Christian nationalism—the idea that strict adherence to Christian theology should govern American political life, separation of church and state be damned—has been on the rise in America for years. Some vanguard elements of this revolutionary movement believe adherents are called to wage a spiritual battle for control of the United States, seeking command of schools, public policy, and even the courts. Its ascendancy helped propel Donald Trump into the White House the first time, and it continues to find purchase at the highest rungs of government, including inside Trump’s second-term cabinet. How is the movement impacting the midterm elections? Our guest on this new episode of Stress Test is Kiera Butler, a Mother Jones national correspondent who has tracked Christian nationalism for years and documented the shifting fortunes of its top leaders. In Trump’s first term, the charismatic prophets of the New Apostolic Reformation held sway. In his second, the ascendant figures are more ascetic, chief among them Doug Wilson, pastor and founder of Christ Church, a more Calvinist congregation in Moscow, Idaho. Wilson also co-created the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, a global network of 160 congregations—including the one attended by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. “Pete Hegseth, who has started these worship sessions in the Pentagon, brought Doug Wilson in earlier this year as a speaker,” Kiera says. “You have this very clear line from this Christian nationalist leader, Doug Wilson, right to Pete Hegseth, who is very close to President Trump.” Kiera joins host Garrison Hayes to discuss the movement’s rising political influence, and the current state of religion in politics more broadly: how it is shaping leaders like Hegseth and JD Vance, and how the right has pushed to rebrand basic Christian empathy as a sin. Garrison, himself a former pastor, observes how the left is trying to reclaim the space: “You have a candidate like James Talarico, who is actively talking about Jesus as a person who invites the stranger and the immigrant. And so you have this kind of warring and competing vision of Christianity playing out in American politics.” What’s stressing Kiera out? “Fundamentalism in all of its forms,” she says. “When I look around and I see people who are against religious pluralism and who are actively trying to undermine the separation of church and state, that’s what freaks me out.” This transcript was generated with automated tools and may contain errors. Garrison Hayes: Talk about faith during these midterms is kind of everywhere. We’re talking about Islam and Judaism. And of course, if you’re anything like me, you’re interested in the conversation about Christianity that’s happening again during the midterms. If you’ve been keyed in on the political conversation that we’ve been having here in America, then you know that you’re well aware that this conversation about Christianity and faith isn’t only limited to the right wing. Both Democrats and Republicans are leveraging the common language of faith to appeal to voters in this time. And so, who better to talk to than my colleague Kiera Butler? She’s been diving deep into Christian nationalism, following it closely for a very long time. Welcome back. This is Stress Test from Mother Jones. I’m Garrison Hayes, and we’ve been talking about the midterms kind of nonstop. That’s what this show is all about. And I’m really, really excited to dig into this conversation. I’ll tell you, in the last episode, David Corn, my co-host, and I had a great conversation with Mother Jones reporter Russ Choma on the money side of the upcoming midterm election. There’s so much there around who’s funding who, campaign finance, potential malfeasance, all that stuff is kind of there, and you definitely want to go back and check it out. If you missed it, you can watch that on our YouTube channel, youtube.com/motherjones. Definitely go check that out. But I think this conversation is also really interesting and really, really important. We’re talking about the role of faith in the current political economy. So without further ado, I want to welcome national correspondent Kiera Butler onto the stage here with me to talk about today’s topic. Kiera’s been keeping a close tab on extremism and Christian nationalism here in the United States for a while. Kiera, welcome to the show. Kiera Butler: Thank you so much for having me, Garrison. GH: Of course, of course. I want to start with where we are right now. You know, I made something a little over a year ago after Charlie Kirk’s death. I watched his memorial service, and it felt like a revival. It also kind of felt like the kind of peak of Christian nationalist fervor in this country. I don’t know if I’m misreading that. You’ve been, of course, staying close on this. And so a year later, heading into the midterms, are we still seeing that same momentum that many Christian nationalist types were riding after the unfortunate and untimely assassination of Charlie Kirk? KB: Yeah, you know, that was certainly a flashpoint. Charlie Kirk’s murder hit a lot of people really hard in the Christian community, and not just Christian nationalists either. You know, I think that was a real reckoning in that community. And in some ways it was a unifying force, and in other ways, you know, we saw new divisions kind of coming to light after that. I would say that since then it’s not that there’s any less Christian nationalism, it’s just that it’s looking a little bit different, and we can get into that. GH: Yeah, I’d like to get into it. And it felt like in some ways some people were trying to use that as a way to advance a more stringent Christian nationalist agenda. And I’m curious if you were seeing the same thing up close. KB: Yeah, so I like to put the Christian nationalists into kind of two different buckets, right? You’ve got the kind of more old-school evangelical charismatic Christian nationalists. These are folks, I’ve done a little bit of reporting on the New Apostolic Reformation. This is a movement where, you know, self-proclaimed prophets will talk about politics as kind of a mountain to be conquered. There are these seven mountains that, you know, culture and entertainment and politics and education. There’s, you know, several more as well. And these folks, you know, if you picture kind of your evangelical megachurch, you know, the worship band, people kind of swaying back and forth, it’s a very kind of interactive style of worship. This was the movement that really defined Trump’s first presidency. You know, this is Paula White-Cain, who is actually still Trump’s spiritual adviser, but this movement was ascendant, and you saw January 6, 2021, was a big moment for these folks. You know, that this movement was very influential in that storming of the Capitol and in election denialism. In Trump’s second term, we’ve really seen the emergence, or I guess the ascendancy, of a different kind of Christian nationalism. We’ve seen a group of folks who I wrote about about two years ago for the first time called the TheoBros. These folks are Reformed Christians, and Reformed theology is a whole thing, as you know, Garrison. It’s—there’s a lot to it. But basically, these folks believe that God decides in advance who’s going to heaven. Their worship style is much more restrained. They sing hymns and psalms, you know, that they are not the, like, you know, soaring worship band, pastor in jeans, like, you know, strutting back and forth. They’re very almost puritanical in their worship style. These folks, though, are pretty extreme in their beliefs. A lot of them believe women shouldn’t be able to vote. A lot of them believe in bringing—they call it prison reform, but by prison reform they mean bringing back public flogging and public execution, which, you know, we’ve seen—we’ve just seen a whole news cycle about that recently. And, you know, they also—they’re self-proclaimed Christian nationalists. They will come right out and say, you know, I believe that the Ten Commandments should be replacing the US Constitution. So I should say, you know, that was kind of a long-winded way of explaining these two Christian nationalist camps that I notice and, you know, really saying that the latter, the TheoBros, I see as more influential politically these days. GH: Yeah, that’s a good point to kind of transition, because the idea here, you know, as you’re saying with the folks who are more influential, is to really have the ear of the president, the people who are really wanting to have a little bit more influence on exactly what kind of comes out. And I guess my question in all of this is, who are the people who have the ear of the president in this time, and who are the leaders that are influencing those who will likely be elected in these midterm elections? KB: One of the most influential Christians who has Trump’s ear is Pete Hegseth, secretary of, as he says, war. He is a Reformed Christian. He certainly belongs to this camp of TheoBros that I was just talking about. His faith—he belongs to a church that is in a denomination called the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. This is a Christian nationalist denomination. It was started by a guy named Doug Wilson, who’s a pastor in Moscow, Idaho. I’ve spent a lot of time reporting about Doug Wilson and his beliefs, and he is the spiritual adviser of Pete Hegseth. And in fact, Pete Hegseth, who has started these, like, worship sessions in the Pentagon, brought Doug Wilson in earlier this year as a speaker at the Pentagon. So, you know, in Pete Hegseth, you have this very clear line from this Christian nationalist leader, Doug Wilson, right to Pete Hegseth, who is very close to President Trump. I will also say that JD Vance, even though he’s a Catholic, so he’s a kind of a different flavor, he mixes pretty freely with this group of TheoBros. A lot of the TheoBros have connections to Silicon Valley. And JD Vance became acquainted with them during his time in Silicon Valley with the world of Peter Thiel, another Christian thinker. And so JD Vance is—he’s very influenced by this, by the TheoBro movement, by some of the, I would say, like, postliberal intellectual circles that JD Vance moves in have influenced him quite a bit. GH: Yeah, well, Kiera, you kind of undersold yourself. You haven’t just been reporting on Doug Wilson. I want to come back to JD Vance and the folks inside the White House in a bit, but you haven’t just been reporting on Doug Wilson. You actually went out to Moscow, Idaho, to talk to him. You interviewed him, and I’m curious what that was like, and what did you see when you were there? KB: Yeah, I’ve actually been to Moscow twice now. So in Moscow, it’s—I have to say, it’s an adorable town. I felt so at home there. I used to live in Berkeley, California, and it reminded me of, like, a mini Berkeley, like college town, you know, think, like, little cozy cafes and, like, couches on porches, and, you know, the University of Idaho is the big college that’s there, and their mascot is the Vandal. And so you see this, like, little Vandal things everywhere. Super cute town, really beautiful part of the country. It’s kind of in the northwest corner of Idaho. But Doug Wilson has this project there. He’s trying to make Moscow, Idaho, into his own little Christian fiefdom. He’s said this. This is something that he’s, you know, fully, you know, states as a goal of his, and he’s done a pretty good job. He started this church, which is now a whole denomination of Reformed Christians. I think there’s something like 160 churches around the