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Teen’s death sparks calls to ban viral head-on tackle game inspired by American football’s biggest hits

A burgeoning new sporting trend inspired by the biggest and hardest full contact hits in American football and rugby has proved deadly, and there’s now calls for it to be banned.

Branded by an organized league as “the world’s fiercest, new collision sport,” Run It Straight games see two people sprint directly towards each other for a high-impact collision, with no protective gear. Whoever dominates wins.

Tens of thousands of dollars are offered up as prize money in organized events in New Zealand and Australia and the game has become a social media craze with teenagers trying it out at home, with fatal consequences.

Ryan Satterthwaite died in hospital on Monday after a backyard challenge went tragically wrong in the small city of Palmerston North. New Zealand Police said the 19-year-old suffered a serious head injury.

Pete Satterthwaite said when he saw local news reports about Run It, he thought the game was a “stupid idea” and instinctively knew that “someone is going to get seriously hurt.”

He just wasn’t expecting it to be his own nephew.

“The ultimate aim is to hurt your opponent, run over the top of him … you’re leading with your shoulder, leading with your head,” he said. “Regardless of whether they have medical staff on site and everybody has a test, it’s still the most stupid thing I’ve ever seen.”

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon urged people not to take part in the tackling game, calling it a “dumb thing to do.”

“You’re hearing the advice from police, from the medical fraternity, from government, from principals saying don’t do it,” Luxon told local media on Friday, adding that organizers of formal events should stop them.

“To the adults that are involved in more formal organization of it and are influencing it and leading this out on social media, I think you need to stop and I can’t be any clearer,” Luxon said.

Following calls for the tackling game to be banned, New Zealand’s sport minister Mark Mitchell said on Friday he had sought advice on what measures the government can take to crack down on what he labelled “unregulated activities that pose a significant level of risk.”

‘Built to break limits’

The Run It Straight game combines elements of American football and rugby – two sports that have tackling in common but with distinct rules to protect players.

Footballers wear a helmet and thick padding to withstand high-impact tackles on the whole body except the head and knees. Rugby players take the field without helmets and with no, or little, padding, while tackles are only allowed below the shoulders.

The new game has been popularized in part by by a company called RUNIT Championship League, which says the game was “born to go viral” and claims to have “taken social media by storm with tens of millions of views.” CEO and owner Charizma, whose real name is Christian Lesa, says the concept started when he was hospitalized and struggling with mental health, according to an interview with Australian public broadcaster ABC.

Lesa said he was inspired by YouTuber Donald De La Haye, nicknamed “Deestroying,” a Costa Rican-American professional football player who would pit players 1-on-1 for viral clicks. He replicated the concept in Australia and the tournament-like event has spread across New Zealand and the Pacific islands.

As followers and subscribers grew on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, RUNIT began hosting championships where participants bull run into each other and the last one standing takes home a cash prize.

The finals of the RUNIT league were scheduled in June with 200,000 New Zealand dollars (around $118,800) up for grabs.

‘Risk of death’

Run It Straight-type collisions are more than five times the force of a rugby tackle, according to Professor Patria Hume from Auckland University of Technology, who warned there was a high risk of brain injury or death.

“Ryan’s death was preventable. It was a backyard copycat of the Runit events which have been designed for social media impact,” Hume said.

“Runit lacks the structure, safety protocols, and purpose of traditional sports. While rugby, boxing, and MMA are inherently physical, they are governed by rules designed to minimize harm and protect athletes.”

“It’s not about the head hitting the ground, it’s the impact,” she said.

A RUNIT Championship League spokesperson said in a statement that it does not encourage “any copying of the sport” saying it should only be done under “strict conditions.”

Alarm bells had already been ringing about the game before the death of Ryan Satterthwaite. Two men were knocked unconscious, with one of them going into a seizure, during a Runit league event at Auckland’s Trusts Arena last week.

“Safety of all participants at our venue is paramount and we therefore made the decision not to allow any future Runit events to take place at The Trusts Arena.”

High-contact sports like rugby and rugby league are hugely popular in New Zealand and the death of Satterthwaite has put pressure on sporting bodies to take a stronger stance on the Run It Straight trend.

New Zealand Rugby issued a statement warning people “not to take part in Run It Straight games or competitions as they carry significant risk of serious injury.”

“Those wanting to play contact sports should register for a school or club team and learn in a controlled and safe environment how to tackle safely and the art of evasion,” the statement said.

A number of New Zealand schools have moved to ban students from playing the game on school grounds and it has also been banned from some public parks in the country’s biggest city, Auckland, by a local council board.

David Bovey, rector of Palmerston North Boys’ High School which Ryan Satterthwaite attended several years ago, said he had been planning to warn his students about the risks of playing Run It Straight on campus before he heard about Ryan’s death.

“It’s an absolute tragedy… you can almost say something like this was almost going to happen,” Bovey told RNZ, adding he received the news just 20 minutes before he was due to address the students on Monday.

“Teenage boys are terrible at thinking about consequences and they never think anything is going to happen to them and so, you know, something like this I think really hit home in terms of the message we are trying to give the boys – ‘this is something I shouldn’t be doing.’”

This post appeared first on cnn.com

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How Rotimi and Vanessa Mdee’s chance romance became a deep dive into faith and purpose

When Nigerian American actor-singer Rotimi and Tanzanian pop star Vanessa Mdee first met in 2019, it was the beginning of a love story that neither of them expected.

That first encounter six years ago could be straight from a rom-com. They had both just performed at the Essence Festival of Culture in New Orleans and ended up at the same Spotify afterparty – neither one particularly eager to be there. But fate had other plans.

“She was sitting on a pool table,” Rotimi laughs. “The lights were glowing and beaming, and I just thought, ‘Yo, who is this?’”

A friend of Rotimi made the introduction, which led to several hours of deep conversation. Within days, they were inseparable. A long-distance relationship began – Vanessa in Tanzania, Rotimi in Atlanta, Georgia, in the US – and she came to visit not long after. “I never left,” Vanessa says with a grin.

