Philippa Kaur

San Francisco, Chicago and New York are among the major cities – as well as more than 200 small towns and counties and a dozen states – that over the past 40 years have adopted what is often known as sanctuary policies.

There is not a single definition of a sanctuary policy. But it often involves local authorities not asking about a resident’s immigration status, or not sharing that personal information with federal immigration authorities.

So when a San Francisco police officer pulls someone over for a traffic violation, the officer will not ask if the person is living in the country legally.

American presidents, from Ronald Reagan to Joe Biden, have chosen to leave sanctuary policies largely unchallenged since different places first adopted them in the 1970s. This changed in 2017, when President Donald Trump first tried to cut federal funding to sanctuary places, claiming that their policies “willfully violate Federal law.” Legal challenges during his first term stopped him from actually withholding the money.

At the start of his second term, Trump signed two executive orders in January and April 2025 which again state that his administration will withhold federal money from areas with sanctuary policies.

“Working on papers to withhold all Federal Funding for any City or State that allows these Death Traps to exist!!!” Trump said, according to an April White House statement. This statement was immediately followed by his April executive order.

These two executive orders task the attorney general and secretary of homeland security with publishing a list of all sanctuary places and notifying local and state officials of “non-compliance, providing an opportunity to correct it.” Those that do not comply with federal law, according to the orders, may lose federal funding.

San Francisco and 14 other sanctuary cities, including New Haven, Connecticut, and Portland, Oregon, sued the Trump administration in February on the grounds that it was illegally trying to coerce cities to comply with its policies. A U.S. district court judge in California issued an injunction on April 24 preventing the administration – at least for the time being – from cutting funding from places with sanctuary policies.

However, as researchers who have studied sanctuary policies for over a decade, we know that Trump’s claim that sanctuary policies violate federal immigration law is not correct.

It’s true that the federal government has exclusive jurisdiction over immigration. Yet there is no federal requirement that state or local governments participate or cooperate in federal immigration enforcement, which would require an act of Congress.

A sign is seen at the Nogales, Ariz., and Mariposa, Mexico, border crossing.
Jan Sonnenmair/Getty Images

What’s behind sanctuary policies

In 1979, the Los Angeles Police Department was the first to announce a prohibition on local officials asking about a resident’s immigration status.

However, it was not until the 1980s that the sanctuary movement took off, when hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans, Guatemalans and Nicaraguans fled civil war and violence in their home countries and migrated to the U.S. This prompted a number of cities to declare solidarity with the faith-based sanctuary movement that offered refuge to Salvadoran, Guatemalan and Nicaraguan asylum seekers facing deportation.

In 1985, Berkeley, Calif., and San Francisco pledged that city officials, including police officers, would not report Central Americans to immigration authorities as long as they were law abiding.

Berkeley also banned officials from using local money to work with federal immigration authorities.

“We are not asking anyone to do anything illegal,” Nancy Walker, a supervisor for San Francisco, said in 1985, according to The New York Times. “We have got to extend our hand to these people. If these people go home, they die. They are asking us to let them stay.”

Today, there are hundreds of sanctuary cities, towns, counties and states across the country that all have a variation of policies that limit their cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

Sometimes – but not always – places with sanctuary policies bar local law enforcement agencies from working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the country’s main immigration enforcement agency.

A large part of ICE’s work is identifying, arresting and deporting immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. In order to carry out this work, ICE issues what is known as “detainer requests” to local law enforcement authorities. A detainer request asks local law enforcement to hold a specific arrested person already being held by police until that person can be transferred to ICE, which can then take steps to deport them.

While places without sanctuary policies tend to comply with these requests, some sanctuary jurisdictions, like the state of California, only do so in the cases of particular violent criminal offenses.

Yet local officials in sanctuary places cannot legally block ICE from arresting local residents who are living in the country illegally, or from carrying out any other parts of its work.

Can Trump withhold federal funding?

Trump claimed in 2017 that sanctuary policies violated federal law, and he issued an executive order that tried to rescind federal grants that these jurisdictions received.

However, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a 2018 case involving San Francisco and Santa Clara County, California, that the president could not refuse to “disperse the federal grants in question without congressional authorization.”

Federal courts, meanwhile, split over whether Trump could freeze funding attached to a specific federal program called the Edward Byrne Memorial Assistance Grant Program, which provides about US$250 million in annual funding to state and local law enforcement.

These cases were in the process of being appealed to the Supreme Court when the Department of Justice, under Biden, asked that they be dismissed.

Other Supreme Court rulings also suggest that the Trump administration’s claim that it can withhold federal funding from sanctuary places rests on shaky legal ground.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1992 and again in 1997 that the federal government could not coerce state or local governments to use their resources to enforce a federal regulatory program, or compel them to enact or administer a federal regulatory program.

Under pressure

The first Trump administration was not generally successful, with the exception of the split over the Edward Byrne Memorial Assistance Grant Program, at stripping funding from sanctuary places. But cutting federal funding – even if it happens temporarily – can be economically damaging to cities and counties while they challenge the decision in court.

Local officials also face other kinds of political pressure to comply with the Trump administration’s demands.