world in this denomination. In the county, Latah County, in Moscow, where he is, there are seven churches that are related to his original one. He started a publishing house that’s now a media company. It’s called Canon Press, K through 12 Christian school, a college called New Saint Andrews— GH: I’m jumping in only because, Kiera, I imagine someone watching this is like, okay, he has a, you know, a press and a media company and he has a church that’s maybe growing, perhaps. What are some of the things that a person or someone who subscribes to Doug Wilson’s beliefs, or maybe just Doug Wilson himself—he can speak for himself—what does he believe? As I understand it, there are things that they believe about women and about the gender roles and all of this stuff. Can you get into some of the beliefs? KB: Yeah, absolutely. So Doug is a proud—well, I’ll say Doug is a fan of the patriarchy. His religion, his denomination is patriarchal. Women do not hold leadership roles in his church. He believes in household voting, which is actually something JD Vance has mentioned too, where the head of the household would vote for the entire household. And Doug Wilson believes that men should be the heads of households, and that wives should be submissive to their husbands. That’s a strong core of his belief. Related to that, he also believes that women are ill suited for combat roles in the military, which of course gets important when you think about what Pete Hegseth is doing with the US military. And in addition to that, you know, he has the sort of beliefs that you would expect from a kind of a fundamentalist Christian. He believes gay marriage should be illegal. He believes abortion should be illegal, that abortion should be considered murder. GH: It actually may be helpful, Kiera, to just hear from Doug Wilson. I’d love to play a little bit of tape, a little snippet from your interview with Doug Wilson back in September, where you asked him about his relationship with the defense secretary, or the secretary of war, as he calls himself. And then I want to ask you about what you thought of his answer. So let’s hear from Doug Wilson first. [Clip plays.] GH: You know, it really strikes me that he is almost trying to downplay his kind of connection and role. That’s what kind of stood out to me. What stood out to you, Kiera? KB: Yeah, you know, what stood out to me in all of my interactions with Doug Wilson when I was there in Moscow is that he is kind of very different when I’m interviewing him, like, you know, when I’m talking to him in person, than he is in some of the viral clips of him that have gone around. You know, he famously said to CNN, like, women are the kind of people who people come out of. In it—I don’t know, like, in his speech at a National Conservatism Conference two years ago, he said, I’m a Presbyterian, not a Lesbyterian. He talks about the tranny flag a lot. He, you know, uses the word retarded, retard. He, you know, he is so much more measured when I’ve been talking to him one-on-one, or, you know, you saw his wife Nancy there in that clip, with her as well. It really is, like, I’ve been thinking of it as, like, a tale of two Dougs. GH: That’s fascinating. You bring out the—like, maybe you have, like, an energy that brings the respect out of him in some way. I don’t know what you think that is. KB: Well, I think part of it is that he knows who he’s talking to, right? Before I ever went to Moscow, I’d been emailing back and forth with him, and to his credit, like, he will always answer my emails, but he’ll often work in, like, a little dig at the end. Like, he’ll be like, Okay, and that’s what I think, and you can go write that in your commie publication. So he certainly is aware of the Mother Jones readership, I guess. The other thing I think that is relevant here is that he—every time he’s—he told me during that same interview that you just played a clip from, I asked him, like, is there any part of this when you have a clip that goes viral or, you know, when you say something particularly controversial and there’s a lot of media scrutiny, like, is there anything that’s good for you and your movement when that happens? And he said, absolutely, it’s great for us. You know, people see what I’m saying and they, you know, want to move to Moscow, Idaho, or they want to, you know, find their nearest Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches church. Another one of his core beliefs is that Christians—like, Christian nationalism is very literal to him. So in his ideal version of a Christian America, people of other faiths would not be allowed to hold office. And he gave me an example: Like, Muslims in his Christian America would be able to practice their faith, but they would not be able to build a minaret. So this is a very kind of muscular version of Christian nationalism that he’s imagining. GH: Yeah, there’s something about it that, you know, I don’t think it always goes unsaid, so I won’t make that statement, but it isn’t said enough that there’s something, I think, deeply bigoted about a lot of what Christian nationalism is trying to advance. I mean, you have—obviously this is Islamophobic in nature. We know that there is actually a ton of anti-Blackness that kind of pops up among some of these, quote-unquote, TheoBros, as you call them. And obviously we also have seen a great deal of antisemitism present in Christian nationalism. In the conversations that you’ve been having with Christian nationalists, have any of those elements of bigotry come up when they aren’t being polite, good little boys? KB: Yeah, you know, anytime you ask about immigration, that’s kind of the tell, right? That, like, you know, the both kinds of Christian nationalists, both the New Apostolic Reformation, kind of the charismatic, Pentecostal evangelicals, and the TheoBros, these Reformed guys, like, none of them are, you know, pro-immigrant in any way. And the only—well, no, definitely will not say the only, but an interesting tension comes when you think about Catholics, right? And, you know, JD Vance has gotten himself into some trouble with this. JD Vance obviously is very—it’s kind of a hard line on immigration, but his Catholic faith is in conflict with that. You know, there’s social justice teaching in Catholicism, that, you know, to be welcoming to immigrants, to, you know, extend empathy to immigrants is a core tenet of that faith. So there’s been some interesting tension there. And I’m actually curious, Garrison, what you’ve noticed along those lines as you’ve been looking at folks on the left and Christians in those circles. GH: Yeah, I mean, well, you have this big showdown happening in Texas, where you have the Republican Party has, of course, taken the position of being anti-immigration and taking pretty hard lines on immigration. And then on the Democratic side, you have a candidate like James Talarico, who is actively talking about Jesus as a person who invites the stranger and the immigrant. And so you have this kind of warring and competing vision of Christianity, I think, playing out in American politics. You know, it’s really interesting to see the way that scripture is leveraged on both sides of this conversation. I, of course, have my own perspective in all of this, but I’m really curious to see how Americans who have obviously voted now for Donald Trump—some subset, some section of Americans have voted for Donald Trump, who always ran on an anti-immigration kind of platform—they voted for him now three times, right? And obviously elected him twice. And so I’m kind of interested how a state like Texas, where this conversation isn’t just theoretical, it’s very much kind of playing out in the practical—I’m curious how that will play out from an electoral perspective. But it is interesting to see how Christians on the center left are thinking about Christianity as a way to advance their political agenda. And I don’t think it’s necessarily new. I wouldn’t describe it as new. Black Christians have absolutely across the South been using and leveraging their faith in electoral politics for a long time. I mean, the Souls to the Polls movement has been a really significant way to get Black voters out to go vote, but I’m seeing it in kind of outside of Black circles in a way that does feel a little new, and I’ve been really curious where that’s coming from. KB: I’m curious if you’re hearing in your circles anything about empathy, because one of the big themes over the last year or two, I would say, in the right-wing Christian nationalist circles is the notion of empathy as a sin. The idea that kind of an excess of empathy and/or misplaced empathy is sinful and is something that, you know, Christians need to repent for. And this, particularly with immigration, I would say, you know, folks are saying, like, you know, if you’re welcoming everybody and if you’re, you know, if you’re having a, you know, a bleeding heart for, you know, all of these people who are flooding over the borders, then that is a sin. You’re sinning. What are you hearing in your circles? GH: You know, I’m certainly hearing the opposite of that. This idea is, of course, a part of, to your point, a kind of certain type of Christian nationalist thinking. It’s certainly a talking point. There’s a commentator named Allie Beth Stuckey who wrote an entire book around this called Toxic Empathy. And so I’ll take the reporting hat off for just a moment here. And as a former pastor, I will say that the notion of having some kind of empathy for the stranger, for your neighbor, understanding, welcoming them in, that is a very common theme throughout scripture. You know, whatever you do to the least of these, you’ve done unto me, and, you know, do unto others as you would have them do unto you is a really common theme throughout the synoptic gospels. And so it’s hard to kind of wrap my mind around, as a former pastor, it’s hard to really wrap my mind around this as a sin. Okay, that’s kind of difficult to find, I think, in scripture. But I will say, you know, I’m really curious, you know, what—you know, putting the reporter hat back on, you know, maybe for a moment here—I’m really curious if this is cutting through. And I, you know, Kiera, maybe you have access to some polling data and what people are actually feeling here in the moment, but I’ve been really curious to learn more about how Christians are responding to this. I mean, truly, love thy neighbor feels so fundamental to the kind of ethic of Christianity that it’s hard to imagine what Christianity is without it. And I would, you know, use that term, love thy neighbor, as kind of a proxy for this concept of empathy. KB: Yeah, I mean, that’s—to me, when I first heard about Allie Beth Stuckey’s book, and also a co-pastor of Doug Wilson’s, Joe Rigney, wrote a very similar book, and when I first heard about it, I thought to myself, just like you were saying, it seems incompatible with basic Christian teachings. But, you know, I think it was maybe it was last year when JD Vance was talking about this, when he sort of got into it about the ordo amoris, the Latin for rightly ordered love, I guess. He was talking about, you know, how you should love, or God wants you to love your family first and then, you know, your extended family, and it kind of is, you know, this concentric-circle model of who you should devote your care and empathy to, and the farther out you get from your kind of core nuclear family, the less you should love. And he used that to sort of explain his stance on immigration. And the pope actually came back and was like, That’s not what that means, which was—it