Blog

VATICAN CITY — The U.S. now has two top-level leaders on the global stage — and there is evidence to suggest Pope Leo XIV will cut a stark contrast to President Donald Trump.

The Chicago-born pontiff, 69, is known as a humble moderate who used his first papal words to urge building “bridges.” Seen as a spiritual successor to the late Pope Francis, Leo was echoing his predecessor’s refrain of building “bridges not walls” — a theme Francis used to openly criticize the Trump administration.

As Cardinal Robert Prevost, Leo also criticized both Trump and Vice President JD Vance on social media. As recently as February, he shared a headline saying that Vance, who is Catholic, was “wrong” to suggest Christians should prioritize loving their countrymen over foreigners.

And like Francis, Leo has expressed deep sympathy for migrants, the poor and those impacted by the climate crisis. He has shared the late pope’s support for appointing women to senior Vatican roles — and his resistance against going all-out in support of female ordination. And he has similarly advocated for an inclusive church that reaches out to other faiths and cultures.

On the other hand, he has not followed Francis’ relative support for LGBTQ+ communities, lamenting in 2012 how TV shows “benignly and sympathetically portrayed” same-sex couples, according to a report by The Arlington Catholic Herald at the time.

The lock-in secrecy of the conclave means we don’t know why the 133 cardinal electors voted for Leo by at least a two-thirds majority. And scholars are divided about how the decision should be interpreted.

For Steven Millies, a professor of public theology at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, it’s an unambiguous repudiation of the Trump administration.

“The cardinals took a side: This new pope will stand against this 21st-century variety of authoritarianism we see getting underway in the U.S. and in too many other parts of the globe,” Millies told NBC News. “To choose an American while a second Trump administration is deporting, disappearing [people] and disrupting to such an alarming extent, again, is a message.”

Asked for comment about these criticisms, the White House directed NBC News toward a social media post by Trump in which he said it was a “great honor” to have an American pope and that he looked forward to meeting him, and one from Vance saying he was “sure millions of American Catholics and other Christians will pray for his successful work leading the church.”

Millies likens the cardinals’ choice to the conclave of 1978, when they selected a Polish pontiff in John Paul II, “from behind the Iron Curtain,” he said. “The cardinals were taking a side — they aimed a new pope at the Soviet Union.”

Others are less sure about the conclave’s intentions.

“Either they’ve chosen an American because they think it sends a message that he stands up to Donald Trump and offers an alternative vision of American leadership, or they’ve chosen him despite the fact that he’s American,” said Miles Pattenden, a historian of the Catholic Church at Britain’s University of Oxford.

“It would seem to me to be rather sensational if they picked him just because he was American and could stand up to President Trump,” he added, if nothing else because Trump’s term is brief compared with a potential papal lifetime.

Whatever the cardinals’ reasoning, they have elected a pope whose personality is night and day to Trump’s brusque persona.

Leo is “a quietly confident person, not a flashy personality,” Bishop Robert Barron of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, told NBC’s “Nightly News” on Thursday. These are qualities that few, including Trump’s most ardent supporters, would attribute to the president.

Even the new pope’s name carries hints he may oppose Trump’s worldview. The last pontiff to take this name was Pope Leo XIII, who in his 25-year papacy from 1878 to 1903 advocated for social justice and workers rights against the nascent forces of capitalism.

“The pope is not going to agree with anything Trump is saying,” said Bill Ciotti, 63, from Boston, who before he retired was responsible for planning liturgy at his church. Ciotti was staying in Rome, a 10-minute walk from the Vatican, with his friend Bill Champlin, a priest at St. Leo Parish in Leominster, Massachusetts. When they saw white smoke billowing on TV while eating dinner, they got up and ran to St. Peter’s Square.

“He’s already criticized Trump and Vance, so I think it’s going to be a major clash,” Ciotti said Friday.

Politically, Leo is “not going to be real far left and he’s not going to be real far right,” his brother John Prevost said in an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday. But he is widely seen as continuing the program that Francis started, which was disliked by many conservative U.S. Catholics.

“I do think one of the dark horses, and unfortunately one of the most progressive, is Cardinal Prevost,” said former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who is Catholic and strongly opposed Francis’ platform. “I think it’s pretty shocking given the contempt in which they hold the American church.” He added that “my understanding is Prevost is one of the closest to Francis ideologically.”

