Books Close Reads Illustrating the Subtext: Edward Gorey’s Homoerotic Cover Art for Melville’s Redburn Gorey’s moody art meets a queer reading of Melville’s novel… By Paul Morton | Published on August 1, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share Welcome to Close Reads! Leah Schnelbach and guest authors will dig into the tiny, weird moments of pop culture—from books to theme songs to viral internet hits—that have burrowed into our minds, found rent-stabilized apartments, started community gardens, and refused to be forced out by corporate interests. This time out, Paul Morton sets sail for one of Herman Melville’s early nautical adventures, Redburn, and the highly specific, very queer-coded cover Edward Gorey contributed. At the beginning of his career, from 1953 to 1960, Edward Gorey drew book covers for Anchor, cheap paperbacks of quality literature, available to college students and laypeople. Gorey would go on to become a Great American Weirdo, the illustrator of dozens of books, though I still know him best for the PBS series Mystery!, for which he designed the opening titles. He refined his style and sensibility through the years, but he defined both early on: spare, carefully chosen lines against even sparer backgrounds; a wicked, Edwardian humor. NYRB has reissued some of this work. On Gorey’s cover of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, the Martians are both menacing and awkward, comical bumblers as well as mass murderers. I first learned about these editions some years back, at a bookstore in Vancouver, which kept a full shelf dedicated to the Gorey Anchors. For five Canadian dollars, I bought a 1957 copy of Herman Melville’s Redburn, a novel first published in 1849, which was based on the author’s first voyage out to sea, from New York to Liverpool, one he undertook in 1837 at the age of 18. I was unlikely to ever display the book in my small, cluttered apartment, and I didn’t see myself reading it anytime soon, but the cover intrigued me enough to buy it: a sexual neophyte, the excitement in his crotch suggested in cross-hatching, glancing both curiously and longingly at three older, rougher men, who regard the boy with a combination of lust and contempt. It was a relic from a dark time when any hint of homosexuality was still transgressive. Gorey had read many if not most of the books he was assigned to illustrate, but his covers were never literal. Instead, as Steven Heller writes in his introduction to Edward Gorey: His Book Cover Art and Design, his drawings “evoked moods or set off sparks of recognition.” I eventually read Redburn, one night when I was eager for a taste of weird America, and no, the cover does not represent any one scene in the book. Redburn is, at heart, a thrilling work of reportage. Wellingborough Redburn, the eponymous hero based on young Melville, has more than an intellectual interest in some of his fellow sailors, but the book is mainly interested in the economies of transportation and transcontinental trade in the mid-19th century, how laborers, passengers, consumers, and owners negotiate a system that is beyond any one person’s control. The prose is precise and fine, descriptive and thorough. It is not the baroque or apocalyptic Melville of Moby-Dick or the Civil War poems, nor the proto-modernist Melville of “Bartleby, the Scrivener” or The Confidence-Man. This is Melville as John McPhee. Still, Gorey might have been thinking of one chapter in the book, 10 of the novel’s 300 pages, the one thirtieth of the book every Melville scholar writes about. Redburn, having disembarked in Liverpool, meets a young man named Harry Bolton, and although Bolton does not appear on Gorey’s cover, his subjects, at some point in their lives, probably took his like for an amour. He was one of those small, but perfectly formed beings, with curling hair, and silken muscles, who seem to have been born in cocoons. His complexion was a mantling brunette, feminine as a girl’s; his feet were small; his hands were white; and his eyes were large, black, and womanly; and, poetry aside, his voice was as the sound of a harp. Bolton’s appearance disrupts the narrative entirely and transforms Melville’s prose, turns what has been a controlled study of a capitalist machine afloat on the water into a mystical dream journey to the underground of London. Imagine if Ken Burns made a ten-part series about the shipping industry, hit a crisis of confidence on episode seven, and decided to remake Fellini Satyricon.  Bolton leads Redburn into a “semi-public place of opulent entertainment,” and in describing it, Melville anticipates the Symbolism of the late 19th century. “From sculptured stalactites of vine-boughs, here and there pendent hung galaxies of gas lights, whose vivid glare was softened by pale, cream-colored, porcelain spheres, shedding over the place a serene, silver flood.” Redburn, a solid reporter but a true naif, sees the well-dressed gentlemen, fine waiters, and a “handsome florid old man,” called the Duke, and assumes he is among a noble set. The establishment, Bolton tells him, is known as “Aladdin’s Palace.” Bolton directs Redburn to remain alone in a room for the night, throughout which he is haunted by mysterious sounds in the distance, “hushed ivory rattling from the closed apartment adjoining.” He suspects he has been drugged, and his nightmare visions are unmistakably phallic: “All the mirrors and marbles around me seemed crawling over with lizards; and I thought to myself, that though gilded and golden, the serpent of vice is a serpent still.” When Bolton reappears, Redburn asks if he was off gambling. Harry laughs and replies enigmatically. Gambling?