Abortion rights advocates are concerned that the Trump Administration will reinstate an abortion ban at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) medical facilities, rolling back the Biden Administration’s efforts to expand access for veterans and their beneficiaries. Before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the VA had banned abortion under any circumstances and prohibited its medical providers from counseling patients about abortion. But after the court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Biden Administration enacted a rule allowing VA medical facilities to offer abortion counseling and abortion care to veterans and their beneficiaries in certain situations, including if the health or life of the pregnant person is at risk or if the pregnancy was a result of rape or incest. Even if the VA facility is based in a state that has banned or restricted abortion, medical providers there can still provide abortion care in these limited instances. Last month, the Trump Administration’s VA submitted for review an interim final rule regarding reproductive health services, according to the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. There’s no further information or details on what the rule says. The VA did not respond to a request for comment, and the White House did not respond to a request for comment by press time. But abortion rights advocates fear that the rule will repeal the Biden-era policy, preventing veterans and their beneficiaries from obtaining abortion care at VA facilities across the country—both in states where abortion is legal and in those that have restricted it. “If they fully rescind the rule, we would be going back to a complete ban on abortion for veterans through the [VA] health care system,” says Freya Riedlin, senior federal policy counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights. “That was already bad before the Biden Administration, which added in these exceptions, but now we’re living in a completely different landscape.” Twelve states have banned abortion in nearly all situations, and four have banned it after six weeks of pregnancy (which is before many people even know they’re pregnant). According to National Partnership for Women & Families, a nonprofit and nonpartisan advocacy organization, more than 55% of women veterans of reproductive age live in states that have banned or are likely to ban abortion. “For some of those veterans in those states with bans, the VA is the only place where they are able to obtain abortion care in those states,” says Cassie Byard, a veteran and the communications manager for Minority Veterans of America. “If that current policy is rescinded, many who might need an abortion would be forced to travel to other states to reach a clinic.” That could lead to delays in care, or even force people to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, she says, since the logistics of traveling out of state—cost, taking time off work, arranging childcare—are insurmountable for some people. For veterans who use the VA as their primary form of health care, going to a medical provider outside the VA would also incur out-of-pocket costs that may not be affordable, Byard says. According to Riedlin, if the VA rescinds the Biden-era policy in its entirety, it would represent the tightest restriction on abortion in the country. “In states that have total bans on abortion, generally, at least in writing, there’s some kind of a life [of the pregnant person] exception, even if it’s narrow,” she says. “We’ve seen that the narrow exceptions do not work—exceptions to abortion bans still have resulted in refusals of care that have threatened the lives and health of pregnant people. But if this rule is rescinded, even the pretense of leaving exceptions for the life of a veteran would not be there.” The Biden Administration had also made efforts to help facilitate travel for active service members and their families to access reproductive health care services, including abortion. The policy allowed active service members and their families to take paid leave and get reimbursed for out-of-state travel to access abortion or other reproductive health care, such as in vitro fertilization (IVF), that was not available through the military. But soon after Pete Hegseth, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Defense (DoD), was confirmed, the department struck down that policy. A DoD official said in a statement shared with TIME that it’s the department’s policy “that taxpayer dollars shall not be used to fund, promote, or reimburse Service members or dependents for non-covered abortion-related travel expenses” and that rescinding the Biden-era rule was “consistent with these principles.” The official added that the new policy doesn’t prohibit active service members from accessing certain reproductive health care services not covered by the military health care program, such as IVF. During Doug Collins’s confirmation hearing to be the VA Secretary, he was asked about the Biden-era VA policy on abortion. He claimed that a 1992 law bars the VA from providing abortion care, but said the VA would look at the Biden-era rule and “see if it complies with the law.” The Biden Administration had previously argued that a 1996 law allowing the VA to offer medical services determined to be “needed” can include abortion care. “If they decide to roll back abortion access, it’s a total slap in the face to anybody who has served,” says Jackii Wang, senior legislative analyst at the National Women’s Law Center. “I’ve talked to a lot of veterans who tell me that they fought for all of our fundamental freedoms just to turn around and find out that those freedoms are being taken away from them.” Byard calls the possible rollback a “cruel betrayal.” Fourteen years ago, when she gave birth to her son, she hemorrhaged. She says she also has an autoimmune disease that is not conducive to pregnancy, and so having more children could be dangerous for her health. While she says she was fortunate to have been able to get a tubal ligation outside of the VA to prevent her getting pregnant again (through employer-sponsored health care), that procedure is “not fool proof.” She now lives in Tennessee, which has banned abortion in nearly all circumstances. Byard says abortion is a “human right,” and fears that other veterans at risk of pregnancy complications who live in states with bans or restrictions may not be able to receive care. She worries that a VA abortion ban will disproportionately affect people of color, people with disabilities, people who come from low-income households, and people in the LGBTQ+ community. “Stripping away veterans’ access to reproductive health care is a betrayal of the sacrifice and service that folks have made to protect the rights and freedoms of everyone in this nation, and that is supposed to include them,” Byard says. “We should not be taking away rights from anyone.”

