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Two prominent US bishops commended Congress this week for advancing budget measures that would cut taxpayer funding to abortion providers and “gender transition” services.

Bishop Daniel E. Thomas, chair of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Committee on Pro-Life Activities, and Bishop Robert E. Barron, chair of the Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life, and Youth, recently voiced strong support for provisions within the House budget reconciliation bill that would redirect funding away from organizations like Planned Parenthood.

CatholicVote reported that the proposed legislation includes provisions to block federal funds for gender procedures for minors under Medicaid, while also cutting off funding for abortion providers that do not comply with the Hyde Amendment, which only allows abortions in cases of rape, incest, or when the mother’s life is at risk.

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“For decades, Planned Parenthood has received government money and offered low-income women one terrible option: to end the lives of their babies,” the bishops stated. “More recently, they have used the same taxpayer funds to expand their destructive offerings, by promoting gender ideology and providing puberty blockers and hormones to minors, turning them into lifelong patients in the process.”

The bishops emphasized that federal funding should not be used to support practices that are harmful to human dignity.

“Americans should not be forced to subsidize abortions and ‘gender transition’ services with their tax dollars,” they said.

In addition to praising the House’s efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, Bishops Thomas and Barron urged lawmakers to redirect funds toward “authentic, life-affirming health care providers that serve mothers and their children in need.”

They also appealed to Congress and the Trump Administration to protect vulnerable populations, especially women and children, from “mutilating ‘gender transition’ services and the scourge of abortion.”

LifeNews Note: Rachel Quackenbush writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.

The post Catholic Bishops Support Reconciliation Bill to Defund Planned Parenthood appeared first on LifeNews.com.

President Donald Trump urged House Republicans to unite behind his sweeping “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” Tuesday morning, highlighting the legislation’s major tax cuts, pro-family provisions, and conservative reforms.

“It’s important for the country,” Trump said Tuesday morning. “It’s the biggest tax reduction in history, incredible for Medicaid, Medicare.”

Responding to Democratic claims that the bill would cut core entitlements, Trump added: “The only thing we’re cutting is waste, fraud, and abuse… We’re not changing Medicaid, and we’re not changing Medicare, and we’re not changing Social Security.”

The bill was approved Sunday night by the House Budget Committee, days after a GOP-led block temporarily stalled it due to concerns about its projected impact on the national debt. It includes large tax breaks for working-class Americans, small businesses, and domestic manufacturers, while targeting several Biden-era policies.

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White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called it “the single most pro-small business, pro-family, and pro-American worker legislation ever.” She noted provisions including no taxes on tips, no overtime tax for law enforcement and firefighters, and a large tax deduction for Americans buying American-made cars.

“Despite desperate Democrat lies, the biggest beneficiary of this tax cut will be working-class Americans and their families,” Leavitt said Monday. “Americans earning between $30,000 and 80,000 per year will pay about 15% less in taxes after this bill is passed.”

The bill also advances longtime conservative priorities, including defunding Planned Parenthood, banning taxpayer-funded “gender transition procedures” for minors through Medicaid, and expanding school choice.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-LA, praised the bill’s repeal of over $500 billion in “radical ‘Green New Deal’” funding, calling it a decisive move to end “Biden’s war on American energy.”

White House Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Steve Miran, citing a new analysis, said the plan could boost GDP by up to 5%, create as many as seven million jobs, and raise the average family’s take-home pay by $8,000-$13,000.

“President Trump’s budget blueprint has a lot of great things in it, not the least of which is stripping federal funding from Planned Parenthood,” said CatholicVote Vice President Joshua Mercer. “That alone is reason enough to support this bill. Factor in the tax breaks for families, pro-worker policies, educational choice, and more, and the ‘big-beautiful bill’ adds up to a major win for Americans.”

A key committee hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, with House leaders aiming for a floor vote soon. If the bill clears the House, it will advance to the Senate, where Republicans are reportedly considering amendments.

