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September 2, 2025 The move is only more proof of the desperation behind Trump’s Epstein Distraction Campaign. A billboard in Times Square calls for the release of the Epstein files. July 23, 2025, in New York City. (Adam Gray / Getty Images) This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com. On January 20, Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office with—at least in his mind—an aura of invincibility. A fully compliant Congress was controlled by Republicans who were, in turn, controlled by him. Conservative justices, three of whom he had appointed, dominated the Supreme Court. The defeated opposition, the Democratic Party, seemed distinctly befuddled and weak. Trump then smashed and bullied his way through his first 100 days, ruling via dictator-like decrees—executive orders—and carrying out retribution at every turn. Democracy’s redlines were crossed daily and his MAGA base remained passionately loyal even as the rest of the nation soured watching him do little to make the country better. However, his “realignment” was never faintly as broad or as solid as he pretended it was. For example, while he made gains with Black voters in the 2024 election, rising from 8 percent in 2020 to 15 percent, the last six months have seen a dramatic change in that support. In January 2025, according to a YouGov poll, Black Americans’ disapproval of Trump was at about 69 percent. By June, it had risen to about 85 percent. Through it all, however, his support among Republicans continued to hover between 88 percent and 95 percent. Then, of course, came the Jeffrey Epstein crisis. Trump himself seeded conspiracies surrounding the dead pedophile and his accomplices at rallies and in social media postings. He minimized his 20-year friendship with both Epstein and his girlfriend (and convicted child trafficker) Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for her part in their horrific crimes. Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and FBI Director Kash Patel each claimed at some point to have evidence that would expose a “deep state” cover-up in the case, while bizarre stories of global pedophile rings led by Democrats animated MAGA as much as Trump’s “build the wall” dreams. The MAGA faithful were waiting for the deliverable. Trump, however, found himself trapped, knowing that he’s part of whatever materials exist and that he will not look good (whether he did anything illegal or not) if the Epstein files are actually released. His constantly changing excuses have spread dissent among his own worshipers and led a panicked Trump to throw out any shiny objects he could think of to change the subject. Pay Attention to the Shiny Object Over There On July 21, as part of his Epstein Distraction Campaign, Trump released more than 230,000 pages of FBI and government files related to Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination on April 4, 1968. The more than 6,000 files include FBI documents related to the killing, most of which are not new, according to experts who have reviewed them. They do not, however, include the agency’s nefarious wiretaps of King that are scheduled for release in 2027. There was, of course, neither rhyme nor reason to Trump’s dispersal of those files at that moment. Current Issue The president’s claim was that he was keeping a promise he had made when he returned to the White House in January. Within a few days of being in office, on January 23, Trump issued Executive Order 14176 with instructions for the declassification and release of files related to the assassinations of King, John F. Kennedy, and Robert Kennedy. It was a feint at transparency meant to feed the anti-federalist conspiracists in his base. For decades, a cadre of Americans has believed that there was a government-backed coverup of those killings. In the modern era, the “deep state” adherents of MAGA world and online extremists have indeed kept those fantasies circulating. Martin Luther King III and Bernice King, the surviving King children, were advised of the release and opposed it. They then issued a statement that read in part, “While we support transparency and historical accountability, we object to any attacks on our father’s legacy or attempts to weaponize it to spread falsehoods. We strongly condemn any attempts to misuse these documents in ways intended to undermine our father’s legacy and the significant achievements of the movement.” Bernice would later post on social media, “Now, do the Epstein files,” making it clear that she was not fooled by Trump’s flaccid bait-and-switch game. Of course, privacy concerns and an ideological assault on their father and his legacy have little meaning for Trump as he tries to escape his Epstein crisis by any means necessary. What the King family, scholars, and followers of Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy are legitimately worried about is that the content of those files may serve to reenergize the long and shameful history of the FBI’s attacks on the late civil rights leader. Under the dictatorial rule of then–FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, the agency surveilled, wiretapped, and harassed King and other Black leaders relentlessly during his lifetime. It was the FBI that tried to convince King to commit suicide. It was the FBI that sent information to news outlets accusing King of being controlled by communists. It was the FBI that fostered conflicts and divisions both among Black activists and between the civil rights movement and white allies. Accusations of womanizing were issued to newspapers to embarrass and discredit King. The purpose, as clear as a bell, was to destroy him, his leadership, and the movement. More broadly, the FBI’s Cointelpro (counter-intelligence program), which officially lasted from 1956 to 1971, sought to annihilate movements for justice, fairness, democracy, peace, and inclusion in the 1950s and beyond. Lives were ruined and campaigns suffered setbacks for exercising legitimate and constitutionally protected free speech and protest rights. Despite the exposure of its many, many crimes, for the most part, neither the FBI

