Each weekend on Best Of The Gist, we listen back to an archival Gist segment from the past, then we replay something from the past week. This weekend, we listen back to Mike’s April 2023 interview with NewsGuard founder Steven Brill about the business of issuing nutrition labels for news. Then we listen back to this past Tuesday’s Spiel about the role for NewsGuard in our current political moment.
Lebanese refugees return home as the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah enters its fourth day. Housing costs loomed large in yesterday's parliamentary elections in Ireland. What the newly emboldened Republican state lawmakers in Texas want this session.
In April, the Biden-Harris administration finalized a rule requiring foster parents to affirm a child’s gender ideology.
“The provider must commit to establishing an environment that supports the child’s LGBTQI+ status or identity,” according to the rule issued by the Department of Health and Human Services.
The policy, according to Herbie Newell, president and executive director of Lifeline Children’s Services, “made people of faith into a different category of foster and adoptive parent, saying that because they didn't give in to this pro-radical LGBTQ+ agenda, that they couldn't foster any child with gender dysphoria or any child that might be having any questions about their LGBTQ status.”
“Faith-based Christian people were put on the sidelines and not able to participate in our foster care and adoption system in the same way,” according to Newell.
With over 350,000 children in the U.S. foster care system, and over 100,000 of whom are waiting to be adopted, Newell says he is hopeful the incoming Trump administration will roll back these “oppressive administrative rulings.”
During Trump’s first administration, there was a sense that “the problem is way too big for us to exclude anyone from the table,” Newell said, noting that he was invited to “West Wing of the White House three times during [Trump’s] presidency.” During the Biden administration, Newell said neither he nor any other faith-based adoption leaders that he knows of were extended such an invitation.
Newell joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss the adoption and foster care policy changes he hopes to see under a second Trump administration. He also explains the ramifications of China’s decision to end international adoptions to the U.S.
As you’re recovering from indulging in stuffing and pecan pie, we wanted to bring you a special bonus episode we put together in collaboration with our friends at StoryCorps.
If you haven’t heard of StoryCorps, it’s an organization that has been gathering individual stories from across the country for over 20 years and collects them in the U.S. Library of Congress. StoryCorps’s online archive now has the largest single collection of human voices ever gathered.
Today, we wanted to play seven stories about gratitude. There’s one about a man’s deeply held appreciation for his father, a story about a mother who forgave the man who killed her son, and one about a busboy who prayed over Robert Kennedy right after he was shot in 1968. There’s a story about a first love, an unexpected friendship, and being yourself.
We know it sounds cheesy, but these stories made us laugh and cry, and we think you’ll love them, too. And as StoryCorps’s founder Dave Isay tells us, “Don’t forget about the beauty in poetry, and the grace in the stories of our loved ones and neighbors hiding in plain sight all around us.”
Thank you so much to Dave and StoryCorps for partnering with us for this episode. If you want to have a conversation with a stranger across the political divide, sign up at One Small Step. If you want to honor a loved one over the holidays with a StoryCorps interview that goes straight from your phone into the Library of Congress with one tap, participate in their Great Thanksgiving Listen. And, of course, if you want to support one of our favorite nonprofits, you can donate here.
If you liked what you heard from Honestly, the best way to support us is to go to TheFP.com and become a Free Press subscriber today.
Music is a very powerful thing. It can invoke a wide variety of emotions and moods.
Particular songs we've heard might invoke memories of when we first heard them.
However, there is some music that actually can server as a cultural shorthand. Not even full songs are necessary. Just a few notes can provide a very specific cultural reference.
Learn more about representative riffs, what they are, and how they came to be on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
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A trade war could be brewing between the U.S. and its three largest trading partners. Correspondent Kelly O'Grady has details. CBS's Natalie Brand with details on a U.S. brokered ceasefire deal between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Family therapist George James talks about a new teen phrase trending on social media that parents need to pay attention to. More than 47 million people in the U.S. face hunger, including one in five children. Host Stacy Lyn talks with Linda Nageotte, the President and C.O.O. of Feeding America about the communities impacted most by hunger and food insecurity. CBS's Matt Pieper with a look at how much we'll be spending on holiday shopping this year.
President Elect Donald Trump has created a new government advisory group ? the Department of Government Efficiency or ?DOGE? - to help cut the US budget.
The world richest man, Elon Musk, will co-head the department and has pledged to cut ?at least $2 trillion? to ?balance the budget?. But is this possible? We talk to Professor Linda Bilmes about what DOGE could or couldn?t do and how she balanced the budget in the 1990?s.
Presenter: Charlotte McDonald
Producer: Lizzy McNeill
Series producer: Tom Colls
Production co-ordinator: Katie Morrison
Sound Mix: Andrew Mills
Editor: Richard Vadon
Parts of the U.S. are facing cold temperatures this weekend. President Biden has reacted to a series of bomb threats and other incidents targeting his administration and several Democratic lawmakers. Canada is considering tariffs to retaliate if President-elect Trump imposes tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China. CBS News Correspondent Jennifer Keiper with tonight's World News Roundup.