LifeNews Note: Elise DeGeeter writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.

The post Trump Tells Republicans to Vote for One Big Beautiful Bill to Defund Planned Parenthood appeared first on LifeNews.com.

Perhaps Putin should tell the Russian people and the Russian Army that his interest in resolving the conflict in Ukraine with peace negotiations lies in the possibility that the negotiations could be used to achieve a Great Power Agreement like what he and Lavrov tried to achieve with the West during the winter of 2021-2022 prior to Russia’s forced intervention in Ukraine. A New Yalta in effect.  

Russian foreign affairs commentators have been speaking for some time about the need for a new Yalta agreement.  A few years ago I was asked to address the Russian Academy of Sciences on the subject.  I told them something that they did not want to hear:  that Washington’s claim to hegemony prevented accommodation to Russian sovereignty.

A few thinking people have been perplexed at Putin’s conduct of the conflict in Ukraine. Russia could have ended the war quickly with conquest, but  instead has fought a slow, restrained war that has greatly expanded the war with Putin and Lavrov bleating constantly for “peace negotiations.”

Why has Putin done this despite the protests of the Wagner Group and the Chechnya leader of the Muslim troops fighting in the Ukraine conflict?  The only answer seems to be that he wants a New Yalta Agreement.  If he wins the war, he loses the opportunity. So he drags out the war in the hopes that negotiations will provide a platform for addressing the “root cause of the conflict”–which he sees as the absence of a Great Power Agreement.

One problem Putin’s wishful strategy faces is Washington’s commitment to hegemony.  No American president has repudiated the Wolfowitz Doctrine. Another is that the absence of victory goes down poorly with the Russian nationalists and with the troops themselves.  There are news reports that Russians are suspicious  and resentful of peace negotiations in Ukraine that stop short of victory. 

Russian soldiers doing the fighting have told media that as tired as they are and as much as they want to go home, they want to liberate all of the regions that are once again part of Russia so that they don’t have to renew the fight in the future.  As one of the soldiers asked, “Otherwise, have all the guys died in vain?”

Russia’s rescue of the Russian territories assigned to Ukraine by Soviet leaders is important to Putin, but more important is to secure a Great Power Agreement, a New Yalta, that accepts Russia as a member county free of sanctions, overthrow attempts, and conflicts.

Putin is so desirous of this agreement that he has risked the ever-widening of the Ukraine conflict to the point that drone attacks now close all Moscow airports and destroy energy infrastructure deep inside Russia.  When Putin says that peace negotiations must address the “root cause of the conflict,” he means the absence of a Great Power Agreement.  

Putin is not interested in a negotiated end to the conflict in Ukraine.  He is hopeful of using negotiation to achieve a New Yalta.  The problem that Putin faces is that Washington, wrapped up as it is in its assumed hegemony, has no comprehension of another country’s point of view. 

Washington’s approach to all negotiations is to use threats, to look for levers of pressure to force other governments to accept Washington’s “solution” to the “problem,” usually a Washington creation.  In other words, Washington doesn’t really negotiate.  It imposes its solutions.

Trump expects the Ukrainian negotiations to fail, and has ensured as much, in order to be able to withdraw money and focus from Ukraine and use the resources to bring into operation Trump’s goal of an American Middle East colonial empire which began with Trump’s claim of Gaza as an American possession. This claim is a claim to the undersea gas reserves that run from Gaza’s border with Egypt to northern Syria.  Trump’s visit in Saudi Arabia, the last remaining Arab state, was to enlist the rulers as junior partners in Trump’s American Middle East colonial empire. It seems that with Trump’s domestic agenda blocked by the judiciary, Trump will make us great again with the rise of America’s Middle East Empire.

Reprinted with permission from PaulCraigRoberts.org.

Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo issued the order in March 2020 that ultimately killed at least 15,000 nursing home residents. Many senior living centers were flooded with COVID patients thanks to Cuomo’s reckless order putting them in senior living facilities instead of other locations that could have protected elderly people.

