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Vice President JD Vance shed a few pounds — and his boss noticed.

The vice president has tipped the scales in his favor when it comes to President Donald Trump’s 2028 presidential nominee power rankings by losing weight, according to a Friday report from MS NOW.

Vance’s trimmer figure, combined with his recent media tour to promote his new book, has helped him leapfrog Secretary of State Marco Rubio — at least for the time being.

“It hasn’t hurt that Trump has been privately complimentary about Vance’s weight loss, according to two people familiar” with Trump, reporters Jacqueline Alemany and Jake Traylor wrote.

They added:

Another person said Trump has taken to remarking that his vice president has been looking good lately.

“There’s been a lot of that,” the person added.

Vance’s weight loss hack? German food. MS NOW pointed to a report from The Wall Street Journal last month on how Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has Vance and other administration officials on a “sauerkraut-heavy diet.”

“Within 30 days I lost 20 pounds,” Kennedy said at a June event in Michigan. “JD Vance is also on the diet and you can see how different he looks.”

Vance started the diet for Lent and has been “committed” to it ever since, with the 41-year-old VP munching on “eggs, sauerkraut, pickles, blackberries and raspberries for lunch, and beef or lamb with sauerkraut for dinner,” per WSJ.

Beyond the weight loss, Trump has been a fan of Vance’s media blitz — which included a three-hour interview with Joe Rogan. The two guys covered a lot of ground, including talking about Israel’s “influence” on Trump, the Iran war, ex-President Joe Biden’s brain surgeries, and dead sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein.

Vance is the favorite to be the ’28 Republican nominee on prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket. Kalshi gives Vance a 39% shot to win, and Polymarket gives him a 43% chance; Rubio is in second place on both platforms, with a 31% chance on Kalshi and 28% on Polymarket.

MS NOW’s report coincided with The Washington Post reporting there is a “coordinated” operation within the Republican Party to “poison” Vance’s 2028 chances. The effort has not worked on Trump, apparently.

The post Less Vance Is More: Trump Reportedly Loves Vice President as 2028 Nominee After He Lost a Bunch of Weight first appeared on Mediaite.

MS NOW host Stephanie Ruhle was overcome with emotion on Friday as she paid tribute to the soldiers recently killed in the Iran war.

Hostilities resumed after President Donald Trump officially declared the Memorandum of Understanding — triggering a temporary ceasefire — was over.

Since then, American and Iranian forces have launched numerous strikes against one another, resulting in the deaths of several American troops.

At the end of Friday’s edition of Money, Power, Politics, Ruhle took a moment to honor four of those soldiers: Lt. Tyler James Feehan, Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, Sgt. Michael Emmanuel Swinton, and Sgt. Angel S. Rampersad. She included personal details about each one, and even shared anecdotes from their loved ones.

“Lieutenant Feehan’s fiancée says he was a man whose greatest strength was his heart,” Ruhle said. “She says he looked up to Ted Lasso as a role model for leadership, and he dreamed of one day becoming a high school football coach after his military service ended. He was 25 years old.

“In Carrollton, Texas, community members came together on Tuesday to honor Private Isabella Gonzales and her life of service. They wore purple and black ribbons — her favorite colors. She was only 19 years old.”

After reading Gonzales’s age, Ruhle’s voice trembled as it became apparent she was fighting back tears. She continued:

Sergeant Swinton’s wife told The New York Times that they met when they were both deployed in Bahrain. She said he was an amazing father and her daughter’s favorite. He was 30.

And in New York, American flags now line the streets of a Queens neighborhood where Sergeant Rampersad grew up. She moved to the United States when she was just 2 years old, an immigrant serving and protecting our country. Her family says she was eager to serve. She was 28.

All four of these true patriots should be remembered and honored for their service and their sacrifice. We are truly grateful.

Watch above via MS NOW

The post MS NOW’s Stephanie Ruhle Fights Back Tears in Emotional Tribute to Soldiers Killed in Iran War: ‘True Patriots’ first appeared on Mediaite.

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OLED gaming monitors have become much easier to recommend over the last year, mostly because prices have started dropping below the $500 mark. LG’s 27GX704A-B UltraGear OLED is one of the better options in that category right now, with excellent motion handling, extremely low input lag, and the glossy WOLED panel that gives games a cleaner, more contrast-heavy look than many matte alternatives. It’s also down to $379 on Amazon, an over 50% discount from its launch price of $799 in 2025.

