Pope Leo On The USCCB Special Message

On Tuesday, Pope Leo made a statement that endorsed the "Special Message" the USCCB issued the week prior. According to the USCCB,

Pope Leo told reporters in Castel Gandolfo that the pastoral message is "a very important statement. I would invite especially all Catholics, but people of goodwill, to listen carefully to what they said."

"No one has said that the United States should have open borders," the pope said. "I think every country has a right to determine who and how and when people enter."

However, he said, in enforcing immigration policy "we have to look for ways of treating people humanely, treating people with the dignity that they have."

"If people are in the United States illegally, there are ways to treat that," he said. "There are courts. There's a system of justice," but the system has "a lot of problems" that should be addressed.

The video I saw strongly suggested Leo was repeating what had been prepared for him, and I've got to think he isn't familiar with the actual conditions imposed on the migrants by the processes through which they're brought into the country, as well as the conditions under which they live and work once they've been brought in. The efforts of the Trump administration have in fact been to alleviate the inhumane and undignified conditions imposed on them. For instance, via Reuters,

U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics show apprehensions at the southwest border, an indicator of the number of migrants trying to cross, are down nearly 90% to their lowest level since 1970.

As a result, the corridor between San Diego and Tijuana, one of the busiest international crossings in the world, has dramatically transformed in less than a year. Major concentrations of migrants in squalid conditions have largely disappeared. A San Diego transit center that once served as a makeshift migrant depot has returned to normal. A dusty gathering spot hemmed in by 30-foot (9.1-meter) border walls, where asylum-seeking migrants amassed to turn themselves in to U.S. officials, is once again nothing more than a vacant outpost. Across the border in Tijuana, migrant shelters suddenly have empty space.

Once they're settled in the interior, a common business model takes over that relies on a form of permanent indenture. For instance, just this week:

A Michigan couple has been arrested and charged with allegedly hiring hundreds of undocumented workers while bringing in tens of millions of dollars for their plumbing business.

. . . The feds say that between January 2022 and December 2024, the couple employed around 253 people, of which only six were legally present and allowed to work in the U.S.

. . . According to the complaint, the defendants collected the passports of the workers and housed them in overcrowded houses and hotel rooms.

Between Jan. 1, 2022 and Aug. 7, 2025, feds say the plumbing company generated around $74 million in customer revenue.

This pattern appears nationwide:

Charlotte, N.C., is making headlines this week because dozens of construction sites have gone silent. ICE swept through the region, and the labor force evaporated almost instantly. A major American city discovered, in real time, that its building boom was being held together by workers who couldn’t legally be there. Watching that footage hit me hard, because I’ve seen it before — not on the evening news, but in the slow collapse of my own childhood community.

. . . Farmers who had paid teenagers and local laborers fair wages realized they could hire adults from Mexico and Central America for far less and house them in the kinds of conditions Americans would never tolerate: eight men to a sagging, leaking trailer with no electricity, no running water, no insulation. They were paid in cash, they didn’t complain, they worked year-round, and they had no leverage because they knew their employers could always get them deported.

The writer concludes,

And through all of this, politicians, pundits, and corporate lobbyists kept repeating the same line: “Americans just won’t do these jobs.” . . . Americans didn’t suddenly lose their work ethic. The jobs were taken from them — not by immigrants directly, but by American employers who built a business model on illegal labor and by a federal government that looked the other way for forty years.

What Americans “won’t do” are jobs that have been made illegal in everything but name — jobs where wages have collapsed to exploit desperation, where safety standards are ignored, where workers are paid off the books, where insurance and taxes are bypassed, and where living conditions violate every regulation on the books. When the floor is lowered that far, legal workers cannot enter the market at all. That isn’t laziness. That’s math.

This business model first surfaced last year, when the problem of Haitian migrants working in sweatships in Springfield, OH hit the media. At that time, it became clear that the issue wasn't just individual greedy employers, it extended to landlords who evicted middle-class tenants so they could rent the units to occupants who would overcrowd them more profitably. As it happened, NGOs, often Catholic, facilitated the process by recruiting candidates in their home countries and flying them in.

If the migrants needed housing, the NGOs paid the slumlords directly. If they needed jobs, they became employment agencies for the sweatshops. If they needed cars, they paid used car dealers who'd sell junk cars to the migrants without drivers licenses, registration, or insurance. All the time, the NGOs were getting humanitarian awards and collecting an administrative skim.

The local migrant ecosystems that relied on Haitian and Venezuelan migrants in particular were created by he Biden administration's extension of "temporary protected status" to migrants from countries including Haiti, Venezuela, and El Salvador. The status of these migrants was often erroneously portrayed as "legal", when it was only a temporary provision. By terminating it, the Trump administration simply eliminated this large-scale exploitation and forced businesses to revert to a fair-wage business model:

Springfield businesses, big and small, are struggling in the aftermath of thousands of Haitians fleeing the town after the Trump administration’s termination of the humanitarian parole program for citizens of several countries, including Haiti, in June. On top of that, the government has ended temporary protected status, affecting the immigration status of more than half a million Haitians, which comes into effect on or before 5 February 2026.

