With egg prices in the United States soaring because of the spread of H5N1 influenza virus among poultry, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) yesterday conditionally approved a vaccine to protect the birds. President Donald Trump’s administration may therefore soon face a fraught decision on whether to join the ranks of other nations—including China, France, Egypt, and Mexico—that vaccinate poultry against H5N1.

Although many influenza researchers contend that vaccination can help control spread of the deadly virus, the U.S. government has long resisted allowing its use because of politics and trade concerns that many contend are unscientific. The USDA approval may signal a shift in policy linked to the Trump administration’s worries about egg prices. Even with the conditional approval, USDA must still approve its use before farmers can start to administer the vaccine because special regulations apply to H5N1 and other so-called highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) viruses.

The vaccine, made by Zoetis, contains a killed version of an H5N2 variant that the company has designed to work against circulating variants of the H5N1 virus that have decimated poultry flocks and have even jumped to cows and some humans. (The “H” in both variants stands for hemagglutinin, the surface protein of the virus, and antibodies against it are the main mechanism of vaccine-induced protection.) Researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported yesterday that three cow veterinarians harbored antibodies to the H5N1 virus in dairy cattle. None had symptomatic disease, they noted in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, suggesting the virus may be more widespread in humans than previously thought.

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With egg prices in the United States soaring because of the spread of H5N1 influenza virus among poultry, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has conditionally approved a vaccine to protect the birds. https://t.co/ArHRIgkmL5

— News from Science (@NewsfromScience) February 14, 2025

Ukraine sent its largest-ever delegation to Washington, DC, last week to rally support for more military defense and plead with Donald Trump not to pull the plug and make a deal that favors Russia. Pastors and religious leaders in the delegation fear that time is running out. 

“We know that President Trump is working on the new negotiations to help bring this war to an end,” said Igor Bandura, vice president of the Baptist Union of Ukraine. “We are here to pray, to advocate, to share our experience, and to remind the American people and American politicians that we are looking not just to end the war, but we need a just peace.”

American conservative and evangelical support for Ukraine has waned as the war has gone on and the Republican Party under Trump has grown increasingly skeptical of international alliances. Past efforts to shore up support for Ukraine among Republicans have yielded results, though, so the delegation remained hopeful, despite deep concerns.

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Ukrainian Christians are pleading with the Trump administration not to pull the plug on support and make a deal that favors Russia.

“We are looking not just to end the war, but we need a just peace.”https://t.co/wQ0WrrLZGI

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) February 13, 2025

The COVID-19 pandemic had an enormous impact on how religious communities gather for worship.

In a Pew Research Center survey in July 2020, a few months after the coronavirus struck the United States, just 6% of Americans who regularly attend religious services said their house of worship was open to the public and holding services in the same way as before the COVID-19 outbreak. The vast majority reported either that their house of worship was not open for in-person services (31%) or that it was open but with changes to limit the spread of disease (55%).

More than a year and a half later, in March 2022, fewer than half of regular worshippers (43%) reported that their church, synagogue, mosque or other house of worship had completely returned to normal, pre-pandemic operations.

Yet, despite COVID-19’s widespread effects on how houses of worship operate, most Americans say their religious and spiritual lives have not been changed by the pandemic, according to a Center survey conducted in October 2024.

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Despite COVID-19’s widespread effects on how houses of worship operate, most Americans say their religious and spiritual lives have not been changed by the pandemic. (2/5) pic.twitter.com/yOItnccrGF

— Michael (Chip) Rotolo (@mrotolo1) February 12, 2025

Our research shows that over the past three decades, among women ages 15 to 44, marriage rates have fallen much faster for rural women than for their urban counterparts. Between 1988 and 2018, the proportion of rural women who were married fell from (55 percent to 33 percent. Marriage among urban women also declined, but to a lesser degree.

At the same time, cohabitation has risen more sharply and divorce has declined more slowly in rural America. By 2018, rural women were more likely than urban women to be in an unmarried cohabiting partnership (19 percent vs. 14 percent). The proportion of women who have never married has also increased steadily for both rural and urban women. And although the proportion of urban women who never marry remains slightly higher, this is mainly because urban women marry at older ages.

