection Act.
• Tennessee and Texas have passed laws requiring drunk drivers who kill parents to pay child support. Other States can follow their example.
• Congress must adapt the Brennan Center for Justice's recommendations to reform the Insurrection Act to prevent abuse of power.
• Tell Congress to pass the proposed law removing Secret Service protection from convicted felons.
• As prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi points out in his book The Betrayal of America, five Republican Supreme Court Justices stole the 2000 presidential election by unconstitutionally granting themselves the authority to vote twice. In a gross abuse of power, these five justices circumvented the law in a ruling so incompetent that it would have been laughed out of any other court. Congress must pass a law instituting criminal penalties for stealing a presidential election.
• The estate tax only affects multimillionaires -- but Republicans have been trying to abolish it for decades. Support Bernie Sanders' bill to raise the estate tax instead.

• The filibuster was invented to prevent a Senate majority from abusing their power and passing laws harmful to minorities. (Though majority rule is democratic, it's not always fair. For instance: say two lions and one antelope vote on what to eat for dinner. Is that fair?) It was intended to be a seldom-used procedure where a Senator would risk their career to prevent Congress from approving a gross injustice. However, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell abused the filibuster by turning it into a blunt instrument. To McConnell, making the nation's first African-American president look incompetent was far more important than passing legislation, even in the middle of the Great Recession. So, McConnell used the filibuster to block everything Obama proposed, even when those proposals benefitted Republicans. (For instance: Republican Senators asked Obama to nominate Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. When Obama did so, those same Senators refused to consider Garland just to spite Obama.) McConnell filibustered more things in eight years than the entire Senate had in the previous eighty.
  For McConnell, it wasn't about principle. It was about power. When Republicans were in the minority, McConnell abused the filibuster and blocked majority rule. When Republicans commanded a Senate majority, McConnell abused majority rule by changing the rules to weaken the filibuster and silencing the minority. (For instance: after years of filibustering all Democrats' court nominees, including Garland, McConnell changed Senate rules again, making it impossible for Democrats to filibuster Republican court nominees.) So much for conservatives preserving American traditions.
  Under McConnell's new rules, Congress now requires a super-majority of 60 Senators to pass any legislation, but a 51-50 majority to put partisan hacks on the Supreme Court. The Constitution's framers wanted the Senate to protect minority rights. The filibuster was never intended to give one senator the power to prevent the government from passing any legislation at all. The Constitution gives the President the ability to veto legislation -- not Mitch McConnell.
  What can we do? First: tell the Senate to reform the filibuster so that, in order to block legislation, a senator must actually talk while refusing to yield the floor. That was the way filibusters were done until 1975. During a talking filibuster, three-fifths of the Senators present can end a filibuster -- not three-fifths of the entire Senate. If the senator conducting the filibuster leaves the Senate chamber, the filibuster is over.
  Second: Tell the Senate to restore the filibuster for court nominations.
  Third: Tell the Senate to place reasonable limits on the number of times a filibuster can be used per year.
  Fourth: In order to stop a filibuster, 60 senators must agree on cloture -- i.e. forcing the filibustering Senator to yield the floor. Tell the Senate to lower that number from 60 to 55.
  Fifth: For every day of a filibuster, the Senator conducting it must donate a month's worth of their total income to an apolitical charity chosen by the legislator who wrote the bill being filibustered. For court nominees, the filibustering Senator must donate a month's worth of their total income to an apolitical charity chosen by the nominee.
  Sixth: McConnell already banned the filibuster for court nominations and budget bills. If nominations and the budget are too important to filibuster, it stands to reason that civil rights, voting rights, and national security are also too important to filibuster. Since McConnell has repeatedly changed Senate rules to block democracy and fair play, Democrats must restore the original Senate rules in order to uphold democracy and fair play. The filibuster was created to protect minority rights -- but McConnell's crusade to prevent the government from functioning has nothing to do with protecting anybody.
  The filibuster must be abolished only if the above reforms don't pass. If Democrats abolish the filibuster, they won't be able to use it to protect minority rights if McConnell takes control of the Senate in the next election. That being said, if McConnell takes power again he will certainly change Senate rules the way he did before, so Republicans can use the filibuster and Democrats cannot. In other words, if Democrats don't abolish the filibuster, McConnell will abolish it himself the next time he has the power to do so.
  Moreover: the Washington Post argues that the nation's demographics have made the filibuster obsolete. By 2040, 70% of Americans will live in 15 States and be represented by 30 Senators. The other 30% of Americans will live in 35 States and be represented by 70 Senators. Since smaller states are already massively over-represented in the Senate, they don't need the filibuster to protect them from being overwhelmed by more populous states.
  
  The filibuster is a procedural tool created to enable the Senate to protect minorities' rights. If Republican senators use the filibuster to deny American minorities the right to vote -- as some senators did during the "Jim Crow" era -- they have used the filibuster to betray the spirit of the Constitution. The filibuster should be preserved, but if it comes down to a choice between the filibuster and restoring the Voting Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act must prevail. A minority of Senators should not have the power to deny Constitutional rights to millions of their fellow citizens. As Senator Raphael Warnock said, the issue of voting rights "is bigger than the filibuster. I stand before you saying that this issue -- access to voting and preempting politicians' efforts to restrict voting -- is so fundamental to our democracy that it is too important to be held hostage by a Senate rule, especially one historically used to restrict the expansion of voting rights. It is a contradiction to say we must protect minority rights in the Senate while refusing to protect minority rights in the society. Colleagues, no Senate rule should overrule the integrity of our democracy, and we must find a way to pass voting rights, whether we get rid of the filibuster or not."
  Likewise, it's critical to our national security that Congress pass legislation protecting our elections from Russian manipulation -- but Mitch McConnell spent the last four years blocking Congress from doing so. If it comes down to a choice between the filibuster and national security, national security must triumph.
  Say the Democrats use their power exactly the way McConnell did and abolish the filibuster in 2023, restoring the Senate's ability to pass legislation with a 51-50 majority. Say McConnell is upset about this, and regains a Senate majority in 2025. If McConnell believes in the filibuster so much, he can use his power to restore the filibuster and give a single Democratic minority senator the ability to veto all legislation and paralyze the government the way he himself did for years. Does anyone think for a moment McConnell will do this?
  Of course not. McConnell doesn't care about the American people, majority rule, minority rights, conservative principles, or fair play. He's spent years blocking legislation supported by large American majorities, including election security bills, universal background checks for gun purchases, lowering perscription drug costs, raising the minimum wage, strengthening law enforcement, and preserving net neutrality. Instead, he used his power to give Supreme Court seats to authoritarian judges opposed by most Americans. McConnell only cares about power -- getting it himself, and preventing anyone else from having it.
  
  
• Tell the Senate to reform Rule 19. As blogger Libby Anne relates, the rule was enacted to prevent senators from defaming each other. However, it was not meant to apply "...to situations where a sitting Senator is nominated for a cabinet position." Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell "blatantly [used] this rule to silence discussion of a presidential cabinet nomination in the very body which is tasked with confirming the nominees." (Sign the petition calling on the Senate to expel McConnell.)
• Tell the House to abolish the so-called Hastert Rule that discourages bipartisanship.
• Congress must pass a law reforming the impeachment process. All impeachment trials must admit evidence and call witnesses. Any Senator (or Congressman) who is implicated in the impeachment scandal must be disqualified from participation. (Sign the petition.)
• The House of Representatives has 435 members because of a law passed in 1911 -- when the country's population was a quarter of what it is today. The United States must adopt the proposed Wyoming Rule specifying that every Congressman represents roughly the same number of people -- about 400,000. This would increase the number of Congressmen to 568 and ensure every American is represented more fairly. In the event of a tie, the (usually non-voting) delegate from the District of Columbia could cast a tie-breaking vote.
  Adding 133 Congressmen would also add 133 electors. This would help create an Electoral College that better represents the country as a whole instead of only the swing States, and would help prevent a handful of partisan electors from awarding the Presidency to a candidate who lost the popular vote.
• Congress must pass a law specifying that the Speaker of the House of Representatives must be member of the House who has been elected to their position and is currently serving.
• Congress must pass the Ban Conflicted Trading Act preventing members of Congress from trading individual stocks. As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich said, "Members of Congress are elected to represent the interests of the people - not the money in their brokerage accounts."
• Tell Congress that the Delegates from American Samoa, the District of Columbia, Guam, the Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and the Cherokee Nation must be granted full voting privileges in the House. (Though America's six territories must become States, this is an important temporary step.)
  

