Medicare for All vs. Medicaid Cuts is The Choice in CA-22 (8/4/26, 91 Days to Midterms)
Help elect Randy Villegas and flip the House. Plus a new proposed concentration camp for kids in Louisiana, one step forward one step back on Vought's politicization of grants and more
🚨 House Ethics Committee recommends censure of Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-NC) for sexual harassment, unwanted advances to House staffers - let’s do them one better and help Jamie Ager run him out of office 🚨
TOO LONG, DIDN’T READ
Help progressive Medicare for All champion Randy Villegas defeat Medicaid betrayer David Valadao in California’s 22nd District
Help the Southeast Dignity Not Detention Coalition fight the expansion of child detention at Alexandria airport
While Congress takes baby steps towards blocking politicization of federal grants, Trump henchmen attempt to keep moving it forward – submit comments through August 24th, join seminar on newest front August 14th
Organizing training on building strong electoral teams with Swing Left TONIGHT at 8PM ET
Phonebank to pressure city officials to end Miami police collaboration with ICE TODAY at 6:00PM ET
If you have questions, comments, and especially submissions for actions, please email us at roganslisttips@gmail.com!
SPOTLIGHT ON CA-22: PROGRESSIVE RANDY VILLEGAS TAKES ON A MAJOR BETRAYER OF MEDICAID
Randy Villegas emerged as the Democratic pick in the California 22nd Congressional District running as a fierce and uncompromising progressive. He’s the son of Mexican immigrant farm laborers who grew up on Medicaid and food assistance and went on to become a community college professor, school board trustee and auto repair shop owner. Villegas earned the endorsement of the Working Families Party, National Nurses United, the UAW, End Citizens United and Dolores Huerta running on Medicare For All and refusing corporate PAC money.
He’s hoping to unseat Republican congressman David Valadao, who has survived in tough districts by building an independent brand. His voting record under Trump 2.0 hasn’t lived up to his carefully cultivated image – he cast a decisive yes for the MAGA murder budget to cut Medicaid and food assistance, supercharge ICE and CBP and give billionaires tax breaks. He did so after being among 12 Republicans who publicly objected to Medicaid cuts, warning they would devastate vulnerable populations and rural hospitals. (Under its old lines, his district had the highest Medicaid enrollment in the country.) He’s also consistently voted to protect Trump’s tariffs and continue his Iran War. Under the new California district lines, Trump won the 22nd by less than two points, and early polling gives Randy a four-point lead in one of the top pickup opportunities on the map.
☎️ Randy could use our support! We can take a phonebank shift for his campaign on Thursday evenings here and on Sunday afternoons here. The Villegas campaign is also doing weekly Spanish-language phonebanks on Wednesdays we can join here. ☎️
✍🏻 Cartoons for Democracy’s Votando Unidos postcard campaign is also targeting voters in this district, and we can sign up to be part of it here. ✍🏽
🤜🏻 And of course, we can find plenty more ways to do our part for these midterms on Rogan’s List’s action page here. 🤛🏽
ICE ATTEMPTS TO BUILD NEW CONCENTRATION CAMP FOR KIDS AT CONTAMINATED SITE
The rural airport at Alexandria, Louisiana has become a central hub of the deportation machine. Hundreds of our friends and neighbors are transferred through it every day, some to be shunted off to other ICE concentration camps nearby, others to be crowded onto deportation flights. It also hosts a massive camp of its own, the Alexandria Staging Facility, notorious for due process violations and terrible conditions.
Now ICE is trying to expand its operations even further, plotting to build a 528-bed detention camp for children and families right next to the runways. They claim it will be a staging area for brief imprisonments, speeding up deportations. Advocates warn that it will turn into another Dilley, where kids are locked up for weeks or months at a facility not prepared for it.
It will be operated by LaSalle Corrections, a private prison company with a long history of medical negligence and abuse, including two recent deaths at Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield, Louisiana.
To top it all off, the site is a health crisis waiting to happen. The proposed location is one of the most forever chemical-contaminated spots in the nation, with concentrations in groundwater 575,000 times the federal limit. ICE is hoping to have it up and running as soon as this month.
The team at the Southeast Dignity Not Detention Coalition has pulled together a toolkit to make it easier for us to push back, with contact information and language to use to urge the England Airpark Authority Board of Directors to cancel the contracts allowing the project to move forward, push the local officials who appointed them for action and sample social media posts to help spread the word. ⚙️ Let’s check it out here and put it to work. ⚙️
📢 We can also share this post on Instagram and follow SEDNDCO on Insta and Facebook to stay up to date with this fight. 📢
ONE STEP FORWARD, ONE STEP BACK ON POLITICIZATION OF FEDERAL GRANTS
In genuinely good news, Senate Republicans look set to join us in putting a (temporary) stop to Russell Vought’s proposed rule politicizing billions in federal grants. The leadership on the Senate Appropriations Committee has reached a bipartisan agreement on a bill to fund the government through December 11th, delaying any painful choices until after midterms, and the resolution includes a block on the implementation of the Vought proposal while it’s in effect. We’re still a ways away from seeing this passed into law (it cleared the first procedural barriers in the Senate 89-4, but it’s unclear how the House will respond) and Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) reports the GOP explicitly rejected an effort to kill the rule permanently, but our voices are clearly being heard on this disastrous measure.
