Demand Progress

Campaigns

• Google: End the Bi-Erasure!

  Some of the biggest boundaries for bisexual teens and adults to overcome are erasure and isolation, with people from both the straight and gay community ignoring their issues or refusing to even admit they exist.

  17 of 100 Signatures

  Created by Demand Progress
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  Tell Congress: Block DeVos from punishing schools that choose not to reopen!

  The last person you want making decisions for your children is Betsy DeVos. As Trump’s Education Secretary, DeVos has been a disaster from Day 1. But during the pandemic she’s only gotten worse. Secretary DeVos wants to hold federal school funding hostage to pressure schools to reopen in a couple of weeks, despite the nation still seeing spikes in COVID-19 cases.[1] Sign the petition: Tell Congress to block DeVos from using federal funds to pressure schools to reopen! Our nation’s schools are already massively underfunded. In a dangerous public health nightmare scenario like the coronavirus pandemic, the federal government should be funding schools to do whatever is necessary to protect students, teachers and staff, and slow the spread of the virus. Instead, if DeVos has her way, schools will have to reopen if they want federal funding that most districts desperately need. In short, DeVos wants to force cities and states to "re-open" - and doesn't seem to care if children, teachers, and school staff get sick or even die in the process. It’s worth remembering that DeVos has never once taught in a classroom, holds no degrees in education, and until Trump appointed her as Secretary of Education, had no government experience. DeVos is a right-wing billionaire donor whose pet project has been dismantling public education. Every year Trump has been in office, DeVos proposed massive budget cuts to the Department of Education. Now she’s only willing to put funds into schools if students, teachers, and school staff risk their health and their lives in the middle of an out-of-control pandemic. There’s not much time left to act before schools start in the fall. That’s why you need to tell Congress to stop DeVos immediately. Sign the petition: Tell Congress to block DeVos from using federal funds to pressure schools to reopen! [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/us/politics/trump-schools-reopening.html

  29,596 of 30,000 Signatures

  Created by Demand Progress
• Save the internet: Overturn the FCC's repeal of Net Neutrality!

  July 2018 update: The FCC's repeal of net neutrality went into effect on June 11th. Now it's even more important to get lawmakers to act. Senators passed a resolution to save net neutrality via the Congressional Review Act. It's up to our congressional representatives to do the same. ------- On December 14, the Federal Communications Commission repealed net neutrality, handing control of the internet to Big Telecom. The repeal of net neutrality gives monopolistic internet providers like Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T the power to block, censor, and slow down your favorite sites on the web. 83% of Americans support net neutrality protections. Congress, as the oversight body for the FCC, can overturn this massive giveaway to the telecom industry. Since the FCC voted to end net neutrality, 20 senators have already pledged to reverse the FCC's vote, and we can convince others to join us. We need to build on this momentum -- tell your member of Congress to support the resolution to restore net neutrality now!

  108,752 of 200,000 Signatures

  Created by Demand Progress
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  Investigate Facebook: Profiting off voter suppression

  Facebook has repeatedly refused to hold Donald Trump to any sort of standard on its platform. And as a result -- the company has given him a green light to sow discord with advertisements that contain deceptive, false, or misleading information. Trump is once again taking advantage of Facebook’s leniency. This time, he’s spreading harmful disinformation about voting. Trump’s re-election campaign has purchased over 500 Facebook ads that spread disproven claims about voter fraud. Facebook exempts politicians' ads, including Trump's, from any fact-checking. Even though Facebook claims it bans political ads that discourage people from voting, the platform has done nothing to stop the Trump campaign from publishing its harmful ads. Facebook profits off of these deliberately misleading ads, and we need to leverage the federal government to change their business model and protect our democracy. We must demand real accountability. Add your name to urge key oversight bodies to investigate Facebook -- and stop the company from profiting off of vote-suppressing ads.

  56 of 100 Signatures

  Created by Demand Progress
• Arizona: Stop giving soft cash to private prisons!

  Arizona House Appropriations Chairman John Kavanagh (R-Fountain Hills) loves private prisons so much that he added an extra $1 million of tax payer money to the state budget to pay for housing prisoners that don't yet exist!

  200 of 300 Signatures

  Created by Demand Progress
• Salvation Army: Stop turning away the trans community!

  Nearly 20 percent of trans people have experienced homelessness at some point in their lives - compared to 1% for the general population - thanks in part to systematic discrimination against trans people in the economic and housing sectors.

  92 of 100 Signatures

  Created by Demand Progress
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  Stop Trump's secret police

  Federal police, dressed in camouflage with no identification, are snatching up Black Lives Matter protestors from the streets of Portland, Oregon, into unmarked vans and arresting them. The governor of Oregon has asked the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to pull these federal forces out of the city — but the director of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, has refused. Now Trump says he's going to do the same thing in cities across America. Trump and the DHS have crossed a bright red line, trampling over both people’s civil liberties and states’ rights. And the agency is setting a terrifying precedent of the Trump administration occupying cities and abusing human rights against their will. We need Congress to act right now to stop this and save our democracy.

  244 of 300 Signatures

  Created by Demand Progress
• House Science Committee: We need your focus on climate change!

  It's one thing to believe space exploration is important — it's another to put examining other planets above keeping us alive on this one.

  24 of 100 Signatures

  Created by Demand Progress
• Conflicts of Interest: This Should be a No-Brainer

  Silicosis is an incurable disease that results in scarring and inflammation of the lungs. It’s the sort of illness you might contract if you work in construction and are exposed to crystalline silica dust without proper safeguards. Now, why bring this up? Because according to Lawrence Lessig’s new piece in The Daily Beast, sixteen Republican Senators have come out against transparency for industry-funded scientific research that will influence new regulations on silica. And surprise, surprise: these Senators just happen to be beneficiaries of “a modest but significant series of contributions” from the interests who stand to gain from this lack of disclosure. Here’s the backstory: the agency tasked with updating safety regulations for silica, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), requested that any scientific research submitted for consideration around the new rules disclose its financial backers. Not mandated, requested. This was apparently too much for Senator Lamar Alexander. The Tennessee politician submitted a letter to OSHA—along with fifteen of his Republican colleagues—calling into question this request for transparency. “[T]he chilling effect the financial disclosure could have seems counter to the idea of robust inclusion of a diverse set of ideas and views to inform the rule-making," explained a staffer for Alexander. The notion, of course, is ludicrous. As The Daily Beast piece humorously (but sadly) ponders, “What’s the chill? That the shrinking violets of the cement industry will be too afraid to hire lobbyists to present their views about the (non)dangers in inhaling silica?” But in the end, this isn’t a joke. It’s the status-quo of corruption in Washington. Lessig points to an obvious solution to this particular mess: President Obama needs to issue an executive order to mandate that “every agency accepting submissions presenting scientific analysis require the authors to include a statement of financial conflicts of interest.” We agree. Sign on to our action and urge President Obama to make this happen. Transparency is not a cure-all for our politics. But considering how dirty our system currently is, it’s a breath of fresh air.

  70 of 100 Signatures

  Created by Demand Progress
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  Stop Jared Kushner from hoarding coronavirus supplies!

  Where are all the masks, test kits, and other crucial supplies desperately needed to safely end the lockdowns and end the coronavirus pandemic? It looks like Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law, has a lot of them. He's working with big corporations to hoard millions of gloves, masks, swabs, and more. We don't know where they're all going, even as governors have to have the National Guard protect their own shipments so the feds don't seize them. This is totally unacceptable. It could even be criminal. But we don't know the details. It's time for Congress to act.

  2,834 of 3,000 Signatures

  Created by Demand Progress