• Congress must immediately grant Statehood to American Samoa, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. Likewise, Guam and the Mariana Islands should be combined into a single State. (Sign the petitions for DC, Guam, and Puerto Rico.)
  

• According to Politico, the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1870 bar anyone who tried to overthrow the government from running for office. Congress and State legislatures must use this statute to ban Trump and his supporters from ever serving again. Likewise, members of Congress who supported Trump's attempted coup must be expelled. (Sign the petitions at Change.org, MoveOn, and the Women's March.)

• Congress must pass a law overriding the Justice Department's guidelines that a sitting President cannot be indicted. If the President commits crimes, he must be held accountable just like any other citizen. (An indicted President would be unable to perform the duties of his office. Under the 25th Amendment, the President would temporarily step down, and the Vice President would become Acting President. If the President were to be acquitted, he could resume his duties.) Tell Congress to pass the Protecting Our Democracy Act.
• As noted above, under current Justice Department rules a sitting President cannot be prosecuted. If the President would be charged with a crime if he had any other job, then that President should be ineligible for re-election. Urge Congress, your Governor, and your State legislators to pass federal and State laws making a President who commits crimes while in office ineligible to appear on future ballots.
• Tell Congress, your Governor, and your State legislators to pass laws making anyone with a criminal record ineligible to become President or Vice President. Moreover, an incarcerated President is unable to fulfill their duties under the 25th Amendment. If a President is sent to prison, their resignation should happen automatically, and the Vice President must become President.
• George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, Jay Bybee, Douglas Feith, John Ashcroft, David Addington, Steven Bradbury and George Tenet must be prosecuted for conspiracy to violate the Convention Against Torture, the Geneva Conventions, and the War Crimes Act. So must anyone else who ordered torture or carried out those orders. Yoo and David Addington must be prosecuted for conspiracy to violate the FISA act. (See Elizabeth Holtzman's book Cheating Justice, Vincent Bugliosi's book The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, and Jane Mayer's book The Dark Side.) Sadly, no American prosecutors ever took up the case, and the statute of limitations means the rich and powerful politicians who ordered their subordinates to break laws -- such as violating the FISA Act -- will never be brought to justice. There is no statute of limitations on torture or murder, however.
• Donald Trump and his co-conspirators attempted to illegally prevent Congress from certifying the 2020 election. Trump and his cronies must be prosecuted for conspiracy to commit voting fraud. (Sign the petitions at Common Cause, Free Speech for People, and Public Citizen.)
• Anyone at the NSA who illegally spied on Americans without a search warrant must be prosecuted.
• The bank executives who committed mortgage fraud in 2008 must be prosecuted. Rich and powerful criminals should not escape prosecution because it's politically inconvenient to charge them.
• The President must pardon whistleblowers such as John Kiriakou and Edward Snowden. The President should also pardon Jeffrey Sterling and Stephen Kim (convicted of espionage for talking to reporters), and pardon the wrongfully prosecuted internet pioneer Aaron Swartz posthumously. Sadly, President Obama refused to do so, and Trump thinks Snowden's a traitor and should be executed. (Sign the Snowden petitions at the ACLU and Amnesty International.)
• The prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have been held for two decades without proof, charges, or trials. They must be put on trial and convicted fairly. Guantanamo Bay Prison must then be closed, and the prisoners transferred to Federal maximum-security prisons in the United States.
• During the Iraq War, pacifist protesters were herded into so-called "free speech zones," fenced-in parking lots miles away from the event they were protesting. In 2010, the Alito Court ruled that the so-called "Westboro Baptist Church" hate group had the right to disrupt funerals, and in 2014 the Court ruled that anti-abortion protesters had the right to gather outside family planning clinics and harass innocent people. Demand Congress abolish this double standard. Either everyone has the right to protest, or hate groups and anti-abortion groups must also hold their protests in "free speech zones" miles away from funerals and family planning clinics.
• No defendant can act as judge in his own case. Congress must pass a law clarifying that the President's power to pardon does not include pardoning himself or his co-conspirators. Likewise, the President's pardon power should not include pardoning subordinates who broke the law on his orders. As George Orwell once wrote, "We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men." Tell Congress to pass the Protecting Our Democracy Act.
• The Senate must adopt Professor Anita Hill's recommendations on vetting judicial nominees who have been accused of sexual misconduct. "The process," Hill writes, "should be guided by experts who have devoted their careers to understanding sexual violence. The job of the Senate Judiciary Committee is to serve as fact-finders... and the weight of the government should not be used to destroy the lives of witnesses who are called to testify.
  "Select a neutral investigative body with experience in sexual misconduct cases that will investigate the incident in question and present its findings to the committee. Outcomes in such investigations are more reliable and less likely to be perceived as tainted by partisanship. Senators must then rely on the investigators’ conclusions, along with advice from experts, to frame the questions they ask... The investigators’ report should frame the hearing, not politics or myths about sexual assault.
  "Do not rush [the] hearings... a week’s preparation is not enough time for meaningful inquiry into very serious charges."
• No survivor of a violent crime should be forced to spend twenty years in court trying to prevent the rapist who attacked her from gaining access to her child. "It's an almost unimaginable scenario," CNN reports. "A victim of rape being forced to face her attacker over custody rights for a child conceived during an assault. 'Almost' is the key word, because it's a situation that can easily happen in states across the United States. The shorthand for this occurrence is often referred to as 'parental rights for rapists,' a phrase that's mind-boggling but accurate in its representation of the issue... Seven states don't have any laws preventing a rapist from claiming parental rights... in nearly half the states that [do] have legislation meant to prevent rapists from claiming parental rights, a victim is still vulnerable to having to face her attacker if there wasn't a conviction in her case -- [even] if she reported it and if it was prosecuted." Write Congress, your Governor and your state legislators. Demand that they protect survivors, and insist they outlaw rapists from seeking custody or visitation rights to children conceived due to a sexual assault.
• Too many jurisdictions collect evidence from rape survivors, then never process it -- or wait to process it until the statute of limitations has expired. This denies justice to the victims and leaves these most loathsome of criminals on the streets. Insist your local and State authorities process evidence immediately. "These [serial rapists] are not the Napoleons of crime," former prosecutor Tim McGinty told a reporter from The Atlantic. "They're morons. We were letting morons beat us." At the time, there were 7,000 unprocessed rape kits sitting in storage in just one city, and the local police had made no attempts to catch the serial rapists responsible.
• Tennessee has banned frivolous lawsuits from domestic abusers meant to stalk, harass, or bankrupt former partners. Other States can follow their example.
• Tell Congress, your Governor, and your State legislators to forbid government agencies from filing frivolous lawsuits against innocent American citizens who file Freedom of Information Act requests.
• The federal government signed over 500 treaties with Native American nations and didn't abide by any of them. The United States must uphold and enforce all treaties made with Native Americans, and make repirations to tribes for lands seized illegally.
• Many States have programs to help convicts get back on their feet after they serve their sentences. Most States, however, have no such programs to help people who were wrongly convicted, went to prison, and then proven innocent and released. Write your Governor and your State legislators and tell them to make the same programs that are available to ex-convicts available to the exonerated.
• Addicts guilty of no crime other than possession of illegal drugs must be sentenced to mandatory treatment, not prison.
• Trump and his aides violated the Hatch Act. Since the President is responsible for enforcing that law and Trump didn't enforce it, neither Trump nor any of his aides were ever punished. As the Huffington Post recommended, an independent ethics office must be placed in charge of enforcing the Hatch Act. This office must be empowered to fire anyone who breaks the Hatch Act -- and to impose punitive fines on them. Tell Congress to pass the Protecting Our Democracy Act.
• The United States must recognize the Republic of Somaliland.
• In 2022, Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian military to conquer the neighboring nation of Ukraine, a friendly country that posed no threat. The United States and other Western countries froze Russian assets to pressure them to stop the attack. The United States must lead world nations in turning the frozen Russian money over to Ukraine for them to use in self-defense.
• In 2024, Connecticut passed a law forbidding police from lying to survivors of sexual assault or telling them they'll be charged with crimes if they don't recant. Other States can follow their example.

