Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that Israel will “take control” of the whole of Gaza, as the military pressed a newly intensified campaign in the war-ravaged territory.

After Israel announced it would let a “basic amount” of food into the Gaza Strip, Netanyahu said it was necessary to prevent a famine for “diplomatic reasons.”

In Gaza, rescuers said air strikes killed at least 22 people, after the military announced it had begun “extensive ground operations” against Hamas.

The fighting is intense and we are making progress. We will take control of all the territory of the strip,” Netanyahu said in a video posted on Telegram.

“We will not give up. But in order to succeed, we must act in a way that cannot be stopped.”

Israel has come under mounting international pressure, including from key backer the United States, to lift a total blockade it imposed on Gaza more than two months ago.

“We must not let the population (of Gaza) sink into famine, both for practical and diplomatic reasons,” Netanyahu said, adding that even friends of Israel would not tolerate “images of mass starvation.”

In a report this month, the UN- and NGO-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification said Gaza was at “critical risk of famine,” with 22% of the population facing an imminent humanitarian “catastrophe.”

‘Reduced to Starvation’

Israel said its blockade since March 2 was aimed at forcing concessions from the Palestinian militant group, but U.N. agencies have warned of critical shortages of food, clean water, fuel and medicines.

Last week President Donald Trump acknowledged that “a lot of people are starving,” adding “we’re going to get that taken care of.”

In his inaugural mass, Pope Leo XIV called on the faithful not to forget “our brothers and sisters who are suffering because of war.

“In Gaza, the surviving children, families and elderly are reduced to starvation,” he said.

But Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir argued against any resumption of aid, saying on X: “Mr Prime Minister, our hostages receive no humanitarian aid.”

“The Prime Minister is making a serious mistake in this move, and he has no majority at all. Hamas must only be crushed, and not at the same time provided with oxygen for its survival,” he said in a statement.

No Breakthrough in Talks

Israel’s military Monday said the air force had struck “160 terror targets” in Gaza over the past day, as it pressed an expanded offensive.

The campaign, which Israel says aims to free hostages and defeat Hamas, started Saturday as the two sides entered indirect talks in Qatar on a deal.

Netanyahu’s office said negotiators Doha were “working to exhaust every possibility for a deal – whether according to the Witkoff framework or as part of ending the fighting.”

Steve Witkoff is Trump’s Middle East envoy who has been involved in discussions.

Netanyahu’s statement said a deal “would include the release of all the hostages, the exile of Hamas terrorists, and the disarmament of the Gaza Strip.”

Since a two-month ceasefire collapsed in March as Israel resumed its offensive, negotiations mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States have failed to make a breakthrough.

Netanyahu has opposed ending the war without Hamas’s total defeat, while Hamas has balked at handing over its weapons.

“No One Left’

There were heavy strikes Monday in and around the main southern city of Khan Yunis, where civil defense agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said 11 people were killed and several others wounded.

Bassal also reported another 11 deaths in strikes on other parts of the territory.

AFPTV footage from Gaza on Sunday showed people sifting through ruined shelters and rescuers treating the wounded.

“All my family members are gone. There is no one left,” said a distraught Warda al-Shaer.

“The children were killed as well as their parents. My mother died too, and my niece lost her eye.”

The United Nations had warned of the risk of famine in Gaza before the aid blockade was imposed.

Hamas’ October 2023 attack that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

Hamas also took 251 hostages during the attack, 57 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 the military says are dead.

Gaza’s health ministry said Sunday at least 3,193 people have been killed since Israel resumed strikes March 18, taking the war’s overall toll to 53,339.

Newsmax World

by Tyler Durden

In recent months, a ban of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) appeared to be inching closer and closer, but now a key voice has clearly spoken out against such a move.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz has now said that voting on an AfD ban in the Bundestag is not the right path, saying it “smacks too much of the elimination of political rivals.” 

He said he does not believe the current evidence is sufficient.

He has even gone a step farther, stating that former Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, an SPD politician with far-left sympathies who wrote for Antifa Magazine, was wrong to classify the AfD as “confirmed” right-wing extremist in the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) report. 

Critics indicate that she rushed the report out at the last minute of her tenure, despite the BfV having no president and despite a lack of any expert review, which she had previously promised would happen.

Speaking to Die Zeit, Merz said; “Working ‘aggressively and militantly’ against the free democratic basic order must be proven. And the burden of proof lies solely with the state. That is a classic task of the executive branch. And I have always internally resisted initiating ban proceedings from within the Bundestag. That smacks too much of political competition elimination to me.”

When the BfV first labeled the AfD “certainly right-wing extremist,” calls came from the left, including the Greens, Left Party, and SPD, to immediately begin proceedings to ban the party in the Bundestag. Even a large portion of the CDU backed the move.

