While the current regime has been hoping to distract us with shiny objects, Congress has quietly begun the process of dismantling decades of progress in environmental protection and health care, along with entrenched institutions including even public education (after all, why would a society need that?)
While a progressive state government in New Jersey will be able to mitigate some of the worst effects, as states can pass their own laws, what happens at the federal level affects us all, and it’s incumbent on Democrats and other progressives to monitor what our national representatives are doing.
The evidence is showing that pressure on our federal representatives, in the form of the many recent and massive action campaigns demonstrates. The fight has just begun, and those that Sussex County has sent to the House of Representatives—Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-11) and Josh Gottheimer (D-5)—how we feel about the bills the right wing is attempting to slip by us. Among the most alarming are:
- HR 861 Abolish the Environmental Protection Agency
- HR 370 Repeal the Affordable Care Act
- HR 899 Abolish the Department of Education
- HR 147 Criminalize Abortion (through the Orwellian-named “Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act”)
- HR 610 Fund public education through vouchersand changes in nutritional guidelines for student meals
- HJR 69 Repeal a rule protecting wildlife in Alaska
- HR 354 Defund Planned Parenthood
- HR 785 Abolish collective bargaining (National Right to Work Act) and
- HR 83 Mobilize against sanctuary cities