Donald Trump and maga Republicans are using SNAP money for political purposes: Middle Class are worried about hunger

The Human Toll of the Suspension of SNAP (Suplemental Nutrition): The food-assistance program serves around forty-two million Americans. In Texas, even people with decent jobs are feeling the pain.  Echo report published in The New Yorker Magazine, by Rachel Monroe.

Angel Goodwin used to work remotely, processing applications for Medicaid and for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. People would sometimes yell at her over the phone—“I’ve been called every name but a child of God,” she said—but it was worse when they cried. 

“Especially the elderly. They would be approved for, like, thirty dollars a month, and they’re getting Social Security for, like, nine hundred and forty-three dollars. They’d be, like, ‘Honey, I can’t—I don’t know what I’m going to do, I don’t have anybody.’ ” Goodwin, a single mother with an eleven-year-old son, also received SNAP benefits. “Little do they know I’m in the same boat,” she said.

Earlier this year, Goodwin began to feel pain shooting down from her shoulder, most likely a consequence of repetitive computer work. At the beginning of October, she took a short-term disability leave. Then, toward the end of the month, she logged in to her SNAP account and saw an alarming notification: November benefits weren’t coming. She and her son had already scaled back to subsist on the short-term disability benefits, which were “not very much at all,” she said. Now they’d have to make do with less, even as food prices seemed to get higher every week. “Personally, my faith will always outweigh my fear,” she said. “But it’s at a scary point now.”

Amid the prolonged government shutdown, which is now the longest in American history, SNAP benefits have (sadly 😯😥) become a political football. 

Although in previous shutdowns, emergency funds were used to cover the SNAP program, which serves around forty-two million Americans, but the cruel Trump Administration has declined NOT to do so. A number of states stepped in to cover the gap, or to provide additional money to food banks; Texas, which has a multibillion-dollar rainy-day fund, has done neither. (H-E-B, the grocery-store chain which arguably serves as a second layer of social services in the state, has donated six million dollars to food banks.) At the end of October, a federal judge ordered the Administration to continue SNAP payments. But, several days later, there was nothing in Goodwin’s SNAP account; the Administration has said that November payments will be only partial, and it’s unclear when the funds will arrive.

Goodwin, who grew up in South Carolina, had what she describes as “a pretty rough childhood.” In her early twenties, she cut ties with her family, and found herself with a young child and no real support system. She slept on friends’ couches and then, when she felt her welcome wearing out, in her car.


Being homeless was tolerable—“You meet cool people on the streets, people with wisdom,” she said—but she wanted her son to have a more stable life. She got a job working the night shift at a gas station, and earned enough money to move into a hotel where she paid by the week. It took two years to save up enough to cover a deposit to rent a small apartment. “I didn’t have any furniture—no couch or anything like that, just a couple of pans that I’d had in the hotel,” she said.

“We pretty much slept on the floor. We literally started from zero.” When she felt overwhelmed, she prayed to God for guidance. She began having dreams about Texas, the state’s outline popping up in unexpected places. In her journal, she asked God if this was really what he wanted her to do— she’d never left South Carolina before. Yes, was the answer she received, so she began researching apartments online. 

By now, she was working remotely as a customer-service representative for a bank, but she’d need more money to fund the move. On YouTube, she learned about retail arbitrage—essentially, buying discounted items in bulk and then reselling them on Amazon at a markup. The scheme eventually stopped working, but by then she’d saved up enough money to cover the deposit on an apartment in Houston.

Two years ago, she moved into a renovated two-bedroom with pale-gray walls and a bright, narrow kitchen. Her days were taken up with work and with homeschooling her son.

On the morning of November 3rd, day three of no SNAP, Goodwin put her son in the car and drove twenty-five minutes to the West Houston Assistance Ministries, a nonprofit social-services organization, which was hosting a special food-distribution event for SNAP recipients. When she arrived, at around 9 A.M., a line of cars snaked down the block, and volunteers in neon vests directed traffic. Nationwide, fourteen per cent of households are considered food-insecure. In Harris County, which comprises Houston, the figure is close to forty per cent. 

WHAM had seen a notable uptick in need since the shutdown began, on October 1st. “We’ve been focussed on food, but we’ve also seen an increase in evictions—it’s a crisis on top of a crisis,” Neysa Gavion, a social worker and a senior case manager at WHAM, told me. “And the interesting thing is, while we’ve always had people at the poverty line or below, this is the middle class.” 

