The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Wednesday, November 12, 2025

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

This is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.On today’s edition of The Briefing, Dr. Mohler discusses the shutting down of the government shutdown, Senator Schumer’s leadership at risk, the best county in the U.S. to raise a family, and visit of Syrian President al-Sharaa to the White House.Part I (00:14 – 08:54)The Government Shutdown is Shutting Down: And the Future of Senator Chuck Schumer’s Leadership in the Senate is at RiskPart II (08:54 – 19:02)What’s the Best County to Raise a Family? It Depends on Who You Ask – The Washington Post Shows Its Bias Toward Liberal TerritoryWhat’s the best place to raise a family? We scored every county. by The Washington Post (Youyou Zhou)Part III (19:02 – 26:50)History Can Turn Very Quickly: Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa Makes Historic Visit to Meet with President Trump at the White HouseSign up to receive The Briefing in your inbox every weekday morning.Follow Dr. Mohler:X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTubeFor more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.To write Dr. Mohler or submit a question for The Mailbox, go here.

It's Wednesday, November 12, 2025. I'm Albert Mueller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. Well, the shutdown of the United States federal government, the longest shutdown in American history, is soon to be over, but there are some other political actions that will have to be taken. The business is basically done in the Senate, and the Senate had been the logjam. But the House of Representatives is now going to have to gather to vote on the same proposal, now adopted by the Senate, and the Senate. then the president, President Trump's going to have to sign it to put it into effect. And that means that at the earliest, we're looking at something like the weekend before the government's going to reopen. So there will be complications that will continue for some days to come. There are also some big lessons here. Now, as I talked about the original deal that made possible this progress in the Senate, I've just made as clear as I know how that I think this measure is absolutely insane.

It's ridiculous that we find ourselves in this position over and over again. Conservatives, and that means in particular, Republicans have argued that it is necessary to exercise at times the threat of a government shutdown in order to gain some restriction on federal funding. The problem with that is that there is very little historical evidence that that has ever worked. And it really doesn't make sense to have a budget adopted without the funding authorization to spend it. And so most nations, let's just put it bluntly, adopt a budget, and the budget is the spending authorization to separate the two, and we also have debt limits and other things. All of that just sets up continual political conflict, which often doesn't appear to accomplish much of anything but irritating the American people. Furthermore, there are real life consequences,

and even those of us who think that the size and spending of the federal government are out of control. It doesn't appear that any meaningful control really comes by this process. But it is a political showdown. And in almost every political showdown, there are winners and there are losers. So what's the equation there? It appears that President Trump and the Republicans basically won this battle because the Democrats caved. A sufficient number of Democrats, eight in number. And that means those who are identified the Democratic caucus, one of them, Senator Angus King of Maine is actually an independent, but he caucuses with the Senate Democrats. The reality is you had a sufficient number of senators on the Democratic side to switch sides for this vote in order to get the government

back in business. Now, I said again, there are eight of them, Senator Angus King of Maine, Senator Tom Cain of Virginia, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, Senator John Federman of Pennsylvania, Senator Maggie Hassan, Senator Gene Shaheen of New Hampshire, Senator Catherine Cortez Mastow of Nevada, and Senator Jackie Rosen of Nevada. So two from Nevada and two from New Hampshire, and then one each from Illinois and Pennsylvania and Virginia and Maine. All right, so what makes this really interesting? Well, for one thing, as you look at the Democrats in the Senate, the Democrats who did cross the aisle, so to speak, to bring the government shutdown to a close,

voting with the Republicans are Democrats who, in the Maine, are not going to face voters for quite a long time. And that demonstrates the fact that Democrats who are going to face voters in the short term, they weren't going to get anywhere near this kind of agreement. And that tells you how the politics works, not between the two parties, not in the national level or even at the state level for elections to the Senate, but in the primary level, inside the parties. And that means that other Democrats who might have been basically equally willing to reach this agreement, to pass a rather clean continuing resolution and just get the government back in business, the reason they didn't is not because they fear Republicans, it's because they

