The Brew: Hope Amid the Ashes
Clean up crews walk past a burned-down building in Altadena, California, on January 18, 2025.
We’re pouring out hope — and only hope — for today’s Brew.
No, not this guy.
Israel Ambassador: Israel and Saudis Closer Than Ever to Peace Deal
It’s a little too early to arrange catering for the signing ceremony, but Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. says his nation and Saudi Arabia are “closer than ever” to normalizing relations. Yechiel Lieder told the Jerusalem Post a peace treaty between the Saudis and the Jewish state would be “a game-changer for the Middle East and beyond.”
Lieder is awed by how far the peace process has come. “Thirty years ago, even discussing such an agreement would have been unthinkable. Now, thanks to the Abraham Accords and changing dynamics, we are on the cusp of a major breakthrough.”
A peace agreement will mean more than just a piece of paper.
“Normalization is not just about trade agreements or diplomatic niceties,” he said. “It’s about creating a new framework for regional stability, one that rejects extremism and fosters cooperation.”
Speaking of rejecting extremism, President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday that will cancel the student visas of antisemitic, pro-Hamas demonstrators.
Trump Bans Federal Funding of Sex-Change Treatments on Kids
Thank God: The federal government will no longer have any part in the mutilation of children. Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order halting all federal funding and encouragement of sex-change treatments for minors. The ghastly, ghoulish campaign targeting kids by former Deputy Health Secretary Rachel Levine is over.
The order titled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation” declares:
It is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called “transition” of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins celebrated the decision.
Thank the Lord that after years of battling this destructive agenda aimed at children, we see a return to TRUTH! Common-sense policies are rooted in transcendent truth — God’s Word — that is why we must stand upon the WORD no matter the cost, it will eventually prevail! I pray this administration will continue to advance policies anchored in truth.
And may accountability come to the quacks, profiteers, activists, and teachers who peddled the lie that our precious children were born in the wrong bodies, confusing them about their own identities to the point that many of them chose to mutilate themselves forever — having believed another lie, namely that the “treatments” are reversible. We leave the last word to detransitioner and activist Chloe Cole.
It’s now looking extremely likely that the ideology that destroyed my childhood and irreversibly altered my body will be completely eradicated. pic.twitter.com/eUAVqtm3SW
— Chloe Cole ⭐️ (@ChoooCole) January 28, 2025
Hope for Safety: ICE Ridding the Streets of Hard-Core Illegal Immigrant Criminals
Trump has signed into law the first bill to land on his desk since resuming: The Laken Riley Act. Named after the Georgia University nursing student brutally murdered by an illegal immigrant let loose into the nation by the Biden-Harris administration, the law requires the Department of Homeland Security to detain noncitizens charged with or convicted of theft-related crimes, assaulting a police officer, or a crime that results in death or serious bodily injury (like drunk driving).
Meanwhile, the round-up of evil-doing illegal immigrants continues. On Tuesday alone, ICE made 1,016 arrests and lodged 814 detainers.
— U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (@ICEgov) January 29, 2025
On the downside, some faith-based NGOs are hell-bent on getting in ICE’s way. Take Catholic Charities (please). Complicit Clergy reports that one Catholic Charities employee named Barbara Graham dropped three videos this week alone teaching illegal immigrants how to dodge ICE enforcement.
Your tax dollars are helping pay that lady, paving the way for another family like Laken Riley’s to pay the price. Thankfully, the administration is trying to put an end to such funding. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem confirmed Wednesday afternoon on The Will Cain Show that she is freezing all NGO grants.
Get Ready, America, to Party Hearty for our 250th Birthday
Trump also signed an executive order reestablishing “Task Force 250,” his plan to throw a star-spangled blowout for the nation’s 250th birthday in 2026. Rather than the dour denouncements of our Founding Fathers we would have gotten had Kamala Harris won the election, Trump wants to pull out all the stops for an “extraordinary celebration” of the birth of the United States, a party to put 1976’s Bicentennial bash to shame.
In his words, we’ll be holding “a grand celebration of the semiquincentennial of the ratification of the Declaration of Independence.” (“Semiquincentennial” is a tough one to say, let alone remember.)
Task Force 250 will “coordinate the plans and activities of federal agencies,” offer stronger protections for statues and monuments, and create a “National Garden of American Heroes,” a statutory park commemorating 250 historically significant Americans.
Trump originally initiated Task Force 250 during his first term, but Joe Biden deep-sixed it.
Finding a Gem Amid the Ashes
Brian McShea and Stephanie Raynor lost their Altadena home in the Eaton wildfire outside Los Angles recently. As they picked through the rubble and ash, Brian kept on focusing on the area where his office desk had been. He did not tell Stephanie why.
That is, until he found what he was looking for: the engagement ring he’d left in his desk the night before the fire.
He told ABC 7 in Los Angeles:
“I really didn’t have a lot of hope, but you just brush away some rubble and there’s a little ring, and you pick that up and it’s actually a washer to something, and that happened like four times, and then you pick it up, and there’s a little diamond.”
Brian did not waste a moment. “I was on my knees and I was like, ‘Hey, will you marry me?’” he said.
“Yes!” answered Stephanie through her tears.
Sometimes in life, love or career, our world gets burned to ashes. Hopes, dreams, and relationships get incinerated.
Yet we know that God is our refuge. We know that we know that” if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” (2 Corinthians 5:1.)
We know that if we “count it all joy,” we can count on the Lord to show us a gem amid the ashes.
Al Perrotta is The Stream’s Washington Bureau chief. He is also the creator of the soon-to-bloom Substack channel Bananas Republic.