When mainstream media journos whine about lost readership, viewers, and public trust, remind them that they only have themselves to blame. And this latest hit job from the Miami Herald about the end of a grant for a Catholic charity can be marked Exhibit MMDCLXVII. At least.
Here’s the headline the Herald ran on their big scoop yesterday:
Amid quarrel with pope, Trump strips Miami charity of funding to house migrant kids
And here’s the lede:
The Trump administration has abruptly canceled an $11 million contract with Catholic Charities to shelter and care for migrant children who enter the U.S. alone, ending a relationship between the Catholic Church and the U.S. government dating back to the first arrivals of Cuban exiles in South Florida.
The development comes amid rising tensions between the administration and American Catholics over President Donald Trump’s heated criticism of the Vatican’s first American pope, Leo XIV. The pontiff has made opposition to the U.S. war with Iran, as well as concern for the welfare of migrants, a cornerstone of his ministry.
Bear in mind that the “quarrel” arose just within the past week, after Pope Leo XIV launched sharp criticism over the war and Trump responded with a series of personal attacks. There is clearly a “quarrel” between Trump and the pope. But did Trump cancel funding to care for “migrant children” in retaliation?
If Trump did, then perhaps he’s more omniscient than the Pope realizes. It’s not until the end of the third paragraph that the Herald gets to the timing of the grant’s cancellation comes to light, and it completely contradicts their narrative of retaliation, emphasis mine:
The federal government reached out to the charity in late March about the cancellation of the funding.
In other words, this did not happen “amid” the “quarrel with the pope,” and had nothing to do with the reciprocal criticism between the two. Furthermore, there’s no evidence at all that Trump had any personal involvement in this decision, not in the Herald’s story and not anywhere else, either. How often do presidents get involved with charity-grant decisions anyway?
So why did the program get cancelled? Readers have to scroll down several more paragraphs to get to the explanation:
In response to a Miami Herald inquiry, the Department of Health and Human Services said the daily population of unaccompanied migrant children in the agency’s care was “significantly lower,” at 1,900, under the Trump administration compared to a peak of 22,000 under the Biden administration.
“ORR is closing and consolidating unused facilities as the Trump Administration continues efforts to stop illegal entry and the smuggling and trafficking of unaccompanied alien children,” said Emily G. Hillard, the Health and Human Services’ press secretary, though she did not single out Catholic Charities as an affected organization.
In other words, the effort to restrict illegal immigration has succeeded in greatly reducing the trafficking of children into the US. That’s the story, not a “quarrel with the Pope,” and the Herald not only buried it but manufactured a false narrative to hide it.
At the heart of this is an actual policy debate worth having. This charity still delivers care to at-risk children who didn’t ask to get trafficked into the US, and Catholic Charities does good work in this arena. Maintaining the same level of funding for it when the burden has been reduced by 90% from its Biden-era peak is nonsensical, but a scaled-down grant might make some sense while the rest of the children get sorted out and returned to families or fostered/adopted into other homes. Cutting off the program at this point may be throwing out the baby with the bath water, and we should make sure that we have made rational decisions with public monies.
That’s not the debate that the Miami Herald wants, though. They just want their Orange Man Bad narrative, and will cook any story they find to fit it.
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