The Economist 07Dec2019

44 United States The EconomistDecember 7th 2019

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liani and the Office of Management and

Budget, which implemented the hold on

Ukraine’s assistance funds; as well as Mike

Pompeo, the secretary of state, and Devin

Nunes, the highest-ranking Republican on

the House Intelligence Committee. Mr Giu-

liani also received calls from someone list-

ed just as “-1”, who tended to ring soon after

he called or texted White House numbers.

The report concludes that Mr Pompeo,

Vice-President Mike Pence, Mick Mulva-

ney, the chief of staff, and others were

“knowledgeable of or active participants

in” Mr Trump’s efforts to make military as-

sistance conditional on Ukraine announc-

ing investigations that would be of perso-

nal political benefit to him.

It also lays out which officials declined

to take part in the impeachment inquiry

and what information Congress wants. The

report argues that Mr Trump’s blanket re-

fusal is unprecedented—Andrew Johnson,

Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton all com-

plied with House requests for informa-

tion—and that such defiance represents

“an existential threat to the nation’s consti-

tutional system of checks and balances

...and rule of law”.

The Republican report rejects virtually

all those claims. It paints the impeachment

inquiry as an effort “to undo the will of the

American people”. It argues that no evi-

dence establishes that Mr Trump pressured

Ukraine, orchestrated a “shadow foreign

policy” or “covered up the substance” of his

conversation with Mr Zelensky. It notes,

correctly, that Ukraine has a history of cor-

ruption, and that during the 2016 election

some Ukrainian officials were publicly

sceptical of Mr Trump, which, given his

avowed fondness for Russia and their op-

pression by it, makes sense. Some of Mr

Trump’s defenders have tried to equate

these isolated, individual statements of

preference with Russia’s extensive, covert

meddling in the 2016 election, but the two

things are not remotely similar.

The two sides continued speaking past

each other at the hearings. The three pro-

fessors whom Democrats invited all testi-

fied that Mr Trump had committed im-

peachable offences; the lone invited by the

Republicans disagreed. It sounded as

though Democrats were laying the ground-

work to draw impeachment articles on

abuse of power and obstruction.

That will not change public opinion.

Support for impeachment rose steeply, to

around 50%, after the inquiry began, but

there it has stayed, just as Mr Trump’s ap-

proval rating has remained in the low 40s.

Without an unlikely shift, congressional

Republicans will still fear a primary chal-

lenge from the right, if they support im-

peachment, more than a general-election

loss. Which means that Mr Trump still

looks likely to be impeached, but then tried

and acquitted. 7

T

he first lesson Melissa Buck taught

her eldest child was that she was not go-

ing to hit him. The 37-year-old stay-at-

home mother from Holt, Michigan and her

husband had fostered the then four-year-

old and his two younger siblings after a pa-

rishioner at their church told them that the

children, having been removed from their

mother, were at risk of being separated. All

three were traumatised by physical abuse

and neglect. The little boy was plainly terri-

fied, Mrs Buck recalled, that he would be

beaten if his younger brother and sister

made too much noise.

Over the next five years the Bucks fos-

tered two more children: a girl with a rare

genetic condition who needed frequent

hospital stays, and the autistic younger

half-brother of two of their older foster-

children. “I was so nervous at the begin-

ning,” says Mrs Buck. “What if they started

a fire or ran away; what if I loved them too

much? But the Bible makes clear that taking

care of the orphaned, the parentless, is our

job.” She could not, she says, have coped

without the agency that arranged the place-

ments, St Vincent Catholic Charities in

Lansing, Michigan. Though Mrs Buck and

her husband have now formally adopted all

five children, they still depend on the orga-

nisation to help them find the myriad med-

ical and educational services needed by

their children.

St Vincent may soon stop doing this

work—along with innumerable other

Christian organisations that have long or-

ganised fostering and adoption place-

ments in America. The reason is their re-

fusal to consider placing children with

lgbtparents, a requirement of the anti-

discrimination laws that followed the le-

galisation of gay marriage in 2015. In 2017,

after St Vincent told two lesbian would-be

foster parents that it did not work with

same-sex couples, the American Civil Lib-

erties Union sued the state of Michigan,

with which St Vincent has a contract. Set-

tling the case this year, Michigan said it

would cut funding to agencies that dis-

criminate on religious grounds. In Septem-

ber, after St Vincent, along with the Buck

family, sued the state, a federal judge ruled

that religious agencies could continue to

refuse to work with same-sex couples. The

decision is likely to be appealed against.

A similar battle is playing out in Phila-

delphia, where the city stopped funding a

Christian foster agency because it would

not work with same-sex couples. In other

states which have passed laws protecting

religious agencies from requirements that

conflict with their beliefs, more cases are

being fought. As long as Christian agencies

go on insisting that marriage is only be-

tween a man and a woman, their continued

existence is under threat.

The issue, inevitably, has been politi-

cised. President Donald Trump, who pre-

sented himself as a warrior for religious

freedom to the evangelicals who helped

elect him in 2016 and on whom he still de-

pends, has entered the fray. This month his

administration issued a proposed rule al-

lowing religious providers to follow their

beliefs. It would replace an Obama-era rule

from 2016 that forbids recipients of federal

funding to discriminate on the ground of

sexual orientation. Though rules do not

have the power of laws, the change is likely

to lead to further legislation and more legal

battles on the issue. Right-wing Evangeli-

cal leaders have greeted the planned rule-

change with jubilation.

Some conservative Christians argue

that if religious adoption and fostering

agencies are forced to close, fewer children

will find proper homes. Assessing this

claim is less straightforward than it might

seem, because no data exist on the propor-

tion of placements organised by religious

agencies. But Christian organisations have

undoubtedly played a huge role in finding

homes for children who cannot live with

their own families. Around a quarter of the

more than 400,000 children now in foster

care in America will never return to their

families. Many religious agencies recruit

in churches with great success. Research by

the Barna Group, an evangelical research

outfit, found that practising Christians

were twice as likely to have adopted chil-

dren as other Americans. Although some

Christians would doubtless adopt and fos-

ter children from secular agencies if no re-

Anti-discrimination laws jolt Christian

child-welfare services

Adoption

Fostering enmity

Handle with care