Activism / September 2, 2025 Left Alone and Cooked Alive We non-speaking autistics are often treated as disposable. It’s killing us. Another autistic person was left to cook alive in a hot vehicle. Far too often, the so-called normal world treats us as disposable. Ribbons hang on September 22, 2015 adjacent to the parking lot where Hun Joon “Paul” Lee was found dead on a school bus. Lee, a 19-year-old autistic student died after being left on a school bus at the Whittier Union High School District parking lot in Whittier, California. (Sarah Reingewirtz / MediaNews Group / Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images) On August 4, Thomas Anderson, 26, was left unattended in a van for almost eight hours outside a facility for disabled individuals in Dutchess County, New York. It was a hot and humid day, and as the sun beat down on the van, its interior warmed and warmed. Anderson, who had autism, was cooked alive. It was only about 85 degrees outside, but according to Stanford University researchers, the temperature inside a parked vehicle quickly exceeds that of the air outside: Within 60 minutes, a car’s interior can measure more than 130 degrees on an 85-degree day. Anderson’s death is not an isolated incident. About a year earlier, Robert Bodack, a 42-year-old nonspeaking autistic man from Florida, died after being left for hours in the vehicle that was transporting him to his day program. Those like Bodack and myself who are nonspeaking autistics are especially vulnerable in such situations, because we cannot easily advocate for ourselves. Not only can we not cry out for help; most of us lack the fine motor skills to undo seatbelts or unlock car doors. Anderson and Bodack surely were aware of the terrible fate that awaited, but their bodies made it impossible for them to escape or to alert others. All the while, the temperature inside the vehicles in which they found themselves trapped climbed ever higher. We nonspeaking autistics are often treated as disposable pieces of humanity—people who, it is imagined, do not suffer like other human beings. This long-standing failure to recognize our humanity is fundamental to the mistreatment that we receive from the so-called normal world. The prevailing view of autism is that those of us with the disorder are unable to understand the world around us. We are often accused of what putative autism experts call “mind blindness”: the idea that we cannot comprehend the perspectives of others. Hence, we are thought to be unable to pick up on social cues or carry on a conversation. The concept of “mind blindness” is a pernicious stereotype, but it enjoys prominence in the medical literature and in popular culture through movies like The Accountant and Rain Man. Even a series like Love on the Spectrum, which is intended to show a more sympathetic portrait of autism, perpetuates the stereotype. The Netflix show suggests that we are so bad at intimacy and romance that we need to be coached through the most basic of human interactions. There is never any sense that we can feel and recognize these emotions but just have trouble showing them. Instead, we are treated as if we are curious specimens that do not understand what is so obvious for others. Current Issue These stereotypes are all-the-more damaging when it comes to those of us with nonspeaking autism. The assumption is that non-speakers suffer from intellectual deficits along with the other challenges posed by their autism. We cannot produce the sorts of responses that most in the outside world understand as the markers of intelligence, but this is an artifact of our limited ability to communicate—not a measure of our true mental capacity. Only in the past few years have a few of us non-speakers learned to express ourselves by writing. Through typing, we can show the world that we are not mentally impaired; we are just trapped in bodies that fail to manifest all the thoughts and hopes and dreams and fears inside of us. Right now, teaching nonspeaking autistics to write is rarely included in the curriculum in special-needs schools. That we should be denied this skill seems cruel to me. As best as I can tell, it reflects a belief that any sort of communication is far beyond people with nonspeaking autism. For those of us living in New York State, one step toward rectifying such wrongs would be to pass the Communication Bill of Rights, which states that “all persons with a disability shall have the right to communicate in their preferred manner and utilize any communication supports that meet their needs.” Although this bill was passed by the state Assembly in June, it still needs to pass the state Senate and