Americans may know more about the man who attempted to assassinate President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, after a legal watchdog filed a federal lawsuit for documents being concealed by the Justice Department.
The non-profit public interest law firm Judicial Watch announced in a statement it “filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for all records regarding Thomas Matthew Crooks, who attempted to assassinate President Trump on July 13, 2024.”
“No more delays and excuses, the FBI should release what it has on the man who tried to kill President Trump a full year ago in Butler. Attorney General Pam Bondi should direct a full and immediate records response to this Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
Judicial Watch notes it sued after the FBI “failed to respond to a July 24, 2024, FOIA request for:”
All records, including but not limited to, investigative reports, interview summaries (Forms 1023), letterhead memoranda, photos, audio/visual recordings, database inquiries, interagency communications, and any other records, whether contained in the Central Records System or cross-referenced files, related to Thomas Matthew Crooks, born September 20, 2003 in Butler Township, PA and died on July 13, 2024, who attempted the assassination of former President Donald Trump on July 13, 2024.
All records of communication in any form, including but not limited to emails, text messages, encrypted app communications and voice recordings, between FBI officials and/or FBI sources, contractors, and assets on the one hand, and Thomas Matthew Crooks on the other hand.
“On July 13, 2024, then-Republican presidential candidate Trump survived an assassination attempt while speaking at an open-air campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Trump was shot and wounded in his upper right ear by 20-year-old Crooks, who fired eight rounds from his perch on top of a nearby building,” Judicial Watch explained, adding, “Crooks also killed one audience member, firefighter Corey Comperatore, and critically injured two others. Crooks was shot and killed by the counter sniper team of the United States Secret Service.”
Judicial Watch has been pursuing the information for nearly a year, noting:
In March 2025, Judicial Watch sued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for records related to security provided for the July 13, 2024, rally in Butler, PA, during which there was an assassination attempt on President Trump (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (No. 1:25-cv-00704)).
In September 2004, Judicial Watch sued the Department of Homeland Security for Secret Service and other records regarding potential increased protective services to former President Trump’s security detail prior to the attempt on his life at his July 13 campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (No. 1:24-cv-02495)).
In August 2024, Judicial Watch obtained records from the district attorney’s office in Butler County, PA, detailing the extensive preparation of local police for the rally at which former President Trump was shot. The preparation included sniper teams, counter assault teams and a quick response force. On August 9, in response to a separate open records request, Judicial Watch obtained bodycam footage of the July 13 assassination events from the Butler Township Police Department.
ANALYSIS – Will Kellyanne Conway return to Team Trump? As Kamala Harris, who recently stole the campaign from her boss, Joe Biden, basks in her current sugar high glory, some in the Trump campaign are wondering if his team needs a reboot.
Or maybe an injection of a 2016 winner.
And who better to revitalize Trump’s campaign, than his winning campaign manager from 2016, Kellyanne Conway.
At least Donald Trump’s wife, Melania, reportedly thinks so.
And a recent post on X showing pics of Conway and Trump together in New Jersey has fueled the speculation that a return to the campaign is in the works.
In 2016 the brash flaxen haired pollster-turned campaign chief swooped in after the campaign’s failing start with its B Team and is rightly credited as helping to get Trump across the finish line to victory against Hillary Clinton.
The outspoken adviser is seen as a trusted confidante by both the former president and, importantly, by Melania Trump who is “pushing” for Conway to return because she sees her as “a familiar face amid a sea of relative newcomers,” says Tara Palmeri in the online magazine, Puck.
Lara Trump, co-chair of the Republican National Committee and wife of Trump’s son, Eric, is also said to be pushing for Conway to be brought on board to reignite campaign stalwarts taken by surprise by Kamala Harris’ fast start after Joe Biden’s sudden departure.
One adviser told Puck that Trump listens to powerful women, more than men. “He listens to Hope Hicks. He listens to Brooke Rollins,” they tell Puck. “Ironically, he likes powerful women. If you’re a sharp woman, he will listen to you. Hope and these people could tell him the hardest shit. He may not have done anything, but at least he listens.”
While she was a key player in Trump’s 2016 win, eight years ago, she could still be the spark that relights the fire of a campaign still unsteady after Harris’ surprising Democrat Party coup and subsequent rise.