Now, the BfV has temporarily removed the designation pending a court appeal, and as Remix News reported, this removal may have been in large part possible due to pressure from the United States.

Merz also expressed his displeasure with Faeser’s move to release the report on her last day of work.

He told Zeit he was “not happy with the way this process is being conducted.”

“The old government presented a report without any factual review, and it was also classified as confidential,” he added. 

As Remix News reported, the 1,100 page report contained only public statements from the AfD, and it has already been leaked and published by the German press. 

Remix News, in a report published earlier today, notes that the BfV is likely sitting on huge amounts of private surveillance data related to AfD members, but due to the unsavory mass surveillance methods used to obtain this data, it is likely withholding this from any official report.

“I don’t know the content of this report, and frankly, I don’t want to know it until the Federal Ministry of the Interior has made an assessment of it,” said Merz. 

He said that it would take several weeks and even months for the interior ministry to make such an assessment.

TYLER DURDEN, ZERO HEDGE

Pope Leo XIV, history’s first American pope, vowed Sunday to work for unity so that the Catholic Church becomes a symbol of peace in the world, offering a message of communion during an inaugural Mass in St. Peter’s Square before an estimated 200,000 pilgrims, presidents, patriarchs and princes.

Leo officially opened his pontificate by taking his first popemobile tour through the piazza, a rite of passage that has become synonymous with the papacy’s global reach and mediatic draw. The 69-year-old Augustinian missionary smiled and waved from the back of the truck, and stopped to bless some babies in the crowd.

During the Mass, Leo appeared to choke up when the two potent symbols of the papacy were placed on him — the lambswool stole over his shoulders and the fisherman’s ring on his finger — as if the weight of responsibility of leading the 1.4-billion strong church had just sunk in.

He turned his hand to look at the ring and seal and then clasped his hands in front of him in prayer.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance, one of the last foreign officials to see Pope Francis before he died, led the U.S. delegation honoring the Chicago-born Leo. Vance paid his respects at the Argentine pope’s tomb upon arriving in Rome late Saturday.

In his homily, Leo said he wanted to be a servant to the faithful through the two dimensions of the papacy, love and unity, so that the church could be a force for peace in the world.

“I would like that our first great desire be for a united church, a sign of unity and communion, which becomes a leaven for a reconciled world,” he said. “In this our time, we still see too much discord, too many wounds caused by hatred, violence, prejudice, the fear of difference, and an economic paradigm that exploits the Earth’s resources and marginalises the poorest.”

His call for unity was significant, given the polarization in the Catholic Church in the United States and beyond.

Francis’ radical 12-year pontificate, which emphasized care for the poor and marginalized and disdain for the capitalist economic system, often alienated conservatives and traditionalists. Leo’s May 8 election, after a remarkably quick 24-hour conclave, appears to have pleased conservative Catholics who seem to appreciate his more disciplined, traditional style and Augustinian background, emphasizing core truths of Catholic doctrine.

Leo drove that message home further by wearing the formal red cape of the papacy, or mozzetta, to receive Vance and official government delegations after the Mass. Francis had eschewed many of the formalities of the papacy as part of his simple style, but Leo’s return to the traditional garb has pleased conservatives and traditionalists who cheered when he came out of the loggia on May 8 wearing the red cape.

Leo did though break protocol when he gave his older brother, Louis Prevost, a self-described political “MAGA-type,” a bear hug in the basilica when he and his wife came up to greet the pope.

Let us build a church founded on God’s love, a sign of unity, a missionary church that opens its arms to the world, proclaims the word, allows itself to be made restless by history, and becomes a leaven of harmony for humanity,” Leo said, referencing some of the themes of Francis’ pontificate as well.

Strict diplomatic protocol dictated the seating arrangements at the inaugural Mass, with both the United States and Peru getting front-row seats thanks to Leo’s dual citizenship. Vance, a Catholic convert who tangled with Francis over the Trump administration’s mass migrant deportation plans, was joined by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who arrived in Rome ahead of time to try to advance Russia-Ukraine peace talks.

Peruvian President Dina Boluarte was one of around a dozen heads of state who attended, as well as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Russia had planned to send its culture minister but was represented by its ambassador, reports said.

Diplomatic protocol also dictated the dress code: While most wore black, the handful of Catholic queens and princesses — Letizia of Spain and Charlene of Monaco among others — wore white in a special privilege allowed them. Three dozen of the world’s other Christian churches sent their own delegations, the Jewish community had a 13-member delegation, half of them rabbis. Other representatives headed Buddhist, Muslim, Zoroastrian, Hindu, Sikh and Jain delegations.

Security was tight, as it was for Francis’ funeral on April 26, which drew an estimated 250,000 people. The Vatican said 200,000 were on hand Sunday in the piazza and surrounding streets, parks and piazzas, where giant television screens and portable toilets were set up.

