Rikki Schlott and

Michael Kaplan

Warnings against artificial intelligence going rogue and leading to a disastrous outcome for humanity have grown louder throughout 2026.

Alarm bells are even being rung by those helming the technology, including OpenAI boss Sam Altman and Anthropic honcho Dario Amodei.

This week a researcher who has worked at both those companies, Jacob Coxon, said he quit Anthropic to warn “AI can kill us all by the end of the decade… These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources.”

As AI hurtles toward Artificial General Intelligence, here’s how the rise of machines could potentially go about wiping us all out.

Humans have been automating jobs for decades, almost all of which are now controlled through the internet — the domain where AI has the most access and control. 

AI systems could [attack] the electrical grid, transportation networks, financial markets,” Stuart Russell, a professor of computer science at UC Berkeley, told The Post. 

Sources explained to The Post how AI could potentially jailbreak almost any device, capturing water plants and forcing surges through pipes until they burst, cutting off supply to whole cities.

It could attack and disable electric grids, leaving huge areas in complete darkness, then disable phone towers. Those who try to escape by vehicle would face chaos, with traffic lights hijacked and gas stations taken offline. ATMs would not operate, and even if you were to access your bank — all funds could be wiped. 

Humans could even be unwittingly recruited for sabotage missions. “Anything we can do on the Internet, AI can do, including pretending to be a human,” added Patri Friedman, an early adapter of AI and founder of Pronomos Capital.

“AI will have no trouble making money – whether it’s through financial trading or doing services for people. It can impersonate a human and hire people or blackmail them to carry out physical ops … such as smuggling a USB thumb drive which can then infect computers on a localized network.”

Even if it didn’t have devious intentions, AI could still kill people, even inadvertently.

“I worry about AI having no common sense,” said Gary Rivlin, author of “AI Valley” told The Post. “Then it somehow, stupidly, drains off all the water because it doesn’t understand what a human would understand. These things know everything and they understand nothing.”

The following is an excerpt from my memoir Keeping the Tryst. It appears just before the end of chapter 37.~

September 10, 2001…

That night I was scheduled to work. And there were three things that I was eager to do when I got home…

The first was to call Lisa.

Secondly, I wanted to start work on writing the script for the movie. Even though I had no grasp whatsoever of crafting a screenplay.

Finally, it was a big night for TheForce.net staff. We would be up all evening getting a bunch of stories about the Episode I DVD release ready to publish at midnight Pacific Time.

Lisa and I talked for a bit, then I threw a pizza into the oven and while that was cooking I started writing the first lines of what I was calling “Sithery”. It seemed as good a working title as anything.

I wrote a page and a half of what passed for a script, then logged into TheForce.net’s staff portal. There were a couple of posts that I needed to have ready, and those were done. I hung out online until 3 a.m. and saw all our work get posted.

Satisfied, I went to the sofa and crashed hard. And before going to sleep I found myself feeling pretty good. I had my own place, a job, and an amazing girlfriend whom I cared for deeply. I was writing a script for a movie. And my words were being read by tens of thousands of people each day.

I thanked God for giving me so much. And then drowsiness took me.

Christopher Knight, The Knight Shift

Radical activists and organizers from across the U.S. and around the world descended on Chicago over Labor Day weekend to attend the Socialism 2026 Conference. The four-day summit was touted as a “place for both seasoned radicals and new activists to sharpen analysis, hone strategy, and build community.” Its more than 100 workshops included a Marxism Education Series, along with sessions bearing titles such as “Confronting Zionism: Decolonizing Palestine and Building the World Anew” and “Trans Care in the Age of Health Fascism.”

But the conference’s central purpose was unmistakable: to chart the socialist movement’s next steps in its pursuit of power — and prepare a new generation of revolutionaries for battle.

Perhaps the weekend’s most memorable remarks came from University of California, Santa Barbara, professor Butch Ware, who told attendees that the Democratic establishment “must be destroyed” and warned they must get ready for “war in the streets.”

For Ware, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed are not radical enough:

We have a tremendous opportunity. But they [the Democratic establishment] are going to keep giving us the Mamdanis and the Abdul El-Sayeds — and in my generation, the Obamas — because they are there to contain radicalism. They are there to destroy it and to diffuse it and to co-opt it and to purchase it.

Despite the false bravado of Democratic leaders such as Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries who persist in peddling the fiction of the party’s “big tent,” Ware was very clear: “The Democrats cannot be reasoned with. They must be destroyed.”

The audience loved it.

UC Santa Barbara professor Dr. Butch Ware at ‘Marxism conference’ says Democrats “must be destroyed.”

“They are going to keep giving us the Mamdanis and the Abdul El-Sayeds…because they are there to contain radicalism.”

