Obama-appointed judge defers to SCOTUS, lifts block on ending Somali temporary protected status; Iran army offers bounty for anyone who kills or captures US service member; Maura Healey’s office invokes her ‘proud Catholic’ identity in defending abortion law amid calls for excommunication; Catholic scholar asks when will Covid-era bishops be held accountable?; Scandal-beset Black professor – youngest in history of Cambridge University – found dead at 41; Mayor of assailed Christian town in West Bank vows to stay put: ‘Even if we die, we’ll be buried in it, because it’s holy ground’; Europe’s tallest statue of Mary blessed in Poland – ‘She directs us toward God’; Today Catholics celebrate the 13th century Polish Dominican priest who saved the Holy Eucharist and a statue of Mary from a Muslim attack; and lots more —
Obama-Appointed Judge Defers to Supreme Court Ruling, Gives Trump a Somali Deportation Win
President Donald Trump scored a big victory Friday after an Obama-appointed judge cleared the way for immigration officials to end temporary legal protections for thousands of Somali nationals living in the United States.
Boston U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs, who previously had issued a stay stopping the administration from terminating Somalia’s Temporary Protected Status (TPS), ended her previous action, saying she had to defer to the Supreme Court that in June sharply limited the ability of federal judges to override certain executive branch policies.
The decision, Fox News reported, allows the Trump administration to move forward with ending Somalian nationals TPS protection, potentially allowing deportation of thousands of affected migrants who lack another lawful basis to remain in the U.S.
Read more at Breitbart
Somalia’s Temporary Protected Status ends after 35 years, first established in 1991 due to civil war
See @AOCzPooter
Iran army offers bounty for anyone who kills or captures US service member
Watch @IranIntl_En
‘Will Come Back to Bite You’: Top FDA Official Asked Fauci for Vaccine Side Effect Study, Email Shows
A newly released email suggests that the nation’s top vaccine regulator encouraged Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins to leverage billions in scientific research dollars to study COVID vaccine side effects—but they never followed through on her request.
In the spring of 2021, Janet Woodcock, then head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), wrote to the leaders of the National Institutes of Health—the country’s leading funder of medical science—to encourage a study into reports she had received of adverse events after COVID-19 vaccination. …
“The symptoms do not fit together into a distinctive syndrome and most are not easily quantifiable or evaluated with standard laboratory testing,” she wrote in the May 27, 2021 correspondence. “Clearly during mass vaccination you will get a lot of psychological reactions and it is hard to sort these things out. But the peoples’ main complaint is that no one takes them seriously, no one knows how to treat them, and there is no effort to study this.” …
“I doubt the industry would support, for obvious reasons,” she wrote in the email. “But my experience is, that if you let a problem fester, then it will come back to bite you later and you are not prepared.”
Read more at the Daily Signal
When Will the Covid-Era Bishops Be Held Accountable? by John M. Grondelski
In the six years since Covid broke out, there has not been any autopsy of the bishops’—and Pope Francis’—decisions during that time.
The United States Senate will soon vote whether to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt for refusing to answer a Senate committee’s questions. On July 29, the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs held a hearing in which Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination when asked about decisions he made during his tenure as Covid Czar. Republicans characterized it as oversight of what the government did during Covid; Democrats called the hearing a backward-looking waste of time to “relitigate” Covid history.
My interest is not in the hearing. I am interested in why there hasn’t been a similar discussion inside the Catholic Church about ecclesiastical performance during Covid.
Bishops across the United States took the unprecedented action of closing churches and shutting down public Masses, in some cases for a year or more. Many Catholics died alone, bereft of the sacraments, including Reconciliation, Anointing, and Viaticum. In some places, it was alleged that Confirmation was “administered” not by episcopal hands but by Q-tips. …
Read more at Crisis Magazine
Stepping Down To Raise Her Kids Makes Karoline Leavitt An Even Better Role Model by Elle Purnell
It would be easy to play into the narrative that women can ‘have it all.’ Choosing instead to prioritize her children, Leavitt is more of a role model than ever.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced Wednesday that she will step down from her role in a few weeks to spend more time with her two young children. While she’s earned her spot as a rising star in the briefing room, her new role will likely be an even greater service to the country, as she hinted in a farewell message posted on Wednesday.
