While the Elderly, Minorities, and the Imprisoned Die, A Push to "Re-Open" the Country by "Pro-Life" Christian Republicans

Reported US coronavirus deaths:

7 weeks ago: 0 deaths
6 weeks ago: 17 deaths
5 weeks ago: 49 deaths
4 weeks ago: 249 deaths
3 weeks ago: 1,588 deaths
2 weeks ago: 7,152 deaths
1 week ago: 18,758 deaths
Right now: 36,997 deaths

— Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) April 18, 2020

Cristina Cabrera, "Reported US Coronavirus Deaths Surge To Record 4,591 In A Single Day":

The U.S. saw a grim milestone this week: A record 4,591 patients in the U.S. with COVID-19 died in a 24-hour stretch ending at 8 p.m. ET Thursday, according to Johns Hopkins University. 

According to the Wall Street Journal, the figure beats the previous record of 2,569 deaths. 

The sharp increase is likely because in New York City's probable coronavirus deaths are now being counted in the official tally. 

As of Friday morning, John Hopkins University reports that the death toll in the U.S. has reached 33,286, the highest mortality rate in the world.

"Responding with the Biggest Ever Anti-Immigrant Raid to the First Ever Anti-Latino, Anti-Immigrant Gun Massacre in This Country: This Will Be History"

Regardless of whatever they say and whatever comes out of the president's mouth, this IS the story of how our government responded to an anti-immigrant massacre committed by someone who quoted the words of the president's re-election campaign about needing to stop an immigrant invasion .... That is how this will look in history. 

The administration responding with the biggest ever anti-immigrant raid to the first ever anti-Latino, anti-immigrant gun massacre in this country: this will be history. This will go down in history as what our government did. 

~ Rachel Maddow

SIX HUNDRED ICE Agents Haul Away 680 Workers as Man in White House Heads to El Paso: What "Pro-Life" White Christians Have Wrought

HAPPENING NOW: In Forrest, Mississippi where one of the #ICE raids happened nearby Children of those who were arrested are left alone in the streets crying for help. Strangers and neighbors are taking them to a local gym to be put up for the night. FULL STORY TONIGHT ON @WJTV. pic.twitter.com/s2zuTTRYfM

— Alex Love (@AlexLoveWJTV) August 8, 2019

SIX HUNDRED armed thugs ICE agents.

They hauled away 680 workers.

Articles About Human Rights and Assaults on Minority Groups in Era of Trump: "ICE Has Been Targeting Those Weakest, According to Reports"

Articles about matters of human rights and assaults on minority groups in the era of Trump that I've read this week and want to pass on to you: 

Holding the Moral Center As Trump Takes Office: "We Must Resist. There Are No Sidelines. There Is No Middle Ground."

A Reader Writes (But Not to Me): Impossible to Talk About "the Catholic Vote" Without Talking About Difference Between White and Hispanic Catholics

Another "reader writes" posting today — though this one is a comment at another site, not a Bilgrimage comment. At Religion Dispatches, Neil J. Young writes about "the Catholic vote" and how it is favoring Hillary Clinton and not Donald Trump. As you'll know if you've followed commentary about this issue here and elsewhere, there's a big difference between what white Catholics are reporting regarding their political choices in the coming election, and what Hispanic Catholics are reporting. 

Charles Pierce on Hispanic Catholics As Key to "Catholic Vote" in 2016 Elections

Non-white Catholics are voting 71% for Clinton & 13% for Trump. @PRRIPoll

— Thomas Reese, S.J. (@ThomasReeseSJ) August 28, 2016

White Catholics are voting 44% for Clinton & 41% for Trump. @PRRIPoll

— Thomas Reese, S.J. (@ThomasReeseSJ) August 28, 2016

Yesterday, I wrote, 

In the News: Slight But Discernible Trend of White Catholics Away from Trump — What Does It Mean?

The Blogger platform (which I use here) has a new feature that allows bloggers to designate a "featured post" on the blog's homepage. Some readers may have noticed that I've been using the new feature, and yesterday, I chose to feature a post I wrote at the end of July taking note of an article Father Thomas Reese had just published then, noting that the Catholic vote might well determine the outcome of the 2016 presidential elections. Reese asks,

"They Put Us in Closets and Do All They Can to Keep Us There": More on the Catholic Erasure of LGBTQ People from the Narrative About Orlando

"Anybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy takes the rest of the week." - Alice Walker

— Broderick Greer (@BroderickGreer) June 15, 2016

And now some more resources that focus specifically on the erasure by top Catholic pastoral leaders of queer people from an act of mass murder of queer people:

Juan Felipe Herrera, First Latino U.S. Poet Laureate: "My Main Goal Was to Shake Hands with as Many People as Possible, of All Ages, and to Reshake Them into Poetry"

Natasha Hakimi comments on the appointment of Juan Felipe Herrera to the position of U.S. poet laureate: as she notes, Herrera is the son of Mexican migrant workers who came to California in 1948. He spent his childhood in tents and trailers as his parents moved around among farm communities in southern California seeking work. 

