Pope Francis Criticized Trump and His Stooges Every Chance He Could

Pope Francis has died at 88. The first Latin American pope, Francis was both beloved and reviled by many for his progressive, humanistic principles, repeatedly warning against the dangers of climate change and creating greater acceptance of LGBTQ people within the church. He also made his deep distaste for Trump and his anti-immigrant policies well known. 

Here are four times the pope talked about Trump and his dangerous MAGA agenda:

1. “A person who only thinks about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” the pope said in February 2016, when asked about then-candidate Trump’s proposal to build a border wall and make Mexico pay for it. “That is not in the Gospel.” 

“For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful,” Trump replied. “If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which, as everyone knows, is ISIS’ ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president.”

2. Francis was also directly critical of Trump’s attack on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. 

“The President of the United States presents himself as pro-life and if he is a good pro-lifer, he understands that family is the cradle of life and its unity must be protected,” Francis said in 2017, after Trump ended the program giving legal protections to about 800,000 “Dreamers” who entered the country as children. “I think this law comes not from parliament but from the executive.… If that is so, I am hopeful that it will be re-thought.”

3. In 2025, he criticized Trump and border czar Tom Homan’s mass deportation plans.

“The act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness.… What is built on the basis of force, and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly.”

4. The Pope’s final public criticism of the Trump administration came in February 2025, when vice president and recently reformed Catholic JD Vance used the Catholic concept of ordo amoris to justify mass deportation, isolationism, and a general resentment of immigrants.  

Francis attacked the very logic of Vance’s claim. 

“Christians know very well that it is only by affirming the infinite dignity of all that our own identity as persons and as communities reaches its maturity. Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups. In other words: The human person is not a mere individual, relatively expansive, with some philanthropic feelings! The human person is a subject with dignity who, through the constitutive relationship with all, especially with the poorest, can gradually mature in his identity and vocation,” Pope Francis wrote. “The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan’ (cf. Lk 10:25-37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”

Pope Francis’s death will leave us without a powerful moral barometer who always put principles over politics. 

The entire Pentagon is in total chaos after Signalgate part two.

The New York Times reported Sunday that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth shared sensitive details of a U.S. military attack on the Houthis in Yemen in yet another Signal group chat that included his wife, brother, and others in his inner circle. It’s the second time he’s done so in less than a month, after he and other members of Trump’s Cabinet discussed similar classified information in a Signal group chat that happened to include The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg.

The news comes amid a wealth of other chaos at the DOD. Just hours after the Times report, Politico published an opinion essay by former Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot detailing the building’s “full-blown meltdown” spurred by Hegseth.

“It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon. From leaks of sensitive operational plans to mass firings, the dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president—who deserves better from his senior leadership,” Ullyot wrote.

First there was Signalgate, a scandal that Hegseth tried to lie his way through, instead of owning up to. Then came reports that the defense secretary brought his wife to classified meetings, and news that the Pentagon arranged a top-secret briefing for Elon Musk on China, behind Donald Trump’s back. To top it off, last week, a number of top DOD senior staffers were fired or left their posts amid rumors that they were leaking sensitive information, sending the building into “disarray under Hegseth’s leadership” Ullyot revealed.

“There are very likely more shoes to drop in short order, with even bigger bombshell stories coming this week,” he wrote. It’s hard to imagine what’s bigger than news that the man in charge of U.S. defense has shared sensitive military information over text, not once but twice. But, as Ullyot pointed out, “The Pentagon focus is no longer on warfighting, but on endless drama.”

As it did with the first Signal scandal, the Department of Defense denied that Hegseth shared any classified information, and framed the whole thing as a smear campaign from the media.

“Another day, another old story—back from the dead. The Trump-hating media continues to be obsessed with destroying anyone committed to President Trump’s agenda,” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell wrote, in a statement on X. “This time, the New York Times—and all other Fake News that repeat their garbage—are enthusiastically taking the grievances of disgruntled former employees as the sole sources for their article. They relied only on the words of people who were fired this week and appear to have a motive to sabotage the Secretary and the President’s agenda.

“There was no classified information in any Signal chat, no matter how many ways they try to write the story,” he continued.

The White House too stood behind Hegseth, despite an outpouring of cries from Democrats demanding he be fired to protect the safety of U.S. military personnel.

“The president stands strongly behind Secretary Hegseth, who is doing a phenomenal job leading the Pentagon,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News on Monday.

“And this is what happens when the entire Pentagon is working against you and working against the monumental change that you are trying to implement,” she added, offering a glimpse into the shaky disarray going on behind the scenes. It seems the White House is doing everything it can to avoid admitting that choosing a 44-year-old TV presenter with allegations of alcohol abuse to lead the U.S. military may have been a bad idea after all.

