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Damon Weaver, who at age 11 became one of the youngest people to interview a sitting president, and who later gained attention for scoring other high-profile interviews with celebrities like Dwyane Wade and Oprah Winfrey, died on May 1. He was 23.

The death was confirmed by Candace Hardy, Mr. Weavers sister. The cause was not made known.

Ms. Hardy told WPTV-TV in West Palm Beach, Fla., that her brother had texted her while she was at work that he was in the hospital. By the time she went to see him, she said, he had already died.

In 2009, Mr. Weaver, then 11, conducted a sit-down interview with President Barack Obama in the Diplomatic Room of the White House, questioning him on topics including the Obama administrations efforts to improve education in lower-income areas like Mr. Weavers hometown, Pahokee, Fla., and Mr. Obamas basketball skills.

You did a great job at this interview, so someone must be doing something right at that school, Mr. Obama told Mr. Weaver after the 11-year-old extended an invitation to come visit him at Kathryn E. Cunningham/Canal Point Elementary School in South Florida.

Before his meeting with Mr. Obama, Mr. Weaver gained sizable attention from an interview in 2008 with Joseph R. Biden Jr., then Mr. Obamas running mate.

Damon Lazar Weaver Jr. was born on April 1, 1998, according to his funeral announcement. His sister told WPTV that Mr. Weaver was a light and the life of the party. According to the station, Mr. Weaver graduated from high school with a full scholarship to Albany State University in Georgia. He graduated from the university in 2020, according to a post on his Instagram page.

Everybody just couldnt wait to be around him, Ms. Hardy told WPTV. Family gatherings, they were always fun just because of his presence.

Mr. Weaver also covered Mr. Obamas inauguration as the 44th president for his schools television news program, interviewing inauguration attendees and celebrities including Ms. Winfrey and Samuel L. Jackson. In an interview with The Associated Press before heading to Washington, Mr. Weaver highlighted what he enjoyed most about being a reporter.

I liked seeing people on TV, so I thought that I could do that job one day, Mr. Weaver said. I like being a reporter because you get to learn a lot of things, you get to meet nice people and you get to travel a lot.

Mr. Weaver said that his favorite subjects in school at the time were reading and math, and that he had goals of becoming a journalist one day and maybe even a football player, an astronaut or president.

Im very proud of him, Regina Weaver, Mr. Weavers mother, told The Associated Press. I never imagined that this project would go as far as it has gone.

Complete information about his survivors was not immediately available.

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Damon Weaver, Child Reporter Who Interviewed Obama, Dies at 23 - The New York Times

For almost as long as humans have been capable of defying gravity, flinging ourselves into the heavens with metal wings, we've seen things in the sky that we can't explain. It's an area of study that's been, for the most part, confined to the fringes of polite society. But now these unexplained flying objects have captured the attention of mainstream America and Congress.

I knew that I regarded myself as more of a Dana Scully than a Fox Mulder, as dedicated to rational inquiry, logic and science as you can be at the age of 8.

I never watched "The X-Files" when it was on the air as a somewhat cowardly lad who self-censored his media consumption, I knew that it was probably too scary for my developing tastes. But I still knew that I regarded myself as more of a Dana Scully than a Fox Mulder, as dedicated to rational inquiry, logic and science as you can be at the age of 8. I still do, to be honest. That's why I'm deeply skeptical that the objects we see in the grainy videos that have been circulating online for years are from another planet.

But now that I'm older, I find myself understanding Mulder a little better, with his belief in things unknown. And like the poster in his FBI office read, "I want to believe." I just need the evidence.

I will say, though, the evidence that UFOs actually are zipping around out there has grown considerably since I was a kid. It's not hard to see why the public has been so fascinated since last year, when the Defense Department confirmed the provenance of some of the videos out there. Just in the last few days, a recently leaked video from the Navy showed ... something disappearing into the water off California.

That clip was released just ahead of CBS' "60 Minutes" interview with two former Navy pilots who recounted their experiences with unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs the official term the U.S. government uses for these kinds of things. And they knew how wild their claims sound, which is a good first step to establishing a witness's credibility.

