Wednesday we shared a post from Joyce Vance's newsletter "Civil Discource".  Our hope is that you are  thoroughly reading it.  It is extremely important that everyone understand what Trump intends to do if he is elected.

Now I am going to pivot to the purpose of today's post.  What you can do to help elect candidates, including Kamala Harris, up and down the ballot who will work for YOU, not their own greedy, harmful intentions.  It won't take but a short time every day or two or even three - just whenever you see or read something that shows MAGA's for what they intend to do to us all, if elected.

Do you remember the old "telephone tree"?  i.e. You have important information you want/need to share with a number of people. You call ten of your friends, relatives or group members with whom you want to share, giving each the information and asking each of them to share it with ten people.  And so on it goes to an ever-expanding group.

Currently, doing this is easier than it ever was in the past.  You can create your list of people as a separate set of contacts in your phone or email - even in your Facebook contact list.  Then send to all of them at ONE time!

So where do you get this information to share?  From everything you see and read i.e. YouTube, Facebook, womensvoices, ect.  It can be script and/or video.  It can be funny and/or serious.  Whatever catches your eye and just might inform your group of people.  It's all up to you.  The goals here are (1) to inform people so they understand how critical this election is and (2) to make sure they are REGISTERED and VOTE.

You can start by sharing the Joyce Vance post from Wednesday.  The link is below.  Accompany it with a brief explanation of why you think it is important to know this information.  You might add a few words about the author's credentials, if you think it will help persuade your contacts.

https://joycevance.substack.com/p/trumps-project-2025

If you are sending to people in Florida, be sure you remind them to vote YES on Amendment 4.  Passage of this amendment will protect repeoductive freedom, not only for Floridians, but for those who live in southern states where abortions are banned or severely restricted.

GET  TO  WORK!   PLEASE.   Together we can get the job done!

Project 2025 Columns Index

Moms from Nashville's Covenant School are leaning into their identities as conservative women and gun owners to bring others to consider policy over party.  By  Jennifer Gerson

Mary Joyce said that when the Tennessee legislature held a special session following the March 2023 mass shooting at her daughter’s school, she had blind faith that her lawmakers would take action. She assumed many legislators would know some of the families whose children attended the private Christian school, The Covenant School in Nashville, or at least feel some kind of connection to them. If nothing else, the sheer tragedy would mean tangible change. 

She doesn’t feel that way today. 

Joyce and her fellow Covenant mom Melissa Alexander went to the statehouse five months later to advocate for gun safety measures as part of two new groups they co-founded, Covenant Families for Brighter Tomorrow, and a corresponding action fund to go along with it. They are lifelong Republicans — Alexander is also a gun owner herself — who could speak firsthand to the trauma inflicted by a mass shooting that killed three 9-year-old children and three adults. Though their children survived, they were traumatized in ways that continued to affect their daily lives; Joyce’s daughter also lost some of her hearing. 

But the politicians they encountered in the deeply red Tennessee statehouse had other things to say. 

While at the statehouse one day, Joyce recalls members of the Republican-majority legislature asking about the droves of protesters who had suddenly shown up to oppose a proposed law allowing school employees to carry guns on campus — and hearing a conservative lawmaker making comments about “all the hot moms of Nashville here in our legislature.” 

(The legislature ultimately passed that bill, making Tennessee the ninth state to legalize arming school employees.)

Comments about their gender didn’t end there. Joyce recalled hearing legislators say to some of the other moms she was at the statehouse with, “Wow, you’re really well-spoken for a female.” 

“It really diminished our value,” Joyce said. “Melissa and I are both business owners. We are active in our community and we’re connected and we’re smart and we’re not just silly little women that have no opinions or perspective on life.”

But, she adds, it only makes her and the other Covenant parents — mainly White women from conservative backgrounds — want to work harder. “No one’s going to talk to us like that. We make decisions about our children and our households 

and our businesses and our lives. It only gives us more fuel to keep going to raise our voice. When moms get their minds made up about something, there is no stopping us. You saw that happen with drunk driving. Well, we are here for gun safety and we’re not going anywhere.”

