President Trump on Monday said the United States and Cuba are talking as the island faces crippling circumstances in the midst of a White House-imposed oil blockade. “Cuba is right now a failed nation, and they don’t even have jet fuel to get for airplanes to take off. They’re clogging up their runway,” Trump told… Source link
You might say that it is in his DNA. Consider Rabbi Elan Babchuck. He is the founding director of Glean Network, an incubator for faith-rooted innovation; the executive vice president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership (CLAL); fellow with the Faith & Media initiative advocating for improved representation of faith in media; and a nationally recognized commentator on religion, technology and the evolving needs of communities today. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Atlantic and Psychology Today. He is also a regular guest at the Pentagon, where he consults with military leaders, in connection with CLAL’s work with the military. In 1837, there was a devastating earthquake in northern Israel that caused major damage to the holy city of Tiberias. Rabbi Babchuck’s great-great-great-grandfather was a rabbi in Tiberias at the time, and he had to rebuild a community that had quite literally been leveled. That experience found its way into Elan’s family story, and it became his own job description. Because that is what …
Contemporary democratic societies are in the midst of a legitimacy crisis. This crisis relates to different dimensions of democracy: a breakdown in meaningful representation of citizens’ interests; a spreading tendency to resort to an unrestrained use of power that calls into question the liberal-democratic promise to protect individual rights and to cater to a stable system of checks and balances; and extreme and widening asymmetries in the distribution of power, status, and wealth among citizens. It is therefore not surprising that political theorists are called to investigate and possibly propose a way out from the so-called phenomenon of democratic backsliding, that is, a spreading perception that democratic ideals and practices are losing ground in the face of contemporary authoritarian and illiberal challenges and populist waves. As a general diagnosis, we can posit that these phenomena, although different in quality and relating to different aspects of democracy, are fostered by a general and widespread erosion of trust. This erosion of trust concerns both the horizontal relationships between fellow citizens as members of the same polity and …
Most of us grumbled through the latest federal government shutdown, vexed by airport delays, minimally staffed national parks, and shuttered local offices. But the forty-three-day disruption in federal service hit hard for hundreds of thousands of furloughed federal employees going without pay and for the roughly 42 million Americans served by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, which at around $100 billion in annual spending is both the nation’s largest food assistance program and one of its largest anti-poverty programs for the non-elderly. A month into the shutdown, despite having access to nearly $6 billion in contingency funds, the Trump administration chose to stop issuing SNAP benefits—the first time in the program’s sixty-one-year history that it failed to deliver support to which enrollees were entitled.1 States sued, and federal courts ruled that the administration acted illegally, but the White House continued to withhold full SNAP funding as it appealed to the Supreme Court. The legal tussle was mooted with the end of the shutdown on November 12, and the US …
Photo of Harvest Crusade outreach at Utah Valley University on Nov 16, 2025 Credit: Harvest Crusades In the midst of the chaos engulfing the world, there is increasing evidence that the Holy Spirit is on the move. Over 6,000 students from NC State gathered at J.S. Dorton Arena arena in Raleigh, North Carolina on November 12, 2025 to worship and hear the Gospel, CBN reports. The event was part of the UniteUS tour that has been holding outreaches at American universities to reach Gen Z. According to the report, hundreds came forward when the ‘call for salvation’ went out. Like what it has done in the past, UniteUS had water tanks available for anyone who wanted to be baptized. It is uncertain how this was provided at the university. In the past, the organization had tanks on the back of half tons. At NC State, 77 of those who made commitments of faith chose to be water baptized. “What a night at NC State!!,” wrote Tony Prewett on Instagram. “We continue to see new miraculous …
