https://www.thecut.com/amp/2019/08/trump-baby-photo-el-paso-shooting.html?__twitter_impression=true

What to make of the First Lady holding the motherless child and youngest survivor of the El Paso massacre.

Imagine this: A shooter has entered a public place, where you are walking with your family. You have but a minute to realize you can save your 2-month-old by using your own body to shield him from the bullets raining down around you. Mere days later, your baby, the youngest survivor of the El Paso massacre, will appear on television with the very man who inspired the terrorist who killed both you and your husband. A photograph is taken, for posterity.

In the photo, your baby wears a bowtie and tiny jacket; someone has dressed him up for this occasion. He gazes off to the side (toward his aunt, who stands beside First Lady Melania Trump), his body stiff, his face solemn. He is not at ease in this strange lady’s arms. How could he be? Your child has just gotten out of the hospital, where he was treated for broken bones incurred when you desperately threw yourself over his little body and took the bullets that seconds later orphaned him and his two siblings.


Neither the president nor Melania so much as glances at Baby Paul. Oblivious (as ever) to the solemnity of their occasion, they smile broadly, matching veneers on full beam. Your husband came from a family of Trump supporters. Perhaps, in a different world, you might even have wanted to meet Donald Trump, or take a photo with him as he gave one of his signature thumbs-up gestures — everything is A-OK here.

https://twitter.com/RedTRaccoon/status/1159286742182256640?s=20


Red T Raccoon
@RedTRaccoon
In case you were wondering what happened to the children of the 680 people captured by ICE today. https://twitter.com/AlexLoveWJTV/status/1159270331258986497 …

Alex Love
@AlexLoveWJTV
Children of those arrested in Wednesday’s #ICE raids near Forest, MS. are being put up in a local gym tonight by neighbors/strangers. Many are left scared & crying after coming home from school & being locked out without their parents. Donated food & drinks are being provided.

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9:14 PM - Aug 7, 2019

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson came to Baltimore Wednesday to tout the Trump administration’s efforts to improve urban areas. But Carson ran into trouble when his entourage was kicked off the Southwest Baltimore property where they planned to hold a press conference.

HUD officials hoped to stage their event on a vacant lot, but never asked permission from Morning Star Baptist Church of Christ, which owns the lot and hopes to build a parking lot there, said church member Gregory Evans. Evans asked the HUD group to move off the property.

“It’s nothing personal,” Evans said from the church lobby, where he was reading the newspaper and checking in children to a vacation Bible school camp. “I didn’t know it was Secretary Carson. I just know there were a bunch of people over there that were taking over our site. And we said, 'Why are they here? They’ve not even asked for permission to be here.”

<snip>

Carson was not pleased. He suggested the church was an example of people refusing to work together to solve Baltimore’s problems.

“We just have all this animosity all the time,” Carson told reporters during his press conference. “For instance, you guys know, you were set up on this property and right here is this church that said: ‘Get off our property.’ You know, a church? When we’re talking about helping the people. I mean, this is the level to which we have sunken as a society.”

https://www.baltimoresun.com/politics/bs-md-pol-ben-carson-visit-20190731-20190731-zk22qwmp4fhvjklv3wxlbvxfkm-story.html

https://cathedral.org/have-we-no-decency-a-response-to-president-trump.html

The escalation of racialized rhetoric from the President of the United States has evoked responses from all sides of the political spectrum. On one side, African American leaders have led the way in rightfully expressing outrage. On the other, those aligned with the President seek to downplay the racial overtones of his attacks, or remain silent.

As faith leaders who serve at Washington National Cathedral ¬– the sacred space where America gathers at moments of national significance – we feel compelled to ask: After two years of President Trump’s words and actions, when will Americans have enough?

As Americans, we have had such moments before, and as a people we have acted. Events of the last week call to mind a similarly dark period in our history:

“Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. … You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?”

https://www.newsweek.com/border-wall-seesaw-build-u-s-american-children-play-1451689

This week, children in the U.S. and Mexico had the chance to play together— despite the barriers that exist between them—after two California professors built a set of seesaws through a border fence.

In a video posted to Instagram by Ronald Rael, the University of California architecture professor who came up with the seesaw project alongside San Jose State design associate professor Virginia San Fratello, children can be seen on either side of the U.S.-Mexico border playing together on three bright pink seesaws built between Ciudad Juárez in Mexico's Chihuahua State and El Paso, Texas.

Calling the project "one of the most incredible experiences" of his and San Fratello's careers, Rael described how powerful it was to see a moment so "filled with joy, excitement and togetherness" unfold at the border wall.