Actor Michael Douglas, a longtime supporter and fundraiser for President Joe Biden, expressed during a Wednesday appearance on ABC’s The View that he was ‘deeply, deeply concerned” about the president’s cognitive health.

“Do you agree for calls for him to step aside? Even Nancy Pelosi seems on the fence about him stepping aside,” co-host Joy Behar asked the actor.

“Such a tough one. I adore the guy. 50 years of public service,” Douglas responded.

Behar chimed in, “Lovely man.”

“A wonderful guy, and this just happens to be one of these elections that is just so crucial, and it’s really hard. I don’t worry necessarily today or tomorrow but a year down the line, I worry,” Douglas added. “I am concerned. You know, and so I’d make a back and forth and looking at some of our politicians who spoke about Biden dropping out last week, and then all of a sudden this week they’re hedging their bets.”

Host Alyssa Farah Griffin pressed the Hollywood star to weigh in on fellow actor George Clooney’s New York Times op-ed calling on the president to step aside.

“George Clooney came out with an op-ed calling for President Biden to step aside. The stakes are too high. Would you like to respond to that?” she asked him.

“I think it’s a valid point,” Douglas said. “I mean, I’m deeply, deeply concerned. I mean, especially, it’s difficult because the Democrats have a big bench. I mean, they’ve got a lot of heavy-hitters… a lot of talent.”

The 79-year-old star admitted he was not impressed with Biden’s performance at the debate and worried about the president’s abilities in the long term.

“I don’t worry necessarily today or tomorrow, but a year down the line, I worry. I am concerned,” he said.

The longtime Democratic Party supporter admitted that politics and this election have created a divide in his own family.

Douglas said he has a brother who “is on the other side of the fence on this.”

“Yeah, and we finally started not being able to talk to each other. We had to take it off the table. That old story about if you take out religion and politics, you can talk to anybody,” Douglas said.

In April, Douglas and his wife Catherine Zeta-Jones held a campaign fundraiser at their Westchester County home for Biden with 100 guests who paid at least $3,000 and up to $100,000 each person to attend.

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While at the fundraiser, according to a White House pool report, Biden became confused and forgot the date of the Jan. 6 riots.

“We’ll certainly never forget the dark days of June 6, Jan. 6, excuse me,” the president reportedly said.

Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares is leading an effort with 15 other attorneys general to file an amicus brief to ask the Supreme Court to hear a parental rights consent case about schools secretly transitioning the gender of students.

“Parents have the right to be involved in major decisions affecting their children’s lives. This case presents an opportunity for the U.S. Supreme Court to provide much-needed clarity and reaffirm that government officials cannot override parents’ fundamental rights simply because they believe they know better,” Miyares said on Monday. “It is essential that schools work with parents, not against them, to support a child’s well-being.”

The case the group is asking the court to hear involves a 2021 Wisconsin complaint by a group of parents who fought a Wisconsin school district’s guidelines to allow students to change their gender identity at school without any parental notification.

A district court and the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the parents’ complaint as “lacking standing.”

“The district’s policy also hopelessly conflicts with constitutionally protected parental rights. Parents, not administrators, have the responsibility and right to raise their children,” the attorneys general wrote in the amicus brief.

The attorneys general added in the brief, “This Court’s intervention is needed to bring clarity, before more parents and children are injured.”

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Miyares has seen numerous parental rights battles in his own commonwealth, where parents in northern Virginia inspired a nationwide movement fighting their school boards over school lockdowns, curriculum disputes, the hiding of sexual assaults in schools, the targeting of parents, and the implementation of gender ideology.

Recently, state lawmakers, including Republican Del. Dave LaRock and state Sen. John McGuire, the current Republican nominee for Virginia’s 5th Congressional District, fought to implement the parental rights legislation called Sage’s Law, which would have provided parental consent about a child’s gender transition. The legislation is named after a teenage girl who became the victim of sex trafficking and sexual assault after the school hid her gender dysphoria from her parents. Democrats in the Virginia General Assembly worked to kill the bill in February this year.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) responded to reporter questions on Monday inquiring where he stood on the push for President Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 presidential election.

The former Virginia governor called the division “not helpful” in the party as the dribbling out of Democrats’ criticism of the president has consumed the news cycle.

