Donald Trump and maga Republicans are now enabling the cover up of two ICE murders after shooting two American citizens

Congress must intervene following shooting of  Alex Jeffrey Pretti, R.N., an ICU nurse who was shot and killed by ICE agents on January 24, 2026, in Minneapolis. On January 7, ICE agents shot and killed Renee Good. 

Echo editorial published by The Virginian-Pilot, in Norfolk, VA.

Although several witnesses who saw these two murders also have video taken at the incident, the fact is the Trump administration is preventing the Minneapolis law enforcement to investigate the killings. 

Federal ICE agents fatally shot another American in Minneapolis on Saturday: 37-year-old Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse at the Minnesota VA hospital. Pretti was observing immigration operations and stepped in when an agent threw a woman to the ground. He was tackled by several U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents, who repeatedly struck him before they fired as many as 10 shots, killing him.

Mr. Pretti’s killing follows the shooting death of Renee Good, a poet, wife, mother and Old Dominion University graduate, on January 7. Ms. Good was given conflicting orders by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents — who told her to move her car and to stop and exit her vehicle — before she was fatally shot attempting to move her car as ordered.

Bystanders filmed both incidents as they unfolded, providing the public with unvarnished evidence of what transpired from multiple angles. But, after both, Trump administration officials have insisted that agents acted properly and halted efforts to conduct thorough, transparent investigations.

To adopt the administration’s line of defense requires one to ignore their eyes and ears — to dismiss clear and overwhelming evidence of federal agents using excessive force against people who are not a threat to them.

It also requires believing that those killed were “domestic terrorists,” as administration officials such as Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have alleged, rather than Americans standing up for their neighbors, exercising their constitutional rights and opposing the increasingly brutal and arbitrary immigration campaign directed by Donald Trump.

Americans have long recognized the value of immigration enforcement, and would probably still support the administration’s efforts to remove dangerous criminals from our streets had this campaign adhered to that goal. But it has not. It has become a quasi NAZI Gestapo style operation targeting Americans. 

Instead the nation has witnessed federal agents act in increasingly unrestrained and dangerous ways — brutalizing suspects, acting aggressively toward protesters, entering homes without warrants, arresting and even killing American citizens — and public support has plummeted. Americans by growing margins want officials to stop the lawlessness — and to do so now❗

The reaction to Pretti’s shooting suggests they will not.

On Saturday January 24, 2026,  Pretti was helping to direct traffic around federal operations when agents initiated a dispute with two observers by aggressively pushing them to the ground. When Pretti intervened, he was swarmed by seven agents who tackled and beat him in the street.

He was a legal, permitted gun owner and video of the scene shows an agent disarmed him as he was restrained. Then, unarmed and no threat to the agents, the ICU nurse who devoted his life to helping the nation’s veterans was shot multiple times and died.

Noem then followed the same playbook as after the Good shooting: smearing the victim as a radical, claiming without evidence that he was intent on shooting agents, and attempting to create the false belief that peaceful protesters are a threat to law and order.

In fact, the greater danger is federal agents violating constitutional rights, laying siege to an American city and putting the public at risk. Anger is growing, as is support for abolishing ICE and building a new immigration enforcement system from the ground up.

Not that this is all about immigration, as the Trump administration admitted over the weekend. Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Saturday saying the White House would withdraw ICE and CBP forces if given access to the state’s voter rolls, among other requirements.

Americans cannot accept a federal government that threatens a state with further brutality for its refusal to submit to the president’s demands for voting information. They cannot stand idle as ICE and CBP routinely ignore rights guaranteed by the Constitution. They must not allow those who kill people in the street without cause to go unpunished by the justice system.

Congress repeatedly refused to exert its power to act as a check on the executive branch, but the time for dithering is over. Federal agents killed another American on Saturday January 24, two innocent American citizens in just one month. How many more will it take before lawmakers do their duty❓

Maine Writer post script- #WhereIsSenatorSusanCollins ❓👀

Donald Trump and maga Republicans claim support from Evangelicals but ignore the urgency of extending empathy to others

MAGA’s War on Empathy  This crisis in Minneapolis reveals a deep moral rot at the heart of Trump’s movement. 

"Democrats need a big tent that welcomes people of faith into our coalition, even if we don’t agree on every issue. Don’t forget, liberal Christianity has a long and storied history. Progressive people of faith have led virtually every major social movement. Think of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. marching with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel in Selma. That’s a spirit we should work to reclaim," Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Publsihed in The Atlanic by Hillary Rodham Clinton

When I first saw the video of the brutal killing of Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital, I immediately thought of the parable of the Good Samaritan. 

Federal agents shot Pretti after he tried to help a woman they had thrown to the ground and pepper-sprayed. Jesus tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves and help those in need. “Do this and you will live,” he says. Not in Donald Trump’s America.

Americans have now seen with their own eyes the cost of Donald Trump’s abuse of power and disregard for the Constitution. 

Videos of the killing of Pretti and Renee Good by federal agents have exposed the lies of Trump-administration officials who were quick to smear the victims as “domestic terrorists.” 

Even Americans who have grown habituated to Trump’s excesses have been shaken by these killings and the reflexively cruel and dishonest response from the administration.

This crisis also reveals a deeper moral rot at the heart of Trump’s MAGA movement. Whatever you think about immigration policy, how can a person of conscience justify the lack of compassion and empathy for the victims in Minnesota, and for the families torn apart or hiding in fear, for the children separated from their parents or afraid to go to school❓

That compassion is weak and cruelty is strong has become an article of MAGA faith. Trump and his allies believe that the more inhumane the treatment, the more likely it is to spread fear. That’s the goal of surging heavily armed federal forces into blue states such as Minnesota and Maine—street theater of the most dangerous kind. Other recent presidents, including Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, managed to deport millions of undocumented immigrants without turning American cities into battlegrounds or making a show of keeping children in cages.

“The cruelty is the point,” as The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer memorably put it during Trump’s first term. The savagery is a feature, not a bug. By contrast, as Serwer noted recently in these pages, the people of Minnesota have responded with an approach you could call “‘neighborism’—a commitment to protecting the people around you, no matter who they are or where they came from.” To my ears, that’s as Christian a value as it gets.

The glorification of cruelty and rejection of compassion don’t just shape the Trump administration’s policies. Those values are also at the core of Trump’s own character and worldview. And they have become a rallying cry for a cadre of hard-right “Christian influencers” who are waging a war on empathy.

