It's a good time for "nice Trump" to show mercy

He won in the courts. Let's be generous about it.

Jun 26, 2026

It wasn’t particularly close. The Supreme Court, deciding along ideological lines, upheld the executive branch’s authority to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haiti and Syria, which will also affect thousands of others currently shielded by TPS programs that had been terminated by the Department of Homeland Security, their status preserved by federal judges while the case was argued.

**Helping people displaced by ethnic violence in Ethiopia, © 2018 European Union (photographer: Anouk Delafortrie), via Flickr.**

I have no issues with the Court’s decision. I believe the executive branch has certain authority granted to it by the legislative branch, which itself is the supreme lawmaking authority under the Constitution. The law enabling TPS exempts decisions made by the executive branch from judicial review. It is not unconstitutional for Congress to make a law like this, and in fact, the very people who are upset at the decision would cheer it if this was a liberal administration making decisions they supported, with a conservative Court trying to strike them as unconstitutional.

The executive branch has the right to follow the law Congress authorized, and under that law, the burden to prove racial animus is clearly with the plaintiffs. The conservative Justices didn’t buy it, and, free to express their opinions, the three liberal Justices: Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson, joined in dissent. While I agree with the decision, I also agree with the dissent. Not the part that the decision is reviewable, but the part that then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem made the decisions without proper consultation as to the effects of her actions. She did make them politically, not based on the facts of what it does to those affected.

I cannot be convinced that Noem didn’t know that the administration had stopped processing applications for the Green Card Lottery; that programs which allowed working immigrants to remain and change status to H1B were made so onerous as to be impossible for most companies; that other strategies that immigrants—who entered the country legally and built lives here—could use to remain were systematically dismantled. The end result is not that the people (scare quotes) “sponging” of our generosity and committing all kinds of crimes would be sent back, but the babies will all be dumped with the bathwater. And to extend the analogy, there are far more babies than bathwater, regardless of what the administration claims.

It is not unconstitutional for the executive branch to lie to the American people. It is not unconstitutional for the federal government to appear cruel and hard in its policies. But it is, as I wrote earlier, evil.

These people, including 4,500 Ethiopians who are now planning their exit, are at the mercy of the government. How hard would it be to actually show mercy?

It is America’s 250th birthday. We are hosting the World Cup. Hundreds of thousands of visitors from all over the world are struck by our riches, our abundance. It’s hard for us to understand, but the mere fact that most places in America have air conditioning, that supermarkets are large, fully stocked, and contain an enormous choice in brands, and don’t even mention Buc-ees, is beyond their imagination because they simply haven’t experienced it before.

Do we want these visitors to leave with the image of hundreds of thousands of once-legal immigrants being forcefully ejected from our country, which can feed the world and cure so many diseases, to their homelands that they escaped for the very reason all these visitors see with their own eyes?

Do we want to appear evil in the eyes, not just of foreign press and governments that have an interest in giving America a black eye, but also of the people who have experienced our freedom, our generosity, and our friendship? I think this is a perfect time for “nice Trump” to appear and to grant either an extension, or some way to vet TPS holders who wish to apply for permanent resident status, so they don’t have to leave immediately.

Who would be hurt by that? What would be the cost of a little mercy?

Here’s America, murdering people we say are drug runners in international waters without due process, bombing Iran then capitulating to it, and also offering to send aid to Venezuela, a nation we treated poorly just a year ago, for earthquake recovery. Our government can appear cold and indifferent, even evil. But we can also appear generous and merciful.

Now is the time for our president to show mercy. He won in the courts. He has the power to send these people home—to a home they fled because it’s dangerous, and where they may be killed—or to give them a chance to live the American dream.

Please, President Trump, for the sake of our Founders, and the vision of our nation as the best place on earth (which I firmly believe it is), show mercy.

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