PragerU is also supplying the multimedia content for the Freedom Truck Mobile Museums, a travelling exhibition of touch-screen displays, Revolutionary War artifacts, and A.I. slop that will chug across the country on tractor-trailers throughout 2026, in celebration of the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. It seems that the battle over who defines good and evil—or, at least, over who defines American history—will be waged, in part, from the helm of an eighteen-wheeler.
Prager, who is seventy-seven, is an observant Jew who sees evangelical Christians as natural allies in his pursuit of “transforming America into a faith-based nation,” as he once wrote. (He has also lamented what he termed Jewish “bigotry” toward evangelical Christians, whose “support, and often even love, of the Jewish people and Israel is the most unrequited love I have ever seen on a large scale.”) In 2009, decades into a successful career in conservative talk radio, he co-founded PragerU, in order to provide what he called a “free alternative to the dominant left-wing ideology in culture, media, and education.” PragerU has received major funding from hard-right benefactors, including Betsy DeVos’s family foundation and the billionaire fracking brothers Dan and Farris Wilks. According to its most recent tax filing—which describes PragerU’s purpose as “marketing and producing educational content for all ages, 4-104, with a focus on a pro-American, Judeo-Christian message”—it received more than sixty-six million dollars in donations in 2024. (In November of that year, Prager sustained a severe spinal-cord injury in a fall that left him paralyzed below the shoulders; he has since resumed making video content for the PragerU website, and composed part of “If There Is No God” by dictation.)
Prager’s nonprofit is just one of dozens of conservative organizations, many of them Christian, that are named as “partners” in the America 250 Civics Education Coalition, which is overseen by Linda McMahon, the Education Secretary. The coalition has the secular task of developing programming for America’s birthday, such as PragerU’s Founders Museum and the Freedom Trucks, the latter of which received a fourteen-million-dollar grant from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services. (In March, President Trump signed executive orders to dismantle both the I.M.L.S. and the D.O.E.; they remain alive, albeit in shrunken, ideologized versions of their former selves.) Other America 250 partners include both of the major pro-Trump think tanks (the America First Policy Institute and the Heritage Foundation), a Christian liberal-arts school (Hillsdale College), the Supreme Court’s favorite conservative-Christian legal-advocacy group (the Alliance Defending Freedom), the Christian-right-aligned church of Charlie Kirk (Turning Point USA), and something called Priests for Life.
According to a D.O.E. press release, the America 250 coalition is “dedicated to renewing patriotism, strengthening civic knowledge, and advancing a shared understanding of America’s founding principles in schools across the nation.” Of course, one of America’s founding principles, taught in every civics class, is the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which might seem to frown on the knitting together of so many religious organizations and public funds intended to advance civic education.
“Real patriotic education,” McMahon said, at the opening of the Founders Museum last year, “means that, just as our founders loved and honored America, so we should honor them, while deeply learning and earnestly debating, still, their ideas.” One way to take McMahon up on this challenge is to deeply learn what James Madison wrote, in 1785, after a bill arose in Virginia’s General Assembly to establish a taxpayer provision for “Teachers of the Christian Religion.” In a petition to his colleagues in the Assembly, Madison asked, “Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?” He abhorred the proposal as “a melancholy mark” of “sudden degeneracy.” “Instead of holding forth an Asylum to the persecuted,” he wrote, “it is itself a signal of persecution.” A governing body that would permit such an incursion on the free exercise of religion was one that “may sweep away all our fundamental rights,” Madison warned. The bill died.
Although PragerU has won fans at the highest levels of federal and state government, its educational content and short-form videos are reviled across many chambers of the internet, where the Prager name—attached to videos with titles such as “DEI Must Die,” “Preferred Pronouns or Prison,” “Multiculturalism: A Bad Idea,” and “Is Fascism Right or Left?”—has become synonymous with MAGA-brand disinformation. (PragerU claims that its videos receive tens of millions of views per quarter, but these metrics have not been independently verified.) A PragerU Kids video called “How to Think Objectively,” which was reportedly shown in Houston public schools, provides the thinnest façade for a lesson in climate-change denial. Democratic socialism and, especially, immigration are scourges of the Prager-verse, which has attempted to undermine the constitutional provision of birthright citizenship and cranked out endless pro-ICE videos since the Department of Homeland Security began its violent occupations of Minneapolis and other major U.S. cities.
Carnival events are popular for their spectacular and enormous floats, as well as the crafted outfits worn, such as Black masking Indians, whose beaded and bejeweled costumes are topped with feathered headdresses, or paradegoers walking the French Quarter in homemade costumes that capture the unique spirit of the Big Easy.
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This is a photo gallery curated by AP photo editors.
BRUSSELS — Belgium summoned the U.S. ambassador on Tuesday over a social media post where he accused the country of antisemitic prosecution of Jewish Belgians, the kingdom’s foreign minister said.
“Labeling Belgium as antisemitic is not just wrong, it’s dangerous disinformation that undermines the real fight against hatred,” said Belgian foreign minister Maxime Prévot in a post on X on Monday. The summons is a rare move between staunch allies.
“An ambassador accredited to Belgium has a responsibility to respect our institutions, our elected representatives, and the independence of our judicial system,” Prévot said. “Personal attacks against a Belgian minister and interference in judicial matters violate basic diplomatic norms.”
National broadcaster VRT said Belgian authorities are investigating whether three men in Antwerp were performing circumcisions without certified medical training.
U.S. Ambassador Bill White said on a post on X that this investigation was “unacceptable harassment of the Jewish community here in Antwerp and in Belgium.
He said he would visit the three accused men in Antwerp and asked Belgium’s minister of health to join him.
“You must make a legal provision to allow Jewish religious MOHELS to perform their duties here in Belgium,” he said, using a Hebrew term for a Jewish officiant trained in circumcision, a central tenet of the faith.
Without it, a Jewish person typically can’t have a bar mitzvah, a Jewish wedding or be buried in a Jewish cemetery.
Prévot, the foreign minister, said that “Belgian law permits ritual circumcision when performed by a qualified physician under strict health and safety standards” and that he would not comment on an ongoing investigation.
On Ash Wednesday, Feb. 18, Southern California Catholics, and Christians of multitude denominations, will wait in line to get a smudge of ashes on their foreheads, and be reminded that they are sinners, yes, who can redeem themselves if they, as Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez said in a recent homily, become “people who heal, make peace, and bear witness to his love.”
But for the millions of faithful in the archdiocese and at parishes and houses of worship from Orange County to Riverside all the way to Gomez’s downtown L.A. cathedral, the first day of Lent finds many in crisis: those undocumented in fear of or already in detention; those working to support them and their families; and Catholics who continue to support the Trump administration’s policies on immigration, abortion and same-sex marriage.
Still some Christians will enter this liturgical season grappling with deeply-held beliefs they say run counter to the government’s massive effort under the Trump administration to deport millions of immigrants in the U.S. illegally.
While that effort, federal officials say, has resulted in mass arrests of the most violent of criminal undocumented immigrants, it has also resulted in fear and anger over the actions of a federal dragnet that immigrants, their advocates and many religious leaders say has tipped too far into violence and cruelty.
Lent arrives as federal agents continue their actions, and many in local Southern California cities push back.
Gomez exhorted Catholics to “help America recover her soul,” during his homily at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels on Feb. 4, during a Holy Hour of Prayer for Peace in response to the shooting death by immigration agents of nurse Alex Pretti in Minnesota.
Archbishop Jose Gomez calls for a holy hour of Peace to renew the nation, emphasizing prayer as a vital step to healing a world wounded by division and violence on Wednesday, February 4, 2026. (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
Isaac Cuevas, director of immigration and public affairs for the archdiocese, heard Goméz call for upholding the rights and dignity of everyone in the United States and not “based on the color of our skin, or the language we speak, or for not having the proper documents.” He also voiced his support for the Dignity Act (HR 4333) in limbo in Congress.
When the Trump administration ramped up its immigration enforcement in Los Angeles last June, Cuevas said there was no question what the church’s response would be.
“We understood clearly that our role was to accompany, to inform, and to support. That has taken shape through ‘Know Your Rights/Risk’ efforts, connecting families with trusted legal support, organizing prayer opportunities, and preparing clergy and parish leaders to respond pastorally if situations arise.”