Recently, the organization had provided assistance to an I.R.S. employee and single mother who was days from being evicted. “People that weren’t impacted before are being impacted now,” Gavion said. A retired woman waiting in line told me that she had contemplated growing her own food. “I got a little balcony. Maybe I can grow some beans?” she said.

A sound system played nineties country and sixties pop, while another group of volunteers carried crates of milk out of the sun. Under a blue shade tent, a woman named Destaney handed out information about food banks and assistance programs. Destaney works at WHAM a few days a week as part of her coursework at community college, where she’s studying to be a paralegal. 

In class, all anyone wanted to talk about was politics, ICE apprehensions, and the shutdown. “At first it didn’t affect me directly, but I get food stamps, too,” she said. “Today, when I woke up and I didn’t get them, I’m, like, O.K., this is really real.”

Goodwin’s car inched forward until she reached the front of the line. She popped her trunk and a volunteer placed a box inside. Another volunteer offered Goodwin a bouquet of flowers that still had a day or two of life in them. Goodwin, surprised, thanked her effusively. When she got back to her apartment, she sent her son into the other room to resume his lesson—he was learning about phytoplankton—as she surveyed the box’s contents: a bag of grapes, some chicken, a can of SpaghettiOs, a gallon of milk. “He loves SpaghettiOs, so that will be his school lunch,” Goodwin said. She had a small stockpile of dried beans, rice, and canned vegetables, some of it from other food banks. “I’ll make it work. There are recipes on YouTube. Or you just put random ingredients into ChatGPT,” she said. The other day she’d made a slow-cooked stew with green beans and turkey legs which she’d served over rice. It had looked (and tasted) good enough that she’d taken a video of it bubbling on the stove. “Everything but the turkey legs came from the food bank,” she said.

Online, people were saying that a judge had told Donald Trump that he’d have to release SNAP funds, but Goodwin wasn’t putting too much stock into that. “It’s just so hard to tell. I think it may start up again in December, or maybe something supplemental will happen. Honestly, to be completely transparent with you, I try not to put my faith in the system,” she said. 

In the meantime, when she got overwhelmed, she asked ChatGPT for help. “I just say, ‘I’m feeling really frustrated now. Please give me some tools to calm my mind.’ ” 

American history is all about immigration and our economy is proof about the value of supporting immigrants

A Big Idea to Solve America’s Immigration Messs- An editorial echo published in The New York Times:

The federal government’s ability to regulate immigration, a basic function of any nation, is broken. Over the past four years, some eight million people settled in the United States, and most of them did so unlawfully. Instead of an immigration policy calibrated to the needs of the country, both Americans and immigrants are being let down by a set of outdated laws inconsistently enforced by underfunded agencies. Chaos has been a predictable result.

Donald Trump won a second term as president on the promise that he would turn back the clock, restoring order by returning immigrants whence they came. The president-elect has vowed to deport all immigrants who do not have legal permission to be in the United States, and some who do. He also has described plans to curtail both illegal and legal immigration.

The United States undoubtedly needs to establish control over immigration, and we describe below the necessary changes. 

But, mass deportations, or reductions in future immigration, are not in the national interest.

Immigrants are America’s rocket fuel, powering our nation’s unsurpassed economic and cultural achievements. The famous poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty mischaracterizes those who leave their home countries behind. They are not the tired and the poor; they are people possessed of the determination, skill and resources to seek a better life. Nobel Prizes have been awarded to 142 immigrants to the United States. Nearly half of the companies in the Fortune 500 were founded by immigrants or their children. Blue jeans, Tesla, basketball, “God Bless America” — all the work of immigrants.

There’s a more basic imperative, too. America needs more people. Americans no longer make enough babies to maintain the country’s population. To sustain economic growth, the United States needs an infusion of a few million immigrants every year.

Without immigrants, the population would start to decline immediately, leaving employers short-handed, curtailing the economy’s potential and causing the kinds of strains on public services and society that have plagued Rust Belt cities for decades.

In Japan, where the population has been in decline since 2009, there are no longer enough postal workers to deliver mail on Saturdays. Nine million homes have been abandoned, and a recent report estimated that more than 40 percent of Japanese municipalities might disappear. The challenges prompted Fumio Kishida, then the prime minister, to declare in January 2023 that “Japan is standing on the verge of whether we can continue to function as a society.”

