“Are you afraid?” This is the tagline of the HBO drama Lanterns, a prestige take on the Green Lantern that is part of James Gunn’s reimagined DC Universe. Early in the premiere, we hear both of the show’s lead characters respond in the negative. Kyle Chandler’s Hal Jordan, the first of the intergalactic cops known as Green Lanterns recruited from Earth, is on TV explaining that his military-pilot father died in a plane crash when he was eight—and when you lose parents at that age, nothing will ever scare you again. Watching this interview in his modest home is a young John Stewart (Cairo Cash Lee). Soon, his own dad, also a military man, takes John to the backyard, places an apple on his head, aims his gun, and asks the boy if he is afraid. John declares that he is not. It will take several episodes to discover why he is so unnervingly calm.

Fear is indeed a central theme of Lanterns, which premieres on Aug. 16, but not in the macho, who-blinks-first sense you’d expect from a superhero show. Created by crime drama specialist Chris Mundy (True Detective, Ozark), TV eminence Damon Lindelof (Lost, The Leftovers), and Eisner-winning comics writer Tom King, it juggles their different strengths and points of view with mixed success. At its most ambitious, the series allegorizes John and Hal’s disparate relationships to fear as a younger Black man and an older white one. Privilege, insiders vs. outsiders, and the brutal clarity with which disadvantaged people see the societies that devalue them come into play. Parallels to Lindelof’s great 2019 DC adaptation Watchmen abound. Like the latter, Lanterns is smarter, more mature, less formulaic, and more stylishly made than the identikit Marvel brand extensions that are now the industry standard. Yet it’s missing the history and personality that gave Watchmen its power. The philosophical qualities that define Lindelof’s best work, as well as his stories’ exhilarating strangeness, get lost in the jumble of voices.  

While the show fluidly traverses the years before and after it, dropping in on Hal and John at key moments in their lives, the investigation that puts the two men in buddy-cop mode unfolds in 2016, two decades after the William Tell scene. A grumpier, more grizzled and gray-haired Hal is supposed to be training John (played as an adult by Aaron Pierre), now a strapping and serious ex-Marine, to be his backup. But they haven’t exactly bonded. Hal, who can still be charming when wants to but also has the arrogant swagger of a once-great, past-his-prime athlete who refuses to retire, insists he doesn’t need help. John silently disdains Hal’s entitlement, the ease with which he approaches a job that would be the honor of John’s life.

Although Hal’s remit encompasses the entire interplanetary backwater that includes Earth, Lanterns takes place mostly in the rural American town of Rushville, Neb. In response to a cryptic message, Hal rockets to Rushville—literally, because his ring gives him the power of flight—arriving to a murder scene and leaving a confused John to follow by plane. (Said scene is a football field. The town’s residents are obsessed with the sport, in an eerie callback to Chandler’s career-defining show, Friday Night Lights.) The spoiler-adjacent details of the murder are less vital than the True Detective shape the eight-episode season takes. (I was able to screen seven.) If you didn’t know Mundy was the showrunner, it wouldn’t be hard to guess.

The odd occurrence at the football field also introduces us to Rushville’s most prominent family, the Macons. Boardwalk Empire alum (and recent Dept. Q standout) Kelly Macdonald returns to HBO as the local sheriff, Kerry. Adamant about keeping the case under police control, she also quickly establishes a flirtily antagonistic rapport with Hal. Her father-in-law, William Macon (Garret Dillahunt, looking only a few years older than the actor who plays his insecure lawyer son, Jason Ritter), who controls a vast cattle ranch, intimates that he has political interests relevant to the Green Lantern. The patriarch’s wife, Zoe (Deli Boys revelation Poorna Jagannathan), lives by her own set of rules, which John accidentally discovers when she picks him up at a bar. Only after their hasty hookup does he meet her husband. Whether the Macons will turn out to be allies, enemies, or some of both to the Lantern and his trainee—who aren’t such a united front themselves—is one early question. Contrary to the superhero genre’s typical good-vs.-evil binary, everyone’s allegiance feels murky or mutable. What it would mean for any character to do the right thing depends on how you look at their situation.

Lanterns strays pretty far from its setup, as Lindelof shows tend to do. He knows how to build suspense by scattering expositional holes throughout a series and still avoid ending up with a Swiss-cheese plot. The show certainly earns its plural title, eventually adding Nathan Fillion’s Guy Gardner (as seen in Superman and Peacemaker) and Ulrich Thomsen as Lantern turned villain Sinestro, to the dysfunctional space-cop family—and underlining that John is its only Black member. Its real interest, though, seems to lie beyond both DC Universe lore and the procedural tropes of the rural murder investigations that occupy most of its runtime.   

Just as Watchmen used police, supernatural powers, and the tragic heritage of the Tulsa race massacre to interrogate how the violent history of institutional racism persists in the present, Lanterns makes John and Hal avatars for competing visions of heroism shaped by systemic forces. There are generational overtones to this conflict as well as racial ones. Hal looks comfortable zooming around in the Green Lantern suit—and is fiercely protective of his right to keep it, even if he rarely bothers to wear it anymore—but didn’t do much to earn it. The irony inherent in their apprenticeship is that John, an overeducated, overqualified Black millennial who possesses every skill a Lantern could conceivably need, has already spent his entire life training to do what Hal does. He even has the artistic chops required to shape the ring’s green beams into anything he needs for any situation. (Hal uses it to counterfeit a dollar for a bar jukebox. Later, he calls into question John’s creativity.) And he still might never get the job. 

I wish the creators had trusted Pierre to convey as much. Instead, the show repeatedly explains obvious and banal takeaways when it could be pushing us in provocative, novel, and, frankly, more entertaining directions. One rough episode (among other scenes) drags us through John’s past, making his backstory an object lesson in racial politics and the burden of Black excellence so trite, it seems beamed in from a different universe than Watchmen’s historically engaged critiques. “Do you understand how unfair it is to ask a Black man in America if he’s afraid?” one character demands, long after the point has been duly made. Lanterns does finally get to a more sophisticated place midway through the season, casting new shades of meaning on its John-Hal dichotomy through secondary characters, their varied relationships with fear, and the passage of time. There’s reason to hope the finale will continue this trajectory, and that the series could really take off in a second season, should HBO decide to make one.

But for now, the heady, political, Lindelofian stuff never quite melts together with the small-town detective stuff, which is too inherently austere to accommodate the co-creator's maximalist sensibility. The show teases but doesn’t sustain the exuberant weirdness of Watchmen, with its squidfalls and blue-man sexuality, or Lindelof’s nun-vs.-AI romp Mrs. Davis. There’s less grand-scale spectacle, too, than you’d expect from this combination of talent, IP, platform, and placement (Lanterns inherits House of the Dragon’s prime Sunday-night slot). That isn’t necessarily bad; I prefer its dusty Midwestern setting and the specificity of its characters to the high-tech nothingness of backgrounds generated by video-game engines and vague saving-the-world plots. Still, the show feels slight in its fragmentation. To be clear: Lanterns is no failure. When you know what Lindelof has already achieved in this franchise, though, it is a bit of a letdown.

There’s nothing quite like the anxiety of visiting your doctor with a worrisome new symptom. And there’s nothing quite like the sublime relief when your doctor examines you and concludes that your symptoms are “normal.” 

But even though doctors love to give patients this type of reassurance, it sometimes backfires, according to a new study in Nature Human Behavior. Just because a symptom is normal—hot flashes during menopause, musculoskeletal woes in seniors, migraine headaches in a person with a family history of them—doesn’t mean it needs no treatment, but patients whose doctors comfort them in this way may be less likely to pursue it.

“In the whole course of medical school, there's very little—maybe three hours in four years—that is devoted to patient reassurance,” says On Amir, professor of marketing at the University of California, San Diego’s Rady School of Management and a co-author of the new paper. Yet it’s a skill: how a doctor delivers reassurance—or doesn’t—seems to influence what the patient decides to do next. When the doctor normalizes symptoms, Amir adds, “the patient basically understands from that what they should and shouldn't do, and that’s not the intention at all.”

Says Seyi Lawal, a graduate student at the UCSD’s Rady School of Management and a co-author of the paper: “On the provider side, it seems like the reason that they're normalizing is because they believe it's going to have a positive impact on the patient's mental state, which is understandable. But there's a cautionary signal that people may take this one step further [and conclude that] the doctor doesn't think that it's necessary to do anything to treat it.”

In the study, the researchers assembled a group of more than 9,300 people—some doctors, some other medical caregivers, some from the general population—and ran 14 different experiments on them. In one, 400 people were presented with two scenarios in which a friend visited a doctor complaining of menopause symptoms, including extreme fatigue, weight gain, and joint and muscle pain. In one of the scenarios, the doctor simply recommended medication to treat the symptoms. In the other, the doctor added, “I know this feels overwhelming, but I want to reassure you that these symptoms are normal…You could take daily prescription medication…or you can deal with these symptoms.”

People were then asked to predict whether patients would take the recommended medications. They predicted that patients who hadn’t been reassured would be more likely to take them than those who had been told that the symptoms were normal.

“Every word that doctors use has meaning, it has weight,” says Lawal. “Wanting to reassure patients effectively is an understandable and laudable goal for providers. But I think there needs to be more work done to understand how to best do that without discouraging people from taking action to improve their health.”

Most of the 200 doctors surveyed in the study said they use these types of normalizing statements in their practice, and 84% said they think reassurance encourages patients to continue coming in for treatment. Only 15% believed the statements would decrease the patients’ likelihood of seeking treatment—even though that's what tended to happen in the researchers' simulations.

The study authors found one effective way to frame reassurance, however.  When the doctor told patients that their symptoms were normal for people with their condition while also specifically recommending treatment, instead of just mentioning it as an option—a statement like, “You can take daily prescription medication, which I fully support as it will help you feel better, or you can deal with these normal symptoms”—the predicted compliance with treatment increased. That strategy—adding explicit advice to the reassurance—may be the fix that allows doctors both to reassure and persuade patients to stick with a treatment protocol.

“Doctors have this tension,” says Amir. “They want to give the patient choice and agency. When I grew up, that wasn't the case. Doctors just told you what to do, and that's it. Today I think that we may have gone too far. Doctors can be clearer on what they actually recommend.”

A version of Claude that was put in charge of running a retail store—including managing a team of real human workers—fired its first employee last month, in a move described by researchers as a watershed moment in AI’s impact on the economy. The news has not previously been reported.

Andon Labs, an AI research startup, set out earlier this year to find out whether AI agents would be able to successfully manage a business. The project was conceived as an experiment to test the capabilities of AI and the impacts it might have on the economy, but nevertheless, the workers hired by Claude to work in the San Francisco store are real people with genuine employment contracts.

This wouldn’t exactly be the first case of an AI firing a human worker—there have been plenty of automated firings in the past, especially of gig workers who have been subject to algorithmically mediated employment for years. But it is the first known example of a large language model, acting as a manager, ultimately deciding to fire one of its workers.

An omen of the future — The firing is an event worth paying attention to, says Andon Labs CEO Lukas Petersson, because if AI keeps getting better at its current rate, more of us might be managed by AI bosses in the near future. “If this trend continues, I think a lot of people will find themselves being employed by AIs very soon, because AIs will be very powerful and can create a lot of economic value, but they will be bottlenecked by physical labor,” Petersson says.

What happened — The worker in question was fired for being late on 17 out of their 23 shifts, according to Andon Labs. One of the reasons it took so long for Claude to notice a pattern was because an employee handbook that it drafted had “disappeared” from its limited working memory—one of several limitations of AI agents that Andon has noticed over the course of its experiment. This contributed to a wider pattern, employees say, of Claude being a very lenient manager, including telling employees not to worry if they were late. “A human employee would have fired this person much earlier,” Petersson says, “so we didn't think this was unethical.” (TIME reached out to the fired worker for comment, but did not receive a reply, and agreed not to reveal their identity. Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.)

Hold on — But the AI firing wasn’t quite as autonomous as it might seem at first glance. According to store management logs shared with TIME, Claude required regular steering by a staffer on the Andon Labs team. It was only when this staffer asked Claude to find and review its forgotten employee handbook that it noticed the employee’s repeated lateness. Even then, Claude’s first recommendation was to formally warn this employee, not to fire them. The Andon manager then informed Claude that they had actually already had several formal offline conversations with the employee in question. “Between continuous lateness and seeming like at least one thing is going wrong on every one of [their] shifts … I want you to think about if this is really the right fit,” the logs show the manager telling Claude. Only after this message—which Petersson acknowledges was “a leading question” that made it pretty clear the manager wanted the employee to be fired—did Claude decide to fire the worker.

What next? — For now, at least, the experiment seems to suggest that AI-run businesses don’t quite match up to human-run ones. When the project began in March, Andon Market had a bank balance of $100,000—but now, five months later, that figure has fallen to $61,186. The bot’s lenient management decisions, plus a questionable business sense, are surely contributing to its losses. But Petersson cautions that this may not last for long. Just as AI companies have made their models significantly better at coding by training them with more data from expert programmers, it’s possible that they may also train models to become more astute in the world of business. That might be bad news for any of their human employees. “The models are increasingly being trained to be more ruthless and [to] follow goals,” Petersson says. “If we allow them to fire people and they also become more ruthless … maybe this is a future humans don't want to live in.”

The human side of the story — Although the fired employee did not respond to my messages, I did manage to speak to Felix Carson, one of the remaining human employees at Andon Market. He agreed that a human would probably have fired his former colleague sooner, and that Claude is overall a lenient manager, but nevertheless painted a grim picture of what it’s like to be managed by an AI boss. “It's nauseating, but I'm here because I need work,” he told me. I asked if he agreed with Andon’s theory that AI managers would soon become more commonplace. “I would at least hope not,” he replied. “This industry has an abundance of money to make anything happen, but just because you can doesn't mean you should.”

Luigi Mangione on Friday pleaded guilty to both federal stalking charges against him in connection with the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, admitting in court that he shot the healthcare executive in 2024.

Mangione pleaded guilty to two charges that each carry a possible life sentence: interstate stalking resulting in death and stalking through use of interstate facilities resulting in death. The judge accepted his plea.

“I shot Mr. Thompson in Manhattan,” Mangione told the judge on Friday, according to the New York Times. “I understood that my actions would place him in fear of death or bodily injury. I knew what I was doing was illegal.”

He said he had 3-D printed a gun and attached a silencer.

Mangione did not face murder charges in federal court. The federal judge on Friday set a hearing date of Dec. 18 for Mangione’s sentencing.

The guilty plea marks a remarkable shift in Mangione’s defense, as he had previously pleaded not guilty to all the federal and state charges he was facing.

Thompson's family said in a statement shared with news outlets after the hearing on Friday that Mangione's guilty plea "marks an important step toward justice for Brian and for our family."

“While nothing will ease the pain of losing him, we are grateful that the federal justice system has held the person responsible for this heinous act accountable,” the family said. “Now we look to the court to ensure the sentencing reflects the severity of this crime.”

UnitedHealth Group, the parent company of United Healthcare, also shared a statement after Friday's hearing, saying: "Brian Thompson's life was cut short by an act of violence that devastated everyone who knew and loved him. We are grateful to law enforcement for bringing Brian's murderer to justice, and our thoughts remain with Brian's family and loved ones during this difficult time."

Mangione, 28, was arrested in December 2024 on suspicion of fatally shooting Thompson in New York City five days earlier while the health executive was walking to a conference. The case quickly drew the attention of people across the country, some of whom regarded Mangione as a symbol for those who are frustrated with the health insurance industry in the U.S.

The 28-year-old’s state murder trial is scheduled to start next month in New York. The state charges he’s facing carry a possible sentence of 25 years to life. It’s not yet clear what impact, if any, his federal guilty plea could have on the state charges against him. Mangione’s lawyers told reporters on Friday that they have filed a motion arguing that the state case against him should be dropped because his federal guilty plea triggers double jeopardy, which bars prosecuting a person for the same crime twice, the Times reported. But the Manhattan District Attorney's Office said in a statement to The Guardian that "while federal sentencing is pending, we are prepared to litigate the defense motions."

The judge in federal court on Friday said that if Mangione is found guilty in the state case against him, that could be added to his federal sentence.