Love in lockdown

While the Covid-19 pandemic forced much of the world into stillness, for Rotimi and Vanessa, it became a sacred time. “I really thank God because he was creating an environment for us to really dive deep into getting to know each other on a very intimate and spiritual level,” Vanessa reflects.

At the encouragement of Rotimi, she booked a flight to the US for a mini vacation, but it became an extended stay due to travel restrictions.

“If I had been a day late, we wouldn’t have been able to see each other for the period of nine-plus months during which the borders were locked,” she says.

The lockdown forced them both into a much-needed break.

“I came onto the scene at the age of 18 years old, so I had been working well into my 30s at this point and I had never taken time off,” Vanessa adds.

The timing was also divine for Rotimi, who had just released the hit “In My Bed.”

“For me, during that time, if the world was open and my record ‘In My Bed’ had just come out, I would have been moving around touring for the whole run of that song, still doing what I needed to do, and my mind wouldn’t have been on anything else,” he says.

That time off allowed something deeper than fame to grow, the couple says, sparking a journey toward faith, family and purpose.

“God wanted me to sit down and heal a lot of things,” Rotimi adds, “and He blessed me with the opportunity to learn this woman.”

From fame to faith

Vanessa, once one of East Africa’s biggest music stars, made headlines when she walked away from the industry at the height of her career in 2020. But the decision wasn’t impulsive – it was deeply spiritual.

“For me, (the music industry) was depleting my mental, spiritual, emotional and physical health in many ways. I turned to many different vices that were not good for me as a person,” she says.

“It got to a point where the music industry became extremely toxic for me. I’m not saying it’s everybody’s story; it’s my story.”

Today, she co-leads “For The Better,” the couple’s faith-based wellness app and community, where she mentors women across the globe through Bible studies, prayer circles, and now a women’s conference.

“I just want every time I step out and do something to be meaningful, purposeful, and effective,” she adds.

Rotimi, whose real name is Olurotimi Akinosho, has embraced a life beyond the spotlight, although he continues to build his career with his current role as Pastor Charles on the Showtime series “The Chi” while releasing new music.

“The job is to be a vessel,” the 36-year-old says. “God works in mysterious ways; it’s not a cookie-cutter approach – it’s more of a roundabout way.”

A ‘kingdom marriage’

Their love is both bold and deeply rooted. Married in 2021, they refer to their relationship as a “kingdom marriage,” grounded in their shared faith.

“We’re not perfect,” Vanessa says. “But we know who’s at the center of it all: God.”

Together, they are raising two children and navigating a blended cultural household where Yoruba, Swahili and American traditions harmonize.

“(The children) know they’re 50% Tanzanian and 50% Nigerian, and they can champion that,” Rotimi says. “It’s about giving our kids roots and wings.”

“Building a strong foundation for our children requires a lot of time, commitment, and being very present – like playing with the kids, nurturing their skills, and honing their crafts while giving them a strong foundation in Christ,” adds Vanessa.

From love-centered music and wellness apps to Bible studies, it’s clear Rotimi and Vanessa feel they are on a mission that reflects a deeper calling. However, when asked if ministry was in their future, the couple was uncertain.

“It would be foolish for us to say no, but it’s too early to say yes,” Rotimi says.

“I just know that whatever we do, it’s going to be for His glory,” Vanessa adds.

This post appeared first on cnn.com

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14,000 troops, 100 ballistic missiles and millions of munitions: What North Korea has sent to Russia, report finds

North Korea has sent soldiers and millions of munitions, including missiles and rockets, to Russia over the past year, according to a new report by an international watchdog, which details the extent to which Pyongyang has helped Moscow “terrorize” Ukraine’s population over its three-year war.

The report was released Thursday by the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT), an initiative made up of 11 United Nations members, formed after Russia forced the disbandment of a previous UN panel that monitored the implementation of sanctions against North Korea.

While some of the team’s findings have been well documented – such as North Korea sending troops to fight for Russia – the report lays out the stunning scope and scale of weaponry sent from Pyongyang since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

That includes as many as 9 million rounds of artillery and ammunition in 2024; more than 11,000 troops last year, and another 3,000 troops in the early months of this year; rocket launchers, vehicles, self-propelled guns and other types of heavy artillery; and at least 100 ballistic missiles “which were subsequently launched into Ukraine to destroy civilian infrastructure and terrorize populated areas such as Kyiv and Zaporizhzhia,” the report found, citing participating states.

“These forms of unlawful cooperation between (North Korea) and Russia contributed to Moscow’s ability to increase its missile attacks against Ukrainian cities including targeted strikes against critical civilian infrastructure,” the report said.

In return, Russia provided North Korea with various valuable pieces of weaponry and technology, including air defense equipment, anti-aircraft missiles, electronic warfare systems and refined oil, the report said.

Moscow has also provided data feedback on Pyongyang’s ballistic missiles, helping improve its missile guidance performance, it said.

These actions “allow North Korea to fund its military programs and further develop its ballistic missiles programs, which are themselves prohibited under multiple (UN Security Council resolutions), and gain first-hand experience in modern warfare,” the report found.

It said its findings were based on MSMT participating states and cited supporting evidence from the Open Source Centre (OSC), a UK-based non-profit that uses publicly accessible information for research, and Conflict Armament Research (CAR), a UK-based research organization.

Both Russia and North Korea are violating the UN arms embargo and are transferring arms and military equipment through actors and networks that evade sanctions, the report alleged. The two countries will likely continue their military cooperation “at least for the foreseeable future,” it added.

In a joint statement, the member nations behind the MSMT – Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States – urged North Korea to “engage in meaningful diplomacy.”

Western governments have become increasingly concerned about the long-term implications of what appears to be a deepening strategic partnership between the two nations.

In recent months, the US has warned that Russia may be close to sharing advanced space and satellite technology with North Korea in exchange for continued support for the war in Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged in April for the first time that North Korean soldiers took part in the fighting to recover Russian territory after Ukraine’s incursion into the Kursk region last year. North Korea also confirmed its troop presence there for the first time in April.