Their twisted campaign validates Trump’s personal immorality and his administration’s cruelty. It marginalizes mainstream religious leaders who espouse traditional values that conflict with Trump’s behavior and agenda. And it threatens to pave the way for an extreme vision of Christian nationalism that seeks to replace democracy with theocracy in America.

The rejection of bedrock Christian values such as dignity, mercy, and compassion did not start with the crisis in Minnesota. The tone was set right at the beginning of this second Trump presidency. The day after taking the oath of office last January, Trump attended a prayer service at the National Cathedral.

 

In fact, the Episcopal bishop of Washington,

Mariann Edgar Budde, directed part of her sermon at the new president: “In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.” She spoke of children of immigrant families afraid that their parents would be taken away, refugees fleeing persecution, and young LGBTQ Americans who feared for their lives. It was an honest plea, suffused with the kind of love and generosity toward neighbors and strangers that Jesus taught.

Bishop Budde was immediately vilified. One Republican congressman said she “should be added to the deportation list.” The pastor and influencer Ben Garrett warned his followers, “This snake is God’s enemy and yours too. She hates God and His people. You need to properly hate in response.”  (Ben Garrett is evil💢❗)

The right-wing Christian podcaster Allie Beth Stuckey called the sermon “toxic empathy that is in complete opposition to God’s Word and in support of the most satanic, destructive ideas ever conjured up.” Toxic empathy❗ ❓What an oxymoron. I don’t know if the phrase reflects moral blindness or moral bankruptcy, but either way it’s appalling.

This is certainly not what I was taught in Sunday school, not what my reading of the Bible teaches me, and not what I believe Jesus preached in his short time on Earth. 

Yes, I went to Sunday school. In fact, my mother taught Sunday school at our Methodist church in Park Ridge, Illinois. As an adult, I occasionally taught at our church in Little Rock, Arkansas. Some people—such as the Republican congressman who once called me the Antichrist—might find this surprising. (When I confronted him, he mumbled something about not having meant it. Trump later appointed him to his Cabinet.)

I’ve never been one to wear my faith on my sleeve, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important to me. Quite the opposite: My faith has sustained me, informed me, saved me, chided me, and challenged me. I don’t know who I would be or where I would have ended up without it. So I am not a disinterested observer here. I believe that Christians like me—and people of faith more generally—have a responsibility to stand up to the extremists who use religion to divide our society and undermine our democracy.

No less a religious authority than the late Pope Francis called out the Trump administration’s war on empathy. After Vice President (Hillbilly❗) Vance - a convert to Roman Catholicism- argued that Christians should be stingy with their love, prioritizing those close to us over strangers, he offered a rebuke. “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups,” the pope noted, before urging everyone to read up on the Good Samaritan.

The contrast between traditional Christian morality and Trumpian amorality was particularly stark at the memorial service for the slain MAGA activist Charlie Kirk, in September. Kirk’s widow, Erika, publicly forgave her husband’s killer. “I forgive him because it was what Christ did,” she said. “The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know from the Gospel is love and always love.”

It reminded me of the families of the victims of the Mother Emanuel Church massacre in Charleston, South Carolina. In 2015, nine Black worshippers were murdered at an evening Bible study by a young white man trying to start a race war. In court a few days later, one by one, grieving parents and siblings stood up and told the shooter, “I forgive you.”

Instead of being inspired by Erika Kirk’s grace, though, Trump rejected it. “I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them,” he declared. He would not forgive his enemies. “I am sorry, Erika,” he said. So much for “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute you.”

With leadership like this, it’s no wonder that one survey found a quarter of Republicans and nearly 40 percent of Christian nationalists now agree that “empathy is a dangerous emotion that undermines our ability to set up a society that is guided by God’s truth.” MAGA rejects the teachings of Jesus to “love thy neighbor” and care for “the last, the least, and the lost.” It recognizes only a zero-sum war of all against all. The world may look gilded from the patio at Mar-a-Lago, but the MAGA view is fundamentally fearful and impoverished. MAGA sees a world of vengeance, scorn, and humiliation, and cannot imagine generosity or solidarity.

The whole exercise is suffused with barely disguised misogyny. The extremist pastor Joe Rigney wrote a book called Leadership and the Sin of Empathy. Rigney is an ally of the influential Christian nationalist Douglas Wilson, who thinks giving women the right to vote was a mistake and advocates turning the United States into a theocracy. (Would it shock you to know that Pete Hegseth is a big fan of Wilson’s❓)

Rigney declared that Bishop Budde’s plea for mercy was “a reminder that feminism is a cancer that enables the politics of empathetic manipulation and victimhood that has plagued us in the era of wokeness.”  Manipulation by wily women is a sexist trope as old as Adam and Eve, but this is an ugly new twist. Instead of women tempting men with vice, now the great fear is that women will tempt men with virtue.

Christian nationalism—the belief that God has called certain Christians to exercise dominion over every aspect of American life, with no separation between Church and state—is ascendant in Trump’s Washington. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, displays a historic flag outside his office on Capitol Hill that in recent years has been embraced by Christian nationalists. The same flag was carried by insurrectionists on January 6, 2021, and flown by Justice Samuel Alito’s wife at the couple’s vacation home.

The National Council of Churches, the largest ecumenical organization for mainline churches in the country, has warned about the dangers of Christian nationalism. “In this quest for political power, Christian humility is lost, as is the message of God’s love for all humanity,” the council said in a 2021, statement. “Where the Bible has at its core the story of a people committed to welcoming aliens and strangers because they themselves were aliens and strangers, and to defending the oppressed because they themselves were once oppressed, the Christian nationalist narrative rejects the stranger and judges the oppressed as deserving of their oppression.”

This is exactly the kind of mainstream Christian view that enrages Allie Beth Stuckey. The author of Toxic Empathy, who styles herself a voice for Christian women, has more than a million followers on social media. In between lifestyle pitter-patter and her demonization of IVF treatments, she warns women not to listen to their soft hearts. This commissar of MAGA morality targets other evangelicals whose empathy, she warns, has left them open to manipulation. 

Maybe they recognize the humanity of an undocumented immigrant family and decide that mass deportation has gone too far. 

Or they make space in their heart for a young rape survivor forced to carry a pregnancy to term and start questioning the wisdom and morality of total abortion bans. It’s all toxic to Stuckey.

