When Paul Ryan gave his farewell address as speaker of the House on Dec. 19, he called on future lawmakers to make poverty issues a greater priority. Ryan’s mentor on poverty-fighting, Bob Woodson, age 81, sat in the front row. While politicians have come and gone, Woodson has toiled on the front lines since the 1970s as the godfather of neighborhood-based organizations that help people help themselves. Here are edited excerpts of our conversation in Washington, D.C.

Approximately 15 seconds of video from the March for Life had many Christian leaders united in a harsh condemnation of an anonymous teenage boy this weekend.

The clip showed a tight shot of a Catholic high schooler in a red “Make America Great Again” hat grinning, or, to some minds, sneering, at a Native American veteran who stood inches away playing a drum. The clip was circulated with the claim that the boy and his classmates surrounded and taunted the veteran by chanting, “Build the wall.”

UPDATE: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., asked President Donald Trump to delay his State of the Union address until the partial government shutdown ends. In a letter Wednesday, Pelosi also gave the president the option of delivering his annual report to lawmakers in writing. The speaker expressed concern that the government could not provide adequate security for the event during the partial shutdown, but other Democrats interpreted the move as political punishment for Trump’s refusal to approve a budget that does not include funding for a wall at the U.S.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan rejected efforts by U.S. national security adviser John Bolton on Tuesday to seek the safety of Kurdish allies in northeastern Syria. Bolton, during a meeting with his Turkish counterpart, Ibrahim Kalin, in Ankara, reiterated U.S. President Donald Trump’s demand that Turkey avoid targeting Kurdish forces as the United States withdraws its troops from Syria. The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) help the U.S. military combat Islamic State (ISIS) militants in the region, but Turkey regards the group’s members as terrorists.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un began a four-day trip to China on Tuesday, meeting with his only major ally ahead of a possible second summit with U.S. President Donald Trump. The North Korean Central News Agency said Kim traveled with his wife, Ri Sol Ju, and other leading officials at the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping. This trip is Kim’s fourth meeting with Xi.

If anyone at Church of the Good Shepherd in Afrin celebrated President Donald Trump’s decision to pull troops from Syria, they weren’t Christians. The church was emptied of its regular worshippers when a militia backed by Turkey invaded a year ago, setting fire to the church in a once-multiethnic and peaceful city barely 70 miles from the U.S. base at Manbij. The church became a jihadist war room, as Sharia law and the Turkish language took over in Afrin.

President Donald Trump on Monday defended his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, tweeting that Islamic State (ISIS) was “mostly gone” and that withdrawing troops would fulfill campaign promises. The president announced on Dec. 19 that the United States would withdraw the remaining 2,000 troops from the war-torn country.