An effective American immigration system requires three big shifts in federal policy, and all three are necessary for any to succeed.

1. The government must make every reasonable effort to prevent people from living and working illegally in the United States. Congress should allocate the resources necessary to secure the nation’s borders and to overhaul the shambolic asylum system so that decisions are made at the border. To further deter people from coming to the United States to seek work — including the significant share of undocumented workers who enter the country legally, on temporary visas, and then remain illegally — the United States also needs to hold employers accountable for the legal status of their workers.

2. Congress should legislate an orderly expansion of legal immigration, including a role for the federal government in directing people to the places that would benefit from population growth and in underwriting the transition costs.

3. The nation also needs to deal humanely with the estimated population of 11 million illegal immigrants who already live here, including the more than three million “Dreamers” brought to this country as children. For too long, large parts of the economy have depended on the labor of immigrants neither paid nor treated as the equals of Americans, a system of exploitation that also undermines American workers and law-abiding employers. 

Most immigrants who have made their lives in this country should be given a path to citizenship.

Versions of this tripartite approach were once embraced by political leaders in both parties. But in recent elections Democrats increasingly cast themselves as full-throated defenders of immigrants, regardless of legal status, while Republicans increasingly portrayed even legal immigration as a negative force in American life. The influx of immigrants into the country, in record numbers in the modern era, has overwhelmed red and blue state approaches. Both parties need a reality check.

Democrats should embrace the need to control who enters the country. High rates of immigration across Europe and North America have not led to more tolerance of newcomers but instead have led to a resurgence of nativist political movements that have shaken liberal democracy. 

Climate change is likely to increase the pressure by propelling more migrants to search for safety and opportunity. 

Frankly, the United States cannot admit everyone who wishes to come into the country, and the choice of who may come should be intentional, not a result of a government’s lack of the will and the capacity to enforce its own laws.

Trump, for his part, is mistaken to portray immigration as a drain on the nation’s resources. Instead, Trump should be condemned for his routinely bigoted portrayal of immigrants, often in defiance of the facts, as a danger to the American people and to the nation’s identity.

Instead, immigration ought to be regarded as an investment in the nation’s future.

The difference between welcoming immigration and trying to suppress it is the difference between Houston and Birmingham, Ala.

Houston began to attract large numbers of immigrants in the mid-1980s. During a downturn in oil prices, large apartment complexes built for oil field workers in neighborhoods such as Gulfton, west of downtown, started advertising for new tenants in Spanish. The basic attractions have remained the same ever since: inexpensive housing, plentiful jobs and the comfort of following in the footsteps of other immigrants.

The Houston area’s population has quadrupled, and nearly a quarter of the 7.5 million residents were born outside the United States, including more than 40 percent of Houston’s doctors, petroleum engineers and scientists, according to the Center for Houston’s Future, a nonprofit research group funded by the local business community.

Ngoc Ho came from Vietnam with her parents in 2014 to join her grandfather, who settled in Houston after the Vietnam War. Ms. Ho, 33, who now runs a day care program, said she loves Houston for its diversity. “It’s like a hot pot,” she said. “You don’t feel different, because everybody has English as a second language.”

The region’s prosperity stands as a rebuttal to Mr. Trump’s insistence that immigration is bad for American workers. Immigrants without specialized skills have pushed Americans out of some types of low-wage work because they are willing to accept worse conditions and lower pay. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts the current surge in immigration will slow the pace of wage growth for Americans without college degrees over the next few years.

But, as immigrants spend the money they earn, they create more jobs than they fill. To care for roughly three dozen children, most of whose parents are immigrants, Ms. Ho employs eight people. The C.B.O. predicts that by 2034, because of the surge in immigration, the nation’s annual economic output will be 3 percent larger.

Americans have a long history of celebrating past waves of immigration while worrying that the newest arrivals will be different — perhaps less successful or less American. But in a study published in 2017, the economists Ran Abramitzky and Leah Boustan found that the current generation of immigrants was assimilating culturally and prospering economically at essentially the same pace as previous generations.

“The children of immigrants from El Salvador are as likely to be economically successful nowadays as were the children of immigrants from Great Britain 150 years ago,” they wrote in “Streets of Gold,” a 2022, book describing their research.

