Migrants

Happy Birthday, Jesus

Another thing I find revolting about Republicans is that they spend the entire year being as vile as humanly possible, and then on Christmas and Easter, they’re all about Jesus.

I scrolled through Twitter yesterday and saw posts from the most despicable, like Lauren Boebert, Ted Cruz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Matt Gaetz praising Jesus and celebrating Christmas, after spending an entire year lying their gaslighting balls off and wishing evil shit on people.

But none of those goons have the power to be as evil as Donald Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, or Texas Governor Greg Abbott. Each of these men was or is presently in an executive position where he can order government agencies to hurt people. And they do it for their own political fortunes.

Trump made it a policy to separate families and put children in cages. DeSantis went out of his way to deport refugees, not from the state he’s actually governor of, but from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard. Trust me, Ron…Texas has enough assholes that it doesn’t need your efforts, case in point…Greg Abbott. Abbott started the Republican trend of shipping migrants and refugees to sanctuary cities, but what he did over the past weekend might be the evilest thing he’s done so far.

On Christmas day, Greg Abbott tweeted a photo of himself and his beautiful family saying “From our family to yours, Merry Christmas.” He also tweeted, “May the hopeful promise of our Savior’s birth bring comfort & joy to you & your family.” He and his family looked warm and cozy in that photo.

But a few hours before that tweet, buses from Texas with 130 refugees, many dressed in only T-shirts, were dropped off in front of the vice president’s residence in Washington, D.C. in sub-zero conditions without any advance notice.

I’m not a Jesus expert and I don’t claim to be a Christian so I can’t tell you what Jesus would do, but he wouldn’t do this.

Officials in New York City received an advance warning these refugees were coming, and that might be why they were re-routed to D.C. Republicans have to make these stunts as cruel as possible.

White House spokesperson Abdullah Hasan accused Abbott of having “abandoned children on the side of the road in below-freezing temperatures” on Christmas Eve without coordinating with any federal or local authorities. You can’t claim this is to help people when you don’t give any advance notification. You also can’t claim it’s to help them when you kick them out of the bus in these temperatures and then abandon them.

There are fair points to the arguments that border states carry an unfair burden in dealing with immigration, and they do deserve more support from the federal government, but this isn’t a solution. There are other ways to make that point than being cruel to the most vulnerable…but maybe the point is to be cruel. Republicans love that shit. Abbott won re-election last month with nearly 55 percent of the vote from Texans. The majority of Texans are all about yee-hawing this sort of cruelty.

Responding to Abbott’s Christmas day tweet, Jon B. Wolfsthal, a senior adviser at Global Zero and ex-adviser to then-Vice President Biden, tweeted: “Did you tweet this before or after you shipped 130 migrants to DC with no extra clothes on the coldest night of the year—which also happened to be Christmas?”

Photojournalist Paul Gillespie replied to Abbott’s Christmas post, tweeting, “Dude, really? You just sent three bus loads of would be Mary and Joseph’s from TX to NY on 9 degree Christmas eve. You all got to stop playing the Christian card. You go against everything he preached. At least the inn keeper let them stay in the manger.”

One user on Twitter posted, “There’s nothing Christian or loving about stunts like this, Greg. In fact, it’s more like Herod than anything else in the Christmas story. I feel sick.”

Amy Fischer, an organizer with The Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network, said, “It really does show the cruelty behind Governor Abbott and his insistence on continuing to bus people here without care about people arriving late at night on Christmas Eve when the weather is so cold. People are getting off the buses, they don’t have coats, they don’t have clothes for this kind of weather, and they’re freezing.”

Living in the Washington area, I can assure you it was freezing and painfully cold on Christmas Eve. The temps weren’t just in the teens and below, it was windy. I walked to a party Friday night and the conditions were physically painful.

Greg Abbott and other Republicans are trying to make a point about immigration, but the only point they’re making is that they’re assholes. And that may be the point they’re really trying to prove because their base loves it. But I bet Jesus doesn’t.

You can’t convince people you’re a Christian or love the messages of Jesus when you’re hurting the most vulnerable for a political stunt.

