An NPR report that a search is underway for a new secretary of defense is being met with vehement denials from the White House. 

In a post on X, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed the news that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s job was in trouble, calling the story “total FAKE NEWS based on one anonymous source who clearly has no idea what they are talking about.”

“As the President said this morning, he stands strongly behind [Hegseth],” Leavitt’s post said. 

President Trump was asked by a reporter at the White House Easter egg roll Monday morning, prior to the report’s publication, if he had confidence in Hegseth, to which he replied, “Why would you even ask a question like that?

“Ask the Houthis how much dysfunction there is. There’s none. Pete’s doing a great job. Everybody’s happy with him. We have the highest recruitment numbers I think we’ve had in 28 years,” Trump said. “No, he’s doing a great job. It’s just fake news.

“They just bring up stories. I guess it sounds like disgruntled employees. You know, he was put there to get rid of a lot of bad people, and that’s what he’s doing, so you don’t always have friends when you do that,” Trump added. 

President Trump on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth: "Ask the Houthis how much disfunction there is. There's none. Pete's doing a great job. Everybody's happy with him." pic.twitter.com/UDzrDYENvT

Hegseth is under fire for sharing details about U.S. airstrikes against targets in Yemen in a private Signal chat last month that included his wife and brother, at around the same time he shared the war plans in another group chat with The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg.

According to other reports, the Pentagon has been in disarray for the past month, not just because of “Signalgate” but also due to other sensitive leaks and mass firings. On Friday, three top Pentagon employees were fired over a leak investigation in the department. If the NPR report is true, the president may be getting fed up with Hegseth’s constant flow of bad news. Perhaps his narrow confirmation was a sign that Hegseth shouldn’t have gotten the job. 

MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene appeared to mock Pope Francis’s death on Monday, calling him “evil.”

“Today there were major shifts in global leaderships,” Taylor Greene wrote on X, alluding to the death of one of the world’s most influential religious leaders without naming him directly. “Evil is being defeated by the hand of God.”

She did not issue any clarification after coming under fire for the post.

This is par for the course for a far-right congresswoman who has expressed that she thinks Catholic bishops are “destroying” the country and that the Catholic Church as a whole is “controlled by Satan.”

American conservatives have maintained a fraught relationship with Pope Francis, as the first Latin American pope was often critical of the Trump administration and its policies.

Vice President JD Vance met with Pope Francis Sunday, just hours before the progressive pontiff passed. Coincidence? Yes—but good luck telling that to the internet, which won’t stop joking that Donald Trump’s antagonistic ally had something to do with it.

During his 12-year papacy, the pope was an advocate for the rights of LGBTQ people and Palestinians and a staunch critic of Trump’s MAGA agenda. He even openly spoke against Vance, who tried to refashion Catholic teaching to justify Trump’s massive deportation scheme.

Suffice it to say, the internet is now suggesting that Vance made quick work vanquishing the Vicar of Christ.

Not everyone was accusing him of doing something, just asking questions.

But people on X certainly had their theories. Specifically, that Vance might be the Antichrist.

Others weren’t quite as convinced.

To be sure, not everyone was suggesting that Vance had carried out some kind of unholy hit. But he certainly didn’t help things.

Some suggested there could be evidence of an emerging trend that Vance has a bad touch.

Pope Francis’s death report, released Monday afternoon by the Vatican, indicated he died of a cerebral stroke, which caused him to fall into a coma and suffer “irreversible cardiocirculatory collapse,” The New York Times reported. He had long suffered from chronic lung disease and developed double pneumonia earlier this year.

This story has been updated.

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele wants to exchange Venezuelan deportees from the United States being unlawfully held in prison for political prisoners being held in Venezuela.

He made the terrifying proposition to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro via X Sunday evening.

“Mr. @NicolasMaduro, you have said on numerous occasions that you want the Venezuelans back and free,” Bukele wrote. “Unlike you, who have political prisoners, we don’t have political prisoners. All the Venezuelans we have in custody were detained as part of an operation against gangs like the Tren de Aragua in the United States.”

Last month, Donald Trump invoked the rarely used Alien Enemies Act to unlawfully deport more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants—the majority of whom have no criminal record—based on unfounded claims that they were part of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua Gang. He also ignored a court order telling him to stop the deportation. The deportees are now being held in CECOT, a notorious prison in El Salvador that has no contact with the outside world.

Bukele........

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