JD Vance Comments on Being One of Last People to See Pope Alive

Vice President JD Vance thought it was “crazy” that he was one of the last people to see Pope Francis before he died early Monday morning.

“I thought a lot about that, it’s pretty crazy actually,” Vance told reporters while on a visit to Agra, India, on the tarmac on Wednesday. 

“Obviously I was able to see him very briefly the morning of Easter Sunday. I knew he was very ill, I didn’t realize how sick he was. The thing that I will always remember Pope Francis for is that he was a great pastor. People on the margins, poor people, people suffering from diseases, they saw in Pope Francis an advocate, and I think a true expression of Christian love.”

Pope Francis has had a tenuous relationship with Trump, Vance, and the Christian right in America for the entirety of his papacy. He was a noted environmentalist who often chastised the Trump administration for its lack of humanity on immigration and climate change and its misuse of Catholic Social Teaching.  

Pope Francis’s funeral will be held on Saturday, according to the Vatican.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right security minister who openly supports the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, said on Wednesday that the Republican leaders he met with in the United States were in full support of his plans to bomb Gaza’s humanitarian aid stations.

“I had the honor and privilege of meeting with senior Republican Party officials at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate,” Ben-Gvir wrote on X. “They expressed support for my very clear position on how to act in Gaza and that the food and aid depots should be bombed in order to create military and political pressure to bring our hostages home safely.”

This is par for the course for a government that has massacred hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the name of self-defense. Ben-Gvir doubled down on his hatred shortly after.

“I see the reports about the debate over who should bring ‘humanitarian’ aid into Gaza: Well, it’s a fundamentally stupid debate, because the entire Strip should not receive any ounce of aid as long as our hostages are being held there,” he said.

Ben-Gvir was welcomed to Florida with open arms. He met with the Miami Police Department, spoke at a Jewish school in Fort Lauderdale, and stopped by an Israeli-Russian-owned gun store. He also had dinner at Mar-a-Lago, which President Trump was not present for. Ben-Gvir will be in New York City on Thursday.

Ben-Gvir has a long history of cruel, racist, anti-Arab sentiments that has led him to be convicted of eight charges related to incitement of racism and support for Israeli terrorism against Arabs. Multiple protests have erupted around his visit to the United States.

Illinois Representative Jan Schakowsky is planning to announce her retirement next month, leaving the Democratic primary for her district wide open.

“I’m going to announce my plans on May 5th. Stay tuned,” Schakowsky said, Politico reported Wednesday. That’s the day that Schakowsky’s annual Ultimate Women’s Power Lunch is scheduled in Chicago.

The veteran Democrat’s exit announcement will invite other Democrats to try to grab her seat. State Senator Laura Fine and Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss are both expected to announce bids for Illinois’s 9th congressional district after Schakowsky officially makes her plans public.

But there’s another opponent already in the field. While Schakowsky has been on retirement watch for at least a few months, 26-year-old lefty content creator Kat Abughazaleh revealed her own gambit for Illinois’s vote. Abughazaleh announced her campaign on March 24.

In a potential sign of the times, Abughazaleh’s campaign outpaced Schakowsky’s first-quarter fundraising in just one week after she announced her candidacy, reportedly raising more than $379,000 in eight days, according to Abughazaleh.

However, less than 1 percent of Abughazaleh’s fundraising stemmed from campaign contributions of more than $200 within the region that she intends to represent, which stretches from Chicago’s North Side through southeast McHenry County.

Abughazaleh’s campaign manager, Sam Weinberg, said that the political newcomer had received more than 1,100 donations from people within Illinois, though the vast majority were under $200—something that Weinberg blamed on the “economic struggles” faced by many Americans that Abughazaleh is “seeking to address.”

“The average American can’t spare $200 or more to donate to a political campaign, and we shouldn’t fault people for that,” Weinberg told WTTW News. “This is the result of an economy that is working for the few rather than the many, and this dynamic should be entirely unacceptable in the richest country in the history of the world.”

The U.S. government is reportedly preparing to deport immigrants to Rwanda who can’t be sent back to their country of origin due to fears of prosecution.

