Members of the Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee are elected by county and represent the Democratic voters in that county. They are not there to push their own personal preference. Just as we expect our other elected officials to listen to constituents, we expect our members of Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee to listen. We have seen how the party being perceived to push their preferred candidates has alienated voters and cost us not only state elections, but also national elections. It is time for the will of the people to be heard. Allow our Democratic process to operate in a fair and unbiased primary.

Kendrick Johnson was brutally murdered 9 years ago at his high school.Kj was 17years old when he was beaten and lynched by classmates

The attack on the US Capital, during the certification of the results of the 2020 Presidential election, and the campaign to sow doubt over the results of that election, was one of the most serious attempts to subvert the will of the American people, and the Constitutional responsibilities of the US Senate, in our lifetimes. The Republican Party and it’s Congressional and Senate members have since joined in the campaign to convince the American people of the “Big Lie,” that there was massive fraud during the 2020 elections, and are blocking the passage of The Voters Rights and John Lewis Acts that would prevent Republican controlled State legislatures from passing bills that would disenfranchise minority voters, continue "extreme gerrymandering,” and permit partisan election officials to overturn the results in future election cycles. At the same time, ex-President Trump, his advisors, lawyers and enablers, have exhausted their legal fight to prevent their subpoenaed testimony before the Special January 6th Investigative Commission and the denial of access to documents related to their roles in the events leading up to the January 6th, 2021, attack on our nation’s Capital. The upcoming sessions of the Special Commission, when the central figures in that attempt to prevent the certification of the Presidential election results will be testifying, are crucial to our understanding of the persons responsible for the campaigns of disinformation and events leading up to and during the attack, in order to prevent future attempts to overturn elections that are central to the survival of our democracy. The light of full media coverage of that testimony is the best way to ensure that the Special Committee achieves it goals and prevent those opposed to its investigation from continuing “The Big Lie” and delegitimizing the Commission and it’s findings/recommendations.

Let's urge Dole Sunshine to take corrective action! Their recent commercial, "Hold My Fruit Bowl" ends with a troubling image of a rock striking a person fishing off an icy coastline: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzhyWHRdP48 The stereotypical implication is deeply problematic and easily interpreted as racist. Dole Sunshine needs to rethink this advertisement, and pull it immediately.

When the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection's (DEP) Oil and Gas division put a moratorium on road spreading in 2018, conventional drillers turned to a different arm of the agency, the Bureau of Waste Management, to find a loophole that would allow them to keep spreading toxic, radioactive drilling wastewater on unpaved roads in PA. The loophole is called Coproduct Determination. Owners of any waste product can legally make determinations that their waste is essentially a product capable of performing the same function a commercially-available product performs. And then they can start using it. At no time are they required to tell the DEP. Should the DEP find out and request a copy of the determination report, the waste owner must provide a copy. In early 2021, for the first time since drillers started availing themselves of the loophole, the Bureau of Waste Management requested determination reports from 17 drillers. The Better Path Coalition requested copies of the reports and put together our own list of companies reporting road spreading in the DEP's Oil & Gas Waste Report. We came up with 29 companies. DEP provided copies of 8 reports that included one that wasn't on our list because the company had not reported road spreading after the moratorium. What we found in the so-called determination reports was alarming. Not one driller came close to doing a proper determination following guidance laid out in 25 PA Code Section 287.8. Some just turned in random lab tests. Others submitted reports filled with extraneous information. When we tried to do our own tracking of the waste, we found the DEP's reporting system to be seriously flawed and missing critically important information. We chronicled all of this in our new brief, The Moratorium Morass. You can read it here, https://www.betterpathcoalition.org/betterpathbriefs. Public health and the environment won't be protected until there's an outright ban on spreading dangerous drilling waste!

The Solution It is the community through its collective vote that is in the best position to decide whether a particular judicial candidate understands the feel, tastes, smell, touch and pulse of the community. This is of particular concern to communities of color that have for far too long, been and continue to a great extent to be marginalized by a judiciary that has been ignorant and insensitive to communities of color. It is only recently that with demographic changes in New York City in particular, that Black and Latino communities have exercised their vote to elect a qualified judiciary more reflective of the community’s demographic make-up. It has been only through their vote, that communities of color have been able to diversify the judiciary to the extent that is has begun to increase to a certain extent, public confidence in the judiciary and the court system as a whole. Indeed, Judges with diverse backgrounds offer unique perspectives and viewpoints that would serve to provide decision-making power to formerly disenfranchised populations and equal justice for all. As a result, BILL NUMBER: S4379 has been introduced and passed by the NYS legislature and awaits Governor Kathy Hochul’s signature. TITLE OF BILL An act to amend the judiciary law, in relation to making technical changes to provisions providing for certification for service as a retired judge of the court of appeals or a retired justice of the supreme court. PURPOSE To make certification of retired Court of Appeals Judges and Supreme Court Justices who otherwise meet the statutory criteria for certification automatic, rather than discretionary.

