Opinion
From 2023 to 2024, I served as a Jesuit Volunteer with the purpose of helping educate high school students. I was repeatedly left awestruck by how easily young people today become dependent on and how effectively they can navigate online spaces.
The early seasons of Stranger Things hit different in 2025. I realized this as I rewatched the series ahead of the final season’s premiere. Watching federal agents sow mistrust and harm children no longer seems like a sci-fi nostalgia trip, and the creeping evil influence of the Upside Down feels more like commentary on current events than a Stephen King pastiche. In fact, in fighting for the world they want and practicing radical solidarity, the kids in Hawkins, Ind., teach us exactly the lesson we need for right now. Stranger Things might even be a modern-day parable.
When the show debuted in 2016, it was a smash hit and proved that Netflix could compete in the original-content arena. Following a group of teenagers and the adults they trust in a fight against the forces of evil, the show owes much of its success to ’80s nostalgia. The group has fought various monsters over its seasons, many of which took cues from Dungeons & Dragons, but Season 4 took a more psychological turn, focusing on a being that feeds on the ongoing trauma people in Hawkins have experienced in their personal lives.
As the Apostle Paul warns us in 1 Timothy 6:9: “But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.” And if you want proof of Paul’s words, look no further than the release of Jeffrey Epstein’s emails.
In early November, Democrats won several key elections up and down the ballot in states like Virginia, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and, perhaps most notably, in New York, where Zohran Mamdani became the first Muslim, South Asian, Democratic Socialist mayor-elect in New York City’s history. For voters concerned about the Republican Party’s authoritarian lurch, it was a reminder that political wins on the left are still possible.
Let’s take a quick trip back to the fall of 2016. Justin Bieber, Drake, and Twenty-One Pilots are topping the charts. All the cool kids are bottle-flipping. And almost every adult I know is falling in line to vote for Donald Trump. I’m from the western side of Michigan, and my home county went to Trump by almost 30 percentage points.
I was just starting to develop political opinions at that time, but it shocked me how so many people—who I knew cared deeply about their own moral lives—could countenance voting for a candidate who made a mockery of Christian values like forgiveness and marital fidelity.
On Nov. 14, more than 100 clergy gathered to raise their voices to demand the closure of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing facility in Broadview, Ill., the release of all detainees, and that the Department of Homeland Security honor federal law by allowing detainees spiritual care.
The Trump administration is blowing boats to pieces off the coast of Venezuela.
At different points this year, I’ve been left with the unsettling feeling that I don’t have the emotional bandwidth to fully process—let alone respond to—all of what’s happening. Early in the year, we all acknowledged that this overwhelmed feeling was by design, part of the Trump administration’s “flood-the-zone” strategy, intended to weaken and divide its opposition.
I’ve been wrestling with this in light of the attacks the Trump administration is orchestrating in Venezuela. On one hand, I’m perplexed at why such a costly, unlawful, and frankly evil operation isn’t garnering louder public outcry; on the other hand, I know there is so much else on people’s minds. It’s not that we don’t care about it all—from Chicago to Palestine to Sudan to so many other places where we know there’s urgent suffering—but there’s only so much outrage we can process before weariness takes over.
And yet I can’t ignore what’s happening in Venezuela
Chicago is in a state of holy rage. Last Friday morning, I stood with many of my colleagues in ministry at a multifaith service outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing facility in Broadview, Ill. It would be better to call this facility an abduction center, as those who are detained there have little to no contact with the outside world.
Every age of Christian art has wrestled with power. From the earliest icons to contemporary murals and prints, artists have used sacred imagery to question authority, confront injustice, and call the church to stay accountable to its own ideals. As chaplain Federico Cinocca writes, protest art can serve as “a precious ally to help theology in its [critical] role and uncover narratives that reinforce marginalization.”
Following a stronger-than-expected showing from Democratic candidates in last week’s elections, there's been a lot of media discourse about what the party can learn from these wins. Much of the focus has been on Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory in New York City.
With a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in place, it is tempting for many in the West to ignore the broader issues that Palestinians still face: Namely, increased settler violence and the state of Israel annexing more Palestinian land. I went to Palestine in August, while the war that was not a war still raged, and I saw firsthand the dire reality of Palestinians in the West Bank.
Whenever government food assistance programs enter the news cycle, the conversation tends to focus on whether recipients are deserving. For example, Republican members of Congress have accused SNAP recipients of not having jobs and wrongly claimed the program benefits undocumented immigrants. Louisiana Rep. Clay Higgins said on X that any SNAP recipients who didn’t “have at least 1 month of groceries stocked” in advance should be ineligible to continue receiving benefits and “stop smoking crack.”
