President Donald J. Trump has ordered all United States flags on government and military properties to be lowered to half-staff in memory of His Holiness Pope Francis on the morning after his passing.
The Vatican announced the pope’s passing early Monday morning in Rome after a fight against pneumonia, Breitbart News reported. He was 88.
Francis had recently left Rome’s Gemelli Hospital, where he was admitted on February 14, before briefly meeting with Vice President JD Vance on Easter Sunday.
Trump released a proclamation shortly after the news broke, calling for flags to be flown at half-mast until sunset out of “respect” for the Catholic leader:
As a mark of respect for the memory of His Holiness Pope Francis, by the authority vested in me as President of the United States by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, I hereby order that the flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff at the White House and upon all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its Territories and possessions until sunset, on the day of interment. I also direct that the flag shall be flown at half-staff for the same length of time at all United States embassies, legations, consular offices, and other facilities abroad, including all military facilities and naval vessels and stations.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-first day of April, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-five, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-ninth.
How committed are Democrats to going off the tracks, aligning themselves with illegal alien and alleged MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia?
Apparently so committed on the train wreck path that they went to El Salvador anyway, even though they were denied Congressional money and American taxpayer dollars to support their trip by House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer in a very blunt statement.
Pope Francis died of a cerebral stroke and irreversible heart failure, Vatican doctor Andrea Arcangeli has said in a death certificate.
The certificate released on Monday for the 88-year-old pontiff said the pope had fallen into a coma before his death earlier in the day.
Pope Francis had suffered various ailments during his 12-year papacy, with severe complications in recent weeks following a bout of double pneumonia for which he spent 38 days at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital.
The Vatican also released Pope Francis’s spiritual testament – a written statement of faith – in which he said he wished to be buried in Rome’s Basilica of Saint Mary Major and not at St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, unlike many of his predecessors.
JD Vance had a “brief” meeting with the Pope amid tensions between the pontiff and the White House on migration policy and welfare cuts. The US Vice President, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, is understood to have been keen to meet his Holiness whilst in Rome with his family.
The leader of the Catholic church had been reticent to grant an official meeting, but a “brief” audience was held on Sunday morning in Casa Santa Marta where the 88-year-old lives. The meeting is understood to have “lasted a few minutes” according to the Vatican, allowing the two to exchange Easter greetings. The Pope has previously been critical of the US administration, condemning their policy on migration and pledge of mass deportations as “a disgrace”.
Mr Vance has at times attempted to clumsily use Catholic teachings to justify the White House’s approach to migration but has been slapped down by the Pope in open letters to Catholic Bishops in the US.
He was also outspoken on President Donald Trump, hours before his inauguration, telling Italian TV: “This won’t do! This is not the way to solve things. That’s not how things are resolved.”
“If they had advisers who had their hand on the pulse of the Democratic Party or national politics, they would have understood the intense level of anger or indifference to them that remains inside our party and isn’t going away anytime soon,” LaRosa said in a recent interview withThe Hill.
“I love both Bidens dearly, but staff loyalty means there is a responsibility to provide them with an honest situational awareness, especially when it comes to their public image, no matter how hurtful it is to hear,” LaRosa added.
An activist group supporting Karmelo Anthony, who is accused of murdering fellow teenager Austin Metcalf at a Texas track meet, posted a bizarre POV-style video on social media showing their security team escorting the alleged killer from jail after he made bond.
In the clip posted by the Next Generation Action Network [NGAN], a member of the organization’s security team shakes the teen’s hand and tells him to “get behind us” and “just stay close” as they walk past the media while leaving the Collin County Jail.
One female reporter shoves a microphone in Anthony’s face and asks if he has anything he’d like to say to the Metcalf family and why he was armed that day, calling him “sweatheart.”
Accused teen killer Karmelo Anthony seen in a newly released video captured by a pair of Ray-Ban glasses. @niquealex/Instagram
Anthony stays mum as they continue to the vehicle, where the security team ushers him into the backseat, the video shows.
Chris Van Hollen has spent nearly a decade as an under-the-radar lawmaker. But the Maryland Democrat, who gave up a leadership trajectory in the House to serve in the Senate, may now finally be meeting his moment.
