“April is the cruellest month.” So says American poet T. S. Eliot as he begins his classic work “The Wasteland.” And it’s been a cruel April, indeed.

The ways in which America has changed since Jan. 20 might be illustrated on a spectrum that depicts the shift in power away from Congress, away from the courts, away from colleges and universities, away from independent oversight agencies, all in the direction of the White House.

But other indices might be instructive, as well. For example, a Cruelty Index.

Consider Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Granted, Abrego Garcia entered the United States illegally when he was 16, but after he was apprehended while looking for work in Maryland, an immigration judge granted him a special status called “withholding from removal” because of the credible threat that Abrego Garcia would face violence and torture if he were deported to El Salvador.

Abrego Garcia created an American life: He has (had) a job, a wife and three children, American citizens all. The American Dream.

The details are documented elsewhere, but all one needs to know about the plight of Abrego Garcia is embodied in the photo by which his wife confirmed his presence in a notoriously brutal prison in El Salvador. He is shown stripped, shackled and roughly manhandled by tough-looking guards.

It would be hard to overstate the cruelty of this situation. Do you have a family? If so, you can imagine the suffering that Abrego Garcia’s family is experiencing, to say nothing of Abrego Garcia himself.

Of course, bad things happen to people all the time. But the definition of cruelty involves casual indifference or even pleasure on the part of the perpetrator. This nuance was evident during President Donald Trump’s press conference last week with Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, who was clearly enjoying his brief appearance at the edge of the Trumpian spotlight.

Both men appeared to be taking smug pleasure from the power they are wielding over the hapless Abrego Garcia family. The courts have found that the Trump administration deported Abrego Garcia illegally and have directed it to facilitate his return. But during the press conference, Trump appeared to exult in his refusal to comply. Abrego Garcia and his family are just collateral damage.

Where does this episode fall on the Cruelty Index? Pretty high, I’d say, but it doesn’t set the record for this cruel April.

Last week, The Atlantic reported that one of the casualties of DOGE’s decimation of USAID is a program that supplied peanut paste — at a minuscule cost to our national budget — to about 3 million malnourished children around the world. Without this emergency supplement, they lose their teeth, their hair turns orange and their abdomens swell as the rest of their bodies shrivel. The article’s title: “’In Three Months, Half of Them Will be Dead.’”

Does the Trump administration take any pleasure from this cruelty? Probably not. But it does appear to be casually indifferent to it.

In the meantime, it’s Easter week. The Trump administration live-streamed a prayer service, and during a sumptuous dinner, the president told his audience that he hoped this will be “one of the great Easters ever.” The New York Times reports that prayer sessions and hymn-singing are breaking out in the West Wing.

The White House Faith Office has proposed to end Christian persecution in America and to get rid of the quaint notion that the church and state should be separate.

I like the separation of church and state. But sometimes I wish that the church would encroach a little more onto the state, like when Jesus said, “Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it unto the dogs.”

Or maybe Proverbs 11:17: “A man who is kind benefits himself, but a cruel man hurts himself.” The same could be said for a cruel nation.

Is April the cruelest month? So far, maybe. It’s pushing up against the wrong end of the Cruelty Index. There’s little reason to believe that May will be kinder.

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