Tag: Trump

U.S. bishops will cease refuge resettlement work with government after Trump funding freeze

Catholic Church

The U.S.C.C.B. said it would not renew its cooperative agreements with the federal government related to children’s services and refugee support after its longstanding partnerships with the government in those areas became “untenable.”

By Kate Scanlon

WASHINGTON (OSV News) — The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said it would not renew its cooperative agreements with the federal government related to children’s services and refugee support after its longstanding partnerships with the federal government in those areas became “untenable.”

Earlier this year, the Trump administration suspended a federal refugee resettlement program as part of its broader effort to enforce its hardline immigration policies. The ensuing halt in federal funding for the USCCB’s refugee resettlement services is the subject of ongoing litigation, and it prompted the conference to lay off about a third of the staff in its Migration and Refugee Services Office in February.

A spokesperson for the USCCB told OSV News the bishops were seeking reimbursement of $24,336,858.26 for resettlement services (PRM and ORR programs) that was still pending payment as of April 7.

“This situation has been brought to us by the decisions of the government,” Anthony Granado, associate general secretary for policy and advocacy for the USCCB, told OSV News.

Despite decades of partnership with the USCCB’s Migration and Refugee Services, across administrations of both parties, including the first Trump administration, Granado said, “we’ve been placed in an untenable position now.”

“It is clear that the government has decided that it wishes to go about doing this in a different way that doesn’t include us, and so we were kind of forced into this position,” Granado said.

Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, president of the USCCB and head of the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services, said in an April 7 statement it was “heartbreaking” to announce the bishops’ conference would not renew its “existing cooperative agreements with the federal government related to children’s services and refugee support.”

“This difficult decision follows the suspension by the government of our cooperative agreements to resettle refugees,” he said. “The decision to reduce these programs drastically forces us to reconsider the best way to serve the needs of our brothers and sisters seeking safe harbor from violence and persecution. As a national effort, we simply cannot sustain the work on our own at current levels or in current form.”

Citing the government’s suspension of the cooperative agreements to resettle refugees, Archbishop Broglio said that the conference has “been concerned with helping families who are fleeing war, violence, and oppression find safe and secure homes.”

“Over the years, partnerships with the federal government helped expand lifesaving programs, benefiting our sisters and brothers from many parts of the world,” Archbishop Broglio said. “All participants in these programs were welcomed by the U.S. government to come to the United States and underwent rigorous screening before their arrival. These are displaced souls who see in America a place of dreams and hope. Some assisted American efforts abroad at their own risk and more seek a place to worship and pray safely as they know God calls them.”

He said, “Our efforts were acts of pastoral care and charity, generously supported by the people of God when funds received from the government did not cover the full cost.”

Federal law requires that unaccompanied refugee minors be cared for, and the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement historically has turned to faith-based organizations, including the USCCB, to carry out this work.

A spokesperson for HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment from OSV News about its cooperative agreement with the USCCB.

Granado said the conference’s cooperative agreements with the federal government were “really about people.”

“From the church’s perspective, this is about responding to the Gospel command — Jesus says in the Gospel, ‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me,’” he said, referencing Jesus Christ’s words in Matthew 25:35-40 regarding his final judgement. “This has been a blessing and a beautiful part of the USCCB and the Catholic Church in the United States.”

The children and refugees impacted “are real people, real families” as well as “the staff whose work will be impacted,” Granado said.

As the agreements end, Archbishop Broglio added, “we will work to identify alternative means of support for the people the federal government has already admitted to these programs. We ask your prayers for the many staff and refugees impacted.” The USCCB, Archbishop Broglio said, “will continue advocating for policy reforms that provide orderly, secure immigration processes, ensuring the safety of everyone in our communities.”

“We remain steadfast in our commitment to advocating on behalf of men, women, and children suffering the scourge of human trafficking,” he said. “For half a century, we have been willing partners in implementing the government’s refugee resettlement program. The Gospel’s call to do what we can for the least among us remains our guide. We ask you to join us in praying for God’s grace in finding new ways to bring hope where it is most needed.”

