decline

Tel Aviv football team says it is working to ‘stamp out racism’ among its fan base.

Israeli football team Maccabi Tel Aviv has said it will turn down any tickets offered to its fans for a match in the United Kingdom, even if an earlier decision by local officials to bar the team’s followers from attending is reversed.

Maccabi Tel Aviv said on Monday that “hard lessons learned” meant it had decided to decline any offer of tickets for the Europa League game against Aston Villa.

“The wellbeing and safety of our fans is paramount,” the team said in a statement posted online. “Our decision should be understood in that context.”

The club also said it had been working to “stamp out racism” within the “more extreme elements” of its fan base.

“Our first-team squad consists of Muslims, Christian and Jewish players and our fan base also crosses the ethnic and religious divide,” it said.

The team’s decision came a day after Israeli police cancelled a match between Maccabi and its rival Tel Aviv team Hapoel before kickoff over what they described as “public disorder and violent riots”.

The move by Israeli authorities to cancel the game stood in contrast with criticism by British and Israeli leaders of Birmingham City’s decision to ban Maccabi fans from the November 6 match at Villa Park in Birmingham, central England.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the ban by the city’s Safety Advisory Group (SAG) “the wrong decision”, while Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Saar called for the “shameful” and “coward decision” to be reversed.

The UK government said on Friday that it was working to override local authorities to allow Israeli fans to be present.

But after Israeli police shut down the match between Tel Aviv teams on Sunday, some UK politicians questioned whether the government should intervene in Birmingham.

“To Keir Starmer and others who tried to make this about religion! Here’s more evidence. Even under the world’s spotlight, these fans chose violence, injuring police officers,” independent MP Ayoub Khan wrote in a post on X.

Richard Burgon, a Labour MP, broke with his government, saying the developments vindicated the decision to ban away fans from attending the game.

“This news exposes how absurd that campaign has been,” he said on X. “The people of Birmingham have a right to be kept safe.”

West Midlands Police said last week that they had classified the match as high risk based on “current intelligence and previous incidents, including violent clashes and hate crime offences that occurred during the 2024 UEFA Europa League match between Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv in Amsterdam”.

“Based on our professional judgement, we believe this measure will help mitigate risks to public safety,” the police force said.

Last year’s clashes in Amsterdam between pro-Palestinian supporters and fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv led to dozens of arrests.

The clashes followed incidents of Israeli fans rampaging through the Dutch capital, assaulting residents, destroying symbols of Palestinian solidarity and chanting racist and genocidal slogans against Palestinians and Arabs.

The clashes also featured reported incidents of anti-Semitism, including a private messaging chat calling for a “Jew hunt”.

Legal experts have also voiced concerns about Israeli teams participating in international sporting matches, citing a report by United Nations investigators that affirmed that Israel is carrying out a genocide against Palestinians.

Earlier this month, more than 30 legal experts wrote to UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin, saying that banning Israel from competitions was “imperative”.

“UEFA must not be complicit in sports-washing such flagrant breaches of international law, including but not limited to the act of genocide,” the experts wrote.

Indian nationals see decrease of 45 percent compared to same period last year as US clamps down on foreign students.

The number of student visas issued by the United States has dropped by about one-fifth compared to the same one-month period last year, with India seeing a dramatic decline amid restrictive policies pursued by United States President Donald Trump.

Data from the International Trade Commission found that the US issued about 313,138 student visas in August, when studies typically begin at US universities, a 19.1 percent drop compared to August 2024.

For Indian students, the largest source of foreign students studying in the US, the drop was 44.5 percent during that period. Visa issuances also dropped for students from China, albeit at a lower rate.

Several Muslim-majority countries also saw massive declines, with student visas for Iranians dropping by 86 percent. The figures do not represent overall numbers of foreign students attending US universities, many of whom remain on previously issued visas.

The drop comes as the Trump administration has pursued a restrictive approach to immigration, while using funding to exert growing political pressure on US universities.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has revoked thousands of student visas, citing violations of US law, participation in protests, or in some cases, criticism of Israel. The targeting has been in parallel with pro-Israel groups that monitor and surveil university students involved in pro-Palestine activism.

In June, Rubio also ordered the temporary suspension of all student visa processing in order to enact greater oversight over student social media profiles.

Those vetting applications were told to look for “any indications of hostility toward the citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles of the United States”.

However, the administration’s messaging towards certain countries has not always been consistent.

After initially vowing to restrict a large portion of Chinese students seeking to study in the US, Trump told reporters in August that he planned to admit 600,000 Chinese students into the country to study.

The figure was double the number of Chinese students currently studying in the US.

“We’re going to allow, it’s very important, 600,000 students. It’s very important,” Trump said at the time.

The Los Angeles Police Department on Tuesday released a report touting a decline in shootings by officers in 2024, even as officials acknowledged this year’s numbers show the trend reversing with a major uptick in incidents of deadly force.

LAPD officers opened fire on 29 people last year, compared with 34 in 2023 — a sign, the report’s authors maintained, that the department’s efforts to curb serious uses of force are having an effect.

Already in 2025, however, LAPD officers have surpassed the total number of shootings recorded last year, with police opening fire at least 31 times in less than nine months.

Teresa Sánchez-Gordon, who on Tuesday was announced as the Police Commission’s new president, said she was struck by the fact that during encounters with people exhibiting signs of mental illness last year, officers sometimes shot instead of first deploying weapons meant to incapacitate.

“Why can we not increase that … use of that less-lethal means?” asked Sánchez-Gordon.

LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell told the commission that the use of Tasers and launchers that shoot hard foam projectiles was “foremost on everybody’s minds.”

But oftentimes, he said, encounters with people in crisis unfold so quickly and unpredictably that officers are left with little time to consider other tools. He noted that the vast majority of shootings stem from 911 calls, rather than “proactive policing,” which he said underscores “the reactive nature of these events.”

The timing of Tuesday’s report seemed incongruous amid mounting public anger over a recent rise in police shootings, including a continued pattern of officers killing people who appear to be in the midst of some behavioral crisis.

The report also noted a rising number of shootings last year in which officers mistakenly believe someone is armed, an increasingly common scenario that has also been cause for recent concern.

In July, LAPD officers fatally shot a man sitting inside a utility van on the city’s Eastside after, they said, he ignored repeated commands to drop what turned out to be a toy Airsoft gun, which resembled a real rifle. The dead man’s fiancee said he had dealt with mental health issues in the past.

In recent weeks, the commission has pushed McDonnell to do more to curb the number of shootings.

Last year, the Southeast, North Hollywood and Harbor patrol areas saw the biggest jumps in the number of police shootings, while 77th Street, Foothill, Rampart and Newton divisions recorded the biggest decreases.

The shootings cut across racial lines. Roughly 55% of those shot by officers were Latino, with Black and white people each accounting for around 21% of the incidents, with the remaining 3% involving Asians.

More than half of the officers who fired their weapons were Latino, which is roughly in line with the department’s racial makeup. A quarter of the officers were white, with Asian officers responsible for 11% of the shootings.

From 2023 to 2024, the number of officers injured in shootings rose from eight to 11, according to the report.

The rise in police shootings has been a regular point of contention for the police critics and social justice advocates who show up to speak at the commission’s weekly meetings.

On Tuesday, Melina Abdullah, a prominent civil rights leader who has long been critical of the department’s history of excessive force against communities of color, accused the commission of failing to take seriously its role as police shootings continue to rise.

“I don’t know how this oversight body is not overseeing and demanding something different,” she said.

The recent report found that officers fired nearly twice as many bullets last year as they did in 2020. On average, LAPD officers fired more than 10 rounds per shooting.

In addition to the decline in police shootings last year, the department’s report revealed that so-called non-categorical uses of force — LAPD speak for the deployment of a Taser or beanbag shotgun or incidents that result in serious but non-life-threatening injuries — dipped slightly to 1,451 from 1,503.

The decline came amid a drop in both crime and the number of people who came into contact with the LAPD in 2024.

There was also a significant decline in shootings of people with knives, swords and other edged weapons. Preventing those types of confrontations from turning deadly has been a point of emphasis by the department and the commission in recent years. In February, LAPD officers faced criticism after they shot and killed a transgender woman holding a knife at a Pacoima motel room after she called 911 to report that she had been kidnapped.

