Pope Leo Canonizes Two New Saints, Surprising Hyundai Raid in GA, And UK Speech in Shambles

And we're live. It's Tom, Erika, and Josh. Welcome back to LOOPcast, brought to you by The Loop, every American Catholic's favorite morning newsletter. And we actually have to start out the show up top. It's a happy birthday. Should we all sing happy birthday to CatholicVote, potentially? It is CatholicVote's 20th birthday. A warm welcome to everyone here in the chat. Welcome to the birthday celebration, as it were. Josh, 20 years. There's another important birthday today. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of a bigger deal, actually.

Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, so we also want to give her credit where credit is due. Without Mary, there would be no CatholicVote birthday. Very true. This is actually true. It is also another birthday, much lesser than either the Blessed Virgin Mother or 20 years of CatholicVote, but Pogo, if you remember three years ago, September 8th was our official.

Was it really? The first thing in the loop cast, it was. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. That is crazy. Three years, guys. Three years? Yeah. Dang. Three years of tears, of joy and laughter. And Josh rants, and Erika making us sound smart, and me bringing us right back down, right back down to the internet. Wow, what a wild ride this has been. That's crazy. I didn't even think about that. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. There was everything in between.

But yeah, it's going to be a great show. Sorry, we just started off with that weird intro. I don't want to hear a word about the Lions, by the way, for the rest of the show. You will. I never think of them. The chat's already. Get into it. Calm down. We got bigger things to talk about, okay? So, first up, we have two new saints in the Catholic Church. Pope Leo had the opportunity to canonize two brand new, fresh saints. We have all the fun from that weekend.

Some weird stuff happened. We're going to get into that, but all the fun from the weekend is just going to be great up top to the show. There's a huge ice raid in Georgia. Massive, historic, largest ever in American history.

A lot of historic's going on there. Really bizarre. I got into it. It was a little bit more interesting than I actually thought at first, so I'm going to get into all that. And then third, we're finally going to get into it. UK's free speech is basically dead.

Erika's been just itching to talk about this for a couple days now. I've been prepped for a week for this story, so I'm really excited about it. Yeah, and you know, good news, Twilight Zone. You know, it's the Luke cast. We got three years of this. You guys got to know by now. That's, you know, that's what you get when you get the three of us. So, before we get into that, the reason we do the show today.

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Gotta love these guys, Charity Mobile. Good group. Amen. Okay, speaking of the good news, we have two new Saints. Okay. There they are. The guys. The boys. The boys are back. Carlo Kudas, Pierre Giorgio Frassati will both be candidized as Saints, and they were. They are. They are now, currently. Carlo died at age 15. Pierre Giorgio died at age 24. Shout out to the youth. I mean, this is like one of the sickest pictures of all time. Oh, I know. On top of the Alps with his pipe.

A little swagger going on. That's some swagger right there if I've ever seen it. So glorious. Hey, we held a rager last night. We had a big old apron party, 100 people showed up. Seventy of them were small children, and we just had Italian foods coming out of our ears. We had like antipasto. People kept bringing pizzas, the great Italian delicacy. We had tiramisu, fake tiramisu, cannoli dip. It was a rocking party, and we took a poll. Josh would be pumped.

We have data points. We took a poll. If you were to die today and you go to heaven, you'd see Jesus. As our priest who was here reminded me. But who do you want to talk to first, Carlo Acutis or Pier Giorgio Frassati? And it was an exercise in the age gap because of the, I mean, Frassati won, but of the 36 people who voted for Frassati, only four of them were under the age of 35.

It was pretty fun. Throw that one in the chat. That would be good. That was crazy. Who do you want to talk to first, Carlo Acutis or Pier Giorgio Forsati? Carlo gets my vote. Really? See, you would have been an outlier, because with us, it was all the kids want to talk to him. Yeah, I feel like for me, I know more about Acutis, so it would probably be Forsati. I know a lot about both of them, and I'm still going with Carlo, just because as the internet became a very popular thing in...

Not just our lives as Americans, but the whole world, you know, at the beginning, like, oh, should we have as a patron saint of the internet? They're like, what about Saint Isidore? Because he catalogs that. I'm like, now the debate's over. It's Saint Carlo. He's the patron saint of the internet. I'm calling it right now. I don't care what anyone else says.

Didn't you kind of do, not to bring it up, you kind of did a 180. Weren't you kind of not on the Hakuta's train for a second? You're like, oh, it's too early, there's not enough going on? I have long said, in general, I'm not a big fan of canonizations that happen quickly. Usually, I want to wait like 100 years, but he's the exception that breaks the rule. I mean, this is the thing.

I mean, here's his mom. We need someone like Carlo. Yeah, like his mom. I think there's only been one other time where a mother has been able to be at the canonization of her child, you know, see her child being canonized. So, he's 15 years old. He, you know, uses the internet as a young boy to try to learn more about Mary and to learn more about Jesus and to spread the, you know, these Eucharistic miracles and knowledge about that all across the world.

The guy, he's our patron for the internet, dude. Yeah, here's his parents bringing up off-tour gifts. His parents and his twin brother and sister, who were born after he died. Isn't that, that just blows my mind. Well, we've talked about Pope Leo just having normal brothers, like normal American brothers. I mean, imagine your brother's a saint. That's like a whole other level of... What am I doing with my life?

No, really. That's awesome, man. It just seemed like all around just a really positive. Oh, yeah. Beautiful day. Oh, so awesome. And Ambassador Birch was there at the ceremony, too. Yeah, finally. Glad we got him over there. Yes. And then also, didn't we get Pope Leo released his travel schedule, right? So, we're getting encyclical at the end of the month. And then we're getting travel to America. He could be coming here one year from now, September of 2026, for our 250th anniversary as a country.

I love it. So exciting. Apparently, he's going to be speaking at the United Nations General Assembly, but then the thought is he would continue on towards his hometown of Chicago. Yeah, he's got to come to Chicago. Possibly other places. I would think Philadelphia is a natural Wanted to add on to it, because that is the birthplace of freedom in the United States. He also went to undergrad there, so hey, pop into Villanova, maybe slap those guys around. Turn that school around.

Let us do it. Just an idea. Yeah. Here is a cool moment from, I believe this is a homily. Play it. How do you see me? Okay, it is all going to be in Italian, so I am going to have to translate.

Yeah, you are. Dear friends, okay, yeah, I am not going to translate. Basically, he said, there are examples and winning formula of holiness to follow. They are an invitation to all of us. Do not squander your lives. I didn't know that Americans could learn other languages. This is new to me.

He knows a few, Josh. He is definitely the best of us. He has been ripping Duolingo. For sure. Okay, the other, just any other, I mean, it just was awesome, right? It was just, it was just awesome. Positive good times, great. So much joy. Brian's there, Gelato, the whole nine. The one thing that stuck out, and this is from, it's Diane Montagna, is that how you pronounce it? She does great reporting. I've never actually had to pronounce her name. But there was a weird protest going on, and it was somewhat related to...