fear other Democrats. And at the top of that list is the chief Democrat in the Senate. New York Senator Chuck Schumer. Charles Schumer entered the United States Senate in 1999. He quickly went up. He had served in, by the way, in the House for almost 20 years, 1981 to 1999, representing a district there in New York. He aspired to get into the Senate. He was elected to the Senate. He very quickly arose in party leadership among the Democrats in the Senate. He was majority leader in 2021 to 2025, and he lost that post. He's still the Democratic leader, but he lost the position of majority leader when the Democrats lost the majority. But he still the Democratic leader, and it's really interesting. The big question right now is how long will he be

the leader of the Democrats in the Senate? He basically crashed and burned on this question. And I'm going to talk a little bit more about how that became very evident. But the other thing here is that Senator Schumer has been operating out of the fear that he would be primaried by someone to his left in the New York Democratic picture. And that's exactly what it's going to happen. It's already announced now. So the Senate minority leader, the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, who would be a liberal in any other context, isn't going to likely be liberal enough for at least some in New York who want generational change and they also want a shift even further to the left. Now, Senator Schumer joined in another measure with Republicans and that had led to all kinds of controversy. And this one, he said he was going

to draw a line in the sand. That line in the sand was continuing the COVID special increase or subsidy for the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare under the situation of COVID. So it was a dated increase because of COVID. It was supposed to expire Senator Schumer, and the Democrats are claiming that that will leave millions and millions of Americans facing an increase in insurance costs. And by the way, it undoubtedly will. But it was the Democrats who put the measure through with this expiration. And so they want to have their cake and eat it too.

and they wanted to use this for political leverage. But Senator Schumer's effort to use this for political leverage, he drew a line in the sand and eight of his own members broke with the party leadership, broke with his leadership on this issue. And by the way, the criticisms are now mounting. The chief criticism is that he's ineffectual. And in this case, he apparently, well, just was. The other thing is that he's not liberal enough. There are those in the Democratic Party who are saying that his demand for a continuation of the Obamacare subsidies not only wasn't enough, it wasn't nearly enough. In other words, they wanted a whole list of liberal goals as leverage in terms of this continuing resolution to get the government back in business and to fund the

budget. So the bottom line is politics is always interesting. It's always a clash of worldviews. The most interesting class of worldviews in this case is not between conservatives and liberals. it's not between Republicans and Democrats, it's among the Democrats, among the liberals, and those who don't think they're liberal enough. I'll just make a prediction. I don't think this is a particularly risky prediction, and that is that Senator Schumer will not long be the leader of the Democrats in the Senate. I think it's also likely that he will not long be the senior Democratic senator from the state of New York. and that's simply because of the shifts in the electorate, particularly among Democrats, and in New York, particularly in New York City, that's really all that matters. The generational shift is also seen, by the way, in two women, and those two women are a mother

and a daughter. The mother is United States Senator Gene Shaheen from New Hampshire, former governor, and now United States Senator. She's one of those who joined with Republicans in this measure. Her daughter is a very different person in this case. Stephanie Shaheen is running for Congress, and she openly disagreed with her mother. She wanted the Democrats to continue to hold out. And yet, did she really? Well, she made a nice statement about her mom saying that she's sure her mom did what she thought was right. But she said nonetheless that she thought it was wrong. And I don't know what either one of them really believes.

I just know how both of them positioned themselves on this issue. and in this case, I think the generational distinction is really, really clear. Senator Shaheen is retiring at the end of this term, which means she doesn't have to face Democratic voters ever again. Her daughter is just beginning what she hopes is going to be a congressional career in the Democratic Party. In order to do that, here's the big worldview lesson. The daughter is going to have to be considerably to the left of the mother. So it goes in politics. But all right, while we're thinking about big worldview issues, I want to point to a very interesting article. It was a complete report that appeared just in recent days in the Washington

