Trump U-Turn on Epstein Files, USCCB Speaks on Immigration, And Ford CEO Mechanic Controversy

And we're live. Welcome back to the LOOPcast. It's Tom, Erika, and Josh. The LOOPcast brought to you by The Loop, every American Catholic's favorite morning newsletter. Happy to be joining you guys this morning. We have a great show. Starting up top, we have a pretty big U-turn on the Epstein files. Again, may I add, from President Trump and this looming House vote coming up. And Josh, I want to hear a little bit about that kind of inside political baseball of whipping, getting the House to do what you want, getting the Senate to do what you want.

So, looking forward to hearing that. Secondly, we have The USCCB put out a statement on immigration. It was the first statement, I believe, since the 2000s from their collective group, and we got a quick response from Tom Holman, who is also Catholic, and we ourselves here actually wrote a report. I believe it is Immigration Enforcement and the Christian Conscience. Lots of good stuff to dig in there. We are going to go over all of that. They released the video, too, though, the bishops, not just the statement.

Yes, yeah. I got the video. Don't worry. We will be watching. And then finally, we have some interesting polling from Gallup on U.S. adults' religiosity. Indeed, some... It contradicts a little bit of what maybe you've been feeling anecdotally as a Catholic going around. We have a lot of encouraging news about conversions, et cetera, so I had Erika go through that for us. And, of course, we've got good news. We've got Twilight Zone. You know how we do it here.

So, we've got a great show. I say we get into it. Josh, did you have anything you'd like to get into before we go to the show? Well, really, really quickly, the worker, Daniela, happy birthday. Oh, yeah, she's the best. Happy birthday, Daniela. She is like a total ambassador for joy everywhere she goes. Greatest smile ever, and she works so hard. To help everyone else here at the CatholicVote team. So, Daniela, wish you a happy birthday. Well-deserved. She is probably a future saint.

If I had to do betting odds... Well, we don't really like and support gambling here so much, but between Kelsey and Daniela, it would be tough. Yeah, I did some digging into prop betting this weekend. Not good. Oh, prop betting? No, that would be the easiest way to solve. I'm like, what is prop betting? So, I was scrolling while they're all watching. Two things. It would be the easiest way to solve integrity issues in the sport, because I guess the Cleveland Guardians pitcher got popped on it, too, but you bet on individual performances giving...

Huge incentive to rig stuff. It would be very easy to do so. If you miss a shot, you miss a pitch, et cetera. And then the second thing is that will never happen because gambling companies make the most money off of prop bets because you can stack them as parlays, and they have, like, the lowest percentage of actually hitting. So, it will never happen, but that would be my quick solution. Like, hey, just get rid of prop bets. It would be easy.

It would be fast. And also, let's do something about the refs. That pass interference call was terrible. Okay, going on. Look, Linus didn't deserve to win. All right, we're not going to get into that. Okay, I distracted you, sorry. All right, all right, all right. Here we go. All right, Epstein it is. Yeah, we have a pretty big U-turn, and don't worry, I have the full history here. For those following, this has just become the Achilles heel, it feels like, of the Trump administration.

Ran on promising to release, and let me just start up by what is the Epstein files at this point? Like, what does that actually physically mean? Obviously, Jeffrey Epstein, a well-known sex trafficker, highly influential, very strange. A rise in terms of how he attained his money, his financier status. He was teaching at a boys' school in New York, math, and then all of a sudden, he becomes in charge of all this rich people's money. Clearly, ties to multiple intelligence agencies, Israel, the UK, the United States, et cetera.

So, what are these files that everyone's fighting over, releasing, not releasing? It refers to a collection of documents, emails, investigative materials, and other records held by the Justice Department. This is relating to Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking network. So, these include potential references to high-profile associates. There's been debate over whether a client list, quote-unquote, exists, but there's well-documented evidence of Jeffrey Epstein using cameras to document all of his misgivings. So, they would protect, say, what was going on with the victims for their privacy reasons, but the people who are taking advantage of them or who are using them, many that we know publicly were on these flight logs, really surprises me and many other Americans why you would protect those people.

Seems like a key promise. We don't know if the FBI files have the Epstein client list or not, but there's evidence of clients. Well, they told us that there was a list, and then Pam Bondi in July told us there is no list, and probably what it is is that what they're referring to there, and it's so much semantics, right, and equivocation, but probably what Pam Bondi is like, well, there's no list as in, here are 140 world leaders who were on my flights who trafficked with the girls.

And it's just like a list somewhere. But that being said, there are certainly many names in these documents and emails, which you just referred to all of the different kinds of documents that are in these files, that have the names of hundreds and hundreds. I mean, Epstein was a very well-connected man, probably.

There are, you know, hundreds, maybe if not thousands of individuals' names scattered throughout these documents that if you had all of them and you had all the time in the world through triangulation, you could come up with a list. The problem is that mixed in with all of these people who were committing criminal acts, you're also going to have people who, you know, he just brushed by, right? So, do you demand that the DOJ just...

Do you publish it all to the whole world, throw it out to the mob, and let the mob decide? Or are you going to drag down people who are innocent while you do that? So, that's part of it. I'm not apologizing for the Epstein list, but... Yeah, there's lots of very famous people who have gone to parties with Jeffrey Epstein who may or may not know what the guy did, or may or may not have gone to this island where said...

Horrible activities occurred with minors. So, we have people like Bill Gates, Donald Trump, and Bill Clinton. These are three very famous people who have all known Jeffrey Epstein and been to some of his parties or whatever, but that does not necessarily mean that there are flight logs for each of these people. So, again, just try to get through the data and get through the information and see what happens. Yeah, I think we're almost going to, you could get lost all day in hashing out all the specific information.

The basic problem is, is that Trump and Vance made a promise to the American people for transparency, and both Kash Patel and Dan Bongino made big names saying, we need to get what's on this list out to the public, we need to drain the swamp. I mean, if I go back to the timeline here, November 2024, they pledged they would release the Epstein files if elected. Framing it as part of training the swamp, Pam Bondi says on Fox News that she had a client list on her desk in February 21, 2025.

She's backtracked those statements. And then to me, the worst part of this was they did this hilarious binder release where they handed out binders to conservative influencers that included nothing that wasn't already known publicly, basically embarrassing everyone there and embarrassing themselves in the process. That was on February 27, 2025. So, but May 8th, 2025 is when we get this House task force on declassification. They send a letter to Bondi demanding full release, got no response. And the Department of Justice-FBI joint statement said that no client list was found, so they're kind of fighting back and forth at this point.

So, of course, now we get, I mean, I think this was inevitable, Thomas Massey and Ro Khanna introduce a bipartisan effort to force the House to vote on full release. Now, all of a sudden, this becomes a political problem if it wasn't already. Speaker Mike Johnson questions Bondi. Trump claims briefing showed no mention of him and accuses foes of fabricating lies.

Uh-oh, this is a problem because the Wall Street Journal reveals 2003 Epstein birthday book with Trump-signed card inside a nude woman's outline. Trump denies authorship, calls it fake, and sues the outlet. Again, we could fight over, you know, hashing out whether...

A lot of people defend, a lot of people don't, whatever the problem is, is that at this point, this problem could have been solved. Okay, so I just want to add a little thing to what you said earlier about the discharge petition. Okay, so what that means is that if you have any member of Congress in the House can start a discharge petition to do anything, to advance any legislation in the House.

But it oftentimes goes nowhere. What has to happen is, if you get a majority of the members of the House to sign off on the discharge petition, then it will eventually force a vote on whatever that topic is. And so, with only a four-seat majority for Republicans, if you lose four Republicans, then you lose that vote. And so, that is what, you know, Massey was already, right from the start, one Republican that wanted it to be forced, and of course, every Democrat is going to vote for it.

So, then it was just a question of, Over time, like tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, what could happen if we get to the part? Where a majority of the members of the House then would actually favor that. And that seemed what was happening over the weekend, because you get reports of Lauren Boebert being called into the White House to drop petition support, and then that leaked out, and now everyone's like, okay, they're panicking. They're calling in individuals into the Oval Office to be like, you better be against this, you better be against this.

And it seems like, and he lashed out at Thomas Massey and Marjorie Taylor Greene on social media, of course. At this point, and this is why I shared that political article, you get the U-turn. Trump himself puts out on True Social, House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files because we have nothing to hide. I don't care.

All I do care about is Republicans getting back on point on the economy, so basically reversing. So, my read on this, Josh, and correct me if I'm wrong, he saw the jailbreak coming and wants to be on the forefront of saying, no, no, no, just go for it. I was always in favor of that, because he couldn't control the House. He lost control over how people are going to vote. Is that what you see?

Well, what happened is he had, you know, it held on by like one vote, okay? And then, you had the House special election in Arizona, where the woman won the congressional seat held by her father, and that election got ratified and confirmed, but then the House was in recess for the last three or four weeks or whatever, and so Speaker Mike Johnson kind of held his powder on this and didn't swear her in. He's like, wow, the House is in recess anyway.