to be signed by Governor Kathy Hochul. This bill will not help those like Bodack who live in other states, nor will it solve the glaring problem of typing not being taught in most special-needs schools. But it can serve as a model for other states and eventually, one hopes, for the federal government. Even if Anderson or Bodack had been able to type, there is no guarantee that either might have been able to save themselves. Most of us nonspeaking autistics have poor fine motor skills, making it hard for us to communicate, say, by texting because the buttons on cell phones are so small. But in a larger sense, perhaps learning to type would have saved their lives. Being able to write would have enabled them to communicate in their daily lives so that those around them would have seen them as sentient beings—not objects that could be forgotten in the back of a hot vehicle. Moreover, learning to type might have allowed them to live different sort of lives—lives where they were not in a group home or day program in the first place. We will never know for certain, of course, but there is still time for other nonspeaking autistics to liberate themselves from the

Martha LewisMartha Willette Lewis is a visual artist, curator, educator, and radio presenter who has exhibited nationally and internationally. Her artistic practice focuses on drawing, site-specific installation, books, knowledge, and the history of science. Read More

Society / StudentNation / September 2, 2025 Over the past decade, opioid overdose protections and programs like Project Weber-Renew have expanded, but with Trump back in office, this trend may be short lived. Employees with Project Weber-Renew in Providence, Rhode Island. (Project Weber-Renew) In 2015, a year into his recovery from drug addiction, Dennis Bailer was determined to give back. While receiving support from various harm reduction programs, he searched for a place where he could help others navigate their own recovery journeys but came up empty. A friend told him about Project Weber in Providence, Rhode Island; a harm reduction site rooted in peer-led recovery. After just a few volunteer shifts, he knew he had found his place. “I wasn’t dealing with people with degrees, who read about substance use disorder, or who maybe even had some family members,” said Bailer, now the center’s overdose program prevention director. “There’s something different about working for an organization where the people who ran the organization had lived experience with being unhoused and trying to navigate treatment detox facilities. This gave it an entirely more grounded feel in regards to connecting with the people we were trying to serve.” At the time, Project Weber operated out of a weathered brick building with just five part-time employees. Now, after merging with a similar organization, Project Renew, the group has 40 full-time employees, and has just established an opioid overdose prevention center this year. The project is just one of many community-based programs made possible through federal investments aimed at tackling the overdose crisis. Over the past decade, the federal government has expanded access to medications for opioid use disorder, increased naloxone distribution, and promoted harm reduction strategies such as the use of fentanyl test strips. All of these efforts have laid the groundwork for measurable progress nationwide. Project Weber-Renew is one of the few in the nation offering real-time overdose prevention and wraparound support, and advocates argue that its model could deepen and sustain progress in addressing the opioid crisis. A place of understanding and acclaim, Project Weber-Renew serves around 6,000 people annually, helping contribute to the 27 percent reduction in overdose deaths in the country—the first time the rate has declined nationally since 2019. But with President Trump back in office, this trend may be short lived. ​​Cuts to federal health programs and agencies, along with a deprioritization of harm reduction strategies, risk undermining efforts like those of Project Weber-Renew. Such policy shifts not only jeopardize the center’s work but could accelerate the rise in overdose deaths in the years ahead. “Any funding cuts have the potential to cut critical services that people rely on to stay safe, healthy, and alive,” said Colleen Ndoye, the executive director of Project Weber-Renew. “We could see increases in the overdose death rate, which would be devastating given how hard we have worked to contribute to the decrease the last two years.” Current Issue “The state of Rhode Island has been a critical partner in the work we’ve been doing,” Ndoye said. “We’ve been lucky in the active and thoughtful way our state partners prioritize overdose prevention and the way they’ve unanimously passed that type of legislation..” Individual states may be able to help fill the loss, but federal funding is still a critical component to addressing a national epidemic. Overdose deaths surged during the Covid-19 era, as the virus disrupted treatment options and boosted feelings of isolation and anxiety; this contributed to an increase in risky drug use, especially among those between 15 and 34, and deaths peaked at around 112,600 in 2022. In response, the Biden administration, through the American Rescue Plan and other initiatives, invested heavily in harm reduction and substance use treatment to curb the crisis. Efforts included $30 million in grants for syringe services, over $5 billion to expand mental health and substance use care, and more than $170 million to support local coalitions. The government also distributed more than 178,000 naloxone kits, released model laws to expand naloxone and syringe access, and eased guidelines for prescribing buprenorphine to improve opioid treatment access. According to Stephen Holt, director of the Addiction Recovery Clinic at the Yale–New Haven Hospital, the provisions provided by the Biden administration helped many of his patients access medications like methadone. He explains that the medications put an end to the daily “hustle” of their lives: They don’t have to buy drugs illegally or commit crimes for money to obtain these drugs, and patients have been able to rekindle relationships and build purpose. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA, played a huge role in trying to curb the crisis. This branch of the Department of Health and Human Services, with addiction expertise, promotes policies that improve the treatment and prevention outlook for those struggling with overdose addiction. “SAMHSA promotes policies that increase access for patients dealing with addiction,” said Holt. “As a vehicle for federal funding grants, they’ve found ways to promote education for clinicians and medical about substance use disorder. They’ve distributed Narcan in multiple places. They’ve even spearheaded the NSDUH, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.” In addition to these national programs, there were also local efforts to curb the overdose rate, including Project Weber-Renew, which supports those struggling with opioid addictions comprehensively and systematically, and is one of the only state-sanctioned opioid overdose prevention centers. The organization began as two separate groups that provided support to the unhoused, sex workers, and drug addicts. Merging in 2016, Project Weber-Renew provides a full spectrum of harm reduction, recovery, and essential support services through peer-led programs. “People struggling with overdose addictions are really stigmatized,” said Ndoye. “They may have gone to another location, or another medical provider.… Our philosophy is really low-barrier, one-stop shop, just sort of breaking down all of the silos so that people don’t have to go to seven different places.” According to Bailer, meeting people where they’re at is especially important for people of color. Almost 90

September 2, 2025 Zachary Leader’s book on Richard Ellmann’s landmark work on James Joyce asks whether a biographer can be considered an artist. Sylvia Beach and James Joyce, 1920. In 1927—just five years after the publication of Ulysses and five years shy of his 50th birthday—James Joyce decided it was high time for someone to write his biography. At least one whole book had been devoted to the analysis of his work, and more were in progress. Joyce first approached Stuart Gilbert, who was already working on an authorized study of Ulysses with the author’s encouragement and collaboration. Gilbert wisely demurred. So Joyce turned to Herbert Gorman, the author of a critical study, James Joyce: His First Forty Years (1924), and offered him the burden of a lifetime (or at least a decade). Books in review Ellmann’s Joyce: The Biography of a Masterpiece and Its Maker by Zachary Leader Buy this book It is not uncommon for writers to authorize a biography for production (and even publication) while they are still alive—they have always understood that posterity is its own kind of celebrity, best nurtured in the here and now. In Joyce’s case, the word author in authorized bears extra weight: Joyce, a nightmare subject who was prone to fantastic paranoia, prodded Gorman when his progress stalled; threatened Gorman (menacingly, through his financial adviser and legal representative, Paul Léon) when he felt disserved by the draft chapters provided (and those withheld); and insisted on correcting Gorman’s page proofs—demanding in at least one case that Gorman tell a bald-faced lie for his benefit—before he would allow the biography to be published. After the book was finished, Joyce delayed the book’s publication so that his slow-going Finnegans Wake could enter the world first in 1939. “I will never write another biography of a living man,” Gorman wrote to his publisher seven years into his decade-long ordeal. “It is too difficult and thankless a task.” Dead writers, with their pesky heirs and estates, their fans and their scholars, are no cup of tea either. A living writer only multiplies the inherent challenges of biography as a form, what Virginia Woolf called “a perpetual marriage of granite and rainbow,” the impossible meeting of biography’s necessary factuality and art’s more-than-real perfection. Still, for modernists like Woolf, biography offered a natural foil to the novel. She imagined the biographer and the novelist starting with the same building blocks—the real world, real people, and real experiences—but posited that facticity bogged the biographer down while fantasy freed the novelist. “The artist’s imagination at its most intense,” she wrote, “fires out what is perishable in fact; he builds with what is durable; but the biographer must accept the perishable, build with it, embed it in the very fabric of his work.” Lytton Strachey, another of Woolf’s close friends, had more practical advice for the biographer stumped