In contrast to Houston, Alabama, in 2011, passed what was then the most restrictive anti-immigration measure in the country. It prohibited hiring, renting property to or transporting undocumented immigrants. It denied financial aid at state universities to undocumented students. Some parts of the law have since been repealed, but the state’s politicians continue to demonize immigrants, even though Alabama has relatively few.

“Alabama has a terrible reputation, well deserved, for not welcoming immigrants,” said David Sher, a former chairman of the Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce.The state’s hostility to immigration helps to explain why Birmingham has lost population in every decade since 1960. It is a city of unfilled spaces — vacant lots, parking lots — and of open jobs. Alabama in August had just 55 available workers for every 100 job openings, among the lowest rates in the country, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Ashley McMakin, who built a popular chain of four Ashley Mac’s restaurants around the Birmingham area, serving home-style lunches and takeaway dinners, said she struggles to find workers. She offers signing bonuses and the kinds of benefits rarely seen in restaurant work, including health insurance and flexible scheduling.

She has partnered with programs that help ex-felons and people recovering from substance abuse return to the labor force.
But, she still faces chronic staffing difficulties, which forced her to postpone expansion plans. At one point, Ms. McMakin posted a picture of a T-shirt on her Instagram feed that read: “Please Be Patient, There’s Like 3 of Us.” The caption said: “Do you like our new staff shirts?! If we don’t keep laughing, we might start crying.”

In 1965, the Black playwright Douglas Turner Ward premiered a one-act satire that revolved around the premise that all of the Black workers in a Southern town had disappeared. Homes went uncleaned. Babies went unfed. The town’s factories were shuttered. A local businessman complained that “the absence of handymen, porters, sweepers, stock-movers, deliverers and miscellaneous dirty-work doers is disrupting the smooth harmony of marketing!”

Immigrants are now the dirty-work doers. Americans rely on people born in other countries to pick crops, pluck chickens, build homes. Visit a wealthy neighborhood in the middle of the day, and you will find the streets alive with immigrants caring for the children, the dogs and the lawns. It is a bitter irony that even as the United States was ending the legal segregation of African Americans, it was effectively creating a new caste system in which many immigrants were enlisted as workers but excluded from becoming citizens. Roughly 11 million people, one-fourth of the foreign-born population, do not have permission to live here.

There is an inescapable unfairness in offering a path to citizenship to people who are in the United States illegally while so many others wait for years or even decades for their chance for legal entry. After decades of political malpractice and misjudgment, there is also no better alternative.

Mr. Trump will not succeed in making immigrants disappear. During his first term, he deported 325,000 people who were living in the U.S. Even if he deports 10 times as many in his second term, a volume many experts regard as beyond the government’s capacity, millions of immigrants would remain in the country, more vulnerable to exploitation because it will be dangerous for them to seek help.

A saving grace of the current system is that children born in the United States to illegal immigrants are Americans in full; Trump’s avowed intention to end birthright citizenship, which would require a constitutional amendment, would make undocumented status hereditary.

Americans face a choice between perpetuating a society maintained by an underclass of unauthorized workers or moving closer to the democratic ideal of a nation of citizens — a nation in which all are equal before the law. As Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in 1958, “citizenship is man’s basic right, for it is nothing less than the right to have rights.”

Maintaining an underclass limits not only what its members can achieve but also what they can contribute. Cesar Espinosa’s family entered the United States from Mexico illegally in 1991, when he was 5 years old. Thirteen years later, he was accepted to Yale University, but he could not enroll because, as an illegal immigrant, he could not obtain financial aid. Instead, Mr. Espinosa built a nonprofit, FIEL Houston, that pushes to make higher education available to undocumented immigrants.

“There’s a version of my life where I’m one of those people living in a condo downtown and working in the Energy Corridor,” he said, referring to the glass and steel Houston office towers where some of the nation’s largest companies are headquartered. “I’ve sat up all night sometimes thinking about it.”

Mr. Espinosa’s family was part of the wave of immigrants who entered the country after the last major overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws, in 1986, under President Ronald Reagan, which was intended to greatly reduce illegal immigration.

The fatal flaw was that the government did not impose any real obligations on employers.

It is illegal to knowingly employ illegal immigrants, but the penalties are modest. The government runs a verification system called E-Verify, which is optional for most employers and notoriously easy to game. Verification is based on possession of a valid Social Security number, but illegal immigrants can use someone else’s.