“The Church’s engagement in public life really begins with our mission, not politics,” Cuevas said. “Our role is to uphold the dignity of every human person and to accompany those who are vulnerable. At times that includes speaking into public policy, especially when laws or enforcement practices impact families, human dignity, or the common good.”
Unlike its Episcopal kin, whose social justice arm, Sacred Resistance, has been in the forefront of anti-ICE vigils and protests, Catholic leaders’ primary work remains pastoral, Cuevas said.
“We walk with people, provide resources, and help form consciences rooted in Catholic social teaching,” he said.
In these days where many in the community feel vulnerable that teaching goes beyond dogma into concrete action, such as standing with neighbors who are afraid, and responding with faith, not fear, Cuevas added.
In his Lenten message this year, Bishop of the Diocese of San Bernardino Alberto Rojas, invited people to pray “with your strength and sincerity” for people who are suffering.
He said the treatment of immigrants happening now is a “violation of human dignity.”
“While we as a Church do not condone unlawful entry into the country, the brutal way authorities are enforcing the law is unacceptable and does not recognize immigrants as human beings, much less as the children of God that they are.”
A season of fear
Fresh off marching with students who walked out of school recently in protest of the raids, Father Francisco Gómez, pastor of Our Lady of Soledad Parish in Coachella, is expecting a busy Ash Wednesday this year. But it’s the immigration raids themselves that have caused so much fear and anxiety among his parishioners that he thinks it’s likely his parish will not see numbers like last year — 10,000 strong who came to be marked with ash on their foreheads.
“It’s precisely because of the fear,” he says, as he reflects on the beginning of Lenten season in which many are anxious about immigration actions that have roiled communities.
Instead, his church has created little packets so people can observe Lent at home. There’s a little guide with prayers and readings, and a tiny bag with ashes inside.
Gómez has faith they’ll get to those people who are too afraid to physically go to church in person to receive the ash. Perhaps someone’s neighbor will deliver a packet. A family, a friend. Those packets will get to people who need them, he said.
Ash Wednesday packets that Our Lady of Soledad in Coachella has prepared for parishioners who cannot make the Ash Wednesday Mass in person. (Courtesy, The Rev. Francisco Gómez)
Gómez enters the season highly attuned to the symbols of Lent, precisely because of the immigration raids that have stirred his community and the nation. He’s also thinking about the impact on a democracy, one where he never thought he’d see such violence amid mass immigration operations.
“The primary symbol of Lent is the desert,” Gómez said, noting the nexus between the ancient tradition of 40 years in the wilderness to get to the promised land and the 40 days Jesus is said to have spent in the desert. “The journey of those 40 years is a journey of being in a place of slavery to being in a place of freedom.”
His message is that those being persecuted can also see themselves in a Christ who suffered, from a public who condemned him to his journey to crucifixion.
“Yet, there is a resurrection. There will be a resurrection,” he said.
Over the past year, Gómez said has seen the struggle play out in his community. And as a season of fasting, abstinence, prayer and almsgiving descends, he’s sensitive to the impacts.
“The cracks that I see are people hovering on the edge of despair,” he said, reflecting on the stress of potential arrest or deportation. “People who are considering suicide. Domestic violence. Students not going to school. Those are the cracks that I see.
“On the other side, I see solidarity. Neighbors who get groceries, helping others, creating spaces where people can talk out their fears.”
Prayer is ‘not passive’
Pasadena’s Clergy Community Coalition, made up of 200 church and community leaders, have regularly shown up at rallies and protests organized by No Kings, Indivisible and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON).
Sacred Resistance, the social justice arm of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, is supporting 60 families impacted by the ICE raids, and members accompany people to immigration proceedings, show up in court and detention centers, and organize public, peaceful actions to confront dehumanizing immigration policies, said Rev. Canon Jaime Edwards-Acton.
It’s a fight for the long haul, he added.
“We are a people of faith and conscience, standing together against injustice. Rooted in our call to resist evil and protect the vulnerable, we support immigrants, refugees, and marginalized communities through advocacy, accompaniment, and action.”
Diocese of San Bernardino Bishop Alberto Rojas places ashes on the forehead of a church member Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2023, during a Mass in the chapel at Our Lady Queen of Peace Catholic Cemetery in Colton. For Christians, Ash Wednesday begins the season of Lent that leads to Easter. (Photo by Watchara Phomicinda, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)
For Catholics, Cuevas said there are both simple and meaningful ways to respond, especially during Lent, with its three pillars of prayer, fasting and almsgiving.
“Prayer is central, but it is not passive,” he said. “We are encouraging people to stay informed, support reputable organizations providing legal and humanitarian assistance, accompany families when appropriate, and advocate in ways that are grounded in charity and truth. Even small acts of solidarity, like helping a family access resources or simply showing up with compassion, can make a real difference.”
Cuevas said his work brings him face to face with Catholics impacted by immigration enforcement who are looking to the church as a place of refuge and trust.
“There is deep gratitude for the church’s presence, but also an honest desire for continued accompaniment and clarity,” he said. “People want to know they are not alone, and that their church will continue to walk with them in both word and action.”
Catholic groups that have long championed migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers include CLINIC, or Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc., and Catholic Charities of Los Angeles. LA Voice, a multi-faith group that organizes people “to reflect the dignity of all people,” and it often works with the archdiocese, as well as more than 500 congregations in 18 counties and 28 cities.
A church’s role in American life
Gómez, of Coachella, said he’s been pleased to see the Catholic Church’s stance on the immigration actions sweeping the region and the nation. But he noted that there is much work to do.
That includes continuing to reach out across divides in a polarized nation.
“The church is not against immigration enforcement but it will always be against violence,” he said.
The shooting deaths by federal agents of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis may have prompted a “real sense of questioning” that it’s gone too far, he said.
But even as church leaders urge compassion, this year’s Lenten season coincides with a political and cultural battle over immigration policy playing out from the Capitol to Southern California.
White House Press Secretary Katherine Leavitt, herself a practicing Roman Catholic, said during an October press briefing, that “I would reject there is inhumane treatment of illegal immigrants in the United States under this administration,” adding that the Biden administration’s more lax border security policy was a form of inhumane treatment of immigrants.
President Donald Trump himself has often spoken fondly of Catholics. A majority of American Catholics — nearly 60% — supported him for the office.
But on Friday, more than 40 Catholic Democrats in Congress released a statement listing ideals from Catholic social teaching they say informs their considerations of immigration policy.
“First, we affirm that people have the right to migrate to sustain their lives and the lives of their families,” the statement reads. “Sacred Scripture consistently reminds us of our obligation toward the vulnerable and displaced. Jesus himself identifies with the migrant when he says, ‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me.’”
The statement came after House Speaker Mike Johnson defended Trump’s mass deportation agenda early this month. Citing Bible verses about a nation’s borders, critics called out Johnson, a Baptist, for espousing a dangerous Christian nationalism.
Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, signed the statement with other California Democrats, including Reps. Nancy Pelosi, Robert Garcia of Long Beach, Sam Liccardo of San Jose, Gil Cisneros of Covina and Nanette Barragan of San Pedro.
“As a Catholic, I follow Jesus’ teachings in Matthew 25:35,” Lieu said, referring to the Bible verse that begins, “For I was hungry, and you gave me food.”
“I believe in Christ’s teachings of advancing the common good by protecting the most vulnerable and individuals in need,” Lieu continued. “The Trump Administration has failed in these endeavors for those seeking refuge by exhibiting indifference and cruelty. We must continue to embrace ideals of justice, mercy, and human dignity while tackling the challenges of immigration.”
That congressional rebuke of Johnson comes after similar calls from U.S. religious leaders.
Protesters march as they pray and sing from a Catholic church to Montebello City Park, as a sign of solidarity with immigrant families impacted by ICE enforcement in Montebello on Aug. 7, 2025. (Connor Terry, Contributing Photographer)
On Jan. 28, Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and considered a conservative leader, called for the Trump administration to be “generous in welcoming immigrants,” and encouraged other leaders to pray “for reconciliation where there is division, for justice where there are violations of fundamental rights, and for consolation for all who feel overwhelmed by fear or loss.”
Three Catholic cardinals protested Trump’sforeign policy on Jan. 19.
More than 150 Episcopal bishops on Jan. 31 called for the suspension of ICE and Border Patrol operations in Minnesota and anywhere in the country militarized enforcement is in place. Addressing the American people, the leaders encouraged people to use their community power, financial power, political power and knowledge to show up for each other and their neighbors.
Irreconcilable differences?