"Over beers we've said, 'Hey man, if I saw this solo, I don't know that I would have come back and said anything,'" Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich said. "Because it sounds so crazy when I say it."

Even former President Barack Obama weighed in on these objects Monday. "What is true, and I'm actually being serious here, is that there is footage and records of objects in the skies that we don't know exactly what they are," Obama said on CBS' "The Late Late Show with James Corden." (Sidebar: What a bit of synergy there for the "60 Minutes" segment; well done, everyone on the CBS crew who made that happen.)

"We can't explain how they move, their trajectory," Obama continued. "They did not have an easily explainable pattern. And so I think that people still take seriously trying to investigate and figure out what that is."

We apologize, this video has expired.

Let me pause to say that yes, I do believe that alien life exists somewhere out there. But as I said in an essay last year, I think we're not exactly the first stop on the galactic traveler's itinerary nor should we be. Humanity has a long way to go before we're ready for visitors from beyond.

It's the folks who do think we're Grand Central Station for various alien species who have kept the discussion about what pilots have seen confined to the realm of kooks and cranks for decades. But that could change soon in the next few weeks, Congress will receive a "detailed analysis of unidentified aerial phenomena data and intelligence" from the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Pentagon's Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force and the FBI.

"Oh, but Congress has so many other things it could be doing!" I hear you say out there. First of all, shut up. This is amazing; let me have this. But also, there is an actual legitimate non-extraterrestrial reason that I'm glad that Congress is looking into these zippy little aircraft. Whatever they are, they're in U.S. airspace, and, if these videos are any indication, they move in a way that isn't like anything else the public has seen.

If and this is a big if! these things are aircraft that another country has developed, that seems like a pretty big deal. (And if you were to pitch me a theory that the U.S. actually knows what these things are but can't say because it doesn't want any other country to get the tech, well, that's more believable than aliens to me.) On this front, I find that I, wildly enough, agree with Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., which in normal circumstances would be evidence that I had been replaced with an alien replica.

"Some of my colleagues are very interested in this topic, and some kind of, you know, giggle when you bring it up," Rubio, the vice chair of the Intelligence Committee, said on "60 Minutes." "But I don't think we can allow the stigma to keep us from having an answer to a very fundamental question."

He's right. It's a national security issue to have things flying around that we can't ID. That's probably part of why the fascination with UFOs was so high during the post-World War II era, as the fear of the Soviets' developing a secret airplane probably freaked a lot of people out. So, I, for one, am super excited to see what the unclassified report to Congress has to say about this.

And if some of the evidence happens to point to an origin higher than the troposphere for these weird little aircraft well, I'll try to keep an open mind.

Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MSNBC Daily, where he helps frame the news of the day for readers. He was previously at BuzzFeed News and holds a degree in international relations from Michigan State University.

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Obama says UFOs are out there. But are they aliens or humans? - MSNBC

by: Nexstar Media Wire, The Associated Press

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) The student reporter who gained national acclaim when he interviewed President Barack Obama at the White House in 2009 has died of natural causes, his family says.

Damon Weaver was 23 when he died May 1, his sister, Candace Hardy, told thePalm Beach Post. Further details were not released. He had been studying communications at Albany State University in Georgia.

Weaver was 11 when he interviewed Obama for 10 minutes in the Diplomatic Room on Aug. 13, 2009, asking questions that focused primarily on education. He covered school lunches, bullying, conflict resolution and how to succeed.

Weaver then asked Obama to be his homeboy, saying then-Vice President Joe Biden had already accepted.

Absolutely, a smiling Obama said, shaking the boys hand.

He used that meeting to later interview Oprah Winfrey and athletes like Dwyane Wade.

He was just a nice person, genuine, very intelligent, Hardy said. Very outspoken, outgoing. He never said no to anybody.

Weaver got his start in fifth grade when he volunteered for the school newscast at K.E. Cunningham/Canal Point Elementary in a farm community on the shores of Lake Okeechobee.

Damon was the kid who ran after me in the hall to tell me he was interested, his teacher, Brian Zimmerman, told the Post in 2016. And right away, I just saw the potential for the way he was on camera. You could see his personality come through. He wasnt nervous being on camera.

