Destiny

“Death By Lightning,” premiering Thursday on Netflix, introduces itself as “a story about two men the world forgot,” and while it is undoubtedly true that few in 2025 will recognize the name Charles Guiteau, many will know James A. Garfield, given that he was one of only four assassinated American presidents. There are less well remembered presidents, for sure — does the name John Tyler ring a bell? — and assassins better known than Guiteau, but if you’re going to make a docudrama, it does help to choose a story that might be more surprising to viewers and comes with a murder built in. It is also, I would guess intentionally, a tale made for our times, with its themes of civil rights, income inequality, cronyism and corruption.

Indeed, most everything about the Garfield story is dramatic — a tragedy, not merely for the family, but for the nation. For the sense one gets from “Death by Lightning” and from the historical record it fairly represents, is that Garfield, killed after only 200 days in office, might have made a very good chief executive. (The stated source for the series is Candice Millard’s 2011 book “Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President”; Millard is also a voice in the more briefly titled, illuminating “American Experience” documentary “Murder of a President.”)

That the longtime Ohio congressman did not seek but was drafted for the job — a compromise chosen, against his protests, on the 36th ballot at the 1880 Republican National Convention, where he’d given a stirring speech to nominate a fellow Ohioan, Treasury Secretary John Sherman — made him, one might say, especially qualified for the job; unlike some politicians one might name, he was self-effacing and humble and not out for personal gain. But he saw, finally, that he had a chance to “fix all the things that terrify me about this republic,” most especially the ongoing oppression of Black citizens, a major theme of his inauguration speech (with remarks transferred here to a campaign address delivered to a crowd of 50,000 from a balcony overlooking New York’s Madison Square Park). “I would rather be with you and defeated than against you and victorious,” he tells a group of Black veterans gathered on his front porch, from which he conducted his campaign. (Some 20,000 people were said to have visited there during its course.)

Political machinations and complications aside, the narrative, which stretches two years across four episodes, is really fairly simple, even schematic, cutting back and forth between Garfield (Michael Shannon, between tours covering early R.E.M. albums) and Guiteau (Matthew Macfadyen), a drifter with delusions of grandeur, as they approach their historically sealed date with destiny. Garfield is goodness personified; we meet him on his farm, cooking breakfast for the family, planing wood to make a picnic table. (A table we will meet again.) Guiteau goes from one failed project to another, living it up on money stolen from his sister, running out on restaurant checks and rooming house bills, telling lies about himself he might well have thought were true, until he decides that politics is the place to make his mark. Under the impression that he was responsible for Garfield’s election, he believed the new president owed him a job — ambassador to France would be nice — and when none was coming, turned sour. A message from God, and the belief that he would save the republic, set him on a path to murder.

Matthew Macfadyen plays Garfield’s assassin, Charles Guiteau, in the miniseries.

(Larry Horricks / Netflix)

The series largely belongs to them — both actors are terrific, Shannon imbuing Garfield with a gravity leavened with kindness and humor, Macfadyen’s Guiteau, optimistically dedicated to his delusions yet always about to pop. But it’s a loaded cast. The ever-invaluable Betty Gilpin, in her fourth big series this year after “American Primeval,” “The Terminal List: Dark Wolf” and “Hal & Harper,” plays Garfield’s wife, Crete, fully up on the political scene and free with her opinions. Shea Whigham is New York senator and power broker Roscoe Conkling, Garfield’s moral opposite, and the series’ villain, if you excuse Guiteau as mentally ill. (The jury didn’t.). As wise Maine Sen. James Blaine, Bradley Whitford exudes a convincing, quiet authority, honed over those years working in the pretend White House on “The West Wing.” All the men have been whiskered to resemble their historical models.

Where most of them, even Guiteau, remain consistent from beginning to end, it’s Nick Offerman’s Chester A. Arthur who goes on a journey. Conkling’s right hand, in charge of the New York Customs House — which generated a third of the country’s revenues through import fees — he’s offered the position of vice president to appease Conkling, New York being key to winning the election. Arthur begins as a thuggish, cigar-smoking, sausage-eating, drunken clown, until he’s forced, by events, and the possibility of inheriting the presidency, to reckon with himself.

When First Lady Crete Garfield wonders whether there should be a little extra security (or, really, any security at all) around her husband, he responds, “Assassination can no more be guarded against than death by lightning — it’s best not to worry too much about either one,” giving the series its title and clearing up any confusion you may have had about its meaning. Indeed, Guiteau moves in and out of what today would be well guarded rooms with surprising ease, managing encounters (some certainly invented) with Crete, Blaine, a drunken Arthur and Garfield, whom he implores, “Tell me how I can be great, too.”

