A group of conservative influencers left the White House on Thursday afternoon, all holding white binders emblazoned with the Department of Justice seal. Some of them held up the binders to the cameras, which showed that they were labeled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1.” The unusual scene came just hours after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was confirmed earlier this month, vowed to release a cache of documents related to the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Bondi had promised that the files would include flight logs and the names of individuals involved, but she had cautioned that some information could not be disclosed due to the need to protect more than 250 victims. A review of the released documents found that they included heavy redactions and mostly information that had been previously reported. While the binders appeared to be marked “declassified,” questions remained as to whether they had ever been classified in the first place. The limited scope of the release drew criticism from some Republicans, including Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, who leads a House GOP task force on government transparency. “I nor the task force were given or reviewed the Epstein documents being released today … A NY Post story just revealed that the documents will simply be Epstein’s phonebook,” Luna tweeted. “THIS IS NOT WHAT WE OR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ASKED FOR and a complete disappointment. GET US THE INFORMATION WE ASKED FOR!” In a Thursday letter to FBI Director Kash Patel, Bondi suggested that the FBI had more documents related to Epstein’s investigation and indictment. She ordered the “full and complete” Epstein files to be delivered to her office by Friday morning, and also ordered Patel to “conduct an immediate investigation” as to why her previous order on delivering all the files wasn’t followed. As the Epstein documents were released, Patel posted on X that the bureau is “entering a new era.” He added: “If there are gaps, we will find them. If records have been hidden, we will uncover them. And we will bring everything we find to the DOJ to be fully assessed and transparently disseminated to the American people as it should be.” Among those carrying the binders outside the White House was political commentator Rogan O’Handley, known online as DC Draino, along with Libs of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik, podcaster Liz Wheeler, and Jack Posobiec, among others. Some posted the same seemingly coordinated message on X, including the line: “This is the most transparent administration in American history.” Bondi discussed the release of the documents in an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, offering a glimpse of what might be included—though she stopped short of confirming whether new revelations would emerge from the files, beyond what the public already knew. Epstein’s dark history, marked by his abuse of underage girls, has been extensively documented over the years, with multiple lawsuits, criminal dockets, and public disclosures laying bare the extent of his crimes. In January 2024, a court unsealed a large batch of documents from the lawsuit filed by Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s victims. The materials released at that time, including police reports and victim testimonies, had already been publicly circulated. Epstein’s predatory behavior spanned more than a decade, with allegations dating back to the 1990s. He was accused of abusing hundreds of children, some as young as 14, in a sprawling operation allegedly involving high-profile individuals, including politicians, celebrities, and royalty. Epstein’s death in 2019, ruled a suicide while in a Manhattan jail awaiting trial, only fueled conspiracy theories and renewed calls for transparency.

The board of Virginia Military Institute voted on Friday against extending the contract of Maj. Gen. Cedric T. Wins, the college’s first Black superintendent. The school’s board of visitors, which voted 10-6 not to extend General Wins’s contract, did not give an official reason for the decision, which was made after a closed session that lasted more than two hours. The move followed years of pushback from conservative alumni of the college who had objected to what they called General Wins’s “woke” efforts to increase campus diversity. And it followed accusations from a Virginia state senator that the effort to remove him was racially motivated. The school is the oldest state-supported military college in the country, and all students participate in reserve officers training, a pathway to leadership roles in the U.S. military. General Wins, a V.M.I. alumnus, was appointed to the job in 2021, although he began on an interim basis the previous year. He was responsible for removing the statue of Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, a Confederate general, that had been prominently positioned on campus. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT He also led efforts to increase diversity on campus following reports of “relentless racism” experienced by Black cadets published by The Washington Post in 2020, shortly before he took over. A subsequent state investigation concluded that there was a racist and sexist culture at V.M.I. When the statue was removed, General Wins acknowledged Jackson’s ties to the school, where he was an instructor, and the strong opinions about the decision. General Wins said in a statement at the time, “Though change can sometimes be difficult, it is time for our beloved Institution to move forward.” In a statement, the board of visitors president, John Adams, said the group was “supremely grateful to Major General Wins for his service to the institute during some very difficult times.” For the past several years, even before General Wins’s contract was approaching renewal, an alumni group known as Spirit of V.M.I. had campaigned to end what it called a “woke” assault on the college, located in Lexington, Va. State Senator Jennifer Carroll Foy, a Black V.M.I. alumna, said in an interview that Mr. Adams, an attorney and former naval officer, told her the board no longer wanted a Black superintendent. A spokesman for Mr. Adams, another V.M.I. alumnus who also voted not to extend General Wins’s contract, said Mr. Adams denies ever saying that. Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, a Republican, has appointed 13 of the board’s 17 members since taking office in 2022, but Democratic state senators recently rejected two of the governor’s appointees. (One board member did not vote on Friday.) Ms. Carroll Foy said the removal of General Wins, who served in the U.S. Army for 34 years, was particularly troubling given the Trump administration’s recent ouster of Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. General Brown is also Black. Virginia’s former governor, Ralph Northam, a Democrat and alumnus of the school who served in the Army, also criticized the move. “Our country has purged too many patriotic military leaders this week, and now Virginia has done it too,” he said in an emailed statement. General Wins, whose contract is set to expire on June 30, could not immediately be reached for comment.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had a tense showdown in the Oval Office on Friday—the likes of which many world leaders were able to watch unfold, thanks to the media being present with their cameras rolling. The pair, joined by U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance, interrupted each other repeatedly during a meeting initially intended to be about a key U.S.-Ukraine minerals agreement. “You don’t have the cards right now,” Trump told Zelensky in the exchange, referencing Ukraine’s ongoing war with Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Zelensky responded with a point of his own: “We’re not playing cards.” Trump made various other remarks about Zelensky and Ukraine’s current position, and the involvement the Biden Administration had in supplying support and funds to Ukraine after it was invaded by Russia. Zelensky remained steadfast on his point that a cease-fire agreement between Ukraine and Russia wouldn't be sufficient without security guarantees from the U.S., and that Putin cannot be trusted. “You’re gambling with [the] lives of millions of people, you’re gambling with World War III and what you’re doing is very disrespectful to this country,” Trump told Zelensky. Trump followed that up by saying: “Your men are brave, but they had our military. If you didn’t have our military equipment, this war would have been over in two weeks.” Shortly after the exchange, Trump canceled a planned press conference with Zelensky and cut off negotiations. He took to his own social media platform, Truth Social, where he wrote that Zelensky “is not ready for Peace if America is involved.” “He disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office. He can come back when he is ready for Peace,” Trump said. Following the Oval Office confrontation, many world leaders have spoken out, remarking upon what happened. Many have reified their support for Ukraine in its defense against Russia’s invasion. A few have supported Trump. Zelensky took to posting on X (formerly Twitter) to thank the world leaders who have come to his defense on the platform. The Ukrainian leader travelled to London and met with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, as planned, on Saturday. Zelensky remarked on social media that they'd had a "meaningful and warm meeting." "During our talks, we discussed the challenges facing Ukraine and all of Europe, coordination with partners, concrete steps to strengthen Ukraine’s position, and ending the war with a just peace, along with robust security guarantees," Zelensky said. Later on Saturday, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves and Ukraine's Finance Minister Sergii Marchenko signed the U.K.-Ukraine Bilateral agreement. The U.K. reinforced its support for Ukraine with a £2.26 billion ($2.84 billion) loan to bolster Ukrainian defence capabilities.

