Join us
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| Hear from speakers who will discuss the erosion of women’s rights and the Heritage Foundation, the architects of Project 2025. Learn what’s happening with women’s rights in Washington from an Indivisible who works there. Hear how the undermining of women’s rights has impacted young people. Please sign up here-and bring a friend! |
Rally with us
Join us Saturdays, 12-1
We’ve partnered with veterans groups to fight for democracy and all our rights every week. Our weekly Saturday vigil will also focus on ICE Out protests–Justice for Lorenzo, Justice for Johan.
We’ll be in Highland on the SE corner of Ridge and 41 at the Highway of Flags Veterans Memorial. Limited parking, along with handicapped spots, is available behind the memorial. If the lot is full, park at Wicker Park and rally on the NW corner of Ridge and 41. Or park in the old Ultra parking lot and rally on the NE corner. Bring your signs and your passion! And please bring nonperishable food items. We donate to a different pantry each week. To let us know you’re coming, please sign up here.
| Our next Indivisible NWI Book Club meeting will be September 19 from 9:30 to 11 at Grindhouse Coffee, 3805 Ridge Road in Highland. We’ll be talking about Don’t Talk About Politics: How to Change 21st Century Minds by Sarah Stein Lubrano Please let us know you’re coming and sign up here. |
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| Your voice matters! Email & call–take easy action with Indivisible:https://indivisible.org/get-involved/take-action/ And make calls with 5calls.org. |
Congress
| The House passed the fiscal 2027 State Department spending bill shortly after rejecting an amendment that reignited Democratic fissures over Israel. In a mostly party-line 217-209 vote, the House passed the $47.3 billion National Security-State appropriations bill. That vote came on the heels of a vote earlier in the afternoon against an amendment from Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., to cut off U.S. aid to Israel. (H.Amdt.235) Massie’s amendment would have prohibited any of the funding in the bill from being used for Israel. The amendment would have also cut $3.3 billion included in the bill for Israel from the Foreign Military Financing program. Ultimately, the amendment was rejected 104-314. All Indiana representatives voted no except Rep Carson who voted aye. View the vote. Passage of the bill also officially merged it with voter ID legislation that became the focus of a standoff among Republicans that recently paralyzed the House floor. While the inclusion of the voting bill unlocked the spending bill in the House, it complicates the measure’s path forward in the Senate. Overall, the spending bill’s $47.3 billion for the State Department and other related agencies would represent a decrease of about $2.7 billion from the fiscal 2026 enacted level. But it would be about $11.7 billion more than what the Trump administration requested for fiscal 2027. Democrats have largely opposed the funding bill because of the cuts, which include a $902 million year-over-year drop in funding for global health, humanitarian and other economic assistance programs. (Roll Call) The Sunshine Protection Act (H.R. 139) The House passed this bill, backed by President Trump, to make daylight saving time permanent nationwide, eliminating the twice-yearly clock change. It passed by a wide margin — 308-117 — but this is only a House vote; it now heads to the Senate, where its path forward is uncertain. (NBC) The House Budget Committee approved a $95 billion budget bill on Thursday. The measure paves the way for a process known as reconciliation, which allows the majority party to pass bills without support from the minority. There’s also money in the bill for a fund supporting the voting restrictions Trump has been pressing for. Romina Boccia, director of budget and entitlement policy at the Cato Institute said the money will probably go to states that do things like “verifying ID and citizenship before registering people to vote,” she said. The legislation heads to the House floor next. (Marketplace) A prohibition on Medicaid funding going to abortion providers like Planned Parenthood was left out of Republicans’ reconciliation 3.0 framework. (The Hill) |
In other news
| The government’s reaction to the cyclospora outbreak has been undermined by massive budget and staffing cuts under President Donald Trump,” “including nearly $30 million in funding that disappeared from Barratt’s CDC division when Trump axed the U.S. Agency for International Development.” Dr. Joel Barratt is the former head of domestic surveillance at the CDC’s Division of Parasitic Diseases and Malaria He resigned last September after seeing his team reduced from eleven to three. “The response,” Barratt said, “is being hampered by the loss of specialized staff and the loss of hands-on-deck needed to identify the source of the outbreaks.” (CNN) A new large sample Pew Poll found non-voters swinging back towards Democrats. This data suggests that Democrats should be pouring more money into voter activities in these closing months of the 2026 election. (Pew) (Hopium Chronicles) Federal changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Medicaid could affect an unexpected population — students receiving free meals through school. (Indiana Capital Chronicle) Trump’s media company is planning to charge for special high-speed access to Truth Social posts, including possibly his own, affecting national security and financial markets. The move announced Thursday would allow Wall Street trading firms and other institutions to get news from top