P C D C C B u l l e t i n Special Supplement May 2025
The level of activities protecting democracy in the U.S. shows increasing resistance to Republican authoritarian rule. The Republican Congress's shirking of the checks and balances in the U.S. Constitution and the federal government's brazen totalitarian governance, aided and abetted by a majority conservative U.S. Supreme Court, requires continued citizens' diligence.
In response, a need surfaces for increased reporting and occasionally publishing a PCDCC Bulletin, with a Supplement, to stave off the bleeding of democracy.
Table of Content:
Letters to the Editor (Sacramento Bee and Gold Rush Media) about
Rep K. Kiley's voting record: By Barbara SmithHere are the Five Things you can do right NOW to fight Trump/Musk policies (Solano County Democrats)
The Most Important American in the world lives in Rome, By David French, Reuters, May 2025
Faithful America (Love They Neighbor, No Exceptions), This organization prove that contrary to their pronouncements, Nationalistic Christians don't represent the majority of Christians in the USA, disputing their claims of a monolithic front of all Christian groups.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Kiley Feigns Ignorance
“How will Trump tariffs affect California Republicans’ congressional races?” (http://sacbee.com/, April 9) This article quotes Rep. Kevin Kiley as saying he is “unfamiliar with legislation that would give Congress more of a say in tariff policy.” That’s interesting since Kiley also claimed in a recent tele-town hall that he didn’t know that the SAVE Act, for which he has twice voted yes, threatens millions of Americans’ voting rights, including married women whose legal names do not match their birth certificates.
Is Kiley truly unaware that cutting spending to preserve tax breaks for the wealthy will endanger Medicaid and Medicare, federal programs on which thousands of his constituents depend?
It’s unlikely. He’s either decided to feign ignorance or maintain a veneer of plausible deniability. Either way, he’s siding with House leadership, leaving District 3 voters with an elected representative who purposefully votes for legislation that harms us.
Barbara Smith
Auburn
Kudos to Kiley, but don’t be fooled
Gold Country Media, May 4, 2025
Kudos to Congressman Kevin Kiley, who received the AmeriCorps Alumni Legacy Award. This award honors “AmeriCorps alumni who advance AmeriCorps through public service at the national, state, or local level.” Kiley participated in the Teach for America program through AmeriCorps.
While Kiley performed a vital and valuable public service during his time with the organization, he does not value it enough to advance or support funding for it. Not only has AmeriCorps explicitly been targeted by this administration, but the Republican budget plan, on which Kiley voted yes, cuts funding for AmeriCorps programs.
No doubt, Kiley employs the same logic in voting against AmeriCorps funding that he uses to justify his vote to require massive cuts in Medicaid appropriations. As long as he pretends to focus on waste, fraud and abuse – the GOP tagline to mask their true intentions – he can say he’s not voting to cut programs, then feign ignorance about the consequences of his actions.
Don’t be fooled by this blatant hypocrisy. It's OK for Kiley to smile while accepting the award, but we know we have to protect our backs.
Barbara V. Smith
Auburn
Want to STOP this Madness?
Here are five things you can do NOW to fight Trump/Musk’s policies.
Even if you don’t see instant results, what you do has an impact!
1. Contact elected officials (Republicans and Democrats) in Congress and the White Houseon a regular basis to let
your views on issues/events be known. Tell electeds to speak out about what is happening!!
Haven’t ever called your rep before? Here is a How To guide: https://5calls.org/
Find your Senators and Congressmember: https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member
Congressional Switchboard (202) 212-3121, White House Switchboard (202) 456-1111
2. Donate money (any amount helps) to organizations who are fighting in court to stop trump/musk illegal firings
and activities. Some examples
Public Citizen, ACLU, Democracy Forward
3. Boycott one product or one company that advertises on a site that produces disinformation. Examples: Fox News,
Twitter, NewsMax. (We condemn vandalism of Teslasor electric charging stations.)
4. Join an organization that is working to stop the illegal takeover of the country. Some examples:
Indivisible, MoveOn.org, Public Citizen, local Democratic club
5. Go to a protest or find an event to participate in: https://www.mobilize.us/
We don’t know how large the window to act is--don’t put off doing something even if you only doone thing
For more information contact the United Democrats of Southern Solano County at uniteddemocratssouthernsolano@gmail.com or email: PublicEngagementForChange@gmail.com
Paid for by the United Democrats of Southern Solano County FPPC: ID 746068 Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee
TRUMP IS NO LONGER THE MOST IMPORTANT AMERICAN
By David French
NYT, May 11, 2025.
Know someone who would want to read this? Share the column.
President Trump is no longer the most important American in the world.
