A New Pope, A New Trade Deal, & A New Plan For Bill Gates’ Billions

May 9, 2025

Hello, readers – happy Friday! Today, we’ll be talking about the new Pope, tariffs, India & Pakistan, the Middle East, Biden’s legacy, NIH grants, and Bill Gates’ foundation.

Here’s some good news: More than 40% of the electricity used in Australia’s main power grid so far this year was renewable. Also, elk could return to the U.K. after 3,000 years thanks to rewilding efforts.

“Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it.” – Marian Wright Edelman

The Conclave Concludes

(Pope Leo XIV by Ernesto Ruscio via Getty Images)

Patriots are in control… kind of. Yesterday, the papal conclave selected a U.S.-born cardinal to ascend to the papacy for the first time. The new leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics used to be named Robert Francis Prevost, but will now be known as Pope Leo XIV. The new pope was born to a French-Italian father and a Louisiana Creole mother in Chicago, went to Villanova for his bachelor’s degree (in math), and later attended the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago for his theological studies. In 2015, he became a naturalized citizen of Peru before ascending to become a bishop, and Pope Francis promoted him to cardinal-bishop in February.

Aside from being the first U.S.-born pope, Leo is also the first member of the Augustinian Order to ascend to the papacy. The order’s members dedicate their lives to poverty and service. Sources claim that Leo holds similarly progressive views to Francis on migrants, the poor, and the environment, though his stances on LGBTQ issues might be more conservative than his predecessors. Interestingly, Pope Leo XIII, the last Leo who headed the church from 1878 until 1903, was known as the “Pope of the Workers” for his firm belief in workers’ rights and the formation of trade unions.

The Brits’ Not-So-Big Deal

The U.S. and U.K. signed off on a trade agreement yesterday, but “Art of the Deal” it was not. The new agreement will allow a few U.K. goods to enter the U.S. with lower tariffs, but will keep 10% tariffs on the vast majority of British imports. The goods with lowered tariffs include British cars as well as certain categories of aluminum and steel – auto tariffs will be lowered from 25% to 10% for the first 100,000 British cars brought into the U.S., while the metals will no longer be tariffed but subject to quotas. To all our readers who were looking to buy a Rolls-Royce or Jaguar sometime this year, you can now pull the trigger – maybe consider donating what you would’ve been tariffed to the Daily Pnut? Trump highlighted the agreement as a “great deal” despite the fact that all the U.S. gets out of it will be the ability to sell more beef, ethanol, and other agricultural products to the U.K.

While that mediocre deal was being hammered out, the E.U. said it was considering a whole raft of tariffs on imports from the U.S. The hope is that the threat of tariffs, which will hit American aircraft, cars, chemicals, electrical equipment, health products, and some food, will act as a bargaining chip. They’ll only take effect if the U.S. continues to tariff E.U. goods after July.

The Nuclear Neighbors Get Nastier

(EMS in Kashmir by Muzamil Mattoo via Getty Images)

Yesterday, India claimed that three of its military bases in the Kashmir region were struck by Pakistani drone attacks. Pakistan denied its involvement in the drone strikes, and asserted that India had targeted Pakistani military bases with its own wave of drones. India continued the he-said-she-said by claiming that the series of attacks was just a response to Pakistan’s attempt to “engage a number of military targets in northern and western India” on Wednesday night. If all this were happening in an elementary school classroom, the principal would just give up and put both parties in detention.
Earlier this week, Trump called the growing border conflict “a shame,” adding that he hoped the tensions would end “quickly.” He also said that India and Pakistan have been fighting for “centuries,” although Pakistan was founded in 1947. One policy analyst said that the statements painted the conflict as a “benign war that’s been going on and [that] they’re bound to stop at one point,” but he warned that the clash actually “carries a huge risk.” That’s because the neighbors “are nuclear powers and all it takes is a miscalculation or a mistake” to spark a nuclear war. So far, over 40 people have been confirmed killed in the conflict, raising the chances of escalation even further.

These Aid Groups Need Some Aid

Let’s move on to the next war (have we tried giving peace a chance?). Yesterday, Israeli missile strikes killed at least 100 Gazans in 24 hours as the IDF prepares for its wider offensive in the Palestinian enclave. Bodies of children were piled up at Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his constituents that the fate of three Israeli hostages was now “uncertain.” Before his statement, 24 hostages in Hamas’ hands were confirmed to be alive. “We know for certain that 21 hostages are alive, there’s no dispute about that,” Netanyahu said.
As charities and aid groups are being forced to shut down their operations in Gaza thanks to Israel’s humanitarian aid blockade, the Trump administration is pushing the U.N. and international aid groups to back a new plan to distribute aid in the war-torn enclave. Under the Trump plan, Israeli border officials would be in charge of vetting and distributing humanitarian aid shipments into Gaza at hubs guarded by the Israeli and American private contractors (instead of the IDF).
While a statement from the organization behind the plan claims it would be able to feed 1.2 million Gazans right out of the gate, aid organizations and people familiar with Israeli plans for the operation say it would feed just 200,000 people initially, requiring them all to somehow verify their identities before getting food. Finding your identification documents isn’t as easy as rummaging through your bedside table when your entire house has been leveled.

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Hur-ting Biden’s Legacy

The White House is reportedly planning to release the audio recordings of former President Biden’s interview with Robert Hur. Biden claimed executive privilege to block the recordings from his conversations with the special counsel, who investigated the former president’s handling of classified documents, from being released. Hur had brought up concerns about Biden’s mental state after speaking with him.
In a potentially related move, the former president is trying to preserve his legacy. Biden tapped Chris Meagher, a former Biden deputy press secretary and Defense Department spokesperson, to help him transition past the first 100 days of the Trump administration. Historically (not that anything about the Trump presidency follows precedent), former presidents don’t criticize their successors within the first 100 days.

Those Cuts Don’t Look Healthy

According to an analysis published yesterday in JAMA, based on data from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System, the Trump administration has terminated $1.81 billion in National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants in under 40 days.
From Feb. 28 to April 8, the administration terminated nearly 700 grants for subjects such as aging, cancer, child health, diabetes, mental health, and neurological disorders. “The National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities was hit the hardest. About 30% of all of its funding was cut. That’s 10 times more than the average,” according to Michael Liu, an author of the study.

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Giving Away His Bill-ions

Bill Gates is letting go of his billions. Yesterday, the Microsoft founder told CBS that he plans to give away almost all of his wealth – more than $100 billion – over the next 20 years via the Gates Foundation. “By deciding to spend all this money in the next 20 years, we can get a lot more done,” Gates said, adding that he’s confident that the money will save “tens of millions of lives.”
“People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that ‘he died rich’ will not be one of them,” Gates wrote in a letter posted online yesterday. “There are too many urgent problems to solve for me to hold onto resources that could be used to help people.” He added that the letter was inspired by Andrew Carnegie’s 1889 essay “The Gospel of Wealth,” especially the quote: “The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.”
The Gates Foundation was originally set up to trickle out its funds for decades after Gates’ and his ex-wife’s deaths, but the billionaire’s decision has changed that timeline significantly. Over the next 20 years, according to Gates, his charity will focus on stopping deaths from preventable causes, stamping out deadly infectious diseases, and improving education in poorer countries.

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