1 John 3:17 says, “But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” God’s love doesn’t abide in the hearts of Republicans, but they do like to tweet photos pretending it does.

And you don’t own the libs by being an asshole.

Facebook Suspension Update: There are 17 days left in my Facebook suspension for typing the word “Taliban.” Here’s Quannah’s countdown clock.

Signed prints: The signed prints are just $40.00 each. Every cartoon on this site is available. You can pay through PayPal. If you don’t like PayPal, you can snail mail it to Clay Jones, P.O. Box 3721, Fredericksburg, VA 22402. I can mail the prints directly to you or if you’re purchasing as a gift, directly to the person you’re gifting.

Notes on my book, Tales From The Trumpster Fire: There are 19 copies of my book in stock, which go for $45.00 each, signed. Also, I have copies of my first book from 1997, Knee-Deep in Mississippi available for $20.00.

Tip Jar: if you want to support the cartoonist, please send a donation through PayPal to clayjonz@gmail.com. You can also snail it to P.O. Box 3721, Fredericksburg, VA 22402.

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Coyote Ugly

Texas Governor Greg Abbott is busing migrants to New York City and Washington, D.C. These migrants entered the United States through the Texas border with Mexico. Greg Abbott is blaming President Joe Biden for “open borders” despite the fact that until recently, Biden’s border policy was the same as Donald Trump’s.

Abbott has sent over 9,000 migrants to New York City and Washington, DC since “Operation Lone Star” began. He said in an August 19 press release, “Busing migrants out of Texas is a way to provide much-needed relief to our overwhelmed border communities.”

And that press release was the only warning the sanctuary cities received, proving this isn’t about humanitarian relief or providing relief to Texas’ border communities. This is a political stunt for Abbott and he’s using human beings running for their lives as political props. While the migrants will certainly do better under NYC Mayor Eric Adams than under Greg Abbott, the use of refugees as pawns should be cited as a human rights violation.

Imagine you wanted to build your reputation through a political stunt, such as kicking puppies and stealing candy from babies. Who in the world would you be trying to appeal to with those horrible actions? Assholes. You’d be seeking the love and approval of assholes. This is exactly what Abbott is doing. He’s appealing to goons. How do you get assholes to like you? By becoming an asshole.

This is just how low the Republican Party has devolved. Republicans love this stunt by Abbott. It has several things they hate. Abbott blames Biden, so there’s one box checked. He’s getting rid of brown immigrants which checks another box. And, he’s sending them to liberal cities in the north. Check, checkity, checkity, check. The only way he could make a stronger appeal to the asshole demographic would be to bus woke vegetarian school teachers along with the cast of “A League of Their Own,” the TV series (it’s full of lesbians).

Another huge sign this is a stunt is the name, “Operation Lone Star,” which was chosen because “Operation Check out my Big Texas Penis” might have been slightly over the top and I believe “Operation Yee-Haw” has been used by now.

Another sign this is more of an asshole move than one of humanitarian relief is the fact Abbot didn’t give NYC or DC any warnings. Of course, not letting the liberal cities know thousands of migrants were coming until they arrived is another way to appeal to the asshole base. It’s really owning the libs, at the expense of migrants of course.

Sure, we all have a good time springing our kids on their grandparents now and then, especially after giving the toddlers Red Bulls, but you wouldn’t leave them there if grandma was going to eat them (my grandparents were worse. They made me watch Lawrence Welk). Here, Texas does not care about these migrants. They’re pawns to own the libs.

New York City and Washington, D.C. aren’t mad at the arrival of migrants because of who they are. They’re annoyed at the burden Texas is throwing on them. NYC and DC are already diverse places and they’ll be fine. Most of these migrants are amazing people, the kind of people you want in your neighborhood. Our diversity is our nation’s greatest strength which is something Republicans don’t understand.

But it’s still a dick move. Probably because Greg Abbott, like most Republican governors, is a dick.

Music note: I listened to The Eagles of Death Metal while drawing today’s cartoon.