He is certainly the most powerful, at least for three more years, but power is only one measure of importance. On Thursday, a Chicago native and Villanova University graduate named Robert Prevost supplanted Trump. He became the first American pope, taking the name Leo XIV.
And it happened at exactly the right time.
I’m not Catholic. I’m an evangelical from the rural South who grew up so isolated from Catholicism that I didn’t even know any Catholics until I went to law school. But I’m deeply influenced by Catholicism, in both its ancient and its modern forms.
I devoured the works of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas in college. And one of my favorite classes was about liberation theology, a left-wing, modern Catholic approach to the Gospel that puts an emphasis on improving the material conditions of the poor, in part through political and economic reform. And no book has influenced my approach to abortion and human life more than Pope John Paul II’s encyclical “Evangelium Vitae.”
It was in this study and reflection that I understood the true importance of the historical stream of Christian thought. Christianity is an ancient faith, one that has endured through rulers and regimes far more ignorant and brutal than anything we’ve ever confronted in the United States.
All too many American evangelicals are disconnected from that history. We belong to churches that measure their existence in months or years, not centuries or millenniums. Our oldest denominations have existed for only the tiniest fraction of time compared with the Catholic Church.
That lack of perspective ends up exaggerating the importance of politics. It narrows our frame of reference and elevates the temporal over the eternal. It leads to absurd declarations, such as Trump’s vow this Easter to make America “more religious than it has ever been before.”
And when you believe the success of your religion depends on the success of any politician, it’s only a matter of time before politics becomes your religion. That means that too many Christians will evaluate even the pope through a partisan political lens.
And that’s exactly what happened last week, as people found the new pope’s social media feeds and began devouring his old posts. Is the new pope MAGA? Is he woke?
How does he fit into the American culture war?
The headline of a story from The Federalist, a MAGA publication, said it all — “Read the New Pope’s Far-Left Takes on Immigration, Climate, Covid and Race Relations.”
NYT Editors’ Picks
And what is far left about the new pope? It turns out that he was opposed to family separation for migrants crossing the border during Trump’s first term, and disagreed with Vice President JD Vance’s interpretation of a theological idea called ordo amoris, which Vance had used to argue that American compassion “belongs first to your fellow citizens.”
Leo had also expressed his sympathy after the death of George Floyd, reposting a tweet by Bishop Michael Olson that said, “I join my voice and prayers to those of my brother bishops that we might work hard to end racism in our hearts and in society. May God give comfort to the family of #GeorgeFloyd in this time of anguish.”
He also posted, “We need to hear more from leaders in the Church, to reject racism and seek justice.”
That’s far left? It seems simply Christian to me.
The new pope had also reposted a message from the Democratic senator Chris Murphy in support of gun control in 2017, and reposted a message expressing alarm that the United States wouldn’t meet its carbon-emission goals, also in 2017. He expressed support for the Covid vaccine, reposting in 2021 a message that said, “May God grant us the grace to face #COVID19 with the strength of faith, ensuring that vaccines are available for all, so that we can all get immunized.”
Again, these positions aren’t far left. They’re all quite mainstream. But if your catechism is the MAGA party platform, then the pope’s positions are very challenging indeed.
At the same time, he doesn’t fit well into the Democratic box, either. He is strongly pro-life, and he upholds the church’s traditional teachings on sexual morality and gender identity. Don’t look for Leo to alter the church’s doctrines on abortion or marriage.
So, no, the pope is neither MAGA nor woke. He’s Catholic, and party platforms are irrelevant to church doctrine.
In addition, don’t look to Leo to provide aid or comfort to those inside and outside the Catholic Church who seek to redeem the culture through the raw exercise of Christian power. In his first homily, he said that the church should serve as “an ark of salvation sailing through the waters of history and a beacon that illumines the dark nights of this world.”
But, the pope argued, it does not accomplish this through “grandeur” (and here he referred to the beauty and majesty of the church’s buildings and cathedrals), but rather through “the holiness of her members.”
It is not the church’s power or wealth but the church’s witness that helps transform the world.
In the case of Leo, the church’s witness to the world also becomes part of America’s witness to the world. Millions of Americans have been lamenting that the most prominent American in the world is a person who embodies cruelty and spite.
Many of us (and certainly many dissenting evangelicals) are also lamenting that Trump owes his victory to the evangelical church more than to any other group in American life. He won the votes of white evangelicals by a 65-point margin. He lost the rest of the electorate by 18 points. Trump’s election, in other words, isn’t just an expression of American political will; it’s also an expression of American Christian will.
But American Christianity does not speak with one voice. It contains multitudes. And so does Leo. He appears to be of mixed-race descent (his maternal grandparents were apparently Creole from New Orleans), and he spent much of his adult life in Peru. In fact, he has such close ties to Peru that the nation celebrated his election, and its president, Dina Boluarte, declared, “The pope is Peruvian.”
