Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday again warned that Ofer Winter’s new People of Israel party could cost the outgoing right-wing coalition essential seats if it runs alone in the upcoming election, urging Winter to meet with him and address the issue.
Friday, September 4, 2026
Toronto rabbis spark backlash with burial ban over assisted dying
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/432656
An Orthodox rabbis’ council has barred funerals and restricted burial for Jews who die through physician-assisted death, triggering a fierce backlash from other rabbis and community leaders.
Under the policy, the council's rabbis will not participate in the funerals of patients who chose euthanasia and will generally refuse permission for such individuals to be buried in cemetery sections affiliated with Orthodox synagogues. The decision comes amid a significant increase in the use of medical assistance in dying in Canada. According to Canadian health data cited in the report, approximately 5,000 Ontario residents chose medical assistance in dying in 2023. Since Canada legalized the procedure roughly a decade ago, more than 75,000 people have chosen it, and assisted deaths now account for more than 5% of all deaths in the country.
The policy quickly drew criticism from other Jewish organizations. The Toronto Council of Rabbis, which includes 56 rabbis representing different Jewish denominations and movements, issued a response calling the Orthodox council's decision "surprising" and "too harsh." While the council said it does not support euthanasia from a Jewish legal perspective, it said its rabbis would continue to provide spiritual support to families, conduct funerals, and participate in shiva.
Thursday, September 3, 2026
The Devilish Legacy of Roy Cohn
https://www.thefp.com/p/roy-cohn-trump-james-kirchick-american-scoundrel
The infamous lawyer and fixer for mobsters, Joe McCarthy, and a young Donald Trump heralded a new kind of American politics.
“Where’s my Roy Cohn?” President Donald Trump demanded in March 2017, barely two months into his first administration. Trump was just given the unwelcome news that his attorney general had recused himself from the Justice Department investigation into his campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia, and he needed someone to rescue him.
The plaintive cry—later adopted by director Matt Tyrnauer as the title for his revelatory 2019 documentary about Cohn—spoke to the singular importance that the late lawyer and political fixer held in Trump’s life. Like many powerful men of dubious morality, Trump had relied on Cohn to extricate him from messes of his own making. During his heyday as a real-estate tycoon, Trump kept a framed photograph of Cohn in his office; during contentious meetings, he would point to it and ask—not so much as a question but as a threat—“Would you rather deal with him?”
Low testosterone is a real problem, but don’t forget this major cause
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/08/31/testosterone-treatment-heres-better-idea-hegseth/
In July, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced a mandatory program to test all service members 30 and older for low testosterone and to offer voluntary testosterone replacement therapy to those who test low. The mandate appears to include women. Hegseth has put forth some out-there beliefs, such as when he promoted a church leader who has advocated the abolition of women’s right to vote. Is this another one of those weird ideas?
Not necessarily. Men rely on testosterone for drive and motivation, for the will to win. When testosterone levels fall, men’s motivation falls — though the same is not true for women.
And testosterone levels in men are in fact dropping. Between 1999 and 2016, the average testosterone level among young men fell by 25 percent. In 1999, only 4 percent of men had low testosterone. In 2016, more than 20 percent of men did — a fivefold increase in less than 20 years. These findings were confirmed in a more recent review, which found no taper in that trend line: Not only are testosterone levels continuing to drop among men, but the pace of the decline appears to be accelerating.
More testosterone won’t make a better soldier or a tougher man – aggression and strength drive T levels, not the other way around
How low is too low when it comes to testosterone levels? When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced in July 2026 that U.S. service members ages 30 and older will have their testosterone tested every year, neither he nor the Pentagon specified what level of the hormone would be considered “low” enough to require treatment – a telling omission, since where “low” begins depends on the lab conducting the test and the guidelines your doctor follows.
The announcement lands amid a national testosterone craze: Prescriptions have climbed to nearly 12 million in 2025, up 154% since 2020, and fastest among men in their late 30s and 40s. Online clinics that sell testosterone as a lifestyle upgrade have largely driven this rise in prescriptions.
As a psychologist who studies masculinity, I’m certain that while the idea that more testosterone makes a man tougher and more fit to fight seems intuitive, it’s also mostly wrong.
Pentagon orders mandatory testosterone tests for male troops 30 and older
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pentagon-orders-mandatory-testosterone-tests-male-troops-30-older
According to the new guidance, which is effective immediately, men ages 30 and older will undergo mandatory testosterone blood tests, while younger men will be tested only if requested or if clinicians identify warning signs.