This in fact appears to be the issue behind this sentence in the USCCB "Special Message" linked yesterday, "We lament that some immigrants in the United States have arbitrarily lost their legal status." This missates the situation that the "temporary protected status" was never permanent, and it also neglects to note that the Catholic NGOs that were enabling the exploitation of migrants and disruption of communities also lost the federal funding they were using to do this.

The economic reality of immigration waves is that they lower wages. The repeated instances of systematic resettlement of third-world low-wage workers in US communities show that they benefit certain employers and other local businesses at the expense of social cohesion and overall prosperity. When the low-wage workers disappear, either permanently, as in Springfield, OH, or temporarily, as in Charlotte, NC, it displays the distortion these policies place on local economies. I asked Chrome AI mode to explain what the current pontiff's namesake, Leo XIII, advocated in his encyclical Rerum Novarum. It answered in part,

• Right to a Just Wage: Wages should not be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved worker and their family in reasonable comfort. This concept laid the foundation for the idea of a "living wage" in Catholic social teaching.
• Right to Rest and Reasonable Working Hours: Workers have the right to reasonable hours, adequate rest periods, time off for religious obligations, and shouldn't be forced to work on Sundays or holy days.
• Right to Safe Working Conditions: Employers are obligated to provide work suited to each person's strength, gender, and age, ensuring health safeguards and safety from bodily harm. He specifically condemned child labor in factories as it interferes with education and proper development.

Pope Leo seems to be unaware that the US bishops, in some measure due to the influence of Catholic NGOs that are enabling low-wage policies that are hurting both native and migrant workers, are pushing him into a position that contrdicts Catholic social justice principles.

More On The USCCB's Special Message

On November 12, the USCCB issued a "Special Message" from its Baltimore Plenary Assembly "addressing their concern for the evolving situation impacting immigrants in the United States." The video embedded above contains one reaction from Fr Robert McTeigue, SJ to an Instagram post featuring some of the bishops drawing attention to the Special Message.

CatholicVote also issued a response to the bishops' message stressing that

"properly speaking, there is no such thing as an official ‘Catholic position’ on the practical details of immigration policy." Instead, it frames individual Catholics’ stances on immigration enforcement as "a matter of prudential political judgment," which it says is "an area of responsibility that belongs properly to Catholic laypersons rather than the bishops."

CatholicVote President Kelsey Reinhardt told Fox News Digital the group "wants to foster a more complete conversation on immigration and give moral standing and freedom of conscience for Catholics and Christians who recognize a need to secure the border and the importance of the rule of law."

One problem I see in the bishops' statement is that it, and some people who support it, frequently refer to migrants in the singular, as in "the migrant", "the sojourner", or "the stranger":

As pastors, we look to Sacred Scripture and the example of the Lord Himself, where we find the wisdom of God’s compassion. The priority of the Lord, as the Prophets remind us, is for those who are most vulnerable: the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the stranger (Zechariah 7:10). In the Lord Jesus, we see the One who became poor for our sake (2 Corinthians 8:9), we see the Good Samaritan who lifts us from the dust (Luke 10:30–37), and we see the One who is found in the least of these (Matthew 25). The Church’s concern for neighbor and our concern here for immigrants is a response to the Lord’s command to love as He has loved us (John 13:34).

I asked Chrome AI mode, "What is the range of estimates for the number of illegal migrants now in the US?" It answered,

Estimates for the number of illegal or unauthorized migrants currently in the United States generally range from approximately 14 million to over 18 million, according to recent reports from various research organizations. The most recent figures are as of mid-2025.

AI being AI, it gave a lowball estimate. In his Butler, PA speech shortly before he was interrupted, Trump gave an estimate of 20 million, while Chrome AI mode itself concludes,

A 2018 study by Yale-affiliated researchers, using a different modeling approach, suggested an even higher possible figure of over 22 million, though this study has been widely critiqued for its methodology.

Differences in these estimates largely stem from varying methodologies, definitions of who counts as "unauthorized," and how effectively different surveys and models account for the population, particularly recent arrivals. Most official estimates are based on U.S. Census Bureau data, which some critics argue has historically undercounted recent unauthorized immigrants.

The problem isn't just "the migrant", "the sojourner", or "the stranger"; the problem is that there are millions of migrants, sojourners, and strangers making enormous claims on community resources. This becomes very noticeable when the migrants, sojourners, and strangers deem it prudent to stay out of view when ICE raids are impending, as the evidence from Charlotte, NC suggests:

OMG. Charlotte, NC teacher says his class of 16 only had 4 students show up amid ICE raids.

The district had over 30,000 kids absent, over 20% of their entire student body.

