WASHINGTON — When a fire erupts in California, it is a lab across the country, at the University of Maryland, that works together with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to determine where the smoke is going. Those unsung scientists help warn the people downwind of dangerous air quality levels.
And it is the National Weather Service, working with buoys at sea and satellites in orbit, figuring out the risks of increased winds and dryness that could prompt devastating fires in highly populated areas such as Los Angeles.
It is not just meteorologists and technicians being forced out of their jobs en masse, jeopardizing the standards of those programs, said Craig McLean, a 40-year veteran of NOAA who served as the agency’s assistant administrator for research and acting chief scientist until his retirement in 2022.
The Trump administration proposes to go further, seeking to eliminate the entire research team that provides forecasters with tools to make their assessments. The Satellite Operations Facility has been hit with deep layoffs. Contracts for the buoys, and other equipment, are on hold while under review by the Commerce Department.
It is a cascade of delays and setbacks that could become evident to the public sooner rather than later, McLean said.
“The forecast risk is apparent upon us,” he told The Times. “I think it’s ridiculous to assume that it’s not — whether it’s for the fire season and the hydrology, whether it’s for the atmospheric rivers and the inundation and deluge, or whether it’s just for the high wind.”
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Trump seeks cuts both to forecast and response
Workers put up a sign as wildfire victims seek disaster relief services at a FEMA center in Pasadena in January.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
The Trump administration’s cuts to NOAA, which have resulted in roughly 600 employee departures, or an about 15% of its workforce, appear to involve across the entire agency, based on self-reporting from employees and the National Weather Service Employees Organization. But the agency itself has provided few details to the public on the extent of its reductions.
“When the voluntary early retirement separation initiative was put up, in one day, NOAA lost 27,000 person years of experience, which is extraordinary in an agency of what was 12,000 personnel,” said Rick Spinrad, who served as administrator of the agency under President Biden.
“So much of what is done at NOAA is interpretive,” he added. “At the end of the day, when your weather forecast office or your local sea grant extension agent is informing you of what might happen, there’s a lot of interpretation of the environment, of local geography, local roads. That experience is gone.”
But if NOAA and the National Weather Service are ill-prepared for hazardous weather events — entering fire season in the West and hurricane season in the East — the Federal Emergency Management Agency may be worse off, having lost nearly a third of its employees since January. This week, Reuters reported that President Trump’s acting FEMA chief, David Richardson, told staff that he wasn’t aware the country had a hurricane season.
Trump has already raised concerns that he is rejecting disaster relief to states for political reasons. In the first three months of his presidency, Trump issued conditions on disaster aid to California after fires ravaged Los Angeles and rejected requests for disaster relief from Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein, both Democrats.
Californians may find themselves more vulnerable to other natural disasters, as well. FEMA announced this month it would cancel $33 million in grants for Californians to retrofit their homes to gird against earthquakes, sparking “grave concern” among state officials. “This move must be reversed before tragedy strikes next,” Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California wrote to the agency.
More disruption for ports and fisheries
Each year, before fishing season begins, NOAA issues a series of scientific reports surveying fish populations and environmental conditions, a basic precaution to prevent permanent damage and overfishing along America’s coasts.
But this spring, staff cuts to NOAA forced the agency to take emergency action on the East Coast so that fishing could begin by May 1. And in Alaska, it took the state’s two Republican senators to plead with the White House to take action to allow fishing to resume.
“The federal government has to do two things: They need to do robust surveys for accurate stock assessments and timely regulations to open fisheries. That is it. When the federal government does not do that, you screw hardworking fishermen,” GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska said at a hearing in May. “To be honest, right now, it is not looking good, and I am getting really upset.”
Their challenges don’t stop there. Fishing ships will not able to sail on time without reliable forecasts from the National Weather Service, likely resulting in a reduction of the number of days out at sea and, in turn, leading to fewer profits and staff members.
Americans are already being told to expect higher seafood prices, due to Trump’s tariff policies driving up duties on seafood imports by 10% to 30%, according to a new United Nations report.
“A fisherman who goes out to collect their lobster pots or go fish for tuna needs a reliable weather report,” said Mark Spalding, president of the Ocean Foundation. “Everybody who works with NOAA, from fishermen to shipping, to other businesses that rely on weather and the predictability of currents and storms, are going to feel less secure if not operating blind.”
Similar problems are facing the country’s largest ports, which rely on government experts in ocean monitoring that have left their jobs.
“At the ports of Long Beach and L.A., the systems used to optimize the ships coming in and out of the ports — the coastal ocean observing systems — are being compromised,” Spinrad said. “The president’s budget threatens to eliminate a lot of that capability.”
Vulnerabilities across the Pacific
In Singapore over the weekend, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned that a Chinese assault on Taiwan “could be imminent” and would threaten the entire Pacific region, including the United States. He touted U.S. partnerships across the region on maritime security — an acknowledgment that any conflict that might arise in the Pacific would be a fight at sea.
Cuts to NOAA could threaten U.S. readiness, McLean said.
“Because we have territories throughout the Pacific, NOAA is responsible for providing weather forecasts in those areas,” he said. “The defense community doesn’t operate completely dependent on NOAA in military conflicts — they have meteorologists in the Air Force and the Navy. But they are using NOAA models and are heavily guided by what the NOAA forecasts are offering, certainly for bases, whether it’s in Guam or Hawaii.”
The military, for example, uses data produced by thousands of buoys deployed and tracked by NOAA — called the Argo Float Network — that are considered the gold standard in ocean monitoring. The program faces cuts from the Trump administration because of its affiliation with climate change.
“There is a national defense component here,” McLean said. “The defense community is dependent upon what NOAA provides, both in models and in research.”
Gun rights advocates say these AR-15s are owned by millions of Americans, and they argue the 2nd Amendment protects weapons that are “in common use by law-abiding citizens.”
But they fell one vote short of winning a hearing on the question before the Supreme Court.
Three conservatives — Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch — voted to hear the 2nd Amendment challenge.
But Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh refused for now to cast the key fourth vote. He called the lower-court ruling upholding Maryland’s ban “questionable,” but agreed with the majority in turning down the appeal for now.
“In my view, this court should and presumably will address the AR–15 issue soon, in the next Term or two,” Kavanaugh said.
The closely watched appeal had been pending since December, and the outcome suggests that the majority, including Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., is not ready to strike down state laws that restrict semiautomatic guns.
Monday’s no-comment order lets stand laws in Maryland and Rhode Island that forbid the sale or possession of “assault weapons” and large-capacity magazines.
California adopted the nation’s first ban on assault weapons in 1989. Since then, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Washington have enacted similar laws, all of which would have been struck down if Maryland’s law were ruled unconstitutional.
Lawmakers in California and nine other Democratic-led states say these rapid-fire weapons are especially dangerous and not needed for self-defense.
Maryland said its ban applies to “certain highly dangerous, military-style assault weapons of the sort used in a series of highly publicized mass shootings.”
The case tested the reach of the 2nd Amendment and its “right to keep and bear arms.”
For more than a decade, the justices have turned away gun-rights appeals that challenged local or state bans on assault weapons.
In 2008, the court ruled for the first time that the 2nd Amendment protects an individual right to self-defense, but its constitutional rulings since then have been modest in their impact.
The justices struck down city ordinances in Washington and Chicago that prohibited private possession of handguns, and they ruled states may not deny law-abiding citizens a permit to carry a concealed weapon.
In opinion polls, most Americans are opposed to a ban on handgun possession but they support a ban on semiautomatic assault rifles.
Maryland passed its ban on “assault weapons” after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, where 20 children and six school employees were killed.
The law was upheld last year in an opinion written by a prominent conservative judge.
Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, a Reagan appointee who was a finalist for a Supreme Court nomination in 2005, said the AR-15, AK-47 and similar rapid-fire rifles are not protected by the 2nd Amendment.
“They are military-style weapons designed for sustained combat operations that are ill-suited and disproportionate to the need for self-defense,” he wrote in a 9-5 decision by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. “We decline to wield the Constitution to declare that military-style armaments which have become primary instruments of mass killing and terrorist attacks in the United States are beyond the reach of our nation’s democratic processes.”
The dissenters said the 2nd Amendment protects the right to the “arms” that are in common use.
“Today, the AR-15 and its variants are one of the most popular and widely owned firearms in the Nation,” wrote Judge Julius Richardson, a Trump appointee.
“As of 2021, there are at least 28 million AR-style semiautomatic rifles in circulation. For context, this means that there are more AR-style rifles in the civilian market than there are Ford F-Series pickup trucks on the road — the most popular truck in America.”
Three years ago, the court said in an opinion by Thomas that the 2nd Amendment should be interpreted based on the nation’s history and tradition of gun regulations.
However, the two sides in the Maryland case differed on what to glean from that history.
Gun-rights advocates said there was no early history of laws banning common firearms.
But some judges and state lawyers said the history shows that when new dangers arose — including stored gunpowder, dynamite and machine guns — new restrictions were written into law. If so, that would support new laws adopted in response to the danger posed by rapid-fire weapons.
SACRAMENTO — This just seems wrong: Californians overwhelmingly approved an anti-crime ballot measure in November. But our governor strongly opposed the proposition. So he’s not funding it.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic legislative leaders, however, are now under pressure to fund the measure in a new state budget that’s being negotiated and must pass the Legislature by June 15.
A core principle of democracy is the rule of law. A governor may dislike a law, but normally is duty- bound to help implement and enforce it. Heaven save us if governors start traipsing the twisted path of President Trump.
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But this isn’t the first time for Newsom. Voters twice — in 2012 and 2016 — rejected ballot measures to eliminate the death penalty. Moreover, in 2016 they voted to expedite executions. But shortly after becoming governor in 2019, Newsom ignored the voters and declared a moratorium on capital punishment.
Nothing on California’s ballot last year got more votes than Proposition 36, which increases punishment for repeated theft and hard drug offenses and requires treatment for repetitive criminal addicts.
It passed with 68.4% of the vote, carrying all 58 counties — 55 of them by landslide margins, including all counties in the liberal San Francisco Bay Area.
“To call it a mandate is an understatement,” says Greg Totten, chief executive officer of the California District Attorneys Assn., which sponsored the initiative. Big retailers bankrolled it.
“It isn’t a red or blue issue,” adds Totten, referring to providing enough money to fund the promised drug and mental health treatment. “It’s what’s compassionate and what’s right and what the public expects us to do.”
Rolled back Proposition 47
Proposition 36 partly rolled back the sentence-softening Proposition 47 that voters passed 10 years earlier and was loudly promoted by then-Lt. Gov. Newsom.
Proposition 47 reduced certain property and hard drug crimes from felonies to misdemeanors and arrests plummeted, the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California found.
