Week of April 6, 2026

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Dear Grandparents and Friends,

Many of us have just celebrated Passover or Easter, holidays that focus on hope, renewal, and liberation.  For me, Passover is also a call to resist despair and to take action - action to make the world a better place for all. How can we do that in these times?

The March 28 No Kings rallies were encouraging. An estimated 8 million people in the U.S. were in the streets, with tens of thousands more demonstrating around the world. We can take heart from that. Still, we know that demonstrations will not change Trump or the Republicans who enable his actions. 

In my view, there is one imperative action now against the disaster we face: we must flip the House and do our best, however unlikely, to flip the Senate as well. At the same time, we need to shore up state governments so they can resist the actions of the federal government that are taking us back to a time of oppression and discrimination against folks who don’t fit their concept of the ideal American.

But with the news of the past few days regarding the war against Iran, I feel we are facing an immediate existential crisis that cannot wait until November to be addressed. I feel I must say something about this before turning to suggestions on how to help achieve our electoral goals.

It is widely agreed that Iran is a monster state that has fomented and enabled conflict in the Middle East and threatened Israel with obliteration for decades. But this does not justify our own extreme violations of the rule of law, domestic and international, and devastatingly cruel and illegal violence against millions of innocent civilians.  Trump delights in announcing the war crimes he has committed or intends to commit. His rhetoric is terrifying. As you probably know, on Easter Sunday he said: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F*ckin’ Strait, you crazy b*stards, or you’ll be living in Hell—JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”  And just this morning he warned that a  “whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran does not make a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by 8 p.m. Eastern. 

Yesterday Heather Cox Richardson wrote: “The [FBI’s] former assistant director for counterintelligence Frank Figliuzzi posted: ‘The American president has lost his mind.’  Journalist Steven Beschloss wrote: ‘This is an actual post. This is not funny. This is beyond desperate. This is a deeply unwell man who doesn’t belong anywhere near the levers of power. Every member of his cabinet and Congress is complicit in not demanding his removal now.’  Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) posted: ‘If I were in Trump’s Cabinet, I would spend Easter calling constitutional lawyers about the 25th Amendment [which provides a process for removing an unfit President]. This is completely, utterly unhinged.’”

If you make one phone call this week or send one email to your representatives,  tell them that Trump is clearly demented and must be removed from office before he brings us all irreparably down. While you’re at it, you can bring up other issues that concern you. Talk about the trillions that Trump wants to take away from domestic programs to fund the war. Talk about the latest ICE cruelty reported in the New York Times (see story below my signature). Perhaps even ask why VP Vance is in Hungary at this critical time, supporting the dictator Orban. For suggestions, including scripts for your message, see 5calls.org.

To return to my main call to action: now is the time to start supporting candidates for office. We hear over and over that early financial support is critical. I suspect that we are all inundated with requests for donations. I would like to suggest one way to handle this if you, like my husband and me, are at a loss as to where the limited amounts we can give will be most useful.

For us, the answer is to make most of our donations through two organizations that devote considerable time and effort to analyzing campaigns and identifying candidates who can best use our money. They are Swing Left (https://swingleft.org) and Force Multiplier (https://www.forcemultiplierus.org/). These organizations evaluate whether candidates have a chance of winning, whether they actually need our money, whether they are in safe districts or in districts that can be flipped from red to blue or are at risk of flipping the other way, and other important factors. Both organizations were launched in 2017 in response to Trump. Swing Left is much bigger and employs a professional paid staff. Force Multiplier is entirely run by highly professional volunteers, so all of your money goes to the candidates or to civil society organizations that it supports (your choice). You can learn more about them on their websites.

If you want to give directly to campaigns,  there are couple of GFB members who thoroughly analyze races all over the country and make recommendations.They would be happy to send you their recommendations. 

In addition to donations, we are all, I’m sure, familiar with - and maybe experienced at - writing postcards and letters, making phone calls, texting and knocking on doors. Campaigns will be looking for this kind of help over the summer and in the fall, and sooner for upcoming special elections. But I would like to suggest that you explore another initiative that has been launched by Swing Left: Ground Truth.

Ground Truth sends volunteers, after training, to knock on doors in swing districts months before an election to engage in substantive conversations with all voters on a block, not just those identified as registered Democrats. These conversations focus on listening openly and non-judgmentally to voters’ concerns. Swing Left launched a pilot of this program in January and February and found some encouraging results. Among them: one out of four Republicans indicated that they were open to voting for a Democrat. In a swing district this is huge. A more thorough description of their method and their findings is on their website, https://swingleft.org.

I have to admit that I have been feeling very discouraged. What lifts me up is getting ideas on what I can do to fight back. When I find myself wanting to throw in the towel, I think of so many who fought for so long - for the freedom and later civil rights of African-Americans, for the right of women to vote, for labor rights, for gay rights and the civil rights of so many others. I think of Ghandi, the people starting the NAACP in the early 20th Century, MLK and so on. I think of Alexei Navalny, a true martyr. I think of all the people around the world and those here in America who are being detained and deported, who are imploring us to stop Trump. 

To end on a happy note: a special welcome to the new members who signed up after the No Kings March, including our first from Indiana and new folks from Arizona, Texas, California, Massachusetts and my hometown, Brooklyn.  Thank you all for being part of the fight.

Best,

Jean

Post Script:  Corruption, cruelty, illegality, attacks on immigrants, on healthcare, on science and education, and other threats to our country continue apace. I'd like to share just one very recent example - because stories like this, while we wish we could avoid them, help me stay engaged when I begin to lose my energy, and this may be true for you as well. 

From yesterday’s New York Times: 

A U.S. Army staff sergeant and his wife arrived at his base in Louisiana last week, expecting to begin their life together as newlyweds. The couple checked in at the visitor center . . . ready to complete the steps that would allow her to move into his home on the base. Within hours, that plan had unraveled.   Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents entered the base and detained his wife, an undocumented Honduran immigrant who was brought to the U.S. as a toddler. By nightfall, she was in a detention facility with hundreds of women facing deportation as part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. The detention came just days after Annie Ramos, 22, a college student with no criminal record, and Matthew Blank, 23, celebrated their marriage with family and friends.  Sergeant Blank, who enlisted more than five years ago, is assigned to a brigade at Fort Polk, La. that is set to begin training at the end of the month for deployment