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  • Trump claims victory on affordability as public anxieties persist

    Trump claims victory on affordability as public anxieties persist

    The White House is declaring victory on turning around the economy, after months of aides’ urging the president to find a more empathetic tone on Americans’ financial struggles.

    But public attitudes about the economy have not risen to match the record-breaking stock market and expectations-beating inflation and jobs report, defining the challenge for the president’s party in November’s midterms. Most Americans say the economy is on the wrong track and disapprove of Trump’s handling of it, recent surveys show.

    The gap between macroeconomic indicators and public sentiment echoes the dynamic that encumbered Trump’s predecessor, which the current president is similarly hoping to overcome through direct appeals to voters.

    “I think we have the greatest economy actually ever in history,” Trump said in an interview with Fox Business’s Larry Kudlow that aired on Tuesday. “I guess I have to sell that because we should win in a landslide.”

    Since the fall, advisers sensitive to the persistent pinch of higher prices urged Trump to modulate his tone on the economy by acknowledging the pain, blaming the conditions on former President Joe Biden, and highlighting his efforts to tame inflation. White House spokespeople and surrogates proved more faithful to that message than the president himself, who largely continued to insist that the economy was great and he deserved more credit.

    Trump’s preference has now prevailed thanks to a record-high stock market, surprisingly strong January job numbers, and easing prices for gas, groceries, and housing.

    “President Trump is absolutely right to celebrate inflation finally cooling and real wages finally growing for everyday American workers,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said.

    “While Biden downplayed and ignored this reality, President Trump has been focused on ending the Biden economic disaster since Day One with policies that work. That’s why inflation has cooled, real wages are up, and GDP growth has far surpassed expectations.”

    The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at about 50,000 points for the first time on Tuesday, and the S&P 500 is also trading at all-time highs. The economy added 130,000 jobs in January, more than double economists’ forecast. A gallon of gas averaged $2.94 on Wednesday, the lowest for this time of year since 2021, according to AAA. And inflation in January dropped to a low last seen in May, before Trump raised tariffs.

    “We’re hitting all-time-high stock numbers,” Trump said Friday in a speech to troops at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. “All I know is forget about the stock market, forget about Wall Street, your 401(k)s are doing very well. I don’t have to ask you, ‘Is anybody doing poorly with their 401(k)?’ If they were, you’re a pretty bad investor.”

    But the positive signs are unevenly felt, and skew toward the wealthy. About 40% of adults in the U.S. do not have a 401(k) or any other retirement savings account, according to a 2025 Gallup survey. Consumer sentiment among people without stock holdings remained near its lowest level since at least 2018, and the overall average was about 20% lower than in January 2025, according to the University of Michigan’s benchmark survey.

    Desai said the stock market highs reflect pro-business policies that are driving investment and will create jobs and increase wages. Most business spending and stock market increases are driven by investments in artificial intelligence by tech companies such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta. The data centers they’re building demand electricity and produce fewer jobs than traditional factories, and some members of Trump’s coalition, such as Tucker Carlson, argue that AI will reduce American jobs in the future.

    Fifty-nine percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of their cost of living, 43% strongly, according to a Reuters-Ipsos poll conducted Jan. 23-25. He performed better on employment and jobs, though half of respondents still disapproved. The survey found only 28% of Americans said the economy is on the right track.

    White House officials also pointed to a four-year low in median national rents and a four-year high in the Intercontinental Exchange’s measure of mortgage affordability. But those measures offer only a partial snapshot. To return to pre-pandemic affordability levels, household incomes would need to rise more than 15% while home prices remain flat, the exchange reported this month. Grocery prices remain volatile, with some falling and others rising — a mix that has made day-to-day food costs uneven for consumers.

    “I brought prices way down,” Trump said in response to a question from the Washington Post last week. “You don’t hear it anymore — when I first came in, the Democrats were screaming ‘affordability.’”

    Mark Mitchell, the head pollster at the conservative Rasmussen Reports, has been critical of the Trump administration’s emphasis on a surging stock market while young Americans are experiencing difficult job and housing markets. “Let them eat S&P,” he wrote repeatedly on X in response to videos of Trump and top administration officials touting stock performance.

    White House officials acknowledged that voters are hard to persuade about their own personal financial circumstances. Since the start of the administration, economic advisers regularly met to focus on policy actions that would deliver benefits Americans would feel in time for the midterms, one of the officials said. The White House was determined to adopt tax cuts earlier than in Trump’s first term to ensure refunds would begin reaching households in 2026.

    The White House is also counting on more momentum, including interest rate cuts from Trump’s new pick to chair the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh, and cheaper prescription drugs available through government-negotiated deals on a website called TrumpRx. The website currently lists 43 medications. Desai said the administration is working to add more pharmaceuticals from companies with existing deals and through negotiations with other drugmakers.

    “There’s reason for some hope” now for Republicans in Congress, said Gregg Keller, a GOP strategist working for a super PAC supporting Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the state’s Senate race. “If the economy rolls this year and if voters give Trump and Republicans credit for it, that bodes well [for] us avoiding a drubbing in the elections.”

    Voters say Trump’s economy is better than Biden’s, but they want to hear more about what the administration is doing to ease everyday costs of living, according to Mitch Brown, a partner at the Republican polling firm Cygnal. Only 30% of voters can handle an unexpected expense of $1,000 or more, heightening their anxiety, Brown said.

    “President Trump knows this and his administration is working to not only address these concerns with policy, but getting the rest of the GOP to hit this message hard that we have done great work but will continue to fight hard to lower costs in the midterms,” Brown said. “Democrats don’t hold a majority of voters’ trust on a single issue, so the opportunity to keep the majority is well within the GOP’s grasp.”

    Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican consultant specializing in polling, said while people with “substantial resources invested in the stock market” are satisfied with a surging Dow, the data suggest “most Americans are still not happy” with progress on inflation and the strength of the economy.

