- Alex Ryvchin for The Free Press: “In Australia, Jew-Hate Is Out of Control”
It was our former neighbors—a Jewish couple in their 80s who had happily lived in the house adjoining ours for decades—who told us exactly what happened.
Both husband and wife woke in the small hours of Friday morning to the sound of an explosion. The former got out of bed to look out the window, and saw colossal flames. Two cars were on fire—one on the curb, one on the driveway of my old home. And my elderly neighbors’ car had been vandalized: “Fuck Jews” was scrawled on one side of it, and “Fuck Israel” on the other. After calling the fire department, he went out with a hose and started fighting the flames himself.
Security footage of the attack was later released. In the video, you can see two people wearing hoods and masks. One pours flammable liquid from my old house all the way across the road, then lights a match and leaps back as it explodes into flame. The other is spray-painting my old garage.
My wife and I visited the scene the next day, and it was devastating to see walls that had kept us safe for five years—walls I whitewashed myself—covered in bright red paint meant to look like blood.
- Aid to the Church in Need: “Massacres mar Christmas celebrations in Nigeria”
- Seth Mandel: Trump’s New Executive Order on Anti-Semitism
Institutions seemingly don’t know how to protect Jews’ civil rights, so Trump is spelling it out for them. Elsewhere in the new order, the president suggests the attorney general should make use of a statute known as the “conspiracy against rights” prohibition. This post-Civil War law was designed to address white supremacist groups preventing black Americans from exercising their political rights. (Trump himself was charged under the statute in one of his Jan. 6-related cases.)
In fact, the masked “globalize the intifada” mobs are quite natural heirs to the Ku Klux Klan, and laws enacted to curb their power are a logical source of ideas for those who actually want to crack down on the post-Oct. 7 goon squads using violence or intimidation to negate the constitutional rights of Jewish students.
The Trump administration is making it very simple for those who want to fight anti-Semitism within existing law. We’re about to find out which institutions oppose the very idea of equal enforcement of the law.
- Naomi Schaefer Riley: The effects of child neglect can be as harmful as child abuse.
It is an increasingly popular idea among certain advocates to suggest that the neglect of children — compared to physical or sexual abuse — is not really a significant problem, and that child welfare agencies should stop investigating neglect and that most cases of neglect could really be solved with material resources provided by the government or private entities.
But as Henderson recounts in his memoir “Troubled,” it was not that his biological mother or his foster families abused him or that they didn’t have enough money to provide for him. Rather it’s that they did not take care of him or put his needs before theirs. In the case of his mother, she was too strung out on drugs to even handle his most basic necessities. And his foster families paid him little attention, allowing him to drink and use drugs from a young age, for instance.
. . .
“Maltreated children often feel shame and may have lower self-esteem and sense of belonging as a consequence of maltreatment, which precipitates withdrawal from their peers,” Kamis said in a press release from the University of Illinois. “Experiencing abuse or neglect may also cause children to anticipate rejection or victimization by their peers, making them less likely to reach out to others.”
- The Oregon Editorial Board: Latest child welfare debacle demands true reform.
Now, add to the list DHS’ failure to protect foster children from sex trafficking, despite clear signs and broad understanding among child welfare experts of many foster kids’ vulnerability to such exploitation.
. . .
After the state brought Grace into the foster-care system at age 11, DHS found new ways for the young girl to slip through the cracks. A counselor at a safe house where Grace stayed told state workers the teen may have been trafficked. A child abuse evaluator and a therapist both previously warned of Grace’s higher risk for being sex trafficked, based on her history and research showing the vulnerability of such abused and traumatized children. But even when Grace disappeared for stretches to meet with various men, caseworkers dismissed the possibility she was being trafficked and failed to screen her for such exploitation.
- Brad Wilcox, Chris Bullivant: American Greatness Depends on Strong Families
Our research at the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) indicates there are three impediments to Americans being able to get married and start a family: money, marriage penalties, and affordable housing.
