Seventy years ago this December, 58 countries came together at the end of World War II to offer the world a roadmap for peace and prosperity strong enough to withstand the appeals of demagogues and the ravages of poverty and fear. In the years since, in country after country, human rights have come to be seen not as a high-minded luxury but as a core national interest. But we have urgent work to do.

If you're angry and ready for change, there's a concrete way to fight back: help candidates with progressive values win their elections on November 6th.

Here are some excellent @runforsomething-endorsed candidates who deserve your support: Merleyn Bell is a fifth-generation Oklahoman running for a seat in the state legislature’s House District 45. She wants to focus on funding public education, expanding access to affordable health care, and revitalizing the state’s infrastructure. bell4norman.com

In honor of National Voter Registration Day, I want to highlight some tools you can use to get registered to vote and register friends. With only six weeks before the election, it's all hands on deck. First: Register to vote, or check your registration to make sure you're ready to vote. Then pass on the link to a friend: IWillVote.com

With a historic number of women running this year, we have a tremendous opportunity to make our government better reflect our country. We'd all be lucky to see these four extraordinary candidates win their races for Congress this fall: .@LucyWins2018 is a businesswoman and activist running for Congress in the 6th district of Georgia. After her son, Jordan Davis, was shot and killed, Lucy turned her grief into action by fighting for both gun safety and criminal justice reform. lucyforcongress.com

I've written a new afterword for "What Happened" breaking down what we've learned since it was published, how we got here, and how we can heal our body politic. The new edition is available today: amazon.com/What-Happened-… On the day after the election, I hoped my fears for our country's future were overblown.

They were not.

Let's talk about Brett Kavanaugh's past rulings on guns. He's out of the mainstream, even among other conservative judges, in his willingness to strike down legislatures' public safety measures to prevent gun violence if they don't align with his politics. Judge Kavanaugh dissented when the D.C. appeals court ruled in 2011 that the city could ban semiautomatic rifles and require handgun registration. He argued that courts shouldn't consider the public safety benefits of gun laws: "Our task is to apply the Constitution."

I want to be sure we're all clear about something that Brett Kavanaugh said in his confirmation hearings last week. He referred to birth-control pills as "abortion-inducing drugs." That set off a lot of alarm bells for me, and it should for you, too. Kavanaugh didn't use that term because he misunderstands the basic science of birth control—the fact that birth control prevents fertilization of eggs in the first place. He used that term because it's a dog whistle to the extreme right.

This year has seen record-high temperatures across the world, the biggest wildfire in California history, and an unprecedented red tide in Florida.

It's urgent that we act to curb climate change—and Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court could make progress virtually impossible. Kavanaugh has consistently argued that the Environmental Protection Agency has limited authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate the carbon and other pollutants that are causing the planet to heat up.

Today's reason to call your senators and urge them to #StopKavanaugh: Kavanaugh would help kill the Voting Rights Act and uphold voter suppression laws that make it harder for voters of color to cast ballots. Kavanaugh voted in 2012 to uphold a South Carolina voter ID law that the Obama administration found would disenfranchise 80,000 minority voters.

If Brett Kavanaugh becomes a Supreme Court justice, will he help gut or overturn Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in America? Yes, of course he will. A few weeks before Kavanaugh's name appeared on President Trump's short list for a new justice, Kavanaugh praised the dissent in the Roe v. Wade case and called former Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist his “hero,” noting that “he clearly wanted to overrule Roe.”

Do you have a pre-existing condition? Do you care about someone who has one? Could you or someone you love ever get one?

Then you should call your senators today to #StopKavanaugh from getting a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court. Here's why: Challenges to the Affordable Care Act's protections for patients, including the notion that insurance companies can't refuse to insure you if you have a pre-existing condition, are already working their way through the lower courts.

Happy Labor Day. There's no better time to talk about why workers’ rights would suffer if Brett Kavanaugh, whose hearings for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court start tomorrow, is confirmed. The Roberts Court has dealt some big blows to workers and unions in the last few years. With Kavanaugh on the Court, a 5-4 hard-right majority would be even more aggressive in siding with corporations over people.

There's a lot going on right now—understatement of the year.

The separation of families and the failure of the administration to reunite them has been eclipsed in the news in recent days, but these tragic circumstances persist.

Here are some of the latest developments: First, it’s been nearly five weeks since the deadline for the administration to reunite families they separated at the border, but 528 children are still waiting to see their parents again.

I’d like to encourage you to support some extraordinary organizations we're proud to have on the @OnwardTogether team: .@LeahGreenB and @EzraLevin are former congressional staffers who started a Google Doc for citizens who wanted to have more of a voice in their government. It became @IndivisibleTeam—a grassroots network of advocates around the country. indivisibleguide.com

We had our first annual @OnwardTogether members call yesterday. Thank you to the thousands of members who joined. We had a chance to hear from a few of our partner groups about the progress they're making to strengthen our democracy. I want to share some of it with you. When @RunForSomething launched, they expected to find 100 people who wanted to run for local office. Instead, they've recruited 17,000 young candidates in all 50 states, built a network of 6,000 volunteers, and endorsed 308 candidates. Their new goal: recruit 50k candidates.

Thousands of families who have been separated at the border still need to be reunited.

In some cases, children have been sent to states far from Texas and Arizona, where their parents were detained.

Here’s how we can help: A coalition of groups is raising money for flights, hotels, and cell phones for families traveling to reunite with their loved ones. You can chip in here: secure.actblue.com/donate/flights…

What’s happening to families at the border right now is a humanitarian crisis. Every parent who has ever held a child in their arms, every human being with a sense of compassion and decency, should be outraged. Despite what this White House claims, separating families is not mandated by law. That is an outright lie, and it’s incumbent on all of us – journalists and citizens alike – to call it just that.

Like so many others, I am horrified and heartbroken by what is happening to immigrant kids and families because of this administration’s disastrous policies. We now know that more than 700 kids were separated from their parents between October 2017 and April 2018. As a mother and a grandmother, it’s devastating to even imagine.

In honor of #InternationalWomensDay, I want to celebrate some of the women and girls who inspire me every day.

These women resist inequality, insist on a better world, persist against all odds, and enlist others in our shared fights. The courageous @Astrid_NV fights tirelessly to protect DREAMers and keep immigrant families together.

This week we lost 17 Americans in Parkland - the deadliest school shooting since Sandy Hook in 2012. Since then, 438 people have been shot and 138 killed in over 230 school shootings. That’s 5 school shootings every month, 16 of which classify as “mass shootings.” Now is the time to listen to the students, teachers, and parents demanding that we end this carnage once and for all with gun safety laws that keep guns out of the hands of those who shouldn’t have them.

Onward Together is ending 2017 by supporting six more incredible organizations fighting to protect voting rights and to make it easier for young, diverse candidates to get on the ballot and get elected. The organizers at @iVoteFund worked with partners on the ground to get automatic voter registration on the ballot in Nevada.