State Department joins forces with Catholic Relief Services to deliver aid to Cuban families; Rubio excoriates Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega over plan to scrap elections; SAVE America Act still stalled in Senate; Victor Davis Hanson: VP should be working with senators on voter ID instead of promoting new book; Speaker endorses ban on lawmaker relationships with all staff; Illegal immigration made average new house $30K more expensive under Biden; Smithsonian propaganda claims ‘politeness’ sign of white supremacy; Heritage Foundation releases video on how the Smithsonian lost its way; President Trump oversees transfer of 4 soldiers killed in battle: ‘For me, it’s one of the hardest things to do’; Catholics celebrate the Feast of the saint known as ‘the Apostle to the Apostles’; and more —
U.S., Catholic Relief Services send first Cuba aid flight under Rubio plan
Catholic Relief Services (CRS) will deliver kits of prepackaged food and hygiene kits for up to 700 Cuban families.
The United States and Catholic Relief Services (CRS) sent the first flight with humanitarian aid to Cuba under Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s $100 million assistance plan.
In partnership with the Catholic Church and Caritas Cuba, the kits of prepackaged food and hygiene kits for up to 700 Cuban families will be delivered by CRS — the official international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the U.S.
“This partnership builds upon the success of the Department’s program last year with CRS and Caritas Cuba to deliver $9 million in direct support to the island following Hurricane Melissa,” according to a U.S. Department of State statement.
Read more at EWTN News
Pre-flight preparation for delivery to Cuba
Watch @StateDept; read press release at US Department of State
Rubio excoriates Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega over plan to scrap elections
Secretary of State Marco Rubio called Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega a dictator after the Central American leader vowed to abolish elections.
“Daniel Ortega’s declaration that under his family’s dictatorship Nicaragua will never again hold elections lays bare their true authoritarian nature,” a State Department statement released Tuesday said. “Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo have abandoned even the pretense of popular consent.”
The State Department called for the right of Nicaraguan citizens to elect leaders through democratic elections and said the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship “cannot expect to maintain business as usual with other nations.”
Read more at the Washington Examiner (behind a partial paywall)
Wisconsin Senator lays out GOP plan to get key provisions of SAVE America Act passed
Watch @overton_news
Victor Davis Hanson: VP should be working with senators on Voter ID instead of promoting new book
Watch @DailySignal
Illegal Immigration Made The Average New House $30K More Expensive Under Biden
The (at least) seven million people who entered the United States illegally from 2021-2024 raised home prices by 6.6 percent.
Although Americans still express strong support for legal immigration, according to the latest Gallup survey, a large plurality, including Democrats, acknowledge immigration drives up housing costs and reduces availability.
The data confirm this impression. Mass immigration has contributed heavily to the dramatic housing price increases, a newly leaked draft working paper from the Federal Reserve confirms. Illegal immigration drove 30 percent of the increase in U.S. home prices from 2021 to 2024, along with 20 percent of the rise in rent prices, the researchers found.
In total, the (at least) seven million people who entered the United States illegally in those four years raised home prices by 6.6 percent, through a “housing demand shock in the face of short-run inelastic supply,” the authors observe. The 2008 financial crisis pushed the annual growth of America’s housing supply far below the normal historical average, and it has remained well short of the norm ever since. Meanwhile, the number of U.S. households has rapidly increased.
Read more at The Federalist
Trump Deals Massive Blow to Minnesota, California for Alleged Fraud
The Trump administration is pausing more than a billion dollars in Medicaid funding to California and Minnesota because of suspected fraud.
“That includes more than $860 million for California and over $200 million for Minnesota,” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Tuesday at a press conference. “If those states want that money, they need to provide documentation that these payments are legitimate.”
Kennedy also announced that he is expanding the authority of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Office of Inspector General to exclude bad actors from funding.
“We will be able to use that authority to remove bad actors from federal healthcare programs and, in many cases, to permanently ban them from returning,” Kennedy said.
Read more at the Daily Signal
Brandon Gill Shows Museum Director No Mercy During Hearing on Wokeification of the Smithsonian
On Tuesday, the House Oversight Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE) held a hearing on “Rewriting American History: Examining the Smithsonian’s Efforts to Reshape the Past,” which followed a detailed 162-page PDF report issued by the White House Domestic Policy Council on July 4th that documented the wokeification of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History (NMAH) on an epic scale.
During the hearing, Republican Rep. Brandon Gill (TX-26) grilled Dr. Anthea Hartig, the director of the museum, on issues including a “Mass Action Tool Kit” that had been promoted by the museum under her leadership. As my RedState colleague Bob Hoge might say, it wasn’t even a fair fight, as Hartig froze at various points during the questioning, feigned ignorance at other points, and seemed more keen on writing down notes on a notepad instead of directly answering Gill’s questions. …
All of this stems from actions President Donald Trump took in the first year of his second term in office.
