Resisting the Fascist, Greedy, & Lawlessness Agenda of Make America Great (White) Again!

February 6, 2026

I have been dealing with an ongoing illness and therefore not out there like I would like. However, I am inspired by all the people and organizations involved in different aspects of resistance and education.

I thank each and all of you. This newsletter is intended to share stories from around the country and world, and make announcements of events you can plug into. Together we are blessed when we share people power and love! -Reverend Graylan Scott Hagler-

Church Disruptions Are Justified

The arrest of Don Lemon ignores a long tradition of religious disruption used to challenge power and hypocrisy

When churches intentionally engage political issues or take positions that materially affect people’s lives, they open themselves to critique from those impacted. That critique has, historically, included disruption during worship.

In 1969, civil rights leader James Forman disrupted services at Riverside Church in New York City to demand $500 million in reparations from white churches. The action, known as the Black Manifesto, forced religious institutions to confront their complicity in slavery and helped spur later anti-poverty and racial justice initiatives.



In December 1989, members of AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) organized “Stop the Church,” disrupting Mass led by Cardinal John O’Connor at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. One hundred eleven protesters were arrested. The demonstration protested O’Connor’s opposition to safe-sex education and condom distribution during the AIDS crisis.

Nurses lead nationwide demands to abolish ICE



The murder in Minneapolis of Alex Pretti, RN, a Veterans Administration intensive care nurse and union member with the Government Employees, by CBP (Customs and Border Patrol) agents has prompted the nation’s top union for registered nurses, National Nurses United (NNU), to demand abolition of the agency and dissolution of its vicious and violent forces.

In a debate involving top Illinois contenders for the U.S. Senate, Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton issued the strongest condemnation of ICE, declaring, “I want to abolish ICE because this agency cannot be reformed. ICE needs to be abolished, and we need to move this country forward and ensure our communities are safe.” But whether the Republican Donald Trump regime, which has unleashed almost 4,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and enforcers in the Twin Cities alone, will listen to that demand by National Nurses United, Stratton, or anyone else who opposes the Trump occupation of U.S. cities is unlikely. 

Texas Democrat Taylor Rehmet flips Republican state Senate seat Trump won by 17 points

(John Hanna Associated Press)

Democrat Taylor Rehmet flipped a reliably Republican state Senate district in Texas in Saturday's special election, continuing a string of surprise victories for Democrats across the U.S. in the year since Donald Trump returned to the White House.

The Republican president immediately distanced himself from the loss in a district he'd won by 17 points in 2024

A bloody season: the olive harvest in the West Bank

It’s a bit after eight in the morning. We’ve just arrived in Beita, a village in the north of the West Bank. The light is still soft, catching in the dust hanging on the road as people park their cars. Everyone is gathering here for the annual season of the olive harvest. Except this isn’t your typical olive harvest. Here, in occupied Palestine, picking olives comes with risks: injury, arrest, or even death.  

“There are settlers trying to stop the farmers from harvesting their olives so we are coming to help them,” Munther Amira tells us. Munther is a Palestinian community organizer from Deir Aban, a Palestinian village ethnically cleansed in 1948. He grew up in the Aida refugee camp, in Bethlehem, where he still lives.

A bloody season: the olive harvest in the West Bank

Journalists Rafaela Cortez and Ricardo Esteves Ribeiro embedded with Palestinians during the 2025 West Bank olive harvest. They witnessed terrible violence and oppression, including the killing of a 13-year-old boy, but also inspiring resistance.

Map shows what would happen to Gaza under the US ‘master plan’

The plan treats Gaza as vacant beachfront property, proposing glass towers and industrial zones over historic sites.

At the World Economic Forum last week in Davos, Switzerland, Jared Kushner, a real estate developer and son-in-law of United States President Donald Trump, unveiled a “master plan” for post-war Gaza during a presentation.



The plan, which was contrived without any consultation with Palestinians in Gaza, promises to rebuild Gaza from scratch and includes residential towers, data centres, seaside resorts, parks, sports facilities and an airport.

US Catholic bishops make urgent pleas to rein in ICE after recent deaths 

Make No Mistake: We Are in a Civil War

By: Reverend Graylan Scott Hagler

It is time for local and state governments to resist more forcefully the lawlessness and cowardice of an out-of-control federal government under the thumb of Trump.

