Hi Patty! My apologies, I had not been here for the past two weeks. It’s been an “all hands on deck” kind of season.

www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/14/c...

Their hope is my hope too. Someday, I will tell the children who gather, long after my own have left their childhoods behind:

“Evil came, and it fought hard. But we countered with peace and with love… and children, we won.”

Yet in my children’s eyes, I see a hope that refuses to concede that this could be the end. These young ones dream of the day when our nation is known by its welcome, when authority is held only to serve, when peace has taken deep root in our bones.

... I taught would always seek to protect and serve. They have watched boys almost their own ages be handcuffed and stuffed into unmarked cars by unidentified men, never to be seen again.

My children have witnessed nightmares.

...in our history books, blessedly decades, centuries – even millennia – behind us.

The evil is here; it is happening today, right now. My children have heard the sobs and the screams of the wife left behind. They have witnessed – have experienced themselves – brutality and betrayal from those...

Cutting this program will not significantly change our nation's financial state (<1% of national budget). Yet, it will alter forever the lives of many around the world. Jesus said that the second greatest commandment was to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Are we doing this?

Remember Jesus' words:

They will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.' (Matt. 25: 44-45)

We have come so close to winning the battle against AIDS, but remember, AIDS is a virus, and without vigilant attention, it will spread again. USAID has had long bipartisan support, and Congress has never considered shutting it down.

USAID does vital work that keeps tens of millions of people alive, including 20 million people living with HIV who depend on daily medication paid for by the US government to survive.

When two men can unilaterally erase a government agency overnight, America is no longer a democracy, it is an authoritarian regime.

Please write/call/email your representatives in Congress. You can put in your zip code at congress[dot]gov and you'll go right to their profiles.

USAID has existed since 1961 (started by JFK) and does (or did) humanitarian and development work in over 100 countries worldwide. It was the largest funder of global health programs in the world.