• Every Federal judge is required to abide by ethics laws -- except the nine Justices on the Supreme Court. Sign the petitions insisting Congress pass the Supreme Court Ethics Act and the Judicial Ethics and Anti-Corruption Act which would create a Code of Ethics for Supreme Court justices and their spouses.
• In 2011, Justice Clarence Thomas was caught evading taxes. He'd been doing it for thirteen years. (Had Ruth Bader Ginsburg been caught evading taxes, she would have been impeached within the month.) Thomas was forced to amend his tax returns and repay the money he owed, but he wasn't impeached or criminally charged.
• In 2023, ProPublica reported that Thomas and his wife illegally accepted over a million dollars in gifts from a Republican billionare dating back to the time he first became a Supreme Court Justice. He even sold a house to the billionaire, who agreed to let Thomas' mother live there rent-free. That violated Federal ethics laws. The billionaire even paid $100,000 to send Thomas' grand-nephew to a private school. Thomas didn't report any of that on his taxes, either. Thomas' billionaire friend is a mega-donor who says he's given millions of dollars to Republican candidates in just the last five years. More importantly, Thomas was ethically required to recuse himself when cases involving his billionare friend came before the Supreme Court. Thomas refused to do so, and always voted in the billionaire's favor. The Washington Post then reported that Thomas has been evading taxes in some fashion ever since he became a Supreme Court Justice.
• ProPublica later reported that three more Republican billionaires have been showering Thomas with millions of dollars in gifts of luxury travel ever since he became a Justice. These include "At least 38 destination vacations, including a previously unreported voyage on a yacht around the Bahamas; 26 private jet flights, plus an additional eight by helicopter; a dozen VIP passes to professional and college sporting events, typically perched in the skybox; two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica; and one standing invitation to an uber-exclusive golf club overlooking the Atlantic coast... Thomas appears to have violated the law by failing to disclose flights, yacht cruises and expensive sports tickets."
• On another occasion, billionaire polluter Charles Koch flew Thomas to a resort so he could attend a dinner for Koch's donors. Thomas didn't report this on his taxes either.
• Yet another Republican billionare bought Thomas a $267,000 recreational vehicle.
• Clarence Thomas' wife Virginia is a reactionary Republican activist. Matters involving her personally have come before the Supreme Court at least five times, and in all four cases Thomas ruled in her favor instead of recusing himself.
  In the first case, Virginia Thomas worked for the Bush Campaign in 2000. When the matter of Bush v. Gore came before the Supreme Court, Justice Thomas refused to recuse himself and ruled in favor of his wife's employer. Bush -- who lost the popular vote -- became President. Clarence Thomas cast the deciding vote.
  In the second case, Virginia Thomas exchanged text messages with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows after the 2020 election. She urged Meadows to do everything in his power to help Trump -- who had just been voted out of office -- to stay in power. She also urged twenty-nine Arizona State legislators to illegally override the will of Arizona voters and appoint fake pro-Trump electors to the Electoral College. According to the Washington Post, Mother Jones, and The Atlantic, Virginia Thomas believes crackpot conspiracy theories that Biden somehow stole the election, insisted that the law would be on Trump's side, and falsely claimed that Biden's family members had already been arrested. (Part of Trump's plan to keep the Presidency was to bring the election before the Supreme Court. He believed the Court would overrule the will of the electorate and decide in his favor -- just as they had for Bush twenty years earlier.) Later, Virginia Thomas attended the January 6th riot that ended with a violent attack on Congress. Two months later, the Congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack requested documents from Trump. The former president refused, and the case went to the Supreme Court. The Court decided 8-1 that Trump had to turn the documents over to Congress. The only dissenter? Clarence Thomas.
  According to U.S. News and World Report, Thomas ruled in Trump's favor in two other cases related to the 2020 election. Fortunately, a majority of Justices -- including Justices appointed by Trump himself -- ruled in favor of upholding the law.
  In a fifth case, Thomas ignored the Fourteenth Amendment and ruled that States could not block Trump from the ballot because of his 2021 coup attempt -- a coup in which Thomas' wife participated.
  Legal experts and members of Congress have demanded that Thomas resign or be impeached.
  Thomas' refusal to step aside in cases where he had personal conflicts of interest shows it's impossible for him to be impartial. These ethics violations likewise demand that Thomas be impeached and removed from the bench. (See the video from the Lincoln Project.) Sign the petitions for Clarence Thomas' impeachment at Demand Progress, Free Speech for People, MoveOn.org, Petition2Congress, and ActionNetwork.
  Virginia Thomas is a government employee: Trump appointed her to help oversee the Library of Congress. Government employees should not advocate for the overthrow of free and fair elections. Tell the President to remove Virginia Thomas from her position.
  Businessman Hunter Biden -- a son of President Joe Biden -- fell into depression, alcoholism, and drug use for four years and forgot to pay his taxes. He paid the amount he owed when he got sober. Nevertheless, federal prosecutors charged Biden with nine counts of tax evasion -- three years after he paid off his debts. If convicted, Biden faces seventeen years in prison.
  In contrast, Clarence Thomas evaded taxes for five times longer and in greater amounts than Biden ever did. At this writing, Thomas has not paid his debts. Despite the much greater scale of Thomas's tax evasion, there has been no investigation, no indictment, and no impeachment. Thomas still sits on the Supreme Court.
  
