WCID: Urgent work at home and abroad

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🚨 Ok here’s the deal 🚨

ICYMI: H.R.1, alternately known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”, or “One Big Ugly Bill”, has passed the House and a version is now under consideration by the Senate.

I’m not exaggerating when I say this is the most comprehensively destructive bill of our lifetimes, all in one big package that’s THIS FUCKING CLOSE to passing.

In a minute, I’m going to encourage/beg you to use WCID to call — and then keep calling, and calling, and calling — your reps to stop it before this bill does lifetimes of damage.

But first, an incomplete bullet list of what’s actually at stake, in exchange for tax breaks for billionaires (collected from various sources, including The Wilderness Society, Distilled, Vox, Heatmap, Slow Boring, and the Center for American Progress):

• More than 250 million acres of public lands available for sale, including 2-3 million in the next 5 years, with no requirement for public input, and no consideration given affordable or dense housing, and no consideration for lost recreation, clean water, wildlife, cultural resources, and more

• 16 million people could be without health insurance in the next ten years (Medicaid and CHIP together provide coverage for over 78 million people, or 1 in 5 Americans)

• 11 million people could lose SNAP benefits (a program that helps feed 42 million people every month)

• Half a million jobs would be at risk (most of which are in Trump-won states)

• The bill “phases out solar and wind tax credits starting in 2026 and kills all of the IRA’s consumer tax credits outright within months”

• Millionaires would see a “larger tax cut than the bottom half of Americans combined — with more than $1.5 trillion in tax cuts going to the top 5%”

• In total, “households that make at least $1 million per year would receive roughly twice as much in tax breaks as the bottom 50% of the nation combined”

• 57 million households in the bottom 60% “would see a tax increase or a negligible tax change”

• The bill could “(change) eligibility requirements for Pell Grants, which help low-income students pay for college, (cap) how much money students can borrow to cover the cost of tuition, (and) put a college education further out of reach for many Americans.”

• And finally, the bill would add at least $3.4 trillion to the national debt

It’s safe to say this is “the largest transfer of wealth from working-class Americans to the ultrawealthy in US history” — which is really saying something.

We cannot do enough to stop this bill from passing. We need every single one of you to show up. Let’s go.

☎️ Be Heard:

• DO IN ONE MINUTE: Click the link, drop in your address, and we’ll pull up your reps, their phone numbers, and a short script for you to read.
  
  Make no mistake — Republican senators and congresspeople actually matter more in this case, because they know damn well how wildly popular Medicaid and clean jobs are in their state, and may already be on the fence.

Donate:

In the wake of horrific cuts to foreign aid, an independent (if you will) fellowship/round table of economists and other people who-give-a-shit sprang together to form PRO — Project Resource Optimization: a curated list of high-impact, cost-effective aid programs at (immediate) risk due to USAID cuts.

Good news: In partnership with the good folks at Founders Pledge, The Life You Can Save, and now Every.org, they’ve just launched a way for donors at every level to contribute to programs from Sudan to Haiti, Myanmar to Madagascar.

Fuck ICE. Fuck their cowardly masks, fuck the whole thing. You gotta fight for the (constitutional) rights (of immigrants).

They’re on sale for a very limited time, and 100% of profits go to the ACLU.

If you didn’t actually call your reps, I’m not kidding when I said it’s the most important action you’ll take this year. Please. Do it.

Let me know how it goes.

And then do it again. And then forward this to everyone you know to do it, too.

If you actually have no time: save it to your new To Do List!

Thank you, as always, for giving a shit.

— Quinn

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