Scientists May Have Just Treated Heart Disease in a Single Shot
Trump heads back to Walter Reed; criminals are posing as ICE agents, and Megyn Kelly turns harder against Trump
Good morning, and happy Memorial Day! This is AlterNet America.
The president is heading back to Walter Reed for the third time in 13 months, and his White House would prefer you not ask why. Fake ICE agents are robbing, beating, and raping immigrants across the country, in part because the real ones refuse to take off their masks. Megyn Kelly has decided to share what she really thinks of Donald Trump’s marriages. And a new treatment for cholesterol had jaw-dropping results.
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Now, the news.
Trump Heads Back to Walter Reed With a Pile of Unanswered Questions
Donald Trump is scheduled to undergo his third medical checkup at Walter Reed in 13 months on Tuesday. This is two more than presidents tend to need in a year if everything is fine.
The Washington Post reported Monday that independent physicians have been asking the White House to explain a number of things that are hard to miss: persistent bruises on the president’s hands, visibly swollen legs, and occasional public sleepiness. The White House says he’s in excellent health. This is also what they said last October, before quietly admitting that the visit involved a CT scan to rule out cardiovascular concerns.
Dr. Jonathan Reiner, who was Dick Cheney’s cardiologist, told the Post that the White House’s bruise explanation — too much aspirin, too much hand-shaking — doesn’t hold up.
“If you’re taking too much aspirin, one would likely take less aspirin,” he said. The bruises also appear on both hands, and Trump does not, as far as anyone can tell, shake hands with his left.
The White House response has been to publish what it calls a Wall of Shame, naming reporters and social media users who have noted that the president sometimes disappears from public view. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has alleged that Trump has the highest testosterone Mehmet Oz has ever seen in a 70-year-old, which is exactly the kind of medical opinion you’d expect from Mehmet Oz.
Trump’s approval on his mental sharpness has fallen seven points since September. His approval on his physical fitness has fallen ten.
Fake ICE Agents Are Terrorizing Immigrants Because the Real Ones Won’t Show Their Faces
A Noticias Telemundo investigation published Monday by NBC News documented at least 31 cases of people impersonating immigration agents in 2025. This is a sixfold increase from the previous decade’s annual average of just over five.
In January 2025, a hooded man kicked down the bedroom door of a Mexican immigrant in Greensboro, North Carolina, shouted that he was ICE, and pistol-whipped him in the head. Another man in the house had his forehead split open with the butt of a gun. A baby had a gun pointed at it.
None of the attackers were federal agents; the case remains unsolved.
A Dominican woman was dragged into a basement in New York by a man claiming to be an ICE agent. A Venezuelan woman was attacked at her workplace in North Carolina under the same pretext. In Philadelphia, a man dressed as a federal agent zip-tied a Dominican cashier and walked out with a thousand dollars.
The share of these cases involving physical violence has risen from 23 percent to 38 percent in a single year. Federal impersonation charges have been filed in exactly two of them.
ICE’s official position is that its agents wear masks to protect themselves from doxxing, and the agency claims threats against officers have risen more than 8,000 percent. What this doesn’t address is that masked agents who refuse to identify themselves create the precise conditions under which a man with a fake badge and a gun can walk into someone’s bedroom and not be questioned.
Philadelphia passed a law requiring federal agents to identify themselves and not wear masks. California passed a similar one, and a federal judge promptly blocked it. The administration is in court defending masks.
The ACLU’s Naureen Shah told NBC News the country is in “uncharted territory,” and noted that in American history, masked figures tend to be remembered for one thing, and it isn’t law enforcement.
Megyn Kelly Resurfaces Trump’s Ugliest Allegation
Megyn Kelly, who spent years rehabilitating her relationship with the man who once attacked her on national television, used a Friday podcast appearance to tell her audience that “Trump has cheated on every wife he’s had.”
She told the Hodgetwins Podcast that Trump began his affair with Marla Maples while still married to Ivana. Then she went further. Trump’s first wife, she said, had once accused him of rape.
The allegation comes from Ivana Trump’s sworn deposition during the couple’s 1990 divorce. She later said she had not meant the word in a criminal sense. Trump has denied it. He was also, last year, convicted of 34 felony counts related to a hush-money payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels.
Kelly’s remarks were prompted by Trump publicly mocking former counterterrorism chief Joe Kent for remarrying four years after Kent’s first wife, Navy officer Shannon Kent, was killed in combat. Kelly described Trump as living in a glass house, and closed by suggesting that anyone who believes Trump has been faithful to Melania has problems beyond what she can help with.
She didn’t explain what changed her mind. She just appears to have run out of patience, which is something a lot of people have in common at the moment.
Scientists May Have Just Cured Heart Disease in a Single Shot
While the administration spent the weekend ordering American scientists to stop publishing with foreign colleagues, scientists in Boston announced something that may eventually prevent the leading cause of death in the United States with a single infusion.
The trial, published Monday in The New England Journal of Medicine, tested an experimental gene-editing treatment that disables a single gene the liver uses to regulate cholesterol. One infusion lowered LDL — the bad kind — by as much as 62 percent across 35 patients. The effect has held in the subgroup treated 18 months ago.
Cardiovascular disease kills nearly 800,000 Americans every year. Statins exist, but between a third and half of patients prescribed them stop taking them within a year. Injectable cholesterol drugs exist, but insurance often won’t cover them.
Alice Thomas, 64, of Lexington, North Carolina, lives on Social Security, couldn’t tolerate statins, and was denied the injectables by her insurance. She’d already had two strokes, and her LDL was 190. She received the infusion on March 30. Two weeks later, her cholesterol was 50.
“One time and it’s over,” she told the Times.
Approval is years away, and the FDA requires 15 years of follow-up on every gene therapy patient. But if this holds, heart disease may be on the verge of moving into the same category we moved polio into a generation ago. It’s the kind of breakthrough that doesn’t happen if American scientists are forbidden from collaborating with anyone outside the country.
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