“Our country is facing an existential threat from an increasingly extremist Democrat Party that seeks to destroy everything great about America, and I believe it is incumbent upon all of us who care about this country to fight back against that threat,” she wrote. “My fight is entering a new phase, but it is far from over.”
Leavitt, who assumed her role at the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term after working as his press secretary on the campaign trail, welcomed a son in July 2024 and a daughter in May, both of whom she shares with her husband Nicholas Riccio. After the birth of her son, Leavitt took three days off before an assassination attempt against then-candidate Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, brought her back from maternity leave.
Read more at The Federalist
Healey’s office invokes her ‘proud Catholic’ identity in defending abortion law amid calls for her excommunication
CatholicVote CEO Kelsey Reinhardt denounced the statement as “tripling down” on the pro-abortion position, which she emphasized is incompatible with Catholic belief.
In a statement defending her decision to sign radically pro-abortion legislation into law Aug. 10, a spokesperson for Democratic Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey called Healey “a proud Catholic” as context for her support of the bill, amid mounting criticism from Catholics who say her support for the law could carry canonical consequences.
The law Healey signed, H.B. 5595, takes effect Nov. 8. Previously, Massachusetts law allowed abortions at or after 24 weeks in specified circumstances involving the patient’s life or physical or mental health, or certain serious fetal diagnoses. The new law removes those specified conditions and states instead: “An abortion may be performed by a physician based upon the professional judgment of the physician.”
Many pro-lifers, Catholics, and others have expressed outrage at the legislation which effectively legalizes abortion up to the moment of birth. As Zeale News has previously reported, CatholicVote CEO Kelsey Reinhardt has been among those calling on the Catholic bishops of Massachusetts to clarify whether the governor has excommunicated herself.
Read more at Zeale
Should the archbishop excommunicate the governor? by Philip Lawler
Should Boston’s Archbishop Richard Henning excommunicate Governor Maura Healey of Massachusetts?
That question has arisen this week, after Healey signed legislation that eliminates virtually all limitations on abortion in the Commonwealth, making it possible to procure an abortion for any reason, at any time up until the very birth of the child. That the new law is an abomination against the dignity of human life is self-evident. But is excommunication the appropriate response?
Nearly a dozen US states now have similar legislation, allowing for unrestricted abortion on demand. But the legislative action in Massachusetts provoked a special revulsion, particularly after Governor Healey posted photos and videos that showed her signing the bill into law, while a dozen onlooking women smiled, laughed, and cheered.
“There is something eerie about this picture,” observed John O’Sullivan, the Editor-at-large of National Review (and my former boss) in an X post. “They are applauding the deliberate killing of children at the very brink of birth who have neither done nor threaten harm to anyone. They are not reluctant. They seem conscious of acting rightly. What do THEY think they are doing?
Read more at Catholic Culture
Another Wave of Moroccan men attempt to cross into Spain on August 15
Spanish and Moroccan security forces, alerted by social media rumors of an open border, deployed heavily and largely stopped the second push, turning back most participants – Grok
Watch @RealAmVoice
Save Europe Act Founder: ‘I cannot think of ONE SINGLE aspect that has been beneficial from the mass immigration’
Watch @bennyjohnson
Scandal-beset Jason Arday found dead – media scrambling for who to blame
See @Knesix
‘Ancient [Canterbury] cathedral goes from sacred space to sacrilege’ on the Feast of the Assumption
Watch @EdwardPentin; read ‘Canterbury Cathedral’s ‘Rave in the Nave’ Draws the Ire of Believers and Nonbelievers’ at the National Catholic Register
Nicaraguan bishop appears in regime interview six weeks after disappearance
Nicaraguan Bishop Abelardo Mata, SDB, emeritus Bishop of Estelí, appeared this week in an interview with a regime-controlled TV station, his first appearance since being taken into police custody six weeks ago.