Much like with most crime statistics, experts caution against reading too much into year-over-year fluctuations. But department statistics show that despite the recent uptick, police shootings are still down considerable from their highs in the early 1990s and make up only a small fraction of all public encounters every year.

One international student after another told the University of Central Missouri this summer that they couldn’t get a visa, and many struggled to even land an interview for one.

Even though demand was just as high as ever, half as many new international graduate students showed up for fall classes compared with last year.

The decline represents a hit to the bottom line for Central Missouri, a small public university that operates close to its margins with an endowment of only $65 million. International students typically account for nearly a quarter of its tuition revenue.

“We aren’t able to subsidize domestic students as much when we have fewer international students who are bringing revenue to us,” said Roger Best, the university’s president.

Signs of a decline in international students have unsettled colleges around the U.S. Colleges with large numbers of foreign students and small endowments have little financial cushion to protect them from steep losses in tuition money.

International students represent at least 20% of enrollment at more than 100 colleges with endowments of less than $250,000 per student, according to an Associated Press analysis. Many are small Christian colleges, but the group also includes large universities such as Northeastern and Carnegie Mellon.

The extent of the change in enrollment will not be clear until the fall. Some groups have forecast a decline of as much as 40%, with a huge impact on college budgets and the wider U.S. economy.

International students face new scrutiny on several fronts

As part of a broader effort to reshape higher education, President Trump has pressed colleges to limit their numbers of international students and heightened scrutiny of student visas. His administration has moved to deport foreign students involved in pro-Palestinian activism, and new student visa appointments were put on hold for weeks as it ramped up vetting of applicants’ social media.

On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security said it will propose a rule that would put new limits on the time foreign students can stay in the U.S.

The policies have introduced severe financial instability for colleges, said Justin Gest, a professor at George Mason University who studies the politics of immigration.

Foreign students are not eligible for federal financial aid and often pay full price for tuition — double or even triple the in-state rate paid by domestic students at public universities.

“If an international student comes in and pays $80,000 a year in tuition, that gives universities the flexibility to offer lower fees and more scholarship money to American students,” Gest said.

A Sudanese student barely made it to the U.S. for the start of classes

Ahmed Ahmed, a Sudanese student, nearly didn’t make it to the U.S. for his freshman year at the University of Rochester.

The Trump administration in June announced a travel ban on 12 countries, including Sudan. Diplomatic officials assured Ahmed he could still enter the U.S. because his visa was issued before the ban. But when he tried to board a flight to leave for the United States from Uganda, where he stayed with family during the summer, he was turned away and advised to contact an embassy about his visa.

With the help of the University of Rochester’s international office, Ahmed was able to book another flight.

At Rochester, where he received a scholarship to study electrical engineering, Ahmed, 19, said he feels supported by the staff. But he also finds himself on edge and understands why other students might not want to subject themselves to the scrutiny in the U.S., particularly those who are entirely paying their own way.

“I feel like I made it through, but I’m one of the last people to make it through,” he said.

Colleges are taking steps to blunt the impact

In recent years, international students have made up about 30% of enrollment at Central Missouri, which has a total of around 12,800 students. In anticipation of the hit to international enrollment, Central Missouri cut a cost-of-living raise for employees. It has pushed off infrastructure improvements planned for its campus and has been looking for other ways to cut costs.

Small schools — typically classified as those with no more than 5,000 students — tend to have less financial flexibility and will be especially vulnerable, said Dick Startz, an economics professor at UC Santa Barbara.

Lee University, a Christian institution with 3,500 students in Tennessee, is expecting 50 to 60 international students enrolled this fall, down from 82 the previous school year, representing a significant drop in revenue for the school, said Roy Y. Chan, the university’s director of graduate studies.

The school already has increased tuition by 20% over the last five years to account for a decrease in overall enrollment, he said.

“Since we’re a smaller liberal arts campus, tuition cost is our main, primary revenue,” Chan said, as opposed to government funding or donations.

The strains on international enrollment only add to distress for schools already on the financial brink.

Colleges around the country have been closing as they cope with declines in domestic enrollment, a consequence of changing demographics and the effects of the pandemic. Nationwide, private colleges have been closing at a rate of about two per month, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Assn.

The number of high school graduates in the U.S. is expected to decline through 2041, when there will be 13% fewer compared with 2024, according to projections from the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education.

“That means that if you lost participation from international students, it’s even worse,” Startz said.

Vileira, Seminera and Binkley write for the Associated Press.

Put down the book, pick up the phone.

So it goes in the United States, where daily reading for pleasure has plummeted more than 40% among adults over the last two decades, according to a new study from the University of Florida and University College London.

From 2003 to 2023, daily leisure reading declined at a steady rate of about 3% per year, according to the study published Wednesday in the journal iScience .

“This decline is concerning given earlier evidence for downward trends in reading for pleasure from the 1940s through to the start of our study in 2003, suggesting at least 80 years of continued decline in reading for pleasure,” the paper states.

Jill Sonke, one of the study’s authors, said in an interview Tuesday that the decline is concerning in part because “we know that reading for pleasure, among other forms of arts participation, is a health behavior. It is associated with relaxation, well-being, mental health, quality of life.”

“We’re losing a low-hanging fruit in our health toolkit when we’re reading or participating in the arts less,” added Sonke, the director of research initiatives at the UF Center for Arts in Medicine and co-director of the university’s EpiArts Lab.

The reading decline comes as most Americans have more access to books than ever before. Because of Libby and other e-book apps, people do not need to travel to libraries or bookstores. They can check out books from multiple libraries and read them on their tablets or phones.

But other forms of digital media are crowding out the free moments that people could devote to books. More time spent scrolling dank memes and reels on social media or bingeing the “King of the Hill” reboot on Hulu means less time for the latest pick from Oprah’s Book Club.

But researchers say there are factors besides digital distraction at play, including a national decline in leisure time overall and uneven access to books and libraries.

The study analyzed data from 236,270 Americans age 15 and older who completed the American Time Use Survey from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics between 2003 and 2023. [The year 2020 was excluded because data collection was briefly paused amid the COVID-19 pandemic.]

Participants were asked to provide granular detail of their activities beginning at 4 a.m. on the day prior to the interview and ending at 4 a.m. the day of the interview.

Researchers found that people who do read for pleasure are doing so for longer stretches of time — from 1 hour 23 minutes per day in 2003 to 1 hour 37 minutes per day in 2023.

But the percentage of Americans who leisure-read on a typical day has dropped from a high of 28% in 2004 to a low of 16% in 2023.

Researchers said there was an especially concerning disparity between Black and white Americans.

The percentage of Black adults who read for pleasure peaked at about 20% in 2004 and fell to about 9% in 2023. The percentage of white adults who picked up a book for fun peaked at about 29% in 2004 and dropped to roughly 18% in 2023.

The study showed that women read for fun more than men. And that people who live in rural areas had a slightly steeper drop in pleasure reading than urban denizens over the last two decades.

In rural places, people have less access not only to bookstores and libraries, but also reliable internet connections, which can contribute to different reading habits, Kate Laughlin, executive director of the Seattle-based Assn. for Rural and Small Libraries, said in an interview Tuesday.

Although there have been concerted national efforts to focus on literacy in children, less attention is paid to adults, especially in small towns, Laughlin said.

“When you say ‘reading for pleasure,’ you make the assumption that reading is pleasurable,” Laughlin said. “If someone struggles with the act of actually reading and interpreting the words, that’s not leisure; that feels like work.”

As rural America shifts away from the extraction-based industries that once defined it — such as logging, coal mining and fishing — adults struggling with basic literacy are trying to play catch-up with the digital literacy needed in the modern workforce, Laughlin said.

Rural librarians, she said, often see adults in their late 20s and older coming in not to read but to learn how to use a keyboard and mouse and set up their first email address so they can apply for work online.

According to the study, the percentage of adults reading to children has not declined over the last two decades. But “rates of engagement were surprisingly low, with only 2% of participants reading with children on the average day.”

Of the participants whose data the researchers analyzed, 21% had a child under 9 at home.

The low percentage of adults reading with kids “is concerning given that regular reading during childhood is a strong determinant of reading ability and engagement later in life,” the study read. “The low rates of reading with children may thus contribute to future declines in reading among adults.”

