Here we go.

Today, Indivisibles are engaged in MLK Day service projects in the communities we’re going to spend the next few years giving our all to defend. When our work for the day wraps up, Donald Trump will be the President of the United States — and then an entirely different kind of work will begin.

In recent days, Trump’s allies have been forecasting a campaign of “shock and awe” — a blitz of executive orders and policy pronouncements meant to divide and overwhelm us. And we have no doubt that the next few weeks are going to be exhausting. They’re going to feel overwhelming. We’re going to suffer some temporary losses on issues we care about.

To tweak one of the best quotes from one of the best-ever shows dealing with tyranny and rebellion (Andor), Trump and his goons are hoping that the pace of their oppression outstrips our ability to process and react to it.

But the thing about ignoramuses with little understanding of history choosing names for things is they decide “shock and awe” sounds macho and intimidating, little realizing it was the opening salvo for one of the most disastrous military campaigns in US history. A campaign that started with a great deal of bravado and overconfidence, before devolving into a quagmire that contributed to a Republican president leaving office in disgrace.

So as we endure this shock and awe campaign over the coming week, let’s remember, it’s not a sign of Trump’s invincibility. It’s a sign he’s at the height of his power now. He can make a lot of noise, cause a lot of damage, but soon he’s going to realize the constraints of his very narrow governing coalition and run up against rising backlash to his staggeringly harmful and massively corrupt policies.

As we wrote in the new Indivisible Guide,

“Fascists depend on convincing us to give our power away and fall in line, that the fight is over and we lost. And while we must be clear-eyed about the threat, we must not do the fascists’ work for them by giving them powers they do not have.”

We’re going to face what comes next, together. Not passively, but defiantly. We’re going to pick our fights, fuel backlash against Trump’s attempts to implement Project 2025, and we’re going to win.

Preparing to fight

Normally on Mondays we send a newsletter with our top action items for the week. With the holiday today we don’t have our usual calls to action — and knowing that a barrage of executive orders will be coming tonight, we can’t say what our main to-dos for the week will be. So our asks for today are about preparing to fight back, together, whatever might come.

1. If you haven’t checked out the new Indivisible Guide yet, add it to your reading list. It provides practical tips for how you can protect your community and defy Trump’s authoritarian agenda, whether you live in a red or blue state. It answers many of the questions we get from new activists about things you should be doing a lot over the coming weeks, like placing calls to your member of Congress and how to organize locally.
2. Make sure we’re able to reach you. With social media magnates bending the knee to Trump, we can’t trust algorithms on some of the leading platforms to allow our content to reach you. Email remains our best means of reaching activists, but email providers don’t always make it easy. To ensure our emails hit your inbox, please click links in our emails and reply from time to time (we read them!). That tells your email provider you’re interested in hearing from us. Also: You can add us (info@indivisible.org) to your trusted contacts. Here’s how you can do that in Gmail, Outlook, AOL, Yahoo, and iCloud. YouTube has great instruction videos for whatever your email provider is.
3. Have friends that might be interested in receiving our weekly to-dos and other emails? Encourage them to join our email list.
4. Help us reach you with the most relevant information. We tailor our messages to folks based on where they live. If you’ve recently moved, you can make sure you get the most relevant messages by updating your information here.
5. Find your community and fight for it. As much as we at Indivisible National try to give you calls to action relevant to where you live, we’re generally talking about national fights. But a lot of the big fights to protect our rights and preserve our democracy over the next few years will be happening in state legislatures, school boards, and city halls. If you want to be part of real grassroots change, and if you want to wield more power than any of us can as individuals, join or start an Indivisible group. There are over 1,000 spread across every state.
6. Fill out this form and an organizer will be in touch. But also, you don’t have to wait for us. This is a bottom-up, not top-down movement. You can use our group map to see if we have an active group near you. Or you can just start one. Grab a few friends and start meeting. We’ve got resources to help you.
7. Consider investing in our grassroots activism. Trump is a wannabe dictator. He and the architects of Project 2025 plan to purge the federal government of dissenters. Corporate media outlets have already begun to fold in the face of speech-chilling lawsuits. A strong civil society is always the last line of defense against tyrants, and it’s up to all of us to make sure independent advocacy groups, think tanks, public interest groups and watchdogs have the resources they need to keep up the fight. Please consider supporting us with a one-time or monthly donation. And not just us — if you have the means to start monthly gifts to other orgs you value, it helps more than you can imagine.

What to expect from us over the next few days

We try to not overwhelm you with emails — but over the next few days we’ll be in close communication as we respond to executive orders, mount a fierce opposition to Trump’s most dangerous nominees, offer resources in the face of rumored immigration raids and more. And please don’t hesitate to be in touch with us. We can’t reply to every email we get, but we read them. It was in response to emails from the movement that we added Tulsi Gabbard to our nix the noms list — and we want to keep hearing about the fights you want to wage and your ideas for making our campaigns more effective.

We’ll also be coming together to process the events of the week this Thursday at 3pm ET. Co-Executive Directors Leah and Ezra will lead the discussion, and answer questions in real time. You can register for the Zoom here. And while we hope you can join us live, we know that time doesn’t work for everyone — all these calls are uploaded here so you can watch them when convenient.

Remember: Today marks the height of Trump’s power. This is as strong as he’s going to be. The man didn’t get a majority of the vote, and his popular vote margin was historically small. He claims a mandate that voters didn’t give him — and that’s going to lead him to overreach quickly, and face mounting backlash (with our assistance) early in this presidency. If we do what we need to, we’re going to be able to delay, defang, and block some of the most dangerous parts of his agenda. We’re going to organize to build power and first in local elections and then in midterms, we’re going to win.

“Now let us begin. Now let us re-dedicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world.” — Martin Luther King Jr.