In the madness of the Trump era, terrible things happen with almost no notice. An announcement is made, some news stories are written, and the issue quickly disappears, engulfed in a storm of crazy tweets and lies, followed by expressions of outrage among President Trump’s foes.
A good example is the administration’s decision last month to slash the number of refugees who can be resettled in the United States next year to 30,000, down from the already shamefully low level of 45,000.
The new figure is the lowest ceiling imposed on the refugee program since it was created in 1980 and reflects a sharp decline from the cap of 110,000 that President Obama proposed in his last year in office.
In all circumstances, the move would be short-sighted, mean, politically opportunistic and embarrassingly out of line with what we have always claimed our values are. But it is even more cruel and wrongheaded now, as the world confronts what Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Massachusetts, called the “worst refugee crisis since World War II.”
“We are turning our backs on it,” McGovern recently told me, “when we should be exercising global leadership.”