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  • ‘Joy of making artwork’: Alison Zapata honors Latino heritage through displays

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    HERITAGE VERY CLOSE TO HEART. WITH EVERY BRUSHSTROKE, ALISON ZAPATA POURS EVERYTHING IN HER PIECES JUST LIKE THIS. BUT ONE THING HAS REMAINED CLEAR THAT SHE HAS NEVER FORGOTTEN HER ROOTS. THROUGH EVERY PIECE, ALISON ZAPATA HAS CREATED THE MEANING BEHIND THEM MAY CHANGE, BUT AT THE CORE, THE MISSION IS THE SAME. JOY, BEAUTY, MAYBE SOME STILLNESS. SOME CALM, BUT ALSO REALLY WRAPPING PEOPLE AROUND WITH LOVE. HER GRANDFATHER WAS BORN IN SAN LUIS POTOSI BEFORE COMING TO PITTSBURGH. A BORN AND RAISED PITTSBURGH. ZAPATA IS A YINZER THROUGH AND THROUGH. BUT GROWING UP, SHE SAYS SHE’S ALWAYS UNDERSTOOD HER HERITAGE. YOU KNOW, HE WOULD ALWAYS TALK ABOUT, YOU KNOW, DON’T FORGET YOUR ROOTS. MAKE SURE YOU SAY YOUR LAST NAME. ALWAYS SAY YOUR LAST NAME THE RIGHT WAY. MAKE SURE THAT YOU, YOU KNOW, YOU HONOR YOUR HERITAGE. AND IT IT SUNK IN. ZAPATA’S WORK CAN BE SEEN ALL OVER THE PITTSBURGH AREA IN RESTAURANTS, IN PARKS, OR BESIDES BUILDINGS. YOU PASS BY EVERY DAY. FOR HER, IT’S ABOUT CARRYING THE TORCH OF ART FORWARD. IT IMPACTED ME IN A WAY THAT WAS ABLE TO SUPPORT THE ARTWORK. SO IF I’M ABLE TO. YEAH. IMPACT OTHERS. I THINK THAT’S THAT’S THE BIGGEST THANKS THAT I COULD POSSIBLY HAVE FOR MY FAMILY. AND YOU KNOW, THE LONG LINEAGE OF ARTISTS THAT HAVE DONE THIS BEFORE ME. AND AS HISPANIC HERITAGE MONTH CONTINUES, ZAPATA SAYS SHE WILL CELEBRATE THOSE WHO HAVE PAVED THE PATH FORWARD. SHE WILL ALSO PLAY HER PART IN HER OWN JOURNEY. IT’S A VERY SPECIAL TIME FOR CELEBRATION, FOR HONORING TRADITIONS, FOR HONORING THE COMMUNITY THAT’S HERE NOW. AND TO HIGHLIGHT THE BEAUTY IN THE GIFTS AND THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF LATINOS HERE IN PITTSBURGH. ZAPATA HOPES TO CONTINUE TO INSPIRE THE NEXT GENERATION TO BECOME ARTISTS, AND WILL CONTINUE TO SET THE EXAMPLE EVERY DAY. BUT FOR NOW. COVERI

    ‘Joy of making artwork’: Alison Zapata honors Latino heritage through displays

    Updated: 4:49 PM EDT Oct 11, 2025

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    Alison Zapata, an artist, creates pieces that reflect her heritage and mission of joy, beauty, and love, with her work displayed throughout her hometown. Her grandfather was born in San Luis Potosí before coming to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She said growing up, her parents emphasized the importance of remembering her roots. “He would always talk about , you know, don’t forget your roots. Make sure you say your last name. Always say your last name the right way. Make sure that you honor your heritage, and it’s sunk in,” Zapata said.Zapata’s artwork can be seen all over Pittsburgh, in restaurants, parks, and beside buildings. For her, it’s about carrying the torch of art forward.”It’s part of, you know, the joy of making artwork. If I’m able to, yeah. And impact others, I think that’s the biggest thing that I could possibly have for my family. And, you know, the long lineage of artists that have done this before me,” Zapata said.As Hispanic Heritage Month continues, Zapata celebrates those who have paved a path forward and wants to play her part through her own journey.”It’s a very special time for celebration, for honoring traditions, for honoring the community that’s here now, and to highlight the beauty in the gifts and the contributions of Latinos here in Pittsburgh,” Zapata said.Zapata hopes to continue to inspire the next generation to become artists and will continue to set the example every day.

    Alison Zapata, an artist, creates pieces that reflect her heritage and mission of joy, beauty, and love, with her work displayed throughout her hometown.

    Her grandfather was born in San Luis Potosí before coming to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

    She said growing up, her parents emphasized the importance of remembering her roots.

    “He would always talk about [and say], you know, don’t forget your roots. Make sure you say your last name. Always say your last name the right way. Make sure that you honor your heritage, and it’s sunk in,” Zapata said.

    Zapata’s artwork can be seen all over Pittsburgh, in restaurants, parks, and beside buildings. For her, it’s about carrying the torch of art forward.

    “It’s part of, you know, the joy of making artwork. If I’m able to, yeah. And impact others, I think that’s the biggest thing that I could possibly have for my family. And, you know, the long lineage of artists that have done this before me,” Zapata said.

    As Hispanic Heritage Month continues, Zapata celebrates those who have paved a path forward and wants to play her part through her own journey.

    “It’s a very special time for celebration, for honoring traditions, for honoring the community that’s here now, and to highlight the beauty in the gifts and the contributions of Latinos here in Pittsburgh,” Zapata said.

    Zapata hopes to continue to inspire the next generation to become artists and will continue to set the example every day.

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  • What Trump Supporters Think When He Mocks People With Disabilities

    What Trump Supporters Think When He Mocks People With Disabilities

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    Last weekend, I stood among thousands of Donald Trump supporters in a windy airfield, watching them watch their candidate. I traveled to the former president’s event just outside Dayton, Ohio, because I couldn’t stop thinking about something that had happened one week earlier, at his rally in Georgia: Trump had broken into an imitation of President Joe Biden’s lifelong stutter, and the crowd had cackled.