Childbearing in the United States has fallen overall, but the “baby bust” has been larger among rural women. Although they still have slightly more children than urban women, a substantially higher share of rural children (54 percent) than urban children (45 percent) are born outside marriage. This is a significant change from years past. In 2002, the reverse was true. These rapid transformations in both marriage and nonmarital childbearing help explain why many rural residents and politicians are inclined to think the traditional family is under threat.

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New WaPo argues retreat from marriage strongest among rural women https://t.co/CbTPvjLLWq

— Brad Wilcox (@BradWilcoxIFS) February 12, 2025

To understand Douthat’s method, recall a scene from the end of the third Indiana Jones film. Indy is faced with a choice: Let his father die or take a leap of faith. The leap in this case is literal, a physical step into a chasm with nothing to hold him up. He takes the step, and by a miracle of movie magic, doesn’t fall. There was a bridge in front of him all along, invisible to the human eye.

For some, this is a picture of true faith: a passionate, even reckless jump into the unknown, based on blind trust, not reason. Douthat demurs. As he writes, “Joining and practicing [some faith] is fundamentally a rational decision, not just an eyes-closed, trust-your-friends-and-intuitions jump.” You can and should consider the case in your mind.

Moreover, whatever the social benefits of church—and they are many!—they aren’t the place to start. They’re a byproduct of the thing itself, and that’s of interest only if it’s true. That’s why Douthat opts to “start with religion’s intellectual advantage: the ways in which nonbelief requires ignoring what our reasoning faculties tell us, while the religious perspective grapples more fully with the evidence before us.”

This is not a case for mere Christianity, then, so much as “mere religion.” Though Douthat ends the book with a chapter explaining why he is Roman Catholic, his aim is to clear the ground for religious commitment in general, to show why Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, and Jews as much as Catholics and Protestants are not exotic residue of a superstitious past.

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Christianity is having a moment.

Intellectuals are converting. Atheists are softening. Agnostics are hungry.@DouthatNYT’s “Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious” is a response to this moment and to the readers he’s trying to reach. https://t.co/UfEYYzZxbb

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) February 11, 2025

Cartels are deeply entwined with the Mexican economy. Many of the tomatoes, bell peppers and cucumbers consumed in the U.S. are grown in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, where many farmers pay the cartel for water for their fields. Businesses such as mining companies and avocado growers are widely believed to pay extortion money to cartels.

“For better or for worse, this will likely force Mexican businesses and the Mexican government to confront pervasive cartel influence,” said Andrew Kaufman, an international lawyer who is counseling Mexican and multinational firms on the expected FTO designations.

Trump’s executive order took note of the cartels’ vast reach. The order gives the secretary of state—in consultation with other cabinet members—14 days to determine which Mexican cartels should be designated as FTOs. Then, key members of Congress have seven days to comment before the designation takes legal effect.

The order accuses the Mexican cartels of infiltrating governments and destabilizing countries across the Americas.

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President Trump wants to deploy a blunt new tool to fight Mexican cartels that flood the U.S. with drugs, by adding them to a list of terrorist groups that includes the likes of al Qaeda and Hamas https://t.co/pZ2amUzOxO

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) February 5, 2025

But when our institutions are weak and frayed, as many say they are now, the mature response is to root out bureaucratic rot while also strengthening our common bonds—the approach of a spade in one hand and sword in the other we see in Nehemiah 4:17. We defend and build simultaneously. We cannot simply critique church without seeking its peace and purity. We cannot tear down without also building up. We cannot sever spiritual growth from the manner and place in which Jesus says it takes place: the church.

Yuval Levin recently reminded us in the journal The New Atlantis that such institutional building is others-centered. We must take attention away from self to build for other (future) people. Levin’s criticism is sharp: “The inability to value those other people and judge them worthy of our work and sacrifice is a characteristic failing of a decadent society.” When we focus exclusively on our self-experience to the detriment of others, in the present or future, our cultural artifacts resemble a stagnant pond. There is no life there. 

In 2020, Ross Douthat identified American society as being in a period of decadence, “something that comes on civilizations when they’ve reached a certain stage, and it’s not clear where they go next.” Decadence, Douthat believes, happens after the ladder of success has been climbed: a sort of stalemate of cultural production and dialogue. Movies rehash the same stories, and sequels rule the day. We often see this stagnation in form before we see it play out in content.

