President Donald Trump is bringing back the Presidential Fitness Test as part of the mission to "make America Healthy again."
From its creation in 1966 until it ended in 2013, the Presidential Fitness Test measured students' strength and endurance with exercises like sit-ups, pull-ups, and one-mile runs. Students who scored in the top percentiles received national recognition.
"It’s a wonderful tradition and we’re bringing it back," Trump said.
The return of the test is a victory for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a leader of the "Make America Healthy Again" movement who has long voiced concern about childhood obesity. His uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was sounding the alarm about Americans going "soft" way back in the 1960s.
“He was lamenting the fact that America had prided itself on a beef jerky toughness, and that we were losing -- that we were falling behind Europeans, we were falling behind other nations,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said at the White House on Thursday.
The Presidential Fitness Test originated during the Eisenhower administration, when the President’s Council on Youth Fitness was established in response to a study on American kids' health that raised concern.
President John F. Kennedy took up the issue, famously writing an article titled "The Soft American" in Sports Illustrated.
He warned about an "increasingly large number of young Americans who are neglecting their bodies -- whose physical fitness is not what it should be -- who are getting soft."
"And such softness on the part of the individual citizen can help to strip and destroy the vitality of a nation," he wrote.
Kennedy also promoted taking the 50-mile hikes that were used by Marines, with his own brother, then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, completing the task in the snow.
President Lyndon Johnson established the Presidential Physical Fitness Award in 1966.
For all of President Kennedy's concern about fitness in the 60s, America's health problems have grown exponentially worse since then, with one in five kids now suffering from obesity.
The fitness test was phased out in 2013 by then-President Barack Obama over concerns that it hurt students' self-esteem. It was replaced with a more individualistic assessment of health as American culture drifted away from meritocracy.
The Trump administration says returning to the old, competitive approach will produce better health outcomes.
“The executive order will be focused on strengthening athletics in our country and making America healthy again,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. “And we are going to reimplement the Presidential Fitness Test in America’s schools, which is, I think, something all Americans can get behind.”
President Trump criticized the media's selective coverage of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, accusing reporters of overlooking prominent Democrats in the financier's orbit such as Bill Clinton, who allegedly visited Epstein's notorious island.
Although Epstein had ties to many high-profile figures, including Clinton, recent reporting has focused almost exclusively on tying Trump to the disgraced financier.
It is well-known that both Trump and Clinton once had friendships with Epstein, but neither president has been accused of wrongdoing.
Trump had a falling out with Epstein in 2004, well before Epstein's first arrest for sex crimes in 2006.
While in Scotland on Monday, Trump explained that Epstein caused a rift in their relationship by stealing workers. Trump also said he never visited Epstein's notorious island, but Clinton traveled there "supposedly 28 times."
“I never had the privilege of going to his island. And I did turn it down,” Trump said. “But a lot of people in Palm Beach were invited to his island. In one of my very good moments, I turned it down. I didn’t want to go to his island.”
While returning to the U.S. on Tuesday, Trump clarified that the workers Epstein "stole" were employees in the Mar-A-Lago spa, and that one of them was Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, who died by suicide this year.
In a 2016 deposition that was unsealed last year, Giuffre testified to meeting Clinton twice on Epstein's island and said he must have known about the crimes taking place there, but she never observed Clinton behaving inappropriately.
"Yes, he would be a witness because he knew what my purpose there was for Jeffrey and he visited Jeffrey's island," Giuffre said, according to the transcript. "There's pictures of nude girls all around the house at all of his houses and it's something that Jeffrey Epstein wasn't shy about admitting to people."
Giuffre also said she never observed Trump do anything wrong.
"I don't think Donald Trump participated in anything," Giuffre said, according to the deposition. "That would have to be another assumption. I never saw or witnessed Donald Trump participate in those acts, but was he in the house of Jeffrey Epstein," Giuffre said. "I’ve heard he has been, but I haven’t seen him myself so I don’t know.”
After Epstein's second arrest for sex trafficking in 2019, a Clinton spokesperson said the former president had no knowledge of Epstein's crimes and that his travels on Epstein's private jet were tied to the Clinton Foundation's work.
Clinton addressed rumors about his ties to Epstein in a memoir released last year, Citizen, in which he denied traveling to Epstein's island.
“Traveling on Epstein’s plane was not worth the years of questioning afterward,” Clinton wrote in the book.
The Wall Street Journal reported recently that Clinton wrote a warm message to Epstein on his 50th birthday, paying tribute to his "child-like curiosity."
