I’ve been doing a lot of study of the Civil War lately for a project I am working on. Boy, it sure has altered my perspective in an unexpected way. I realized that this country has endured waxing and waning division for pretty much all of its history and generations before us had to grapple with the same frustrations and fears, dismay and disgust, hope and determination that we are now experiencing.
That Big Bad Bill will pass — we need to accept that and stop hoping against hope that Republicans will somehow resist TFG’s bullying. Although some may have misgivings, we also need to accept that for most of them, this is what they want. No bullying needed (except possibly for window-dressing). Maybe it feels better to think they are just weak, spineless and scared, and not really mean/fascist/extreme right wingers. But they are. It is better to face the truth squarely so we know what we are up against.
Right now, TFG and his party have the upper hand and they are going to continue to overplay it. Tyranny seems strong, because it is cruel and without conscience, but it is a brittle “strength”. Power over other people brings out the very worst in authoritarian personalities, but they live in constant fear, too. They fear the people, who only have to realize their own strength to stand up to abuse. The authoritarians will try to terrorize us to stay in power, but once enough of the people understand what is going on — and that the power IS in the people — the brittle “strength” of tyrants falls apart.
Be aware and forewarned — so you can limit the amount of shock you repeatedly feel — TFG always tells on himself. If he has idly mused about committing some atrocity, be forewarned that it is something he will try to do at some point. I don’t want to scare anybody, but we have got to get a handle on this constant cycle of shock/adaptation/more shock/adaptation/more shock/eventual exhaustion, because it threatens to destroy us. We need to be emotionally resilient to get through this dark period in our history.
Please read Goodie’s excellent post on this subject: I am FULL of HOPE and COURAGE. HERE IS WHY: GNR
We will pace ourselves, support each other, and keep doing the work to bring about a better world.
🤬 🌪️ Republicans UnRaveling 😵💫 😡
Yes, Republicans are rushing to put their Project 2025/MAGA wishlist into law — and yes, they will manage to pass some of it. However, as they plow ahead with their democracy and economy-wrecking agenda, they are setting the stage for a day of reckoning in the future.
One of the signs of that are the cracks that are appearing in the radical coalition. In some cases, it is conflicting evil agendas that bring out the fractures; in other cases, the consciences of some congresspeople — who know very well that the agenda they are eager to pass (and WANT) will certainly cause great harm to the very people who voted them into office. They aren’t sorry about the agenda — but they may be sorry when they suffer at the polls for it.
GOP Senator Breaks From Party On Tax Bill, Warns Trump 'Betraying' His Own Voters, Arthur Delaney, HuffPost, June 30, 2025.
WASHINGTON – Having just announced he won’t seek reelection, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) felt free to speak his mind about the so-called Big Beautiful Bill on Sunday evening, and it wasn’t very nice.
In a speech on the Senate floor, Tillis said the bill will betray President Donald Trump’s promise not to cut Medicaid and that the president is being advised by “amateurs” who aren’t telling him the truth.
“I’m telling the president that you have been misinformed. You supporting the Senate mark will hurt people who are eligible and qualified for Medicaid,” Tillis said.
Tillis had announced his retirement just hours earlier following an attack from Trump after Tillis opposed the bill on a procedural vote in the Senate. His retirement announcement sets up a battleground state showdown and might give Democrats a decent chance of picking up a Senate seat.
Thom Tillis’s retirement is an ominous sign for the GOP, Noah Berlatsky, Public Notice, June 30, 2025.
North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis announced yesterday he will not run for reelection next year, meaning the GOP’s hold on a key seat in a purple state is increasingly tenuous.
Tillis’s exit from the race appears to be directly related to his inability to navigate the politics of the ongoing GOP reconciliation bill process. As such, it’s the first warning sign that Republicans’ massive cuts to Medicaid and social programs could lead not just to widespread death and misery for their constituents, but also to electoral disaster for the party.
Tillis looked at those numbers and blanched. He’s facing a very difficult fight in North Carolina, where former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper is expected to be a strong opponent. Trump won North Carolina in 2024 by about three points; Democrats are currently overperforming in special elections by about 13 points.
Americans Hate the Big Beautiful Bill So Much It's Making History, Sarah Jones, The Daily, June 30, 2025.
