🎼 It's the most WTF time of the year

That's how the song goes, right?

We’re well into the year-end whirlwind—holiday prep, school events, work deadlines—and somehow we’re all still standing so pat yourself on the damn back. Going straight from the election to Thanksgiving to making holiday magic without even the slightest hint of a breather (godspeed to anyone out there who is still keeping up with Elf on the Shelf) is some special curated kind of cruel. But we’re all about creating community in chaos and keeping you updated with any need-to-know info, so here’s a roundup of what’s up lately and what’s on deck.

So refill your coffee, hand the kids over to the nanny turn on Ms. Rachel, and settle in for a slice of clarity amidst all the commotion.

What you may have missed recently:

What, like you’re busy?

• President Biden’s Historic Clemency Move: In the biggest single-day act of clemency in U.S. history, President Biden commuted roughly 1,500 sentences and pardoned 39 people. AP News

• Kylie Kelce Tops the Podcast Charts: Kylie Kelce’s new podcast debuted at #1, knocking Shmo Shmogan off the top spot. The Hill

• Big Win for Workers in Wisconsin: A judge overturned Act 10, the controversial Scott Walker-era law that restricted collective bargaining rights. This will undoubtably be challenged in court, but we’re taking our wins where we can these days. WPR

• RJK Jr.’s Lawyer and the Polio Vaccine: A top lawyer for Mr. MAHA himself filed a petition as recently as 2022 to revoke FDA approval of the polio vaccine. POLIO! CNN

• Mystery Drones Over New Jersey: Unexplained drones over the Garden State are sparking confusion and conspiracy theories galore. BCC

Some updates from our end:

• If you haven’t listened yet, we’ve got two new podcast episodes for you:

  • Nicole and I talked to Chair of the Outagamie Dems, recent assembly candidate and millennial mom: Emily Steffos. We get into what it takes to create inroads on America’s back roads and Emily opens up about the misconceptions people have about rural communities (and even some Republicans). We also dive into her thoughts on the future of the Democratic National Committee and what a new DNC chair needs to prioritize. If you’re taking a break from the political pundits, have no fear, this is not your meemaw’s episode of Meet the Press.

  • MFG OG and musical theatre enthusiast Danielle Scampini Linn joined me (a High School Musical type of musical theatre person) to talk all things Wicked and get into the political crossover of it all! Coincidently enough, I keep accidentally spelling Wicked without the ‘c’ which is embarrassing and I blame Ben Wikler.

• We’re going to start a VERY CASUAL, unstructured culture club (book club meets podcast club, cookbook club, movie club, whatever you feel like chatting about club) in the new year. What I mean by this: besides keeping those expectations low, if you have a discussion in mind you’d like to organize MFG folks around, request access to edit and then add it to this google form. We’ll send out link to a shared calendar of community-led chats in the next few weeks.

  • If you’re in the Milwaukee area, I’ll be organizing a meetup to discuss this book on Thursday, Jan. 16 in the evening

• Here in Wisconsin, we have important elections coming up already on April 1! If you’re running for school board or other local office, stay tuned for an announcement coming this week about a new program we’ve been stirring up just for you.

  

Easy action items for the overachievers:

If your house is clean, list is shopped, presents are all wrapped and you happen to have the bandwidth for some casual advocacy, first of all, are you a life coach accepting new clients? This extra credit list is for you:

• If you live in Wisconsin:

  • Help Judge Susan Crawford collect nomination signatures to be on the ballot for Wisconsin Supreme Court

  • Submit public comment to Governor Evers re: your priorities for the upcoming biennial state budget (don’t worry, if you’re not sure where to start, we’ll have plenty more on this in the new year)

• Nationally:

  • There’s a big national push to urge President Biden to ratify the ERA. We will always tell you to contact your elected officials about whatever is most important to you as advocacy is most meaningful (and effective) when it’s tied tightly to your values. We would obviously love for this to happen, but found this article from Emily Amick (@emilyinyourphone) on the legal complications of it all to be really helpful.

    • In short: Please call about this if you want to! It matters. We just haven’t been pushing it much because we are very aware of the heavy load everyone is carrying right now and want to make sure we’re being as strategic as possible with any asks.

Thats all for now. Thoughts, ideas, Elf on the Shelf fails you’d like to share with the class? Drop a comment.

Hang in there!
-K.