Proposition 36 was inspired by escalating retail theft, including smash-and-grab burglaries, that were virtually unpunished. Increased peddling of deadly fentanyl also stirred the public.
The ballot measure imposed tougher penalties for dealing and possessing fentanyl, treating it like other hard drugs, such as heroin and cocaine. But the proposition offered a carrot to addicted serial criminals: Many could be offered treatment rather than jail time.
Newsom adamantly opposed Proposition 36.
“We don’t need to go back to the broken policies of the last century,” the governor declared. “Mass incarceration has been proven ineffective and is not the answer.”
Newsom tried to sabotage Proposition 36 by crafting an alternative ballot measure. Top legislative leaders went along. But rank-and-file Democratic lawmakers rebelled and Newsom abandoned the effort.
The Legislature ultimately passed 13 anti-theft bills that Newsom and Democrats hoped would satisfy voters, but didn’t come close. Totten called the legislative product “half measures.”
Proposition 36 was flawed in one regard: It lacked a funding mechanism. That was part of the backers’ political strategy. To specify a revenue source — a tax increase, the raid of an existing program — would have created a fat target for opponents.
Let the governor and the Legislature decide how to fund it, sponsors decided.
“We didn’t want to tie the hands of the Legislature,” Totten says. “The Legislature doesn’t like that.”
Anti-crime measure won’t work without funding
Without funding from Sacramento, Proposition 36 won’t work, says Graham Knaus, chief executive officer of the California State Assn. of Counties.
“We believe strongly that if it’s not properly funded, it’s going to fail,” Knaus says. “Proposition 36 requires increased capacity for mental health and substance abuse treatment. And until that’s in place, there’s not really a way to make the sentencing work.”
There’s a fear among Proposition 36 supporters that if treatment isn’t offered to qualifying addicts, courts won’t allow jail sentencing.
“That will probably get litigated,” Totten says.
“Counties can’t implement 36 for free,” Knaus says. “Voters declared this to be a top-level priority. It’s on the state to determine how to fund it. Counties have a very limited ability to raise revenue.”
The district attorney and county organizations peg the annual cost of implementing the measure at $250 million. State Senate Republicans are shooting for the moon: $400 million. The nonpartisan legislative analyst originally figured that the cost ranged “from several tens of millions of dollars to the low hundreds of millions of dollars each year.”
Newson recently sent the Legislature a revised $322-billion state budget proposal for the fiscal year starting July 1. There wasn’t a dime specifically for Proposition 36.
The governor, in fact, got a bit surly when asked about it by a reporter.
“There were a lot of supervisors in the counties that promoted it,” the governor asserted. “So this is their opportunity to step up. Fund it.”
One supervisor I spoke with — a Democrat — opposed Proposition 36, but is irked that Newsom isn’t helping to implement it.
“It’s disappointing and immensely frustrating,” says Bruce Gibson, a longtime San Luis Obispo County supervisor. “Voters have spoken and we need to work together with the state in partnership.”
In fairness, the governor and the Legislature are faced with the daunting task of patching a projected $12-billion hole in the budget, plus preparing for the unpredictable fiscal whims of a president who keeps threatening to withhold federal funds from California because he doesn’t like our policies.
“I am quite concerned about adequately providing the necessary funding to implement Proposition 36,” says state Sen. Tom Umberg of Santa Ana, a strong Democratic supporter of the measure.
He’s fearful that the Legislature will approve only a token amount of funding — and the governor will veto even that.
Under California’s progressive system of direct democracy, voters are allowed to bypass Sacramento and enact a state law themselves. Assuming the statue is constitutional, the state then has a duty to implement it. To ignore the voters is a slap in the face of democracy.
JACK DRAPER is not only a huge rising star in tennis but also models for fashion magazines including Vogue.
But who is the Tennis-playing supermodel dating? Here’s everything you need to know about British No 1 – who has reached the semi-final of the US Open.
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Jack Draper has reached the semi-finals of the US OpenCredit: Splash
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Zendaya, the star of hit tennis film Challengers, even attended one of Jack’s matchesCredit: AP: Associated Press
Who is Jack Draper?
Jack was born on 22 December 2001, in Sutton, Surrey.
He is a star both on and off the court, as he has been ranked as high as No.25 in singles – although he will likely climb the rankings after his heroics at the US Open.
Although he is yet to win a Grand Slam, tennis is something that runs in his family.
His brother, Ben, is a former pro and his mum, Nicky, is a junior champion turned coach.
His father was even the chief executive of the LTA (Lawn Tennis Association), which is the national governing body of tennis in Great Britain, the Channel Islands, and the Isle of Man.
Although they haven’t said that they are dating, Jack is close friends with Emma RaducanuCredit: Getty Images
He told Tatler: “I’m not that great with celebrities.
“We were at the US Open last year and everyone was making a big fuss over this girl who walked in and I had no idea who she was. I think she was called Zendaya?”
Luis Enrique wept tears of joy and emotion as Paris St-Germain delivered the performance of a lifetime to win the Champions League for the first time on a remarkable night in Munich.
And, as PSG outclassed Inter Milan for a historic 5-0 victory, brilliant teenager Desire Doue confirmed his status as one half of a new duo of young superstars – alongside Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal – who have the genius to dominate the game for years to come.
The poignant human story was PSG coach Luis Enrique, who became only the sixth coach to win this tournament with two different clubs after his triumph with Barcelona in 2015.
The sporting story was one of the finest team displays in the history of this tournament, in this and its previous guise of the European Cup, with generational teenage talent Doue as its centrepiece.
On the most important night of a career, Doue made the biggest stage in European club football his playground.
This was also a win heavy with significance and meaning for 55-year-old Asturian Luis Enrique, beyond the glory of the brutal beauty of this PSG triumph that finally brought the giant Champions League trophy to The City Of Light.
The man who has transformed PSG has spoken about how he helped his daughter Xana plant a Barcelona flag in the centre circle after that 2015 triumph over Juventus in Berlin.
He said he hoped he might make the same gesture here in her memory after she died from a rare form of bone cancer aged nine in 2019.
In the afterglow of victory, he pulled on a t-shirt bearing an image of himself and his daughter planting a PSG flag.
And then, in a moment of raw emotion, PSG’s “Ultras” unfurled their own tribute – a giant flag emblazoned with an image of father and daughter, in the French club’s shirt, planting a flag.
It was a wonderful gesture on a joyful night for PSG in Munich, when all their agonies as they chased the Champions League were washed away in one of the greatest displays any team has produced in a European final.
“I’m very happy. It was very emotional at the end with the banner from the fans for my family. But I always think about my daughter,” said Luis Enrique.
“Since day one, I said I wanted to win important trophies, and Paris had never won the Champions League. We did it for the first time. It’s a great feeling to make many people happy.”
The housing estate of Tlajomulco de Zúñiga has become a no-go area, with gang violence a regular feature of an abandoned project that is now crumbling into the ground
Tlajomulco de Zúñiga has become known as the ‘Mexican Chernobyl’(Image: AFP via Getty Images)
A big ‘no entry’ sign hangs ominously above the entrance to an abandoned town known as the ‘MexicanChernobyl‘.
Unlike the Ukrainian town, which was evacuated following the nuclear meltdown of 1986, the housing estate of Tlajomulco de Zúñiga is not empty of almost all human life as a consequence of a futuristic energy solution gone wrong.
The housing complex was built with the people of the Guadalajara district in mind, designed to provide safe, spacious homes for families there. According to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography, there are 70,000 homes in Tlajomulco. Just 12 years after they were built, all of them are empty.
It takes a brave soul to visit the abandoned town. The unfinished buildings tower ominously over the empty streets. Many have no windows and have been battered by the elements. Plants have broken through the cracks in the brickwork, upon which graffiti has been slapped.
The town has become a hotbed of crime(Image: AFP via Getty Images)
Inside some, there are hundreds of scratches on the wall. In others, food and clothing have been scattered on the floor. The properties are occasionally frequented by homeless people looking for shelter for the night, although they have a long 20-mile journey from the bustling centre of Guadalajara over swaying fields of grass that seem to hold in the silence of the eerie settlement.
The area is under the control of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), reports Info Bae, meaning the YouTubers, media outlets and tourists who venture to the housing complex for a poke around do so at no small risk to themselves.
In the last six years, the area has become a go-to place for those looking to get rid of a body. Officials found 54 bodies in clandestine graves in the area in December 2019, and a further 110 in July 2020, reports La Jornada.
Next to the unfinished buildings are apartment blocks that stand over them, both a legacy of the construction company that went bust in 2014. The Mexican Army set up one of its bases in one of these apartment towers.
Mexico has a huge number of abandoned homes, with some estimates putting the total nationwide into the millions. As in the case of Tlajomulco de Zúñiga, housing estates are built on the outskirts of urban centres specifically for working people and their families.
Few people remain living there (Image: AFP via Getty Images)
During periods of wage stagnation and inflation, many have defaulted on unfavourable mortgages. At the same time, construction firms, including the one responsible for Tlajomulco de Zúñiga, have struggled to complete ambitious jobs. Some of the homes in Tlajomulco de Zúñiga are finished and ready for habitation, while other sections consist of half-built shells.
Some families still live in the housing complex, but it is a far cry from the brief period when a majority of the buildings were occupied. The remaining few live under a cloud of fear. “Those who stayed are living under a self-imposed curfew. At 6pm no one leaves their homes, and outside, only the wind and criminals roam the streets,” La Jornada adds.
Guillermina Sánchez is one of the limited number still living in estate, along with her husband. She adheres to the 6pm curfew after her partner was badly beaten while leaving their home, NMas reports.
Emmerdale has aired the full return for Robert Sugden after Ryan Hawley reprised his role as one half of ‘Robron’ after six years away from the soap – and it was everything we dreamed of
Is a restaurant worth a visit simply because it’s been around longer than that bottle of yellow mustard in your refrigerator? Longer than your oldest living relative? Maybe. Proper respect should be paid to an institution.
Los Angeles is home to restaurants celebrating a century in business. About 36,500 days in operation. The feat alone is something to marvel at.
What is Hollywood without the martini culture built around Musso & Frank Grill? The Long Beach bar scene without the Schooners of cold beer and pickled eggs at Joe Jost’s? A South Pasadena stretch of Route 66 without milkshakes and phospate sodas at Fair Oaks Pharmacy? Over decades in business, these restaurants have become landmarks synonymous with the cities themselves.
Some of L.A.’s most popular attractions are our food halls, with Grand Central Market in downtown and the Original Farmers Market in Fairfax drawing millions of visitors each year. Grand Central Market opened in 1917 with nearly 100 food merchants. Its oldest running restaurant is the China Cafe, with a 22-seat counter that’s been around since 1959. In 1934, about a dozen farmers and other vendors started selling produce at the corner of 3rd Street and Fairfax Avenue, where the Original Farmers Market still operates today. Magee’s Kitchen, its oldest restaurant, began when Blanche Magee started serving lunch to the farmers in the ‘30s.
