Trump Announces 2-Week Ceasefire, NY State Comes for the Nuns, and the Pope Likes Peeps

Happy Easter Wednesday, and welcome to LOOPcast. We are Tom-less today. It's just me and Mercer. It's going to be a great couple of hours here. Mercer, did you want to comment on it? I mean, it's okay. It's going to be great. It's good. I mean, we like to tease Tom, but, you know, he does a good job of keeping things moving along, and he's got some...

Crazy opinions, too. We love them, so. Well, that's what keeps things spicy here, so. But we're going to have a good time today. We have a lot to cover, as you see from the title. We have a ceasefire-ish in Iran, so we're going to talk all about what we know so far, a lot of what we don't know, which seems to be the ongoing pattern with Trump and Iran, and do some speculation on that. We also have a ton of stories coming out of the U.S.

itself, so a little domestic for you all. We have a jobs report that was shockingly good, and we have what is going on in Virginia, and why is Abigail Spanberger breaking all the wrong records there? We also had the birthright citizenship court case went to the Supreme Court. We had the oral arguments last week, and it did not go so well for the Trump administration. Guys, we went around the moon. The Publix peeps, it's going to be... A fantastic Monday. We have good news in Twilight Zone.

That's true, then? That news thing about him not letting the Pope like the peep sugar? Dude, I have video. I have video evidence for you here, and you can decide if it's AI-generated or not. I'm going with credulity. I'm going to believe it. American Pope, American peeps.

Yep, it's going to be awesome. That's a strike against him. No offense. They're terrible. Actually, I have a funny story. They're only good for the microwave. Yeah. They're becoming enormous, you know. My son, in his Easter basket, we gave him one of those because they're so beautiful in the store, this tall thing of different peeps candy on a stick. He took one bite of it, and he's like, this is disgusting. He tossed it. I never liked marshmallow much of any kind, honestly.

See, you're more refined. It's only good in Rice Krispie bars. That's about it. What's your go-to Easter candy then, Josh? Did you imbibe a little and indulge a little this weekend? I love, you know, chocolate and peanut butter, and I'm happy to report that, actually, Hershey's announced this last week that they're going to bring back the old recipe for Reese's peanut butter cups after the grandson of Reese's, like, attacked the company for chintzing out on it, but it's, apparently, the cost of cocoa had shot up 200%.

A lot of these companies were trying to not actually quite chocolate, but chocolate. tasty kind of thing, and so I'm happy that, you know, public outcry is like, no, no, no, dude, no, we'll pay a little bit more. Bring back the chocolate. We want the real deal. Yeah, we can tell. We can tell. Even those of us who buy mass-made chocolate products. Yeah, Reese's peanut butter is my 100% favorite, Christmas and Easter. I just, I love that stuff. All right, we have a lot to get to today, but first, of course, we have the OG sponsor.

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Check out that baby on the screen. What is not to love? Check out Charity Mobile. All right. Let's get into it. So, we've had quite the whiplash the last few days when it comes to the war in Iran, but this morning, we woke up, or if you were scrolling the news and monitoring the situation last night like I was, I was preparing a show for what if we actually start, you know, going scorched earth, salt the earth in Iran tonight, and then at about, was it like 7.50 p.m., we get, oh no.

Now we're in a ceasefire, and we're actually going to do a business deal with Iran. So, Trump announced last night, yeah, just an hour, 90 minutes before the deadline, that he has agreed to suspend military strikes against Iran for two weeks.

After early threatening the country, if it failed to meet the 8 p.m. deadline. So, the truth social statement we have, oh gosh, we were just white knuckling it for an hour. So, right before the deadline, we were going to, there we go. Sorry. Is that going to pull up, Celine?

Maybe, maybe not. We'll see. Maybe, maybe not. We're working on it. So, his statement was officially based on conversations with Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Muneer of Pakistan, and wherein they requested- Pakistan is a clutch. Yeah, the Pakistanis really brought this home.

They got a ton of their oil from Iran. Yeah, this is very important to them. Something like upwards of 80%. Well, like most of East Asia, India, China. You know, a lot of the islands there, Japan, they all get their oil from Iran. Right. So, they need the Strait to open, and they need the Strait to open without the Americans bombing all the oil infrastructure, because that would be total destruction for them as well. So, he says, As were they requested, I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran and subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the complete, immediate, and safe opening of the Strait of Hormuz.

I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks. This will be a double-sided ceasefire. The reason for doing so is that we have already met and exceeded all military objectives and are very far along with a definitive agreement concerning long-term peace with Iran and peace in the Middle East. We received a 10-point proposal from Iran and believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiate.

Almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran, but a two-week period will allow the agreement to be finalized and consummated. On behalf of the United States of America as president and also representing the countries of the Middle East on and on, thank you for your attention to this matter, Donald J. Trump.

The last two sentences were the only ones written by him. Yes, exactly. Thank you for this attention. It doesn't matter. Yes, this was a very different tone from the previous two posts, which had absolutely set the media's hair on fire. I believe on Easter Sunday, we got a post that included... I mean, not for nothing. Yes, not for nothing. It's a good point. We had the F-bomb and praise be to Allah in one tweet on Sunday morning, and then... That was, yeah.

References to Allah by a president on Easter. Easter Sunday morning. That would be a first-timer. Yep. Followed by early Monday morning, a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have complete and total regime change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen. Who knows? We will find out tonight. One of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the world.

47 years of extortion. God bless the great people of Iran. I mean, that tweet, that one, compared to, I mean, with the one on Sunday. We heard it around the world. Yeah. Everyone saw that, and everyone commented on it. So, I mean, this is where you start to dissect it. I mean, did anyone honestly think that he would, you know.

Use nukes on Tehran and flatten the civilization? The percentage of people actually thought that was probably very low, and therefore, some people who are defending Trump are saying, so what's the point? It was just bluster. And it's like, well, wait a minute now. Maybe it's just not a good idea to use that kind of bluster when threatening, I don't know, the death of a civilization?

Yeah. I mean, the Iranian regime has done a lot of evil and a lot of bad things. You know, no question about that, okay? Yeah. But the question is, the Trump-style bluster. You know, in rhetoric, where he's not really serious, he's, you know, don't take him literally, he's just, you know, throwing this stuff out there. That kind of stuff works a lot better on domestic politics, even in, like, maybe trade disputes internationally, like tariffs and stuff like that, maybe. But I think it crossed a bit of a line there when he starts talking about threatening the end of a civilization like that, and therefore...

So, obviously, the U.S. bishops had to respond, Paul Coakley, the head of the USCCB, and then you had Pope Leo himself, who felt compelled to say something about that. Like, how could they not say something like that? You know, they have to say something on that, because otherwise people are like, well, wait a minute now, are you just going to be totally okay with that? You know, and I, you know, again.

I don't think many of these people in their heart of hearts thought he was going to make it all a sheet of glass. That's not, you know, yes, they weren't thinking that he was going to do that, but it's still.

Yeah. You got to rein it in a little bit, big guy. I'm with you on most things, but, you know. Yeah, it's one thing when you're talking in that really blusterous way about winning elections and beating people in the polls, but it's another when you actually have your finger on the nuclear button, and we literally have the power to end civilizations. And I think, for me, I didn't think it would actually. Happen, and yet that seemed like a line was certainly crossed there.

Yeah, it's... So, anyway, I mean... But... That being said... What we've asked for here on the podcast many times, as certainly I have, is the hope that, you know, a couple of weeks of this stuff, and then you claim victory and move forward and ramp down the war. And it seems like...

This could be happening. You don't want to count your chicks before they're hatched, but a two-week ceasefire, agreeing in principle to a bunch of different things. It looks like this is an exit ramp, and that has always been my concern. What is the exit ramp? What's going on here?

What's your path to victory? What's your way out of this? You know, that's what I've always been concerned with, so. Yeah, and it's going to be a really strange exit ramp, because we did get, so earlier this morning, we got the Iranians' 10-point plan. So, this came out of Nour News, which is an Iranian publication backed by the government in Iran, and they published a list of these 10 points that Trump had referenced, and in Trump's original...

announcement. He said that this would be like a reasonable basis, but you actually go through the list of Iran's demands, and I mean, all of these are kind of already a hard no. We've got the U.S. must fundamentally commit to guaranteeing non-aggression. That's a possibility that we agree to not go back in there, but then we have continuation of Iran's control over the Strait of Hormuz. That's going to be a $2 million ticket price to get a ship through the Strait, which was previously free.

I don't see anyone really getting excited about that. We have to accept that Iran can enrich uranium for its nuclear program, which, again, for a nuclear energy program, like Rubio said last week, we've always said that's fine, but it's that they've never stopped there.

Removing all primary and secondary sanctions on Iran, ending all the resolutions targeting Iran. I can see us doing that just because I don't think Trump really cares. I don't know what the UN Security Council says anymore. But then also ending all of the Atomic Energy Agency resolutions on Iran's nuclear program, which would include saying they can't build a nuclear weapon. So, again, like a lot of these points that come through from Iran, you're like, those seem like non-negotiables that Trump's already said.

Here's what I think Trump is ultimately going to be okay with. Iran getting to impose, basically, a toll at the Strait of Hormuz, which other people are like, wait a minute now, we didn't have that before this war, and now we're having it, so how are we better off than we were before? And Trump's answer to that would probably be like, well, we no longer have... The Ayatollah and his regime, like, we've seen a change in behavior, and if this new regime sticks with that and stays better, then that's an improvement, even if it means being charged for ships leaving.

And, of course, most of the ships aren't necessarily ours. Now, under the international rules, it shouldn't be a toll, of course, because it's just international waters. It's international waters, right. I guess Trump's thought is, if this is what it takes to get to peace, then fine, or whatever. I don't know. I'm not thrilled by it, but I'd much prefer to have a toll there than to continue a war which I'm not interested in. So, I mean, whatever. Again, my thought in general, when it comes to U.S.

foreign policy, I'm... I am kind of contrarian in this sense. I am not a big fan of unconditional surrender. That has been kind of like our recent history. It started with the Civil War Unconditional Surrender Grant, and it went all the way through World War II. It is like, you know, it is like, hmm.

If I give them a few conditions and I get them to surrender sooner, I would prefer that, actually. If that allows them to save face, you know, okay, you get a little poll tax here on a toll here or whatever. I mean, fine, whatever. I'd rather that than to have to send. at what ground troops like no no thank you i don't want that yeah 100 like yeah do not get the boys in there yeah the the other point that iran put forward was they called for a ceasefire on all fronts including uh from israel against hezbollah in lebanon and uh bb netanyahu came out almost immediately hours actually just minutes later and said no israel will continue um its attacks in lebanon and sure enough we got Multiple strikes, I think another 300 casualties there this morning.

So, Israel has already rejected that term, at least, of the ceasefire. Well, they can say they do, but we can go to Israel and say, well, here's the score. You have to go along with this agreement. Too bad.

Yeah, and I think the point is that this is going to be a long process of back and forth. There will probably be violations of the ceasefire. Again, like Pete Hegseth this morning, there was an 8 a.m. press conference with Hegseth and Dan Raisenkane, and he was explaining to the reporters that because Iran's communication systems are so decimated over there, he's like, they're using carrier pigeons, basically. And in fact, there were stories that The ceasefire came about because there were runners who were giving messages to the new Ayatollah who is in hiding because he's an assassination target.

