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At First Things, George Weigel is in a snit because the preparatory document for the next synod doesn't mention his hero St. Pope John Paul II. I shall have a fuller treatment of this tomorrow. (h/t Rocco)
From the Chicago Sun Times, and in the file marked "alternative facts," President Trump blames immigrants for the violence in Chicago. And, at Politico, concerns that Trump and Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton have their sights on legal immigration too.
Also at Politico, a report on Trump's effort to split organized labor, including a good, brief history lesson of previous attempts by GOP presidents to do so. The article, by Rich Yeselson, also contains sage advice to the Dems about why they should be more attentive to labor than the Obama administration was:
Indeed, there is probably a larger upside for Democrats than for Trump in fighting for the social unionism that Bell wrote about. It is understandable in calculated political terms why many Democrats today don’t support a weakened labor movement with the same fervor that some of their ancestors used to support a strong one. Yet there are still good reasons for them to do so. Democrats should do so because unions, despite their long decline, still provide more human and financial resources for the domestic policy goals of liberals than any other private institution. They should do so because union decline is linked by economists to the rise of inequality, especially among the same white men whom Trump now so powerfully appeals—it is hard to see how inequality is mitigated without stronger unions. And they should do so because, despite all of their flaws, unions—including some of those increasingly integrated building trades unions—are organizations that bring women and men of all races together in a common project of economic and political empowerment.