Blue Like Jazz’s form felt new and edgy for young millennials and Gen Xers in 2003. In hindsight, the fruit it bore is that of a decadent society where the self is ultimately authoritative, where individuals self-select into churches that feed their values (rather than sharpen like iron on iron), and where our Christian message is no different from the world’s—if we stay in the church at all.

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In 2022 and 2023, the Army missed its recruitment goal by nearly twenty-five per cent—about fifteen thousand troops a year. It hit the mark last year, but only by reducing the target by more than ten thousand. The Navy has also fared badly: it failed to reach its goals in 2023, then met them in 2024 by filling out the ranks with recruits of a lower standard; nearly half measured below average on an aptitude exam. The Army Reserve hasn’t met its benchmark since 2016, and the ranks are so depleted that active-duty officers have been put in charge of reserve units. Some experts worry that, if the country went to war, many reserve units might be unable to deploy. A U.S. official who works on these issues put it simply: “We can’t get enough people.”

At the end of the Second World War, the American military had twelve million active-duty members. It now has 1.3 million—even though the population has more than doubled, and women are now eligible for armed service. “The U.S. military has been shrinking for thirty years,” Lawrence Wilkerson, a former senior State Department official who leads a task force on the challenges facing the armed services, said. “But its global commitments haven’t changed.” The military operates out of bases in more than fifty countries, and routinely deploys Special Operations forces to about eighty. Now, Wilkerson said, “it’s not clear that the military is large enough anymore for America to uphold its promises.”

For decades, the armed forces based their requirements on a defensive doctrine called “win and hold”: the capacity to win one war while fighting a second to a standstill. Today, with the U.S. confronting perhaps its starkest global-security challenges since the Cold War, many analysts fear that even one war would be too taxing. A conflict with China over the disputed island of Taiwan could leave thousands of Americans dead in a matter of weeks—amounting to nearly half the losses the country sustained in twenty years of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Dexter Filkins reports on the U.S. military’s struggle to recruit from a population that’s not just unenthusiastic but unable to serve as it also reckons with political turbulence at home and mounting security threats abroad. https://t.co/bw6y3RY3zT

— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) February 3, 2025

Americans are the most optimistic they have been in the past seven years about several aspects of the U.S. economy, particularly economic growth and the stock market. Majorities of Americans expect both indicators of economic health to go up this year, while 41% are hopeful that interest rates will fall, exceeding the 35% saying interest rates will rise.

The public is divided over whether unemployment will increase (38%) or decrease (38%) — although at a time of relatively low unemployment, the 21% expecting the rate to hold steady could be viewed as positive. A slim majority of Americans, 52%, predict that inflation will rise, but that is down significantly from recent years.

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"Americans are the most optimistic they have been in the past seven years about several aspects of the U.S. economy, particularly economic growth and the stock market."@Gallup pic.twitter.com/dvNHxgJTA1

— Daily Chartbook (@dailychartbook) February 4, 2025

A key determinant of becoming a global leader in AI is the ability to build an efficient, sustainable and resilient infrastructure that ensures energy is available, reliable and constant. The state of national power grids in China, the EU, and the US remains a significant barrier. China’s creaking grid represents a major constraint to progress and the government is planning to invest more than US$800bn over the next six years. The investment will support Beijing’s Eastern Data, Western Computing initiative, which aims to tap into China’s energy resources in the west and transfer computing power to economic hubs along the coast.

The European power grid is one of the oldest in the world. Moreover, around 40% of the grid is around ten years off its expected lifespan, while over half of the physical grid needs to be repaired or replaced. It remains uncertain whether the estimated US$584bn in European grid investments needed this decade will materialise. In 2024, the EU’s Modernisation Fund handed out almost US$3bn to modernise member states’ energy systems, amongst other activities.

The ageing and fragmented US grid comprises three main regions (Western, Eastern and Texas), which remain inefficient, especially for interconnections between regions. The US Department of Energy (DoE) estimates that power outages cost the US economy US$150bn annually. Modernising the US grid will cost trillions over the coming decades.

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Building AI infrastructure is only one part of the story, as sovereign AI capabilities may prove more decisive.

Read the latest analysis by Charlie Edwards: https://t.co/5y4Hb1bd1o pic.twitter.com/HWb7vskEoL

— IISS News (@IISS_org) January 31, 2025

 China’s military is building a massive complex in western Beijing that US intelligence believes will serve as a wartime command centre far larger than the Pentagon, according to current and former American officials.

