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[Catholic Caucus] The Next Pope Needs a Better China Policyeforming the Vatican’s policy on China should be a priority of the next papacy. The current approach is defined by the Vatican’s controversial 2018 agreement with China to share power with Beijing in the appointment of Catholic bishops. It severely compromises the Catholic Church in China and erodes papal religious and moral authority.Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Cardinal Parolin is the architect of the China deal and its chief enthusiast. Beijing has not-so-subtly signaled that he is China’s top pick for the next pope. At a press conference on April 22—one...

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is officially launching his digital ID and cryptocurrency project, Worldcoin, in the United States. Worldcoin uses eye-scanning technology to confirm a person’s identity in a system called World ID. World ID is a digital ID that uses biometric verification to confirm payments and prove a person’s identity. Altman is hoping that Worldcoin will create a global identity and digital cash payment system.

Gun violence in New York City has spiked along with the mercury, with shootings up more than 50% last week compared to the same time last year — indicating that the Big Apple could be in for a bloody summer. A total of 23 shootings were reported across the five boroughs in the week starting April 21, according to new NYPD statistics — an increase of 53% from the 15 shootings tallied over the same period in 2024. Temperatures in Gotham hit a high of 82 degrees last Tuesday, making it the second-warmest day in April, according to Accuweather. Last...

Explanation: The most massive young star cluster in the Small Magellanic Cloud is NGC 346, embedded in our small satellite galaxy's largest star forming region some 210,000 light-years distant. Of course the massive stars of NGC 346 are short lived, but very energetic. Their winds and radiation sculpt the edges of the region's dusty molecular cloud triggering star-formation within. The star forming region also appears to contain a large population of infant stars. A mere 3 to 5 million years old and not yet burning hydrogen in their cores, the infant stars are strewn about the embedded star cluster. This...

President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump at the Governor's Ball - February 22, 2025

Late on Thursday night, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to cut taxpayer funds to PBS and NPR through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The text was posted on the Trump team’s “Rapid Response 47” account on X.It said: “@POTUS just signed an executive order ENDING the taxpayer subsidization of NPR and PBS — which receive millions from taxpayers to spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news.’” The executive order includes this argument:Unlike in 1967, when the CPB was established, today the media landscape is filled with abundant, diverse, and innovative news options. Government funding of news media in...

The Washington Examiner reports that the suit was filed on behalf of Babbitt’s estate and her husband, Aaron Babbitt, and claims the officer who shot Babbitt was “incompetent” and “dangerous” and should have recognized Babbitt posed no threat to Congress when she entered the House speaker’s lobby. Kyle Cheney from Politico posted the news on X this Friday afternoon. UPDATE: The radical leftist judge on the case, Ana Reyes, is SCREAMING at both sides in the courtroom. Insane! Via Julie Kelly:

The church's claim to the right to pardon leads the Romanist to feel at liberty to sin; and the ordinance of confession, without which her pardon is not granted, tends also to give license to evil. He who kneels before fallen man, and opens in confession the secret thoughts and imaginations of his heart, is debasing his manhood and degrading every noble instinct of his soul. In unfolding the sins of his life to a priest,—an erring, sinful mortal, and too often corrupted with wine and licentiousness,—his standard of character is lowered, and he is defiled in consequence. His thought...

Neil Young is facing criticism for a new song he wrote about “fascists” buying Teslas. The 79-year-old singer-songwriter debuted the song, reportedly titled “Let’s Roll Again,” at the Light Up the Blue charity concert in Los Angeles over the weekend. “If you’re a fascist, get a Tesla / It’s electric, it doesn’t matter / If you’re a Democrat, taste your freedom / Get whatever you want, taste your freedom,” Young could be heard singing in clips circulating on social media. “Come on Ford, come on GM / Come on Chrysler, let’s roll again,” the song continued. “Build something special that...

Internet sleuths have already discovered the stunning truth behind a 'UFO' image shared on Capitol Hill yesterday by a Pentagon whistleblower. Former military intelligence official Luis Elizondo spoke before Congress Thursday morning, revealing a never-before-seen image of a cruise ship–sized craft he claimed was spotted hovering 21,000 feet in the air over the western US. The image quickly flooded social media and was debunked in less than 24 hours. Users analyzed the photo and located the object, discovering it was actually a snapshot of two irrigation circles in rural Colorado. Mick West, a British-American science writer and conspiracy theory investigator,...

