Pope Meets With Top Obama Adviser in Wake of Pentagon Threat

Barack Obama could be about to one-up Donald Trump yet again.

Pope Leo XIV met with Obama adviser David Axelrod Thursday morning, reported Substack journalist Christopher Hale, marking a major progression in the quest to land the 44th president a meeting with the Chicago-born pontiff.  

Obama’s enthusiasm for meeting the pope was made apparent in February, when he joined Brian Tyler Cohen’s podcast for a Valentine’s Day episode.

“I’ll be honest with you, being president or even being an ex-president, I can kind of meet everybody, so I’ve met a lot of folks,” Obama said at the time. “The person who I have not yet met that I’m looking forward to meeting—and I hope I get an opportunity sometime in the future—is the new pope, who’s from Chicago, and a White Sox fan.”

Axelrod worked as Obama’s chief strategist on both of his presidential campaigns. It’s not clear what Axelrod and the pope discussed, but the shrinking degrees of separation between the global figures bodes well for Obama’s dream.

The effort to pair the two has been actively in the works since at least March, when Hale reported that the Holy See had been in communication with Obama’s team about arranging a meeting.

That could mean that Obama meets Pope Leo XIV before Trump does.

Leo became the first American-born pope on May 8, 2025, but Trump has not managed to meet him over the past year. Instead, the Vatican has shied away from the Trump administration, in no small part due to threats made by Defense Department officials who were unhappy with the pontiff’s various criticisms of Trump’s warmongering.

Days after Pope Leo XIV delivered his “State of the World” speech in January, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s U.S. representative, to a closed-door meeting at the Pentagon. The atmosphere was anything but friendly: Pentagon officials openly threatened the religious ambassador, asserting that the Catholic Church needed to get behind the Trump administration’s global whims due to the country’s military prowess.

One U.S. official present at the meeting brought up the Avignon papacy, a period in the fourteenth century in which the French monarchy bent the Catholic Church into submission, ordering an attack on Pope Boniface VIII that led to his downfall and subsequent death, and forcing the papacy to relocate from Rome to Avignon.

The Vatican was so alarmed by the Pentagon’s warning that Pope Leo cancelled his plans to visit the U.S. later in the year, reported Hale, who noted that “many in the Vatican saw the Pentagon’s reference to an Avignon papacy as a threat to use military force against the Holy See.”

The Vatican also rejected the White House’s invitation to host the pope for America’s 250th anniversary on July 4.

Donald Trump, despite his praise for the U.S. steel industry, will be using foreign steel for his ballroom project.

The New York Times reports that Luxembourg-based company ArcelorMittal will be providing millions of dollars in steel for the project, all produced in Europe. Trump said in October that he was offered $37 million worth of donated steel for the ballroom, but didn’t say where it was from.

He told ballroom donors at the time that a “great steel company” had come forward with a gift.

“He said, ‘Sir, I’d like to donate the steel for your ballroom,’” Trump recounted to the donors. “I said: ‘Whoa, that’s nice.’ And I found out—‘How much is the steel?’ I called the contractor. ‘Sir, it’s down for $37 million.’ I said, ‘This is a nice donation, right?’”

He called the steel “great steel as opposed to garbage steel, because they dump a lot of garbage around. You know, steel is like everything else, including human beings. Steel could be high quality, and it can be low quality. He wants to make sure it’s high quality.”

Days after Trump made that announcement last year, he halved tariffs that applied to automotive steel exports that ArcelorMittal happens to produce in Canada. An unnamed White House official told the Times that despite ArcelorMittal being a foreign company, it was benefiting the U.S. through a joint venture with Japan’s Nippon Steel in Alabama and an iron mine in Minnesota, and denied that the company received anything in return for its donation.

Last year, the Trump administration allowed Japan-based Nippon Steel to take over U.S. Steel in exchange for a “golden share” in the company, which allows the government to block major decisions such as offshoring or layoffs. Why would Trump get steel from ArcelorMittal when the government already has a close (and controversial) stake in U.S. Steel?