Researchers noted some limitations in their ability to interpret the data from the American Time Use Survey. Some pleasure reading might have been categorized, mistakenly, as digital activity, they wrote.

E-books were not included in the reading category until 2011, and audiobooks were not included until 2021.

From 2003 to 2006, reading the Bible and other religious texts was included in reading in personal interest — but was recategorized afterward and grouped with other participation in religious practice.

Further, reading on tablets, computers and smartphones was not explicitly included in examples, making it unclear whether survey participants included it as leisure reading or technology use.

“This may mean that we underestimated rates of total engagement, although … we expect any such misclassifications to have minimal effects on our findings,” they wrote.

Aug. 2 (UPI) — Berkshire Hathaway on Saturday reported a 3.79% decline in second-quarter earnings as CEO Warren Buffett‘s company warned about troubling times because of President Donald Trump‘s tariffs on imported goods.

Buffett, who has been involved with the company for 60 years, owns about 15.1% of its economic interest and 31.2% of its voting interest as its largest shareholder.

The public company reported an operating profit of $11.16 billion, with a lower number from a decline in its assets, which include insurance underwriting for Geico. The first-half decline was 8.8% at $20.8 billion.

Net income in the second quarter dropped to $12.37 billion, which is a 59% slump from the second quarter last year.

Trump in April imposed a baseline tariff of 10% on most trading partners with high duties in place or coming on Friday.

“Considerable uncertainty remains as to the ultimate outcome of these events,” the company said in its filing. “We are currently unable to reliably predict the ultimate impact on our businesses, whether through changes in the availability of products, supply chain costs and efficiency, and customer demand for our products and services. It is reasonably possible there could be adverse consequences on most, if not all, of our operating businesses, as well as on our investments in equity securities, which could significantly affect our future results.”

The company said its financials already were impacted.

“The pace of changes in these events, including tensions from developing international trade policies and tariffs, accelerated through the first six months of 2025,” Berkshire said.

Pre-tax underwriting losses before foreign currency effects were $276 million in the first six months this year, compared with $299 million in 2024, the company reported.

Berkshire encountered a $1.1 billion payout from the Southern California wildfires in January. There were no significant catastrophic events in the first six months of 2024.

But higher profits did roll in for the company’s railroad, manufacturing, service and retail holdings, CNBC reported. Also, its energy company, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, had an 18% rise in net income.

The company reported revenue of $182.24 billion for the first six months compared with $183.52 the previous year. Second-quarter revenue was 92.15 billion, with 93.7 billion in 2024.

Berkshire Hathaway wrote down a loss of $3.8 billion from a stake in Kraft Heinz and is considering a spinoff for the food giant, of which it owns owns 27.4% in stock.

Berkshire Hathaway has $344.09 billion in cash, equivalents and short-term securities.

“Despite what some commentators currently view as an extraordinary cash position at Berkshire, the great majority of your money remains in equities. That preference won’t change,” Buffett wrote in his annual 15-page letter in February.

The company did not re-purchase any stock during the first half of this year.

“Berkshire’s common stock repurchase program permits Berkshire to repurchase its shares any time that Warren Buffett … believes that the repurchase price is below Berkshire’s intrinsic value, conservatively determined,” the company said in the filing.

Berkshire Hathaway filed its first earnings report since the 94-year-old Buffett announced he will depart as CEO at the end of the year, but will remain as chairman of the board. Greg Abel, who is the company’s vice president of non-insurance operations, will become the new CEO.

Buffett is the ninth richest person in the world with a net worth $141.7 billion through Saturday, according to Forbes, and is known as the Oracle of Omaha, which refers to the Nebraska city where Berkshire is headquartered and he has lived his entire life.

Berkshire Hathaway traces its roots to 1839 as Valley Falls Company, a textile manufacturer in New England, before mergers with Hathaway Manufacturing Company in 1888 and Berkshire Fine Spinning Associates in 1929.

The company was “mired in a terrible business,” according to Buffett, and he purchased his first shares of Berkshire in December 1962.

The company’s market capitalization is now $1.01 trillion.

Shares ended trading Friday at $472.84. This year, the all-time high has been $539.80 on May 4, while the 2025 low was $442.66 on Jan. 10. The company began trading in 1996 at $22.20. Class A shares have never undergone a stock split.

In a message, Buffett wrote: “You probably know that I don’t make stock recommendations. However, I have two thoughts regarding your personal expenditures that can save you real money. I’m suggesting that you call on the services of two subsidiaries of Berkshire: GEICO and Borsheim’s.”

He noted savings on Geico for auto insurance and Borsheim fine jewelry, watches and giftware “almost certainly will cost you less.”

July 24 (UPI) — Tesla’s shares price declined 1.74% for the week on Friday, two days after posting declining profits for a third straight quarter amid increased competition and a pending loss of federal tax credits.

On Friday, the stock price closed at $316.06, up $10.76, or 3.52%, from the day before, when the stock slumped 8.2%. Its market capitalization slumped to $984.73 billion. Tesla earnings report was released after the market closed on Wednesday.

Tesla is down 16.7% year to date but up 43.5% from one year ago, according to NASDAQ.

Tesla’s price was as low as $284.70 on June 5 when Elon Musk’s feud with President Donald Trump intensified and $221.85 on April 8 when stock indexes and bond market were tumbling before Trump announced a pause on harsh tariffs on trading partners.

The company’s stock price reached a record of 479.86 on Dec. 17 before Trump entered the White House as president again on Jan. 20. Tesla first began trading on June 29, 2010, with an initial price offering of $17 but opened trading at $19 per share.

Back then the only car for sale was the Roadster and two years before the Model S hit the market. The top-selling cars are now the Model Y SUV and Model 3 sedan.

Musk wasn’t Tesla founder but he invested early and served as chairman and took over as CEO in 2008.

The conference call Thursdsay was light in earnings information and more focused on robotics and artificial intelligence.

“The company offered remarkably little detail on some of the most important factors” – like its mysterious new lower-priced model – “making our outlook lean more on imagination than realistic targets,” Truist’s William Stein, who has a hold rating on Tesla, said in a note after the call in a report by CNN.

“I wouldn’t say it was a conference call that should be put in the Hall of Fame,” Dan Ives of Wdbush Securities, told CNN on Thursday, but said he is still bullish on Tesla’s robotics future with Musk in charge. “Communication on the call was less than stellar in terms of details, and I think that definitely played into the selloff that we’re seeing.”

Tesla later told staff Thursday it plans to launch its Robotaxi service in San Francisco this weekend, according to an internal memo obtained by Business Insider. Tesla has a permit for testing its self-driving software in California with a driver behind the wheel.

Earning report

Looking back, Tesla sold $22.5 billion worth of products during the second quarter, which is $3 billion less than the $25.5 billion in sales during the same period in 2024.

Tesla reported $1.2 billion in earnings profit from April to June, which is down from $1.4 billion a year earlier.

The earnings drop is the third straight quarter for the EV maker that last reported an earnings gain during the third quarter last year.

Driving much of the loss is a decline in Tesla vehicle sales, which totaled $16.7 billion during the second quarter — down by 16% from a year ago.

Tesla delivered 384,000 vehicles during the second quarter, which is 14% fewer than a year ago, the company announced in July.

Several factors have contributed to the decline in Tesla sales, including the end to federal tax credits for buying electric vehicles and increased competition for EV makers in China and elsewhere.

Musk recently cautioned investors about the approach of a “few rough quarters” due to the loss of the federal EV tax credits.

A recently signed budget bill that Trump dubbed “one big, beautiful bill” eliminates a $7,500 federal tax credit after September.

Trump said he does not intend to eliminate federal subsidies for Tesla, though.

“I want Elon and all businesses within our country to thrive … like never before,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Thursday.

“The better they do, the better the USA does, and that’s good for all of us,” Trump added.

Tesla also posted a decline in new vehicle registrations in Europe in July and only sold 4,300 units of its Cybertruck during the second quarter.

Tesla sold about half as many Cybertrucks during the second quarter than it did a year earlier, according to Cox Automotive.

Musk has announced Tesla will soon offer a new EV that costs less after beginning production in June.

Industry analysts anticipate it will be similar to Tesla’s electric Model Y SUV.

Tesla’s declining EV sales come as demand for EVs has grown by 1.5% so far in 2025 in the United States and by 32% and 26%, respectively, in China and Europe, Cox Automotive and Rho Motion reported.

