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In January 2024, the publication Axios reported that the United States president at the time, Joe Biden, was “running out of patience” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza had been raging for months by that point, and Biden was facing public backlash over US support for the conflict.

The assault would continue for the rest of Biden’s term and bleed into the first 10 months of Donald Trump‘s second presidency.

Since then, media outlets have continued to publish anonymous accounts of rifts and “frustrating” calls between Trump and the Israeli prime minister. But US support for its Middle East ally has never wavered.

Another anonymously sourced report about a furious, expletive-laden call between US and Israeli leaders came out this week, and it spread rapidly across international media.

Axios reported on Monday that Trump called Netanyahu “f***ing crazy” and berated him over Israel’s escalation in Lebanon.

Around the same time, an Israeli attack killed six people, including two children, in the southern Lebanese town of al-Marwaniyah.

Experts say that despite leaks of feuds and harsh words between US leaders and Netanyahu, policies are ultimately what matters, and they have changed very little.

Ryan Costello, the policy director at the National Iranian American Council Action (NIAC), said political observers have grown to “mock” reports of closed-door anger from US presidents against Netanyahu.

“What’s really important is what actually happens in practice,” Costello told Al Jazeera.

Two administrations, same reports

Though there are reports of Trump giving Netanyahu a dressing-down, Isabelle Hayslip, an advocacy manager at the US-based rights group DAWN, said that US policy remains aligned with Israeli interests.

“Single-source reporting of Trump as a strongman who picks up the phone and yells at Netanyahu for undermining US policy is contradicted by the actual policy outcomes where Netanyahu gets exactly what he wants,” Hayslip told Al Jazeera.

“Trump has no final say over Israeli actions. Like his predecessors, the president has proved completely unable to prioritise American interests, instead catering to Israel’s expansionist whims.”

The latest report comes as Trump faces increasing pressure from his Democratic rivals and segments of his base over his handling of the war on Iran, which he launched jointly with Netanyahu on February 28.

The conflict, which saw Iran close the Strait of Hormuz, has sent gasoline prices soaring in the US and fuelled inflation.

Critics have accused Trump of allowing Israel to drag the US into a war that does not advance Washington’s priorities.

With negotiations to end the war stagnating, Israel’s escalation in Lebanon and its threat to bomb Beirut risks derailing the fragile truce that came into effect in April.

Iranian officials have suggested that they cut off contact with the US over the Israeli attacks in Lebanon.

Before the Axios report, Trump announced he had spoken to Netanyahu and an unidentified Hezbollah representative, and both sides agreed that “all shooting will stop”.

But Netanyahu was quick to assert that the Israeli military “will continue to operate as planned in southern Lebanon”, where it is deepening its invasion and turning entire towns into rubble.

Advocates say Israeli atrocities in Lebanon and across the region could not have happened without US backing.

Since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, the US has provided Israel with nearly $25bn in military aid, helped fend off retaliatory Iranian attacks against the country and vetoed several ceasefire resolutions at the United Nations Security Council.

Nonetheless, anonymous accounts that the US president is angry at Netanyahu have become a regular feature in the media.

Such reports are attributed to US officials, but it is unclear how leaks with a similar message on the same topic have continued across two administrations from different political parties.

‘Moderating the anger’

Publicly, aides of both Biden and Trump have largely refrained from criticising Israel.

Trump has regularly praised the Israeli prime minister, arguing on more than one occasion that Israel would have ceased to exist without Netanyahu’s leadership.

In December, the US president also called the Israeli prime minister a “hero” during a meeting in Florida.

“We’re with you, and we’ll continue to be with you,” Trump told Netanyahu.

Two weeks earlier, Axios reported that the White House had “scolded” Netanyahu over Israel’s ceasefire violations in Gaza.

“The White House message to Netanyahu was: ‘If you want to ruin your reputation and show that you don’t abide by agreements, be our guest, but we won’t allow you to ruin President Trump’s reputation after he brokered the deal in Gaza,” the publication quoted a US official as saying.

Few people know the exact content of high-level calls at the White House. Sometimes, top officials, including members of the National Security Council, sit in on conversations between the president and world leaders after briefings.

Negar Mortazavi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, a research nonprofit, said the leak about the tense call between Trump and Netanyahu may be aimed at making Trump look tough on Israel to quell outrage over the war.

“It could be sort of a way of moderating the anger or the blame at the US for continuing this unpopular, illegal, unnecessary war,” Mortazavi told Al Jazeera.

She added that the message it sends is, “Look, we’re very angry at Israel. We yell at them. We call them names.”

But Mortazavi stressed that policy is more important than rhetoric: “Does that change the facts on the ground?”

Information war

For his part, Costello argued that the leak was likely directed at Iran.

“I see this one primarily as a signal to the Iranians that Trump is serious, and he wants to insulate what’s happening in Lebanon and Israel’s attacks from the Iran negotiations,” Costello said.

“It remains to be seen the extent to which that excoriation has actually led to a change in Israel’s policies, and I think there is a strong incentive for continued defiance from Netanyahu.”

Axios, meanwhile, has defended its coverage.

“We stand by our reporting, which by the way noted ‘Trump and Netanyahu have had several tense calls in the past but have still coordinated closely on Iran and other issues,’” Jake Wilkins, a spokesperson for the publication, told Al Jazeera in an email.

Mortazavi warned that all sides of the war on Iran are trying to influence public perceptions of the conflict.

She pointed to recent reports that Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian had resigned, a rumour that was promptly denied by his office.

“This is a very hybrid war. It’s a war on the battlefield. It’s an intelligence war. It’s a war of narratives,” Mortazavi told Al Jazeera. “And then there’s also an information war, which includes disinformation, half-truths and strategic leaks.”

WASHINGTON — Mired in a persistent cost of living crisis and an unpopular war with Iran, President Trump reached a perilous milestone last week, registering an approval rating of 34% in a top-tier poll — a record low less than halfway through his second term.

