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By any standard, the International Criminal Court (ICC) is in crisis. But the revelations in The Wall Street Journal – detailing explosive allegations of non-consensual sexual acts and abuse of office against its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan – have not just shaken the court’s credibility. They have obliterated it. The Journal reported that Khan faces “multiple allegations of coerced sexual intercourse,” based on documents, testimony and interviews with ICC officials. At the heart of the Journal’s investigation is a horrifying accusation: that Khan, while leading the most controversial prosecution in the ICC’s history, was allegedly engaged in a sustained pattern of sexual abuse against a junior female lawyer on his team.

“We do not need loud, forceful communication,” said Pope Leo XIV, the Chicago-born American prelate Robert Prevost – at his first press conference on Monday, “but rather communication that is capable of listening and of gathering the voices of the weak who have no voice.”  His Holiness, who opened by thanking the 6,000 attendees in English before delivering his remarks in superb Italian, also called for freedom for imprisoned journalists, urged members of the Fourth Estate to avoid “ideological or partisan” language in their work and admonished them to pursue a “path of communication in favor of peace.

In America, we are told justice is blind. Hennepin County wants her to peek. Last week, the Department of Justice launched an investigation into Minnesota’s Hennepin County Attorney’s Office after prosecutors were instructed to consider race and age during plea negotiations. County Attorney Mary Moriarty defended the policy as an effort to address “racial disparities” in the criminal justice system. But good intentions don’t excuse bad policy – and this one sends a dangerous message: that some people are less accountable for their actions because of the color of their skin. As a black conservative, I am fully in favor of thoughtful criminal justice reform.

President Donald Trump is continuing his consistently inconsistent stance on abortion as his administration’s Justice Department has asked a federal court in Texas to dismiss a case aiming to increase regulations on mifepristone, an abortion pill shown in some rare cases to involve serious health risks. Trump has claimed many times in the past to be pro-life, even saying in 2016 that “there has to be some form of punishment” for abortions.

“You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.” So goes the bartenders’ refrain to customers at closing time. The Trump administration is issuing that same call to millions of illegal immigrants, beginning with the most violent (and those caught staying with them). You can’t stay here. It’s a wildly popular stance, but it is running into predictable problems. The first is that rounding up the millions here illegally is costly, time-consuming and sometimes dangerous. That problem was vastly increased by Joe Biden’s deliberate decision to open the southern border, allow millions of people to cross it illegally and then lie to the public and Congress about what his administration was doing.

Was the first American Pope ushered in on a wave of suspect, last-minute betting? Something odd seems to have been happening on at least one online gambling platform – Polymarket – in the minutes before the new Pope was announced. I know because I happened to place a bet just before Pope Leo XIV walked out on the balcony of St. Peter’s – and watched the odds dramatically shortening before my eyes.   Before his election as Pope, Leo was Cardinal Robert Prevost. I’d barely heard the name until a week ago, when I joined a tour of the Vatican laid on by the Holy See press office. We were not, disappointingly, to be shown the Sistine Chapel, the world’s most splendid polling station for the few days of a papal election.

It was around 3 p.m. last Tuesday when I’d finally heard enough. Karoline Leavitt, for the love of your movement, stop bringing podcasters and influencers into the White House briefings. It’s not good for anyone, not the administration, not for conservative nor new media, and it’s certainly not good for all the righteous goals that got Trump elected in the first place. Take TikTok’s Link Lauren, aka “MAGA Malfoy,” who had the opportunity so few get to ask Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt a question in person at the White House.

Among the Sunday night demands from King Donald came this bizarre proclamation: “REBUILD AND REOPEN ALCATRAZ!” The latest Trumpian nocturnal emission evoked a time when America was a more “serious Nation…No longer will we tolerate these serious offenders who spread filth, blood, and mayhem on our streets.” Apparently, to return to law and order, all we need to do is restore the glory days of The Rock, which has been closed for 60 years and is currently a museum operated by the National Park Service. To be charitable, our prison system is cruelly overcrowded, and under Trump’s rule, it is fixing to be even more so. We’re going to need facilities to house “America’s most ruthless and violent offenders,” and Arkham Asylum only exists in the imagination.

Is Donald Trump forsaking four more years? In an interview today with NBC’s Kristen Welker, Trump indicated that while his MAGA faithful may be hawking hats in support of a 2028 run, he’s not keen on the idea. “I’ll be an eight-year president,” he said. “I’ll be a two-term president. I always thought that was very important.” His current term, he added, was more than adequate to accomplish something “really spectacular.” The interest that Trump’s declaration of non-intention is receiving offers a reminder that he stirs up as much news with what he doesn’t do as with what he does.  The only president to smash the barrier was, of course, Franklin D.

A lonely caravan, ambushed on the open frontier, circles the wagons. The settlers bring out their long rifles to fight for survival. They endure the first onslaught, but dusk is falling – and the battle has only begun.It’s a familiar scene in Hollywood westerns. In recent weeks, on Washington’s political prairies, the mainstream Democratic establishment has been living it, too.The Democrats of the old established order are hunkered down behind whatever cover they can find, defending themselves against a rising, radical flank of their own party. The insurgents call themselves "the Resistance" – but they’re not just resisting Republicans. They are contesting normalcy within their own party.

“I’m that same woman from Michigan,” Governor Gretchen Whitmer told Fox 2 Detroit Tuesday night, when asked about her changing relationship with President Donald Trump. Yet for progressive Democratic voters, Whitmer’s willingness to appear – reluctantly in the Oval Office three weeks ago, less so Tuesday at the Air National Guard Base at Selfridge, where Trump invited her to speak at the lectern prominently bearing the seal of the President – is viewed as anathema. Who’s right in this moment? Will Whitmer’s multiple appearances and plaudits for Trump become something she intensely regrets when the Democratic party’s presidential primaries begin apace? Or is the True Gretch author sly as a fox?