Created by Mike Makowsky, it isn’t free from theatrical effects, dramatic overreach or obvious statements, but as period pieces go, it’s unusually persuasive, in big and little ways. Only occasionally does one feel taken out of a 19th century reality into a 21st century television series. The effects budget has been spent where it matters, with some detailed evocations of late 19th century Chicago and Washington that don’t scream CGI. The first episode, which recreates the 1880 convention, held at the Interstate Exposition Building in Chicago, aligns perfectly with engravings of the scene and brings it to life, supporting the wheeling and dealing and speechifying in a way that one imagines is close to being there.

Because we know what’s coming, the series can be emotionally taxing, especially as a wounded Garfield lingers through much of the final episode, while being mistreated by his doctor, Willard Bliss (Zeljko Ivanek), who ignores the advice of the younger, better informed Dr. Charles Purvis (Shaun Parkes), the first Black physician to attend to a sitting president; many, including Millard, believe it was the doctor who killed him through a lack of sanitary precautions, and that Garfield might have recovered if he’d just been left alone, an idea the series supports.

But you can’t change history, as much as “Death By Lightning” makes you wish you could.

Tottenham say they are supporting Destiny Udogie after confirming the Italy defender was allegedly threatened with a gun by a football agent.

On Monday, BBC Sport reported an unnamed Premier League footballer was targeted in London on 6 September.

Another man is also alleged to have been blackmailed and threatened by the same individual during the incident in question. No injuries were reported.

The Metropolitan police, who are investigating, said a 31-year-old man was arrested on 8 September on suspicion of possession of firearms with intent, blackmail and driving without a licence. He has been bailed while enquiries continue.

In a statement on Tuesday, Spurs said: “We have been providing support for Destiny and his family since the incident and will continue to do so. Given this is a legal matter, we cannot comment any further.”

The 22-year-old Udogie joined Spurs from Udinese for £15m on a five-year deal in the summer of 2022, before immediately returning to the Serie A club on a season-long loan.

He returned to Tottenham for the start of the 2023-24 campaign and has made 76 appearances for the club.

The Italian has played 10 times this season, including Tuesday night’s 4-0 win over Copenhagen in the league phase of the Champions League.

Destiny Wealth Partners reported in an SEC filing on Monday that it sold 59,354 shares of the iShares Biotechnology ETF (IBB) in the third quarter—an estimated $8.1 million transaction based on average pricing for the quarter.

What happened

According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, Destiny Wealth Partners reduced its holding in the iShares Biotechnology ETF (IBB) by 59,354 shares during the quarter. The estimated value of the shares sold was $8.1 million. The fund now holds 16,430 IBB shares valued at $2.4 million as of September 30.

What else to know

This sale left IBB representing 0.3% of Destiny Wealth Partners’ 13F reportable assets.

Top holdings after the filing:

• JAAA: $46.41 million (5.7% of AUM)
• VUG: $40.11 million (4.9% of AUM)
• DFLV: $32.03 million (3.9% of AUM)
• JCPB: $28.13 million (3.45% of AUM)
• AMZN: $27.70 million (3.4% of AUM)

As of Tuesday afternoon, IBB shares were priced at $149.73. The fund is up about 5% over the year.

Company overview

Company snapshot

• IBB seeks to track the investment results of a biotechnology-focused equity index, investing at least 80% of assets in component securities and economically similar investments.
• It operates as a non-diversified ETF, with periodic rebalancing to maintain index alignment.

The iShares Biotechnology ETF (IBB) offers investors access to the U.S. biotechnology sector through a passively managed fund. With over $6 billion in market capitalization, the ETF provides exposure to biotechnology companies.

Foolish take

Destiny Wealth Partners’ decision to unload roughly $8.1 million in iShares Biotechnology ETF (IBB) shares adds to a broader theme in markets this year: Institutional investors have been cooling on biotech. The sector has struggled to regain its pandemic-era momentum as investors favor AI, energy, and industrial plays. IBB is up about 5% over the past year, trailing the S&P 500’s 18% gain.

IBB’s two largest holdings—Vertex Pharmaceuticals and Amgen—have each slumped, down about 8% and 7%, respectively, over the past year. That drag has offset strength from smaller, high-growth biotech names focused on oncology and gene therapy. Meanwhile, the fund’s expense ratio of 0.44% sits slightly above broad-market ETF averages, reflecting the niche exposure investors are paying for.

For long-term investors, IBB still offers diversified exposure to the innovation pipeline driving future drug breakthroughs—but near-term returns will depend on FDA approvals, pricing clarity, and investor appetite for higher-risk growth sectors.

Glossary

ETF (Exchange-Traded Fund): An investment fund traded on stock exchanges, holding a basket of assets like stocks or bonds.

Biotechnology ETF: An ETF focused on companies in the biotechnology industry, such as drug development and medical research.

AUM (Assets Under Management): The total market value of assets that an investment manager or fund controls on behalf of clients.