by the management of facts: “Ignorance,” he maintained in the preface to Eminent Victorians (1918), “is the first requisite of the historian—ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection unattainable by the highest art.” For Strachey, Woolf, and others, the trivia of the real world was an obstacle to the more integrated —and, in Woolf’s words, “rarer” and “intenser”—vision of reality conjured by art. It is no coincidence that Woolf’s most playful and fantastical novel, the gender-bending Orlando (1928), presents itself as “a biography.” It is perhaps at once Woolf’s least and most factual novel, full of true vignettes from real lives translated across time, place, and character. On the other hand, when Woolf was persuaded to write the biography of her friend the artist and art critic Roger Fry, her efforts—cramped by grief and the intimate knowledge of close friendship—fell flat. Joyce’s irreverence for certain facts in his personal biography, when, for example, they related to his relationship with his father or the precise date of his marriage to Nora Barnacle—when they seemed incompatible with the image he wanted broadcast to the world, in other words—was exceeded by an opposing craze for facticity in his fiction. He felt a need for his work—which skewed, to a debatable extent, autobiographical—to rest on a bedrock of unimpeachable authenticity. When a prospective publisher, George Roberts of Maunsel & Company, wanted Joyce to fictionalize the names of pubs and the railway company mentioned in Dubliners (1914), Joyce (in his own words) “offered to take a car and go with Roberts, proofs in hand, to the 3 or 4 publicans really named and to the secretary of the railway co.” His ambitions for Ulysses were grander. As he told his friend Frank Budgen, he wanted “to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city one day suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of my book.” Joyce was aided in this unyielding pursuit of factuality by his aunt Josephine Murray. In a letter to Murray from 1922, for example, Joyce asked whether during the “cold February of 1893”—that is, some 29 years earlier —“the canal was frozen over and if there was any skating.” As these writers grappled with the intrusion or inclusion of reality in their work, they were also, many of them, preparing a record for posterity, either in the form of propagandistic biographies, in the case of Joyce, or in the form of a copious and well-guarded paper trail. In 1940, a bomb struck Virginia Woolf’s London home in Mecklenburgh Square while she was living in the countryside. The loss made her giddy: Surveying the “heap of ruins” that had once been the Bloomsbury haunts of her youth, she let out “a sigh of relief”; with her base in London destroyed, she felt released from another fact, a heap of facts, the tether of the past. “I sh[oul]d like to start life, in peace, almost bare—free to go anywhere,” she reflected. There was just one thing she wasn’t ready to give up: With “books all over the dining room floor” and the

Note: We wish this story were satire, but the Democrat Mayor of Chicago is genuinely insane. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson continues to deny reality and responsibility for his crime-ridden city. Is he blaming his lax law enforcement policies? No. Is he blaming the criminals for their actions? Of course not. He’s blaming red states and their guns. Somehow, migratory guns from red states are settling in the Windy City and magically corrupting innocent Chicagoans, thus causing these otherwise peaceful, gentle souls to kill each other in the streets. Seriously, that’s what Johnson is saying. Here’s the insanity. (WATCH) Brandon Johnson just blamed ‘gun violence’ in Chicago on Trump and red states: “These guns come from red states. That is the harsh reality. Whether Republicans like it or not.” pic.twitter.com/o49GBZeGPU — Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) September 2, 2025 He expects us to believe Red Republican states are responsible for Brandon Johnson’s, Blue Democratic state committing gun violence? Shooting 58 people and 8 people k*lled?? — Danette DuBrul (@dubrul_danette) September 2, 2025 Well, if Juicy Smolliet has taught me anything it’s that Chicago is MAGA country. — 🦴 𝓣𝓸𝓷𝓷𝓲𝓮 𝓡𝓸𝓫𝓮𝓻 🦴 (@TonnieRober) September 2, 2025 “Trump’s fault.” — Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) September 2, 2025 Johnson fully expects sane Americans to be as gullible and stupid as the voters who put him into office. Posters find it strange that red areas of states are not literal killing fields, but once a gun enters a blue area, massacres start immediately. How does this keep happening? So Indiana must be the most dangerous state in the country right? What a dumbass this guy is. Doesn’t believe anything he is reading. — MAZE (@mazemoore) September 2, 2025 IQ of a doorknob, and an approval rating to match. — Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) September 2, 2025 My brother lives in Chicago and trends liberal. He told me recently that most people think Johnson is an absolute idiot. He’s only in his position due to the support of the Chicago teachers union. — RD (@rodericdeane) September 2, 2025 Recommended It’s so obvious even the libs get it 🤣 — Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) September 2, 2025 Weird how the same crime isn’t happening in these “red states” that Brandon is