Trump takes out Massie in Kentucky and other election night takeaways; Massie makes snarky remark about opponent: ‘It took awhile to find Ed Gallrein in Tel Aviv’; Gallrein says Massie was voting against people who elected him’; Trump endorses Texas AG Ken Paxton; John Cornyn’s failure to fight for SAVE America Act cost him Trump’s endorsement, according to The Federalist; Senate Majority Leader John Thune upset with POTUS’s decision to endorse Paxton, strikes back; MSNOW’s Katy Tur appears clueless about country’s founding documents; Trump continues to make progress on ‘Making DC beautiful again’; VP Vance comments on Pope Leo’s upcoming encyclical on Artificial Intelligence; Rep. Riley Moore: ‘Taking out ISIS global second-in-command is saving Christian lives’; Daily Caller interviews great Eduard Habsburg, former Hungarian ambassador to the Vatican; and more —
Nine key takeaways from election night in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Alabama and Georgia
Here are nine takeaways –
-Trump takes out Thomas Massie in Kentucky
-Massie hints he’s not done yet
-Squad-backed candidate wins in Pennsylvania
-Georgia Republicans who spoke out against Trump got smoked
-Republicans will have to wait for their golden candidate to take down Sen. Jon Ossoff
-Alabama governor’s race will be rematch of 2020 Senate election
-Alabama Senate primaries head to runoffs
-Race to replace Mitch McConnell set
-Midterm races set in Pennsylvania’s battleground House districts
Read more about the ‘takeaways’ at the New York Post
Thomas Massie loses Republican primary to Trump-backed challenger Ed Gallrein
Massie is known for being a libertarian, which has seen him frequently vote against his own party on budgetary matters, and he has emerged as one of the foremost Republican skeptics of Israel and the ongoing Iran war.
Kentucky GOP Rep. Thomas Massie lost his primary Tuesday night to President Donald Trump-backed challenger Ed Gallrein, according to the Associated Press.
The race was called with Gallrein securing 54.4% of the vote, compared to Massie’s 45.6%, with 72% of the vote in.
The loss ends the libertarian’s decade-long career in the lower chamber and demonstrates the power of Trump’s endorsement.
Trump endorsed Gallrein earlier this year and War Secretary Pete Hegseth campaigned for the candidate Monday night.
Read more at Just the News
Massie concedes
Watch @EricLDaugh
Gallrein speaks after Massie concedes
Watch @overton_news
Trump endorses Ken Paxton for Senate
Read @KenPaxtonTX; see also @seanmdav
John Cornyn’s Failure To Fight For The SAVE Act Cost Him Trump’s Endorsement by M.D. Kittle
Republican primary voters want candidates who will fight for the MAGA movement, not institutionalized RINOS who won’t.
As the longest-running primetime scripted series, The Simpsons has delivered a mountain of memorable TV moments in its 36-plus years on the air. The most hilariously heartbreaking happened in Season 4, with an episode titled, “I Love Lisa.”
If you’re a Simpsons fan you know. If you’re not, I won’t bore you with a lot of details. But things end very badly for poor Ralph Wiggum, the second-grade’s village idiot, when he declares his love for second-grade intellectual Lisa Simpson on live TV. A gesture of kindness turns to horror when Lisa, furious and fed up, screams that she doesn’t like Ralph, has never liked him, and that the cherished Valentine’s Day card she had given him was offered out of pity, not affection.
“You can actually pinpoint the second when his heart rips in half,” big brother Bart tells Lisa as he plays back in agonizing slow motion the video tape immortalizing Ralph’s obliterated heart.
I imagine the moment of heartbreak when four-term Texas Sen. John Cornyn learned that President Donald Trump’s coveted endorsement was going to his Senate primary challenger instead. In the parlance of Lisa’s locomotive-themed Valentine’s Day card, Trump did not “choo-choo choose” Cornyn. He choo-choo chose real conservative Ken Paxton, the Lone Star State’s “MAGA warrior” attorney general.
And Cornyn — with his RINO instincts, pointedly his unwillingness to fight hard for Trump’s top election-integrity legislation request — has only himself to blame.
Read more at The Federalist
Senate Majority Leader John Thune – upset with POTUS’s decision to pick Texas AG Paxton in Texas US Senate race – strikes back
Watch @JusttheNews
Spencer Pratt Is Running for LA Mayor. Could He Win? – Essay by Peter Savodnik
‘My party is angry Angelenos,’ says the former reality TV star. Are there enough of them for him to topple Mayor Karen Bass?
At last week’s mayoral debate in Los Angeles, there were three competing visions of the city on offer. There’s Mayor Karen Bass’s Democratic theory of government, according to which things are pretty good. There’s City Councilmember Nithya Raman’s uber-progressivism, according to which the city is facing an affordability crisis that demands more “planning” and fewer cops. And then there’s former reality television star Spencer Pratt, and his rage against the machine.
Pratt, 42, grew up in the Pacific Palisades, which, once upon a time, was idyllic: beautiful Spanish revival and midcentury modern homes overlooking the ocean, pools and tennis courts, a very quaint “village” full of pricey boutiques. His father was a dentist; his mother didn’t work. He went to Crossroads, which was known as the hippy-dippy school for the children of famous actors and directors. (Jonah Hill was in his class.) …
Everything, according to Pratt, was perfect, until the horrific fire of January 2025, when their home and his parents’ home, both in the Palisades, were destroyed. …
When he showed up at the debate last week at the Skirball Cultural Center, he was a different man. Or, more likely, he was the same as he had always been. …
He was ready to pounce. …
While Bass shifted the blame for the fires to her former fire chief, and Raman had difficulty extricating herself from the language of the Ivy-educated technocrat—operationalize, public safety outcomes, and so forth—Pratt sounded human. Intemperate, unconventional, disdainful of his political foes—but human. …
The question is: Are there enough angry Angelenos for Pratt to win in a city that backed Bernie Sanders over Joe Biden in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary?