“The Democrats cannot be reasoned with. They must be… pic.twitter.com/USKxfFSkZc

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) September 6, 2026

In the next video, Ware tells attendees to get ready for “war in the streets.”

Y’all ain’t dreamed big enough yet. And also, some of these clickety-clack revolutionaries have never been in a f***ing gunfight. But some of us that grew up in the hood know what guns are like. Outcasts said it best, ‘N****s ranting and raving about gas. N****, they made them gas. They got some sh** that’ll blow out our backs.

You are ready for a war in the streets? No, you ain’t. Y’all ain’t nowhere near ready for a war in the streets. You better get ready for both kinds of war.

And if you stay ready, you ain’t got to get ready.

UCSB prof Dr. Butch Ware tells ‘Marxism’ conference: Be ready for “war in the streets.”

“Some of these clickety-clack revolutionaries have never been in a f*cking gunfight.”

“Y’all ain’t nowhere near ready for a war in the streets. You better get ready for both kinds of war.”… https://t.co/Gw4bLlEbWp pic.twitter.com/gOZQTAPYH2

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) September 7, 2026

Responding to Ware’s remarks on X, podcast host Michael Shermer stated the obvious:

If Marxism requires armed violent action, doesn’t that mean that “the people” don’t actually want it (so you have to force it upon them at gunpoint)? For over a century Marxism has failed everywhere it has been tried & resulted in >100 million dead. Enough @ButchWare&

City University of New York Professor Ruth Gilmore drew considerable attention after declaring that capitalism is inherently racist.

There is no good capitalism. There isn’t a capitalism that is somehow not racial. There isn’t a capitalism that does not produce and reproduce all kinds of sexual and gender boundaries.

…

But make no mistake: It’s capitalism we’re after.

We believe you.

Also Ruth Wilson Gilmore: “It’s capitalism we’re after.” pic.twitter.com/0fPBTvvYUf https://t.co/H42I9eX5Ek

— Stu Smith (@thestustustudio) September 7, 2026

During a Saturday interview with Newsmax, former White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley discussed what may have drawn so many young voters to the Marxist conference. He noted that the socialist message resonates particularly strongly with those “who are carrying college debt and squeezed out of housing.”

In Gidley’s telling, young socialists have been sold the idea that prosperity should be theirs immediately, without the years of sacrifice traditionally required to attain it:

You should be able to afford a penthouse in Manhattan. And because you can’t, it must be because of the man.

Instead of saying, ‘Hey, pay your dues, stay with roommates, live, scrape, claw, work to get where you are.’ No, you should be given that on day one.

Democrats have done an outstanding job selling this lie to so many young people in this country.

Young voters, he added, are largely “ignorant” of Marxism’s history and consequences. They simply “don’t know any better.”

Whatever appeal socialism may hold for disaffected young Americans, the rhetoric coming out of Chicago should not be dismissed as youthful idealism. A conference billed as a forum for sharpening strategy and building a movement featured prominent speakers calling for the destruction of the Democratic establishment, preparation for “war in the streets,” and the end of capitalism. When self-described revolutionaries tell the public exactly what they intend to do, it would be foolish not to take them seriously.

Elizabeth Stauffer, Legal Insurrection

Happiness comes from a combination of internal and external factors. We can influence it somewhat by approaching situations positively or choosing to spend time with people we love, doing activities we enjoy. However, other things out of our control, like the cost-of-living crisis or ongoing economic uncertainty, can also take a toll, with only 44% of Americans saying they are “very satisfied” with their lives.

Even though people across the U.S. are facing difficult times, the state in which you live may have an impact on how happy you are. To determine where Americans exhibit the best combination of good economic, emotional, physical and social health, we examined the 50 states across 30 key metrics, ranging from the depression rate and the share of adults feeling productive to income growth and the unemployment rate.

“The happiest states are those that provide above-average quality of life in a wide variety of areas, from strong state economies and great physical and mental healthcare to adequate amounts of leisure time and good weather. It’s also important to note that while the adage that money can’t buy happiness has a lot of truth to it, having enough money to live comfortably is still essential. But anything beyond that won’t necessarily enhance happiness as much as having fulfilling hobbies, relationships and opportunities for personal growth.” — Chip Lupo, WalletHub Analyst

Chip Lupo, WalletHub

Vladimir Putin has not changed his war aims a jot since 2022 and remains determined on fighting on. Donald Trump has no new plan for peace other than bringing the Ukraine war to an end on Putin’s terms. And Kyiv is running out of money and men to defend itself, just as surely as it has already run out of Patriot interceptors to defend its skies against the Kremlin’s barrages.

Those are the three depressing takeaways from the latest round of shuttle diplomacy in Moscow and Kyiv by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff.