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At this price, the LG 27GX704A-B lands much closer to premium IPS gaming monitors while still offering the contrast and motion performance OLED panels are known for. This is a 1440p display with a 240Hz refresh rate, so it’s clearly aimed at PC gamers who care more about responsiveness and motion clarity than pushing full 4K resolution. Competitive games like Valorant, Apex Legends, and Call of Duty benefit the most here because the near-instant response time keeps motion looking unusually sharp, even during fast camera movement or flicks across the screen. The panel itself uses LG’s newer third-generation WOLED technology and supports both FreeSync Premium Pro and G-SYNC compatibility, so screen tearing is less of an issue regardless of whether you use an AMD or NVIDIA graphics card.

One of the more noticeable differences between this model and LG’s earlier UltraGear OLED displays is the glossy screen coating—instead of the matte finish found on many gaming monitors, this panel looks clearer and a bit punchier in darker rooms because the coating doesn’t soften the image as much. Blacks look genuinely deep, HDR highlights stand out nicely, and games with darker environments benefit a lot from the OLED panel’s per-pixel lighting. The downside is that reflections become much more noticeable if your setup sits near a sunny window or a bright overhead light, and VRR flicker can appear when frame rates bounce around heavily in darker scenes. The LG 27GX704A-B is also positioned as an entry-level OLED gaming monitor, so you won’t get premium features like DisplayPort 2.1, a built-in KVM switch, or an especially advanced USB hub beyond two basic USB-A ports.

President Donald Trump’s “patience is running out” with Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) — White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt warned Thursday.

Addressing the press corps during a morning briefing, the president’s spokesperson confirmed that Trump is getting antsy with the fact that the SAVE America Act — which would implement a number of new election-related measures impacting everything from voter ID to mail-in voting — has stalled in the Senate. When asked by the Daily Caller’s Reagan Reese if Trump’s patience is running out with Thune, Leavitt was blunt.

“His patience is running out,” Leavitt said. “He wants to see as much of the SAVE America Act passed as possible by the August recess. He knows that’s what the American people want to see passed. He was just traveling on the road yesterday, spoke about this, and there was a very loud applause from the people in the audience, the everyday Americans, because voter ID is common sense. They want proof of citizenship in our elections, and the president feels very strongly about that.”

Leavitt added, “The American people elected overwhelmingly Republicans to not just this White House, but also the House and the Senate,” Leavitt said. “The House did its job, the Senate needs to do its job too.”

In response, Thune took a shot at Leavitt and the White House — claiming they have not helped win over the Senators they need to get the legislation passed.

“Well maybe [Leavitt] or somebody else ought to get on the phone and get the votes, right?” Thune said, according to Politico. “It’s 50 around here, and so instead of, you know, pointing the finger at Republicans, they might think about going after the people who are stopping it on the floor, which is the Democrats, and if there are Republicans that they think are gettable, get on the phone.”

Watch above, via CNN.

The post Trump’s ‘Patience is Running Out’ With Top Senate Republican, Leavitt Warns first appeared on Mediaite.

Fox News chief national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin joined Fox News’s America Reports on Wednesday to discuss the dignified transfer of four fallen U.S. soldiers, which was attended by President Donald Trump.

Anchor Sandra Smith introduced Griffin during their coverage of the somber event, which included a lengthy moment of silence as the coffins were being transferred.

“Sandra, every president says that this is the most difficult thing that they have to do during their presidency — to go to Dover to meet the families and to greet the caskets of the fallen, knowing that they have sent these individuals, these soldiers, to war. It weighs heavily on them. We’ve heard President Trump speak about that in the past,” Griffin began, before offering a lengthy description of the lives the four fallen soldiers left behind:

This is the third time that he has been to Dover since the start of the Iran War. There were the six service members who were killed early on in the conflict when a drone hit their base in Kuwait. There were the six service members who died in the KC-135 air refueling plane that went down over Iraq. And now today we have these four other soldiers.

First Lieutenant Tyler James Feehan — we’re learning more about his life from his family. His family in Utah has set up a scholarship fund for ROTC students at his former alma mater, the University of Southern Utah, with the death gratuity — the $100,000 that each service member’s family will be given by the Department of War — and his family has decided to devote that to future service members. He was supposed to return home and get married. His family remembers him as an adventurer. He went to Mount Everest base camp. He hiked the Camino Trail. He was planning to come home and get married.

Then there was Private Isabella Gonzales, just 19 years old. She had just graduated last year from high school. She told her English teacher, just before she graduated, that she planned to enlist so that she could eventually go to college. She’s from Northern Texas, from Carrollton, Texas.