The Trump Administration, which has promised to dismantle the Department of Education, has come after higher education—freezing funding for elite universities and revoking international student visas. Now, it’s targeting early childhood education. As the White House prepares to send Congress its 2026 fiscal year budget request, a 64-page internal preliminary budget proposal obtained by the Washington Post, according to an April 16 report, revealed plans of deep financial cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), accounting for roughly a third of the department’s discretionary budget Among the programs targeted for cuts is Head Start, which has for 60 years provided comprehensive early childhood education and care for low-income families. “The federal government should not be in the business of mandating curriculum, locations and performance standards for any form of education,” the document reportedly explains. The plan to fully eliminate Head Start, which was among Project 2025’s controversial policy blueprint and first reported to be in the Trump Administration’s upcoming budget proposal earlier this month by USA Today, would impact about 750,000 children, according to the nonprofit National Head Start Association (NHSA), and has been met with strong backlash from Democrats. Here’s what to know about the program. Head Start’s history and effectiveness Since the program began in 1965 under President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” Head Start has promoted school readiness and development for over 40 million children from birth to age 5. Besides education, its free services also include meals, medical and dental screenings, and social assistance. Families eligible under federal poverty guidelines must apply to the program to receive the benefits. During its launch, Johnson called the program, which was then under the Office of Economic Opportunity, “one of the most constructive, and one of the most sensible, and also one of the most exciting.” Throughout the years, the program has increased in scope and funding under both Democratic and Republican administrations, and its budget exceeded $1 billion in 1984. For fiscal year 2025, Congress authorized a budget of about $12 billion for Head Start. But there’s been debate over how effective the program is at improving learning and health outcomes. In 1985, HHS conducted a meta-analysis of research on Head Start and concluded: In the long run, cognitive and socioemotional test scores of former Head Start students do not remain superior to those of disadvantaged children who did not attend Head Start,” which critics have long used to claim that the program is ineffective. A 2010 HHS Impact Study also found that “the advantages children gained during their time in Head Start and up to age 4 yielded only a few statistically significant differences in outcomes at the end of 1st grade,” which has been commonly referred to as a “fade out” effect. Former TIME columnist Joe Klein argued in 2011 for axing the entire program, writing: “In these straitened times, we need world-class education programs, from infancy on up. But we can no longer afford to be sloppy about dispensing cash—whether it’s subsidies for oil companies or Head Start—to programs that do not produce a return.” But advocates say Head Start is effective—a range of studies have shown positive long-term results from the program, such as reducing adult poverty and increasing the likelihood of higher educational attainments as well as even improving future parenting practices—but is hampered by underfunding and shortstaffing and needs to be bolstered rather than cut. The Associated Press reported on April 16 that some Head Start-backed preschools across the country have had to close this year due to delays in funding already appropriated by Congress. Reactions to the proposal to eliminate Head Start NHSA executive director Yasmina Vinci told USA Today that eliminating the program’s funding would be “catastrophic,” adding: “We urge every parent, every American, and every believer in the American dream to reach out to their elected officials to express their outrage about such a proposal.” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D, Conn.), a ranking member of the House Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Subcommittee, dubbed the Trump budget proposal “Every Child Left Behind,” a play on the name of the George W. Bush Administration’s “No Child Left Behind” education policy, in an April 14 statement. “Head Start has had broad, bipartisan support since it was created—this is not a Republican or Democratic issue,” DeLauro said, adding that eliminating Head Start “to pay for tax cuts for billionaires would be an unrivaled and unthinkable betrayal of middle class, working class, and vulnerable families who need help with the cost of living.” Gov. Tony Evers (D, Wis.) posted on X on April 15 that the Trump Administration “is once again going back on their word, and now, HeadStart programs that more than 10,000 kids and their families across our state depend on are at risk. I will fight any action that messes with our kids and families.” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D, Minn.) posted on X on April 16 that the Trump Administration’s proposed elimination of Head Start “would be disastrous for hundreds of thousands of children and families, who would no longer have access to early education. We need to invest in our kids, not turn our backs on them.” And Sen. Patty Murray, (D, Wash.) said in an April 16 statement, “As he works to give more tax breaks to billionaires like himself, Donald Trump is doing everything he can to destroy Head Start.” Trump wants to “rip pre-K and essential support away from families nationwide,” Murray added, noting: “Democrats won’t let a proposal like that go anywhere in Congress—but make no mistake: Trump is already doing all he can to wreck the program on his own,” in reference to the recent withholding of already-appropriated federal funding. “I’m going to keep fighting back with all I’ve got,” Murray said, “because we’ve got to keep mobilizing and opposing this administration’s cruel agenda to help billionaires and hurt working families.”

Abortion rights advocates are concerned that the Trump Administration will reinstate an abortion ban at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) medical facilities, rolling back the Biden Administration’s efforts to expand access for veterans and their beneficiaries. Before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the VA had banned abortion under any circumstances and prohibited its medical providers from counseling patients about abortion. But after the court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Biden Administration enacted a rule allowing VA medical facilities to offer abortion counseling and abortion care to veterans and their beneficiaries in certain situations, including if the health or life of the pregnant person is at risk or if the pregnancy was a result of rape or incest. Even if the VA facility is based in a state that has banned or restricted abortion, medical providers there can still provide abortion care in these limited instances. Advertisement Last month, the Trump Administration’s VA submitted for review an interim final rule regarding reproductive health services, according to the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. There’s no further information or details on what the rule says. The VA did not respond to a request for comment, and the White House did not respond to a request for comment by press time. But abortion rights advocates fear that the rule will repeal the Biden-era policy, preventing veterans and their beneficiaries from obtaining abortion care at VA facilities across the country—both in states where abortion is legal and in those that have restricted it. “If they fully rescind the rule, we would be going back to a complete ban on abortion for veterans through the [VA] health care system,” says Freya Riedlin, senior federal policy counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights. “That was already bad before the Biden Administration, which added in these exceptions, but now we’re living in a completely different landscape.”

In an hour-long meeting at Eli Lilly and Company’s headquarters in Indianapolis on April 15, the pharmaceutical company’s top executives met, like they had dozens of times before, to hear the long-awaited results of a study involving a new drug. There’s always a lot riding on these presentations, called readouts. But this one, for Lilly’s first diabetes and weight-loss pill based on the GLP-1 hormone, was particularly fraught. Days before, rival pharma giant Pfizer had announced it was abandoning its oral weight-loss drug after worrying side effects involving liver problems were reported in one participant in the trial. It was the second drug in its class that had failed for Pfizer. Advertisement So, David Ricks, Lilly’s CEO, was understandably cautious. It was the latest in a string of milestone moments for the understated leader of the country’s most dynamic pharmaceutical company. Lilly executives took TIME inside the complex process of developing the new pill that unfolded over a series of conversations and a visit to the company’s headquarters and labs in Indianapolis to detail both the scientific advancements as well as the unique culture at the pharma giant that made the drug possible. And now it all came down to this meeting. Early phase studies had been promising, but anything can happen when a new drug is tested on thousands more people. “In my job as CEO, I’ve walked into a room like that about 30 times, and most of them have been for successful drugs—but there have been failures,” he says. “You can kind of tell by the way people are sitting what the outcome is going to be. But what you don’t know is the degree

Mere hours after birth, most newborns are tested for two things: whether they have signs of hearing loss and whether they have any of a range of rare conditions that could severely impact their health and their lives. If they test positive for either, they qualify for a number of interventions that can dramatically improve their prospects over their lifetime. But both tests could soon undergo dramatic changes because of drastic cutbacks at federal health agencies that public-health advocates say imperil both programs. These cutbacks could mean that certain states will not test for and respond to conditions that currently set services into motion in every state. Advertisement “There are a lot of worthy causes that fall by the wayside when there isn’t some kind of centralized government support,” says Karl White, director of the National Center for Hearing Assessment and Management at Utah State University. The dismantling of a critical division The Early Hearing Detection and Intervention program (EHDI) is run partially out of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The program helps states coordinate newborn hearing screening and respond to infants who fail the hearing tests. It falls under the CDC’s Disability and Health Promotion branch. But this entire branch was eliminated in the April 1 cutbacks at CDC that slashed about 2,400 employees. EHDI had eight full-time workers and one fellow; all but one were eliminated in the cutbacks, according to current and former staff. EHDI worked with states to analyze data to help communities follow up with families so that babies born deaf or hard of hearing get support as early as possible.