“It’s not helpful. We need to be unified to be successful [in November]. We have to find a dynamic that will enable us to be unified,” Kaine said. “I do see paths forward where we can be unified, but that’s a burden on our shoulders.”

He added, “We need a lot of unity and energy in order to be successful. The debate did create some excitement and interest, which may have been lacking before the debate.”

A reporter pressed Kaine about his personal view of the pressure campaign to oust Biden.

“Any advice I have for the president, I’m going to share with the president; I don’t feel the need to share it beyond that,” the former Democratic National Committee chairman said after an event on Monday at Reynolds Community College.

Kaine praised Biden for always being “someone who has always put his country first over himself.”

“If he believes fully that he can do this, I will respect that judgment. But I also completely believe that if he has doubts about whether he can do it, he’ll level with the American public about it,” the Virginia senator said, adding, “That’s the kind of patriot that he is.”

The senator said he has been talking to his colleagues and the White House.

Reporters asked him about fellow Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), who was organizing an effort to meet with other prominent Senate Democrats in a “private” meeting but then scrapped it after it became public.

“Obviously there’s division right now, but we just have to find a path forward to unity,” Kaine said.

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He told reporters that he expected a planned lunch on Tuesday between the senators to be “very spirited” but would not reveal what he had discussed with his colleagues in the Senate.

Kaine is running for a third term in November against Republican nominee Hung Cao.

Duck Dynasty stars Jep and Jessica Robertson released a new children’s book, Dear Valor, from BRAVE Books that celebrates and encourages child adoption.

“Our youngest is adopted. We adopted him when he was three days old,” Jessica Robertson said of their son Gus Robertson who inspired the book.

In describing Dear Valor, Jessica said, “It’s about the trials you may face and teaching children about empathy on what it’s like in an adopted child’s life and their family.”

The children’s book was published by the up-and-coming Christian book publisher BRAVE Books. The story is about a tiger named Valor who is adopted by two lions who love him unconditionally. The story explores the “sweet” joys and challenges of adoption.

Jep Robertson explained to WMAL radio that he’s been told that if every church had just one family adopting a child, then “we wouldn’t have foster care.”

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The husband and wife team is best known for their roles in the A&E reality TV series Duck Dynasty and spinoff shows Jep & Jessica: Growing the Dynasty and Duck Family Treasure.

The Robertsons are based in West Monroe, Louisiana, with their five children. They have long been involved in the adoption nonprofit group All God’s Children International ministry.

Dove‘s global chief marketing officer, Alessandro Manfredi, announced on Wednesday that he was leaving the soap’s parent company, Unilever, after two decades amid product backlash over numerous controversial marketing campaigns and new leadership seeking to improve competitiveness.

“Even the most beautiful love stories come to an end. A few months ago, I have decided to leave Unilever and the past few days were my last as the leader of the Dove brand. I am leaving with a deep feeling of Pride and Gratitude,” he wrote on LinkedIn, “I had the privilege to lead a brand that has become the #1 provider of body confidence education in the world.”

“I will always carry the torch of this humanity, wherever I go, whatever I do next,” he said.

Manfredi has been behind the soap company’s “Campaign for Real Beauty” which launched in 2004 to challenge digital distortions and unrealistic beauty standards in society at large.

His exit comes a year after Unilever’s CEO, Hein Schumacher, who took over leadership of the company in July 2023, claimed the company’s competitiveness was “disappointing” and the “overall performance” needed to improve.

The company has recently received backlash for various “woke” partnerships and marketing campaigns.

In 2022, Dove promoted Dove Dry Spray by doing a body positivity campaign and promoting a movement “rejecting negative armpit stereotypes.” On Instagram, Dove showed a plus-sized woman with hairy armpits who was embracing her “big pit energy.” On New York City billboards, the Dove campaign used the hashtag #freethepits.

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In September 2023, Dove partnered with Black Lives Matter activist Zyahna Bryant to push a “fat liberation” campaign in the soap company’s “Campaign For Size Freedom.”

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Bryant shared an Instagram video about her Dove partnership and said, “My belief is that we should be centering the voices and experiences of the most marginalized people and communities at all times. So when I think about what fat liberation looks like to me, I think about centering the voices of those who live in and who maneuver through spaces and institutions in a fat body.”