Sergeant Michael Swinton — his wife is from Fayetteville, North Carolina. He was stationed at Fort Bragg. His wife, Mia, posted a heart-rending post on Facebook showing him hugging his four-year-old daughter. It was the last picture she would take of him through the car window in his uniform as he hugged his four-year-old daughter. He also had a six-year-old son. He was killed in northern Iraq when they were trying to disable a one-way Iranian attack drone last weekend.

And then there is Sergeant Angel Rampersad. We just learned her name and received a photo of her — 28-year-old Angel Rampersad of Queens, New York. She is believed to be dead, because her remains have not yet been identified. They will be identified at Dover. She had been found under the rubble of that drone strike on the Jordanian base.

So these four American heroes have returned to Dover. The president, Secretary Hegseth, as well as the Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, were there to greet them, as well as General Dan Cain. They spent about three hours with the family members. That’s what they do before we see this ceremony and the flag-draped caskets come out of the back of that plane — they spend time individually with those family members. So, a heartbreaking moment today at Dover Air Force Base.

Watch above via Fox News.

The post Fox’s Jennifer Griffin Details the Lives of Fallen US Soldiers In Somber Tribute After Dignified Transfer first appeared on Mediaite.

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Exercise is a healthy and, one might argue, necessary part of our lives. The guidelines from public health organizations tell you to aim for at least 150 minutes of “moderate” exercise each week, and that each minute of “vigorous” exercise counts double. That raises the question: What the hell is “moderate” exercise? How do you know when you’re doing it? 

Moderate exercise is sometimes conflated with "zone 2" exercise. These two things aren't exactly the same, but they do overlap a bit. I'll get into the difference below. Moderate exercise includes activities like walking and casual bicycling, and it counts whether you think of it as a workout or not. Getting enough moderate exercise has benefits for your heart, metabolism, mental health, and more—so let's dig in to what it is and how you can know when you're doing it.

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Scientists measure METs, but you don't have to 

If you use a fitness tracker like the Fitbit Air, it may try to tell you that "moderate" exercise occurs when you reach a certain heart rate. This isn't actually the case. The scientists who came up with the exercise guidelines didn't use heart rate as their guide. Instead, they used charts that measured how many "METs," or metabolic equivalents, each type of exercise requires.

I'll explain more about METs below, but the important thing to know is that the type and intensity of exercise is what tells you whether it's moderate, not your heart rate while you're doing it. You can look up exercises on a chart like this one, but here's the basic idea: 

• Walking is moderate exercise; jogging or running is vigorous.

• Bicycling is moderate if it’s under about 12 miles per hour on the flat.

• Indoor cycling is moderate if it’s up to about 100 watts of power.

You don’t have to overthink it. The guidelines that mention “moderate” and “vigorous” activities aren’t asking you to monitor your heart rate or any other numeric metric. They want you thinking in terms of generalities: walking versus running, leisurely bike commuting versus sweating your heart out in a spin studio.

And honestly, if it’s easier to watch your heart rate than to worry about the above, that’s fine. For most of us, 150 minutes of Zone 2 is going to be at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise. So follow that guideline, and you’ll be an overachiever.

It’s not really about heart rate

So why does your watch want to steer you toward a certain heart rate during exercise? Mostly because that's easy to measure. Moderate exercise sorta-kinda matches up to "zone 2" cardio, which I’ve previously explained. (Zone 2 is is the second-lowest intensity in a five-zone system, and the easiest way to know which zone you're in is to glance at your fitness watch.)

While you can use heart rate zones as a rule of thumb to find moderate exercise, this idea falls short in two ways: (1) different gadgets and systems use different cutoffs to decide which numbers count as "zone 2", and (2) for most of us, zone 2 includes most moderate activities but also some vigorous activities. If you’re relatively fit, you can jog at a 12 minute-per-mile pace while keeping your heart rate in zone 2. That’s a “vigorous” activity in terms of METs, though. 

The other reason heart rate isn’t accurate for this task is that your heart rate changes for all kinds of reasons. The hotter it is when you're working out, the higher your heart rate tends to be. Same goes for when you’re nervous or stressed. And as you get fitter, you’ll be able to do the same activities at a lower heart rate. Those activities might feel easier than they used to, but they’re not any less work. 

What is a MET, anyway?

One MET is the energy expended when you’re at rest—the amount of oxygen, calories, etc that it takes to keep you alive and breathing. (We use oxygen in the process of burning calories, so officially a MET is 3.2 milliliters of oxygen per kilogram of body weight per minute.) 

