Weekly Letter to Members and Recommended Actions for the Week of July 28

Dear Grandparents and Friends,

I hope you have had a good week and have been able to escape some of the brutal heat sweeping the country. 

Let me start with some good news from Heather Cox Richardson. If you don't get her daily emails, I highly recommend them. She's a professor of American history and not only does she summarize what's happening on a daily basis, but she puts it in historical context. I will send separately her July 21 email,  but I want to highlight this: “On Friday, G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers reported that ‘polls show Trump’s position plummeting.’ On Friday morning, the average job approval rating for Trump was 42.6% with 53.5% disapproving.” Days later, the latest Gallup Poll showed Trump’s job approval rating at 37%, having fallen 10 points among U.S. adults since he began his second term, including a 17-point decline among independents, to 29%. The only thing keeping Trump’s approval ratings as high as they are are the Republicans, and even they are beginning to have doubts. It galls me that it’s the Epstein case that concerns them the most, but I’ll take whatever we can.

So let’s keep going out there and telling people why we are so upset and worried. And let’s keep urging our Democratic legislators and other leaders to speak out, and calling out Republicans for their cynical votes and their lies.*

Other good news: On Monday Federal District Court Judge Indira Talwani (Massachusetts), indefinitely blocked the Trump administration from enforcing a policy that would prevent many Planned Parenthood clinics from receiving federal Medicaid reimbursements if they continue to offer abortion services. 

And this story from the New York Times was very heartening: “Big Law Firms Bowed to Trump; A Corps of the ‘Little Guys’ Jumped in to Fight Him.” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/21/us/politics/trump-big-law-firms-fight.html?searchResultPosition=1 

We welcome and badly need the good news, because every week there is also some pretty bad news. I will mention just a couple of stories that have come to my attention in the past few days, in case you missed them.

1. More attacks on academic freedom. First we learned that Columbia University did, and Harvard may, succumb to the extortion tactics of the Trump Administration by agreeing to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to the government and take other steps to examine its academic policies. But perhaps even more scary than that, The New York Times reported yesterday that the Department of Justice recently opened an investigation into George Mason University on the ground’s that its diversity programs are discriminatory and is now saying that it will also investigate the faculty because the faculty drafted a letter in support of the university’s president! In a letter sent on Friday, the DOJ said “it would seek drafts of the faculty resolution, all written communications among the Faculty Senate members who drafted the resolution, and all communications between those faculty members and the office of the university’s president, Gregory Washington.” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/us/justice-department-george-mason-faculty-senate-investigation.html?searchResultPosition=2. (You may not be surprised to learn that Washington is the first Black president of George Mason.) I guess being on the right doesn’t protect anyone from Trump’s obsession with DEI. First they came for the liberals, then for the conservatives. . . . .
2. This week the Venezuelan Little League team that won the Latin American region was denied visas to participate in the Little League Senior Baseball World Series. Although this is minor in the bigger scheme of things, the unfairness and meanness of it is just another reminder of the cruelty we are confronting in our leadership. “It is a mockery on the part of Little League to keep us here in Bogotá with the hope that our children can fulfill their dreams of participating in a world championship,” the team said in a statement to the Associated Press. “What do we do with so much injustice, what do we do with the pain that was caused to our children?”
3. And, finally, the attack on immigrants goes on, reaching new levels of shocking activity. This past week I heard a discussion on a local radio station with the author of an article that recently ran in The Atlantic entitled “Naturalized Citizens Are Scared.” The article reports: “Last month, the Department of Justice released a civil-enforcement memo listing the denaturalization of U.S. citizens as a top-five priority and pledging to “maximally pursue” all viable cases, including people who are “a potential danger to national security” and, more vague, anyone “sufficiently important to pursue.” President Trump has suggested that targets could include citizens whom he views as his political enemies, such as Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayoral candidate who was born in Uganda and naturalized in 2018: ‘A lot of people are saying he’s here illegally,’ Trump said. ‘We’re going to look at everything.’” Many people called in to the program saying that they were now scared to participate in any demonstrations or make any phone calls opposing Trump’s agenda or activities. I myself felt a chill, having a number of friends who were born elsewhere and are so proud of their citizenship.

So let's hang in and keep protesting and urging our representatives, if they are Democrats, to keep fighting back and speaking out, and if they are Republicans, to get a spine, admit the truth and show that they care more about us and our future than about themselves. It is also good to thank any representatives who do the right thing. They need our encouragement, just as we need the encouragement of our friends, family and fellow activists. Once again, and for those who are new members, I recommend https://5calls.org/ for information on important issues in the country and in your area, telephone numbers and scripts. I also again highly recommend adding your representatives to your “favorites” in your phone; it is so easy to call while walking your dog, running errands, watching a relatively mindless show…. I might also suggest adding the numbers of Senate Majority Leader John Thune (202-224-2321) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (202-225-2777). Hopefully you’ll get an answering machine and can give them an earful! (I haven’t tried this yet but plan to and will report back.) And, if you’re not already doing this, you might also call Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer (202-224-6542) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (718-237-2211). 

Please also consider calling or writing to the various federal judges who have fought so hard at great personal risk to uphold the constitutional values that we thought were part of our great country. I can send separately a list of all those judges if anyone would like one.

Another new-to-me action you might consider: every Thursday at 7 p.m. take part in a national "Shine the Light" witnessing- in front of your houses, apartment buildings, street corners, subway stops, etc. "Our signs proudly share whatever we’re feeling in the face of this regime’s actions. Signs might read, 'I Stand with Our Immigrant Neighbors' or 'Honk if you love Ukraine' or “Trans Rights are Human Rights” or “Read Banned Books.”  Sponsor: The Beacon, founded by Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, more info here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IWGcktdLhod7kqNkpBOG1yKvQ-vZwvzmcNWXHfSeLNY/edit?tab=t.0. This is like the daily thank-you’s we engaged in during COVID.

Thanks for joining this small (about 220 members) but mighty group!

Jean

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*With respect to lies, Richardson’s attached letter reports some of those spread by Trump and his Republican enablers in the prior week, including that Beyonce broke the law by taking $11 million for endorsing Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and should be prosecuted (Trump lie); that it was the Obama administration that allowed Epstein to avoid serious federal charges by agreeing to a “sweetheart plea deal,” when the agreement was actually drafted and signed under George W. Bush (OK Senator Markwayne Mullin lie); or that the Congressional Budget Office was wrong in predicting that the cuts in the budget reconciliation measure would push 10 million people off health insurance (Vance lie); and Trump’s social media posts of an image of intelligence agents and politicians in prison garb as if in mug shots and an AI-generated video showing former president Barack Obama being arrested by FBI agents and then being held in a jail cell.