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Damon Weaver, kid reporter who interviewed Obama, dies at 23 - WCBD News 2

Remember when we had a president that cared about sneakers? Obviously they were not as important as his political leanings, but important, nonetheless, to folks like me. Though the occasion was rare, seeing Barack Obama in a pair of cool sneakers engaged an area of my mind that I dont think I expected a politician to ever touch. It didnt seem forced.

It wasnt an effort by a politician to make it seem like he fit in with the cool crowd. Obamas appreciation for sneakers seemed to be an authentic part of his nature. While some might assume it was him alone, some of the ease with which he was able to break these invisible barriers was due to the people around him. He had a team of like-minded individuals that were masters in their respective fields surrounding him.

One of those people was Chris Holliday. A hard man to find and one of the most low-key people I have ever had the pleasure of speaking with, Holliday is a man of many connections. In fact, it was Holliday that helped Complex secure then-Vice President-elect Kamala Harris for an appearance on Sneaker Shopping. When it came to Obama and sneakers, Holliday was the go-between. He says he sourced a lot of sneakers for the former president. However, he is more than just a sneaker guy.

Looking through Hollidays social media accountswell, accountthe first thing you notice is that he has some very influential friends. From the professional world of basketball to the White House, Holliday keeps company with those at the top of their game. The second thing you notice is that his sneaker collection runs pretty thick. And unlike most sneakerheads, hell rock a fresh pair while dressed in the usual political uniform of a suit and tie. Its a bit jarring and refreshing, but also speaks to the role he plays in connecting the dots between Black men and the political process that so often adversely affects them.

Lets be honest, when we think of politics, a Black man in a suit in a fresh pair of Jordans isnt the image that comes to mind. For Holliday, the sneakers are just a part of who he is. And as he navigates the world of politics, he is slowly changing the expectation and perception of a larger community that is now starting to understand their power.

As you grow up and you see different types of people from where youre from, he says, you realize who are the authentic people and who are not the authentic people.

Holliday was most recently the adviser to surrogate outreach for the Biden campaign. While the title sounds vague, the position helped the Biden campaign listen and connect to Black men. As Holliday describes it, his role was to curate the culture to translate and become a bridge for African-American men. With 2020 disrupted by the COVID pandemic, the job of connecting anyone to anyone was hard enough, let alone to a very specific group of people. Banking on his experience in marketing and promotions at iHeartRadio, Holliday developed a sense of how important the role of media can be in shaping the conversation. He also knows how individual voices can be more important than any media conglomerate.

One thing I realized is with athletes and entertainers, especially athletes right now, they are their own media companies, Holliday says. You wake up in the morning, you scroll to your feed. Me and my nephews, my cousins, my friends, we dont get up in the morning and turn on CNN, ABC, or NBC.

One of those athletes is Chris Paul, who Holliday stood next to on the campaign trail in one of the few photos I could find of him.

Chris is an essential piece in connecting politics, sports, and culture, which gave us a chance to ask our own questions and tell our own stories to President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, the NBA veteran says of Holliday. What makes it even cooler is the fact he looks like us, speaks our language, and dresses the way we dressJs and all.

While Holliday didnt know it at the time, his start at iHeartRadio and front row view of the process of turning artists into stars would be the prep work needed to take on his role as a surrogate during the Obama administration. Starting out as a deputy press secretary in Florida for the 2008 campaign, Holliday began learning the ins and outs of the world of politics and how he could step in and help. During that initial campaign, he started to realize the power of telling stories and being true to yourself.

You just woke up in the morning, you tried to give something, give all that you have, but also trying to interject your own piece of who you really are. Obama, the campaign, was all about telling your story, he says.

That authenticity and storytelling often came through the eyes of Hollidays athlete friends. Back in the Obama administration, Steph Curry became a vocal advocate of the president, speaking against gun violence and appearing as part of the Malaria Initiative. Curry and Obama also came together on sneakers when Under Armour created the super-limited Under Armour Curry 3 sneaker that honored Obamas back-to-back terms as president. Holliday was the connector.