Van Hollen has grabbed the national spotlight amid a two-day trip to El Salvador to meet with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident who was mistakenly deported by the Trump administration on erroneous charges of gang membership. After being initially blocked from entering a maximum-security prison by the Salvadoran government, Van Hollen ultimately succeeded in sitting down Thursday with his constituent, who had since been transferred to another detention facility.
“If you deny the constitutional rights of one man, you threaten the constitutional rights and due process for everyone else in America,” Van Hollen said Friday at a press conference at Dulles International Airport, shortly after returning from El Salvador.
He was flanked by advocates holding signs emblazoned with the words, “Thank you Senator Van Hollen.”
Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen returned from his trip to El Salvador Friday after meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man who was deported due to an administrative error.
Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador on Wednesday, April 16, to check on Abrego Garcia’s health and well-being, a month after he was deported to a Salvadoran supermax prison known as CECOT.
“His conversation with me was the first communication that he had with anybody outside of prison since he was abducted. He said he felt very sad about being in a prison because he had not committed any crimes,” Van Hollen said.
However, he said, Abrego Garcia has since been moved to another prison where he says the conditions are better.
“He told me, and this was yesterday, eight days ago, so nine days ago from today, he was moved to another detention center in Santa Ana, where the conditions are better. But he said, despite the better conditions, he still has no access to any news from the outside world and no ability to communicate with anybody in the outside world,” Van Hollen said.
President Donald Trump argued Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s tattoos prove he is a MS-13 gang member who should not be allowed back into the United States.
On Friday evening, Trump highlighted a photo of Abrego Garcia’s hand that appeared to contain “MS-13” tattooed on his knuckles. MS-13 is a Salvadoran-native gang that the U.S. has designated a terrorist organization.
“This is the hand of the man that the Democrats feel should be brought back to the United States, because he is such ‘a fine and innocent person.’ They said he is not a member of MS-13, even though he’s got MS-13 tattooed onto his knuckles, and two Highly Respected Courts found that he was a member of MS-13, beat up his wife, etc,” the president wrote in a post to Truth Social.
The photo Trump showed included labels claiming to identify what the tattoos, each on one knuckle, represented. “M” was supposedly represented by a marijuana leaf, “S” was represented by a smiley face, “1” was represented by a cross, and “3” was a skull, according to the legend, with the latter two images possibly being to cover up the two numbers.
The Democratic Party faces a growing rift over how to take on President Donald Trump. On one side, younger, more defiant members are pushing for generational change and a harder line. On the other? Moderates and institutionalists who seem pretty comfortable clinging to the status quo.
Democrats like Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen have been on the front lines, demanding accountability and treating the case like the crisis it is. Others, such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom, are dismissing the party’s focus on Garcia as a “distraction,” urging Democrats to hit Trump on tariffs and trade instead.
Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, right, speaks with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man whom the Trump administration wrongly deported El Salvador, in a hotel restaurant in San Salvador, El Salvador, on April 17.
“This is the hand of the man that the Democrats feel should be brought back to the United States, because he is such a ‘fine and innocent person,'” President Trump wrote.
On Friday, President Donald Trump released a photo of the tattoos belonging to MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was recently deported to El Salvador after unlawfully residing in the United States. The tattoos on his knuckles are affiliated with the MS-13 gang, which include a marijuana leaf, a smiley face, a cross, and a skull. These symbols are intended to spell out “MS-13.”
The photo evidence comes after Democratic lawmakers claimed that the Trump administration unlawfully deported illegal immigrant Abrego Garcia to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CEDOT), who had been residing in the United States with his wife in Maryland. This resulted in Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) travelling to El Salvador in an attempt to bring the foreign terrorist back to the US.
“This is the hand of the man that the Democrats feel should be brought back to the United States, because he is such a ‘fine and innocent person,'” President Trump wrote on X. “They said he is not a member of MS-13, even though he’s got MS-13 tattooed onto his knuckles, and two Highly Respected Courts found that he was a member of MS-13, beat up his wife, etc. I was elected to take bad people out of the United States, among other things. I must be allowed to do my job. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
The clash over President Donald Trump’s bid to exercise unprecedented powers in deporting migrants deepened Sunday as he again bashed the judiciary, while a top Democrat warned the country was “closer and closer” to a constitutional crisis.
The latest events followed a dramatic intervention by the Supreme Court in the pre-dawn hours of Saturday to temporarily block Trump’s use of an obscure law to deport Venezuelan migrants without due process.
