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Welcome to the Truth and Action Roundup, your reliable weekly source for information, inspiration, and opportunities for action during the second Trump administration.  Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to continue receiving it.

Even as the war in Iran continued to widen, the Senate this week chose to prioritize the SAVE America Act — a bill that critics argue is aimed at restricting the vote for millions of Americans.

This push should be understood in the context of polling that shows growing public opposition to both the war and the broader agenda of the current administration.

This push to prevent millions of people from being able to vote while rejecting the constitutional demand for Congress to exercise its war power demonstrates how critical our voices can be in promoting peace. It also connects the shared thread of ignoring everyone’s right to self-determination.

Throughout our history as a nation, we have upheld the right to self-representation as an ideal that should be extended to everyone. Through decades of determined organizing and activism, the right to self-representation has continued to be recognized through the Civil Rights and women’s suffrage movements, along with others. Now, these gains are under sustained assault from an administration that has decided it can unilaterally decide the fate of people both here and abroad.

Twinned with this current effort here, we are recapitulating the worst of our history in denying people agency abroad. In Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran, the administration is now determined to unilaterally dictate terms to nations which have the right to their own self-determination . The tragic consequences are already visible in the mounting casualties across the Middle East and the Caribbean. Congress must reassert its role as the representatives of the people and end this the unfettered executive overreach that has already done considerable.

–Rev. Moya Harris and Chad Stanton, Sojourners

In the News

Here’s a look at what happened this week:

1. In international news, we continue to see various kinds of turmoil in countries around the world.

   • Cuba’s national electric grid collapsed Monday, leaving approximately 10 million people without power amid a U.S.-imposed oil blockade that has already crippled the island’s generation system. Recovery from the outage proceeded slowly over the course of the week. President Trump openly mused about whether he would have the “honor of taking Cuba.” Compounding Cuba’s troubles, a magnitude 6 earthquake struck the island on Tuesday.

   • The U.S. and Israeli war on Iran continued to rage in its third week, with the killing of several top Iranian officials, Iranian missile strikes on Israel and other targets throughout the region, and heavy Israeli bombing of Lebanon, where at least 850 people have been killed since the conflict began.

   • Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned from his position Tuesday in opposition to the war on Iran. His publicly posted resignation letter drew immediate criticism and rebuke, including from some Republican elected officials, for its "virulent antisemitism." In the letter, Kent trafficked in antisemitic conspiracy theories claiming Jewish people control the government and the media, suggesting that Israel had orchestrated not just the current war but the 2003 Iraq War as well.

   • Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) warned President Trump against trying to withdraw the United States from NATO or dismantle the alliance. Bacon said there would be a “civil war” inside the Republican party if Trump were to do so, and that it could “destroy the party for many years.” Bacon was responding to Trump’s angry social media post this week after NATO declined his request to join the war on Iran. Trump wrote that “we no longer ‘need,’ or desire, the NATO Countries’ assistance — WE NEVER DID!” As we move further into this midterm election year, the stakes around voting and democracy more broadly are sky high.

   • Senate Republicans opened debate Tuesday on the so-called “SAVE America Act,” a voter ID bill that critics say could disenfranchise millions of Americans. The procedural vote Tuesday set the stage for several days of often acrimonious debate. Though the bill lacks the 60 votes needed to overcome a Democratic filibuster, President Trump has urged Senate Republicans to dismantle the filibuster to pass this legislation—a step that Senate Republicans have so far been unwilling to take.

   • Trump posted criticism of the US Supreme Court on social media, alleging the Court “wouldn’t even call out The Rigged Presidential Election of 2020.” These posts followed sustained criticism of the Court since its ruling that several of his tariff policies were unlawful. State budgets are currently facing significant fiscal pressure, with potential consequences for vulnerable populations. Contributing factors include reductions in federal cost-sharing provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), the expiration of federal funds from COVID Relief legislation and the American Rescue Plan Act, and long-term fiscal trends such as increased enrollment in Social Security benefits. Reductions to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) under the OBBBA are expected to create funding gaps that many states will find difficult to address.

2. Concerns regarding the administration’s immigration enforcement policies intensified this week, as did legal and public opposition.

