As the northern winter approaches, Scandinavia’s Catholic Church is witnessing unprecedented growth, with more people turning to the faith in reaction to the region’s highly secularized culture.

“The Church is gaining strength thanks to an upsurge in Catholic conversions,”

“And where there was once anti-Catholic feeling, public prejudices are now much diminished. Young people are finding each other in parishes across the country, while others show a positive interest in ways we haven’t seen before,”

The lay Catholic spoke as Bishop Fredrik Hansen of Oslo marked World Mission Sunday Oct. 18 by unveiling plans for his diocese’s first-ever synod on evangelical needs and challenges.

In an OSV News interview, Aadland Høen said many young people have discovered the faith after “terrifying experiences” of pagan and New Age practices, adding that Norway’s Church was now seeing a significant rise in confirmations and adult initiation courses.

Meanwhile, a prominent Danish Catholic told OSV News the country’s Church was also observing new signs of interest, but was also seeking to ensure converts properly understood Catholic teaching and were not merely making a “conservative, counter-cultural statement.”

“The growth isn’t as pronounced here as in Norway and Sweden,” said Nik Bredholt, parish council chairman at St. Ansgar’s Cathedral in Copenhagen.

“But many are discovering the Catholic Church via the internet and coming to our Masses in a genuine search for God,” Bredholt said. “Something significant is clearly happening.”

Catholics suffered severe repression throughout post-Reformation Scandinavia, when predominant Lutheran churches gained official denomination status.

However, although Norway’s Constitution, amended in 2014, still declares the Lutheran Church to be “established,” it no longer requires government ministers to be practicing members and says other faith communities must be “supported on equal terms.”

Demands for similar modernizing reforms have been made where Lutheran state churches still hold sway.

Jonathan Luxmoore, OSV News

• On Friday, The New York Times reported military review boards are defying orders from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to discharge transgender service members, with Navy and Marine Corps boards frequently voting to retain them.
• President Donald Trump’s administration created three-person separation boards with narrow instructions mandating dismissal of the estimated 4,250 transgender personnel currently serving in the military.
• Navy and Marine Corps boards have voted to retain trans members in nine of 12 cases. Marine Staff Sgt. Damien Contreras saw board members cross out instructions regarding “a history of cross sex hormone therapy” and circle “remains qualified.”
• The Army and Air Force have overwhelmingly voted to discharge transgender service members, contrasting sharply with Navy and Marine retention rates. Board decisions are recommendations that politically appointed branch secretaries could reverse.
• Rank-and-File soldiers are prioritizing service records over political mandates. “You have war fighters looking at war fighters,” Contreras said, noting peers recognize colleagues who deployed and followed military rules.

People say you’re racist for suggesting that Hispanic immigrants are moochers coming to the USA for freebies. Actually, I don’t assume most of them are. Immigration is hard. It takes courage, stamina, independence and initiative for anyone to immigrate. But the career politicians are like heroin dealers. Their explicit goal is to hook immigrants on freebies and expand the permanent underclass. Pair this with an economy destroyed by huge taxes, crazy regulations and billions in stolen wealth handed to swine like Ilhan Omar, and you have the recipe for unlimited power fueled by dependence. Socialists must destroy the best within immigrants–and all of us–in order to thrive as the sociopathic parasites they are.

*******

“Zohran Mamdani instructs illegal migrants how to dodge ICE.” [reported at Breitbart 10-23-26]

If Biden or Kamala Harris were President, would a conservative mayor get away with telling citizens to disregard a federal agency? To say nothing of telling noncitizens?

If federal agencies only have power when Democrats say they do, then aren’t we already a one-Party country? As in totalitarian country? We’re certainly getting there.

Imagine if we had a Democratic President using the FBI to round up and arrest Trump supporters, opponents of electric car mandates, anyone “misgendering” a man dressed as a woman. Next, imagine a Republican mayor or governor informing citizens how to avoid or stand up to the FBI. The retribution from the federal government would be swift, ruthless and decisive.

You may well live to see it happen. As for Mamdani–he will be just fine. This is why America is sinking. Sobering, but it’s a fact.

*******

You can’t really blame Ilhan Omar for acting like an ass. After all: NOBODY on the left has EVER been held accountable for ANYTHING. Not once. If she gets what’s coming–then she will be the first. Hopefully not the only. Clock’s ticking, President Trump. Two more years and a possibly Democratic Congress coming. All hell will break loose.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Socialism and Communism are all about control, conformity, uniformity, and the stifling of innovation. Socialism seeks to suppress independence, rational intelligence and individualism. When you suppress these things, you do not get the “warmth of collectivism;” you get stagnation, starvation and despair.

But hey — at least you’ll get “affordability.” And that’s all that matters.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

The 2026 midterms aren’t even over yet, and Vice President JD Vance has already dropped a bomb into the 2028 presidential election cycle: he might not run.

Vance told the audience at a Michigan town hall that he had not yet made a decision about whether or not he would seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2028 — and said it was certainly a possibility that he would sit the election out.