A legal group founded by Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff in the Trump administration, for example, sent letters to dozens of local officials in January threatening criminal prosecution for their sanctuary policies.

Michelle Wu, the mayor of Boston, a sanctuary city, testifies during a House committee hearing on sanctuary city mayors on March 5, 2025, in Washington.
Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images

The real effects of sanctuary policies

One part of Trump’s argument against sanctuary policies is that places with these policies have more crime than those that do not.

But there is no established relationship between sanctuary status and crime rates.

There is, however, evidence that when local law enforcement and ICE work together, it reduces the likelihood of immigrant and Latino communities to report crimes, likely for fear of being arrested by federal immigration authorities.

Sanctuary policies are certainly worthy of debate, but this requires an accurate representation of what they are, what they do, and the effects they have. More

President Donald Trump’s speech at the graduation of the class of 2025 from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point included segments that were clearly scripted and portions that were obviously not.

During the unscripted portions, Trump, who wore a bright red “Make America Great Again” campaign hat during his entire appearance on May 24, 2025, delivered remarks that hit many of his frequent partisan political talking points. That included attacking presidential predecessors Barack Obama and Joe Biden, describing immigrants to the U.S. as “criminals” and trumpeting other policy accomplishments in his first and second terms.

That level of partisanship in a military setting – on the campus of the nation’s first military academy, and before an audience of cadets and their families, many of whom are veterans – is unusual in the United States.

The Conversation U.S. has published several articles discussing the importance to democracy of keeping the military and partisan politics separate. Here are three highlights from that coverage.

A Jan. 12, 2021, message from the nation’s top military officers reminds all service members: ‘We support and defend the Constitution’ – not any particular person.
Joint Chiefs of Staff

1. Cadets focus on the Constitution

During the West Point ceremony, the graduates themselves took an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” And all of them had studied the significance of that oath, including in classes like those taught by Joseph G. Amoroso and Lee Robinson, active-duty Army officers who graduated from West Point and later served as professors there.

As Amoroso and Robinson wrote, those classes teach cadets that, like all military personnel, they serve the Constitution and the American people, not a particular person or political party:

“(O)ur oath forms the basis of a nonpartisan ethic. In the U.S., unlike in many other countries, the oath implies military leaders should be trusted for their expertise and judgment, not for their loyalty to an individual or political party. We emphasize to cadets the rules and professional expectations associated with this profound responsibility.”

Read more:
Military personnel swear allegiance to the Constitution and serve the American people – not one leader or party

2. A tradition of nonpartisanship

Retired U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Samuel C. Mahaney, who teaches history, national security and constitutional law at Missouri University of Science and Technology, observed:

“(S)ince the days of George Washington, the military has been dedicated to serving the nation, not a specific person or political agenda. … (N)onpartisanship is central to the military’s primary mission of defending the country.”

Mahaney wrote that if Trump’s actions during his second term meant a change from the centuries of precedent, “military personnel at all levels would face a crucial question: Would they stand up for the military’s independent role in maintaining the integrity and stability of American democracy or follow the president’s orders – even if those orders crossed a line that made them illegal or unconstitutional?”

Presenting a key question for military personnel.

Read more:
Trump’s firings of military leaders pose a crucial question to service members of all ranks

3. Dating back to the founding of the nation

Marcus Hedahl and Bradley Jay Strawser, professors of philosophy who teach military ethics at the U.S. Naval Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School, respectively, explain the reason for this long-standing focus on keeping politicians and politics separate from military action.

“To minimize the chance of the kind of military occupation they suffered during the Revolutionary War, the country’s founders wrote the Constitution requiring that the president, an elected civilian, would be the commander in chief of the military. In the wake of World War II, Congress went even further, restructuring the military and requiring that the secretary of defense be a civilian as well.”

As they observed, “… the framers always intended it to be the people’s military – not the president’s.”

Read more:
Threatening ‘the enemy within’ with force: Military ethicists explain the danger to important American traditions

This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives. More

President Donald Trump’s speech at the graduation of the class of 2025 from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point included segments that were clearly scripted and portions that were obviously not.

During the unscripted portions, Trump, who wore a bright red “Make America Great Again” campaign hat during his entire appearance on May 24, 2025, delivered remarks that hit many of his frequent partisan political talking points. That included attacking presidential predecessors Barack Obama and Joe Biden, describing immigrants to the U.S. as “criminals” and trumpeting other policy accomplishments in his first and second terms.

That level of partisanship in a military setting – on the campus of the nation’s first military academy, and before an audience of cadets and their families, many of whom are veterans – is unusual in the United States.

The Conversation U.S. has published several articles discussing the importance to democracy of keeping the military and partisan politics separate. Here are two highlights from that coverage.

A Jan. 12, 2021, message from the nation’s top military officers reminds all service members: ‘We support and defend the Constitution’ – not any particular person.
Joint Chiefs of Staff

1. Cadets focus on the Constitution

During the West Point ceremony, the graduates themselves took an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” And all of them had studied the significance of that oath, including in classes like those taught by Joseph G. Amoroso and Lee Robinson, active-duty Army officers who graduated from West Point and later served as professors there.

