Annoying - the president ?

One answer to President Trump's recent executive  order to tighten control of immigration has come from what may seem unlikely sources. The presidential order called  halt to financial subsidies for town and city  councils who refuse to carry out the President's  severe directions about  removing immigrants. 

So some municipal councils are refusing to obey.

 In the state of Connecticut a city council not only refused to obey but got a standing ovation for refusing. One of its  Republican councillors said , "It's sad that we're voting on this tonight, it's great to see the community come together but it's unfortunate that this is why". The "why" was the need for  this, like other councils, "to make the state's (Connecticut's) largest city a safe haven for undocumented immigrants" .  A small but growing number of USA cities, towns and college campuses  have declared themselves safe sanctuaries for immigrants under this threat from the administration.

This sanctuary movement  is reminiscent of what happened in Europe centuries  ago - immigrants take their folk memories with them wherever they go  - when monasteries -  some of these were as big as small towns in population and wealth - were declared sanctuaries, sanctuaries even for wrongdoers. It is reminiscent also of places of refuge for citizens of the USA who went north for sanctuary in Canada because they refused to fight in Vietnam and other wars whose morality they could not believe in. And there  are towns in America still proudly remembered  as sanctuaries for fleeing slaves.

Like any humane and dignified  initiative the ancient right of sanctuary was abused. They say for instance that when rich European nobility  went to fight in the Christians' eastern  crusades some of them did some foul deeds and on returning home founded  monasteries, partly to become reconciled to the Almighty and partly to ensure  they could live the rest of their  short lives there and die in peace, safe from competitors and enemies.

In  Middletown , Connecticut, a short while ago the Mayor said : "It's been our practice for years not to enforce federal immigration law....". 

The University of Connecticut declared its commitment to protecting undocumented students.

A Hartford Connecticut newspaper   recently reported  their  Mayor saying,   "This is a welcoming , caring, and inclusive town" - he too was reacting against  the Presidential order.

Meanwhile about eight thousand people recently assembled at a site in North Dakota to protest at an oil pipeline being made to run more than a thousand miles  through sacred tribal land of native Americans. They protested the President's order that  the pipeline  must proceed, under the care of the Army's engineers. What happens if the people keep resisting to the point of standing in physical opposition, Army or no Army ?

The Franciscan Action Network  said, "Building a pipeline through indigenous people's sacred land is a violation of their religious freedom just the same as if President Trump gave permission to tear down St Patrick's Cathedral in New York to build an oil refinery there ".

In North Dakota it would likely poison the people's water supply into the bargain.

 The Sisters of Mercy of the Americas  called the latest executive order on immigrants  "morally unacceptable" 

So the President testing his political and financial muscle in the present struggle for internal power is not just a matter of annoying the press and the fleeing industrialists. Consciences and city councils are annoyed  as well.