By Jude Russo, The American Conservative – President Donald Trump is making big noises about calling off the Iran War. Good. As the local TV warlord Pete Hegseth would have it, we’ve made a complete mess of the place; you can watch it in the official Department of Defense X account… The problem is that it’s difficult to really put your heart into believing the gang at 1600 Penn. The Iranians are denying that any direct negotiations are taking place, and Washington’s latest great white hope, Iran’s Speaker of the Parliament Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf, has said that the announcements to that effect are an effort to settle the stomachs of Western markets …

By Sean Fitzpatrick, Catholic Exchange – In the end, Catholics belong to a higher order, and by their faith they show an invulnerability to the trappings and terrors that the elites can launch and levy. In short, if the Catholic Church is right, then everything the elites stand for is wrong… Catholics stand on the tradition and western heritage that the elites have abandoned, the bulwark where God and the Divine order preside, which exposes and condemns the filth and lucre that these lost souls have given themselves over to wholesale. …

By Eddie Scarry, The Federalist – To be an elected Democrat is to cripple an entire government agency for weeks on end, all for the purpose of derailing law enforcement, and have the national media treat it like standard partisan bickering… We’re more than a month into the latest Democrat-led government shutdown with Transportation Security Administration agents going on a second pay period with no income, leading hundreds of them to quit and thousands of them to just not go into work. Travelers are facing security lines that stretch for hours, and that’s on top of still more flight cancellations and delays. …

By Steven Ertelt, LifeNews – The Senate has launched an investigation into the companies that make the deadly and dangerous abortion pill – which has killed millions of babies and injured thousands of women… U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy, R-La., joined by Sens. Steve Daines, R-Mont., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., and James Lankford, R-Okla., has launched an investigation into three manufacturers of the chemical abortion drug mifepristone, raising serious concerns about compliance with federal safety protocols ….

Author Don Schwager, Servants of the Word – John 8:51-59 – 51 Truly, truly, I say to you, if any one keeps my word, he will never see death.” 52 The Jews said to him, “Now we know that you have a demon. Abraham died, as did the prophets; and you say, `If any one keeps my word, he will never taste death.’ 53 Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? And the prophets died! Who do you claim to be?” 54 Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing; it is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say that he is your God. …

By Chris Jackson, Hiraeth in Exile, Substack – A Parolin letter to France set off a victory parade in Trad Inc. But Leo’s real agenda was visible elsewhere: Vatican II, Vatican banking, interreligious fraternity, and pressure politics… The reaction was wildly disproportionate to the actual substance. There was no motu proprio. No legal reversal of Traditionis custodes. No restoration of rights. No repudiation of Francis. No acknowledgment that the old Mass had been treated unjustly. No admission that the Vatican’s own stated rationale for the crackdown had already been badly damaged by the leaked survey material.

By Francis X. Rocca, The Atlantic – Not so long ago, when U.S. Catholic leaders said something political, they tended to sound like conservatives. American bishops’ most prominent policy statements focused on three issues: same-sex marriage, contraception, and—above all—abortion… Since Donald Trump’s reelection, however, the Church in the United States has been sounding more liberal. Its teaching hasn’t changed, but the president’s second term has shifted the bishops’ attention. The most urgent political concern for America’s Catholic leaders is no longer abortion; it’s immigration.

By Carole Novielli, Live Action News – New abortion data for 2025 published by the Guttmacher Institute estimates that “1,126,000 abortions were provided by US clinicians in 2025” — an increase of about 0.18% (less than two-tenths of a percent) from abortion totals estimated for 2024… Though this percentage seems very small and is presented as “largely unchanged” by Guttmacher, it represents the deaths of approximately 2,000 more preborn children than 2024.

By Greg Cook, Catholic Exchange – Although the Holy Catholic Church will persist until the end of time, there have been moments in time when it has seemed beyond hope of resuscitation. The year 1968 was one of those moments, so much so that we shouldn’t be afraid to call it “The Year of Catholic Death.”… 1968 featured death in many guises: the death of sanity, as students and radicals rose up in bifurcated France, eldest daughter of the Church and bastion of the Revolution; the death of the old Mass, as many priests began celebrating facing the people and in the vernacular, coupled with the death of a proper understanding of the priesthood and consecrated religious life;

By Trinity Communications – St. Ludger was born in Friesland about the year 743. His father, a nobleman of the first rank, at the child’s own request, committed him very young to the care of St. Gregory, the disciple of St. Boniface, and his successors in the government of the see of Utrecht. Gregory educated him in his monastery and gave him the clerical tonsure. Ludger, desirous of further improvement, passed over into England and spent four years and a half under Alcuin, who was rector of a famous school at York.

Catholic Culture, Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord – Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord: O God, who willed that your Word should take on the reality of human flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary, grant, we pray, that we, who confess our Redeemer to be God and man, may merit to become partakers even in his divine nature. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever… Again Lent’s austerity is interrupted as we solemnly keep a feast in honor of the Annunciation. The Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord is a mystery that belongs to the temporal rather than to the sanctoral cycle in the Church’s calendar.

By Nate Jackson, Patriot Post – One in five mail-in voters admitted to cheating in the 2020 election, so it might just make sense to rein in the process a bit. Enter the Supreme Court, which yesterday considered arguments in Watson v. Republican National Committee, a case involving a Mississippi law that permits counting mail-in ballots up to five days after Election Day, provided they are postmarked on or before Election Day. Another 13 states — including California, New York, and Texas — and DC have similar laws.

By Julio John Orvananos Archer, Catholic Exchange – Presently, we live in a world where confusion is the stamp of reality. This dislocation of being disfigures the nature and essence of everything it touches, especially the collective understanding of the eternal truths… Amongst the many divine concepts injured by popular error, few are more damaging to the soul than the misunderstanding of the angelic world, because, in the same manner in which a bad Mariology leads to a bad Christology, a bad Angelology leads to heresy, heresy leads to apostasy, and apostasy leads to Satanism.

By Nicole Weatherholtz, NewsMax – Rep. Aaron Bean, R-Fla., said Tuesday on Newsmax that Democrats are responsible for the ongoing partial government shutdown, accusing them of “holding Homeland Security hostage” while failing to act in the Senate… During an appearance on “National Report,” Bean said he wanted to “correct the record” and pointed to mainstream media coverage that he said blames Congress as a whole for the funding impasse instead of Democrats specifically.

By Fr. Shenan J. Boquet, Human Life International – Ehrlich predicted that by 1980 all important animal life in the sea would be extinct. He predicted that the United States would “be dying of thirst” by 1984. In a 1969 article, he declared that “by 1985 enough millions will have died to reduce the earth’s population to some acceptable level, like 1.5 billion people.” Visiting Britain, he announced that he would take “even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”… Instead, the world’s population more than doubled, from 3.5 billion when his book was published to over 8 billion today, and humanity became vastly wealthier, healthier, and better fed. Extreme poverty plummeted. Life expectancy soared.