Yesterday, Donald Trump incited a violent insurrection by a mob of his supporters, intended to overturn our democracy. Until yesterday, Trump’s actions were aptly termed a bloodless coup. Now we need to remove the word bloodless.

We must hold the president accountable. These events once again demonstrate Trump's unfitness to remain in office even for the 13 days left in his term OR in the future. His behavior is too egregious and dangerous.  Given yesterday's attempted coup and the continuing threat to the peaceful transfer of power, we cannot just wait for Trump to leave office. This is about maintaining the rule of law over the next two weeks and signaling that mob violence to overthrow elected officials and overturn elections will not be tolerated now or in the future and those that try it will be held accountable.

If the cabinet does not invoke the 25th amendment to remove him, BlueWaveNJ joins Indivisible's call for the House and Senate to impeach and convict him. Impeachment will force Republicans to choose whether they will continue to support a would-be dictator or uphold the peaceful transfer of power. It will also prevent him from ever holding elected federal office again.

Please call our NJ Congressional delegation and demand that the president is held accountable.  We also call for an investigation into the failure of law enforcement to prepare for the violence we all feared would materialize yesterday from the president's incitement. The difference between the police presence and even accommodation of the protestors yesterday compared to their overwhelming and violent response to the peaceful protests at the capital of the killing of George Floyd is chilling. 

Contact your House Representative here:

https://indivisible.org/demand-your-representative-support-impeachment-donald-trump#

Contact your Senators here:

https://indivisible.org/demand-your-senator-support-conviction-and-permanent-disqualification-donald-trump

We know you have heard every negative adjective to describe 2020 and we are not going to add others. But in our hurry to kick 2020 and Trump's presidency goodbye, we should not forget the remarkable things BlueWaveNJ accomplished in the time of the pandemic. We phoned and we mailed until we dropped. The numbers are incredible:

• Over 2,000,000 phone calls to swing state voters
• Over 31,000 postcards sent to key races
• Over 200,000 digital ads delivered in key NJ house districts
  And so much more.

...and, of course, the Biden/Harris ticket won their decisive victory and all New Jersey's Democratic congress members won their elections.

Thank you for everything you did to achieve these victories; we can all feel proud.

We are genuinely hopeful we can make significant progress in the New Year, both in New Jersey and Washington. We will be working every day for our democracy and planet, for affordable health care for all, reproductive rights, and an equitable economic recovery, to name only a few of next year's priorities.

Please consider making a donation to support our efforts at: https://www.bluewavenj.org/support, and please join us in 2021 to fight for a more progressive America.

Wishing you all a happy and safe New Year

Marcia Marley & The BlueWaveNJ Team

Small “d” democracy

By Mark Lurinsky

Republican State Senator Thomas Kean Jr. is challenging 7^th Congressional District Representative Tom Malinowski by claiming to be the candidate who stands for “bipartisanship” and “working across the aisle”. He’s hoping to bolster this assertion by his name association with his father, the two-term New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean Sr., who did establish a reputation for moderation and civility in the 1990s.

There are two problems with Kean Jr’s claim. First, his actual policy positions during his two decades in the New Jersey legislature are a far cry from any type of moderation. Second, his support for and alliance with the divisive Donald Trump and adoption of Trump-like tactics during the election campaign have meant anything but bipartisanship, moderation or civility.

By Andrew Sprung

Trump's "health care plan," unveiled on September 24, is such a pathetically transparent fraud that it's gone down without a murmur. Embodied in an executive order and an orally delivered promise, it boils down to: 

Small “d” democracy

By Mark Lurinsky

Thanks to Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward of Watergate fame, we now know, down to the day, the key timeline of America’s COVID crisis as it relates to Donald Trump’s presidency:

BlueWaveNJ has submitted the testimony below in support of a New Jersey bill, S2676/A4389, that would replace the national ACA tax on health insurers repealed by Congress late last year with a state tax that would raise some $300 million per year. The bill dedicates the funds to improving health insurance affordability, focusing mainly on low-income New Jerseyans.   The bulk of the money will likely be used to add state subsidies to federal subsidies for health plans sold in the ACA marketplace, with a portion going to fund the existing reinsurance program that reduces individual market premiums for those who earn too much to qualify for subsidies. Conceived  when unemployment was at an historic low, the measure is all the more vital now as hundreds of thousand of New Jerseyans lose their employer-sponsored health insurance in the wake of the pandemic.

Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd are just the latest in a long line of senseless killings that have exposed America’s centuries-old institutionalized and systemic racism.  In the case of George Floyd, the video of his slow and deliberate murder is impossible to watch without dissolving in anger.  The question is, will this and the other recent murders finally be the catalyst for fundamental change?

Small “d” democracy

By Mark Lurinsky

Late Sunday night, President Donald Trump shocked the nation by suggesting on Twitter that he may shortly reassess encouraging the social distancing measures meant to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus, measures that only became widespread a little over a week ago. He argued that the economic impact of the various emergency measures could “be worse than the problem itself”. On Tuesday he suggested that the U.S. economy will be “open” by Easter Sunday.  Media reports suggest that influential members of the Trump administration are now prioritizing the concerns of certain corporate entities over the consensus advice of public health experts inside and outside government who have been adamant that more time is needed and many more resources have to be made immediately available before we can begin to consider relaxing any containment measures.

President Trump needs to be reminded: everyone’s life now depends on listening carefully to the science.

Please join BlueWaveNJ’s environmental committee, which is doing extremely important, time sensitive work this year. We need your help and engagement.

Sign up at this link here.

Politically, on the federal level, we will be expanding the successful program we started in the 2018 mid-terms to do issue-oriented canvassing in swing districts to make sure voters know of the stark choice they have between candidates such as Tom Malinowski, Mikie Sherrill and Any Kim, who recognize the urgency of climate change, and their opponents who support the agenda of climate change deniers. Climate change advocacy can play a huge role in keeping our Congressional districts blue. 

On the State level, BlueWaveNJ is one the groups taking the lead in attempting to obtain a moratorium on all new fossil fuel projects. We have already been partly successful in having the Murphy administration agree to the regulation of greenhouse gases. However, without continued grassroots pressure there is the risk that these regulations will not be enacted in the first term and they may never get enacted if there is a change in administrations. We are organizing a hopefully enormous Earth Day rally in Morristown on April 25 to support our goals.

All of you know we cannot wait another year, month or day to take the action needed to minimize the catastrophic impact of climate change. If you want to be an effective part of that effort, please join us and sign up for our committee by March 27th. We can’t do this without you.

Sign up at this link here.