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Today marks the 63rd anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. This year, the occasion is being marked by a march led by a coalition of religious leaders to defend the vote and renew the push for full equality throughout the country. This year’s march is both commemoration and protest as we face the specter of a loss in Black representation unseen since the end of Reconstruction.

This attack on Black representation in Congress comes as Black professors and students are being removed from university campuses, with programs and departments built over decades being unceremoniously closed. It comes amid reversals of criminal legal policies designed to lessen the racial disparity in arrests, prisons, and jails, and as Black communities are once again subject to industrial pollution and disinvestment that makes the very homes they live in sites of harm.

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech from the original march is often cited as an American ideal. However, as we witness the wholesale reversal of the gains of the Civil Rights movement in government, education, health care, and the environment, we must be critical in assessing the sincerity of the citations. As Christians, we must recognize these actions as false to both our biblical creed of Imago Dei, honoring the image of God recognizable in all of us, and the constitutional creed that we are all created equal, which King was appealing to with his words. As we see those in power continue to target Black and other marginalized communities in this moment, we must be clear-eyed and prophetic in rejecting these empty proclamations of faith.

In the News

The Trump administration’s deportation regime continued its cruel work, sometimes in defiance of laws and courts:
- In the first 15 months following President Donald Trump’s return to office, local officials from at least 75 agencies across Illinois fed information to federal immigration agents, sometimes in apparent violation of state law. In more than a third of Illinois counties, at least one police department, sheriff’s office, or state’s attorney’s office collaborated with federal agents.
- A federal judge will hold a hearing next month to determine why the Trump administration should not be held in contempt after barring them from entering places of worship.
- Court filings revealed that undercover Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers spied on people attending church meetings and ran license plate numbers of worshippers’ cars, part of a surveillance campaign, dubbed “Operation Puppet Master,” that began after federal agents fatally shot two people in Minneapolis earlier this year.
- A beloved Haitian pastor and community leader in Springfield, Ohio, was detained by ICE on August 20. Advocates called Pastor Gilbert Joubert Adrien’s detention “a profound wound” to the embattled Haitian community. Pastor Carl Ruby said Adrien “left Haiti because his life was in danger, served Christ and his congregation faithfully,” and that his arrest shows how far ICE will go to intimidate peaceful immigrants who came here legally.
- All US immigrant visa applications have been paused by the Trump administration as the State Department tightens restrictions as part of a broader crackdown on both lawful and undocumented immigration. This week, the administration also announced plans to revoke visas from asylum seekers who initially entered the country for tourism or business. Up to 200,000 people currently seeking asylum could be affected, marking what would be the largest mass revocation of visas in U.S. history.
Election season is heating up, with primaries in South Carolina and Alaska, as well as November’s general election coming ever closer:
- Democratic nominee for congressional delegate Robert White has launched a new political project, Defend DC. The initiative aims to help elect strong advocates for home rule and statehood by deploying D.C. residents to door-knock in places like Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, where congressional races could help determine control of the House of Representatives. Defend DC launched with nearly a dozen coalition partners, including the D.C. Democratic Party, the D.C. chapter of the NAACP, the D.C. Latino Caucus, statehood advocacy group Free DC, and other local political and civic groups.
- The Supreme Court opened a path Monday for possible implementation of President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting mail-in voting, ruling that the states which sued lacked standing rather than deciding whether the order itself is lawful. It remains unclear how much can be put in place before the fast-approaching midterm elections, and the decision leaves room for additional court challenges that could further slow the order. Indeed, two dozen states and the District of Columbia filed a fresh lawsuit on Wednesday against the U.S. Postal Service to block it from implementing the order.
- Dan Sullivan supports Dan Sullivan against Dan Sullivan in Alaska’s US Senate election, says a former Anchorage mayor who recently backed the race’s Republican incumbent over a challenger sharing his name. That development provided another of multiple absurd elements to Dan S. Sullivan’s campaign for a third term in the U.S. Senate, which – besides Mary Peltola, a former Alaska Democratic congresswoman – drew opposition from Dan J. Sullivan.
- Sen. Darline Graham, who was appointed to serve the remainder of her late brother Lindsey Graham’s term, defeated Rep. Ralph Norman in a South Carolina Republican Senate primary. Graham was endorsed by Donald Trump and won the primary runoff over Norman, despite a debate flub, by nearly 5 percentage points.
The Trump administration’s decisions continued to reverberate for families around the country and their ability to make ends meet.
- President Donald Trump lashed out again at Canada a day after America’s northern neighbor unveiled retaliatory tariffs to escalate the trade war he started months ago. The president complained about “unbelievable” tariffs Canada has long imposed on certain American dairy products, in a regime similar to what the United States does with imported beef, and bragged about how he has upended the relationship between Washington and Ottawa with his trade war.
- Trump’s approval rating is just 33% according to The Hill, and disapproval has climbed to 65%.
- Trump announced Friday that his administration would temporarily lift tariffs on up to 300,000 metric tons of imported ground beef. House and Senate Republicans criticized the decision, with lawmakers from agricultural states decrying the impact Trump’s decision will have on farmers and ranchers.
- Major cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, are taking effect as a result of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that President Donald Trump signed into law last year. In California alone, an estimated 650,000 people are at risk of losing food assistance benefits, leading local food banks, which have already been serving clients in record numbers since the pandemic, to brace for further impact.
- Meanwhile, gas prices continue to hover north of $4 per gallon, more than a dollar per gallon higher than before the U.S. and Israel launched their war on Iran.

Take Action

• BAJI is hosting a day of action for the Stop Taking Our People campaign tomorrow.

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

What We’re Reading

“Catherine Meeks Says Christians Need Solidarity, Not Racial Reconciliation” | “But you’ve got to get out of the head swimming and get focused or else you’ll spend forever with white supremacy ruling.” (By Evana Upshaw)

“Dolly Parton Gave Me The Courage To Outgrow My Faith Community” | “…whenever I hear “Jolene” or “9 to 5,” what I’ll remember of Dolly Parton is that she went through life being unapologetically herself and making it less scary for all of us to do the same.” (By Ryan McQuade)

Deep Breaths

Black August: We Do Language

Award-winning opinion columnist Karen Attiah, who was wrongly fired from The Washington Post in September 2025 following the killing of Charlie Kirk, has won an arbitration ruling that the Post violated her rights as a union-protected employee. The independent arbitrator ordered the newspaper to reinstate her and compensate her for lost wages and benefits, finding the Post lacked "good and sufficient cause" to terminate her and had failed to establish "gross misconduct.”

Attiah was fired over social media posts she made about political violence, race and America's response to gun deaths in the wake of Kirk's assassination. At the time, she was the last Black full-time member of the Post's opinion desk.

I am lifting up her persistence in a world where thousands upon thousands of Black women have been targeted in this anti-DEI reality — a world where journalists are under attack for telling the truth, and where the First Amendment is under siege.

Ancestor Toni Morrison reminded us that now is not the time for artists to be quiet or fearful. We need art — writing, journalism, music, painting. She wrote:

"This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge — even wisdom. Like art."

Our democracy depends upon the press, writers, artists and musicians to present truth as an alternative to the authoritarian forces that threaten our existence.

Please take a moment to listen to her say more about the necessity for artists to create.

–Rev. Moya Harris, Senior Director of Programs

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