Developing an H.P.V. vaccine was distinctly challenging. One reason was that cancers from H.P.V. usually occur many years after the initial infection. A vaccine trial might need to run for decades, and such a delay could be life-costing, as well as impractical.
The epidemiologist Laura Koutsky, of the University of Washington, got around this problem by designing, with others, a double-blind study in which more than two thousand women were given three doses of the vaccine or an equivalent placebo and then screened every six months—not for cancer but, instead, simply for H.P.V.-16 infection. (H.P.V.-16 is the most common cancer-causing strain.) An early report, published a bit more than a year later, showed no H.P.V.-16 infections in the vaccinated group. Even ten years later, the women who had been immunized remained protected. “It was absolutely stunning,” Stanley said. In terms of extending life, getting an H.P.V. vaccine is as important for a woman as quitting smoking.
Ruanne Barnabas, a physician-scientist, grew up in South Africa, where her father worked as a botanist and her mother was a public-health doctor. “They weren’t maybe as organized as they could have been, so I would go to the hospital with my mom on the weekends,” she said. She also spent many afternoons in her dad’s laboratory, drawing botanical specimens. Her medical training, which coincided with the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, focussed on infectious disease, and she later continued her training with a Ph.D. in medicine and clinical epidemiology at Oxford. For her thesis, she constructed mathematical models using clinical trials of the first H.P.V. vaccines approved for use in England and in the U.S. The vaccine was capable of saving lives—the pressing question was how to increase access and lower costs. Cervical cancer is currently the fourth most common cancer in women globally, but in countries such as India and Kenya its prevalence is second only to breast cancer. Although the cost of H.P.V. vaccines is within reach for well-off countries, it is a stretch for most low- and middle-income ones.
It seemed pretty clear initially that H.P.V. vaccines would require a three-dose regimen. They are made of virus-like particles, rather than parts of the virus itself, and such vaccines (called protein-based vaccines) generally provoke only a weak immune response after the first dose. The follow-up doses boost that response. But getting people to turn up three times is an iffy proposition. This difficulty is amplified not only by ambient vaccine skepticism but also by the fact that H.P.V. is sexually transmitted and vaccines against it are ideally given to girls and young women. In Japan, in 2013, unfounded reports of the H.P.V. vaccine causing chronic pain or other neurological side effects spread in the media, leading the government temporarily to suspend its H.P.V. recommendation. Vaccination rates fell from seventy per cent to less than one per cent. In 2014, in northern Colombia, hundreds of school-age girls who had received the H.P.V. vaccine went to medical centers complaining of a racing heart, shortness of breath, and numbness in their arms and legs; a medical investigation concluded that the vaccines were not the cause, but the conclusion was poorly received.
In an H.P.V. vaccine trial that began in 2004 in Costa Rica, one of the most important findings came about by the by. Some seventy-five hundred women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five were enrolled. However, for various reasons, pregnancy being a major one, about twenty per cent of them received fewer than three doses. But even the women who received only one developed antibody levels nine times higher than those found in naturally infected individuals. The vaccine efficacy among the groups remained essentially equal, even years down the line. Aimée Kreimer, the lead author on this discovery, suggested that maybe one dose was sufficient. “Kreimer was subjected to God knows how much skepticism,” Stanley, who counted herself among the disbelievers back then, said. “It was heresy for a protein-based vaccine to work with only one dose.”
Then a trial in India, begun in 2009, went even more wrong. The trial was looking at the efficacy of going from three H.P.V. doses to two. Led by the International Agency for Research Against Cancer, the trial enrolled twenty thousand girls and women. Before several months had passed, seven girls in a different H.P.V.-vaccine study—a demonstration study led by the nonprofit Program for Appropriate Technology in Health—died, and both the I.A.R.C. and PATH trials were stopped. (An investigation uncovered that one girl had drowned, another died from snake bite, two had swallowed poisonous pesticides, one died as a result of malaria, another of what was suspected to be a cerebral hemorrhage, and one of a high fever that Indian government investigators concluded was “very unlikely” to have resulted from the vaccine.) Some women had received one dose, and some two or three, but the women with one dose appeared to be as protected as those with more.
Have you seen the Mike Tyson ad telling people to eat “real food?” The black-and-white spot that debuted during the Super Bowl is the latest promotion for the federal government’s new dietary guidelines.
With a quick scroll, football watchers who visited the website in the ad would have encountered the statistic that “90% of U.S. healthcare spending goes to treating chronic disease — much of which is linked to diet and lifestyle.”
This statistic also appeared in the dietary guidelines and on the CDC’s website. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said it this way in his Jan. 7 announcement: “The CDC reports that 90% of healthcare spending treats chronic disease.”
This number grabbed podcaster Michael Hobbes’ attention. “I couldn’t find anyone fact-checking this number,” Hobbes said on the Jan. 30 episode of “Maintenance Phase,” a podcast that digs into the science behind health and wellness trends.
No worries — PolitiFact is here to answer the call!
The 90% figure has roots in a 2017 report by the Rand Corp., a nonpartisan research organization. But one of the researchers told PolitiFact that the claim, as stated by Kennedy and RealFood.gov, didn’t accurately reflect their findings.
The Rand report calculated all health spending on people with chronic illnesses, which includes a majority of Americans. It did not isolate the total spending on treating chronic illness itself.
Here’s another way to think about it: If someone with asthma broke a leg, got glasses or picked up antibiotics, that all counted as spending on a person with a chronic disease — even if it’s not treating the asthma.
Rand used data from an annual government-run survey. The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey asks families to report a year’s worth of personal health care use and spending — including doctor’s visits, prescriptions and hospital stays. It also collects data on people’s health conditions, which can be categorized as chronic or not chronic.
The sample size has varied over the years, ranging from about 18,000 to 37,000 people. Experts said it is among the best data sources on personal health spending.
The report defines a chronic condition as a mental or physical health condition lasting over a year that either requires functional restrictions or ongoing medical treatment. Many conditions fall into this category, including hypertension, diabetes, depression, anxiety, osteoarthritis, asthma, heart disease, high cholesterol, and cancer.
Using survey data collected in 2014, Rand researchers estimated almost 60% of Americans had at least one chronic condition.
Then they looked at people’s health care costs, including payments made by insurers and out-of-pocket costs.
According to Rand, spending on the 60% of people with one or more chronic conditions made up 90% of all spending. The 40% with no chronic illnesses made up 10% of the spending.
“A person in a year spends or incurs health care costs for multiple related things,” said Christine Buttorff, a Rand health policy researcher and study co-author. “It could be their chronic disease, but it also could be something as simple as an acute illness where they had to go to the doctor or go to the emergency room for something totally unrelated to the chronic disease. So our estimates lump all of that together.”
The claim that 90% of U.S. health care spending goes to treating chronic disease is “not an accurate reflection of our report,” Buttorff said.
Limited data on chronic illness treatment spending
Estimating how much Americans spend on treating chronic illness is harder. It typically requires using insurance claims data, which is spread across government databases and private insurers.
It can be difficult to link expenses and conditions. If, for example, a person with asthma is hospitalized with pneumonia, is that part of their chronic disease treatment or an acute case? If a person pays to see a psychiatrist but has both anxiety and depression, which diagnosis is that cost linked to?
University of Washington researchers have been tackling this question. The university’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in 2025 analyzed personal health care spending from 2010 to 2019 on 148 health conditions, without distinguishing chronic illnesses from other ailments.
In 2019, the top three most expensive conditions were Type 2 diabetes ($143.9 billion), musculoskeletal disorders such as joint pain and osteoporosis ($108.6 billion), and oral disorders such as cavities and orthodontia ($93 billion).
“Reality is, we spend a ton of money on things that people don’t associate with chronic diseases,” said Joseph L. Dieleman, a University of Washington health metrics sciences professor and study co-author.
PolitiFact did not find any studies since 2018 that looked specifically at past chronic disease treatment spending.
One recent report tried to model future spending on chronic disease. A 2025 report from GlobalData and the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease estimated an average of $2.2 trillion annually in medical costs over the next 15 years.
Given that current health care spending is over $5.3 trillion annually, that rate of spending would put chronic disease spending around 42% annually.
Rising chronic illness burden is not all related to diet and lifestyle
U.S. chronic illness rates are rising.
In 2010, about 50% of Americans had at least one chronic condition. The number has climbed closer to 75% in recent years, boosted in part by better diagnostics and longer lifespans.
“Chronic conditions linked to lifestyle choices such as physical inactivity or diet are a huge issue in the U.S., even if their use of this statistic isn’t quite right,” Buttorff said.
Several of the most common chronic conditions — hypertension, Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and high cholesterol — have beenlinked to diet and lifestyle related risk factors.
Others can’t always be linked to lifestyle, including mental health conditions, asthma, Type 1 diabetes, cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, Alzheimer’s disease, and dementia.
Our ruling
Kennedy and his department said that 90% of health care spending is for treating chronic disease.
The statistic is based on all health spending on people with chronic diseases, not spending on treatment itself.
A majority of Americans have chronic illnesses, so it’s likely the real number is high. We were unable to find a reliable report that isolated chronic illness spending in the past few years, but a predictive report estimated it could be around 2.2 trillion annually, which would be less than half of current health spending. HHS did not provide evidence to support the claim about treatment spending.
We rate this statement False.
Staff Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report
“We see that there’s an emphasis on whole and minimally processed foods, and that really is a welcome shift away from decades of more nutrient-focused messaging,” said Patti Truant Anderson, policy director at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future.
She said the focus of the new food pyramid moves away from added preservatives and toward fruits and veggies.
“We see that fruits and vegetables are prominently in the new food pyramid, which aligns with evidence-based dietary patterns, which we know help people live longer,” she said.
But there are parts of the new pyramid she thinks people should pay attention to. This includes the added emphasis on protein and meat.