It was evening in Kyiv when the news from the White House arrived. My dinner mate, a colonel in the Ukrainian armed forces, got a call on his phone while raising a toast, and I could hear a muffled voice urging him to watch the footage from the Oval Office. We pulled it up on the colonel’s phone and sat there, slack jawed, the fat coagulating on our plates, as my President and his President went at each other like a pair of feuding in-laws. A long moment passed before my companion rendered his verdict. Molodets, he said of President Volodymyr Zelensky. “Well done.” I had rarely heard the officer praise his commander-in-chief. But he seemed genuinely impressed. “He pushed back," he said of Zelensky. "You have to respect that.” Then he paused again, looking down at the screen, and added: “But now we’re f---ed.” It was evening in Kyiv when the news from the White House arrived. My dinner mate, a colonel in the Ukrainian armed forces, got a call on his phone while raising a toast, and I could hear a muffled voice urging him to watch the footage from the Oval Office. We pulled it up on the colonel’s phone and sat there, slack jawed, the fat coagulating on our plates, as my President and his President went at each other like a pair of feuding in-laws. A long moment passed before my companion rendered his verdict. Molodets, he said of President Volodymyr Zelensky. “Well done.” I had rarely heard the officer praise his commander-in-chief. But he seemed genuinely impressed. “He pushed back," he said of Zelensky. "You have to respect that.” Then he paused again, looking down at the screen, and added: “But now we’re f---ed.” But those closest to Zelensky knew the outburst had plenty of precedents—except, in the past, they played out behind closed doors. President Joe Biden had similar clashes with Zelensky early in the war. In the summer of 2022, the U.S. agreed to provide a massive package of military aid to Ukraine, including an advanced missile system that Biden withheld for months out of fear of drawing the U.S. deeper into the war. During a phone call to talk about the aid package, which was worth about a billion dollars, Zelensky took barely a minute to thank Biden before he began asking for more assistance. Biden lost his temper in response, chastising the Ukrainian leader for seeming ungrateful. About a year later, Zelensky received a similar dressing down from Ben Wallace, who was then the British Defense Minister. “People want to see gratitude,” Wallace said at a NATO summit in July 2023. “We’re not Amazon.” The U.K. had delivered so many de-mining vehicles to the Ukrainians, Wallace added, “that I think there’s none left.” After the spat, Wallace received so much blowback for his remarks that he issued an apology to Zelensky. On Friday night, it was Zelensky who faced pressure to apologize to Trump during an interview with Fox News, and he declined to offer one. “No. I respect [the] President, and I respect American people,” he said calmly. “I think we have to be very open and very honest, and I’m not sure that we did something bad.” To many Ukrainians, Zelensky was right. In the Oval Office and on Fox News, he spoke with all the conviction and self-respect that his citizens have come to expect from their leader. He has long internalized their collective pain and anger at the Russian invasion, and he has made an art of channeling those emotions as he seeks to win the support of the world. Maybe this time he chose the wrong setting to speak so freely with such a crucial ally. But the main response among my friends in Kyiv was pride in having a leader with such a backbone. “Every time he goes abroad, he carries with him what we feel here,” one of them told me on Friday night. “That’s part of his job. To express those feelings to the world.”

Considering a new workout routine? A new yoga practice? Determined to use your recumbent bike for something other than hanging your clothes? Whatever the case, it never hurts to reconsider whether your fitness program is best suited for you, given the many options all claiming to being your surest route to better health. To make things easier, we tapped eight personal trainers for their best bits of wisdom on how to level up your workout. Focus on mobility first One piece of fitness-related advice that has changed the life of Ackeem Emmons, coach at Tonal, an interactive home gym system, is the power of mobility. For years, the New York City-based personal trainer focused solely on strength and speed—his only metrics of success. “It was not until I matured, started training others, and kept getting injured that I learned to appreciate mobility,” he says. “When I started to incorporate mobility, stretching, and improving my flexibility, I saw major improvements in how I felt, coached, and looked.” These days, Emmons’ dynamic pre- and post-workout routine includes moves like the “World’s Greatest Stretch,” squat to stand, and scorpion stretch, which have boosted his well-being and fitness. “The obstacle to our strength goals,” he says, “[is] the lack of mobility and body awareness.” Restoring a city’s charm Branded Content Restoring a city’s charm By China Daily Ignore your fitness tracker This tip comes from Laura Thomas, a holistic movement coach in Cleveland. “Sometimes, we must not listen to our fitness trackers and do what feels good right now,” she says. “Even if your Fitbit barks at you to do more cardio, you know your body better than anyone else.” Read More: Why You Should Change Your Exercise Routine—and How to Do It Check in with yourself before a workout about your stress levels, how you slept, and what you ate that day. “Should you push through a challenging workout when you feel fatigued? Most likely not,” Thomas says. Instead, consider if mobility work or gentle yoga will fill your cup that day. Stay open-minded to new research and workout approaches Kaleigh Ray, an exercise physiologist and staff writer for Treadmill Review Guru in St. George, Utah, warns clients not to get trapped in fitness fads and to be open to new research. For instance, she was “really into” minimalist and barefoot shoes for a long time, but upon reading research on running-shoe construction, she came to believe her preconceptions were false. “I still think barefoot shoes and minimalist shoes are great, but I’m also open to the benefits of maximalist shoes,” she says. To that point, Ray strongly recommends that you incorporate multiple training techniques into your routine. “Believing one method is beneficial doesn’t mean you have to exclude all others forever. What serves you at one point in your fitness journey may not be what you need later,” she says. “Often, clinging to one fitness principle forces you to ignore an entire body of research.” Start with just five minutes “When the weather is awful, my schedule feels packed, or my motivation is low, my go-to advice is: commit to just five minutes of movement,” says Sarah Pelc Graca, owner and head coach at Strong with Sarah Weight Loss Coaching in Novi, Mich. “Whether it’s a quick warm-up stretching session, a walk around the house, or five minutes of lifting weights, the key is starting small. “ More often than not, she finds five minutes turn into 15 minutes, 20 minutes, or even a full workout. Read More: Does Face Yoga Really Work? Pelc Graca learned this lesson a few years ago as a new mom juggling her business and caring for her newborn, when the idea of squeezing in a workout felt impossible. “I quickly realized the hardest part was getting started,” she says. “Once I began moving, I wanted to keep going because it felt so good.” She still uses this mindset, whether it’s a quick few minutes of jumping rope or squeezing in body-weight squats while waiting for her coffee to brew. Remember: There is no finish line when it comes to your health and fitness This motto comes courtesy of personal trainer Tami Smith, owner of Fit Healthy Macros in St. Augustine, Fla. “Your journey is ongoing: there's no rush, no end date, just a continued commitment to show up in the best way you can daily,” Smith says. Too often, she adds, we get caught up in wanting to achieve a certain goal, like losing an amount of weight by a specific date. . Rather, though, embrace the idea that these efforts will continue for the rest of your life, even though there will be ebbs and flows. This, Smith says, “leads to better adherence, less stress, and improved results.” Befriend heavy weights This advice applies especially to women, who often shy away from greater weight loads at the gym or home, says Michelle Porter, a personal trainer and yoga instructor in Hoboken, N.J. “Lift heavy, and don’t stress about your heart rate or calorie burn while strength training,” she says. “Focus on form, challenge your muscles, and the results will come.” Read More: How to Stop Checking Your Phone Every 10 Seconds Porter first became acquainted with this “lift heavy” principle in 2011 at a CrossFit class. “As a personal trainer at the time, barbell strength training and Olympic-style lifting were entirely new to me,” she says. “Like many women, I worried that lifting heavy weights would make me ‘bulky.’ But it didn’t — it helped me lean out and define my muscles.” Stop comparing yourself Bill Camarda, a personal trainer and owner of Limitless Fitness in Epping, N.H., never forgets the humbling moment of being told that somewhere in the world, there's always going to be someone doing better than he is in the gym. “There's always someone lifting more weight. There's always going to be someone in better shape. There's always someone who can run faster, jump higher, do more push-ups,” he says. “When someone pointed this out to me, it helped me to realize that the only person I needed to compare myself to was myself.” Recognizing this not only helped Camarda check his ego at the gym door, but also do what was best for his body rather than trying to keep up with others. Pick the right music Or podcast, or audiobook. Emily Abbate, a personal trainer in New York City and host of the wellness podcast Hurdle, is all about finding “the right soundtrack for your sweat,” as she puts it. Research shows that upbeat music or other audio fare can help you work both harder and for longer. “So when your motivation may be lacking, seek out something sweet for your headphones that inspires you to get up and out,” she says. “You may be surprised at what happens next.

At Lakenheath High School, a school for children of U.S. military members in Britain, a club for gay students and their allies can no longer meet. A Women in STEM group has also been placed on hold. At Ramstein High School in Germany, groups for students of Hispanic and Asian heritage as well as the Pride and Ally club were among those put on pause. And worldwide, in schools attended by military families, books are under review in response to Trump administration orders cracking down on gender identity and diversity, equity and inclusion. So far, few U.S. school districts have made sweeping changes in response to Trump administration orders. Most K-12 schools operate largely under local and state control, with limited interference from the federal government. But a school system run by the Defense Department, which serves about 67,000 students in preschool through high school on military bases around the world, is an exception. As part of the federal government, Defense Department schools have hurried to respond. In addition to pauses on some affinity clubs related to gender and race and reviews of certain books, Pride decorations have been taken down and Black History Month assemblies and performances have been canceled, according to interviews with students and parents and a copy of a Defense Department memo.It is a striking change for a school system that has historically been insulated from political fights in education, and whose math and reading scores are routinely among the nation’s best. Defense schools are global, with locations on some military bases in the United States but also in countries like Belgium and Japan. The student body, like the military itself, is racially and socioeconomically diverse, a history that dates back to the school system’s creation, in part, to serve students of military families in the American South when local schools remained segregated. “Diversity is, like, the core principle of our schools,” said Kadyn, 16, a junior at Lakenheath High School, northeast of Cambridge, who asked to use only his first name because he is the child of a federal employee. At his school, he said, “All Are Welcome” signs, which included a rainbow flag and a Black Lives Matter symbol, had been taken down from classrooms. He added that some flags of foreign countries had also been removed. “I feel like we are losing the essence of what makes our schools thrive,” he said. Will Griffin, a spokesman for Defense Department schools, said that the school system was reviewing its policies to comply with orders from President Trump and his secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, who called for an end to cultural awareness months, such as those for Black history or women’s history, in his first weeks on the job.Students have the right to participate in student-led groups, Mr. Griffin said. But student clubs also need a teacher to supervise meetings, and teachers in Defense schools are federal employees subject to the new orders. It is possible that student affinity groups will be able to start again with employees supervising in an unpaid capacity. “We will continue to remain focused on providing a rigorous, high-quality educational experience for military-connected students to prepare them for success in college, careers and life,” he said. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT In a Feb. 5 memo, Defense officials instructed schools not to use certain materials, including the book “Becoming Nicole,” about the journey of a transgender girl and her family, which was listed as an independent reading novel in sixth through 12th grade. Also listed was a biography of Albert Cashier, a Union Army soldier in the Civil War who was born female but fought and lived as a man, which had been included in some elementary school material. Material in Advanced Placement Psychology courses concerning gender identity and sexuality was also off limits. But the orders have also resulted in confusion and uncertainty, as principals and teachers try to interpret guidance and librarians review books in more than 100 schools around the world.The actress Julianne Moore made headlines when she said that her book “Freckleface Strawberry,” about a 7-year-old girl who dislikes her freckles but learns to embrace her differences, had been pulled for review. “I can’t help but wonder what is so controversial about this picture book,” Ms. Moore, who attended a Defense high school in Frankfurt, wrote on Instagram. But as of this week, “Freckleface Strawberry” is available for checkout, Mr. Griffin said. He said most books under review were not part of the official curriculum but were extra books available in classrooms or libraries. “Our principal was saying she was not going to request that the library remove books about Rosa Parks or Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” said Allie Allen, the mother of three children who attend Defense schools in Stuttgart, Germany. But a book mentioning Black History Month might be removed, she said. “There is not a lot of exact guidance,” she said. Students are also waiting in limbo, said Sophia Carey, 16, a junior at a Defense high school in Germany. She had wanted to create a girls club at her high school, which would have held an assembly for Women’s History Month, brought in female speakers who work in the military and science and included a community project to offer feminine products in women’s bathrooms at school and in the community. An obstacle for her club and others, she said, had been finding a teacher who could supervise. “Everything is so uncertain,” she said.

