Trump Rages as His Favorite Far-Right Leader Turns Against Him

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is no longer on Donald Trump’s good side after criticizing his remarks against Pope Leo XIV.

On Tuesday, responding to Meloni’s comment the day before, Trump told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera that he was “shocked by her. I thought she was brave, but I was wrong.”

Meloni had said it was “unacceptable” that Trump called the pope “weak on crime” and “terrible on foreign policy.”

“The Pope is the head of the Catholic Church, and it is right and proper that he call for peace and condemn all forms of war,” Meloni said in a statement. Trump told the newspaper that “it’s her who’s unacceptable, because she doesn’t care if Iran has a nuclear weapon and would blow up Italy in two minutes if it had the chance.”

The war in Iran is unpopular in Italy, and Meloni announced on Tuesday that her government has suspended a defense cooperation agreement with Israel. Italy’s continued refusal to join the war has left Trump fuming.

“They pay the highest energy costs in the world and are not even ready to fight for the Strait of Hormuz.… They depend on Donald Trump ​to keep it open,” Trump said.

Almost 80 percent of Italians say they are Catholic, and Vatican City, where the Catholic Church is headquartered and where the pope lives, is located entirely within the Italian city of Rome. The pope opposes the war in Iran, and told reporters on Monday, “Too many people are suffering in the world today. Too many innocent ‌people ⁠are being killed. And I think someone has to stand up and say there’s a better way to do this.”

A report last week revealed that the Department of Defense had threatened the pope in January after he criticized increased U.S. militarism during his yearly address. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned the Vatican’s U.S. representative, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, and told him that “the United States has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.”

That appears to have caused a ripple effect leading to Trump feuding with both the American-born pope and a right-wing leader whom he used to count as a close ally. Considering Trump’s penchant for refusing to admit when he’s wrong, U.S. relations with both the pope and Italy may be strained for some time.

Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell and Republican Representative Tony Gonzales both resigned from Congress on Tuesday. 

Both lawmakers were facing House Ethics investigations into sexual assault allegations against them.  Gonzales, whose resignation will be effective at 11:59 p.m. Tuesday, was accused of sexual misconduct with women who worked for him, including a staffer who later died by suicide. Swalwell resigned merely an hour after yet another woman, Lonna Drewes, came forward and said she was raped by him in 2018 in an incident that made her think she died.

“I had contact with Eric Swalwell on three separate occasions after meeting him socially. He offered me connections to further my software company, and I also had an interest in local politics. He invited me to two public events. I knew he was married at the time and that his wife was pregnant. He was my friend,” Drewes said on Tuesday afternoon. “On the third occasion, I believe he drugged my drink. I only had ONE glass of wine. He—we were supposed to go to a political event and he said he needed to get paperwork from his hotel room. When I arrived at his hotel room, I was already incapacitated and I couldn’t move my arms or my body. He raped me. And he choked me. And while he was choking me, I lost consciousness. And I thought I died. I did not consent to any sexual activity, although I did not undergo a rape kit at the time, I disclosed this all to the people closest to me.”

”My delay in taking action against Eric was driven by fear, not doubt. Fear of his political power, his background as an attorney, and his family law enforcement ties. I have never doubted what happened, I stand with the other women WHO have come forward. And I will be making a report to law enforcement shortly with my attorneys.”

Swalwell—who has been accused of sexual assault by multiple women—was a leading Democratic candidate for California governor, and Gonzales was actively running for reelection for the House. Now they are both out of a job.  

This story has been updated. 

President Donald Trump thinks diet soda is actually good for you.

During the latest episode of Donald Trump Jr.’s Triggered podcast, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the daytime television host the president picked to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, revealed some of the president’s unorthodox beliefs about health.

“Your dad argues that diet soda is good for him because it kills grass, if poured on grass, so therefore it must kill cancer cells inside the body,” Oz said.

Don Jr. laughed incredulously at his father’s apparent delusion.

Oz recounted Trump’s defense when the health official spotted him drinking Fanta aboard Air Force One. “He starts to like, sheepishly grin. He goes, ‘You know this stuff’s good for me. It kills cancer cells.’ And then he tells me, ‘It’s fresh squeezed, so how bad can it be for you?’”

