The Democratic victors in Tuesday’s races do not take office until January, and President Donald Trump wants lame-duck legislators to pass his proposed $1.5 trillion defense budget in the remaining weeks his party still has leverage on Capitol Hill. But some of his GOP allies, grumpy about the election results and Trump’s overtures to Russia, may not play along.

What did the commentators say?
A “handful of defections” by Republican defense hawks could “jeopardize Trump’s entire defense agenda,” said Politico. Some members of the president’s party are unhappy with his choice to allow Russian fuel sales and waive sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime, and they still want answers about the recent throttling of Starlink access to Ukraine. Trump “can’t even see Russia as our adversary,” said outgoing Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) to the outlet. “Why do I want to fund his agenda?”

The “growing pushback” even extends to Trump’s staunchest allies, said Reuters. Putin “cannot be trusted,” and there could be “unintended consequences” from sanctions relief, said House Speaker Mike Johnson to Fox News before the midterm election. 

Several House and Senate Republicans signed letters last month objecting to the diesel and sanctions decisions. Their frustration could “pose new hurdles” for the president’s defense and spending bills during the lame-duck session, said Reuters.

Outgoing Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), an occasional Trump antagonist, might be the most notable opponent. Passing the defense bill will require the support of Republicans who “know the difference between the good guys and the bad guys,” said McConnell at The Wall Street Journal. Trump should “plan accordingly” and end the “obeisance” to Putin.

What next?
Trump’s lame-duck agenda will “run into a brick wall” if defeated GOP incumbents decide to play hooky during their final weeks in office, said The Hill. These candidates often “lose their appetite to stick around Washington” during the last weeks of their term. Some of them will also “blame Trump on election results,” said Bacon to the outlet, and that will “factor in.”

For more than 1,000 years, the Catholic Church has used its just-war theory to create moral guardrails for when nations choose to fight and how their armies conduct themselves in combat. But now, under the guidance of Pope Leo, it’s having second thoughts.

Just cause, just means?
There’s “no such thing as a holy war; only peace is holy,” Leo (pictured above) said last month at a religious conference, per Christopher Hale at Letters from Leo. The pope sparked the ire of President Donald Trump earlier this year by criticizing the U.S. war against Iran, and his continued anti-war messaging shows “he means it,” said Hale. The Church is now reviewing its “outdated” just-war doctrines in a reaction against “every leader who has tried to draft heaven into a bombing campaign.”

The theory says a war is justified only if waged for a “just cause” and with “just means,” said Luis Parrales at The Atlantic. This guidance has influenced instruction at military academies and the development of human rights laws. 

But there’s a sense that the doctrine is “prone to abuse” by national leaders who have twisted and bent its tenets to dubiously assert their chosen conflicts’ morality, said Parrales. So the Church’s current task is to create a “successor theory that better addresses the many moral challenges that modern-day wars pose.”

‘Necessary and therefore just’
Just-war theory “fails to adequately train peacemakers,” said Eli McCarthy at the outlet U.S. Catholic. Leaders must “cultivate strategic nonviolent practices” and build institutions that make “sustainable peace” possible. Existing doctrine only makes wars “more likely to continue.”

Critics suggest that abandoning just-war principles would risk “dangerous passivity in the face of aggression,” said the National Catholic Register. “All wars are bad,” said John Rist, a church historian and philosopher, to the outlet. But sometimes it’s “necessary and therefore just” to fight. This “unhappy truth” must be acknowledged. Because “appeasing the wicked and supposing one needs only to ‘accompany’ them or ‘dialogue’ with them is itself irresponsible.”

A band plays at a demonstration in Marseille, France. Hundreds of thousands of workers across the country are on strike today, as student-led rallies against educational failings continue to expand into wider protests about the cost of living.
Justine Meddah / AFP / Getty Images

Thrillers come in many styles, from mind-numbingly psychological to high-octane crime. These are the most gripping novels of all time.

‘Strangers on a Train’ (1950)
Patricia Highsmith is better known for “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” but “Strangers on a Train” might be her “greatest book, reeling us in from the very beginning,” said Collider. The author’s “genius lies in” shifting the focus “away from the murders themselves” and toward the “psychological burden that follows.” ($17, W. W. Norton & Company)

‘Mystic River’ (2001)
The consequences of an incident between three boyhood friends in 1970s Boston ripple for decades. When one of the trio’s teen daughters is murdered 25 years later, the book becomes an “enthralling study” in “remorse, revenge and the long tail of emotional trauma” told in Dennis Lehane’s “inimitably tender and profane style,” said The New York Times. ($20, HarperCollins)

‘In the Woods’ (2007)
Tana French has established herself as one of the greats in the thriller genre, and her debut novel, “In The Woods,” remains one of her finest. Detective Rob Ryan is called to investigate a murder in the same woods where his childhood friends disappeared. It’s a “stone-cold stunner” of a book,” said Electric Lit. ($19, Penguin Books, Amazon)

‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ (2008)
Swedish writer Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium juggernaut” began with this book (translated into English by Reg Keeland), said The New York Times. It introduces goth-punk Swedish computer hacker Lisbeth Salander, whose “technical brilliance is matched only by her antisocial tendencies.” ($19, Vintage Crime / Black Lizard)