Researchers can then put a mask on a person and measure how much oxygen they use while running, walking, playing guitar, etc. If an activity takes twice as much oxygen as sitting still, they say it takes two METs. Here are a few examples (taken from this scientific paper): 

• 2 MET: washing dishes, or playing croquet

• 3 MET: walking at 3 miles per hour (a pretty typical walking pace)

• 4 MET: table tennis, ice skating

• 5 MET: modern dance, fast-paced ballroom dance

• 6 MET: volleyball, singles tennis

• 7 MET: jogging, jumping rope

The numbers go up from there. Speed skating clocks in at 15 MET. To be clear, you will not be measuring METs directly when you exercise. The MET studies are done in labs so that we can use the information to get a sense of what MET values each common type of exercise tends to have.

Moderate exercise is 3 to 6 MET, and vigorous is 6 or more

The physical activity guidelines define “moderate” exercise as at least 3 MET, but less than 6. Vigorous is 6 MET or more. Because METs are specific to the activity, not to how fit you are, it makes the most sense to look at METs in terms of the pace you run or the settings you use on your treadmill or other cardio machine. Here are paces and activities that have been clocked as between 3 and 6 METs: 

• Walking at 3-4 mph (a 15-minute to 20-minute mile)

• Cycling, between 50 to 100 watts

• Shooting baskets

• Playing baseball

• Taking a low-impact aerobics class

And these are vigorous (6 or more MET): 

• Race walking (5+ mph) 

• Walking uphill

• Walking with a 12-pound pack

• Jogging (a 12-minute mile is 8.0 MET; the faster you go, the higher the MET)

• Bicycling at 12 miles per hour or faster

• Swimming laps

• Playing a game of basketball, soccer, or hockey

So when you're trying to get your 150 minutes (or more) of moderate exercise each week, you can count all your walking, your easy bike riding, and your low-impact aerobics class. Give yourself credit for vigorous exercise for all the time you spend jogging (at any heart rate), lap swimming, or rucking. You may find you've been doing more exercise than you think.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) didn’t mince words when asking questions of Dr. David Blight at Tuesday’s congressional hearing on the Smithsonian Institution, a hearing she described as a “Republican white pride rally.”

Ahead of Blight’s testimony as part of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency hearing about the Smithsonian, Crockett said, “It might be uncomfortable for some people on this committee to hear about the true history of America, and I hate that for them, but facts are facts.”

She continued, “And it’s a fact that there is a violent, exclusionary, discriminatory, sexist and racist part of American history, where our Indigenous populations were forcibly displaced from their land, where thousands of black people were unjustly lynched, where Black people were denied the right to vote and they still trying to do it today, where women needed their husband’s permission to open a bank account, where people with disabilities were routinely excluded from schools, workplaces and public life, where four little black girls were murdered by the KKK at the 16th Street Baptist Church.”

“And a lot of this wasn’t that long ago,” Crockett added. “In fact, three of those little girls would be 77, and one would be 74. More than 40 members of Congress serving right now would be older than them. Ruby Bridges, who was the first Black child to desegregate an all-white school, is only 71 years old. More than 100 members of Congress serving right now are older than her.”

With that history in mind, she said, “attacks on the Smithsonian or any other institution that’s willing to tell the true history of America is not only an attempt to rewrite history, but it’s an attempt to erase history.”

Crockett then turned her attention to Blight and asked, “So Dr. Blight, if Republicans are going to ban books, penalize schools and universities, attack museums, if states continue to change curriculum, where do Americans go to learn about the complicated, sometimes racist and violent parts of American history?”

“Thank you for the question. I think they will have to keep going to the same institutions, and we have to keep fighting to preserve what we are doing in those institutions,” Blight answered. In addition to the Smithsonian museums, those institutions also include public schools and libraries, he continued.

“Look, the purpose of history is to enlighten us, inspire us, trouble us, bother us, sometimes make us angry. I find it hard to believe that a young person could go through the Museum of American History and not come out at least inspired with the single most important thing, a sense of the past, a sense of history. Americans have to keep going to those places they trust,” Blight said. “We have to keep those institutions trustworthy.”

This week, Blight published an op-ed in The New York Times that spelled out the importance of Smithsonian Institutes, and the problem with the Trump administration’s focus on dismantling them. “The Trump White House and its history police want us all to live in their chosen bubble, immune from instability or perceived disorder in their take on American greatness,” Blight wrote. “They have a right to their bubble as individual citizens, but to impose it on the rest of us as policy egregiously breaks the public trust.”

Watch the above via PBS NewsHour.

The post Jasmine Crockett Goes Off On Her GOP Colleagues During Hearing She Calls a ‘White Pride Rally’ first appeared on Mediaite.