  
• In June 2023, ProPublica reported that, like Thomas, Justice Samuel Alito accepted a gift worth a hundred thousand dollars from a (different) billionaire. Alito didn't follow the law that required him to report this gift. Alito then ruled in the billionaire's favor in a court case instead of recusing himself -- a decision that made the billionaire another $2.4 billion. Alito must also be impeached and removed from the bench. (Sign the petition.)
• In 2022, Alito voted to reduce the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to regulate pollution from power plants. In 2023, Alito voted to weaken the Clean Water Act by reducing the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to protect wetlands from fossil fuel pollution. According to Business Insider and The Intercept, while Alito was doing this, Alito's wife leased a plot of land she owns to a fossil fuel company in return for a share of the profits. Alito refused to recuse himself from court cases where his decisions could potentially make him a lot of money.
  In a 2017 speech, Alito announced that "carbon dioxide is not a pollutant." How could a Supreme Court Justice display such a pathetic lack of knowledge regarding the basic science that American students learn in high school? Alito's ignorance of the way the atmosphere works and his apathy towards the millions of people who will have to live with the fallout of his decisions are deliberate. As Upton Sinclair wrote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
• In 2021, Alito publicly sympathized with Trump's lie that the 2020 election had been stolen from him and sympathized with Trump's illegal attempts to stay in power after being voted out of office. With Alito openly supporting a President who blatantly broke the law and violated the Constitution, there's no way the Alito Court will ever give Trump's opponents a fair hearing. Alito was ethically obligated to recuse himself from cases surrounding Trump's refusal to leave office after losing the 2020 election, and has refused.
• Alito's job is to uphold justice and the Constitution. Instead, he wants to impose his religious beliefs on everyone else. Though Alito has every right to his religion, he does not have the right to use the power of the government to force people who don't share his religious beliefs to abide by them anyway. Alito is a megalomaniac who thinks he's above the law. Either he's betrayed his oath to uphold the Constitution in order to shove his ideology down everyone else's throats, or -- like many religious fanatics -- he's lost the ability to tell the difference. Sign the petition to demand Congress impeach Alito and remove him from the bench.
• Republican lawyer Brett Kavanaugh lied under oath during his 2004 and 2006 confirmation hearings to become a judge. In 2018, Trump nominated Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, and Congress learned Kavanaugh had been accused of attempting to rape a 15-year-old girl when he was 17. A second witness claimed Kavanaugh had sexually harassed her when they were in college. Kavanaugh was black-out drunk on both occasions. When the senators asked him about it, Kavanaugh acknowledged that he drank as a teenager, but claimed he had never been so drunk that he blacked out. His own yearbooks and calendars -- along with statements by people who knew him at the time -- prove this isn't true.
  Even after Kavanaugh was caught committing perjury on live television, the Senate confirmed him to the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, Kavanaugh lied under oath when he denied being a binge drinker as a young man. Under the standard established by then-Senator Jeff Sessions, Kavanaugh must be impeached and removed from the bench. (Had Ruth Bader Ginsburg been caught lying about receving stolen emails and underage drinking the way Kavanaugh had, she would have been impeached, not given a seat on the Supreme Court.) For more information, read the first, second, and third open letters to Senator Susan Collins opposing Kavanaugh's confirmation.
  If your Senator voted to confirm Kavanaugh even after watching him commit perjury, vote that Senator out of office in the next election. Sign the Petition to impeach Kavanaugh and remove him from the bench.
  Attorney Ben Meiselas points out that Kavanaugh committed another count of perjury during his confirmation hearing. Kavanaugh assured Senators that the President was not above the law. Once he was on the Supreme Court, he then joined his five fellow Republicans in the infamous ruling that the President cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed while in office.
• In 2017, Trump nominated then-Professor Amy Coney Barrett to be a judge. According to Mother Jones, in her confirmation hearings, Barrett told the Senate (on live television) that she didn't know that the so-called ADF hate group was trying to criminalize same-sex couples when she was teaching their summer classes. Barrett was either lying or completely incompetent. In 2020, Trump nominated Barrett to the Supreme Court. In her 2020 confirmation hearings, Barrett (again on live television) again claimed ignorance of the hate group. This couldn't possibly be true, because she'd been told of the hate group's agenda (on live television) at her confirmation hearings three years earlier. Barrett committed perjury, and must be impeached and removed from the bench. (Sign the petition.)
• According to Business Insider, Jane Roberts - wife of "Chief Justice" John Roberts - quit her legal practice after her husband became Chief Justice. She then capitalized on her husband's name by starting a new career as a legal recruiter and finding other lawyers jobs at law firms. She made over $10 million in commissions -- and some of those lawyers went on to argue cases before the Alito Court. Roberts never disclosed that those lawyers had paid his family millions, nor did he ever recuse himself from cases involving his wife's clients.
• According to Politico, Neil Gorsuch tried to sell some property in Colorado for two years. A few days after he became a Supreme Court Justice, Gorsuch finally found a buyer -- a law firm. The firm paid $1.8 million for the property -- and Gorsuch never disclosed the buyer's identity on the paperwork. The firm has since argued 22 cases before the Supreme Court, and Gorsuch decided in the firm's favor in two-thirds of those cases.
• In May 2022, Politico published a draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito revealing that he and four other reactionary Republicans on the Supreme Court were planning to repeal the 1973 Roe V. Wade decision before the end of the summer. Alito's draft made it clear that he and his Republican colleagues "always" planned to repeal Roe, and they moved forward as soon as they had the votes to do it.
  These five Republicans -- Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett -- all testified in their confirmation hearings that they would respect Roe's precedent and would not overturn Roe. Alito's draft proved they lied under oath. Since all five Justices committed perjury, all five must be impeached and removed from the bench.
  Barrett in 2020: "Roe is not a super precedent because calls for its overruling have never ceased, but that does not mean that Roe should be overruled... I have no mission and no agenda."
  Gorsuch in 2017: Roe is "a precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court."
  Kavanaugh in 2018: "It is important precedent of the Supreme Court that has been reaffirmed many times. It is not as if it is just a run of the mill case that was decided and never been reconsidered, but Casey specifically reconsidered it, applied the stare decisis factors, and decided to reaffirm it. That makes Casey a precedent on precedent."
  Alito in 2006: "Roe v. Wade is an important precedent of the Supreme Court. It was decided in 1973, so it has been on the books for a long time."
  Roberts in 2005: "Precedent plays an important role in promoting stability and evenhandedness... you... look at these other factors, like settled expectations, like the legitimacy of the court, like whether a particular precedent is workable or not, whether a precedent has been eroded by subsequent developments. All of those factors go into the determination of whether to revisit a precedent under the principles of stare decisis."
  Thomas in 1991: I do not have "a personal opinion on the outcome in Roe v. Wade."
  (Sources: NBC News, CBS News)

  
  As noted above, four of those five reactionary Justices were nominated by presidents who lost the popular vote, and 69% of Americans oppose repealing Roe. When Alito's decision went into effect, it overturned fifty years of legal precedent and outlawed abortion in half of the country. Sign the petition to impeach all five.

• Congress must pass a law requiring the Senate to consider nominees. If the Senators don't want to confirm the nominee, they can vote against them, but they must hold a vote. If the Senate does not vote within a reasonable amount of time after the nomination -- such as two months -- the nominee shall take office under the principle qui tacet consentire videtur, ubi loqui debuit ac potuit (i.e. he who is silent, when he ought to have spoken and was able to, is taken to agree.)
• Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama all nominated two Supreme Court justices over two terms. Donald Trump nominated three justices in one term -- even though he lost the popular vote and has no mandate. It's the Senate's job to confirm or reject the President's nominees -- but the Republicans controlling the Senate represent a minority of Americans and have no mandate, either. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell also changed Senate rules so a filibuster can't stop a Supreme Court nominee. This allowed him to ram through new justices 51-50 while requiring a 60-40 super-majority to pass any legislation. The New York Times pointed out:

  "We're increasingly a country where the minority is not merely protected from the tyranny of the majority, as the nation's founders intended. We're a country where the minority rules, and under Trump, it rules tyrannically.
  "McConnell is in a position to make Trump's third court appointment happen because Republicans have a Senate majority, but they have that majority not because they command the support of a larger number of Americans than their Democratic counterparts do. They command the support of fewer.
  "In 2018, Democrats won 22 of the 35 Senate elections, with candidates who got roughly 17 million more votes than the Republican candidates got." Since 2014, the Republicans controlling the Senate have represented less than half the country's population.
  "...A court with three Trump appointees could well restrict abortion even though most Americans support its legality in all or most cases. Such a court could also revisit gay rights, though an even bigger majority of Americans support marriage equality and an overwhelming majority believe that gay Americans should be protected from employment discrimination."

  Congress must:

  • Abolish the Electoral College and elect the President by direct popular vote, as detailed above;
  • Add ten more senators by granting statehood to America's territories, as detailed above;
  • Add 133 more electors by adopting the Wyoming Rule, as detailed above;
  • Impeach Justices Thomas and Alito and remove them from the bench for tax evasion, perjury, and ethics violations, as detailed above;
  • Impeach Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett and remove them from the bench for perjury, as detailed above.
  
  Expanding the Court should be a last resort, one Congress uses only if all the other options fail. As Slate magazine writes, McConnell "established a new rule: The party in power can use every tool at its disposal to seize the Supreme Court, within constitutional limits. If Democrats win unified control of the federal government in November, they must draw from the Republicans' new rule to expand the court."
  Justice Barrett was confirmed a week before the 2020 election. Thus, the Court has six Republicans and three Democrats. Five of those six Republicans were nominated by Presidents who lost the popular vote. Likewise, those Justices were confirmed by a Republican-majority Senate that represents 40 million fewer Americans than the Democratic "minority." (The country has more Democrats (49%) than Republicans (40%.) Slate recommends that a Democratic president and a Democratic-majority Senate add more justices to the Supreme Court until the ideological balance is restored.

