Fauci facing Senate today following release of COVID-era journals; Trump administration asks Supreme Court to clear way for new mail-in voting restrictions; Kentucky governor gives ultimatum to Mitch McConnell: prove ability to serve or resign; Trump: Lindsey Graham’s raising his sister Darline was his greatest accomplishment; San Francisco archbishop among new members of Vatican’s highest court; Conservative Hungarian journal knocks AP for lamenting fate of trans sex workers after USAID cuts; As wildfires rage, France’s bishops urge Catholics to welcome evacuees; CatholicVote president sounds alarm on DSA rising stars: ‘they turned the ladder they climbed into a weapon against the country that provided it’; Catholics celebrate two saints who together represent ‘a balance of action AND contemplation in Christian life’; and more —
Fauci Set to Face Senate [Today] Following Release of COVID-Era Journals
Dr. Anthony Fauci is set to testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on July 29, subpoenaed by Senator Rand Paul. The hearing follows the release of newly declassified intelligence documents and thousands of pages from Fauci’s personal journals. Lawmakers are expected to question whether his public statements on the virus’s origins and mortality contradicted private information he possessed during the pandemic’s earliest months.
Dr. Anthony Fauci is scheduled to testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Wednesday, July 29, after being subpoenaed by Committee Chairman Senator Rand Paul (R-KY). Lawmakers are expected to question the former Chief Medical Advisor to the President about the federal government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including his public messaging and handling of information about the virus’s origins.
The hearing follows the late June release of newly declassified intelligence documents from outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, which renewed scrutiny of Fauci’s role during the pandemic. The documents allege that Fauci’s public statements during the pandemic, particularly on the possible origins of the virus and its mortality rate, contradicted private information that he had access to.
Notably, the hearing also comes after Senator Paul’s office released thousands of pages from Fauci’s personal journals documenting the earliest months of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Read more at Amac
Rand Paul: On Wednesday [July 29], under subpoena, Fauci finally has to answer for it
See @RandPaul
Link to the Senate hearing compliments of Sen. Rand Paul
See @SenRandPaul
Trump administration asks Supreme Court to clear the way for new mail-in voting restrictions
The Trump administration on Monday asked the Supreme Court to allow it to fully implement an executive order signed by President Donald Trump that seeks to impose additional restrictions on mail-in voting. U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer called an order by a federal judge in Massachusetts that paused portions of the order in 23 states and the District of Columbia “extraordinary,” and he argued that it “flouts settled” doctrines governing when courts can weigh in on a dispute.
Sauer also asked the court to issue an immediate administrative stay – an order that temporarily puts the lower court’s order on hold while the justices consider the government’s request.
Trump signed the executive order at the center of the case, titled “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections” on March 31 of this year. Among other things, the order instructs the U.S. Postal Service to propose rules for mail-in and absentee ballots, and it directs the Department of Homeland Security to compile “state citizenship lists” – lists of individuals in each state who are U.S. citizens over the age of 18. Under the order, the rules issued by the USPS must provide that the Postal Service can only send mail-in ballots to voters whose names appear on the state citizenship lists.
A group of 23 states and the District of Columbia, led by California, went to federal court in Massachusetts to challenge the implementation of the order. They argued that the order conflicts with provisions in the Constitution that give states the power to determine voter eligibility and to set the “Times, Places, and Manner” of holding congressional elections.
Read more at SCOTUSblog
Constitutional law professor weighs in on SCOTUS rendering on mail-in ballots
Watch @Project21News
Kentucky governor gives ultimatum to Mitch McConnell
See @NEWSMAX
Mitch McConnell memes like this abound
Watch @knesix
Trump eulogizes Lindsey Graham at funeral: ‘He never saw a war that he didn’t like’
President Donald Trump celebrated Graham as a “true American original,” while the late senator’s fiercely interventionist foreign-policy legacy drew both praise and pointed acknowledgement during his funeral.
President Donald Trump remembered the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., as a beloved friend and an unapologetic foreign-policy hawk during a July 28 funeral attended by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and leaders from across the U.S. government.
Speaking at Washington National Cathedral, Trump called Graham “a beloved friend, a devoted brother, a respected statesman, a giant of the United States Senate, a true American original who left us much too soon.”
“For more than 30 years, nothing of consequence happened in this capital without Lindsey Graham knowing about it,” the President said. “Nothing of significance happened anywhere in the world without Lindsey Graham having a view on it.”
Read more at Zeale; watch Trump’s full eulogy @KarluskaP
Trump: Lindsey Graham’s Raising of His Sister Darline Was His Greatest Accomplishment
Watch @BreitbartNews
VP’s Eulogy to Lindsey Graham
Watch @BreitbartNews
Trump Strengthens Religious Liberty for Parental Rights
Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice released a memo directing the executive branch to expand religious liberty protections in the areas of parental rights and religious autonomy to broadly protect religious exercise.
The guidance memo, titled “Federal Law Protections for Religious Liberty,” is the first revision to such guidance since 2017. The new guidelines reflect significant U.S. Supreme Court rulings from the last nine years involving the First Amendment, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Title VII, and stipulates policy on the church autonomy doctrine, neutrality, and parental rights.
“Religious liberty is not merely a right to personal religious beliefs or even to worship in a particular place,” reads the memo. “It also encompasses religious observance and practice as displayed in a person’s daily life. Except in the narrowest circumstances, no one should be forced to choose between living out his or her faith and complying with the law.”
