Happy Hump Day, Shit Givers.
We’re about a week past the US midterm elections, and we’re still riding that high while remaining focused on the next assignment: make the winners actually do something.
How do we do that? We show up — and it’s mostly a numbers game. For example, in 2024, advocates for eliminating TB held 35 meetings with congressional offices. In March, they held 265, including every single Senate office.
Congress only funded the government through December 11th, which means the spending bills that decide what actually gets money (TB, WIC, housing) are getting hashed out right now, while everyone’s still reading election takes.
Time to be annoying (in a productive way!).
Let’s go.
— Willow
APL Positions covered this week:
💉 Support global TB elimination efforts (learn more)
🍎 WIC fully funded with no waitlists (learn more)
🏠 Housing First — homes before conditions (learn more)
👉️ NEW: Discover all of our APL Positions here.
Lobbying = showing up
TB is the world’s deadliest infectious disease. It kills more than a million people a year, and it’s curable. Yet the CDC’s domestic TB funding is down about 60% since 1994, adjusted for inflation.
Every March, TB survivors, doctors, and advocates head to Capitol Hill for TB Hill Day to ask Congress to fund the fight. Advocates get trained on how the appropriations process works, then meet with offices from every state.
Applications for the 2027 event (March 1-2) are open now, and close December 7th.
Not a TB expert? Advocates get trained first (participants cover their own travel and lodging, but the application includes a request for financial assistance). And if you can’t make it to DC, anyone in the US can schedule a meeting with their own member of Congress.
Here’s what you can do:
Apply to attend TB Hill Day 2027 by December 7th (go).
Call your lawmakers and tell them to support the End Tuberculosis Now Act, a bipartisan bill that would make ending TB a US foreign aid priority and speed up access to better diagnostics and treatments (go).
Stay up to date on global TB data with the WHO Tuberculosis Program (go).
Follow the money
Often, the most important bills in Congress are the boring ones. Appropriations bills decide how much money programs actually get, no matter what anyone promised on the campaign trail.
A stopgap signed in September keeps the government funded at last year’s levels through December 11th.
Two House spending bills for next year worth a call:
The House’s agriculture spending bill, which narrowly passed in June, cuts funding for WIC by about $200 million. Tell the Senate to fully fund WIC in the final bill (go).
A House committee’s housing and transportation bill would cut homelessness assistance grants by about 6% and the Public Housing Fund by about 15%, and eliminate the US Interagency Council on Homelessness. Tell Congress to fully fund housing and transit (go).
Find your people
You don’t have to start from scratch! There are so many amazing people and organizations that have been putting in the work for years, and they’d love the help.
Here’s what you can do:
Join Citizens’ Climate Lobby, a nonpartisan volunteer movement building political will for climate action (go).
Join the People’s Action Institute for grassroots campaigns on justice, care, and the climate (go).
Support the COVID Longhauler Advocacy Project, where patients push for Long COVID research and care. Patients make great lobbyists (go).
That’s it for this week.
Thank you — as always — for giving a shit.
— Willow
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