True Santa & Fake Santa in the US. NPP underwhelmed by Square-toed Critics

A telling Christmas cartoon in a Canadian newspaper (The Globe and Mail) shows the American Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents apprehending and attacking Santa Claus as he lands in the US presumably without a visa.

- BY RAJAN PHILIPS

For their part, ICE agents have gone a step worse and got one of their men to be a fake Santa, with an ICE logo, in an advertisement that promises US immigrants a payment of $3,000 and free flight 'home' for Christmas if they would voluntarily turn themselves in. The overexcited and out-of-depth Department of Homeland Secretary Kristi Noam has added her two cents: "Illegal aliens should take advantage of this gift and self-deport."

That is Trump's America and it is at terrible odds with the historical image of America that the first American Pope in Vatican devoutly cherishes and is unabashedly defending. Paraphrasing the gospel of Matthew, the Pope had pointedly admonished, "Jesus says very clearly, at the end of the world, we're going to be asked, 'How did you receive the foreigner?" The American Bishops followed suit and in a rare rebuke of the Administration, have expressed their "concern for the evolving situation impacting immigrants in the United States".

But not all American Catholics are with the Pope and their Bishops. Sixty percent of white American Catholics are said to be in favour of Trump's vicious crackdown on immigrants. They and their voluble intelligentsia are a bulwark of Trump's MAGA (Make America Great Again) bandwagon. Five of the nine Supreme Court judges are conservative white Catholics. They are aided and abetted by Clarence Thomas, the lone male African-American and conservative judge on the bench. The six judges, ignoring the dissenting liberal judges, have been giving judicial cover to practically all of Trump's controversial second term initiatives.