“I think that there are some aspects that may be misleading to consumers when you look just at the new food pyramid, compared to the actual guidelines,” Truant Anderson said.
She said the big focus on meat and dairy products might be confusing to some.
“How do you increase your protein content without increasing your saturated fat content too much? And it is possible, but you have to be really careful about that, and focus more on the plant-based and seafood sources of protein,” Truant Anderson said.
Dr. Ashanti Woods, an attending pediatrician at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, said you should be paying attention to what the inversion of the pyramid means for you and your family.
“We’re looking down the road and, ultimately, have a goal of keeping our children healthy,” he said.
He said he liked that the new pyramid encouraged a diversity of foods.
“We want families to consider a plate that has a little bit of everything on it. We want children to explore. We want families to take their children with them shopping to the grocery store so that children can pick out certain foods and give it a try,” he said.
Woods said one of the biggest changes when it comes to the food pyramid is the goal for daily protein intake. Currently, the recommendation is 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight.
“It’s now been increased to 1.2 to 1.6 grams of protein a day, essentially doubling it. While we don’t think children should be eating, consuming, a lot of anything, protein included, we do think that there are some benefits to children eating lean protein,” he said.
And Woods said the healthiest habits come not only from watching what you eat but, “anywhere from three to five days of good exercise in the work week, and good exercise to us is anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes of activity that involves sweating.”
Immigrant activist Jeanette Vizguerra is on the precipice of being released from an immigration detention facility after an immigration judge ruled Sunday that she can post bail.
Denver immigration judge Brea Burgie set Vizguerra’s bail at $5,000, but she included no other restrictions, like an ankle monitor. Her family intends to immediately post the bond, her legal team said in a statement. She likely won’t be released for at least 24 to 48 hours, said Jenn Piper, the program co-director for the American Friends Service Committee of Denver. Still, Burgie’s ruling means Vizguerra, a mother of four children, will be home by Christmas.
The order comes two days after Vizguerra’s legal team argued that the activist, who was born in Mexico and has spent most of the last 28 years in the United States, posed no flight risk and was not a danger to the community. She has been detained in the Aurora detention center since March, when she was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at her work.
Vizguerra’s legal team said Sunday that Burgie found that Vizguerra “does not pose a danger to the community,” nor did she pose a flight risk, given her “strong family and community ties” and her previous compliance with court proceedings.
Vizguerra’s bail hearing took place Friday because of the order of a separate federal judge last week. When her family posts bail, Vizguerra will be released while her broader legal efforts to stay in the country — and fight her deportation — play out in both immigartion and federal court.
An activist who received national attention when she sheltered in a Denver church for years during President Donald Trump’s first term, Vizguerra was named one of TIME’s most influential people in 2017. Earlier this year and while in detention, she won a humanitarian award from the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization.
Vizguerra’s supporters have held regular vigils for her outside of the detention center for months.
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.
Nearly 100 years after the birth of Robert F. Kennedy, a new book by political commentator Chris Matthews explores what made him such an iconic and lasting figure. Matthews joins “The Takeout” to discuss “Lessons from Bobby: Ten Reasons Robert F. Kennedy Still Matters,” the state of the Democratic Party and more.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in file photo at the White House with President Trump. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
WASHINGTON, DC – The White House is announcing another plan meant to lower the cost of prescription drugs in the U.S. On Wednesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced said the Food and Drug Administration will be making it easier for ” biosimilars” to enter U.S. markets, something Europe has been doing for decades. Biosimilars are drugs similar to those that have been proven to work and have already been approved by the FDA.
“This is a victory for patients, for innovation, and commonsense,” Kennedy told reporters. “In Europe, for example, regulators have approved more than twice as many biosimilars as the United States,” he added.
Kennedy says he is cutting the red tape, and clinical trials that are necessary before these types of drugs can be sold in the U.S.
Washington — Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced on Thursday new action to reformthe nation’s organ transplant system, as well as a a move to decertify an organ procurement organization.
“Every American should feel safe becoming an organ donor and giving the gift of life, yet decades of ignored patient safety concerns have driven more and more Americans off the donor list,” Kennedy said. “Today, under President Trump’s leadership, we are taking bold action and historic action to restore trust in the organ procurement process.”
Transplant experts said last year there had been a spike in people revoking organ donor registrations, after a report that a Kentucky man who’d been declared dead woke up just as a team was preparing to remove his organs. Since then, there have been more reports of attempts to remove organs from patients who had mistakenly been declared dead.
Kennedy said at a news conference that “we are acting because of years of documented patient safety data failures and repeated violations of federal requirements, and we intend this decision to serve as a clear warning.”
The secretary said the Life Alliance Organ Recovery Agency, a division of the University of Miami Health System, “has a long record of deficiencies directly tied to patient harm.”
“Unlike the Biden administration, which ignored these problems and failed to act, the Trump administration is setting a new standard that patient safety comes first,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy said along with the decertification, HHS is reforming the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network and “investing in new ways to encourage organ donation.”
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks during a press conference on the steps of the United States Department of Agriculture on July 14, 2025 in Washington, D.C.
Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images
In July, HHS announced a plan to begin reforming the organ transplant system, citing a federal investigation that “revealed disturbing practices by a major organ procurement organization.”
Kennedy said in a statement at the time that the investigation, conducted by the Health Resources and Services Administration under HHS, showed “that hospitals allowed the organ procurement process to begin when patients showed signs of life,” calling it “horrifying” and pledging to hold accountable organ procurement organizations that coordinate access to transplants.
HHS said the investigation examined 351 cases where organ donation was “authorized, but ultimately not completed,” finding that nearly 30% showed “concerning features,” like neurological signs in patients that the agency said are incompatible with organ donation. And at least 28 patients “may not have been deceased at the time organ procurement was initiated.”
More than 100,000 people are on the national transplant waiting list, and 13 people die each day waiting for a transplant, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration.
Kennedy has been pushing major changes to the nation’s health care systems since he was sworn in earlier this year. And he has faced criticism in recent weeks over his leadership of the department amid a number of departures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On Wednesday, Susan Monarez, who was ousted as CDC director by Kennedy less than a month after she was confirmed, testified before a Senate committee that she faced pressure from the secretary to change the childhood vaccine schedule, regardless of whether there was scientific evidence to support doing so.
Kennedy testified before a different Senate committee earlier this month, where he defended the CDC shake-up, saying changes at the health agency were “absolutely necessary.” The secretary denied pressuring the former director to preapprove upcoming vaccine recommendations, and accused her of lying about why she was fired.
Anyone 6 months and older who wants a COVID-19 shot in Colorado can now get one, but the vaccine will only be free for those with the right insurance — at least for now.
Initially, pharmacies couldn’t administer the updated shots in Colorado unless a patient had a prescription. The state allows pharmacists to administer vaccines recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s advisory committee, but not other shots.
Dr. Ned Calonge, chief medical officer for the state health department, responded by issuing a standing order — essentially, a prescription for every resident – allowing them to get vaccinated at retail pharmacies.
But that order doesn’t guarantee insurance will cover the shots or that pharmacies will choose to stock them. Last year, fewer than half of people over 65 nationwide received an updated COVID-19 shot, with uptake dropping further in younger age groups, raising questions about whether health care providers will believe demand is high enough to justify buying the vaccine.
“The standing order provides accessibility. It doesn’t necessarily provide availability,” Calonge said Tuesday.
The Colorado Division of Insurance issued a draft rule last week that would require state-regulated plans to cover COVID-19 vaccines without out-of-pocket costs for people of any age, assuming the division passes it as written. Insurance cards from state-regulated plans typically have CO-DOI printed in the lower left corner.
The state’s rule doesn’t apply to federally regulated plans, which account for about 30% of employer-sponsored insurance plans in Colorado, Calonge said. Typically, however, those plans try to offer competitive benefits, since they mostly serve large employers, he said.
“My hope would be they would want to keep up with other insurers,” he said.
This isn’t the first time that people on state-regulated plans have had benefits not guaranteed for people with federally regulated insurance.
Colorado capped the cost of insulin and epinephrine shots to treat severe allergic reactions in state plans, but couldn’t require the same for plans the state doesn’t oversee. In those cases, it offered an “affordability program” requiring manufacturers to supply the medication at a lower cost for people who aren’t covered by the state caps, Medicare or Medicaid.
At least two Colorado insurers surveyed by The Denver Post said all of their plans will cover COVID-19 vaccines, while others hedged.
Select Health, which sells Medicare and individual marketplace plans in Colorado, said its plans currently cover COVID-19 vaccines without out-of-pocket costs for everyone. Kaiser Permanente Colorado said in a message to members that it will pay for the shot for anyone 6 months or older.
Donna Lynne, CEO of Denver Health, said the health system’s insurance arm is waiting on clarification about when it should cover the vaccines. Denver Health Medical Plan offers multiple plan types, some state-regulated and some under federal rules, she said.
“It’s less of a decision on our part than understanding what the health department and the insurance department are saying,” she said. “You can’t have one insurance company saying they are doing it and one saying they aren’t doing it.”
Anthem said it considers immunizations “medically necessary” if the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Family Physicians or the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee has recommended them, but didn’t specify whether it would charge out-of-pocket costs for medically necessary vaccines.
If those bodies stated that certain people could get a particular vaccine — but not that they should — Anthem would decide about coverage “on an individual basis,” its website said. The other groups have recommended the shots for people over 18 or under 2, with the option for healthy children in between to get a booster if their parents wish.
The state’s Medicaid program is still waiting for guidance from federal authorities about whose vaccines it can cover, according to the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing, and Medicare isn’t yet paying for the shots.
For most of the COVID-19 vaccines’ relatively brief existence, they were free and recommended for everyone 6 months and older. In 2024, the federal government stopped paying for them, which meant uninsured people no longer could be sure they could get the shot without paying.
