After only a month in office, the Trump administration is targeting the programs that serve the most vulnerable people in our nation and world. This agenda is led by President Trump, carried out by Elon Musk and defended by Vice President JD Vance. They also have a strategy of seeking to intimidate and undermine Catholic leaders and ministries that serve the poor and vulnerable with attacks, falsehoods and the cutting-off of resources. It seems to be working.
I base these judgments on decades of work at the intersection of faith, Catholic social teaching and national public policy. The attacks on the resources and structures that serve the poor and on the religious institutions that serve the most vulnerable are unprecedented in their scale, pace and human impact. After many years at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and advocacy with both Democratic and Republican administrations, I have never seen such reckless actions and sweeping proposals that threaten the lives and dignity of so many people.
Targeting the poor
It is no accident that one of the administration’s first efforts to defund and destroy government structures and capacity has been the United States Agency for International Development , which serves the poorest people in the poorest parts of the world with food, medicine, development assistance and disaster relief.
Any agency and all programs can be improved and reformed, and no doubt there have been some unwise and ineffective investments within U.S.A.I.D. But the administration’s actions are not about reform or improvement; they are focused on destroying our nation’s commitment and capacity to help those who are hungry, sick and desperately poor around the world. Mr. Musk, who has played a primary role in President Trump’s attack on government agencies, posted on X with pride that “we spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.” Mr. Trump wrote “CLOSE IT DOWN” on his social media site Truth Social.
They are not assessing programs for their value and impact but instead ending U.S.A.I.D. completely, terminating many staff and requiring them to immediately leave their work abroad. The Trump administration has promised waivers for vital lifesaving programs, but few have yet been approved, endangering the resources and staff that make those programs possible. These reckless actions will destroy millions of lives and damage U.S. security and the country’s standing in the world.
“Foreign aid” has never been politically popular, in part because many believe it is more than 20 percent of the federal budget; it actually makes up less than 1 percent. At the same time, global anti-hunger programs, H.I.V.-AIDS efforts, and development assistance have had significant bipartisan ownership and support. The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (Pepfar) was launched by President George W. Bush; and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Senator Lindsey Graham and other Republican leaders have actively supported development assistance in the past.
At home as well, Republicans in the Trump administration and Congress have targeted programs that serve the poorest children and families. The leading G.O.P. budget proposal in Congress would drastically cut programs that feed the hungry and provide health care to the sick; at the same time, they are pushing for massive tax cuts that will primarily benefit the wealthy and corporations. Under the current G.O.P. proposal, food stamps (now called SNAP) and Medicaid, which serve families and the elderly with the least resources, would be cut by hundreds of billions to pay for such tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, as well as for increases in defense spending and immigration enforcement. But House Speaker Mike Johnson said in early January that programs that serve seniors, like Social Security and Medicare, “have to be preserved.” Why? Perhaps because older Americans have political power; poor kids and families do not.
These early actions of the Trump presidency and the plans of Republican leadership in Congress have one common element: They target the programs that serve those who are poor, sick or vulnerable at home and abroad.
Attacks on Catholic ministries
This targeting of the most vulnerable contradicts fundamental biblical values and Catholic social teaching. When the Catholic bishops and other religious voices questioned and resisted these policies, the administration did not explain or try to persuade; instead, they attacked. When the U.S.C.C.B. released a respectful statement identifying areas of agreement and disagreement with the Trump administration’s policies and priorities, Vice President Vance went on the attack specifically and publicly. He said on CBS that the U.S. church served refugees for profit, and that the U.S. bishops were worried about their “bottom line” and were indifferent to “children who have been sex trafficked.”
These attacks are outrageous and false. The U.S.C.C.B., Catholic Relief Services and Catholic Charities do not profit from federal programs that help them serve those who are hungry, sick and desperately poor. Public information and audits make clear that providing these services costs more than the government pays. These partnerships are a wise investment for the government, because religious groups carry out these programs to reduce hunger, combat disease and promote development with greater compassion, effectiveness and efficiency than government acting alone.
I have been involved in these issues long enough to remember when conservatives and Republicans fought for the rights of religious groups to participate in federal programs to help those in greatest need without violating their religious principles. I have seen the lifesaving work of C.R.S. around the world and the lifegiving care of our Catholic Charities in our own land. These efforts are expressions of our faith and essential contributions to the common good. They should be sources of pride for our church and nation, not targets for misguided attacks.
