THE DISSIDENT DAD DAILY - Nov. 26th - Vol.9
Who Gets Protected, Who Gets Spent
👇NEW SECTION: “The Daily Table” - At the bottom of each newsletter you’ll now find The Daily Table; a short Scripture, thought, and question you can use at dinner to lead your kids toward God, Jesus Christ, and His Church. I hope you find it useful.
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1. Trump Freezes Biden-Era Refugees, Throws 200,000 Lives Back Into Limbo
The Trump administration has ordered a full review of every refugee admitted under Biden, freezing green card processing for roughly 200,000 people and forcing many to sit for fresh interviews.
A memo from USCIS Director Joe Edlow tells officers to re-check all refugees admitted between January 20, 2021 and February 20, 2025, blasting the prior approach as focused on “speed” and volume instead of security. Green card approvals for that entire group are paused while the bureaucracy decides who still “qualifies” to stay.
Refugee groups are livid, calling the move “destabilizing” and “morally unjust.” Many of these people have been here for years, with jobs, mortgages, parish communities, kids in school. Now they get to wonder if the country that invited them is about to slam the door in their face because some DC faction wants to relitigate paperwork.
You do not have to like Biden’s refugee numbers to see what this is: the managerial state flipping a giant switch that instantly destabilizes actual families while everyone in charge shrugs and calls it “operational necessity.” When your status here can change because a memo changed, you are not a citizen. You are inventory.
2. ICE Detention Hits Record 65,000, Mostly People With No Criminal Record
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is now holding more than 65,000 migrants in detention, the highest number ever recorded. That is up from under 60,000 before the recent shutdown, with around 1,200 arrests and 1,250 deportations happening per day.
If this were mostly hardened criminals, the regime would never shut up about it. But data from TRAC shows about 73 percent of people in ICE detention have no criminal convictions at all, and many of the rest are in for minor stuff like traffic violations.
So what you really have is a massive federal prison system for paperwork violations. A parallel jail network for people the government itself waved through or tolerated for years, right up until a new memo said “round them up.”
You can support borders and still admit this is insane. A serious country protects its frontier first so it doesn’t have to turn half the interior into a dragnet. We instead did the opposite: invite chaos, then send men with badges into neighborhoods to clean up the mess. It is theatrical toughness. The managers still get their cheap labor and their moral preening, while normal families on both sides of the border live in constant fear.
3. AFPI Backs Louisiana’s Ten Commandments Law, Says Kids Don’t Have a Right to “Religion-Free” Classrooms
The America First Policy Institute is backing Louisiana’s push to post the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom, telling the courts that the Constitution does not promise children a sterile, religion-free bubble.
AFPI filed an amicus brief after a federal panel blocked the law and called it “plainly unconstitutional.” Their argument is simple: the Ten Commandments are part of the country’s legal and cultural heritage, and states have every right to acknowledge that. Historical references to God in classrooms, courthouses, and capitols are not some weird new violation. They are the norm for most of American history.
The usual activist groups are screaming “theocracy” again. These are the same people who think it is totally fine to wallpaper hallways with identity flags, climate propaganda, and whatever this week’s social cause is. That is all treated as neutral, value-free civics. “Thou shalt not kill” on a small poster? That is apparently a constitutional crisis.
Normal parents know better. Government schools already catechize kids in a religion: radical individualism, sexual confusion, and loyalty to the state over the family. Louisiana’s crime is just saying out loud that God exists and His law has something to say about how we live. If AFPI helps crack open the idea that public life has to pretend God is dead, good. Let that fight come.
4. Monaco’s Prince Vetoes Abortion Bill, Picks Catholic Identity Over Elite Approval
In tiny Monaco, an actual monarch just did what almost no Western politician has the courage to do. Prince Albert II refused to sign a bill that would have legalized abortion on demand up to 12 weeks and in some cases up to 16 weeks, even though parliament passed it by a huge margin.
Abortion in Monaco has been decriminalized on paper for years, but still only allowed in narrow cases like rape, serious risk to the mother, or grave fetal abnormalities. The new law would have blown that open. Albert said no. In interviews he pointed straight at Monaco’s Catholic roots and the duty to protect life as the reason.
Commentators are clutching their pearls about “democracy” and “modernization.” Translation: how dare a sovereign ruler use his actual authority to defend children instead of rubber-stamping the spirit of the age. They are not mad about monarchy. They are mad about a man in power acting like he answers to Someone above him.
For Catholic and Christian dads paying attention, this is a blueprint. You and I do not control a European microstate, but we do control our homes, parishes, and land. You are allowed to say no. You are allowed to refuse to cooperate with evil even if everyone around you calls it “progress.” One prince just reminded the entire West that headship is supposed to mean protecting the weakest, not managing the decline.
5. Colorado School Tried To Put 11-Year-Old Girl In Bed With Trans-Identified Boy, Parents Sue
Four Colorado families are suing Jefferson County Public Schools after their 11 year old daughter was allegedly assigned to share a hotel room, and even the same bed, with a male student who identifies as female on a school trip.
According to the lawsuit, the district has a policy that overnight room assignments are based on “gender identity,” not biological sex, and parents are never clearly told that their daughters could end up rooming with boys who identify as girls. Alliance Defending Freedom is representing the families and says the district deliberately blurred language to hide the policy from moms and dads.
The district says it did nothing wrong and that once staff realized the situation, the trans-identifying student was moved. A federal judge already tossed an earlier version of the case, but the families are pressing on, arguing their daughters’ privacy and safety should not be sacrificed to ideology written into an internal handbook.
