The White House isn’t just the home of the sitting president of the United States—it’s also known as the people’s house, a symbol of democracy at work. Vanity Fair‘s Chris Whipple took readers inside the building and the inner workings of a half-dozen of Donald Trump‘s closest advisors, interviewing chief of staff Susie Wiles several times throughout the first months of Trump’s second term, and speaking to Stephen Miller, Marco Rubio, Karoline Leavitt, JD Vance, and others in a bombshell two-part feature.
Whipple has discussed his reporting process for the story, and now, here’s Anderson in conversation with VF, taking us behind the scenes of the assignment that he almost turned down. And, to answer the question on everyone’s mind right away, Anderson says of those ultra-tight shots, “No, they’re not cropped versions. I’m standing very, very close.”
Vanity Fair: What compelled you to take this assignment for Vanity Fair? Christopher Anderson: I wasn’t eager to accept the assignment at first. My roots are in journalism, I have done a lot of political work over the years and photographed a lot of politicians from the last administrations, from George Bush to Barack Obama, Joe Biden, even Bill Clinton. But a lot of what I do now is photograph celebrities. And I assumed incorrectly that the ask was for me to show up and be a celebrity photographer for this administration. And my journalistic DNA would not sit comfortably with this idea. So I thought, at first, I’m not gonna accept. Jennifer Pastore, the global creative director of Vanity Fair, and I had a long discussion about this, and she persuaded me that wearing my celebrity photographer hat was not why they were coming to me. That the qualification for this job was to come as a journalist, to bring a certain sense of clear-eyed observation and even skepticism. And that would come with a certain challenge and in my opinion, I felt an enormous responsibility in doing that. So that very much aligned with what my history is, what my roots have been in, it’s an historical moment, so I want to be there.
As the joke goes, come November 30th, Mariah Carey starts defrosting, ready to take over the Christmas season once more. It doesn’t feel truly festive until we’ve heard the iconic first line to her 1994 hit All I Want for Christmas Is You.
And it certainly isn’t an office party until someone has wailed the (very high) lyrics in the direction of their inappropriate office crush.
The pop icon spends Christmas every year in Aspen – the snow-covered playground of the rich and famous, who all flock to the famous ski slopes and quaint town for a dose of festive fun that looks like it was pulled straight out of a Netflix rom-com.
Mariah’s Christmas traditions include trips to the snowy landscapes of Aspen, occasionally a sleigh ride (with a real reindeer, no less), and rustling up her late father’s linguini recipe. Her Christmas style? Unabashedly festive. Think sequins and fluffy trims on everything.
2025 is no different for Mariah, and she has just arrived in the gorgeous Colorado spot, and immediately headed to the iconic Kemo Sabe – a luxury Western clothing store beloved by visitors to the area.
The brand offers high-end Western-inspired clothing and accessories, and it’s their cowboy hats that undoubtedly get the most buzz. They offer a range of customisation in store, and A-listers that have flocked to get their mitts on the swanky merchandise include Jennifer Lopez,Rihanna and Kendall Jenner.
Those whose pockets might not stretch to a cowboy hat will be pleased to know that the iconic store also offers branded socks – a steal at $35.
Quite simply, Aspen offers world-class skiing opportunities, extreme luxury and most importantly of all – privacy. The secluded town means minimal paparazzi, so A-listers can relax in a way that more populous destinations such as LA and London make tricky.
Especially in the world of social media, fans often feel entitled to unfettered access to their favourite celebrities, with instant content available 24/7 at the mere push of a button. Christmas should be a time of relaxing and stepping back from the day-to-day rat race, so it isn’t surprising that so many of the über-rich and famous head to more private destinations at this time of year.
Kemo Sabe wasn’t the only store Mariah popped into on arrival in Aspen. She was also papped outside the Gucci store – naturally – and in fact, in these fun snaps she is wearing the Italian fashion house’s boots – emblazoned with the luxury label’s logo.
Mariah has long been a fan of the brand, her love of high fashion has seen her sport Fendi, Louis Vuitton and Prada on this vacation too. H! Fashion‘s Style Editor, trend expert (and Christmas lover) Orion Scott notes that: “Mariah’s distinct brand of pairing seriously luxurious labels with a cheeky festive wink plus a sequin or two, has become her signature style – not just at Christmas, but all year round. It’s fashionable yet fun. Chic, yet a little cheesy. And we love her for it.”
And actually, Mariah isn’t the only pop superstar to fall in love with these glorious Gucci boots. They were, in fact, also spotted on Radial Optimism singer Dua Lipa earlier this month. Callum Turner‘s wife-to-be opted to pair them with the matching skirt and blouse for a serious dose of outfit inspo.
Mariah also has lots to celebrate at the moment – her iconic Christmas hit All I Want for Christmas Is You (released an astonishing 31 years ago has reached top spot yet again in the Billboard Hot 100.
We might love Christmas, but no one loves Christmas quite like Mariah.
Nothing exploded. No one yelled. However, the energy was tense. People talked past each other, and several commitments quietly evaporated once the meeting ended. Later that day, the manager said, “This is what culture damage looks like before it becomes culture collapse.”
You don’t lose a healthy workplace all at once. You lose it through small, repeated behaviors that go unaddressed—missed responsibilities, defensive reactions, and negativity that spreads faster than motivation.
Recent research from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) shows that teams with unresolved behavior issues experience significantly higher disengagement and turnover—not because employees are “bad,” but because accountability is unclear and leaders hesitate to intervene.
An Inc.com Featured Presentation
That’s where you come in. Because whether you’re leading a team or simply influencing the people around you, culture is shaped by what you tolerate.
The most damaging behaviors aren’t the loud ones
In my own experience, I have found that teams suffer most not from isolated misconduct, but from persistent low-grade behavior problems that drain energy and trust over time. In other words, culture erodes quietly.
The good news? You can stop that erosion faster than you think. Here are seven actions you can take right now to protect (and repair) your workplace culture:
Matthew Broderick and David Cross. Photo: Marc J. Franklin
One is tempted to execute a stunt review of the new Tartuffe in heroic couplets, as the late, great Richard Wilbur translated Molière’s comedies for six decades, beginning with The Misanthrope in 1955. For example, I could open with:
This shoddy Tartuffe with its lazy rhymes
Is a cracked church bell that gratingly chimes.
