Trump considers declaring national security emergency to control 2026 election; NY-ers fed up with Mamdani’s pied-à-terre tax fight city hall; Despite late-night ballot drop, Democrat Francesca Hong loses Wisconsin gubernatorial primary; Resurfaced videos expose Abdul El-Sayed slamming American football as ‘toxic masculinity’; Children’s hospital that secretly performed sex-changes on kids after ban now ordered to fund America’s first DETRANSITION clinic; Israel’s military protects Palestine’s last Christian village of Taybeh from extremist Israeli settlers; Chinese Trappist monk who survived Mao’s ‘death march’ dies at 108; Swiss bishop censures recent popes for ‘sacrificing dignity of Petrine office for trappings of personality and media appeal’; Catholics honor 16th-century saint who created a religious order for nuns rejected by other orders and who said ‘Hold your eyes on God and leave the doing to Him’; and lots more —
Trump declines to rule out declaring a national security emergency to control the 2026 election
President Donald Trump in a new interview declined to rule out declaring a national security emergency as a means to try to assert more control over the 2026 midterm elections.
It’s merely the latest warning sign that Trump could try to mess with the election not just by baselessly claiming voter fraud and challenging the results afterward — as he did in 2020, leading to a violent riot at the US Capitol — but by trying to unilaterally take control before votes are cast.
In the interview, Wayne Allyn Root of Real America’s Voice pitched such a scenario to Trump. He suggested it as an alternative, given the Senate has failed to pass Trump’s coveted elections bill, known as the “SAVE America Act.”
“If they never get the SAVE America Act done, you have the right to declare a national security emergency for elections,” Root said. He added that “if you declare a national security emergency as the president of the United States, they can’t challenge it. It can only be overturned by a two-thirds vote by both houses of Congress. So if you do this in the next month, we will get photo ID, proof of citizenship (for voter registration) and a limit to mail-in ballots.”
It’s at this point that Trump cut Root off and coyly suggested such an option was indeed in play.
“Let me just say that stranger things have happened, OK?” Trump said. “I’ll leave it at that.”
Read more at CNN Lite
Meet the NYers fighting Mamdani’s pied-à-terre tax in court: ‘The city botched this’
… A trio of New Yorkers — two family members of a GOP lawmaker and the other a self-described supporter of Mayor Zohran Mamdani – are the standard bearers for a legal fight that temporarily put New York City’s pied-à-terre tax on hold.
Rachel O’Brien, whose husband is City Councilman Frank Morano (R-Staten Island), said she joined the high-profile lawsuit after Mamdani’s administration included their home on a published list of more than 900,000 properties that could fall under the new levy.
“As soon as I saw it I was confused and a little bit angry that the city would do this,” O’Brien, 41, told The Post as she cared for her newborn child Tuesday. “I immediately knew it was wrong and I had conversations with my husband, who’s a city councilman and he had been receiving phone calls from constituents who were on the list and confused and worried.”
O’Brien said she immediately thought about how it was “crazy” that the city was “able to do this and just sort of throw people’s lives into disarray.”
“It’s the city just putting unnecessary stress on middle income homeowners who are just going to work, paying their mortgages, paying their property taxes, utilities — trying to raise their families like we’re doing,” she said.
Read more at the New York Post
More consternation for Mamdani
Watch @ThePatriotOasis
Shocking upset: Francesca Hong loses Wisconsin gubernatorial primary to David Crowley
Watch @ThePatriotOasis; See @dcexaminer
Resurfaced videos expose El-Sayed slamming American football as ‘toxic masculinity’
‘Not liking football doesn’t play well in Michigan’ – Democrats for Mike Rogers
See @ClayTravis; see @its_The_Dr
The Problem With DSA Democrats Isn’t Socialism, It’s Third-Worldism by John Daniel Davidson
Decades of immigration from Muslim-majority Third World countries has turned the Democrats into the party of militant anti-Americanism.
The recent electoral success of candidates affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has prompted many Republicans and commentators on the right to attack these Democrats for being “socialists” or “communists” — as if those labels will persuade voters, particularly younger voters, that DSA-backed candidates are just too radical.
It’s not going to work. For many Americans, “socialist” is no longer an epithet the way it was during and immediately after the Cold War. Baby Boomers and Gen Xers (and even older Millennials) are simply mistaken if they think that calling New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani a commie is going to sting, or that pointing out the hypocrisy of well-heeled leftists is going to stick. This week Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana cracked a joke about “Lulu Lenins,” which is funny but isn’t going to deter voters who back DSA-affiliated candidates.
The main reason it won’t work, though, isn’t generational but cultural. Indeed, socialism or communism isn’t really the problem with the DSA crowd, nor are the oft-lampooned woke white women who vote for leftist radicals. The real problem is that mass immigration from the Third World over the past 30 years has brought in huge numbers of people from Muslim-majority countries, where ethno-religious identity is more important than political ideology, and the set of priorities that determines voting patterns is radically different than the traditional American mainstream.
