Andrea Mitchell: It's 'mystifying' that Biden's cancer wasn't caught earlier
NBC News Chief Washington Correspondent Andrea Mitchell reacts to the news of former President Joe Biden's "aggressive" prostate cancer diagnosis. "When you have a presidential work-up, as all presidents do, it's mystifying as how it was not caught sooner, when it could have been diagnosed before it metastasized to his bones," says Mitchell. "It's just common sense, especially if you know something about prostate cancer, [which] is very treatable when found early."
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Fox News
17 minutes ago
- Fox News
Federal judge again blocks deportation of anti-Israel Columbia protester
A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from detaining a Columbia University student and lawful permanent resident whom federal agents have targeted for deportation after she took part in an anti-Israel demonstration earlier this year. U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald's preliminary injunction on Thursday blocks Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from taking 21-year-old Yunseo Chung into custody. Chung is originally from South Korea and has lived in the U.S. since she was seven years old. ICE had attempted to arrest her in March but were unsuccessful and the court has now barred ICE from detaining her without prior approval. If the government tries to detain Chung for any reason other than her potential deportation, it must give 72 hours' notice to Chung's lawyers and the court and allow the court time to determine if the detention attempt is a pretext for First Amendment retaliation. The ruling also states that she remains free while her legal case proceeds. Ramzi Kassem, co-director of CLEAR, a legal nonprofit at City University of New York that is representing Chung, praised the ruling. "This is a win not just for Yunseo and for the legions of people who stand up for Palestinians and oppose the daily atrocities in Gaza that our government underwrites, but also for freedom of speech and the rule of law in our country," Kassem said in a statement, per the Washington Post. It comes after the same judge in March ordered immigration officials to cease their efforts to arrest Chung. The Trump administration has alleged that her participation in a protest poses a potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequence for the United States. Chung's attorneys say that the government's pursuit of the Columbia student is an "unjustifiable assault on [the] First Amendment." Chung sued the government earlier this year. The lawsuit states that Chung was a participant in the anti-Israel protests, not a leader, and was "one of a large group of college students" expressing "shared concerns" over the war in Gaza. Chung, according to the lawsuit, "visited" the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, a number of tents organized in the center of campus, but does not state whether she stayed there. The lawsuit also makes it clear that she did not make public statements or engage in high-profile activities while at the protests. Chung's lawsuit states that she was never arrested or disciplined in relation to events at the encampment. However, she was later arrested during a 2025 protest at Barnard College. The lawsuit claims that it is common in New York City for police to arrest many protesters and that charges are usually dropped or dismissed. The lawsuit states that on March 8, an ICE official signed an administrative arrest warrant for Chung and federal law enforcement went to Chung's parents' house the next day seeking to arrest her. An ICE official allegedly told Chung's attorneys on March 10 that her green card had been "revoked," according to the lawsuit. The government has the authority to rescind permanent resident status if it believes that a person has violated U.S. immigration law. Chung's attorneys say in the lawsuit that law enforcement searched Chung's dorm room on March 13 in accordance with a warrant. She was valedictorian of her high school senior class and has a near-perfect GPA heading into her senior year, according to court documents. Chung is double-majoring in English and women's and gender studies at Columbia, the Washington Post reported. The Trump administration has also sought to deport former Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, whom it accuses of playing a major role in anti-Israel protests at Columbia University.


CNN
17 minutes ago
- CNN
Trump tells CNN he's ‘not even thinking about Elon' and won't speak to him ‘for a while'
President Donald Trump told CNN on Friday he is 'not even thinking about' billionaire Elon Musk and won't be speaking to him in the near future. 'I'm not even thinking about Elon. He's got a problem. The poor guy's got a problem,' Trump told CNN's Dana Bash. The comments come after a day Trump and Musk traded barbs on social media as their relationship deteriorated in spectacular public fashion. Trump said Thursday he was 'very disappointed' with the tech billionaire for criticizing his massive tax and spending cuts package while Musk fired back that 'Trump would have lost the election' without him. In a brief phone call, Trump talked about the forthcoming jobs report, inflation and gas prices. Asked if he had a call with Musk, the president responded: 'No. I won't be speaking to him for a while I guess, but I wish him well.' As the two powerful onetime friends duked it out online on Thursday, their shared allies sought to quietly broker a truce, CNN previously reported. Musk, for his part, appeared open to a thaw. 'You're not wrong,' Musk responded to a post from billionaire investor Bill Ackman, who wrote on X: 'I support @realDonaldTrump and @elonmusk and they should make peace for the benefit of our great country. We are much stronger together than apart.'


Medscape
26 minutes ago
- Medscape
Which Tx Combo Is Best for HER2+ Breast Cancer?