Schools are not underfunded and understaffed. They’re just full of illegals. pic.twitter.com/oGpMyUwmak

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) November 19, 2025

In fact, I think we're looking at levels of mass migration equivalent to what Rome faced in the fifth century. I asked Chrome AI mode, "Did inability to control mass migration contribute to the fall of Rome?" It answered,

Yes, many historians agree that the Western Roman Empire's inability to control and effectively manage mass migrations of Germanic and other tribes was a major contributing factor to its collapse. The empire's internal weaknesses, such as political instability, economic troubles, and military overextension, meant it could no longer manage the large influx of people as it had in the past.

But we need to recognize that this was after Rome had converted to Christianity -- specifically, Catholicism. I asked Chrome AI mode, "What effect did the Vandal invasion have on Christian North Africa in the 5th century?" It answered,

The Vandal invasion of Christian North Africa in the 5th century led to the decline of the flourishing Nicene (Catholic) Church in the region, marked by the confiscation of church property, exile of clergy, and intermittent, severe persecution of the Nicene Christian population by the Arian Vandal rulers.

In fact, the Vandal invasion extinguished the entire highly productive North African branch of Christianity, represented by St Augustine of Hippo, who died durng the siege of that city. I asked Chrome AI mode, "Was the Vandal invasion of North Africa an organized invasion or a migration?" It answered,

The Vandal movement into North Africa was a mass migration that was also an organized military invasion. It was not a standing Roman-style army, but a "people in arms" that included their entire society: warriors, women, children, and the elderly.

. . . The Vandals, a Germanic people, had been migrating across Europe for decades, driven by pressures from other groups like the Huns. Their crossing into North Africa in 429 CE was a move to find a new territory to settle permanently after being pressured in Spain by the Visigoths.

. . . The group was led by their effective and cunning King Gaiseric (Genseric), who organized the crossing of an estimated 80,000 people across the Strait of Gibraltar.

This isn't that different from what's been happening in the US: the invasion is partly spontaneous, but partly organized, on one hand by the cartels, who control the border from the Mexican side and in effect sponsor most illegal crossings, but also by NGOs, many of which are funded by the US Catholic bishops, which organize and subsidize large-scale settlement of illegal migrant communities on arrival at designated destinations. How did such large numbers settle in Charlotte, NC, of all places? A quick search found this from the Catholic Charities Diocese of Charlotte:

• Serve over 19,000 clients in Western NC through direct assistance, food pantry, counseling, refugee resettlement, employment services and elder ministry.
• Resettled over 15,000 refugees representing 27 different nationalities over the past 40 years.

To what extent are the bishops themselves creating situations in which migrant populations, large enough to destabilize communities, are encouraged to develop a sense of permanent entitlement? Apparently tens of thousands of migrant children, 20%, are in the Charlotte public schools. Could the Catholic schools in the Diocese of Charlotte accommodate migrant children at 20% of its enrollment at the bishop's expense? Has the bishop made any such offer?

What effect would putting migrant children into the Catholic schools at 20% enrollment have on the schools themselves? How many ESL teachers would they need to hire? What sort of disciplinary problems would they need to deal with? How would the school administrators respond? How would the parents respond? Heck, how would the parish priests respond?

It sounds very much to me as though the bishops are preaching to the public at large to respond to the Lord's command to love others in ways that their own dioceses could not remotely consider -- for instance, by allowing a massive influx of migrant children into their own school systems. But hey, why not set an example for the rest of us? Show us the way forward, bishops!

But the Church has a major example in its own history of how failure to address mass migration has had disastrous effects on its own faithful.

Trump Beats Conventional Wisdom

Sundance at Conservative Treehouse makes a worthwhile, though not a stunnningly insightful, point:

[W]hen AI was launched on the various platforms being used by the larger public, the inputs which frame the AI results are controlled by the same people who built the AI systems. When you engage with AI, you are engaging with a system that only has “approved information” behind it to deliver the outputs.

In other words, if you ask any public AI platform a question about any current topic, you're going to get an answer based on a pre-digested body of conventional wisdom, pretty much the same thing you'd get going to Real Clear Politics. I use Chrome AI mode, which I don't have to pay for, and the answers are worth what I pay for them. ChatGPT and Grok are overpriced and ought to charge nothing. But given public AI's limitations, you can at least get a good take on conventional wisdom. I asked Chrome AI mode, "What was last week's conventional wisdom about Trump's position on the Epstein files?" It answered,

Last week's conventional wisdom regarding Donald Trump's position on the Jeffrey Epstein files was that he was privately attempting to block their release, while publicly calling the entire issue a "Democratic hoax". This was seen as a major point of political vulnerability and a source of tension within his own party.

Key elements of this conventional wisdom included:

• Opposition to Transparency: Trump and his administration were perceived as actively resisting efforts to make the files public, despite his campaign promises to support transparency.
• "Hoax" Narrative: The prevailing White House strategy was to dismiss the entire affair as a politically motivated distraction.
• Political Pressure: There was significant bipartisan pressure, including from some Republicans like Rep. Thomas Massie, for the White House to stop blocking the release.
• Impending Reversal: By the end of last week (around November 16, 2025), it became clear that a House vote to compel the release of the files was inevitable.

