Donald Trump and maga Republicans create hypocritical myths about "Democratic Socialists" when the greedy GOP want to control the economy

We need less Chicken 🐔Little when it comes to Democratic Socialists.  🐔🙄

‘Political control over the economy is anathema* to capitalism and a free market. So let’s be fair in our media coverage about what communism and socialism are and have less of the sky is falling,’ the letter writer says.  (*anathema: something or someone that you intensely dislike, loathe, or strongly disapprove of.)

Echo opinion letter published in the Twin Cities Pioneer News in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

There’s a recent hyper-clamor and hysteria about "those Democratic Socialists". Lots of hypocritical hyperbole: “Democrats are 🤥socialists who want to destroy our country.” And so the beat goes on. Most fail the test of reality and lack facts and credibility. 

Of the hundreds of Democrats who ran for elective office only a few are Democratic socialists. With few exceptions most ran in deeply blue districts. Chicken Little and his pals who panicked on an unfounded “the sky has falling” story didn’t fare well at the end. Facts matter. 

To digress, “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander:” What about the Trump administration❓ As one author stated, “He has crossed the Rubicon.”

Donald Trump has taken a playbook out of Communism 101. Central, government control versus our founding fathers who built our nation on liberty, equality, private property and a free press. Trump’s government owns a part of 31 private and public companies. Of Nippon Steel, they own a “Gold Share,” which gives the government veto powers. Trump enacted sweeping tariffs. 

Political control over the economy is anathema to capitalism and a free market. So let’s be fair in our coverage of communism and socialism and have less of the sky is falling.

From Geri Minton, in Roseville, Minnesota 

Donald Trump will lie about everybody and everything to avoid dealing with his incompetent leadership

Clown dunce Trump

Donald Trump blamed Minnesota Governor Tim Walz—not Iran—for recent cyberattacks targeting municipal water systems, calling state leadership "grossly incompetent" 🤥rather than acknowledging reports of foreign state-sponsored hacking. While similar water system intrusions and security alerts also impacted neighboring Wisconsin and other states, Trump specifically focused his remarks on Minnesota.   

Donald Trump has no evidence to support such an egregious lie it is another example of his incompetence and complete lack of concern about average Americans.  Instead of collaborating to solve the water problem, instead, he just blames people he doesn't like and then abdicates any responsibility for taking constructive action.

Trump water system attack response a classic example of lying.

Echo letter published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and on Yahoo.com

By denying the evidence of potential involvement by Iran, Trump avoids having to choose between several difficult alternatives, including cyber counter-attacks.

Donald Trump’s response to the cyberattacks on various municipal water systems in Minnesota and elsewhere is a classic example of lying in diplomacy (“Trump disputes cyberattack reports,” Aug. 1).

Most US intelligence services suspect this is the work of Iranian affiliated hackers. Trump dismisses that analysis and blames state leaders for their incompetence.

By denying the evidence of potential involvement by Iran, he avoids having to choose between several alternatives, such as taking direct action against Iran (cyber counter-attacks or military intervention, for example) or taking no action at all.

From: Gene Lillge, in Madison Wisconsin

A New York Times Editorial must read and that means YOU Ms. Karoline Leavitt!

Trump’s Stifling of Dissent Reaches a New Level- Read the autocracy measures at the end of this opinion.

Editorial opinion published in The New York Times:

(Maine Writer:  Seems to me this editorial should be a cc directed to Trump's 3D Copier Barbie Karoline Leavitt, JMO❗) 

The crackdown on dissent and speech in Minnesota this winter follows a pattern that is common in countries that slide from democracy to autocracy: A leader enacts a legally dubious policy. Citizens protest that policy. The government responds with intimidation and force. 😧😟💢😓When people are hurt, the government blames them and lies about what happened.

The New York Times editorial board published an index in October tracking 12 categories of democratic erosion, based on historical patterns and interviews with experts. 

Our index places the United States on a scale of 0 to 10 for each category. Zero represents the United States before Donald Trump began his second term — not perfect, surely, but one of the world’s healthiest democracies.

Ten represents the condition in a true autocracy, such as China, Iran or Russia.

Based on recent events, we (the NYT Editorial Board) moved our assessment of one of the categories — stifling speech and dissent — up one notch, to level four:

The wide-ranging abuses in Minnesota are the main reason for the change. The Trump administration is conducting a military-style operation in an American city under dubious pretenses. The stated goal is immigration enforcement, even though the state is home to relatively few undocumented immigrants. The true goal seems to be instilling fear in people who oppose Donald Trump’s agenda. Federal agents have killed two protesters, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and assaulted and menaced others. The administration has made clear that the abusers will face no accountability.😡

The acceleration in the stifling of dissent and speech is broader than what’s happening in Minnesota. Since late last year, the administration also widened its campaign for investigating perceived enemies, such as Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair.