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1.El Coyote founder Blanche March.(El Coyote)2.The counter at Fugetsu-Do in 1904.(Fugetsu-Do Bakery Shop)3.Alicia Mijares, left, daughter of Mijares founder Jesucita Mijares, with Maria Guzman in 1984.(Mijares Restaurant)
Many of the restaurants on this list were built by immigrants from every corner of the world, their American dreams realized in a mochi shop in Little Tokyo, a French restaurant in downtown L.A. and a taste of Jalisco, Mexico, in Pasadena.
If you’re looking for the oldest restaurant in Los Angeles County, you’ll find it in Santa Clarita, a city about 30 miles northwest of downtown. Originally called the Saugus Eating House when it opened as part of a railway station in 1886, the Saugus Cafe boasts a history rich with Hollywood film stars, U.S. presidents and a train network that helped establish towns across the state.
In 1916, the cafe moved across the street to where it sits now, one long, narrow building that includes a dining room and a bar. It has closed, reopened and changed hands numerous times over the last 139 years. Longtime employee Alfredo Mercado now owns the restaurant.
It’s a place that exists in a cocoon of nostalgia. The history embedded in the walls, the decor and the friendly staff are the main draw. If you’re searching for the best breakfast in town, you may want to keep looking.
The following are decades-old restaurants that have stood the test of time, shrinking wallets and fickle diners. In operation for 90 years or longer, these 17 destinations (listed from oldest to newest) are worth the trip for both the history, and whatever you decide to order.
United States President Donald Trump commuted the federal drugs-and-extortion sentence of former Chicago gang leader, Larry Hoover, on Wednesday. Hoover has been serving multiple life sentences following both state and federal convictions over the past five decades.
For his federal conviction, Hoover is currently being held at the ADX Florence prison, a federal prison formally known as the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, in Florence, Colorado.
Commuting a sentence means reducing its length or severity, or ending it entirely. The US president has the power to commute federal sentences, but not state sentences.
Here is what we know.
Who is Larry Hoover and why was his sentence commuted?
Hoover, 74, is the cofounder of Gangster Disciples, one of Chicago’s most powerful gangs.
In a two-page order issued on Wednesday, the Trump administration commuted his federal sentence, considering it served “with no further fines, restitution, probation or other conditions” and ordering his immediate release, according to a copy of the document from Hoover’s legal team seen by The Chicago Tribune.
Hoover’s lawyers said the order was a vindication of their attempts to have their client’s sentence reduced.
Lawyers Jennifer Bonjean and Justin Moore said in a statement: “The Courts have demonstrated a complete unwillingness to consider Mr Hoover’s considerable growth and complete rehabilitation. Despite the Court’s unwillingness to do the right thing, Mr Hoover has been able to keep his voice alive through the incredible work of many advocates and supporters. Thankfully, Mr Hoover’s pleas were heard by President Trump who took action to deliver justice for Mr Hoover.”
Lobbying for Hoover’s pardon has mounted since Trump appointed Alice Johnson as his “pardon tsar” in February this year. Johnson was a non-violent drug offender and was sentenced to life in prison in a drug conspiracy case, but was pardoned by Trump in 2020.
What was Hoover convicted of?
Hoover has been convicted on both state charges and federal charges. A federal crime is a violation of the US Constitution, possibly spanning multiple states, while a state crime is one that breaks a state law.
He was convicted in 1973 on state charges in Illinois for the murder of 19-year-old drug dealer William “Pooky” Young and sentenced to 200 years in prison.
Online state prison records show that Hoover was an inmate at Dixon Correctional Center in western Illinois from 1974. He was accused of continuing to direct the Gangster Disciples from behind bars.
In 1997, Hoover was convicted on federal charges of extortion, federal drug conspiracy and continuing to engage in a criminal enterprise. Hoover has spent nearly three decades in solitary confinement at ADX Florence, a maximum security prison in Colorado, according to his lawyers.
What crimes has the Gangster Disciples gang been involved in?
According to court documents, Hoover was one of the leaders of the gang between 1970 and 1995. The documents state that under Hoover, the Gangster Disciples sold “great quantities of cocaine, heroin, and other drugs in Chicago”.
As of 1995, the gang was believed to have 30,000 members in Chicago and had spread to at least 35 other states, according to an article published by the US Department of Justice that year.
However, little is publicly known about the activities of the Gangster Disciples in recent years.
What are the conditions in the ADX Florence prison?
ADX Florence in Colorado is a super-max prison, or an administrative maximum (ADX) prison, a control unit prison with the highest level of security.
The prison opened in 1994. Prisoners are held in solitary confinement in 12-by-7ft (3.6-by-2 metre) cells with thick concrete walls, and cannot see each other. Inmates sleep on a thin mattress atop a concrete slab. The cells also have a sink, toilet and automated shower.
Prisoners may have access to televisions, books or arts-and-crafts materials. Human interaction is very limited in ADX prisons.
A patrol vehicle is seen along the fencing at the Federal Correctional Complex, including the Administrative Maximum Penitentiary or ‘Supermax’ prison, in Florence, Colorado, on February 21, 2007 [File: Rick Wilking/Reuters]
Is Larry Hoover free to leave prison now?
No, Hoover is still serving his 200-year state sentence following the 1973 Illinois murder conviction.
It is not known if or when Hoover might be moved to another prison – such as the Dixon Correctional Center, a medium-security prison in Illinois that opened in 1983 – now that his federal conviction has been commuted, to serve out his state convictions. In the past, Illinois Department of Corrections officials have suggested that Hoover complete his state sentence in federal prison, citing security concerns.
Is Hoover eligible for parole?
The online records at Dixon Correctional Center say that Hoover will not be eligible for parole until October 2062, when he will be 111 years old. It is not clear whether his parole date can be advanced.
Presidential clemency is reserved for federal crimes, and not state crimes, according to the US Congress website, so Trump cannot intervene. The power to commute state crimes rests in the hands of the governor of the state. The governor of Illinois is Democrat JB Pritzker, who has so far not spoken about Hoover, nor of any plans to grant him clemency.
What role have public figures played in this case?
Performer Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, has long advocated for the pardon of Hoover. In 2018, during Trump’s first term, Ye requested Trump pardon Hoover. On Ye’s 2021 album, Donda, a track called “Jesus Lord” features a vocal snippet from Hoover’s son, Larry Hoover Jr, thanking Ye for bringing up his father’s case in the Oval Office. “Free my father, Mr Larry Hoover Sr,” the junior Hoover is heard saying.
Rapper Drake also advocated for Hoover’s freedom. In 2021, Ye and Drake set personal tensions aside and collaborated on a “Free Hoover” concert in Los Angeles.
“WORDS CAN’T EXPRESS MY GRATITUDE FOR OUR DEVOTED ENDURING PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP FOR FREEING LARRY HOOVER,” Ye posted on X after the commutation order.
WORDS CAN’T EXPRESS MY GRATITUDE FOR OUR DEVOTED ENDURING PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP FOR FREEING LARRY HOOVER
The exact reasoning for Hoover’s commutation is unclear. However, it comes amid a spree of commutations and pardons granted by Trump.
On Wednesday, Trump issued a pardon for former Republican Congressman Michael Grimm, who was convicted of tax fraud in 2015 and sentenced to several months in prison.
On Tuesday, the president pardoned reality television couple Todd and Julie Chrisley, who were convicted of tax evasion and defrauding banks of at least $30m in 2022. Todd Chrisley received a 12-year prison sentence, while his wife was sentenced to seven years.
WASHINGTON — A Starship spun out of control in suborbital flight on Tuesday, failing to meet critical testing goals set by SpaceX in its plans for a mission to Mars. A poll released last week showed the national brand reputation for Tesla, once revered, had cratered. And later that same day, House Republicans passed a bill that would balloon the federal deficit.
It has been a challenging period for Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who not long ago thought he had conquered the private sector and could, in short order, do the same with the federal government. That all ended Wednesday evening with his announcement he is leaving the Trump administration.
“As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President @realDonaldTrump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending,” Musk wrote on X, his social media platform.
The mission of the program he called the Department of Government Efficiency “will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government,” he added.
Musk’s departure comes on the heels of a ruling from a federal judge in Washington on Wednesday questioning Musk’s initial appointment as a temporary government employee and, by extension, whether any of his work for DOGE was constitutional.
“I thought there were problems,” Musk said in a recent interview with the Washington Post, “but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in D.C., to say the least.”
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Growing conflicts with Trump
Musk’s role as an omnipresent advisor to President Trump began to wane weeks ago, amid public backlash against DOGE’s cuts to treasured government programs — from cancer research to the National Park Service — and after Trump bucked Musk’s counsel on economic policy, launching a global trade war that jolted supply chains and financial markets.
But the entrepreneur has grown increasingly vocal with criticism of the Trump administration this week, stating that a megabill pushed by the White House proposing an overhaul to the tax code risks undermining his efforts to cut government spending.
Musk responded to a user on X, his social media platform, on Monday lamenting that House Republicans “won’t vote” to codify DOGE’s cuts. “Did my best,” he wrote.
“I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk explained further in an interview with “CBS Sunday Morning” later in the week. “I think a bill can be big, or it can be beautiful, but I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion.”
The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” would increase border security and defense spending, renew tax cuts passed in 2017 and extend a new tax deduction to seniors, while eliminating green energy tax benefits and cutting $1 trillion in funding to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Despite the cuts, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill would add so much money to the debt that Congress may be forced to execute cuts across the board, including hundreds of billions to Medicare, in a process known as sequestration.
Hours after the CBS interview aired, the White House appeared to respond directly to Musk with the release of a press release titled “FACT: One, Big, Beautiful Bill Cuts Spending, Fuels Growth.” And Trump responded directly from the Oval Office, noting Democratic opposition and the challenges of unifying a fractious GOP caucus. Negotiations with the Senate will result in changes to the legislation, Trump said.
“My reaction’s a lot of things,” Trump said. “I’m not happy about certain aspects of it, but I’m thrilled by other aspects of it.”
“That’s the way they go,” he added. “It’s very big. It’s the big, beautiful bill.”
Cuts in question
It is unclear whether Musk succeeded in making the government more efficient, regardless of what Congress does.
While the DOGE program originally set a goal of cutting $2 trillion in federal spending, Musk ultimately revised that target down dramatically, to $150 billion. The program’s “wall of receipts” claims that $175 billion has been saved, but the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service has documented an increase in spending over last year.
“DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything,” Musk said in the Post interview this week. “So, like, something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it.”
Musk had been brought into the Trump administration designated as a special government employee, a position limited to 130 days that does not require Senate approval.
But the legal case making its way through the Washington courtroom of U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan is questioning the entire arrangement.
