Donald Trump hearing from angry Republican Catholics who are disgusted by his obsession with His Holiness Pope Leo

A president cosplaying as Christ and trashing the pope crosses a moral red line | Echo Opinion published in the Miami Herald by Mary Anna Mancuso.

I’m a Republican. I’m also Catholic. And this weekend, both of parts of my identity were at odds when President Trump attacked Pope Leo, the first American pope in the history of the Roman Catholic Church. Trump called Leo, “WEAK on Crime and terrible for Foreign Policy,” in a post on Truth Social on Sunday evening. He then boasted it was because he was in the White House that Pope Leo is in the Vatican. But Trump didn’t stop there, in the same post, he made it political saying, “I like his brother Louis much better than I like him, because Louis is all MAGA.”

More troubling was the AI-generated image Trump shared on Truth Social depicting himself as Jesus Christ. When a sitting president borrows sacred religious imagery and attacks the head of the Catholic Church, it’s not just political rhetoric but blasphemy. The image has since been deleted after backlash, but the point remains: Trump’s attacks on Pope Leo are morally wrong. 

No other American president has ever done this.

Catholics believe the pope is the successor to St. Peter, the spiritual leader of more than a billion worldwide. 

But, here in South Florida, this isn’t some distant theological concept — it’s personal. The Archdiocese of Miami is home to roughly 1.3 million Catholics, the single-largest religious group in South Florida. That’s more than a number, it’s families across Miami-Dade County, and 30% of adults, according to Pew Research. 

You don’t have to be Catholic to understand that the pope’s role is moral, not political. Criticizing the pope isn’t new, it’s happened for centuries. Catholics have debated and disagreed with Church leaders before. But, morally, this is different from theological differences. Treating the papacy as a political opponent to be mocked crosses a line as red as the pope’s vestment.

When the president ridicules a spiritual leader, it makes the office of the presidency look small, not powerful. When every institution is treated as political and something to be conquered, nothing is left above politics. Democracy requires shared ground — institutions that are beyond the reach of one man’s ambition. The Catholic Church is one of them.

For two millennia, the church outlasted empires and survived wars. And it’s always emerged from centuries of political turmoil with its mission intact. Indeed, the Catholic Church will outlast Trump’s insolence, too. 

Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said he was “disheartened” by Trump’s comments, saying, “Pope Leo is not his rival; nor is the Pope a politician. He is the Vicar of Christ who speaks from the truth of the Gospel.” GOP Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska said, “I saw a lot of Republicans commenting in it last night. Some saying he’s just trolling, and others saying it’s anti-Christian. 

When you divide your own party it is self destructive. To me it was a gaudy and juvenile post.” Ari Fleischer, former White House press secretary under President George W. Bush, called it “inappropriate and embarrassing.” 

These are not liberal critics. These are Republicans telling Trump he went too far. And the post’s deletion suggests the White House knew it, too. On Monday, Leo told reporters he is “not afraid of the Trump administration or of speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel, which is what the Church works for.”

“We are not politicians,” Leo said. Leo didn’t mince words and conservatives must defend that distinction. A president who portrays himself as Christ while treating the pope as a political enemy is doing more than attacking a religious leader. Trump is claiming authority that no American president is meant to have. But the deletion of the image wasn’t an act of contrition. There hasn’t been an apology or statement issued. Under pressure, Trump retreated — which is telling. It shows the backlash worked and that a line still exists. And it means Americans — including conservatives and Christians who support Trump — will not follow him past it. The papacy isn’t a political target, and Jesus Christ isn’t a brand. Any president who refuses to acknowledge that diminishes the office he holds. 

Mary Anna Mancuso is a member of the Miami Herald Editorial Board. Her email: mmancuso@miamiherald.com

Donald Trump descended into American democracy and continues to degrade the Republican party

Donald Trump has shown his authoritarian mentality from the moment he entered (I describe it as "descended" into) the 2016, presidential elections. 

Trump slowly descended a golden escalator to the basement of his eponymous New York tower, he clambered on to a makeshift stage and began his (racist based!) announcement speech. On 16 June 2015, the then mogul announced his White House run. Four years on, reporters who covered that Trump Tower speech recall the lies and bombast that defined his (failed!) presidency

Maine Writer - Republicans are drunk on the cult "kool-aid". Their leader suggests executing and shooting enemies. The GOP continues to bow down. 

Echo opinion published in the Miami Herald:

Back in 2016, Americans brushed off as hyperbole comments like his offer to pay the legal fees of supporters who knocked “the crap out of” protesters at one of his rallies. It was, thanks to Trump, that for the first time in American history, rioters stormed a democratic institution — the U.S. Capitol — to stop the certification of an election.

What if the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol had succeeded?

There are no lessons learned. Cult supporters continue to support Trump, who leads national and state Republican presidential primary polls.  All this while Trump's rhetoric has gone from off-the-cuff remarks to straight-up violent.

He’s suggested a military general, the man he appointed to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, should have been executed. Trump wrote on his social media website (fake!) Truth Social that General Mark Milley’s phone call, done in coordination with Trump’s defense secretary, to China after January 6 was “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH.”

Trump also posted a photo on (fake!)Truth Social of a law clerk who works for the New York judge presiding over his civil fraud trial, an invitation for violence against the judiciary. 

In fact, that (fake!) Truth Social message prompted the judge to issue a gag order barring Trump from speaking publicly about his staff. Trump told Republicans in California that shoplifters should be shot, raising the obvious comparison with a strongman Trump personally praised: Former Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, whose war on drugs embraced extrajudicial killings of thousands of suspects without a trial.