So, in order to get him on board, they had to actually have notes on pieces of paper being run. So, talk about we're back in the Persian Wars or something. But he was saying that this morning we had multiple strikes. So, the government of Bahrain reported... I guess you can't give him a beeper, right? Yeah, no, can't, no beeper cell phones. They tried that. It wasn't good for Hezbollah, let's just put it that way. So, UAE saw some strikes this morning.

Israel is, like I said, they're still active in Lebanon today. So, this is going to be, this wasn't like an immediate day of world peace, which is another tweet that we got from Trump this morning, but it was an immediate world peace.

I think there is some hope that there's movement here going on. And then, of course, we get all the accusations from the left and some crazy people on the right that Trump has chickened out again, and that, like, Trump blinked was one of the headlines I saw.

I'm like, well, what did you want him to do? Like, go ahead with his threat? Not sure. And then we also saw the markets. You know, the markets so far this morning, they've soared 1,100 points, the Dow, and then the price of oil has tumbled, versus truly having sold half of his stock in petroleum last week.

Good job. Excellent work, Josh. Yeah, we started the day, or yesterday we started, I think it was $117 a barrel, and this morning it was $93. So, this was a total nosedive. There's some incredible graphs out there you can go take a look at. And predictors are saying that Americans will start seeing the relief of the pumps probably this weekend even. We'll start to see those prices come down if the ceasefire. Holds, which we don't know. We don't know what's going to happen.

And I have to keep reminding myself, it's not my job to have the answers. It's more just to sit there and look at it with you all, as I am glad to do. We do our best. Yeah, there was a... So, Josh, you watched that video. You'd mentioned a couple of times that game theory of like, what is actually going on here? And this actually has popped up in a few different commentators, but a few people are trying to understand the...

The purpose of going into Iran, in terms of... Trump, the Trump administration... Makes some sense of it, right? Making some sense of this, like, why would an America first president do this unless he was either a crazy lunatic, which some people are happy to conclude because they concluded that 10 years ago, or if he actually had some genius plan? And the truth is probably somewhere in between, as most truths are. Could be elements of both, right? Exactly. And, I mean, you know, again, revenge for...

I mean, you know, I'm... You know, I was in diapers when Iran, you know, took our hostages, you know, in Tehran, and held them there for 444 days. I mean, I don't remember any of it, but I only learned about it, obviously, growing up. And, you know, but for a lot of Americans who are older than me, that they remember vividly the national embarrassment. That's actually how the TV show Nightline got started. The purpose of it was every day, every night, Ted Kopp will get out there and give you the latest update on the Iran hostage crisis, and it only stopped on January 20th, 1981, when President Reagan was sworn into office, and the Iranians thought, well, wait a minute now.

The New York Times, the Washington Post say this is some crazy cowboy who will nuke everything. We better let these guys go, or we might be in trouble. And so, that is one of those times where You know, if they think that's why I'm not too harsh on Trump. I mean, I think he crossed a little bit of line, but I get it. Like, what he's going for is you want your enemy to think you're a little crazy. You never know what's going to happen, and so I get that.

But, like, this game theory that we're talking about, like, who knows? It's this guy. He is a Chinese. He was born in China. He taught for a long time in Canada, and now he is back in Beijing, and he had this crazy idea for why Trump might be doing this, and his thought is You know, the world economy is being propped up in many ways by the American consumer, but there's too much debt, and Americans are getting lazy. I don't like it when a foreigner says that about my country.

I like to say it about my country. And his thought is... The whole idea with BRICS was this association of countries that were trying to think about an alternative to the U.S. dollar, because the U.S. dollar is the world's reserve currency. You know the U.S. dollar is stable, but then again, if you get to this point where, because of You know, entitlement spending, you know, especially Medicare and Social Security, and with baby boomers retiring, I'm not trying to attack baby boomers here.

I'm just giving you the numbers. It's math. Don't get mad at me. Like, you are faced with a situation in the United States where you could get into sort of a debt spiral. And if these other countries start adopting another currency, a reserve currency, whether it's gold or crypto or whatever, You know, then suddenly, they're buying less U.S. treasuries, and they're not financing our debt, and it gets more expensive for us to finance our debt, and that becomes a very big problem.

And so, his thought, this guy, this game theory guy, is that Donald Trump recognizes this and realizes that we need to be less based on our economy, based less on finance. And based more on resource allocation. Yeah. And we've already started to do some of this in the last 20 years. Domestic oil production has gone way up, no thanks to Obama. That was all done on private lands or state land.

Oil, you know, we used to, I mean, all my whole life, you know, we were oil importers, but now the U.S. can actually export oil for a while, and then Biden started gumming that up a little bit. But, no, we are in a spot where we need, we can have more assets, more resources, you know, and the Trump administration has already announced big efforts to try to increase mining. Like, for the longest time, it was like, oh, that's.

Yeah, mining is dirty. Let other countries, let those poor countries do mining, because it's the tough work, you know, but it might be tough work, but it pays well. And it's good to have, you know, natural resources, and you start to realize, you know, your phones, how much they, you know, special elements that they need, or rare earth elements to run these supercomputers, cell phones, and everything.

That's why he said Trump was eyeballing Greenland, because Greenland has some of these rare earth minerals. And right now, China's sort of cornering the market on it, and what happens, we saw what happened in COVID. When we were in a spot where we needed precious medical supplies, and China's like, yeah, no, we're going to hold these back. We're like, well, wait a minute now. We paid for those from private companies. It's not like we bought it from the government of China.

You can't just hold it back. And China's like, no, screw you. And so, we started to realize, China, not a free economy, not a free, true trade partner. Not a friend. They're also willing to cut us out, and so that's why we need to realize we cannot become dependent on China. See, the thing about it, for the most part, you know, I like a market-based economy because, you know, Michigan works on building cars, and Connecticut does.

You know, life insurance. We all have our different things. What do we do? Yeah. The different states that they work on, right? And that also applies internationally, you know. Right. And so, that creates a sort of dependency. And that's not a bad way. It's just like you get more efficient, but you become dependent. So, like, if you don't have enough oil, you become an importer. China is a big importer of oil. They're very dependent. They don't create oil domestically like we do.

So, we're a little bit more independent than they are on oil. But on other things, like our debt, we're very dependent on other countries buying our debt. And so, this guy's thought is, if... If going to war with Iran causes oil production in the Middle East to go down, that makes it more expensive. And China and India and Pakistan, who are reliant, and Japan, reliant on Middle Eastern oil, they are going to have to buy it from other places. Where are the other places?

Well, one of the biggest places of oil production is... Venezuela. No. What do you think Donald Trump did in January? He went into Venezuela and got rid of Hugo Chavez, but now we're kind of controlling the oil there. So, you've got Venezuela, Canada, United States, oil producers now, actually, and we're less reliant on these other countries. So, there might be something to play here with Iran. Maybe there's a chess move here. I don't know. We're just bringing this up because it...

Might make sense of it. Now, I obviously think, you know, there's statements from Donald Trump from 1980 to 1984 to 1991, where he's been attacking what happened to Iran. He felt Iran embarrassed the United States, we're the global superpower, how can we allow this tiny country He's always been an Iran hawk, yeah. So, he's been a hawk on Iran for a long time, although There are voters who felt like they got the rug pulled underneath them because they're like, wait a minute now, you were bragging about how you kept us out of wars when you were president, and that if you vote for Kamala, she's going to get war with Iran.

So, you know, there's a little bit of this stuff going on too. Yeah, a lot of that. Really interesting, and as always, there's just so many interconnected factors when you're looking at these sort of global movements. Yeah, the Venezuela piece made a lot of sense to me that, oh, well, of course, we secured Venezuela before doing anything like this, because that's pretty important. There's some talk that now Greenland might be back on the table, because Europe is feeling the squeeze. With Russian oil off the table for them, Strait of Hormuz is going to be charging $2 million a ship.

Europe's like, Hmm, America? So, a lot of interesting things to watch the next few years. We're just going to keep our eyeballs open. We don't even need to take over Greenland. I mean, that's the bluster. That's the rhetoric.

But what Trump says is, like, you Europeans, you're so green and so earth-sensitive and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, you're not drilling. Let us go in there and mine it, and we'll just give you some money, and you can pretend like, oh, we're so terrible. Whatever. Yep, a couple military bases. And then you buy oil anyway. A couple mines. And they need a really good ambassador, I think, Josh, like a Viking sort of. Figure.

You know? I mean, it was 17 degrees yesterday morning here in northern Michigan, so I can handle it. The winter that never ends. All right, so another figure who popped up a lot over the weekend was J.D. Vance. J.D. Vance, Vice President of the United States. He headed to Hungary ahead of all this drama, so he was there through all of the ups and downs of the last 48, 76 hours. And first, though, I just, I just. Have to play this clip.

Selene, can we get Usha Vance up on the screen? Because look at this woman. She is so beautiful. They're disembarking from Air Force Two, I guess, would be it. But she's so beautifully pregnant. Her maternity, her like Easter violet hues. It's just, she's so beautiful. So, here's to having.

A pregnant mama in the White House. I feel seen. This is beautiful. She's much more pretty than I am, but she's lovely. Oh, and the rumor is that some people who don't like J.D. Vance are like, maybe he's not going to run for president in 2028 because he'll use the family as an excuse. The poll numbers are so bad. Yeah, and then she shows up on the plane. Yeah, no. Yeah, no. He's running. People come. Yeah. And besides, the baby's going to be like two, two and a half at that point, so yeah, we're good.

But he went into Budapest and... He was there for several reasons, it seems. The primary reason being Victor Orban is facing re-election in April, I believe, or wait, it is April, in May. Sorry, next month. It's not March anymore. In May, Victor Orban's up for re-election. He was there to boost Victor Orban's profile.

Trump called in live to one of the rallies, and the crowd went wild. Trump made some nice comments about... ...about the Hungarian people, and it was very lovely. But people were also commenting that a lot of negotiation was going on, or is going on, in Budapest, because Viktor Orban is one of the few figures in Europe who still has the ability to call Putin on the phone and talk about Iran and talk about oil. He's one of the few leaders whose call Putin will take.

And so, again, rumblings there of possible... Making a forcing function on Ukrainian peace deal as well. So, we will see. But, again, J.D. That would be lovely. We would hope something on that. Yeah, could we end two wars this spring? I would totally be. I just feel like it is probably not going to happen. I think war is seen as beneficial to Putin. He thinks it is working for him.

Yeah, and he's made comments that this is a forever war, and the way that they've mobilized their economy, it appears that he would rather just keep fighting. But J.D. Vance had a really profound comment here, I don't know if we can pull that up, Celine, about why we want to fight with the Europeans, why we want to be on the same side.

We just celebrated Easter, of course, all of us. And for 2,000 years, our civilization has been shaped above all and beyond all by the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ. Beautiful. I love it. We can all get behind that little Easter message. And then we had this as well.