They called it a pilgrimage the day before the canonizations. Okay, go for it. I mean, why do I have this picture in my feed? Yeah, so there was, as I think we mentioned when we were covering Father James Martin, he had that meeting with Pope Leo, and he got out ahead of it and framed it for us. But Father James Martin was in Rome for the LGBTQ plus community Jubilee Year of Hope event, which of course was at the Jesuit. Church of the Holy Infant in Rome, and about 1,500 people went to the Church of the Bambino Gesu, and here we see them.

They walked from the place of their pilgrimage to St. Peter's Basilica. And you see, like, images of men with rainbow flags, intersex flags draped over them, holding hands, clearly coupling. Homosexual couples, right? Homosexual couples coming through. We've got, they're carrying a cross that's painted with a rainbow.

We have men wearing backpacks that say things like, F your rules, into the basilica. They're being interviewed outside by Italian television about how much they love each other and how now the church accepts them. And yeah, it was, it was slightly.

Distressing, let's just say. Diane Montagno, who you mentioned, she did some, how did this happen? How is it that St. Peter's Basilica turns women away for their shoulders being bare and tells them to go cover themselves, but they somehow let this parade, which is great. I am 100% in favor of that. Justifiable. Somehow, this whole parade of people with rainbow flags, and one of them had demon claws on. Gets into the Basilica. So, she did some digging. She said, I asked Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni what the Vatican's policy for the LGBT pilgrimage would be.

So, this is even before it happened. She's like, okay, if they walk ahead of it, we're going to get ahead of it. What is it? And the spokesman said, oh, I'll check into it. Never got back to Diane. Yeah.

Also on Friday, the day before they did this. Walk-in. She called the Dicastery for Evangelization, which is in charge of organizing the Jubilee, right? Asked the same question. What's the policy going to be if they come with all of their paraphernalia? And that person said, oh, there shouldn't be a problem with this. I'll just confirm it with my superior. And so he said, no flags or banners would be allowed, only the official Jubilee cross, which is like the little rainbow people hugging each other.

Whatever. Only the official Jubilee Cross will be. So, on Saturday, she went to cover the event. ...and asked the organizer of the LGBT if the flags, banners, crosses were allowed. He said no, and an official was present where the pilgrimage began. He did not take too kindly to Diane, according to her reporting. Yeah, that is going to be the takeaway from this. Yeah, so basically... That they are upset at Diane. Yeah, they are upset at Diane for covering it. So, there were rules in place that said this should not have happened.

Nobody enforced the rules, and we blame people for covering it. For being unwelcoming and uncharitable and unchristian. So, that is the bottom line of what happened. Well, I mean, yeah, thank you for the bottom line and the context, because all I could think about when I was looking at this picture specifically is what could sum up better, like, the problems occurring in a spiritual level, at a base level, because...

When you go to St. Peter's Square, or you go in a jubilee, you go in with a humility and an awe, like you're entering into something larger than yourselves. Something sacred, something worth respecting, something worth revering, and if you go in dressed ridiculously with a cell phone, trying to make a statement, this isn't awe or reverence, this is conquer, this is takeover, making everything about yourself, trying to change what's going on there.

I mean, honestly, I'm really disappointed that this happened. This is a problem, but it's never been more clear to me what the problems we're facing in regards to sexual teaching are. It's crazy. Yeah, and I think there was a great column at the Catholic thing this morning about this, and sort of...

What the disappointment could be, right, with Pope Leo, with the organizers of this office, because it seems that there's a certain approach with the Vatican, with the Holy Father, of, you know, let's have small battles and small victories and small steps in these small conversations that we're having, which can be really, really effective. And he likened it to the Roman general who, like, Instead of going out and facing Hannibal straight on, basically waged a war of attrition across the Italian peninsula.

I get that. Right, I get that, and there's a place for that. But what the point he was making was in the column, and I need to pull this up. I will get that to you. Yeah, go for it.

The point he was making was that when it comes to the LGBT, sort of that ideology, When it comes to that ideology, a war of waiting and seeing and attrition isn't going to work at this point, because this is a very aggressive gesture. This is like, we know the rules. We don't care about the rules. This is about us. Yeah, and another special interest group that would go there and act this way. Yeah, like adulterers are us. You know what I mean?

Right. Are you going to go commit a sex act in there? It's really crazy. I can't think of another special interest group that would do this. They did this at the United States Senate. Oh, yeah, in the halls. Yeah.

Well, they did it at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York with the drag queen funeral that they just like, we're just going to come in here and do whatever we want. Yeah, they definitely flaunted it, right? Yeah, they just flaunted it, and this was Robert Royal. Thank you. It was Robert Royal this morning in the Catholic thing. Highly recommend, and he's very gentle about this, but he's just saying we need to get out ahead of these things. We should have. Announced that any welcoming of this pilgrimage must take place on the terms of our undivided moral tradition, going back from Jesus back to Moses.

We have St. Paul, Afonso Liguori, John Henry Newman going forward, that this is our unbroken tradition and understanding of human sexuality. We should have gotten out in front of it and been like, This is how you can come into the basilica, the way that everyone comes into the basilica, from a place of humility and respecting the tradition. And whoever they have in charge of enforcing the rules needs to get fired. Like, that's, I'm sorry. Again. Vatican doge. Vatican doge. Pride is the root of all.

Lawson, may I add? Okay, I want to move on now, because the Hyundai stuff is really interesting. But before we get into that, Erika, we got another sponsor. We have Home Title Lock. Loopers, act fast. Did you know that American homeowners have over $32 trillion in equity, and criminals are targeting it with a growing scam the FBI calls house stealing?

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You will also get a free title history report to ensure you are not already a victim, and make sure you check out the million-dollar triple lock protection. Details when you get there. Click the link below. Promo code LOOP60. Thank you, Home Title Lock. Excellent. Thank you, Erika. On to B Block now. So, this has been slow rolling out. So, what happened at this site in Georgia? On Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security conducted its largest single-site enforcement action. Detaining 475 people at an under-construction Hyundai battery plant in Georgia, 300 of which were Korean nationals, which, interesting, we do a lot of business with South Korea.

There actually was a massive investment specifically from South Korea to build this plant, so not an area that we've typically seen enforcement action on, so that's already set the stage to be kind of unusual. So, other nationalities reported among the detainees included individuals from Cuba. Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. And I will add, the operation was planned for months, so this wasn't a random sweep through. We're going to hit it. They got a search warrant. They went through all those processes. It's been researched for a long time.

Here's ATF Atlanta with pictures. Today, ATF Atlanta joined HSI, FBI, DEA, ICE, GSP, and other agencies in a major immigration enforcement operation at the Hyundai Megasite plant. In Bryan County, Georgia, leading to the apprehension of 450 unlawful aliens, emphasizing our commitment to community safety. You can see some of the pictures here. There's lots of videos floating around. It was massive. It went from a very full plant to a very empty one. So, really, just at the baseline, I was kind of curious, you know, what's going on.