    “Presidents who’ve done a good job capturing the sentiments of the American people are those who articulate a message that is consistent with what most people feel,” Ayres said. “Bill Clinton was probably the best of anyone at that, but it’s very difficult to persuade Americans to believe something they’re not feeling in their daily lives.”

    House Republicans need Trump to use the full weight of his presidency to make the case that his administration has brought down the cost of living, said longtime GOP strategist Ron Bonjean.

    “House Republicans are entering a really dangerous phase. They have to defy history. They need everything,” he said. “They need a president who has the loudest megaphone in the country’s history.”

  • Public health workers quitting over Guantánamo assignments

    Public health workers quitting over Guantánamo assignments

    Rebekah Stewart, a nurse at the U.S. Public Health Service, got a call last April that brought her to tears. She had been selected for deployment to the Trump administration’s new immigration detention operation at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

    This posting combined Donald Trump’s longtime passion to use the offshore base to move “some bad dudes” out of the United States with a promise made shortly after his inauguration last year to hold thousands of noncitizens there. The naval base is known for the torture and inhumane treatment of men suspected of terrorism in the wake of 9/11.

    “Deployments are typically not something you can say no to,” Stewart said. She pleaded with the coordinating office, which found another nurse to go in her place.

    Other public health officers who worked at Guantánamo in the past year described conditions there for the detainees, some of whom learned they were in Cuba from the nurses and doctors sent to care for them. They treated immigrants detained in a dark prison called Camp 6, where no sunlight filters in, said the officers, whom KFF Health News agreed not to name because they fear retaliation for speaking publicly. It previously held people with suspected ties to al-Qaeda. The officers said they were not briefed ahead of time on the details of their potential duties at the base.

    Although the Public Health Service is not a branch of the U.S. armed forces, its uniformed officers — roughly 5,000 doctors, nurses, and other health workers — act like stethoscope-wearing soldiers in emergencies. The government deploys them during hurricanes, wildfires, mass shootings, and measles outbreaks. In the interim, they fill gaps at an alphabet soup of government agencies.

    The Trump administration’s mass arrests to curb immigration have created a new type of health emergency as the number of people detained reaches record highs. About 71,000 immigrants are currently imprisoned, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement data, which show that most have no criminal record.

    Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has said: “President Donald Trump has been very clear: Guantánamo Bay will hold the worst of the worst.” However, several news organizations have reported that many of the men shipped to the base had no criminal convictions. As many as 90% of them were described as “low-risk” in a May progress report from ICE.

    In fits and starts, the Trump administration has sent about 780 noncitizens to Guantánamo Bay, according to the New York Times. Numbers fluctuate as new detainees arrive and others are returned to the U.S. or deported.

    While some Public Health Service officers have provided medical care to detained immigrants in the past, this is the first time in American history that Guantánamo has been used to house immigrants who had been living in the U.S. Officers said ICE postings are getting more common. After dodging Guantánamo, Stewart was instructed to report to an ICE detention center in Texas.

    “Public health officers are being asked to facilitate a man-made humanitarian crisis,” she said.

    Seeing no option to refuse deployments that she found objectionable, Stewart resigned after a decade of service. She would give up the prospect of a pension offered after 20 years.

    “It was one of the hardest decisions I ever had to make,” she said. “It was my dream job.”

    One of her PHS colleagues, nurse Dena Bushman, grappled with a similar moral dilemma when she got a notice to report to Guantánamo a few weeks after the shooting at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in August. Bushman, who was posted with the CDC, got a medical waiver delaying her deployment on account of stress and grief. She considered resigning, then did.

    “This may sound extreme,” Bushman said. “But when I was making this decision, I couldn’t help but think about how the people who fed those imprisoned in concentration camps were still part of the Nazi regime.”

    Others have resigned, but many officers remain. While they are alarmed by Trump’s tactics, detained people need care, multiple PHS officers told KFF Health News.

    “I respect people and treat them like humans,” said a PHS nurse who worked in detention facilities last year. “I try to be a light in the darkness, the one person that makes someone smile in this horrible mess.”

    The PHS officers conceded that their power to protect people was limited in a detention system fraught with overcrowding, disorganization, and the psychological trauma of uncertainty, family separations, and sleep deprivation.

    “Ensuring the safety, security, and well-being of individuals in our custody is a top priority at ICE,” said Tricia McLaughlin, chief spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, in an emailed statement to KFF Health News.

    Adm. Brian Christine, assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the Public Health Service, said in an email: “Our duty is clear: say ‘Yes Sir!’, salute smartly, and execute the mission: show up, provide humane care, and protect health.” Christine is a recent appointee who, until recently, was a urologist specializing in testosterone and male fertility issues.

    “In pursuit of subjective morality or public displays of virtue,” he added, “we risk abandoning the very individuals we pledged to serve.”

    Into the unknown

    In the months before Stewart resigned, she reflected on her previous deployments, during Trump’s first term, to immigration processing centers run by Customs and Border Protection. Fifty women were held in a single concrete cell in Texas, she recalled.

    “The most impactful thing I could do was to convince the guards to allow the women, who had been in there for a week, to shower,” she said. “I witnessed suffering without having much ability to address it.”

    Stewart spoke with Bushman and other PHS officers who were embedded at the CDC last year. They assisted with the agency’s response to ongoing measles outbreaks, with sexually transmitted infection research, and more. Their roles became crucial last year as the Trump administration laid off droves of CDC staffers.

    Stewart, Bushman, and a few other PHS officers at the CDC said they met with middle managers to ask for details about the deployments: If they went to Guantánamo and ICE facilities, how much power would they have to provide what they considered medically necessary care? If they saw anything unethical, how could they report it? Would it be investigated? Would they be protected from reprisal?

    Stewart and Bushman said they were given a PHS office phone number they could call if they had a complaint while on assignment. Otherwise, they said, their questions went unanswered. They resigned and so never went to Guantánamo.

    PHS officers who were deployed to the base told KFF Health News they weren’t given details about their potential duties — or the standard operating procedure for medical care — before they arrived.