Additionally, the Department of Homeland Security used subpoenas that no judge approved to demand information on critics. The F.B.I. searched the home of a journalist who had exposed problems with the administration’s policies.

Our country is still not close to being a true autocracy. Many forms of speech and dissent remain vibrant in the United States, in courts, in Congress, the media and the streets (and in blogs, 😊too❗). But, Donald Trump and his allies have restricted dissent in fundamental ways. It is a violation of basic American values.

Background and methodology: The clearest sign that a democracy has died is that a leader and his party make it impossible for their opponents to win an election and hold power. Once that stage is reached, however, the change is extremely difficult to reverse.

The 12 benchmarks in this editorial offer a way to understand how much Donald Trump is eroding American democracy. The categories are based on interviews with legal scholars, political scientists, historians and other democracy experts. The ratings come from the New York Times editorial board. In our 0-to-10 scales, zero represents roughly where the United States, flawed though it was, had been under presidents of both parties prior to Mr. Trump. Ten represents the condition in a true authoritarian state. Moving even one notch toward autocracy is a worrisome sign.

We first published the index in October 2025. This version is the first update. We plan to publish future updates as events warrant.

Here is the autocracy measurement tool: 

The Autocracy Index: 12 markers of democratic erosion

• Stifling speech and dissent
• Persecuting political opponents
• Bypassing the legislature
• Defying the courts
• Declaring false emergencies
• Using the military at home
• Vilifying marginalized groups
• Controlling information
• Taking over universities
• Creating a cult of personality
• Using power for personal profit
• Manipulating the law to stay in power

💥💢

democracy














autocracy


Persecuting political opponents






democracy














autocracy


Bypassing the legislature






democracy














autocracy


Defying the courts






democracy














autocracy


Declaring false emergencies






democracy














autocracy


Using the military at home






democracy














autocracy


Vilifying marginalized groups






democracy














autocracy


Controlling information






democracy














autocracy


Trying to take over universities






democracy














autocracy


Creating a cult of personality






democracy














autocracy


Using power for personal profit






democracy














autocracy


Manipulating the law to stay in power






democracy














autocracy

Donald Trump and Kristi Noem and Tom Homan must stop failed quota numbers used by ICE in their illegal dragnet

Let me get this? So, children are captured and detained by ICE because the evil operations must reach deportation quotas❓  OMG❗💢

Deportation quotas are a 2026, version of Vietnam body counts
In Vietnam, soldiers were rewarded based on body counts. ICE deportation quotas are a chilling reminder of that policy.

Echo essay published in the MinnPost in Minneapolis Community Voices by Ralph Brauer. 

Officials and the mainstream press debating our immigration crisis are ignoring the elephant in the room: the policy of setting deportation quotas. To a historian, this policy ominously recalls the infamous Vietnam body count.

The flawed brainchild of then U.S.

Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, the body count supposedly measured the success of combat operations by tracking the number of enemy soldiers killed in each encounter. 

When troops realized they were being graded on how many corpses they could amass, this macabre idea quickly ran off the rails. Seymour Hersh discovered “there were three-day passes for the men who achieved high body counts; sometimes whole units would be rewarded.” As Hersh showed with stomach-churning detail, it did not matter whose body was counted or how they died.

If this sounds familiar, it should. The administration has dictated that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deport 1 million people by the end of the year. If we divide this number among the states it yields an average of 20,000 per year, per state.

The Migration Policy Institute calculates Minnesota has 100,000 undocumented immigrants. Complicating this, 41% of families have children under 18 eligible for birthright citizenship. Three-quarters of the work-eligible undocumented are employed, with 20% in manufacturing, 11% in construction, and 10% in health care. Imagine the impact on communities if they lose these workers. It is estimated that the Minneapolis occupation has cost some businesses 50-80% of their revenue because ICE causes workers to stay home and drives away customers. We don’t yet know what it has cost the state economy.

ICE has also provided questionable information about how many arrests are truly the “worst of the worst” or the fate of those who disappeared into its American gulag. Last November, the conservative Cato Institute estimated 73% of ICE detainees have no prior criminal conviction. The Homeland Security website says, “70% of all ICE arrests are of criminal illegal aliens charged or convicted of a crime in the United States.” These widely divergent numbers suggest ICE body counts are as reliable as those from the Vietnam War.