The campaign led to backlash and boycott threats.

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In February during the Super Bowl, the beauty product company ran a television advertisement that showed a montage of young girls playing sports but 2024 Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy took aim at the company by bringing attention to its history of embracing transgender athletes as it went “out of its way to publicly celebrate men competing in women sports.”

Dove also had to apologize for a social media post in 2017 that showed a black woman removing her dark-colored shirt to reveal a white woman in a light-colored shirt. The company apologized for missing “the mark in representing women of color thoughtfully.”

Actor Kirk Cameron announced Wednesday that he has left California and moved to Tennessee, adding to the list of Hollywood stars fleeing the Golden State.

The born-and-raised Californian and Growing Pains star told the Washington Examiner that he started thinking “seriously” about moving in the past three to five years, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns. In 2021, he asked his fans about suggestions for places to live if they could pick a state.

“It’s pretty clear that California has been moving in a particular direction for a long time,” he said.

The actor shared that the state was creating “so much division” and he yearned for a place that had a “healthy freedom mindset.”

In recent years, the Hollywood exodus out of California has included actor Mark Wahlberg who decided to leave Los Angeles to find a better place for his children “to thrive.” Sylvester Stallone also moved to Florida in 2021. Fitness guru Jillian Michaels recently left California because of the crime and found Florida to be “less crazy.”

For Cameron, he said he has found that Tennessee has “a lot of California refugees,” including “creatives” who’ve moved from Hollywood and are creating a growing entertainment industry community in the state. From 2014 to 2022, Tennessee’s motion picture and video production jobs have skyrocketed by 82%. As a result, the state has started getting the nickname “Hollywood of the South.”

The Hollywood Reporter reported in 2021 that the industry has been moving out of California for lower taxes and quality of life. The report cited that many have “an appetite for the no-state-income-tax states,” such as Tennessee. It also suggested that the Volunteer State’s popularity is because there’s “an entertainment hub there.”

Cameron said that while the pandemic helped change the viewpoint of companies around the world regarding remote working, the film business was evolving because of technology prior to 2020 to make it possible for entertainment professionals to coordinate and execute productions from anywhere.

“It’s shocking how many Californians are here. And when I see them in the grocery store, I tell them, ‘Don’t California our Tennessee,’” he said with a laugh.

“If everything hits the fan and there’s some serious economic problems and division going on, they want to be around people like they think who are all about God, family, and country. It’s a really nice place to be,” the former teenage heartthrob said of his new fellow Tennesseans.

Cameron, a now 53-year-old father of six grown children, said he was also drawn to leaving California due to three of his children now living in Tennessee, a place where he says has “good wholesome values and, equally as important, good whiskey.”

He also said many families are exiting states such as California because they want to get away from those that are diminishing their property values and quality of life, adding that families want to “be around like-minded people for safety and for security.”

The television actor is continuing to produce and star in his new children’s television show Adventures with Iggy and Mr. Kirk, which is a modernized and animated version of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. The new show features himself and Iggy the Iguana.

In recent years, Cameron has also been a leading advocate against drag queen story hours and drawing crowds of thousands nationwide to library story hours in an effort to promote wholesome, age-appropriate children’s books. He has partnered with BRAVE Books to release several faith-based children’s books.

On Aug. 24, Cameron is leading a nationwide effort to encourage parents and children to host or help support a story hour at their local libraries.

Last month, LGBT activists used Pride Month to make the Guinness Book of World Records in hosting the world’s largest drag queen story event in Philadelphia with over 260 attendees at the National Constitution Center.

“We’re aiming to set a Guinness World Record with this event. It’s called ‘See You at the Library’ and we held this event last summer and we had tens of thousands of people show up at their public libraries on this one day to read wholesome books to the children in their community, to sing the National Anthem, and to pray together,” he said.

He said last year’s “See You at the Library” event had over 300 public libraries that participated in 46 states and this year, he said he hopes the event will be in more than 500 public libraries across all 50 states.

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Cameron plans to rival the Pride Month record with his own story hour record on Aug. 24. He previously had over 3,000 attendees at one of his story hours in Indianapolis.

The BRAVE Books children’s author hopes the Guinness Book of Records will have the “same integrity and objectivity” about his story hour event in August.