The don’t-love-thy-neighbor Christians have powerful allies in the war on empathy. Silicon Valley techno-authoritarians and social Darwinists argue that empathy is weakness and “suicidal” for civilization because it gets in the way of ruthless ambition and efficiency. That’s pretty rich for the crew that’s busy building artificial-intelligence systems they freely admit might obliterate humanity one day. But these are the same billionaires who dismiss critics and liberals as “NPCs,” or non-player characters, a video-game term for nonhumans. Once you see people that way, why would you care about understanding or helping them❓😢

They may be convinced that they’re the smartest guys in the room, but they’re dead wrong about this. Empathy won’t destroy civilization; indeed, it just might save it. We can debate policies. We can debate theology. But if we give up on empathy, we give up on any real chance of coming together to solve our problems. Empathy does not overwhelm our critical thinking or blind us to moral clarity. It opens our eyes to moral complexity. It’s not a sign of weakness; it’s a source of strength.

This might be lost on tycoons who have a huge financial interest in leaving the rest of us behind on their way to Mars, but one might hope Christians would know better. You don’t need to look too far back to find examples of those who do. I disagreed with President George W. Bush about many things, but I respected his sincere belief in a more “compassionate conservatism.” There was no greater proof of this commitment than the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a mission of mercy that helped save an estimated 26 million lives. It was a public-health miracle. Many of the program’s most ardent champions were evangelical Christians inspired by Jesus’s teachings to heal the sick and feed the hungry.

But, tragically, that hasn’t stopped the Trump administration from slashing PEPFAR and other lifesaving assistance to people in need around the world. Experts predict that 14 million people could die by 2030 as a result—including millions of children.

Some earlier leaders of the religious right were also cruel and demagogic. When I was coming up in politics, we had huckster televangelists instead of social-media snake-oil salesmen, but the game was the same: exploit religion to profiteer and push an extreme political agenda. In the 1980s, right-wing firebrands such as Jerry Falwell and Anita Bryant claimed that the AIDS epidemic was a plague sent by God to punish gay people. There was no shortage of rhetoric that I would call dehumanizing or un-Christian. These reactionary religious forces led a decades-long campaign against women’s rights and gay rights that helped turn the Republican Party against democracy itself. The rise of unabashed Christian nationalists is their legacy.

It has pained me to see my own United Methodist Church split by deep disagreements over gay rights. Many conservative American congregations seceded and joined with traditionalist congregations in Africa and elsewhere to form a separate, less inclusive Church. 

Other denominations have faced similar struggles. All of this has left room for upstarts such as Douglas Wilson’s Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, a growing network of more than 150 Christian-nationalist congregations.

Another factor is Trump himself. No one mistakes him for a devout Christian,or a person of faith or morality. But his corruption isn’t just a personal matter—it taints everything he touches, including his Christian supporters. The conventional wisdom is that Trump says out loud what many others think privately, that his blunt bigotry gives permission for people to throw off the shackles of political correctness and woke piety. That may be partly true. Trump does bring out the worst in people. But it’s more than that. He makes people worse. Cruelty and ugliness are infectious. When they become the norm, we all suffer.

But what we’re seeing today feels different—and more dangerous. The question of who deserves empathy, and the rights and respect that flow from our shared humanity, has always been highly contested in our politics. But until now, no major American political
movement has ever seriously suggested that empathy and compassion themselves are suspect.

The decline of mainstream Christian voices in recent decades left a vacuum that the most extreme ideologues and provocateurs eagerly filled. The Catholic Church and the old mainline Protestant denominations have been weakened by destabilizing scandals and schisms, and have seen declining attendance. With the percentage of Americans identifying as Christian hitting record lows, the National Council of Churches expects that as many as 100,000 churches across the country will close in the coming years, mostly mainstream Methodist, Presbyterian, and Lutheran congregations.

Consider the contrast between Trump and President Reagan, two presidents beloved by the religious right.

President Reagan offered a vision of an optimistic, sunny, welcoming America. He called it a shining city on a hill. His policies often failed to match his rhetoric, but the stories we tell ourselves matter. They shape our national narrative and shared moral framework. By contrast, Trump’s story is dark and angry, filled with “American carnage” in the streets. It makes sense that his political movement—and its version of Christianity—would be dark and angry, too.

President Reagan cultivated a distinctly American mythos: the aw-shucks cowboy working his ranch and standing up to tyranny. Trump, especially in this second term, has styled himself as a gold-plated Caesar, the farthest thing from an American ideal. Instead of the decency of Washington we get the decadence of Caligula; rather than the humility of Lincoln, the cruelty of Nero. You’d think good Christians would see the irony of throwing their lot in with a wannabe Roman emperor, but the whole point of a cult of personality is to leave you blind and afraid.

Finally, I am convinced that the uniquely pernicious dynamics of social media have put all of these trends on steroids.

Our addiction to algorithms has made society more lonely, anxious, and mean. Platforms like TikTok and Elon Musk’s X reward extremism and marginalize moderation. They promote negativity and smother positivity. Empathy doesn’t drive engagement, so it’s not valuable.

In the 1980s, I was impressed by Neil Postman’s book Amusing Ourselves to Death, which argued that television was corroding American society and democracy. He bemoaned how religion and politics had been reduced to shallow entertainment as a distracted public lost the ability to think clearly and debate rationally.

Today I find Postman’s warnings eerily prescient. He argued that “each medium, like language itself, makes possible a unique mode of discourse by providing a new orientation for thought, for expression, for sensibility.” Now that social media—and short-form, algorithmic video in particular—has taken over the world, it’s crucial that we understand how this medium is shaping our culture. It’s no coincidence that TikTok has given such a boost to far-right politics. It’s not just the hidden hand of the Chinese Communist Party, or the group of Trump supporters who recently bought the app’s American shell, although that’s also alarming. It’s that the medium is designed to boost vitriol and knee-jerk reactions rather than thoughtful dialogue. It provides fertile ground for misinformation and is inhospitable to serious journalism or debate.

Cultural critics have begun warning that we are at risk of becoming a “post-literate” society. They point to declining reading and math scores across the Western world in the years since the smartphone was introduced. The fear is that with fewer people reading books and newspapers, we’ll lose the ability to process complex ideas and arguments, become more susceptible to propaganda, and, to paraphrase Postman, scroll our way to oblivion.