Unreliable information poses another problem. Hersh discovered Vietnam War troops received “no meaningful instruction in the Geneva conventions or in the proper treatment of prisoners of war during training in Hawaii or in South Vietnam.” Much like the Army struggled to train the flood of Vietnam draftees, ICE scrambled to rush agents into the field, causing cutbacks in training.

That training is complicated by the lack of clarity about objectives and tactics to achieve them, which is at the root of problems with the Vietnam and ICE body counts. As the war dragged on, the question grew about how the enemy could muster increasing resistance when it supposedly lost so many soldiers. (Evil❗) Stephen Miller’s command that ICE deport a million people by the end of this year seems to be pulled from President Donald Trump’s hat and raises additional questions.

Does the administration want to remove only violent criminals or any non-citizens❓Do we deport a taxpaying business owner with a family for a decade-old speeding ticket❓ What about asylum seekers or those currently filing for admission❓ What information is used to make those arrests❓

Answering such questions demands spelling out clear rules of engagement that parallel those of other law enforcement agencies. ICE defenders constantly turn the debate toward deporting violent criminals who are here illegally. These zealots seem unconcerned if this is done in accordance with the rule of law and our values. Maybe we should ask them: “If local police behaved like ICE, would you tolerate it❓”

What if police forced citizens to carry their papers to the grocery store like ICE❓ What if police dragged a 50-year-old naturalized American from the wrong house into the snow wearing only boxer shorts like ICE thugs? What if police ignored court orders like ICE❓ What if police wore masks and said they did not need warrants like ICE❓ This may be OK in some fascist dictatorship, but not in a nation that fought a revolution against unreasonable searches and seizures.

To ensure ICE follows the rules, the country must insist on clear rules of engagement and verification that all violations are investigated and punished. This includes deliberately ignoring court orders and disregarding suspects’ constitutional rights. As Seymour Hersh would remind us, body counts can lead to atrocities like My Lai. Too many have already been shot by ICE. How many more will we lose before the country acts❓

Ralph Brauer, a retired historian who lives in Northfield, Minnesota, is the author of the recent book “The Age of Discontent.”

Donald Trump and maga Republicans must end the ICE Gestapo "Army of Occupation" terrorizing all Americans

Echo opinion letters published in The New York Times:

#ICEOut❗

A Backlash Against ICE’s ‘Army of Occupation’

The move by the Trump administration to remove the Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino from the anti-immigrant operation in Minnesota and replace him with Tom Homan, the Donald Trump border czar, feels like a way to take Bovino out of the line of fire and divert attention from the real issue.

The real issue is how Donald Trump is using an agency to enforce a draconian and violent program directed at nonwhite immigrants and their American citizen supporters. The program violates laws and the Constitution in multiple ways, and has resulted in the killing of two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Whatever ICE was set up to do, it has become an army of occupation directed at Democratic cities. Violating laws violently for political purposes seems like the essence of domestic terrorism. In this case, it is directed by the Donald Trump administration with the apparent support of the Republican Party.

At this point, ICE should be defunded and disbanded. Congress (including leadership by Maine's Senator Susan Collins)  should act in an adult manner to hold accountable those who killed Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti, and violated the rights of many more.

A new agency must be designed from the ground up for the stated purposes of immigration enforcement, one that operates according to the Constitution, the law and not the whim of a self-proclaimed dictator.

From Simon Cohen in Queens, New York

The New York Times editorial board rightly emphasizes that Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, and Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol official, “are lying in defiance of obvious truths.” 

Just because Bovino is removed from the anti-immigrant operation in Minnesota doesn’t change that.

Last week, in a speech to the British Parliament commemorating the coming 250th anniversary of our country’s founding, the U.S. House speaker, Mike Johnson, quoting the British writer and philosopher G.K. Chesterton, said that “every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things.” One of those things, he noted, is the “indispensable relationship between freedom and virtue.”

Truth is the precondition for accountability. It is also virtuous, making it indispensable to our freedom as Americans. Our democracy will decay if we forget this.

It is therefore incumbent upon Johnson and his congressional colleagues to investigate the killings of Mr. Alex Pretti and Ms. Renee Good to establish the truth. His duty as House speaker — and as a member of our “high civilization” — demands it.

From T. Michael Spencer in Washington

To the Editor: Yes, the Trump administration is lying to our faces. This editorial encapsulates our current national situation.