Host Tony Dokoupil started the ball rolling by jumping on a comment Vance had made earlier in the evening — namely that he might be “out of a job” in a couple of years.

“The structure of the sentence suggests that you’d be running for a continued job,” he said.

“Not necessarily,” Vance laughed.

“No?” Dokoupil asked. “So there’s a chance — okay, let’s go right there: Is there a chance that you don’t run for president in 2028?”

“Of course there’s a chance!” Vance’s reaction was immediate. “Yeah, man, we’ve got four little kids, my wife has never loved politics. She loves public service. I think you know you can do a lot of good in this job, and I’ve tried to do as much good as possible.”

“I really — people ask me this question all the time. I think they assume that because I’m a politician, ‘Of course he’s going to run for president in 2028,’” he continued adding that, as a rule, he tended to procrastinate on major life decisions and only make up his mind at the last minute.

“My wife will tell you this: I’m a procrastinator. I hate ‘thinking about it,’” he added. “And what will happen is that first of all, after all of these fine people elect Mike Rogers United States Senator for the state of Michigan, what’s going to happen is, they don’t have to think about it. And I actually will have to make a decision.”

Throwing up his hands, Vance shook his head and concluded, “But you know, anything could happen, man.”

President Donald Trump has refrained from naming a chosen successor, making it clear that he has confidence in a number of members of his own cabinet should any of them decide to run for the 2028 nomination. He has said specifically that he thought Vance would do a great job, and has also voiced support for Secretary of State Marco Rubio

Virginia Kruta, Daily Wire

Nurse says he recently reported a ER nurse who delayed pain medication to a Level I trauma patient because he was wearing a MAGA hat.

The man had been stabbed, beaten with a baseball bat, and had a bone protruding from his leg. That’s just evil.

Good on this man for reporting her and making those in charge aware of her abhorrent behavior. Politics should never interfere with patient care.

Instagram

U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday attacked former U.S. President Barack Obama for campaigning for Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee, labeling him a “Muslim Brotherhood Jihadist.”

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said El-Sayed “hates Jews and Blacks and Americans and Trump.

“Michigan doesn’t want an arrogant, open borders, fake doctor, jihadist,” Trump wrote. He urged voters to back Republican nominee Mike Rogers.

JNS

Wisconsin media is reporting on a MAJOR Democrat Party scandal just days before the November 3rd midterm elections.

This involves the Wisconsin race for governor.

Democrat primary candidate and Milwaukee County Executive, David Crowley announced on Wednesday, July 8th, that he was suspending his campaign.

That leaves current Wisconsin Lt. Governor Sara Rodriguez in the primary race against unhinged communist

But Sara Rodriguez dropped out of the race two weeks later on July 17th. Her campaign discovered “serious mismanagement and inaccuracies” in its campaign finance reports, leading to the firing of campaign manager Kara Spencer.

So that was the first major scandal in the Democrat Party’s primary race for governor.

That’s when David Crowley jumped back in the race less than 24 hours later after Rodriquez’s departure.

At this point the Democrat gubernatorial primary race pitted David Crowley against Francesa Hong, a wacky and unapologeticly socialist candidate.

The primary election was now less than a month away.

The squirrely socialist was squaring off against the Milwaukee county executive. But the Democrat primary election scandal only just starting.

On election night, the dim-witted, holiday-hating communist who had emerged as one of new ‘stars’ of the Democratic Party lost her primary in a stunning upset to a largely unknown establishment opponent following a late drop and chaos in Wisconsin’s largest city.

That’s right.

As CNN reported, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley narrowly defeated 37-year-old state assemblywoman Francesca Hong, who almost everyone assumed was going face Wisconsin GOP nominee Tom Tiffany in the general election.

The state results showed Crowley holding roughly a three-thousand-vote lead, less than half a percentage point of the vote.

According to the media at the time, Milwaukee’s election results from Tuesday’s primary were delayed because of a “human error” when five of nine USB flash drives did not download election results, prompting critics to call it a showing of “complete incompetence.”

Crowley won, Hong went home.

This snafu was similar to what we all witnessed in the 2020 election in Wisconsin.

Democrats lost the election flash drive in Milwaukee and the next thing you know, miraculously found 120,000 votes in the middle of the night for Joe Biden.

It appears Democrats got away with this again in the August primary!

Why not try it two times, since the first time it worked so well.

UPDATE: Steve Cortez says there is much more to come… October Surprise!

Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit

Progressives not afraid to say the quiet part out loud

The casual way Democrats threaten to throw Republicans in prison or prosecute them for supporting President Trump is alarming and indicative of exactly what they will try to do if they win power on Nov. 3.

On “The Bulwark Daily” podcast Monday, Kara Swisher blithely speculated that if Kamala Harris had won the presidency in 2024, Elon Musk might already be in jail and that he “knows what’s coming for him” if Democrats win control of Congress in the midterm elections — though they would not hold that power until the next Congress is seated in January.

