Hi there! Welcome to Easy A–Your go-to source for quick and easy actions you can take in five minutes or less about the issues you care about.
Are you a busy mom? Or maybe your work is so hectic you can’t think about anything else during the day? A lot of us are also taking care of parents or other loved ones too, leaving little time for anything else.
The good news is that these are things you can do while you’re waiting in the school pick up line, on your lunch break, or even at your kid’s soccer practice – anywhere you happen to be! And you can easily share Easy A with your friends so they can be in the know, too! We’ll send you a new action to take every week–just one, we promise –and it will always be something you can do in five minutes or less. Ready to get started? Let’s go!
Watch This: Supporting the Transgender Community
Extremist politicians have been stepping up their efforts to demonize transgender people and take away their rights. Through new laws, lawsuits, and executive orders, they are denying the existence of trans people and trying to keep them from living full and happy lives.
We can’t sit back and let this happen. While many American companies are pulling back their support for Pride Month this year, Red Wine & Blue is doing the opposite. Our members and TroubleNation groups are celebrating Pride nationwide. And earlier this year, on March 31, we also recognized Transgender Day of Visibility. Watch our one minute video from that day here:
We will continue to fight for trans rights, even after June ends! Next week, we’ll have another action you can take to support trans people in your community.
Read This: Supporting the Transgender Community
June is Pride Month, a time to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community and advocate for their rights.*
This year, supporting the transgender community and advocating for their rights is especially urgent. That’s because the Trump administration has launched a series of executive orders and other actions that take away trans people’s rights and try to erase their very existence.
Here’s how:
- One of the very first executive orders Trump announced — on his inauguration day! — orders the federal government to only recognize two sexes, “biological males” and “biological females.” It also removes all previous federal guidance that recognized and supported non-binary and transgender people. This means that government-issued IDs like U.S. passports and records like tax and social security forms won’t recognize all genders. And federal prisons will have to house prisoners based on only two sexes, putting non-binary and transgender prisoners at risk of physical harassment and assault.
- A similar executive order restricts what schools can teach about the LGBTQ+ community and requires public schools to only recognize two sexes. It bans schools from recognizing transgender students by their preferred names or pronouns and actually threatens to withhold public funding from schools that support students in this way. It also threatens the prosecution of teachers and school administrators who don’t comply.
- Also impacting schools, a separate executive order bans transgender athletes from playing on girls’ and women’s sports teams, rather than leaving this decision up to state and local organizations. This order goes beyond schools, seeking to pressure independent national and international athletic organizations — including the Olympics — into adopting the same policy. Not only does this take away opportunities for trans girls, but it subjects all girls and women to the possibility of unnecessary and invasive physical examinations.
- Another executive order bans transgender people from serving in the U.S. military. After it was announced, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed the military to stop providing healthcare for transgender service members. Both actions are being challenged in federal courts, but for now, the military can ban the enlistment of transgender people and discharge thousands of active service members.
- A separate executive order restricts access to healthcare for transgender children and teens, even in states where it is specifically protected by state law. It misrepresents the guidelines and standards of gender-affirming care recognized by the medical community and takes away the freedom of kids and families to make their own healthcare decisions. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on a case, U.S. v. Skrmetti, which will decide if the U.S. Constitution protects healthcare for transgender kids.
- The U.S. Supreme Court has also agreed to hear Chiles v. Salazar, which could overturn a ban on “conversion therapy” in Colorado. This discredited practice tries to force LGBTQ+ people into being straight. All major medical and psychological associations have proven that it does nothing but cause serious harm. If the court overturns the ban and allows “conversion therapy” in Colorado, it would set the precedent to overturn similar bans that exist in 20 other states.
The bottom line is that these policies are trying to push trans people out of our communities and deny their existence.
To make matters worse, these political attacks have led to an increase in suicide risk among LGBTQ+ kids and teens, and Trump has proposed to cut federal funding for the life-saving 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. This hotline helps thousands of kids a month — more than 1.2 million since it started in 2022.
It’s up to all of us to stand up in support of the transgender community. As less than 1% of the U.S. population, they cannot fight this fight alone, but they are 1.6 million people whose health, safety, and happiness matters. Pride Month is a great time to take action, and in the coming weeks, we’ll show you how!