Donald Trump is incensed that Harvard University won’t give in to his administration’s draconian demands, and is taking further action against the institution.

The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday night that the White House plans to pull $1 billion in federal funding for Harvard’s health research, which comes after the administration cut $2.2 billion in grants and a $60 million contract with the university last week.

The White House is reportedly upset that the university publicly released a letter that the administration’s Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism sent it more than a week ago. The task force’s letter had a long list of demands, apparently under the impression that it would simply be a starting point for negotiations. Since the letter’s release, Trump has planned to treat Harvard even more harshly than Columbia University, which lost $400 billion in federal funding despite giving in to the administration’s demands.

Harvard President Alan Garber had written his own letter to the university community, rejecting Trump’s demands. “No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” he wrote.

Trump has already threatened to end the university’s tax-exempt status, which would cost the university millions of dollars, as well as its ability to enroll international students, which make up 27 percent of Harvard’s enrollment. Now the president expects an even more protracted fight with America’s oldest university.

“Instead of grandstanding, Harvard should focus on rebuilding confidence among all students, particularly Jewish students,” a White House spokesperson told the Journal. “The White House remains open to dialogue, but serious changes are needed at Harvard.”

Trump’s attacks on academic freedom echo the right’s long-standing grievances against higher education institutions in America, which it sees as bastions of liberal influence. Last year’s protests at universities across the country against Israel’s brutal war in Gaza incensed supporters of Israel and further drove Republicans to punish any university they perceive as failing to take action. After making an example of Columbia, Trump and his fellow conservatives are expanding their crusade.

Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen perfectly dismantled Donald Trump’s administration’s argument for ignoring the due process rights of immigrants such as Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

During an appearance Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, Van Hollen was asked to respond to comments from Patty Morin, the mother of Maryland resident Rachel Morin who was raped and killed by a Salvadoran man in 2023, a tragedy that Trump administration officials regularly revisit in their justification of the president’s mass deportation scheme.

Morin had criticized Van Hollen’s visit to El Salvador to find Abrego Garcia, whom the Trump administration mistakenly deported in March, during a White House press briefing last week.

“To have a senator from Maryland who didn’t even acknowledge, or barely acknowledged, my daughter and the brutal death that she endured, leaving her five children without a mother and now a grandbaby without a grandmother, so that he can use my taxpayer money to fly to El Salvador to bring back someone that’s not even an American citizen. Why does that person have more right than I do? Or my daughter?” Morin asked.

Van Hollen responded to Morin’s comments Sunday.

“My heart goes out to the Morin family. They suffered—experienced an unspeakable tragedy in the murder of their daughter, and I said at the time that my heart goes out to the Morin family. And I’m very glad that the killer of Rachel has been convicted in a court of law. That is how we hold guilty people accountable,” Van Hollen said.

“The courts of law are also where people get to have their due process so we don’t unfairly punish people who don’t have criminal records,” Van Hollen continued. “And so, my view is you can crack down and hold guilty people accountable and also respect the due process rights of everybody who is in court. And I am not sure why Abrego Garcia’s rights should be denied based on an awful murder that he had absolutely nothing to do with.”

Van Hollen returned from El Salvador Friday after finally meeting with a “traumatized” Abrego Garcia, and recounted the outrageous lengths the Salvadoran government had gone to to try to mislead the public about its treatment of Abrego Garcia.

The Trump administration has claimed that Abrego Garcia, who has no criminal record, was not only a member of MS-13 but a “top leader” and “engaged in human trafficking,” while only providing thin evidence that he was even affiliated with the group. In fact Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador as the result of an “administrative error.”

In the spirit of Easter, Donald Trump spent Sunday ranting on Truth Social, attacking judges, the left, and former President Joe Biden.

His first Easter address began normally enough, wishing Americans a “very happy Easter” and a day “full of Peace and Joy for all who celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.” But within minutes, the president flipped the script and went on a furious rampage against his favorite targets.

“Happy Easter to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics who are fighting and scheming so hard to bring Murderers, Drug Lords, Dangerous Prisoners, the Mentally Insane, and well known MS-13 Gang Members and Wife Beaters, back into our Country,” he wrote.

“Happy Easter also to the WEAK and INEFFECTIVE judges and Law Enforcement Officials who are allowing this sinister attack on our nation to continue, an attack so violent it will never be forgotten!” Trump continued, on par with his attack on the courts that’s reached new heights in recent weeks.

Right on cue, Trump’s message then turned into a frantic blitz against the left, blaming Biden and the Democrats for allowing “millions of CRIMINALS” to enter the country in the “single most calamitous act ever perpetrated on America.”

“He was, by far, our WORST and most Incompetent President, a man who had absolutely no idea what he was doing.… But to him … and to all of the people who CHEATED in the 2020 Presidential Election in order to get this highly destructive Moron Elected, I wish you, with great love, sincerity, and affection, a very Happy Easter!!!” Trump concluded.

