Ad Orientem

US Government is Paying for Trump Advertising

2026-09-24T12:51:32.522-04:00

At first glance, it looks like a typical Republican campaign advertisement. As images of President Donald Trump flash across the screen, the 30-second spot says “America will never be a communist country” and boasts about the “largest tax cuts in history.”

But there’s something different near the end — a bit of text at the bottom that says “paid for by the U.S. government.”

According to AdImpact, which tracks media spending, the advertisement cost $14,000 and it ran during conservative shows on Fox News and Newsmax.

It’s not clear what part of the U.S. government paid for the spot, which includes background music with singers crooning “love me” over and over. The White House did not immediately return a request for comment. Neither did Fox News or Newsmax.

The advertisement does not say who voters should support in the midterms, but it meshes with campaign messaging from Trump and other Republicans, particularly during the party’s unusual convention in Dallas earlier this month.

Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who is in line to chair the House Judiciary Committee if his party wins the majority in November, said in a social media post that it’s a violation of the Hatch Act for government employees to work on such a video.

“It is blatantly unethical under numerous federal ethics provisions proscribing the use of government resources for political campaigns,” Raskin wrote.

Poll: Trump's Approval Rating Breaks Below 30%

2026-09-23T19:09:42.723-04:00

It was received wisdom during President Trump’s first term that his hard floor of support sat somewhere around one-third of Americans. Those were the MAGA true believers, the die-hards, the folks who stood in line for hours to attend their fifth Trump rally of the year. That rule of thumb proved to be true. Trump’s approval was still hovering in the 40s before ending around 34 percent on Jan. 4, 2021.

Whatever truths we can glean from Trump’s trainwreck of a second term, it is clear the MAGA base is now deserting him in record numbers.

An American Research Group poll published this week found Trump’s approval at just 29 percent — a new low for his presidency and a flashing warning sign for the congressional Republicans being dragged beneath the waves by the president’s plummeting popularity.

What is surprising are the circumstances of Trump’s collapse. The economy is certainly in better shape than it was during the height of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, when Trump’s approval sat in the 40s. Last month’s 3.5 percent inflation rate is bad but well below its peak. Perhaps, more than high gas and grocery prices, Americans have just had enough of politicians who don’t seem to care about their problems.

The best example of Republican apathy doesn’t even come from Trump, but from the very mild criticism delivered by Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.). In a Sept. 6 interview with “Meet the Press,” Kennedy admitted that congressional Republicans could act before the midterms to ease an affordability crisis that is crushing regular Americans.

“These prices are gutting the middle class like a fish and they expect Congress to address them. And we should have started five months ago. We didn’t. But we need to start talking about it now,” Kennedy said.

When asked by host Kristen Welker if Republicans had the power to address inflation, Kennedy was clear: “Sure, if we wanted to,” Kennedy replied. “We can do anything we want to in reconciliation and ask the House to come back and do it. I’m not saying we will do that. Certainly based on our record of the last five or six months, it’s not likely.”

It is one thing for angry voters to hear Democrats complaining about Republican inaction on inflation. It’s quite another to hear a prominent Republican tell voters in no uncertain terms that the Republican Party just doesn’t care enough about them to address skyrocketing prices. Sure, your nearly $5 a gallon gas may be demolishing your family budget, but don’t expect your Republican elected leaders to lift a finger to help.

The apathy on display among Republican leaders is baffling, given the scope of America’s affordability crisis. A Fox News poll conducted Sept. 11-14 found that more than two-thirds of voters — including one-quarter of Republicans — blame Trump for making the economy worse. Those voters also trust Democrats over Republicans to address the inflation crisis by a 15-point margin, one of the largest spreads to date.

Interestingly, that number is driven more by voter anger over Republicans’ failure to act (51 percent) than confidence Democrats’ plans will actually work (47 percent). Voters would rather try a solution that might not work than let an indifferent and ineffective Republican Party squander two more years of power.

Read the rest here.

The Bond Market Rout Continues

2026-09-23T19:03:33.281-04:00

Treasury rates spiked on Wednesday to multiyear highs in what was the biggest one-day move for the 10-year Treasury yield in nearly 18 months. There were a number of reasons cited for the sudden move higher:

Much stronger-than-expected surveys on U.S. economic activity, especially in the manufacturing sector

Hawkish commentary from a top Federal Reserve official

A U.S. Treasury auction for five-year notes that was met with poor demand

Stubbornly high oil prices with WTI crude rising 2%

The 10-year Treasury note yield

popped more than 13 basis points to 5.104% and reached a level not seen since July 2007. The move gained steam after the 10-year yield broke through the key 5% level. It marked the benchmark yield’s biggest one-day move since April 7, 2025 — when it surged 16.6 points.