“But then, maybe he’s on to something,” Don Jr. replied, boasting about his dad’s level of energy, recall, and stamina.

But we wouldn’t recommend writing prescriptions for Diet Dr. Pepper quite yet. Trump has repeatedly been spotted dozing off during press conferences, bill signings, and Cabinet meetings, among other apparent instances of cognitive decline.

Obviously, Trump’s attitudes about diet soda wouldn’t matter if he were simply any ordinary 79-year-old man. But he’s the president of the United States, who plans to make sweeping cuts to the National Institutes of Health and other federal science and health care programs in order to keep waging war abroad, all while remaining less than transparent about his apparent health issues.

Fifty House Democrats have officially filed legislation that would create a commission to jump-start the process to remove President Trump under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.

The bill, introduced Tuesday by House Judiciary Ranking Member Jamie Raskin, would establish a “Commission on Presidential Capacity to Discharge the Powers and Duties of the Office,” a move that would allow Congress to complete its part in the Twenty-Fifth Amendment process. It also calls for the commission to hold “a medical examination of the President to determine whether the President is mentally or physically unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office.”

The bill essentially bypasses JD Vance, as Section 4 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment requires either the vice president and the Cabinet or “such other body as Congress may by law provide” to determine the president is no longer fit for office.

“Public trust in Donald Trump’s ability to meet the duties of his office has dropped to unprecedented lows as he threatens to destroy entire civilizations, unleashes chaos in the Middle East while violating Congressional war powers, aggressively insults the Pope of the Catholic Church and sends out artistic renderings online likening himself to Jesus Christ,” Raskin said in a statement. “We are at a dangerous precipice, and it is now a matter of national security for Congress to fulfill its responsibilities under the 25th Amendment to protect the American people from an increasingly volatile and unstable situation.”

It remains highly unlikely that this attempt will be successful, even as some of Trump’s staunchest former supporters call on Congress to “25th Amendment his ass.” If the bill does somehow pass the Republican-controlled House and Trump vetoes it, which he likely would, then at least two-thirds of both the House and Senate would have to agree to overturn his veto.

The Trump administration won’t face contempt of court charges for deporting immigrants to El Salvador last year in defiance of a court order.

In a 2–1 ruling, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a writ of mandamus Tuesday rebuking U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, saying that he overstepped his authority by pursuing the charges against former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other administration officials. In March 2025, DHS quickly deported over 100 Venezuelans that the administration claimed were gang members, invoking the Alien Enemies Act to justify their removal without due process.

The immigrants were put on planes to El Salvador as part of an agreement with the country’s president, Nayib Bukele, to house them in Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, where human rights abuses are alleged to take place. These flights took place in spite of Boasberg ordering them to stop.

Boasberg subsequently ruled that “probable cause exists to find the government in criminal contempt” for the government’s defiance of his order, but over the next year, the administration dodged the contempt charges with multiple appeals to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which deliberated on whether Boasberg had the authority to hold the federal government in contempt.

The two judges who ruled against Boasberg, Neomi Rao and Justin Walker, were both appointed by Trump, and they claimed the lower court judge abused his power with the contempt probe.

“The district court proposes to probe high-level Executive Branch deliberations about matters of national security and diplomacy,” wrote Rao in the majority opinion. “These proceedings are a clear abuse of discretion.”

Incensed over Boasberg, Trump called for his impeachment last year, earning a rare and light rebuke from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who warned about attacks on the judicial branch of government. While Boasberg isn’t being penalized with this ruling, the White House will be happy that none of its officials, for now, will face penalties for breaking the law.

Don’t hold your breath for an impeachment hearing.

Eric Trump and his wife, Lara, are scheduled to accompany Donald Trump on a state trip to China next month, Kimberly Benza, a spokesperson for the Trump organization, told Reuters Tuesday.

Two sources told Reuters that Eric and other members of the Trump family planned to work on business relations between the U.S. and China, but Benza insisted that Eric was attending the trip in a “personal capacity.”

