TMZ Grills Ted Cruz on Whether He’s Team Trump or Team Pope

Senator Ted Cruz refused to pick a side in President Trump’s petty tiff with Pope Leo XIV.

“Are you on the pope’s side or the president’s side?” a TMZ reporter asked Cruz on Monday evening.

“You know what, I’m quite confident that both the pope and the president can speak for themselves,” Cruz replied.

“Well, they are going through a very public sort of beef right now—”

“I understand you wanna get me in the middle of that,” Cruz interrupted. “I trust both of them to express their own views.”

TMZ then proceeded to ask Cruz various questions regarding Trump’s attack, all of which Cruz rebuffed. “Every way you ask the question you’re gonna get the same answer.”

This beef with the pope—in which Trump called him “weak on crime” and accused him of wanting Iran to have a nuclear weapon—comes while Trump and his base are still reeling from the president’s AI post depicting himself as Jesus Christ. Cruz, a devout Southern Baptist, hasn’t commented on that either.

Vice President JD Vance thinks economic terrorism is OK—as long as President Donald Trump’s the one doing it.

Speaking to Fox News Monday night, the vice president made a startling admission about how Donald Trump intended to end the war in Iran.

“When it comes to weapons of war, what they have done is engage in this act of economic terrorism against the entire world. They’ve basically threatened any ship that’s moving through the Strait of Hormuz. Well, as the president of the United States showed, two can play at that game,” Vance said.

“And if the Iranians are going to try and engage in economic terrorism, we’re going to abide by a simple principle: that no Iranian ships are going to get out either,” Vance said.

Still, the vice president insisted that Trump only wanted to see Iranians “thrive and succeed,” as if the president had not threatened to end their entire civilization a little more than a week ago.

Trump’s naval blockade on Iranian ports began Monday. A sustained military blockade would be incredibly expensive and require a large number of warships, and U.S. allies have made it very clear they have no intention of helping out. While it may seem like a quick fix, taking Iranian oil off the market will only squeeze the market, causing energy prices to surge higher. Gas prices in the U.S. have surged beyond $4 a gallon, as crude oil has climbed to over $100 per barrel.

More than 300 people protested outside of the New York offices of Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand Monday to oppose sending U.S. weapons to Israel.

At least 90 protesters were arrested, among them Chelsea Manning, a former U.S. soldier and whistleblower who leaked hundreds of thousands of military and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks in 2011, as well as New York City Council Member Alexa Avilés and actor Hari Nef. The protests were organized by Jewish Voice for Peace and the Sunrise Movement. According to JVP, the protesters consisted of U.S. military veterans as well as Jewish, Palestinian, Iranian, and Lebanese New Yorkers.

The protesters were calling on the New York Democrats to support resolutions proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders last month that would block nearly $660 million in weapons sales to Israel. Sanders has attempted to block weapons to Israel before, and 19 Senate Democrats, including Gillibrand and Schumer, voted against his last effort in July.

Israel is bombing Lebanon and Iran with U.S. support and aid, and continues to kill Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank despite a ceasefire. The war in Iran is overshadowing an ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and Israel is also accused of encouraging ethnic cleansing against Shia Muslims in southern Lebanon.

“This is the moment when Schumer and Gillibrand must listen to their constituents,” Sonya Meyerson-Knox, the communications director with Jewish Voice for Peace, told the Associated Press Monday. “The majority of Americans and New Yorkers want a resolution to what the Israeli government is doing.”

The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has caused a domestic fluoride shortage, in yet another unintended consequence of a useless and unpopular conflict.

The Associated Press has reported that various U.S. water utility companies across the country have struggled to obtain fluoride because Israel is one of the top providers of fluorosilicic acid. With Israel sending more people into military service, amid attacks on Lebanon, Iran, and Gaza, that supply chain has been disrupted

This has led to “decreased production, and supply shortages for the U.S. market,” Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies officer Dan Hartnett told the AP. Water facilities in Maryland and Pennsylvania have been hit particularly hard, with WSSC Water in Maryland lowering the amount of fluoride in the water from the recommended 0.7 milligrams per liter to just 0.4 milligrams.

Adding fluoride to drinking water has been one of the most effective public health measures in reducing tooth decay. What’s happening now shows the widespread ripple effects that this war is having. From the death and destruction in Lebanon and Iran to high prices at the gas pump, to no more fluoride in some of the water, to even fishermen in the Philippines struggling to get by due to fuel price spikes, this war has permeated through all facets of life around the world—and that will only worsen given the current state of things.

The Trump administration is continuing to punish immigration judges who impede its deportation agenda.

Judge Roopal Patel ruled in January that the administration did not have sufficient evidence to deport Rümeysa Öztürk, a Ph.D. student studying at Tufts University on an F-1 student visa. On Friday, Patel received a pink slip, formally pushing her out of the federal judiciary.  

Patel told The Boston Globe that she was not sure if her ruling in Öztürk’s case had affected her tenure. 

The White House has made it all too clear that immigration is a top priority for Donald Trump’s second-term legacy. Under ex–Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Justice Department massively shifted its resources toward arresting and prosecuting noncriminal immigrants, dropping tens of thousands of criminal probes in the process.

Immigration court is the final step of that process before the Trump administration can legally thrust the people out of the country, though the admin has not seemed to understand the limitations of the law. Instead, the DOJ has attempted to ram cases through the system in an attempt to meet the White House’s demands, placing an enormous and unusual burden on America’s judges.

“It was a pressure I at least tried to actively resist,” Patel told The New York Times. “All people in the United States are entitled to due process, and everyone deserves to have their cases adjudicated fully and fairly.”

But Patel was not the only judge suddenly ousted from their job on Friday. Six federal judges were fired at the end of last week, a U.S. official confirmed to the Times. Four of those were probationary discharges, according to the official. 

One of the other immigration judges dismissed on Friday was Nina Froes, a Massachusetts judge who oversaw the government’s case against Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian student leader at Columbia University and green card holder who protested against Israel’s war on Gaza.

Froes ultimately ruled against Mahdawi’s deportation last April, despite an aggressive pressure campaign fronted by State Secretary Marco Rubio to push the West Bank refugee out of the country. Rubio at one point argued that Mahdawi’s presence in the U.S. could “potentially undermine” U.S. foreign policy.

Froes was similarly unsure if her ruling in the Mahdawi case had affected her job stability.

“I don’t know what’s in the minds of other people,” she told the Times. “But I can’t imagine it was helpful.”