It’s important because if we don’t speak up now! Rates will continue to rise and we will continue to be expected to pay them regardless of the price on the bill. The city doesn’t have reliable utility assistance for its residents. Community Service doesn’t have funding… Most community organizations will tell you that the bill can’t exceed $200 dollars in order to receive assistance. So majority of our residents don’t qualify for the assistance. It’s important to remember the cost of living and minimum wage that the state still hasn’t graduated from. 

If we lose our First Amendment rights and freedom of the press, democracy is finished.  We need big media companies and powerful CEOs to stand up to Trump. 

  President Trump's attempt to freeze funding for life-saving and essential science with a blatantly illegal and unconstitutional power grab should send chills down our spines. Research and grants abruptly halted. Medicine deliveries interrupted. Families and communities in shock. The Trump administration's Project 2025 plan has made clear that the President thinks it's his power and prerogative to unilaterally decide how taxpayer dollars are spent. That includes funds that Congress has already approved to go to local hospitals, universities, and research institutions for essential science, research, and programs that directly benefit our communities. The Trump administration has also made clear it will not stop trying to exercise this power wherever and however it can. Regardless of whether the administration has to walk back an executive order or is momentarily turned back by a court, they will keep at it until and unless Congress acts decisively and is clear that it will not stand for this illegal and harmful overreach. Urge Congress to oppose the Trump administration's illegal freeze of federal funds for programs, research, and science. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) launched our Save Science, Save Lives campaign on Day 1 of the Trump administration to provide a bullhorn for UCS supporters to speak out with one voice. Right now, we need to band together to make sure our lawmakers to hear from us and are moved to stand up to the Trump administration and to protect science. Regardless of party, we expect our legislators to use every tool at their disposal to stop the illegal and unconstitutional attempt to withhold congressionally approved funds. Funds that our communities have been counting on for cancer and other life-saving research, critical disaster relief efforts, providing food to kids, and so much more. Take a moment to let your members of Congress know where you stand on Trump's illegal and unconstitutional power grab, and how you expect them to respond. 

This administration wants us to be overwhelmed and feel as if we are in complete chaos! Let’s not let them do that.  Let’s start by gathering everyone against this fascist administration in one place and we can do that by signing this petition to show how strong our numbers are! Show them how we outnumber them!  When we organize, we win. When we fight, we win

America is the wealthiest nation in the world. We can and should have a fully staffed flight control system and a fully funded FAA. A politic that would consider tax cuts for the wealthy so they can take joy rides into space, while at the same time using a 'Swiss cheese' approach to air traffic control to pinch government spending is insane.  The irreplaceable lives of 67 people were lost this Thursday due to a preventable accident. All mid-air collisions are this. At the time of this accident, the fact that one controller was doing the work of two, and that this was considered 'permissible' reveals the root of the problem: Short staffed air traffic controller systems. These dedicated, over worked heroes have warned us for years, since the 1970's when Reagan fired them all over a strike about working conditions, that their work load is unrealistic. As traffic has increased dramatically over the last decades, near-collisions have increased proportionately. Yet, our government leaders have not responded to the warnings that traffic controllers are overworked and under staffed. Many, many warnings have been ignored. Now 67 have died and their families have suffered the worst imaginable loss; all because these elected leaders have failed to respond. We the people must DEMAND that our air traffic control system be fully staffed and fully funded, so it can operate at it's best possible level and provide the best possible safety.  Our very lives depend on it. Please sign this petition, and we must all call / write your Senators and Congress persons and make this demand.  Fully staff flight controllers and fully fund the FAA.

Medical debt is a mounting crisis in Virginia. Half of adults in the state report having faced medical debt in the past five years. Of those, nearly 30% had more than $1000 in medical debt. This burden is often the result of unavoidable illnesses-nobody chooses to get cancer or suffer a heart attack. Our state legislature can act now to protect Virginia patients from predatory medical debt by passing this bill. Note that the bill has passed the Virginia State House on Wednesday January 29th, and moves on to the Senate!

