2025-12-29 03:13:59
Kara Swisher, the veteran tech journalist who had a leading hand in uncovering the affair between then-presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and journalist Olivia Nuzzi, said in a Friday interview that RFK Jr. also needs to be held accountable given his long history as a “predator.”
“It’s crazy that people don’t care,” Swisher said, regarding how his well-documented allegations of sexual misconduct didn’t impact his confirmation as secretary of health and human services. “It’s because he’s lying about it.”
Eliza Cooney, a former babysitter for the Kennedy family, said that RFK Jr. sexually assaulted her when she was 23 years old and he was 45.
Kennedy reportedly sent a text to Cooney that deflected responsibility: “I have no memory of this incident but I apologize sincerely for anything I ever did that made you feel uncomfortable…If I hurt you, it was inadvertent.”
Before he was confirmed, his cousin Caroline Kennedy wrote to several Congress members that they shouldn’t approve his nomination, calling him a “predator” that was “unqualified” for the job.
“He lacks any relevant government, financial, management, or medical experience,” she said. “His views on vaccines are dangerous and willfully misinformed.”
RFK Jr. also appeared in Jeffrey Epstein flight records released in 2024.
But he was confirmed anyway.
“He’s murdering people with the vaccine stuff,” Swisher also told Miller.
The CDC voted earlier this month to limit hepatitis B vaccines for newborns, rolling back over 30 years of evidence that the vaccine lowers the probability of liver diseases caused by the virus. Models project that delaying the vaccine from birth to two months could lead to at least 1,400 infections and 480 deaths every year.
The detrimental impact of RFK Jr.’s confirmation is obvious, but as Nina Martin noted in our Heroes and Monsters series this month, Swisher is correct—not just about Nuzzi but also how men in power like RFK Jr. continue to go unpunished.
2025-12-29 01:25:38
The Department of Homeland Security’s complaint about being under a gag order on Saturday in its case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who the Trump administration illegally deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador earlier this year, likely violated the court order.
Tricia McLaughlin, the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the DHS, said that Abrego Garcia being able to make viral TikTok posts was unfair in a rant on X: “American justice ceases to function when its arbiters silence law enforcement and give megaphones to those who oppose our legal system.”
But this “gag order” isn’t specific to Abrego Garcia’s case. As a Saturday court filing states, local criminal rule in the Middle District of Tennessee already blocks DOJ and DHS employees from making extrajudicial remarks that will ‘have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing” a defendant’s right to a fair trial. In other words, it is not politically motivated.
McLaughlin’s post boosted another post calling Abrego Garcia an “MS-13 terrorist.” The Trump administration has accused Abrego Garcia of being a member of MS-13, which a federal judge has ruled as unfounded.
“For the Court to find that Abrego is member of or in affiliation with MS-13, it would have to make so many inferences from the Government’s proffered evidence in its favor that such conclusion would border on fanciful,” the district judge wrote in July.
Earlier this month, Abrego Garcia’s defense team accused the US government of violating the court order, citing that Chief Border Patrol Agent Gregory Bovino, who has overseen the immigration raids in Los Angeles and Chicago, called Abrego Garcia an “alien smuggler,” “wife beater,” and an “MS-13 gang member” on national news.
Abrego Garcia has no criminal record, yet the attempts to justify his deportation have continued for months.
Abrego Garcia was deported to the Salvadoran Terrorism Confinement Center in March, a prison that Mother Jones and other media organizations have reported on as inflicting torture, due to “an administrative error.” Following a court order and public backlash, the Trump administration brought him back to the US in June—but issued an arrest warrant against him on human smuggling charges in Tennessee.
Abrego Garcia has rejected the accusations and said that prosecutors were vindictively targeting him. A federal judge found that he has sufficient evidence to hold a hearing on the issue, which is scheduled to take place in late January.
Abrego Garcia’s case demonstrates that the Trump administration is pursuing policies such that no immigrant living in the country can feel safe. As my colleague Isabela Dias wrote earlier this month, “Every disturbing news report about a wrongful deportation or military-style raid of an apartment building should come as a reminder that the US government is using its prosecutorial discretion—it is choosing—to normalize casual cruelty and overt racism. And it’s doing so ostensibly in the name of “protecting” the American people.”
2025-12-28 20:30:00
This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Shane Farrell has spent the better part of the last three years underwater, diving off the coast of Maine. The University of Maine Ph.D. student and his team at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences are surveying the rapid decline of kelp forests in the warming waters.