was just kind of a funny little disagreement. But I agree, you know, I don’t have any polling. I don’t know whether there’s polling on this issue of empathy or not, and if there is, I don’t have it at my fingertips, but I am very curious about how Christians are receiving that notion. GH: You know, I think a lot of this really depends on something that I’ve heard pastors say for a long time, which is that people aren’t really reading their Bibles anymore, and that there’s this kind of—there’s a real concern that Christians are getting further and further removed from the kind of primary source text in all of this. I will say, as a person who again has kind of studied this stuff and was a pastor for a while, that a part of the Ten Commandments is, you know, the fourth commandment talks about the extension of rest, and it really goes all the way out to the stranger that’s in your country, the stranger in your gates, and then it works backwards from there all the way to the person who lives in your home, a family member. And so this kind of notion that one is supposed to love closer and then maybe kind of work your way out, it kind of, like, there’s something, I’d say, maybe intuitive about that, the idea of proximity, but I think the Bible writers go out of their way to invert that as a way of, I think, reaffirming the importance of loving those far away from you. Okay, this isn’t Bible study, Kiera Butler. KB: I do want to say, though, this made me think of something, and I can’t help but mention it. There is a Progressive Baptist church—and I live in Atlanta, and there’s a Progressive Baptist church in my neighborhood—and they have a bunch of signs outside the church, and one of the signs is, like, somebody drew, like, almost like a child’s drawing of Jesus, and the speech bubble says, Y’all, that is not what I said. GH: Right. Right. Okay. I want to move us on. You just kind of closed out a big investigation about this organization called Life Surge. I loved your episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out. It was so good. You went to this event, you kind of dug deep. If you don’t know, Life Surge is a Christian roadshow that’s tied to the former star quarterback Tim Tebow, and it was great. I’d love for you to tell us a little bit more about that and where we can go find it. What’s kind of interesting about that investigation? KB: Yeah, so Life Surge is—their main event that they draw people in with is, like, a roadshow. It’s, like, a one-day event that’s where they kind of mix, like, worship and motivational speakers. Many of their speakers are, like, athletes, like really famous athletes like Tim Tebow, and, you know, they’ve had Magic Johnson, they’ve had David Ortiz, just, like, you know, super famous people. And during that day they try to get you to sign up for these—what they call Impact Classes, and they’re, like, financial—like, they teach you how to invest in the stock market, teach you how to, like, flip houses and, you know, allegedly make a bunch of money in real estate. And then once you go to the three-day classes, then they try to sell you on packages of investment training that cost, like, you know, packages that range from, like, $10,000 to, like, $50,000. And so my investigation focused on how folks who have done these classes have said that the salespeople are using faith to sell them on a product that they can’t afford. So I’ve, you know, talked to people who have ended up tens of thousands of dollars in debt and said things like, you know, that the salesperson said, If you’re having doubts about whether you want to buy this financial package, that was the devil. The devil was putting doubts in your mind. So that was the investigation. You know, an interesting thing, I guess, just in the wake of the investigation, Tim Tebow cut or paused his ties with Life Surge, and a bunch of the other high-profile speakers did as well. So that was—it was really interesting to see that impact there of our investigation. But, you know, I think because the investigation really got a lot of attention, I’ve gotten a lot of tips from people and, you know, threads to follow, and it really does seem like this is sort of the tip of the iceberg, the world of Christian finance seminars that people are, you know, spending a lot of money and at times losing a lot of money. This is a real wing of, I guess, the right-wing Christian movement that I had not explored before. So I think it’s something to keep an eye on going forward, for sure. GH: I think so, Kiera. I’m excited to see more of what you uncover. Okay, before we let you go, I want to ask you the question that we’re asking all of our guests here on this show: After all of your Christian nationalist reporting and all of that, what’s stressing you out the most? KB: What’s stressing me out the most? Fundamentalism in all of its forms. You know, I think—and that is not unique to Christianity, of course. To me, when I look around and I see people who are against religious pluralism and who are actively trying to undermine the separation of church and state, that’s what freaks me out. GH: Listen, to our viewers and our listeners, Kiera has another Doug Wilson story in the works, along with some of the excellent sneak preview reporting that you heard here today. It’s important, it’s fascinating. These stories are so, so important. They have incredible impact, as you already heard. So make sure you follow her reporting on MotherJones.com. Kiera Butler, thank you. KB: Thank you so much for having me. GH: That’s all we have for you in today’s episode. If you missed the previous episodes of Stress Test, you can watch them on our YouTube channel or wherever you get your podcasts. Our great journalism here at Mother Jones—Kiera’s reporting, Russ Choma’s reporting, Ari Berman’s reporting—all of that is made possible with your support. Your views, your subscriptions keep us going. So don’t forget to like and to share and to subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you have any questions or suggestions, please leave them for us down in the comments below. Our producers love reading your comments. We’ll be back in just a couple of days with another edition of Stress Test. Until then, take care.

The face of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was erased from a church fresco in Rome following a controversy over the artwork earlier this week. The affair began with painter Bruno Valentinetti’s restoration of a fresco at Rome’s Basilica of San Lorenzo in Lucina, which he first painted in the early 2000s. One of the figures in the restored fresco, it was noticed, bore an uncanny resemblance to Meloni. The likeness sparked outrage among opposition parties, prompting the Ministry of Culture and the Diocese of Rome to open an inquiry. According to a Wednesday report in La Repubblica, a daily paper, the painter said he had since painted over the face on Tuesday night. “That’s what the Vatican wanted,” Valentinetti told Italian media. “Yes, it is the prime minister’s face,” he confessed, “but based on the previous painting.” POLITICO reached out to the Vatican for comment but did not receive an answer ahead of publication. The culture ministry said in a statement on Wednesday that following the erasure of the face, Rome’s special superintendent had informed the rector of the basilica of the applicable rules. “Any restoration work requires an authorization request to the Religious Buildings Fund of the Interior Ministry, which owns the property, as well as to the Vicariate and the Special Superintendency of Rome, accompanied by a sketch of the image,” the statement said. While Meloni had previously laughed off the issue, noting “I definitely don’t look like an angel,” it remained unclear on Wednesday how Italy’s right-wing leader felt about being so unceremoniously erased. POLITICO contacted Meloni’s office as well as the rector of the basilica for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

On January 24, a US Border Patrol agent shot and killed 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis after he was held down by multiple federal agents. The Trump administration alleged that Pretti threatened agents with a gun. But videos appear to show Pretti, who was carrying a licensed handgun, holding only his phone in his hand when he was tackled and agents disarming Pretti before he was shot and killed. Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. The Trump administration has since signaled that it’s scaling back the federal immigration operation in the city. Multiple news outlets are reporting that Gregory Bovino, the top US Border Patrol official, has been demoted and will leave. Tom Homan, the White House border czar, is now expected to manage immigration enforcement in Minneapolis, according to multiple reports. Following Pretti’s death, thousands of protesters once again flooded the streets of Minneapolis. One of them was Rob Schenck, an evangelical minister who once routinely lobbied legislators to adopt a Christian conservative agenda and worked to persuade Supreme Court justices to rule in favor of the religious right. But Schenck began doubting the movement and his own role in it—especially once President Donald Trump came to power. Since then, he’s made a moral and political 180 and is now working to undo his decades of activism that he believes helped lead to this moment.  On this week’s More To The Story, Schenck sits down with host Al Letson to talk about what led him to the streets of Minneapolis, his emotional visit to Renée Good’s memorial, and why he’s become “guardedly optimistic” about the ultimate direction of this current political moment in America. Find More To The Story on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Pandora, or your favorite podcast app, and don’t forget to subscribe.

He helped build the religious right in the United States. Now he’s in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to join the clergy’s fight ICE’s siege of the city. “Being here, in solidarity, is part of the repair work in my own soul,” said Rev. Rob Schenck, an Evangelical minister who spent decades commingling church and state to advance conservative causes like the anti-abortion movement. One example: Schenck’s organization, Faith and Action in the Nation’s Capital, created “Operation Higher Court,” which trained wealthy couples as “stealth missionaries” to befriend Supreme Court justices to preserve, in his words, a Christian nation. Now, he says he must confront the damage he helped cause, including what he believes was his role in delivering “the entities that are now inflicting all of this suffering on so many people”—extending to the rise of President Donald Trump. “We made this terrible deal with Donald Trump because we were already demoralized,” he told Mother Jones in 2018. “He didn’t demoralize us—he is the evidence of our demoralization.” So, here, braving subzero temperatures, Schenck told me, “I have to do the work of repair.” The video above was taken on Friday, during the city’s “Day of Truth and Freedom”—a citywide strike and march in which clergy played a prominent role. “These folks are showing more grace in accepting me than I would have ever extended to them,” he said, flanked by organizers shouting, “Whose streets? Our streets!” The next day, after learning of federal agents shooting and killing Alex Pretti, Schenck extended his stay in the city. I’ve been following Rob on his journey over the last few days and the clergy’s fight against ICE, which we will feature more of in the coming days. “This is redemption,” he told me. “This is redemption.”