Trump also vowed to investigate media outlets he sees as enemies, showing his disregard for the Constitution and freedom of press. He’s called on Republicans to shutdown the federal government to stall the criminal cases against him and urged the House to impeach President Joe Biden because the “lowlifes Impeached me TWICE.” As have authoritarians before him, Trump sees the state’s machinery as a mere conduit to his own interests and retribution, which he masks under the guise of making America great again or draining the swamp.

The problem isn’t just that Americans have become numb to his remarks. Many see violence and the eroding of the institutions that keep a democracy strong as justified means to achieve the greatness that the former president sells them. It’s become part of the GOP platform to defund federal agencies like the FBI, which also investigates local crimes that Republicans themselves promise to curtail if they return to the White House. 

For whatever cult mentality exists, pitifully few conservatives seem bothered when Trump vows to use the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate his political rivals If Trump is a symptom of our polarized times, he’s made the annihilation of one’s opponents a righteous cause. A pastor’s opening prayers at an Iowa Trump rally over the weekend said, “We ask that those who stand against [Trump] be put to silence.”  (OMG...this is not a prayer, because there is no prayerful intent in this plea......!)

If reelected, could Trump incite another January 6, or even something worse? That’s a possibility that few of his rivals in the presidential primary publicly contemplate. Instead, many of them escalate Trump’s violent rhetoric. If the former president considered bombing drug labs in Mexico, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he wants to send military troops into the country to fight drug cartels. That would be the type of foreign intervention that Republicans themselves say prevents the country from putting “America First.” DeSantis also vowed to “start slitting throats” of federal bureaucrats.

Republicans who call out Trump’s threat to democracy are losing ground in their party. That’s dangerous because an emboldened Trump back in the White House, seeking revenge for his perceived victimization, could do more damage than he did in his first go-round.

Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida failed his responsibility as the leader in disaster emergency-management

An important echo opinion about the inept Governor Ron DeSantis published in the Miami Herald by Dan Gelber, the mayor of Miami Beach.

Mayor of Miami Beach Dan Gelber

Why is DeSantis battling Mickey Mouse, instead of fighting to keep us safe from hurricanes? 

❓❓ Governor Ron DeSantis has a Mickey Mouse problem❗

In nearly a century, Florida has not suffered a hurricane disaster like last year’s Hurricane Ian. The 149 people who died, mostly from drowning, are the most hurricane deaths in Florida since the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, well before the many scientific advancements we now take for granted; before predictive meteorological technologies; before cell phones and connected communication networks; before a robust highway system; before stronger building codes; and before a century of experience in, well, hurricanes. Yet 149 people died. Many in their homes, swallowed by the sea. Others were unable to outrun the rising waters. Still others because they were injured, but medical care was unable to reach them in time. Within hours of the hurricane ravaging our state, and before any real analysis or review, Gov. DeSantis fully defended government evacuation decisions by simply repeating the mantra that local and state emergency managers “followed the data.” 

Many, like me, wondered if this was really the best we could do? Was the loss of 149 lives truly inevitable? When pressed, DeSantis promised an after-action review of Hurricane Ian’s response. That made sense, not because we need to place blame, but because we need to know how to do better. 

Any review should not diminish in any way the first responders and emergency-management personnel who worked so hard, often heroically in the midst of the storm, nor the immediate post-storm efforts, as it seems clear the local, state and federal authorities got it right by delivering aid and assistance quickly. 

Yet, here we are, eight months later, and the state of Florida has yet to issue the after-action report promised by the governor or suggested reforms that might help us better identify shortfalls and implement corrections to help navigate a similar peril in the upcoming hurricane season. 

And to make matters even worse, the Florida Department of Emergency Management just canceled its annual emergency management training exercise that typically is held in the run-up to storm season.

As the mayor of a barrier island sitting at sea level on the Florida coast, I think we need some obvious questions authoritatively answered, especially with our next hurricane season just weeks away. 

Obvious questions for the inept Governor DeSantis

• Why was there such disparity in county decisions to evacuate? Lee County, for instance, where nearly half of the deaths occurred during Ian, waited a day after neighboring Charlotte County issued its evacuation order. What role did or should the state play in decision making? 
• Do we need to revisit our protocols for evacuation? Are we making the decision to evacuate too close to a storm’s arrival, especially in areas that include barrier islands that sit at sea level?
• Did we do enough to properly message and communicate to those in harm’s way? Many in Florida are new arrivals who have never experienced the power of a Category 3 or higher storm and, likely, need to receive better guidance. 
• Too many of the dead were the vulnerable elderly, who might have had challenges that come with age or infirmity. Have we implemented sufficient plans to evacuate those with special needs and those in hospitals? 
• While decisions to evacuate typically rest with counties, the governor and his emergency-management team are still the de facto leaders of disasters. Did they adequately make clear the necessity of evacuation?
• Are we prepared for a similar incident on the Southeast coast where the challenges and potential peril are even greater due to a substantially larger population than the areas impacted by Hurricane Ian? How has this not been the focus of our state government in the aftermath of such an extraordinary loss of life caused by Ian? In the immediate wake of Hurricane Andrew (August 1992), Gov. Lawton Chiles and the Florida Legislature commenced major revisions to the state’s building codes to protect our lives and created catastrophic funds to protect our property. Within weeks after 9-11, Gov. Jeb Bush and the Legislature led a top-to-bottom overhaul of Florida’s anti-terrorism efforts. By the way, both efforts were entirely bipartisan. But, since Hurricane Ian,  Governor DeSantis and the Florida Legislature have spent way more time “protecting” Floridians from drag queens, pronouns and Mickey Mouse than addressing what went wrong in Florida’s deadliest hurricane in nearly a century. This is unfortunate considering that weather events are only getting more extreme.

