The Trump Memo: A Threat to Reason and Compassion

[0:05] This is Glass City Humanist, a show about humanism, humanist values, by a humanist. Here is your host, Douglas Berger. In this episode, we find out what the county plans to do with the old decrepit church. They forced the Catholic diocese to sell them in 2018. The wrecking ball is not an answer. The statehouse in Columbus is back in session and up to their old tricks. And finally, we talk about a Trump executive order that may actually affect groups like ours. Glass City Humanist is an outreach project of the secular humanists of Western Lake Erie, building community through compassion and reason for a better tomorrow. We’ll see you next week. I am proud to announce that our long local nightmare is over. This past week, the land bank of Lucas County and the city and the county government authorities announced that they were going to renovate St. Anthony’s Catholic Church.

[1:22] And for those that don’t remember, one of the first direct actions that we took as a group here in Toledo when we were formed in 2018 was we opposed the saving of the former St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church in the Junction neighborhood of Toledo. It’s in the near, it’s in the south end of Toledo. The church was built in 1894 by the Polish community that lived in the area at the time. And if you know anything about the Catholic religion or about Catholic churches, at least this was a thing in the United States. I’m not sure about the rest of the world, but when a community wanted a Catholic church, one of the things that they had to do is they had to raise the money themselves. You know, the Vatican sitting on millions and millions and millions of dollars, but the local community had to raise their own money to build a church. Now, I’m assuming probably that the Catholic Church guaranteed the funding for the buildings and things like that. But eventually the pledges and the tithing and all that stuff would pay for the building. So this building was built in 1894. There was also a school built next door to it.

[2:50] And as I said, it was for a Polish immigrant community that populated the Junction area. And so it was a going Catholic parish that was eventually closed in 2005. And the reason why it was closed was because the neighborhood became depopulated. The Polish community had long since gone. They moved on to the suburbs when they could, and it was mainly African-American majority, and they also had a lot of economic stresses, so they had a lot of businesses, local businesses in the area close, and it was a down area. It was a struggling neighborhood, and they weren’t able to keep a parish going to justify the costs. It was a hundred and, you know, at the time that it closed, 120 something odd building. It’s 131 years old now.

[3:56] Huge imposing steeple. I mean, the steeple is huge. If you look at it on street view or something like that, I mean, it is a humongous church steeple. The building itself isn’t that big, you know, footprint wise, but it’s very tall. And the steeple is very tall. And like I said before, they had a school next to it. Well, the school eventually, they tore it down because of maintenance issues. And it was an old building because I think it was built probably in the early 1900s or early 1920s.

[4:40] And they didn’t, they had no way of maintaining the school either. Because as the Catholic families moved away, so did the kids that would go to this school. So anyway, so in 2018, the Catholic diocese decided to tear down the church, and then they would sell the land for development or whatever.

[5:04] And Congresswoman Marcy Captor from the 9th District got wind of it, as well as some community members that still lived there, or at least had a history in the area. And they were mad that the diocese was going to tear down this church because they had such strong memories of attending the church when they were kids. Marcy Kaptur is from a Polish family, and she remembers going to that church as a kid. So she jumped on her white horse and rode into Toledo to try to save the church. And so they tried, the diocese fought them for a little while. We, again, we got on the news and had some press releases sent out saying that the diocese should be able to do whatever they want with that building. And the main thing is that at the time that people were talking about turning it into something else, a community center or housing or a health clinic or something like that. But this is a 100-year-old building that was built for religion. It was built to be a church. And it is really hard to turn those types of buildings, those ancient church buildings, into something else. It’s just hard.

[6:30] Because a lot of the walls aren’t 90 degrees anymore, the maintenance issues, everything. So we opposed it. The land bank of Lucas County eventually bought the property. And then they, at the time, and this was in 2020, they had some focus groups and came up with some plans. And at the top of the list, the community, the junction community, the stakeholders, they wanted affordable housing. Well, they couldn’t put affordable housing in this church building. They just couldn’t. There wasn’t enough room, and plus they were thinking, well, would the cost justify the means and everything? They couldn’t do that. Next on the list was to make it a community space where they could have community meetings and have kid events and maybe some weddings. Or, you know, they could rent it out for events to other groups. And one of the concepts was that they would build a smaller building next to it where the old school used to be. And put in some like offices or meeting places and things like that into it. But that was scrapped. They didn’t want to do that.

