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Read: Obama’s Speech At The National Prayer Breakfast

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Editor’s note: The National Prayer Breakfast was the focus of much of the day, but there were other issues we’re working on, like the vigil for slain LGBT activist and leader David Kato. We’ll get those stories to you shortly. In the mean time, please read:

National Prayer Breakfast: Despite Protests, Obama Attended. Why?
On National Prayer Breakfast Day, Poll Finds Religion Polarizes U.S.A.
Listen: This Morning’s National Prayer Breakfast With President Obama

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary


Remarks by the President at National Prayer Breakfast

Washington Hilton, Washington, D.C.

9:00 A.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you so much.  To the co-chairs, Jeff and Ann; to all the members of Congress who are here, the distinguished guests who’ve traveled so far to be here this morning; to Randall for your wonderful stories and powerful prayer; to all who are here providing testimony, thank you so much for having me and Michelle here.  We are blessed to be here.

I want to begin by just saying a word to Mark Kelly, who’s here.  We have been praying for Mark’s wife, Gabby Giffords, for many days now.  But I want Gabby and Mark and their entire family to know that we are with them for the long haul, and God is with them for the long haul.  (Applause.)

And even as we pray for Gabby in the aftermath of a tragedy here at home, we’re also mindful of the violence that we’re now seeing in the Middle East, and we pray that the violence in Egypt will end and that the rights and aspirations of the Egyptian people will be realized and that a better day will dawn over Egypt and throughout the world.

For almost 60 years, going back to President Eisenhower, this gathering has been attended by our President.  It’s a tradition that I’m proud to uphold not only as a fellow believer but as an elected leader whose entry into public service was actually through the church.  This may come as a surprise, for as some of you know, I did not come from a particularly religious family.  My father, who I barely knew — I only met once for a month in my entire life — was said to be a non-believer throughout his life.

My mother, whose parents were Baptist and Methodist, grew up with a certain skepticism about organized religion, and she usually only took me to church on Easter and Christmas — sometimes.  And yet my mother was also one of the most spiritual people that I ever knew.  She was somebody who was instinctively guided by the Golden Rule and who nagged me constantly about the homespun values of her Kansas upbringing, values like honesty and hard work and kindness and fair play.

And it’s because of her that I came to understand the equal worth of all men and all women, and the imperatives of an ethical life and the necessity to act on your beliefs.  And it’s because of her example and guidance that despite the absence of a formal religious upbringing my earliest inspirations for a life of service ended up being the faith leaders of the civil rights movement.

There was, of course, Martin Luther King and the Baptist leaders, the ways in which they helped those who had been subjugated to make a way out of no way, and transform a nation through the force of love.  But there were also Catholic leaders like Father Theodore Heshburg, and Jewish leaders like Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Muslim leaders and Hindu leaders.  Their call to fix what was broken in our world, a call rooted in faith, is what led me just a few years out of college to sign up as a community organizer for a group of churches on the Southside of Chicago.  And it was through that experience working with pastors and laypeople trying to heal the wounds of hurting neighborhoods that I came to know Jesus Christ for myself and embrace Him as my lord and savior.  (Applause.)

Now, that was over 20 years ago.  And like all of us, my faith journey has had its twists and turns.  It hasn’t always been a straight line.  I have thanked God for the joys of parenthood and Michelle’s willingness to put up with me.  (Laughter.)  In the wake of failures and disappointments I’ve questioned what God had in store for me and been reminded that God’s plans for us may not always match our own short-sighted desires.

And let me tell you, these past two years, they have deepened my faith.  (Laughter and applause.)  The presidency has a funny way of making a person feel the need to pray.  (Laughter.)  Abe Lincoln said, as many of you know, “I have been driven to my knees many times by the overwhelming conviction that I had no place else to go.”  (Laughter.)

Fortunately, I’m not alone in my prayers.  Pastor friends like Joel Hunter and T.D. Jakes come over to the Oval Office every once in a while to pray with me and pray for the nation.  The chapel at Camp David has provided consistent respite and fellowship.  The director of our Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnership’s office, Joshua DuBois — young minister himself — he starts my morning off with meditations from Scripture.

Most of all, I’ve got friends around the country — some who I know, some who I don’t know, but I know their friends who are out there praying for me.  One of them is an old friend named Kaye Wilson.  In our family we call her Momma Kaye.  And she happens to be Malia and Sasha’s godmother.  And she has organized prayer circles for me all around the country.  She started small with her own Bible study group, but once I started running for President and she heard what they were saying about me on cable, she felt the need to pray harder.  (Laughter.)  By the time I was elected President, she says, “I just couldn’t keep up on my own.” (Laughter.)  “I was having to pray eight, nine times a day just for you.”  (Laughter.)  So she enlisted help from around the country.

