Tag: illegal

President Trump Continues to Break Many Laws and to Violate the Constitution. Woe to Those Who Enable Him

The Epstein Files – A month ago, both chambers of Congress passed a bill (the Epstein Files Transparency Act) that required the Department of Justice (DOJ) to release all of the Epstein files regarding sex trafficking by December 19, 2025 (with a limited amount of material to be redacted in order to protect the identity of the victims). On Friday some 13,000 files had been released but Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche admitted that not all of the files would be released by Friday.

Republican Congressman Thomas Massie from Kentucky who co-sponsored the bill is not convinced that the DOJ is acting in good faith.. Prior to the release of this first trove of files, in a post to X, Massie described the information he was expecting. “The victims’ lawyers have been in contact with me. And collectively, they know there are at least 20 names of men who are accused of sex crimes in the possession of the FBI. So, if we get a large production on December 19th, and it does not contain a single name of any male who’s accused of a sex crime or sex trafficking or rape or any of these things, then we know they haven’t produced all the documents”. In addition, sixteen files with pictures that were inadvertently released on Friday had already been taken down from the website by Saturday because they contained a photograph of Trump. After reviewing the material, Massie accused the DOJ of “flouting the spirit and the letter of the law.”

If President Trump is truly innocent of any criminality, he should order the DOJ to release all the files immediately. To not release them means allowing guilty pedophiles and sex traffickers to continue to freely roam our streets. (Breaking news: a second trove of documents has just been released. This is due to the outcry raised by citizens of both parties.)

War with Venezuela? – In early September, Secretary of Defense Hegseth began to order military strikes against small boats off the coast of Venezuela and also in the eastern Pacific. As of today, more than 29 boats have been destroyed and over 100 people have been killed. Hegseth has alleged that Venezuela was smuggling drugs Into the United States but the evidence makes the allegation quite unconvincing for the following reasons:

  • Athough Venezuela is far from perfect, it does not have a history of shipping drugs to the United States. Fentanyl comes through Mexico and Cocaine through Colombia or Central America.
  • Drug smugglers would not use precious cargo space for people; they would fill up the holds with drugs.
  • Although several boats were destroyed in the Pacific, these could not have been Venezuelan, because Venezuela does not even have a coastline on the Pacific! These boats would have had to come through the Panama Canal. Ridiculous!

More recently, three Venezuelan oil tankers have been stopped and/or seized by the U.S. military, Republican Senator Rand Paul claims that Trump is trying to provoke a war, so that the U.S. can take control over Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.

Trump’s attacks on boats and detention of oil tankers are acts of warfare. According to our Constitution, it is Congress that should declare war. If the president has a legitimate case for war, let him present it to Congress where both the House of Representatives and the Senate are controlled by Republicans.

Trump’s Name on Government Buildings – During his second term in the White House, Donald Trump (and his acolytes) have tried to place his name or face all over the place (on a new one dollar coin, on Mount Rushmore, on the Institute of Peace, and most recently, on the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. This last attempt is a most obscene demonstration of his narcissistic megalomania. First, he fired members of the Board and replaced them with his cronies. He also named himself Chair of the Board. He then feigned modesty and unawareness when the Board voted to add his name (and in front of JFK’s!) to the Kennedy Memorial Center.

He and his Board also showed a complete lack of knowledge of the meaning of the word “memorial”. “Memorial” is used to honor people who have already died, not those who are still alive. Perhaps the White House knows something about the state of the president’s health that we don’t know. In any case, it was Congress that originally named the Kennedy Center and only Congress can rename it.

Enablers – Enablers are people who through their silence allow their leaders, family members, or others to continue practicing bad or criminal behavior. This silence is quite damaging. Although every administration has had its share of enablers, the current one seems to be permeated by “Yes men and women”. People of integrity praise what is good and denounce that which is immoral. I invite supporters of Trump to find their moral backbone and to reject his most unjust and illegal actions.

“Illegal”: From Linguistics to Divine Ethics

There is an ongoing debate about the use of the word “illegal”. For most of its five-century history, the word has been used as an adjective to describe actions that violate a law. Only more recently has the term been used to refer to people, usually immigrants who supposedly do not have the necessary documents to be in a country and usually with a derogatory connotation.

I suggest that the word “illegal” only be used as an adjective to describe actions. This would bring clarity to our discussions. The reason should be obvious. I (and most people who read my blog) have driven over the speed limit. Such action is illegal because it violates the law. Those who commit such violations should be fined (or at least warned). But driving over the speed limit does not make me an “illegal”. Actions can be illegal, people are not.

There is a much more important reason. According to most religions and philosophies, every human has immense value. The three largest monotheistic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) agree that people are valuable because each person is made in God’s image. This is abundantly clear in Christianity, my chosen faith. Jesus taught that every action directed towards another person was, in reality, an action directed towards God. (Matthew 25:31-46) We wouldn’t dare call God an ”illegal”, so why do we use that word to put down people created by a loving God’s? Those who claim to be followers of Jesus should be “pro-life” in the truest sense, by cherishing every human being as “wondrously made” in God’s image.

There’s another reason why I don’t use “illegal” to refer to immigrants. I (and many of my readers) have some ancestors who immigrated to North America hundreds of years ago. Most became settlers, but they usually did not get permission (or something comparable) from the indigenous people who were stewarding this land. Immigration is a two-edged sword which frequently reveals our own hypocrisy. If we don’t want to be descendants and heirs of “illegals”, we should use the word more appropriately.