    Mocking Biden is not the worst thing Trump has ever done. Biden is a grown man, and the most public of figures. He does not need to be babied by other politicians or members of the media. Trump disrespects all manner of people, but he had notably avoided mocking Biden’s stutter throughout the 2020 campaign. No more.

    Read: Trump finds another line to cross

    This is bigger than Biden, though. Stuttering is a genetic neurological disorder—one that can be covered under the Americans With Disabilities Act, one that 3 million Americans have. Trump may or may not know that, but he certainly knows that having a disability is something both Democrats and Republicans experience. Scores of Trump supporters are older, and are therefore more likely to be disabled themselves. Most everyone can think of at least one disabled friend or family member, a person they wouldn’t want taunted by a bully on the dais.

    On Saturday, as we awaited Trump’s arrival by private plane, my colleague Hanna Rosin and I spent the day wandering the grounds of Wright Bros. Aero Inc., asking rally attendees uncomfortable questions about what they’re comfortable with. Virtually everyone was bothered by specific examples of Trump’s recent bullying. But as they unpacked their thoughts, they continually found ways to excuse their favored candidate’s behavior. Many interviewees repeatedly contradicted themselves, perhaps because of a particular variable: I’m a person who stutters, and that day, I was asking real people how they felt about Trump making fun of stuttering.

    A married couple from Dayton, Todd and Cindy Rossbach, were waiting in a long, snaking line to take in their sixth Trump rally. “He’s the best president I’ve ever seen in my lifetime,” Todd said. “Probably Reagan comes in second.” I asked him if he had seen Trump’s comments during the Georgia rally, and specifically, if he had seen Trump imitate Biden’s stutter. He saw it all. “I think he’s got every right to do whatever he wants to do at this point,” Todd said. “The level of, uh, cruelness, may seem tough, but they’re being very cruel with him, so it seems justified.”

    His wife spoke up. “I disagree, because I think when you make fun of people, it just makes you look bad,” Cindy said. “It’s not the Christian way to be,” she added a little later. “I just feel like it makes Trump look bad, when he’s probably not a bad person. But he is just stooping to their level, and I don’t like it.” Nevertheless, neither of them felt that Trump could do anything between now and November to make him lose their vote.

    Farther back in line was Cheryl Beverly, from Chillicothe, Ohio, who said she works locally trying to get children out of homelessness. Beverly shared that she has a learning disability and has trouble spelling. Even as an adult, she’s regularly ridiculed. “It does hurt my feelings at times,” she said. She acknowledged that it’s hard to “see a lot of people make fun of people with disabilities,” and pointed to the risk of suicide and addiction among members of the community. “We’ll just go in a dark secret hole and not come out,” Beverly said. Yet she also said she still planned to vote for Trump this fall. She was able to separate Trump’s taunts from her personal feelings by chalking his behavior up to politics. If a child asked her about Trump’s belittlement, she imagined that she would liken it to playing a game: “You’re just finding a way for you to become the winner and they become the loser,” she offered. “It’s just trash-talking.”

    Near a food truck inside the venue, I struck up a conversation with a woman from Cincinnati named Vanessa Miller. She was wearing a T-shirt that read Jesus Is My Savior, Trump Is My President, and a dog tag inscribed with the serenity prayer. She hadn’t seen, or heard about, the clip of Trump mimicking Biden. “Trump is a good man,” Miller said. “He’s not perfect. Biden is not handicapped. He’s just an ass, and he does not care about this country.” She went on, “If Trump made fun of Biden, well, like I said, he’s not perfect, but it wasn’t about a disability. It was about how he has made this country dysfunctional, not disabled.”

    From the January/February 2020 issue: What Joe Biden can’t bring himself to say

    A bit later, she told me that “Biden doesn’t stutter; he’s mentally incapable of running this country.” But then she did something surprising: She reached out and grabbed my arm in a maternal fashion. “And I feel what you’re—I feel what you’re saying,” she said, acknowledging my own stutter. “People that are unkind to people with disabilities, it’s shameful. It’s awful. Absolutely disgusting. And I guess I understand that, like, in an election, you know, it gets ugly, and elections get competitive, and people say things, people do things.”

    I unlocked my phone and showed her a video of Trump’s stuttering impression. She turned her focus to the mainstream media in general. She said that “for the press to inflame and use disabilities to get people riled up is exactly what they want.” Nothing would stop her from voting for Trump.

    This pattern continued in nearly every interaction that day: skepticism, a momentary denouncement, then an eventual conclusion that Trump was still a man worth their vote. A woman named Susie Michael, who runs a Mathnasium tutoring center, told me, “I don’t appreciate the making-fun-of part, but he doesn’t have to be my best friend. He just has to do the best job for the country and for me. So I have to overlook that, because everybody has their good points and their bad points.”

    Shana, a special-education teacher from Indiana who did not give her last name, told me, “​I would still support him because I feel like people make mistakes. They say things they shouldn’t say. And I feel like God is the judge on that, you know, and that we’re to forgive him.” She noted that if Trump were to mock Biden’s stutter at this rally, she’d be inclined to write him a letter saying that “everybody was born of God and that we shouldn’t be making fun of anybody.”

    Saturday’s event was hosted by the Buckeye Values political-action committee, ostensibly in support of the U.S. Senate candidate Bernie Moreno. But Trump, of course, was the real draw. Moreno, who last night won the Ohio Republican primary, was merely among the president’s list of warm-up speakers, alongside South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, Senator J. D. Vance of Ohio, and Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio.