The Handbasket newsletter reported Tuesday that a State Department cable sent from the U.S. Embassy in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, on March 13 stated that the country would be willing to accept such people. A new cable sent Tuesday from the State Department said that a refugee from Iraq, Omar Abdulsattar Ameen, became the first person to be officially deported to Rwanda thanks to this arrangement.

It’s quite a departure from the public deal the U.S. cut with El Salvador to accept deported immigrants in January, which resulted in legal challenges and at least one immigrant, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, being mistakenly sent to the country. The use of Rwanda as a third country for deportations has not been publicly disclosed by the country or the U.S. government.

“This successful relocation—and Rwanda’s subsequent agreement to accept additional third-country nationals (TCNs)—proved the concept for developing a new removal program to relocate TCNs from the United States to Rwanda,” Tuesday’s cable states, according to The Handbasket.

The cable mentions a “wish list” from Rwanda, including policy concessions as well as a single $100,000 payment for “social services, residency documents, and work permits.” The newsletter confirmed that the payment was made, but how the U.S. responded to other items on the list is unknown.

“Rwanda also agreed to accept another ten TCNs of various nationalities,” the cable also states, while adding that the country “seeks a bilateral dialogue to develop a durable program to facilitate these relocations and avoid reinventing the wheel with time-intensive ad hoc negotiations.”

Similar to Abrego Garcia, Ameen was accused of being a terrorist by the first Trump administration, who called him a member of ISIS and said he abused the refugee resettlement program. In 2014, Ameen and his family were granted refugee status, but he was arrested in 2018 by “dozens of armed men” at his Sacramento home.

The administration claims that Ameen murdered an Iraqi police officer as part of an ISIS plot, and tried to have him deported back to Iraq to stand trial. Ameen maintains that he is innocent, saying that he was in Turkey at the time of the murder, awaiting refugee status with the United Nations.

A federal judge ruled in 2021 that the case against Ameen was “dubious” with “unreliable” witnesses and allegations that were “simply not plausible,” ordering his immediate release. But just after he was released, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, under the Biden administration, picked him up again and began deportation proceedings.

Last year in May, Ameen said in a statement that “I am so grateful to the judge for listening to all the evidence, and I thank God that in this country, I had the right to defend myself and be found innocent. I love America and want to enjoy living here with my wife and children for the rest of my life. It saddens me that I still have to fight for my freedom again.”

Yet Ameen was let down by the U.S. and is now the first person to be deported by the Trump administration to Rwanda, and on the basis of weak evidence to boot. Will he get any restitution, or will he be stuck overseas like Abrego Garcia?

Immigration was one of Donald Trump’s winning priorities with American voters, but not anymore.

Three recent polls have practically spelled disaster for Trump on the issue, with Americans increasingly disapproving of the president’s immigration policies amid a flurry of rushed deportations.

A YouGov/Economist poll released Wednesday indicates that Americans have soured on Trump’s immigration stances, with 50 percent of respondents disapproving compared to 45 percent approving.

The poll comes on the heels of a Reuters-Ipsos poll published Monday that indicated that 46 percent of the country disapproved of Trump’s immigration policies. And earlier this month, a Quinnipiac survey found that 50 percent of polled respondents didn’t agree with Trump on immigration.

During his second inaugural address in January, Trump promised to “eliminate the presence of all foreign gangs and criminal networks bringing devastating crime to U.S. soil.” But in the months since Trump has returned to the White House, he has defied court orders, ignored the Supreme Court, and challenged the Constitution in order to advance his nativist immigration agenda.

In March, the Trump administration deported more than 200 alleged members of a Venezuelan gang to El Salvador by invoking a Japanese internment-era wartime policy. That gave the administration the cover to deport the men without due process, a critical error that has only continued to mire the administration in more controversy, as it has become increasingly apparent that some members of the charged group—such as Kilmar Abrego Garcia—had never been convicted of a crime.

The administration has since had to admit that it mistakenly deported Garcia, though it has simultaneously appeared unable to retrieve him from the crowded foreign prison where the government is paying El Salvador $6 million to house the alleged gang members.