Sociologist Richard Wood, president of the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at USC, said both the Biden and current Trump administrations have included substantial numbers of Catholics in cabinet-level leadership positions, with the Biden administration encompassing slightly more.
“Nonetheless, both administrations experienced tensions with the Catholic Church — Biden especially around issues of gender and sexuality, abortion, and American support for the brutal Israeli assault on Gaza in response to the brutal Hamas assault of Oct. 7, 2023; Trump especially around immigrant rights, threats to Greenland, and attacks on democratic institutions,” Wood said.
Among the Catholics in the second Trump administration: Vice President J.D. Vance, Leavitt and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
But having the first American Pope lead the world’s Catholics takes away an oft-used excuse that a Pope “just doesn’t understand America,” supporters said, and lends his criticism of the Trump presidency more weight. Pope Leo XIV was born Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago in 1955.
White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers brushed away the Pope’s criticism of Trump and pointed to the president’s support among Catholics, saying in a Politico, that “in just 10 short months, the president has delivered unprecedented victories for Catholic Americans.”
Pope Leo XIV holds his weekly general audience in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican, Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Pope Leo has not backed down, saying two months ago, at an address at the Vatican, that “ever more inhuman measures are being adopted —even celebrated politically — that treat these ‘undesirables’ as if they were garbage and not human beings.”
What the effect this divide between the White House and the Vatican can be seen in recent polling data that show large declines in support of Trump administration policies on immigration among both Catholics and Evangelical Christians, Wood said.
But both political parties have elements in them with real issues with religion and secularism, he added.
“The Democratic Party, because significant sectors of the party see religion as a problem and embrace a narrowly secular worldview that sees no value in religion, almost a kind of ‘secular fundamentalism,” he said. “And the Republican Party, because significant sectors affirm a worldview that falls well outside of traditional religious respect for the common good, the human dignity of all, and a reasonable level of civility in public life and diplomacy.”
Meanwhile, Gómez, the Coachella priest, who belongs to a congregation of missionaries in the Catholic Church who work with the poor in the U.S. and Latin America, readies for Ash Wednesday.
As he prepares, he is reflecting on a mission that relentlessly serves the poor and the persecuted – which in this moment means meeting a moment to serve immigrants.
“We have pledged our lives to those who stand on those margins. And those on the edge of death,” he said.
NEW YORK (AP) — Activists planned protests at more than two dozen Target stores around the United States on Wednesday to pressure the discount retailer into taking a public stand against the 5-week-old immigration crackdown in its home state of Minnesota.
ICE Out Minnesota, a coalition of community groups, religious leaders, labor unions and other critics of the federal operation, called for sit-ins and other demonstrations to continue at Target locations for a full week. Target’s headquarters are located in Minneapolis, where federal officers last month killed two residents who had participated in anti-ICE protests, and its name adorns the city’s major league baseball stadium and an arena where its basketball teams plays.
“They claim to be part of the community, but they are not standing up to ICE,” said Elan Axelbank, a member of the Minnesota chapter of Socialist Alternative, which describes itself as a revolutionary political group. He organized a Wednesday protest outside a Target store in Minneapolis’ Dinkytown commercial district.
Demonstrations also were scheduled in St. Paul, Minnesota, Boston, Chicago, Honolulu, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Raleigh, North Carolina, San Diego, Seattle and other cities, as well as in suburban areas of Minnesota, California and Massachusetts. Target declined Wednesday to comment on the protests.
Target first became a bulls-eye for critics of the Trump administration’s surge in immigration enforcement activity after a widely-circulated video showed federal agents detaining two Target employees in a store in the Minneapolis suburb of Richfield last month. Luis Argueta, a spokesperson for Unidos Minnesota, an immigrant-led social justice advocacy organization that is part of the CE Out Minnesota coalition, said his group is focusing its protests on the Richfield store.
One of the demands of Wednesday’s protests is for Target to deny federal agents entry to stores unless they have judicial warrants authorizing arrests.
Some lawyers have argued that anyone, including U.S. Border Patrol and Immigration and Customers Enforcement agents without signed warrants, can enter public areas of a business as they wish. Public areas include restaurant dining sections, open parking lots, office lobbies and shopping aisles, but not back offices, closed-off kitchens or other areas of a business that are generally off-limits to the public and where privacy would be reasonably expected, those lawyers say.
Target has not commented publicly on the detention of the store employees. CEO Michael Fiddelke, who became Target’s chief executive on Feb. 2, sent a video message to the company’s 400,000 workers two days after a Border Patrol agent and a Customs and Border Protection officer shot and killed Minneapolis resident Alex Pretti on Jan. 24.
Fiddelke said the “violence and loss of life in our community is incredibly painful,” but he did not mention the immigration crackdown or the fatal shootings of Pretti, an ICU nurse at a medical center for U.S. veterans in Minneapolis, and Renee Good, a mother of three fired on in her car by an ICE agent.
Fiddelke was one of 60 CEOs of Minnesota-based companies who, in the wake of Pretti’s death, signed an open letter “calling for an immediate deescalation of tensions and for state, local and federal officials to work together to find real solutions.”
The protests over its alleged failure to oppose the immigration crackdown in Minnesota come a year after Target faced protests and boycotts over the company’s decision to roll back its diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. At the time, critics said the decision marked a betrayal of Target’s retail giant’s philanthropic commitment to fighting racial disparities and promoting progressive values in liberal Minneapolis and beyond.
The retail chain also is struggling with a persistent sales malaise. Critics have complained of disheveled stores that are missing the budget-priced flair that long ago earned the retailer the nickname “Tarzhay.”
While Wednesday’s protests targeted a tiny fraction of the company’s nearly 2,000 stores, the negative attention serves as another distraction from Target’s business, according to Neil Saunders, managing director of the retail division of market research firm GlobalData.
“The agenda has been hijacked by this,” Saunders said. “And it is a bit of a distraction for Target that they’d rather not have.”
In recent days, a national coalition of Mennonite congregations organized roughly a dozen demonstrations inside and outside of Target stores across the country, singing and urging Target to publicly call Congress to defund Immigration and Customs Enforcement among other demands.
A spokesperson for Mennonite Action said the coalition was not formally connected to Ice Out but following the lead of organizers in Minneapolis.
The Rev. Joanna Lawrence Shenk, associate pastor at First Mennonite Church of San Francisco, said the group did not plan any actions on Wednesday but was mapping out weekend singalong events at Targets in a handful of towns and cities, including Pittsburgh and Harrisonburg, Virginia. She estimated that by the end of the weekend more than 1,000 congregation members will have participated.
Shenk noted that the Mennonites sing “This Little Light of Mine” and other gospel songs and hymns.
“The singing was an expression of our love for immigrant neighbors who are at risk right now and who are also a part of our congregation,” she said. “For us, it’s not just standing in solidarity with others but it’s also protecting people who are vulnerable.”
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The cardinals’ statement was striking for several reasons. Atypically, it showed U.S. prelates weighing in on foreign affairs. (McElroy is an expert; he earned a Ph.D. in political science at Stanford, with a thesis on morality and U.S. foreign policy.) It came directly from the leaders of three archdioceses, not from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops—which has about four hundred members and a complex process for the drafting of such statements—and it was released a week after that group’s new president, Archbishop Paul Coakley, of Oklahoma City, met with President Donald Trump and Vice-President J. D. Vance, at the White House. And the new Pope is close to all three of its authors: Tobin; Cupich, who served alongside Prevost in Rome in the powerful Dicastery for Bishops; and McElroy, whom Prevost, when he was the head of that office, tapped last year for the high-profile role of Archbishop in the nation’s capital. Their statement suggested that, even if Leo is not the “anti-Trump,” as his statements on peace, immigration, the climate, and the rule of law have led a number of observers to propose, his compadres in the U.S. are speaking up in a strong, clear voice.
On Friday, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, in Manhattan, will host the installation of a new Archbishop of New York, who is likely to round out what might be called Leo’s Team U.S.A. Ronald Hicks, the former Bishop of Joliet, Illinois, succeeds Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who reached the nominal retirement age of seventy-five last year. Hicks was born in 1967, grew up in the placid Chicago suburb of South Holland, studied at a seminary on the Southwest Side, spent a year in Mexico, and served in the Archdiocese of Chicago’s parishes and seminaries. In 2005, at the age of thirty-seven, he went to El Salvador, where he worked as a regional director of Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos (Our Little Brothers and Sisters), a group of residences for orphans and at-risk children which was founded by an American missionary in Mexico in 1954.