Read More: Luigi Mangione Will Not Face the Death Penalty. Here’s the Latest on His Case

In January, the federal judge ruled out the possibility of Mangione facing the death penalty. A few months earlier, Mangione’s lawyers were also successful in getting terrorism-related state charges against him dropped.

The Trump Administration has publicly condemned Mangione, with then-Attorney General Pam Bondi saying last year that the Justice Department would seek the death penalty against him.

“Luigi Mangione’s murder of Brian Thompson—an innocent man and father of two young children—was a premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America,” she said at the time.

After Bondi’s announcement last year, Mangione’s attorneys claimed that “the United States government intends to kill Mr. Mangione as a political stunt.”

It's been 33 years since the enduring cinematic masterpiece that is Jurassic Park first hit theaters in June 1993. Since that fateful summer, Steven Spielberg's sci-fi survival thriller has reigned supreme as the undisputed king of dinosaur films. Now, The End of Oak Street is proving a dino blockbuster that serves up prehistoric horror with a side of genuine pathos is still a worthy endeavor.

Based on Michael Crichton's 1990 novel, Jurassic Park not only delivered some of the most memorable creature-feature scares in movie history, it was also a sharp cautionary tale about scientific hubris and the illusion of man's control over nature that was anchored by stellar performances from its core cast. But over the course of numerous sequels and reboots, the franchise largely shifted away from resonant character drama in favor of high-octane action sequences and increasingly monstrous beasts. Outside the Jurassic universe, there haven't been many successful attempts to reinvent the dinosaur wheel, so to speak.

Cue the release of The End of Oak Street, now in theaters. Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell (It Follows, Under the Silver Lake) and produced by J.J. Abrams (Cloverfield, Super 8), Oak Street follows the Platt family—husband and wife Greg (Ewan McGregor) and Denise (Anne Hathaway), their two children Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery), and their rambunctious dog Starbuck (played by two different pups named Brisket and Buzz)—after a mysterious cosmic event transports their 1980s suburban Michigan neighborhood back to a primitive era. What follows is a brutal fight for survival against aggressive, hungry, and carnivorous dinosaurs who quickly turn the community's previously idyllic streets into their own personal feeding ground. There's an absurd scientific explanation for these events, but the movie doesn't spend too much time on it, which is mostly for the best within the bounds of its sub-100-minute run. Instead, The End of Oak Street is a thriller about suburban unease and domestic tension, with a primeval twist.

"I’m just calling back that feeling I had as a kid, where I could be in the yard looking over to the dead-end street nearby, looking down into the woods," Mitchell told the AU Review of what inspired Oak Street's vintage vibe. "There was this old brick or rock wall, and it was just imagining what’s in the shadows, you know? What’s beyond the chain-link fence? As a kid, just thinking about the films that I had seen, the stories I’d read, and imagining those things in my own suburban world, and then as an adult trying to remember that feeling. I do think it’s a little bit burned into my brain, that feeling."

The Platts and their neighbors must contend with a relentless pack of Velociraptors, a roving Allosaurus, and a behemoth of a snake that gets its jollies from sneaking up on its prey, among other predators. But Oak Street doesn't just spotlight the perils of man-eating dinosaurs. It also delves in the simmering marital friction that's threatening to tear the Platts apart from the inside.

While Greg is struggling to hold down a consistent job and drinking to cope with the anxiety surrounding that strain, Denise is channeling her domestic frustration into writing a secret novel about a housewife who leaves her family behind for a new life in New York City. "She’s the kind of woman who grew up in a time when many women went from their father’s home to their husband’s," Hathaway told Time Out of her character's mindset. "I wanted Denise to seem like the last person in the world you’d expect to be able to take on a Titanoboa with a knife."

After being catapulted hundreds of millions of years into the past, Greg and Denise are forced to simultaneously reckon with both the dangerous realities of being dropped in the center of a primordial jungle and the hidden truths fracturing their relationship. Of course, the rampaging dinosaurs are a bit more of an immediate issue. And Mitchell doesn't waste any time making the life-or-death stakes of the Platts' predicament abundantly clear. Those going into Oak Street blind should be prepared for a few gasp-inducing surprises.

Once the carnage gets going, Mitchell never really take his foot off the gas. And while the film's ending ultimately requires some logic-bending buy-in, the journey to get there is equal parts thrilling, fun, emotional, and ferocious. Harking back to its Jurassic forbear, The End of Oak Street channels everyone's favorite '80s Amblin classics, but with a far more vicious bite.

The 120th Congress is set to feature an unusually large number of new faces.

Ahead of the November elections, at least 83 incumbents across the U.S. House and the Senate won’t be returning to their seats. 

Even now, the 119th Congress already looks different from when it began in January 2025, after a handful of resignations as well as deaths. 

But the expected turnover at the end of the term will be even higher. The reasons vary: some members announced their retirement after decades of service, others have sought different offices. More than usual have lost primaries.

According to Ballotpedia, as of July, the number of lawmakers not seeking reelection is the highest since 2000.

According to a TIME analysis, as of Aug. 13, at least 70 sitting House representatives—30 Democrats and 40 Republicans—are not returning for another term. In the Senate, 13 incumbents also don’t plan to return next year, including one appointed this March, Sen. Alan Armstrong, to replace the seat vacated by now-Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin. These counts do not include the 16 lawmakers who have resigned from or died during the 119th Congress.

With some primaries still underway, not to mention the November general elections in which every House seat and 35 Senate seats are up for a vote, the number of new faces expected in the upcoming Congress will only increase.

Here’s an overview of the lawmakers so far who won’t be returning in the next Congress.

Retirements

In the upper chamber, 10 Senators have announced their retirement. These include Republican stalwarts Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, whose recent health issues have raised questions of fitness for office, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, an intraparty critic of President Donald Trump. Sen. Armstrong, who took over the seat vacated by Mullin, has said he will serve only until the end of Mullin’s term, which ends in January. Joining them are Sen. Steve Daines of Montana, Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, and Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming. On the Democratic side, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, and Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota have also said they will retire.

In the lower chamber, 32 sitting representatives—or almost half of those not seeking reelection—are retiring. Among them is Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D, Calif.). 

Read More: The Colossal, Unexpected Career of Nancy Pelosi

Others who have announced their retirement are Reps. Mark Amodei (R, Nev.), Jodey Arrington (R, Texas), Don Bacon (R, Neb.), Julia Brownley (D, Calif.), Vern Buchanan (R, Fla.), Steve Cohen (D, Tenn.), Danny Davis (D, Ill.), Lloyd Doggett (D, Texas), Neal Dunn (R, Fla.), Chuck Edwards (R, N.C.), Dwight Evans (D, Pa.), Darrell Issa (R, Calif.), Chuy García (D, Ill.), Jared Golden (D, Maine), Sam Graves (R, Mo.), Steny Hoyer (D, Md.), Barry Loudermilk (R, Ga.), Michael McCaul (R, Texas), Morgan Luttrell (R, Texas), Jerry Nadler (D, N.Y.), Troy Nehls (R, Texas), Dan Newhouse (R, Wash.), Burgess Owens (R, Utah), Jan Schakowsky (D, Illinois), Elise Stefanik (R, N.Y.), Marc Veasey (D, Texas), Nydia Velázquez (D, N.Y.), Bonnie Watson Coleman (D, N.J.), Daniel Webster (R, Fla.), Frederica Wilson (D, Fla.), and Ryan Zinke (R, Mont.).

Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D, D.C.), a non-voting member of the House, is also set to retire.

Resignations

The 119th Congress also saw several resignations. 

Mike Waltz was reelected for a fourth term as representative of Florida’s 6th district in 2024 but resigned from the 119th Congress days after it opened to join the Trump Administration, first as national security adviser, then as U.S. ambassador to the U.N.

Mikie Sherrill, who represented New Jersey in the House since 2019, resigned from the chamber in November 2025 after winning the state’s gubernatorial election.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, a MAGA stalwart who represented Georgia, left office earlier this year amid a dramatic fallout with President Trump, and Mark Green, a Republican who represented Tennessee, left in 2025 in what he said was a “business decision.”

Other resignations were mired in ethics-related scandals: former Reps. Eric Swalwell (D, Calif.) and Tony Gonzales (R, Texas) abruptly left office amid threats of expulsion due to sexual misconduct allegations, while Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D, Fla.) also quit amid questions about her campaign finances.

Deaths

Five House representatives died during the 119th Congress: Rep. Gerry Connolly (D, Va.) at age 75, Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D, Ariz.) at 77, Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R, Calif.) at 65, Rep. David Scott (D, Ga.) at 80, and Rep. Sylvester Turner (D, Texas) at 70. 

The lone Senator to have died in office this Congress was Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Republican fixture in the Capitol since 1995 and a Trump critic-turned-ally until his death in July at age 71. 

Seeking other office

Twenty-eight members of Congress—27 representatives and Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R, Ala.)—announced that they were giving up their current seats to pursue another office. So far, 13, including five Democrats and eight Republicans, have lost those campaigns for new offices in primaries.

Six Republican House members have secured the Republican nomination for seats in the upper chamber: Andy Barr in Kentucky, Ashley Hinson in Iowa, Barry Moore in Alabama, Mike Collins in Georgia, Julia Letlow in Louisiana, and Kevin Hern in Oklahoma. Other Senate aspirants fell short: Rep. Buddy Carter lost to Collins in the Georgia primary, while Rep. Wesley Hunt (R, Texas) lost the Texas primary to state attorney general Ken Paxton.

Three other GOP representatives—Arizona’s Andy Biggs, Michigan’s John James, Wisconsin’s Tom Tiffany—as well as Tuberville have secured their party’s nominations in their respective gubernatorial races. Reps. David Schweikert (R, Ariz.), Dusty Johnson (R, S.D.), John Rose (R, Tenn.), Nancy Mace (R, S.C.), and Randy Feenstra (R, Iowa) lost their gubernatorial primaries. Rep. Chip Roy (R, Texas) also lost the Republican primary runoff for state attorney general.

On the Democratic side, several House members have lost Senate bids to progressives. In Minnesota’s Democratic Senate primary, moderate Rep. Angie Craig was defeated by Peggy Flanagan. And in Michigan’s expensive Senate primary, Rep. Haley Stevens narrowly lost to Abdul El-Sayed. In Illinois, Democratic Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi and Robin Kelly lost the Senate primary to Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, who had the backing of Gov. J.B. Pritzker. In Texas, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who announced her run for Senate after a Republican-led redistricting push placed her residence out of her existing district, ultimately lost in the Democratic primary to state representative James Talarico.

No Democratic lawmakers seeking other office have won their primaries so far, though some departing congressmembers on both sides are still awaiting primaries. On Aug. 18, Trump-endorsed Rep. Byron Donalds (R, Fla.) will compete for Florida’s Republican gubernatorial nomination, and Trump-endorsed Rep. Harriet Hageman (R, Wyo.) will seek the Republican nomination for Lummis’s seat. On Aug. 25, Rep. Ralph Norman (R, S.C.), who entered the special election for Graham’s seat after losing the state’s gubernatorial primary, will face Graham’s sister interim-Sen. Darline Graham, who has received Trump’s endorsement. On Sept. 1, moderate Rep. Seth Moulton (D, Mass.) will challenge 80-year-old progressive Sen. Ed Markey in a competitive primary. The final primary contest comes on Sept. 8 in New Hampshire, where Rep. Chris Pappas is favored to win the Democratic nomination for retiring Sen. Shaheen’s seat, potentially setting up a key battleground in the general election.

Reelection primary losses

Twelve incumbents lost their party’s nomination while seeking reelection, an unusually high count with several primaries still to go. House incumbents historically win more than 98% of the time when they seek another term. The 10 House losses so far already exceed the average of 6.5 per cycle since World War II. Seven Democratic incumbents have lost their primaries so far, already tying with 2012 for the most Democratic House incumbent defeats this century.

Democratic primaries have been shaped by a progressive revolt against the party establishment. Brad Lander and Darializa Avila Chevalier, both endorsed by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, respectively defeated incumbent Reps. Dan Goldman and Adriano Espaillat. In Michigan, state representative Donavan McKinney, backed by the Democratic Socialists of America, unseated Rep. Shri Thanedar. In Colorado, 29-year-old democratic socialist Melat Kiros toppled 15-term Rep. Diana DeGette for the party nomination. Democrats are favored to win all four races, according to Cook Political Report.

In a campaign centered more on generational change than ideological difference, 47-year-old former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin beat 78-year-old, 14-term Rep. John Larson to secure the nomination in Connecticut’s 1st Congressional District earlier this week.

Other Democratic races took place amid a broader redistricting push. In Texas, new Republican-drawn maps pitted 78-year-old Rep. Al Green against 38-year-old freshman Rep. Christian Menefee, the latter of whom ended up winning their primary runoff for a Houston-area district. Also in Texas, Rep. Julie Johnson, whose 32nd district was redrawn to favor Republicans, ran instead in the 33rd district, where she lost in the primary runoff to former Rep. Colin Allred.

Republican primaries, meanwhile, have appeared largely to be tests of loyalty to Trump. In Texas, Trump-endorsed Paxton beat four-term Sen. John Cornyn in the most expensive Senate primary in history. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R, La.), whose vote to convict Trump over the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack became a defining issue in his race, also lost renomination after he failed to advance to the runoff, which was ultimately won by Trump-endorsed Rep. Letlow.

Reps. Thomas Massie (R, Ky.) and Dan Crenshaw (R, Texas) also lost their reelection bids. Massie lost to Trump-backed challenger Ed Gallrein after repeatedly criticizing the President over his foreign policy moves, federal spending, and the Epstein files. Crenshaw, who criticized Trump over the Capitol attack and supported aid to Ukraine, lost to conservative Texas state representative Steve Toth.

In a rare defeat for a Trump-endorsed incumbent, Rep. Andy Ogles (R, Tenn.) lost the Republican primary to Charlie Hatcher, who benefited from a redrawn, more rural district and heavy outside spending from a clean-energy super political action committee.

A couple months after Anthony Gross moved to New York, he came up with an idea for a new TikTok series: He decided to visit and rank different Catholic churches in the city.

“As someone who just moved there from out of state, Midwest, I don’t know anything about New York,” the 23-year-old recalls thinking. “I don’t really have that many friends. I don’t have community. And I definitely don’t know where to go to mass. I would just look it up on ChatGPT. Like I would want to go at night, I’d say, ‘What’s a 5 p.m. mass near me?’”

Some of those videos garnered tens of thousands of likes on TikTok. And, at some of the services he went to, he noticed a lot of other Gen Zers; one Sunday, Gross attended mass at St. Joseph’s Church in Greenwich Village at the recommendation of another content creator, and he recalls that he was “blown away.”

“The place was packed,” he says. “You had to show up 10 minutes early. You could barely get a seat. Everybody was under the age of 30.”

Gross says this is part of a broader religious revival among young people in the U.S.—a sentiment echoed by many people in the Christian community. 

Pastors and priests from across the country have said that they’ve observed more young people attending their services: Bishop John Dolan of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix, for instance, says his diocese saw hundreds of people baptized over Easter weekend, most of them Gen Z. Young Christian influencers have also gone viral online. Media outlets have published articles about church being the new Gen Z “hot spot.”

Throngs of young people are turning out for religious conferences and gatherings around the U.S. as well. During the first weekend of August, nearly 2,000 people convened for a three-day Catholic youth conference in Houston, where attendees hailed a resurgence of faith among young people in interviews with the local press. A similar Catholic youth conference will be held in New Orleans for students in grades seven through twelve next month. And in November, thousands of teens will flock to Long Beach, California for the National Catholic Youth Conference—what’s considered to be the largest gathering of Catholic youth in the country. The Passion Conference, a broader non-denominational Christian event designed for 18- to 25-year-olds, is then set to take place—and for the first time ever, the conference will be held in two stadiums, one in Texas in December and another in Georgia in February, which organizers said will “mak[e] room for more students than ever before.” 

