• More than two dozen Christian and Jewish organizations sued the Trump administration Tuesday over its decision to let immigration agents make arrests at places of worship. Also Tuesday, Pope Francis issued a stinging rebuke of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan in a letter to U.S. Catholic Bishops. And he had some seemingly pointed words for Vice President J.D. Vance, who in recent weeks has used his Catholic faith to justify the White House’s immigration crackdown. Terence Sweeney, an assistant teaching professor at Villanova University, breaks down the holes in the Trump administration’s interpretation of Christianity and Catholicism.
• Later in the show, Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics and trade policy at the Cato Institute, explains why Trump’s threats to a trade loophole could blow up your online shopping habits.
• And in headlines: Trump and Elon Musk defended the Department of Government Efficiency’s draconian cost-cutting actions during a joint press conference, DOGE said it cut $900 million in Department of Education contracts, and a federal judge blocked the administration’s order to cut billions in funding for medical research.

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TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Wednesday, February 12th. I’m Jane Coaston and this is What a Day. The show that keeps checking the news to find things that don’t make it feel sad or scared and keeps finding news like the coast guard released audio of the Titan submarine imploding. Not helping coast guard. Not helping. [music break] On today’s show, Elon Musk’s DOGE moves in on the Education Department, and President Donald Trump says Ukraine should like, give us some stuff if they want our help fighting Russia. But let’s start with a growing resistance to the Trump administration from an unexpected corner, faith groups. On Tuesday, more than two dozen Christian and Jewish organizations sued over the administration’s decision to let immigration agents make arrests at places of worship. It’s actually the second lawsuit like this. A group of Quakers sued over the same issue last month. Historically, places like schools and churches had been off limits for immigration raids, but not in Trump’s vision of maximum cruelty when it comes to immigration. Also on Tuesday, Pope Francis issued a stinging rebuke of the administration’s mass deportation plans. In a letter to U.S. Catholic bishops, Francis wrote, quote, “What is built on the basis of force and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being begins badly and will end badly.” Ominous. Naturally, any kind of criticism, even from the head of the Catholic Church himself didn’t sit well with the administration. Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, essentially told the Pope to mind his own business. 

[clip of Tom Homan] Well I got harsh words for the pope, Pope ought to fix the Catholic Church. I’m saying this as a lifelong Catholic. I was baptized Catholic, I was at first communion as a Catholic, confirmation as a Catholic. He ought to fix the Catholic Church, and concentrate on his work and lead border enforcement to us.

Jane Coaston: I also was born and raised Catholic, Tom. I went to Catholic school for 13 years. I was baptized, confirmed all of it. You want to talk about the Avignon papacy? Begotten not Made? I’ve got all the time in the world. And I feel like I can safely say that this line of thinking would not have flown with the people who taught me about Catholicism. The Catholic Church is roughly 2000 years old. You’ve had this job for three weeks. Simmer down. But back to the pope. He also had some seemingly pointed words for Vice President J.D. Vance. In recent weeks, Vance has justified Trump’s immigration crackdown by citing a medieval Catholic concept called ordo amoris or order of love in Latin. Here’s how the vice president explained it during an interview with Fox late last month. 

[clip of Vice President J.D. Vance] There’s this old school, and I think it’s a very Christian concept, by the way, that um you love your family and then you love your neighbor and then you love your community and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country. And then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world. 

Jane Coaston: Pope Francis says no. Without naming Vance, Francis wrote in his letter, quote, “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups.” See, again, that’s what I remember from Catholic school. I remember love thy neighbor and Jesus hanging out with lepers and an understanding that the ways of the world, like immigration law, are immaterial in the long run. So to help us make sense of the White House’s um unconventional interpretation of Christianity and Catholicism, I spoke with Terence Sweeney. He is an assistant teaching professor at Villanova University and has a doctorate in philosophy. Terence, welcome to What a Day. 

Terence Sweeney: Great to be here. 

Jane Coaston: So I should start by saying that like millions of Americans, I was raised Catholic and I have been really bothered by how Catholicism has been playing into how this administration has behaved. What has stood out to you during this time? 

Terence Sweeney: Yeah, it’s a bit confusing. Uh. I mean, if you’re a bit of an academic nerdy type like me, there are some upsides. So J.D. Vance is using uh very old Latin expressions uh to justify what the uh administration is doing. But a lot of it is pretty manipulative uh and it’s being used in strange ways, like defunding Catholic Relief services that provides aid for refugees and migrants. So there’s a is a they’re using Catholic language in order to prevents people distributing money to the poor or to refugees. And that’s not what Catholic language is supposed to get used for. 

