Former President Joe Biden diagnosed with 'aggressive form' of prostate cancer | The Excerpt
On Monday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: Former President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with prostate cancer. President Donald Trump's tax bill passed in a key House committee vote. Paste BN White House Reporter Davis Winkie talks about an understaffed nuclear agency hit by DOGE and safety worries. Russia Sunday launched its largest drone attack on Ukraine since the start of the war, before President Donald Trump is set to discuss a proposed ceasefire with Russian President Vladimir Putin Monday. Officials are investigating what caused a Mexican navy ship to veer off course and strike the Brooklyn Bridge. Paste BN Supreme Court Correspondent Maureen Groppe takes a look at some of the justices' upcoming decisions after adjourning for the summer.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Monday, May 19th, 2025. This is The Excerpt. Today, what we know about former President Joe Biden's cancer diagnosis, plus, what to expect from some upcoming Supreme Court decisions, and we discuss concerns about an understaffed nuclear agency.
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Former President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has spread to the bone, according to a spokesperson yesterday. The 82-year-old was diagnosed on Friday after experiencing urinary symptoms and a nodule was discovered on his prostate, according to the statement. While the diagnosis indicates the former President has one of the worst forms of the disease, it appears to be hormone-sensitive, which allows for effective management, the spokesperson said.
Support for Biden quickly poured in from across the political world. President Donald Trump said in a statement with First Lady Melania Trump, that they were saddened to hear about the diagnosis; writing, "We extend our warmest and best wishes to Jill and the family, and we wish Joe a fast and successful recovery." Former President Barack Obama wrote in a statement on X that nobody has done more to find breakthrough treatments for cancer in all its forms than Joe, and he's certain he will fight this challenge with his trademark resolve and grace.
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President Donald Trump's tax bill won approval from a key congressional committee yesterday to advance toward possible passage in the House later this week. The bill had been stalled for days by Republican infighting over spending cuts. The move was a big win for Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson after hardline Republican Conservatives last week blocked the bill from clearing the House Budget Committee over a dispute involving spending cuts to the Medicaid healthcare program for lower-income Americans and the repeal of green energy tax cuts. Nonpartisan analysts say the bill would add 3-$5 trillion to the nation's $36.2 trillion in debt over the next decade. Moody cited the rising debt for its decision last week to downgrade the US credit rating.
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The National Nuclear Security Administration, or NNSA, who has fewer than 1,900 federal employees oversee the more than 60,000 contractors who build and maintain the US nuclear arsenal, has seen disruptions amid the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency cuts. I spoke with Paste BN White House reporter Davis Winkie to learn more about some of the potential consequences.
Davis, thanks so much for hopping on today.
Davis Winkie:
It's great to be back.
Taylor Wilson:
So, now President Donald Trump's administration has thrown the NNSA into chaos, as you write, Davis. How so, and what have we really seen over the past few months amid these cuts?
Davis Winkie:
At the NNSA in particular, in January and February, it got kind of weird. The NNSA is structured as a 2,000 federal employee agency, but there's contractors that actually run these weapons labs. So these 2,000 federal employees have to oversee 60,000 or more contractors. So there's huge programmatic oversight concerns with can these feds actually manage these incredibly important, incredibly expensive contracts that require a lot of technical expertise. And for decades, there have been issues with planning proper succession when employees leave with making sure that homegrown talent is able to go into this pipeline.
And DOGE enters the picture in two main ways. The first is the deferred resignation program they offered government-wide, which was essentially if you accepted a resignation, they would pay you through September. And there were a lot of people who took this offer in the NNSA. More than 100 employees, including some who were in really key positions, were the kind of people that typically you would want to have years of overlap between them and their successors to ensure there's proper on-the-job training. Then on top of that, there was the mass layoffs of probationary employees that happened across the government in late January and February.