    When Trump’s plane touched down on the runway behind the stage, the dramatic electric-guitar instrumental from Top Gun played over the loudspeakers. Because of the wind, the teleprompters were swaying, making it nearly impossible for Trump to read his prepared remarks. So he went off script and rambled for about 90 minutes. “Hey, it’s a nice Saturday, what the hell, we have nothing else to do,” Trump said. Most of Trump’s rhetoric vacillated between aggrieved and menacing. He called migrants “animals” and warned of a “bloodbath” next year. (The latter comment came after Trump was talking about the auto industry, though some intuited the remark to refer to political violence.) Trump didn’t bust out his schoolyard mimic of Biden’s stutter this time, but he did repeatedly attack the way Biden speaks. “He can’t talk,” Trump said.

    People began filing out long before Trump finished speaking. When the event was finally over, I loitered by one of the merch tables. (A selection of that day’s T-shirt and sticker offerings: Joe and the Hoe Gotta Go, Jihad Joe, Trump’s face on Mount Rushmore, a cartoon Trump urinating on Biden à la Calvin and Hobbes.) One man, a union worker named Joseph Smock, told me that he’d been “red pilled” eight years ago after seeing the effects of illegal immigration in his native California. (He now lives in Dayton.) Unlike many other attendees I spoke with, Smock fully acknowledged Biden’s history with stuttering, rather than dismissing it as a media invention or a political ploy for sympathy. He characterized Trump as someone with a “hard slant.” When, like Biden, you’re in the big leagues, he said, Trump’s “going to hit you, and if he sees a weakness, he’s gonna go for it. Some people like that; some people don’t.”

    Read: You should go to a Trump rally

    A man on an electric scooter, Wes Huff, rolled by with a big grin and his wife, Lisa, by his side. Wes told me that this was their first Trump rally, and that they thought it was “awesome.” Wes is disabled—he has dealt with diabetes and kidney failure, and is missing five toes. He shared that all of his siblings are also disabled. He hadn’t seen Trump’s clip from a week earlier. I asked Huff a hypothetical question: If Biden made fun of a rival for using a wheelchair—someone like Texas Governor Greg Abbott—would he find that offensive? “Yeah. Oh yeah,” he said.

    But then our conversation migrated back to stuttering in particular. “I actually used to stutter,” he said. He was bullied for it as a kid. He also told me about an old colleague of his who stuttered, who was ridiculed as an adult. Huff was kind and sensitive as he described their friendship, how he would look out for him. “You shouldn’t make fun of disabled people,” he said. He also said he still planned to vote for Trump this fall.

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    John Hendrickson

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  • How Asian-language tattoos have helped me feel at home in my own skin

    How Asian-language tattoos have helped me feel at home in my own skin

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    The Chinese language is difficult, and perhaps no one has struggled more with it than the inkers and bearers of America’s Chinese-character tattoos.

    Most infamous was probably the tattoo on Britney Spears’ hip, which intended to be the character for “mysterious,” but ended expressing something closer to “strange.”

    Another popular choice is the Chinese character for “freedom,” which mistranslates to mian fei, or “free of charge.” I’ve also seen tattoos intended to represent the Chinese character for “power” represented as dian, which means “electricity” rather than “strength.”

    I got my first tattoo in 2014 at My Tattoo in Alhambra, a road map of Los Angeles in black and red. My second came from a tattoo parlor in a neon lit alley in Shihlin Night Market in Taipei, a Chinese family stamp that depicts the meaning of my last name, a bear.

    A Chinese dragon is one of the featured tattoos on display at Jelly Los Angeles.

    (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

    Each tattoo attempts to express something different that is important to me, and I often considered using Chinese. But I could never see the Chinese character tattoo as anything more than an embarrassing stereotype. I associated it with exoticizing Asian culture, robbing it of meaning, except as decoration. I joked that getting one might pigeonhole me as one of those guy who owns one too many kimonos.

    There’s probably no need to get this tangled up over a tattoo. But I don’t think I’m alone. Asian Americans often grow up with mocking, racist or alienating representations of our culture. And sometimes that has the ironic, contradictory effect of making us feel stereotyped by our own cultures.

    Mainstream culture’s version of Asian American identity can feel like a costume you never agreed to wear. To construct an identity that could contain all parts of myself, I felt like I had to shed that skin and create some distance from it.

    Now, conical rice paddy hats, the sound of a gong, and kung-fu have all become things I find very hard to enjoy or appreciate. These basically harmless aspects of Chinese cultures, through the lens of past pain, can still hurt.

    When I moved to Venice Beach two years ago, I saw Chinese tattoos on skaters, lifters, pickleball players, surfers and tourists, hardly any with Chinese heritage. Some tattoo parlors advertised with giant posters of translated Chinese characters in the window. None of them seemed self-conscious or apologetic about it, which made my hesitation feel unnecessary. I envied their nonchalance.

    I decided to ink a Taoist verse in a line down my forearm. I met my tattoo artist, Shane, at Devocean Tattoo, a tiny storefront shop. He asked a lot of questions about the characters before getting started — as a white tattoo artist he’s all too aware of the inaccurate Chinese tattoo stereotype.

    Tattoo artist tattoos the Korean symbol for "taste, savor, flavor" on a wrist.

    Tattoo artist Mikey Ekimoto tattoos the Korean symbol for “taste, savor, flavor” on Frank Shyong’s wrist at Ocean Front Tattoo in Venice.

    (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

    The pain of a tattoo always seems to land just short of intolerable, depending on where you get it. When the tattoo gun’s twin needles pierce your skin, it stings enough that the body instinctively seeks to stop the pain, whether by flinching or flooding your brain with endorphins. It’s enough pain to frustrate your attempts to avoid thinking about it.

    But the most important thing about the pain of a tattoo is that it will end, as with most pain in life. What you’re left with is a feeling of victory over suffering. Or at least, a sense that you have less to fear from it than before. I used to see tattoos as talismans of pain, but now I believe they also represent healing.

    When the words on my arm healed, my anger faded with the pain.

    There are no easy rules that neatly separate cultural appropriation from cultural appreciation because there is no single way to respect people’s pain. Trying to determine which Chinese-character tattoos are the most authentic or appropriate is pointless, because the most culturally accurate thing to do is to never get one.

