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The first-ever pope from the United States is clashing with the White House. Pope Leo XIV, head of the Catholic Church, which counts more than a billion people in the world as its members, has spoken out forcefully against war. He said in his Palm Sunday address that Jesus "does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war … [whose] hands are full of blood." In response, President Donald Trump said Pope Leo is "weak on crime, and terrible for foreign policy." Trump is also under fire for sharing an AI-generated image that appears to show himself as Jesus Christ. Pressed about the controversy in an interview on Fox News, Trump's Catholic Vice President JD Vance said the pope should "stick to matters of morality."
"I don't know any other more pressing moral issues than war and peace, taking care of the poor, the sick, the homeless, the stranger," says Father James Martin, a writer and Jesuit priest. "I don't understand how Vice President Vance cannot see that war is a moral issue. … This idea that some people don't deserve mercy is completely against the Christian message."
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Why no one is surprised when another member of Congress is accused of sexual misconduct.
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The federal government is preparing to begin automatically registering eligible U.S. men ages 18 to 26 for the military draft pool. The U.S. hasn't had a military draft since 1973, but it still maintains a registry of eligible men in case the draft is restored. New rules around automatic military draft registration were tucked into the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act.
We are joined by Edward Hasbrouck, an organizer with the Anti-Draft Coalition, which opposes the plan for automatic draft registration and is calling for repeal of the Military Selective Service Act. "The important thing is to take the draft off the table, remove it from the arsenal of war planning. Forcing the government to confront the question, before they make wars, of whether enough people will fight them actually constrains wars before they happen," says Hasbrouck.
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The Trump administration has fired six more immigration judges in its effort to reshape immigration policy and the immigration courts. Two of the fired judges, Roopal Patel and Nina Froes, had each dismissed high-profile cases brought by the government against international students who had advocated for Palestinian rights, Rümeysa Öztürk and Mohsen Mahdawi. Around 100 immigration judges have been fired by the Trump administration. Firings in previous administrations were rare.
The Trump administration is eroding "the concept of procedural due process, the idea that you get to have a hearing in the United States" by "firing judges that it perceived as being opposed to the administration's stated goal to deport as many people as possible with the least amount of due process possible," says Carmen Maria Rey Caldas, a former immigration judge in New York who was fired in August.
The firing of so many immigration judges is also "egregious" because noncitizens are "going to be subject to the ruling of judges that are under pressure," says Cyrus Mehta, an attorney who represents Palestinian activist Mohsen Mahdawi.
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Ship traffic has been halted again in the Strait of Hormuz after President Trump ordered the U.S. military to begin a naval blockade of all Iranian ports and coastal areas starting Monday at 10 a.m. ET. Iran denounced Trump's move as an illegal act amounting to "piracy" and has threatened to strike Gulf ports in retaliation. Trump ordered the blockade after the U.S. and Iran failed to reach a deal to end the war following 21 hours of talks in Islamabad, Pakistan. Global oil prices jumped after Trump announced the blockade.
Ervand Abrahamian, professor emeritus of history at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, predicts "the U.S. will start bombing Iranian oil installations. Iran will retaliate by bombing the Gulf oil installations, gas installations. The oil prices then could really zoom up. Some people expect it to reach $200 a barrel." Abrahamian warns that soaring energy prices will have long-term implications for the world economy.
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