Cassidys

EASTENDERS legend Natalie Cassidy has revealed her young daughter had to be rushed to hospital after smashing her arm in a terrifying accident.

The actress, 43, said she felt like she had a “nervous breakdown” when she was told Joanie, nine, had slipped over at school — just weeks after having metal plates surgically removed from the same arm following a previous injury.

“Joanie’s broken her arm again. Same arm — smashed to pieces. General anaesthetic, same operation,” she said today.

Natalie shares Joanie with her fiancé Marc Humphreys, a cameraman she met on the set of EastEnders in 2014. She is also mum to Eliza, 15, from her previous relationship with Adam Cottrell.

The actress, who left the BBC One soap last year after playing Sonia Fowler on and off since 1993, said the accident happened just as the family were settling in for what they had hoped would be a relaxing few days at home in Hertfordshire.

“I’d done a little bit of work in the morning at home,” she explained. “[Marc] went outside, put the paddling pool up, cut all the grass — thinking we’re going to have a few days, like a mini holiday, at home.

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“And then the phone rang. She slipped over in the hall, before doing PE. I’m speechless. It’s so traumatic.”

Speaking on her podcast, Life With Nat, which she hosts with Marc, Natalie said this was not the first time Joanie had been through surgery on her left arm.

“A few years ago she broke her arm, and it was a clean break,” she said.

“She then broke it again, they put all the metal work in. And then eight weeks ago, she went under general anaesthetic, had it all out – and has done it again.”

She added: “I felt I was going to have a nervous breakdown, actually. I’m being really honest here. I really fell to pieces. I was not in a good place. Just her little body – and the medication and the trauma of it all.”

The repeated injuries have led the family to ask whether something more might be behind them. 

Natalie said they believed “some sort of deficiency” was causing Joanie’s frequent fractures.

She said: “But she’s had full blood tests, and everything is in range. It’s absolutely perfect. The consultant actually said, ‘I do think it’s just really bad luck.’”

Their latest NHS hospital stay took place during last week’s record-breaking heatwave, when the Met Office issued a rare red extreme heat warning and temperatures climbed close to 40C across parts of England.

“The hospital was quite warm for the few days we were in there,” Natalie admitted. “The staff… they’re not moaning, they’re laughing, they’re joking. Just wonderful, wonderful people. We were so well looked after again. It’s like a little trip, now. It’s like being in a hotel!”

The injury also means the family now face a string of complications around their upcoming holiday. Natalie said Joanie will need a waterproof cover to swim, and that she will have to arrange medical clearance for her to fly with a cast on.

Their trips to hospital have become so frequent that staff now recognise Joanie.

Marc said: “The anaesthetist actually knew her.” Natalie added: “I went down to the theatre. I said, ‘hello, Barbara.’ I mean, who, in their right mind, knows the people in the hospital?”

President Trump succeeded in his effort to defeat Sen. Bill Cassidy in Louisiana’s Republican primary, a signal of the enduring strength of the president’s hold on his party despite an unpopular war and soaring gas prices.

Cassidy was one of seven Republican senators in 2021 who voted to convict Trump on the impeachment charge of inciting an insurrection on Jan. 6 that year. He placed last in a three-way race Saturday against U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow, who was endorsed by Trump, and state Treasurer John Fleming.

“His disloyalty to the man who got him elected is now a part of legend, and it’s nice to see that his political career is OVER!” Trump said of Cassidy on social media late Saturday.

With 92.3% of ballots tallied, Letlow had 44.8% of the vote and Fleming had 28.3%. Cassidy trailed with 24.7%.

Letlow and Fleming will advance to a runoff next month. Whoever wins that contest is virtually assured victory in November in deep-red Louisiana. In his last reelection in 2020, just months before his vote to convict Trump, Cassidy won 59% of the vote.

In a primary season where Trump is crusading to vanquish members of his party with whom he’s been at odds, the Louisiana race comes just days before the president tries to oust another Republican foe, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky. But Trump has opted so far to stay out of a hard-fought Texas GOP runoff later this month between incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, a traditional conservative, and state Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton, who is more politically aligned with the president’s MAGA movement.

Massie, who faces a primary that has become the most expensive of its kind, said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that’s he’s confident he will prevail Tuesday despite a string of social media insults from the president and fundraising by Trump allies such as billionaires Miriam Adelson and Paul Singer.

“I think it’s going to help my fundraising,” Massie said. “People don’t like this.”

With state polls showing Massie with a slight lead, the congressman said, “that’s why the president is losing sleep and tweeting about me.”

Trump’s success in defeating Cassidy left the Louisiana senator defiant: “Let me just set the record straight. Our country is not about one individual, it is about the welfare of all Americans and it is about our Constitution.”

“If someone doesn’t understand that and attempts to control others through using the levers of power, they’re about serving themselves, they’re not about serving us,” he added.

Trump has attacked Cassidy for his 2021 vote and his opposition to some aspects of his agenda, particularly vaccine and other health policies pushed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. During Kennedy’s Senate confirmation hearings last year, Cassidy, who is a doctor, expressed deep skepticism about the nominee’s anti-vaccine views, but ultimately voted to confirm him.

Trump recently blamed Cassidy for thwarting the nomination of wellness influencer Casey Means as surgeon general. Means is a longtime ally of Kennedy’s, and Cassidy had also questioned her stance on vaccinations.

On Saturday morning, Trump continued his attacks, calling Cassidy a “a disloyal disaster” on social media. He later congratulated Letlow on her first-place finish.

In his concession speech, Cassidy said: “I find that people of character and integrity don’t spend their time attacking people on the internet.”