Despite the absence of state action, my city will do what we must to prepare. With the leadership of Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, we will participate in exercises next month to ready ourselves for the evolving nature of this challenge. We will seek to learn lessons from Hurricane Ian, because our residents should expect nothing less. The sad truth is that 149 souls should not be lost to a slow-moving hurricane. Acting as though the deaths caused by Hurricane Ian were inevitable does a disservice to those who perished. Declining to conduct a comprehensive review, unfortunately, hamstrings efforts to better prepare for the next one. Dan Gelber is the mayor of Miami Beach.

Gun violence is the horrific social equalizer: Everybody is equally vulnerable

On America’s gun violence, it’s time to stop asking why and start asking who?

Echo opinion editorial by Leonard Pitts, Jr. published in the Miami Herald

But why? It is the question that haunts every mass shooting. It seems to be asked in the tacit belief that if we could just find a reasonable motive, just suss out a cause, it might provide a way to comprehend the incomprehensible — even suggest a road map to preventing the next one. In America, there is always a next one. Sometimes, we do find motives — often racial or cultural hatred. Just as often, the shooter dies at the scene and takes his reasons with him.

But even when do we get a “why” it often feels superficial and does little to facilitate the question’s ultimate goal. Which is to say, it does little to help us understand the tragedy before us. Yet, like a gnawing itch, the question persists. Why did this happen? Why is America like this? We are conditioned to seek the answer after mass shootings, those moments of communal grief and rage when the nation’s attention turns, predictably as a wheel, to the fact that our public spaces have become shooting galleries. But it might be instructive to spend a little time contemplating a different category of firearms assaults. Call them “knucklehead shootings,” i.e., small-scale shootings where the motive is patently absurd. 

Like with mass shootings, there is no shortage.

In Atlanta, in June, a woman who worked at Subway was killed for putting too much mayonnaise on a sandwich. 

In Brooklyn, in August, a man who worked at McDonald’s was shot in the neck because the french fries were cold. In Houston, in September, a woman who worked at Jack in the Box allegedly shot at a customer in an argument over curly fries.

In Detroit, in November, a man was shot to death after he apparently failed to the hold the elevator door. 

In Tulsa, in November, a man reportedly shot at his stepfather after they got into an argument over a game of Monopoly. 

Absorb enough of these knucklehead shootings and the idea that a search for motive might yield any insight of value begins to feel silly, little more than intellectual busywork that gives the mind something to do, some illusion of control. And never mind that whatever the motive is, whether it was that the french fries were cold or the shooter hated black people, it will never come close to explaining, much less justifying the carnage.

It will never tell us why. So maybe it is time to stop asking, time to start interrogating the “who” and not the “why.” 

Many will say the problem is that guns are too readily available in America, which is demonstrably true, but even that only gets us part of the way to any sensible answer. Other countries — Canada and New Zealand for instance — also allow citizens to buy guns, albeit with laws more restrictive than you’ll find here. Gun ownership in both countries is widespread. Yet, American-style violence is not. 

Maybe it’s because America fetishizes not just guns, but also the idea that guns, more than a tool of hunting or even of self-defense, are a shortcut to capability, an instant equalizer allowing even the weak-minded and the lily-livered to stand their ground. 

Standing your ground is a foundation of the American myth, so it’s hard to overstate the allure that must carry for a certain type of person. For them, to own a gun is to own swagger, to know that nobody’s going to mess with you or move you off your spot. 

And that if you want hot french fries, then doggone it, you will have hot french fries. Because this is America. In the end, that’s all the “why” you’re ever going to get. And all you’ll ever need. 

Maine Writer post script- "french fries❓"..... Hmmmm, it seems to me like Pitts has not finished this opinion. He needs to write a sequel to include some expert opinion quotes about the premise he created in the lead:  "On America’s gun violence, it’s time to stop asking why and start asking who?"

Neverhteless, Pitts makes a case for gun violence being an equal opportunity social equalizer, because Americans are all at risk for being victims.

Who is the Republican human trafficker names "Perla"?

Did individuals illegibly acting on DeSantis’ behalf trick migrants at a shelter into getting on the stunt flight to Martha's Vineyard, in Massachusetts? Did they not even understand the distinction between refugee and asylum-applicant status themselves? Unraveling that would require knowing who exactly did the recruiting? Little is currently known besides several migrants having said that a woman named “Perla” was involved. (Echo reported in Slate by Ben Mathis Lilly).

Venezuelan Refugees

Texas sheriff will investigate how the Florida governor flying Venezuelan migrants to Martha’s Vineyard is human trafficking.

Authorities in Texas opened a criminal investigation into Governor Ron DeSantis’ operation to fly roughly 50 Venezuelan migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts last week.



Migrant Sonia, 30, wipes away tears in Eagle Pass, Texas, as she remembers how she left her child in Venezuela in hopes of providing a better life for them both.

Echo report published in the Miami Herald by Sarah Blaskey and Nicholas Nehemas.

Bexar County Texas Sheriff Javier Salazar announced at a news conference that his office is investigating whether the migrants were the victims of a crime, saying they were “lured under false pretenses.” Many migrants said they agreed to fly from San Antonio to the Massachusetts island after being promised jobs. But there was no work waiting. “I believe people need to be held accountable for it to the extent possible,” Salazar said.

“At this point, I’m not able to definitively say here’s the statute that they broke, either federal, state or local, but what I can tell you is it’s wrong. Just from a human rights perspective, what was done to these folks is wrong.”