But I won’t subject you to my doggerel; I had to choke down so much already at New York Theatre Workshop. Lucas Hnath’s version of the 1669 French classic adopts a defiantly dopey attitude to the original Alexandrine verse, spitting out countless false rhymes (special/medal), pointless recycling (bastard/disaster—twice!) and triplets that seem to relish their own insipidity (“to touch your ass is no more crass than worshipping at holy mass”). Wilbur opted for a sleek line of iambic pentameter, and his bouncy euphony, highly playable and delightful on the ear, remains the gold standard. Hnath’s effort, by contrast, is a collegiate prank, a hectic hash of profanity, stoner chuckles and feints at moral philosophy. He seems unconcerned if his rhyming falls flat or his characters sound like idiots. The outraged matriarch Mme Pernelle (Bianca del Rio, haute camp) lambastes her relatives for being louche and uncouth:
I am stunned you think it’s okay that the cleaning woman has so much say, be that as it may, go ahead and let the maid just have her way, I can no longer stay and watch you all fall into moral decay.
I’m not cosplaying rhyme police; this is cheap stuff. Once you hear Hnath’s weakness for flat or tinny notes, you can’t un-hear it, and it will bug you for two hours sans intermission. For some reason, he formats his script in prose, as if to bury the juvenile wordplay.
What a misguided affair from such an accomplished team. Director Sarah Benson has collaborated intensely with living or modern playwrights (her productions of An Octoroon, Fairview, and Blasted were unforgettable) but sinks under the weight of a hyper-stylized design and resolutely unfunny text. Hnath has been justly celebrated for form-bending in weird, metatheatrical dazzlers such as Dana H. and A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney (which Benson staged at Soho Rep). It’s unclear what the goal was here. Drunk Theatre does French Baroque? Hip-hop Molière without actual rapping?
Amber Gray. Photo: Marc J. Franklin
Tartuffe is a clockwork farce about the hypocrisy of moralizers and the credulity of followers. Wealthy patriarch Orgon (David Cross) has fallen under the spell of Tartuffe (Matthew Broderick), a nondenominational preacher who espouses a vaguely Catholic credo of sexual abstinence and mortification of the flesh. Naturally, this doesn’t prevent Tartuffe from gorging on Orgon’s larder or lusting after his attractive wife, Elmire (Amber Gray, glamour and grace). Orgon’s son, Damis (Ryan J. Haddad, petulant delight) sees through the hypocrite—as does mouthy maid Dorine (Lisa Kron) and mousy daughter Mariane (Emily Davis). Perpetually posing with a frozen smile and singsong delivery, Ikechukwu Ufomadu pops in now and then as Mariane’s nincompoop suitor Valère. There’s a tasting menu of acting styles clashing onstage, but Ufomadu really seemed to be in his own play. I kinda wish I’d been at that one.
To be sure, it’s a murderer’s row of gifted actors, and David Cross (Arrested Development) cannot not get laughs playing a confident dolt. Davis simpers and grimaces deliciously as Orgon tries to arrange a marriage between her and Tartuffe, and Haddad throws very amusing tantrums. Kron seems baffled by the world around her, but manages dry one-liners. As Elmire’s brother and a voice of reason, Francis Jue may not have the flashiest role, but he finds a pleasing balance of witty restraint and outrage. About Matthew Broderick, I don’t know what to say. After seeing umpteenth performances from him on Broadway and Off-Broadway, I’m still shocked by his limited range and strangulated physical vocabulary. His Tartuffe talks (and walks) like Kermit the Frog in a frock coat. His understated squeaks render some lines droll, but on the whole, Broderick recedes into the muted green walls (mock-Louis XIV furnishings by set collective dots).
Emily Davis and Ikechukwu Ufomadu. Photo: Marc J. Franklin
Benson and her designers deserve credit for not setting Tartuffe in a modern-day megachurch or MAGA country. Her actors are arranged in a hermetically sealed, cartoon version of 17th-century France, with sumptuous costuming by Enver Chakartash so colorful and candied it’s like a crate of macarons on legs. Sound design by Peter Mills Weiss mixes boxing-match bells and industrial droning, and interstitial dances by Raja Feather Kelly gesture (superfluously) toward the characters’ lives of leisure, like mimed ballroom dancing and tennis. Heather Christian contributes a dirge at the end that seems to point out everyone is guilty of moral certitude, which kills the already decomposing satirical vibe.
Look, finding comic gold in Molière is famously hard. The antique Gallic humor is refined and mannered, the Wilbur translations, as mentioned, are hard to beat, and the structured nature of the farce needs a super-deft, well-directed group of clowns to keep it popping. This past summer, Red Bull Theater’s The Imaginary Invalid actually worked. Adapter Jeffrey Hatcher opted for a prose translation that went straight for the funny bone. It was all there: visual gags, silly accents, runaway mugging, jokes about Les Misérables. Punch lines that punched. At New York Theatre Workshop, it’s style without substance—which Molière mocked in the first place.
Tartuffe | 2 hrs. No intermission. | New York Theatre Workshop | 79 East 4th Street | 212-460-5475 | Click Here For Tickets
Lisa Kron and Emilty Davis. Photo: Marc J. Franklin
Old friend who can’t get anywhere on time: Obviously, get them a new watch. If they already have a watch and they’re still always late, get a new friend.
PTA parent-friend with a secret trust fund: They literally deserve nothing.
Brother-in-law with terrifyingly good taste: A subscription to Emily Sundberg’s Substack newsletter, “Feed Me”
Art collector: Draw them a little picture. Sign it. Frame it. Hammer a nail into their wall and hang it while they aren’t looking.
Cinema snob: I can’t stand these people. Show them who’s boss by getting them this box set of Caveh Zahedi’s films. If they don’t know who he is, they’re not a true cinema snob.
Over the past century, there have been countless attempts to assemble a definitive list of essential literature. In recent decades, however, the very idea of a literary canon has become a source of sustained debate, shaped by its historical tendency to be racist, sexist and otherwise exclusionary. A glance at many of these roundups still reveals a striking sameness: overwhelmingly white and male.
That is not to suggest that Joyce, Homer and Dostoyevsky are not foundational reads for literary devotees. Rather, a truly committed reader would do well to recognize that many extraordinary books exist as overlooked peers to the greatest works humanity has produced. With that in mind, what follows is a selection of classics, old and new, that deserve a place in any honest literary canon.