The YouGov/Economist poll found that 50 percent of Americans wanted Trump to bring Garcia back, while 28 percent agreed with the president’s actions.

The White House has said that Garcia “will never live” in the U.S. again.

“When President Trump declared MS-13 to be a foreign terrorist organization, that meant that (Abrego Garcia) was no longer eligible, under federal law … for any form of immigration relief in the United States,” said White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller last week.

Despite the White House’s insistence, just 27 percent of Americans are convinced Abrego Garcia’s a member of MS-13, according to the YouGov survey.

In a meeting with Trump, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele referred to a question regarding Garcia’s potential release as “preposterous.”

“How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?” Bukele said, claiming that he did not have the authority to return Garcia to his family in the U.S.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has pitched immigration alternatives such as the “gold card” that seem to be little more than opportunities to sell American democracy to the “highest bidder,” allowing America’s longtime adversaries—including Russian oligarchs—to effectively buy their way into the country.

Donald Trump’s most recent attack on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy over Crimea couldn’t be more pro-Russian if it had been written by Vladimir Putin himself.

In an angry post on Truth Social Wednesday, Trump criticized Zelenskiy for refusing to recognize Russia’s occupation of Crimea, which Moscow seized in 2014, after the U.S. president pushed for a peace deal that would allow Russia to keep all of the territory it had seized from Ukraine.

“This statement is very harmful to the Peace Negotiations with Russia in that Crimea was lost years ago under the auspices of President Barack Hussein Obama, and is not even a point of discussion,” Trump wrote. “Nobody is asking Zelenskyy to recognize Crimea as Russian Territory but, if he wants Crimea, why didn’t they fight for it eleven years ago when it was handed over to Russia without a shot being fired?”

This is coming from the same person who has repeatedly attempted to rewrite history to place Ukraine at fault for Russia’s invasion. Trump has also totally abdicated any responsibility in the situation. During his first term, Trump repeatedly undermined Zelenskiy and emboldened Putin. Crucially, after Trump’s first term, the situation in Ukraine was largely the same as it was under Obama. During peace negotiations, Trump has continued to barter on behalf of Russia, carving out a deal that punishes Ukraine for accepting U.S. military aid.

On some level, Trump must’ve realized how inane he sounded, because he quickly jumped on the defensive. “I have nothing to do with Russia,” he wrote. “But have much to do with wanting to save, on average, five thousand Russian and Ukrainian soldiers a week, who are dying for no reason whatsoever.

“The statement made by Zelenskyy today will do nothing but prolong the ‘killing field,’ and nobody wants that! We are very close to a Deal, but the man with ‘no cards to play’ should now, finally, GET IT DONE,” Trump added.

Russia currently controls roughly 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory.

Trump’s latest attack comes as Vice President JD Vance issued a stark ultimatum for the two European countries to come together over peace talks or risk the U.S. walking away. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump envoy Steve Witkoff decided not to attend a planned meeting in London between the U.S., Ukraine, and other European leaders, due to what Rubio’s spokesperson called “logistical issues.”

The U.S. government detained a U.S. citizen for 10 days on claims he was an undocumented immigrant, and then lied in their official account.

Jose Hermosillo is a 19-year-old New Mexico resident who visited his girlfriend’s family in Tucson, Arizona, earlier this month. After suffering from a seizure, he was transported to a hospital by ambulance and did not have his state ID. After being released from the Tucson hospital, Hermosillo did not know how to get back to where he was staying, he told the Popular Information newsletter. He sought out a police officer for help.

That officer happened to work for Border Patrol, and asked Hermosillo where he was from and if he had papers. Hermosillo said, “New Mexico,” to which the officer replied, “Don’t make me [out] like [I’m] stupid. I know you’re from Mexico.” Hermosillo was then arrested.

But the Department of Homeland Security’s account says something completely different. According to the DHS X account, “Hermosillo’s arrest and detention were a direct result of his own actions and statements.”

“Jose Hermosillo approached Border Patrol in Tucson Arizona stating he had ILLEGALLY entered the U.S. and identified himself as a Mexican citizen,” the account stated Monday. The DHS also released a supposed transcript of Hermosillo’s conversation with a Border Patrol agent, signed “JOSE,” in which Hermosillo said he was born in Mexico and illegally entered the U.S.

