Last week’s circus on the House floor was an absurd means to an inevitable end: Kevin McCarthy is the new Speaker of the House. This week, the McCarthy era began with a grossly predictable assault on federal spending. The first vote of the Republican controlled chamber is to defund the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) which successfully passed in the House.1 They specifically want to undo recent investments made to the IRS designed to strengthen the agency’s ability to crack down on millionaire, billionaire, and corporate tax cheats. In other words: they want to issue handouts to their wealthy donors. Sign the petition: the US Senate must reject House Republicans' attempt to undermine the IRS for the benefit of the rich and powerful. Who will benefit from a weakened IRS? Notably Donald Trump. His recently released tax returns expose a strategy of overseas bank accounts and manipulative real estate evaluations that effectively allowed him to dodge taxes.2,3 This is exactly why Democrats included an extra $80 billion in funding for the IRS in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act.1 To go after ultra-wealthy tax cheats like Trump. Republican’s response has been to paint the I.R.S. investments as “militarizing the IRS” and creating “hordes of armed IRS agents” that would target small businesses and working Americans.4 They pretend to be serving the interests of working Americans when really, they’re just following the classic GOP playbook of catering to the ultra-wealthy. This hypocritical fear mongering is also on display in the name of their bill, “The Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act.” A more appropriate name might be something like “The Millionaire, Billionaire, and Corporate Taxpayer Protection Act.” Claiming their legislation will help working Americans when in reality it will only benefit the top one percent is about to be the status quo for the McCarthy run House. We need to rely on the Democrat-run Senate to hold the line and prevent this harmful legislation from becoming law. Sign the petition: Tell the US Senate to reject House Republicans attempts to defund the IRS! Sources: 1. NY Times, “House Republicans Vote to Rescind I.R.S. Funding,” January 9, 2023. 2. The Independent, “Trump had foreign bank accounts in China, UK and Ireland as president and one year paid more foreign tax than US,” December 30, 2022. 3. CNN, “Key takeaways from six years of Donald Trump’s federal tax returns,” December 30, 2022. 4. Reuters, “Fact Check-The IRS is not hiring thousands of armed agents, job ads show opening for specialized unit,” August 17, 2022.

In the last three years, nearly 1.1 million Americans have died from COVID-19 and over 100 million more have become ill. This huge, unnecessary price increase for the Moderna vaccine would have devastating impacts and will cause needless deaths and severe, long-term health challenges for so many due to millions of Americans not being able to afford the vaccine. It will make the vaccine unavailable and inaccessible for many millions of uninsured and underinsured Americans (especially low-income people, people with disabilities, and communities of color) who won’t be able to afford it. How many people will die from COVID-19 as a result of limited access to these life-saving vaccines? In the midst of a deadly pandemic, restricting access to this much-needed vaccine is unconscionable. The COVID-19 vaccines were jointly developed in partnership with scientists from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a U.S. government agency that is funded by U.S. taxpayers, and the federal government, who directly provided $1.7 billion to Moderna for research and development. If Moderna more than quadrupled the price of the vaccine, it would make it unaffordable to the very residents of this country who made the production of the vaccine possible, not to mention the fact that this decision will make the vaccine inaccessible to countries across the world. That is not acceptable. It will also have a significantly negative impact on the budgets of Medicaid, Medicare, and other government programs that will continue covering the vaccine without cost-sharing for patients. It will cost taxpayers BILLIONS of dollars, and the outrageous price boost will increase private health insurance premiums. And in the midst of the worst public health crisis in the U.S. over the last two years, Moderna made over $19 billion in profits and used those profits to provide incredibly extravagant compensation packages to the CEO and other top officials at the company. The Moderna CEO even became a multi-billionaire as a direct result of Moderna’s COVID vaccine, and several Moderna chairmen, co-founders, and investors are now billionaires, too. Let’s be clear: The purpose of the recent taxpayer investment in Moderna was to protect our health and lives, not to turn a handful of corporate executives and investors into multi-billionaires. This is why we are urgently calling for Moderna to NOT increase the price of the people-funded COVID-19 vaccine!

As a lobbying group working at the local, state, and federal levels on issues affecting aging Americans, retired Americans need AARP’s political influence to assist in repealing the GPO and WEP.

Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, right-wing Republican laws have taken effect in state after state to ban abortion and criminalize those who seek and provide it. These harsh laws take away a fundamental right that had been guaranteed by the Constitution for nearly 50 years and fulfill an extremist vision of exerting control over our health, our bodies, and our autonomy. As a result, pregnant people—many of whom already faced challenges accessing the abortion care that should have been their right—are forced to travel long distances to seek care, or to carry to term pregnancies that could be harmful or fatal. And we see these same Republicans seeking to jail and punish people in cruel and outrageous ways. The Republican Party is now bringing these attacks to Congress, where their majority in the House of Representatives wasted no time in passing two anti-abortion bills. We know they won't stop there: They'll go after the right to contraception, limit access to self-managed abortion, and seek a full national abortion ban. We need to stop them at all costs. Democrats in the Senate and President Biden need to take every measure to defeat these bills. More than that, they need to continue the fight to codify the protections of Roe into law—and do away with the regressive filibuster, if necessary, to pass such a bill in the Senate. And as the House continues to vote on these bills, we need every member of Congress to hear from their constituents, to know that a vast, bipartisan majority of Americans support abortion rights, and that they will be held accountable for voting for any measure that seeks to limit those rights, including a national abortion ban.

Integrity and honesty of candidates for office and holders of office are of vital importance for a democracy. Mr. Santos' case for office was based almost entirely on fabrication. That cannot be acceptable for continuing in any elected office.

its beneficial towards em and I

If we now know the truth about George Santos, let's acknowledge the fact and correct this betrayal before there are consequences that jeopardize our democracy by allowing another individual who's allergic to reality, be a leader within our country

George Santos lied about his mother’s family fleeing from Nazi oppression in the Ukraine and then Belgium, fleeing from the Holocaust to Brazil, where he then immigrated to the United States. His mother’s family already was living in Brazil during the period when he said they were fleeing from the Holocaust, so this is an outright lie. The Holocaust is one of the greatest crimes against humanity to ever occur, and to the Jewish people, the Holocaust is a personal and collective tragedy. We hold the truth of the Holocaust sacred and do not accept when it is used in a lie for political gain to help to obtain political office. It has been proven that Representative Elect George Santos has completely lied about his family background, and he is neither Jewish, nor did his family flee from the Nazis in Europe. This is an unacceptable lie and we demand that he step down and not take his seat in Congress. We demand that the GOP recognize his slap in the face of the memory of the Jews who suffered and died in the Holocaust and call for him to not take his seat in the House of Representitives.

Because my daughter and so many others who defended themselves are behind bars.

The Civil War continues to be the single most divisive event in US history. References and branding that are remnants of this destructive time in our history should be considered divisive as well.

Republican attempts to silence our voices haven't gone unnoticed. But to stop them, we need to step up now. Elected officials should never amplify language or take actions that put the lives of their constituents, their peers, or public servants at risk.

Facebook is preparing to make a decision on whether or not to reinstate Donald Trump's Facebook account. For the risk Trump poses to our public safety and democracy, we must keep Trump off Facebook. Join us in urging Meta to keep Trump off Facebook.