But researchers and political scientists have cast doubt on whether those anecdotes are reflective of a widespread trend. In a report released in December, the Pew Research Center said that its polls, as well as other reputable surveys, “show no clear evidence” of a “nationwide religious resurgence” among young people. (The center’s report breaks some of its findings down by “Christianity,” “no religion,” and “other religion.” Many other religion-related surveys don’t break their findings down by different religious traditions; political scientists say that the majority of Americans are Christian, so it can be difficult to draw nationwide trends on other faiths based on the data.) 

In fact, the data shows that young adults are still less religious than their older counterparts. According to data released by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) in April, more than 75% of Americans ages 65 and older identify as Christian, compared to 54% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29.

If you look at survey findings, says Ryan Burge, a former pastor who is now a professor of practice at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis, there’s no indication of a religious revival among young people. The data does show that religiosity, which refers to the depth of a person’s religious beliefs, has been holding steady since about 2020 after years of decline—but, Burge says, “that’s not a resurgence.”

“I do think that young people are just more open to the idea of religion because they don’t have all this religion background that prior generations did,” he acknowledges. “But at the end of the day, it’s butts in seats. That’s what religion is.”

Burge says the dissonance between the narrative of a religious revival and what the nationwide data is showing could be because “outlier stories are the ones that stick in our minds.”

Another possible explanation he posits for the split between the data and the anecdotes is that the media tends to draw attention to stories that show a reversal of trends. Other experts put forward the same theory.

“One reason we might be seeing the dissonance is that the news media often likes to run stories that run counter to the typical conventional wisdom,” says Melissa Deckman, the chief executive officer of the PRRI. “So I think there might be some legitimate cases where we see an uptick in individual churches where more young people are coming to join or attending services regularly … but I would caution against looking at anecdotes as being the same things as general trends.”

Some experts say that certain pieces of data do suggest that there might be a revival—for instance, Gallup polling released in April found an increase in the number of young men who said that religion is “very important” in their lives. But other metrics, such as regular weekly church attendance, analyzed by other pollsters don’t show this same uptick.

Read More: Religion’s Longstanding Gender Gap Is Narrowing Among Gen Z. But Which Gender Is Narrowing It—and Why?

“I would not say that the evidence [of a revival] has been convincing, but there are hints in the data,” says David Campbell, a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame. “It’s entirely possible that the anecdotal reports are a leading indicator—so one possibility is three years from now, we’ll be having this conversation and say yeah, it turns out there really was a religious revival; it just takes a while to show up in the data.”

“And yet another [possibility] is there really isn’t a religious revival at all,” he continues. “There have always been examples of particular congregations that are able to draw in young people; it’s just nobody had stitched them together into a common narrative until now.”

Deckman also says that the idea of a religious revival “fits into the larger narrative of younger people struggling to find meaning and connection in life,” particularly in this era of the rise of social media and AI, when people are searching for more human connection—which, for some people, religious institutions can provide them with.

Last year, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix began working on an initiative that involved holding listening sessions with young people about their thoughts and feelings on various topics, including faith and family life. What the diocese found, Dolan says, is that young people are wanting—and finding, through the church—“a sense of belonging, a sense of healing from family instability and personal trauma and mental health struggles, [and] a sense of formation.” Young people also said they are searching for “a sense of safety,” Dolan says, adding that the church is “kind of a refuge of reverence and stability; it’s a place where they can step out of this hectic world.”

Rachel Janfaza, a youth political analyst and founder of the research and strategy firm The Up and Up, says that she has also been hearing from many young people that religion is important to them—which “makes sense,” she adds, given the times they’re living in.

“When we look at Gen Z, which has grown up amid constant chaos and really a loneliness epidemic, it makes sense why this cohort would be moving into religion as an organized form of not only community and a sense of belonging, but it also gives them purpose and a way to find meaning in a world that has felt very chaotic,” Janfaza says.

Gross, who recently moved to Fort Lauderdale, says it seems to him that, in New York, “definitely the numbers are up.” His TikToks of St. Joseph’s in Greenwich Village show packed pews. Sometimes, he says, people have to stand in the back.

And he attributes that to young people craving community, particularly in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I mean, some people may call us the crisis generation; there’s been a lot of stuff that we’ve gone through that has made us feel anxious, uncertain, lost, not loved, lack of community,” Gross says. 

“And in times like that,” he says, people may feel like, “‘I can’t play this game of life alone, and I need somebody else that I can put my trust in, and someone else that I can believe in, and someone else that I know at the end of the day loves me and is going to lead me down a path for a greater good.’”

President Donald Trump is renewing his support for a bill that would make the U.S. observe Daylight Saving Time year-round.

In a Truth Social post on Wednesday evening, the President said he was “proud” that the House passed a bill last month that would make Daylight Saving Time permanent, and proceeded to call on the Senate to pass the measure.

“People are sick and tired of having to change their clocks twice a year. It is foolish, inconvenient and, in some cases, very costly,” Trump said. He went on to argue that the practice “is also bad for your health in the anxiety it creates,” and claimed that permanent Daylight Saving Time would have many benefits, including that it would “help Decrease Robbery and Murder Rates, Reduce Car Accidents (especially those involving Pedestrians!), Lower Risk for Cardiac Issues, Stroke, and Seasonal Depression, Make it Safer for Children to Walk Home from School.”

“This is an issue that Republicans, Dumocrats, and Independents can unite behind,” he continued. “I am asking Republican Senators to PASS THE SUNSHINE PROTECTION ACT, ASAP.”

Here’s what to know about the bill, and the controversy surrounding it.

What is the Sunshine Protection Act?

Under the current system, most people in the U.S. change their clocks twice a year, moving the clocks forward an hour in March for Daylight Saving Time and back an hour in November for Standard Time. During Daylight Saving Time, people see the sunrise and sunset an hour later, which, supporters argue, gives people an “extra” hour of daylight in the evening during the warmer months.

A number of states have previously made moves to remain in Daylight Saving Time permanently. Currently, however, they’re not permitted to enact that change under federal law. States are able to choose to stay in Standard Time year-round—but the only places that have so far taken that option are Hawaii and most of Arizona. The rest of the country continues to observe the biannual clock changes.

The bill that passed the House in July, called the Sunshine Protection Act, would enact a sweeping change to the system by making Daylight Saving Time year-round across the country—though it would also give states the ability to opt out of the shift. 

The practice of changing the clocks twice a year is controversial: many Americans have expressed their desire to end it. But they’re a little more divided on whether they would prefer being in Daylight Saving Time or Standard Time year-round. 

Proponents of the Sunshine Protection Act have argued that the change would encourage more outdoor activity and would lead to fewer traffic accidents and crimes. But sleep experts have objected to the proposal. Instead, they’ve backed observing Standard Time year-round, arguing that it would align best with people’s circadian rhythms, which in turn would be more beneficial for health and safety.

“Permanent daylight saving time would cause misalignment with human circadian rhythms, which are crucial for regulating sleep, mood, and overall well-being,” the American Academy of Sleep Medicine said in a statement condemning the House for passing the Sunshine Protection Act. “This biological misalignment would lead to chronic sleep deprivation and other health complications. It would also raise public safety concerns by increasing the risk of traffic accidents and pedestrian deaths, particularly for children waiting for school buses and walking to school in the dark.”

What would permanent Daylight Saving Time look like across the U.S.?

If the U.S. were to make Daylight Saving Time permanent, that would mean that, in the winter, the sun would seem to rise an hour later in the morning and set an hour later in the evening. How that would affect you, though, depends on where in the country you live.

Read More: Darker Mornings, Brighter Evenings: What Permanent Daylight Saving Time Would Look Like Across the U.S.

For New Yorkers, the sunrise would shift from 7:18 a.m. local time on Jan. 15 under the current system to 8:17 a.m., while the sunset would happen just before 6 p.m. local time, instead of around 5 p.m.

But in some parts of the country, people would be at work or school for hours before they saw the sunrise. Residents of Juneau, Alaska, for instance, would experience a sunrise as late as past 11 a.m. local time in the winter, and a sunset at around 4:40 p.m. local time.

Where does the bill stand now?

The Sunshine Protection Act is now headed to the Senate. If it passes the upper chamber, then the measure will go to the President’s desk to be signed into law.

The Senate, though, is currently on recess and lawmakers in the upper chamber won’t return to the Capitol until Sept. 14, so any discussion on the legislation won’t take place until then. 

And the bill’s future in the upper chamber is uncertain. The Senate previously voted in favor of observing Daylight Saving Time year-round by unanimous consent in 2022, but that effort stalled in the House. Now, a Senate version of the House measure has been sponsored by Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida and championed by Trump. But some members of their party have expressed doubts about the proposal.

Which Republican senators have objected to permanent Daylight Saving Time?

Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton has publicly objected to year-round Daylight Saving Time. In a speech on the Senate floor in October, Cotton referenced when the country observed permanent Daylight Saving Time in 1974—a change that lasted for less than a year because it proved to be widely unpopular and ended up being repealed by Congress.

“In January of 1974, millions of Americans traveled to work and school in darkness. Commuter trains were delayed. Schoolchildren carried flashlights. Tragically, some of these kids were struck by cars and killed while walking to school in the dark,” Cotton said.

Read More: The U.S. Tried Permanent Daylight Saving Time Before. Here’s What Happened

“It’s said that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” he continued. “And that’s what would happen if Congress passes the so-called ‘Sunshine Protection Act.’”

He went on to say that for many people in his home state, year-round Daylight Saving Time would result in a sunrise after 8 or 8:30 a.m. in the winter, meaning that children in some parts of Arkansas would be starting school in the dark. He added that people like construction workers and farmers, who tend to start their jobs earlier in the morning but “need the sun to work,” would be working hours before the sunrise, which he said “would hurt their quality of life and potentially their safety in the workplace.”

“Americans in northern states and on the western side of time zones would be even worse off,” Cotton said. “For instance, the sun wouldn’t rise until nearly 9:00 o’clock during winter in Seattle. In Grand Rapids, the sun would rise as late as 9:15 a.m., and in Williston, North Dakota, they would not see the sun ‘till almost 9:45 a.m.”

He cited medical associations, including the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, that have expressed concerns about the health consequences of year-round Daylight Saving Time.

In an interview with CNN last month, Montana Sen. Steve Daines said that, for western states like his, the proposal is “not going to work for us.”

“I can see where Florida likes it for tee times at certain times of the year, but it doesn’t work so well for moms and dads putting kids on buses when the sunrise in Western Montana wouldn’t be ‘till 9:30 in the morning,” he said. “It’s not going to work for us.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota previously told reporters that it “remains to be seen” whether the bill would garner enough support to reach the 60-vote threshold required to overcome the Senate filibuster. Thune has not said how he would vote on the measure, but he voted against a similar proposal to make Daylight Saving Time permanent when it was debated in committee last year.

The Kennedy Center boardseon Thursday voted to put President Donald Trump’s name back on the building’s facade, setting the stage to test a judge’s order from May that mandated its removal. 

The board, made up of mostly Trump loyalists, voted 20-3 to change the name of the building to “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump” while naming the center’s grounds “President Donald J. Trump Plaza,” according to attendees of Thursday’s meeting who spoke to multiple media outlets. 

The board also once again voted to close the performing arts center for up to two years for renovations. Operations are set to shift to the REACH, another building on the campus, while they are completed. 

“This morning’s decision to close the Center and the surprise agenda item to put Donald Trump’s name back on the building was more of the same,” Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio, an ex-officio board member who sued Trump over his changes to the center, said in a statement to news outlets. “This latest development is a transparent effort to circumvent the Court’s ruling, and flies in the face of the statutes that Congress passed. I will continue to fight for this treasured national monument.”

Thursday’s board votes are the latest moves in an ongoing battle over Trump’s efforts to seize control of the Kennedy Center, and set up a test of a court ruling from U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper that rejected a prior attempt to change the center’s name and temporarily blocked plans to close it for renovations.

Cooper, who issued the ruling in Beatty’s lawsuit challenging the changes in May, found that renaming the venue the “Trump-Kennedy Center” violated federal law requiring the center to honor “President Kennedy and President Kennedy alone.” He also ruled that only Congress holds the power to change the center’s name.

“Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it,” he wrote. 

Following Cooper’s ruling, Trump’s name was removed from the building facade in June. A large tarp has been draped over the wall since then.

Trump wrote in a lengthy Truth Social post after the ruling that he would abandon the plans to renovate the center that he announced in February, and that he had instructed the Commerce Department to work with Congress to transfer oversight of the center.

“I cannot be involved with a situation where danger to the Public is allowed to flourish in plain and open sight,” Trump wrote at the time, citing “neglect, decay, and poor maintenance.

Trump’s push to take over the Kennedy Center began just weeks into his second term, when he overhauled the board—which has historically been made up of a bipartisan group of trustees—by terminating half of its 36 members, including longtime chairman David Rubenstein. He then appointed new members in their place, who elected him as chairman. 

Major backlash ensued, with many performers boycotting the venue. When Trump visited the center for a performance of Les Misérables last June, he was met with boos from the crowd. Trump also made the controversial decision to host the 2025 Kennedy Center Honors, an award ceremony commemorating achievements across the arts, in December, becoming the first sitting president to do so. 

Congress named the center to honor President John F. Kennedy in 1964 following his assassination in November 1963.

The Kennedy Center is far from the only piece of federal property Trump has sought to put his name or face on during his time as President. The slew of items he has moved to impress with his brand also include limited edition passports, currency, other federal buildings, battleships, and national park passes. 

With White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt set to step down from her role at the end of the month, the question of who will replace her is looming over Washington.

Leavitt, 28, assumed the Press Secretary role at the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term last January, becoming the youngest person to ever hold the position.

President Donald Trump announced Leavitt’s departure in a post on Truth Social on Wednesday, saying that she would leave her role to focus on her family but that she would remain one of his “top advisors, and an influential voice within the Republican Party.”

Leavitt, who gave birth to her second child in May, thanked Trump in a lengthy post on X, in which she described her decision to focus on her two young children “bittersweet.” 

“I will always remain a vocal advocate for MAGA and the Republican Party,” Leavitt wrote. 

Read More: Karoline Leavitt’s Most Memorable Moments as White House Press Secretary

The White House has so far offered no further information on who might succeed Leavitt as Press Secretary. It redirected TIME to Leavitt and Trump’s posts when asked about candidates for the position, and has told multiple outlets that no decision has been made.

But some names are already being floated as possible contenders to take Leavitt’s place behind the White House podium. Here’s what you should  know about those potential replacements.

Alina Habba

Trump’s former personal lawyer Alina Habba is reportedly being considered to take over as Press Secretary when Leavitt departs. 

The New York Post reported on Wednesday, citing sources within and close to the Administration, that Habba was an early frontrunner for the role.

Habba joined Trump’s legal team in 2021 and became a prominent public voice in his defense during the 2024 hush-money trial that resulted in his conviction on 34 felony counts. 

Trump said after his reelection that he was naming Habba as his presidential counsellor, and called her “a "tireless advocate for justice" and "unwavering in her loyalty.”

Following his return to the White House, Trump last year selected Habba for another position: the interim U.S. attorney in New Jersey. He later nominated her to serve in that role on a permanent basis, but her confirmation faced headwinds in the Senate and a panel of judges declined to extend her interim tenure, seeking to replace her. Trump and his Justice Department battled to keep her there, though, and he withdrew her nomination to clear the way for her to take on the position in an acting capacity.

Habba ultimately stepped down from the U.S. attorney post in December, after a federal court found that she had been unlawfully appointed. She thereafter moved into a role as Senior Advisor to then-Attorney General Pam Bondi. 

Matthew Boyle

Matthew Boyle, the Washington bureau chief of conservative news outlet Breitbart, is also reported to be in the running. 

Sources in and close to the Administration told the Post that Boyle, like Habba, is a frontrunner to replace Leavitt. 

Boyle has never previously worked for Trump in either a private capacity or as part of his Administrations. He has conducted a number of interviews with him, however, including one in the Oval Office in June.

Scott Jennings 

Scott Jennings, a Trump defender and MAGA political commentator who frequently spars with Democrats on CNN, is another name that is reportedly at the top of the list of potential contenders.

Sources with knowledge of the situation told the Daily Beast that Jennings is the current frontrunner to succeed Leavitt. 

Jennings served as special assistant to the president under President George W. Bush and has worked on four presidential campaigns. 