Jane Coaston: Right. I was struck I saw someone online basically arguing that the story of the Good Samaritan is actually about how um, you know, we’re supposed to take care of people we can see. And it just it’s just been striking to me. And you tweeted Pope Francis’s letter to the bishops of the United States and the subject of immigration and refugees and you added something that really struck me, quote, “But I am also saddened by the cafeteria Catholicism that many Catholics in the right will be showing in the days to come.” Can you define cafeteria Catholicism? 

Terence Sweeney: Yeah, it’s an expression that’s popped up in the past 20 years, usually deployed uh by conservative Catholics about liberal Catholics. And it’s it’s an attitude where, you know, kind of the church teaches a lot of different things, things about the Trinity, things about about going to mass, things about social justice. And it’s an attitude where you just you kind of pick and choose like oh I like a little bit of spinach and I like the cookies. And kind of teaching is meant to be kind of integrated. It’s a kind of a vision of what life is and should be and you really shouldn’t be doing a lot of picking and choosing. But what’s going on here is certain American Catholics, the vice presidents and others, they don’t really like the what the church teaches about migrants and refugees. They don’t really like what the church has to say about helping poor people. So they just–

Jane Coaston: Or the death penalty. 

Terence Sweeney: Or the death penalty of note. Uh. And so they’re just like they just want to kind of not pick that uh there uh rather than kind of taking, you know, that kind of integrated vision, which is hard like sometimes the integrated vision doesn’t fit in with things we like. And we have to you it, Christianity calls for a life of conversion, but they’d rather nots. 

Jane Coaston: What did you think of Pope Francis’s letter overall? What struck you? 

Terence Sweeney: I mean, I thought it was measured. This is not an open borders policy. There are some people who believe in open borders, but not many. So now what the pope thinks certainly there’s room for dealing with criminals. Real criminals are criminals. Right. And we have laws and that’s important. But the onus on us is to welcome the stranger. I mean, that’s what the story of the Good Samaritan is about, right? This person whom I don’t really know, who I’ve never met before. And I need to find a way in as much as I can to welcome them. We live in a country with major economic problems, and a lot of people are suffering. But we’re also the wealthiest country in the world. We’re a huge country. We have a lot of space. So the pope is calling on us to take our excess, which we have a lot of, and find a way to help people who are coming to our door asking for help, find a way to send some of our money so we can treat kids who might get Aids, send some of our money to help people who are in Latin America who maybe if we help them there, might be able to stay there. That’s what he’s calling on us to do, to live out love actively for the least. 

Jane Coaston: The so called prosperity gospel is rife among American evangelicals. The idea that your wealth is indicative of your salvation, that the richer you are, clearly the more God loves you. Do you think that there is sort of a corresponding prosperity gospel for American Catholics right now, where your performance of holiness or your performance of specifically conservatism is indicative of how good a Catholic you are? 

Terence Sweeney: Yeah, it seems a little bit like that. This is a Catholic idea, it’s called the preferential option for the poor. It’s the idea that God has a kind of preference for people in poverty and uh that preference is because their they need. Right. And so we should have that, too. I think a lot of times in American Catholicism, there’s a temptation to a preferential option for the rich. Well like we want to make sure we cut the budget so that people who have more money can have more money. And so people who have less money don’t get food stamps. So I think there’s we’re getting a kind of the preferences wrong. When we design our social policy, the people who should get the priority are the people who need more and the people who should get less priority are people who need less. And that’s where I see that kind of prosperity gospel influencing Catholic thought, which I mean, there’s a place for people making money and things in life. But ultimately, this is about how do we help the people who are the smallest and most forgotten. And that principle, alas, seems to be strategically being forgotten. 

Jane Coaston: What do you think Vice President Vance is missing in the message of the church on immigration and refugees? 

Terence Sweeney: He’s right when he talks about this idea of order of loves. Right? So like, I have children, I have four kids, which is crazy and right. And I have to take care of them. And if I start donating all my money to help other people’s children and I can’t feed my kids, that’s bad. Like that’s right. However, we should be the part of the vision of Christianity is that humanity is one family, right? Uh. That whole Adam and Eve story like one of the big things that Saint Augustine takes in that is that humanity is one family. There aren’t races, there aren’t ethnicities in a fundamental way. There’s just this whole big family. So the the people coming here in need in 1840 because they’re starving Irish people or in uh the 2020s because they’re fleeing a Marxist regime in Venezuela. Those are the ones we need to make sure we’re prioritizing too. So, yes, take care of our children. Of course, I wish the Republican Party was prioritizing taking care of Americans uh in poverty. The government, a long history of working with faith based organizations that Donald Trump is destroying. I mean, this is a supposedly friendlier to Catholic presidency, but the US Catholic Conference of Bishops, Catholic Relief Services, Catholic Charities, they are laying people off because they can’t they can’t help anyone. The refugees are being cut off. And that’s not a particularly Catholic vision really at all. 