On the eve of their departure, Trump said his boys would be presenting ‘a new plan’ for Ukraine. It quickly became clear that no such initiative existed. Instead, a grinning Putin simply cycled through his old talking points about liberating all of Donbas and insisting that Ukraine still needed to be ‘demilitarised’ and ‘denazified.’

Trump’s people continue to focus on the commercial upside of ending the war

Objectively, talking is better than not talking – especially in a war that has become a grinding battle of attrition on the ground, and where both sides have switched their strategic efforts to a long-range battle where they vie to destroy each other’s cities and vital infrastructure. Jared Kushner was mocked by some pro-Kyiv commentators for his upbeat insistence that Trump is seeking to end the war using his business background. ‘War is negative sum. Everyone loses from war,’ Kushner told a press conference in Kyiv. ‘Business and peace is positive sum.’ Kushner also spoke of Putin’s ‘aspirations’ for his country that could also be achieved once the war is concluded. Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s Politburo-faced foreign policy advisor, confirmed that ‘economic issues and potential major, mutually beneficial Russian-American projects were discussed in considerable detail.’

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In short, Trump’s people continue to focus on the commercial upside of ending the war. Volodymyr Zelensky, by contrast, called the battle for Donbas ‘a war for survival’

In one sense, Trump is profoundly wrong in his belief that dangling business deals will somehow influence the Kremlin’s decision-making. If Putin cared about the Russian economy, he would not have launched his full-scale invasion in the first place. For Putin, the conflict is not about preserving prosperity but about defending Russia against an existential threat.

At the same time, Zelensky is equally deluded about Ukraine’s chances of defeating Russia – or even, tragically, about stopping the Kremlin’s slow but relentless advances. More importantly, as the Kremlin continues its ruthless campaign to render Ukraine’s cities unliveable, destroy the country’s economy and rob it of its future, Kyiv’s ability to defend itself is in serious doubt.

Part of Ukraine’s unfolding nightmare is tactical. Every one of Russia’s long-range attack systems has become more devastating. A new generation of jet-powered Geran attack drones, much faster and more accurate than their old Iranian Shahed models, are being deployed in mass. Russia is developing at least two new, low-cost cruise missile systems and stepping up production of air- and ground-launched ballistic missiles. ‘This is a war of cities and infrastructure. No one will win it,’ Serhii Beskrestnov, Zelensky’s advisor on defence technologies and a leading figure in Kyiv’s defence establishment, told the Guardian this weekend. ‘Attack has become stronger than defence.’ Beskrestnov predicts that Ukraine will not be able to obtain enough missiles to fully protect Ukraine’s cities from devastation this winter.But a larger part of Ukraine’s slowly unfolding defeat is strategic. Western sanctions have basically failed – not least because of the West’s self-preserving insistence on keeping oil prices down under the Joe Biden administration and, since the Iran war, because of Europe’s hunger for Russian liquefied natural gas. Rather than being crushed by sanctions or wrecked by Ukrainian long-range strikes, Russia’s defence industrial capacity is stepping up. Yes, that comes as a crippling cost to the economy, with a record 45 per cent of Russian government revenues now going into war production. And indeed, Ukrainian strikes have caused a fuel crisis and knocked out 20 per cent of the warehousing of Wildberries, Russia’s answer to Amazon. But that’s a price that Putin is willing to pay – as he has just reaffirmed in the most emphatic possible terms to Kushner and Witkoff.Perhaps the most important strategic crisis for Ukraine is a triple failure on the part of its European allies. First, the UK and Europe have talked up sanctions while in practice sending far more money to Moscow in payment for oil and gas than they have given Kyiv in military aid. Second, fear of escalation and prioritising their own defence over Kyiv’s has prevented Europeans from sending offensive missiles (such as Germany’s Taurus) for use against Russian targets or from sharing their supplies of precious Patriot missile defence batteries. But the third and most serious failure is a refusal to countenance seriously engaging the Kremlin in peace talks, and a stubbornly fixed idea that encouraging Ukraine to fight and fight forever will somehow magically lead to victory.In short, western leaders’ repeated pledges at the beginning of the war to give Ukraine ‘whatever it takes’ for ‘as long as it takes’ (Joe Biden in June and November 2022), were fundamentally misleading. Indeed, these open-ended but non-specific promises – which became a mantra repeated by all British prime ministers since Boris Johnson and were recently reaffirmed by Andrew Burnham in Kyiv – ended up achieving the worst of all worlds. The already-paranoid Kremlin was convinced that it was fighting the ‘collective West’ – while that self-same West continued to buy the Kremlin’s oil and gas and transport it in their ships.The crunch point – where those promises will finally crash hard into reality – will come soon in the form of an imminent fiscal crisis in Kyiv. Ukraine’s Prime Minister Serhii Koretsky recently announced that Kyiv has already spent most of its 2026 defence funds and faces a looming €26 billion (£22 billion) budget black hole – despite a recent €90 billion (£78 billion) loan from the EU. That loan, secured after months of Brussels horse-trading, represented the high-water mark of what the EU is realistically capable of raising. As Ukraine heads into the hardest and most punishing winter of the war, it is about to run out of not only Patriot missiles and men for the front lines, but money to fight on.At the same time, Zelensky faces a perfect political storm at home. A year of relentless corruption scandals in Kyiv – the latest featuring the arrest of a deputy prosecutor general on charges of protecting online scam centres – has seriously eroded trust in Zelensky’s administration. A dozen senior members of his team are now in jail, under investigation or have fled abroad. A shoot-out in a Kyiv street between rival factions of Ukraine’s SBU and HUR domestic and military intelligence services have left many Ukrainians wondering if their country is sliding back to 1990s-style gangsterism. Last week, an investigation by the New York Times found that Ukraine’s military procurement system has suffered from serious fraud, waste and mismanagement during the war. Secret audits show that in 2024 alone, about $1.2 billion (£900 million) was lost through overpayments and corrupt contracts. Unsurprisingly, August polls by SOCIS show that a majority of Ukrainians consider corruption a more serious threat to their state than Russia – and that nearly 57 per cent of Ukrainians blame Zelensky for the prevalence of corruption, nearly double the number in a similar poll from April 2025. The same poll also also projects that three different rivals would beat him in a second-round election, each by a landslide margin of around two-to-one.What can save Ukraine from political and military collapse? There are signs that Europe’s political taboo on taking to Putin is cracking. Alice Weidel of Germany’s AfD, newly victorious in elections in Saxony, has called for ‘an open channel to Russia in order to reach an understanding and achieve a peaceful solution.’ According to Iuliia Mendel, Zelensky’s press secretary from 2019 to 2021, ‘new forces are rising, and they are getting stronger’ which represent ‘our only chance for peaceful Europe…More weapons will not save us. They never have.’To date, every successive peace offer has been worse for Kyiv than the last. It seems that Putin’s clear intention is to give Ukraine’s cities a brutal final kicking before finally settling the war on his own terms, perhaps next year. The Trump administration has long given up on the idea of backing a full Ukrainian victory, and it will be for historians to decide whether that decision to pull American aid and arms became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Europe, for its part, continues talking the talk. But it has no concrete plan to help, or save, Ukraine from the Kremlin’s fury – much less to crush the Russian economy or break Putin’s will.

