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Today is Friday, Jan. 24, day five of the new Trump administration. The entire Truth and Action Roundup team is deeply honored by the opportunity to have brought you this newsletter during the presidential transition period between the election and the inauguration. And we have great news: Due to your consistent engagement and interest in its news, action, and spiritual components — all three of which have always been core to Sojourners’ identity and mission — we plan to continue offering the Truth and Action Roundup each Friday morning through the first 100 days of this second Trump administration. If this week is any indication, we will all need to rely on trusted sources of information, inspiration, and action in the weeks ahead. Our sincere hope for all of you is that this newsletter will provide a lighthouse to guide you through the tempestuous seas that lie ahead. If you continue to find our work helpful, please consider sharing this with your friends, family, and colleagues. We’ll be back next Friday!

— Rev. Adam Taylor, Sojourners

In the News

Here’s what we know at the time of writing:

1) The Trump administration continues to move quickly to increase deportations and take other aggressive actions that target migrant people. One of the many policy changes is a move this week to scrap policies that limit arrests of migrant people at “sensitive locations” like churches and schools. These policies had been in place since the second Obama administration — Trump did not take action to rescind them during his first term in office. Some states, such as California; cities, such as Chicago, and churches in the New Sanctuary Movement have announced their intention to resist these directives.

2) President Donald Trump has also declared sweeping policy changes that attack LGBTQ+ people, particularly transgender, intersex, and nonbinary people, such as an executive order declaring that the government will only recognize two unchangeable sexes — male and female — as well as banning federal funds from being used to promote “gender ideology.” This order will affect identification documents and could also affect parental rights, access to gender-affirming health care and much more. The order’s provisions are expected to be challenged in court, as several parts of it may run afoul of a 2020 Supreme Court decision, Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, which held that the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s protections apply to both sexual orientation and gender identity.

3) The Trump administration has ordered all federal diversity, equity, and inclusion staff be immediately put on paid leave and develop plans for laying off these employees to be submitted by the end of the month. Meanwhile, the Office of Personnel Management sent a memo to federal employees across the government this week that includes a McCarthy-esque directive to report efforts to “disguise” DEI programs or funding, or face “adverse consequences.” According to reporting in The Hill, this memo “indicates the Trump administration believes agencies are working to shelter employees who might otherwise lose their jobs.”

4) The Trump administration has directed government agencies charged with upholding public health to pause all external communications, including health advisories, weekly scientific reports, social media posts, and more. The scope and indeterminate length of the pause is causing confusion and anxiety among the federal officials charged with such communications, which include reports documenting outbreaks of the H5N1 avian influenza virus, and reports on health trends such as drug overdose deaths. Some experts say that temporary pauses are common at the beginning of a new administration, but that a pause of more than a week or two would be cause for more serious concern.

Take Action

Read and share the ACLU’s “Know Your Rights” resource for migrant people. The ACLU has put together bilingual resources that explain the constitutional rights afforded to everyone in the United States, regardless of immigration status, and how those rights apply to a variety of different scenarios or crises that migrant people may encounter.

Draw on the Trevor Project’s extensive resources for LGBTQ+ people and allies. The Trevor Project’s Resource Center contains many tools that can be accessed discreetly and confidentially. The resources are helpfully organized in categories including sexual orientation, LGBTQ+ mental health, gender identity, suicide prevention, and more.

Deep Breaths

Years ago, I taught a course in South Africa on the church’s work in confronting apartheid. As part of that experience, our students had the opportunity to interact with Rev. John de Gruchy, who worked alongside Bishop Desmond Tutu and the South African Council of Churches to empower churches’ resistance of the violent and dehumanizing tactics of the apartheid era. As he related his experience, he emphasized the significance of prayer and grounding as foundational for the work:

“The goal of the kingdom is not to make the church politically powerful but to redeem the world and make it more just … activism alone produce[s] spiritual emptiness. As Richard Lovelace aptly put it, ‘most of those who pray are not praying about social issues, and most of those who are active in social issues are not praying very much.’ This false dichotomy reflects a flawed understanding of both prayer and Christian social action.”

De Gruchy reminds us that, in this difficult time, we cannot sustain ourselves on action alone. We need the balance of prayer, meditation, and action to center and guide us through the barrage of attacks on our rights and dignity.

As we venture into this long journey together, take time to pray, read poetry that inspires you to notice the beauty of creation and in your fellow human beings, listen to music that restores you, and make space for gratitude. This is the oxygen we must breathe for ourselves and for others.

— Rev. Andrea Saccoccio, director of congregational education and outreach

The Truth and Action Roundup is compiled by Sojourners staff:
President: Rev. Adam Russell Taylor
Director of Racial Justice: Rev. Moya Harris
Senior Research Associate: J.K. Granberg-Michaelson
Senior Adviser and Director to the President’s Office: Elizabeth Denlinger Reaves
Senior Director of Campaigns and Mobilizing: Sandy Ovalle Martínez
Director of Congregational Outreach & Education: Rev. Andrea Saccoccio
Digital Communications Associate: Lexi Schnaser
Senior Director of Marketing: Sandra Sims

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