DeSantis took responsibility for the two (tax payer paid) charter flights last week, saying they were part of a state program to relocate migrants from Florida, although the group of Venezuelans was in San Antonio. Salazar, a Democrat, called the flights “political theater.” He did not name DeSantis.

He also said his office was working with a private attorney for the migrants, as well as advocacy groups, and was preparing to cooperate with federal agencies “should the need arise.”

One potential lead: Salazar said he believed a Venezuelan migrant had been paid a “bird dog fee” to recruit other migrants in San Antonio for the flights.

In response to a request for comment, Jeremy Redfern, DeSantis’ deputy press secretary, did not answer with words. Instead, he emailed a screenshot of a news story with the headline: “Bexar County Sheriff Salazar says Biden admin’s handling of immigration ‘isn’t working.’ ”

On Monday night, DeSantis appeared on Sean Hannity’s #FakeFoxNews Fox News show and defended the flights.

DeSantis (wrongly!) said the program was “clearly ❗ 😧voluntary and all the other nonsense you are hearing is just not true.” But the migrants said they were recruited for the Martha’s Vineyard trip with falsehoods. Several said that a woman known as “Perla,” who is not believed to be a migrant, approached them outside a migrant resource center in San Antonio and (illegally!) offered them jobs and assistance if they flew to Massachusetts.

Illegal brochure distributed to the Venezuelan migrants.

Those claims of employment and other opportunities turned out to be false as officials on Martha’s Vineyard were unprepared for their arrival last Wednesday.

In addition, brochures provided to the migrants said they could receive cash assistance and employment services after landing. The brochures included the phone number and website of the Massachusetts Office for Refugees and Immigrants. The office said it did not print the brochures, which were shared with the Herald by Lawyers for Civil Rights, a Boston-based legal group representing some of the migrants.

While “Perla’s” full name and connections have not yet been publicly revealed — despite a handbill, distributed by the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), offering $5,000 for information on her identity — Salazar suggested the investigation could reach Florida.

“If somebody’s in Florida and they need to be brought here to be brought to justice, that’s just paperwork at that point,” the sheriff said. He said investigators had obtained the names of “persons of interest” but declined to release them yet.

Bexar County Texas Sheriff Javier Salazar announced at a news conference that his office is investigating whether the migrants were the victims of a crime

In fact, the migrants have legal status in the United States, having presented themselves to U.S. authorities after crossing the border in Texas and seeking asylum status. DeSantis has said the flights were financed with Florida taxpayer money meant to remove migrants from Florida. All the migrants boarded in San Antonio, which is in Bexar County, although the planes stopped in Florida’s Panhandle to refuel. Transporting migrants from Texas with Florida money appears to conflict with language included in the state budget that authorized the $12 million program. Passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and supported by most Democrats, the budget instructed the Florida Department of Transportation to spend the funds “to facilitate the transport of unauthorized aliens from this state.”

DeSantis has suggested the flights were a way to intercept migrants before they reached Florida. On Sunday, the Herald interviewed migrants who had just crossed the border in Eagle Pass, Texas. None of them told journalists they wanted to go to Florida. Instead, most hoped to travel to New York. They spoke of a dangerous journey to the United States and an uncertain future now that they’re here. None had the money for a $50 bus ticket to San Antonio, the nearest city. Advocates say that makes them easy prey for scammers. 

Miami Herald staff writers Bianca Padró Ocasio and Ana Ceballos contributed to this report.

Buffalo racist massacre's root ideology

An essay echo explains the Buffalo assassin's evil minded theory:

"Believers say this evil goal is being achieved both through the immigration of nonwhite people into societies that have largely been dominated by white people, as well as through simple demographics, with white people having lower birth rates than other populations"

A racist ideology seeping from the nefarious internet's fringes into the mainstream is being investigated as a motivating factor in the supermarket shooting that killed 10 people in Buffalo, New York. Most of the victims were Black. Ideas from the “great replacement theory" filled a racist screed supposedly posted online by the white 18-year-old accused of targeting Black people in Saturday's rampage. Authorities were still working to confirm its authenticity. 

Certainly, there was no mistaking the racist intent of the Buffalo shooter.  An essay published in Florida's the Miami Herald, by David Bauder.

White ‘replacement theory’ fuels racist attacks:
What is the "Great Replacement Theory"?

Simply put, the conspiracy theory says there's a plot to diminish the influence of white people.

Believers say this goal is being achieved both through the immigration of nonwhite people into societies that have largely been dominated by white people, as well as through simple demographics, with white people having lower birth rates than other populations. 

This conspiracy theory's more racist adherents believe Jews are behind the so-called replacement plan: White nationalists marching at a Charlottesville, Virginia, rally that turned deadly in 2017, chanted “You will not replace us!” and “Jews will not replace us!” 

A more mainstream view in the U.S. baselessly suggests Democrats are encouraging immigration from Latin America so more like-minded potential voters replace “traditional” Americans, says Mark Pitcavage, senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism. 

What are this conspiracy theory's origins? How long has racism existed? Broadly speaking, the roots of this “theory” are that deep. In the U.S., you can point to efforts to intimidate and discourage Black people from voting — or, in antagonists' view, “replacing” white voters at the polls — that date to the Reconstruction era, after the 15th Amendment made clear suffrage couldn't be restricted on account of race. In the modern era, most experts point to two influential books. “The Turner Diaries,” a 1978 novel written by William Luther Pierce under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald, is about a violent revolution in the United States with a race war that leads to the extermination of nonwhites. The FBI called it a “bible of the racist right,” says Kurt Braddock, an American University professor and researcher at the Polarization and Extremism Research & Innovation Lab. Renaud Camus, a French writer, published a 2011, book claiming that Europe was being invaded by Black and brown immigrants from Africa. He called the book “Le Grand Replacement,” and a conspiracy's name was born. 