Hicks spent five years in El Salvador—a long time for a cleric on the executive track. He has said that his favorite saint is Óscar Romero, the Archbishop of San Salvador, who, as Hicks put it, “walked with his people for justice and peace.” (Romero denounced the military regime in a series of Sunday homilies broadcast nationally on the radio—in effect, scrawling “no” on the church steps. He was murdered while saying Mass, in 1980; in 2018, Pope Francis canonized him.) After returning to Chicago, Hicks served as Cardinal Cupich’s vicar-general, or deputy, then as a bishop, and was known for unshowy efficiency. The initial take on him has been that he is akin to Pope Leo, a Chicagoan who spent his thirties working with the poor as a missionary in Peru and then brought that experience to a series of leadership roles. Hicks has been involved in prison ministry since the nineteen-eighties and, as bishop of Joliet, he took steps to address the climate emergency, following Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical on the issue. He appears boyishly pious—on plane flights, he prays the Rosary and watches unobjectionable movies, such as “Harold and the Purple Crayon”—but he is likely to fit right in with the more worldly trio whose company he’ll now keep.
Hicks’s relative youth and low profile make his elevation to big-city archbishop significant. But what’s particularly notable is where he’s becoming an archbishop. Cupich is now seventy-six, so in Chicago it was assumed that Hicks would succeed him. Instead, he’ll be Archbishop of New York—historically, the most prominent post in the U.S. Church. In 1984, Pope John Paul II entrusted it to the bishop of Scranton, Pennsylvania, John J. O’Connor, who was little known to the public but shared the Pope’s culture-warrior style. “I want a man just like me in New York,” John Paul was said to have remarked. With Hicks, Leo is appointing a cleric who seems both like himself and distinctly different from the boisterous Cardinal Dolan.
When I was working with refugees in Lebanon and Turkey and the Iraqi crisis, Rwanda, other places—you know, when everything’s taken away from you, God is all you have left. So we need a way to speak about who God is and who we are before God, and I think theology gives us a way of doing that.
I’ve noticed something similar in debates around homelessness and immigration: the church does enormous amounts of work on the ground, but theological questions seem to have been pushed out of the broader public discourse.
I did my graduate work at Berkeley, so when I was in California, I can remember one day I woke up and, literally, on the other side of the bed where I slept, outside the window, was a homeless person. And for me that began a long journey of trying to understand theology from the other side of the wall—not just from the perspective of a library or a room but from the streets and from the people who are living on the edge.
What you see in the church’s teachings called the seamless garment of life runs through homelessness, runs through immigration, runs through the elderly, runs through all other life issues. When I spend time speaking to migrants at borders around the world, I often ask them, What is it that you would want people to hear? Or if you could preach on Sunday, what would you want people to know? And often it’s about dignity. It’s about saying, We’re human beings here, and you’re treating us like we’re dogs.
The issue is these people have become nonpersons. I mean, they’re just not even seen. And I think part of the work of the church is saying, Actually, these people belong in a human community, and they belong to be seen, and therefore they belong in the discourse as well.
You make this core argument that all people are created in the image of God, Imago Dei. That’s something that many people would say they believe. But when you see the news right now, the horrific videos coming out, the responses to them—do you feel that idea is in crisis?
What we’ve also included in that understanding is that in the fall, we lost the likeness, but we never lose the image. There’s a deep core within us that’s indestructible—our worth and our value before God.
One of the things I often say is that if we can’t see in the immigrant or in the homeless or in people who are considered different from us something of ourselves, we’ve lost touch with our humanity. So I think that’s what’s at stake. We’ve deported our own soul, if we’ve really lost touch with our own humanity.
You argue that every person should have everything necessary for living a truly human life. What does that look like in practice if it’s not simply open borders?
The church recognizes that nations have the right to control their borders, but it’s not an absolute right. It’s subjugated to a larger sense of what’s called the universal destination of all goods. And what does the church mean by that? In practice, that everything belongs to God, and when we die, we’re gonna have to give up everything anyway. So there’s a way in which we’re, at best, stewards in this life, not owners of anything in an absolute way. And even our nationalities and our national identities have only a relative importance in light of a larger vision of what the kingdom of God is about.
The question is, what’s the narrative that shapes our consciousness on this? If the narrative is, This is my stuff, this is my country, this is where I belong, this is what I own, and I have to defend it and protect it—that’s one way of understanding it. But if the narrative is, Everything I have is a gift, and when I die, I’m going to give everything up, that I’m a steward and not an owner, and I can be judged by how I use what I’ve been given—that’s a different way of inhabiting the world. If the narrative is about how do we move closer to communion with God, and in closer connection with each other, with a life and a faith that does justice, in terms of caring for one another, that’s a very different way of inhabiting the world.
COLORADO CITY, Ariz. — The prairie dresses, walled compounds and distrust of outsiders that were once hallmarks of two towns on the Arizona-Utah border are mostly gone.
These days, Colorado City, Arizona, and neighboring Hildale, Utah, look much like any other town in this remote and picturesque area near Zion National Park, with weekend soccer games, a few bars, and even a winery.
Until courts wrested control of the towns from a polygamous sect whose leader and prophet, Warren Jeffs, was imprisoned for sexually assaulting two girls, youth sports, cocktail hours and many other common activities were forbidden. The towns have transformed so quickly that they were released from court-ordered supervision last summer, almost two years earlier than expected.
It wasn’t easy.
“What you see is the outcome of a massive amount of internal turmoil and change within people to reset themselves,” said Willie Jessop, a onetime spokesman for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints who later broke with the sect. “We call it ‘life after Jeffs’ — and, frankly, it’s a great life.”
Some former members have fond memories of growing up in the FLDS, describing mothers who looked out for each other’s kids and playing sports with other kids in town.
But they say things got worse after Jeffs took charge following his father’s death in 2002. Families were broken apart by church leaders who cast out men deemed unworthy and reassigned their wives and children to others. On Jeffs’ orders, children were pulled from public school, basketball hoops were taken down, and followers were told how to spend their time and what to eat.
“It started to go into a very sinister, dark, cult direction,” said Shem Fischer, who left the towns in 2000 after the church split up his father’s family. He later returned to open a lodge in Hildale.
Church members settled in Colorado City and Hildale in the 1930s so they could continue practicing polygamy after the sect broke away from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the mainstream Mormon church that renounced plural marriage in 1890.
Stung by the public backlash from a disastrous 1953 raid on the FLDS, authorities turned a blind eye to polygamy in the towns until Jeffs took over.
After being charged in 2005 with arranging the marriage of a teenage girl to a 28-year-old follower who was already married, Jeffs went on the run, making the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list before his arrest the next year. In 2011, he was convicted in Texas of sexually assaulting two girls ages 12 and 15 and sentenced to life in prison.
Even years after Jeffs’ arrest, federal prosecutors accused the towns of being run as an arm of the church and denying non-followers basic services such as building permits, water hookups and police protection. In 2017, the court placed the towns under supervision, excising the church from their governments and shared police department. Separately, supervision of a trust that controlled the church’s real estate was turned over to a community board, which has been selling it.
The towns functioned for 90 years largely as a theocracy, so they had to learn how to operate “a first-generation representative government,” Roger Carter, the court-appointed monitor, pointed out in his progress reports.
The FLDS had controlled most of the towns’ land through a trust, allowing its leaders to dictate where followers could live, so private property ownership was new to many. People unaccustomed to openness and government policies needed clarification about whether decisions were based on religious affiliation.
Although the towns took direction from the sect in the past, their civic leaders now prioritize residents’ needs, Carter wrote before the court lifted the oversight last July.
With its leader in prison and stripped of its control over the towns, many FLDS members left the sect or moved away. Other places of worship have opened, and practicing FLDS members are now believed to account for only a small percentage of towns’ populations.
Hildale Mayor Donia Jessop, who was once distantly related to Willie Jessop through marriage, said the community has made huge strides. Like others, she has reconnected with family members who were divided by the church and quit talking to each other.
When a 2015 flood in Hildale killed 13 people, she was one of many former residents who returned to help look for missing loved ones. She got a chance to visit with a sister she hadn’t seen in years.
“We started to realize that the love was still there — that my sister that I hadn’t been able to speak to for in so many years was still my sister, and she missed me as bad as I missed her,” the mayor said. “And it just started to open doors that weren’t open before.”
