Trump is doing a terrific job pissing off religious groups

It turns out that a lot of religious groups aren’t all that interested in President Donald Trump’s plan to create a white ethnostate by barring certain refugees from entering the country. 

Trump signed an executive order banning refugees on Day 1, but now he’s created what is basically an affirmative action program for white South Africans, opening U.S. doors for them and only them. Now, the ostensibly oppressed Afrikaners have landed in Washington, D.C., a mere three months after Trump decided that they’re the most persecuted people on Earth. 

It’s a move so venal that the Episcopal Church just announced that it will no longer work with the federal government on refugee resettlement after having helped more than 100,000 people.

In the announcement, the presiding bishop said that the church’s “steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation and our historic ties with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa.” 

About those “historic ties” … 

The Episcopal Church is part of the worldwide Anglican community—which also happens to include the late Desmond Tutu’s Anglican Church of Southern Africa—so it’s clear that they were never going to be down with the idea that only white South Africans have been persecuted. 

Surely the Trump administration will try to dismiss this by sneering about how woke Episcopalians are, but it’s not just the “woke” Christians who are furious. 

A significant portion of immigration and refugee resettlement work is handled through a public-private partnership among 10 organizations, 7 of which are religious. So when the Trump administration slammed the door on refugee resettlement, it also yanked funding for this work, including for services already rendered. 

That’s why the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which isn’t exactly known as a hotbed of liberalism, sued the Trump administration in February for refusing to reimburse the $13 million it had already spent. 

Three other religious groups sued separately, saying that Trump’s refugee ban was implemented without the required rulemaking procedure and violated the due process of refugees who had already completed the years-long admission process. 

USCCB’s lawsuit was heard by Trevor McFadden, a conservative Trump judge who ruled against them, meaning that their contracts with the federal government remain canceled and they’re still out $13 million. They’ve appealed the decision, but they’re also quitting the refugee resettlement partnership, since a public-private partnership doesn’t really work when you remove the public funding. 

Vice President JD Vance, who was shamed by the late Pope Francis over the Trump administration’s mistreatment of immigrants, speculated that Catholic bishops are only upset because resettlement is a big-time moneymaker for the church. He whined that, “as a devout Catholic,” he hoped the church would “do better.” 

While Vance makes it sound like Catholic bishops decided to get mad out of nowhere, USCCB has helped resettle more than 930,000 refugees since 1980. It’s likely inconceivable to Vance that religious people might actually be motivated by good things rather than abject cruelty, so it’s no wonder he’s confused about what it means to be “a devout Catholic.” 

Additionally, resettling refugees is not the ticket to riches Vance imagines it to be, with bishops explaining that the funds provided by the government do not even fully cover the costs of resettlement. 

Even evangelical Christians are not happy with resettlement being limited to white South Africans. World Relief, a Christian humanitarian organization, said that it would be serving a small number of those arrivals but wants to resume resettlement for a broad swath of people. Recent polling also shows that evangelicals broadly support immigration efforts like refugee resettlement. 

But while the Trump administration pretends that white South African refugees are uniquely at risk, it’s given away the reason why these particular refugees are so desirable. 

“One of the criteria is making sure they can be assimilated easily into our country,” a top Trump official said when asked why other refugees, such as Afghans, are being denied.

That certainly clears that up. 

You’d think the United States already has enough homegrown white supremacists that we wouldn’t need to import them from overseas, but apparently there can never be too many. And if the federal government loses support from religious groups along the way, well, that’s just the art of the deal.

Campaign Action