Ateam of astronomers have found what they claim are the most promising—but also tentative—signs of possible life on a distant planet. The research, which was published in the The Astrophysical Journal Letters, was led by the University of Cambridge and was based on data from the James Webb Space Telescope. Researchers detected chemical fingerprints of at least one, if not two, molecules—dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and dimethyl disulfide (DMDS)—in the atmosphere of K2-18b, a planet outside of our solar system, 124 light years away from Earth. Like Earth, this planet orbits its star in the habitable zone—an area around a star where planets with liquid water on their surfaces may exist. “On Earth, DMS and DMDS are only produced by life, primarily microbial life such as marine phytoplankton,” a Cambridge press release said. “While an unknown chemical process may be the source of these molecules in K2-18b’s atmosphere, the results are the strongest evidence yet that life may exist on a planet outside our solar system.” According to the press release, there’s a 0.3% probability that these findings were a statistical fluke. That’s not a small enough chance to reach the standard required to claim a scientific discovery—for that, there would have to be below a 0.00006% probability they occurred by chance. K2-18b has a mass 8.6 times that of Earth’s, and the planet is 2.6 times as large as Earth. Scientists have had their eye on this planet for a few years now. In 2023, researchers said they found evidence of methane and carbon dioxide in K2-18b’s atmosphere—the first time that carbon-based molecules were detected in the atmosphere of a planet outside of our solar system in the habitable zone. While astronomers said the latest results are “exciting,” they stressed that additional research needs to be conducted before making the bold claim that life has been found on another planet. “It’s important that we’re deeply sceptical of our own results, because it’s only by testing and testing again that we will be able to reach the point where we’re confident in them,” Nikku Madhusudhan, a professor at Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy who led the research, said in the university’s press release. “That’s how science has to work.”

A 20-year-old student at Florida State University in Tallahassee shot and killed two people on Thursday and injured six, the police said. The gunman was identified as the son of a deputy in the local sheriff’s department, and was taken into custody after being shot by the police, law enforcement officials said. Officials said that the gunman, identified as Phoenix Ikner, was armed with a former service revolver of his mother, a deputy who has worked at the Leon County Sheriff’s Office for 18 years and was allowed to keep the gun for personal use. Mr. Ikner had been involved in training programs at the Sheriff’s Office and was a member of its youth advisory committee, Sheriff Walter McNeil told reporters. “He has been steeped in the Leon County Sheriff’s Office family,” the sheriff said. “It’s not a surprise to us that he had access to weapons.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Chief Lawrence E. Revell of the Tallahassee Police Department said Mr. Ikner also had a shotgun with him, but Chief Revell said he was not sure that gun was used in the attack. The two people killed in the shooting were not students, law enforcement officials said. They had not been identified as of Thursday evening. Mr. Ikner was shot and wounded by responding officers after he did not obey their commands, officials said. Chief Revell said he believed that Mr. Ikner acted alone. “There is no further threat to our community,” he said. He added that Mr. Ikner had “invoked his right not to speak to us.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The shooting occurred shortly before noon, sending students and staff to seek cover on a warm and sunny day in Tallahassee when many were outside. The university soon issued a shelter-in-place alert, and officers raced to the campus and began escorting people out of academic buildings.Television footage captured the chaotic aftermath of the shooting: shoes scattered on the lawns of the campus; chairs in one classroom piled in a makeshift barricade against a door; students leaving the campus with their hands raised in the air. Students and a professor in an environmental science class sprang into action when an alarm went off, said Will Rhoades, one of the 135 students in the class. The students barricaded the classroom doors with tables and used sweatshirts to tie the door handles together, he said. Victor Castillo, who was in the student union, near the shooting, said he had been momentarily confused by the sound of gunfire but quickly took cover. “All of a sudden, I hear boom, boom, boom,” said Mr. Castillo, 20, a sophomore studying business management. “My ears started ringing. I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t think it would happen here.”Mr. Castillo said he sheltered in place until the police evacuated the building. Ilana Badiner, 21, said she huddled in the student union basement with about 30 people during the shooting. In 2018, she was a student at a school adjacent to the high school in Parkland, Fla., where 17 people were shot dead. “It was the same situation today, where people were just on the phones calling everybody and there were people crying,” she said, adding, “It’s terrible that this keeps happening.” President Trump said that he had been briefed on the shooting. “It’s a shame, a horrible thing, it’s horrible that things like this take place,” he said. Some gun-control advocates said the attack illustrated the need for more firearms restrictions, though with a Republican governor and legislature supporting gun rights, any such moves were unlikely in Florida. “Today, students at FSU sheltered in place during a shooting on their campus,” read a post on X by Giffords, the organization founded by the former congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who was seriously wounded in a 2011 assassination attempt. “Seven years ago, some of these same students survived the Parkland shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS. Our children are being traumatized over and over again. It doesn’t have to be this way.” University officials canceled all classes, events and business operations for the rest of the week. All athletic events were canceled through the weekend. The last day of classes is next Friday. Florida State was also the scene of a deadly shooting in 2014, when an alumnus of the university shot three people at a campus library before being killed by the police. A student who was left paralyzed reached a $1 million settlement with the university, The Tallahassee Democrat reported.