—“what two devilish, stiletto-sounding syllables they are!” The once confident and deliberate young man is now manic and he asks Redburn to hold onto a dirk, telling him he has thoughts of suicide. What happened that night is unclear. Was Bolton servicing a gentleman? Was Bolton attempting to pimp out Redburn? Was Redburn himself violated? Melville doesn’t answer those questions. The boy returns to Liverpool, boards the ship and heads back to New York. It will not surprise you to learn that prominent scholars, as late as the mid-aughts, have resisted a queer reading. For one, the décor is common to heterosexual brothels of the period. And although it was highly possible that Melville, like most whalers, enjoyed homoerotic adventures during his long journeys on exclusively male ships, it is not so obvious that he sought out similar encounters on land. Moreover, the Aladdin’s Palace sequence is probably based on another’s experience, as it is unlikely that Melville himself ventured beyond Liverpool. Still, there is ample evidence that Melville developed strong romantic feelings towards his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne, and his career, all the way up to his very last novel, betrays a profound appreciation for the beauty of the male body. Such critics do the same work of Bolton himself, refusing to name what cries out to be named. Like Melville, Gorey evokes a homoerotic aura. But he does not depict the decadent pseudo-upper-class world of Aladdin’s Palace, as much as the cruising culture from the period when he was working, a culture that collapsed the class structure of Eisenhower-era America. A curious middle-class teenage boy may have recognized himself on this cover, and he may have bought the book for 95 cents. He might keep a picture of James Dean in his bedroom. He might collect body-building magazines. He might have an immaculate Eagle Scout uniform in his closet. And he might very well spend nights by the railroad tracks or in a particular corner of the town park. Does he ever actually read Redburn? If so, the book may give him a taste for camp. And it may help him question the mores of the economic class just above his own. I don’t know if such teenagers still exist, avid readers hungry for the transgressive in capital-l Literature. No matter how often I move, I have no plans of ever dropping my Redburn. I hold onto it in memory of whoever among Melville’s few readers in 1849 felt a stirring of excitement when he read those ten pages, and of that teenage boy in 1957, who by the 1970s was organizing chic literary salons in SoHo. It is the glorious task of every generation to reinvent sex for themselves, hopefully for the better.[end-mark] The post Illustrating the Subtext: Edward Gorey’s Homoerotic Cover Art for Melville’s <i>Redburn</i> appeared first on Reactor.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—A Catholic organization that tracks attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers and churches is urging the Justice Department to investigate over 400 known attacks since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. The organization, CatholicVote, requested a meeting to discuss probes of pro-abortion violations of the FACE Act in a letter to Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke that it shared with The Daily Signal. “The [Biden] administration has repeatedly met and coordinated with the abortion industry, but has refused to meet with representatives of the millions of pro-life Americans and concerned Catholic citizens who are being threatened and intimidated across the country,” CatholicVote President Brian Burch writes in the letter to Clarke. The FACE Act prohibits “threats of force, obstruction and property damage intended to interfere with reproductive health care services.” The 1994 law protects abortion clinics and pro-life pregnancy centers. The Justice Department, however, has used the law to charge pro-life activists with FACE Act violations in the months since June 2022, when the Supreme Court overturned its 1973 Roe ruling and ended abortion on demand across the nation. Burch’s letter, dated June 21, asks Clarke why the DOJ disproportionally prosecutes pro-lifers for alleged violations of the FACE Act when the department apparently hasn’t prosecuted anyone for 439 attacks on pro-life Catholic churches since 2020. “Nearly every single prosecution of alleged violence against abortion clinics has involved application of the FACE Act despite the lack of enforcement on attacks against churches and pregnancy resource centers,” Burch writes. “What policies are in place at the DOJ which contribute to this imbalance, and what is being done to rectify it?” In June, three Florida pro-abortion activists pleaded guilty to conspiring to deface and threaten pro-life pregnancy