ATHENS, Georgia (AP) — Fresh from a marathon trip to Pakistan that failed to reach a deal for ending the war with Iran, Vice President JD Vance jetted to this Georgia college town for a campus tour organized by the conservative powerhouse Turning Point USA.
But instead of showcasing the youthful energy that the organization harnessed to return President Donald Trump to the White House less than two years ago, there was a mostly empty arena, awkward questions and unusually sharp criticism.
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People listen as Vice President JD Vance speaks at a Turning Point USA tour stop at the University of Georgia in Athens, Ga., Tuesday, April 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Erik S. Lesser)
People listen as Vice President JD Vance speaks at a Turning Point USA tour stop at the University of Georgia in Athens, Ga., Tuesday, April 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Erik S. Lesser)
Vice President JD Vance, right, speaks with Turning Point USA spokesperson Andrew Kolvet during a Turning Point USA event at Akins Ford Arena at the Classic Center in Athens, Ga., Tuesday, April 14, 2026. (Chip Somodevilla/Pool via AP)
Vice President JD Vance speaks during a Turning Point USA event at Akins Ford Arena at the Classic Center in Athens, Ga., Tuesday, April 14, 2026. (Chip Somodevilla/Pool via AP)
The event affirmed Trump's difficulty selling the war and how much he’s complicated his own political fortunes by assailing Pope Leo XIV and posting a social media meme that depicted himself as Jesus.
“I did vote for Trump. I am not a Trump supporter anymore,” said Joseph Bercher, a Catholic who said he was glad that Leo has expressed opposition to the war with Iran.
Bercher said the Jesus meme, which the president took down Monday after a rare conservative backlash, was a “red flag” indicating Trump's true character.
“He sees himself as like a demagogue or someone to be worshipped," Bercher said.
C.J. Santini, a recent graduate of Liberty University, an evangelical school in Virginia, said he didn't have an opinion on whether Iran was truly close to manufacturing a nuclear weapon and thus needed to be attacked. But he laughed and shook his head when asked about Trump attacking Leo.
“It’s just stupid. Stupid,” he said, calling it a “distraction” from Trump’s agenda in Iran and at home.
Many of the college-age attendees donned Turning Point attire, Trump hats and red-white-and-blue paraphernalia for the event. Yet they were outnumbered more than 2-to-1 by empty seats in what is not even the largest arena on this sprawling campus that sits about a 90-minute drive from downtown Atlanta.
A Marine veteran who served in Iraq, Vance acknowledged that not all young conservatives are enamored with another U.S. war in the Middle East.
“I’m not saying you have to agree with me on every issue,” Vance told the young crowd. “What I’m saying,” he added, “is don’t get disengaged.”
The vice president took questions from Turning Point executive Andrew Kolvet instead of Erika Kirk, who began leading the organization after the assassination of her husband Charlie Kirk. Kolvet said Erika Kirk canceled her plans to be on stage because of unspecified threats she had received.
Vance, whose presence ensured significant Secret Service and other law enforcement protection around the venue, said he’d been worried that the event would be canceled altogether.
Kolvet asked Vance directly about the war and Trump’s back-and-forth with Leo. Audience questions were more aggressive. Vance jousted with at least one heckler over the war in Gaza, and he was pressed by another person over the administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case files.
In the audience, even some of Vance’s sympathetic listeners offered caveats and critiques.
“The pope needs to stay out of politics,” said Jessie Williams, a Methodist. But he noted his mother is Catholic, and he said he understands why Catholics recoil at Trump calling the pope “weak” and suggesting that the first U.S.-born pontiff was chosen only as a counter to Trump.
Williams called Trump’s meme distasteful.
“I don’t like it, but it’s — what can we do?" Williams said. "He’s a grown man, he’s gonna do what he wants.”
Blake McCluggage, a Baptist, said he did not approve of the meme or Trump’s profane Easter Sunday message that threatened widespread destruction of Iran’s civilian infrastructure.
The threat, plus Trump’s follow up message that a “whole civilization” would die, prompted escalating criticism from Leo, with the pope calling the president’s comments “truly unacceptable.”