LONDON — Reza Pahlavi was in the United States as a student in 1979 when his father, the last shah of Iran, was toppled in a revolution. He has not set foot inside Iran since, though his monarchist supporters have never stopped believing that one day their “crown prince” will return.  As anti-regime demonstrations fill the streets of more than 100 towns and cities across the country of 90 million people, despite an internet blackout and an increasingly brutal crackdown, that day may just be nearing.   Pahlavi’s name is on the lips of many protesters, who chant that they want the “shah” back. Even his critics — and there are plenty who oppose a return of the monarchy — now concede that Pahlavi may prove to be the only figure with the profile required to oversee a transition.  The global implications of the end of the Islamic Republic and its replacement with a pro-Western democratic government would be profound, touching everything from the Gaza crisis to the wars in Ukraine and Yemen, to the oil market.  Over the course of three interviews in the past 12 months in London, Paris and online, Pahlavi told POLITICO how Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could be overthrown. He set out the steps needed to end half a century of religious dictatorship and outlined his own proposal to lead a transition to secular democracy. Nothing is guaranteed, and even Pahlavi’s team cannot be sure that this current wave of protests will take down the regime, never mind bring him to power. But if it does, the following is an account of Pahlavi’s roadmap for revolution and his blueprint for a democratic future.  POPULAR UPRISING  Pahlavi argues that change needs to be driven from inside Iran, and in his interview with POLITICO last February he made it clear he wanted foreign powers to focus on supporting Iranians to move against their rulers rather than intervening militarily from the outside.  “People are already on the streets with no help. The economic situation is to a point where our currency devaluation, salaries can’t be paid, people can’t even afford a kilo of potatoes, never mind meat,” he said. “We need more and more sustained protests.” Over the past two weeks, the spiraling cost of living and economic mismanagement have indeed helped fuel the protest wave. The biggest rallies in years have filled the streets, despite attempts by the authorities to intimidate opponents through violence and by cutting off communications. Pahlavi has sought to encourage foreign financial support for workers who will disrupt the state by going on strike. He also called for more Starlink internet terminals to be shipped into Iran, in defiance of a ban, to make it harder for the regime to stop dissidents from communicating and coordinating their opposition. Amid the latest internet shutdowns, Starlink has provided the opposition movements with a vital lifeline. As the protests gathered pace last week, Pahlavi stepped up his own stream of social media posts and videos, which gain many millions of views, encouraging people onto the streets. He started by calling for demonstrations to begin at 8 p.m. local time, then urged protesters to start earlier and occupy city centers for longer. His supporters say these appeals are helping steer the protest movement. Reza Pahlavi argues that change needs to be driven from inside Iran. | Salvatore Di Nolfi/EPA The security forces have brutally crushed many of these gatherings. The Norway-based Iranian Human Rights group puts the number of dead at 648, while estimating that more than 10,000 people have been arrested. It’s almost impossible to know how widely Pahlavi’s message is permeating nationwide, but footage inside Iran suggests the exiled prince’s words are gaining some traction with demonstrators, with increasing images of the pre-revolutionary Lion and Sun flag appearing at protests, and crowds chanting “javid shah” — the eternal shah. DEFECTORS Understandably, given his family history, Pahlavi has made a study of revolutions and draws on the collapse of the Soviet Union to understand how the Islamic Republic can be overthrown. In Romania and Czechoslovakia, he said, what was required to end Communism was ultimately “maximum defections” among people inside the ruling elites, military and security services who did not want to “go down with the sinking ship.”  “I don’t think there will ever be a successful civil disobedience movement without the tacit collaboration or non-intervention of the military,” he said during an interview last February.  There are multiple layers to Iran’s machinery of repression, including the hated Basij militia, but the most powerful and feared part of its security apparatus is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Pahlavi argued that top IRGC commanders who are “lining their pockets” — and would remain loyal to Khamenei — did not represent the bulk of the organization’s operatives, many of whom “can’t pay rent and have to take a second job at the end of their shift.”  “They’re ultimately at some point contemplating their children are in the streets protesting … and resisting the regime. And it’s their children they’re called on to shoot. How long is that tenable?” Pahlavi’s offer to those defecting is that they will be granted an amnesty once the regime has fallen. He argues that most of the people currently working in the government and military will need to remain in their roles to provide stability once Khamenei has been thrown out, in order to avoid hollowing out the administration and creating a vacuum — as happened after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.  Only the hardline officials at the top of the regime in Tehran should expect to face punishment.  In June, Pahlavi announced he and his team were setting up a secure portal for defectors to register their support for overthrowing the regime, offering an amnesty to those who sign up and help support a popular uprising. By July, he told POLITICO, 50,000 apparent regime defectors had used the system.  His team are now wary of making claims regarding the total number of defectors, beyond saying “tens of thousands” have registered. These have to be verified, and any regime trolls or spies rooted out. But Pahlavi’s allies say a large number of new defectors made contact via the portal as the protests gathered pace in recent days.  REGIME CHANGE In his conversations with POLITICO last year, Pahlavi insisted he didn’t want the United States or Israel to get involved directly and drive out the supreme leader and his lieutenants. He always said the regime would be destroyed by a combination of fracturing from within and pressure from popular unrest.  He’s also been critical of the reluctance of European governments to challenge the regime and of their preference to continue diplomatic efforts, which he has described as appeasement. European powers, especially France, Germany and the U.K., have historically had a significant role in managing the West’s relations with Iran, notably in designing the 2015 nuclear deal that sought to limit Tehran’s uranium enrichment program.  But Pahlavi’s allies want more support and vocal condemnation from Europe. U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal in his first term and wasted little time on diplomacy in his second. He ordered American military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities last year, as part of Israel’s 12-day war, action that many analysts and Pahlavi’s team agree leaves the clerical elite and its vast security apparatus weaker than ever.  U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal in his first term and wasted little time on diplomacy in his second. | Pool photo by Bonnie Cash via EPA Pahlavi remains in close contact with members of the Trump administration, as well as other governments including in Germany, France and the U.K. He has met U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio several times and said he regards him as “the most astute and understanding” holder of that office when it comes to Iran since the 1979 revolution.  In recent days Trump has escalated his threats to intervene, including potentially through more military action if Iran’s rulers continue their crackdown and kill large numbers of protesters.  On the weekend Pahlavi urged Trump to follow through. “Mr President,” he posted on X Sunday. “Your words of solidarity have given Iranians the strength to fight for freedom,” he said. “Help them liberate themselves and Make Iran Great Again!” THE CARETAKER KING  In June Pahlavi announced he was ready to replace Khamenei’s administration to lead the transition from authoritarianism to democracy.   “Once the regime collapses, we have to have a transitional government as quickly as possible,” he told POLITICO last year. He proposed that a constitutional conference should be held among Iranian representatives to devise a new settlement, to be ratified by the people in a referendum.  The day after that referendum is held, he told POLITICO in February, “that’s the end of my mission in life.”  Asked if he wanted to see a monarchy restored, he said in June: “Democratic options should be on the table. I’m not going to be the one to decide that. My role however is to make sure that no voice is left behind. That all opinions should have the chance to argue their case — it doesn’t matter if they are republicans or monarchists, it doesn’t matter if they’re on the left of center or the right.”  One option he hasn’t apparently excluded might be to restore a permanent monarchy, with a democratically elected government serving in his name.  Pahlavi says he has three clear principles for establishing a new democracy: protecting Iran’s territorial integrity; a secular democratic system that separates religion from the government; and “every principle of human rights incorporated into our laws.” He confirmed to POLITICO that this would include equality and protection against discrimination for all citizens, regardless of their sexual or religious orientation.  COME-BACK CAPITALISM  Over the past year, Pahlavi has been touring Western capitals meeting politicians as well as senior business figures and investors from the world of banking and finance. Iran is a major OPEC oil producer and has the second biggest reserves of natural gas in the world, “which could supply Europe for a long time to come,” he said.  “Iran is the most untapped reserve for foreign investment,” Pahlavi said in February. “If Silicon Valley was to commit for a $100 billion investment, you could imagine what sort of impact that could have. The sky is the limit.”  What he wants to bring about, he says, is a “democratic culture” — even more than any specific laws that stipulate forms of democratic government. He pointed to Iran’s past under the Pahlavi monarchy, saying his grandfather remains a respected figure as a modernizer.  “If it becomes an issue of the family, my grandfather today is the most revered political figure in the architect of modern Iran,” he said in February. “Every chant of the streets of ‘god bless his soul.’ These are the actual slogans people chant on the street as they enter or exit a soccer stadium. Why? Because the intent was patriotic, helping Iran come out of the dark ages. There was no aspect of secular modern institutions from a postal system to a modern army to education which was in the hands of the clerics.”   Pahlavi’s father, the shah, brought in an era of industrialization and economic improvement alongside greater freedom for women, he said. “This is where the Gen Z of Iran is,” he said. “Regardless of whether I play a direct role or not, Iranians are coming out of the tunnel.”  Conversely, many Iranians still associate his father’s regime with out-of-touch elites and the notorious Savak secret police, whose brutality helped fuel the 1979 revolution. NOT SO FAST  Nobody can be sure what happens next in Iran. It may still come down to Trump and perhaps Israel.  Anti-regime demonstrations fill the streets of more than 100 towns and cities across the country of 90 million people. | Neil Hall/EPA Plenty of experts don’t believe the regime is finished, though it is clearly weakened. Even if the protests do result in change, many say it seems more likely that the regime will use a mixture of fear tactics and adaptation to protect itself rather than collapse or be toppled completely.  While reports suggest young people have led the protests and appear to have grown in confidence, recent days have seen a more ferocious regime response, with accounts of hospitals being overwhelmed with shooting victims. The demonstrations could still be snuffed out by a regime with a capacity for violence.  The Iranian opposition remains hugely fragmented, with many leading activists in prison. The substantial diaspora has struggled to find a unity of voice, though Pahlavi tried last year to bring more people on board with his own movement.  Sanam Vakil, an Iran specialist at the Chatham House think tank in London, said Iran should do better than reviving a “failed” monarchy. She added she was unsure how wide Pahlavi’s support really was inside the country. Independent, reliable polling is hard to find and memories of the darker side of the shah’s era run deep. But the exiled prince’s advantage now may be that there is no better option to oversee the collapse of the clerics and map out what comes next. “Pahlavi has name recognition and there is no other clear individual to turn to,” Vakil said. “People are willing to listen to his comments calling on them to go out in the streets.”

