Full story, UPDATED with confirmations that the meeting occurred from the Department of Defense and the nuncio's office. religionnews.com/2026/04/08/p...

i hate when people shame others for mispronouncing a word they’ve only ever read. correct them, fine, but like let’s give grace to readers to talk about what they read.

MAGA has a strong isolationist wing that Carlson, MTG, etc, represent. This wing will be harder to maintain in the MAGA coalition. And Vance is too connected right now with the actions of Trump to win them over. All of which makes me think that Carlson is gonna make a run for the presidency.

Nobody can take away this man's phone?

The president of the United States, 8:06 am ET, threatens Iran: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.“

As MAGA religious groups become more radicalized, it’ll likely be a lot of infighting between the Catholic Integralists, far-right Reformed and evangelical/charismatic Dominionists. Their coalition is actually a lot weaker since each branch feels theologically superior to the other.

Just FYI: Seeing a few protest crowd photos shared on here that appear to be AI-generated. But there’s lots of reporters out there today taking photos and video (especially, it seems, @statesnewsroom.com), so you may wanna keep an eye on what journalists post.

My hometown in SW Virginia (with a roughly 5,000 pop.) had a No Kings protest. It was a small group, but boy did the local paper’s FB post strike up the comment section.

This represents an instance in which certain reports in the media misrepresent the meaning of evangelical Christianeze language. The “die in Christ” language is an overly dramatic call to repentance. www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/pete-h...

3. An odd theological aside: the profound religious chasm between Talarico and these guys notwithstanding, *both* of their faith traditions (PCUSA and CREC, respectively) are Calvinist. Calvinism has a much, much broader spectrum of interpretations — especially politically — than many people think.

My observation is confirmed. www.theatlantic.com/national-sec...

look say whatever you want about Chuck Norris but Walker, Texas Ranger was among the most unhinged, feel good gifts of the 1990s

Reposting on Sister Rosetta Tharpe's Birthday: Ladies don't just sing the blues. They play them, too www.dailykos.com/stories/2021...

I suspect he’s angling for the presidency tbh

Always wild to see how the Fundamentalist-Modernist split just, like, never ended.

A Methodist pastor from my town was previously Epstein’s administrative assistant and property manager during the last year of his life. fox4kc.com/news/former-...

This hits me a little personally because I lived and volunteered In Lusaka for a year back in the pre-pandemic days. I have no words other than this is just wrong.

Jürgen Habermas was surely one of the only great twentieth century intellectuals to tweet actively at the end of his life. And he had some truly iconic ones.

Honestly so happy to hear Sinners won so many awards - easily one of my favorite movies I’ve seen in the past decade.

Michael B. Jordan really took his craft to a different level with his acting in Sinners. Well deserved.

NATO is a defensive alliance whose main goal is deterrence, not a mercenary force

I actually don’t remember much of the “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?” plot, but the soundtrack? Still slaps.

A big takeaway this year has to be that Sinners and One Battle After Another were big, artist driven, swings bankrolled by WB whose future is ultimately unclear. I like living in a world where people like PTA and Ryan Coogler get to make the films they want to make with those resources.

Heath Carter's new article discussing Matthew Sutton's new book, Chosen Land, is an excellent and provocative piece pointing out something that I argue in my last book: the mainline liberal Protestants of today were the "Christian nationalists" of yesterday. www.theatlantic.com/books/2026/0...

Breaking: SC newspaper verifies portions of Trump accuser's story. Textbook journalism. Local journalism. Support your local news outlets. www.postandcourier.com/news/epstein...

Even though I’ve used the term in the past, I’ve slowly come to believe that “Christian nationalism” isn’t really a helpful concept. I’m glad to see others recognize it too. www.theatlantic.com/books/2026/0...

Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is 56, which means he was 10 in the 1979 revolution. That makes him the first leader of Iran without memories of life under the Shah or the revolution itself (beyond kid recollection, at least). Like John Quincy Adams, the first post-revolutionary leader.

writing long pieces that require readers to go under for a long time before coming up for air is an act of defiance against the efficiency economy and grindset maxxing. it’s a fuck you to AI summaries and headline reactions. it’s rebellion. we are fighting for a world where long reads are the norm.

Given that this conflict's cons far outweigh any alleged pros, it falls in either of two camps of Trump's incentives: a) greed, and b) personal grievance. I suspect it falls under the latter. foreignpolicy.com/2026/03/06/i...

Paternal grandfather was a truck driver, and maternal grandfather was a car salesman and a WVA coal miner towards the end of his life.

Read @virginiaheffernan.bsky.social on the "intellectually insecure reactionaries" around Epstein. Much here that I did not know www.thenerve.news/p/epstein-bi...

It’s tiring that we are increasingly stuck organizing our intellectual lives around arguing for the value of having an intellectual life

So was Noam (or at least she and her family have connections with Foursquare).

I met an 18-year old American Freshmen male at St. Andrews, was raised in a liberal Democratic, Jewish home, who thinks that fascism à la Mussolini is an ideal form of government. I’m afraid radicalization it’s not just happening with “lower-educated” males but even with those in elite places.

The owner of the house was a Quaker and one of my ancestors. You can’t choose your tree, but sometimes you have some good ones

If these reports are substantiated, the Middle East is going to be a very different region post-2026. www.reuters.com/world/iran-c...

Sure would be a good time to have not laid off your entire Middle East bureau.

"To Dismantle The Principle Of Birthright Citizenship Would Undermine Both The Legal And Moral Foundations of American Society" — The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (and the Catholic Legal Immigration Network), in this brief

Raffi has publicly identified himself as antifascist for a long while now!! he rocks!!

I know this probably isn’t the most important part of this press conference, but what’s up with the press room’s lighting?

it’s breathtaking to see how this country is in decline by every possible metric

Bluesky is where are all the smart cats are hanging around these days

NEW: I spoke with Justin Giboney, president of the AND Campaign, to try and better understand his criticism of progressive Christians. Things got a little tense.

Fuentes, yesterday: “Our #1 political enemy is women because women constrain everything, every conversation, every man, everything. They have to be imprisoned. They are the ones that are hurting the fertility rate. They're the ones making us sympathetic to poor people, which are also brown people.”

One big difference between UK/Europe and U.S: The accountability towards those associated with Epstein is a whole lot stronger here in Europe than in the U.S.

Trump’s racism is both a) very bad, and b) a political tool. Remember when he spread the lie about Haitians in Ohio during his debate with Kamala Harris? It sucked the air out of any reasonable discourse about that debate. (1/2)

Based on anecdotal evidence, I’m seeing a lot more liberal-to-left-leaning friends in the U.S. becoming more comfortable with the 2nd amendment and owning guns. Is anyone else seeing this?

The word “Apocalyptic” derives from the Greek root-word apokaluptein, meaning to “uncover” or “reveal.” Between the dismantling of Wash Post and the wealthiest and most powerful people implicated in the Epstein files across the political spectrum, there’s an uncovering that truly is apocalyptic.

Intro to History of Jewish Thought Worlds of Music Rise of China Geology Politics of China and Japan

What QAnon conspiracy theorists got right was that there is p*dophila in the highest echelons of our society. But they got two-items wrong: 1, it was being run by leaders of a single political party; and 2, that Donald Trump would destroy the trafficking ring.