Satellite images obtained by the Financial Times that are being examined by US intelligence show a roughly 1,500-acre construction site 30km south-west of Beijing with deep holes that military experts assess will house large, hardened bunkers to protect Chinese military leaders during any conflict — including potentially a nuclear war.

Several current and former US officials said the intelligence community was closely monitoring the site, which would be the world’s largest military command centre — and at least 10 times the size of the Pentagon.

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SCOOP China builds huge new wartime military command centre in western Beijing – 10 times the size of the Pentagon https://t.co/19nxQg0MqM via @ft

— Demetri (@Dimi) January 30, 2025

The market reaction, when it came, was brutal. On January 27th, as investors realised just how good DeepSeek’s “v3” and “R1” models were, they wiped around a trillion dollars off the market capitalisation of America’s listed tech firms. Nvidia, a chipmaker and the chief shovel-seller of the artificial-intelligence (AI) gold rush, saw its value fall by $600bn. Yet even if the Chinese model-maker’s new releases rattled investors in a handful of firms, they should be a cause for optimism for the world at large. DeepSeek shows how competition and innovation will make ai cheaper and therefore more useful.

DeepSeek’s models are practically as good as those made by Google and OpenAI—and have been produced at a fraction of the cost. Barred by American export controls from using cutting-edge chips, the Chinese firm undertook an efficiency drive, even reprogramming the chips it used to train the model to eke out every drop of power. The cost of building an AI model that can stand toe-to-toe with the best has plummeted. Within days, DeepSeek’s chatbot was the most downloaded app on the iPhone.

The contrast with America’s approach could not be starker. Sam Altman, the boss of OpenAI, has spent years telling investors—and America’s new president—that vast sums of money and computing power are needed to stay at the forefront of AI. Investors have accordingly been betting that a handful of firms stand to reap vast monopoly-like rents. Yet if fast followers such as DeepSeek can eat away at that lead for a fraction of the cost, then those profits are at risk.

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"However, the real winners will be consumers. For AI to transform society, it needs to be cheap, ubiquitous and out of the control of any one country or company. DeepSeek’s success suggests that such a world is imaginable."https://t.co/8aZ4eM5PV5 #USChina #Geoeconomics #地経学

— Ken Doi土居 (@kitakazethomas) January 30, 2025

US fourth- and eighth-grade students are struggling with reading comprehension with last year’s nationwide testing showing the worst results in over two decades.

Average reading scores deteriorated among students who took the Congressionally-mandated assessment in 2024, according to results released Wednesday from the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

“This is a major concern,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the test known as the Nation’s Report Card every two years. “Our nation is facing complex challenges in reading.”

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US fourth- and eighth-grade students are struggling with reading comprehension with last year’s nationwide testing showing the worst results in over two decades. https://t.co/mHk2GPQyId

— Bloomberg Markets (@markets) January 29, 2025

Almost overnight, DeepSeek has upended many of the assumptions inside Silicon Valley about the economics of building AI, as well as the best technical methods for developing the technology and the extent of the US lead over competitors in China. For much of the past two-plus years since ChatGPT kicked off the global AI frenzy, the industry has bet that the path to better AI depends largely on spending heavily on more advanced chips from companies like Nvidia Corp. and increasingly massive data centers to house them.

US President Donald Trump welcomed the development as “good, because you don’t have to spend as much money.” Industry leader Nvidia, whose shares took a huge hit from DeepSeek’s debut, also lauded it as an “excellent AI advancement” in a statement on Monday.

The market fallout was staggering. Hype over DeepSeek’s feat drove a nearly $1 trillion rout in US and European technology stocks on Monday as investors questioned the spending plans of some of America’s biggest companies. The share plunge in AI chipmaker Nvidia alone erased roughly $589 billion in market value, the biggest wipeout in US stock-market history.

Meanwhile, in DC, lawmakers are left to figure out the best route to beat back China’s progress on a technology some see as crucial to its military and economy, given the Biden administration’s chip export curbs were not enough. David Sacks, President Donald Trump’s crypto and AI czar, said DeepSeek shows the global AI race will be very competitive — while blaming the Biden administration for regulation that “hamstrung” AI development.