“You don't have to be a mathematical genius to know that when the net favorable rating of your bill is somewhere between minus 19 and minus 29 points, that it is not a positive bill as viewed by the American public. The American public at this particular point, hate, hate, hate the big, beautiful bill. As far as they're concerned, it's not a big beautiful bill. It's a big, bad bill.”
How about when they got more details, did the American public like it better then?
“No. You know, we have Quinnipiac University. They hated it in early June when the net favorable rating was minus 26 points. And look at where we are in late June. It's the same minus 26 points.”
“The more they learn about this bill, they hate it just as much. I've been going through the historical books and trying to find a piece of legislation that looks more likely than not to pass, and seeing if there is one as unpopular as the big, beautiful bill. And the bottom line is, Omar, I can't find one. This one is in the history books, and for all of the wrong reasons, as far as the American public is concerned.”
Note: We do not, under any circumstances, have to hand it to him … but go ahead and murmur, “Let them fight”:
Musk shreds Trump’s tax bill as ‘DEBT SLAVERY,’ vows to unseat Republicans who back it. Kevin Breuninger, CNBC, June 30, 2025.
“Porky Pig Party”
The uber-rich Musk — who spent around $290 million backing Trump and other Republicans in the 2024 election cycle and beyond — called for a “new political party.”
He even vowed that any fiscal conservatives who vote for the bill will face his wrath in their next primary races.
“Every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history should hang their head in shame!” Musk wrote in a series of posts on his social media site X.
“And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth,” he added.
🤡 Bullying misstep threatens to leave Trump presidency 'dead in the water': WSJ, Tom Boggioni, Raw Story, June 30, 2025.
Instead of letting the Republican Party's Senate leadership wheel and deal with the megabill budget hold-outs, Donald Trump inserted himself — and now has been called out by the editorial board of the conservative Wall Street Journal for his bullying which, it wrote, could put his presidency at risk.✂️
They wrote that Trump couldn't leave well enough alone as recalcitrant GOP caucus members were being wooed by Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune (SD).
The editorial stated, "A common feature of Donald Trump’s two terms as President is that he can’t stand political prosperity. When events are going in his direction, he has an uncanny habit of handing his opponents a sword." The writers added that the Tillis debacle is a classic example.✂️
Combined with a possible loss of the House with its tiny GOP majority, losing the Senate could make for a dismal two years for the GOP.
"GOP legislative reforms will have no chance if Democrats take the House in 2026. And if they also take the Senate, forget about confirming another Supreme Court nominee. The Trump Presidency will be dead in the water," they warned.
🎶 Music Time 🎶
📰 😊 General Good News 🙂 📰
🏳️🌈 Hungary Banned Pride Events. Thousands Marched Anyway. Laura C. Morel, Mother Jones, June 28, 2025.
Earlier this year, Hungary’s parliament passed legislation banning Pride events and allowing the use of facial recognition technology to identify attendees. The ban is supported by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a conservative nationalist and Trump ally whose regime has been widely described as anti-democratic. Orbán has for years decried “gender insanity” and “woke globalists,” the New York Timesreports, “distracting attention from Hungary’s faltering economy and revving up his right-wing rural base.”
But in spite of the ban, tens of thousands of people marched through Budapest on Saturday during the city’s 30th annual Pride march, according to several news outlets. At least 70 European Parliament members also attended, CNN reported. The event had the support of Budapest’s liberal mayor, Gergely Karácsony. “They have trapped themselves by trying to ban something that cannot be banned,” Karácsony said, according to the Times.
⚖️ Trump Drops Lawsuit Against Iowa Pollster Ann Selzer — Her Attorneys Confirm ‘No Settlement’ Paid, Sarah Rumpf, Mediaite, June 30, 2025.
This awful attack on free speech, free press and on a perceived political “enemy” was slapped down by Selzer’s defenders, and (knowing they would be thrashed in court) TFG drops the groundless lawsuit:
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (“FIRE”), a nonpartisan free speech advocacy nonprofit, announced in January that it would represent Selzer pro bono, and issued a statement blasting Trump’s lawsuit for being “about as unconstitutional as it gets.” Selzer’s legal team includes FIRE attorneys Robert Corn-Revere as lead counsel along with Conor Fitzpatrick, Greg Greubel, and Adam Steinbaugh, plus Matthew McGuire of the Des Moines law firm Nyemaster Goode as additional local counsel.