“He does not have business ​ventures in China nor plans on doing business in China. He will not be ‌participating ⁠in private meetings, but will instead stand alongside the President to mark this historic occasion,” Benza said.

Donald Trump has previously alleged that Hunter Biden made a fortune from business dealings in Ukraine and China thanks to his father’s connections. Now it appears that the president is setting his own children up to do just that. This is the kind of thing that should raise alarm bells in Washington but probably won’t.

Eric serves as executive vice president of development for the Trump Organization, which does not currently have any upcoming real estate projects in China. But during Trump’s last term, China and its state-owned entities paid a whopping $5.5 million at properties owned by the president’s family—far more than any other country.

Eric and his brother Don Jr. co-founded World Liberty Financial, a decentralized finance platform that has attracted the financial interest of foreign investors who then benefited from Trump’s policy changes.

Eric and Don Jr. recently merged their publicly traded golf course holding company with Powerus, a Florida-based drone company, with the goal of filling the gaps left by the Trump administration’s ban on Chinese drones, another blatant move to profit off their father’s policy changes.

In October, Donald Trump and Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto were caught on a hot mic discussing plans to set up a meeting between “good boy” Eric, the foreign leader, and another potential business associate. In February, speaking from his father’s gilded ballroom at Mar-a-Lago, Eric didn’t bother to push back on claims that the brothers had financially benefited from their father’s office.

Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche claims that his department released every single Epstein file—and that if any weren’t released, it’s because they “were not responsive to the law.”

“You have the authority to go ahead and release more [of the Epstein files], do you not?” Blanche was asked Tuesday on Fox News. “And you have the authority to go to Congress, perhaps?”

“No, we have released everything,” Blanche replied. “So listen, we reviewed six million pieces of paper. What we released with anything that’s associated with the Epstein file. So we are not sitting on a single piece of paper.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing that should be released. If we find something else tomorrow, we’ll release it. I don’t anticipate we will. So the misguided assumption that there is more to be released is because we reviewed millions and millions of pages within the department, millions of which had nothing to do with Epstein.… If we didn’t release it, it’s because it was not responsive to the law, and therefore not part of the Epstein files.… By law, we had to make certain redactions.… But we said to Congress, any congressman can come in and spend as much time as they want looking at everything unredacted.”

“I don’t know how this department or this president can be more transparent than saying ‘American people, here is every single document in our entire database. And if we had to redact it … anybody can come look at it if you’re a member of Congress.’”

This is facetious at best. As reported earlier this year, 2.5 million documents in the Justice Department’s investigative files on Epstein have yet to be released publicly, and many of the 3.5 million pages that were released have been redacted to hell.

“Todd Blanche needs a reminder that there’s a legally binding subpoena for documents that is different than the law,” Democratic Representative Robert Garcia wrote on X. “This investigation is not a hoax. The DOJ needs to release the rest of files.”

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution explicitly protects freedom of religion, preventing the government from prohibiting the free exercise of one’s own beliefs, and forbidding the government from establishing an official religion or from favoring one over another.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration flagrantly defied it.

On Easter Sunday, Brooke Rollins, the secretary of the Department of Agriculture, sent out a blatantly Christian email to some 100,000 government employees. The subject line read: “He has risen!”

“Happy Easter—He is Risen indeed!” starts the email, obtained by The Washington Post. “Today we celebrate the greatest story ever told, the foundation of our faith, and the abiding hope of all mankind.

“From the foot of the Cross on Good Friday to the stone rolled away from the now empty tomb, sin has been destroyed,” continues the email, signed by the secretary. “Jesus has been raised from the dead. And God has granted each of us victory and new life. And where there is life—risen life—there is hope.”

Staffers were shocked by the constitutional violation.

“This has never happened before,” one government employee, who described the email as “grotesque,” told Wired. “I have never gotten a message like this from anyone.”

The same employee noted that such a message wouldn’t even be expected from military chaplains, commissioned officers who provide religious services.

Another employee, a 15-year veteran of the department, told the Post, “I have never seen that overtly of a religious email in all my years of government service.... It’s a separation of state and religion for a reason.”