Racism explained 101

Who are the Replacement Theory Adherents?  To some of the more extreme believers, certain white supremacist mass killers — at a Norway summer camp in 2011, two Christchurch, New Zealand, mosques in 2019, a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018, a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015 — are wrong-mindedly considered saints, Pitcavage says. Those “accelerationist white supremacists” believe small societal changes won't achieve much, so the only option is tearing down society, he says. The Buffalo shooter’s purported written diatribe and some of the methods indicate he closely studied the Christchurch shooter — particularly the effort to livestream his rampage. According to apparent screenshots from the Buffalo broadcast, the shooter inscribed the number 14 on his gun, which Pitcavage says is shorthand for a 14-word white supremacist slogan. A written declaration by the Christchurch shooter was widely spread online. If the message attributed to the Buffalo shooter proves authentic, it's designed to also spread his philosophy and methods to a large audience. 

Is the theory making inroads?  While more virulent forms of racism are widely abhorred, experts are concerned about extreme views nonetheless becoming mainstream. In a poll released last week, The Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that about 1 in 3 Americans believe an effort is underway to replace U.S.-born Americans with immigrants for electoral gain. 

On a regular basis, many adherents to the more extreme versions of the “great replacement” theory converse through encrypted apps online. They tend to be careful. They know they’re being watched. “They are very clever,” Braddock says. “They don’t make overt calls to arms.” 

Who is talking up this conspiracy theory?  In particular, Tucker Carlson, #Fake Fox News’ most popular personality, has pushed false views that are more easily embraced by some white people who are concerned about a loss of their political and social power. “I know that the left and all the gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term ‘replacement,’ if you suggest the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World,” he said on his show last year. “But they become hysterical because that's what's happening, actually, let's just say it. That's true.” 

A study of five years' worth of Carlson's show by The New York Times found 400 instances where he talked about Democratic politicians and others seeking to force demographic change through immigration. #Fake Fox News defended the host, pointing to repeated statements that Carlson has made denouncing political violence of all kinds. The attention paid by many Republican politicians to what they see as a leaky southern border along the United States has been interpreted, at least by some, as a nod to the concern of white people who worry about being “replaced.” 

House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik's campaign committee was criticized last year for an advertisement that said “radical Democrats” were planning a “permanent election insurrection” by granting amnesty to undocumented immigrants who would create a permanent liberal majority in Washington. Stefanik represents a New York district.  (IMO- Stefanik is the modern equivalent of a Republican Lady MacBeth, a classic racist co-conspirator who then refutes the obvious statements she allows to be published. "What beast was't then, That made you break this enterprise to me?”)

Pitcavage says he's concerned about the message Carlson and supporters are sending: “It actually introduces the ‘great replacement theory’ to a conservative audience in an easier-to-swallow pill." ___ This story has been corrected to report that Renaud Camus’ book was published in 2011, not 2012, and the Charleston shooting was in 2015, not 2017. 

Definition of a hate group: Consider the Republican party as GQP

This Leonard Pitts Jr., echo opinion in the Miami Herald, was published in July 2019, but worthy of a revival reading.  

Mr. Pitts wrote: Here’s how The Southern Poverty Law Center defines a hate group.  Consider the rapidly growing morph "GQP".

It is, they say, “an organization that — based on its official statements or principles, the statements of its leaders, or its activities — has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.” That definition is offered preparatory to an explosive question:

Is the Republican Party a hate group?

Granted, in its “official statements or principles,” the party doesn’t meet the SPLC standard for a hate group. Nevertheless, it activities and the statements of its leaders are another matter.

Consider that  #FormerGuy Trump, demanded that four progressive congresswomen, four women of color, four Americans, “go back” to the countries they came from. It devolved from that low point to a lower one, as an overwhelmingly white audience of Trump supporters booed the mention of one of the women, Somalia-born Rep. Ilhan Omar. “Send her back!” they chanted.

It’s not that we haven’t seen political parties exploit racial animosity before. Democrats even thrived on that, even into the 1960s. After the Civil Rights Movement made open appeals to racism politically perilous, the GOP evolved its infamous “Southern Strategy” of appealing to white racism without mentioning race at all.

Lee Atwater, party chairman, aide to Ronald Reagan and campaign manager for George H.W. Bush, explained this in a 1981 interview with political scientist Alexander Lamis: “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff …”

For half a century, then, the GOP has taught white voters racial resentment, taught them to prioritize concerns about white prerogative over concerns about shuttered factories, dirty water, lack of healthcare, foreclosed futures. It did this in code — “Willie Horton,” “tax cuts,” “welfare queen” — which, while obvious to all but the most gullible, still allowed respectable white men and women to maintain fig leaves of deniability.

So politicians accepted the votes, but never had to acknowledge the means of their manufacture. White voters gave them the votes, but never had to confront the reasons they did so.

Mission of ADL is to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all.

#FormerGuy Donald Trump is the payoff of that devil’s bargain. 

His “innovation” has been to shred subtlety and abandon code. 

With blunt, brutish clarity, he tells four black and brown women to “go back” where they came from, and if you don’t see racism there, you’ll never see it anywhere.

Yet bad as that is, the monstrous part is that his audience, trained by 50 years of appeals to their basest selves, cheers him on. They no longer need fig leaves. That should tell you something. As should the fact that the GOP seems to have abandoned policy altogether.

What do they stand for? Do they still care about the national debt? Do they have a strategy to combat global warming? What will they do about Russia and Iran? Who knows?