There’s good reason to believe that a post-literate society will also be a post-moral society. We already have Christian influencers saying empathy is a sin. We have a president who is allergic to civic virtue. Americans spend countless hours on social media and are lonelier, angrier, and more distrustful than at any time I can remember.

What can we do❓ A good place to start is to follow the example of courageous faith leaders standing up to the Trump administration’s abuses. 

On January 23, about 100 clergy were arrested after protesting deportation flights at the Minneapolis airport. They prayed and sang hymns in the brutal cold until police took them away. Many more have fanned out across the city to support protesters and help immigrant families in need.

In November, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops released an unusual special message condemning “the indiscriminate mass deportation of people” and “the vilification of immigrants.” It is rare for America’s bishops to speak with one voice like this—the last time was in 2013—but they said, “We feel compelled now in this environment to raise our voices in defense of God-given human dignity.”

I hope grassroots faith leaders across the country who are appalled by what they see from an immoral administration and an extremist political right also find their voice. It is understandable that some stay silent out of fear. Influencers like Stuckey are zealously policing any deviation from the party line. But speaking truth to power has been part of the Christian tradition since the very beginning. The Christian community—and the country—would be stronger and healthier if we heard these voices.

We also need to contest this ground politically. If MAGA Republicans are going to give up on traditional virtues such as compassion and community, Democrats have an opportunity to fill that gap. The violent overreach in Minnesota may provide an opening to engage new audiences looking for alternatives. Many evangelical Christians who have long voted Republican are turned off by Trump’s venality and cruelty. Even some Republican leaders are starting to question the administration’s berserk immigration crackdown.

Democrats need a big tent that welcomes people of faith into our coalition, even if we don’t agree on every issue. Don’t forget, liberal Christianity has a long and storied history. Progressive people of faith have led virtually every major social movement. Think of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. marching with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel in Selma. That’s a spirit we should work to reclaim.

Indeed, welcoming is not enough. Democrats should actively reach out to people of faith and try to win their trust and their votes. That dozens of liberal clergy have already signed up to run for office in the 2026 midterms is an encouraging sign. This doesn’t mean Democrats should abandon our commitments to freedom, justice, and equality for all, or fight any less hard for what we believe in. We should listen with an open heart and an open mind, and be unafraid to talk about our values.

I know empathy isn’t easy. But neither is Christianity. When Jesus called on us to turn the other cheek and pray for those who persecute us, it was supposed to be hard. We fail more than we succeed—we’re human—but the discipline is to keep trying.

It’s especially challenging to feel empathetic for people with whom we disagree passionately. I certainly struggle with this. You may remember that I once described half of Trump supporters as “the basket of deplorables.” I was talking about people drawn to racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia—you name it. “Some of those folks, they are irredeemable,” I said. I still believe intolerance and hatred are deplorable. Slandering a peaceful protester and cheering his murder is deplorable. Terrorizing children because their parents are undocumented is deplorable. But as a Christian, I also aspire to see the goodness in everyone and believe that everyone has a chance at redemption, no matter how remote.

When I see brutality like we’ve all witnessed in Minnesota, I ask myself: Can I really find empathy for people who insist on dehumanizing others? I’m not sure, to be honest. I’m still working on it. I believe our hearts are big enough to hold two truths at once. We can see the humanity in even the worst of our fellow human beings and still fiercely resist tyranny and repression. We can stand firm without mirroring the cruelty of our opponents. These are dark days in America. To rekindle our light, we must reject cruelty and corruption. To be strong, we need more empathy, not less.

Murders in Minneapolis by evil ICE are the result of Gestapo tactics deliberately targeting innocent American citizens

Echo opinion letter published in the Baltimore Sun, in Maryland:

Noting that courageous protesters in Minneapolis are tracking the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (evil ICE) activities and coordinating protests through online chats and databases, Vice President JD (Hillbilly) Vance said that the “engineered chaos … is the direct consequence of far left agitators” (“Report: Encrypted chats reveal protesters tracked ICE before Minnesota shooting,” Jan. 26).

That is false. 🤥IOW another lie.

The chaos is the direct consequence of the ruthless, blatantly unconstitutional and sometimes murderous actions of brutal ICE agents and their superiors. The protesters are well within their constitutional rights to organize by the best legal means available to call attention to the ICE horror show.

Protect peaceful protestors. Although a few protesters may have gone too far, it is evil ICE’s cruelty that prompts them, and ICE’s cruelty that now, finally, is becoming of concern even to true conservative Republicans - like Senator Susan Collins. ❗ Thank heaven for peaceful protestors 🙏❗

#WhereIsSenatorSusanCollins❓

From  Travers Nelson, in Baltimore, Maryland  #ICEGestapo

Donald Trump lies and Karoline Leavitt amplifies it!

 The Cruelty and Theatre of the Trump Press Conference

"We're all mad here," said the Cheshire Cat to Alice. 

During the Donald Trump second term, he and his staff have made the media briefing his signature rhetorical form.
Echo essay by Vinson Cunningham published in The New Yorker Magazine

Texas oil fields for crude before successfully running for President—as much to establish strong images as to earn a family fortune. These are the ultimate capitalists, pecking ruggedly at the earth’s skin and turning its lifeblood into piles of cash. The men surrounding Trump were the kinds of guys he always seems to want to impress.

Now Trump, having asserted control over Venezuela’s resources as well as its immediate political fate—an arrogation he has taken to calling the “Donroe Doctrine”—had something to offer them. He started to deliver his remarks without having turned on the microphone in front of him; his Vice-President, J. D. Vance, leaned over unstealthily and pressed a button that activated the audio and made a green light on the microphone glow. Trump didn’t skip a beat. Now amplified, he was already midsentence, rushing off urgently, like a burbling river. Leaders of all the “biggest” countries had called to congratulate him about nabbing Maduro. “They’re all impressed,” he said, implying that the oil guys should be, too.

Playacting for journalists standing in an unruly huddle just off camera, Trump asked questions of the oilmen, wondering how soon they could suck the ground under Venezuela dry. “And you’re very much set up for the heavy oil, right?” he asked at one point. There was an implicit cruelty behind the exercise. He wanted the cameras to see him place Venezuela on the table like a celebratory goose and start slicing.

The White House press-briefing room, a small theatre for an increasingly sick show, sits atop what used to be a swimming pool. The pool was installed during the Administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who swam to maintain his strength after his paralysis. Today, the room is the central site of the Trump Administration’s ritual humiliation of the American media. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, presides over the space, transmitting the spleen and the constantly shifting imperatives of the President.