At the end of the Mass, Leo expressed hope for negotiations to bring a “just and lasting peace” in Ukraine and offered prayers for the people of Gaza — children, families and elderly who are “reduced to starvation,” he said. Leo made no mention of hostages taken by Hamas from southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, as Francis usually did when praying for Gaza.

Susan Hanssen, a professor who was born in Chicago and just arrived in Rome to teach, said she thought Leo’s homily of unity would resonate in the U.S. and beyond. “I think he will inspire,” she said after Mass. “What I particularly loved was the phrasing, unity within the doctrine of the faith, and then in love.”

U.S. seminarian Ethan Menning, 21, from Omaha, Nebraska, wrapped himself in an American flag, purchased at a truck stop in Iowa, to celebrate.

“Rome always felt like home for a Catholic, but now coming here and seeing one of our own on the throne of Peter … it almost makes Jesus himself more accessible,” he said.

The two symbols of the papacy handed to Leo were the pallium stole, and the fisherman’s ring. The pallium, draped across his shoulders, symbolizes the pastor carrying his flock as the pope carries the faithful. The ring, which becomes Leo’s official seal, harks back to Jesus’ call to the apostle Peter to cast his fishing nets.

The other symbolically important moment of the Mass was the representational rite of obedience to Leo: Whereas in the past all cardinals would vow obedience to the new pope, more recent papal installations involve representatives of cardinals, bishops, priests, deacons, nuns, married couples and young people participating in the rite.

Gregory and Susan Hudak, who lived for 40 years in the Chicago area, found themselves in Rome after booking a trip in February, with just a faint hope of perhaps glimpsing the pope. Seeing the popemobile pass by in front of them, with the Chicago-born Leo on board, was even better than watching Michael Jordan play, said Gary Hudak, a former altar boy wearing a Chicago Bears hat.

“Originally, the only hope I had coming here was to see the inside of the Sistine Chapel,” he said. “Seeing the pope was not scheduled, it was a long shot hope. And this was a treasure, simple as that.”

Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Americans’ confidence in higher education has fallen to 36%, sharply lower than in two prior readings in 2015 (57%) and 2018 (48%). In addition to the 17% of U.S. adults who have “a great deal” and 19% “quite a lot” of confidence, 40% have “some” and 22% “very little” confidence.

The latest decline in the public’s trust in higher education is from a June 1-22 Gallup poll that also found confidence in 16 other institutions has been waning in recent years. Many of these entities, which are tracked more often than higher education, are now also at or near their lowest points in confidence. Although diminished, higher education ranks fourth in confidence among the 17 institutions measured, with small business, the military and the police in the top three spots. This was also the case in 2018, the last time higher education was included in the list of institutions.

In 2015, majorities of Americans in all key subgroups expressed confidence in higher education, with one exception — independents (48%). By 2018, though, confidence had fallen across all groups, with the largest drop, 17 percentage points, among Republicans. In the latest measure, confidence once again fell across the board, but Republicans’ sank the most — 20 points to 19%, the lowest of any group. Confidence among adults without a college degree and those aged 55 and older dropped nearly as much as Republicans’ since 2018.

Even though all subgroups show declining confidence in higher education, significant gaps persist among political, educational, gender and age subgroups. Notably, the only key subgroup with majority-level confidence in higher education is Democrats (59%).

Bottom Line

Americans’ confidence in higher education, which showed a marked decrease between 2015 and 2018, has declined further to a new low point. While Gallup did not probe for reasons behind the recent drop in confidence, the rising costs of postsecondary education likely play a significant role.

There is a growing divide between Republicans’ and Democrats’ confidence in higher education. Previous Gallup polling found that Democrats expressed concern about the costs, while Republicans registered concern about politics in higher education.

Megan Brenan, Gallup

Down in the swamps of Washington, D.C., our Congress is said to be hard at work hammering out a budget for the coming fiscal year. With a crisis of massive deficits looming, supposedly they are going to come up with some major areas where government spending can be cut.

One of the areas under consideration for significant cuts is the program formally known as the “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,” or SNAP, and informally known as “food stamps.” According to the latest data from the Department of Agriculture, as of February 2025 the SNAP program had some 42+ million “participation persons,” with the cost of the program running at just under $8 billion per month, which is close to $100 billion per year.

Is it possible to achieve meaningful savings in this program? That depends on whether you think that the government’s goal should be to maximize the number of people living on handouts and in a state of dependency, or whether instead you think that the government’s goal should be to maximize the number of people living by their own resources and without dependency. The history of the program over the past several decades would suggest that plenty of current program participants are fully capable of making it on their own.