Arthur L. Carter poses for a portrait in The New York Observer’s Upper East Side townhouse in New York City on May 16, 1994. Penske Media via Getty Images
Except for a few excursions to his crowded Connecticut parties, I really did not know Arthur Carter well at all. I was much closer and friendlier with his brilliant editor, Peter Kaplan, who began working with me in 1987 and continued until his death after 15 years as one of the most powerful and impactfulvoices in American journalism. Kaplan was the longest-standing editor of The New York Observer. Carter was what you might technically label his “boss,” but he consulted Kaplan on every issue, large and small, and never made a move without him.
Carter admired Kaplan for his extraordinary kindness and brilliant intellect. “I’d never seen that combination before and have never seen it since,” Carter said. “He was a superb talent, a gentleman with a rare quality of just plain niceness.” Before joining their liaison, I had always been limited by working relationships with important but self-involved editors, who were more obsessed with personal achievements and political accomplishments than personal pride.
Carter cared more about writers than their editorial opinions. He was devoted to quality. He never rejected a single idea of mine and never failed to share enthusiasm for an article or review that particularly appealed to him. An expression of approval, no matter how small, is meaningful to a writer and is often overlooked. Carter was careful to make his approval every bit as valuable as his occasional criticism. As the only journalist known to have appeared in The New York Observer from its inception, I am proud to say that I have no memory of any negative reaction to any single review or feature I ever wrote. That, for any journalist with the remotest controversial reputation, is something uniquely unheard of.
On a personal level, he threw lavish Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners that included just about everyone you ever longed to meet on a professional level. My days of collaboration with Arthur Carter extended to such privileges as a personal recommendation from his ex-wife, Dixie Carter, beseeching him for a healthy raise for this reporter, which he countered with, “I appreciate your admiration, but I already thought of it first. A Rex Reed salary increase went into effect yesterday.” You hardly ever get a boss like that anymore, and if you do, you’d be a fool to look the other way.
Madonna and Guy Ritchie reunited in London to support their son, Rocco Ritchie, showing up for the opening of his gallery art show, Talk Is Cheap. It was the first time the former spouses have appeared together publicly since 2008.
Their 25-year-old son, who trained at the Central Saint Martins School and then the Royal Drawing School, presented his new works in a warehouse-studio in central London’s Soho district. The exhibition wasn’t lacking in celebrity guests, with Jason Statham, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, and Jake Gyllenhaal in attendance, but it was the presence of the artist’s parents that turned the most heads. In the caption to his Instagram post, in which he appears arm in arm with both his parents, Rocco Ritchie thanked them for coming to his event.
“It’s obvious why some people might hold judgment against me, I don’t blame them,” he wrote. “However, I am proud to be who I am, but I’m even prouder to have both my parents together in one room supporting me.”
“I wanted long necks, big eyes, a good profile,” says the artist Mark Leckey, talking about the models in this story, his first fashion project for a magazine. He was searching for the kinds of faces that might have fit into paintings from one of his favorite historical periods, “just before the Renaissance,” when Italian artists such as Giotto were, he says, “moving from Byzantine icons to sort of early realism.” Giotto lived in Florence in the late Middle Ages, and Leckey is excited to note that one of the models is Florentine too. “He looks like a kind of angel,” he says. “I always had this expectation that models were not going to be that luminous in real life, but they are. It’s like, the closer you get to them, the more impossible looking they become.”
Working in mediums including film, installation, and performance (he once inhaled refrigerator coolant in order to get into the mindset of a Samsung fridge), Leckey has carved out a unique niche in the art world. Many of his works draw on youth cultures; his most famous film, Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore, from 1999, is a euphoric but eerie montage of frenzied British clubbers in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. In 2019, at Tate Britain, in London, he re-created the overpass where he used to hang out at night as a teenager in Liverpool; he is about to make a similarly site-specific intervention at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.
Leckey is also a DJ—he says that the night before our meeting, he cleared the dance floor at the London nightclub Fold by playing “horrible gabber,” the super-fast, super-hard Dutch techno subgenre. One of the chief inspirations for this shoot is the year 1971, sometimes acclaimed as the best year ever for rock music, with landmark albums including Led Zeppelin’s Led Zeppelin IV, Joni Mitchell’s Blue, and Carole King’s Tapestry. “I was only a little kid in 1971,” says Leckey, who is 61, “but it calls to me in some way. There was a notion that you could create a culture from the detritus and waste of contemporary capitalism. I guess I still believe in that.”
The artist, who is wearing a rumpled gray suit and a single piratical pearl drop earring on the day of the shoot, says that, like the rest of his work, the images seen here are a way to try and bring together disparate cultural elements to evoke some kind of mythology. He also incorporated one of his obsessions since the pandemic: the Middle Ages. He’s noticed how club kids have been wearing what he describes as “medieval athleisure”—picture a Joan of Arc haircut, chains, and a tracksuit. “Covid felt very medieval, in the sense of a plague,” he notes. “But I also think that the more ubiquitous technology becomes, the more it paradoxically throws us back into a kind of animistic past.” With the online and offline, Leckey notes, “you’re experiencing the world as both material and immaterial at the same time. And I guess that’s what felt to me akin to kind of a medieval mindset.”
Leckey also wanted to convey something else he often returns to in his work: states of bliss. “I’ve always been fascinated by the ecstatic, whether it’s through music, drugs, or religion,” he says. “I once had a moment of rapture. It was the end of lockdown. I was with my little kid in the pram, walking in the park, freer than I’d been for the whole year. I was listening to Judee Sill’s ‘Jesus Was a Cross Maker.’ The sun came out through the trees, and I was just overwhelmed.” Leckey says that the images and music he makes are an attempt to recapture that transcendent moment. Then he adds: “Because I can’t do yoga.”
George Anderson wears a Prada dress.
Edna Karibwami wears a Rick Owens gown and boots.
Amedeo Mancini wears a Palomo top.
From left: Karibwami, Matilde Lucidi, Anderson, and Geng.
Geng wears a Fforme coat.
Lucidi wears a Colleen Allen cloak.
Anderson wears a Prada dress.
Karibwami wears a Rick Owens gown.
David Gant wears an IM Men coat and pants.
Hair by Claire Grech for Oribe at Streeters Agency; makeup by Daniel Sällstrom at MA World Group; manicure by Chisato Yamamoto for Essie at Caren Agency. Models: Edna Karibwami at IMG; Matilde Lucidi at Society; Athiec Geng at Fusion Models NYC; George Anderson at Viva Paris; Amedeo Mancini at the Claw Agency; David Gant at Models1. Casting by Ashley Brokaw Casting.