The results mark one of the sharpest polling collapses of any modern president. The data, from the Economist and YouGov, brings Trump back down to his political nadir, matching a number he hasn’t seen since the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack five years ago.

It follows on several other surveys published in recent days showing the president entering precarious political territory roughly six months ahead of the midterm elections, raising alarm bells in Republican campaign offices across the country over the party’s prospects in the fall.

It has also led pollsters to question long-standing assumptions about the president’s floor of support, wondering whether it is at risk of giving way.

“It’s harder to get lower, but it’s possible depending on what he does,” said Christopher Wlezien, a political scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. “To get that number down, you are going to have to eat into his core.”

Trump’s base of support remains strong, reinforcing a long-standing theory among pollsters that partisanship now serves as a direct proxy for presidential approval. But softening Republican support on specific policy matters — including top voter priorities, such as the economy — have begun raising questions among experts whether further erosion is possible.

A New York Times poll found his approval at 38%, and a Politico poll recorded a similar erosion, driven by a majority of Americans — including 18% of Trump supporters — stating they are financially worse off than they were before he resumed office.

Roughly 2 out of 3 Americans oppose the war Trump started with Iran. And the coalition that swept him back into office — including a surge in support from Latino, independent and young voters — has effectively disappeared.

While the downward trend looks like a story of a presidency in perpetual trouble, political scientists see a more complicated picture.

“Polarization has raised the floor and lowered the ceiling for approval ratings,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a professor of political science at the University of Houston. “Dramatic swings are less common because approval ratings are now fixed to partisanship.”

The comparison to George W. Bush, whose numbers famously soared after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and cratered into the mid-20s after Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq war, is instructive of how polarization has changed in the Trump era.

Bush governed in a country capable of moving together, in favor or against a president, in response to major events. Americans are no longer swayed in that way when it comes to their views of the president, Rottinghaus argues.

“Approval ratings today are increasingly a measure of who the president is rather than what the president does,” he said.

Trump, in his own way, has seemed to nod at this dynamic. When challenged on his standing with the public, or when a Republican lawmaker breaks with him over a policy issue, he has made the argument that he and the MAGA movement are inseparable. In other words, that opposition to any decision he makes is opposition to the movement itself.

“MAGA is me. MAGA loves everything I do, and I love everything I do,” Trump said in a January interview with NBC News when asked if his base supports long-term military interventions abroad.

Rottinghaus compared the questions about presidential approval as the “same as asking whether you’re Republican or not.”

“So why ask it,” he said.

Gallup, the organization that had tracked presidential approval for eight decades, announced earlier this year that it would stop publishing approval ratings of individual political figures, a shift that underscores how the traditional measure of a politician’s popularity has evolved.

When asked about the change, a Gallup spokesperson told the Washington Post at the time that “the context around these measures has changed.”

“They are now widely produced, aggregated and interpreted, and no longer represent an area where Gallup can make its most distinctive contribution,” the spokesperson added.

It would be a huge call for Edwards to drop Knight, who made a record 310th England appearance at Chelmsford, for such an important summer.

Hartley said her top three would consist of Wyatt-Hodge, Capsey and Sciver-Brunt, keeping Knight in the middle order and with Dunkley missing out.

However, Dunkley is one of few England batters capable of clearing the ropes, which is an area in which they are lacking.

Since the last T20 World Cup in 2024, Dunkley has hit 11 sixes and Wyatt-Hodge five. They are the only batters in England’s top seven to have hit more than three sixes in that timeframe.

Explosive all-rounders Dani Gibson and Freya Kemp were tasked with scoring at more than 10 runs per over by the time they came in, having been in a very similar position during England’s defeat by New Zealand at Canterbury.

On both occasions, they fell cheaply trying to score quickly from ball one because of the pressure that had built when Knight was batting.

The argument to stick with Knight is not helped by the fact her attacking shot percentage has dropped to 64% in 2026 compared to 75% between 2023 and 2025.

“I don’t think Charlotte Edwards will want to drop one of the all-rounders,” Hartley added.

“She’s a huge all-rounder fan and she wants that left-hander in Kemp as well.”

Former England Test captain Nasser Hussain backed Knight to deliver because of her wealth of experience, but accepted there needs to be an improvement.

“I back Heather because she has been a world-class player for a long time,” Hussain said on Sky Sports.

“Under pressure you need people like Heather Knight, but she will know her last four innings, particularly today, to a get a run-a-ball 20 after three run-a-ball 20s – you are better getting out for a first-ball duck than getting that.

“She didn’t play T20 internationals for a year. Maybe she is taking time to get going.

“She is not as mobile. She is not someone like Jemimah Rodrigues who is putting away the bad balls and looks a lot busier, but she has been around long enough to know that is not the innings you need in a 180 run-chase.”

“In my humble opinion, you have never known how to make coffee or Negroes. The former you leave too light, the latter too black.”

– Venezuelan poet and politician Andrés Eloy Blanco to US visitors, 1944

Contemporary racist attitudes in Venezuela have deep roots in the colonial period (sixteenth to nineteenth centuries). After independence, Venezuela constructed a national narrative that claimed to have overcome racism through miscegenation. We were (are) a “café con leche” (coffee with milk) nation, a blend in which racial differences had dissolved. But this supposed harmony concealed a persistent idea: whiteness remained the ideal, while African and Indigenous identities were seen as something to be diluted and gradually eliminated. 

This whitening process was not only biological, but also cultural and political. Paradoxically, racism in Venezuela became invisible to those who practiced it and even to those who suffered from it, masked under the pretext that “here we are all mestizos.” However, we have seen that when political conflicts intensify, the mask of mestizaje falls away and colonial prejudices resurface. 

The origin of an ideology

Although the validity of the term “race” has been questioned – on the grounds that we all belong to the human race and differ only in phenotypic traits – according to Venezuelan historian Luis Felipe Pellicer, “…if racism exists, race exists,” but only as an ideological construct of domination, and by no means as a scientific truth.