China’s BYD EV maker is growing its market share there, while JATO Dynamics reported Volkswagen has overtaken Tesla as the top EV seller in Europe.

Recent political turmoil also has led to negative publicity for Musk and Tesla by extension.

Musk’s recently controversial activities as the former director of the Department of Government Efficiency, subsequent fallout with Trump and recent announcement of founding a third political party have preceded declines in sales and Tesla’s share price.

Analysts expect a turnaround in future quarters as the automaker bets on robotaxi expansions.

Tesla has reported its biggest decline in quarterly revenue in more than a decade as CEO Elon Musk’s political activity weighs on the electric carmaker brand’s reputation.

Revenue fell to $22.5bn for the April-June quarter from $25.5bn a year earlier, according to its earnings report, which Tesla released after the closing bell on Wall Street. Analysts on average were expecting revenue of $22.74bn, according to data compiled by LSEG.

Revenue from car sales declined by 16 percent. Tesla attributed the revenue dip to a decline in vehicle deliveries. Earlier this month, it reported a 14 percent decline in car deliveries in the second quarter.

Investors are worried about whether Musk will be able to give enough time and attention to Tesla after he locked horns with United States President Donald Trump by forming a new political party this month. Weeks earlier, he had promised that he would cut back on government work and focus on his companies.

Musk’s connections to the Trump administration and layoffs across the US government when he headed the Department of Government Efficiency weighed on its US reputation. Meanwhile, the billionaire’s endorsements of the far-right AfD party in Germany have affected the brand’s reputation in Europe.

A series of high-profile executive exits, including last month of a longtime Musk confidant who oversaw sales and manufacturing in North America and Europe, is also adding to the concerns.

The company reported a second straight quarterly revenue drop, despite rolling out a much-awaited refreshed version of its best-selling Model Y SUV that investors had hoped would rekindle demand.

Much of the company’s trillion-dollar valuation hangs on its bet on its robotaxi service – a small trial of which started in Austin, Texas, last month – and developing humanoid robots. On Wednesday, Bloomberg News reported that Tesla has been in talks with the state of Nevada about introducing robotaxi services there.

Analysts believe that this will keep the automaker on pace for growth in future quarters.

“We are at a ‘positive crossroads’ in the Tesla story: Musk is laser focused as CEO, Robotaxi/autonomous expansion has begun, demand stabilisation has begun especially in China, and Tesla is about to embark on an aggressive AI-focused strategy that, we believe, will include owning a significant piece of xAI,” Dan Ives, an analyst at the financial services company Wedbush Securities, said in a note provided to Al Jazeera.

xAI is Musk’s AI firm which also makes the chatbot Grok.

“While near-term and this quarter the numbers are nothing to write home about, we believe investors are instead focused on the AI future at Tesla, with a motivated Musk back driving Tesla’s future,” Ives said.

Tesla’s stock closed the trading day in positive territory, up by 0.1, but has tumbled in after-hours trading, down by 0.3 percent.

Last week, Warner Bros Pictures released a new reboot of the Superman film series. The movie soared to the top of the box office and grossed an estimated $122m in the United States in its opening weekend. Though the industry is celebrating the film’s early box office totals, they are well below the earnings of comparable blockbusters from a decade ago. For example, in its opening weekend in 2016, Warner Bros’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice reaped a healthy $166m ($224m when adjusted for inflation).

Indeed, over the past few years, revenues from such films have steadily fallen, and the new Superman film is not an exception. In the 2010s, superhero movies regularly reaped more than $500m worldwide in box office totals. In recent years, far fewer have reached that high watermark – a fact that is causing unease in the industry. Last year, Hollywood trade magazine Variety warned that the genre was experiencing an “unprecedented box office drought”.

What made superhero movies fall off? According to Hollywood bigwigs, the reason is “superhero fatigue”, as Superman director James Gunn put it. Disney CEO Bob Iger opined that the prolific output of superhero movies “diluted [the audience’s] focus and attention”.

But their narrative — that consumers are simply getting “fatigued” with the genre — is reductive. As with all artistic genres, there are reasons why some rise or fall in popularity. Those reasons are intimately tied to politics.

Superhero boom and decline

Superhero fiction is a uniquely US genre, arguably invented in 1938 with the publication of the first Superman comic book. The first superhero comic adaptation was released in 1941 under the title Adventures of Captain Marvel. The genre was popular among Americans for decades, but it really took off following the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

Those attacks punctured the relative tranquillity (in the US, at least) of the post-Cold War era and put the US propaganda machine into overdrive. Americans were fed a cartoonish portrait of what a “supervillain” looked like, which fit easily into superhero movie narratives. These supervillains were — like America’s purported enemies — bent on global domination and opposed to liberalism and US hegemony.

The Pentagon played a prominent role in shaping propagandistic narratives in popular culture. As a longtime partner of Hollywood, the Department of Defense has long had the practice of loaning out military equipment to filmmakers in exchange for script approval rights. In the post-9/11 era, it had a say in the scripts of a number of superhero blockbusters, including Iron Man and Captain America. Captain Marvel was even used as a recruitment tool for pilots by the US air force.

As a result, many superhero movies depict the US military and superheroes working hand-in-hand to defeat supervillainy, jointly pushing a vision of Pax Americana: a world where the dominant global power is the US.

The protagonists are often portrayed as defenders of “American ideals” like democracy, inclusivity, and justice. Take someone like Captain America, who originated as a literal embodiment of the US cultural victory over fascism. Other popular superheroes of the past 20 years, like Black Panther, embodied liberal America’s multicultural, pluralistic ideals.

But in recent years, the political reality those heroes are meant to uphold has begun to fracture. A September 2024 poll asked Americans whether they agreed with the statement “my country’s leader should have total, unchecked authority”. An astonishing 57.4 percent of US respondents agreed.

Another poll conducted a year earlier found that 45 percent of Americans “point to people seeing racial discrimination where it really doesn’t exist as the larger issue”.

It increasingly seems that America as a liberal, pluralistic society — the way it is depicted in superhero films — is no longer a universal aspiration for many Americans.

There is also growing scepticism towards America’s moral authority and superpower standing in the world.

A 2024 poll from Fox News found that 62 percent of American voters described the US as “on the decline”. Only 26 percent thought it was rising. A 2023 poll from Pew Research — a year before Donald Trump was re-elected — reported that 58 percent of those polled said that “life in America is worse today than it was 50 years ago”.

Social cohesion collapsing

While public perceptions gradually changed in the post-9/11 period, there were events that accelerated this shift.

The precipitous drop in superhero movie box office totals began in 2020. Why that year? This was when the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated already growing societal divisions.

The sense of a cohesive national identity fully shattered with the onset of this unprecedented public health emergency. Widespread mistrust of the government’s ability to manage the crisis — coupled with a deeply individualistic streak in Americans that precluded any understanding of social obligations that would prevent mass death, such as social distancing or lockdown measures — fostered a furious and splintered American body politic.

The singular vision of liberal American righteousness suggested by superhero films could not resonate amid this factional political landscape.

A year later came the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. The decision to pull out upset the notion of the US as a “heroic” intervener — a sort of global superman – heavily projected after 9/11. In contrast to Iraq, Afghanistan was long presented as a potential “success story”, or as The New York Times put it in 2005: the “American-led intervention that could wind up actually making people’s lives better”.

Of course, we all know how that turned out: the US entered Afghanistan in 2001 and exited in 2021, having killed more than 100,000 people and spent $2.3 trillion to pause Taliban rule for 20 years.

With its military power failing abroad and tensions rising at home, the US did not seem like a place that anyone — superhero or mortal — believed in any more. Inevitably, the domestic ills ignored by the political elites came to the fore. Real wages had been in decline for 30 years, while income inequality had been increasing, and infrastructure – decaying.

Americans on both left and right began to question the fitness of the US political system, long portrayed as the best in the world.

Many on the left now believe that corporate interests have so thoroughly captured the Democratic Party that they have ceased fighting for real wealth redistribution or social programmes, and conspire against progressive candidates who do believe in these things. Meanwhile, the American right has grown more venal, racist and authoritarian — the result of failing to understand the true reasons behind the country’s socioeconomic crises.

In depicting America as, ultimately, a force for good, the superhero movie genre does not speak to either of these political lines. Hollywood elites do not seem to understand this, however.