There are so many ways in which the United States and Hungary have been great economic partners, and that partnership has really accelerated over the past couple of years under President Trump's leadership. But, ladies and gentlemen, I'm not here primarily, Victor, because of the economic cooperation between our countries. I'm here because of the moral cooperation between our two countries, because what the United States and Hungary together represent under Victor's leadership and under President Trump's leadership… Is the defense of Western civilization, the defense of the idea that children should be able to go to school and get educated and not indoctrinated, the defense of the idea that European and American families should be able to transport themselves and be able to afford to heat and cool their homes, the defense of the idea that we are founded on a certain Christian civilization and Christian values that animate everything from freedom of speech to rule of law to respect Respect for minority rights and protection of the vulnerable.

There is so much that unites the United States and Hungary. And unfortunately, there have been too few people who have been willing to stand up for the values of Western civilization. Victor Orban is the rare exception that has unfortunately proved the rule. That's one of the reasons why I'm here.

Awesome. Yeah, I mean, and obviously, we owe our credit to Athens and Jerusalem, but I just like the fact that you just mentioned Christian civilization, especially in the Wake Easter, because it's like, you know, Europe is Christian, and it was.

For well over a thousand years, and we would like to return to that. That'd be great, and Hungary is a critical component in that, as well as Poland, and so I hope that those two countries can become, you know, leaders. I mean, it's funny, like, just within a few years, Poland, their economy will be greater than the United Kingdom. Right. It's just astounding. Yeah, the UK is going down toward the third world status, and Poland's rising, and the Prime Minister, actually, or President, the President gave a speech over the weekend as well, and said, it's because we closed our borders.

It's because we're enforcing our laws. And he's like, we won't need help from Europe anymore, because we will be leading Europe in the years to come, and I think he's absolutely right. And, you know, last week we had a lot of, you know, more talk about leaving NATO, destroying NATO, ending our relations with Europe, and this is all coming, this is like, you know, top kind of surface level bluster, I do believe.

But also concerning, because Europe is our, in addition, while economically and in terms of defense, we've been give, give, give, give, give to them since the post-war period. Yeah, we've been underwriting and supporting their welfare state. Right. We also receive, though, it's also of benefit for us to be aligned with nations that share the same civilizational convictions. And whether Europe does or not anymore...

That's up for debate, although with the Easter conversions, it seems like maybe there's some kind of recovery going on there, maybe small, but hopeful. But it would be interesting. We want to be friends with them. Could you imagine if Victor Orban and J.D. Vance, they got together with Poland, Hungary, United States, and- Georgia Maloney.

Maybe, although she's getting a little squishy on immigration recently. And then also, was it El Salvador, the guy in the... Oh, yeah, the Kelly. Yeah, and just kind of like do an association or alliance of countries that say, hey, we think the world is best served, and Japan, by upholding certain basic truths. Like, I want Japan to be for the Japanese people and to have Japanese culture. And I want the government of Japan to focus on Japanese citizens first and foremost, and I'm not offended by that.

I think that makes them stronger, and that makes them a better partner for us. I want Hungary to be for the Hungarian people. I don't want a million people from the Middle East that go into that country and take it over. I want Poland to be for the Polish culture, and that Polish customs and traditions. I want Poland to be for Poland. When you think of what it means to be Irish, or what it means to be Italian, or what it means to be Spanish, I want those countries to be strong in their identity.

I don't want them to be overrun by people who are just happy to be there. Yeah. I'm sorry. No, that's not. Yeah, it's like almost an alternative, a new birth of a new kind of United Nations. Not United Nations, which was like post-war consensus, we're all going to be the same. United Nations, which just declined. The lines of proud peoples. Yeah, exactly. The lines of proud peoples. I like, take back pride. Take back the good kind. A little piety. Piety. Patriotism.

I love it. Okay, one note on patriotism here. We did have, I can't let this, I can't leave the Middle East without mentioning that over the weekend, we had not only what could have been the greatest disaster of the Iran conflict, but also the greatest military rescue of the entire conflict, if not of the last. 60 years, maybe since Vietnam. There was a pretty dramatic rescue in Vietnam. But anyway, dramatic rescue operation unfolded in Iran over the weekend, Easter Sunday. We saw the news that a U.S.

Air Force fighter jet had been shot down over Iran itself. It was an F-15E Strike Eagle, and it went down over southwestern Iran near the mountainous country. And both crew members successfully ejected. The pilot was not badly hurt, and he was rescued almost immediately, but the second airman, a weapons system officer, he was very badly injured and separated from the pilot, so he actually treated his own wounds, crawled away from the wreckage, got himself into the Zagros mountain range, scaled a cliff, God is great, or God is good.

And then we said, we got you. Hang tight. And as the Iranians are putting out bounties on him, crawling through the mountain range trying to find him, we launched this spectacular No Man Left Behind campaign. This will be a movie very shortly. No question. This was... I mean, it already was. It already was. Did you see the Lego movie?

From Bosnia, Owen Wilson and Gene Hackman. I mean, it's basically... Oh, that's true. It was the Owen Wilson movie. Owen Wilson was miscast, I think. But anyway, it was a real-life rescue, and yeah, just incredible. I mean, they set up a place to land, and they land the plane, they get the guy, they get him out, they leave, then they bomb the place that they set up to land the plane. Yeah, so the Iranians can't get the equipment. But not only that, so they set up a landing place, they land the plane.

They get out, they assemble these little bird helicopters that, you know, you'd think these would take three weeks to build in a factory, but they assemble them in a matter of hours, if not minutes, and then they get the helicopters up into the mountains, get the guy, get him back, bomb everything, and they're out, and he is safe and sound back with his American troops. So, wow, just another demonstration that the American military... I mean, and like, leave no man behind, right?

That is... So different than what happened in Tehran in 1979 when they took over our embassy. I mean, incredible. Yeah. Which, by the way, by the whole thing, I love that movie, Argo. Did you ever see that? No, I haven't seen Argo. Oh, I mean, there's a lot of people who hate on Ben Affleck, but I love this movie.

It's kind of a funny farce, but it's like based on a real true story that these guys set up a whole fake Hollywood movie that they're going to do to try to go in and do Into Iran, and look at sets, or whatever, and the whole idea was to smuggle out our Americans, because there were six Americans who were not actually at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, they were at the Canadian Embassy.

And they're like, uh-oh, we don't want to go back, because obviously they just took over the embassy, and so they called Ottawa, and Ottawa called Washington, and like, we've got like six people here, five, six people here, who are Americans. What do you want us to do? And it's like, do we make fake passports? But then they already know, you know, it's a fun movie. I love the movie, so you should watch it. Right. Argo. Check it out. A-R-G-O. It was fun.

Argo. All right. Argo Ben Affleck. That would be a blast from the past, for sure. All right, so... Moving on, before we get into the domestic news, we have a big event coming up on June 13th, the Feast of the Sacred Heart. We will be in Wisconsin at Cardinal Burke's Shrine, Our Lady of Guadalupe Shrine in La Crosse, Wisconsin. That's going to be Saturday, June 13th. Actually, it's the Feast of the Immaculate Heart. We're going to be praying for our country, America 250, but there are also going to be amazing speakers and...

Your Lubecast team will be there. We want to see you there. So, tickets are on sale now. Seats are limited, but if you wanted to spend the weekend in beautiful La Crosse, Wisconsin, cool off a little bit. If you're from the South or the Southeast, you really want to be in Wisconsin in June, not where you live. So, come join us. It's going to be an amazing day. A little cooler. I'll say this. La Crosse, Wisconsin is where my father was born.

Beautiful town. Beautiful area that is right on the Mississippi River, and a lot of the Midwest is kind of flat. But that is not the case in La Crosse. You have got rolling hills and these big bluffs, and it is geologically very different because of the way the ice, you know, the glaciers melted. They did not rough up this area as much, and so it is really striking in its beauty. And Cardinal Burke, when he was the Bishop of La Crosse, began work on building this beautiful shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe just south of town, and I have been there.

It's gorgeous. My kids love it. I can't wait to go back. Absolutely got to check out the shrine. I can't wait. It's nestled in the woods, and you climb up the hill. I mean, it's amazing. Yeah. No one says, oh, this sucks. It's awesome. You got to come check it out. And then, like Erika said, we got some good... Are we allowed to announce some of the speakers yet? I don't even know. Yeah, we have a couple that we can announce.

They're on the website, but we can announce that we will be having... Michael Knowles will be there. Which is really exciting. Not as exciting as Cardinal Burke himself, who will also be there. Hey, both. Sorry, Michael. They're both giving it away.

And we've got Kelsey Reinhart, obviously, from CatholicVote. She is an amazing woman to meet. Highly recommend. And she took down the house when she spoke at SEEK earlier. Oh, at SEEK, yeah. The young people love her, but also all of us love her. And then we have a Baltimore Ravens senior offensive.

Assistant coach Joe Lombardi will be there. Now, why is that a big deal, Erika? Do you know? No, because I am football illiterate. Tell me. Ah, that's why I'm here. All right. I'm here for you. So, I grew up, my dad grew up in lacrosse. He's a Wisconsin guy. I grew up in Minnesota. I'm a Minnesota Vikings fan. My dad grew up as a Packer fan, but when he crossed the river, he became a Vikings fan. God bless him. But, in Wisconsin.

Everyone in Wisconsin is massive Green Bay Packer fans, and I still love them despite that, but the legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers in the 60s was a man named Vince Lombardi. Good Catholic man, solid guy, knew how to win, and he was just a great American. This coach that we're bringing from Baltimore Ravens is his grandson.

Mm-hmm. And so, he's going to, I think, obviously speak about his grandfather and how much of an impact he had on his life, but then also on the lives of so many people in Wisconsin who just revere Vince Lombardi so much. And so, this will be really kind of exciting for people in Wisconsin to hear about this guy. So, that's kind of cool. I mean, Americans love football, and it'll be kind of cool to hear that story. I think a lot of us will be able to get lessons from that anyway as well.

That's awesome. Yeah, it's going to be a great day. Ticket sales, like I said, are live, so please be sure to go to the website and make your travel plans. We really hope to see you all there. So, with that being said, we had a good jobs report for the month of March come out, and the numbers were...

Of far exceeding expectations. So, the expectation was we were going to add about $60,000, which would have been good, but the report says we had $178,000 gain. Well, $60,000 would have been meh. Meh. I mean, not that well compared to February, which was a loss. Yeah. So, February was a loss. $60,000 would have been an improvement, but $178,000 was a pretty impressive gain. The unemployment rate. Went down very slightly by a tenth of a point, and the biggest gains were in the healthcare industry.

Again, we'd like to diversify a little bit, but this is expected. So, healthcare saw the largest gains adding 90,000 jobs, leisure and hospitality, and 44,000 construction jobs were actually up significantly at 26,000, and manufacturing, so 15,000. All of those are good, healthy jobs. Indicators that we're seeing growth in the economy. And yeah, they're not like high-end jobs, too. Finance was actually down in terms of its job numbers. So, yeah. That's information. Who knows? But the left always says, Americans, we don't invest enough in education and in healthcare.

And it's like, actually, I don't know. Looks like 76,000 new jobs in healthcare. That means we're... Investing more in healthcare. So, maybe that is a good thing. Why is it bad? We are trying to make all of us healthier. Now, if they are just people pushing stuff, some of that you need, obviously, but I like to challenge the level. Oh, we don't invest enough in healthcare.

