Barack and Michelle Obama have date night at George Clooney's Broadway play amid divorce rumors
The couple, in a rare joint public appearance, dined at The Lowell Hotel restaurant in Midtown Manhattan before the show, multiple reports indicated.
Michelle was seen in a black lacy midi dress with her hair swept back in a long braid, while Barack was seen in a standard dark suit.
Flanked by Secret Service members, the two were then ushered into a Black SUV and whisked away to the Winter Garden Theater to see Clooney as Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck. Their attendance was confirmed by a representative for the production.
The stage adaptation of his 2005 film of the same name marked the A-lister's Broadway debut and garnered him a 2025 Tony Award nomination.
The Obamas have been the subject of divorce rumors for several months following Michelle's absence from a handful of high-profile events at the start of the year, including former President Jimmy Carter's funeral and President Donald Trump's inauguration.
She recently opened up about her decision to skip the events in an April episode of her podcast, IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson.
'My decision to skip the inauguration, what people don't realize, or my decision to make choices at the beginning of this year that suited me were met with such ridicule and criticism,' she said. 'People couldn't believe that I was saying no for any other reason, that they had to assume that my marriage was falling apart, you know.'
She reiterated that she simply didn't go to the inauguration because it was the best decision for her.
'I'm here really trying to own my life and intentionally practice making the choice that was right for me,' she explained. 'And it took everything in my power to not do the thing that was right, or that was perceived as right, but do the thing that was right for me. That was a hard thing for me to do.'
The former First Lady also spoke about the divorce rumors during an appearance on Sophia Bush's Work in Progress podcast earlier in April.
'The interesting thing is that, when I say 'no,' for the most part people are like, 'I get it, and I'm OK,'' she said.
'That's the thing that we as women, I think we struggle with disappointing people. I mean, so much so that this year people couldn't even fathom that I was making a choice for myself that they had to assume that my husband and I are divorcing.'
'This couldn't be a grown woman just making a set of decisions for herself, right?' she added. 'But that's what society does to us. We start actually, finally going, 'What am I doing? Who am I doing this for?' And if it doesn't fit into the sort of stereotype of what people think we should do, then it gets labeled as something negative and horrible.'
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles

Hypebeast
an hour ago
- Hypebeast
For Diana Sinclair, the Medium Is the Message
By Erin Ikeuchi In the tradition of artists whose work outlives its maker, Diana Sinclair creates with an eternity in mind. Her works, each their own act of communion, connect her with those who came before, those still yet to come and hold space for the too-many stories erased and left behind. Born and based in New Jersey, Sinclair came onto the scene with refreshing velocity, with a sold-out Christie's auction already under her belt. It's the kind of attention that might have anchored another young artist to familiar ground. Yet for her, evolution was still imminent, and with it came a new artistic language that captured the world as she truly saw it. Last year, she landed a spot at the World Trade Center's coveted Silver Art Project residency, trading her Web3 beginnings for the alchemy of cyanotypes. Drawn to the medium's unpredictable nature and hypnotic cobalt palette, she began using it as a lens to explore the historic and spiritual ties between Black communities and water, a theme informed by her own experience as a swimmer. The resulting works feature rounded figures suspended beneath sublime veils of blue. Alive with movement and friction, each surface, she says, is touched by 'chance,' straddling lands of the living and the lost, beauty and grief, the personal and political. Now 21, fresh off her debut solo exhibition at Plato Gallery, Sinclair is optimistic for all that awaits. 'I feel like a small plant in a big pot,' she reflects. 'There's a lot for me to learn and grow from.' For this latest edition of Hypeart Visits , we caught up with Sinclair on the heels of Threaded Blue to discuss her multivalenced practice and what it means to reconnect with history in the face of its unsteady waters. 1 of 10 2 of 10 3 of 10 4 of 10 5 of 10 6 of 10 7 of 10 8 of 10 9 of 10 10 of 10 'I view the world through the lens of light and shadow, shapes and lines, which has allowed me to have very beautiful experiences throughout my own life.' What was your creative upbringing like? My dad's an artist when it comes to pen, paper, charcoal. My mother's an artist because she's a storyteller and a writer. I was homeschooled, so I ended up in the middle of them. My dad wanted me to be able to see and translate the world, so he taught me the foundations of drawing. I would sketch all the time and became really obsessed with curves, contours and shapes. Now, I view the world through the lens of light and shadow, shapes and lines, which has allowed me to have very beautiful experiences throughout my own life. How do you envision your relationship to your work? I've been seeing spirals a lot, circling back and connecting at different places. There's a relationship to time, memory, experience, but also separation and detachment. It's all constantly evolving. With these works and the show in general, I'm speaking