However, needless to say, the left-wing press has risen to the occasion to defend every last penny of current spending on the ground that any cut would constitute a cruel blow to the vulnerable. For one example among many that are available, let me pick on my usual whipping boy, the New York Times. The Times has a piece from Monday (May 12) with the headline and subheadline “Republicans Target Federal Anti-Hunger Program as They Prepare Trump Tax Package; Limiting funding for SNAP could help defray the costs of President Trump’s tax plans, but could result in millions of low-income families losing access to aid.” Excerpt:

House Republicans on Monday proposed a series of sharp restrictions on the federal anti-hunger program known as food stamps, seeking to limit its funding and benefits as part of a sprawling package to advance President Trump’s tax cuts. . . . The moves could result in potentially millions of low-income families losing access to the safety net program.

On cue, the Times rolls out a program advocate to throw around some inflammatory rhetoric:

Proponents of the food stamp program say that it has long served as a critical lifeline for low-income families by ensuring that they do not experience hunger. . . . “Slashing billions from SNAP would deepen hunger, increase poverty, and weaken communities,” said Crystal FitzSimons, interim president of the Food Research & Action Center, an advocacy group.

However, looking at the history of the program, what emerges is that it became bloated during the Covid pandemic, and the Bidenauts were only to happy to keep it that way. The best resource I find for a counter-view on food stamps is something called the Economic Policy Innovation Center, or EPIC. They have a web page called the EPIC Food Stamps Resource, updated to May 1, 2025. Some key data:

– In 2001, when Bill Clinton left office, the number of participants in the food stamp program was 17.3 million.

– During the George W. Bush years, food stamp enrollment went up substantially, reaching 28 million in 2008.

– But then, once Barack Obama took office, enrollment really started to soar. As recounted in this Manhattan Contrarian post from 2013, the Obama administration undertook an aggressive advertising and outreach effort to maximize food stamp enrollment. By 2013, enrollment had reached 47.24 million. Essentially all of that increase took place during times of economic expansion, when the normal expectation would be that enrollment would decline.

– During his first term, Trump and his people made substantial progress in decreasing the food stamp rolls. By Trump’s last year in office, enrollment was down to just over 34 million, almost a 30% decrease.

Covid was the excuse for letting the food stamp rolls begin to explode again. But at this point the pandemic has been over for at least three years. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the rolls are at a high level because the Biden people wanted them to be at a high level.

EPIC gives some insights into how the numbers come to be so high. For example, the food stamp program supposedly has work requirements for any able-bodied adults. But the work requirements “are currently waived completely or in part in 34 states.” As a result, many able-bodied adults enrolled in the program simply do not work. EPIC gives figures for 2017-19: “Before the pandemic and Biden expansions, 13 million able-bodied adults received food stamp benefits on average between 2017 and 2019, yet 62 percent of these work-capable recipients did not work at all.” Since then, the evasion of the supposed work requirements has only gotten worse.

With food stamp program expenditures currently running at an annual rate of around $100 billion or more, there is lots of room for that to be reduced without anyone actually going hungry. If Bill Clinton could have food stamp rolls of well under 20 million people, that should be achievable again.

Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian

Ukrainian and Russian soldiers are bleeding and dying on battlefields in eastern Ukraine right now.

On the night of October 25, 2004, I experienced the most intense combat situation I have ever lived through. 

While returning to our Forward Operating Base (FOB) in the Sunni Triangle, insurgents ambushed our platoon’s convoy. Out of nowhere, an IED exploded, with a sound like the world splitting in half and crashing back together.

We reacted with well-rehearsed battle drills.  As I made my way to perform first aid on a comrade who was hit, a second 155 mm artillery shell exploded, wire-detonated by the same insurgents. As I began treating the soldier, who was bleeding profusely and screaming in pain, a third IED exploded.

These were some of the most terrifying minutes in my life. My patient lived, but two days later another IED attack killed a different team member. A few months earlier, I saw the same kind of carnage when treating a civilian. He’d been shot in one lung and was aspirating blood through the wound. Iraqi insurgents took shots at us while we treated him.

More than 20 years later, I can still recall the sounds, the smells, the blood, the screams, and the stress driven adrenaline surges. There were more than a few of these experiences during my time in Iraq. But they were short moments lasting only a few, albeit intense, minutes.

Such experiences happen, magnified by the hundreds and thousands, in Ukraine on a daily basis, as they have been happening since 2022. Russia and Ukraine are throwing an entire generation into a bloody meat-grinding stalemate. Military casualties have topped one million, and millions more Ukrainian civilians suffer. That’s millions of moments of sheer terror. For those who survive, the hidden wounds will last for years, or even lifetimes.

Vladimir Putin’s invasion was malicious and evil, and the Ukrainians have mounted a surprisingly stubborn and effective defense. Russia continues to have important military advantages in numbers, both of equipment and personnel.