A motion to dismiss filed on Selzer’s behalf in February cited extensive case precedent on why the lawsuit overall was an attempt to undermine both the letter and intent of the First Amendment and delivered a scathing point-by-point takedown of how each element of the legal claims the plaintiffs are attempting to bring are “fatally flawed on every level” and nothing more than “a transparent attempt to punish news coverage and analysis of a political campaign.”✂️
In February, Mediaite interviewed Corn-Revere, a First Amendment litigator for more than four decades who joined FIRE as chief counsel two years ago.
Corn-Revere scoffed at the legal arguments from Trump’s legal team — “it’s not just that they didn’t make their case, there was no case to be made” — and highlighted the broader importance of Selzer’s case in the fight to protect First Amendment rights.
🐑 ☀️ In Georgia, sheep on a solar farm is not a baaad idea, Emily Jones, Grist, June 30, 2025.
As the flock grazes, the sheep need somewhere to take a break from the Georgia sun.
“It is incredibly hot, the sun is just unavoidable, and the fact that they’ve got shade every 15 feet out here — it’s just the ideal environment, to have shade so close,” he said on a recent hot day.The shade comes from solar panels, using that same relentless sunshine to generate energy.
Win Win!
The sheep, in turn, cut down on mowing costs for the solar farm. The flock loves chowing down on the vegetation under and around the panels, Huber said.
💙 The Democratic Party is Its Voters And They’re Doing Just Fine, Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo, June 30, 2025.
On the one hand, the Democratic Party is “floundering,” “directionless,” “lost.” Its approval numbers are bleak. And then, often in the same articles, you have all this evidence of voter intensity. Turnout. New activism. Lots of new people running for office. What seems like an apparent contradiction resolves itself if you get your terms right. I don’t think the Democratic Party is in a tailspin or floundering at all. In many cases, the elected leadership of the party is. But the elected leadership is not the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party is its voters. Especially its primary voters. This is just a signal understanding of what a party is and what constitutes its health or disfunction.✂️
Through the Spring, there’s been a lot of frustration that congressional Democrats haven’t been able to figure out how to oppose Trump, how to focus attention on all the terrible things he’s doing, how to galvanize opposition. I’ve participated in a lot of this complaining myself, and rightly so. But wave elections don’t happen because the opposition party had great slogans. They’re almost always because of an interlocking series of structural factors — the election cycle — especially the first presidential midterm, the state of the economy and the public’s reaction to what the party in power is doing. Believe me, I want a more effective and more fighting Democratic Party as much as you do. But what we’ve seen from a range of different kinds of evidence — polls, town halls, protests, campaign activism — is that the public is deciding for themselves that they really don’t like what they’re seeing. Elected Democrats may not be doing enough to help that process. But voters are jumping into the breach and doing it themselves.
When things aren’t working right, you need tumult, even if it comes with some messiness. A lot of the weirdness of press coverage of the current Democratic Party, its goals, its abilities and its future get resolved if you have a clear set of definitions about who and what the Democratic Party actually is. The more primaries, the better. Basically every poll you see with the public standing of the Democratic Party at an historic low is based on Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents who are fed up with the party because they see it as ineffective and weak. That is about the elected leadership. And that anger and realization is a good thing, not a bad thing, because it shows that voters aren’t satisfied with the current party, the current elected leadership. They are, as they say, looking to go in another direction. And that’s great.
🎩 to DHfromKY for this wonderful parade of No Kings Day protests all around the country:
🌳 🍻 💙 To Your Good Health 💙 🥂 🌤️
😃 This first article may seem a bit glib at first, but there’s some real wisdom in there. Most you’ve heard before — but like with everything else we are coming to learn about this wacky time — repetition is helpful! We tend to forget the simple steps we could be using to center ourselves and restore emotional calm. So here’s a refresher and I am going to quote the most important one to today’s theme:
9 SIMPLE WAYS TO BE HAPPY EVERY DAY, Andrea Karr, Canadian Living.
9. DELAY REACTIONS.
You will have hard days. That's a given in life. But the occasional bad day or mood can't hurt you if you press pause on rash actions (think yelling at a loved one or sending a snooty email). "Your thinking is unreliable in the lower mood states," says Senn, meaning that you may not be able to think clearly if you're anxious, angry, impatient or sad. "Don't trust your feelings during lower mood states. Instead of acting on unreliable thinking, delay important conversations and decisions."