It’s also comforting to know that people are praying for you who don’t always agree with you.  Tom Coburn, for example, is here.  He is not only a dear friend but also a brother in Christ. We came into the Senate at the same time.  Even though we are on opposite sides of a whole bunch of issues, part of what has bound us together is a shared faith, a recognition that we pray to and serve the same God.  And I keep praying that God will show him the light and he will vote with me once in a while.  (Laughter.) It’s going to happen, Tom.  (Laughter.)  A ray of light is going to beam down.  (Laughter.)

My Christian faith then has been a sustaining force for me over these last few years.  All the more so, when Michelle and I hear our faith questioned from time to time, we are reminded that ultimately what matters is not what other people say about us but whether we’re being true to our conscience and true to our God.  “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.”

As I travel across the country folks often ask me what is it that I pray for.  And like most of you, my prayers sometimes are general:  Lord, give me the strength to meet the challenges of my office.  Sometimes they’re specific:  Lord, give me patience as I watch Malia go to her first dance — (laughter) — where there will be boys.  (Laughter.)  Lord, have that skirt get longer as she travels to that dance.  (Laughter.)

But while I petition God for a whole range of things, there are a few common themes that do recur.  The first category of prayer comes out of the urgency of the Old Testament prophets and the Gospel itself.  I pray for my ability to help those who are struggling.  Christian tradition teaches that one day the world will be turned right side up and everything will return as it should be.  But until that day, we’re called to work on behalf of a God that chose justice and mercy and compassion to the most vulnerable.

We’ve seen a lot of hardship these past two years.  Not a day passes when I don’t get a letter from somebody or meet someone who’s out of work or lost their home or without health care.  The story Randall told about his father — that’s a story that a whole lot of Americans have gone through over these past couple of years.

Sometimes I can’t help right away.  Sometimes what I can do to try to improve the economy or to curb foreclosures or to help deal with the health care system — sometimes it seems so distant and so remote, so profoundly inadequate to the enormity of the need.  And it is my faith, then, that biblical injunction to serve the least of these, that keeps me going and that keeps me from being overwhelmed.  It’s faith that reminds me that despite being just one very imperfect man, I can still help whoever I can, however I can, wherever I can, for as long as I can, and that somehow God will buttress these efforts.

It also helps to know that none of us are alone in answering this call.  It’s being taken up each and every day by so many of you — back home, your churches, your temples and synagogues, your fellow congregants — so many faith groups across this great country of ours.

I came upon a group recently called “charity: water,” a group that supports clean water projects overseas.  This is a project that was started by a former nightclub promoter named Scott Harrison who grew weary of living only for himself and feeling like he wasn’t following Christ as well as he should.
And because of Scott’s good work, “charity: water” has helped 1.7 million people get access to clean water.  And in the next 10 years, he plans to make clean water accessible to a hundred million more.  That’s the kind of promoting we need more of, and that’s the kind of faith that moves mountains.  And there’s stories like that scattered across this room of people who’ve taken it upon themselves to make a difference.

Now, sometimes faith groups can do the work of caring for the least of these on their own; sometimes they need a partner, whether it’s in business or government.  And that’s why my administration has taken a fresh look at the way we organize with faith groups, the way we work with faith groups through our Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

And through that office, we’re expanding the way faith groups can partner with our government.  We’re helping them feed more kids who otherwise would go hungry.  We’re helping fatherhood groups get dads the support they need to be there for their children.  We’re working with non-profits to improve the lives of people around the world.  And we’re doing it in ways that are aligned with our constitutional principles.  And in this work, we intend to expand it in the days ahead, rooted in the notions of partnership and justice and the imperatives to help the poor.

Of course there are some needs that require more resources than faith groups have at their disposal.  There’s only so much a church can do to help all the families in need — all those who need help making a mortgage payment, or avoiding foreclosure, or making sure their child can go to college.  There’s only so much that a nonprofit can do to help a community rebuild in the wake of disaster.  There’s only so much the private sector will do to help folks who are desperately sick get the care that they need.
And that’s why I continue to believe that in a caring and in a just society, government must have a role to play; that our values, our love and our charity must find expression not just in our families, not just in our places of work and our places of worship, but also in our government and in our politics.