Almost all insurance plans still were required to pay for the shots, though, because the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommended them.
Doctors still could prescribe the vaccine “off-label” to healthy people, in the same way that they prescribe adult medications for children when an alternative specifically approved for kids isn’t available.
The committee’s decision also will determine whether the Vaccines for Children program can supply the shots for children who are uninsured, covered by Medicaid or are members of American Indian tribes, Calonge said. If the committee decides not to recommend the vaccines, those children likely won’t have another option to get the shots, he said.
When states and the federal government passed laws linking coverage to the committee’s recommendations, they did so expecting that it would also remain an apolitical arbiter of the evidence for vaccinating the population or specific subgroups, said Cathy Bradley, dean of the Colorado School of Public Health.
Now, that premise is in doubt, and states are looking for other ways to ensure access, she said.
Allowing anyone who wants a COVID-19 vaccine to get one from the provider of their choice is an important first step for Colorado, because the vaccines remain effective in preventing severe illness, Bradley said. As the situation develops, the state will likely need to come up with other partial solutions to preserve access, she said.
“It’s a different path for everyone, depending on what your coverage is,” she said.
For months, President Donald Trump’s Administration has launched a full-scale attack, led by his Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., on America’s public-health system. In the past week, however, the efforts escalated: Kennedy, who rose to fame in part owing to his conspiracy theories about vaccinations, pushed to fire Susan Monarez, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is part of H.H.S. This came after Monarez refused to follow the lead of Kennedy’s advisers, who have tried to restrict vaccine access. (Trump has now named a Kennedy deputy, Jim O’Neill, as her replacement; Monarez’s lawyer claims that her firing was “legally deficient.”) The Trump Administration has already tried to limit access to COVID vaccines; earlier this month, the F.D.A. approved updated COVID vaccines but limited access to them to people sixty-five and older, and those with certain preëxisting conditions that put them at risk of severe illness. In mid-September, a C.D.C. advisory committee will meet and is expected to make a recommendation on who should be able to get the shots.
I spoke about the crisis at the C.D.C. with Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and a professor of pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine, at the University of Pennsylvania. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed the extent to which the federal government can deter or restrict vaccine access, what Kennedy is really trying to accomplish, and why making it more difficult for pharmacies to inoculate patients may change public health in America.
How important are C.D.C. recommendations to vaccine uptake? How centralized a process is this?
Everyone who is involved in administering vaccines looks to the C.D.C. for their recommendations. So the Food and Drug Administration (F.D.A.) is a licensing body. It says a company can sell their vaccine, but it’s the C.D.C., specifically the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (A.C.I.P.), that gives specific recommendations. They say, O.K., now that it’s licensed, you can administer this vaccine to these people at these time intervals. And they have always been the central source, so they’re critical. They are the group that people look to for advice.
And so, when you say “people,” you’re talking about doctors, pharmacies, insurance companies, everyone, essentially.
Yes. I think parents look to their doctors for advice, but I think the doctors and the pharmacists and others are looking to the A.C.I.P. for advice.
I imagine there will be a lot of doctors, a majority of doctors in the United States, who are going to end up disagreeing with the Trump Administration’s guidance about vaccines. What, then, do doctors have the ability or inability to do, based on what the C.D.C. does?
So, for example, the C.D.C.—prior to Kennedy becoming the Secretary of H.H.S.—had recommended that young children receive a vaccine based on data that were presented in April of this year showing that thousands of children were being hospitalized, that one in five of those children hospitalized were being sent to the intensive-care unit, that a hundred and fifty-two children had died, that virtually none who died were vaccinated, and that half who died were previously healthy. Most of those children were less than four years old, and many were less than six months of age. So therefore there was a clear, firm recommendation by the C.D.C. to vaccinate young children. Then, at the end of May, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., stood and said H.H.S. is no longer recommending the COVID vaccine for healthy young children and for pregnant women, even though children under six months of age could only be protected by vaccinating their mother [during pregnancy].
That threw a wrench into the system, and here’s how it played out. The American Academy of Pediatrics is going to publish a clear recommendation in its journal saying that all children six months and older who have not been vaccinated should be; and that children less than two years of age should clearly be vaccinated because of the data showing that COVID can be a serious and occasionally fatal infection in that age group. Then the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists stood up in the defense of pregnant women and said that pregnant women should receive a vaccine.
The only vaccine available for children less than five is Moderna’s vaccine. And that is licensed only for children in a high-risk category. So now you’re stuck. You’re wondering, Is insurance going to cover this? Is insurance going to cover a young child, a healthy child getting a vaccine? Are physicians going to feel comfortable, in terms of liability, giving that? And, for the most part, physicians are covered by the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, so, more important, are pharmacists going to feel comfortable? And, even though that act does not include COVID vaccines, another act does. I talked to two lawyers and my understanding is that it doesn’t cover pharmacists, so they are being left in the lurch. It’s all confusing, and I think that’s the point. I think Kennedy’s point is to make it confusing.
Why is Moderna the only one making a vaccine for kids, and why did they only recommend it for kids who are not healthy?
Moderna and Pfizer initially had a vaccine approved under an emergency-use authorization (E.U.A.), and then Moderna advanced that from the emergency-use authorization to a licensed product. But that licensure through the F.D.A. unfortunately only included children who were at high risk, because what the Trump F.D.A. did was they basically usurped the role of the C.D.C. The job of the F.D.A. is to say, O.K., if this vaccine is safe and effective, then it’s licensed and the company can sell it. Then it’s up to the C.D.C. to say, O.K., looking at the epidemiological data that we have, it looks like all children older than six months benefit. But the F.D.A. preëmpted that, and basically they took over the role of the C.D.C. Project 2025 wants to eliminate C.D.C. as a recommending body. And one way to do this is what the F.D.A. just did, which is to limit the vaccines to just those children who are at high risk. Pfizer’s vaccine was approved through an emergency-use authorization for children less than five years old, but they just didn’t advance the license quickly enough. And so Kennedy saw an opportunity and basically said, We’re not going to approve anything through E.U.A. anymore. And that eliminated Pfizer’s vaccine for children.
I have read that some countries in Europe have a more relaxed attitude to children’s vaccinations than we did before Trump. Is that accurate? And do you think that there’s anything to be said for that?
The goal of the vaccine is to keep people out of the hospital, keep them out of the intensive-care unit, keep them out of the morgue. You’re not going to be protected against mild to moderate disease for long after either a natural infection or a vaccination. Four to six months later, your antibody response will fade; you’re still going to be protected against severe disease for a fairly long time, but you’ll still be at risk for mild to moderate disease. So then the question becomes who’s getting hospitalized? Who’s dying? That’s who you’re trying to protect. It really falls into four groups: people who are pregnant, people who are over seventy-five, people who are immunocompromised, and people who have high-risk medical conditions like chronic lung or heart disease. The logical response is to say, O.K., let’s just target those groups. Let’s give the vaccine every year to those groups, the groups most likely to be hospitalized or suffer serious illness.
We didn’t. We just kept saying everybody over six months of age should get a yearly vaccine—and I think that was wrong. Very early on, actually, I started to say that we should target the groups who are being hospitalized. That’s the goal of the vaccine. I was getting a lot of criticism for saying that we should just target the high-risk groups. I suddenly had gotten off the bus, and I think, in the public-health world, you’re either on the bus or off the bus. Someone I talked to in that world said that would be seen as a nuanced recommendation, which is going to be seen as a garbled recommendation. And the best way to get everybody vaccinated who should be vaccinated is to make a universal recommendation. I guess it’s a testable hypothesis, but I don’t agree with that. And so it was always seen as a messaging issue. And the A.C.I.P., in April of this year, started to discuss whether they should just target high-risk groups. But then those people got fired and replaced by this group with members who are science-averse and anti-vaccine.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Friday signed a redistricting law that could strengthen Republican influence in Washington, a move that could tilt upcoming congressional elections in the party’s favour.
“Texas is now more red in the United States Congress,” Abbott said in a video on X, referring to the state’s Republican lean. In his post, he added that the move “ensures fairer representation in Congress.”
The legislation redraws congressional boundaries to give the Republican Party an advantage in the House of Representatives, where each member represents a single district. Republicans currently hold narrow majorities in both chambers of Congress.
The process, known as gerrymandering, involves drawing districts to concentrate a party’s own voters while splitting the opposition, allowing the party to win more seats even without a majority of votes.
Redistricting is normally based on the decennial census, but the new law bypasses this requirement. All 435 seats in the US House of Representatives are up for election in November 2026.
Texas, one of the nation’s most populous states, currently sends 38 representatives to the House, second only to California. Small shifts in district lines can therefore change the balance of power.
Republicans hope the redistricting could deliver up to five additional house seats. California, led by Democrats, has already signalled plans to review its own redistricting, potentially challenging the Republican’s efforts.
Hours after Abbott’s move, Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe announced on X that he is convening a special legislative session to redraw congressional districts in the Republican-led state.
In previous years, the committee recommended updated COVID-19 vaccines within days of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approving them. This year, the committee doesn’t have any meetings scheduled until late September, and may not recommend the shot when it does meet, since Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appointed multiple members with anti-vaccine views after removing all prior appointees in June.
The lack of a recommendation also means that insurance companies aren’t legally required to pay for the COVID-19 vaccine without out-of-pocket costs. Most private insurers will cover the updated shots this year, though that could change in 2026, according to Reuters.
Initially, CVS said it couldn’t give the COVID-19 vaccine to anyone in Colorado or 15 other states, because of their ACIP-approval requirement. As of Friday morning, its pharmacies can offer the shots to eligible people who have a prescription, spokeswoman Amy Thibault said.