13F reportable AUM: The portion of a fund’s assets that must be disclosed in quarterly SEC Form 13F filings, typically U.S. equity holdings.

Non-diversified ETF: A fund that invests in fewer securities or sectors, increasing exposure to specific industries or companies.

Index-based selection: An investment strategy where holdings are chosen to match a specific market index, rather than by active management.

Component securities: The individual stocks or assets that make up an index or ETF portfolio.

Dividend yield: The annual dividend income expressed as a percentage of the investment’s current price.

Total return: The investment’s price change plus all dividends and distributions, assuming those payouts are reinvested.

Rebalancing: Adjusting a fund’s holdings periodically to maintain alignment with its target index or asset allocation.

Since the start of President Trump’s second term, the Department of Homeland Security’s social media team has published a stream of content worthy of a meme-slinging basement dweller on 4chan.

Grainy, distorted mug shots of immigrants. Links to butt-kissing Fox News stories about MAGA anything. Whiny slams against politicians who call out la migra for treating the Constitution like a pee pad. Paeans to “heritage” and “homeland” worthy of Goebbels. A Thomas Kinkade painting of 1950s-era white picket fence suburbia straight out of “Leave It to Beaver,” with the caption “Protect the Homeland.”

All of this is gag-inducing, but it has a purpose — it’s revealing the racist id of this administration in real time, in case anyone was still doubtful.

In June, DHS shared a poster, originally created by the white-power scene, of a grim-faced Uncle Sam urging Americans to “report all foreign invaders” by calling Immigration and Customs Enforcement. On July 14, the DHS X account featured a painting of a young white couple cradling a baby in a covered wagon on the Great Plains with the caption, “Remember your Homeland’s Heritage.”

When my colleague Hailey Branson-Potts asked about the pioneer painting and the Trump administration’s trollish social media strategy, a White House spokesperson asked her to “explain how deporting illegal aliens is racist,” adding that haters should “stay mad.”

Now, behold the latest DHS salvo: a July 23 X post of a 19th century painting by John Gast titled “American Progress.”

A blond white woman robed in — yep — white, with a gold star just above her forehead, floats in the center. She holds a book in her right hand and a loop of telegraph wire that her left hand trails across poles. Below her on the right side are miners, hunters, farmers, loggers, a stagecoach and trains. They rush westward, illuminated by puffy clouds and the soft glow of dawn.

The angelic woman is Columbia, the historic female personification of the United States. She seems to be guiding everyone forward, toward Native Americans — bare breasted women, headdress-bedecked warriors — who are fleeing in terror along with a herd of bison and a bear with its mouth agape. It’s too late, though: Covered wagon trains and a teamster wielding a whip have already encroached on their land.

The white settlers are literally in the light-bathed side of the painting, while the Native Americans are shrouded in the dusky, murky side.

It ain’t subtle, folks!

“A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth Defending,” DHS wrote as a caption for “American Progress” — a mantra you may soon find printed on the $20 bill, the way this administration is going.

Gast finished his painting in 1872, when the U.S. was in the last stages of conquest. The Civil War was done. White Americans were moving into the Southwest in large numbers, dispossessing the Mexican Americans who had been there for generations through the courts, squatting or outright murder. The Army was ramping up to defeat Native Americans once and for all. In the eyes of politicians, a new menace was emerging from the Pacific: mass Asian migration, especially Chinese.

Scholars have long interpreted Gast’s infamous work as an allegory about Manifest Destiny — that the U.S. had a God-given right to seize as much of the American continent as it could. John L. O’Sullivan, the newspaperman who coined the term in 1845, openly tied this country’s expansion to white supremacy, expressing the hope that pushing Black people into Latin America, a region “already of mixed and confused blood,” would lead to “the ultimate disappearance of the negro race from our borders.”

O’Sullivan also salivated at the idea of California leaving “imbecile and distracted” Mexico and joining the U.S., adding, “The Anglo-Saxon foot is already on its borders. Already the advance guard of the irresistible army of Anglo-Saxon emigration has begun to pour down upon it, armed with the plough and the rifle.”

This is the heritage the Trump administration thinks is worth promoting.

Vice President JD Vance, center, speaks next to officials including, from left to right, HUD Regional Administrator William Spencer, U.S. Atty. for the Central District of California Bill Essayli, FBI Los Angeles Asst. Director Akil Davis, U.S. Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino and ICE Field Office Director Ernie Santacruz at the Wilshire Federal Building in Los Angeles in June.

(Jae C. Hong / AP)

Administration officials act shocked and offended when critics accuse them of racism, but the Trump base knows exactly what’s going on.

“This is our country, and we can’t let the radical left make us ashamed of our heritage,” one X user commented on the “American Progress” post. “Manifest Destiny was an amazing thing!”

“It’s time to re-conquer the land,” another wrote.