Truth Social contributors in milliseconds so they could profit off subsequent moves in stocks, bonds and interest rates. (Associated Press) It might actually be the most corrupt thing Trump has done since returning to office. It’s so brazen and so blatant. It’s something Democrats should scream from the mountaintops about. Because the news came out on the same day that Trump gave his deranged, dishonest national address, this story got much less attention than it deserves. It’s not illegal. The president is exempt from the conflict-of-interest rules that bind almost every other federal official. When the law was originally written, there was a concern that presidents worked on so many issues that applying it would be impossible. Trump is doing a lot of unprecedented corruption. To voters, Trump seems to be more focused on raising his income than lowering their prices. So, even if you can’t convince the public that Trump’s corruption is a deal breaker, you can convince them that Trump cares more about his bottom line than yours. And this latest gambit is a great opportunity to do that. (Message Box) |
State of Indiana
| Utilities nationwide are planning to build at least 74 natural gas-fired power plants across the United States to keep up with demand from data centers, a new study found. A new Environmental Integrity Project report, “The Power Behind AI,” found the new plants would generate 142 gigawatts of electricity, or enough to power the state of California three times over. The new natural gas plants powering data centers would release 662 million tons per year of greenhouse gas pollution, as much as France or Australia. The study found the power plants would collectively release 159,142 tons a year of health-damaging air pollutants, including 44,281 tons of nitrogen oxides and 32,684 tons of fine particulate matter. After building new wind and solar for years, NIPSCO boomeranged back to fossil fuels after data centers required it to quickly ramp up capacity, such as Amazon’s $25 billion plan for new data centers in Northwest Indiana that would require NIPSCO to double its electric production capacity. NIPSCO is now looking to invest $5.7 billion in a new natural gas plant in Wheatfield to supply Amazon data centers in Hobart and Wheatfield. Several other data center projects have been proposed elsewhere in Northwest Indiana. The power plants would primarily supply data centers with power instead of feeding the broader electricity grid. The study found the data centers would drive up electricity bills, including by increasing demand and prices for natural gas. (NWI Times) The total price tag for Gov. Mike Braun’s gas tax holiday is in: the state of Indiana and hundreds of local governments are expected to lose out on a combined $533 million, with the impacts felt through October. That also means motorists saved that much money at the pump. (Indiana Capital Chronicle) Indiana republicans will propose eliminating property taxes during the 2027 session. That will be a disaster for working families and a boon for businesses and the wealthy. First, the state’s tax revenues as a share of our economy are now as low as they’ve been since we’ve kept records. Both state and local government employment per 100 residents is near a 40-year low. If tax rates really mattered as much as quality public services, Indiana would be a prosperous and fast-growing state. Instead, we are among the poorest dozen states in the nation, and among the slowest growing. A tax system that promoted economic growth would focus on younger families because they are the most mobile cohort. Businesses, in turn, go where people want to live. The overwhelming majority of mobile families move to places with higher taxes and more abundant public services. Republicans are selling the elimination of property taxes through town halls across the state. Rep. JD Prescott is proposing to extend Indiana’s 7% sales tax to most services while exempting healthcare and childcare services, and eliminating all property taxes. Eliminating property taxes won’t double taxes for most people. Businesses will see a windfall, particularly data centers and large manufacturing firms. Older folks who own homes and earn less income (because they are retired) will also get a windfall tax cut. And farmers will see their tax liability drop to well below zero (because they already are getting subsidies that are greater than their gross state and federal tax). Everyone else, particularly younger families with kids, will face a staggering tax increase under the plan now being promoted by Prescott and the state GOP. This is far and away the worst tax proposal to emerge from a political party platform. It represents the biggest transfer of tax burden away from businesses and wealthy families to young and working families in any U.S. state since the Civil War (and probably before that). If enacted, it would give Indiana the most regressive state tax system in the developed world by a long margin. It should be entirely disavowed by election day. (NWI Times—no paywall) Indiana will discontinue aspects of a diversity program it used for decades to recruit minority and female contractors after the state attorney general determined the program’s race and gender preferences were unconstitutional. (Indiana Capital Chronicle) Indiana’s state government cash reserves grew by $1.5 billion over the past year as tax collections increased much faster than expected. Rising revenue combined with an ongoing clampdown on state spending led to a 60% jump in the reserves to just shy of $4 billion as of June 30, according to the 2025 fiscal year report released Wednesday. (Indiana Capital Chronicle) |