As of about 10 a.m. Friday, CVS’s website wouldn’t allow visitors to schedule COVID-19 shots in Colorado.
Walgreens didn’t respond to questions about its COVID-19 vaccine policy, but its website said patients need a prescription in Colorado. A New York Times reporter found the same in 15 other states.
History of stroke or disease in the brain’s blood vessels
Chronic kidney disease
Liver disease
Cystic fibrosis
Diabetes (all types)
Developmental disabilities, such as Down syndrome
Heart problems
Mental health conditions, including depression and schizophrenia
Dementia
Parkinson’s disease
Obesity
Physical inactivity
Current or recent pregnancy
Diseases or medications that impair the immune system
Smoking
Healthy people technically still can get the vaccine, but would have to ask a health care provider to prescribe it off-label. An off-label prescription refers to one given for a condition the drug isn’t approved to treat, such as a blood-pressure drug prescribed to prevent migraines.
Not everyone has a regular health care provider or the inclination to take time out of their day for an office visit, though. Insurers also vary in their willingness to cover off-label prescriptions.
In a series called Mondo Appropriato, Culled Culture examines how “on the nose” something is in the pop cultural and/or political landscape.
Where once it was easy to bill any Kennedy “tragedy” as merely part of the “Kennedy curse,” it seems that, more and more, the overshadowing word is “scandal” rather than “tragedy.” And most of it is less a “curse” than largely being the making of the (often depraved) Kennedy men. The latest to outshine some of his forebears’ former “glory” in that department is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. While, sure, one might have thought that his brand couldn’t possibly be more damaged after years of anti-vaccine rhetoric, a bid for president in 2024 that has almost been as embarrassing as Donald Trump’s and admissions to two separate incidents of “bizarre” (to say the least) behavior with dead animals (specifically, a bear cub and a whale), it turns out, they were wrong. There was so much more damaging to do in 2024.
The latest scandal in the Kennedy arsenal in general and the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. arsenal in particular is Olivia Nuzzi’s admission to having a “personal relationship” with the presidential hopeful earlier this year while on the campaign trail. And yes, the vagueness of the term “personal relationship” leaves far too much to the imagination. Described as a “star reporter” for New York Magazine, Nuzzi was suspended from the publication after “acknowledging” her close dynamic with RFK Jr. (evidently, close enough to risk her entire career on this confession), though she was certain to stress that the relationship wasn’t physical. Even so, as any woman who has ever had to deal with a boyfriend or husband’s “best friend” in a female form, there is obviously such a thing as an emotional affair (which is oftentimes even worse than a physical one). And it’s likely just as grating to Cheryl Hines as it is to any other woman.
Per a statement released by NY Mag,
“Recently our Washington Correspondent Olivia Nuzzi acknowledged to the magazine’s editors that she had engaged in a personal relationship with a former subject relevant to the 2024 campaign while she was reporting on the campaign, a violation of the magazine’s standards around conflicts of interest and disclosures. Had the magazine been aware of this relationship, she would not have continued to cover the presidential campaign. An internal review of her published work has found no inaccuracies nor evidence of bias. She is currently on leave from the magazine, and the magazine is conducting a more thorough third-party review. We regret this violation of our readers’ trust.”
Alas, it’s unlikely that RFK Jr. would ever apologize for the violation of Hines’ trust. Then again, the Kennedy men are more than somewhat known for their penchants for having affairs and doing a very shitty job of being discreet about it. Leaving the door open for people to say that Hines should have “expected” it/“known better.” Especially considering his ex-wife, Mary Kathleen Richardson, killed herself after discovering a journal of RFK Jr.’s detailing how he slept with thirty-seven women in 2001 alone (which means who knows what the total number of women he had affairs with really added up to in the years before and beyond that). In other words, while RFK Jr. was usually in a non-marriage bed, Hines should have seen that she was making her own to lie in. But those who would try to fault her with “I told you so” logic, well, they clearly haven’t been subjected to “the heart wants what it wants” phenomena.
In the male Kennedys’ case, however, that saying has always been “the dick wants what it wants.” And damn the aftermath. Perhaps that’s what makes the Nuzzi “incident” one of the more unique ones for Kennedy shame in that RFK Jr. didn’t even “go all the way,” despite probably knowing somewhere deep down that there would be an inevitable fallout (so why not make it all slightly worth it with an orgasm here and there?). And, apparently, plenty of email/sext exchanges showcasing the nature of his and Nuzzi’s emotionally intimate rapport.
As for Nuzzi, it will be for her just as it has been for every woman that has suffered at the hands of a Kennedy scandal: her reputation will still end up being more tarnished than his (which is, quite simply, the patriarchy in active motion). Particularly because she’s a journalist now facing an extreme loss of credibility, even more so due to the fact that she’ll be billed as some kind of Jezebel in future dealings with male subjects. Indeed, her behavior is liable to be met with plenty of contempt from fellow journalists of the belief that the last thing the industry needed was another reason for the public to doubt it. And the last thing the Kennedy “dynasty” needed was yet another (cum) stain on it thanks to a man who couldn’t resist a flirtation that turned into something far more unseemly.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Donald Trump are set to appear miles apart in Arizona on Friday as speculation grows that Kennedy could drop his independent presidential bid and endorse the Republican nominee.Kennedy is scheduled to speak at 2 p.m. Eastern time in Phoenix “about the present historical moment and his path forward,” according to his campaign. Hours later, Trump will hold a rally in neighboring Glendale. Trump’s campaign has teased that he will be joined by “a special guest,” though neither campaign responded to messages about whether Kennedy would be that guest.Kennedy withdrew from the ballot in Arizona late Thursday, less than a week after he submitted well more than the required number of signatures to appear on the ballot. But his critics raised questions about the validity of some of the signatures, and the involvement of a pro-Kennedy super PAC to collect them risked potentially running afoul of rules against coordination between candidates and independent political groups. A year ago, some would have thought it inconceivable that Kennedy — a member of the most storied family in Democratic politics — would work with Trump to keep a Democrat out of the White House. Even in recent months, Kennedy has accused Trump of betraying his followers, while Trump has criticized Kennedy as “the most radical left candidate in the race.”But the two campaigns have ramped up their compliments to each other and engaged in behind-the-scenes discussions in recent weeks, according to those familiar with the efforts. Both campaigns have spent months accusing Democrats of weaponizing the legal system for their own benefit. And both have hinted publicly that they could be open to joining forces, with the shared goal of limiting the election chances of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.Last month, during the Republican National Convention, Kennedy’s son posted and then quickly deleted a video showing a phone call between Kennedy and Trump, in which the former president appeared to try to talk Kennedy into siding with him.Talks between the two camps have continued, with close Trump allies quietly lobbying Kennedy to drop out of the race and support the Republican nominee, according to a person familiar with the efforts who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.Trump told CNN on Tuesday that he would “love” an endorsement from Kennedy, whom he called a “brilliant guy.” He also said he would “certainly” be open to Kennedy playing a role in his administration if Kennedy drops out and endorses him. Kennedy’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, also openly suggested on a podcast this week that his campaign might “walk away right now and join forces with Donald Trump.” While she clarified that she is not personally in talks with Trump, she entertained the idea that Kennedy could join Trump’s administration as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.”I think that Bobby in a role like that would be excellent,” Shanahan said. “I fully support it. I have high hopes.”Kennedy, a son of former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and a nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, hasn’t disclosed the reason for his Friday remarks, but they come as his campaign’s momentum has slipped. Kennedy Jr. first entered the 2024 presidential race as a Democrat but left the party last fall to run as an independent. He built an unusually strong base for a third-party bid, fueled in part by anti-establishment voters and vaccine skeptics who have followed his anti-vaccine work since the COVID-19 pandemic. But he has since faced strained campaign finances and mounting legal challenges, including a recent ruling from a New York judge that he should not appear on the ballot in the state because he listed a “sham” address on nominating petitions.Recent polls put his support in the mid-single digits. And it’s unclear if he’d get even that in a general election, since third-party candidates frequently don’t live up to their early poll numbers when voters actually cast their ballots.There’s some evidence that Kennedy’s staying in the race would hurt Trump more than Harris. According to a July AP-NORC poll, Republicans were significantly more likely than Democrats to have a favorable view of Kennedy. And those with a positive impression of Kennedy were significantly more likely to also have a favorable view of Trump (52%) than Harris (37%). In an interview with MSNBC at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Thursday, Harris communications director Michael Tyler said her campaign welcomes Kennedy voters should the independent candidate drop out.For voters who see Trump as a threat, who are looking for a new way forward, or who want “government to get the hell out of the way of their own personal decisions, there’s a home for you in Kamala Harris’ campaign,” Tyler said.For Trump, Friday will mark the end of a week’s worth of battleground state visits in which he has sought to draw attention away from Democrats’ celebration of Harris’ presidential nomination in Chicago.He traveled to Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina and Arizona’s U.S.-Mexico border for events focused on his policy proposals on the economy, crime and safety, national security and the border. He will close out the week Friday with stops in Las Vegas and Glendale.___Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in New York, Michelle L. Price in Phoenix, Meg Kinnard in Chicago and Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.
PHOENIX —
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Donald Trump are set to appear miles apart in Arizona on Friday as speculation grows that Kennedy could drop his independent presidential bid and endorse the Republican nominee.
Kennedy is scheduled to speak at 2 p.m. Eastern time in Phoenix “about the present historical moment and his path forward,” according to his campaign. Hours later, Trump will hold a rally in neighboring Glendale. Trump’s campaign has teased that he will be joined by “a special guest,” though neither campaign responded to messages about whether Kennedy would be that guest.
Kennedy withdrew from the ballot in Arizona late Thursday, less than a week after he submitted well more than the required number of signatures to appear on the ballot. But his critics raised questions about the validity of some of the signatures, and the involvement of a pro-Kennedy super PAC to collect them risked potentially running afoul of rules against coordination between candidates and independent political groups.