These bills and letters are local governments and political leaders operating within the culture and structure of American conformity where decorum is presented and the traditional rules of law applies. Civil protest and discourse are exercised believing that the structures have power. They have been trained to abide by the rules of civility. Meanwhile the federal behemoth is trampling standard political decorum by bending things until they break and using the weight of the federal government to crush any the resistance. What is needed now and before it is too late is the deliberate creation of a constitutional crisis.

After the killing of Renee Good, faith leaders in Minneapolis issued a call. I went because ICE violence is escalating, because federal funding continues to fuel terror, and because stopping the funding of ICE is not an abstract policy demand—it is a matter of life and death.

Upon being asked to travel to Minneapolis, on behalf of Rainbow PUSH coalition, who I am honored to be working as as organizer for, I immediately packed my tallit (Jewish prayer shawl) and hopped on an airplane.

The last week of January, I was arrested TWICE—once in Minneapolis and once in Washington, DC—while participating in peaceful, prayerful acts of civil disobedience against the terror that ICE, disappearing people, ripping families apart, and carrying out murders in plain site, is enacting in Minnesota, and cities across the country.

I do not say this lightly. I say it because, like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965, I believe there are moments when people of faith are called to leave safety behind and show up where history is being written. When King called clergy to Selma, he said, “The people of Selma will struggle on for the soul of the nation, but it is fitting that all America help to bear the burden.” Last week, Minneapolis became one of those places.

Is ICE Becoming America’s Tonton Macoutes?

In 1959, Haitian dictator François “Papa Doc” Duvalier created a paramilitary force that answered only to him. Empowered to use unrestrained violence, it existed to terrorize, silence, and eliminate perceived enemies

History teaches us that when armed forces answer more to political authority than to law, abuse follows. Haitians know this lesson intimately. The Tonton Macoutes did not spring up overnight. They emerged gradually, justified by fear, normalized by silence, and enabled by impunity.

Americans should take heed. History rarely announces itself with sirens. It advances through normalization — through the quiet acceptance of practices once considered unthinkable. When armed agents answer more to political power than to law, when deaths are dismissed as procedure, and when fear becomes policy, the comparisons we resist today become the realities we inherit tomorrow.

"It was a mess": Inside Trump's pivot on Minnesota

ICE Sparks ‘International Incident’ by Trying to Enter Ecuadorian Consulate in Minneapolis

The Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry filed a formal complaint with the US Embassy over the attempted incursion “so that acts of this nature are not repeated.”

Haiti and Haitians in 2026

Haiti remains volatile. According to the most recent report from the UN Security Council, there are now 1.4 million people displaced, 12% of the population, and 5.9 million people facing hunger, with 1.9 million facing extreme hunger. There are also alarming levels of sexual violence, with women and girls the primary victims. Gang violence remains widespread, with a reported 8100 total killings nationwide between January and November 2025. Half of gang members are children, who remain at extreme risk due to school closures and lack of opportunity. Local press is also reporting horrific civilian casualties from government-sponsored drone attacks targeting gangs.

Longtime DC Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton to end her reelection campaign

Norton, 88, has been the sole representative of the residents of the nation’s capital in Congress since 1991, but she faced increasing questions about her effectiveness after the Trump administration began its sweeping intervention into the city last year.

Mayor Muriel Bowser congratulated Norton on her retirement.

“For 35 years, Congresswoman Norton has been our Warrior on the Hill,” Bowser wrote on social media. “Her work embodies the unwavering resolve of a city that refuses to yield in its fight for equal representation.”

Norton’s campaign filed a termination report with the Federal Election Commission on Sunday. Her office has not released an official statement about the delegate’s intentions.

Ash Wednesday Prayer Service of Repentance, Conversion and Resistance Outside Cannon House Office Building 

When: Ash Wednesday, February 18, 2026 -- from Noon-1:00 p.m. 

Where: Outside the Cannon House Office Building, 27 Independence Ave. SE  (Closest Metro: Capitol South. Directions From Metro: Walk north on First St. and take a left on Independence Ave. Walk west on Independence Ave. about a half block and meet at the corner entrance of Cannon Building. This is directly across the street from a main entrance to the U.S. Capitol)

"A Church that doesn’t provoke any crises, a gospel that doesn’t unsettle, a word of God that doesn’t get under anyone’s skin, a word of God that doesn’t touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed – what Gospel is that"?...Feeling in one's flesh the consequences of sin and injustice, one is stimulated to work for social justice and a genuine love for the poor. Our Lent should awaken a sense of social justice." -– St. Oscar Romero

“Our only hope lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism...The choice before us is either nonviolence or nonexistence." -- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, a time for personal and societal repentance, radical conversion, renewal and transformation. Living under the brutal occupation of the Roman empire, Jesus declared: "The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the Gospel." (Mk.1:15) Living in the U.S. empire, which is responsible for so much death and suffering in our world, we need to heed Jesus' proclamation now more than ever!