While Ukraine has been relatively successful at halting them in the east, they likely cannot retake that territory even with continued Western military and financial aid. European and American ability to continue aid is limited. U.S. military stocks are being used faster than they can be replaced, and many of those are important to maintaining deterrence elsewhere. Likewise, financial assistance to Ukraine saps resources that can be used elsewhere.

Settling for less than prewar borders is understandably unpalatable to Ukrainians. U.S.-led diplomacy, though, must embrace realism. Voices in the U.S. and in Europe who resist a negotiated peace harp on Russia’s potential to seize territory from European NATO members. This assumes that Russia, fought to a standstill by a smaller, weaker Ukraine, has the appetite to take on a richer and stronger NATO. Meanwhile, the bleeding, the screaming, and death go on in eastern Ukraine.

There is a path to ending the carnage. Since taking office, President Trump has worked to bring both governments to the table to negotiate, but that is just the beginning.

Russia and Ukraine must understand the security dilemma each face. Ukraine has a larger, more powerful, and aggressive neighbor in Russia. And Russia has a strategic fear, based on historical experience, of powerful neighbors to their west.

Such understanding will only be the beginning of the bargaining. If Russia can acknowledge Ukraine’s need for security, and Ukraine can accept that Russia fears and will not allow NATO expansion into Ukraine, there is a starting position. 

An armed but neutral Ukraine best fits the strategic needs of both nations.

If Ukraine is willing to forego future membership in NATO, there is still a path toward enduring security. Ukraine has proven itself resilient enough to make a total Russian conquest nearly impossible. If allowed to maintain a capable military as a deterrent, and to trade with both eastern and western neighbors, Ukraine will have security.

Russia should allow an armed neutrality for Ukraine, tied to assurances that NATO will not expand to include Ukraine.

The devil will be in the details. The future disposition of seized and contested territory will present a difficult negotiating point. But ending the lethal engagements that destroy lives, limbs, and sanity daily should motivate all parties to negotiate.

President Trump is right to claim that ending combat and ending the war is imperative.

Further, Europe must continue to take the lead in its own security. The war in Ukraine has been tragic but it has also exposed the weaknesses of Russia’s conventional military forces.  Europe has the resources to defend against those forces and its military capacity should reflect that – without continuing the current dominant role of the U.S. in European security. Ending the war will allow both the U.S. and Europe to rebuild stockpiles of key munitions for their own defense, and allow the U.S. to focus on other, more important strategic threats. 

When treating a wounded soldier, one of the most important steps is to stop the bleeding.  It’s time to stop the bleeding in Ukraine.

John Byrnes is Strategic Director at Concerned Veterans for America and a combat veteran of the Marine Corps and National Guard.

Pope Leo XIV, history’s first American pope, vowed Sunday to work for unity so that the Catholic Church becomes a sign of peace in the world, offering a message of communion during an inaugural Mass in St. Peter’s Square before tens of thousands of people, presidents, patriarchs and princes.

Leo officially opened his pontificate by taking his first popemobile tour through the piazza, a rite of passage that has become synonymous with the papacy’s global reach and mediatic draw. The 69-year-old Augustinian missionary smiled and waved from the back of the truck, but didn’t appear to stop to kiss babies and the crowd.

During the Mass, Leo appeared to choke up when the two potent symbols of the papacy were placed on him — the pallium woolen stole over his shoulders and the fisherman’s ring on his finger — as if the weight of responsibility of leading the 1.4-billion strong church had just sunk in.

He turned his hand to look at the ring and seal and then clasped his hands in front of him in prayer.

Security was tight as civil protection crews in neon uniforms funneled pilgrims into quadrants in the piazza and up and down the boulevard that leads to it for the ceremony blending ancient ritual, evocative symbols and a dose of modern-day celebrity.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance, one of the last foreign officials to see Pope Francis before he died, led the U.S. delegation honoring the Chicago-born Leo after paying his respects at the Argentine pope’s tomb upon arriving in Rome late Saturday.

In his homily, Leo said he wanted to be a servant to the faithful through the two dimensions of the papacy, love and unity, so that the church could be a force for peace in the world.

“I would like that our first great desire be for a united church, a sign of unity and communion, which becomes a leaven for a reconciled world,” he said. “In this our time, we still see too much discord, too many wounds caused by hatred, violence, prejudice, the fear of difference, and an economic paradigm that exploits the Earth’s resources and marginalises the poorest.”

His call for unity was significant, given the polarization in the Catholic Church in the United States and beyond.

Francis’ radical 12-year pontificate, which emphasized care for the poor and marginalized and disdain for the capitalist economic system, often alienated conservatives and traditionalists. Leo’s May 8 election, after a remarkably quick 24-hour conclave, has appeared at the outset to have pleased conservative Catholics who seem to appreciate his more disciplined, traditional style and Augustinian background, emphasizing core truths of Catholic doctrine.

