In an attempt to force Republicans to move beyond "worthless" tweets and speeches in response to President Donald Trump's sycophantic behavior at the Helsinki summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Thursday outlined a series of steps that can immediately be taken by Congress to shore up the American electoral system and rein in the unhinged commander in chief.

It may be a law of nature: President Trump tweets something about Islam. Anti-Muslim hate crimes follow.
That’s according to a working paper by University of Warwick researchers Karsten Müller and Carlo Schwarz.
Their conclusions correspond with anecdotal reports collected by Muslim civil rights and advocacy groups, too.

Sanders Rips Trump Attempt to Walk Back Helsinki Remarks: "Too Bad Trump Didn't Have the Guts to Say That" With Putin There...

"I'm glad that Trump has repudiated his absurd statement in Helsinki and now agrees with what our intelligence community has said for over a year," Sanders wrote on Twitter. "Too bad Trump didn’t have the guts to say that yesterday while with his authoritarian friend, Vladimir Putin."

One of the lessons that resonated with me was the idea that we can relate to prophets and saints like Muhammad, Jesus, Mary, Buddha or Rumi not merely as historical figures, but as sacred personalities who belong to all humanity, rather than a particular religion, ideology or nationality. They represent transcendent qualities accessible through the collective human consciousness...…

and

Our body is like Mary.
Each of us has a Jesus inside.
If a pain and yearning shows up inside us,
the Jesus of our soul is born.
If there is no pain, no yearning,
the Jesus of our soul will return to its origin from
the same secret passageway he came from…
If there is no pain, no yearning,
we will remain deprived
not benefiting from that Jesus of the soul.

One of the lessons that resonated with me was the idea that we can relate to prophets and saints like Muhammad, Jesus, Mary, Buddha or Rumi not merely as historical figures, but as sacred personalities who belong to all humanity, rather than a particular religion, ideology or nationality. They represent transcendent qualities accessible through the collective human consciousness...…

and

Our body is like Mary.
Each of us has a Jesus inside.
If a pain and yearning shows up inside us,
the Jesus of our soul is born.
If there is no pain, no yearning,
the Jesus of our soul will return to its origin from
the same secret passageway he came from…
If there is no pain, no yearning,
we will remain deprived
not benefiting from that Jesus of the soul.

From Congress to state legislatures and school boards, Muslim Americans spurred to action by the anti-Muslim policies and rhetoric of President Donald Trump and his supporters are running for elected offices in numbers not seen since before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, say Muslim groups and political observers...…

Still, the path to victory can be tougher for a Muslim American. Some promising campaigns already have fizzled out while many more face strong anti-Muslim backlash.

"How does it happen that there are major corporations in America where CEOs receive extravagant compensation packages, who pay their workers wages so low that many of them are forced to rely on food stamps, Medicaid, and public housing—subsidized by taxpayers—to survive?"

ANTI-SEMITISM has come crawling back into popular politics, together with the far-right fringe that had kept it quiet, but never abandoned it.
According to an audit by the Anti-Defamation League, there were 1,986 anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. in 2017, up 57 percent from the previous year. Far from being concentrated in “red states,” the highest number of anti-Semitic events occurred in New York, California, New Jersey and Massachusetts.
This increase in anti-Semitic rhetoric and attacks on Jewish places of worship, cemeteries and elsewhere exists in other countries, particularly where far-right political forces have had successes.

“He was a community builder. The neighborhood was symbolic of Fred Rogers’ desire for people to live together in peace, with respect and love and affirmation, and when things go wrong, forgiveness and reconciliation,” he said.
Rogers not only took his own faith seriously, but also he studied Judaism, Islam and other traditions. Wirth recalled spending a week in Toronto with Rogers visiting Catholic theologian Henri Nouwen.
“I think the bottom line for him was he believed all people are created in the image of God. He saw everyone in that light: created in the image of God,” Wirth said. “That crosses all the religious boundaries, all the race, all the ethnic boundaries — all of God’s children are created in God’s image.”
But Rogers never explicitly mentioned his faith on “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”