News reports: Why so scared?

You knew this was coming. You saw it miles away.

We’re not a week into Donald Trump’s second presidency, and the news reports are filled with fear. “Threats against ‘sanctuary cities’ have chilling effect” in Massachusetts. Funny, not funny, just a few weeks ago Mass Gov. Maura Healey (Democrat) touted a new proposed law that would limit the state’s right-to-shelter law to legal immigrants who pass additional background checks. The news a week ago was filled with stories of illegal immigrants committing rape, trading in illegal weapons and fentanyl, and other terrible crimes. Now, suddenly, the same officials who are busy rolling up the red carpet for illegals are scared because Trump threatened to prosecute anyone who doesn’t cooperate with the Feds, who are busy rounding up illegals.

It’s not like people haven’t seen this coming, from like 50 miles away. It was like a giant life-killing asteroid that’s been hurtling toward earth for five years, but ignored until it fills the sky. Or like a president who was too old to execute the duties of office but aggressively protected by everyone—until he was unceremoniously thrown out.

Everyone, of all parties, thinks illegal immigration is a big problem in America. The only people denying it were Democrats running for office, which is one of the reasons why many of them lost.

As for legal immigration, people are more chill. There’s broad agreement that legal immigration should stay about where it is or increased, plus or minus. More Americans say we need immigrants, especially skilled immigrants. My own opinion is a bit more nuanced. Skilled immigrants who were schooled in their home country tend to displace jobs in America—the kinds of jobs people would like to have. Unskilled, motivated immigrants work toward those jobs but also fill jobs at the lower end of the economy that Americans have been trained to not want. So I’d prefer a mix.

But none of this justifies “panic” as proclaimed by the Boston Globe. In fact, this is the definition of conspiracy promotion and “fake news.”

The warnings are raging across text chains, on social media, in panicked calls to lawyers: rumors of immigration officers on raids near Boston, federal agents waiting for students at school bus stops in Worcester, an unmarked van in East Boston that looks suspicious.

Although none of those incidents turned out to be true or real, that they set off alarm bells among immigrants in the Boston area underscores the fear and hysteria gripping a community already on edge over President Trump’s return to office this week riding a wave of anti-immigrant rhetoric that included pledges of mass deportations.

“Everyone here is panicked, everyone is scared,” said Michael Kairos, who owns a barbershop on Meridian Street in East Boston. “People come in asking us what to do. And what can I tell them?”

I don’t remember the media having such compassion about people scared from similar panicked conspiracies about Democrats and progressives rounding up pro-life peaceful protesters at abortion clinics. (Wait, some of that wasn’t conspiracy, was it?)

Then there’s “terror” among the transgender community (in Detroit). They are terrified about Trump’s executive order “rescinding rights.” If you mean the right to claim “X” on your passport, that’s correct. Trump’s executive order means the government will only recognize the two biological sexes: male and female. It’s not like anyone expected something different to happen.

And no, the Feds are not going to round up transgender people and deport them or put them in concentration camps.

"How would you feel if someone came up to you and said, 'You're not real?' ... I can say it will have such a negative impact on the mental health of the transgender community. ... A lot of us have gone through hell to become ourselves and he wants to do away with all of that," Crandall-Crocker said Monday soon after Trump declared in his inauguration speech that the federal government's official policy will recognize only two genders.

Summing this up: transgender people’s feelings are hurt.

Funny, I don’t remember the same concern voiced by the press in Detroit over Jews being hounded on campus to the point where they felt their safety threatened. The feelings of Jews aren’t as important as the right to put an “X” for sex on a passport, apparently.

What do Americans think about transgender people? Only 10 percent of Americans say they strongly oppose laws protecting transgender people from discrimination. That means 90 percent are okay with it—and 64 percent strongly favor such laws. I’d call that a consensus, even a mandate, for the government to protect transgender individuals. Most Americans agree with biology that gender and sex is assigned at birth, not when a kid or parent decides.

But what about sports? A significant majority of Americans say transgender athletes should be limited to playing for teams of their biological sex. Since 2021, the number of Democrats who favored rules promoted by the Biden administration allowing trans women to play on women’s sports teams fell from 55 percent to 47 percent, according to a Gallup poll. The percentage of Democrats who favor restrictions on trans athletes went from 41 to 48 percent.

Trump’s actions regarding this more reflect current thinking and broad consensus on the subject than Biden’s. It’s not like everyone didn’t see this coming, like trans swimmer Lia Thomas winning every meet and the NCAA Division I championship. It was pretty predictable.

It seems like the fear and panic isn’t really justified given where American opinion on these topics has been going. Donald Trump campaigned on these issues: Kamala is for they/them, Trump is for you. That ad generated all kinds of “attacks” comments, but with voters, it resonated, because it’s what Americans were really thinking.

There’s plenty of reasons to be scared of things Trump is doing, and plans to do. Handing government functions over to Elon Musk is scary. Handing Ukraine over to Vladimir Putin is scary. Threatening military action against Mexico or Panama is scary. Pulling protective details from John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, when Iran has actively put a bounty on their heads, is scary.

On that last topic, it’s almost like Trump is daring Iran or random freaks who hate America to take shots at Bolton and Pompeo, which, if tied to Iran (or not), is casus belli—an act of war. Why do we need to be at war with Iran? I am not a fan of Iran’s current regime, but I favor Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s approach (to the Iranian people) over the passive-aggressive, stumbling into war. Then again, perhaps Trump is simpler to read: he doesn’t like Bolton or Pompeo, so he’s punishing them by making their lives hell and having them live in fear.

It’s scary to have a president who treats people this way. But it’s not scary when Trump does things that Americans generally favor, and in fact elected him because he was willing to do them.

If we’re going to live in terror from Trump, let’s calibrate our fear to the right things.

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