Did JD Vance Kill the Pope? An Investigation.

Vice President JD Vance met with Pope Francis Sunday, just hours before the progressive pontiff passed. Coincidence? Yes—but good luck telling that to the internet, which won’t stop joking that Donald Trump’s antagonistic ally had something to do with it.

During his 12-year papacy, the pope was an advocate for the rights of LGBTQ+ people and Palestinians and a staunch critic of Trump’s MAGA agenda. He even openly spoke against Vance, who tried to refashion Catholic teaching to justify Trump’s massive deportation scheme.

Suffice it to say, the internet is now suggesting that Vance made quick work vanquishing the Vicar of Christ.

Not everyone was accusing him of doing something, just asking questions.

But people on X certainly had their theories. Specifically, that Vance might be the Antichrist.

Others weren’t quite as convinced.

To be sure, not everyone was suggesting that Vance had carried out some kind of unholy hit. But he certainly didn’t help things.

Some suggested there could be evidence of an emerging trend that Vance has a bad touch.

Pope Francis’s death report, released Monday afternoon by the Vatican, indicated he died of a cerebral stroke, which caused him to fall into a coma and suffer “irreversible cardiocirculatory collapse,” The New York Times reported. He had long suffered from chronic lung disease and developed double pneumonia earlier this year.

This story has been updated.

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele wants to exchange Venezuelan deportees from the United States being unlawfully held in prison for political prisoners being held in Venezuela.

He made the terrifying proposition to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro via X Sunday evening.

“Mr. @NicolasMaduro, you have said on numerous occasions that you want the Venezuelans back and free,” Bukele wrote. “Unlike you, who have political prisoners, we don’t have political prisoners. All the Venezuelans we have in custody were detained as part of an operation against gangs like the Tren de Aragua in the United States.”

Last month, Donald Trump invoked the rarely used Alien Enemies Act to unlawfully deport more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants—the majority of whom have no criminal record—based on unfounded claims that they were part of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua Gang. He also ignored a court order telling him to stop the deportation. The deportees are now being held in CECOT, a notorious prison in El Salvador that has no contact with the outside world.

Bukele happily agreed to hold the Venezuelan deportees captive in exchange for a $6 million payment from the U.S. government. In complete disregard for the lives of innocent Venezuelans, the self-proclaimed “world’s coolest dictator” is now proposing to trade human beings he was paid to lock up for a handpicked group of people he wants in El Salvador.

“The only reason they are imprisoned is because they opposed you and your electoral fraud,” Bukele said of the political prisoners he wants released. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that includes the repatriation of 100% of the 252 Venezuelans who were deported, in exchange for the release and delivery of an identical number (252) of the thousands of political prisoners that you hold.”

Among those he wants released include the son-in-law of former Venezuelan presidential candidate Edmundo González, lawyer and activist Rocío San Miguel, journalist Roland Carreño, four political leaders seeking asylum in the Argentine embassy, and nearly 50 detained citizens of various nationalities.

Venezuela’s chief prosecutor, Tarek William Saab, said in a statement that Bukele’s proposal was “cynical” and called the 44-year-old dictator a “neofascist.”

“The treatment received by Venezuelans in the United States and El Salvador constitutes a serious violation of international human rights law and constitutes a crime against humanity,” Saab said in the statement.

Bukele’s alarming idea for a swap comes as the Trump administration is desperately trying to deport more Venezuelan immigrants through the Alien Enemies Act. It looks like Bukele will do everything he can to capitalize on Trump’s stupidity and benefit his own authoritarian government.

Trump administration aide Stephen Miller thinks the United States deserves reparations for mass immigration.

That was Miller’s response to Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s idea that the administration be held in civil contempt and fined $1 million for each day it refuses to follow the Supreme Court’s ruling that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported to El Savador, be returned to the United States.

“Where does our whole country go to get repaid for all of the wealth, all of the prosperity and security, that has been stolen from us by decades of uncontrolled, illegal mass migration?” Miller said. “We all deserve reparations for what has been stolen from us.”

Miller didn’t stop there, complaining that “we used to have a functioning public school system in this country,” until it was ruined by “open borders.”

“An entire generation of Americans—multiple generations, in fact—have been robbed of educational opportunities,” Miller complained, raising his voice.

The White House aide went on to blame immigrants for deaths from fentanyl, the rise of gangs, and violent crime against Americans.

“Where do any of their families go to get reparations?” Miller said. “There aren’t enough volumes that could fit into a library to calculate the carnage that has been inflicted by the Democrat Party’s policy of open borders.”

The Trump administration has accused Abrego Garcia, with no evidence, of being a violent member of the MS-13 gang and already admitted his deportation was an “administrative error.” He has no criminal record but continues to be held in El Salvador due to a deal the Trump administration made with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, whom it is paying to hold undocumented immigrants in the country.

Miller’s absurd demand belies the fact that previous administrations, including Democratic presidents such as Joe Biden and Barack Obama, deported countless undocumented immigrants. It also ignores the fact that, statistically speaking, native-born Americans commit more crimes than immigrants. But Miller’s views have long been influenced by xenophobia and racism, which is commonplace in the Trump administration.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed it was “fake news,” but purported plans to shutter huge sections of the Department of State sent shivers down the spines of U.S. diplomats over the weekend.

An alleged draft order circulated through the State Department over the weekend, outlining a complete overhaul of the agency to “streamline mission delivery” while eliminating “waste, fraud and abuse,” according to The New York Times. The plan recommended eliminating the department’s bureaus focusing on African affairs and all “non-essential embassies and consulates in sub-Saharan Africa.” It would also shutter bureaus on democracy and human rights, refugees and migration, and one that works with international organizations. It would abolish the special envoy on climate and shrink the U.S. diplomatic presence in Canada to a “significantly reduced team” overseen by Rubio himself.

The document also pitched changes to how the foreign service works, ending an “outdated and disorganized generalist global rotation model” for a model that promotes specialization in one particular area. The plan called to terminate the foreign service’s contract to recruit fellowship candidates from Howard University, a historically Black institution.

Rubio responded to the report in a post on X Sunday, writing that it was “fake news.” But the proposed changes reportedly rattled diplomats, who thought the memo could be real, according to Politico.

“There’s a lot that could be reformed, but you could give infinite monkeys infinite typewriters, and they would come up with something better than that,” said one U.S. diplomat who spoke to Politico. They called the plan “bonkers crazypants.”

Amid the massive cuts proposed by the Trump administration, it’s no surprise that the radical reshuffling seemed like the real thing. Last month, Politico reported that the Trump administration was planning to cut the State Department’s budget by nearly half, zeroing out the funding for programs to promote democratic processes and counter drug trafficking, and shuttering up to three dozen embassies. This proposal would shrink the department’s budget from $54.4 billion in 2025 to $28.4 billion in 2026.

Last week, a memorandum that was part of a broader budget for 2026 that is due to the Office of Budget Management outlined a plan to close 10 embassies and 17 consulates. This includes U.S. missions in Eritrea, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Scotland, and South Sudan, as well as five outposts in France and two in Germany.

Politico reported that there was significant reason to doubt the veracity of last week’s memo, which was not consistent with other communications from the Trump administration to Congress and did not follow the typical structure of an executive order.

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.