I am a lifelong resident of Minnesota, 86 years of age. Our state is known as a liberal state and mostly votes Democratic. That apparently does not sit well with the current administration.

We are besieged by federal government forces flooding our streets, terrorizing our residents, scaring our kids. They have brutally and unjustly killed two citizens here since they arrived.

Where is this going❓ When will it end❓ Who is safe now❓

😡😞😟

From Judith Koll Healey in  Minneapolis

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

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

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

Publsihed in The Atlanic by Hillary Rodham Clinton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

In fact, the Episcopal bishop of Washington,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Republicans and Democrats call for Noem to step down❗

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

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

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

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

But Donald Trump stands by Noem and praises her work

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fighting about DHS funding

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Renee Nicole Good an unarmed American citizen was murdered by evil ICE agents when she driving away from the shooter!

Echo opinion letters to The New York Times: Dateline Minneapolis


Re “I’m the Mayor of Minneapolis. Trump Is Lying,”* 🤥by Jacob Frey (Opinion guest essay, January 10)- (see story lead below):

At some point, we have to ask ourselves as Americans whether we are willing to accept a country with no shared moral base line, no principle that rises above political affiliation.

Are we comfortable living in an America where a 37-year-old mother can be shot dead in the street and, almost immediately, have powerful figures justify it or attempt to construct an alternate reality that contradicts what we all plainly witnessed?

Are we comfortable living in an America where an insurrection that threatened our democracy on January 6th is minimized; where foreign and domestic policymakers increasingly act as judge; jury and executioner; and where blatant misinformation is delivered from behind the White House logo from 3D Barbie Karoline Leavitt❓

These are not abstract concerns. They cut to the heart 💔😟of whether we still agree on right and wrong, truth and falsehood, restraint and accountability.

We should be asking ourselves where the line is, and at what point we decide we simply will not tolerate the disregard for the democratic norms and human dignity that generations before us worked to preserve.

Red, purple or blue, the question is not about ideology. It’s about whether we can still come together to defend something as fundamental as basic decency.

From Seth Schlussel in San Francisco, California

To the Editor:  The killing of unarmed American citizen Renee Good by an ICE agent raises an urgent question: If the federal government won’t protect its citizens, when will the states step up? New York has ample but unused leverage to rein in ICE’s increasingly violent operations. It must act immediately to prevent escalating unrest.

Under the Anti-Commandeering Doctrine, a constitutional principle articulated in the Tenth Amendment, states cannot be compelled to assist federal law enforcement. This principle affords New York lawful tools not to abolish ICE but to refuse to enable conduct that endangers citizens.

The state could, for example, prohibit rental companies from renting cars to ICE without a judicial warrant, restrict hotels and short-term rentals from staging federal operations without oversight, bar New York-regulated companies from sharing sensitive data with ICE without a criminal warrant or deny state contracts to entities that do business with ICE. These measures would not conflict with federal criminal law, but would ensure New York would not facilitate dangerous and unaccountable (evil❗) ICE operations.

From Alexander Thomson in Ithaca, New York

To the Editor: The recent killing of Renee Good, a 37-year-old unarmed American woman, by a federal officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota demands careful legal scrutiny, not political slogans or emotional reactions.

Under well-established constitutional principles and longstanding federal case law, the use of deadly force by a government agent is justified only when there exists an immediate, objective and unavoidable threat to the life of the officer or others. That determination must rest on observable facts at the precise moment of force is used, not on subjective fear or speculative danger.

In cases where an officer stands only a few feet from a vehicle that is stationary or just beginning to move, basic physics, human reaction time and standard police training all indicate that reasonable avenues of evasion are typically available.

Federal courts have repeatedly held that an officer may not voluntarily place himself in the path of a vehicle and then rely on that self-created risk to justify lethal force. The threat must be truly imminent and not reasonably avoidable by other means. This is not an ideological issue; it is a legal one. Whether the constitutional limits on the use of deadly force were respected or violated public trust depends on those limits being applied rigorously, transparently and without exception.

When the state exercises its ultimate power, the burden of justification must be equally exacting.

From Juan Carden in St. Louis, Missouri

To the Editor: Re “Early Comments Cast Doubts Over ICE Inquiry” (news analysis, front page, Jan. 11):

JD Vance’s false claim that ICE agents have “absolute immunity” not only suggests agents have something to hide; it also reveals an ignorance of federal law.

Civil rights crimes perpetrated by ICE agents and their bosses are addressed specifically in Federal Statute 242, “Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law.”

