Don't Lose Sight of What Matters

It’s easy to get caught up in the bromance meltdown going on in real time on social media. The taunts and threats being lobbed back and forth between Trump and Musk today are as hard to look away from as a schoolyard confrontation between the two kids everyone wants to see get taken down a notch. We all need a good laugh to lighten the load, but I worry that when this is all over, the joke is going to be on us.

DOGE is still inside of our government—and our personal data. We are going into Hurricane season, during climate change, without a functional FEMA. A generation of scientific research is at risk. We are not preparing for the next pandemic; at this rate, we won’t even have updated Flu or Covid shots for the next season. The Justice Department is taking orders from the president to exact revenge on people he thinks of as his enemies. Pete Hegseth is still running the Department of Defense.

We are watching live as DHS, headed by cosplay-loving Secretary Kristi Noem—who is apparently increasingly desperate to meet the president’s deportation quotas—going after the easiest people it can find to deport. They’re not violent criminals. They’re people who work in our communities, our neighbors, and your kids’ school friends. They are people who are regularly reporting for scheduled meetings with immigration authorities—law abiding, tax paying, noncitizens.

And yes, school friends, because there is reporting from multiple cities that ICE is seizing kids and separating them from their families.

Today in the Oval Office Trump met with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who was there to ask Trump to show more support for Ukraine in its war with Russia.

As they sat before the cameras, the Chancellor said: “May I remind you that we are having June 6 tomorrow. This is the D-Day anniversary.” Trump, showing absolutely no understanding of history or modern-day Germany’s stance on Naziism, responds, "Not a pleasant day for you.” As the Chancellor breaks in, he continues, “That was not a great day." Clearly taken aback, Merz collect his thoughts, and then, looking straight at Trump says, "This was the liberation of my country from Nazi dictatorship."

Apparently, there is room in the president’s world to have sympathy for Nazis. But not for little kids, whose only sin was being brought here by parents who wanted them to grow up in a place where they would be safe. Nazis, too, separated children from their parents for no legitimate reason. And of course, they did far worse. But it starts with this kernel of inhumanity. There is no telling where it can end once it takes hold. These ICE roundups are quite a policy for a president who doesn’t unambiguously view the end of Nazi rule in Germany as a good thing.

Ten-year-old Martir Garcia Lara “simply didn’t show up for school” one day. He is a fourth grader at a California elementary school.

The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting tonight that ICE arrested 15 people, including a three-year-old child.

And ICE deported three U.S. citizen children back in April, claiming their noncitizen mothers wanted to take them with them when they were deported, a claim that later fell apart. The children were two, four, and seven years old.

I’m told by friends working on immigration cases that all across the country, people are being called in to meet with immigration authorities and then, with no warning or opportunity to prepare, being taken into custody. Just like what happened here, in Birmingham.

So yes, I get and share the fascination with Trump and Musk hurling taunts at each other. But please, let’s not let the kids who are sleeping in ICE detention, separated from friends and family, be there alone. Let’s commit to stay by their sides and speak for them when they cannot speak for themselves.

We can stand up for the people who are being disappeared and refuse to let their names be forgotten. Our government is doing this in our names, and we need to tell them they can’t. And no sideshow is going to distract us from this.

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We’re in this together,

Joyce

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