On Ash Wednesday, people from the faith-based peace and justice community in the DMV will hold a prayer service near the White House to call for repentance and conversion of ourselves, our society and our churches to the Gospel way of justice, nonviolence and a reverence for all life and creation. 

We decry the reign of terror that the Trump Administration is carrying out on all fronts. This includes the horrific ICE raids and killings, and detention, deportation of immigrants; military intervention in Venezuela; continued support for Israel's genocidal war in Gaza and ethnic cleansing of Palestine; military threats against Iran, attempts to takeover Greenland and destabilizing actions against Cuba; massive cuts in health care and other vital services for the poor while granting tax breaks for the wealthy and increasing the military budget to over $1 trillion; and policy directives that exacerbate the climate crisis. Today, we are especially mindful of our urgent moral duty to proclaim the Gospel mandates of justice and nonviolence and to resist empire, fascism, Christian nationalism, and all forms of systemic violence, oppression and racism. 

During this Holy Season, we call for an end to ICE raids in Minneapolis and everywhere. We call for the conversion of our war-based economy to meet critical human needs and protect the earth, our common home. We commit to working for the abolition of war and all weapons--from nuclear weapons to killer drones to assault weapons and handguns--and for social, racial, economic and environmental justice. 

Let us begin Lent together by joining in this Ash Wednesday witness as we strive to make God's reign of love, justice and peace a reality and proclaim Gospel Nonviolence. 

Ashes will be blessed and distributed. Please join us.

Co-Sponsors

Dorothy Day Catholic Worker

Pax Christi USA 

Pax Christi Metro DC-Baltimore

Assisi Community 

Franciscan Action Network 

Sisters of Mercy of the Americas – Justice Team

Maryknoll Office of Global Concerns

Little Friends for Peace

For more info contact Art Laffin, Dorothy Day Catholic Worker: artlaffin@hotmail.com

Tomorrow, our weekly Picket & Pray will be hosted by Community Peacemaker Teams (CPT) live from Palestine. The CPT team is based in Hebron, the only city in the West Bank where Israeli settlements are located inside the city, making the violent and dehumanizing (and often deadly) consequences of the occupation especially intense. CPT’s presence is a critical source of sustaining support and resistance, and we’re so grateful to learn from them! 

Every week on Wednesdays, CFP joins with our partners at Mennonite Action and Kirkridge Study and Retreat Center for shared spiritual practice and action for Palestine. Will you join us tomorrow? Whether you participate in Picket & Pray every week or this will be your first time, we welcome you!

Six months ago, we gathered at the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia. Over these two days, participants across backgrounds and denominations came together to develop coordinated, strategic actions to respond to the urgent situation in Palestine and Israel. Six months later, much work still remains. We are continuing to make progress on the strategies that we decided upon in late July, 2025, and also recognize the necessity of re-evaluating our path forward to ensure it is best suited for evolving circumstances on the ground.  

In that spirit, please see these important updates: 

1. Save the date: Our next in-person follow-up meeting to the event at the Carter Center will take place on May 5, 2026. More information to come soon. 

Joint Christian Advocacy Summit 2026: Join CMEP and a broad coalition of co-sponsors on May 5-7, 2026 as we converge in Washington, DC for a Joint Christian Advocacy Summit for the Middle East. This event was one of the key strategies decided upon at the July 2025 summit at the Carter Center. Centered on the theme “Do Right; Seek Justice (Is. 1:17): Christians Uniting Against Oppression in Palestine/Israel,” this gathering will equip and mobilize Christian advocates from across the country in support of U.S. policies that uphold dignity, human rights, and lasting security for all who call the region home. Attendees will learn from experts, gain advocacy skills, and have the opportunity to meet with their congressional offices to call for a just peace in the Holy Land. 

Please co-sponsor the event through this form! 

In peace and solidarity,

Churches for Middle East Peace 



Contact Us 

Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP)

110 Maryland Ave NE Suite 505

Washington, District of Columbia 20002

(202) 543-1222

info@cmep.org

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