Racism emerged in Venezuela as a result of an exploitative and extractive economy that created a need for enslaved labor. Initially, this labor force consisted of Indigenous people and was later supplemented by individuals brought from the Atlantic coast of Africa. Countries such as present-day Ghana, Togo, Benin, Angola, and the Republic of the Congo were particularly affected. 

Now, the issue of slavery in Africa has deeper roots that warrant a more comprehensive examination, but in the Americas this system underwent a transformation, and what began as an economic activity ultimately established ideas that created negative associations around those subjected to slavery, thereby inventing the political and social category of “blackness.” By merging the condition of slavery with skin pigmentation into a single concept, the colonial mindset ended up stigmatizing every cultural and vital expression of these groups, considering them inferior, ugly, and despicable.

One of the characteristics of enslavement in the Americas was dehumanization and its racial justification. That is to say, here the idea of enslavement due to war or debt repayment was abandoned. The automatic association was: you are a slave because you are a Black African, and vice versa. This phenomenon created the idea that all Africans and their descendants were predestined for servitude and forced labor. 

The racist backlash

The recent incident in Madrid that saw supporters of far-right leader María Corina Machado shout slogans against Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodríguez reflects a deep social divide. Sectors of the opposition who identify – whether phenotypically or aspirationally – with a Eurocentric worldview and the ideal of “whiteness” believe that the exercise of power by groups they associate with or perceive as people of African descent constitutes a historical affront. For decades before the Bolivarian Revolution, epithets like “monkey,” “mulatto,” “zambo,” “bembón,” and “bad hair,” among others, paraded across TV screens and in the national press with complete normality and often disguised as jokes – another mechanism for propagating Venezuelan racism. Following his government’s post-2001 radicalization of revolutionary reforms, Hugo Chávez was himself notoriously called a “monkey” and prominently caricatured as such by Venezuela’s right-wing opposition.

It is no surprise, then, that the presence of figures such as Venezuela’s current acting president transcends the issue of political ideology to constitute a rupture in “quality,” a term used in eighteenth-century Venezuela. “What is quality or race?” asks Pellicer. “It is an idea of inferiority regarding a human group that is transmitted, corporeally, through sexual reproduction.” It is an affront, then, to the natural order of things, to the pyramid of colonial society that placed peninsular Spaniards at the apex and people of African descent at the base. 

With the chant “Fuera la mona” (“Out with the monkey”), the Venezuelan far-right hurled an insult that reveals their undemocratic nature. But more importantly, these insults are not even linked to any incompetence in governance, but rather to what these groups perceive as “racial incompetence.” It is the expression of a wounded “whiteness” that uses racism as a defense mechanism against what they see as a displacement of their traditional privileges. It is, in essence, an attempt to restore a colonial order. 

Racism is a power structure. “Colonial thought,” Pellicer observes, “invents the other, whether Indigenous, mestizo, mulatto, or Black, as well as the white self … thereby establishing the ideology of race as the primary marker of inequality, beginning with the invasion of the Americas.” The struggle for honor in the colony was a struggle for differentiation and political recognition. Today, the “animalization” of non-white political leaders is the continuation of that colonial war, which is why the Madrid slur is not a simple rudeness; it is an act of historical violence. It is the voice of the eighteenth century trying to silence the twenty-first. And at this point, one must ask: what is admirable about the idea that, based on skin color, some are more or less fit to govern a country? 

The slave owner/racist does not see a person; he sees a tool, a piece of property, and for this to happen, the mind must adopt a psychopathic and callous mindset. The racist needs to strip the oppressed of their status as subjects in order to invoke a visceral fear of otherness that, if acknowledged, threatens their illusion of superiority. Choosing to be part of this ideological operation of domination today should be a source of shame, for it is the most glaring expression of a violence that heralds the end of humanity.

From Cortés to Díaz Ayuso

This exclusionary mindset is part of a transatlantic trend toward neocolonial revival that seeks to re-legitimize old hierarchies. A telling example is Spanish right-wing politician Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s recent visit to Mexico, where her proposal to celebrate the figure of Hernán Cortés serves as an ideological parallel to the “Fuera la mona” chants heard in Madrid. By attempting to portray the invasion and genocide in the Americas as a “civilizing” feat, Ayuso revives the logic of the “society of qualities”: a structure where moral and political superiority is an exclusive Hispanic and white inheritance, while Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples are reduced to a state of barbarism remediable only through paternalistic tutelage.

This narrative is not merely a historical debate, but a contemporary validation of the racial hierarchy and justification for overthrowing processes of popular sovereignty in Latin America. Ayuso’s discourse seeks to reaffirm a “Hispanic identity” that views ethnic otherness as a threat to the values of Western civilization. In this sense, what happened in Madrid is a clear symptom of the reactionary neo-fascist wave sweeping large parts of the Global North and South.

Racist remarks

The trauma of Venezuela’s War of Independence (1810–1830) and the Federal War (1859–1863) created the need to invent a narrative in which Venezuelan society was free of conflicts and differences, and thus the persistence of racial and social tensions has been glossed over. However, it resurfaces in comments such as: “Fuera la mona”; “We need to improve the race”; “Black but refined”; “Money whitens.” 

In 1948, conservative writer Arturo Uslar Pietri responded to Rómulo Gallegos’s presidential campaign by stating: “Anyone who speaks of blacks or whites, anyone who invokes racial hatred or privileges, denies the essence of Venezuela. In Venezuela, in political and social matters, there are neither whites nor blacks, neither mestizos nor Indigenous people. There are only Venezuelans .” This argument was almost exactly the same as that put forward by María Corina Machado when asked about the event at La Puerta del Sol, stating that it had occurred because of the fissures of hatred that Chavismo introduced into its discourse over 27 years in power. 