    Preserving the body is considered an important aspect of filial piety within the context of Confucianism, and that precept encourages long hair, forbids suicide and is interpreted as prohibiting tattoos.

    Chinese American tattoo artist Em Jia has a Chinese character tattoo on the back of their neck.

    Chinese American tattoo artist Em Jia has a Chinese character tattoo on the back of their neck.

    (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

    I spoke to a Chinese American tattoo artist, Em Jia, who has a tattoo that plays with this concept. Their mother used to eye Jia’s tattoos with distaste, warning them that all the luck was bleeding out of their body. So Jia inked the words fu chi dou mei you, which means “luckless.”

    Tattooing the words was their way of refusing shame and practicing self acceptance, a “way of finding freedom,” Jia said.

    But they’re still uncomfortable about seeing Chinese-character tattoos on non-Asian people. They feel protective of their connection to Chinese culture and language. I think it’s a natural reaction for anyone growing up with Long Duk Dong from the 1984 movie “Sixteen Candles” and racist Asian jokes on prime-time TV.

    “Now I open a bag of shrimp chips and I don’t give a f— about what anyone says,” said Jia, 26.

    Later that day, I met Mike Cho, a Korean American from Philadelphia and the owner of Ocean Front Tattoo in Venice Beach for the last 11 years. Cho said the store experiences steady demand for Chinese tattoos, as does pretty much every other tattoo parlor on the boardwalk.

    Korean American tattoo artist Mike Cho wears a tattoo on his neck with Korean figures that translate to "Cho."

    Korean American tattoo artist Mike Cho wears, among others, a tattoo on his neck with Korean figures that translate to his last name.

    (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

    His skin has enough ink to print a whole newspaper, with tattoos pretty much everywhere but his face. His last name is inked in Korean on his throat, and the Korean characters for the number 17 tattooed on his neck, because he moved to Los Angeles at the age of 21 with just $1,700 in his pocket.

    I told him that I wanted to get a Korean word tattooed after traveling to Seoul last year, and wondered what he thought.

    At the time I was struggling to find pleasure in food following a difficult breakup. At Gwangjang Market, after I spotted a golden brown seafood pancake sizzling on a flattop grill, I ordered one and devoured it. It was the first meal I remember enjoying in more than a year, and I wanted to memorialize the feeling with a tattoo of the Korean character for “savor,” mas.

    Cho, 45, had no problem with me, a Taiwanese guy, getting a Korean character tattoo. Actually, he found the question a bit confusing. He had never thought twice about getting his own Asian-language tattoo.

    “Just thought it was cool,” Cho said. “I was more worried about what my parents would say. I didn’t go home for five years!”

    I’ll likely meet other Korean Americans who will be bothered by my tattoo. But I can accept that, because I’m trying to imagine a future in which all of these clashing feelings can find some equilibrium. And before pain heals, it has to find expression.

    When a tattoo is finished, the area is red, throbbing and swollen. The wound oozes and scabbing cracks the skin. Soon a soft outline of new skin forms around the cuts, peeling and flaking for a while, until one day, you wake up, and there is no scar, just your skin.

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    Frank Shyong

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  • Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Promises to Spoil the Election

    Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Promises to Spoil the Election

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    Three words told the story. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign had billed this afternoon’s event in Philadelphia as a “much-anticipated announcement.” Of course, that specific phrase may have been more true than intended.

    Ever since Kennedy entered the Democratic presidential primary race in the spring, observers had been anticipating that he’d one day announce his honest intentions as a 2024 candidate. Given Kennedy’s rhetoric, his positions, and his support from conservative operatives, was he really running as a Democrat? A couple thousand people—supporters, journalists, campaign volunteers, people with nothing to do—trekked to Philly to find out.

    The candidate was nothing if not on message. Standing in front of a backdrop that read DECLARE YOUR INDEPENDENCE, Kennedy looked out at Independence Hall as he spoke of “a new declaration of independence for our entire nation.” He rattled off a list of everything we’d soon be independent from: cynical elites, the mainstream media, wealthy donors. (Though, presumably, not the same wealthy donors who recently raised more than $2 million for him and his super PAC at a private estate in Brentwood, California, with help from his friend Eric Clapton). Onstage, Kennedy formally declared his independence “from the Democratic Party and all other political parties”—perhaps an unsubtle way to shoot down speculation that he might change his mind and run as a Libertarian, or even a Republican. As his wife, Cheryl Hines, said a bit cryptically before her husband took the stage: “Are you really ready for Bobby Kennedy?”

    Kennedy, whom many came to know as a Boomer environmentalist, was the star of this mellow show with a distinct ’60s campus vibe. At one table, attendees were invited to literally sketch their vision of the future on blank sheets of paper with colored pens. Throngs gathered on the grass in front of the National Constitution Center and were led in a Native American tribal dance, followed by the inoffensive piano stylings of Tim Hockenberry, who covered “Jersey Girl” in a Springsteen growl. Outside the entrance, enterprising vendors sold an array of Kennedy memorabilia: buttons that read RESIST INSANITY, RAGE AGAINST THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE, and FIT TO BE PRESIDENT, featuring a photo of a buff, shirtless Kennedy. One attendee waved a giant black-and-white flag with a message for their fellow Kennedy-heads: WE ARE THE CONTROL GROUP. Many people wore fedoras.

    Read: Inside the mind of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

    They came from all over. Michael Schroth, 69, and his wife, Luz, had taken a 4:30 a.m. bus down from Boston. Schroth told me he voted for Barack Obama twice, but also voted for the third-party candidate Ralph Nader twice, as well as Jill Stein in 2016. “I look for the best candidate, and I don’t care if they’re going to win or not. It’s getting the idea out,” he said. Chris Devol, 56, from Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, was wearing a Philadelphia Eagles hoodie and smiling ear to ear as he awaited Kennedy’s arrival. Devol told me he had voted for the third-party candidate Ross Perot in 1992, and that although he wasn’t sure whether he’d support Kennedy next November, he “100 percent” supported the idea of him competing in the Democratic primary. An elderly woman named Barbara (last name withheld), a retired teacher from Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, told me she believed that President Joe Biden wasn’t doing anything to address the nation’s drug problem. She said a bag of fentanyl was recently found on the steps of her local church, then asked me if I was familiar with the Boxer Rebellion.