*If you have more time this week, you can read last year’s Easy A posts that dig deeper into the history of Pride Month.
Do This: Empower Your Friends to Help Protect our Reproductive Rights
We’ve spent the last two weeks learning about the ongoing threats to our reproductive freedom. These threats are particularly dangerous because extremists are intentionally trying to keep them under the radar. We’re not gonna let that happen!
We’ve just added a great new resource to our website called, “We Decide, Not Politicians.” It explains all the stuff we’ve shared with you here and teaches how to fight back!
There’s something here for anyone who’s ever needed, or thought about needing, any sort of reproductive healthcare. From birth control to IVF to miscarriage management to abortion care, we’re talking about all of it.
Use one of these easy, premade social media posts to share this information with your friends and family right now. Together we can shine a light on what these extremists are doing and make sure they stop taking away our reproductive rights. We decide what’s best for us and our families, not politicians or extremists!
Watch This: The New Attacks on our Reproductive Rights
Last week, we learned about the new ways that extremists are coming for our reproductive rights.
We know that they have a plan to take away the abortion pill everywhere, even in states where abortion is legal. We also know that they’re testing a variety of state and local bills across the country to see what they can pass under the radar.
Jessica Valenti, author of the newsletter Abortion, Every Day, joined us for an event recently to talk about these attacks and what we can do to stop them. Watch this short video from that event in which she told us the most important thing we can all be doing right now to protect our reproductive rights in the face of these attacks.
The fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022 put our access to abortion care in the hands of state and local leaders. This created a patchwork of laws and varying levels of access to safe and basic reproductive healthcare, all just depending on where we happen to live. It’s scary and confusing for a lot of us, but we have a lot of power locally.
By subscribing to Easy A, you’re already taking Jessica’s advice to stay informed! Next week we’ll continue to be inspired by Jessica and take one more action to protect our reproductive freedom.
And if you have a little extra time this week, you can watch our full event with Jessica here on our YouTube channel!
Read This: The New Attacks on our Reproductive Rights
The majority — 63% — of abortions in the U.S. are performed using medication, not surgery.
The FDA-approved drug mifepristone is one of the main pills used in medication abortions. Its safety has been proven for decades through more than 100 studies. It’s safer than Tylenol, Penicillin, and Viagra!
But Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. just announced that the FDA will take on a new safety review of mifepristone.
Why? Because a partisan group affiliated with Project 2025 just produced a biased, non-scientific report that questions mifepristone’s safety. Project 2025 wants the FDA to reverse its approval of mifepristone and ban medication abortion nationwide. This is their first step towards making that happen.
But here’s the thing — this is not what most Americans want!
81% of Americans believe that the decision to get an abortion should be between a woman and her doctor, not the government. And support for legal abortion has increased even more since the U.S. Supreme Court issued their 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, taking away our reproductive rights.
The media covered the immediate fallout of Dobbs, as 21 states swiftly banned abortion, but we haven’t heard much more about the state of reproductive healthcare lately. Unfortunately, as this RFK, Jr. announcement shows, we are all facing a new wave of threats to our reproductive rights.
These threats aren’t just at the federal level. Anti-abortion extremists are also trying to pass misleading state and local bills that are going underreported. Here are some examples:
- “Clean water” surveillance bills that would require the monitoring of wastewater for evidence of birth control, abortion medication, and hormone therapies. They claim it’s to ensure the safety of drinking water, but really they just want to detect where people are using these forms of healthcare.
- “Child protection” and “trafficking” bills that penalize anyone who helps young people get abortion care. In states with abortion bans, these laws call it illegal trafficking if you help a young patient get abortion care in another state. These bills are meant to chill community support, keeping us too scared to help the young people in our lives.
- “Baby Olivia” bills that require public schools to include an anti-abortion video called “Meet Baby Olivia” (or similar content) in their science or sex education classes. According to doctors and scientists, the video has biased and unscientific information.
- Bills that require collecting medical data on abortion procedures and providers and making that data public. This would enable anti-abortion extremists to identify doctors and sue them — or worse.