Production: Farago Projects; executive producer: Sylvia Farago; producers: Kate Duncan, Sarah Aranda Garzon; photo assistants: David Manion, Abena Appiah, Max Lancaster; digital technician: Patricia Benitez; projection technician: Dawid; fashion assistants: Jordan Kelsey, Atalanta Thornton, Maria Vredko, Lily Ramsay; production coordinators: Keri Hannah-Pettigrew; Mia Vinaccia; hair assistants: Kirsten Bassett, Gordon Chapples, Krisztian Szalay; makeup assistants: Martina DeRosa, Martha Inoue, Naomi Gugler; manicure assistant: Tomoko Komiya; tailor: Inna Romanovych at Galedi Agency.
“It feels like the Eras Tour was a lifetime within my life,” Taylor Swift said earlier this week at an intimate New York City screening of the first two episodes of The End of an Era, the six-part docuseries pulling back the curtain on her record-breaking Eras Tour. Those episodes, as well as Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour: The Final Show, a concert film capturing the entirety of her final bow of the 149-show tour, hit Disney+ on Friday, a day before Swift’s 36th birthday.
The tour was long—about a year and a half, all told—and its goodbye, ongoing even now, a year later, is long too. It’s fitting, though, as there’s a lot to process: While on the road, she released two Taylor’s Version re-recording projects (Red and 1989), launched a super-sized studio album (The Tortured Poets Department), began dating Travis Kelce (now her fiancé), attended two Super Bowls, and wrote and recorded another studio album (The Life of a Showgirl). And those are just the highlights.
Taking the microphone, Swift spoke after the rambunctious cheering of the crowd—made up of her entire backing band and vocalists, the Eras Tour dancers, tour production staff, her dad Scott Swift, mom Andrea Swift, and brother Austin Swift, not to mention various Disney personnel and a few members of the media—faded, thanking all who were involved in the tour and production of the series.
“It was a year ago yesterday that we played the last show of the Eras Tour. It feels insane. I know it does for me,” she said, before describing a career-long fixation with not just entertaining people, but providing an escape for audiences, where everything is not perfect, but all feelings are allowed. There’s room for the joy and community that fans have gushed over finding at her concerts, right alongside space to express grief with songs like “Marjorie,” rage (“The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”), exasperation (“We Are Never Getting Back Together”), resilience (“I Can Do It With a Broken Heart”), giddy youthfulness (“22”), and more points along the emotional spectrum that colors everyday life.
“Everything that went into this was all the lessons we’ve learned all of our lives,” she said, crediting her dancers, band, technical staff, and all involved with pouring their own life experiences into making the tour an immersive experience, before acknowledging the docuseries’ directors, Don Argott and Sheena Joyce, also in attendance, for their work preserving the period to share with the world.
Hollein then announced that the evening had raised $5 million, a new record for the event and a massive haul for any museum, though not quite in the same stratosphere as that of…the Met Gala, which raised $31 million this year for the Costume Institute. And then he pressed play on a short film made especially for the evening, featuring two living artists with work in The Met’s collection, Wangechi Mutu and Alex Katz. It was projected onto the gigantic walls that house the Temple of Dendur, everyone in their penguin suits rapt with awe. Each artist picked an object from The Met’s collection; Mutu homed in on a nearly 3,000-year-old statue of Osiris, while Katz chose an Edgar Degas drawing of Mary Cassatt at the Louvre.
At the end of the video, Katz summed up the night’s whole vibe, saying, “In all my experiences in New York, the happiest day I ever had was when I came into The Met and saw my painting.”
“What do you think about your art adding to The Metropolitan Museum’s collection?” the interviewer asked.
“I think it’s a big asset!” Katz said, laughing.
And just because we’re so excited…we have to mention…
Across the country, another museum is announcing some big news: The Vanity Fair Oscar Party is moving to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
That’s right—the best party on Hollywood’s biggest night will now be held at the brand-new campus for LACMA, a month before it’s set to open to the public. The Peter Zumthor–designed building is already winning over the hearts and minds of Angelenos, and it’s a great privilege to bring this historic event to perhaps the most anticipated new fortress of art constructed this century.
“The idea of Hollywood has never been more expansive than it is today,” said Mark Guiducci, global editorial director of Vanity Fair, when announcing the new venue. “The film industry intersects with so many disciplines, and the silos between them are breaking down. Artists make films. Sports stars are producers. Movie moguls fund art museums. And technology is embedded throughout. We’re thrilled to capture that energy with a cultural institution that undergirds the importance of Los Angeles and the industry at a time when Vanity Fair and LACMA are both entering exciting new chapters.”
In the mid-1990s, Merlin began writing a biography of “the posthumous existence” of Oscar Wilde. Nearly 30 years later, he finished it. After Oscar: The Legacy of a Scandal was released last month in the UK by Europa Editions, ahead of its publication in the US next April.
So, what took so long? “Having criticized other people for sloppy research and inventions and exaggerations and so on, I knew I had to get it right myself,” Merlin, 79, tells me during an interview over Zoom from his home in the Burgundy region of France, where he lives with his wife, Emma, who teaches English to employees of the French nuclear industry.
As Merlin investigated the details of Wilde’s tragic last years and charted the dramatic swings in his literary reputation in the century following his death, his book became a family memoir as much as a scholarly biography. Combing through letters, diaries, and photos (many not published before), he eventually came to terms with his complicated legacy.
Given how celebrated Oscar Wilde is today, people might find it hard to fathom “the ricochet effect of the atom bomb of the Oscar Wilde scandal,” as actor Rupert Everett phrased it during a launch event for After Oscar at the British Library on October 16 (which would have been the author’s 171st birthday). “But it’s a ricochet that you are still living,” Everett said to Merlin.
During my chat with him, Merlin elaborates: “I wanted people to know that the echoes of that scandal back in 1895 can still be heard—faintly, admittedly—right up to the last 20 years.”
He also explains why his last name isn’t Wilde. Soon after Oscar Wilde began serving his sentence of two years’ hard labor in 1895, his wife, Constance, adopted the surname Holland for herself and the couple’s two boys, Vyvyan and Cyril, who were eight-and-a-half and 10 years old at the time. Given the scandal that convulsed Victorian society, it was, he writes, “a necessity dictated by public prejudice and concern for her children’s future rather than any sense of shame on her part.”