The end of denial

As part of the commemoration of the Day of Venezuelan Afro-Descendance, established under the Hugo Chávez government in 2005 to be celebrated every May 10 [on the anniversary of the 1795 slave uprising led by José Leonardo Chirino], it is both pertinent and necessary to reflect on and understand that racism in Venezuela is a long-standing phenomenon that surfaces with particular virulence during times of political crisis. The historical association between power and whiteness, inherited from the colonial era and reinforced by twentieth-century positivist thought, remains alive in the minds of sections of society that refuse to accept the nation’s diversity, including among working-class communities through what is known as endoracism. 

Understanding the origin of this phenomenon is the first step toward dismantling it. We must move from the false harmony of “café con leche” to true decolonial justice, where a person’s “quality” is not dictated by their “whiteness.” The Madrid incident reminds us that the battle for Venezuela’s mental independence far from over.

Rosanna Álvarez holds an MSc in History of Republican Venezuela from the Central University of Venezuela (UCV). She is a researcher at the Centro de Estudios Simón Bolívar and Fundación Hugo Chávez, as well as a writer at the Libertador 8 Estrellas magazine. She is the author of Venezuela vista e imaginada. Un recorrido visual por nuestra historia and host of the Bolívar Nuestro show on Radio del Sur.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.

WASHINGTON — Former Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi is scheduled to meet with the House Oversight Committee on Friday to discuss the Justice Department’s investigations into deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and its release of files related to that investigation.

But the circumstances surrounding her meeting with the committee raise questions about how much the committee will actually learn about either.

For one, the former attorney general will not be under oath in a sworn deposition but will provide a transcribed interview, which is voluntary. Bondi’s interview with the committee will happen behind closed doors with members of the committee and staff and will not be filmed. The committee says it plans to release a transcript soon after the hearing.

And Bondi will be represented at her interview by Assistant Atty. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon, which legal experts say raises the prospects that the Department of Justice could direct Bondi to not answer some questions posed by the committee.

Former Atty. Gen. William Barr, former President Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton all gave sworn depositions.

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the chair of the committee, rejected the Clintons’ offer to provide a transcribed interview, rather than sit for a deposition, out of concern that someone giving a transcribed interview could “refuse to answer whatever questions he wanted for whatever reasons he wanted.”

Comer’s spokesperson said Bondi was allowed to sit for a transcribed interview, rather than a deposition, because the former attorney general was “cooperative.”

“Unlike the Clintons who defied subpoenas for seven months, former Attorney General Pam Bondi voluntarily and quickly cooperated with the Committee to identify a mutually agreeable date,” spokesperson Austin Hacker said in a statement.

Bondi had, in fact, refused to comply with the committee’s subpoena while she was still in office, and the ranking Democrat on the committee, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), filed a resolution on April 29 to hold Bondi in contempt for not complying with the committee’s subpoena a month earlier. Bondi’s agreement to provide a transcribed interview was announced the same day.

The committee subpoenaed Bondi in March to learn more about the department’s long-running investigations into Epstein — the financier accused of abusing more than 1,000 women and girls and directing some of them to have sex with his high-powered friends — and the department’s release of files in response to the 2025 Epstein Files Transparency Act, which mandated disclosure of the investigative records.

Asked whether Dhillon’s participation indicated that the department planned to invoke privilege and bar Bondi from sharing some information, the department said in a statement that Dhillon and other agency officials would attend Bondi’s interview “solely to ensure accurate representation of Department processes, facilitate any necessary clarifications, and support a complete factual record for the Committee.”

The department added that it “routinely provides staff” to assist with “congressional engagement involving past Department staff actions.”

But a former DOJ ethics official, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said that Dhillon’s participation in the proceedings was anything but routine.

Typically, this type of work would be handled by a less senior attorney at the department who had more direct involvement with the subject matter at hand, the former official said. Dhillon oversees the department’s civil rights division, while the investigations into Epstein were criminal matters.

“I don’t see where Harmeet Dhillon has the experience or the normal level of authority that this would be delegated to,” the official said. “Everything about this seems unusual.”

Bondi would also need to have submitted a formal request for representation from the department.

“It doesn’t just happen willy-nilly,” the former ethics official said.

The department didn’t say how Bondi came to be represented by the agency’s attorneys. Bondi, who said this week she is being treated for thyroid cancer, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The presence of Dhillon — a San Francisco attorney and Republican party insider who has been talked about as a potential pick for attorney general — could also present a conflict of interest, experts said.

“It’s unclear if she is representing the interests of Bondi, the department, or herself,” said Dave Rapallo, a former staff director of the House Oversight Committee.

He said that Dhillon would not have been able to represent Bondi if her testimony was provided in a deposition because the committee’s rules prevent agency lawyers from attending depositions.

Bondi was fired by President Trump on April 2. She was dogged by questions about her handling of the Epstein investigation throughout her time in office.

Trump campaigned on the promise of releasing information about the government’s investigation into Epstein in 2024 and in February 2025, Bondi told Fox News that she had on her desk a list of clients of Epstein — who died in federal custody in 2019.

But months later, as questions swirled about Trump’s relationship with Epstein, the Justice Department announced that it was closing its investigation into Epstein and said that, in fact, no such client list existed.

Soon after, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) introduced the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act, requiring the Justice Department to release all of the records from its investigation into Epstein. Trump initially opposed the legislation but ultimately signed it into law.

The department has released millions of pages of records in response to the law. While Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche said in January that there are millions of additional pages of records that are not yet public, the department has indicated that it doesn’t plan to release these additional files.

WASHINGTON — President Trump had another medical exam Tuesday, putting his health under renewed public scrutiny as he has worked to dismiss concerns over his age and stamina.

The 79-year-old president spent more than three hours at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for what the White House described as preventive medical and dental checkups. It was Trump’s fourth publicly disclosed medical exam since he returned to office for a second term, and it comes as he tries to project strength ahead of midterm elections that will test his sway with voters.

In a social media post after the visit, Trump said he just finished his “6 month physical” and “Everything checked out PERFECTLY.”

