President Trump officially kicks off US 250th birthday celebrations; Back-to-back powerful earthquakes slam Venezuela, Rubio promises ‘whole-of-government’ response; Trump refuses to sign Housing Act until SAVE America Act is passed; POTUS orders investigation into oil companies price gouging Americans: ‘We should be $2.25 at the pump right now’; Postmaster General: USPS to hold back mail ballots in states that won’t share voter data; ‘State of Deception’: Former Minnesota congressman takes on ‘one of the great scandals’ of our time in new COVID movie; World Cup UK travelers to US: ‘We owe you a big apology. Because what we think America’s like is exactly not what it’s like’; SSPX issues open letter, profession of the faith to Pope Leo and College of Cardinals; Relics of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque to grace nation’s capital on the Fourth of July; and more —
President Trump officially kicks off US 250th birthday celebrations with ‘Great American State Fair’
“Tonight, right here on our National Mall, we are beginning the most unforgettable birthday party any country has ever seen,” Trump said. “This evening, it is my honor to officially kick off the celebration with the Great American State Fair.”
President Donald Trump on Wednesday night officially kicked off the nation’s nearly two-week-long 250th birthday celebrations with the Great American State Fair on the National Mall.
The state fair was modeled after world fairs and features 150 exhibits from “all 56 states and territories, businesses, innovators, and civic organizations.” It also includes a rodeo, a massive Ferris wheel and several food vendors.
“Under our leadership, America will also be a nation that dares to dream and to build again,” Trump said in his remarks. “For the 100th anniversary of our founding in 1876, America completed the Washington Monument and work began on the Statue of Liberty. For the 200th year, we built the National Air and Space Museum and renovated the U.S. Capitol. …
The president also took a moment to wish Team USA “good luck” during their match against Turkey on Thursday as part of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which the U.S. is hosting alongside Canada and Mexico.
Trump additionally pushed to unite the country this Fourth of July, highlighting the nation’s shared legacy as one of the “most incredible [countries] to ever grace the earth.”
Read more at Just the News
Trump speaking at the The Great American State Fair
Watch @RapidResponse47; watch ending of Trump’s kickoff @overton_news
Lee Greenwood sings ‘God bless the USA’ at kickoff
Watch @nicksortor
Back-to-back Powerful Earthquakes Slam Venezuela, Collapsing Buildings in the Capital of Caracas
Back-to-back powerful earthquakes slammed Venezuela on Wednesday evening, collapsing buildings in the capital of Caracas.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the first earthquake had a magnitude of 7.1 and its epicenter was west of the community of Morón, located along the country’s Caribbean coast, about 168 kilometers (104 miles) west of Caracas. The quake had a depth of 13 kilometers (8 miles).
The USGS reported an even larger 7.5-magnitude earthquake just a minute later. The second quake had a depth of 10 kilometers and its epicenter was 16 kilometers (10 miles) southwest of Morón.
The quakes are among the strongest to strike Venezuela in more than a century.
The U.S. Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a tsunami alert for Virgin Islands. Authorities in the Dominican Republic also issued one for the island. Another alert for Puerto Rico was quickly lifted.
Read more at NEWSMAX
President Trump’s post about earthquakes in Venezuela
Watch @WhiteHouse; see also @SecRubio
RUBIO: ‘We are having a whole-of-government response, it will be big, and it will be fast!‘
Watch @ThePatriotOasis
Request to pray for Venezuela
See @Knesix
Trump Cancels Housing Bill Signing Over SAVE America Act
President Donald Trump cancelled the signing of a housing bill Wednesday until the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act is passed.
Trump intended to sign the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act into law at the U.S. Capitol, but abruptly announced its cancellation in a Truth Social post. He demanded that the Senate must pass the “desperately needed” SAVE America Act, calling it a “national emergency.”
“Today’s Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump said.