The 2-year Treasury note yield

, which is most sensitive to expected changes in Fed policy, jumped more than 11 basis points to 4.889% and hit its highest level since May 2024 as traders increased their bet the Federal Reserve would need to hike again in October.

The 30-year Treasury

yield gained more than 9 basis points to 5.398%. It hit the highest level since June 2007. One basis point is equal to 0.01%, and yields and prices move in opposite directions.

“This is the market telling us we’ve entered a genuine re-tightening cycle, said Tony Miano, global investment strategy analyst at Wells Fargo Investment Institute. “The Fed’s 25 basis point hike last week to 3.75%–4% was its first increase since 2023, and the dot plot signaled another this year.”

“A week ago you could argue that was a one-and-done insurance move or a one and maybe December hike). Today’s price action says investors no longer believe that,” he added. Bottom line, “you can’t fool or hide in the bond market – unless the Fed gets inflation under control the long end of the curve is going to continue to come under pressure.”

Read the rest here.

See also this for a more detailed discussion of the recent craziness in the markets.

75% of Americans Say Tariffs Will Be Important to Their Vote in the Midterms

2026-09-18T21:05:42.551-04:00

A new Cato Institute/Morning Consult survey of 4,150 registered voters finds that three in four (75%) say tariffs will be important to their vote in this November’s midterm elections.

Nearly the same share—74%—say that Trump’s tariffs increased the prices of things they buy at the store, including 66% of Republicans and 84% of Democrats. Majorities say the tariffs are a tax on Americans (57%) and believe they have weakened the US economy (53%), while just 23% say the tariffs have improved their personal quality of life.

Overall, 57% have an unfavorable opinion of President Trump’s handling of trade policy (an increase from 54% in March), while 43% have a favorable view.

Together, these findings suggest tariffs could pose a political liability for Republicans in the midterms, particularly among independents and voters concerned about higher prices. The survey finds that a plurality of Americans plan to vote for the Democratic candidate for Congress over the Republican candidate by 47% to 42%, with 11% unsure.

Read the rest here.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Sees Serious Threats to the Global Economy

2026-09-15T18:30:46.578-04:00

Four powerful shocks are hitting the world economy at the same time. They are escalating and feeding on each other, driving a commodity spiral that can end only in an inflationary blow-off.

The effects are ripping through the global bond markets and confronting central banks with an impossible dilemma. Yields on 10-year US Treasuries have surpassed 5pc, smashing through the Maginot defences of Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary.

The Bloomberg commodity index has risen 48pc this year, accelerating in pace and spreading in breadth from energy to industrial metals and grains. The fever has spread to shipping and freight.

Lloyd’s List says the cost of a giant VLCC oil tanker on the Baltic Exchange has hit $1m (£740,000) a day, eight times the cost in January. “What is happening is truly unprecedented,” said Erik Broekhuizen, the head of shipping at Poten & Partners.

The futures markets are no longer pricing in a quick return to normal, as they were in those first insouciant weeks of the Iran war, when traders still believed in the all-conquering might of the US navy. Brent futures contracts are over $90 a barrel all the way out to the spring of 2027.

European gas futures are locking in prices through the winter that are three times higher than last winter. Wheat, maize and soybeans are all in “contango”: futures prices are well above today’s spot prices.

Read the rest here.

Profiles in Cowardice

2026-09-15T13:05:20.811-04:00

The thing I’ve found most shocking about Donald Trump’s second presidency is not the epic grift, the ICE paramilitary violence or the assaults on free speech. These abuses, while horrifying, are predictable. What has stunned me has been the capitulation of so many American elites to Trump’s vulgar authoritarianism.

I didn’t expect major law firms, some that have long boasted about their progressive pro bono work, to fold with barely a fight. I didn’t expect TV networks to settle bogus lawsuits by paying the president millions, or for Ivy League schools such as Columbia to relinquish autonomy over curriculum, admissions and student discipline. In Hungary, it took years for Viktor Orban’s government to bring most of academia, the news media and other pillars of civil society to heel. Why were so many powerful people in America, a country whose civic culture is steeped in resistance to tyranny, so willing to abase themselves and their institutions?