😴 😵💫 Here is a long discussion of insomnia and some of the research and possible methods to treat it.
Why Can’t Americans Sleep? Jennifer Senior, the Atlantic, June 30, 2025.
People of all ages pop awake in the middle of the night and have trouble going back to sleep. One associates this phenomenon with anxiety if it happens in younger people, and no doubt that’s frequently the cause. But it also rhymes with what may be a natural pattern. Perhaps we’re meant to wake up. Perhaps broken sleep doesn’t mean our sleep is broken, because another sleep awaits.✂️
The problem, unfortunately, is that the world isn’t structured to accommodate a second sleep or a day informed by dreams. We live unnatural, anxious lives. Every morning, we turn on our lights, switch on our computers, grab our phones; the whir begins. For now, this strange way of being is exclusively on us to adapt to. Sleep doesn’t much curve to it, nor it to sleep. For those who struggle each night (or day), praying for what should be their biologically given reprieve from the chaos, the world has proved an even harsher place.
But there are ways to improve it. Through policy, by refraining from judgment—of others, but also of ourselves. Meanwhile, I take comfort in the two hunter-gatherer tribes Wehr told me about, ones he modestly noted did not confirm his hypothesis of biphasic sleep. He couldn’t remember their names, but I later looked them up: the San in Namibia and the Tsimané in Bolivia. They average less than 6.5 hours of sleep a night. And neither has a word for insomnia.
🥗 🍡 Resistance Recipes — Comfort Food 🥕 🍱
🍅 Who doesn’t love a scrumptious stuffed tomato?
Stuff your tomatoes. With burrata. Trust me, Ashlie D Stevens, Salon, June 30, 2025.
And yet, every so often, I find myself craving something from that dusty, disrespected corner of the culinary canon. Once a quarter, I need a diner tuna melt: white bread griddled too hard, a slice of orange cheddar molten on top, served with fries and a dill pickle and the worst cup of coffee I can find. Recently? I wanted a stuffed tomato. Badly.
Not a twee one. Not a revivalist, microgreen-dotted, deconstructed riff. I wanted something indulgent and hot and built for right now — something that didn’t apologize for being a tomato holding other things inside it. My version isn’t dainty. It’s not a side salad or a starter or something you push around while drinking rosé. This is a tomato engineered for appetite.✂️
I’m not trying to save the stuffed tomato. It doesn’t need rescuing or rebranding or a pop-up devoted to its legacy. But I do think there’s something lovely about letting a dusty dish back in through the side door — not because it’s trending, but because it just sounds good. Because you’re hungry, and you’re curious and because a tomato, warmed and spilling over with good things, can still surprise you.
Baked Burrata & Chorizo Stuffed Tomatoes with Herbed Breadcrumbs
Ingredients
- 4 large ripe tomatoes (beefsteak or heirloom preferred)
- Kosher salt
- Olive oil (you’ll want at least ¼ cup)
- 1½ cups torn sourdough or rustic bread, crusts on
- 1 tsp chopped fresh rosemary or thyme (or a mix)
- 3–4 oz cured chorizo, diced or crumbled
- 1 ball burrata (about 4 oz), torn into 4 pieces
- Zest of 1 lemon
- Flaky salt and freshly cracked black pepper, to finish
Optional for serving:
- Buttered orzo, pearl couscous, bucatini, or toasted sourdough
- A bold red wine and something moody on the speakers
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C).
- Prep the tomatoes. Slice the tops off the tomatoes and gently hollow them out with a spoon or melon baller. Salt the insides lightly and place them upside down on a paper towel while you prep everything else — this helps them release a bit of moisture and concentrate their flavor.
- Make the herbed breadcrumbs. In a skillet, heat 2–3 tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat. Add the torn bread and chopped herbs, and cook, stirring frequently, until the crumbs are golden brown and crisp. Season with a pinch of kosher salt and set aside.
- Cook the chorizo. In the same pan (no need to wipe it out), cook the diced chorizo until crisp and browned. Drain on paper towels. The rendered fat should smell spicy and smoky in all the right ways.