Moms have already played a critical role in the gun safety advocacy movement, from the Black women who founded Mothers of the Movement to speak out on behalf of their children killed by police and gun violence, to Moms Demand Action, founded by a White suburban mother who felt compelled to act in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012. These groups followed the road map outlined during the ‘80’s and ‘90’s by groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving to organize and effect real change. 

Joyce said that as conservative women, they feel especially well-positioned to engage in this fight because of their culture, their community and their ability to relate to parents who may have felt excluded from the gun safety advocacy movement. 

“We are in this constant and evolving state of anxiety for mothers and kids,” she said, “because as the degrees of separation of gun violence get smaller, more and more people are just waiting for their turn, for it to be them next. That shifts the narrative from, ‘This is my freedom and my right to own a firearm’ to ‘Man, I am living in fear every day that I might be killed or that my child might be killed.’”

Joyce and Alexander are supporters of Second Amendment rights, but, as Joyce said, those rights need regulation. “Where do my rights end and someone else’s rights begin?” Joyce asked.

As part of a community of gun owners, the things they are advocating for — safe storage laws, red flag laws, universal background checks — feel in line with the values they’ve always held, they said. It’s why Alexander said she and so many other gun owners she has spoken to “very much disagree” with decisions like the Supreme Court’s June ruling that overturned the Trump-era policy banning bump stocks, devices that can be attached to a semi-automatic weapon to effectively turn it into a machine gun. (Civilians have been legally barred from owning machine guns in the United States since 1986.) “Responsible gun owners are not aligned with a decision like that,” she said.

Alexander points to polling done last year by researchers at Vanderbilt University who found that 75 percent of Tennesseans favor red flag laws that allow law enforcement officers to temporarily disarm people determined to be dangerous to themselves or others. “People want to see these things, especially responsible gun owners,” she said. 

Joyce believes that the Covenant moms have “created this safe space for mothers” who have found it hard to speak up because of how “politically charged” the issue of gun safety has become. 

A significant part of this work, she said, is educating women to think about policy over party. “I’ve been a lifelong Republican, but what does that really mean? How has the Republican Party changed? We have a huge following, especially with suburban mothers who probably didn’t show up for the primaries or vote in them, or if they did, just voted straight down party lines. What we’re saying is, ‘You need to know who it is you’re voting for. Pay attention to the person, not the party.’”

But they say that they have also sometimes hit roadblocks with other gun safety advocates because of their backgrounds. As conservative women, Alexander said, they’ve felt pushback from others who bristled at their political leanings and cultural norms, and weren’t sure if they should be in a space long dominated by progressives and frequently led by women of color. 

“We’ve heard feedback about, ‘You guys don’t look like us, you don’t sound like us, you’re different,’” Joyce said. “But maybe there’s power in that. Perhaps there are other people that maybe do feel the same way and look and sound like us — so let’s amplify this voice and come together. We all want the same goal.”

Still, Alexander said that they “love” and have been “embraced” by Everytown and Moms Demand Action, two of the largest gun safety advocacy groups who operate as one larger grassroots movement. “They’re setting a great example because they’re the largest gun violence prevention organization in the country, and I think they’re making an impact” because of their willingness to welcome a diverse group of advocates, she said. 

Alexander added that there’s not always a straightforward path to getting more women to understand the connection between public safety and how they vote. Because of her own background, she says, she is able to bring empathy to getting people to rethink their political identities. 

This includes encouraging people who may have sat out primary and even general elections to vote. “We have to show the importance of primaries, that they really do tend to determine the election. Typically, we only have a 20 percent turnout in Tennessee, so educating people to go and vote and do so in local primaries down to school-board level is key,” she said. “Local politics are what affect our lives.”

Joyce said she didn’t understand the degree to which Republican lawmakers are beholden to the gun lobby until after the Covenant shooting. Alexander added that her “biggest surprise” was seeing how the Tennessee legislature failed to pass a single piece of gun safety legislation in the nearly 18 months since that shooting. “I’m still shocked to this day how nothing has been done.” 

Joyce said she didn’t understand the degree to which Republican lawmakers are beholden to the gun lobby until after the Covenant shooting. Alexander added that her “biggest surprise” was seeing how the Tennessee legislature failed to pass a single piece of gun safety legislation in the nearly 18 months since that shooting. “I’m still shocked to this day how nothing has been done.” 