But as soon as she would be sworn in, then you would have the exact number of votes needed for this discharge petition to get final, and thus forcing a vote. So, Trump's only opportunity then, if he doesn't want this to get out, is to, like you say, convince somebody who had already signed off on it to change their mind. You know, you're not going to get Massey and empty, you know, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Trump have been at civil war for the last week.

That's not going to happen. So, if you can convince Lauren Boebert, hey, why don't you just change your mind and say, you know, this is a distraction, then you would still be short and the discharge petition wouldn't happen. Well, probably what happened is after Lauren Boebert's like, no, dude, I'm not going to change my mind. I can't. Then, it is the dais cast. You have the 216, 217, whatever votes necessary. Then, Trump is like, let us just flip the script. Let us just say, yeah, let us go for it.

Vote for it. Let us get it all out there. Now, my question is, why would he say that? Why would he, quote, not care if it got out there now? Well, obviously, you cannot stop it, but also, why did he campaign on releasing it? Well, maybe you are just going for anything you can to get a vote.

What would change his mind? What would have changed his mind from right before the election, promising, let us release it, let us release it, then to the spring, this spring being not wanting to release it, and the summer calling it a distraction?

And then now, like, okay, fine, whatever. Well, the last part makes sense. He can't stop it, so just say, fine, to heck with it. We're not going to be seen as obstructing. But the Democrats will say, oh, that's because he's guilty of sin. We got him dead of rights in all this material. I mean, of course, anything's possible. I suspect what really is happening, though.

He just thinks this is going to lead to months and months of people picking apart this and talking about this or that, and there might be somebody who does get embarrassed, who is a big donor, and he's like, what's the point of all this blowing up in everyone's faces?

I don't know. That's just my guess. That's my guess on his read on it. I don't know if that's right or not. Yeah, if that's the read, it just seems like a complete unforced error, and yeah, I'm looking at the chat, and people are like, I'm so over this. We need to get through this. We need to get over this. So, I think the biggest problem being that if, in fact, in November of 2024, the Trump campaign, they get Dan Bongino on board, they get all this excitement over, we're going to drain the swamp, we're going to drain the swamp, and then they They pull in the Epstein file release into that.

To a lot of people, this matters a lot, and that's just a fact, and if it was part of building the big tent to win the election. Again, look, the problem is this seeming, like, fracture between Trump's campaign promises, many of which he has kept, I mean, the border being one of the most important to me. But this is another one, on top of, like, the H-1B visas last week, on top of other walking back, the IDF stuff. My Epstein files, H-1B visas.

Right, like, yeah, Tom's personal Epstein files. Well, I mean, here's my question for you. Like, who's it going to satisfy? Right. I mean, I guess, you know... There's not going to be, like, the list of, here's what you say. I don't think it exists. 100 million people who went. I mean, so.

No, if I could, because people are, this is, I mean, people are so annoyed and over this at this point. To me, this is a necessary exercising of demons. Let's all just admit at this point, yes, this is a mistake. He should have just been forthcoming about it. It would have embarrassed maybe donors, is what you're saying, Josh. But this does accomplish, in my mind, the ability to move forward now. Like, people are never going to be able to move forward if this thing.

Was held under wraps or slow rolled out, and like, you even saw Democrats get a hold of emails through a whistleblower, and all of a sudden, they're putting those out there, and then you have to re-litigate again. Like, does this implicate Trump? Does it not? My only question, Tom, I'm with you, but like, you know, is it going to satisfy them? You know, because there's not going to be like a smoking gun list. Who's them? It satisfies me. Like, the problem, I think maybe the problem is, is that it's not about satisfying the other side.

That's always going to be after Trump. This hurt real people, a part of his base. Like, this was a betrayal. In my mind, who was a part of his base who voted for him, and it destroyed trust. And then, of course, what did that lead to? The overseas stuff, that was a problem to me. This leads to the H-1B stuff, that's a huge problem to me. So, it's just like, it was a domino effect. That was the first one to really fall, to really make people start looking at him poorly this summer.

Everyone saw this and was like, this is a problem. Not just the people that hate him, but also the people that supported him and wanted him to succeed. So, I see this as like, here's how I see this going. He's going to let the House vote on it. I don't see any reason why he wouldn't let the Senate vote on it. And then he gets to sign it on his desk and say, hey, I'm here for transparency. This is a huge win.

And then people forget about it, and the people forget about it, the people that hate him. Best case scenario. That's best case scenario. That's all I hope, because I'm like, let's put this behind us at this point, right? Like, just get it all out there, and then the people that are mad can at least say, well, he did the right thing in the end. And that's what's most important, right? Like, he made a mistake. I have been fairly consistent in saying that there is about 100 things more I care more about than this, but...

Right. And that's fine. That's you, Josh. I think we're talking about this morning. No one said I was normal. No one said you were normal. Absolutely. Okay, if we're ready now, I'd say we get on to some more hard tech. So, we had that USCCB statement, and Erika, I can play some of it. Yeah, I have some of it on YouTube. Why was this unusual? Why did this hit headlines? Yeah, so this came out from the USCCB meeting in Baltimore last week, where all the bishops get together and talk about various church things, and this was framed as a special statement, and what that means, all that means is that a two-thirds majority of bishops voted in favor of putting out this particular statement.

This doesn't happen very often, so it signals that this is sort of... A very important... ...issue to the collected together United States bishops. So, two-thirds majority, first time in 12 years that they've had any kind of special statement, and it had to do directly with immigration. No names were mentioned, no names were dropped, but it opens up by... I mean, with obviousness, though. I think we could guess. I mean, right?

So, I can listen to a sample, and it's a little bit long, so we can... Go for it. Let's do a little bit of sample of the video. Right now. As pastors, we, the bishops of the United States, are bound to our people by ties of communion and compassion in our Lord Jesus Christ.

And we are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement. We are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vivification of immigrants. We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care. We lament that some immigrants in the United States have arbitrarily lost their legal status. We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools.

We are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school. All when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones. Despite obstacles and prejudices, generations of immigrants have made enormous contributions to the well-being of our nation.

We, as Catholic bishops, love our country and pray for its peace and prosperity. For this very reason, we feel compelled now, in this environment, to raise our voices in defense of God-given human dignity. Catholic teaching exhorts nations to recognize the fundamental dignity of all persons, including immigrants.

We bishops advocate for a meaningful reform of our nation's immigration laws and procedures. Okay. First of all... Both sides of the political spectrum believe in the dignity of immigrants, except for, I suppose, Democrats who want the immigrants to come into this country and abort their children. That they want to do at taxpayer expense, but for the most part, this idea, do immigrants who come into this country legally or illegally have innate human dignity? Are they made in the image of God, the creator, and should we treat them with respect?

No one debates this. Right. This is not, I mean, stop. I mean, this is what frustrates me. It's like, Well, you know, we need to treat them with respect. We do treat someone with respect. If someone breaks into my house, that is a different story. If someone comes into our country illegally, then we might apprehend them, okay? But this idea, that is not in dispute. Both parties agree that people who come to this country, whether illegally or illegally, are human beings, that they have rights.

The question is... Do we have borders? Can we enforce those borders? Do we have laws? Is it illicit to do so? You know, and I think this statement really was, I think, very frustrating in that respect, because it's like, yes, of course, immigrants have contributed a lot to our country.

But Americans have been very frustrated that we had a situation on our southern border where people were coming into this country illegally for decades, and it was massively exasperated during the four horrible years of Joe Biden, who should have been impeached if for no other reason than simply his absolute crazy border policy. That alone was enough to remove him from office. It was absolute dereliction of duty.

So, to me, why not have the frustration with how the wide open border has created a vacuum where millions of people were being trafficked by coyotes into this country, going through the treacherous Darien Gap, and getting into this country to be exploited either through sex or labor. Why is that good? That is horrible.

So, I mean... Can I... Before I... I want to get Erika's sense on this. I saw this video, and I know, like, I'm supposed to care because it's the USCCB, I guess. I actually didn't have a huge issue with this. I look at the chat. I think, Josh, you nailed it. It was very tone-deaf, and I don't think it really addresses the legitimate frustrations and affronts the human dignity of Americans. No doubt. I think the tone-deafness, I think, speaks for itself.

But did they say anything in this, outside of it being tone deaf, that I fundamentally disagree with as a Catholic? Like, no. I disagree with the fact I do not think we're seeing a widespread vilification of immigrants. I don't think we're seeing that. I think there's some times where some things are said that are outside the bound. Hey, that's a little too far.

But it is not like the vast majority, I mean, why did Catholic voters support Trump and Vance in 2024? There are many reasons. One of which, though, was they wanted... Law and order and security on the southern border. There's no question about it. Immigration was one of the top three issues of this campaign, and it's one of the reasons why Catholics supported Donald Trump.