Though North Korean troops had been deployed to Kursk since at least November, they withdrew from the front lines in January after reports of mass casualties, Ukrainian officials said.

Both countries have denied that Pyongyang is supplying arms to Moscow, despite overwhelming evidence. However, as part of a landmark defense pact struck last year, they have both pledged to use all available means to provide immediate military assistance in the event the other is attacked.

Putin has warned he would provide arms to Pyongyang if the West continues arming Ukraine.

In recent weeks, Ukraine’s allies have lifted a ban on Kyiv firing long-range missiles into Russia, after days of Russia bombarding the Ukrainian capital and other regions with massive aerial attacks and as the US grows increasingly frustrated with Putin over the lack of a peace deal.

This post appeared first on cnn.com

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Dreams cut short, Chinese students anxious and angry over ‘aggressive’ US visa ban plans

Kiwi Zhang, a computer science student from China, was full of hope for his academic future in the United States – until his visa was revoked at the US border last week.

The first-year PhD student at a university in central US had just presented his research at a conference in Asia. He was returning to the US after a brief visit home when his American dream was abruptly cut short.

According to Zhang, he was detained at the border for 48 hours by US officials, who confiscated his phone and laptop, and searched his belongings. He said they questioned him about his ties to the Chinese Communist Party and meetings with friends while in China.

At the end of the interrogation, Zhang said he was deported and barred from the US for five years, on suspicion of having shared his research with the Chinese government – an allegation he denies. He is now back in China and mulling his next steps.

Now, many Chinese students studying in the US fear they could meet the same fate, after President Trump’s administration vowed on Wednesday to “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.”

The announcement by Secretary of State Marco Rubio was brief and vaguely worded, but it sent shock waves through China, triggering widespread confusion, anxiety and fear among current and prospective students and their families, as well as strong opposition from Beijing.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio attends a ceremony in the Oval Office of the White House earlier on May 6.
Kent Nishimura/Reuters/File

Student chat groups lit up with messages of disbelief. Education consultants were flooded with panicked phone calls. Many students aired their frustration and anger on social media.

At a regular news conference Thursday, China’s foreign ministry accused the Trump administration of using ideology and national security as a “pretext” for the “politically motivated and discriminatory” move.

Suddenly, hundreds of thousands of young Chinese minds, drawn by the prestige of a world-class education and the allure of the American dream, found themselves facing a stark reality: the future they had worked so hard for now hangs in the balance, held hostage by the whims of a US administration that increasingly views them – and their homeland – as a threat.

“What strikes me is how tiny individuals are in the tide of history – career plans can collapse overnight,” said Joyce, who received an offer from her dream school, Harvard, to pursue a master’s degree in architecture.

Her visa from her undergraduate program in the US is still valid for another year, but she did not dare to return to China for the summer, worrying that she might be denied reentry at the US border.

“I can’t help wishing I’d grown up in a golden age of US-China relations,” she said.

Growing mistrust

For decades, China’s brightest minds have flocked to America, as their home country played catch-up with the world’s leading superpower. Until last year, Chinese students made up the largest group of international students in the US, contributing significantly to the economy and helping America maintain its competitive edge in scientific research and technological innovation.

But as strategic rivalry between the two nations intensifies, mistrust has deepened. Both sides have ramped up national security measures and grown more protective of their advanced technologies – particularly in sensitive sectors with military implications.

During his first term in 2020, Trump introduced a ban that effectively denied US visas to graduates in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields from Chinese universities believed to be linked to the military. Within just three months, more than 1,000 Chinese nationals had their visas revoked, and the order remained in place under former President Joe Biden.

They include David Yang, whose heart sank when he saw Rubio’s announcement. “This is just too surreal,” said the second-year PhD student in theoretical chemistry at a top university in the Midwestern US.

“When the news broke, some classmates said they were working on their final assignments but completely lost the motivation to continue. I felt the same way,” he said.

In recent weeks, Yang has found it nearly impossible to focus on his research, simulating how molecules interact with each other in the human body. Instead, he’s been glued to the news, anxiously tracking Trump’s escalating war on elite universities and international students, trying to gauge whether he might land in the crossfire.

People participate in a “Harvard Stand United” rally in support of the school’s international students on Tuesday.
Brian Snyder/Reuters

Last week, the Trump administration barred Harvard University from enrolling international students, accusing the prestigious institution of “coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party,” among other allegations.

Although a federal court has since blocked the move, the State Department soon followed with a diplomatic cable instructing US embassies and consulates worldwide to halt new student visa appointments.

As Yang scrolled through the headlines, periods of anxiety would suddenly hit, and he found himself compulsively refreshing news sites over and over.

“I felt sad, lost and helpless. It’s been incredibly stressful,” he said. “The constant policy changes bring so much uncertainty into our lives. It really impacts productivity and, over time, takes a toll on your mental health – and for me, it already has.”

Worried about his visa, Yang is planning on canceling his trip home this winter. His major could well fall under what Rubio called “critical fields” and – like millions of Chinese students – he’s a member of the Communist Youth League, a youth branch of the 99-million-strong Communist Party for those aged between 14 and 28.

Students hold flags, including the Communist Youth League of China flag, second left, during a city-wide sporting event in Yumen, Gansu province, China, in 2021.
Qilai Shen/Bloomberg/Getty Images

In China, most students are Youth League members by the time they finish high school, or have party members among family and friends – thanks to the party’s ubiquity across government and business, as well as cultural and social sectors.

“The vast majority of people in China have some connection to the Communist Party – so this is essentially the same as condemning all Chinese students with a single stroke,” Yang said.

Zhang, the student whose visa was revoked at the border, said US officials asked whether anyone in his family was a member of the Communist Party. He told them both of his parents were. They then questioned him about his own affiliation with the Communist Youth League, he said.

