Connect with us

The Dictatorship

Pope Francis schooling JD Vance brings ‘harsh words’ from border czar Tom Homan

Published

on

Pope Francis schooling JD Vance brings ‘harsh words’ from border czar Tom Homan

Pope Francis is rattling the Trump administration this week with a letter to the U.S. bishops regarding the president’s mass deportation policies. Calling them a “violation of the dignity of many men and women and entire families,” the letter upset President Donald Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homanwho, when asked by a reporter about the pope’s “harsh words,” Banized out“I got harsh words for the pope. The pope ought to fix the Catholic Church.”

Really?

Homan should know better than to critique the pope over clear Catholic teaching.

As a Catholic, Homan should know better than to critique the pope over clear Catholic teaching. So should Vice President JD Vance, a relatively recent Catholic convert who got a pointed correction to his faulty Catholic theology in Francis’ letter. Homan, a cradle Catholic, and Vance, a convert, each needs to go back and take some remedial Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (CCD) courses to understand the teachings of the Catholic Church on human dignity. After all, as Francis reminds Vance in his letter, Jesus was an immigrant.

The Trump administration, which describes itself as “faith based,” is in fact setting itself up for an epic religious and social battle with religious groups over deportation. Francis’ letter is notable because he took the time to write specifically to the bishops of the United States about the way deportations have been categorized by the Trump administration. The letter is clear about thisstating, “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.”

In other words, labeling all deportees as criminals flies in the face of human dignity, and is directly opposite to Christian teachings about loving and caring for one’s neighbors.

Vance proclaimed himself to be “ Heartbroken” about the Catholic bishops’ criticism of the Trump administration’s immigration policy, and, in a tone similar to Homan’s, said the bishops needed to “look in the mirror” because “when they receive over $100 million to help resettle illegal immigrants, are they worried about humanitarian concerns? Or are they actually worried about their bottom line?”

Francis’ letter was also a pointed critique of Vance’s erroneous exposition on medieval theology. “Just google ‘ordo amoris,’” Vance posted on the social media platform X on Jan. 30 as people were criticizing him for a Fox News interview in which he said, “There is a Christian concept that you love your family, and then you love your neighborand then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country. And then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.” He said the “far left” got the order backward.

Francis’ letter was also a pointed critique of Vice President JD Vance’s erroneous exposition on medieval theology.

And in the X post, he called his view “basic common sense.”

To the contrary, the ordo amoris is about the order of love and charity that should be held for all humans, and to care for all in need. To quote from the pope’s letter, “The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan’ (cf. Lk 10:25-37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception. But worrying 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.”

The pope devoting a whole paragraph to correcting Vance should be seen as embarrassing, not only for the vice president but also for the Trump administration as a whole.

In the battle between the Catholic Church and the Trump administration over deportations, Francis has been putting his chess pieces on the board. He just appointed another pro-migrant bishop,  Bishop Weisenburger,to serve as archbishop in Detroit. And as I’ve previously written, Cardinal Robert McElroywhom the pope decided to make the archbishop of Washington, D.C., after Trump won, has decried mass deportations. Given those voices and a statement defending migrants from Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso, the Trump administration should expect there to be more than the usual criticism of its decidedly non-Christian policies on immigration and deportation.

Even New York’s archbishop, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who led a prayer at Trump’s inauguration last month, said Vance’s comments on the bishops and immigration were “very scurrilous and very nasty.”

Other religious groups are joining in to denounce Trump’s draconian deportation policies. A lawsuit filedby 27 religious groups is suing the Trump administration to protect houses of worship from immigration raids. Add to that the condemnation over the closure of U.S. Agency for International Development offices around the world, which many U.S. religious organizations participated in, and you have the makings of a new war pitting religious groups against Trump’s immigration and foreign aid policies.

Even Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who led a prayer at Trump’s inauguration, said Vance’s comments were ‘very scurrilous and very nasty.’

Francis clearly wants this fight. He called Trump’s focus on deportations a major crisis in his letter to the bishops. Then he directly addressed the Trump administration in his letter by saying “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.”

