The Build Back Better (BBB) bill is a roadmap for the kind of bold and broad climate action that is long overdue. And it’s on the threshold of passing. Panicked, the fossil fuel industry, which thrives on billions in government subsidies, has its paid-for politicians fighting to eviscerate it, although the legislation is supported by the vast majority of the American people.

Elections are supposed to be competitions of ideas with the majority deciding what’s best for them and the country. That’s the theory. Faced with a shrinking voter base, Republicans are going all out to pass laws that exclude Democratic voters. Dems are fighting to protect the right to vote and fair vote counting. But the GOP is blocking those efforts too.

While Congress was busy this week, it actually resolved nothing. Despite accelerating state gerrymandering, voting rights bills still languish in the Senate. Bloated defense budgets pass easily, but Democrats are cutting funding for desperately needed family infrastructural and climate programs. And, it’s not clear Big Oil will be held accountable for decades of lying about climate change. Nevertheless, at least Democrats are trying to govern. Let’s call and remind them what we need.

Big Oil has known that climate change is real for decades but has employed every trick in the book to support climate denialism, foster uncertainty about the science, and cover up its role in the climate catastrophe. It’s time to hold Big Oil to account and pass meaningful climate legislation.

In state after state, the GOP is sabotaging future elections by blocking non-white citizens from the voting booth and rigging the vote-counting system. In Congress, bills to overturn those unconstitutional laws are blocked by the GOP using the filibuster loophole to thwart the Senate majority. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court continues its 20-year effort to maintain white supremacy.

This week, as Democrats begin negotiating with themselves about what belongs in Build Back Better, we identified the questions we need to answer in telling our MoCs what needs to be included in the final product. We also called on our Senators to pass voting rights legislation, with a filibuster carve-out if necessary, and we called out the Senator who, with his corporate donors, is trying to destroy the planet. To ensure these bills pass, we must continue calling Congress.

Sen. Joe Manchin, drenched in fossil fuel money, is intent on blocking the most significant climate change bill in history and our last, best chance to slow the coming devastation. We cannot sit back and let him and industry donors destroy the planet.

The Build Back Better bill would take from the rich and help the rest of us. But America’s biggest welfare recipients, the rich and powerful, hate that idea. So they have dispatched their lobbyists to push their paid-for politicians to defeat the bill whose sole purpose is to help make America a more broadly prosperous nation.