The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

Pope Leo XIV has appointed Rev Manuel de Jesús Rodríguez — a Dominican-born, pro-immigrant priest from Queens whose flock is mostly migrants — as the new bishop of Palm Beach, aka the diocese that has the misfortune of containing Trump’s self-declared “Center of the Universe”, Mar-a-Lago. In other words, the Vatican just dropped a pastor who openly worries about Trump’s immigration raids right into the heart of the golf-cart gulag.

Rodríguez, whose parish lost more than 100 people to Covid and whose congregants now live in fear of Trump’s immigration crackdown, is politely trying to help the administration stop deporting five-year-olds and parents with no criminal records. Because nothing says family values like forcing parents to sign caregiver affidavits so their US-born kids don’t end up in foster care when ICE does a pre-dawn no-knock on the way to Mass.

While Trump rants about ‘bad hombres’ from his Palm Beach bunker, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops — including the conservatives — has issued a rare special message condemning his mass deportations, migrant ‘vilification’, and denial of pastoral care in detention centers. So now, in the same zip code where Trump rails against ‘invaders’, the local bishop will be preaching that migrants are not to be demonized, that they share American values, and that they deserve dignity and respect. But sure, tell us more about how the real religious persecution here is people saying ‘Happy Holidays’ at Target.

The Trump administration has decided that if at first your totally not a Muslim ban looks racist and authoritarian, you just double it and see who complains. Trump is expanding his travel restrictions to an additional 20 countries plus people traveling on Palestinian Authority documents, because nothing says "national security" like turning huge swaths of Africa and the Middle East into a no-entry zone.

Five more countries — Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, South Sudan and Syria — now join the full-ban club, along with Palestinians whose crime is existing while Palestinian. Another 15 mostly African and Caribbean countries get slapped with "partial" restrictions, which is Washington-speak for "we’d like the xenophobia à la carte." This is on top of the 19 already targeted earlier this year, resurrecting Trump’s first-term signature policy of keeping the wrong kind of brown people out.

The White House insists this is all about "widespread corruption" and "unreliable documents" and "overstays," in other words: a grab bag of bureaucratic Mad Libs to justify collective punishment of millions of people who have never done anything wrong. The supposed trigger? An Afghan man accused — not convicted — of shooting two National Guard troops. So naturally, instead of dealing with gun violence, domestic extremism, or due process, Trump just bans more foreigners and calls it a win. But sure, tell us again how this is about "security" and not a long-running campaign to turn U.S. immigration policy into a Fox News comments section.