Ultimately, believers and nonbelievers alike will have to wait and see how the Trump-Leo era plays out.

“Our God is a God of surprises,” said Cesar Jaramillo, 35, a canon lawyer from Paterson, New Jersey, who has lived in Rome for eight years. “The foresight that the Holy Spirit has shown in allowing Leo the opportunity to lead during a very turbulent time, that is a good sign.”

Radar screens serving Newark Liberty International Airport went black early Friday morning, raising more air traffic safety concerns at the busy New Jersey hub, federal authorities said.

The outrage shortly before 4 a.m. EDT lasted only 90 seconds on a limited number of sectors, the FAA said, but the blackout is still a troubling development in the wake of revelations that controllers lost radio contact with pilots flying into the airport in recent months.

The difficulties were traced to Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) network out of Philadelphia.

“There was a telecommunications outage that impacted communications and radar display at Philadelphia TRACON Area C, which guides aircraft in and out of Newark Liberty International Airport airspace,” according to an FAA statement. “The outage occurred around 3:55 a.m. on Friday, May 9, and lasted approximately 90 seconds.”

The 11 high school lacrosse players accused of tying up a younger teammate in remote woodland as part of a hazing ritual last month regret their actions, their attorney said Thursday.

“Our clients and their families are devastated by the impact this incident has had on the Westhill community,” Tom Cerio of Cerio Law Offices said in a statement. “These young men deeply regret their involvement in what began as a misguided attempt at a prank. They recognize that their actions were inappropriate, and do not minimize the fear and distress experienced by the other students.”

All 11 players, students at Westhill High School in Syracuse, turned themselves in to the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Office in Upstate New York on April 30, after deputies had given them 48 hours to surrender or face felony charges of kidnapping.

As a result, District Attorney Bill Fitzpatrick said last week that would receive appearance tickets for the less serious misdemeanor crime of unlawful imprisonment. They were not detained and will avoid criminal records.

Cerio said this clients appreciated the DA’s approach to the matter and said discussions with him would continue. He added that he hoped that the young men — who have not been identified because of their age — are not subjected to “irreversible punishment” by the school district, media and local community.

“As with any case involving young people, we urge a balanced approach, one that includes appropriate consequences, while also providing an opportunity to make amends and grow from their mistakes,” Cerio said.

The team’s coach at Westhill, Aaron Cahill, said last week in a now-deleted LinkedIn post that that he had no prior knowledge of the boys’ alleged hazing prank. Westhill Central School District Superintendent Steve Dunham said that the lacrosse season would be canceled in light of the incident.

Dunham said in a statement Thursday that the school was working through its own disciplinary process regarding the 11 players but couldn’t legally share the details of individual cases.

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved the first at-home test to screen for cervical cancer, Teal Health, which makes the test kit, said.

Currently, cervical cancer screening is done in a doctor’s office during a pelvic exam, a process some women find uncomfortable and even painful.

Some patients don’t get screened for cervical cancer because they don’t want a pelvic exam, said Dr. Emeline Aviki, a gynecologic-oncologist at NYU Langone Health.

“It’s not a fun exam and it’s the easiest thing to cancel,” said Aviki, who worked on some of the early studies to validate the new test.

Cervical cancer is considered highly preventable, thanks to screenings and the HPV vaccine. Rates of the disease have plummeted since the 1970s, according to a 2025 report from the American Cancer Society, though they have begun to level off in recent years. The report estimated that this year, 13,360 women will be diagnosed with cervical cancer and about 4,320 women will die.

However, the number of women getting screened has fallen since the mid-2000s. A 2022 study found that 23% of women were behind on their cervical cancer screening in 2019, up from 14% in 2005. Up to half of women diagnosed with cervical cancer in the U.S. weren’t up to date on their screenings, the American Cancer Society says.

“Cervical cancer screening in general is something that saves lives,” said Dr. Jessica Kiley, chief of general obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago.

The new test, called the Teal Wand, detects HPV using a vaginal swab, making it less invasive than a pap smear, in which the gynecologist inserts a speculum and collects samples of cells from the cervix.

HPV, or human papillomavirus, is a sexually transmitted infection and the leading cause of cervical cancer. There’s no treatment for HPV, but most cases clear on their own. Several strains, however, are linked to cervical cancer.

The Teal Wand is not the first HPV test that uses a vaginal sample: Last year, the FDA approved a similar swab, also performed by patients themselves, that’s collected in a doctor’s office.