Republican Florida Sen. Rick Scott invited Trump to attend a lunch Wednesday to discuss a wide range of issues, which would likely include the SAVE America Act.
Read more at the Daily Caller
Watch: Trump refuses to sign Road to Housing Act until SAVE America Act is passed
Watch @ScottPresler; watch also @nicksortor
Postmaster General: USPS to hold back mail ballots in states that won’t share voter data
Watch @EricLDaugh
POTUS orders investigation into oil companies price gouging Americans: ‘We should be $2.25 at the pump right now’
Watch @nicksortor
‘State of Deception’: Former congressman takes on ‘one of the great scandals’ of our time in new COVID movie
“It was a public health issue being politicized for very much partisan gain,” said former Congressman Jason Lewis. However, Lewis said the bigger issue is “how many people it hurt.”
They are conspiracies until they aren’t. With more and more information about the COVID pandemic being released, former Minnesota Congressman Jason Lewis joined Liz Collin on her podcast to talk about his new feature film project, “State of Deception.”
Lewis, who represented Minnesota’s Second District in Congress from 2017 to 2019, said the film aims to provide much-needed perspective about COVID-era scandals in the style of “House of Cards meets The Manchurian Candidate.”
While the project has been in the works for some time, Lewis said he is reassured given all of the information that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released last week on her last day on the job.
“I spoke with Tulsi about this a couple of years back, and she was very concerned then,” Lewis said.
By releasing the declassified information, Lewis said Gabbard did “a wonderful, wonderful thing for America in trying to uncover what is going to turn out to be one of the great scandals, one of the great conspiracies, of which, by the way, a lot of people’s lives are still impacted by.”
“What we experimented with is, quite frankly, martial law in Minnesota. And we’ve still yet to get all the information on how we fast tracked this vaccine. It was classified as experimental, and why somehow it was needed for everyone, including the young and the healthy. So you’ve got all of these things coming together,” Lewis explained.
“This is how I got on State of Deception. If you put this in a story and then you realize all the things that are coming out are proving this grand conspiracy, people wouldn’t believe it … so this is really something that I think is going to go down, quite frankly, as sort of the beginning of the end for my home state of Minnesota,” he added.
Read more at ALPHA NEWS
Alpha News interview with former Minnesota congressman about film ‘State of Deception’
Watch @AlphaNews; watch trailer for ‘State of Deception’ at Team Lewis
Tulsi Gabbard on Fauci’s gain of function research in China
Watch @DNIGabbard
Brits visiting US for first time during World Cup are apologizing to Americans: ‘We were wrong’
The British are coming … to apologize.
With the World Cup taking over towns all across the nation, travelers from the UK are getting a taste of the Red, White and Blue. And tons are offering up apologies along the way.
Many Brits have acknowledged on social media that their assumptions about the US were wrong.
In a string of TikTok’s from across the pond, Brits are earnestly sharing their experience in the US and revealing the media in their country “paint this weird narrative” about Uncle Sam.
“America is nothing like what the media tells us,” said World Cup traveler Oliver Henry, on TikTok as @oliver.henry.w, in a recent post.
Some of those tales told: Americans are rude, inhospitable, unsafe and proud — just to name a few. But folks are spotting a different side to the country, and falling in love.
Host cities have been welcoming outsiders with open arms as they take our commonplace for wonder. Our red fire trucks, Walmart, Buc-ee’s and free refills have tourists in awe of our heartland.
Watch more at the New York Post
Brit acknowledges his false assumptions about the US
Watch @TONYxTWO
Victor Davis Hanson: Europe looking to US for how to deal with border security, energy
Watch @DailySignal
Solar panels failing UK amid heat wave – Gas power stations to the rescue
See @toadmeister
English bishop on ‘personal leave’ charged with rape of a minor
Neither the Vatican nor the diocese disclosed Oakley’s arrest when he went on ‘personal leave’ last year.