- “Equal protection” or “fetal personhood” bills that criminalize having an abortion or discarding IVF embryos. This means patients or doctors could be charged with homicide.
Extremists are testing these sneaky bills at state and local levels to see what will go unnoticed and get passed into law. If they can get them passed in one state, they’ll try in many more.
So what do we do in the face of these new threats to our reproductive freedom? We don’t let their tricks go unnoticed! We stay informed so we can spot these types of bills if and when they come to our lawmakers. Then we can work to stop them.
We can also make sure that the people in our community know that we are trusted sources of information and support. We won’t let these threats stop us from helping our community. We’ll share more specific actions we can take to protect our reproductive rights in the weeks ahead.
Do This: Spotting and Stopping Disinformation
Disinformation is everywhere, from social media posts to blogs to online influencers. It works because it’s convincing and easy to share quickly.
Disinformation is not just pervasive and persuasive, it’s also persistent! That means we need to create routine, online habits that help us recognize disinformation when we see it. Small actions whenever we are scrolling — like pausing before sharing something to check its source and make sure that it is true — are the best way to stop disinformation in its tracks. This week’s Easy A action will help you learn how to do this.
Janine is going to teach us how to spot trustworthy news online. Even if you can’t make it to the live virtual event on May 22 at 7:30pm ET, take just a moment to sign up for it now, and we’ll email you the recording after the event so that you can watch it in your own time.
Facts matter now more than ever. Janine will show us how this all plays a role in protecting our democracy, so we really hope you’ll join us!
Watch This: Spotting and Stopping Disinformation
We learned last week that 1 in 4 Americans know that they’ve shared misinformation or disinformation online. We also know that a lot of disinformation intentionally comes from bad actors, like other governments that want to interfere with our democratic elections.
A hot-off-the-presses survey from YouGov and NewsGuard just reported that one third of Americans believed Russian disinformation when they were shown actual false claims that have been spreading on social media. Less than 1% — regardless of political party — were able to tell that all the claims they were shown were false!
Watch this quick, one minute video from the News Literacy Project about these troubling results and how we can improve our ability to spot this dangerous disinformation and keep it from spreading.
And if you have a little extra time this week, you can check out the News Literacy Project’s free resources on fact-checking, mis- and disinformation, and more. If you’re a teacher, they have a special set of resources and lesson plans just for you!
Read This: Spotting and Stopping Disinformation
Whether we prefer Facebook or Instagram, TikTok or Substack, we’re all scrolling our feeds regularly (maybe more often than we should!). Social media has become a big part of our lives. It has immense power for good, like exposing us to new points of view and connecting us with our community. But social media also gives bad actors an opportunity to take advantage of us by spreading disinformation.
A healthy democracy needs us, its citizens, to be accurately informed, so let’s learn more about disinformation and how we can fight it.
What is disinformation and why is it dangerous?
Disinformation is false information that is being spread on purpose in order to mislead people. It’s different from misinformation, which is inaccurate information being spread without the awareness that it’s not true. But since we can’t always tell if the intent is there or not, we can tackle both in the same way.
First, it’s important to recognize that disinformation is spread by bad actors. These can be foreign adversaries or domestic agitators. They can be governments, organizations or groups, or individuals. They all have the same goal: To mislead and manipulate us in order to divide us. They want to sow distrust among us so that we don’t trust each other, our institutions like schools and courts, and our professionals like teachers, lawyers, doctors, and scientists. While uniting us against common enemies, they promote their points of view and interests, often for political power and financial gain.
We know that bad actors are using disinformation to influence our elections. And Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools are making it easier for anyone to create disinformational content. Unfortunately, social media companies are reducing their fact-checking efforts, and the Trump administration is ending federal efforts to fight disinformation online. So it’s increasingly up to us to keep disinformation from spreading.
How Disinformation works (because we can all fall for it)
Spotting disinformation can be tough because it comes in many of the same forms as legitimate information or entertainment. Disinformation can be delivered through:
- Memes or other social media graphics.
- Content disguised as a news article.
- Real news articles (even journalists might include disinformation in their work!).
- Editorials, opinion pieces, and blogs (they have less stringent standards for fact-checking and data-sourcing than journalism does).
- Manipulated or AI generated photos or videos.