AUTHOR BIO:  Jennifer Gerson is a reporter on THE 19th* breaking news team. She was the recipient of the 2015 Maggie Award for her reproductive and sexual health reporting work at Yahoo Health. In 2019, she was twice nominated by the American Society of Magazine Editors for her work in Marie Claire and Cosmopolitan. She was also one of the founding editors of Jezebel.com.

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Known by its brand name Roundup, glyphosate is a clear and present danger to human health.

By Caroline Cox

Glyphosate, known by its famous brand name, Roundup, is a widely used herbicide (a pesticide designed to kill plants). It is a broad-spectrum herbicide that kills or damages all plant types: grasses, perennials, vines, shrubs, and trees. Glyphosate has been sold as an herbicide since 1974. Its use dramatically increased in the 21st century as its patents expired and genetically modified crop varieties that tolerated exposure to glyphosate became popular.

Experts now believe it is the “most heavily” used herbicide globally. In 2015, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen.

Glyphosate: Widespread Use and Exposure

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated glyphosate usage in 2019—based on data collected between 2012 and 2016—and concluded that almost 300 million acres of farmland were treated with about 280 million pounds of glyphosate yearly. Another 24 million pounds of the herbicide is used every year in home yards, roadways, forestry, and turf, according to a 2020 analysis by the agency.

Given this enormous use of glyphosate in the United States, it is perhaps unsurprising that exposure to it is widespread. A unit of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did the largest and most comprehensive study to determine glyphosate exposure using urine collected from a sample of Americans selected between 2013 and 2014 to accurately represent the entire population. Researchers found that more than 80 percent of participants, who were six years and older, had been exposed to glyphosate. In discussing the results, the CDC suggested that food was an important source of exposure to the chemical. “Participants who had not eaten for eight or more hours had lower levels of glyphosate in their urine.”

The Salinas Study: Liver Diseases and Diabetes

A growing number of studies link exposure to glyphosate with various human health problems other than the cancer hazard that IARC evaluated. Typically classified as epidemiology, this research does not formally determine cause and effect but is more realistic and often more compelling than research done using laboratory animals or cell cultures.

One example of an epidemiology study comes from the agricultural town of Salinas, California. Starting in 1999, the University of California, Berkeley, scientists recruited pregnant mothers and then their children as volunteer participants in a study called the Center for the Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas (CHAMACOS), which was conducted over a period of more than 20 years. These “480 mother-child duos” mostly belonged to farmworker families in the Salinas area. The mothers provided their blood and urine samples and other health information during pregnancy, while the samples from children were collected when they were 5, 14, and then 18 years old. All of this data was used to answer essential questions about glyphosate exposure.

The CHAMACOS study compared teens with higher-than-average exposure to glyphosate as children to those with lower exposure. Teens with higher exposure to glyphosate and its primary breakdown product, aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA), were more likely to show signs of liver inflammation, meaning they had a higher risk of developing liver disease. They were also more likely to have metabolic syndrome (high blood pressure, high blood sugar, low levels of “good” cholesterol, and several other health problems), which could make them more susceptible to serious health concerns such as liver cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes, later in life.

The study had several other interesting results. In the early years of the study (2000-2002), glyphosate exposures in children were infrequent and low. Most participants did not have glyphosate in their bodies. This changed dramatically as time went on. Glyphosate and AMPA were found in 80 to 90 percent of the 14-year-old participants. The researchers note that this mirrors the national and global increase in glyphosate use.

In addition, the Salinas study showed that glyphosate exposures in this agricultural farmworker community were similar to exposures across the country in people who were not farmworkers. According to the researchers, this suggests that the primary source of glyphosate exposure was food, concluding that “diet was a major source of glyphosate and AMPA exposure among… study participants… as indicated by higher urinary glyphosate or AMPA concentrations among those who ate more cereal, fruits, vegetables, bread, and in general, carbohydrates.”

American Women: Pregnancy Problems

Another example of epidemiology showing glyphosate hazards comes from a study of pregnant women living in California, Minnesota, New York, and Washington. This study found that more than 90 percent of these women were exposed to glyphosate and that higher exposures to glyphosate and AMPA during the second trimester were linked to shorter-than-normal pregnancies. The study participants represented all American pregnant women in terms of race, ethnicity, economic status, and urban versus suburban families. The report concluded that exposure to glyphosate “may impact reproductive health by shortening length of gestation.”

