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jd vance
US Bishops Issue Rare Message Denouncing Trump's 'Indiscriminate Mass Deportation' Campaign
"Not since the civil rights era—and never with such unanimity—have American bishops so directly challenged a president’s policies," wrote one chronicler of the Catholic Church.
Nov 14, 2025
More than 200 Catholic bishops joined in condemning the Trump administration’s attacks on immigrants in an extraordinary statement on Wednesday.
The "special message" was issued at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' (USCCB) annual fall plenary, at which a majority of the nation's bishops were in attendance. They denounced the administration's "indiscriminate mass deportation" campaign, and called for an end to "dehumanizing rhetoric and violence."
Such a message is exceptionally rare. It was the first time in 12 years that the USCCB has issued such a joint statement, which it says is reserved for cases it deems "particularly urgent."
The statement was passed with 216 votes of approval, while just five bishops voted against it and three abstained. There are around 270 actively serving bishops in the US, meaning the vote represents the vast majority opinion among these high-ranking church officials. After the vote passed, the declaration was met with sustained applause.
The bishops laid out a litany of ways the Trump administration has violated the rights of immigrants over the past year and engaged in dehumanizing rhetoric directed at them.
"We are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement," the bishops said. "We are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants. We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care. We lament that some immigrants in the United States have arbitrarily lost their legal status. We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools. We are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school, and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones."
The White House often claims that the immigrants it targets for deportation are violent criminals and terrorists. But the latest immigration data shows that around 72% of current detainees have no criminal convictions. Previous data from the libertarian Cato Institute has shown that 93% of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) book-ins were for non-criminals and nonviolent offenders.
Members of the Trump administration often engage in openly hostile rhetoric toward immigrants, including Vice President JD Vance, whose wife's parents immigrated from India, and who is a recent Catholic convert who often speaks about the role of faith in his politics.
Vance has described immigration to the US as a “historic invasion” of the nation. He has admitted to spreading false rumors about Haitian asylum seekers, who’d fled violence and instability in their home countries to settle legally in the US; during the 2024 presidential campaign, he amplified baseless claims that the migrants were eating the pets of their American neighbors. Vance has derided the idea of people from "different cultures" moving to the US, saying it's "totally reasonable and acceptable for American citizens to look at their next-door neighbors and say, 'I want to live next to people who I have something in common with,'" including speaking the same language.
The bishops thoroughly repudiated this worldview in their statement.
"Despite obstacles and prejudices, generations of immigrants have made enormous contributions to the well-being of our nation. We, as Catholic bishops, love our country and pray for its peace and prosperity. For this very reason, we feel compelled now in this environment to raise our voices in defense of God-given human dignity," they said. "Catholic teaching exhorts nations to recognize the fundamental dignity of all persons, including immigrants."
The bishops called for “meaningful reform of our nation’s immigration laws and procedures,” adding that “human dignity and national security are not in conflict” and that “both are possible if people of goodwill work together.”
"We recognize that nations have a responsibility to regulate their borders and establish a just and orderly immigration system for the sake of the common good," they said. "Without such processes, immigrants face the risk of trafficking and other forms of exploitation. Safe and legal pathways serve as an antidote to such risks."
The bishops' statement follows a call by Pope Leo XIV last week for "deep reflection" about the way immigrants are treated in the United States. The Chicago-born Pope, the first American to ever serve as the church's patriarch, said that "many people who have lived for years and years and years, never causing problems, have been deeply affected by what is going on right now.”
According to the American Immigration Council, more than 80% of the undocumented immigrants in the US in 2022 had been living in the country for over a decade. Meanwhile, numerous studies have found that both undocumented and documented immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens.
The bishops’ denunciation comes at a time when Americans have turned considerably against Trump’s immigration policies: Where he had double-digit approval on the issue near the start of his presidency, at the beginning of November, net support for his immigration policy was at -7 according to polls from The Economist/YouGov.
As Christopher Hale, a writer who has chronicled Leo's papacy, wrote, the bishops' statement may be the strongest collective denunciation of a US president ever made by the Catholic hierarchy.
"Not since the civil rights era—and never with such unanimity—have American bishops so directly challenged a president’s policies," Hale said.
Also at the plenary, El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz, the chair of the USCCB's migration committee, announced the launch of the conference's "You Are Not Alone" Initiative, which aims to provide support and accompaniment to migrants at risk of deportation under the Trump administration.
"Our immigrant brothers and sisters… are living in a deep state of fear,” Seitz said. “Many are too afraid to work, send their children to school, or avail themselves to the sacraments.”
He added: "Because we’re pastors… we care about our people, and we care particularly for those who are most vulnerable and those who are most in need.”
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GOP Vermont State Senator Sam Douglass Resigns Over Hate-Filled Group Chat
Many social media users had the same reaction to Douglass' resignation: "Good riddance!"
Oct 19, 2025
Vermont state Sen. Sam Douglass is set to step down Monday after being exposed as a participant in a Young Republican group chat in which members—including at least one Trump administration official—exchanged hate-filled messages.
Douglass, a Republican, said in a statement Friday: “I must resign. I know that this decision will upset many, and delight others, but in this political climate I must keep my family safe.”
“If my governor asks me to do something, I will act, because I believe in what he’s trying to do,” the 27-year-old freshman lawmaker added, referring to Republican Vermont Gov. Phil Scott's call for him to step down.
“I love my state, my people, and I am deeply sorry for the offense this caused and that our state was dragged into this," Douglass added.