At the NNSA, almost 20% of the agency's workforce was in a probationary status, because the agency has had to grow a lot recently in order to keep up with its role in a $1.7 trillion modernization plan for our nation's nuclear arsenal. The agency had made a ton of progress in 2024, record hiring levels, and all these employees that were hired or promoted were in probationary status. So these employees were fired on the night of February 13th, and then almost all of them, when the government realized the irreplaceable people they had just axed, they asked them to come back. But the destabilizing and chilling effect on that workforce is still there today, according to the employees that my colleague Cybele and I spoke to while we reported this story. And that has huge implications for the way the agency functions moving forward.
Taylor Wilson:
On that point, just in terms of really what's at stake here, we're talking about nuclear work, Davis; high stakes. What do experts say the big deal is here amid these cuts?
Davis Winkie:
We spoke with several experts for this piece, most notably people associated with nuclear safety, and also people associated with the NNSA's weapons programs that include the former deputy admin of the agency. And what we also found through reviewing decades of watchdog reports, safety documents, et cetera, is that the agency has always been at high risk of having issues like cost overruns on modernization programs, and delays associated with that as well. These experts think that the destabilization of the workforce and a hiring freeze that is not letting them replace the people who did leave is going to combine to further delay some of these really expensive and, some would argue, really important components of the nuclear modernization program, and that could run the tab for the taxpayers up by additional billions of dollars.
There's also the safety side of things as well. One of the NNSA's projects is making new plutonium pits, which are the explosive cores at the heart of a modern nuclear weapon. They are retrofitting an old facility at Los Alamos in New Mexico, where the Manhattan Project once was, to produce these plutonium pits, and it is an old facility that was not designed for mass scale production of these components. So there's concerns about whether safety, as they're really trying to ramp this up, combined with a sudden deficit in safety oversight staffing could have negative impacts from a safety perspective. And the former head of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, she told us that it's a recipe for disaster.
Taylor Wilson:
So in terms of the current administration here, we've heard various versions of the same talking point amid other cuts across the government. What do we hear from the Trump administration about some of these concerns?
Davis Winkie:
We heard back from an NNSA spokesperson that we queried for this story, who said essentially that they are going to hold and not make more cuts at this time. That distinguishes the NNSA from other government agencies which are likely going to face more permanent layoffs and restructuring. With that said, there is still a blanket hiring freeze in place, say for a few critical positions, which means that spots are sitting vacant at this point.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. This was outstanding journalism from you as always, Davis. Listeners can go check out the full version of this story with a link in today's show notes. Davis Winkie covers the White House for Paste BN. Thank you, Davis.
Davis Winkie:
Thanks for having me.
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Taylor Wilson:
Russia yesterday launched its largest drone attack on Ukraine since the start of the war, before President Donald Trump is due to discuss a proposed ceasefire with Russia's Vladimir Putin later today. Meanwhile, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Rome yesterday on the sidelines of Pope Leo's inauguration. Zelenskyy said the meeting was good and released pictures of Ukrainian and US officials sitting outside at a roundtable and smiling. Ukrainian media said the meeting lasted 40 minutes. Zelenskyy is working to improve ties with Washington after a disastrous visit in February. For his part, Trump has shifted US rhetoric toward accepting some of Russia's narrative about the war that Putin launched in 2022.
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Officials are investigating what caused the Mexican Navy ship to veer off course and strike the Brooklyn Bridge over the weekend, killing two sailors and injuring more than a dozen others on board. Videos shared widely online showed the training vessel sailing toward the bridge. The ship's 147-foot masts were damaged upon impact, and Naval cadets dressed in white uniforms could be seen dangling from the ship's crossbeams. The National Transportation Safety Board launched a Go Team to the site, and Mexico's Navy is also investigating the cause of the crash. New York City Mayor Eric Adams said the ship lost power just before crashing into the bridge.
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The Supreme Court last week heard its final case before adjourning for the summer, and they still have nearly three dozen decisions to make in the coming weeks. I spoke with Paste BN Supreme Court correspondent Maureen Groppe for a look at what's coming soon.
Hello, Maureen.
Maureen Groppe:
Hello.