Men found to have low testosterone levels may undergo further evaluation and, if clinically appropriate, may be offered voluntary hormone replacement therapy.
Some endocrinologists and other medical experts have raised concerns that broad testosterone testing could lead to unnecessary or potentially harmful treatment, saying there is a lack of evidence to support the claim that universal screening for low testosterone among service members would improve military readiness.
Republican Senator Calls On Trump to Replace Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
https://time.com/article/2026/09/02/trump-hegseth-tillis-driscoll-resignation-pentagon/
Republican Sen. Thom Tillis is urging President Donald Trump to replace Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth because of what he described as “inept management.”
The North Carolina lawmaker’s call to oust Hegseth comes after Dan Driscoll resigned from his role as Army Secretary on Monday, amid tension that had been reportedly broiling between Driscoll and Hegseth for months. In a social media post on Wednesday, Tillis thanked Driscoll “for his leadership to our Army and service to our country,” before going on to slam Hegseth.
“If we had a @SecWar who maintained the same priorities and forward-thinking, he would be fighting to retain talented leaders like Dan and the many flag officers he has forced into retirement,” Tillis said. “Instead, he is creating a leadership void at the top of our military ranks.”
The verdict is in on Trump’s ‘Lake America’ and Canada trade war. It’s not good
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/09/02/politics/trump-lake-america-canada-polls
President Donald Trump has dropped another clunker in the laps of his fellow Republicans in the run-up to the 2026 midterm elections.
His new trade war with Canada and his related move to change the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America” are the latest in a series of unpopular actions.
In fact, new polling suggests they’re even more unpopular than Trump’s previous tariffs and efforts to rename things.
It shows Americans oppose the president’s executive order to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America” 63% to 14%, with the rest undecided.
That more than 4-to-1 margin is more lopsided than when Trump moved to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” last year. Back then, polls showed more than 7 in 10 Americans opposed it. But support was about twice as high, on average.
Wednesday, September 2, 2026
Red Heifer
Tanchuma (Chukas 08) A certain convert questioned Rabban Johanan ben Zakkay, “These things which you do seem like a kind of sorcery. You bring a heifer, burn it, pound it, and take its ashes. Then when one of you is defiled by a corpse, they sprinkle two or three drops on him, and you say to him, ‘You are clean.’” He said to him, “Have you ever had a bad spirit of madness enter you?” He told him, “No.” He said to him, “Perhaps you have seen someone into whom a bad spirit has entered?” He told him, “Yes.” He said to him, “So what did you do for him?” He said to him, “They bring roots and burn them beneath him. Then they sprinkle water on the spirit, and it flees.” He said to him, “Let your ears hear what you are uttering with your mouth. Similarly is this spirit an unclean spirit. Thus it is stated ‘and I will also remove the prophets and the unclean spirit from the land.’ They sprinkle the purifying water upon him, and he flees.” After the gentile had left, R. Johanan's disciples said to him, “Our master, you repelled this one with a mere reed of an answer. What have you to say to us?” He said to them, “By your lives, a corpse does not defile, nor does a heifer purify, nor does water purify. Rather, G-d has said, ‘I have enacted a statute for you. I have issued a decree, and you are not allowed to transgress against my decree.’” Thus it is written “This is the statute of the Torah.” And for what reason are all the sacrifices male and female, while that one is only female? R. Ayyevu said, “It is comparable to the son of a female slave who defiled a king's palace. The king said, ‘Let his mother come and clean up the excrement.’ Similarly has the Holy One, blessed be He, said, ‘Let a heifer come and atone for the incident of the golden calf.’”
Bamidbar Rabbah (19:08) A certain idolater asked Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakai: ‘These actions that you perform seem to be a type of sorcery. You bring a heifer, burn it, crush it, and take its ashes. One of you becomes impure from a corpse, one sprinkles upon him two or three drops, and you say to him: You are purified.’ He said to him: ‘Has a spirit of insanity never entered you?’ He said to him: ‘No.’ ‘Have you seen a person into whom a spirit of insanity has entered?’ He said to him: ‘Yes.’ He said to him: ‘And what do you do to him?’ He said to him: ‘We bring roots, smoke them beneath him, and sprinkle water on it, and it flees.’ He said to him: ‘Let your ears hear what you express from your mouth. The same is true of this spirit, this spirit of impurity, as it is written: “I will remove the prophets and the spirit of impurity from the land”. We sprinkle upon it the water of sprinkling, and it flees.’After he left, his students said to him: ‘You rebuffed this one with a reed. What do you say to us?’ He said to them: ‘As you live, it is not the corpse that impurifies, and it is not the water that purifies. Rather, G-d said: I instituted a statute, issued a decree; you are not permitted to violate My decree, as it is written: “This is the statute of the Torah.”’
