Delaware is one of the nation’s most reliably blue states, currently featuring a supermajority in the state senate and just short of one in the lower chamber. It’s also a longtime corporate haven, where 60% of Fortune 500 companies were incorporated, due to business-friendly and consumer-unfriendly tax law and regulation. This is a product of state capture, as starkly demonstrated last year: when the Delaware Court of Chancery struck down a $55.8 billion pay package for Elon Musk challenged by shareholders, the legislature promptly passed the “billionaires’ bill” SB 21, written by his law firm, to make sure he could still get his money.

The Working Families Party is working to change that and get leaders into elected office who will fight for us and not the super-wealthy. In next month’s Democratic primary, they’ve endorsed a slate of challengers taking on incumbents who helped pass the billionaires’ bill, and they’re starting to gear up to get out the vote for these folks. ☎️ We can sign up for shifts turning out voters for Rae Krantz in House District 6 on Thursdays starting TODAY and running through September 10th here, and make calls for Shane Darby in District 1 this Saturday at noon here. ☎️

SUPPORT RAE KRANTZ

SUPPORT SHANE DARBY

We all know the score here: it's not going to be enough to just earn more votes than MAGA at the ballot box. We need to be prepared to stop Trump from subverting these elections. That work will stretch on for weeks after Election Day, and it needs to begin now.

🙋🏽‍♀️ We’ve pulled together a new action page running down ways we can get engaged in the work of election protection starting today. This will be continually updated as we learn of new opportunities to volunteer, and we hope it can be a reference and a resource for you. Check it out here. Currently, it features:

BEFORE ELECTION DAY

Help Ensure We Have People In Place For The Work on November 3rd

VoPro Pros aims to provide a national network of volunteers experienced in voter protection issues, ready to be activated wherever their expertise is needed – and they’re always looking to get new people trained and on board. In the lead-up to the election, they’ll be recruiting poll monitors, contacting voters to help get their registration issues fixed, and more. We can sign up to volunteer with VoPro Pros here.

BE A VOPRO PRO

A substantial amount of the infrastructure for election protection is run by the DNC, state Democratic Party organizations and their associated coordinated campaigns, and they’re using this period to make sure they have their teams in place. We can sign up to help recruit voter protection volunteers in Michigan here and in North Carolina here.

RECRUIT MORE PROTECTORS

Help Folks Get The ID They Need

VoteRiders is focused on ensuring that voter ID laws don’t keep eligible voters away from the ballot box. In addition to advocating for pro-voter policies, they also work to inform folks of what identification they’ll need to register and cast their ballots and work with them to help them secure it. We can volunteer with them to do direct outreach to at-risk voters and help staff their voter ID assistance helplines by signing up here.

BEAT VOTER ID LAWS

Make Sure Decisionmakers Know We’re Watching

We know Donald Trump and MAGA aren’t shy about putting pressure on election administrators and elected officials to subvert elections. We need to make sure they know the heat is on them to do the right thing, too.

Indivisible’s Hands Off Our Vote program is urging folks to either sit down and meet with or publicly call out local and state election officials and our members of Congress to get some answers on what they’re doing on election protection. We can see their guidance on how to do so here.

WHAT'S THE PLAN?

May Day Strong, led by partner the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, is encouraging folks to publicly push big businesses and recruit small businesses to commit to acting for democracy in the event of election subversion, starting with signing the Business for Democracy Pledge. We can read more about how to be part of this effort here.

RECRUIT BUSINESSES

Be Prepared For Rapid Response

Starting now, we need to be fully prepared for scenarios where we need to respond to new risks within hours, not days. Indivisible’s Hands Off Our Vote program has pulled together a rapid response playbook we can put to work here. And Freedom Trainers has put together an 80-page guide on the different threats that may arise we can review here.

THE PLAYBOOK

WHAT WE MIGHT BE RESPONDING TO

ON ELECTION DAY

Volunteer As A Poll Worker

Poll workers assist professional election administrators manage polling sites – helping check in voters, answering their questions, setting up and testing voting machines, issuing ballots and being a resource for anyone who has questions. (It’s also actual work, you’ll get paid for it.) The smoother each site functions, the weaker MAGA’s efforts to cry foul will be, and we’ll need a million poll workers nationwide to make it happen. We can sign up to be poll workers by contacting whoever runs our local elections or connect with them through Power The Polls here.