The White House attempted to “minimize Musk’s role, framing him as a mere advisor without any formal authority,” Chutkan wrote, while granting him broad powers that gave him “unauthorized access” to “private and proprietary information,” like Social Security numbers and medical records. Those actions, Chutkan added, provide the basis for parties to claim Musk inflicted substantial injury in a legal challenge.
‘I think I’ve done enough’
Musk was scheduled to speak on Tuesday after SpaceX’s Starship test launch, setting out the road ahead to “making life multiplanetary.” But he never appeared after the spacecraft failed early on in its planned trajectory to orbit Earth.
The SpaceX Starship rocket is launched Tuesday in Texas. It later disintegrated over the Indian Ocean, officials said.
(Sergio Flores / AFP / Getty Images)
Starship is supposed to be the vehicle that returns Americans to the moon in just two years. NASA, in conjunction with U.S. private sector companies, is in a close race with China to return humans to the moon for the first time since the end of the Apollo program.
But none of Musk’s endeavors has suffered more than his electric car company, Tesla, which saw a 71% plunge in profits in the first quarter of 2025 and a 50% drop in stock value from its highs in December. An Axios Harris Poll released last week found that Tesla dropped in its reputation ranking of America’s 100 most visible companies to 95th place, down from eighth in 2021 and 63rd last year.
The reputational damage to Tesla, setbacks at SpaceX and limits to his influence on Trump appear to be cautioning Musk to step back from his political activity.
“I think in terms of political spending, I’m going to do a lot less in the future,” Musk told Bloomberg News on May 20, during the Qatar Economic Forum. “I think I’ve done enough.”
PALM DESERT — They came to the baking desert to honor one of their own, a political professional, a legend and a throwback to a time when gatherings like this one — a companionable assembly of Republicans, Democrats and the odd newspaper columnist — weren’t such a rare and noteworthy thing.
They came to Palm Desert on a 98-degree spring day to do the things that political pros do when they gather: drink and laugh and swap stories of campaigns and elections past.
And they showed, with their affection and goodwill and mutual regard, how much the world, and the world of politics, have changed.
“This is how politics used to be,” Democrat Harvey Englander said after sidling up to Republican Joel Fox. The two met through their work with the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., a spawn of the Proposition 13 taxpayer revolt, circa 1978.
“We had different views of how government should work,” Englander said as Fox nodded his assent. “But we agreed government should work.”
Spencer was a campaign strategist and master tactician who helped usher into office generations of GOP leaders, foremost among them Ronald Reagan. The former president and California governor was a Hollywood has-been until Spencer came along and turned him into something compelling and new, something they called a “citizen-politician.”
Hanging, inevitably, over the weekend’s celebration was the current occupant of the Oval Office, a boiling black cloud compared to the radiant and sunshiny Reagan. Spencer was no fan of Donald Trump, and he let it be known.
“A demagogue and opportunist,” he called him, chafing, in particular, at Trump’s comparisons of himself to Reagan.
“He would be sick,” Spencer said, guessing the recoil the nation’s 40th president would have had if he’d witnessed the crass and corrupt behavior of the 45th and 47th one.
Many of those at the weekend event are similarly out of step with today’s Republican Party and, especially, Trump’s bomb-the-opposition-to-rubble approach to politics. But most preferred not to express those sentiments for the record.
George Steffes, who served as Reagan’s legislative director in Sacramento, allowed as how the loudly and proudly uncouth Trump was “180 degrees” from the politely mannered Reagan. In five years, Steffes said, he never once heard the governor raise his voice, belittle a person or “treat a human being with anything but respect.”
Fox, with a seeming touch of wounded pride, suggested Trump could use “some pushback from some of the ‘old thinking’ of the Stu Spencer/Ronald Reagan era.”
A flag flown over the U.S. Capitol in Spencer’s honor was displayed at his memorial celebration, along with White House schedules from the 1984 campaign.
(H.D. Palmer)
Behind them, playing on a big-screen TV, were images from Spencer’s filled-to-the-bursting life.
Old black-and-white snapshots — an apple-cheeked Navy sailor, a little boy — alternated with photographs of Spencer smiling alongside Reagan and President Ford, standing with Dick Cheney and George H.W. Bush, appearing next to Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Wilson, a spry 91, was among the 150 or so who turned out to remember Spencer. He was given a place of honor, seated with his wife, Gayle, directly in front of the podium.)
In a brief presentation, Spencer’s son, Steve, remembered his father as someone who emphasized caring and compassion, as well as hard work and the importance of holding fast to one’s principles. “Pop’s word,” he said, “was gold.”
Spencer’s grandson, Sam, a Republican political consultant in Washington, choked up as he recounted how “Papa Stu” not only helped make history but never stinted on his family, driving four hours to attend Sam’s 45-minute soccer games and staying up well past bedtime to get after-action reports on his grandson’s campaigns.
Stu Spencer, he said, was a voracious reader and owned “one of the greatest political minds in history.”
Outside the golf resort, a stiff wind kicked up, ruffling the palm trees and sending small waves across a water hazard on the 18th green — an obvious metaphor for these blustery and unsettled times.
Fred Karger first met Spencer in 1976 when his partner, Bill Roberts, hired Karger to work on an unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign. (In 2012, Karger made history as the first out gay major-party candidate to run for president.)
He no longer recognizes the political party he dedicated his life to. “It’s the Trump-publican Party,” Karger said. “It’s no longer the Republican Party.”
But politics are cyclical, he went on, and surely Trump and his MAGA movement will run their course and the GOP will return to the days when Reagan’s optimism and Spencer’s less-hateful campaign style return to fashion.
His gripped his white wine like a potion, delivering hope. “Don’t you think?”
SACRAMENTO — The big question in California politics is, “Will Kamala Harris run for governor?” But that’s the wrong question. Far more important is, “Should she?”
And that’s not a question to be answered based strictly on her prospects for winning.
Rather, the answer should be determined based on what strengths, goals and ideas she would bring to the table — her specific plans for fixing California’s enormous problems, her eagerness to fight even political allies to achieve her objectives and her own desire to lead the state’s comeback.
She shouldn’t view the job as a consolation prize after losing the presidential election to Donald Trump. Voters would smell that and, anyway, Harris would be miserably bored in the state Capitol dealing with budget minutiae and relatively inexperienced legislative leaders.
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So far, since returning from Washington to her native state, Harris, 60, has displayed none of the above criteria that California needs in its next governor.
But neither did she previously in any noteworthy way as a U.S. senator or — particularly — state attorney general. As attorney general, Harris refused to take positions on important ballot measures, including those dealing with her role as California’s so-called top cop — propositions to stiffen criminal sentences and both abolish and expedite the death penalty.
Harris has a record of being overly cautious about taking positions that could alienate interests she deems important to her political career.
But, look, you don’t need to be a gubernatorial candidate to express concerns about your state. Any resident who’s conscious should be alarmed.
“Home prices have skyrocketed as supply slumped over the past three decades,” the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California noted in a report last week.
California’s median home price in March was $884,000 — very tough if not impossible for many middle-class families. The housing shortage is largely due to over-regulation, tangled red tape that slows issuance of building permits and abuse of California’s environmental protection laws.
There’s a strong move in the Legislature to ease regulations, but it’s highly controversial. Does Harris have a thought on this?
Homeowner insurance rates are rising fast in the aftermath of wildfires. And in many fire-prone regions, traditional policies are impossible to obtain. The next governor needs to fix this.
California’s poverty rate is the nation’s highest when the cost of living is considered, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Despite our spending many billions of dollars and regardless of ugly finger-pointing at each other by Newsom and local officials, 187,000 Californians are homeless — a 35% increase in 17 years. That’s the highest in the nation — only partly because we’ve got the largest population.
Gasoline prices are roughly $1.60 a gallon higher in California than the U.S. average. And two oil refineries are planning to shut down, invariably hiking pump prices even higher.
We’re a high-tax state, a fact Newsom is in denial about. We lean too heavily on the wealthy for tax revenue and that produces roller-coaster budget deficits and surpluses depending on the stock market. It’s ridiculous. State taxes should be modernized. But no politician has the guts to attempt that.
Then there’s California’s historic problem of not enough water for its thirst.
Does Harris have anything to say about any of this? She hasn’t so far.
Of course, the seven leading announced Democratic candidates have been practically mute themselves on matters that risk aggravating party interest groups.
One exception is former Los Angeles Mayor and state Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, who has been bolder than most of his rivals.
Harris has said she’ll decide by the end of summer whether to run for governor in 2026. Maybe she’ll seek the presidency again in 2028 or retire from politics and make a bundle in the private sector.
But Villaraigosa already is taking shots at her — including last week for allegedly helping to cover up former President Biden’s cognitive decline while in the Oval Office. Villaraigosa included in the attack another gubernatorial candidate: former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra.
Harris is a lot more vulnerable than Becerra on the issue.
But it’s a cheap shot. How many people would publicly accuse their boss of being mentally incompetent? And Harris would have instantly been blasted for being self-serving by plotting to push the president aside so she could grab the Democratic nomination.
Harris could help herself and California’s voters, however, by occasionally voicing some anxiety about her home state.
The little we’ve heard from her this year are attacks on Trump. She also has been lending her name to anti-Trump fundraising appeals by the Democratic National Committee.
But the last thing California Democrats need is another politician — especially a potential governor — telling them that Trump is an evil, ignorant con artist. They’re fully aware of that. They need someone who can tell them how their state can be fixed.
If she ran, Harris would be the initial favorite because of her broad name recognition, past election successes in California and fundraising ability. Some current candidates would probably drop out.
But there doesn’t seem to be a public clamoring for her to run.
Harris needs to start showing people why she should even consider seeking the job. Because, so far, she’s sounding more like a 2028 presidential retread.
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire host Jeremy Clarkson admitted he would be “sobbing on the floor” after Contestant Nicholas Bennett lost the biggest amount in show history
23:03, 25 May 2025Updated 23:05, 25 May 2025
(Image: ITV)
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire Contestant Nicholas Bennett lost the biggest amount of money in the show’s history after making a huge mistake.
The show, which has now been running for 30 seasons, saw Nicholas get all the way to 500k without using any of his lifelines, leaving host Jeremy Clarkson hugely impressed. However, things took a turn, and Nicholas ended up losing a whopping £375k.
After the £125,000 question, Clarkson says: “He’s just roaring along.”
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire Contestant Nicholas Bennett lost the biggest amount of money in the show’s history(Image: ITV)
Next up was the £250,000 question, which read: “Which of these groups never successfully invaded the city of Rome?”. The options were: “a) Visigoths, b) Huns, c) Vandals, d) Gauls”.