  "Democrats have two options," Slate writes. "They can accept a half-century of far-right, partisan jurisprudence while protesting that Republicans are hypocrites. Or Democrats can stop complaining about the new rules and start playing by them. The first choice rests upon the theory that it is possible to shame politicians who've demonstrated, over and over again, that they have no capacity for shame. The second rests upon the theory that Democrats have an obligation to play constitutional hardball - not just to protect their agenda, but to save the court's legitimacy and preserve democracy itself.
  "McConnell himself has altered the number of justices to influence the court's outcomes. By refusing to consider Garland, McConnell reduced the Supreme Court to an eight-member body for more than a year. Multiple Republican senators... said they would not confirm any nominees put forth by Hillary Clinton; their scheme would have reduced the court's membership indefinitely. Republicans have already legitimized the strategy of modifying the Supreme Court's membership by changing the number of justices on the bench. These tactics may be distasteful, but they are plainly lawful.
  "Lawmakers would surely be tempted to reject [the Supreme Court's] decisions outright, denying the justices' authority to say what the law is. But... that threat will exist regardless of whether Democrats retaliate. Countless Americans will reject the court's legitimacy as it entrenches more and more Republican policies against the popular will. At worst, expanding the court will neutralize [McConnell's] power grab, delegitimize the court, and shift constitutional decision-making back to the democratic branches.
  "It may be difficult for some Democrats to accept that the old rules governing Supreme Court nominations have gone out the window. There was once... a playbook, respected by both sides, that kept politics at arms length from the confirmation process. But McConnell lit that playbook on fire in his ruthless crusade to transform the court [system] into an arm of the GOP. Now Democrats have to decide if they will accept a partisan, far-right judiciary for the next generation or use the new rules to respond in kind."

  The Atlantic added:

  "...Republicans initiated this arms race by stealing the Court vacancy that was rightfully Obama's to fill in 2016. For Democrats to refrain from responding in kind would be to disarm unilaterally. As game theorists have shown, the quickest way to restore a stable equilibrium after one party in a reiterative game has repudiated a cooperative norm is to retaliate in kind. Failing to do so incentivizes only more of the norm-breaking behavior.
  "...Republicans themselves will almost surely enlarge the size of the Court the first time they have the opportunity and see the need to do so. Suppose that Democrats refrain from expanding the Court in 2021-22. Next, imagine that two Republican justices are tragically killed in an automobile accident, and President Biden and the Democratic Senate replace them with two Democratic justices, restoring Democrats to the five-to-four majority they ought to have enjoyed after Scalia's death. Now suppose that, in 2024, a Republican is elected president and Republicans win control of Congress. Does anyone doubt that Senate Majority Leader McConnell would pursue Court expansion? His argument for doing so would be precisely the same as his argument last October for confirming Barrett: Republicans had the power to do it, and nothing in the Constitution prohibited them from doing it.
  "...It cannot be a persuasive argument against Democrats' expanding the Court that Republicans will simply retaliate in kind one day: Republicans have amply demonstrated that they will break the norm against Court expansion when they see the advantage in doing so, regardless of what Democrats do now."

• There is currently no legal distinction between a candidate who was elected President by winning the popular vote and candidate who became President despite losing it. Congress must pass a law: a President with no mandate should be limited to placing one Justice on the Supreme Court per term.
• Justices are given lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court so they can fairly interpret the law without being pressured by an unruly mob. The Constitution empowers them to do what is right instead of what is popular.
  Despite gaining a Congressional majority at the end of 2021, Democrats did nothing to reform the Supreme Court. Consequently, Alito and Thomas -- joined by Barrett, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Roberts -- overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022. This was a heinous abuse of power. Supreme Court Justices are supposed to be the greatest legal minds of their generation. The Constitution never intended the Court be a vehicle through which six partisan extremists could lie their way onto lifetime seats, then use their authority to strip away human rights from hundreds of millions of innocent American citizens. Furthermore, Thomas wrote that he intends to criminalize contraception and same-sex marriage. Since Congress declined to impeach and remove the corrupt Justices, the Court must be expanded.
  As noted above, after Republican Senators asked then-President Obama to nominate Judge Garland to the Supreme Court, those same Republicans refused to give Garland a vote. This shrank the Court to eight members for a year. When Hillary Clinton ran for President in 2016, Republican Senators vowed to block anyone she nominated, too. If she had won -- and she came within 80,000 votes of doing so -- we would currently have a Supreme Court with only five Justices. Since the Republicans believe it's all right for them to shrink the Court, it must be all right for the Democrats to expand it. Since Presidents who lost the popular vote put five reactionaries on the court, a President who won the popular vote should be allowed to nominate four moderates.
  Moreover, the Supreme Court has had nine justices since 1869 -- when the country's population was a tenth the size it is now. The country has changed. The ideological balance of the Court must be able to meet the legal challenges we face today, not the ones we had a century ago. (Sign the peititions at Demand Progress and Demand Justice.)
• As noted above, Supreme Court Justices have lifetime terms so they can follow the law instead of caving to the pressure of an unruly mob. Republican Presidents and Senators abused their authority for twenty years by packing the court with reactionary partisan lawyers. Unsurprisingly, the Alito Court has become the most corrupt in generations. The Republican abuse of power in appointing extremists to the Court led directly to the Court's abuse of power in striking down campaign finance reform, the Voting Rights Act, the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to protect the environment, and Roe v. Wade. The Alito Court later announced that Donald Trump could not be prosecuted for crimes he committed while in office. Congress must pass a law establishing term limits for Supreme Court Justices. Once confirmed, a Justice should sit for twenty years, and then retire. Retired Justices must be barred from being re-nominated.
• After years of corruption on the Supreme Court, a group of House Democrats filed impeachment charges against Thomas and Alito in July 2024. Though this move to hold the two corrupt Justices accountable is long overdue, the impeachment attempt is unlikely to move forward in the Republican-controlled House.
• Although John Roberts is Chief Justice on paper, this essay refers to the Alito-dominated court as the "Alito Court," not as the "Roberts Court." Alito is clearly the one calling the shots.

• March in the Women's Marches and support Black Lives Matter. However, this is not enough. Read Indivisible: a Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda. We must lobby Congress and get out the vote.
• Speak out. Though white supremacists and neo-Nazis have the right to free speech, the rest of us have the responsibility to stand up to them and condemn their hatred of innocent people.
• Follow the examples of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Never engage in violence. Trump wants an excuse to crack down on protests. Don't give him one. (If Trump has an excuse to arrest everyone who's willing to stand up for American values, there will be no one left to stand up to white supremacists and neo-Nazis.)
• Urge Congress not to dismantle Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, public schools, or Planned Parenthood. Insist that your State have the best schools in the nation.
• Most Americans agree that abortion and contraception should remain legal. Mike Pence, Brett Kavanaugh, and Mike Pompeo disagree. They want to ban most contraceptives and ban abortion under all circumstances, including when there's no other way to save a woman's life. Urge Congress, your Governor, and your State legislators to protect a woman's right to an abortion and a couple's right to use contraceptives. (If we give the government the power to stop people who need abortions from having them, the government can also force abortions on people who don't want them.) Those who disagree certainly have a right to their opinion, but no one has a right to force someone who doesn't share their religious beliefs to abide by them anyway. (Sign the petition urging Congress to pass the Right to Contraception Act.)
• Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws exist to create so much bureaucracy that it's impossible to get an abortion, even if it's technically legal. If your State has TRAP laws, demand your Governor and legislators repeal them.
• According to Slate Magazine, the majority of women who have abortions are married white women who already have children and can't afford another one. Currently, "most women making this choice are contending with some combination of low income, unemployment, and a lack of health insurance, or are struggling to raise kids on their own." It doesn't help that the Ryan-McConnell-Trump tax law raised taxes on families with more than two children.
  If our society really wants to prevent abortions, we must:
  • Make free contraception available to everyone;
  • Make all children and all pregnant women eligible for Medicare; and
  • Allow mothers who can't afford another child to write off pregnancy expenses on their taxes so they can afford to carry the embryo to term and give it up for adoption. Also:
  • Employers must allow women to take maternity leave and guarantee they can return to their jobs afterwards. They can hire temporary employees in the meantime.
• Support charities and organizations opposing fascism, including: the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, the Anti-Defamation League, the Climate Reality Action Fund, Common Cause, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Earth Justice, Friends of the Earth, the Human Rights Campaign, Human Rights First, NARAL Pro-Choice America, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood, Public Citizen, the Sierra Club, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and UltraViolet.
• Boycott Trump-owned businesses and Trump-affiliated businesses.
• Write Congress, your governor, and your State legislators and demand a law outlawing armed responses to peaceful, unarmed protesters.

