Welcome to the Saturday edition of The Conversation U.S.’s Daily newsletter.

Late Sunday night, I did a quick check of headlines before going to bed. A good rule of thumb for 2026 has been to expect the unexpected. Still, I didn’t anticipate what I saw: that President Donald Trump had taken to Truth Social to rail against Pope Leo.

Well then, I thought. It’s going to be an interesting week.

There’s a lot to unpack in Trump’s criticism of the leader of the Catholic Church, as well as the pontiff’s response: what they say about politics, faith and leadership today. But in Conversation stories, we often try to take a step back, looking to history to piece together the bigger picture.

Joelle Rollo-Koster, a medievalist at the University of Rhode Island, writes that the clash between pope and president reenacts debates that stretch back 1,000 years. What happens when a faith leader seems to challenge political power?

“Conflicts between popes and rulers are not an aberration; they’re a durable feature of Western history,” she writes. “They concern who holds ultimate authority over people, souls – and in the end, history itself.”

This week we also liked stories about how cannabis legalization hasn’t led to much innovation in health, how AI “personalities” may affect you more than you think, and why energy bills are unaffordable to so many Americans.

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