Nicholas, looking quite confident, said: “I do like history, I know the Gauls invaded pretty early on. I’m pretty sure the Vandals destroyed the city – that’s why we have vandalism. I don’t think the Huns did, I don’t think they made it that far into Europe, whereas I knew the Visigoths were around. As it’s a free shot, I’m 70-80% sure…”
Clarkson proceeded to remind him that he’s still got all four lifelines and that he doesn’t need to guess, however, Nicholas responds: “I don’t think this is a guess though. Maybe on the next question I’ll need them, so I’m gonna say Huns – final answer.”
The show, which has now been running for 30 seasons, saw Nicholas get all the way to 500k without using any of his lifelines(Image: ITV)
Lo and behold, the answer was correct, and Nicholas went on to the next question worth £500k.
Host Jeremy Clarkson observed: “You seem quite relaxed”, to which Nicholas responds: “It’s not relaxed inside my head.”
The £500k question read: “Which of these long-running US sitcoms had the most episodes? a) The Big Bang Theory b) Friends c) The Office or d) Seinfeld”.
Unsure on the answer, he asked the audience who thought it was Friends – but only 37% – while 30% thought Seinfeld. Still unsure and not wanting to take chances yet, he used 50/50, which left The Big Bang Theory and The Office (which meant the audience was wrong).
(Image: ITV)
Nicolas stated that it was difficult to get his words out before revealing The Big Bang Theory as his final answer. The answer was correct and then it was on to the final question, the £1million question.
Clarkson asks: “Which of these words, each coined by a famous writer, was derived from the title of a fairytale about three princes? a)Pandemonium b) Serendipity c) Utopia d) Yahoo.”
Nicholas says: “The one that’s standing out to me is yahoo, but I don’t know.”
He asks host Jeremy, who says he can’t think of a fairytale that’s about three princes and points out that all four words have come from authors. Nicholas then remembers a puppet show he went to recently in Spain, which he thinks was about three princes. He said he doesn’t speak Spanish well enough to know what the story was about. “But I think someone was yelling yahoo”, he said.
He reasons that he’s still got £125k if he gets it wrong, and Clarkson points out that he would lose £375k and that he has another lifeline. Nicholas then used his lifeline, but unfortunately, his friend Meg had no idea of the answer.
“Normally, I’m really averse to any kind of gambling, but I do think I’m going to go for it,” he says, “Yahoo, final answer.”
The computer then reveals the answer to be serendipity, coined by Horace Walpole from The Three Princes of Serendip. Nicholas shrugs and says: ”I’ve still got £125k” as Jeremy admits he would be “sobbing on the floor” if he’d just lost that much money.
“Oh my giddy aunt,” Clarkson said afterwards. “Is that the biggest loss in Millionaire history?” and he tells Nicholas: “I don’t think I’ve had a contestant I’ve enjoyed more than you. Well done, enjoy your winnings.”
After the ad break he welcomed viewers back by saying: “We’ve just seen someone lose what we think is the biggest amount in Who Wants to be a Millionaire history”.
TikTok sensation Katie Kennedy – aka The History Gossip – is bringing history to life in her new Sky TV show History Crush after going viral with her bawdy social media videos
Queen Elizabeth I was “fuggers”, Henry VIII “clapped” and it’s debatable whether Anne Of Cleeves was a “minger”.
Katie Kennedy, better known as The History Gossip, uses this colourful language to bring alive famous historical characters in her bawdy social media posts, which have earned millions of likes on TikTok. Most people take years to get noticed, but Katie became famous practically overnight.
One minute she was writing her 12,000-word dissertation on Women in Pompeii in her final year at Durham University, the next she’d posted a few quirky history videos on TikTok and gone viral.
Like most students, she’d happily wile away hours of study time on social media, but for Katie, it led to greater things. “I was on TikTok all the time anyway, so I posted some stuff about the Tudors and I got a couple of thousand followers Then I did a video with the caption – why were the Tudes clapped?” she says.
Seeing my blank expression, she translates: “Why were they really ugly? That did really well. It got onto this really big meme page called Great British Memes and they’ve got loads of followers. People were screenshotting it and asking, ‘Is that you?”
Earthy and funny, Katie’s history videos are the right side of sweary, with a sprinkling of Gen Z language. “Some of the slang that I’ve picked up through the years was originally just to get around TikTok guidelines,” she explains.
The young Henry might have been worth a flng, but Katie says the older king was definitely ‘clapped’(Image: Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Half a million followers later, Katie got a book deal and published The History Gossip – Was Anne Of Cleeves A Minger? And she will now be appearing on our screens on Sky TV’s History Crush, where she’ll be rummaging through the underwear drawers of historical figures like Lord Byron, Charles Dickens or Marie-Antoinette – and asking the big questions like was Henry VIII clapped? “Yes he was,” she giggles. And was Lord Byron a crush or a burn? “Definitely a crush.”
The speed at which Katie got a book deal will have many seasoned writers gnashing at the bit. “I had a message from my now agent in February last year when things were going off,” she says. “And she was like, ‘Have you ever thought about writing a book?’ And I thought, ‘Yeah maybe in the future.’ But as soon as I handed in my dissertation, I started writing it and finished it during Freshers Week at Oxford – when I was hungover!
“We got it out for November for Christmas, because it was more of a gifty book. It’s still really weird seeing it in the book shops.”
When we meet outside on a sunny afternoon in pretty Vaults and Gardens Cafe by Radcliffe Camera in Oxford, where 25-year-old Katie’s now studying for her masters, I have to ask, “Was Anne of Cleeves a minger?”
A diet of sugar left the Virgin Queen with ‘fuggers’ teeth and awful breath, says Katie Kennedy(Image: UIG via Getty Images)
“Well I don’t think so,” she replies. “Henry VIII gave her a castle and they had a brother and sister type of relationship. Of all his wives, she came out of it quite well. She wasn’t really minging, like her portraits said, but she was ‘mid’.”
What about Elizabeth 1? “Her teeth were fuggers because she ate so much sugar,” says Katie. “And it’s so funny that even when she looks a bit minging in her portrait, that’s probably her best photoshopped version.”
Katie has just returned from a holiday abroad, but her skin remains the colour of porcelain. “I don’t like to sit in the sun because I get scared of getting sunburned,” she says in her sing-song Geordie accent.
“I’ve lived in Durham my whole life. I grew up there, went to a local comprehensive school, did sixth form. And then a journalism apprenticeship with BBC,” she says.
This explains why Katie’s so good at finding a hook in a story – and she has a journalism certificate to prove it. “In my posts, I have to get a three second intro to get people interested – that takes a lot of research,” she explains. “I don’t really script them though, I just press record!”
The History Gossip says Anne of Cleeves was nowhere near as ‘minging’ in real life as her portrait(Image: Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
The secret of Katie’s success is clearly an authentic voice on the platform, which is backed up by years of hard academic study.
“I did journalism for two years, but I felt like I’d missed out on university, so I applied to Durham to do Ancient History and Archeology – and got in!” she says.
While she seems surprised by her ‘luck,’ it strikes me that both Durham and Oxford are lucky to have someone with such a knack for bringing history to life.
Although she has a bit of imposter syndrome, the university social life has made up for it. “I loved being at Durham – all the traditions and stuff and that’s partly why I wanted to come to Oxford,” she admits. “It’s fun and you don’t get that in every university.”
A quick peek at her socials and you can see Katie has settled in well since arriving last September. She laughs: “Yeah the balls are so nice. I love wearing the gowns. I went to a Balioll College ball last week. I can’t lie – the balls here are better than Durham!”
Katie’s first taste of history came when her parents dragged her around National Trust properties every Sunday. “I remember when I was seven being like, I don’t want to go to Wellington and Cragside, I just want to sit on my little Nintendo,’” she admits.
In her new show, Katie reckons poet Byron was definitely a ‘crush’ rather than a ‘burn’(Image: Getty Images)
But the experience left an impression, because she fell in love with immersive history – even becoming part of a Beamish Living Museum of the North exhibit.
“It’s just down the road from where I liv,e so I did work experience there twice,” she recalls. “Once dressed up as a Victorian school child and then as a Second World War evacuée and I had my little cardboard gas mask box.
“Did you know during rationing, instead of ice lollies little kids would have frozen carrots?”
Inspired by TV historians such as Lucy Worsley and Ruth Goodman, Katie admits that Horrible Histories – which has probably done more to make history popular than all the dusty old academic institutions put together – inspired her.
“Horrible Histories doesn’t make you feel like you’re learning. The author of the books, Terry Deary, is from Sunderland, which is not far from where I’m from,” she adds proudly.
“I used to love Ruth when she would do Victorian Farm on TV and she would be like, ‘I’m going to make bread from scratch.’ She doesn’t make you feel you’re being lectured to – she’s living history and talking about normal people, who I think get overlooked sometimes.
“It definitely sparked the way I like to present history in a fun, doesn’t-feel-like-you’re-learning type of way.”
‘Misunderstood’ Marie Antoinette loved her gowns and employed a full-time hot chocolate maker(Image: ullstein bild via Getty Images)
I do wonder what Katie’s more traditional tutors think of her style of bringing history to the masses. “When I first started on TikTok, I blocked everyone at Durham and friends and family, because I was embarrassed about posting a video that might get three views,” she reveals. “It was only later when I did a series on the Victorians, that I stopped caring what people thought.
“My supervisor at Oxford’s really supportive. I told him it’s like Horrible History but for adults, and he thinks it’s great that I’m making history more accessible.”
Social media burn out is real for influencers. I ask how she’s managing her time with so much on her plate. “My masters is on British and European 18th-century history, and I’m doing my dissertation on the fan-making industry and how women used fans. But I’ve gone part-time now, so I’ve got another year to get my arse in gear and sort it”: she says.
“I used to post every single day on TikTok, but I’ve learned to take a step back from it and know that if I don’t post today, it’s not like the end of everything.”
And history clearly attracts a decent social media crowd. “I just get Americans not being able to understand my accent, or they’re like ‘what’s a minger?’” she laughs.
In Durham she lives with her mum, dad and brother, who’s just started studying politics at university. “He was debating history or politics, but he likes arguments, so it’s politics,” she says.
Katie and her new book The History Gossip – Was Anne of Cleeves A Minger?(Image: Rowan Griffiths / Daily Mirror)
While she’s keen to ask if historical figures are worth dating, she sidesteps when asked if she’s single. “Depends on who’s asking?” she smiles.
But she gushes when talking about one of her great loves back in Durham. “We’ve just got a King Charles Spaniel puppy called Millie – I love to sit and cuddle her in the garden,” she says. “I miss her so much when I’m not there.”
Devoting a lot of time to studying women in history Katie continues: “I especially like the Brontes and also Mary Antoinette, because I feel like she was very misunderstood.”
The arts have been losing out in the push for more maths and engineering, but Katie is making history cool again and reminds us the importance of knowing about our past.