“What’s different about this new indication is that this sample can be collected at home and not in a medical setting,” said Dr. George Sawaya, a gynecologist at UCSF Health. “You have to logically believe that would increase access if people’s main barrier was getting to a medical setting.”

A recent report in JAMA Network Open found that women in rural areas are 25% more likely to be diagnosed with cervical cancer and 42% more likely to die from the disease than women who live in cities, a trend that likely reflects lower access to screenings and care in rural parts of the country.

Patients will be able to order the test kit after a telehealth appointment with a doctor and then collect the sample themselves at home. For now, the product will have to be prescribed by one of Teal Health’s virtual providers, but the company plans to make it available for other doctors to order as well. The swab is then mailed to a lab for analysis.

Teal Health said if the result is positive, its providers will help arrange for further care. Following a positive test, women may need additional tests in a doctor’s office.

Still, experts want more information on the cost of the test, and whether patients will follow up if they need more testing.

“Those are some of the uncertainties around it,” Sawaya said.

Kara Egan, the CEO of Teal Health, did not say how much the test would cost.

However, she said, because cervical cancer screening is endorsed by a government group called the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, the company is anticipating the test will be covered by insurance and expects to know definitively in the coming months. In December, the task force recommended in-office self-swabs.

Kiley, the gynecologist from Northwestern, said it’s still important that women see a gynecologist regularly. An annual exam covers more than just cervical cancer screening, she said.

President Donald Trump has signaled a willingness to drastically cut the U.S.’ current 145% tariff rate on China ahead of trade talks between the two countries.

Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Friday morning: “80% Tariff on China seems right! Up to Scott B.,” appearing to refer to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

The post comes a day before Bessent and U.S. Trade Rep. Jamieson Greer meet with their Chinese counterparts in Geneva for trade discussions.

Trump indicated Thursday that he might be open to lowering the current 145% tariff on China. “ I mean, we’re going to see. Right now, you can’t get any higher,” he said during remarks from the Oval Office.

A representative for the Chinese embassy in the U.S. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

An 80% across-the-board tariff would still be far beyond the duties the U.S. had in place on China before Trump took office. He first imposed a 20% levy on America’s third-largest source of imports in response to its alleged inaction on curbing fentanyl flows, then signed an executive order several weeks later imposing 125% duties.

In general, Trump’s unwieldy approach to tariffs negotiations has continued unabated: On Thursday, he announced an agreement was being worked out with the U.K. that contained few details but which would leave the U.S.’s 10% across-the-board duty on all countries mostly in tact. Yet while the agreement signaled pathways to expand U.S. exports of beef, ethanol and other agricultural products, it provided no guarantees, as yet, that the U.K. would actually increase imports of those products.

Trump has attempted to walk back the eye-watering country-by-country duties he announced during his shock “Liberation Day” speech more than a month ago.

But sizable levies remain, including 25% duties on all steel, aluminum and auto imports. While discussion of trade deals remains plentiful, actual progress on them has been relatively scarce — leaving business confidence throttled.

Nor is it clear that the China tariffs are having Trump’s desired effect. In April, according to CNBC calculations, China’s exports surged amid a ramp up in shipments to Southeast Asian countries — an indicator that China may simply be increasing trans-shipment of goods to third-party countries that then export to the U.S., an expert told CNBC.

With suspended cricket matches, power outages and air raid sirens, fears are swelling of an all-out war between India and Pakistan amid questions over how much of a mediating role the United States will be able to play.

The nuclear-armed neighbors engaged in their worst fighting in decades on Wednesday, when India launched an assault on Pakistan in response to a deadly terrorist attack for which New Delhi blames Islamabad.

Almost four dozen people were killed in the initial violence between the two countries, including India’s strikes on what it said were “terror camps” and the shelling in response by Pakistan, which denies involvement in the April 22 attack in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.

Pakistan claimed partial victory, saying it downed five Indian fighter jets and dozens of drones, which India has not confirmed. India has said it does not wish to escalate but will respond firmly if Pakistan strikes its territory.

Both countries accused each other of continuing to launch new military attacks on Friday, including shelling of towns near their de facto border that Pakistan said killed five civilians. The Indian army also said it had “effectively repulsed” drone attacks by Pakistan, which denied the accusation.

Villagers have fled their homes amid cross-border violence near the de facto border in Kashmir, which both India and Pakistan claim in full and control in part.