- Assemble the tomatoes. Place the hollowed tomatoes upright in a small baking dish or cast iron skillet. Spoon a small layer of herbed breadcrumbs into the bottom of each, followed by a spoonful of chorizo. Nestle a chunk of burrata into each tomato. Drizzle the tops with a bit more olive oil and finish with a sprinkle of flaky salt.
- Bake. Slide the dish into the oven and bake for 25 minutes, until the tomatoes begin to slouch in on themselves and the burrata looks slightly molten — creamy and barely holding its shape.
- Finish & serve. Top each tomato with more of the reserved breadcrumbs and a light dusting of lemon zest. Serve warm, ideally over a bed of something cozy like buttered orzo or torn pieces of sourdough to mop up the tomato juices and molten cheese.
🍹 A vacation in a glass? Yes, please!
This strawberry-lime dirty soda tastes like a vacation in a glass, Dhivya Subramanian, CBC, June 26, 2025.
This strawberry-lime dirty soda is inspired by a classic Italian soda, but with a tropical twist. The fruity, fizzy drink is finished with a splash of coconut milk, which makes it taste like a vacation in a glass. Scroll down for more ways to stir up this refreshing zero-proof sipper — but the flavour combinations are endless, so you can experiment all summer long!
Ingredients
3 strawberries, hulled
1 tbsp strawberry jam
1 tbsp lime juice
Ice
Lime slice or wedge
Lime soda
¼ cup coconut milk
Preparation
Add strawberries, jam and lime juice to a highball glass, and use a muddler to mash the fruit until it is broken down.
Resistance Baking: 🥧 "Justice would taste like the best pie ever": These activists bake a good fight into every slice, Melanie McFarland, Salon, June 19, 2025.
🎶 Music to whet your appetite 🎶
🐩 💙 CG’s Picks 💙 🐩
Hello Everybody! It’s me, CurlyGirl! CG for short 😊
The weather has turned quite warm here in Chicagoland and I do not like warm weather. Most dogs don’t like hot weather, but I HATE it, even just warm weather! I feel all wobbly and tired and I can’t get cool and it is very unpleasant.
Lucky for me, Mama knows how I suffer in warm weather and we only go for walks very early in the morning and late in the evening and we only walk on the shady side of the street. But even so, if the temperature gets above 80, we only walk a block or so in the shade so I can do my business and then we dash straight back into the cool apartment.
Sometimes we see dogs outside being walked briskly by people who don’t always notice that the dogs are panting hard and maybe need to go inside. So I saw this story and I thought I would put it in my section today so Good Newsies can share the information with anyone they know who has dogs!
🥵 How to keep your dog safe in a heatwave, Sean Dilley, BBC, June 29, 2025.
For starters, when the mercury hits 20C, I place the back of my hand on the pavement to check I can comfortably keep it there. It's a great indicator that your dog's pads will be ok too.
I always pack a folding water travel bowl and carry chilled or iced water. In addition, when the temperature hits 24C or above, I start asking whether it's safe to be out at all and usually decide at 25C and above that it's too hot to walk my dog more than a few feet from my front door to an air-conditioned cab.
But what about exercise?
Your dog needs life more than it needs a walk. On super-hot days, keep your dog indoors and ideally air-conditioned or in a cool room with a fan.
Your dog will be fine without a walk for a few days but you could provide playtime at home by throwing a toy.
If you are planning to walk your dog, do it in the very early morning or very late evenings. If you walk your dog in extreme heat you are literally putting their lives at risk. They're too important – keep them safe, cool and inside.
🐶 I really like the We Rate Dogs people! Here are their top 5 dogs of June. Mama says to tell you that the number 1 dog of June (at the end of the video) is Gilbert, the beloved pet of Rep. Melissa Hortman of Minnesota and that part of the video made her feel sad, but also glad to learn more about Gilbert.
🐕🦺 Service dog training organization flooded with donations following fatal shooting of Rep. Melissa Hortman, Esmé Murphy, CBS, June 19, 2025.
Gilbert and the Hortmans' story has nearly 400,000 likes on the "We Rate Dogs" Instagram, and Helping Paws has been flooded with unsolicited donations.
The organization reached out to the family and got a call back from the Hortmans' adult children, Sophie and Collin.
