Where are the Republicans in Congress?

Barbara Jatkola, Keene Sentinel Letter to the Editor 4/24/26

Where are the Republicans in Congress? Where are the Christian leaders in our country?

What do they think of Trump’s Easter morning post (“Open the F------ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell”) and his subsequent threat that “a whole civilization will die”? Of his Orthodox Easter post, which included an image of him as Jesus healing a man in a bed?

What do they think about his defense secretary invoking “the Lord, Jesus Christ” in the bombardment of Iranian cities and canceling Catholic services at the Pentagon on Good Friday? About Trump and his henchmen picking a fight with the pope, who they say isn’t really up to speed on Christian doctrine?

What do the Speaker of the House and the other Christians in Congress and throughout the country think about the racist, hate-filled screeds that come out of Trump’s mouth and social media every day? Oh, I know: they haven’t heard about this or seen that, or they say, with a simpering grin, “Can’t you take a joke? It’s just Trump being Trump.”

Which is, after all, the problem.

Where were the Republicans when the defense secretary forced out the army chief of staff after he refused to remove the names of two women and two black men from a list of candidates to be promoted to brigadier general, then terminated the army chief of chaplains, whom he considered too “woke”?

Republicans cannot spare one stinking word as Trump destroys our economy, our environment, our social safety net. As he enriches Russia and Putin at the expense of Ukrainians fighting to defend not just their democracy, but the very idea of democracy. As he enriches himself.

Not a peep from them and their Christian supporters as ICE rounds up documented and undocumented immigrants, spirits them and their children away to filthy, overcrowded detention centers, and keeps them there for months on end without access to an attorney.

In 1776, Thomas Paine wrote, “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

Where are the Republicans in these trying times 250 years on? Where are the Christians? What will it take to rouse THEM to act in the service of our country now?