Trump Announces Ceasefire in Israel-Lebanon War He Started

President Trump is claiming that he has negotiated a ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel, posting on Truth Social Thursday that the two nations have agreed to suspend hostilities for 10 days beginning at 5 p.m. E.T.

“On Tuesday, the two Countries met for the first time in 34 years here in Washington, D.C., with our Great Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. I have directed Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Rubio, together with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Razin’ Caine, to work with Israel and Lebanon to achieve a Lasting PEACE. It has been my Honor to solve 9 Wars across the World, and this will be my 10th, so let’s, GET IT DONE! President DONALD J. TRUMP,” Trump wrote.

Israel has said that it was targeting Hezbollah in its bombing campaign, which has killed an estimated 2,167 people in Lebanon since the beginning of March. Trump’s post didn’t mention whether Hezbollah, which has opposed the talks between Israel and Lebanon, is on board with the deal. He also made no mention of Lebanon being a sticking point in the U.S.-Iran talks, as Iran and mediator Pakistan maintained it was.

Whether this ceasefire will hold is anyone’s guess, especially considering that Israel’s sweeping evacuation orders in southern Lebanon suggest ethnic cleansing against Shia Muslims—but Trump will surely declare victory nonetheless.

This story has been updated.

President Trump has canceled $11 million in funding to Catholic Charities in Miami for taking care of immigrant children as he continues to feud with Pope Leo XIV, who has criticized Trump’s mass deportations and the war in Iran.

The federal government has worked with the organization since the first Cuban exiles arrived in south Florida. The government, through the Office of Refugee Resettlement, has paid the nonprofit for years to house immigrant kids who arrive in the U.S. without any adult guardians. The operation runs in a similar way to foster care, independent from state agencies, and the government notified the charity in March of its decision.

“The U.S. government has abruptly decided to end more than 60 years of relationship with Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of Miami,” Archbishop Thomas Wenski of the Miami Archdiocese said in a statement to the Miami Herald’s editorial board. “The Archdiocese of Miami’s services for unaccompanied minors have been recognized for their excellence and have served as a model for other agencies throughout the country.”

Wenski added: “Our track record in serving this vulnerable population is unmatched. Yet, the Archdiocese of Miami’s Catholic Charities’ services for unaccompanied minors has been stripped of funding and will be forced to shut down within three months.… It is baffling that the U.S. government would shut down a program that it would be hard-pressed to replicate at the level of competence” shown by the organization.

The Department of Health and Human Services told the newspaper that the refugee office is handling about 1,900 unaccompanied minors daily, compared to a peak of 22,000 during the Biden administration.

“ORR is closing and consolidating unused facilities as the Trump Administration continues efforts to stop illegal entry and the smuggling and trafficking of unaccompanied alien children,” said HHS spokesperson Emily G. Hillard. It’s unclear how many children are in the Catholic organization’s care, and what will happen to the children if their full-service child welfare program in Miami-Dade County is forced to close.

Trump has blasted the pope for being “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy,” but the administration’s criticism of the church’s immigration stances goes back even further. In January 2025, Vice President JD Vance suggested that Catholic bishops were more worried about their federal funding than administration policies. It would seem that Vance’s words back then have now become the administration’s policy.

The Trump administration is lying to the public—and it doesn’t care.

In a heated exchange before the House Ways and Means Committee Thursday morning, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. insisted that his department has “done better” at preventing measles amid a global epidemic than “any country in the world.”

Measles is an incredibly contagious disease, meaning that an outbreak anywhere is dangerous for people everywhere. Several countries across the globe, including India, Angola, and Mexico, are currently combating thousands of cases. But even America’s relatively small caseload—which currently sits at more than 1,800 for 2026—does not suggest that the Trump administration has excelled at combating the virus. Instead, that number has put the U.S. at risk of losing its measles elimination status, which it has maintained since the year 2000.

“There is no country that has seen a bigger percentage increase” than the U.S. under the second-term Trump administration, argued California Representative Linda Sanchez.

Measles does not have a cure. The disease can cause a blotchy rash, pinkeye, a high fever, white spots inside the mouth, full body aches, pneumonia, and severe dehydration, and it can result in hospitalization or even death.

Fortunately, however, it is highly preventable thanks to a vaccine that was developed by a couple of American scientists in 1963. Less than a decade later, in 1971, researchers created yet another vaccine capable of preventing measles as well as two other contagious illnesses—mumps and rubella—thanks to miraculous developments in modern medicine.

The joint shot was named the MMR vaccine, an acronym for “measles, mumps, and rubella.” Kennedy has railed against the three-in-one shot, baselessly claiming that it was not “safely tested.”