“I said I’ve never had any connection with them. The Communist Youth League charges us seven or eight yuan (about $1) a year, but there are no activities at all. But the officials said: ‘You are lying.’ I honestly didn’t know what to say. I could only sit there, stunned,” Zhang said.

Other alternatives

Facing potential deportation in the middle of their hard-won education, some Chinese students are considering other options.

Ella Liu, a math undergraduate at the University of Michigan, is visiting family in the southern city of Guangzhou before her summer research project in the US starts next month.

“Me and my parents are all praying that I won’t be banned from entering the country in June,” she said.

Liu was drawn to the US by its academic freedom and resources. But if the hardline visa policy continues, she might consider transferring to another university in Europe or Hong Kong.

“I am very determined to study mathematics and there are also many excellent math resources in other countries, such as in France,” she said.

Like many Chinese students, Liu comes from a middle-class family. Her parents saved for years for her to attend college in the US, where tuition and living costs can run to more than $80,000 – much more than getting a degree in Europe or Asia.

Some Chinese students are already looking elsewhere. In recent years, the number of Chinese students in the US has steadily declined from a peak in the 2019-2020 school year – a drop that coincides with the Covid-19 pandemic but also increasing friction between the two governments.

Nelson Urena Jr., co-founder and director of college counseling at an education management firm in Shanghai, said that for years many Chinese families saw American universities as the “gold standard” for college education.

Since around 2018, however, he has noticed more interest from students and parents alike in universities in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, as well as the semi-autonomous Chinese city of Hong Kong.

“A lot of families were concerned legitimately about their children’s safety, and then also just the rhetoric of, you know, whether they’re welcome in the US,” he said, citing issues such as gun violence and racist hostility or even violence against Asian people.

“More recently, I think people are starting to see the growing disconnect between the US and China, and feeling like maybe things are going to be more difficult for them – from getting the visa to making payments for tuitions.”

Rubio’s announcement Wednesday also vowed to “revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications” from China, including Hong Kong.

Since then, Urena has been inundated by phone calls from anxious students preparing to start their college education in the US. But he didn’t have a ready response for them.

“It’s just a lot of uncertainty right now. The students are trying to figure out what to do…The options are very limited at this point – Do they do a gap year? Do they go to university elsewhere? Do they have to go back to the application process?” he said.

Nevertheless, for some Chinese parents, the allure of American higher education has not worn off.

Arno Huang, a 56-year-old businessman from China’s coastal Fujian province, still wants to send his kids to the US for graduate schools after they finish undergraduate studies in Hong Kong.

“The US represents one of the most civilized, developed, and open places for humanity. Although US-China relations are currently strained, smart people still recognize this fact,” said Huang.

Having kids studying in the US gives a family “face,” he said, using a common Chinese phrase to refer to good reputation or social standing. “Once their child is in the US, they can proudly tell others, ‘Look how successful my son is!’”

Zichen Wang, a research fellow at the Center for China and Globalization, a non-government think tank in Beijing, lamented a seemingly bygone era, when Chinese officials, entrepreneurs and scientists alike were trained in the US – especially those who played key roles during China’s reform and opening-up era that began in 1978.

“When they returned to China, they brought back not only professional knowledge and credentials, but also a deep respect and admiration for America as an open and inclusive society,” he said.

“I believe many Chinese people see what makes America great not merely as its economic or military strength, but its openness – its world-class universities, its confidence in the marketplace of ideas, and its ability to attract top global talent,” Wang added.

“That, at least in my view, is what many people around the world truly admire about the United States.”

This post appeared first on cnn.com

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White House discloses who will lead DOGE efforts after Musk’s departure

President Donald Trump and members of his Cabinet will spearhead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) efforts, now that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is stepping aside from leading the initiative. 

‘The DOGE leaders are each and every member of the president’s cabinet and the president himself, who is wholeheartedly committed to cutting waste, fraud and abuse from our government,’ White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Thursday at a White House press briefing. 

‘The entire Cabinet understands the need to cut government waste, fraud and abuse,’ Leavitt said. ‘And each Cabinet secretary at their respective agencies is committed to that. That’s why they were working hand in hand with Elon Musk. And they’ll continue to work with their respective DOGE employees who have onboarded as political appointees at all of these agencies. So surely the mission of DOGE will continue, and many DOGE employees are now political appointees and employees of our government.’

Since January, Musk has been heading up DOGE, which was tasked with cutting $2 trillion from the federal government’s budget through efforts to slash spending, government programs and the federal workforce.

DOGE’s efforts to cut waste has led to roughly $175 billion in savings due to asset sales, contract cancellations, fraud payment cuts, in addition to other steps to eliminate costs, according to a May 26 update from DOGE’s website. That translates to roughly $1,086.96 in savings per taxpayer, according to the website. 

Musk announced his departure in an X post. 

‘As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President @realDonaldTrump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending,’ Musk said on X Wednesday. ‘The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.’

Fox News’ Andrew Mark Miller contributed to this report. 

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS

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Lone Biden official breaks silence on cognitive decline as Cabinet stays mute

Only a single member of former President Joe Biden’s Cabinet responded to a massive outreach effort from Fox News Digital asking if the more than two dozen Cabinet-level officials stood by previous remarks that Biden was mentally and physically fit to serve as president.

And even that lone statement, from former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, skirted addressing head-on whether he had witnessed instances of Biden’s now widely acknowledged cognitive issues.

‘I met with President Biden when needed to make important decisions and to execute with my team at HHS,’ Becerra said. ‘It’s clear the President was getting older, but he made the mission clear: run the largest health agency in the world, expand care to millions more Americans than ever before, negotiate down the cost of prescription drugs, and pull us out of a world-wide pandemic. And we delivered.’

Roughly four months after Biden’s Oval Office exit, a handful of political books detailing the 2024 campaign and Biden administration have hit store shelves and are painting a bleak picture of Biden’s health. Adding fuel to the fire, audio recordings of Biden’s October 2023 interview with former Special Counsel Robert Hur showed the former president tripping over his words, slurring sentences, taking long pauses between answers and struggling to remember key moments in his life, including the year his son Beau died of cancer.