As Amoroso and Robinson wrote, those classes teach cadets that, like all military personnel, they serve the Constitution and the American people, not a particular person or political party:

“(O)ur oath forms the basis of a nonpartisan ethic. In the U.S., unlike in many other countries, the oath implies military leaders should be trusted for their expertise and judgment, not for their loyalty to an individual or political party. We emphasize to cadets the rules and professional expectations associated with this profound responsibility.”

Read more:
Military personnel swear allegiance to the Constitution and serve the American people – not one leader or party

2. A tradition of nonpartisanship

Retired U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Samuel C. Mahaney, who teaches history, national security and constitutional law at Missouri University of Science and Technology, observed:

“(S)ince the days of George Washington, the military has been dedicated to serving the nation, not a specific person or political agenda. … (N)onpartisanship is central to the military’s primary mission of defending the country.”

Mahaney wrote that if Trump’s actions during his second term meant a change from the centuries of precedent, “military personnel at all levels would face a crucial question: Would they stand up for the military’s independent role in maintaining the integrity and stability of American democracy or follow the president’s orders – even if those orders crossed a line that made them illegal or unconstitutional?”

Presenting a key question for military personnel.

Read more:
Trump’s firings of military leaders pose a crucial question to service members of all ranks

This story was updated to highlight two articles from The Conversation’s archives. More

The United States has long played a leadership role in NATO, the most successful military alliance in history.

The U.S. and 11 other countries in North America and Europe founded NATO in 1949, following World War II. NATO has since grown its membership to include 32 countries in Europe and North America.

But now, European leaders and politicians fear the United States has become a less reliable ally, posing major challenges for Europe and, by implication, NATO.

This concern is not unfounded.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly spoken of a desire to seize Greenland, which is an autonomous territory of Denmark, a NATO member. He has declared that Canada, another NATO member, should become “the 51st state.” Trump has also sided with Russia at the United Nations and said that the European Union, the political and economic group uniting 27 European countries, was designed to “screw” the U.S.

Still, Trump – as well as other senior U.S. government officials – has said that the U.S. remains committed to staying in and supporting NATO.

For decades, both liberal and conservative American politicians have recognized that the U.S. strengthens its own military and economic interests by being a leader in NATO – and by keeping thousands of U.S. troops based in Europe to underwrite its commitment.

President Donald Trump speaks at a NATO Summit in July 2018 during his first term.
Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Understanding NATO

The U.S., Canada and 10 Western European countries formed NATO nearly 80 years ago as a way to help maintain peace and stability in Europe following World War II. NATO helped European and North American countries bind together and defend themselves against the threat once posed by the Soviet Union, a former communist empire that fell in 1991.

NATO employs about 2,000 people at its headquarters in Brussels. It does not have its own military troops and relies on its 32 member countries to volunteer their own military forces to conduct operations and other tasks under NATO’s leadership.

NATO does have its own military command structure, led by an American military officer, and including military officers from other countries. This team plans and executes all NATO military operations.

In peacetime, military forces working with NATO conduct training exercises across Eastern Europe and other places to help reassure allies about the strength of the military coalition – and to deter potential aggressors, like Russia.

NATO has a relatively small annual budget of around US$3.6 billion. The U.S. and Germany are the largest contributors to this budget, each responsible for funding 16% of NATO’s costs each year.

Separate from NATO’s annual budget, in 2014, NATO members agreed that each participating country should spend the equivalent of 2% of its gross domestic product on their own national defense. Twenty two of NATO’s 31 members with military forces were expected that 2% threshold as of April 2025.

Although NATO is chiefly a military alliance, it has roots in the mutual economic interests of both the U.S. and Europe.

Europe is the United States’ most important economic partner. Roughly one-quarter of all U.S. trade is with Europe – more than the U.S. has with Canada, China or Mexico.

Over 2.3 million American jobs are directly tied to producing exports that reach European countries that are part of NATO.

NATO helps safeguard this mutual economic relationship between the U.S. and Europe. If Russia or another country tries to intimidate, dominate or even invade a European country, this could hurt the American economy. In this way, NATO can be seen as the insurance policy that underwrites the strength and vitality of the American economy.

The heart of that insurance policy is Article 5, a mutual defense pledge that member countries agree to when they join NATO.

Article 5 says that an armed attack against one NATO member is considered an attack against the entire alliance. If one NATO member is attacked, all other NATO members must help defend the country in question. NATO members have only invoked Article 5 once, following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S., when the alliance deployed aircraft to monitor U.S. skies.

A wavering commitment to Article 5

Trump has questioned whether he would enforce Article 5 and help defend a NATO country if it is not paying the required 2% of its gross domestic product.

NBC News also reported in April 2025 that the U.S. is likely going to cut 10,000 or more of the nearly 85,000 American troops stationed in Europe. The U.S. might also relinquish its top military leadership position within NATO, according to NBC.

Many political analysts expect the U.S. to shift its national security focus away from Europe and toward threats posed by China – specifically, the threat of China invading or attacking Taiwan.