According to Hermosillo’s girlfriend, he has learning disabilities and is only able to write his own name. He told Popular Information that he did not graduate from high school, only finishing the tenth grade. According to the DHS report, Hermosillo “read” their document or had it read to him, but he says that never happened. On top of that, the documents contain inaccurate information, claiming that Hermosillo was detained “at or near Nogales, Arizona,” which is more than 70 miles away from Tucson.

Hermosillo was then held in a cell with 15 other men at Florence Correctional Center, a privately run immigration detention facility, for 10 days before being released on April 17. Two days into his detention, he told a judge that he was a U.S. citizen, but prosecutors then asked that his hearing be rescheduled, with Hermosillo remaining in detention until then. Seven days later, at the next hearing, his family provided the immigration court with his birth certificate.

While in detention, Hermosillo contracted the flu but was not provided with any medicine after he requested it. His pleas to prison staff that he was a U.S. citizen were met with replies of, “Call your lawyer.”

Ultimately, while Hermosillo managed to secure his release, his account is a horror story of how quickly someone can be detained on the suspicion of being an undocumented immigrant, and how the government will even lie to keep someone in detention. The Trump administration is staunchly resisting any kind of legal safeguard to protect the rights of immigrants or those mistakenly detained, blatantly denying people the right of due process.

Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon is in shambles after an explosive power struggle saw the secretary of defense’s top civilian advisers dismissed, Politico reported Wednesday.

Donald Trump’s laughably unqualified pick to lead the Department of Defense may have thought he was bringing in advisers to help supplement his blatant lack of experience—but the situation at the Pentagon quickly detonated into a bitter battle of personalities as his top aides competed for influence.

At the center is Joe Kasper, Hegseth’s departing chief of staff who reportedly counseled the secretary to fire three of his other top advisers last week over leak concerns, according to Politico, which spoke with nine current and former DOD officials.

Hegseth’s senior adviser Dan Caldwell, chief of staff to the deputy defense secretary Colin Carroll, and deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick were all put on the chopping block—and apparently, it was because Kasper had it out for them when they were brought in to help supplement his unprofessional leadership.

“When Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick took on many of his responsibilities at Hegseth’s direction, a rift deepened between Joe and them,” one source told Politico. “After several weeks, Joe began trying to move them out apparently by bad-mouthing them to the secretary.”

“Kasper did not like that those guys had the secretary’s ear,” another person familiar with the dynamic told Politico. “He did not like that they had walk-in and hanging-out privileges in the office. He wanted them out. It was a knife fight.”

For his part, Kasper has claimed that his scrutiny of the advisers was the result of his direction to investigate a spate of leaks about Hegseth’s allegedly sharing classified material in unsecured group chats. Hegseth suspected the leaks were a result of the severe infighting, someone close to him told Politico.

In an interview with Tucker Carlson Monday, Caldwell claimed that individuals with “personal vendettas” against Hegseth’s three ousted advisers had “weaponized” the investigation against them.

“There’s just a lot of tension, there’s a lot of bad blood,” said one person with knowledge of the matter. “And there’s a lot of people trying to assert dominance in an area where it’s very hard to do without cutting somebody else.”

“There is a complete meltdown in the building, and this is really reflecting on the secretary’s leadership,” another person familiar with the feud told Politico. “Pete Hegseth has surrounded himself with some people who don’t have his interests at heart.”

Last week, Politico reported that Kasper would be stepping away from his role for a new position at the agency.

Hegseth himself may not be long for the DOD, with one anonymous source saying that the secretary may “implode on his own,” while another suggested that Trump could get tired of the distractions from the former Fox News host’s tenure at the Pentagon. But on Sunday, the president criticized Hegseth’s detractors.

Elon Musk, a self-described free speech absolutist, has been targeting people who are mean to him on X, according to The New York Times.

The Times reported that three X users who engaged in public online feuds with the billionaire were essentially shadow-banned shortly after, with their views and reach falling off a cliff.

