Call and email scripts: oppose Trump's appointees

[chestnut_pod]

Indivisible has call and email scripts loaded to ask senators to oppose the nominations of Kash Patel, RFK, Jr., Russell Vought, and Tulsi Gabbard to important executive positions.

Find them here. Both emailing and calling are very easy; Indivisible has a good UI. Once you have called and/or emailed, they provide social media chips for posting elsewhere, if desired.

I spent this morning working down the list and feel just slightly better.

threats to Lutheran charities

[loligo]

If you happen to live in a Republican district in the following states, Elon Musk just gave you a superb talking point for a phone call to your representative: AZ, FL, IL, NC, NE, OH, OR, PA, SD, TX, WI.

See a screen shot of Musk & Mike Flynn trashing Lutheran nonprofits in those states as "illegal money laundering", and Musk saying that he will be stopping their government payments, here at a Lutheran blog.

Look up to see if any of those organizations operate in your district. (LSSI provides vital child welfare services in mine.) Call your rep to ask "Why is Elon Musk attacking [local Lutheran nonprofit]? He says he's stopping their payments - how are you going to prevent that? We need [whatever service they provide]!"

It just makes the phone call somewhat less uncomfortable when the thing that you're supporting is something that your Republican representative was probably supporting too, just a few days ago, until everything went crazypants.

Reliable source of info on FDA Recalls/Drug shortages during pause on external comms

[tanaqui]

https://drrubin.substack.com/

Dr Rubin is a double board-certified physician who has a substack blog. From his first post about tracking FDA Recalls/Drug Shortages:

This was not a topic that I was initially planning on writing about, but because the federal government has recently put a pause on communications coming out of federal health agencies such as the CDC and FDA, I am going to regularly update you on what the FDA has listed in their recall list.

This is a matter of safety for the general public. Normally, you can sign up for alerts directly from the FDA. I have these alerts in my email inbox, but these communications are non-existent currently. Therefore, until the communications come back online, I will check the list and write quick summaries here.

You can sign up to his mailing list to get his posts sent to you daily.

New Tags

[tanaqui]

redbird added a new tag for department of government efficiency — many thanks, redbird!

I just added tags for:

• office of personnel management
  
• federal hiring freeze/firing
  
• communication freeze
  
• us treasury (Muskrat is reportedly now using his access to US Treasury systems to freeze funding on federal contracts — except for his companies, of course — and has gained access to privileged information on his rivals' contracts with the federal govt)
  
• dei diversity equality inclusion
  
• tariffs
  
• foreign relations
  
• panama
  
• greenland
  
• canada

Added based on suggestions:

• federal funding

I'm strongly tempted to just add a tag for Trump 2025 WTFery!

More seriously, please suggest any more tags you think we'll need given the current onslaught on the normal operation of the US federal government, the economy and foreign relations that we're seeing.

Welcome to Making the World a Better Place

[tanaqui]

It's February 2025, Trump is two weeks into his second term and in full swing on implementing Project 2025, working to dismantle the federal government and enrich his cronies, working on crashing the economy and destroying relations with a range of countries.

This community was created to encourage political and social action in the U.S. following Trump's election in 2016, a place of solidarity and information-sharing. While the United States recovered somewhat under Biden's term, Trump is now speed running his fascist, oligarchic agenda, aided and abetted by the Republican party.

Our community will continue its work, sharing links to information and actions you can take to "defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic", defend the federal government and its normal operations, and support public policy that helps people rather than hurts them. We stand with Black Lives Matter, Native Americans, Immigrants, Minority populations, LGBTQA+, Women's groups, the Unemployed, the millions upon millions of people who need Universal Healthcare, and everyone else who needs social and political support to improve their lives. Absolutely no hate-speech will be tolerated.

We also value self-care. Worrying about each issue can be daunting and overwhelming. It's okay to take a step back when you need to, and also to prioritize one or two issues that are close to you over spreading yourself thin on everything and burning out. Change is a marathon and a relay both. 

Your mods are tassosss and tanaqui. We won't be as proactive as we have been (e.g. with the regular check in posts) but we are still here for this amazing community. Drop us a line via PM or on this post if you need anything.

We have a sister community thissterlingcrew  run by tanaqui  for taking political and social action in the UK.

What you can post to this community
1. Links to organizations, news articles, relevant posts elsewhere on the internet, etc. (mods will add tags/clean-up tags)
2. Links to action items and actions you are taking - called your representatives? great, maybe it'll inspire the next person to do the same
3. Celebration posts - let's take joy in the victories!
4. Community suggestions for posts or activities - they can be their own post or you can drop them in the comments of this post

Tagging: Please use available tags when possible. If you need a new one or have a tagging question please contact redbird  who is our tag guru.

Community name and title from:

"As long as there is injustice, whenever a Targathian baby cries out, wherever a distress signal sounds among the stars, we'll be there. This fine ship, this fine crew. Never give up... and never surrender." -- Jason Nesmith, Galaxy Quest