Gunn, who directed the new Superman movie, described the feature as a metaphor for American values. “Superman is the story of America,” Gunn said in an interview with The Times of London. “An immigrant that came from other places and populated the country, but for me it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost.”

His words spurred a furious reaction from the American right. “We don’t go to the movie theatre to be lectured to and to have somebody throw their ideology onto us,” Kellyanne Conway, former senior counsellor to President Trump, said on Fox News.

The recent American tendency to hyper-politicise film and slot all movies into either “woke” or “anti-woke” categories does not bode well for these kinds of tentpole blockbusters that, in days of yore, would attract audiences of all political stripes.

Superhero movies are an optimistic as well as a nationalistic genre — their primary message is that America, and the liberal order in general, are worth defending. But Americans no longer seem optimistic about the future, nor particularly attached to these ideological values. Fewer Americans seem to even believe in liberal pillars like democracy and multiculturalism — the kinds of things that superheroes typically fight for.

If we cannot seem to agree on what American values even are, it is understandable that we cannot agree on what kind of hero would embody the national spirit. Given these dispiriting political conditions, perhaps it is not super-surprising that Americans are not flocking to the superhero genre like they once did.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

WASHINGTON — Americans’ per capita income–after adjustment for inflation–declined in 1991, the first drop in nine years, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday.

The fall in real personal income was even greater in California, reflecting the impact of the recession in the state.

Nationwide, personal income averaged $19,082 last year, a scant 2.1% improvement over the prior year. That compares to a 4.1% rise in consumer prices, meaning real per capita income fell last year.

In California, personal income averaged $20,952 in 1991, a 1.3% increase over 1990. Nevada lagged even more with personal income of $19,175, only 0.7% higher than the prior year.

It was the first time since 1982 that growth in per capita income failed to keep pace with inflation, and it was the slowest growth since per capita incomes rose just 1% in 1958, a recession year.

The Commerce Department calculates personal income using wages and salaries, rents, dividends and government payments such as Social Security. This total measure of income–$4.81 trillion nationally in 1991–divided by a population of 252.2 million yields the per capita income for America.

California last year was among a group of 14 slow-growing states, according to the Commerce Department. This represents a major change from the 1980s, when these states were enjoying rapid growth, significantly above the national expansion of per capita incomes. They led the boom, with the central part of the nation lagging behind.

Now the situation is reversed, with the Midwest enjoying growth while both coasts suffer from sluggish economic performance.

The eastern states, notably New England and New York, suffered “declines in earnings in construction, durables, manufacturing and retail trade,” the Commerce Department said. Incomes grew in the West, but population and inflation grew even faster.

The fast-growing states, in which per capita income outstripped the national average, had strong gains in construction, manufacturing and service industries, the Commerce Department said. This group included Texas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Hawaii and Utah.

Nationally, the growth rate in per capita income has been slowing since the end of the Reagan Administration. The increase in 1988 was 7.1%, and then slipped to 6.9% in 1989, and 5.4% in 1990 before reaching 1.3% last year.

The Commerce Department indicated that the recession, now in its second year, has had widespread and pervasive impact throughout the country. The growth of income slowed in all 50 states compared to the previous year’s performance.

“The defense cutbacks are having a big impact,” said Rudolph E. DePass, a Commerce Department analyst. “The high-income states (in the 1980s) . . . were generally all pretty heavily involved in the defense industry.”

Only seven states enjoyed per capita incomes in 1991 matching or exceeding the national inflation rate. They were: Wyoming, 5.1%; Montana, 4.8%; North Dakota, 4.8%; Hawaii, 4.6%; Louisiana, 4.2%; New Mexico, 4.1%, and Arkansas, 4.1%. Mississippi at 4% virtually matched the national average.

Economists predicted that income growth would improve modestly this year as the economy recovers.

“1992 will be slightly better. You could see a 3% to 4% increase,” said economist Lawrence Chimerine of DRI-McGraw Hill, a Lexington, Mass., forecasting firm. “But we still will be lucky to match or exceed inflation, and we won’t make up for the weakness of the last several years.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

According to GLAAD’s 13th annual Studio Responsibility Index (SRI), there was a decrease in LGBTQ+ representation in films last year.

The report “maps the quantity, quality, and diversity of LGBTQ characters in films released by the seven film studio distributors that had the highest theatrical grosses from films released in the 2021 calendar year.”

The distributors that the SRI analysed were as follows: The Walt Disney Studios, Apple TV+, Warner Bros., Paramount Global, Lionsgate, Sony Pictures Entertainment, and Lionsgate.

The percentage of LGBTQIA+-inclusive films from major studios in 2024 decreased to 23.6%, compared to 27.3% in 2023 and the record high of 28.5% in 2022.

Trans representation was abysmal in the 250 films tracked, with only two major movies featuring trans characters, and both included either inauthentic casting or harmful stereotypes.

When it came to analysing screen time, it was revealed that 38% of LGBTQIA+ characters had less than one minute of screen time, while 27% had over 10 minutes, representing a significant decrease from the 38% in 2023.

In terms of racial diversity among the 181 LGBTQIA+ characters tracked, 115 were white (64 percent), 19 were Black (17 percent), 12 were Latine (seven percent), 18 were Asian/Pacific Islander (10 percent), nine were multiracial (five percent), three were Indigenous (two percent), and two were Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) (one percent).

While the number of Indigenous LGBTQIA+ characters slightly increased in 2024, there was a decrease in Black, Latine, MENA, and Multiracial representation.

LGBTQIA+ characters living with HIV were not included in any of the studied films, and only 4% had a disability.

Amid the troubling data, there were slight wins for the community, with LGBTQIA+ women seeing an increase in representation (50%) – outnumbering LGBTQIA+ men (48%) for the first time in five years.

The report also tracked “the quantity, quality, and diversity of LGBTQ characters in the year’s slate, as well as actions from the studios and parent companies that either supported or harmed the LGBTQ community.”

A24 was the only studio to receive a “good” rating, while NBCUniversal and Amazon were awarded a “fair” ranking. The remaining studios earned either “insufficient” or “poor” grades.

Lastly, under the SRI’s Bechdel Test-inspired Vito Russo Test – which analyses whether the inclusion of LGBTQ+ characters within the narrative actually “matters” – only 18% of the total 250 films passed.

This marked a two percent decrease from 2024 (20%) and a four percent decrease from 2023 (22%).

GLAAD CEO & President Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement: “This year’s findings are a wake-up call to the industry. At a time when LGBTQ people are facing unprecedented attacks in politics and news media, film must be a space for visibility and truth.

“Representation isn’t about checking a box — it’s about whose stories get told, whose lives are valued, and creating worlds that mirror our own society today. When done authentically, LGBTQ representation builds audience and buzz, while humanising LGBTQ people as those in power are actively working to take away our humanity.”

Megan Townsend, GLAAD’s Director of Entertainment Research and Analysis, echoed similar sentiments, adding that the “majorities of LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ 18-24 year olds (93% and 85%, respectively) reporting actively seeking out queer media.”

“The LGBTQ community is a powerful and growing audience with significant buying power and cultural clout that can drive success for a film,” she said.

“More than 1 in 5 (23.1%) Gen Z U.S. adults – a key ticket and subscription buying audience – are LGBTQ. Further, LGBTQ Americans 13-39 are more likely than non-LGBTQ peers to say they are a “diehard fan” of something, rating movies as the top thing they fan over.

“It’s clear that companies who are looking to grow their revenue should be deliberately courting this community with inclusive storytelling, targeted and specific marketing, and merchandise. When studios don’t tell LGBTQ stories, they’re ignoring an audience that represents over one trillion per year in U.S. spending power, and leaving profit on the table.”

You can read GLAAD’s full SRI report for 2025 here. 

While PE is a mandatory subject in schools, the recommended amount of two hours a week is not enforced.

YST chief executive Ali Oliver said: “Our children are moving less, feeling unhappier, and losing access to the transformative power of PE, contributing to stagnant physical activity levels.

“The fall in PE hours is sadly an exacerbation of a longer-term trend and should be a wake-up call to society, from policymakers to schools and parents.

“Unless we take action to reverse these damaging trends and increase activity levels to improve wellbeing, we risk failing a generation.”