…it may also be fair to question whether his brain trust is living in the past. Chris LaCivita, who famously ran the Swift Boat Veterans campaign against John Kerry, has spearheaded an attack on Walz’s military record, but it’s yet to have the same impact as it did in 2004, when the U.S. had recently invaded Iraq. Other Trump allies are wondering if pollster Tony Fabrizio is likewise frozen in carbonite, as he considers a race-baiting strategy against Harris akin to the Willie Horton ads against Dukakis back in 1988.
Team Harris has raised $310 million in July, and another $36 million in the 24 hours after announcing her stolen Valor radical VP choice, Tim Walz.
So far Team Trump hasn’t been able to land any significant blows on his younger female political opponent.
According to Puck, Trump’s campaign team is split in half over whether she should return in a similar role to the one she had in 2016.
Meanwhile, Conway is smoothing over any ruffled feather with JD Vance after openly suggesting Marco Rubio as Trump’s VP.
As part of her mending relations effort, Conway recently tweeted “Brilliant” to Vance’s stunt when he landed at the same airport as Harris and Walz and challenged her to debate.
I thought the reporters traveling with Kamala might be a little lonely given that she never answers questions from them, so I figured I’d come say hello and check out my new plane while I was at it. https://t.co/OPEh0UKBDc
One big potential drawback to Team Trump is the fact that Conway recently registered as a $50,000- a month foreign agent for a Ukrainian oligarch.
This is already provoking accusations among her critics that it would be a conflict of interest. However, a campaign manager or advisor is not the same as a member of the administration. So, that issue may not matter much in these final three months of the campaign.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Great America News Desk.
Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Ramón Colón-López and the chief of staff to Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller, Kash Patel, arrive at Joint Base Andrews, Md., Jan. 14, 2021. (DoD photo by Lisa Ferdinando)
Matt Whitaker hosts prominent Trump adviser Kash Patel on Liberty & Justice.
Kash Patel is an American attorney, children’s book author and former government official. He served as chief of staff to the Acting United States Secretary of Defense under President Donald Trump.
Matthew G. Whitaker was acting Attorney General of the United States (2018-2019). Prior to becoming acting Attorney General, Mr. Whitaker served as Chief of Staff to the Attorney General. He was appointed as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa by President George W. Bush, serving from 2004-2009. Whitaker was the managing partner of Des Moines-based law firm, Whitaker Hagenow & Gustoff LLP from 2009 until rejoining DOJ in 2017. He was also the Executive Director for FACT, The Foundation for Accountability & Civic Trust, an ethics and accountability watchdog, between 2014 and 2017. Mr. Whitaker is the Author of the book–Above the Law, The Inside Story of How the Justice Department Tried to Subvert President Trump.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
By Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) - Director Wray Installation Ceremony, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63667603
The election of Donald Trump in November 2016 was, for the entrenched political class, a thunderclap. It was not supposed to happen. The experts, the pollsters, the seasoned operatives had assured the country that Hillary Clinton’s victory was inevitable. Yet by the morning of November 9, the White House was preparing to receive a president unlike any in modern history: a political outsider with no government experience, an instinctive distrust of Washington, and a willingness to discard its conventions. For some in the outgoing administration and the permanent bureaucracy, this was not merely a surprise. It was a crisis to be managed, or better yet, undone.
That undoing began in earnest just four months into Trump’s presidency, when Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, with the approval of FBI Counterintelligence chief Bill Priestap and General Counsel James Baker, authorized a criminal investigation into the sitting president of the United States. This probe did not arise from fresh evidence of presidential misconduct. It rested on the same thin reeds that had underpinned the Russia collusion narrative since mid-2016: opposition research paid for by the Clinton campaign, laundered through the Steele dossier, and presented as intelligence. It was a case study in how partisan disinformation can metastasize into official action when it finds a willing audience inside the government.
To understand how extraordinary this was, one must appreciate the context. Intelligence reports later declassified in the Durham Annex revealed that, as early as March 2016, the Clinton campaign had hatched a plan to tie Trump to Russian operatives, not as a matter of national security, but as an electoral tactic. These plans were known to senior Obama administration officials, including John Brennan, James Comey, and Andrew McCabe, before the election. Yet when Trump won, the machinery they had assembled did not wind down. It shifted purpose: from preventing his election to destabilizing his presidency.
