Here at My Civic Workout, we object to Neil Gorsuch’s appointment to the Supreme Court. In an unprecedented move last spring, Republican senators refused to hold a hearing for President Obama’s choice for the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland, on the pretext that a Supreme Court appointment shouldn’t be made in an election year. Corporations and right wing interest groups spent millions to assure this outcome, and Gorsuch, the “Hobby Lobby” judge, is a quintessential conservative pick.
Gorsuch will likely be confirmed in the Republican-majority Senate, but that doesn’t mean we should accept this outcome without putting up a fight.
Get Your Game Face On
Last Thursday, President Trump released his “skinny budget,” which is basically a Christmas list of things he wants Congress to fund or to take away funding from. The Trump budget proposes devastating cuts to key federal agencies and would eliminate funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Meals on Wheels, the National Endowment for the Arts, and more. The good news is that the president doesn’t actually set the final budget. Congress does, and they’ll be working on it over the coming months. This won't be our last budget edition, so today we’re going to start out with the basics.
Gerryman-dering, or How to Rig A Game
One of the biggest influences in your local and state elections is gerrymandering, a way of drawing the boundaries of political districts so that one party is given an advantage over the other. In effect, if voting districts are gerrymandered enough, it can create permanent electoral majorities for one party.