Narendra Modi on Monday presided over the consecration of a Hindu temple on the site of a destroyed mosque, delighting millions of his supporters but drawing criticism from opponents who said India’s leader was flouting the country’s secular constitutional principles. Business leaders, celebrities and film stars joined the ceremony rich in pomp and symbolism that marked the opening of the first phase of the Ram Mandir shrine in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, a northern state ruled by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi today opened a controversial Hindu temple built on the ruins of a historical mosque in the flashpoint city of Ayodhya. 

The temple, which is still under construction, is dedicated to the Hindu god Lord Ram and fulfils a long-standing demand by millions of Hindus who worship the revered deity. 

About 80 chartered flights have landed at the new international airport of India’s holy city of Ayodhya for Monday’s partial opening of the controversial grand temple for one of Hinduism’s most revered deities, Lord Ram.

Ayodhya’s airport can barely accommodate the influx of private jets. “The planes will depart after dropping guests,” airport manager Saurabh Singh said.

The temple was built over a razed mosque, and most political opposition leaders are boycotting the temple’s opening, saying it doesn’t befit a secular India.

Mainstream media outlets are ignoring Christian nationalism’s central role in a new conservative operation to ensure that a future Republican president implements “Schedule F,” a radical plan to eliminate job protections for federal workers who don’t share an extreme, right-wing ideology. 

Patriotism, religious faith, having children and other priorities that helped define the national character for generations are receding in importance to Americans, a new Wall Street Journal-NORC poll finds.

There was a time, not very long ago, when far-right figures wanted to avoid being called “Christian nationalists”—denying or deflecting or pleading ignorance. Even now, some reject the label. “Reporters frequently ask me,” Robert Jeffress, the megachurch pastor, said last month, “‘Are you a Christian nationalist?’ . . . And I respond emphatically, ‘No, not in any way.’” In May, Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee in the race for Pennsylvania governor, wrote a reporter, “Is this a term you fabricated?

Online nationalist sentiment in the wake of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan last week urged Beijing to take more aggressive actions and pushed celebrities to publicly support China's position.

Why it matters: Nationalism thrives on China's highly censored internet, but it comes at a cost for Beijing. If Chinese leaders are perceived as responding too weakly to what people online might consider a foreign provocation, nationalist ire could turn against Beijing.

Disputes over identity and historical birthrights are part and parcel to the Balkans. A past characterized by subjection to foreign empires meets innumerable ethnic, linguistic, and religious differences, all concentrated in a narrow geographic funnel that forms the (almost) European crossroads of West and East.

They are a distinct minority in their own party and, for that matter, their country: Republican holdouts amid an ever-widening consensus that Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine poses a mortal threat to American interests. 

A far right wing of the Republican Party tightly bound to former President Donald Trump is fighting to push the GOP toward the “America First” isolationism that underpinned his 2016 presidential bid. 

For the first time since Trump’s rise, his party is pushing back. 

Here in the middle of former President Donald Trump’s Midwest base, in a state where a sense of economic malaise lands hard on rural and working-class voters, many Republicans see higher gas prices as a small price to pay to help defend Ukraine.

“I don’t think we’re doing enough,” Mary King, an unemployed caregiver, said of President Joe Biden’s ban on Russian oil last week. She spoke while waiting for GOP Senate candidate J.D. Vance to hold a campaign event in this industrial city along the Ohio River.