She’s good at telling lies on the job. Some press secretaries show hints of strain, managing the dual tasks of carrying the boss’s message and playing it straight with the press. Leavitt—who ran for Congress, in 2022, and lost—betrays no such struggle. She has a placid, open face and often, when she’s in a jovial mood, jokes around behind the lectern. When a wonky issue like health care comes up, she tends to read deftly and quickly from a sheet of talking points. When one of Donald Trump's favored hot-button issues arises, she speaks fluently off the cuff, as she did recently when describing undocumented people being hunted by ICE as “criminal illegal-alien killers, rapists, and pedophiles.”

Even when Leavitt is acting enraged, she does so with a small smile. Case in point: a fracas with Niall Stanage, a columnist from The Hill, who wanted to know how the Administration could possibly believe that ICE’s activity was going “correctly,” as the Donald Trump had enthused, when, for instance, one of its officers had been filmed shooting and killing  of the innocent American citizen named Ms. Renee Nicole Good, on January 7, 2026, in Minneapolis.

Leavitt took on the strict tone of a scolding teacher: “Why was, uh, Renee Good unfortunately and tragically killed?”

“You’re asking me my opinion?” Stanage asked.

“Yeah!”

“Because an ICE agent acted recklessly and killed her unjustifiably.”

Leavitt pounced. “Oh, O.K., so you’re a biased reporter with a left-wing opinion.” She said “left-wing opinion”—referring to an opinion she’d solicited just a second ago—with a slight, taunting singsong in her voice. She continued, “Yeah, because you’re a left-wing hack, you’re not a reporter, you’re posing in this room as a journalist, and it’s so clear by the premise of your question. And you and the people in the media who have such biases but fake like you’re a journalist—you shouldn’t even be sitting in that seat.”

This short diatribe, delivered with a raised voice (but, still, that Cheshire Cat slimy smile) was a characteristic sample of the Administration’s verbal style. Its members apply names and labels—illegal, criminal, alien, left-wing, agitator—in order to dehumanize the people to whom those words are supposed to refer. If you fit into this ever-growing lexicon of categories, you shouldn’t have your job, or sit in your seat, or try to protect your neighbors, or even, in Good’s “unfortunately and tragically” illustrative case, be left alive.

A few days earlier, Vance gave a press conference to shame the media about its reporting on Good and her killer, Jonathan Ross, and to slant the story in a more Trump-friendly direction. Vance showed off a way with words quite similar to Leavitt’s, and to Trump’s. He made sure to note that Minnesota was under siege by fraud, perpetrated mostly by “Somali immigrants.” Without the benefit of a thorough investigation, he nonetheless asserted that Good had been trying to ram Ross with her car, called her a “deranged leftist,” and, admitting that her death was a tragedy, deemed it “a tragedy of the far left.” So many names for nonpersons, emitted with such ease!

And yet Trump doesn’t always sound so pleased with the promotional efforts of his team. On January 20th, to mark a year since he retook office, the President made a guest appearance at Leavitt’s briefing. She’d teased the spot on her X account with QVC-ish good cheer: “A very special guest will be joining me at the podium today. . . . TUNE IN! 👀🇺🇸.”

Trump showed up with a thick sheaf of papers, listing the “accomplishments” of the year. He’d turned the United States into the “hottest country anywhere in the world” and wanted to get some credit. “We’ve had the best stock market in history,” he said. “I mean, I’m not getting—maybe I have bad public-relations people, but we’re not getting it across.” ♦

Published in the print edition with the headline “Meet the Press.”

Donald Trump and maga Republicans are in denial about how dangerous ICE is causing harm to innocent American people

Just when it seems as if Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown can’t get any worse, it does. Echo opinion published in the Boston Globe by Abdallah Fayyad.

Over the span of less than three weeks in January, federal officers shot and killed two US citizens in Minnesota.

In normal times, it should be easy to say that Renee Good and Alex Pretti — who were standing up for their neighbors and against the aggressive and violent operation to arrest, detain, and deport immigrants — should still be alive. But top government officials have justified the killings by accusing both Good and Pretti of being “domestic terrorists.”

That this cruel and callous rhetoric seems almost reflexive for top officials underscores the most disturbing fact about the Trump administration’s overall strategy on immigration: This crackdown is neither coherent nor methodical. It’s random. Students have been detained for merely participating in protests, certain cities and states have been targeted for no apparent reason, and homes have been raided without judicial warrants.

It’s that arbitrary nature of the crackdown — and the Trump administration’s vociferous defense of its worst evil excesses — that make it nothing short of state terror. Specifically, the US government is wielding state violence arbitrarily to instill fear in and ultimately subdue the population. Immigration officers can strike, it seems, anyone, anywhere, anytime. And now, as the Good and Pretti killings show, it’s gotten to the point where no one can take their freedom or safety for granted, citizen or not.

What we’re witnessing on the streets of Minneapolis and elsewhere, in other words, is not “law and order” but full-on, unadulterated, state-sanctioned chaos.

The problem is that there’s no clear remedy for this kind of reckless and hate filled governance. Congress has proved itself to be spineless❗ and unwilling to exercise its core duty to be a check on the executive branch. 

Meanwhile, the legal system has shown that it’s not up to the task of meaningfully restraining a rogue president; in some cases, the courts have even emboldened Trump.

So with institutions failing to protect Americans from government abuse, how can we put a stop to the chaos❓ The answer is to unleash more chaos — not from the top down but from the bottom up.

But another way, Americans have to respond to state-sanctioned violent chaos with people-powered nonviolent chaos until the Trump administration is forced to retreat from the streets.

That means nonstop mass protests that attract people across ideological divides, akin to what Americans did in record numbers after a police officer murdered George Floyd in 2020.

It means targeted and sustained boycotts that make cooperating with Trump’s immigration crackdown financially unfeasible for businesses.

It means disrupting commerce to the point where a general strike is not a fanciful idea but an achievable tactic that labor unions can employ.

Everyone has the ability to create this kind of disruption so long as they do it together: Teachers have that power, doctors and nurses have that power, civil servants have that power. The point that Americans have to make to the Trump administration is that there is no going back to business as usual until people can sleep at night knowing that their rights are intact and that the sheer cruelty of immigration crackdowns will end.

Admittedly, it can feel futile to engage in protest against a government that’s so deeply out of touch and drunk with power. But that’s also precisely the time to participate in a mass movement.