In the interview, Mata claims to be well taken care of and said he has received visits from a brother and a niece at his residence. However, local observers have raised alarm at what appears to be an unofficial house arrest, as the bishop has not been publicly accused of any crimes.
Mata, who is 80 years old, was taken into police custody on June 29, following a homily mentioning the persecution of the Church in the country. …
On July 4, the Nicaraguan regime published a statement claiming that Mata had returned to his home “in perfect condition,” after “a necessary inquiry on the origin of properties and family links that are incoherent with the priestly condition” of the bishop. …
However, Church sources and local human rights advocates say that Mata’s residence has been surrounded by police since he was initially detained, and neither his relatives nor other close contacts have been able to see or speak with him.
The lack of independent confirmation of his whereabouts has fueled fears that he is either being held under unofficial house arrest or has been transferred to another detention facility.
Read more at The Pillar
Mayor of assailed Christian town in West Bank vows to stay put
See @CatholicArena; watch video of recent attacks on Christians by Israeli settlers in Taybeh here and here
Despite French officials warning of ‘very high’ terrorist threats to religious processions, Catholic Parisians take their faith to the Paris streets on Feast of the Assumption
This is Paris around 5:30 p.m. on August 15, 2026. On the Boulevard Saint-Germain, I encountered a religious procession for the Assumption of Mary, where they were carrying a statue of the Virgin Mary. The singing voices are so beautiful, so please do check out the audio (translation of below from Japanese
Watch @tricolorparis
Mary – the Antidote to the Lie by Gavin Ashenden
This is why Mary is so dangerous to the culture of post-modernity[:] She represents everything it cannot tolerate: creatureliness instead of autonomy; receptivity instead of self-invention; obedience instead of self-assertion; biological reality instead of imaginative reconstruction; humility instead of power; truth instead of the lie.
I remember being confused as an Anglican choirboy about why it was that we sung the Magnificat so often in the liturgy. As far as I could tell, Mary had a central place at Christmas but otherwise seemed to take a back seat until the end of the story, peeping in at Cana, the foot of the Cross and the beginning of the Book of Acts.
I could see that the Magnificat had some stirring phrases in it, but I wasn’t sure what it was about?
London Southbank Anglicanism of the 1960’s of my childhood in SW19, was essentially political before it was anything else, and so I assumed this was the kind of raw material of socialist redistribution, since it talked about the rich getting their comeuppance and the poor getting retribution.
Looking forward from 1966 to 2026, I could have no idea of what was going to happen to our culture. …
Read more at Gavin Ashenden Substack
Europe’s tallest statue of Mary blessed in Poland [on the Feast of the Assumption] – “She directs us toward God”
The Europe’s tallest statue of Mary was blessed on August 15 in Konotopie, Poland. During the ceremony, Bishop Krzysztof Wętkowski said the more than 55-meter (180-foot) monument is meant to turn people’s thoughts toward God and serve as a place of prayer.
The statue of Our Lady of Mercy now stands at a site that has long drawn local pilgrims to a nearby chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows, linking the new monument to an existing tradition of prayer and pilgrimage.
“The place where we stand is no ordinary place; it is a place sanctified by the prayers of pilgrims,” said Krzysztof Wętkowski, bishop of the Diocese of Włocławek, in his homily during the Mass and blessing of the statue of Our Lady of Mercy.
He noted that “this monumental statue of Our Lady of Mercy stands near a chapel where Our Lady of Sorrows has been venerated for decades,” underscoring the site’s longstanding connection with prayer and pilgrimage.
Read more at Vatican News
Today is the Feast of St. Hyacinth, the Polish Dominican known as ‘Apostle of the North’
Hyacinth saved the Eucharist and a statue of Mary from a Tartar attack: “You must carry Jesus and Mary at the same time. You must show, by your works, that you love both with your whole heart. If you love Jesus, see that you do not offend Him; if you love Mary, arouse not the wrath of Him Whom she loves above all things.”
Read @TempusFugit4016; read more about St. Hyacinth here