In the meantime, the work continues. In June, the National Science Foundation quietly updated its Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide to align with the not-yet-finalized OMB rule, essentially attempting to implement it before it’s finalized. But like the proposal itself, this guidance is subject to public comment, open through August 24th.
Stand Up for Science is urging us to get our objections on record ASAP. ✍🏻 We can submit here, find guidance on how to write our comments from Elisabeth Marnik, PhD here, from Elizabeth G. here and from SUFS (aka Science Fight Club) here. ✍🏾
🏫 SUFS will be holding a seminar on this new element to Vought’s threats next Friday at 2PM ET. We can sign up to learn more with them here. 🏫
DEA, PENTAGON: BOAT STRIKES HAVE FAILED TO REDUCE COCAINE TRAFFICKING
While Trump continues to flail around for a way to end the Iran War, his quiet little war in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific has proceeded apace. The Untied States has now struck 66 accused drug boats in a little over 11 months, killing at least 221 people, allegedly including innocent fishermen and victims of human trafficking. They’ve cost us over $820 million. And last week the Washington Post reported that, in spite of what Trump has claimed, the Drug Enforcement Administration and Pentagon analysts have found they failed to reduce the amount of cocaine entering the country. The price and purity of drugs has similarly not been affected, but we have managed to undermine traditional investigative methods to bring these criminals to justice.
It is time to admit it: this illegal campaign is not working and it’s not going to. 🗣️ Let’s use language and this call tool from Win Without War to call for Congress to act to stop these strikes, through a war powers resolution or through the Pentagon appropriations process. 🗣️
In other news from Capitol Hill, Todd Blanche’s formal order rescinding the slush fund and clarifying that other organizations affiliated with Trump and his family weren’t covered by the super-pardon has earned him the support of critical GOP holdouts Senators Thom Tillis and John Cornyn, likely clearing the way for his nomination as attorney general to be approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning. (It shouldn’t have - there are loopholes big enough to driver a tractor-trailer through.) That should be all she wrote, but if we have not recently told our senators just how unacceptable it is that Blanche will keep running the Justice Department, now is the time. 🗣️ We can find call language here and email language here, or send this message by texting SIGN PLJGKA to 50409. 🗣️
LEVEL UP OUR TEAM-BUILDING SKILLS WITH SWING LEFT TONIGHT
With just 13 weeks until Election Day, volunteer efforts are picking up speed in every target race. Whether we’re leading a group of experienced canvassers or starting fresh and ready to recruit, Swing Left wants to help us get the most out of our efforts to help Democrats win this November. TONIGHT at 8PM ET, they’re hosting a training for organizers focused on building out leadership teams - what makes them effective, how to match roles to goals, and how to grow volunteers into leaders as the work starts piling up! 🏫 We can sign up here, and bring our organizing friends along too! 🏫
SUPPORT LOCAL ACTIVISTS RALLYING AGAINST COLLABORATION WITH ICE IN MIAMI
Advocates for immigrants are raising pressure on city officials in Miami to exit their 287(g) agreement allowing local police to carry out immigration enforcement actions on behalf of the federal government. They should be well positioned to succeed – they enrolled last June after a 3-2 vote in favor among the city commission, and have since elected another commissioner who has expressed openness to ending the agreement along with Mayor Eileen Higgins, a critic of the decision. TODAY at 6:00PM ET, the ACLU of Florida is holding a phonebank, reaching out to constituents to urge them to call Mayor Higgins and their reps on the city commission to demand action. ☎️ Let’s sign up to join them in driving folks to speak up against collaboration with the deportation machine here. ☎️
👀 KEEPING AN EYE ON… 👀
NEWS: Two more ICE captives die in their custody: Prisciliano Trejo Ricano and Edwin Giovanni Lopez Cornejo
NEWS: Nebraska is beginning to kick people off Medicaid over paperwork requirements
Looking for more ways to get engaged in the midterms? Here’s a full list!
The Trump regime is trying to crush dissent and pro-immigrant advocacy - stand with targeted activists including VC Defensa, the Prairieland defendants, the Spokane 3, University of Michigan pro-Palestine organizers, the Minnesota 15, and lawyers for unaccompanied migrant children
Hotel workers in Seattle, warehouse workers in California and transit workers in Mississippi are on strike, refinery workers in Indiana are locked out - show solidarity!
We will not stop demanding justice for Kohen Wiley - keep pressing Senatobia officials to release body cam, dash cam and Walmart surveillance footage of his killing
National week of action against automatic license plate readers August 16th-22nd