A year ago, some would have thought it inconceivable that Kennedy — a member of the most storied family in Democratic politics — would work with Trump to keep a Democrat out of the White House. Even in recent months, Kennedy has accused Trump of betraying his followers, while Trump has criticized Kennedy as “the most radical left candidate in the race.”
But the two campaigns have ramped up their compliments to each other and engaged in behind-the-scenes discussions in recent weeks, according to those familiar with the efforts. Both campaigns have spent months accusing Democrats of weaponizing the legal system for their own benefit. And both have hinted publicly that they could be open to joining forces, with the shared goal of limiting the election chances of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
Last month, during the Republican National Convention, Kennedy’s son posted and then quickly deleted a video showing a phone call between Kennedy and Trump, in which the former president appeared to try to talk Kennedy into siding with him.
Talks between the two camps have continued, with close Trump allies quietly lobbying Kennedy to drop out of the race and support the Republican nominee, according to a person familiar with the efforts who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Trump told CNN on Tuesday that he would “love” an endorsement from Kennedy, whom he called a “brilliant guy.” He also said he would “certainly” be open to Kennedy playing a role in his administration if Kennedy drops out and endorses him.
Kennedy’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, also openly suggested on a podcast this week that his campaign might “walk away right now and join forces with Donald Trump.” While she clarified that she is not personally in talks with Trump, she entertained the idea that Kennedy could join Trump’s administration as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
“I think that Bobby in a role like that would be excellent,” Shanahan said. “I fully support it. I have high hopes.”
Kennedy, a son of former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and a nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, hasn’t disclosed the reason for his Friday remarks, but they come as his campaign’s momentum has slipped.
Kennedy Jr. first entered the 2024 presidential race as a Democrat but left the party last fall to run as an independent. He built an unusually strong base for a third-party bid, fueled in part by anti-establishment voters and vaccine skeptics who have followed his anti-vaccine work since the COVID-19 pandemic. But he has since faced strained campaign finances and mounting legal challenges, including a recent ruling from a New York judge that he should not appear on the ballot in the state because he listed a “sham” address on nominating petitions.
Recent polls put his support in the mid-single digits. And it’s unclear if he’d get even that in a general election, since third-party candidates frequently don’t live up to their early poll numbers when voters actually cast their ballots.
There’s some evidence that Kennedy’s staying in the race would hurt Trump more than Harris. According to a July AP-NORC poll, Republicans were significantly more likely than Democrats to have a favorable view of Kennedy. And those with a positive impression of Kennedy were significantly more likely to also have a favorable view of Trump (52%) than Harris (37%).
In an interview with MSNBC at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Thursday, Harris communications director Michael Tyler said her campaign welcomes Kennedy voters should the independent candidate drop out.
For voters who see Trump as a threat, who are looking for a new way forward, or who want “government to get the hell out of the way of their own personal decisions, there’s a home for you in Kamala Harris’ campaign,” Tyler said.
For Trump, Friday will mark the end of a week’s worth of battleground state visits in which he has sought to draw attention away from Democrats’ celebration of Harris’ presidential nomination in Chicago.
He traveled to Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina and Arizona’s U.S.-Mexico border for events focused on his policy proposals on the economy, crime and safety, national security and the border. He will close out the week Friday with stops in Las Vegas and Glendale.
___
Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in New York, Michelle L. Price in Phoenix, Meg Kinnard in Chicago and Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.
Here’s a look at the life of environmental and human rights activist Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Robert F. Kennedy.
Birth date: April 11, 1928
Birth place: Chicago, Illinois
Birth name: Ethel Skakel
Father: George Skakel, businessman
Mother: Ann (Brannack) Skakel
Marriage: Robert F. Kennedy (June 17, 1950-June 6, 1968, his death)
Children: Rory, 1968; Douglas, 1967; Matthew, 1965; Christopher, 1963; Mary, 1959; Michael, February 27, 1958 – December 31, 1997; Courtney, 1956; David, June 15, 1955 – April 25, 1984; Robert Jr., 1954; Joseph II, 1952; Kathleen, 1951
Education: Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart, 1949 (now called Manhattanville College)
Established an organization called Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, which supports the causes championed by Robert F. Kennedy.
Met Robert Kennedy though his sister, Jean.
Her nephew, Michael Skakel, was convicted in 2002 of the 1975 murder of his neighbor, Martha Moxley. In 2018, the Connecticut Supreme Court vacated Skakel’s conviction and ordered a new trial. Prosecutors announced they would not retry Skakel in October 2020.
1955 – Ethel’s parents, George and Ann Skakel, are killed in an airplane accident.
1959 – Campaigns for Robert’s brother, John F. Kennedy, during his run for the presidency.
1961-1964 – Robert Kennedy serves as attorney general of the United States.
1964 – Robert Kennedy is elected to the US Senate to represent New York.
March 16, 1968 – Robert Kennedy announces he will run for the Democratic presidential nomination.
June 5, 1968 – Robert Kennedy is shot while campaigning in Los Angeles. He dies on June 6 at the age of 42.
CNN’s Kasie Hunt wasn’t having it with independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s claim that he never made remarks about vaccines that he indeed made earlier this year.
Kennedy, a conspiracy theorist known for his anti-vax views, spoke to the anchor after a recent poll showed 21% of registered voters will either “definitely” or “probably” vote for Kennedy in the 2024 presidential election if President Joe Biden or former President Donald Trump are their respective parties’ nominees.
Hunt noted that Kennedy has gained notoriety for his vaccine skepticism before she read from his own words.
“Over the summer, in an interview, you said ‘there’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective,’ do you still believe that?” Hunt asked before Kennedy disputed his own remarks.
“I never said that –,” he replied.
“So, stop me, we have the clip, please play the clip,” Hunt pushed back.
“Play the whole clip,” Kennedy chimed in.
CNN proceeded to play footage from Kennedy’s appearance on Lex Fridman’s podcast, where he told the host that “there’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective” when asked to name vaccines that he thinks “are good.”
Hunt, who reminded the candidate that he “did say it,” asked him again if he still believes the take on vaccines.
“Here’s what I would say, first of all, I’m not anti-vaccine,” Kennedy proceeded to claim.
“How is that statement not anti-vaccine?” Hunt questioned.
You can check out more from Hunt’s interview with Kennedy below.
12.15.23 CNN/CNN International Anchor of State of the Race, Kasie Hunt @kasie w/ US Independent Presidential Candidate @RobertKennedyJr Ms Hunt asks all the right questions including on vaccines. Well done Ms. Hunt. Journalistic Excellence. 19 minutes 49 seconds pic.twitter.com/L26KOzMeQv
John F. Kennedy took George Plimpton by surprise after a dinner party one evening when he pulled his friend aside for a word in the Oval Office. The president had Reconstruction on his mind—really, though, he wanted to discuss Plimpton’s grandmother.
Plimpton was lanky and lordly, famous for his patrician accent and his forays into professional sports. The Paris Review founder did everything and knew everyone. He might edit literary criticism one day and try his hand at football or boxing the next. Plimpton had known Jackie Kennedy for years, and he had been friends with Robert F. Kennedy since their Harvard days.
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He also had another, and very different, Kennedy connection. Plimpton’s great-grandfather Adelbert Ames, a New Englander, had been a Civil War general and Mississippi governor during Reconstruction. He was an ardent supporter of Black suffrage. Kennedy had soiled Ames’s reputation in his best-selling 1956 book, Profiles in Courage, which had won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography the following year. The book ushered the junior senator from Massachusetts onto the national stage, effectively launching his bid for the presidency.
Kennedy’s book presented a pantheon of past U.S. senators as models of courageous compromise and political pragmatism. One such man, Kennedy claimed, was Ames’s racist Democratic rival, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II. A slaveholder, drafter of the Mississippi Ordinance of Secession, and Confederate colonel, Lamar later became the first ex-Confederate appointed to the Supreme Court after the Civil War.
Lamar and Ames were the preeminent politicians of Mississippi Reconstruction. They hated each other. (At one point, Lamar threatened to lynch Ames.) Profiles in Courage had relied heavily on the work of influential Dunning School historians—disciples of the Columbia University professor William A. Dunning, who scorned Black suffrage and promoted the mythology of the Lost Cause. Kennedy may have been genuinely misled by these historians, but he also aspired to higher office and needed to appeal to white southern voters. His book denounced Reconstruction, casting Ames as a corrupt, carpetbagging villain and Lamar as a heroic southern statesman.
Ames’s daughter Blanche—Plimpton’s grandmother—was incensed. She sent meticulously researched letters to Kennedy, demanding that he correct his book. Some of the letters had footnotes. Some had appendixes. Blanche would not let up, chasing Kennedy from the Senate to the presidency.
In Plimpton’s telling, as Kennedy took his guests on an informal tour of the White House that evening, he motioned to Plimpton for a word. “George,” he said, as Plimpton would recall, “I’d like to talk to you about your grandmother.” Kennedy begged him to persuade Blanche Ames to stop writing, complaining that her correspondence “was cutting into the work of government.”
Plimpton promised to try, but he knew it would be no use. “My grandmother was a Massachusetts woman,” he later explained, and when Kennedy refused to amend Profiles, Blanche “did what any sensible Massachusetts woman would do: she sat down and wrote her own book.”
Blanche Ames wasborn in Massachusetts in 1878, the year after Reconstruction ended in a political deal that awarded Rutherford B. Hayes, a Republican, the disputed presidential election in exchange for withdrawing federal troops from the South. Blanche had the Civil War in her blood. Benjamin F. Butler, a Union general, was her maternal grandfather; he had commanded Fort Monroe, in Virginia, and had designated fugitive slaves as “contraband of war,” using a legal loophole that allowed refugees to seek protection behind Union lines. He later became governor of Massachusetts. Adelbert Ames, her father, won the Medal of Honor at First Bull Run and fought at Antietam and Gettysburg. After serving as the military governor of Mississippi, Ames became the state’s senator and then its civilian governor. He was a champion of racial rights, embracing a personal “Mission with a large M ” to support Black citizens.
