December 2024
While December’s Heroes and Zeroes is dedicated to announcing the winner of our Hero of the year tournament, we couldn’t let these honorable mentions go unnoticed at year’s end.
HERO
Tom Homan, incoming border czar
Tom Homan, whom President-elect Donald Trump selected to be his border czar during his second term, brings even more than his over three decades of law enforcement experience to the incoming administration.
Homan has long touted his humanitarian approach to immigration policy, informed by his Catholic faith. Homan outlined his positions in his 2020 book “Defend the Border and Save Lives: Solving Our Most Important Humanitarian and Security Crisis.”
During a December 9 appearance on “Dr. Phil Primetime,” Homan affirmed that the administration will get to work securing the border beginning on day one of Trump’s second term.
He also vowed to prioritize searching for the estimated 300,000 children reportedly unaccounted for by the outgoing Biden administration.
“We’ll find them too,” Homan said.
“President Trump’s been clear,” he told host Dr. Phil McGraw. “We’re going to prioritize public safety threats and national security threats first because they pose the most danger to this nation.”
“So, day one, we’re going to be looking for these public safety threats, arrest them, detaining them, and deporting them,” Homan continued. Critics think “those who enforce the laws are the bad guys, those who broke the law are the victims,” but “we’re going to change that after January 20.”
Later in the month, Homan stressed the importance of ending the border crisis and deporting criminal illegal migrants humanely. He told the Washington Post: “We need to show the American people we can do this and not be inhumane about it.”
During a 2020 appearance on “The Catholic Current” podcast, hosted by Fr. Robert McTeigue, SJ, Homan said, “Securing the border not only saves lives in this country.”
“It saves lives of the most vulnerable people that are enticed to come to this country with promises that can’t be kept,” he noted:
I’ve seen many children who died making that journey. Thirty-one percent of women are being sexually assaulted making that journey. Criminal cartels are making millions of dollars a week smuggling people, trafficking in people. Opioids killed almost 70,000 Americans in the past year – that are coming across that border.
“So, it’s important having a secure border,” Homan concluded.
ZERO
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, former Speaker of the House
In a stunning act of defiance, ex-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi openly announced that she had disobeyed a directive from her local ordinary, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone.
In 2022, Cordileone became a household name when he penned a pastoral letter to Pelosi forbidding the radically pro-abortion lawmaker from receiving communion in his archdiocese.
However, via an article published on December 10, the Democrat told left-wing outlet National Catholic Reporter (NCR) that she “received Communion anyway.”
“That’s his problem, not mine,” Pelosi said. “My Catholic faith is, Christ is my savior. It has nothing to do with the bishops.”
Also on December 10, Cordileone responded: “As a pastor of souls, my overriding concern and chief responsibility is the salvation of souls.”
“And as Ezekiel reminds us, for a pastor to fulfill his calling, he has the duty not only to teach, console, heal and forgive, but also, when necessary, to correct, admonish and call to conversion,” the archbishop pointed out.
Cordileone wrote in his acclaimed 2022 letter: “A Catholic legislator who supports procured abortion, after knowing the teaching of the Church, commits a manifestly grave sin which is a cause of most serious scandal to others.”
Despite leaving her 20-year post in House Democratic leadership in 2002, Pelosi, 84, continues to represent her San Francisco-based seat in Congress – an office to which she was first elected in 1987.