Let's look at the numbers. This just came out. I think you had this queued up there, the statistics of the number of people who are crossing through the Darien Gap. Like, the Darien Gap in Central America is this treacherous thing. It is a very dangerous thing to go through the Darien Gap, and we saw hundreds of thousands of people make this dangerous jury during Biden's years.

I have it on my Twitter page here. We have, you know, if you look at the numbers, in 2022, the number of illegal alien crossings at the Darien Gap was 248,000. That jumped to 520,000 in 2023. In 2024, it got to 300,000. This year, Less than 3,000. It's incredible. Right. It's a very dangerous thing to kind of go through this steering gap, and the people are realizing, wait a minute, there's not going to be a wide open border I can come into.

It's not worth the risk. I'm not going to make this very dangerous trek. That's good. That is a success. It is a good thing. Let's, Erika, before I get to Tom Helmuth's response, what do you think? Yeah, I think same with...

My biggest frustration with the video, other than totally tone-deaf, is that the bishops, once again, here, who participated in this, by trying to walk the fine line and be politic or something, and not naming any names, not naming any specific anything, and just being like, we sense there's more vilification. We have an indiscriminate mass deportation. We don't like indiscriminate mass deportation. I mean, Tom Holman would agree. We shouldn't have indiscriminate. Mass deportation. We should have discriminant mass deportation, right? But it just hurts their ability to be moral leaders at a time when the American church and the American order needs strong Catholic voices that actually say something.

And for me, I was just contrasting this with the last time they did a special statement where two-thirds of them agreed on something. It was in response to the Affordable Care Act. This is back in 2013, and they put out a strong statement on a specific policy coming out with Obamacare that was forcing people like the Little Sisters of the Poor to pay for contraception, and that's when the bishops can be effective. They were like, this specific law is contrary to religious freedom, was their big thing, and we will not, you know, kowtow to it.

We demand it's rescinded. So, that is the kind of case where the bishops can do that. But when it comes to these sort of like, we don't like, they don't like Trump. So, they're going to come out with this vague thing of like, we have this vilification. It doesn't point to any specific data. It doesn't point to any specific measure. It's just like Josh said, we all agree. We don't think immigrants or anyone should be treated without human dignity. It just doesn't say anything.

Well, I have to say, this is why we commissioned our own little report that we released here at CatholicVote. As Tom mentioned, you know, it... So, it's immigration enforcement of the Christian conscience, and I encourage everyone to go to CatholicVote.org. I think we specifically talk about, yes, in fact, we need to make sure all people, immigrants, whether they're legal or not, deserve dignity. But there's also an important thing that, when we come to rule of law and order, and that actually people who immigrate to a country also have an obligation, that the bonds of social order...

Are important, and that the lawmakers of a country have their primary responsibility to their own citizens, and they have to make sure that the laws that they're created, what frustrates me so much is that in modern life, we just think. America is just too opulent and way too rich, and therefore, how can you say no to a million people coming into this country? But it's like, well, hold on a second. There are literally a billion people who would be willing to come to the United States if you gave them and allowed them to.

And it's like, if you suddenly take a country with 330 million people and make it 1.3 billion people, you completely transform the entire country, and the economy shatters. So, I'm sorry. Just because people want to come here doesn't mean, and one of the things that we made in this report, my good friend Ben, Benjamin Mann, wrote this report. Okay, so let us say somebody is fleeing Venezuela, and it is a difficult situation going on there with the country there, and they are feeling like they are persecuted.

Why is it that the United States, just because the United States is that immigrant's first pick, why would they necessarily get there? First pick. Why wouldn't it be like, why don't you go to another country in South America or Central America? Why is it automatically the United States the first one? We take in, in sure numbers, the most number of people, refugees, than any other country in the world. Now, Canada and Germany take a higher percentage, but by raw numbers, we take the most.

And at some point, it is like, The United States has, over its time, said, hold on a second, we have taken in a lot of immigrants, but we are worried about social cohesion, we are worried about making sure we have an actual melting pot and a sound culture, and so let us kind of tap the brakes here on immigration. And what we are doing right now, there really isn't even a discussion about stopping illegal immigration. Restricting legal immigration, that's barely just being talked about.

What's talked about now in this 2024 election was, let's stop illegal immigration. Close the border. We don't really know if we can, and we don't really want to. We need to pass a new law. Nope. Turns out, we just needed a new president. Let me just say, again, and Tom Holman shot back, and I think... I can show Holman. It is what everyone thinks, right? It is what every American thinks about it. I will play the clip. It is like a minute long.

They said they get the countries to secure their borders, but they don't like these mass deportations. What is your message? So, according to them, the message they are going to send to the whole world is that if you cross the border illegally, which is a crime, don't worry about it.

If you get ordered to be moved by a federal judge after due process, don't worry about it, because there shouldn't be mass deportations. Is that the message we send the whole world? People are still going to put themselves in harm's way to come to the greatest man's family. They're going to spend their life savings to get to a criminal cartel. We saw during the Biden administration, when there was no immigration enforcement, over 4,000 Americans died in the war, and a quarter million Americans died in fentanyl in the war.

Secure borders save lives, and we said that's the trick to understand that. We have the right to secure our borders, and we have the right to secure their facilities. Yeah. You can't secure their facilities. As a matter of fact, the penalties for entering their facilities are much worse than ours. So, you know, by doing that, we're saving a lot of lives. So even borders save lives.

That's a little bit of a, you know, like some people call it a cheap shot, but it's like you can't do illegal entry into the Vatican City State. That's what he's getting at. And so, some super pro-immigration church voice is like, oh, it's a cheap shot. But the fact is, why is it that the U.S. bishops aren't really engaging the other questions that Tom Holman's addressing and raising, that there are a lot of people being exploited by these cartels to... They bring them up through the daring gap into the United States.

It is very dangerous. There is exploitation going on. It is bad. They burn the life savings. A lot of them get raped. This is bad news. By foreclosing that possibility, that is actually better, because thousands and thousands of people are not going to be spending a ton of money to cartels that are going to abuse them. That is a win. And then there is the fentanyl that is being smuggled in. There is a lot of this stuff.

So, why is it that, you know, like, you could say, you know, well, we think the Trump policy is a little bit too harsh, but at least acknowledge that there are good policies happening. I don't think that they're necessarily harsh, by the way, but at least just allow that progress has been made. Yeah, and again, just to emphasize, I want the bishops to be credible. I want them to have a strong moral voice. We need them to have that. But when they pick and choose which crises...

To, you know, elevate, like, I'm sure there have been mistakes. There have been mistakes. When it comes to ICE, there has been, you know, abuse. They've arrested the wrong people. They're not treating people well. Yes, this happens. This is what's happening. But when you only elevate that, and you don't acknowledge the full-blown crisis that ordinary Americans, like you said, Josh, ...have been suffering because of the result of that open border policy and culture. And when you're only attacking the Trump administration and failing to mention, oh, the cartels, and oh, the Chinese government, and oh, the Mexican government, and the failure for them on their end to close that border.

When you're picking and choosing like that, you lose credibility because people are like, what about... X, Y, Z. So, some people will say that they're not picking and choosing because they did criticize, for example, Biden, but the thing is, they didn't do a special video about Biden. No. No. You know, and his recklessness. It's been 12 years. Okay, wait, wait. They didn't do a video about the fact that a president who was Catholic supported.

Abortion. The most anti-Catholic president in the history of the United States. This is this embarrassing anti-ecumenical moment where people are like, well, why are they so up in arms about this, which seems like a policy that Trump's doing that, maybe it's not perfect, but it's doing some good.

Certainly what people voted for. Right. Biden policies on abortion and trans were only bad. I need to say what Kelsey had to say here, because I thought it was so good. It actually wraps up literally everything we're talking about. I keep thinking about this, because it is easy to get really angry after you see a statement like this. So, direct quote from Kelsey, President of CatholicVote. A faithful Catholic approach to immigration begins not with politics, but people. Compassion, hospitality, and solidarity with the poor.

...are not optional virtues. They are at the center of the gospel. Yet, mercy and justice travel together. One without the other distorts both. Welcoming the stranger and safeguarding one's own citizens are not contradictory, but complementary duties rooted in justice. Properly speaking, there is no such thing as an official Catholic position on the practical details of immigration policy. Exactly. Despite what church leaders in America have indicated, a faithful Catholic can support strong and humane immigration law enforcement. By means such as physical barriers, detention, and deportation without violating the teaching of the church.

And I think you haven't heard. Key cameo from our board, St. Thomas Aquinas, summed things up quite well on Matthew 5-7. That's his commentary on it, when he explained both the need for mercy and justice. Justice without mercy leads to cruelty, he wrote. Mercy without justice is the mother of dissolution. I mean, have we ever felt anything stronger than that? I mean, under the Biden administration, it literally felt like the country was falling apart because, well, one, we didn't really have a functional president, and then two...