That’s the question at the heart of Jacob Weisberg’s important new book, “Profiles in Cowardice: A Study of Collaboration in the Trump Era.” It’s an inverted version of John F. Kennedy’s “Profiles in Courage,” offering character studies of eight people who gave in to Trump despite surely knowing better. Reading it made me wonder if there’s something about America today that selects for spinelessness at the highest levels.

Some of Weisberg’s choices perplexed me; a few of the figures he focuses on are less morally compromised than simply rotten. There’s nothing that mysterious, at least to me, in the failure of people like Mitch McConnell, Megyn Kelly or the vulture capitalist Stephen Schwarzman to display much democratic integrity. What’s harder to fathom is why people who presented themselves as bulwarks against Trumpism during his first term made such degrading compromises during his second.

The Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos adopted the motto “Democracy Dies in Darkness” for his newspaper during the first Trump presidency, then gutted it during the second. As president of Barnard during the first Trump administration, Sian Beilock championed sweeping antiracism initiatives. In Trump’s second term, as president of Dartmouth, she has kept mostly mum about Trump’s attacks on higher education. These are people who once knew how dangerous Trump was, but now that he’s worse than ever, they’re pretending not to see. Why?

Read the rest here.

A Sober Reflection on the National Debt

2026-09-15T13:02:15.638-04:00

Imagine running into a movie theater and yelling “fire!” But just as people are starting to panic, you add, “I mean … not yet … but maybe at some unknowable point in the future.”

That’s a fair description of where many of us tracking the U.S. fiscal outlook find ourselves at this moment. For years, I wasn’t an alarmist about the national debt. During the Biden administration, I even criticized those calling for more austere budget policy; I thought that fiscal austerity would do more harm than good.

Our fiscal reality has changed significantly since those days, and so has my stance on public debt. Here’s why:

The basic budget math has worsened as the interest rate on our national debt has climbed closer to the economy’s growth rate. If the compounding debt consistently grows faster than the economy, we risk entering a debt spiral.

Our annual deficits, currently about 6 percent of G.D.P., are way above where history says they should be. We’re not in a recession, but we’re borrowing as though we were.

Politically, neither party shows any interest in addressing the problem. President Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, in fact, are aggressively creating the very risks I worry about.

Mr. Trump does so by explicitly trying to manipulate the Federal Reserve to lower the nation’s debt payments.

Mr. Bessent may be even worse, abandoning the steady hand that’s essential for being Treasury Secretary for hedge-fund swagger. He’s flexing on markets — “I am the house now,” he said, referring to the Treasury’s recent purchase of Japanese yen to support the dollar — by daring currency and bond markets to bet against him. They did. The traders quickly waved off his swagger, and bond yields rose.

Read the rest here.

Good news (for a change)

2026-09-11T12:59:50.530-04:00

The UK parliament has rejected the legalization of euthanasia.

When ‘12 Angry Men’ becomes one angry man

2026-09-05T14:34:30.599-04:00

“I hope that guy can sleep well at night.”

Those words from Kevin Reddington on the steps of the Plymouth, Massachusetts Courthouse were part of a diatribe against the “guy” who was reportedly the sole holdout in the Lindsay Clancy trial. The scene was a fitting end to a visceral trial, but it added a vindictive element that should prompt Judge William Sullivan to call out the seasoned defense attorney.

After declaring that the 11-1 mistrial was “no time to gloat,” Reddington bragged repeatedly about “crushing” District Attorney Tim Cruz, whom he also attacked. He insisted that, in the trial, no one said a single negative thing about his client as a mother — ignoring that little matter of the three young children whom she had strangled to death, one by one.

But it was his attack on the holdout juror that was a breathtaking abandonment of restraint and decency. Reddington knows it is very likely that the name of this juror (he has already been identified as one of only three males on the jury) will eventually be uncovered by Internet sleuths. He effectively put a target on the back of a juror who committed the unpardonable sin of not being convinced by his arguments.

The fact that this is one of the three male jurors only ramped up the rage. This case prompted a striking gender divide between men and women, with many women expressing sympathy for Clancy and anger at the system for failing her.

For Reddington and many viewers, the hung jury was less “Twelve Angry Men” and more like “One Angry Man.” Indeed, in addition to attacking the juror, women outside of the courthouse heckled Cruz as he tried to speak to the press, shouting that he “only cares about the three children. What about the Mom?”