Blanche, too, was a principled fighter, willing to risk her social privilege for the causes that she championed. Adelbert encouraged his daughters to attend college. Blanche went to Smith, where she became class president. At commencement, she delivered a forceful address promoting women’s suffrage, with President William McKinley in the audience. Blanche helped spearhead the Massachusetts women’s-suffrage movement, working as a political cartoonist for Woman’s Journal. She founded the Massachusetts Birth Control League. Once, Blanche sauntered onto Boston’s Commonwealth Avenue carrying a hand-carved wooden penis to demonstrate proper condom use; she was arrested, but police released her after realizing she was the daughter of one governor and the granddaughter of another. “If she was a man,” one historian has observed, “there would be five books” about her already.
Blanche Ames Ames acquired her distinctive, double-barreled name upon marrying the prominent Harvard botanist Oakes Ames, who came from an unrelated dynastic strand of Ameses. A talented painter, Blanche illustrated some of Oakes’s books about orchids. The Ames mansion at Borderland, their 1,200-acre estate outside Boston, was built entirely of stone to ensure that the library—the filming location for the 2019 movie Knives Out—would be fireproof. Adelbert Ames’s and Benjamin Butler’s Civil War–era swords can still be seen in the foyer. George Plimpton once used one to cut a cake at an anniversary party.
Profiles in Courage roused Blanche from her Borderland retirement. Eight decades had elapsed since the end of Reconstruction. The modern civil-rights movement was gaining momentum, with its promise of a second Reconstruction. Kennedy was not only taking the wrong side, but he was doing so by maligning Blanche’s father:
No state suffered more from carpetbag rule than Mississippi. Adelbert Ames, first Senator and then Governor … [admitted] that only his election to the Senate prompted him to take up his residence in Mississippi. He was chosen Governor by a majority composed of freed slaves and radical Republicans, sustained and nourished by Federal bayonets … Taxes increased to a level fourteen times as high as normal in order to support the extravagances of the reconstruction government.
Lamar, meanwhile, was cast as a “statesman” for whom “no partisan, personal or sectional considerations could outweigh his devotion to the national interest and to the truth”—a selfless patriot who had helped reconcile the nation.
The truth of the matter was very different. Reconstruction-era Mississippi under Ames’s leadership arguably held more political promise for newly enfranchised Black people than any other southern state. Before the Civil War, Mississippi had contained some of the richest counties in the nation, but most Mississippians—some 55 percent—were enslaved. After the war, Mississippi was the poorest state in the Union. But the new state constitution worked to overturn the Black Codes—laws designed to limit the rights of newly freed African Americans—and Mississippi’s Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce became the country’s first Black senators. Ames himself shared his gubernatorial ticket with three Black candidates.
Democrats swept the 1874 national midterm elections in what the historian Eric Foner has called a “repudiation of Reconstruction.” Mississippi Democrats saw an opportunity: By seizing control of the legislature in upcoming state elections, they could pass measures that would essentially end Black suffrage. The year 1875 became a struggle between Ames, the elected governor, and Lamar, who was then in Congress. Ames’s administration had the support of Black voters. Lamar, meanwhile, embraced the so-called Mississippi Plan, which aimed to disrupt a legitimate election, by force if necessary. Lamar insisted that the Democrats had to win control of the state legislature to ensure the “supremacy of the unconquered and unconquerable Saxon race.” On Election Day, paramilitary terrorists called White Liners obstructed polling places, destroyed ballot boxes, and threatened to kill Black citizens who voted, as the journalist Nicholas Lemann has written in Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War. Counties that were once overwhelmingly Republican saw the Republican vote drop to single digits. “A revolution has taken place,” Ames wrote to his wife, prophesying a bleak future for Mississippi. “A race are disenfranchised—they are to be returned to … an era of second slavery.”
Democrats, elected by terrorism and led by Lamar, now threatened Ames with impeachment. They accused him of financial impropriety—including the high taxes that Profiles decried—despite his administration’s relative frugality. To avoid impeachment, Ames resigned and fled the state. A U.S. Senate committee investigated the Mississippi elections and produced a 2,000-page document known as the “Boutwell Report.” It concluded that Ames was blameless and that his resignation had been forced “by measures unauthorized by law.” No matter: Ames’s reputation lay in tatters.
The following year, during the presidential deadlock, Lamar helped broker the Compromise of 1877, which gave Hayes the presidency over Samuel Tilden in exchange for the return of “home rule”—rule by white-supremacist Democrats—to the South, effectively destroying national Reconstruction.
Profiles in Courageevades easy categorization. It is a historical work, written by a political team, heavily assisted by historians, and published for political gain. The book features eight senators, strategically distributed across time, space, and party. Five of the profiles focus on questions of slavery, the Civil War, or Reconstruction, and none of the featured senators took a progressive approach to Black rights. Three, including Lamar, were slaveholders. Questions about authorship arose early: Kennedy’s speechwriter Theodore Sorensen was rumored to be the true author. (He did, in fact, write most of the book.) Archival drafts reveal that the Georgetown University history professor Jules Davids helped overhaul the Mississippi chapter. The book’s historical vision, though, came from Kennedy.
Historians in recent years have acknowledged that the real problem with Profiles is not authorship but substance. As a critic, Blanche Ames got there first. Her personal copy of the book, a first edition, overflows with annotations. She drew arrows and corkscrew question marks around the paragraph about her father, her anger visible on the page. When Kennedy insisted that Lamar had written Mississippi’s Ordinance of Secession only after losing hope that “the South could obtain justice in the Federal Union,” Blanche thundered in the margins: “Lamar had sown the seed in 1861. He was sowing it again in 1874.”
In June 1956, Blanche sent a nine-page letter to Senator Kennedy, introducing herself as his friend Plimpton’s grandmother and urging “corrections of errata for your own sake as well as mine.” She recognized diplomatically that, “in a work as ambitious as ‘Profiles in Courage’ … there are bound to be some viewpoints to arouse controversy.” Nevertheless, she argued, ambition did not excuse historical inaccuracy.
Kennedy replied the next month. He was cordial, admitting that Reconstruction was “one of the most difficult sections” to write, not because of lack of material, but because of an abundance of “emotion-packed and strongly partisan” readings. It was a politician’s apology, suffused with qualifiers. He insisted that he had relied on “reputable authorities,” but granted that “it is possible, of course, that in so doing a particular individual or incident is slighted or inadequately or inaccurately described.” He added, “If such is the case in connection with my mention of your father … I am indeed sorry.” He assured Blanche that her message “succeeded in stimulating me to further research,” but warned that he did not expect Profiles to be reprinted, so there would be no correction.
Kennedy did, in fact, do further research. According to Plimpton, during that Oval Office conversation after the dinner party, Kennedy asked Plimpton what he knew about his great-grandfather, apparently eager to demonstrate his own knowledge. He reenacted how Ames would inspect his Civil War soldiers and shout “For God’s sake, draw up your bowels!,” causing White House personnel to burst in, worried by the uproar. The president had found this obscure detail in an equally obscure book, The Twentieth Maine, which was published a year after Profiles.
But between 1956 and 1963, Profiles was reprinted more than 30 times. Kennedy did not change his account of Adelbert Ames and L. Q. C. Lamar.
Kennedy’s intransigence only fueled Blanche’s campaign. She forwarded her letters to Harper & Brothers, giving the publisher “the first opportunity” to rectify where Profiles in Courage “falls short of the Code of Historians.” The publisher declined, claiming that too much time had elapsed for readers to be able to understand any corrections. Blanche combed through Kennedy’s acknowledgments and wrote to the professors who assisted with drafting or editing Profiles, hoping that the historians might put pressure on him.
They did not. There is no evidence that Davids, architect of the Lamar chapter, ever bothered to reply. Allan Nevins, at Columbia, backpedaled, claiming that the introduction he had written for Profiles “carried no endorsement of all details … I am sure the Senator will make correction where correction is proper.” Arthur Holcombe, at Harvard, patronizingly suggested that Blanche had “misunderstood Senator Kennedy’s meaning.” Some of these academic historians may simply not have taken Blanche seriously: She was old, she was a woman, and she lacked scholarly credentials.
Blanche contacted a second circle of scholars, seeking a historian “free from bias” who might serve as an impartial biographer of Adelbert Ames. She steeped herself in the historiography of Reconstruction, coming to understand how closely Profiles followed the neo-Confederate historians Wirt Armistead Cate and Edward Mayes. “Cate copies Mayes and Kennedy copies Cate,” she wrote to the eminent Harvard historian Samuel Eliot Morison. “Now, unless corrected, modern and future historians may copy Kennedy! This method of writing history leads around in circles of quotations of half-truths. It is a false method.”
Morison suggested a few military scholars as potential Ames biographers, but mainly recommended “Negro historians” such as John Hope Franklin, Rayford Logan, and Alrutheus Ambush Taylor. “Adelbert Ames’ career as Governor was, I believe, more important than his military career,” Morison reasoned, “and he was the champion of the Negroes.” Blanche contacted a host of prominent academics, including C. Vann Woodward, whose books had criticized the Dunning School and challenged the myth that Reconstruction governments with Black elected officials were simply incompetent or ignorant. The Profiles team had paid no attention to this scholarship. Despite her efforts, no historian would commit to the project. So Blanche resolved to write a biography of Adelbert Ames herself.