On Valentine’s Day, Lewis Hamilton enters a sprawling studio space in northwest London and intently stares at the magnificent creature standing off in the distance. “Sh-t,” says Hamilton to no one in particular. “I’m nervous.” Soon enough, however, the seven-time Formula One world champion overcomes his anxiety and is standing face-to-face with a shiny black stallion named Aroma. He pets his nose, massages his neck, generally spreads his hands all over Aroma’s thick coat. He is doing his allergies, the source of his initial fear, no favors. But Hamilton, a literal knight, is enamored, peppering the horse master with questions. Where’s Aroma from? (Portugal.) Can he sleep lying down? (Yes.) How much does he weigh? (About 1,300 lb. Only a few hundred less than Hamilton’s race car.) He’s throwing health caution to the wind in order to commemorate his much ballyhooed move from Mercedes, where he won six of his seven F1 driver titles, to the venerated Scuderia Ferrari HP race team: a photo of himself positioned in front of an actual black horse standing on his hind legs, mimicking the Italian automaker’s famous logo. Like Hamilton, Aroma—who is retired but still does the occasional photo shoot—has an impressive resume, including appearances in Robin Hood and Maleficent, ads for Hermès and Burberry, and a Dua Lipa video; he is joined by Theo, a stunt horse you might recognize from Bridgerton, among other things. “This is going to be such an iconic picture,” says Hamilton while trying on outfits for the shoot. “Super timeless.” That depends, of course, on what comes after. At 40, Hamilton is aiming to not only win a record eighth F1 driver title—cementing his status as the greatest F1 driver to ever live and ending the longest-ever championship drought for the most storied race team on the planet—but also fulfill a lifelong dream. His move to Ferrari, announced before the 2024 season, was shocking worldwide front-page news: he had suited up for Mercedes for more than a decade, helped build a more diverse workforce there, and hoped to someday acquire an ownership stake in the team. It seemed he would ride into the sunset with the Silver Arrows. Hamilton had other ideas. “You can’t stand still for too long,” Hamilton tells TIME, in his first in-depth interview about his decision to leave Mercedes for Ferrari. “I needed to throw myself into something uncomfortable again. Honestly, I thought all my firsts were done. Your first car, your first crash, your first date, first day of school. The excitement I got by the idea of, ‘This is my first time in the red suit, the first time in the Ferrari.’ Wow. Honestly, I’ve never been so excited.” During the 2024 F1 season, Hamilton, out of respect for Mercedes—with whom he was still under contract and racing—didn’t talk much about the switch. The situation was awkward and unprecedented. (Picture LeBron James suiting up for the Los Angeles Lakers knowing he’d be playing the following year for a rival, like the Boston Celtics. Exactly. It would never happen.) All sides appear to have handled it as professionally as possible: Hamilton ended a 945-day losing streak by winning his hometown race, at Silverstone in Britain, in July before winning again in Belgium three weeks later. Meanwhile Carlos Sainz, the Ferrari driver whom Hamilton is replacing this year, helped Scuderia finish second in the constructor, or team, standings, just a few points behind 2024 champion McLaren. Hamilton’s road to the title record won’t be easy. Some critics have questioned Ferrari’s strategy of signing an aging driver, whose best days could very well be in the rearview. They’ve wondered whether Ferrari’s more interested in marketing than winning—Hamilton is still F1’s most popular driver, by a mile, as well as an internationally known cultural figure with a hand in fashion, film, and business. (He’s co-chairing the Met Gala in May alongside Colman Domingo, Pharrell Williams, A$AP Rocky, and Anna Wintour; LeBron James is honorary chair.) Plus, a slew of younger drivers like reigning four-time champion Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, 27; McLaren’s Lando Norris, 25; and Hamilton’s new Ferrari teammate, Charles LeClerc, 27, could keep him off the top of the podium. “The old man is a state of mind,” says Hamilton. “Of course your body ages. But I’m never going to be an old man.” The 2025 F1 campaign, which kicks off in Australia on March 16, comes laced with intrigue. Hamilton sits at the epicenter. Ferrari is religion in Italy; when the team wins an F1 race, the bells of the Church of St. Blaise in Maranello, the small city near Bologna that houses Ferrari headquarters, ring in celebration. So Hamilton’s quest to end Ferrari’s agony, while breaking the individual title record set by Michael Schumacher—who won five straight titles with Ferrari from 2000 to 2004—will be appointment theater. Meanwhile, Hamilton is co-producing, along with Jerry Bruckheimer and others, an F1 movie, aptly called F1, that is almost literally a Brad Pitt vehicle. The film, which comes out in June, plus a competitive race for the championship, could deliver a jolt to the sport’s popularity, especially in the U.S., where F1 has boomed but flattened out a bit, given Verstappen’s predictable dominance. A Hamilton championship in red, in the twilight of his racing life, would be nothing less than one of the greatest mic-drop moments in sports history. “I don’t know if I can find an adjective to describe that,” says American racing legend Mario Andretti, the 1978 F1 champion who raced for Ferrari in the early ’70s. “Nothing is missing in his career. But oh man, how better can you describe your career after that? Oh my God, he’d be the king of all kings.” Two weeks before the stallion photo shoot, Hamilton is striking golf balls into a simulator at an indoor club on the banks of the Thames. (He has a pronounced slice.) He doesn’t golf much these days, but Hamilton being Hamilton—a man who has taken full advantage of this sport’s jet-setting ways to become one of the world’s most prominent collectors of influential people—he last played a round with actor Tom Holland, a.k.a. Spider-Man. His other golf partners have included Samuel L. Jackson and Kelly Slater, the surfing GOAT. He was once supposed to play with another GOAT, Michael Jordan, but when Hamilton got to the course, he says, Jordan “didn’t end up being there.” As we’re taking swings, I ask Hamilton if he’s checked out TGL, the indoor golf competition founded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy that just launched its first season in the U.S. He hasn’t. I explain some of the particulars—it’s a team league, ESPN is showing it on weeknights—before it sounds familiar. But Hamilton is involved with so many projects—movies, art, fashion lines, the Denver Broncos, a pet-food company, a plant-based burger chain with Leonardo DiCaprio—that he can’t quite remember whether he poured some money into this new outfit. “I might have,” he says, with a laugh. (He did.) Hamilton takes a break from golf, reclines on a couch, and orders a latte before sharing the story of how he arrived at this moment. It began a long time ago, when he was a kid growing up in public housing north of London. His first Ferrari memories have stuck with him. He would drive Schumacher’s car in racing video games. The Ferrari replica featured in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off—the 1961 250 GT California Spyder—is still, to this