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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.

This week marks one year since National Guard units from around the country began occupying Washington, D.C. With over 5,000 military troops deployed here in the nation’s capital, the Trump administration has announced its intent to continue the occupation until 2029. As the community has continued to protest their presence, most recently through a series of protests led by the group Free DC, the cost has been estimated at 4.3 times what would be needed to house the entire unhoused population of the city. The stated reason for placing military troops in neighborhood parks is to combat “crime,” but we know there are far more effective methods. 

Throughout the country, we’re also seeing crime used as justification for the deployment of the National Guard in states like Louisiana and Tennessee, and for sending active-duty military along the southern border and to Los Angeles in support of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In communities such as New York, Miami, and Springfield, Ohio, Haitian communities are living in fear as they become newly eligible for ICE targeting, with some people fitted with tracking devices after being summoned while attempting to follow official procedures. Internationally, in the Caribbean Sea, the U.S. military continues to target small boats with bombings, drawing alarm from U.S. senators such as Sen. Tim Kaine, D-VA, even as the U.S. deepens cooperation with Erik Prince’s private security forces operating in Haiti. 

These actions across the country, carried out in support of mass deportation and community occupation, have been justified as fighting crime, even as violent crime has continued to drop nationwide. Despite the positive example of cities like Baltimore, which have used a holistic approach to achieve a record drop in crime, we continue to see this militarized approach applied elsewhere. In truth, “crime” remains a powerful justification, despite persistent debunking and data showing better solutions, because it fits a story many people in the United States hold about who is a criminal and what one looks like. Until we address these assumptions, crime will remain an effective justification for denying people homes and support, and offering violence instead.  

As Christians dedicated to putting faith in action for social justice, we cannot turn a blind eye to these racist assumptions, which keep so many people from receiving the help our faith demands we provide. Rather than increasing budgets for more weapons and detention centers, we must demand funding for the needy and be forthright in addressing why they are so often and readily denied. 

–Rev. Moya Harris and Chad Stanton, Sojourners

P.S. We are continuing to build an intentional community of people looking to live out their faith in our Sojourners Faith and Practice Forum on Mighty Networks. Please consider joining us.

In the News

1. In foreign policy, the quagmire of the Iran war dragged on, with no clear end in sight. 

• The U.S. military has lost at least 45 MQ-9 Reaper drones during the war with Iran, or roughly 25% of its fleet. At $30 million to $50 million each, the potential cost to taxpayers of these losses is over $1.3 billion just for these drones. 

• Efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz are becoming more urgent as the International Energy Agency warns global oil stockpiles are rapidly dwindling. Traffic through the crucial waterway remains minuscule, despite President Trump’s insistence that the strait is open and the U.S. still controls it. 

• Donald Trump secretly swapped planes as he left a NATO summit in Turkey last month, in response to a possible Iranian threat. Trump boarded Air Force One in view of cameras before being transported to a military aircraft with the help of a catering truck. Journalists and some White House staff on board did not know he had been smuggled out. The U.S. had reportedly detected a credible Iranian threat to fire a missile at the plane.   

2. The Trump administration’s deportation regime continued its cruel work.  

• According to a report from Amnesty International, more than 100 people have been put on planes by ICE officials and sent to third countries in Africa over the past year, places where they have no ties and whose language they do not speak. Thirteen sub-Saharan African countries are known to have signed third-country removal agreements with the U.S.: Burundi, Cameroon, Cabo Verde, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, Ghana, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Uganda and the Central African Republic. The report also pointed out that “many of these agreements are part of broader political negotiations characterized by asymmetrical power.” 

• After a federal judge who had temporarily blocked the Trump administration from ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for as many as 350,000 Haitians living in the U.S. officially lifted that order, Haitians are more vulnerable than ever to arrest and deportation. The Supreme Court decision in June allowing the administration to proceed with deportations of Haitians while legal challenges continue has sharply narrowed the path forward for many Haitians. Advocates are stressing important steps that those losing TPS protection can take, including securing qualified legal representation, knowing one’s rights and much more.

3. There were several high-profile primary elections this week, with the results producing interesting fallout. 

• Democratic primaries in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Connecticut signaled what the party’s base may want from new leaders: a harder line against President Trump’s immigration crackdown and younger, more progressive nominees. 

• In Ohio, U.S. Rep. Max Miller, R-Ohio, 37, has refused to drop out of his congressional race after his ex-wife accused him of holding a gun to her head and throwing hot water at her, with others from his past levying a variety of other troubling allegations. 

• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sought to distance herself from some of the positions democratic socialists took around 2020, suggesting that those positions were a product of the time. She seems in particular to be attempting to distance herself from the idea of defunding the police as she eyes a potential bid for higher office in 2028.  

Take Action

• We continue to demand that Congress intervene to end the blockade of Cuba as blackouts continue to affect the island.

• The Maryknoll Office of Global Concerns is asking Congress to promote peace in Sudan. You can contact your members of Congress here.

• Freedom Summer is holding revivals across the country in response to the ruling in Louisiana v. Callais.

What We’re Reading

“How Christians Learned the Wrong Story About Leprosy” | “One day, after washing the feet and hands of men and women with leprosy, Angela of Foligno, the 13th-century saint and mystic, ate a leprous sore.” (By Cassidy Klein) 

Deep Breaths

Black August: Freedom Is Beautiful 

¹Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb ² through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month, and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. ³ Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; ⁴ they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. ⁵ And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.  –– Revelation 22

I can't help dreaming. Looking back through my past newsletter reflections, I found the word "dream" has come up more than twenty-five times. I probably dream every night — and I actually look forward to it. I often see my ancestors in my dreams. Sometimes I return to my nursing career. Other times I am playing softball again. I consider reading fiction its own form of dreaming, where I use my mind's eye to envision what's happening on the page. I love listening to baseball games and can see the whole diamond in my mind as the broadcaster sets the scene. I even fall asleep to sleep stories, letting my mind unwind after a long day. 

Dreaming is essential to my life. Dreaming informs how I read Scripture. That's probably why Revelation 21 and 22 are my favorite chapters in the Bible: I can "see" what John of Patmos is describing. I can see the justice: the end of suffering, the healing of the nations, the new heaven and the new earth. That vision is where I find my hope. 

So when I say freedom is beautiful, I mean that the end result of God's liberation is a world of beauty and flourishing — a world with no more suffering and no more separation from our ancestors. No more for-profit incarceration. No more empty bellies. No more Ebola deaths in Congo. No more ICE detention camps. No more Black people shot by police. No more fear for the rights of LGBTQIA people. No more high Black maternal mortality rates. 

One day, we will see the fullness of God's beauty. Until then, I will continue to dream. I will continue to fight. I will continue to love. Freedom is beautiful, indeed.  

–Rev. Moya Harris, Senior Director of Programs, Sojourners 

I Dream a World 
by Langston Hughes

I dream a world where man 
No other man will scorn, 
Where love will bless the earth 
And peace its paths adorn 
I dream a world where all 
Will know sweet freedom's way, 
Where greed no longer saps the soul 
Nor avarice blights our day. 
A world I dream where black or white, 
Whatever race you be, 
Will share the bounties of the earth 
And every man is free, 
Where wretchedness will hang its head 
And joy, like a pearl, 
Attends the needs of all mankind— 
Of such I dream, my world!

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
Education and Engagement Program Manager: Cortnie Brooks