On top of that, going with a foreign steel company contradicts Trump’s stated “America First” ethos, which critics seized upon Wednesday.

“While the White House imports foreign steel to build Trump’s ugly Epstein Ballroom, California is opening its first new steel plant in 50 years,” California Governor Gavin Newsom’s press office posted on X. “Thanks, Gavin Newsom!”

“Make America Luxembourg Again?” Newsom also posted on his personal account.

“Foreign steel in the White House? Are you kidding? We’ve got Iron Range mines shut down & 100’s @steelworkers laid off. Instead, they’re outsourcing one of the most iconic American buildings overseas! American steel built this country, it should build the White House too,” Minnesota State Senator Grant Hauschild, a Democrat, said on X.

President Trump issued an “ultimatum” to European countries regarding the Strait of Hormuz after meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte at the White House on Wednesday.

German news magazine Der Spiegel reported that Trump is expecting NATO members to help reopen the strait, which Iran closed in retaliation for the war Trump started without speaking to any of those NATO members. He’s also threatening to pull U.S. military support from any countries that don’t help reopen the strait.

Trump’s demand is equivalent to an “ultimatum,” several European diplomats told Der Spiegel.

“None of these people, including our own, very disappointing, NATO, understood anything unless they have pressure placed upon them!!!” Trump posted on Truth Social early Thursday morning, hours after his meeting with Rutte.

This isn’t the first time Trump has begged NATO to help him reestablish a status quo that he disrupted. Last month, Trump claimed that other countries—such as China—depend more on the Middle East waterway than the U.S. does, and should therefore be leading the charge in reopening the bomb-laden strait.

“I’m demanding that these countries come in and protect their own territory, because it is their territory. It’s the place from which they get their energy. And they should come and they should help us protect it,” Trump said. “Why are we maintaining the Hormuz Strait when it’s really there for China and many other countries? Why aren’t they doing it?”

It’s been less than 48 hours since the U.S. brokered a fragile, two-week ceasefire agreement with Iran, and Donald Trump is already raring for his next fight.

The president issued another violent threat against Iran Wednesday night, promising that the “shootin’ starts” if the two countries do not reach a “REAL AGREEMENT.”

“All U.S. Ships, Aircraft, and Military Personnel, with additional Ammunition, Weaponry, and anything else that is appropriate and necessary for the lethal prosecution and destruction of an already substantially degraded Enemy, will remain in place in, and around, Iran, until such time as the REAL AGREEMENT reached is fully complied with,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“If for any reason it is not, which is highly unlikely, then the ‘Shootin’ Starts,’ bigger, and better, and stronger than anyone has ever seen before.”

“It was agreed, a long time ago, and despite all of the fake rhetoric to the contrary—NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS and, the Strait of Hormuz WILL BE OPEN & SAFE,” he continued. “In the meantime our great Military is Loading Up and Resting, looking forward, actually, to its next Conquest. AMERICA IS BACK!”

Iran offered a 10-point peace plan on Monday that the White House tepidly agreed to work with, mere minutes before Trump’s deadline the following night to completely obliterate the country.

The plan includes various demands for an immediate end to the regional violence, including proposals for a permanent end to the war, guarantees that Iran and its allies would not be attacked again, and an end to Israeli strikes on Hezbollah in Lebanon.

It also seeks the lifting of all U.S. and international sanctions on Iran; the imposition of a new $2 million toll per ship through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil passageway situated between Iran and Oman; and a $1 toll per barrel of oil delivered through the waterway.

But there was an additional detail included in versions of the ceasefire arrangement distributed in Farsi—Iran’s native language—that was not included in the English edition, specifying the “acceptance of enrichment” for Iran’s nuclear program, suggesting that the country was not yet willing to let go of its plans to develop nuclear technology.

