Pete Hegseth Directly Compares Trump to Jesus Amid AI Post Scandal

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is preaching from the Pentagon pulpit again.

In the midst of an Iran war briefing Thursday, Hegseth delivered a sermon from the Defense Department’s press room dais, scolding the American press for its “relentlessly negative” coverage of the Trump administration and comparing journalists to the biblical Pharisees.

“A note to the press corps, as I just can’t help but notice the endless stream of garbage,” Hegseth said, referring to America’s myriad journalistic organizations as if they operate as some ubiquitous entity. “Sometimes it’s hard to figure out which side some of you are actually on. It’s incredibly unpatriotic.

“This past Sunday I was sitting in church with my family, and our minister preached from the Book of Mark, the third chapter. And in the passage, Jesus entered a synagogue and healed a man with a withered hand.

“The Pharisees came to watch, and as the Scripture reads, they came to see whether He, Jesus, would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him. You see, the Pharisees, the so-called elites of their time, were there to witness, to write everything down, to report. But their hearts were hardened,” Hegseth said.

“Even though they witnessed a literal miracle, it didn’t matter. They were only there to explain away the goodness in pursuit of their agenda,” Hegseth continued. “I sat there in church, and I thought, ‘These press are just like these Pharisees.’ Not all of you, but the legacy, Trump-hating press.”

Hegseth then asked the press to “open their eyes” to the “historic goodness” of America’s military might, the recent developments in the war in Iran (which includes thousands of dead civilians, 13 dead U.S. service members, and internal reports that regional American bases were caught off guard), “historic recruiting numbers,” and two “miracle” search-and-rescue operations.

The Pentagon chief was apparently undeterred by recent backlash to the Trump administration’s explicit evangelical bent.

Over the weekend, Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus Christ to his Truth Social acount, setting off sparks among even some of his most ardent supporters. Several self-identified Trump voters interviewed by MS NOW said that they were “disgusted” and “ashamed” of the image, which depicted Trump as a haloed messiah. Trump deleted the image shortly afterward, telling reporters that he believed it illustrated him as a doctor healing people.

Federal employees across the executive branch have also complained about the administration’s hyperfixation on Christianity, claiming that the religious inclusions—which flagrantly defy the First Amendment and the Founders’ intention to separate church and state—have made the government a very uncomfortable place to work. Other, non-Christian staffers have expressed that the environment has made them fearful of potential retaliation within the workplace for failing to homogeneously identify as the same religion as their leadership.

Somehow, those aren’t the administration’s only recent Christian faux pas. The White House is also in the middle of a feud with Pope Leo XIV, who has apparently upset the president and a number of Trump’s underlings by advocating for world peace. Last week, reports emerged that the Pentagon had openly threatened a Vatican ambassador in January, days after the pope made antiwar remarks during his State of the World address.

Senate Democrats on Wednesday refused to rally behind twin resolutions sponsored by Senator Bernie Sanders to block nearly $450 million in weapons sales to Israel.

Seven Democrats joined every Republican in the Senate to vote against a resolution blocking the sale of bulldozers to Israel, given their role in razing Gaza to the ground. The resolution failed by a vote of 59-40. Another resolution to block the transfer of 1000-pound bombs failed by a vote of 63-36, with 11 Democrats voting against.

Despite protests at their offices on Monday urging them to support the resolution, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and fellow New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand still voted against both resolutions.

This was the latest in a series of efforts by Sanders to halt weapons sales to Israel, which is bombing Lebanon and Iran with U.S. weapons and continues to kill Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank despite a ceasefire, exacerbating an ongoing humanitarian crisis. Israel is also accused of encouraging
ethnic cleansing against Shia Muslims in southern Lebanon.

“Under Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government, we’ve seen an expanded war in Lebanon that is putting innocent Lebanese civilians at risk, and ongoing violence against Palestinians and their homes being demolished in the West Bank,” said Senator Mark Kelly, who had voted against Sanders’s previous two resolutions against weapons sales to Israel. “All of this has undermined the path forward for peace.”

Last July, 19 Democrats including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer blocked Sanders’s last attempt. This time, Kelly was among the Democratic senators who changed their minds and voted for the resolution, taking into account that the resolutions are intertwined with President Trump’s unpopular war in Iran. A vote to continue weapons sales, which include $150 million in 1,000-pound bombs and $300 million in bulldozers, could be seen by voters as an endorsement of the war, which has hurt the economy and caused gas prices to skyrocket.

