The State Department has joined the pope in lashing out at the latest massacre of Christians in Nigeria, reportedly by Islamist Fulani ‘terrorists.’

Pope Leo XIV declared during a recent address to thousands at the Vatican that ‘some 200 people were murdered, with extraordinary cruelty’ on June 13 in Yelewata, in Nigeria’s Benue State.

Late Monday, a State Department spokesperson told Fox News Digital, ‘We strongly condemn these increasing attacks, including recent massacres in Benue state which primarily targeted Christian farming villages.’

‘Shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ (Arabic for ‘God is great’), they (the attackers) burnt the buildings and attacked people with guns and machetes,’ NGO Aid to the Church in Need wrote in a statement, adding that the militants ‘used fuel to set fire to the doors of the people’s accommodation before opening fire.’

The pope told the crowds in Rome that the majority of those ‘brutally killed’ in Yelewata had been sheltering in a Catholic sanctuary. ‘Most of the victims were internal refugees, who were hosted by a local Catholic mission,’ the pontiff stated. He added that he would pray for ‘security, peace and justice,’ particularly for ‘rural Christian communities of the Benue state who have been relentless victims of violence.’

Nigeria is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a Christian, according to Open Doors International’s 2025 World Watch List (WWL). Of the 4,476 Christians killed worldwide in WWL’s latest reporting period, 3,100 of those who died – 69% – were in Nigeria. 

Talking to Fox News Digital, a State Department spokesperson reinforced reports that the attacks on Christians are being carried out by Islamic militant groups. ‘The United States remains deeply concerned about the levels of violence in Nigeria, including the threats posed by terrorist groups like Boko Haram and ISIS-West Africa in northern Nigeria, and the impact that violence has on all communities in Nigeria.’

This year, Islamist militants have often attacked areas of Nigeria where the people are predominantly Christian. Benue State, where the latest massacre took place, is said to be 93% Christian. 

One Nigerian church leader, who asked to remain anonymous for his safety, told Fox News Digital just last month that what the attackers ‘want is to be sure that Islam [takes] over every part of these places. … And so they’re doing everything to make sure that Christianity is brought down and Islam is [the] established No. 1. They want to make sure that Sharia law (strict Islamic law) has taken over Nigeria.’

The State Department spokesperson appeared to back up this viewpoint, saying, ‘violent extremist groups target a wide range of civilians and military targets as part of their broader campaign against a secular state. The increase in violent Islamic extremism and repeated attacks against vulnerable communities in Nigeria must be addressed more effectively.’

A Nigerian bishop told Fox News Digital in June that he had been threatened and his home village murderously attacked after he appealed to lawmakers at a March congressional hearing for the killing of Christians to stop.

Bishop Wilfred Anagbe said that after he went to Washington to testify, ‘terrorist Jihadists’ killed 20 parishioners in four attacks in 10 days in his diocese, the area he is responsible for.

Now, the bishop is in hiding after several foreign embassies in Nigeria’s capital Abuja warned him of credible high-level official threats that ‘something might happen to him.’

The State Department spokesperson added, ‘We regularly urge the Government of Nigeria to intensify their efforts to protect civilians, enforce rule of law, and hold perpetrators accountable. The United States partners with the Government of Nigeria to strengthen Nigeria’s counterterrorism capabilities, working together toward the elimination of terrorist organizations and their networks of support.’

The Nigerian government did not respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment. However, President Bola Tinubu visited Benue State this past week and told reporters, ‘Let’s fashion out a framework for lasting peace.’ 

The same day, in the same district, six more people were reported to have been killed.

Senior Democratic Party officials vowed Monday to ‘fight tooth and nail’ to keep in place federal campaign spending limits up for Supreme Court review this fall — describing the GOP-led effort to repeal the limits as unprecedented and dangerous ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to review the case, National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission, taking up a challenge filed by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, and on behalf of two Senate Republican candidates, including now-Vice President JD Vance, following the 2022 elections.