In a statement, the government said: “These figures highlight the government’s dire inheritance, but we’re determined to break down barriers to accessing PE and school sports for young people through our Plan for Change, helping to improve their mental and physical wellbeing.

“We are working across the government and with our partners including Youth Sport Trust and Sport England to boost participation and have already invested £100m to upgrade sports facilities and launched a programme to improve access to sports for pupils with special education needs and disabilities.

“Our ongoing curriculum and assessment review seeks to deliver a broader curriculum, so that children do not miss out on subjects including PE and sport.”

June 4 (UPI) — Argentina’s birth rate has declined by nearly 40% in the last decade, reaching its lowest level in more than 50 years in 2023.

Statistics from the Ministry of Health show that 460,902 births were recorded in Argentina in 2023, representing a 7% decrease from the previous year and a 41% drop compared to 2014, when the highest number of births was 777,012.

The crude birth rate in 2023 was 9.9 births per 1,000 inhabitants, marking a historic low comparable to that of European countries.

A report from the Austral University of Argentina revealed that the national fertility rate has dropped to 1.4 children per woman, well below the generational replacement rate. This implies a trajectory toward population aging and a possible long-term reduction in the total population if the trend is not reversed.

The analysis adds that the percentage of households without children younger than 18 years of age increased from 44% in 1991 to 57% in 2022. Furthermore, single-person households increased from 13% to 25% over the same period, and single-parent households, mostly headed by women, also showed a sustained increase.

President Javier Milei has expressed concern about the declining birth rate in Argentina, attributing it primarily to the legalization of abortion in 2020 and other progressive policies. During his presidential campaign, Milei expressed his intention to repeal the law and even mentioned the possibility of calling a referendum to do so.

So far, this issue has not been part of the government’s agenda. However, under the guise of reducing public spending, Milei’s administration has reduced the distribution of contraceptives and dismantled sexual health programs, delegating these responsibilities to the provinces. In contrast to the continued decline in births, “voluntary and legal interruptions of pregnancy (IVE/ILE)” have increased from 73,000 in 2021 to more than 107,000 in 2023.

Statistics for 2024 and 2025 are expected to continue to rise.

Although Milei points to abortion as a direct cause, experts attribute the decline in birth rates to a multitude of sociocultural and economic factors. Among these factors are inflation, job instability and the high cost of living, which lead many couples to postpone or forgo parenthood.

The average age for having a first child has shifted to 30-34 years, reflecting a trend toward prioritizing academic training and professional development.

Furthermore, among mothers with lower educational levels, births have decreased by 77% since 2005, while among those with higher educational levels, the decrease was 13% and 7%, respectively.

Research by the consulting firm “Sentimientos Públicos” in Buenos Aires reveals that 20% of those younger than 30 do not want to have children, prioritizing other aspects of their lives. This percentage is lower among millennials (between 30 and 44 years old), where it drops to 11%, and 10% of them cite economic reasons.

The sustained decline in birth and fertility rates in Argentina reflects profound demographic transformations, such as the population aging index, which increased from 29 in 1991 to 60.55 in 2025, and the percentage of people over 85 years of age doubled in 20 years. This change poses challenges for the health care system, education, the pension system, and the economy in general.

For weeks now, Americans — left, right and terminally online — have been obsessed with Joe Biden’s fitness as president. The whispers about cognitive decline, once the province of Fox News pundits and dinner table cranks, have gone mainstream. And now, with the release of a couple of high-profile books and a report confirming that Biden has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, the narrative has curdled into something that feels downright scandalous — maybe even conspiratorial. A full-blown cover-up.

Is that an understandable, if predictable, reaction? Sure. But let’s not pretend this was some shocking plot twist. Biden has been aging in public like a banana on a dashboard for a decade — a fact that became undeniable after his infamous June 2024 debate with Donald Trump.

So who’s to blame? Let’s start with Biden’s inner circle. The underlying charge is that Biden was asleep at the wheel, with someone else driving the presidential bus. We’ve seen this narrative before: The figurehead nods, the handlers handle and the country rolls on, more or less. With various degrees of verisimilitude, similar charges have been leveled at the administrations of Woodrow Wilson (hi, Edith) and Ronald Reagan (hi, Nancy).

My take on Biden is pretty much the same as it was with Reagan. Whoever was running the country wasn’t half bad. Sure, maybe, toward the end, Uncle Joe wasn’t gripping the wheel as tightly as he used to. But at least the bus stayed between the lines.

Whether it was Jill Biden, “The Politburo” (a cabal of top aides accused of running the show) or a sentient Microsoft Excel spreadsheet — the government mostly worked. Ukraine got funded, the stock market didn’t implode, and your odds of being sent to prison in El Salvador were virtually nil.

Yes, mistakes were made during Biden’s presidency. Plenty. The Afghanistan withdrawal was a disaster. Illegal border crossings soared. Biden’s COVID relief probably juiced inflation. But these weren’t deranged or asleep-at-the-wheel decisions: They were predictable policy fumbles, consistent with Biden’s worldview (sort of like an NFL coach opting to run a prevent defense in the third quarter — wrongheaded, but understandable).

The more obvious problem was Biden’s inability to communicate. Biden couldn’t explain where he wanted to drive the bus, let alone inspire confidence in his ability to get us there. And that’s not just bad political optics. It’s a real governance issue. If FDR had mumbled through the fireside chats, we might all be speaking German.

Biden insiders squinted and pretended everything was fine. Not because they’re villains, but because even proximity to power is addictive.

Other Biden enablers had more noble reasons to convince themselves the ends justified the means. If Trump is an existential threat to democracy, then keeping Grandpa Joe upright — literally, metaphorically, pharmaceutically — was a moral imperative.

Again, understandable: Trump’s lies about the 2020 election led to an armed mob chanting about hanging the vice president. The exaggerations about Biden’s fitness mostly led to awkward silences and gentle nudges offstage.

But this isn’t just about Biden’s inner circle deluding themselves. The media was complicit, too. Their main contribution wasn’t lying or even spinning (although there are examples of both). The dirty secret of modern media is this: Yes, the news industry leans liberal. But more than that, it leans toward drama, car chases and celebrity trials.

Biden, bless his heart, is boring. And thanks to Trump’s penchant for being the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral, guess who got the attention?

Think I’m making excuses or exaggerating? A mere two days after the report came out in which special counsel Robert Hur described Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Trump went out of his way to change the subject by: 1) attacking Nikki Haley’s husband (who was on a military deployment) and 2) telling NATO allies he wouldn’t honor our treaty and defend them from Russia if they don’t pay their bills.

An old maxim says you should never interfere with your opponent when he’s committing suicide. Well, Biden was in the process of drowning, and Trump threw him a life preserver.

Again, the “media” didn’t ignore Biden’s age. Respected veteran Washington Post columnist David Ignatius wrote a sober plea for him to step aside. David Axelrod — Barack Obama’s own Jedi — sounded the alarm all over mainstream media. Heck, I piled on, too.

The coverage existed. But media bias isn’t just about what gets reported. It’s about what gets repeated. Loudly. Over and over. So, yes, Biden’s decline was reported and discussed. It just wasn’t amplified.

Now, we can pretend this is some devious plot. Or we can admit that real life isn’t “House of Cards” or even “Veep.” It was something much more banal: collective inertia.

In the end, the scandal isn’t that the media and Democratic partisans conspired to keep us in the dark about Joe Biden’s fitness for office. The scandal is that the truth was hidden in plain sight (the American public knew Biden was unfit), yet a lot of elites chose not to see it.

Not because they’re evil, but because of loyalty, proximity to power, exhaustion and yes, desperation. Because they’re human.

And maybe, just maybe, because they were terrified of what (or who) would come next, when the old man finally shuffled offstage.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”

Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a 2026 candidate for California governor, criticized former Vice President Kamala Harris and former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra on Tuesday as complicit in covering up former President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline in office.

Villaraigosa said those actions, in part, lead to President Trump winning the November election. Becerra, who previously served as California Attorney General, is also in the running for governor and Harris is considering jumping into the race. All three are Democrats.

“At the highest levels of our government, those in power were intentionally complicit or told outright lies in a systematic cover up to keep Joe Biden’s mental decline from the public,” Villaraigosa said in a statement. “Now, we have come to learn this cover up includes two prominent California politicians who served as California Attorney General – one who is running for Governor and another who is thinking about running for Governor. Voters deserve to know the truth, what did Kamala Harris and Xavier Becerra know, when did they know it, and most importantly, why didn’t either of them speak out?”