Taylor Wilson:
So let's start by talking about the slew of religious rights cases. What will the court be deciding, and how big does it appear issues around, really, freedom of religion are shaking out today?
Maureen Groppe:
So there are three religious rights cases that came before the court this term. One involves a tax break for Catholic charities in Wisconsin. One is about the complaint from parents in Maryland who have religious objections to their children not being able to leave the classroom if the teacher is reading books with LGBTQ characters. And then the biggest case is whether the Catholic Church in Oklahoma can create the nation's first religious charter school.
The court in recent years has been siding with religious rights advocates on cases like these. These cases pose a tension between two parts of the First Amendment. One part says that people have a right to practice their religion, and the other part is about the separation between church and state; to keep government from being too entangled in religion, to not endorse a particular religion, not get involved in a religion. And in recent cases when those two things have been intentioned, the Supreme Court has been siding with those who say what's paramount is their ability to practice their religion. And most people think that that's going to be the way all three of these cases play out, which will make it a major theme of the Supreme Court this term.
Taylor Wilson:
Some of the recent news out of the court centered on President Donald Trump's executive order limiting birthright citizenship. How did those arguments land last week, and what's next as it pertains to issues over Trump's executive authority?
Maureen Groppe:
So the oral arguments, it was a little unclear what the justices are going to do in this case. They weren't asked by the administration to decide whether his executive order is constitutional. And every court that has looked at this so far has said it probably is not. Instead, the administration is arguing that they should be able to mostly enforce their executive order while courts are going through the lengthy process of determining whether in fact it's constitutional. Judges around the country have put this executive order on hold. The Justice Department says it should only be on hold for the particular parties that brought that lawsuit.
So just ideally for them, a handful of named plaintiffs in the case would be protected from this executive order, but it would go in place everywhere else. And there'd be a lot of practical problems with that, which some of the justices talked about during their oral arguments. But on the other hand, they have raised concerns about the ability of one judge to put a President's policy on hold everywhere in the nation during the process of fully litigating it.
So it's not clear if they're going to figure out a way to limit that ability and what that would mean both for the birthright citizenship executive order as well as what it would mean for whether it will be harder to challenge other of Trump's policies.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, shifting gears. Cases over transgender rights have moved through the courts for some time. What are justices considering on these issues, especially, Maureen, relating to Trump administration actions?
Maureen Groppe:
Well, we had one decision on what's called the emergency docket. These are quick appeals that come up to the Supreme Court that they decide without doing the full briefings and oral arguments that the regular cases get. And in that case, the court said that the administration could enforce its ban on transgender people serving in the military while challenges to that policy are going through the lengthy legal process.
On the what you call the regular docket, one of the biggest decisions that we're waiting for is whether Tennessee can ban minors from getting hormone therapy and other gender-affirming care treatments; puberty blockers, hormone therapy. And Tennessee is not the only state that has done this, has said minors shouldn't be able to get this kind of treatment. And it sounded like the Supreme Court is going to side with Tennessee and not with the parents of transgender youths who have challenged the state's law.
But we don't know that for sure, and we also don't know how they're going to decide that case. And how they decide it could affect a number of other transgender rights issues. And the Trump administration, besides banning transgender people from serving in the military, has taken other actions targeting transgender people. And so how the Supreme Court decides this case could have implications for other transgender rights cases.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. All that and more pending decisions coming from the High Court. Maureen Groppe covers the Supreme Court for Paste BN. Thanks, Maureen.
Maureen Groppe:
Thanks for having me.
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Taylor Wilson:
And coming up later today we have a new episode of Forum hosted by Michael McCarter.
Michael McCarter:
Do you think it's time for Elon Musk to fade away from the Trump administration, or do you think he should stay full-time in his role with DOGE? You can hear what listeners and readers like you feel about this. Tune into Forum, publishing today at 4:00 PM Eastern Time on this feed.
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Taylor Wilson:
You can find more opinions on usatoday.com/forum. And thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio. And as always, if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. You can email us at podcasts@usatoday.com. I'm Taylor Wilson. I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from Paste BN.