The New York Times is looking to hear from high school and college students in the United States who are considering changing their college plans as a result of the Trump administration’s policies. We want to hear how the recent shifts in higher education may have affected your plans to pursue an undergraduate or graduate degree at a school in the United States, and if you may be considering a university in another country instead. We want to hear both from students who plan to start programs in the fall and those who will be applying in the next admissions cycle. We will reach out if we’re interested in learning more for our story. Any information you provide will not be used without your permission, and we will not share your contact information outside the newsroom.

Serena Williams sits back in the driver’s seat of her light blue Lincoln Navigator, as darkness turns to light one recent South Florida morning. An interview that was supposed to start close to noon got pushed up, on very short notice, to the ungodly hour of 6:20 a.m. Something unexpected came up with her daughters—Olympia, 7, and Adira, 1—that required a pre-dawn rescheduling. Given Williams’ hectic life since she announced, nearly three years ago, that she was “evolving away from tennis”—she purposely avoided saying retirement—a last-minute request to shuffle things around didn’t come as a big surprise. But no one was thrilled with the new appointment time, least of all a bleary-eyed Williams. “Oh my God, this is the worst,” she says. We’re in the driveway of her family’s five-acre farm because her in-laws are sleeping inside the house. “We basically eat off the land,” says Williams of the property on which she and her husband, Reddit co-founder and investor Alexis Ohanian, grow berries, tomatoes, kale, and other crops while raising chickens. A basketball hoop stands to our left, which seems fitting at this moment in time: a few weeks earlier, Williams announced that she was joining the ownership group of the Toronto Tempo, a WNBA expansion team that will take the court in 2026. It is yet another addition to an already full plate that includes running her investment firm and raising two children with Ohanian, with the occasional high-profile moment like calling out Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker, who had suggested a woman’s most important title is homemaker, when she hosted last year’s ESPYs or, making a surprise appearance dancing at this year’s Super Bowl halftime show. As our sleepiness wears off, I ask her if she misses tennis, expecting a canned answer about how that part of her life is now behind her. But I should have known better. Dull has never been Williams’ style. “I miss it a lot, with all my heart,” she responds. “I miss it because I’m healthy.” In other words, her body feels good enough that she’s confident, even at 43, she could still pile up some wins on tour. “If I couldn't walk, or if I was so out of it, I wouldn’t miss it as much,” Williams says. I wonder if she’s healthy because she stopped playing. “I think I’m healthy because I didn’t overplay,” she says. Williams, who has 23 Grand Slam singles titles, still hits around—there’s a tennis court on the farm. And after George Foreman died, just four days prior to our meeting, a comeback did cross her mind. “He was champion at 45,” Williams notes. It’s a tantalizing prospect, for sure. But a tennis return remains highly unlikely. “I just can't peel myself away from these children,” says Williams. “Another reason I had to transition was because I wanted to have more kids. And I look at Adira and I'm like, ‘Was it worth it?’ I literally thought about it the other day. I was like, ‘Yeah, it was definitely worth it.’” So tennis marches on without Williams, as a plethora of talented players—Aryna Sabalenka, Iga Swiatek, Coco Gauff, Madison Keys, and others—continue to duke it out, tournament after tournament, to fill the void she left behind. But Williams never planned on fading away. She’s followed through, for example, on her promise to pour her energy into growing as a businesswoman: Over the past 15 years, Williams has put her own money into more than 120 companies, 14 of them valued at $1 billion or more. Her company, Serena Ventures, has raised over $100 million of outside capital to invest in more than 30 companies since 2021. Deal flow at Serena Ventures has quadrupled in the last year. She joined the Tempo at an ascendant moment for the WNBA, which tips off its 2025 campaign in mid-May. Last season, the league set attendance and viewership records. Williams has ambitions of propelling it further. She has also signed on as an executive producer of Netflix's adaptation of Taylor Jenkins Reid's best-selling novel Carrie Soto Is Back, about a tennis champion who comes out of retirement to reclaim her Grand Slam record. Meanwhile, the Super Bowl dance illustrated that even though she’s no longer acing opponents on the Wimbledon grass, the power of Serena endures. Just as, at various points during her athletic career, she sparked conversations about racism, sexism, sportsmanship, decorum, and a whole host of issues that extended far beyond the tennis court, her crip walk, in front of some 200 million people tuning in around the world, during Kendrick Lamar’s halftime performance of “Not Like Us”—his diss track aimed at fellow rapper Drake—caused a commotion. Was Williams’ Black cultural expression a form of political resistance against a President aiming to squash diversity initiatives in American life? Was this act appropriate at the Super Bowl, ostensibly one of the few remaining unifying events remaining on the calendar? Was she settling old scores with an ex-boyfriend (Drake)? Subscribe Apr 16, 2025 5:38 PM IST Serena Williams Is Still at the Top of Her Game Sports TIME 100 2025 Time 100 Serena Williams profile Serena Williams photographed in West Palm Beach, Florida on Mar. 11Adrienne Raquel for TIME Sean Gregory / Jupiter, Fla. by Sean Gregory / Jupiter, Fla. Senior Correspondent This story is part of the 2025 TIME100. Read Allyson Felix’s tribute to Serena Williams here. Serena Williams sits back in the driver’s seat of her light blue Lincoln Navigator, as darkness turns to light one recent South Florida morning. An interview that was supposed to start close to noon got pushed up, on very short notice, to the ungodly hour of 6:20 a.m. Something unexpected came up with her daughters—Olympia, 7, and Adira, 1—that required a pre-dawn rescheduling. Given Williams’ hectic life since she announced, nearly three years ago, that she was “evolving away from tennis”—she purposely avoided saying retirement—a last-minute request to shuffle things around didn’t come as a big surprise. But no one was thrilled with the new appointment time, least of all a bleary-eyed Williams. “Oh my God, this is the worst,” she says. Advertisement We’re in the driveway of her family’s five-acre farm because her in-laws are sleeping inside the house. “We basically eat off the land,” says Williams of the property on which she and her husband, Reddit co-founder and investor Alexis Ohanian, grow berries, tomatoes, kale, and other crops while raising chickens. A basketball hoop stands to our left, which seems fitting at this moment in time: a few weeks