Tensions have also escalated to cricket, a cherished sport in both countries. The Indian Premier League, which is among the richest sport leagues in the world, was suspended for one week on Friday amid safety concerns after a match was halted amid the turmoil.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with officials in both countries Thursday in the latest U.S. effort to ease tensions.

Speaking with Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, Rubio reiterated his condolences over the April 22 terrorist attack in Indian-administered Kashmir, which killed 26 people, most of them Indian tourists. He also “reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to work with India in the fight against terrorism,” the State Department said.

In his call with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Rubio “expressed sorrow for the reported loss of civilian lives in the current conflict,” the State Department said, and “reiterated his calls for Pakistan to take concrete steps to end any support for terrorist groups.”

Speaking with NBC News, an official Indian government source dismissed the idea of the U.S. or any other country playing a central mediating role, saying the issues were bilateral and that the message of any government to Pakistan should be to stop supporting terrorism. The source said that India’s strikes targeted terrorist infrastructure and followed 15 days of waiting for the Pakistani government to take its own action against militant groups.

An official Pakistani government source called India’s strikes “the ultimate act of provocation.” The source said that the actions taken by Pakistan so far have been in self-defense and that Pakistan reserves the right to respond to strikes on its soil.

Pakistan has called for a “neutral” international investigation into the Kashmir attack, and the government source said there was “no shred of evidence” that Islamabad had supported it.

President Donald Trump has not engaged directly with the leaders of India and Pakistan but said Wednesday that he wants “to see them work it out” and that “if I can do anything to help, I will be there.”

Lisa Curtis, an expert on South Asia at the Washington-based Center for a New American Security, said the Trump administration had sent mixed signals to the two countries and needs to “clean up” its public messaging.

Trump initially said the U.S. would not get involved in the crisis, and on Thursday Vice President JD Vance told Fox News, “We’re not going to get involved in the middle of a war that’s fundamentally none of our business.”

Rubio has made measured statements calling for reducing tensions, while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said India had a right to defend itself.

The U.S. has previously played a key role in defusing conflicts between India and Pakistan, said Curtis, who was senior director for South and Central Asia on the National Security Council from 2017 to 2021. But U.S. relations with Pakistan have deteriorated in recent years, calling into question Washington’s influence with Islamabad.

The U.S. has left the door open to supporting Pakistan’s call for further investigation into the terrorist attack.

“We want the perpetrators to be held accountable, and are supportive of any efforts to that end,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce told reporters Thursday.

India responded to the attack by launching military strikes on “terror camps” in Pakistan early Wednesday, which according to Pakistan killed 31 people, including civilians. Pakistan immediately claimed partial victory saying it had downed five Indian fighter jets and dozens of drones, which India has not confirmed.

The April 22 attack was the worst of its kind on Indian civilians in two decades and capped years of separatist insurgency and the bitter resentment between the two neighbors over Kashmir, a former princely state and the only Muslim-majority part of India which ceded territory to India in 1947 when the British colonial rule ended.

Pakistan and India have since fought three out of their multiple wars over it, and India has long-accused Pakistan of supporting cross-border terrorism, which Islamabad denies. Both countries now lay claim to Kashmir in full but only partly control.

VATICAN CITY — Pope Leo XIV has inherited a raging battle for not only the soul of the Catholic Church, but also its place in the geopolitical world.

The new pope will have to decide whether his global pulpit will continue Pope Francis’ broadly progressive legacy, or revert to a more conservative approach. The first American pontiff will grapple with the spiritual decline in the church’s European power base, coupled with its rise in parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America. And he will be forced to confront the legacy of the decadeslong sexual abuse scandal.

“Usually the most important thing that the pope has to take care of is the Catholic Church — but right now it’s much more complicated because we are in a time of global disruption,” said Massimo Faggioli, a professor and world-leading expert on the church’s inner workings, based at Villanova University. “The church is much more global than ever before, so the cardinals will have to consider what it means to elect a global leader of the Catholic Church in this situation.”

Here’s a look at what’s in the ecclesiastical inbox:

Sexual abuse scandal

After hundreds of thousands of cases emerged in dozens of countries over the past century, the church’s endemic sexual abuse scandal is far from resolved.

Cases continue to be uncovered, and although Francis went further than his predecessors in addressing this, campaigners said he did nowhere near enough.