There was no justice. The mercy, I would actually even argue, wasn't actual mercy. It was kind of a weaponized compassion to just, you know, obviously, the status quo system was so evil, so easily provable evil. I mean, the amount of times we saw, like, the back of trucks open up to people just... Burned alive. Cooked to death. Literally cooked to death. It's hard to even... Lake and Riley, right? It's hard to watch that and not feel a burning rage for, like, that could have been your daughter, that could have been your sister.

I think Eric, you made the correct point, in my mind. Having the conversation, if you want to have the conversation, which I'm open to having the conversation, it has to be comprehensive, especially to the people that you are representing, USCCB. You are the US Catholic, US, United States, a part of USCCB, needs to be a part of that, the citizens. And obviously, there's a huge problem here, and if you're not going to make that a part of that statement, you're not really willing to have a real conversation.

I'm all for immigration reform. I don't know who isn't. I think that the system that was allowed to propagate over the last four years is a great example of how our current system is too vulnerable to just be flipped on its head. I mean, you have one president who can literally just shut it down immediately, and in the last four years, you can allow the country to be flooded. I think back to the 1900s. Trump has heard of some of the reforms, and they're good.

Yes, and they're good, and they should be praised, especially by people like the U.S. Well, that was one thing I was reading. The Trump administration has hired and has plans to hire more. It was like a 70% increase in asylum judges, which is precisely what the bishops have been calling for to fix the broken immigration system. But again, there's no acknowledgement that, oh, the Trump administration is getting this right, so that means, you know, that there's at least some movement here, whereas under Biden, there was no movement.

The last thing I want to say here is that I love that line from Kelsey's letter, and it's reiterated in the report at length, that there is no Catholic position on specific immigration and enforcement. This isn't like church teaching on mass deportation in republics and democracies in the 21st century. That just doesn't exist. Good Catholics, Catholics of goodwill, can disagree on and debate things like specific policies.

We have had, since the last special report from the bishops, we have had multiple instances of the Catholic president of the United States, Joseph Biden, violating what is not negotiable in Catholic teaching, things that good Catholics never in good conscience disagree with or have debates about, contraception, the attacks on religious freedom, the abortion being the primary one. Yeah.

We did not get a special video on that, and I think that is what hurts the most. It is a little hard to swallow. Well, again, what is frustrating about it is that the only real problem on immigration, according to this video, is that Trump is enforcing it, seemingly. In other words, there is no acknowledgement. Yes, okay, we have had a problem with immigration enforcement. Yes, we have had problems with millions of people coming to this country illegally, but we should still treat them with compassion and care.

There's nothing. It was just like, you know, it was all convicting. There's no accepting of the horrible situation that this country was facing with a massive problem that was so massive, it was the number one election issue in 2024. Yeah, which you think, so notably.

How have they gotten picked up? Well, the whole Sunodal thing I'll get back to, actually, in my video. We'll get back to this in a minute. All right, all right, all right, all right. We have some time. Oh, yeah, let's slide. Would you like, I can bump you up good news if you want to go Sunodal.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I just, you know, we'll see if this happens or not, but the Pillar is reporting that Pope Leo is going to apparently ask Cardinal Roach to grant generous exemptions to Pope Francis's very highly restrictive Traditiones Custodias, you know, which kind of put the Latin mass practically in chains. So, if that happens, that's good news. I mean, this is the whole thing about, like, why A joke about the synodal, you know, church is, like, if you really wanted to be, if a church was really to be listening.

Then the church would say, yeah, you know what? Pope Benedict was right. We should allow for the celebration in Latin of Latin Masses. If you think that there are some voices in the church who are weaponizing the Latin Mass against unity, try to deal with that in a way that doesn't cut off everyone else who wants to experience the Latin Mass. So, it is like if 5% of the Latin Mass attenders are being harmful. You're going to let the other 95% never be able to, like, basically not experience the Latin Mass because of that?

Like, how is that a listening church? How is that a fatherly church? So, to the extent that Pope Leo might be allowing more liberalization, that would be helpful. I guess, like, why not, if you really thought that was the case, like, allow the Latin Mass, but then maybe have a, you could, as a bishop, say... Order of prayer to be said at the end of the Mass that would call for unity. Not something that is going to make people spit. As they have to read it, but something that would actually be true.

We all want, as Christ said, let them all be one. We want to be a church united under the Holy Father and with our eyes on Jesus Christ, something like that. That is a way to do the remedy, but what we get too often, there is some letter by the Bishop of Austin that was really getting rid of kneelers and stuff like that.

You can't be helped but thought that people... I'm not really a traditionalist when it comes to the liturgy. I'm more kind of like a conservative or whatever. You know, I'm too lib for most of you traditionalists. That's fine. But I'm not a kumbaya type. Don't get me wrong. Lib Josh.

Okay, but the thing is... No gatherers. I very much... And frustrated when people who just love the liturgy that has been celebrated by our mothers and fathers for 13, 14, 15 centuries, is now you're looked at as if you're a pariah. And I just, I think that is, you know, like a church that has gone out of its way with this whole synodal process to listen to people, and you're going to slam the door in the face of people of the Latin Mass and spit at them like you think they're the worst thing ever.

And that was, and that came from the top. That came from Pope Francis, that kind of really just viper attitude. Again, I don't even go to the light mass, but anyone with eyes could see how just, it was just disgusting, and we should let that move in the past. I understand Pope Leo is wanting to slow his role on this, to try to slowly unwind it, and then, you know, but... I just wish you'd go back to what Benedict had done.

Like, to me, that Pope Francis, the immediate successor of Pope Benedict, immediately reversed what he did on the Latin Mass was just such a slap in the face. Yeah, I mean... I'll never forget it. So, according to the source from the pillar, the nuncio explained that while Pope Leo is not minded to change Traditiones Custodias, but as there are many different rites in the church, there is no reason to exclude the TLM. And Pope Leo himself, pretty publicly and obviously, has an appreciation for Latin.

He often prays in Latin. He often sings in Latin. It is very public. The question is, are some of these bishops, like the one in Charlotte and all these, as they start in Detroit, as they clamp down harder and harder on the line? I was literally going to bring that up. It's like, are you going to try to pull them back a little bit? I mean, like, and again, it just, it strikes me as so weird, like these boomer bishops who have such hatred for the Latin Mass.

It's like, dude, if it's not your thing, fine. Why can't you let this little parish over there just do their thing? Like, what's so wrong? I've never understood the vitriol. Yeah. Weisenberger actually tweeted a picture of him. I think it was at a Marian Rite church, or it was some different rite. It was an Eastern Rite church. And everyone was just like, are you serious? How could you be so down on this rite, but then this rite totally fine? And isn't that kind of the...

The beauty of the church is that it is universal, and that there are different rights, and that there's different modes of appreciation. Well, the Benedict model, I think, is the smartest and the most beautiful. There's a mutual appreciation of both. They feed each other. They feed each other, and they all grow, and that is the common sense. And that was starting to happen, and then Francis said no. So, set the church back many years. Yeah, I think you're right, John. I mean, pointing to the generational divide, for sure, and just to drop the deep episode there on our young priests, is liberal Catholicism dying?

You should totally go check that out, because I talk about that very phenomenon, the generational divide. So, I appreciate the sacrifices of many Catholic families who love the traditional Latin Mass and now are, you know, feeling... Like they've been exploited again, and they just want to love the church in this liturgy, and they're having to go to extreme measures just to be able to witness it and celebrate it. My heart goes out to you. I think it's terrible.

Yeah. Erika. For sure. Yeah, just some good news. I am always happy when Planned Parenthood throws up a red flag and says the end is near, because it means that there are fewer babies being killed, at least at certain stages in the womb. So, we had Planned Parenthood announcing they have closed 70 centers, clinics, slash abortion mills this year, according to their own report. And so, they said that this is directly tied to the defunding of Planned Parenthood, the loss of funds through Medicaid in particular.

So, in the past, Planned Parenthood centers have provided 100,000 visits for patients using Medicaid in one month, covering an estimated $45 million in care at no cost to patients. You know why it's no cost to patients? Because of donors and you, the taxpayer. But with the cuts to Medicaid, they have had to close 70 abortion. 20 since the defunding, following 50 other closures in anticipation of defunding. So, big good news there. Of course, the new battlefront in the abortion fight is chemical abortions because this does not address the fact that People continue to, men and women, continue to get prescriptions for mifepristone, misoprostol, sent to them through the mail, which is its own rabbit hole.

But this is good news, that we have 70 fewer Planned Parenthood centers than we did a year ago, and yeah, let's continue the fight. Awesome. I voted for that. All right, mine's a little unusual, I think. Everyone takes a collective gasp when everyone's about to do mine. Mine is Marjorie Taylor Greene. I'm going to play this clip.

And I'll see if you guys see the same thing I do. Congresswoman, you posted on X that President Trump is, with his comments, fueling a, quote, hotbed of threats against you. Obviously, any threats to your safety are completely unacceptable. But we have seen these kinds of attacks or criticism from the president at other people. It's not new. And with respect, I haven't heard you speak out about it until it was directed. What happens next?

