Pope Leo Warns Trump About Next Steps in Venezuela

Pope Leo has implored Donald Trump not to use military force to force out Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

The first American leader of the Catholic Church told reporters Tuesday that it would be “better” to “find another way” to apply pressure, such as hosting a dialogue with Maduro, or imposing economic sanctions on the South American nation, “if that is what they want to do in the United States.”

Since early September, the U.S. has destroyed at least 20 small boats traversing the Caribbean that Trump administration officials deemed—without an investigation or interdiction—to be smuggling drugs. At least 83 people have been killed in the attacks.

The attacks have been condemned by U.S. lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and foreign human advocates alike, including the U.N. human rights chief, who said in October that the strikes “violate international human rights law.”

While chalking the seemingly needless violence up to counter-narcoterrorism efforts, Trump has simultaneously leveraged the aggression to shove Maduro out of power, something that he tried and failed to do in 2019.

The White House confirmed Sunday that the two leaders shared a phone call late last week, during which Trump reportedly issued a stern ultimatum.

“You can save yourself and those closest to you, but you must leave the country now,” Trump told Maduro, according to insiders who spoke with the Miami Herald. That is, “only if he agreed to resign right away.”

Maduro, meanwhile, told thousands of his supporters Monday that he would not capitulate or settle for “a slave’s peace.”

Responding to a reporter Tuesday, Leo suggested that the Trump administration had not been consistent with its policy toward Venezuela.

“On one hand, it seems there was a call between the two presidents.… On the other hand, there is the danger, there is the possibility there will be some activity, some (military) operation.

“The voices that come from the United States, they change with a certain frequency,” the Chicagoan pontiff said.

Republican Representative Elise Stefanik is feuding with House Speaker Mike Johnson after legislation she has been pushing for years related to Russia and the 2016 election was left out of the National Defense Authorization Act, a major defense policy bill.

Stefanik’s legislation would require the FBI to notify Congress every time the bureau opens an investigation into a political candidate seeking federal office. On Monday, she complained on X that her years-old provision was being left out of the NDAA and that, as a result, she would be voting “no” on the bill.

“Unless this provision is added back into the bill to prevent illegal political weaponization of the intelligence community in our elections, I am a HARD NO. I have always voted in support of the defense and intelligence authorization bills, but no more,” Stefanik wrote in a long post. “It is a scandalous disgrace that Republicans are allowing themselves to be rolled by the Dems and deep state on this.”

Johnson was not happy, telling Jake Sherman of Punchbowl Tuesday, “All of that is false.”

“I don’t exactly know why Elise won’t just call me. I texted her yesterday. She’s upset one of her provisions is not being made, I think, into the NDAA.… As soon as I heard this yesterday, I was campaigning in Tennessee, and I wrote her and said, ‘What are you talking about? This hasn’t even made it to my level,’” Johnson said.

This seemed to make Stefanik even more upset. She ranted on X: “Just more lies from the Speaker.”

“And in true to form, the Speaker texted me yesterday claiming he ‘knew nothing about it.’ Yeah right. This is his preferred tactic to tell Members when he gets caught torpedoing the Republican agenda,” Stefanik posted, complaining that Johnson was “siding” with Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin.

Losing Stefanik’s vote on the NDAA, a major defense appropriations bill that has to pass every year, could be disastrous for Johnson, considering that Republicans only have a narrow two-vote majority in the House. Stefanik also has the support of fellow House GOP rebel Marjorie Taylor Greene, who posted on X Tuesday, “No surprises here. As usual from the Speaker, promises made promises broken. We all know it,” quoting a post from Stefanik.

Stefanik will not be in Congress much longer, as she has launched her own campaign for governor of New York. In the meantime, she’s not being quiet, and Johnson should be worried that her feelings might spread within the GOP caucus, especially with other House Republicans eyeing the exits.

President Trump once again appeared to struggle to stay awake and alert during his own Cabinet meeting.

The president leaned forward, leaned back, twiddled his thumbs, and did everything in between as his eyelids grew heavy in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon Cabinet meeting. As each of his Cabinet members gave him an update on how great everything is going, the president looked more and more exhausted, his eyes fully closed at several points.

This most recent on-camera nap comes just over a week after The New York Times reported on what appears to be a serious drop in Trump’s energy and activity compared to his first term. The president has been pissed about the story ever since.