Further complicating matters, the renewed uncertainty over large AI investments comes just days after Trump championed a $100 billion joint venture from OpenAI, SoftBank Group Corp. and Oracle Corp. to boost US competitiveness by investing in data centers and other physical infrastructure. Now, there are new questions about the rationale for stratospheric AI budgets.

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The censorship part here is eerie. Had a physical reaction while reading that.

Bloomberg: DeepSeek Challenges Everyone’s Assumptions About AI Costs https://t.co/8ewlGlxrkD pic.twitter.com/0R1ns25aoM

— Emily Binder (@emilybinder) January 28, 2025

The viewer first recoils at this dystopian society’s upside-down standard of beauty. “Eye of the Beholder” asks us to think about where we get our standards of beauty in the first place. But more importantly, the show invites us to recoil even more at what they do with those who fail to achieve their standard. 

The Christian knows that God offers sure and true answers. But what is the Christian to do in response to those who have different answers? Who don’t know the truth? That question was settled by the founders of this country when they wrote the U.S. Constitution and its First Amendment, but that foundation is being undermined by Christian nationalists who seek to “merge Christian and American identities, distorting both the Christian faith and America’s constitutional democracy.”

The original audience Serling sought to challenge were communist sympathizers and Cold War-era dictators and all who would fall for the false comforts offered by such. That challenge is recurring. 

Janet offers timeless wisdom when she cries out to her physician: 

“Who are you people, anyway? What is this state? Who makes up all the rules and the statutes and the traditions? The people who are different have to stay away from other people who are normal. The state isn’t God, Doctor.”

Today, those advocating Christian nationalism might heed Janet’s words.

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A good one from @KSPrior:

“Who are you people, anyway? What is this state? Who makes up all the rules and the statutes and the traditions? The people who are different have to stay away from other people who are normal. The state isn’t God, Doctor.”https://t.co/xgKwAHsFG3

— W. David O. Taylor (@wdavidotaylor) January 24, 2025

President Trump’s landmark executive order designating major drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) marks a watershed moment in America’s approach to national security and strategic competition against China. This reclassification acknowledges an uncomfortable truth: the fentanyl crisis is not merely a law enforcement challenge but a sophisticated form of irregular warfare targeting American society, with cartels serving as proxies in a broader strategic campaign orchestrated by China against U.S. interests.

The devastating impact of this proxy warfare is reflected in stark statistics. According to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl, were responsible for over 70,000 deaths in 2022. The Drug Enforcement Administration has meticulously documented how Mexican cartels have industrialized fentanyl production using precursor chemicals sourced predominantly from China, creating what amounts to a chemical weapons supply chain targeting American communities. These aren’t merely crime statistics – they represent casualties in an irregular war being waged through proxy forces, with networks stretching from Beijing through Sinaloa and into every major American city.

The Brookings Institution has documented how this crisis disproportionately impacts working-class communities, creating zones of social instability that strain local governments and emergency services – precisely the type of internal disruption that aligns with China’s strategic objectives. The National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates the economic burden of the opioid crisis exceeds $1 trillion, representing a significant drain on American resources and societal resilience. This continued deficit reduces our ability to reinvest in competition with China, while contributing to the ballooning national debt.

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https://t.co/T0XizEzRfs

— Small Wars Journal (@smallwars) January 22, 2025

If there is a single technology America needs to bring about the “thrilling new era of national success” that President Donald Trump promised in his inauguration speech, it is generative artificial intelligence. At the very least, ai will add to the next decade’s productivity gains, fuelling economic growth. At the most, it will power humanity through a transformation comparable to the Industrial Revolution.

Mr Trump’s hosting the next day of the launch of “the largest ai infrastructure project in history” shows he grasps the potential. But so does the rest of the world—and most of all, China. Even as Mr Trump was giving his inaugural oration, a Chinese firm released the latest impressive large language model (LLM). Suddenly, America’s lead over China in ai looks smaller than at any time since ChatGPT became famous.

China’s catch-up is startling because it had been so far behind—and because America had set out to slow it down. Joe Biden’s administration feared that advanced ai could secure the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) military supremacy. So America has curtailed exports to China of the best chips for training ai and cut off China’s access to many of the machines needed to make substitutes. Behind its protective wall, Silicon Valley has swaggered. Chinese researchers devour American papers on ai; Americans have rarely returned the compliment.