And this is also the biggest economic development project in state history in Georgia. So, there's a lot of people in Georgia riled up about this. Kind of everyone around, it just hit a bunch of weird notes. So, this battery factory in Georgia is being built for two Korean companies, Hyundai Motor Group and LG Energy Solution. More than 1,400 people are working at this site. So, according to a South Korean official who spoke with the Wall Street Journal, Hyundai said none of its direct employees were arrested, rather subcontractors, which immediately pinged me, okay, they're not claiming any responsibility of all of the people working on said Hyundai plant.

What's going on? So, I was looking a little bit deeper into that. I think the argument was that their argument Is Americans lack experience with Hyundai's advanced battery technology. So, they're sending people over, theoretically, to train Americans on how to build the batteries that are going to happen in this plant. That was the message pitched. The Biden administration actually gave a huge tax break to get these people over to get this investment. The investment happened under the Biden administration, and an employee told the South Korean newspaper that experienced Korean employees need to set up the manufacturing site, but given that the U.S.

government's reluctance to issue H-1B visas, Realistically, there are no other options than ESTA and B-1 visas, which are shorter-term and carry limited authorizations. That is the understatement of a century. I looked a little bit deeper into this. So, for those unfamiliar, H-1B visas are work visas. People come over theoretically for skilled labor, labor that can't be replaced by Americans. There's a whole process to make sure that Americans get the opportunity before, say, we go to the international market to bring people over.

It doesn't necessarily. Which never happens. It's historically been a total joke, abused specifically by countries like India. India is a huge culprit of having these kind of staffing firms that take advantage of the H-1B lottery system to stash people in America so that they can work on jobs that Americans could theoretically do, but they just take advantage of the American employment system.

So, I did see Hyundai is a repeat offender, according to Jay Palmer, an immigration expert who works with immigration lawyers. He told this to Breitbart News. Like other companies, including Mercedes, Kia, and Tesla, Hyundai executives use staffing companies to legally shield themselves as they fly airport migrants to job sites, he said. The workforce was legally distanced from the companies by a series of subcontractors, so it's all a bit of a puzzle. They push the people to staffing agencies, and then they hire them from staffing agencies.

And then they think they're shielded from the law because they have a master service agreement that states that immigration status is not their responsibility. This is happening in every industry, especially in meat processing plants. It's just egregious. If you remember, the meat processing plant in Nebraska was raided, a very similar situation.

And so, for those curious on what that B-1, B-2 visa, what I read was from a much more liberal news outlet saying, oh, it's just our hands are tied. We can't get each one Bs. We do B-1. For those curious on what that is, it's called a business visitor visa. Intended for temporary business-related activities in the U.S., such as attending meetings, conferences, or negotiating contracts. It does not permit employment or long-time work. Holders can stay for up to six months with possible extensions.

Also used is a B-2 visa. That's a tourist visitor visa designed for tourism, medical treatment, or visiting family and friends. Like the B-1, it prohibits employment and allows stays for up to six months with potential extensions. So, I was looking into what is ICE? Why would they conduct the largest rage ever on a country we do a lot of business with? I believe it's their sixth largest partner, and Trump said he wasn't briefed on it, but Trump also said, please kindly respect our immigration laws for people that want to do business in America.

So, individuals enter the U.S. on B-1, B-2 visas, but engage in paid work, which is clearly prohibited. For example, in the ice raid at the Hyundai plant in Georgia, many South Korean workers were detained for allegedly working on these visas at a manufacturing facility, a clear violation as they were performing labor for subcontractors. This happens in other industries like construction, manufacturing, hospitality. The most memorable example, if you guys remember, Do you remember the Disney workers' replacement controversy in 2015-2016? Wow, that is a blast from the past.

So, for those who don't remember, in 2015, report services that Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, laid off approximately 250 American IT workers, replacing them with foreign workers, many from India, brought in by outsourcing firms like HCL America. Some of these workers were allegedly on B1 visas, though primary focus was on H1B visas, and the issue gained huge traction. I mean, everyone talked about that in 2015. What do you mean Walt Disney, American company, is going to fire Americans who can clearly do the work?

And then just go use H-1B visas to get cheaper work that they can control better. To me, we're going to see what rolls out of this. This is a pretty clear example of abuse of the current labor system. And talk about a really— And the subcontractor ruse, which is such baloney. But it's a betrayal because they're saying, oh, South Korea, we invested so much money in America so that we can theoretically employ Americans to then just find cheaper labor from their own country and then make it in our country.

On a philosophical level, this is garbage. And it's not just about administration. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp bragged about this. He was there with the shovel at the opening of this back in 2022. So, you know, again, there's a lot of dirt to go around on this. The fact of the matter is, though, it's like if you work at this, you know, Battery factory. It's like, oh, I don't actually work at the battery factory. I work for a subcontractor who's being hired by this company to work here.

It's like, Give me a break. You're working here. It's a shell game kind of thing. I don't work for this meatpacking factory. I work for a holding company that just happens to do services. That means you work for the meatpacking factory. Stop it. This subcontracting ruse, it's a joke.

Just keeping lawyers employed. Did you listen to the... Dude, Ross is the man, by the way. Interesting times with the guy from China, but he was talking about... The guy from China was saying China is a country of engineers, ran by engineers, and America is a country of lawyers, and that prescribes our problems to a T.

Because, what is this? We don't have to be like this. We don't have to, but Josh, what is this? It doesn't have to be this way. This is legal nonsense to not employ Americans. Maybe if we had a Department of Labor. No, I mean, actually, to the Trump administration's credit, they're doing something about this. They've rented this factory. They said, this is baloney. Message sent. Right. Yes. Message sent. This is nonsense. I think he said, yeah, please kindly respect our labor laws, because South Korea now, of course, is like, we pledged $350 billion.

Yada, yada, yada. It's like, again, America is not an economic opportunity zone for the rest of the world. Right. How it is, I cannot, I mean, could you fathom talking to, like, a founding father or someone in 1800, like, hey, guess what?

You know, our ally, quote-unquote, is going to build a factory and then only employ their own nationals in the factory. No, not only theirs. They shipped in illegals. Right, or people from other countries. People from other countries. Special America. And those are like practically at slave wages. Yeah.

We had that jobs report come out last week. It was kind of disappointing, I think, for a lot of people, until you start digging into the numbers. Scott Besson pointed this out on the weekend shows. The mainstream media is grilling him, like, oh, look at the jobs. There's not enough jobs that aren't being added as fast as Trump promised they would be. And he said, no, no, no, listen, though. 100% of the jobs added. Since the last report, went to native-born American workers.

Under the Biden administration, it's like 90% of those jobs added under Biden. They're like, oh, Biden added so many jobs. They were all to people like this. They were all non-Americans. They were either foreign workers or illegal immigrants.

I'll take a jobs report that's not as, you know, quote-unquote good or booming or flashy as a Biden jobs report if it's going to native-born Americans. Basically, America's been the worst labor union of all time. It'd be like, you sign up for a union that's supposed to protect your job and your interests, and they're like, let's just do everything possible to make sure it's impossible to employ you, and we'll just find cheaper people. Like, we'll find scabs all over the world.