- Selected edits of photos, screenshots, or videos removed from their original context.
- Satire presented as fact.
Disinformation thrives in places where people are either too naive or overly confident about our abilities to spot it, but we’re all susceptible! It’s designed to tap into our “fast brain,” the part of our brain that runs on autopilot and emotions, not rationality. Disinformation is designed to elicit an emotional response — shock, anger, fear, horror, joy, or amusement — so that we react and share it quickly without thinking critically about it.
Disinformation is bolstered by the fact that social media is designed to make spreading information impulsive and easy. The algorithms boost content that has lots of reactions and clicks, and those are all driven by that same emotional response.
We also all have confirmation bias — the tendency to believe something if it reinforces or aligns with our current beliefs and values. So if we see something that supports our beliefs, we’re more likely to share it without fact-checking first. Disinformation is designed to work faster than our ability to spot and analyze it, so that’s exactly what we have to do to fight it.
How to stop disinformation from spreading.
It takes work and some reconditioning of our habits, but we can train ourselves to recognize disinformation. Now that we understand that it taps into our “fast brain,” we can be intentional about scrolling social media with our “slow brain” instead, using our reasoning and critical thinking skills. Here are some standards we can use:
- Remember that everything online can be false or manipulated.
- Be aware of our biases.
- Pause and investigate further when something quickly elicits an emotional response.
- Assess who is sharing the information. Are they a real person? Are they reliable? Could they be a bot or fake account?
- Fact-check everything — especially if it elicited strong emotions or seems sensational — using sites like factcheck.org or snopes.com.
- Assess the source of information. Is there a source? Is it a primary source? Is it reliable?
- Check a few reputable sources to see if they have the same information.
- Don’t share if you can’t verify or if it isn’t from a trusted source.
- Don’t repeat disinformation, even if you are trying to debunk it. You don’t want to spread it further, and it’s better to just share the facts!
Our democracy depends on us being informed with accurate information. In this era where real news is being called “fake news” and actual fake news is spreading like wildfire, we can all use these tips to spot and stop disinformation.
Do This: Call Your Senators About the SAVE Act
America may have a history of voter suppression, but that doesn’t mean we have to let it continue! It’s up to us to use our voices to speak out against restrictive voter laws and voter suppression tactics, and we have the opportunity to do that right now.
Earlier this month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the SAVE Act. It’s an incredibly restrictive voter ID law that could keep tens of thousands of Americans — especially women — from voting.
The SAVE Act would require showing a passport or a birth certificate, in person, that matches our current last name to register to vote or to update our voter registration for any reason. Let’s be honest, how many women have one of those things handy? (Spoiler: 69 million married women don’t!) Not to mention, the bill would remove online and mail-in voter registration, making it harder for all first-time voters to register, even if they do have the required documents.
The good news is we can stop this outrageous bill from going any further. It will take 60 votes to pass the U.S. Senate. We can make sure that never happens by calling our senators today, and we have a calling tool that makes it really easy for you to do!
Pressed for time? No sweat. Our members’ calls are averaging less than a minute and a half, so you can call both of your senators in under 5 minutes!
Never called your elected officials before? Have no fear! Our tool walks you through it step by step, and we even provide a script to help you figure out what to say. What matters most is that you are using your voice and speaking out.
Let’s make sure this bill — the most restrictive voter bill Congress has ever considered — is dead on arrival. Call your senators today!
Watch This: Modern Day Voter Suppression in America
America has a long history of voter suppression. While the tactics may have changed over time, the reason remains the same — extremists know that their positions are unpopular and that the only way they can win elections is if they keep people from voting.
We talked about the different types of modern day voter suppression laws last week, and unfortunately, we have a perfect example of a voter ID bill looming over us all right now.
The SAVE Act is a huge voter suppression bill, and Speaker Mike Johnson made sure it passed the U.S. House of Representatives this session. Watch here where he was recently caught on a hot mic proving our point — extremists want low voter turnout in elections.
This is why it’s important to vote in every election, and to make sure our friends and family do, too. It’s also important to keep using our voice with our elected representatives.
Fortunately, the SAVE Act has not passed in the U.S. Senate yet, so next week, we’ll give you a way to tell your senators how you feel about this awful bill!