Fox News Digital has written extensively dating back to the 2020 presidential campaign about Biden’s cognitive decline and his inner circle’s role in covering it up.

Becerra’s statement stood in marked contrast to the silence emanating from the rest of his former colleagues. Fox News Digital reached out to 26 Biden administration officials with Cabinet-level positions — from former Vice President Kamala Harris to former Chief of Staff Jeff Zients — asking whether they still believe that Biden was fit to serve as president, or whether they’ve had a change of heart amid the cascade of damning evidence and anecdotes portraying a mental decline.

If a majority of those Cabinet-level officials believed Biden to be unable to perform his duties, they could have attempted to remove him from office through the 25th Amendment. Instead, those officials repeatedly said at the time that Biden was competent and in command.

That talking point hasn’t abated among the former officials.

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg weighed in on Biden’s presidential health earlier in May during a town hall with veterans and military families in Iowa. 

When asked during the event whether Biden experienced cognitive decline, Buttigieg told reporters that ‘every time I needed something from him from the West Wing, I got it.’ 

‘The time I worked closest with him in his final year was around the Baltimore bridge collapse,’ he added. ‘And what I can tell you is that the same president the world saw addressing that was the president I was in the Oval with, insisting that we do a good job, do right by Baltimore. And that was characteristic of my experience with him.’ 

Buttigieg did not elaborate when responding to a separate inquiry from Fox News Digital. 

Biden’s office recently revealed that the former president was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer that had metastasized and was undergoing treatment. 

The diagnosis sparked an outpouring of well-wishes from political leaders across both aisles, and shock from some doctors who said such cancer should have been caught before it advanced and metastasized. 

None of Biden’s annual physical health reports as president tested for prostate cancer, Fox News Digital previously reported, with a representative confirming Biden’s last-known prostate blood test was conducted in 2014. 

‘FULL CONFIDENCE’ 

The 2024 presidential debate between Biden and President Donald Trump opened the floodgates of criticism surrounding Biden’s mental acuity after the 46th president’s poor performance, which included Biden losing his train of thought and stumbling over his words.

Concerns over Biden’s mental acuity had simmered for years among conservatives, but it wasn’t until the June 2024 presidential debate that traditional Democrat allies and media outlets began questioning Biden’s health and openly called for him to drop out of the race. 

Despite mounting concerns, members of Biden’s Cabinet vowed he was of sound health and mind.

Then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement in September 2024, for example, that he has ‘full confidence in President Biden’s ability to carry out his job.’ 

‘As I’ve said before, I come fully prepared for my meetings with President Biden, knowing his questions will be detail-oriented, probing, and exacting,’ he said. ‘In our exchanges, the President always draws upon our prior conversations and past events in analyzing the issues and reaching his conclusions.’ 

Conservatives in 2024 floated calling for the invocation of the 25th Amendment to remove Biden, which would have required Harris and the majority of the Cabinet to declare him unfit to lead. Harris and the Cabinet did not take such steps during the administration, and instead defended his health. 

In July 2024, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo called Biden ‘one of the most accomplished presidents in American history and continues to effectively lead our country with a steady hand.’ 

‘As someone who is actually in the room when the President meets with the Cabinet and foreign leaders, I can tell you he is an incisive and extraordinary leader,’ Raimondo said at the time. 

‘PHYSICAL DETERIORATION’ 

Since Biden’s exit from the White House in January, political journalists have published a handful of books arguing that, behind the scenes of the administration, staffers were concerned about Biden’s health. 

‘Biden’s physical deterioration — most apparent in his halting walk — had become so severe that there were internal discussions about putting the president in a wheelchair, but they couldn’t do so until after the election,’ according to a new book written by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson, ‘Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.’ 

‘Given Biden’s age, (his physician Kevin O’Connor) also privately said that if he had another bad fall, a wheelchair might be necessary for what could be a difficult recovery,’ the authors wrote. 

While another newly released book by longtime D.C. reporters Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, ‘Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House,’ investigated Biden’s mental decline in the lead-up to the general election, calling him a ‘shell of himself.’

‘All of them,’ Parnes told Vanity Fair in April of who in Biden’s inner circle was most to blame for covering up his mental decline when he was in office. 

‘It’s pretty remarkable how they kept him very closed off,’ Parnes said. ‘He was a shell of himself. When he entered the White House, he was so, so different from the man who I covered as vice president, a guy who would hold court in the Naval Observatory with reporters until the wee hours.’

‘We’d been watching Biden’s decline for a long period of time and, honestly, thought he had lost his fastball some when he was running in 2020,’ Allen added of Biden’s mental decline. ‘And it was still so shocking to see the leader of the free world so bereft of coherent thought.’ 

Earlier in May, hours of Biden’s October 2023 interview with Hur’s office were released to the public and underscored the president’s apparent mental decline from his days as a senator from Delaware.

Hur led an investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents after Biden’s departure as vice president during the Obama administration. The then-special counsel announced in February 2024 he would not recommend criminal charges against Biden for possessing classified materials after his vice presidency, saying Biden is ‘a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.’

Hur came under fire from Biden, Harris and other Democrats in 2024 for suggesting in the report that Biden could not remember when his son Beau died. Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015. 

In February 2024, following the release of the report, Biden shot back at Hur: ‘There’s some attention paid to some language in the report about my recollection of events. There’s even a reference that I don’t remember when my son died. How in the hell dare he raise that?’

Harris called the report ‘gratuitous, inaccurate and inappropriate.’

The recently released audio recordings show it was Biden who brought up his son and could not remember when Beau died. 

‘So, during this time when you were living at Chain Bridge Road and there were documents relating to the Penn Biden Center, or the Biden Institute, or the Cancer Moonshot or your book, where did you keep papers that related to those things that you were actively working on?’ Hur asked Biden in the interview. 