In March 2025, Trump signed an Executive Order on “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” where it was noted that “museums in our Nation’s capital should be places where individuals go to learn — not to be subjected to ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history.”
Read more at Red State
Highlight of Gill questioning director of the Smithsonian
Watch @EndWokeness; full hearing at Forbes Breaking News
Highlight of Nancy Mace questioning director of the Smithsonian
Watch @OffThePress; see also @nancymace; watch also @DailyWire
Heritage Foundation weighs in on how the Smithsonian lost its way
Watch @Heritage; see also ‘Saving America’s Story’ at White House
Trump oversees transfer of 4 soldiers killed in battle: ‘For me, it’s one of the hardest things to do as president’
Watch @WhiteHouse
DC Metropolitan Police Department Bodycam Footage from January 6, 2021 compliments of Judicial Watch
Watch @JudicialWatch; Watch ‘DC Metropolitan Police Department Bodycam Footage from January 6, 2021’ at Judicial Watch
Speaker endorses ban on lawmaker relationships with all staff — not just subordinates
His comments come amid a broader push to police bad behavior among House members.
Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday he supports a more extensive ban on lawmakers having sexual relationships with any congressional aides — not just subordinates in a personal office or on a committee.
Johnson replied “yeah,” when asked at a news conference whether he’s on board with remarks made over the weekend by House GOP Conference Chair Lisa McClain of Michigan in support of establishing new rules barring members from having sex with any congressional staff.
It’s unclear what the path forward is for such a change, but it would require a revision to the House Code of Official Conduct — and an endorsement from two of the top lawmakers in the House is a promising sign there could be action.
The staff director for the House Ethics Committee did not respond to a request for comment.
In the wake of the #MeToo movement, the House in 2018 opted to formally ban members from having intimate relationships with their subordinates in personal offices or on the committees on which the lawmakers serve, with an exception for lawmakers who are married to staffers.
This latest push from McClain, and now the speaker, to expand the prohibition is partly a response to recent reporting on Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), outlining that Gallego had relationships with staffers who were not under his supervision.
Read more at Politico
Dem-backed Senate candidate’s daughter linked to online sex work
See @Berkemeyer_Drew
Reading the Bible in Texas
Beyond religious education, the Bible provides as much, if not more, of the necessary context behind Western Civilization as would the study of Greek and Roman culture.
On June 26, the Texas State Board of Education adopted reading lists for public schools across the Lone Star State. Apart from the “perhaps unprecedented” (The New York Times’ word) fact that it sets a standard body of knowledge for graduates of public schools in one of the largest states in the Union, the Board’s reading list did two other shocking things. First, it mandated that each book be read “in its entirety.” Second, it stipulated excerpts from the Bible at every grade level.
The usual suspects wailed. Reading from the Bible was another breach in the great wall of church-state separation. Reading the classics was subjecting a “diverse” and non-white school population to the thought of dead white European (and American) males. Like Shakespeare and Poe, Stevenson and Lincoln. And, of course, it truncated teacher “autonomy.”
Let me defend the Board’s decision on the Bible. Like it or not, American—and more broadly Western—culture is the product of a Judeo-Christian influence. That culture is incomprehensible apart from recognizing its sources in Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem. The culture we know comes from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Jesus Christ—and not Confucius, Allah, and Vishnu. Like it or not, that is a historical fact. One need not be a Jew or a Christian to understand that a thorough grasp of American and Occidental culture presupposes some basic understanding of Judaism and Christianity.
Read more at Crisis Magazine
Bruno Mars kicks off Wembley [suburb of London] Tour with prayer for London
Bruno Mars has kicked off the Wembley leg of his The Romantic tour with a prayer for the city.
The night opened with a visual of Mars in a church, head bowed in prayer.
“God, I thank you for giving me another day to do what I love,” the Grammy winner says. “All that I ask is that you protect everyone in this audience. Protect everyone on this stage.
“Give my band and I the power and strength to give this city a show they’ll never forget. Amen.”
Mars then places a white hat atop his head, lies a red rose at the altar and leaves the church.
The singer’s Catholic background features throughout his work. Among classic hits like ‘Uptown Funk’, Mars played newer songs such as ‘God Was Showing Off’, in which he sings: “The way you’rе put together, only God can do… I once was blind but now I see… God was showing off when he made you.”
Read at Premier Christian News
Today is the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene
Read @father_rmv
Mary Magdalene’s Hometown
See @VividProwess