Dana, I think that is fair criticism, and I would like to say, humbly, I am sorry for taking part in the toxic politics. It is very bad for our country, and it has been something I have thought about a lot, especially since Charlie Kirk was assassinated, is that I am only responsible for myself and my own words and actions, and I am committed. I've been working on this a lot lately to put down the knives in politics. I really just want to see people be kind to one another, and we need to figure out a new path forward that is focused on the American people, because as Americans, no matter what side of the aisle we're on, we have far more in common than we have differences, and we need to be able to respect each other with our disagreements.

So, just to put a button on this, you... Regret the things that you have said and posted in the past, the Facebook post that was taken down of you in 2020 holding a gun alongside the squad, encouraging people to go on the offense against the socialists, liking a tweet of somebody calling for the execution of Nancy Pelosi and former President Obama, just examples.

Well, Dana, as you know and many people know, I addressed that back in 2021, and of course, I never want to cause any harm or anything bad for anyone, so that was addressed back then, and I very much stand by my words. I said then, and I stand by my words today. I think America needs to come together and end all the toxic, dangerous rhetoric and divide, and I'm leading the way with my own example, and I hope that President Trump Can do the same.

Okay, I need you to explain to me what this is doing in the good news section, like ASAP, right now. Why? Because that was just like... When's the last... Okay, and this comes from someone who didn't know much about Marjorie Taylor Greene, other than the fact that she acts crazy on social media and yells a lot and is crazy. When is the last time you've seen that level of self-criticism and reflection from an elected official? Sure.

It is very rare if it's real. Right, I sure hope it is. I'm not buying this. You're not buying? Are you kidding? I mean, I'm saying we could use a lot more of this. Who came away from this exchange looking good? Marjorie Taylor Greene, in my opinion. That might be controversial.

This was a classic, gotcha, I'm going to come in with all your worst moments. She left this, I feel like, looking good. Is that crazy to me? I feel like no one else has seen this. I'm like, I would love more of this. Yes, I was wrong about that. I've changed my opinion. I want to unify. I want to move forward. You guys aren't seeing it. I don't know. This is coming from one of the craziest members. Hold on a second.

I think this is very good, because I think Marjorie Taylor Greene has a voting record I largely support on many things. I'm not saying I'm going to, you know, but... It's her rhetoric that I think has been, you know, kind of crazy. She's kind of like that crazy aunt, you know, talking about Jewish space lasers, controlling weather, you know, in California, whatever. Like, you know, not helpful, not helpful at all.

So, is this what we would want? So, when someone does this, when they take a step back from crazy, we welcome it. I think this is a good thing. My only concern here is, I just want to make sure we understand this, it's like...

The left, it is still good that she did this, but the left is, you have to be very careful, because in the left's mind, the way the narrative is, our country is just getting more and more left-wing, more and more progressive, and that is a good thing, and the only problem is that these reactionary conservatives do not like that things are getting better, and that they scream and yell, and they go crazy, and so then, they are the problem. Whereas, I think, with regards to American life, We had this country founded under Christian principles.

And we've had generation after generation of wealthy elites attack this country and try to undermine it at every turn, and good-natured people have stepped up and tried to say, no, don't destroy our country, don't flush it down the toilet, don't do all these bad things, and sometimes they use kind of crazy rhetoric like Marjorie Taylor Greene has done, and I'm glad that she's stepping away from that bad rhetoric, but I also want to make sure we understand that there are people who are advocating for Horrible things, transgender surgeries on miters, mutilating these children, they favor abortion, they favor all sorts of things that are undermining and attacking the faith, attacking human dignity.

We still need to stay strong, and we still need to push back against this. This doesn't mean we don't fight. We still fight. We fight like heck to try to defend a country and return it back to normalcy. But to the extent that posting photos on Facebook where it makes it look like you want to go after the squad and murder them, yeah, that is good that she apologized in 2021, and it is also good that she is saying, I contributed in a negative way to political recourse.

It is very uncommon, and I think she is doing it right now because she realized that she really upset President Trump. And she realizes that she might be the odd man out, and she's weaponized Trump against him. Here's the thing. What if Trump just came out, and Fireside Chat said, Listen, I knew this guy Epstein a long time ago, and I really bungled how this was handled. And I want to be completely honest with you, the American people, that I felt like I breached your trust.

I'm really sorry for how I've handled this. You deserve better. This is how it's going to be released now. There's going to be some tough things in it. I want to just level with you, and I was wrong for how I handled it. Here you go. I would like to earn your trust back. That is the position you want to push people towards. I always like when politicians level with you. Right, so with Marjorie Taylor Greene, I think there's plenty of politicians that, you know, we all got crazy during COVID, said crazy things.

I think it's a good thing for our politicians and us in general to say, hey, I was a little crazy then. I was a little hopped up. I said things I regret. She actually went on The View. Which was hilarious. She was on The View, and she had to face all of the most nasty, vindictive ladies ever, and she actually came out of that looking pretty good, and we're talking about someone that's perceived, quote-unquote, as crazy, and I was the first to say, up top, she's done some crazy things, but isn't the hope that you change, isn't the hope that you get better?

And again, it can't just be naive hope based on things that they're saying, and then their positions don't change, but I was thinking about Marjorie Taylor Greene. I don't have any issues with any of her votes, for the most part. Right. Like, all of the things that she actually has done, and so the difference would be, if you have someone that has voted for crazy stuff, and voted for mutilation of children, et cetera, and then were like, hey, you know what, this is a little crazy, let's tone down the record, rhetoric, okay, how have you changed?

Prove it. And you're like, I was wrong, I saw the studies, I felt really bad about that, I was wrong about trans, like, wouldn't we want those people to come off the ledge, too? I would. Right, so, for example, Christopher Murphy is Erika's senator. He is, he, you know. I can see his house.

You know, and there are other senators, like, take, for example, the one out of Rhode Island, Jack Reed. He's about as boring as it gets, okay? But he votes, like, for radical stuff. Really radical stuff. So, he should be accosted. Like, it's worth pointing out here, like...

You know, how you talk, how you communicate, how, you know, your tone, the way you say things, the way you talk about things does matter, but you can have somebody who sounds very quiet. Quiet, calm, reserved, and then they vote like a total psychopath. Right. Right. And that is someone like Jack Reed. Marjorie Taylor Greene did talk like a moon bat at times. Yep. Okay? But she would vote like, in most things, like, okay, yeah, I agree with that. We should stop mutilating children.

Yes, that is good. Thank you. Yeah. Yep. I think this is great news for the discourse, and I actually feel like her media tour that she's done has made a lot of people change their mind about her, and she is positioning herself well by doing seemingly the right thing in public, which is apologize for your past mistakes, don't dig entrenchments, and then try to work towards the American good. I just think that rhetoric not only is just good politically, but isn't it what we should want and what everyone needs right now?

Especially post-Charlie Kirk, especially after all the divisions, especially all this, like, if more people were just that self-critical, I think people are naturally kind of hesitant to do that, and I think there should be genuine suspicion upon how people are changing their positions, but if it is, that is what we should want for people. So, we'll see with Marjorie Taylor Greene, but lines up. Well, I'll say this. I think we ought to vote ourselves as an institution.

We tend to do that as well. We try to, you know, we try to lay the things out. We try to be transparent. We tell them what we think, you know, like with regards to, like, for example, how we're talking about the bishops. Like, we respect these guys a lot, but we really don't think that this is potentially wise because of this and that, and, you know, we explain that. We're not trying to throw grenades. Yeah, I'm not too proud to admit, well, you know, when we're wrong, when we got a little crazy.

Like, I think that's good. Hopefully, I hope that I would have that much virtue to do that. Okay, let's get in church corner before we hit Twilight Zone. Erika, you know, I was a little confused. I saw a Gallup poll, largest decline in adult religiosity, I think, ever recorded, juxtaposed with the New York City conversions, especially among Gen Z. So, how should we read all these studies coming out about religiosity and Catholicism? Yeah, this is a good question, and this came up in conversation with a couple of friend groups that I'm in the last couple of weeks, because on the one hand, we have all this vibe of like Gen Z.

Getting back to church, more Catholic conversions, and we've covered that on The Deep. We've covered that here a lot, but then we get a poll like this, and actually, the loop this morning was a perfect sort of snapshot of this seeming disparity that's going on here. So, we have this Gallup poll that says we've had the largest decline, and I'll just go through this one first.

We have the largest decline in adult religiosity. I'm losing it here. The Gallup poll reveals that the share of US adults who say religion is an important part of their daily life dropped from 66% in 2015 to just 49% in 2025. Now, that's a 17-point plunge, and this kind of a shift is really almost unheard of. Only 14 out of 160 countries included in the study have dropped or risen more than 15 points in that 10-year time frame. So, a 17-point shift is very dramatic, one of the greatest globally, and it places the U.S.

closer to secularized countries like France and the United Kingdom than to the rest of the world. So, the rest of the world, if you go global, about 86% percent of people around the world say religion is an important part of daily life. Now the United States is farther from that number and closer to sort of the extreme secularism of Western Europe.