I think members of the Trump administration believed they could brush aside the concerns of Christians with MAGA-style rhetoric and bad theological takes and did not anticipate an immediate fight — and certainly not a scolding letter from the pope. Unlike the sycophantic evangelical followers and prosperity gospel folks like Paula Whitethe new head of Trump’s faith office, the administration is now encountering Christians who understand and seek to carry out the message of the Gospels.

Read More

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

The Dictatorship

Trump ends ex-Vice President Harris’ Secret Service protection early after Biden had extended it

Published

on

Trump ends ex-Vice President Harris’ Secret Service protection early after Biden had extended it

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has revoked former Vice President Kamala Harris’ Secret Service protection that otherwise would have ended next summer, senior Trump administration officials said Friday.

Former vice presidents typically get federal government protection for six months after leaving office, while ex-presidents do so for life. But then-President Joe Biden quietly signed a directive, at Harris’ request, that had extended protection for her beyond the traditional six months, according to another person familiar with the matter. The people insisted on anonymity to discuss a matter not made public.

Trump, a Republican, defeated Harrisa Democrat, in the presidential election last year.

His move to drop Harris’ Secret Service protection comes as the former vice president, who became the Democratic nominee last summer after a chaotic series of events that led to Biden dropping out of the contestis about to embark on a book tour for her memoirtitled “107 Days.” The tour has 15 stops, including visits abroad to London and Toronto. The book, which refers to the historically short length of her presidential campaign, will be released Sept. 23, and the tour begins the following day.

A recent threat intelligence assessment the Secret Service conducts on those it protects, such as Harris, found no red flags or credible evidence of a threat to the former vice president, said a White House official who also insisted on anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The administration found no reason Harris’ protection should go beyond the standard six-month period for former vice presidents, the official said.

Trump’s vice president from his first term, Mike Pence, did not have extended Secret Service protection beyond the standard six months.

Still, it is not unusual for Secret Service protection to continue well beyond the statutory six-month window, particularly when former officials face credible and ongoing threats. But Trump’s decisions to revoke the protection have stood out both for timing and for targets.

During Trump’s second presidency, he repeatedly has cut off security for adversaries and figures who have fallen from favor, including his onetime national security adviser John Bolton and members of Biden’s family, including the former president’s adult children. Outgoing presidents can extend protection for those who might otherwise not be eligible; Trump did so for his family after leaving office in 2021.

The decision to strip Harris of protection is certain to raise alarms among security experts who view continuity of protection as essential in a polarized climate.

A senior Trump administration official said an executive memorandum was issued Thursday to the Department of Homeland Security ending Harris’ security detail and security services. Those had been extended from six to 18 months by the Biden administration, so they would have ended in July 2026, but now they will be terminated on Monday.

Harris lives in the Los Angeles area. The city’s Democratic mayor, Karen Bass, called Trump’s decision “another act of revenge following a long list of political retaliation” and warned that it would endanger Harris. Bass said she plans to work with California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a fellow Democrat, to ensure the former vice president’s safety, and she and Harris have already been in touch about the issue, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions.

While she lost to Trump last November, Harris is seen as a potential candidate for 2028, and she has already announced she will not run for California governor in 2026. Harris is also a former senator, California attorney general and San Francisco district attorney.

Last year was a particularly politically charged environment with Trump facing two assassination attempts, and the Secret Service played a crucial role in protecting the now-president. While questions remain about how the agency prepared for a July 2024 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, a Secret Service counter sniper shot a gunman dead after he fired eight shots, killing an attendee, wounding two others and grazing Trump’s right ear. Trump chose one of the agents who rushed to the stage to shield him, Sean Curran, to lead the agency earlier this year.

The news of the security revocation was first reported by BLN.

