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Monday Miscellany, 7/28/25

Monday Miscellany, 7/28/25

Last updated on: July 28, 2025 at 6:00 am by Gene Veith

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Monday Miscellany, 7/28/25 2025-07-24T14:15:17-04:00 Gene Veith

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Minneapolis is also going for a socialist mayor. Europe is making itself go extinct. And seal of confession update.

Minneapolis Is Also Going for a Socialist Mayor

New York City Democrats have chosen the Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim with African ties, to be their candidate for mayor. Now Minneapolis Democrats have also chosen an Democratic Socialist, a Muslim with African ties, to be their candidate for mayor.

Omar Fateh, the son of Somali immigrants, is a state legislator–as is Mamdani–received the endorsement of the Minneapolis Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL). Today, populism is associated with right wing supporters of Donald Trump, but not so very long ago, populism was a left-wing phenomenon. The Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party was one manifestation of that movement. In 1944, that party merged with the Democratic Party to create the DFL, which is the official affliate of the national Democratic Party. (There is only one other state Democratic Party with a different name than the national party, the rather humorously named North Dakota Democratic–Nonpartisan League Party.)

The Minneapolis DFL conventionn endorsed Fateh over the two-term incumbent Mayor Jacob Frey, who is also a member of the DFL. Comments Susan Du of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, “With no viable Republican Party in the city, political divisions have formed in the DFL between traditional Democrats and the party’s ascendant left wing that includes democratic socialists.”

Du also quotes the former chair of the DFL, who says the Democratic Socialists do not fully reflect the values of the party:

“The Democratic Socialists of America want to defund the police,” Graham said. “They want to disarm all law enforcement officers. They want to free all incarcerated people, legalize the sex trade, the drug trade, homelessness and squatting. I could go on.

The DFL endorsement is not a primary. Mayor Frey, as well as other candidates, will still be running. Minneapolis will be using ranked-choice voting, so the results will be hard to predict.

Europe Is Making Itself Go Extinct

“It’s not just that European nations aren’t having children,” observes Jack Butler. “They’re increasingly preventing the children they do have from being born.”

In his National Review article Europe Is Extinguishing Itself, he notes that the European nations are finally waking up to the demographic problems they will be facing thanks to their plummeting birthrate. At the same time, though, they are becoming ever more extreme in their embrace of abortion.

Last year France revised its governing documents to make abortion a constitutional right. Sweden allows abortion pills through 22 weeks. Last month the United Kingdom decriminalized abortion at any point in the pregnancy.

In 2022, nearly a third of the children conceived in Great Britain and Wales were aborted. In Ireland, long a pro-life Catholic bastion, one in six children who are conceived are aborted.

Butler closes by invoking the loss of a generation in the carnage of World War I:

The violence it unleashed changed Europe’s conception of itself and laid the groundwork for further violence and chaos to come. We have yet fully to see the extent of the distortive and corrupting horrors this other form of violence, inflicted not by adults on their peers but by adults on children, will bring forth.

Seal of the Confession Update

We’ve blogged about Washington state’s law that would require clergy to violate the seal of confession–that is, the church requirement that sins confessed to a pastor or priest must never be divulged to anyone– in cases involving child abuse.

Violations of the law would draw a penalty of up to 364 days in jail, a $5,000 fine, and potential civil liability. Abiding by the law would draw a penalty for Catholic priests of automatic excommunication.

We noted that this time the federal government joined a lawsuit, Etienne v. Ferguson, arguing that the law is unconstitutional.

To report on the outcome, a federal judge has blocked the law. One reason is that the state of Washington was unable to show why the law targets clergy and not lawyers and family members, who remain exempt from the reporting law.

Democratic Socialist Party

Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party

European abortion laws

Omar Fateh

religious liberty

seal of confession

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