It’s Wednesday, April 15. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Maya Sulkin reports on the people cheering on violence against OpenAI chief Sam Altman. Mike Pesca on the autocrat who got voted out. Michael Horn on the financial crisis hitting America’s colleges. And much more.
But first: the Catholic case for the Iran war.
Lately it seems that many of our political conflicts are really theological ones, particularly when the American president is taking jabs at the first American pope. Just consider the debate over the Iran war. As The Free Press reported last week, senior Pentagon officials lectured top Vatican diplomats on how the Holy See should get behind President Donald Trump’s military campaign.
That happened behind closed doors. Now it’s all broken out in public, with both Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance—a convert to Catholicism—engaging in a war of words with Pope Leo XIV. When Trump threatened to level Iran’s civilian infrastructure and end a “whole civilization,” Pope Leo called Trump’s comments “truly unacceptable.” Trump responded by saying the leader of the Catholic Church was, among other things, “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy.”
That brings us to today. The U.S. has blockaded the Strait of Hormuz and is turning back ships leaving Iranian ports. Democrats hope Trump’s attacks on Pope Leo will help them peel off some conservative-leaning Catholics. And the Pontiff says that, while he has no appetite for criticizing Trump, he’s also not afraid of the president.
The Pope is clearly on one side and the Trump administration on the other. But within the Church, the dividing lines are not so neat. Many of us American Catholics think the war with Iran ill-conceived.
But many others believe the war is justified, including Father Gerald Murray, an expert on canon law, and on what makes a “just war” in Catholic tradition. He explains why he thinks the strikes on Iran are just in our pages today. Agree with him or not, Murray is one of the country’s foremost Catholic thinkers, and his case is worth considering.
As for the progress of the war itself: So far, the U.S. blockade against Iranian ports seems to be holding. Aaron MacLean breaks down how it works, what it would take to force Iran to the table, and whether Iran’s leaders will cut a deal to save themselves or go down with the ship.
And on the latest episode of the School of War podcast, Aaron is joined by maritime history and shipping expert Sal Mercogliano to dive deeper into the history of naval blockades—how past ones have fared and what it would actually take to open the Strait of Hormuz.
—Will Rahn
For every act of terror, there is someone happy to cheer it on. Two attacks on OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s residence—a Molotov cocktail on Friday and gunshots on Sunday—have proved that rule. Maya Sulkin reports on the online celebration that has followed, and why a growing number of young Americans believe AI executives have it coming. “Sam Altman is violent,” a 15-year-old told her. “So we’re just fighting violence with violence.”
Hungary’s Viktor Orbán just lost an election in a landslide—and despite years of being called an autocrat, a fascist, and a dictator, he conceded graciously after a few hours. Mike Pesca argues that’s a problem for every pundit who spent years insisting that Orbán would try to hold on to power indefinitely—and that Trump would too. If an autocrat can be simply voted out, Mike asks, was he an autocrat at all?
Hampshire College just announced it would close after next fall, joining the more than 700 U.S. colleges and universities that have shut down since 2013. Michael Horn says that this is just the beginning. More than a third of private colleges have fewer than five years before they need to start drawing down endowments or searching for money to borrow to keep their doors open. Read his piece to understand why “colleges can appear stable, right up until the moment they are not.”
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Israel and Lebanon agreed to “launch direct negotiations” following their first face-to-face talks in more than 30 years yesterday in Washington, D.C, brokered by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. A statement from the State Department reiterated each side’s core positions—Israel demanding the disarmament and dismantling of terror groups like Hezbollah and Lebanon asserting its territorial sovereignty—while the U.S. made clear any ceasefire must be brokered by Washington, not Tehran.
The Trump administration rolled back sanctions on Venezuela’s state-controlled banking system, unlocking the country’s access to the broader global financial system for the first time in years. The relief comes as the U.S. tries to expand development in the Venezuelan oil sector and shore up the fragile government of acting president Delcy Rodríguez, who took power following the U.S. capture of Nicolás Maduro in January.
Trump publicly rebuked Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni Tuesday in a blast at one of his closest European allies, saying he was “shocked” by her after she refused to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz. “I’m shocked by her,” he said. “I thought she had courage. I was wrong.”
Democratic California representative Eric Swalwell and Republican Texas representative Tony Gonzales both resigned ahead of expected expulsion votes over separate sexual misconduct scandals. A new accuser also came forward against Swalwell, alleging he raped her in 2018.
A federal appeals court ordered Judge James Boasberg to shut down his criminal contempt investigation of the Trump administration. The D.C. Circuit ruled 2-1 that Boasberg’s yearlong probe into whether officials defied his order to halt deportation flights of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador was a “clear abuse of discretion.”
Representative Jamie Raskin introduced legislation that would create a commission to evaluate the president’s fitness for office and determine whether the 25th Amendment should be invoked to remove him, drawing 50 Democratic cosponsors. The bill has little realistic path forward given Republican control of Congress.
The 25th Amendment should be repealed. It is clear that nearly 100% of our elected representatives voted along party lines in every instance. The fact that Joe "crazy horse" Biden was not removed after he lost his mind is evidence that the 25th amendment should go the way of prohibition. It is obvious that it will never be used.
While the latest 25th Amendment proposal will go nowhere, it's a further reminder to the voters just before a critical election that a President desperately in need of putting out to pasture was defeated by his enablers and nervous nelly lackeys.