To come work so that you can't get employed, and that you can't get a good wage, and that you can't have good benefits. That has been the status quo. You start hearing about some of this stuff, and you start to think, it's surprising there hasn't been a revolution in this country already. The patience of American citizens so far is wearing thin, but it's helpful to see. Again, this is one of those cases where, again, you would think it would be...

You would think neither party would kind of do this garbage, but both parties have been implicated, as I said, the Biden administration, as well as Republican Brian Kemp in Georgia. Right. Although he's like, oh, good that for this, you know, he's supportive of this enforcement action. Well, yeah.

He better be. But the fact of the matter is, you get to a situation where politics can get so corrupted, you know, that you really need. The, you know, a powerful executive to come in and just kick butt and bust up the trust like Teddy Roosevelt did, and that is what Donald Trump is doing, so kudos to him.

Because what is frustrating to me about this is I guarantee no executive, no C-suite executive is going to get charged for this, and they should be. I mean, they are economically pillaging our country to take advantage of what our market, basically, the American market. I mean, I just think we should charge them.

We should just charge them. Whatever it costs for us to do this operation, we just send the bill to South Curry to Hyundai and be like, well, you're welcome. We cleaned it up for you. I do think it would be nice to have someone from the Justice, I mean, ICE is doing these kind of raids on the plants, but it would be nice to have somebody from the Justice Department.

Go after some of these shell corporations that are going around and helping businesses flaunt the law and wrap them on racketeering or something. Just get them, book them. They're breaking the law, clearly. We know who they are, by the way. It's not like these staffing countries haven't existed forever. I mean, they've been around for years and years and years, and I'm sure they're just going to say, well, what happens is they just fold and then they reincorporate under something else. I'm like, great, whack-a-mole.

There should be an entire government agency. Once you get one of these guys by the scruff of the neck and throw them in jail for 20 years, then the message will get out. Send the message. I'm so tired of this. This is actually a little bit more outrageous to me than... Because people, whenever they couch the immigration discussion, they're like, well, it's just, you know, a really hardworking, well-meaning person from Mexico that wants to come over and make a living because it's dangerous in their country and the economy is bad.

And I'm like, I'm actually much more sympathetic to that argument than, say, a wealthy South Korea basically pillaging our country, taking advantage of our labor laws, India taking advantage of our labor laws, firing Americans who work in IT. But they don't do it by themselves. They use lobbyists, and they get, you know, Republican and Democratic Party officials in our own country to betray their fellow citizens, and it's… It's treason. Hey, we're getting… We're turning this around. So, I'm happy about this.

I think we're going to learn more from what comes from this. I think they're going to publish, whether they were H1 or H2. Again, this is one of those things, 20 years from now, people are like, our kids aren't going to believe that we allowed this stuff to happen. I sure hope so, Josh. I sure hope so, because I'm sure it's been going on for a long time. But, yeah. And then Korea is now saying, ah, they're upset, but they also charted flights for all these people to come home.

So, you're like, well, okay. Please respect our laws. So, yeah, we'll see what goes on. But, okay, good news now. Erika, you were up first. Good news now. Amy Coney Barrett is on a book tour. So, she's giving interviews, which she very rarely does. She's a very private person. But Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, this was a banger of a headline. The dogma still lives loudly. Shout out to my friend, Andrea Picote-Bear, for writing a review of her new book, which is titled, scintillatingly, Listening to the Law.

She's a lawyer. What are you going to expect? That's about all we got. But she had, these are some great excerpts from the forthcoming book, so if you haven't ordered it and you want to know inside the mind, heart, and soul of Amy Coney Barrett, go ahead and pre-order that now. But she wrote, this was an interesting part for me. She talks a lot about...

So, the rule of law being the hallmark of American culture, American society, civil society, and she actually talks about how, for a justice, it's not about personal beliefs, kind of a little shade on Katonji Brown Jackson there. It's not about like a personal crusade that you're on for justice. It's about applying the law. Right? Regardless of person. And she talks about, I thought of you, Josh, the death penalty cases that she's heard. She says, for me, the death penalty cases drive home the collision between the law and my personal beliefs.

Long before I was a judge, even before I was a member of the bar, I co-authored an academic article expressing a moral objection to capital punishment. But it's okay, Josh, because prisoners sentenced to death almost always challenge their sentences on appeal. The tension between my beliefs and the law is not one I could avoid as a young law clerk, much less now as a judge. Then she talks about the Boston Marathon bomber case that came before the Supreme Court right after she was appointed, and she said the Court of Appeals had vacated the death sentence, and the United States argued it had done so in error.

I thought the United States was right, and I joined the court's holding that Tsarnaev's death sentence was valid. Then she said, that was not the only course open to me. Given my view of capital punishment, I could have looked for ways to slant the law.

In favor of defendants facing the death penalty. There were, after all, plausible arguments going his way. Had I voted in favor of him, no one would have known that I did it because I objected to the death penalty, rather than because I concluded he had the better of the argument. So, she's like, I could have manipulated. Yeah, you would have known. Josh would have known. She could, but she said, that would have been a dereliction of my duty. People who adopted the Constitution did not share my view of the death penalty, neither do all my fellow citizens today.

Mercer. Quite the contrary. 27 states authorize capital punishment, as does the federal government. If I distort the law to make it difficult for them to impose the death penalty, I interfere with the voters' right to self-government. I love it. So, wait. Actually, first, Josh, before we get into this, this was a huge debate on Twitter over the weekend I saw. I think it was Rand Paul said that the narco-terrorists should have gotten due process. They should have had a fair trial.

Yeah. What are your thoughts on that? No. No? They were literally driving a boat here with deadly drugs to pump in Americans. Yeah, I figured there wasn't going to be too much disagreement on this show about that, but... No controversy. Rand Paul. And then he was like, have you never read To Kill a Mockingbird? I mean, come on!

What? What are you talking about? Oh, man. I mean, again, Rand Paul has never graduated from college. He's still that sophomore who thinks he's got such great insights. Brother, read a little more. Give me a break. Kill Mockingbird, too. It's all about the rule of law. Okay. Give me a break. No, I mean, the fact is, if Osama bin Laden was on a boat trying to come into our country, we would have taken out the boat, right?

Oh, well, we've got to give them due process. Not for a terrorist, and these narco-terrorists are. That's what they are. They're bringing wicked amounts of drugs into this country to try to kill Americans. Bye-bye. Bye. Yeah, people are asking for the Rand Paul tweet.

Oh, you can find it. I had it. To Kill a Mockingbird was really a shop's kiss on top of that, as if somehow there was a parallel. There's not. Spoiler alert, there's not. Sorry, yeah, Rosie, go find the rant. I don't really object. I don't really have a problem with the vice president using colorful language either. That was another thing. I was like, come on, bro. He's from Kentucky.

Okay, Josh, you're up. Well, for my good news, I want to just, again, celebrate 20 years of CatholicVote. Woo! I just thought I'd give our listeners… I thought that was kind of a cool logo. I like that. It's our Twitter logo right now, I think. Yeah. Let me find it. Yeah, I love the American flag. So, a little blast for the past. I thought I would share with our listeners some good news. It was exactly… It was one of the early years of CatholicVote, before we even were called CatholicVote, because we went by the name of Fidelis for the first couple years.