‘Well, um … I, I, I, I, I don’t know. This is, what, 2017, 2018, that area?’ Biden responded. 

‘Yes, sir,’ Hur said. 

‘Remember, in this timeframe, my son is either been deployed or is dying, and, and so it was and by the way, there were still a lot of people at the time when I got out of the Senate that were encouraging me to run in this period, except the president,’ Biden continued. ‘I’m not — and not a mean thing to say. He just thought that she (Hillary Clinton) had a better shot of winning the presidency than I did. And so I hadn’t, I hadn’t, at this point — even though I’m at Penn, I hadn’t walked away from the idea that I may run for office again. But if I ran again, I’d be running for president. And, and so what was happening, though — what month did Beau die? Oh, God, May 30th.’ 

Others present during the interview responded that Beau Biden died in 2015. 

Trump has called an alleged cover-up of Biden’s health a ‘scandal’ and has argued that White House staffers were controlling the administration through the use of an autopen. 

Autopen signatures are automatically produced by a machine, as opposed to an authentic, handwritten signature. The conservative Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project first investigated the Biden administration’s use of an autopen earlier in 2025 and found that the same signature was on a bevvy of executive orders and other official documents, while Biden’s signature on the document announcing his departure from the 2024 race varied from the apparent machine-produced signature.

‘Whoever had control of the ‘AUTOPEN’ is looking to be a bigger and bigger scandal by the moment,’ Trump posted to Truth Social in May.

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Hawley urges DOJ probe of Chinese trucking company

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., asked the Justice Department on Thursday to investigate a Chinese-owned self-driving trucking company, one of the largest in the U.S., citing allegations that it had shared proprietary data and other sensitive technology with state-linked entities in Beijing. 

The letter, sent to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and previewed exclusively to Fox News Digital, asks the Justice Department to open a formal investigation into the autonomous truck company TuSimple Holdings, a Chinese-owned company and one of the largest self-driving truck companies in the U.S. 

In it, Hawley cites recent reporting from the Wall Street Journal that alleges that TuSimple ‘systematically shared proprietary data, source code, and autonomous driving technologies’ with Chinese state-linked entities— what he described as ‘blatant disregard’ of the 2022 national security agreement with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS.

‘These reports also revealed communications from TuSimple personnel inside China requesting the shipment of sensitive Nvidia AI chips and detailed records showing ‘deep and longstanding ties’ with Chinese military-affiliated manufacturers,’ Hawley said. 

He noted that to date, TuSimple ‘has not faced serious consequences’ for sharing American intellectual property with China, despite having continued to share data with China after signing a national security agreement with the U.S. government in 2022, which was enforced by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S.

‘If the reports about TuSimple are accurate, they represent not just a violation of export law, but a breach of national trust and a direct threat to American technological leadership,’ Hawley said. 

‘The American people deserve to know how and why a supposedly U.S.-based company was allowed to serve as a conduit for the transfer of sensitive innovations to the Chinese Communist Party,’ he added.

The letter asks Bondi and the Justice Department to take certain steps to investigate the company’s actions, as alleged by the recent reports – including investigating whether TuSimple provided protected information to any Chinese-based entities, and what activities were covered by the company’s national security agreement with CFIUS, struck more than two years ago. 

Hawley also asked Bondi what actions, if any, DOJ has taken to date to ensure that Bot Auto—a new Texas-based self-driving vehicle company staffed by many former TuSimple employees, ‘is not engaging in similar behavior.’

According to the Wall Street Journal report, TuSimple’s actions helped shape new Commerce Department regulations, which blocked the sale of internet-linked cars and different components with links to China. According to the report, a CFIUS investigation determined TuSimple’s tech sharing did not violate the official national security agreement— but the company was fined for other infractions, and ultimately paid out a $6 million settlement. 

The letter comes as Hawley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, has emerged as one of the Senate’s more vocal critics of the Chinese Communist Party, especially as it relates to the conduct of certain U.S. companies, and the sharing of certain intellectual property. 

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Flashback: Top five wildest moments from Elon Musk’s DOGE tenure as it comes to an end

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced his departure from DOGE on social media Wednesday after five months of viral moments and cuts that sparked both praise and controversy nationwide. Fox News Digital compiled five of the top memorable moments from that span. 

Tesla photo shoot at the White House with President Trump

As Musk’s efforts to cut government waste resulted in outrage from Democrats and violent protests at Tesla dealerships across the country, along with a dip in Tesla’s stock price, President Donald Trump announced he was going to purchase a Tesla and met with Musk outside the White House to look at options.

‘I’m going to buy a brand-new Tesla tomorrow morning as a show of confidence and support for Elon Musk, a truly great American,’ Trump announced.

‘To Republicans, Conservatives, and all great Americans, Elon Musk is ‘putting it on the line’ in order to help our Nation, and he is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! But the Radical Left Lunatics, as they often do, are trying to illegally and collusively boycott Tesla, one of the World’s great automakers, and Elon’s ‘baby,’ in order to attack and do harm to Elon, and everything he stands for,’ Trump said on Truth Social. 

Trump and Musk were photographed examining different Tesla models and sitting inside them.

Musk got in on the passenger side and joked about ‘giving the Secret Service a heart attack’ as they talked about how to start a vehicle that can reach 60 miles per hour in a few seconds.

‘That’s beautiful, this is a different panel . . . everything’s computer!’ Trump remarked, in a comment that went viral on social media. ‘That’s beautiful! Wow!’

Trump told reporters that he would write a check for the car he chose, which retails for roughly $80,000, and leave it at the White House, so his staff could drive it. The president also said he hopes his purchase will boost Tesla, which was struggling with sagging sales and declining stock prices at the time.

Iron Mountain revelation

One of the most notable DOGE revelations as it scoured the government for waste, fraud, and abuse was Musk’s announcement in February that his agency was looking into a limestone mine in Pennsylvania where he said federal employee retirements are processed manually using a system that could take months. 