___

Gomez Licon reported from Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Read More

Continue Reading

The Dictatorship

Appeals court rules against Trump tariffs, but Supreme Court appeal may soon follow

Published

on

Appeals court rules against Trump tariffs, but Supreme Court appeal may soon follow
Image: President Trump Holds
President Donald Trump holds up a chart during a “Make America Wealthy Again” trade announcement at the White House on April 2.Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

A federal appeals court ruled against President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Friday, but the ruling won’t take immediate effect because the court is giving the administration time to appeal to the Supreme Court. So as with nearly every big issue in American life, the justices may have the last word.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said the administration will appeal. The president said in his own social media post that if the ruling stands it would “literally destroy the United States of America.”

The ruling came Friday from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. It dealt with five executive orders imposing tariffs “of unlimited duration on nearly all goods from nearly every country in the world,” as the court put it. The U.S. Court of International Trade had previously ruled in May that the tariffs ran afoul of a federal law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The government appealed to the Federal Circuit, which upheld the trade court on Friday.

“Because we agree that IEEPA’s grant of presidential authority to ‘regulate’ imports does not authorize the tariffs imposed by the Executive Orders, we affirm,” the appeals court said, adding that it wasn’t weighing in on “whether the President’s actions should have been taken as a matter of policy.”

The court also said that further review is needed back in the trade court regarding the universal injunction it granted. The appeals court cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in the birthright citizenship case that dealt with that subject in June, after the trade court ruling came out.

The Federal Circuit’s ruling on Friday split the 11 judges who heard the case 7-4.

The judges also issued an order accompanying the ruling that keeps it from taking effect through Oct. 14. If a Supreme Court appeal is filed by then, the appellate ruling will remain on hold either until the Supreme Court declines review or issues its own ruling.

Four judges added a separate opinion that agreed with the majority, but further expressed their view that IEEPA not only doesn’t authorize Trump to issue the tariffs in these executive orders, but that it doesn’t authorize him to issue any tariffs at all.

Four other judges dissented, writing that they agreed with the majority that the trade court had jurisdiction, that the plaintiffs had standing to bring a lawsuit and that (if the tariffs are unlawful) the case needs to be sent back to the lower court for further review; but they disagreed with the substance of the lower court’s ruling that the tariffs are unlawful.

Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.

Jordan Rubin

Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro,” a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined BLN, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.

Read More

Continue Reading

The Dictatorship

A teenager died by suicide after confiding in ChatGPT. That should be a wake-up call.

Published

on

A teenager died by suicide after confiding in ChatGPT. That should be a wake-up call.

In family photos, you can see 16-year-old Adam Raine grinning ear to ear. But the California teen’s prankster personality concealed a deep current of depression and despair. And earlier this year, say his parentsChatGPT — which Adam went to for comfort — helped him take his own life.

Earlier this week, Adam’s mother and father filed the first known wrongful death suit against OpenAI. The lawsuit includes ChatGPT logs from Adam’s phone, which show how completely he was lured in to rely on a Big Tech product for companionship — and how, time after time, that product ignored warning signs and structurally failed him. At first, he turned to AI for homework help. Then, as chronic illness and problems at school narrowed his world, he called on it for comfort. Instead, the lawsuit alleges, it became an accelerator for self-harm and guided him through his death by suicide. (In a statement to NBC News, an OpenAI spokesperson confirmed the authenticity of the logs, but said the lawsuit did not include the full context of ChatGPT’s responses.)

Chatbots are designed to keep kids hooked — even when they need off-ramps for real-world help.

As the mother of two boys, 3 and 5, I can only imagine the pain Adam’s parents are feeling. But I know that families across the country share a fundamental anger that Big Tech companies willingly risk the lives of our kids, an anger that grows every time we hear about the loss of a young person like Adam.

More and more frequently, kids are confiding in Big Tech’s AI chatbots, not just when they want help with homework, but when they’re lonely or in pain. Because AI chatbots are designed to be sycophantic and to adeptly mimic human emotion, children can’t always tell truth from fiction, or distinguish real love and concern from a machine-generated response. That makes kids dangerously vulnerable to forming unhealthy attachments.