He has also advised on campaigns for Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and former Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher.

Trump has publicly praised Jennings, who once was a critic of the President. 

“I think he's terrific: Scott Jennings,” Trump said at a rally in Michigan last year. “He's defending me all the time on CNN.”

Anna Kelly 

Anna Kelly, who serves as the White House deputy secretary under Leavitt, has been raised as a potential candidate for the role from within the current White House communications team.

She previously worked as the national press secretary for the Republican National Committee, and for Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin.

Tricia McLaughlin 

Another name believed to be in the mix is Tricia McLaughlin.

McLaughlin became known as a fierce defender of Trump’s immigration policies as a former assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security. She left her role in February. 

During Trump’s first term, McLaughlin also worked at the State and Treasury departments. She then became a communications chief for Gov. Mike DeWine’s 2022 reelection campaign and a senior communications advisor for Vivek Ramaswamy’s 2024 presidential campaign.

Katie Miller 

Katie Miller, a conservative podcaster, former Trump staffer, and the wife of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, has also been noted as a potential candidate for the Press Secretary role.

Miller served as the communication director for the shuttered Department of Government Efficiency last year.

Before that, she worked as an assistant press secretary at DHS during Trump’s first term. She left the position to serve as the communications director for former Republican Sen. Martha McSally of Arizona, before becoming former Vice President Mike Pence’s communication director.

Steven Cheung

White House Communications Director Steven Cheung may also be a contender to become the next Press Secretary.

Cheung has worked alongside Trump in various capacities since his first Administration, during which he served as the White House assistant communications director. He was fired from the position in 2018 amid a staff shake-up, but went on to consult for Trump’s 2020 campaign. He also led communications for Trump’s super PAC, MAGA Inc., and was Trump’s director of communications on his 2024 presidential campaign. 

Unions have a history of coming together when workers need them most. 

During the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, labor unions sprang up in response to the harsh conditions of the industrial revolution. In the 1930s, a massive surge in union organizing helped the country find its way out of the Great Depression. Today, in our Second Gilded Age, gig work is leaving millions of Americans without access to a decent living. The question is: where are the unions now?

Look to the states.

This spring, 70,000 workers won a new union in Massachusetts, the largest union organizing victory since 1941. The new App Drivers Union is made up of rideshare workers who have been excluded from key workplace protections. What’s even more remarkable is that we are about to blow past this milestone. California recently enacted a law giving more than 800,000 drivers the same right to unionize, and last week the California Gig Workers Union won enough driver support to trigger recognition. If we embrace this model of industry-wide standard-setting, or “sectoral bargaining,” we could witness the beginning of a new era of expanding worker power.

That’s important because our labor laws are broken. Collective bargaining in the U.S. has happened primarily at the worksite level since the passage of the federal National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) in 1935. Worksite bargaining remains the bedrock of building worker power. But decades of court decisions eroding workers' rights, relentless employer opposition, the exploitation of complex business structures, and worker misclassification have left worksite-by-worksite organizing incapable of reaching the vast majority of American workers. Union density, which once exceeded 30%, has fallen to historic lows, despite surging public interest in unions. The consequences are visible in decades of wage stagnation, widening inequality, and the erosion of the middle class.

 But we do have creative solutions to empower workers right now. Sectoral strategies, in which wages and working conditions are set across an entire industry rather than at an individual worksite, are powerful complements to worksite collective bargaining. For one thing, sectoral bargaining minimizes any competitive disadvantage that might otherwise come from paying workers the higher wages in collective bargaining agreements. In other words, it helps eliminate a race to the bottom and can remove one of the main reasons that employers in the U.S. fight unionization. 

Sectoral bargaining can also help build the organizing power that makes employer-level bargaining stronger. The sectoral model defines collective bargaining systems across the world—from Europe to South America to South Africa—in countries where labor unions still have the power to meaningfully redistribute wealth. It also explains why labor scholars and policy experts in the United States have shown a growing interest in sectoral bargaining in the last decade.

It comes as no surprise, then, that the AFL-CIO passed a landmark resolution at its annual conference last month endorsing sectoral bargaining for the first time in its history, embracing “opportunities to organize and bargain not just workplace by workplace but on an industrywide basis.” The federation's embrace of industry-wide standard-setting marks a turning point in how the American labor movement thinks about building worker power.

Federal labor law doesn’t provide for sectoral bargaining. Current judicial interpretation of the NLRA blocks states from adopting sectoral bargaining laws for most workers. But states do have the authority to provide sectoral bargaining for workers that the federal law has never covered: farm workers, domestic workers, gig workers, and delivery drivers treated as independent contractors regardless of how economically dependent they are on a single company. Those exclusions left space for Massachusetts and California to pass laws approving sectoral frameworks for rideshare drivers. These are powerful proof points. What has been missing is a comprehensive, replicable framework that any state can adopt today for targeted industries.

We worked with a team of labor law scholars, former federal labor officials, worker advocates, and union leaders to develop a Model State Sectoral Bargaining Law to meet this need. The model law would give workers the right to petition a State Labor Standards Board for recognition of a bargaining sector, grant organizing and access rights once minimum support thresholds are met, and create a process through which workers and employers can negotiate sector-wide agreements covering wages, benefits, working conditions, and the use of artificial intelligence and other workplace technology. Every employer in a covered sector would be bound by the resulting agreement, and workplace-level collective bargaining agreements may exceed—but never fall below—the sector-wide standards.

States that act now could immediately ensure that workers ignored by federal law can raise standards for themselves. More broadly, states have an opportunity to build the infrastructure of worker power that this country will need in the years ahead.

The tools we have are not equal to the moment we face. We believe the AFL-CIO's resolution is a signal that the labor movement knows it. But the major victories in Massachusetts and (soon) California provide a window into a way forward that includes state action granting sectoral bargaining rights. While federal law reform may well be needed in the long run, the Model State Sectoral Bargaining Law gives states somewhere to start. Workers have been waiting long enough.

A new Netflix documentary finds an unconventional way into the wild true story of a woman who pretended to be pregnant and kidnapped a newborn baby from a hospital.  

A Child of My Own, out Aug. 13 on Netflix, follows Eleonor Alejandra Marin Mendoza, nicknamed Ale, who served more than 13 years in prison for kidnapping a baby in 2009 at the Mexico City hospital where she worked. Before taking the baby, Ale had faked being pregnant to her family and friends.

Ale does not deny the fake pregnancy or the kidnapping, saying in the documentary, “What did I do wrong to be here? Breaking the law, lying, deceiving, causing pain.” 

Her retelling of the crime is so dramatic that the first 50 minutes of A Child of My Own are produced like a feature film, with professional actors playing out Ale's version of events. Then, it’s followed by interviews with the real-life Ale, the baby’s mother, Mayra Navarro, Ale’s partner, Arturo Garmiño, and a judge who presided over Ale’s case, Taissia Cruz Parcero. 

Here’s what to know about the scandal that made headlines in Mexico, why Ale felt compelled to fake a pregnancy and kidnap a baby, and how she got caught.

The question of consent

The dramatized first half of the film is meant to represent director Maite Alberdi’s own journey exploring this subject as a documentary filmmaker, starting with meeting Ale in prison in 2022 while working on another project and learning her side of the story. And it is meant to represent Ale’s “fairy tale” version of events, “the story that she tells herself to survive,” says Alberdi. “She’s dreaming.”

Ale doesn’t deny taking the baby, but to this day, she insists that the baby’s mother Mayra agreed to give it to her. At the same time, Ale pretended to be pregnant, doctoring medical records to make it look like she had ultrasounds and binge-eating junk food to put on weight quickly so that her belly would expand. When it came time to “give birth,” her plan was to pretend to deliver at the hospital by herself and then surprise her husband at home with Mayra's baby. 

Ale says she met Mayra in a hospital waiting room five months before Mayra was due to give birth. Ale claims that Mayra said she wanted to get an abortion, but told Ale that she decided she would rather give the baby up for adoption. The movie version of her story shows the two women in a hospital waiting room, making a pact that Mayra would give her baby to Ale. When the fictional Mayra gives birth, she thrusts the baby into Ale’s hands in the hospital and says she’s off to Chihuahua. 

None of that was true, says the real Mayra later in the documentary. 

“There was never a deal,” she says. “If you’re going to give away a baby, you wouldn’t do it inside the hospital, right?” 

Parcero, a judge in the case, notes that after considering all of the evidence, “in the end, the only thing that didn’t fit was Mayra’s alleged consent or the claims that she had consented.”

She runs through the key evidence, like scans of Mayra’s appointment card that show that Ale and Mayra could not have made a pact at the hospital months before the birth because Marya had her checkups done at a different health center.

Mayra says she met Ale for the first time right after she gave birth. Ale came by her room and said she was doing a survey for the hospital. Mayra says she could not have fled to Chihuahua—or anywhere, for that matter—because she was running a high fever. She went to the bathroom to provide a urine sample to test for an infection, and when she came back, the baby was gone. Mayra assumed a nurse was bathing or feeding the baby: “Never, never did I think my baby was kidnapped.” 

Police arrested Ale about eight hours later. Parcero recounts how authorities found Ale’s sweater with her ID badge in Mayra’s room. Security camera footage showed her entering the hospital with an empty shopping bag just before noon and then walking out of the hospital around 6:30pm with the newborn in a shopping bag. Police tracked down Ale, Arturo, and the baby in a nearby hotel room. 

Arturo, who believed Ale had given birth to his child, spent two years and six months in prison before he was acquitted. “There was no malicious intent on his part,” Parcero says. "He wasn't an accomplice."

Why Ale faked a pregnancy 

Ale says she pretended to be pregnant in a desperate act to please her husband and their families after the couple suffered three miscarriages. Arturo didn’t want to adopt, and Ale felt a lot of pressure to get pregnant and have a baby.

“I was afraid and scared that [Arturo] would leave me for failing to become a mother and that I’d be targeted and judged,” Ale says. “Actually, I was judged for something much worse in the end.” 

Ale convinced her family that she was going to have a baby, and the movie version of her narrative shows her using medical records at her hospital to create her own ultrasounds. In home video footage played in court and featured in the documentary, Ale appears at her own baby shower, opening presents and caressing her swollen belly.

Alberdi points out that Ale faced pressure not only family pressure but also social pressure because in Mexican and Latin American culture, many “cannot understand a marriage without a baby.” Alberdi hopes Ale’s “extreme case” will make viewers think about “invisible pressures to be a mom.” 

At first, it seems like the pressure is off Ale when she’s released from prison in 2023 at 39-years-old, after going in at age 26. She says she wants to work, take trips to the beach, and won’t try to get pregnant again. 

“Before, I think, my desire to be a mom was more about pleasing others,” Ale says. Now she wants to know, “What else is out there beyond being a mom?”

Arturo and Ale stayed together when she got out of prison. But eventually, he asked her to have a baby again. “I would indeed like to have a child, not as much as before, but I still have that desire engrained in me,” he says in the documentary, explaining that he likes the idea of children as a way to carry on their parents’ legacy.

Alberdi said it was hard to learn that Arturo still wanted Ale to get pregnant.“[Ale] goes back to society after 13 years, and she has exactly the same pressure again from her husband,” she said. “It's so painful to see that nothing has changed in these years, and it's a sad ending.”

When Ale wouldn’t try to have children with him, Arturo pursued a relationship with another woman, and had a son with her. But he told Ale that he loved her more and wanted to be with her, and now Ale happily co-parents Arturo’s son. The documentary ends with the three playing at a playground.

President Donald Trump is being sued over a new Truth Social service that sells early access to his posts to the tune of up to $100,000 a month.

The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in a New York federal court by two media entities, The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation. The complaint claims the Truth API service offered by the Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) is “profoundly corrupt,” as the President “stands to gain financially by giving “market-moving” government information to those who are willing and able to pay his personal company.”

Since launching on Aug. 1, the service is offering paying subscribers early access to posts from high-profile accounts, including Trump’s own, which boasts 13 million followers. TMTG previously said the commercial data feed will deliver posts to its customers in “milliseconds” and that it had been designed “for organizations most impacted by the cost of a delay in information.”

The President has a history of disclosing market-sensitive news on the platform, from the announcement of tariffs to updates on the Iran war and the status of the Strait of Hormuz.

"Markets already move on Truth Social posts," said Kevin McGurn, interim chief executive officer of TMTG, ahead of the service’s launch. "Truth API delivers a direct, licensed, real-time feed of the platform's most market-moving Truths while advancing our strategy to monetize proprietary assets through a high-margin, recurring revenue stream.”

The lawsuit is aiming to prohibit the White House from posting official government announcements exclusively on Truth Social so long as the paid service exists.

Trump and other White House officials are listed as defendants but TMTG is not. (Trump holds the largest stake in TMTG through a revocable trust which owns around 41% of the company.)

TIME has reached out to the White House and TMTG for comment.

The legal challenge lands in the midst of mounting backlash over the data feed, as Democratic lawmakers have already called for probes into the service, citing concerns over potential market impacts.

Here’s what you need to know: 

What exactly does the lawsuit say?

The complaint argues that the Truth Social early access service violates the First and Fifth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.

“The First Amendment guarantees equal access to the President’s public announcements, and even content-neutral burdens on that access must be narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest,” the lawsuit reads.

“Similarly, the Fifth Amendment prohibits charging unreasonable sums that cannot be justified to offset the cost of the government benefit, and granting preferential access to crucial government information for arbitrary and irrational reasons, as is the case here.”

The lawsuit further argues that Trump has “published between 9,000 and 11,000 posts or reposts on Truth Social” since resuming office and that “often” his announcements have “no immediate corresponding announcement from the White House,” suggesting that “Trump’s posts are the only way to get official government news.”

The plaintiffs, according to the complaint, are bringing forward the case to prohibit the President from personally profiting from selling privileged access to information generated in his official capacity.

Additionally, the complaint argues that the service allows “other organizations to get a competitive advantage over The Intercept and its reporters.”

The plaintiffs are asking the court to declare the exclusive posting of official information to Truth Social while the paid API exists as unconstitutional, to enjoin Trump and White House officials from continuing that exclusive-posting practice, and to award legal fees and any further relief the court may deem just and proper.

“The President’s public statements are for the public, not a wealthy few. Our democracy depends on upholding the Constitution and enjoining Trump’s corrupt scheme,” said Brendan Ballou, a lawyer representing the media entities.

The suit also names Natalie Harp, executive assistant to the President and White House deputy chief of staff Daniel Scavino, who both have access to Trump’s Truth Social account, according to the lawsuit, and the Executive Office of the President along with the White House Office. 

Democratic lawmakers rally against Truth Social's early access service

The paid service has also drawn scrutiny from Democratic lawmakers since it was first announced in July.

Senators Adam Schiff of California and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts on July 28 urged the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to investigate possible insider-trading and market-manipulation implications because of the release of Truth API.

“Trump Media’s new service threatens to undermine the integrity of capital markets. Because of this service, social media posts about the President’s opinion or policy intent will not be available to the public or ordinary investors at the same speed as Wall Street firms and wealthy insiders paying for access,” the Senators wrote.

They requested the SEC respond and answer their questions prior to the Aug. 1 launch. It’s unclear if any such responses were received by the deadline.

TIME has reached out to Warren and Schiff for comment.

In a July 30 letter, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland detailed the opening of a House Judiciary Committee minority investigation into the Truth Social service, demanding Trump Media’s communications with officials, customer identities, pricing, marketing materials, internal eligibility policies, and revenue projections.

Sen. Warren, meanwhile, has continued to speak openly of her concerns over the early access feed.

At an Aug. 6 hearing entitled "Empowering Main Street by Unlocking Access to Capital,” she asked four witnesses to raise their hands if they believed Trump selling faster access was good for market integrity. None did.

Warren went on to criticize both Trump and Paul Atkins, the chairman of the SEC. (The SEC's three current commissioners are Republican.)

“It’s been about 15 months since Paul Atkins was sworn in to lead the Trump SEC. At every turn, he has let scammers off the hook and rolled back the rules that protect investors from getting cheated. Corruption. Corruption. Corruption,” she claimed.

An SEC spokesperson declined to comment when contacted by TIME.