Post. So let's just listen to those words, Washington Post, rather liberal newspaper. There in the nation's capital, new ownership, Jeff Bezos, who was the founder of Amazon, and he has, he sought to bring some kind of editorial correction and editorial control. But that paper is still very liberal. And this story, This report is particularly liberal, and I want you to see what's being presented here. Here's the headline, what's the best place to raise a family? We scored every county. So this team, working on behalf of the Washington Post, scored every county in the United States

on the basis of livability and the ability to raise a family. And so there are winners and there are losers. And, you know, the winners, by the way, tended to be suburban counties near Washington, D.C. in Virginia and Maryland. Okay, so your alarm bells ought to be going off now. If those places are going to be identified as the best places to raise a family, especially given the cost of living in those counties, then we're going to have to look at what in the world they were using as criteria. So let's take a deep dive. I promise you this is going to be interesting. Yu-Ju, who is the lead reporter on the story, tells us, quote, the United States is reaching its lowest birth rate in history. But that alarming

outcome isn't necessarily intentional. She goes on to say that research data, including from the Pew Research Center, show that, quote, the majority of young Americans today still want to have children once italicized. Quote, more than seven out of ten people in their 20s and their 30s have or plan to have at least one child, and the majority of non-parents between the ages of 18 and 34, say they want to be parents someday. Now, I am not going to question the fact that the cost of living is considerably more expensive that it was in the past, and that includes the cost of raising children. But I will say relative to economic terms over the course of the last several decades, not to mention centuries, that is simply not an adequate rationale. In other words,

people who had far less not only in relative terms, but in net terms, the reality is they found a way to have children and to raise children. But this shows you something of the worldview expectation of many people. And again, I'm not diminishing the fact that buying a is far more expensive than it has been for previous generations. It's outside the reach. And by the way, some of that's due to politics. It's due to inflation, yes, but it's also due to politics, including restrictions on building houses. You know what? Here's a surprise. That comes with consequences. Well, all right, so there were four metrics chosen by the Washington Post in this project to decide which counties are best for the raising of children. The four criteria are affordability,

quality of education, neighborhood safety, and state policies. State policies on what? Well, let me just tell you, buckle your worldview seat belt. State policies on, quote, abortion access, parental leave, and LGBTQ rights. They then make this statement, all these factors are important for the well-being of parents and children. End quote. Of course, the obvious retort is, says who? Says who? Look what they baked into the cake here for this research. The most important, Newspaper in the capital city of our nation is ranking every county in the country on the basis of livability, choosing and predicting which are the best places to raise a child. And they start out with affordability. Of course, we get that metric. Quality of education. Okay, that's going to be

laden with some worldview assumptions, but we agree education is important. Neighborhood safety, that means crime rate. I think all of us would agree that's important. But then state policies on abortion access, parental leave, and LGBTQ rights, you know, wait. What you have here is a very liberal context, a liberal formula that's just even openly admitted, this is how the newspaper is judging county by county, how conducive, how healthy that county is for the raising of children. All right. So let's just look a little bit further at the report. Those four metrics were used.

And guess what? Quote, the places with the highest scores are outside D.C. in pockets of Virginia and Maryland, they strike a balance. between quality education and cost of living, they are also low crime areas in states that do not impose many restrictions on women and children's rights, end quote. But notice that's the right to abortion and LGBT rights, and that includes trans rights for children. That's actually in this formula. So here's a big surprise, liberal suburbs around the liberal metropolitan area of Washington, D.C. are judged to come out on top. Guess who comes out on bottom? Well, hello, Alabama and Mississippi.

So on affordability, I think, again, you can understand the South and the Southeast comes out with great advantage there. Quality of education, that's kind of spread around the country. Interestingly, there's some pretty high-ranking places outside the Northeast. Safety, once again, the map is at least somewhat predicated upon more rural and more urban context. That's understandable. But policies on personal liberties. where the good counties are, according to the Washington Post, very liberal perspective, the West Coast and the East Coast. And then you have some other states such as Illinois and Minnesota and

Colorado. And for different reasons, those three states tend to be not only blue, but increasingly now, very, very blue. But you'll notice the issues, abortion access, LGBTQ issues. And that's within the context is supposedly answering the question, what's the best place to raise a family. So I just want us to look at this because I think it's just huge and worldview impact. And by the way, when you're talking about the economics, even when you're talking about livability, I wanted to take a look, where is this information drawn from? Where's the source or who's the source of this data? And the answer is, well, that turns out to be pretty explosive too. So even on the financial metrics, who's cited here? Well, it's a group known as the