“The next pope must institute a zero tolerance law for sexual abuse that immediately removes abusive clergy and leaders who have covered up abuse from ministry,” Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, a Chicago-based watchdog, said before Leo was elected.

“He must use his authority to enact fundamental, institutional changes to end the systematic practice of sexual abuse and its concealment,” it said.

Ideology

Francis was widely seen as a progressive force, at least compared with predecessors and peers. He allowed priests to informally bless same-sex couples, asking, “Who am I to judge?” And over doctrinal dogma he favored topics such as global capitalism and the climate crisis.

Though this was not cut-and-dried (he likened abortions to “hiring a hitman”), his message enraged conservative traditionalists, including those on the American hard right, who would like to see Francis’ successor revert to what they believe are the church’s core teachings.

“In a time when illiberalism is gaining ground internationally,” Francis’ “messaging was an unexpected oasis for many, and unwelcomingly out of step for others,” said Effie Fokas, a research associate specializing in geopolitics and religion at the London School of Economics and Political Science before Thursday’s election of Leo.

“So there is great anticipation over whether the church will, on the one hand, choose to be an oasis or, rather, in step with the waves of right-wing conservatism sweeping over the United States and much of Europe and beyond.”

Geopolitics

Whether Leo likes it or not, the new leader of 1.4 billion Catholics will become a leading voice in an upended world. Francis chose to use that platform to pontificate against the war in the Gaza Strip, for example, and even rebuked President Donald Trump’s stance on immigration.

The next pope can choose to continue these fulminations, or not. But even a less outspoken pope would be notable by his absence on the world stage.

“Francis has been a beacon of hope in the world, probably the only ethical helm in the (sinking) ship of global politics,” said Sara Silvestri, a senior lecturer in international politics at City St. George’s, University of London, in an email.

She hoped the new pope wouldn’t “fall in the trap of siding with” any one political faction, but rather “bypass this by emphasizing the universality of the Christian message, and its core values of justice and mercy that are non negotiable and cannot fit into the narrow box of a political party or political ideology.”

Geography

A key element of how the new pontiff navigates these roiling waters will be his approach to the rapidly changing demographics of the church.

Europe’s Catholic population fell by nearly half a million in 2022, according to the Vatican’s most recent figures, released late last year. Meanwhile, the Catholic population grew by 7.3 million in Africa, 5.9 million in North and South America, and about 900,000 in Asia.

The number of priests tracks the European decline and rise elsewhere, the figures show.

So a big issue for the new pope will be how to address the needs of a church whose followers are increasingly based in the Global South.

“We need a pope who understands the issues facing the Third World,” Piere Domerson, a priest from Haiti who is studying in Rome, told NBC News shortly before Leo’s election was announced. 

“We always remember how Pope Francis understood this universality of the church,” he said in St. Peter’s Square. “And because he appointed more cardinals from outside Europe, we have seen that become more universal, too.”

Néstor Medina, a professor of religious ethics and culture at the University of Toronto, said people in the Global South are “becoming more actively vocal about the church’s involvement with colonization.”

That means if the new pope wants “to keep people in the church, then social justice, ecology and critique of capitalism will still have to be front and center of the new papacy,” he said.

Managing these changing currents will not be straightforward — the developing world is not a monolith. While many progressive Catholic voices have come from Latin America, a number of African bishops, also for example, can be among the most conservative when it comes to same-sex couples, divorce and cohabiting outside of marriage.

Xi’s visit comes as the Trump administration is seeking a 30-day “unconditional ceasefire” between Russia and Ukraine, and ahead of U.S.-China trade talks this weekend, the first since Trump imposed steep tariffs on U.S. trading partners around the world.

Xi was among 29 world leaders expected to attend the commemorations, according to the Kremlin. Diplomats from other countries said the Chinese leader’s presence had factored into their decisions to come. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had warned world leaders against attending the commemorations, saying it would undermine some countries’ declared neutrality in the Ukraine war. But Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva told NBC News that Zelenskyy had asked him to deliver a message to Putin calling for a sustained ceasefire.

The Ukrainian government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Lula insisted that standing with Putin in Red Square “will not strengthen” the Russian leader.

“Brazil’s position has not changed,” he said in an interview Thursday. “Brazil is critical of Ukrainian occupation and we have to find peace.”

Moscow does not look like a city that wants peace at any cost. Ahead of the parade, hotel workers, officials and many members of the public wore the orange-and-black ribbon of Saint George, a Russian military symbol that especially since Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has been associated with Russian nationalism and militarism. Streets were draped in the same colors.