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The success of China’s large language models could turn the economics of AI on its head. America must prepare for a world in which China is breathing down its neck https://t.co/RGElwLsoIN

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) January 23, 2025

Phillips Brooks died on Monday, 23 January 1893, at the age of 57. On the day of his funeral, 26th January, Boston came to a virtual standstill. “The Boston stock exchange many of the business houses of the city closed from 11 o’clock until two, “reported the New York Times, “and brokers and clerks swell the throng that blackened Copley square“ in front of Trinity Church and filled the surrounding streets. Brooks’s body had lain in state on the west porch of the church since 8 AM while 15,000 mourners filed by.

–John Frederick, Wolverton , The Education of Philip Brooks (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), page 1

"Topical preaching may be interesting but it grows unsatisfactory because it does not fasten itself to the authority of Scripture. It tempts the preachers' genius & invention, but is apt to send people with a feeling that they have heard more from him than God"
–Phillips Brooks pic.twitter.com/xDvPmswNa2

— Expositors Collective (@expositcllctv) January 20, 2025

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”–then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.

There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

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Get a glimpse of the man beyond the momentous speech he delivered at the March on Washington. https://t.co/Zo3sMwtkJB

— Smithsonian Magazine (@SmithsonianMag) January 20, 2025

I also came to see that liberalism’s superficial optimism concerning human nature caused it to overlook the fact that reason is darkened by sin. The more I thought about human nature the more I saw how our tragic inclination for sin causes us to use our minds to rationalize our actions. Liberalism failed to see that reason by itself is little more than an instrument to justify man’s defensive ways of thinking. Reason, devoid of the purifying power of faith, can never free itself from distortions and rationalizations.

In spite of the fact that I had to reject some aspects of liberalism, I never came to an all-out acceptance of neo-orthodoxy. While I saw neo-orthodoxy as a helpful corrective for a liberalism that had become all too sentimental, I never felt that it provided an adequate answer to the basic questions. If liberalism was too optimistic concerning human nature, neo-orthodoxy was too pessimistic. Not only on the question of man but also on other vital issues, neo-orthodoxy went too far in its revolt. In its attempt to preserve the transcendence of God, which had been neglected by liberalism’s overstress of his immanence, neo-orthodoxy went to the extreme of stressing a God who was hidden, unknown and “wholly other.” In its revolt against liberalism’s overemphasis on the power of reason, neo-orthodoxy fell into a mood of antirationalism and semifundamentalism, stressing a narrow, uncritical biblicism. This approach, I felt, was inadequate both for the church and for personal life.

So although liberalism left me unsatisfied on the question of the nature of man, I found no refuge in neo-orthodoxy. I am now convinced that the truth about man is found neither in liberalism nor in neo-orthodoxy. Each represents a partial truth. A large segment of Protestant liberalism defined man only in terms of his essential nature, his capacity for good. Neo-orthodoxy tended to define man only in terms of his existential nature, his capacity for evil. An adequate understanding of man is found neither in the thesis of liberalism nor in the antithesis of neo-orthodoxy, but in a synthesis which reconciles the truths of both.

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Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was first celebrated in 1986 to honor the life & legacy of the influential leader of the Civil Rights Movement. His statue in the MLK Memorial shows Dr. King taking a determined stand; nonviolent, but unwavering in his vision for a better America. pic.twitter.com/4H4GcRsxow

— National Mall NPS (@NationalMallNPS) January 20, 2025

You can find the full text here.

I find it always is really worth the time to listen to and read and ponder it all on this day especially–KSH.

Almighty God, who by the hand of Moses thy servant didst lead thy people out of slavery, and didst make them free at last: Grant that thy Church, following the example of thy prophet Martin Luther King, may resist oppression in the name of thy love, and may strive to secure for all thy children the blessed liberty of the Gospel of Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we recommit to being guided by Dr. King’s light.

We must continue his march forward to a more perfect union. pic.twitter.com/vTIEzniQi3

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 20, 2025

McCartney said Promise Keepers grew out of tension in his own life. His zeal for success as a football coach came into conflict with his desire to be the husband and father he felt God wanted him to be. His struggle to reconcile those tensions led him to launch the ministry that fused evangelical spirituality, big-tent revivalism, sports celebrity, and therapeutic masculinity—and to eventually walk away from coaching while he was still at the top of his game.