In the Justice Department’s own language: Section 242 makes it a federal crime for a person “acting under color of any law to willfully deprive a person of a right or privilege protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States. If those acts lead to the death of that person, the statue says, punishment could include imprisonment or a death sentence. It offers no immunity.

Statute 242 was intended to protect Renee Good’s civil rights, and the F.B.I. has a responsibility to investigate possible deprivation of those rights. If F.B.I. officials refuse to investigate, wouldn’t they themselves be violating Statute 242, in depriving Ms. Good of the right to due process, as well as of one of her legal protections❓

From Mark Thurmond in Kneeland, California

Jacob Frey the mayor of Minneapolis

*Minneapolis:  On August 1, 2007, the Interstate 35W bridge spanning the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed into the water during rush hour. Thirteen people died, and dozens more were injured.

In the immediate aftermath, the president, a Republican, showed up in a city full of Democrats ready to help.

Minneapolis leaders were passionate and vocal critics of President George W. Bush’s policies at the time. 

But when the crisis struck, it didn’t matter. We were partners in what mattered most: saving lives, steadying our community and rebuilding infrastructure. 

Cities could count on the administration in a crisis. Politics stopped, quite literally, at the water’s edge.

Blue largely Democratic cities like Minneapolis used to be able to count on good-faith partnerships with the federal government under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Under the Biden administration, our police officers worked with federal agents and the U.S. attorney’s office to bring down shooting rates in North Minneapolis. The effort wasn’t political — it was practical, and it continues to keep people safe.

But such partnerships, in both crisis and ordinary governance, are not the experience of big-city Democratic mayors under the Trump administrations. I learned that the hard way in 2020, during the civil unrest that came in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer. I’ll never forget the shock I felt when Donald Trump not only encouraged violence during the unrest, but denied federal approval for disaster relief.

After I learned that a Minneapolis resident had been shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, I didn’t feel the shock in my gut that I felt over five years ago. Nothing about this was shocking. The chaos caused by ICE and the Trump administration have brought Minneapolis to this sadly preventable, although predictable, tragedy. In mid-December, ICE agents were filmed dragging a pregnant woman through the street. Heavily armed agents have been deployed to arrest lone individuals in public libraries and malls. Even in the aftermath of this week’s shooting, ICE agents continued to spread chaos, apparently deploying chemical agents at a local public high school.

The actions of the ICE agents deployed to my city are dangerous, and now, even deadly. But that danger has been compounded by the administration’s claim that the victim committed an act of domestic terrorism. The Department of Homeland Security secretary, Kristi "Evil ICEDiva" Noem, baselessly insisted the shooting was an act of self-defense. Mr. Trump falsely claimed that the victim, Renee Nicole Good, “behaved horribly” and “ran him over,” referring to the ICE agent. I’ve watched multiple videos, from multiple perspectives — it seems clear that Ms. Good, a mother of three, was trying to leave the scene, not attack an agent.

Renee Nicole Good killed by an evil ICE agent in Minneapolis

The Trump administration’s false narrative about this week’s shooting, and the demonization of the victim, are only part of a bigger lie. It wants the American public to believe that ICE’s heavily militarized crackdown across this country is an effort to keep cities like Minneapolis safe. It is not. It is about vilifying not just immigrants, but all who welcome them and their contributions to our communities. By defending the lie about this clearly avoidable shooting in Minneapolis and refusing to allow Minnesota officials to investigate the crime, the administration is sending a message to the entire country: If you show up for your immigrant neighbors, or even are simply present when those neighbors are taken, your rights will not be protected by the law and your life will be at risk.

Under both the first and second Trump administrations, the country has learned from watching Minneapolis that the federal government holds no regard for cities or the people who live in them. When coupled with this administration’s open contempt for democratic norms — indeed, our Constitution — this is a threat to the long-term endurance of our Republic.

My hope is for no more of my fellow mayors find their cities in this administration’s cross hairs. 

But, for those who do, here is my advice: The best thing you can do is to build cities that work, and love those streets and those citizens above any ideology. By bringing down violent crime, Minneapolis has been able to successfully push back against those who have tried to portray our city as a postapocalyptic hellscape. By building housing and focusing on affordability, we have made our city a place that immigrants, transplants and native Minneapolitans can all call home. By supporting immigrant-owned small businesses, our city has become living proof that immigrants make our city and our nation stronger.

Cities are on the front lines of this dark hour in our national politics. But after we weather this moment — and we will weather it — it will be on us to light the way forward. The best way to convince the country that welcoming and lifting up immigrants is good for its communities is by proving it in our own cities.