In the mid-2000s, Todd Davis, chief executive of an identity-protection company called LifeLock, published his Social Security number on billboards as a marketing gimmick. A Houston lawyer who works on immigration cases said he found at least 165 instances in which undocumented workers in the Houston area used Mr. Davis’s number.

The government’s longstanding focus on policing immigrants rather than employers is akin to arresting drug users rather than dealers, and it has been roughly as successful.

In 2009, Marek Brothers, a Houston construction company, fired dozens after a government review found the workers had used other people’s Social Security numbers. Stan Marek, the company’s chief executive, said he soon noticed that some of those workers found jobs doing the same work for independent contractors too small to be subjected to scrutiny by federal regulators.

The correctives are straightforward: Limit the classification of workers as independent contractors, so companies are responsible for more of their work forces; legislate an affirmative obligation for companies to verify the immigration status of those workers; create a robust verification system.

Verification would protect workers and law-abiding employers from unfair competition as well as protecting immigrants from exploitation.

Mr. Marek said his business is challenged not just by the low-priced competition but also by the difficulty in finding legal workers even at higher wages. He recruits at high schools and halfway houses, but a vast majority of those he is able to hire are legal immigrants, and there aren’t enough. “Immigrants do the hard work, and we haven’t had a legal way to have them do that since 1986,” he said.

Satish Nannapaneni left India on a student visa in 1997, to earn a master's degree in software engineering at the University of Houston, Clear Lake. After obtaining a green card, he started Flexera Global, a tech services company based in Sugar Land. He is now an American citizen with 140 employees.

He’d like to hire more people, but he can’t find American workers. Those who have the skills are often uninterested in a job that requires regular travel.

Companies can use a special visa, the H-1B, to hire highly educated foreign workers, but the government hasn’t increased the number of visas since 2006. In 2024, Mr. Nannapaneni’s company applied for 47 H-1B visas and received nine.

“People want to come here, they’re talented, and still the politicians keep talking about it instead of fixing the issue,” Mr. Nannapaneni said.

From technology companies in Texas to turf farmers in Alabama, employers insist they can’t find enough domestic workers, and the numbers bear them out. The unemployment rate is low, and as Americans have fewer children, the shortage of workers is projected to increase. The nation must import more than 1.6 million people each year simply to maintain the population.

Proposals to expand legal immigration often focus on identifying immigrants who are most likely to contribute, economically or otherwise, to our national life.

Minimum standards, such as barring criminals, are a matter of common sense. Governments, however, are not always equipped to determine who will make the greatest contributions.

Hugo Ortega had no obvious skills when he arrived in Houston in 1984 at the age of 19.

He decided to leave Mexico City because he was hungry and facing homelessness. He knew that one of his uncles had found work in Texas, sometimes sending home letters that included $20 bills carefully wrapped in aluminum foil.

He was caught at the border five times before he succeeded in crossing on the sixth attempt. In Houston, he took a job as a dishwasher. Four decades later, he is a Houston icon, the chef and a co-owner of a string of celebrated restaurants. “I put my life at risk to come here, and I would do it in a heartbeat again and again and again,” he said.

The amnesty provisions in the 1986 immigration law allowed Mr. Ortega to obtain a green card in 1989 and to become an American citizen in 1996. Along the way he married the restaurant owner, and together they built a culinary empire introducing Houston, long the homeland of Tex-Mex food, to more authentic varieties of Mexican cuisine.

Houston restaurants now serve faithful renditions of a wide range of homeland cuisines, as well as mash-ups that may not be found anywhere else, like beef pho kolaches and brisket tikka masala. 

But, Mr. Ortega knows that immigrant dishwashers in Houston today cannot follow his path. These hard working people have little chance of becoming full members of the society in which they have worked. Indeed, they now face the possibility of being forced to leave.

What would he say to Americans skeptical of immigration?

“Give us an opportunity,” Mr. Ortega said. “You know, just give us an opportunity to cook for you. Give us an opportunity to be part of this wonderful country.”

President Joe Biden is the candidate with wisdom and experience. Vote Blue 2024

Houston Chronicle OPINION
//RECOMMENDATIONS BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Houston chronicle endorses Joe Biden for President of the United States in the Democratic Primary (Opinion)

Now that the Kansas City Chiefs triumphed over the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII — and without the help of Taylor Swift and the CIA, as far as we know — this nation can turn its attention to another winning team. 