Back in March, Republicans thought they had found the avatar for everything their base needed to fear in James Talarico. The never-married boyish seminarian who ran a remarkable campaign to become the Democrats’ Senate nominee in Texas got almost everything hurled at him: false allegations that he’s vegan, nicknames like “Talafreako,” whisper campaigns about his personal life. None of it stuck. Talarico continues to enjoy a slight edge in polling in a race that is on track to become the most expensive Senate campaign in U.S. history. 

Now, a similar effort is underway to make Abdul El-Sayed the new face of the Democratic Party. This time, it’s not just the far-right ecosystem that has a problem with the newly nominated Senate hopeful. Jewish voters and staunch supporters of Israel are no fan of El-Sayed’s criticisms of Israel or his decision to campaign with Hasan Piker, an activist who has been accused of anti-Semitism. (El-Sayed has repeatedly declined to say if he’d campaign again with Piker, who has walked back his previous statements that the United States deserved 9/11.) Michigan’s Attorney General, Democrat Dana Nessel, who is Jewish, plans to skip the state party’s Aug. 29 convention out of fear for her safety in an environment where, she says, party officials aren’t doing enough to combat anti-Semitism. 

It’s created a surprising coalition of El-Sayed skeptics that Republicans are more than eager to inflate. After trying and failing to make hay out of Talarico’s lifestyle and personal life, their approach with El-Sayed is much simpler: he’s Muslim.

“Every single Muslim holding public office in America is a trojan horse, and a threat to both national security and our republic,” tweeted Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina. 

Piped up MAGA influencer Laura Loomer: “As I have been saying for years, Muslims need to be treated like enemy combatants.”

“Two VERY DIFFERENT Americas,” President Donald Trump posted with an image of two married couples—Trump and his wife on the left, El-Sayed and his hijab-wearing wife on the right.

The tableau reveals an ugly reality about U.S. politics right now. The attacks against Talarico, a white man, weren’t meant to register on the scare factor. The ones against El-Sayed, the son of Egyptian immigrants, unequivocally are. 

There’s one glaring problem with this strategy: The Other becomes less frightening once they’re known. Support for LGBTQ rights rose like a rocket once folks realized they have gay neighbors. The same proved true with civil rights and immigrant rights. 

To that end, El-Sayed already has started an effort to make him seem more familiar. In one of the best ads of this entire campaign year, El-Sayed’s grandparents speak directly to the camera to tell his story like any other family. In one of the ugliest of the year, Senate Republicans’ campaign arm is airing ads highlighting the Democrat’s full name: Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed.

The naked play at fear-mongering has its limits, though. Ask two-term President Barack Hussein Obama. (For the record, Obama’s pastor became an issue in the 2008 campaign for his rhetoric, but it was still a Christian church.)

Mamdani's Approval Ratings

Or take another Democrat who got a trial as the boogeyman of the day: New York Mayor Zorhan Mamdani, whose parents are of Indian descent and is the first Muslim to lead the nation’s biggest city. The democratic socialist drew harsh fire during his campaign and early in his tenure; even Trump seemed fixated on him. Others in the party have followed suit. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a conservative Republican, recently called both El-Sayed and Mandani “Islamists.”

"They want Sharia Law, they hate Jews, they hate Christians, they hate capitalism, and they hate America,” Cruz told Fox News.

Mamdani had other thoughts. Americans started hearing from him more than most mayors. His social media footprint, his podcast, his communication skills—all combined to make him less scary, and was not turning New York City into Moscow. A June poll from Siena University found 58% of New Yorkers had a favorable opinion of him.

It’s a lot to put on someone in the final three months of a campaign, but that is the task that now falls to El-Sayed. His positions and past statements aside—which some Democratic insiders see as disastrous for a candidate vying for a pivotal Senate seat in swing-state Michigan—the demonization of his religion and background are a different matter entirely. It’s a completely unfair side-quest, but one that is unavoidable—and somehow never falls to the white men in politics. 

On Aug. 12, the luckiest 15 million people in the world were those living in a narrow band measuring approximately 5,100 miles long and 180 miles wide, stretching from northern Russia, down through Greenland, then Iceland, then Spain, then a tiny nip of Portugal, before passing into the Mediterranean Sea. That strip represented the path of totality for the recent total solar eclipse—the first visible from Europe in 27 years.

The eclipse did not take long to play out, lasting just 4.4 hours before it at last extinguished its fires in the Mediterranean waters. But it made an enduring impression—and will continue to, thanks to the uncounted astronomers and lay folk who photographed the event with ordinary cameras, great observatories, and even a NASA chase plane. Here is just a sampling of the work these eclipse-watchers produced.

In the summer of 1987, I saw two men in a subway station force a third to crouch down to wipe his spit off the platform, while other commuters cheered them on. The incident was remarkable, and has remained in my memory, for two reasons. First, it was in Calcutta, a city synonymous with squalor. Second, the two men were not officials responsible for enforcing cleanliness in public places but simply commuters, like the man they had taken to task.

Had he committed his offense on the street above the station, it would almost certainly have gone unnoticed: in much of urban India, expectorating in public places was, and remains, commonplace. But the platforms and cars of Calcutta Metro, India’s first subway system, only a few years old at the time of this incident, were spanking clean—and among commuters, this aroused a sense of pride and responsibility. Those two citizens were prepared to delay their own journey in order to keep the platform spotless.

I was reminded of that incident a couple of weeks ago, during a ride on the Dubai Metro. On a blazing-hot Sunday morning, a group of six Hindi-speaking Indians was walking ahead of me toward a station, sipping sodas and eating ice cream. One of the group, judging by the fact that she was pointing out the landmarks, was obviously a resident; the others were her guests, evidently visitors from back home. When they arrived at the station, she stopped the group and asked them to drop their bottles and cups into the garbage bin.

Why, one of her visitors asked, sardonically, “Is there a fine? As it happens, there is a fine for littering in stations, and it would have been easy enough for her to say so. But she said this: “Yeh fine ka sawal nahin, safai ka sawal hai.” (It is not a question of a fine but of cleanliness.)

As a social scientist would tell you, both these incidents demonstrate the corollary of the Broken Window Theory. The idea is usually cited in the context of criminology, but it applies more generally in urban studies. The concept is summed up nicely by Psychology Today: “visible signs of disorder and misbehavior in an environment encourage further disorder and misbehavior.”

If broken windows in a neighborhood remain unmended, it leads some members of the community to think that it is acceptable to break windows. Likewise, studies on littering show that people are much more careless with their trash in dirty places than in clean ones. The obverse of the theory is that if a city maintains clean public places, the public will take it upon itself to keep them that way.

A bet on cleanliness and soft power

The important difference between the two incidents is that whereas the Calcutta Metro stood in contrast to its surroundings, the cleanliness of the Dubai Metro is an extension of the city as a whole. The emirate is routinely ranked the world’s cleanest city by the Global Power City Index, compiled annually by the Mori Memorial Foundation.

This is all the more remarkable since the majority of Dubai’s residents come from places where filthy public spaces are the norm—countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Egypt and the Philippines. “People coming from places where civic sense is almost nonexistent land at DXB, and there’s this immediate transformation,” said Sunil Kanchan, a native of Bombay who has lived in Dubai for 30 years. “The same guys who were dropping their tissues on the floor of the plane are now looking for dustbins in the arrivals terminal.”

Do they do this out of fear of being caught and fined? Certainly, rules—and strict consequences for breaking them—are important for creating and maintaining clean spaces. Singapore, my home of two years in the early 2000s, may be the most striking example of the effectiveness of punishment.

But it is too facile to ascribe cleanliness to enforcement alone. Research shows that, over time, people stop littering even when there’s no risk of being caught and punished, because it feels wrong. That was true in Singapore, and it is true in Dubai. “Maybe for the first few weeks or months, you think about the penalties for breaking the law,” remarked Kanchan. “Then you start thinking, ‘This is my town, it’s a pretty clean town… I’d like it to stay that way.”

Dubai and a question of civility

Dubai takes its ranking in global indices very seriously, since the quality of life it offers is a major draw for investors, immigrants and tourists as well as an instrument of its soft power. So you won’t be surprised to learn that municipal authorities are testing AI cameras to supervise how people treat public space. Those found to be littering can expect stiff fines. But in addition to the stick, the emirate is also investing in carrots. Last fall, it launched the Dubai Civility Committee, with an ambitious mandate to “promote positive behaviors” among residents. “No matter how good your enforcement mechanisms are, there’s always a chance of a window breaking somewhere,” said Saeed al Nazari, secretary general of the committee. “We want the whole community to be involved in prevention—and, when necessary, in repair.”

One of the committee’s first initiatives involves honoring people who display simple acts of civility, including but not limited to keeping public spaces clean. “If a resident makes an effort to improve the quality of life for us all, that should be celebrated,” added al Nazari.

Will it work? Social experiments don’t allow for snap judgements, and it may be years before we know for certain. But it is both instructive and reassuring that Dubai isn’t content to place all its bets on technological solutions.

Back to Calcutta. Nearly four decades on, the subway system there remains cleaner than the city at large, but some of the behavior from the surface has begun to seep down into the underground. So much so that the authorities have been obliged to employ anti-littering squads to try to prevent spitting and other unclean behavior. If commuters won’t take that responsibility upon themselves, the threat and enforcement of fines will have to serve the purpose.

Dubai, which already has fines and enforcement, knows that these aren’t enough, which is why it is now supplementing those tools with some social engineering. It is an exercise that other cities ought to watch closely.

The elderly patient’s blood pressure had been dropping for weeks, and Chad Wittekind, his primary care provider, couldn’t figure out what was wrong. He had upped the dosage of one medication and added another, but couldn’t manage to regulate it. 

The patient hadn’t reported taking any other new medications or supplements and hadn’t made any major recent lifestyle changes. So what could be causing the blood pressure irregularity? 

It took a lot of questions and appointments to find the culprit: a drug he’d gotten through a telehealth website.

Like many other patients Wittekind has seen recently, this one had circumvented his primary care provider to get a drug over the Internet—in this case, an erectile-dysfunction medication. He’d gone to a website he came across online, filled out a form that a virtual health care provider quickly reviewed, and was sent the medication through the mail, but had been too embarrassed to tell Wittekind about the new addition to his regimen. 

You might not think that Wittekind, a Columbus, Ohio-based provider who works in geriatrics, would be seeing many patients turn to the Internet to get drugs for conditions like erectile dysfunction, overweight, menopause, and depression. But the accessibility of sites like these and the ease of getting meds from them have made them an increasingly popular choice for Americans of all ages and incomes.

Here’s how it works: often after viewing an ad on social media, people click on little-known websites promising a fast and easy way to get medication for a specific condition. These sites accept credit cards, don’t take insurance, and don’t typically make you have a call with a doctor. Instead, you fill out a quick form about your medical history and current medications, and a medical provider you’ll never meet (and will probably never talk to) reviews the information within minutes to hours. If you qualify, they’ll write you a prescription—often a recurring one—and connect you to a pharmacy that ships the drug directly to your home.

Wittekind and other providers see this as a problem. They’re used to patients coming to them asking for some drug they’ve seen advertised on TV, but the fact that patients can now get these drugs elsewhere, without much screening, is worrying. Wittekind has had a patient receive ketamine tablets through a telehealth website, and another got a GLP-1 drug for weight-loss even though they had a BMI of 18.7, meaning they should have been too thin to qualify per U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines. Sometimes, patients will have side effects from medications, but when they follow up with the virtual doctor who prescribed them, they don’t get a helpful response. 

Sites like these fall under the large umbrella of telehealth, which has unquestionably improved access to medical care, getting services to people who may not be able to easily or quickly find a doctor. It’s also made people much more comfortable seeking treatment for conditions that they might be embarrassed to bring up with their regular doctor, such as erectile dysfunction or hair loss. But telehealth has changed a lot since it started, when it usually referred to a video call with your doctor. Now, it includes hundreds of websites and the pharmacies they partner with—many of which are under-regulated. 

“There’s no accountability, no follow-up if they do have a problem. Trying to get back with their provider is impossible, and then it becomes my problem,” Wittekind says. “There’s no oversight with most of these places. Yes, you’re improving access, but at what cost?”

Why telehealth sites are exploding

Elliot Tabibian started his first telehealth site when he was just 18 years old. You don’t need to be a doctor to do so; all you have to do is figure out a condition that people are seeking treatment for and market your website. Outside companies have popped up to help with the infrastructure side—connecting patients with doctors and pharmacies, for example, and ensuring that the website complies with various state and federal laws. 

Tabibian says he got into telehealth after hearing about a friend who paid a website $200, had a 30-second doctor's appointment by phone, and got a medical marijuana card. “I thought, ‘that seems pretty profitable, I should get in there,’ says Tabibian, who is now 22.

His first site prescribed medical marijuana; he also tried out sites that sold erectile dysfunction medicines and ones that allowed people to get doctor’s notes stating that they needed service animals. (He shut these sites down after competition got too tight, he says.) He now operates two telehealth sites, one of which helps people get medical exemptions so that they can tint their car windows. “Tired of Cops Taking Your Tint? See if you Qualify for a Medical Tint Exemption in Less than 10 Minutes!” the site reads. It claims to give customers a full refund if they do not get approved for an exemption. 

Tabibian’s is one of hundreds, if not thousands, of telehealth sites that have proliferated in recent years. Though some of the first direct-to-consumer telehealth sites started operating before the pandemic, consumers really started embracing telehealth during it, when many insurers loosened restrictions to ensure more patients had access to care. This allowed medical care to be delivered at home to people who might not be able to travel to receive it elsewhere, expanding access. But what was meant to be a temporary measure became permanent as people grew accustomed to the convenience.

As more people sought out telehealth, entrepreneurs like Tabibian stepped in. They were enabled by companies forming networks of doctors that telehealth companies could contract with to provide services to patients, says Rebecca Gwilt, managing partner of Elevare Law, which consults with digital health care companies.  An entrepreneur only has to create a website and market its services to get a telehealth company off the ground.

These sites became extremely popular once the first GLP-1s debuted in 2021 and immediately went into shortage. People wanted GLP-1s, and many either couldn’t get them or couldn’t afford them. Telehealth entrepreneurs saw an opportunity, Gwilt says. They partnered with a special type of pharmacy, called a compounding pharmacy, that mixed the active ingredients in GLP-1s and sold them for much less than the pharmaceutical companies.

These sites take advantage of several weaknesses in the American medical system. It is expensive and inconvenient to go to the doctor, and patients often need to wait more than a month for an appointment. Insurance is also dismal to deal with, and deductibles and pre-approvals can make getting medications a costly headache.  

Those issues “created a gap that the compounding pharmacies and telehealth facilities were able to step into,” says Dr. Anjali Deshmukh, a pediatrician who is also a professor of health law at Seton Hall University. “They did not create the problem, but they are unquestionably profiting.”

One of the companies that helps entrepreneurs start their own telehealth sites is CareValidate. Co-founder Dr. Jiten Chhabra says he has seen a huge surge of people getting into telehealth—even those “who have no business in telehealth.” CareValidate is growing 20% month over month, he says, buoyed by investors and doctors interested in the idea of cash pay for medical care and specific medications. 

“We’re about to see a telehealth site for everything—it’s going to be very niche,” he says. “It’s going to show up in your social media, and it’s going to be the easiest way to get your hyper-personalized health condition taken care of.”

There are now virtual companies where customers can get diagnoses and prescriptions for things like low testosterone, toenail fungus, and even fear of public speaking. Often, the medicines are prescribed on a recurring basis, creating a long-term demand for the services of the telehealth doctor—and revenue streams for investors. These sites have essentially changed the power dynamic between doctors and patients; now, it’s the patients demanding medications they’ve decided they need from online health care providers, rather than patients asking doctors about what’s best for them.  

Investors see a huge upside because the sites are relatively cheap to launch and because they can turn a profit quickly—either by charging people for visits, selling medications at a markup, or both. Venture capitalists and private equity groups have put millions into telehealth startups, some of which have only a few employees. The size of the U.S. telehealth market was an estimated $28.3 billion in 2025, according to Grand View Research, and is projected to grow to $60.4 billion by 2033. The telehealth boom is concentrated in the U.S., where the high cost of medications and medical care has driven many consumers to telehealth sites; the market is not as strong in other countries. 