In December, popular right-wing X commentator Anastasia Maria Loupis got into it with Musk over the H-1B visa fiasco, in which the more white ethno-nationalist section of MAGA chided the billionaire for supporting foreign workers in America. She had her check removed and stopped going consistently viral.

“It’s been 4 weeks since @elonmusk deliberately destroyed my once very viral X account. In 4 weeks, I’ve had ZERO viral posts. I used to have at least 5-10 a day. This happened right after Elon Musk got himself into the White House,” she wrote on X in January. “To me, this is 4 years of work against corrupt governments down the drain, and 3 Medical Boards ‘investigations’ as punishment for telling the truth about Covid, climate scam, transgender ideology, Ukraine, Gaza, Israel. This is exactly what Elon Musk promised not to do when he took over Twitter.”

Full-time Trump muse Laura Loomer had a similar experience.

“Is DOGE a way to ‘cut spending’ or REDIRECT the spending toward the pet projects of tech bro billionaires? It’s looking like the latter TBH,” she said on X in December, a sharp take from one of the worst people the MAGAverse has to offer. “‘Hey let’s convince the peasants that we are saving them money as we enrich ourselves! Then when they find out and speak out, we will have the Indian Mods Ban them!’”

“Loomer is trolling for attention. Ignore,” Musk replied. Loomer’s reach and platform shrank dramatically shortly after that interaction. She had her X Premium status revoked, which eliminated her ability to monetize. She alleges she lost about $50,000 in that time, but she did later regain access to X Premium.

“I think it’s wrong to say it’s a free speech platform and then shut off people’s ability to monetize,” Loomer said at the time.

The third popular right-wing victim of Musk’s free speech suppression was Infowars host Owen Shroyer, who also piled on in the foreign workers beef and had his X Premium access swiftly revoked with no explanation.

​​“My theory is that someone is manipulating reach based off of personal, political or issue based bias,” Shroyer said in an email to the Times, stopping short of directly naming Musk.

It isn’t clear exactly how each of these accounts were shadow-banned. It’s also unclear how many people Musk has done this to, as smaller accounts may not be as noticeable. For a man who laments the intolerance of the left and bemoans cancel culture, he sure has thin skin.

Bill Owens’s shocking exit from 60 Minutes was akin to a soldier pulling the pin on their last grenade, according to current employees at the serial magazine show.

The chief producer stepped aside Tuesday after 24 years on the show, amid network turmoil related to a $20 billion lawsuit brought by Donald Trump, who has repeatedly alleged that 60 Minutes’ sit-down interview with Kamala Harris prior to Election Day had “defrauded” the American public.

“The lawsuit was baseless. He wouldn’t apologize, he wouldn’t bend,” one 60 Minutes source anonymously told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “He fought for the broadcast and for independent journalism, and that cost him his job. It’s shameful.”

A second internal source said that Owens had “dedicated his life to CBS and the broadcast.”

“It’s like a guy who has been battling for months against an attack—unable to defend the broadcast from inappropriate corporate influence. He pulled the pin from his last grenade. He sacrificed himself hoping it might make our corporate overlords wake up and realize they risk destroying what makes 60 Minutes great,” the source said.

“It’s clear now, in a quest to sell the company, Shari Redstone and others will bow to presidential pressure,” the source told CNN, referring to the nonexecutive chairwoman of CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global.

“60 Minutes is one of the crown jewels of American broadcast journalism, and they have no problem crushing it in their race to make a deal and make themselves richer,” the source continued.

Trump and his allies have claimed that CBS should lose its broadcasting license for what they view as selectively editing Harris’s answers to a question regarding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Two of the network’s shows—60 Minutes and Face the Nation—cut and aired different portions of her answer on different days. But a Federal Communications Commission review of the segment found that Harris’s answers had not been sliced and diced together—instead, they had been trimmed from the former vice president’s extended 21-second response.

“Over the past months, it has also become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it,” Owens wrote Tuesday, in a memo to staff obtained by The Washington Post. “To make independent decisions based on what was right for 60 Minutes, right for the audience.”

Owens further wrote that he was departing so that the show—which he described as “my life”—could “move forward.”