Richard Rodriguez's Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography: Depending on Women "to Protect the Church from Its impulse to Cleanse Itself of Me"

For the San Francisco Chronicle, Lesley Hazleton reviews Richard Rodriguez's new book, Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography. As she notes, as an openly gay Latino Catholic, Rodriguez has long struggled with the overweeningly macho heritage of Christianity, or, at least, of significant strands of the Christian tradition. 

Bishop John Shelby Spong on 2012 Elections: U.S. in a "New Place"

And yet more post-election commentary, this from noted Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong, who maintains that the 2012 elections move the United States to "a new place."  Frank Douglas at the Voice from the Desert blog helpfully provides the entire statement from Spong's site, which requires registration to access the text.

Peter Laarman to Samuel Rodriguez: Theocratic Agendas and Aging White Men

At Religion Dispatches, Peter Laarman writes a heartfelt open letter, ordained pastor to ordained pastor,  to Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, the "Hispanic Karl Rove," as Greg Metzger characterizes him.  Rodriguez gave the opening benediction for this year's Republican National Convention, and is unhappy that President Obama was re-elected.  As Mark Silk notes, Rodriguez is now being promoted as the Great Brown Hope of the GOP at a moment in which the Republican party is having to come to terms with its serious lack of support among Latinos.

Also in the News: The New America and Challenges Ahead

And yet more end-of-week snippets of news on themes political and religious, from commentary that caught my eye in recent days:

The GOP's Very Bad Night: The Racial Subtext That Is Not Subtextual at All

As I post this piece this morning, the lead article at the CNN site is Tom Cohen's analysis of the challenge now facing the Republican party after Tuesday's elections.  Cohen writes,

New America of 2012 Elections: Implications for Religious Conservatives and American Catholic Centrists

Vis-a-vis religion-and-politics news, one of the big narratives emerging from this election cycle is the increasing impotence of the religious right in American politics, and the significant challenges posed to the religious right by the broad coalition of voters (African Americans, Latinos, women, gays, and young people) that, during this election cycle, refused to be browbeaten into submission by the aging white men (including the Catholic hierarchy) who have created and continue to run the religious right machine.  Here are a few statements about this matter:

Post-Election Commentary: History Turning a Corner with the New America

This morning, a selection of post-election commentary from the last two days that, to my mind, makes valuable points and raises interesting questions: the following all focus on the new America that one commentator after another sees expressing its political will in the 2012 elections, in which a record number of Latino voters voted, in which the gender gap nationwide was 18 points, in which significant numbers of progressive young voters made a powerful difference at the polls, in which 77% of gay voters backed Obama, and in which black voters responded to ugly, raw GOP attempts to suppress their vote by turning out in droves to exercise the right to vote:

Winners of U.S. Elections: Women, Gays, Latinos, People of Color, Climate, Young People (Losers: Angry White Males, Catholic Bishops, Knights of Columbus)

Well, that was quite a night, wasn't it?  I couldn't be happier to have been proven very wrong about my fears that the Republicans would find a way back into power last evening.  And at the risk of boring readers who are already thoroughly saturated with news commentary, including the many good readers of this blog outside the U.S., for whom our American navel-gazing is surely a bore, I thought I'd simply recap here some of my favorite quips and comments from folks following the election results last evening:

National Catholic Reporter Editorials on Catholic Winners, Catholic Losers in U.S. Elections

Two valuable editorial statements from National Catholic Reporter as election day arrives in the U.S.: the first maintains that three groups of Catholics are the "winners" in today's elections, regardless of the outcome of specific elections.  These are the nuns on the bus, LGBT Catholics, and Latinos.  

Church-Going Latino Catholics Favor Same-Sex Marriage: The Surprise of the Centrist Catholic Commentariat

Also in the news, Latino Catholics and their stance regarding gay marriage: at the Commonweal blog site, Paul Moses notes that a recent Pew Research Center poll shows 46 percent of Latino Catholics who attend church weekly favoring same-sex marriage, as opposed to 37 percent who oppose it.  This is in sharp contrast to the findings for white Catholics who attend Mass weekly: in that group, 39 percent favor same-sex marriage, while 53 percent oppose it.