SECRETARY OF EDUCATION Confirmation Vote is Tuesday, Jan. 31. Reports indicate that over a million emails have been sent and 1,000,000 people signed onto one petition to block the appointment, and that Capitol phones have been jammed with calls since the Senate announced a delay of vote due to ethics concerns. Sen. Tammy Baldwin has announced that she will not support this appointment. Wisconsin residents with concerns about Ms. DeVos can reach Sen. Ron Johnson by email or by phoning any of his 3 offices: Milwaukee Office (414) 276-7282; Oshkosh Office (920) 230-7250; Washington D.C. Office (202) 224-5323. His voicemail box has been filling up often, but it does get cleaned out so if you can’t leave a message the first time you call, PLEASE call back again the next day.

Here’s an article outlining some of the top reasons to oppose Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education.

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/articles/2017-01-25/5-reasons-to-oppose-betsy-devos-for-donald-trumps-secretary-of-education

As many of you have heard, President Trump put a gag order on government agencies, forbidding them from posting on certain subjects and certain news. Many of these agencies have developed “alt” social media sites to make sure news still gets out about what is happening in our agencies. Here is a list of some of these sites:

On Twitter: @AltUSFWS, @AltHomelandSec, @altusda, @Alt_NIH, @Alt_NASA, @AltHHS, @Alt_CDC, @ungaggedEPA, @NatParkUndrgrnd, @AlternativeNWS, @alt_fda, @altUSEPA, @BadHombreNPS, @AltForestServ, @ActualEPAFacts, @AltNatParkSer

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AltUSNationalParkService/

The Samaritan Health Center in West Bend is in need of Bingo prizes and other small gifts for their residents. The Samaritan Center is funded by the county and due to cuts, has become more and more reliant on donations. For our February community service project, we will be collecting prizes for the residents. Here’s a list of what they are looking for: small candies, chips, other snacks in miniature sizes, small lotions, toiletries, kleenex, shampoo, hand cream, decks of cards, small books of puzzles, crosswords, and any other small gifts or prizes.

We will have a basket at the office for your donations. Thank you!

In case you need a bright light during a particularly dark week, please note that a federal court has ordered Scott Walker and the state Republicans to redraw the maps by November 1st, 2017. This means we will have new lines by the next partisan elections. For more information on the ruling, please click here.