about young black boys who drowned or had complex relationships with water and pool spaces. At the beginning of last year, I had a near-drowning experience in Costa Rica. When I started with these works, it wasn't on the forefront of my mind, but through that, I gained a degree of understanding and I've been able to apply that empathy to the art. You were embraced by the art world early on in your career. Reflecting on your artistic practice, are there any moments that have really allowed for that understanding and empathy towards yourself? When I was 13, I entered a competition for young artists in Brooklyn. I was nervous because at the time, I had no proximity to other artists. I ended up winning first prize, and the judges told me that I should be grateful that I didn't have a formal education because it allowed me to think outside the box. I carry that with me especially when I've had moments of doubt. Having a solo show feels like dropping an album: you condense and cut things out and try to figure out the language and the message. That was an 'aha moment' in terms of how I understand my career going forward, and finding more security and faith in the spaces that I'm in, spaces I deserve to be. On this out-of-the-box line of thinking, I'm curious what it's been like working with cyanotypes. I heard that you invented your own kind of exposure chamber. Anybody who works with cyanotypes knows that they can be really frustrating to work with. I was able to get it down to a personal science, but that came from a lot of trial and error. There's a world of possibility within what I can control, but outside of that, there is opportunity in allowing for error and evolution, which sometimes can be the same thing. 1 of 10 2 of 10 3 of 10 4 of 10 5 of 10 6 of 10 7 of 10 8 of 10 9 of 10 10 of 10 'There's a world of possibility within what I can control, but outside of that, there is opportunity in allowing for error and evolution, which sometimes can be the same thing.' Are there other instances of chance present through your process for this body of work? There was opportunity for change and destruction and evolution at every point of the process. Even working with the subjects, a lot of them posed nude for the first time. People didn't just come in and throw off their clothes – we spent hours on set. I had to view the body as an object or material, but couldn't lose the person. I told them, 'Take as long as you need. You don't have to take your clothes off now or even today.' That intimacy has to be generated authentically. I shot 50 to 100 polaroids per session. I'd have an image that I was so excited about, put it into boiling water, something would go wrong and I would lose it. But maybe, for some reason that was meant to be. 'Return to the Womb' was a 'mistake' at the beginning. It was the first one I made. Part of being intimate is allowing for things to be as they are, and I learned that through this body of work. Art is a very spiritual practice if you allow it to be, and Threaded Blue is about that character of chance, which is also a natural quality of water. 1 of 5 2 of 5 3 of 5 4 of 5 5 of 5 'I didn't expect all of this to open up, but I started to see it spiral outwards.' Within the exhibition, you grapple with a wide range of eras and ideas. What are some of the themes explored in the pieces? The square pieces are about the physical and spiritual element of the deaths of people who passed away during the Middle Passage. This whole body of work was inspired by residence time, which is the amount of time it takes for the ocean to fully consume something. For bodies, that takes about 260 million years. For me, there's a question of whether death by water is different from a burial. I'm thinking about the DNA of people who were thrown, and the choices made by those who took fate into their own hands and jumped. It brings me back to the sense of faith that people had in death — that release over the life of enslavement they were being delivered to. The cyanotypes revolve around the center sculpture made out of pool tiles. How does modern day swimming culture and aquatic spaces play into this? You can watch America evolve through a pool space. I became fascinated by social boundaries and how people were forced to face them in swimming pools. In other spaces, we were moving towards a progressive mindset, yet there was still a lot of tension in these spaces and they led to a lot of suffering and death. The work started with researching the segregation of pools because of my relationship with water as a swimmer. It made me feel extremely othered and created permanent damage to my body. I watch my brother swim as a way to open doors for himself, in spite of his own experiences. I had to sit with the things that I had gone through and ask why they happened. I didn't expect all of this to open up, but I started to see it spiral outwards: water is necessary to life, so how are we holding trauma on mental, physical and spiritual planes? The title came to me as I was thinking about time. The works are on fabric, but I also wanted to consider how threads weave and layer on top of each other. I believe that the future can also affect the past, it's not always linear. It's a question of how we got here and what happened after we arrived. As an artist who works at the intersection of more than a few themes and ideas, do you have any advice for how to keep your thoughts organized? Mind maps. It's valuable to put everything you're thinking on one page — associative writing to dig into the patterns and relationships between the core theme and other ideas on your mind or sitting on your spirit. 