It sounds like we're investing a lot, actually. Yeah, well, you'll love this. Look, what did we spend our money on? They complain about the military. It's like, dude, the military is dwarfed by how much the U.S. federal government spends on health care. Are you kidding me?

Yeah. Yeah, people were tearing their hair out about the request for the defense budget to go up, and I was like, you know, I think I'd actually like it if we spent more on defense. Of course, we have to cut some other places, like the welfare state, but we have cut a few places. So, another part of the jobs report was that the federal government Lost 18,000 jobs. You might say job loss is bad. Not this kind, because those are salaries you are no longer paying with your taxes, and those are people now entering the public.

Look at that. That is the federal government jobs. They are just... Crashing. This is the lowest they have been, at least since 2007, if not before that. Wow. And so, yeah, that's actually... 2007 was the immediate aftermath of, not immediate aftermath, but the ramping up of the, you know, Department of Homeland Security was a big ramp up from 2002 to 2007, for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. So, a good jobs report, solid for the Trump administration, and hey, if those gas prices can come down, we'll take it. We'll take it. Meanwhile, in Virginia, Josh, I'm going to let you explain what is Abigail Spanberger doing. I'll just sort of like toss you the softball, though. So, the headline was, Abigail Spanberger, governor of Virginia, Democrat, newly sworn in, has the worst approval rating of any Virginia governor. No matter what party. At this time in their tenure. Right.

At this time in their tenure, since the mid-1990s. Where did she go wrong? She has only been in office for three months. What happened is, she campaigned as a moderate, of course, and then she is deciding to rule like a communist, so no surprise there. But what happened is, There's the ratcheting up of gerrymandering that's going on, and the Democrats like to say, we're just responding to Texas, but it started with New York. New York has got this whole latest round going, you know, when Kathy Hochul and the Democrats in Albany decided to try to maximize their opportunities mid-cycle, mid-district, mid-decade, and try to get more house seats, right?

And so, Texas' response to New York, and then California responds to Texas, and now Virginia. Virginia, the Democrats in Virginia, this is a state that You know, it went for Trump only about 45%, you know, to 55% for Kamala or whatever, eight or nine points, but it's not like 70-30, you know what I mean? It's not like it's Idaho or Vermont, you know what I mean? Like, they went way, seven to ten the other way. So, the Democrats in Virginia devised this strategy.

She gets into office, like, hey, we're going to push through redistricting, and we're going to make this state, which is like... If it were nine seats, you would expect five to be Democrats, four to be Republicans, right? That is about what the split would be.

Well, they said, we are going to go for a 10 to 1 map. We are going to take Fairfax County, which is a suburban county of Washington, D.C., and we are going to splice it in four different ways so that these rural areas are represented by Democrat voters in Fairfax County.

I mean, like, these districts, one of them looks like a lobster. Sounds like our sacred democracy in action. It's like, wait, you're about 53, 54, 55% of the population, and you're going to have 90% of the House seats, 91%, really? And it's like, this is like, whoa, this is way too far. And you have to remember.

Democrats in Virginia had convinced the voters just a few years back, hey, we want to have an independent commission draw these lines so that they're fair. And then what they've decided is, oh, well, we don't want them fair anymore. Now that we have the governor, we want to just maximize it. So, they were totally lying through their teeth. I mean, at least Republicans are like, we're pretty straightforward on this. We're trying to gain our advantage, you know, in Texas.

Like, there's a certain honesty, at least, there. Yeah. Virginians, Democrats are, like, trying to do this two ways. So, what happened? Poll numbers have suggested, actually, some Democratic voters are, like, not so hip with this power grab. And, in fact, there is a chance. That we could defeat this 10-to-1 proposal that's going to the voters, I think it's in September, this coming up, actually coming up soon, in May, I think. In May, yeah. So, we're trying to rally voters, we're sending out postcards in Virginia, we're trying to mobilize people against this power grab by the Democrats, and guess what?

What? The Washington Post. Wrote an editorial in which they said, the honeymoon ended quickly because Spanberger allowed herself to become the face of hyper-partisan power grab that she knew to be wrong. Whoa! The governor signed off on a proposed map that will give her party a 10-1 advantage in the state congressional delegation if voters approve an April 21 referendum. So, yeah, coming up in two weeks here. There are currently six Democrats and four Republicans, which is about a fair mix in this blue-leaning state, Washington Post gets at.

This has turned off independents and repulsed moderate Republicans who helped her win three competitive... Congressional races. Spanberger came off, comes across as a hypocrite, said the Washington Post, one of the characteristic voters most dislike about politicians. Commercials and mailers highlight her past support for the 2020 constitutional amendment she is now trying to unravel, and previous condemnations of the tactics she is now employing. So, wow. Washington Post, very liberal, and they are calling her to the carpet. That's great. Times, they are changing.

So, if you live in Virginia. Yeah, get out and vote. Don't forget to vote. Vote no on this program. Do not skip this one. All right, and go Catholic, vote for all your efforts there. Oh, my gosh. So, we also had another woman.

Deciding to join her husband on his campaign trail. Obviously, Gavin Newsom has not yet announced his candidacy for the presidency officially. Oh, this is going to be my twilight zone, yeah. Oh, no. Okay, we'll skip that. We'll wait until that. Okay, we'll wait until the twilight zone. Okay, other places where voters are doing our, you know, hopefully Virginia is a win, but where we seem to have had a win, Maine. The state of Maine has... Ended ranked choice voting? Josh, can you parse this for us?

So, what happened is there was an attempt to expand ranked choice voting because they have it in primaries in Maine, and the Constitution of Maine explicitly provides that someone who has a polarity of the vote, polarity is short of a majority, but you have the most number of votes. The Constitution of Maine allows for someone who has a polarity to be the winner, and so... It's basically against the Constitution to have ranked choice voting, because the Constitution explicitly allows polarity winners.

And so, there are attempts by the Democrats to try to expand ranked choice voting, not just to the, you know, to other additional elections, like state-run offices, like for governor and that kind of stuff, which we, the ranked choice voting in Maine is allowed for federal offices, like Senator and the House. That is how we got Collins, right? That is how they ended up with. Well, no, Collins, no, no, no, she got it all right, but you are thinking the Congressman, Jared Golden, who is actually.

Not running for re-election, she's a Democrat, got it that way. And then Murkowski in Alaska, she got elected through ranked choice vote, but she's similar to Collins in her voting patterns. But anyway, it's good to see that the Supreme Court said, no, no, no, the Constitution allows for this. You can't just expand it willy-nilly. And other states like Ohio and Indiana have put the kibosh and slammed the door on ranked choice voting, which I think is not the right way to go.

We're concerned that, you know, like the concerns that some people address with the current voting system, it's called first-past-the-post. That means whoever gets the most number of votes wins. Now, what that does is it basically creates a two-party system, because if you have additional parties, it tends to harm one of the two major parties. You split the vote, right? So, they adapt, so you basically get the two parties again. And some people don't like a two-party system, and look, that's fine if you don't want that, but the reality, the better way to handle that would be to have a runoff.

So, in Georgia, you could have, you know, the Democrat candidate, the Republican candidate, Libertarian, Natural Law, Green Party, all these guys running, and if you get, if the Republican candidate gets like 49% and the Democrat gets 42, Then, and then the other candidates get like 5% or 2% or whatever. The Republican does not win in that case. You actually have to win a majority of the votes in order to be elected. And so, what Georgia does is they take the top two, and they do a runoff like a month or so later, and voters have to decide which one of the two that they want, and so that any candidate then serving in elective office in Georgia then has a support of a majority of the voters.

That is the better way to do it. Ranked choice voting gets to be a real weird scheme, and I do not like it because it takes so long to get election results, whether it is the mayor of Minneapolis or some congressional race in Alaska, and a lot of the races in California, where it takes so long to get results, and it does, whether it is fair or not. It does increase voter suspicions in the election results, and so I just think get rid of rank choice voting, have a simple count the votes, get the votes in, and if you want to have a runoff, do it that way, like Georgia, Louisiana.

Fine, but don't do this ranked choice voting where you're calculating, oh, let's assign these votes to this and that. That's where you get chicanery. I don't like it. Yeah, and I think it's hard to overstate the importance of recovering voter confidence in the fairness of elections at this point. And that's been a bipartisan concern. You can't just blame the Republicans for that. You know, Hillary Clinton challenged the election of 2000 and 2016, so it goes both ways. I remember. No one else seems to.

Like, Hillary was the OG election denier, right? That's right. I don't know. Oh, gosh. Al Gore, too. He was an OG election denier. Again, let me say it. How dare these Republicans challenge the results of the 2020 election by casting their ballot against certifications? Like, Democrats voted, not all of them, certainly, but there were Democrats who voted in Congress against the certification of the 2004 election. Yeah. Yeah. So, are we not going to talk about that? Apparently not.

And then, Josh, you had this poll here that maybe everyone's been like, oh my gosh, the war in Iran is going to totally destroy all of our election chances. 2026 will be a bloodbath, but it seems like perhaps. And it could be. It could be. It could still be. That's still a possibility. Yep. But maybe there is a little bit of a light at the end of the tunnel here, so if you pull this up, let us just play this clip.

Yeah, Harry Enten is a pretty fair guy. He is at CNN. I mean, he is not a conservative by any means, but he is pretty fair with the facts. Let's just take a look at this. Net favorability, party ahead at this point, midterm of years with the GOP president. In 2018, Dems were up by 12. In 2006, on net favorability, which party would like more? Dems were ahead by 18. Republicans are actually ahead on net favorability at this point by five points.

So, Democrats are just simply put running behind their previous benchmarks, and they need to be running well ahead of them if they want to take back the United States Senate. Okay, so let's explain this. I think part of this isn't that Americans are so in love with the Republican Party. What this tells me is that the Democratic Party's brand is still in the toilet, and they've got a lot of work to do if they want to try to convince Americans, yeah, no, our biggest concerns aren't trans and kids.

We actually care about jobs. They've got a lot of work to do, and I don't believe them, so I'm not going to help you with that. So, I think their brand is in the toilet, and I don't think that Republicans are super stellar. It's just that Hey, compared to the options you got, it doesn't look so bad. We'll see if this holds. It's one poll. There's others that show. I mean, if you ask me, Josh, if you had to bet your entire House, you know, are Democrats going to win the House or are Republicans going to hold it?

I'm like, chances are. Based on historical trends and everything else, yeah, the Republicans will probably lose the House. I get that. But to lose the Senate is going to be a lot harder. Democrats have to win four seats because the Republicans have 53 senators, and if they lose three, they hold the Senate by that much because it's a 50-50 tie, and then Vice President Johnson can break that tie. So, he'll never leave Washington, really, or he'll campaign and call them back.

You've got to get your back for a vote. Well, Usha would like that. It makes for great campaigning. I've got to leave. I've got to go save the country. I've got to go vote. Yeah. But the fact is, if Democrats want to win four Senate races, they've got a really good shot at winning North Carolina.

They've got to hold on to Michigan. They can't lose Michigan, you know, so it's going to be a fight there, and there's a fight in New Hampshire, but they've got to win North Carolina. That's doable, but then you've got to win Ohio. Then you've got to win Iowa. Then you've got to win Alaska.

A lot of those states have become very red. I mean, Alaska has always been kind of red, but you would need the economy really to go in the tank. You need the war to explode and drag on and be very costly and unpopular. I am not saying that cannot happen.