Signed prints: The signed prints are just $40.00 each. Every cartoon on this site is available. You can pay through PayPal. If you don’t like PayPal, you can snail mail it to Clay Jones, P.O. Box 3721, Fredericksburg, VA 22402. I can mail the prints directly to you or if you’re purchasing as a gift, directly to the person you’re gifting.

Notes on my book, Tales From The Trumpster Fire: There are 19 copies of my book in stock, which go for $45.00 each, signed. Also, I have copies of my first book from 1997, Knee-Deep in Mississippi available for $20.00.

Tip Jar: if you want to support the cartoonist, please send a donation through PayPal to clayjonz@gmail.com. You can also snail it to P.O. Box 3721, Fredericksburg, VA 22402.

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Happy New Year, Baby

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Out of all the god-awful, horrifying horrible stuff Donald Trump has inflicted upon this nation, and there’s been a lot, perhaps his greatest offense has been his administration’s treatment of migrant children.

Don’t get me wrong. The past two years has been one nightmare after stupid racist nightmare, with each new one being worse than the last. While the disaster and deaths in Puerto Rico may be the first Trump tragedy that comes to many minds, that situation was one of neglect, incompetence, and a total lack of caring. But, what Trump has done concerning families and children crossing our southern border is intentional. Trump and the racist dregs he’s staffed his administration with setting out to traumatize children as a way to discourage foreigners from not just entering our nation illegally, but from seeking asylum.

Donald Trump is a horrible person. He designed a horrible policy that was implemented by people nearly as horrible as he is. Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions got giggly while explaining the new policy and Homeland Security Director Kirstjen Nielsen has blamed the parents of children who died while in the custody of Border Patrol.

When this issue is discussed, or I post a cartoon on it, there’s always some Trump sycophant who’ll point out that Obama separated families too. That argument is a deflection and a case of whataboutism. It doesn’t defend Trump in any way. Yes, Obama’s administration separated families, as in, “some” families. The Obama administration didn’t create a policy that EVERY family had to be separated. That is exactly what the Trump administration has done.

Donald Trump and the evil idiots of his administration firmly believe that a policy of cruelty is what will make America great again. When you display to the entire world that you’ll throw children in cages, traumatize them by separating them from their parents, deny people the right to request asylum, and implement policies that actually lead to the deaths of seven and eight-year-old kids, what you’re doing is not making America great.

There are a lot of people supporting Trump who believes this agenda of cruelty is best for America. Near the end of 2018, the majority of the nation rejected Trumpism and his goal of making the United States a more crueler and evil place. They rejected the darkness of the Trump administration and took the first steps toward the light. Hopefully, in 2019, the light gets brighter.

Old Man 2018 is an asshole. When Baby New Year arrives, he better enter from the north as the racists aren’t manning that border.

Everyone in Washington should make it their New Year’s resolution to end the incarceration, punishment, and traumatization of children.

Be Complicit

What kind of person would want to be part of something that disparages, slanders, and disrespects Dear Leader and his sycophantic followers? Hopefully, you. 
Making a contribution supports my work and keeps the cartoons, columns, and videos coming. My income is from newspapers that subscribe to my work and small contributors. George Soros hasn’t sent me a million dollar check in weeks. Making a contribution of any amount, or buying a print for $40.00, makes you part of this specific resistance, and a member of Team Claytoonz (we’re still working on the name). You are complicit, an accomplice, and in cahoots (and whatever gangster terms we can think of) with this political satire pointing out that the stupid emperor has no clothes. Contributions can be made through PayPal, checks, and wads of cash exchanged in back alleys.
Whether you can help support, can’t, or just choose not to, please continue to enjoy and keep reading my work. Thank you!!! 

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Feliz Navidad

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As you celebrate the holidays this season, take at least a moment and think of the nearly 15,000 children currently detained in Donald Trump’s child prison camps.

Most of the migrant children are teenage boys from Central America who crossed the southern border unaccompanied. Most were escaping gangs or poverty and are seeking asylum in the U.S. In November, an average of 175 unaccompanied children crossed the border every day. A senior official with the Department of Health and Human Services blamed a broken immigration system that acts as a “perverse incentive” for undocumented children to cross the border in the first place. Damn this American freedom.