“History keeps repeating itself,” she says. “People aren’t so different to us today. The Tudors put belladonna in their eyes to make them sparkle. Victorian women would eat arsenic wafers to give their skin a pale complexion and wore dresses dyed with a green pigment made from arsenic. Women died wearing them.”
So, forget Brazilian butt lifts, or excessive tanning – when it comes to dying for beauty, the Tudors and Victorians got there first.
• HISTORY CRUSH, presented by Katie Kennedy (aka History Gossip), will be available on Sky HISTORY on demand via Sky and Virgin Media from May 29. More at www.history.co.uk/shows/history-crush #HISTORYCRUSH @HISTORYUK
Bangkok, Thailand – Over several years in the mid-1960s, the crumbling ruins of an ancient temple in northeast Thailand were picked clean by local looters.
Possibly hundreds of centuries-old statues that were long buried beneath the soft, verdant grounds around the temple were stolen.
To this day, all the known artefacts from the pillaging spree, collectively known as the Prakhon Chai hoard, sit scattered thousands of miles away in museums and collections across the United States, Europe and Australia.
In a matter of weeks, though, the first of those statues will begin their journey home to Thailand.
The acquisitions committee of San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum recommended the release last year of four bronze statues from the hoard, which had been held in its collection since the late 1960s.
San Francisco city’s Asian Art Commission, which manages the museum, then approved the proposal on April 22, officially setting the pieces free.
Some six decades after the late British antiquities dealer Douglas Latchford is suspected of spiriting the statues out of the country, they are expected to arrive back in Thailand within a month or two.
“We are the righteous owners,” Disapong Netlomwong, senior curator for the Office of National Museums at Thailand’s Fine Arts Department, told Al Jazeera.
“It is something that our ancestors … have made, and it should be exhibited here to show the civilisation and the belief of the people,” said Disapong, who also serves on Thailand’s Committee for the Repatriation of Stolen Artefacts.
The imminent return of the statues is the latest victory in Thailand’s quest to reclaim its pilfered heritage.
Their homecoming also exemplifies the efforts of countries across the world to retrieve pieces of their own stolen history that still sit in display cases and in the vaults of some of the West’s top museums.
The Golden Boy statue on display at the National Museum Bangkok, Thailand, following its return last year from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art [Zsombor Peter/Al Jazeera]
From Thai temples to the Acropolis in Athens
Latchford, a high-profile Asian art dealer who came to settle in Bangkok and lived there until his death in 2020 at 88 years of age, is believed to have earned a fortune from auction houses, private collectors and museums around the world who acquired his smuggled ancient artefacts from Thailand and neighbouring Cambodia.
In 2021, Latchford’s daughter, Nawapan Kriangsak, agreed to return her late father’s private collection of more than 100 artefacts, valued at more than $50m, to Cambodia.
Though never convicted during his lifetime, Latchford was charged with falsifying shipping records, wire fraud and a host of other crimes related to antiquities smuggling by a US federal grand jury in 2019.
He died the following year, before the case against him could go to trial.
In 2023 the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York agreed to return 16 pieces tied to Latchford’s smuggling network to Cambodia and Thailand.
Ricky Patel of the New York field office of the Department of Homeland Security, delivers remarks during an announcement of the repatriation and return to Cambodia of 30 Cambodian antiquities sold to US collectors and institutions by Douglas Latchford and seized by the US Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, New York City, United States, in August 2022 [Andrew Kelly/Reuters]
San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum has also previously returned pieces to Thailand – two intricately carved stone lintels taken from a pair of temples dating back to the 10th and 11th centuries, in 2021.
While Thailand and Cambodia have recently fared relatively well in efforts to reclaim their looted heritage from US museum collections, Greece has not had such luck with the British Museum in London.
Perhaps no case of looted antiquities has grabbed more news headlines than that of the so-called “Elgin Marbles”.
The 2,500-year-old friezes, known also as the Parthenon Marbles, were hacked off the iconic Acropolis in Athens in the early 1800s by agents of Lord Elgin, Britain’s ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, which controlled Greece at that time.
Elgin claimed he took the marbles with the permission of the Ottomans and then sold them in 1816 to the British Museum in London, where they remain.
Greece has been demanding the return of the artefacts since the country’s declaration of independence in 1832 and sent an official request to the museum in 1983, according to the nongovernmental Hellenic Institute of Cultural Diplomacy.
“Despite all these efforts, the British government has not deviated from its positions over the years, legally considering the Parthenon marbles to belong to Britain. They have even passed laws to prevent the return of cultural artefacts,” the institute said.
A woman looks at the Parthenon Marbles, a collection of stone objects, inscriptions and sculptures, on show at the British Museum in London in 2014 [File: Dylan Martinez/Reuters]
‘Colonialism is still alive and well’
Tess Davis, executive director of the Antiquities Coalition, a Washington-based nonprofit campaigning against the illicit trade of ancient art and artefacts, said that “colonialism is still alive and well in parts of the art world”.
“There is a mistaken assumption by some institutions that they are better carers, owners, custodians of these cultural objects,” Davis told Al Jazeera.
But Davis, who has worked on Cambodia’s repatriation claims with US museums, says the “custodians” defence has long been debunked.
“These antiquities were cared for by [their] communities for centuries, in some cases for millennia, before there was … a market demand for them, leading to their looting and trafficking, but we still do see resistance,” she said.
Brad Gordon, a lawyer representing the Cambodian government in its ongoing repatriation of stolen artefacts, has heard museums make all sorts of claims to defend retaining pieces that should be returned to their rightful homelands.
Excuses from museums include claiming that they are not sure where pieces originated from; that contested items were acquired before laws banned their smuggling; that domestic laws block their repatriation, or that the ancient pieces deserve a more global audience than they would receive in their home country.
Still, none of those arguments should keep a stolen piece from coming home, Gordon said.
“If we believe the object is stolen and the country of origin wishes for it to come home, then the artefact should be returned,” he said.
Old attitudes have started breaking down though, and more looted artefacts are starting to find their way back to their origins.
“There’s definitely a growing trend toward doing the right thing in this area, and … I hope that more museums follow the Asian Art Museum’s example. We’ve come a long way, but there’s still a long way to go,” Davis said.
The Kneeling Lady on display at the National Museum Bangkok, Thailand, following its return last year from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art [Zsombor Peter/Al Jazeera]
Much of the progress, Davis believes, is down to growing media coverage of stolen antiquities and public awareness of the problem in the West, which has placed mounting pressure on museums to do the right thing.
In 2022, the popular US comedy show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver dedicated a whole episode to the topic. As Oliver said, if you go to Greece and visit the Acropolis you might notice “some odd details”, such as sections missing from sculptures – which are now in Britain.
“Honestly, if you are ever looking for a missing artefact, nine times out of 10 it’s in the British Museum,” Oliver quips.
Gordon also believes a generational shift in thinking is at play among those who once trafficked in the cultural heritage of other countries.
“For example, the children of many collectors, once they are aware of the facts of how the artefacts were removed from the country of origin, want their parents to return them,” he said.
Proof of the past
The four bronze statues the San Francisco museum will soon be returning to Thailand date back to the 7th and 9th centuries.
Thai archaeologist Tanongsak Hanwong said that period places them squarely in the Dvaravati civilisation, which dominated northeast Thailand, before the height of the Khmer empire that would build the towering spires of Angkor Wat in present-day Cambodia and come to conquer much of the surrounding region centuries later.
Three of the slender, mottled figures, one nearly a metre tall (3.2 feet), depict Bodhisattva – Buddhist adherents on the path to nirvana – and the other the Buddha himself in a wide, flowing robe.
Tanongsak, who brought the four pieces in the San Francisco collection to the attention of Thailand’s stolen artefacts repatriation committee in 2017, said they and the rest of the Prakhon Chai hoard are priceless proof of Thailand’s Buddhist roots at a time when much of the region was still Hindu.
“The fact that we do not have any Prakhon Chai bronzes on display anywhere [in Thailand], in the national museum or local museums whatsoever, it means we do not have any evidence of the Buddhist history of that period at all, and that’s strange,” he said.
Plai Bat II temple in Buriram province, Thailand, from where the Prakhon Chai hoard was looted in the 1960s, as seen in 2016 [Courtesy of Tanongsak Hanwong]
The Fine Arts Department first wrote to San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum about the statues’ illicit provenance in 2019, but started to make progress on having them returned only when the US Department of Homeland Security got involved on Thailand’s behalf.
Robert Mintz, the museum’s chief curator, said staff could find no evidence that the statues had been trafficked in their own records.
But they were convinced they had been looted and smuggled out of Thailand – and of Latchford’s involvement – once Homeland Security provided proof, with the help of Thai researchers.
“Once that evidence was presented and they heard it, their feeling was the appropriate place for these would be back in Thailand,” Mintz said of the museum’s staff and acquisition committee.
‘Pull back the curtain’
The San Francisco Asian Art Museum went a step further when it finally resolved to return the four statues to Thailand.
It also staged a special exhibit around the pieces to highlight the very questions the experience had raised regarding the theft of antiquities.
The exhibition – Moving Objects: Learning from Local and Global Communities – ran in San Francisco from November to March.
“One of our goals was to try to indicate to the visiting public to the museum how important it is to look historically at where works of art have come from,” Mintz said.
“To pull back the curtain a bit, to say, these things do exist within American collections and now is the time to address challenges that emerge from past collecting practice,” he said.
Mintz says Homeland Security has asked the Asian Art Museum to look into the provenance of at least another 10 pieces in its collection that likely came from Thailand.
Thai dancers perform during a ceremony to return two stolen hand-carved sandstone lintels dating back to the 9th and 10th centuries to the Thai government in 2021, in Los Angeles, the US. The artefacts had been exhibited at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum [Ashley Landis/AP]
Tess Davis, of the Antiquities Coalition campaign group, said the exhibition was a very unusual, and welcome, move for a museum in the process of giving up looted artefacts.
In Thailand, Disapong and Tanongsak say the Asian Art Museum’s decision to recognise Thailand’s rightful claim to the statues could also help them start bringing the rest of the Prakhon Chai hoard home, including 14 more known pieces in other museums around the US, and at least a half-dozen scattered across Europe and Australia.
“It is indeed a good example, because once we can show the world that the Prakhon Chai bronzes were all exported from Thailand illegally, then probably, hopefully some other museums will see that all the Prakhon Chai bronzes they have must be returned to Thailand as well,” Tanongsak said.
There are several other artefacts besides the Prakhon Chai hoard that Thailand is also looking to repatriate from collections around the world, he said.
Davis said the repatriation of stolen antiquities is still being treated by too many with collections as an obstacle when it should be seen, as the Asian Art Museum has, as an opportunity.
“It’s an opportunity to educate the public,” Davis said.