The first American pope is on a collision course with U.S. President Donald Trump. The latest fault line between the Vatican and the White House emerged on Sunday. Shortly after Trump suggested his administration could “run” Venezuela, the Chicago-born Pope Leo XIV appeared at the Angelus window overlooking St. Peter’s Square to deliver an address calling for the safeguarding of the “country’s sovereignty.” For MAGA-aligned conservatives, this is now part of an unwelcome pattern. While Leo is less combative in tone toward Trump than his predecessor Francis, his priorities are rekindling familiar battles in the culture war with the U.S. administration on topics such as immigration and deportations, LGBTQ+ rights and climate change. As the leader of a global community of 1.4 billion Catholics, Leo has a rare position of influence to challenge Trump’s policies, and the U.S. president has to tread with uncustomary caution in confronting him. Trump traditionally relishes blasting his critics with invective but has been unusually restrained in response to Leo’s criticism, in part because he counts a large number of Catholics among his core electorate. “[Leo] is not looking for a fight like Francis, who sometimes enjoyed a fight,” said Chris White, author of “Pope Leo XIV: Inside the Conclave and the Dawn of a New Papacy.” “But while different in style, he is clearly a continuation of Francis in substance. Initially there was a wait-and-see approach, but for many MAGA Catholics, Leo challenges core beliefs.” In recent months, migration has become the main combat zone between the liberal pope and U.S. conservatives. Leo called on his senior clergy to speak out on the need to protect vulnerable migrants, and U.S. bishops denounced the “dehumanizing rhetoric and violence” leveled at people targeted by Trump’s deportation policies. Leo later went public with an appeal that migrants in the U.S. be treated “humanely” and “with dignity.” Leo’s support emboldened Florida bishops to call for a Christmas reprieve from Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. “Don’t be the Grinch that stole Christmas,” said Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami. As if evidence were needed of America’s polarization on this topic, however, the Department of Homeland Security described their arrests as a “Christmas gift to Americans.” Leo also conspicuously removed Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Trump’s preferred candidate for pope and a favorite on the conservative Fox News channel, from a key post as archbishop of New York, replacing him with a bishop known for pro-migrant views. This cuts to the heart of the moral dilemma for a divided U.S. Catholic community. For Trump, Catholics are hardly a sideshow as they constitute 22 percent of his electorate, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center. While the pope appeals to liberal causes, however, many MAGA Catholics take a far stricter line on topics such as migration, sexuality and climate change. To his critics from the conservative Catholic MAGA camp, such as Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon, the pope is anathema. U.S.-born Pope Leo XIV appeared at the Angelus window overlooking St. Peter’s Square to deliver an address calling for the safeguarding of Venezuela’s “sovereignty.” | Stefano Costantino/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Last year the pope blessed a chunk of ice from Greenland and criticized political leaders who ignore climate change. He said supporters of the death penalty could not credibly claim to be pro-life, and argued that Christians and Muslims could be friends. He has also signaled a more tolerant posture toward LGBTQ+ Catholics, permitting an LGBTQ+ pilgrimage to St Peter’s Basilica. Small wonder, then, that Trump confidante and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer branded Leo the “woke Marxist pope.” Trump-aligned Catholic conservatives have denounced him as “secularist,” “globalist” and even “apostate.” Far-right pundit Jack Posobiec has called him “anti-Trump.” “Some popes are a blessing. Some popes are a penance,” Posobiec wrote on X. PONTIFF FROM CHICAGO There were early hopes that Leo might build bridges with U.S. hardliners. He’s an American, after all: He wears an Apple watch and follows baseball, and American Catholics can hardly dismiss him as as foreign. The Argentine Francis, by contrast, was often portrayed by critics as anti-American and shaped by the politics of poorer nations. Leo can’t be waved away so easily. Early in his papacy, Leo also showed signs he was keen to steady the church after years of internal conflict, and threw some bones to conservatives such as allowing a Latin Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica and wearing more ornate papal vestments. But the traditionalists were not reassured. Benjamin Harnwell, the Vatican correspondent for the MAGA-aligned War Room podcast, said conservatives were immediately skeptical of Leo. “From day one, we have been telling our base to be wary: Do not be deceived,” he said. Leo, Harnwell added, is “fully signed up to Francis’ agenda … but [is] more strategic and intelligent.” After the conclave that appointed Leo, former Trump strategist Bannon told POLITICO that Leo’s election was “the worst choice for MAGA Catholics” and “an anti-Trump vote by the globalists of the Curia.” Trump had a long-running feud with Francis, who condemned the U.S. president’s border wall and criticized his migration policies. Francis appeared to enjoy that sparring, but Leo is a very different character. More retiring by nature, he shies away from confrontation. But his resolve in defending what he sees as non-negotiable moral principles, particularly the protection of the weak, is increasingly colliding with the core assumptions of Trumpism. Trump loomed large during the conclave, with an AI-generated video depicting himself as pope. The gesture was seen by some Vatican insiders as a “mafia-style” warning to elect someone who would not criticize him, Vatican-watcher Elisabetta Piqué wrote in a new book “The Election of Pope Leo XIV: The Last Surprise of Pope Francis.” NOT PERSONAL Leo was not chosen expressly as an anti-Trump figure, according to a Vatican official. Rather, his nationality was likely seen by some cardinals as “reassuring,” suggesting he would be accountable and transparent in governance and finances. But while Leo does not seem to be actively seeking a confrontation with Trump, the world views of the two men seem incompatible. “He will avoid personalizing,” said the same Vatican official. “He will state church teaching, not in reaction to Trump, but as things he would say anyway.” Despite the attacks on Leo from his allies, Trump himself has also appeared wary of a direct showdown. When asked about the pope in a POLITICO interview, Trump was more keen to discuss meeting the pontiff’s brother in Florida, whom he described as “serious MAGA.” When pressed on whether he would meet the pope himself, he finally replied: “Sure, I will. Why not?” The potential for conflict will come into sharper focus as Leo hosts a summit called an extraordinary consistory this week, the first of its kind since 2014, which is expected to provide a blueprint for the future direction of the church. His first publication on social issues, such as inequality and migration, is also expected in the next few months. “He will use [the summit] to talk about what he sees as the future,” said a diplomat posted to the Vatican. “It will give his collaborators a sense of where he is going. He could use it as a sounding board, or ask them to suggest solutions.” It’s safe to assume Leo won’t be unveiling a MAGA-aligned agenda. The ultimate balance of power may also favor the pope. Trump must contend with elections and political clocks; Leo, elected for life, does not. At 70, and as a tennis player in good health, Leo appears positioned to shape Catholic politics well after Trump’s moment has passed. “He is not in a hurry,” the Vatican official said. “Time is on his side.”

Well, it’s (almost) over.  2025 was a monster year of news for Europe, but a couple stories in particular shook the continent — and piqued our readers’ interest. The first was a new and hostile U.S. administration, led by Donald Trump, which dramatically upended the transatlantic relationship (and saw him named POLITICO’s most influential person in Europe).  And the second was the war in Ukraine, which dragged into its fourth, bloody year and — together with Trump’s return to the White House — forced Europe’s leaders to make hard choices about the EU’s security, agency and destiny.   The collision of the two, a paradigm-shattering American president, and the grim reality on Ukraine’s battlefield dominated the year’s news. And POLITICO was there for every consequential speech, summit, and Oval Office spat.  Without further ado, here are our 20 most-read stories of 2025.   20. Europe thinks the unthinkable: Retaliating against Russia As the Kremlin launched a wave of hybrid attacks against EU member countries, from menacing fighter jet incursions to mysterious drone sightings, POLITICO asked: What would it take for Europe to finally hit back? Read the story 19. North Korean troops are far from ‘cannon fodder,’ Ukrainian soldiers say Pyongyang’s entry into the war in Ukraine on the Kremlin side was one of the more surprising stories of 2024. As the fighting continued this year, North Korean infantry proved to be highly skilled combatants, not just expendable pawns, according to Kyiv. Read the story 18. Canada’s conservative leader Pierre Poilievre loses his own seat in election collapse Canada’s election in the spring saw the landslide victory of now-Prime Minister Mark Carney and the spectacular fall of Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, who was unable to hang onto his own seat. Read the story 17. Trump demands $500B in rare earths from Ukraine for continued support The transactional American president turned his sights on Ukraine’s rare earths, the critical elements and minerals vital to manufacturing modern technologies, asking Kyiv to cough up its natural resources in return for Washington’s help fending off Russia’s invasion … Read the story 16. Ukraine balks at signing Trump deal to hand over its mineral wealth … But that didn’t fly with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who refused to sign an agreement drafted by Washington to hand over half of his country’s rare earth minerals to American companies. Read the story 15. ‘Free world needs a new leader’: Europe defends Zelenskyy after Trump attack Trump and Vice President JD Vance’s acrimonious Oval Office showdown with Zelenskyy horrified European leaders and saw the EU stand up to Washington in a major turning point for transatlantic relations. Read story Vice President JD Vance joins as U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office at the White House on August 18, 2025. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images 14. Trump blaming Ukraine for Putin’s war leaves Europe reeling The American leader’s insistence that Ukraine was responsible for its own invasion and parroting of Kremlin talking points didn’t exactly sit well with European governments, with one spokesperson calling his remarks “often incomprehensible.” Read the story 13. Russia to Trump: Back off Ukraine’s rare earths Trump’s efforts to ink an economic deal with Ukraine rang alarm bells in Moscow and triggered a response from the Kremlin’s chief spokesperson. Read the story 12. EU offers Trump removal of all industrial tariffs Trump’s punishing tariffs roiled the global economy, and in a bid to nab itself a better deal, the EU offered to scrap its tariffs on industrial products such as cars and chemicals if Washington did the same. Read the story 11. Macron calls emergency European summit on Trump, Polish minister says French President Emmanuel Macron, who did not exactly have the best year, led the European charge to respond to Trump’s disruption with a crisis meeting in Paris. Read the story 10. Huge blackouts cripple power supply in Spain and Portugal A massive outage in Spain and Portugal brought both countries to a standstill, affecting everything from public transport and traffic lights to hospitals and nuclear power plants. Read the story 9. Trump and Putin stun Europe with peace plan for Ukraine Just weeks after taking office, Trump confirmed Europeans’ worst fears when he called Russian President Vladimir Putin — who had previously been in the diplomatic freezer — and sought to broker an end to the war in Ukraine with the Kremlin, sidelining Kyiv and Brussels. Read the story 8. JD Vance attacks Europe over migration, free speech In a stunning tirade that set the tone for the Trump administration’s scathing stance on Europe this year, the American vice president ripped into the EU over everything from freedom of speech to migration policy. Read the story 7. JD Vance sparks British fury as he mocks Ukraine peacekeeping plan As the coalition of the willing took shape, with EU member countries and the U.K. devising a plan to potentially put boots on the ground in Ukraine, Vance poured scorn on the idea — and triggered backlash from London. Read the story 6. EU offers its own ‘win-win’ minerals deal to Ukraine Just as Trump was close to inking an economic deal with Ukraine to dig up Kyiv’s much-coveted natural resources, the EU swooped in with a rival proposition. Read the story 5. EU slams the door on US in colossal defense plan 2025 saw the EU race to arm itself with an ambitious €800 billion defense spending scheme— but Washington, which partly triggered Europe’s scramble to stand on its own two feet by denigrating Europe and cutting off aid to Ukraine, was shut out of the plan. Read the story 4. Top Trump allies hold secret talks with Zelenskyy’s Ukrainian opponents Weeks after Trump’s angry spray at Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, the U.S. president’s allies held secret discussions with some of the Ukrainian leader’s top domestic opponents. Read the story 3. ‘Parkinson’s is a man-made disease’ One of the most sobering stories of 2025 was the explosion in cases of Parkinson’s disease, which have more than doubled globally over the past 20 years and are expected to do so again in the next 20. A neurologist who leads a globally recognized clinic and research team told POLITICO the reason could be our exposure to chemicals. Read the story Photo-illustration by Laura Scott for POLITICO 2. EU to Trump on tariffs: Go ahead, make our day. As Trump prepared to unleash devastating tariffs on Europe, the EU locked and loaded its so-called “trade bazooka,” in a standoff that put Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry to shame. Read the story 1. Pope Francis, sensing he is close to death, moves to protect his legacy In the end, it was political machinations in the Vatican, not the U.S. or Ukraine, which most fascinated POLITICO’s readers. Facing the prospect of his death (which, when it happened in April following a stroke, triggered an outpouring of global grief), Pope Francis took steps to cement his reformist agenda and ensure his successor would follow in his footsteps. Read the story