Jane Coaston: Something I keep thinking about. And you brought this up with talking about the idea of cafeteria Catholicism. And American Catholics have long been a little bit rogue on a lot of issues, and they’ve pushed away the authority of the pope on any number of issues, whether it is abortion or the death penalty, which I think seems pretty notable to me um that that latter one. But it seems to me that you see a new generation of conservative American Catholics, especially those who converted as adults, as Vice President Vance did, they seem to be rejecting the very tenets of Catholicism in favor of something way meaner and way more tied to current events or politics. They’re sacrificing faith, in my view, to own the Libs. What do you think the way forward for Catholics and other people of faith in this moment is? 

Terence Sweeney: I was raised Catholic and then I did what a lot of my peers did, which was I stopped going to church for several years. And then uh and then I found my way back as many of my peers have done as well. There’s a lot of different things millennials have done. And you know, what you’re finding your way back to is this kind of vision of love. That’s the whole point. And so finding like how do we live that out in the kind of practical ways we need to. Right. There’s lots of policy questions. And what exactly is the right rate of immigration is its own kind of uh challenging question. But when we do this, we do this in the context of, you know, if your life is about owning the Libs or owning the conservatives or owning whomever. You’re really missing the point. Whether you’re Catholic or not, what we should be doing is seeking the good. This is old natural law theory from Thomas Aquinas that fundamentally the point of our lives is to seek the good. And if you’re just living your life to kind of take it out on somebody else, you’re really you’re not going to be happy yourself. Uh. You’re not going make anyone else happy and you’re going to miss the point of of what God made this life for, which is to see good, the good for myself and for others. And to try to share that good as much as possible. 

Jane Coaston: Terence, thank you so much for joining me. 

Terence Sweeney: It’s my pleasure. Thank you. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Terence Sweeney, an assistant teaching professor at Villanova University. We’ll get to more of the news in a moment. But if you like the show, make sure to subscribe. Leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts. Watch us on YouTube and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

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Jane Coaston: Here’s what else we’re following today. 

[sung] Headlines. 

[clip of Elon Musk] It’s not like I think I can get away with something. I’ll be scrutinized nonstop. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] And if we thought that we would not let him do that segment or look in that area if we thought there was a lack of transparency or a conflict of interest. And we watched that also. 

Jane Coaston: Sure. President Trump held a press conference in the Oval Office Tuesday with Elon Musk and Musk’s young son right by his side. Trump signed an executive order that essentially gives the Department of Government efficiency more power because that’s what it needs. The DOGE Workforce Optimization initiative will, quote, “make the federal workforce more efficient and effective.” And by that, the administration really means cutting jobs. After being asked about claims that he’s orchestrating a hostile takeover of the government, Musk said he’s just giving the people what they voted for. 

[clip of Elon Musk] The people voted for major government reform. There should be no doubt about that. That was on the campaign. The president spoke about that at every rally, the people voted for major government reform. And that’s what people are going to get they’re going to get what they voted for. 

Jane Coaston: Musk said the goal of DOGE is to restore democracy. And I guess if you call an unelected billionaire coming in and gutting federal agencies democracy, then sure, DOGE is restoring it. Musk and the boys are keeping busy. On Monday, DOGE announced the Department of Education terminated 89 contracts worth nearly $900 million. The non-agency agency posted on Twitter that the Education Department also cut 29 diversity, equity, and inclusion training grants totaling around $100 million. The cuts are apparently directed at the Institute of Education Sciences, the department’s research arm. Industry groups said a lot of the institute’s work was cut. The What a Day newsletter scooped a full list of the canceled programs and we’ll link to the story in our show notes. Democratic Senator Patty Murray of Washington said in a statement Monday that whittling down the Department of Education means nothing to Musk. She said, quote, “Make no mistake, this is just the first step Trump and Musk are taking to abolish the Department of Education.” A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration’s order to cut billions of dollars in funding for medical research from the National Institutes of Health. The NIH announced it would cut, quote unquote, “indirect costs” on Friday after the White House ordered the institutes to slash grant funding. These indirect costs for things like equipment and office spaces amount to billions of dollars paid to universities and medical centers to assist with research on cancer, Alzheimer’s and other human diseases. 22 state attorneys general sued the White House that same day, and a federal judge sided with them on Tuesday, issuing a temporary restraining order until further arguments in the case are heard later this month. It should be noted that the ruling only applies to the states that joined the lawsuit. So the 28 states that weren’t part of the suit will see less research funding. The NIH is is the biggest funder of medical research in the world. One medical professor at Johns Hopkins University who depends on NIH funding told Time magazine that cutting funding for medical research nationwide would be, quote, “the apocalypse of American science.” Fun. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] We were treated very nicely by Russia, actually. I hope that’s the beginning of a relationship where we can end that war and millions of people can stop being killed. 