“If Donald Trump loses the House and the Senate, I would worry. I’d be worried if I were him,” Ms. Swisher said. “So they’re going to start investigating again. You think he’s not on the list? He’s at the top of that list.”

Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Michigan Democrat, tried to scare young Republicans from entering public service at an Oct. 13 event at the University of Chicago, saying Democrats would focus on the aides who enabled Mr. Trump’s alleged corruption.

“I want young people coming out of school to say, ’Should I go work for the Trump administration? Like, that sounds like fun. I might get an opportunity.’ I want them to be like, ’Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want, and so let me avoid participating in that.’ I want that deterrence message sent,” Ms. Slotkin said.

After the clip surfaced this week, Ms. Slotkin doubled down, defending her comments as “manufactured outrage” from conservatives who want to deflect from tight midterm races in places such as Michigan and Kansas. If only that were the case. She accidentally said the quiet part out loud: Democrats plan to weaponize the government if they win power, in the hopes of deterring young Republicans from serving in office.

On Wednesday, Ms. Slotkin suggested that the Trump administration may attempt to change the outcome of the midterm elections. “Right in the last two weeks, they somehow will come up with a national security incident only they can protect us from,” she said, sowing public distrust in both our electoral system and the Trump administration.

The day before Ms. Slotkin made her comments, The Washington Post reported on a “small group” of anonymously sourced “national security officials” who were “discreetly advising state governments and congressional lawmakers on how to prepare for the possibility that the Trump administration would attempt to interfere in November’s midterm elections.”

Their efforts are motivated not by political bias, they say, but a growing sense of alarm that President Trump will harm American democracy by undermining the integrity of the vote to keep the Republican Party in power,” The Post reported.

Jenna Pounds, a Utah software engineer known as DataRepublican on X, sifted through various Democratic Socialists of America and left-wing think tank and nonprofit materials and concluded that the left was preparing its own “color revolution” in America and laying the groundwork.

Sowing distrust in our institutions and Republican leadership so that youths will view both as “illegitimate” is the first step. If Democrats do not win by a landslide on Nov. 3, it must be because of the nefarious actions of Republicans. Ms. Slotkin’s remarks and The Post’s reporting said as much.

A color revolution starts with a series of mass civil protests aimed at replacing perceived entrenched or corrupt leaders, as we are seeing in France. Those that occurred in post-Soviet states in the early 21st century aimed to replace communism with a Western-style democratic government and were sparked by tactics developed and deployed by U.S. intelligence agencies at the time.

America’s color revolution will be the reverse: American communists seizing power through democratic means and then consolidating it for themselves. A color revolution usually follows disputed or falsified elections, so it is essential for these Democratic Socialists of America revolutionaries to sow distrust in our electoral system beforehand.

How coordinated and sophisticated is this effort? It is hard to say, though it is undeniable that Democratic Socialists of America candidates have growing power and influence within the Democratic Party.

It is also undeniable that Democrats have no fear of weaponizing the government against their political opponents. You need to look no further than special counsel Jack Smith’s Arctic Frost investigation, in which he obtained personal information and data on at least 639,000 Republican donors, voters and supporters, according to a memo from Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican.

Mr. Trump’s two previous impeachments, the sham House Select January 6th Committee and Mr. Trump’s four criminal indictments while he served as a private citizen were all initiated by Democrats.

Democrats are promising more of the same if they win the midterms — though the consequences would not be felt until the new Congress takes power in January. Republicans will go to prison, whether deserved or not. Democrats are already running the playbook.

Kelly Sadler is the commentary editor at The Washington Times.

U.S. intelligence officials are warning that Iran has intensified efforts to assassinate Americans overseas, prompting the Trump administration to reduce diplomatic staffing across the Middle East amid escalating threats from Tehran and its terrorist proxies.

Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton issued an unclassified memo Friday to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, warning that Iranian assassination plots targeting U.S. citizens have reached dangerous levels.

“Lethal plotting efforts by the Iranians against U.S. citizens have reached advanced stages,” Clayton wrote.

Clayton said Tehran has significantly expanded operations targeting American personnel abroad and warned that the danger extends beyond individuals currently authorized to receive classified intelligence.

The warning follows deadly attacks by Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen, including strikes against Saudi Arabia’s King Khalid Airport earlier this month that reportedly killed at least 12 people, including an American, and injured hundreds.

In response, the State Department ordered additional personnel reductions at diplomatic facilities in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Qatar, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.

The U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia has been operating with emergency personnel following intensified Houthi missile attacks.

On Saturday, the State Department also updated travel advisories for more than a dozen Middle Eastern countries, citing growing threats from Iranian-backed militants.

President Donald Trump addressed the escalating confrontation during a Friday campaign rally in Florida, suggesting another military operation against Iran could be forthcoming if Tehran refuses to reach a peace agreement.

Trump referenced Operation Epic Fury, the U.S. military campaign launched against Iran in February, while signaling that Washington remains prepared to use military force.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi responded with warnings against further American military action, arguing that escalation around the Strait of Hormuz could endanger civilians and disrupt the global economy.

American Greatness Staff