The official White House account shared the message on X, along with a graphic of Trump standing beside a person in an Easter bunny costume, seemingly addressing the country. The graphic reads, “Happy Easter to All, Even the Radical left Lunatics …”—a sobering comparison to last year’s Easter Sunday, which the White House declared Transgender Day of Visibility.

Donald Trump made nearly $240 million off of inauguration donations from billionaires and corporations eager to kiss the ring. 

The New York Times reported that this round of donations is more than double the already record-setting amount of money that Trump raised at his first inauguration, in 2017. 

The three biggest donations—made out to the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee—were from poultry company Pilgrim’s, which gave $5 million; crypto company Ripple Inc., which gave just under $5 million; and Republican donor, businessman, and potential ambassador to the U.K. Warren Stephens, who gave $4 million. Multiple other high-profile companies, including Meta, Amazon, JP Morgan, Target, also contributed to Trump’s massive inauguration haul. The record-setting donations underscore the level of corporate influence within this administration and raise the question of just how much it takes for President Trump to be bought. One million dollars sounds about right, as a whopping 140 people or companies each donated at least that. 

While the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee is not legally required to disclose how it’ll use its newly acquired millions, some have hinted that the funds will go toward the Trump Presidential Library. 

Not long before Pope Francis passed away Monday, he met with Vice President JD Vance and lectured him about immigrants.

The 88-year-old pontiff seemed to initially snub Vance over the weekend, having his deputy Cardinal Pietro Parolin and the Vatican Foreign Minister Archbishop Paul Gallagher meet with Vance on Saturday. The Vatican described that meeting as “an exchange of opinions on the international situation, especially regarding countries affected by war, political tensions and difficult humanitarian situations, with particular attention to migrants, refugees, and prisoners.

“Finally, hope was expressed for serene collaboration between the state and the Catholic Church in the United States, whose valuable service to the most vulnerable people was acknowledged,” the statement from the Vatican added.

Vance’s office issued its own statement, saying that the group discussed “the plight of persecuted Christian communities around the world” and Donald Trump’s “commitment to restoring world peace”—making no mention of immigrants, refugees, or prisoners.

On Sunday, Vance met with Francis in a brief meeting, telling the pontiff, “It’s good to see you in better health,” and accepting Easter eggs for his children. But the Pope’s official Easter sermon that day criticized hostility toward immigrants and international aid, a trademark of the Trump administration.

“How much contempt is stirred up at times toward the vulnerable, the marginalized and migrants?” Francis said in his address.

Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, has provoked tensions with the church with his defense of the Trump administration’s immigration policies, and even attacked the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in January for assisting immigrants, saying their concerns about the Trump administration were due to the fear of losing federal funding.

“Are they worried about humanitarian concerns, or are they actually worried about their bottom line?” Vance said at the time.

Vance further drew the ire of the Vatican when he invoked the Catholic concept of “ordo amoris”—the order of love—to defend the White House’s mass deportation policies, claiming in January that the well-being of Americans trumped any concern for that of immigrants.

Francis, the first and so far only Latin American pope, responded with a letter saying, “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups.

“The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan,’ that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception,” the February letter stated, pointedly criticizing mass deportation.

Francis more explicitly condemned Trump’s mass deportations on an Italian talk show that month, saying, “If true, this will be a disgrace.… This is not the way to solve things.”

Last month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other top officials were exposed for using encrypted messaging app Signal to discuss sensitive information regarding an attack on Yemen—a significant breach of security. Now it’s been reported that Hegseth shared similar information in a second Signal chat, this time with his wife and brother present in said chat.

His response to this second national security bombshell has been to insist that it’s simply a politically motivated smear campaign rather than yet another massive faux pas.

“Your agenda is illegals, trans & DEI—all of which are no longer allowed @ DoD,” Hegseth wrote late Sunday night, in response to the Democratic Party’s X account saying he “needs to go.”

A longer statement from the Department of Defense also downplayed the national security concerns of Hegseth’s actions.

“The Trump-hating media continues to be obsessed with destroying anyone committed to President Trump’s agenda. This time, the New York Times—and all other Fake News that repeat their garbage—are enthusiastically taking the grievances of disgruntled former employees as the sole sources for their article. They relied only on the words of people who were fired this week and appear to have a motive to sabotage the Secretary and the President’s agenda,” wrote Defense Department spokesperson Sean Parnell. “There was no classified information in any Signal chat, no matter how many ways they try to write the story. What is true is that the Office of the Secretary of Defense is continuing to become stronger and more efficient in executing President Trump’s agenda.”

Hegseth doubled down again Monday at the White House Easter Egg roll, of all places.