“Let us build a church founded on God’s love, a sign of unity, a missionary church that opens its arms to the world, proclaims the word, allows itself to be made restless by history, and becomes a leaven of harmony for humanity,” he said, referencing some of the themes of Francis’ pontificate as well.

Strict diplomatic protocol dictated the seating arrangements at the inaugural Mass, with both the United States and Peru getting front-row seats thanks to Leo’s dual citizenship. Vance, a Catholic convert who tangled with Francis over the Trump administration’s mass migrant deportation plans, was joined by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who arrived in Rome ahead of time to try to advance Russia-Ukraine peace talks.

Peruvian President Dina Boluarte was one of around a dozen heads of state who attended, as well as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Russia had planned to send its culture minister but was represented by its ambassador, reports said.

Diplomatic protocol also dictated the dress code: While most wore black, the handful of Catholic queens and princesses — Letizia of Spain and Charlene of Monaco among others — wore white in a special privilege allowed them. Three dozen of the world’s other Christian churches sent their own delegations, the Jewish community had a 13-member delegation, half of them rabbis. Other representatives headed Buddhist, Muslim, Zoroastrian, Hindu, Sikh and Jain delegations.

Security was tight, as it was for Francis’ funeral on April 26, which drew an estimated 250,000 people. The Vatican said 200,000 were on hand Sunday in the piazza and surrounding streets, parks and piazzas, where giant television screens and portable toilets were set up.

At the end of the Mass, Leo expressed hope for negotiations to bring a “just and lasting peace” in Ukraine and offered prayers for the people of Gaza — children, families and elderly who are “reduced to starvation,” he said. Leo made no mention of hostages taken by Hamas from southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, as Francis usually did when praying for Gaza.

Susan Hanssen, a professor who was born in Chicago and just arrived in Rome to teach, said she thought Leo’s homily of unity would resonate in the U.S. and beyond. “I think he will inspire,” she said after Mass. “What I particularly loved was the phrasing, unity within the doctrine of the faith, and then in love.”

U.S. seminarian Ethan Menning, 21, from Omaha, Nebraska, wrapped himself in an American flag, purchased at a truck stop in Iowa, to celebrate.

“Rome always felt like home for a Catholic, but now coming here and seeing one of our own on the throne of Peter … it almost makes Jesus himself more accessible,” he said.

The two symbols of the papacy handed to Leo were the pallium stole, and the fisherman’s ring. The pallium, draped across his shoulders, symbolizes the pastor carrying his flock as the pope carries the faithful. The ring, which becomes Leo’s official seal, harks back to Jesus’ call to the apostle Peter to cast his fishing nets.

The other symbolically important moment of the Mass was the representational rite of obedience to Leo: Whereas in the past all cardinals would vow obedience to the new pope, more recent papal installations involve representatives of cardinals, bishops, priests, deacons, nuns, married couples and young people participating in the rite.

Gregory and Susan Hudak, who lived for 40 years in the Chicago area, found themselves in Rome after booking a trip in February, with just a faint hope of perhaps glimpsing the pope. Seeing the popemobile pass by in front of them, with the Chicago-born Leo on board, was even better than watching Michael Jordan play, said Gary Hudak, a former altar boy wearing a Chicago Bears hat.

“Originally, the only hope I had coming here was to see the inside of the Sistine Chapel,” he said. “Seeing the pope was not scheduled, it was a long shot hope. And this was a treasure, simple as that.”

Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

David Harsanyi | May 17, 2025

“We got so screwed by Biden, as a party,” former Barack Obama adviser David Plouffe is quoted saying in a New Yorker excerpt from Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s new book, “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.”

The supposition of the piece, headlined “How Joe Biden Handed the Presidency to Donald Trump,” is that Democrats only failed to hold the White House because of Biden’s prideful obstinacy.

Scapegoating Biden for all the Left’s considerable political problems is an ugly hypocrisy. It is also There is a reason the Democratic Party’s polling is at historic lows right now, and it’s not just Biden’s memory problems.

Let’s recall that every congressional Democrat decided to shoehorn the Inflation Reduction Act into law even after most economists warned it would plunge the nation into price spikes. Biden wasn’t the only one leaning into the hysterics of “semi-fascism.” If anything, Biden had merely adopted the social science quackery on gender that so many Democrats champion.

Did any elected Democrat speak out about the anarchy of illegal immigration? If so, I must have missed it. Yet, according to a preelection Pew poll, 78% of people believed the border was a crisis or major problem.

One of the big criticisms of Biden is that he failed to make room for another candidate earlier. Almost surely, Kamala Harris would have been the nominee regardless of when Biden dropped out. Does anyone really believe a hyper-ambitious politician ensconced in the White House was going to step aside or let some middling governor wrest the nomination from her? The only Democrat who consistently outperformed Harris in most polls after Biden’s debate debacle was Michelle Obama. It was going to be Harris.