day, Hamilton’s favorite. “That’s the ultimate retirement car,” he says. “I can just see myself with Roscoe, him with a scarf and goggles in the seat next to me, driving down the PCH.” (Roscoe, Hamilton’s pet bulldog—who, like his owner, is vegan—has an Instagram account with 1.1 million followers.) McLaren signed Hamilton to a driver’s deal in 1998, when he was 13. In 2006, Hamilton won the championship in what is now known as Formula Two. “I did have the bit of red on my helmet,” he says. During that F2 season, and the one prior in F3, Hamilton raced for team principal Frédéric Vasseur, whose management style and ability to recruit top engineering talent to his lower-level operation impressed the young driver. Hamilton figured Vasseur would be a F1 leader one day. Hamilton won his first F1 championship in 2008, his second season with McLaren. He competed there for four more seasons before jumping, in 2013, to Mercedes, a middling team that Hamilton lifted to championship heights. Through it all, Hamilton maintained cordial relations with Ferrari leadership. He’d walk past the Ferrari garage at races, say “ciao” to the mechanics, and hear them say “vieni Ferrari” (come to Ferrari). Around 2018, Hamilton met with Ferrari chairman John Elkann. Both sides expressed a desire to see Hamilton in red. But by the end of the 2020 season, Hamilton had four straight championships with Mercedes. He had no reason to jump ship. “If I’m really honest, I had accepted the fact that I’m probably not going to drive for Ferrari,” says Hamilton. “I was OK with that.” After the 2021 season, Hamilton nearly walked away from racing. He—and millions of his fans—felt his record eighth driver title was stolen from him, when during the final race of the year, in Abu Dhabi, an official’s controversial decision allowed Verstappen to overtake Hamilton in the last lap and clinch his first title. Hamilton ultimately refused to quit without a fight, but he failed to win a single race as Verstappen cruised to another pair of championships. Hamilton signed a two-year extension with Mercedes in the summer of 2023, but the deal allowed him an option to leave after one year. Meanwhile, true to Hamilton’s prediction, his de facto coach in the minors, Vasseur, took over an F1 team in 2016. Before the 2023 season, he was hired for a new team-principal gig—at Ferrari. Vasseur got wind of the loophole in Hamilton’s new deal—“He told me at one stage,” says Vasseur. “Good news”—and aimed to sign an agreement with Hamilton before the 2024 season. He wanted his drivers under contract last year, LeClerc and Sainz, to be free of whispers regarding their status. So while Hamilton was at his home in Colorado in December 2023, he got a call from Vasseur asking him to join Ferrari starting in 2025. “I remember getting off the phone and, like, almost shaking,” says Hamilton, who’s now almost shaking while recalling the moment. “I was like, Oh God!” He told a friend who was with him about the call; they both sat in silence on a bathroom floor in shock. “I was like, Holy sh-t,” says Hamilton. “I literally just signed with Mercedes.” Breaking up with a team that felt like family was far from a no-brainer. And he didn’t have much time to decide. “It was a lot to take in, and my emotions were really high,” says Hamilton. “So I honestly had to go for a walk.” He left the house for an hour to decompress. Hamilton then spent a few days meditating. He was leaning toward Ferrari. “My eyes felt really calm and present,” he says. “This is the right thing for me.” When he’d switched from McLaren to Mercedes all those years ago, he solicited too much advice. Here, he confided in just a few family members and trusted friends. “One cannot discount the Ferrari influence on the sport, especially through the eyes of a child,” says Mellody Hobson, co-CEO of Ariel Investments and the former chair of the Starbucks board, who’s very close to Hamilton. During negotiations, after every phone call with Ferrari, he’d jump around like a little kid. “We’re in a time of reimagining the future, reimagining what really dreaming is about,” says Hamilton. “I’m going to Ferrari, man, and that’s the biggest dream.” Not everyone is so thrilled. The day after he informed Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff of his decision was Hamilton’s annual paintball outing with his race-team mechanics. When he arrived, he was too nervous to get out of his car. “These are guys I’ve been with so many years,” says Hamilton. He eventually stood on top of a table to address his decision. His squad appeared understanding and supportive. But they let him have it in paintball. “They lit me up, hard,” says Hamilton. “It was so painful.” At one point, he was hiding behind a barrel shooting at the other team when he was struck from behind. A member of his own squadron had nailed him. “Freaking guy,” says Hamilton. They laughed about it afterward and managed to get through the season. “There is no bad blood,” says Hamilton. “Absolutely not. We won so many championships.” (Mercedes declined to comment for this story.) Andrea Kimi Antonelli, an 18-year-old from Bologna, will take Hamilton’s place in the Mercedes lineup. “They have all the ingredients to win world championships, and they will win more world championships,” says Hamilton of Mercedes. “I have no doubt.” In a book published in November—Inside Mercedes F1: Life in the Fast Lane—Wolff says Hamilton’s move “helps us because it avoids the moment where we need to tell the sport’s most iconic driver that we want to stop ... We’re in a sport where cognitive sharpness is extremely important, and I believe everyone has a shelf life.” The comments caused a stir, and Wolff clarified that Hamilton is still “very sharp.” Hamilton insists Wolff’s remark doesn’t bother him. He points to athletes like Tom Brady and LeBron James who’ve achieved success into their 40s. “Don’t ever compare me to anybody else,” says Hamilton. “I’m the first and only Black driver that’s ever been in this sport. I’m built different. I’ve been through a lot. I’ve had my own journey. You can’t compare me to another 40-year-old, past or present, Formula One driver in history. Because they are nothing like me. I’m hungry, driven, don’t have a wife and kids. I’m focused on one thing, and that’s winning. That’s my No. 1 priority.” He also dismisses criticism from the broader racing community. Former F1 team owner Eddie Jordan said in a December podcast that it was “absolutely suicidal” for Ferrari to drop Sainz from its roster, given the strong working relationship between him and LeClerc. (Sainz will now race for Williams.) “I’ve always welcomed the negativity,” says Hamilton. “I never, ever reply to any of the older, ultimately, white men who have commented on my career and what they think I should be doing. How you show up, how you present yourself, how you perform slowly dispels that.” Others, including former Ferrari driver Jacky Ickx, have suggested that Ferrari has signed Hamilton primarily for his commercial value. “I think it’s really unfair to Lewis, some of the comments saying, ‘This is a marketing operation,’” says Elkann, the Ferrari chairman. “Truth said, Lewis doesn’t need that. Ferrari doesn’t need that. What we need to do is win championships and do great things on the track. If that happens, what we can do outside of the track, in some ways, takes care of itself. There’s unlimited possibilities.” The pressure, internal and external, Hamilton faces is immense. No F1 team owns more constructor titles than Ferrari, but they last won in 2008. Ferrari also owns the driver record, with 15, but the last Ferrari driver to win an individual crown was Kimi Raikkonen, in 2007. Ferrari fans are so passionate that they go by their own name, the tifosi. At the Ferrari museum, not far from the team’s 9.3 million-sq.