The first casualty in this internal campaign was Michael Flynn, Trump’s National Security Adviser and one of the few senior appointees with both loyalty to Trump and an understanding of the intelligence community’s inner workings. In late January 2017, Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, an Obama holdover, warned the White House that Flynn had misled them about conversations with the Russian ambassador. The FBI had already interviewed Flynn, in a meeting arranged by Comey that bypassed standard White House protocol. Even Peter Strzok, one of the interviewing agents, admitted they did not believe Flynn had lied. Nevertheless, the incident was used to force Flynn’s resignation on February 13, with Vice President Pence publicly citing dishonesty over sanctions discussions. In hindsight, it is clear this was less about Flynn’s conduct than about removing a man who might have quickly uncovered the flimsiness of the Russia allegations.
Next came Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a Trump loyalist but a DOJ outsider with no prior experience in its leadership. Under pressure over his own contacts with the same Russian ambassador, Sessions recused himself from any matters related to the 2016 campaign on March 2. This decision, encouraged by DOJ ethics officials from the Obama era and accepted without challenge by Pence and other advisers, effectively ceded control of any Trump-Russia inquiries to deep state officials and Obama holdovers. It was the opening the FBI needed.
By mid-May, after Trump fired Comey at the recommendation of Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the FBI’s leadership was in open revolt. McCabe, Priestap, and Baker, all veterans of the Obama years, debated whether Trump had acted at Moscow’s behest. They even discussed the 25th Amendment and the idea of Rosenstein surreptitiously recording the president. These were not jokes. On May 16, McCabe authorized a full counterintelligence and criminal investigation into Trump himself, premised on the possibility that he was an agent of a foreign power. This was the first such investigation of a sitting president in US history.
Screenshot via X [Credit: @amuse]
The evidentiary basis for this move was paper-thin, much of it drawn from the Steele dossier, a work of partisan fiction that its own author was unwilling to verify. Baker, the FBI’s top lawyer, was a personal friend of Michael Sussmann, the Clinton campaign attorney who had helped funnel the dossier to the Bureau. Priestap, who signed off on the investigation, had overseen its use in obtaining FISA warrants to surveil Trump associates. They knew the source was tainted and the allegations were fiction. They proceeded anyway.
The day after the investigation formally opened, Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller as Special Counsel, locking the inquiry beyond Trump’s reach. Mueller’s team, stocked with Democratic donors and Obama DOJ and FBI veterans, inherited the case and its political overtones. For nearly two years, the president governed under a cloud of suspicion, his every move interpreted through the lens of an unfounded allegation.
The impact on Trump’s presidency was profound. Key legislative initiatives stalled. Allies in Congress, warned privately by Pence and others that the investigation was serious, kept their distance. Figures like John McCain, Paul Ryan, and Jeff Flake acted in ways that hampered Trump’s agenda, from blocking Obamacare repeal to threatening his judicial nominations. Inside the executive branch, FBI Director Christopher Wray, another newcomer with no institutional knowledge of the Bureau’s internal politics, declined to purge the officials who had driven the investigation, allowing them to operate until they were forced out by Inspector General findings.
By the time Mueller submitted his report in March 2019, concluding there was no evidence of collusion, the damage was done. Trump’s first term had been defined in large part by a manufactured scandal. The narrative of foreign compromise, though disproven, had justified a Special Counsel, sustained hostile media coverage, and ultimately greased the skids for an unfounded impeachment over Ukraine.
The Durham Annex, unearthed years later, stripped away any lingering doubt about intent. It documented that the Russia collusion story was conceived as a political hit, that it was known to be false by the time it was weaponized in 2017, and that senior intelligence and law enforcement officials chose to advance it rather than expose it. In Madison’s terms, the accumulation of legislative, executive, and judicial powers in the same hands, here, the unelected leadership of the FBI and DOJ, amounted to tyranny.
That Trump survived this onslaught is remarkable. Few presidents, faced with a hostile bureaucracy, disloyal appointees, and a media eager to amplify every leak, could have done so. That the plot failed to remove him does not make it less a coup. It makes it a failed coup, one whose near-success should alarm anyone who values electoral legitimacy.
The lesson is clear. The intelligence and law enforcement apparatus of the United States must never again be allowed to become an instrument of partisan warfare. The use of fabricated opposition research to justify surveillance, investigations, and the effective nullification of an election result is a violation not just of political norms but of the constitutional order. It took years for the facts to emerge. It will take far longer to repair the trust that was lost.
Sponsored by the John Milton Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to helping independent journalists overcome formidable challenges in today’s media landscape and bring crucial stories to you.