The more than 100 federally contracted shelters (that means someone’s making a lot of money off of this) are 92 percent full. The largest shelter is in Tornillo, West Texas, and it’s composed of heated tents a few hundred yards from the Rio Grande. Currently, there are 2,800 children in the Tornillo shelter. It can accommodate 3,800 children.

There are sponsors waiting for many of these kids. The sponsors are usually family members and the children stay with them while their respective cases for asylum are pending. There is a vetting process for the sponsors, but that process has slowed down to a crawl. The daily discharge rate is about one percent. The Trump administration vets sponsors’ immigration status and requires all adults in a household seeking to care for an immigrant child to submit their fingerprints for a background check. Previous administrations did not do this. They are discouraging people from sponsoring these children.

There are also children being detained because of Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy that separates parents from their children at the southern border.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, detained children often suffer from anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. I’m sure that will be on Donald Trump’s mind while he’s golfing at Mar-a-Lago during his Christmas vacation. I hear the resort makes a mean ham.

While the shelters will give the children Christmas “festivities,” they won’t be with their families. They won’t be receiving hugs.

I hope it rains all week at Mar-a-Lago.

Creative note: This cartoon is the bookend to my Fourth of July Cartoon, Feliz Dia De La Independencia. I’m not a huge fan of holiday cartoons and unless I draw one for The Costa Rica Star this week, this is my last Christmas cartoon of the year. I’ve managed to avoid any sitting on Santa’s lap cartoons or drawing the Grinch, who has been in more commercials than Shaq.

My cartoons have file dates and this one’s the 25th (I’m ridiculously ahead and need to take a day off). Though my clients are not required to embargo the cartoons until their file date, I hope at least one of them runs this on Christmas day. Maybe instead of publishing some sentimental holiday crap, they can give their readers something to think about.

Be Complicit

What kind of person would want to be part of something that disparages, slanders, and disrespects Dear Leader and his sycophantic followers? Hopefully, you. 
Making a contribution supports my work and keeps the cartoons, columns, and videos coming. My income is from newspapers that subscribe to my work and small contributors. George Soros hasn’t sent me a million dollar check in weeks. Making a contribution of any amount, or buying a print for $40.00, makes you part of this specific resistance, and a member of Team Claytoonz (we’re still working on the name). You are complicit, an accomplice, and in cahoots (and whatever gangster terms we can think of) with this political satire pointing out that the stupid emperor has no clothes. Contributions can be made through PayPal, checks, and wads of cash exchanged in back alleys.
Whether you can help support, can’t, or just choose not to, please continue to enjoy and keep reading my work. Thank you!!! 

You can purchase a signed print of this cartoon.

Watch me draw.

Spray-On Hatred

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I did Nazi that coming. White House hate czar Stephen Miller popped into Face the Nation on Sunday to bloviate about the dangers of immigrants while sporting something on his head that looked like a recalled Chia Pet. Miller should stop taking hair advice from the president and raiding his Adderall.

Miller spent the bulk of his time on CBS promising that Trump would shut down the government if he doesn’t get funding for his racist, xenophobic border wall while pretending that stuff on his head came from his scalp and not a can.

Miller argued that refusing to fund the border wall was the same thing as advocating for illegal immigration and said, “Democrats have a simple choice between fighting for America’s working class and promoting illegal immigration.” I’d argue that milking $5 billion out of the budget for a useless wall that can be defeated by ladders does more harm to America’s working class than immigrants. Miller would probably enjoy kicking over cartons of water left by humanitarians for immigrants, except the desert sun would melt his faux follicles.

What makes less sense than Miller’s new hairline is threatening to shut down the government and having those guarding the border going unpaid. Can we stop the dogmatic lie that those against the wall are in favor of an unprotected border?

The wall is a ridiculous argument but it’s loved by those who love simple solutions and talking points. “Build the wall” is a fun chant for sycophants who form their opinions from internet memes. There’s no thinking required.

