Politics

For Dyan Cannon, age is more than just a number.

The ‘Heaven Can Wait’ actress, 88, attempted to go inside the White House this week, but as she and her friends documented in a video shared on social media, the Secret Service refused to let her enter because of an age discrepancy on her passport.

Cannon, along with fellow actresses Kym Douglas and Tracey Bregman and TV personality and chef Christine Avanti-Fischer, traveled to Washington, D.C., together recently. The group hosts a new podcast, ‘God’s Table.’ 

They went out to do some sightseeing, but there was a hiccup in their plans.

‘We are lined up for a great tour, and we have these Secret Service guys and all of the federal agents. We can’t get in because someone lied about their age,’ Douglas, who filmed the video, explained.

Cannon laughed throughout the explanation as Bregman and Avanti-Fischer teased her.

‘Listen,’ Cannon said. ‘Years ago, here’s the thing, I lied about my age on my passport.’

‘Who doesn’t, Dyan?’ Douglas joked.

Avanti-Fischer remarked, ‘If we get in, it’s going to be a miracle of God.’

The video was originally shared by Douglas on her Instagram story Thursday, but Cannon reposted it to her own page, writing in her caption, ‘And I’d do it again.’

She added, ‘It’s nobody’s business what the number is they’ve pinned on me ….right girls? Right guys? it’s just a blinkin number… no matter what number they put next to me there’s one thing that never changes …I WUV WU’

Bregman commented on the post, writing, ‘Hilarious. Love you so but seriously, how can I change my age.’

Cannon has been a force in the entertainment industry for decades. She got her start in show business by appearing in various TV shows in the 1950s, and, in 1962, she appeared in her first Broadway show.

Her breakthrough role came in 1969, when she appeared in ‘Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice,’ a role that earned her her first Academy Award nomination.

She was later nominated for the award for best live action short film for 1976’s ‘Number One,’ which she produced. This nod made her the first woman nominated for an Oscar for her work in front of and behind the camera.

Cannon has also had a storied love life, which included marrying legendary actor Cary Grant in 1965. The couple welcomed one daughter, Jennifer, before divorcing in 1968.

She got married a second time in 1985 to real estate investor Stanley Fimberg, but the couple split in 1991. She also had what she once called a ‘love affair’ with Johnny Carson.

Earlier this year, she told People that ‘of course’ she’s still dating.

She told the outlet she was seeing ‘somebody very special,’ then clarified that she was actually seeing ‘several special [people]. … I have friends with benefits, yes.’

Lawmakers could soon have Jeffrey Epstein’s infamous ‘birthday book,’ which could potentially give insight into the disgraced late financier’s social ties. 

Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., who serves as the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, told MSNBC on Friday that Epstein’s estate ‘is actually going to actually now get us that book and a bunch of other documents that they have that’s not actually been reported yet.’ He added that the lawmakers expect to receive the book and the documents on Sept. 8.

Garcia also told MSNBC that ‘many of the victims’ of Epstein would speak to lawmakers on Capitol Hill next week to ‘highlight their stories.’ He did not name the lawmakers or accusers expected to meet.

The release date is confirmed in the subpoena signed by House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky. The specific deadline listed in the subpoena is Sept. 8 at 12 p.m.

‘The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is reviewing the possible mismanagement of the federal government’s investigation of Mr. Jeffrey Epstein and Ms. Ghislaine Maxwell, the circumstances and subsequent investigations of Mr. Epstein’s death, the operation of sex-trafficking rings and ways for the federal government to effectively combat them, and potential violations of ethics rules related to elected officials,’ Comer stated in a cover letter that accompanied the subpoena.

‘Recent reporting indicates the estate of Mr. Epstein has access to documents relevant to the Committee’s investigation, including the alleged ‘birthday book’ prepared for Mr. Epstein by Ms. Maxwell… It is imperative that Congress conduct oversight of the federal government’s enforcement of sex trafficking laws generally and specifically its handling of the investigation and prosecution of Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell,’ Comer added.

READ THE LETTER BELOW. APP USERS CLICK HERE:

House Oversight Democrats released a statement Monday supporting the subpoena for the book and calling on former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida and Trump Labor Secretary Alex Acosta to testify before Congress. He is expected to appear for a closed-door transcribed interview next month.

