WASHINGTON (OSV News) — President Donald Trump shuffled his national security staff as he marked the 100th day of his presidency, giving a new interim role to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
The same week, the U.S. and Ukraine signed a minerals deal after months of tense negotiations and a Senate committee advanced the nomination of Brian Burch, Trump’s nominee for U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See.
Also, the Supreme Court has been asked by the Trump administration to remove legal protections for hundreds of thousands of temporary Venezuelan migrants.
Rubio to be acting national security adviser
President Donald Trump said May 1 he named Rubio as acting national security adviser to replace Mike Waltz in the role. Trump will nominate Waltz instead to be United Nations ambassador.
The move comes just weeks after an early scandal of the second Trump administration, when The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, appeared to be added to a Signal group chat by Waltz where officials including Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The group chat discussed sensitive information March 15 about the planned attacks against Yemen’s Houthis, including aircraft types and strike times, in the run up to the attacks that took place that day.
Politico previously reported that an ally of Trump suggested he did not want to give his critics a “scalp,” by firing Waltz in the immediate aftermath of the scandal, and planned to wait out the news cycle before having him leave the role.
In his capacity as interim national security adviser, Rubio, who is Catholic, will be the first person to simultaneously hold that role as well as secretary of state since Henry Kissinger.
US, Ukraine sign minerals deal after Trump, Zelenskyy meeting in Rome
Following months of tense negotiations, the U.S. and Ukraine signed a minerals deal that will share future revenues from Ukraine’s mineral reserves by creating a joint investment fund between the countries, the Trump administration said.
Trump had sought the minerals deal as a means of paying back U.S. support for Ukraine, of which Trump has been skeptical, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of that country in 2022. The deal went unsigned in February after a fractious, televised White House meeting between Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Zelenskyy Feb. 28.
The signatures came after Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met one-on-one at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome April 26 ahead of the funeral Mass for Pope Francis.
Metropolitan Borys A. Gudziak of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia told OSV News that, through that historic April 26 encounter, “Pope Francis is giving a gift” to the world — “maybe not the last one, but a gift at the time of farewell to the prospects of peace.”
Senate committee advances Burch’s nomination
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved the nomination of Brian Burch, Trump’s nominee for U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, on April 30, advancing it to the full Senate for consideration.
Burch, president of CatholicVote, a right-leaning political advocacy organization that endorsed Trump’s presidential bid, was approved in a party-line vote. The organization is not an official entity of the Catholic Church and does not have active approval from a U.S. bishop to use “Catholic” in its name.
At his April confirmation hearing, Burch defended the Trump administration’s cuts to foreign aid, which gutted humanitarian efforts by Catholic aid agencies and was condemned by the head of the Vatican City-based Caritas Internationalis as an “inhumane affront to people’s God-given human dignity” given its impact on millions of lives. Burch also criticized the Vatican’s provisional agreement with China related to the appointment of bishops.
The role to which Burch is nominated is intended to represent the U.S. government’s positions on many issues to the Holy See in its capacity as a nation-state in diplomatic efforts.
CatholicVote said Burch will step down from his role there if confirmed by the Senate.
Trump administration asks Supreme Court to end TPS for Venezuelans
The Trump administration on May 1 asked the Supreme Court to revoke temporary legal status for upwards of 300,000 Venezuelan immigrants, who come from an overwhelmingly Catholic country, and have been authorized to remain in the U.S. without risk of deportation due to dangerous conditions in their homeland.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem “vacated” a renewal of their status — known as Temporary Protected Status or TPS — in January, but those plans were blocked by a judge when those impacted by the decision argued proper procedures were not followed by the government. U.S. District Judge Edward Chen also noted that the administration’s actions also appeared “motivated at least in part by animus,” in part thanks to statements by Noem. The secretary, in announcing the move in January, had referred to Venezuelan migrants as “dirtbags.”
Chen noted “Venezuelan TPS holders are largely employed and have relatively high education levels.” He said the government’s failure to provide counter-evidence to back up its casting of Venezuelan TPS holders as criminals “is a form of group defamation.”
According to official statistics, 96% of Venezuelans are Catholic — a number that may be somewhat lower due to the growth of evangelical Protestantism in Venezuela. A joint project of the National Association of Evangelicals, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops‘ Migration and Refugee Services, the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and World Relief, found Christians account for approximately 80% of all of those at risk of deportation. The Christians most at risk of deportation are Catholics, 61% of the total.
Indigenous coalition prepares to go to federal court to protect sacred site
A coalition of Western Apache people will on May 7 have their emergency appeal heard by a federal court after the Trump administration signaled it planned to move forward with a mining project that would destroy their sacred site, although the case’s status is still under consideration by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The coalition, which filed the petition under the banner of the nonprofit Apache Stronghold, includes other Native American and non-Indigenous supporters. They have asked the Supreme Court to block the destruction of their religious site. Arguing the site cannot be replaced, that action would place a substantial burden on their religious practice, in violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. A lower court previously ruled that law did not protect the group, as they were not being coerced by the government to violate their beliefs.
Becket, a religious liberty law firm representing Apache Stronghold, said some members of that group will run from Oak Flat to Phoenix, where the federal court is located, on May 4.
Diverse religious groups — Muslim, Jewish and Sikh, as well as Christian groups, including Catholic ones — filed briefs in support of the Apache group’s case. The Notre Dame Law School Religious Liberty Clinic has also supported the case.
Kate Scanlon is a national reporter for OSV News covering Washington. Follow her on X @kgscanlon. OSV News national news editor Peter Jesserer Smith contributed to this report.