What makes anyone think that Harris would have experienced more success had she enjoyed more time? After an initial jolt up, the vice president’s popularity steadily declined. Harris needed less time, not more. The more the public heard from her, the more they disliked her.

Harris, like any other possible Democrat candidate, was compelled to run on the president’s record. And that record, championed by virtually every Democrat, was unpopular long before the media were compelled to acknowledge the president’s declining mental state.

The Democratic Party had blown it. Polls found that only 36% approved of Biden’s handling of the economy, 28% approved of his handling of immigration, 33% approved of his handling of foreign policy, and 30% approved of his handling of the Middle East.

Now, even with those numbers, elections are a contest between two visions. A CBS News poll found that 65% of Americans remember the economy under Trump fondly, while only 38% said the same about Biden.

Does anyone really believe that Govs. Wes Moore, Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsom, Andy Beshear or JB Pritzker possess the kind of charismatic personality or compelling message to overcome that record? It’s exceptionally unlikely.

Plouffe might have been one of the few Democrats who publicly questioned the wisdom of running a man whose mental acuity had slipped for years. Until the day of the first 2024 presidential debates, however, virtually the entirety of the party and media had been shielding Biden. If the president had refused to debate Trump, the Left would have almost surely kept on concealing Biden’s condition. It had no choice but to turn on the president once he had been exposed.

We learn in The New Yorker that Biden didn’t recognize George Clooney at the infamous Hollywood fundraiser where Barack Obama had to lead the president off stage by hand. Recall that even at this point, the big media were still gaslighting the public about the president’s deteriorating acuity. Three days later, Tapper’s colleague wrote in CNN’s media newsletter that the claim had been a “fabrication.”

Two days before the debate, then-Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., had told reporters the president was sharper than he’d been in years. “He’s fine. All this right-wing propaganda that his mental acuity has declined is wrong,” he said.

In the New Yorker piece, we learn that Schumer would speak to Biden on the phone regularly, “and, after some chit chat,” the president would “admit that he’d forgotten why he’d called. Sometimes he rambled. Sometimes he forgot names. Schumer wasnt concerned about Biden’s acuity, but he was worried about the optics.”

The president is the most powerful man in the world, and the Senate leader was worried about optics. So, indeed, was the rest of his party.

Which is merely to say that Democrats screwed themselves.

The Daily Signal

For Democrats, there’s no escaping (for now) the Biden hangover from 2024.

The verdict is in. Joe Biden is to blame. So too are the advisers who protected him in the White House by hiding his frailties. Together they unwittingly choreographed the comeback of President Donald Trump. The country is living with the consequences, and the Democratic Party is looking for a way out of the wilderness.

That, at least, is the underlying charge of books about the 2024 election. The one drawing the most attention is the newest, “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.” Written by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’s Alex Thompson, the book will not be released until Tuesday, but prepublication excerpts have made waves…..

Biden isolated from Cabinet members and lawmakers in the latter years of his presidency. Biden’s workdays reduced in hours. Biden tethered to a teleprompter even at intimate fundraisers. Advisers fearful that another fall could require him to use a wheelchair in a second term.

The portrait of his inner circle is as damning. Key advisers and family members are described as shielding the president to a fault, dismissive of any suggestion that he was failing. When a report from special counsel Robert K. Hur described Biden as “a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory,” his handlers (and the president) were indignant. Was all this hubris, blind loyalty, a conspiracy of silence? That depends on where you sit……

Some Democrats are angry that the focus has fixed on Biden’s decline rather than what they see as admirable accomplishments in office. Others simply find it a distraction from the business of battling with Trump. Biden has added to the drama by publicly challenging the conclusions of authors, as he seeks to shape a legacy tarnished by the closing months of his presidency.

The Tapper-Thompson book isn’t the only one out there. “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House,” by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, made a splash when it was released in early April. “Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History,” by Chris Whipple, included startling descriptions from Ron Klain, Biden’s former White House chief of staff, about the president’s woeful preparations ahead of his terrible debate. “2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America,” by (former and current colleagues) Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf, will be released in July.

These portraits of a Biden in decline are something that the world saw at his disastrous debate with Trump on June 27. That halting performance prompted his decision to withdraw and elevate Vice President Kamala Harris to become the party’s nominee, which many Democrats believe doomed her to a short and unsuccessful campaign.

Even in the days after the debate, let alone the months prior, most Democratic lawmakers were reluctant to call publicly for Biden’s withdrawal. A story in the Wall Street Journal sometime before the debate, charting Biden’s decline, drew a pile-on from the White House and many Democratic officials (and some in the media) for relying on mostly Republican sources.

