Politics
JD Vance has ‘exchange of opinions’ on issues like deportations during meeting with top Vatican official
Vice President JD Vance met with the Vatican’s No. 2 official Saturday in Rome, and the pair had an “exchange of opinions” on international issues, including migrants and deportations under the Trump administration.
“There was an exchange of opinions on the international situation, especially regarding countries affected by war, political tensions and difficult humanitarian situations, with particular attention to migrants, refugees and prisoners,” a statement from the Vatican said after the meeting.
“Finally, hope was expressed for serene collaboration between the state and the Catholic Church in the United States, whose valuable service to the most vulnerable people was acknowledged.”
Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, met with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, and Archbishop Paul Gallagher, its foreign minister.
VP VANCE SHARES SPECIAL MESSAGE TO AILING POPE FRANCIS AMID BREATHING CRISIS
Vice President JD Vance and his family met Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s ecretary of state Saturday. (Vatican Media via AP, HO)
He and Parolin “discussed their shared religious faith, Catholicism in the United States, the plight of persecuted Christian communities around the world and President Trump’s commitment to restoring world peace,” Vance’s office said.
Pope Francis has cut back his official meetings since a bout with double pneumonia.
The Vatican has clashed with the Trump administration over its deportation push, but the Holy See affirmed its good relations with the United States after the meeting.
The vice president’s Vatican meeting Saturday is part of an official trip to Italy and India.
Vance with his family at a Good Friday service in Rome Friday. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Vance, with second lady Usha Vance and their two young children, arrived in Rome Friday, and he met with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
“I’m grateful every day for this job, but particularly today, where my official duties have brought me to Rome on Good Friday,” the 40-year-old wrote on his X account Friday. “I had a great meeting with Prime Minister Meloni and her team, and will head to church soon with my family in this beautiful city. I wish all Christians all over the world, but particularly those back home in the US, a blessed Good Friday. He died so that we might live.”
JD VANCE SOUNDS OFF ON DEPORTATION, ‘RATIFICATION OF BIDEN’S ILLEGAL MIGRANT INVASION’ VIA ‘FAKE LEGAL PROCESS’
Vance and his family leaving Rome’s Botanic Gardens Saturday. (AP Photo/Riccardo De Luca)
The meeting came a day after President Trump met with Meloni at the White House to discuss a trade deal.
U.S. Bishop Robert Barron, who, along with being bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester in Minnesota, is also an online evangelist and founder of Word on Fire Ministries, told Fox News Digital he “was pleased to hear that Vice President JD Vance met with Cardinal Parolin and Archbishop Gallagher at the Vatican.
“American Catholics will appreciate that our Catholic Vice President was received with such a warm welcome. I’m sure that among the many topics they addressed were immigration and the war in the Ukraine, both of which are top of mind for both the Holy See and the United States.
“The Vice President, as a Catholic, shares a common faith with his Vatican interlocutors, but also a common language in Catholic social teaching, which brings to bear into political and cultural realities moral and theological principles, insights and recommendations.”
The vice president is expected to leave Italy for India, the second leg of his trip, on Monday, where he’ll meet with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
With new legal muscle, the nonprofit Freedom of the Press Foundation is upping pressure on Paramount Global to abandon efforts to settle President Trump’s $20-billion lawsuit targeting CBS and “60 Minutes.”
Respected Washington litigator Abbe David Lowell this week joined the team representing the New York advocacy group, which has vowed to sue Paramount should it settle with Trump. The group owns Paramount shares.
Lowell, who has represented Hunter Biden, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, is working on the case with attorney Norm Eisen, a Trump critic who helped House Democrats with strategy during Trump’s first impeachment hearings in 2019.
Eisen is a former ambassador to the Czech Republic who served as White House ethics advisor under President Obama.
Late Thursday, the two attorneys sent a strongly worded letter to Paramount’s chairwoman and controlling shareholder Shari Redstone and other board members arguing that a Trump settlement would cause “catastrophic” harm to the embattled media company.
Hunter Biden, left, with his attorney Abbe Lowell, right, at a House committee hearing last year.
(Jose Luis Magana / Associated Press)
First Amendment experts have labeled Trump’s lawsuit frivolous. But Paramount leaders are desperate to end the Trump drama and some believe a truce could clear a path for the Federal Communications Commission to approve the company’s $8-billion sale to David Ellison’s Skydance Media.
Paramount needs the FCC to authorize the transfer of the CBS station licenses to the Ellison family.
The prospect of a Trump settlement has carved deep divisions within Paramount, which includes CBS News and “60 Minutes.”
“Trading away the credibility of CBS’s news division to curry favor with the Trump Administration is an improper and reckless act that will irreparably damage the company’s brand and destroy shareholder value,” Lowell said in a statement late Thursday.
“The board is legally and morally obligated to protect the company, not auction off its integrity for regulatory approval,” Lowell said.
The FCC review of Skydance’s proposed takeover of Paramount has become a slog. Skydance and Paramount face an October deadline to finalize the sale or the deal could collapse.
Paramount, in a statement, said that it is treating the FCC review and the Trump lawsuit as separate matters. “We will abide by the legal process to defend our case,” a corporate spokesman said.
Paramount’s lawyers entered mediation with the president’s legal team in late April, but no resolution has been reached. Paramount offered $15 million to Trump to end his suit, according to the Wall Street Journal, but the president rejected the overture and asked for more.
On Thursday, Redstone disclosed that she has been diagnosed with thyroid cancer and is receiving treatment. Last month, doctors removed her thyroid but cancer cells had spread to her vocal chords.
