ABC News:
He mentioned Pope Francis twice and explicitly said he wants to pick up where the late pope left off on that very balcony on Easter, before giving the Urbi et Orbi blessing -- meaning to "the city and the world."
...
The director of the Holy See told reporters Thursday that the name is a "direct reference to Leo XIII," the last pope to take the name Leo.
Pope Leo XIII, who headed the Catholic Church from 1878 until his death in 1903, was a founding figure of the Catholic social justice tradition.
He is known for his encyclical "Rerum Novarum," meaning "Of New Things," which is "considered to be the foundation for the modern social doctrine of the Church," the Holy See director said.
Oh, and he’s from Chicago. So, for many reasons, including the fondness for him by his predecessor, there is hope about this Pope.
Daily Beast:
Cardinals Humiliate MAGA With ‘Social Justice Warrior’ Pope Leo XIV
As Cardinal Francis Robert Prevost emerged on the Vatican balcony as Pope Leo XIV, a massive right-wing lobbying operation to bend the Catholic Church towards MAGA looked to be a bust...
A native of Chicago, Prevost is the first American to hold the papacy, but like his predecessor he has deep ties to Latin America. He’s a dual citizen of Peru, where he lived for many years before Francis summoned him to Rome to eventually head the powerful Dicastery for Bishops.
Making his first speech from the Vatican balcony, Leo told an ecstatic crowd gathered in St. Peter’s Square, “We must seek together to be a missionary church, a church that builds bridges, dialogue. And that is always open, like this piazza, to receive with open arms everyone—everyone—who needs our charity, our presence, our dialogue, and love.”
Social media is already having fun with this guy.
Jack Jenkins/RNS:
By electing Pope Leo XIV, some see Vatican making very American political play
‘The election of an American Pope, the first American Pope … there’s a signal here that the church is taking a side in what’s happening around the globe,' said Steven Millies, a professor at Catholic Theological Union.
As Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost walked out on the central loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica on Thursday (May 8) and took the name Pope Leo XIV, Steven P. Millies’ initial reaction was a mixture of elation and disbelief. A professor at Catholic Theological Union — a seminary Prevost, a Chicago native, attended — Millies was overjoyed at the idea of a pontiff from so close to home.
“It’s incredible to me that we have a Southsider who’s the pope,” Millies said of the first U.S.-born bishop of Rome.
But Millies also had another thought: By electing Leo, the College of Cardinals was, as Millies put it, “taking a side” in global politics — including U.S. politics.
Thomas Edsall/New York Times:
Who’s the Greatest Grifter of Them All?
Let’s look a little more deeply into the legal and constitutional issues raised by Trump’s cryptocurrency enterprise: On May 1, Zach Witkoff, one of the founders of the Trump family’s crypto firm, World Liberty Financial, announced at the Token 2429 Conference in Dubai that Abu Dhabi would use the firm’s stablecoin, USD1, to finance a $2 billion investment in Binance, the largest crypto exchange in the world.
The transaction, my Times colleague David Yaffe-Bellany wrote, “would be a major contribution by a foreign government to President Trump’s private venture — one that stands to generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the Trump family.
The Bulwark:
The Shame of What We’ve Become
Trump’s deportation regime is a stain on our country. The bigger stain is that we voted for it.
Yesterday, in Boston, U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy reminded the Trump administration that he had already barred the Department of Homeland Security from deporting someone to a third country without having given them a chance to challenge their removal and seek protection in the United States.
“This case,” Judge Murphy wrote, “presents a simple question: Before the United States forcibly sends someone to a country other than their country of origin, must that person be told where they are going and be given a chance to tell the United States that they might be killed if sent there?” The answer, Murphy said, consistent with previous judicial rulings and with “common sense [and] basic decency” is yes.
But the Trump administration denies this. The administration is appealing this and other cases, making the argument that they have the unilateral right to deport anyone they detain to any place they chose.
Carrie Dann/Cook Political Report:
Inside the Trump Slump: Young, Latino and Independent Voters Sour on Trump
The CPR PollTracker finds that Trump’s net job approval rating has dropped nearly seven points since April 15, going from -3.9% to -10.7%.
In that same period of time, the negative shifts in net job approval among young voters, Latinos and independents were the most dramatic of the demographic groups our tracker measured.
For 18-to-29-year-olds, the net shift was -11.8 points, the most significant slide of any group.
For Latinos, Trump’s approval saw a net drop of 10.4 points.
And for independents, it was a net drop of 7.9 points.
It’s worth noting that even significant slumps in the president’s popularity don’t directly translate into shifts in downballot vote choice, particularly in a deeply polarized climate. It’s no guarantee that most — or even many — Americans who ultimately sour on the current occupant of the White House will be driven into the arms of the Democratic Party come next November.
What’s more likely is that they may simply stay home. Continuing to track the president’s approval among the coalition groups that propelled him to victory in 2024 will give us a strong indication of whether those voters will show up next year to support Republicans not named Donald Trump.
NBC, in case you missed it:
Federal judge says results of North Carolina court race with Democrat ahead must be certified
More than 5.5 million ballots were cast in what has been the country's last undecided race from the general election in November.
Disputed ballots in the still unresolved 2024 race for a North Carolina Supreme Court seat must remain in the final count, a federal judge ruled late Monday, a decision that if upheld would result in an electoral victory for Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs.
U.S. District Judge Richard Myers agreed with Riggs and others who argued it would be a violation of the U.S. Constitution to carry out recent decisions by state appeals courts that directed the removal of potentially thousands of voter ballots deemed ineligible. Myers wrote that votes couldn’t be removed six months after Election Day without damaging due process and equal protection rights of the affected residents.
Myers also ordered the State Board of Elections to certify results that after two recounts showed Riggs the winner — by just 734 votes — over Republican challenger Jefferson Griffin. But the judge delayed his decisions for seven days in case Griffin wants to appeal the ruling to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
And with that, Griffin finally conceded.
Bloomberg Politics:
In Court, Trump Is Losing More Than He’s Winning
President Donald Trump’s expansive use of executive power faced at least 328 lawsuits as of May 1 — with judges halting his policies far more often than they allowed them.
Courts entered more than 200 orders stopping the administration’s actions in 128 cases, with judges sometimes ruling at multiple stages of the legal fights. Judges had allowed contested policies to go ahead in 43 cases, and hadn’t ruled yet in more than 140 others. Most cases are in the early stages, and new ones are being filed daily.
The court battles are testing the balance of power at the heart of American democracy. Trump and his supporters have attacked judges as biased, and his administration has been accused of failing to fully comply with orders. Bloomberg found that his court losses — and wins — came from a mix of appointees of Democratic and Republican presidents, including some nominated by Trump during his first term.