We are told this is about “inclusion.” Inclusion of whom, exactly. Not the 11 year old girl whose comfort and modesty used to be non negotiable. This is what happens when you let activists rewrite reality on paper and then hand your kids to that system for field trips. Policies come first. Your daughters come second.
6. Ohio Protects Abortion In Its Constitution, But 24 Counties Don’t Have A Single OB-GYN
Ohio proudly locked abortion into its state constitution with Issue 1. At the same time, 24 of Ohio’s 88 counties do not have a single practicing OB-GYN. Another 11 only have one.
That means pregnant women in big stretches of the state are traveling hours for prenatal appointments, ultrasounds, labor, and emergencies. If the car dies or there is one vehicle for the whole household, tough luck. They miss the appointment. The care gap is worst in rural and poorer areas, exactly the kinds of places already getting hammered by hospital closures and doctor shortages.
So the same political class that spent a year screaming about “access” to abortion cannot be bothered to fix the much more basic problem of actually having doctors within reach for women who want to carry a child to term. They love rights language. They are not so interested in doing the boring, local work of making sure there is a real human being in a white coat anywhere near your county.
It is a neat snapshot of blue America’s priorities: the procedure that ends life is protected in the highest legal text the state has. The ongoing care that supports life is just another line item for hospital corporations to ignore if the margins are not good enough.
7. Nearly 1 In 10 American Adults Have Had Cancer
Gallup now says 9.7 percent of U.S. adults report having been diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives. That is the highest number they have ever recorded, up from about 7 percent in the late 2000s.
Death rates for some cancers are down. Treatment has improved. People are living longer after diagnosis. That is the good news. But the mix of cancers is shifting. Obesity related cancers are up. Colorectal cancer is hitting younger adults more often. The overall share of people who have heard a doctor say “you have cancer” keeps climbing.
Almost one in ten adults. That is not random bad luck. That is what it looks like when a whole civilization spends decades marinating in processed food, endocrine disrupting chemicals, sedentary work, chronic stress, sleep deprivation, and spiritual emptiness while telling itself it is “health conscious” because a few people bought Pelotons.
You cannot pill and chemo your way out of a way of life that is attacking bodies and souls from every angle. The regime will talk about “screening” and “awareness month.” The real work happens in kitchens, on farms, and in parishes where families decide to live differently than the machine.
Commentary: Who Gets Protected, Who Gets Spent
Bringing it all together, this is where we stand.
The federal machine can flip a switch and suddenly 200,000 refugees have their futures frozen while USCIS digs back through years of files. It can cage more than 65,000 migrants at once, run daily raids in U.S. cities, and write page after page about when and where the Ten Commandments are allowed to hang on a wall.
Meanwhile, a Catholic prince in a tiny country has to be the one using his authority to defend unborn children against a parliament and the entire “modernization” chorus. Our own elites act like they are powerless in the face of polls and focus groups.
Here, our courts and activists will fight like crazy to keep “Thou shalt not kill” out of a classroom. The same system shrugs while 24 Ohio counties do not have a single OB-GYN, Colorado schools write policies that let 11 year old girls be assigned to beds with boys in lipstick, and nearly one in ten adults walks around with a cancer diagnosis in their history.
So no, the real question is not “Is government doing something.” It is busy. Constantly. The real question is: who does it choose to protect, and who is it willing to spend.
Immigration enforcement and refugee review are sold as protecting Americans. And look, a sane nation absolutely has the right to decide who comes in. A father absolutely has a duty to put his kids’ safety ahead of vague humanitarian vibes. That ladder of loyalties is correct.
But notice where the moral seriousness stops.
It does not extend to school boards that treat little girls as test subjects in a gender experiment. It does not extend to rebuilding local medicine so a mom in rural Ohio can see a doctor without driving half a day. It does not extend to asking why our food, water, work, and rest patterns are churning out chronic disease at industrial scale.
Then you look at Monaco. One man with actual responsibility simply says: no. This law violates who we are before God. He does not hide behind a consultant’s memo. He does not pretend to be neutral. He uses his office to defend the smallest. That is what headship looks like when someone believes eternity is real.
Here is where that lands for you and me.
We are not princes. We are dads, husbands, parish men, neighbors. But the basic job description is the same at our level:
Your kids’ innocence is not collateral for someone else’s ideology.
Your wife’s access to real care matters more than a hospital system’s margin.
Your neighbors’ health and sanity matter more than junk food and pharma profits.
Your town’s cohesion matters more than whatever quota the State Department dreamed up.
We cannot personally edit federal memos or steer ICE. We can absolutely refuse to outsource our conscience to the people who write them. We can build small, stubborn networks of families who actually notice when the regime spends some group to keep the system going, and then step in with real help and hard no’s.
The empire will keep reclassifying people: refugee, detainee, “birthing person,” “assigned female at birth,” patient, taxpayer. Your job stays simple. Protect the humans God actually put in your care. Plant your feet. Say no when you have to.
That is what real America First looks like when it leaves the slogan stage and hits the dinner table.
The Daily Table
Tonight’s verse for the kids:
“If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith…”
(1 Timothy 5:8, partial)
Easy way to tee it up at dinner:
“Today I read a bunch of stories where big institutions decided who gets cared for and who doesn’t. This verse says a man who will not care for his own household has basically walked away from the faith.
So here is my question for us tonight:
“What are some specific ways we, in this house, can make sure no one here is forgotten or ‘spent’ so other people are comfortable?”
Let everyone answer. Let the kids suggest something small and concrete. Then pick one and actually do it this week.
Thanks for reading and God Bless,
Greg @ The Dissident Dad