Longtime resident Isaac Wyler said after the FLDS expelled him in 2004, he was ostracized by the people he grew up with, a local store wouldn’t sell him animal feed, he was refused service at a burger joint and police ignored his complaints that his farm was being vandalized.
Things are very different now, he said. For one thing, his religious affiliation no longer factors into his encounters with police, Wyler said. And that feed store, burger joint and the FLDS-run grocery store have been replaced by a big supermarket, bank, pharmacy, coffee shop and bar.
“Like a normal town,” he said.
People with no FLDS connections have also been moving in.
Gabby Olsen, who grew up in Salt Lake City, first came to the towns in 2016 as an intern for a climbing and canyoneering guide service. She was drawn to the mountains and canyons, clean air and 300 days of sunshine each year.
She said people asked “all the time” whether she was really going to move to a place known for polygamy, but it didn’t bother her.
“When you tell people, ‘Hey, we’re getting married in Hildale,’ they kind of chuckle, because they just really don’t know what it’s about,” said Olsen’s husband, Dion Obermeyer, who runs the service with her. “But of course when they all came down here, they’re all quite surprised. And you’re like, ‘Oh yeah, there’s a winery.’”
Even with the FLDS’ influence waning, it’s not completely gone and the towns are dealing with some new problems.
Residents say the new openness has brought common societal woes such as drug use to Hildale and Colorado City.
And some people are still practicing polygamy: A Colorado City sect member with more than 20 spiritual “wives,” including 10 underage girls, was sentenced in late 2024 to 50 years in prison for coercing girls into sexual acts and other crimes.
Briell Decker, who was 18 when she became Jeffs’ 65th “wife” in an arranged marriage, turned her back on the church. These days, she works for a residential support center in Colorado City that serves people leaving polygamy.
Now 40 and remarried with a child, Decker said she thinks it will take several generations to recover from the FLDS’ abuses under Jeffs.
“I do think they can, but it’s going to take a while because so many people are in denial,” Decker said. “Still, they want to blame somebody. They don’t really want to take accountability.” ___
Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
NEW YORK (AP) — A car crashed into the Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters in New York City on Wednesday night, damaging some of the deeply revered Hasidic Jewish site’s doors.
There were no apparent injuries, and the driver was detained by police, Chabad Lubavitch spokesperson Motti Seligson said.
“Those are the facts that we know at this point, and we hope to get clarity very soon,” he said.
Video of the crash that was posted online shows a car with New Jersey license plates moving forward and backward on an icy driveway leading to a building in the complex and ramming its basement-level doors at least four times.
The driver, who is wearing shorts, emerges, shouts to bystanders that “It slipped” and says something to police about trying to park.
The Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights receives thousands of visitors annually. Its Gothic Revival facade is very recognizable to adherents of the Chabad movement and has inspired dozens of replicas across the world.
Commonly referred to as 770, a nod to the address of the complex’s original building, the headquarters now encompasses multiple adjacent structures.
New York police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
LOUISBURG, N.C. — The Buddhist monks aren’t slowing down despite the winter weather.
For the past week the group journeyed across North Carolina on their way to Washington, D.C., through rain, sleet and sunshine.
What You Need To Know
Monday was Day 93 for the Buddhist monks on their Walk for Peace
The monks will be out of North Carolina this week
They are heading to Warrenton on Tuesday
The monks were making their way through the state Monday, Day 93 of their Walk for Peace. The group has been welcomed and admired by thousands.
“They’re walking in faith. They’re walking in faith,” said supporter Jeannette Bucher.
Despite the road conditions after this weekend’s winter storm, the monks continue to walk while spreading their message.
Bucher said she and her friends were waiting at the airport in Louisburg for two hours.
“When I first saw them marching, I’ve been following them for months, and I just feel so blessed to be able to be here today. And I just can’t wait to be in their presence and just root them on,” she said.
Louisburg native John Yarborough said he and his son grabbed their jackets and hats, then hit the road to see the monks.
Yarborough said the group’s message, motivation and mission is nothing short of inspiring.
“Because this world is about to be corrupt, there is so much hatred in this world, Black against white, that’s why we need peace,” he said.
Yarborough said the Walk for Peace is the most exciting thing the area has seen in a long time.
“Something they have never been to here before, other than the civil rights stuff, when we used to march back in the day,” he said. “Other than that, that’s it.”
Supporters seem to have one thing in common — they were ready to endure this weekend’s winter weather to support the message of peace for all.
The monks are almost out of North Carolina but have a couple of more stops.
The group will be in Warrenton on Tuesday.
Follow us on Instagram at spectrumnews1nc for news and other happenings across North Carolina.
I can’t say my affiliation with Christianity was very strong, but I did develop a positive association with the idea of moral community—the idea that we could get together, support each other, and try to do something good for one another and for the world. That seemed like an important thing for us to be doing.
When did you start thinking about the role of religion in your animal-rights activism? I ask because the organization you started, Direct Action Everywhere, feels explicitly secular.
I remember having a conversation around 2015 with Doug McAdam, a sociologist at Stanford who studies political movements. For the most part, he thought that DxE was a fascinating demonstration of grassroots mobilization and community-building. But he said one thing that really hit me hard, and made me think we might be on the wrong path: “You’re not really harnessing any particular identity. And movements that don’t have identities behind them just don’t succeed, because they can’t sustain themselves over the long term.”
Fundamentally, what moves people is when they believe they’re fighting for something that’s part of them. If it’s purely about ideology, not about identity, it’s just not going to create sustained mobilization. The example he gave me was the Black church. He told me to read “The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement,” by Aldon Morris.
I already knew a lot about Martin Luther King, Jr., and how the movement collapsed in the late sixties partly because of the loss of faith. There wasn’t the same sense of community and commitment. Doug shared this acronym with me, WUNC, coined by the sociologist Charles Tilly. It stands for “worthiness, unity, numbers, and commitment.” When you have those four attributes, you have a successful movement.
I realized there wasn’t a sense of worthiness in our movement, partly because there wasn’t a commitment to some greater moral purpose. In the late stage of the civil-rights movement, it became nihilistic—the Weather Underground, the Vietnam War tearing at the fabric of people’s commitment to nation, to community, to church. Our movement just never had that deep sense of moral purpose that made people feel like, O.K., these people are praiseworthy people.
You don’t think “Don’t kill animals” is a worthy cause?
I think it’s a worthy cause. I don’t think people see us as worthy people. There’s a big difference. It’s not enough to have a good cause. You have to have people believe you’re good people. If anything, it’s almost the opposite—even though people think we’re a good cause, they find us annoying and pedantic.
I remember when Ta-Nehisi Coates went on Ezra Klein’s show after he read “Why We’re Polarized.” He called it a “cold, atheist book.” I think, even when animal rights is at our best, people see us as a cold, hard-atheist movement. There’s sentimentality and emotion about suffering in animal-confinement facilities, but there isn’t this sense that we’re a morally meaningful, upstanding contingent of the broader human community.
I agree that the public thinks you guys are freaks or agents provocateurs trying to advance a marginal cause. How does affiliation with the church change that?
I think it’s a complete antidote to that “freak” allegation. It’s hard to say whether this is a cultural artifact of the past ten thousand years or whether there’s something inherent in humanity—the desire for divine purpose. But, regardless of whether it’s socialization or something inherent, most humans on Earth see the divine as the most morally praiseworthy thing in our communities. This is even true of the cold, hard atheists—the effective altruists. They don’t call the divine God. Their divinity is some form of very strict utilitarianism.
A shared narrative has to involve a story that doesn’t just matter to me. We all have stories about ourselves that are funny or interesting or inspiring, but a lot of times they only matter to us. And there are some stories that affect all of us—the nation-state, universities, sports teams.
The other thing that’s important is a sense of power beyond our comprehension and control. I think that might be inherent to human beings—there’s something about that we almost want to worship.
On Friday morning, hundreds of Minnesotans across faiths gathered together united by prayer at Temple Israel in Minneapolis.
They had a message of unity in a time of uncertainty.
“We welcome friends of many faiths, many stories, many journeys,” said Rabbi Marcia Zimmerman.
During the coldest day of the year, people sought warmth inside Temple Israel in Minneapolis. Jewish, Muslim and Christian followers gathered to sing songs and recite prayers in different languages.
The sole purpose was to show support for immigrant communities in Minnesota.