Days ago, Trump removed a vital layer of oversight by purging over a dozen Senate-confirmed government watchdogs across Defense, State, Transportation, Labor, Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Energy, Commerce, Treasury, and Agriculture, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, Small Business Administration, and the Social Security Administration. Trump claims, “It’s a very common thing to do.” It isn’t. What it is, is illegal. But don’t ask us. Ask Senators Adam Schiff and Lindsey Graham, who agree that Trump’s Inspector General (IG) purge violates U.S. law. What they don’t agree on is what comes next — and that’s where you come in. A president can’t illegally dismiss officials designed to hold him to account without repercussions. The Inspector General Act, originally passed in 1978 and updated just two years ago, allows a president to remove an IG. To do it, he has to give Congress 30 days' notice before the removal and explain the rationale for each removal. Neither requirement was satisfied when Trump fired as many as 17 IGs late on Friday, January 24, 2025. The consequences of inaction at this moment could last generations. But together, we can demand justice and safeguard our democracy. Because when Congress acts, a president listens: In 2020, Sen. Chuck Grassley held up Trump nominees when he was angry about another dubious Trump firing of IGs. Decades earlier, when President Reagan summarily fired the IGs, congressional outcry got them reinstated. Members of Congress have a fundamental and legal duty to make sure that Trump follows the law — and the kind of leverage to get these expert civil servants reinstated. People’s lives and safety are on the line and lawmakers must act immediately. 

Since its inception in 2003, PEPFAR has invested over $100 billion in the global HIV/AIDS response, saving 25 million lives, preventing millions of HIV infections and supports grants for PEace Corps volunteers, all while significantly strengthening global health security.

housing insecurity affects everyone, directly or indirectly. It impacts our schools, hospitals, businesses, and local economies. When families can’t afford housing, children’s education suffers, healthcare costs rise, and economic growth stalls. Affordable housing isn’t just about helping those in need—it’s about creating strong, thriving communities for all of us.

Science for the Public Good: An Open Letter to the 119th Congress I am asking you to defend the science and scientists that keep Americans safe. The Trump administration's current agenda promises to eviscerate the protections that Americans count on and support: clean air and water; safe food and medicine; products that won't harm us; and protection from extreme weather and other damaging effects of climate change. Without strong federal science, people will suffer, and historically marginalized communities will continue to bear the burden of these harms. Independent science can inform strong public policy that puts the health, safety and welfare of Americans first. Protecting rigorous and independent science is a common-sense, nonpartisan goal. The reason behind the Trump administration's radical proposals to sideline science and scientists is crystal clear: science stands in the way of polluters and special interests unleashing unprecedented amounts of pollution that would put short-term profits over people, no matter the cost to current and future generations of Americans. The next stretch of the Trump administration will be absolutely essential for taking action that can save science that saves lives. Science supporters in your district and state are mobilizing to fight back and prevent the politicization of science and firing of scientists who help protect our families and communities. This is a critical time to show the administration that members of Congress of both parties are united in championing the science that helps protect the communities they represent. I am asking for your support.

Imagine you were fleeing violence, or seeking to reunify with your relatives in the United States. You are crossing the border when the US government arrests you. Despite your age, you are treated like a criminal, locked in detention, and separated from your family. Not only must you endure conditions that the federal government itself has found inhumane, but you must also defend yourself in immigration court alone-because the United States does not recognize your right to a lawyer even if you cannot find one. This is the reality that hundreds of thousands of adults and children face each day. It is the result of an immigration system designed to dehumanize and criminalize people, not welcome them with dignity. The US immigration system is an arrest-to-deportation pipeline rooted in racism. Our nation’s immigration laws were created and founded explicitly in racism and xenophobia. The past three decades have been marked by an ever-expanding immigration detention system, and an immigration enforcement regime that criminalizes people of color and funnels people from the criminal legal systems into detention and deportation. As a result, our immigration system serves as a form of “double punishment” for people who pass from one legal system to another, compounding the racial disparities and injustices in both. Just as Black people are more likely than white people to be targeted by police, Black immigrants are also disproportionately vulnerable to immigration enforcement. One-in-Ten Black people living in the United States are also immigrants. 

The Atlantic City Housing Authority Stanley Holmes Village is a humanitarian health and economic development crisis, because it endangers the health and wellness of several hundred children, seniors, and families during blistering cold weather. For example December 23, 2024, it was 12° degrees outside, and these America  families had no heat or hot water on the inside.