Trump has sued the newspaper over its separate report that he wrote his own letter that contained a nude drawing of a woman.
His past ties to Epstein have come under intense scrutiny from the media and the Democratic party as the White House faces backlash over its refusal to release the Epstein files.
The Justice Department officially ruled in July that a hypothetical "client list" does not exist, that Epstein died by suicide in his prison cell, and that no evidence exists to charge additional third parties. The findings angered many Trump supporters who have long believed Epstein had hidden accomplices who abused underage girls.
Micheal Ward, a rising Hollywood star, has been dropped by his talent agency after he was charged with rape and sexual assault.
The British actor, of Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, was charged with two counts of rape and three counts of sexual assault, London's Metropolitan Police said. The alleged offenses occurred in January 2023 and concern a single woman.
Ward denies any wrongdoing, and he has expressed confidence in his eventual exoneration.
The actor has worked with some of the biggest directors in Hollywood today. He co-starred in the acclaimed Sam Mendes drama Empire of Light (2022) and is set to appear in Ari Aster's upcoming Western, Eddington (2025).
Ward is due to appear in Thames magistrates court in east London on August 28.
“I deny the charges against me entirely. I have cooperated fully with the police throughout their investigation and will continue to cooperate," he said.
“I recognize that proceedings are now ongoing, and I have full faith that they will lead to my name being cleared. Given those proceedings, I am unable to comment further.”
Detective Supt Scott Ware, whose team is leading the Met’s investigation, said: “Our specialist officers continue to support the woman who has come forward – we know investigations of this nature can have significant impact on those who make reports.”
Catherine Baccas, the deputy chief crown prosecutor for CPS London South, said: “Having carefully reviewed a file of evidence, the Crown Prosecution Service has authorized the Metropolitan police to charge Micheal Ward, 27, with two counts of rape, two counts of assault by penetration, and one count of sexual assault against a woman in January 2023."
“We remind all concerned that proceedings against the suspect are active and he has a right to a fair trial. It is vital that there should be no reporting, commentary or sharing of information online which could in any way prejudice these proceedings.”
Ward became famous for his role in the Netflix revival of the crime drama Top Boy, which is set in East London. He appeared in 19 episodes from 2019 to 2022.
The Jamaican-born actor won the BAFTA Rising Star award for Blue Story (2019) and was nominated for a BAFTA award for Best Supporting Actor for Small Axe (2020), a BBC series about West Indian immigrants living in London.
As reported by Deadline, Ward's UK talent agency Olivia Bell Management has dropped him.
These are disturbing accusations, but like all defendants, Ward is innocent until proven guilty.
President Trump revealed the reason why he severed ties with Jeffrey Epstein, saying the disgraced financier stole workers from Mar-A-Lago.
Trump's past friendship with Epstein is back in the spotlight as the White House confronts backlash over its handling of the Epstein files.
Democrats have seized on the issue, and Trump's critics in the "fake news" media have hammered the story non-stop.
Much of the recent reporting on Trump and Epstein has done little more than rehash old details of their past friendship, which ended well before Epstein's first arrest in 2006.
It has long been known that Trump and Epstein socialized for some years before they had a falling out in 2004, reportedly over real estate.
While answering questions in Scotland on Monday, Trump repeated his assertion that the Epstein story is a "hoax" that has been blown up "way beyond proportion" by his enemies. But Trump nevertheless offered some new details about his relationship with Epstein and the way it unraveled.
"That’s such old history, very easy to explain, but I don’t want to waste your time by explaining it," Trump said.
The president explained that Epstein became "persona non grata" after hiring some of Trump's employees.
“He hired help. And I said ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He stole people that worked for me,” Trump continued. “I said, ‘Don’t never do that again.’ He did it again. And I threw him out of the place, persona non grata. I threw him out, and that was it. I’m glad I did, if you want to know the truth.”
Addressing claims in the Wall Street Journal that he was named in the Epstein files, Trump said his predecessors would have released the files if they contained anything incriminating about him.
"Those files were run by the worst scum on earth... If they had anything I assume they would have released it. The whole thing is a hoax," Trump said.
"They can easily put something in the files that's a phony," Trump added, invoking the fake Trump-Russia dossier that was used to derail his first term.
Even if Trump is named in the files, that does not imply that he was involved in any wrongdoing.
Trump was one of several high-profile people who flew on Epstein's private jet, including Bill Clinton, who Trump alleged went to Epstein's infamous island "28 times."
"Bill Clinton went there, supposedly, 28 times ... And many other people that are very big people. Nobody ever talks about them," Trump said.