-ft. campus in Maranello, Italy, pilgrims often start crying, or propose marriage, in the Hall of Victories, which showcases the team’s championship cars and more than 100 trophies. One night in early February, at the Ristorante Montana, which displays a trove of Ferrari memorabilia in its dining room, Andrea Puttini, a seller of building materials from Naples, is outside enjoying a smoke. “In Italy, we say it’s not important if you speak bad or speak good about something,” says Puttini. “The importance is that you are talking about this. And Hamilton, just for being here, he lets us talk all over the world about Ferrari.” Hamilton connected with as many of his new co-workers as possible during his first visit to Maranello in January, shaking hands until his arm was pulsating. “The amount of ciaos and grazies and piaceres I was saying, aye aye aye,” he says. After his first test run, he went out to greet the supporters lining a bridge that overlooks Ferrari’s private racetrack. A few weeks later, a fan decked out in a red Ferrari shirt and cowboy hat cut down a tree to allow the tifosi a better look at a Hamilton practice. Hamilton first spotted himself in a Ferrari suit while in, of all places, the loo; he was washing his hands and looked up into the mirror. “I’m in red, I’m like, Whoa!” he says. He paused for a moment to take in the reflection. He liked what he saw. “The suit looked so good on me,” says Hamilton, laughing. “I’m like, Damn.” When seated in a Ferrari race car for the first time, he closed his eyes when the engine started and smiled. “The vibrations are different,” he says. He let them course through his body. “You just wonder how that feels,” Hamilton says. Now he knows. “It’s a really, really special moment.” Still, Hamilton is well aware that Italian sports fans have not always been so welcoming of Black athletes like himself. He competed in karting races there in his younger days, starting at around 12, and experienced racist abuse, just as he had in England. He prefers not to go into details. “I don’t want to dwell,” he says. But he’s heard the racist chants directed at Black soccer players in particular. “I’m not going to lie, it definitely crossed my mind when I was thinking about my decision,” he says. “Like in so many things, it’s often such a small group of people that set that trend for many. I don’t think that it’s going to be a problem.” Ferrari’s diversity—or lack thereof—was Hamilton’s more pressing concern. In the wake of George Floyd’s 2020 murder, as part of the worldwide sports protest movement against racial injustice, Hamilton started the Hamilton Commission to offer recommendations for more Black representation in U.K. motorsports. Mercedes launched its own diversity initiative in the months that followed and began hiring personnel from underrepresented groups, including Black engineers. “I did think, Oh my God, I’ve finally got a more diverse working environment that we’ve built over time,” says Hamilton. “And now I’m going back to the beginning of my time with Mercedes, where it wasn’t diverse.” Along with every other F1 team, Ferrari signed a Diversity and Inclusion charter in November. While the new Trump Administration has made a point of attacking diversity—the President has signed a series of executive orders targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs—Hamilton, for one, remains locked in. “I’m not going to change what he does, or the government does. All I can do is try to make sure that in my space, in my environment, I’m trying to elevate people,” he says. “There’s going to be forces along the way that don’t want that, for whatever reason I can’t fathom. That doesn’t stop me. It is a fight that we’ll just keep fighting.” Hamilton is confident that Ferrari is committed to inclusion. Vasseur, Hamilton’s new boss, agrees that it’s important, though as he fiddles with a binder clip in an office at Ferrari headquarters, where trade secrets are so closely guarded visitors must place stickers over their mobile-phone cameras (red ones, of course), he suggests that it may not be his top goal. “It’s not politically correct, but first is performance,” he says. “I’m keen to go into the direction of diversity and so on. We are doing our best effort. We are trying to push in this direction, but I want to build up the best team.” I show Vasseur, who hails from France, a photo I found online: it’s him and Hamilton some 20 years ago, celebrating a win. He shows me some photos on his own phone, of his children, who are now grown, with Hamilton. He’s enjoying the walk down memory lane. But, he says, “We can’t be sentimental.” Switching teams is difficult for any driver. The steering wheel, the cockpit, the terminology, they’re all different. “I’m literally learning a completely new book,” says Hamilton. F1 regulations allow limited practice time in the new car. He’s made strides in his Italian, thanks to lessons, but he’s by no means fluent. It took Hamilton more than four months to win a race in his first season with Mercedes. What gives Vasseur confidence that Hamilton will accelerate that learning curve? “I could reply like a book and give you something that you want to write,” Vasseur replies. “But at the end of the day, at this part of the season, the feeling, the first time, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, will be nothing compared to race one in Australia. You will forget about everything that happened before. It’s all about pure performance.” While Hamilton swears his devotion to Ferrari, his schedule has remained plenty full. A Fashion Week and red-carpet regular, he has his own production company, a Dior line, and other enterprises. He says he’s in the preliminary stages of developing scripts for a comedy—it doesn’t involve racing—and a film pertaining to pets. (That’s all he’ll offer.) But the biggest thing on the horizon, besides of course the 24 Grand Prix races in the season, is the upcoming F1 movie. Tom Cruise had first connected Hamilton with director Joseph Kosinski because Hamilton was interested in an acting role in Top Gun: Maverick. Kosinski was ready to bring him on board, but Hamilton was still fighting for championships with Mercedes and couldn’t afford the time commitment. Cruise screened the movie, which grossed $1.5 billion worldwide upon its 2022 release, for Hamilton in London. “I was crying a bit inside,” Hamilton says. “Ah, that could have been me!” So when Kosinski called Hamilton about his F1 project, Hamilton jumped at the chance to be a producer. Early in the process, he took Pitt, who plays a veteran F1 driver in the film, for a drive around a track near Los Angeles. “He gave Brad the scare of a lifetime in a lap,” says Kosinski. “Brad was clawing at the windows, begging to get out.” Hamilton was also part of the casting process and offered instructive feedback. “The notes are so detailed,” says Bruckheimer. “‘When you’re going into that next turn, you have the car in second gear, it should be in third. I can hear it. I can hear the sound of it.’” He pushed for Hans Zimmer, composer of The Lion King, Gladiator, Dune, and other