• Stay informed. Read websites like 99 Ways to Fight Trump. Read actress Beth Broderick's letter. Read Professor Ira Lupu's article. Watch Keith Olbermann's videos and listen to his podcast. Read David Frum's recommendations. Read director Michael Moore's plan. Read Professor Timothy Snyder's book On Tyranny. Read Jane Mayer's book Dark Money. Read the Mueller Report. Watch former Labor Secretary Robert Reich's videos. Attend a Town Hall. Attend local events -- check the Resistance Calendar. Read What Do I Do About Trump. Support the Sister District Project. Watch comedian Seth Meyers' "A Closer Look" videos. Watch comedian Stephen Colbert's videos.
• If any of your elected officials support Trump, vote them out of office. If they're Republicans who don't support Trump, ask them to leave the party and caucus with the Democrats. See my Open Letter to Senators John McCain and Ben Sasse -- written before the inauguration -- or my Open Letter to Senator Susan Collins, written afterward. See my Open Letter to Senators Bob Corker, Jeff Flake, and Lisa Murkowski, written after the Helsinki summit. See my Open Letter to Senators Susan Collins, Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, and Ben Sasse, written during the impeachment hearings.
• Putin's cyberattacks have gone mostly unanswered by the United States and other Western nations. Journalist Thomas L. Friedman writes: "Putin used cyberwarfare to poison American politics, to spread fake news, to help elect a chaos candidate, all in order to weaken our democracy. We should be using our cyber-capabilities to spread the truth about Putin — just how much money he has stolen, just how many lies he has spread, just how many rivals he has jailed or made disappear — all to weaken his autocracy." Columnist Max Boot lists other ways the West can respond, including: freezing Russian government officials' bank accounts; designating Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism; kicking Russia out of the G-20; denying Putin-allied banks access to international money transfers; and so on.
  
• Political advertisements on television and in print are required to disclose who paid for them. Online political advertising must be held to the same standard.
• Whenever a politician appears on television, subtitles should appear at the bottom of the screen listing their top campaign donors.
• Tell Congress, your Governor, and your state legislators to raise the minimum wage to $15/hour. No one who works a full-time job should live in poverty. In the future, the minimum wage should be tied to the value of the dollar so it doesn't require Congressional or State action to raise it.
• Many credit card companies include an arbitration clause in their terms of service. This clause specifies that in any dispute a consumer may have with the credit card company, the consumer waives legal action in favor of arbitration. The problem: the arbitrator works for the credit card company! Tell Congress, your Governor, and your State legislators to abolish this practice.
• Demand Congress, your Governor, and your State legislators establish modern protections for airline travelers.
• If someone has to postpone a flight due to contracting COVID or another contagious disease, the airline should book them on a later flight for free. People should not be penalized financially for doing the responsible thing to stop diseases from spreading. If the airlines do not do this, Congress must pass legislation requiring them to do so.
• A political party's candidate for Vice President should be chosen by the convention delegates' popular vote, not by the candidate for President.
• When someone dies, their personal possessions are often sold at estate sales. The perfectly good used household items that aren't sold are thrown in a landfill. Americorps should be tasked to collect these unsold items and distribute them to people in poverty who need them.
• Retail stores often throw away unsold merchandise. Instead of throwing it in a landfill, unsold merchandise should be donated to charity.
• Fifty years ago, appliances were built to last. People who bought a toaster in their 20s could use it for the rest of their lives and then pass it on to their grandchildren. Today, appliances are built with planned obsolescence. A toaster's parts wear out soon after the warranty expires. The consumer is forced to buy a new one, and the broken one ends up in a landfill. Tell Congress to outlaw the manufacture and sale of appliances deliberately built to fail.
• Tell Congress to pass a law eliminating medical debt.
• The Second Amendment guarantees that "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Balancing that right with the principles of the Constitution's Preamble -- that the people come together to "insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, [and] promote the general Welfare" has challenged Americans for generations. One way to balance the people's right to own guns for use in self-defense with the people's right to be safe from gun-wielding criminals is to require everyone purchasing guns or ammunition to undergo a background check and complete a gun safety class. (If the Constitution guaranteed the people's right to keep and drive cars, it wouldn't infringe drivers' rights for States to require drivers' licenses!) The New York Times reports that most gun owners, gun experts, and the general public agree on steps like these, including barring convicted criminals from owning firearms.
• Al-Qaeda training manuals instruct terrorists to visit the United States, purchase assault weapons legally, and use them to murder innocent Americans. Congress must reinstate the assault weapons ban. (Send a letter to Congress and sign the petitions at Democracy for America, Amnesty International, Moms Rising, and MoveOn.org.)
• In 2014, California passed a Gun Violence Restraining Order (GVRO) law. Laws like this one can keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, felons, and those accused of domestic violence while preserving their right to due process. Other states can follow their example.
• Boston's Ceasefire project has created a 63% drop in youth homicides. Other cities can follow their example.
• In 1996, Congress passed the Dickey Amendment -- which forbids the government from studying how gun violence affects public health. Congress must repeal this Amendment.
• After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting left 26 people dead, then-President Obama gave the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (which regulates gun sales) authority to check the Social Security Administration's mental health records. In February 2017, Donald Trump cancelled this rule before it ever went into effect. Congress must codify Obama's rule into law.
• The government must raise taxes on ammunition. If every bullet cost $100, people would think twice before shooting one.
• Tell Congress, your governor, and your State legislators to raise the age that individuals are allowed to buy guns and ammunition from 18 to 21. If someone's not responsible enough to drink, they're not responsible enough to buy a gun.
• Every car owner is required by law to purchase insurance in case their car is involved in an accident. If State governments can require liability insurance for cars, they can require it for guns.
  As William Hamby wrote: "What if gun rights were regulated like abortion rights? Here's a list of just some of the hoops you'd have to jump through before you could own a gun:

  • "Only one store in the entire state would sell guns. (See: Mississippi, Arkansas, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming for states with only one abortion provider.)
  • "You'd have to fill out an enormous personal background check including intrusive personal information that has nothing to do with your ability to own or use a gun. Then you'd have to wait at least 72 hours and come back to the store. (Remember, it's the only one in the state. You better hope you don't live on the other side of Wyoming.)
  • "Upon your return, you'd have to sit through intensive mandatory counseling. Your counselor, regardless of his personal beliefs, would have to tell you that gun ownership is actually a bad idea, and that it would negatively effect your mental health to own a gun. (This, despite there being no scientific evidence to support the claim.)
  • "Next, you'd sit through a gruesome movie showing the actual aftermath of domestic gun crimes. You'd see people with half a head. You'd see dead children in their beds. You'd see the bloody aftermath of a school shooting. You'd be shown statistic after statistic warning you that you'd be contributing to this morally degenerate sanctioning of murder.
  • "If you lived in Virginia, you'd have to come back (again) for an invasive and uncomfortable fMRI (which costs around $300 out of your pocket) to ensure your honesty in answering all the background check information and your intentions to use your gun responsibly...
  • "Oh... and if you were married, your spouse might have to sign off on your gun ownership.

  "Once you jumped through all these hoops, you could buy a gun. In a week, if you wanted another gun, you'd have to start over at Step 1. No exceptions."

