CruxNow: U.S. bishops sue Trump administration over funding freeze
By John Lavenburg 19 Feb 2025, National Correspondent
NEW YORK – Citing the violation of multiple laws and Congress’s authority to control government spending as outlined by the Constitution, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has sued the Trump administration over its halt of refugee resettlement funding.
“For decades, the U.S. government has chosen to admit refugees and outsourced its statutory responsibility to provide those refugees with resettlement assistance to non-profit organizations like USCCB,” states the lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Feb. 18. “But now, after refugees have arrived and been placed in USCCB’s care, the government is attempting to pull the rug out from under USCCB’s programs by halting funding.”
The U.S. bishops now join the long list of states, organizations, and other entities that have sued the Trump administration over various federal funding freezes that have been carried out via executive order. Pertinent to the USCCB lawsuit is the State Department’s decision to suspend funding for refugee resettlement on Jan. 24.
The suspension has forced the USCCB to lay off fifty employees from its Migration & Refugee Services office, more than half of its refugee-resettlement staff. It has also left 6,758 refugees assigned to the USCCB – who are still within their 90-day transition period at the time of the suspension – in limbo as they may soon be cut off from support, according to the lawsuit.
Link to full article:
Massimo Faggioli in La Croix International:
‘The United States today is — as Ross Douthat, Catholic columnist of the New York Times and personal friend of Vice President JD Vance put it recently — “a declining superpower grasping for lost status. The blend of grievance, nationalism, and libertarianism forms the basis of the partnership between Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk.” It is in this “grasping for lost status” that one should look to understand the real meaning of the religious narratives offered by the Trump-Vance administration. Trump’s announcement of his program to re-convert the United States to God has the same credibility as the “prosperity theology” of preacher-entrepreneur Paula White, leading the White House faith office under one of his countless executive orders. Once, that corrupt, idolatrous theology promised prosperity from televangelists (on behalf of God) to individuals; now, the U.S. President renews this promise to an entire nation, whose wealth increasingly rests in the hands of a few self-styled masters of the universe.’
https://international.la-croix.com/opinions/no-longer-parallel-empires-the-vatican-and-the-united-states-under-trump
~
Again, status anxiety is confirmed as the curse of all who wield too much power and strive unscrupulously to maintain it. Other current or recent examples: Putin’s invasion of Ukraine; the UK Tory Party in ‘masterminding’ Brexit; the Chinese Communist Party in trying to bury the memories of the massacre of students Tiananmen Square in 1989 and the democratic protests in Hong Kong more recently; RC Bishops (and even some popes) in covering up clerical abuse.
That the same status anxiety also motivated the accusation and crucifixion of Jesus – and that He accepted crucifixion to overcome and unmask it – is an interpretation of the Gospel still to be properly considered by official Catholic theology.