Truth and Action Roundup 8.21.2026

View this email in your browser 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, the Trump administration continued to target our communities with violence intended to silence our neighbors and render them invisible. Throughout the primary election season, we have seen increasingly desperate efforts to discourage political participation. Now, the administration is using a Justice Department largely bent to Trump’s will to deploy federal election monitors to selected jurisdictions during the primaries, which we believe is intended to lay the groundwork for future claims of fraud. In doing so, Trump hopes to legitimize the demonstrably false claims he has repeatedly made about our election process.  The deployment of federal election monitors is one official tactic announced this week, but Trump and his allies have also increasingly turned to an old and long ugly one. Following the political success of Muslim politicians such as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Abdul El-Sayed, who recently won Michigan’s Democratic U.S. Senate primary, we have seen Islamophobia deployed through vicious political rhetoric with little accountability. Over the years, this tactic has been used against both Christian and Muslim political figures, most notably through opponents’ repeated, pointed use of former President Barack Obama’s middle name as a pejorative.  Now, white Christian nationalism is supercharging this long-standing bigotry in service of a political project that seeks to subvert our democratic process, advance mass deportation and provide a religious rationale for the U.S. war against Iran. As Christians, we are obligated to resist attacks on Muslim elected officials, candidates, and members of our communities. We have already seen the consequences of unchecked Islamophobia in the far-right riots that terrorized Muslim communities across the United Kingdom. We must raise our voice now, and demand that we treat our neighbors with love and dignity, and call for an end to religious bigotry wherever it appears.  –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. The Justice Department under the Trump administration has continued to show itself to be far from independent from the White House.   • Attorney General Todd Blanche said he would consider President Donald Trump’s views on prosecutions, rejecting the notion of an independent Justice Department. Since Trump returned to the White House, he has overseen major changes at the Justice Department, including the firing of dozens of officials and the departure of thousands of lawyers.   • The Justice Department is planning to deploy a record 1,000 federal monitors to polling places throughout the U.S. for the midterm elections, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon said this week. A department spokesperson told CBS News that the department will seek federal employees to volunteer for the poll-monitoring effort.   • Department of Homeland Security investigators took part in a wide-ranging probe of progressive groups and labor unions as part of a crackdown on dissent during Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota, according to court filings. The filings allege that DHS agents secretly obtained financial records from labor unions and recorded meetings of social justice groups in private buildings, public parks and churches while the groups organized against the ICE surge.  2. The White House’s politically motivated funding decisions came into focus this week.   • Attorneys for the state of Colorado say a newly uncovered White House email provides crucial evidence in their lawsuit alleging that the Trump administration retaliated against the state over election policies and the prosecution of former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters. The alleged retaliation included hundreds of millions of dollars in transportation and energy funding cuts, efforts to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the denial of disaster relief assistance.  • Administration officials admitted in a federal court filing that they recommended terminating grants worth several billion dollars for clean-energy projects based “solely” on states’ “political identity” and whether President Donald Trump won those states in the 2024 election.  • Nashville filed suit against the federal government for attempting to require changes to how local elections are administered as a condition of receiving Department of Homeland Security grants that the city uses for first responders. The lawsuit, filed Monday morning in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges the grant system, administered by Federal Emergency Management Agency, violates the separation of powers and states’ constitutional authority to administer elections. “FEMA has no authority to impose those conditions — not under its governing statute and not under the Constitution,” the suit argues.  3. The Trump administration’s deportation regime continued its cruel work, while also facing pushback from civil society and political leaders.   • A federal judge in Boston has cleared the way for the Trump administration to terminate temporary protected status for Ethiopian nationals. U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy on Tuesday lifted the administrative stay that had been blocking the termination of TPS. The ruling follows other recent court orders allowing the administration to end protections for TPS holders from countries including Haiti, Somalia, Syria, and Myanmar as part of the ongoing immigration crackdown.  • A federal appeals court Tuesday upheld an injunction that limits Department of Homeland Security agents from conducting immigration enforcement “at or near” more than 1,400 houses of worship across 33 states and the District of Columbia. The three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a February 2025 ruling in favor of a coalition of Quaker, Sikh and Baptist congregations that sued to block the Trump administration’s reversal of a Biden-era policy discouraging immigration actions at “sensitive places.”   • U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-CO, was denied answers about tuberculosis during a visit to an immigrant detention center in Aurora, Colorado. Hickenlooper said he was stonewalled whenever he asked a tuberculosis-related question, including who had been tested, what type of investigation had been conducted and where people exposed to the disease were located.    • Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison on Tuesday announced he is suing Texas Gov. Greg Abbott over Abbott’s refusal to authorize the extradition of an ICE agent accused of shooting a man in Minneapolis. Ellison and Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty previously sent letters asking Abbott to sign extradition paperwork for Christian Castro, who is accused of shooting a man in the leg in north Minneapolis in January. Ellison and Moriarty stressed that extradition requests are intended to be administrative, and Moriarty called Abbott’s apparent “extremely rare, if not unprecedented.”  Take Action • 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 “Christian Masculinity Doesn't Have to Be This Way” | “Tap, tap, tap. I rap my knuckles against the glass pane.” (By Rubin McClain)  “How To Survive Christian College As a Queer Student” | “In the fall of 2013, my family drove from the city of Boston to Greenville, S.C. We visited Charleston, S.C., where Confederate flags could still be seen at government buildings and all over Fort Sumter.” (By Oisín Rowe)  Deep Breaths Black August: Freedom is Communal  Last week, in our work in Omaha, Nebraska, the SojoAction team came together in person.  We rode together in Ubers to and from our training sessions and cohort convenings. We ate meals together. We learned more about each other as humans, not just as colleagues and coworkers.  It has been easy to withdraw from society. (I am speaking for myself.) There is so much bad news in this work with this administration's cruel policies and its cruel rhetoric. It would be easier to stay in our own corners and just get the job done on auto-pilot.  Instead, we came together. We laughed together. We looked each other in the eye when we were tired, and let each other know it was okay to take a breath, okay to skip hanging out in the hotel lobby after work and just rest. Some rode scooters through the city to cross the bridge that connects Nebraska to Iowa. Others discovered free concerts.   All of it freed us up to do this work more authentically. It filled our cups. It primed the pump for the difficult work that lies ahead… the work of equipping faith leaders to protect our democracy, so that everyone can be free.  Assata Shakur said it best:  "It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains."  That is what community did for us last week. It reminded us that the loving and the supporting are not separate from the fighting: it is what makes the fighting possible. We cannot pour into the work of protecting democracy from an empty cup. We have to fill each other up first.  If your cup is empty, perhaps it is time to tap into community.    –Rev. Moya Harris, Senior Director of Programs, 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 Education and Engagement Program Manager: Cortnie Brooks Donate Subscribe Copyright © 2026 Sojourners. All rights reserved. Email: sojourners@sojo.net | Tel.: 202.328.8842