resource centers in violation of the FACE Act. CatholicVote received an email from the Justice Department regarding the conviction, the letter says. This was CatholicVote’s first communication with the DOJ in over two years, the organization says, despite several outreach attempts. The Justice Department did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment before publication time. “We are happy to see that your recent correspondence affirmatively acknowledges that pregnancy resource centers, including those that do not perform abortions, are indeed protected by the act, and deserving of the same protection,” Burch says in the letter to Clarke. “Regrettably, the pattern has been disproportionately strong enforcement of the FACE Act against pro-lifers and minimal enforcement against pro-abortion extremists.” CatholicVote has documented relatively few arrests in response to attacks on Catholic churches and pregnancy centers. The organization’s letter to Clarke asks what steps, if any, the DOJ is taking to “identify, monitor, and investigate” pro-abortion groups behind the vandalism and other attacks, such as Jane’s Revenge and Ruth Sent Us. A total of 90 attacks on pregnancy centers and pro-life groups have occurred since the Supreme Court overturned Roe in 2022, according to CatholicVote’s tracker. “These are really concerning incidents, just from a public safety perspective, not even talking about the spiritual significance of them, and they are just not being touched,” Tommy Valentine, director of CatholicVote’s Catholic Accountability Project, told The Daily Signal. “They’re not being pursued with any diligence by the federal government, and a lot of these are centrally organized by domestic extremist organizations like Jane’s Revenge, like Ruth Sent Us, various anarchist groups that are clearly coordinating at least some of these attacks,” Valentine said. If any other religion or faith were being targeted like this, multiple federal task forces would set to work, but the DOJ turns a blind eye to attacks against Catholics, he said. “If we do not receive a response, we will assume the Department of Justice under our second Catholic president intends to continue turning a blind eye to the violence being perpetrated against his fellow Catholics,” CatholicVote’s letter to Clarke concludes. Mary Margaret Olohan contributed to this report. The post EXCLUSIVE: Catholic Group Urges DOJ to Investigate Pro-Abortion Attacks on Churches, Pregnancy Centers appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Those Illegal Jordanians Who Tried to Breach the Gate at Quantico? Feds Can't Be Bothered With Them

If something came over you and you felt compelled to drop a metal ball superheated to 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,832 degrees Fahrenheit) onto a piece of pineapple skin, you'd observe a peculiar phenomenon. Rather than burning, erupting into flames, or fizzing out of existence, the pineapple skin does, well, not much. How? It all comes down to a little something called the Leidenfrost effect.Such a bizarre experiment was shared in a video on X. In it, we see a defenceless sliver of pineapple skin on a table, minding its own business until a super-heated glowing iron ball is dropped on top of it.        The video rolls on and the pineapple skin looks pretty much fine until eventually the ball loses its orange glow. Flipping it over reveals that the fleshy innards never even got singed, so what’s going on? Is pineapple some kind of super material we should be crafting into armor?As much as we’d love to see that battle, the fact is that what we’re witnessing here is a nifty quirk of heat transfer. It’s something called the Leidenfrost effect and it isn’t unique to pineapples (see also: watermelons). It's a fun phenomenon that can make water flow uphill, and you’ve probably seen it in the kitchen.The Leidenfrost Effect acting on a water droplet.Image credit: Cryonic07, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia CommonsAs explained by Seppo Louhenkilpi from the Aalto University School of Chemical Technology, heat transfer is influenced by something known as Leidenfrost temperature. Above this temperature, a surface is so hot that when it comes into contact with a liquid it forms a layer of steam so the surface and the liquid aren’t in direct contact.Where you may have seen this before is if you drop liquid on a hot surface, it can form into little balls that appear to float. Similarly, if you put a really hot ball in water, it creates a little steam bubble so that the ball itself isn’t touching the water. Just check it out in the below video.     What this means for heat transfer is that on surfaces above the Leidenfrost temperature, the heat transfer rate doesn’t change much. For surfaces below the Leidenfrost temperature, the comparatively cooler hot surface can come into direct contact with the liquid, increasing the rate of heat transfer significantly.So, bizarrely, you could do more damage to a pineapple with a moderately heated ball than a superheated one. Something to remember should you find yourself facing an army of people who didn’t know about the Leidenfrost effect and took this video to mean that pineapple armor was a good idea.