    Stephen Xenakis, a retired Army general and a psychiatrist who has advised on medical care at Guantánamo for two decades, said that was troubling. Before health workers deploy, he said, they should understand what they’ll be expected to do.

    The consequences of insufficient preparation can be severe. In 2014, the Navy threatened to court-martial one of its nurses at Guantánamo who refused to force-feed prisoners on hunger strike, who were protesting inhumane treatment and indefinite detention. The protocol was brutal: A person was shackled to a five-point restraint chair as nurses shoved a tube for liquid food into their stomach through their nostrils.

    “He wasn’t given clear guidance in advance on how these procedures would be conducted at Guantánamo,” Xenakis said of the nurse. “Until he saw it, he didn’t understand how painful it was for detainees.”

    The American Nurses Association and Physicians for Human Rights sided with the nurse, saying his objection was guided by professional ethics. After a year, the military dropped the charges.

    A uniformed doctor or nurse’s power tends to depend on their rank, their supervisor, and chains of command, Xenakis said. He helped put an end to some inhumane practices at Guantánamo more than a decade ago, when he and other retired generals and admirals publicly objected to certain interrogation techniques, such as one called “walling,” in which interrogators slammed the heads of detainees suspected of terrorism against a wall, causing slight concussions. Xenakis argued that science didn’t support “walling” as an effective means of interrogation, and that it was unethical, amounting to torture.

    Medics practice evacuating a detained immigrant in a simulated exercise at Guantánamo in April 2025.

    Torture hasn’t been reported from Guantánamo’s immigration operation, but ICE shift reports obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the government watchdog group American Oversight note concerns about detainees resorting to hunger strikes and self-harm.

    “Welfare checks with potential hunger strike IA’s,” short for illegal aliens, says an April 30 note from a contractor working with ICE. “In case of a hunger strike or other emergencies,” the report adds, the PHS and ICE are “coordinating policies and procedures.”

    “De-escalation of potential pod wide hunger strike/potential riot,” says an entry from July 8. “Speak with alien on suicide watch regarding well being.”

    Inmates and investigations have reported delayed medical care at immigration detention facilities and dangerous conditions, including overcrowding and a lack of sanitation. Thirty-two people died in ICE custody in 2025, making it the deadliest year in two decades.

    “They are arresting and detaining more people than their facilities can support,” one PHS officer told KFF Health News. The most prevalent problem the officer saw among imprisoned immigrants was psychological. They worried about never seeing their families again or being sent back to a country where they feared they’d be killed. “People are scared out of their minds,” the officer said.

    U.S. service members stand by during an April 2025 simulated medical evacuation of immigrants detained at Guantánamo.

    No sunlight

    The PHS officers who were at Guantánamo told KFF Health News that the men they saw were detained in either low-security barracks, with a handful of people per room, or in Camp 6, a dark, high-security facility without natural light. The ICE shift reports describe the two stations by their position on the island, Leeward for the barracks and Windward for Camp 6. About 50 Cuban men sent to Guantánamo in December and January have languished at Camp 6.

    A Navy hospital on the base mainly serves the military and other residents who aren’t locked up — and in any case, its capabilities are limited, the officers said. To reduce the chance of expensive medical evacuations back to the U.S. to see specialists quickly, they said, the immigrants were screened before being shipped to Guantánamo. People over age 60 or who needed daily drugs to manage diabetes and high blood pressure, for example, were generally excluded. Still, the officers said, some detainees have had to be evacuated back to Florida.

    PHS nurses and doctors said they screened immigrants again when they arrived and provided ongoing care, fielding complaints including about gastrointestinal distress and depression. One ICE monthly progress report says, “The USPHS psychologist started an exercise group” for detainees.

    Doctors’ requests for lab work were often turned down because of logistical hurdles, partly due to the number of agencies working together on the base, the officers said. Even a routine test, a complete blood count, took weeks to process, vs. hours in the U.S.

    DHS and the Department of Defense, which have coordinated on the Guantánamo immigration operation, did not respond to requests for comment about their work there.

    One PHS officer who helped medically screen new detainees said they were often surprised to learn they were at Guantánamo.

    “I’d tell them, ‘I’m sorry you are here,’” the officer said. “No one freaked out. It was like the ten-millionth time they had been transferred.” Some of the men had been detained in various facilities for five or six months and said they wanted to return to their home countries, according to the officer. Health workers had neither an answer nor a fix.

    Unlike ICE detention facilities in the U.S., Guantánamo hasn’t been overcrowded. “I have never been so not busy at work,” one officer said. A military base on a tropical island, Guantánamo offers activities such as snorkeling, paddleboard yoga, and kickboxing to those who aren’t imprisoned. Even so, the officer said they would rather be home than on this assignment on the taxpayer’s dime.

    Transporting staff and supplies to the island and maintaining them on-base is enormously expensive. The government paid an estimated $16,500 per day, per detainee at Guantánamo, to hold those accused of terrorism, according to a 2025 Washington Post analysis of Department of Defense data. (The average cost to detain immigrants in ICE facilities in the U.S. is $157 a day.)

    Even so, the funding has skyrocketed: Congress granted ICE a record $78 billion for fiscal year 2026, a staggering increase from $9.9 billion in 2024 and $6.5 billion nearly a decade ago.

    Last year, the Trump administration also diverted more than $2 billion from the national defense budget to immigration operations, according to a report from congressional Democrats. About $60 million of it went to Guantánamo.

    “Detaining noncitizens at Guantánamo is far more costly and logistically burdensome than holding them in ICE detention facilities within the United States,” wrote Deborah Fleischaker, a former assistant director at ICE, in a declaration submitted as part of a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union early last year. In December, a federal judge rejected the Trump administration’s request to dismiss a separate ACLU case questioning the legality of detaining immigrants outside the U.S.

    Anne Schuchat, who served with the PHS for 30 years before retiring in 2018, said PHS deployments to detention centers may cost the nation in terms of security, too. “A key concern has always been to have enough of these officers available for public health emergencies,” she said.