Trump lashed out Sunday on his Truth Social platform, not specifically naming the high court but slamming the “WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Judges and Law Enforcement Officials who are allowing this sinister attack on our Nation to continue, an attack so violent that it will never be forgotten!”
Samuel Alito, one of two conservative high-court justices to vote against the halt, called the emergency ruling by the court’s majority “legally questionable.”
As of Saturday morning, the White House had not immediately responded to a request from Reuters for comment. When President Trump was asked on Friday about the planned deportations of the Venezuelan men, he claimed he was unfamiliar with the particular case, but said that “if they’re bad people,” he would “certainly authorize it.”
The Trump administration—including the president, Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, and other immigration officials—have in the few months since taking office rolled out a coordinated onslaught against immigrants, both documented and not, across the country. This comes after Trump, when running for office, referred to immigrants as “animals” and said that they are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
In March, more than 130 men whom the Trump administration claimed were Tren de Aragua members were deported to El Salvador. Family members and lawyers for the men have said they were singled out because of tattoos that they have, but an expert on the gang told NBC that tattoos are not closely connected with affiliation to Tren de Aragua and that “Venezuelan gangs are not identified by tattoos.” (Immigration officials have maintained that they did not solely rely on tattoos to identify the deportees as alleged gang members.)
Speaking to reporters at Dulles airport in Washington on Friday afternoon, the senator Chris Van Hollen just accused the government of El Salvador of creating the hoax he called “Margarita-gate”, by placing a pair of cocktail glasses on the table between himself and Kilmar Ábrego García as they met the night before, to make it look as though they were enjoying drinks.
Those photographs were posted on X by El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, along with a caption that downplayed the seriousness of the situation by falsely claiming that the senator and the wrongly deported man had been “sipping margaritas” as they met on Thursday evening.
But the senator said that the drinks were placed there during the meeting by someone from the Salvadoran government before the photographs were taken and that neither he nor Ábrego García had touched them. Van Hollen pointed out that there was visual evidence for this in the photographs: the rims of both glasses were covered in salt or sugar, but it was clear from the images that neither glass had been drunk from, since the rims were undisturbed.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer has denied a request from two Democrat Representatives who sought approval of funds to visit Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador.
Reps. Robert Garcia and Maxwell Frost had asked to receive funds from the Congressional budget (that’s taxpayer money) to fly down to El Salvador and meet with alleged MS-13 gang member and wife-beater Abrego Garcia.
Comer bluntly shut down the request, telling the Democrat Congressmen that he will “not approve a single dime of taxpayer funds” to be used for such a purpose. He noted that Democrat Sen. Van Hollen already visited Abrego Garcia.
“If you also wish to meet with him, you can spend your own money,” he stated.
The clash over President Donald Trump‘s bid to exercise unprecedented powers in deporting migrants deepened Sunday as he again bashed the judiciary, while a top Democrat warned the country was “closer and closer” to a constitutional crisis.
The latest events followed a dramatic intervention by the Supreme Court in the pre-dawn hours of Saturday to temporarily block Trump‘s use of an obscure law to deport Venezuelan migrants without due process.
Trump lashed out Sunday on his Truth Social platform, not specifically naming the high court but slamming the “WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Judges and Law Enforcement Officials who are allowing this sinister attack on our Nation to continue, an attack so violent that it will never be forgotten!”
Samuel Alito, one of two conservative high-court justices to vote against the halt, called the emergency ruling by the court’s majority “legally questionable.”
“Literally in the middle of the night, the Court issued unprecedented and legally questionable relief… without hearing from the opposing party,” Alito wrote in his dissent.
Extreme cosmic events such as colliding black holes or the explosions of stars can cause ripples in spacetime, so-called gravitational waves. Their discovery opened a new window into the universe. To observe them, ultra-precise detectors are required. Designing them remains a major scientific challenge for humans.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light (MPL) have been working on how an artificial intelligence system could explore an unimaginably vast space of possible designs to find entirely new solutions. The results were recently published in the journal Physical Review X.