‘We’re like, well, what? Why is that? Well, because all the retirement paperwork is manual on paper,’ Musk said. ‘It’s manually calculated and written down on a piece of paper. Then it goes down to mine and like, what do you mean, a mine?’

DOGE wrote on X that an old limestone mine in Boyers, Pennsylvania, about 60 miles north of Pittsburgh, is where about 700 workers operate more than 230 feet underground to process about 10,000 federal retirement applications per month.

The applications are processed by hand using paper, and are stored in manila envelopes and cardboard boxes, DOGE said.

The Washington Post described the facility as a ‘sinkhole of bureaucracy’ in a 2014 article. At the time, the report said the total spending on the retirement system was $55.8 million. 

‘And then the speed, the limiting factor is the speed at which the mine shaft elevator can move, determines how many people can retire from the federal government,’ Musk said. ‘And the elevator breaks down and sometimes, and then you can’t, nobody can retire. Doesn’t that sound crazy?’

Lil X steals the show at the White House

Musk’s 4-year-old son, Æ A-12, also known as ‘Lil X,’ was often seen accompanying his father for visits to the White House and Capitol Hill in recent months, often going viral on social media. 

In February, Lil X made headlines after attending an Oval Office meeting and mimicking his father while he spoke, at one point sitting on Musk’s shoulders and putting his fingers in the former DOGE chief’s ears, and holding onto the Resolute Desk. 

‘This is X, and he’s a great guy. High IQ,’ a chuckling Trump said, adding that the boy is a ‘high-IQ individual.’

In March, heartwarming photographs of Trump walking to the president’s helicopter, Marine One, with Elon Musk’s son went viral on social media, with internet users doting over the joyful moment. 

Explosive interviews with ‘Big Balls’ and the DOGE team

Musk sat down with ‘Special Report’ executive editor Bret Baier for a revealing behind-the-scenes interview with members of his team earlier in March and offered previously unseen glimpses into the work being done.

Musk, along with DOGE members Steve Davis, Joe Gebbia, Aram Moghaddassi, Brad Smith, Anthony Armstrong, Tom Krause and Tyler Hassen, illustrated key efforts of the department to achieve Trump’s goal. Davis brought up federal credit cards, which he labeled a ‘mundane’ but ‘illustrative’ example of DOGE’s work.

‘There are in the federal government around 4.6 million credit cards for around 2.3 to 2.4 million employees. This doesn’t make sense. So one of the things all of the teams have worked on is we’ve worked for the agencies and said, ‘Do you need all of these credit cards? Are they being used? Can you tell us physically where they are?” Davis explained.

‘Clearly there should not be more credit cards than there are people,’ Musk responded.

The eight-man group also discussed DOGE’s work relating to the federal workforce, financial management, government infrastructure, computer systems, Social Security and more.

‘They may characterize it as shooting from the hip, but it is anything but that,’ Musk said, noting that the agency’s approach to cuts is to ‘measure twice, if not thrice, and cut once.’

Earlier this month, Musk and his team gave a second revealing interview to ‘Jesse Watters Primetime,’ outlining examples of waste they had discovered in government. 

As the team shared cases of wasteful spending from top departments to smaller agencies, Watters asked how the findings made Musk and the DOGE members feel.

‘Unfortunately, like the 100th time you’ve heard it, it’s hard not to get a little numb, and by the 200th time, you’re like, well, OK, it was just another day at the office,’ Musk replied.

One DOGE member, who joined Musk on ‘Jesse Watters Primetime,’ revealed that he had dropped out of Harvard University to ‘serve my country,’ but faced backlash. 

‘It’s been unfortunate to see lost friendships. Most of campus hates me now, but I think, fundamentally, I hope people realize through conversations like this that reform is genuinely needed,’ he said.

In the interview, 19-year-old DOGE team member Edward Coristine revealed how he got the nickname ‘Big Balls,’ which had received significant chatter online. 

Coristine went on to say that the system that distributes government or taxpayer money ‘literally has no checks and no accountability to the actual American taxpayer.’

‘So, it’s a huge vector for fraud, waste, and abuse.’

Dismantling of USAID

Out of the many agencies that experienced cuts during Musk’s time at DOGE, USAID was perhaps the most discussed and most affected by DOGE’s findings. 

In March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that 83% of USAID programs would be canceled following the conclusion of a six-week review by DOGE.

In total, 5,200 contracts were to be terminated, Rubio wrote on X, announcing the new reforms. He said the canceled contracts amounted to ‘tens of billions of dollars’ being spent ‘in ways that did not serve,’ or even harmed, the national interests of the U.S.

Rubio added that the remaining 18% of USAID programs—approximately 1,000—would now be managed by the State Department. The move to transfer that authority, he said, was made in consultation with Congress. 

Several examples of questionable spending were made public by DOGE, including where Biden’s USAID awarded $20 million to a nonprofit called Sesame Workshopto produce a show called ‘Ahlan Simsim Iraq’ in an effort to ‘promote inclusion, mutual respect and understanding across ethnic, religious and sectarian groups.’ 

More than $900,000 went to a ‘Gaza-based terror charity,’ called Bayader Association for Environment and Development, and $1.5 million went to a program slated to ‘advance diversity, equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities.’

Fox News Digital’s Alec Schemmel, Stephen Sorace and Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Less than half of DOGE-terminated contracts can be publicly tracked, only about a quarter of grants: watchdog

With Elon Musk’s departure from the agency, there’s debate roiling over how effective the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE), has been in its mission.

In a report released just two days prior to Musk stepping down, financial watchdog Open The Books published a report finding it is likely impossible for the average American taxpayer to track the savings associated with the contracts and grants that were terminated by the DOGE team.

According to Open The Books’ analysis, which mined all the data published on DOGE’s official website, the average American taxpayer would likely only be able to confirm 42% of contracts and 27% of grants through an independent review of public federal spending databases.

‘This doesn’t mean these targets aren’t real, it simply means it’s very hard for taxpayers who want to see additional savings to find proof and evidence of savings,’ Open The Books points out in its analysis, shared in a report the group released Tuesday.