Source: U.S. bishops will cease refuge resettlement work with government after Trump funding freeze | America Magazine

Reaching the bottom of the barrel: Coronavirus pandemic batters European wine production

 

It’s an ancient beverage turned cultural icon, so cherished in France that the legendary Victor Hugo once provocatively wrote: “God made only water – but man made wine”. Aside from being a staple at many family dinner tables, wine is also a massive European industry – and one that’s going through its own coronavirus-induced crisis. This in a sector that was already battling against 25% tariffs imposed by Donald Trump in 2019 that have seen exports slump.

Source: Reaching the bottom of the barrel: Coronavirus pandemic batters European wine production – Talking Europe

Reform, Defund, or Dismantle the Police? A French Perspective on the Movement in the United States

Police violence and racism confront workers and minorities in both France and the United States. France’s capitalist leaders insist that what happens on the other side of the Atlantic is irrelevant and reject any discussion of defunding or dismantling the police. The authors put the lie to their contention.

“France is not the United States.” Over and over, that is the refrain from those seeking to stigmatize the demonstrations in recent weeks here in France against police violence and racism. To that they add, over and over, that the demonstrations are a form of ethnic factionalism, that they are divisive, that they are a threat to the “Republic.” Indeed, in view of the latest statements by Macron, the right wing, and the extreme right opposition, it is true that “France is not the United States.”

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Continue reading “Reform, Defund, or Dismantle the Police? A French Perspective on the Movement in the United States” →

Worries Trump is ‘deteriorating rapidly’ after video shows him struggling to walk down a ramp: ‘They can’t hide this much longer’

Commentators on Twitter worried about President Donald Trump’s physical and mental health after video showed him struggling while descending a ramp following his graduation address at West Point.

“He minces down the ramp taking tiny baby steps and staring at his shoes, then pulls up big at the end, and blusters through the last step like he’s Patton surveying a battlefield full of knocked out panzers,” Mike Rochschild posted on Twitter.

Source: Worries Trump is ‘deteriorating rapidly’ after video shows him struggling to walk down a ramp: ‘They can’t hide this much longer’ – Raw Story

How a republic dies in the empty eyes of an empty man

From Charles Pierce, in Esquire:

“In my life, I have watched John Kennedy talk on television about missiles in Cuba. I saw Lyndon Johnson look Richard Russell squarely in the eye and and say, “And we shall overcome.” I saw Richard Nixon resign and Gerald Ford tell the Congress that our long national nightmare was over. I saw Jimmy Carter talk about malaise and Ronald Reagan talk about a shining city on a hill. I saw George H.W. Bush deliver the eulogy for the Soviet bloc, and Bill Clinton comfort the survivors of Timothy McVeigh’s madness in Oklahoma City. I saw George W. Bush struggle to make sense of it all on September 11, 2001, and I saw Barack Obama sing ‘Amazing Grace’ in the wounded sanctuary of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

“These were the presidents of my lifetime. These were not perfect men. They were not perfect presidents, god knows. Not one of them was that. But they approached the job, and they took to the podium, with all the gravitas they could muster as appropriate to the job. They tried, at least, to reach for something in the presidency that was beyond their grasp as ordinary human beings. They were not all ennobled by the attempt, but they tried nonetheless.

“And comes now this hopeless, vicious buffoon, and the audience of equally hopeless and vicious buffoons who laughed and cheered when he made sport of a woman whose lasting memory of the trauma she suffered is the laughter of the perpetrators. Now he comes, a man swathed in scandal, with no interest beyond what he can put in his pocket and what he can put over on a universe of suckers, and he does something like this while occupying an office that we gave him, and while endowed with a public trust that he dishonors every day he wakes up in the White House.

“The scion of a multigenerational criminal enterprise, the parameters of which we are only now beginning to comprehend. A vessel for all the worst elements of the American condition. And a cheap, soulless bully besides. We never have had such a cheap counterfeit of a president* as currently occupies the office. We never have had a president* so completely deserving of scorn and yet so small in the office that it almost seems a waste of time and energy to summon up the requisite contempt.

“Watch how a republic dies in the empty eyes of an empty man who feels nothing but his own imaginary greatness, and who cannot find in himself the decency simply to shut up even when it is in his best interest to do so. Presidents don’t have to be heroes to be good presidents. They just have to realize that their humanity is our common humanity, and that their political commonwealth is our political commonwealth, too.

Watch him behind the seal of the President of the United States. Isn’t he a funny man? Isn’t what happened to that lady hilarious? Watch the assembled morons cheer. This is the only story now.”