While the marine heatwaves killing the kelp ecosystem were alarming on their own, the researchers have discovered a new threat—the rise in red turf algae, a filamentous invasive species—that is taking over the place of the kelp that has collapsed from the heat.
The team published its findings in a recent study published in Science stating that the predatory algae were releasing waterborne, allelopathic chemicals into the water that prevented the regeneration of juvenile or baby kelp. These molecules were specifically affecting the gametophyte phase—when the kelp reproduces to produce gametes—which is particularly important for their recruitment and survival on the reefs.
“What was most shocking was that the types of chemicals found in the study are also found behind the lack of recovery in certain coral reefs and tropical rainforests,” Farrell said, alluding to the bigger impact of these invasive species.
One of the most abundant varieties of the red algae originally came from Asia. Doug Rasher, a senior research scientist heading Bigelow’s Rasher Lab, where Farrell works, points out that the warming waters of this part of the North Atlantic match the temperature of the red algae’s native habitat, which is why the algae does well compared to kelps, which are a cold-water species. Through underwater surveys and laboratory experiments, the team found the warming water had helped the proliferation of the red algae.
Even though they span all the way from Canada to certain regions of Massachusetts, the kelp forests are a foundational fixture on Maine’s coasts. The state remains one of the largest homes for this ecosystem on the East Coast. However, between 2004 and 2018, southern Maine experienced an 80 percent decline in kelp cover, mainly because the south is one of the warmest regions on the coast.
“This transition from kelp to turf algae is not just happening here in Maine. It’s happening in places of rapid ocean warming around the world,” Farrell said.
However, this is far from the only threat the kelp faces. A host of environmental and biological stressors continue to thwart the survival and regeneration of kelp, putting the alarming numbers about the steady decline in perspective. For instance, the sea urchin remains one of the main reasons for the decimation of abundant kelp cover in the country. “Sea urchins are locusts, they crawl across the substrate [and act as] underwater lawn mowers—they eat everything in their path,” said Jon Witman, a marine biologist who has taught at Brown University and spent most of his research life studying marine food webs across the Gulf of Maine, Galapagos Islands, and the reefs of Easter Island.
“Sea urchins are locusts, they crawl across the substrate [and act as] underwater lawn mowers—they eat everything in their path.”
Witman also said storm surges can destroy the kelp forests, with intense hurricanes uprooting and tossing up the fronds. When he was conducting his Ph.D. research in Maine, he remembers tens of thousands of plants washing ashore after a storm.
Such extreme weather events are known to leave dead corals, kelp, and fish in their wake. But with climate change, such events are becoming more frequent and intense. In 2024 alone, the country has faced 27 extreme weather events, ranging from heatwaves and droughts to both severe and tropical storms.
Scientists have predicted that by the end of the century, the world might potentially warm by 2.3 degrees C to 2.5 degrees C, leading to a surge in extreme weather events.
A map measuring marine heatwaves in the United States between 1982 and 2023 found that they have increased in intensity and duration. The Gulf of Maine in the last three decades has warmed at a rate of 0.06 degrees Celsius per year (0.11 degrees Fahrenheit), which is three times more than the global average. In 2019, the region suffered a marine heatwave that continued for over a month.
The impact of this thermal stress on the kelp is a complex process. They tend to do poorly in warming waters and begin to disintegrate when temperatures reach higher than 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit), Witman said.
Farrell attests to this. In the Gulf of Maine, at 16.5 degrees Celsius (62 degrees Fahrenheit), he says the kelp start to erode from the very tip of the plant, which limits the plant’s ability to release spores, which are vital for reproduction.
This makes Farrell concerned for the aquaculture industry. “[The kelp farmers] rely on wild kelp beds for their seed, and use the reproductive tissue of these kelp and use their spores to grow for seed,” he said. The loss of kelp can effect the seed bank and, in turn, the kelp aquaculture industry in Maine, which is leading kelp farming in the country.
Rasher’s team also found that two common or widespread fish species depend heavily on kelp forests, getting most of their energy from kelp. This is not to say the fish are herbivores directly feeding on the kelp, Rasher said. Instead, they benefit from a chain of interactions that move kelp-derived carbon up the food web and into their tissues. “[Before this study], people didn’t know that Maine’s kelp forests play an important role in creating energy that fuels the nearshore food web,” he added.