Written by

Owen Matthews

Owen Matthews is an Associate Editor of The Spectator and the author of Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin’s war on Ukraine.

The declaration of a mistrial in the filicide case of Lindsay Clancy coincides, for me uncomfortably, with a new UK reissue of my 2003 breakout novel We Need to Talk About Kevin. The book concerns a mother whose son becomes a high-school mass murderer. She agonises over whether something has always been wrong with him or something is wrong with him because something is wrong with her. Prior to publication, I’d imagined that the commercial hook would be the frequency with which self-pitying adolescents were taking their misery out on their classmates and teachers, since when I wrote the novel school shootings had yet to be fictionalised.

Instead, what hit a cultural nerve was ‘maternal ambivalence’. The text dares to explore parenthood in de-romanticised terms. It gives mothers permission to admit that they sometimes find caring for small children dull, that the unqualified devotion to offspring we expect from mothers is not necessarily innate or automatic, and that even normally loving parents sometimes dislike their own children. At publication, opening a more honest conversation about the reality of bringing up baby seemed like a good thing. Now I’m not so sure. Given what passes for feminism these days, I feel guilty.

Let’s give no credence to fanciful internet claims that the husband did it just because the husband always did it. The grisly facts of the Clancy case are not in dispute. Having sent her husband on an errand to get him out of the house in January 2023, Lindsay took her three children, aged five, three and eight months, to the basement and strangled them with exercise bands one by one. She killed two outright; the youngest would prove brain dead. She then cut her own wrists and neck.

The seriousness of her suicide attempt is debatable – the cuts were shallow – although jumping from a first-floor window did paralyse her from the waist down. Her husband returned home to the kind of horror it took me 400 pages to build up to.

Plausibly, having to live forever after with the enormity of such a crime seems sufficient punishment – although jurisprudentially that would mean releasing any lawbreaker who feels bad.

The defence argued that Lindsay was in the grip of postpartum psychosis, thus not criminally responsible. And frankly, the whole business of mental illness and criminality is an unsettled mess. Maybe any woman capable of that atrocity is insane by definition.