“Each and every one of our traditions believes in the dignity of every human being,” said Zimmerman.
Senators Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar were part of a group of politicians who said a prayer. And faith leaders lit a candle of remembrance for Renee Good and those detained by ICE.
“We don’t want hate. We don’t want division. We want a voice that is of hope and clarity of compassion,” said Zimmerman.
Among those who spoke was Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde. She traveled from Washington D.C. and wanted to be a part of this service.
“Across the country, we see you, we will tell your story and we will follow your example of love, decency and courage,” said Budde.
Like others, Budde talked about unity and non-violence during a time when people are feeling fear. She is one of nearly 700 clergy members who traveled to Minnesota this week.
“Together, we will bring this nightmare to an end. It is for this moment that we are here,” said Budde.
Organizers say the day’s aim is to “call for an immediate end to ICE operations” in the state.
“As leaders in their community, clergy are bearing witness to the constitutional and human rights violations happening on a daily basis in our state and communities as a result of DHS operations,” wrote a spokesperson with the St. Paul-based nonprofit Isaiah.
The Day of Truth and Freedom will also include a march and rally in downtown Minneapolis on Friday, starting at 2 p.m.
Several Twin Cities businesses and co-ops will also close Friday in solidarity, and organizers say several unions are also on board, including the St. Paul Federation of Educators, the Minneapolis Federation of Educators, Unite Here Local 17, SEIU Local 26, and the transit union ATU.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
NOTE: The original airdate of the video attached to this article is Jan. 13, 2026.
Several faith leaders called urgently for protecting the rights of worshippers while also expressing compassion for migrants after anti-immigration enforcement protesters disrupted a service at a Southern Baptist church in Minnesota.
About three dozen protesters entered the Cities Church in St. Paul during Sunday service, some walking right up to the pulpit, others loudly chanting “ICE out” and “Renee Good,” referring to a woman who was fatally shot on Jan. 7 by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis.
One of the church’s pastors, David Easterwood, leads the local ICE field office, and one of the leaders of the protest and prominent local activist Nekima Levy Armstrong said she’s also an ordained pastor.
The Minnesota-Wisconsin Baptist Convention called what happened “an unacceptable trauma,” saying the service was ”forced to end prematurely” as protesters shouted “insults and accusations at youth, children, and families.”
“I believe we must be resolute in two areas: encouraging our churches to provide compassionate pastoral care to these (migrant) families and standing firm for the sanctity of our houses of worship,” Trey Turner, who leads the convention, told The Associated Press on Monday. Cities Church belongs to the convention.
The U.S. Department of Justice said it has opened a civil rights investigation.
The recent surge in operations in Minnesota has pitted more than 2,000 federal immigration officers against community activists and protesters. The Trump administration and Minnesota officials have traded blame for the heightened tensions.
“No cause — political or otherwise — justifies the desecration of a sacred space or the intimidation and trauma inflicted on families gathered peacefully in the house of God,” Kevin Ezell, president of the North American Mission Board, said in a statement. “What occurred was not protest; it was lawless harassment.”
Jonathan Parnell, the pastor who led the disrupted service, is a missionary with Ezell’s group and serves dozens of Southern Baptist churches in the area. Cities Church, housed in a Gothic-style, century-old stone building next to a college campus on one of the Twin Cities’ landmark boulevards, has not returned AP requests for comment.
Christians in the United States are divided on the moral and legal dilemmas raised by immigration, including the presence of an estimated 11 million people who are in the country illegally and the spike in illegal border crossings and asylum requests during the Biden administration.
Opinions differ between and within denominations on whether Christians must prioritize care for strangers and neighbors or the immigration enforcement push in the name of security. White evangelicals tend to support strong enforcement, while Catholic leaders have spoken in favor of migrant rights.
The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S. and has a conservative evangelical theology.
Miles Mullin, the vice-president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, said faith leaders can and often have led protests on social issues, but those should never prevent others from worshipping.
“This is something that just shouldn’t happen in America,” Mullin said. “For Baptists, our worship services are sacred.”
On Facebook, Levy Armstrong wrote about Sunday’s protest in religious terms: “It’s time for judgment to begin and it will begin in the House of God!!!”
But Albert Mohler, the president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, called the protesters’ tactics unjustifiable.
“For Christians, the precedent of invading a congregation at worship should be unthinkable,” Mohler said in an interview. “I think the political left is crossing a threshold.”
Brian Kaylor, a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship-affiliated minister and leader of the Christian media organization Word&Way, called having an ICE official serve as a pastor “a serious moral failure.”
But Kaylor, who has spoken out against the Trump administration’s treatment of immigrants, said he was “very torn” by the protesters’ action inside a church.
“It would be very alarming if we come to see this become a widespread tactic across the political spectrum,” he said.
No immigration raids during church services have been reported, but some churches have posted notices on their doors saying no federal immigration officers are allowed inside. Others have reported a drop in attendance, particularly during enforcement surges.
Following the protest in Cities Church, Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Justice, said her office is investigating “potential violations of the federal FACE Act,” calling the protest “un-American and outrageous.”
The 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act prohibits interference or intimidation of “any person by force, threat of force, or physical obstruction exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt warned in a social media post that “President Trump will not tolerate the intimidation and harassment of Christians in their sacred places of worship.”
Several pastors called for better security in churches.
The Rev. Joe Rigney, one of the founding pastors at Cities Church in 2015 who served there until 2023, said safety would have been his first concern had a group disrupted service, especially since the fatal shooting at a Minneapolis Catholic school Mass last summer.
In a statement to the AP, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s spokesperson said that while people have a right to speak out, the governor doesn’t support interrupting a place of worship.
Also Monday, the Department of Justice notified a federal appeals court that it will appeal a ruling that federal officers in the Minneapolis area cannot detain or tear gas peaceful protesters who aren’t obstructing authorities. The case was filed in December on behalf of six Minnesota activists who are among thousands of people observing the activities of federal immigration officers in the area.
Yet more protesters braved temperatures that dipped below zero (minus 8 Celsius) Monday to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in St. Paul. Some waved signs from vehicles bearing messages including, “What did you do while your neighbors were being kidnapped?” and “We love our Somali neighbors.”
Dozens of protesters also staged a brief sit-in at a Target store in St. Paul demanding that the retailer bar entry to federal agents. Target, headquartered in Minneapolis, has been criticized by activists after a video showed federal agents detaining two employees at a store in Richfield, Minnesota.
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Associated Press journalists Holly Meyer in Nashville, Tennessee, Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis and Jack Brook in St. Paul, Minnesota, contributed.
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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
ROME — Three U.S. Catholic cardinals urged the Trump administration on Monday to use a moral compass in pursuing its foreign policy, saying U.S. military action in Venezuela, threats of acquiring Greenland and cuts in foreign aid risk bringing vast suffering instead of promoting peace.
In a joint statement, Cardinals Blase Cupich of Chicago, Robert McElroy of Washington and Joseph Tobin of Newark, N.J., warned that without a moral vision, the current debate over Washington’s foreign policy was mired in “polarization, partisanship, and narrow economic and social interests.”
“Most of the United States and the world are adrift morally in terms of foreign policy,” McElroy told The Associated Press. “I still believe the United States has a tremendous impact upon the world.”
The statement was unusual and marked the second time in as many months that members of the U.S. Catholic hierarchy have asserted their voice against a Trump administration many believe isn’t upholding the basic tenets of human dignity. In November, the entire U.S. conference of Catholic bishops condemned the administration’s mass deportation of migrants and “vilification” of them in the public discourse.
The three cardinals, who are prominent figures in the more progressive wing of the U.S. church, took as a starting point a major foreign policy address that Pope Leo XIV delivered Jan. 9 to ambassadors accredited to the Holy See.
The speech, delivered almost entirely in English, amounted to Leo’s most substantial critique of U.S. foreign policy. History’s first U.S.-born pope denounced how nations were using force to assert their dominion worldwide, “completely undermining” peace and the post-World War II international legal order.
Leo didn’t name individual countries, but his speech came against the backdrop of the then-recent U.S. military operation in Venezuela to remove Nicolás Maduro from power, U.S. threats to take Greenland as well as Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine.
Cardinals question the use of force
The three cardinals cited Venezuela, Greenland and Ukraine in their statement — saying they “raised basic questions about the use of military force and the meaning of peace” — as well as the cuts to foreign aid that U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration initiated last year.