[7:45] And so that was the focus group. And everybody thought that that’s what’s going to happen. Well, the Lucas County Land Bank thought that they knew better. And the city and the county and the land bank ignored the community for seven years and tried all kinds of different things. And the last big thing that I remember that I had reported on was that they had come to the conclusion that they were going to put a climbing gym in the building. A climbing gym is where you put up a wall with those little plastic nubs and they string ropes up into the rafters and you climb up these walls. And it’s a thing now. And had this private company come in and do an assessment if they could do a climbing gym. Not to mention that just a couple of blocks away was the Frederick Douglass Center, which has a proper gym and other facilities for kids to work out and have fun. And the problem I had with the climbing gym, one, was nobody in the community wanted a climbing gym.

[8:58] And two, it was going to be a private company running it. And there is no, like, large parking areas in that. Plus, there was the concern about local people being able to use it because, you know, you’re a private company. You want to make money. You’re going to charge people to use it. So there was that concern. So I was glad that that didn’t work out. So now they went ahead and dusted off the old focus groups and everything and decided we are going to turn this into a community center. So in this article in the Toledo Blade on October the 6th, it said the church will be renovated and transformed into a community center for the Junction neighborhood. The land bank has raised about six million dollars to revitalize the building. The $6 million includes about a million dollars from the city and county and a $4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

[9:56] And that $4 million was the money that Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur got back in 2018-2019 to save the building. So hopefully they have that money in the bank, because I think if Trump and his acolytes get a hold of that information, they might just get rid of that grant because they want to get rid of Marcy Kaptur in the Congress. And then David Mann, the CEO of the land bank, said that work on the exterior will begin first. Construction on the outside will start in the coming days and will be completed around winter of next year. After that, work on the interior will begin. I, you know, I haven’t posed this question to the group or to the board or anything like that, but I still oppose this project for the same reasons that I opposed it in 2018. I believe it’s a waste of money.

[10:57] And so I wrote a letter to the editor on this article. And here is what I wrote. And this letter, the majority, the big part of this letter was published in the Toledo Blade on October the 8th in Section A10, if you are subscribers. And I’ll have a link to all this stuff in the show notes. But after opening about it, I said, it only took them seven years, but the county and city finally listened to the Junction community. And will be turning the ancient St. Anthony Church building into a community center. It was in 2020 that they did a focus group and talked to people in the neighborhood, and aside from housing, a community center was the next best choice. And finally, the powers that be listened.

[11:51] I think it is all a waste of money. The church building should have been demolished, and a modern building for a set purpose should have been built, not putting Band-Aids on a 131-year-old eyesore. And if you look at pictures of this building, it’s an eyesore right now. Maybe when they do this renovation, it’ll look better. But anyway, so to continue my letter, I said, I hope people have some idea what the maintenance costs will be, especially leaving in the current stained glass windows. The community who built the church is long gone, and it only lives on as a memory to those who attended as a child decades ago. Is spending millions on a feeling a proper use of tax dollars? I think not. Nostalgia doesn’t put food on the plate or get people jobs. And that was the thing that when they do this renovation, and I didn’t see it mentioned too much in the article in the Blade, but when they talked about it on the TV, one of the TV websites had an article that they are planning on leaving the artwork and the stained glass windows in place. 130-year-old Billy, I’m sure the stained glass isn’t 130 years old. I’m sure that it got replaced at some point, but it’s not weather-resistant today to today’s standards. I’m sure of that.

[13:19] I just think it’s just wrong to keep this church building. It should be torn down, and they should build a modern, brand-new building for what they want to do, have a community center. I don’t have a problem with there being a community center, as long as the people in the neighborhood and the stakeholders, the people that are going to use it.

[13:43] Play a part in it. And I just think it’s just dumb to save an old church building that is limited in what you can do. And that’s what they found out. It’s limited. They couldn’t put housing in it. If they wanted to bring it up to standard codes and put stuff inside, it was going to cost a lot of money. What about the lead paint? I’m sure they have some lead paint in there somewhere. I believe that they removed most of the asbestos already. They did that when they were stabilizing the church several years ago. I think the diocese had done that. And I just think it’s a bad use of taxpayer dollars. But I could be wrong. And if I am, let me know. Send us a comment and tell us your thoughts.

[14:42] For more information about the topics in this episode, including links used, please visit the episode page at glasscityhumanist.show.

[15:03] We are currently at the start of the month of October of 2025. Most of the legislators, well, except for the Congress, are back in session after summer recess. And so what I wanted to do is there’s already been some actions taken by various legislatures around here in the country and particularly in Ohio that I wanted to go over briefly and explain them to you. And I have like one state thing to talk about and one national thing to talk about on the state side.