DHS seems to be vibing with the Heritage American movement, now bleeding into the conservative mainstream from its far-right beginnings. Its adherents maintain that Americans whose ancestors have been here for generations are more deserving of this nation’s riches than those whose families came over within living memory. Our values, proponents say, shouldn’t be based on antiquated concepts like liberty and equality but rather, the customs and traditions established by Anglo Protestants before mass immigration forever changed this country’s demographics.

In other words, if you’re white, you’re all right. If you’re brown or anything else, you’re probably not down.

Our own vice president, JD Vance, is espousing this pendejada. In a speech to the Claremont Institute earlier this month, Vance outlined his vision of what an American is.

“America is not just an idea,” Vance told the crowd. “We’re a particular place, with a particular people, and a particular set of beliefs and way of life.”

Weird — I learned in high school that people come here not because of how Americans live, but because they have the freedom to live however they want.

“If you stop importing millions of foreigners,” the vice president continued, “you allow social cohesion to form naturally.”

All those Southern and Eastern Europeans who came at the turn of the 20th century seem to have assimilated just fine, even as Appalachia’s Scots-Irish — Vance’s claimed ethnic affiliation — are, by his own admission, still a tribe apart after centuries of living here.

Trump, Vance added, is “ensur[ing] that the people we serve have a better life in the country their grandparents built.” I guess that excludes me, since my Mexican grandparents settled here in the autumn of their lives.

The irony of elevating so-called Heritage Americans is that many in Trumpworld would seem to be excluded.

First Lady Melania Trump was born in what’s now Slovenia. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is the child of Cuban immigrants. Vance’s wife’s parents came here from India. The Jewish immigrant ancestor of Trump’s deportation mastermind, Stephen Miller, wouldn’t be allowed in these days, after arriving at Ellis Island from czarist Russia with $8 to his name. Even Gast and O’Sullivan wouldn’t count as Heritage Americans by the strictest definition, since the former was Prussian and the latter was the son of Irish and English immigrants.

But that’s the evil genius of MAGA. Trump has proclaimed that he welcomes anyone, regardless of race, creed or sexual orientation (except for trans people), into his movement, as long as they’re committed to owning the libs.

Americans are so myopic about their own history, if not downright ignorant, that some minorities think they’re being welcomed into the Heritage Americans fold by Vance and his ilk. No wonder a record number of voters of color, especially Latinos, jumped on the Trump train in 2024.

“American Progress” might as well replace red hats as the ultimate MAGA symbol. To them, it’s not a shameful artifact; it’s a road map for Americans hell-bent on turning back the clock to the era of eradication.

Like I said, not a subtle message at all — if your eyes aren’t shut.

British pop star Liam Payne’s final TV appearance is finally on the horizon, less than a year after he died suddenly in Argentina.

Netflix on Tuesday released the trailer for its upcoming singing competition series “Building the Band,” which features the late One Direction singer as one of its guest judges. The series, set to premiere July 9, could bring a sense of closure for fans of Payne, who began his singing career as a contestant on the competition series “X Factor.”

In the teaser, Payne offers his wisdom to aspiring singers, urging them, “I need to feel the connection between you guys.” The singer knew a thing or two about group chemistry: during his second “X Factor” foray in 2010, judges Simon Cowell and Nicole Scherzinger decided Payne should join fellow contestants Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik and Louis Tomlinson to form One Direction. Despite losing the crown, the quintet went on to become a pop sensation best known for songs including “What Makes You Beautiful” and “Story of My Life.”

“Building the Band” reunites Payne with Scherzinger, whose role is judge and mentor. Destiny’s Child alum Kelly Rowland also serves as a guest judge. Backstreet Boys singer and Payne’s friend AJ McLean is the show’s host. The series features 50 singers who work with the veteran musicians to form six bands.

Netflix confirmed Payne’s posthumous appearance earlier this month as it released a first look and announced the series’ premiere date. The streamer wrapped production on “Building the Band” before Payne’s death and received support from the singer’s family to push forward. Payne’s “family reviewed the series and is supportive of his inclusion,” Netflix said in a statement to Deadline.

Payne died Oct. 16 after falling from a balcony at a Buenos Aires hotel. He was 31. Shortly after his death, officials determined the singer died from multiple traumas and internal and external bleeding caused by the fall. Officials announced in December that Payne also had traces of alcohol, cocaine and a prescription antidepressant in his system when he fell.

Two hotel workers and Payne’s friend Rogelio “Roger” Nores were three of five people charged for their alleged involvement in the singer’s death but were cleared of those charges in February. Appeals court judges ruled at the time that Nores did not have a role in Payne’s “obtaining and consuming alcohol” and that he could not have taken actions to prevent Payne’s death.

The two remaining suspects — charged in December with allegedly supplying Payne with narcotics before his death — will stand trial, officials announced earlier this month.