“What a big surprise that a few leakers get fired and suddenly a bunch of hit pieces come out from the same media that peddled the Russia hoax; that won’t give back their Pulitzers—they got Pulitzers for a bunch of lies,” he told CSPAN reporters on Monday morning, while Easter festivities went on behind him. “This is what the media does. They take anonymous sources from disgruntled former employees, and then they try to slash and burn people and ruin their reputations.”

While the first Signal chat was created by national security adviser Mike Waltz, the second one was created solely by Hegseth.

“Every day he stays in his job is another day our troops’ lives are endangered by his singular stupidity,” Senator Tammy Duckworth commented.

This story has been updated.

Senator Chris Van Hollen set the record straight Friday on the shameless lies about his meeting with the Maryland man wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador. 

During a press conference, Van Hollen put to rest right-wing rumors started by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who claimed that Van Hollen and Abrego Garcia were “sipping margaritas” and shared a photo on X of the two men at a table with drinks topped with maraschino cherries. 

The Maryland Democrat said that when they sat down to talk at his hotel, “one of the government people came over and deposited two other glasses on the table with ice, and I don’t know if it was salt or sugar around the top, but they looked like margaritas.”

“If you look at the one they put in front of Kilmar, it actually had a little less liquid than the one in front of me, to try to make it look, I assume, like he drank out of it,” Van Hollen said.  

“Let me just be very clear, neither of us touched the drinks that were in front of us. And if you want to play a little Sherlock Holmes, I’ll tell you how you could know that,” he continued. 

Van Hollen explained that if either of the men had sipped from the cups, there would be a gap in the dressing around the rims. 

“There’s no gap. Nobody drank any margaritas or sugar water or whatever it is,” he said. “But this is a lesson. It’s the lengths that President Bukele will do to deceive people about what’s going on.” 

Van Hollen said that when Donald Trump was asked later Friday about the photograph, “he just went along for the ride.” 

Van Hollen also said that the so-called “margarita-gate” could have been even worse. 

“I should also just say, you know I mentioned the fake margarita scandal, they actually wanted to have the meeting by the side of the pool, right? In the hotel,” Van Hollen said. “I mean this is a guy in CECOT, this is a guy who has been detained. They wanted to create this appearance that life was just lovely for Kilmar, which of course is a big, fat lie.”

Abrego Garcia’s experience in CECOT was anything but luxurious: the senator said he’d been kept in a cell with 25 other prisoners. 

Abrego Garcia “said he was not afraid of the other prisoners in his immediate cell but he was traumatized by being at CECOT and fearful of many of the prisoners in other cellblocks who called out to him and taunted him in various ways,” Van Hollen explained.

Nine days prior, Abrego Garcia had been moved to another detention facility in Santa Ana, where the conditions were better. But Van Hollen stressed that Abrego Garcia had been given no contact with the outside world, and no opportunity to communicate with a lawyer or his loved ones since he was “abducted.”

“His conversation with me was the first communication he’d had with anybody outside of prison since he was abducted,” Van Hollen said. 

The Trump administration continues to flout orders from a federal court, an appeals court, and the Supreme Court ordering it to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia, who was deported due to an “administrative error.”

Elon Musk’s latest pick to lead the Internal Revenue Service is being forced out after less than 72 hours, The New York Times reported Friday.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reportedly complained to Donald Trump that Musk went behind his back to appoint Gary Shapley, a former supervisor at the agency who garnered attention for blowing the whistle on Hunter Biden’s tax investigation, without his knowledge. Trump gave Bessent the go-ahead to oust him from the IRS, which falls under Bessent’s jurisdiction as head of the Treasury Department.

Shapley’s meagre three-day tenure beats that of Anthony Scaramucci, who was famously booted from his role as Trump’s communications director after just 10 days during the president’s first term. It’s also yet another change in leadership for the IRS, which has now lost its fourth commissioner in three months.

Melanie Krause, the IRS acting commissioner before Shapley, was appointed in February but resigned earlier this month after the Treasury Department allowed Immigrations and Customs Enforcement access to IRS data to help deport immigrants. Doug O’Donnell retired amid agency cutbacks and chaos, and Danny Werfel, Joe Biden’s appointed IRS commissioner, resigned on Trump’s Inauguration Day. The agency is facing so much turbulence, it’s starting to become known as a “zombie agency” among tax attorneys, CNBC reported Thursday.

While Trump’s official pick to lead the IRS, Representative Billy Long (who suspiciously just had a six-figure debt paid off by campaign donors), awaits Senate confirmation, Musk and Bessent continue to publicly butt heads.

On Thursday, Musk shared a tweet from far-right activist Laura Loomer slamming Bessent for his reported association with a Trump hater. “Troubling,” Musk replied. It’s a sign that much of the Trump administration is not on the same page, as federal agencies fall apart at the seams.