Reddington followed up by saying that Cruz really did not care about the children (because he looked down to read their names). He also accused the holdout jurors of wasting the time of the jury, complaining “that guy stole seven weeks from those jurors.”

It was an ironic twist on the 1957 classic. In that movie, Juror number eight (Ford) was repeatedly attacked for “wasting time” and not yielding to the majority — until he ultimately convinced all of his peers.

Earlier in the day, Reddington had asked a Massachusetts Supreme Court justice for an emergency order to force Sullivan not to declare a mistrial, and instead to remove the holdout in favor of an alternate. It was an utterly meritless effort, but Reddington used the filing to further denounce the juror. He compared the juror’s refusal to vote for his client as akin to leaving a racist on a jury. In this case, he suggested that the “guy” was a virtual anti-disability version of “Bull” Connor or some deranged “ableist.”

Read the rest here.

Whatever one's opinion on the case, Redington's behavior was grossly unethical. It can only have the effect of undermining public confidence in the jury system and making ordinary citizens reluctant to serve on jury duty for fear of being the target of a vengeful lawyer. He should be sanctioned and removed from the case if there is a retrial.

Dutch central bank moves gold bars out of U.S. and Canada, citing ‘crisis preparedness’

2026-09-03T17:32:13.695-04:00

The Dutch central bank (DNB) has transferred approximately 86 metric tons of gold out of the U.S. and Canada to the U.K., seeking to shore up its contingency planning in view of “increasing geopolitical unrest.”

Just over one-quarter of the central bank’s gold reserves held in New York and Ottawa had been shifted to London between March and August, DNB said Wednesday.

The transferred gold is now stored with the Bank of England because gold stored there must meet international trade standards and is recognized as “the world’s most easily tradable gold,” DNB said, adding that the move strengthens its “crisis preparedness.”

By contrast, DNB said the gold bars held in the U.S. and Canada could not be utilized as quickly and directly in a crisis situation.

“With this relocation, we have improved the tradability of our gold reserves. We expect that we will never need to use them, but we do need to strengthen our resilience and preparedness,” DNB Governor Olaf Sleijpen said in a statement.

The move comes amid a blockbuster rally in gold prices and continued U.S.-Iran geopolitical tensions over the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz, with a comprehensive settlement agreement far from certain.

Read the rest here.

Israel ‘seeking Trump’s support for plan to expel Palestinians from Gaza’

2026-09-02T17:12:05.200-04:00

Israel’s defence minister has said his country is seeking Donald Trump’s support to approve plans to expel Palestinians from the Gaza Strip in what has widely been condemned as a potential war crime.

Israel Katz said there was “no real solution for Gaza in the end without this migration” during a conference hosted by the Israeli news site Ynet and the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. He said the Israeli government was “organised and prepared to get them out by sea, by air, by every way possible”.

Trump discussed a US takeover of the Gaza Strip in early 2025 that would have involved removing Palestinians from the territory, but has since pulled back from the idea. A 20-point peace plan the White House drew up last year did not call for Palestinians’ deportation, an act that would be widely seen as ethnic cleansing.

Read the rest here.

Trump is threatening military intervention against a new target... the Bond Market.

2026-08-29T19:02:19.721-04:00

You just can't make this stuff up.

Memory Eternal

2026-08-28T15:59:01.253-04:00

Harald V of Norway

France: Far left presidential candidate calls for suspension of interest on national debt

2026-08-26T13:52:14.507-04:00

CHÂTEAUNEUF-SUR-ISÈRE, France — Jean-Luc Mélenchon has a radical idea to help solve France’s financial challenges: “set fire” to a large chunk of its public debt.

The far-left presidential contender would essentially have the European Central Bank agree to waive interest payments on a massive tranche of French bonds.

Coming from a top presidential hopeful, the proposal has triggered a flurry of criticism from leading economists and politicians, who have denounced it as irresponsible and dangerous for the economic stability of the country and the entire European Union.

Read the rest here.

Are there any adults left in this administration?

2026-08-25T11:29:27.708-04:00

Trump threatens to change Lake Ontario's name to "Lake America"

Stephen Marche: America Came for Canada. We Said No.

2026-08-24T11:12:43.968-04:00

Friday, Aug. 21, may go down in history as Canada’s Liberation Day. It was the day America came for us, and we said no.

The trade negotiations between the United States and Canada had been moving forward in the weeks after President Trump first threatened 50 percent tariffs on Canadian goods, but just before midnight, Prime Minister Mark Carney rejected the American proposal. “Last-minute changes in the U.S.-proposed terms were unfair, uneconomic and called into question the reliability of any deal,” Mr. Carney said in a statement. “Canada will match those tariffs dollar for dollar to protect our workers and businesses.”