Here is the full list of Democrats who voted to continue sending bombs to Israel, with those who voted against both resolutions in bold:

1. Richard Blumenthal (CT)
2. Chris Coons (DE)
3. Catherine Cortez Masto (NV)
4. John Fetterman (PA)
5. Kirsten Gillibrand (NY)
6. Gary Peters (MI)
7. Jack Reed (RI)
8. Jackie Rosen (NV)
9. Chuck Schumer (NY)
10. Mark Warner (VA)
11. Sheldon Whitehouse (RI)

* This article has been updated to clarify the number of resolutions and how Democrats voted on each one.

A Black former federal employee is suing the Trump administration, claiming he was fired because of his race.

Alvin Brown, a Democratic member of the National Transportation Safety Board nominated by President Biden, was fired from his post in May 2025. In his lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court on Tuesday, Brown said that political differences couldn’t have been the main reason for his firing from the NTSB. Brown’s lawyers, who work for the Democracy Forward Foundation, also claim that 75 percent of Black officials at independent agencies have been fired under Trump.

“Mr. Brown’s removal from the NTSB cannot be explained by the fact that Mr. Brown is a Democrat and President Trump might have wanted to exert Republican control over the Board,” the lawsuit states. “At the time of Mr. Brown’s removal from the NTSB, there were two other Democrats serving on the Board.”

Since Brown’s firing was racially motivated, the lawsuit alleges, it “therefore violated Mr. Brown’s constitutional rights under the Fifth Amendment.” The lawsuit also points to people of color being dismissed at agencies including the National Labor Relations Board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Federal Reserve, and the Library of Congress.

The lawsuit cited Trump’s attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and the fact that Brown’s replacement, John DeLeeuw, is white.

“President Trump has removed Black Senate-confirmed appointees; he has either nominated a non-Black individual for their replacement or has not formally replaced them at all,” the lawsuit states. “This trend fits with President Trump’s consistent messaging criticizing diversity and inclusion and his clear and demonstrable emphasis on hiring white people.”

Senate Republicans are allowing Donald Trump to continue to wage war with impunity.

Senate Republicans voted Wednesday to block a resolution that would have stopped Trump from taking further military action in Iran without the express approval of Congress. The vote was 47–52, largely along party lines, with Senator Rand Paul joining the Democrats, and Senator John Fetterman siding with Republicans.

Some Republicans, however, expressed that they were nearing their breaking points. 

“I hope that we are arriving at an exit strategy here to bring this to a close to preserve our security interests and bring down the cost of gasoline. They’re very high. Very, very high,” said Missouri Senator Josh Hawley. 

Gas prices in the U.S. have surged beyond $4 a gallon as crude oil has climbed to more than $100 per barrel, placing a significant strain on Americans’ pocketbooks. Trump’s blockade of Iranian ports will only send prices higher.

It’s been 47 days since Trump first struck Iran. That means he has less than two weeks to acquire support from Congress. The War Powers Act states that the president can legally deploy armed forces in a hostile environment for a period of 60 days without congressional approval.  

South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds said that if Trump expects Congress to support the conflict beyond the 60-day window, then the administration should be prepared to “come in and give us a full description of it and sell the point and the plan.”

“We’ve got to start answering questions,” said North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis. “The 60-day target is what I’m looking at.”

Earlier this month, Utah Senator John Curtis had warned Deseret News, “I will not support ongoing military action beyond a 60-day window without congressional approval. I take this position for two reasons—one is historical, and one is constitutional.”

On Wednesday, a federal jury found massive entertainment company Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, guilty of holding a monopoly on “major concert venues” and forcing artists to book via Ticketmaster or risk losing access to their amenities—a violation of federal antitrust laws. Remedies have yet to be determined.

The verdict was reached after four days of deliberations in a closely-watched trial in New York federal court. It comes after years of criticism of Live Nation’s predatory ticketing practices, and will likely completely change the face of the music industry from here on out. It also ends a long antitrust battle against Live Nation that Merrick Garland’s DOJ began in 2019.

The Department of Justice and 40 states sued Live Nation in 2024 for controlling “virtually every aspect of the live music ecosystem” along with Ticketmaster. In a move that surprised many of the states, and even the judge overseeing the case, Trump’s Justice Department decided to settle with Live Nation a week into trial for $281 million. Judge Arun Subramanian called the move “totally unacceptable,” given the lack of transparency from the DOJ. To make matters even worse, a whopping 34 of the 40 states involved rejected the settlement and chose to continue the trial without the DOJ’s help.