earlier, Williams announced that she was joining the ownership group of the Toronto Tempo, a WNBA expansion team that will take the court in 2026. It is yet another addition to an already full plate that includes running her investment firm and raising two children with Ohanian, with the occasional high-profile moment like calling out Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker, who had suggested a woman’s most important title is homemaker, when she hosted last year’s ESPYs or, making a surprise appearance dancing at this year’s Super Bowl halftime show. Advertisement As our sleepiness wears off, I ask her if she misses tennis, expecting a canned answer about how that part of her life is now behind her. But I should have known better. Dull has never been Williams’ style. “I miss it a lot, with all my heart,” she responds. “I miss it because I’m healthy.” In other words, her body feels good enough that she’s confident, even at 43, she could still pile up some wins on tour. “If I couldn't walk, or if I was so out of it, I wouldn’t miss it as much,” Williams says. I wonder if she’s healthy because she stopped playing. “I think I’m healthy because I didn’t overplay,” she says. Williams, who has 23 Grand Slam singles titles, still hits around—there’s a tennis court on the farm. And after George Foreman died, just four days prior to our meeting, a comeback did cross her mind. “He was champion at 45,” Williams notes. It’s a tantalizing prospect, for sure. But a tennis return remains highly unlikely. “I just can't peel myself away from these children,” says Williams. “Another reason I had to transition was because I wanted to have more kids. And I look at Adira and I'm like, ‘Was it worth it?’ I literally thought about it the other day. I was like, ‘Yeah, it was definitely worth it.’” Advertisement Photograph by Adrienne Raquel for TIME Order your copy of the 2025 TIME100 issue here So tennis marches on without Williams, as a plethora of talented players—Aryna Sabalenka, Iga Swiatek, Coco Gauff, Madison Keys, and others—continue to duke it out, tournament after tournament, to fill the void she left behind. But Williams never planned on fading away. She’s followed through, for example, on her promise to pour her energy into growing as a businesswoman: Over the past 15 years, Williams has put her own money into more than 120 companies, 14 of them valued at $1 billion or more. Her company, Serena Ventures, has raised over $100 million of outside capital to invest in more than 30 companies since 2021. Deal flow at Serena Ventures has quadrupled in the last year. She joined the Tempo at an ascendant moment for the WNBA, which tips off its 2025 campaign in mid-May. Last season, the league set attendance and viewership records. Williams has ambitions of propelling it further. She has also signed on as an executive producer of Netflix's adaptation of Taylor Jenkins Reid's best-selling novel Carrie Soto Is Back, about a tennis champion who comes out of retirement to reclaim her Grand Slam record. Advertisement Meanwhile, the Super Bowl dance illustrated that even though she’s no longer acing opponents on the Wimbledon grass, the power of Serena endures. Just as, at various points during her athletic career, she sparked conversations about racism, sexism, sportsmanship, decorum, and a whole host of issues that extended far beyond the tennis court, her crip walk, in front of some 200 million people tuning in around the world, during Kendrick Lamar’s halftime performance of “Not Like Us”—his diss track aimed at fellow rapper Drake—caused a commotion. Was Williams’ Black cultural expression a form of political resistance against a President aiming to squash diversity initiatives in American life? Was this act appropriate at the Super Bowl, ostensibly one of the few remaining unifying events remaining on the calendar? Was she settling old scores with an ex-boyfriend (Drake)? Advertisement In the less than five seconds she appeared on television that night, barely a blip on the screen, she rocketed back into our collective consciousness. In the Navigator, while breaking down the whole affair, Williams arrives at a simple conclusion. “That’s such a Serena moment.” Before her final professional tennis match, a three-hour Friday night epic in New York City that she lost to Australia’s Ajla Tomljanović at the 2022 U.S. Open, Williams told TIME she was stepping away from the game, in part, to evolve as a mom. “I think I’m good at it,” she said of parenthood. “But I want to explore if I can be great at it.” Nearly three years on, has she achieved greatness in this realm? “I’m a wonderful mom,” Williams says. “I think we, as women, don’t give ourselves credit, but I’m a great mom. I really am. I do everything. I'm freaking the room mom at Olympia’s school this year.” Advertisement Williams gave birth to Adira less than a year after hanging up her racquet, and she’s had to grapple with a challenge familiar to most, if not all, parents of second children: doting on the new arrival at the expense of the older sibling. “I try to be less on baby, but she's just so cute,” says Williams. “How do you not give her all the attention in the world? Oh my God. It’s so hard.” Peeling herself away from Adira as she goes to pick up Olympia from school is more difficult than she envisioned. And as the youngest sister in her own family, she also cops to taking Adira’s side during rare squabbles between the sisters. (She says they get along great.) “When Olympia tells Adira no, I'm just like, ‘Excuse me, you have to share’ because it's triggering,” she says. In that same pre-retirement interview, Williams said she got “more love and more joy out of what I do in the VC space” than from tennis. That passion for business has endured. While many athletes simply lend their name to such financial enterprises, Williams actually does the work. The founders of Serena Ventures-backed start-ups often have a line into Williams herself. “She’s giving her direct cell phone to a lot of people,” says Beth Ferreira, the firm’s general partner. Williams sometimes mitigates disputes between company executives, according to Ferreira, or sits in on legal calls. “In my past life, I’ve worked with other athletes, and they’re usually very in the background,” says Ferreira. “This is different. I’ve tried to pull her out of the weeds.” Advertisement Ferreira, who previously worked for a New York venture-capital firm that early-stage invested in companies like Airbnb, Shopify, and DraftKings, would prefer that Williams spend even more of her time opening doors for the fund’s portfolio companies. Two other well-known venture-capital funds, for example, promised to introduce a start-up’s founders to a Fortune 100 executive, but ultimately couldn’t make it happen. “Serena not only got them the meeting by the next day, but she also walked them into the meeting and stayed for the meeting,” says Ferreira. Some companies expect to leverage Williams’ celebrity. “One of the challenges is, people are like, ‘Can you do this picture or post?’” says Williams. Sometimes she will plug a business to her 18.1 million Instagram followers, because it can only help her investment. “But that's the least part that I bring, posting about something which lives on social media for 