Dan McClellan has spent much of his life learning—and relearning—what the Bible and its authors were trying to tell us. But the years he spent in graduate school studying Hebrew texts, Near Eastern cultures, and the concept of deity taught him something else: The way scholars talk about the Bible is much different from how churchgoers—or most people on social media—talk about it. So several years ago, McClellan began pushing back against what he saw as misguided biblical interpretations online and found an audience. Today, he has almost 1 million followers on TikTok who look for his thoughts on topics like the “sin of empathy,” what the Bible says about slavery, or maybe just to see what graphic T-shirt he has decided to wear that day. (He confesses to also being a comic book nerd.) But one strand of thought that weaves through many of his videos is how Christian nationalists have recently used the Bible to gain political power. Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. “The hot new thing right now is to be a Christian nationalist,” says McClellan, who also wrote The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues. “And I think a lot of people are jumping at the opportunity to get on board this attempt to take over the government on the part of Christians. And unfortunately, it means hurting an awful lot of people along the way.” On this week’s More To The Story, McClellan sits down with host Al Letson to talk about the ways people throughout history have used the Bible to serve their own interests and describes a time when his own perspective of the Bible was challenged. This is an update of an episode that originally aired in July 2025. This following interview was edited for length and clarity. More To The Story transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. Al Letson: So you got a new book out, but wait, before we get to that, before we get to that, I should tell my listeners that I am such a huge fan of your work. I’ve been following you for a while and I think I came across your work because I’m the son of a preacher man, grew up in the church and definitely have my own religious beliefs. But what I love about the work that you do is you are just kind of demystifying the Bible and putting it in context. How did you end up doing this type of work, for lack of better term, fact-checking people’s conception of the Bible on TikTok and Instagram? Dan McClellan: Yeah, that was definitely not what I was aimed at when I started graduate school. In fact, I think from an academic point of view, my career looks more like a failure than anything else. Because I have taught at some universities, but never on a full-time basis. I don’t have a tenure-track position or anything like that. But something that has always been a concern of mine, even when I was an undergraduate and then moving into graduate school was the fact that the way scholars and experts talk about the Bible and think about the Bible is very, very different from the way the folks on the street or in the pews think and talk about the Bible. There’s a very big gap between those two. And the more I learned about the Bible and an academic approach to the Bible, the more that gap bothered me and the more I wanted to be able to share the insights that come from that expertise with the folks on the street and in the pews, which is not an easy thing to do, not only because it requires packaging frequently very complex concepts into things that are more easily digestible, but also because there tends to be a lot of pushback from the streets and the pews when you say, “Actually, that’s not what the Bible is like, it’s more like this.” Because of how deeply embedded in their worldviews their own understandings of the Bible are. And so I’ve always tried to engage on social media with the discourse about the Bible and religion. And I’ve always tried to combat the spread of misinformation and speak out against hoaxes and fake artifacts that people try to pawn off as real, have been doing this for a long time on blogs and on message boards and on Facebook and things like that. And the reach is just not that great on those channels. And then for whatever reason, I stumble across TikTok and suddenly I’m able to find an audience that is interested in someone who is there to call balls and strikes rather than to try to defend one dogma or one identity over and against the other. And I’m very happy to be in a position where I say that I combat the spread of misinformation about the Bible and religion for a living. And I wouldn’t take a university position right now if somebody offered me one. So very happy to be in the position I am right now. If any of our listeners have not seen you on TikTok or Instagram and they’re just listening to this conversation and they’re being introduced to you for the first time, I think they would be surprised to know that you’re also a huge pop culture nerd, like myself, a specific type of nerd though. You’re a comic book nerd. I mean, I’m sure you cover many nerddoms, but the one we definitely have in common is comic book and so which makes your videos fun. I think, from what I gather, there are an awful lot of folks out there who find my work relatable precisely because I do not come across as some stuffed shirt, Ivory tower academic. I’m just another dude who likes to wear graphic tees and likes to read comic books and stuff like that. And so I mean, how much better off could things be for me that the things that I enjoy are things that my audience enjoys and that I get to just riff about? So when I think about you on TikTok, I mean, basically you’re fact-checking people who are bending the message of the Bible for their own purposes. I mean, people have been doing this since the Bible was written. But today with social media, those interpretations are now being delivered in a new and really effective way. Yeah. I think the Bible for a long time has been viewed as the highest authority, and particularly after the Reformation when a lot of Christians got rid of everything else and now all we have is the Bible. But if you have something, a text that is supposed to be God’s very word and inspired and inerrant and that is the ultimate authority, if you can leverage that in support of your identity markers, in support of your rhetorical goals and everything like that, that’s a powerful tool in structuring power and values and boundaries. And so it becomes the… That’s the holy grail. That’s what you need to have on your side. But because it’s a text, it has no inherent meaning. It has to be interpreted, which then means whoever best interprets the text in support of their ideologies is going to be able to leverage that ultimate authority. And so I think an awful lot of people spend an awful lot of time trying to read their own ideologies and their own identity politics into the text because that is a very attractive instrument that they can then leverage to serve their own ends. And unfortunately, far too often that means powerful people using that as a tool against less powerful people and groups. And I think that’s particularly true today. I would say that when we look at the way religion is being used to fight against things like homosexuality, the way the Bible is being used to reframe slavery. There was one clip where Charlie Kirk was a person that you were taking his, I wouldn’t say misinformation, I would say disinformation because I think that he actually knows the truth of what he’s saying, as someone that knows the Bible a little bit, even I can look at the things he’s saying and be like, “What are you talking about?” Yeah, he’s an example of somebody I get tagged in his videos a lot and I try not to engage unless there’s a plausible case to be made that what he’s talking about overlaps with the Bible. That’s an example of somebody who right now is trying to leverage the Bible in defense of Christian nationalism because that’s the hot new thing right now is to be a Christian nationalist. And I think a lot of people are jumping at the opportunity to get on board this attempt to take over the government on the part of Christians. And unfortunately, it means hurting an awful lot of people along the way and structuring everything to serve the interests of already privileged and powerful groups over and against the interests of already vulnerable groups. I think folks who love power more than they love people are the actual problem that is causing a lot of the social ills that we have today. And unfortunately, the Bible is very frequently one of the main instruments that we find in the hands of those people. A couple months ago, the thing that I was hearing a lot on social media specifically from right wing religious folks is the idea that there’s the sin of empathy. And on its surface I thought it was laughable, but I have you here now. So my question is is there anywhere in the Bible that talks about the sin of empathy? Certainly not. There are certainly times when in narratives God will say, “Show no mercy,” or something like that. And these are particularly problematic passages where God says, “You will go through the town and you will kill everything that breathes, men, women, children, the suckling baby. Show no mercy.” And so I think you could interpret that to mean there are times when God does not want you to be empathetic, at least there are times when the narrative calls for that. But I think we can point out that’s a bad narrative and that’s a bad message. There’s certainly no point where anyone says empathy is a sin just in general. And the notion of the sin of empathy is just an attempt to try to overturn the fact that we’re social creatures and we are evolutionarily and experientially predisposed to feel what other people are feeling. That is what allows us to cooperate. That’s what allows us to build larger and more complex social groups without things breaking down. Empathy is important to the survival of humanity, but it has a negative byproduct because we all understand ourselves according to specific sets of social identities. And if you have a social identity, you have an in-group and then you have an out-group. And so empathy can be problematic when we empathize with the in-group to the degree that we then become antagonistic toward the out-group. We call that parochial empathy. If you are empathetic toward the people you identify with to the degree that you then antagonize and harm the out-group, that can be harmful. But I don’t think that’s what people are talking about when they are talking about the sin of empathy because those are the people who are overwhelmingly trying to defend precisely parochial empathy because they’re trying to convince others it’s bad for us to empathize with undocumented immigrants. It’s bad for us to empathize with people from other nations. It’s bad for us to empathize with either conservatives or liberals. I think empathy that is outward looking is good. Empathy that is parochial, I mean, it serves a purpose. Smaller groups that are threatened, that are vulnerable, in order for those identities to survive, they have to kind of circle the wagons and you have to kind of be a little protective of your identity. This is what the Judeans and the Jewish folks throughout history have had to do. And that’s necessary, I think, in certain contexts for the survival and the protection of vulnerable identities. But once you become the oppressor, once you become the empire, once you become the dominant group to then say the out-group is bad and to exercise that parochial empathy, I think that becomes phenomenally harmful. And so ironically, there can be a way that empathy is bad and the folks who talk about the sin of empathy are primarily defending the bad kind of empathy and criticizing the good kind of empathy. So I think they have it precisely backwards. And I think all they’re trying to do is protect their own privilege and power. Yeah. I mean, I think they have it backwards, but I think they have it backwards purposefully so. I think that there are a lot of people who don’t know any better and