For decades, administrations have released selected results from presidential physicals, offering the public a glimpse at the commander in chief’s health. But the results are filtered through the White House and must be approved by the president, raising questions about what the public does and doesn’t get to see.

Trump turns 80 next month and was the oldest person elected president. His immediate predecessor, President Biden, was 82 when he left office, dropping out of the 2024 race because of widespread concerns he was too old for the job.

A Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted in April found that less than half of U.S. adults think Trump has the mental sharpness or physical health to serve effectively as president.

“I think concern for the president’s physical health is probably at an all-time high, and I think advanced physical age is the No. 1 concern,” said Dr. Jeffrey Kuhlman, who served as a White House physician for more than a decade under Presidents Obama, George W. Bush and Clinton.

For a president of Trump’s age, a complete physical would be expected to include advanced heart testing, screening for common cancers and a cognitive assessment, along with basics like height, weight and blood pressure, Kuhlman said.

The White House has not disclosed what the visit entailed but expressed confidence in what it will show.

“President Trump is the sharpest and most accessible President in American history who is working nonstop to solve problems and deliver on his promises, and he remains in excellent health,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said in a statement.

No law requiring presidents to disclose medical records

In the weeks leading up to his visit, Trump has been saying he feels as good as he did five decades ago — even as he jokes about his fondness for fast food and his minimal exercise regimen. Yet he’s also sensitive to perceptions about his age, noting that he takes extra caution descending the steps from Air Force One to avoid headlines about a stumble.

There is no law requiring presidents to publicize their health records, and the degree of transparency has varied by administration. Trump’s past reports have been criticized for offering scant detail and providing statistics that some medical experts eyed with skepticism.

At public appearances, Trump often is seen wearing makeup to conceal bruising on his hands, which the White House attributes to handshaking and regular aspirin use. He sometimes has appeared drowsy during meetings and closed his eyes for long stretches, though he denies having fallen asleep.

Trump often boasts of having “aced” cognitive tests while frequently deriding Biden, who faced questions about his mental acuity. Biden and his aides pushed back aggressively against doubts raised about his fitness for office.

Some of Trump’s previous physicals have included the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, used to screen for dementia and cognitive impairment. His physicians reported a score of 30 out of 30 for him at 2018 and 2025 checkups.

Yet critics have pointed to Trump’s meandering speeches and sometimes bellicose rhetoric as evidence of cognitive decline.

Last month, a statement from more than 30 neurologists, psychiatrists and other medical experts — who acknowledged they’ve never examined him — said Trump was mentally unfit to serve and warned of an “increasingly dangerous decline” in his behavior based on what they called “objectively observable signs of serious medical concern.″

“Any so-called medical professionals engaging in armchair diagnosis or false speculation for political purposes are clearly breaking the Hippocratic Oath they’ve sworn to,” Ingle said.

Just like any other patient, presidents get to choose what’s disclosed about their health, said Sara Rosenthal, a bioethicist at the University of Kentucky who studies presidential health. Questions about transparency have become more acute as America elects aging presidents like Trump and Biden, she said.

“We can expect very little disclosure about the true health status of any president unless they’re in perfect health,” said Rosenthal, who has suggested an independent medical organization to review and report on the health of the president and those in the line of succession.

‘Nothing should be hidden’

Trump’s first medical report in his second term was released in April 2025. In July, he was diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency, a common condition in older adults that causes blood to pool in his veins. Photographs have shown the president with swollen feet, ankles and calves, described by the White House as a symptom of chronic venous insufficiency leading to “mild swelling” in his lower legs.

Following his last publicly disclosed exam, described as a routine follow-up in October, Trump’s physician issued a one-page summary saying the president was in “exceptional health” without divulging many specific results.

The frequency of Trump’s medical checkups is not uncommon for someone his age, according to S. Jay Olshansky of the University of Illinois-Chicago, who has studied the health of past presidents. It’s part of a strategy to catch problems while they’re still treatable, Olshansky said.

Olshansky says the public deserves to see more than White House medical summaries that “may be subject to editorial discretion.” Full, unredacted medical records should be made public, he said. “Nothing should be hidden.”

Binkley writes for the Associated Press.

In 1951, not long after her breakthrough appearances in “All About Eve” and “The Asphalt Jungle,” Marilyn Monroe went to college: She enrolled in a pair of 10-week classes at UCLA’s adult-extension program, both covering literature. Looky-loos peeked through the windows. Some likely assumed a publicity stunt. But Monroe’s passion for books was sincere. An orphan who bounced around upward of a dozen foster homes and orphanages regretted that she’d never graduated high school, she moved often in her life but always made sure her books came wherever she went.

Gail Crowther’s “Marilyn and Her Books” is the story of that library, though more precisely it’s about what we’ve projected upon Monroe when we’re asked to consider that she had one. Our prevailing cultural reflex, then and now, is skepticism larded with misogyny. A famous 1955 photo of her sitting in a Long Island playground reading James Joyce’s “Ulysses” — one of 50 known photos of her reading — is routinely scoffed at whenever it’s posted online. (Crowther gathers up a sampling of misogynistic comments.)

But Crowther’s sleuthing determines that Joyce’s novel was a regular companion of hers, and she was particularly enchanted with Molly Bloom’s closing soliloquy. As an actor who had to be exceedingly smart to play dumb blondes, she used the shoot to make “a profound statement about her social positioning.”

Marilyn Monroe reads the book “To the Actor: On the Technique of Acting” by Michael Chekhov in a quiet moment at the Ambassador Hotel in New York.

(Ed Feingersh / Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images)

Writing about Monroe’s reading habits demands a lot of speculation on the part of Crowther, who’s written engaging books on Dorothy Parker, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. We know a lot about the star’s library — when she died in 1962, she owned more than 400 books, diligently cataloged and auctioned in 1999. There’s documented marginalia and scribblings that suggest a serious reader, and anecdotes about her reciting poems at parties, reading Proust on set, and expounding on Whitman, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. She had strong opinions about Hemingway: “Those big tough guys are so sick, they aren’t even all that tough. … They always want to kill something to prove themselves.”