    Andrew Nixon, an HHS spokesperson, said the immigration deployments don’t affect the public health service’s potential response to other emergencies.

    In the past, PHS officers have stood up medical shelters during hurricanes in Louisiana and Texas, rolled out COVID testing in the earliest months of the pandemic, and provided crisis support after the deadly shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School and the Boston Marathon bombing.

    “It’s important for the public to be aware of how many government resources are being used so that the current administration can carry out this one agenda,” said Stewart, one of the nurses who resigned. “This one thing that’s probably turning us into the types of countries we have fought wars against.”

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.

  • Letters to the Editor | Feb. 15, 2026

    Letters to the Editor | Feb. 15, 2026

    Seditious behavior?

    Donald Trump has accused six Democratic officials of sedition for saying U.S. service members should refuse to obey illegal orders. He ordered his prosecutors to pursue criminal charges against them, but the grand jury to which Trump’s officials presented the claim thankfully refused to return an indictment. All of this begs the obvious question that no one has posed to Trump: Does he believe members of the U.S. military should carry out orders that are patently illegal? There are legal safeguards in place to protect members of the military who refuse to carry out such orders. How does Trump circumvent them? The Nuremberg trials established as a matter of international law that “I was just following orders” is not a legally valid defense. Why is no one holding Trump’s feet to this fire?

    Ben Zuckerman, Philadelphia

    Lead with love

    The Bible, Torah, Quran, and other sacred texts all call us to care for our neighbor, yet this founding tenet of our various and mutual faiths has been twisted throughout our history as humans. You, as I, may have once considered that America could be different. Though we have gone terribly astray within our 250 years from the intentions of our Creator, we have also struggled to become a people more worthy of our aspirations. Yet, within this one year, we witness a vicious tearing asunder of the justice and fellowship we have striven to achieve.

    This is the very moment we must rededicate ourselves to one another. To seek the truths of our lives, knowing we are all connected. That we need one another. Let us shine the light of our lives in all the dark places we have allowed to grow within and around us. Taking our courage in new and daring directions, not least of which is the voting booth.

    Marilyn Frazier, Ambler

    The apprentice

    Our company has made a terrible error. We have given a uniquely powerful position to an employee who has proven to be untrustworthy, even dangerous. He has intentionally ignored or altered fundamental policies of our organization. He actively avoids accountability and changes the rules to his benefit. His words and actions sow division among us and soil our reputation here and abroad. He has shared proprietary information with our competitors. He expresses bigotry against people of color, women, and minority groups. His reports are replete with lies and exaggerations to the point where he cannot be trusted. He has enriched himself, his family, friends, and business associates at our expense. Many of us tolerated his behavior, thinking he could change, but ignoring it has only emboldened him and weakened us. To placate him is to destroy the 250-year-old organization we have worked so hard to build and sustain. Our situation has become intolerable. It is time to fire him, now, before it is too late.

    Carol A. Stein, Dresher

    Join the conversation: Send letters to letters@inquirer.com. Limit length to 150 words and include home address and day and evening phone number. Letters run in The Inquirer six days a week on the editorial pages and online.

  • Dear Abby | Girlfriend taking new romance as slow as possible

    DEAR ABBY: I have been dating “Rita” for four months. We peck on the lips, hug and hold hands, but we have had only one real kiss so far. Rita was first married for 22 years to an emotionally abusive man and then remarried to a manipulative one. She said we were going too fast and she wanted to slow down. I understood and have exerted no pressure on her.

    Rita has canceled dates for various reasons and gone silent for a day here and there. She says she’s not talking to anyone else, and neither am I. I have told her she is worth the wait. I have fallen hard for her and have serious intentions about her.

    Rita says she has strong feelings for me and that I treat her better than any man she has ever been involved with, but she doesn’t know how to handle the feelings. How long should I give her to figure out what she wants this relationship to be?

    I’m not worried about sex or anything like that, but four months without even calling us “dating” or “girlfriend and boyfriend” has me worried that I am, for a lack of a better description, wasting my time with her. What would you advise me to do?

    — TAKING IT SLOW IN VIRGINIA

    DEAR TAKING IT SLOW: Continue allowing your relationship with Rita to develop slowly. The woman has had two unsuccessful marriages, so it’s no wonder she’s slow to commit. If, after a year (eight months from now), Rita still feels uncomfortable calling you “boyfriend” or “companion,” revisit the conversation and decide then if you have invested enough time.

    ** ** **

    DEAR ABBY: After reading so many horrible letters sent to you from people about their mothers-in-law, I feel compelled to write to you about mine. I met her 43 years ago when I was dating her oldest son (now my husband). From the moment we met, she treated me with caring, acceptance and love. She and my father-in-law raised five amazing children, and they treated their children’s spouses as if we were their own. She devoted her entire life to caring for and nurturing her husband, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

    Unfortunately, we just lost this beautiful woman at the age of 89 to a long and difficult battle with Parkinson’s and dementia. We watched her “sparkle” slowly fade away, but we will carry her amazing legacy with us always. I hope I can be half the MIL to my children’s spouses that she was to me.

    I also hope that all those who aren’t as lucky as I was can find some common ground with their mothers-in-law — especially if there are children involved. I LOVE YOU, MOM!

    — FORTUNATE IN NEW YORK

    DEAR FORTUNATE: Thank you for sharing this beautiful tribute to a woman who made such a positive difference in the lives of those she touched. Not only were you fortunate to be a member of such a warm and loving family, but she was also lucky to have a daughter-in-law like you.

  • Horoscopes: Sunday, Feb. 15, 2026

    ARIES (March 21-April 19). The way you live your day-to-day is admirable. How about a little credit? Negativity bias makes it easy to note what you did wrong, but why? Thousands of things are going right now because of you.

    TAURUS (April 20-May 20). Love sends you on a mission. Your heart asks, your mind finds the way. Of course, there is no journey without things like feet, wheels and the like. Money helps, too. Love communicates itself practically.

