Good morning! A word of advice to anyone running for Congress as a fun scheme to live high on the hog off of political donations: Don’t accidentally win. Former Rep. George Santos, a gay Hispanic Republican from New York, was just sentenced to more than seven years in federal prison for fraud. The 36-year-old ex-Brazilian drag queen who once described himself as “Jew-ish” and claimed his mom died on 9/11 was expelled from the House in 2023 after just 11 months on the job. Better get those Cameos while they’re still available!

WORLD

🇻🇦 Trump attends papal funeral, meets with Zelenskyy

Dozens of world leaders were among the more than 250,000 people who gathered in St. Peter’s Square for Pope Francis’s funeral on Saturday. The artist formerly known as Jorge Mario Bergoglio passed away last Monday after 12 years as pope.

Who attended? Dozens of world leaders made the trip. The pope's native Argentina received top billing in the seating chart. Next up was Italy, which surrounds all 121 acres of the sovereign Vatican City. After that? It was all alphabetical based on country name (in French).

• President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump (probably a strange 55th birthday for her) won lucky front-row seats near France’s President Emmanuel Macron and Spain’s King Felipe VI.

• The U.K.’s Prince William was a few rows back next to Germany’s chancellor. They were right behind Jordan’s King Abdullah II.

• Former President Joe Biden (the second-ever Catholic president) also came, as did a 15-member bipartisan congressional delegation.

Pope Francis’s tomb at the Basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome opened to the public on Sunday. He was the first pope to be buried outside of the Vatican in more than a century.

President Trump pulled double duty on the trip. He and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met in the Vatican's St. Peter's Basilica and had what the White House called a "very productive discussion" on a potential peace plan for Ukraine.

• Trump's ticked at Putin for "shooting missiles into civilian areas" and thinks maybe the Russian leader isn't all that interested in stopping the war.

• Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday said, "We're close, but we're not close enough," and that this week will be "very critical" to any potential deal.

The papal conclave: The Catholic Church's cardinals will meet in the Sistine Chapel (shout-out to Michelangelo) to elect a new pope from among their members. While there are 252 cardinals, only the 135 who are younger than 80 are allowed to attend the conclave and vote. A two-thirds majority — that's 90 votes — is required to win. Of the cardinal electors, 108 were appointed by Francis himself.

• Ten of the 17 American cardinals are eligible to attend, including the archbishops of New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.

• Also voting will be the camerlengo, Kevin Farrell. He’s the former bishop of Dallas who’s effectively “acting pope” until Francis’s replacement is chosen.

GOVERNMENT

🌐 The State Department is expected to lay off 15% of its staff as part of a big reorganization plan it dropped last week. Sec. Marco Rubio said this about more than "saving money" and that the department today is too bloated to perform its "essential diplomatic mission." He said Sunday that his primary concern is "empowering the regional bureaus and embassies" and making sure "every office... has a purpose." Planned changes include reducing the number of bureaus from 734 to 602 and shifting others around. Targets for elimination include offices deemed redundant and many related to human rights and diversity efforts. New offices are also planned, including one for emerging threats.

⚖️ The FBI arrested Wisconsin state judge Hannah C. Dugan on Friday for obstruction of justice. A previously deported Mexican migrant was in her courtroom on April 18th for a hearing on battery charges. The feds claim Dugan led the man out a private back door to help him avoid federal immigration agents who were waiting outside in a public hallway to arrest him. Attorney General Pam Bondi defended the move, saying, “No one is above the law, not even a judge.”

POLITICS

🗳️ Canada votes and Florida Democrat declares his party ‘dead’

Voters in the land of moose ‘n maple are hitting the polls today. Canadians will elect all 343 members of their Parliament’s House of Commons. The winning party’s leader then becomes prime minister. If you think the Electoral College is undemocratic, just imagine if we all voted for Congress and the speaker of the House became president.

Canadian Liberals were up a (frozen) creek a few months ago, but the trade war seems to have revived their hopes of hanging onto power. If they win, Prime Minister Mark Carney (a Liberal Party man) will remain in office. If the Conservative Party takes it, Pierre Poilievre will send Carney packing and straight into the history books as the shortest-serving leader in Canadian history.

• Carney was chosen to lead the Labor Party and took office as prime minister on March 14 after the old guy’s popularity tanked and he called it quits.

Down in Florida, Sunshine State Democrats are all over the board emotionally. Their party's now-former State Senate leader, Sen. Jason Pizzo, bailed last week to become an independent and said "the Democratic Party in Florida is dead.” On the flip side, their hopes of relevance were revived when Republican-turned-independent former U.S. Rep. David Jolly became a Democrat ahead of an expected 2026 bid for governor.

• Nominating an ex-Republican didn't work out so well back in 2022. But, hey, it's better than nothing.

• Also giving them a boost? A brewing scandal involving $10 million of state money being sent to a charity connected to Florida first lady Casey DeSantis.

Back in Washington, D.C., President Trump will mark his 100th day in office on Tuesday (yes, it’s only been 100). The milestone has been an important symbolic one for American presidents since President Franklin Roosevelt invented the concept in 1933. And whether you love or loathe the current president, one thing is for sure: His first 100 days have been busy.

TRIVIA

Owing to melting ice and increasingly valuable shipping lanes, the Santa-adjacent Arctic is the Next Big Thing® in geopolitics. Everybody wants a piece of the pie, but not everybody has, y’know, actual territory in the region. That hasn’t stopped China from flexing its muscles and declaring itself a “near-Arctic” state (that’s like being “near-attractive” or “near-funny”). That projection, however, is causing some problems with the actual Arctic countries. Which eight countries have territory above the Arctic Circle?

Hint: One of them only counts because it owns Greenland.

BRIEFS

● RIP to Lt. Gen. Yaroslav Moskalik. The key Russian general was killed near Moscow on Friday by a car bomb. This was the second such attack in the past four months, so Russia is blaming Ukraine.

● The immigrant wife of an active-duty Coast Guardsman was arrested last week at a military base in Key West, Florida. A routine security check determined that her work visa expired in 2017 and that she's since been living in the U.S. illegally.

● Elon Musk's X.com is suing the state of Minnesota. The company says a 2023 state law banning election-related deepfakes violates the First Amendment’s free speech protections and could accidentally sweep up innocuous election-related posts.

● Yahoo still exists and is among the many tech companies eager to buy Chrome if the federal government forces a sale to break up Google's monopoly. OpenAI is also interested. The (potential) sale price is expected to be more than $10 billion.

● Eleven people are dead and dozens are injured in Canada after a man plowed his car into Vancouver's Filipino festival. The 30-year-old suspect has a "significant history" of mental health interactions with police.

QUOTE

ANSWER

1. The United States (thanks, Alaska!)

2. Canada

3. Norway

4. Sweden

5. Finland

6. Russia (boo!)

7. Denmark (thanks, Greenland!)

8. Iceland