By Matilda K. Williams Seminole, Okla.

In a religious column, recently published in the Producer, the writer claimed that today “everyone is demanding respect that is not earned.” He named people going to court to sue for their rights as an example.

The Trump administration exiled a young father, Abrego Garcia, who is a legal resident, without due process, to a concentration camp in El Salvador. He wasn’t accused of a crime, or given an opportunity to defend himself in court, if the Trump Administration had evidence of a crime. He’s not “demanding respect.” He’s demanding his right to due process.

The Supreme Court, UNANIMOUSLY, directed Trump to “facilitate” getting the young man back in the U.S. for a hearing.

Instead, Mr. Trump invited Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador to America. Trump sat in the White House saying it was Mr. Bukele’s decision, not his. Meanwhile, Mr. Bukele said that Trump has never asked him to send the man back; and, if Trump would send a plane to pick him up, Abrego Garcia would be on his way back.

I wonder if Americans care anymore when they are being lied to.

This isn’t about “demanding unearned respect.” This is about gross disrespect of the rule of law which could affect any of us. Hitler’s first concentration camp, Dachau, was filled, not with Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, and Communists, as we all know they were later on, but with German citizens who simply opposed him. This is the slippery slope we are on.

Trump deports people of color without due process, and imports white immigrants from South Africa, using photos from the Congo, not South Africa, as justification. This is about bias, situations when someone can’t earn respect because they are despised and disbelieved on the basis of their ethnicity.

There’s another situation which is about bias. Two days after the Soviets blockaded West Berlin, the USA and the UK began the Berlin Airlift: over 200,000 planes over 5 months, carrying over 800,000 tons of aid, enough for 1700 calories a day per person for 2.8 million people. The world cheered.

The state of Israel began its latest blockade of Gaza on March 2, 2025. There are no flights, no ships, no trucks, no tons of aid for the 2.1 million inhabitants of Gaza. Why not?

It seems to me a religious columnist should be familiar with what Jesus actually said. “Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” He didn’t say, “Oh, but they have to earn your respect first.”

No wonder the number of young people claiming no religion is on the rise!

One final example. My fellow Oklahomans, when we approved State Question 802 in 2020, to expand Medicaid in our state, we enabled 500,000 Oklahomans to get health care who didn’t have it before.

Now, the federal House of Representatives has voted for Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” which removes 8% of current recipients from Medicaid. Which 40,000 Oklahomans are you willing to tell they “didn’t earn your respect” enough to continue to have health care? Yet, this same bill drives us $4 trillion further into debt, to provide obscenely huge tax cuts for people earning $500,000 a year! Did those billionaires “earn” it?

The religious columnist is probably happy about this bill. It contains a poison pill which makes it harder to sue the government to redress a wrong. You now have to raise a large bond, thousands of dollars, in addition to paying your lawyer, “just in case you lose and the government wants to sue you.”

Our Senator James Lankford has said, “Before we decide what we’re going to do, we have to decide who we are.”

I hope he heeds his own words, and Matthew 25, and votes against this “Big Beautiful Bill.” And I hope that people realize that compassion isn’t transactional. We have survived as a species because we help each other. If we can’t do that anymore, we will all suffer.