In a statement Monday, the Democratic campaign groups vowed to fight back against what they characterized as the GOP’s attempt to ‘sow chaos and fundamentally upend our campaign finance system, which would return us to the pre-Watergate era of campaign finance.’

At issue are federal spending limits that restrict the amount of money political parties can spend on behalf of certain candidates — and which Republicans argue run afoul of free speech protections under the First Amendment of the Constitution.

A decision from the Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority could have major implications on campaign spending in the U.S., further eroding the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, a law Congress passed more than 50 years ago with the aim of restricting the amount of money that can be spent on behalf of candidates.

That law, and subsequent amendments, restricts the amount of money that political parties can funnel into certain campaigns.

Senior Democratic Party officials described the GOP-led effort Monday as the latest effort by Republicans to claw back campaign spending limits and erode some 50 years of federal election law.

‘Republicans know their grassroots support is drying up across the country, and they want to drown out the will of the voters,’ DCCC chair Suzan DelBene, DSCC chair Kirsten Gillibrand, and DNC chair Ken Martin said in a joint statement Monday. 

The case is almost certain to be one of the most high-profile cases heard by the Supreme Court this fall.

Adding to the drama is the involvement of the Trump-led Justice Department, which said in May that it planned to side with the NRSC in the case — putting the Trump administration in the somewhat unusual position of arguing against a law passed by Congress.

Justice Department officials cited free speech protections as its basis for siding with the NRSC, which they said represents ‘the rare case that warrants an exception to that general approach’ of backing federal laws.’ 

Meanwhile, the Democratic groups sought to go on offense with their message, describing the GOP efforts as the latest iteration of a decades-long effort to ‘rewrite’ election laws in ways that benefit the party. They cited another Republican-led challenge to campaign spending limits brought more than 20 years ago, in Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee v. FEC. 

That challenge was ultimately rejected by the high court, DNC officials noted.

‘To date, those efforts have failed at every turn, ensuring a stable, predictable campaign finance structure for party committees and political candidates across the country,’ DNC officials said. 

Meanwhile, Republican officials praised the Supreme Court’s decision to take up the case, which they described as helping the GOP ensure they are in ‘the strongest possible position’ ahead of the 2026 midterms and beyond.’

‘The government should not restrict a party committee’s support for its own candidates,’ Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., and Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C. who chair the NRSC and NRCC, respectively, said Monday.

‘These coordinated expenditure limits violate the First Amendment, and we appreciate the court’s decision to hear our case,’ they added.

Donald Trump must be feeling pretty powerful.

He’s even demanding that Israel cancel the criminal trial of Bibi Netanyahu.

By any objective analysis, whether you like the president or not, he has been on an incredible winning streak for the last two weeks. Everything seems to be breaking his way.

And as he racks up these victories, from the powder keg of the Middle East to the staunchly conservative Supreme Court, he seems to grow bigger and stronger, like some comic book superhero, and then zap his next adversary.

By hitting Iran’s nuclear sites with 30,000-pound bombs – even as we debate the impact – Trump took a risk that stunned the world.

With media liberals and Democrats still in full resistance mode, the coverage has been largely negative, but that doesn’t matter. Since his days as a New York developer, he has been boosted by critical coverage because that drives the news agenda and gets everyone chattering about his preferred topic. 

But telling another country to drop criminal charges against its leader is a whole new level of what his native city calls chutzpah.

Trump posted the following: ‘It is terrible what they are doing in Israel to Bibi Netanyahu. He is a War Hero, and a Prime Minister who did a fabulous job working with the United States to bring Great Success in getting rid of the dangerous Nuclear threat in Iran.’

Netanyahu is in ‘the process of negotiating a Deal with Hamas, which will include getting the Hostages back,’ and Trump wonders how the Israelis could force him ‘to sit in a Courtroom all day long, over NOTHING.’

As Axios points out, Netanyahu is charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust:  

‘He’s accused of accepting more than $200,000 in gifts from wealthy businessmen, and of granting regulatory benefits worth hundreds of millions of dollars to a telecom tycoon in exchange for favorable news coverage.’