With a federal probe of the case under way, lawmakers have sought the testimony of several former high-ranking officials, such as former Attorney General Bill Barr. While Barr testified before lawmakers, Democrats, such as Reps. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va., and Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, were not pleased with Republicans’ questions.

Comer, who argued those accusations were baseless, implored Democrats not to politicize a bipartisan investigation. Divisions deepened after Comer said Barr had no knowledge of, nor did he believe there were any implications of wrongdoing on President Donald Trump’s part related to Epstein.

Garcia disagreed. Though he did not attend the deposition, he said in a statement that Barr did not clear Trump.

Fox News Digital’s Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report. 

Demetre Daskalakis, an official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), resigned this week, claiming the Trump administration’s policies ignore science. However, his own leadership during the Biden-era monkeypox response was criticized for putting optics over public health.

Amid the Trump administration’s efforts to push out CDC Director Susan Monarez, a handful of other top CDC officials, including Daskalakis, resigned in protest of the Trump administration’s policies. Daskalakis wrote in his resignation letter that was posted to social media that the health policies put forward by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy do not ‘reflect scientific reality.’ He also accused the Trump administration of attempting to ‘erase transgender populations,’ while also using the term ‘pregnant people’ to describe women who are about to give birth.

But flashback to 2022 and 2023, after the monkeypox virus had spread across several countries and made its way into the U.S., during which Daskalakis was among the Biden administration’s top advisers who spearheaded the national response to the disease outbreak. 

Government communications from that time period, uncovered by watchdog group the Oversight Project, show that officials were aware that the disease was spreading among the gay community. However, those communications, and other records, show the administration appeared to be more concerned with protecting the stigma targeting the gay community, than they were with implementing measures that would provide the best mitigation response.

‘A common theme was public health officials identifying locations where outbreaks occurred, to include bathhouses and saunas,’ according to the Oversight Project. ‘Officials never broached consideration of shutting down these locations. This draws a stark contrast to the public health guidance and shutdowns of gathering places during COVID, to include gyms and skate parks.’

In 2023, after the monkeypox outbreak had taken hold in the U.S., Daskalakis went on national television to let the country know that his team was ‘making sure [they] got the word out in a way that supports people’s joy, as opposed to calling them risky.’

‘You know, one person’s idea of risk, is another person’s idea of a great festival or Friday night, for that matter. So, we have to sort of embrace that with joy and make sure that folks know how to keep themselves safe,’ the Biden monkeypox coordinator added.

Meanwhile, during the outbreak, Daskalkis posted a tweet from gay sex app Grindr that stated ‘Dr. Daskalakis could jab me any day,’ with a sticker of a flattered cat.

In other social media posts from around the same time, Daskalkis can be seen using male models wearing leather bondage straps to make an entrance at an HIV prevention summit. 

While in his role at the White House leading the monkeypox response, Daskalkis also reportedly ran an STD screening operation from an after-hours sex club in New York City. When asked about the operation in an interview, Daskalakis described it as ‘exciting’ and added there was ‘not much sleep time.’ Later in the interview, he added: ‘I’d already kind of been the bathhouse HIV testing doctor.’

Fox News Digital reached out to Daskalakis about the juxtaposition between his criticism of Kennedy’s policies not reflecting ‘scientific reality,’ and his role in the Biden administration’s approach to monkeypox, but did not receive an immediate response.

Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso is ready to go nuclear on Senate Democrats and their blockade of President Donald Trump’s nominees.

Before leaving Washington, D.C., to their respective home states, Senate Republicans were on the verge of a deal with their colleagues across the aisle to hammer out a deal to ram through dozens of Trump’s picks for non-controversial positions.

But those talks fell apart when Trump nuked any further negotiations over funding demands from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. Currently, there are 145 pending nominations on the Senate’s executive calendar, with that number expected to balloon when the upper chamber reopens for business.

Lawmakers are set to return on Tuesday, and Barrasso, R-Wyo., wants to immediately tackle the nomination quandary. He’s engaged in a public pressure campaign, writing an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal directly calling out Schumer.

Meanwhile, he’s facilitated talks among Senate Republicans on the best path forward, and told Fox News Digital in an interview that, at this point, he’s willing to do anything necessary to see the president’s picks confirmed.