Borderland became Blanche’s archive and fortress while she spent six years—1957 to 1963—researching and writing. When her granddaughter Olivia Hoblitzelle visited Borderland, she marveled at the piles of Civil War maps and books in the library. On one trip, Hoblitzelle recalled, her father asked, “How long is it now?” “Five hundred pages,” Blanche replied. When Hoblitzelle’s father asked, “Isn’t that enough?,” Blanche “looked him straight in the eye, and said, ‘Well, if Tolstoy could do it, so can I.’ ” When she finished, she was 86 years old.
Blanche’s research drew significantly on the work of Black historians, who had been publishing trenchant studies of Reconstruction for decades. White historians had largely ignored this work, dismissing it as second-class scholarship. Blanche thought otherwise. Her bibliography cited W. E. B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction in America, Franklin’s The Militant South, John Lynch’s The Facts of Reconstruction, Merl Eppse’s The Negro, Too, in American History, and George Washington Williams’s History of the Negro Race in America. Kennedy, meanwhile, had not cited a single Black author on Mississippi Reconstruction.
The stakes, Blanche believed, included not only her father’s reputation but the very meaning of Reconstruction. Her final chapter, “Integrity and History,” is a scathing condemnation of the traditional Reconstruction historiography Kennedy had parroted. Throughout the book, she linked Adelbert Ames’s promotion of racial rights in the 1870s with the modern civil-rights movement—the second Reconstruction:
In this fateful year of 1963, our Congress has a unique opportunity with its overwhelming Democratic majorities … Congress seems to hold the practical power to do away with the disgraceful suppression of Negro suffrage rights … A hundred years has been too long to wait for application of these long-standing laws of equity.
Blanche Ames’s book was published at the worst possible moment. In September 1963, she finished correcting page proofs for Adelbert Ames, 1835–1933: General, Senator, Governor. The book was lovingly bound in Sundour cloth and stamped in gold. It sold for $12.50, about $120 today—an old-fashioned, costly volume. Kennedy’s mass-produced paperback, meanwhile, sold for less than a dollar. On November 22, 1963, as Blanche’s book was going to press, Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed Kennedy in Dallas.
With the president’s tragic death, Profiles in Courage got a second life, landing back on the New York Times best-seller list. As Americans evaluated Kennedy’s legacy, his prizewinning book seemed a natural place to start. A televised adaptation of Profiles had been in production at NBC before Kennedy’s death. At that time, Blanche had urged Kennedy to use television as an opportunity to “bring your views into accord with the trend of modern historical interpretation of the Reconstruction Period.” After the assassination, the network pressed ahead, framing the series as “one of the finest living memorials to President Kennedy.” But Blanche may have gotten through to Kennedy’s team in the end, at least as far as the television series: When it premiered, a year after Kennedy’s death, the planned segment on Lamar had been quietly dropped. It was the only original profile not to be featured on television.
But there was still the book. Blanche wrote to Sorensen in early 1964, trying to strike a tone of mutual interest: “Must we not find a way of correcting these obvious misstatements inadvertently restated by President Kennedy? Otherwise they will be perpetuated with greater force than ever, and I do not believe that he would have wished this. Do you?” There is no record that Sorensen replied.
Blanche lived to see the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Born a year after the end of the first Reconstruction, she was able to witness the start of the second. But when she died at Borderland, in 1969, a belittling New York Times headline read: “MRS. OAKES AMES, BOTANIST’S WIDOW; Illustrator of Her Husband’s Works on Orchids Dies.” Despite Blanche’s best efforts, her book sold only a few thousand copies.
In 2010, a few years before efforts to remove Confederate monuments gained traction across the country, a life-size statue of Lamar was erected outside his former home in Oxford, Mississippi. The L. Q. C. Lamar House Museum’s public-outreach efforts generally commemorate Lamar not as a white supremacist or an architect of the Mississippi Plan, but as the embodiment of Kennedy’s redemptive arc: “Southern secessionist to American statesman,” as the museum describes it. Ames is not mentioned at all; Profiles is highlighted throughout the museum.
In 1980, George Plimpton donated a copy of Blanche’s book to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, in Boston. “President Kennedy would know,” he said, “that a Massachusetts woman will eventually have her way.” But Blanche Ames Ames has not had her way quite yet. At the library’s gift shop, visitors can buy a 50th-anniversary edition of Profiles in Courage, published in 2006, with an introduction by Caroline Kennedy. The book has never been corrected.
This article appears in the December 2023 print edition with the headline “Kennedy and the Lost Cause.” When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.
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You’re more likely to read about people in the aggregate in this newsletter – how groups are affected by something the government is doing and how polls suggest those groups feel about it.
CNN’s John King is looking at the 2024 presidential race from the other side in his new “All Over the Map” project. Building relationships with individuals in key states, he plans to chart how their opinions shift over the course of the campaign.
He’s filed reports from Iowa and New Hampshire so far:
I talked to Kingto hear what he’s learned so far. Our conversation, conducted by phone and edited for length, is below.
WOLF: What are you finding when you talk to people out in the country?
KING: This is how I started covering politics 106 million years ago. It’s just at this moment in the country where you have this weird combination of polarization and disaffection and a lot of people who are in the middle who would be moderate Republicans or true independents or centrist Democrats are just disgusted and they’re sitting out.
The people who are sitting out are empowering the extremes, and they know it, but they just can’t stomach national politics. So they vote for mayor and they vote for governor and sometimes they vote for Senate and Congress, but even that pisses them off. So it’s just a weird time.
WOLF: What I really like in these reports is the nuance of people’s opinions. They don’t fit into the buckets that we create for them here in Washington. How do you find people who will talk to you? I’ve talked to other reporters who have trouble doing that.
KING: It can be hard sometimes. We’re doing this a number of ways. Some of these are through people I know. The fishermen in New Hampshire we found through a woman I met years ago who’s part of an advocacy group for these independent small fishermen …
They’re interesting because they’re young, they’re Republican-leaning, they’re really hardworking, blue-collar people. People that when I started doing this – 35 years ago was my first campaign – they were Democrats.
Michael Dukakis only won 10 states in 1988, but he won West Virginia and Iowa. Farmers and coal miners and fishermen and people who work with their hands were Democrats then. And they are more and more Republicans now.
The idea here is to build relationships with them all the way through next November and hopefully beyond. But in the 2024 campaign context, we’re not going in to get people at a rally to say, “Are you for (former President Donald)Trump or are you for (President Joe)Biden? Are you for (former South Carolina Gov. Nikki) Haley or are you for (Florida Gov. Ron)DeSantis?”
We care about that, but I care much more about how they got there. Have they always been there? And again, in all caps in boldface to me is the question:why?
WOLF: You talk to a solar panel salesman who backs Trump and a commercial fisherman, who you just mentioned, who says Republicans are for the working man. What motivates people whose livelihoods are directly related to climate change to back Republicans who are largely opposed to having any government involvement with doing anything about it?
KING: That part’s fascinating. Chris Mudd is the solar panel guy in Iowa and Andrew Konchek is one of the fishermen in New Hampshire. And to your point, our business makes the mistake – and the candidates, the politicians and the parties way too often make the mistake – of trying to put people in their lanes and in their boxes. And guess what, everybody is different. It’s a cliche, but it’s true.
So Chris Mudd – his family has an advertising business that employs just shy of 100 people in Cedar Falls, Iowa. It’s an anchor of the community, especially in a part of the country where you’ve had a lot of economic turmoil in the last 25 years, manufacturing disappearing. These guys are heroes in their communities. They are employers.
Then he started the spinoff solar installation business, and he admits straight up his business benefits – and quite significantly – from the Biden green energy tax credits. And yet, he says, he would take his chances without them because he thinks that money should be redirected to the border wall. That Trump should finish his border wall.
It’s not just immigration. It’s American sovereignty and the border. And so he’s willing to take an economic hit for his business. He thinks it would survive, but he would take a hit because immigration, American security, comes first to him.
The fisherman, on the other hand, wants to stay on the water. He came to Trump in 2016 because Trump was a newcomer, he was the insurgent. He loves the policies. In Andrew’s case, he does not like the tweets. He does not like the chaos. Prefers Trump would talk more about the future, not the past.
But his industry is in decline. And he says Trump is for less regulation – so they won’t be regulating the fishing industry as much – and he knows Trump hates wind energy farms, and he thinks the biggest immediate threat to his job, two or three years down the road, is a plan to build all these wind turbine farms off the coast of New Hampshire and off the coast of Maine.
And he thinks they’re gonna kill his business. So he’s for Trump because he wants to pay his mortgage.
WOLF: You talk to another guy in New Hampshire who’s switching from Trump to Robert F.Kennedy Jr. The conventional wisdom would be that Kennedy would pull from Biden’s support because he is, at least technically, a Democrat. What is happening there?
KING: So that to me is fascinating on a couple levels. No. 1, Lucas was a Trump 2016 primary voter in New Hampshire. He quickly got turned off by the chaos. He was not for Trump in 2020. He went third party. But he’s a Republican-leaning guy who likes Trump’s policies. Does not like the Trump performance art, I’ll call it.
You would think he’d be looking for another Republican in this campaign, but he gets all the way over to Robert Kennedy.
A buddy of his, a crew mate, gave him a Joe Rogan podcast with Bobby Kennedy on it. And Kennedy is talking about how years ago, he helped these fishermen who were being hurt by industrial pollution when he was at the National Resources Defense Council.
So what was he thinking here? They don’t trust politicians. Politicians promised to help them all the time, and in their view, they never do. So here’s a guy who’s running for president, who actually helped people who do what he does. Done. That’s it. Right?
Yes, he knows there’s a lot of other controversy about Robert Kennedy. He says there’s going to be controversy about any politician. Here’s a guy who has helped people just like him.