You know, a month, as we've seen in politics, feels like a lifetime. So, we'll see how voters feel in November, but the economy is actually, those numbers are showing that it's not actually kind of improving. So, we'll see.

Yeah, we will see. We shall see, and I think it's important. I'm going to play this in my good news, but I think it's important to remember to keep these stories at the top of mind as well, because it's so easy when we're going through a war like this, and the talk is like, fracture's on the right, MAGA's falling apart, this is the end, we need to blow everything up, that there are other things happening in the country at the same time, and life does go on.

Not everyone is on Twitter. Thank God. We are, so you don't have to be. You're welcome. That's true. All right. So, a little bit of maybe a challenge here to the Trump administration happening over at the Supreme Court. Famously, we mentioned this last week, Trump was actually present for some of the oral arguments in Trump v. Barbara, which is the birthright citizenship case, in which a The ACLU, to all effects and purposes, the ACLU brought a lawsuit against the Trump administration for his executive order that ended birthright citizenship, saying the president does not have the power granted by the Constitution to make this law.

And so, according to analysis on SCOTUSblog over at National Review, I was reading around New York Times and also Daily Wire, the oral argument centered on whether, like we've said before, the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution allows the government to deny citizenship to children born in the U.S. to non-citizen parents, and this has become a massive issue in the United States. Although this was... You know, settled, or there's precedent in the Supreme Court from the 1890s, a case there in which birthright citizenship was upheld for the Chinese immigrant we can get into, in recent years because of the rise of illegal immigration and also birth tourism.

Can we pull up this news story from Turkey? These stories like this kept surfacing all last week, and actually some of them were brought up in the oral arguments as a reason why we need to reconsider. So, this was one. A hundred women from Turkey flew over to America, had their babies, and then signed up for Medicaid. So, not only did their children get birthright citizenship, but then the American taxpayer had to pay for the childbirth and the follow-up care. And yeah, this was on multiple outlets about this.

And we also have seen issues with Chinese, the Chinese government having dual citizenship. And then they raise them back in China. And they have all the rights of a United States citizen. So, again, the times they have changed in the last 130 years.

Yeah. Go ahead. No, I was going to say, I mean, you know, most prognosticators are like, oh, well, I mean, you know, even though there's six. Conservatives on the court really seems like only Alito and Thomas are going to agree with Trump, and that it's unlikely that there's going to be five votes to greenlight what Donald Trump has done to stop birthright citizenship.

But here's the thing. The Supreme Court loves to Pardon the verbiage here. Split the baby. They love to do that. And I have a feeling that they're going to try to come up with an, even, it seemed like in some of the oral arguments, even Elena Kagan was open to possibly curtailing a little bit of this. Maybe I feel like they could craft it, they're going to try to, their ruling, to basically be against, to allow that. The president to stop birth tourism, because that involves, you know, visas and flying into the country, that kind of stuff.

And somehow, their thought is, if someone's been in this country, even illegally, for... Let us say five, six, seven months, and at that point, gives birth to a baby, they might say, well, you have to give it citizenship at that point, but if someone just flies in from Beijing, or Ankara, or wherever, and gives birth, no, you do not have to give that person birthright citizenship. They are not really subject to our jurisdiction, because that is the key words in the 14th Amendment, subject to the jurisdiction thereof.

So, if somebody has been in the country illegally for seven, eight, nine months, or even a year or more, Elena Kagan and other moderates on the court might say, well, you know, we can't really say no. I mean, I would say no at all. Yeah, you can. It's rough to me. I'm with Alito and Thomas, like, forget it. No, we don't owe you anything. Like, no, I'm sorry. It's a magical carpet ride here.

But I wouldn't be surprised, actually, if the Supreme Court found a way to get rid of birth tourism while maintaining birthright citizenship for those who had been in the country for Right. Yeah, we'll see. I expect something along those lines as well. I think the Trump administration will lose, but will gain something. A half-win. Yeah, like a half-win, which at this point.

I will take a half win. Half a loaf is better than nothing at all. That's right. Half a bee, oh, no, that was a bad analogy. Okay, so moving on to our good news. We brought this up at the beginning, but here is my video evidence that we have an American Pope, because how does he celebrate Easter? By finding all the peeps he can in St. Peter's Square. Here he is in the Popemobile. And he, can we go to that? Yeah, we're good.

All right, and he sees there's these Americans. They have these boxes of peeps, and he's like, I'll take them, and then he's like, I'll take them all, and so they get all the boxes of peeps, and they give them to the Pope and the Pope won't be ill, but I mean, that is such a, do you think Bob from Chicago, like, grew up Easter morning? There were peeps, right? Like, that's how he grew up, too, whether you like him or not.

Yeah, candy of some kind. Yeah, I don't know how long, have peeps been around that long? Do you, did you have any fun Easter morning traditions, Josh? Do you? That your family does that you got to do this year? Oh, I mean, in my family, my grandma Charlene's caramel rolls. We can't have Easter without it. Oh, we need more than we made last year, and somehow we still eat them all. So, yeah. That's awesome. It's a family treat. We love it.

I love it. Yeah, when we get back from... The Easter vigil. We have to have cream puffs and eclairs and fruit salad. That's cream puffs, eclairs, fruit salad, and I might have had a little Baileys as well this year, but it was a glorious Easter vigil. So awesome. Wonderful year. I did. I loved the moment, too. On Holy Thursday, the Pope washed the feet of 13 priests of the Diocese of Rome, and that just touched my heart so much. It's the first time, I think, in Like, since we started tracking, the Pope's done it for 13 priests, and I just loved the honor given to them, but also recalling the last...

It's been a while since the previous Pope, that's right. Yeah, it's been a while. It's been a while, so wonderful return to tradition there. I loved it. Okay, but my other good news is we have gone farther from the earth. ...than ever before, we being four astronauts, three Americans, one Canadian, and I have been following the moon stuff. The Artemis II astronauts are going to be landing, hopefully weather permitting, at some point on Friday back here on Earth. So, mission is not yet accomplished until they're safely home with their loved ones here, but there have been just amazing photos.

Coming out of this mission, and let's see. Oh, here we have the Artemis II. Is this the Nutella? This is the Nutella, if you play. This is not the clip I intended to play. All right, but here we go.

Nice. It's beautiful. So, they traveled about a quarter of a million miles from the surface of the Earth. They swung around the moon using the moon's gravity. And, just beautiful. Pull up some of these pictures, Selene. Yeah, I actually had former astronaut Jim Lovell send a recording to those guys. Yeah, he was the former record holder, right? So, here we have just these amazing photos, video from the surface of the moon. We got a real sense of the color. There were some great shots of the Earth rising behind the moon from the astronaut's vantage point.

Just amazing. I think every little boy and girl, maybe, in America, just loving these moments. Yeah, there's the earth rising behind the moon. What I love about God's creation is that, of course, the sun is 400 times the size of the moon. But it is also 400 times further away, so that the sun and the moon appear to be the same size in the sky. And I think they did this intentionally to be at a time where there is a partial eclipse, right, on the photograph.

It is just amazing stuff. Yeah. I love it. So lovely. So, the next... Oh, yeah, and this was kind of cool, because realizing, listening to the commentary, that in the last 60 years, basically since the moon landings, which actually happened... Yes, Tom, you're not here to argue with me. So, since the moon landings, we've pretty much been confined to the Earth's orbit in terms of distance. So, this was a massive return to that progress that we've made. So, the next mission...

I mean, I'm 49 years old. I'm 49 years old, and we have never been on the moon a day I've been alive. Like, it was only during Nixon's presidency, you know, and then it was done. Yeah, it's kind of crazy. It's time to go. Yeah, Elon Musk was, like, living it up on Twitter. He was so excited.

We were never on the moon during the Roe v. Wade regime. Oh. Now we got rid of Roe, and now we're back. Okay. I never made that connection. This is really, that's actually really cool. It actually reminds me of a deep episode that's coming up, but more on that later. Next mission, Artemis 3, will be testing the Orion, the spacecraft's low Earth orbit docking procedures, together with SpaceX, Elon Musk, anticipating sender lunar landing craft to the moon, and that's targeted for 27 to 28, 2028.

So, hey, maybe we'll get our first Catholic president. Yeah, that's right. That's the goal. So, we'll see. Lots to go. All right, Josh. All right, well, in addition to all the other clips that you showed about J.D. Vance, you know, in Hunger or whatever, he had a really good quote here, and, you know, the term is blackpilling on the internet or whatever, but it's just generally good advice, I think, anyway. Like, I've had my critiques.

Of Trump, Vance, and I've had a lot of things I've liked about him, and I've praised him. And so, some people who have been upset about this thing going on in Iran. I just think this is good advice for everyone to pay attention to what he says here.

I mean, this institution was founded in 1996. It's far more influential than it was back then. But, I think a lot of people, this is particularly true in the United States of America, if they see something that the administration does they don't like, they say, oh, that's not what we voted for, we're going to check out of politics. No, no, no, no. That's the exact wrong response. If we do something you don't like, the response should be to get more involved, to make your voice heard, and to try to push things in the direction that you want them to be pushed.

Our civilization was not built overnight, it's not going to be saved overnight. And so, what I'd encourage you to do is stay involved, be patient, and don't let disappointment turn to checking out of the system entirely. There's way too much of that, I would say, in the Anglo system and the American system. There's way too much, you know, I didn't like this thing that the Vice President said, or I didn't like this thing that the President did, and I'm going to completely check out.

We call that black billing in the United States of America, and black billing is how you give power to the forces. They're trying to destroy what our ancestors built. We need to take power back from those people and build the kind of institutions that can actually save our societies. It will not happen overnight. It will not happen in the term of one prime minister or one president, but it will happen so long as we keep our faith in God and we work hard to achieve it.

That's what we have to do. Amen, brother. Awesome. Yeah, it's so, yeah, because it's, you watch the headlines, it's easy to give into cynicism and just be like, it's all hopeless, but, and I appreciated, too, in that comment how he acknowledged the friction, you know, by which civilizations are healed and restored and saved, or by which they're dragged down, that, like, look, he's not saying the Trump advance is going to save civilization on its own. It's not. There's going to be people who don't like what we do.

There's going to be people who love what we do, but the worst thing that could happen is that people just check out of the system entirely. That's when you open up to totalitarianism and tyranny, but it's the friction of people arguing with us, and we push back, and they push back, and we push back. And I think part of it is just this despair that we're just one mistake away from the whole thing unraveling, and it's like, no, no, no, no.

We are better positioned today than we were 10 years ago, than 20 years ago, to keep making improvements. There will be setbacks, but hey, this is not the time for quitters. Anyone could be a sunshine patriot. We need people who are willing to cross the Delaware and take out some like, come on, man. What did Benny Franklin say? It's a republic if you're willing to keep it. Let's go. I want to keep it. You got to fight. Let's do it. We do got to fight.

You know who's fighting. The Dominican nuns are fighting again. Why are they fighting? Because the state of New York came after them, again. So, Little Sisters of the Poor continue to be unraveled, and now we have the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, fun fact, named for Nathaniel Hawthorne's daughter, who started them. Literary reference. The state of New York has threatened to shut down the Ministry of the Dominican Sisters at Rosary Hill Home. And the ministry of similar. Members of their network, unless they violate their Catholic faith, what am I talking about?