The trial has dragged on for four years, thanks to Netanyahu’s delaying tactics, and there was this war thing that intervened. 

So now Trump has called for the trial to be cancelled or Netanyahu granted a pardon – and done it quite openly. 

Imagine if a foreign head of state urged this country to drop charges against a major political figure. But Trump doesn’t play by everyone else’s rules.

Another Trumpian tactic is to make a big move immediately after a major uproar, when the public and press barely has time to digest the previous controversy. 

So the president cut off trade talks with Canada to protest its taxation of major American tech companies such as Amazon and Google. This involves revenue they earn from online marketplaces, data and social media involving Canadian users.

Before the weekend was out, Canada caved and rescinded the taxes. It’s another case of Trump’s tough-guy negotiating tactics getting instant results.

The not-so-beautiful budget bill in the Senate is another classic case. Elon Musk – did you really think he’d stay quiet for long? – calls it ‘utterly insane’ and ‘political suicide for the Republican Party.’ The CBO says it would add $3.3 trillion to the deficit over a decade. The Senate measure would also make deep cuts in Medicaid, which Trump has vowed to protect. 

Here’s the point: One of the loudest Republican critics is Sen. Thom Tillis, who has been voting against a bill he says would betray the president’s promise to protect those on Medicaid. Trump has trashed him, saying he will recruit a challenger to oust him from the Senate in next year’s primary. 

The next day, literally, Tillis announced that he would not run for reelection. 

So Trump can save his money. He knocked out the North Carolina lawmaker with a couple of postings. 

And then there’s the Supreme Court.

By ruling that local judges cannot issue nationwide injunctions, the court has immensely increased the power of Trump and the executive branch. The 6-3 decision came in the birthright citizenship case, though not on the merits, and tore down one of the last guardrails against unchecked presidential power.

It applies to Democratic presidents too, though far more of these injunctions – 40 – have been brought against Trump just in the opening months of his second term. Joe Biden faced 14 in the first three years of his term.

These injunctions – which have always seemed unfair to me, on both sides – also extend Trump’s winning streak in the high court. He has, after all, appointed three of the six justices that make up the conservative majority.

And that’s not all. SCOTUS ruled that parents with religious objections can pull their children out of public school classrooms when books with LGBTQ themes are being taught.

In yet another decision, the court upheld a Tennessee law banning some forms of transition surgery for transgender youths. Trump has ordered transgender members of the military to leave the service.

Sonia Sotomayor read two blistering dissents from the bench, especially in the birthright citizenship case: ‘Today’s decision is not just egregiously wrong, it is also a travesty of law…No right is safe.’ 

Trump has made clear that he will use expanded powers to be even more aggressive than in the past. Throw in his pressure tactics and funding freezes against elite law firms and Ivy League universities and you have an emboldened president even more determined to stick it to his opponents and detractors.

Of course, even Trump has his limits. The effort to derail Netanyahu’s corruption trial was destined to fail. 

Oh wait.

An Israeli court yesterday canceled this week’s hearings on diplomatic and national security grounds, based on classified information provided by the prime minister and the Mossad spy agency. 

Coincidence?

A deal that had been reached between Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, over how states can regulate artificial intelligence has been pulled from President Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful’ bill.

The collapsed agreement would have required states seeking to access hundreds of millions of dollars in AI infrastructure funding in the ‘big, beautiful’ bill to refrain from adopting new regulations on the technology for five years, a compromise down from the original 10 years.

It also included carveouts to regulate child sexual abuse material, unauthorized use of a person’s likeness and other deceptive practices.

Blackburn announced Monday night that she is withdrawing her support for the agreement.

‘For as long as I’ve been in Congress, I’ve worked alongside federal and state legislators, parents seeking to protect their kids online, and the creative community in Tennessee to fight back against Big Tech’s exploitation by passing legislation to govern the virtual space,’ Blackburn said in a statement to Fox News.