And I was reading an article from the Bishop of Providence, the good Tobin, as I like to call him, and he talked about Rudy Giuliani, who was running for president of the United States, and a lot of Republicans loved Rudy because he was America's mayor. He cleaned up the hellhole of New York City crime, which is now back to being a hellhole.

You know, after 9-11, I mean, he was on Time Magazine, never loved the guy, and so, but this bishop said, now, wait a minute, now, hold on a second. He is a supporter of abortion, and like Pontius Pilate, he likes to wash his hands of the issue, pretending like he has nothing to do with it, do whatever he wants to do. And so, I see this article on a Sunday, it's like June 2007.

And I'm like, oh, this is good. We've got to do something about this. So, Brian and Joe and I got together, and we put out a press release that first thing in the morning, slamming. Rudy Giuliani, and celebrating this bishop who's calling him out, like, hey, we're pro-life. What's it we care about? We're not going to give this guy a free pass because he's Republican, especially since he's a Catholic, we're not giving him a free pass. So, we put out that press release, and imagine my surprise when Wolf Blitzer, who always loves that opportunity when conservatives attack conservatives, mentions this.

This doesn't mention us by name, but mentions the bishop. Because we were out there press release, CNN covered it in their presidential debate that night. Roll the tape. Watch what happens. Two things, Wolf Spritzer, and then three dudes in their basement. Got this in the debate. Here we go. When you hear words like that from a Catholic bishop, a Catholic bishop, any religion...

Issues of model, the thing that's having an effect on our system. Yeah, yeah, pause the tape here. Whoa, wait, did that just happen? So, Rudy Giuliani was going to give a defense after this bishop attacked him on abortion, and Rudy Giuliani is going to defend himself, and what happens?

Lightning struck the roof of this debate, and it... Killed out his microphone. Now, actually, finish rolling the tape, because actually, it is kind of funny, the response. I give him credit for saying something funny, but... You want me to roll that? Yeah, yeah. Alright.

John O'Keefe starts walking away from them, but he doesn't want to get struck by lightning. Look, for someone who went to parochial schools all his life, this is a very frightening thing that's happening. Yeah, it is, buddy. Did you always know when someone says, I went to Catholic school as a kid, they're going to wind up with the worst possible answer? Usually, but that one actually was pretty darn funny. That was actually pretty funny. But you also give George Bush credit for...

What's the line you like from George Bush? Well, during the debate, George W. Bush talked, you know, they all asked, that was a different debate, obviously, four years, eight years before when George W. Bush was running for president in 2000 against all the other Republicans, and they asked him. Every candidate, what was your biggest mistake? Oh, yeah. And George W. Bush, former president of the Texas Rangers, said, trading Sam Sosa.

It's funny. That was good. That was good. We're playing the LOOPcast today. You'll go on to make many more mistakes. Worse than that. Let me tell you. Oh, man. We are playing the LOOPcast hits today, man. I have to say, though, this is the thing where, I mean, it was just a regular Sunday.

You know, my kids are sleeping, I'm reading different blogs, I find this obscure article written by a bishop in Rhode Island, almost, you know, it was precisely because I'm like, man, we should do something about this, and it ends up in the debate, and God does his magic. Thank you, God, with the lightning. Someone even said it was a lightning rod. Someone said it. It was a pretty cool moment. That's awesome. I didn't get my idea.

There's probably some stories about Catholic, but we can't tell in this program. All right, I run to my good news now on that note. So, guys, it's happened. Someone, so please tell me, you guys covered on the last episode, the... The tweet of the year, yep. Tweet of the year. Hang it now, that is the best tweet of the year of a woman reporting herself dressed as... Really unbelievable. I could bury the lead on that one. I was actually mad. I was not there for that episode.

I was like, I don't ever do power plays like this, but I was like, Erika, you need to do this. This is the tweet of the year. So we did. So I have good news. Someone, Finally found out how to properly use the costume as the correct protest. From the Handmaid's Tale. From the Handmaid's Tale, for the audios. Someone in, or there was a protest in Madrid of women against surrogacy. Ah!

Yes. Okay. That's legit. Yes. That is exactly the metaphor. This is the metaphor. Thank you. They read the book. So, shout out to the Spaniards, man. They figured it out. They read the book. Surrogacy. Didn't the UN just put out something saying that it was bad? The UN said we should have limits on surrogacy, bans on surrogacy. Yeah. It's crazy. Tinfoil Tom sent an article about...

There's now a legal case about a baby, I believe, that was miscarried by a surrogate, and now the people are suing the surrogate, I think, for, like, whose fault is the death, basically. I mean, what a nightmare. It's just such an ethical quagmire. So, shout out to the ladies in Spain. They finally figured it out, got her first proper usage of the hands-made tail. My dear Spanish ladies. Good job. Shout out. Paella. Total evil. Yeah, totally. No redeeming qualities. Okay, Erika, the UK is on fire.

All right, the moment you've all been waiting for. Yes. The UK is on fire. I don't think Americans who just tune into LOOPcast once or twice a week quite realize how bad it has gotten over there. And last week, we had a celebrity arrest that really shone the spotlight on what's going on in the UK. And I'm going to start with a celebrity arrest, but I'm going to try and put it in the context. Of what a normal person over there is experiencing right now, too.

And not that celebrities can't be normal, but Gran Lynham, who's this Irish comedian, he's really well-known over there. Think like, I don't know, John Krasinski over here, but he's known as the creator of these two sitcoms in the last 30 years, one called Father Ted, the other called the IT or the It Crowd. So, he's really, really well-known, and he has also been known for supporting People like J.K. Rowling, as they're talking about men can't become women, and women can't become men.

So, he's known for using his platform. So, on September 1st, he tried to go home from visiting Arizona, the great state of Arizona, and he was arrested at Heathrow Airport by armed officers as he got off the plane.

On suspicion of inciting violence via three April ex-posts about trans persons. Did he stab anyone on the train? There were no knives involved. There was no punching involved. He is a legal citizen. The ex-posts said things, I mean, they were. They were crass, but they weren't violent, in the least. During questioning, as he was being questioned in the airport by these officers, his blood pressure spiked into, quote, stroke territory, prompting a rush to the hospital, and he was kept under observation and handcuffed there.

He was bailed, barred from using X, like he can't go on Twitter anymore, and the case has now sparked a heated UK debate over free speech and policing. His case is ongoing. The UK, to put some context on this, it arrests about 30 people a day on average for online speech.

What? And I will leave you to guess about what topics. In fact, I won't. I'll just say it. It's about trans. Trans Muslims. About Muslims, yeah. About immigration. Wow, 30 a day? 30 a day. That's like how many people die.