WORK THE POLLS

Volunteer As a Poll Monitor/Respond to Threats During The Vote

While poll workers help administer the election, poll monitors are there to assist voters who encounter any problems with those administrators when they try to exercise their rights, collect information and respond to any and all election regularities. We can volunteer to be grassroots poll monitors with the nonpartisan Election Protection/866-OUR-VOTE program here at protectthevote.net. Other opportunities to be poll monitors are likely to be offered locally through either your state’s chapter of Common Cause or the League of Women Voters or ACLU affiliate.

866-OUR-VOTE POLL MONITORS

If we’re looking for higher commitment, higher preparation work, VoPro Pros will be helping to organize and staff voter assistance hotlines and serve in state party boiler rooms to respond to issues at the polls. We can sign up to volunteer with VoPro Pros here.

BE A VOPRO PRO

As noted above, a substantial amount of the infrastructure for on-site work identifying and addressing problems at the polls is run by the DNC, state Democratic Party organizations and their associated coordinated campaigns. You can find websites and contact info for your state party here, and sign up for the DNC voter protection program volunteer list here – with a disclaimer that we cannot guarantee this won’t put you on a bunch of email lists.

IT'S A PARTY ALL RIGHT

A whole network of local- and state-based pro-democracy organizations are working together to similarly identify and respond to threats on the ground. many of whom are grantees of the Movement Voter Fund. We can sign up to be connected with them here.

GET LOCAL

AFTER ELECTION DAY

Watch The Count

Want to keep an eye on the counts, the recounts, the audits? That’s being a canvass, tabulation or certification monitor. We will be posting these opportunities as they arise – but as noted above, consider connecting with your local Common Cause, League of Women Voters or ACLU affiliate or your state Democratic Party.

STAY TUNED

Help Rejected Ballots Get Counted

“Ballot curing” is the process of contacting voters whose votes have been rejected for some reason and helping them correct any errors to make sure they’re officially counted. We can sign up to volunteer to ballot cure with VoPro Pros here. There will also be significant ballot curing opportunities run through coordinated campaigns, individual campaigns and state parties.

BE A VOPRO PRO

Prepare to Take To The Streets

We all lived through the days leading up to the attack on the Capitol, so we know the work of securing our victories doesn’t end on November 3rd. Some of the scariest and most plausible scenarios – Trump ordering federal law enforcement to seize ballots and voting machines to “prove” fraud, interfering with the certification process and/or encouraging congressional Republicans to refusing to seat the Democratic winners of “disputed” races – will arise in the weeks after Election Day. We need to guard against them and be prepared to respond to them.

Some of this groundwork will have already been laid – closely monitored and smoothly executed elections will make it more difficult for fraud claims to succeed. But we also need to be prepared to demand that our state officials stand firm and follow the law, and to exercise our collective power to insist that lawful results be respected. In short: be ready to shut it down.

The strikes organized on May 1st by the May Day Strong coalition were in part meant to test our capacity for a similar shutdown if it becomes necessary in November. We’re continuing to build for mass collective action by holding hundreds of solidarity schools and other nonviolent direct action trainings this Labor Day. We can learn more about how to organize one near us here.

LABOR DAY SOLIDARITY SCHOOLS

Freedom Trainers’ Strike Ready Corps will be holding workshops with practical, concrete guidance on building community resilience and what strike readiness means in real life throughout this summer and fall. We can sign up to take one of their trainings here.

GET STRIKE READY

Of course, the most important and in many ways easiest thing we can do to be prepared to respond to a steal is to connect with others in our community who will also be taking to the streets. We can find organizations near us who will be preparing for action on this list of May Day Strong coalition partners, by connecting with a nearby Indivisible group and joining the Hands Off Our Vote team, by checking in with our local DSA chapters or by linking up with a Movement Voter Fund local grantee.

STRONGER TOGETHER

For decades, studies have shown us the impacts of immigration, both legal and otherwise. No matter the methodology, those impacts have always been positive. From boosting the economy and wages to lowering crime rates, immigration helps society. Now, a new study from the UC Irvine School of Social Ecology, which analyzed 11,500 neighborhoods over a decade, provides us with more data to challenge false narratives that have become mainstream:

"“We find that neighborhoods where the share of undocumented residents grew actually saw greater reductions in property crime and no significant change in violent crime,” the study reads."

(Please note the details of this story are extremely disturbing.)