The conventional wisdom changed dramatically over the weekend as Trump abruptly reversed his stance and publicly called for House Republicans to vote for the release, a move widely interpreted as an attempt to save face and control the political narrative once it was clear the bill would pass anyway.

But what really happened, independent of any abrupt reversal on Trump's part, was that a tranche of releases from the House Oversight Committee last week, completely unrelated to the files in question in Tuesday's House vote, had already begun to damage Democrats.

The first case was Stacey Plaskett, Democrat House delegate from the US Virgin Islands:

In November 2025, newly released documents showed that during Michael Cohen's February 2019 testimony to the House Oversight Committee, Plaskett received and responded to text messages from Epstein before, during, and after her questions. Epstein directed her to question Cohen on Trump's executive assistant, Rhona Graff, and messaged her "Good work" after her questioning concluded.

Although a Republican move to censure her for this failed, it did reinforce the idea that the Epstein files were a net Democrat liability.

The next Epstein victim was former Clinton Treasury Secratary and Harvard president Larry Summers:

Larry Summers said Monday night that he was “deeply ashamed” about his relationship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, telling CNN that he would pause all public engagements as he works to “rebuild trust and repair relationships” — but the Harvard University professor added that he will continue teaching as some call for the university to sever ties with him.

. . . New details of Summers’ relationship with Epstein emerged last week when a House committee released emails showing years of personal correspondence between the two men, including Summers making sexist comments and seeking Epstein’s romantic advice.

The romantic advice concerned his attempts to arrange a romantic weekend with a woman who wasn't his wife, which appears now to have threatened that marriage. The situation in turn has caused Harvard to launch additional new investigations:

The investigation will also examine the roles of other people associated with the university who are implicated in the tens of thousands of pages released by the House Oversight Committee – including Summers’ wife, a professor emerita of American literature at Harvard, and nearly a dozen current and former Harvard affiliates, the paper said.

As of last night, new revelations emerged concerning House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries:

The materials, disclosed by House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, included a 2013 email to the disgraced financier—who died by suicide in a New York City jail cell six years later—promoting Jeffries as a rising figure in the party, calling him "Brooklyn's Barack." Comer seized on the outreach in a floor speech and on social media, arguing that the communication amounted to an effort to draw Epstein into Democratic fundraising circles.

. . . The Washington Times first reported on the email exchange Tuesday, emphasizing that Epstein had already been convicted as a sex offender in 2008 and was facing mounting lawsuits by 2013. The documents do not show evidence of Jeffries meeting Epstein or of Epstein donating in response to the solicitation. It is also unclear if Epstein responded to the email.

Meanwhile, the Clintons, who had previously delayed scheduled depositions concerning Epstein with the House Oversight Committee, now appear to be refusing to cooperate at all:

🚨🇺🇸 REP. LUNA ACCUSES CLINTONS OF REFUSING EPSTEIN DEPOSITIONS

“Bill and Hillary Clinton are refusing to appear before House Oversight for their depositions regarding Jeffrey Epstein.

Notice how House Democrats suddenly have nothing to say about it.”

Source: @RepLuna https://t.co/Si4XEaDpW2 pic.twitter.com/Fqzvm7x5Yw

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) November 17, 2025

At the start of the YouTube video embedded at the top of this post, Mark Halperin points out,

So, the Democrats are convinced that this is a scandal about Donald Trump, that this is gonna finally destroy Donald Trump, that his failure to be for disclosure up until the last minute reflects the fact that he's worried about his relationship with Epstein. . . . Back in 2015, ten years ago, I was covering Donald Trump speaking in Washington to the annual CPAC meeting, and he did an event onstage with Sean Hannity, and in that event, again, think about 2015 where he's thinking about running for president the next year, he knows that Hillary Clinton is likely to run, and . . . he's likely to face her in the general election. In that event, he brings up Jeffrey Epstein and his relationship to Bill Clinton. Ten years ago.

Halperin goes on to outline his own brief exposure to Epstein during that time, noting that Epstein could be found at pretty much any gathering of the rich and connected in New York -- but he seems to forget that if Epstein was rich and connected, that would always apply even more to Trump. Tidbits are now dropping in releases from the files that I've got to think Trump already knew about ten, a dozen, 15 years ago, whispered to him first hand. Trump must have been aware of what would drop about Summers, the Clintons, Staley, Gates, likely plenty of others, from the time the events took place.

So why did he resist releasing the documents? On one hand, he likely felt that the various tidbits weren't all that important -- the Summers business would mostly threaten Summers's marriage, something Trump probably felt wasn't worth the trouble. Anything about Clinton might potentially be of use, but it would be about Bill, not Hillary, and he wound up not using it.