Oh, Tom's gone. Sorry, that's like how many people die in Chicago on a weekend. Yeah. So, Graham, he wrote about his experience. I'm just going to read a little bit of this again, because I want, I think he did a good job of getting inside the head of someone who has posted something on X days, or in some cases, years ago, and then the cops show up. I think it's important to say he is not a UK citizen.

Okay, he's Irish. He's Irish, but the posts were made while he was in the UK. He was like on UK soil. Which is enough to arrest. I mean, that makes it even crazier. Wait a minute, wait a minute. So, a foreigner.

Visiting the United Kingdom is not allowed to tweet inside England about trans Muslims? Yes. Oh, boy. Yeah. So, he says, when I first saw the call, I actually laughed. I couldn't help myself. Don't tell me you've been sent by trans activists, I said. The officers didn't react. That was the theme throughout most of the day. Among the rank and file of the police, there was a sort of polite bafflement. They were entirely professional and even kind, but most had absolutely no idea what any of this was about.

And then he wrote, the fact that the individual officers were civil does not alter the fundamental reality of what happened to me. I was arrested at an airport like a terrorist. He was perp walked, locked in the cell like a criminal, taken to the hospital because the stress nearly killed me, and banned from speaking online, all because I made jokes on X.

He said, the UK has become a country that is hostile to freedom of speech, hostile to women, and far too accommodating to the demands of violent, entitled, abusive men who have turned the police into their personal goon squad. And if you could just show, here's how he showed up for his trial two days later. This guy is epic. Yeah.

Yeah, he had a sandwich board on with the trans colors. It's like, there's no such thing as a transgender child, and keep men out of women's sports. He just showed up with a sandwich board on. He's like, fine, just come at me.

And make sure the camera is at a good angle. The lists, and you can go on X and find so much body cam footage at this point of these arrests happening, and the way, it is just stunning. I watched one this morning of a guy in Birmingham, was it, who the police came because he had called a woman a Muppet. Online, and the police are just like, you called her a Muppet, and she reported it to us. He's like, wait, you're arresting me because I called someone a Muppet?

And they're like, yes, sir, we are. I would have been arrested a million times if I were in the UK. Like, what is happening? That is crazy. And he's just doing it. So, yeah, we had, you know, a couple other examples, but some of them, this woman four years ago put up a tweet saying that, like, men shouldn't be in women's bathrooms. She took it down almost immediately because someone was like, you shouldn't say that. So, she took it down within hours, and then four years later, they show up and they're like, oh, we're going to arrest you.

Because this tweet happened. Four years later? Yeah, they're just, it's crazy. It's crazy over there. This is why we have the Second Amendment, because it doesn't, First Amendment doesn't mean squat if you don't have the Second Amendment, because the fact of the matter is. The, you know, our government should fear our citizens a little bit. Like, this is crazy. Like, absolutely asinine. Am I crazy for remembering when the international community, including the UK, poo-pooed J.D. Vance for going over and saying that the greatest threat to the UK is that they are not committed to free speech, and then everyone made fun of them because, like, no, no, no, it's Russia.

It's this and that. That's crazy. We have free speech in the UK. Like, I remember it was... Kind of an international dust-off? Oh, yeah. So, he's totally right. He was, and I do remember J.D. Vance also saying that the first Islamic country to get the nuclear bomb is going to be the United Kingdom.

Yeah, and everyone laughed in the audience, and it wasn't a joke, guys. Okay, wait, so, I'm not sure, sorry, this might be a part of your coverage, but... There was also some protests in the UK where people were flying the Union Jack.

As a form of protest in their own country, and they were actually, I think, getting in trouble for it? That's another thing you can be arrested for. If an immigrant, if a Muslim immigrant calls in and says, oh, they're flying the flag of St. George, it's the one that's really being seen everywhere now. Flying the flag of St. George, they're going to, you could be arrested if you refuse to take it down.

Yeah, Union Jack, it's crazy. Yeah, so some of the immigration stats, too. I mean. At the same time they're spending all this police effort to crack down on hateful comments online, we also have this, the reality of England literally being transformed into Somali, into North African countries, right? So, we have, of the 1.2 million people who came to live in the United Kingdom in the year end June 2024, in a country that is just under 70 million, around 86% were non-EU nationals, right?

So, we are looking at this swell of people coming in, primarily from North Africa. And they're being deliberately imported. Like, this is a deliberate opening of the gates that they've tried. And I was looking into some projections. Two different guys gave me two different numbers, but the projections indicate that the proportion of Anglo-Saxon Britons, so white Britons whose family have been there, will fall below 50% by 2063. Other projections give it till 2066.

In any case, this is the only driver of growth of the population in England is coming from outside of its borders. And it's transforming the country. They just named a new Homeland Secretary, who's a Muslim immigrant woman who marches in protest saying, you know, globalize the Intifada.

Well, suicidal doesn't even start to capture this. So, just to devil's advocate, why is that a bad thing? I think that, you know what, there's a great interview right now on Trigonometry with Tom Holland, not Superman, Tom Holland, Spider-Man, not Spider-Man, definitely not Superman because he doesn't play him, Tom Holland to the historian.

And they're talking about, it's hard to articulate the radical difference between Christian societies or post-Christian societies who still swim in the waters of Christianity and the cross. And people who come from cultures that don't, from cultures that, I mean, Josh, I think the image of the homeless migrant in Brussels, Belgium, frying scrambled eggs over the eternal flame to the unnamed soldier is such an icon of what happens, because there is no dialogue between the theocratic, in the worst sense of the word, theocratic Islamic totalitarianism.

...society that's been imported into Britain, and the good old jolly St. George of Mary England, her green and pleasant pastures traditions of that nation. And unfortunately, the green and pleasant pastures of England, which became totally emasculated through the 20th century with the world wars and the devastation of our own revolutions, our secular revolutions, their response to the on-flux... The influx of the Muslim. This civilization is, we are just going to lay down and let them come in, because that is the nice thing to do.

Well, it is also a bunch of businessmen that are just looking for cheap labor as well. I mean, there are a whole lot of factors, and the thing is, that guy frying the eggs on the eternal flame does it because he does not care. He does not know, but he does not care. Right. He does not care enough about the country to know that this is just not going to do it. You are not going to walk up to him and explain to him why he should not do that, right?

Well, right, but it is also the fact that if you lose... If a country loses her own traditions and loses her religion, you go from being very Christian to the next generation going through the motions of Christian, to the next generation not even actually practicing it, to the next generation not even knowing it. And so then, it's like...

They can't, you can't hold it. Like, you've lost so much, you've eroded so much that someone like this comes along, and there's no capacity to say, well, how could you do that? Don't you care? Because the people in the old country apparently don't care, you know? What's left of a remnant there is very small, and again, it happens here in our own country. Like, our own people, we are losing our traditions, and we're losing our religion.

It starts with little things, but it gets corrosive. Yeah, I think there was a study last year about college students and Gen Z in particular and their views on free speech, which are very different from previous generations. It was like 54% of Gen Z college-educated women believe that there should be restrictions on hate speech, by which they mean... Not like actual hate speech, but you should kill Brett Kavanaugh, but yeah, speech that they hate, exactly. I think the reason the UK is a bellwether in so many ways, because we see that it could happen here.