Recently, Mr. Vance cited a traditional moral principle of ordo amoris to suggest that a commitment to protect the lives and dignity of immigrants and the poor and vulnerable violates a more compelling call to love our own families, neighbors and country. As others have made clear, this is a false choice and misapplication of the principle. It also distorts the Gospel and Catholic teaching on solidarity and subsidiarity. In the Gospel of Luke, after the Beatitudes, when Jesus said blessed are those who are “poor” and “hungry,” he warned: “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same” (Lk 6: 32-33).
The vice president’s theological defense of the Trump administration’s attacks on the church and Catholic ministries, and its policies that target the most vulnerable, seem designed to intimidate Catholic leaders and to divide the Catholic community rather than to advance a dialogue about the demands of our faith and call to serve “the least among us.”
Catholic responses
I fear that these attacks and diversions may be working. While many individual bishops have spoken up, the public response thus far from the U.S.C.C.B. to these attacks and the efforts to target the most vulnerable at home and abroad seems to be muted. The bishops have issued a series of specific formal statements commending the Trump administration for its executive orders and actions on gender, abortion and school choice. There have not been similar, specific statements on administration actions halting and cutting international food, health and development assistance programs.
The U.S.C.C.B. has now sued the Trump administration, calling the abrupt halt to funding of refugee programs unlawful and harmful to refugees and to the church’s resettlement programs. The lawsuit also challenges the government’s failure to pay for services that the church has already provided to refugees in partnership with the U.S. government, which has already led to substantial layoffs.
The responses of the bishops to Mr. Vance’s allegations and other attacks have consisted of generally brief and general descriptions of the church’s work, posted without context or even mentioning who wrote them. They often lack a strong public defense of the church’s ministries Surprisingly, there has been little response from U.S.C.C.B. leadership to Vice President Vance’s direct attacks on the bishops or his efforts to instruct Catholics on our moral obligations, in contrast to specific statements in the past correcting President Biden and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi on abortion and related issues.
I also fear that the administration is dividing the Catholic community. The outrageous and false claims that Catholic ministries serve people in need for financial reasons and the refugee resettlement programs contribute to human trafficking have been repeated and amplified online by allies of the administration in the Catholic community and beyond .
In this context, Pope Francis wrote an extraordinary public letter to the U.S. bishops. Offering encouragement for their efforts and emphasizing key elements of Catholic teaching that apply in this time of “crisis,” he recognized “the right of a nation to defend itself and keep communities safe.” He also warned that “what is built on the basis of force, and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly.” The pope insisted, “The true common good is promoted when society and government, with creativity and strict respect for the rights of all...welcomes, protects, promotes and integrates the most fragile, unprotected and vulnerable.”
In the letter, Pope Francis did what the bishops’ conference has not done, which is to clarify the demands of Christian love and to challenge the misunderstanding of ordo amorisoffered by Mr. Vance:
Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups…. The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the “Good Samaritan” (cf. Lk 10:25-37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception. But worrying about personal, community or national identity, apart from these considerations, easily introduces an ideological criterion that distorts social life and imposes the will of the strongest as the criterion of truth.
Pope Francis has stepped up to articulate clearly traditional Catholic teaching on the dignity of migrants and refugees and the responsibilities of both Christians and governments. He has directly challenged attempts to introduce theological rationalizations to justify policies and actions that violate that teaching. He has shown faithful, principled and strong leadership when others have sometimes been silent or reticent.
Ways forward
When the lives and dignity of the “least of these” are threatened at home and around the world, it is essential for Catholic leaders and citizens to actively defend and support our nation’s efforts to help those in greatest need and contribute to a more compassionate, just, safe and peaceful world. We can reform and renew; we should root out waste or inappropriate spending, but we should not undermine or destroy the structures that help our nation feed the hungry, help the sick and give hope to the poorest people on earth.
When leaders seek massive cuts in resources for nutrition and health care for poor families to fund sweeping tax cuts, it is our responsibility to call on our leaders in the administration and in Congress, in both parties, to put the needs of the poor and vulnerable first in budget choices and national priorities. We ought to reach out to our representatives to challenge these actions and proposals.
President Trump pledged many things in his campaign, but taking nutrition assistance and health care from those in need was not what he campaigned on or what people voted for. Whatever their partisan or ideological agendas, I doubt many members of the House and Senate came to Washington to take food from hungry children or health care from their families.
When the church and its charitable ministries are under attack, it is essential for Catholics to come together across political, ideological and theological lines to defend and stand in solidarity with our ministries that bring food, health care and hope to our sisters and brothers here in our nation and around the world. This is Gospel work and reflects the best of our national values.
This is a time for all of us to keep in mind that Jesus explicitly taught that our salvation depended on our response to the hungry, the thirsty, the sick and the stranger (Mt 25), and that in the words of President John F. Kennedy, who created U.S.A.I.D., “here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”
