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Vice President JD Vance took aim at late Pope Francis and the Vatican in his new book, describing the meeting with the Roman Catholic Church's leader who died roughly 24 hours after the conversation, according to The Washington Post.Vance described the meeting as "'unsettling' as the officials uttered what he describes as 'trite platitudes' and 'clichés,' adding that he preferred the direct rebukes offered by Pope Francis," The Post reported.In the new book, "Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith," which is slated to be released on Tuesday, Vance talked about his short conversation with Francis and Vatican diplomats on Easter morning. He wrote about being "unusually nervous" on the drive to the Vatican — and what would later be known as the last day of Francis's life."The vice president’s criticism of Vatican officials in his new book contrasts with his favorable accounts of both Francis and Pope Leo XIV, the first American-born pope. His account follows efforts by U.S. and Vatican officials to downplay tensions between the two sides as they’ve disagreed over the last year and a half on matters of immigration and war," according to The Post.Vance argued that Vatican officials were "too diplomatic" in the talks and "unwilling to talk in specifics about the subjects on which the U.S. and the Holy See disagreed," The Post reported."He acknowledges that the diplomats probably avoided specifics 'out of a desire to be, well, diplomatic,' but writes that their comments were 'too abstract to be helpful,'" according to The Post.The vice president converted to Catholicism in 2019 and in his new book, shares his faith experiences. "Vance adds he was 'struck that one of the few institutions with the moral authority and global perspective to address the migration question seemed so afraid of saying something controversial that it chose, effectively, to say nothing at all,'" The Post reported.In the book, he reflected on the encounter and on other decisions he made during his 2021 Senate campaign."One of the dumbest things I ever said came when I argued that ‘childless cat ladies’ across the Democrat Party were running our country into the ground," Vance wrote in his new book. "It was a boneheaded comment, intentionally (and successfully) provocative rather than illuminating."

A Republican lawmaker's comments about the Iran agreement during an interview with Fox News on Monday drew laughs online.Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), an Army veteran and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, defended the Trump administration's reported move to give Iran billions of dollars, saying it was good and that the taxpayer-funded expense made sense because "we destroyed so much.""OK, maybe they do end up getting $20 billion, let's say—we're still $300 to $500 billion ahead considering we destroyed their Navy, destroyed their Air Force, destroyed all those nuclear facilities I already spoke about, their steel manufacturing, their drone manufacturing," Mast said.Journalists and political commentators questioned the GOP congressman's math."Math degree from Trump University," S.V. Dáte, White House correspondent at HuffPost, wrote on X."This is not how anything works," Tom Nichols, staff writer at The Atlantic, wrote on X."This time we'll send barges full of cash. That will show them! Mast leaves out that when Obama sent cash, it was the Iranians' money that had sat in interest-bearing accounts for decades. This time it will be U.S. Taxpayers who foot the bill," Decoding Fox News, a newsletter and podcast founded by Juliet Jeske, wrote on X."Would Brian Mast call this...., 'palettes [SIC] of cash,' or 'plane loads of cash?'" Comedian and artist Patric Reynolds wrote on Bluesky.Math degree from Trump University. https://t.co/mi2hGX1bn4— S.V. Dáte (@svdate) June 15, 2026

Experts were raising questions about President Donald Trump's health after photo and video footage showed the now octogenarian traveling between back-to-back events across the ocean.Trump went from Sunday night's UFC Freedom 250 event at the White House to France for the G7 Summit to discuss the next steps in the deal with Iran to stop the military conflict and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.Political commentators reacted to the president's appearance in Évian-les-Bains, France, with French President Emmanuel Macron."The WH is trying to project Trump as the president who never stops working, going right from the UFC thing to Paris and nailing down the Iran agreement when others were sleeping. In reality, he looks and sounds totally spent. How much longer can they keep the plates spinning?" Conspiracy expert and author Mike Rothschild wrote on X."Trump does not look like a man that’s in full control of his faculties," entrepreneur and technologist Gissur Simonarson, co-founder of Cloud Sherpa, wrote on X."Trump looks like death warmed over," journalist Aaron Rupar wrote on X."Trump, now 80 years old, is looking banged up after his big night at the fights and a flight to Europe," Rupar wrote in a separate X post."The blank eyes. A portal to hell," political commentator Bill Johnson wrote on X.The WH is trying to project Trump as the president who never stops working, going right from the UFC thing to Paris and nailing down the Iran agreement when others were sleeping.In reality, he looks and sounds totally spent. How much longer can they keep the plates spinning? https://t.co/Unfvq3uzBE— Mike (not a) Rothschild (@rothschildmd) June 15, 2026