So, New York State's LGBTQ Long-Term Care Facility Residence Bill of Rights, what an elegant name. That's a tongue twister. Let me do that again. The LGBTQ Long-Term Care Facility Residence Bill of Rights. There I go. Codified at New York Public Health Law. It requires long-term care facilities, like the Sisters Home for the Dying, to assign patients to rooms based on their stated gender identity rather than their biological sex. It requires the Sisters to use patients' preferred pronouns, even when the patient is not physically present.

To the person speaking of them, requires them to post notices affirming compliance with these requirements and ensure that all staff received, quote, cultural competency training, indoctrinating them in gender ideology. That's what the state says the sisters have to do, or they're going to be fined into oblivion, maybe lose their license. The sisters take care of dying cancer patients who are too poor to be cared for in other facilities. They literally are...

The last best hope, not only for these patients, but for the state of New York, which needs all the help it can get. So, the Catholic Benefits Association is helping. Their legal counsel is representing the sisters, and they've released several statements about this, including the copy that I just read.

But, I mean, I can't believe we're here again. Hasn't the Supreme Court settled this, Josh? Why are we back here? Well, I mean, again, this would be state law, so, I mean, you know, again, the other ones dealt with federal law, like, for example, the HHS mandate that the little sisters of the poor fought, but they also had to fight it in Pennsylvania because Governor Josh Shapiro has been on them for state law stuff, so it is, again, another fight, and part of it is, like, frustrating.

Even though we are doing this judicial reform, the Supreme Court could smack this stuff down a lot faster, and they allow it to fester and build before they finally do it, so years of lawfare. Which I find very frustrating and annoying. I also find annoying how many darn adjectives there are in that. New York, LGBTQ, long-term care facility residence bill of rights. Whew, that's a tongue twister. Yeah. By the way, when we had the HHS mandate, where they go after all these employers, and they decided on a definition of religious liberty that was so narrow.

That it only covered, basically, If you had a group of celibate priests only, like a bunch of monks or an order of priests that are like 30 or 40 of that. Right, who have no employees, basically, like who run their... No females at all, then it was covered. But if you had a group of religious sisters, it's like, oh, well, see, they're women, and therefore women need reproductive care, therefore the HHS mandate covers that. And allegedly, Vice President Joe Biden at the time was like...

It was cautioning Barack Obama, apparently, allegedly, not to go after, because then you go after religious nuns. That's, you know, why are you picking a state? The optics are not good. The optics are not good because Joe Biden had been elected.

For decades, on this whole, you know, wink and a nod, like, I'm pretending I'm Catholic, and I totally support the Democratic Party's left-wing social agenda on abortion and everything, but I got to pretend like I care about the rights, and I take my face seriously, and I got the ashes on my forehead on Ash Wednesday. But Barack Obama and the rise of these new secularists in the Democratic Party were like, no, abortion uber alice.

We need to make religious people bend the knee to the state and admit that, you know, no, there is no power greater than us, and their attack on religion continues, and it is good that these religious sisters in New York are fighting back. We at CatholicVote are also fighting back in another way. There is a teacher in Connecticut.

Who had a 12-inch crucifix on her personal desk area, where other people would have, like, pennants of the boss of Red Sox or whatever. Oh, crystals, like, symbols of all kinds of religions. It's your own private employee space, but they said, well, no, no, no, hold on, you got a crucifix there.

That's establishing a state religion. What? It wasn't like it was in the classroom, like, really big as you walk in, like it is in a Catholic school. This is a public school on her desk. Yeah. And they said, no, no, no, and they took her, even though they have a teacher shortage, they reassigned her, got her out of the classroom, and were like, this is ridiculous.

We signed off on a legal filing, front of the court brief on behalf of Marisol. We hope that she gets her job back and that the Second Circuit Court of Appeals will side with her and overturn a really stupid lower court ruling. And even if the Second Circuit doesn't do the right thing, The Supreme Court will. I am very confident that this Supreme Court is not perfect, but when it comes to the right of religious freedom of people, they have been actually quite outstanding.

So, I look forward to that. It is true, and I look forward to the sisters winning, too. Something that made it even worse was that the state of New York actually gave a religious exemption to the Church of Christ scientists, so Scientologists did not have to follow it, but they ruled that Catholics did. So, I mean, if this goes to SCOTUS, that alone is just going to be, I mean, what are we going to get, like 6-2? John Roberts will nuke it for more money.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, yeah, and I think it's important, too, because when we see these things happen, and they do happen in ordinary people's lives, like Marisol here in Connecticut, ordinary school teacher, these, you know, people in this cancer ward, this happens all over the place all the time. And it's... The stories that we end up hearing about are Christians and Catholics who are willing to challenge this and to go through, in many cases, hell, to go through these legal battles to protect the rights of all of us.

So, you know, huge shout out to Jacques Philippe out in Colorado, the Masterpiece Cake Shop guy. I forget the name of the graphic designer who did the weddings and would do these same-sex couples. And the woman who, the florist, you know, yeah. The florist in Washington. Yeah, and yeah, there are modern-day Joan of Arc, so... They want to make religious people a pariah in American society, and we've got to fight back. Yep. That's why a CatholicVote exists. That's right. Love it.

St. Fidelis is coming up, one of our patron saints. He's coming up in April, right? This month? April 24th? That's right. Yes, April 24th. So, we'll look forward to that. Also, speaking of the nuns, I have to just tease tomorrow's deep episode I am so excited about. The question is, where did America's nuns go? So, we talk about the 82% drop-off. Oh, yeah, the nuns on the bus. How did we get from St. Francis Xavier Cabrini to the nuns on the bus?

We go through all of that and the amazing turnaround that we're seeing in new communities and in some old communities. So, how did the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia survive the 60s and thrive? Like, what happened? So, I'm going to unpack all of that. That goes live tomorrow, 4 p.m., on The Deep. If you want to see lots of images of happy nuns, there's a lot of those, too, not just angry nuns. I am here for it. Looking forward to that.

Oh, it's going to be a really fun one. The kids are excited, too. All right. So, we have, all right, now we're going to our culture blocks. This is where it gets really fun. Sorry, Josh, this is like mommy corner culture block for you today. I love moms. You live with a mom? Yeah. I do, yeah. Moms are great. Go Lori Mercy, shout out.

Okay, so over the weekend, Twitter, which again, we watch so you don't have to, but it's fun for you to know about these blowups. We had a couple of events happening. There was a panel hosted by top moms in D.C., Emma Waters, who's awesome, out of Heritage. She hosted this panel, and Carolyn Leavitt was talking about, she's expecting her second baby in May, so she's very visibly pregnant, press secretary for the White House, and she said, you can, in terms of being a mom and having a career, you can and you should do both, because actually...

Being a mom and having a family and having a job, it gives you the greatest perspective. And she very eloquently, of course, because she's a press secretary, went on to talk about how being a mom helps her to not get all caught up in the weeds of world events and to be really on it with her job. So, she's very much a have-it-all conservative mom.

The Leonine Institute, which is a… How would you describe the Leonides? Like a conservative think tank? They kind of like think about things? Yeah. They came out, and they posed a picture of Carolyn Lovett. Her baby is there drinking out of his bottle. She's on the computer, clearly in the White House, and it says, conservative feminism tells you that you can have two full-time jobs simultaneously.

Most people are sensible enough to realize that one of these jobs will get inadequate attention. You can be a great mom and a model employee, but not at the same time. I mean, I agree with a lot of what they're saying here. Okay, this is a Catholic group.

I do agree with a lot of it. Particularly in the case of Carolyn Lovett, who I think has done an outstanding job, and I'm not saying that she can't do a good job with her parenting of her kids, but the job of press secretary for the President of the United States is an exhausting job, both in the stress of it and the quantity of time that you work in it. So, of anyone trying to have it all, it's not like her children...

Very smart, lovely, gorgeous woman. Very talented. I'm a big fan, but it's not like she's 40. And her kids are, let's say, teenagers, and she helps them get out the door for breakfast, and then she goes on to work her day. She's expecting her second, and her first is not that old. I mean, within the last two years or whatever. So, that is a time where it's one thing if she has a job where she telecommutes. I'm not against women, per se, working.

Oh, good, because I'm here. Well, obviously, I hired you, right? Okay, but the point is, like, we oftentimes, when we get into debates like this, we get very polarizing, and we feel like there's got to be, like, sort of, like, these extremes, and I don't actually believe it has to be that way. I'm just saying, her particular circumstance is not actually, I mean, I think it's easy to say, I don't know if this is going to be great. How much longer can you do this?

You know, like, once the second baby is born, and you've got a, you know, an... Infant, and you have like a 24-month-old. I mean, that gets to be very hard to try to do that while doing a very stressful job that is, you're having to fly with the president. It's a lot to ask of one person to do, and I do think she's setting herself up for, you know, a not optimal situation. That's all I'm trying to say.

Yeah, obviously, like any individual story, like Carolyn Love, I don't know the, we don't know the details, like, does she have a full-time nanny who's in the office with her and her babies are there? We don't know a lot of these details, but I think the broader question is, there's, the online debate seems to.

Just sort of whiplash between two extremes, right? And one was like girl boss all day long, and then the other was trad wife, right? And by trad wife, I mean like the stereotype where you're home. Of 50s, where she doesn't work at all, right? Right. Quiverful, like it's just sourdough all day. That's the other extreme.

Not that that's bad, per se, but it doesn't work for every family. That's the whole point I'm trying to say. Yeah, and I think like the... The... The principle that you then have to apply to your individual situation is that however a mom works, if she works outside the home or she doesn't work outside the home, whatever that choice is, it has to be able to fit around mothering, especially in, I think, the early years of a child's life are pivotal, and all the studies suggest that the kids don't want quality time with mom.

They want quantity time with mom, especially When they're in those very young stages, especially the first year to two years where physically... Our bodies are designed to be nourishing our baby, and so it can't be the other way around where we fit our motherhood and our female fertility and parenting into this job structure, and we try to make it all work.

And so, I think that, and I didn't say she doesn't work at all. I see you in the chat. I said work outside the home or not. Working in the home is, yes, completely agree. Very laborious. So, there's different ways of working. And there's different ways in which women can provide for their family. Obviously, there's the savings that they can do, like by preparing meals.

You are not door dashing it. You are doing that, and you are being efficient with things. Shopping sales, planning. Right, that kind of stuff can be done. But it is also, like some people who are a little bit more conservative or traditional, just so you know, it is not uncommon for a woman to find some way to try to add to the bottom line, whether it is growing a garden, whether it is getting a job. What is nice about the technology now is that you can...

Be kind of flexible. You can still provide some value to the workforce, not having to leave the home and stay with the kids. But I thought this comment by Katie Faust, a good friend of ours who you interviewed before. She is with the group Them Before Us. I don't think she is Catholic, but she is a very wise woman. I can't remember her religious background, but she made the point that a woman's career needs to fit around her kids, not the other way around.

She started right from the beginning, and I agree with that. That being said, she said, there are so many ways that women can do this today. And as much as I wish every dad earned enough so that his wife could be a full-time mother, that is not the reality, especially for the exact young couples we are encouraging to have lots of babies.