Americans have to remember that even the most repressive, authoritarian regimes in the world aren’t immune to public backlash, and neither is the Trump administration. If movements around the world have toppled kings, then it’s not so far-fetched to believe that ordinary people can come together to stop agencies like the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from intimidating, harassing, and abusing immigrants and nonimmigrants alike.

That, of course, is no easy task. And it comes with serious risks. After all, Ms. Renee Good and Mr. Alex Pretti were engaging in this kind of resistance when officers shot and killed them. 

But at the end of the day, public perception still matters — that’s why Trump officials keep lying about the people they wrongfully detain or kill, essentially telling Americans not to believe what they’re seeing with their own eyes. And public perception is ultimately the last guardrail against tyranny. The only way for that guardrail to work is for people to continue expressing outrage and their dissatisfaction with the status quo, however uncomfortable that may be.

Minnesotans have set an example for the rest of America to follow. “The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone,” writes Adam Serwer in The Atlantic. “In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive — because of its diversity and not in spite of it.”

Indeed, we can already see hints that the relentless pushback from Minnesotans has, at least for the time being, caused the Trump administration to reassess its tactics. 

Since Mr. Pretti’s killing, Gregory Bovino, Border Patrol’s so-called commander-at-large, who has been one of the leading officials behind Trump’s immigration crackdown, has reportedly been demoted and is expected to retire soon. Even some Republican lawmakers have now called for the ouster of Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security.

The key 🔐🗝️ in this defining moment is for Americans to create chaos while ensuring that they stick to nonviolence. The last thing that the most vulnerable among us need is any pretext that the Trump administration can use to expand its operations or that the president can use to invoke the Insurrection Act in order to send troops to American cities.

So no matter your political background — whether you’re a leftist or a Trump voter who believes this has gone too far — if you want things to change, you have to exercise your rights. If there’s a demonstration in your neighborhood, for example, consider joining the crowd. If your elected representative is holding a town hall, show up, speak out, and make them uncomfortable (especially if they’re defending the administration). If you belong to a labor union, you can also help organize a strike, and all of us can boycott companies that collaborate with ICE.

And if ICE ultimately shows up in your neighborhood, take a note from Minneapolis residents and protect your neighbors in whatever way you can: Demand that officers follow the law, protest their raids, and record their transgressions for the world to see.

It might feel chaotic at times, but that’s exactly what the country needs: good chaos.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans must eliminate Immigration and Customs ICE evil operations

Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski says
Homeland Security secretary should resign amid rising calls for her firing or impeachment by Lisa Mascaro for AP published in the Anchorage Daily News, Alaska.

WASHINGTON, DC— A groundswell of voices have come to the same conclusion: Kristi Noem must go.

From Democratic Party leaders to the nation’s leading advocacy organizations to even the most centrist lawmakers in Congress, the calls are mounting for the Homeland Security secretary to step aside after the shooting deaths in Minneapolis of two people who protested deportation policy.

At a defining moment in her tenure, few Republicans are rising to Noem’s defense.

Noem “has, through her words, and I think in her actions — she’s taken a direction that has not been helpful to the situation, and I don’t think that it helps the country," said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.

“I think you have a secretary right now that needs to be accountable to the chaos and in some of the tragedy that we have seen,” Murkowski added. “... I voted for her. I think the president needs to look at who he has in place as a secretary of Homeland Security. I would not support her again and I think it probably is time for her to step down.”

Top House Democratic Reps. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Katherine Clark of Massachusetts and Pete Aguilar of California said in a joint statement that “the country is disgusted by what the Department of Homeland Security has done.”

“Kristi Noem should be fired immediately,” the Democrats said, “or we will commence impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives.”

Republicans and Democrats call for Noem to step down❗

What started as sharp criticism of the Homeland Security secretary, and a longshot move by Democratic lawmakers signing onto impeachment legislation in the Republican-controlled House, has morphed into an inflection point for Noem, who has been the high-profile face of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement regime.

Noem’s brash leadership style and remarks in the aftermath of the shooting deaths of Alex Pretti, R.N., and Renee Good — in which she suggested Pretti “attacked” officers and portrayed the events leading up to Good’s shooting an “act of domestic terrorism” — have been seen as doing irreparable damage, as events on the ground disputed her account.

Her alliance with Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino, who was recalled from the Minnesota operation Monday as border czar Tom Homan took the lead, has left her isolated on Capitol Hill.

“What she’s done in Minnesota should be disqualifying. She should be out of a job,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C.

But Donald Trump stands by Noem and praises her work

President Donald Trump defended Noem at multiple junctures, strongly indicating her job does not appear to be in immediate jeopardy.

Asked by reporters as he left the White House on Tuesday for a trip to Iowa whether Noem is going to step down, Trump had a one-word answer: “No.”

Pressed later during an interview on Fox (Fake❗) News if he had confidence in Noem, the president said, “I do.”🙄

“Who closed up the border? She did,” Trump said, “with Tom Homan, with the whole group. I mean, they’ve closed up the border. The border is a tremendous success.”

As Democrats in Congress threaten to shut down the government as they demand restrictions on Trump’s mass deportation agenda, Noem’s future at the department faces serious questions and concerns.

The Republican leadership of the House and Senate committees that oversee Homeland Security have demanded that department officials appear before their panels to answer for the operations that have stunned the nation with their sheer force — including images of children, including a 5-year-old, being plucked from families.

“Obviously this is an inflection point and an opportunity to evaluate and to really assess the policies and procedures and how they are being implemented and put into practice,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, where Noem had been the state’s House representative and governor before joining the administration.

Asked about his own confidence in Noem’s leadership, Thune said, “That’s the president’s judgment call to make.”

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer called Noem a “liar” and said she must be fired.

Fighting about DHS funding

Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that DHS enforces the laws from Congress, and if lawmakers don’t like those laws, they should change them.

“Too many politicians would rather defend criminals and attack the men and women who are enforcing our laws,” McLaughlin said. “It’s time they focus on protecting the American people, the work this Department is doing every day under Secretary Noem’s leadership.”

The ability of Congress to restrict Homeland Security funding is limited, in large part because the GOP majority already essentially doubled department funding under Trump’s big tax breaks and spending cuts law.

Instead, Democrats are seeking to impose restraints on Border Patrol and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations as part of a routine annual funding package for Homeland, Defense, Health and other departments. Without action this week, those agencies would head toward a shutdown.

