León XIV ha superado cualquier expectativa. Ha reafirmado su liderazgo mundial con este largo e intenso viaje a España, que es sin lugar a dudas la nación más importante en la Historia del Catolicismo. Es algo sobre lo que el Santo Padre era consciente, pero que sobre todo conoció por su experiencia en el otro lado del Atlántico. Su labor misionera le permitió profundizar, al margen de la ignorancia de aquellos que critican la huella hispana en América, la labor evangelizadora y cultural realizada desde el Descubrimiento. La ignorancia se cura viajando, porque no hay nada mejor que visitar esos países hermanos y relacionarse con los descendientes de los pueblos originarios para entender que siempre se buscó el desarrollo y la integración. Es un proceso que se ralentizó, desgraciadamente, con las guerras civiles que se vivieron en los antiguos virreinatos cuando las élites dirigentes, ayudadas por los ingleses, iniciaron el proceso de separación de la Monarquía Hispánica. No hay duda de que es más ajustado a la realidad histórica referirse a unas guerras civiles que a una independencia que no quería una gran parte de la población que era leal a España. Hay que felicitarse por la respuesta generalizada de la sociedad española y sus instituciones ante esta histórica visita. León XIV ha mostrado que es un hombre de Dios sensible, intelectualmente muy sólido y con una proximidad que desconocíamos. El recibimiento que ha recibido, no hay duda de que le ha emocionado. Los sucesivos mensajes que ha lanzado son claros, directos y profundos, mostrando que su Papado se inscribirá entre los más trascendentes de la Edad Contemporánea. Ese liderazgo moral, con ese cierto aire de timidez que muestra ante el fervor que desata su figura, es muy importante en estos tiempos tan turbulentos y complejos. Desde su elección, me resultó muy interesante su trayectoria académica y pastoral. En lo primero, se muestra la solidez de su mensaje y una cabeza extraordinariamente ordenada, fruto de su formación como matemático. La humanidad que destila es coherente con su trayectoria como misionero. El haber trabajado entre los más desfavorecidos imprime carácter, pero lo hace desde el equilibrio, la justicia social y el progreso tanto personal como colectivo. Sus funciones como obispo y posteriormente como prefecto del Dicasterio para los Obispos le dieron la experiencia que le faltaba para asumir el Papado.

Francisco Marhuenda. Académico de número de la Real Academia de Jurisprudencia y Legislación de España y de la Real Academia de Doctores de España. Académico correspondiente de la Real Academia de la Historia. Catedrático de Derecho Público e Historia de las Instituciones (UNIE).

© EFE

There’s an old saying: There are no atheists in foxholes. Faith plays a large role in the lives of many service members (including, yes, uniformed atheists). The U.S. military has long provided religious support to service members who are naturally often far from home and their faith communities. Given that the First Amendment prohibits the government both from establishing a religion and from preventing its free exercise, the military’s formal provision of chaplains and religious services to those in uniform is understood to balance these competing constitutional demands.

Until now, that is. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recently slashed the list of Pentagon-recognized religions and belief systems that service members can have reflected in their personnel records from more than 200 to just 31, with the majority of the remaining being Christian religions. Those who ascribe to one of the 180-plus now-deleted belief systems must instead list in their records either “no religion” or “other religion.” This change tilts military policy toward the unconstitutional establishment of religion and simultaneously limits its members’ free exercise of their chosen faith.

Religious resources aren’t merely a nice bonus for service members that the Pentagon chief can do away with just by snapping his fingers.

The list of recognized religions grew from 100 to more than 200 during the first Trump administration when the Pentagon’s  board of chaplains “recommended adding new faith and belief groups to standardize and better identify religious preferences recognized by the Military Services” in response to legislation mandating improved religious liberty protections. Despite such rationale, Hegseth says this larger list was “infected by political correctness and secular humanism” under previous administrations.

The defense secretary is now using the Pentagon’s previous rationale for expanding the list to drastically shrink it instead, stating that his purge is about “giving chaplains clear, usable information so they can minister to service members in a way that aligns with that service member’s faith background and religious practice.” Echoing the secretary, the Pentagon says this massive cancellation of faiths is simply an administrative exercise, one designed to allow chaplains “to quickly look at the religious composition of their units and determine how they structure resources to best provide for warfighters of all faith groups,” and to “provide the best data to support our chaplains in that effort.” Yet how does no data — indeed, deliberate ignorance of service members’ faiths, if they ascribe to one of the 180 now-cancelled religions — equate to better support?