We have in mind the winning Biden administration. Under the leadership of the oldest and arguably the most experienced president in American history, the team in the White House for the past three years has performed remarkably well, despite the rancor and divisiveness that have afflicted this nation for nearly a decade.
The accomplishments of an administration dedicated to governing, one that believes in the power of government to make life better for the American people, is a key reason we heartily endorse the reelection of President Joe Biden. The other reason, equally important, is to fend off the chaos, corruption and danger to the nation that would accompany the return of Donald Trump to the White House.

Although Presiden Biden has some shortcomings, to be sure, but during the past three years, his administration has bee a decent and truthful potent reminder to fellow Democrats, to independents and to those Republicans who have somehow resisted Trump’s cultish appeal, that our nation has a viable alternative to dangerous Trumpziis. 

Here is a sampling:

• If it's really "the economy, stupid," that determines success in presidential elections, then Biden can probably rest easy at neutral. But, in the time of fake newsTrumpziism, "No", Bidenomics alone didn't save us, but neither did they damn us. 
• One of the clear advantages of a president as experienced as Biden is wisdom: in this case, the wisdom to get the heck out of the Fed's way as it masterfully applied the brakes to what could have been runaway inflation.
• The economy has recovered from the perils of the pandemic and is now healthier than that of any other advanced nation. With unemployment approaching a 50-year low, companies large and small need workers. (Notice the “help wanted” signs in shop windows, the “We’re Hiring” signs outside huge warehouses and distribution centers just off I-10 east of Brookshire.)
• Inflation is trending downward, somehow, despite all dire prophecies of economists, without the bitter medicine of a recession or a period of high unemployment. 
• Food prices are still high, and hard-working Americans are still wincing at grocery store receipts, but gas prices have fallen, as the U.S. produces more oil than any country in history, including Saudi Arabia. 
• In an ongoing effort to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, theBiden administration is investing $7 billion in an ambitious solar-power project and is promoting other alternative energy projects, as well.
• Biden administration in its first year managed to pass a bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that’s expected to add an estimated 1.5 million jobs per year for the next 10 years. This administration’s “infrastructure week” is investing in clean water and high-speed internet. It’s repairing roads and bridges, upgrading air- and seaports, modernizing our power infrastructure, investing in public transit and pahssenger rail and cleaning up Superfund and brownfield sites.
• A little heralded initiative related to infrastructure involves “strategic sector” investments in employment-distressed counties around the nation. 
• In 2021, according to a study conducted by Brookings Metro (a think tank) and MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, these 1,071 counties have received about $82 billion in private-sector investment from industries the Biden administration has targeted. Industries that will locate in these areas include manufacturers of semiconductors (in this country instead of China) and equipment to generate solar and wind power. 

One of the distressed areas to benefit is Wilbarger County, Texas, along the Red River, northwest of Wichita Falls. 

A $4 billion private-sector venture is constructing a mega-scale green hydrogen plant that’s expected to create 115 permanent jobs and more than 1,300 construction jobs in a county where population has declined almost every decade since 1940. It’s worth noting that Wilbarger County in 2020 cast 21 percent of its votes for Biden, nearly 78 percent for Trump.😖😒

Letter to the editor response: 

It is with great respect that I write this letter to show appreciation to the Houston Chronicle editorial board for their faithfulness to our free press. I know personally what it means to live under a government-controlled press. In Argentina, our then-president and dictator Juan Perón dissolved the free press, practically on day one. You point out the reasons for us to support Biden, and “the other reason, equally important, is to fend off the chaos, corruption and danger to the nation that would accompany the return of Donald Trump to the White House.” I wholeheartedly agree, and protecting our precious democracy should be our most important priority.

Toy B. Halsey, in Houston,Texas

President Joe Biden must support the Afghan military asylum seeker

Echo report by Allison P. Erickson published in The Texas Tribune

Afghan soldier jailed in Texas for crossing border should receive presidential pardon, U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee says.

Abdul Wasi Safi, who worked as an intelligence officer in the Afghan National Security Forces alongside U.S. troops, hopes to apply for asylum in the U.S. but is awaiting a criminal trial in a Texas detention center.

The Houston Democrat said she has sent a letter to the White House asking the Biden administration to ensure Abdul Wasi Safi starts his life in America without a criminal record.

HOUSTON — U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee is demanding the release of a former Afghan soldier seeking asylum in the U.S. who is being held at a Texas detention center after he attempted to cross the U.S.-Mexico border to reunite with his brother.

