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Fellow citizens, please note. Being an informed citizen means more than being concerned about the price of eggs.
Amid the ongoing chaos and upheaval unleashed on the country by Donald Trump and his henchman Elon Musk, it comes as no surprise that many Americans who voted for Trump are learning two maxims that may wind up haunting them for years to come:
Be careful what you wish for. Beware of being a single-issue voter.
In light of the assault on government agencies and their very purposes, these two adages must be dwelling in the minds of many conservative Christians who voted for Trump over the single issue of abortion, only to see the new administration call for a freeze in federal funding for church social service functions delivered by nongovernmental organizations.
Case in point: Catholic Charities USA is an organization that operates 167 agencies across the nation that serve the needs of migrant and immigrant populations. The work of Catholic Charities is overseen by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, where an audit covering the years 2014-2023 showed that CCUSA received $797 million in federal grant funds – more than 90% of its operating revenue.
Notwithstanding its work in providing health care, nutrition and other services to needy individuals, Trump in late January announced his intention to curtail NGO support for refugees while certain allies, including Elon Musk and retired General Michael Flynn, called such federal grant support as “money laundering” and “illegal.”
The criticism of the Catholic bishops’ support for refugees was joined by Vice President J.D. Vance, who said that the motivation for resettling refugees was driven by funding. Vance, a recent Catholic convert, drew the ire of New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan. The cardinal, who has been chummy around Trump and sat next to him in October at the annual Al Smith Catholic charity event, went on to deliver the invocation at the January 20 inauguration.
That was then.
Just weeks later, the grin is now off Dolan’s face amid announced funding freezes for immigrant support, as it is for much of the Catholic hierarchy who supported candidate Trump in their one-issue mindset. Among other word choices, Dolan characterized Vance’s language as “nasty” and “scurrilous.”
In a statement released on January 26, just six days into the Trump administration, the Catholic bishops pushed back at Vance’s use of the term “illegal immigrants” and challenged the veracity of his views about the church’s work with refugees.
“In 1980, the bishops of the United States began partnering with the federal government to carry out this service when Congress created the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.
“Every person resettled through USRAP is vetted and approved for the program by the federal government while outside of the United States. In our agreements with the government, the USCCB receives funds to do this work; however, these funds are not sufficient to cover the entire cost of these programs.”
The current attacks by the Trump administration on organizations assisting immigrants is of particular interest to Ohioans because of the recent outright support Catholic bishops gave in a special election in August 2023 to Republicans in the fight over reproductive freedom which culminated in the defeat of Issue One that summer.
In that campaign, Ohio’s Catholic bishops donated $900,000 from parish collection baskets for a ballot measure that would have made it virtually impossible to amend the Ohio constitution, requiring 60% voter approval and a percentage of the vote in all 88 counties for passage. Issue One was a blatant attempt to block a reproductive rights amendment from appearing on the ballot that fall by calling a special election in the middle of the summer.
The ploy didn’t work.
After defeating Issue One in August, 57% of Ohio voters passed a reproductive rights amendment in November 2023 that is now part of the Ohio constitution. The measure would have failed if the preceding Issue One had been approved a few months earlier.
Issue One may be a textbook example of the pitfalls of one-issue voting, a lesson that Catholic bishops and other organizations should have learned by now.
It is a moral issue for an administration to cause chaos among those agencies who feed the hungry, care for the sick, and provide refuge for those in need. Indeed, it is an act of betrayal against those who put their faith in Trump but received a layoff notice or other action that puts their livelihood in jeopardy.
With the betrayal of the Catholic bishops and other organizations by the Trump administration and the failure of other elected Republicans to push back on the obscene measures that have wreaked havoc on so many Americans in the last three weeks, there is a lesson in being careful about what you wished for, encapsulated in that all-important single-issue that drove so many to the polls while ignoring another single-issue so important in our lives: personal character.
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