Secure Freedom Minute

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute. 

In less than two days, the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church will lock itself in the Sistine Chapel to elect a new pope. One of his first acts will be to mark on May 24th the annual day of prayer for China. 

We need to know now whether he will answer the prayers of millions of Catholics, non-Catholic Christians and, for that matter, practitioners of other faiths in China by terminating the toxic secret deal his predecessor reached with the Chinese Communist Party.

The cardinals are on notice: There’s no more important determinant of the Catholic Church’s future direction and faithfulness to Jesus Christ than whether it continues or abandons its betrayal of Chinese believers to the CCP’s determined effort to destroy religion in China.

Join us in calling on them and the pope they are poised to elect to RepealtheDeal.org.  

This is Frank Gaffney.

Donald Trump’s selection yesterday of Secretary of State Marco Rubio as his acting National Security Advisor is a God-thing. 

It comes at a moment when the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church will for sure decide on its next pope. The cardinals also need to act on a direct threat to the institution, its clergy, faithful and future in Communist China. 

Secretary Rubio is not only a Catholic. Throughout his career he has opposed the Chinese Communist Party and its bid to dominate the world. As the son of refugees from Castro’s tyranny, he knows firsthand what is at stake.

Catholics and others around the world are calling on the cardinals to reveal and terminate a toxic secret agreement between the Vatican and the CCP. We need Secretary Rubio to facilitate the Trump Team’s joining us. You should, too, at RepealtheDeal.org. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

It is a time of choosing for the Roman Catholic Church. Obviously, its cardinals will be making a choice of a new pope one week from today. 

But an extremely powerful webinar yesterday revealed that they face an even more immediate and, arguably, more fraught choice in the meantime. The cardinals must decide whether the Church will stand with freedom, Judeo-Christian civilization and, yes, Jesus Christ. Or submit to a Chinese Communist dictator, Xi Jinping, who the Vatican has secretly empowered to supplant all three in China. 

Underscoring the choice, Beijing yesterday announced that it had unilaterally appointed two new Catholic bishops – in direct violation of a secret deal negotiated by the reported frontrunner to be the next pope, Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin. 

The cardinals must repudiate this odious deal. Learn more and urge them to do so at RepealtheDeal.org.  

This is Frank Gaffney.

Last week, Pope Francis died. Starting this week, as Catholic leaders prepare to select his successor, a question that must be formally addressed is: Will a secret, and scandalous, part of the last papacy be laid to rest, as well?

In 2018, an as-yet-undisclosed deal was struck by the Vatican with the Chinese Communist Party. Its principal architect was the Church’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who is said to be a frontrunner to replace Francis. 

Parolin’s diabolical deal is still secret because it shamefully betrayed the Catholic Church, harmed countless believers and devastatingly impacted even other faith communities in China. In practice, it has effectively enabled atheistic Communist dictator Xi Jinping’s claim to be God.  

Today, we are launching a grassroots campaign calling for the Catholic Church to reveal and repeal the deal. Join us and take action at RepealtheDeal.org.  

On Monday, Spain, Portugal and part of France came, literally to a screeching halt for many hours. Millions are still without power. 

What happened? And could it happen here? 

The Portuguese grid operator blamed extreme temperature variation-induced “oscillations” in its high-voltage power lines. It may actually have more to do with the unreliability and attendant problems caused by so-called “sustainable” wind and solar power generation, on which the affected grid relies for over 50 percent of its electricity.

Parts of the U.S. electric grid certainly face such so-called green energy-precipitated problems as solar and wind farms that work part-time replace coal, nuclear and gas-fired power plants that work continuously. 

That’s a formula for disaster here, too. Until it’s reversed, our grid will go down, too – if not due to enemy action or solar storms, because of insane green energy policies.

This is Frank Gaffney.   

Over the weekend, Chinese military personnel unfurled the PRC flag on an uninhabited Pacific reef known as Sandy Cay, then claimed to have “maritime control” and “sovereign jurisdiction” over the tiny sandbar near a key Philippino outpost. 

This isn’t the first time the CCP has laid claim to such South China Sea features, some of which became bastions for power-projection and controlling their undersea resources.

This is, however, China’s first such incursion on Donald Trump’s watch. If there’s no push-back, there will surely be additional, and more fraught, acts of Chinese aggression in the region.

Fortunately, the United States can penalize the Chinese Communists without force by ending a May 2013 Memorandum of Understanding that gave their companies uniquely privileged access to U.S. capital markets.

This is a policy course-correction that needs to be taken anyway. Do it now.

A jihadist attack against mostly Indian tourists in Kashmir has precipitated a crisis that may see two nuclear-armed states go to war again. If that happens, it may be precipitated by the weaponization of water.

India holds Pakistan responsible for this act of terrorism and responded by suspending a treaty governing the Indus River’s waters. The Pakistanis say interfering with their access to such flows would amount to an act of war. 

Ironically, Pakistan’s patron and enabler, Communist China, initially denounced India’s water warfare. That’s particularly rich since the Chinese have diverted water from Tibet for years, creating drought conditions downstream in Myanmar, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos. 

Beijing is now threatening India’s access to river flows, as well. 

If shared use of transnational water sources in South Asia is not restored quickly, war – and perhaps a nuclear one – may well ensue.

This is Frank Gaffney.

Has Egypt switched sides? For over five decades, successive Egyptian governments have received enormous amounts of U.S. foreign aid and military assistance – essentially rewards for making peace with Israel and for remaining generally aligned with American regional policy and interests.

We had a taste of what could happen to this arrangement when Barack Obama encouraged the toppling of longtime ally, President Hosni Mubarak, and the Muslim Brotherhood came to power. Fortunately, the Brothers’ regime was overthrown before it fully imposed Sharia law and threw in with Israel’s enemies. 

Now, Egypt’s government is violating the peace treaty with Israel by massing forces in the Sinai. It’s recently conducted air and naval exercises respectively with China and Russia and improved relations with Iran. And it has released top Muslim Brothers from jail. 

These manifest the strategic equivalent of tectonic shifts. Brace for impact. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke yesterday about “trade, Iran, etc.” and are “on the same side on every issue.” Hopefully, that means no further extensions of the U.S.-Iranian disarmament negotiations past this weekend. 

Otherwise, there’s a real risk the mullahs will succeed in foreclosing the only outcome with a chance of precluding them from acquiring and probably using nuclear weapons – namely, their forcible removal from power.

More time invites the regime in Tehran to declare it’s acquired such weapons, transforming the calculus of contending with the threat it poses.

Alternatively, more time allows Iran’s Chinese and Russian allies, fresh from military exercises with an increasingly problematic Egypt – to increase their regional presence, arguably making an attack on the ayatollahs too risky.

Therefore, Trump and Netanyahu must stop the Iranian nuclear threat, without further delay.                                       

This is Frank Gaffney.  

Pete Hegseth is a change agent in the Defense Department. Like most institutions, especially highly bureaucratic and hierarchical ones, the Pentagon is inherently resistant to major course-corrections. And few have been more dramatic than those being undertaken by the Trump administration after four years in which the military was subjected to unprecedented, highly politicized and debilitating “fundamental transformation.”

The new Secretary of Defense has been tasked with restoring the warrior ethos to our armed services. That means eliminating the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion agenda that made promotions to leadership a function not of warfighting skills and achievement, but conformity with and championing of what amounts to cultural Marxism. 

At a moment when the prospect of a shooting war looms large, Pete Hegseth needs our support in clearing the Pentagon’s decks for action, not encouragement to those resisting the changes the times require. 

This is Frank Gaffney.