The star V889 Herculis rotates faster at midlatitudes than either the equator or the poles, unlike the Sun and everything we would expect. The astronomers who detected the pattern do not yet have an explanation, but when we find it there could be some big changes to our assumptions about stellar behavior.Once astronomers started tracking the movements of sunspots, they realized the Sun rotated. That wasn’t so surprising, given that other astronomical bodies do too (even the Moon may appear not to until you think about it a little more). However, more detailed observations revealed that, unlike planets or moons, the Sun does not rotate at the same rate throughout. The equator takes about 25 Earth days to spin, while the figure for the poles is about 34 days, with intermediary values at mid-latitudes.This is thought to be because hot plasma rises to the surface nearly parallel to the axis of rotation near the poles, but perpendicular at the equator. Conservation of angular moment forces faster rotation at the equator, and in a fluid body the forces between regions are insufficient to keep the rotations matched.Even our most advanced telescopes lack the capacity to track starspots on other stars with the same precision. Nevertheless, we can see enough to know that some rotate much more quickly, and others more slowly. To the extent we could measure different rotation rates by latitude, it appeared they either shared the trait of rotating faster the closer one gets to the equator or had similar rotation at all latitudes.These conclusions were reached based on relatively short-term observations of rotations, but the physics fits the observations, and all seemed well with the heavens, until we looked at V889 Herculis.With mass and temperature just marginally greater than the Sun, but an age of 50 million years, V889 Herculis is considered one of the best proxies we have seen for the Sun at 1 percent of its current age. At 115 light years away it is hardly nearby, but still closer than 99.9 percent of the stars in the galaxy, making it a prime candidate for study.Stars spin quickly when they are formed, and slow with age. In this, V889 Herculis is no exception – it rotates once every 32 hours, allowing astronomers to observe a great many rotations. Fourteen years ago, a study reported the expected result that the equator rotates faster than the poles, lapping them roughly every 150 days, but this ignored the mid-latitudes. Given the gradual way the Sun slows down with latitude, that didn’t seem to be a problem, but a team led by Dr Mikko Tuomi of the University of Helsinki (best known for helping discover Proxima Centauri b) has complicated things. They found that the maximum rotation occurs at latitudes of 37-40 degrees. The equator turns slower, but the poles slowest of all."We applied a newly developed statistical technique to the data of a familiar star that has been studied at the University of Helsinki for years. We did not expect to see such anomalies in stellar rotation. The anomalies in the rotational profile of V889 Herculis indicate that our understanding of stellar dynamics and magnetic dynamos are insufficient," Tuomi said in a statement. The team used the same technique to explore the rotational profile of LQ Hydrae, a star 20 percent less massive than the Sun, and the same age as V889 Herculis. Its rotation could not be distinguished from a solid body, where the equator and poles turn at the same rate. However, the authors think its equator probably still rotates faster, just to such a small extent we lack the capacity to detect the difference.Both V889 Herculis and LQ Hydrae have been tracked for 30 years by robotic telescopes at the Fairborn Observatory that are the size of large amateur instruments, rather than the giants that dominate professional astronomy. Such modest instruments cannot make out the individual starspots at this distance, but they make up for that with long-term observations tracking a rise and fall in brightness. Tuomi and colleagues picked out curves they think are indicative of times when spots were predominantly located in one part of the star. With thousands of rotations taking place over the time each star was observed, this gave them a large sample to work on."It is amazing that even in the era of great space-based observatories we can obtain fundamental information on stellar astrophysics with small 40cm [16-inch] ground-based telescopes,” Tuomi said.The study is published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), better known as “forever chemicals,” have been found in almost every single fish tested in Illinois rivers, highlighting how these synthetic pollutants have become prolific in the natural world. In a new study, scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign studied 17 different PFAS across nine fish species caught from 15 sampling sites across four waterways in Illinois. Fish were found to be contaminated with PFAS in every one of their 15 test sites, and elevated levels of one specific compound, called PFOS, were found in nearly all fish tested. Levels were especially high in fish at the top of the food chain, like channel catfish, suggesting that bioaccumulation is at play. They were also higher in fish caught near urban locations and industrial regions.PFAS are nicknamed "forever chemicals" because they are highly resistant to degradation due to their strong carbon-fluorine bonds, causing them to persist in the environment and living organisms for an extremely long time.