   • A group of Haitian nationals petitioned the Supreme Court on Monday to uphold a federal judge’s ruling permitting them to remain in the United States, citing unsafe conditions in the country of origin. The petition represents a legal challenge to the Trump Administration’s efforts to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haiti.

   • Mohammad Nazeer Paktyawal, a 41-year-old Afghan national and father of six who worked with U.S. forces in Afghanistan, died in ICE custody on Saturday. His death is among 24 fatalities recorded in ICE custody since October, a pace that may reach record levels by year’s end.

   • In communities across the country, ICE’s plans to expand its detention facilities are being met with often bipartisan local resistance. Activists and local governments in Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Merrimack, New Hampshire, and more have managed to block facilities from being built.

   • Freedom for Immigrants, a national immigrant advocacy organization, has launched an interactive map designed to help families locate detained individuals, access legal and community resources, and better understand the expanding U.S. immigration detention system. The map is available on the organization’s website.

Take Action

• We are continuing to call on Congress to end the war with Iran.

• We are also supporting the third No Kings protest currently being planned March 28th

What We’re Reading

“No, Sinners Is Not Anti-Christian" | Sinners displays the importance of resisting the false religious binaries of sacred and demonic that victims of imperialism have had forced upon them for far too long. (by Trinity Williams)

“Churches Part of Hub Supporting Haitian Community Amid TPS Turmoil” | He said Jesus’s teachings to love God and love your neighbor are important to Maranatha and that the church provides a special place to focus the spiritual elements of these commands. (by Caleb McGever, Favs News)

Deep Breaths

Whose World Is This?

Sometimes I sit and look at the headlines and ask, whose world is this? There is such obvious polarization—the haves and the have-nots—that it has become normalized. The rich are getting richer, while those whose backs are against the wall no longer even have a wall to lean on.

Whose world is this?

If you asked folks in the Nation’s Capital or in the mainstream media, they might tell you the world belongs to corporations, banks, billionaires, and other potentates. They move as if it is theirs and no one else counts. So they make speeches full of lies and dog whistles, puff their chests out, rename buildings, undo traditions with their Sharpies—while children cry, locked up in detention centers.

Whose world is this?

Does it belong to people who believe that cash rules everything around us, where influence and proximity alone earn high positions in government, no experience required? Does it only belong to white, rich, cisgender male Protestant Christians? 

The way that things are going, it appears that those rich in land and oil are the ones running things. Leaders of countries who play war games with people’s lives without counting the cost, look like they are ruling the world. 

I’m sorry, but there is something oligarchs seem not to understand: The world is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof. The Creator of heaven and earth still holds the wind and the rain.

I ask again, whose world is this?

The world is still the Lord’s—no matter what some may say or do. It might not look like God is in control as we experience the evil actions we continue to see play out. It is easy to doubt that God is still making all things new if you are looking through human eyes. 

However, if you take the time to be still and look through your spiritual eyes, you just might see that God is still moving, quietly, steadily, relentlessly, beneath the noise of empire. While headlines shout destruction, God is planting seeds of life. In neighborhoods written off as hopeless, new grassroots leaders are emerging. In communities pressed down, mutual aid is blooming. Both in sanctuaries and on sidewalks, people are choosing courage over fear, truth over propaganda and love over cruelty. 

The Spirit is still breathing on dry bones, still stirring holy imagination, still unsettling what is unjust and strengthening what is good. What looks like endings are often the trembling beginnings of something more faithful being born. God is making pathways in deserts, rivers in parched places, and possibilities where the powerful declared there would be none. The work is not always loud, but it is alive.

And God is not finished. And neither are we. 

Again, I ask, whose world is this?

––Rev. Moya Harris, Sojourners

The Truth and Action Roundup is compiled by Sojourners staff:

President: Rev. Adam Russell Taylor
Senior Research Associate: J.K. Granberg-Michaelson
Digital Content and Community Specialist: Kassandra Tapia
Chief Program and Impact Officer: Bryan Epps
Political Director: Chad V. Stanton
Senior Program Director: Rev. Moya Harris
Digital Education and Outreach Specialist: Cortnie Brooks
Policy and Action Assistant: Trinity Williams