blaming. It’s almost as if the problem is not guns, but CRIMINALS WHO USE THEM. — Fedup American 🇺🇲💪 (@Fedup026) September 2, 2025 They never seem to address this question. — Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) September 2, 2025 Sounds like Chicago has a teachers union problem, which is just part of a larger Democrat problem. Commenters say Johnson is unintentionally telling us Illinois and Chicago’s gun laws are utterly useless at preventing shootings. Could criminals be the reason these shootings keep happening, and not huge flocks of migratory hypnotic firearms? Is this his way of telling us that criminals are disregarding the strict gun laws in Chicago by using guns they bring from other places? That’s shocking. I thought that if you passed strict gun laws, the criminals would have the decency to obey them. — Tanya Berlaga (@TBerlaga) September 2, 2025 Imaginary flock of firearms resting during their long migration. pic.twitter.com/YaoqNs09e6 — DoctorEd (@dr_isin) September 3, 2025 It’s true. The guns got up from Texas, walked themselves all the way into Chicago, and just started to blam blam blam all over the place. Total chaos. — WhatsTheDifference (@TheDudeApollo) September 3, 2025 pic.twitter.com/eLeooZLZeZ — Katie Scarlett (@Katiescarlet2) September 2, 2025 It’s not the guns, and it’s not the red states. The shootings and murders in blue cities are caused by the criminals and the pointy-headed Democrat Party idiots who enable and excuse them. We’re not going to give up our guns because Democrats are out of control. In fact, Democrats being out of control is a good reason for us to have firearms in the first place. Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights. Help us continue to report on and expose the Democrats’ gun control policies and schemes. Join Twitchy VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your VIP membership. Read More

As we reported, “TRUMP IS DEAD” was trending on X over the weekend after two whole days without a public appearance. As we reported, liberals, including Ron Filipkowski, were doing a Zapruder-style analysis of a photo of President Donald Trump in the back of a car returning to the White House after golfing at his course in Virginia. Some claimed it was a body double, and he was in Walter Reed. Some said the photo looked altered or AI-generated. Besides holding a press conference about moving Space Command Headquarters from Colorado to Alabama, as our own Amy Curtis reported Tuesday afternoon, Trump is alive and well and appeared on Scott Jennings’ radio show. Sharp-eared listeners said that something was off about Trump’s voice. Reuters White House correspondent Nandita Bose thought that Trump’s voice sounded “rough.” President Trump’s voice sounds rough on the @ScottJenningsKY show today — Nandita Bose (@nanditab1) September 2, 2025 Trump sounded absolutely normal Is this journo brain poisoned like the libs who think Trump is secretly hospitalized? https://t.co/eqWbMfXM3r — Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) September 2, 2025 Its a stutter. — Bill Flashfrybuffalo McBride (@gilescorey) September 2, 2025 The walls are closing in — Dan Stringer, SEC Pimp (@Danstringer74) September 2, 2025 He’s just fine. Cope. — I’m that suburban mom Trump voter (@GinaBritton14) September 2, 2025 It would appear that brain worms have penetrated your auditory cortex. Seek immediate help for your TDS before it’s too late. — Uri Blago🇮🇱 (@UriBlago_v2) September 2, 2025 Bose wasn’t alone in thinking there was something up with Trump’s voice. Here’s Republicans Against Trump: Trump’s voice in his interview with Scott Jennings this morning … something’s not right.pic.twitter.com/YWfBp74qtD — Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) September 2, 2025 Recommended You people are morons — Bobby Diesel (@RealSaltySlim) September 2, 2025 He is literally speaking right now. Perfectly fine. You guys are pathetic 😆😆 — Aceofhearts (@everytime_11) September 2, 2025 Oh boy, The obsession with you liberals. His voice, his hand, his big toe, his golf swing. — Bret Seufert (@bret8202) September 2, 2025 As our own Amy Curtis reported on Monday, Adam Cochran — who is, by his own admission, not a medical expert — posted a 31-post thread showing the growing evidence that the White House is covering up the fact that Trump has been dealing with TIA strokes. Cochran was back for the Republicans Against Trump post: It backs the stroke hypothesis. https://t.co/qjwpenPE8q — Adam Cochran (adamscochran.eth) (@adamscochran) September 2, 2025 No, it doesn’t. Sorry, he’s alive and well. You people are vile. — Georgie (@Georgie67606089) September 2, 2025 *** Editor’s Note: President Trump is leading America into the “Golden Age” as Democrats try desperately to stop it.   Help us continue to report on President Trump’s successes. Join Twitchy VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your membership. Read More