- Patrick T. Brown: What a realistic pro-parent, pro-worker agenda looks like
If the president were to prioritize, say, an expanded Child Tax Credit and no tax on tips as the two signature victories in a tax bill, that would help Republicans find the requisite revenue options to make this happen. One effort to support families was introduced earlier this month by Utah Rep. Blake Moore, whose Family First Act would bump the current $2,000-per-child Child Tax Credit to $4,200 per child aged 6 and under, and $3,000 per school-age child, while consolidating other child-related benefits in the tax code.
Trump has historically disdained to get into the weeds of legislative dealmaking. But the messy bundle of competing priorities will need to be sorted out among the House GOP caucus before it has a chance of making it to the president’s desk. If there is no leadership from the top, the intra-house fighting will be messy. Arrington, for example, is reported to have rubbed many of his colleagues the wrong way with his heavy handed approach to spending cuts.
15. Institute for Family Studies: Usha’s Awesome Opportunity
Like the Princess of Wales, our lovely new Second Lady will have the opportunity to choose a platform for which she will advocate during her tenure. I hope that Usha chooses exactly what she cares about most, be it harsher punishment for parole violators or saving the American honeybee. But I would also like to humbly suggest to her that she is now presented with a unique opportunity to initiate a Family-Friendly America.
The American family needs encouragement. Morale is low, anxiety is high, and ambivalence is giving way to culture war partisanship. This problem—nebulous and complicated as it is—demands attention. For the sake of men who hope to be good fathers, children who represent the future of American dynamism, and women, especially, either whose lives feel impossibly strung between work and home, or those who are alienated and disregarded in their lives as mothers, or those who are terrified by the prospect of losing everything they’ve worked to build in order to start a family, a public project oriented toward building a family-friendly society has the potential to address the needs of many
- Stephanie H. Murray: Are We Willing to Admit That We Need Parents?
the societal value of parenthood is an integral part of what makes it rewarding. To pretend that it ultimately doesn’t matter how many kids people have as long as they have the number they want is to rob parents of a source of satisfaction common to many other types of work: the knowledge that they are contributing meaningfully to society. It is as absurd as attempting to recruit people to the army while pretending that it doesn’t matter if anyone signs up. If anyone really believed that the world would carry on just fine without doctors, or nurses, or firemen, fewer people would take up those roles, not because there is no personal satisfaction to be gleaned from them, but because that satisfaction is often linked to the purpose they serve in society. There is evidence that “prosocial” motivation plays a significant role in drawing people into the nursing profession, government or the military. This sort of other-centered impulse is, no doubt, only part of the puzzle—I don’t think many people would become nurses for free just for the satisfaction of serving their communities—but it’s an important part nonetheless. People are drawn to work through a mixture of values and practical considerations; their motivations for having kids are likely going to be the same.
17. First Things: A Future for the Family: A New Technology Agenda for the Right”
Technology is meant to empower the human person. We have seen, however, that if left ungoverned, technological advancement too easily comes to hinder human flourishing and threatens the human person and the family. Many of the most important political questions of our day have been prompted by the moral implications of new technologies: Should human life be artificially created or destroyed? Can people change genders? Should digital obscenity be accessible to all ages in the name of free speech? Should jobs that sustain families be automated? We must discern prudent ways to govern technology in order to keep the human person, human dignity, and the common good as the central goals of our politics. We must ensure that new technologies serve human life and the human family, not the other way around.
Our present technologies are not, however, designed to serve the family. They were developed to accomplish military, bureaucratic, and corporate purposes, without regard to effects on families. American technology has undermined the moral authority of parents, the procreative potential of spouses, and the ability of families to shape their communities; it has commodified the data, relationships, and bodies of children; and it has enabled the out-sourcing of jobs that once supported a healthy marriage culture among the poor and working class. This crisis affects almost every aspect of our national life. The family generates society, and a culture of thriving families is an indispensable condition of social health. A nation that is hostile to the family is hostile to itself.
