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Today is Friday, February 28, day 40 of the new Trump administration. As we reflect on the chaos, fear, and pain of the last 40 days, we also look ahead to the start of Lent, the liturgical season that begins on Ash Wednesday next week. For Christians, Lent is a season for prayer, fasting, sacrifice, and repentance. It’s a season for reflection on the human condition, our finiteness and God’s infiniteness, as we prepare to celebrate that Jesus conquered death, sin, and injustice on our behalf. At Sojourners, we are committed to spending this season in faithful witness as we abide in the political wilderness, relentlessly speaking prophetic truth to the powers that be, and calling for them to repent for their selfish and evil ways. It is our faithful hope that you will join us. — Rev. Adam Taylor and Rev. Moya Harris, Sojourners A note on next week’s schedule: Due to Sojourners’ annual staff retreat, next week’s Truth and Action Roundup will come to you on Ash Wednesday, March 5.
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Here’s what’s been happening this week:
1) Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service is planning another round of firing federal workers, this one is expected to be the most widespread yet.
According to the latest reporting, the Social Security Administration, for example, has been instructed to produce a plan to cut its staff in half. This week the Office of Personnel Management issued a lengthy memo that instructs agencies to “submit plans to drastically reduce their staff size by March 13,” according to the Washington Post. Last weekend, Musk decreed that all federal employees needed to email a summary of their accomplishments over the past week or be fired, causing a split in how various agencies responded. Trump later backed Musk in the first Cabinet meeting of his new administration.
2) Consumer-activist and Black church groups are calling for nationwide boycotts in the coming days — including an “Economic Blackout” today, Feb. 28, — to “take back control of our economy, government, and future of our country.”The Internal Revenue Service will lay off roughly 6,000 relatively recently hired workers in the middle of tax filing season. Today’s boycott, organized by the People’s Union, calls for no spending at major retailers such as Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy, as well as no spending on gas or fast food. It calls for any emergency purchases to take place with cash and at small, local businesses. Black faith leaders, meanwhile, are pushing back against Target’s retreat from DEI initiatives with a 40-day boycott of Target during Lent, which starts March 5.
3) On Tuesday, the House of Representatives passed its budget framework for President Trump’s second term agenda, setting the stage to pass a massive spending bill that could devastate programs such as Medicaid, which enables millions of low-income and disabled people to access health care. The framework includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and $2 trillion in spending cuts. The passage of this framework is an ominous sign for people in vulnerable situations. 4) A child in Texas has died of measles, a first for the U.S. since 2015. The outbreak across nine counties is Texas’ largest in nearly 30 years. Measles was considered eliminated in the United States in 2000 but has seen a resurgence as vaccination rates have fallen below the recommended 95% rate among kindergartners in many areas. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. falsely dismissed the Texas outbreak as “not unusual.”
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Tell Congress: Any peace deal must include Ukrainian voices. Our partners at Win Without War are providing an opportunity to demand that Congress push the Trump administration to include Ukrainian voices in all peace negotiations to end the war between Russia and Ukraine. Attend a Prophetic Convening Masterclass on “Boycotts, Divestment, and DEI Metrics.” Our partners at the Black Church Freedom Fund are hosting this masterclass to equip faith leaders, organizers, and advocates with the tools to hold corporations accountable, leverage economic resistance, and sustain equity work in the face of growing opposition. Join us virtually or in person for Faithful Witness Wednesdays, A Call for Congressional Courage! Ash Wednesday, March 5, at 12 noon Eastern, will kick off a monthlong series of vigils at the U.S. Capitol. Faith leaders will call on Congress to exercise greater moral courage in upholding its constitutional powers and preventing overreach by the Trump administration. Sign up here to attend virtually or in-person.
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A Strategy for Christian Witness Against Trump’s Autocracy | Autocracies begin at the ballot box. Donald Trump is the legitimately elected president of the United States who, in his first weeks in office, has used illegitimate and illegal actions to solidify his power. But while he is the first U.S. president to display such public contempt for the structures, institutions, and civil servants he has been elected to lead, his tactics aren’t unique. (Wesley Granberg-Michaelson) Mutual Aid’s Radical Christian Roots | From the book of Acts to Mennonite solidarity, mutual aid has long been a way to create networks of communal care. (Isaac S. Villegas) You Don’t Have to Understand Everything About Trans People to Love Us | Will & Harper reminds viewers that trans rights are about real relationships, not simply a divisive political issue. (Taj M. Smith)
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Deep Breaths dig·ni·ty /ˈdiɡnədē/ noun We are living through an attack on our dignity — both individual and collective. The cruelty of this administration, its divisive policies and rhetoric, is meant to disorient and divide us. It seeks to instill fear so that we forget who we are, abandon our values, and relinquish our power. This is not new. Fear of diverse cultures, spiritual traditions, and ways of knowing has long been woven into the fabric of this nation. Now, more than ever, we must remember who we are — and as followers of Jesus, whom we follow. Jesus cared about people’s lives, their suffering, their dignity. He stood against anything that caused harm. For generations, Black people in America have held onto our dignity in the face of oppression. The Black church has nurtured and protected it — from the cradle to the grave — sustaining joy even in the midst of struggle. And in this moment, we must do the same. Cole Arthur Riley offers us this prayer from Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations for Staying Human: FOR WORTH God in us, We know the miracle inherent in our existence. We are here, our beauty stretching out and dwelling within us. But it is hard to believe in one’s dignity when the systems and societies to which we belong are content to destroy us. We have heard lies of our worthlessness in the explicit and implicit ways the world interacts with our bodies, stories, and homes. It is incessant — this lie of our own inadequacy, this charade of our inferiority. Remind us that our dignity does not wane or bud in relation to anyone’s belief in it, including our own. Let us rest with the knowledge that we have nothing to prove; our dignity, perpetual as it is divine. We will not shrink. We expand. Remind us of our making. For we too contain the divine. Amen. — Cole Arthur Riley, Black Liturgies We are children of the Most High. No political oligarch, no racist mob, no hypocritical ideology can separate us from the love of God. Stand tall. Hold onto your dignity. Do not let this moment break you. Do not let it strip you of your worth. — Rev. Moya Harris, Director of Racial Justice, Sojourners
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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
Associate Editor: Josina Guess
Mobilizing and Policy Assistant: Miriam Tellez
Senior Director of Marketing: Sandra Sims
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