Religious resources aren’t merely a nice bonus for service members that the Pentagon chief can do away with by snapping his fingers. Reasonable access to well-rounded military chaplains is a traditional component of military life, allowing soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen to freely practice their religious beliefs even if deployed to foreign battlefields.

It’s impossible for the Pentagon to provide a specific “religious military professional” — the phrase military regulations use for chaplains — for every possible faith; service members don’t have a right to a chaplain of their particular belief system. But military chaplains are expected and required to support the spiritual needs of all service members, not just those who hold one of the faiths the Pentagon still recognizes.

Specifically, the Pentagon’s regulation governing military chaplains states that their primary mission is to “meet the religious requirements and care for the spiritual needs of Service members” (and others, including family members). This regulation is grounded in the First Amendment and explains that the position of military chaplain “directly and indirectly supports the free exercise of religion by all Service members.” Religious ministry professionals must be “able to personally meet the religious requirements of persons in their assigned military units, potentially in isolated or combat environments.”

The Pentagon is burying its head in the sand regarding the faiths of the U.S. fighting forces.

Yet how can military chaplains meet the religious needs of their units’ members when they won’t know what faiths are actually represented, outside of the recognized few? Among faiths no longer recognized by the Pentagon are the Unitarian Universalist religious movement (to which John Adams belonged), deism (to which Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson subscribed), atheism, the Dutch Reformed Church, paganism, the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the Native American Church. These faiths count millions of Americans among their members.

Since when is ignorance “the best data”? Resources can’t be adequately structured to support service members of all faiths when the Pentagon is burying its head in the sand regarding the faiths of the U.S. fighting forces. The lack of information does not equal “useful” information — except if the intended use is to stop supporting those service members’ minority faiths and practices.

While service members can reportedly still list their faith of choice on their dog tags, that doesn’t mean a chaplain can understand their spiritual needs while they’re still alive. As religious military professionals, chaplains can’t best support those they are being essentially ordered not to see. It’s also unclear how this policy cancellation will affect the qualifications of already serving chaplains; their eligibility depends on the endorsement of religiously affiliated organizations, and surely some of those organizations are tied to religions that have lost Pentagon recognition.

Couple Hegseth’s and the Pentagon’s nonsensical reasons for this new policy with the secretary’s penchant for proselytizing his Christian faith to service members, and it’s clear that this massive purge isn’t about streamlining data or structuring resources. It’s about the Trump administration’s desire to support only certain religions, and therefore only certain service members. This move hinders other service members’ free exercise of religion, at least compared with those whose beliefs are represented. And it takes a large step in the direction of unconstitutionally “establishing” (by discriminatorily supporting) the religions that remain recognized by the military.

The Pentagon’s new policy means that some military members are now sacrificing to ensure that their fellow Americans enjoy a freedom of religion they no longer fully possess. That is not just deeply ironic; it is morally and constitutionally repugnant. And it should be added to the ever-growing list of mistakes by this White House that a future president and Congress will need to rectify.

The post Thanks to Pete Hegseth, some U.S. service members lost full freedom of religion appeared first on MS NOW.

If there were anything like justice in college sports, Brendan Sorsby would never play another down of football. It’s a tough thing to say about someone only 22 years old, and under most circumstances, I’d never argue that misdeeds should end an athlete’s career before they hit the professional ranks.

But Sorsby, Texas Tech’s star quarterback, isn’t an average college kid who made a mistake. He bet at least $90,000 on sports — including on games involving the Indiana Hoosiers when he was on that team’s roster as a freshman in 2022. For obvious reasons, the NCAA frowns upon such behavior and rightly issued a permanent ban when it discovered what Sorsby did. Sorsby says he’s been diagnosed with a gambling addiction.

Sorsby says he’s been diagnosed with a gambling addiction.

But on Monday, retired Texas judge Ken Curry, appointed to the case after another judge recused himself, gave Sorsby a pass with a temporary injunction that will allow him to play this season. Curry reasoned that the injunction was necessary to avoid “probable, imminent and irreparable injury” to the quarterback’s college football career. But the judge is mischaracterizing the consequences of Sorsby’s actions as injury.