Read more at LifeNews
San Francisco archbishop among new members of Vatican’s highest court
Pope Leo XIV also appointed Bishop Edward Lohse of Kalamazoo, Michigan, along with canon law experts from Spain, Germany, Poland, and Italy, to five-year terms on the Apostolic Signatura.
Pope Leo XIV has appointed San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone and Kalamazoo, Michigan, Bishop Edward M. Lohse among seven new members of the Apostolic Signatura, the Catholic Church’s highest court.
Cordileone has led the Archdiocese of San Francisco since 2012. Previously an auxiliary bishop of San Diego and bishop of Oakland, California, he is known for his public defense of contested Catholic teachings, including the Church’s teaching on marriage. In 2025, he was appointed to the advisory board of the U.S. Religious Liberty Commission.
Lohse, the bishop of Kalamazoo and apostolic administrator of Steubenville, Ohio, previously worked at the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy from 2010 to 2015. He holds a doctorate in canon law from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.
Read more at EWTN NEWS
A point of note from Hungarian Conservative
See @hu_conservative
Conservative Hungarian journal knocks AP for lamenting fate of trans sex workers after USAID cuts
See @hu_conservative
Megafires at Bordeaux’s Gates Expose France’s Firefighting and Forest Management Failures
The massive wildfires that have been ravaging the Gironde region in southwestern France for several days now represent one of the most severe disasters France has experienced since the summer of 2022. This time, however, the scale of the fires is unprecedented: the flames have reached the very outskirts of Bordeaux, a city of nearly one million people, forcing authorities to consider unprecedented evacuation scenarios.
By the morning of July 27th, the main fire—the result of several separate blazes reported since July 23rd—had burned more than 42,000 hectares, while more than 220,000 people had been evacuated in total in the Gironde department, marking what is likely the largest population displacement caused by a natural disaster in metropolitan France in several decades. Authorities emphasize that the fire’s spread is now “generally stable,” though it has not yet been brought under control.
The fire has destroyed numerous homes, businesses, and infrastructure, although the exact extent of the property damage is still being assessed. Several thousand farm animals had to be evacuated or rescued, while wildlife is suffering considerable losses in the forested areas swept by the flames. As a precaution, shelters have also been set up for the pets of evacuated residents. On the ground, looters are taking advantage of residents’ abandoned homes to steal goods: a 45-year-old Tunisian woman, living in the country illegally, was arrested in Gironde with a bag full of jewelry and valuables in an evacuated area. The woman allegedly took advantage of homes abandoned by their occupants to loot them.
Read more at The European Conservative
France’s bishops urge Catholics to welcome wildfire evacuees
The bishops of France have called on Catholics to welcome the displaced, as another 4,000 people have been evacuated.
More than 220,000 people in total have been forced to flee, with France seeing its largest wildfire since 1949. The French bishops encouraged parishes to remain open where possible as places of welcome for those displaced.
In a July 28 statement, the Bishops’ Conference of France stated: “Firefighters were seriously injured and some even lost their lives in this fierce fight against the flames. At the same time, other territories suffered episodes of hail of exceptional violence. In a few minutes, entire crops are wiped out, leaving farmers destitute with the disappearance of their crops, vineyards, orchards or fields.
See @CatholicHerald; read at The Catholic Herald (behind a partial paywall)
Leading Nigerian bishops meet with nation’s president, challenge him on erosion of democracy
… The president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria “raised serious concerns over the state of the nation’s democratic situation, issuing a direct warning against the narrowing of political opposition and the creeping fear of a single-party dominant state,” according to a report from the episcopal conference’s media network.
Archbishop Matthew Man-Oso Ndagoso of Kaduna made his remarks during a July 28 meeting with Bola Tinubu, the nation’s president since 2023. The report added:
Beyond political freedoms, Archbishop Ndagoso presented a stark assessment of the severe economic and security challenges threatening the nation’s stability, restating what the Conference has severally said in the past; that Nigeria is bleeding, and its citizens are suffering and crying, not only due to incessant security threats, but also because of government policies whose promised relief has been delayed for too long.
In an address to the Catholic prelates, President Tinubu touted his economic record and added, “I have just approved the expansion of the armed forces. We are getting more equipment, building new barracks. We will defeat terrorism.”
Located in West Africa, Nigeria, a nation of 243 million (map), is the most populous in Africa and sixth most populous in the world. It is 47% Muslim, 46% Christian (11% Catholic), and 7% ethnic religionist.
Read at Catholic Culture; read ‘Catholic Bishops Challenge Tinubu on One-Party Concerns, Electoral Integrity, and a Bleeding Nation’ at Nigeria Catholic Network
Cut flowers: a note on the DSA rising class by Kelsey Reinhardt
A generation of socialist candidates — Ivy-educated and meritocracy-perfected — has turned the ladder it climbed into a weapon against the country that provided it.
A civilization can be measured not only by what it produces, but by what its beneficiaries choose to do with what they have received.
America has produced a generation of political candidates who represent something genuinely new. They call themselves Democratic Socialists. They are on the ballot in Colorado, in Michigan, in New York’s most competitive districts. And the story being told about them is that they are the voice of the working class — champions of the paycheck-to-paycheck laborer, tribunes of the forgotten American.
That story is not true.
Read more at CatholicVote
White House to honor heroic 16-year old life guard
Watch @realDonaldTrump
Today is the Feast of Saint Martha and Saint Mary
‘Together, Martha and Mary represent a balance of action and contemplation in Christian life. Martha’s service and Mary’s attentiveness complement each other, illustrating that faith can be expressed through both practical work and spiritual devotion, not as an either/or, but as necessary companions‘
Read @father_rmv