To be sure, Homeland Security still has strong defenders in the Congress.

The conservative House Freedom Caucus said Tuesday in a letter to Trump that he should invoke the Insurrection Act, if needed, to quell protests. The group said it would be “ready to take all steps necessary” to keep funds flowing for Trump’s immigration enforcement and removal operations.

On the job for a year, Noem has clashed at times with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, as Republicans and Democrats have sought greater oversight and accounting of the department’s spending and operations.

Noem has kept a low profile since the Saturday press conference following Pretti’s death, though she appeared Sunday on Fox (Fake❗) News.

She doubled down in that interview on criticism of Minnesota officials, but also expressed compassion for Pretti’s family.

“It grieves me to think about what his family is going through but it also grieves me what’s happening to these law enforcement officers every day out in the streets with the violence they face,” she said.
Once rare, impeachments now more common

Impeachment, once a far-flung tool brandished against administration officials, has become increasingly commonplace.

Two years ago, the Republican-led House impeached another Homeland Security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, in protest over the then-Biden administration’s border security and immigration policies that allowed millions of immigrants and asylum seekers to enter the U.S. The Senate dismissed the charges.

Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said if the Republican chairman of the panel, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, does not launch an impeachment probe, he would.

Raskin said he would work with the top Democrats on the Homeland Security and Oversight committees to immediately launch an impeachment inquiry related to the Minnesota deaths and other “lawlessness and corruption that may involve treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

More than 160 House Democrats have signed on to an impeachment resolution from Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill.

Anchorage Daily News staff along with Associated Press writers Rebecca Santana, Kevin Freking and Joey Cappelletti contributed to this story.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans must end Trumpzi reign of terror and end ICE gestapo tactics

The political logic of Trump’s violent lawlessness
He is using the border as a pretext to dismantle the rule of law

everywhere, normalize state terror, and replace constitutional government with personal rule.

Senator Susan Collins alert❗

Echo opinion published in the Boston Globe by Timothy Snyder:

Timothy Snyder, the inaugural chair in Modern European History at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, is the author or editor of 20 books. © Project Syndicate, 2026.

The moral horror wrought by President Trump’s second administration is incontrovertible. The killing of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse and US citizen, by Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis was recorded from all angles by brave observers and seen by people around the world.

Given this, the radical has become (strangely 😕 )the pragmatic. Trump, and everyone else responsible for these outrages, should be impeached and convicted. Immigration and Customs Enforcement should be disbanded, as should its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security. And the people who have killed — both publicly and privately — should be investigated and hauled before judges and juries.

But the logic of the killings is as important as the killings themselves. While a truth in itself, the moral horror is also a sign of the administration’s lies and lawlessness, a political logic known from 20th-century Soviet and Nazi totalitarian regimes and from attempts to replace the rule of law with personal tyranny.

In a constitutional republic like the United States, the law applies everywhere, at all times, to everyone. For that logic of law to be undone, the aspiring tyrant looks for cracks in the system that can be pried open.

One of these cracks is the border, where the country ends. Because the law ends there, too, an obvious move for the tyrant is to turn the whole country into a border, where no rules apply. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin did this in the 1930s, with border zones and deportations preceding the Great Terror. Adolf Hitler did it, too, in 1938 Germany, with immigration raids that targeted undocumented Jews and forced them to flee the country.

Trump, by his own admission and that of his Cabinet members, is following the same playbook. He is using ICE, nominally a border authority, to enforce his own whims on a US state of his choosing — a Democratic Party stronghold with deep-rooted civic idealism. It is not legal to attack a city over its politics, or to flood its streets with federal agents to gain information about a state’s voters in exchange for withdrawing ICE agents.

The border becomes the pretext to undo the law everywhere, at all times, and against anyone. It is the crack that can be opened. The wedge is constructed with lies, which begin as cliches and memes that the government pounds into our heads, and which the media repeat, mindlessly or with malice.

One of these cliches is “law enforcement,” which is uttered over and over like an incantation. “Law enforcement” is not a noun like “table” or “house”; it is not a fixed thing. It is an action, a process that Americans have a right to see and judge for themselves. People enforcing the law do not wear masks, nor do they trespass, assault, batter, and kill at will. Public killings carried out by Trump’s goons do a great disservice to the local, state, and federal authorities whose job is to police effectively, particularly when such state terror is defined as “law enforcement.”

It follows the public killing earlier this month of Renée Nicole Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis mother and fellow US citizen, and an untold number of unseen deaths and disappearances in American detention centers like “Alligator 🐊Alcatraz.”

The lies continue as provocative inversions, or what I called “dangerous words” in my book “On Tyranny.” 

In this case, the Trump administration is using “terrorist” and “extremist” — terms long favored by tyrants — to defame those killed by their policies. Their “messaging” reflects what Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil” — or, as Václav Havel put it, the evil of banality. Words turn into reality with the collaboration of those who hear them.

In this sense, those who actively lie are complicit in the killings in Minnesota and any more to come. But those in the media who choose to treat propaganda as the story, who begin from lies rather than from events, are also complicit. The border is the crack, the lies are the wedge, and the people who accept those lies are opening it wider.

Words matter, whether uttered first or repeated. They create an atmosphere, they normalize — or they do not. We must choose to see, to call things by their proper names, to condemn people who lie.

Behind the moral horror of these public killings is a political logic. Those who resist the Trump administration’s lawlessness and the lies understand this. In Minneapolis and many other places, they are doing right — and giving the endangered American republic its best chance of survival.🙏

Can somebody who knows JD Vance please read this essay to him? Vance is a Roman Catholic convert who needs a spiritual refresh

You can tell a lot about someone by what they leave behind.
Echo essay published by Katy McGrady in Substack.

Underlining the Parable of the Good Samaritan
The Ulma Family of Poland are saints for our time.

What family photos were framed on the wall❓

What items were left on a nightstand❓ What stories do people tell about them❓ What passages are highlighted in their Bible❓ 

Wictoria and Jozef Ulman had a single word written in the margins of their family Bible, in the Gospel of Luke, right beside the parable of the Good Samaritan, which they had underlined: Yes❗

That tells us almost everything we need to know about the Ulmas, and what legacy they left behind: the Gospel was real to them.