Over the past two years, the nature of these obligations, the proper role of government has obviously been the subject of enormous controversy.  And the debates have been fierce as one side’s version of compassion and community may be interpreted by the other side as an oppressive and irresponsible expansion of the state or an unacceptable restriction on individual freedom.

That’s why a second recurring theme in my prayers is a prayer for humility.  Now, God answered this prayer for me early on by having me marry Michelle.  (Laughter and applause.)  Because whether it’s reminding me of a chore undone, or questioning the wisdom of watching my third football game in a row on Sunday, she keeps me humble.  (Laughter.)

But in this life of politics when debates have become so bitterly polarized, and changes in the media lead so many of us just to listen to those who reinforce our existing biases, it’s useful to go back to Scripture to remind ourselves that none of has all the answers — none of us, no matter what our political party or our station in life.

The full breadth of human knowledge is like a grain of sand in God’s hands.  And there are some mysteries in this world we cannot fully comprehend.  As it’s written in Job, “God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways.  He does great things beyond our understandings.”

The challenge I find then is to balance this uncertainty, this humility, with the need to fight for deeply held convictions, to be open to other points of view but firm in our core principles.  And I pray for this wisdom every day.

I pray that God will show me and all of us the limits of our understanding, and open our ears and our hearts to our brothers and sisters with different points of view; that such reminders of our shared hopes and our shared dreams and our shared limitations as children of God will reveal the way forward that we can travel together.

And the last recurring theme, one that binds all prayers together, is that I might walk closer with God and make that walk my first and most important task.

In our own lives it’s easy to be consumed by our daily worries and our daily concerns.  And it is even easier at a time when everybody is busy, everybody is stressed, and everybody — our culture is obsessed with wealth and power and celebrity.  And often it takes a brush with hardship or tragedy to shake us out of that, to remind us of what matters most.

We see an aging parent wither under a long illness, or we lose a daughter or a husband in Afghanistan, we watch a gunman open fire in a supermarket — and we remember how fleeting life can be.  And we ask ourselves how have we treated others, whether we’ve told our family and friends how much we love them.  And it’s in these moments, when we feel most intensely our mortality and our own flaws and the sins of the world, that we most desperately seek to touch the face of God.

So my prayer this morning is that we might seek His face not only in those moments, but each and every day; that every day as we go through the hustle and bustle of our lives, whether it’s in Washington or Hollywood or anywhere in between, that we might every so often rise above the here and now, and kneel before the Eternal; that we might remember, Kaye, the fact that those who wait on the Lord will soar on wings like eagles, and they will run and not be weary, and they will walk and not faint.

When I wake in the morning, I wait on the Lord, and I ask Him to give me the strength to do right by our country and its people.  And when I go to bed at night I wait on the Lord, and I ask Him to forgive me my sins, and look after my family and the American people, and make me an instrument of His will.

I say these prayers hoping they will be answered, and I say these prayers knowing that I must work and must sacrifice and must serve to see them answered.  But I also say these prayers knowing that the act of prayer itself is a source of strength.  It’s a reminder that our time on Earth is not just about us; that when we open ourselves to the possibility that God might have a larger purpose for our lives, there’s a chance that somehow, in ways that we may never fully know, God will use us well.

May the Lord bless you and keep you, and may He bless this country that we love.  (Applause.)

END
9:23 A.M. EST

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News

‘Depraved Lie’: White House Claims Democrats Are Blaming Trump for Texas Floods

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An increasingly “anxious” White House is lashing out at Democrats and the media, accusing them—without providing evidence—of blaming President Donald Trump for the catastrophic Texas floods that have killed over 90 people, including many children.

Critics are questioning whether cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS) by the Trump administration hampered accurate forecasting and slowed emergency warnings. Others point to failures by local officials to communicate timely alerts to the flood-stricken area along the Guadalupe River.

“Former federal officials and outside experts have warned for months that President Donald Trump’s deep staffing cuts to the National Weather Service could endanger lives,” the Associated Press reported Monday afternoon. “The Trump administration has cut hundreds of jobs at NWS, with staffing down by at least 20% at nearly half of the 122 NWS field offices nationally and at least a half dozen no longer staffed 24 hours a day. Hundreds more experienced forecasters and senior managers were encouraged to retire early.”

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“The website for the NWS office for Austin/San Antonio, which covers the region that includes hard-hit Kerr County, shows six of 27 positions are listed as vacant,” the AP also reported, noting, however, that there were the usual number of staff members on hand the night of the flood.

Now, veteran foreign policy journalist Laura Rozen writes that the White House is “very anxious that administration/DOGE massive staffing cuts to national weather service and related agencies not be seen as connected to flooding deaths in Texas, inadequate warning.”

Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Monday, in a letter to Roderick Anderson, the Commerce Department’s acting inspector general, urged him to immediately “open an investigation into the scope, breadth, and ramifications of whether staffing shortages at key local National Weather Service (NWS) stations contributed to the catastrophic loss of life and property during the deadly flooding,” The Hill reported.

“He noted that The New York Times reported that key forecasting and coordination positions at the San Antonio and San Angelo offices of the NWS were vacant at the time of the Friday storm,” The Hill also reported. “Those local offices were missing a warning coordination meteorologist, a science officer and a senior hydrologist, among other ‘vital forecasting, meteorology and coordination roles.'”

Only once in Schumer’s letter does he mention Trump, and it is not to blame him for the flooding.

But White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday strongly suggested Senator Schumer was indeed directly blaming Trump for the flooding.

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“Unfortunately, in the wake of this once in a generation natural disaster, we have seen many falsehoods pushed by Democrats such as Senator Chuck Schumer and some members of the media. Blaming President Trump for these floods is a depraved lie, and it serves no purpose during this time of national mourning,” Leavitt told reporters (video below).

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz on Monday also falsely claimed that President Trump is being blamed for natural disasters, telling reporters, “you see that with a hurricane, with a tornado, with a wildfire, with this flooding, where people immediately say, ‘Well, the hurricane is Donald Trump’s fault.'”

Critics pushed back at the White House.

“Nobody is blaming Trump for the floods,” wrote journalist and environmentalist Michael Dominowski. “But he did decimate National Weather Service forecast offices, despite being told doing so would hamper the agency’s ability to accurately predict storms. He did it anyway. Look at what happened. Cause/effect is a thing.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

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Ted Cruz Blasted for Defending Trump, Dodging Questions on Flood Warning System Failures

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U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is under fire for remarks he made in the wake of deadly Texas flooding that has killed over 80 people, claiming that now is not the time to politicize—or even examine—the tragedy, while also defending President Donald Trump.

Some are asking if the Trump administration’s staffing cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and specifically, the National Weather Service (NWS), which provides local weather forecasts and warnings across the country, were to blame for a possibly stunted response to the flash flooding on the Guadalupe River.

“State and local officials are calling out federal forecasters amid deadly flooding in the Texas Hill Country over the extended Fourth of July weekend,” Texas NBC affiliate KXAN reported on Friday. “The criticism comes, as funding cuts and staff shortages plague the National Weather Service and other emergency management agencies nationwide.”

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On Monday at Public Notice, Noah Berlatsky wrote: “Retired federal scientists warned that the cuts could hamstring forecasts and make extreme weather events less predictable and more dangerous.”

“The New York Times reported that ‘crucial positions at the local offices of the National Weather Service were unfilled as severe rainfall inundated parts of Central Texas … prompting some experts to question whether staffing shortages made it harder for the forecasting agency to coordinate with local emergency managers as floodwaters rose,” Berlatsky added. “Did Trump’s cuts cause excess deaths in Texas? It will probably be some time before we have a definitive answer to that question, if we ever do at all.”

Meanwhile, Senator Cruz on Monday told reporters (video below), “I think any time you’re dealing with major rivers, there’s a risk of flooding, and there’s always been a risk of flooding, particularly on the Guadalupe River.”

“One of the things that’s predictable is that you see some people engaging in, I think partisan games, and trying to blame their political opponents for a natural disaster. And you see that with a hurricane, with a tornado, with a wildfire, with this flooding, where people immediately say, “Well, the hurricane is Donald Trump’s fault.”

Cruz also insisted that there’s an “ordering of things,” and that not until after the search and rescue and not until after rebuilding can there be a “retrospective” to determine what could have been done differently.

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Critics blasted Cruz, with one noting that he “was asked a non-partisan question about a safety/warning system. His response was to be defensive and political in defending Trump.”

Others noted that Americans aren’t blaming the President for natural disasters, but for what some see as a hampered response given the drastic cuts made to the National Weather Service.

“No one is saying Trump caused the storm, Ted,” wrote “On Democracy” podcaster Fred Wellman. “We are asking if more could have been done to warn people? They were literally relying on a system of upstream camps calling one’s further down. It’s 2025. They should have had sirens, cell coverage improvements, and more. The county posted the warning on Facebook. Your job is to ask those questions not gaslight.”