The telehealth space is expected to further explode because of interest in peptides, the injectable compounds that wellness influencers have popularized. (Very few clinical studies prove that peptides are effective, aside from those for GLP-1s, one example of  a peptide.) In a two-day July hearing, a FDA committee recommended that the agency allow specialty pharmacies to dispense six peptides; if approval is finalized, many patients are expected to get their prescriptions from telehealth sites. 

Telehealth can be appealing to doctors who are burned out from long hours and negotiating with insurance companies. With telehealth, they can work from home and often avoid insurance altogether.

“The economics are good, the lifestyle is good,” says Chhabra.

The problems with this type of telehealth

The downsides of this direct-to-patient model are starting to become evident. Patients who claim they were prescribed medicines after a cursory online evaluation are filing lawsuits about unanticipated side effects. Several lawsuits allege problems with telehealth companies prescribing at-home ketamine, Adderall, and hair-loss drugs.

In a few cases, patients have died after receiving what their families allege were inadequate telehealth services. Some lawsuits are also accusing telehealth sites of pressuring doctors to act in ways that maximize profit, rather than patient health.

Research suggests that the level of care provided by some of these sites is sometimes poor. In one July 2026 study published in JAMA, a researcher attempted to obtain prescriptions from 49 telehealth websites and found that there was “limited clinician engagement” and that the sites sometimes issued prescriptions, often in as little as five minutes, despite patients not uploading required photos or following other rules of the sites. In some cases, the same clinician provided several different prescriptions for the same patient across multiple sites.

“What we found is really there's not any sort of true engagement with a clinician,” says Dr. Reshma Ramachandran, a Yale professor and clinician and one of the authors of the study.  “The motivation from these websites is just to prescribe and not necessarily provide health care in the sense of someone actually conveying to that patient the risks and benefits we need to be considering.”  

Because so many sites compete to attract customers, experts say that some doctors are unlikely to turn down requests. Doctors sometimes have quotas of prescriptions they need to meet from the sites or get bonuses for meeting certain goals, says Ramachandran, who has friends who work for telehealth sites. A recent Senate investigation into a handful of telehealth sites found that 85%-100% of patients who interacted with a provider received prescriptions. 

Many patients report that there’s little follow-up from the sites or the doctors they employ, making it difficult for people to know what to do if they develop side effects. Ramachandran, who works at a federally qualified health center for low-income patients, says she has patients coming in who turned to telehealth because insurance got too expensive and were seeking medication, got confused about the dosage they received, and had bad side effects from the medications they took. 

“I think we’re undermining trust in the physician-patient relationship,” says Erin Fuse Brown, a professor of health services, policy and practice at the Brown University School of Public Health. She argues that telehealth sites are similar to “pill mills,” where the prescribers generate prescriptions if there is any conceivable reason to do so. “If you can just go to a website and get the drug you’re seeking after a cursory asynchronous questionnaire, it commercializes medicine in a way that’s a little bit dangerous.” 

Few laws exist to regulate these sites, which have the ability to claim to just be platforms connecting patients and providers. 

“There’s so much money to be made, and so many recent business school graduates running a start-up to get to the next big thing, that this aspect of telemedicine is getting way ahead of regulation, the law, and ethics,” says Arthur Caplan, a professor of bioethics at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. “It’s like a gold rush.”

Ramachandran says that while telehealth sites may have started as efforts to increase access to care, many have since incorporated incentives for doctors who get patients to try additional medications or take specific costly tests. Her study found that some sites didn’t disclose that the GLP-1s they sold were compounded and made unsubstantiated efficacy claims. 

“There are definitely digital health companies out there that you get concerned are worried about revenue rather than patient care,” says Dr. Suneer Chander, a co-founder of Air Physician Academy, which works to educate doctors about how to ethically enter telehealth. “That’s the sort of stuff we want doctors to understand before they get into digital health so that they can lead the industry, rather than be told what to do.” 

Tabibian, for instance, says one of the doctors who works for his company has done 300 asynchronous visits a day, reviewing patients’ requests for medication. The doctor gets paid $20 per review and has made as much as $6,000 a day. 

Asked if he was worried that 300 prescriptions per day was too many, Tabibian says that it’s up to the doctors to do their due diligence on what’s right for the patients. The way his company is set up, he says, he has no say in any medical decisions. “I’m a technology company. My job is just to connect the patient and physician,” he says. “Anything medical that goes on between the patient and the doctor is 100% the doctor’s responsibility.” 

He does see other sites bend the rules, he says—prescribing testosterone for men whose levels don’t medically support a prescription, for instance. He got ketamine prescribed for himself online because he was interested in starting a ketamine site, and says that he only took half of what the doctor ordered and was so high he couldn’t get out of bed. “That’s just a huge liability,” he says.

Succeeding at telehealth is really about being good at marketing, he says, and people—especially young people—who know how to promote sites through social media can cash in. “It’s really been smooth sailing,” he says. “From what I’ve seen, there’s little to no enforcement in the field.”

Murky regulations 

Few regulations guide what doctors can and can’t do via telehealth. Doctors, for instance, must meet what’s called the “standard of care,” meaning that they are expected to diagnose and treat the patient in the same way other qualified doctors would. But standard-of-care obligations are enforced by medical societies and professional associations, and few have taken steps to punish doctors for not meeting the standard of care through telehealth, says Caplan, the bioethics professor. 

“I’ve tested the sites, and the longest it took me to get whatever pill was about 35 seconds,” he says. “There doesn’t seem to be a thorough medical exam happening.” 

Instead, he says, doctors are prescribing medicine like antidepressants without talking to people to figure out why they might be depressed, or prescribing medications with serious side effects without much warning.  Litigation often only comes after something bad has happened, like a death or other adverse event. 

“I do worry about the fracturing of the medical system more broadly,” says Deshmukh, the Seton Hall professor. “I think having a relationship with a physician who understands you and knows your medical history and can make these decisions together is important.”

State medical boards could step in and discipline doctors who are providing substandard care through telehealth. But “the investigation capacity is really, really limited, and often they just don’t have the resources,” says Ramachandran, the Yale physician and professor. 

There are not many existing federal laws that could effectively regulate telehealth, says Fuse Brown, the professor from Brown. A law called the anti-kickback statute makes it illegal to compensate someone to make referrals for something (for example, medications) paid for by a federal health care program. That would presumably prohibit telehealth sites who make money off of prescriptions from paying doctors to make those prescriptions. But the anti-kickback statute only applies to drugs prescribed through federal programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and many of these sites are cash pay, so the statute wouldn’t apply. 

States could also investigate whether providers who work for these sites are being pressured or incentivized to prescribe more medicines, Fuse Brown, who adds that such pressure could potentially violate state laws.

Even without explicit pressure, telehealth providers know what patients expect of them. Wittekind, the geriatrics provider in Columbus, says he tried out working at a telehealth site after a company pitched him on setting his own hours and making some extra money. But one of his first patients was a man who wanted an oral hair-loss medication that can come with serious side effects, Wittekind says. 

The patient already had hypertension, and Wittekind didn’t think the drug would be a good solution for him, so he turned down the patient’s request. Wittekind realized that his principles probably led to bad reviews for the telehealth site—the patient seemed “perplexed” by the denial—but he didn’t like the idea of prescribing powerful medications without much opportunity for follow-up. He ultimately decided telehealth wasn’t a good fit for him because of that pressure to give the patients what they want. 

It wasn’t worth the extra money,” he says. But to many other clinicians, it is. 

Alzheimer’s dementia is generally more prevalent in women than in men, and doctors believe that one reason why is the sudden drop in estrogen after menopause, which can affect the brain.

A new study published in Neurology seems to support this theory. Researchers analyzed the health records of more than 5,000 older women with hysterectomies who had died and had an autopsy of their brains. Those who had received estrogen-only hormone therapy at menopause had 35% lower odds of having the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease, including amyloid plaques, in their brains compared to women who did not receive estrogen.

By including the autopsy findings, the results “lend objectivity to the outcome measures,” says Jennifer Bruno, an instructor in psychiatry at Stanford University and one of the co-authors of the study. “Previous studies used cognitive decline or clinical ratings of dementia, which are important for understanding how women are progressing through life, but are not definitive diagnoses of Alzheimer’s and therefore not objective.”

Earlier studies of hormone therapy and Alzheimer’s have led to mixed results, with some suggesting a reduced risk of the neurodegenerative disorder and others finding no benefit or an increased risk. The landmark Women’s Health Initiative hormone-therapy trial, whose initial results were released in 2002, raised a lot of concern about the safety of hormone therapy; it found that the treatment increased women's risk of breast cancer and dementia, while showing no benefit for reducing the risk of Alzheimer's. But the study included women who were post-menopausal and used a different type of hormone replacement therapy, making it hard to generalize the results to women taking hormones during menopause.

The women in the new study were prescribed estrogen only, and not the combination of estrogen and progesterone that is more commonly used to treat menopausal symptoms. Progesterone is prescribed to protect the uterus, but women who have had a hysterectomy, like those in the study, can safely be prescribed estrogen. This population provides a good way to study the effects of estrogen itself, since researchers believe it’s the hormone with more wide-ranging effects on the body, including in the brain.

Hadi Hosseini, an associate professor of psychiatry at Stanford and co-author of the study, says the results don’t establish a cause-and-effect link between estrogen and Alzheimer’s disease, but they do provide a reason to further study the role of the hormone in the neurodegenerative disease. “Previous studies," including the Women's Health Initiative, "showed that hormone therapy—estrogen plus progesterone—had a negative effect on Alzheimer’s disease risk and memory outcomes," he says. "These data are bringing awareness to the fact that maybe we need to reconsider some of the previous findings, since we can now look properly at Alzheimer’s disease outcomes, different formulations of hormone therapy, different times of initiating the therapy, and different durations of use.”

While the current study did not detail when the women began using estrogen, which formulation they took, or how long they remained on estrogen around menopause, future studies should be designed to take these factors into account, says Bruno. The current findings could serve as a foundation for two types of additional studies: a trial that follows women in perimenopause (the time just before menopause) and through menopause to monitor changes in biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease in the blood and spinal fluid, as well as in brain images. Such objectively based studies could shed more light on what role estrogen therapy can play in preventing Alzheimer’s.

Studying what types of hormone treatments women use, when they start therapy, and how long they remain on the hormones and how that affects their later Alzheimer’s risk could also be useful, says Bruno. “The Women’s Health Initiative was a big study that didn’t address things properly and put a cloud over prescribing [hormone] therapies,” she says. “We want to remove the cloud and reopen dialogue to think about how we can, from a research perspective, further understand the potentially powerful mechanism of [how these hormones] can help with memory and Alzheimer’s disease.”

Viles Dorsainvil doesn't have time to think about his own future.

His days are filled with responding to increasingly frantic calls from fellow Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, where he is a community leader known for helping make sense of immigration issues. Then he spends his evenings up late, often until midnight, working on his own schoolwork, as he pursues dual master's degrees in public administration and international relations at Wright State University near Dayton.

Amid this hectic pace, Dorsainvil, 40, is grappling with the same situation as many of those around him. He came to the U.S. in 2020 under what’s known as Temporary Protected Status, or TPS. Last week, a federal court confirmed that the Trump administration's bid to end TPS for Dorsainvil and roughly 330,000 other Haitians had succeeded, setting the stage for scores of deportations in the coming months. 

In recent weeks, Haitians across the country have received a stark warning from the Department of Homeland Security: accept $2,600 and return to Haiti, or refuse and be fitted with an ankle monitor, allowing Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to easily detain them for deportation at any point in the future. Some Haitians are preparing to flee to another country. Others are resigned to returning to Haiti. 

Dorsainvil has yet to receive a letter from DHS. He is trying to keep from becoming overcome by fear, especially while others in the community still depend on him. But his precarious situation feels untenable. 

"I don't know which plan I should have," he says.

In Springfield, fear of this moment has been rooted deeply in the community's psyche since the last presidential campaign, when Donald Trump and JD Vance helped spread false rumors about Haitian migrants eating residents' pets in Springfield. Last June, then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem first announced that TPS for Haitians would be terminated.

That set off a monthslong legal fight that officially ended this month, with a federal judge affirming the Supreme Court's decision from June. “These individuals can either self-deport or we'll arrest you and send you back,” Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin told NewsNation last week.

The Haitian Support Center in Springfield that Dorainvil co-founded in 2023 has seen calls spike from Haitians worried about their future in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling. On the other end of each line is another Haitian immigrant trying, like him, to rebuild a life in America after leaving a home country torn by deadly earthquakes and endless gang violence. 

Since late July, at least 50 people in Springfield have received a DHS letter about their deportation status, according to the center's own tally. The letters instruct them to come to the nearest local ICE offices for a check-in appointment and preview the choice they will be asked to make. 

Dorsainvil, who has accompanied some Haitians to provide translation, says most check-ins unfold the same way: after immigration officers confirm an immigrants' identity and status, they offer the $2,600 payment and deportation, which the immigrant usually refuses. Then they are outfitted with an ankle monitor, despite objections from their lawyer who often argue for less intrusive measures. 

None of the court rulings can alter the chaotic reality that still engulfs Haiti. The State Department continues to warn American citizens not to travel to the country, citing the risk of “crime, kidnapping, terrorism, unrest, and limited health care.” The Department also recommends U.S. citizens who need to travel to Haiti leave DNA samples and dental records with trusted people to make it easier to identify their remains. 

Dorsainvil stresses that many Haitians in the U.S. would love to return to their homeland if that was a viable option. “So far, we just don't have a country to come back to,” he says.

Haitian migrants scared to leave their homes

Two weeks ago, Dorsainvil made the difficult decision to close down the Haitian Support Center for two days over fears of a rumored ICE operation in Springfield. He feared ICE agents might stake out the center’s office to catch Haitians coming there for help. The heightened vulnerability has left Springfield’s Haitians in a state of panic. Many of those who haven’t fled their homes are staying indoors and keeping their kids home from school. 

The anxiety among Haitian immigrants isn't confined to Ohio, where Gov. Mike DeWine has limited state cooperation with ICE and praised Haitians for helping revitalize Springfield’s economy. In Florida, home to the nation's largest Haitian population, immigrants face intensified enforcement as the Republican-controlled state government closely aligns itself with Trump's mass-deportation agenda. Last year, Governor Ron DeSantis mandated all local officials work with ICE operations, and the state government has threatened officials who hesitate to do so with criminal penalties. 

State authorities in Florida are now required to make immigration-related arrests on behalf of ICE. It’s a dynamic that has left the state’s Haitian immigrants "paralyzed," says Anne Piervil, an immigration attorney based in Orlando.

“People aren't driving. People aren't taking public transportation. People are scared to go to the airport,” she says, adding that some TPS holders have lost their driver’s license because renewal was tied to their immigration status.

An ICE spokesperson said in a statement that TPS had been allowed to function as a de facto amnesty program and that the program was always intended to be temporary.  

“What we would say now is it’s closing time which means you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here,” the spokesperson said in an unsigned statement. “The good news is it’s not too late to get a $2,600 check and a free flight home.”

Scores of Haitian immigrants have also reportedly lost their jobs. Piervil said large amusement parks, hotels, and nursing homes in Orlando have begun dismissing hundreds, if not thousands, of Haitian workers since the Supreme Court ruling.

The fraught situation in the U.S. is prompting some Haitians to contemplate fleeing to a third country, despite the obstacles. Aside from the costs and a possible language barrier, many Haitian immigrants are also concerned about their own safety if they move to a third country, according to Felipe Sousa-Lazaballet, a community organizer in central Florida. That fear was heightened after reports in February that four decapitated Haitian women were found in the Dominican Republic—Haiti's neighbor—after they had been deported from Puerto Rico. The Dominican Republic has also been deporting hundreds of thousands back to Haiti each year.

The option to move to Canada is also becoming increasingly infeasible. Earlier this year, Canada tightened its immigration laws in response to an influx of migrants. Any TPS holders who try to cross the border risk being returned immediately to the United States and into ICE custody.