And Crowther literally has the receipts from Los Angeles and Beverly Hills stores like the Pickwick Book Shop, Martindale’s Book Store and Hunter’s Books, where she purchased titles that were practical (“How to Live With a Cat”), relatable (“Sister Carrie”) and weighty (a three-volume life of Sigmund Freud).

Her third husband, playwright Arthur Miller, suggests the purchases were largely a pose: In his memoir, he wrote that aside from some short stories and Colette’s “Cheri” she likely never read anything start to finish. It would be nice to know more, but as Crowther pointedly observes multiple times, journalists never thought to ask her about her reading. When the subject of literature came up, Monroe seemed compelled to play to ditzy expectations. After telling interviewers she wanted to play Grushenka in an adaptation of “The Brothers Karamazov,” they asked her if she could spell the character’s name. She demurred.

A clearer historical record might have blunted the sexist comments that have stalked her, and given Crowther an opportunity to do less guesswork. “Marilyn and Her Books” is scaffolded with 15 chapters, each dedicated to a question that usually can’t be answered in full: “Did Marilyn read all her books?” (probably not, who does?), “Did Marilyn suffer from imposter syndrome?” (probably, who doesn’t?). Some questions feel like attempts to pad the pages (“Are there any surprising omissions from Marilyn’s personal library?” “How did Marilyn’s reading compare to that of her contemporaries?”). The elegiac opening and closing chapters, in which Crowther imagines visiting Monroe’s home and scanning her shelves, also add to the feeling that too much is being extrapolated out of not enough information.

Curiously, the book also dwells little on Monroe’s own literary ambitions. Crowther shares a few scraps of despairing, Plathian verse, but almost entirely neglects her unfinished posthumous memoir, published in 1974 as “My Story.” Its relative shapelessness, along with its use of a ghostwriter, doesn’t bolster her literary credentials, but its existence points to Monroe’s ambition to have them.

And there’s plenty to say about the literary work that Monroe herself has inspired, including Joyce Carol Oates’ 2000 masterpiece, “Blonde,” or Sharon Olds’ poem “The Death of Marilyn Monroe,” in which a man who carted away her body is shocked into the reality of “a woman breathing, just an ordinary woman breathing.” Writers have afforded Monroe the grace and status in death that she was rarely afforded in life.

But the core question that drives the book, the subject of a central chapter, is valuable: “Why is Marilyn Monroe’s reading ability doubted?” Among other things, Crowther argues, Monroe suffered from a “poisonous cocktail of patriarchy, industry decisions, cultural stereotypes, social expectations, Marilyn’s unwitting complicity,” and more. Crowther keeps her focus narrowly on Monroe, but it doesn’t require a substantial mental leap to see how Monroe is just one example of a cover-model-worthy woman artist being told she’s a try-hard for demonstrating intelligence. (To pick just one example, the pop star Dua Lipa’s book club has a demonstrated high-literary bent, selecting Tommy Orange, Olga Tokarczuk and Percival Everett, which got her mocked as “an alien spaceship touching down in a medieval peasant village.”)

“Marilyn’s reading formed a concerted effort to overcome any inadequacies she perceived in herself,” Crowther writes. That, too, made her a lot like anybody who goes to books to satisfy gaps in our knowledge. We can do that in private, to avoid embarrassment. For Monroe, though, the effort was always public and always suspect — the culture was attuned to see any book in her hand as a prop. For most people, reading is an escape route. For Monroe it only led to one more cul-de-sac.

Athitakis is a writer in Phoenix and author of “The New Midwest.”

SACRAMENTO — Dana Williamson, one of the political heavyweights at the center of a financial scandal involving gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra, looked shell-shocked Thursday morning in a federal courtroom in downtown Sacramento, as most folks do when bad choices collide with the hard realities of the justice system.

A thousand-yard stare in her eyes, Williamson responded “guilty” three times in a voice that required a microphone to be heard as the judge walked her through a plea deal reached days before with the U.S. Department of Justice. She likely won’t be sentenced until fall (possibly close to the general election) but will — again, just a likely here — at best face home confinement and at worst upward of three years in prison.

It’s a colossal fall for a woman who wasn’t so much a consultant as a political operative to Becerra, Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Gov. Jerry Brown and a slew of companies including Meta and PG&E. She was known at the Capitol as a woman who got things done, sometimes with finesse, sometimes not.

It was her savvy and ability to deliver whatever was needed through her deep connections and knowledge of the complicated structures — official and cultural — that govern the California halls of power that make her predicament all the more confounding. Especially because, far from stealing money for self-enrichment, she actually paid money to be part of this scheme.

That alone, to me, raises questions.

Though Williamson’s guilty plea may seem like an ending to the saga, it shouldn’t be, because there’s still a lot lurking in the dark corners of this deal.

If Becerra makes it past the primary, which seems (I’ll use that word again) likely, voters have a right to know.

Here’s the simple backstory, according to court documents. Becerra’s close aide, Sean McCluskie, took a pay cut to remain with his boss when he moved to Washington to become President Biden’s secretary of Health and Human Services.

Strapped for cash, McCluskie asked Williamson to receive money from Becerra’s dormant campaign account — which Becerra was legally not allowed to manage while holding federal office — and pass it through a bunch of other accounts before giving it to McCluskie’s wife as payment for a nonexistent job.

Williamson’s attorney, McGregor Scott, said Thursday that Williamson received $7,500 each month from the Becerra account and added $2,500 from her own funds before sending it on to ultimately reach McCluskie — for a total of $10,000 a month.

McCluskie was “living on a government salary,” Scott said Thursday after court. “Wife is home with the kids. They didn’t have enough money, and that’s where this all originated. [Williamson] was simply trying to help a friend in a pinch as best she could.”