[15:42] So the Ohio legislature came back from their summer recess and there was a bill that was in the Senate Education Committee, the Ohio Senate Education Committee. It was called House Bill 57 and had previously been passed by the Ohio House before the break. And so now it got sent to the Senate committee to be considered.

[16:08] And if it passes out of the Senate committee, then it moves to the Senate. Well, the title of the bill, or at least how the log line was showing in the Ohio legislature website was House Bill 57, says regards school policies on administering overdose reversal drugs. And this bill was introduced bipartisanly by a Democrat, Representative Gerald’s, and our buddy, Representative Josh Williams. They introduced this together. And what it would do, what the original purpose of this bill was, was to regulate how schools would administer overdose reversal drugs. Because you have to remember in public schools, at least in Ohio, I don’t know how it is in other states, at least in Ohio, administrators and teachers and everybody, they’re not even allowed to give out Tylenol. Even before the wacky doodle said that it caused autism, pain relief, medication.

[17:20] Any kind of medication, EpiPens, things like that, you had to take them to the administration and they would hold them for you. And if you needed them, then you’d have to find them and administer it yourself.

[17:34] So what they wanted to do was with these overdose reversal drugs, we’re talking like Narcan and some other ones, they wanted to have a policy or a state law to govern the use of those reversal drugs for public schools so that they had some guidelines. So it was a positive bill. We loved it. I supported it. At least I didn’t hate it. So it goes through the House Education Committee, goes to the House, gets passed by the House, gets sent over to the Ohio Senate Committee, Education Committee. And the Republicans decided to, because it had something to do with public schools, that they decided to amend it for more crap about LifeWise. LifeWise Academy is the Christian nationalist group that is forcing its way into public schools during the middle of the school day.

[18:28] And so they’re buddies in the Ohio Senate. And I know there’s a couple of them on that Ohio Senate Education Committee that are big supporters of LifeWise. They decided to add or make an amendment to clarify the amount of time that a student could be released for LifeWise or any release time religious education. They didn’t need to put that in there. They just didn’t. As I’ve argued incessantly since they started this forcing LifeWise into public schools, is that it should be up to the schools how things like LifeWise are regulated. But instead, the state decides to stick its nose into the process.

[19:23] So one of the amendments to this House Bill 57 that they made was, they added, it says, under Section E, it says, Unless otherwise specified in a school district’s policy adopted under Division B of this section, a student shall not be excused from school to attend a release time course in religious instruction for longer than either of the following. That’s what they added was excused from longer than before. Previously, it had just said exceeded, exceed. The first thing was for students in elementary or middle school, two periods in total per week. So that was added in the budget bill that was passed, specific amount of time that kids would get to go to Bible class. And then the second thing was for students in high school, the amount of time that is equivalent to attending two units of high school credit per week.

[20:25] So now most people are going to say that that is not a big deal. It’s just clarifying. Instead of using the word exceed, it just says that they shouldn’t be longer than that, which means that schools can’t have life-wise academy stuff that lasts longer. You know, you can’t go three or four times a week. So I’m not sure why they added it. But anyway, so the Senate Education Committee added that as an amendment without any. Now, this is the part. This is why I’m bringing it up. Is they did this without any public input. They didn’t hold any hearings or anything because it had already passed in the House. And so in one day, they added this, pretty much one day, they added this amendment, then they reported it out of committee. They sent it to the Senate floor the same day the Senate voted on it and it passed.

[21:27] And so then they had to send it back to the House because they had made changes to it. And the very same day that the Senate passed it, the House concurred all in one day. So there was no public input allowed. There was no hearings held. Nothing. Nobody knew that this was happening until it happened. I didn’t know it until I got an alert about it from one of the progressive groups that I follow because they found out about it.

[22:00] And when the original bill that didn’t include the rtri stuff passed the house it passed unanimously the vote total on the original bill in may when it passed was 96 to nothing and then when the senate committee added that it passed the committee uh five to two and the people that voted against it was Catherine Ingram. She is a former, I believe, teacher. She’s a school teacher. And Democrat Kent Smith voted against it. All the Republicans voted for it. Then when it went to the Senate, also on October the 1st, it passed 28 to 4. And there were some Democrats that voted for it. Four people voted against it. It was Democrats. It was Bill DeMora, Catherine Ingram again voted against it. Paula Hicks-Hudson, who is the senator for the Toledo area, she voted against it. And Kent Smith also voted against it.