Because, the GQP, is now the party of “Send her back!” — of outrage over Colin Kaepernick kneeling and April Ryan asking questions. That’s what passes for ideas in today’s GOP. 

Moreover, if that’s what Trump has made them, it’s not like they fought him tooth and nail.

So is the GQP a hate group? It’s sobering that the question can even be asked. But the inevitable answer is downright chilling. Because, the SPLC offers a fair and cogent definition of that term.

And, clearly, the GOP (aka GQP!) fits it with room to spare.

Donald Trump alert! Vietnam veterans are American heroes

Echo opinion letter published in the Miami Herald:

In the fall of 1968, I received orders from my local draft board, in Brooklyn, New York, directing me to report for a physical examination and subsequent induction into the U.S. Army. I was a compliant young man, and my two older brothers had already served in the army. Eventually, I wound up in an artillery unit in the Mekong Delta region of South Vietnam. My job was to send up weather balloons to provide meteorological data to the troops.

My wife, Janet, and I have been married for 50 years, live comfortably in Coral Gables and belong to the Biltmore Hotel spa and health club, where we try to swim every day. 

Although I do have some physical problems, having been exposed to Agent Orange while in Vietnam, I am still above ground and breathing, which is a lot more than I can say for many of my friends, male and female, who never came home.

I have never thought of myself as either a sucker or a loser for having served my country.

From Paul Irgang, Coral Gables, Florida

Donald Trump tried to establish a Trump brand in Cuba and he lies to Cuban Americans

What Donald Trump tells Cuban-American voters in Miami is different from what he directed the Trump Organization to do: Pursue business opportunities in Cuba and register the Trump trademark on the communist island.

US and Cuba: Donald Trump is lying to Cuban-Americans. By his greedy nature, he hates the Cubans! Check out the blog ling at the end of this echo.

Trump conned Miami’s Cuban-American supporters while chasing business opportunities in Cuba | Opinion

By Fabiola Santiago published in the Miami Herald

Once again, the truth about what Donald Trump really thinks about Cuba has come to light.

He may peddle the hard line to his Republican Cuban-American supporters in Miami, but when he looks south of the city, he only sees dollar signs.

He promises that he won’t do business until Cuba is free of the Castro brothers’ regime — and prohibits Americans from traveling to the island — but Trump and his team have been chasing business opportunities in Cuba for the past decade.

A new el Nuevo Herald report has unearthed more proof of how seriously Trump tried to gain a foothold in Cuba, despite the U.S. embargo that’s in place.

Documents show that the president applied to register his Trump trademark in Cuba in 2008, so he could conduct business and invest in real estate. His plans included not only erecting a Trump Tower in Havana and putting a golf course in Varadero and other possible sites, but building casinos as well.

To do so, Trump hired a Cuban lawyer on the island, Leticia Laura Bermúdez Benítez.

Trump registered his trademark in Cuba in 2008 to build hotels, casinos and golf courses

To truly gauge Trump’s cretinous hustler nature, you have to go back to 1999 when he was already courting Cuban Americans with anti-Fidel Castro rhetoric and hinting at a presidential run.

Fidel Castro (1949-2018)

He was betting on an aging Castro dying soon. The way Trump saw it, the wealthy members of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) were going to be the ones calling the shots on the island.

“So what Jorge is saying is that when Cuba is free, I get the first hotel? Is that true? Sounds like a good deal to me,” Trump quipped during a CANF speech, referring to Jorge Mas Santos, who had taken the reins of the influential organization after his father died in 1997.

It was a crass thing to say — and harmful to efforts to democratize Cuba, and not install a U.S. puppet government to service the likes of Trump — but Cuban Americans laughed and later applauded him.

That year, Trump also wrote an op-ed in the Miami Herald slamming Castro, which prompted the Brigade 2506, veterans of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961, to correspond with Trump and begin a relationship that would culminate with their endorsement in 2016 and again in 2020.

But before all that wooing of Cuban Americans, Trump was trying to gain a foothold in Cuba.

CUBA TRIPS CONTINUED

In 2016, Newsweek reported that Trump sent emissaries on a mission to secure business ventures in Cuba in 1997, that would allow him to skirt the ban imposed by the embargo. Interviews with former Trump executives, internal company records and court filings confirmed the dealings.

He only turned to Cuban Americans and blasting Castro in the Herald when that didn’t work out.

And still, Trump didn’t give up on being first in Cuba.He only grew impatient.

Castro was far from dying and only began a gradual stepping down in 2006, when he passed the presidency to his brother Raúl and, two years later, other powers as well.

Trump’s closest associates continued to travel to Cuba in 2011, 2012 and 2013, on behalf of the Trump Organization to scout business opportunities in violation of the embargo. Those trips were documented in a 2016, Bloomberg Businessweek report.

And, in a slap to the people who helped elect him, right before Trump’s inauguration in 2017, Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, traveled to Cuba to meet with a Castro son, a meeting arranged by Trump’s property broker.

Who says so? A Senate Intelligence Committee report documents it.

And now, we learn of the trademark registration, too, more damning evidence of Trump’s true intent — to make money in Cuba any way he can: hotels, casinos and golf courses.

If Fidel or Raúl Castro had let him develop Cuba, Trump would be praising them like he does Vladimir Putin and other nefarious dictators.

Playing both sides proves that Trump is a terrific huckster.

And it sure puts another spin on what Trump said during an early fundraiser at his Doral resort in 2016. “We’re tough on Cuba ‘cause they’re not doing the right thing for our people,” Trump said, and Cuban Americans applauded him.

A Freudian slip, perhaps?

They’ve been fooled so many times. The reason Trump talks tough — and has pursued sanctions in his first term — is because the Cuban government wouldn’t give him what he wanted, preferential treatment, and wouldn’t seal the deals.