It was a decision made, seemingly, on the spur of the moment, but the deep history of this country paved the way for this one, critical gesture — a historic “no.”

Mr. Trump’s tariffs on some $20 billion of Canadian goods began immediately after his deadline passed. For Canada, the choice came down to either severe but temporary economic instability or binding itself to a pseudo-democratic fiscal basketcase of a nation, whose only apparent foreign policy objective has become domination for the gratification of its president’s slapdash vanity.

Read the rest here.

Fr. John Whiteford: In Defense of the Septuagint

2026-08-23T18:56:40.752-04:00

Fr. Stephen De Young has repeated made the claim that the Septuagint has no more authority in the Orthodox Church than does the Masoretic Hebrew Text (for example, in his interview with Fr. Thomas Soroka, entitled: "Orthodoxy, the Old Testament, & the Septuagint"). This is simply not the case. Now, Fr. Stephen is obviously an extremely intelligent man, and well educated. I have learned a lot from listening to him, and have often found him to be very insightful. But the idea that the Septuagint has superior authority to the Masoretic Text is not an urban legend -- this has been the consistent teaching of the Church.

Read the rest here.

Reconciling Hayek and Mill's Divergent Defenses of Liberty

2026-08-23T17:29:27.161-04:00

Nobel Prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek and the great political philosopher John Stuart Mill both reached generally libertarian conclusions. But, as prominent Harvard law Porf. and political theorist Cass Sunstein points out in an excellent recent post, they did so for quite different reasons:

Mill was a romantic about choosers (about you and me, and what we know, and what we are capable of), while Hayek was not a romantic about choosers at all (not close). He was a romantic, or something like that, about undesigned orders and traditions, and a skeptic about planners.

Mill put a bright spotlight on individuals, their knowledge, their potential, and their agency. Hayek put a bright spotlight on markets and traditions, and on government planners and what they cannot know.

In sum, Mill emphasized the merits of individual freedom of choice, which he famously argued would enable each person to exercise control over his or her affairs, and result in valuable "experiments in living." By contrast, Hayek emphasized the defects of government planners, and their lack of knowledge.

As Sunstein notes, these two ideas are not inherently opposed. They can even be mutually reinforcing, in so far as they provide alternative justifications for the same conclusion. But there is a tension, in so far as Hayek also emphasized the value of "spontaneous order" and the traditions it generates, which he viewed as better guides to decision-making than the unaided reason of individuals. This contrasts with Mill's emphasis on individual autonomy and reasoning skills.

Read the rest here.

The West Bank’s last Christian village under settler attack

2026-08-23T11:55:19.656-04:00

The Israeli settlers always come at sunset, their approach sending the inhabitants of the remote farmsteads into a quiet panic.

They arrive on noisy off-road vehicles, on foot, sometimes on horseback. They throw stones, break windows, set fires and occasionally, residents end up in hospital from their savage beatings, or worse.

In Taybeh, the last entirely Christian town in the West Bank, The Telegraph witnessed an attack in which a local Bedouin family were pinned down for more than an hour last week.

The town, which is close to Ramallah, has been declared a “closed military zone” by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) after months of settler attacks. The Telegraph previously reported that the settlers had used leaf blowers to fan the flames they had set to intimidate the town’s Christian inhabitants.

Despite this IDF order, attacks continue unabated and the town is increasingly surrounded by illegal outposts built by Israeli settlers.

Read the rest here.

Can Presidents Exempt People from US Law?

2026-08-23T11:51:26.667-04:00

After the Supreme Court struck down his first order restricting birthright citizenship in Trump v. Barbara, President Trump signed a new order on August 6. At first blush, the new order seems like only a blatant attempt to ignore the Supreme Court. That might be true, but there’s an alternative reading that is more bizarre and potentially frightening: The president might believe he can unilaterally decide whether US law applies to any particular person or groups of people.

The entire order rests on the assertion that presidents can decide who is subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and, therefore, US law. In a way, this is a far more dangerous claim. For instance, diplomats receive immunity not only from federal but also from state and local prosecution. If the president can suspend the laws—not just the enforcement of them but the laws themselves—the order would not only strip citizenship from many Americans, it would also create a massive new power for presidents to abuse.

