The Biden regime has not been in place for long, and already it is a constant barrage of bad news. First, it was the onslaught of immigrants crossing the border illegally: nearly 100,000 apprehended in February, 172,000 in March and almost 180,000 in April. Thousands are being held in confinement units intended to hold a fraction of that number. Huge numbers are children, many of whom are unaccompanied, abandoned and/or could be exploited in sex trafficking rings. Disease is rampant in the detention facilities.

So much of this is a direct consequence of President Joe Biden’s irresponsible encouragement of illegal migration, his cancelation of the border wall construction and his refusal to enforce our country’s immigration laws. His appointed immigration czarina, Vice President Kamala Harris, has neither visited the border nor announced when — or if — she will.

Then there are the foreign policy debacles: U.S. officials were mocked by China’s envoys at a summit in Alaska earlier this year. Biden is now openly talking about bribing Iran with more millions of U.S. dollars, thus enabling that sponsor of international terror to move closer to developing nuclear bombs and, in the short term, to fund more of the rockets Hamas has been lobbing into Israel this past week. So long to a new millennium Middle East and celebrating the hope from peace accords signed under former President Trump; it now resembles the battlefields of the 1970s.

And speaking of the 1970s, what about the higher gas prices, higher consumer product prices overall and the cyberattack on one of our oil pipelines? (Interestingly, in May of last year, Trump issued an order forbidding the use of hardware or software from countries like China in our energy grid. Biden suspended that order in January.) Now, across the southern and eastern parts of the United States, gas stations have shortages and lines.

Catholics for Biden and other similarly situated groups heralded his campaign and his administration as a return to “normalcy,” “civility” and “decency.” How is encouraging illegal migration and the resulting trafficking, child exploitation and spread of disease “decent”? How is it “decent” to support a nation that oppresses, tortures, imprisons and kills its own citizens, and funds terrorism abroad, including attacks on Israel? What is praiseworthy about damaging the economy, eliminating our energy independence and compromising the security of our power grid?

Another bombshell dropped this week, largely unnoticed amidst the tumult. On May 10, Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, revoked the regulation put in place by the Trump administration that provided conscience protection for doctors and other medical professionals who do not want to perform abortions or gender reassignment surgeries.

This can hardly come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. In December, I warned that Biden had promised to go after the Little Sisters of the Poor, who have been fighting for over a decade to avoid paying for contraceptives as part of insurance coverage, in violation of their religious beliefs. The Trump administration had granted dispensation from regulations promulgated by former President Obama’s HHS. Biden plans to revoke that dispensation.

Biden and his progressive puppet masters have put Xavier Becerra, a pro-abortion-rights pit bull, in charge of the HHS. Becerra was the attorney general of California and named defendant in the landmark Supreme Court case NIFLA v. Becerra. That case challenged California’s Reproductive FACT Act, legislation that required anti-abortion pregnancy centers to promote and advertise the availability of abortion clinics. The Supreme Court declared the law unconstitutional.

In a column I wrote after Becerra’s nomination, I asked: “Will Biden’s HHS seek to place transgender surgeries and physician-assisted suicide under the umbrella of ‘health care’? If so, what will the rules be for Catholic — or any other — medical professionals and hospitals that object to these procedures on religious or moral grounds? While the Trump administration has been strongly supportive of conscience protection for health care workers, the Biden camp has signaled its antipathy toward those arguments. Given Biden’s own statements — and his Cabinet choices — it is reasonable to anticipate that an HHS run by Becerra in a Biden administration will be one that quickly announces that Catholic individuals and organizations must provide and/or pay for … whatever the government decides is ‘health care.’”

Guess I was right.

Truly, I do not understand why Catholics keep falling for this. More than a decade ago, then-President Barack Obama courted Catholics — including, most notably, my own alma mater, the University of Notre Dame — only to stab them in the back by imposing the odious contraceptive mandate. Obama’s HHS had a nominally Catholic secretary (Kathleen Sebelius), same as now (Becerra).

So much of the support for Biden seems to focus on presidential demeanor — “Trump is a braggart who writes mean tweets. Biden goes to Mass on Sunday.”

So? At what point do we stop looking at surface characteristics and start scrutinizing actual policies?

Those of us who seek wisdom in the Bible might do well to heed its admonition: “By their fruit ye shall recognize them.” We are also well-advised not to be taken in by appearances, even appearances of those who seem to be religiously observant. They, too, can, as the Bible says, “appear to people as righteous but on the inside” be “full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”

How much more will Catholics excuse?

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