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Pope Leo Has Clearly Struck a Nerve

Apr 17, 2026Center Right

I am not one to give advice - political or moral - to Trump, especially as he is on the ropes in a midterm election year. As he and Vice President JD Vance belabor a war of words with the pope, anyone would ask why any officeholder, much less the president, would double down on images and statements that alienate voters of faith and other segments of the electorate whose turnout is critical to winning in November. But there are issues to understand that are much larger than politics.

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Billionaire Trump ally melts down in spat with pope: ‘Working for Chinese communists”

Raw Story

7 hours ago

Billionaire Trump ally melts down in spat with pope: ‘Working for Chinese communists”

Right-wing tech billionaire Peter Thiel is accusing Pope Leo XIV of doing the work of the Chinese Communist Party with his criticisms of artificial intelligence.According to a Thursday report from CNN, Thiel told the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado on Tuesday that the pope was inadvertently serving as a “Chinese communist agent” when he released a 42,000-word encyclical that called for strict regulation of AI, a technology that the pontiff said heightens the “risk of dehumanization” throughout the world.Thiel argued that this sort of thinking was dangerous, CNN reported, because it could result in the US losing the “race” to build more advanced AI to China. Because of this, Thiel continued, the pope is essentially “working for the Chinese communists” by trying to tap the brakes on AI development.Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, has long decried AI critics in harsh terms. Over the last year, he has been delivering a series of lectures in which he has said that opponents of AI development are working as agents for the Antichrist.Journalist Christopher Hale, who writes the Letters From Leo newsletter, noted on Friday that Thiel in the past has even speculated that Pope Leo could be “a manifestation of the Antichrist.”Thiel has said that he instructed Vice President JD Vance, a longtime political ally who received major funding from the tech billionaire for his 2022 Senate campaign, to ignore the pope’s moral guidance despite influencing Vance to convert to Catholicism, Hale added.“Thiel seeded the vice president’s Catholic faith,” Hale wrote, “and he now tells wealthy festival audiences that the leader of that faith works for a communist government.”In addition to his attacks on the pope, Thiel also warned about “a democratic-socialist takeover of the Democratic Party,” pointing to recent victories in New York and Colorado of candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America.Thiel said that this “takeover” would doom the US, arguing that “when the Democratic Party goes, this country is over,” according to CNN.The New York Times reported in May that Thiel has grown so concerned about the political situation in the US that he’s created a “foothold” for himself in Argentina, which is currently being governed by ideologically likeminded libertarian President Javier Milei.“Thiel, who has a history of collecting backup countries as he hedges his bets against the United States, is considering making Argentina another Plan B,” the Times reported. “Born in Germany and raised in the United States, he received citizenship in New Zealand in 2011, and applied for a passport in Malta in 2022.”

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Donald Trump is the accidental hero of a real-life feelgood climate tale even as a creeping horror story plays alongside | Clear Air

US news | The Guardian

16 hours ago

Donald Trump is the accidental hero of a real-life feelgood climate tale even as a creeping horror story plays alongside | Clear Air

Despite a deadly heatwave sweeping through Europe, the US president’s ineptness has created reason for optimism on the climate crisisSign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter hereTwo real-life climate-themed movies are playing in parallel across the globe. They are about the world today, but they are also a snapshot of the future. The first is a slow-building horror story; the second, a feelgood summer hit. Both are worth watching.Horror films are suddenly box-office gold, so let’s start there. The World Health Organisation says the extreme, record-breaking heatwave blanketing Europe has killed more than 1,300 people. But everyone knows that number will end up a dramatic understatement. Continue reading...

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Awe-Struck World Cup Tourists Should Remind Us What Makes America So Great

The Federalist

Yesterday

Awe-Struck World Cup Tourists Should Remind Us What Makes America So Great

The lesson our foreign friends should learn is that America’s heart and soul has very little to do with our fast food and fast cars.