Read more at The Federalist
Revving up for 2028? AOC splits with long-time partner
Watch @CollinRugg
America’s First Detransitioner Clinic
See @USA1STONLY; backstory on children’s hospital that secretly kept performing sex-changes on kids after they were banned has just been ordered to fund America’s first DETRANSITION clinic @k_mahlburg
Mother Miriam on the Third Commandment: You shall not take the Name of the Lord your God in vain
Mother receives an email from a listener named Jonathan who is having a difficult time at his local Newman Center. While he aspires to be a priest, he doesn’t understand the third commandment. He’ll frequently be called out by his peers at the center for taking the Lord’s name in vain despite some of them swearing.
Watch at Mother Miriam Highlights
The Requiem Mass for murdered UK conservative politician today
See @michaelkeohan; see also @UK_Dispatch
Former priest of the Church of England calls out King Charles’ relationship with Islam
Watch @ReChristendom
Babylon Bee jokes Elon Musk buys UK to restore Free Speech – Musk asks ‘How much is it?’
Watch @MarioNawfal
US bishop calls for prayers for people of Columbia after 7.4 magnitude earthquake
See @cnalive
Pope Leo prays for Columbians
Read @Pontifex
Israel Declares Closed Military Zone in West Bank’s Taybeh
Israel’s military said Monday it had declared a Christian-majority town in the occupied West Bank a closed military zone to keep out Israeli settlers and other non-residents.
The new tactic is designed to keep Israelis out of Taybeh, which is surrounded by settlements to its east and west and has been subject to arson, vandalism and settlers coming onto private and village property.
The order does not apply to Palestinian residents or journalists, who the army said would be allowed unless soldiers determine their presence poses a threat. The army said its troops would detain suspects and disperse gatherings to keep the peace.
The designation comes after months of the army and police struggling to maintain order throughout the territory, where at least 87 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli settlers or soldiers in 2026, according to the Ramallah-based Palestinian Health Ministry.
Parts of Taybeh lie in what’s called “Area B,” where Israel maintains security control, but residents have complained that the army and police are slow to respond to attacks by extremist settlers.
Read more at Asharq Al-Awasat; read “West Bank Christians feel ‘forgotten’ over settler violence” at Vatican News
Human Rights Campaigner calls on Pope to revisit China-Vatican pact
Patriotic Church in China has replaced Ten Commandments with quotes from Xi Jinping
Read @lukedepulford
World’s Oldest Catholic Monk from China Dies at Age 108
‘[Mao’s] forces bound the monks with wire or chains and forced them on a brutal “death march” through the mountains of northern China. Carrying the sick and elderly on their shoulders through heavy rains, the monks were forced to scavenge for food, forbidden from talking, and whipped if caught praying or nodding off. Up to three monks died daily from sheer exhaustion and starvation’
At 108 years old, the world’s oldest Catholic monk in China has passed away. His long life stands as a testament to the brutal “death march” with which Mao’s communist forces decimated the monasteries of Yangjiaping and Liesse in the 1940s, as well as the 1956 rebirth of the Abbey of Our Lady of Joy in Hong Kong.
The Chinese-language weekly of the Diocese of Hong Kong, Kung Kao Po, reported that Father Benedict Chao, a Trappist monk from the Abbey of Our Lady of Joy on Lantau Island, passed away on July 31. …
Father Chao’s 79-year religious journey was defined by far more than his extraordinary longevity. His funeral on August 14 marks the final farewell to the last surviving member of the Trappist group that endured communist persecution in China before re-establishing their community in British Hong Kong during the 1950s with the help of PIME missionary Bishop Enrico Valtorta.
Read more at Catholic News World
Bishop Eleganti: Is the Petrine Ministry in Decline?
In the following guest post, the Swiss bishop emeritus argues that recent popes have sacrificed the dignity of the Petrine office for the trappings of personality and media appeal.
On 31 July 2026, Pope Leo XIV held a 40-minute private audience at the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican with the American rock musician, poet and artist Patti Smith (born 1946), the so-called “Godmother of Punk.” Both are from Chicago. The meeting was attended by Father Antonio Spadaro. There are several official photographs and a video of the encounter.
This innocuous meeting — I imagine that it mainly involved an exchange of pleasantries, with hardly anything of great significance for the Church — raises questions for me.
For a long time now, I have personally been troubled by the fact that, since John Paul II, popes have increasingly been speaking in a purely informal manner on all sorts of occasions (e.g. on a plane or by the roadside, as Pope Leo XIV does in Castel Gandolfo). They give spontaneous interviews and express personal opinions. They are accessible to all sorts of people who want to have their photograph taken with them.
Read more at Edward Pentin’s Substack
Today is the Feast of St. Jeanne-Françoise de Chantal (St. Jane Frances)
See @CHMadison; see also @father_rmv