This could have been us had the election gone a different way in November. We were already starting to see it under the Biden administration, like people, oh, you posted this. The chilling effect of these visits, right, from the FBI.

Yeah, I mean, I think a bigger problem with this is that because the government betrayed the legitimate interests of the people, you're going to get the next generation of youth. Like, you're talking about, oh, they want to ban hate speech. The people I talk to, younger than me, say things that legitimately make me blush. Like, things out loud. Crazy, crazy, like extreme, far to the right, or whatever direction.

You know, and the reason that they are so extreme is because they have not been taken care of. They haven't been listened to, and so the government puts the people in the situation where, I mean, it's just going to get worse if you can't fly the flag of St. George in the UK. I think the same thing is going on. I mean, people are moving further to the right on immigration, but they're also going way, way, way, way further into, you know, talking about ethnicity, talking about, it just gets really nasty, and it doesn't have to, and it never had to get that way.

Because they weren't actually being listened to, and it just puts people in the worst possible situation, in which there's going to be legitimate social unrest, to the point where there could actually be physical violence. I mean, we've seen physical violence in some of these rallies and riots and things like that, but when you do things like censor British men for speaking up about Afghani rape gangs in their own government, in their own police ranks, and then blaming the victims for speaking up about it on ethnicity, you're just fomenting this kind of riot.

And it's hard for me because I see this happening in slow motion. That actually leads to my twilight zone, because, again, this is a problem. Oh, I had the same one, and I appreciate that you did it, because it's insane. I mean, the fact of the matter is, the corruption of our elite ruling class, as well as the stenographers, which is the mainstream media.

Is leading to a lot of these problems, and if we actually had a media with any kind of morality, you know, we would be in a lot better situation, but because they are so thoroughly immoral and corrupted, you get horrific things. So, her name is Iryana Zaruska. She fled war-torn Ukraine. For a better life in the United States, she didn't know that a monster would be sitting behind her on the train in Charlotte, North Carolina. This picture we're showing, we're not going to show the rest, is extremely sad, albeit it's not gory, but this would be a second before her demise.

She would be stabbed to death on the train. It's not like we don't know who this guy is. This guy had 14 mugshots before he killed Iriana Zaruska. Now, what is important to remember here, it is like any time you have discussions about urban planning and all that kind of stuff, people are like, why don't, why do white people joke about not wanting to take the bus or take public transportation?

Hello, this is why. The fact of the matter is, we remember. We remember when a violent passenger in a subway terminal was threatening a bunch of people and hurting people, and Daniel Penny put him in a headlock to save other people. Now, what happened? Oh, my gosh. Daniel Penny got scads of newspaper, flood of newspaper coverage against him.

Wall to wall. He was arrested. They tried to put him in jail. He was a hero. Thankfully, he did not serve any time. The media, though, is completely silent on a repeat offender who is continually let out of prison by judges and given bail of like 500 bucks so he could go kill someone else. The guy, I mean, we know that, I mean, like.

This is a choice. You're choosing to live as this society. To me, this is very radical. Now, George Floyd beat his girlfriend. He had fentanyl. He dealt drugs, and yes, he met his demise. No one wants this, okay? But the fact of the matter is, the AP wrote in the newspaper tens of thousands of news stories on George Floyd. How many have they written on?

Well, as of the weekend, it was zero. Now, this morning, they're starting to write some articles. Guess what they're writing? CNN, Axios. They're not reporting on this crime. They're reporting on conservatives who are upset about it. Right. The Axios, I mean- It shouldn't be that just conservatives are upset about this. Everyone should be upset about this. Josh, you got to read the Axios headline here. I mean, it's- Axios writes- Truly unbelievable. The gruesome video of the fatal knife attack in Uriana Zaruska on a light rail car in Charlotte.

Is drawing attention from MAGA influencers thinking to elevate the issue of violent urban crime and accuse mainstream media of undercovering shocking cases. Yeah. You do not hate the media enough. You do not. This is disgusting. And the fact of the matter is...

Anytime there's a crime against a black man, wall-to-wall coverage. Anytime white-on-black crime, wall-to-wall coverage. Daniel Penny. It wasn't even a crime. It was self-defense. But this black man, there's literally, it's not like she said something to the guy and he popped off. She was looking at her phone. By the way, I'm telling my daughters, don't you go on a bus, don't you go on a rail.

Uber, if you have to, travel in pairs, travel with men. And don't turn your back on anybody. That would have killed a man, too, by the way. Especially a black man. Sorry. Yep. I mean, that would have killed a man, no question. And then, from the Axios article, I could see even better, the big picture. The rising number of surveillance cameras in public spaces, including on Charlotte's light rail, has become a big accelerant in these cases. The video is easily shared or leaked and can instantly pollinate across social media, a visual counterpoint to statistics showing crime decreases.

Wait, so the story is that we have so many surveillance cameras. Oh, I thought it was the violent stabbing. I thought that was the story. No, and this recently brought up another debate online about dash cams. So, dash cams were supposed to be this big, it's going to prove how racist cops are, and that they target black people, and they are horribly violent, and they're too bad. And I'm not saying that it doesn't happen, but that was the story, that all of a sudden this is going to explode, and it's going to prove how corrupt everything is.

And just about, like, thank God for whoever invented dash cams, because it's saved so many lives. It's probably stopped so many riots. Because every time you see on the dash cam, oh, you had to take a life, horrific, you see that they were charged with a knife. Like, the most, the recent one was a black woman in a car charged an officer with a knife, and there was going to be a whole other racial reckoning. She fired a gun, right, yeah.

Yeah, and you had to take her out. Yeah, cops realize this. Dash cams are good, and body cams for cops are good. Because that was the one black guy, he was a researcher at Harvard, and they completely... Pushed him off the table for, how could dare you? Because he was saying, police brutality is largely baloney. Yeah. And people are like, how dare you say that? You're a traitor to your race, yeah. Terrible. Proven right, though. I mean, hello? I mean, are there not a single cop who does anything bad?

No, of course not. But, like, it's largely a myth. And, like, you know, and you get these riots, and people go crazy, and then the dash cam or the body cam proves, hey. The media was full of crap once again. May I also add, too, and shout out Meg Basham from The Daily Wire. She had a good analysis of, like, how did we get here in Charlotte? So, in 2020, after the death of George Floyd, North Carolina's Democrat Attorney General Josh Stein, who is now the governor, instituted a, quote, task force for racial equity and criminal justice.

One of that task force's key recommendations was to improve pre-trial release practices. By this, they meant that in the name of racial equity, more minorities charged with crimes ...should be released without bail or little bail. They also recommended enacting legislation with a sunset provision for all local ordinance crimes that criminalize property or behavior in public places, meaning we should move to decriminalize being a public nuisance or living on public streets. The recommendations also included racial equity training for court system personnel.