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Freedom 250 dancer nearly struck by plunging panel as event stage 'falls apart': report

Raw Story

Yesterday

Freedom 250 dancer nearly struck by plunging panel as event stage 'falls apart': report

A stage panel plunged toward dancers rehearsing for President Donald Trump's Freedom 250 July 4th celebration on the National Mall, narrowly missing them.Video of the incident, posted to X at 3:18 PM Thursday by independent journalist Aaron Parnas, showed the panel falling from the arched stage structure as dozens of dancers performed below."The stage is falling apart at the rehearsal for Freedom 250's July 4th celebration," Parnas wrote."This is incredibly dangerous stuff," journalist Ryan Grim wrote on X."Trump cutting safety corners with stage building is the kind of thing somebody can genuinely be prosecuted for if someone dies," Grim added. Under criminal law, causing a death through reckless safety failures can result in prosecution even without intent to harm."This equipment is deadly when falling from those heights," he wrote.Since Freedom 250's Great American State Fair opened on the National Mall on June 25th, the event has been plagued by power outages that melted ice cream, a 110-foot Ferris wheel that repeatedly broke down, and plywood booth facades painted to look like marble columns, Forbes reported. Freedom 250 is a public-private partnership created by Trump to organize the nation's semiquincentennial celebrations, operating separately from America250, the nonpartisan organization Congress created for that purpose."MAJOR BREAKING: Trump's Freedom 250 stage collapses in the midst of a rehearsal for the July 4 performance," political commentator Brian Krassenstein wrote on X."People literally could have died," he added.Trump is scheduled to deliver a speech at the National Mall celebration at 9:45 PM on July 4th, two days away, according to WTOP.

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Walz, Minnesota Board of Pardons clears convicted illegal alien child sex offender facing deportation

Latest Political News on Fox News

2 days ago

Walz, Minnesota Board of Pardons clears convicted illegal alien child sex offender facing deportation

Gov. Tim Walz pardoned illegal immigrant Tou Lue Vang, convicted of child sexual assault, making the Laotian citizen ineligible for deportation.

Right

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Blaze Media

2 days ago

The birthright ruling leaves Trump one clear move

The Supreme Court’s decision in the birthright citizenship case cannot be sugarcoated: It is a disaster.Illegal immigration drives many of the problems that afflict the nation — cultural decline, political brinkmanship, the rise of socialist and communist policies, social fragmentation, strained schools and hospitals, and damage to the job market, to name only a few.Getting back on track requires Immigration and Customs Enforcement to focus resources on targets and operations that can yield large numbers of removals.But birthright citizenship adds a uniquely destructive incentive. It rewards illegal immigration itself by bestowing sacred American citizenship on the children of people who should not be here in the first place.Birthright citizenship creates a multiplier effect. It turns one act of illegality into a generational claim on the country. To put it in terms some of my more interventionist friends may understand, the proponents of illegal immigration have secured state-sanctioned weapons of mass reproduction.Even after this setback, much can be done to mitigate the damage. Fortunately, the solution is not only politically viable; it was promised.The solution is mass deportation, now with a particular focus on illegal aliens who are expectant parents or already have children.The Supreme Court’s ruling does nothing to grant amnesty to the parents of would-be citizens if those parents are here illegally. Deporting expectant parents shuts off birthright citizenship before it happens.For illegal aliens who already have children with ill-gotten birthright citizenship, the parents should be deported with their illegal-alien family unit. They can choose to abandon their children in the United States, which would be a condemnable moral failure, or take their children with them.To make things easier, the Oversight Project has already put together the “Keeping Families Together Plan: How to Deport After the Birthright Citizenship Case.”The administration remains far off target on fulfilling its mass-deportation agenda. The numbers are not there. Getting back on track requires Immigration and Customs Enforcement to focus resources on targets and operations that can yield large numbers of removals.That means high-density enforcement.Worksite enforcement against illegal labor operations at Republican-protected sanctuary farms, factories, and industrial hubs would produce large numbers of arrests and deportations. Enforcement at high-density physical locations obviously yields more results than chasing one alien at a time.This is not happening at the necessary scale because the special-interest lobby supporting these industries is a major financial backer of the Republican Party.But as far as I know, no special-interest lobby for the parents of anchor babies funds Republican elections. I have been surprised before, but this should be an easier political fight.RELATED: 1776, not 1608: What the Supreme Court got wrong on birthright citizenship Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call Inc./Getty ImagesIt has been difficult to persuade the Trump administration to turn fully toward worksite enforcement. Perhaps the outrage over the Supreme Court’s decision can now be channeled into concrete action to mitigate the damage.If the court had ruled the other way, presumably these removals would already be happening. If birthright citizenship for illegal aliens is truly the civilizational threat its critics claim it is, then the Trump administration must use every available tool to address it even under this now seemingly permanent constitutional framework.Other steps will be necessary to address birthright citizenship gained through means other than crossing the border illegally. Temporary visitors and birth tourism should be targeted. So should more exotic abuses, such as a communist Chinese billionaire allegedly mailing sperm to California to impregnate women and produce American-citizen children for him.There is no shortage of mitigating measures available: tightening rules for temporary visitors, banning birth tourism, and perhaps even banning the use of the mail system for communist Chinese sperm.For those here illegally, the answer is more straightforward.The Trump administration should fall back in love with its signature campaign promise to carry out the largest deportation operation in American history.Illegal aliens cannot have anchor babies here if they are deported first.The solution is sitting right in front of us.Mass deportation.

