Indivisibles --

A deal has been struck.

The Senate and House have both voted to reopen the government. And after 35 days, the longest shutdown in our country’s history will come to an end.

Why? Because of you.

For the last 35 days, Trump and Mitch McConnell held government employees and immigrant families hostage, refusing to let them go. All because of a hateful campaign promise to his base to build a border wall.

Today, Trump caved. And he agreed to reopen the government without getting a single new dollar for his wall.

Let’s be clear: Trump isn’t the only GOPer to blame here. Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans have run interference for him on the Hill, on Fox News, on the Sunday shows… wherever they can. Because it is their agenda too.

All the while, a new Democratically-controlled House (elected by you, in November!) voted ten times to reopen the government with no strings attached. Time and time again, they sent their bills to the Senate where Mitch McConnell refused to entertain them. Until today.

The vote they took tonight was a short-term continuing resolution to reopen the government through February 15. Most importantly, it does so without Democrats having given Trump any additional money for the wall or other parts of his anti-immigrant agenda.

Your advocacy worked.

For so long, it felt like we were in a stalemate. House Democrats kept passing bills and Senate Republicans kept ignoring them.

But on Wednesday, we called for a movement-wide call-in day of action. And your pressure worked. Indivisibles made 16,821 calls this week (more than 12,000 calls on Wednesday alone!). From all 50 states... to all 100 Senators. This was our movement’s biggest coordinated call-in action since December 2017. We’re blown away. Here’s just a (really) small snapshot of your work:

And on Thursday, when the Senate took up two different funding bills -- Trump’s phony “deal” with nearly $6 billion for the wall and the Democrats’ bill with no funding for the wall -- the Democrats’ proposal got more votes. In fact, five Republican Senators flipped, voting for the Democrats’ bill and making it clear Trump’s proposal was dead on arrival.

We made calls Wednesday (Indivisible Guide 101!), and Thursday the tide turned. This week is a great reminder that you never know where the cracks will show up when pressure is applied everywhere -- on both our Democratic and Republican Members of Congress (MoCs).

• Winning the House in November gave Democrats a stronger negotiating hand. The actions and calls you made encouraged them to stay strong under pressure. This easily could have gone the other direction without all the work of committed activists over the last two years.
• And while constituent pressure applied to Republican MoCs may feel like you’re screaming into the void and they may never publicly change their stance… relentless pressure can often scare them into turning on each other in private.

Trust us, Trump and Republicans didn’t cave out of the goodness of their hearts. They did so because you forced their hand. Take a deep breath, pat yourselves on the back, and take a moment to enjoy this victory.

Here’s what’s next.

We won, but this is a short term deal. We could be back in the same place in three weeks. Part of this deal is that Congress will negotiate, through a conference committee, a final funding package for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). If they can't reach an agreement by February 15, we could get another shutdown. And Trump has threatened that he might declare a national emergency in order to build his wall. (Here’s our resource on what Congress can do about that.)

First up, read our updated shutdown resource with our full state of play, what’s happening next, and what we’ll have to do leading up to February 15 to make sure the government doesn’t shut down again.

• The ask for Democratic Senators: THANK YOU! And keep it up. The government reopened with no new funding for the wall, and we should thank Democrats (except Joe Manchin) for keeping strong to make sure that happened. But the fight isn’t over yet. You should tell your Democratic senator to support a conference agreement that has no new funding for the wall.
• The ask for Republican Senators: No new wall money. Keep the government open. We will be right back where we started, with another government shutdown on February 16, if Republicans try to back Trump’s demands for wall funding. Ask them to keep the government open and support a conference agreement with no new funding for the wall.

The next fight is just around the corner. Thank you for banding together with us, arm in arm, through this fight.

In solidarity,
The Indivisible Team

P.S. Thank you so much for using our tools to make calls (and encourage constituents in key states to make their calls!). Your coordinated pressure broke the dam on this fight. But every call costs a little bit, and after 16,000 calls, it adds up. This year, we want to heavily invest in doing even more with these organizing tools to build power, hold Trump accountable, and save democracy. If you can, invest a few dollars now in these critical tools to build on our success heading into 2020.