(  )  The new president of the Southern Baptist Convention is concerned about efforts by some to move America’s largest Protestant denomination in a more liberal direction.  Willy Rice, who is senior pastor of Calvary Church in Clearwater, Florida, has warned about SBC leadership moving to the left on issues ranging from race to gender to immigration.  On his webpage, Rice has urged Southern Baptists to hold to core convictions rather than occupying a “mushy evangelical middle ground.”  Last year he led efforts to abolish the denomination’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission over allegations it received funding from liberal groups.

(  )  The Trump administration has launched an anti-Semitism investigation of the nation’s largest teachers union.  The National Education Association is facing accusations of discrimination by some of its Jewish members.  They say they were subjected to harassment and physical intimidation by other NEA members at the organization’s annual convention last year.  A number of Jewish teachers say other NEA members allegedly cheered the mention of an attack on Jews in Colorado in 2025.  Other charges concern a union handbook for Indigenous People’s Day that included a map of the Middle East in which Israel was labeled “Palestine”.  Another handbook mentioned the Holocaust but failed to state that Jews were its primary victims.

(  )  Planned Parenthood and two smaller regional abortion businesses are again billing Medicaid for services other than abortion after being cut off for most of a year.  The defunding, which was mandated in President Trump’s tax policy of 2025, has expired and Congress has yet to renew it.  However, the restored funding does not mean the battle over federal abortion policy has ended, and not all services that were cut will return.  Pro-life advocates are pushing lawmakers to adopt another defunding policy.  Kelsey Pritchard of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America says, “they should do everything in their power to do it again.”