Four days after the inauguration, I attended a naturalization ceremony inside the cavernous third-floor courtroom at South Bend’s federal courthouse. My musician wife was there to sing the anthem and I tagged along to witness the minting of 50 brand-new citizens.
It was a celebratory and crowded scene – the gallery packed with supporters and spouses and kids; with immigration officials; Social Security administrators; plenipotentiaries; and Daughters of the American Revolution. The citizens-in-waiting sat up front with miniature U.S. flags in their laps. They hailed from 17 different countries and were very patient throughout the speechifying.
President Trump had just issued an executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship. Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita was somehow in the room, sporting a candy cane necktie. He was taller than I expected and up close looks like a man who takes long baths.
When it was his turn to speak, Rokita stood over the seated honorees and offered his congratulations. “You did it the right way,” he said. Meaning they followed the rules, passed the civics test, obtained the permissions, etc.
The right way.
He said it several times in a short speech. The right way.
A bestowal.
Todd Rokita then strode across the street and sued the St. Joe sheriff for harboring “illegal aliens” who “want to come and live here and commit crime here."
The newly naturalized and their immigrant families dressed in Sunday clothes had by this time taken their little flags and returned to the rest of their lives in Indiana.
***
“We are not hosting a town hall.”
Congressman Rudy Yakym’s staff made that clear in an email but invited me to visit them on Grape Road and so I did. The district office feels like a title company storefront – thick paint, dark carpet squares, furniture from Staples – with a lobby flatscreen tuned to CSPAN. Everyone inside is exceedingly young.
Yakym is early in his second term, the successor to Jackie Walorski’s political operation in a safe red district. Prior to Walorski’s untimely death two years ago, Yakym had never held office. As a congressman, he has never hosted a public forum or joined a candidate debate.
Yakym’s district director took the meeting. We sat across a table in a small conference room, and the district director spoke in courteous, practiced cadences.
About the Oval Office debacle with Zelensky: “Peace Through Strength,” he said.
About Trump’s Canada tariffs: “Fentanyl,” he said. “Even one death is too many.”
About Elon Musk: The district director said Sinclair Broadcasting polls showed Trump remains popular.
But let us now talk turkey. What about GOP plans to cut $880 billion from Medicaid and Social Security? This is why I took off work.
The district director mentioned record deficits. He also said the highest priority in Congress is extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts. One thought is to resume work requirements for Medicaid, he said. Yakym seems for it.
More than 26 percent of district residents are on Medicaid. I asked how many would be bounced due to work mandates. The district director could not say.
My wife’s elderly aunt is mentally disabled and survives in a nursing home funded by Medicaid. My mom lived on Social Security after ruination in a late-life financial fraud. My brother died young in Cook County’s publicly funded Stroger Hospital.
All three worked and paid into the system. All believed in the system. Aunt Karen still relies on it. Mom and Tim, it is now clear, had the good and patriotic sense to die when the money ran out. When they were revealed, in Musk-speak, as Non-Player Characters – as so many of us well and truly are.
More juice from a raisin.
More austerity for the austere.
I asked the district director, So how come no town halls?
“Not productive,” he said.
Music: “Yackety Yak” by The Coasters