“Our country’s moral role in confronting evil around the world, sustaining the right to life and human dignity, and supporting religious liberty are all under examination,” they warned.
“We renounce war as an instrument for narrow national interests and proclaim that military action must be seen only as a last resort in extreme situations, not a normal instrument of national policy,” they wrote. “We seek a foreign policy that respects and advances the right to human life, religious liberty, and the enhancement of human dignity throughout the world, especially through economic assistance.”
Tobin described the moral compass the cardinals wish the U.S. would use globally.
“It can’t be that my prosperity is predicated on inhuman treatment of others,” he told the AP. “The real argument isn’t just my right or individual rights, but what is the common good.”
Cardinals expand on their statement in interviews with AP
In interviews, Cupich and McElroy said the signatories were inspired to issue a statement after hearing from several fellow cardinals during a Jan. 7-8 meeting at the Vatican. These other cardinals expressed alarm about the U.S. action in Venezuela, its cuts in foreign aid and its threats to acquire Greenland, Cupich said.
A day later, Leo’s nearly 45-minute-long speech to the diplomatic corps gave the Americans the language they needed, allowing them to “piggyback on” the pope’s words, Cupich said.
Cupich acknowledged that Maduro’s prosecution could be seen positively, but not the way it was done via a U.S. military incursion into a sovereign country.
“When we go ahead and do it in such a way that is portrayed as saying, ‘Because we can do it, we’re going to do it, that might makes right’ — that’s a troublesome development,” he said. “There’s the rule of law that should be followed.”
Trump has insisted that capturing Maduro was legal. On Greenland, Trump has argued repeatedly that the U.S. needs control of the resource-rich island, a semiautonomous region of NATO ally Denmark. for its national security.
The Trump administration last year significantly gutted the U.S. Agency for International Development, saying its projects advance a liberal agenda and were a waste of money.
Tobin, who ministered in more than 70 countries as a Redemptorist priest and the order’s superior general, lamented the retreat in USAID assistance, saying U.S. philanthropy makes a big difference in everything from hunger to health.
The three cardinals said their key aim wasn’t to criticize the administration, but rather to encourage the U.S. to regain is moral standing in the world by pursuing a foreign policy that is ethically guided and seeks the common good.
“We’re not endorsing a political party or a political movement,” Tobin said. The faithful in the pews and all people of good will have a role to play, he said.
“They can make an argument of basic human decency,” he said.
MINNEAPOLIS — The U.S. Department of Justice said Sunday it is investigating a group of protesters in Minnesota who disrupted services at a church where a local official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement apparently serves as a pastor.
A livestreamed video posted on the Facebook page of Black Lives Matter Minnesota, one of the protest’s organizers, shows a group of people interrupting services at the Cities Church in St. Paul by chanting “ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good.” The 37-year-old mother of three was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis earlier this month amid a surge in federal immigration enforcement activities.
The protesters allege that one of the church’s pastors — David Easterwood — also leads the local ICE field office overseeing the operations that have involved violent tactics and illegal arrests.
U.S. Department of Justice Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said her agency is investigating federal civil rights violations “by these people desecrating a house of worship and interfering with Christian worshippers.”
“A house of worship is not a public forum for your protest! It is a space protected from exactly such acts by federal criminal and civil laws!” she said on social media.
Attorney General Pam Bondi also weighed in on social media, saying that any violations of federal law would be prosecuted.
Nekima Levy Armstrong, who participated in the protest and leads the local grassroots civil rights organization Racial Justice Network, dismissed the potential DOJ investigation as a sham and a distraction from federal agents’ actions in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
“When you think about the federal government unleashing barbaric ICE agents upon our community and all the harm that they have caused, to have someone serving as a pastor who oversees these ICE agents, is almost unfathomable to me,” said Armstrong, who added she is an ordained reverend. “If people are more concerned about someone coming to a church on a Sunday and disrupting business as usual than they are about the atrocities that we are experiencing in our community, then they need to check their theology and the need to check their hearts.”
The website of St. Paul-based Cities Church lists David Easterwood as a pastor, and his personal information appears to match that of the David Easterwood identified in court filings as the acting director of the ICE St. Paul field office. Easterwood appeared alongside DHS Secretary Kristi Noem at a Minneapolis press conference last October.
Cities Church did not respond to a phone call or emailed request for comment Sunday evening, and Easterwood’s personal contact information could not immediately be located.
Easterwood did not lead the part of the service that was livestreamed, and it was unclear if he was present at the church Sunday.
In a Jan. 5 court filing, Easterwood defended ICE’s tactics in Minnesota such as swapping license plates and spraying protesters with chemical irritants. He wrote that federal agents were experiencing increased threats and aggression and crowd control devices like flash-bang grenades were important to protect against violent attacks. He testified that he was unaware of agents “knowingly targeting or retaliating against peaceful protesters or legal observers with less lethal munitions and/or crowd control devices.”
“Agitators aren’t just targeting our officers. Now they’re targeting churches, too,” the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency stated. “They’re going from hotel to hotel, church to church, hunting for federal law enforcement who are risking their lives to protect Americans.”
Black Lives Matter Minnesota co-founder Monique Cullars-Doty said that the DOJ’s prosecution was misguided.
“If you got a head — a leader in a church — that is leading and orchestrating ICE raids, my God, what has the world come to?” Cullars-Doty said. “We can’t sit back idly and watch people go and be led astray.”
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The U.S. Department of Justice said Sunday it is investigating a group of protesters in Minnesota who disrupted services at a church where a local official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement apparently serves as a pastor.
A livestreamed video posted on the Facebook page of Black Lives Matter Minnesota, one of the protest’s organizers, shows a group of people interrupting services at the Cities Church in St. Paul by chanting “ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good.” The 37-year-old mother of three was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis earlier this month amid a surge in federal immigration enforcement activities.
The protesters allege that one of the church’s pastors — David Easterwood — also leads the local ICE field office overseeing the operations that have involved violent tactics and illegal arrests.
U.S. Department of Justice Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said her agency is investigating federal civil rights violations “by these people desecrating a house of worship and interfering with Christian worshippers.”
“A house of worship is not a public forum for your protest! It is a space protected from exactly such acts by federal criminal and civil laws!” she said on social media.
Attorney General Pam Bondi also weighed in on social media, saying that any violations of federal law would be prosecuted.
Nekima Levy Armstrong, who participated in the protest and leads the local grassroots civil rights organization Racial Justice Network, dismissed the potential DOJ investigation as a sham and a distraction from federal agents’ actions in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
“When you think about the federal government unleashing barbaric ICE agents upon our community and all the harm that they have caused, to have someone serving as a pastor who oversees these ICE agents, is almost unfathomable to me,” said Armstrong, who added she is an ordained reverend. “If people are more concerned about someone coming to a church on a Sunday and disrupting business as usual than they are about the atrocities that we are experiencing in our community, then they need to check their theology and the need to check their hearts.”
The website of St. Paul-based Cities Church lists David Easterwood as a pastor, and his personal information appears to match that of the David Easterwood identified in court filings as the acting director of the ICE St. Paul field office. Easterwood appeared alongside DHS Secretary Kristi Noem at a Minneapolis press conference last October.
Cities Church did not respond to a phone call or emailed request for comment Sunday evening, and Easterwood’s personal contact information could not immediately be located.
In a Jan. 5 court filing, Easterwood defended ICE’s tactics in Minnesota such as swapping license plates and spraying protesters with chemical irritants. He wrote that federal agents were experiencing increased threats and aggression and crowd control devices like flash-bang grenades were important to protect against violent attacks. He testified that he was unaware of agents “knowingly targeting or retaliating against peaceful protesters or legal observers with less lethal munitions and/or crowd control devices.”
“Agitators aren’t just targeting our officers. Now they’re targeting churches, too,” the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency stated. “They’re going from hotel to hotel, church to church, hunting for federal law enforcement who are risking their lives to protect Americans.”
Black Lives Matter Minnesota co-founder Monique Cullars-Doty said that the DOJ’s prosecution was misguided.
“If you got a head — a leader in a church — that is leading and orchestrating ICE raids, my God, what has the world come to?” Cullars-Doty said. “We can’t sit back idly and watch people go and be led astray.”