This story has been updated.

Six House Republicans sided with the Democratic Party Wednesday, forcing a vote on a bill that could expand protections for Haitian immigrants.

Republican Representatives María Elvira Salazar (Florida), Brian Fitzpatrick (Pennsylvania), Mike Lawler (New York), Don Bacon (Nebraska), Carlos Giménez (Florida), and Nicole Malliotakis (New York) voted alongside 212 House Democrats and one independent to advance a vote to extend Temporary Protected Status for Haitians for three years.

“I have one of the largest Haitian populations in the country in my district,” Lawler told The Washington Post. “If you end [temporary protections] without addressing work authorization, it will cause a huge crisis in our health care system, especially in an area like mine, where a lot of our Haitian TPS holders are nurses.”

The minority party utilized a discharge petition to bring the issue to the House floor, circumventing the whims of House Speaker Mike Johnson and Donald Trump.

Politicians across the country have argued that ending TPS for Haitians would threaten the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of families, disrupt state economies, and jeopardize the futures of the population’s American-born children.

Haitians have become a favorite target of the MAGA movement in recent years. In 2024, several prominent members of the party—including then–vice presidential candidate JD Vance—hurled racist and baseless accusations against Haitian immigrants in Ohio, claiming that they were causing “constant car crashes” and were capturing and eating their neighbors’ pets.

The Trump administration set an effective end date for TPS for Haiti of September 2, 2025, a decision that was expected to affect more than 348,000 people in the U.S. But the effort has since been held up in the judiciary as lower courts stepped in to prevent the suspension.

The admin has appealed the matter to the Supreme Court, which will hear the government’s argument on April 29. Nineteen attorneys general have jointly filed an amicus brief imploring the nation’s highest court to uphold Haitians’ legal status.

The Pentagon received direct orders from President Trump to prepare for a military escalation in Cuba, according to multiple reports this week.

USA Today and Zeteo, both citing anonymous sources, report that the Pentagon is ramping up planning for a military operation in Cuba, should Trump make the call. Zeteo noted that the order came straight from the White House.

Trump has been threatening Cuba for months now, and in January signed an executive order imposing tariffs on countries that attempted to send oil there, essentially imposing a catastrophic oil blockade on the island. On Monday, he said that “we may stop by Cuba after we’re finished with this,” in reference to his war on Iran, which still has no tangible end in sight. And last month, Trump said of Cuba that “it may be a friendly takeover, it may not be a friendly takeover. It wouldn’t matter.... They have no energy. They have no money. They’re in deep trouble on a humanitarian basis.”

Trump’s oil and aid blockade of Cuba has caused rampant human suffering on the island, as Cubans have experienced blackouts, food shortages, and inflation. While the Trump administration has framed this economic strangling as a liberatory endeavor, this kind of military escalation in a country that hasn’t been a threat in decades points to plans to impose its own agenda on Cuba and the rest of the Western hemisphere.

Utah Senator Mike Lee got help from the Trump administration on his disastrous plot to execute a large-scale sell-off of public lands—only to be left behind weeks later.

In June, Lee introduced a controversial measure to sell off 4.2 million acres of public land as an amendment to Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, after consulting with the Department of the Interior, Public Domain reported Wednesday.

The agency shared technical data about the proposal with the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, of which Lee is the chair, according to internal emails obtained by the Wilderness Society. The department also offered feedback on the proposal, which Lee used to craft talking points and respond to concerns.

In one email chain on June 10, Chris Prandoni, the committee’s deputy staff director, asked two Interior Department staffers to approve a quote that would accurately reflect the agency’s research.

“This is the quote I’ve been working up with your guys to accurately reflect your research: ‘The Department of the Interior estimates that the Bureau of Land Management has about 1.2 million acres of land within 1 mile of a population city center and another 800,000 acres within 1-5 miles of a population center. Much of this land may qualify for disposal under this section,’” Prandoni wrote.

Jeremy Arendt, who serves as the Interior’s deputy assistant secretary of natural resources and infrastructure, urged Lee’s staff to “include a % of total acres this represents for [the Bureau of Land Management], which is about 0.7% of the total, or about 30% of lands within 5 miles of population centers.”

“Good to go on the quoted content. Thanks for running it by us!” wrote Greg Wischer, the Interior’s deputy assistant secretary for land and minerals management.

