Saturday, October 4, 2025. Annette’s Roundup for Democracy.
Attack on Synagogue in Manchester, England on holiest day of Jewish year.
A Terrible Attack in Manchester
On the holiest day of the year for Jews, two people were killed outside a synagogue in the United Kingdom.
This morning [Thusday], while Jews around the world settled in to observe Yom Kippur, two people were killed and three were wounded in a vehicle-ramming and stabbing attack at a synagogue in Manchester, England. Even before authorities made public the identity of the suspect, who was killed by police outside of the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation, they had classified the incident as terrorism.
The two people killed were both Jewish, according to the police, and three people have been arrested in connection with the attack. U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that the assailant “attacked Jews because they are Jews” and that additional police are being deployed to other synagogues throughout the country. Manchester is home to about 30,000 Jews, the largest population in England outside of London. “The fact that this has taken place on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, makes it all the more horrific,” he wrote in a social-media post.
Violent attacks against Jews are rising worldwide, and have intensified particularly over the past two years. Although many of the deadliest attacks have occurred elsewhere in Europe—as well as in other countries, including the United States—those who track anti-Semitism closely have long been worried about the United Kingdom. The Community Security Trust (CST), an organization that monitors anti-Semitism in the U.K. and coordinates security at Jewish institutions, recorded 1,521 anti-Semitic incidents in the first six months of 2025 alone, the second-most on record for the first half of any year. CST classified three of those incidents as “extreme violence,” meaning that they caused serious bodily harm or were otherwise life-threatening.
The highest number of anti-Semitic incidents in the first half of any year on record in the U.K. occurred in the aftermath of October 7, 2023, according to the CST: There were 2,019 in the first half of 2024, more than double the number that occurred during the same period in 2023. (The definition of what constitutes anti-Semitism can vary among organizations, but even with different tallies of anti-Semitic attacks and incidents, what the data reveal is universally troubling.) And as the war in Gaza has carried on, reports show a worrying trend around the world: Jews—regardless of their nationality or political affiliation—are more frequently being conflated with the state of Israel, putting them at greater risk of being targeted.
In one 2024 survey, which included responses from 8,000 Jews across 13 countries in the European Union, 96 percent of Jews reported encountering anti-Semitism in the previous year. In a 2015 story about anti-Semitism in European countries, Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg wrote that the Holocaust “served for a while as a sort of inoculation against the return of overt Jew-hatred—but the effects of the inoculation, it is becoming clear, are wearing off. What was once impermissible is again imaginable.” Far-right extremism is rising across the continent; in the U.K., white-supremacist groups aligned with Nazi ideology promote anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
In a speech today, Prime Minister Starmer said that Britain must “defeat” the threat of anti-Semitism. How that endeavor has played out in America, which has the highest population of Jews outside of Israel, is a cautionary tale: The Trump administration has harnessed growing fears around anti-Semitism to crack down on various perceived political foes, both individuals and entire institutions. As my colleague Jonathan Chait has observed, the administration’s approach to “combating” anti-Semitism has been “gleefully selective,” and in practice has amounted to “using anti-Semitism as a pretext to intimidate its opponents while simultaneously cultivating its own anti-Semitic faction.”
Anti-Semitism is often described as history’s oldest hatred. Today’s attack in Manchester is a reminder of how dangerous even the most ancient prejudices can be. (The Atlantic)
Trump is always crazy.
Even “hear nothing, see nothing” enabler Mike Johnson agrees.
Yesterday, the day after Trump’s 70-minute rambling talk in front of the nation’s top military leaders, Representative Madeleine Dean (D-PA) confronted House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). A camera caught the exchange:
Dean: “The president is unhinged. He is unwell.”
Johnson: “A lot of folks on your side are, too. I don’t control him.”
Dean: “Oh my God, please. That performance in front of the generals?”
Johnson: “I didn’t see it.”
Dean: “That is so dangerous! You know I serve on Foreign Affairs and Appropriations, this is a collision of those two things. Our allies are looking elsewhere. Our enemies are laughing. You have a president who is unwell.”
Johnson: “I just left the Speaker’s apartment.”
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTMM7BG9p/
One more thing.
While MAGA Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, was busy admitting Trump is “unhinged,” Trump admitted Project 2025 is his guidebook.
Ahead of Russ Vought meeting, Trump embraces Project 2025.
President Trump referenced Project 2025 Thursday despite distancing himself from it during his 2024 campaign.
Why it matters: Project 2025 became a political flashpoint during last year's presidential campaign because of its controversial outline for reshaping American life.
Project 2025, never an official Trump platform, was built by some Trump allies and echoes moves from the early days of Trump's second presidency.
Some of Trump's MAGA allies called Project 2025 the next-term agenda after Trump's win.
Driving the news: Trump said Tuesday he planned to meet with Russ Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, to discuss agency cuts amid the government shutdown.
Trump identified Vought as "of Project 2025 fame" in his Truth Social post on the meeting.
"I can't believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity," he wrote.
What they're saying: When asked about Trump's mention of Project 2025, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson didn't directly respond to Axios' question.