"They gave us their blessing, and they said, 'This is what our mom would want, if something good to come out of this. And we love your organization so much, and Gilbert was such a big part of all of our lives for four years. And my mom would bless this. Our mom would bless this,'" said Helping Paws Executive Director Alyssa Golob.✂️
Golob says the organization typically receives 50-100 contributions per month. Since the tragedy on June 14, they have received 5,700 individual donations in just a few days — so many that they have not yet totaled the dollar amount.
Helping Paws says it wants to work with the family to set up an appropriate memorial to Gilbert and the Hortmans.
🐈 Video: Three Cats Are The Most ‘Well-behaved’ On New York Subway, Parul Singh, Yahoo, June 30, 2025.
Traveling with pets is never easy. But if your furry friends are well-trained — be they canines or felines — they can become the best travel companions for life. Take these three for example. Instead of running haywire or hissing at people in the video, these cats — Sponge Cake, Donut, and Buttercream — are at their best behavior on the New York City subway. So much so that they took the passengers as well as netizens by surprise. Many were in awe of the pet parent, who has clearly trained them well.
That’s all I have for you for today. Thanks for reading! Bye for now! Luv, CG 💙🐾
⚡️ Lightning RoundUp ⚡️
⚡️ Big Ugly Bill hastens demise of GOP, Robert Hubbell, Today’s Edition, June 30, 2025.
⚡️ Do We Even Understand the Importance of this Moment? David Rothkopf, Need to Know, June 30, 2025.
⚡️ Lessons From New York, Matt Kerbel, Wolves and Sheep, June 30, 2025.
⚡️ Bill Moyers Saw What Was Coming, John Light, TPM, June 30, 2025.
⚡️ Useful and helpful! How to train your social media algorithm puppy to fetch whatever you want online - and request to social media companies to give us ability to select between - pretrained options, Robert Walker, Doomsday Debunked, June 29, 2025.
⚡️ Our divisions have created the potential for redemptive revolution, Joel Edward Goza, Salon, June 24, 2025.
⚡️ The Real Lesson of the Iran-Israel War, Matt Johnson, Persuasion, June 30, 2025.
⚡️ Not Trump’s baby: The “big, beautiful” bill’s father is really Grover Norquist, Heather Digby Parton, Salon, June 30, 2025.
⚡️ John Roberts: "I Never Thought the Leopards Would Eat *My* Judiciary", Allison Gill, The Breakdown, June 28, 2025.
⚡️🎧 Welcome to Week 25 of the Trump Administration: Are The Cracks Starting to Show? Defections + SCOTUS, Knitting Cult Lady, June 30, 2025.
⚡️🎧 Putin’s summer offensive ‘failing’ as troops forced to use ‘Chinese golf carts’ on frontline, Times Radio, June 30, 2025.
⚡️🎧 “Mind-Boggling”: Trump Voters Shocked at How Badly He’s Screwing Them, Greg Sargent, The New Republic, June 30, 2025.
🎶 Music Break 🎶
🚧 🩷 ❣️ How Can You Help Build a Better World? ❣️ 🩷 🚧
I’m going to share some of the excellent links and suggestions from GoodNewsRoundup and chloris creator. Repetition is good!
🎩 GOODNEWSROUNDUP:
There are many ways to get involved. Everyone can find something that works for them.
Here are some ideas.
-
If you can, I strongly recommend going to an in person meeting in your area.
-
Join the truth brigade! Grassroots-powered lie-stopping. Person by person; mind by opened mind
- Election Response Center is a project hosted by Working Families Party, MoveOn Civic Action, Indivisible, and Public Citizen. They are organizing lots of events to get people fighting. Join one at this link
-
The ACLU plays a key role in filing lawsuits that often stop voter suppression. Get involved with them at this link.
-
Get involved with the Democratic party. We aren’t perfect, but they are fucking evil.
- Get involved with the States Project They are working on turning state legislatures blue
- Get involved with Swing Left. They are working on races right now!
- People For the American Way is a national progressive advocacy organization that inspires and mobilizes Americans to defend freedom, justice, and democracy from those who threaten to take them away. Get involved with them here
- Center for American Progress Action Fund is an independent, nonpartisan policy institute and advocacy organization that is dedicated to improving the lives of all Americans through bold, progressive ideas, as well as strong leadership and concerted action. Get involved with them here
🎩 CHLORIS CREATOR:
I know it’s tough to see the path forward. And I can’t guarantee that there is a path forward. But people who are smarter and braver than I have seen ways to move ahead.