“It’s an opportunity to build bridges with Southeast Asia,” she added, “and I hope other institutions follow suit.”
WASHINGTON — How can Congress cut Medicaid without explicitly cutting Medicaid?
That has been a years-long dilemma facing fiscal conservatives in the Republican Party who have sought cuts to the country’s deficit-driving social safety net programs, including Medicaid, Social Security and Medicare, without generating political fallout from the tens of millions of Americans who will suffer the consequences.
Now, GOP lawmakers have settled on a strategy, outlined in legislation expected to pass the House in the coming days amid ongoing negotiations over the package that President Trump is calling his “Big Beautiful Bill.”
Rather than lowering the income eligibility limit for coverage — an old policy proposal that would cut off Americans at the higher end of the eligibility range — Trump’s bill will instead require applicants to provide proof of their work hours and apply for specific exceptions, creating new barriers for individuals to maintain insurance.
House passage of the bill is far from assured, and the Senate will still have its say. But if it does become law, the policy would affect more than 71 million of the poorest Americans, more of whom live in California than any other state.
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Barriers to entry are the point
If everyone eligible under the new work requirements were to apply for and receive Medicaid coverage, the cost savings to the government would be minimal. But the barriers themselves are the point, making it more likely that people with a right to Medicaid won’t ultimately receive it, experts said.
“If you want to make a substantial cut to the program, how do you do that in a systematic way?” said Matt Bruenig, founder of People’s Policy Project and a former lawyer at the National Labor Relations Board.
“With the work requirements, the number of people who seem to be actually ineligible because of it is quite small — so if it actually is perfectly administrated, you’re not going to see a whole lot of savings,” Bruenig said. “But if it’s not well administrated and it creates all these problems, then you could see significant savings.”
Existing government programs, such as Social Security, unemployment and supplemental nutrition assistance for women, infants and children, determine eligibility for those benefits based on an individual’s income. But creating a new set of criteria for Medicaid based on hours worked will require a new reporting system that is not outlined in the bill.
“We have all these systems that are based around making sure people have the earnings that they can report to all these agencies, but you don’t really report hours in any context,” Bruenig added. “Monthly hours — that’s just not a thing. And it’s not clear how that’s going to work, at all.”
Who counts as ‘waste, fraud and abuse’?
Trump and members of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of Republican fiscal hawks, have argued for a strict hourly work requirement to eliminate “waste, fraud and abuse” in Medicaid by cutting off unproductive individuals from government benefits.
But exemptions suggested in the draft legislation — parents caring for young children or elderly parents, individuals dealing with health issues, those between jobs — reflect the range of reasons why Medicaid recipients may fall below the proposed hourly requirement. And each time an exception arises, individuals will have to refile, increasing the likelihood they will simply let their coverage lapse.
It also will force working individuals who would otherwise be eligible — such as Americans working gig jobs for DoorDash or Uber, for example — to account for hours worked transiting between jobs that don’t generate receipts.
“They just are not finding very much at all,” said John Schmitt, a senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, when asked whether ineligible individuals are routinely receiving Medicaid.
“The real problems are not with individuals taking advantage of Medicaid,” Schmitt added. “It is with healthcare providers taking advantage of Medicaid, in the sense of the way they bill and provide services to people. And that is not going to be changed in any way, whatsoever, by imposing a work requirement.”
The Congressional Budget Office said it is these Medicaid recipients who will either fall behind or grow fed up with the paperwork, resulting in 7.6 million losing coverage under the plan and saving the federal government roughly $800 billion.
California will be hit hardest
The effects of Medicaid cuts will be felt nationwide, but most pointedly in states that expanded Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act. On that score, Democratic states such as California lead the way.
A state assessment published Sunday found the GOP bill would “cause serious harm to California’s health care system,” possibly resulting in up to 3.4 million residents losing coverage.
No state has more workers on Medicaid than California, where 18% of its workforce receives benefits from the program, according to a study from the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
“Millions will lose coverage, hospitals will close, and safety nets could collapse under the weight,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement. “We must sound the alarm because the stakes couldn’t be higher.”
But the political stakes are high for Republicans as well.
Stephen K. Bannon, a former campaign aide and White House strategist to Trump, warned in recent days that the party has “gotta be careful” with Medicaid, given its widespread use among low-income GOP voters.
“A lot of MAGAs are on Medicaid, I’m telling you,” Bannon said on his podcast. “If you don’t think so, you are dead wrong.”
Trump, for his part, seems of two minds on the matter. Cuts to Medicaid, as well as to food stamp programs and green energy tax benefits, will be required to get the bill passed with support from the Freedom Caucus, which says the renewal of tax cuts initially passed in the first Trump administration must be offset with savings elsewhere.
“Here’s what I want on Medicaid: We’re not touching anything,” Trump said Tuesday, taking questions from reporters on Capitol Hill. “All I want is one thing. Three words. We don’t want any waste, fraud or abuse. Very simple — waste, fraud, abuse.”
But in a private meeting with GOP lawmakers, his guidance was sharper. “Don’t f— around with Medicaid,” the president reportedly said.
Once more we’re litigating Joe Biden’s catatonic debate performance, his lumbering gait, his moth-eaten memory and his selfish delusion he deserved a second term in the White House while shuffling through his ninth decade on earth.
“Original Sin,” a book by journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, published this week, is chock-full of anecdotes illustrating the lengths to which Biden’s family and palace guard worked to shield his mental and physical lapses from voters.
John Robert Greene is not at all surprised.
“It’s old news, hiding presidential illness,” said Greene, who’s written a shelf full of books on presidents and the presidency. “I can’t think of too many … who’ve been the picture of health.”
Before we go further, let’s state for the record this in no way condones the actions of Biden and his political enablers. To be clear, let’s repeat it in capital letters: WHAT BIDEN AND HIS HANDLERS DID WAS WRONG.
But, as Greene states, it was not unprecedented or terribly unusual. History abounds with examples of presidential maladies being minimized, or kept secret.
Grover Cleveland underwent surgery for oral cancer on a yacht in New York Harbor to keep his condition from being widely known. Woodrow Wilson suffered a debilitating stroke, a fact covered up by his wife and confidants, who exercised extraordinary power in his stead.
Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy both suffered serious, chronic ailments that were kept well away from the public eye.
Those surrounding Ronald Reagan downplayed his injuries after a 1981 assassination attempt, and the Trump administration misled the public about the seriousness of the president’s condition after he was diagnosed with COVID-19 a month before the 2020 election.
The capacity to misdirect, in Biden’s case, or mislead, as happened under Trump, illustrates one of the magical features of the White House: the ability of a president to conceal himself in plain sight.
“When you’re in the presidency, there is nothing that you can’t hide for awhile,” Greene, an emeritus history professor at Cazenovia College, said from his home in upstate New York. “You’ve got everything at your disposal to live a completely hidden double life, if you want. Everything from the Secret Service to the bubble of the White House.”
Greene likened the Neoclassical mansion at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. to a giant fish bowl — one that is painted from the inside. It’s highly visible, but you can’t really see what’s happening in the interior.
That deflates the notion there was some grand media conspiracy to prop Biden up. (Sorry, haters.)
Yes, detractors will say it was plain as the dawning day that Biden was demented, diminished and obviously not up to the job of the presidency. Today, Trump’s critics say the same sort of thing about him; from their armchairs, they even deliver quite specific diagnoses: He suffers dementia, or Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease.
That doesn’t make it so.
“It’s a very politicized process. People see what they want to see,” said Jacob Appel, a professor of psychiatry and medical education at the Icahn School of Medicine in New York City, who’s writing a book on presidential health.
“You can watch videotapes of Ronald Reagan in 1987,” Appel said, “and, depending on your view of him. you can see him as sharp and funny as ever, or being on the cusp of dementia.” (Five years after leaving the White House, Reagan — then 83 — announced he was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.)
To an uncomfortable degree, those covering the White House — and, by extension, the public they serve — are forced to rely on whatever the White House chooses to reveal.
“I don’t have subpoena power,” Tapper told The Times’ Stephen Battaglio, saying he would have eagerly published the details contained in his new book had sources been willing to come forth while Biden was still in power. “We were just lied to over and over again.”
It hasn’t always been that way.
In September 1955, during his first term, President Dwight D. Eisenhower suffered a heart attack while on a golf vacation in Denver. “”It was sudden,” said Jim Newton, an Eisenhower biographer. “One minute he’s fine and the next minute he was flat on his back, quite literally.”
The details surrounding Eisenhower’s immediate treatment remain a mystery, though Newton suggests that may have had more do with protecting his personal physician, who misdiagnosed the heart attack as a bout of indigestion, than a purposeful attempt to mislead the public.
From then on, the White House was forthcoming — offering daily reports on what Eisenhower ate, his blood pressure, the results of various tests — to a point that it embarrassed the president. (Among the information released was an accounting of Ike’s bowel movements.)
“They were self-consciously transparent,” Newton said. “The White House looked to the Wilson example as something not to emulate.”
Less than 14 months later, Eisenhower had sufficiently recovered — and voters had enough faith in his well-being — that he won his second term in a landslide.
But that 70-year-old example is a notable exception.
As long as there are White House staffers, campaign advisers, political strategists and family members, presidents will be surrounded by people with an incentive to downplay, minimize or obfuscate any physical or mental maladies they face while in office.
All we can do is wait — years, decades — for the truth to come out. And, in the meantime, hope for the best.
The picturesque city of Canterbury in Kent is home to a series of stunning waterways, offering visitors the chance to explore its famous landmarks from a unique perspective
The tranquil waters of Canterbury(Image: Getty Images)
Picture yourself drifting through the historic streets of Canterbury, effortlessly cruising on the pristine waters in a classic punt, basking in the warm glow of the sun. In this charming corner of Kent, visitors are treated to the tranquil pleasure of a guided canal tour along the idyllic River Stour.
As you nestle into your seat, a well-versed guide will enchant you with stories of the city’s storied past, highlighting notable sights such as time-worn bridges, picturesque weaver’s cottages, theatres, ancient monasteries and peaceful orchards. The journey also reveals some of Canterbury’s more sombre tales, including the grim beheading of an unfortunate priest and the harrowing tale of a mill engulfed by flames.
Canterbury as seen from the Bell Harry Tower on Canterbury Cathedral(Image: Getty Images)
The roughly 45-minute excursion provides a distinctive vantage point of Canterbury’s lesser-known treasures, with one visitor lauding the experience for its “crystal clear waters, beautiful buildings, plants and a really unique view passing under bridges and streets.”
The esteemed Canterbury Punting Company, honoured with the Tripadvisor Travellers’ Choice Award 2024, is celebrated for its traditional handcrafted wooden boats and engaging guides who are not only local historians but also possess a natural flair for storytelling, as reported by KentLive.