I always roll my eyes at films in which characters are mortally smothered with a pillow in ten seconds – because, for fatal results, Lindsay must have cut off the airway of each child for four to five minutes. That’s an incomprehensibly long time to watch your own children die. Surely such a killer had to be mad.

Yet this circular reasoning could delegitimise the entire justice system. We could submit with the same circularity that people who violate the moral codes of their culture are insufficiently socialised and therefore evolutionarily defective; if their psyches are damaged or broken, bad behaviour is not their fault. In fact, the whole left-wing trend is to place the locus of control outside the offender. Not the culprit but racism did it. An abusive childhood did it. A history of sexual violence did it. That’s a mechanical, soulless model of personhood – human as inert object, without agency, merely acted upon – and to competent novelists, anathema.

The argument over how deranged you need be to no longer exercise moral free will may be insoluble. What alarms me more is that the conversation I helped start has moved on. If the pink-clad boosters outside that Massachusetts courthouse are any guide, we’re no longer discussing maternal ‘ambivalence’ but maternal depravity. Online and off, women have identified with Lindsay Clancy, joining a veritable chorus to proclaim that the murderer in that basement ‘could have been me!’. Clancy’s family’s GoFundMe campaign has raised more than $1 million. Missing from protestors’ posters is any concern for the fate of the children.

The Clancy fan club insists their heroine was neglected by a medical establishment that fails to take postpartum mental illness seriously. Yet Lindsay sought help from multiple therapists, outpatient programmes, ERs and doctors. They issued her 30 prescriptions for 13 potent drugs. Her problem wasn’t lack of healthcare but too much of it.

The impression her sympathisers leave is that bearing children is intolerable. That motherhood is an affliction. Women have videoed themselves screaming hysterically at their own young kids, posting the clips proudly on social media as if to say: ‘See? This is what the grotesque imposition of raising another generation drives us to. Lindsay’s crazy? We’re all crazy! We totally understand strangling your own kids because we’re tempted to do the same thing every single day.’ Obviously, such performances aren’t doing wonders for the hard-won popular belief that women are capable of rationality and self-control. Maybe we should never have been given the vote after all. Maybe a female president really would press the button when she’s having her period – right after murdering the first family’s kids.

I chose not to have children. That was probably the right decision for me, but being ‘child-free’ is no claim to fame. Rather, my unsuitability to motherhood betrays a deficient generosity of spirit. I’m grateful to my own parents for sacrificing on my behalf. I wasn’t always fun to have around, either –but I hope I’ve redeemed their efforts now that my temper tantrums are down to three or four a year.

If women collectively repudiate pregnancy and its subsequent stresses as unreasonable burdens levied by ‘the patriarchy’, our species will vanish. Purportedly ‘very invested’ in the Clancy case, while Lindsay’s jury was in deliber-ations, Corie Walsh of suburban Illinois allegedly hanged her two-year-old son from the rafters before attempting suicide earlier this month. (Walsh’s lawyer claims she was ‘experiencing a psychotic episode’.)

Behold the kind of copycatting we get when progressive icons include a fentanyl-addicted petty criminal, a cold-blooded assassin who shot a father of two in the back, and, yes, a deeply disturbed mother who choked her three children to death. Is this why we encourage having role models?

Lionel Shriver, The Spectator

The remarks, reported by The Catholic Herald from a copy of the original talk issued by Burke’s office, mark a notable intervention in the debate that followed the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s (DDF) November 4, 2025, doctrinal note Mater Populi Fidelis.

Signed by Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández and approved by Pope Leo XIV on October 7, 2025, MPF claimed it is “always inappropriate” to use the title Co-Redemptrix to define Mary’s cooperation in the Redemption. The note argued that the expression risks “obscuring Christ’s unique salvific mediation” and becomes “unhelpful” when it requires repeated explanations to prevent misunderstanding. It likewise discouraged Our Lady’s long-standing title, “Mediatrix of All Graces.”

In January, Pope Leo XIV praised the document as offering “precise and important clarifications for Mariology” and a “great benefit” to the faithful. Cardinal Fernández later sought to clarify that “always” referred to future official and liturgical use, adding that those who understand the title’s true meaning “may use the title – but it will not be used officially.”

‘The Blessed Virgin Mary is Co-Redemptrix’

Speaking after Mass during events organized with Radio Maria Nederland, Burke used the title without hesitation.

“The Blessed Virgin Mary is Co-Redemptrix, that is, she participates in Our Lord’s saving work, in a unique way,” he said. Situating that uniqueness within the broader Christian vocation shared by all the faithful, he affirmed, “We are, in virtue of Baptism and Confirmation, co-redeemers, that is, we participate in Our Lord’s saving work by sanctifying the portion of His vineyard, which He has entrusted into our care.”