It’s clear to anyone watching that the president has issues staying up while sitting in long meetings, like many old men do. Trump has dozed off in other meetings, including during a briefing with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in May. This all only adds fuel to the narrative that the man who will end his term as the oldest president in U.S. history is not as mentally or physically fit as he claims to be.

Sabrina Carpenter slammed the White House Tuesday for using her hit song about “freaky positions” in a racist video about brutal immigration arrests.

The White House posted a video on X Monday using the Gen Z pop star’s song “Juno” over footage of people protesting Trump’s immigration operations. The video then cuts to clips of other people being brutally run down and handcuffed by federal authorities. It’s not clear that any of the people in the video were actually undocumented immigrants—they just weren’t white.

“Have you ever tried this one?” the post read, a lyric from Carpenter’s song. “Bye-bye.”

Carpenter replied the next day: “This video is evil and disgusting. Do not ever involve me or my music to benefit your inhumane agenda.”

But White House didn’t seem to get the message to keep away from Carpenter’s music. White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson responded with a statement that once again referenced the singer’s lyrics: “Here’s a Short n’ Sweet message for Sabrina Carpenter: We won’t apologize for deporting dangerous criminal illegal murderers, rapists, and pedophiles from our country. Anyone who would defend these sick monsters must be stupid, or is it slow?”

If this is the Trump administration’s best attempt to reach out to a younger generation, it doesn’t seem to be going too well.

Earlier this month, Carpenter’s fellow pop star and former Disney Channel actress Olivia Rodrigo hit back at the Department of Homeland Security after it posted an Instagram reel promoting self-deportation, using one of her songs. In a comment, Rodrigo said, “Don’t ever use my songs to promote your racist, hateful propaganda.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched an ad campaign in August to recruit “Gen-Z and early-career professionals” to fill thousands of open roles as so-called “Homeland Defenders.” The Trump administration has desperately worked to boost the number of immigration officers, causing a “shit show” at ICE.

This story has been updated.

Republican leadership is tiring of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Top conservatives have started to publicly voice their discontent with Trump’s appointed war chief, as reports circulate about a Pentagon decision to mercilessly kill survivors of a drone strike in the Caribbean on September 2.

Republicans have been practically mute as Hegseth’s careless, monthslong killing spree has claimed the lives of at least 83 people. But GOP-led panels in the House and Senate are dialing up their scrutiny of the Pentagon, demanding a full account of the September boat strikes.

The Republican chairmen of the Senate and House Armed Services committees are both demanding audio and video of the incident. “We’re going to conduct oversight, and we’re going to try to get to the facts,” vowed Senator Roger Wicker.

Senator Thom Tillis told CNN that he was still trying to understand whether Hegseth had ordered the second strike that day, killing a couple of survivors that clung to the wreckage left by the initial attack.

“Obviously, if it can be substantiated by facts, it’s a violation of both ethical and possibly legal requirements,” Tillis said. “If it is substantiated, whoever made that order needs to get the hell out of Washington.”

The North Carolina lawmaker was not the only conservative in Washington irate over the events. Senator Lindsey Graham said that he was still working out “the facts” but suggested that the attack could have run afoul of the law.

“It’s a long-held rule that survivors of the ship attack are no longer combatants, and an air crew member in a parachute is no longer a combatant. You’re out of the fight,” Graham told CNN. “I don’t know what the facts are, but that’s general law. We’ll see what the facts are.”

Before he knew that the White House had confirmed the Pentagon struck the boat twice, West Virginia Senator Jim Justice told the network that a second attack seemed “way over the edge.”

“I don’t see how that’s acceptable,” he added.

Ultimately, Hegseth’s long string of scandals appear to be adding up, pushing his potential congressional allies further and further away.

Representative Don Bacon, who serves on the House Committee on Armed Services, told CNN’s Manu Raju that Hegseth should be forced out of government—if he’s deemed responsible for the second strike.

“I felt that way under Signalgate,” Bacon said, referring to an incident in March when Trump administration officials accidentally added The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal chat regarding sensitive details of a plan to bomb Houthis in Yemen. “He should’ve taken responsibility then, and he didn’t.”

“I’ve seen enough that I don’t think he’s the right leader,” Bacon told Raju.

The White House has repeatedly insisted the violence is justified, broadly accusing the boats of trafficking narcotics to the U.S. from Venezuela and Colombia, though U.S. lawmakers have been more than skeptical—particularly since several of the boats were thousands of miles away in international waters, and since the attacks were conducted without prior investigations or interdiction. Pentagon officials reportedly haven’t been concerned with identifying the people on the boats before attacking.