  Brian Murtagh added: "Let's close down all but one gun shop in every state and make him travel hundreds of miles, take time off work, and stay overnight in a strange town to get a gun. Make him walk through a gauntlet of people holding photos of loved ones who were shot to death, people who call him a murderer and beg him not to buy a gun.
  "Why can't you have to go through a brief training course to show you can operate the thing safely? Why can't you register a particular gun just like you register your car to you? Why aren't you required to take out insurance in case something goes wrong and you're in an accident or whatever? You accidentally shoot somebody?
  "[I]f you have the privilege of carrying a lethal weapon around with you, then if you misuse it, if you use it while under the influence of drugs or alcohol, if you use it in the commission of crime, it should be taken away from you."

• Do your best to love your neighbors as yourselves, and treat others the way you'd wish to be treated. Fascism needs an enemy to blame and vilify. Don't fall into that trap. We are all Americans, and we are all in this together. The people Trump hates are Americans just like us.
• As Professor Chris Edelson points out, the people who detained innocent travelers under Trump's Muslim ban were ordinary people doing their jobs. In all likelihood, none of them would have ever considered handcuffing children or locking families in empty rooms without food for almost a day if they hadn't been following their supervisor's instructions. Likewise, the Homeland Security officers who took immigrant children away from their asylum-seeking mothers never dreamed they would be ordered to do that when they applied for the job. Border Patrol officers with no training in crowd control never thought they'd be ordered to suppress peaceful civil rights protests in Oregon. Post Office workers never thought they'd be ordered to decommission sorting machines so their boss could help steal a presidential election. In order to oppress ordinary people, a tyrant needs other ordinary people willing to obey orders. If your boss tells you to violate someone's civil rights or participate in a criminal, unethical, immoral, or unconstitutional act, refuse to obey illegal orders and call the American Civil Liberties Union. The law is on your side.
• Before you repost anything on social media, check your source to make sure it's accurate. (National Public Radio lists some common-sense suggestions.)
• Some white supremacists have been calling themselves the "alt-right" to obscure the fact that they're white supremacists. Don't fall into this trap. Call white supremacists what they are.
• New York State has made public college tuition-free. Other States must follow their example.
• Tell Congress, your Governor, your State legislators, and your county and municipal commissioners to establish criminal penalties for banks and their employees that foreclose on the wrong house.
• Ask Congress, your Governor, your State legislators, and your county and municipal commissioners to outlaw civil asset forfeiture.
• Urge your State legislators, your Governor, and your city and county commissioners to pass legislation making it illegal for police officers to be intimate with people under arrest. As the petition reads: "When someone is in custody of the police, there is an immediate imbalance of power making consent by the detainee impossible."
• Utah has almost eliminated homelessness with its Housing First program. Other States must follow their example.
• Tell your Governor and your State legislators to outlaw campaign contributions from outside your State.
• Protect the environment.
  • Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement shortly after taking office in January 2025. Urge Congress to codify the the Kyoto Protocols, the Clean Power Plan, and the Paris Agreement into law. (Email your representative.) 20 States have agreed to abide by the Kyoto Protocols reducing air pollution. If your State does not, tell Congress, your Governor, and your legislators to adopt them.
  • Insist Congress, your Governor, and your State legislature institute a cap-and-trade system to reduce carbon pollution.
  • Reduce your "carbon footprint" by living an environmentally responsible life.
  • All parts of the country must recycle and compost. If your area doesn't, call or write your local garbage carrier, your municipality, your county, and your State legislators and request they establish recycling and composting programs. The United States must move towards zero waste.
  • Tell Congress to pass a law reinstating the environmental protection rules and regulations Trump canceled.
  • Urge Congress to preserve the Environmental Protection Agency. If it is abolished anyway, write your Governor and State legislators demanding that they pass environmental protection laws that will do in your State what the EPA was supposed to do for all of us. Demand that your State have the strongest environmental protection laws in the country.
  • Support the Green New Deal - a plan to move the United States to renewable energy. (Email your Senators and sign the petitions at Climate Hawks, Climate Truth, and the Sierra Club.)
  • Fracking is a dangerous mining procedure that poisons ground water. Tell Congress, your Governor, your State legislators, and your county commissioners to outlaw it. (Sign the petition.)
  • State governments must give consumers tax breaks for purchasing environmentally responsible, sustainable, and energy efficient products. State and local governments must raise taxes on products that harm the environment, waste energy, or exploit non-renewable resources. (The federal government's Energy Star program is a step in the right direction, but does not go far enough.)
  • Aspen (Colorado), Burlington (Vermont), Greensburg (Kansas), and Las Vegas (Nevada) power all their municipal buildings with renewable energy. Tell your city, county, and State officials to follow their example.
  • France requires all new buildings to have solar panels or rooftop gardens. American cities, counties, and States must do this too.
  • Urge Congress, your Governor, and your State and local legislators to print all government publications on 100% recycled paper.
  • According to ABC News, the federal government owns over 602,000 cars. Ask Congress, your Governor, and your State and local legislators to buy only American-made electric cars from now on.
  • Write Congress, your Governor, your State legislators, and your county and municipal commissioners and tell them to buy and use only compostable trash bags.
  • Urge Congress, your Governor, and your State legislators to phase out single-use plastic bags and straws and replace them with compostable ones. In the meantime, bring your own bags when you go shopping.
  • Tell Congress, your Governor, your State legislators, and your county and municipal commissioners to install solar panels on public buildings (other than historical landmarks) and other public utilities, such as traffic lights, street lights, and traffic signs.
  • Tell your representatives to pass a law requiring all new parking lots to be built with canopies that hold solar panels. This will generate clean energy, keep vehicles cool on summer days, and protect them from weather.
  • Tell Congress, your State legislators, your Governor, and your city and county commissioners to buy only energy efficient lightbulbs to light public and government buildings, street lights, street signs, and so on.
  • In 2020, the State of California joined countries like Canada, France, Germany, India, Israel, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom -- along with cities like Mexico City, Madrid, and Athens -- in making plans to prohibit the sale of gasoline cars between 2030 and 2040. American cities, counties, and other States can follow their example. American car manufacturers must phase out production of gasoline cars in favor of electric ones in the same way leaded gasoline was phased out in the 1980's.
  • Washington State is phasing out their coal power plants by 2025 and replacing them with wind and solar power. Congress and other States must follow their example.
  • Insist Congress, your Governor, your State legislators, and your city and county outlaw the sale of products made from endangered species.
  • Tell Congress to ban the sale of shark fins. (Sign the petition.)
  • Glyphosate ("Roundup") is a herbicide that's dangerous to people and animals as well as weeds. It is illegal in France and Hawaii. Tell Congress, your Governor, and your State and county legislators to ban its manufacture, import, sale, and use. (Sign the petition.) In the meantime, consumers must boycott it.
  • Neonicotinoid insecticides are deadly to helpful insects (such as bees and butterflies) as well as pests. They also harm songbirds and are dangerous to human children. The European Union has outlawed them. Urge Congress, your Governor, and your State and county legislators to ban their manufacture, import, sale, and use. In the meantime, boycott them.
  • Organophosphate pesticides harm birds and children. In 2018, the Trump Administration lifted a ban that had been in effect since 2001. Urge your representatives at all levels of government to outlaw them. (Sign the petition.) In the meantime, boycott them.
  • According to Friends of the Earth, the poison paraquat is banned in 67 countries, but is still used as a pesticide in the United States. Tell Congress to ban it.
  • Urge Congress to ban the use of depleted uranium.
  • Write Congress, your Governor, and your State legislators asking for a law banning the use of high fructose corn syrup in food and drinks. Cane sugar must be reinstated. In the meantime, boycott it.
  • Ask Congress, your Governor, and your State legislators to ban the use of recombinant bovine growth hormone (RBGH.) It's cruel to the cows and has been linked to illnesses in people. The United States must stop the production, use, and sale of dairy products made with RBGH, and consumers must boycott the product.
  • Tell Congress, your Governor, and your State legislators to ban the import, manufacture and sale of foods, soaps, deodorants, toothpaste, and so on made with sodium sulfate, propylene glycol, dimethyl silicone, partially hydrogenated oil, or red dye 3. In the meantime: boycott such products.
  • The European Union has banned the use of mineral oil, olestra, and azodicarbonamide in foods, and has banned brominated vegetable oil in drinks. Tell Congress, your Governor, and your State legislators to follow their example. In the meantime, boycott products containing them.
  • Polystyrene styrofoam hurts the environment and can be replaced with compostable products. Tell Congress, your Governor, and your State, county, and municipal legislators to ban it. (Sign the petition.) In the meantime: boycott it.
  • The State of California has banned the use of polyethylene plastic, polypropylene plastic, and plexiglass (polymethyl methacrylate) in toothpastes. Congress and other States must follow their example. In the meantime, boycott them. Plastics don't belong in toothpaste.
  • The State of Hawaii has banned the sale of sunscreens containing oxybenzone, an ingredient that damages coral reefs. Other States must follow their example. In the meantime: boycott it.
  • Diacetyl and acetylpropionyl are flavor additives that can cause lung disease and Alzheimer's disease in the workers that manufacture them. Write Congress, your Governor, and your State legislators and tell them to ban them. In the meantime, boycott products (i.e. microwave popcorn) that contain them.
  • We need a national no junk mail list modeled after the national do not call list. Though the do not call list has hardly eliminated telemarketing, it has outlawed it. If any telemarketer calls you, they are breaking the law, and you can be sure it's a scam. All catalogs and direct mail advertising must include a freepost ("business reply mail") postcard allowing the consumer to automatically remove themselves from the advertiser's list. Furthermore, Congress and State governments must legislate that any remaining direct mail advertising is printed on 100% recycled paper. In the meantime, call or email anyone who sends you junk mail and tell them to take you off their list.
  • The national do not call list does not go far enough. Write Congress, your Governor, and your State legislators and tell them to outlaw all cold calling.
  • Even though the majority of Americans oppose drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress legalized it. Drilling there would cost more than the oil is worth! Tell Congress to repeal this decision. (Sign the petition.)
  • Ask Congress, your Governor, and your State legislators to put reasonable limits on the use of antibiotics on factory farmed livestock.
  • Nuclear power plants create deadly radioactive waste that will still be toxic 10,000 years from now. Tell Congress, your Governor, and your State legislators to phase out the use of nuclear power plants.
  • 90% of Americans agree that genetically modified food must be labeled as such. Urge Congress, your Governor, and your State legislators to require it.
  • Asbstos was banned in 1989, but the Trump Administration ended the ban in 2018. Asbestos is poisonous and causes cancer. Though the Biden Administration restored the ban, insist Congress, your Governor, and your State legislators to outlaw the import, manufacture, sale, and use of products made with asbestos.
  • Urge Congress, your Governor, and your State legislators to ban the use of BPA, a cancer-causing plastic lining found in cans and other food products. In the meantime, boycott products made with it.
  • Urge the FDA -- as well as Congress, your Governor, and your State legislators -- to outlaw the use of phthalate plastics in food packaging. These are linked to birth defects, infertility, and miscarriages.
  • Tell Congress, your Governor, and your State legislators to ban the sale of animals with mad cow disease.
  • Insist your Governor, your State legislators, and Congress to outlaw the sale of exotic and endangered animals.
  • California, Hawaii, New Mexico, and Washington have committed to 100% clean energy by 2045. Other States, cities, and counties can follow their example.
  • It's illegal to sell products in the United States that don't meet certain health and safety standards -- but it is not illegal for companies to manufacture such products here and then sell them in other countries. Urge Congress to pass a law requiring all American exports to meet the same health and safety standards as products sold in the United States.
  • Save paper by canceling your newspaper delivery and reading the news online.
  • Ten days after being voted out of office, Trump ended protections for gray wolves. Tell Congress to reinstate them.
  • Tell Congress to impose tariffs on seafood imported from countries that allow overfishing.
  • America has become dependent on fertilizers to grow crops. Runoff from overfertilization is poisoning streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans. Congress must give tax incentives to farms that use crop rotation and raise taxes on farms that overuse fertilizers.
  • The United States must use our power and prestige to encourage other nations to adopt the human rights, environmental protection, and worker safety laws we have in America.
  • The United States must lead the world in adopting clean energy. The USA must phase out the extraction, processing, sale, and burning of all fossil fuels, and must use our economic and diplomatic power to push other nations to do so as well.
  • The President must declare all remaining wilderness areas as national monuments. The United States must use our diplomatic and economic power to push other nations to preserve theirs as well.
  • Americorps must be tasked with cleaning up abandoned lands (such as ghost towns) and restocking them with native species of plants and animals.
  • Urge Congress, your governor, and your State legislators to pass laws mandating that all new highways and freeways must be built with underpasses for wildlife to pass through safely.
  • Decades of hunting, trapping, and poison have decimated the American ocelot. The species has been wiped out in Louisiana, and under 120 animals exist in Texas. The United States and Mexico must make an arrangement to bring Mexican ocelots to Texas to restore the American population. (Sign the petition.)
  • Boycott companies that support the Dakota Access Pipeline.
  