As kelp has been a viable habitat and nutrient deposit for fishes, their escalating loss can reduce the abundance of reef fish and potentially impact local fisheries, which has happened in California. But the authors don’t know just yet how this would play out for Maine’s fisheries.
Soon, however, they intend to tease out what the cascading impacts of the red turf algae invasion will mean for the state’s most economically viable crustacean—the lobster.
“Physical removal of invasive algae like Caulerpa in the Mediterranean does work with a lot of effort, but those plants are large and easy to target, compared to red algal turf, which is filamentous,” Witman said, which means one cannot really grab and pull it off the bottom, as a method of controlling it.
Rasher emphasized the need for more research into the long-term resilience of kelp forests. If the goal is to bring the kelp forests back, he said, improving the receptivity of reefs would involve not only getting rid of the turf algae but also identifying kelp cultivars that can withstand the warming ocean temperatures.
The research received funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, both of which have undergone significant reductions in their funding during President Donald Trump’s second term. The cuts will reverberate across labs such as Rasher’s, which depended on the organizations to sustain their cutting-edge research.
However, Rasher is not deterred. He said his lab is further diversifying its funding sources by seeking foundational and philanthropic support, in addition to federal support.
2025-12-28 05:22:58
Elon Musk took to his social media site on Friday to decry New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s pick to lead the city’s fire department, claiming that she couldn’t do the job. The commissioner-to-be, Lillian Bonsignore, is a 31-year FDNY veteran who led the department’s emergency medical services during the Covid-19 pandemic. She will be the second woman to hold the position and the first openly gay person to lead the department.
That was enough for Musk to weigh in. “People will die because of this,” he wrote, adding, “Proven experience matters when lives are at stake.”
As Gothamist reported, before her retirement in 2022, Bonsignore was both the highest-ranking uniformed woman in FDNY history and the first woman to achieve a four-star rank. At the press conference announcing her appointment, Mamdani praised Bonsignore, saying that “her record speaks for itself,” before detailing her career in the city that spanned from before 9/11 through the worst of the pandemic.
“I know the job,” Bonsignore said this week. “I know what the firefighters need, and I can translate that to this administration that is willing to listen. I know what EMS needs. I have been EMS for 30-plus years.”
Musk is the richest person on the planet and a rabid opponent of diversity, equity, and inclusion measures, or DEI. He appeared to be claiming that the new head of the FDNY was a diversity hire. He’s written: “Time for DEI to DIE,” “DEI has caused people to DIE,” “DEI is a Civil Rights Act violation,” “DEI kills art,” “DEI puts the lives of your loved ones at risk,” and “DEI is just another word for racism,” amongst his other previous observations about these efforts.
This isn’t the first time Musk, who is not a resident of New York, has weighed in on Mamdani or his campaign.
A day before the mayoral election in November, Musk endorsed Mamdani’s leading opponent in the race, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo had resigned in disgrace after the state’s attorney general reported that he had sexually harassed nearly a dozen women. (A later DOJ investigation put that number at 13.) In Musk’s endorsement post, he called the soon-to-be-mayor-elect “Mumdumi.”
Then, on the morning of Election Day, Musk shared a false claim that because Mamdani was listed under both the “Democratic” and “Working Families” party lines on the NYC ballot, the election was a “scam!” But in New York, candidates can appear more than once on a ballot if they are nominated by multiple political parties. Musk also pointed to the layout of the ballot as a problem, since Cuomo’s name appeared in a lower spot on the ballot than Mamdani’s. He failed to mention that this took place because the former governor lost in the Democratic primary and chose to run as an independent later in the election season.
Despite his recent interest in the FDNY’s leadership, Musk’s work during his time with the federal government imperiled some of NYC’s firefighters. His DOGE team threatened cancer research funding for firefighters who responded to the World Trade Center attacks and were exposed to toxins.
Back in February, Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, tried to cancel a $257,000 contract for 9/11-related cancer research. At the time, according to CBS News, “FDNY confirmed researchers working on the career firefighter health study received notice of the CDC contract termination.” Days later, after public backlash, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention restored the contract.
As he spoke about the FDNY during his commissioner announcement, Mamdani called the first responders, “the heroes of our five boroughs,” who “save lives at a moment’s notice.”
