Few things loom quite as large in the American psyche as the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy — a moment of deep national trauma and mystery with ramifications still being felt today. Now, more than half a century after Kennedy's death, President Donald Trump has released a tranche of declassified documents "for the American people to know the truth!" But that truth may be harder to find than Trump's enthusiasm suggests. 

What are the documents?
Just days after taking office, Trump signed an executive order to "release all records related to" the assassinations of both John and Robert Kennedy, as well as Martin Luther King Jr., saying it was in the "national interest" for the public to receive "transparency and truth" regarding the trio of high-profile political slayings. The JFK assassination records have been long slated for publication under a 1992 congressional act.

So far, about 63,400 pages of JFK-related documents have been released by the National Archives. It's "unclear" how much of the information released so far is "actually new," said The New York Times, or if some papers had "previously been released in part or in whole." Many are "scans of documents" that appear "blurred" or have "become faint or difficult to read" in the intervening decades, said USA Today. There are also various photographs and audio recordings "mostly from the 1960s."

What have we learned?
The American public will "truly be shocked" by the documents, said White House spokesperson Harrison Fields to NewsNation. Despite that prediction, it's uncertain "how much light" the declassification will shed, said The Washington Post. 

The published files describe Kennedy's "mistrust of the CIA, the surveillance of [assassin Lee Harvey] Oswald in Mexico City, and propaganda operations involving Oswald before and after JFK was killed," said investigative journalist Jefferson Morley to CBS News. Despite adding further texture and context to Kennedy's death, there's "no smoking gun" or evidence to dramatically reframe the assassination, said expert Tom Samoluk to CNN. 

Many of the documents were classified or redacted not for fear of revealing new details about the assassination itself, said Columbia University historian Tim Naftali to The New York Times. Rather, they were likely kept secret to "mask highly sensitive details about CIA intelligence-gathering."

Human beings have evolved to become "perfectly adapted to life on Earth," said Sky News. So spending time in space, without gravity or sunlight and exposed to radiation, "poses a real challenge physically." For astronauts Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Sunita "Suni" Williams (pictured above), whose routine eight-day visit to the International Space Station turned into an unscheduled nine-month stay, the challenge may be even bigger since they returned to Earth last evening. 

The pair, traveling in a SpaceX Dragon capsule, left the ISS early yesterday morning, and after a "fast and fiery reentry through Earth's atmosphere," they splashed down off the coast of Florida, said the BBC. Fresh air feels "fantastic," said Helen Sharman, the U.K.'s first astronaut, but such an extended space mission will have taken a "toll on the body." 

'Exit spacecraft on stretchers' 
"You adapt incredibly quickly to being in space," NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, who spent 371 days in space in 2023, said to Time last year. But readapting to life back on Earth can be a "little bit longer and more difficult." The first two or three months will be focused on recovery, "reincorporating yourself into Earth and your family" and "rehabilitating your body."

After splashdown, the astronauts were taken to the Johnson Space Center in Houston for a medical checkup. Astronauts returning from long-duration space missions "routinely exit their spacecraft on stretchers," said CNN, because their bodies "need time to adjust to feeling Earth's gravity." 

'Incredible connection to humanity' 
Nine months without gravity will have caused "significant, and irreparable, bone density loss," said The Guardian. Being in space "causes muscles to waste," and fluids "don't drain as easily." The returning astronauts will "struggle to walk, get dizzy easily and have bad eyesight," because the "buildup of fluid changes the shape of their eyeballs and weakens their vision." They may need glasses for the rest of their lives.

In space, clothing floats off your skin, so your skin gets "almost babylike sensitivity," Alan Duffy, an astrophysicist at Australia's Swinburne University, said to The Guardian. On Earth, some astronauts "feel like their clothing is sandpaper." But most significantly, seeing the planet from space has led some astronauts to report an "incredible connection to humanity," said The Guardian, and an "immediate sense of its fragility."