[23:01] So then when it went back to the House for the concurrence, now remember when it passed in May, it passed 96 to nothing. When it went back with the changes, with the addition of the RTRI stuff, it only passed 76 to 18. Erica White, she’s from the Toledo area. She represents the Toledo area. Michelle Grimm also, she’s from the Toledo area. She voted against it. Beryl Piccolon-Nicotanio, She is a former school board member. She voted against it. And that’s the thing. Usually with these RTRI bills and things, the people that actually have experience in education, public education, either they were teachers or they were on school boards, they oppose release time religious instruction, especially how LifeWise has it. And so that got passed. And like I said, all in one day, that’s what a supermajority can do for you, is it can pass a bill if they want to in one day without any further hearings.

[24:13] And not to mention the fact that they ruined a perfectly good bill by tacking on a different subject. See, they’re not supposed to put more than one subject in a bill. The RTRI stuff was a different subject besides opioid reversal drugs. You know, those are two separate issues.

[24:37] But they do that stuff all the time.

[24:49] For more information about the topics in this episode, including links used, please visit the episode page at glasscityhumanist.show. In the national thing, it’s a little bit worse. We had the report come out, initial report for Trump’s Trumped Up Anti-Christian Bias Task Force. And it pretty much said whatever we knew it was going to say. They were complaining that too many people are anti-Christian. But what happened, though, during the run-up to the shutdown and in the wake of the murder of conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk was that Trump, President Trump, issued a formal presidential memorandum. And it’s a national security presidential memorandum, number seven, NSPM 7.

[26:04] And what it does is it calls on the National Joint Terrorism Task Force, which works under the FBI, to go after particular threats to our nation. Which threats? Oh, you know, just all critics of conservatism. Hemant Mehta at Friendly Atheist has a good write-up. Rebecca Watson did an excellent video on this issue as well, and I’ll have links for the show notes on our website, glasscityhumanist.show. But reading from Hemet’s article, and he quotes the memo, says, There are common recurrent motivations and indicteci uniting this pattern of violent and terroristic activities under the umbrella of self-described anti-fascism. These movements portray foundational American principles, support for law enforcement, border control as fascist, to justify and encourage acts of violent revolution. This anti-fascist lie has become the organizing rally cry used by domestic terrorists to wage a violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental American liberties. Now, again, I’m reading from the memo. This is the memo that President Trump signed. He didn’t read it. He just signed it.

[27:28] Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity, support for the overthrow of the United States government, extremism on migration, race, and gender, and hostility towards those who hold traditional American values on family, religion, and morality. So that is what the text of the memo is. Now, the reason why this is an issue is because it’s a national security presidential memo. Those memos typically are secret or kept secret or under wraps for many, many years because they deal with national security issues that they don’t want to put out there. There was a national security memo that George W. Bush had issued that was leaked and people really got upset about it. I don’t remember what it was, but for those that like freedom and everything, I think it was pretty, pretty bad. But anyway, so this National Security Presidential Memorandum is giving or directing their Joint Terrorism Task Force to stop these groups that they claim are using anti-fascism to justify violent takeover of the government.

[28:57] It’s not true, but that’s the justification they use. And then they lump in people who criticize Trump and his administration. As Hemet writes in his article, it says, So the government must be on the lookout for anyone who criticizes America, calls out wealth inequality, condemns the worst aspects of Christianity, accepts transgender identities, and has any hostility toward bigots who insist the only good families, are single income households with stay at home trad wives who homeschool their two and a half children. Pretty much my entire social media feed and probably pretty much my own. The other part of this memo that is very disturbing is these normally what happens when when government law enforcement is looking at a particular group, they want to see you try to take an action. Either you’ve taken an action or you’re just about to take an action. And usually it’s a violent action. Like when they stopped Muslim terrorists, they usually get them when they’re buying guns or whatever, and then they’ll arrest them. Well, they’re going to do the same thing to those of us who are anti-Christians.

[30:18] It says, and this is quoting the memo again, it says, The United States requires a national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so the law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts. Through this comprehensive strategy, law enforcement will disband and uproot networks, entities, and organizations that promote organized violence, violent intimidation, conspiracies against rights, and other efforts to disrupt the functioning of a democratic society. And as Hemant writes again, he says that, The way that’s worded, conservatives could argue that atheist organizations that routinely push for church-state separation, criticize religion, and refute the false beliefs of Christian nationalists are disrupting the functioning of a democratic society and need to be shut down. This memo gives law enforcement permission to disband those groups long before they’ve done anything to warrant any kind of scrutiny. This isn’t about seeking justice after a group has done something wrong. It’s about going after them on the assertion that they will do something wrong.