'This is like my championship season.' How does spirituality figure into your practice? It's the foundation for everything. Going through those cycles of release and frustration was a spiritual practice. Moving through the highs and lows, and alchemizing the lows into progress. In every area of life, the chaos of destruction and evolution will always spiral back around. The works serve as markers of time through these stages, and I have to make sure that that connection and conversation is always at their core. Beyond the conceptual, would you say your experience as an athlete shaped the more literal approach to your practice? My relationship to sports impacted how I think about my practice and my studio time. This is like my championship season, I have to be very present with the pieces I've been working toward all season. After this, I should take a little break, but then I have to get back into building up my artistic stamina. I'll go through an exploratory phase and accept the new frustrations that come with. I'll figure out how to apply those lessons from last season, and hopefully it'll be a smoother process because I'll allow myself more grace. 1 of 4 2 of 4 3 of 4 4 of 4 'There's an element of surrender and release with what people can teach me about what I make.' How do you satiate yourself creatively during these periods of high stress? I try to attend to my student side when I'm talking with others about my work. People bring an element of chance; I don't have control in their interpretation. I don't enter the gallery thinking that I know more than anyone about this work. I don't own it, I'm just the vehicle for these ideas. There's an element of surrender and release with what people can teach me about what I make. Those conversations help me dig into whatever I'm working on next. It's a part of how I keep curious. Behind the works themselves was a rather intense research process. What did that look like? Who were some of your interlocutors? There are very few people that I've spoken to that know more than me about this — it's my special interest. My first conversation with Jeff Wiltse who wrote Contested Water . Incredible book. I reached out to Kevin Dawson. We had a great conversation about his work Undercurrents of Power , which relates to where my family's from. There's also Ehemi Ora, who writes a lot about water and traditional African spiritualities. I learned she's an artist in the city and we've become very close friends. Those relationships, the conversations, the personal impact, they've really shaped practice and will continue to do so. I'm very much into world building, and that's what I get to do. There are these people that inform my world, and I'm building out my Bible. Studio photos by John Manuel Gomez. All artwork courtesy of the artist and Plato Gallery.


Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
Newsom urges Trump to abandon redistricting fight as Texas Republicans remain stymied on new maps
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Responding to Texas, Newsom and other California Democrats are considering new boundaries to yield a five-seat shift toward Democrats. That would require, however, getting California voters to set aside existing maps drawn by an independent commission. New York Governor Kathy Hochul and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker have promised similar efforts. Advertisement Newsom urged Trump in a letter Monday to abandon his scheme, telling the president he is 'playing with fire' and 'risking the destabilization of our democracy.' Advertisement Newsom said he prefers that independent bodies draw political districts rather than partisan legislatures, as is done in Texas and most GOP-controlled states. But, he wrote, 'California cannot stand idly by as this power grab unfolds.' If Texas and 'the other states call off their redistricting efforts,' the governor added, 'we will happily do the same. And American democracy will be better for it.' Dozens of Texas Democratic lawmakers are staying in Illinois, New York and elsewhere, and they say they have no intentions of returning as long as Republicans are intent on mollifying Trump. 'Democrats, especially in Texas, are standing firm,' said Representative Rhetta Bowers at a gathering of Texas lawmakers Monday in Illinois. The minority caucus intends to run out the clock on the current special session, which cannot extend beyond Aug. 19. But Governor Greg Abbott said he'll call lawmakers back to the Statehouse again and again until enough Democrats show up to reach the 100-member threshold required to vote on the bill. Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a US Senate candidate, want state courts to remove lawmakers, asserting that they have abandoned their posts. Paxton also has asked an Illinois court to enforce Texas civil warrants issued for the absent lawmakers' arrests. For now, the lawmakers who are out of state remain beyond the reach of Texas authorities and the warrants. 'If they show back up in the state of Texas, they will be arrested and taken to the Capitol,' Abbott said over the weekend on 'Fox News Sunday.' At the least, Texas lawmakers face $500 daily fines for each absence under legislative rules. But Bowers and others have said they remain undeterred. She compared both the proposed Texas maps, which would disproportionately affect districts represented by Black and Latino Democrats, and Abbott's and Paxton's threats to the Civil Rights Movement in the mid-20th century. Advertisement Republicans, she said, are using 'the very same tactics used against Black and brown Americans' who pushed for passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. 'Their fight is our fight, and just like the Civil Rights heroes of the past, no matter the cost we are prepared to see it through to the end,' Bowers said.