hits, to score it. His close relationship with F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali, a former Ferrari team principal, helped the filmmakers gain access to F1 tracks and races to shoot scenes. “He opened all those doors for us into that world,” says Kosinski. “We would not have been able to do this without him.” Hamilton is predicting box-office success. “It’s going to blow away anything that’s ever been done in Formula One before,” Hamilton says. The Netflix behind-the-scenes docuseries, Formula 1: Drive to Survive, has been properly credited for expanding F1’s popularity, especially in the U.S. Hamilton believes this movie will compel viewers from all different backgrounds to become fans, or even pursue a career in F1. “Netflix has been huge,” he says. “This is going to be even bigger, on more of a global scale.” While F1 might not count as art-house fare—“I don’t think we set out for it to be, like, an Oscar-winning movie,” says Hamilton—he’s promising a memorable experience. “The goal is to make people feel good, to bring people in, to inspire people,” he says. “We want you to leave the cinema and be like, ‘Wow, that was freaking wicked.’” But even with his creative juices flowing, he’s as energized as ever to drive. In other words, unlike Aroma, whose presence does not seem to have triggered Hamilton’s allergies at all, he has no plans to slow down. “What I can tell you is, retirement is nowhere on my radar,” says Hamilton. “I could be here until I’m 50, who knows.” Hamilton believes that he and LeClerc are the strongest team pairing in the sport and that Verstappen is “absolutely” beatable. “I know exactly where the North Star is,” says Hamilton. “I know where I need to go. I know how to get there. It’s far, and it’s going to be tough to get there, but I know I’ve got all the ingredients, all the people, an amazing team around me. So it’s how much you want it. And I can’t express to you how much I want it.”

President Donald Trump is set to make a highly-anticipated speech at a joint session of Congress. The address to members of Congress will be Trump’s first since he was sworn in as President for the second time on Jan. 20. Presidents typically address a joint session of Congress soon after they take office and use it as an opportunity to go over their agenda. Trump began making moves on his agenda quickly after he was sworn in, signing a number of Executive Orders on his first day in office, including one withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization (WHO) and another that aimed to redefine birthright citizenship (the latter has been blocked by multiple judges). In a Jan. 25 post shared on X, Republican House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson said: “It is my distinct honor and great privilege to invite President Donald Trump to address a Joint Session of Congress on Tuesday, March 4, 2025, to share his America First vision for our future.” Johnson also shared a letter of the invite. Where is the joint session of Congress taking place? Trump will address members of Congress in the Chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. How can I watch Trump's address to the joint session of Congress? You can watch Trump’s address live on C-SPAN. Many radio stations and broadcast networks will also be airing or streaming Trump’s address live, including CBS News and CNN. Trump’s speech is reportedly set to begin at around 9 p.m. ET, but some news networks and outlets will start live coverage and analysis hours earlier.

When Nancy Cantor became president of Hunter College last fall, she asked faculty, students and staff what they wanted from the school. One answer was more attention to Palestinian studies. Faculty members began working on possible approaches. They came up with a plan for two tenure-track faculty positions that would cross several departments and began drafting job descriptions. The Hunter College job listing for Palestinian studies called for scholars who could “take a critical lens” to issues including “settler colonialism, genocide, human rights, apartheid” and other topics. When the listing was posted last weekend, Jewish groups protested the inclusion of words that they said are antisemitic when applied to Israel. Their objections were first reported in The New York Post. By Tuesday, Gov. Kathy Hochul demanded that the college, a part of the City University of New York, take down the listing. “Governor Hochul directed CUNY to immediately remove this posting and conduct a thorough review of the position to ensure that antisemitic theories are not promoted in the classroom,” a spokesperson said in a statement, adding, “Hateful rhetoric of any kind has no place at CUNY or anywhere in New York State.”The college, as part of the CUNY system, depends on state funding. The university’s chancellor and board chair immediately approved Governor Hochul’s directive to remove the listing. “We find this language divisive, polarizing and inappropriate and strongly agree with Governor Hochul’s direction to remove this posting, which we have ensured Hunter College has since done,” Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez and the chairman of the board of trustees, William C. Thompson Jr., said in a statement. Like that, the listing was gone. The jobs remain, awaiting a new listing. “We will be reviewing the posting process and look forward to adding scholars with expertise in this subject matter to our distinguished faculty,” a spokesman for Hunter said. For faculty members working in New York City, where hot-button topics that incite battles elsewhere spark little opposition or government scrutiny, the governor’s swift action came as a shock. “This is an act of censorship and a break from the norms of respecting academic freedom,” said Heba Gowayed, an associate professor of sociology at Hunter and the CUNY Graduate Center. “There’s always a lot of censorship and pushback when people talk about Palestine, but no one expected a Democratic governor of New York to get involved in such an egregious way in something that should be decided by the experts in the field.” She pointed out that terms like “settler colonialism,” “apartheid” and “genocide” appear in many academic fields — and thus many faculty job listings — without objection. Jeffrey Lax, a CUNY professor and founder of the group Students, Alumni and Faculty for Equality on Campus, which “advocates for Zionist Jews discriminated against and excluded on college campuses,” objected to such censorship claims, saying the listing promoted dangerous falsehoods. “It accuses Israel, falsely, of being a settler colonial state, of being an apartheid state and of committing genocide,” he said. “These are, to me, the most horrific modern antisemitic false tropes against Jewish people.” Why, he asked, was there no “critical lens” applied to Hamas, terrorism or other aspects of Palestinian life that did not include charges against Israel? Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT When he saw the listing, he distributed it to allies, calling it a “modern-day blood libel,” he said. The governor’s action comes amid a series of campus battles nationwide — mostly led by Republicans — over how issues of race, gender and other topics are taught. “It’s ironic that Democratic leaders loudly and rightly denounce Republican interference with higher ed, but then do it themselves,” said Corinna Mullin, a CUNY adjunct professor and organizer for the group CUNY4palestine. “This is part of a larger pattern of overreach and intervention into campus freedom that has accelerated since Oct. 7.”By Thursday afternoon, when Governor Hochul was scheduled to speak at the City College of New York, also part of the CUNY system, a few dozen demonstrators gathered to protest her canceling the listing, calling it an impingement on critical inquiry. “You can’t expect people to learn any truths from history if you don’t teach true history,” said Michael Loeb, 51, who has worked in the Department of Education and for CUNY for the last 25 years, and who identified himself as the son of a Holocaust survivor. The governor’s speech was canceled for security reasons. CUNY, the nation’s largest urban university system, serves 231,000 students and had a budget for 2025 of $4.3 billion. The system was rocked last May when the president of the City College of New York, which has a long history of campus activism, called in the police to end a protest for Palestinian rights. The governor had previously ordered a report on the CUNY system’s policies and practices for combating antisemitism and other discrimination. Jonathan Lippman, a former chief judge for the state of New York, who led the investigation, said the governor’s actions were “very consistent” with the report’s findings, and with free speech on campus. “Free speech doesn’t extend to violence or illegal acts,” he said. “What we don’t want on campus is an ambience that results in students feeling unsafe, because their education is disrupted.” He added: “First Amendment rights can exist simultaneously with the need to make sure students feel safe.”

In the late afternoon of Feb. 26, members of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)'s expert committee on vaccines received an unusual email. It informed them that their upcoming meeting on March 13 to determine which influenza strains to include in the next flu shot—a meeting that has occurred every year since the late 1960s, even during the pandemic—was canceled. One of the email recipients was Dr. Paul Offit, director of the vaccine education center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine, and a member of the committee since 2017. “It said the meeting was canceled—not postponed—and there was no evidence that it would be rescheduled,” he says. In a statement, the FDA said: "The FDA will make public its recommendations to manufacturers in time for updated vaccines to be available for the 2025-2026 influenza season." “I assume that will be without the advice of the expert independent advisory committee,” Offit says. “I don’t know what this means, who made the decision, or why they made the decision. We were told nothing about it.” The cancellation came one day before new government-issued data was published showing the high effectiveness of the latest flu vaccine at keeping kids and adults out of the hospital. Enterprises eye China’s huge consumer market Branded Content Enterprises eye China’s huge consumer market By China Daily Here's what to know. What the vaccine committee does The Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) is a group of vaccine experts who volunteer their time to review data on the yearly update to the flu vaccine. They do the same for any new vaccines against infectious disease, as well as biological products that companies hope to sell to the public. The committee's primary responsibility is to discuss the safety and effectiveness of these health therapies. To ensure the members are reviewing and analyzing the data objectively, the committee is independent; voting members are not active employees of the government, although government officials join the discussion. Read More: When Is the Best Time to Get a Flu Shot? After reviewing data provided by vaccine makers on studies the companies have conducted on their vaccines, the committee votes on whether it believes a vaccine should be approved or not. In the case of the annual flu shot, they vote on which strains to include in the vaccine, based on recommendations from the World Health Organization and data from flu cases in the southern hemisphere, which goes through its flu season before the northern part of the world. This process led to the emergency use authorizations and ultimately approvals of the COVID-19 vaccines. The VRBPAC members met to discuss data, as they became available, on each of the new COVID-19 vaccines; based on the recommendations from the committee, the FDA then made the final decision on whether vaccines were safe and effective enough for the public. What usually happens after the committee meets Once the FDA commissioner decides to approve a vaccine or update the strains in a vaccine, the work then shifts to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC has a vaccine committee of its own: the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, which meets several times a year to make recommendations for the childhood and adult vaccine schedule. Based on these insights, CDC then recommends certain vaccines to the public and outlines how frequently and how many doses should be provided. Doctors rely almost exclusively on the data from both the FDA and the CDC when discussing and administering vaccines to their patients. Signs of trouble for vaccines Soon after Robert F. Kennedy Jr., became head of the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees both the FDA and the CDC, the CDC announced that its vaccine committee meeting scheduled for Feb. 26 to Feb. 28 was postponed. Kennedy has been a long-time skeptic of vaccines; he continues to question their safety and highlights what he describes as conflicts of interest in the vaccine review and approval process. Read More: What to Know About the Measles Vaccine Not having a discussion and incorporating advice from independent experts “is worrisome,” says Offit, who has also served on ACIP. “We are getting the sense that expertise isn’t really valued.” Without the work of both the FDA and CDC committees, the message is that “doctors and parents should figure it out for themselves,” he says. “But there are things discussed at these meetings that most physicians in private practice aren’t going to intuit on their own. That’s why they look to the advisory committees to help give them advice and provide that information.” Committee members don't always agree. But “it’s important to have dissenting votes and have a vigorous discussion to make sure the science behind public policy is well-tuned," Offit says. "This is an independent group. It is independent of the pharmaceutical industry, and independent of government.” Without its advice, it means the government would be making important decisions affecting the public’s health on its own. New research on the importance of flu vaccines The meeting cancellation came one day before the CDC issued its weekly MMWR report, a scientific update on the latest public-health news. In the Feb. 27 edition, CDC scientists published new data on the benefits of flu shots in protecting both children and adults from serious complications. The latest data on the most recent flu season from 2024 to 2025 show that children and teens who were vaccinated were up to 78% less likely to be hospitalized for flu than those who weren’t, and adults who got their flu shot were up to 55% less likely to get hospitalized. The report concludes by reiterating the agency’s recommendation that people who are eligible should get a flu shot every year.