While it’s hard to see how any components of the deal offer a benefit to the U.S., the final point undermines Trump’s rationale for the war entirely: The president’s primary interest in fighting Iran was to cripple the country’s nuclear program, stripping any potential for the country to create a nuclear weapon. Failing to do so would imply that the war—which has so far cost the lives of 13 U.S. troops and billions of dollars in munitions—was a complete waste of time, even by the White House’s own metrics.

So much for Donald Trump’s “Golden Age.” It looks like America’s economic growth is officially in free fall.

Between October and December, America’s real gross domestic product fell from 4.4 percent to just 0.5 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Thursday.

That figure is significantly less than the agency’s second estimate of 0.7 percent growth, reported last month.

The government reported that the economy grew 2.1 percent last year, compared to 2.8 percent in 2024 and 2.9 percent in 2023. If GDP growth is beneath 2 percent annually, that can typically be considered a recession.

The surprising economic slow-down in the fourth quarter can be attributed to the government shutdown, which cut federal spending and investment by 16.6 percent and trimmed 1.16 percent points off of growth in Q4. Consumer spending expanded at a pace of 1.89 percent, down from the previous estimate of 3.5 percent in the second quarter.

This weakened economy has set the stage for Trump’s increasingly expensive war in Iran. The president’s reckless military campaign in the Middle East has triggered significant disruptions in global commerce and sent energy prices surging.

Iran is not happy that Israel is continuing to bomb Lebanon and is warning Donald Trump to enforce what it says is “an inseparable part of the ceasefire.”  

In a post on X Thursday morning, Iran’s speaker of parliament Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf posted three points emphasizing Lebanon’s importance to the ceasefire deal, noting that it was part of the first point in Iran’s 10-point plan, that mediator Pakistan “publicly and clearly stressed the Lebanon issue,” and that ceasefire violations “carry explicit costs and STRONG responses.” 

“Extinguish the fire immediately,” Ghalibaf warned. 

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted on X Wednesday that “the Iran-U.S. Ceasefire terms are clear and explicit: the U.S. must choose—ceasefire or continued war via Israel. It cannot have both.” 

“The world sees the massacres in Lebanon. The ball is in the U.S. court, and the world is watching whether it will act on its commitments,” Araghchi said. 

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian echoed Araghchi.

“Renewed aggression by the Zionist regime against Lebanon blatantly violates the initial ceasefire. Such actions signal deception and non-compliance, rendering negotiations meaningless. Our hands remain on the trigger. Iran will never forsake its Lebanese brothers and sisters,” Pezeshkian posted on X Thursday. 

At least 203 people were killed in Lebanon in Israeli strikes on Wednesday, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry, with over 1,000 wounded. Strikes continued Thursday, with at least seven people killed in the southern Lebanese town of Abbassiyeh.  

Meanwhile, the status of the Strait of Hormuz was unclear Thursday morning. Few ships were traversing it despite the supposed ceasefire, and Iranian officials said Wednesday that traffic was once again blocked due to the strikes on Lebanon. But U.S. and Israeli officials are claiming, contrary to Pakistan, that Lebanon wasn’t part of the ceasefire.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted on X in Hebrew Thursday morning that “we will continue to strike Hezbollah wherever required, until we restore full security to the residents of the north.” 

Vice President JD Vance said Wednesday that “if Iran wants to let this negotiation fall apart—in a conflict where they were getting hammered—over Lebanon, which has nothing to do with them and which the United States never once said was part of the ceasefire, that’s ultimately their choice. We think that would be dumb, but that’s their choice.”

So, is the ceasefire all but dead? Will the White House do anything about Israel’s continued bombing of Lebanon? If this two-week peace deal is meant to hold up, then these questions have to be answered, otherwise more civilians will die and things will only get worse. 

President Trump plans to automatically sign up military draft-eligible men for a potential draft, an ominous decision to make in the midst of a war on Iran.