Their (the fascists’) plans really are dark, but many of them are also dumb, in the sense that they don’t make sense. So many of them cannot succeed.
Here are some quick hits.
- Stay involved. Yeah, that’s tough. I want to look away too, but by taking simple actions you can make a difference. Keep contacting your representatives, both in DC and at home.
- Support causes that will fight. Send money if you can. Also, spread their news with clicks and conversation.
- Slow them down. Oppose and block at every turn.
- Make tRump unpopular. Doing this weakens him. And it should not be that difficult. The GOP made a lot out of Biden is old and eggs cost too much. Well, tRump is older than Biden was at the beginning of his term and tRump has no policies that are going to bring down inflation. And a host of other problems, like he’s a convicted felon.
- Divide the GOP from each other. They are a coalition based on contradictory promises, so there’s plenty to work with.
- Keep telling the truth and showing love.
- Make sure to pace yourselves in this marathon and to practice self-care.
Other Actions
I alternate between PTV Etsy shop postcards and other pretty postcards that I find on Bookshop.org like these flower ones.
📞 Call your Congress critters and register your concerns!
(202) 224-3121 is the main switchboard number for Congress. They will ask for your city and state or your zip code and connect you with your representatives. It’s easy and it does make a difference.
📪 Write postcards to help Democratic candidates and progressive judges get elected:
Postcards to Voters3️⃣ Check out
Third Act Actions page — there might be something there that you can do.
🚨 NEW! 🚨
Thanks to arhpdx for this link:
🧵 Share your favorite news sites, podcasts or vloggers in the comments! The GNR comments section is a bonus reason to read GNR every day!!
💙 RoundUp WindDown 💙
That’s it from me and CG for another Tuesday.
Please take good care of yourselves — as so many people have said, this is a marathon, not a sprint. I know you know this, but still it is important to remind ourselves often. Even though we know, the firehouse of awfulness gets us wound up and feeling the need for urgent action. That is normal and understandable, and yet we cannot live in a permanent state of anxious arousal.
Use all the tools you can find to pace yourself and find pockets of peace in the midst of all the madness. You are allowed to shut off the news for a period of time each day so that you can breathe deeply and look around you at the parts of life that are still beautiful. There are lots of them! Your loved ones, your friends, trees and flowers and sky and clouds, the moon and stars, the vastness of the sea… let the beauty of nature restore you for a few minutes each day. Make time for joyful moments with loved ones.
This is the stuff that keeps us going and which, frankly, makes life worth living. Don’t let these terrible people rob you of what makes life worth living. You can understand the challenges we face and do your part to help without giving up everything else about your life that you are actually fighting for.
Get some rest, eat nutritious food and ENJOY YOUR LIFE!
Happy Tuesday, Gnuville!
![Colorful sketch of a wildebeest by Starhawk, a side view of a happy, dynamic gnu dancing on one hind leg. A classic heraldric pose of a beast in rampant position. Image bears a hand-written title, "Happy Dance,". The lettering is joyful. Image created by Starhawk of Daily Kos. Uploaded 03-07-2021. Presented as a gift to all members of the Good News Roundup team. Tags Good News Roundups Gnus Gnusies Newsies gnhap](https://cdn.prod.dailykos.com/images/924811/story_image/GnuHappyDance.jpg?1615144457 "Colorful sketch of a wildebeest by Starhawk, a side view of a happy, dynamic gnu dancing on one hind leg. A classic heraldric pose of a beast in rampant position. Image bears a hand-written title, "Happy Dance,". The lettering is joyful. Image created by Starhawk of Daily Kos. Uploaded 03-07-2021. Presented as a gift to all members of the Good News Roundup team. Tags Good News Roundups Gnus Gnusies Newsies gnhap")
![US Flag against blue sky. [Size small, 248 x 248] Tags Good News Gnus](https://images.dailykos.com/images/689612/large/USFlagagainstblueskysmallTagsGoodNewsGnus.jpg?1561513575 "US Flag against blue sky. [Size small, 248 x 248] Tags Good News Gnus")