Rambam (Mikvaos (11:12) It is a clear and apparent matter that the concepts of purity and impurity are Scriptural decrees and they are not matters determined by a person's understanding and they are included in the category of chukim. Similarly, immersion in a mikveh to ascend from impurity is included in the category of chukim, because impurity is not mud or filth that can be washed away with water. Instead, the immersion is a Scriptural decree and requires the focusing the intent of one's heart. Therefore our Sages said: "When one immersed, but did not intend to purify himself," it is as if he did not immerse.
Milo Yiannopoulos ‘very ashamed’ of support for Trump after deportation
https://thehill.com/media/6064328-milo-yiannopoulos-deportation-trump/
Yiannopoulos told British commentator Piers Morgan on his talk show “Uncensored” on YouTube that he believes the Trump administration has “devolved into the Loomer admin,” referring to far-right influencer Laura Loomer, who took credit for reporting Yiannopoulos to ICE.
“To think that the promise and hope and joy and anticipation of Trump 2016 could, over the course of 10 years, collapse into this ugly, war-mongering –– taken as a whole, mentally ill heap of crazy with some of the most unstable and lunatic people seemingly directing the president’s actions,” Yiannopoulos told Morgan.
“If,” he added, “I had any clue that anything remotely like this was even possible, I would never have gotten involved in supporting Trump in the first place. And I’m very ashamed that I did.”
Hegseth is winning the battle over the Pentagon’s future
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/09/01/hegseth-driscoll-tech-culture-wars-01060795
Army Secretary Dan Driscoll wanted to transform the service into a modern, tech-oriented force. Pete Hegseth made that almost impossible.
The Army secretary, in his final months in the job, found his efforts to champion a leaner force with a lighter footprint challenged by Hegseth and the new acting Army Chief of Staff Gen. Christopher LaNeve, who focused on gearing the Army toward grooming and fitness standards, according to the people. And that, coupled with the resignation of well-regarded top generals, led Driscoll to head to the White House and deliver his resignation to President Donald Trump.
The White House defended Hegseth’s leadership of the Pentagon, saying he’s aligned with the president’s anti-diversity, equity and initiatives stance. “After Joe Biden’s Pentagon prioritized DEI and woke ideology, President Trump and Secretary Hegseth quickly reversed course,” said spokesperson Anna Kelly. “The President has complete trust in Secretary Hegseth.”
Tuesday, September 1, 2026
The Republican Party’s Midterm Nightmare Is Taking Shape
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2026/08/30/republican-party-midterms-trump-01055934
He’s in serious trouble in farm country,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) told me. “He being Trump — and Trump is us. I’m not very optimistic.”
The triple-whammy of tariffs, expensive diesel and fertilizer and now imported beef has created a crisis for agriculture-state Republicans.
The culprits are obvious: the exorbitant cost of living, Trump’s deep unpopularity with the political center and the massive enthusiasm gap Democrats enjoy over Republicans.
Florida, Vaccines and Religious Liberty
State Attorney General James Uthmeier threatens to bar Catholic schools from voucher programs if they insist on vaccinations.
The movement against vaccines has led to a resurgence of measles and now is taking a dangerous constitutional turn in Florida. Attorney General James Uthmeier is threatening to ban Catholic schools from the state’s voucher programs over their immunization requirements. Democrats aren’t the only politicians attacking the free exercise of religion these days.
Mr. Uthmeier in July issued a peremptory letter to Catholic bishops accusing them of violating Church doctrine and state law by requiring students to be immunized and not allowing parents who object to vaccines for religious reasons to opt out. There is “no legitimate religious reason” to deny religious exemptions, he wrote.
Monday, August 31, 2026
Republicans are worried about the midterms. Trump is focused on his legacy
As his approval ratings sag ahead of US midterm elections, Donald Trump is on a mission to burnish his legacy, but Republicans worry that his focus on himself is backfiring with voters.