On balance, it's pretty clear that Trump thought Epstein stuff didn't affect him, that it would hurt other people unnecessarily, and it was a distraction from his overall success. But if the Democrats and never-Trumpers want it so badly, hey, let them have it. It's not as though any of it affects him -- and nobody can now accuse him of ordering its release in any case.

It's a major error to underestimate Trump. I've sometimes pointed out here concerning Trump that it's better to be lucky than good -- but that doesn't mean Trump isn't often just good.

Was Thomas Crooks A Trans-Obsessed Furry?

It has now been confirmed that attempted Trump assassin Thomas Crooks used they/them pronouns, had a deep interest in furries, and was exploring gender identity.

Add it to the list:

- Charlie Kirk’s assassin Tyler Robinson had a furry obsession and lived with transgender… pic.twitter.com/JyAK9qO8ix

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) November 17, 2025

The idea that Thomas Crooks, the Butler, PA shooter, was trans isn't new. Just as I started a web search, Google AI hastened to set me straight:

The person identified by the FBI as the shooter in the July 2024 assassination attempt on Donald Trump was Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old cisgender man who was a registered Republican.

Following the shooting, a false online conspiracy theory spread rapidly, claiming the shooter was transgender. This was based on a misidentification using a photo of an unrelated transgender woman named Rose, an artist who was falsely targeted in the smear campaign. Fact-checking organizations, including Reuters and AFP, have confirmed that the claims identifying the shooter as trans are false.

I'm sure glad that's settled, huh? Thank goodness for fact-checking organizations! But now, more than a year later, we have Trump shooter Thomas Crooks's disturbing trans 'furry' fantasies revealed:

Donald Trump's would-be assassin appears to have used 'they/them' pronouns on a website known for hosting pornographic 'furry' material.

Thomas Crooks, who shot Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, at the height of the presidential campaign in 2024, is linked to the accounts 'epicmicrowave' and 'theepicmicrowave' on the website DeviantArt.

The website hosts sexually explicit images of 'furries' - human-like animal characters.

The accounts linked to Crooks used 'they/them' pronouns used by the transgender community and his activity suggested an interest in cartoon characters with ripped male physiques and female heads.

It comes amid renewed scrutiny on Crooks after Tucker Carlson carried out a forensic examination of his online footprint, including his violent statements, as well as his political journey from Trump supporter to rabid leftist.

Prior to Tucker's reporting, very little was known about Crooks, to the extent that the FBI was accused of a cover-up, which has fueled various conspiracy theories - including that the shooter may have been backed by a foreign government.

According to the New York Post,

[FBI Director Christopher] Wray’s deputy Paul Abbate told Congress that comments posted on one of Crooks’ social media accounts “appear to reflect antisemitic and anti-immigration themes to espouse political violence and are described as extreme in nature.”

Thanks to an enterprising source who uncovered Crooks’ hidden digital footprint, we can see that Abbate misled Congress by omission, because he left out an entire section of Crooks’ online interactions from January to August 2020 when he did an ideological backflip and went from rabidly pro-Trump to rabidly anti-Trump and then went dark, never seeming to post again.Thanks to an enterprising source who uncovered Crooks’ hidden digital footprint, we can see that Abbate misled Congress by omission, because he left out an entire section of Crooks’ online interactions from January to August 2020 when he did an ideological backflip and went from rabidly pro-Trump to rabidly anti-Trump and then went dark, never seeming to post again.

Among the 17 accounts uncovered by our source were ones on YouTube, Snapchat, Venmo, Zelle, GroupMe, Discord, Google Play, Quizlet, Chess.com and Quora.

The online interactions from when Crooks was ages 15 to 17 give us a better understanding of his evolution into an assassin, and invite more questions about what — or who — reversed his ideology.

The problem appears to be that you can pick and choose pretty much anything Crooks posted as an adolescent and prove he was anywhere on the polirical and psychological spectrum -- as you can with any adolescent -- but then you have to add that he went completely silent at age 17, three years before he did the shooting. Here's also a CBS News investigation from this past July, before the latest story broke:

His habits started to rapidly shift that fall [2023]. To his professors, he still appeared focused on getting straight A's and preparing to apply to the engineering programs at the University of Pittsburgh and Robert Morris University. But his online activity suggests his attention was elsewhere. He began to more frequently use an encrypted email service called Mailfence and a virtual private network called Mullvad. Both would shield his online life from anyone who might pry.

An analysis by CBS News of Crooks' internet routines shows he developed an increasing interest in news, explosives and ammo, and secrecy. The records include nearly a year of Crooks' activity on his college's wireless internet network. They show hundreds of visits to websites ranging from his academic email account and discussion boards, to his bank, news sites, gaming platforms, social media, weapons blogs and Steelers fan sites.

Logs of Crooks' on-campus internet activity, which CBS News obtained through a public records request, indicate that in the last months of his life, he became increasingly rigid about secrecy, shrouding his activities through encrypted services.