Yet another employee found it telling that Rollins was “forcing religion down everybody’s throat,” noting that non-Christian USDA employees had expressed concern about their futures in the department.

A USDA spokesperson insisted to Wired that Rollins was “within her rights” to issue an Easter-themed missive.

But the note was just one of many breaches by the Trump administration of America’s longstanding religious freedom. Weeks into his second term, Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing the official White House Faith Office, led by televangelist pastor Paula White-Cain. That same week, Trump issued another executive order to “end the anti-Christian weaponization of government.”

Months later in July, the Office of Personnel Management issued a similar memo, effectively allowing federal employees to attempt to convert their colleagues in the workplace and encourage them to pray in the workplace.

The Department of Labor also established its own faith office, where its religious leader, Kenneth Wolfe, hosts monthly worship services.

“Generally, people who are working for the government understand that their job is to work on behalf of all Americans,” an unnamed source at the Labor Department told Wired. “And this is something very different. This is very explicitly Christian, and even within the realm of Christianity, a very narrow representation of that.”

“People are uncomfortable. I know several who are offended and angry,” they continued. “These [worship services] are very Christian in nature.”

The evangelical infusions have been unabashed and shameless. In January, the niece of Martin Luther King Jr. and the senior adviser on faith and community outreach at USDA, Alveda King, told DOL employees that “we have different denominations, different faiths, and some have no faith.”

“Those are the ones I would be more concerned about,” King emphasized.

In March, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth urged Americans to pray “every day” on their knees “in the name of Jesus Christ.” Employees say the hyper-fixation on Christianity has made the federal government a very uncomfortable place to work, spurring an environment in which staffers fear religion-based retaliation. Another staffer told Wired plainly that the “vibes are bad.”

“They always spend a lot of time carrying on like, ‘No one’s forcing you to pray, these are voluntary,’” they said. “But it’s happening in the middle of a government workplace.”

Republican Senator Roger Marshall wants Americans to stop complaining about gas prices because they’re necessary for “national security.”

Speaking on Newsmax’s Wake Up America Tuesday morning, Marshall was asked about the Iran war, and the Kansas politician was dismissive of its negative economic effects on the American people.

“I’m sorry the gas prices are going up, but help is on its way, and your national security, yes, is even more important than your pocketbook,” Marshall said.

Marshall doubled down when asked how long Americans would be paying higher energy costs, saying, “I think back to my grandparents and their generation that served in World War II.”

“Could you imagine trying to tell the president, ‘Look, you only got so many days to defeat Hitler or defeat Japan?’ We have to do it till we get the outcome that we want. I hope it’s weeks and not months, but at the end of the day, Americans are going to be safer,” Marshall said.

This is all rather callous to say with gas prices averaging $4 per gallon across the country and more than $5 per gallon in places like California and Oregon, all because of a war of choice that had nothing to do with any imminent threats to the U.S. The latest threats to national security were actually caused by President Trump’s decision to bomb Iran, and Marshall is stubbornly defending the war out of loyalty to him.

Pope Leo XIV warned on Tuesday that democracy risks becoming a “majoritarian tyranny” if not rooted in moral law.

The warning came in a letter addressed to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.

“Far from being a mere procedure, democracy recognizes the dignity of every person and calls each citizen to participate responsibly in the pursuit of the common good,” Leo wrote. “Democracy remains healthy, however, only when rooted in the moral law and a true vision of the human person. Lacking this foundation, it risks becoming either a majoritarian tyranny or a mask for the dominance of economic and technological elites.”

While the statement didn’t mention President Trump by name, it’s hard not to see Leo’s warning as the latest installment of their ideological feud. Trump says the pope, of all people, is “weak on crime,” and doesn’t understand why his Holiness is opposed to an illegal and deadly war on Iran. Leo has responded with the case for a democracy rooted in Catholic social teaching that “regards power not as an end in itself, but as a means ordered toward the common good.”

The letter also comes just a day after the pope stated that he was not a politician and had “no fear” of the Trump administration. Read his letter here.