He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2013. But his greatest legacy was as a Christian. While many Christian football coaches came before him and many after, few burned as bright as McCartney or extended their influence as wide.

“Bill McCartney’s absolute commitment to Jesus Christ was and is a beacon for all of us,” Bill Curry, a coaching contemporary, told Christianity Today. “We will always remember and do our best to honor his memory.”

McCartney died on Friday, January 10, at the age of 84.

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Bill McCartney led the Colorado Buffaloes to a national title and started a movement urging men to take responsibility for their faith, families, and communities.

The football coach died on January 10, at the age of 84.https://t.co/EcpYlsfejr

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) January 15, 2025

Patton instructed his men: “Pray when driving. Pray when fighting. Pray alone. Pray with others. Pray by night and pray by day.” He believed the Third Army’s nearly 500 chaplains, representing 32 denominations, were as critical to victory as his tank commanders. “He wanted a chaplain to be above average in courage,” O’Neill recalled. “In time of battle, he wanted the chaplains up front, where the men were dying. And that’s where the Third Army chaplains went—up front. We lost more chaplains, proportionately, than any other group.”

Patton relied on his faith more than most commanders did. Brig. Gen. Harry H. Semmes wrote that Patton “always read the Bible, particularly the life of Christ and the wars of the Old Testament. He knew by heart the order of morning prayer of the Episcopal Church. His thoughts, as demonstrated daily to those close to him, repeatedly indicated that his life was dominated by a feeling of dependence on God.” Semmes added that “Patton was an unusual mixture of a profane and highly religious man.”

Gen. Omar Bradley concurred: “He was profane, but he was also reverent. He strutted imperiously as a commander, but he knelt humbly before his God.” This was certainly the case during Patton’s finest moment in the Ardennes. “Destiny sent for me in a hurry when things got tight,” he wrote at the height of the battle. “Perhaps God saved me for this effort.” He also noted: “We can and will win, God helping. . . . Give us the Victory, Lord.”

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In World War II, Gen. George Patton believed the Third Army’s nearly 500 chaplains, representing 32 denominations, were as critical to victory as his tank commanders, writes @kershaw_alexhttps://t.co/6JWN16ZNM1

— Wall Street Journal Opinion (@WSJopinion) December 20, 2024

Ukraine is not only the breadbasket of Europe; it is also a mineral superpower, with some of the largest reserves of 117 of the 120 most widely used minerals in the world.

Of the 50 strategic minerals identified by the United States as critical to its economy and national security, many of which are quite rare yet key to certain high-value applications, Ukraine supplies 22.

Ukraine possesses the largest reserves of uranium in Europe; the second-largest reserves of iron ore, titanium and manganese; and the third-largest reserves of shale gas — as well as large deposits of lithium, graphite and rare earth metals, according to a 2022 report by the Canadian geopolitical risk-analysis firm SecDev. These minerals are essential to the production of vital goods ranging from airplanes, cellphones and electric vehicles to steel and nuclear power.

The question for the president-elect is: Does he want Russia and China to get that treasure trove of natural resources? Or does he want to develop them with Ukraine to the benefit of the American people? One of the main reasons Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine (aside from his delusional historical fantasies about how Ukrainians and Russians are “one people”) was to seize these natural resources, which are valued at an estimated $26 trillion, according to SecDev.

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Does Trump want Putin to get Ukraine’s $26 trillion in gas and minerals? Kyiv controls vast gas and mineral deposits. Does Trump want those flowing west, or to Russia and China?

Gift link: https://t.co/3feef88yEZ pic.twitter.com/QVIbrZFNyc

— Marc Thiessen (@marcthiessen) December 19, 2024

Slowing China’s progress in artificial intelligence (AI) has been a top priority for Washington for the last three years. To achieve that goal, the Biden administration has escalated controls on the sale of advanced chips and chipmaking equipment to China, including a fresh salvo of restrictions earlier this week.

Policymakers may be flummoxed to learn, then, that Chinese companies aren’t just keeping up in the AI race: some believe they could overtake American industry leaders as soon as next year.

The latest breakthroughs came late last month, when two Chinese AI companies released new models that perform as well, if not better than their American peers. Developed by tech giant Alibaba and High Flyer Capital Management, a Chinese quantitative hedge fund, the technologies compete directly with OpenAI’s latest o1 model, which can “reason” through problems — a process some researchers have described as a new paradigm.