Their enthralling narratives and adept punting ensure a memorable adventure for everyone embarking on this relaxed voyage, reports Kent Live.
This top-rated company proudly holds an impressive 4.8 out of 5 stars, based on a staggering 1,388 reviews on Tripadvisor. Just this month, a customer raved: “What a fantastic experience and led by a very knowledgeable and entertaining guide/punter – not sure what correct terminology is – by the name of Freddy.
Canterbury has many pretty waterways(Image: Getty Images/NeonJellyfish/E)
“He kept us thoroughly entertained with his tales of yonder whilst on the history boat ride. It was a lovely experience and so relaxing and informative.
“Can’t wait to try the nature tour next. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to do something a bit different and to see Canterbury from the River Stour.”
Sharing the enthusiasm, another visitor from May wrote: “Sebastian was a very talented storyteller and informed us of the magical world that is Canterbury.
“The tour was relaxing and enjoyable, and my family thoroughly enjoyed it. I highly recommend this to any family who wants a day out relaxing on the river.”
Mushtaq’s Heart Lamp poignantly captures the hardships of Muslim women living in southern India
Indian writer-lawyer-activist Banu Mushtaq has scripted history by winning the International Booker prize for the short story anthology, Heart Lamp.
It is the first book written in the Kannada language, which is spoken in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, to win the prestigious prize.
The stories in Heart Lamp were translated into English by Deepa Bhasthi.
Featuring 12 short stories written by Mushtaq over three decades from 1990 to 2023, Heart Lamp poignantly captures the hardships of Muslim women living in southern India.
In her acceptance speech, Mushtaq thanked readers for letting her words wander into their hearts.
“This book was born from the belief that no story is ever small; that in the tapestry of human experience, every thread holds the weight of the whole,” she said.
“In a world that often tries to divide us, literature remains one of the last sacred spaces where we can live inside each other’s minds, if only for a few pages,” she added.
Bhasthi, who became the first Indian translator to win an International Booker, said that she hoped that the win would encourage more translations from and into Kannada and other South Asian languages.
Mushtaq’s win comes off the back of Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand – translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell – winning the prize in 2022.
Her body of work is well-known among book lovers, but the Booker International win has shone a bigger spotlight on her life and literary oeuvre, which mirrors many of the challenges the women in her stories face, brought on by religious conservatism and a deeply patriarchal society.
It is this self-awareness that has, perhaps, helped Mushtaq craft some of the most nuanced characters and plotlines.
“In a literary culture that rewards spectacle, Heart Lamp insists on the value of attention – to lives lived at the edges, to unnoticed choices, to the strength it takes simply to persist. That is Banu Mushtaq’s quiet power,” a review in the Indian Express newspaper says about the book.
Who is Banu Mushtaq?
Mushtaq grew up in a small town in the southern state of Karnataka in a Muslim neighbourhood and like most girls around her, studied the Quran in the Urdu language at school.
But her father, a government employee, wanted more for her and at the age of eight, enrolled her in a convent school where the medium of instruction was the state’s official language – Kannada.
Mushtaq worked hard to become fluent in Kannada, but this alien tongue would become the language she chose for her literary expression.
She began writing while still in school and chose to go to college even as her peers were getting married and raising children.
It would take several years before Mushtaq was published and it happened during a particularly challenging phase in her life.
Her short story appeared in a local magazine a year after she had married a man of her choosing at the age of 26, but her early marital years were also marked by conflict and strife – something she openly spoke of, in several interviews.
Getty Images
Banu Mushtaq (left) and Deepa Bhasthi (right) hold copies of Heart Lamp
In an interview with Vogue magazine, she said, “I had always wanted to write but had nothing to write (about) because suddenly, after a love marriage, I was told to wear a burqa and dedicate myself to domestic work. I became a mother suffering from postpartum depression at 29”.
In the another interview to The Week magazine, she spoke of how she was forced to live a life confined within the four walls of her house.
Then, a shocking act of defiance set her free.
“Once, in a fit of despair, I poured white petrol on myself, intending to set myself on fire. Thankfully, he [the husband] sensed it in time, hugged me, and took away the matchbox. He pleaded with me, placing our baby at my feet saying, ‘Don’t abandon us’,” she told the magazine.
What does Banu Mushtaq write about?
In Heart Lamp, her female characters mirror this spirit of resistance and resilience.
“In mainstream Indian literature, Muslim women are often flattened into metaphors — silent sufferers or tropes in someone else’s moral argument. Mushtaq refuses both. Her characters endure, negotiate, and occasionally push back — not in ways that claim headlines, but in ways that matter to their lives,” according to a review of the book in The Indian Express newspaper.
Mushtaq went on to work as a reporter in a prominent local tabloid and also associated with the Bandaya movement – which focussed on addressing social and economic injustices through literature and activism.
After leaving journalism a decade later, she took up work as a lawyer to support her family.
In a storied career spanning several decades, she has published a copious amount of work; including six short story collections, an essay collection and a novel.
But her incisive writing has also made her a target of hate.
In an interview to The Hindu newspaper, she spoke about how in the year 2000, she received threatening phone calls after she expressed her opinion supporting women’s right to offer prayer in mosques.
A fatwa – a legal ruling as per Islamic law – was issued against her and a man tried to attack her with a knife before he was overpowered by her husband.
But these incidents did not faze Mushtaq, who continued to write with fierce honesty.
“I have consistently challenged chauvinistic religious interpretations. These issues are central to my writing even now. Society has changed a lot, but the core issues remain the same. Even though the context evolves, the basic struggles of women and marginalised communities continue,” she told The Week magazine.
Over the years Mushtaq’s writings have won numerous prestigious local and national awards including the Karnataka Sahitya Academy Award and the Daana Chintamani Attimabbe Award.
In 2024, the translated English compilation of Mushtaq’s five short story collections published between 1990 and 2012 – Haseena and Other Stories – won the PEN Translation Prize.
WASHINGTON — For generations, official American documents have been meticulously preserved and protected — from the era of quills and parchment to boxes of paper to the cloud, safeguarding snapshots of the government and the nation for posterity.
Now, the Trump administration has sought to expand the executive branch’s power to shield from public view key administration initiatives. Officials have used apps like Signal that can auto-delete messages containing sensitive information rather than retaining them for record-keeping. And they have shaken up the National Archives leadership.
To historians and archivists, it points to the possibility that President Trump will leave less for the nation’s historical record than nearly any president before him.
Such an eventuality creates a conundrum: How will experts — and even ordinary Americans — piece together what occurred when those charged with setting aside the artifacts properly documenting history refuse to do so?
How to preserve history?
The Trump administration says it’s the “most transparent in history,” citing the president’s fondness for taking questions from reporters nearly every day. But flooding the airwaves, media outlets and the internet with all things Trump isn’t the same as keeping records that document the inner workings of an administration, historians caution.
“He thinks he controls history,” says Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian who served as founding director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda. “He wants to control what Americans ultimately find out about the truth of his administration, and that’s dangerous.”
Trump long refused to release his tax returns despite every other major White House candidate and president having done so since Jimmy Carter. And, today, White House stenographers still record every word Trump utters, but many of their transcriptions are languishing in the White House press office without authorization for release — meaning there’s no official record of what the president says for weeks, if at all.
“You want to have a record because that’s how you ensure accountability,” said Lindsay Chervinsky, executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library in Mount Vernon, Va.
The law mandates maintaining records
The Presidential Records Act of 1978 mandates the preservation, forever, of White House and vice presidential documents and communications. It deems them the property of the U.S. government and directs the National Archives and Records Administration to administer them after a president’s term.
After his first term, rather than turn classified documents over the National Archives, Trump hauled boxes of potentially sensitive documents to his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, where they ended up piled in his bedroom, a ballroom and even a bathroom and shower. The FBI raided the property to recover them. The case was later scrapped.
Trudy Huskamp Peterson, who served as acting archivist of the United States from 1993 to 1995, said keeping such records for the public is important because “decision-making always involves conflicting views, and it’s really important to get that internal documentation to see what the arguments were.”
Presidential clashes with archivists predate Trump
President George H.W. Bush’s administration destroyed some informal notes, visitor logs and emails. After President Clinton left office, his former national security advisor, Sandy Berger, pleaded guilty to taking copies of a document about terrorist threats from the National Archives.
President George W. Bush’s administration disabled automatic archiving for some official emails, encouraged some staffers to use private email accounts outside their work addresses and lost 22 million emails that were supposed to have been archived, though they were eventually uncovered in 2009.
Congress updated the Presidential Records Act in 2014 to encompass electronic messaging — including commercial email services known to be used by government employees to conduct official business.
But back then, use of auto-delete apps like Signal was far less common.
“It’s far easier to copy — or forward — a commercial email to a dot-gov address to be preserved, than it is to screenshot a series of messages on an app like Signal,” said Jason R. Baron, a professor at the University of Maryland and former director of litigation at the National Archives.
Relying on ’an honor system’
There were efforts during the first Trump administration to safeguard transparency, including a memo issued through the office of White House counsel Don McGahn in February 2017 that reminded White House personnel of the necessity to preserve and maintain presidential records.
The White House now points to having recently ordered the declassification of bevies of historical files, including records related to the assassinations of Kennedy, his brother Robert and Martin Luther King Jr.
The Trump administration says it also ended a Biden policy that allowed staffers to use Microsoft Teams, where chats weren’t captured by White House systems. The Biden administration had over 800 users on Teams, meaning an unknown number of presidential records might have been lost, the Trump administration now says.
But the White House did not answer questions about the possibly of drafting a new memo on record retention like McGahn’s from 2017.
Chervinsky, author of “The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution,” said Congress, the courts and even the public often don’t have the bandwidth to ensure records retention laws are enforced, meaning, “a lot of it is still, I think, an honor system.”
“There aren’t that many people who are practicing oversight,” she said. “So, a lot of it does require people acting in good faith and using the operating systems that they’re supposed to use, and using the filing systems they’re supposed to use.”
Angered by the role the National Archives played in his documents case, meanwhile, Trump fired the ostensibly independent agency’s head, Archivist of the United States Colleen Shogan, and named Secretary of State Marco Rubio as her acting replacement.
Peterson, the former acting national archivist, said she still believes key information about the Trump administration will eventually emerge, but “I don’t know how soon.”
“Ultimately things come out,” she said. “That’s just the way the world works.”
![The Kneeling Lady on display at the National Museum Bangkok, Thailand, following its return last year from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art [Zsombor Peter/Al Jazeera]](https://www.occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Knee-Lady-1747982733.jpg)
![Plai Bat 2 temple in Buriram province, Thailand, from where the Prakhon Chai hoard was looted in the 1960s, as seen in 2016 [Courtesy of Tanongsak Hanwong]](https://www.occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Temple-2-1747983054.jpg)