“Thanks, guys. See some of you all tomorrow,” Prandoni replied, implying that staff from the Senate committee would meet with Interior staff in person the next day, when Lee would announce his amendment to Trump’s massive budget reconciliation bill.

But just two weeks later, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum tried to distance the Trump administration from Lee’s outrageous proposal.

“It’s not a central topic. I don’t think anybody is really thinking about it up there,” Burgum told Scripps News, later adding: “It doesn’t matter to me at all if it’s part of this bill, because it’s not something that’s—it wasn’t part of the president’s agenda to be part of this bill in the first place.”

Ultimately, Lee’s massive sell-off wasn’t included in Trump’s behemoth budget bill. But contrary to what Burgum said, the privatization of federal lands is definitely a part of Trump’s agenda, even if it wasn’t for that particular bill.

American Catholic bishops are pushing back against the Trump administration after Vice President JD Vance warned Pope Leo XIV to “be careful when he talks about matters of theology” and invoked “just war” theory at a Turning Point USA event Tuesday.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which represents Catholic leaders across the country, issued a statement Wednesday from its chairman on doctrine, Bishop James Massa, in which he defended the pope’s opposition to the Iran war.

“For over a thousand years, the Catholic Church has taught just war theory and it is that long tradition the Holy Father carefully references in his comments on war,” Massa said in his statement. “That is, to be a just war it must be a defense against another who actively wages war, which is what the Holy Father actually said: ‘He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.’”

Massa said that the pope wasn’t just “offering opinions on theology” but “preaching the Gospel and exercising his ministry as the Vicar of Christ. The consistent teaching of the Church is insistent that all people of good will must pray and work toward lasting peace while avoiding the evils and injustices that accompany all wars.”

President Trump called the pope “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy” in a Truth Social post Sunday, and Vance, who converted to Catholicism seven years ago, tried to defend him at Tuesday’s event in Georgia, claiming that God supports just wars—a stark contrast to the pope’s assertion that “anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.”

“Was God on the side of the Americans who liberated France from the Nazis?” Vance said to a sparse crowd. “I certainly think the answer is yes.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson echoed the same talking point on Wednesday, saying that “there’s something called the just war doctrine” and it is a “very well settled matter of Christian theology.”

Meanwhile, the U.S.-led war in Iran has killed an estimated 1,700 civilians in the country and damaged at least 17 Iranian health care facilities and 22 schools. Perhaps Vance and his boss in the White House need to take some moral direction from higher authority on what a just war actually is.

Democrats are mounting a formal opposition to oust Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Arizona Representative Yassamin Ansari filed six articles of impeachment against the Pentagon chief Wednesday, accusing Hegseth of repeatedly violating his constitutional oath.

“Pete Hegseth broke his oath to the Constitution, put U.S. troops at grave risk through the unauthorized disclosure of classified information, engaged in abuse of office and conduct beneath the dignity of his office, and carried out unlawful military actions despite his obligation to refuse—including strikes on civilians and a girls’ school in Minab, Iran,” Ansari said in a statement.

The text of the articles claims that Hegseth engaged in “high crimes and misdemeanors” when he obeyed Donald Trump’s orders, initiating a war against Iran without congressional approval.

“Only Congress can declare war; his actions demand immediate removal,” Ansari wrote on X.

Ansari also accused Hegseth of demonstrating a “willful disregard” for the Constitution, a willingness to abuse the powers of his office, and reckless endangerment of American servicemembers deployed in the Middle East. She further argued that Hegseth’s relative incompetence fronting the war effort caused thousands of civilian casualties.

But his actions in the Iran war were not the only topic of concern. Ansari also said that Hegseth had inappropriately politicized America’s military, and that he had broken the established rules of engagement by approving illegal “double tap” strikes on noncombatant boats in the Caribbean. She even alluded to the March 2025 Signalgate scandal, claiming that Hegseth had “demonstrated gross negligence” in his handling of classified military information.

A dozen other liberal representatives cosponsored Ansari’s bill: Sarah McBride (Delaware), Lauren Underwood (Illinois), Al Green (Texas), Steve Cohen (Tennessee), Jasmine Crockett (Texas), Nikema Williams (Georgia), Dina Titus (Nevada), Dave Min (California), Shri Thanedar (Michigan), Melanie Stansbury (New Mexico), Mike Quigley (Illinois), and Brittany Pettersen (Colorado).

This story has been updated.