ANALYSIS – Even though, after the recent Supreme Court ruling against Affirmative Action, the momentum seems to be shifting away from discriminatory Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts nationally, one major, crime-infested, ‘Defund the Police’ city on the Left coast hasn’t gotten the message.
Seattle’s Democrat Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office ordered fewer White males and officers with ‘military bearing’ be shown in promotional images and videos for the city’s struggling police force.
The controversial document appears to be part of the mayor’s Comprehensive Police Recruitment and Retention Plan passed last year which prioritizes applicants with “diverse racial and immigration backgrounds.”
Once the memo provoked a firestorm of protest, the document was quietly edited to remove the offensive verbiage. Then the mayor’s office lied about having copies of the original memo, saying the original versions were lost.
This, according to a March 2023 memo written for the Seattle Police Department (SPD), titled “SPD Marketing More and Less,” calls for more photos and videos of “officers of color” who are “younger” and of “different genders” to be featured in the department’s marketing materials.
And to make the overtly discriminatory point as clear as possible, the memo also directed that there should be “less” images and videos of “officers who are white, male” and “officers with military bearing.”
The outrageous memo was written by Ben Dalgetty, a Digital Strategy Lead from the mayor’s office who oversees SPD recruitment. And it got the Seattle Police Officers Guild justifiably upset.
Officer Mike Solan, president of the police union told Seattle radio host Jason Rantz in a written statement that the union cannot abide by “discrimination.”
“What I condemn and will forever continue to push back on is the verbiage within the recruitment document that calls for less of white male officers. Less of people in leadership positions, and less of humans with military backgrounds. This is flat-out discrimination. Period. It is an affront to decency, reasonableness and further divides our communities,” Sloan wrote.
“It is embarrassing, shameful, and detrimental to a healthy functioning society.” But he wasn’t the only one outraged by the memo.
According to My Northwest, police sources who spoke to “The Jason Rantz Show” were shocked that the mayor’s office would put their radical racial and other preferences for police recruitment in writing.
“I thought, ‘Are you kidding me? You put this in writing?'” one SPD source reportedly said. “It shows not only a lack of respect for officers, but a lack of respect for the military. They have no understanding of someone willing to put their lives on the line for their fellow man. They don’t have respect.”
Other SPD officials were “livid” with the memo. After receiving complaints from SPD, Dalgetty made several edits to the document.
“The Jason Rantz Show” said their public records request for the original memo went unanswered for months before the mayor’s office finally provided the edited version on July 10, but wrongly claimed the original version wasn’t available anymore.
Meanwhile, there were 52 homicides in Seattle in 2022, and last year had the highest number of violent crimes with 5,625, the most in over 10 years of Seattle crime statistics.
And, since 2020, and the Black Lives Matter riots, the SPD has had a net loss of 325 officers. Last year, it was a net loss of 90 cops, despite Mayor Harrell’s much-publicized diverse recruitment efforts.
At the same time, the left-wing city council and two different Democrat mayors have talked for nearly three years about forming teams of social workers or mental health counselors to respond to some calls instead of police.
But the fact is that 300-plus cops who used to respond to an increasing number of 911 calls are gone — and haven’t been replaced with anything real.
Still, city officials have the audacity to discriminate against the remaining white male officers with ‘military bearing’ who remain.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
A new Associated Press poll finds Americans are almost evenly split on whether former President Donald Trump should be sentenced to prison after being found guilty of falsifying business records in New York.
“The public is divided over whether Donald Trump should be sentenced to prison for his felony conviction for falsifying business records in the hush money case,” the AP reports. “Opinions on the conviction itself have remained stable in the weeks since the decision was announced on May 30 with nearly half approving of the jury’s decision and about a quarter disapproving. The public is also divided on whether Trump has received fair treatment from the legal system.”
Trump, convicted in June, is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 18, just weeks ahead of the November election. Experts predict Trump will likely receive probation and a fine, but a prison sentence is a distinct possibility.
The AP/NORC poll, conducted June 20-24, finds 48 percent believe Trump should receive a prison sentence, while 50 percent disagree. That gap is within the poll’s margin of error, meaning Americans are essentially evenly split.
Among independent voters, who will decide the election, 50 percent believe Trump should be imprisoned while 46 percent disagree.
While Americans are split on whether Trump should go to prison, the number who support Trump’s conviction outnumber those who oppose it by nearly a two-to-one margin.
