Shortly after the House passed a two-week spending bill on Thursday, the Senate followed suit with a vote of 81-14, averting a government shutdown on Friday.

The stopgap measure will keep the federal government open through Dec. 22. Republicans, who are trying to finish work on their tax bill, need the support of Democrats to put together a two-year budget deal that will pass. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that Democrats "will not leave here without a DACA fix," meaning the budget must include deportation protection for undocumented young people who came to the U.S. as children. Catherine Garcia

"There is a Revolution going on in California," President Trump opined on Twitter last week. "Soooo many Sanctuary areas want OUT of this ridiculous, crime infested & breeding concept."

Research by Tom K. Wong, an associate professor of political science at the University of California at San Diego, says otherwise. He interviewed a representative sample of nearly 600 illegal immigrants from Mexico in San Diego County, asking about how sanctuary city policies shape their interactions with police.

The results were dramatic: If "local law enforcement officials were working together with [Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)], 60.8 percent said they are less likely to report a crime they witnessed, and 42.9 percent said they are less likely to report being a victim of a crime." That stark difference held true across other scenarios, too:

(The Washington Post)

Wong concludes that sanctuary policies encourage undocumented immigrants to report crime to the police, and that "counties with sanctuary policies have less crime than comparable non-sanctuary counties, or that there is no statistically significant relationship between city sanctuary policies and increased crime rates." Read the full report here. Bonnie Kristian

President Trump will share his first state dinner with French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday evening, and only Republicans are invited. Breaking with tradition, the White House did not include any members of the media or congressional Democrats.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said on CNN on Tuesday that the move would not have been his choice. "I would have included — and this is just me; the president can select his own management style — I would have included more of a cross-section. I would have included the media," he told host Chris Cuomo. "I think it would have sent a better message, just my opinion, if we included a cross-section of Congress. You can't include everybody, but that's Democrats, independents, and Republicans."

Watch a clip of the conversation below. Bonnie Kristian

The fierce debate on gun control has led people on both sides to put money where their mouths are.

The NRA raised more money in March 2018 than any other month in the past 15 years, Federal Elections Commission records reported by the Miami Herald show.

The organization's Victory Fund, used for backing political campaigns, raised $2.4 million last month, and the majority came from small donors who gave less than $200. The boom in fundraising coincided with student-led March for Our Lives protests, which followed a February school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 people. The March for Our Lives Action Fund, meanwhile, has raised $3.5 million since Feb. 18, just four days after the shooting.

In March 2017, the NRA Victory Fund raised $884,000, while February 2018 brought in just $800,000. The major jump in last month's donations follows a pattern — the organization also saw a rise in fundraising after a 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

The Herald reports that the NRA spends money from its Victory Fund on political campaigns for candidates who oppose stricter gun control laws, but is often limited by state and federal campaign finance laws. The organization spends many millions more through its lobbying arm: For example, it spent $31 million to oppose Hillary Clinton and support President Trump in the 2016 election. Read more at the Miami Herald. Summer Meza

A deadly van attack broke through an idyllic afternoon in Toronto on Monday, when a man driving a white van mounted the sidewalk and crashed into pedestrians. The incident, which occurred on the city's famous Yonge Street, left 10 people dead and 15 more injured.

Hours later, the Toronto Maple Leafs hosted the Boston Bruins at Air Canada Centre for Game 6 of their Eastern Conference quarterfinal matchup. The Leafs entered the series trailing 3-2, but kept their Stanley Cup hopes alive with a 3-1 win that forced a Game 7.

But before the triumph on the ice, the Leafs held a moment of silence for the lives lost on Yonge Street. Then came time for the customary performance of the national anthem, "O Canada," which Leafs anthem singer Martina Ortiz-Luis was set to sing — until the crowd chimed in. Watch the emotional moment below. Kimberly Alters

The United Nations, the United Arab Emirates, and Iraq are banding together for a massive multimillion-dollar restoration of the Great Mosque of al-Nuri, which was destroyed by the Islamic State in Mosul, Iraq, last year. The centuries-old mosque was also where ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a caliphate after his forces took control of Mosul during an offensive in northern Iraq and Syria in 2014. ISIS militants blew the structure up when Iraqi troops closed in last summer.

"You can find [the mosque] on money notes, you can find it in scrapbooks," Rasha Al Aqeedi, who grew up in Mosul, told The New York Times around the time of its destruction. "It's everywhere. I don't know how to put it into words. It's just something people always identified with because it was always there."

The project is expected to take five years, as all that remains of the mosque and its famous leaning minaret is the foundation and a barely-supported dome, BBC reports. The collaboration between the Iraqi and UAE governments and the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is "the largest and unprecedented cooperation to rebuild cultural heritage in Iraq ever," the UNESCO director said.

"The five-year project is not just about rebuilding the mosque, the minaret, and the infrastructure, but also about giving hope to young Iraqis," explained UAE Culture Minister Noura al-Kaabi. The UAE has given some $50 million to the mosque's restoration. She added: "The millennia-old civilization must be preserved." See more images of liberated Mosul at The Week. Jeva Lange

CNN's Chris Cuomo laughed nervously at the "frightening" parallels between the way his 15-year-old and the president of the United States use their cell phones on New Day on Tuesday.

"President Trump is using his personal cell phone more than he had been in the past year," Alisyn Camerota began, citing a CNN report that suggests Trump is back on his less-secure device when talking to outside advisers. Cuomo then jumped in with some well-rehearsed fatherly scolding: Trump is on the phone "when he's supposed to be studying," Cuomo said. "This is a very teachable moment. You have to say to him in this moment if you're [Chief of Staff] John Kelly, 'Look, we let you use this phone, it's a privilege. It's not a right. And if you don't use it the right way, we're going to take it from you until we know that you can use it responsibly.'"

"And you're going to be grounded!" pitched in Camerota.

Cuomo observed that "this is the exact conversation I have, and lose, with my 15-year-old on a regular basis." Watch the humorous comparison below. Jeva Lange

Rep. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.), a leading candidate for the Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), tells The Wall Street Journal that she was sexually abused by a track coach during her senior year in high school, and that the experience helped shape her life choices. McSally, 52, said that she had taken up running to "escape from the grief of losing my dad" in middle school, and at St. Mary Academy-Bay View, an all-girl Catholic high school in Rhode Island, she placed her trust in a male coach who pressured her into having sex with him.

"It took a while for me to come to a place where I understood what the hell I had been through," McSally told the Journal. "I now understand — like many girls and boys who are abused by people in authority over them — there's a lot of fear and manipulation and shame." The sexual relationship wasn't physically coerced, she added, but "it certainly was an emotional manipulation." McSally said she ramped up her running to shut down her menstrual cycle, because "I was freaking out that he would get me pregnant."

McSally said she chose to attend the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado in part "to get away from him," and she pushed herself in other ways because of the ordeal. She told her family 10 years after the experience, and Rich Robinson, who volunteered at an Arizona Air Force base chapel when McSally was stationed there, told the Journal that she had told him about the alleged abuse by her coach, "and others," in 1994. (McSally also told the Journal she had "similar, awful experiences in the military on the spectrum of abuse of power and sexual assault.") The Journal identified the coach in question, who denied ever having sex with McSally. You can read more at The Wall Street Journal. Peter Weber