And so, she makes the point where there are ways to flex, whether, you know, okay, can grandma come by a couple times a week and watch the kids part-time so that mom can, you know, work on some other additional work, or maybe when the kids go to bed or whatever. And so, I thought Katie had a pretty good balanced approach to this that made a lot of sense. Yeah, and I liked, too, that she pointed out that women who have jobs outside the home aren't necessarily trying to boss babe it.

She's like, they're not trying to boss babe. They're taking advantage of the new economy that offers a lot more flexibility than the nine-to-five working girl confines of the past, and that is so true. I mean, I am so blessed with this work here that it's very project-based. I get to work from home. There are definitely sacrifices that the kids make, but they can be part. ...of those sacrifices, not just like putting them away in another institution while I'm fulfilling my responsibilities to CatholicVote and zeal.

And so, I appreciated her response a lot that, look, when it comes to these highly personal decisions, it's... It's really important to realize there's a few non-negotiable principles, but at the same time, we have to admit that with our new world and the new economy, so many more things are possible. It's not a black and white both ends, like you either do or you don't, working outside the home.

I just wish people, as they discuss this with other people... Be a little bit nimble and humble, and don't wag the finger so much, and just gently suggest, if you're just doing this as Katie says. For a three-car garage to maintain some sort of lavish lifestyle, that's not good. But if you're doing it to help the family, if you put the family first, if it's done sacrificially so that you can make sure that maybe the dad is going through law school part-time or whatever, or you're trying to get by on a minister's salary or whatever, I get it.

Those are things where you're saving up for house. If it's done in pursuit, this is my big thing, is to get... Husbands and wives, to understand the family as An organism, an entity, a reality that you are sacrificing on behalf of, and you're at service to it, and the kids play a part of it, you play a part of it, your spouse plays a part of it, and God is welcome into that conversation, critically, obviously. Yeah, and I think, too, another point, obviously, like your primary, to God, to your family, in conversation with your husband and your support system.

But also that for some women working in some capacity, like I get to do this work with CatholicVote, which is awesome, and it's actually… You have an intellectual fulfillment there that is important for women, and there's obviously seasons where the kids need you more physically, and so it's harder to do brain work or writing or something like that, but then there's other seasons of life where if you have a talent for something and you are just good at it, then being able to use that talent.

I think of friends of mine who are nurses who, now that their kids are small, they're working just maybe one... Night shift a week here in Connecticut, and then as the kids get older, maybe they'll go back and work more, but they have a real gift for Bedside Manor, and they bless other people, and it blesses them to be able to serve in that way. So, there's also that. Add service to your country, add service to your family, and understanding the balance here.

Yeah, I think it's all about perspective and why you're doing it, and making sure you don't forget about... Your primary responsibilities. Yeah, yeah. Shout out to Katie Faust. She's great. You should go check out the interview with her about their work at Them Before Us. It's so necessary. We have a mail back, and this is actually a follow-up from last week, and I want to get Josh's take on this as well. So, last week, we talked about letting your kids play with neighborhood kids, and it came up, well, what if someone in the neighborhood has two mommies?

And that... sparked this. So, interestingly enough, this is from a mom in Indiana. At our Catholic school, we have a family with two moms. My friend's son came home from preschool and asked about the boy in his class, saying, where's Joey's daddy? My friend responded, he doesn't have a dad. He has two mommies. Her preschool son responded, mom, that's not possible. He has to have a daddy.

That's true. That's true. The kid is like, he's a little Thomist. A budding Thomist. She was concerned how she should respond because she knew that whatever she said, she wanted to be sure it aligned with the Catholic teaching. It turns out she's just gone through OCIA, so she's a very newbie neophyte Catholic this year. She wanted to be sure it aligned with church teaching. She also wanted to be loving and not over-explain to a child, so we're talking like four or five years old probably, who has no awareness of the birds and the bees.

Obviously understands natural law, and so her response, my response last week to a child who came to you and is like, my friend Joey has two mommies in the neighborhood, and I've used this before. Well, their mommies, the two women don't know about Jesus, so we should pray for them. And she says, well, actually, these mommies do know about Jesus. They are believers and followers, but are also lesbians and live in a union and have a child together. Similar to the wine-addicted mom showing up for Mass every week, or the couple living together before marriage showing up at Mass, or the porn addict showing up at Mass, everyone has their sin.

It just isn't as evident as others. So, this was a little... That's actually a good point. Yeah. How do you lovingly advise her to respond to her young child without over-explaining? I would just say, with regards to that analogy, you could probably hide an addiction to alcohol fairly well, although if it is on your breath, or you look disheveled, it is like, what is it with this guy? Pornography addiction could be easily hidden. It is not like in the old days where you had to go to the sketchy part of town and put it in a brown paper wrapper.

But the point is, you know, those are still sins, obviously, and if those people suffering from those kind of addictions should obviously go to confession and try to make right with God, and there are programs out there to help you deal with each of those addictions.

But you're right in the sense that, you know, a same-sex couple, do they recognize it as sinful? That is the open question. They may not. It is like the person who is obstinate. Like, oh, no, I have an addiction to alcoholism or whatever, or pornography, and I am not going to confess it, because I don't think there is anything wrong with that. That would be the equivalent.

You know, that's different. You know, where's the James Martin out there who's calling for, you know, hey, you should be able to be addicted to alcohol or pornography and still go to church, and like, the church should change. Like, what? That's basically what they suggest on this. You know, I don't know if that same-sex couple, you know, I presume they are.

Going to a different church, but they might even be going to a Catholic church, and the priest there doesn't know that they're a couple? I mean, or, you know, they're like, okay, I mean, or they don't care. Maybe the priest doesn't want to know, like, don't tell me. I would hate that to be the case, but you got to be capable of being kind of crazy when you confront them about stuff. Yeah. You know, but maybe they're in a church that is in alignment with their values, and they just prefer a Catholic school for the Making sure they have a better education?

Yeah. But the thing is... So, how would you respond to the child, though? So, what she's saying is, my explanation to my children in the neighborhood is that they don't know Jesus, and so they're confused about that every child needs a daddy, right? And so, we need to pray for them that they would come to know God, and that he would show them that they're... They needed, their child should have a daddy, right? Something like very simple like that for a small child.

Yeah, I mean, well, they go to church, so you can't use that. It's lamentable because it's hard to do this kind of a, you know, a catechesis for someone, a kid who's like six years old. You know, it gets tough, but I still feel like, you know, what you had said initially still makes sense to say, like, well, we truly do believe. As God had designed it, that every baby should be born to a mommy and a daddy. Obviously, that is always the goal that we try to aim for.

That is what is proper and right. We try to be nice to other people. We treat them with love. That child also should have a daddy, but it's not for us to shake our finger, and we don't say mean things, but we will pray for all of them. We'll pray for your friend. We'll pray for each of the...

For, I mean, we shouldn't have two mommies, but we're going to pray for them both anyway. Right. And hope that they have an understanding of what it is, but it's tough. I mean, I, you know, there's not necessarily an easy answer for this, but, you know, it is the kind of thing where.

I do think teachers and administrators at the school should be aware of, like, hey, by the way, this is becoming a prudential thing. How do we try to talk about this and address this, as well as the pastor? Because usually a school is assigned to a parish. Maybe it's not in this case. I don't know. Are they going to the Catholic parish? A parish priest should want to speak to the parents involved here and just say, hey, we want to let you know we have an understanding of the way God made all of us, that there are insights into human nature, and that it makes sense to be in a...

In a home where there's a mother and father, that's always the goal. Like, you know, and if tragically you lose one parent, that's unfortunate, but this is not the arrangement that leads to human flourishing. So, it is a tough one. It is, and I think that, you know, as these, in the last 15 years, these situations have become more and more common, and for, it would behoove Catholic parishes with... and nursery schools and daycares, where they're welcoming people from the broader community to offer counsel to Catholic parents.

If you're going to accept families that are all these different conglomerations of human relationships, you should also be offering to Catholic parents, like, why don't we get together and talk about how to talk to your small kids about these situations, and for pastors to really take the lead on this.

Because, and it's not to gossip, it's not to sit there and gossip about the families or anything like that, but to just sort of leave people to the wind is unfair and unchristian. So, like at the Vatican, they have like these signs where it says like, this is the appropriate attire. Oh yeah, like the dress code. As men and women enter into these sacred places, you know, this is not a gym. You should be dressed, you know, covering up, and for men and for women, it's not just like they're targeting just the women or something like that.

And it's not judgy. It's just like, this is how we look at it. This is why we feel the way that we do, and why we feel that this is the appropriate response. By the way, the church can do this for all sorts of different things, right? It could do for, in this case, it could do it for abortion. This is why we feel the way we do. This is why we feel, you know, pornography on your phone, whatever. This is why we feel like this is...

Not helpful. This is bad. This is not good for your soul. And by the way, this is why we feel like same-sex couples is not the right way to human flourishing, and we feel like children deserve to have a mother and a father. You know, having these...

When brochures are up, like, why does the church have this? That would be very helpful so that people could see this, they could pick it up, they could read it, and then they could go, well, Father, now what was the deal? I saw this, and can start these kind of conversations. I think that would be kind of a helpful way to kind of bring this about and to start some of these conversations. Yeah, and I think, like, a lot of the new Catholic media is doing a great job on this.

So, you know, like, Formed, for example, and Halo app is not catechetical, but it has that. Obviously, Zeal, we have a lot of conversations about stuff like this. A lot of podcasters, you know. Yeah, yeah, and there are. We do a job, Matt, Fred, but I feel like having it at a parish, or even in this case, a school. A local. Then you're reaching a larger audience. People go, oh, no, wait a minute. Why does the church, you know, like, who cares if I should be able to wear?

A tank top, or God's just happy in there. It's like, well, He is happy you're there, but He does want you to kind of dress up for the occasion, okay? There's a purpose to the way we order our bodies and the way we do things that we should, you know, do it this way. There's a better way, so. 100%, 100%. All right, but good news from the church over the weekend. I did just want to touch on this. We have amazing...

A revival, or is it more of a rebound in terms of adult conversions to the Catholic faith? We're getting some of the actual numbers, and it was a great weekend. It was fantastic. So, overall, U.S. Catholic Church experienced an estimated 38% increase in adult converts over the Easter weekend, driven by young men in their 20s, according to an analysis of data from 140. Of the nation's 175 diocese. So, we got a little bit of a wet blanket, marsh wiggle, puddle glum reading from the pillar.

They posted this graph at the beginning of, I think it was on Good Friday. So, we have this graph here, and they're showing how back in 2000, we actually had 174,000 adult converts. And that includes numbers of both coming into full communion with confirmation in First Eucharist and baptisms. So, really, really high in 2000. You see it just takes a nosedive heading down. So, this is after the scandals, right? We get this nosedive heading down till we hit a nadir in 2020, right after the McCarrick scandal during COVID, 71,000 converting.

And then you get the numbers starting to creep back up again, but The problem is this graph stops in 2024, which is now, last time I checked, two years ago. So, it's missing data from last year when we first saw the surge to the year after that. Now, if you flip back out to the show notes, Celine, and we're going to go down to Jonathan Liddle, great reporter.