    Prior to Kennedy’s address, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, one of the opening speakers, asked for a moment of silence to honor the violence of this past weekend. Someone in the crowd yelled out “Warmonger!” Another screamed, “Free the Palestinians!” Boteach acknowledged neither individual, and said he greatly respects Kennedy, who has been accused of anti-Semitism, as a man of faith. Later, Kennedy said he had arrived at a place where he was serving only his conscience, his creator, and “you”—the voters.

    This afternoon marked the culmination of what he described as a “very painful” decision. He noted his long-standing ties to the Democrats, the party of his family, which he casually referred to as a dynasty, before tearing into the tyranny of the two-party system. For weeks, Kennedy had been attacking the Democratic National Committee for “rigging” the primary process. (The DNC has refused to hold primary debates, as is custom when a party’s incumbents are running for reelection.) Kennedy has been polling in the double digits against Biden, but his support hasn’t grown meaningfully since he launched his campaign. As of last Friday, according to the FiveThirtyEight average, Kennedy was polling at 16.4 percent compared with Biden’s 61.2 percent. Four of his siblings—Kerry Kennedy, Rory Kennedy, Joseph P. Kennedy II, and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend—issued a statement today denouncing their brother’s newly independent candidacy, calling his decision “perilous for our country.” Kennedy acknowledged the challenge ahead of him. “There have been independent candidates in this country before,” he said. “But this time it’s going to be different.”

    Kennedy is the second candidate in as many weeks to go rogue. Cornel West dropped his Green Party affiliation in favor of an independent bid, telling The New York Times, “I am a jazz man in politics and the life of the mind who refuses to play only in a party band!” Though neither Democrats nor Republicans seem particularly worried about the candidacies of West or Marianne Williamson, Kennedy is different. “The Democrats are frightened that I’m going to spoil the election for President Biden, and the Republicans are frightened that I’m going to spoil the election for President Trump,” Kennedy said. He waited for a strategic beat. “The truth is, they’re both right.”

    Read: The 2024 U.S. presidential race: a cheat sheet

    All year long, mainstream Democrats have tried to pretend that Kennedy simply doesn’t exist, with mixed results. Both the Biden campaign and the DNC declined to comment today on Kennedy’s switch. The RNC, for its part, blasted out a list of “23 Reasons to Oppose RFK Jr.,” and reports have been circulating that Trump’s allies are preparing to pummel Kennedy with opposition research. Last week, the election analyst Nate Silver argued that Kennedy’s independent run won’t necessarily hurt Biden, and it might even help him. David Axelrod, the chief strategist of Barack Obama’s campaigns, took a different view. “I think anything that lowers the threshold for winning helps Trump, who has a high floor and low ceiling [of support,]” Axelrod told me.

    Kennedy tantalized the crowd with nuggets that purport to make the case for his electability: “I have seen the polls that they won’t show you.” He pointed out that 63 percent of Americans want an independent to run for president. Though he didn’t cite the origin of this statistic, it aligns with recent Gallup polling, which also showed that 58 percent of Republicans endorse a third U.S. political party, up from 45 percent last year.

    Kennedy has built his candidacy, and his career as a lawyer and writer more broadly, on the idea that there are lots of things “they won’t show you.” As I wrote in a profile of Kennedy this summer, he has promoted a theory that Wi-Fi radiation causes cancer and “leaky brain,” saying it “opens your blood-brain barrier.” He has suggested that antidepressants might have contributed to the rise in mass shootings. He told me he believes that Ukraine is engaged in a “proxy” war and that Russia’s invasion, although “illegal,” would not have taken place if the United States “didn’t want it to.”

    “He’s drawing from many of those Trump voters—the two-time Obama, onetime Trump—that are still disaffected, want change, and maybe haven’t found a permanent home in the Trump movement,” Steve Bannon told me as I was reporting the profile. “Populist left, populist right, and where that Venn diagram overlaps—he’s talking to those people.”

    The reality is that Kennedy will have an extremely hard time even getting his name on the ballot. The GOP “dirty trickster” Roger Stone, who earlier this year was accused of being among those propping up Kennedy’s candidacy (something he has repeatedly denied), told me in a text message that Kennedy faces a “Herculean task” with “50 different state laws written by Republicans and Democrats working together to make ballot access as difficult as possible.” Even if Kennedy is right and voters are looking for a true alternative to Trump and Biden, mathematically, Kennedy’s path to 270 electoral votes is almost incomprehensible.

    Nevertheless, he said he believes that he is at the start of a new American moment. “Something is stirring in us that says, It doesn’t have to be this way,” Kennedy said onstage. He nodded to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech from the eve of his assassination and quoted Abraham Lincoln quoting Jesus Christ: “A house divided cannot stand.” He said that the left and the right had become “all mixed up.” He said that he was proud to count those on both sides of the abortion debate among his supporters, in addition to “climate activists” and “climate skeptics,” and, of course, the “vaccinated” and the “unvaccinated.” Perhaps saying the quiet part out loud, Kennedy said it would be very hard for people to tell “whether my administration is left or right.” He had no shortage of curious metaphors. He promised not just to “take the wheel,” but to “reboot the GPS.” The nation’s two-party system? “A two-headed monster that leads us over a cliff.” And, in case it wasn’t clear: “At the bottom of that cliff is the destruction of our country.”

    When I interviewed Kennedy for the profile, I asked him what he thought would be more dangerous for the country: four more years of Biden, or another Trump term. “I can’t answer that,” he said.

    Around that time, I asked his campaign manager, Dennis Kucinich, if Kennedy was committed to running solely as a Democratic candidate.

    “He’s running in the Democratic primary,” Kucinich responded.

    “So, no chance of a third party?”

    “He’s running in the Democratic primary.”

