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The United States is the wealthiest, most powerful country the world has ever seen. And we've always had a moral tug-of-war between those who want to hoard wealth and power and those who honor the dignity of every person. What's happening now is that the wealthy and powerful are working to divide the people—and keep the wealth and power for themselves.
President Donald Trump and his loyal followers in Congress have begun the process of pulling back help and basic services for all Americans, especially poor and low-income people, and engaging in ongoing war and oppression. And they're doing it all to consolidate wealth and power for themselves and their friends. We know this not because of what the president and his allies say, but because of what they do.
As faith leaders and scholars, we recently released a report that lays bare the realities of the president and Congress' actions , especially with regard to the upcoming reconciliation process through which Congress will decide budget priorities for the next 10 years. We found that members of Congress, with President Trump's encouragement, have taken the first steps toward a budget that would take Medicaid coverage away from as many as 36 million people and force closures of rural medical facilities. Their plan would literally take food from the mouths of children, cutting food stamps for as many as 40 million people at a time of unprecedented food prices.
All told, their plan cuts $2 trillion in services for ordinary people. Meanwhile, the president—with help from Elon Musk , the world's richest man—is firing thousands of government workers, often illegally. They tell the workers to go find work in the private sector .
But at their own companies, Elon Musk and his fellow business titans are more interested in cutting jobs than creating them. And private business will never replicate the good but profitless work of keeping our air and water clean , providing free health care to veterans , or finding cures for rare diseases . The real tell is where they're putting the money from all those cuts.
The president's plan, as passed by his supporters in Congress, would cut $4.5 trillion in taxes, mostly for the wealthy and corporations. For the bottom half of families, savings from the president's tax cuts would amount to less than $1 per day, while the richest 0.
1 percent would enjoy windfalls of $314,266 per year. And administration officials have sided with corporations against workers by refusing to support raising the minimum wage, which has been stuck at $7.25 since 2009.
Meanwhile, for a war-weary and dangerously divided nation, the president and his allies in Congress want to invest at least $300 billion more in the war machine and indiscriminate mass deportations. Continuing decades of war, the president has already bombed Somalia and Yemen , and has suggested the possibility of military takeovers in the Gaza Strip, Greenland, and Panama. And we are once again seeing the devastating and cruel effects of family separation for immigrants.
The Trump administration has begun deporting parents of the 4.4 million U.S.
citizen children with an undocumented parent—even stripping legal status in order to justify the deportation. All of this serves to divide us—the wealthy against the poor, immigrants against the U.S.
-born, job-seeker against fellow job-seeker, Black against brown against white, straight against gay, cisgender against transgender. Nothing makes this clearer than the administration's anti-DEI obsession, which denies that diversity is a strength and a blessing. Those divisions clear the way for them to take the spoils.
We say this not as Democrats or Republicans , but as faith leaders and scholars who know from our communities and our studies that our common life depends on shared moral commitments. We call on all people of conscience—faith leaders, religious, and nonreligious folk alike—to join us in a season of nonviolent moral dissent. With millions of Americans turning out for the recent "Hands Off" rallies across the country , it may already be beginning.
Our national hymn says, "America! America! God mend thine every flaw." We began our own season of dissent by calling hundreds of faith leaders to rally at the U.S.
Capitol this March to stand together in prayer and moral resistance and tell Congress to stop the extremism, bullying, and corruption. We will gather there the first Wednesday of every month. We oppose the immoral budget priorities of this president and his allies in Congress.
We invite other faith leaders and all people to study our report on the true state of our nation , and to assemble on the town square, at city hall, or on the state house lawn in communities across this land. It's time for a new season of moral action to mend this country and reclaim the dignity of every person. Bishop William J.
Barber is the founder of Repairers of the Breach and national co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign. Tope Folarin is the executive director of the Institute for Policy Studies. Repairers and IPS, along with the Economic Policy Institute, recently released the report, The High Moral Stakes of the Policy Battles Raging in Washington .
The views expressed in this article are the writers' own..
