This OTYCD entry originally posted in April 2017. It’s among the earliest stories we’ve published, and it might be the best. That’s why it will always appear on the page headlined “The Most Important Thing You Can Do”.
P.S. Trump went through his entire four years in office without criticizing Vladimir Putin even once.
Subscribe to One Thing You Can Do by clicking the blue button on the upper right or checking the About & Subscribe page. And tell your friends about the blog!
Support Jana Lynne Sanchez’s run for a House of Representatives special election for an open seat in Texas’s 6th District.
We at OTYCD wrote about Sanchez in 2018, when she ran for this very seat. She won the Democratic primary but was defeated in the general by Republican Ronald Wright. She got 45.4 percent of the vote to his tally of 53.1.
Wright won re-election in 2020 but died of COVID-19 on February 7, 2021. He’s the first sitting member of Congress to succumb to the disease; Luke Letlow, a GOP Congressman-elect from Louisiana, died of COVID-19 before he could be sworn in.
Wright’s death prompted a special election to fill his seat, and Sanchez has stepped forward to run. She is one of ten Democrats and 11 Republicans vying for the post alongside a Libertarian and an Independent.
Ballotpedia does not reflect a date for a primary for this special election, but the special election itself takes place on May 1, 2021.
Subscribe to One Thing You Can Do by clicking the blue button on the upper right or checking the About & Subscribe page. And tell your friends about the blog!
April Fool’s Day is a perennial pain-in-the-butt for sites like OTYCD. Facts matter, and we don’t want to risk posting a story that could be taken as a prank.
We’re going to play it as safe as we can by reworking a post from April 2017 about how to fact-check.
The link below will take you to a Google doc from 2017 written by Laura M. Browning, a professional copy editor who has trained others to check facts. She titled the document Fact-checking in the Age of Trumpism for obvious reasons, but its strength and validity hasn’t diminished one bit now that Trump has left the Oval Office.
Read Laura M. Browning’s deft, incisive, and blessedly short (barely five pages) paper on how to fact-check:
Subscribe to One Thing You Can Do by clicking the blue button on the upper right or checking the About & Subscribe page. And tell your friends about the blog!
Today is the Federal Election Commission (FEC) Q1 deadline–donate to your favorite 2022 candidates before midnight.
During previous electoral cycles, OTYCD readers learned about the power and importance of FEC quarterly deadlines.
The numbers represent temperature checks on candidates for office. Good numbers launch a virtuous cycle that attract additional big-dollar donors to commit based on the quarterly fundraising reports.
Why draw your attention to the Q1 2021 deadline? Because traditionally, midterm elections have gone against the party of the sitting president. Congressional chambers flip in midterms.
As you read this, Democrats have a single-digit seat advantage in the House of Representatives and hold the Senate by virtue of having Vice President Kamala Harris available to cast a tie-breaking vote.
Yes, you should rest more this year than you did in 2020, a year that allowed little rest at all. But this is not an electoral off-year. With Trumpism far from dead, there’s no such thing. There are no more off-years, only less-intense years.
If you’ve built out your Core Four Plus for 2022 as much as you can, please consider making a donation to your chosen candidates, or making an additional booster donation before midnight.
If you can’t afford to donate to candidates right now, signal boost the Q1 donation deadline on social media and encourage others to give to solid Democratic incumbents and challengers.
Subscribe to One Thing You Can Do by clicking the blue button on the upper right or checking the About & Subscribe page. And tell your friends about the blog!
Subscribe to One Thing You Can Do by clicking the blue button on the upper right or checking the About & Subscribe page. And tell your friends about the blog!
Join Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), a group that encourages and organizes white people to dismantle white supremacy and move America toward actual racial equality.
This OTYCD story originally ran in February 2019. Click to read:
Subscribe to One Thing You Can Do by clicking the blue button on the upper right or checking the About & Subscribe page. And tell your friends about the blog!
Sign up for a health insurance plan at Healthcare.gov during a special enrollment period announced by President Biden.
We originally published this OTYCD story in mid-February, after Biden announced it. We will re-run the story at least once a month until the special enrollment period ends on May 15, 2021.
Subscribe to One Thing You Can Do by clicking the blue button on the upper right or checking the About & Subscribe page. And tell your friends about the blog!
Learn who your current Secretary of State is–the person who is usually responsible for overseeing elections.
Sure, you know who represents you in Congress and in your state legislature. But there are other elected state officials who affect your life.
The Secretary of State (a job title that’s styled as “Secretary of the Commonwealth” in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia) should get more attention.
As of January 2020, a total of 40 Secretaries of State also serve as the Chief State Election Official–the person who oversees elections.
Bookmark the page to find your own Secretary of State, and to find those of your chosen Swing State and Red State.
Subscribe to One Thing You Can Do by clicking the blue button on the upper right or checking the About & Subscribe page. And tell your friends about the blog!
Is 2021 an off-year for elections? That might not be true for you on the local level.
When we say “the local level”, we mean elected offices such as the mayor, city council members, planning board, school board, and the like.
Finding out what’s going on is harder than finding out what’s going on at the federal and the state level. You have to look to local resources, and local resources will vary. It will require some work on your part.
One Thing You Can Do 
You must be logged in to post a comment.