“PFAS contain multiple carbon-fluorine bonds, one of the strongest bonds in organic chemistry. Because of this, they are also very hard to break down. They persist for a long time because they are very, very stable,” Joseph Irudayaraj, a professor of bioengineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who led the new study, said in a statement. Common carp were also found to be loaded with "forever chemicals."Image credit: Rostislav Stefanek/Shutterstock.comPrized for their durability and stability under stresses like high heat or exposure to water, they’re used in a wide variety of industrial and consumer products, including non-stick cookware, water-repellent clothing, food packaging, firefighting foams, and cleaning products. In recent years, a long reel of studies has shown how PFAS have become ubiquitous in the world’s water, soil, air, and life forms. Concerning levels of the chemicals have been found in everything from drinking water and rainwater to dog poop and breast milk.“About 99 percent of people living in the U.S. have PFAS in their system,” said Professor Irudayaraj.Needless to say, this is not good news. PFAS are linked to a host of negative health effects, including liver damage, thyroid disease, obesity, fertility issues, and cancer. However, we are only just starting to uncover the extent of the damage they can cause.Some action is being taken to address the planet’s PFAS problem, although the scale of the problem means this is no easy task. In April 2024, the US Environmental Protection Agency established the first-ever national limits for PFAS in drinking water. However, the law only limited six types of PFAS, ignoring thousands and thousands of others. The new study is published in the journal Science of The Total Environment.

The big Trump news story on Wednesday night and Thursday morning was the intensely hostile grilling he received at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago. Unsurprisingly, the networks pounced on Trump’s trolling claims that Kamala Harris used to identify by an Indian heritage, and then decided she was black. Norah O'Donnell at CBS led like Dan Rather was scripting it:  CBS opens: "We start tonight with a fact-check. The Vice President's heritage is both Indian and Jamaican. But that didn't stop the Republican presidential nominee from accusing her of downplaying parts of her identity during the combative interview in front of a jeering crowd." pic.twitter.com/HwXs0QgTr8 — Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) August 1, 2024 But what did they omit? -- Kamala Harris skipped the black journalist convention, while Trump appeared. All the networks ran lots of commentary from Biden’s press secretary, and Harris, and Harris campaign statements, but mostly skipped the fact that Kamala skipped. On the Big Three, only on the CBS Evening News did reporter Nikole Killian briefly note “The vice president is in talks to address the NABJ in September.” The PBS News Hour had a sentence from Lisa Desjardins: “ Vice President Harris isn't expected at the journalists' convention, but is in talks to speak to NABJ members in September.” NPR’s All Things Considered and Morning Edition made no mention in their biased takedowns. The newspapers were also lame on this point. The New York Times noted it in paragraph 24, The Washington Post in paragraph 31, and The Wall Street Journal omitted it.  -- Harris has skipped all interviews and press conferences. The networks eagerly run clips of her Teleprompter speeches and repeat her campaign's press statements, but there's no mention of Harris hiding from the press since she undemocratically emerged as Biden's successor on the "Democrat" side. -- Most skipped the obnoxious opening question from ABC's Rachel Scott, especially ABC! NBC's Today ran the question in full. In both the evening and the morning, Scott's stories honed in on her pushy questions about Kamala Harris being a "DEI hire" as she refused to answer his question about what "DEI" means.  On CBS Tuesday night, Nikole Killion lamented: “One question in, the former president quickly panned one of the moderators who asked about some of his past comments….denigrating people of color and black journalists.” In between, she ran a clip of Trump asking in 2011 when Obama will release his birth certificate, and a brief snippet of Trump in 2018 accusing reporter Yamiche Alcindor of asking a "racist question." Viewers would have no idea what the question was.  (Alcindor asked: "On the campaign trail, you called yourself a nationalist. Some people saw that as emboldening white nationalists.") NBC’s Garrett Haake skipped the Scott speech on the Nightly News, but concluded his report with out-of-context spin: “Trump [is] defiant tonight blasting the questions at that event as rude and nasty, while a source close to the Harris campaign describes them as painful and completely unhinged. Lester.” On PBS, Lisa Desjardins began: "it quickly turned combative with ABC's Rachel Scott," and then only played Trump. NPR's All Things Considered refused to consider airing Scott's opening assault. Another so-called NABJ "moderator" (inquisitor?), Kadia Goba, complained "I was very surprised at the vitriol at the very beginning. It was very -- it was quite unsettling and kind of set the tone for a very aggressive panel." Excuse me? Who set the tone at the top? How bizarre. NPR host Ailsa Chang replied "Can I play a tape of that?" And then she played only Trump's response! 

President Donald Trump lauded the efforts by a Christian advocacy group Wednesday to raise awareness about Vice President Kamala Harris' apparent antipathy to Catholics, Catholic organizations, and Catholic moral teaching. Speaking to a large crowd Friday at the Turning Point Believers' Summit in West Palm Beach, Florida, Trump suggested that the "radical left ideology Kamala supports is really militantly hostile towards Americans of faith" and that Harris personally has an issue with Catholics. Harris "viciously attacked highly qualified judicial nominees simply because they were members of the Knights of Columbus, suggesting that their Catholic faith disqualified them from serving on the federal bench," said Trump. Trump nominated Brian Buescher to sit on the U.S. District Court in Nebraska in 2018. During Buescher's nomination process, Democrats took issue with his religious affiliation and membership in the massive Catholic fraternal organization Knights of Columbus, which is well known for its charitable outreach and the assistance it provides to persecuted Christians in the Middle East. Then-Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), an advocate for abortion up until birth who has in recent days secured the full support of various abortion outfits, wrote to Buescher, "Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed a woman's right to choose when you joined the organization?" It's unclear whether Harris knew at the time that the Catholic Church has opposed abortion since the first century and still officially affirms the "moral evil of every procured abortion." Harris also asked Buescher, "Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed marriage equality when you joined the organization?" Again, the organization's recognition of marriage as a covenant between a man and a woman is simply reflective of the official teaching of the Catholic Church. 'Harris's animus toward Catholicism is not limited to inquisition of Catholic nominees for federal courts.' The archbishop of Philadelphia at the time, Charles Chaput, blasted Harris and her fellow travelers for these and other questions insinuating that Catholics such as Buescher are unfit to sit as American judges, writing, "The sheer ignorance, not the mention injustice, in the senators' describing the Knights as 'extreme' would be baffling – if it weren't part of pattern of bigoted thinking already sanctified by other senators like Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) in her vulgar 2017 grilling of now-Judge Amy Coney Barrett ('The dogma lives loudly within you, and that's a concern')." Kenneth Craycraft, the James J. Gardner Chair of Moral Theology at Mount St. Mary's Seminary and School of Theology, underscored in First Things that "Harris's animus toward Catholicism is not limited to inquisition of Catholic nominees for federal courts, but also extends to harassment of public organizations whose missions are consistent with Catholic moral theology." For instance, Harris introduced legislation aimed at forcing "religious individuals and organizations to engage in activities that directly violate their firmly held religious beliefs" and co-sponsored the "Equality Act," which would "force Catholic hospitals, for example, to perform gender transition surgeries, open women’s restrooms to men, and force girls and women to compete against boys and men in athletic competitions." Trump noted Friday, "I don't know how a Catholic can vote for the Democrats because they're after the Catholics almost as much as they're after me." Trump also noted that his victory in November would mean an end to the kind of targeting of Christians and pro-life activists undertaken by the Biden-Harris Department of Justice and FBI. He further promised to review the cases of "every political prisoner who has been unjustly victimized by the Biden-Harris regime," including Catholic activist "Paulette Harlow, the 75-year-old woman in poor health who the