Despite the president’s opposition to his candidacy, Cassidy had run ads featuring images of Trump, praising top White House issues that the senator had supported including the president’s massive tax package enacted last year, while casting Letlow as insufficiently conservative.

The outcome also notches a high-profile win for Kennedy’s political operation, which supported Letlow and opposed Cassidy in the race. The two men have repeatedly clashed over nominations and the department’s changes to vaccine policy. With certainty of his departure when his term ends in January, Cassidy could make the health secretary’s job even more difficult as he finishes out his term with an eye to his legacy and priorities.

Cassidy’s departure will also leave a leadership vacuum for the GOP atop the Senate Health Committee next year. The panel oversees health agencies and confirmations for key leadership positions at the agencies, and Cassidy brought his medical expertise to the role. He has built a reputation as a healthcare policy wonk willing to work across the aisle.

Only two other Republican senators who broke with Trump in his 2021 impeachment trial, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, remain in the Senate. Collins, who represents a state Trump lost in 2024, has largely avoided the president’s wrath while she fights for her political life in one of the most competitive races of the midterms. Murkowski won reelection in 2022.

“You can disagree with President Trump, but if you try to destroy him you’re going to lose because this is the party of Donald Trump,” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“There’s no room in this party to destroy his agenda or to destroy him or his family as a Republican,” Graham said. “It’s just a reality.”

Cohrs Zhang writes for Bloomberg. Bloomberg writers Tony Czuczka and Se Young Lee contributed to this report.

A Republican senator who broke from his party to vote in favour of convicting US President Donald Trump in impeachment proceedings during his first term is facing a bruising primary challenge in his home state of Louisiana.

Bill Cassidy’s primary race on Thursday has been seen as a barometer of Trump’s continued hold over the Republican Party. Even as polls have shown the president’s approval tanking, early primary votes have shown the continued weight his endorsement carries.

Trump has backed US Representative Julia Letlow in the Senate race. State Treasurer John Fleming is also running. The winner of the Republican primary is all-but-assured to win in the general election in the deep-red state.

Cassidy had joined seven Republicans in the Senate in voting to convict Trump of “incitement of insurrection”, following his campaign to overturn the 2020 election results and his supporters’ storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

“Our Constitution and our country is more important than any one person. I voted to convict President Trump because he is guilty,” Cassidy said in a statement at the time.

Despite the handful of Republican defections, the chamber fell far short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict Trump of the charges, of which he was acquitted.

Initially viewed as politically toxic after leaving office in 2021, Trump mounted a stunning comeback in the years that followed, reshaping the Republican Party in his likeness.

That included the ascension of many lawmakers who endorsed Trump’s claims that the 2020 vote was stolen, for which he has provided no evidence.

Currently, most other Republican senators who voted to convict Trump alongside Cassidy have been ousted or chosen to leave office.

Among the group, only Republican centrists Susan Collins from Maine, who continues to be seen as a bulwark against Democratic challengers in her home state, and Lisa Murkowski from Alaska, who saw off a Trump-backed challenger in 2022, have escaped major intra-party fallout for their votes.

Letlow, an academic administrator who entered office in 2021, has also seized on Cassidy’s 2021 vote, saying in her campaign launch video that residents of Louisiana “shouldn’t have to wonder how our senator will vote when the pressure is on”.

A fine line

Cassidy, a physician, has walked a fine line during Trump’s second term, regularly touting the administration’s policy initiatives and appearing alongside Trump at the White House several times for healthcare-focused events and bill signings.

Still, Cassidy has had some high-profile clashes with the Trump administration. During Robert F Kennedy Jr‘s confirmation hearing to become health and human services secretary, Cassidy sparred with Kennedy over his vaccine scepticism.

“I am a doctor who has seen people die from vaccine-preventable diseases, and when I see outbreaks numbered in the thousands, and people dying once more from vaccine-preventable diseases, particularly children, it seems more than tragic,” he said during the hearing.

Cassidy later cast the deciding vote to confirm Kennedy after receiving assurances that he would not change federal vaccine recommendations. The HHS under Kennedy has since changed those recommendations.

In April of this year, Trump accused Cassidy of tanking his nominee for surgeon-general, Casey Means, who had come under fire for her vaccine scepticism and unproven wellness theories.

Trump decried what he called Cassidy’s “intransigence and political games”. In a subsequent post, he said hopefully Republicans “will be voting Bill Cassidy OUT OF OFFICE in the upcoming Republican Primary!”

Cassidy, in turn, has claimed opponent Letlow does not have conservative bona fides.

He has highlighted her past support of education diversity initiatives, which she has since disavowed, as well as her past attendance at the 2023 United Nations climate change conference.

Trump’s sway?

Trump carried Louisiana in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections with about 58 percent of the vote, and in 2024 with 60 percent.

Heading into the primary vote, the president’s overall national approval rating has tanked, hitting a record low of 34 percent at the end of April. That has come amid widespread discontent over the US-Israel war on Iran and its economic toll.

Trump has maintained strong support among Republicans, but has notably seen dipping support among independents.

Polls have shown Cassidy trailing behind both Letlow and Fleming. If no candidate wins an outright majority, the race will move to a run-off on June 27.

Thursday’s race takes place amid an ongoing national battle over congressional redistricting.

While Louisiana’s US House of Representatives primary was also scheduled for Thursday, Governor Jeff Landry has temporarily suspended the vote.

That after the US Supreme Court struck down a major provision of the Voting Rights Act, paving the way for the state’s Republican-controlled legislature to redraw its congressional map to do away with one of two Black-majority districts.

Civil rights groups have filed a lawsuit alleging the suspension violates both the US and the state’s constitutions.