Trump has a very important place in the Republican Party. But it’s not to lead it in office. It’s to shape it from the outside, free of the responsibilities of actually governing. He doesn’t need it, and he has done more than any other national figure in the GOP’s history already without it.

There is direct empirical evidence that putting Trump at the center of our party in 2024 is a probable loser, as Trump twice got a smaller percentage of the vote than Mitt Romney. And that was before the failed insurrection wherein Trump violated his oath of office to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.

Trump’s complete control of this venerable right-wing forum is all the more remarkable considering the 2016 poll was won by Ted Cruz… The agenda and speakers this year underscore the Trumpification of this once vibrant, if a bit nutty, group.

The House bill provides $1,400 stimulus checks, on top of the $600 payments issued through the stimulus bill passed in December. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget puts the price tag of this next wave of checks at $422 billion.

The House and Senate passed a budget resolution earlier this month that allows them to craft a $1.9 trillion relief package. The size of the package has stayed the same since it was unveiled by President-elect Biden during the transition period, and after he rebuffed a proposal by a group of 10 Republicans who argued for a $618 billion bill.

The Senate is likely to take up the measure next week, and will need to iron out some wrinkles that have emerged during negotiations. The biggest hitch is a provision in the House measure that would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025. The Senate bill is unlikely to include the increase…

President Biden already announced, two weeks ago, that the U.S. will review arms deals with the kingdom and will no longer support – materially or diplomatically – Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen.

Biden is now trying to walk a tightrope. By releasing the damning intelligence report late on Friday and announcing the new “Khashoggi ban,” the new administration is hoping a mere rebuke and a slap on the wrist will be enough to signal the changing tides of US foreign policy after the Trump administration.

Instead of imposing sanctions on M.B.S., Biden appears ready to let the murderer walk. The weak message to other thuggish dictators considering such a murder is: Please don’t do it, but we’ll still work with you if we have to.

If you haven’t heard, Dr. Seuss is being canceled. The same boneheads who claim that the “mister” in Mr. Potato Head is overly “exclusive,” that Aunt Jemima syrup encouraged racial stereotyping, that math is a vestige of White supremacy and that gender reveal parties are “transphobic,” want you to find racism in the pages of “Hop on Pop.”

The world is a very different place from when Mr. Potato Head used to stare at me with his giant dead eyes or when my younger brother got teased mercilessly because his prized possession was an Easy-Bake Oven. The gender stereotypes of yesteryear are vanishing.

Good riddance.

The minutes when I thought I would have to look at a brownish plastic oval and not clearly know what gender it was were some of the most frightening of my life. I started to sob. I thought, what will they come for next? Soon I won’t know what gender any of the plastics are around my home.

In his introduction, Shore makes the following proposal. “I would like to suggest that many of the stories here, though involving real people, are also a type of encounter with Eliyahu HaNavi. The very fact that the individual appeared at precisely the right moment and offered the help that he or she did shows that the spirit of Eliyahu had entered into them, leading them to fulfill the prophet’s work in the world.”

The most influential prophet in the Hebrew Bible is one you may never have heard of. She is described in only six verses, yet Judaism was transformed by her. Yes, her… for this prophet was a woman. I am talking about Huldah, — hardly a household name — a prophetess in Judah.

The extraordinary bond that existed between the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel began in 1963, ending only when King was assassinated in Memphis five years later… King and Heschel bonded at that conference because both were thoroughly immersed in the words and teaching of the Jewish prophets, and theologically rooted to the Hebrew Bible. Each man also saw in the other a modern prophet.

We’ve seen plenty of Jewish horror movies, mostly having to do with the atrocities of the Holocaust. “The Vigil” has an element of that, too, but it’s mainly a scare-filled psychological thriller steeped in Jewish ritual and lore.

Neal Shusterman is a Jewish literary powerhouse… His latest novel, “Game Changer” (HarperCollins, 2021), is a creative tour de force that follows a teenage linebacker bounding through different alternate realities. In one dimension, segregation still exists in the United States. In another, the male protagonist was born a woman.

From “Romeo and Juliet” to “Titanic,” “West Side Story,” “Brokeback Mountain” and “The Notebook,” star-crossed love stories have been a staple of cinema… While the circumstances in “Leona” aren’t quite as dire, it’s an absorbing drama about a young woman torn between her family and and community on one side and her forbidden relationship, independence, and personal expression on the other.