It’s ugly sentiments like this that underlie the Trump administration’s cruel use of hunger as leverage to pressure Democratic senators into signing the Republicans’ continuing resolution, all while Trump himself drags its feet on a court order to make full SNAP payments despite the shutdown. Meanwhile, food pantries are being stretched beyond capacity, with families, children and the elderly going hungry just weeks before Thanksgiving. Given this, the question of whether or not these people are truly deserving is not just political negligence. It is deeply immoral.
This past weekend, funds for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program ran out due to the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. But after two federal judges ruled that the Trump administration could not legally prevent the nation’s largest anti-hunger program from receiving funds, the administration said it would designate $4.65 billion from an Agriculture Department contingency fund to offer partial relief to the 42 million people who rely on SNAP benefits.
On Oct. 28, U.S. Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino sat before U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis, who had ordered him to appear in court after attorneys accused him of throwing tear gas into a crowd in the Little Village neighborhood. Bovino was selected by the Trump administration to lead its immigration raids in Chicago—dubbed “Operation Midway Blitz.”
Working at a peacebuilding organization during times of war, genocide, and political upheaval is a strange kind of calling. At Telos, where I serve as director of marketing and communications, our mission is to equip communities to be peacemakers—working across lines of difference to help all people live in safety, freedom, and dignity.
In Palestine, we welcomed the news of a ceasefire with hope—a fragile, trembling hope. After months of unbearable horror, we allowed ourselves to exhale. For the people of Gaza, it meant a pause in the killing, a night of uneasy quiet, and the possibility of sleep without bombs.
In the past week, the Trump administration brokered a deal that secured the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners. While the terms of the long overdue ceasefire are being contested, this is a groundbreaking accomplishment for which I’m deeply thankful. But this short-term peacemaking victory abroad was quickly undermined by the administration’s bellicose rhetoric and actions at home.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly abused his ability to declare emergencies and seize power under the pretense of maintaining law and order. For example, he declared immigration emergencies to further militarize the U.S.-Mexico border and label drug cartels terrorists; he declared a “trade emergency” to justify and impose costly tariffs; and he declared an energy emergency to greenlight new drilling projects and ignore regulations. Most alarmingly, he has falsely declared a “crime” emergency to federalize and deploy National Guard troops to additional cities.
Are billionaires the reason we can’t have nice things? It’s tempting to think so.
Consider Elon Musk, having been messily ejected from President Donald Trump’s orbit after his DOGE project ended in failure, with little to show for it other than an appalling and growing body count. Or Jeff Bezos, whose reported interference with The Washington Post has helped reduce the one-time standard bearer of ferocious journalism to a husk of its former glory.
As we enter the second week of the government shutdown, paychecks are on hold, flights are being delayed, and the political blame game is in full swing. One way or another, it will end when legislators do what they failed to do in the first place: Pass a spending bill.
Until that happens, I find it’s easy to get lost in the political soup of it all. A nonstop churn of pundits bid for the best take on what the shutdown means, which party will be held responsible, and whether a new spending bill even matters if Congress won’t do its job and enforce. Politicians point fingers, the president posts a racist deepfake, and Washington, D.C.’s bars roll out themed “unhappy hour” menus with discounts for furloughed workers. A round of “Continuing Rye-solutions,” anyone?
I first learned about the theological concept of kairos while studying abroad in Cape Town, South Africa in 1996. South African faith leaders taught me that, as compared to chronos, or time as we know it and traditionally experience it, kairos moments are precipitated by times in which our current reality becomes so pernicious and fraudulent that God can create a moment of opportunity for propitious action and transformation.
As I think about the alarming things we’ve seen in the U.S. this year—eviscerated foreign aid, a gutted federal workforce, tax cuts for the 1% at the expense of Medicaid and food stamps, National Guard troops deployed against U.S. cities, indiscriminate immigration raids, an almost complete retreat on addressing our climate crisis, attacks on media outlets and free speech, and other tactics that mirror authoritarian regimes—I’m increasingly sensing that we are in the midst of a kairos moment. Further signs came to a head this past week with the horror of five mass shootings in one weekend, a costly government shutdown, and an alarming and bizarre summoning of 800 generals and admirals to the White House in which President Donald Trump pledged to dangerously misuse the military to come after the “enemy from within.”