When his incursions into Cuba failed, Trump turned around and pursued the other side and the presidency — and it worked.

The Cuban-American vote helped him win Florida. It could help him in 2020, too.

Trump’s Cuban American supporters are that gullible and party faithful. They stand by their man even if he’s worked hard to golf with the enemy.

Also, be sure to check out reading the blogger post "Trump Hates All Cubans", published by Julia E. Sweig.  

Voters must hold Donald Trump and Mike Pence accountable for gross immigrant abuse

"The Trump administration is lying",.... opinion echo.

Maine Writer sub title: Nazi tactics on innocent immigrants.

Mr. Pence, where were your pro-life values when immigrant children needed protection? | Opinion Echo by Fabiola Santiago*, published in the Miami Herald

Six little words were all the United States needed to raze centuries of claims of moral leadership about family values. 

“We need to take away children,” then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions insisted in May 2018.

Remember the children when you vote in this election.

You, privileged American, may have tried to forget their brown skin torched by the sun and little bodies dehydrated and exhausted from the multi-country trek to the U.S. border. 

A perilous journey taken only to be torn from their immigrant parents at the doorstep of their shot at the humblest version of the American Dream.

Not even babies were spared.

“We need to take away children,” the aging former senator and xenophobe commanded.

And all the way down the chain — his deputy Rod J. Rosenstein, five Department of Justice prosecutors at the border, Border Patrol agents, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), they fell in line and did the unthinkable.

They took some 2,600 children from their parents and sent them to faraway detention camps and foster-care facilities.

It was wholesale, horrific cruelty carried out by an administration denying that separating immigrant families was the intention of the new “zero tolerance” policy meant to deter immigrants from seeking refuge here from violence, death threats and poverty.

Two years later, we can confirm what we long suspected in a draft of a new 86-page report by the watchdog office of the Inspector General obtained by The New York Times.

The Trump administration was lying.

Separation wasn’t a byproduct of parents making the choice to pursue their asylum claims. It was direct, ordered punishment — and a way to send a message to others to stay away.

No child was too young to be separated from their parents, Rosenstein told prosecutors. He had escaped scrutiny but the report shows he aided and abetted Sessions.

The Inspector General's report isn’t the only sick revelation to come to light about Donald Trump’s heinous immigration policies as he faces re-election and, according to the latest polls, the prospect of losing to Democrat Joe Biden.

STERILIZATIONS IN DETENTION, ABUSE

In a whistleblower complaint filed with Homeland Security in September, a nurse who worked at an immigration detention center in Georgia said a doctor performed questionable hysterectomies on immigrant women, refused to test the detainees for COVID-19 and shredded medical records.

“The uterus collector,” the nurse called him.

A subsequent investigation by Associated Press found that Dr. Mahendra Amin performed at least eight gynecological procedures on immigrant women in ICE custody. Some said they didn’t understand what was happening or consent to the treatment.

How did the government react to the complaints?

ICE (Immigration-Deportation!) tried to deport one of the immigrant women speaking out; she had been through the unwanted removal of a Fallopian tube.

And so, in dribs and drabs of watchdog investigations and journalism, Americans are learning that our government is mirroring the behavior of rogue states and being condemned by international human-rights organizations.

In July, another report, this one obtained by the Miami Herald and written by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), the federal agency tasked with oversight of immigrant children, revealed that the children have suffered abuse.

At least four Central American immigrant children reported being sexually abused by staff members at the privately run Homestead detention center for unaccompanied minors, now shut down.

That the violations happened in this community of refuge to generations of immigrants only adds to the tragedy.

Many other children also were hurt in detention.
And, just when you think you’ve seen enough, along comes another outrage.

CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE

Dozens of families separated at the border have filed claims against the U.S. government, some claiming that their children were sexually, physically or emotionally abused in federally funded foster care.

These children relive their traumas in nightmares.

IMMIGRATION ABSENT IN 2020 ELECTION

You ask: Why should we care at this point?

Besides for reasons of basic human decency, the politics that drove our shameful actions are still relevant, still with us.

Yet the topic of immigration, a cauldron of discord in 2016, during the years of “zero tolerance” abuses, has been largely absent from the fireworks of the 2020, election.

It’s round two for Trump’s “Make America Great Again” rally cry and social engineering maneuvers to stop the growth of the Latino population in the United States. Only he hides now behind labels like Latinos for Trump and his followers are all to happy to give him cover.

Voters should hold Donald Trump accountable for the abuses committed on his watch.

But in a race only won by uniting coalitions of voters, immigration is an inconvenient subject for both political parties, too divisive.

What’s clear, however, from what we now know is that the party of bible-quoting Sessions, the party with the claim to being pro-life, supports the abuser of children.

“I couldn’t be more proud to serve as vice president to a president who stands without apology for the sanctity of human life. I’m pro-life, I don’t apologize for it,” Vice President Mike Pence said during his debate with Sen. Kamala Harris.

His words ring hollow to the core.

Mr. Vice President, where were your pro-life values when immigrant children needed protection?

The children, targeted to punish the adults, have changed who we are as a nation.

“Let’s be clear: A society is judged based on how it treats its children,” she said. “A society is judged based on how it treats the least among us. And we will be judged harshly. History will judge us harshly because of what this Administration has done.”

Senator Harris- She wins the morality play, Mr. Vice President.

The United States bid goodbye to family values when we failed to protect young, defenseless immigrant children in need. And their mothers, too.

Senator Harris predicted this would happen in an impassioned call to end the family separation policy on the Senate floor in 2018.