    GEMINI (May 21-June 21). Instead of talking yourself out of things, you just choose. You step up, and the doubts quiet down. People notice the confidence and assume you know what you’re doing. You can safely assume it, too.

    CANCER (June 22-July 22). Something’s been bugging you, and you’ll finally figure out what. It boils down to a bad transaction. You didn’t know the value of what you had, and you gave too much away. You’ll get a do-over and get it right.

    LEO (July 23-Aug. 22). It couldn’t work as things were. Time has passed, so now the question is simple: What has changed, and is it enough to change the outcome? Because as alluring as nostalgia may be, it’s more interesting to have an emotional life that progresses.

    VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). The ice cream parlor of life has an abundance of flavors, but you keep coming back to your favorite scoops time and again because it’s so nice to have predictable, dependable sweetness. Taste is self-knowledge.

    LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 23). Relationships are central to your mood. When your relationships are in good working order, you feel grounded. Since sweet exchanges lift you and friction brings the vibes down, you’re sure to initiate the sweetness and stay happy.

    SCORPIO (Oct. 24-Nov. 21). You won’t have to fight for anything. What’s yours will be freely given or returned to you. Argument and persuasion are unnecessary uses of your energy today as well. You’ll simply stand in your own truth, and everything will work out.

    SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21). You have the gift of gab today, which is actually a gift that has more to do with listening well and choosing topics people enjoy than it is a talent for talking. Conversation will challenge your assumptions and expand your sense of what could be.

    CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19). Instead of defaulting to the usual tokens of appreciation, consider this: Taking the time to understand how someone thinks can mean more than anything you could buy. It’s a deeper and rarer kind of care.

    AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18). You’ve got a burning drive, and you make time for your passions. Developing your talent teaches you that your abilities are more substantial than you thought. You’re rising to the next league.

    PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20). Letting go of a problem is not the same as solving it, but the effect on your life will be the same. Even if you just leave the problem for another day so you can feel unfettered today, you’ll take full advantage of the subsequent levity. Viva compartmentalization!

    TODAY’S BIRTHDAY (Feb. 15). Welcome to your Year of Vivid Horizons — not because they are wide open and cloudless but because the clouds reflect vibrant colors and a life that moves into shapes unexpected and lovely. Travel, study and serendipitous encounters keep this vision a bit surreal and ever joyful. More highlights: Romantic sparks ignite, you’re recognized for your contributions, and you receive the money you need to rocket your dream. Gemini and Virgo adore you. Your lucky numbers are: 5, 21, 36, 14 and 9.

  • All-Star reliever Elroy Face, 97, who saved 3 games for Pirates in 1960 World Series, has died

    All-Star reliever Elroy Face, 97, who saved 3 games for Pirates in 1960 World Series, has died

    PITTSBURGH — Elroy Face, an All-Star reliever for the Pittsburgh Pirates who saved three games in the 1960 World Series to help them upset the New York Yankees, has died. He was 97.

    In a news release Thursday, the Pirates announced they confirmed Mr. Face’s death. Team historian Jim Trdinich said the club was contacted by Mr. Face’s son, Elroy Jr., and informed the former pitcher died earlier in the day at an independent senior living facility outside Pittsburgh in North Versailles, Pa.

    No cause of death was provided. Mr. Face was eight days shy of his 98th birthday.

    “It is with heavy hearts and deep sadness that we mourn the passing of Pirates Hall of Famer Elroy Face, a beloved member of the Pirates family,” team chairperson Bob Nutting said in a statement.

    “Elroy was a pioneer of the modern relief pitcher — the ‘Baron of the Bullpen’ — and he played a critical role in our 1960 World Series championship.”

    Selected to six All-Star teams, Mr. Face went 104-95 with a 3.48 ERA in 16 major league seasons with Pittsburgh (1953-68), Detroit (1968), and Montreal (1969). He pitched in 848 games, starting only 27, and compiled 191 career saves — although saves didn’t become an official statistic until 1969.

    The 5-foot-8 right-hander holds the National League record for wins in relief with 96 and the major league mark for relief wins in one season after going 18-1 with a 2.70 ERA in 1959.

    He topped the National League with 68 appearances and 61 games finished in 1960, when the underdog Pirates stunned Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, and the mighty Yankees on Bill Mazeroski’s famous home run that won Game 7 of the World Series at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh.

    Mr. Face made four relief appearances in the Series, posting a 5.23 ERA in 10⅓ innings. He closed out Pirates wins in Games 1, 4, and 5.

    Inducted into the Pirates Hall of Fame in 2023, he is the club’s career leader in appearances with 802. And the team noted that if saves had been an official stat before 1969, he also would hold that franchise record with 188.

    Mr. Face was born in Stephentown, N.Y., on Feb. 20, 1928. He is survived by his three children, Michelle, Valerie, and Elroy Jr., and his sister Jacqueline, the Pirates said.

  • LaMonte McLemore, 90, 5th Dimension singer and Jet photographer, has died

    LaMonte McLemore, 90, 5th Dimension singer and Jet photographer, has died

    Touring the world with the 5th Dimension, LaMonte McLemore liked to say he had a microphone in one hand and his camera in the other.

    Mr. McLemore, who died Feb. 3 at age 90, was best known as a founding member of the 5th Dimension, the genre-blending vocal group behind cheery, chart-topping hits like 1969’s “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In,” a medley from the rock musical Hair. In an era of political violence and racial unrest, he and his fellow singers honed a fizzy style they called “champagne soul,” reaching a post-hippie audience — “This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius,” they sang — while fusing jazz, pop, and R&B.

    Between 1967 and 1973, the group won six Grammy Awards, landed 20 songs on the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100, and performed in Las Vegas with Frank Sinatra and at the White House for President Richard M. Nixon. Mr. McLemore was a key part of that run, singing bass on hits like “One Less Bell to Answer” and “(Last Night) I Didn’t Get to Sleep at All,” in addition to serving as an occasional emcee, introducing his bandmates onstage by their zodiac sign.