10 seconds and people forget,” says Williams. “The best part about what we bring, as a firm, is that we make introductions that firms with 20 years’ experience make.” According to Serena Ventures, nearly 70% of the companies in which the firm invests were founded by women or people of color, including online marketplace Rebel, which sells discounted baby products and other home essentials that have been returned to retailers and would otherwise be headed for a landfill, and Esusu, a fintech company that helps renters, particularly immigrants, build credit scores. And Williams doesn’t intend to alter her strategy because of President Trump’s policies targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. “We are obviously going to lean into that, because my team is filled with inclusion, because we're women,” says Williams, who quickly adds that Serena Ventures would like to hire a man. “We like to partner with people that believe in that too. It's a free world. People are going to do what they want to do. And I can't let that affect how I do things. I'm going to do the things that I think are right.” While Serena Ventures may branch out into sports investments, Williams is putting her own cash into the Tempo. She first fell in love with women’s basketball, she says, during her years seeing the U.S. national team up close while at the Olympics, starting in 2000: Williams, who herself won four Olympic tennis gold medals, points to players like Lisa Leslie and Diana Taurasi as inspirations. The way last season’s WNBA rookie sensation, Caitlin Clark, handled all the fevered debates that surrounded her also left an impression. “I felt like she’s always herself, she stayed out of it, just muted the noise,” says Williams. “She has this maturity that I didn’t have.” Clark did have the benefit of being in college when she attracted the national spotlight, while Williams started playing on tour at age 14. But Clark, at just 23, has already learned to tune out distractions like the latest online outrage, something Williams got better at later in her career. "I felt like she was, like me, purposely staying away," says Williams. "I respect that. Kudos to her." About a year ago, Williams publicly expressed interest in owning a WNBA team. Women’s team sports valuations are surging, and Williams does not believe it’s a bubble that will burst. “With AI coming in, it's going to affect so many different industries,” says Williams. “But the one thing it's not going to affect is sports. They’re the last real thing that you can see and hold and feel.” A few weeks after the Tempo were awarded an expansion franchise in May 2024, WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert asked Tempo majority owner Larry Tanenbaum if he had any room for Williams in his group. “It took me exactly five seconds, maybe not even that long, to say of course,” says Tanenbaum. The duo connected and clicked. It didn’t hurt that Toronto was one of Williams’ favorite stops on the Women’s Tennis Association tour. The Canadian Open alternates for the women each summer between Toronto and Montreal: Williams won all three of her tournament titles in Toronto. “You spend so much time at these places and get to know the insides of the city,” she says. “You get to know the restaurants, you get to know people, you get to know just festivals and all kinds of stuff. I got to know the karaoke rooms.” Advertisement She’s throwing herself into the job. Williams, along with Tanenbaum and team president Teresa Resch, took part in the interview process that landed the Tempo its first general manager, former WNBA player and assistant general manager of the Phoenix Mercury, Monica Wright Rogers. Williams asked Wright Rogers what she thought was the most important aspect of player experience with the team. Wright Rogers emphasized resources for nutrition and recovery and analytics to optimize performance. “Right answer,” Williams said. She requested a follow-up conversation, one-on-one, to confirm the leadership team's hunch that Wright Rogers was the correct choice. The Tempo is betting that Williams can help the team, and the WNBA at large, accelerate its international growth, which has lagged behind the more established men’s game. “We’re truly positioned to be the global catalyst for this league,” says Resch. “The WNBA is a rocket ship in North America. But worldwide, there’s no great exposure. And I don't know if there's a bigger global brand than Serena Williams.” Advertisement It took some nine months for Williams to finalize her deal with the Tempo. Her Super Bowl booking came together much quicker. A couple of weeks before the game, Lamar, a 22-time Grammy winner and Pulitzer Prize winner who like Williams was born and raised in Compton, Calif., reached out to her. “We’ve been trying to do something together for ages,” she says. Lamar had watched Williams do the crip walk, a West Coast dance move that originated with first-generation members of the Crips, a Los Angeles gang, on the supposedly sacrosanct Wimbledon surface after winning the gold medal at the 2012 London Olympics. She received some blowback in the media. One columnist compared her dance to “cracking a tasteless, X-rated joke inside a church.” Lamar, however, appreciated that Williams represented hip-hop culture on the world stage and wanted her to do it again. “I'm like, ‘Wait, what, you're asking me?’” says Williams. “I'm not Taylor Swift, let's be honest. I would have a better chance to be quarterback at the Super Bowl than dance.” Advertisement Williams knew, going in, she would be dancing to “Not Like Us,” Lamar’s incendiary 2024 hit that won five Grammys in February. In his 2022 song, “Middle of the Ocean,” Drake sang, “Sidebar, Serena, your husband a groupie.” In “Not Like Us,” Lamar tells Drake he’d “better not speak on Serena,” and, in very unsubtle fashion, accuses Drake of sexual impropriety with minors. (Drake has denied all such allegations and has sued the Universal Music Group, the record company behind “Not Like Us,” for defamation; UMG has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.) Williams had previously danced to “Not Like Us” at the ESPYs, joking, “If I’ve learned anything this year, it’s that none of us, not a single one of us, not even me, should ever pick a fight with Kendrick Lamar. He will make your hometown not like you. The next time Drake sits courtside at a Raptors game, they’re going to Forrest Gump him. Seats taken.” But this was clearly much bigger. Advertisement Williams strategized with her team: would the negativity her appearance could spark be worth the thrill of performing at halftime? The opportunity to amplify her hometown to the globe—again—was too good to pass up. “Who would have thought that a tennis player from Compton would be regarded as one of the best tennis players of all time?” she says. “It was just putting an exclamation on it.” These days, Williams spends her days listening to Gracie’s Corner, a YouTube channel for kids. “Eenie, meenie, miny, moe/ Take big steps like an elephant, go,” is one lyrical sampling. She leans forward in the car and puts her hands over her face, recalling her reaction as she listened to the, er, less gentle words of “Not Like Us” in her earbuds and at rehearsals as the halftime show