Trump signs new law helping veterans avoid foreclosure; RFK Jr. Affirms Human Life is sacred; Homosexual pedophile obtains baby boy through surrogacy; Ousted Vatican auditor says he needs to talk with pope; Father Carlos Martins cleared of all charges; St. John Henry Newman set to become newest Doctor of the Church; and more –
World will hear young people’s joy, shouting for peace on earth, pope says
The enthusiastic joy of young people, who love Jesus and want all wars to stop, will be heard to the ends of the earth, Pope Leo XIV said, welcoming tens of thousands of cheering young men and women to Rome for their Jubilee.
“Buona sera, buenas tardes, good evening!” he said after finishing a long ride in the popemobile, waving to more than 120,000 ecstatic visitors filling St. Peter’s Square and the long, wide boulevard that runs between the square and Castel Sant’Angelo by the Tiber River.
Read more at the Detroit Catholic
Trump signs new law helping veterans avoid foreclosure with partial claims payment program
President Donald Trump signed the VA Home Loan Program Reform Act into law Wednesday, cementing a partial claims program aimed at preventing veterans from losing their homes to foreclosure.
The new partial claims program under the Department of Veterans’ Affairs’ (VA) Home Loan Program will allow veterans who are late on mortgage payments to tack on those payments to the tail end of their loans.
Read more at Fox
Trump unloads on Powell after Fed decision to keep interest rates steady: ‘Too angry, too stupid’
President Donald Trump slammed Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Thursday morning for failing to heed calls to lower interest rates.
Powell held short-term interest rates steady on Wednesday at 4.25% to 4.50%, despite intense pressure from the White House to lower them, as Trump believes doing so will fuel the economy. The Fed’s decision marks the fifth time Powell has bucked the president on the matter this year, after the central bank previously declined to lower rates during its January, March, May, and June meetings.
Read more at the Washington Examiner (subscription required for full article)
Assassination Culture: majority of left-leaning voters would justify killing Trump or Musk and approve of destroying Teslas
The justification of political violence continues to grow, especially if it is to downplay or normalize attacks against Donald Trump or Elon Musk, even their assassination or the destruction of private buyers’ Teslas. A trend that is especially acute among Democratic voters, of whom around 50% would justify the violent death of the president or the visible face of the DOGE.
So denounces a report from the Network Contagion Research Institute released Monday, which collects troubling data for peaceful coexistence. According to the researchers, since the first attempted assassination of Donald Trump during the campaign, what they call the “Assassination Culture” has exploded, with justifications for lethal attacks and even calls to perpetrate them.
Read more at Voz
US bishops: Bipartisan collaboration on immigration reform is ‘absolutely necessary’
Bishop Mark Seitz, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Committee on Migration, is applauding a bipartisan push for immigration reform, calling the latest version of the Dignity Act a vital step toward serving the common good.
Introduced earlier this month by Reps. María Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., and Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, the bill has drawn support from more than 20 House lawmakers, from both parties.
Read more at Catholic Vote
Map Shows Countries Where Christians No Longer in Majority
New data from Pew Research Center shows a decline in the number of countries where Christians are in a majority between 2010 and 2020.
While most countries still have Christian majorities—with more than half the people in those countries identifying as Christians—there has been a decline in the last decade—with the U.K., France, Uruguay and Australia no longer falling into this category.
Read more at Newsweek
Kamala Harris says she is not running for California governor
After months of speculation about her political future, former Vice President and San Francisco Bay Area native Kamala Harris has ruled out one option: governor of California.
Harris said Wednesday that she will not enter the 2026 race to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is serving his second term and cannot run again. Harris did not say what she plans to do next, but her choice is the clearest sign yet that she may still be considering a third run for president.
Read more at the Los Angeles Times
RFK Jr. Affirms Human Life Is Sacred
Affirmations of the sanctity of human life from a U.S. bureaucracy certainly aren’t an everyday occurrence, so it was notable on July 21 when Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. did precisely that in sharing the disturbing findings of a federal investigation into the operating practices of a federally funded organ-procurement organization.
The investigation by the HHS’s Health Resources and Services Administration examined 351 patients for whom organ donation was authorized, but not completed, in accordance with currently accepted U.S. standards for brain death.
