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Pope vs. president is fight everyone loses

President Trump and Pope Leo are in a war of words right now — when they should be allies, not enemies. Both want peace, but the president intends to get it by winning a war against Iran, while the pope thinks the war isn't worth fighting. "I don't want a Pope who thinks it's OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon," Trump said Sunday on his Truth social-media network, in a post blasting the pontiff as "weak on crime and terrible for foreign policy." With midterm elections just seven months away, Catholic voters suddenly find themselves in the crossfire between the ...

Party may be over

There is lore about the 1862 meeting between Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," — the influential novel about slavery — and former President Abraham Lincoln. "So," President Lincoln is reported to have greeted her, "you're the woman who wrote the book that made this great war." History doesn't indicate whether Lincoln made these remarks out of admiration, irritation, regret or some combination thereof. It may be that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg will come to mutter something comparable about the 20-year-old California woman, identified in court records as ...

Funding defense spending is priority

Trump's new budget proposes a $1.5 trillion defense budget in fiscal year 2027, a staggering 40% year-over-year increase. At the same time, it outlines a 10% cut in so-called domestic discretionary programs (a category excluding entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security). Progressives consider this tantamount to a crime against humanity. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the budget "rotten to the core." Sen. Patty Murray of Washington said its vision is "bleak and unacceptable." Her colleague from Oregon, Jeff Merkley, deemed the document "an out-of-touch ...

Heartbreaking Nancy Guthrie case

The disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the mother of "Today" co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, has been a grueling national story. It has been over two months since Nancy was last seen on Feb. 1 at her home in Tucson, Arizona, and her case is perplexing and incredibly frustrating, as no specific suspects have been identified, and authorities continue to analyze surveillance video and retrieve DNA samples. Savannah returned to the "Today" show this month, and even for those of us who do not regularly watch her on weekday mornings, our hearts are still broken for her, and many of us have ...

Rubio shows impressive skills as leader

"White House deploys Marco Rubio to clarify messaging about Iran conflict." So reads the headline on the front page of the Washington Examiner's website in the early hours of April 1, the third month of U.S. military operations against Iran, which have been taking place since Feb. 28. That prominence was overtaken as it was announced that President Donald Trump would address the nation on the war on Wednesday night. But it's still worth noting and could turn out to be more significant as the end of the second Trump term comes into view. Rubio's video making the case for the ...

Is US empire doomed to crumble?

History does not whisper. It warns. Empires do not collapse because of a single moment of weakness. They erode from within, slowly hollowed out by overreach, moral ambiguity and the false belief that their power exempts them from consequence. The question before us is not whether America is strong. It is whether we are wise enough to endure the burden that comes with being the world's lone superpower. Scores of empires have come before us. Each one believed itself indispensable. Each one believed its reach was justified. And each one eventually fell, often not at the hands of foreign ...