Conservatives should push for policies that support economic dynamism and innovation, but we must recognize that the market has failed to produce a technological order that uplifts the family. Rather, that order too often attacks it at the root.
- Angela Williams: “Baby anonymously surrendered at Mississippi hospital baby box”
A baby who was surrendered to a hospital baby box in Mississippi is waiting to be adopted.
…
The baby is Mississippi’s first completely anonymous safe surrender.
- George F. Will: When trust in government collapses, that’s how you get RFK Jr.
Kennedy’s flights of medical fancy are too numerous and, by now, too familiar to reprise here. They are, however, intensely interesting because they will soon test the degree of abject devotion, or paralyzing fear, that Senate Republicans feel regarding Trump. Kennedy himself, however, is interesting as a social type, and as a symptom.
Actress Elizabeth Tabish, who has been captivating audiences with her depiction of Mary Magdalene in “The Chosen,” is out with a new film that sheds light on an Armenian family’s struggle for freedom.
- On the passing of the blood sister of a Sister of Life, Sister Jordan Rose: Gabrielle “Gabbie” Ann Rehder, 29
In the early morning hours of Sunday, Jan. 12, 2025, on the feast of the Baptism of Our Lord, in the Jubilee Year of Hope, our precious Gabbie saw the face of Jesus and entered eternal life with Him at the age of 29 at her home in Cottonwood, Idaho.
Gabrielle Ann Rehder was born on Aug. 18, 1995, to Joe and Charlene Rehder in Kennewick, Wash. She was baptized Catholic on Aug. 25, 1995, and remained a strong and faithful follower of Jesus her entire life. Her greatest desire was for everyone to know and love Jesus and she lived her life as a testimony to His love.
Wherever Gabbie lived, she was quick to make friends with those around her and she cherished time with her family and friends. Gabbie was diagnosed with a rare mitochondrial illness, Kearns-Sayre Syndrome, in 2009, which she did not allow to break her spirit. She was passionately pro-life, loved politics, and was a fierce defender of the unborn and the suffering. Despite the many trials she faced throughout her life, she remained steadfast in her belief and was an inspiration to all who knew her. Gabbie evangelized by blogging. Her current blog on Substack, “Take Heart”, allowed her to share her journey and impact lives. Gabbie documented her journey in an article published in Imprint magazine, “Anchored in the Heart of God.”
- Father Raymond J. de Souza: Legos are not just for kids anymore.
It’s hard to measure “brand value” precisely, but Lego has been Denmark’s most valuable global brand in recent years. It is expected though to be overtaken soon by Novo Nordisk, the pharmaceutical giant that makes Ozempic and other diabetes and weight-loss drugs. In 2024, Novo Nordisk’s market capitalization was greater than the annual GDP of Denmark. There are few more powerful metaphors for decadent decline than the move from innocent play (Lego) to obesity treatment (Novo Nordisk).
Lego’s expansion is powered by the shift from generic bricks inviting a child’s imagination, to specific puzzles requiring an adult’s imitation. A generic set of bricks can last multiple generations, which is sentimentally satisfying but less lucrative. Another set need not be purchased. After assembling the Millennium Falcon, it’s done. Time to move on to the Sail Barge of Jabba the Hutt — and another $650.
- Grazie Christie: Bible sales are up. Here’s why that makes sense.
The thousands of years of prophecy, revelation, poetry, and adventure stories in one thick book whose sales have topped 5 billion over the centuries is not just a blueprint for the glories of Western society. It is also full of meaning. The loneliness, anxiety, sadness, dysfunction, and fragmentation that characterizes so much of modern Western man’s life can be laid at the feet of an absence of meaning. Why are we here? Where are we going? How are we meant to treat ourselves and others on the way to our goal? What are the enabling principles of a well-lived life?
The Bible has the answers that fill us with hope, answers that show us how to live courageously in a harsh world full of bitter and unavoidable truths.