The clock is ticking and unless immediate action is taken, in less than a week the federal government will run out of money and shutdown on October 1st. This is not a drill! House Republicans have created this totally manufactured, preventable crisis that will hurt our families, workers (especially military and government workers), veterans, children, and our economy. 

Government shutdowns are a total failure of governance and because Republicans in the House of Representatives are choosing partisan antics and extremism over doing their job, we are days away from that failure. Yikes.

How can you help stop this? I’m so glad you asked!

***Send a Letter to the Editor to your local paper calling on your elected leaders to avoid a government shutdown and pass a budget that lifts up our families, including fully funding programs like WIC and child care! (We make it super easy using our letter to the editor tool.)

Why do letters to the editor matter so much right now? Simply put—U.S. Senators and Representatives read their local papers! By submitting a letter you are helping us raise the profile on this very important issue and ringing the alarm bells that we expect Congress to avoid a shutdown and do their jobs by passing a budget that lifts up our families and children.

Don’t worry—sending the Letter to the Editor is super easy! When you click on the link above, we’ll lead you through a quick process to write a Letter to the Editor to your local newspaper. This tool is pretty magical—you can easily edit our pre-drafted letter, if you wish (inserting your personal story if you have one!), and send it to your paper with just a few clicks.

The pre-drafted letter (which you can edit when you click through to the link!) simply says:

We are days away from the federal government shutting down because extremist House Republicans are choosing partisan antics over funding the programs that lift up our families, communities, and economy.

House Republicans want to shut down the government, collapse our economy, and jam their right-wing agenda down our throats–slashing funding for everything from WIC for postpartum moms and babies, to K-12 education, while at the same time passing anti-immigrant policies. 

We will not stand for this! Our elected leaders need to do their job: avoid a shutdown and pass a budget that lifts up children, families, and our economy, including fully funding WIC and childcare.

(If you will be personally impacted by a government shutdown or the budget cuts the Republicans are proposing, feel free to include that in your Letter to the Editor too).

**Take a minute to send a letter to your local paper now! This action is high-impact and will definitely get the attention of your elected leaders in Congress. (We make it really easy for you using our LTE tool!)

House Republicans continue to practice chaos politics. House Republicans have put forth purely partisan spending bills that slash funding for programs our families need to build a good life and our economy needs to grow –everything from nutrition assistance like WIC, to child care assistance, to funding for the IRS to collect taxes from the rich and powerful. To make matters worse every…single…bill…they’ve passed includes anti-immigrant, anti-abortion, anti-education, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-environment language such as making abortion illegal nationally, slashing climate crisis funding, and opening up discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community. 

The House Republicans’ plan is obvious: they want to hold families, workers, and our economy hostage by shutting down the government and then jam their right-wing extremist agenda through Congress. At risk is the funding of programs that grow the economy, raise incomes and cut costs for families, including health care, child care, maternal and mental health, job training, and environmental safety programs.

This is all the more reason we need YOU to speak out and show the real-world costs of this partisan, damaging chaos! Send your Letter to the Editor to your local paper using our super easy tool and then share our action page with your friends and family so they can send a letter as well.