Canadian Study: Glyphosate in Food

A detailed evaluation of glyphosate exposure comes from a study of about 2,000 pregnant women in 10 cities across Canada between 2008 and 2011. Based on urine analysis and questionnaires, the researchers concluded that food was a more likely source of glyphosate exposure than household pesticide use or pesticide drift. The foods linked to higher glyphosate exposures were spinach, whole grain bread, soy and rice beverages, and pasta. The strongest link was “between consumption of whole grain bread and higher urinary glyphosate concentrations.”

Government Testing

Government agencies in North America have tested foods for glyphosate contamination. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration started testing food for glyphosate in 2016-2017. In more recent testing of more than 2,000 samples from 2020, the FDA found relatively high levels of glyphosate in lentils (up to 20 parts per million, or “ppm”), garbanzo beans (up to 12 ppm), and black beans (up to 1 ppm). The U.S. Department of Agriculture tested corn (unprocessed grain) for glyphosate in 2021. Glyphosate was found in about 35 percent of the samples tested. The highest contamination level was relatively low at 0.14 ppm.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) tested a much wider variety of foods (almost 8,000 samples) between 2015 and 2017. More than 40 percent were contaminated with glyphosate. Consistent with the FDA data, CFIA found relatively high levels of glyphosate in beans (up to 8 ppm), chickpeas (up to 3 ppm), and lentils (up to 3 ppm).

The researchers found other commonly eaten foods with relatively high glyphosate levels, including couscous (up to 1 ppm), pasta (up to 1 ppm), pearl barley (up to 2 ppm), oatmeal (up to 1 ppm), infant oatmeal (up to 2 ppm), and rye flour/flakes (up to 6 ppm). Two foods with somewhat lower concentrations, but important because they are eaten often, were flour (77 percent of the samples were contaminated; with levels up to 0.8 ppm) and pizza (90 percent of samples contaminated; with levels up to 0.5 ppm). The research by CFIA found that “The highest glyphosate levels were observed in pulses and wheat products.”

Consumer Advocacy Group Testing

Several nonprofit organizations have also conducted testing of popular foods for glyphosate contamination. This testing is beneficial because the results identify brands contaminated with the herbicide, which would typically not be part of the government agency testing. Some 2022 results from the Detox Project, a research platform, provide details about glyphosate residue levels for brands such as Village Hearth’s 100% whole wheat bread (1 ppm), 365 Whole Foods Market’s whole wheat bread (1 ppm), and Quaker Oats (0.5 ppm).

In some good news, the Environmental Working Group reported in 2023 that glyphosate contamination of oat cereals and other oat-based products has decreased, with the highest levels found in Quaker Oatmeal Squares (less than 0.5 ppm).

Organic Farming

Certified organic farmers do not use glyphosate or most other synthetic pesticides. Buying and eating organic food is an excellent way to reduce glyphosate exposure. For example, a 2020 peer-reviewed study found that glyphosate exposure in four U.S. families was reduced by 70 percent within six days after they switched to an organic diet. In the CFIA study of glyphosate contamination of Canadian foods, testing of more than 1,000 organic items found that 75 percent were free of glyphosate, and most of the remaining organic products had only small amounts of the chemical. Organic products can be contaminated by drift, contaminated water, or contaminated equipment, but these levels are typically low.

The amount of organic farmland in the U.S. was almost five million acres in 2021, and organic food sales topped $60 billion for the first time in 2022, according to a 2023 survey by the Organic Trade Association.

“Organic has proven it can withstand short-term economic storms. Despite the fluctuation of any given moment, Americans are still investing in their personal health, and, with increasing interest, in the environment,” said Organic Trade Association CEO Tom Chapman, according to a May 2023 press release.

If organic farming continues to expand and is made accessible to consumers across the U.S., a future with glyphosate-free food seems within reach.

Author Bio: Caroline Cox is a retired pesticide scientist. She was a staff scientist at the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides from 1990 to 2006 and a research director and senior scientist at the Center for Environmental Health from 2006 to 2020. She has been writing about glyphosate hazards since the 1990s. She is a contributor to the Observatory

 This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.