Day: August 18, 2023

10 things you need to know today: July 29, 2023

1 Congress breaks for August recess without path to avoid shutdown Lawmakers left Congress for their August recess at the end of this week without a clear path forward to avoid a looming government shutdown. Both the House and Senate had entered recess by Saturday, and are not due back in the nation’s Capitol until…

Is Ohio’s Issue 1 blowout a fluke or a sign of things to come?

After months of bombastic (and frequently convoluted) messaging from Ohio conservatives, a mid-summer push to head off a November ballot initiative to enshrine abortion access into the state’s constitution failed dramatically, with voters rejecting a Republican-led proposal to significantly raise the threshold for constitutional amendments by a double-digit margin as of Wednesday morning. Opponents of the measure heralded the…

The United Methodist Church has lost 20% of U.S. congregations in schism over LGBTQ rules

More than 6,180 United Methodist congregations in the U.S. have been granted permission to leave the denomination in a schism that began in 2019 over the role of LGBTQ Methodists in the church and other theological issues, according to an unofficial tally kept by UM News. The bulk of the departures, 4,172, were approved in June, in…

Artificial intelligence goes to school

AI is transforming education from grade school to grad school and making take-home essays obsolete. Here’s everything you need to know: How is AI changing schooling? It’s raising questions about whether age-old methods of educating people can or should survive in a world where sophisticated answers to virtually any question are just a few keystrokes…