Why did he not? Pride is one answer. Stubbornness another. The reluctance to cede power, especially the ultimate power on the planet. A belief that only he could stop Trump from winning again. A lack of confidence in Harris to lead the party in the election, a view expressed by presidential advisers to some on the outside who pleaded that Biden should not seek a second term. A belief that even a dramatically diminished Biden would be safer for the country than Trump. A belief that — despite polls showing him losing to Trump — he could still win, though other strategists saw no such path, given voters who thought he was too old for another term. Biden still asserts that had he been on the ballot, he would have defeated Trump.

Biden might have drawn a primary challenge had it not been for the 2022 midterm elections, which, though narrowly lost by Democrats, went better than they had expected. As Biden claimed a moral victory in the aftermath, potential challengers melted away, ultimately denying the party a test between Biden and those of a younger generation.

Some who were urged to run, according to a Democrat who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly, demurred. They did not want to be blamed for so weakening Biden in a primary that Trump could win the election. Had Biden been challenged in the primaries and forced to debate other Democrats, would his frailties have emerged early enough to force him out of the race? That was the thinking of some who hoped to see a competitive nomination contest.

When Biden finally quit the race, Harris had too many hurdles to overcome in a short time. Some Democrats believe she could have won, had she run a different kind of campaign. Others still doubt she could have surmounted the dissatisfaction with Biden and an opaque profile that left her vulnerable to attack. She is currently mulling her future, with another run for president and a campaign for governor of California among her choices.

The anger at Biden for choosing to run in the first place is still white-hot among some Democrats. David Plouffe, who helped Barack Obama win two elections and was brought in to advise the Harris campaign, is quoted by Tapper and Thompson as saying of Biden, “He totally f—ed us.” That kind of fury from a strategist toward a president of his or her party is rare. Such is the fallout from this episode.

The focus on Biden comes at an awkward time for the Democratic Party, which should be looking forward rather than backward. Some Democrats are angry that the focus has fixed on Biden’s decline rather than what they see as admirable accomplishments in office. Others simply find it a distraction from the business of battling with Trump. Biden has added to the drama by publicly challenging the conclusions of authors, as he seeks to shape a legacy tarnished by the closing months of his presidency. Many Democrats wish he would stay out of view.

For now, there is no escaping this excavation of the final months of Biden’s presidency. The question is whether Democrats will use Biden as an excuse to ignore deeper problems that helped Trump prevail in 2024 and that continue to hamper them as they try to make a comeback of their own — issues of the party’s tattered coalition, of identity politics, and most important its economic priorities and program. That debate has barely started, to the dismay of many in the party.

Dan Balz, Washington Post

Political commentator Chris Cillizza says “polls showing that only a third of registered Democrats are optimistic about their Party strike me as very problematic. This is especially troublesome compared to polls showing that 55% of Republicans are optimistic about their Party. With most of the media attempting to paint the Republicans as an existential threat to democracy I find it remarkable that its partisans can be so optimistic. Not only are most Democrats lacking optimism, they also use words like liberal, weak, and corrupt to describe how their standard bearers are perceived by the general public.”

House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) admitted “those terms don’t sound very attractive or heroic, but I would argue that the majority of humanity would be most accurately described in exactly those terms. In this respect the Democratic Party does represent this majority of the population. We are liberal with public funds in our efforts to redistribute the wealth more equitably between those who earn it and those who need it. We are champions of the weaker elements of our society who can’t sustain their desired lifestyle without the support of the government. And many of our leaders have been caught in corrupt endeavors to use their public office for personal enrichment. However, I would argue that this is a perfectly reasonable response to an unfair world. The trick will be to convince voters that we are the true guardians of their interests.”

“It’ll have to be a pretty good trick,” Cillizza said. “A recent poll by Emerson College/Pix 11/the Hill found that President Trump breaks even among the voters in New Jersey–a traditional stronghold for Democrats–with a 47% approval vs a 47% disapproval rating. In contrast, Gov Phil Murphy (D) is underwater with a 40% approval and 45% disapproval rating. In the 2024 election Kamala Harris carried the state by a 6% margin over Trump. In 2020 Joe Biden carried the state by a margin of 16% over Trump. Surely, such a trend has to be concerning for Democrats?”

“Trump may be riding high now,” Jeffries observed, “but we’re making inroads against his unconstitutional efforts to deport foreign criminals. Numerous federal district courts have sided with us on this issue and are blocking his authority to carry out his campaign promise to get these people out of the country. We’re also having similar success against Trump’s efforts to reduce government waste, corruption, and abuse. These courts are ordering him to rehire government employees that he’s fired and restore federal grants that he’s canceled. As voters come to recognize that he cannot fulfill his campaign promises they’ll come home to the Democratic Party.”

John Semmens