Tom is my very good friend and a neighbor in Florida. He is an extraordinary person who lives across the hall in our condominium building. We have daily interactions, and together, we value the connection we have made. Since a tragic diving accident at seventeen, he has lived as a quadriplegic, overcoming the enormous physical, mental and emotional obstacles a spinal cord injury imposes to craft a meaningful and accomplished life. At fifty-six, he is a therapist, helping others sort through the issues and challenges in their lives. He has also counseled, taught and sensitized me to the issues confronting those in our communities who face and have to overcome an array of similar challenges to his.
Trump’s initial response to the massive rejection of him and his administration was dazed acceptance and an apparent acknowledgement that he would need to collaborate with the Democrats. However, in typical fashion, he has since reversed himself. Now, he claims that the election was fraught with fraud, and after ousting his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, Trump replaced her with the architect of most of his administration’s extreme policies, Stephen Miller, policies the nation has now repudiated. Even as the new Congress goes through its orientation seminars and plans its agenda for undoing the extremism, the Trump and Miller tag team is doubling down on their across-the-board campaign of cruelty and corruption.
Heather Cox Richardson highlighted these alarming developments in her Substack on November 6, 2026, indicating that the Trump administration learned little from their election demise. We can expect nothing to change from the disgusting abuses by masked ICE agents to the continuation of a revolting cover-up of the exploitations of young women by the rich and powerful who were part of Jeffrey Epstein's sick orbit. Of particular note in her Letters from an American was a reference to the Trump/Miller attitudes and actions involving the rights of the disabled. She wrote:
And Miller was central to the administration’s undermining of disability rights. Mike Hixenbaugh of NBC News reported that after Trump complained about seeing homeless encampments in Washington, D.C., Miller argued for a plan to make it easier to round up mentally ill homeless people and institutionalize them. Making that happen required abandoning enforcement of the 1999 Supreme Court decision Olmstead v. L.C., which established that disabled Americans have a right to live in their communities rather than being forced into institutions.
The Department of Justice went along with Miller’s plan and issued a memo saying that it would no longer enforce Olmstead. While the initial targets were unhoused people, Hixenbaugh notes, the administration quickly backed away from at least five disability rights cases designed to keep physically or mentally disabled children and adults out of institutions. Hixenbaugh points out that the administration’s refusal to enforce Olmstead is sending a message to the states that, with the dramatic cuts to Medicaid in the Republicans’ so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” they should “feel free to cut services that help disabled people remain at home,” forcing them into institutions.
We have so much work to do!
Lauren Jackson, a columnist for the New York Times, wrote an article recently titled The Bible Chapter That Helps Explain the New Christian Left (New York Times, November 8, 2026). That Bible chapter, of course, is Matthew 25. Senator Raphael Warnock, the senior pastor of the famed Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, has called himself for years “a Matthew 25 Christian.” After the results of the midterm elections are finally certified, there will be many more legislators identifying themselves as ‘Matthew 25 Christians,’ this in stark contrast to the white Christian nationalism of MAGA and the Christian right. Jackson explains:
In the New Testament’s book of Matthew, chapter 25, Jesus tells his disciples that if they offer care to the most vulnerable in society, they are also offering devotion to him. “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me,” Jesus said, according to Matthew’s author. “I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”
Along with their massive win at the ballot box, the new Congress has an equally massive challenge ahead of it. Their agenda requires the reversal of the inhumane and unlawful policies and practices of the Trump administration, beginning with the war in Iran. They must focus not only on the issues of affordability and the grotesque corruption of Trump, his family and allies, but on the needs of the most vulnerable among us. No matter what our religion might be, we must be literally or figuratively ‘Matthew 25 Christians.’ Too many among us are hungry and homeless, adults and children alike. We must restore the funding that was cut. Too many of the strangers among us are mistreated and unjustly detained by ICE, separating children from parents. We must cut funding for ICE and restore protections for immigrants. Too many have lost healthcare, adults and children alike. Their challenge will be to restore and even expand coverage, maybe even Medicare for all. Too many of our most vulnerable, especially the poor and the disabled, have been neglected and now must be re-valued and have their rightful place at the table.
Scripture tells us that on one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the Sabbath, He made the following admonition:
2 He said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers and sisters or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. 13 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. 14 And you will be blessed because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” Luke 14:12-14 (nrsvue)
The election is over. There has been a seismic shift in our national heart’s desire for our neighbor’s wellness and well-being. In my last post, I said that a new morning in America is dawning. Indeed, it is. And now we are but two weeks away from the observance of Thanksgiving, when we gather as families, friends and communities to give thanks for one another and our shared blessings. It feels different this year, lighter, more hopeful, filled with promise. The electorate has spoken boldly and bravely. Before we gather at our dining tables on November twenty-sixth, let us be materially mindful and generous toward the least and most vulnerable among us. Why? Because we are a ‘Matthew 25 People’ once again.