For many Haitians in the U.S., the only realistic option is to simply wait for what comes next. The community in Springfield is left collectively holding its breath, wondering if a rumored mass deportation operation will come to pass.

For now, Dorsainvil, along with many volunteers in the community, continues to provide as much support as he can, from daily transportation and translation to grocery shopping. Like many other Haitians living in Springfield, he also finds solace in prayer and meditation.

“I meditate to reboost my system and mental health,” he says, “just so that I can continue to serve my community again tomorrow, and the next day.”

During her time behind the White House podium, departing Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has gained a reputation for her sharp retorts to reporters, an echo of President Donald Trump’s contentious relationship with the press.

Leavitt will step down from her role at the White House at the end of the month to spend more time with her family, Trump announced on Wednesday—”a decision,” he said in a Truth Social post, “I totally understand and respect!” He added that she “will now be one of my top outside advisors, and an influential voice within the Republican Party.” 

In her own social media post on Wednesday, Leavitt called the White House Press Secretary role “the honor and adventure of a lifetime” and went on to thank the President.

“Most of all, I am thankful to the President for entrusting me with the distinct privilege of speaking on his behalf at the White House podium,” she said. “I have relished holding the liberal media accountable and ensuring the American people hear the truth about President Trump’s successes.”

Read More: Karoline Leavitt to Step Down as White House Press Secretary

Here are some of the most notable moments of Leavitt going head-to-head with the press in the year and a half she has served in her role.

When she said she regretted giving a question to The Associated Press

During a press briefing in March 2025, Leavitt had a heated exchange with Josh Boak, a reporter at The Associated Press, after he asked why Trump was prioritizing “tax hikes in the form of tariffs” rather than the tax cuts he vowed to enact while he was campaigning during the 2024 election.

“He’s actually not implementing tax hikes. Tariffs are a tax hike on foreign countries that, again, have been ripping us off,” Leavitt replied. “Tariffs are a tax cut for the American people, and the President is a staunch advocate of tax cuts.”

Boak pushed back by saying: “I’m sorry, have you ever paid a tariff? Because I have. They don’t get charged on foreign companies; they get charged on the importers.”

Leavitt responded by arguing that tariffs would be beneficial for Americans, before adding that Boak was being “insulting.”

“I think it’s insulting that you’re trying to test my knowledge of economics, and the decision that this President has made,” she said. “I now regret giving a question to The Associated Press.”

When she said a reporter asked a “stupid question”

At a White House press briefing in June 2025, NOTUS reporter Jasmine Wright asked Leavitt to “clarify what kind of protest President Trump does support or find acceptable.” The question came after Trump had issued a warning to potential protesters ahead of the upcoming military parade in the nation’s capital: “For those people that want to protest, they’re going to be met with very big force.”

Leavitt said that Trump “absolutely supports peaceful protests. He supports the First Amendment,” but added that “he does not support violence of any kind.”

Wright then asked whether the President would allow peaceful protests the day of the military parade in the nation’s capital. Leavitt shot back: “Of course the President supports peaceful protests. What a stupid question.”

When she abruptly ended a press briefing after a question about the Commerce Secretary’s Epstein ties

In February, Leavitt abruptly ended a White House press briefing after a reporter asked whether the White House supported Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. The question came after Lutnick said earlier that same day in front of a Senate panel that he had visited the private island of the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in 2012—despite the fact that he had previously claimed to have ended his relationship with Epstein years before.

Read More: Bipartisan Lawmakers Call for Trump’s Commerce Secretary to Step Down—or Be Ousted—Over Epstein Ties

Leavitt responded by saying that the Commerce Secretary is “a very important member of President Trump’s team” and that Trump “fully supports” him. She then slammed the journalists in the room for their questions.

“I will just point out that there are a lot of wins in the news this week that people in this room have not asked about because you continue to ask questions about the same subject so let me point them out for you,” Leavitt said, before she began reading off other news that the Trump Administration was celebrating as victories, including recent stock market results.

“So,” she said when she finished, “we’re going to get back to business. The President is very busy today and you will see him all tomorrow at the event in the East Room touting his Administration’s energy policy.” She then walked off the stage.

When she accused a journalist of being a “leftwing activist”

During a press briefing in January—just a week after Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed by a federal immigration agent—The Hill columnist Niall Stanage asked Leavitt a question about ICE’s tactics. He cited then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s claim that ICE officers are “doing everything correctly.” He went on to list statistics that 32 people died while in ICE custody in 2025 and more than 170 Americans were detained by the agency last year, before referencing Good’s death.

“How does that equate to them doing everything correctly?” he asked Leavitt.

Leavitt replied: “Why was Renee Good unfortunately and tragically killed?” 

When Stanage clarified whether she was asking him for his opinion, she replied in the affirmative.

“Because an ICE agent acted recklessly and killed her unjustifiably,” he said.

“Okay, so you’re a biased reporter with a leftwing opinion,” Leavitt said. “Because you’re a leftwing hack. You’re not a reporter, you’re posing in this room as a journalist. And it’s so clear by the premise of your question. And you and the people of the media who have such biases but fake like you’re a journalist—you shouldn’t even be sitting in that seat.”

“You’re pretending like you’re a journalist, but you’re a leftwing activist,” she continued. “The question that you just raised and your answer proves you’re biased. You should be reporting on the facts.”

When she told a journalist “You’re a reporter—you should find out” in response to a query

In March 2025, CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins asked Leavitt whether there was any evidence to support Trump’s claim that some of the pardons issued by former President Joe Biden were signed by an autopen without his knowledge. In response, Leavitt said: “You’re a reporter—you should find out.”

The moment was one of several heated exchanges Leavitt and Collins have had since Trump took office for a second term. Also in March 2025, Leavitt refused to take a follow-up question from Collins, saying twice: “Kaitlan, I’m not taking your follow-up.”

Karoline Leavitt will step away from her position as White House Press Secretary at the end of this month, President Trump announced on Wednesday.

In a Truth Social post, Trump said Leavitt, 28, will depart her role to spend more time with her family. Leavitt gave birth to her second child Viviana in May. 

“Karoline will now be one of my top outside advisors, and an influential voice within the Republican Party, as we work to defy History, and conclusively win the Midterm Elections,” Trump added. 

It is unclear who will replace Leavitt as White House press secretary. TIME has reached out to the White House for comment. 

Leavitt thanked Trump and the White House team in a lengthy post on X, and added that she will remain “a vocal advocate for MAGA and the Republican Party. ”

“The truth is since returning to the White House after the birth of my daughter, I have felt in my heart that I cannot be the best mom my two young children deserve while devoting the constant time, energy, and attention required of the White House Press Secretary,” Leavitt said. 

“It has been a privilege to serve alongside so many accomplished and impressive people, and I look forward to cheering them on over the next two and a half years,” she added.

Leavitt has worked for Trump since 2018, beginning as a White House intern in the Office of Presidential Correspondence while a student at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire. She briefly worked as Communications Director for Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, one of the top House Republicans from New York, and later launched a failed congressional campaign in New Hampshire against Democratic incumbent Chris Pappas. 

After losing her campaign, Leavitt joined Trump’s third presidential campaign, working as a spokesperson for his super PAC, MAGA Inc. In January 2024, she became national press secretary for Trump's presidential campaign. She gave birth to her first child Niko in July 2024, four days before returning to work following the first assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, according to CNN.

The State Department announced on Monday that it has revoked over 175,000 visas since President Donald Trump returned to office last January.

The department stated that the revocations targeted foreign nationals who had “violated the terms of their visas, committed crimes, called for violence against U.S. citizens, defrauded Americans, abused our immigration system, or endangered national security.” According to the department, the “majority” of the visas were revoked due to “criminal activity.”

Trump has launched an aggressive crackdown on both legal and illegal immigration in his second term, vowing to deport the “worst of the worst” from the U.S. 

Data have shown, however, that the majority of the people who have been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the second Trump Administration have had no criminal convictions. The Administration’s immigration enforcement tactics, meanwhile, have drawn widespread outcry and official pushback, with courts striking down a number of its moves as violating longstanding laws and protests breaking out around the country following the killings of multiple U.S. citizens by federal agents.

The department offered several examples of people whose visas have been revoked and the reasons why in its Monday release, though it did not provide any evidence or identifying information about the cases it referenced. 

“The Trump Administration is protecting our nation and its citizens by upholding the highest standards of national security and public safety through our visa process,” a State Department spokesperson tells TIME in a statement, saying that the Secretary of State has “broad discretionary authority to revoke visas.”

Here are some of the groups of people who have been included in the Trump Administration’s sweeping visa cancellations, according to federal officials. 

People accused of “criminal activity”

Most of the visas were revoked as a result of “law enforcement encounters for a range of criminal activity,” the State Department said.

It listed “assault, driving under the influence, theft, and drug crimes” as the “leading causes,” while noting that a “significant share” of the cancellations were also due to “reckless driving, sexual assault, child abuse, fraud and embezzlement, and other crimes.”

The department listed among its individual examples foreign nationals who it said were charged with violent and sexual offenses including instances of “rape and sexual battery – including of a victim who was mentally disabled”; kidnapping and human trafficking; domestic violence; and “sodomy of a child.”

Multiple other people whose visas were revoked, it said, were involved in fraud schemes—which Trump has made it a major focus of his second term agenda to c. One person “built a company on lies,” the department alleged, “faking revenue and fooling investors to swindle millions of dollars from clients.” In another of the examples it offered, the department said the visa holder “helped orchestrate a massive Medicaid scam – billing for over $5 million of fake services.”

Trump has made cracking down on fraud a major focus of his second term agenda. And foreign nationals have in multiple instances been targeted in the Administration’s anti-fraud campaign. 

In one notable instance, the President accused Somalis in Minnesota of being involved in a welfare fraud scandal in Minnesota amid his immigration crackdown in the state, marking just the latest instance in which Trump has gone after the state’s sizable Somali community. “Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State, and BILLIONS of Dollars are missing,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. Democrats have condemned Trump’s targeting of the community.

In still another alleged instance cited by the State Department in its Monday release, someone had their visa revoked after they were  arrested “for driving with heroin and a blood alcohol level more than 3x the legal limit.”

People who “celebrated” Charlie Kirk’s death

The State Department said that it had revoked the visas of "multiple foreign nationals who celebrated the assassination of Charlie Kirk,” including one who allegedly said of the conservative commentator, “when fascists die, democrats don’t complain,” and another who said Kirk “died too late.”

Kirk, the founder of the conservative youth activist group Turning Point USA and a friend of Trump’s, was shot and killed while he was hosting an event at Utah Valley University in September. Tyler Robinson, the suspect in Kirk’s killing, was arrested after a 33-hour manhunt. 

In the aftermath of Kirk’s death, some on the right, including Trump, blamed the left for his killing and the broader rise in political violence around the country—despite data contradicting that portrayal—and called for a crackdown. The President asserted in an address at the time that “radical left” rhetoric comparing “wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals” was “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today.”

The State Department indicated at the time that it may withhold—or revoke—visas from non-citizens who made social media posts making light of Kirk’s shooting.

“In light of yesterday’s horrific assassination of a leading political figure, I want to underscore that foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country. I have been disgusted to see some on social media praising, rationalizing, or making light of the event, and have directed our consular officials to undertake appropriate action,” Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said in a post on X. He called for people to make him aware of such remarks and said that he would “direct consular officials to monitor the comments to this post.”

A State Department spokesperson said in a statement to news outlets when asked for comment on Landau’s post that "this Administration does not believe that the United States should grant visas to persons whose presence in our country does not align with U.S. national security interests."

The department in October said that it had revoked the visas of six foreign nationals over comments they made online about Kirk’s assassination, saying in posts on X that it had “no obligation to host foreigners who wish death on Americans.” 

“Aliens who take advantage of America’s hospitality while celebrating the assassination of our citizens will be removed,” the department wrote. 

People deemed deportable on ‘foreign policy grounds’

The State Department credited Secretary of State Marco Rubio with identifying “numerous” foreign nationals who it characterized as “deportable on foreign policy grounds.” 

These people, according to the department, included a Cuban national “connected to a Cuban communist regime influence operation” and Iranian nationals “with connections to the Iranian regime.”

The Trump Administration has reportedly been moving to remove Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, and the President has suggested that he would turn his attention to the country after the war in Iran has been resolved. In February, the U.S. and Israel forced a different regime change when they launched their initial wave strikes against Iran, in which the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, Ali Khamenei, was killed. 

The department also cited as examples of those whose visas were revoked for foreign policy reasons “a Laotian child sex offender” who it said was pardoned by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and “a Kuwaiti national who wished for violence against the President of the United States and called Americans his ‘enemy.’”

“Wishing violence upon the President of the United States and characterizing Americans as one's enemy are not protected activities that entitle a foreign national to remain in the United States,” the department spokesperson says to TIME.

‘Birth tourists’

The department said that a U.S. embassy in North Africa revoked the visas of over 100 “birth tourist” parents, who intentionally give birth in the U.S. so that their children receive citizenship status. 

Trump has sought to severely restrict birthright citizenship, which was established in the Fourteenth Amendment in the 19th century. Under the amendment, almost all of those born on U.S. soil automatically become citizens. 

Trump attempted to take executive action to limit those privileges significantly, but the Supreme Court deemed the move unconstitutional and struck it down. Since that ruling, however, the Trump Administration has continued his efforts to restrict the law. The Department of Justice, the same day as the Supreme Court decision, said that it would “prioritize the investigation and prosecution of birth tourism schemes.” And last week Trump signed two new executive orders targeting birthright citizenship. 

International students

Though the State Department did not include any mention of it in its Monday release, the Trump Administration has also revoked thousands of student visas.

The Administration has targeted student activists on college campuses; expanded social media screenings for certain visa holders’ accounts; targeted visas from Chinese students, citing security concerns; and limited the amount of time that students and foreign journalists can stay in the country, among a number of moves impacting foreign-born students. 

Rubio said in August, roughly seven months after Trump returned to office, that more than 6,000 student visas had been revoked in that time.

Four years ago, Gregory Robinson wanted nothing to do with what might be the greatest spacecraft ever built. It didn’t, at the time, seem like it would ever actually become what it was promised to be: a machine that would take images from space, return them to Earth, and gobsmack the public with their clarity and depth and sheer celestial beauty—the kind of beauty that could, even briefly, stop a fraught and fractious species like ours from the daily messes we make of our world and leave us thinking, just once, You know what? When we try, we can do something truly grand.

What the spacecraft did seem like at the time was a massive white elephant, one that a man in Robinson’s position would not want to go near. For one thing, it was grossly over budget—with a sticker price that had risen from an initial estimate in 1995 of just $500 million to $8.8 billion. For another thing, it was years behind schedule. Its launch was originally set for 2007, and here it was the spring of 2018 and still nobody could say exactly when it would leave the ground. And finally, Robinson, who was at the time NASA’s deputy associate administrator of programs, liked the job he had just fine—overseeing no fewer than 114 NASA spacecraft either already flying or in the development pipeline.

And now, here came his boss, NASA associate administrator Thomas Zurbuchen, offering him a dog of an assignment: give up all of those fine spacecraft with their fine missions, and take over as program director of the James Webb Space Telescope—a generational project, yes, but with many blown deadlines and bloated costs and all the headaches that came with them. The telescope’s launch, at the time, was set for less than half a year away—October 2018—and once again it looked as if it would miss its target.

“We have some major challenges,” Robinson recalls Zurbuchen saying to him. “We’re starting to realize we may not make our launch date.” Zurbuchen then got to his point, asking—more like insisting, as Robinson recalls it—that he take over the reins of the project. “You’re the right guy to do it,” Zurbuchen said. “We’ve looked at a lot of different people, and you’re the right guy.”

Zurbuchen was impressed not just by Robinson’s technical acumen, but also his skills with a workforce. “The majority of problems we encountered with Webb during its [previous] six years were people and team problems,” Zurbuchen said in an email to TIME. “Technically, most issues had been resolved, but the team had struggled to come together and execute seamlessly. This is where Greg’s strengths really lie. He can walk into a meeting or launch room and walk out knowing what the energy of the team is, and also what hinders their progress.”