Prior to his fall, Wilde was the toast of London. He and Constance, the daughter of an Anglo-Irish barrister whom he married in 1884, were bringing up their boys in their home on Tite Street. It was there that she met her husband’s beautiful younger lover, Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas, a son of the Marquess of Queensberry, when Wilde brought him for a visit. In 1895, the marquess visited the Albemarle Club in London, where the Wildes were members, and left a messagewith the porter accusing Wilde of being a sodomite. Goaded on by Bosie, who loathed his father, Wilde brought a libel action against the marquess. He later withdrew the libel case, but the Crown then successfully brought charges of gross indecency against Wilde.
In 1977, Mary Boone paid about $1,700 a month to rent a gallery space in SoHo to show relatively unknown artists. Within a few years, her eponymous gallery and the artists she championed, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Julian Schnabel, and David Salle, had ushered in a new creative era. Known as a no-nonsense dealmaker, Boone cultivated difficult geniuses, wooed pedigreed collectors, and accumulated a closetful of Chanel. But in 2018, after four decades in the art world, she was suddenly embroiled in scandal. Boone was convicted of tax fraud, forced to close her two galleries, and served 13 months in prison. She kept a low profile after her release, but that didn’t last long. In 2024, the band Vampire Weekend released a single titled “Mary Boone.” “[Lead singer] Ezra Koenig called me up and said, ‘Tomorrow we’re going to drop your song,’ ” recalls Boone. “It’s flattering.” Now she’s enjoying a comeback. On a recent Tuesday, the 74-year-old was at Lévy Gorvy Dayan, the uptown Manhattan gallery where her first curatorial effort post-prison has been on view since September. “Downtown/Uptown: New York in the Eighties” features work by the artists she helped launch. After prison, she says, “I thought I was never going to do this again!”
Mary Boone pictured in 1956, at age 5.
Courtesy of Mary Boone
Born in Pennsylvania to Egyptian parents, Boone moved to Los Angeles as a child after her father died. In Los Angeles, she says, “it was like every day was Saturday. We lived by the beach; you were always in the sand.” Growing up, she discovered she had a talent for drawing. “Everyone encouraged me to become an artist.”
Boone with Michael Werner.
Courtesy of Mary Boone
Boone married the German art dealer Michael Werner in 1986. Their honeymoon, in Venice, overlapped with a professional commitment: One of Werner’s artists, Sigmar Polke, was included in the city’s Biennale. “It always seemed like the art world and our lives intermixed,” says Boone. Like her, Werner had emerged from a working-class background, and had earned a reputation for nurturing young talent. Though they divorced in the 1990s, the two remain close friends.
Boone pictured in her SoHo gallery in 1982.
Michel Delsol/Getty Images
Boone studied at the Rhode Island School of Design. As a student, she caught the attention of the artist Lynda Benglis, who also lectured at universities. Benglis told her, “You can’t be in Providence—you have to be in New York.” Boone moved to the city in 1970 and hung out in the Max’s Kansas City scene, which was populated with the likes of John Chamberlain, David Bowie, and Patti Smith. Mostly, though, she found herself at the Odeon and the Ocean Club. “You’d go in, and there would be a table with Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons, and Sarah Charlesworth. Then there’d be another group with David Salle, Julian Schnabel, and Ross Bleckner. It was just fun.”
Ileana Sonnabend and Boone.
Courtesy of Mary Boone
Boone’s first gallery was at 420 West Broadway, which also housed the influential galleries run by divorced art world giants Leo Castelli and Ileana Sonnabend. “I used to joke that when the elevator was broken, which was a lot of the time, people would come into my gallery instead of going up to see theirs.” Both became important mentors and friends of hers. Here, Sonnabend and Boone celebrate their joint birthday in October 1981. “I was turning 30, and she was not turning 30.”
Leo Castelli with his then girlfriend, the art writer Laura de Coppet (left), and Boone at art collector Douglas Cramer’s Los Angeles ranch for a party celebrating Boone’s wedding, in 1986.
Courtesy of Mary Boone
Castelli joined forces with Boone to usher in the neo-Expressionist movement of the 1980s. “Leo didn’t race to show my artists. I had to persuade him to do a show with me,” says Boone.
Boone in front of the Berlin Wall in 1989, while on a trip to visit an artist.
Courtesy of Mary Boone
Boone met Werner in 1981 at the opening party for Norman Rosenthal’s landmark show “A New Spirit in Painting” at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Many of Werner’s artists, including Gerhard Richter and Anselm Kiefer, were on display, and Boone wanted to exhibit them in New York. “I was too young of a dealer to show them, but slowly we started working together.”
In 1987, Boone and Werner had their only child, a son named Max. After giving birth, “I just got a whim to have my hair cut off,” says Boone. “It was a lot of change becoming a parent. I was really lucky—I have a great kid.” Max has worked with both Boone and Werner, and recently struck out on his own as a gallerist.
“Jean-Michel found out where Andy Warhol would go to lunch, and he went there and started selling drawings to everybody,” says Boone, who staged a Basquiat show in 1984. “I made it my business to meet him.” At top, Basquiat and Boone are pictured at that exhibition in Boone’s gallery. “He had a thing with his mother. I think I became a substitute for his mother, and Andy became a substitute for his father.” Warhol took the bottom photo in 1985, as Basquiat prepared for an opening. “He didn’t let the packers pack up his paintings. He rolled them up and dragged them.”
“I always liked artists who did something I had never seen before,” says Boone. She originally turned down the chance to represent Eric Fischl, known as the “bad boy of painting” for his voyeuristic style, but she eventually relented and worked with him for 30 years. The two are seen here at the opening of his show at the Whitney Museum of American Art, in 1986.
Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images
Boone attends the 1990 launch party for Bob Colacello’s Andy Warhol biography, Holy Terror. She showed numerous Warhol works throughout her career, and he eagerly embraced her stable of young artists. “I think he really loved being the head figure,” says Boone. Warhol was the first person to show up to Boone’s inaugural Basquiat exhibition, together with “this man who was smaller than he was, and it turned out to be Manolo Blahnik. Andy tried to get him to buy a Basquiat painting, which was, like, $10,000 at the time. Maybe $5,000. Manolo said he was saving up his money to open a shoe store.”
