Dear MoveOn member,
Donald Trump just caved, and the shutdown is ending without one dime for Trump's racist, wasteful border wall! (For now.)1
The fact that we are getting the government open and workers back to their jobs without paying the ransom for Trump's racist agenda is a testament to the work that progressive activists like you have done over the past 35 days, pressuring Republicans to crack and demanding Democrats stay united.
But here's the truth: This fight isn't over. The government is only reopening for three weeks.2 And the fight to stop Trump's wall is still in high gear.
Which is why I'm asking: What can you do over the next few weeks to help keep the government open, help stop the next shutdown, and help make sure Democrats stand strong against Trump's anti-immigrant agenda in all its forms and don't approve one dime for Trump's wasteful, racist border wall?
We're already on a countdown until Trump could try to hold our country hostage again or follow up on his threat to declare a fake national emergency to build his wall, which is why next week we have to keep up pressure on both parties so that they don't land on a disastrous backroom deal and so that if we do end up in a shutdown fight on February 15, we're in an even stronger position than we are today.
Trump just spent 35 days pushing a million federal workers and contractors to the financial brink in a transparent attempt to make us choose between federal workers and the immigrant communities he's determined to harm. The government never needed to shut down, and the unimaginable fear and stress felt by federal workers, their families, and immigrant communities was met with nothing but a callous disregard from the man in the White House.
Our work helped end this stalemate and force Trump to back down. This is an incredible moment. But we have to build off the momentum of this temporary win, and build a more lasting victory. With your help, we'll help lead this fight in the coming weeks and beyond, urging Democrats to stand with immigrants, asylum-seekers, and federal workers, and pressuring Republicans to reject future shutdowns.
Will you take our quick survey—and let us know how you can help over the next three weeks?
MoveOn members played a critical role in ending this shutdown. Over the past 35 days, MoveOn members like you, Eddie, made over 68,000 calls to their senators, powered events in six key states to put pressure on vulnerable Republican senators, and delivered a quarter-million petition signatures to Congress.
On top of that, MoveOn, along with United We Dream, Indivisible, and others, planned over 100 additional nationwide events, worked with nearly 70 allies to show our grassroots power, conducted polling showing the political cost of the shutdown and supporting Trump's wall in key states, and launched the innovative "Rage Text Your Senator" program.
Make no mistake: All of this work helped force Trump's unequivocal failure yesterday—but our work is not done. We will need to be on the front lines over the next three weeks to ensure that Trump does not succeed in getting a dime for his racist wall and deportation agenda or once again hold federal workers hostage through yet another shutdown.
Congressional leaders are agreeing to a bipartisan group that will propose border security provisions. Trump will want this to be a wall—but that's not all.
"Border security" is often just code for funneling more money into the terror of the Trump anti-immigrant regime. Democrats must not, behind closed doors, agree to increasing funding for deportations, detentions, family separation, criminalizing asylum-seekers, punishing immigrants, and the rest of Trump's white supremacist agenda. So we must keep the pressure up—on both Republicans and Democrats—for the next 21 days.
Eddie, we need you to stay in this fight with us. Will you let us know how you can help?
Here is what we have planned for the next three weeks to make sure Democrats stand strong and that Trump once again fails to achieve his racist dream:
- Ramping up pressure on the members of Congress, including those participating in the conference committee on border security. The negotiations over "border security" will happen behind closed doors, which means we have to dramatically increase the pressure on the members of Congress involved in this committee to make sure that Democrats do not cave in to any demands to further militarize our border or demonize immigrants and refugees and that Republicans know that any attempt to do so will have major consequences for their political future. And pressure on Congress overall will help shape the debate, making it harder for the conference committee to deliver an appalling proposal and easier to defeat such a proposal if one emerges.
- Planning digital organizing actions around the rescheduled State of the Union address. Just as he did during his announcement ending the shutdown—and in every televised appearance he has made previously—Trump will certainly use the State of the Union address to spew lies and hatred. We must counter those lies with truth and that hatred with love to show Trump and the Republicans the power of our movement, especially at this critical political moment.
- Preparing to launch the Crisis Response Network if Trump declares a national emergency to get his wall. In his speech yesterday, he once again threatened to declare a national emergency if Congress does not give him what he wants, and we all know that one bad mood—or one bad piece of coverage on Fox News—could push him over the edge. Hundreds of thousands of MoveOn members will be ready to activate across the country if he takes this unprecedented step and, in doing so, seizes excessive and frightening executive authority.
Yesterday's victory was critical, but we're not out of the woods yet. We have to keep organizing. We cannot stop until Republicans realize that going into another shutdown would be political suicide. Democrats have to hear that giving in—and giving funding—to Trump's anti-immigrant agenda would be a betrayal. And public outcry and outrage have to keep Trump from seizing and abusing further executive powers.
Which is why we still need your help, Eddie.
The high level of outrage, the clear poll numbers, the sharp, compelling, and moral messaging, and the flurry of calls, actions, events, and petitions we've seen over these past 35 days need to continue to prevent another shutdown in just three weeks.
We need your help to maintain an advantageous political position for those of us who stand with workers, with immigrants, with human rights, with a functional government, and against the Trump agenda.
We have the momentum now, and we are winning. MoveOn is ready to seize the moment and keep pounding away at Republicans who voted the wrong way, keep raising the voices of those impacted by the shutdown, keep up the moral fight for a just, humane, legal approach to immigration, and keep up pressure on Democrats to step forward with confidence and not cave in as the fight changes over the weeks ahead.
Thanks for all you do.
–Emma, Elsie, Ben, Ilya, and the rest of the team
Sources:
1. "7 Takeaways From The Longest Shutdown In U.S. History," NPR, January 26, 2019
https://act.moveon.org/go/62813?t=6&akid=225577%2E10220574%2EIMW9ON
Want to support our work? The MoveOn community will work every moment, day by day and year by year, to resist Trump's agenda, contain the damage, defeat hate with love, and begin the process of swinging the nation's pendulum back toward sanity, decency, and the kind of future that we must never give up on. And to do it we need your support, now more than ever. Will you stand with us?
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Contributions to MoveOn.org Civic Action are not tax deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes. This email was sent to Eddie Alfaro on January 26th, 2019. To change your email address or update your contact info, click here. To remove yourself from this list, click here.
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