President Joe Biden walks out to speak in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Nov. 26, 2024.

(Ben Curtis / Associated Press)

Attempts to reach representatives for Harris and Beccera were unsuccessful Tuesday afternoon.

Villaraigosa based his remarks on excerpts from “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” written by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson and publicly released Tuesday.

The book, largely relying on anonymous sources, argues that Biden’s confidants and inner circle kept his deteriorating state from the American people, resulting in the Republican victory in the 2024 presidential election.

“Kamala Harris and Xavier Becerra took an oath of office and were entrusted to protect the American people, but instead Kamala Harris repeatedly said there was nothing wrong with Biden and Becerra turned a blind eye,” Villaraigosa said.

Eleven minutes into the June 27 presidential debate, CNN anchor Dana Bash slipped a note to her colleague Jake Tapper after President Biden gave a rambling, incoherent answer.

“He just lost the election,” she wrote.

The event at the network’s Atlanta studios — recounted in Tapper’s and Axios correspondent Alex Thompson’s new book, “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again” — turned out to be the most consequential presidential debate in history.

Negative reaction to Biden’s alarmingly disastrous performance led him to abandon his campaign three weeks later and Vice President Kamala Harris to take his place on the 2024 Democratic ticket. The election against President Trump was less than four months away.

Biden’s mental and physical decline had long been the subject of speculation at that point. The unraveling of the then-81-year-old incumbent president in front of an audience of 51 million TV viewers made his diminished capacity undeniable.

“It was just the painful realization that the White House had been lying to everyone, including likely, in many ways, to themselves,” Tapper said in a recent Zoom conversation from his home in Washington, D.C. “As bad as it was on TV, it was worse in person.”

CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash at the first 2024 presidential debate in Atlanta on June 27.

(Austin Steele / CNN)

The debate meltdown and its aftermath prompted Tapper to join forces with Thompson for an investigative deep dive into Biden’s deteriorating condition and how family and staff protected him from scrutiny until it was no longer possible to hide.

“Original Sin” is rife with examples of Biden forgetting the names of friends and associates he’s known for years, most notably actor George Clooney at a Hollywood fundraiser. At the same event, former President Obama led a dazed-looking Biden offstage.

Tapper and Thompson give a detailed account of Biden’s October 2023 interview with special counsel Robert Hur, who investigated whether the former president was in illegal possession of classified material.

Biden frequently wandered off topic during his testimony and failed to recall dates of key moments of his life, such as the year his son Beau died. Hur declined to prosecute Biden, calling him a “well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory” in his report. Hur was hammered by Democratic critics who called him cruel and ageist.

There were private discussions among aides about Biden using a wheelchair if he were elected to a second term. The staff went through machinations to minimize the appearance of Biden’s physical challenges, even enlisting director Steven Spielberg to coach Biden for his 2024 State of the Union address.

Tapper and Thompson tie the stories together in a way that reads like a horror movie script — you know what’s coming and there’s nothing you can do about it.

“We were just lied to over and over again,” Tapper said.

Their book has already generated a national debate about whether the White House deceived the public about the president’s condition and how Biden’s late exit from the race undermined the Democratic Party’s chances of stopping a second term for President Trump.

The discussion intensified after Sunday’s announcement that Biden was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer.

The immediate response of right-wing commentators to the book’s revelations has been “we told you so,” along with accusations that the mainstream media was complicit in a White House cover-up of the president’s health issues.

Tapper anticipated the reaction. He said 99% of what is reported in the book was discovered after the election.

“If I learned about any of these stories in 2022, 2023 or 2024, I would have reported them in a second,” he said. “But I don’t have subpoena power.”

Tapper believes conservatives were proven correct in their harsh and at times tactless assessments of Biden’s condition, which clearly worsened in 2023 after his son Hunter faced the possibility of a prison sentence when a plea deal on tax and gun charges fell apart.

“They were right and that should be acknowledged,” Tapper said. “At the same time, saying that the president’s brain has turned to applesauce is not journalism. It’s punditry.”

Although there is plenty of footage showing Biden’s memory lapses and senior moments, Tapper noted there were few deeply reported stories on the extent of the president’s condition. Biden was surrounded by family members and longtime loyalists who were effective at deflecting and dismissing the inquiries as partisan attacks.

Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy was persistent in raising the issue of Biden’s health in the White House briefing room and former Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was persistent in shutting him down, suggesting he was spreading disinformation.

“They weren’t only lying to journalists, they were lying to everybody,” Tapper said. “People would do reporting and all the great Democratic sources that you could rely on for candor would say, ‘No, we’re told that he’s fine.’ And I think that they all either believed it or had no other facts.”

Along with Thompson’s work for Axios, the most detailed report on Biden’s frailty and memory lapses came in June 2024 from Wall Street Journal reporters Siobhan Hughes and Annie Linskey. The highly respected Washington journalists were roundly criticized by progressive commentators for depending on unnamed sources in the report, titled “Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping.” CNN’s own Reliable Sources newsletter dismissed the piece, saying, “The Wall Street Journal owes its readers — and the public — better.”

Tapper said Hughes and Linskey “should be heralded as heroes” and agreed that the Washington press corps failed to aggressively pursue the Biden health story. But it didn’t help that loyalty to Biden kept potential whistleblowers in line.

“I do primarily think that the people who were lying, or the people who knew the truth but were fearful, are the ones that could’ve prevented this disaster much more so than those of us in the news media,” Tapper said. “We’re only as good as our sources.”

Tapper and Thompson rely largely on unnamed sources in “Original Sin.” Among the 200 people they talked to are Democratic Party insiders and four cabinet secretaries. While many Democrats are still reluctant to go on the record about what they knew about Biden and when they knew it, the floodgate of anecdotes opened after the election.

“I have never experienced the ability to get behind the scenes in so many different rooms as for these recountings as I was for this book,” Tapper said. “I felt like people needed to get this off their chest. It was almost like they were unburdening themselves.”

Many of the sources expressed regret that they did not speak up sooner. Tapper said he and his co-author maintained a high bar for what they used.

“If there was stuff that we were not 100% sure about, we didn’t put it in the book,” he said. “There are stories, really good ones, that had one source and we said, ‘It’s not good enough.’”

In its only response to the book thus far, the Biden camp has asserted that the former president’s condition did not impair his ability to execute his duties in the White House.

“We continue to await anything that shows where Joe Biden had to make a presidential decision or where national security was threatened or where he was unable to do his job. In fact, the evidence points to the opposite — he was a very effective president.”

Tapper and Thompson say in the book that they found no instances where Biden was unable to discharge his duties as president. They write that even most of his critics interviewed for the book “attest to his ability to make sound decisions, if on his own schedule.”

Tapper believes that the effort of family and his longtime staff members to hide Biden’s condition deprived the Democratic Party of the chance to determine if its chances were better with another candidate, who would have benefited from more time to mount a campaign against Trump.

“President Biden knows what he was going through,” Tapper said. “Jill Biden knows what he’s going through. They hid this. It’s still amazing to me that they were actually arguing that he could do this job for four more years.

“I’m proud of the book that Alex and I wrote,” Tapper added. “I’m proud of the reporting. But I’d rather that this hadn’t happened.”

Asked if the Biden’s actions amounted to a medical Watergate, Tapper said it did “in the fact that there was a horrible cover-up of something that wasn’t technically a crime, but you could argue morally it was.”

In March 2024, I wrote a column about President Biden’s State of the Union speech with a confident headline that made perfect sense to me at the time: “Chill out, my fellow Americans. Your president isn’t cognitively impaired.”

Boy was I wrong. For months, critics and supporters had been raising pointed questions about the president’s physical health and intellectual acuity. Had he won the November election, after all, he would have been the oldest president in American history. (Since he lost, that honor goes to the current White House occupant.) But during his hourlong speech to Congress, Biden had sparred repeatedly with Republican hecklers. He was on his game. Democrats were relieved.

Having watched Trump raise spurious questions during the 2016 campaign about Hillary Clinton’s health —particularly after she was visibly ill at a 9/11 ceremony in Manhattan — I thought Republicans were harping on the issue of Biden’s age more as a tactic than anything else. It was a good distraction, considering that his opponent, then-former President Trump, was only a few years younger and given to rambling incoherence himself.