Read This: A History of Voting Rights — and Voter Suppression — in America
The right to vote is one of the most fundamental principles of our democracy, but it hasn’t always been guaranteed for all Americans. And for some of us, it’s still under constant threat. How is that possible? Let’s take a look at the progression of voting rights over time.
A History of Voting Rights and Voter Suppression
When America was founded in 1776, only white, landowning men could vote. Some states further restricted the right to only Christians. In the early 1800s, states began to remove the landowning requirement, allowing more white men to vote.
Black men gained the right to vote in 1870 through the 15th Amendment. But even then, many were not able to exercise that right, because the white people in power put up intentional barriers. They required literacy tests to vote when they knew that Black Americans were educationally disadvantaged, or completely random (and impossible) tests requiring Black voters to guess how many jelly beans were in a jar, or how many bumps were on a cucumber.
They also charged poll taxes — fees for registering and voting — despite Black Americans being economically disadvantaged. White voters were spared by a literal “grandfather clause” that said anyone with a father or grandfather who voted before the abolition of slavery (that is, white men) were excluded from the tax. And there was often intimidation and violence at polling locations from groups like the Ku Klux Klan to keep Black men from voting.
During this time, women were fighting for their voting rights, but white women did not always include Black women in the movement. All women finally gained the right to vote in 1920 through the 19th Amendment.
Progress and Regress
The Civil Rights movement brought about the passing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which outlawed those discriminatory literacy tests and other barriers to voting based on race. It also established a rule that the federal government would oversee the passage of any new voting laws in states that had a history of racism. This was known as “preclearance” and was meant to protect people of color from new voter suppression laws — and it worked! It led to an immediate surge of new Black voters in the same year. Unfortunately, the story doesn’t happily end there.
In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court ended preclearance, ruling in Shelby County v. Holder that it was unconstitutional. This meant that the states with a history of discrimination could oversee their own voting laws again. Almost immediately, states began to introduce new, restrictive voter laws.
Modern Day Voter Suppression
According to the Brennan Center for Justice, since Shelby, 29 states have passed 94 new laws making it harder for people to vote. At least 1/3 of those laws likely would’ve been prevented by federal preclearance under the Voting Rights Act if it still existed. And the gap in turnout rates between white voters and voters of color has grown since the decision.
After the 2020 election, 440 voter restriction bills were introduced nationwide. This included a wave of bills targeting mail-in voting, mainly because its growth during the Covid-19 pandemic led to an increase in voter turnout. In 2023 alone, 356 restrictive voting bills were introduced.
Why does this voter suppression persist? For the same reason it started 250 years ago — the white, Christian men in power want to stay in power and they are afraid that they won’t win elections if there is an increase in more diverse voters. Far-right extremist legislators in districts and states with high populations of voters of color are the ones pushing the hardest for more restrictive voter laws.
What do restrictive voter laws and voter suppression actually look like?
Here are just some examples:
- Laws requiring an approved voter ID (that can be costly and harder for some groups to get).
- Laws restricting and criminalizing voter assistance (like making it a crime to hand out snacks or water to voters waiting in line).
- Putting restrictions on who can hold voter registration drives, and how they’re run.
- Limiting voter registration periods, early voting periods, or polling locations.
- Ending or restricting mail-in voting.
- Purging voter rolls, especially without informing purged voters.
- Unfair drawing of voting districts to favor a certain party (aka gerrymandering).
According to the Brennan Center and the ACLU, these types of laws disproportionately keep Black and brown people from voting. These are usually state laws, but we’re also currently facing federal attempts to suppress voters.
Donald Trump just issued a sweeping Executive Order to take more control over elections and to implement a highly restrictive voter ID requirement nationwide. At the same time, MAGA extremists in Congress are trying to pass the SAVE Act, which has a similarly restrictive ID requirement. These efforts could take away voting rights from tens of thousands of married women, immigrants, transgender people, and new voters.
What Can We Do?
We can all agree that we want safe and fair elections, but passing extremely restrictive voter laws is not how we ensure that. Everyone should be able to vote. In the coming weeks, we’ll dig deeper into what we can do to fight voter suppression and ensure voting rights for all.