“They deserve a leader who cares about their work,” he continued, referring to Bonsignore, adding, “because she did it herself.”
2025-12-28 02:09:17
The president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is threatening legal action against a jazz musician who cancelled his Christmas Eve performance after the institution’s board of trustees, handpicked by President Donald Trump, voted last week to change the name of the performing arts institution.
The letter from Richard Grenell, the Kennedy Center president, to Chuck Redd, a drum and vibraphone player, says that they will seek $1 million in damages for “this political stunt.”
“Your decision to withdraw at the last moment—explicitly in response to the Center’s recent renaming, which honors President Trump’s extraordinary efforts to save this national treasure,” the letter, shared to the Associated Press, reads, “is classic intolerance.” And, Grenell continues, “Your action surrenders to the sad bullying tactics employed by certain elements on the left, who have sought to intimidate artists into boycotting performances.”
“Your action surrenders to the sad bullying tactics employed by certain elements on the left, who have sought to intimidate artists into boycotting performances.”
The move from Grenell, who was appointed by Trump earlier this year, comes after the center’s board of trustees voted to rename the institution the Trump-Kennedy Center. It took less than 24 hours from the board’s meeting in Palm Beach to workers showing up at the building to affix “THE DONALD J. TRUMP AND” above “THE JOHN F. KENNEDY MEMORIAL CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS.”
The institution’s website now shows: “The Trump Kennedy Center.” Members of the Kennedy family have denounced the action.
As The New York Times reported, “Even though Mr. Trump had already been calling it that for months in trollish posts online, he acted shocked that his handpicked board had thought to do this for him.” President Trump told reporters that he was “honored” and “surprised” by the vote.
Redd has hosted the annual “Jazz Jams” Christmas Eve concert since 2006. He told AP that once he saw the name change earlier this month, he “chose to cancel our concert.” According to the AP, Redd often included a student musician in the show, which, he said, is “one of the many reasons that it was very sad to have had to cancel.”
Grenell also took personal jabs at Redd in the letter, claiming that his show wasn’t popular. “The contrast between the public’s lack of interest in your show with the success we are experiencing under our new chairman is drastic,” Grenell wrote. Trump’s board elected him as chairman in February. “The most avant-garde and well-regarded performers in your genre will still perform regularly,” he added, “and unlike you, they’ll do it to sold–out crowds regardless of their political leanings.”
The center’s website still describes Redd as “an accomplished performer.”
Despite Grenell’s insistence that the Kennedy Center has experienced “drastic” success under new management, The Washington Post reports that even before the renaming, ticket sales had tanked. “Nearly nine months after Trump became chair of the center and more than a month into its main season,” the Post noted, “ticket sales for the Kennedy Center’s three largest performance venues are the worst they’ve been in years, according to a Washington Post analysis of ticketing data from dozens of recent shows as well as past seasons. Tens of thousands of seats have been left empty.”
Days after the renaming, Representative Joyce Beatty, a Democrat of Ohio, filed a lawsuit against President Trump and center representatives. The suit holds that the move was illegal because an act of Congress is required to rename the building. Representative Beatty is an ex officio member of the Kennedy Center’s board and called into the board meeting where the change was voted on.
“For the record. This was not unanimous,” she wrote on X. “I was muted on the call and not allowed to speak or voice my opposition to this move. Also, for the record, this was not on the agenda. This was not consensus. This is censorship.”
2025-12-27 16:01:00
The first pilot episode of Reveal exposed how the Department of Veterans Affairs was overprescribing opioids to veterans and contributing to an overdose crisis. Journalist Aaron Glantz explained how he received—surprisingly quickly—a decade’s worth of opioid prescription data from the federal government.
“Sometimes, you have to sue to get the records,” he said. “I have to think that there were some people over there in DC who were as concerned as we were about this.”
After that first show was made, host Al Letson didn’t know what to expect. “We weren’t sure if any public radio stations would even air it,” he said.
Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.Reveal’s VA investigation sparked outrage. Congress held hearings during a government lockdown, and there’s been a sea change in the way veterans are prescribed painkillers. And today, the show is on more than 500 stations.
This week on Reveal, we celebrate our 10-year anniversary with a look back at some of our favorite stories, from investigations into water shortages in drought-prone California to labor abuses in the Dominican Republic. And we interview the journalists behind the reporting to explain what happened after the stories aired.
This is a rebroadcast of an episode that originally aired in March 2025.