they say things based in their ignorance, but I also think there are a lot of people who interpret the text in a way that justifies the things that they already believe to be right. It’s good for them to… I mean, sometimes when I’m listening to some folks talk about the Bible and Jesus, the image of Jesus that comes in my mind is Jesus riding horseback on a Tyrannosaurus Rex with two sub-machine guns in his hand. With an AK, yeah. Yeah, exactly. It’s like that’s not the Jesus that I see, but I understand how some people can twist their beliefs to fit that image. Yeah. And you do, anytime you have these movements, you’ve got a lot of people who are there along for the ride. They’re convinced of things, but a lot of the thought leaders and a lot of the people who are driving the car are conscious of what they’re doing, are very intentionally doing it. So tell me about your book. why’d you write it? All the things. All the things. It’s called The Bible Says So: What We Get Right and Wrong About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues. The framing that I came up with is the Bible says so because one of the most common things that I’m confronting in social media is the notion that the Bible says X, Y, and Z. And so that was the genesis of this manuscript that turned into this book, which has 18 different chapters, an intro, and then I give a little broad-level view of how we got the Bible. But then 18 different chapters, each one addresses a different claim about what the Bible says. So the Bible says homosexuality is an abomination. The Bible says God created the universe out of nothing. The Bible says you should beat your kids. A lot of different claims about what the Bible says. And in each chapter I try to go through and share what the data actually indicate about what the authors and earliest audiences of these biblical texts understood the text to be doing and to be saying, where normally when people say the Bible says X, Y or Z, they’re sharing what makes the Bible meaningful and useful to them in their specific circumstances. And what I do is try to say, “I’m going to set that aside and I’m going to try to understand what would’ve made this text meaningful and useful to its authors and earliest audiences irrespective of how meaningful and useful that may make it to us.” And so I try to share what we think the authors were trying to say when they wrote whatever they did right in the Bible. All of your studies that you’ve… And you’ve gone deep into all of this, is it fair to look at the Bible as a historical document or do you see the Bible more as a collection of stories that try to teach people, specifically people of that time how to live their lives, like how to be safe, how to create community, all of those things? I think there’s a degree to which many parts of the Bible are historical, but I think that’s incidental. The Bible was certainly not written as a history book. And I think overwhelmingly, the Bible is a collection of texts from that time period that were intended to try to do certain things with the audiences. It wasn’t also always necessarily about how to live right. I think a lot of the times it’s about trying to establish who’s in control and what kind of understanding of our identity we should have and things like that. So there are a lot of different rhetorical goals going on, and sometimes one set of authors might be arguing against another set of authors. You see that particularly between Samuel and Kings and Chronicles. You have a lot of things being changed because the editors of Chronicles were like, “I don’t like the way you do it. I’m going to do it this other way.” And they’re trying to make different points. But yeah, they’re definitely rhetorical texts. They’re definitely to some degree propagandistic texts, and particularly a lot of the historical texts having to do with the Kings and things like that in the Hebrew Bible. Once we get into the New Testament, I think it’s probably a little more in line with texts intended to help people understand how to live according to the opinion of the authors. Tell me if this categorization is fair. The God of the Old Testament is, my dad would kill me if he heard me say this, but the God of the Old Testament feels very much a God of get off my lawn, kids and very much like an angry wrathful God, like, “You step in line with me or I will smite you. I will burn whole cities down. And if you turn around and look at those cities, I will turn you into pillars of salt. I don’t mess around. There’s no mercy.” Then after Jesus is born and Jesus lives his life, the God we meet there is a much more generous and loving God, the God who hung out with tax collectors, who hung out with prostitutes, who told you to love your neighbor as you would love yourself, all of these things that are a much more softer and loving deity than what we see in the Old Testament. Would you agree that that’s true? I would agree that that’s a very common interpretation. And I would agree that on the surface, if we’re not looking incredibly closely, it can seem like that. But I think there’s a problem with that perspective, and there are a few things going on here. Because you have an angry vindictive God in the New Testament as well, but it’s isolated to only a couple places and primarily like the Book of Revelation represents a deity that will bathe its sword in the blood of victims, and you also find a phenomenally merciful and long-suffering God in different parts of the Hebrew Bible. And this is one of the reasons that I’ve tried to point out there’s no one God of the Bible. You have numerous different divine profiles being represented throughout both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. Different authors are going to represent God in whatever ways serve their own rhetorical interests and goals, but there is a chronological trajectory as well. As things are changing in the world in societies, you go from far more warfare, far more conflict between societies to a time period when there’s still war and conflict, but there’s a lot more advocacy for peace. And it’s not the division between the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament where that pivots, it’s actually before the end of the Hebrew Bible. I think that that dichotomy of the vindictive and violent God of the Hebrew Bible and the loving merciful God of the New Testament also is problematic from an antisemitism point of view because that has taken up frequently to frame the God of the Jewish people as evil and the God of Christianity as good. And that facilitates, or it historically has facilitated a lot of problems. So I try to help people understand that you’ve got a mix of both in both sets of texts, and it’s really your choice what you choose to emphasize, give priority to and center. This is exactly why I love your videos because I have a long-held belief that I’ve thought about over years. And then you come along and you blow it all up. You blow it all. Not only do you blow it up, you point out the places where that belief is problematic because until you said it, I never would’ve thought of it in the frame of like antisemitic. It’s the blind spot, I don’t see it like that, but when you frame it in that way, I get it. I get why that thinking is totally problematic, and I think that’s the power of what you do on social media. And that’s something that it’s a lesson I had to learn myself as well. Because I saw somebody posted on Twitter many years ago a picture of Santa Claus in somebody’s living room, but he was angry and had an ax or something, and there’s a little kid on the stairs looking around the corner and says, “Oh, no, it’s Old Testament Santa.” And I was like, “Aha.” And I shared this and some of my Jewish scholar friends immediately were like, “Bad form. Here’s why this is bad.” And it had never occurred to me either, and then I couldn’t unsee it. Once I accepted that people with very different experiences are going to feel very differently about the joke and what’s being expressed there, I couldn’t unsee that. It’s interesting to me growing up in the Baptist church that when I was in church and in the church that I went to, the Bible verse that I heard more than anything was that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than a rich man to enter the gates of heaven. And that was kind of a thing in the church that I was in, and most of the churches that I went to, that wealth did not equate that you were a pious and good person. It was more the opposite, that wealth meant that your actions had to be more because it was going to be hard for you to get through the gates of heaven. And it seems that that Bible verse is completely forgotten by, well, A, like a lot of these Christian nationalists or preachers who engage in the prosperity gospel. Yeah, it’s a big issue. And I mean, there are ways that people try to get around that verse. They say that, “Oh, eye have the needle doesn’t mean an actual sewing needle. It refers to what’s called a wicked gate, a little door that is inside of the main door of the city gate.” And so it just means that you have to open the little door and the pack has to be taken off the camel and they have to shimmy through on their knees. And I don’t think these people have ever seen a camel in real life who are saying this because camels are not going to do that. But there were no such gates anywhere in, around or near Jerusalem, anywhere near the time of the composition of the New Testament. And this is very clearly hyperbole that is coming at the end of a story about a rich young ruler comes to Jesus and says, “I’ve kept all the commandments since my youth. What do I have to do to inherit the kingdom of God?” And Jesus says, “Sell everything you own and give it to the poor.” And then it says the man went away sad because he had a lot of possessions. And that’s where Jesus goes, “Tsk, tsk. It’s going to be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven,” and then gives this hyperbolic notion of a camel passing through the eye of a needle. And for people who try to endorse a prosperity gospel interpretation of this, not only is it incredibly hard to do and it’s never really convincing unless you are already there and just need to be made to feel like it’s not impossible. But like everywhere else in the gospels, Jesus says, “You cannot serve God and mammon.” And Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor.” And you can look in the sermon on the Mount and in Matthew 5, and it says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” And so people say, “Aha. It doesn’t say… That’s not about economic poverty, that’s about humility.” But you can then go to the sermon on the plain in the Gospel of Luke and it just says, “Blessed are the poor.” Which very clearly is referring to economic poverty. As I said before, the Bible is a text. It has no inherent meaning. We create meaning in negotiation with the text, which means we’re bringing our experiences and our understanding to the text, and that’s generating the meaning. And if you have experienced privilege and wealth your whole life, you’re going to interpret the Bible in a way that makes that okay. It’s very rare that we have someone in a position like that who comes to the text and can think critically enough to realize, “This is about me. This is saying that I am the problem. I better fix myself.” That’s phenomenally rare. What is far more common is for someone to bring their own experiences to the text and say, “I was right all along. The problem is everybody else. The problem is not me. I can find endorsement or validation of my own worldviews and my own perspectives and my own hatred and my own bigotry in the text and that authorizes and validates it.” And that’s what we see going on overwhelmingly in public discourse about the Bible. Tough question that you’ve probably been asked a million times before, but the fact that you are doing such deep research on the Bible, how does that affect your religious belief? And I think for a long time I assumed that you are an atheist, that you didn’t believe in God, but then you did a video and you talked about being a Mormon, and I was like, “Wow, okay. That’s a wrinkle. That’s something there.” So yeah, talk to me about that. How do you balance the two things? Well, and this is something I’ve for a long time said, I don’t talk about my personal beliefs on social media, so that’s a boundary that I try to maintain. But what I will say is that I have always tried very, very hard ever since I started formally studying the Bible to ensure that I was compartmentalizing my academic approach to the Bible from my devotional approach to the Bible, keeping them firmly separate, which is not an easy thing to do because I was raised more or less without religion. And like I mentioned earlier, I joined the LDS church as an adult. I was 20 years old. I didn’t really have much that I had to deconstruct when I started studying the Bible academically. So I would say that a lot of people reach out to me for help with deconstruction, for help with trying to understand these things through a prism of faith. And that’s where I say, “That’s above my pay grade.” I don’t take a pastoral approach to this. I’m not here to hold anybody’s hand through faith crises and things like that. There are content creators out there who do that kind of thing. I’m just here to try to present the data and my own personal grappling with that is something that is private. So I do keep that separate. Find More To The Story on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Pandora, or your favorite podcast app, and don’t forget to subscribe.