After the Raines filed their lawsuit, an OpenAI spokesperson said the company was “deeply saddened by Mr. Raine’s passing.” The company published a blog post listing “some of the things we are working to improve” when ChatGPT’s safeguards fail. That is too little, too late — just like Big Tech’s attitude toward safety in general. Rather than do anything to help address this problem, these companies prioritize hyping up the uses of AI and increasing its “market share” of our kids’ waking hours and mental bandwidth.

Adam Raine.
Adam Raine.Courtesy Raine Family

In fact, Mark Zuckerberg has said he wants his Meta AI companion to fill users’ “demand for meaningfully more” real-world friends. In 2023, The Wall Street Journal reportsthe chatbot’s product managers “told staff that Zuckerberg was upset that the team was playing it too safe,” which led to a loosening of the standards that kept conversations from becoming too sexualized.

Meta’s internal documents allowed their AI chatbots to “engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual” until the company was asked about it by Reuters. New research from the family advocacy group Common Sense Media finds that Meta’s chatbot for Instagram and Facebook willingly coaches teens on how to carry out self-harm, disordered eating and violent fantasies.

As AI chatbots become confidantes and even parasitic bosom buddies, many children share secrets they won’t or can’t tell their families. Chatbots, though, are designed to produce engagement and keep kids hooked — even when they need off-ramps for real-world help. Products like ChatGPT — tragically, unspeakably — become abettors and co-conspirators in suicidal plans, with the chatbot, according to the lawsuit, even providing Adam advice on how to tie a noose.

If this were any other industry, lawmakers would have listened to the thousands of parents and young advocates who have been banging down their doors pleading for change.

The scale of the harm wrought by these companies grows by the day.

But Big Tech has big money, which means big lobbying — and so far, that has blocked real safeguards. Instead of working with lawmakers, these companies even pushed for a ludicrous federal moratorium on AI regulation, which would have negated hundreds, if not thousands, of state laws already on the books and blocked any state laws dealing with AI for 10 years. This prompted a nationwide revolt of parents, attorneys general, governors and state legislators on both sides of the aisle.

My two boys haven’t yet begun to ask me for phones, and they don’t know what social media or chatbots are. And still I’m scared to death we won’t get through to lawmakers in time to save them. My eldest is a whip-smart, sensitive kid, who I’m terrified will be destroyed by social media, either preyed upon by an online child predator, or persuaded to do himself harm because his young mind won’t comprehend that the “friend” he is confiding in is actually a machine humming away in a massive data center somewhere, helping him — like it did for Adam — plan a “beautiful suicide.”

Meanwhile, tech giants are buying off academics and whitewashing research about the dangers their products pose to our kids. They’re infiltrating trusted institutions like the PTA, backing “safety” initiatives while fighting to defeat safety reforms, suing organizations they view as threats. They try to silence whistleblowers — even when those whistleblowers are called before Congress. And now they’re even creating political super PACs to intimidate lawmakers into voting their way and ignoring tragedies like Adam’s.

Let me be absolutely clear: Politicians should think twice before accepting donations from these Big Tech super PACs. The scale of the harm wrought by these companies grows by the day. They are not working in good faith with legislators and regulators to ensure that our privacy and our children’s lives are protected.

Thankfully, state legislators don’t have to wait for Washington to act. In California, for instance, state Sen. Steve Padilla introduced SB 243which would establish safety guardrails for “companion” chatbots and make companies track interactions with users in crisis. And AB 1064the LEAD for Kids Act, championed by Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, would ban emotionally manipulative AI companions for kids, require parental consent and more.

These are all sensible measures — and they are under attack by the very companies whose products are harming our children. Just last week, Meta announced a California-specific super PAC to go after such bills.

Meta, Apple, Google, OpenAI and their ilk will never regulate themselves, so we urgently need to do it before more children die and more families are destroyed. In Adam Raine’s memory, we have an opportunity to prevent future tragedies — if lawmakers will listen.

Read More

Continue Reading

Trending