Those who have watched college football scandals over the decades should be especially incensed by the judge’s ruling that Sorsby should play. His transgressions are exponentially worse than those of Reggie Bush, who was forced to forfeit his Heisman Trophy in 2010 for rules violations he allegedly committed while at the University of Southern California, and exponentially worse than Ohio State University’s Terrelle Pryor, who was suspended for receiving free tattoos and selling his memorabilia. Granted, those punishments were imposed in a bygone era when the NCAA still stood on the farce that players, the labor in its multibillion-dollar enterprise, were amateurs and all but forced them to the black market to profit from their work.

Those infractions from Bush and Pryor were metaphorical misdemeanors relative to the near-treasonous offense Sorsby committed against the NCAA. The integrity of the games, or at least the appearance thereof, are crucial for the association’s survival. Thus, its strict prohibition against gambling and its promise of a kind of death penalty (a lifetime ban) for athletes who gamble anyway.

Sorsby acknowledged a gambling addiction, a serious mental health issue that warrants professional treatment, and to his credit, he reports that he recently sought a 35-day rehab at an inpatient clinic in Arizona. Gambling addiction can cause immense harm to the afflicted and those around them. It’s also a compulsion whose victims often relapse, which isn’t something someone in Sorsby’s position can afford, even once.

It’s not something the NCAA can afford, either. In this instance, the NCAA saw a problem — the starting quarterback at a Power Conference school has a gambling problem that makes him vulnerable to compromise — and it took that problem out at the knees. Sorsby, who is discussed as a rising NFL prospect, had every right to try to enter the league’s supplemental draft or to seek a free agent tryout. Obviously, any NFL general manager with common sense would think long and hard before adding him to the roster, which means he’d be risking not being able to play in college or the pros. But such are the wages of his sin. The predicament he put himself in doesn’t warrant the judge forcing the NCAA to let him play after he flouted its rules and violated the integrity of its sport.

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To the extent that he’s seriously contrite, Sorsby deserves credit for taking accountability, which he did in a social media post last month. But contrition doesn’t erase consequences, and accountability often demands them. Yet here we have a judge forcing the NCAA to let Sorsby play alongside other young men who have every right to question their teammate’s motives. Other college programs have responded by vowing not to play any games against Texas Tech.

Sorsby embodies two overlapping problems involving sports and gambling: the increasing prevalence of gambling addiction among young adults, teenagers and even preteens and the seemingly growing number of instances of athletes themselves betting on games. Just last week, an arbitrator ruled that NBA free agent Terry Rozier must forfeit most of his $26.6 million salary for the 2025-26 season after he was alleged to have taken a bribe to withdraw from a game early when he was playing for the Charlotte Hornets. Rozier has pleaded not guilty to the gambling accusations.

If Sorsby ever makes it to the NFL, one wonders how he will fare in a league that prohibits its players from gambling but has rich partnership deals with FanDuel, DraftKings and Caesars Entertainment, its “official casino sponsor.” In the pros, nobody even pretends there’s a wall between the action on the field and the action the sportsbooks are taking in real time. Fans will be in the stadium, not just watching but placing bets. Whichever team signs Sorsby would be gambling too: that he won’t repeat the same offenses that put the NCAA and Texas Tech in a negative spotlight.

The post The biggest scandal in college sports is brought to you by a Texas judge appeared first on MS NOW.

Those aren't isolated headlines anymore. They show a pattern.  

Those aren't isolated headlines anymore. They show a pattern.  

It is absurd to still be counting all the mail-in ballots days and weeks after Election Day. We should know who won, day of.   

It is absurd to still be counting all the mail-in ballots days and weeks after Election Day. We should know who won, day of.   

The SECURE Data Act and the GUARD Financial Data Act offer a potential solution to the lack of federal regulation of data brokers, but both bills leave significant gaps in protecting consumers from the misuse of their personal data.

The SECURE Data Act and the GUARD Financial Data Act offer a potential solution to the lack of federal regulation of data brokers, but both bills leave significant gaps in protecting consumers from the misuse of their personal data.

The U.S. failed to "take Vienna" in the Iran conflict, resulting in an undeterred and belligerent Iran that has been awarded a vote in deciding the control of the most strategically important commercial chokepoint in the world.

The U.S. failed to "take Vienna" in the Iran conflict, resulting in an undeterred and belligerent Iran that has been awarded a vote in deciding the control of the most strategically important commercial chokepoint in the world.