‘While I appreciate Chairman Cruz’s efforts to find acceptable language that allows states to protect their citizens from the abuses of AI, the current language is not acceptable to those who need these protections the most,’ she continued. ‘This provision could allow Big Tech to continue to exploit kids, creators, and conservatives.’

Blackburn added: ‘Until Congress passes federally preemptive legislation like the Kids Online Safety Act and an online privacy framework, we can’t block states from making laws that protect their citizens.’

When asked about Blackburn pulling her support for the compromise, Cruz told Punchbowl News the ‘night is young.’

But Blackburn appears to now be co-sponsoring an amendment with Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., that would completely pull the AI moratorium from the bill.

Cantwell had earlier said that the since-scrapped deal between Blackburn and Cruz would do ‘nothing to protect kids or consumers.’

‘It’s just another giveaway to tech companies,’ Cantwell said in a statement Monday. ‘This provision gives AI and social media a brand-new shield against litigation and state regulation. This is Section 230 on steroids.’

Blackburn is one of several Republicans who have expressed concerns about the 10-year ban on state AI regulation.

Last week, 17 Republican governors wrote a joint letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., calling for the pause to be scrapped completely.

‘AI is already deeply entrenched in American industry and society; people will be at risk until basic rules ensuring safety and fairness can go into effect,’ the letter reads. ‘Over the next decade, this novel technology will be used throughout our society, for harm and good. It will significantly alter our industries, jobs, and ways of life, and rebuild how we as a people function in profound and fundamental ways.’

‘That Congress is burying a provision that will strip the right of any state to regulate this technology in any way – without a thoughtful public debate – is the antithesis of what our Founders envisioned,’ it continued.

Some House Republicans also said they do not support the AI provision, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who admitted she found out about it a few days after voting for Trump’s spending bill.

‘Full transparency, I did not know about this,’ Greene wrote on X. ‘I am adamantly OPPOSED to this and it is a violation of state rights and I would have voted NO if I had known this was in there.’

As the Senate continued to inch closer to finalizing President Donald Trump’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill,’ the president took to social media early Tuesday to warn that a failure to come to an agreement would end in the largest tax increase in history.

The message came after lawmakers had been in a marathon ‘vote-a-rama,’ for several hours, submitting amendments to the megabill from either side of the aisle.  

‘Republicans, the One Big Beautiful Bill, perhaps the greatest and most important of its kind in history, gives the largest Tax Cuts and Border Security ever, Jobs by the Millions, Military/Vets increases, and so much more. The failure to pass means a whopping 68% Tax increase, the largest in history!!!,’ he posted.

There is currently no end in sight as Republican leaders are searching for ways to garner support for the bill while simultaneously fighting proposed amendments from Democrats who are opposing it.

GOP leaders have a narrow margin and cannot afford to lose more than three Republican senators as two, Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has already indicated that they oppose it.

Tillis announced that he would not be seeking reelection after President Trump made threats of a campaign against him.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota said Republicans are ‘figuring out how to get to the end game,’ but an end to the vote-a-rama has been predicted to come well into the middle of the night.

The bill, if passed, will enact Trump’s domestic tax and spending agenda that includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, according to the latest CBO analysis. 

The package would also roll back billions in green energy tax credits threatening wind and solar investments, according to Democrats.

Billionaire Elon Musk, who until a few weeks ago led the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), took to social media late Monday, lashing out at Republicans as ‘the PORKY PIG PARTY!!’ for including a provision, he argued, would raise the nation’s debt limit by $5 trillion.

Trump fired back at Musk on Truth Social, threatening to turn DOGE on its former leader. 

‘Elon Musk knew, long before he so strongly Endorsed me for President, that I was strongly against the EV Mandate. It is ridiculous, and was always a major part of my campaign. Electric cars are fine, but not everyone should be forced to own one. Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa. No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE. Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this? BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!’ the president wrote. 

The bill will also impose $1.2 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and food stamps and make sign-up eligibility more rigorous and change federal reimbursements to states. It will also provide a $350 billion infusion for border and national security to include deportations.