Republicans may have exaggerated Biden’s issues, but they were, as we soon learned, in the main, correct. By the time the president stood slack-jawed and confused on a debate stage with Trump only three months after his triumphant State of the Union address, it was clear that something was very, very wrong. The debate stage can be a cruel place, and with no prepared speech loaded onto a teleprompter, Biden was suddenly naked in the spotlight. It was not a pretty sight, and suddenly, he was no longer a tenable presidential candidate.

But why are we talking about this old news when we have a president flouting every ethical norm of his office, wantonly violating the Constitution and cozying up to murderous dictators such as Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince whom the CIA concluded had ordered the 2018 killing and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist and Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi?

Biden is back in the news thanks to “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” by longtime CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios White House correspondent Alex Thompson. The book, whose subtitle says it all, has been excerpted in the New Yorker and reviewed by other publications. Its publication date is Tuesday.

I tried to get my hands on a copy, but the publishing house blew me off.

In any case, so much of the book’s insider information has been made available that it is possible to make a convincing case, even from a distance, that Biden’s insistence on running for a second term, despite his promise to be a one-term “bridge,” and his belated decision to drop out, is how we got to where we are today: in the grip of a chaotic, despotic self-dealing president who is turning the Constitution on its head.

Heckuva job, Joe!

I was as surprised as anyone that Biden became the nominee in 2020. I recall watching him stump in Iowa, certain that he was too old for the job. Onstage, he was shouty, his voice rising and falling for no particular reason — “mistaking volume for passion,” as I wrote back then.

And yet, for all his faults, gaffes and frailties, I would still prefer an impaired Biden to the corrupt felon who currently occupies the Oval Office.

Those who have read “Original Sin” say that it does not contain any bombshells. What it offers is a detailed account of the systematic effort by family and advisors to conceal the truth from the American people, and calls out the cowardly Democratic leaders who knew Biden was not up to a second term but were afraid to cross him.

As the Washington Post put it in its review: “The book is a damning account of an elderly, egotistical president shielded from reality by a slavish coterie of loyalists and family members united by a shared, seemingly ironclad sense of denial and a determination to smear anyone who dared to question the president’s fitness for office as a threat to the republic covertly working on behalf of Trump.”

Co-author Thompson, as it happens, was one of the few mainstream political journalists to aggressively report on Biden’s worsening condition and the struggle — you might even call it gaslighting — to keep it from the public.

For that, the White House Correspondents’ Assn. awarded him its top honor in April. In his acceptance speech, Thompson was unflinching.

“President Biden’s decline and its cover-up by the people around him is a reminder that every White House, regardless of party, is capable of deception,” he said. “But being truth tellers also means telling the truth about ourselves. We, myself included, missed a lot of this story, and some people trust us less because of it. We bear some responsibility for faith in the media being at such lows. … We should have done better.”

I take his point. We are now living with the consequences of our failures.

@rabcarian.bsky.social and @rabcarian

Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s superbly reported “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again” reads like a Shakespearean drama on steroids. During his latter years as No. 46, Biden is portrayed as a lion in winter — shockingly frail and forgetful with a ferocious pride that blinds him to the fact that it’s time to exit the stage. He was assisted in that delusion, the authors claim, by the mythology his family erected around him — that he was indestructible — and by his zealously protective inner circle, dubbed “the Politburo.”

Though Tapper and Thompson’s mostly anonymous sources (it’s jarring that so few went on the record) suggest that the first disturbing signs of Biden’s diminished capacities emerged as early as 2015, many around him chalked them up to the “Bidenness” of it all: “He was known on the Hill for being congenitally prone to long stories, gaffes, and inappropriate comments,” the authors observe. “Even in tightly choreographed Zoom calls with friendly audiences, Biden could step on a rake.”

That propensity appeared to morph into something more worrisome even before Biden was elected president. An unnamed Democrat who witnessed candidate Biden being prepped for a taping prior to the 2020 convention in Milwaukee was startled by his incoherence, commenting that it “was like watching Grandpa who shouldn’t be driving.” Once in office, the White House staff “treated him as very delicate,” and the pandemic gave aides an excuse to build “barriers” around him so few could gain access. The news media and public were kept at arm’s length, as were many members of the Cabinet and Congress, which led to a “uniquely small and loyal inner circle.” “I’ve never seen a situation like this before, with so few people having so much power,” said one unidentified top official.

That elite quintet consisted of domestic policy advisor Bruce Reed, chief strategist Mike Donilon, legislative affairs guru Steve Ricchetti and chief of staff Ron Klain, each of whom had deep ties to Biden. “Five people were running the country, and Joe Biden was at best a senior member of the board,” offered one person familiar with the dynamic. As time went on and more grew concerned about Biden’s behavior, those who inquired were routinely told that everything was okay. One staffer who didn’t have regular access to Biden during this period said that when they did see him in person, they were “shocked, but the other people around him didn’t seem to be, so I didn’t say anything.”

It wasn’t until around the time Biden broke his one-term pledge to be a “bridge” president and made clear he intended to run again that some began to feel a sense of alarm. For example, in 2023, Congressman Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) was with Biden when he visited Ireland. Biden seemed to gain strength from the crowds that greeted him, but then appeared “sapped and not quite there.” The authors write that Quigley “realized why this all felt so familiar to him … This was how his father, Bill, had been before he died.” Similarly, Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips was so disturbed by Biden’s reduced “speaking and walking skills” that he pressed Democratic officials as to whether the president was up to the job. Even those who admitted to having concerns offered the “yes, but,” as in, “Yes, Biden is in decline but can you imagine Trump winning?” Phillips could imagine such a scenario, “especially if Biden were the Democratic nominee.” Failing to get anyone to take his worries seriously, he declared his own candidacy. But “the whale who spouts gets harpooned,” Phillips later noted after the “Democratic machine” set out to quash his chances. He reluctantly pulled out of the race and “watched his party sleepwalk toward disaster.”

Alex Thompson, left, and Jake Tapper argue that there was a conspiracy to conceal President Biden’s “cognitive diminishment” from the press, public and top Democrats.

(Elliott O’Donovan)

Though some top Democratic supporters such as Hollywood mogul Ari Emanuel refused to support Biden’s bid for reelection — even shouting at Klain during a “power-player retreat” that, “Joe Biden cannot run for reelection! He needs to drop out!” — most remained in the president’s corner until his disastrous debate performance in late June 2024. Following that, the slow drip of Biden allies calling for him to withdraw became a downpour, with even loyalists like George Clooney remarking publicly in an op-ed that while he “loved” Joe Biden, “the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time.”

Was there a conspiracy to conceal Biden’s symptoms from the press, public and top Democrats? The authors conclude there was. “The original sin of Election 2024,” they write, “was Biden’s decision to run for reelection — followed by aggressive efforts to hide his cognitive diminishment.” The course Biden’s family and inner circle chose was tantamount to “gaslighting the American people.” Many other key Democratic officials and donors simply felt that even a weakened Biden was the best bet against the “existential threat” posed by Trump, until the debate shattered that rationalization. In any case, Biden allies “who voiced fears were flicked away like lint.”

In the end, I’m not convinced there was a coordinated campaign to hide the truth about Biden’s “condition,” but maybe that doesn’t matter. In the book’s final chapter, the authors quote former Watergate special prosecutor and law professor Archibald Cox on what lessons Americans should take away from the Watergate scandal. He observes that “we should be reminded of the corrupt influence of great power. … Perhaps it is inescapable that modern government vests extraordinary power in the President and puts around him a large circle of men and women whose personal status and satisfaction depends entirely on pleasing one man.”

But Biden isn’t Nixon. He is a man who generated intense love and loyalty, whose life has been filled with tragedy as well as opportunity; who adeptly and passionately served his country for decades. “Original Sin” is not a compassionate account of Biden’s last campaign — at times it’s even a painful, if necessary, piece of journalism. A great takeaway from 2024, according to political strategist David Plouffe, is that “never again can we as a party suggest to people that what they’re seeing is not true.” We don’t know if Trump could have been defeated had Biden opted not to run. But in the future, we can’t afford to be in denial.

Haber is a writer, editor and publishing strategist. She was director of Oprah’s Book Club and books editor for O, the Oprah Magazine.