While President Donald Trump has been stymied on many fronts — the legal challenges to his refugee ban, the defeat of the AHCA, and the complete lack so far of any legislative accomplishments — Jeff Sessions is firmly in place as the nation’s top law enforcement officer. And he has been busy.
In so many of the gospel stories that are familiar to us, women were behind the scenes — always there, always present, always faithful — but nearly always in the background and hardly ever mentioned by the men in the stories, and certainly not the ones writing the stories. Their testimony as women was not even admissible in court under Jewish law; the word of a woman had no public credibility in that patriarchal culture. But God chose to reveal the miracle of Jesus' resurrection first to women. They were then told to report the astonishing news of the empty tomb to the men.
It wasn’t fake news and couldn’t be called that; we all watched it together. FBI Director James B. Comey, testifying before the House Intelligence Committee, said that neither the FBI or the Justice Department had any information that President Barack Obama ever ordered Donald Trump’s phones tapped at Trump Tower. “I have no information that supports those tweets,” Comey said.
Overall, states would be forced to absorb $880 billion in Medicaid cuts to prevent the reduction or elimination of Medicaid services, something states are in no position to do according to governors from both parties. The bill would cut almost $900 billion from Medicaid over ten years, mostly to pay for changes that would benefit high-income people and corporations.
And in a morally shocking move, it is not just the poor, but the older and sicker poor people who will fare the worst under the new law.
The growing momentum behind the Matthew 25 Pledge has reminded me of my old friend and mentor, Mary Glover, who helped me understand the deepest meaning of that Gospel text. She was not a theologian or formal biblical commentator, but she showed and taught me the meaning of this Scripture more than four decades ago. Matthew 25 brought me to Christ out of the student movements of my time and led me to help begin Sojourners. We moved into one of the poorest parts of Washington, D.C., in the neighborhood where Mrs. Glover lived.