While registration into Selective Service—the massive database that tells the United States how many men it can force into war in the event of a national emergency—has historically been required for every U.S. male upon turning 18, the sign-up process was manual.

“On December 18, 2025, the President signed the FY 2026 [National Defense Authorization Act] into law, mandating automatic Selective Service registration. The Agency engaged with Congress throughout the NDAA process regarding the automated legislative proposal,” the Selective Service System said in a public statement. “This statutory change transfers responsibility for registration from individual men to SSS through integration with federal data sources. SSS will implement the change by December 2026, resulting in a streamlined registration process and corresponding workforce realignment.”

Multiple Democrats were quick to call out the administration’s misplaced priorities.

“If they can automatically register you for WAR, they can automatically register you to VOTE,” Democratic House of Representatives candidate Sarah McGee wrote on X. Others posted old tweets from White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller about how young men should vote for Trump lest they be “drafted to fight in Kamala’s and Cheney’s 3rd World War.”

The last time the U.S. had a draft was in 1973, for the Vietnam War, which caused institutional and ideological damage that this country is still dealing with today. A draft in this era would be even more catastrophic.

Relations between the United States and the Catholic Church have not been the same since January, when senior U.S. defense officials shared an abrasive message with a Vatican official.

Days after Pope Leo XIV delivered his State of the World speech, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s U.S. representative, to a closed-door Pentagon meeting for a bitter lecture.

“The United States,” Colby said, according to a blistering new report by The Free Press, “has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.”

One U.S. official present at the meeting brought up the Avignon papacy, a period in the fourteenth century in which the French monarchy bent the Catholic Church into submission, ordering an attack on Pope Boniface VIII that led to his downfall and subsequent death and forcing the papacy to relocate from Rome to Avignon, a region inside France.

The Trump administration had taken issue with the pope’s critique of its militaristic proclivities. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other top Pentagon officials were particularly aggrieved by portions of Leo’s January 9 speech in which the pope argued that “a diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force,” and that “war is back in vogue, and a zeal for war is spreading.”

The pope’s address was dissected line by line and interpreted as a hostile message toward the administration, reported Letters from Leo Substack writer Christopher Hale.

It was difficult not to interpret Leo’s comments as an immediate commentary on Donald Trump’s second administration, which had at that point bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities, kidnapped Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, fiercely advocated for the dissolution of NATO, and threatened America’s allies, including claiming that the U.S. would seize control of Canada and Greenland.

But the blatant intimidation tactic is the first of its kind ever made by American officials to the Catholic Church. There are no public records of any previous meetings between Vatican and U.S. officials at the Pentagon, let alone an instance in which the world power suggested that it could force the Bishop of Rome into captivity.

The Vatican was so alarmed by the Pentagon’s warning that Pope Leo canceled his plans to visit the U.S. later in the year, reported Hale, who noted that “many in the Vatican saw the Pentagon’s reference to an Avignon papacy as a threat to use military force against the Holy See.”

Tensions had not been mended by February, when the Holy See rejected the White House’s invitation to host Pope Leo—the religious order’s first U.S.-born pontiff—for America’s 250th anniversary in July. Instead, the Catholic leader has arranged to visit a very different locale on July 4: Lampedusa, a tiny island between Tunisia and Sicily where North African immigrants wash ashore by the thousands.

“Robert Francis Prevost is too deliberate a man to have chosen that date by accident,” commented Hale.

The White House has dismissed the entire account, writing in a statement to reporter Barbara Starr that “the Free Press’s characterization of the meeting is highly exaggerated and distorted.”

“The meeting between Pentagon and Vatican officials was a respectful and reasonable discussion,” the Defense Department official continued. “We have nothing but the highest regard and welcome continued dialogue with the Holy See.”

This story has been updated.

As bombs rain down on innocents in the Middle East, gas prices skyrocket, and data centers displace poor communities across the land, at least Americans can take solace in the fact that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is starting a podcast.

