Justice Anthony Kennedy, the swing vote in many important cases on a sharply divided Supreme Court, has announced he will retire on July 31. 

The Wednesday announcement set off a political earthquake that will dominate Washington in the coming weeks. Minutes after the news broke, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., went to the Senate floor to announce, “We will vote to confirm Justice Kennedy’s successor this fall.”

DALLAS—Delegates at the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) annual meeting in Dallas overwhelmingly elected J.D. Greear as the group’s next president on Tuesday. Greear, pastor of Summit Church in Durham, N.C., took 69 percent of the vote on the first ballot. Former seminary head Ken Hemphill had 31 percent.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has quietly appointed the wife of Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., to a religious freedom commission a month after the governor of West Virginia fired her from a state post.

The congressional record shows Schumer appointed Gayle C. Manchin to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) on April 19. She has no known prior experience working on international or religious freedom issues. 

Last July, Brigham Young University convened its Annual Religious Freedom Review featuring attorneys, advocates, and marquee names like Sen. Jeff Flake, the Republican from Arizona.

Major league baseball’s World Series starts Tuesday night, and whichever team wins the best-of-seven series will end a long title drought. The Los Angeles Dodgers won it in 1988 but haven’t been back since. The Houston Astros joined baseball in 1962 as the Colt .45s and have never won the championship. Twelve years ago, Houston went to its first World Series as a National League team but lost to the Chicago White Sox and then didn’t make the playoffs again until two years ago. Meanwhile, being in the World Series is old hat for the Dodgers.

Star Parker is a conservative commentator, author, and founder of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE). Here are edited excerpts of our recent conversation at her Washington, D.C., office.

Tell us about your childhood.

President Donald Trump has announced he will appoint Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback as the next ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom.

The Wednesday evening statement caps weeks of hopeful speculation by advocates who said Brownback would bring unprecedented political muscle to the position.