“OK,” wrote actress Morgan Fairchild, “but was it ever communicated to you that it was a priority to have [a] warning system? Especially since the area is called Flood Alley…”

“Ted Cruz slams people for ‘engaging in partisan games’ just minutes after he praised Donald Trump as in essence the greatest president and said Trump made it clear he would be there for Texas,” observed SiriusXM host Dean Obeidallah.

Watch the videos below or at this link.

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‘Authoritarian’: Trump Treasury Chief Ripped for Call to Punish Private Citizen’s Speech

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In what some critics describe as an example of “cancel culture,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent—a high profile official in the Trump administration—is calling for an apology or the firing of a private citizen: Larry Summers, a Democrat who, coincidentally, once held Bessent’s current position and later served as president of Harvard University.

In remarks he made over the weekend, Summers likened the horrific Texas flooding fatalities—now over 80, with dozens reportedly still missing and more rain expected—to what experts say will be the result of President Donald Trump’s so-called “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” the GOP budget projected to lead to the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans annually.

“A Yale and University of Pennsylvania study estimated that restricting Medicaid and Affordable Care Act coverage, the repeal of nursing home staffing regulations, and other adjustments in the bill could result in 51,000 preventable deaths each year across the country, making it a top 10 cause of death in the U.S.,” The Daily Beast reported over the weekend.

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Actually citing lower death projections, Summers on Sunday told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos (video below) that the GOP budget bill, signed into law in an Independence Day ceremony complete with fighter jets and B-2 bombers soaring overhead, “is the biggest cut in the American safety net in history.”

He cited “estimates that it will kill, over 10 years, 100,000 people.”

“That is 2,000 days of death like we’ve seen in Texas this weekend. In my 70 years, I’ve never been as embarrassed for my country on July 4th,” Summers lamented.

He went on to call it “a shameful act by our Congress and by our president that is going to set our country back.”

Secretary Bessent, reportedly under consideration to replace Jerome Powell as Trump calls for the Federal Reserve Chairman’s exit, lashed out.

Calling Summers’ appearance on ABC News’ “This Week,” a “shockingly callous interview,” that portrayed “a lack of humanity and judgment,” Bessent charged, “Using the horrifying situation in Texas for cheap political gain is unfathomable.”

He offered no insight into what political advantage Summers hoped to gain, but alleged that Summers had “turned a human tragedy into a political cudgel,” characterized his remarks as “feckless and deeply offensive,” and demanded “a public apology for his toxic language.”

At no point did Secretary Bessent dispute the numbers Summers cited.

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But he did demand an apology, and absent that, said his remarks should be “grounds for dismissal.”

“I hope the nonprofit and for-profit institutions with which he is affiliated will join me in this call. If he is unwilling or unable to acknowledge the cruelty of his remarks, they should consider Harvard’s example and make his unacceptable rhetoric grounds for dismissal,” the Treasury Secretary wrote.

Critics blasted Bessent.

“‘Shockingly callous’ isn’t pointing out the reality that Medicaid cuts will kill tens of thousands. Shockingly callous is cutting Medicaid without knowing this, or worse, cutting it despite knowing this,” wrote Professor of Economics and Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Justin Wolfers. “Notice something else: Not once does Bessent refute the numbers that Summers offers. He just finds the language offensive. Some may find the reality more offensive.”

“Thank goodness we’ve gotten rid of cancel cult…,” Wolfers also snarked. “oh, wait, the secretary of the treasury is pressuring a private university to strip a professor of tenure because he highlighted numbers in a way the regime never refuted, but found offensive.”

“It’s truly pathetic that a Treasury Sec is using a public account to launch ad hominem attacks on a former Treasury Sec,” wrote Neera Tanden, former Biden Director of the Domestic Policy Council. “Clearly Bessent can’t counter @LHSummers facts. Clearly the WH is so worried BBB is a political disaster they forced their toady Treasury Sec to attack.”

“This is none of your business, Scott,” charged writer and historian Joshua Decter. “Stop trying to interfere and meddle with independent academic institutions. These are neo-Stalinist or neo-Maoist tactics. This is not what should happen in America.”

“Calling for a private citizen to be punished for disagreeing with the Administration from his official government account is classic authoritarianism,” observed Fred Wellman, a graduate of West Point and the Harvard Kennedy School, a 22-year combat veteran who is now the host of the podcast “On Democracy.”

Civil liberties and national security journalist Marcy Wheeler charged: “Secretary: You ALL WERE WARNED. You were warned repeatedly about the deaths you were going to cause. You own them.”

Watch Summers’ remarks in the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: Trump Appeared Unaware His Budget Bill Cuts $1T From Medicaid: Report

 

Image via Reuters

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