Since the last time we checked in about scumbag Republican congressman Max Miller, the strange quiet around the horrific accusations against him has finally lifted – and the details are gut wrenching.

His ex-wife (who happens to be the daughter of Ohio’s Republican Senator Bernie Moreno) has reported him throwing boiling hot water at her in front of their two-year-old child, scalding her chest and stomach (an incident a voice recording shared by Miller seems to confirm took place), holding a gun to her head after she angered him while changing their daughter’s diaper, and possibly breaking their daughter’s collarbone as part of “a history of violence and misconduct going back more than a decade.” She’s presented photographic evidence of her own injuries. He’s also been accused of harassing his ex-wife’s lawyer, who has sought a restraining order against him, and withholding their daughter’s little blue sleep bunny from her.

This isn’t even the first allegation of domestic violence by Miller – former Trump press secretary Stephanie Grisham has also stated he hit her during a dating relationship while he was a White House aide, and multiple witnesses have confirmed he shoved a girl down the stairs as a high schooler when she rejected his attempts to touch her. (He also falsely accused a pro-Palestinian constituent of threatening him and running him off the road.)

The eyes of the country are now on the Ohio Seventh District representative, who has retained the support of his former boss Donald Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson, and the RNC, and refused to drop his reelection campaign. It’s an R+5 district that Trump won by 11 in November 2024. Miller seems to be counting on that partisan lean to help him avoid accountability. They did, after all, elect him the first two times with Grisham’s reports and the violence against women in high school already on the public record.

We’re not going to let it happen.

Miller is being challenged by Brian Poindexter, a city councilman and union ironworker. He’s got a working-class background, having made his living in machine shops, kitchens, trucks and the high beams on skyscrapers. He’s sworn off corporate PAC money and emphasized the value of a strong labor movement and protecting the right to organize as part of building a economy that works for every American and not just the billionaires, along with moving towards Medicare For All.

Let’s do our part to get an advocate for working folks in power and a dangerous creep out of it. ☎️ The Poindexter campaign is officially launching virtual phonebanks next week, running every Thursday from 6-7PM ET. We can sign up here. ☎️

MAX MILLER DOES NOT BELONG IN CONGRESS

(Brian Poindexter is a SUFS-endorsed candidate, but this is not a SUFS-organized phonebank.)

With the right continuing to threaten access to abortion wherever they have the power to do so, advocates are stepping up to strengthen the legal framework protecting it. In the Silver State, they’re pursuing a constitutional amendment securing abortion rights until fetal viability. They passed it for the first time even as Trump won Nevada in 2024, and now need to do so again in November to finish the job. ☎️ The Jewish Alliance for Law & Social Action is phonebanking in favor of Question 6 tomorrow night from 8:30-10:30PM ET. We can sign up to join them here. ☎️

"The United States has deported hundreds of Mexican children who crossed the border without their families on flights to southern Mexico, where many have gotten stuck without the resources to go home safely.

"Multiple organizations that monitor and support children who are migrating without parents or guardians raised alarms over the issue in a hearing with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on Aug. 3. The organizations said they have confirmed more than 350 cases, but it’s not clear how many children in all have ended up by themselves in Mexico’s southern cities.

"Though the U.S. began deporting Mexican adults and families to Tapachula and Villahermosa soon after President Donald Trump returned to office, flying unaccompanied children south appears to be a more recent change.

"The policy, which organizations said they discovered in December of last year, has resulted in disappeared children — along with concerns that some may be dead."

Europe is facing another extreme heat wave and the NOAA just reported that July was the hottest month ever in the lower 48. The U.S. is having one of its worst wildfires seasons in years. A warm winter has left Lake Mead at record lows. Climate change is real, it’s here, and we need leaders in place who are prepared to deal with it.

The Environmental Voter Project works to get folks who understand this threat to show up to the polls, trying to identify and activate the estimated 11 million low-propensity climate voters who did not show up in 2024. Like everyone else, they’re ramping up their work as the midterms close in, including an orientation at noon on Friday to kick off their Texas postcarding campaigns. 📫 If we want to be part of it, let’s register here, and check out their site for other upcoming ways to help. 📫

GREEN THE ELECTORATE

☎️ Want to do more? We can also join Lead Locally’s Monday phonebanks for climate champions in downballot races here and consider a donation to Rebuild.Us’ fund to support folks recovering from climate disasters here. 🪙