Mark Carney says Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise office hasn’t been ‘effective’ since its 2019 setupCanada is eliminating a watchdog that investigates alleged human rights violations committed by Canadian companies operating abroad, after Mark Carney said the office hadn’t been “effective” since it was set up in 2019.The move comes as Canada faces criticism from Donald Trump’s administration over its “unacceptable” efforts to combat forced labour. Continue reading...

Mark Levin, one of President Donald Trump's most reliable media defenders and a leading hawk on the Iran war, is breaking with the president over the peace deal Trump is racing to sign — demanding to actually see the agreement before it's locked in.In a post on X on Sunday, the conservative radio host pressed for transparency on the memorandum of understanding the administration says it will sign with Iran. Levin asked whether the MOU "has... been released so we can actually read it," answering his own question with a pointed "Why not?" Briefing "selected reporters" through a "senior official" on the deal's "broad outlines," he argued, "is not enough."The complaint lands as Trump pushes to finalize the agreement on Sunday — his 80th birthday. Trump declared on Truth Social that the deal was "scheduled to get signed" and that the Strait of Hormuz would be "OPEN TO ALL" immediately afterward, casting it as a barrier to a nuclear-armed Iran.The reported terms help explain why a hawk like Levin is uneasy. According to Reuters and other outlets, the draft would have Iran reopen the strait while the U.S. lifts its naval blockade, releases roughly $25 billion in frozen Iranian assets — including direct cash transfers — waives oil sanctions and holds off on new ones, with broader nuclear talks pushed to a later phase.The Sunday post wasn't a one-off. British broadcaster Piers Morgan, locked in his own feud with Levin, accused the host over the weekend of having "raged at President Trump for wanting to end the Iran war" and urging him to keep bombing — and Levin's own broadcasts back up the charge. As the fighting moved toward a truce, Levin declared on his show, "I hate this word ceasefire," and argued that Iran "should be forced to sign a surrender document. Unconditional surrender." After an earlier ceasefire, he warned on Sean Hannity's program to "make no mistake: they are the enemy," insisting the regime would not be contained "if there's not regime change."He has been just as dismissive of the diplomacy itself, calling Iran's proposals "an absolute disaster" and branding reported drafts of the deal "disastrous," warning that an agreement along those lines would let the Iranian regime survive. That hard line has put Levin crosswise not only with the president he usually defends but with parts of Trump's own base — figures like Steve Bannon have accused him of undermining Trump's "peace posture" and quietly siding with the neocon hawks the MAGA movement claims to reject.The details of the deal itself remain murky, which is precisely Levin's gripe. Iran has repeatedly cautioned against speculation about the timing and contents, and its Fars news agency reported the strait would stay under Tehran's control, dismissing Trump's "open to all" claim as "incomplete and inconsistent with reality." Trump, for his part, has denied Iran's account of the terms.Also on Sunday, Levin wrote, "Iran’s Hezbollah continues firing missiles into Israel. This is precisely what I and others have been warning about."It all marks a striking turn for a host who spent the war as one of Trump's fiercest defenders. But with Trump now moving to wind the conflict down and cut a deal that delivers Iran sweeping economic relief, Levin has shifted from cheerleader to skeptic — joining a chorus of hawks bristling at an outcome they spent months warning against.