At the same time, the Trump administration appears eager to reset relations with Russia. This is despite the Russian military’s atrocities committed against Ukrainian military forces and civilians in the war Russia began in 2022, and Russia’s intensifying hybrid war against Europeans in the form of covert spy attacks across Europe. This hybrid warfare allegedly includes Russia conducting cyberattacks and sabotage operations across Europe. It also involves Russia allegedly trying to plant incendiary devices on planes headed to North America, among other things.

President Joe Biden speaks during a NATO summit in Washington in July 2024.
Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images

A shifting role in Europe

The available evidence indicates that the U.S. is backing away from its role in Europe. At best – from a European security perspective – the U.S. could still defend European allies with the potential threat of its nuclear weapon arsennal. The U.S. has significantly more nuclear weapons than any Western European country, but it is not clear that this is enough to deter Russia without the clear presence of large numbers of American troops in Europe, especially given that Moscow continues to perceive the U.S. as NATO’s most important and most powerful member.

For this reason, significantly downsizing the number of U.S. troops in Europe, giving up key American military leadership positions in NATO, or backing away from the alliance in other ways appears exceptionally perilous. Such actions could increase Russian aggression across Europe, ultimately threatening not just European security bu America’s as well.

Maintaining America’s leadership position in NATO and sustaining its troop levels in Europe helps reinforce the U.S. commitment to defending its most important allies. This is the best way to protect vital U.S. economic interests in Europe today and ensure Washington will have friends to call on in the future. More

The first five months of Donald Trump’s second presidency have been brutal for the Democratic party, which has been almost completely unable to stop his aggressive agenda. In March, CNN polling showed the favourability rating for the Democrats at just 29% – a record low in CNN polls dating back to 1992.

The problem with the Democratic party “isn’t a lack of talent”, says Federico de Jesús, a Democratic strategist and spokesman for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign who I interviewed for this story. It is a “problem of vision and strategy”, he argues.

“A lot of people, in theory, agree with the Democrats on a lot of issues. But they don’t necessarily feel comfortable with the direction the party is taking.” De Jesús told me that the Democrats allowed themselves to become identified by “woke issues” by many voters who abandoned them in November.

However, the Democrats now have some reasons to celebrate. In early April, a Democratic-backed judge called Susan Crawford secured a seat in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court. This kept liberal control of the state’s highest court intact. And a Reuters/Ipsos poll released a few weeks later showed that only 37% of US voters approve of Trump’s handling of the economy.

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As a Washington political correspondent for almost two decades, I have witnessed how the parties changed the guard after painful election cycles. This time, in the absence of clear leaders, the challenge is quite high for the Democrats.

But who are the Democrats positioning themselves to lead the struggle against Trump’s policies? The acts of defiance are coming from two fronts: lawmakers in Congress and governors.

Donald Trump and Joe Biden greet each other at Trump’s inauguration on January 20.
Kenny Holston/EPA

Senate minority leader Charles Schumer has predicted that the Democrats will win back control of the Senate after the 2026 midterm elections. “The electorate will desert the Republican candidates who embraced Trump in an overwhelming way”, he said on April 23.

Others, like California senator Adam Schiff and Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin, are using tactics like holding town halls in strong Republican districts to rally the opposition. Michigan congressman Shri Thanedar even filed articles of impeachment against Trump on April 28, but top Democrats shot down the effort as impractical.

At the same time, House of Representatives minority leader Hakeem Jeffries is facing an intra-party effort to unseat many long-time lawmakers in solid Democratic districts. David Hogg, vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee, is pledging US$20 million (£15 million) to end a culture of “seniority politics” which allows “asleep at the wheel” lawmakers to stay in office.

But it is New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who has been stealing the headlines. She is setting fundraising records, preparing for an effort to challenge Schumer in a New York senatorial primary in 2028. Surveys this early are rarely predictive, but an April head-to-head poll has Ocasio-Cortez leading Schumer by double digits.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez delivers a speech on stage during a rally in Los Angeles, California, in April 2025.
David Swanson/EPA

Three Democrat governors are standing out at present: Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, Minnesota’s Tim Walz and California’s Gavin Newsom.

Shapiro is very popular with voters in his crucial swing state, and gets good marks even from Republicans on his bipartisan record. Walz was Kamala Harris’s running mate in November’s election, and his campaign performance was well received by his party. Walz is an obvious contender to run for the White House in 2028.

But Newsom is probably the most notable of the three. While he’s been critical of his party, telling the Hill newspaper on April 21 that Democrats haven’t performed a thorough autopsy of what led to the loss in November, he is seen as someone who can address Republican voters well.

A second tier of governors include Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer, whose soft criticism of the Trump administration’s tariff regime saw Trump praise her for doing an “excellent job”. She is joined by Maryland’s Wes Moore, who is young and popular in his state, and JB Pritzker of Illinois.

Pritzker called for “mass mobilisations and disruption” against Trump at a Democratic event in New Hampshire in late April. “These governors need to stand out”, said de Jesús, “either by fighting against Trump, or either [by] achieving something memorable.”