These achievements by Chinese firms underscore how formidable a competitor the country remains in the global AI race. Buoyed by a wealth of engineering talent and intense domestic competition — plus ample chip supply for now — Chinese AI firms are unlikely to fall back in that race as easily as some in Washington may hope.

Influential figures in the AI community are taking note. On Monday, Clement Delangue, chief executive of HuggingFace, a popular platform that offers tools and data to AI developers, predicted on LinkedIn that China would “start to lead the AI race in 2025.”

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Americans’ confidence in their nation’s judicial system and courts dropped to a record-low 35% in 2024.

The result further sets the U.S. apart from other wealthy nations, where a majority, on average, still expresses trust in an institution that relies largely on the public’s confidence to protect its authority and independence.

Between 2006 and 2020, Americans’ perceptions of their courts were most often in line with the median for OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries, with a majority in each typically expressing confidence.

Since 2020, confidence in the courts across the other OECD countries has been stable, while the U.S. has seen a sharp decline — 24 percentage points — in the past four years. The resulting 20-point gap in confidence between the U.S. and the median of OECD nations in 2024 is the largest in the Gallup trend, which dates to 2006.

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Americans' confidence in the nation's courts and judicial systems has plummeted 24 percentage points in the past four years, sagging to a record low, per a new Gallup poll.

https://t.co/qAklPE19Su

— Mike Walker (@New_Narrative) December 17, 2024

The US bid to lead the world in artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing is facing a critical hurdle: a shortage of development-ready industrial sites.

Nearly two-thirds of the people involved in securing US industrial sites cited their scarcity as the top factor impeding new projects, in a 2024 survey by the Site Selector’s Guild. And 87 per cent of respondents said resource shortages — including a lack of land, labour and utilities — had affected or compromised project timelines.

“It’s absolutely crazy,” says Josh Bays, a principal at Site Selection Group, which helps companies find US locations. “Most of the low-hanging fruit’s been picked over.” 

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US aim to lead on AI threatened by land shortage via @FT
https://t.co/I9nJTyJXnT

— Amb Antonio Garza (@aogarza) December 12, 2024

A craze for betting is sweeping over America. This year Americans are on track to wager nearly $150bn on sports, having bet a paltry $7bn in 2018. Another $80bn is being wagered in online casinos; in the few weeks when election gambling was legal before the presidential vote, hundreds of millions of dollars were placed on the outcome. Even physical casinos are spreading. Soon the island of Manhattan could have its own casino towering over Times Square.

As our Briefing this week explains, the revolution has been unleashed by the overturning of bans, the rise of always-available betting apps and a booming economy. It is turning gambling into a mammoth business. Americans may wager as much as $630bn online by the end of the decade, quadrupling gambling companies’ revenues from sports-betting and virtual casinos. Earlier this year the market capitalisation of Flutter, a company that owns online betting platforms including FanDuel, the biggest sports-betting site in America, overtook the biggest behemoth in physical casinos, Las Vegas Sands. Gambling is changing the nature of sports, too, invigorating fans and enlivening broadcasting. Last year espn, the sports network owned by Disney, launched its own betting app.

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.@TheEconomist is generally good, but this article is horrendous. Online gambling has been cash cow for @bet365 @DraftKings @BetMGM @FanDuel & more. But all of their customers irrationally think they can come out ahead. And lose it all in the process.https://t.co/MSPPNLL6Sr

— Ben Rothke (@benrothke) December 5, 2024

U.S. officials said Tuesday they had not been able to expel Chinese government hackers from telecommunications companies and internet service providers, warning concerned users to turn to encrypted messages and voice calls and giving no timeline for securing carriers.

The downbeat press briefing came more than three months after the first report of Chinese spies deeply penetrating major carriers for espionage, and after the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) met with scores of companies to help them shore up defenses and hunt for hackers in their networks.

“Given where we are in discovering the activity, I think it would be impossible for us to predict a time frame on when we’ll have full of eviction” of hackers from the networks, said Jeff Greene, executive assistant director for cybersecurity at CISA.

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U.S. officials say they still have not expelled Chinese telco hackers https://t.co/udxPjSnK8O

— Dr. David P. Weber, Forensics Professor (@dpweber_fraud) December 3, 2024