President Donald Trump publicly chided Israel on Sunday over a morning airstrike on Beirut, warning that the attack threatened to derail the Iran peace deal he is trying to sign on his 80th birthday."This morning's attack on Beirut should not have happened, particularly on a special day when we are so close to a Peace Deal with Iran," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post at 10:46 a.m. Eastern.While allowing that "Israel has the right to defend itself against threats," Trump played down the provocation Israel said it was answering, calling it "very small and meaningless" and noting that "nobody was hurt, injured, or killed." The strike, he wrote, "should not disrupt this important process."He then urged all sides to back off. "We are very close to a Deal that will bring peace to the region, including to Lebanon, and all sides should stand down," Trump wrote. "There should be no more attacks by Israel anywhere in Lebanon, but there should also be no more attacks by any other party, including Hezbollah, against Israel."Trump closed on a familiar mix of optimism and warning: "This could be the beginning of a long and beautiful peace — Let's not blow it!"The post came hours after the Israeli military said it had struck Hezbollah "infrastructure" in Beirut's southern suburbs — and on the same day Trump has insisted a U.S.-Iran agreement to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz could be signed. Iranian officials have been more cautious about the timing, and warned that the Beirut strike would not go unanswered.

A peace deal between Washington and Tehran – one that President Donald Trump has shown a “strange insistence” on being finalized Sunday, his 80th birthday – is at risk of collapse after a key Iranian demand was violated Sunday morning, Al Jazeera reported.Iran has demanded that Israel halt its bombardment of Lebanon as a non-negotiable condition to ending the war, a demand that Israel has largely ignored, despite Trump’s insistence that Israel halts its attacks on its northern neighbor. And on Sunday, Israel launched airstrikes on suburbs in Beirut, Lebanon’s capital and largest city, killing at least two and wounding four.The attack, warned Sami Nader of the Levant Institute for Strategic Affairs, could blow up the U.S.-Iran peace deal Trump had hoped would be finalized Sunday.“This event is quite significant and it has the potential to torpedo the deal between the US and Iran,” Nader told Al Jazeera. “The thing is now how Iran will retaliate?”Iran launched strikes against Israel for striking Lebanon as recently as last week, setting a new precedent in the war by launching attacks against Israel on behalf of another country. Whether Iran repeats last week’s attack remains to be seen, though Al Jazeera’s Almigdad Alruhaid argued that Israel’s Sunday morning strikes were, at the least, a potential “huge setback” for a brokered deal between Washington and Tehran.“This is a serious development as far as Iran is concerned. We’ve seen that the situation in Lebanon is an integral and central part of the potential peace deal,” Alruhaid wrote.“The latest broader ceasefire, on April 8, was linked to the situation in Lebanon, and Iranian officials have repeatedly said that the situation in Lebanon will not be separated from this deal. So it could be a huge setback.”

A sweeping defeat of Trump's immigration policies will likely end up in the Supreme Court, a legal expert flagged.Last week, a federal judge in Rhode Island struck down four Trump policies that froze immigration benefits for nationals from 39 countries, attorney Rachel Cohen said on Legal AF. Cohen is now expecting that challenge to land in the Supreme Court."I would be shocked if it didn't go all the way up to the Supreme Court," Cohen said, referring to the case Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island v. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The administration entered final judgment earlier this week and has already filed a notice of appeal, Cohen added.The Trump administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the Immigration and Nationality Act with policies that froze asylum decisions, green cards, work permits, and naturalization for people from countries on Trump's travel-ban list, according to Cohen's description of a ruling by Chief Judge John McConnell."It actually is, I would say, one of the most sweeping kind of rebukes to the Trump administration when it comes to its attempts to target legal immigrants that we have seen thus far," Cohen said. "Trump has been attacking legal immigrants left and right by changing policies as much as possible."Cohen also flagged a deeper problem with Trump's policies, grinding the important immigration process to a halt."If you're not even processing any of these applications, basically all that that arm of the government is doing is terrorizing people on the streets, snatching them up," Cohen said, referring to the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees USCIS and ICE. She also noted that congressional Republicans moved to increase the ICE budget by $70 billion over the next three years.