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The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. This is a non-exhaustive and totally subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy, discontent, or curiosity. Happy holidays.
Before the mass deportations. Before DOGE eviscerated government agencies, demoralized civil servants, and obliterated lifesaving aid programs. Before the ludicrous confirmation hearings for dangerous and eminently unqualified Cabinet officials. (Remember Rep. Matt Gaetz? He’s the one who never made it that far.) Before Congress demonstrated its craven obedience and its crawling sycophancy to President Donald Trump. Before yet another Supreme Court case threatened to expand presidential power or further undermine voting rights.
And just a day after Trump’s oligarch-padded inauguration and frenzied signing of executive orders, the soft-spoken Episcopalian minister who has been the Bishop of Washington, DC, since 2011, quietly and thoughtfully delivered a message. Her audience: the president, the vice president, and a congregation of government officials and GOP notables at the traditional inaugural prayer services, held at the Washington National Cathedral.
“I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now,” Bishop Mariann Budde said directly to Trump. “There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and independent families, some who fear for their lives.”
“The people who pick our crops, and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals,” she continued. “They may not be citizens, or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals.”
This was not the first encounter the first female bishop of the Washington diocese had with Trump, and it’s likely that the grudge-holder-in-chief already was predisposed to dislike her and anything she might preach that day. Back in June 2020, in the midst of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests, Trump—flanked by Ivanka and Jared, Attorney General William Barr, and a few other administration officials—marched across Lafayette Square near the White House for a photo op at St. John’s Church. Unrelated to Trump’s appearance, it was later revealed, police had just cleared protesters from the park with tear gas. “We have the greatest country in the world,” Trump said, clutching a Bible and standing in front of the historic church. “Keep it nice and safe.”
The Episcopalian diocese of Washington encompasses 86 congregations, including St. John’s, which was first established in 1815 and is known as the “church of the presidents.” The night before Trump appeared, some of the protesters had turned violent, setting fires in the church basement and outside. As bishop, Budde responded and expressed her support for peaceful protests.
The president’s unexpected appearance was another matter.
She told the Washington Post, “I am the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and was not given even a courtesy call, that they would be clearing [the area] with tear gas so they could use one of our churches as a prop.” In a since-deleted post on X, she also offered a few observations directed to the president, describing his message as being “antithetical to the teachings of Jesus and everything that our church stands for.” She continued, “The President did not come to pray; he did not lament the death of George Floyd or acknowledge the collective agony of people of color in our nation. He did not attempt to heal or bring calm to our troubled land.”
Back then, Trump did not bother to respond.
Fast-forward to the second day of his second term, and Trump’s resting-sulk-face was impassive as Budde delivered her message of mercy and Christ-like behavior. He had already signed a raft of executive orders, and 10 of them explicitly targeted migrants. She noted, “Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, because we were all once strangers in this land.” Speaking of God, she even appealed to Trump’s sense of having been somehow chosen after surviving an assassin’s bullet with only minor injuries. “You have felt the providential hand of a loving God,” she said. “In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.”
Naturally, none of this sat well with the president or his party. Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.), for instance, suggested Budde, a US citizen, should be deported.
For his part, Trump was not going to permit Bishop Budde to get away with this level of insubordination. Perhaps during the service, he was already composing the fusillade of threats and insults that he posted on his social media platform Truth Social late that night. Referring to her as a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater,” he complained that she was not only “nasty in tone” but also “not compelling or smart.” Add to that, the service was “very boring” and “uninspiring” and “[s]he and her church owe the public an apology.”
She withstood all the vitriol. She certainly was threatened. Her friends reportedly were concerned about her safety. But Budde responded philosophically—in fact, heroically, given the temper of the times. She kept focused on what was much more important than the newly reelected president’s temper tantrum. “It’s not just the one sermon,” she told the National Catholic Reporter at the time. “We just need to continue to believe what we believe in and stand for the things we stand for—and that’s the work, right?”
It’s been nearly a year since then, but I often think that this might have been the only time the president was forced to sit (relatively) still and quiet and listen to someone stand up for the victims of his cruel policies. From her pulpit, she spoke about the qualities of mercy that are repeated by religious people all the time. But this time, facing all these powerful and vindictive people, she was not just pastoral, she was heroic.