The strange new order is already being challenged in court, but we still don’t know how the government will defend it.

Read the rest here.

Russia sabotages weapons factories across Europe

2026-08-23T11:48:46.718-04:00

Russia has launched a fresh wave of attacks on European armaments factories under the guise of plausible deniability, according to Western intelligence sources.

The Kremlin is recruiting local gang members to sabotage defence manufacturers to test Nato’s resolve.

The attacks appear carefully calculated to fall just short of triggering Article 5, Nato’s mutual defence clause, intelligence officials believe.

Read the rest here.

Canada Defies Trump- Will Impose Retaliatory Tariffs

2026-08-22T12:41:13.956-04:00

The U.S. imposed 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian products early Saturday after last-ditch negotiations failed to resolve the latest strain in already tense relations between the historic allies. Canada's leader said it will retaliate beginning Sept. 8.

In a call with reporters late Friday, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Canada had declined to finalize the trade deal under the terms that had been agreed to earlier this week. He told Fox News on Saturday that there are "no new planned talks with the Canadians."

"We're moving forward with measures that respond to Canadian retaliation," Greer said, adding: "After a year of that retaliation, we've said enough, and so we've taken countermeasures. Our interest is in protecting American workers and protecting American supply chains. We've been offering to bring the Canadians along on that path, really to cut the tariffs on them, on steel, on tariff autos, even lumber, things that are sensitive for them, and they've always had the best deal, and they still would have an even better deal, but they didn't want that."

Canadian Prime Minister said Saturday in Ottawa that "in the coming days, we will release the details of these new tariff measures, which will come into force the Tuesday after Labor Day." The dollar-for-dollar retaliation would target steel, dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper and electronics.

He disclosed that Canada had been willing to drop remaining retaliatory tariffs on steel, aluminum and autos if the United States substantially lowered its own, and to encourage provinces to restore U.S. alcohol sales.

But he said Washington's final demands went too far, saying, "They asked too much and offered too little," Carney said.

Read the rest here.

The Right to Worship

2026-08-22T12:34:44.734-04:00

Synagogues are becoming recurring targets in America. Just days ago, Kabbalat Shabbat services at Central Synagogue in the heart of New York City were disrupted when a man violently assaulted a congregant and a security guard.

Last November, at Park East Synagogue in Manhattan, congregants were greeted by roughly 200 protesters chanting “Globalize the intifada,” “Death to the IDF” and “We need to make them scared,” forcing synagogue attendees to face a torrent of antisemitic slurs and threats. Then, in May, the harassment returned. This time, demonstrators waved a Hezbollah flag and screamed “rapist” and “pedophile” at Jewish people simply trying to enter the synagogue.

The fact that American houses of worship require police protection just to let its congregation through the door should alarm every American.

The pattern goes beyond New York: in Los Angeles, a group of masked antisemitic protesters gathered outside Wilshire Boulevard Temple, shouting “baby killers” and “Zionist pigs” at those seeking to enter. Two protesters eventually were arrested, for battery and destruction of property, after forcing their way inside of the synagogue.

These are not isolated incidents. They represent a dangerous escalation threatening the fundamental right to worship freely and safely.  

In 2025 alone, ADL documented dozens of protest-related antisemitic incidents and nearly 530 incidents of harassment at synagogues in the United States. While overall antisemitic incidents declined since the year prior, physical assaults reached record levels.

And the crisis extends beyond the Jewish community. An LDS church was besieged and burned to the ground last fall in Michigan, and in May, three people were killed protecting students and worshipers at San Diego’s largest mosque. Houses of worship across the U.S. increasingly are being turned into flashpoints for confrontation rather than havens for reflection and community.

Read the rest here.

Our ancestors were made of iron

2026-08-21T10:50:46.098-04:00

HT: Fr. Z

Navy may rename carrier honoring Black war hero after Trump

2026-08-20T19:36:01.332-04:00

The US Navy is working to rename an aircraft carrier under construction that was set to honor a Black sailor hailed for his heroic actions during the attack on Pearl Harbor, three sources familiar with internal discussions told CNN.

During President Donald Trump’s first term, the Navy announced that the Ford-class carrier would be called the USS Doris Miller, recognizing an enlisted sailor who helped defend US forces from Japan’s attack.

It’s unclear what the Navy is seeking to change the name of the carrier to, though two of the sources said there have been internal conversations about renaming it to honor Trump. It would be an unprecedented move to name an aircraft carrier after a sitting president.

Read the rest here.