Russ Vought's ties to Project 2025
Zoom in: Vought was a co-architect of the Heritage Foundation's initiative, largely seen as a roadmap for Trump's agenda.
Vought was vice president of Heritage Action for America, a sister organization to the Heritage Foundation, which produced Project 2025. He wrote a section on the executive office.
Other Trump allies — including Tom Homan, John Ratcliffe and Pete Hoekstra — also had a role in the plan's development.
Worthy of your time: After one X user linked the FCC's threats to ABC over Jimmy Kimmel's suspension to Project 2025, FCC chairman Brendan Carr, who also contributed to the agenda's text, posted a GIF of Jack Nicholson nodding menacingly.
Trump on Project 2025
Flashback: Trump repeatedly distanced himself from the plan during the 2024 election campaign as Democrats repeatedly linked him to it.
"I have nothing to do with Project 2025," Trump said during a contentious presidential debate with Kamala Harris last year.
"That's out there. I haven't read it. I don't want to read it, purposely. I'm not going to read it," he said.
At a campaign rally in July 2024, Trump called the plan "seriously extreme" and was conceived by people on the "severe right."
Project 2025 main points
Project 2025, deemed a blueprint for reshaping life for millions of Americans, proposes massive expansion of executive branch power and control of the federal bureaucracy.
Many of Trump's executive orders signed at the start of his presidency echo the project's agenda.
The plan calls for hardline positions on issues like abortion, as well as urged the expansion of oil and gas drilling in Alaska.
It also includes recommendations for slashing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), minimizing the social safety net, cutting student debt relief and deporting immigrants.(Axios)
"Unprecedented opportunity": Trump, Vought to decide which "Democrat" agencies to cut)
Trump’s latest and most authoritarian move against American colleges.
A Defining Choice for Higher Ed
U.Va. is among the nine universities targeted by Trump.
Colleges should say no to Trump administration plans to condition access to federal funding on pledges of fealty to the president’s priorities.
Ask people at Columbia, Harvard or UCLA how things are going for higher education, and they might rightly say that things are quite dismal. Those places have been early targets in the Trump administration’s ongoing effort to bring colleges and universities to heel.
Funding cutoffs, intrusive demands for data and investigations have made life pretty difficult for those universities and some others. In addition, they have had to confront the excruciating choice of whether to defy the administration’s demands or try to reach a settlement.
At Columbia, Harvard and UCLA, budgets have been squeezed. Uncomfortable adjustments have been made. Reputations and careers have been damaged or ruined.
While some college presidents have publicly condemned what the administration has been doing, many other college and university leaders have tried to keep their heads down, to say nothing or do nothing to join with and support places that have been prominent on the administration’s hit list. But the days of duck and cover in American higher education may be coming to a close.
On Sunday, The Washington Post reported that the administration was considering a new strategy in its dealings with colleges and universities. The plan is to change the way the federal government awards research grants, “giving a competitive advantage to schools that pledge to adhere to the values and policies of the Trump administration on admissions, hiring and other matters.”
Then, on Wednesday, the administration sent letters to nine universities asking them to sign a 10-page “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” In exchange for getting preferential treatment for federal funds, among other benefits, colleges would agree “to freeze tuition for five years, cap the enrollment of international students and commit to strict definitions of gender.” They also must, per The New York Times, “change their governance structures to prohibit anything that would ‘punish, belittle and even spark violence against conservative ideas.’”
The “Compact for Academic Excellence” seeks to get colleges and universities to sign onto President Trump’s priorities all at once. That means that the kinds of excruciating choices faced by a few colleges and universities will soon be coming to a campus near you.
Higher education is now facing an unprecedented moment of truth, with institutions needing to decide whether to stick to their commitments to independence and academic freedom at the cost of their financial well-being and capacity to carry out research, or to show their loyalty to the administration at a cost to their integrity and mission.
As I see it, there really is no choice. Colleges and universities must say no. They should do so now, when resistance might dissuade the administration from going any further with its plan.
If colleges relent, they will forfeit whatever moral capital they have left and send the message that the pursuit of truth matters less than loyalty to a political agenda and that colleges and universities can be made to give up their independence if the price of freedom is high enough.
I am enough of a realist not to take odds on what choices colleges and universities will make. And I know that resistance of the kind I am advocating may be very costly for students, faculty and staff, as well as the communities served by campuses that push back.
But as journalist Nathan M. Greenfield explained in 2021, “Academic freedom is the sine qua non of universities in common law countries as well as those in Western Europe and, indeed, is central to the functioning of universities in all but those countries with repressive governments.” Yale Law School professor Robert Post explains that “academic freedom rests on a bargain between society and institutions of higher education. Universities are granted independence so they can produce two necessities of modern life: knowledge and education.
The very idea that the Trump administration is seeking to compel universities to adhere to the values and policies that it prefers suggests how little regard it has for either knowledge or education. Post gets it right when he says, “Democracy would become a farce, and the value of self-government meaningless, if the state could manipulate the knowledge available to its citizens.”