In their seven-page letter, Lowell and Eisen told Paramount’s leaders that, should they approve a Trump settlement to gain traction at the FCC, they would be violating their fiduciary duty to shareholders and potentially breaking federal anti-bribery statutes.
“We believe [a settlement] could violate laws prohibiting bribery of public officials, thereby causing severe and last damage to Paramount and its shareholders,” Lowell and Eisen wrote.
“To be as clear as possible, you control what happens next,” they said.
The admonition follows a similar warning from three U.S. senators — Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). In a May 19 letter, the senators wrote that paying money to Trump to help win clearance for the Paramount sale could constitute a bribe.
“It is illegal to corruptly give anything of value to public officials to influence an official act,” the three senators wrote in their letter.
In addition, two California Democrats have proposed a state Senate hearing to examine problems with a possible Trump settlement.
The senators invited two former CBS News executives — who both left, in large part, because of the controversy — to testify before a yet-unscheduled joint committee hearing in Sacramento.
The California lawmakers, in their letter, said a Trump settlement could also violate California’s Unfair Competition Law because it could disrupt the playing field for news organizations.
Earlier this week, Paramount asked shareholders to increase the size of its board to seven members at the company’s annual investor meeting next month.
The Freedom of the Press Foundation was created in 2012 to protect and defend public interest journalism.
This spring, Lowell left his former major law firm, Winston & Strawn, where he had been a partner for years. He formed his own boutique firm, Lowell & Associates, with a focus on “public interest representation in matters that defend the integrity of the legal system and protect individuals and institutions from government overreach,” according to its website.
Lowell’s firm also includes lawyer Brenna Frey, who made a high-profile exit from another prominent law firm, Skadden Arps, after it cut a deal with Trump to avoid becoming a target. That law firm agreed to provide $100 million in free legal services.
Last month, Frey appeared on CBS’ “60 Minutes” to air her decision to resign from Skadden Arps.
“I was able to tell my story on CBS’s ’60 Minutes’ because of the independence of a courageous news division, which is what’s at risk now,” Frey said in a statement.
President Trump on Wednesday signed a travel ban on 12 countries, primarily in Africa and the Middle East, reviving an effort from his first term to prevent large numbers of immigrants and visitors from entering the United States. Hamed Aleaziz, who covers the Department of Homeland Security and immigration policy for The New York Times, explains what we know and don’t know about the ban.
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Maverick Democratic Sen. John Fetterman dissed members of his own party Thursday for suddenly backing Elon Musk during his feud with President Donald Trump.
Democrats have found an unlikely ally in Musk this week, given his public rejection of Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” and a subsequent call for Trump’s impeachment.
The president has championed the legislation as fulfilling his key campaign promises, including border security, American energy production and tax cuts.
The megabill is under consideration by both a Republican-led White House and Congress. But it has faced hiccups in the Senate this week as Republicans, including some who helped pass the bill through the House, have indicated they do not support the bill in its current form. Every House Democrat voted against the bill.
ELON MUSK WARPATH AGAINST TRUMP’S ‘BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL’ RATTLES HOUSE GOP
Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., (left) said Democrats should make up their minds about Elon Musk. (Reuters; Getty Images)
The national debt is at $36,214,501,400,213.64 as of June 5, according to the latest numbers published by the Treasury Department.
GOP SENATORS EXPRESS ‘CONCERNS,’ ‘SKEPTICISM’ OVER TRUMP’S SPENDING BILL AFTER MUSK RANT
Amid the setbacks, Musk has thrown a wrench into the Republican’s reconciliation process through a series of fiery posts on X, the platform he bought in 2022. And Democrats were quick to coalesce behind Musk’s rejection of the bill, seizing on the GOP’s intraparty conflict despite their outright rejection of Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) this year.
In the first of several posts targeting the bill, and then Trump directly, Musk said, “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”
Fetterman, who has built a reputation for bucking his own party on issues like immigration and support for Israel, was quick to call out the inconsistency of his fellow Democrats Thursday.
Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., talks with a reporter after a Senate luncheon at the U.S. Capitol March 11, 2025. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
“The Dems, we’ve been dumping all over Musk and vandalizing Teslas or whatever, and now, suddenly, we might be more back into him,” Fetterman said.
Democrats began staging protests at Tesla dealerships early into Trump’s second term. Tesla vehicles and dealerships have also been targeted this year in a string of violent attacks against the company, another business owned by Musk. Trump’s Justice Department labeled the attacks “domestic terrorism.”
And while the Pennsylvania Democrat said Musk is right for rejecting Trump’s megabill, Fetterman said Thursday Democrats have to decide what they think of Musk and stick with it.
Elon Musk holds the key to the White House, a gift he received from President Donald Trump, at a press conference in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., May 30, 2025. (Reuters/Nathan Howard)
“It wasn’t that long ago that Tesla was like the virtue-signaling kind of accessory for Dems,” Fetterman said. “I would never want to vandalize Teslas, and the ‘big, beautiful bill’ is wrong for America. So, from my perspective, I’ve just tried to be consistent through that.”
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., was one Democrat who acknowledged this week that Democrats should work with Musk on their shared objective to stop Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.”
And GOP Rep. Tim Burchett piled on the criticism of Democrats’ inconsistencies, telling Fox News Digital, “It’s kind of ironic to me that, a week ago, the Democrats hated Elon Musk’s guts … and now they’re basing everything they have on him.”
Fox News Channel’s Chad Pergram and Fox News Media’s Dan Scully contributed to this report.
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