    “Gotcha. And nothing could change that?”

    “He’s running in the Democratic primary.”

    Today, after Kennedy finished speaking, Kucinich briefly seized the mic and led the crowd in a building, dramatic chant:

    “I declare my independence!”

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    John Hendrickson

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  • Can You Have a Fun Vacation on Ozempic?

    Can You Have a Fun Vacation on Ozempic?

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    At Christmas dinner, Jenny Burriss remembers eating exactly one bite of beef before feeling full. She had just upped her dose of semaglutide—the diabetes and obesity drug better known by the brand names Ozempic and Wegovy—and her appetite had plummeted. She had also lost her taste for alcohol, a side effect of the drug. So before her vacation a couple of months later, she decided to skip a dose. She was going to Disney World, and she wanted to enjoy the food—at least a little.

    She was indeed hungrier after skipping her weekly injection, but not ravenously so. At the Biergarten buffet in Epcot’s Germany pavilion—where she might have once piled her plate high, justifying to herself that, after all, this is vacation—she was satisfied by just a small taste of everything. At the French pavilion, she savored a Grand Marnier orange slush. She didn’t lose weight at Disney World, but she didn’t gain any either.

    Semaglutide works by suppressing the appetite and promoting a feeling of fullness. More fundamentally though, it works by altering one’s relationship with food. Doctors see the drug as a powerful biochemical tool to help patients build healthy long-term habits. Eating becomes a source not of comfort or pleasure, but simply of sustenance. “It takes a little bit of the enjoyment out of it,” Burriss told me. “But that’s healthy,” she added, for someone like her, who had a compulsive relationship with food. Semaglutide has helped her lose about 40 pounds. As the drug has exploded in popularity for weight loss, though, people who use semaglutide to reset their eating habits are navigating a world where food and the anticipation of it are still central to celebration. Semaglutide is meant to be taken regularly as a lifelong drug. So what to do on vacation, when enjoyment is kind of the point?

    For some, deciding to forgo the dose while traveling is just a practical consideration. Semaglutide’s side effects usually taper off as the body adjusts, but they can range from the mildly inconvenient to the terribly uncomfortable: nausea, vomiting, fatigue, constipation, diarrhea, heartburn, sulfur burps. No one wants to get hit with a bout of diarrhea as a plane is taking off.

    Read: Beware the Ozempic burp

    For others, staying on the drug removes the compulsion and distraction of thinking about food. They enjoy that peace, even on vacation. Semaglutide quiets what some patients call the “food noise” in their brains: waking up in the morning and immediately wondering what to eat today. Mexican? Pizza? Oh, let me look at some menus. It can be overwhelming to experience and exhausting to constantly counter. Fatima Cody Stanford, an obesity-medicine doctor at Harvard, told me that her patients on semaglutide like being able to attend a wedding or a party “without having to worry about overindulging.” Janice Jin Hwang, an obesity-medicine doctor at the UNC School of Medicine, says she tells patients not to see vacations as cheat days. “I don’t like to make it a dichotomy where it’s your normal time and your vacation time,” she says, advocating instead for a more balanced approach all the time.

    People who want to skip while on vacation, though, are swapping tips and experiences online, sometimes in lieu of official medical advice. By and large, those I spoke with, like Burriss, told me that they were looking for a middle ground, not to go completely overboard on food. “I certainly didn’t want to pig out,” says Sarah, who skipped a dose for a 10-year-anniversary trip to the Bahamas. “I just didn’t want to have that weird nauseous feeling or not be able to enjoy wine.” Sarah, whose last name I’m not using to protect her medical privacy, has always loved researching the best restaurants on vacation. This time, she felt some of the thrill of anticipation, but she ate moderately and chose healthy options, such as fresh fish. Allyson Gelman, who skipped while on vacation in Mexico City, told me she still ended up canceling an eagerly awaited 12-course tasting menu. When she eats too much or too unhealthily on semaglutide, she has to vomit; she’s sometimes had to run to the bathroom after overdoing it in a nice restaurant. In Mexico City, she could still feel the drug’s effects lingering in her system, and she knew she wasn’t getting through 12 courses without throwing up.

    Read: Ozempic is about to be old news

    Semaglutide does take several weeks to clear from the body, so skipping just one dose attenuates but doesn’t eliminate the effects of the drug. Marnie, whom I’m also identifying by only her first name for medical privacy, has been regularly taking her prescribed Wegovy every other week. In the second week, she can feel her side effects start to fade and her hunger start to return. For her, skipping is largely about managing her side effects, because the drug still leaves her very tired. She’s probably losing weight more slowly this way, she says, but she’s okay with that. In certain cases, Stanford, the doctor at Harvard, told me she has instructed patients who don’t need the full dose for weight loss to go longer between injections to modulate severe side effects. (Bafflingly, she’s found that insurance won’t cover a smaller-dose injection pen.)

    The explosion of interest in semaglutide is so new, though, that doctors and patients alike are still figuring out what it means in the long term—not just in two or three years, but in 20 or 30. How long do the effects last, and how permanent are these new habits? Burriss believes that, for her, there is room for the occasional indulgence, during a special event or vacation. “It’s not an everyday thing,” she said. And indulging while on semaglutide is still nothing like bingeing without it.

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    Sarah Zhang

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  • Trump Begins the ‘Retribution’ Tour

    Trump Begins the ‘Retribution’ Tour

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    You’d think that, by now, Donald Trump’s fans would be tired of all this. The long lines and the self-indulgent speeches and the relentless blasting of Laura Branigan’s “Gloria” as they stand outside exposed to the elements. But they aren’t. Not at all.

    After six years, the former president’s rallies still have summer-camp vibes—at least at first. At last night’s event in Waco, Texas—the first rally of his 2024 presidential campaign—Trump’s thousands of supporters seemed delighted simply to be together at the Waco airport hangar, wearing their ULTRA MAGA T-shirts and drinking lemonade in the hot sun. Sure, the vendors ran out of water at one point, and there was no shade to speak of, but nobody really complained. They were too busy singing along to the Village People and bonding with new friends over their shared interests (justice, freedom, theories about a ruling Deep State cabal).