[31:33] And this brings up a point that I want to talk about. It was an effort that was done by the federal government in the 1960s, 1950s, 60s, into the 70s. They called it COINTELPRO. And basically it was a program where they would have government agents infiltrate certain groups that they were wary of and attempt to disrupt those groups and break them up and stop anything, any anti-American things that they may try to do. They did surveillance. They infiltrated with, you know, they would send people to join and take over the group and then get rid of them. They would jail leaders, etc. Now, what the problem was is that they did this without any legal authority to do it. There’s a thing called the Constitution. We have a right to get together in groups. We have a free speech right to express our grievances to the government.

[32:47] You know, as long as we’re not bombing things or shooting people or being violent in that way or destroying property, they don’t have a legal basis for arresting you or putting you in jail or surveilling you or anything. That’s what they did through the whole 50s, 60s and 70s. They justified it as trying to keep out communism.

[33:10] But it hurt a lot of people along the way over many decades. If you get a chance, do a Google search on the church committee. That was where it all came out. And they even passed laws after that that are supposed to prohibit that.

[33:27] Or they raised the bar for you to be able to do that. You have to have probable cause and things like that. And that’s what they would do. And I saw, and I can’t think of what it was some historian was talking about, why those on the left seem not to be organized. That the people on the right, they’re well-funded, they have a solid infrastructure, and they’ve basically gotten everything that they’ve wanted in the last 30 years. And the reason is, is because the federal government has been disrupting people on the left for decades. And not allowing them to get a start or to get any headwind to try to make change in this country. And they’ve been doing it either secretly or out in the open. The one example that we have is, you know, Trump is sending National Guardsmen into Portland, Oregon. There’s nothing going on in Portland, Oregon. People are protesting outside an ICE detention facility.

[34:30] But if you remember right, if you go back and look at some of the protests during the George Floyd thing, there was a lot of a lot of not violent violence, but there was a lot of severe expression of dissatisfaction. Uh, firebombing, uh, police stations in Portland, you know, uh, being disrupted by, by, uh, police moving through the crowds. It happened in Columbus, Ohio. Um, I was part of one that got disrupted in here in Toledo. And so, you know, that’s, that’s happened in the past right now. There is nothing like that going on. And, but unfortunately, president Trump believes that there is because he’s got some mental issues of some kind. And so he issued this. Now, most of the executive orders that we know about that he’s issued or not issued, but he signed since he started in office in January, a lot of it is a lot of bluster. This national security presidential memorandum, because this is going to actually, something will happen. This joint terrorism task force will do something because now they’ve been given permission.

[35:55] And that is why we have this this national security apparatus that surveils people. And, you know, they’ve been trying to get voter registration information from the states. They’ve been trying to buy data that you’ve used on social media to track you.

[36:16] Things like that. And so this is a real concern. This is real. This memo, this National Security Presidential Memo 7, is the real thing. It’s the real stuff. And we need to be wary of it and be aware that it’s out there. And so one of the things that I’m doing with my group is I’m vetting people. If people automatically show up and want to join my group, I’m vetting them. I’m checking them out. I recommend other people do that as well. And if somebody is getting extra close to you or want to get extra close to you or your groups, and they just give a bad vibe because I don’t think that they’re very talented, some of these federal agents, it could be. So you just need to be careful. You need to be careful. You need to watch everything because one day you could be out walking your dog and they pull up in their SUVs and take you away. It’s a real possibility.

[37:24] You know, I’m not trying to scare people, but it’s a real possibility. So make sure you check out the ACLU. They have materials available so you know your rights, even though that’s kind of up an air, but know that, you know, as being a leader of a non-religious group who could be considered anti-Christian because I don’t agree with the Christian religion, my group could go away. Who knows? But I just want to make people aware of that national issue. And as I said, I put the links up to Hemet Mehta’s article and Rebecca Watson’s video, and I really encourage you to check them out when you get the time. Thank you for listening.

[38:17] For more information about the topics in this episode, including links used, please visit the episode page at glasscityhumanist.show. Show Lee can be reached at humanistswle.org. Glass City Humanist is hosted, written, and produced by Douglas Berger, and he’s solely responsible for the content.