Spectator Life

After speculating that President Biden’s medical team must have been aware of his prostate cancer at the time of his last physical examination in 2024, we are now learning from his spokesperson that he has not had a blood test for the prostate specific antigen or PSA since 2014. Let’s recall that year. It’s the summer of 2014. The West Wing is buzzing. Crises in Eastern Europe, unrest in the Middle East, and deep concern for a resurgent threat overseas. Joe Biden, then Vice President of the United States, is flying between continents, doing shuttle diplomacy, leading panels, briefing NATO.And quietly, behind the scenes, his medical chart records a final PSA test. A routine prostate-specific antigen screening. It would be his last.Why?The question isn’t rhetorical. It’s clinical.

The announcement of former president Joe Biden’s diagnosis for advanced prostate cancer is of course a sad event, as it would be with any president’s cancer diagnosis. For the human side, the prayers and sympathies of the nation should be with him and his family. But coming as it does after years of hiding the true nature of Biden’s health – including repeated lies told by his staff, family and those closest to him to the American people – it should lead to even more questions about the truth of his condition, and what we were not told as voters who deserve to trust our top institutions to be honest to us.

How does metastatic prostate cancer “suddenly” appear in someone like Joe Biden? It doesn’t appear overnight, it festers. In rare but dangerous cases, prostate cancer bypasses the usual slow growth and strikes fast, especially in older men. If he wasn’t screened regularly, or had an aggressive subtype that evaded PSA detection, it could have advanced under the radar. But how can we imagine that a President was not screened properly? Prostate cancer is the easiest cancer to diagnose. The PSA blood test shows the rate of cancer cell growth. Even with the most aggressive form, it is a 5-7 year journey without treatment before it becomes metastatic. Meaning, it would be malpractice for this patient to show up and be first diagnosed with metastatic disease in May 2025.

In Bentonville, Arkansas, far from the Beltway bubble, Ivanka Trump is talking about her latest venture. Her topic isn’t politics but produce – specifically, supply chain inefficiencies and supporting American farmers. “We launched Planet Harvest to reimagine how American produce moves,” she says, with her signature polished delivery. Gone are the West Wing offices and policy portfolios. Now it’s all about “reducing food waste, expanding access” and other wholesome buzzwords that perfectly capture the current moment in American food politics. This agricultural pivot isn’t just convenient timing, as Ivanka jumps on the MAHA bandwagon. It’s a masterclass in political repositioning.

Are contemporary faculty members at risk from false accusations made by supporters of Governor DeSantis? Or more generally President Trump? Has a crackdown begun that instills fear into the hearts of classroom teachers? Is there an epidemic of self-censorship that has gripped the campus?  Anna Peterson, professor of religion at the University of Florida, believes all this is true.  She presented her testimony in a New York Times guest essay last Sunday, “Did One of My Students Hate Me Enough to Lie to Get Me in Trouble?” I am among those naturally disposed to doubt pretty much everything in the Times that has a political slant – and few of its articles don’t. Nonetheless, I’m an assiduous reader of the newspaper.

Casey Means, President Trump’s nominee to become the next Surgeon General of the United States, describes herself on her stylish website as a “medical doctor, writer, tech entrepreneur, and aspiring regenerative gardener who lives in a state of awe for the miracle of existence and consciousness.” Big points to you if you had that on your Second Trump Era Bingo card, but it really shouldn’t be a surprise if you were paying attention during the campaign. Dr. Means is a close friend and ally of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and gave a series of extraordinary interviews during the campaign, most notably with Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson, where she talked about the “chronic disease epidemic” in America, particularly among children.

Gwyneth Paltrow may be set to pass her celebrity-everyone-loves-to-hate crown to another out-of-touch elitist. The Goop founder and queen of outrageous “wellness” hacks has announced – gasp! – that she’s begun eating like the rest of us. Paltrow has followed a Paleo diet for years – meaning she cut out virtually all culinary joy for the sake of eating like a cavewoman, though I assume she did more gathering than hunting. Yet on her Goop podcast last week, Paltrow announced, “I’m a little sick of it if I’m honest. I’m getting back into eating some sourdough bread and some cheese. There, I said it. A little pasta. After being strict with it for so long.” Paltrow’s foray into normal-people food is serendipitous; or perhaps it’s ingenious timing.

“Why did I ever order those tests?” This is the question that Dr. Sharon Ostfeld-Johns of Yale Medical School now asks herself of every drug test she ever ordered for newborns with mothers who were heavy users.The pediatrician is one of a growing cadre of doctors who think that at risk babies should not be screened for drug exposure because positive tests lead to interactions with child welfare services and exacerbate what they see as racial bias in the system. Like so many new policies in this field, though, the efforts to reduce racial disparities only end up harming the most vulnerable children.   Dr.

The weather is growing warm, which means anti-Semitic demonstrations are blooming at elite universities. The hatred of Jews is no longer hidden, as it was in the days when Jewish enrollment was quietly limited by quotas. Now, it is displayed openly by a campus coalition led by hardline American leftists (students, faculty, and administrators) and Muslim students, some from America, some from the Middle East.  Their hatred is screamed at Jewish students and pro-Israeli speakers—and then at anyone who dares support them or simply demands the basic right to speak or be heard. Any support for Israel is damned as “genocide” and then shouted down, shamed, or worse.

Scratch almost any major US political story and sooner or later you’ll hit a big red nerve that belongs to the Chinese Communist party (CCP). Tariffs, energy, TikTok, the border, Fentanyl, Greenland, Panama, the Gulf of America – on all these subjects the Trump administration is, one way or another, trying to limit Beijing’s power in the West. And Donald Trump’s "war on Harvard," it turns out, is no exception. It’s clear that the President is pushing against anti-Semitism and the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion madness on America’s most famous campus, as well as in countless other colleges and universities.