Photo Courtesy of Repairers of the Breach

For two months now, faith leaders have powerfully gathered at the nation’s capital to speak up against policy violence. Hundreds of these leaders have shown up to condemn Republican-led proposals to fast-track funding for the Pentagon and Trump’s mass deportation agenda while gutting social programs and leaving struggling families to fend for themselves. 

In recent news, Trump is seeking $1 trillion for the Pentagon and war in his budget request, and the House of Representatives advanced spending recommendations for  $146.3 billion for mass detention, deportations and border militarization over four years.

Faith leaders and allies are united in saying: the people don’t want this.

Repairers of the Breach, Institute for Policy Studies, and the Economic Policy Institute released a joint report showcasing just how this budget coming to life would hurt so many people. We found that an earlier Senate proposal of $86 billion in new spending per year for the Pentagon and mass deportations could provide early childhood education through Head Start for 3.6 million children, health insurance for 4 million children, and public housing for 4 million families. Since then, the proposed spending increases have ballooned to more than $157 billion for 2026 alone – enough to provide Medicaid to nearly 32 million adults, in contrast to Republican plans to decimate health insurance for poor and low-income Americans.¹ 

On April 28, Reverend Doctor William Barber and other faith leaders launched “Moral Mondays” to bring together community leaders, members, and advocates to continue to defend poor people, migrants, and all struggling Americans from harmful policies and a budget that makes the policies real.

“We’ve brought Moral Mondays to the U.S. Capitol because the 'weightier matters' of our religious and moral traditions, which call us to protect the poor and the most vulnerable in our communities, are being neglected as an agenda backed by a narrow set of billionaires aims to dismantle our nation’s social safety net.” 

- Rev. Dr. William Barber & Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Yale Divinity School, for MSNBC

And guess what? These leaders are making some good trouble. 

On April 28, Rev. Barber and other preachers were promptly arrested at the Capitol rotunda for praying. This situation repeated on May 5 when five faith leaders were arrested for refusing to end prayer. Elsewhere, other members of the Moral Mondays movement hand-delivered letters to members of Congress, urging them to join a prayer with Americans who would be impacted by the proposed Medicaid, SNAP, housing, and education cuts.

At a Moral Monday rally, IPS Global Economy Project Director and Inequality.org Co-editor, Sarah Anderson, spoke truth to power about another morally bankrupt proposal: generous tax cuts for wealthy billionaires. She pointed out that if we were to tax the wealthy at the same rate as taxing income from work, Jeff Bezos would’ve owed $6.2 billion - which instead he gets to keep in his pockets.

We live in a time where elected leaders are pushing for a budget that would further enrich war profiteers, corporations, and billionaires in place of meeting the basic needs of millions of Americans. 

It’s important that moral leaders are bringing hard-hitting facts and questions of values front and center: Who do our leaders stand for? What will this budget mean for millions of struggling families? Who does this budget actually benefit?

“Whether we care for the poor, the sick and the vulnerable is not a question of partisan loyalty, but of moral commitment. We are bringing the prayers of millions to our nation’s Capitol because we continue to believe that the values of love, mercy and justice are moral values that go deeper than partisan loyalty.”

- Rev. Dr. William Barber & Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Yale Divinity School, for MSNBC

Our leaders must stand for the people they represent and for a budget that takes care of all of us – not for an exclusive few.

¹ The President’s budget request assumes $113.3 billion will be allocated to the Department of Defense and $43.8 billion to the Department of Homeland Security in 2026 from the reconciliation package.