Boone and Nicole Miller attend a party in 1989 at The Lowell to celebrate Miller’s collaboration with Absolut Vodka.
Patrick McMullan/Getty Images
“Nicole Miller and I have been friends since our days at RISD. We moved to New York together.” While Boone rose to the top ranks of the art scene, Miller’s fashion brand established her as a household name in the 1980s. “I’m very loyal, and so is she.”
Boone with Eric Fischl (center) and Michael Werner at Fischl’s 1985 solo show at Kunsthalle Basel.
Courtesy of Mary Boone
When Boone first moved to New York, she worked at Bykert Gallery, which was run by Lynda Benglis’s boyfriend, Klaus Kertess. “At around four or five, all the artists would start coming in, like Richard Serra, Brice Marden, Chuck Close, and Agnes Martin. Hearing these artists talk about art really was educational,” she says. Kertess left the gallery in 1975 to become a writer, and Boone decided to strike out on her own. “For every artist I ended up showing, I went to a thousand studios. Slowly, I put together a group.” Here, she is pictured with Eric Fischl (center) and Werner at Fischl’s 1985 solo show at Kunsthalle Basel.
Boone attending a Christophe de Menil fashion show at the Palladium, in 1985.
Patrick McMullan/Getty Images
Boone’s first brush with the press had come in 1974, when a young Anna Wintour asked to include her in a Harpers & Queen story on stylish young New York women. “I told her, ‘Please don’t write about me, because I don’t want to be talked about in terms of my clothes. I want to open my gallery.’ ” Nonetheless, Boone paid attention to fashion. “It started with Armani. I, and a lot of other dealers, wore the low-key gray.” She developed a taste for Chanel when she found a trove of vintage couture suits in her size at auction. “I bought one or two. Tina Chow bought the rest of them, like, 30. Then Lagerfeld took over Chanel, and I wore that most of the time.”
Boone and Julian Schnabel in 1980.
Photo by Bob Kiss
Julian Schnabel’s first solo show in New York, at Boone’s gallery in 1979, was a breakthrough for both artist and gallerist. Previously, Schnabel had worked as a cook at the trendy Ocean Club restaurant. (David Salle, another of Boone’s artists, also cooked there.) Schnabel’s plate paintings—literally paintings on broken plates affixed to a canvas—marked a break from the minimalism of the 1970s. “It was just something completely different,” Boone says.
DAVID X PRUTTING/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images
Schnabel’s defection from Boone’s gallery to Pace, in 1984, was her first major setback. “I was heartbroken,” she says. Here, she poses with Schnabel’s son Vito at his gallery show in 2008. “It shows you life is just a circle of events. Hopefully, the good outweighs the bad.”
New York magazine and Vox Media, LLC
A 1982 New York magazine cover on the booming art market named Boone “The New Queen of the Art Scene.” The city had emerged from bankruptcy, and suddenly money was flowing into the art world. The article painted Boone as a new type of gallerist, one always ready to pour a glass of champagne or make 10 phone calls to close a sale. “I kind of blocked it out,” she says. “I became a symbol. But, listen, a lot of young women, like Thelma Golden, came up to me and said, ‘I wanted to go into the arts because of seeing that cover.’ ” She credits Wintour, then working as New York’s fashion editor, for her inclusion.
Fairchild Archive/Penske Media via Getty Images
In the 1980s, a magazine asked a selection of gallerists how they celebrated a big sale. Most said with champagne or food. Boone said she bought a new pair of shoes. Her reputation as a shoe lover has followed her ever since. “Someone told me Warhol read that. Then I got my first invitation to lunch at the Factory,” she says. “I do like shoes, because they’re about moving forward. And particularly being a woman in what was still a man’s world, it was like taking steps.”
Boone with Parker Posey and Posey in the film Basquiat.
Left: Marion Curtis/Starpix/Shutterstock. Right: Eleventh Street Prod/Miramax/Kobal/Shutterstock
Parker Posey with Boone, played a fictionalized version of the gallerist in Schnabel’s 1996 film, Basquiat (right). Boone likes to separate herself from the character: “Parker asked me some things, but she pretty much did her own thing.” Even so, Boone is a fan of both the actor (“I wish she could play me in real life”) and the film. “This is Julian’s story about what he thinks of me, Jean-Michel, and himself. It’s a good movie because he’s a painter. A lot of the problem with movies about artists is believability.”
Courtesy of Lévy Gorvy Dayan, photos by Elisabeth Bernstein
Initially, Boone and her band of artists were dismissed as a fad. “I never really listened to that,” says Boone. “I just had to keep doing serious shows.” Her 2025 exhibition at Lévy Gorvy Dayan presents the people she worked with as the definitive 1980s American artists.
Boone with collector Stan Cohen on opening night of her 2025 exhibition.
Courtesy of Mary Boone
The exhibition includes a Barbara Kruger silkscreen bearing the phrase: what me worry? “I’ve shown that work three different times, and it’s never looked as good as it does here.”
Boone with Pharrell Williams and the artist KAWS in 2013.
Neil Rasmus/BFA/Shutterstock
The VIPs who have shown up to Boone’s galleries on opening night include Steve Martin, Monica Lewinsky, Diane Sawyer, Bianca Jagger, Katie Couric, and David Bowie, among many more. Here, she poses with Pharrell Williams and the artist KAWS at the opening of a 2013 show she organized. Nonetheless, Boone never chases celebrities on opening night. “There should be a lot of energy focused on the art and the artists.”
By the time I hit my mid-20s, I had sadly held a front-row seat to my dad Wally “Famous” Amos’s slow decline, from “cover of magazine” famous to “pop-culture trivia answer” famous, for many years. After leaving Famous Amos, Wally started a string of new cookie companies—none of which came close to capturing the success his first venture achieved. A lawsuit with Famous Amos over the use of his name left him in a financial hole, and he would spend the rest of his life never quite climbing out of it.
By the 2010s, my relationship with my dad had become one of performative love. I watched as he continued to court fame, including during an appearance on Shark Tank in 2016, but chose not to get involved in any of his business dealings. We chatted and saw each other regularly, but his divorce from my mom, Christine, as well as two subsequently short-lived marriages, had created a distance that neither he nor I seemed to want to really fix.
Then, in 2019, Wally put into motion a series of events that would set up a final chapter of his life filled with chaos for me and my brothers, Michael, Gregory, and Shawn. As we navigated issues tied to his dementia, abrupt cross-country moves, family court battles, and his eventual passing in 2024, I was finally forced to face my father’s life and legacy head-on.