    He was the only Virgo of the bunch.

    “LaMonte would be the first to tell you he may not have been our group’s strongest lead singer,” his former bandmates Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. said in a statement. Yet it was Mr. McLemore “who brought us all together,” they said, adding that it was also Mr. McLemore who helped keep the group whole for 10 years, persuading the singers to postpone solo careers that ultimately led the original lineup to split apart in 1975.

    “Every time you hear a 5th Dimension harmony, every time you hear an Original 5th Dimension melody, pause and give thanks for our beloved friend,” McCoo and Davis said. “Without his grace, the egos of everyone else might have kept that dream from ever coming true.”

    Mr. McLemore, a onetime medical photographer for the Navy, toured with the 5th Dimension even as he pursued his other vocation, photography. He took pictures of fellow musicians including Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder; contributed to Harper’s Bazaar, where he was said to be the first Black photographer the magazine ever hired; and freelanced for publications including Ebony, Playboy, and People.

    For more than four decades, his photos were also a mainstay of Jet magazine, which once reached more than 1 million print subscribers each week. Mr. McLemore photographed more than 500 women — most of them nonprofessional models — for the publication’s “Beauty of the Week” feature, a reader favorite designed to showcase Black style and beauty from around the world.

    “LaMonte had a good eye. He was a sure shot,” said Sylvia Flanagan, a former Jet senior editor who worked with Mr. McLemore for 35 years. “And I knew that if LaMonte was shooting it, it was going to be perfect.”

    That was partly because Mr. McLemore was able to put his subjects at ease, Flanagan said. It was also because Mr. McLemore knew the assignment: “If a person was more voluptuous on the top, not so much on the bottom, LaMonte would put them in water. Because that magnifies everything.”

    Jet’s “Beauty of the Week” subjects were everyday women — college students, nurses, postal workers — confidently posing in a swimsuit or stockings. A brief caption identified them by name, noting their profession and hobbies along with their measurements.

    “They looked like someone whom you might catch a glimpse of at the Jersey Shore one day,” Jennifer Wilson wrote in the New Yorker in 2024, in an essay that praised the column for having “democratized the thirst trap.” “’Hey, did I see you in Jet?’ was a pickup line someone once tried on my aunt.”

    According to Flanagan, some of Mr. McLemore’s subjects were women he encountered while on tour with the 5th Dimension. Others were more personal: Mr. McLemore photographed his daughter, Ciara McLemore, 23 years after he photographed her mother, Lisa Starnes, wearing the same leopard-print swimsuit.

    Many of his Jet photographs were collected in a 2024 book, Black Is Beautiful, which he prepared with Washington gallerist Chris Murray. Artist Mickalene Thomas, who cited Mr. McLemore as an inspiration, wrote in an introductory essay that the pictures “served as a radical depiction of the Black female body as both effortlessly beautiful and exceedingly powerful.” Mr. McLemore’s images also “provided a much-needed space for Black women to see themselves represented as desirable,” she wrote.

    “To me, women are the miracle of life,” Mr. McLemore told Ebony in a 1989 interview. “As mysterious as they are, I got tired of trying to figure out the mystery. It’s better enjoyed than understood.”

    ‘A rare mixture’

    The first of four children, Herman LaMonte McLemore was born in St. Louis on Sept. 17, 1935. His first love was baseball, although he sang doo-wop ever since he was a boy, harmonizing on street corners with friends.

    When Mr. McLemore was 5, his father, a janitor and sometime musician, left the family. He was raised by his mother and maternal grandmother, who taught him a lesson that Mr. McLemore adopted as his motto: “We are only in this world to help one another.”

    After graduating from high school, Mr. McLemore enlisted in the Navy, buying his first 35 mm camera while stationed in Alaska. He went on to play minor league baseball, pitching in the Los Angeles Dodgers’ farm system before breaking his arm in a car crash, he said.

    In the offseason, he took pictures, working as a freelance photographer whenever he could. His assignments took him to the Miss Bronze California beauty pageant, where he photographed two contestants, McCoo and Florence LaRue, who became founding members of the 5th Dimension.

    Formed in 1965, the group was originally known as the Versatiles, and also included two of Mr. McLemore’s friends from St. Louis, Billy Davis Jr. and Ron “Sweets” Townson.

    “I pulled them together as friends,” Mr. McLemore told the Stuart News of Florida in 2004. “Ron happened to sing opera, Billy sang rock and roll, me and Marilyn were singing jazz and Florence was singing pop. It was just a rare mixture, but it blended.”

    The group had success almost immediately, scoring their first Top 40 hit with a cover of the Mamas & the Papas’ “Go Where You Wanna Go.” Later in 1967, they released their first million-selling record, “Up — Up and Away,” written by Jimmy Webb, a rising songwriter and pianist who backed them in the studio. The song’s title, usually rendered with a comma instead of a dash, became a national catchphrase, and the group went on to find repeated success with Webb and songwriter Laura Nyro, who crafted their hits “Stoned Soul Picnic” and “Wedding Bell Blues,” which went to No. 1.

    Their music resonated even behind the Iron Curtain. When the 5th Dimension embarked on a State Department cultural tour in 1973, performing in Eastern Europe and Turkey, they stopped to chat with admiring fans at embassies and elementary schools. “A lot of soul in Czechoslovakia,” Mr. McLemore observed on his return.

    His death — at his home in Henderson, Nev., a few years after suffering a stroke — was confirmed by Murray and by Robert-Allan Arno, who co-wrote Mr. McLemore’s memoir, From Hobo Flats to the 5th Dimension.

    In addition to his daughter, Ciara, survivors include his wife, the former Mieko Tone, whom he married in 1995; a son, Darin; a sister; and three grandchildren.

    Mr. McLemore and the 5th Dimension received renewed attention in 2021, when they were featured in Summer of Soul (… Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), Questlove’s Oscar-winning documentary about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival.