Business Journals
an hour ago
- Business Journals
Andrew Young School of Policy Studies guides young leaders toward good works for the world
At the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, a truth goes marching on — an unshakeable belief that good economics, good governance and good social policy make a better world. 'When I was mayor of Atlanta, I saw what the public and private sector could do when they teamed up,' said Andrew Young, the school's namesake. 'Atlanta today is the result of that partnership, and that same principle is just as true in the poor countries of the world.' The good-hearted values of Young, a man still energetically engaged with the Andrew Young School at age 93, uphold the college. 'Our school embodies Andrew Young's spirit of public service and dedication to social and economic progress,' said Dean Thomas J. Vicino. 'His commitment to opportunity and inclusion shapes our mission and values.' Young earned fame and worldwide respect as a trusted young lieutenant to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during the Civil Rights Movement. Young became the first Black representative elected to Congress from Georgia (1972-1977) since Reconstruction. President Jimmy Carter then appointed him as the United States' first-ever Black U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Later, as Atlanta mayor (1982-1990), Young blended public and private interests in ways that attracted 1,000-plus corporations to the city and helped win the 1996 Olympic Games. His able and pragmatic leadership demonstrated how an effective application of economics, governance and social policy can drive prosperity and well-being. That model is the Andrew Young School's beating heart. A Global Beacon Today's college stands as a beacon to young leaders of the future. The school boasts more than $28 million annually in active sponsored grants, and faculty and students write more than 250 scholarly papers, chapters and books every year. The school's work impacts more than 70 countries. The AYSPS comprises five academic units: the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, the Department of Economics, the Department of Public Management and Policy, the School of Social Work and the Urban Studies Institute. Students and faculty fill various additional policy-critical research centers, cluster and labs engaged with dozens of government, industry and nonprofit collaborators and partners. In April 2025, U.S. News & World Report ranked AYSPS No. 16 (of 285 schools) among the nation's Best Graduate Schools in Public Affairs. The school ranked in the top five in the 2023-24 survey for Urban Policy and for Public Financing and Budget, and it ranked in the top 10 in Local Government Management and Nonprofit Management. About one-fifth of AYSPS graduate students come from developing countries. Some 59 percent of all students are women, and nearly one-half are African Americans. Many students come to Atlanta expressly to study in a place shaped by Young's practices and ideals and to learn ways to develop those in their own communities. 'Every time we graduate a young person from a developing country and send them back home,' Young said, 'I feel like we have leveled the playing field a little more.' Young's Founding Role Almost 30 years ago, Young helped bring the founding dean of AYSPS to Atlanta. The same year as the Centennial Olympic Games, 1996, then-dean of GSU's business college, Michael Mescon, asked Young to contact Roy Bahl at Syracuse University. Bahl had an international reputation as a thought leader on fiscal matters for governments in developing and transitioning economies internationally — a perfect pairing to Young's life work. Young persuaded Bahl to come south. The new arrival was named dean when GSU merged the departments of Economics, Public Administration and Urban Studies with a couple of research centers into a new college. Bahl didn't forget a favor. 'Here we are, a school of policy,' Bahl said in 2013. 'We're about government, we're about international, we're about not-for-profit, we're about linking the public and private sectors. 'And here you get a guy who's a former ambassador, has been a businessman, was a U.S. representative, has a global view of the world. What better name could there possibly be (for the school) … and what better role model?' In 1999, Andrew Young entrusted his name to the new school of policy. A Field of Dreams Avani Raval, AYSPS' college administrative officer, still marvels that Young persuaded Bahl to come to GSU, catalyzing creation of the college. 'Andrew Young gave us that 'Field of Dreams' moment,' Raval says. 'You know – build it, and they will come.' They still come. And they're more welcome than ever. 'Our doors are open to hardworking students who want to be the leaders of tomorrow,' Young said. 'There is nothing elitist or conventional about us. We love overachievers, and we love students who have the improvement of policy as a goal.' 'We are proud,' Dean Vicino added, 'to carry forward Andrew Young's vision by advancing knowledge, fostering innovation and empowering future leaders to build a more just and equitable world.' Georgia State, an enterprising public research university in Atlanta, is a national leader in graduating students from diverse backgrounds. The university provides its accomplished faculty and 52,000 students with unsurpassed connections to the opportunities available in one of the 21st century's great global cities.