I don’t dispute that our nation has a right to change its course and policy. And I fully admit that we can’t save everyone from all the wars and all the political conflicts on the globe. A trip a couple of decades back to Honduras persuaded me that the needs of others on the planet are endless.
But in what my Christian friends call a fallen world, I believe we can at least do what Dave Chapelle urged us to do on Saturday Night Live this past winter — muster up a little empathy for people the world over who are in dire danger not of their own making.
As I understand it, that was the purpose of the humanitarian parole program the Trump Administration has decided to cut short, to which the U.S. Supreme Court gave its blessing.
In a dissent joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson chided the majority for allowing the deportations “before the courts have reached a final judgment regarding the legal arguments at issue.”
But it was in saying the decision “would facilitate needless human suffering” that Jackson’s dissent will find a place both in court history and the history of the second Trump Administration.
Court analysts will note Brown’s use of the word “facilitate” as a clever echoing of the word the Supreme Court used in trying to get the administration to bring back to Venezuelan man from an El Salvador prison to determine whether he had been afforded due process before his deportation. Thus far, that hasn’t happened.
But “needless human suffering” were the very words I had been looking for months ago when the president decided to pause humanitarian food aid to people starving in war zones.
As you may or may not recall, that food was already paid for and set for delivery and use when the president called for the pause.
As an American and a human, I will always be bothered that, in those circumstances, our nation put locks on the doors.
Did we think that the starving would be able to hit a pause button on their starvation? Or that of their children? Or that these people deserved to continue starving because they were among the people the president claims have been ripping us off?
If not, the alternative is that we were aware of what would happen and did it anyway.
My best guess is that the president hit the pause button as a bold announcement to the world that the nation is “Under New Management.”
But what kind of management? One willing to sacrifice the lives of helpless, starving people so it could a shine a bright light on the way it might use its power?
The administrative style this signaled now has people in the streets protesting DOGE, in courts disputing the legality and constitutionality of executive orders under Trump’s bold signature; and in town hall meetings pleading with their representatives to exercise responsible management over the nation’s budget.
It also has communities like ours in panic mode wondering how we can continue to feed the hungry, house the homeless, and fight gun violence on our streets, without a federal partner.
We’ll soon begin to see how it plays out.
My guess is that it will tend to facilitate more needless human suffering.
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