No one really knows what’s going to happen in the June 2 jungle primary, in which the top two vote-getters proceed to the general. The conventional wisdom is that Bass will win the most votes, and Raman or Pratt will come in second, and then, in November, Bass will be reelected. … The prediction markets have been all over the place—although, since the debate, Pratt has been surging. …
One thing is indisputable: Pratt has tapped into the zeitgeist.
Read more at The Free Press
Trump encourages Pratt: ‘I’d like to see him do well’
Watch @EricLDaugh
MSM continues to criticize Rededicate 250 event that honored US as ‘one nation under God‘
Watch @CatholicVote; watch also Speaker Johnson’s address @ChristianPost
Decline Is a Choice: President Trump Restores Pride and Beauty to America’s Capital – White House release
For years, the nation’s capital was allowed to decay — marred by crime, graffiti, and crumbling infrastructure — amid a bureaucratic acceptance of decline as inevitable.President Donald J. Trump rejected that surrender from Day One — and under his leadership, the Trump Administration is demonstrating that decline is a choice.
This week, the historic cascading fountain at Meridian Hill Park roared back to life after years of disrepair. What was once a stark symbol of all-too-common neglect now flows powerfully again as a visible emblem of rebirth in the heart of the city.
This is about far more than water and landscaping; it’s about rekindling national pride in the city that represents the American Republic. These projects signal a fundamental shift: a rejection of mediocrity and a renewed commitment to excellence in the place where our democracy is on display. It’s a signal to the world — and every citizen — that we will not settle for inferiority in the city that embodies our republic.
Read more at The White House
DC historic cascading fountain now in operation – thanks to ‘Make DC Beautiful Again’
Watch @RapidResponse47; see also @TheDMVLive
Trump’s ballroom construction project to date
See @WhiteHouse; full video of event here
Reports: Photo currently circulating online of Islamic Center attacker Caleb Vazquez is incorrect, NOT the attacker
Watch @amyforsandiego; see also MrAndyNgo
JD fills in for Karoline Leavitt on maternity leave
Watch @EricLDaugh
VP Vance on Pope Leo’s upcoming encyclical on Artificial Intelligence
Watch @CatholicVote
Rep. Riley Moore: ‘Taking out ISIS global second-in-command is saving Christian lives’
Watch @RepRileyMoore
Upcoming: Blessing of the Tower of Christ on the Church of the Holy Family in Barcelona
On this 10th of June, the blessing and inauguration of the Tower of Jesus Christ will take place, the highest and most symbolic point of Antoni Gaudí’s project. The event will be presided over by Pope Leo XIV, who will solemnly bless the tower in a celebration of great spiritual and institutional significance.
Watch @sagradafamilia
Ahead of Leo visit to Spain [in June], monument [Valley of the Fallen] remains controversial
Leaked correspondence suggests the Spanish bishops have played a larger role than they have publicly admitted.
When Pope Leo travels to Spain in June, he’ll find himself in the middle of a complex situation involving the Spanish bishops and the country’s socialist government.
While the focuses of tension are varied, perhaps the largest one is the government’s attempt to “resignify” the Valley of the Fallen, a Franco-era monument to the deceased in the Spanish Civil War. The monument, which is owned by a public foundation, contains the world’s largest cross, a basilica, and a Benedictine abbey.
While the Spanish bishops have claimed they did not approve planned changes to the monument, recently leaked correspondence between the Archbishop of Madrid and the Spanish Minister of Justice suggest that the bishops have played a larger role than they have publicly admitted.
Meanwhile, the monks at the abbey have filed a civil complaint over the project, arguing that the Madrid archdiocese does not have legal standing to represent them in negotiations regarding the monument, because they belong to a sui iuris abbey, directly subject to the Holy See.
Read more at The Pillar
AUDIO EXCLUSIVE | The strong man of the Doctrine of the Faith for abuses: ‘We have to try to protect the Church from scandal’
Previously unreleased audio recordings of the apostolic commissioner of the Sodalicio reveal the logic with which part of the Roman apparatus continues to handle sexual abuse cases: the Church’s institutional priority above the victims. Bertomeu himself even compares this principle to “the law of the Third Reich”.
InfoVaticana today publishes two audio recordings of Mons. Jordi Bertomeu [Spanish priest], an official of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and one of the principal instructors of sexual abuse cases within the Church. This Spanish priest is part of the core of the Roman apparatus that decides how some of the most sensitive canonical proceedings against clerics accused of sexual abuse are investigated, channeled, and resolved, and for years he has acted as one of the trusted operational figures used by Rome in cases of major international impact. He has been a trusted man of Pope Francis, continues to be so under the current pontificate, and works at a very high level within the dicastery led by Cardinal Víctor Manuel “Tucho” Fernández under the wing of Archbishop Charles Scicluna.
The figure, moreover, does not arrive clean to this story. Bertomeu already carries the delirious controversy of having been accused of formally threatening two lay journalists with excommunication after they had denounced him to both civil and canonical authorities for an alleged breach of confidentiality. That episode, which in any other institution would have been politically devastating, also functions as a very precise warning about the way part of the Roman apparatus still understands power, public criticism, and control of the narrative when uncomfortable complaints or sensitive investigations come into play.
Listen/read more at InfoVaticana
Excellent interview with the great Eduard Habsburg, former Hungarian ambassador to the Vatican
Watch @DailyCaller
