The News & Topicality Thread

[Jocose]

So much is being exposed right now, it’s difficult to keep up

[Jocose]

https://x.com/johnrich/status/1887328889074294944

You think they're melting down now? Just wait until we start learning about the tax dollars used to traffic children all over America, and the world. This is just getting started, folks. We're not even one inch in on a mile deep tar pit of wickedness.

[Del]

So much is being exposed right now, it’s difficult to keep up

Trump has been averaging about 5 major headline news actions, every day.

And then Elon Musk has been adding a major headline or two each day.
And several of Trump's Cabinet members, like Marco Rubio and Pam Bondi, have added a headline every day or so.
Tom Homan hits the headlines every day.

Democrats and their lazy media have not been able to keep up. By the time they can manage a lame response to yesterday's headline, the issue has already resolved, or advanced, or escalated beyond their reach. Democrats need to fix their own house.
===============================
Trump and Musk won't need to cut anything that anyone cares about that is proper to the well-being of America.

I believe that they can balance the budget, just by finding and ending all of the fraud.

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+

Title: Latin American Church strategies after Trump’s immigration policies
Source: Crux
Link: cruxnow DOT com/church-in-the-americas/2025/02/latin-american-church-strategies-after-trumps-immigration-policies

The Money-Quotes:

One of the recent initiatives aiming develop strategies to deal with the new situation was an online meeting promoted by Red Clamor (Latin American and Caribbean Ecclesial Network on Migration, Displacement, Refuge and Trafficking in Human Beings), which gathers dozens of Catholic groups, on Jan. 31. More than 100 people discussed the challenges posed by Trump.

“The new measures’ impacts are manifold. They menace people now traveling to the U.S., people who have been living there for decades, and institutions that directly or indirectly receive money from the U.S.,” Bishop Eugenio Lira of Matamoros, Mexico, who heads the Mexican Human Mobility Pastoral Ministry, told Crux.

[…]

One of the key moves now is to enhance the dialogue between different Church organizations, as well as to promote alliances with Catholic educational institutions, parishes and dioceses, he added.

“If donations from the U.S. will not arrive anymore in Church projects, we must look on the local level for new alliances with governments, businesses, and Catholic entities,” Lira said.

[…]

In the opinion of Father Conrado Zepeda, a Social Science professor at the Ibero American University in Puebla who headed the Jesuits’ migration and refugees service for years in Mexico, the Latin American Church is “on the immigrants’ side, more than ever.”

“More conservative parishes or groups that didn’t have any work connected to immigrants have been launching initiatives over the past few years, thanks to Pope Francis’s insistence on that theme. The Latin American Church is almost unanimous now in that regard,” he told Crux.

∗∗∗

Trump & Co. may be disappointed to learn that the Church will continue helping Migrants assert their Rights, even when forced to do so by means ever-reinvented.

[Del]

Title: Latin American Church strategies after Trump’s immigration policies
Source: Crux
Link: cruxnow DOT com/church-in-the-americas/2025/02/latin-american-church-strategies-after-trumps-immigration-policies

The Money-Quotes:

One of the recent initiatives aiming develop strategies to deal with the new situation was an online meeting promoted by Red Clamor (Latin American and Caribbean Ecclesial Network on Migration, Displacement, Refuge and Trafficking in Human Beings), which gathers dozens of Catholic groups, on Jan. 31. More than 100 people discussed the challenges posed by Trump.

“The new measures’ impacts are manifold. They menace people now traveling to the U.S., people who have been living there for decades, and institutions that directly or indirectly receive money from the U.S.,” Bishop Eugenio Lira of Matamoros, Mexico, who heads the Mexican Human Mobility Pastoral Ministry, told Crux.

[…]

One of the key moves now is to enhance the dialogue between different Church organizations, as well as to promote alliances with Catholic educational institutions, parishes and dioceses, he added.

“If donations from the U.S. will not arrive anymore in Church projects, we must look on the local level for new alliances with governments, businesses, and Catholic entities,” Lira said.

[…]

In the opinion of Father Conrado Zepeda, a Social Science professor at the Ibero American University in Puebla who headed the Jesuits’ migration and refugees service for years in Mexico, the Latin American Church is “on the immigrants’ side, more than ever.”

“More conservative parishes or groups that didn’t have any work connected to immigrants have been launching initiatives over the past few years, thanks to Pope Francis’s insistence on that theme. The Latin American Church is almost unanimous now in that regard,” he told Crux.