Scott, a former Bush and Trump United States attorney, managed to get Williamson’s original 23-count indictment knocked down to the Becerra account issue, along with lying to the FBI and filing a false tax return.

McCluskie entered his own guilty plea in the case last November and is scheduled to be sentenced, along with the third lobbyist, in June.

Becerra, who is a slim-margin front-runner for governor, was the victim in this case — or more precisely, his state campaign bank account was, according to court documents.

There has never been any indication that Becerra was investigated as a participant, and he has forcefully denied wrongdoing, calling it a “gut punch” that his advisers allegedly betrayed him.

That, of course, hasn’t stopped the other candidates from using the case against him.

“My opponents have spent millions spreading lies to purposefully mislead voters,” he wrote Thursday on social media. “Today confirms what I have said from day one: I did nothing wrong. Case closed.”

Meanwhile, Scott, the attorney, also said Thursday that Williamson assumed, based on her conversations with McCluskie, that McCluskie had spoken to Becerra about the concept of the money transfer. Text messages in court records show a brief and ambiguous exchange between McCluskie and Williamson that backs that up.

Scott said that Williamson never spoke directly with Becerra about the scheme.

That leaves the distinct possibility that Williamson believed Becerra knew what was happening — but never asked him. Dumb? Maybe. But Williamson isn’t usually dumb.

“The understanding that McCluskie conveyed to my client was it was OK to proceed,” Scott said.

Becerra has repeatedly said he believed the $10,000 a month was a legitimate fee being paid to manage the funds in the dormant account while he could not — though that is an amount above what is usual for such work, as my colleague Dakota Smith has reported.

Becerra has also repeatedly used some variation of the “case closed” line, seemingly hoping to move past this scandal without further answers.

But at the very least, it deserves some kind of mea culpa from Becerra or lessons learned, a more robust conversation than the brush-off it’s been getting. Because either McCluskie is one heck of a con man who rolled both Becerra and Williamson, making both believe what was happening was kosher with entirely different tales, or someone isn’t being entirely honest.

Did Becerra never question why an account with almost no activity was costing so much to manage? Did he never wonder what Williamson was doing to earn all that money? Should he, with his decades of legal and political experience, have seen red flags, even with a trusted adviser? Or is Williamson, facing sentencing, just trying to paint herself in a sympathetic light?

“I’m not trying to paint my client as a victim,” McGregor said. “She’s accepted responsibility today for what she did by pleading guilty. She’s now a felon. So you know, we’re not trying to do anything to dance away from that.”

Williamson may be done dancing, but the music’s still playing, and the fancy footwork of politics continues.

Flights can be incredibly expensive, but this simple hack could get you free extra legroom in a bulkhead or exit row seat — just by asking one polite question at check-in

My first long-haul flight came at just three years old. When my family decided to emigrate from England to New Zealand, it meant I’d spend much of my childhood travelling between the two nations.

This is no minor journey – while people frequently complain about how far away Australia is from the UK, New Zealand is even further away.

At its quickest, the flight from London to New Zealand takes 23 hours, though depending on where your aircraft stops to refuel and the length of your stopovers, it can easily balloon to 36 hours or beyond.

As the years passed, I grew taller – and then exceptionally tall.

Now aged 31, I stand just under 6ft tall, and as a teenager, I wasn’t significantly shorter.

Attempting to squeeze myself into economy class seats became increasingly difficult with every additional inch I gained.

That’s precisely why these days, whenever I take a long-haul flight, I employ a strategy my mum taught me as an awkward, lanky pre-teen that significantly boosts my odds of securing a seat upgrade.

I must emphasise that this method doesn’t succeed every single time. Nevertheless, it does boast a fairly impressive success rate when executed properly – I’d estimate it’s worked in my favour roughly 70% of the occasions I’ve attempted it.

All you require is good manners, a friendly smile, and the confidence to handle potential disappointment. It’s simpler if you’re checking luggage, though it’s achievable without.

Whenever I check my luggage at the desk, I politely ask the staff member whether they have any bulkhead seats available or any rows with empty seats.

Even if I’m travelling without checked luggage, I’ll still join the queue and make an enquiry – frequently using the excuse of needing a physical boarding pass printed.

Being tall, I often point to my height and crack a self-deprecating joke about being squeezed into an economy class. If you’re polite and ask courteously, the results might surprise you.

I’ve been given entire rows to myself, exit row seats and bulkhead seats all at no additional charge simply because I asked politely.

This approach depends on fortune – if the aircraft is at full capacity, then it clearly won’t succeed, but occasionally flights have available seats and staff are willing to reassign you.

The crucial thing is not to become annoyed if the response is negative – always be gracious, thank the person at the desk for their time and proceed to your flight.

Who won the 2020 election?

Was the Capitol attacked on Jan. 6, 2021?

Can Donald Trump be elected to a third term as president?

No brainers, right?

The answers are, of course, “Joe Biden,” “yes” and “no.” Any fact- and reality-based American would say so. But that humongous class of people pointedly doesn’t include the president of the United States. And apparently for that reason, his nominees for federal judgeships — the very jobs in which you’d most want fact-based individuals — hem, haw, stammer and ultimately decline to give direct answers when Democratic senators test them with such easy-peasy questions at confirmation hearings.

One after another, month after month, Trump nominees for district and appeals courts across the land say that the answers to the questions are matters of debate, of “significant political dispute.” Well, they’re in dispute only because Trump says they are, as does every ambitious officeholder and office-seeker desperate to remain in the retributive ruler’s good graces — including, alas, would-be judges.

To watch them squirm and then squirt out the same rehearsed reply, the same legalistic word salad, just like the dozens of nominees before them would be hilarious (see below) if it weren’t so ominous for the rule of law in the nation.

