Indivisibles,

We’re not going to mince words: on Saturday, a young, white man drove 9
hours to a Walmart in El Paso to murder brown people. It was spurred by
the white nationalist ideology Trump promotes, his Republican enablers in
Congress support, and Fox news mainstreams. Hours later, another white man
murdered 9 people -- mostly Black people -- in less than a minute.

[ [link removed] ]Sydney Morning Herald - US in the midst of a white nationalist
terrorism crisis.

As the Sydney Morning Herald in Australia put it, the “US is in the midst
of a white nationalist terrorism crisis.” The question now is what are we
going to do about it?

Trump and Congressional Republicans have blood on their hands. They refuse
to pass laws to reduce gun violence, no matter how many lives are lost in
places like El Paso or Dayton or Chicago or Virginia Beach or Parkland or
Pittsburgh or Thousand Oaks or Annapolis or Santa Fe. That is to say --
anywhere. The same Republicans also refuse to pass laws to create a more
humane, common-sense, people-first immigration system that protects
children and keeps families together.

The conversations we’re having right now, from gun control and white
supremacist terror to immigration, are intrinsically linked. Just this
morning, Trump doubled down on his harmful, racist rhetoric by suggesting
we pass background check legislation as part of a deal on his harmful
deportation agenda. (We’ll say it for you. What. The. F&*%?)

We have to do more to prevent gun violence. We need universal background
checks. We must close the Charleston loophole. We should ban high capacity
magazines, and the type of weapons used in these mass shootings -- weapons
of war designed to carry out mass carnage in mere seconds. The Senate
should come back to debate and vote on the pieces of legislation to expand
background checks that the House passed months ago. But this crisis isn’t
one that can be solved with gun reform alone.

President Trump’s signature issue has, and always will be, villainizing
Black and Brown immigrants. You’ve read his Twitter, and you’ve seen his
campaign ads. Since May 2018, his campaign has run more than 2,200
Facebook ads mentioning the word “invasion.” And rather than calling out
their racist party leader, leading Republicans and their Fox News backers
have fanned the flames, nodding along and sending him their donations
while he suggests that some neo-Nazis are “very good people.”

Those “very good people” are the people who wake up, pick up a gun they
bought legally through our far-too-loose laws, and then walk into a school
or a mall or a church or a synagogue or a Walmart and murder people who
the President has told them are less-than-human.

So what do we do?

In short, a lot. We have to fight on every front. That means:

* Demanding our members of Congress (MoCs) speak out against white
nationalism and terror fueled by white supremacy in no uncertain
terms.
* Organizing to tell our representatives to defund Trump’s hateful
deportation agenda by cutting funding to ICE and CBP in this
September’s budget fight.
* Showing up to ask the hard questions and get our MoCs on the record,
publicly supporting a formal impeachment inquiry in the House. (If ten
episodes of obstruction of justice weren't enough, inciting domestic
terrorism and hate crimes should be. He's unfit for office and there
is a mechanism in place to remove him).
* Asking our senators to publicly demand Mitch McConnell call an
emergency session to vote on House-passed gun violence prevention
legislation and cosponsor S. 42, Chris Murphy's Background Check
Expansion Act.
* Insisting on meaningful plans from 2020ers on issues like immigration,
fighting white nationalism, and addressing gun violence.
* Working hard to defeat Trump, take back the Senate, and maintain our
House majority in 2020.
* And least click-bait-worthy but potentially most important? It means
calling on senators and 2020 candidates to get real about how we get
any of this done and commit to ending the filibuster in 2021 (more on
this below).

We know -- that’s a lot to think about all at one time. So here are our
top-3 action items for the week to move our entire agenda forward:

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 Your 3 weekly to-dos 

 1. [ [link removed] ]Check out our new toolkit to fight back against Trump’s racist
deportation machine and start planning your September Defund Hate Week
of Action event now. This September’s work on the budget will be the
biggest advocacy fight of this year -- and there’s so much at stake.
As our MoCs return to DC next month, we are organizing a national week
of action for our Defund Hate campaign. The week of action starts with
a national call-in day on Monday, September 9, and will build up to a
major, nationwide mobilization on Friday, September 13. Start planning
now to tell your MoC to cut funding for ICE) and Customs and Border
Protection (CBP) in the upcoming Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
funding bill.
 2. [ [link removed] ]This August, demand your representative publicly support a formal
impeachment inquiry in the House. We’re proud to partner with MoveOn,
Need to Impeach, Stand Up America, and others on the Impeachment
August campaign. The ask is simple: find a town hall or register your
own district office visit and demand that your representative in the
House support a formal impeachment inquiry. As of today, a majority of
House Democrats support an inquiry -- but we need many, many more to
speak out to guarantee we learn the truth about Trump’s crime and
corruption.
 3. [ [link removed] ]Use this script to call your senators now to say their thoughts and
prayers are not enough. After the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton
this weekend, every senator should publicly demand Mitch McConnell
call an emergency session to debate and vote on gun violence
prevention legislation AND cosponsor S. 42, which would close
loopholes and require background checks for all gun purchases. [ [link removed] ]Read
more in our updated resource here.

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 A word on the filibuster and gun violence prevention 

If you follow us on Twitter, you may have noticed that we (and others,
like Jay Inslee) talked a lot about the filibuster this weekend. We want
to talk to you about why.

For years, Democrats have offered legislative solutions to the routine
mass shootings that take place in our country, but Republicans, many of
whom are cozy with the National Rifle Association, have blocked any
progress on common-sense gun safety laws.

This is because of a procedural loophole called the filibuster. It allows
just one senator -- even a senator in the minority party -- to block a
vote on legislation, unless a supermajority of 60 senators agree to let a
vote proceed. Mitch McConnell has exploited the filibuster to great effect
in the past, and if that weren’t bad enough, he has stated that he will
use the filibuster to be “the Grim Reaper” of the progressive agenda if
Democrats win back the White House in 2020.

In fact, after Sandy Hook, a bill to expand background checks got 54
Democratic and Republican votes in the Senate. It failed because of the
filibuster.

That means McConnell and the rest of the GOP will stand in the way of all
common-sense gun safety reforms, including widely popular proposals like
universal background checks. How can we fight back? By eliminating the
filibuster and passing gun safety laws with a simple majority.

In coming weeks, we’re going to be talking a lot more about the filibuster
and why we must eliminate it -- but in the meantime, [ [link removed] ]check out this
explainer from Vox on what it is and why it has to go and [ [link removed] ]read our
explainer. Then, start talking to your senators and the 2020 candidates
about why you’re demanding that they commit to eliminating it, and get
them on the record about their positions.

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 Find an IndivisiEvent near you 



MARCH FOR IMPEACHMENT

When: Monday, September 9, 10:00 AM
Where: US CAPITOL LAWN, Washington, DC

[ [link removed] ]RSVP Here >>



Showing events near: xxxxxx. [ [link removed] ]Wrong zip code? Update it here.



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 All This Work Costs Money 

We outlined a lot of work in the message above here.

We talked about calling your senators about gun violence legislation,
pressuring the administration to cut funding to ICE and CBP, pushing
Democrats on impeachment, speaking out at Town Halls, demanding the Senate
eliminate the filibuster and doing the work to take back the Senate and
protect the Democratic House. And that’s just scratching the surface.

It takes a lot of things to get all of that done. And one of our jobs at
Indivisible is to provide tools and resources so that we can make all of
that calling, pressuring, pushing, speaking out, demanding and doing the
work as easy and effective as possible for you. 

If you can, please chip in $5. Your donation supporting Indivisible Action
will fund those tools and is an investment in taking back the Senate,
ending gun violence and pushing forwards all of Indivisible’s priorities. 

If you’ve saved your information with ActBlue Express Lane, your donation
to Indivisible Action will go through immediately:

[ [link removed] ]Donate $5 >>

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[ [link removed] ]Donate $25 >>

[ [link removed] ]Donate another amount >>



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 IndivisWin of the Week 

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Republicans created this crisis. Period. End of story. This is their
strategy: a relentless assault on our values, our sanity. They’re hoping
that we let cynicism take over. That we begin to opt-out. That we stop
resisting. That we compromise on one crisis to address another. This has
been their strategy long before Trump became president. 

It’s up to us not to let cynicism creep in and take over. We have to take
the anger, the sorrow, the outrage and turn it into action. It is our
opportunity to create a crisis for Republicans.

And we can only create it when we organize, when we show up, and when we
collectively raise our voices to demand more from the people who represent
us.

Your members of Congress are home right now for August recess until
September 9, and they all need to hear from you. So, stay angry, get
organized, and let’s get to work.

In solidarity,
Indivisible Team

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