  America cannot solve all the world's problems. However, the United States can and must use our diplomatic and economic power to encourage other countries to solve their own problems.
• Tell Congress, your Governor, and your State legislators to pass a law requiring telephone companies to block robocalls. (Sign the petition.)
• In 33 States, it costs more to send a child to day care than it does to send a child to college. Professor Elizabeth Palley suggests that States build child care systems modeled after the one used by the U.S. military.
• In the last decade, American parents have been arrested and prosecuted for doing something that was commonplace thirty years ago: allowing older children to walk home from school, to play at local parks unsupervised, or to wait in the car while they go to the store. Their children have been taken away and placed in foster care -- wasting resources that should be used to help children in real danger of abuse or neglect. Utah has outlawed this practice. Other states should follow their example. Communities must empower the police to investigate crimes, not force police officers to waste time and resources harassing law-abiding families.
• Tell your Governor and State legislators to outlaw marriage below the age of sixteen (at the very least.) If someone isn't responsible enough to drive a car, they aren't responsible enough to get married.
• "Lunch shaming" humiliates elementary school students whose parents have not paid or could not pay for their school lunch -- as if there were anything a child in their single digits could do about it! New Mexico and Texas have banned the practice. Other States should follow their example.
• Ask your Governor, State legislators, and Congress to designate September 11th as a holiday honoring firefighters and other emergency responders.
• Only four States -- California, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island -- have established paid maternity leave. Other States must follow their example.
• Most workers cannot afford to use up their sick time in order to care for sick children -- so they send their kids to school when they're sick. This does nothing but spread disease, and sick children can't concentrate on schoolwork anyway. Write your representatives and ask them to pass laws requiring companies to set aside extra sick time for employees who need to take care of sick relatives.
• Smoking kills 480,000 Americans every year. Ask Congress, your Governor, and your State, city, and county legislators to ban tobacco advertising.
• Ask your Governor and your State legislators to give tax incentives to developers who convert abandoned shopping malls into apartment buildings.
• In Germany, television networks play shows straight through with no interruptions, then have ten minutes of advertisements. American networks should do this too.
• The barbaric Iraqi-Syrian terrorist group that calls itself the "Islamic State" (usually abbreviated to ISIS or ISIL) is neither Islamic nor a state. Don't legitimize them by calling them that. Use the Arabic acronym for them instead: DAESH. They hate being called that -- it translates to "bigot" or "bully."
• Americans of all ethnicities can stand up to the racist legacy of slavery and move statues of Confederate generals from public places to museums.
• Write Congress, your governor, and your state legislators and tell them to ban the sale of suicide extension cords.

If your Representatives, Senators, Governor, and State legislators don't pass these reforms, vote them out of power in favor of someone who will. America's standard of living must lead the world, and our nation must stay competitive.

Note that signing petitions is fine, but petitions by themselves don't accomplish much. The way to make a difference is to lobby Congress and vote. If you're already registered to vote, double-check your registration. If you're not, register. Urge your family and friends to register, even if they disagree with you. On election day: vote.

Legacy Links: [But Today, I Confess: Political Satire in Verse] | [Obamawatch] | [The Legacy of George W. Bush]