‘We need to either get a lot of cooperation from the Democrats, or we’re going to have to roll over them with changes of the rules that we’re going to be able to do in a unilateral way, as well as President Trump making recess appointments,’ he said.

Senate Democrats, under Schumer’s direction, are unlikely to play ball, however.

Schumer, in response to Barrasso’s public jab against him and Senate Democrats, contended in a statement that ‘historically bad nominees deserve a historic level of scrutiny by Senate Democrats.’

‘Anybody nominated by President Trump is, in Schumer’s words, ‘historically bad.’ Why? Because they were nominated by President Trump,’ Barrasso shot back. ‘That is his sole criteria for which these people are being gone after and filibustered, each and every one of them, even those that are coming out of committee, many, many of whom are with bipartisan support.’

Unilaterally changing the rules, or the nuclear option, would allow Republicans to make tweaks to the confirmation process without help from Democrats, but it could also kneecap further negotiations on key items that would require their support to advance beyond the Senate filibuster.

Barrasso was not worried about taking that route, however, and noted that the nominees that he and other Republicans were specifically considering would be ‘sub-Cabinet level positions’ and ambassadors.

Up for discussion are changes to the debate time, what kind of nominee could qualify for a speedier process and whether to give the president runway to make recess appointments, which would require the Senate to go into recess and allow Trump to make appointments on a temporary basis.

‘When you take a look at this right now, it takes a 30-minute roll-call vote to get on cloture, and then two hours of debate time, and then another 30-minute roll-call vote,’ Barrasso said. ‘Well, that’s three hours, and it’s time when you can’t do legislation, you can’t do any of the other things.’

But there is a menu of key items that Congress will have to deal with when they return, particularly the deadline to fund the government by Sept. 30.

Barrasso acknowledged that reality, and noted that it was because of the hefty schedule that he wanted a rules change to be put front and center.

‘There’s not going to be any time to — or there’s going to be limited time, I should say, to actually get people through the nominations process, which is just going to drag on further, and you’ll have more people having hearings and coming out of committees,’ he said.  

‘This backlog is going to worsen this traffic jam at the Schumer toll booth. So, we are going to do something, because this cannot stand.’

America First Legal (AFL) sued the Food and Drug Administration on Friday to obtain Biden-era records related to the government’s internal guidance for the recommended use of puberty blockers for kids.  

The Trump-aligned legal group previously uncovered communications from the former administration through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, which reportedly showed the FDA knew that these drugs increased mental health risk but still recommended approving them for kids.

Following those uncovered communications, AFL followed up with a separate FOIA requesting documents specifically pertaining to the FDA’s internal guidance for the off-label use of these drugs. Despite acknowledging the federal information request, the FDA has not cooperated, and the deadline to produce documents is up.

‘The Biden administration pushed gender-denying treatments on American kids. Now, it’s time to expose what officials really knew,’ AFL counsel Will Scolinos, said. 

Similar to AFL’s current FOIA request, the group was required to engage in litigation to compel the release of the first set of documents. 

But, eventually, documents were released that seemed to show the Biden-era Division of General Endocrinology at the FDA recommended the agency approve puberty blockers for children despite the knowledge that there were negative impacts associated with them, such as increased depression, suicidality and seizure risks.

‘There is definitely a need for these drugs to be approved for gender transition,’ an FDA official from the agency’s endocrinology division stated in an email uncovered by AFL. In the same communications, the FDA official also explicitly states that studies found ‘increased risk of depression and suicidality, as well as increased seizure risk.’

Such findings have been confirmed by other studies as well.

Researchers at the University of Texas sampled 107,583 patients 18 and older who had gender dysphoria, including some who underwent gender surgery, and concluded that ‘gender-sensitive mental health support … to address post-surgical psychological risks’ is a ‘necessity.’

Males who received surgery had depression rates of 25% compared to males without surgery, who had rates slightly below 12%. Anxiety rates among that group were 12.8% compared to 2.6%.

The same differences were seen among females as well. Those with surgery had 22.9% depression rates compared to 14.6% in the non-surgical group. Females who did get surgery also had a rate of anxiety of 10.5% compared to 7.1% for girls who had not gotten surgery.

Fox News Digital reached out to the FDA for comment but did not immediately receive a response. 

Fox News’ Melissa Rudy and Michael Dorgan contributed to this report