Harris had largely kept a low profile since November’s election. But on April 30 she sharply criticised Trump’s first 100 days in office during a speech in San Francisco. She may decide to enter the race for California governor in the summer of 2025.

Dark horse leader

There could also be a dark horse leader waiting in the wings: Rahm Emanuel. As former Chicago mayor, Illinois congressman, Obama and Bill Clinton aide and US ambassador to Japan, he is considered a political heavyweight.

Emanuel has hinted he may again run for public office, while criticising the party’s focus on gender issues and not on “kitchen table” issues as reasons for November’s defeat.

Rahm Emanuel walks next to Joe Biden during a visit to Japan in 2023.
Franck Robichon/EPA

Progressives chafe at the idea of dialling down the talk about certain policies, such as gender and identity issues. But both Newsom and Emanuel are among those suggesting that the focus should instead shift to defending changes that most voters can relate to.

At the moment, the party still lacks a clear leader and direction to recover from the 2024 defeat. Newsom, for instance, told the Hill that he doesn’t “know what the party is”. “I’m still struggling with that,” he added.

According to de Jesús, “people don’t necessarily want someone to just hate Trump, but to identify the issues voters care about and co-opt that populist message.” More

The 133 cardinal electors sequestered in the Sistine Chapel elected a new pope May 8. The choice was a surprise — Chicago-born Cardinal Robert Prevost, who has carried out most of his ministry in Peru, before being elevated to Vatican roles by Pope Francis.

As commentators and the media try to piece together backgrounders on Pope Leo XIV, one obvious question will be, “Is he a liberal or a conservative?” The same question was asked about Pope Francis, and about the cardinals entering this conclave.

When applied to individual Catholics, the terms “liberal” and “conservative” can mean very different things. One could be conservative in regard to liturgy and church practice while being strongly committed to anti-racism and environmentalism.

Or one might be considered a social conservative on issues such as marriage, sexuality and gender while holding clearly left-wing, social democratic views on the role of government.

Newly elected Pope Leo XIV appears at the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, May 8, 2025.
(AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Even if Catholics are comfortable self-identifying as liberal or conservative Catholics, we should not treat these terms as if their meaning were obvious — especially since even as purely political terms the meaning of “liberal” or “conservative” is contested.

Papacy as institution

Things become all the more complicated when we are talking about the pope, the supreme head of the Catholic Church. The papacy as an institution is conservative by definition.

The pope is considered the successor of the Apostle Peter, and his job description is precisely to maintain the unity and catholicity (“wholeness”) of the Church’s life, not only in space but through time — that is, to ensure continuity.

But because of this role to maintain the fullness of a tradition and the unity of the Church, the pope cannot be conservative (or liberal) in a political sense.

Pope Francis legacy

The pontificate of Francis should have served as a lesson against liberal/conservative labels. From the beginning of his pontificate, he advocated strenuously for migrants and refugees. He reached out personally to LGBTQ+ communities. He initiated a worldwide “synodal” process that included broad consultation and fostered discussion of topics previously considered out of bounds, such as ordination of women as deacons (though not priests). He placed women in high-ranking positions in the Roman curia previously reserved only for clerics.

Chiclayo Bishop Edinson Farfan speaks about newly elected Pope Leo XIV during a press conference at the bishop’s office in Chiclayo, Peru, May 9, 2025.
(AP Photo/Guadalupe Pardo)

But Francis was also critical of “gender ideology,” affirmed Church teaching on abortion and maintained the Church’s reservation of ordination to men only. While he angered self-identified conservatives, he often disappointed self-identified liberals.

Instead of trying to impose political categories, it makes more sense to try to uncover the internal dynamics and motivations of a pope’s teaching and ministry. For example, Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical letter, Laudato si’, was a landmark in Catholic teaching on ecology. Far from being a political manifesto, the letter presents a vision of the human being within creation, informed by the Bible, theological reflection and modern Catholic social teaching. Francis frequently references the social thought of his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, who himself affirmed that the Church “must defend not only earth, water and air as gifts of creation that belong to everyone.”

Read more:
Laudato Si’: A look back on Pope Francis’s environmental legacy

As the British theologian Anna Rowlands astutely notes, Catholic social teaching “functions as a social philosophy that never fully baptizes a liberal philosophy or sentiment. It remains locked in a complex dialogue … with liberal democracy.”

The role of the pope, highlighted in Francis’s teaching on ecology, is to inspire a different kind of social and moral imagination, one not reducible to particular ideological positions.

A children’s choir displays photos of newly elected Pope Leo XIV after performing to celebrate his election as pope outside the Santa Maria Cathedral, the episcopal see of the Diocese of Chiclayo, Peru, where he served as bishop, May 9, 2025.
(AP Photo/Guadalupe Pardo)

Catholic teaching, conscience

Another example that subverts the liberal/conservative dichotomy was the well-known response of Pope Francis to a journalist’s question about homosexuality in the priesthood: “Who am I to judge?” Francis did not overturn “conservative” teachings in sexual ethics.

But he did speak as a member of the Jesuit religious order and as a pastor, who knows that the general law must be applied in specific cases that introduce complexities and require nuanced concrete responses.