He did a projection of what the graph would look like. Yeah, okay, there we go. Love it. Hey, good things come out of there. So, if you actually did what the numbers were expected to be over this past weekend, the graph would look more like this, where we're back up to 2010 numbers.

The rebound is happening, and it seems to be happening quickly. It could lead to a revival. Right now, it's a rebound. Right now, it's a rebound. Could be leading to a revival, but just wonderful pictures. I loved going on Twitter for the church corner this time because it was just pictures of young people receiving baptism and glowing and beaming. Huge group at the University of Notre Dame. Beautiful picture. Cincinnati. The Archdiocese of Cincinnati in Ohio, massive conversions. Boston. Now, I know you teased about Wet Blanket, but I actually...

I am thankful that The Pillar gave us a fuller picture. I do not want a false sense of hope. I do not want to, you know, oh, drink the Kool-Aid, everything is fine. So, I know we were just teasing about that, but actually, kudos to The Pillar for doing a very good deep dive on this. I think it was very helpful to the church. Yes, really awesome. And let us hope it keeps going up. Let us go, guys. Let us hope.

Let us do it. I love it. Bring more people in. Yes, seriously. Okay, we are... Rolling into the twilight zone. Josh, what do you have for us? Oh, boy. You know, Mrs. Gavin Newsom, what can we say about her? Aspiring First Lady of the United States?

Well, no. No, of course. She's not the First Lady of California. Right? She's like, what is it? Oh, partner. She's the first partner. First partner of California. I apologize. She's like, I don't know if America is ready for a first partner in the United States or not, so we'll see. My paper is showing, yeah. But I got to say. One of the biggest problems, I think, in American life today is what I call toxic empathy, and we have talked about this in the past.

Ali Beth Stuckey has written a really good book about this, and that there are a lot of affluent women in this country, white women, who feel, for whatever reason, very wrapped with guilt about the fact that they are living in a very prosperous country, that they have all the devices at their disposal.

They live a charmed life or whatever, but they're still angry and stressed and on all these antidepressants, and they have this really weird toxic empathy, and I just, I can't understand why it is, but they asked her, they did an interview with her, and she was talking about how she met these juveniles, you know, JV prisoners at Sam Quinton, and let's just roll the tape. This is amazing what she decides to share with. This audience, about her time talking with young men who were in prison.

I had to be very raw when we interviewed the young men who were juvenile offenders in San Quentin. I told them about my own loss, where I lost my older sister a few days before my seventh birthday, and I blamed myself for her death, and I share that.

Okay. She accidentally killed her sister with a golf cart. Ooh. Okay. All right. It's horrifying. Yeah, that is horrifying. I mean, if that had happened to me, I killed one of my siblings when I was like almost seven years old, I would be horrified to even talk about it. And so, talking about that, maybe it's courage, or maybe it's self-indulgence, whatever. I'll let you decide. Roll the tape.

Because they ultimately were accused of committing these violent crimes and sentenced for life, and I think it shocked them that this blonde lady who was interviewing them had a similar story, was perhaps in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But wasn't punished the way they were, because clearly it was an accident, but theirs was probably an accident too. So, anyway, I share that just because I guess, you know, I quite enjoy... Spending time with people, and being real, and unmasking, and showing them that it's safe to unmask themselves. Beautiful, beautiful. What in the world? This does not shake out. So, a six-year-old, seven-year-old girl that she was, driving a golf cart, and accidentally runs over her sibling, and the sibling dies.

Traumatic, horrifying. It's the kind of accident that it's senseless. I feel for her, honestly, because if that had happened to me, I mean, I don't know how to deal with it, and that would just be, oh, the pain of that would be so terrible, and you're going to compare it. To some 15-year-old kid who beat the snot out of an innocent person? Like, I'm sorry, they're not the same. It is an injustice to treat unequal things the same. You accidentally harming and killing your sister is a terrible, terrible tragedy.

It makes angels cry. It's sad. But when someone maims or even murders someone in cold blood, That is evil. Not the same. It is not the same. They are not in the same universe. And so, I find this disgusting, frankly. I find it crazy. And if I'm Vice President J.D. Vance, I'm like, keep talking, girl, because this stuff is politically toxic. What in the world are they drinking in California? Oh, my goodness. Yeah, just slack-jawed. I have no words for that.

It doesn't shake out well any way you interpret what she just said. I, yeah, there was another- She goes to visit a bunch of prisoners and makes the story about her. Yeah, not good. I think there was another round. She's making the rounds. There's all these, like, speech things of her, like, going around, and she had another one where she explained how they- They used non-gender specific pronouns and gave dolls to their son, and how now we have all these young men heading towards MAGA and the right, and so we need legislation to encourage tech companies to basically silence voices that are drawing young men to the right, and how horrified she was that her son knew who Andrew Tate was.

And I'm like, do you remember when Gavin Newsom interviewed Charlie Kirk just a month or so before he died, and so Charlie Kirk goes on the Gavin Newsom show, and Gavin's like, yeah, my son's a fan of yours, and I'm like, yeah, Abigail can't handle that. I just, yeah. I mean, I don't know. Kids look at you, Gavin, and their mom like that, and everything about you, white privilege, and if you're a man, you need to hate yourself, and it's like, yeah, no, sorry.

I don't want to sign up for that. Yeah, Dad. I'm good. Maybe he'll convert to Catholicism. That'd be awesome. Okay. I mean, Gavin calls himself Catholic. I know. Read our Gavin Newsom report for more information on that score. Yeah, really, really creepy stuff out of the Newsoms. Oh, my goodness. All right.

We have a really strange situation in the country right now. On the one hand, abortion mills are closing all over the country. Planned Parenthood healthcare facilities, to use the euphemism, are shutting down. So, we had news over the weekend of another facility closing in Washington State. We had the facility in Greensboro closing.

You know, this is, I think Planned Parenthood has closed 20% of its in-person clinics since the fall of Dobbs, and certainly since the Trump administration, for a time, turned off the spigot. Don't need to get into that right now. So, on the one hand, really, really good news that there are fewer facilities where women can go for in-person clinical surgical abortion.

And yet... And yet, we also, over the weekend, or actually it was Friday night... At the five o'clock Pacific time when no one's paying attention, Planned Parenthood quietly released its abortion numbers, its annual report. So, if you pull up that tweet there, the abortion numbers in the country, or this was for Planned Parenthood, but they were actually up.

By 32,000 abortions between 2024 report and the 2025 report. So, the first image is this year's numbers, and then the second image you see are last year's numbers, and there's that. I mean, you think of the human life wasted. We're looking at numbers like 434,450. Children's lives were ended by Planned Parenthood just in the last year. It boggles the mind.

Guttmacher followed up. So, Guttmacher is the research arm for Planned Parenthood. It followed up the report with analyses. So, just to give you a sense of where the pro-life movement's challenges are right now, nationally, good news, I guess, in 2024, we had over 154,000 mothers traveled across state lines to be able to obtain an abortion. So, going from a red state like Indiana into an abortion for all at any point state like Illinois. So, over 150,000 in 2024, that number was down to 142,000 last year, and you think, okay.

Yeah, so that's the part of it that's good, that it's going that way, yeah. Yeah, that that one's going down, but the way that Guttmacher explained this was the decline in travel out of state. And the decline in abortion facilities for Planned Parenthood. These coincide with a large increase in telehealth provision in these same states, from approximately 72,000 to 91,000, provided by clinicians residing in states with telehealth shield laws, like California and New York, and Connecticut, sadly. Taken together, these estimates suggest a substantial shift ...in the way people in states with total bans...

Abortion bans, restrictions, access abortion care, quote-unquote, with fewer people traveling out of state and more accessing care via telehealth, which is crazy, because mifepristone, the drug that is the first drug taken in a chemical abortion, it has an 11% adverse effect rate, which means that the, this is a shout-out to Ryan T. Anderson over at EPPC, their report studying the insurance claims based on hospital room visits. ...found that women who take mifepristone, 11% of them end up with some adverse effect that puts them in some kind of emergency room or emergency care, urgent care situation.

That is insane. And yet, the FDA, under the Trump administration... ...has still been delaying investigation into mifepristine and misoprostol, the abortion, chemical abortion regimen. It is beyond time, as we know that women are now using this more and more to end their pregnancy, to kill their babies. They're also killing themselves, and it's time for the federal government, for the MAHA movement, Make America Healthy Again movement, to step up and investigate this. I mean, Josh Hawley, God bless him, he has an act going through Congress right now.

Shout out to the USCCB. We criticize them a lot. They put out a statement in support of this act to end the FDA's... Totally wonky approval of Mifepristone, at least until further investigation. It would be nice also to get a video from the USCCB, though. Remember that nice video they did, Josh, about illegal immigrants and loving our neighbor? What if we did a video with the bishops about Mifepristone and chemical abortion? I'm going to call their press secretary.

They are reticent to do a video of a bunch of old men against abortion for the optics. I understand what you're saying, though. I understand. They do it for religious freedom. I'm glad that they did that about a decade ago. But yeah, I think that would be their only hesitation, not for lack of wanting it. They certainly all support it to a T.

That's true. That's true. So, it would be prudential judgment there. Yeah, not to end on a down note, but I think it's important to see where we're actually at in terms of pro-life efforts here in the country. Yeah. But like Vice President Vance said, don't blackpill. Keep working on it, and that's what we do. Tom McCluskey and all of us here at CatholicVote are pressing ahead on the administration and the different departments of this government to try to move forward and make positive directions.

Make sure we don't reinstate funding for Planned Parenthood on July 4th. Make sure that we move on this stuff like you just said with Maha. So, yeah, we've got to keep pushing ahead. Keep pushing ahead. Amen. Amen. Speaking of pushing ahead, we'll end in prayer for our country. Before we do, though, just a reminder, we have The Deep coming out tomorrow, What Happened to America's Nuns? You can find out with me tomorrow at 4 p.m. Eastern, so be sure you're subscribed here to the LOOPcast on YouTube.

You can get notified. We also have an incredible episode out of Forgotten USA on Zeal. Guys, this is about the beloved city of Steubenville, Ohio. This is my favorite thing on Zeal now. Yeah, Steubenville, amazing turnaround story, and this film on this episode of Forgotten USA, inspiring, gut-wrenching, it is why we did Zeal, was to bring this story to you. So, if you are not on Zeal, go and download it now. You can watch Forgotten USA for free over on the platform.

An amazing story of American resilience and Christian hope. So, check that out this Easter week. Perfect Easter story, right? Okay, so let us pray. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen. A sacred heart of Jesus, King of Heaven and Earth, I place today my nation, the United States of America, into your heart, pierced for love of us. On the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, I acknowledge that true liberty is your gift, and that our lasting homeland is the eternal Kingdom of Heaven.

Under the mantle of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of the Americas, and through the intercession of her Immaculate Heart, bless my homeland anew. Purify her from sin and guard her leaders in truth, justice, and peace so that she may safeguard all human life and respect the integrity of marriage and the family and honor the practice of religion. Reign in my home and in my nation. Draw every heart into communion with you that your truth, love, justice, mercy, and peace may triumph in America and throughout the world.

Amen. Saint Fidelis, pray for us. Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us. Saint Thomas More, pray for us. Alleluia. Happy Easter, and we will see you back here next Wednesday. Peace.