Religious leaders, including some who spoke at President Trump’s inauguration, are calling on Congress to protect foreign aid that helps the needy across the globe.
Trump’s 2018 budget proposal calls for $25.6 billion in funding for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. That’s a decrease of $10.1 billion, or 28 percent, from the 2017 budget.
My primary medium is portrait photography, and during my sessions I draw people out by asking questions about their very literal story. What is delightful for you in this season? What is hard? What I’ve found happen in these conversations is that decades of untended pain or suppressed pleasures begin to break forth, find air, and heal as needed or grow.
Judge Watson’s ruling came from a lawsuit filed by Hawaii, according to the Guardian. In the case, the state of Hawaii claimed that the ban hurt Hawaii’s tourism industry and negatively affected businesses and universities’ ability to recruit talented individuals from the banned countries. They continued to point out that the ban hurts families bringing up the example of Ismail Elshikh — an imam of the Muslim Association of Hawaii — whose Syrian mother-in-law’s visa is still on hold and might not denied with the new restrictions of the ban.
On March 16, the Trump administration released President Donald Trump’s proposal for the 2018 federal budget, revealing a list of significant cuts to various federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the State Department, and the Department of Education.
I thought about my own will to division — how I was inclined to cut out from my circle of care those who, it seemed to me, had chosen to elect leaders who relish division, scapegoating, dog whistling, and control. I thought about our Buddhist siblings’ reminder that there is no separation between these hatreds — that to choose division myself is to cut out a part of our general body that is central to the compassion and fierce love through which lasting change comes.
Enrollment has dropped at more than a quarter of Jewish Community Center preschools since a wave of threats against JCCs began in early January.
“I’m starting with the most difficult news, which is simply that more JCCs indicated something of a decline — but the majority have not,” said David Posner of the Jewish Community Center Association of North America, sharing the results of the umbrella group’s latest member survey.
The fight to end sexual harassment and assault in the workplace continues. In 2016, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was asked to investigate 6,758 claims of sexual harassment — a number that has been steadily declining over the past several years (7,944 cases in 2010). Only about half of the claims result in charges. According to a Huffington Post YouGov poll, only 27 percent of the people who experienced sexual harassment reported the incident.
Here is the power of story: to make people pay attention and be fully present. The only irony is they are fully present in a story that is not their own. We weep for a Dumbledore who never lived, thrill at a first kiss that wasn't ours, and experience the terror of being chased by a psychotic killer while safely resting a theater seat.
If you don’t need or want insurance, some ask, why should you have to pay for other people’s coverage?
I know people who think this way, and they resent having the government obligate them to pay into the system.
Understanding that many Americans struggle and pay a high cost under the Affordable Care Act, we cannot really blame some for holding this position. But responsible citizenship compels us to take a broader view.
Following a report that President Trump is thinking of scrapping the ambassador position assigned to combat global anti-Semitism, a bipartisan group of 167 U.S. House members sent a letter asking him to appoint one soon.
The letter, released on March 13, asks Trump to “maintain and prioritize” the appointment, in a time of rising anti-Semitism.