Read at National Catholic Register
Homosexual pedophile obtains baby boy through surrogacy
A chorus of outrage erupted on social media after it was revealed that a homosexual — a registered sex offender after having been convicted of sexual abuse of young teen male — was able to obtain an infant boy through surrogacy.
Brandon Mitchell, who “married” another male, Logan Riley, is described as Tier 1 sex offender in Pennsylvania, convicted of “sexual abuse of children” and “possession of child pornography.” A high school chemistry teacher at the time, Mitchell was arrested in 2016 for numerous “sexually explicit solicitations and conversations” with a 16-year-old student after he was found to have sent 20 nude photos and a sexually explicit video of himself.
Read more at Lifesite News
Daily Wire reports Planned Parenthood hiding ‘gender-affirming care’ data: The numbers ‘don’t add up’
Planned Parenthood’s national service totals and its local affiliate data on the number of “gender-affirming care” services provided nationally don’t line up, according to a new report from The Daily Wire.
In a July 24 article, The Daily Wire’s Macy Petty notes that Planned Parenthood’s latest annual report, 2023-24, shows a sharp decline in its “other procedures” subcategory — which includes “transgender” services — despite reports from local affiliates that those services are increasing. The subcategory also includes pediatric care, adult preventative care, and high complexity visits, including infertility services.
Read more at Catholic Vote
Trump Administration Plans to Destroy $10M in Overseas Contraceptives For Women
The Trump administration plans to destroy nearly $10 million worth of taxpayer-funded contraceptives, including IUDs, implants, injectables, and pills, intended for girls and women in low-income countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa through USAID.
The decision follows the administration’s cancellation of 83% of USAID’s programs and is influenced by the Mexico City Policy, which restricts U.S. funds from supporting abortion-related services. The contraceptives, stored in a Belgian warehouse, will be incinerated in France at a cost of $167,000, despite offers from organizations like the United Nations Population Fund and MSI Reproductive Choices to purchase or distribute them.
Read more at Catholics for Catholics
American Academy of Pediatrics Wants to Shut Down Religious Vaccine Exemptions
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) today [July 28, 2025] called for an end to religious and philosophical vaccine exemptions for children attending daycare and school in the U.S.
In an updated policy statement published in Pediatrics, the AAP said universal immunization is necessary to keep children and employees safe. The organization said there is a place for “legitimate” medical exemptions, but nonmedical exemptions are “problematic.”
“We recommend that vaccination is required for participation in certain public activities, such as school and daycare, and if you choose not to vaccinate, you’re essentially choosing to exclude yourself from those settings,” lead author Dr. Jesse Hackell told MedPage Today.
Read more at Children’s Health Defense
Celibacy is better than marriage — don’t be threatened by this truth
These days it’s impossible to say that celibacy is higher than marriage without some Catholics taking offense. Even if you make the right qualifications—what is objectively better may not be subjectively better for a given individual, marriage is still good, married people can be saints—people are still set off by the mere statement that one state of life is in itself superior to the other.
I often use the word “higher”, because it seems to connote something that is better in itself, without the lower goods being “worse” (in the sense of being bad, rather than less good). But it really doesn’t matter whether you say “higher”, “better”, or “superior”—these are synonyms. Obviously, it is better to be higher than to be lower.
Read more at Catholic Culture
Senate Confirms Special Forces Vet Joe Kent to Lead National Counterterrorism Center
The Senate voted 52-44 to confirm former special operations soldier Joe Kent to serve as the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC).
“It’s an honor to serve our nation again & to be back in the fight against terrorism,” Kent wrote in a post on X. Kent continued to thank President Donald Trump and Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard for their confidence in his leadership.
Kent added that NCTC would “relentlessly pursue & defeat our nation’s enemies.”
“In honor of our fallen, we fight on,” Kent continued.