    But the sunny mood of Trump’s supporters contrasted with his 2024 campaign message, which is different this time around—darker, more vengeful, and, if such a thing is possible, even more self-absorbed. “The abuses of power that we are witnessing at all levels of government will go down as among the most shameful, corrupt, and depraved chapters” in history, Trump told the crowd in a clear reference to a potential indictment he’s facing related to hush-money payments to the porn actor Stormy Daniels—and probably also to the three other main legal cases against him. He spent 30 minutes soliloquizing about Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the corrupt “thugs” in America’s justice system, and the apparent threat to his attorney-client privilege. Behind Trump, supporters held up WITCH HUNT signs that had been given out by the campaign.

    David A. Graham: The most disturbing part of Trump’s latest rant

    At his rallies in 2016, Trump used to tell his supporters, “I am your voice.” Last night, he offered something more sinister. “I am your warrior. I am your justice,” he told them. “For those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”

    Choosing Waco for his first campaign rally of the season was a little on the nose even for Trump, a man who has always relished a chance to say the quiet part out loud. In the spring of 1993, federal law-enforcement agents laid siege to the Branch Davidian compound, where a leader had bound his followers to him with apocalyptic warnings. Thirty years later, here was Trump, whipping up his own supporters with claims of similar law-enforcement overreach—which, in Trump’s case, may mean being charged with crimes related to his dealings with a star of Porking With Pride 2.

    At times over the past week, Trump has seemed almost giddy at the prospect of an indictment, reportedly musing with aides about how he might behave during a potential perp walk. The past few days have also been anxious ones for Trump, according to the New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, but also according to anyone reading Trump’s frantic social-media posts. On Truth Social, in between site ads for mole and skin-tag removal, the former president has been Truthing and Retruthing with the all-caps enthusiasm of a middle schooler hopped up on Pixy Stix. “EVERYBODY KNOWS I’M 100% INNOCENT,” he wrote last week. “OUR COUNTRY IS BEING DESTROYED, AS THEY TELL US TO BE PEACEFUL!” Trump predicted an imminent arrest, and urged Americans to “PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!!!” On Thursday, presumably while pacing the gilded halls of Mar-a-Lago, Trump amped up his rhetoric by warning—or maybe, threatening—about the “death & destruction” that could occur if he is eventually charged.

    Tim Naftali: Indicting a former president should always have been fair game

    Trump was not indicted last week, but it could happen this week—as early as tomorrow, when the grand jury is due to reconvene. If Trump is arrested, he might be booked the same as any other suspect. Americans may get to see his mug shot. We may also see the kind of turbulent protests that he’s clearly agitating for. His supporters, predictably, think the whole Stormy Daniels situation is hogwash. “We laugh at it all, because the liberal side is just trying to throw everything at the wall to see if something sticks,” Ron Weldon, a helicopter pilot from Keller, told me at Waco. Texan rally goers I spoke with forecast that, if Trump is indicted, there will be protests, but they will be peaceful, and nothing major. They’d really like to avoid another January 6 situation, which, they reminded me, was caused by FBI plants. An indictment, they said, will only make them love Trump more. “If they do that, they might as well seal their fate: He’s gonna win,” Janet Larson, a retiree from Temple, told me.

    Last night, though, no one acted as if their leader was about to be indicted. People sucked on Bomb Pops and danced and got sunburned. They carried around their tiny dogs and booed the press at all the right times. When Trump’s jet landed, an hour later than scheduled, a vendor abandoned her ice-cream truck to take a video. Zany conspiracy theories ran rampant: A woman named Stephanie Tatar wearing a hot-pink pantsuit told me that she’s starting a business that allows people to fax her handwritten letters to Trump; she’ll deliver them personally to Mar-a-Lago, to avoid censorship by the postal service. Priscilla Patterson, a 50-something woman from Waco, said that she wasn’t worried about Trump winning in 2024, because he’d be installed as the rightful president well before then. Her husband, Ricky Patterson, suggested that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is currently Trump’s main presumptive rival in the Republican primary race, was himself a puppet of the elite ruling cabal.

    Brian Klaas: Rule by law in Florida

    Recent stories about Trump’s supporters have suggested that they’re bored with him, or flirting with the idea of switching candidates. But the fans still showing up at his rallies—at least the estimated 10,000 of them last night in Waco—seem more bullish than ever. Maybe it was a good thing, they said, that Trump had been away for a couple of years—America got to see what it was missing: low gas prices, no wars in Europe. And they are not considering other candidates: DeSantis is too establishment, too fake, not ready for prime time. It’s Trump, all the way, baby. No one else even comes close.

    Trump and his supporters have been through a lot together since 2020: the stolen election; the FBI inside job on January 6, 2021; the long list of legal persecutions. These trials have served only to cement their devotion. So, for them, seeing Trump back on the campaign trail was like witnessing the long-awaited return of an exiled leader. That’s why, they told me, this cycle’s campaign will be different. “The other ones were ‘Let’s make America great! Let’s clean it up, let’s do things right!’” a Waco man named Brian, who declined to share his last name, told me. But he prefers to use Trump’s word to describe this next iteration. “To me, this is retribution. We’ve got to get our country back, because it’s been stolen from us.” What would that retribution promised by Trump look like? I asked. “People who have done fraud and illegal stuff, they’ve gotta be perp walked. They need to face justice,” he said. “There’s a two-tier level of justice in this country.”

    The legal system is corrupt, the political system is rigged, and Joe Biden was never elected president, Ricky Patterson told me. Trump’s campaign is a crusade for “redemption.” Trump is a “new-age Moses,” April Rickman, from Midland, Texas, told me. “He delivered the people from Egypt.”