So I wanted to compare this with the numbers from my favorite religion numbers guy, Ryan Berg. And his data is much more long-term. So, this was a 10-year study, and I like him because he gives us like a half-century to century kinds of numbers to understand the bigger context for this. Ryan Burge. Ryan Burge, sorry. I always say Berg, and it's Burge, the E at the end. Well, I mean, it's like just, you said it so quiet, too. It's like, we're not talking about my, Ryan Birch.

We're talking about Ryan. Who's feeling good with the Bears on top of the division, but all right, continue. Yeah, he texted me right after the game. Oh, yeah. Right. So, he gives good, going to America alone, he gives us a good context here. So, he looks at religious affiliation over the last 40 to 60 years, and we talked a lot in the early 2010s about the rise of the non, so people who are not affiliated with any religion, and while that continued to rise through the 2010s, now it seems to be plateauing, right?

So, we have the Gallup numbers. We have plunging religiosity. Ryan Burge, we have sort of plateauing, perhaps, a slowing down of the decline when it comes to affiliation and saying, I don't belong to any religion. So, we have two not-so-great trends. But then we get these smaller-scale stories like the Brooklyn Diocese, and this was the other piece that was profiled in The Loop this morning.

So, in the Brooklyn Diocese, adult entries into the Catholic Church roughly doubled. From 2024 compared with 2023. So, again, you start to put these percentages in your head. Okay, wait a minute. So, U.S. adults are 70% less religious in daily life, but then we have this diocese that's like 50% growing, doubling. So, for example, they had 538 adults entered the church in 2024, nearly twice the 2023 number.

Then we also have these stories from The Pillar that we covered back in May. They reported a surge in the numbers of aspiring Catholics registering to join the Church last Easter of 2025. Lansing, Michigan, for example, reported a 30% spike from the previous year, 633 converts, which is the highest they have ever seen.

So, we get these. I don't like that. I mean, it's an anomaly. Hillsdale College, they're getting a ton of... It's because of St. Anthony's. I mean, that's a good thing. That's a great thing. Yeah, why are you talking that down, dude? That's sick. It is awesome. Shout out Hillsdale. Yeah, so I think like what we're looking at here, just to help people understand, are these in contradiction to each other? But we have these macro studies, which seem to indicate increasing secularism in our country.

But we have these kind of tinier micro success stories in individual dioceses. So, on one level, we're talking millions of Americans. On another level, we're talking these pockets of hundreds, maybe moving in a different direction. So, that is the way you want to think about the stories, and for me, it makes sense. I mean, just historically looking back at the last two millennia of the church, Christianity, Catholicism.

What doesn't do so well when it's flourishing, and it's the majority, and everything's comfortable, and you're all doing great? We tend to get fat and happy and complacent, which I think is the phenomenon that we see with the 1960s and the boomers. The seminaries are full, we're building all these churches and all these schools, and then crash, right? But when things are tough, when there's less of a secular narrative of success, when there's less cushion, In what the state can offer and what our culture can offer, and right now, it is not a lot, right?

Then you start to have these smaller pockets of conversions, because that is where the church is offering meaning, purpose, and a real culture in life, and people respond to that in small scale, not necessarily always in great revivals, although it can happen. Read Acts 7. What Ryan Burge was saying is that these stories that you see, let us say, in Washington Post or in New York Post or Fox News. Of these Gen Z youth embracing traditional religions, and he is like, eh, and he was kind of throwing some cold water on it, and I am like, okay, well, first of all, you are talking about major headwinds.

So, you know, we are having lots of Catholics who have not gone to church in a long time that are dying off, right? So, we are losing members that way, but did they go to church much? Yeah, affiliation is not always the best. And they had kids that were Catholic, and some of them hardly ever went either. So, you know, we are getting like a couple of generations of people who are not going to church on a regular basis. So, my grandmother and grandfather went to church almost every day, certainly every week, and they had 11 children, and I do not even know how many of those 11 children were at Mass on Sunday.

And then they had those of their 30-plus grandchildren. I might have been one of the only ones that went to Mass on Sunday. So, in terms of raw numbers, you are dealing with a situation where a lot of people would answer on a survey. If you asked all my aunts and uncles, they would say a Catholic.

But, you know, they go to church, and, you know, maybe... I'm not trying to talk crap about my family. I love my family, okay? But I'm just saying, I can see... It's a snapshot of America. It's an old-fashioned story. I can see these numbers, you know, and bring them to life. And so, to me... When some kid who grew up in a secular home watches a Charlie Kirk video and says, you know what, I'm giving myself over to Christ, and he starts going to church, whether it's evangelical or Catholic, I'm like, massive success, because where someone was lost, now they've been found, as opposed to a lot of the Catholics that are leaving the church, they haven't gone in decades, or they've died off, or whatever.

So, it's like, to me, these stories are encouraging because... We're getting more people who are on fire with the faith, and they're going to inspire other people to join. I think it's a good sign. From the trenches, from the trenches. I think Pope Benedict's prediction is coming true. We're a smaller, more fervent church, no question, especially from the Catholic perspective.

I think, I'm curious where this goes, because... As Erika pointed out, we don't really live in a Christian society or nation anymore. We like to proclaim our roots and talk about it. I think it's true. I think at one point, we really were a Christian society for actually probably the majority of our country's history.

That's just not the case anymore. And I think it makes the smaller enclaves of more fervent Catholics, puts them in an interesting position because they are smaller, they're more fervent, they operate in a less friendly to Christianity country than they may have before. And so, you're making the point correctly that Christianity does operate better under persecution. It's always flourished during times of serious persecution, like death-type persecution.

There is a small element of persecution now, obviously not to that level, but in just the friction we have now in the country that we operate in. So, I'm curious where this goes, you know what I mean? Because I see maybe, I think the, as Josh is saying, there's kind of a soft evangelization effort and opportunity because As you get more rootless people, they're more open to the message of Christianity because they have not been fulfilled by the promises that were made before, and there isn't that kind of Christian space anymore that they feel is dominant, is kind of the status quo.

So, I'm excited for the opportunity as well. I'm just curious where, like, we're going to get more of that friction between the people that are hardcore and the people that are, like, not Christian at all. I think the reason why is because for...

Whether it's true or not, whether it's fair or not, for baby boomers, Gen Xers, older millennials, Christianity is not a new thing. It's something that they had left, whereas Gen Z is like all around the whole world, the digital addictions and loneliness and atomization of society, and Christianity seems like, wait a minute, this is refreshing. This is a new alternative.

And I think that is exciting. Yeah. Amen. Let us rock Twilight Zone now, Josh. What do you got? So, about a year and a half ago or so, Clarence Thomas actually signaled that there might be an opportunity to make a run at rent control laws, but the particular case then that was approaching the bench was not the right one. And so, this guy out of New York, Rob Johnson, he is a lawyer, he thinks he found a case that really could provide the opportunity.

For the Supreme Court to take a look at this, and the reason why isn't so often the case, if you're talking about rent control, it's like, you know, the left would use it like, oh, you're going to go after this poor person who's just, you know, trying to make ends meet, and they're broke, and if you let the horrible owners and landlords raise the rent.

And so, it is just terrible. It is a terrible situation, you know, from optics. You know, it makes it seem like, you know, you are just throwing this cool person out on the streets. You hate grandma. Well, lo and behold, this lawyer found these guys who own an apartment, and the situation here is the apartment itself is so rent-controlled that it is actually not feasible because the legal limit, they can rent this apartment out. It's $700. It's a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan, and they cannot rent it for more than $700.

Manhattan. I mean, you can't get a two-bedroom apartment in Petoskey for $700 a month, but in Manhattan. And so, it's priced so low, and of course, if they rent it out, then. They actually will lose money because, of course, they have to update all the stuff to the apartment because it's not safe. And meet the extensive code from a place like New York City. Yeah, and pay the taxes, right. So, this is the perfect case, then, because they could say... By having this restrictive rent control and only allowing you to sell it or rent it out at $700, it amounts to a government taking, because now, economically, he's losing money by not renting it out every day that he doesn't rent it out, of course, and if he rents it out, he also loses money, because he would have to pour so much money into it just to get it up to code to sell it at below market rates, because the market is so distorted.

So, what happens here is that people... Get into a rent-controlled apartment, and they stay there forever because the control is so low, and you can't raise it so much while they're there, only when they can switch. Anyway, I think this is kind of like a twilight zone.

