Op-Ed
Erica L. Green, a White House correspondent, covering President Trump and his
administration, reports on Trump’s task force to “prosecute anti-Christian violence
and vandalism” (https://nytimes.com/2025/02/07/trump-anti-christian-bias.html).
Green writes: “President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday aimed at
eradicating ‘anti-Christian bias’ in the federal government by having agencies
review policies and practices that he says have tried to squelch religious activities
and activism.” Trump “announced the order at the National Prayer Breakfast,”
where he “appointed his new attorney general, Pam Bondi, to lead a task force at
the Justice Department to spearhead the effort.” Green continues: “Mr. Trump said
the task force would ‘fully prosecute anti-Christian violence and vandalism in our
society’ and ‘move heaven and earth to defend the rights of Christians and
religious believers nationwide.’”
Trump criticized former President Biden for supporting the convictions of anti-
Gitmo, of course!! It’s the freest place “we” have – by which I mean the American government, a.k.a. Donald Trump. No rules apply there, be they international humanitarian law or the U.S. Constitution. It’s a dumping ground, a black hole.
It’s the most secure place for America to hold, as Trump put it a few weeks ago, “the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people. Some of them are so bad we don’t even trust their countries to hold them because we don’t want them coming back.”
Anne Garrels (1951 – 2022) was a US journalist who worked for National Public Radio during the Iraq war and authored of Naked in Baghdad.
Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism students were mostly in high school when National Public Radio (NPR) correspondent Anne Garrels endured the “shock and awe” bombing of Iraq, chronicling her experiences in the book Naked in Baghdad.
But when she spoke at the university in 2008, that didn’t curtail their questions about the Abu Ghraib scandal, the dubious government contactor Blackwater, government censorship, reporters embedding with the active military operations and war reporting as a female when Garrels.
Casually dressed in a leotard, flowered skirt, ballet flats and bare legs, Garrels discussed the progression of the war, the effect of escalating violence and kidnappings on reporting and everyday life in Iraq and her personal experiences as a reporter and a woman.
In this chaotic news cycle, America’s worst plane crash in a generation already feels a generation old.
But the administration’s response to the tragic January collision that killed 67 people over the Potomac is worth revisiting. Not only because the loved ones of those lost deserve answers, but because it highlights a MAGA playbook we’ve seen repeatedly now — and we’ll see again very soon.
“Some experts worry that, if the country went to war, many reserve units might be unable to deploy. A U.S. official who works on these issues put it simply: ‘We can’t get enough people.’”
And now Trump consciousness purports to claim – or reclaim – control over America: the land of white Christian nationalists and no one else, damnit!
But of course that level of selfishness – mine, mine, mine! – is only possible to maintain with a huge helping of fear alongside it: fear of the enemy. Fear of “them.”
Thus Alexandra Villarreal, writing in the Guardian about Trump 2.0’s first day in office (on Martin Luther King Day), noted: “He immediately involved the military, ordering the armed forces to ‘seal’ the US’s borders ‘by repelling forms of invasion including unlawful mass migration.’
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Last week, I, as an Executive Producer of FROM GROUND ZERO: STORIES FROM GAZA, was quoted across the country as stating the following: “No filmmaker, writer or artist should ever have to tell the story of their own extermination.”
And yet…
As I write this, in a scattered group of cinemas across the country, movie-goers are watching this anthology of stories captured on camera by Palestinian filmmakers in Gaza amidst Netanyahu’s reign of terror over the past year. This collection of 22 short films of his shameless extermination attempt — the unending barrage of bombs and bullets, the forced starvation — is what the people of Gaza are facing every single day.
And during this hour and fifty-two minutes on the screen, you will feel the pulse of the Palestinian people. Their resilience. And you are right there with them. They are not Hamas. They are not rapists. They are not lying in wait to murder Israelis. They are not a threat to any human or to Democracy as certain propagandists are hoping you’ll be brainwashed into believing.
“I left you for God, Daddy.”
Let those words resonate across the planet. The speaker is Yahya Al-Batran, a Palestinian man – a dad – imagining the words his newborn son would have said. The boy, Jumaa, froze to death in the family’s tent. The infant had a twin brother who was also lying still in their bed one morning recently. The parents rushed the boys to a functioning hospital, where Jumaa’s brother, at the time NBC’s story came out last week, was still fighting for his life.
Jumaa was one of half a dozen Palestinian babies (so far) who have frozen to death in their family’s tents since the onset of winter – just one more fragment of hell the Palestinians are enduring as Israel’s US-complicit genocide continues . . . one death at a time.