As my time making this podcast comes to an end, I’ve been thinking a lot about the fact that I’ll never really know how my dad would have felt about my telling his story. Would he have understood and appreciated my decision to so publicly air the journey I went on to understand who Wally Amos was to the world—and, more importantly, to me? In the end, I’ve decided he would have been proud. He was a man who was always happiest when his successes—and mistakes—could help inspire others. It would have brought a smile to his face to know that, in the end, he did exactly that for his daughter.
To hear the final two episodes of Tough Cookie: The Wally “Famous” Amos Story, listen here or wherever you download your podcasts.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday aimed at bolstering U.S. artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives as it unveiled its new “Genesis Mission” to accelerate AI use for scientific purposes.
The “Genesis Mission” will direct the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and their national labs to work with private companies to share federal data sets, advanced supercomputing capabilities, and scientific facilities.
“The private sector has launched artificial intelligence at huge scale, but with a little bit different focus – on language, on business, on processes, on consumer services,” Secretary of Energy Chris Wright told reporters Monday. “What we’re doing here is just pivoting those efforts to focus on scientific discovery, engineering advancements. And to do that, you need the data sets that are contained across our national labs.”
Vice President JD Vance, left, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright, right, in Greenland while honoring the 55th anniversary of Earth Day 2025. (Reuters)
Additionally, the executive order instructs the Department of Energy and national labs to create an integrated platform aimed at expediting scientific discovery, in an attempt to connect AI capability with scientists, engineers, technical staff, and the labs’ scientific instruments, according to a White House official.
Trump hinted an effort like this was in the works during the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum Wednesday in Washington, where he said the U.S. would work “to build the largest, most powerful, most innovative AI ecosystem in the world.”
US President Donald Trump during the US-Saudi Investment Forum at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025. (Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The effort comes after Trump issued an AI policy document called “Winning the Race: America’s AI Action Plan” in July. The document laid out a framework focused on accelerating AI innovation, ensuring the U.S. is the leader in international AI diplomacy and security, and using the private sector to help build up and operate AI infrastructure.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is also currently considering other executive orders pertaining to AI, and more executive orders could be on the horizon.
For example, Fox News Digital previously reported that the White House was gearing up an executive order instructing the Justice Department to sue states that adopt their own laws regulating AI.
The Trump administration is prepping an executive order that would instruct the Justice Department to sue states that adopt their own laws that would regulate AI. (Samuel Corum/Bloomberg via Getty Images, left, and MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images, right.)
Trump appeared to address the initiative at the U.S-Saudi Investment Forum as well, claiming that a series of AI regulations imposed at the state level would prove a “disaster.”
Christie’s had a somewhat controversial install of work from the collection of Stefan Edlis and Gael Neeson. Specialists hung one gallery almost identically to their Chicago apartment (sans the wraparound lakeside views) with the Cindy Sherman way up high and a Warhol above a fake fireplace. Very prominently featured were the couple’s furniture pieces, including two bookshelves by Diego Giacometti and two ultrarare Giacometti coffee tables. And when they came on the block at the evening sale, the two bookcases, one after another, commanded fierce bidding wars, flying past their high estimates, the functioning furniture outselling the paintings. It was a bit mystifying to watch multiple bidders chase one of the chicer Giacometti design grails on offer, a low table with fox heads, to a final price of $4.5 million, more than the Princes and the Peytons and many of the Warhols. These things are just part of the game these days. Appropriately enough, I walked into a collector’s living room this week, and there was a Giacometti table.
WINNER: LAUDER WORK ON PAPER
Not just the Klimt—basically all of the Leonard Lauder collection was out of reach for even a mega-collector with a ton of money in the bank. Which makes it all the more charming that, in the day sale, there were a few choice works on paper offered for a cheap-sounding four figures. Lauder bought them from galleries in the ’70s and ’80s: Elizabeth Murray and Joel Shapiro from Paula Cooper, and the Dorothea Rockburne from John Weber. This week, the works on paper all had an approachable low estimate of $5,000. They ended up selling for a lot more—nearly ten times that for the Murray as well as the Rockburne—but compared to the Klimt, still affordable-ish!
I often see entrepreneurs fall into the trap of believing success means working harder than everyone else and chasing every single opportunity that comes their way. After two decades of running a business, I’ve learned that short-term wins are easy, but lasting success is what truly sets leaders and businesses apart. Real impact is about much more than temporary gains or flashy metrics.
Four leadership principles have guided my team, shaped our culture, and helped our business find success—not just for a quarter or a year, but over the long haul. I believe these practices deliver real results, create sustainable results, and separate leaders who achieve lasting success from those focused only on immediate results.
1. Invest in relationships and trust
Success is rarely achieved alone. The leaders who last understand that success always comes back to the people around you—your team, partners, and customers. Build strong teams who take ownership, support your partners with integrity, and listen to the customers you serve with genuine empathy.
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At our software company, we consistently invest in building relationships with like-minded organizations in our industry. Our leadership team regularly partners with our regional Rental Owners Association to present to members on key topics, generating dozens of client referrals right here in our home state. We’ve also cultivated lasting partnerships with other technology providers to integrate new features for our clients, which drives a steady influx of mutual referrals. These referral streams—both of which directly impact our bottom line—wouldn’t exist without these strong relationships we’ve built over time.
Relationships rooted in transparency, reliability, and mutual respect will outlast any short-term gain or quick win. These connections are what will carry you through the challenges, spark loyalty, and open doors to opportunities that no single strategy or tactic could ever replicate. By prioritizing your people, collaboration becomes your competitive advantage—standing the test of market shifts and turbulence.
2. Adapt while staying true to your core values
If I’ve learned anything in two decades of running a business, it’s that change is the only constant. Markets shift, technology evolves, and communities transform. Leaders who adapt with discipline, rather than chasing every new trend, will thrive in any environment by adjusting strategies while staying anchored in core values. Agility matters, but values are what give your decisions meaning, consistency, and staying power.
I have a handful of guiding principles—personal connection, organic growth, exceptional service, and continuous innovation—that shape how I lead and how my team operates every day. Staying true to these values for all these years hasn’t limited our growth—it’s fueled it. They’ve allowed me to adapt thoughtfully, grow sustainably, and make a lasting impact on both our industry and community.