“I never had the privilege of going to his island. And I did turn it down,” Trump added.
“But a lot of people in Palm Beach were invited to his island. In one of my very good moments, I turned it down. I didn’t want to go to his island.”
President Trump is furious at White House officials for mishandling the Jeffrey Epstein case, but Trump is reluctant to fire anyone and create a bigger "spectacle" for critics to grab ahold of, according to a report.
A political storm over the Epstein files has now consumed the White House for three weeks, angering Trump and members of his team who believe it is becoming a distraction from the president's successes.
“This is a pretty substantial distraction,” one White House source told the Washington Post.
"While many are trying to keep the unity, in many ways, the DOJ and the FBI are breaking at the seams. Many are wondering how sustainable this is going to be for all the parties involved — be it the FBI director or attorney general.”
The controversy exploded over the July 4th weekend, when the DOJ published a memo concluding that Epstein died by suicide in his prison cell and that he did not keep a secret client list.
The findings sparked backlash from members of Trump's own base, many of whom felt blindsided after Trump officials had appeared to tease that new information was forthcoming. Critics have piled on attorney general Pam Bondi in particular, who hinted at a "truckload" of explosive documents.
“Everything’s going to come out to the public,” she told Fox News' Sean Hannity in early March. “The public has a right to know. Americans have a right to know.”
Trump has stood by his embattled attorney general through the Epstein drama, which has yet to die down despite Trump's repeated pleas for supporters to move on from what he calls a "hoax" being stoked by his enemies.
"He [Trump] does not want to create a bigger spectacle by firing anyone," the White House source told the Washington Post.
In an effort to quiet the storm, Trump earlier this month directed Bondi to seek the release of grand jury materials in the case. One of those requests has been denied by a federal judge in Florida.
Democrats pounced on a recent report in the Wall Street Journal that said Trump was told his name appeared in the Epstein files. Trump was reportedly told this by Bondi during a routine briefing that was not dedicated to the subject.
Simply being mentioned in the government's files on Epstein does not imply wrongdoing, but Democrats have exploited the issue to attack Trump, who severed ties with Epstein years ago.
After Trump announced a major trade deal between the U.S. and Europe on Sunday, he was asked by a reporter if the effort was expedited to drive Epstein out of the headlines.
The question left Trump visibly irritated.
"Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me with that,” Trump said.
Democrats like former President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris, who was the party's 2024 presidential nominee, relied heavily on the strategy of having major celebrity influencers walk them across the finish line.
As we all know by now, that strategy didn't pan out even close to what Democrats had presumably hoped, and even worse for Harris, it looks like it could backfire in a major way -- perhaps even legally.
According to The Hill, President Donald Trump once again insisted this week that Harris illegally paid celebrities to endorse her candidacy and went as far as suggesting that the former vice president should be "prosecuted" for it.
Trump also said that the celebrities involved, which include Beyoncé, Oprah and Al Sharpton, should also face legal consequences.
As he usually does, Trump held nothing back in a Truth Social post insisting that Harris illegally paid celebrities to endorse her campaign, pointing out that it's illegal to do so.
"YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO PAY FOR AN ENDORSEMENT. IT IS TOTALLY ILLEGAL TO DO SO. Can you imagine what would happen if politicians started paying for people to endorse them. All hell would break out," Trump wrote.
He added, "Kamala, and all of those that received Endorsement money, BROKE THE LAW. They should all be prosecuted! Thank you for your attention to this matter."
The president has made similar claims in the past, emphasizing that paying people to endorse is illegal.
The Hill noted:
“Beyoncé didn’t sing, Oprah didn’t do much of anything (she called it ‘expenses’), and Al is just a third rate Con Man,” he said in December.
In Saturday’s post, the president claimed Harris paid $11 million to Beyoncé, $3 million to Oprah, and $600,000 to Sharpton.
For her part, Oprah has publicly denied that she had been paid Harris, admitting that production fees for an appearance she made with Harris were covered by the campaign.
“The people who worked on that production needed to be paid. And were. End of story," Oprah said at the time.
Whether or not Harris broke campaign finance laws -- or other laws -- it doesn't seem to matter at this point because it failed miserably.
Trump connected with Americans, at the dinner table, and even though he's a billionaire real estage mogul and holder of the highest office, he was more relatable than Harris and her elite celebrity friends.
It'll be interesting to see if Democrats learn their lesson the next time around.
Big news came out of the National Governors Association (NGA) Summer Meeting in Colorado Springs, Colorado this week, and many governors are thrilled.