The cardinal from Wisconsin affirmed that Mary’s cooperation implies no defect in the salvific work of her divine Son, Jesus Christ.

“It is not that the Sacrifice of Our Lord is in any way defective,” he noted, referencing the Gospel of Luke. “It is perfect and procures divine grace and eternal life for all who unite themselves to Our Lord in His Sacrifice. All that is lacking is our wholehearted participation in Our Lord’s Sacrifice, our daily taking up the Cross and following Him.”

He then turned to Isaiah 61:10-11, saying God’s promise is “fulfilled, first of all and most perfectly of all, in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary by her irreplaceable cooperation in the Mystery of the Redemptive Incarnation.” That same promise, he added, “is to be fulfilled in each of our lives as co-workers, with the Virgin Mother of God in her Divine Son’s work of the Redemption.”

Mater Populi Fidelis ‘basically states the ‘right opposite’ of what the Church Fathers and previous Popes have historically taught’

Cardinal Burke’s doctrinal presentation aligns with critiques of Mater Populi Fidelis that quickly emerged after its promulgation late last year.

Bishop Athanasius Schneider confirmed that the Ordinary Magisterium, saints, and Doctors of the Church have long taught co-redemption and mediation under these titles, so it “cannot be maintained that the Ordinary Magisterium could have led the faithful astray through a consistently inappropriate use.”

He cited papal texts from Leo XIII through John Paul II, including Pius XI’s 1933 statement that “we invoke her under the title of Co-Redemptrix.”

Dutch Bishop Rob Mutsaerts, who was present for the weekend events with Burke, has written that “cooperation does not mean rivalry” and that “the term ‘Co-Redemptrix’ is not as shocking as some fear,” because “co” means “with,” not equality.

The International Marian Association Theological Commission, including theologians such as Scott Hahn and Mark Miravalle, called the note an “anti-development of doctrine,” noting that Lumen Gentium 58 affirms Mary’s association with Christ’s sacrifice even without using the word, and that many core Catholic terms require explanation.

Mariologist Fr. Serafino Lanzetta, STD, who sponsored a “Filial Appeal to Pope Leo XIV” last December asking him to reconsider Mater Populi Fidelis, commented that “never in the history of the Church has the magisterium said what this document says; instead, it basically states the ‘right opposite’ of what the Church Fathers and previous Popes have historically taught.”

Though Cardinal Burke did not directly contest the DDF note’s disciplinary directive for official texts, he did echo the voices of other experts in presenting the long-affirmed title as a concise expression of a doctrine rooted in Sacred Scripture, the uniqueness of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s fiat at the Annunciation, her suffering with Christ at Calvary, and the baptismal call of all the faithful to cooperate in Christ’s work.

Cardinal Raymond Burke publicly reaffirmed the Blessed Virgin Mary’s traditional title of Co-Redemptrix during a conference on Sunday at the Cathedral of Saint Bavo in Haarlem, the Netherlands.

The remarks, reported by The Catholic Herald from a copy of the original talk issued by Burke’s office, mark a notable intervention in the debate that followed the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s (DDF) November 4, 2025, doctrinal note Mater Populi Fidelis.

Signed by Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández and approved by Pope Leo XIV on October 7, 2025, MPF claimed it is “always inappropriate” to use the title Co-Redemptrix to define Mary’s cooperation in the Redemption. The note argued that the expression risks “obscuring Christ’s unique salvific mediation” and becomes “unhelpful” when it requires repeated explanations to prevent misunderstanding. It likewise discouraged Our Lady’s long-standing title, “Mediatrix of All Graces.”

In January, Pope Leo XIV praised the document as offering “precise and important clarifications for Mariology” and a “great benefit” to the faithful. Cardinal Fernández later sought to clarify that “always” referred to future official and liturgical use, adding that those who understand the title’s true meaning “may use the title – but it will not be used officially.”

‘The Blessed Virgin Mary is Co-Redemptrix’

Speaking after Mass during events organized with Radio Maria Nederland, Burke used the title without hesitation.

“The Blessed Virgin Mary is Co-Redemptrix, that is, she participates in Our Lord’s saving work, in a unique way,” he said. Situating that uniqueness within the broader Christian vocation shared by all the faithful, he affirmed, “We are, in virtue of Baptism and Confirmation, co-redeemers, that is, we participate in Our Lord’s saving work by sanctifying the portion of His vineyard, which He has entrusted into our care.”

The cardinal from Wisconsin affirmed that Mary’s cooperation implies no defect in the salvific work of her divine Son, Jesus Christ.