. . . In December 2023, a month before Crooks' final semester started, his life began to split in two. He was focused on his college applications, and at the same time fixated on mass violence. One day, he emailed himself to review his personal statement for his application; on another, he emailed customer service to complain that the explosive fuel he ordered had not yet shipped. Investigators later concluded he would have been able to engineer bombs in his bedroom without his parents knowing.

Around this time, some in Crooks' life did notice erratic behavior.

. . . "Crooks' father explained that within the last year he observed several instances of his son dancing in his bedroom throughout the night," a Pennsylvania investigator wrote. "He would occasionally see Crooks talking to himself with his hands moving, which he expressed as uncommon and had become more prevalent after he had finished his last semester."

But according to the Post story, he'd already gone dark in 2020; his 2023 secrecy was nothing new, and the CBS story indicates that he'd been solitary and unsocial all his life. He was teased and bullied about his body odor. Some of these characteristics might be consistent with the onset of schizophrenia in late adolescence or early adulthood, but not necessarily.

On the other hand, much of the story suggests that, although he was secretive in his habits, he was disorganized: he took homemade bombs with him in his car, along with remote detonators, but he doesn't seem to have had a fully developed plan to detonate them once he arrived at the Butler site. He doesn't seem to have been able to interact especially well with others, which would make him a poor co-conspirator. All of these qualities made him similar to Lee Harvey Oswald, to the extent that the Soviets never took Oswald seriously as a potential agent.

Does the FBI still have competent profilers? Maybe we should be hearing from them. The bottom line is that we still don't know enough about Crooks, and posts he may have made at 16 don't tell us much about him at 20. But so far, nothing indicates to me that he didn't work alone.

The Epstein Files???

Just this morning, via Time Magazine:

Republican Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky went against the most powerful leaders of his party to push forward with a vote to release more Jeffrey Epstein investigation files.

Except that last night,

President Donald Trump called for House Republicans to take a “vote to release” files relating to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, explaining that it is time for the nation “to move on from this Democrat Hoax.”

. . . “As I said on Friday night aboard Air Force One to the Fake News Media, House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party, including our recent Victory on the Democrat ‘Shutdown,'” Trump said in his post.

According to Wikipedia,

The term "Epstein files" refers to documents collected as evidence in the criminal cases against Epstein and his associates, stored as over 300 gigabytes of data, plus other media, in the FBI's case management system. They include his contacts book, flight logs of his planes, and court documents; some have been publicly released in redacted form. For example, court documents and flight logs have contained various prominent individuals as having traveled with Epstein, or been in contact with him.

I asked Chrome AI mode, "Why is there such a widespread expectation that the Epstein files will contain dirt on trump?" It answered,

The widespread expectation that the Jeffrey Epstein files would contain incriminating information ("dirt") on Donald Trump stemmed primarily from two factors: their past personal association and years of speculation and political maneuvering by figures on both sides.

Surprisingly, it added farther down, under "Reality of the Files",

The actual released documents contain mentions of Trump but no direct evidence has emerged of his participation in any illicit activity. The emails released are hearsay, and testimony from an ex-butler and the victim Virginia Giuffre in a 2016 deposition indicated Trump was a visitor for dinner but never stayed overnight, got a massage from Epstein's victims, or was seen in an inappropriate setting. The expectation of "dirt" largely stemmed from the combination of their past social ties, an absence of full transparency, and years of political posturing and conspiracy theories, rather than confirmed facts of wrongdoing in the files.

So I went on to ask, "Can you name which public figures have actually had their reputations damaged by association with Jeffrey Epstein?" It answered,

The most significant and publicly documented cases of reputational damage and professional consequences due to association with Jeffrey Epstein are those of Prince Andrew, Alexander Acosta, and Jes Staley.

OK, we know all about the former HRH Prince Andrew, now known as Mr Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Jes Staley resigned as the CEO of Barclays Bank in 2021 after allegations that he concealed his relationship with Epstein from UK bank regulators. Acosta is in a different category; he never cavorted with Epstein's nymphets, but he succumbed to political pressure while a US Attorney to give Epstein favorable treatment in negotiating his 2008 non-prosecution agreement.

But then Chrome AI notes,

While many other prominent names, including . . . Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, Bill Gates, and various celebrities, appear in contact lists, flight logs, and court documents, they have largely avoided the career-ending fallout experienced by the figures above. The presence of their names in records does not automatically imply involvement in wrongdoing, and they have denied any knowledge of Epstein's crimes.

In fact, of the numerous figures mentioned for one reason or another in the "Epstein files", very few have had their reputations seriously damaged simply as a result of being named in the files. The idea of "Epstein files" in itself appears to be a product of Epstein's own self-promotion as a highly connected, highly influential individual, which in turn appears to have been a cover story invented to explain the mysterious origin of his fortune, which was probably acquired largely through embezzlement of Leslie Wexner's money.