More than a century ago, Einstein theoretically predicted gravitational waves. They could only be directly detected in 2016 because the development of the necessary detectors was extremely complex. Dr. Mario Krenn, head of the research group ›Artificial Scientist Lab‹ at MPL, in collaboration with the team of LIGO (“Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory”), who built those detectors successfully, has designed an AI-based algorithm called ›Urania‹ to design novel interferometric gravitational wave detectors. Interferometry describes a measurement method which uses the interference of waves, i.e. their superposition when they meet. Detector design requires optimizing both layout and parameters. The scientists have converted this challenge into a continuous optimization problem and solved it using methods inspired by modern machine learning. They have found many new experimental designs which outperform the best known next-generation detectors. These results have the potential to improve the range of detectable signals by more than an order of magnitude.
According to a statement issued by the “Hawks” — a specialized police unit that investigates serious crimes — Sullivan, 45, was abducted at the Fellowship Baptist Church in Motherwell Township outside the coastal city of Gqeberha and was being held in a safehouse in that city.
The Hawks say numerous police agencies acting on tips went to the house Tuesday and saw a vehicle. Suspects in the vehicle tried to flee, opening fire on the officers as they did and “the officers responded with tactical precision, leading to a high-intensity shootout” in which the three suspects were killed.
Sullivan was found in the vehicle “miraculously unharmed,” the statement says, adding that he was “immediately assessed by medical personnel and is currently in an excellent condition.
At least 40 people were killed in a brutal attack on a Christian farming community in north-central Nigeria late Sunday night, according to President Bola Tinubu. The attackers, who were reported as being Muslim gunmen, struck on Palm Sunday in the Zike community, located in Bassa, Plateau State.
Open Doors reports this latest attack brings the death toll to around 113 people who have been killed in an ongoing spate of attacks in Plateau State since the end of March. The watchdog group reports Muslim Fulani militants have attacked at least eight communities, destroying more than 300 homes and displacing 3,000 people.
In the last few weeks, the militants killed 3 Christians who were in the middle of farming their land, 11 Christians who had gathered for a funeral – including a pregnant woman and a ten-year-old girl – and at least five Christian women who had gathered for fellowship.
In the Palm Sunday attack, Andy Yakubu, a resident of Zike, said homes were looted and set ablaze during the onslaught, and the death toll could exceed 50. At the last count, an Open Doors contact reported, “43 people were killed, several houses were burnt down with people inside.”
Hamas says it has “lost contact” with the group of fighters holding an Israeli-American hostage captive in Gaza following an Israeli strike on their location.
The 21-year-old soldier, Edan Alexander, has appeared in videos released by the group in recent days.
Israel had asked for him to be released on day one of a new 45-day ceasefire proposal put forward last week which has been rejected by Hamas.
Hamas on Tuesday did not indicate when contact had been lost and has not produced any evidence for their claim. Israel regularly asserts it avoids hitting locations where it believes hostages are being held.
“We announce that we have lost contact with the group holding soldier Edan Alexander following a direct strike on their location,” Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida said in a statement.
“We are still trying to reach them at this moment,” he added.
Dominique Alexander, a self-described minister and activist with a violent history, has thrown his weight behind Karmelo Anthony, the young teen accused of fatally stabbing fellow teen Austin Metcalf at a high school track meet.
Alexander recently celebrated Anthony’s release on bond via an X post, stating, “Karmelo Anthony is SAFE at home,” framing it as a community victory. However, Alexander’s extensive criminal history raises questions about his credibility as an advocate.
In 2009, Alexander was arrested for causing serious bodily injury to a 2-year-old child, resulting in a subdural hemorrhage and retinal hemorrhages, injuries doctors attributed to abusive head trauma, according to the Dallas Observer.
Alexander admitted to shaking the child but claimed the injuries were accidental. He faced a first-degree felony charge but avoided significant jail time through plea deals and probation.
In 2016, he was sentenced to five years for probation violations, though he served only eight days, according to The Dallas Express.
In a sign of just how depraved society has become, the case immediately became a racial issue despite Anthony, who is black, being the one who allegedly murdered Metcalf. Donations poured into Anthony’s GoFundMe campaign for his “legal defense,” and posts like this were made calling for “justice,” not for the boy who was killed, but for the alleged killer.
Karmelo Anthony is SAFE at home.
This moment is a reminder that a community united can never be divided.
The journey ahead is long, but today—we celebrate a victory for justice, for family, and for the power of people coming together to protect our youth.