 

‘Because taxpayers don’t have access to real-time transparency and a real-time look at the Treasury Payment System, it’s still too difficult for even a highly motivated Joe Taxpayer to confirm the savings claims DOGE is making,’ the analysis, released ahead of Elon Musk stepping down from running the agency, continued. ‘It’s also far too easy for critics to sew [sic] doubt and confusion.’

DOGE says on its website that the group’s work up to this point has provided the American taxpayer with $175 billion in ‘estimated’ savings from the elimination of contracts, grants and leases, as well as through renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion and other mechanisms. 

However, DOGE’s estimated savings have been contested by watchdog groups and budget experts. Such critics have posited that the inclusion of already canceled contracts, double-counting or misrepresentation of contract values, and the unaccounted cost burden that could be imposed on the government when it has to re-hire folks down the line, or revamp its productivity, due to DOGE cuts, have led to inflated savings estimates. 

Nate Malkus, a senior fellow at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, has accused DOGE of ‘overestimating contracts by a factor of two,’ according to CBS News.

 

But White House spokesperson Harrison Fields told Fox News Digital that DOGE has produced ‘historic savings’ for the American people.

‘DOGE is working at record speed to cut waste, fraud, and abuse, producing historic savings for the American people,’ Fields said. ‘The DOGE Wall of Receipts provides the latest and most accurate information following a thorough assessment, which takes time. Updates to the DOGE savings page will continue to be made promptly, and departments and agencies will keep highlighting the massive savings DOGE is achieving.’

‘DOGE and Elon Musk have done the country an incredible service by identifying savings targets,’ added Open The Books CEO John Hart. ‘Having worked on the last major deficit commission with the late Senator Tom Coburn, we would have been elated to have had Musk in our corner. Now it’s up to Congress to not only turn DOGE’s recommendations into durable savings but to go beyond DOGE’s scope and truly tackle our long-term debt and deficit crisis.’

Open The Books highlighted two ‘common sense’ standards to help establish an ‘intellectually honest’ approach to understanding the true impact of government cuts, such as those being recommended by DOGE.

The first is the ‘durable standard,’ which asks whether a proposed cut can be easily reversed.

‘Describing something as ‘durable’ does not mean it is permanent or irreversible; it simply means it is hard to reverse,’ the Open The Books’ analysis stated. ‘The most durable budget cut in our constitutional system would be passed by Congress, signed into law by the president and be clearly constitutional, or unassailable in a court challenge. Budget cuts become less durable when they lack any of these three elements.’

The second is called a ‘duty standard,’ which illuminates the power behind certain cuts based on who is trying to impose them.

‘In our constitutional system, the founders gave the job of budget savings to three branches but primarily to Congress,’ Open The Books points out. ‘DOGE’s job is to identify, not enact, savings targets. It’s up to Congress to do the heavy lifting. And We the People have a responsibility to be informed and hold our elected officials accountable.’

Open The Books ultimately concluded that due to various limitations associated with publicly available data on government spending and revenue, in particular a lack of real-time access to the government’s Treasury Payment System, it is still too difficult for even the most motivated average American citizen to either confirm, or deny, the savings claimed by DOGE.

Elon Musk officially stepped down from his role as DOGE chief Thursday evening, as his position of ‘special government employee’ in the Trump administration was limited by law to a few months. Amid the transition, Musk criticized Republicans’ spending bill that was passed ahead of Memorial Day in the House, indicating he was ‘disappointed’ it would increase the federal deficit. 

‘I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,’ Musk told CBS News in an interview that will air in full on June 1.

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Jill Biden should have to answer for ‘cover up’ of former president’s decline, White House says

Former first lady Jill Biden should have to answer for her role in the ‘cover up’ of her husband and former President Joe Biden’s mental decline, according to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. 

Multiple books published in 2025 have detailed the deterioration of Biden’s mental faculties while in the White House, including in the book ‘Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again’ released May 20. 

‘The former first lady should certainly speak up about what she saw in regard to her husband and when she saw it and what she knew, because I think anybody looking again at the videos and photo evidence of Joe Biden with your own eyes and a little bit of common sense can see this was a clear cover up,’ Leavitt said. ‘And Joe, by, Jill Biden was certainly complicit in that cover up.’ 

‘There’s documentation, video evidence of her clearly shielding her husband away from the cameras that were just on ‘The View’ last week,’ Leavitt told reporters Thursday. ‘She was saying, ‘Everything is fine.’ She’s still lying to the American people. She still thinks the American public are so stupid that they’re going to believe her lies. And frankly, it’s insulting and she needs to answer for it.’ 

A spokesperson for Jill Biden did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital. 

‘Original Sin,’ authored by journalists Jake Tapper of CNN and Alex Thompson of Axios, includes stories about how former President Joe Biden struggled to handle fairly routine aspects of a campaign. 

For example, the book says his team attempted to film a campaign video for ads on television in a high school gym, and have people ask questions akin to a town hall meeting. 

‘The campaign was trying to make it look like the president was out there taking off-the-cuff questions from voters in public,’ the book said. ‘But the event was closed to reporters, and the campaign had the full list of questions that people would ask.’

Even so, former President Joe Biden encountered so much ‘trouble’ answering questions that his team decided to cut the footage. Some blamed the poor lighting in the gym, but the book said that others said the real problem remained with the former president. 

Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s team has pushed back on the material in ‘Original Sin,’ which chronicles the 2024 election cycle and how his team allegedly plotted a cover-up to hide just how severely his mental faculties had declined. 

‘There is nothing in this book that shows Joe Biden failed to do his job, as the authors have alleged, nor did they prove their allegation that there was a cover-up or conspiracy,’ a Biden spokesperson previously said in a statement to Fox News Digital. ‘Nowhere do they show that our national security was threatened or where the President wasn’t otherwise engaged in the important matters of the Presidency. In fact, Joe Biden was an effective President who led our country with empathy and skill.’

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