Since Trump's return to the White House, a few people, briefly including Elon Musk, have tried to hitchhike on Trump's prestige by claiming they somehow know enough about the "Epstein files" to bring Trump down a la now-Mr Mountbatten-Windsor. Musk seems to have recognized almost immediately that this was a bad strategy and quickly dropped it. Reps Massie and Taylor Greene seem to be more obtuse. It's a bad strategy in general to try to base your career on underestimating Trump.

Bp Strickland Provokes A Silence In Baltimore

Via The Catholic Herald:

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops was briefly unsettled this week when Bishop Joseph Strickland intervened against Fr James Martin over a recent confirmation liturgy involving an openly “married” homosexual couple.

The exchange occurred during the Committee on Doctrine’s consideration of Action Item #03, which concerns updated Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services.

Bishop Strickland spoke briefly and drew attention to images widely circulated online of a recent liturgy involving a well-known American broadcaster. “Since we’re in the area of doctrine,” he said, “I don’t know how many of us have seen on social media, priests and others gathered celebrating the confirmation of a man living with a man openly. And it just needs to be addressed.”

Bishop Strickland continued, stating, “Father James Martin once again involved. Great pictures of all of them smiling. Here we are talking about doctrine. I just thought I need to raise that issue. I know it’s not part of any agenda, but this body gathered, we need to address it. Thank you.”

At about 6:00 in the video embedded above, he comments,

I said a few words, spoke for maybe 30 seconds, not very long, and then the rest of the clip [from the session] was total silence, until, I guess, the bishops said, that were leading the meeting, sort of recovered from my interruption, and just told the bishop that was there at the podium, "Oh, Bishop, continue with your presentation." It was like I didn't exist, and the words that I'd spoken were not heard. It was just sort of a blip in the broadcast.

On one hand, the Baltimore bishops are generally seen to have taken conservative steps in electing Abp Coakley as president, as well as formally adopting a ban on gender-affirming care for transgender patients in Catholic hospitals. On the other, Bp Strickland's simple request that the meeting address the question of Fr James Martin endorsing communion for individuals in a state of mortal sin provoked a stunned silence, a "does not compute".

The request, of course, is hardly as simple as Strickland made it seem. Pope Leo granted a private audience to Fr Martin this past September 1, which is taken as a signal that Leo intends to continue Francis's legacy of "openness and welcome" toward the LGBTQ+ community. It's hard not to imagine the thoughts that were racing through the bishops' heads in the ensuing silence.

Thus places Bp Strickland in the position of truthteller, a Huckleberry Finn, a James Dean playing Caleb Trask in East of Eden, a Holden Caulfield, even a Froggy Gremlin.

Froggy the Gremlin was a character created by Smilin' Ed McConnell and brought to radio in the 1940s and television in 1950s on the Smilin' Ed's Gang show, and later Andy's Gang TV show, hosted by actor Andy Devine after McConnell's death.

. . . Froggy was a troublemaker. Disrespectful of adult authority figures, Froggy played practical jokes and disrupted the presentations of other guests. If a guest were to demonstrate how to paint a wall, he might say, "And now I'm going to take this can of paint..." Froggy would chime in, "And dump it over my head." And the confused guest would proceed to do so.

I asked Chrome AI mode, "Are there any Catholic saints who resemble Froggy the Gremlin in certain ways?" It replied,

There is no Catholic saint who physically resembles Froggy the Gremlin or has an appearance based on an amphibian. Froggy the Gremlin is an American fictional character from mid-20th century children's television, and the Catholic Church does not have saints with a physical description or iconography matching a green, mischievous, frog-like creature.

So there you have it. Bp Strickland is neither a frog nor a saint, nor is any case for his canonization likely to be taken up in any foreseeable future. Nevertheless, I wondered exactly why he was removed as a bishop, and I discovered that nobody really knows.

In an online interview given several hours after his dismissal, Strickland stated that he was uncertain of the exact reason he was removed from office, "except I've threatened some of the powers that be with the truth of the Gospel".

But it appears that he's been on point over a good many issues, including of all things, COVID:

In May 2020, Strickland signed a petition released by [Abp Carlo Maria] Viganò that criticized government restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Viganò characterized them as intentionally "...creating panic among the world's population with the sole aim of permanently imposing unacceptable forms of restriction on freedoms." The petition singled out the use of contact tracing devices as well as mandatory vaccination as infringements on people's rights. It also cited "growing doubts ... about the actual contagiousness, danger, and resistance of the virus."

In a December 2020 letter to his diocese regarding the COVID-19 vaccines, Strickland wrote "I urge you to reject any vaccine that uses the remains of aborted children." He later tweeted, "The fact remains that ANY vaccine available today involves using murdered children before they could even be born." Strickland added, "I renew my pledge — I will not extend my life by USING murdered children. This is evil WAKE UP!"

I can only conclude that I haven't been praying fervently enough for our bishops.

Biden showered half a billion dollars on @USCCB for resettling his foreign invasion force.