We need to address generational curses and Women's Reentry, Child Mental Health, State and Local Police Conduct, Prosecutorial Conduct and Taxation without Representation for Ex-Offenders. While there has been some improvement, more needs to be done today!! Join setuptofail.org in our quest for Justice and Responsibility.

The current surge in Covid-19 around the country, and in Michigan in particular, make a surge inevitable at MSU. The physical and mental health of the MSU students, faculty, and staff must not be put at unnecessary risk, and a shift to online classes is needed to prevent another disaster within our community.

To remember John for all of the numerous contributions and lives he touched through sports and specifically hockey throughout the Hoboken community.

Almost an entire year after leaving office, Donald Trump’s political appointees are still working in the Department of Justice.1 Even worse, there’s never been any investigation into whether Trump broke personnel rules by hiring them. That’s because Attorney General Merrick Garland says he’s not “looking backward.”2 As a nation, we can’t collectively move forward past the Trump administration if his cronies are still burrowed deep inside the Department of Justice. Sign the petition: Tell AG Merrick Garland to investigate and remove Trump appointees in the DOJ! Having Trump appointees installed in career positions at the DOJ is a ticking time bomb for the Biden administration. One of them, Deputy Solicitor General Chris Gannon went against the Biden administration and argued, in front of the Supreme Court, to deny Social Security benefits for residents of Puerto Rico. Another Trump appointee, Alexander Haas, has used his position as Director of the Federal Programs Branch to weaken protections for student-borrowers from predatory for-profit colleges. These cases may seem small but they impact real people, and the longer these Trump appointees remain in the DOJ the more likely they could become involved in high-profile cases like voting rights, immigration, or reproductive rights. President Biden can’t afford to keep Trump aides inside the DOJ. If Attorney General Merrick Garland truly wants to look forward and not backward, he can start by removing Trump’s cronies from his agency. Sign the petition: Tell AG Merrick Garland to investigate and remove Trump appointees in the DOJ! Sources: 1. The American Prospect, “The Trump Officials Still Running Biden’s Justice Department,” December 13, 2021. 2. Washington Post, “Merrick Garland Will Not Deliver Your Catharsis,” July 19, 2021.

Over a decade ago, Demand Progress’ co-founder Aaron Swartz started working to make federal court documents available to the public at no cost. The public entrusts federal courts with our rights and disputes; in turn, the public has a right to inspect court records and ensure federal courts administer justice fairly. But the current filing system stashes these essential documents behind a paywall, costing the public more than a hundred million dollars each year.[1] In 2008, Aaron paid a small fortune to bring several million federal court documents out from behind the paywall, exposing misdeeds within the federal judiciary in the process. For sharing information and revealing wrongdoing, Aaron was pursued by the FBI.[2] It’s time for court documents to be made public. Sign the petition if you agree. Thanks to Aaron’s and others’ activism, we’ve come a long way from the days when open sourcing federal court documents was regarded by the federal government as radical — even potentially criminal. When the Senate returns from holiday break, legislation to make federal court records available at no cost to the public will be brought before the full Senate for a floor vote. This movement is gaining traction. We need to make sure the legislation passes. Sign the petition: Tell Congress we demand the passage of the Open Courts Act! Information freedom activists and civil rights groups have been calling for transparency around court records for over a decade. But the federal court administrators still refuses to make these records publicly accessible, even after a district court ruled last year that the courts are dramatically overcharging the public for access the paywall as it currently exists is illegal.[3] Court administrators, who have diverted the revenues for unauthorized purposes, fear giving up this revenue stream. Some federal judges do not want to empower systematic studies of how justice is administered, and have fought the public access movement tooth and nail.[4] The courts have built a rickety, poor-designed, costly alternative to the promise of access for all that (barely) serves their narrow needs, not that of the public. Thankfully, many federal court records have entered the public record another way: through grassroots information-sharing. In the process of empowering the public to access its own laws, activists have also exposed rampant privacy violations within the federal judiciary — demonstrating once again that public oversight is essential to protecting democracy.[2] It’s time for Congress to require the courts provide free and open access to federal court records. Sign the petition: Tell Congress to pass the Open the Courts Act to grant the American people access to their own records! Sources: 1. Fix the Court, “How Could We Pay for Free PACER? Let's Look at the Options,” August 29, 2019. 2. CNN, “How Aaron Swartz helped build the Internet,” January 15, 2013. 3. ABA Journal, “Federal judiciary wrongly used PACER fees for unrelated projects, Federal Circuit rules,” August 6, 2020. 4. GovExec, “The Paywall That Continues to Stand in the Way of Government Transparency,” November 30, 2021.

Removing Fox News and it’s affiliates would greatly improve the mental health, slow the spread of misinformation and disinformation and decrease the radicalization of our armed force members and Federal employees.. The disastrous effect this propaganda has on the morale of our men and women must not be minimized