“It is not that the Sacrifice of Our Lord is in any way defective,” he noted, referencing the Gospel of Luke. “It is perfect and procures divine grace and eternal life for all who unite themselves to Our Lord in His Sacrifice. All that is lacking is our wholehearted participation in Our Lord’s Sacrifice, our daily taking up the Cross and following Him.”

He then turned to Isaiah 61:10-11, saying God’s promise is “fulfilled, first of all and most perfectly of all, in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary by her irreplaceable cooperation in the Mystery of the Redemptive Incarnation.” That same promise, he added, “is to be fulfilled in each of our lives as co-workers, with the Virgin Mother of God in her Divine Son’s work of the Redemption.”

Mater Populi Fidelis ‘basically states the ‘right opposite’ of what the Church Fathers and previous Popes have historically taught’

Cardinal Burke’s doctrinal presentation aligns with critiques of Mater Populi Fidelis that quickly emerged after its promulgation late last year.

Bishop Athanasius Schneider confirmed that the Ordinary Magisterium, saints, and Doctors of the Church have long taught co-redemption and mediation under these titles, so it “cannot be maintained that the Ordinary Magisterium could have led the faithful astray through a consistently inappropriate use.”

He cited papal texts from Leo XIII through John Paul II, including Pius XI’s 1933 statement that “we invoke her under the title of Co-Redemptrix.”

Dutch Bishop Rob Mutsaerts, who was present for the weekend events with Burke, has written that “cooperation does not mean rivalry” and that “the term ‘Co-Redemptrix’ is not as shocking as some fear,” because “co” means “with,” not equality.

The International Marian Association Theological Commission, including theologians such as Scott Hahn and Mark Miravalle, called the note an “anti-development of doctrine,” noting that Lumen Gentium 58 affirms Mary’s association with Christ’s sacrifice even without using the word, and that many core Catholic terms require explanation.

Mariologist Fr. Serafino Lanzetta, STD, who sponsored a “Filial Appeal to Pope Leo XIV” last December asking him to reconsider Mater Populi Fidelis, commented that “never in the history of the Church has the magisterium said what this document says; instead, it basically states the ‘right opposite’ of what the Church Fathers and previous Popes have historically taught.”

Though Cardinal Burke did not directly contest the DDF note’s disciplinary directive for official texts, he did echo the voices of other experts in presenting the long-affirmed title as a concise expression of a doctrine rooted in Sacred Scripture, the uniqueness of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s fiat at the Annunciation, her suffering with Christ at Calvary, and the baptismal call of all the faithful to cooperate in Christ’s work.

Myles Allman, Lifesite News

I agree with this meme. Republicans do not stand for individual rights and freedom; in words, maybe, but rarely in practice (leaving aside President Trump). But Republicans seek much less control and coercion over every detail of daily life than the now radicalized, highly insane and physically dangerous Democrats.

You need not love Republicans to state there is simply no comparison. Republicans are like an inept night watchman. Democrats are like gang rapists, looters, violent psychopaths, medieval lunatics, grifters, self-righteous, arrogant mobsters and snake oil salesmen all rolled up into one.

Stay home on Election Day, and you’re signing your own death warrant. And you have doomed your children and grandchildren to a far inferior life to what you had. Socialism kills. Democrats are expecting a big victory this fall as a mandate to arrest Trump, his Cabinet and throttle the lives of his supporters like nothing seen even during the Biden regime. And to socialize and nationalize everything from medical care and education to groceries, energy, automobiles and housing. Republicans buy us a little more time while America perhaps will yet get its act together. President Trump made an excellent contribution this past decade and will hopefully leave office with a lot of prosecuted tyrants. He unmasked a corrupt media and a grotesque federal bipartisan Establishment unsustainable and incompatible with our Constitution. Trump is a heroic, courageous figure for the ages who literally took bullets for this nation and its Constitution.

Just the same: the rest is up to us.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

The Trump administration is drafting a rule that would allow certain married couples with a stay-at-home parent to qualify for federal child care assistance of about $9,000 per child annually, according to people familiar with the discussions who spoke with The New York Times. 

The reported proposal would expand eligibility under the Child Care and Development Fund, a roughly $12 billion Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) program that currently subsidizes care for children from low- and moderate-income parents while their parents work, attend school, or participate in job training.

Under the draft rule, a new category of “parent-based child care” would allow one married parent to receive assistance to care for the couple’s child while the other spouse works at least 35 hours a week, according to the Times. The payments would come from the program’s existing funding rather than a new congressional appropriation.

Families would still have to meet income limits established by their states. Federal rules generally limit eligibility to families earning no more than 85% of their state’s median income, although states may set lower thresholds. Unmarried couples and single parents who are not working would not qualify under the reported proposal.

The Times described the proposal as a top priority for Vice President JD Vance. Vance has previously endorsed the idea of using federal child care assistance to support families whose children receive care from a parent or relative. 