We all trust Chris, Curry says. He always tells it straight with a real feel for how we can make the biggest difference while still staying true to who we are, like we did together for the Democratic National Convention. And hes got that special personality that bridges and connects with people of every background while staying true to who he is, which is really rare. Its just dope to see a brother like Chris moving in these circles, representing the culture, and just trying to do right for people.

With the Biden administration leaning heavily on the world of social media, Holliday was able to connect the campaign with culture in a way that the Obama administration didnt need to. How athletes use their voice has changed tremendously since 2008. From podcasts, to YouTube vlogs, to full-on media and production companies, athletes and celebrities alike are telling their own stories, their own way. And with the NBA relaxing rules on footwear, weve seen a ton of messages in support of all types of causes across the sneakers we see on court. For Holliday, that voice and perspective is important. He believes that everyone needs to see people that look like people they know.

While there is an audience for the larger networks to reach, Holliday believes that there is a far greater impact when seeing someone from your own neighborhood, where the most help is needed, interacting with and championing the causes that are important to those communities.

When asked about his role in past administrations and how he got there, Holliday is quick to keep it as authentic as you can get.

For me, as a young Black man, I didnt grow up saying, Hey, I want to go work at the White House, Holliday explains while laughing under his breath. I didnt grow up doing that.

Through his experience working in politics, Holliday started his own company, Swing State Strategies. In addition to advising political campaigns and presidents on being inclusive, he is also tapped by CEOs and other executives to advise on how their companies can be more diverse. As an adviser, Chris is often sharing what seems all too obvious to most of us.

I tell people: How you can be inclusive of Black people is hire Black people, he says. Put them in these rooms.

In addition to advising politicians and CEOs, part of Hollidays job is to educate. For many, the world of politics and big business seem daunting and out of reach. He looks at it a different way. As he helps change the narrative around Black men, he also uses his platform to let people know that Harvard, Yale, and Princeton arent the only roads that lead to success. He believes that intelligence goes beyond what you score on an exam and extends to how you are able to feel a room and respond accordingly so that everyone leaves happy.

The smartest executives aint the guy that got on the shoes and tie, Holliday says.

Holliday believes the smartest executives that come to him for counsel extend a hand to the younger executives that look, speak, and think differently than they themselves do. He also feels that the more inclusive your surroundings, the more inclusive the result. Its this style of thinking that has led to a more inclusive sneaker world for us all. Big brands like Adidas are partnering with designers like Jerry Lorenzo to run entire divisions; Foot Locker named Melody Ehsani to run its womens business. It is these companies that wind up succeeding, according to Chris.

Holliday has witnessed these ideas in practice from within his own family. His cousin Victor, a video game designer and executive at Universal, wears Jordans to work. He notes that this distinction separates Victor from the majority of executives in a way that makes the rooms he is in more diverse. Holliday doesnt believe that the neighborhood you come from, or how you dress, disqualifies you from being an executive.

As part of his job, Holliday fields calls from executives asking about the latest footweara sign he believes comes from a genuine place of interest to understand sneaker culture. It is this new clashing of cool and smart that is bringing a different voice to the world, and CEOs are starting to recognize the value it has in creating a more diverse and inclusive business. Evidence of this can be seen in the release of the Air Jordan 11 Jubilee that brought in over $175 million over the holiday season. Holliday became the resource for many of the executives he works with when it came to securing their pairs.

You have to create dialogue, context, and open communication to figure out how to make everybody feel inclusive in this environment, Holliday says. To him, this is important because if it isnt done, those same people will continue to make laws and policies that dont pertain to the larger audience. Not just for African-American men, but also their kids.

The unresolved issues that exist in BIPOC communities arent always a priority in the world of politics, and, yet, in the past 12 months weve again realized how important the conversation can be to making us all feel like we have a part in the direction of this country. For Holliday, this connection is more important than ever. From CEOs of venture capital firms and tech companies, to some of the best basketball players in the world, to presidents, senators, and city councilmen, Holliday is bringing together people in a way that politics hasnt been able to do for as long as we can remember, all while teaching and being authentic to himself and his community.