Now, the Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation into Cuomo, probing whether he lied to Congress about his role in a state policy that led to the deaths of thousands of nursing home residents. The investigation, initiated last month, centers on a controversial March 2020 directive that required nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients, a policy critics argue caused a catastrophic loss of life among vulnerable seniors.

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The probe follows a referral from House Oversight Chairman James Comer, who accused Cuomo of making false statements to a House subcommittee investigating his administration’s handling of the pandemic.

Comer’s referral alleges Cuomo was involved in drafting a 2020 New York State Health Department report that downplayed nursing home deaths, despite testifying he had no role in its creation.

Cuomo’s March 25, 2020, order mandated nursing homes to admit or re-admit patients regardless of their COVID status, a decision that pro-life groups and grieving families say endangered elderly residents. The policy, which was revoked on May 10, 2020, is blamed for contributing to the deaths of at least 15,000 nursing home residents, according to reports.

A 2021 investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James found that the state undercounted nursing home deaths by as much as 50%, excluding residents who died after being transferred to hospitals.

This investigation is long overdue for people like Daniel Arbeeny, co-founder of We Care Memorial Wall for COVID nursing home victims, whose father, Norman, died in a Brooklyn nursing home after contracting COVID. Arbeeny, who filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Cuomo in 2022, called the policy “reckless endangerment” that cost thousands of lives.

He has said Cuomo must be held accountable for forcing nursing homes to accept infected patients when safer alternatives, like hospital ships, were available.

Janice Dean, a Fox News meteorologist who lost both her in-laws to COVID-19 in New York nursing homes, has been a vocal critic as well and says there needs to be accountability for the 15,000 seniors who died alone because of Cuomo’s deadly directive.

Families of nursing home victims see the probe as a step toward justice.

Vivian Zayas, co-founder of Voices for Seniors, whose mother died in a Long Island nursing home, said, has demanded the truth for over 5 years.

The Justice Department and FBI declined to comment, citing a policy of not confirming ongoing investigations. Whether the probe will lead to charges remains unclear, but for pro-life advocates and affected families, it represents a chance to hold Cuomo accountable for policies they believe prioritized politics over human lives.

The post Justice Department Investigating Andrew Cuomo for Killing Thousands of Seniors appeared first on LifeNews.com.

There are plenty of areas in which to be disappointed (or justified, depending on your level of cynicism) by the current presidential administration. But one has to be grateful to God that Trump is president, if only to be freed from the globalist tyranny of the so-called World Health Organization. Withdrawing our country from the WHO and the oh-so-fraudulently-based Paris Climate Accords are two of the very best moves he has made.

Make no mistake, and you likely already know this, the globalist WHO and the climate scam are nothing more than means of globalist tyranny, the weakening of national sovereignty, and a gigantic tax on US citizens to fund their own destruction.

The global response to the 2020 cold virus “pandemic” was so good for the globalists that they want even more power. The WHO just adopted a “pandemic agreement” that requires member nations to do what it says. Thankfully, our withdrawal from this gang of corrupt and evil bureaucrats was already announced and will soon be over. I get the feeling also that should the gang declare a summer beach and playground pandemic before the literal ending date of US membership that our president would tell them where and how far up to stick their dictates.

Like I said at the time, it isn’t as though we deserve the blessings of the good Lord for anything we have done. But in His goodness He has given us a stay of execution, as it were. Further membership in the WHO might have been a literal death sentence. Good for President Trump.

Now do NATO.

Democrats Hate White People

Here is the white  Democrat Rep. Merkley raising a fuss with Secretary of Defense Rubio–why Rubio?–about white South Africans being allowed into the US. 

What more proof do insouciant Americans need that Democrats are anti-white?

https://x.com/nicksortor/status/1924862459623440604 

When you take a close look at the US Congress, the media, educators, the judiciary, you have to wonder how the United States can possibly survive.

