Get Into Good Trouble, Reclaim Morality, Stand for the Vulnerable
Honor John Lewis at National Day of Action on July 17
That nerve-wracking scraping of fingernails on a blackboard is Donald Trump once again claiming he was anointed by God to be dictator of America.
Thanks to immunity from the Supreme Court and lackey deference from his Republican Congressional acolytes, Trump sees himself as an invincible savior. “It remains my firm conviction that God alone saved me that day for a righteous purpose: to restore our beloved Republic to greatness and to rescue our Nation from those who seek its ruin,” Trump preens in a White House screed about the July 13, 2024 assassination attempt, evidence of a “triumph over forces of evil and destruction.”
The truth, however, is that Trump is more like Satan – the greedy, con artist Biblical “father of lies” - than an imitation of Jesus Christ. He delights in obfuscating morality, normalizing nonchalant cruelty and idolizing golden calves. He is the one who seeks to ruin a civilized world where decency and diversity are cherished.
Trump’s world is amoral, situational, shameless, simply, “Me, First.” And as the first six months of his second term have illustrated, he is the one who has unleashed the forces of evil and destruction.
In the early morning of early July 4th, devastating flash floods rushed through Texas Hill Country, killing at least 134 people, including 37 children with 101 still missing. Would more have been saved if DOGE had not blindly cut or intimidated weather experts into leaving?
The new Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator, David Richardson, failed to rush to the site of one of the country’s deadliest floods in 25 years. Worse still, Richardson told his staff last month that he was unaware that the U.S. has a hurricane season. Hurricane season began on June 1 and lasts through November. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast that this season is expected to bring as many as 10 hurricanes.
Meanwhile, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem requires her personal approval for any contract exceeding $100,000, including regular FEMA responses such as ensuring a logistics company transports supplies to a disaster site.
“If you can’t spend $150,000 on a requirement and you have to wait for the secretary to approve that, maybe it’s too late,” a former FEMA official told Politico.
Trump issued a disaster declaration on July 6, enabling FEMA to provide emergency aid for temporary lodging and other emergency expenses. But three days later, aid for Kerr County - which has about 26,000 households and had the most flood deaths - had only been approved for 11 households.
"FEMA is shifting from bloated, DC-centric dead weight to a lean, deployable disaster force that empowers state actors to provide relief for their citizens," a DHS spokesperson told Reuters.
Apparently, Trump’s disaster relief empowerment does not extend to starving children. On July 15, despite months of warnings that “nearly 500 metric tons of emergency [USAID] food—enough to feed about 1.5 million children for a week”—would expire, the Trump administration ordered the food incinerated “instead of sending it to people abroad who need it,” according to a July 14 story in The Atlantic.
In some cases, FEMA isn’t waiting. Last January, FEMA’s Emergency Food and Shelter program cut a $175,000 annual grant to Los Angeles-based Project Angel Food, a nonprofit that started out providing nutritious meals to people with AIDS during the AIDS Crisis, then expanded to people with life-threatening conditions. Recently, CEO Richard Ayoub learned that an additional $340,000 was cut from another federal grant administered by LA County specifically designated for medically personalized foods for 519 people living with HIV/AIDS.
Ayoub is turning to the community for help. “These people need food to survive. They have neuropathy. They are going through depression. They may have cancer, diabetes or heart disease on top of the HIV because they’re immune suppressed,” he says.
Are these cuts God’s “righteous purpose?”
Under Trump, the party of “Family Values” has become the party of ugly, racist Christian Nationalist family separation; of vitriolic hate targeting trans people; and of indiscriminate White Supremacist racial profiling, kidnappings, deportation and disappearances without due process. To fulfill Trump’s goal of deporting 1 million people in his first year, ICE is increasingly targeting unauthorized immigrants with no criminal record for arrest and ordered to hold immigrants who entered the country illegally “for the duration of their removal proceedings,” which can take months or years, according to the Washington Post.
Meanwhile, states and vulnerable citizens are bracing for Trump’s One Big Ugly Bill, which the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated will cut federal spending on Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) benefits by $1.02 trillion, due in part to eliminating at least 10.5 million people from the programs by 2034, according to an analysis by the Center for American Progress and Arc.
“It is nearly impossible to carve out a specific population, such as disabled people or elderly people, because the cuts to Medicaid funding will affect everyone due to hospital closures and health care workforce layoffs.”
“The damage of this bill will be staggering,” Crystal FitzSimons, president of Food Research & Action Center (FRAC), said in a statement. “Multiple data sources have highlighted how tens of millions of working families with children as well as older adults, veterans, and people with disabilities will lose access to the nutrition they need for their health and well-being,”
“All of this is happening so that billionaires will receive new tax breaks, a cruel juxtaposition as millions of our nation’s children will lose access to basic nutrition. Many will lose access to the free school meals that fuel their health and learning, and to the Summer EBT Program, which helps close the summer child hunger gap,” she said.
Is this God’s “righteous purpose” for Trump?
Meanwhile, on Monday, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to dismantle the Department of Education, which, Trump has argued, is unnecessary, ineffective and a tool of a “woke” culture war.
Trump apparently doesn’t know or care that the Dept. of Education does NOT determine curriculum or most school policies. However, the massive cuts may cripple the Office for Civil Rights, which has protected LGBTQ+ rights and the Federal Student Aid office that oversees the $1.6 trillion federal student loan program, among other offices. Grant programs are also impacted, such as the $18.4 billion Title I program “that provides supplemental funding to high-poverty K-12 schools, as well as the $15.5 billion program that helps cover the cost of education for students with disabilities.”
Voters overwhelmingly disapprove of the cuts in both a Economist/YouGov poll and a Quinnipiac University poll.
Tiffany Justice, chair of the Parental Rights Initiative at The Heritage Foundation, however, said in a post on X: "Can't wait for @EDSecMcMahon to be able to unleash the full power of reform on the bloated, inefficient, bureaucracy at @usedgov."
Once upon a time in America, people of faith would be aghast and ashamed that their government was committing such cruelty toward the vulnerable in the name of God. And yet, on July 14, Trump rambled and rudely swore at the first White House Faith Office summit, talked about being saved by God, and told a “funny” story that ended with Russia bombing a Ukrainian nursing home and everyone laughed.
What is God’s “righteous purpose” for us?
Perhaps checking in with like-minded people of good conscience might reveal a loving, challenging spirit similar to that of the late civil rights hero, Rep. John Lewis.
"Good Trouble Lives On" is a National Day of Action set for July 17, the fifth anniversary of Lewis’ death, with a variety of different protests and events planned around the country. In Los Angeles, the event is in DTLA, from 4:30-8pm at 200 N. Spring Street, LA 90012. This site provides a map.
"We are facing the most brazen rollback of civil rights in generations. Whether you're outraged by attacks on voting rights, the gutting of essential services, disappearance of our neighbors, or the assault on free speech and our right to protest—this movement is for you,” organizers say. "Trump is trying to divide us but we know the power of coming together."
John Lewis "taught us the power of people coming together for peaceful collective action. This is our moment to carry the torch, continue the legacy of John Lewis and pass it forward to future generations,” said Allison Pulliam and Christine Wood, co-directors of the Declaration for American Democracy Coalition. "We invite you to join us on July 17th in making Good Trouble."