Huge billboards connected the World War II anniversary with Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, while others welcomed world leaders individually, including those of Cuba and Venezuela.

May 9 is a hallowed day for the former Soviet Union, which lost 27 million people during World War II. But the parade on Friday was haunted by the war in Ukraine, now in its fourth year.

China, Russia’s biggest trading partner, has strived to portray itself as neutral in the Ukraine war while supporting Russia diplomatically and economically. Xi told Putin on Thursday that he hoped for “a fair and durable peace deal that is binding and accepted by all parties concerned.”

Xi will leave Russia on Saturday, as U.S. and Chinese officials meet in Switzerland to discuss mounting tariffs between the two countries that have rattled the global economy.

China agreed to the talks without any U.S. concessions, suggesting the tariffs “are having their intended effect,” said Craig Singleton, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin prosecutors have charged the father of a teenage girl who killed a teacher and fellow student in a school shooting last year with allowing her access to the semiautomatic pistols she used in the attack.

The criminal complaint against 42-year-old Jeffrey Rupnow of Madison details how his daughter, 15-year-old Natalie Rupnow, struggled with her parents’ divorce, showing her anger in a written piece entitled “War Against Humanity.” Her father tried to bond with her through guns, the complaint said, even as she meticulously planned the attack, including building a cardboard model of the school and scheduling the shooting to end with her suicide.

Prosecutors filed the complaint Wednesday but didn’t unseal it until after Jeffrey Rupnow was arrested Thursday and taken to the Dane County Jail. He faces two counts of intentionally giving a dangerous weapon to a person under 18 causing death and contributing to the delinquency of a child. All of the charges are felonies.

He was scheduled to make his initial court appearance Friday. Online court records did not list an attorney for him. Acting Madison Police Chief John Patterson said he was cooperative throughout the investigation. No one returned voicemails left at possible telephone listings for him and his ex-wife, Melissa Rupnow.

Attack left 2 dead, 6 injured

Natalie Rupnow entered Abundant Life Christian School, a religious school in Madison that offers prekindergarten through high school classes, on Dec. 16 and opened fire in a study hall. She killed teacher Erin Michelle West and 14-year-old student Rubi Bergara and injured six others before she killed herself.

According to the complaint, investigators recovered 20 shell casings from the study hall where she opened fire.

They also recovered a 9 mm Glock handgun that Jeffrey Rupnow had purchased for her from the room and a .22-caliber Sig Sauer pistol from a bag the girl was carrying, the complaint says. Jeffrey Rupnow had given that gun to her as a Christmas present in 2023, the complaint says.

Also in the bag were three magazines loaded with .22 ammunition and a 50-round box of 9 mm ammunition. She wore a black T-shirt emblazoned with a bull’s-eye during the attack.

Natalie Rupnow had been struggling with parents’ divorce

Jeffrey Rupnow told investigators that his daughter lived with him but had been struggling with his divorce from her mother in 2022, saying she hated her life and wanted to kill herself. He said she used to cut herself to the point where he had to lock up all the knives in his house.

She had been in therapy to learn how to be more social until the spring before the attack, he told investigators. Her mother, Melissa Rupnow, told detectives that the therapist told her that Natalie was suffering post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from the divorce. One of Natalie’s friends told investigators that Jeffrey Rupnow was “frequently verbally aggressive” with Natalie and that she had told him that her father was a “drinker,” according to the complaint.

Jeffery Rupnow told investigators that took Natalie shooting with him on a friend’s land about two years before the Abundant Life attack. She enjoyed it, and he came to see guns as a way to connect with her. But he was shocked at how her interest in firearms “snow balled,” he told investigators.

He kept Natalie’s pistols in a gun safe, telling her that if she ever need them the access code was his Social Security number entered backward. About 10 days before the school attack, he texted a friend and said that Natalie would shoot him if he left “the fun safe open right now,” according to the complaint.

The day before the school attack he took the Sig Sauer out of the safe so Natalie could clean it. But he got distracted and wasn’t sure if he put the weapon back in the safe or locked it, according to the complaint.

‘War Against Humanity’

A search of Natalie’s room netted a six-page document the girl had written entitled “War Against Humanity.” She started the piece by describing humanity as “filth” and saying she hated people who don’t care and “smoke their lungs out with weed or drink as much as they can like my own father.”