There was also a tacit appeal to the teaching of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), that an individual is bound to follow their conscience.

A pin from Dignity USA, a group of LGBTQ+ Catholics, outside the Sao Vicente de Paulo Parish Social Centre, after Pope Francis visited it, in Lisbon, Aug. 4, 2023.
(AP Photo/Armando Franca)

For his part, Benedict XVI (as then-Cardinal Ratzinger), in a 1991 address to American bishops in Dallas, alluded to “the classical principle of moral tradition that conscience is the highest norm which [the human person] is to follow even in opposition to authority.” According to this principle, while church teaching authority would inform conscience, “conscience … would retain the final word.”

There is no doubt that LGBTQ+ Catholics were able to hear something different in Francis’s language than they had heard in Benedict’s. However, both Benedict and Francis could appeal to shared principles, which were theological rather than political, and not reducible to liberal versus conservative categories.

Weight of political polarization

In our current political context, political terms like “liberal” and “conservative” tend to carry the weight of American political polarization.

In the American context at the moment, “conservative Catholic” in its most radical form blends theological traditionalism — devotion to the traditional Latin mass, emphasis on doctrinal orthodoxy and opposition to Francis’s reformist papacy — with support for the Republican party and MAGA movement.

As professor of moral philosophy Massimo Borghesi has argued, this radical conservative opposition to Francis has its genesis in the pro-capitalist Catholic neo-conservatism of the 1980s and 90s, and is a predominantly American phenomenon.

In addition, as writer and editor James T. Keane noted in a 2021 article in the Jesuit magazine America, the political polarizations that have seeped into the American Catholic Church should not set the map for the rest of the world, least of all the papacy. It is important to remember this fact as the first North American pope begins his pontificate.

Newly elected Pope Leo XIV, center, leaves after concelebrating Mass with the College of Cardinals inside the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican the day after his election, May 9, 2025.
(Vatican Media via AP)

Choice of name Leo

Cardinal Robert Prevost, who has become Pope Leo XIV, has given indications of being critical of the Trump administration on issues of peace and migration, very much in line with Francis.

His choice of the name Leo harkens back to Pope Leo XIII, the pope credited with initiating modern Catholic social teaching, and signals an emphasis on the Church’s advocacy for peace and justice. The new pope’s first Urbi et Orbi (“To the City and to the World”) address from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica signalled continuity with Francis — peace, dialogue, encounter, bridge-building.

And Pope Leo’s career as a missionary, bishop and Vatican cardinal outside of the U.S. means that his context is not confined to the polarizations of the U.S. Catholic Church and its bishops.

Will the new Pope, Leo XIV, be liberal or conservative? Pope Francis did not fit neatly into these categories: I hope Pope Leo won’t either. More

The 133 cardinal electors sequestered in the Sistine Chapel elected a new pope May 8. The choice was a surprise — Chicago-born Cardinal Robert Prevost, who has carried out most of his ministry in Peru, before being elevated to Vatican roles by Pope Francis.

As commentators and the media try to piece together backgrounders on Pope Leo XIV, one obvious question will be, “Is he a liberal or a conservative?” The same question was asked about Pope Francis, and about the cardinals entering this conclave.

When applied to individual Catholics, the terms “liberal” and “conservative” can mean very different things. One could be conservative in regard to liturgy and church practice while being strongly committed to anti-racism and environmentalism.

Or one might be considered a social conservative on issues such as marriage, sexuality and gender while holding clearly left-wing, social democratic views on the role of government.

Newly elected Pope Leo XIV appears at the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, May 8, 2025.
(AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Even if Catholics are comfortable self-identifying as liberal or conservative Catholics, we should not treat these terms as if their meaning were obvious — especially since even as purely political terms the meaning of “liberal” or “conservative” is contested.

Papacy as institution

Things become all the more complicated when we are talking about the pope, the supreme head of the Catholic Church. The papacy as an institution is conservative by definition.

The pope is considered the successor of the Apostle Peter, and his job description is precisely to maintain the unity and catholicity (“wholeness”) of the Church’s life, not only in space but through time — that is, to ensure continuity.

But because of this role to maintain the fullness of a tradition and the unity of the Church, the pope cannot be conservative (or liberal) in a political sense.

Pope Francis legacy

The pontificate of Francis should have served as a lesson against liberal/conservative labels. From the beginning of his pontificate, he advocated strenuously for migrants and refugees. He reached out personally to LGBTQ+ communities. He initiated a worldwide “synodal” process that included broad consultation and fostered discussion of topics previously considered out of bounds, such as ordination of women as deacons (though not priests). He placed women in high-ranking positions in the Roman curia previously reserved only for clerics.

Chiclayo Bishop Edinson Farfan speaks about newly elected Pope Leo XIV during a press conference at the bishop’s office in Chiclayo, Peru, May 9, 2025.
(AP Photo/Guadalupe Pardo)

But Francis was also critical of “gender ideology,” affirmed Church teaching on abortion and maintained the Church’s reservation of ordination to men only. While he angered self-identified conservatives, he often disappointed self-identified liberals.