The wall is impossible. We can’t build a wall to cover our entire border when it would have to go over private property, mountains, and rivers. If we can’t protect our entire border then how are we going to protect the entire wall from people going over or under it? We’re talking about something that will cost between $20 to $70 billion dollars that can be conquered by Mexican ladders.

On top of all that, the wall is hateful. If the wall is ever actually constructed, it will be a dark spot on our nation’s history alongside slavery and the internment of Japanese Americans. If the wall is built, someday a more enlightened United States will tear it down.

But the wall will never be built. Stephen Miller has a better chance of needing a comb before that wall’s ever constructed.

Be Complicit

What kind of person would want to be part of something that disparages, slanders, and disrespects Dear Leader and his sycophantic followers? Hopefully, you. 
Making a contribution supports my work and keeps the cartoons, columns, and videos coming. My income is from newspapers that subscribe to my work and small contributors. George Soros hasn’t sent me a million dollar check in weeks. Making a contribution of any amount, or buying a print for $40.00, makes you part of this specific resistance, and a member of Team Claytoonz (we’re still working on the name). You are complicit, an accomplice, and in cahoots (and whatever gangster terms we can think of) with this political satire pointing out that the stupid emperor has no clothes. Contributions can be made through PayPal, checks, and wads of cash exchanged in back alleys.
Whether you can help support, can’t, or just choose not to, please continue to enjoy and keep reading my work. Thank you!!! 

You can purchase a signed print of this cartoon.

Watch me draw.

Ice Ice Baby

cjones07112018

Donald Trump’s Zero-Tolerance policy of separating families and throwing children in detention centers has stirred a sentiment among many Democrats and liberals to abolish ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Trump and Republicans have used immigration as a divisive wedge to rile up his base. He’s even accusing those who call to abolish ICE as wanting MS-13 gangs to run wild in the streets. Any rational person (which describes fewer Republicans lately) knows that is preposterous. Just because you don’t want immigrants unjustly punished and families ripped apart doesn’t mean you want open borders or gangs killing Americans. But yelling and screaming about MS-13 has become the latest racist wolf whistle for Republicans.

I have been undecided about abolishing ICE, but now I’m starting to think we don’t need the agency. While ICE isn’t responsible for separating families at the border, it has become an abusive and needless program. It’s also interesting that for once, Republicans are the ones against decreasing the size of government.

ICE has only existed for 15 years. It spends over $2 billion a year on detention out of an annual budget that’s over $7 billion. Private contractors have been benefiting from detention centers, which gives them a huge financial incentive to holding immigrants indefinitely as if they’re al-Qaeda members in Guantanamo. There have been 1,448 allegations of sexual abuse between 2012 and March 2018 in ICE detention centers.

ICE’s job is to round-up illegal immigrants. They don’t patrol the border. That job is for Border Patrol, which can technically operate within 100 miles of the border. Since two-thirds of Americans live within 100 miles of the border, that makes ICE redundant.

Republicans argue we need ICE to catch violent criminals. But, we already have the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the DEA, the ATF, your local police department, Neighborhood Watch, John Walsh, McGruff the Crime Dog, and your nosy neighbor who calls the cops every time she sees a brown person at the public pool. Now, at least 19 ICE agents want their own agency dissolved, believing the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal migrants has limited their ability to pursue national security threats, child pornography, and transnational crime.

We need secure borders. We need to arrest violent criminals, whether they were born south of the border or in the United States. But we don’t need to harass and separate families just for seeking a better life for their children, attempting to escape violence in their home country, or even seeking asylum (which is legal). We don’t need to use the issue as a racist wolf whistle. And, we don’t need to hold brown babies and children hostage to fund a wall the president told us we wouldn’t have to pay for.

The greatest threat facing this nation does not come from immigrants. That distinction belongs to the current occupant of the Oval Office.

ICE is very much like the Vanilla Ice song, “Ice, Ice, Baby” (which was ripped off from Queen). It’s redundant, pointless, useless, and should be banished and never seen or heard again. Sorry if I put it in your head today.

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