Indivisibles,

It’s official -- yesterday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced an official
impeachment inquiry of Donald Trump. 

Below, we’ll give you a rundown on what the next steps are, but first we
want to take a moment to recap what led up to this point. (Feel free to
skip this first section if you’ve been checking Twitter as obsessively as
we have!) 

How We Got Here

It’s been all over the news: A whistleblower complaint alleges that Trump
asked Ukrainian leaders to interfere in our elections and provide
intelligence on his political opponents. Trump himself -- along with his
personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani -- admitted it. On camera. 

So that brazenly illegal act was what led to additional Democrats coming
out in support of impeachment and Pelosi finally backing the effort,
right? Well, sort of, but it wasn’t entirely as fast and easy as the
headlines make it sound. 

This happened because members of Congress -- mostly members of color --
came out early for impeachment and never gave in to whether the winds of
public opinion had swayed Pelosi. People like Maxine Waters, Al Green,
Pramila Jayapal, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and
Ayanna Pressley (and so many others) who have been outspoken about
Congress needing to have the moral clarity to do what's right and take one
small step to protect our damned democracy. It happened because of our
partner organizations, Indivisible groups and so many individuals who made
calls, sent emails, held meetings, and visited district offices for TWO
YEARS, demanding to be heard and for their members to do the right thing.

In short: thousands of people have been greasing the wheels on impeachment
for months. And that’s created a steady buildup of pressure on members of
Congress to back the process. The Mueller report, the events and rallies
during Impeachment August, the town hall questions and social media posts,
the Letters to the Editor -- all these things were kindling just waiting
for a spark. 

And then there were the calls. 

Yesterday, when it became clear that Speaker Pelosi and other Democratic
leadership were planning to meet about impeachment in the wake of
revelations about Trump’s call with Ukraine, Indivisibles did what we do
best: we sprung into action. Together, in just 4 hours, we generated more
than 11,000 phone calls into congressional offices pressuring Members to
support impeachment in advance of the House Democratic Caucus meeting. 

That’s the kind of effort that makes a difference. It’s the kind of effort
that brings Nancy Pelosi onto national television to say, “No one is above
the law.” And it’s the kind of effort we’re going to need to replicate to
keep this inquiry moving forward.

What’s Next

Now that the official inquiry has been announced, you may be wondering
what the next steps are. In simple terms -- we need to keep up the
pressure. 

Yesterday we had three simple asks, but we already won one (yay!) so now
it’s two:

 1. Keep the investigation in the Judiciary Committee, which has the
authority and is already moving forward. ← Big win! At 5 pm yesterday,
Speaker Pelosi announced she will not be establishing a special select
committee on impeachment. Instead, the existing committees will
continue their ongoing investigations in service of a formal
impeachment inquiry. That’s what we wanted!
 2. Cancel next week’s recess. Rather than going home and letting the news
cycle move on without any action (we’ve seen that before), Congress
should cancel their scheduled recess, stay in Washington, and do their
jobs to hold Trump accountable.
 3. Hold a vote on impeachment as soon as possible. Every day Trump sits
in office without any consequences for his behavior is a threat to the
country and our most fundamental principles. The time to act is now.

We’ve gotten some questions about that last ask, so we want to give our
two cents. Trump's actions are not just corrupt -- they are a matter of
national security, election security, and the integrity of our democracy.
And several committees have been investigating Trump’s conduct for months.
That means that a lot of the up-front work that would form the basis of
articles of impeachment has already been conducted by committees in the
House and is ready to be forwarded to Judiciary. We’re not at all saying
we shouldn’t have any more hearings, but there’s no reason this process
should take months to move forward -- as long as Democratic leadership
treats it with the urgency it requires. 

[ [link removed] ]Here is a call script for you to call your members of Congress. And if
you’d like to take it a step further, after you make your calls, [ [link removed] ]click
here to write a letter to the editor supporting impeachment. 

What if they stay on recess?

We know very well that asking Congress to give back their vacation time to
go back to still-hot-and-muggy DC could be a losing battle. So if they
don’t do the right thing, we’re ready to get loud. 

Yesterday afternoon, we worked with some of our sister organizations to
form IMPEACH-NOW, a coalition of progressive organizations dedicated to
pressuring members of Congress to Impeach Trump. We’ve launched a shared
website, [ [link removed] ]impeachnow.org. Until Speaker Pelosi does the right thing and
brings Congress back from recess, use the resources there to find town
halls and organize office visits while your member of Congress is home. 

Truthfully, even though we put a lot of work into it today, we hope that
[ [link removed] ]impeachnow.org won’t be live very long -- because if it’s not, that
means we’ve succeeded! 

What else can I do?

The amount of movement we’ve seen on impeachment just in the last week is
evidence that chance really does favor the prepared -- Indivisibles helped
create an environment that’s ripe for action, and you were ready to take
up the call when opportunity struck. 

But even when you’re prepared, it takes an unbelievable amount of work to
pull off something like what we did yesterday, and the tools we use to
make it happen aren’t cheap. Over 30 Indivisible staff members spent the
majority of yesterday developing and promoting rapid response resources.
Here’s a look at what that took:

* We built a brand-new call in page, and we wrote, developed, and
recorded a phone dial-in so you could text IMPEACH to 97779 and get a
recording of messages.
* Our policy experts researched and wrote new content to match the
fast-changing news -- and then worked with our video team to script
and film a video explaining what was happening.
* We sent an email to nearly a million Indivisibles, and a text message
to over 150,000 more, outlining the state of play and asking you to
take action.
* We coordinated with partner organizations and progressive members of
Congress to ensure our asks were aligned across the movement and that
we weren’t duplicating each other’s work, but amplifying instead.
* We answered dozens of emails offering support to Indivisibles who were
having trouble contacting their members of Congress. (Yes, we do read
replies to these messages!)

The fact is that marshalling those resources of both tools and time costs
money. And while we will never, ever, EVER ask you to prioritize donating
over giving time (if you haven’t done the ask above, stop reading and go
do it!), we do truly count on Indivisibles’ financial support to keep all
of this work moving forward. So please: Chip in even just $10 today to
support Indivisible Project and help us respond with all our might in big
moments like this. 

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We know that this won’t be the last breaking news update of the Trump
administration. It probably won’t be the last one of the impeachment
fight. And we’re committed to being there for all of them, because we
believe that it’s our responsibility to fight for a more just and
democratic society and uphold the values we share. But we can’t do any of
it without you, the backbone and core of all this work. 

All our power in these moments comes from you. So thank you. 

In solidarity,
Indivisible Team

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