Instead of trying to impose political categories, it makes more sense to try to uncover the internal dynamics and motivations of a pope’s teaching and ministry. For example, Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical letter, Laudato si’, was a landmark in Catholic teaching on ecology. Far from being a political manifesto, the letter presents a vision of the human being within creation, informed by the Bible, theological reflection and modern Catholic social teaching. Francis frequently references the social thought of his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, who himself affirmed that the Church “must defend not only earth, water and air as gifts of creation that belong to everyone.”

Read more:
Laudato Si’: A look back on Pope Francis’s environmental legacy

As the British theologian Anna Rowlands astutely notes, Catholic social teaching “functions as a social philosophy that never fully baptizes a liberal philosophy or sentiment. It remains locked in a complex dialogue … with liberal democracy.”

The role of the pope, highlighted in Francis’s teaching on ecology, is to inspire a different kind of social and moral imagination, one not reducible to particular ideological positions.

A children’s choir displays photos of newly elected Pope Leo XIV after performing to celebrate his election as pope outside the Santa Maria Cathedral, the episcopal see of the Diocese of Chiclayo, Peru, where he served as bishop, May 9, 2025.
(AP Photo/Guadalupe Pardo)

Catholic teaching, conscience

Another example that subverts the liberal/conservative dichotomy was the well-known response of Pope Francis to a journalist’s question about homosexuality in the priesthood: “Who am I to judge?” Francis did not overturn “conservative” teachings in sexual ethics.

But he did speak as a member of the Jesuit religious order and as a pastor, who knows that the general law must be applied in specific cases that introduce complexities and require nuanced concrete responses.

There was also a tacit appeal to the teaching of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), that an individual is bound to follow their conscience.

A pin from Dignity USA, a group of LGBTQ+ Catholics, outside the Sao Vicente de Paulo Parish Social Centre, after Pope Francis visited it, in Lisbon, Aug. 4, 2023.
(AP Photo/Armando Franca)

For his part, Benedict XVI (as then-Cardinal Ratzinger), in a 1991 address to American bishops in Dallas, alluded to “the classical principle of moral tradition that conscience is the highest norm which [the human person] is to follow even in opposition to authority.” According to this principle, while church teaching authority would inform conscience, “conscience … would retain the final word.”

There is no doubt that LGBTQ+ Catholics were able to hear something different in Francis’s language than they had heard in Benedict’s. However, both Benedict and Francis could appeal to shared principles, which were theological rather than political, and not reducible to liberal versus conservative categories.

Weight of political polarization

In our current political context, political terms like “liberal” and “conservative” tend to carry the weight of American political polarization.

In the American context at the moment, “conservative Catholic” in its most radical form blends theological traditionalism — devotion to the traditional Latin mass, emphasis on doctrinal orthodoxy and opposition to Francis’s reformist papacy — with support for the Republican party and MAGA movement.

As professor of moral philosophy Massimo Borghesi has argued, this radical conservative opposition to Francis has its genesis in the pro-capitalist Catholic neo-conservatism of the 1980s and 90s, and is a predominantly American phenomenon.

In addition, as writer and editor James T. Keane noted in a 2021 article in the Jesuit magazine America, the political polarizations that have seeped into the American Catholic Church should not set the map for the rest of the world, least of all the papacy. It is important to remember this fact as the first North American pope begins his pontificate.

Newly elected Pope Leo XIV, center, leaves after concelebrating Mass with the College of Cardinals inside the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican the day after his election, May 9, 2025.
(Vatican Media via AP)

Choice of name Leo

Cardinal Robert Prevost, who has become Pope Leo XIV, has given indications of being critical of the Trump administration on issues of peace and migration, very much in line with Francis.

His choice of the name Leo harkens back to Pope Leo XIII, the pope credited with initiating modern Catholic social teaching, and signals an emphasis on the Church’s advocacy for peace and justice. The new pope’s first Urbi et Orbi (“To the City and to the World”) address from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica signalled continuity with Francis — peace, dialogue, encounter, bridge-building.

And Pope Leo’s career as a missionary, bishop and Vatican cardinal outside of the U.S. means that his context is not confined to the polarizations of the U.S. Catholic Church and its bishops.

Will the new Pope, Leo XIV, be liberal or conservative? Pope Francis did not fit neatly into these categories: I hope Pope Leo won’t either. More

Former presidents don’t criticize their successors in public.

Or do they?

Former Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden have all criticized President Donald Trump in recent months.

In April 2025, Obama, for example, spoke about the importance of preserving the international order, meaning the system of rules, norms and institutions that have been active since World War II. He said: “And this is an important moment, because in the last two months, we have seen a U.S. government actively try to destroy that order and discredit it. And the thinking, I gather, is that somehow, since we are the strongest, we’re going to be better off if we can just bully people into doing whatever we want.”

Biden also offered his own negative comments on April 15: “In fewer than 100 days, this new administration has done so much damage,” he said in his first public remarks since leaving office.

Some commentators have called these former presidents’ remarks “unprecedented.”

Many Americans are accustomed to former presidents not speaking about – let alone criticizing – the current president.

