☕ Daily Brief: The Church to Mosque Conversion

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WHAT WE'RE WATCHING

🤝 Canada holds secret defense talks with China. Canadian and Chinese defense officials quietly met on September 4, marking the first "defense coordination talks" between the two nations in eight years. The talks come as US-Canada tensions escalate amid a trade war, with Trump threatening greater tariffs on Canadian imports starting in January.

📚 US reading scores hit historic lows. American 15-year-olds scored more than 30 points below average on the latest PISA reading assessment, with results near their lowest point in 25 years. Just eight percent of US students were top performers in math — a rate that trails far behind China, Singapore, Japan, and South Korea.

🇬🇧 Whistleblower claims 99 percent of UK asylum cases are fraudulent. A Home Office decision-maker told The Times that migrants are coached to recycle absurd cover stories, with "hundreds" claiming to have slept with the Kurdish Prime Minister's daughter and hundreds more from Pakistan all naming the same boyfriend as proof they're gay.

💰 Migrant indicted for $1.3B Medicare fraud. Federal prosecutors charged Erekle Gugava with submitting fraudulent claims through a Pennsylvania medical equipment company, using stolen identities of elderly and disabled Americans. The scheme funneled taxpayer funds to a Russian crime syndicate the DOJ has dubbed "Operation Gold Rush," which has stolen billions from Medicare.

WORLD NEWS

Behind the paywall: An attack on an Australian pastor's home, sexual crime charges in the Spanish territory of Ceuta, and three Western nations halting trade with Israeli settlements.

HOAX TRACKER

Real scholars acknowledge that the European Right is being unjustly censored…

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ASK THE EDITORS

Q: Why is the Republican Jewish Coalition giving a platform to JD Vance, who is perceived to have antisemitic views? — Gideon R.

A: In my view, JD Vance does not hold antisemitic views, and I wouldn't accuse him of being an antisemite. I would say, however, that his close friend Tucker Carlson holds antisemitic views, and this could be a big liability for Vance in 2028.

Let's back up for a second. Vance is clearly more in favor of distancing the US from Israel than most of his Republican colleagues in the administration, like Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio. In the lead-up to the Memorandum of Understanding with Iran, Vance caught heat over his concern that Israel was an obstacle to the US achieving a peace deal with Iran.

Those kinds of views put him at odds with a group like the RJC on some level.

But politics is about coalition-building, and Vance knows he'll need the RJC's support and financial backing heading into 2028. Reaching out to them now is about shoring up a relationship he can't afford to lose if he wants to be president.

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YOUR TAKE

What do you think is the solution to shuttering churches?

TODAY’S POLL

POP QUIZ

POLL RESULTS FROM YESTERDAY

Should the government incentivize married at-home parents to raise their kids?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 👍 Yes (882)

🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ 👎 No (176)

🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🤔 Unsure (152)

OUR MISSION

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