If you're looking for a reason to run for office, here's your sign

[View in browser]( [Mother Jones Daily Newsletter]( September 7, 2021 I hope you all had a stellar Labor Day Weekend, and maybe even took a moment to acknowledge the labor organizers who continue to fight for fair wages and union representation in the United States and abroad. President Biden is in New York and New Jersey today, observing the damage caused by last week's historic flooding and commenting on the destructive nature of climate change. "Every part of the country is getting hit by extreme weather," he said, "and we’re now living in real time what the country’s gonna look like, and if we don’t do something, we can’t turn it back very much, but we can prevent it from getting worse." So, what to do? Congress could start by passing a [$3.5 trillion budget package]( that would include tax incentives for clean energy and electric vehicles, plus investments in building a renewable energy economy—but Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) wants Senate Democrats to take a "[strategic pause](" on the tax-and-spending package. There are the [specters]( of a carbon tax and a clean energy standard, but any real progress on that front would require Manchin's support. At the risk of sounding ageist: Joe Biden is 78. Manchin is 74. Notorious climate-denier Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) is 86. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) is 88. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) turns 88 10 days from now. This Senate is the [oldest in American history](, and our climate future is being decided by people who won't be alive to experience the most serious consequences of a failure to act. Are you under the age of, say, 75 and worried about inhabiting a warming planet for the rest of your life? Run for office. —Abigail Weinberg Advertisement [UC Press]( [Top Story] [Top Story]( [A Texas Judge Temporarily Halted Abortion Ban Enforcement. That Won’t Stop the GOP in Other States.]( One Republican lawmaker dismissed all the concerns as Democrats just trying to "gin up their base." BY EDWIN RIOS [Trending] [Be your own boss: Inside six co-op businesses returning power to their workers]( BY ALISSA QUART [TikTokers and coders are trying to spam this Texas anti-abortion site into the ground]( BY ALI BRELAND [It may have just gotten a lot harder for far-right Rep. Lauren Boebert to keep her job.]( BY NOAH LANARD [The drug war's deepest failure: Making users the enemy]( BY TROY FARAH Advertisement [UC Press]( [Food] [Special Feature]( [England Intends to Ban Single-Use Culinary Plastics—Very Slowly]( “This snail-paced, piecemeal approach isn’t leadership.” BY DAMIAN CARRINGTON [Fiercely Independent] Support from readers allows Mother Jones to do journalism that doesn't just follow the pack. [Donate]( [Recharge] SOME GOOD NEWS, FOR ONCE [“I Want to Make the Company Work for Me”: What Co-op Power Looks Like]( On Labor Day yesterday, we ran a series of photographs from six regions of the country, each answering an underlying question as aspirational as it is achievable: What does it look like when people are their own bosses? You can see the answers [here](. It’s a striking portrait—commissioned by Mother Jones in collaboration with the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and Solutions Journalism Network—of how co-ops are returning power to workers in North Carolina, Alabama, Vermont, California, and other areas where labor rights is a paramount movement of civil rights. “It’s no wonder,” writes the author, Alissa Quart, “that people are drawn to a model that gives them back some power” in an era of “epic income inequality” and “corporate consolidation and union-busting” that reliably produce “unstable and episodic” work. The interest in co-ops marks a return to what one worker in the series calls making a “livelihood” rather than just earning a paycheck. To sustain a co-op, the portrait shows, is to be freer of the grasping, capricious moves of top-down profiteers who’d sooner [vacation in space]( on rank-and-file dime and [moonwalk in the media about it]( than invest more meaningfully in worker safety, security, health, productivity, and hope. [Give the photos a look](. —Daniel King Did you enjoy this newsletter? Help us out by [forwarding]( it to a friend or sharing it on [Facebook]( and [Twitter](. [Mother Jones]( [Donate]( [Subscribe]( This message was sent to {EMAIL}. To change the messages you receive from us, you can [edit your email preferences]( or [unsubscribe from all mailings.]( For advertising opportunities see our online [media kit.]( Were you forwarded this email? [Sign up for Mother Jones' newsletters today.]( [www.MotherJones.com]( PO Box 8539, Big Sandy, TX 75755