Read more at Breitbart
Chief of the Cherokee Nation applauds Senate confirmation of Sam Brown to VA Post
Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation Chuck Hoskin Jr. issues a statement on the Senate’s confirmation of Sam Brown to U.S. Veterans Affairs Post
Read statement @CherokeeNation on X
[One] Freedom Convoy trucker avoids jail time, receives probation
A Canadian trucker who took part in the 2022 Freedom Convoy in protest against COVID mandates and who was zip-tied and denied access to legal counsel has been spared jail time after a court instead gave him probation.
In a court update, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) said that Guy Meister, who was a peaceful trucker, was “denied access to legal counsel and held for hours in a freezing police van” after his arrest during the 2022 Freedom Convoy protest and is now free.
Read more at LifeSite News
The Chilling Backstory Behind the Anti-White Mob Attack in Cincinnati
A political commentator and podcast host traces the recent Cincinnati beatings to the history of Cincinnati’s annual music festival and what it has come to represent. This is a bigger, more systemic problem, than most people realize, he argues.
Watch at Matt Walsh YouTube (IN: 2:53 OUT: 21:36)
Researchers quietly planned a test to dim sunlight. They wanted to ‘avoid scaring’ the public.
A team of researchers in California drew notoriety last year with an aborted experiment on a retired aircraft carrier that sought to test a machine for creating clouds.
But behind the scenes, they were planning a much larger and potentially riskier study of salt-water-spraying equipment that could eventually be used to dim the sun’s rays — a multimillion-dollar project aimed at producing clouds over a stretch of ocean larger than Puerto Rico.
Read more at Politico
Ousted Vatican auditor: ‘I need to speak to the Pope!’
“I need to speak to the Pope,” says Libero Milone, the former Vatican auditor general, who was forced to resign in 2017—because, he says, he had exposed widespread financial corruption.
In a July 30 session with journalists, Milone said that efforts to restore integrity and accountability in the Vatican’s financial affairs, led by the late Cardinal George Pell, were thwarted by a powerful bloc of officials of the Roman Curia, who ultimately arranged his removal.
Last week a Vatican appeals court dismissed Milone’s wrongful-termination lawsuit, confirming a lower court’s verdict. The former auditor … hopes to arrange a private meeting with Pope Leo XIV, in which he could inform the new Pontiff about the situation that he uncovered. As Milone put it, “at the end of the day, the best thing is for two people to sit down in front of each other and talk this through.”
Read more at Catholic Culture
Father Carlos Martins cleared of misdemeanor charges after incident at Illinois parish
The popular podcasting priest Father Carlos Martins is no longer facing criminal charges after an incident at an Illinois parish last year led to misdemeanor allegations.
The Burke Law Group said in a Wednesday press release that the priest, who hosts “The Exorcist Files” podcast, had been “fully cleared of all charges” stemming from a Nov. 21, 2024, event held at Queen of Apostles Parish in Joliet, Illinois.
Read more at the Catholic News Agency; see also Catholicism.org
Modernism is a Sin by Matt Gaspars
On his first day in office, in addition to signing a flurry of executive orders, President Joe Biden led a virtual swearing-in ceremony for “Day One Presidential Appointees,” that is, administrative staff for the White House and various governmental agencies.
A few minutes into his remarks, Biden told his new subordinates that “we owe your families, we owe your families, because those of you working in the White House, [and] those who will be working in other agencies, you’re gonna work like the devil [an interesting choice of words]. We all do. We put in long hours. And it shouldn’t be something that you should do unless you really care about it a great deal.”
He returned a few minutes later to this theme of needing to be passionate about their work …
Read more at OnePeterFive
St John Henry Newman set to become newest Doctor of the Church
One of the great modern thinkers of Christianity, a key figure in a spiritual and human journey that left a profound mark on the Church and 19th-century ecumenism, and the author of writings that show how living the faith is a daily “heart-to-heart” dialogue with Christ. A life spent with energy and passion for the Gospel—culminating in his canonization in 2019 — that will soon lead to the English cardinal John Henry Newman being proclaimed a Doctor of the Church.
The news was announced today, July 31, in a statement from the Holy See Press Office, which reported that during an audience granted to Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, Pope Leo XIV has “confirmed the affirmative opinion of the Plenary Session of Cardinals and Bishops … which will soon be conferred on Saint John Henry Newman.”
Read more at Vatican News