Economic Policy Institute. Here's how they describe themselves. Quote, the Economic Policy Institute's vision is an economy that is just and strong, sustainable, and equitable, where every job is good, every worker can join a union, and every family and community can thrive. More, quote, the Economic Policy Institute is a non-profit, non-partisan think tank working for the last 30 years to counter rising inequality, low wages, and weak benefits for working people, so were economic growth, acceptable employment conditions and a widening racial wage gap. We intentionally center low and middle income working families and economic policy decisions. They go on about the organizations, by the way, vision for equity, diversity, and inclusion. So instead of DEI, boy, this is very clever. It's not

DEI. It's EDI. Do a search for DEI. You won't find them because this is EDI. Here's how they define it, Quote, the Economic Policy Institute's vision is for all workers to share equally in the economic prosperity of our country. Our research exposes the forces that seek to exclude and diminish the power of people of color and women, particularly Brack Brown and indigenous people to the benefit of white supremacy and wealthy elites. Quote, therefore, our vision elevates the importance of racial gender and worker justice as central to the world we want to see.

End quote. So that's the source for the economic information. So you'll notice how ideologically loaded this entire. project is. It just tells you when you see something like this, you need to look below the surface. Here is supposedly one of the most influential newspapers in the country asking and answering the question about the best place to raise a family. But when they think about the best place, it is based upon huge leftist economic assumptions, but also on, you know, the moral issues. They're pushing abortion rights and LGBTQ rights. And by the way, I think it's a

big tell here. Let's just put it this way. They're talking about places to raise a family, places to raise children, and they put abortion on the list without any apparent sense of irony. I think that's a big tell in itself. A very sad one to be sure. Speaking about the sources behind even the score, once again, incredibly revealing, quote, state policies on personal liberties and parental support combines abortion access, that's 60%. Sexual orientation and gender identity policies, that's 30% and family leave support 10% into one score. The abortion access measures the travel distance to the nearest abortion clinic by county as of July from the Myers abortion facility database. The sexual orientation and gender identity data comes from the Movement Advancement Project

as of September. The state family leave policy data comes from the bipartisan policy institute as of February. All right. I think it's a legitimate question. Where would be better counties more conducive to the raising of children. And how would you define that? I'm going to argue the Washington Post has the right to define it and however they want to define it. And to the credit of the Washington Post, I want to say this, they actually made their sources clear. But that doesn't resolve the problem. It actually creates an even bigger problem. Because as it turns out, there's a reason why some very liberal counties near Washington, D.C. come out on top. and some of the places, which, by the way, have an even higher birth rate, they come out lower.

So, World View Matters. It's really fascinating to see how this works in this particular report from the Washington Post. And, you know, in this case, let's be really honest, this report doesn't tell us a whole lot about America, but it does tell us a whole lot about the Washington Post. But next, let's come back to the United States. Something big happened in the U.S. It happened to the White House, and it escaped a lot of the United States. and it escaped a lot of attention, frankly, because there's so many other big things going on in the world.

But we need to take a look at this. It tells us a lot about how the world works. What happened is that the president of Syria, the nation of Syria, made a visit to the White House and met with the president of the United States, and thus was hosted by the president of the United States. In political terms, international policy, that's massive. In this case, we're talking about Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharah. And he was elected president after he led a military coalition in toppling the totalitarian regime of Bashir Assad, who followed his own father in terms of a totalitarian dictatorship. That was, let's just say, a thorn in the side of Western nations, and in particular of the United States for a very, very long time. And it was understood to be not only a repressive and oppressive dictatorship, it was also understood to be.

a state actor in terms of terrorism and in terms of giving aid and comfort to various terrorist groups. Now, of course, this is where the story gets more interesting because the announcement made at the White House this week is that President Al-Shara and President Trump had agreed that Syria will join in a coalition to oppose ISIS, the Islamic State. So why is this so interesting? Well, it's interesting that this is the first time a political leader, a head of state, of Syria, has visited of the White House. It's also very interesting that the White House, the president of the United States, wanted him to visit and to make it publicly visible. That's interesting. What's even more interesting is that until just recently this very man was on the most wanted list by the United