However, McCluggage said, “you can still be a Republican” despite disagreeing with Trump.
A day before coming to Georgia, Vance tried to laugh off the meme as a joke that “a lot of people weren’t understanding.” The vice president also seemed to echo Trump’s assertion that Leo should concentrate less on global affairs.
“It would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of what’s going on in the Catholic church and let the president of the United States stick to dictating American public policy,” Vance said in a Fox News interview.
On stage in Athens, he shifted his arguments, saying he welcomes Leo’s comments even if he disagrees with them.
“At the very least, it invites conversation,” said Vance, who converted to Catholicism as an adult.
Still, Vance questioned Leo anew, pushing back specifically at the pope’s Palm Sunday assertion that God does not hear the prayers of those who make war. Leo was quoting scripture from the Old Testament book of Isaiah. Vance asked whether God was on the side of Allied forces in World War II as they liberated Jewish survivors of Nazi extermination camps.
“I certainly think the answer is yes,” Vance said. When Leo mixes global affairs and complex theology, Vance said, “it’s very important for the pope to be careful.”
People listen as Vice President JD Vance speaks at a Turning Point USA tour stop at the University of Georgia in Athens, Ga., Tuesday, April 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Erik S. Lesser)
People listen as Vice President JD Vance speaks at a Turning Point USA tour stop at the University of Georgia in Athens, Ga., Tuesday, April 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Erik S. Lesser)
Vice President JD Vance, right, speaks with Turning Point USA spokesperson Andrew Kolvet during a Turning Point USA event at Akins Ford Arena at the Classic Center in Athens, Ga., Tuesday, April 14, 2026. (Chip Somodevilla/Pool via AP)
Vice President JD Vance speaks during a Turning Point USA event at Akins Ford Arena at the Classic Center in Athens, Ga., Tuesday, April 14, 2026. (Chip Somodevilla/Pool via AP)
PORT SUDAN, Sudan (AP) — Famine. Massacres. And now badly needed food and other supplies are under strain. Sudan on Wednesday enters a fourth year of war that's being called an “abandoned crisis,” as a new conflict in the Middle East throws into shadow the fighting that has forced 13 million people to flee their homes.
The North African country has been described as the world's largest humanitarian challenge, notably in terms of displacement and hunger. There is no end in sight to the fighting between the military and the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, which witnesses and aid groups say has laid waste to parts of the vast Darfur region.
Growing evidence shows regional powers like the United Arab Emirates backing combatants behind the scenes. Attempts by the United States and regional powers, now distracted by the Iran war, have failed to establish a ceasefire.
“This grim and chastening anniversary marks another year when the world has failed to meet the test of Sudan,” U.N. humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said.
At least 59,000 people have been killed. At least 6,000 died over three days as the RSF rampaged through the Darfur outpost of el-Fasher in October, according to the United Nations, with U.N.-backed experts concluding that the offensive bore “the defining characteristics of genocide.” More than 11,000 people were missing over the course of the war, the Red Cross says.
The war has pushed parts of Sudan into famine. The number of people with severe acute malnutrition, the most dangerous and deadly kind, is expected to increase to 800,000, the world's foremost experts on food security, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, said in February.
About 34 million people, or almost two out of three Sudanese, need assistance, the U.N. says. Only 63% of health facilities remain fully or partially functional amid disease outbreaks, including cholera, according to the World Health Organization.
At a center for malnourished children in the Red Sea city of Port Sudan, health staff weighed crying babies and fed some through a tube in their nose.
The number of severely malnourished children entering the center has doubled since the war began, to 60 a week, staff said. The clinic has 16 beds, often forcing several children to share a mattress, they said.
“I don’t know what will happen in the coming days,” said Dr. Osman Karrar, a physician there.
And now fuel prices in Sudan have increased by more than 24% because of the Iran war and its effects on shipping, driving up food prices.
“A plea from me: Please don’t call this the forgotten crisis. I’m referring to this as an abandoned crisis,” the top U.N. official in Sudan, Denise Brown, said Monday, criticizing the international community for failing to focus on ending the fighting.