    Intended to promote Black pride and unity, the concert series featured acts including Nina Simone and Sly & the Family Stone. The 5th Dimension headlined the series’s first weekend, though, as the film noted, the singers had a mixed reputation among Black audiences. Hearing echoes of pop and folk rock acts like the Mamas & the Papas, some listeners mistakenly assumed that Mr. McLemore and his bandmates were white.

    Ebony magazine summed up the confusion in a 1967 cover story headlined, “The Fifth Dimension: White sound in a black group.”

    “Black people, when we first started … they didn’t understand what we were doing at all,” Mr. McLemore told an interviewer in 2017. He and his fellow singers were put off — “We said, ‘How can you color a sound? This is our sound. And it’s different and we ain’t gonna change it’” — but were gratified when the mood began to shift, just as the group notched its first No. 1 hit with “Aquarius.”

    “All of a sudden,” he said, “all the Black people came up and said, ‘We were with y’all all along!’”

  • Iran’s crown prince says survival of Tehran government ‘sends a clear signal to every bully’

    Iran’s crown prince says survival of Tehran government ‘sends a clear signal to every bully’

    MUNICH — Some 200,000 people demonstrated Saturday against Iran’s government on the sidelines of a gathering of world leaders in Germany, police said, answering a call from Iran‘s exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi for cranked-up international pressure on Tehran.

    Banging drums and chanting for regime change, the giant and boisterous rally in Munich was part of what Pahlavi described as a “global day of action” to support Iranians in the wake of deadly nationwide protests. He also called for demonstrations in Los Angeles and Toronto. The police estimate of 200,000 protesters in Munich was reported by German news agency dpa and was higher than organizers had expected.

    “Change, change, regime change” the huge crowd chanted, waving green-white-and-red flags with lion and sun emblems. Iran used that flag before its 1979 Islamic Revolution that toppled the Pahlavi dynasty.

    At a news conference on the sidelines of a security conference in Munich, Pahlavi warned of more deaths in Iran if “democracies stand by and watch” following Iran’s deadly crackdown on protesters last month.

    “We gather at an hour of profound peril to ask: Will the world stand with the people of Iran?” he asked.

    He added that the survival of Iran’s government “sends a clear signal to every bully: Kill enough people and you stay in power.”

    At the Munich rally, demonstrators sported “Make Iran Great Again” red caps, mimicking the MAGA caps worn by U.S. President Donald Trump‘s supporters. Many waved placards showing Pahlavi, some that called him a king. The son of Iran’s deposed shah has been in exile for nearly 50 years but is trying to position himself as a player in Iran’s future.

    The crowd chanted “Pahlavi for Iran” and “democracy for Iran” as drums and cymbals sounded.

    “We have huge hopes and (are) looking forward that the regime is going to change hopefully,” said Daniyal Mohtashamian, a demonstrator who traveled from Zurich, Switzerland, to speak for protesters inside Iran who faced repression.

    “There is an internet blackout and their voices are not going outside of Iran,” he said.

    About 500 protesters also rallied outside the presidential palace in Nicosia, Cyprus, with many holding up banners with slogans against Iran’s government and in favor of Pahlavi.

    On Saturday night in Iran’s capital, Tehran, witnesses said they heard people chanting against the country’s theocracy. The cries included “death to the dictator” and “long live the shah.” The protest came after calls from Pahlavi for people to chant against the government from their homes over the weekend.

    Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi criticized the Munich conference, saying it was “sad to see the usually serious Munich Security Conference turned into the ‘Munich Circus’ when it comes to Iran.”

    The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency says at least 7,005 people were killed in last month’s protests, including 214 government forces. It has been accurate in counting deaths during previous rounds of unrest in Iran and relies on a network of activists inside Iran to verify deaths.

    Iran’s government offered its only death toll on Jan. 21, saying 3,117 people were killed. Iran’s theocracy in the past has undercounted or not reported fatalities from past unrest.

    The Associated Press has been unable to independently assess the death toll, given authorities have disrupted internet access and international calls in Iran.

    Iranian leaders are facing renewed pressure from Trump, who has threatened U.S. military action. Trump wants Iran to further scale back its nuclear program. He suggested Friday that regime change in Iran “would be the best thing that could happen.”

    Iran was also the focus of protests in Munich on Friday, the opening day of an annual security conference in the city gathering European leaders and global security figures. Supporters of the Iranian opposition group People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran, also known as the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, demonstrated.

  • L.A. Olympics leader Wasserman will sell talent agency in wake of Epstein emails discovery

    L.A. Olympics leader Wasserman will sell talent agency in wake of Epstein emails discovery

    LOS ANGELES — Casey Wasserman, the chairperson of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics organizing committee, is selling his eponymous talent agency in the wake of the release of emails between himself and Ghislaine Maxwell.

    Wasserman’s emails with Maxwell were revealed by his appearance in recently released government files on Jeffrey Epstein. Wasserman, whose agency represents some of the top pop music artists in the world, has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

    The recently released documents revealed that in 2003 he swapped flirtatious emails with Maxwell, who would years later be accused of helping Epstein recruit and sexually abuse his victims. Wasserman said in a Friday evening memo to his staff that he has begun the process of selling the company, according to a company spokesperson who provided the memo to the Associated Press.

    Wasserman’s memo to staff said that he felt he had become a distraction to the company’s work.

    “During this time, Mike Watts will assume day-to-day control of the business while I devote my full attention to delivering Los Angeles an Olympic Games in 2028 that is worthy of this outstanding city,” the memo stated.

    The memo arrived days after the LA28 board’s executive committee met to discuss Wasserman’s appearance in the Epstein files. The committee said it and an outside legal firm conducted a review of Wasserman’s interactions with Epstein and Maxwell with Wasserman’s full cooperation.

    The committee said in a statement: “We found Mr. Wasserman’s relationship with Epstein and Maxwell did not go beyond what has already been publicly documented.” The statement also said Wasserman “should continue to lead LA28 and deliver a safe and successful games.”