What a concept!!! Catholic charity workers assisting people in their homelands and nations where they have settled legally.

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+

Title: Pope Francis to U.S. Catholic bishops: Oppose mass deportations
Source: America
Link: americamagazine DOT org/politics-society/2025/02/11/catholic-bishops-mass-deportation-pope-francis-249893

The Money-Quotes:

Pope Francis has sent a strongly worded letter to the Catholic bishops of the United States in which he denounced the mass deportation of migrants initiated by President Donald Trump. The letter also stated that Francis disagrees with identifying the illegal status of migrants with criminality, and called on the bishops “to walk together” and defend the human dignity of the migrants in their country.

“I have followed closely the major crisis that is taking place in the United States with the initiation of a program of mass deportations,” the pope said.

He told the bishops that “the rightly formed conscience cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality.” His words seemingly allude to statements by Mr. Trump and members of his administration that depict migrants as criminals, rapists and drug traffickers.

“At the same time,” Francis said, “one must recognize the right of a nation to defend itself and keep communities safe from those who have committed violent or serious crimes while in the country or prior to arrival.”

[…]

The act of deportation “is not a minor issue,” the pope stated. He emphasized that “an authentic rule of law is verified precisely in the dignified treatment that all people deserve, especially the poorest and most marginalized.” He said, “The true common good is promoted when society and government, with creativity and strict respect for the rights of all — as I have affirmed on numerous occasions — welcomes, protects, promotes and integrates the most fragile, unprotected and vulnerable.” Such an approach, he said, “does not impede the development of a policy that regulates orderly and legal migration.”

He insisted that the development of such a policy “cannot come about through the privilege of some and the sacrifice of others. What is built on the basis of force, and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly.”

He reminded the American bishops that the Catholic Church’s social doctrine emphatically shows that Jesus Christ, “the Son of God, in becoming man, also chose to live the drama of immigration.”

[…]

“[W]orrying about personal, community or national identity, apart from these considerations, easily introduces an ideological criterion that distorts social life and imposes the will of the strongest as the criterion of truth,” Francis said.

The letter has been in the drafting for at least 10 days, according to an informed Vatican source who asked for anonymity. He said Francis is aware that while a small number of the almost 300 active diocesan bishops, including Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago and Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso, Tex., have taken a strong public stance on this question, he knows that many others have been tepid in their statements or stayed silent. The pope wants them all to “stand together” and “take a strong stance in defense of the human dignity of migrants,” the source said.

∗∗∗

This letter should bring the American bishops together somewhat. Hopefully, it will also inspire a Come-to-Jesus-Moment in Vance and Homan (both Catholics) as well as in any incorrigible MAGA Catholic megaphones.

"Major Crisis". "Not a Minor Issue". Heh. One might even call it "Nonnegotiable".

[Del]

All the same, no one is going to stop arresting and deporting the "criminals, rapists and drug traffickers."

[Del]

Homan is taking care of securing our border, rounding up the known violent criminals, gangs, and terrorists, and finding the hundreds of thousands of lost migrant children.

Trump and Pam Bondi at DOJ have released the political prisoners and shut down the political law fare cases.

Pete Hegseth has turned around our military morale and readiness on a dime, it seems. We have gone from desperately low recruitment to breaking records -- and having to double our capacity for training new recruits.

Trump and Sec of State Marco Rubio are making great strides in restoring world peace and prosperity under American hegemony. Hostages returned from Venezuela, Russia, and Hamas. Persuading Middle Eastern nations to host Palestinian refugees. We expect to hear some good news concerning Russia and Ukraine soon.

And perhaps the greatest surprise which could result in the greatest boon to Americans and the world is the work being done by Elon Musk and DOGE. It is entirely possible that America could balance our budget without having to cut anything that we care about.... Nothing but just the waste and fraud!

But DOGE isn't just cleaning up a mess.... this is major surgery. It is likely that we will be facing tens of thousands -- maybe hundreds of thousands -- of unemployed former gov't bureau workers, many of whom have no skills and no work ethic. It could be difficult to integrate these into real American jobs. The DC area around the Beltway could be hit hard.

[Hovannes]

[Del]

What's with all the masks????

And they are threatening to resign? What kind of threat is that? -- They're just going to be fired anyway.