got closer. “Ohhhh my God,” she says. She took a couple of shots of tequila before going onto the Caesars Superdome field in New Orleans. They weren't calming her nerves, but her handlers discouraged her from taking a third. Despite the butterflies, Williams danced with aplomb, as viewers exclaimed, “Wait a second, is that Serena Williams?!” Then the fallout commenced. The FCC received some 125 complaints about Lamar’s performance, with one even singling out Williams for promoting “gang affiliation.” Many took her crip walk as a direct shot at Drake. “I don't know if I regret it or not,” she says now of her decision to dance. “I don't know the answer to that.” So was Williams throwing shade at Drake? “Absolutely not,” she says. “I would never do that. And that was sad, that anyone would ever think that. I respect how they could. Obviously I can see how someone would think that. But absolutely not. I have never had negative feelings towards him. We’ve known him for so many years.” ESPN personality Stephen A. Smith—who recently signed a reported $100 million contract with the network—weighed in, claiming that if he were married to Williams, he’d divorce her over the halftime show. “If I’m married and my wife is going to join trolling her ex, go back to his ass,” Smith said on the show First Take. “’Cause clearly you don’t belong with me. What you worried about him for and you’re with me? Bye-bye.” Williams caught Smith’s reaction. “I thought it was hilarious,” she says. “He’s allowed to have his personal opinion. But did you see my husband’s remark? It was so eloquent.” Ohanian replied to Smith on social media, with a thread that included a reminder that Williams received criticism for crip-walking at the Olympics and a clip of the victorious Philadelphia Eagles players dancing to “Not Like Us” in the Super Bowl locker room. “This is bigger than the music,” Ohanian wrote. “And I'm like, dude, like, we literally are investing in the world, both of us,” says Williams. Ohanian owns a stake in Angel City FC, the National Women’s Soccer League team, and started an all-women’s track event last year. “We’re investing in women and in sports,” she says. “This is literally the last thing on our minds. Come on.” That evening, the couple was more concerned with securing an autograph from Swift, who was at the game supporting her boyfriend, Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. Swift had been greeted by boos—presumably from Eagles fans—in New Orleans. “Why would you boo her?” says Williams. “That’s so mean. That’s just awful.” Olympia waited with her mom and dad outside Swift’s suite, hoping to catch her exiting the area. “I’m such a mom. I was ready to go in here myself and be like, ‘Taylor, come get this girl,’” says Williams. But since the Eagles were trouncing the Kelce’s Chiefs, she wanted to respect Swift’s space. “It’s hard when your team is losing,” says Williams. “I totally get it.” So Olympia’s Swift autograph will have to wait. “My husband and I, we’re so in a different space,” she says. “We’re so connected, we’re so in love, we’re just, like, trying to get our daughter Taylor Swift autographs. And nothing else.” Williams does still care about tennis. She’s a big fan, for example, of Jannik Sinner, the emergent Italian star who’s won the last two Australian Opens and is the defending U.S. Open champion. “Fantastic personality,” says Williams. “I love the guy, I love this game. He’s great for the sport.” She admits, however, that she was surprised by the three-month suspension he was given for testing positive for a performance-enhancing substance a year ago. According to Sinner, a physio inadvertently gave him the substance. The International Tennis Integrity Agency agreed with his explanation, determining that the amount was so small that it didn’t give him a competitive advantage, but the World Anti-Doping Agency pushed for a one-year ban. The parties reached a settlement in February, and while Sinner is currently sitting out tournaments, he won’t have to miss a major. Some players have accused the game’s officials of giving the top-ranked Sinner favorable treatment. Williams wants to be crystal-clear: she wishes Sinner no ill will. “I’ve been put down so much, I don’t want to bring anyone down,” she says, adding that she’s excited to see his return to the tour, at the Italian Open in early May. “Men’s tennis needs him.” But, she says, “if I did that, I would have gotten 20 years. Let's be honest. I would have gotten Grand Slams taken away from me.” Williams says she was always extra careful about what went into her body, taking nothing stronger than Advil for fear of ingesting something that could get her in trouble. A performance-enhancing-drugs scandal would have landed her “in jail,” she says, with a laugh. “You would have heard about it in another multiverse.” She also wonders what her contemporary and occasional rival, Maria Sharapova, is thinking. Sharapova got a two-year doping ban back in 2016 (on appeal it was reduced to 15 months), despite the fact a tennis governing body determined that her offense was, like Sinner’s, unintentional. “Just weirdly and oddly, I can't help but think about Maria all this time,” says Williams. “I can't help but feel for her.” (Sharapova declined to comment.) With those thoughts off her chest, Williams gets out of the Navigator and offers a tour of her farm. She says that growing up in Compton, she never could have imagined a life of growing peppers and collecting eggs. “I never thought I had a green thumb,” she says. One corner of the property houses bees. “We get so much honey it’s insane,” she says. Williams dehydrates the farm’s Moringa leaves, which are packed with antioxidants, to make tea. She is in frequent touch with her friend Meghan Markle, who has a colossal garden at her California home. “I’m always like, ‘Girl, what are you doing today?’” says Williams. “So we're trading recipes.” She plans on adding a padel court on the property: padel, like pickleball, is a fast-growing racquet sport (in padel, you play the ball off of walls). “I’m clearly good at padel,” Williams says. “I’m not great at it. It’s a learning curve.” A trio of playhouses line a paved mini-road, replete with an “East Stockton St.” sign, in honor of her childhood address in Compton. She intends to put a number on each of the playhouses: 1117, her house number in Compton; 313, the address for the Florida home she shared with her sister Venus for two decades; and the number of Ohanian’s childhood home in Maryland. A farmhand offers to pluck some mint for Williams and informs her that some purple sweet potatoes will be coming. Mangoes, blueberries, and raspberries will be growing in soon. “You crushed the Super Bowl, by the way,” she tells Williams. “Oh my God. I was like, ‘There's my boss, that’s lit!’” Despite her continued longing for the sport she once dominated, Williams is clear on why she made the decision she did. As a person who fully commits to everything she does, she knows she has to be selective about where she devotes her energy, and right now her priorities are not on the court. She also suspects the itch she feels to keep competing will fade over time. “Hopefully I'll feel better when I feel like, physically, I'm not able to have wins over some people,” she says. “I've given my whole life to tennis. And I would gladly give another two years if I had time. But it's nice to do something different. I'm content.” Styled by Solange Franklin; set design by Ceci Garcia; hair by Angela Meadows; make-up by Natasha Gross; production by Petty Cash On the cover: Top by Alaia, skirt by David Koma, shoes by Gianvito Rossi, earrings and necklace by Vhernier, watch by Audemar Piguet, anklet is Williams’ own On the inside: Jacket by Helsa, shoes by Khaite, tights by Falke, belt and earrings by Patricia von Musilin Jumpsuit by Sergio Hudson, shoes by Paris Texas, earrings by Van Cleef & Arpels, watch by Audemar Piguet

