Trump To Cut Off Catholic Charities USA's Nose To Spite Pope's Face
He cut $11 million from a program housing unaccompanied immigrant minors.
In the midst of an ongoing slap-fight with Pope Leo XIV, Donald Trump has abruptly killed off an $11 million contract with Catholic Charities USA in Miami, Florida, to house and care for immigrant children who have come here on their own. The non-profit has long had a contract with the Office of Refugee Resettlement to find foster homes and forever homes for these children, apart from the state’s foster program.
“The U.S. government has abruptly decided to end more than 60 years of relationship with Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of Miami,” Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski wrote in a statement to the Miami Herald. “The Archdiocese of Miami’s services for unaccompanied minors have been recognized for their excellence and have served as a model for other agencies throughout the country.”
“Our track record in serving this vulnerable population is unmatched. Yet, the Archdiocese of Miami’s Catholic Charities’ services for unaccompanied minors has been stripped of funding and will be forced to shut down within three months,” he added.
If a Democrat defunded a Catholic non-profit a few days after the Pope criticized birth control or abortion, Republicans would lose their goddamn minds and yowl about religious freedom until the heat death of the universe. In fact, we’re so old we remember when it was the height of religious tyranny when the Obama administration suggested Catholic agencies could … sign a form if they wanted to opt out of providing birth control through insurance.
One might think, given how frequently Republicans profess their great love of the children, that they might be partial to a program that helps those children. But because it’s Trump, and because it’s a program for refugee children, they’re mostly pleased as punch about it.
Catholic Charities USA’s refugee resettlement programs and advocacy for immigrants have been a right-wing bugaboo for a minute now, but it has really ramped up in recent days as Trump has been criticized for going after the Pontifex for criticizing his war on Iran and the rhetoric around it. In hopes of changing the subject, MAGA stalwarts like Mike Cernovich and Jack Posobiec have attempted to flood the zone with criticism of the organization.
This is likely why, aside from his usual pettiness, Trump has chosen this time to kill the funding. His attacks on the Pope have not gone over especially well with many of his Catholic supporters, and he likely thinks that attacking Catholic Charities for being too nice to immigrant children will win back their favor. It’s possible he may not have thought this one entirely through.
There could be an upside, though. After many years of fighting for government funding for “faith-based initiatives,” some on the Right are now arguing that the government shouldn’t be giving any money to religious charities at all.
On Xitter, our old pal Todd Starnes, who once raged against Florida officials telling a Christian charity that fed the poor that they couldn’t get government funding from the USDA if they insisted upon proselytizing to people, wrote, “Why are we giving $11 million in tax money to Catholic Charities? If the Catholics want to provide charity it should come from their parishioners. Same for the Baptists and the Methodists and the Pentecostals...”
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Catholic Charities is … a mixed bag, to say the least. They have absolutely done some very good work, particularly in the areas of disaster relief, helping the unhoused, helping veterans, and caring for immigrants and refugees. They were the ones who came to help the day I found an unhoused man sitting on Michigan Avenue with a four-inch icicle hanging off of his nose. They’ve also done some truly fucked things over the years, famously fighting to be allowed to discriminate against same-sex couples in foster care and adoption, against trans people in sex-segregated shelters, and fought against covering birth control in their insurance plans. Not to mention historically fighting against government programs designed to fund child welfare initiatives and universal healthcare, because of how they’d take away their spirit of Christian charity if the government took proper care of its citizens like a normal country.
That being said, this particular program has done a lot of good, and there is almost no chance that the government would subsequently go and give that money to a secular organization doing the same work. Clearly, they prefer caging children to finding them homes.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
Providing less housing for migrant children will teach that Pope guy his lesson!
JD Vance is lecturing the Pope on Catholicism and Pierre Poilievre is lecturing Mark Carney on economics and RFK Jr is lecturing scientists about vaccines and Donald Trump is lecturing the world on tariffs and Pete Hegseth is quoting Pulp Fiction and thinking it’s the Bible