As we have seen, the British campaign for abortion emerged from the eugenics movement, whose members believed society was “breeding from the wrong end” and that the proliferating “unfit” should be sterilised; however, while eugenicists believed that the “fit” should have more children, and the “unfit” fewer, the equally secular Neo-Malthusians advocated the small “Malthusian […]

The post Religion and the abortion campaign (2) appeared first on Voice of the Family.

Unfortunately it will be on a Sunday rather than the preceding Thursday. Keep in mind that the symbolic meaning of having it on Thursday is to remind us of Holy Thursday and the Institution of the Most Holy Eucharist by our Lord. Hopefully Holy Thursday never gets transferred to the following Sunday like Corpus Christi and the Ascension have.

From Vatican News:

As the Church marks the Solemnity of the Body & Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi) on Sunday, June 22, Pope Leo XIV will preside at Mass at 5:00 PM in the Basilica of St. John Lateran and take part in the Eucharistic procession to the Basilica of St. Mary Major.

The following paragraph, courtesy of Amazon, reviews the book Death of the Dollar by William Rickenbacker.

Death of the Dollar by William F. Rickenbacker is a critical examination of the economic policies and monetary mismanagement that the author argues are eroding the value of the U.S. dollar and threatening financial stability. Rickenbacker contends that the actions of money managers, including excessive government spending, inflationary policies, and the detachment of the dollar from the gold standard, are systematically devaluing the currency. The book warns of an impending monetary disaster, highlighting how these policies disproportionately harm everyday citizens who rely on the dollar’s stability for savings and investments. Through a blend of economic analysis and historical context, Rickenbacker underscores the dangers of unchecked financial intervention and the potential for a collapse of the dollar’s purchasing power.

Plenty of books, articles, and social media posts herald the same grim forecast as Rickenbacker. For the most part, they rely on similar reasoning. Essentially, lax monetary policy and gross fiscal spending, both deemed to be inflationary, will result in dollar devaluation and ultimately the death of the dollar.

The difference between Rickenbacker’s book and other dollar demise forecasts is that  Death of the Dollar was written in 1968! Fifty-seven years later, despite, or possibly because of Rickenbacker’s justifications, the dollar is still the world's reserve currency, and no other sovereign currency, cryptocurrency, or precious metal will replace it anytime soon.

Given the topic's importance and the gross misinformation spread about the dollar’s imminent demise, we review Rickenbacker’s thesis to highlight that today’s warnings have been around for decades and why the odds of them coming to fruition this time are very low, as they were decades ago.

Removal Of The Gold Standard

Rickenbacker’s book was published in 1968, three years before President Nixon closed the gold window, essentially making the dollar a fiat currency. While his book accurately predicted that ground-shaking event, it did not correctly anticipate its impact.

He reasoned that without gold regulating the supply of dollars, unchecked monetary policy would result in reckless “money printing.”

He was correct that the Fed would have more flexibility in managing the money supply. Furthermore, with this added power, we have seen reckless behavior, as he theorized. However, Rickenbacker erred on the money printing allegation.

The Fed doesn’t print money. All money is lent into creation by banks. The Fed prints bank reserves, which allow banks to make loans, i.e., print money, if they choose. More importantly, even if the money supply increases due to Fed incentives to lend, it's unclear whether such activity is good or bad for the economy and how it impacts inflation and ultimately the dollar’s value. That is a function of the productivity of debt.

Simply, productive debt drives economic growth, increases the nation's prosperity, and reduces deficits as a percentage of economic activity. Unproductive debt detracts from economic growth and prosperity and worsens deficits. Weaker growth from unproductive debt tends to be disinflationary.

As judged by an increasing debt-to-GDP ratio, aggregate debt has been unproductive, leading to lower inflation growth rates. Thus, if the concern is that “money printing” would lead to inflation, it may lead to disinflation.

Fed Flexibility

In one respect, Rickenbacker correctly said that giving the Fed more flexibility was a curse. Easy money policy has led to periods of gross speculation and crises, such as in 2008.

