Central American women wait to apply for asylum at a checkpoint in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico. (CNS photo/Reuters /Edgard Garrido)
In the New York Times, Azam Ahmed chronicles the violence many women face in Central America and why it forces them to flee north. If these people are not worthy of asylum, no one is worthy of asylum, and the president's indifference to their suffering is despicable.
LifeSiteNews has started a "Faithful Shepherds" website where they trash prelates they do not like. What makes it especially nefarious is the pop-up ad to donate to LifeSiteNews: Help us continue to rip apart the Body of Christ could be the motto. More on this tomorrow.
In case you thought ideology only blinds those on the right, this article at HuffPost shows the degree to which those on the left can make fools of themselves and not realize it: Sara Perine explains why it is okay for her to love her two children but others should really stop having them, you know, so her two children will inherit a planet that is more ecologically friendly. I do not usually buy into the idea of privilege as an analytical tool, but this essay convinces me there is something to it.
From Pew Research Center, Puerto Rico's population is at a 40-year low since Hurricanes Irma and Maria struck the island. And, the surge of exits comes on top of a decade in which every year sees a net decrease in population. My sources tell me the new governor is doing great — and now plans to stay in office, which was not clear when she was sworn in — but these numbers are daunting.
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In the Washington Post, E.J.Dionne rightly encourages some of the presidential candidates to drop out and run for the Senate because if the Democrats win the White House and fail to control Congress, we will be faced with the kind of gridlock that turns people against government in the first place.
At Politico, Jeff Greenfield has some smart analysis regarding Sen. Elizabeth Warren's presidential campaign, and the need for her to distance herself in some way from the ideological base that represents the core of her support. The American people are more pragmatic than ideological and want to know their president is capable of standing up to people on her own side of the aisle at times. What he fails to note is that Bill Clinton had his Sister Souljah moment and George W. Bush addressed the NAACP after they had secured the nomination, not before. I predict Warren will find a time and place to have such a moment, but only after Sen. Bernie Sanders is out of the race, and there is no shortage of kookie targets.
Also at Politico, Luiza Ch. Savage on the ways China is overtaking the United States in solar and wind technology. President Donald Trump's unwillingness to admit the reality of climate change, still less do anything about it, is costing the U.S. a role in the future, as well as endangering the entire planet. Look for this to become a theme in the race: How Trump's ignorance is costing us jobs.
[Michael Sean Winters covers the nexus of religion and politics for NCR.]
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