In 1957, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter approvingly cited a statement that identified four conditions for higher education to thrive: universities must be free to determine who may teach, what can be taught, how it is taught and who will be admitted. “For society’s good,” Justice Frankfurter wrote, “inquiries into [academic and social] problems, speculations about them, stimulation in others of reflection upon them, must be left as unfettered as possible. Political power must abstain from intrusion into this activity of freedom, pursued in the interest of wise government and the people’s wellbeing.”
The Trump administration is not displaying such restraint in dealing with all of American higher education. The Washington Post quotes Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, who said that the new policy is a frontal “assault … on institutional autonomy, on ideological diversity, on freedom of expression and academic freedom.”
“Suddenly, to get a grant,” Mitchell continued, “you need to not demonstrate merit, but ideological fealty to a particular set of political viewpoints … I can’t imagine a university in America that would be supportive of this.”
We may soon see whether he is right. But he may have framed the issue incorrectly.
The question is not whether America’s colleges and universities will support a clearly unconstitutional overreach by the Trump administration. The question is whether they will go along with it by signing on to the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.”
The administration is asking colleges and universities, “’What are the things that you believe? What are your values?” Justice Frankfurter must be rolling over in his grave.
We can only hope that the first nine universities asked to agree to the administration’s latest intrusion into higher education will follow his wisdom and refuse to do so. And other colleges and universities should make clear now that if they are asked to follow suit, they too will say no.(Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College, Inside Higher Education).
One more thing.
From New York Times coverage of Trump’s most recent demand of colleges
Letters were sent on Wednesday to the University of Arizona, Brown University, Dartmouth College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas, Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia.
“The University of Texas system is honored that our flagship — the University of Texas at Austin — has been named as one of only nine institutions in the U.S. selected by the Trump administration for potential funding advantages under its new Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” Kevin P. Eltife, the chairman of the University of Texas Board of Regents, said in a statement on Thursday. “We enthusiastically look forward to engaging with university officials and reviewing the compact immediately.”
First woman is named archbishop of Canterbury, leader of Church of England
Sarah Mullally, previously the bishop of London, is the first woman to serve as spiritual leader of the Church of England in its nearly 500-year history.
Dame Sarah Mullally named first female Archbishop of Canterbury.
Sarah Mullally was named the new archbishop of Canterbury on Friday, becoming the first woman to serve as the spiritual leader of the Church of England, and of the global Anglican community, in the church’s nearly 500-year history.
The position has been vacant since last November when Justin Welby announced his resignation after an investigation found he failed to sufficiently report, investigate and contain a man who for decades ran evangelical summer camps and subjected boys to sexual, physical and psychological abuse. A report summarizing an investigation by the church described the man, John Smyth, as “arguably, the most prolific serial abuser to be associated with the Church of England.”
The Church of England only allowed women to become bishops in 2014.
Mullally, 63, has broken barriers throughout her career. In 2018, she became the first female bishop of London, the church’s third most senior clerical position. Before her ordination in 2001, she worked in nursing and, at age 37, became the youngest person to be appointed England’s chief nursing officer.
The archbishop of Canterbury is formally nominated by the British monarch, acting on advice from the prime minister, who in turn relies on advice from a Church of England commission. Mullally will be installed as the 106th archbishop at a service at Canterbury Cathedral in March 2026.
Britain is considered a more secular country than the United States, both in terms of people identifying as having no religion and in rates of regular church attendance.
Yet the Church of England still retains a large symbolic presence in national identity and values. The archbishop of Canterbury, for instance, plays a central role in major state occasions such as coronations, royal weddings and funerals.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer welcomed Mullally’s appointment. “The Archbishop of Canterbury will play a key role in our national life,” Starmer said in a statement. “I wish her every success and look forward to working together.”
“The Church of England is of profound importance to this country,” he said. “Its churches, cathedrals, schools, and charities are part of the fabric of our communities.”
In her first address since being named archbishop — carried by the state broadcaster on Friday — Mullally spoke about major domestic and global issues. She condemned Thursday’s Yom Kippur attack on a synagogue in Manchester, which left two people dead, and said the church had a duty to stand with the Jewish community against antisemitism in “all its forms.”
She also highlighted extreme poverty; the “ever worsening climate crisis”; solidarity with “our Palestinian Christian brothers and sisters”; and the “horrors of war” for people in the Middle East, Ukraine, Russia, Sudan, Myanmar and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Turning to the church’s own failings, Mullally stressed the importance of preventing abuse and responding more effectively when concerns are raised.
She also noted the historic nature of her appointment.
“Some will be asking what it means for a woman to lead the Church of England and to take on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s global role in the Anglican Communion,” she said.
“I intend to be a shepherd who enables everyone’s ministry and vocation to flourish,” she continued, adding, “I give thanks for all the men and women, lay and ordained deacons, priests and bishops who have paid the paved the way for this moment and to all the women that have gone before me.” (Washington Post).
Enter the weekend with a smile.
Spotted: Statue of Trump and Epstein reinstalled in the same location pic.twitter.com/WHXSULqTZk
— Overheard District (@OverheardWDC) October 2, 2025