A massive crowd gathered at City Hall in Philadelphia Thursday for a May Day rally and to see Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders speak. The "For Workers, Not Billionaires" rally on the north side of City Hall drew a large crowd and shut down streets in the area. Sanders laid into the Trump administration's policies on taxes, immigration, federal cuts and more. He also pointed out the billionaires President Trump has put into cabinet positions and surrounded himself with — including the world's wealthiest man, Elon Musk. Sanders says he came to the event with a call to workers and Pennsylvania...

"Part of it is he's an *sshole. I like authenticity." "I read [Candace Owens'] book and it just opened my eyes to maybe he's not this person that I have been led to believe that he was." "I saw how things were going during his first term, and I was pleasantly surprised."

The Department of Defense announced that May is Military Appreciation Month, and thanks to President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, our troops have something to celebrate. From the skyrocketing recruitment to ditching DEI to reinstating those fired over COVID-19 vaccination status, the Trump Department of Defense (DOD) has much to promote in terms of achievements going into Military Appreciation Month. And hopefully, we will continue to see more victories in the future, such as successfully separating “transgender” troops, as Hegseth’s DOD announced it would do before activist courts intervened. Make sure to thank any active duty military and...

The Shanghai auto show, which opened on Wednesday, highlights China's dominance in the global automotive industry, particularly in electric and smart vehicles.

Vice Chair of the Democrat National Committee (DNC) David Hogg has vowed to keep fighting for his struggling party even if he is shoved out of his position. The gun control activist told Newsweek on Thursday, “Obviously I would prefer that I not be removed; however, in the case that I am, I’m still going to fight to build the strongest Democratic Party possible.” “The party has been around for over 170 years, and it has evolved a lot, obviously, since its beginning. And I think what the moment calls for is making sure that we have the strongest people...

A six-day immigration sweep in Florida in April resulted in the arrests of more than 1,100 people, the Trump administration said on Thursday as it increasingly relies on local law enforcement to help speed deportations.

Seriously, what is the point of defending Europe? Well, maybe to defend the Louvre and some monuments to a once-great culture? I can't think of many other reasons, now that the continent has descended once-again into the 1930s-style of fascism (no, not the Nazis of the late thirties and 40s, but more Mussolini-style fascism). Elections are being canceled, censorship is running amok, people are getting arrested for speaking, and now the most popular party in Germany is on the edge of getting banned because it threatens the power of the German elite. There is no doubt that the AfD is,...

TUSKEGEE, Ala. (AP) — A runaway kangaroo named Sheila shut down a stretch of interstate in Alabama on Tuesday before state troopers and the animal’s owner wrangled the wayward marsupial. The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency said the kangaroo was spotted Tuesday hopping along the side of Interstate 85 in Macon County, which is between Montgomery and Auburn. The sight snarled traffic, and state troopers shut down both sides of the interstate for the safety of motorists. The animal’s owner and troopers were able to capture it, Capt. Jeremy J. Burkett of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency said.

New York Magazine’s Ben Terris saved the most important part of his extensive profile of Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman for last: “I didn’t find any indication that the stroke had left him cognitively impaired,” he wrote in its concluding paragraphs. That is not the impression that a reader would have gathered from the worried former Fetterman staffers, jilted progressive activists, and anecdotes detailing the senator’s declining mental health that preceded this observation. The piece paints a portrait of a broken man, a shadow of his former self, plagued by depression and demented episodes. None of that was especially apparent to...

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) — President Donald Trump offered some encouraging words and advice for graduating students at the University of Alabama on Thursday in a speech interspersed with impressions of transgender weightlifters, accusations that judges were interfering with his agenda and attacks on his predecessor, Joe Biden. The Republican’s jolting speech was standard fare for Trump and well received by the crowd in deep-red Alabama, which backed him in all three of his presidential runs. “You’re the first graduating class of the golden age of America,” the president told the graduates.