The conflict exploded from a power struggle that emerged following Sudan’s transition to democracy after an uprising forced the military ouster of longtime autocratic President Omar al-Bashir in April 2019.
Tensions sparked between military chief Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, who chairs the ruling sovereign council, and RSF commander Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who was Burhan’s deputy there.
Neither side can achieve a decisive victory, said Shamel Elnoor, a Sudanese journalist and researcher, adding that Sudanese “have become powerless and are subjected to foreign dictates.”
Germany was hosting a Sudan conference in Berlin on Wednesday for governments, U.N. agencies and aid groups. The aim is to rally humanitarian donors and “promote an immediate ceasefire," the German Development Ministry said.
The Sudanese government in Khartoum, however, slammed the conference as an “unacceptable” interference and said Germany didn't consult with Sudan before convening it.
Sudan is now essentially divided between a military-backed, internationally recognized government in the capital, Khartoum, and a rival RSF-controlled administration in Darfur.
The military has established control over the north, east and central regions, including Sudan’s Red Sea ports and its oil refineries and pipelines. The RSF and its allies control Darfur and areas in the Kordofan region along the border with South Sudan. Both regions include many of Sudan’s oil fields and gold mines.
While Egypt supports Sudan's military, the UAE is accused by U.N. experts and rights groups of providing arms to the RSF. The UAE has rejected the accusation.
The Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab, which tracks the war through satellite imagery, said this month that the RSF had received military support from a base in Ethiopia. The RSF didn't comment on the allegation.
Josef Tucker, senior analyst for the Horn of Africa at the International Crisis Group, told The Associated Press that the war could spill over Sudan’s borders, making the conflict “even more intractable.”
Three years of fighting have seen widespread atrocities including mass killings and rampant sexual violence, including gang rapes.
Hospitals, ambulances and medical workers in Sudan have been attacked, with more than 2,000 people killed, WHO has said.
The International Criminal Court has said that it was investigating potential war crimes and crimes against humanity, particularly in Darfur, a region that two decades ago became synonymous with genocide and war crimes.
Most of the latest atrocities have been blamed on the RSF and their Janjaweed allies — Arab militias that were notorious for atrocities in the early 2000s against people identifying as East or Central African in Darfur. The RSF grew out of the Janjaweed.
The military's seizure of Khartoum and other urban areas in central Sudan in early 2025 did allow the return of about 4 million people to their homes, the U.N. migration agency said in March. But they struggle with damaged infrastructure and other challenges.
“It’s not really a return to normal. It is trying to survive amid a new normal,” said Tjada D’Oyen McKenna, CEO of aid group Mercy Corps.
Magdy reported from Cairo. Fatma Khaled in Cairo, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin contributed to this report.
A nurse weighs a newly arrived baby patient at the paediatric hospital stabilization center in Port Sudan, Sudan, Wednesday, April 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
Patient Saidal Altaher, aged two months, receives treatment for malnutrition at the paediatric hospital stabilization center in Port Sudan, Sudan, Wednesday, April 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
Patient Saidal Altaher, aged two months, receives treatment for malnutrition at the paediatric hospital stabilization center in Port Sudan, Sudan, Wednesday, April 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
A woman holds a placard during a tree planting event commemorating the war in Sudan as it enters its fourth year, in Nairobi, Kenya, Wednesday, April 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)
Hashem Abderaman sits in his bed next to his mother while receiving treatment at the paediatric hospital stabilization center in Port Sudan, Sudan, Wednesday, April 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
A woman holds a placard during a tree planting event commemorating the war in Sudan as it enters its fourth year, in Nairobi, Kenya, Wednesday, April 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)
Students prepare to enter Sudanese secondary school certificate exams under the control of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), in Khartoum, Sudan, Monday, April 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Marwan Ali)
Students attend Sudanese secondary school certificate exams under the control of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), in Khartoum, Sudan, Monday, April 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Marwan Ali)
Students prepare to enter Sudanese secondary school certificate exams under the control of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), in Khartoum, Sudan, Monday, April 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Marwan Ali)