Wasi, as he is known, worked as an intelligence officer in the Afghan National Security Forces alongside U.S. troops. He fled Afghanistan in 2021 as the Taliban began targeting citizens who had previously helped the U.S. during the decades long war. 

Wasi crossed three continents to make it to the Texas border, where he hoped to meet his brother, who is now a naturalized U.S. citizen. Instead, he was arrested and has been in custody since Sept. 30.

“I’m calling on Biden’s administration to release my brother,” said Sami-ullah Safi, Wasi’s brother. “He believed in this mission of this country in Afghanistan. That’s why he fought alongside the United States Special Forces … to eliminate terrorism.”

In a letter to President Joe Biden, the congresswoman requested that he issue Wasi a pardon, stating an owed debt to our allies ought to be honored by the country.

“When their service exposes them to credible threats, we must redouble our effort to keep our word because doing so also protects our troops stationed around the world today and into the future,” the letter reads.

And to ensure Abdul Wasi Safi begins his life in the U.S. without a criminal record, Jackson Lee, a Houston Democrat, has sent a letter to the White House asking the Biden administration to pardon the Afghan veteran for any crimes related to his crossing the border seeking asylum.

“This is a mistake that needs to be corrected immediately,” she said at a news conference.

Jackson Lee, is a co-chair of the House’s Afghanistan caucus, and she is the highest-profile official to demand Wasi’s release. Previously, several military and immigrant rights groups called on the White House to intervene in Wasi’s case.

Jackson Lee said Friday she believed the White House had not received those messages. Jackson Lee stood at a podium in the Mickey Leland Federal Building flanked by supporters of the Safi brothers, including local Afghan community members in Houston, military veterans and new members of Wasi’s legal team.

Wasi, who is facing criminal charges for attempting to cross the border without proper paperwork, was expected to have a plea hearing earlier this week. However, a new legal team asked for an extension. Wasi has also begun to cooperate with the federal government. He was interviewed by the FBI earlier this month.

The congresswoman said Wasi must be granted asylum without a criminal record.

“I characterize this as a logistical error and nightmare for Mr. Safi,” she said. Jackson Lee specifically underlined the criminal misdemeanor charges as the major cause for Wasi’s asylum case delays.  A new court date has been set for mid-February.

“I’m the last person that wants to jeopardize the national security of this nation, or to jeopardize any security for the American people, but I think it is important to try to be fair across the board,” Jackson Lee said.

A Houston-area volunteer started a GoFundMe account in the name of Wasi’s brother, Sami, to cover likely medical expenses from a team of periodontists, dentists, audiologists and mental health professionals on standby to assess Wasi after his release.

Meanwhile, Abdul Wasi Safi’s physical and mental health are deteriorating as he waits at a detention center near the border.

FLOTUS (aka Melania) wears flood stilettos: No! Seriously!

As the flooding in Houston, Texas, worsens, many people have escaped to shelters around the greater Houston area. 

Most of the desperate evacuees in Houston look like this picture, while inside the Houston convention center, where Hurricane Harvey evacuees are double the capacity:

But, when Melania Trump showed up with her husband, Donald Trump, to view the devastating damage, her choice for shoes was to wear stilettos.  It's sort of the modern version of the Marie Antoinette quote abut "let them eat cake". In other words, if people can't wear shoes because, of course, most of their apparel is water logged, then let them wear fashion stilettos instead?

Melania Trump, Off to Texas, Finds Herself on Thin Heels

So, those Trumpenistas, the people who defend all that Donald Trump says, does or supports regardless of the circumstances. Here's a fashion dilemma for all of you. While desperate Texans and people in Houston are struggling just to find shelter, not knowing how they will recover from the disaster of Hurricane Harvey's unprecedented flooding, they are certainly not concerned about their current state of fashion. Unfortunately, the wife of Donald Trump, who is known by the acronym FLOTUS, seemed to put fashion above utility, when she (Melania) showed up in Texas, with Donald Trump, wearing fashion runway high stilettos.

No seriously! This is a classic "I can't make this up," cliche.

What was Melania thinking? This is sort of like the 21st century's version of the Marie Antoinette quote about "let them eat cake".

In other words, if evacuees can't fine shoes, then let them wear stilettos instead.

Unfortunately, I expected more from Melania. She did not represent or extend the empathy that I expected to see, from a woman in her position.