The poll finds 46 percent of Americans support the jury’s decision to convict Trump, while 27 percent disapprove and 25 percent are unsure.
Among independents, 32 percent agree with the conviction, 21 percent disagree and 47 percent are unsure.
The nationwide poll was conducted June 20-24, 2024 using the AmeriSpeak® Panel, the probability-based panel of NORC at the University of Chicago.
The poll, using online and telephone interviews using landlines and cell phones, was conducted with 1,088 adults. The margin of sampling error is +/- 4.0 percentage points.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – The communist regime in China raided a private U.S. investigations company’s office in Beijing on March 20.
This brazen, and likely unlawful, act against the New York-based due diligence firm, the Mintz Group, follows the FBI raid last fall of an illegal Chinese overseas ‘police station’ in New York City.
And some see it as a heavy-handed, and non-symmetrical retaliation.
But the raid in Beijing is also likely tied to Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s draconian security crackdown on the information inside China.
“Red alerts should be going off in all boardrooms right now about risks in China,” said one source in the New York Post.
The same U.S. business person also said that the Mintz Group raid sent a “remarkable signal” that Beijing will suck up foreign money and technology but won’t accept credible U.S. firms conducting research and investigations on Chinese partners or the country’s business environment.
Reuters reported that the company confirmed that “Chinese authorities have detained the five staff in Mintz Group’s Beijing office, all of them Chinese nationals, and have closed our operations there.”
The detained employees are reportedly being held somewhere outside Beijing. The company has not been able to contact the employees since they were detained.
Unlike the official police status of the Chinese outposts raided in NYC, the Mintz Group is a purely private company.
The firm describes itself as “a corporate investigations firm that gathers information before hiring, before transactions, during litigation disputes and after frauds, all over the world.”
According to its website, the company has over 450 investigators in 18 offices worldwide, but its Beijing office is the only one in mainland China. It has a second office in Hong Kong.
It also does background checks, asset tracing, and fraud and corruption investigations for businesses planning acquisitions or other large investments.
This corporate mission will likely be used by Chinese authorities to accuse the company of being spies.
And it wouldn’t be the first time western due diligence companies have gotten into trouble with Chinese authorities.
British corporate investigator Peter Humphrey and his American wife Yu Yingzeng, who ran a risk advisory firm, ChinaWhys, were detained in 2013 for work they did for a giant British pharmaceutical firm.
They spent two years in jail.
But there is an added twist to this latest raid.
While there may not be a direct link, the New York Post reported that: “Randal Phillips, a partner at the firm [Mintz Group] who heads its Asia operations but is based outside of China, is listed on its website as the Central Intelligence Agency’s former chief representative in China. Phillips worked in Beijing for years after leaving the CIA.”
Even though the raid can be seen as a response to the FBI raid against Beijing’s illegal NYC police outpost, one of 100 stations around the world, the additional motive is also clear.
…the move [also] highlighted the risks that firms involved in due diligence face in China as Xi Jinping, the country’s top leader, has repeatedly called for a greater emphasis on security and has tightened the ruling Communist Party’s grip on information.
The firm stated that it “has not received any official legal notice regarding a case against the company and has requested that the authorities release its employees.”
Perhaps not coincidentally, reported the Wall Street Journal, the Mintz Group raid is putting foreign companies in China on alert just as the country hosts an international economic conclave called the ‘China Development Forum’ set for this weekend.
The high-profile event is expected to be attended by Apple CEO Tim Cook, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, Ray Dalio, who founded the world’s biggest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, and other top executives.
According to a survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in China, with increasing tensions between the U.S. and China, U.S. businesses already operating in China are increasingly pessimistic about their prospects.
Maybe this latest Chinese act will make more U.S. firms think twice about investing there.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Pope Francis has named Cardinal Robert McElroy, a known advocate for migrants and outspoken critic of President-elect Donald Trump, as the new Archbishop of Washington, D.C. The decision underscores the pontiff’s preference for church leaders who align with his progressive vision, even as it risks further deepening ideological divisions within the millennia-old Catholic Church.
Cardinal McElroy, recognized as a strong supporter of LGBTQ inclusion and other liberal causes, has consistently aligned with Pope Francis on key social and theological issues. His appointment was announced two weeks before Inauguration Day, conspicuous timing that drew widespread attention given the cardinal’s history of publicly criticizing Trump’s policies on immigration and social justice. This is particularly notable in light of McElroy’s emphasis on synodality (dialogue with one another in the presence of the Spirit of God) and church reform, which have drawn both praise and criticism from Catholic observers.