Bishop David Oakley of Northampton, England, has been charged with two counts of rape of a minor, local police confirmed June 24. The bishop has been on a leave of absence since October last year, when he announced he was taking time away from the diocese for “personal reasons.”
The charges were confirmed by local police this week as part of an investigation into historical allegations of abuse against the English bishop, 70, which involved an arrest last September that had not been previously made public.
Shortly after that arrest, it was announced that the bishop, who has led the Diocese of Northampton since 2020, had taken a leave of absence for unexplained personal reasons. The diocese did not disclose the fact that the bishop had been arrested.
A statement from the diocese, released June 24, said that “the Diocese of Northampton can confirm that Bishop David Oakley has been charged after an investigation into non-recent safeguarding allegations. We understand that this will be very distressing for all concerned but cannot comment further on an active legal process.”
Read more at The Pillar
SSPX Issues Open Letter to Pope Leo XIV and the College of Cardinals
The letter, accompanied by a 28-page Profession of Faith, comes on the eve of the Pope’s second meeting with the Sacred College.
On the eve of the Extraordinary Consistory of Cardinals at the Vatican on 26–27 June, and just one week before the Society of Saint Pius X’s planned episcopal consecrations at Ecône, the SSPX has issued an open letter to Pope Leo XIV and the members of the Sacred College.
The letter, accompanied by a 28-page Profession of Faith, was first published in Italian today by the Italian site, Messa in Latino. The publication stated that it had received the documents from what it described as “sources at the highest levels” and indicated that the full text of the accompanying doctrinal declaration would be published later today.
Presenting the accompanying 28-page Profession of Faith, the SSPX leaders write that they hope it may one day “serve as the basis for a frank discussion with the Holy See, in a peaceful, fraternal, and charitable spirit.” They add that the document is “not the sterile litany of a group of nostalgics, but the necessary expression, peaceful yet resolute, of our faith.”
Dated 24 June 2026, the Feast of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist, the letter is signed by Superior General Davide Pagliarani together with the Society’s principal superiors and former superiors general.
Read more and the translated letter at Diane Montagna Substack
St. Margaret Mary Alacoque relics coming to DC just in time for Fourth of July
See @Stephen_P_White; more information at St. John Paul II National Shrine
Becoming Relics – Essay by Stephen P. White
As you surely know, not least because it has been mentioned repeatedly in these pages, the bishops of the United States, in preparation of the celebration for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence have consecrated the entire nation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
No doubt you also know, faithful readers of The Catholic Thing, that the image of the Sacred Heart was revealed by Jesus himself to a 17th-century French nun named Margaret Mary Alacoque. If you didn’t know this before, you probably learned it just yesterday from Msgr. Charles Fink’s wonderful reflection on how holy images, including the Sacred Heart, can captivate the imagination and so move us toward greater devotion. …
Relics are a powerful reminder that we are all, as it were, in the same story.
Any ancient artifact can, on a natural level, remind us that we are all carried along in the same stream of time: you, me, George Washington, Cleopatra, and Nebuchadnezzar. We can throw in the mastodons and the dinosaurs while we’re at it. But saintly relics are more than mementos, more than fossils or museum pieces – as fascinating as those objects may be.
Relics remind us both of the fact of our mortality and of precious exemplars of holiness and devotion. And they remind us of the promise of resurrection.
Read more at The Catholic Thing
A film about St. Margaret Mary – Sacred Heart: His Reign Has No End – the OFFICIAL TRAILER
‘SACRED HEART: His Reign Has No End’ brings to life the story of St. Margaret Mary, the mystery of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the message that continues to transform hearts more than 350 years later.
It is a French docudrama directed and produced by filmmakers Sabrina and Steven J. Gunnell to mark the 350th anniversary of the apparitions of Jesus to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque.
The film has already been screened at select theaters worldwide but is expected to transition to digital platforms and on-demand streaming services soon.
Watch at SacredHeartFilmUSA
