Friday, May 2, 2025

SojoMail - People of faith are pushing back against Trump

This week: Glimpses of “courageous action” during Trump’s first 100 days, The Chosen’s Elizabeth Tabish on playing Mary Magdalene, and empathy as a virtue — not a sin.

Trump Is Destructive, But People of Faith Are Pushing Back

Adam Russell Taylor writes in this week’s SojoMail that those of us who have met Trump’s first 100 days with lament and anger are not alone — or powerless:

If you walk to the Sojourners office from Union Station in Washington, D.C., you’ll pass the headquarters of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that created Project 2025. This week, to celebrate the first 100 days of President Donald Trump’s second term, they put up a giant poster on the side of the building featuring Trump’s official portrait and a list of his “accomplishments.”

I use air quotes because the list employs political doublespeak, including things like “dismantling the administrative state” and “removing government waste” — despite estimates from the Partnership for Public Service that firings, rehirings, lost productivity, and paid leave of thousands of workers will cost upward of $135 billion this fiscal year, roughly equal to the $150 billion the Department of Government Efficiency has promised to find in “savings.”

There’s been plenty of coverage of what Trump and his administration have done in their first 100 days. In the conservative media ecosystem, this coverage appears as disinformation-riddled praise for how Trump has restored America’s greatness and created renewed prosperity. In mainstream media outlets, this coverage is often focused on cataloging the harms of policies that often felt chaotic or cruel.

While I’m grateful for those who ensure the public has an accurate understanding of the impact of Trump’s decisions, there’s another set of stories beneath those headlines that rarely get as much attention: how people have consistently been taking courageous action to counter these harms.

Read the full article

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