The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
As Forbes’ Conor Murray reports, the move to elevate McElroy comes as a stark contrast to Trump’s nomination of Brian Burch as ambassador to Vatican City. Burch, a conservative Catholic activist and president of the right-leaning advocacy group CatholicVote, was instrumental in rallying Catholic support for Trump during the 2024 campaign. His organization has frequently clashed with the more progressive stances of Pope Francis and his allies:
McElroy has largely slammed Trump because of his views on immigration, including his promise to conduct mass deportations. McElroy was one of 12 Catholic bishops from California who co-authored a statement last month voicing support for “our migrant brothers and sisters,” acknowledging the “calls for mass deportations and raids on undocumented individuals” have created fear in migrant communities. After Trump’s first election victory in 2016, McElroy called it “unthinkable” that Catholics would “stand by while more than ten percent of our flock is ripped from our midst and deported.” He called Trump’s mass deportation plan an “act of injustice which would stain our national honor” and compared it to Japanese interment and Native American dispossession. McElroy criticized Trump’s plan to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy in 2017 for lacking any “shred of humanity,” stating Jesus Christ was “both a refugee and an immigrant during his journey.”
In a 2023 column for America magazine, McElroy urged greater welcoming of divorced and LGBTQ Catholics into the church, stating the church’s “disproportionate” focus on sexual activity as sin “does not lie at the heart” of a Christian’s relationship with God and “should change.” McElroy called it a “demonic mystery of the human soul why so many men and women have a profound and visceral animus toward members of the L.G.B.T. communities.” In a February 2024 speech, McElroy considered the lack of support among Catholics for blessing same-sex marriages to be the result of “enduring animus among far too many toward LGBT persons.” McElroy has also criticized abortion being considered a “de facto litmus test for determining whether a Catholic public official is a faithful Catholic.” McElroy, however, called Biden’s lack of support for anti-abortion legislation an “immense sadness” in a 2021 America magazine column, and called the overturning of Roe v. Wade a “day to give thanks and celebrate.”
Burch, founder and co-president of CatholicVote, was once a Trump skeptic but praised him in 2020 for making a “concerted effort to reach out to Catholics in a way that we haven’t seen in the past.” That year, he authored the pro-Trump book, “A New Catholic Moment: Donald Trump and the Politics of the Common Good.” Burch has slammed Francis for “progressive Catholic cheerleading” and accused him of creating “massive confusion” over his approval of blessing same-sex marriages in 2023.
Also on Monday, Francis appointed Sister Simona Brambilla, an Italian nun, to lead a Vatican office, making her the first woman to lead a major Vatican department. The department, the Dicastery for the Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, is responsible for religious orders. Francis has long voiced support for greater roles for women in the church, though he has ruled out ordaining women as deacons or priests.
McElroy’s appointment also highlights Pope Francis’ broader engagement with U.S. politics. In 2024, the pontiff made headlines when he urged voters to carefully consider their choices, describing the act of voting as a moral responsibility. During a press conference aboard the papal plane, Francis remarked on the complexities of American politics, advising voters to choose “the lesser evil” when faced with challenging decisions.
While the pope has criticized Trump’s hardline immigration policies, he has also expressed concern over Vice President Kamala Harris‘ unwavering support for abortion rights. Both stances, Francis noted, conflict with the Church’s teachings on the sanctity of life. “One must choose the lesser of two evils,” the pope reiterated. “Who is the lesser of two evils? That lady or that gentleman? I don’t know. Everyone with a conscience should think on this and do it.”
Despite the pontiff’s cultural influence, his impact on American politics was negligible. In the 2024 presidential election, former President Donald Trump secured a notable share of the Catholic vote, surpassing his performance in previous campaigns. According to exit polls conducted by The Washington Post, Trump won the national Catholic vote by a 15-point margin, with 56% supporting him compared to 41% for Vice President Kamala Harris.
This represents a notable shift compared to the 2020 election, where the Catholic electorate was nearly evenly split, with 50% supporting Trump and 49% favoring Joe Biden, a lifelong Catholic.
The 2024 election also saw variations within the Catholic demographic. Trump’s support among white Catholics increased, with 59% backing him compared to Harris’s 39%, a 20-point margin. This was an improvement over his 15-point lead in 2020.