On the pretrial recommendation, a later report specifically noted that local judicial districts have made changes in their bond policies consistent with TREC recommendations. They also claim success on ensuring that all court personnel, including judges, had racial equity training in passing legislation to decriminalize behavior in public spaces. These are the very policies that allowed DeCarlos Brown to be out on the streets, despite the fact that he had 13 prior arrests, including for armed robbery, pre-trial release. Two for assaulting women. Pre-trial release and being allowed to be a menace on the streets was what gave him the opportunity to murder Irana Zaruska.

In January of this year, Judge Teresa Stokes allowed him to be released on no cash bail. Last month, Brown's public defender questioned his mental capacity. The judge, Roy Wiggins, ordered a forensic evaluation. While allowing Brown to remain free. So, judges and DAs need to be held accountable. There is an interesting statistic this guy put together comparing these nine cities. San Francisco, Chicago, St. Louis, Portland, Minneapolis, and Oakland all defunded the police. Salt Lake City, Columbus, and El Paso did not. And if you look, the murders in 2019 are the same as the murders in 2015.

Went way up to 2022 for those six cities that defunded their police. San Francisco didn't go up as much, but you see Chicago goes from 490 to 695. St. Louis goes from 194 to 362. Portland, 36 to 93. Minneapolis, 48 to 81. Oakland, 74 to 119. The cities of Salt Lake City, Columbus, El Paso did not defund their police. The number of murders actually went down in Salt Lake City and El Paso. They went up a little bit in Columbus, but this guy also noted the cell phone percentage of traffic, okay?

So, these six cities that gutted their police force, what happened? You would think the amount of cell phone service, how many people were using their cell phone, right? Yeah, like geofence. How many people are going into the city and going- They're using their phone, right?

So, 32%. So, you're talking a massive dive, the amount of cell phone traffic in San Francisco. In Chicago, it's down, it went 43%. It's 43% of what it once was. St. Louis, 38% of what it once was. Portland, 40. Minneapolis, 41. Oakland, 47%. They all went down by more than half.

Salt Lake City, Columbus, and El Paso all had more traffic because they have more people, because they didn't gut their police force, and they haven't done as much of this psycho DEI stuff, and no cash bails, so. I hope everyone knows, too, that I, it's a perfect storm. Living this way is a choice. This might have been one of the smartest strategic moves Trump has made in a long time by threatening to bring in the National Guard to these places. It just makes people defend.

The obvious poor conditions of living for, often, the poorest among us, people that can't afford to live in different places. This is the ultimate winning issue of all time, and I know the media is like, oh, they're picking up on it now because it's useful for that effort. You didn't cover it. I mean, it's crazy. We don't have to win on these issues if you guys would stop being psycho and let people get murdered in rail cars. Right. It goes back to the America is a country.

Governor Roy Cooper signed an executive order, as you said, pushing all this stuff. Now he wants to be the next senator. From the state of North Carolina. Voters, you have a choice. America is a country of lawyers. This is which one for the future? America is a country of lawyers, and we choose to live with a lower standard of living than we have to. It is a choice. You go to China, I guarantee.

Like, the Chinese guy who's interviewing, everything's safe, everything's orderly, and you're like, oh, but we have free speech, we have religion, like, yeah, those things are great. I also would like to not get murdered when I ride Subway. I'd like to keep them. I think there's a happy medium in here somewhere. It's the same, everyone talks about, like, dudes take a mental health trip to Japan in their 20s, and they're shocked by, like, it's all clean. People are polite. The Subways aren't violent.

They're not, there's no homeless people laying around. There's answers out there, guys. Like, there's other countries that have pulled it off. We can just do things. Right. You can just do things. Now, let's not forget this, okay? When we had another immigrant come into this country, he beat his wife, he joined the MS-13 gang, Donald Trump's administration sends him back down to Nicaragua, and the senator from Maryland went down there and had margaritas with the guy. That's how the Democratic Party and the elite in the media treat that immigrant.

This immigrant, she fled Ukraine to escape war, and she was murdered, but she was murdered by a black guy, so. La, la, la, la, la. I mean, it doesn't care. It's just amazing. They just care that you noticed.

Well, you know what I noticed? The problem is the surveillance camera footage. That's right. Too many cameras. What an honest admission that was. Okay, Erika. Well, you took my Twilight Zone, so I'm just going to do a really quick one here. Yeah, that one. We're going to go with the President of the United States just wished our Blessed Mother A happy birthday on Truth Social. There we go. Thank you for bringing us up. It's a very nice image of her, too.

None of this saccharine French stuff from 1890. This was a beautiful stone statue of our lady. From the President of the United States. He's more Catholic than any of the other Catholic presidents. Happy birthday, Mary, Queen of Peace. The other one that I think I talked about it on the show, but to tack on how annoying Twitter is, I saw that the DHS account posted Pray Without Ceasing after the Minnesota thing, and it kind of went like semi-viral. All I said was, oh, they're quoting Padre Pio.

Like, what a time to be alive. And all the Protestants got in there like, oh, you've never heard of St. Paul? He was the one that did it. Then the Orthodox got in there like, these stupid Catholics never read the Bible.

Guys, now is not the time. Like, there was just a shooting in a church in Minnesota, and now is not the time to split hairs. Plus, many of you, your denomination got invented two seconds ago. So, I don't want to hear about it, about history, okay? We kind of wrote the Bible, so chill. And then also, Trump, I think, followed this up with, I think he said he's going to go to war with Chicago, which is kind of hilarious. Queen of peace to I'm going to war with Chicago.

Well, you wage war to get peace. That's the only reason. That's it. That's the only reason. No contradiction there. It just sounds funny, but I'm with you. Well, have you read To Kill a Mockingbird? Yeah, I have, several times. So, I don't know, man. Have you read To Kill a Mockingbird? Man, what a time to be alive. What a time to be alive. Glad we're doing it. Kentucky, you can do better.

Glad we're doing it together, gang. Sweet. So, happy birthday, CatholicVote. Happy birthday, LOOPcast. Therefore, happy birthday to everyone listening to us in the chat. If you want to give us a little birthday gift, go ahead and leave a review. Say, happy birthday, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, give us five stars. That helps out. Or even better, become a member of the Champions Club. Come on, man. If you really just, you know, it's like when you open up the card, and you've got to pretend like money doesn't fall out.

You know, you're looking at the card like, oh, thanks, Grandma. If you really want to make it, you know, join the Champions Club. Keep us going. Sign us that nice birthday card. Thank you. Make my day. Keep us employed. Help us to do the things that we do. Join the Champions Club, CatholicVote.org slash champions, where you can do that. You can email me, LOOPcast at CatholicVote.org. I have been behind, so sorry if you emailed me. I do need to go through that.

I will this week. And then, wind with a prayer. So, the daily prayer today is from the Liturgy of the Hours for the Feast of the Nativity of Mary. So, we will start there. In the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen.

In part to your servants, we pray, O Lord, the gift of heavenly grace, that the feast of the nativity of the Blessed Virgin may bring deeper peace to those for whom the birth of her Son was the dawning of salvation, through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever. Amen. St. Thomas More, St. Fidelis, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us. Happy birthday, guys, and we'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.