According to Fox News, Secretary Linda McMahon of the Department of Education announced the unfreezing of $6.8 billion in previously frozen funds. She assured the attending governors that it would never happen again.
The previously frozen funds were set aside for K-12 programs, and the announcement comes on the heels of a lawsuit filed against the Trump administration by 20 Democratic attorneys general.
They argued that the federal funding freeze was crippling for states with the new school year just around the corner, insisting that states desperately need the funds to keep everything operational.
Department of Education spokesperson Madi Biedermann explained to Fox News that the funds were unfrozen after a review by the Office of Budget Management (OMB) was completed.
Biedermann said the OMB "has completed its review of Title I-C, Title II-A, Title III-A and Title IV-A ESEA funds and Title II WIOA funds and has directed the Department to release all formula funds. The agency will begin dispersing funds to states next week."
Sec. McMahon was thanked by many of the Democrats in the coaltion that sued the administration.
Fox News noted:
The bipartisan group of governors, including the NGA's outgoing chair, Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado, and its vice chair, Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma, thanked McMahon for unlocking the funding during the NGA's education session Friday.
Gov. Jared Polis asked, "How can we better communicate to make sure that this chaos and uncertainty doesn't occur again around funding and that people know things earlier?"
McMahon responded, "No guarantees from me that we will eliminate all the communications gaps that do happen, but I can say that part of it is just the transition aspect."
McMahon went on to assure the governors that the funds were frozen due to the review process.
Fox News added:
The education secretary said the other aspect of the federal funding freeze was that the OMB budget office "took some time to really review the title funding to look at all the programs, etc., before they were released. They were well satisfied. So, now, those funds are going to be going out."
The news comes also as Trump continues to do whatever he can to dismantle the Education Department.
Trump and his administration recently won a major Supreme Court ruling that allowed the firing of nearly half of the DoE's workforce.
Bill Clinton was among the famous people who sent Jeffrey Epstein a letter on his 50th birthday, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The letter was part of a birthday album that contained messages from around five dozen people, but Clinton was the most notable contributor when the album was put together by Epstein's former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, in 2003.
The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Donald Trump sent Epstein a "bawdy" letter with a drawing of naked woman. Trump is suing the newspaper over the "fake" claim.
Clinton and Trump were both listed as "friends" in the book, along with Wall Street billionaire Leon Black, attorney Alan Dershowitz, media owner Mort Zuckerman, former Victoria' Secret CEO Leslie Wexner, and the late model scout Jean-Luc Brunel.
The album reportedly contained several lewd jokes. Black wrote a suggestive poem signed "Loves and Kisses," while Nathan Myhrvold, a billionaire and former Microsoft executive, sent Epstein photographs from a trip to Africa of animals mating.
The message from Clinton praised Epstein as a philanthropist with a "drive to make a difference" and "childlike curiosity."
"It’s reassuring isn’t it, to have lasted as long, across all the years of learning and knowing, adventures and [illegible word], and also to have your childlike curiosity, the drive to make a difference and the solace of friends," Clinton wrote.
A spokesman for Clinton declined to comment to the Wall Street Journal and pointed to a previous statement, which said that Clinton severed ties with Epstein long ago.
Epstein's birthday album was reportedly put together in 2003, three years before Epstein's first arrest in Florida and over a decade before his suicide in prison while facing sex trafficking charges in 2019.
The late billionaire is back in the spotlight as the Trump administration faces backlash over its handling of the government's files in the case against him. The Justice Department angered many Trump supporters earlier this month when it said there is nothing more to release, that Epstein killed himself and that he did not keep a secret list of clients.
Democrats have seized on the issue to attack President Trump, who was once part of Epstein's wide circle of connections before they had a falling out in 2004 over real estate.
It has long been known that Epstein had past friendships with both Trump and Clinton, and neither president is specifically accused of wrongdoing.
After Epstein's second arrest in New York, Clinton's spokesman said that the former president traveled on Epstein's jet four times and visited Epstein once at his Manhattan townhouse.
Those travels were always accompanied by Secret Service and were tied to Clinton's work with the Clinton Foundation, the spokesperson said.
The Supreme Court has cleared President Trump to fire three Biden appointees on the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
The court granted the Trump administration's request on an emergency basis, allowing Trump to move ahead with removing the three Democrats on the agency, who have pushed their own agenda against Trump's wishes.
The Supreme Court's liberals, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented.
The Trump administration has decried what it calls a judicial assault on the president's powers, which includes the authority to hire and fire executive branch employees as the president sees fit.