Trump nominees for other high-ranking jobs, likewise prepped for Senate Democrats’ questions by their Trump handlers, give the same rote response. But the fact that candidates for lifetime seats on the federal bench, making decisions of life-changing consequences for millions of Americans, would choose to dodge the truth is most sickening.

In their truth-trolling to keep Trump happy, lest he yank their chance at new black robes, these candidates fail the test of judicial independence. As one Democrat, Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, told four district judge nominees last week at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, their humiliating hedging “on an issue of fact” — Biden won in 2020 — “reflects not only on your honesty but really on your fitness to be a federal judge.”

Indeed. That judicial nominees would curry Trump’s favor bodes ill for future federal jurisprudence in the one branch of government that’s stood up for the rule of law against Trump, repeatedly, when Congress and the Supreme Court have not. To be fair, a number of judges confirmed in Trump’s first term have been among the many who’ve ruled against his and his administration’s second-term abuses of power. Yet just as Trump has populated his Cabinet and executive branch with sycophants, unlike in Trump 1.0, he’s obviously applying new litmus tests to potential judges. One of them, clearly, is playing along with his election lies.

His nominees’ failure to speak truth to Trump’s power should be disqualifying. But they’re not disqualified, because the Senate is run by Republicans who share their fear of him.

That fact is a big reason to hope that Democrats capture the majority in November’s midterm elections and that, under new management, the Senate will finally take seriously its constitutional “advice and consent” responsibility to act as a check on Trump nominees for the final two years of his term — including, perhaps, one for the Supreme Court.

And, yes, this is Trump’s final term, for all of his teasing about “Trump 2028.” The Constitution’s 22nd Amendment says as much in its opening line: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”

Yet the four wannabe district judges at last week’s Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing — Michael J. Hendershot of Ohio; Arthur Roberts Jones and John G.E. Marck, both of Texas; and Jeffrey T. Kuntz of Florida — struggled over that clear language.

All four hesitated when Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, asked them to describe the amendment. He even read its initial words before querying Marck, “Is President Trump eligible to run for president again in 2028?”

Marck paused, then sputtered: “Senator, with ah, without considering all the facts and looking at everything, depending on what the situation is, this to me strikes as more of a hypothetical of something that could be raised.”

“It’s not a hypothetical,” Coons countered, then asked again whether Trump is “eligible to run for a third term under our Constitution.”

“Um, I would have to, to review the, the actual wording of it,” Marck blabbered.

Coons turned to the others: “Anybody else brave enough to say that the Constitution of the United States prevents President Trump from seeking a third term?” Silence.

“Anybody willing to apply the Constitution by its plain language in the 22nd Amendment?” Coons persisted. Crickets.

His Democratic colleague, Blumenthal, inquired of the foursome, “Who won the 2020 election?” All agreed in turn that Biden “was certified” the winner. None would say he “won” because — as we and they know —Trump insists to this day that he won; he’s turned the power of his “Justice” Department to trying to prove that obvious falsehood. Far be it from these future judges to contradict the president who nominated them.

Here’s Hendershot’s gibberish to Blumenthal’s simple query: “Senator, I want to be mindful of the canons here. I know this question has come up many times in these hearings and it’s become an issue of significant political dispute and debate. So, with, with that, I would say that, that President Biden was certified the winner of the 2020 election.”

After the others replied similarly, Blumenthal turned justifiably scathing: “It’s pretty irrefutable that Joe Biden won the election. But you’re unwilling to use that word because you are afraid. You are afraid. Of what? President Trump? That is exactly what we do not need on the federal bench today. We need jurists who are fearless and strong, not weak and pathetic.”

Apparently unshamed, each similarly demurred when he asked if the Capitol had been attacked. “You’ve seen the videos, have you not?” Blumenthal blurted.

No matter, Senator. These would-be triers of fact apparently won’t believe their eyes. Not when their patron, the president, insists on lies.

Bluesky: @jackiecalmes
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Free agent NFL receiver Stefon Diggs has been found not guilty of felony strangulation and not guilty of misdemeanor assault and battery in connection with an alleged dispute with his private chef over money she said he owed her for her services.

Diggs remained stoic in the courtroom as the verdicts were announced, following less that two hours of deliberation by the jury.

Diggs was charged Dec. 30 and pleaded not guilty during his arraignment at Massachusetts’ Dedham District Court on Feb. 13, five days after playing in Super Bowl LX with the New England Patriots.

Diggs did not take the stand during the trial, which started Monday in Norfolk County District Court in Dedham, Mass.

His accuser, Jamila Adams, told the jury that the 11-year NFL veteran “smacked me with an open hand” and wrapped his arm around her neck during an incident that is alleged to have occurred at Diggs’ house on Dec. 2.

“When I went up to block him, he took his arms and came around my neck and he began to choke me,” said Adams, who became emotional during her testimony.

Defense attorney Andrew Kettlewell told jurors there was no evidence of an assault, with no one in the house reporting anything of the kind and no medical records, photos or video that documented any injuries.

Adams said she did not take any photos or video that showed any marks on her body that could be used as evidence because she “was in shock.”

According to Adams, her employment dynamic with Diggs was “complicated.” The two of them have known each other for more than four years, she said, and had previously been in a sexual relationship, although they were not at the time of the alleged assault. As Diggs’ private chef, she lived in his home and prepared him meals and snacks, she said.

In reporting the alleged incident to police Dec. 16, Adams said she and Diggs had a dispute over payment she thought she was owed. Kettlewell told jurors that Adams had sought money from Diggs after reporting the alleged incident, in amounts that increased over time and culminated in her attorney seeking $5.5 million.

“She was furious and she wanted Mr. Diggs to pay in every sense of that word,” Kettlewell said.

Asked Tuesday about the $5.5-million claim, Adams answered at various points, “I can’t speak on that,” “I don’t understand the question” and “I don’t know how to answer the question.”

At times during the trial, Judge Jeanmarie Carroll instructed jurors to disregard parts of Adams’ testimony that the judge said went beyond the scope of the questions.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.