Our efforts paid off! Thanks to public pressure, the Trump administration walked back its policy that would have stripped international students of their visas from schools administering online only courses this fall. While this is undoubtedly great news, Trump has a slew of other policies in place that put the lives of immigrant families and people like us at risk. We’ve got to keep up the fight and keep standing up for our communities!
The new head of the U.S. Postal Service, Louis DeJoy, who also happens to be a major Trump donor, just made big operational changes that could slow down mail delivery. While this would be annoying in normal times, it’s a threat to our democracy in pandemic times when so many of us rely on mail-in ballots to make our voices heard. An NPR analysis earlier this week found that at least 65,000 absentee or mail-in ballots have been thrown out in recent primaries because they arrived past the deadline, often through no fault of the voter. We must hold our officials accountable so these delays stop and our votes are counted in November.
Do the absentee ballots that never showed up and long lines at this year’s primary elections scare you? They should—because they scare us—which is why we must take action now.
Join us in demanding that the Senate properly fund vote-by-mail programs. We need to do everything we can to ensure that every voice is heard this election, and that means supporting mail-in voting, absentee voting, and other expanded voting options.
New Americans are 26% of the population but just 3.5% of state legislators. This is just one of the many startling facts we discovered in our newly released study examining the representation gap people like us face in state legislatures.
While state legislators are often overlooked by national media, their decisions and actions in office can directly impact people’s lives. For example, state legislators play a vital role in addressing criminal justice reform, creating police reform legislation, and controlling budgets that influence the way cities and county-level law enforcement are funded. More broadly, they help ensure that the voices of the community they serve are heard, and that their needs are met. It’s troubling, then, how only 258 of the 7,383 seats in U.S. state legislatures are held by New Americans. If we want an inclusive democracy that represents and works for all Americans, we need more diverse state legislators (currently, 82% are white and 71% are male).
To learn more about the findings and recommendations in our State of Representation 2020 report, read it here or see its coverage in CNN and Fast Company.