One senior administration official said the president has entered “legacy mode.” He is fixated on how he will be remembered by future generations, according to aides, conscious of avoiding the fate of past occupants of the White House he views as weak, such as Jimmy Carter.
Despite his low approval ratings, Trump plans to put himself at the center of the midterms, a move that will test whether his influence with voters is waning. As the president’s team debates how to spend MAGA Inc.’s enormous fundraising haul, Trump has told advisers that he wants to produce a series of television ads centered on his agenda, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Republican Party’s Midterm Nightmare Is Taking Shape
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2026/08/30/republican-party-midterms-trump-01055934
As the traditional start of the campaign season draws near, though, Republicans are increasingly worried they may be consumed by a worsening prairie fire.
Will 2026 bring a backlash against the party in power, but one largely confined to House losses because of polarization, limiting Democratic strength in Senate races? Or will there be a greater wave that grows high enough to sweep out Republicans thought to be safe, flipping both chambers of Congress in the process?
Absent a drastic shift in voter sentiment, this election is poised to mirror the last time a Republican was besieged by ornery voters upset with corruption, the price at the pump and an unpopular Middle Eastern war: complete Democratic takeover.
The Great Unknown: Seven Journeys to the Frontiers of Science
"Just as I can talk about space having a shape, I can also talk about space-time having a shape. My initial instinct is to think of time as a line, which makes it very difficult for me to think of anything other than a line that is finite and therefore has a beginning and an end, or a line that is infinite. But there are other possibilities. Since time and space make up four dimensions, I must consider shapes that I can’t see. I need mathematics to describe them. But I can picture shapes representing parts of space-time that enable me to understand what I mean by the question of what happened before the Big Bang. For example, imagine there was only one spatial dimension, so that space-time is two-dimensional. This creates a surface that I can see, like a rubber sheet that I can play with and wrap up in interesting ways. I think most people’s model of two-dimensional space-time would be an infinite flat sheet with time extending infinitely backward and forward and space also one-dimensional and infinite. But, as I explored in the last Edge, space could be finite. I could wrap space up to make a circle and then time would extend this circle to make space-time look like a cylinder. I could, of course, join the cylinder up to make a bagel- or torus-shaped space-time. That would make time finite too. In this model of space-time I could loop around and return to a previous moment in history. Logician Kurt Gödel proposed solutions to Einstein’s equations of general relativity that have this feature. Gödel, as I shall explain in my final Edge, greatly enjoyed messing with people’s logical expectations. But Gödel’s circles of space-time are generally regarded as curiosities, because going back in time causes too many problems when it comes to causality. Possible shapes for a two-dimensional space-time To get a more realistic picture of space-time, I need to create a geometry that takes into account our current model of the history of the universe, which includes a beginning: the Big Bang. To see this point in my two-dimensional space-time universe, I could wrap up the surface so that it looks like a cone. The universe, which is just a circle, shrinks as I go back in time until I hit the point at the end of the cone. This is where time begins. There is nothing before that. No space. No time. Just a point of infinite density. This is a good model for something rather like the Big Bang. Or, rather than pinching space-time at a point, perhaps it could look like a sphere—like the surface of the Earth. This has its own implications for how I answer the question of what happened before the Big Bang. If I head south along a line of longitude, then when I hit the South Pole there is a sudden flip and I find myself on another line of longitude on the other side. But these are just numbers that we give to these points on the Earth’s surface. It doesn’t actually represent a discontinuous flip in the shape, just a jump in the way that we measure it. So by changing the coordinates, what appears to be a singular point can look quite smooth. This is one of Hawking’s ideas for time. Perhaps I should try to embed space-time in a shape such that this point that seems to show time stopping is actually just the south pole of the shape. After all, how do you answer the question, what’s south of the South Pole? The question doesn’t really make sense. It is striking that often when a question arises to which it seems we cannot know the answer, it turns out you need to acknowledge that the question is not well posed. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is not really an expression of the fact that we cannot simultaneously know both the momentum and position of a particle, so much as that these two things don’t actually exist concurrently. Similarly, attempts have been made to show that the question “What happened before the Big Bang?” isn’t one whose answer cannot be known. Rather, the question does not really make sense. To talk about “before” is to suppose the existence of time, but what if time existed only after the Big Bang?"
Start reading this book for free: https://read.amazon.com/kp/
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