The Supreme Court has been generally sympathetic to the White House's view on executive branch control of independent agencies, previously ruling in Trump v. Wilcox that Trump could fire members of the National Labor Relations Board and Merit Systems Protection Board "without cause."
In its brief, unsigned opinion on the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Supreme Court quoted its opinion in Trump v. Wilcox. In that case, the justices held that the wrongful removal of a federal officer is less concerning than "allowing a removed officer to continue exercising the executive power."
The Supreme Court agreed with the Trump administration's argument that Trump v. Wilcox "squarely controls" the dispute with the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which, the court said, "exercises executive power in a similar manner as the National Labor Relations Board."
A Biden-appointed district judge in June had ordered Trump to reinstate three Democrats on the Consumer Product Safety Commission after Trump fired them. The commission has five members who serve staggered terms.
The district court's order put the agency under the control of a Democratic majority, which then "immediately moved to undo actions that the Commission had taken since their removal," the Trump administration noted in its early July appeal.
"That plain-as-day affront to the President’s fundamental Article II powers warrants intervention now just as much as in Wilcox," Solicitor General John D. Sauer wrote.
The Trump administration's battles with the federal bureaucracy could be building toward a major Supreme Court ruling on the scope of executive power.
A 90-year-old Supreme Court precedent, Humphrey's Executor, backstops the independence of federal agencies with "quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial" functions.
But the White House argues, and the Supreme Court seems to tentatively agree, that Humphrey's has allowed agencies like the Consumer Product Safety Commission to arrogate executive power in a way that threatens the Constitution.
In a dissent from the court's ruling, the liberal wing fretted that the justices have "all but overturned" Humphrey’s Executor.
"By allowing the president to remove commissioners for no reason other than their party affiliation, the majority has negated Congress’s choice of agency bipartisanship and independence,” they wrote.
The top prosecutor in New Jersey was fired by the Justice Department as a power struggle between the White House and a group of "rogue" federal judges came to a head.
Attorney general Pam Bondi fired career prosecutor Desiree Leigh Grace shortly after she was tapped to replace interim U.S. attorney Alina Habba, a former Trump lawyer and loyal supporter of the president.
The Justice Department cast Leigh's appointment as a corrupt conspiracy by "activist" judges and Democrats to derail Trump's chosen pick, Habba.
The president nominates U.S. attorneys, who then must receive confirmation by a vote of the Senate to serve permanently.
Trump named Habba to be New Jersey's top prosecutor in March and formally nominated her to the role on July 1, but her confirmation has been stalled as New Jersey Senators Cory Booker (D) and Andy Kim (D) refuse to support her.
Acting U.S. attorneys can serve for up to 120 days without Senate approval. District courts may extend that window or name their own pick.
A panel of judges in New Jersey chose the latter option, rejecting Habba in favor of Grace, a career prosecutor since 2016. A registered Republican, Grace led the criminal division in Habba's office before Habba chose her to be her deputy.
Grace is a more traditional - and for Democrats, more palatable - choice than Habba, who became known during the 2024 presidential campaign as Trump's outspoken attorney as he faced an onslaught of civil and criminal cases brought by his Democratic foes.
During her brief tenure as U.S. attorney, Habba brought federal charges against two Democrats in New Jersey who were involved in a scuffle with immigration enforcement. She later dropped trespassing charges against one of those Democrats, Newark mayor Ras Baraka.
"The firing of a career public servant, lawfully appointed by the court, is another blatant attempt to intimidate anyone that doesn’t agree with them and undermine judicial independence,” senators Kim and Booker said of Grace's firing. “This Administration may not like the law, but they are not above it.”
Meanwhile, Trump's DOJ condemned Habba's dismissal as an effort by partisan judges and Democrats in Congress to control Trump and step on his lawful authority.
"The district judges in NJ just proved this was never about law—it was about politics. They forced out President Trump’s pick, @USAttyHabba, then installed her deputy, colluding with the NJ Senators along the way. It won’t work. Pursuant to the President’s authority, we have removed that deputy, effective immediately. This backroom vote will not override the authority of the Chief Executive," said deputy attorney general Todd Blanche.
Attorney general Pam Bondi also ripped the "politically minded judges" who removed Habba from her role.
“Nonetheless, politically minded judges refused to allow her to continue in her position, replacing Alina with the First Assistant. Accordingly, the First Assistant United States Attorney in New Jersey has just been removed. This Department of Justice does not tolerate rogue judges — especially when they threaten the President’s core Article II powers,” Bondi posted on X.