By Zach Pressnell is a Newsweek contributor based in Columbus, Ohio. His focus is MLB content. He has an extensive knowledge of professional baseball and all things that come with it after working closely with the sport for years. Zach has been with Newsweek since November 2024 and previously worked at FanSided and OnSI. He is a graduate of Bethany College (WV). You can get in touch with Zach by emailing z.pressnell@newsweek.com. Zach Pressnell Contributing Sports Writer 🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur. New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge has been one of the best hitters in baseball since his debut in the big leagues nearly a decade ago. In his time in the big leagues, the slugger has broken standards and records at a surprising rate. He’s arguably the most talented hitter in the game, from a pure hitting standpoint. Recently, Judge has begun to heat up again. Earlier this week, the slugger clubbed his 43rd home run of the season. Beyond the fact that it was his 43rd home run of the year, it was also the 358th home run of his career, tying Yogi Berra for fifth place on the Yankees’ all-time home run list. Such an accomplishment shouldn’t be taken lightly, and it doesn’t seem that Judge is taking it that way at all. CHICAGO, ILLINOIS – AUGUST 30: Aaron Judge #99 of the New York Yankees celebrates after hitting a solo home run against the Chicago White Sox during the fourth inning at Rate Field on August 30,… Daniel Bartel/Getty Images “When you get a chance to tie one of the greatest, if not the greatest, Yankees in homers, it’s pretty special,” Judge said, via the Athletic’s Chris Kirschner. “The way Yogi played the game, what he meant to the pinstripes, you know how much it meant being a New York Yankee to him. I feel the same way. I’m honored to wear this jersey. It’s pretty cool to be on that list with him.” At this rate, Judge is solidifying himself as one of the best Yankees of all time. He’s going to struggle to climb that list among the Yankee greats without any real postseason success, but from a talent standpoint, there aren’t many Yankees who can outhit Judge. Judge deserves his flowers. He’s a Yankees great at this point. In the near future, he will likely pass Berra and overtake fifth place in home runs in Yankees history. After that, he’ll be just two homers away from tying Joe DiMaggio for fourth on that list, and then will slowly work to chase down Lou Gehrig (493 career homers) for third. More MLB: Alex Bregman Sweepstakes — Tigers Could Be Perfect Fit for $120 Million Superstar Read More

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un crossed into China by train on Tuesday, heading to Beijing for a military parade to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. He also has meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Why It Matters Neighboring China has been North Korea’s steadfast ally and most important trade partner for decades, although since coming to power in 2012, Kim has sought to rebalance North Korea’s great power ties by investing in more robust relations with Russia. He oversaw a new chapter in this endeavor last year when he ordered the deployment of up to 15,000 troops, according to South Korean estimates, along with artillery rounds and missiles, to support Russian forces in its invasion of Ukraine. Kim, like his father and grandfather before him, both of whom led North Korea, rarely travels abroad and this is his first visit to China in six years. Kim’s expected meeting with Xi and Putin will be a symbolically important show of unity by three leaders who all vehemently opposed to a global order dominated by the United States. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center, leaves Pyongyang, North Korea by train Monday, Sept. 1, 2025, heading to Beijing, in photo provided by the North Korean government. Korean Central News Agency/AP What To Know Kim set off for China by train on Monday from Pyongyang and crossed the border overnight, the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. “His train passed the border early in the morning on September 2,” KCNA said. Kim, “accompanied by major leading officials” of North Korea’s ruling party and government, is travelling to China “to participate in celebrations of the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War at the invitation of Xi Jinping,” it said. Xi and his guests, including the leaders of 26 counties, are expected to survey tens of thousands of People’s Liberation Army troops parading with some of their most advanced weaponry at Tiananmen Square for the parade on Wednesday. No leaders from the U.S. or other major Western countries are expected to attend, in part because of their differences with Putin over the war in Ukraine. “The parade will feature a wide range of weapons and equipment, many of which will be unveiled for the first time,” China’s Xinhua news agency quoted the deputy director of the Chinese office organizing the parade, Wu Zeke, as saying last week. “The event will highlight the Chinese military’s recent advancements in modernization and enhanced combat readiness,” Xinhua reported. Kim’s reaffirmation of his close ties with Xi and Putin comes amid speculation that President Donald Trump might try to revive dialogue with Kim that they undertook in 2018 and 2019. Trump met Kim three times during his first term in office in an unsuccessful bid to press him to give up his nuclear weapons. Trump said last week that he looked forward to meeting Kim again at an appropriate time. North Korea, which is officially known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DRPK), has conducted six nuclear tests since 2006 and has dismissed all efforts by its neighbor, South Korea, and the U.S. to negotiate an end to its missile and nuclear programs. What People Are Saying Senior North Korean foreign ministry official Kim Chon Il said in a statement on Monday denouncing the U.S. and its two east Asian allies, Japan and South Korea: “The more the U.S. persists in its anachronistic and malicious hostile acts against the DPRK through the intensified collaboration with its satellite countries, the more distrust and hostility will be piled up between the DPRK and the U.S.” Hong Lei, China’s assistant minister of foreign affairs, said during a press conference last Thursday: “China and the DPRK are traditional friendly neighbors connected by mountains and rivers…Upholding, consolidating and developing the traditional friendship between China and the DPRK is a firm position of the Communist Party of China and the Chinese government.” What Happens Next? Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov told Russian media on Saturday that Kim will sit on Xi’s left side during Wednesday’s parade, with Putin in the place of honor on the right. Reporting from the Associated Press contributed to this article. Read More

By Suzanne Blake is a Newsweek reporter based in New York. Her focus is reporting on consumer and social trends, spanning from retail to restaurants and beyond. She is a graduate of UNC Chapel Hill and joined Newsweek in 2023. You can get in touch with Suzanne by emailing s.blake@newsweek.com. Languages: English Suzanne Blake Reporter, Consumer & Social Trends 🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur. Ozempic and other kinds of GLP-1 medications have skyrocketed in popularity in recent years, but the likelihood of you or your neighbor being on the weight loss drugs could vary significantly based on where you live. In a recent report from weight loss management platform Levity, cities were ranked by Google search trends for the medications based on how interested residents were in the drugs. Why It Matters The use of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists has surged, and popular products like Ozempic, Mounjaro, Wegovy and Zephound have been a game changer for many Americans who are obese or have type 2 diabetes. While the drugs have been linked to successful short term weight loss, they also have a large number of side effects, including nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and even stomach paralysis in rare cases. What To Know According to Levity’s report, regional hot spots for Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs included Orlando, Florida; Miami; Atlanta; St. Louis; and Cleveland. Also in the top 10 based on GLP-1 related searches were Minneapolis; Las Vegas; Pittsburgh; Cincinnati; and Tampa, Florida. Orlando had the top spot at 89,620 searches per 100,000 residents, but all of the top 10 cities had 48,000 searches per 100,000 residents or more. Google search volume for GLP-1 drugs generally increased by 9.5 percent over the past year among the 100 largest U.S. cities. Across the board, 13 percent of survey respondents reported trying a GLP-1 medication, with Gen Z the most likely at 17 percent The report, which surveyed roughly 1,000 Americans, also found roughly one in five Americans said GLP-1s have influenced their view of what a “normal” or “healthy” body looks like. There was still significant pushback to the drugs amongst survey respondents, with 73 percent of Americans saying GLP-1s are a shortcut to weight loss. Meanwhile, 52 percent said they are a temporary fix. Ozempic is medicine for adults with type 2 diabetes that along with diet and exercise may improve blood sugar. Steve Christo – Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images What People Are Saying Hamilton Noel, Pattern data scientist, previously told Newsweek: “The continued massive demand for these weight loss drugs we’re seeing speaks to the desperation consumers are experiencing. With these intermittent shortages, folks are continually checking places like Amazon despite reports of tricky side effects. We expect the drugs to continue growing in popularity despite those supply chain issues.” Tom Holland, an exercise physiologist and weight-loss expert and author of Beat the Gym & The Micro Workout Plan, previously told Newsweek: “Unfortunately the human condition is such that, when it comes to diet and exercise, we are constantly seeking the quickest fix with the least amount of effort, regardless of the costs, both monetarily as well as physically.” What Happens Next While obesity levels are likely to decline in the short term due to GLP-1 use, the long-term implications of GLP-1 medication use are so far unclear. A recent study discovered a new link between taking GLP-1 drugs and elevated risk of pancreatitis and kidney conditions, including kidney stones. Is This Article Trustworthy? Newsweek is committed to journalism that is factual and fair We value your input and encourage you to rate this article. Newsweek is committed to journalism that is factual and fair We value your input and encourage you to rate this article. Slide Circle to Vote No Moderately Yes VOTE Top stories About the writer Suzanne Blake is a Newsweek reporter based in New York. Her focus is reporting on consumer and social trends, spanning from retail to restaurants and beyond. She is a graduate of UNC Chapel Hill and joined Newsweek in 2023. You can get in touch with Suzanne by emailing s.blake@newsweek.com. Languages: English Suzanne Blake Suzanne Blake is a Newsweek reporter based in New York. Her focus is reporting on consumer and social trends, spanning … Read more Read More