The care that is being taken to find out about this. This is one of those things, who wants to argue on behalf of landlords? Landlords are not universally evil people. I'm sorry. Sometimes in life, they're the good guys, actually. Thank you. There was a story this morning. It was either Free Press or Morning Brew, but there are 50,000... Vacant apartments in Manhattan, specifically $50,000. Do you know that the average price of rent is, I think, $4,400 for a one-bedroom apartment in New York City?

Probably studio. Yeah, it's just so messed up. Something like this would be necessary. Can I push at you really quickly? I actually agree. I think that many landlords are being demonized unfairly because they're put in a situation like this. But I also do see the problem of... People that grew up in New York City that can no longer afford to live there. The real problem, as you're saying, is these vacant apartments. Many of them are actually rented out by the wealthiest people from all over the world, and they don't live there.

They buy it as a store of value or a way to launder their money or whatever, and so they own a lot of New York City by apartment building. The real problem is that that much foreign investment from the wealthiest people all over the world is driving up prices for everyone. I don't think the answer to that problem is rent control. I don't know what the answer to that problem is. New York City is essentially, and Mexico City is seeing it, too, in terms of their gentrification.

People from all over the world go, and they buy up places. These international cities. Exactly, and then they will force out people that cannot make enough money to live there anymore. I don't know necessarily about how to answer that from a policy perspective, but the one thing I will say is that if you put such tight...

There are controls that you cannot actually feasibly make any money. In fact, you lose money if you do not rent it, and you lose money if you do. Either way, it is a lose-lose situation. If you do that, enough of these business owners are like, this is terrible. I cannot get ahead. So, what you have done is people who want to try to make a living by providing housing to people.

Are snuffed out of the market. So, I want businessmen to make money by providing more apartments in New York City to meet the demand, but they are not going to build more apartments if this is the kind of rent control stuff that happens to them, so then the supply does not go up. This is the problem. I always talk about this. There are certain industries that people demonize. So, gas companies are the ultimate. I always hear people about, especially the Democrats, but just in everyday life, gas company, there they go, raising the prices again.

So, whenever the price goes down, which it did recently in my state by about 30 cents ago, gosh, why aren't these gas companies greedy anymore? Like, they could have charged $3.30, but they are only charging $3 now. I cannot believe that they are not as greedy as they were a month ago, and maybe it is because you do not get to set the price yourself. The price of something is determined by… I thought it was because they took Joe Biden to heart.

They were like, he was right all along. We should not be so greedy. So, again, this is one of those things where it is like landlords are obviously just super universally despised and hated, especially in certain cities like New York City, but the fact of the matter is the rent controls have gone too much and too strident, too strict. A guy like that, oh, I'm sorry, you can only rent it out for two or better apart for 700 bucks, like, that's just ridiculous.

Agree. Erika, what do you got? Well, we have the ultimate mansplain, and I can't wait to tell you about it. Democrat Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey lives just north of me here in Connecticut, so she's up in Massachusetts. She's drawing fire because she recently appointed a new vice chair of the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women's Programming and Planning Committee.

Who did she appoint? She appointed Giselle Byrd. Not the person's given name, because Giselle is actually a biological male. Transgender activists. The appointment was effective November 1st. Bird, the executive director of the Theater Offensive in Boston. I mean, that sounds like something Josh would totally belong to, the theater offensive and activist. I'm just looking at that big thing covering the necks. You don't see his head on there. What is that?

So, the head of several LGBT nonprofits was initially appointed back in August. So, once again, we learn that men make the best women. Yep. And why wouldn't we put a male in charge of... The committee that's in charge of women's programming and planning, Maura Healy. Thank you. Thank you. Listen, we give Trump a hard time. We've been having a hard time recently. I remember a time when I saw a headline at the national level like this every day. Yep. Every day.

Oh, man. Trans Day of Visibility on the front lawn. Oh, my gosh, man. Glad that our fights have moved on from that. I mean, I was just so sick of luggage thieves. Unless you live up here in the Northeast. We have not moved on. We have not moved on here. We're still there. That's alive and well. It's still 2023 here in the Northeast. Well, I mean, there are two things that Trump has done very well, like to secure the border, and number two, it seems like the contagion.

of trans historically broke the fever, and we're starting to see it in decline. I hope so. A lot less teenagers are identifying it as such. Right. If he had not won, we might have been locked in for this for decades. Yeah, I mean, we have our frustrations with the Trump administration, but when I think back to just over a year ago, the alternative was absolutely unthinkable.

Precisely, and Massachusetts is a good daily reminder to me of just why I voted for Donald Trump, because it's still happening. All right, this is the story of everyone's, but the chat has been calling for this story, Tom. The chat has been clamoring. The fan is waiting. Listen, I've made my thoughts abundantly clear on the H-1B visa program. It's a complete scam, it's a betrayal to Americans, and it's hurting people, young people, especially trying to get in entry-level jobs, as AI is already causing problems on that front.

That being said, okay, so we get this statement from the Ford CEO. Someone actually emailed it in, and I was trying my best to dig into it. So, Ford CEO, he went on the... Podcast Circuit said he has 5,000 open mechanic jobs with six-figure salaries from the shortage of manually skilled workers. Quote, we are trouble in our country. Specifically, I believe he said $120,000 a year. ...type roles for mechanics, 5,000 of them open. We are in trouble in this country. We are not talking about this enough.

Farley told host Monica Langley, we have over a million openings in critical jobs, emergency services, trucking, factory workers, plumbers, electricians, and tradesmen. It is a very serious thing. Um, this was not received well, uh, online, but I will say, before I get into this, I really gave him the benefit of the doubt, and I, you know, I do actually think it's more complex than it leads to. Ford, of course, close to my heart. Clyde, we love you, Charlie. Thank you. So, I went to try to investigate this claim in its fullness.

Now, I did investigate this claim, and... I don't think, you couldn't find those roles on the website. They were saying that these roles exist at the dealership level, so it's hard to aggregate all the different dealerships. The problem is, each dealership sets their own salaries and rates, and a lot of times they're hourly. The best I could ascertain is that most likely the average for this is like somewhere between $50,000 and $60,000 for these straight-up mechanic tech jobs. The $120,000 roles on the Ford website are for Highly specialized engineers, which, of course, that makes more sense.

The 50 to 60 makes a lot more sense. I will just say, as a non-starter, I think it's unhelpful for him to go, of course, the CEO for doing pretty well money-wise, to go on and make this bold claim that there's these $120,000, because they just don't exist right now. So, if you're going to speak, be accurate. I do think that there's a problem here, for sure. I don't know anyone that would disagree, but that just was really unhelpful, and it set a lot of people off.

And then, of course, Elon Musk has chimed in at this point. And further cemented the claim, America has a major shortage of people who can do challenging physical work or even wish to train to do so. Also not very helpful as someone that utilizes the H-1B program quite a bit.

That being said, I don't disagree that there is a skills mismatch, which of course brings me back to the man, the myth, the legend, Henry Ford himself, and how he wanted to address the skill problem, in which I think there's a huge opportunity. Because cynical me, I'm like, Ford CEO is just going to make this claim to preemptively move more factories to Mexico, or move more factories elsewhere, as Ford has done. Like, we're in the era of the H-1B. Of the transnational corporation, and I will argue that's why quality has severely declined for American vehicles.

They've become much more complicated in electric. A lot of these techs are going to be working electric cars, and so it's much harder to fix the cars, which I think cynically was done intentionally, so that you can bring the revenue back to these specialized areas.

That being said, they do have a program called New Ford Tech, in which you can enroll at the high school level and receive some certification. So, it is not that they are doing nothing. They have scholarship programs for people to go and learn the specialized area of labor, but I will say historically, and someone did put together this graphic, which I think is true, the nobody wants to work anymore claim. If I could be the first to dismiss, they have... Newspaper clippings from 1894 to 2022, and I encourage you all to go back through the progression of American labor, because the problem with American labor is we did receive a lot of immigrants, and a lot of people would say, well, the Italians, all these other people, we put them to work, and they did a lot of great things for the country.

I don't disagree. In many cases, it completely evaporated and destroyed the wages for Americans working before, and as a business tactic, it makes sense to replace Americans with people that will work for less. Under worse conditions, often child labor, et cetera. So, I have all these clips. It says, it's becoming apparent that nobody wants to work in these hard times, 1894 and then 2022. According to a new survey released by TinyPulse, one in, however, executive leaders agree with the statement, no one wants to work anymore.

So, I would just encourage, say, like CEOs at this point. I know it's hard. I read a couple of Free Press articles about the situation on the ground for these techs, and they're even administering, like, we've kind of gotten ourselves in a problem by making things so complicated, so technical, and then not paying techs enough. They work them too hard. There's a lot of turnover for this area. When people can go to college and receive a degree that would transfer from place to place and be more valuable in the long term.

And we've told our youth, hey, you know, go into tech. Go into healthcare, because that's where the opportunities are, and then you can transfer it around. And so, automotive industry has really gotten themselves in a corner, because they've made things so complicated, they've made things so certified, and they're currently not offering, at least at scale, enough vocational training or technical challenging, or they're not paying people enough to make this enticing. So, there's a huge opportunity here for someone that wants to tap into American labor.