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. The speaker had an alarming warning for his audience: for the first time ever, Social Security benefits may not reach beneficiaries this month thanks to cuts to the government office that handles them. But if the message to the gathering of advocates for disabled persons on Tuesday night was urgent, the delivery was all-too-familiar. Folks, let’s put this in perspective,” former President Joe Biden intoned. “In the 90 years since Franklin Roosevelt created the Social Security system, people have always gotten their Social Security checks. They’ve gotten them during wartime. During recessions. During a pandemic. No matter what, they got them. Now, for the first time ever, that might change. It would be calamity for millions of families.” It was Biden’s first public speech since leaving the White House, and it brought it all back. There was the former President’s favorite feigned indifference to his 2020 rival, referring to “This Guy” as a stand-in for Trump. There were the cliches: “They’re shooting first and aiming later,” Biden said. And there were the awkward sentence constructions. “In fewer than 100 days, this new Administration has done so much damage and so much destruction. It’s kind of breathtaking it happened that soon.” It’s the comeback no one is asking for, starting just 85 days after Biden left the White House. There is a rhythm to most post-presidencies, with most Commanders-in-Chief stepping back for a period out of the spotlight. Trump, of course, defied trends, but Obama traveled the globe and palled around with his celebrity friends. George W. Bush retreated to Texas to take up oil painting and largely swore off politics. Bill Clinton took a (brief) minute to cede the spotlight to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who assumed office as New York’s junior Senator with 17 days left on her time as First Lady. All began work on their Presidential libraries, quietly raising money behind the scenes. Biden has taken a different path since stepping down. He has been back in Washington every couple of weeks for meetings about his post-presidential life. Last month he came to pick up a lifetime achievement award from one of his most loyal unions, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. He popped up at a Model UN event in New York and this weekend for a Passover seder with Delaware’s Governor. He appeared in black tie for opening night of Othello on Broadway, snubbing another star-studded play, Good Night and Good Luck led by George Clooney who penned a brutal op-ed urging Biden to leave the 2024 race, earning permanent exile from the Biden orbit. Closer to home, Biden has started on the outline for his memoirs. He has scaled-back his calls to pals on Capitol Hill, taking a breather from the day-to-day political brawl. To the bewilderment of even his best allies in the Senate, there has been no hard movement on a presidential library. And he has done zero fundraising in an environment where dollars get harder to raise the further the asking party is from the action. Some of Biden’s most excuse-prone donors say they are not even sure where Biden plans to build his library, whenever he does get around to it. If he's less interested in fundraising than in getting back in the public eye, it may be because he wants to draw the contrast with Trump's tumultuous start to his second term. Democratic faithful readily point to what they insist is Biden’s record of accomplishment: a tax credit that led to the lowest rate of childhood poverty in U.S. history; millions in spending to ease the recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic; huge subsidies for U.S. businesses through investments in the clean-energy sector; and an economy that added more than 16 million jobs. And Biden clearly relished the opportunity to step back on stage, joining the Advocates, Counselors, and Representatives for the Disabled conference in Chicago Tuesday. His political instinct isn’t wrong that Social Security is a good re-entry point: 73 million Social Security recipients are older and disabled, and even if the checks do get out this month, Republicans are on a collision course over funding the program. Trump has repeatedly promised he would not cut it, but the math doesn’t add up in the spending plans he is pushing. Congress is pursuing a spending framework that makes deep but vague cuts, and there are really only a few piles of money big enough to cover them. The Senate framework sets a baseline of $4 billion in reductions, while the House is chasing at least $1.5 trillion in spending slashes. Meanwhile, Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, helmed by billionaire Elon Musk, has already cut the Social Security Administration by 10% and shuttered dozens of regional offices, putting an unsustainable stress on the system. Musk has called Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” and suggested cuts to automatic spending programs have to be on the table. White House officials insist that he’s merely talking about fraud, but Democrats don’t buy it. It’s why Democrats, in search of a coherent message in the post-Biden era, have rallied around threats to Social Security. House Democrats used Tuesday as a national day of action on the entitlement program. Senate Democrats launched their first ads of the cycle on Tuesday, targeting Republican incumbents in Maine and North Carolina. Republicans can hardly hold public events without confronting enthusiastic protests demanding no changes to the retirement safety net. Meanwhile huge audiences have turned out for Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez even deep-red places like Utah, while Sen. Cory Booker’s record-breaking marathon speech on the floor drew rapturous reactions. But Biden's Tuesday evening event reminded everyone why the former President hadn’t been able to generate the same enthusiasm. Biden joked about his half-century in public service, pointing to legislation he championed as a lawmaker, “as a United States Senator 400 years ago.” At another point, he mocked Musk’s obsession with zombie beneficiaries. “By the way, those 300-year-old folks getting that Social Security, I want to meet them,” Biden said. “Hell of a thing, man. I’m looking at longevity. Because it’s hell when you turn 40 years old.” The 27-minute speech Tuesday gave no one nostalgia for Biden. Even fewer think him sticking around is going to fix any of the long-term, structural problems facing Democrats. Biden may want a comeback, but if he pushes his luck, he could find himself in a lonely camp.