The combination of trastuzumab deruxtecan (Enhertu) with pertuzumab (Perjeta) as a first-line treatment for HER2-positive advanced metastatic breast cancer has been shown to reduce the risk for disease progression or death by more than the current standard-of-care treatment. Sara Tolaney, MD, MPH Sara Tolaney, MD, MPH, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, presented this finding and other interim results of the phase 3 DESTINY-Breast09 study, at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2025 annual meeting in Chicago. 'Trastuzumab deruxtecan, or T-DXd, in combination with pertuzumab demonstrated a statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement in progression-free survival, with a 44% reduction in the risk of disease progression or death when compared to a taxane, trastuzumab, and pertuzumab (THP),' said Tolaney, during her presentation. New First-line Standard? Similar results were observed across all patient subgroups, with no new safety signals, Tolaney said. 'These data suggest that T-DXd and pertuzumab may represent a new first-line standard of care for patients with metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer,' she said. The study randomized 1157 patients to three treatment groups: T-DXd 5.4 mg/kg every three weeks plus placebo, T-DXd-pertuzumab, or a taxane plus trastuzumab with pertuzumab (THP). The interim study readout includes only data from the T-DXd-pertuzumab and the taxane plus trastuzumab with pertuzumab groups. Pertuzumab + T-Dxd or Standard of Care? Median progression-free survival (PFS) was 40.7 months in the T-DXd-pertuzumab patients and 26.9 months in the taxane plus trastuzumab with pertuzumab patients ( P < .00001). Tolaney explained that the study was designed to have an interim analysis for PFS after approximately 399 events across the three arms with at least 277 events for comparison. At the time of the interim analysis, she said, only the TDX-pertuzumab and THP groups met the criteria for superiority, a P -value < .00043, which was not met for the comparison of T-DXd plus placebo to THP. The T-DXd-placebo arm remains blinded until the final progression-free survival analysis, Tolaney said. Twenty-one percent of the patients in the T-DXd-pertuzumab arm had discontinued T-DXd due to adverse events, Tolaney said; 9% of patients elected to continue with trastuzumab and pertuzumab after they discontinued T-DXd. Among hormone receptor-positive patients, 13.5% in the T-DXd-pertuzumab group and 38% in the THP group elected to add endocrine treatment. At the data cutoff, 46% of the T-DXd-pertuzumab patients and 33% of those in the THP group remained on study treatment. Median follow-up duration was 29 months. The treatment effect of T-DXd-pertuzumab became evident early in the study, Tolaney said. Six months after starting treatment, 7% of the T-DXd-pertuzumab group vs 12% of the THP group had progressed. The gap continued to widen over time, she said. 'With 26% of patients still on steady treatment with T-DXd and pertuzumab, it suggests that this median is likely to evolve with further follow-up,' she said. Objective response rates were also higher with T-DXd–pertuzumab, 86% vs 79% with THP, Tolaney said. 'The complete response rate for T-DXd and pertuzumab was 15%, which was almost double what was seen with THP (8.5%),' she said. Response duration was also longer with T-DXd-pertuzumab, with 73% remaining in response at 24 months vs 55% in the THP arm. 'Overall survival data are very immature at this timepoint with just 16% of survival events seen, but you can see that there is an early trend favoring T-DXd plus pertuzumab with a hazard ratio of 0.84,' she said. A similar number of patients in both groups had serious treatment-emergent adverse events: 27% for T-DXd-pertuzumab and 25.1% for THP, which Tolaney said, was consistent with the known toxicity profiles of both agents, with no new toxicities identified. The median duration of treatment in the DESTINY-Breast09 study was 21 months. 'A Pivotal Advancement?' Rebecca Dent, MD, deputy CEO at the National Cancer Center Singapore, called the DESTINY-Breast09 results 'a pivotal advancement in the treatment of HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer that is both clinically and statistically significant.' Rebecca Dent, MD HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer was once considered a 'death sentence,' Dent said at a press conference, but now patients can survive on therapy for years, which presents its own challenges. Regarding the T-DXd-plus-pertuzumab regimen, Dent said, 'Is this for all patients at the beginning of their treatment for metastatic disease?' The truth of the matter is we don't know.' Having better biomarkers would provide answers, she said, but for patients with extensive disease with central nervous system metastasis, pertuzumab in combination with other agents 'is clearly your first-line choice.' How to best sequence therapies is another challenge emerging with these evolving treatment regimens, Dent added. 'And then I think finally we do have to appreciate that there are toxicities: One in terms of quality of life but also cost toxicity,' she said. Which Therapeutic Regimen Costs More? Tolaney acknowledged the cost implications of adding pertuzumab to T-DXd, in an interview with Medscape Medical News . 'But I would also note,' Tolaney said, 'that the standard-of-care arm does involve getting continued trastuzumab and pertuzumab therapy.' In the PATINA study, which added palbociclib (Ibrance) to standard maintenance therapy in patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer, the cost profile was similar to those of the treatments used in the newer trial, Tolaney said. 'You are looking at substantial continued cost because we're continuing to suppress the HER2 pathway for years in these patients,' she said. AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo funded the study. Tolaney reported financial relationships with ADi, Ambrx, Artios Biopharmaceuticals, Arvinas, AstraZeneca, Bayer, BeiGene, Bicycle Therapeutics, BioNTech, Blueprint Medicines, Bristol Myers Squibb, Circle Pharma, Cullinan Oncology, Daiichi Sankyo, eFFECTOR Therapeutics, Eisai, Exelixis, Genentech, Gilead Sciences, Hengrui Pharmaceutical (USA), Immunomedics/Gilead, Incyte, Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & Johnson, Launch Therapeutics, Lilly, Menarini Group, Merck, Mersana, NanoString Technologies, Natera, Novartis, OncoPep, Pfizer, Reveal Genomics, Sanofi, Seagen, Sumitovant Biopharma, Summit Therapeutics, Systimmune, Tango Therapeutics, Zentalis, Zuellig Pharma, and Zymeworks. Dent reported having financial relationships with AstraZeneca, Daiichi Sankyo/Astra Zeneca, DKSH, Eisai, Gilead Sciences, Merck Sharpe and Dohme, Novartis, Pfizer, and Roche.