France is one of the most secular countries on earth, and on Saturday Paris came to church. Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope, celebrated an open-air Mass at the Place de la Concorde with the crowd stretching the length of the Champs-Élysées. The Vatican estimated 800,000 people, about 200,000 more than had registered, per Fox News and the Associated Press. Families held babies up to the popemobile as he passed. And think about where they stood: the Place de la Concorde is where the French Revolution guillotined Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and 1,119 others, the revolution that tried to erase the faith from France. The Pope told the young people, "You are the Church today. How wonderful it is to see your enthusiasm." He went on to Lourdes and spoke against what he called trends that seek to redefine the value of human life. The experts keep telling us faith is dying in the West. 800,000 people in the streets of Paris did not get the memo. Chuck reads the story, as reported by Fox News and the Gateway Pundit.
Also in today's episode: two poo-poo platter items, Joe Biden accepting Planned Parenthood of Delaware's Sonia Schorr Sloan Service Award from his wife at the group's Chocolate and Champagne Gala and telling the room "You have no idea how powerful women are in this country. You are about to find out," per Breitbart News and the Catholic Herald, and Christa Pike, set to be executed Wednesday for the 1995 murder of 18-year-old Colleen Slemmer, asking Tennessee for an all-female execution team, which the state says is its goal for her transfer but has not guaranteed, per WREG and Fox 8; the United States and China agree to cut tariffs on $30 billion of goods in each direction and China commits to buy 10 million metric tons of American coal in each of 2027 and 2028, with rare earths still unsettled, per the White House fact sheet via Breitbart News and Axios; the president scraps the Biden-era fuel economy rules that would have required about 50 miles per gallon by 2031, writing that the new standards "terminate sleepy Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg's ridiculous EV mandate," per CNBC and Al Jazeera; Chris LaCivita tells Breitbart's Matthew Boyle the president will campaign for 30 days straight and that "all we have to do is alter the turnout two to three to four points in every congressional district, and we win," with rallies in Durant, Oklahoma Thursday and Mobile, Alabama Friday; NYPD figures cited by the New York Post show prostitution arrests on Queens' Roosevelt Avenue down 59 percent, from 468 to 193, while the Post reports the number of women working the street has multiplied; two former Venezuelan diplomats are arrested at Madrid's airport with 50 kilograms of cocaine, per CiberCuba off El Pitazo and The Objective; and a week-old elephant found hiding in a herd of zebras in Tsavo East last November is growing up at the Sheldrick nursery, named Wangalla for the plains where she was found.
There is a famine of truth in our land. Nine stories. Seven o'clock. The truth starts now.