This Polish farm family, with six children and one on the way, knew the Gospel mandate to care for the tossed down, cast aside, and hurt was not just an abstract idea for preachers at the pulpit. They knew they were called to care for the marginalized themselves, in their real life circumstances, and so when the Szali and Goldman families came to find shelter as the Nazis were rounding up the Jews in 1942, the Ulmas opened their home. 

Their farm became a shelter, and for nearly two years, this Polish Catholic family and these Eastern European Jews lived and worked together, living the parable of the Good Samaritan.

It would’ve been very easy for the Ulmas to say, “we have little kids, we can’t hide you here.” It would’ve been entirely understandable for the Ulmas to say, “we can’t afford to feed you” or “we don’t want to die too.” I’m not sure anyone would’ve blamed Jozef or Wictoria for being fearful or cautious in the face of the evils of the day.

But,  they did not cower. They did not hesitate.

In an interview with Paulina Guzic for OSV, (Our Sunday Visitor) the postulator of the Ulma canonization cause said this:

“It is sometimes said that they behaved downright irresponsibly by taking in all these Jews. After all, they risked their lives, the lives of their children. And Wiktoria was soon expecting the birth of this next, seventh child. Well, it’s precisely the opposite. In their lives you can see a deep desire to live. They very much wanted to live … constantly discovering the Lord God, the beauty of everyday life, the beauty of life.”

They were eventually sold out by a policeman who knew their whereabouts, bringing the German police to their front door, leading to their brutal execution in the front yard. 17 people total, including the six Ulma children, were shot and killed in a matter of minutes, all so the Nazis could make an example of them. 

Eyewitness accounts include the horrific details that as the adults were shot and killed, the children stood by screaming and crying. 

Not knowing what to do with these children in the aftermath, the police decided to shoot and kill them too. When asked about it later, Eilert Dieken, the German commander, responded: So that you would not have any problems with them.

The Ulmas, in the face of unspeakable evil, believed the mandate of the Gospel: they were moved with compassion, they attended to their neighbor, they treated others with mercy, and were killed for it.

The Ulma family was beatified together in 2023. This is the first time an entire family, including a child who was being born at the time of his mother’s martyrdom, were all raised to the altars together.

A monument to their heroism and sanctity stands in Markowa with these words:

Saving the lives of others they laid down their own lives. Hiding eight elder brothers in faith, they were killed with them. May their sacrifice be a call for respect and love to every human being! They were the sons and daughters of this land; they will remain in our hearts.

In light of everything happening in our country and world, in the face of remarkable injustice, visible violence, horrific destruction, and deep division, I can’t help but ask the Ulma family for their intercession.
Can I too say “Yes❗” to the command of the parable of the Good Samaritan? Am I willing to help those who have been tossed down, cast aside, and rounded up?

At the heart of the Good Samaritan parable is someone beaten down, and someone passing by sees the injustice, hurt, pain, and suffering, and decides to help.

As videos of the shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on Saturday, January 24, 2026, circulated, what happened mere moments before his death is notable: he was trying to help a woman tossed down on the ice.

Political commentary and vastly varied opinions about what’s happening with immigration enforcement and protesting aside, it’s evident that a man was killed — after a confusing scrum and in the midst of a tense situation — after his last earthly act was to try and help someone stand back up.

Archbishop Bernard Hebda’s statement after yet another tragedy in his Archdiocese is poignant:

“Following January 24, 2026, Saturday’s tragic shooting in Minneapolis, I ask all people of good will to join me today in prayer for Alex Jeffrey Pretti, for his parents, and for his loved ones.

The loss of another life amidst the tensions that have gripped Minnesota should prompt all of us to ask what we can do to restore the Lord’s peace. While we rightly thirst for God’s justice and hunger for his peace, this will be not be achieved until we are able to rid our hearts of the hatreds and prejudices that prevent us from seeing each other as brothers and sisters created in the image and likeness of God. That is as true for our undocumented neighbors as it is for our elected officials and for the men and women who have the unenviable responsibility of enforcing our laws. They all need our humble prayers.”

Perhaps the only way to see the image and likeness of God in another is to first and foremost remember we’re all called to be a good samaritan: to help others up when they’ve been pushed down, to offer shelter when we have room, and to see the goodness of God in even the most heartbreaking moments.

As Archbishop Coakley, president of the USCCB said in his statement:

“As a nation we must come together in dialogue, turning away from dehumanizing rhetoric and acts which threaten human life. In this spirit, in unity with Pope Leo, it is important to proclaim, ‘Peace is built on respect for people!’”

A priest I know and respect in the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis, who is also a chaplain in the Minnesota National Guard, gave a very short and powerful homily yesterday. It’s worth watching in full.

Yesterday, at the Angelus address at noon above St. Peter’s Square, Pope Leo spoke about the timing and place of Jesus’s mission. When John the Baptist was arrested, he could’ve perhaps been tempted to think “not the right time.” As his cousin is imprisoned, he could’ve perhaps assumed “not the right place.”

And yet… “it was precisely in this dark situation that Jesus began to bring the light of the Good News: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near’.”

If these moments seems like they are heavy, or dark, or hopeless, or terrifying, the courage of the Ulmas can remind us that the Gospel is real, and the Gospel, proclaimed by you, is needed most, right now.

“In our lives, both individually and as a Church, interior struggles or circumstances we deem unfavorable can lead us to believe that it is not the right time to proclaim the Gospel, to make a decision, to make a choice, or to change a situation. 

In this way, however, we risk becoming paralyzed by indecision or imprisoned by excessive prudence, whereas the Gospel calls us to dare to trust. God is at work at all times; every moment is “God’s time,” even when we do not feel ready or when the situation seems unfavorable.”

We must dare to trust. In justice and healing, in mercy and forgiveness. We must dare to hope, that God is not (nor will he ever be) finished. We must dare to believe, that God is working, even still, even when it’d be far easier to close the door, ignore the news, or try and pretend it’s all just going to be fine.

 

And as Pope Leo said, our God is one who “…enters fully into the complexity of human situations and relationships.”

This is not a moment for ceaseless news commentary. It’s not just a moment for video analysis or hand wringing. It’s a moment for Gospel proclamation, because only then can the Gospel serve “…as a leaven of fraternity and peace among all individuals, cultures, religions and peoples.”

And what does the Gospel proclaim❓ What should we write Yes❗ to in the margins of our Bible❓

He approached the victim, poured oil and wine over his wounds and bandaged them. Then he lifted him up on his own animal, took him to an inn and cared for him. -Luke 10:34