"He's totally fearless. Because he has a lot of opposition," the filmmaker said.

"Eighty percent of the farm bill is around the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. It's significant when we hear it's going to include some dramatic cuts."

Getting humanitarian aid to desperate populations during the conflict has largely been contingent on the warring sides to agree to a temporary cease fire.

The show stars popular singers John Legend as Jesus and Sara Bareilles, who was raised Catholic, as Mary Magdalene, and features 1970s rock figure Alice Cooper as Herod.

In the January shutdown, Democratic lawmakers backed down on their threat to keep the government closed until a DACA deal was reached. ment funded through March 23 was overshadowed by the $1 trillion spending package of which it was a part.

The sectarian will meet the secular in an unusual way with the May 10 debut of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibit "Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination."

Political unrest in and around the capital, Kinshasa, is just the latest malady to afflict the Congolese citizens.

"Today, Indians are the poorest of all American ethnic groups," said Father Michael Carson, a Choctaw Indian who is assistant director of Native American affairs for the U.S. bishops' Secretariat for Cultural Diversity in the Church.

"The American Catholic Church has continued to be virtually silent," said Bishop George V. Murry of Youngstown, Ohio, "which leads us to the question: Why?"

Lois Smith called writer-director Greta Gerwig "a remarkably talented person."