Marburg79, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Among Latino Catholics, there was a significant shift toward Trump. In 2020, Biden led this group by a substantial margin, but in 2024, Trump’s support increased notably, contributing to his overall gains among Catholic voters.
The appointment of McElroy is likely to spark further debate within the Church, where a widening schism between liberal and conservative leaders continue to grow. However, it also reflects Francis’ commitment to shaping the Church’s leadership in a way that emphasizes his vision for pastoral care and inclusivity, even at the expense of unity.
Yet, in the United States, voting trends strongly suggest that Trump’s campaign strategies—including selecting Senator JD Vance, a Catholic, as his running mate, and making explicit appeals to Catholic voters—resonated with this demographic, contributing to increased GOP support in the 2024 election and possibly beyond.
Article Published With The Permission of American Liberty News.
Vivek Ramaswamy speaking with attendees at the 2022 AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona.
ANALYSIS- Who is this skinny guy with the funny-sounding name? (That was his opening line at the debate). Vivek Ramaswamy wasn’t supposed to be at the center of the first Republican presidential candidate debate in Milwaukee.
Ron DeSantis was supposed to be the viable GOP alternative to Donald Trump. A two-term governor of the third most populous state in the union, DeSantis, a Navy veteran who served in Iraq, is as conservative as they come.
And he has a proven track record of fighting the left in Florida – and winning.
But despite his solid bona fides and resume, DeSantis has a personality problem. He just doesn’t exude charm or confidence, and that’s hurting him – a lot.
Meanwhile, Ramaswamy the 38-year-old Trump-defending, Cincinnati-born, biotech billionaire (worth at least $950 million), son of Pakistani immigrants, kind of stole the show at the debate.
According to former FBI agent and body language expert, Joe Navarro: “[Ramaswamy] consistently looked the most comfortable on stage.”
He was also the most openly and unabashedly pro-Trump. He was the first candidate to raise their hand when asked who would support the former President as the party nominee even if he is convicted on felony charges that he’s facing.
He has also promised to pardon Trump if elected. But he went even farther than that.
“President Trump, I believe, was the best president of the 21st century,” Ramaswamy said in a clip from the debate Trump posted on Truth Social.
And Trump loved it.
“This answer gave Vivek Ramaswamy a big WIN in the debate because of a thing called TRUTH. Thank you, Vivek!”
The ever-smiling political newbie Ramaswamy, who seemed to be having a blast on stage, was also the target of many of his GOP rivals.
Maybe it was Ramaswamy’s consistent and confounding defense of All Things Trump. Maybe it was his smooth talk and culture-war acumen. Maybe it was just the fact that Ramaswamy frankly does not care how things were done before and might just have enough self-made money to go the distance.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie snarled that he had “had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like ChatGPT,” an A.I. battery. He then dismissed Ramaswamy as someone on the same level as a political figure universally loathed in the GOP. “The last person in one of these debates… who stood in the middle of the stage and said, ‘What is a skinny guy with an odd last name doing up here?’ was Barack Obama. And I am afraid we are dealing with the same type of amateur standing on the stage tonight,” Christie said.
But the quick witted Ramaswamy’s riposte to Christie was a zinger: “Give me a hug like you did to Obama, and you’ll help elect me just like you did to Obama. Give me the damn hug, brother.”
Ramaswamy was referring to the 2012 incident when Christie was accused of “hugging” Obama during his visit in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy which hit days before the 2012 presidential election.
It’s a claim that Christie has been denying since then, saying: “I didn’t hug him.”
Photos at the time seem to back up Christie, but the zinger still worked.
Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN under Trump, and ex-South Carolina governor, Nikki Haley, who is of Indian descent, hit Ramaswamy too: “You have no foreign policy experience, and it shows.”
I would agree with that assessment and believe he has made a few deeply flawed important national security statements – including on Ukraine and Israel.
But he is super smart and can learn quickly.
Then Vice President Mike Pence took a Christie-like jab at Ramaswamy, attacking the very same quality that originally helped raise Trump in the GOP base – that he is not a politician.
“Now it’s not the time for on-the-job training,” retorted Pence. “We don’t need to bring in a rookie. We don’t need to bring in people with no experience.”
AS TIME noted: “Attacks during debates are the norm but this was different. Ramaswamy’s competitors really don’t like him. Not even a little.”
However, there is one important GOP rival who seems to like Ramaswamy – Donald Trump. And that could be all that matters.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