The caveat is, you need to pay them. Like, you need to pay people enough money to want to do your work, otherwise it's not going to happen. People are going to do it. And I think we're kind of at an impasse where... There's people that do want well-paying, you know, good-paying jobs that have future careers and trajectory, and I don't think you should fault anyone for wanting that. But then at the business level, too, there is a challenge. We need to find good labor that's committed to the company, that can work hard, that's going to be reliable, that will show up.

I think there has to be a little bit of a bargain here between companies that want to invest in their future workforce, understanding the position that the future or the younger generation is in right now. They're saddled with so much college debt. That they need a very, like, they need a guarantee path to help pay it off, and maybe that's a government collaborative effort where, say, hey, we're going to start forgiving loans to go into these specific areas of work. Like, I could see that as a potential solution.

There needs to be some type of collaboration at this point. I think Ford and other companies, the first one to move on this at scale is going to reap the rewards of, you know, good labor. So, I don't know. So, I mean, I mentioned before I'm actually a fan of the fact that My state of Michigan has free community colleges for two years or whatever, but included in that, it is a lot of skilled trade stuff, too. So, you can learn how to be an HVAC specialist.

There's, I remember, there's like a dozen of these different things that were included in that as well. I don't have them off the top of my head, but so states are starting to realize, you know, it's in our interest to try to provide these opportunities and let kids know, I mean kids, they're 18, let them know that they have this other pathway and to take a look at it because it can be very rewarding and you don't get saddled with, you know, basically a mortgage.

For that, you can jump right into a job with a little bit of training. It is a good path. Yeah, I was looking through the new Ford Tech program there, and I hope that it does take off a little bit more, and they are offering it to high school students, right? So, military veterans, high school students, and we said on the program, like, not everyone needs to go to college, especially colleges and universities the way that they are right now in our country.

Yeah, sounds like Rerum Novarum, Marga. I love that. Yeah. And so, I hope that more and more high schools in the United States start to include these programs increasingly, and not just the poorer high schools that are in the cities either, but my own Cheshire High School down the road here. There is no reason why every wealthy white kid in Cheshire needs to then go to some white-collar university and study for four years and get $280,000 in debt and all that.

Kids from any kind of, they could benefit from these programs. They don't have to go to school, so I hope that they continue to go into the high schools more and more and make kids aware of these opportunities.

Yeah, maybe they should have gotten rid of Votek. They never should have gotten rid of Votek. Never should have. Places like GMI, now General Motors Institute, and Kettering University, as it is now known, were initiatives by these companies. I do think we are kind of in a, like, you can't put the toothpaste back in the bottle with globalization.

Because what is frustrating to me is, simultaneously, we are told American universities are so bad that 600,000 Chinese students are willing to travel across the world to go there. So, that is kind of hilarious. And if we don't do that. We're going to, half of universities will close, even though we're also being told that universities aren't giving people the training to actually equip them to jobs and careers that actually pay them, but then Ford is saying, hey, we have this shortage, just move to Mexico then.

What's keeping you here? You know what I mean? Like, clearly something's keeping you here. It's either the regulatory environment, or you benefit off of all of the things that America provides you as a company, but you're saying, well, I don't want the workers. That can't be the end trade. Like, you need to actually, if you're going to be here, if you want to benefit from the regulatory environment, stock exchange, whatever, you need to invest in Americans, and that needs to be, I don't know if that just needs to be clearer told by the Trump administration to these companies.

There needs to be an impasse on student loans. I'm not sure. We don't necessarily know what is the right proper balance, as of yet, of the percentage of people that need to go for a liberal arts degree for four years, and how many people should go into the trades. We're not trying to force that. Situation, but it is true that we had a one-track mind on this for about 40 years, and that we're trying to shove everyone into the four-year liberal arts degree, and we were doing it so with massive government subsidies and loans, and made it so that anyone could get it.

If an 18-year-old tried to borrow $5,000 to start a cleaning business, it would be easier to go to a productology exam, but then you want $80,000 to go to a four-year school. Sign here. It did not make any sense. So, again, we needed to get rid of some of these artificial distortions that the market was doing, well, that was done to the market by government.

Here is a crazy idea, Josh. What if, because I think student loans, federal student loans, they have servicers, but that money does end up getting paid back to the government, right? Like, that would just go, I do not know if that goes to the treasury or something. Right. So, what if the government was like, hey, we screwed up, you know, we gave too much, you know, let us forgive. They pulled a Marjorie Taylor Greene. Exactly. We screwed up our fault. Let us forgive 75% of student loans with certain stipulations or whatever.

But, we are no longer going to be involved in the college business, or dramatically reduce. Well, they've already made a major step here, Tom. Like, the big, beautiful bill allowed for the Department of Education to make modifications, and so what is starting next July, July 1st, the total amount a family can borrow is like $20,000 a year, period.

And so, you basically place some sort of caps on this. It's like, you know, you just can't borrow 80 grand or something like that every year, you know? So, there are some, you know, and people are freaking out, like, ah! Well, you know, like, you have to have, you know, some limits here, some caps. And you have to start somewhere, right? Yeah. So, I don't, you know.

I think there's so many cool programs I would actually love. So, I did actually get to hang out with a plumber. That is coming, by the way. We're in the process of editing. And, like, I just, man, I got to ride along with them, and the two guys I was with, the farmer and the plumber, my coolest takeaway was, man, these are young guys, like, getting after it. Like, positive, they forwent other rewards or temporary rewards, they sacrificed a lot, and they're reaping the rewards of it now.

It's not an easy life, but they work hard, and they're good men. I see so many examples, small examples, say like the Wisconsin Harley-Davidson apprenticeship program, or this Ford Tech program, or there's all these opportunities. I think that we're getting close to the breaking point of college becoming viable, and AI is going to totally accelerate this. In some ways, I think it's good, but I think it's scary to the point where it could be It's detrimental to human flourish. It already kind of is, but to the point where, like, if you can't provide for your family, if you can't afford living anymore because you're in such a crushing situation, I just think, like, again, maybe Trump, it'd be a good, like, Trump moment.

Hey, I'm wrong on H-1B. Like, you know, I was wrong on that. I didn't understand it. I shouldn't have said it. We're shutting the program down. I want the future of America to include men and women that can make a good wage, not be settled in a ton of debt, and be able to afford the American dream, and I'm willing to be creative to do that, and I'm willing to have corporate partnerships to help do that. I think if that was the message, instead of, I'm having private dinners with AI billionaires, we're going to bail out, clearly.

I just see it hurtling down the same path that we hurtled down during the 2008 financial crisis, and the Ford motor bailout, and all these kind of things. You're just helping out the richest of the richest. And the people are getting screwed again. That is like, that's actually not only would be a good thing, that's what you should do as the current, like, patriarch of America. Your role, we put you in office to take care of Americans, and there's no one else who's advocating on our behalf, clearly.

If you did that, seriously, you would earn, you'd reap the rewards of goodwill forever. Like, you'd be cemented forever, so. I hope this is a good day to exorcise our demons, right? Like, we are just getting the Epstein stuff out there, exorcised, right? Like, we are going to start getting people jobs again.

The best ideas, the best team, forward. That is just what it is about. Yes, do it. So, I say that is a good way to end. Yeah. Great show, gang. We have another Wednesday show coming for you. I'm excited for the next episode of The Deep. I'm already looking forward to it. Oh, boy, it's going to be a good one. Yep. This afternoon. We have some climate change talk going on here. Yes. The polar bears are back, baby. I have numbers.

I have receipts. Receipts. So, yeah, but if you want to check out all of that, go over to head over to YouTube. That's the LOOPcast over on YouTube. That's where we got all our extra content, but leave a review. Apple Podcasts and Spotify help us out a ton.

Subscribe to The Loop, CatholicVote.org slash getloop, and thank you to our champions who make this possible, CatholicVote.org slash champions, where you can join them. Really only possible with you guys. Thank you. And if anyone is like a Ford employee or something, like talk to me. I actually really want to get to the bottom of this. I want to solve it. I'd like to hear from you. So, we're going to end right now. Daily Prayer, this is actually from Tinfoil Tom, sent it over from DC.

This is the feast day of St. Elizabeth of Hungary. She was 13th century queen known for her charity to the poor and sick. Princess who became, oh. Confirmed monarchist, I am going to say. We do not have enough time to get into that, Erika.

Okay, so we are going to end in that prayer. In the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. O God, by whose grace your servant, Elizabeth of Hungary, recognized and honored Jesus and the poor of this world, grant that we, following her example, may, with love and gladness, serve those in any need or trouble, in the name and for the sake of and through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Amen. St. Thomas More, St. Fidelis, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us. Great show, guys. We will catch you on Wednesday, ready to rock, and I hope you have a great Monday. Peace.