ROME — Christmas is becoming a new front line in Europe’s culture wars. Far-right parties are claiming the festive season as their own, recasting Christmas as a marker of Christian civilization that is under threat and positioning themselves as its last line of defense against a supposedly hostile, secular left. The trope echoes a familiar refrain across the Atlantic that was first propagated by Fox News, where hosts have inveighed against a purported “War on Christmas” for years. U.S. President Donald Trump claims to have “brought back” the phrase “Merry Christmas” in the United States, framing it as defiance against political correctness. Now, European far-right parties more usually focused on immigration or law-and-order concerns have adopted similar language, recasting Christmas as the latest battleground in a broader struggle over culture. In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has made the defense of Christmas traditions central to her political identity. She has repeatedly framed the holiday as part of the nation’s endangered heritage, railing against what she calls “ideological” attempts to dilute it. “How can my culture offend you?” Meloni has asked in the past, defending nativity scenes in public spaces. She has argued that children should learn the values of the Nativity — rather than just associating Christmas with food and presents — and rejected the idea that long-standing traditions should be altered. This year, Meloni said she was abstaining from alcohol until Christmas, portraying herself as a practitioner of spirituality and tradition.   France’s National Rally and Spain’s Vox have similarly opposed secularist or “woke” efforts to replace religious imagery with neutral seasonal language, and advocated for nativity scenes in town halls. In Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has warned that Christmas markets are losing their “German character,” amplifying disinformation about Muslim traditions edging out Christian ones. CHRISTMAS SPECTACLE But Meloni’s party, Brothers of Italy, has turned the message into spectacle. Each December it hosts a Christmas-themed political festival — complete with Santa, ice-skating, and a towering Christmas tree lit in the colors of the Italian tricolor. Once held quietly in late summer, the event, named Atreyu — after a character in the fantasy film The NeverEnding Story — has since moved to the prestigious Castel Sant’Angelo, drawing families, tourists and the politically curious. Brothers of Italy said on their Whatsapp Channel that the festival had been “a success without precedent. Record numbers, real participation and a community that grows from year to year, demonstrating how it has become strong, like Italy.” Daniel, a 26-year-old tourist from Mallorca, who declined to give his last name because he did not want to be associated with a far right political event, said he and a friend wandered in after spotting the lights and music. “Then we realized it was about politics,” he said, laughing. CULTURAL CHRISTIANITY For party figures, the symbolism is explicit. “For us, traditions represent our roots, who we are, who we have been, and the history that made us what we are today,” said Marta Schifone, a Brothers of Italy MP. “Those roots must be celebrated and absolutely defended.” That message resonates with younger supporters too. Alessandro Meriggi, a student and leader in Azione Universitaria, the party’s youth wing, said Italy is founded on specific values that newcomers should respect. “In a country like Italy, you can’t ask schools to remove the crucifix,” he said. “It represents our values.” Religion, however, often feels almost beside the point. Many of the politicians leading these campaigns are not especially devout, and only a minority of their voters are practicing Christians. What matters is Christianity as culture, a civilizational shorthand that draws a boundary between “us” and “them.” U.S. President Donald Trump claims to have “brought back” the phrase “Merry Christmas” in the United States. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images “In the 1980s and 1990s, the radical right largely kept its distance from the church,” said Daniele Albertazzi, a professor at the University of Surrey who researches populism. “That changed between 2010–15, following Islamic terrorist attacks in Europe, which were framed as a clash of civilizations. Christianity became a cultural marker, a way to portray themselves as defenders of traditional family, tradition and identity.” Hosting a Christmas festival is a “very intelligent” move by Meloni’s party, he said. “They have tried to reverse the stigma of their past [on the far right] by becoming a broad-church modern conservative party, and this is part of the repackaging.” That strategy benefits from the left’s discomfort with religion in public life. Progressive parties and institutions, including the EU, have tried to emphasize inclusivity by using neutral phrases like “holiday season,” which for the far right amounts to cultural self-loathing. In Italy this year, the League and Brothers of Italy have attacked several schools that removed religious references from Christmas songs. In Genoa, right-wing parties accused the city’s left-wing mayor of delivering a “slap in the face to tradition” after she chose not to display a nativity scene in her offices. “We’re not embarrassed to say ‘Merry Christmas,’” said Lucio Malan, a Brothers of Italy senator, at Meloni’s festival. “I have always promoted religious freedom and know not everyone is Christian. But Christmas is the holiday people care about most. Let’s not forget its origins.” The irony, critics note, is that many Christmas traditions are relatively modern, shaped as much by commerce as by religion. Yet Christmas remains politically potent precisely because it is emotive, tied to family rituals, childhood memories and local identity. For Meloni’s government, taking ownership of Christmas fits a broader project to reclaim control over cultural institutions from public broadcasting to museums and opera, after what it sees as decades of left-wing dominance. The narrative of the far right as the defenders of Christmas presents a challenge for mainstream parties who have struggled to find a compelling counter-argument to convincingly defend secularism. And nowhere is that clearer than at the Brothers of Italy’s Christmas festival itself. As dusk falls over Castel Sant’Angelo, families skate to a soundtrack of Christmas pop, children pose for photos with Santa, and tourists wander in, drawn by lights and music rather than ideology. Politics is present, but softened, wrapped in nostalgia, tradition and seasonal cheer.

Pope Leo called on U.S. President Donald Trump not to “break apart” the transatlantic alliance after the Republican leader harshly criticized Europe in an interview with POLITICO.  Speaking to reporters after a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at Castel Gandolfo near Rome, the pontiff said Trump’s recent statements — in which he derided European leaders as “weak” and the continent as “decaying” — were an attempt to destroy the U.S.-Europe relationship.  “The remarks that were made about Europe also in interviews recently I think are trying to break apart what I think needs to be a very important alliance today and in the future,” Pope Leo said.    Trump slammed Europe as poorly governed and failing to regulate migration in an interview with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns that aired Tuesday in a special episode of The Conversation podcast.   “I think they’re weak,” Trump said, referring to the continent’s presidents and prime ministers, adding, “I think they don’t know what to do. Europe doesn’t know what to do.”  Pope Leo added the Trump administration’s peace plan for Ukraine “unfortunately” marks “a huge change in what was for many, many years a true alliance between Europe and the United States.”  Trump’s proposal to end the war, which sidelined Brussels and included several major concessions to Russia, including ceding vast swathes of Ukrainian territory and capping the size of its military, drew alarm from Kyiv and its European allies and led to frenzied negotiations in Geneva to come up with an alternative framework.  “It’s a program that President Trump and his advisers put together. He’s the president of the United States and he has a right to do that,” Pope Leo added.  But the Catholic leader said brokering peace talks “without including Europe” was “unrealistic.” “I really think that Europe’s role is very important … seeking a peace agreement without including Europe in the conversations, it’s not realistic,” he said. “The war is in Europe. I think in the guarantees of security that are also being sought today and in the future, Europe must be part of them.” Pope Leo — a Chicago native who was inaugurated in May as the first pontiff from North America — has hit out at Trump before, condemning Washington’s treatment of migrants as “inhuman” and urging him not to invade Venezuela.  Trump also tangled with Pope Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis, who slammed the U.S.-Mexico border wall as “not Christian” and, months before his death, called Trump’s mass deportation plans a “disgrace.” Trump in turn branded him a “very political person.” Despite the current pontiff’s criticism, Trump signaled openness to talking or meeting with Leo in remarks to POLITICO.  “Sure, I will. Why not?” he said.