America’s diminishing herd immunity is due to a growing movement of anti-vax parents—whom Kennedy champions at the federal level—who refuse to provide their children with the same public health advantages that they received in their youth, mostly in fear of thoroughly debunked conspiracy theories that, at one point, linked autism to the jab.

During the deadly measles outbreak in Texas last year, Kennedy advised that state residents take extra vitamins rather than receive the vaccine, and justified a local religious community’s decision not to receive it by claiming that the measles vaccine contains “aborted fetus debris” as well as “DNA particles.” Fact check: It does not.

But the 72-year-old has a lot to gain from pushing disinformation about the jab: The more doubt and division that Kennedy sows, the more money he’ll make. Ahead of his appointment, Kennedy disclosed that he made roughly $10 million in 2024 from speaking fees and dividends from his anti-vaccine lawsuits.

He’s also made cash from merchandising handled by his nonprofit, Children’s Health Defense, which bungled anti-vax messaging in Samoa so badly that it started a 2019 measles outbreak that resulted in the deaths of at least 83 people, the majority of whom were children under the age of 5.

Two years ago, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggested that Black children prescribed depression or ADHD medication should be “re-parented.” When confronted with that statement on Thursday by Representative Terri Sewell—a Black Democrat from Alabama—he denied ever saying it.

“In a 2024 podcast interview, you suggested that Black children on ADHD medication should be ‘re-parented.’ You said: ‘Every Black kid is now just standard put on Adderall, SSRIs, benzos, which are known to induce violence,’ and that those children are going to have to go somewhere to get ‘re-parented,’” Sewell said. “Have you ever ‘re-parented,’ or parented, a Black child?”

RFK Jr. immediately went on the defensive.

“I don’t even know what that phrase means, and I doubt that I said it,” he replied.

“It’s just a yes or no answer,” Sewell responded.

“I doubt that I said that phrase, no. Not gonna answer something that I didn’t say.”

“You absolutely said it.”

“I’d like to hear the recording.”

Kennedy is completely wrong here, and he said what Sewell is accusing him of saying nearly verbatim. Here’s the recording:

“My Peace Corps program is going to be wellness farms, rehabilitation facilities that I’m gonna start in rural areas all over the country, where people—any American—can go for free,” Kennedy said, painting a utopian picture for his solution to the prescription drug epidemic. “Psychiatric drugs, which every Black kid is now just standard put on—Adderall, SSRIs, benzos, which are known to induce violence—and those kids are gonna have a chance to go somewhere and get re-parented, to live in a community where there’ll be no cell phones, no screens, you’ll actually have to talk to people.”

Even with the utopian framing, it’s impossible to ignore that Kennedy is pushing for Black children to be separated from their families and taken to farms to do God knows what—all because they’ve been prescribed depression or ADHD meds. That alone is extremely troubling given Kennedy’s position as health secretary and his lack of any kind of medical expertise. The fact that he denied even saying it during a congressional hearing—when there is clear evidence proving otherwise—is just as troubling.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth quoted the fake Bible verse from Samuel L. Jackson’s monologue as Jules Winfield in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, apparently believing it was completely real.  

The moment came at one of Hegseth’s Pentagon sermons on Wednesday morning. 

“They call it CSAR 25:17, which I think is meant to reflect Ezekiel 25:17,” Hegseth erroneously said, saying the lead planner of the Combat Search And Rescue operation in Iran shared it with him.

So the prayer is CSAR 25:17 and it reads … “the path of the downed aviator is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of camaraderie and duty, shepherd the lost through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper, and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother. And you will know my call sign is Sandy One when I lay my vengeance upon thee.”

Almost every single line from Hegseth’s prayer is ripped from Jackson’s iconic recitation of Ezekiel 25:17 in Tarantino’s film, not the prophet Ezekiel as ordained by God.

Here’s what the original verse in the Bible actually reads:

I will execute great vengeance on them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the LORD, when I lay My vengeance upon them.

That’s it. The flowery language, the allusions to destruction of evil—all come from Tarantino. 

But if that wasn’t bad enough, Hegseth added his own spin on a Bible verse that was already fake. Compare Hegseth’s monologue to the version in Pulp Fiction: 

The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you. 

It’s hard to parse how incredibly stupid this is. Why is the former Fox News alcoholic turned defense secretary even holding sermons at the Pentagon in the first place? And no one thought to let him know that the verse he so poetically interpreted was a blasphemous one? Did he even care? And to make matters even worse, this blatant display of religious ignorance comes on the heels of the Trump administration’s attacks on Pope Leo XIV for his opposition to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and Lebanon.