Jane Coaston: President Trump said on Tuesday that he hopes Russia and the U.S. can work together to end the war in Ukraine. He made the remarks in the Oval Office shortly after the White House secured the release of Marc Fogel, an American teacher who had been detained in Russia for over three years. He was teaching in Moscow and was arrested for marijuana possession. Earlier this week, President Trump told Fox News that Ukraine should pay the U.S. $500 billion worth of natural resources in exchange for the military aid the war torn country has received amid Russia’s invasion. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said last week he was willing to make such a deal in the form of rare earth and mineral resources like lithium and uranium. Materials that are often used to make electronics. Vice President J.D. Vance will likely discuss the matter with Zelensky on Friday when the two are set to meet at the Munich Security Conference. And that’s the news. [music break] One more thing. I’m going to say three very boring words to you. De minimis loophole. Now, until about a week ago, I did not know what this was. Nor did I particularly care about the nitty gritty specifics of American trade policy. At the moment, I have to say I’m more concerned about Elon Musk having my Social Security number. But you might care now. See, the de minimis loophole states that packages worth less than $800 can enter the United States duty free. If you’ve bought a pair of cheap sweatpants because you’re in your bedrot era, you can probably thank the de minimis loophole. But that loophole might be on the way out. Earlier this month, when Trump imposed those 10% across the board tariffs on China, he also scrapped the de minimis provision. But because we as Americans buy so much cheap crap online, it sparked chaos. And Trump backed away from ending the de minimis loophole, at least for now. So to explain what all this means for you and your shopping habits, I asked Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics and trade policy at the Cato Institute to tell me more. We talked to him last week. The one thing I’ve seen is that Temu and Shein and all those places that are why you can get $14 jeans that will fall apart immediately. They’re about to get way more expensive because Trump wants to get rid of the de minimis loophole. 

Scott Lincicome: Yeah. 

Jane Coaston: What is that? 

Scott Lincicome: Yeah sure. 

Jane Coaston: And what does it mean for Americans who are cheap like me? 

Scott Lincicome: Okay. So decades ago, uh this provision was inserted into U.S. trade law that allows people traveling abroad to bring back a certain dollar amount of goods duty free. Right. Not going to pay tariffs on those things. Congress, in its wisdom years ago said, well, that’s really unfair to poor people. Right? That’s basically like letting the rich go to Europe and buy cheap stuff and then get it tariff free. But for poor people who want to order via mail order or via the Internet and who can’t afford fancy plane tickets and hotels, they’re screwed. So we’re going to apply that same exemption to their individual purchases. Now, when Trump started imposing a lot of tariffs back in 2017, a bunch of companies, including Shein and Temu, realized, wait, we can use this de minimis exception and ship low dollar value things directly to consumers and they can we can avoid the tariffs. So right after the tariffs were imposed, de minimis shipments exploded. And so effectively, Trump’s tariffs fueled the growth of these direct consumer outlets. And I should note, it’s not just in China. It’s not just Shein and Temu. There are tons of companies that utilize this business. They do it via warehouses in Canada and Mexico. I bought my daughter some Air Jordans for Christmas last year and they were made in Indonesia. They came from a warehouse in Canada. Definitely using the de minimis exception. And Trump wants to shut that down. Now, there’s two problems with that. First, of course, it’s just going to tax American consumers of mainly clothing and basic consumables. But second is, there’s an administration problem because there are now millions of de minimis shipments entering the United States every day. So if you start trying to put tariffs on these things and instead of just scanning them, doing what customs typically does for border security staff, estimates are you’d need thousands and thousands of new customs agents that the administration alone would be basically impossible. 

Jane Coaston: That was Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics and trade policy at the Cato Institute. But uh I’m still going to buy sneakers, so. [music break]

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Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe. Leave a review. Tell me your favorite pieces of Papal trivia and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading and not just about the time one pope had his predecessor who was dead, dug up and put on trial for perjury, like me. What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston and history is fun. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producers are Raven Yamamoto and Emily Fohr. Our producer is Michell Eloy. We had production help today from Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters and Julia Claire. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison and our executive producer is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. 

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