The 2026 FIFA World Cup, which begins this week, is expected to bring millions of visitors from dozens of countries to the United States. I have tickets to the World Cup finals next month, and I’m finding it hard to contain my excitement at my opportunity to watch what I know will be the pinnacle of competition in a sport loved by billions of fans worldwide.

But as a doctor, I can’t help but think about how dangerously unprepared the United States is to meet the public health demands of hosting the largest sporting event in U.S. history. The World Cup will bring with it significant public health risks, bringing people from all corners of the world together, where infectious diseases can easily travel and become amplified in enclosed, semiconfined spaces such as stadiums, bars and restaurants.

As a doctor, I can’t help but think about how dangerously unprepared the United States is.

I know firsthand how infectious diseases spread in mass gatherings. As a Muslim performing the Hajj in Mecca, I saw some people contract meningitis, and I was one of the countless others on that spiritual pilgrimage who became infected with an upper respiratory infection. Mass gatherings of the size of the Hajj or the World Cup provide ideal conditions for infectious diseases, heat illness, crowd injuries and foodborne outbreaks to occur.

As a practicing physician who writes and speaks about public health, I have little confidence that the U.S. is prepared for the part of its World Cup-hosting duties that includes ensuring the safety of the health of millions of visitors.

The World Cup comes to a United States that remains scarred by the Covid-19 pandemic. There’s rising mistrust of vaccines, worsening healthcare staff shortages and the re-emergence of infectious diseases that had been eliminated. More than 2,000 cases of measles in the U.S. this year serve as a reminder of what happens when public health information officials such as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. traffic in misinformation instead of work to preserve public health. Thanks in no small part to Kennedy, vaccine hesitancy is on the rise, and the kindergarten rate of vaccination is below the 95% rate necessary to confer protection upon the larger community.

Although a recent hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship on the Atlantic posed a low risk to the general American public, if it had gotten out of hand, the U.S. would not have been prepared. If cases had spread across the country, we would not have been able to sufficiently test and identify cases because the lab test that detects the virus is only available at a handful of special laboratories throughout the country. And the silence from HHS and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was worrisome. Because public health only succeeds when and where there is clear, transparent communication, officials at those agencies should have held a national press briefing to answer the public’s questions. But they didn’t. According to an Annenberg Public Policy Center poll from March, only 43% of Americans trust public health communications from federal agencies.

The pillars of a strong public health infrastructure are early recognition of diseases, clear communication and trust, all of which appear to have been eroded lately. That’s why it seems unlikely that the U.S. could respond effectively to a major public health threat on our soil during the World Cup or at any time in the near future.

There’s little evidence that the U.S. implemented a proactive approach to the World Cup.

Our public health infrastructure has been underfunded for decades, surveillance systems have been gutted, and hundreds of critical CDC and HHS workers have been laid off. The greatest threats to a successful World Cup, then, may not be terrorism or violence, but an inability to manage predictable health emergencies at scale.

There’s little evidence that the U.S. implemented a proactive approach to the World Cup. To the contrary, it appears the country will react passively if havoc occurs. A proactive approach would have included strengthening infectious disease monitoring at airports, improving hospital surge planning, investing in public health infrastructure such as vaccine research, and rebuilding trust through transparency.

When I look at my World Cup tickets, I am filled with excitement, but I can’t shake the feeling that our country isn’t prepared for public health crises that may occur in the coming weeks.

The post As a fan, I’m excited for the World Cup. As a doctor, I’m worried. appeared first on MS NOW.

Housing First, paired with clinical and social services and sustained federal investment in affordable housing, is the path to reducing homelessness.

Housing First, paired with clinical and social services and sustained federal investment in affordable housing, is the path to reducing homelessness.

Volodymyr Zelensky made a rare misstep when German Chancellor Friedrich Merz proposed associate EU membership for Ukraine, offering institutional access, participation in Council meetings, gradual budget integration, and critically, Article 42(7) security guarantees.

Zelensky rejected it, insisting Ukraine deserves full and equal membership. In principle, most Europeans would agree.

Patients in every other wealthy country already get the medications they need at prices their governments negotiated on their behalf.

Patients in every other wealthy country already get the medications they need at prices their governments negotiated on their behalf.

Knife attack riots show that hate is transferable

There are lessons to be learned from aviation security that apply to addressing the Ebola outbreak.  

There are lessons to be learned from aviation security that apply to addressing the Ebola outbreak.