    The prophet himself—after ranting about Bragg and corruption, and getting off a few good DeSantis barbs—offered a few moments of hope for such deliverance. To round after round of applause, he promised to close the border, unleash ICE, and deport gang members “with tattoos on their faces.” He vowed to “settle” the war in Ukraine in just 24 hours, to keep trans girls out of girls’ sports, and to prevent World War III. The crowd around me screamed its approval.

    Adam Serwer: Don’t cut corners on indicting Trump

    But the high didn’t last long. Suddenly, a somber string melody was playing through the loudspeakers, and Trump was speaking over it. An American flag rippled on the Jumbotrons behind him. “We are a nation in decline. We are a failing nation,” he said to an audience that, hours before, had been beaming in the sun with Mountain Dew and stuffed pretzels. “We are a nation that in many ways has become a joke. And we are a nation that is hostile to liberty, freedom, and faith.”

    Then it was all over, and Trump’s plane pulled out onto the runway to take him back to Florida. The hardcore fans who’d stuck around to watch his departure lined up along the fence to wave goodbye. As the plane sped down the tarmac, April Rickman held her hands up to the sky.

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    Elaine Godfrey

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  • What They Aren’t Telling You About Hypoallergenic Dogs

    What They Aren’t Telling You About Hypoallergenic Dogs

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    As someone with dog allergies who nevertheless has been around many dogs as a trainer, a fosterer, and an owner, Candice has learned not to trust the promise of a “hypoallergenic” dog. She’s met low-shedding, hypoallergenic poodles and Portuguese water dogs that supposedly shouldn’t trigger her allergies yet very much did. But she has also met fluffy, longhaired breeds such as huskies and spitzes that set off nary a sneeze. “I’ve had more misery with short-haired dogs,” she told me. That includes her own Belgian Malinois, Fiore, with whom her symptoms got so bad that she started allergy shots. Fiore’s equally furry full sister Fernando, though? Totally fine. No reaction!

    Candice—whose last name I’m not using for medical-privacy reasons—is not alone in discerning no rhyme or reason to which dogs she’s allergic to. In studies, scientists have found no difference in how much of the dog allergen Can f 1 is present in homes with hypoallergenic versus non-hypoallergenic breeds. One study found no difference in the amount of allergen on the fur of different dogs either. Another actually found more allergen on the fur of hypoallergenic breeds. Hypoallergenic doesn’t seem to mean much at all.

    “There’s really, truly no completely, 100 percent hypoallergenic dog. Even hairless dogs can make the allergen,” says John James, a spokesperson for the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. “It’s really a marketing term,” says David Stukus, an allergist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and a member of AAFA’s Medical Scientific Council. When I asked several allergists around the country if perplexed owners ever come in allergic to their expensive, supposedly hypoallergenic dog, their answers were unequivocal: “All the time.” One of the biggest sources of misinformation on this topic is, in fact, a former U.S. president. “When President Obama was in office, they allegedly had a hypoallergenic dog because their daughter had allergies, and that didn’t help matters,” Stukus told me, referring to the Obamas’ first Portuguese water dog, Bo. “Everybody got Portuguese water dogs.”  And—surprise—they can still cause allergies.

    Technically, hypoallergenic means that a dog is less likely to cause allergies, not that it never causes allergies, though this distinction is often lost in colloquial use. But even then, there is no such thing as a consistently hypoallergenic breed. That’s because, although breeds that shed less fur or hair are commonly considered hypoallergenic, the fur or hair itself is not what causes allergies. Rather, it is proteins present in the dander, or small flakes of skin, or saliva. All dogs make these proteins, and all dogs have skin and saliva.

    It is true, though, that a person might find one dog less allergenic than another. The studies that couldn’t find a clear pattern of lower allergens in hypoallergenic breeds did find differences among individual dogs of the same breed. And a smaller dog is generally going to shed less dander than a big one. On size alone, “it does make sense that a chihuahua is less problematic than a Great Dane,” says Richard Lockey, an allergist at the University of South Florida. Dogs also make a whole suite of proteins that can cause allergies. The best known is Can f 1, although there are seven others. Some people might be more allergic to one of these proteins than another; some dogs might make more of one of these proteins than another. Whether a particular human actually ends up allergic to a particular dog depends on these details—and can’t be predicted from the breed alone. For this reason, doctors recommend that anyone with allergies spend time with a specific dog before taking it home. “I literally say, ‘Have your child hug them, rub their face on them.’ If nothing happens, that’s a good sign,” Stukus said.

    People who are allergic can also develop tolerance to a specific dog over time. Candice, for example, eventually developed a tolerance to her German-shepherd mix, Tesla, despite getting all watery-eyed and sneezy at first. In addition, allergy shots, also called immunotherapy, can help people build up tolerance by gradually increasing exposure to an allergen; Candice eventually resorted to them with Fiore. The inverse of this principle explains the Thanksgiving effect, where people who leave for college come home suddenly allergic to their childhood pet after not being exposed for a long time.

    Nasal steroid sprays and antihistamines such as Claritin and Allegra, which are available over the counter, can also be used to manage allergies these days. That wasn’t always the case, recalls Lockey, who began practicing medicine in the 1960s. Back then, there weren’t good medications for controlling allergies, and he would just tell patients to keep their pets outdoors. “That just doesn’t go anymore,” he told me. Now few dogs are kept exclusively outdoors, especially in cities. They sleep in our homes and even our beds. As dogs have become physically enmeshed in our lives, dog allergies can no longer be as easily ignored as when the animals lived outside.

    The myth of an allergy-free dog persists, though, and Stukus often sees this frustration play out in families with allergic kids. “This is the point that I hear all the time from families: It’s the grandparents,” he told me. Parents might quickly discover that their kids are allergic to “hypoallergenic” dogs. But grandparents, eager for their grandkids to visit, push back because their expensive pet is supposed to be hypoallergenic—“The Obamas had the same dog. It’s fine!”—only for the kids to end up coughing and miserable. He keeps hearing the same lament. “They just don’t understand,” the parents tell him, “that there’s no such thing as a hypoallergenic dog.”

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    Sarah Zhang

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