    Wasserman has said previously that he flew on a humanitarian mission to Africa on Epstein’s private plane at the invitation of the Clinton Foundation in 2002. Exchanges between Wasserman and Maxwell in the files include Wasserman telling Maxwell: “I think of you all the time. So, what do I have to do to see you in a tight leather outfit?”

    His agency, also called Wasserman, has lost clients over the Maxwell emails. Singer Chappell Roan and retired U.S. women’s soccer legend Abby Wambach are among them.

    Wasserman said in his memo to staff that his interactions with Maxwell and Epstein were limited and he regrets the emails.

    “It was years before their criminal conduct came to light, and, in its entirety, consisted of one humanitarian trip to Africa and a handful of emails that I deeply regret sending. And I’m heartbroken that my brief contact with them 23 years ago has caused you, this company, and its clients so much hardship over the past days and weeks,” the memo said.

  • Rubio says U.S., Europe ‘belong together,’ despite rifts over Trump policies

    Rubio says U.S., Europe ‘belong together,’ despite rifts over Trump policies

    MUNICH — Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared that the United States and Europe “belong together” in a speech Saturday aimed at unifying the Western alliance, while condemning hallmarks of globalization, open borders, unfettered free trade, “deindustrialization,” and mass migration.

    Rubio’s message, in a keynote address at the annual Munich Security Conference, received applause from a demoralized audience of European leaders who are deeply distressed about divisions with the United States stoked by President Donald Trump’s punitive tariffs, territorial ambitions for Greenland, and disagreements over how to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.

    “We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together,” Rubio said.

    But even as he appealed to those ties, Rubio promoted several Trump administration positions that are deeply controversial among the United States’ closest traditional allies. He showed disdain for policies to reduce carbon emissions, staunchly criticized the United Nations — which many in Europe view as critical to protecting smaller states’ sovereignty — and lauded unilateral U.S. military action in Latin America and the Middle East.

    “On the most pressing matters before us, [the U.N.] has no answers and has played virtually no role,” Rubio said.

    Compared, however, to Vice President JD Vance’s blistering speech in Munich last year, which left the audience stunned by his seeming contempt for Europe, Rubio’s appeal to strengthen the alliance was received as more constructive.

    “Our home may be in the Western Hemisphere, but we will always be a child of Europe,” Rubio said.

    The moderator of the event, Wolfgang Ischinger, called the remarks a “sigh of relief” and a message of “reassurance” and “partnership.”

    Europe’s top leaders descended on the Bavarian capital this weekend, proclaiming the need to overhaul the relationship with the U.S. that has spurred economic prosperity and guaranteed security since World War II.

    European leaders promised to chart their own course and forge a version of the Western alliance in which they depend less on the United States.

    “In today’s fractured world, Europe must become more independent — there is no other choice,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a speech early Saturday, to applause.

    As European and American politicians issue post-mortems for the world order in Munich, officials from each side of the Atlantic said it was high time for Europe to pay its own way for security. On that point, European and U.S. leaders appeared in sync.

    For the Europeans, the call to take charge of the continent’s defense is about more than addressing U.S. demands: It could also provide the ability to stand up to Washington and an administration with which they concede they do not share some interests.

    Rubio’s remarks about Europe were softer than Vance’s criticism of the suppression of far-right parties — and, in his characterization, free speech — or Trump’s threats to seize Greenland from NATO ally Denmark.

    But European leaders know well that a crisis with the administration could still erupt on an array of issues, including Greenland, negotiations with Russia over Ukraine, and regulation of hate speech and Big Tech.

    The leaders of Europe’s political and economic powerhouses, France and Germany, stressed that a more powerful Europe could shield itself from the whims of Washington and Moscow, and they delivered a stern rebuke of Trump’s foreign policy gyrations including on trade and climate.

    French President Emmanuel Macron, speaking at the conference Friday night, said Europe had been unjustly “vilified” as a continent of unfettered immigration and repression — an apparent reference to Vance’s speech and to a recent U.S. National Security Strategy that said Europe was facing “civilizational erasure.”

    “Everyone should take their cue from us, instead of criticizing us or trying to divide us,” Macron said. He called for “derisking vis-à-vis all the big powers,” not just in defense, but also in the economy and technology.

    “Europe is rearming, but we must now go beyond,” he added. “Europe has to learn to become a geopolitical power.”

    German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, in his welcoming remarks on Friday, said: “The culture wars of MAGA in the U.S. are not ours.”

    Merz also said that the U.S. claim to global leadership was being “challenged” in an era of great power rivalry, including rising Chinese influence, and he warned that Washington will need allies.

    “Even the United States will not be powerful enough to go it alone,” he said. “Dear friends, being a part of NATO is not only Europe’s competitive advantage. It is also the United States’ competitive advantage.”

    British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that “we shouldn’t get in the warm bath of complacency. He said the U.K. must reforge closer ties with Europe to help the continent “stand on our own two feet” in its own defense, and said there needs to be investment that “moves us from overdependence to interdependence.”

    Hanno Pevkur, the defense minister of EU and NATO member Estonia, said it was “quite a bold statement to say that America is ‘a child of Europe’.”

    “It was a good speech, needed here today, but that doesn’t mean that we can rest on pillows now,” he told The Associated Press. “So still a lot of work has to be done.”

    A meeting on Greenland

    Rubio didn’t mention Greenland. After last month’s escalation over Trump’s designs on the Arctic island, the U.S., Denmark, and Greenland started technical talks on an Arctic security deal.

    The Secretary of State met briefly in Munich on Friday with the Danish and Greenlandic leaders, a meeting Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen described as constructive.

    But Frederiksen suggested Saturday that although the dispute has cooled, she remains wary. Asked whether the crisis has passed, she replied: “No, unfortunately not. I think the desire from the U.S. president is exactly the same. He is very serious about this theme.”

    Asked whether she can put a price on Greenland, she responded “of course not,” adding that “we have to respect sovereign states … and we have to respect people’s right for self-determination. And the Greenlandic people have been very clear, they don’t want to become Americans.”