News Reporter

Tuesday, 29 September 2026

Abortion scandals have to stop

Friend,

Planned Parenthood—the nation’s largest committer of abortions—wanted to honor Joe Biden.

And Biden happily said yes.

In his address to Planned Parenthood, Biden offered no nuance and no hesitation in his support for the legal right to abort innocent children.

“In the wake of the Dobbs decision as president... We took action; I signed an executive order to protect access to reproductive healthcare, including emergency medical care,” said Biden.

He added that he was “outraged and appalled” by the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and that “the majority of the court dared us to stand up and be heard”—making it clear he supports abortion and any effort to silence those against it.

In the world of Catholic leaders, Joe Biden stands in stark contrast to Bishop Michael Burbidge of the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia.

Bishop Burbidge is also issuing a call to stand up and be heard, but his call is to the members of his flock, urging them to vote against ballot initiatives that endanger the unborn and threaten the integrity of marriage and the traditional family.

He is not fighting on simply Catholic grounds. These issues are not just about Catholic teaching; they are life and death. They affect the moral fabric of American society.

Where Joe Biden is receiving an award for opposing Catholic teaching in the public square, Bishop Burbidge is promoting the right and duty of Catholics to bring their moral consciences to the ballot box.

We are asking all of our U.S. bishops to stand up and be heard, to make it clear that the Church can no longer tolerate Catholic politicians who mislead the faithful on abortion—or worse: they pretend that their faith supports this barbaric practice.

It is time to declare that such politicians are calling themselves Catholic in bad faith. And that, like Joe Biden, they imperil their own souls in doing so.

Please, encourage your bishop to stand up and be heard. Thank him if he has raised his voice.

A shepherd’s courage may just be waiting for the encouragement of his people.

Go forward bravely,

Kelsey Reinhardt

President & CEO

CatholicVote

Future Coach: Why you should fix your phone but junk your car

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By Michael J. Coren

Welcome to Future Coach.

This week I’m writing about the surprising logic that shows it’s sometimes better to replace an appliance or car that’s working perfectly.

(KAMBOU SIA/AFP via Getty Images)

Buy a gasoline car tomorrow. Junk it. Then buy a new electric vehicle and drive it for a decade. You would still do less harm to the climate than if you’d kept driving that gas car for 10 years.

That finding, published in the peer-reviewed journal Science in August, reveals a truth that’s blowing up old intuitions about how long to keep our machines: The efficiency of new electric technology is virtually unbeatable. Understanding how this works will help you make the smartest choices about which products to repair or replace — for your wallet and the planet.

Elliott Campbell, a professor of environmental studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and his colleague Roland Geyer analyzed thousands of data points from the transportation sector to model lifetime vehicle emissions. No matter how they sliced the data, emissions for EVs were lower than for gasoline vehicles — even after junking a brand-new gas vehicle — in 92 percent of the scenarios combining different models, electric grids and battery types.

“This is crazy, especially for me, growing up fixing and repairing things,” said Campbell. He once repaired a Volvo station wagon with 300,000 miles on it so he could drive it for a few more years. “The notion that you could take a brand-new, complicated piece of equipment, drive it across the street and scrap it immediately and still be doing something good for the environment — that, to me, is shocking.”

The reason is basic physics. Machines demand energy at two stages of their lives: when they’re being manufactured and when they’re being used. Manufacturing appears massive: Mining, refining, factories and transport do take energy. But over time, even the biggest conventional machines (especially those, in fact) consume far more in fuel, and thus generate more emissions, than what’s required to make them.

This isn’t just true for cars. Home appliances are the same. Dishwashers, laptops, phones, washing machines and others that demand energy obey the same principle.

So I worked with Campbell to answer the question many of you ask me: When should you retire your car or appliance, and when should you keep it alive on duct tape and borrowed time (as I do)?

The results were not what I expected. Here’s how to decide when to trash a machine in your life and when to fix it.

Read the column

I want to hear from you! Email me your feedback and stories at futurecoach@washpost.com.

See you on Thursday,

Michael Coren, Future Coach

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