Oh, and he’s a White Sox fan, so he has a heart for hopeless causes.
He’s also the living embodiment of one of America’s most important and profound transformations — from a Protestant-dominated nation that was often deeply intolerant of Catholicism and Catholics to a nation in which people of all faiths can worship freely.
Leo will forge his own path, and it’s important not to read too much into various tweets and social media posts. But if there is one thing we can glean from the new pope’s words and the way he has lived his life, it’s that he shares Pope Francis’ love for the poor and the vulnerable. He’s expressing and trying to embody a religious faith that views all life as precious.
“The church,” Martin Luther King Jr. said, “must be reminded once again that it is not to be the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state.” The Catholic church, however, is a global church. It’s not the conscience of one nation. It is the conscience of many nations.
As one American steps onto the world stage as a man of malice, another American answers, leading with love and compassion. They represent two starkly different visions of American character. And, if all goes well, Leo will command the world stage long after Trump is gone from public life.
I don’t know what kind of pope Leo will ultimately become. But on Thursday, I felt the cultural wind shift just a tiny bit. An American man who confounds political categories now leads the world’s largest church. As a friend texted me right after the pope’s selection was announced, that shift “almost feels like … hope.”
More on Pope Leo XIV.
Opinion | Carlos Lozada Pope Leo, Peru and Me. May 10, 2025
Opinion | Ross Douthat What the World Needs From Pope Leo. May 9, 2025
Opinion | David Gibson The New Pope Might Be Somewhat Like the Old Pope May 8, 2025
Opinion | Daniel J. Wakin An American Pope? Maybe It Wasn’t So Impossible. May 8, 2025
David French is an Opinion columnist, writing about law, culture, religion and armed conflict. He is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and a former constitutional litigator.
His most recent book is “Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation.” You can follow him on Threads (@davidfrenchjag).
FAITHFUL AMERICA
LOVE THY NEIGHBOR. NO EXCEPTIONS
April 29, 2025, marked 100 days since Trump took office, and the polls are clear -- the vast majority of Americans reject everything this authoritarian regime stands for. His most recent approval rating is only 39%.
But there's one big exception to Trump's tumbling poll numbers: 72% of white evangelical Christians still support him.
Trump's pet pastors have a lot to do with that. False prophets like Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffress, and Jackson Lahmeyer constantly try to paint Trump as a champion of the faithful -- even as he slashes funding for Christian charities and abuses our most vulnerable neighbors.
Here's the thing: The religious right and Trump's far-right allies will never stop trying to claim the mantle of Christianity in the public square because it helps them maintain their power and control over others.
Contesting that false claim -- through our words and actions -- is one of the most powerful things that people who follow Jesus can do right now. As one of the boldest Christian organizations fighting Christian nationalism and working to build a better world, Faithful America has a track record of doing just that.
Here are just a few of the corrupt, Christian-nationalist absurdities we've seen out of this supposedly faithful regime in the past 100 days:
· Trump's spiritual advisor, Paula White-Cain, tried to sell blessings (including your own personal angel!) to
pro-Trump Christians for a mere $1,000 each
· Attorney General Pam Bondi wrongly claimed former president and lifelong Catholic Joe Biden "abused and
targeted Christians"
· Trump collected corporate sponsor cash for his Easter celebration
· Trump's billionaire bestie Elon Musk falsely accused Lutheran Family Services of fraud
· Trump threw his name in the hat to become the next pope (we're not joking -- there's a video!)
Trump and his far-right buddies love to use Christian holidays and terminology as vehicles for grift and weapons to stoke fear and resentment.
But you know what you'll never hear them talk about? The things that Jesus actually taught:
· Love your neighbor, NO exceptions
· Blessed are the meek and the merciful and the peacemakers
· Welcome the stranger (that means don't imprison them!)
· Flip the tables of those who manipulate faith or take advantage of others
· …and you will know those who truly follow Jesus by their fruits.
Faithful America is committed to countering the warped teachings of Christian nationalism and Trumpism. And our members are also organizing online and in their communities, standing up for those the Trump administration is targeting, and advocating for better policy because we take following Jesus and loving our neighbors seriously.
In Trump's first 100 days, Faithful America started a book club, built a thriving Facebook community, brought our faith to nationwide protests, and more. We want to go even bigger in the next 100 days. Will you pitch in $20 or whatever you can to keep building this Christian movement?
Thank you for everything you've done to love your neighbor and support this community over the past 100 days. We're grateful to be organizing alongside you.
In peace,
- Karli (she/her), Rev. Dr. Shannon (she/her), Rev. Hunter (he/him), Christina (she/her), and the Faithful America team
"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!" - Isaiah 5:20
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