However, without the gold shackles, the Fed has incredible power to manage economic crises and avoid a currency collapse. In fact, despite the 2008 crisis having roots in the US mortgage market and the prospect of the collapse of the US banking system, the world flocked to dollars during the crisis, as shown below.  

Most crises have been accompanied by a stronger dollar, proving that the dollar is the port in the storm foreign investors seek when economic confidence is lacking, and liquidity is paramount.

Excessive Government Spending

The book criticizes massive federal expenditures, particularly on social programs and military efforts, which create budget deficits, drive up inflation, and ultimately devalue the dollar. The book was written while Lyndon Johnson spent heavily on the Vietnam War and domestic programs. Again, Rickenbacker was correct in worrying about inflation, a big problem throughout the 1970s.

Despite ever-increasing government spending and an increasing debt-to-GDP ratio, the globalization of trade has expanded rapidly since his book was published. With it, foreigners' demand for dollars has been growing, and in mirror fashion, so is their need to invest the dollars, which helps us fund our deficits.

Even today, with “runaway” deficits making headlines daily, the dollar remains in the upper range of the last 35 years.

Dollar Devaluation In Context

Rickenbacker believed that easy money Federal Reserve policies, such as low interest rates and expanding the money supply, would fuel inflation that would erode the dollar’s purchasing power. He was right, as evidenced by comparing what a dollar buys today versus yesteryear. However, the argument provides little context.

For instance, in the 1950s, a hamburger (15 cents), fries (10 cents), and a Coke (10 cents) at McDonald's cost less than 50 cents. Today, the same meal could run nearly $10.

Although decades of inflation have drastically eroded the dollar's value, our standard of living has risen appreciably. To wit, the purchasing power of one dollar in 1947 has eroded to 7 cents. However, as shown below, inflation-adjusted incomes have risen fivefold since 1947. The dollar buys less, but our incomes buy more!

Trade and Balance of Payments Deficits

Rickenbacker points to persistent U.S. trade deficits and dollar outflows abroad, which weaken the currency’s global standing. He is correct that trade deficits have steadily increased, resulting in more dollars flowing abroad. However, more dollar outflows are a result of more demand for dollars. Furthermore, those dollars ultimately return to the US through investments and loans to the government and corporations. The larger the global economy, the greater the need for dollars, and the more dollars that need to be invested in the US economy.

Rickenbacker Was Right

The author’s concerns are valid and, in many cases, have proven true. However, the victim has not been the dollar. The victims are larger deficits, lower productivity growth, hollowing out of manufacturing, and a growing wealth divide, to name a few.

While these are big problems, they do not necessarily threaten the dollar's status. As we wrote in Four Reasons The Dollar Is Here To Stay:

The pundits will be right someday. The dollar’s death as the reserve currency will come, and some other nation’s currency, cryptocurrency, gold, shells, or something else will take its place. However, that day is not coming anytime soon. The four reasons we describe in the article leave the world with no alternative.

While China is rapidly growing its economy and global trade footprint, it lacks the rule of law and liquid capital markets to sustain a global currency. It’s difficult to see how a communist country can overcome those challenges.

The Euro is the most viable competitor. They have the rule of law, but their capital markets are not nearly liquid enough to facilitate global trade. They also lack the military might to force the usage of the Euro. Let us also remember its finances are in equally bad or even worse shape than the U.S. There is no reason to suspect the euro could overtake the dollar.

Bitcoin? Forget about it! The government will never relinquish its control over the currency because, with that, they lose control of the nation.

Summary

Had Rickenbacker’s Death of the Dollar book solely focused on monetary and fiscal imprudence and its negative implications for the country, he would have been proven a seer. Unfortunately, he was wrong to insist that the dollar would lose its status as the world’s reserve currency.

The graph below, courtesy of the Federal Reserve, shows how the dollar's usage in global transactions has been stable for the last two decades. The index calculation, as detailed at the bottom of the graphic, is based on the primary uses of currencies.

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