Biden-Harris administration sent to prison for peacefully protesting outside of a clinic." Days after his speech, Trump recognized online that he was not the only person calling out Harris over her religious bigotry. Ahead of Trump's speech, the advocacy group CatholicVote launched a multimillion-dollar ad campaign hammering Harris in critical swing states over her anti-Catholic record. The group's president, Brian Burch, stated, "Kamala Harris hates what we believe." "Not only is this a gross form of anti-religious bigotry, it's also unconstitutional," Burch said in reference to the Buescher incident. “Harris' version of being Catholic is a Catholic who surrenders their core beliefs." Trump celebrated the group's efforts on Truth Social, writing Wednesday, "A large group of Catholics is launching a major Political Campaign against Crazy Kamala Harris. FINALLY!" "Catholics are literally being persecuted by this Wack Job, just ask the Knights of Columbus," wrote Trump. "They say that she is the most Anti-Catholic person ever to run for high office in the U.S. This respected group wants ALL CATHOLICS TO VOTE AGAINST KAMALA, and they are 100% correct." CatholicVote responded, "We're proud to expose Kamala's vile hatred of Catholics. Having a President who unapologetically brings this hatred to light is needed to combat religious bigotry." Should Harris pick Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as her running mate — which she is apparently now strongly considering — the Democratic ticket will be weighed down by even more anti-Catholic baggage. In 2017, then-state Attorney General Shapiro, who has counted the Catholic Church among his opponents, announced at a Planned Parenthood center that he was suing the Trump administration for providing religious nonprofits with an exemption from having to provide insurance coverage for contraceptives and other services at odds with their deeply held religious beliefs. Facing the potential of millions of dollars in fines for noncompliance, the Little Sisters of the Poor, a group of nuns who take care of the elderly poor, ultimately fought back and won. When referencing the lawsuit years later, Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R) said that Shapiro "has a real grudge against the Catholic Church." Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. 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Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner called out ABC News reporter Rachel Scott on Thursday for trying to corner Donald Trump with "gotcha" questions.On Wednesday, Trump sat for questions at a National Association of Black Journalists panel in Washington. The appearance began with immediate contention: Scott didn't say "hello" to Trump but immediately began to grill him with questions implying that he is racist. 'I mean, it didn't take much to show humanity, and in that moment, I was so disappointed that that didn't happen.'In true Trump form, the former president condemned Scott for her "nasty" question. — (@) Reflecting on the event during a "Fox & Friends" interview, Faulkner — who was one of three black journalists to question Trump at the NABJ event — expressed dismay over how Trump was treated.Not only did audio and technical problems snare the event — issues Faulkner attributed to the NABJ and ABC News — but Faulkner blasted Scott, though without naming her, for stirring up emotion through "gotcha moments" that grabbed headlines. She mourned the fact that emotionally charged moments grabbed headlines instead of the fact that Trump, according to Faulkner, willingly walked "into a racial storm."But that's not the only problem with the event, Faulkner went on to say.Like Trump, Faulkner took significant issue with the fact that Trump was not given a proper welcome."He walks out on stage and not a greeting to acknowledge it's been 18 days at that point since you survived an assassination attempt. 'We're going to ask you tough questions, but Mr. President, welcome, and we are glad you're still here,'" she said. "I mean, it didn't take much to show humanity, and in that moment, I was so disappointed that that didn't happen," she added. "I couldn't control it, but it got things off to an emotional start, and you and I both know that once that happens and you are interviewing someone, there is an agenda."At the end of her reflection, Faulkner made a prediction about the 2024 election: The only color that will matter is green."I don't know that people are going to vote on the color of their skin and the hair texture this time around," she predicted. "This is about money, the color is green."If Faulkner is right, then Vice President Kamala Harris will have a tough time overcoming President Joe Biden's record and her history of far-left economic views. Americans, after all, remember the price of their groceries when Trump was president.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

What Americans have wanted is justice. That will be denied.