As a scholar of the presidency, I know that most presidents stay quiet about their successors, regardless of what the current president does or says. They do this to avoid undermining both their own reputations as well as the stability of the presidency itself.

But I am also struck by the fact that this tradition is not as entrenched as former presidents might claim or as many Americans believe.

President Jimmy Carter and his Republican challenger, Ronald Reagan, shake hands as they meet on a debate stage in 1980.
Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images

Presidents who bucked the norm

President George Washington established the precedent that presidents retire after two terms and steer clear of public statement. John Quincy Adams, the sixth U.S. president, established a different model.

After Adams lost his bid for reelection in 1828 to Andrew Jackson, he served in the House of Representatives from 1831 through 1848. Congress is an unusual perch for a former president, but it’s a place where criticizing sitting presidents and their policies is part of the job. Adams had plenty of criticism there for his successors, including Jackson and James K. Polk.

Nearly half a century later, President Teddy Roosevelt was disappointed that his hand-picked successor, William Howard Taft, failed to live up to Roosevelt’s vision of reform. Roosevelt went from criticizing Taft privately in political circles to campaigning against him publicly in 1912, aiming to win a nonconsecutive second term. Democrat Woodrow Wilson eventually won that election, beating out Taft and Roosevelt.

Richard Nixon, who, in 1974, became the only president to resign from office, wrote a series of books in the 1980s and 1990s that sought to redeem his own sullied image by casting himself as a visionary statesman. Nixon’s books also included plenty of unsolicited advice – and implicit criticism – for Democratic and Republican presidents alike.

Before becoming the beloved elder statesman of the former presidents club in 1980, Jimmy Carter earned the ire of his successors for his outspokenness. He said that President Ronald Reagan’s administration was an “aberration on the political scene” and said that one of Clinton’s political pardons was “disgraceful.”

With the exception of Roosevelt, these former presidents who criticized their successors all felt they had something to prove. Anxious to redeem their legacies, they did not retire quietly.

A healthy foray into retirement

So why don’t we all know these stories, and instead believe that past presidents simply keep their mouths shut?

Americans have long treated presidential retirement as a symbol of a healthy democracy. And that story of retirement emphasizes how former presidents often leave politics behind them.

The trajectory of presidents finding peace and contentment in retirement, surrounded by friends and family, is an appealing way for presidential biographers to end a story. These stories have included narratives about Harry Truman taking a cross-country road trip only months after leaving the White House in 1953, and George W. Bush taking up painting.

In reality, former presidents have led complex lives of happiness and loss, withdrawal and engagement. The energy and ambition that brought them to the White House often make retirement difficult. And, over the long history of the presidency, former presidents have become increasingly public figures.

Former Presidents Bill Clinton, left, George W. Bush and Barack Obama are seen with Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush at the inauguration of Donald Trump on Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

A shifting role

Another important factor in the growing prominence of former presidents is how their roles have recently changed.

Beginning in the 1990s, former presidents and first ladies tried to publicly show friendship and agreement with their counterparts.

George H.W. Bush and Clinton, for example, teamed up to raise money for disaster relief after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in South and Southeast Asia. In 2017, Bush’s son George W. Bush, himself a former president by that time, called Clinton his “brother with a different mother.”

Former first lady Michelle Obama and Barack Obama have publicly thanked George W. Bush and Laura Bush for helping their family adjust to life in the White House. Michelle Obama has also become known for her personal friendship with George W. Bush.

And as medical advances enabled former presidents to live longer than ever, the relationships within a growing former presidents club became the subject of books, movies and television segments.

All of these stories had the same message – that all presidents are committed to their country. Likewise, the amiable relationship between former and sitting presidents shows that if party leaders could overcome partisanship in the name of unity and friendship, so too could other Americans.

In a remarkable moment, for example, three presidents from two different parties – Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama – came together for a video before Biden’s 2021 inauguration to call for unity in a moment of crisis.

Following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, they used their connection as presidents to tell a national story. As Bush said, “Well, I think the fact that the three of us are standing here talking about a peaceful transfer of power speaks to the institutional integrity of our country.”

“America’s a generous country, people of great hearts. All three of us were lucky to be the president of this country,” Bush continued.

The Republican former president looked at the Democrats on either side of him and smiled.

Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton speak together in 2021.

A new kind of presidential relations

While friendships between presidents became more common in the 1990s and 2000s, Clinton and especially Trump were doing something different by the 2016 election.

In 2016, Clinton became an active partisan in support of his wife, Hillary Clinton, during her unsuccessful bid for president.

Both Clintons remained public critics of Trump long after he assumed office in 2017.

For his part, Trump as a politician and then president immediately dismissed the notion of friendship with his predecessors and former competitors. He was quick to condemn Hillary Clinton – and especially Obama – in the early years of his first presidency.

No sooner did Trump lose the 2020 election than he was heaping public scorn on Biden with an energy that only increased after Trump entered the 2024 race.

Trump’s criticism of Biden did not stop after his 2024 victory, with the White House issuing statements like a pledge “to turn back the economic plague unleashed by the Biden Administration.”

Trump has escalated attacks on other presidents. But he was not the first to criticize his successors or predecessors. More