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Supreme Court Makes It Clear. Mass Deportations Are Mandatory To Save America

The Federalist

2 days ago

Supreme Court Makes It Clear. Mass Deportations Are Mandatory To Save America

A spate of rulings from the Supreme Court couldn’t be more of a mandate if they were handed down, gift-wrapped, and sealed with a kiss by God: The mass deportation of illegal aliens is legal and imperative if there’s any hope of saving this country. One ruling declared it within the president’s authority to interpret […]

Far Right

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'I accepted help': Republican who missed 140 votes in Congress finally clears up mystery

Blaze Media

3 days ago

'I accepted help': Republican who missed 140 votes in Congress finally clears up mystery

The New Jersey congressman who missed more than 140 votes has finally revealed the mystery "medical issue" that kept him from his congressional duties.Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (N.J.) last voted in Congress on March 5 and then went missing for three months without a full explanation of his absence.'There is no timeline for recovery, only the work of getting better one day at a time.'On Tuesday, Kean said in a speech on the floor of Congress that he had been diagnosed with depression and told to stay in the hospital for treatment. "Several months ago, due to health concerns, I entered the hospital for some testing. I did not believe that this would result in a long-term stay," he said. "I was given the diagnosis of depression."Kean said his doctors recommended that he stay in the hospital to treat his depression."They explained to me that this would be the fastest way to recovery, and to be honest, I was hesitant. I didn’t think that I had time for it. ... Like many people, I believed that I could simply push through," Kean continued. "But I agreed to follow my doctor’s recommendations again, not believing that it would result in a long-term stay."Kean was pressed for details about his absence from Congress in April and said only that he had been dealing with a "personal medical issue."He said Tuesday that he had hoped to seek release earlier but his treatment dragged on."As the over 48 million of my fellow Americans being treated for this illness have come to discover, there is no timeline for healing. There is no timeline for recovery," he added, "only the work of getting better one day at a time."Kean won the primary for his re-election campaign during the time he was gone. RELATED: GOP congressman sort of reappears after going AWOL for months, missing over 100 votes Kean reiterated his message on social media."I’m a private person by nature, so sharing my story wasn’t easy. But if speaking openly about what I’ve been through helps even one person know they’re not alone, then it was worth it," he wrote."I’m deeply grateful for the prayers, kindness, and support I’ve received," Kean concluded.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

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Pope Leo Has Clearly Struck a Nerve

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Pope Leo Has Clearly Struck a Nerve

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