She wrote about how she admired school shooters, how her mother was not in her life and how she obtained her weapons “by lies and manipulation, and my fathers stupidity.”

Investigators also discovered maps of the school and a cardboard model of the building, along with a handwritten schedule that detailed how she would being the attack at 11:30 a.m. and wipe out the first and second floors of the school by 11:55 a.m. She planned to end the attack by 12:10 p.m. with a notation “ready 4 Death.”

She had been communicating online with people around the world about her fascination with school shootings and weapons, Acting Madison Police Chief John Patterson said Thursday.

Father calls teaching her gun safety ‘biggest mistake’

Jeffery Rupnow sent a message to a detective two weeks after the school shooting saying that his biggest mistake was teaching Natalie how to handle guns safely and urging police to warn people to change their gun safe combinations every two to three months, the complaint said.

“Kids are smart and they will figure it out,” he wrote. “Just like someone trying to hack your bank account. I just want to protect other families from going through what I’m going through.”

According to the complaint, after learning that Natalie was the shooter while talking to a police officer, Melissa Rupnow began breathing very quickly through her nose and yelled something, to the effect of, “I’m going to kill him, I’m going to kill him,” apparently referring to her ex-husband.

Charges are latest in string of cases against parents in school shootings

Jeffrey Rupnow is the latest parent of a school shooter to face charges associated with an attack.

Last year, the mother and father of a school shooter in Michigan who killed four students in 2021 were each convicted of involuntary manslaughter. The mother was the first parent in the U.S. to be held responsible for a child carrying out a mass school attack.

The father of a 14-year-old boy accused of fatally shooting four people at a Georgia high school was arrested in September and faces charges including second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter for letting his son possess a weapon.

In 2023, the father of a man charged in a deadly Fourth of July parade shooting in suburban Chicago pleaded guilty to seven misdemeanors related to how his son obtained a gun license.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un supervised tests of short-range ballistic missile systems that simulated nuclear counterstrikes against U.S. and South Korean forces, state media said Friday, as the North continued to blame its rivals for escalating tensions through their joint military exercises.

The report came a day after South Korea’s military detected multiple launches from North Korea’s eastern coast and assessed that the tests could also be related to the country’s weapons exports to Russia during its war in Ukraine.

North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said Thursday’s tests involved a mobile ballistic missile system apparently modeled after Russia’s Iskander, as well as 600-millimeter multiple rocket launchers that South Korean officials classify as ballistic due to their self-propulsion and guided flight. Both are part of a growing lineup of weapons systems that the North says could be armed with “tactical” nuclear weapons for battlefield use.

KCNA said the tests were intended to train military units operating missile and rocket systems to more effectively execute attacks under the North’s nuclear weapons control system and ensure a swift response to a nuclear crisis.

The agency criticized the United States and its “vassal states” for expanding joint military exercises on and around the Korean Peninsula, which the North claims are preparations for nuclear war, and said Thursday’s launches demonstrated the “rapid counteraction posture” of its forces.

Kim stressed the need to strengthen the role of his nuclear forces in both deterring and fighting war, and called for continued efforts to improve combat readiness and precision strike capabilities, KCNA said.

Kim Inae, spokesperson for South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, described the latest North Korean launches as a “clear act of provocation” that violates U.N. Security Council resolutions and poses a serious threat to peace and stability in the region.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said multiple missiles of various types were launched from the area around the eastern port city of Wonsan on Thursday from about 8:10 to 9:20 a.m. (7:10 to 8:20 p.m. Wednesday ET), with the farthest traveling about 500 miles.

Lee Sung Joon, spokesperson for the Joint Chiefs, said in a briefing that the North Korean launches were possibly intended to test the performance of weapons it plans to export, as the country continues to send military equipment and troops to fuel Russia’s warfighting against Ukraine.

Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani told reporters that none of the North Korean missiles reached Japan’s exclusive economic zone and there was no damage to vessels or aircraft in the area.

It was the North’s first known ballistic activity since March 10, when it fired several ballistic missiles hours after U.S. and South Korean troops began an annual combined military exercise, and the country’s sixth launch event of the year.

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula have escalated in recent months as North Korean leader Kim continues to accelerate the development of his nuclear and missile programs and supply weapons and troops to support Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Thursday’s launch came a day after North Korean state media said Kim urged munition workers to increase the production of artillery shells amid his deepening alignment with Moscow.