Douglass is the only known elected official involved in a leaked Telegram chat first reported by Politico on Tuesday in which members of Young Republican chapters in four states exchanged racist, anti-LGBTQ+, and misogynistic messages, including quips about an "epic" rape and killing people in Nazi gas chambers.
Group chat participants included Michael Bartels, a senior adviser in the office of general counsel at the US Small Business Administration.
The chat included one message in which Douglass equated being Indian with poor hygiene, and another exchange in which his wife, Vermont Young Republican national committee member Brianna Douglass, admonishes the organization for “expecting the Jew to be honest.”
Prominent Republicans have rallied in defense of what Vice President JD Vance called the private jokes of "young boys"—who are apparently all in their 20s and 30s.
The fallout from the group chat leak has cost a majority of participants in the Telegram chat their jobs or employment offers.
Most prominently, ex-New York State Young Republicans chair Peter Giunta—who posted "I love Hitler"—was fired from his job as chief of staff to New York Assemblyman Michael Reilly (R-62).
Many social media users had the same reaction to Douglass' resignation: "Good riddance!"
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Vance Jumps to Defense of 'Young Boys,' Aged 24-35, Who Praised Hitler in GOP Group Chat
While the vice president "infantalizes people on the right to defend them," said one journalist, "he never shows the same charity to the left (like, for instance, students that Trump has tried to deport)."
Oct 16, 2025
Since the killing of far-right activist Charlie Kirk last month, Vice President JD Vance has led the charge among right-wing politicians who have railed against "left-wing extremists" and what he has claimed is a "network" of advocacy groups that foment and perpetrate violence—suggesting the "rhetoric" of progressives who are critical of President Donald Trump and his allies is akin to violence.
But confronted with racist, antisemitic messages and jokes about rape that were sent in a group chat by members of the group Leaders of Young Republicans on Wednesday, the vice president dismissed the outrage that has ensued over the chats as "pearl clutching" over the actions of "young boys."
The "young boys" who sent messages that explicitly praised Adolf Hitler, lauded Republicans who they believe support slavery, and said their political foes should go to "the gas chamber," were between the ages of 24-35.
“The reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys,” Vance said on The Charlie Kirk Show. “They tell edgy, offensive jokes. That’s what kids do. And I really don’t want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke—telling a very offensive, stupid joke—is cause to ruin their lives.”
Since the messages were leaked, some of the Young Republicans who took part in the group chat have stepped down from their jobs—which they held, in some cases, with state lawmakers and the New York state court system. One member, Vermont state Sen. Samuel Douglass, who was the only elected official in the chat and made a racist remark about South Asian people, has faced calls to resign.
"Lil' JD defends Nazi-loving Republicans as 'boys,' though they're almost his age. I wonder how his wife feels about his waving away anti-Indian slurs?" said The Nation's Joan Walsh, referring to Usha Vance, whose parents immigrated to the US from India.
On CNN Wednesday evening, I've Had It podcast host Jennifer Welch said Vance's defense of racism—despite the fact that he has a South Asian wife and biracial children—offers the latest evidence that he's unlikely to fight for the rights of anyone, including those who voted for him.
Welch nailed it:
“JD Vance is married to an Indian woman. He has mixed-race children. If he won’t even defend them—his own family—from white supremacist jokes and Hitler worship… what makes you think he gives a damn about you?”
If a man won’t stand for his own, he’ll sell out… pic.twitter.com/5rAtLCZ61j
— Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) October 16, 2025
Vance's suggestion that the fallout from the Young Republicans' praise for Hitler and other comments could "ruin their lives" comes as the vice president and other far-right leaders have called for federal investigations and other actions to "disrupt" groups that express disagreement with the Trump administration—for example, those that call the deployment of armed immigration agents in US cities "authoritarian."
The administration and its allies have also already taken extreme actions against individuals who exercise their First Amendment rights—detaining pro-Palestinian protesters like Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk and trying to deport them for speaking out against US support for Israel's genocidal military campaign in Gaza. A man in Tennessee was charged with threatening mass violence and held in jail for weeks after he posted a meme with a quote from Trump after Kirk's killing, and more than 145 people have been fired for making comments about the activist's assassination.
While Vance "infantalizes people on the right to defend them," said journalist Zaid Jilani, "he never shows the same charity to the left (like, for instance, students that Trump has tried to deport)."
When asked by Politico, White House spokesperson Liz Huston rejected the idea that the ideas expressed in the group chat was reflective of rhetoric that Trump and other Republicans use in public and claimed that "no one has been subjected to more vicious rhetoric and violence than President Trump and his supporters."
Trump megadonor and former special government employee Elon Musk displayed what appeared to be a Nazi salute at an inauguration event for the president, and both Vance and Musk embraced the neo-Nazi political party Alternative for Germany before the country's election earlier this year.
On Wednesday, US Capitol Police opened an investigation after a modified US flag that displayed a swastika was seen in a video taken in Rep. Dave Taylor's (R-Ohio) office.
But on Thursday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) joined Vance in dismissing questions about the group chat's participants, whose group has been expressly supported by GOP leaders.
"I don't know who any of these people are," said Johnson, before acknowledging that a photo had been posted online showing him standing with some of the group chat participants.
With Vance attempting to deflect attention away from the group chat this week, Massachusetts state Rep. Manny Cruz (D-7) reminded him that "these are the leaders of the Young Republican National Federation, the GOP’s 15,000-member political organization for Republicans between 18 and 40 years old."
"As leaders of national organizations and staff in state government," said Cruz, "they are rightfully being held accountable."
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