During an August 2024 interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Vance said child care policy should accommodate different family arrangements, including care from stay-at-home parents and grandparents.

“I grew up in a poor family where the child care was my grandparents, and a lot of these child care proposals do nothing for grandparents. If you look at some of these proposals, they do nothing for stay-at-home moms or stay-at-home dads,” Vance said at the time. “I want us to have a child care policy that’s good for all families, not just a particular model of family, and that’s what I’ve said.”

In a May 2021 opinion essay co-written with Jenet Erickson for The Wall Street Journal, Vance expressed a similar view, opposing then-President Joe Biden’s proposed expansion of a government-subsidized day care and arguing that “young children are clearly happier and healthier when they spend the day at home with a parent.” 

According to the Times, the draft also incorporates elements of legislation introduced in 2024 by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, then a U.S. senator from Florida, that would have allowed married couples working a combined 40 hours per week to receive direct assistance if one parent cared for their children at home. Unlike the reported Trump administration plan, Rubio’s bill would have added $5.25 billion to the child care fund and offset the increase by eliminating a separate child care tax credit.

The change would not require congressional approval, but it would still need White House approval and would be subject to a public comment period before taking effect. The rule could be implemented as early as 2027, according to reports. 

The Times reported that some HHS lawyers have questioned whether limiting the benefit to married couples would be lawful. Officials have also raised concerns about possible fraud if subsidies are paid directly to parents rather than child care providers. 

Meanwhile, critics have argued that expanding eligibility for the program without adding funding could reduce assistance available to the single parents already receiving support.

Conservative commentator Michael Knowles praised the reported proposal during a Sept. 6 appearance on “Fox & Friends Weekend,” calling it “one of the very best policies to come out of either Trump administration.” 

“We already have a fund that is supposed to help parents take care of their kids,” Knowles said. “There’s no new spending here. There’s no new bill that needs to be passed. The problem is the current system incentivizes single parenthood, and it’s basically just a subsidy for corporate America that wants to keep women locked up at the widget factory.” 

Knowles, host of “The Michael Knowles Show,” also said the proposal raises broader questions about whether government policy should encourage marriage and allow children to spend more time with their parents.

“To me, this is a grand slam, no-brainer, and I can’t wait to see it in action,” he said.

Knowles also invoked a disagreement between second-wave feminist writers Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan over whether women should be encouraged or even permitted to stay at home and raise their children.

“Simone de Beauvoir said, ‘No, feminism cannot succeed if women are even permitted to stay home and raise their kids,’” Knowles said, contrasting that position with what he characterized as Friedan’s view that women should be encouraged to work but remain free to stay home. 

“That’s what this policy asks: ‘Should women at least be allowed to?’” he added. “I think so.” 

Knowles also pushed back against conservatives who oppose modifying the existing federal benefit and instead favor abolishing the broader welfare system.

Knowles wrote Sept. 7 on X, “If I understand the establishment conservatives correctly, we should not reform a 30-year-old entitlement program to stop incentivizing single parenthood because it would be better to abolish the entire 91-year-old welfare state, which no one even pretends to think is possible.”

Elise Winland, Zeale

Much has been made about Texas U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico’s version, or perversion, of “Christianity.”

The Democrat nominee has called St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Austin home since he was two years old, he says. It has been led for 35 years by Rev. Jim Rigby, whom Talarico calls a “mentor.” Rev. Babs Miller is “Minister to the Parish,” according to the progressive church’s website. So, one might conclude Miller knows a thing or two about St. Andrews’ congregants and their beliefs.

“We still have people in this church who wish that the young man had not just nicked his ear, but had been more successful,” Miller said, according to a video obtained by Townhall Media.

CLICK ABOVE ARTICLE LINK FOR THE VIDEO

She, of course, seems to be referring to Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old man who attempted to assassinate President Donald Trump as he rallied supporters in a Butler, Pennsylvania, field in 2024. Miller didn’t get more specific about which church members feel that way, so it’s unclear if they include Talarico.

Sources tell Townhall Media a trove of other videos that feature Miller and Rigby are forthcoming and indicate the true nature of Talarico’s religious beliefs.

“If you polled our members, and asked them if they were Christian, agnostic, or atheist, the vast majority would say agnostic or atheist because they don’t buy the religion that we got from the Puritans,” Miller said, according to another video reviewed by Townhall.

The inside look at Talarico’s church’s beliefs gives an unvarnished version of the “Christianity” he is offering to Texas voters.

He has sought to tone down his bizarre values as Election Day approaches, including the idea that God is “non-binary” and that “faith traditions all over the world” are “all equal pathways to truth.”

Kyle Olsen, Townhall