The Week Magazine May 2, 2025

In high school in the 1980s, we all had to read Profiles in Courage, John F. Kennedy’s history of U.S. senators who stood up for their beliefs in defiance of their party or even their constituents. If the book were written now, it might include a chapter on John McCain (R-Ariz.), who saved Obamacare with his famous thumbs-down vote on repeal. Maybe there’d be room for Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who just went to El Salvador to fight for the rights of a Maryland resident deported without due process. And certainly it would feature Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the only one of the seven Republicans in favor of convicting President Trump in his second impeachment who dared to face voters afterward in an election. Asked last week about the creeping…

What happened Catholics worldwide mourned the death this week of Pope Francis, the first Jesuit to lead the Catholic Church and a strong voice for the marginalized and the dispossessed. Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, he was also the first non-European pope in over a millennium, and he broke from the conservatism of his predecessors to introduce reforms such as allowing priests to bless same-sex unions, restricting the use of the Latin Mass, and inviting women to attend meetings of bishops (see Obituaries, p.35). Francis, 88, had long suffered from lung problems, and a bout of double pneumonia had him hospitalized for more than five weeks earlier this year. On Easter, the visibly ailing pope gave a brief audience to Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert.…

■ Two-year-old Boden Allen sparked a massive manhunt when he wandered away from his home in Yavapai County, Arizona. But 16 hours later Allen was rescued by Buford, a 6-year-old Anatolian Pyrenees ranch dog at the Dunton ranch. The toddler walked 7 miles, across mountainous terrain and valleys, and slept overnight beneath a tree in frigid conditions and with prowling mountain lions. But in the morning Buford discovered him and alerted his owner, Scotty Dunton, who reported the boy found. ■ While inspecting a line of cable in the Pompeian Room in Rome’s Villa Farnesina, electrician Davide Renzoni mounted a scaffold and climbed through a trapdoor in the ceiling—discovering a second trapdoor leading to an upper ceiling covered in 17th-century frescoes. “My first feeling was astonishment,” said Renzoni. “Immense…

What happened Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was fighting to hold on to his Cabinet position this week after reports that he used a second Signal chat—which included his wife, brother, and personal lawyer—last month to discuss detailed plans for a U.S. military strike on rebel camps in Yemen. The New York Times reported that Hegseth, a former Fox News host, had created chaos “unmatched in the recent history” of the Pentagon, and that after he fired three top aides last week and accused them of leaking to the press, his circle of advisers “is in shambles.” A fourth recently departed aide, former Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot, said in a Politico column that the Defense Department is “in a full-blown meltdown” under Hegseth’s leadership and that “it’s hard to see”…

What happened A federal judge this week accused the Trump administration of ignoring court orders and acting in “willful and bad faith” in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who remains locked up in El Salvador despite a Supreme Court order that the administration facilitate his return. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis blasted the administration for failing to answer questions about what it was doing to free the Maryland sheet metal worker and father of three, instead taking “refuge behind vague and unsubstantiated assertions of privilege.” Her order followed a blistering ruling from a federal appeals panel. The White House is claiming the right to “stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons” without due process, which “should be shocking” to all Americans, wrote Judge Harvie Wilkinson, a…

After one American institution after another caved to “the irrational demands of a lunatic administration,” one of them finally “stood up and said no,” said Charles P. Pierce in Esquire. The Trump administration recently sent Harvard University a list of outrageous demands, threatening to cancel nearly $9 billion in government funding unless Harvard agreed to regular federal “audits” of its hiring, admissions, and disciplinary processes, and of the “viewpoint diversity” of its professors and student body. Harvard president Alan Garber issued a public “hell no,” pledging that the university “will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.” Trump’s retaliation was swift, said Erwin Chemerinsky in The San Francisco Standard. In a “blatantly illegal” move, he canceled nearly $2.2 billion in grants without so much as a court…