The Health and Human Services secretary, best known for having a brain worm and allegedly contributing to 83 Samoan deaths by spreading anti-vaccine propaganda there, announced his new podcast Wednesday with a 90-second video on his government X account.

“Many of us have come to the conclusion that the government actually lies to us,” Kennedy says in the video, presumably forgetting the fact that he works for the government. “This podcast is about telling the truth, especially when it’s uncomfortable.”

Kennedy goes on to say his podcast will involve him speaking to medical experts and innovators in order to tell said truth. He also gets slightly spiritual with things: “I’m going to ask the questions, and lift the taboos, and expose the hypocrisy and the conflicts and the corruption. We’re going to follow the evidence wherever it leads, and we’re going to name the names of the forces that obstruct the paths to public health. This isn’t going to be about politics. It’s about our families, it’s about our children, and it’s about confronting the spiritual malaise and embracing the truth.”

RFK Jr. has spasmodic dysphonia, which makes his voice difficult to listen to at the best of times. But honestly, the podcast idea isn’t a bad one. Our wackjob health secretary debating actual medical experts about Americans’ health problems? It’s like The Joe Rogan Experience meets House!

Unfortunately, it’s hard to believe RFK when he says the podcast won’t be political. More likely, his guests will take the shape of “alternative” medical gurus looking to profit off of listeners and sow distrust in an American medical system that Donald Trump is already trying to defund.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt threw one of her patented tantrums Wednesday in her first appearance since Donald Trump’s deranged threat to wipe out Iran’s “whole civilization” if it did not agree to his terms.

Andrew Feinberg, a journalist with The Independent, asked Leavitt how Trump could claim the U.S. was fighting a just war after such extreme rhetoric.

“When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, George W. Bush said in a message to the Iraqi people that the military campaign was directed ‘against the lawless men who rule your country and not against you,’” Feinberg said. “Yesterday, the president threatened to destroy Iran’s civilization.… Not the Iranian government, but the Iranian civilization. The Iranian people. The U.S. has been a moral leader for most of its history by fighting wars against other governments, not against civilizations. How can the president claim that America can ever have the moral high ground if he’s threatening to destroy civilizations?”

Leavitt shot back, using all the jingoism she could muster: “Andrew, I think you should take a look at the actions of this president over the course of the past six weeks, and the actions of the brave men and women in the United States military.… The president absolutely has the moral high ground over the Iranian terrorist regime, and for you to even suggest otherwise is frankly insulting.”

Leavitt then called on a different reporter over Feinberg’s protestations. Feinberg could be heard saying, “With all due respect, Karoline …” a handful of times before giving up, as it became clear that Leavitt wasn’t going to let him speak again.

Leavitt received a similar question later in the conference when a reporter asked what her understanding of Trump’s “a whole civilization will die tonight” post was.

“I think it was a very, very strong threat from the president that led the Iranian regime to cave to their knees and ask for a ceasefire and agree to reopening the Strait of Hormuz,” Leavitt replied.

“It was a very strong threat that led to results. And as the secretary of war stated at the Pentagon this morning, it was not an empty threat by any means. The Pentagon had a target list that they were ready to hit go on at 8 p.m. last night, if the Iranian regime had not agreed to open the Strait, which they did. I think that’s something we should all be grateful for.”

“Does he see the United States as a moral leader in the world given that he’s—” the reporter pressed before Leavitt cut her off.

“I was asked this exact same question by your colleague … and I think again, the insinuation by anyone in this room that Iran somehow has the moral high ground over the United States of America is insulting,” Leavitt said.

In addition to Leavitt misrepresenting some facts here—the Strait of Hormuz is again closed after Israel attacked Lebanon Wednesday morning, per Iranian reporting—the fact that the White House is actually praising the president’s threat to exterminate an entire nation is as cruel as it gets. But would you expect anything less from such a bloodthirsty regime?