Trump took office and stopped it, and now @USCCB is doing a PR campaign condemning Trump’s immigration policies.

We all know what’s happening here. https://t.co/V1KwTEfkZa

— Oilfield Rando (@Oilfield_Rando) November 14, 2025

Yesterday,

As The New York Times reported, the United States’ Conference of Bishops sharply rebuked the Trump Administration over its mass deportation policy of illegals during the bishops’ annual conference in Baltimore.

In a statement, the bishops slammed the Trump Administration for creating “a climate of fear,” vilifying illegals, and not granting lawbreakers access to pastoral care.

. . . The statement overwhelmingly passed, with 216 anonymous votes in favor. Five bishops voted no, and three abstained.

I asked Chrome AI mnode, "What are major catholic NGOs that support migrants, and has the trump administration withdrawn funding?" It replied,

Major Catholic NGOs that support migrants include the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), Catholic Charities USA, and Catholic Relief Services (CRS). Following funding freezes and policy changes by the Trump administration in 2025, the USCCB ended its partnerships with the federal government for refugee and children's aid programs, and Catholic Charities agencies experienced layoffs and program cuts.

Major Catholic NGOs supporting migrants

• U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB): Through its Migration and Refugee Services, the USCCB has historically been a major partner with the federal government in refugee resettlement. They also operate the "You Are Not Alone" initiative to provide support to migrants.
• Catholic Charities USA: Local Catholic Charities agencies across the U.S. provide direct services to migrants, including food, housing, legal aid, and resettlement assistance.
• Catholic Relief Services (CRS): CRS provides humanitarian aid to migrants and refugees internationally, particularly throughout Latin America, offering aid beyond the U.S. border.
• Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC): CLINIC provides legal support to immigrants in need.

These were just the first entrries in a long list. It also linked to several news stories, including this from The Washington Post last April:

Citing “drastic” government funding cuts, U.S. Catholic bishops Monday said they’re ending a century-old program of resettling refugees fleeing war or persecution.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Migration and Refugee Services, the largest refugee resettlement agency in the world, will also end its support of undocumented children who come into the United States.

I askexd Chrome AI mode, "What is the total amount of funding the US Catholic resettlement NGOs have lost in the Trump funding cuts?" It replied,

A precise, single figure for the total amount of funding lost by all U.S. Catholic resettlement NGOs due to the Trump administration's cuts is not publicly available, as the impact was fragmented across numerous local agencies and programs. However, reports indicate widespread and substantial losses, with specific agencies losing millions of dollars and a large portion of their budgets.

Howevef, this site carries a lengthy breakdown of grants and amounts to the USCCB alone under the Biden administration, including

• $138 million for refugee reception and placement services, with $38.4 million specifically for evacuated Afghan refugees
• $110 million for the “Preferred Communities Program” (refugee aid program established in the 1990’s by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, includes one year of comprehensive assistance
• $48.8 million for USCCB’s Unaccompanied Alien Children program
• $66.1 million for general post-resettlement refugee assistance

In other words, the USCCB isn't necessarily addressing this issue from a disinterested moral perspective. But various statements from the USCCB, some individual bishops, and even the Holy Father consistently fail to mention CCC 2241:

The more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin. Public authorities should see to it that the natural right is respected that places a guest under the protection of those who receive him.

Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants' duties toward their country of adoption. Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens.

It appears that over the course of this year in particular, a consensus has emerged in the UK, Europe, the US, and Canada that the level of migration has now exceeded the ability of the prosperous nations to accommodate it without serious social disruption. In the US, programs from the USCCB and Catholic Charities were identified last year as enabling problems in places like Springfield, OH and Charleroi, PA that included migrants being able to drive unregistered cars without licenses or insurance, resulting in accidents, injuries, fatalities, and insurance rate increases for law-abiding citizens.

These issues affected the 2024 presidential election, which led directly to the Trump administration cutting the funding to the programs that created a situation in which Catholic NGOs were seen as enabling migrants to disobey laws and avoid carrying civic burdens. And it's a Catholic principle that citizens should participate in public decisionmaking through voting. As Border Czar Homan put it in response to the USCCB statement in the first link above,

So, according to them, the message we should 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 removed by a federal judge after due process, don’t worry about it because there shouldn’t be mass deportations.

In 2024, the US electorate made it plain that the level of immigration had exceeded the point where the country was able to accommodate it. This was one of the top issues in the election. The voters insisted that the political authorities enforce existing juridical conditions surrounding the right to immigrate.

It intrigues me that the USCCB vote was anonymous. And due to its near unanimity, I suspect that some centrist-to-conservative bishops like Bp Barron voted for it, but they would probably be unwilling to defend their votes publicly if forced to do so. But that brings me to another question: given a similar anonymous vote on whether the bishops support CCC 1994, which says in part,

[T]radition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Persona humana, 8). They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

would there be the same level of near-unanimity in support? I can't disagree with Border Czar Homan who urges the bishops to turn their attention to fixing the Catholic Church.