Author: Reporter

Recalling Jesus’ birth in a stable, Pope Francis rebuked those “ravenous” for wealth and power at the expense of the vulnerable, including children, in a Christmas Eve homily decrying war, poverty, and greedy consumerism. In the splendor of St. Peter’s Basilica, Francis presided over the evening Mass attended by about 7,000 faithful, including tourists and pilgrims, who flocked to the church on a warm evening and took their place behind rows of white-robed pontiffs. Francis drew lessons from the humility of Jesus’ first hours of life in a manger. “While animals feed in their stalls, men and women in...

The 117th Congress opened with the unfathomable January 6, 2021, mob siege of the Capitol and is closing with unprecedented federal criminal referrals of the former president over the insurrection, all while conducting one of the most consequential legislative sessions in recent memory. Lawmakers are wrapping up the two-year session having found surprisingly common ground on big bills, despite enduring bitter political divisions that haunt the halls, and the country, after the bloody Capitol attack by supporters of the defeated president, Donald Trump, that threatened democracy. The Congress passed monumental legislation — including a bill making one of the...

Congress gave final passage to legislation on December 23 changing the arcane law that governs the certification of a presidential contest, the strongest effort yet to avoid a repeat of Donald Trump’s violence-inflaming push to reverse his loss in the 2020 election. The House passed an overhaul of the Electoral Count Act as part of its massive, end-of-the-year spending bill, after the Senate approved identical wording on December 22. The legislation now goes to President Joe Biden for his signature. Biden hailed the provisions’ inclusion in the spending bill in a statement on December 23, calling it “critical bipartisan...

A word, “Hope,” is stitched onto a throw pillow in the little hilltop farmhouse. Photographs of children and grandchildren speckle the walls. In the kitchen, an envelope is decorated with a hand-drawn heart. “Happy Birthday, My Love,” it reads. Out front, past a pair of century-old cottonwoods, the neighbors’ cornfields reach into the distance. John Kraft loves this place. He loves the quiet and the space. He loves that you can drive for miles without passing another car. But out there? Out beyond the cornfields, to the little western Wisconsin towns turning into commuter suburbs, and to the cities...

“Gaslighting,” behavior that is mind manipulating, grossly misleading, and downright deceitful, was selected by Merriam-Webster on November 28 as word of the year for 2022. Lookups for the word on merriam-webster.com increased 1,740% in 2022 over the year before. But something else happened. There was not a single event that drove significant spikes in curiosity, as it usually goes with the chosen word of the year. The gaslighting was pervasive. “It’s a word that has risen so quickly in the English language, and especially in the last four years, that it actually came as a surprise to me and...