3. Prioritize impact over activity
As a leader, especially in the early stages of building a business, it’s easy to get caught up in being busy and mistake it for progress. The most effective leaders don’t just work harder; they work smarter. Learning to delegate strategically will be one of your most powerful tools, freeing you to focus on initiatives that deliver measurable results and truly move the needle.
Whether it’s innovating your product, scaling your organization, or creating meaningful change in your community, prioritizing the projects and decisions that drive real impact creates momentum that builds over time. Every action should align with a clear purpose, positioning your business for long-term, sustainable success.
One of my priorities is to turn customer feedback into new software features that deliver real value for our clients. Recently, I was thinking about how we could measure impact more effectively. True to my developer roots, I spent a weekend writing new code to track client feature requests, calculate how many users each new feature would affect, and flag specific accounts so our team can personally update customers on progress. This small investment of effort ensures that every development decision directly benefits our clients and that our team focuses on what truly matters.
4. Make giving back a habit
As you start to find success as a business leader, it’s the perfect time to start thinking about how you want to give back to the community you’re a part of. Your community might be your neighborhood or city, a niche within your industry, or a cause you feel passionate about.
At our company, we’ve built philanthropy and community engagement into the core values of our business. We support several local organizations that will, in turn, help the people who live in our region. Our company and team are headquartered in Southern Oregon, and we’re always looking for new ways to support the community that supports us. On a larger scale, we also share our research, data, and knowledge through hundreds of free articles, guides, and educational resources—helping strengthen the entire industry we serve.
Giving back builds trust, inspires loyalty, and ensures that the success you’ve worked so hard to build benefits more than just your bottom line.
Short-term wins might feel exciting, but building a business that endures is a long game. Creating a foundation that can weather challenges drives meaningful growth and leaves a lasting impact on your team, industry, and community. Lasting success isn’t by chance; it’s intentional.
Nathan Miller is the president and founder of Rentec Direct.
If you’ve ever wanted the famously exclusive Hermès Birkin bag, now’s your chance. On December 15, a Birkin 35 in black box calf leather with gold metal trim will be auctioned off by Orne Enchères at Hôtel Drouot in Paris.
A status symbol featured on everything from Sex and the City to Real Housewives, the Birkin bag is named after late actor and singer Jane Birkin, who died on July 16, 2023. The specific bag being auctioned belonged to Birkin, who later gave it to her best friend, photographer Gabrielle Crawford. Crawford will donate the proceeds to help finance the “future Jane Birkin Foundation.” The bag is estimated to go for as much 100,000 to 120,000 euros.
“It is in homage to this friendship, to the hectic adventure that was their life together, that Gabrielle has decided to entrust these souvenirs to the auction in order to continue Jane’s philanthropic battles and to create a foundation in her name,” reads a statement from Orne Enchères.
According to the press release, the Birkin 35 in black box calf leather was “one of the first bags offered by Hermès” to Birkin. According to Crawford, Birkin used this bag every day for years and it “became a sort of mobile warehouse.”
“Gifts from all over the world hung from the handles—bells, Japanese lucky charms,” the press release continues. “It weighed a ton. But she and it were inseparable. She never forgot it.” Eventually, Birkin gave it to Crawford, her best friend of nearly six decades.
Crawford and Birkin met in 1964, at a photo shoot for the Daily Mail’s 1965 “Girls to Watch” promotion. “My friendship with Jane was unique and irreplaceable,” Crawford told Paris Match last year. “A true friend gives you self-confidence. We played that role for each other for 58 years…. She said I was her antidote to disaster.” Crawford wrote a 2024 biography of Birkin, C’est Jane, Birkin Jane.
Le sac Birkin mis en vente par la maison Orne Enchères à l’Hôtel Drouot le 15 décembre 2025.Clemens Klenk
Environmental journalistTatiana Schlossberg, the daughter of Caroline Kennedy, announced in an essay published Saturday that she has been diagnosed with an incurable form of acute myeloid leukemia. She was diagnosed at age 34, after a routine blood draw performed following the May 2024 birth of her daughter revealed unusual results. Writing for the New Yorker, she says that in the months since, she’s undergone chemotherapy, a bone-marrow transplant, stem cell treatment, and a clinical trial for a new form of immunotherapy—many of these the result of federally supported cancer research, which her second cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., slashed following his confirmation earlier this year.
As Vanity Fair and others have reported, RFK Jr. lost the support of his family as he campaigned against vaccines and for president last year. As Joe Hagan reported for VF in 2024, his siblings were “furious” and “heartbroken” over his candidacy. Following the presidential election, his sister Caroline Kennedy, who has long shied away from public discussion of family matters, penned a damning letter to the Senate opposing his confirmation as the head of the US Department of Health and Human Services.
According to a paper published last week in the JAMA Internal Medicine journal, RFK Jr. oversaw funding cuts to the National Institutes of Health that shut down nearly 1 out of every 30 clinical trials currently underway, many involving cancer treatments. In his role as HHS head, RFK Jr. has also expressed interest in firing the entire United States Preventive Services Task Force—a panel that advocates for cancer screenings—for being “too woke,” reports ABC News. And perhaps most significantly, the longtime vaccine criticannounced in August that all mRNA vaccine development would cease, even though they are widely believed to be the next frontier in eradicating a multitude of chronic and fatal diseases, including cancer.
In an August op-ed for the Utah News Dispatch cancer survivor and physician Brian Moench took Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to task, saying he is “slamming the door on the survival chances of millions of cancer victims.” One of those people, Natalie Phelps, tells CBS News that her participation in a clinical trial for treatment of Stage 4 metastatic colorectal cancer has been delayed due to the cuts. “I have endured so much, and now I have another hurdle just because of funding cuts?” Phelps says. “When is cancer political?”
It’s not just cancer that’s become politicized under Kennedy. The HHS head has also opposed use of anti-depressants, falsely claiming that their use has been linked to school shootings. He fired all the members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in June, and last week told the New York Times that he “he personally instructed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to abandon its longstanding position that vaccines do not cause autism,” infuriating doctors including Republican Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, who voted to confirm RFK Jr. as HHS head only after Kennedy said he would not remove language from the CDC website debunking the disproven link between vaccinations and the disorder. Meanwhile, he’s continued to publicly misrepresent chronic disease rates in the US and oversaw mass firings at the FDA of experts tasked with the regulation of food and drug companies.