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Aloka the Peace Dog was reunited with the Walk for Peace monks for the first time since undergoing leg surgery following an injury during the 2,300-mile Walk for Peace in early January. The reunion happened in Charlotte, North Carolina, where Aloka briefly appeared in front of supporters during the group’s lunch stop. He appeared to be in good spirits. The monks say his spirits remain high and he is healing well. “We are happy to share that Aloka is recovering very well from his surgery,” the group wrote on a Facebook post after his surgery.Video below: More about the Walk for Peace and the monks’ stop in North CarolinaA team at the Charleston Veterinary Referral Center in Charleston, South Carolina, performed the surgery and assisted Aloka through the early stages of his recovery.The monks say Aloka received a professional therapy massage and red-light therapy. He will not be walking with the group for now so he can continue healing.Find a map of the monks’ path on sister statin WXII’s website.
Aloka the Peace Dog was reunited with the Walk for Peace monks for the first time since undergoing leg surgery following an injury during the 2,300-mile Walk for Peace in early January.
The reunion happened in Charlotte, North Carolina, where Aloka briefly appeared in front of supporters during the group’s lunch stop. He appeared to be in good spirits.
The monks say his spirits remain high and he is healing well. “We are happy to share that Aloka is recovering very well from his surgery,” the group wrote on a Facebook post after his surgery.
Video below: More about the Walk for Peace and the monks’ stop in North Carolina
A team at the Charleston Veterinary Referral Center in Charleston, South Carolina, performed the surgery and assisted Aloka through the early stages of his recovery.
The monks say Aloka received a professional therapy massage and red-light therapy. He will not be walking with the group for now so he can continue healing.
That’s according to a 2025 Year-End Report from Luminate, an industry data and analytics company that provides insight into changing behaviors across music listenership.
In the U.S., on-demand audio streams hit 1.4 trillion, a 4.6% increase from last year.
But attention is on older music. Less than half all U.S. on-demand audio streams — 43% — were from tracks released in the last five years (2021 – 2025).
One exception? Taylor Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl” and Morgan Wallen’s “I’m the Problem,” both of which surpassed 5 million album equivalent units in a single year. That’s a combination of sales and streaming combined.
Luminate’s 2025 Mid-Year Report revealed that though streams of new music — music released in the last 18 months — were slightly down from the same time last year in the U.S., new Christian/gospel music defied the trend, said Jaime Marconette, Luminate’s vice president of music insights and industry relations, led by acts like Forrest Frank, Brandon Lake and Elevation Worship.
In the year-end report, it is clear that Christian/gospel music has continued to grow stateside: up 18.5% in on-demand audio volume change compared to 2024.
Other genres that saw an uptick? Rock grew 6.4% and Latin grew 5.2%.
“Rock is the largest growth genre this year, meaning it grew its share of the streaming pie the most,” said Marconette in a statement. “Though rock streaming in general leans catalog (tracks older than 18 months), the genre posted the second highest total of new current streams this year.”
For Latin music’s growth, Bad Bunny is responsible. His on-demand audio streams totaled 5.3 billion — 4.38% of all Latin on-demand audio streams.
“The Latin genre continues to be one of the highest growth-genres in the U.S.,” adds Marconette. “Bad Bunny was a key driver of the growth this year with his new album “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” generating 2.97 billion U.S. on-demand audio streams in 2025.”
The introduction of high-profile artificial intelligence artists became a leading music story in 2025. Those include Xania Monet and the rock band The Velvet Sundown.
Monet went on to become the first AI act to debut on a Billboard radio chart, reaching No. 3 on the organization’s Hot Gospel Songs and No. 20 on the Hot R&B Songs.
There have been quite a few AI country artists as well, including Aventhis, Cain Walker and Breaking Rust. The latter had a song called “Walk My Walk” hit No. 1 on Billboard’s country digital song sales chart in November. The vocal phrasing, melodic shape and stylistic DNA came from the Grammy-nominated country artist Blanco Brown, an artist who has worked with Britney Spears, Childish Gambino and Rihanna.
These artists serve as examples of generative AI continuing to upend the music industry, giving anyone the ability to instantly create seemingly new songs by typing prompts into a chat window, often using models trained on real artists’ voices and styles without their knowledge.
And according to Luminate, they’re having real success. Monet earned 125 million global on-demand audio streams last year. Breaking Rust brought in roughly 72.8 million streams followed by Walker with 48.1 million, Enlly Blue with 34.8 and Juno Skye with 15.5 million.
The top songs, globally, as determined by on-demand audio streams are the following:
1. Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars, “Die With a Smile” — 2.858 billion
2. HUNTR/X (Ejae, Audrey Nuna, Rei Ami) from “Kpop Demon Hunters,” “Golden” — 2.430 billion
3. Alex Warren, “Ordinary” — 2.403 billion
4. Rosé and Bruno Mars’ “APT.” — 2.236 billion
5. Billie Eilish, “Birds of a Feather” — 2.133 billion
10. Gracie Abrams, “That’s So True” — 1.544 billion
Seven of the top 10 tracks were released in 2024. The exceptions are “Golden,” “Ordinary” and “DtMF.”
Just like last year and the year before it, when it comes to overall music streaming in the U.S., R&B and hip-hop still lead, once again accounting for more than one in every four streams stateside.
In 2025, rap and R&B accounted for 349.9 billion on-demand audio streams, up from 341.63 billion last year.
It is followed by rock with 260.5 billion (up from 234.22 billion last year) and pop with 167.2 billion (up from 165.49 billion).
Rounding out the top five is country with 122.5 billion (up from 117.58 billion) and Latin with 120.9 billion (up from 113.02 billion.)
JACKSON, Miss. — Beverly Geiger Bonnheim was 17 when the Ku Klux Klan bombed her synagogue in 1967. This weekend, at 75, she watched it burn again.
“It was horrifying and disbelieving to see it again,” Geiger Bonnheim said. “Does history change?”
The historic Beth Israel Congregation, the only synagogue in Jackson, was set ablaze shortly after 3 a.m. on Saturday.
The fire badly damaged the 165-year-old synagogue’s library and administrative offices. Two Torahs — the sacred scrolls with the text of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible — were destroyed, and five others were being assessed for smoke damage.
Stephen Pittman, 19, confessed to lighting a fire inside the building, which he referred to as “the synagogue of Satan,” according to an FBI affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Mississippi on Monday.
He was charged with maliciously damaging or destroying a building by means of fire or an explosive. He is also facing a similar state charge of first-degree arson of a place of worship.
Neither of the two public defenders representing Pittman have addressed the charges, nor have they returned The Associated Press’ requests for comment.
Geiger Bonnheim, who now lives in Dallas, remains an active member of the congregation. She is also on the board of the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life, a nonprofit that celebrates Jewish life in the South and is based out of the Beth Israel Congregation building.
She recalls visiting the synagogue with her father the night it was bombed in 1967, calling the sight horrific. At the time, her father was vice president of the congregation, which had just moved into the building, she said.
“There’s a Hebrew saying, ‘l’dor v’dor,’ from generation to generation,” she said. “The 1967 (bombing) and dealing with the Klan, that was my generation’s and my parent’s generation’s dealing with bigotry and hatred. Unfortunately now it’s this generation’s time to have to deal with those very issues.”
Geiger Bonnheim said the news of the arson was depressing but not surprising. Jewish people have been persecuted for more than 3,000 years, she said.
Benjamin Russell, the spiritual leader of Beth Israel Congregation who is going to school to become a Rabi, said recovering from hardship is part of the Jewish psyche. He said the Torah is filled with examples of people being reborn through hardship.
“From the ashes, something beautiful will rise,” Russell said.
Zach Shemper, the congregation’s president, has vowed to rebuild. Already, nearby churches are opening their doors, offering to let the congregation worship inside. Other synagogues have offered the Beth Israel Congregation new Torahs.
The fire has not interrupted the congregation’s programs, and they plan to gather Friday night to observe Shabbat, a weekly day of rest.
“We’re still here, and we’re not going anywhere,” Shemper said.
While the congregation has shown resilience, their anger and sadness is palpable.
Abram Orlansky, a congregant and former Beth Israel Congregation president, broke down when he thought about his two children and the role the synagogue plays in their lives.
“We told our kids the truth — that someone did this on purpose, and it’s because they don’t like the Jewish people,” he said.
At the same time, Orlansky said seeing the outpouring of support from the Jackson community and the worldwide Jewish community has been heartening, and his kids are excited to be a part of showing the world that their community isn’t going anywhere.
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LaFleur contributed to this report from Dallas, Texas.