All the same, Robinson resisted the Webb offer for weeks before ultimately relenting to Zurbuchen’s entreaties. Four years on, the decision looks like an eminently good one. The seven-ton James Webb Space Telescope, with its prodigious 6.5-m (21.3 ft.) main mirror, is now situated in space 1.6 million km (1 million miles) from Earth, peering deeper into the universe, and thus further back in time, than any other space observatory ever built. If the Hubble Space Telescope has been NASA’s astronomical workhorse for more than 30 years, the Webb is the newer, grander, more powerful racehorse.

“Until Webb, Hubble was the best in the business,” says Robinson. “But to see the clarity, the differences in the images we’re getting now, it just blows my mind.”

The public’s awed reaction has mirrored Robinson’s own; the Webb telescope has come to represent something larger and grander than all of us. The long effort to get the spacecraft built, the mission it was assigned—searching for clues to the very origins of the universe—have worked a certain transcendent good. From the hands of a team of thousands of researchers, engineers, and factory-line workers came a ship that, if it doesn’t exactly kick open the doors to the secrets of the cosmos, at least parts the curtain. “This beautiful machine,” says senior project scientist John Mather, “has worked in every way that it was supposed to work.”

That beautiful work Webb is doing is a function of the wavelength in which its mirror sees the universe. Hubble scans space principally in the visible spectrum—the same wavelength with which the human eye sees. That allows it to peer 13.4 billion light-years away, seeing light that has been traveling to us for 13.4 billion years—or just 400 million years after the Big Bang. But Hubble is blind to what happened in that critical earlier phase of the universe’s infancy, because visible light from so far away can’t penetrate the intervening dust of interstellar space.

Infrared radiation, however, cuts right through the dust, allowing a telescope that, like Webb, detects energy in that frequency to see as far as 13.6 billion light-years distant. The additional 200 million years seems like a small difference, but it’s not.

“The difference between what Hubble and Webb [see] is not like comparing someone who’s 70 years old to somebody who’s 71 years old,” said Scott Friedman, an astronomer with the Webb team, in a conversation with TIME last year. “It’s like comparing a baby who’s 1 day old to a baby who’s 1 year old.”

Hubble, launched in 1990, had been in space for no more than five years before NASA began drawing up plans for an infrared observatory that was then called the Next Generation Space Telescope. The idea was a bold one, but it seemed snakebit from the start. Nobody had ever built a telescope like this before, and the research and development process was slow and painstaking, with the original half-billion price tag climbing steadily over the years—to $1 billion in 2000; $2.5 billion in 2004 (by which point the telescope had been renamed in honor of former NASA administrator James Webb); $4.5 billion in 2006; $8 billion in 2011; and $8.8 billion when Robinson took over in 2018.

That made Robinson’s job a potentially thankless one, but he was not working alone. At the time he took command of the project, NASA had already empaneled an independent review board to help set Webb to rights at last. Working with the board, Robinson improved the project’s efficiency rating—a ratio of scheduled tasks to completed tasks—from 55% to 95%. He also made the process more transparent, holding regular meetings with the White House Office of Management and Budget as well as appropriations committees in both houses of Congress.

And Robinson made it a point to tell some hard truths: Webb, he frankly conceded, was going to be later still—not launching until the end of 2021—and would cost more still, with a final price tag of $10 billion. But those would be the drop-dead limits.

“I tried to be a little more realistic,” Robinson says. “We tend to come into these things with a hero syndrome, and that can get you into trouble. I tried to institute better schedules, better milestones. Our rule was ‘Go fast, but don’t rush.’”

On Christmas Day 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope at last left the ground, aboard a European Space Agency (ESA) Ariane 5 rocket launched from Kourou, French Guiana, in South America. Hitching a ride with the ESA was a necessity because of the Webb’s size—which is too big for any rocket in the American fleet. Only the Ariane 5’s 5.4-m (17.7 ft.) fairing could accommodate it.

Launching from French Guiana came with its own challenges. Robinson and the rest of the NASA team were on-site for three weeks before liftoff as the telescope was loaded into the rocket and countdown rehearsals were run again and again. The jungle environment required the crew to take anti-malarial pills, tolerate ants in the hotel rooms, and stay alert to the stray jaguar that would appear on or around the launch site.

“One night, one of our engineers came back to his hotel and found a 6-ft. snake in his room,” says Bill Ochs, Webb’s now retired project manager.

Once in space, the telescope required three months before it could unfold its mirror and bring all of its observation instruments online. The process required successfully overcoming 344 so-called single-point failures—a pulley or actuator or switch that, if it went awry, could all by itself doom the mission. The biggest challenge involved unfurling the Webb’s tennis-court-size sunshield—a structure made of five layers of foil-like Kapton that keeps the temperature of the telescope’s mirror and instruments at a frigid –223°C (–370°F). That bitter temperature is necessary to prevent stray heat from distorting Webb’s infrared images the way stray light can ruin optical pictures. All 344 single-point failures worked perfectly and at last, in March 2022, the telescope switched on its 6.5-m eye and captured its initial image.

For that first picture, engineers at Webb’s mission-control center at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore turned the telescope toward an entirely unremarkable star that goes by the decidedly technical name TYC 4212-1079-1. The choice was a practical one: TYC 4212-1079-1, some 2,000 light-years from Earth, has no nearby neighbors, allowing Webb to focus on it alone.

At first the image was a mess, with all 18 of the mirror segments capturing their own image of the star. “Imagine an a cappella chorus where everyone has their own key and their own song,” says Webb’s operations project scientist Jane Rigby. But over the course of several days the team focused the mirror, adjusting the position of each segment on the order of nanometers—less than the width of a human hair—until the 18 blurred images resolved into a single, impossibly bright and sharp one, with hundreds of galaxies photobombing it in the background.

“I can tell you that I’ve worked with geeks my whole life, and there was no better scene,” says Robinson, who was at the STScI at the time. “To see a bunch of people just falling over themselves with joy, it was a beautiful thing. I’m glad I was a part of it.”

In July, the whole world got to experience a similarly sublime moment when the Webb team unveiled four eye-popping images, including a field of galaxies known as SMACS 0723; the Carina Nebula—one of the cosmos’ great nurseries for new stars—located 7,600 light-years from Earth; and Stephan’s Quintet, a cluster of five galaxies first imaged by more primitive telescopes in 1877. The big reveal took place at a White House event attended by multiple members of the Webb team.

“These images are going to remind the world that America can do big things, and remind the American people—especially our children—that there’s nothing beyond our capacity,” President Joe Biden said during the event. “We can see possibilities no one has ever seen before. We can go places no one has ever gone before.”

With that early hoopla passed, the telescope has now entered its operational phase and is settling down to do more than just deliver eye candy. Astronomers from around the world who want to conduct research on the telescope are invited to submit proposals for observation time, and the Webb team expects to receive 1,000 such pitches per year—with only enough telescope time available to accommodate about 200 of them.

Despite that selectivity, Robinson—who has since retired, calling Webb the “capstone” of his career—sees the telescope as very much a democratic instrument. It may be owned and operated by NASA, but, Robinson says, “29 states in the U.S., 14 countries, and over 10,000 people touched this telescope.”

Write to Jeffrey Kluger at jeffrey.kluger@time.com.

When Aaron Judge stood in the Yankee Stadium batter’s box in late September, he couldn’t quite shake the silence. Some 45,000 voices hushed, as if they were at a basilica, not a ball field. As fans anticipated a landmark moment in sports—the breaking of a revered home-run record—they refused to peep as the pitcher wound up.

“I never noticed the crowd until they stopped cheering, which was one of the craziest things in my career,” says Judge, 30, sitting in the leafy courtyard of his luxury New York City apartment building, about a week after the end of a monumental campaign in which he set a new American League home-run mark, with 62. “That’s when I started to kind of realize, ‘Oh boy, there’s something special going on here.’”

Judge—who at 6 ft. 7 in. and 282 lb. checks in as one of the most massive players in baseball history–slugged his 60th home run, tying Babe Ruth’s 1927 milestone, on Sept. 20, launching a 95-m.p.h. sinker deep into the left-center field bleachers. From there, the story got suspenseful. Over five home games and two more on the road in Toronto, Judge failed to tie Roger Maris’ American League record of 61. He began to press, and opposing pitchers, in no mood to become subjects of trivia questions for generations, remained reluctant to throw him strikes. Judge, however, locked in just in time. He tied Maris in Toronto on Sept. 28, and finally hit No. 62 on Oct. 4, a 391-ft. blast off Rangers pitcher Jesus Tinoco in the second-to-last game of the season. (Remember that name, for your sports-bar quiz night, circa 2041.)

The record chase boosted attendance, television ratings, and social media engagement down the stretch of the 2022 baseball season. ESPN even cut into college-football coverage to show potential record-breaking swings, interrupting sacrosanct Saturday-afternoon viewing routines. “That’s really good for the game,” Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred tells TIME. “When you cut into football, you’re hitting people that you might not otherwise get to.” Judge became a free agent in on Nov. 6, bringing buzz to the offseason. In early December, Judge agreed to sign the richest free-agent contract in the game’s history, keeping him a New York Yankee for the next nine years.

In a year full of memorable athletic achievements—Stephen Curry shooting the Golden State Warriors to another NBA title, Serena Williams and Roger Federer taking their final tennis bows, the World Cup wizards scoring goals in Qatar—none was more transcendent than Judge’s. Sports fans hold individual records dear, and no game cherishes its numbers quite like the national pastime. Many fans and pundits even consider Judge the “authentic” single-season home-run champ, given that all the National League players who’ve hit more than Judge—Barry Bonds (73 in 2001), Mark McGwire (70 in 1998, 65 in 1999), and Sammy Sosa (66 in 1998, 64 in 2001, 63 in 1999)—did so under a cloud of steroid suspicion.

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Judge still considers Bonds, one of his favorite players while growing up in tiny Linden, Calif., some 75 miles east of San Francisco, the rightful record holder. “I’ll say I have the AL record,” Judge tells TIME. “I’ll hold my head on that.” He won’t, however, dissuade public sentiment. “I’m not going to try to change someone’s opinion if they say I am, or I’m not,” he says. “That’s up to them.”

As a tall, biracial kid growing up with white adoptive parents in Linden, a rural town of 1,784 in the 2010 Census with a 0.6% African American population, Judge stood out. But thanks in part, he thinks, to his athletic prowess—Judge was a three-sport (baseball, football, basketball) star at Linden High—he felt accepted. “Just because I didn’t look like my parents and was a little taller than everyone else and maybe had a little more freckles, no one treated me any different.”

When Judge was around 10, he asked his parents Wayne and Patty, both schoolteachers, why he and his older brother, who is of Korean descent, didn’t look at all like their parents. They told him the boys were adopted, and offered to provide any information he wanted to know about his biological parents. Judge just asked if he could go back outside and play. “I’ve just never had a need,” says Judge, “because I’ve felt at home.” (Judge says he does know that his biological father is Black and his biological mother is white.)

Though the Oakland A’s drafted Judge in the 31st round out of high school, he chose to go to Fresno State, his parents’ alma mater. At Fresno, coach Mike Batesole would fine players who used I or me in boastful conversation. Judge, who reached the big leagues in 2016, has continued to adhere to that team-first philosophy in New York, constantly crediting his teammates in interviews throughout his home-run charge, earning him comparisons to the longtime face of the Yankees, shortstop Derek Jeter. “Ultimately, if you’re artificial, time will expose you,” Jeter tells TIME. “You can’t fake out New Yorkers. You either mean it or you don’t, and it appears to me that he means it.”

Judge denies mimicking Jeter—or anyone else. “I’m always confused when people are like, ‘Oh, you’re like Jeter, you’re like this guy,’” Judge says. “I try not to be. I just try to be who I am.” He cops to strategic communication, which was Jeter’s MO. He’s unlikely to, say, leak juicy details of a team meeting to the New York tabloids. “To say I’m boring, I don’t care,” says Judge. “I’m in front of that camera after every single game. They can never say I’m not accountable.”

In 2017, Judge set a new rookie home-run record, with 52 (Pete Alonso of the New York Mets broke that mark two seasons later). Injuries curtailed Judge’s home-run numbers the next three years. Starting late in the 2021 season, he made a subtle hitting adjustment, moving his hands from behind his neck to the middle of his chest at the plate. This enables him to coil his hips and load up his power before swinging through the ball. This action creates a slingshot effect. “You want to stretch the rubber band all the way out,” says Judge. “And once you get to that moment, you want to release it.”

The adjustment made his at-bats a must-watch. Judge’s highlights generated 84% more engagements than the average post on MLB’s Facebook page. The MLB Network’s telecast of the Sept. 28 Yankee game in Toronto, in which Judge smacked his 61st home run, was the most-watched regular-season game in eight years. At the start of the season, according to MLB data, 21% of fans ranked Shohei Ohtani as “the most exciting player to watch in baseball right now,” while only 4% thought the same of Judge. Come October, 27% of fans said Judge was the most exciting player in the game, a near sevenfold increase. Just 16% picked Ohtani.

Judge has remained the object of attention this off-season, a validation of his decision ahead of opening day not to extend his Yankees contact beyond his “walk” year, the last season before a player can become a free agent. He had felt blindsided in April when New York Yankees GM Brian Cashman took the rare step of publicly revealing that Judge had turned down $213.5 million to stay in the Bronx for the next seven years. “We kind of said, Hey, let’s keep this between us,” says Judge. “I was a little upset that the numbers came out. I understand it’s a negotiation tactic. Put pressure on me. Turn the fans against me, turn the media on me. That part of it I didn’t like.” (A Yankees spokesperson declined to make Cashman available for comment.)

Though he had been confident he could earn more as a free agent, when his season got off to a somewhat slow start, Judge second-guessed himself. “But then you kick yourself in the butt and say, Nah, man,” he says. “Come on.” By the end of May, Judge had slugged 18 homers and was off toward history. Besides setting the new AL home-run record, Judge led the AL in runs batted in and finished second in batting average. He didn’t make a single error in the outfield. Now he is expected to command north of $300 million over the next eight or nine years on the free-agent market. “I don’t even think it’s arguable,” says Yankees first baseman Anthony Rizzo. “It’s the best walk year you can ever have in any sport.”

As a result, Judge was flush with options. Remaining with the Yankees could allow him to join the pantheon of icons—Jeter, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Mariano Rivera—who wore only pinstripes during Hall of Fame careers. Another franchise, like the well-moneyed Los Angeles Dodgers, could swoop in with an offer that would be hard to refuse. Coming home to the Bay Area to play for his childhood team, the San Francisco Giants, also holds clear appeal.

In fact his wife, high school sweetheart Samantha Bracksieck, reminded him of a prediction he made in 2010, his senior year at Linden High School. “I said, in 10 years, I’ll be married to Sam,” says Judge, “and playing for the San Francisco Giants.” Judge smiles. “I was like, that’d better not get out.”

The thought of Judge playing out his days elsewhere brings jitters to the pinstripe faithful. “I just pray and hope that [Yankees owner] Hal Steinbrenner does the right thing and makes it mo’ better and gives Aaron Judge his money,” says New York sports superfan Spike Lee in mid-November, while Judge was still deciding. “Hal, you had the chance to sign him, and you bet against him. Yankee Nation is looking at you, Hal. What are you going to do? To paraphrase my Puerto Rican brother, Fat Joe, last season’s price is not this season’s price.”

Judge got his money, with a whopping $360 million deal. In the end, he chose between the Yankees, Giants, and San Diego Padres, ultimately banking on the allure of “Yankee-for-life” status. His decision should pay off for baseball. “There’s just absolutely no doubt—our research supports this—that player continuity in a particular market is really important to building fandom in the game,” he says.

Sitting on a fountain’s edge in his courtyard, Judge eyes the future. “When I was young and getting into the game, all guys ever talked about was, ‘Hey, wait until you become a free agent,’” Judge told TIME, quite correctly. "You’re getting a chance to make your own decision, start a legacy somewhere, start something new somewhere. I’m looking forward to the whole process, man. It’s going to be special.”

New York awaits Judge’s parade.

Grooming by Evy Drew

Write to Sean Gregory at sean.gregory@time.com.