States government with a price on his head because he was identified himself as a terrorist and one who was a part of the effort undertaken by al-Qaeda. How in the world does someone change? for being an avowed enemy of the United States, basically targeted for arrest and military action, and then all of a sudden he's invited to the White House and made a part of a coalition. How can history turn so quickly? But as you know, one of the lessons of history is that history can turn very, very quickly. One of the clearest examples of this came during the Second World War. Just remind yourselves that when you think of the Second World War, you think of the Allies,

and that includes, of course, Britain and the United States and our other allies over against Nazi Germany and its allies. Okay, where's the Soviet Union? The Soviet Union was our ally. Well, it was, but before it was our ally, it was allied with Nazi Germany, a pact that was made between Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler through their foreign ministers at the expense of England and the United States and all the allies. Joe Stalin was at one point the avowed enemy of the allies, and then he became one of the allies. What changed that? Well, one thing that changed it was Adolf Hitler invading the Soviet Union. Guess what? Joe Stalin switched sides. And then you had people who would say, well, how could Joe Stalin, how can the Soviet Union be an ally? And the answer is, because in the fight

to defeat Nazi Germany, it was absolutely necessary for the Soviet Union to be an ally. The Soviet armed forces, absolutely crucial. And not only that, the Soviet Union facing the direct invasion of the Nazi forces, an existential threat, of course, to the Soviet Union, Joe Stalin fought back, and so you had capitalists and communists working together. They had been opposed to one another. They had actually been militarily defined as enemies. Now all of a sudden they are allies, and now you have the great powers and you've got Churchill and Stalin and Roosevelt meeting together. How does that happen? It is because history is full of reversals.

And history also indicates that national interest is something that has to be defined in the long term, yes, and the medium term, yes, but sometimes in the short term, and sometimes the short term means right now. And this means that throughout American history, sometimes we've had some very awkward allies, even as we've had some very self-avowed enemies. and sometimes our enemies have become our allies. Consider what happened. After World War I and World War II, Germany was at the center of the problem, but Germany has been a key ally to the United States ever since the defeat of Nazi Germany at the end of

World War II. What about Japan? Imperial Japan was the avowed enemy of the United States of America. Just think, Toro, Torah, Toro, Pearl Harbor. But Japan, since World War II, has been one of the closest allies to the United States, and its strategic importance as an ally right now in the Pacific is underlined by headline after headline. And so it's a reminder that in the rising and falling of world events and the rising and falling of empires and the rising and falling of alliances, nations do what they see as in their best interest at that time.

And that does mean that sometimes we have some very strange friends. We have some very strange treaty members. We have some partners. We also have some enemies that align themselves differently from time to time. And right now with the contest between, say, China and the United States for world influence, it's interesting. You've got people who would like to play it both ways. And it's hard to know exactly how the map will be colored when we look, just say a year or two years from now. But one of the clearest examples of that is the presence of President Ahmad al-Shara, who had been on the most wanted list by the United States government is now this week a guest

to the President of the United States in the White House. Is this hypocrisy? No, it was done right out in the open. The White House released the picture. The Syrian News Agency released the picture. It was done right out in public. Why did the United States do this? Because the United States has everything to gain by the current president of Syria joining

in an effort against the Islamic State. And is there something for the United States to lose? Yes, but there's a lot more at stake for President Al-Shara in Syria. And he had to know he was putting his life on the line and making this visit to the White House. So history does sometimes turn. And if all we see in history is the rising and falling of empires and the coming and going of allies and enemies, we're going to miss the big thing. As Christians, we have to look at history and understand there is a providential understanding of history that comes to Christians. And we also understand that in the rising and falling of empires and the making and unmaking of allies and enemies, there's a picture of a world, an

absolute confusion until all of this is brought to a conclusion with the coming of the Prince of Peace and the establishment of the Kingdom of Christ. Until then, maybe one way to look at it is no permanent friends and no permanent enemies. The person who's on the most wanted list can be a most honored guest at the White House in short order. How's that for irony? Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website at Albertmolar.com. You can follow me on X or Twitter by going to X.com forward slash Albert Moller. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbtsketeas.edu. For information on Boyce College, just go to voicecollege.com. I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.