Introduced to me as Obamas sneaker guy, it is clear that Hollidays role is much larger and more impactful than that. He serves as a bridge. He speaks and connects the world to young Black men and lets them know they dont have to fit in a box to change the world, they can just be themselves, fresh Js and all.

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From Obama to Kamala, Meet the Presidential Connect to Sneakers, Athletes, and CEOs - Complex

There is an awful lot going on in the State Capitol in these waning days of the elongated 2021 session yes kids, we are just over three weeks away from a legislative hard stop and much of it is horrifying to one degree or another, depending on your particular ox and how much of a priority has been made of goring it. Meanwhile, there is also an awful lot going on beyond our shores, and the new administrations reactions to those could ultimately prove at least as consequential, and probably more so, as what transpires under the local dome.

The middle east is as good a place to start as anywhere, given that it cannot quite give up its hold over dominating the center of the world stage.

The primary concern, on the foreign policy front, of a Biden administration was that it adumbrated a return to the chronically feckless foreign policy meandering of the Obama administration. That fear is on the verge of being realized in the current conflict between Israel and Hamas. First, while it is unreasonable to suggest that Biden and his policies were in any way directly responsible for Hamas and Islamic Jihads attack of Israel, the concurrent circumstances cannot be ignored. The Iranian government is nothing if not opportunistic well, brutal too and is fully cognizant of how eager Biden is to resurrect the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Tehran sees the change in administrations as a chance to fray the Abraham Accords struck last year between Israel and several Arab states, gauge the commitment of the United States to Israeli security, and maximize their bargaining position when America comes running back to the table.

So far, the Biden administration hasnt exactly shown the steadfastness of Rolands defense of Roncevaux, but hasnt caved to demands from the left to pressure Israel into an unwise cease-fire either. Those mistakes have come from Congress, where the fringier types have denounced Israel as an undemocratic, apartheid state, betraying a profound confusion over the meaning of both of those words Israel is among the only functioning democracies in the region, one in which Arab-Israelis can and do fully participate; while Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian State, is 15 years into a four-year term and are, among other things, demanding an end to arms sales to Israel and blocking sanctions against foreign supporters of Hamas. So the question is how long the Biden administration can hold off the pressure from the left to condemn Israel for defending herself? If I were living under the Iron Dome in Tel Aviv, I would not place an exorbitant amount of hope in the fortitude of Joe Biden.

Turning north, we see this week a hint of how the Biden administration will interact with Putins Russia. One of the bewildering ironies of the Trump years was the overnight flip-flop by both parties concerning Russia before 2016, the Democrats were the party of Russian (decades earlier, Soviet) appeasement, the Republicans Cold War-nostalgic hardliners. After attempts by Russia to interfere with the 2016 election (which, incidentally, they had been doing since at least 1917), the narrative mysteriously flipped, and Biden tried sounding absolutely Nixonian in his jingoistic denunciations of Putin and Russia.

At least before the election. Now he is again looking as though he is prepared to pick up right where Obama left off. His decision to not levy sanctions against the company running the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which will pour Russian natural gas into Europe, is riddled with ironies, not the least of which is that it demonstrates a greater commitment by this administration to a pipeline that would benefit Russia, than to one the Keystone XL that would benefit the U.S. But it also demonstrates a disconcerting weakness and a misunderstanding of the weight of geopolitics.

All of this is compounded by Bidens earlier decision to suspend already weak intellectual property protections for U.S. vaccine makers, which sets a terrifying precedent would the same administration be as willing to share details of, say, the Joint Strike Fighter, in the name of an international security emergency?

Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, the Chinese Communist Party has all but solidified its takeover of Hong Kong, this week seizing the equity assets of an owner in a publicly traded company under the aegis of the new national security law. One can safely assume that the Chinese rulers are closely watching how the new American administration responds to Iran and Russia as their gaze turns over the South China Sea towards Taiwan.

Kelly Sloan is a political and public affairs consultant and a recovering journalist based in Denver.

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SLOAN | Will Biden abroad be Obama in redux? - coloradopolitics.com