* Award-winning columnist Fabiola Santiago has been writing about all things Miami since 1980, when the Mariel boatlift became her first front-page story. A Cuban refugee child of the Freedom Flights, she’s also the author of essays, short fiction, and the novel “Reclaiming Paris.”

Open letter from Florida U.S. Representative Ted Deutch to Senator Marco Rubio

Published in the Miami Herald by Congressman Ted Deutch:

Dear Senator Rubio, "There is only one universe of facts"

Representative Ted Deutch representes Florida's 22nd Legislative District in Congress. He wrote an open leter published in the Miami Herald, whereby he calls on Florida Senator Marco Rubio to practice what he preaches and to stop ignoring the dangerousness of Trumpziim.

Senator Rubio warns about political divisiveness, yet he blinds himself to Trumpsiism’s rhetoric (and seems willing to accept "alternative facts"!)

Miami Herald reported: “Rubio warns the divided flow of information is threatening democracy in the U.S.:” Moreover, Senator Marco Rubio lamented divisions in media and culture that produce “a world where people might be neighbors and live in two separate universes.”

Unfortunately, Senator Rubio has deepened the divide by refusing to condemn the misinformation and dangerous rhetoric President Trump deployed in response to the impeachment inquiry — claims of a coup, accusations of treason, and warnings of civil war.

There is only one universe of facts.

Here is the fact:  Trump admitted that he asked the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate a political rival and then publicly doubled down on his request for foreign interference in our 2020 election.

By using the Office of the Presidency to pressure foreign leaders to assist his re-election campaign, President Trump threatens our national security and the core values that should be at the center of our foreign policy.

By suggesting that we “wait for all of the information to come forward,” Senator Rubio ignores the Trump administration’s obstruction of congressional efforts to obtain those facts.

And when Senator Rubio minimizes Trump's glaring abuse of office as “needling the press,” he carelessly suggests the president’s words have no meaning.

The problem isn’t that Americans are living in “two separate universes.”

It is that people like Senator Rubio are helping Donald Trump attempt to create one where he can never be held accountable.

From U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch,  Florida’s 22nd Congressional District

Where have all the children gone? Homestead shelter for migrants

Miami Herald Trump blocks three Florida congresswomen from visiting Homestead child detention center

Monique O. Madan

Advocates ‘shed light’ on Homestead children detection center

Where have all the children gone? 

The Trumpzi "government sends many of them to an emergency intake shelter in South Florida. That facility has come under intense scrutiny because it's the only child shelter for immigrants that's run by a for-profit corporation"- NPR reports

Three South Florida congresswomen say the Trump administration blocked them from entering the Homestead shelter for migrant kids despite a new law mandating Congressional access there.

U.S. Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Donna Shalala and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, all Florida Democrats , were verbally denied entry by the Department of Health and Human Services.

HHS confirmed the denial to access.

“We have had significant interest for facility visits. To ensure a facility visit does not interfere with the safety and well-being of our [children], we require a minimum two-week notification at the convenience and availability of the facility. This has been policy since 2015,” the department told the Miami Herald in a statement Saturday.

But Schultz, Shalala and Mucarsel-Powell said their denial is “illegal,” referencing Section 234 of bill 115-245, which was amended this year to say members of Congress can’t be prevented from “entering, for the purpose of conducting oversight, any U.S. facility used for maintaining custody of or otherwise housing unaccompanied alien children.”

HHS did not comment on their rebuttal.

“During our last visit to Homestead, we witnessed children living in cramped, prison-like conditions,” the joint statement said, referring to a tour of the facility earlier this year. “The idea to force even more children into an already full detention facility is not only unsafe, but is cruel and violates basic tenets of human decency.”

The move to bar the congresswomen in comes days after the government announced it would be expanding the facility to detain as many as 3,600 children there— a population larger than Homestead High School.

In a recent four-page letter written to Congress by the Department of Homestead Security, the agency’s director said the “overwhelming” population at the border has caused a “system-wide meltdown” and cited her concerns over over inadequate staffing, space and other services there.

“Denying entry to oversee the conditions and care provided to the unaccompanied children in the Homestead facility would not only be a breach of transparency and confidence in the care provided there, it would violate the law,” the lawmakers said in a statement Saturday.

“A similar denial of access occurred there a year ago, and Congress specifically addressed it by ensuring members would have unencumbered access to such facilities to conduct our constitutionally mandated oversight responsibilities.”

Lawmakers are a regular presence at the Homestead facility, which reopened in June 2018 as the Trump administration pushed a policy of separating children from their parents when they crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally together.

Former Sen. Bill Nelson, Rep. Kionne McGhee and Wasserman Schultz, all Democrats, tried to enter the facility shortly after it was reopened but were denied access.

“The company running this facility told us we would be welcomed to tour the facility,” Nelson said on Twitter. “HHS then denied us entry and said that they need ‘two weeks notice’ to allow us inside. That’s ridiculous, and it’s clear this administration is hiding something.”

A few days later, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio was allowed into the facility and a host of Democrats visited a day later. But the facility denied Mucarsel-Powell’s predecessor, Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo, from visiting by himself in July 2018. Curbelo managed to get in a few weeks later.

“Given long-held concerns about the Homestead facility’s lack of staffing, space, education and other services, the recent announcement by the Department of Health and Human Services that it will dramatically expand the number of beds there merits immediate scrutiny,” the congresswomen’s statement said. “The Department’s initial refusal to allow entry there under these current circumstances is deeply troubling.”

Protestors say their protest signs were taken down outside the Homestead shelter for unaccompanied minors, so they decided to project their message in lights on the buildings, instead.

By Daniel A. Varela

Miami Herald staff writer Alex Daughtery contributed to this report.