WOLF: You talked about a couple of people just now who don’t like the Trump noise or chaos, but CNN ‘s latest polling – we just had one in New Hampshire. Trump leads there. He leads in Iowa, according to polling there. What does your reporting on the ground suggest is behind the fact that none of these many Trump challengers have caught on?
KING: Well, one of the issues is just that there are so many of them. The numbers are part of it, without a doubt. But a lot of these Republicans also view Trump as kind of an incumbent. And to a degree, he also benefits from the cynical effort to convince so many Republicans that he didn’t lose last time, even though we all know he did.
If you look at our New Hampshire poll, even a lot of Republicans who support the other candidates think Trump is the strongest general election candidate. That’s helping him. I think the bigger part there is just that the base is loyal to him.
He can be beat. Six in 10 Republicans in New Hampshire want somebody else, but there are 10 other people running and the support is fractured. Until you have a singular alternative, there’s no way to beat Trump.
The only thing I would add to that is what several Trump voters in New Hampshire (told us). They’re planning to vote for him, make no mistake, but they say it’s not as exciting. It’s not the same as it was in 2015 and 2016, when he was new, when that hostile takeover was so dramatic and to many Republicans so exciting.
The establishment didn’t think so, but a lot of Republican voters found it very exciting. Trump is not the new guy anymore. And in some ways, he’s the new establishment. That doesn’t mean his people aren’t loyal, but in the back of their mind, there does seem to be a little bit of, “I’m open to some change.”
WOLF: Joe Biden didn’t win either Iowa or New Hampshire in the 2020 primaries. And for a complicated and very strange Democratic reason, he may not take part in those contests this year. His nomination is probably a foregone conclusion, but what did you hear from Democrats in those states?
KING: I want to be a little careful here because we haven’t spent a ton of time with Democrats. The project’s going to expand over the next 13, 14 months, through the election.
The biggest question right now is can Trump be stopped and who is the Republican nominee going to be? So that’s where we have put 75, 80% of our energy and focus. Doesn’t mean when we go into the states, we’re not meeting and talking to Democrats, but I would be more careful about taking the anecdotal reporting we get from six, eight, 10, 12 voters and projecting it out.
I will say that a number of Democrats ask us, “Do you think there’s any chance he doesn’t run still?” Or they will share their own worries that there will be some event that will force him to not run again.
The age thing is a nagging thought for Democrats. Age, or is he up to the job might be a better way to put it. Does he have the stamina for another term? That’s lingering.
You don’t see any evidence that there’s anybody – no Democrat is running who has a serious chance or anything like that. We’re going get to the swing states as we go forward. I have a number of questions about whetherkey pieces of the Biden coalition are energized for any number of reasons.
Sometimes you hear this age, stamina, up-to-the-job question. Other times you hear, if you talk to organizers and activists, that some of the people absolutely critical to the Democratic coalition – blue-collar Black workers, blue-collar Latino workers – are still feeling it from inflation, don’t feel like the economy’s bounced back.
Those are things to cover as we go forward. I would not make any big sweeping findings in my reporting on the Democrats so far. I’ve got more questions than I have answers.
WOLF: Let me tweak that a little bit. Separating you from these reporting trips, as somebody who’s covered so many presidential elections, what could be the potential effect of the president not taking part in the first two contests?
KING: New Hampshire is very parochial. There are a lot of Democrats there who are, forgive my language, but pissed off at him. I think he could be “embarrassed” in New Hampshire.
Now, does it have any lasting meaning? Let’s see what happens.
The president did something, actually, that’s pretty courageous. I do not remember one cycle where there hasn’t been at least a conversation about, “Is it time to change this Iowa and New Hampshire thing?”
The Iowa electorate is 90% White. The New Hampshire electorate is 90% White. The numbers are even higher than that if you look at the Republican electorate. They’re overwhelmingly White states. They do not reflect the diversity, both from an ethnic perspective and even an economic perspective, of the Democratic Party.
This conversation comes up every four years in both parties. Are you gonna change it? Biden had the guts to do it. The cynic would say he did it for the reasons you mentioned – that he lost Iowa and New Hampshire, and he’s lost them before. That wasn’t the first time and so he wanted a new way. He wanted the Biden way.
Of course that’s one of the reasons he did it. Because he has more success in South Carolina. He has a history. So he has tilted the Democratic playing field to his favor. A bad number in New Hampshire might be embarrassing, but I think they’ve actually more protected themselves than exposed themselves by doing it this way.
My bigger question is does the way they’ve changed the Democratic (process) actually mask weaknesses? If there’s a weakness in Democratic enthusiasm, if there’s a turnout problem, they need to get a handle on that as soon as possible.
But while Kennedy’s bid for the Democratic nomination was largely inconsequential, he could play a big role as an independent candidate in determining the winner of the general election.
The polling on an independent run by Kennedy is limited, but the data we do have suggests he would start out as one of the strongest third-party or independent candidates this century.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted this past week among likely voters finds former President Donald Trump at 40%, Biden at 38% and Kennedy at 14% in a hypothetical November 2024 matchup. The 2-point difference between Biden and Trump looks a lot like other surveys we’ve seen and is well within the margin of error.
But from a historical perspective, the 14% for Kennedy is quite unusual. Consider Gary Johnson, the 2016 Libertarian nominee for president. Like this cycle, the two major party nominees in 2016 (Democrat Hillary Clinton and Trump) were unpopular. Johnson, though, appears to never have hit 14% in any poll when matched up against Clinton and Trump.
Indeed, I can’t find any instance of an eventual third-party or independent candidate getting to 14% in a national poll since Ross Perot in the 1996 cycle.
Now, the chance of Kennedy garnering 14% of the vote next November is not high. Non-major-party candidates almost always fade down the stretch.
We can see this, again, by using the Johnson example from 2016. The former New Mexico governor polled at 4% or above in every national poll before September 2020 that met CNN’s standards for publication. He averaged 8% of the vote in those polls and frequently registered in the double digits.
Johnson ended up getting a mere 3% come Election Day.
And he isn’t alone. At one point in the 1992 campaign, independent Perot led both major-party nominees; he ultimately ended up a distant third. Independent John Anderson was often polling in the 20s in national surveys of the 1980 election, before getting less than 7% that November.
We obviously don’t know if or how much Kennedy’s polling might change between now and the election. Still, even if he ends up with the same level of support as Johnson, it could make a big difference.
At the moment, Biden and Trump are close in the national polls. Some surveys have Biden slightly ahead. Others give Trump the edge. The same is true in swing states like Pennsylvania, where Biden and Trump are within the margin of error of each other.
If Kennedy takes disproportionately from either Biden or Trump, it could tip the balance of the election.
The question, therefore, is: Which one of them should fear a Kennedy candidacy more?
The answer is far from clear at this early stage. Although Kennedy has so far been running in the Democratic primary, his favorability ratings are far higher among Republicans. He was just announced as a speaker at an upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference event, after all.
Still, most of Kennedy’s admirers on the GOP side also hold a favorable view of Trump, according to a Quinnipiac University poll from last month. It’s tough to see Trump-supporting Republicans voting for Kennedy, even if they like him too.
When you drill down to Democrats (and independents who lean their way) and Republicans (and GOP-leaning independents) who don’t hold a favorable view of their party’s front-runners, Kennedy is about equally liked. His favorability rating among this group of Democrats is 31%, while it’s 32% among this group of Republicans.
In the Ipsos poll of a potential general election, Kennedy got 12% from Republicans and 9% from Democrats. This isn’t a big difference, but you could see it helping Biden in a very close election.
The Ipsos poll also found that when an unnamed third-party candidate is matched up against Biden and Trump, Biden comes in with 43% to Trump’s 42%. That 1-point deficit for Trump (within the margin of error) is worse for him than his 2-point lead (again, within the margin of error) when Kennedy is included instead of a generic third-party candidate. Kennedy’s presence on the ballot could therefore benefit Republicans a tad more.
One thing that does seem true from the Ipsos and Quinnipiac data is that among voters who either didn’t vote in 2020 or aren’t likely to vote this time around, Kennedy has better net favorability ratings and trails the front-runners by a narrower margin.
This means Kennedy could drive up voter turnout but still not affect the election outcome.
The race between Biden and Trump is so close, though, that I’m not sure either side wants to risk a Kennedy candidacy potentially taking votes away from them.
Environmental lawyer and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced on Monday his independent candidacy for president, officially ending his effort to defeat President Joe Biden in the Democratic primary in favor of a long-shot general election bid.
“I’m here to declare myself an independent candidate for president of the United States,” Kennedy said in remarks in Philadelphia.
Kennedy’s announcement comes after several weeks of speculation about his future in the 2024 field. CNN previously reported Kennedy met with the chair of the Libertarian Party earlier this year to discuss their common beliefs. And last week, a super PAC supporting Kennedy’s presidential campaign released the results of a poll they conducted testing Kennedy’s strength in a hypothetical three-way race between Biden and former President Donald Trump.
The campaign will host a series of events in Texas, Florida and Georgia later this month, a campaign official told CNN, pledging to travel “everywhere” in the lead-up to next year’s general election. The official said the campaign is confident they’ll gain ballot access in every state ahead of November 2024.
Independent and third-party candidates have struggled in the past to garner substantial support in presidential elections. In 1992, Texas businessman Ross Perot mounted one of the most successful independent presidential candidacies in recent history, which ended with him receiving 8% of the vote in the general election that was ultimately won by Bill Clinton.
On Monday, Kennedy acknowledged the unsuccessful history of independent presidential campaigns but said he’s optimistic about his chances.
“Today, we turn a new page in American politics. There have been independent candidates in this country before, but this time it’s going to be different. Because this time, the independent is gonna win,” he said.
Mark Gorton, co-founder of American Values 2024, the super PAC supporting Kennedy’s campaign, said the candidate will need to prove viability to voters by consistently increasing his support in the polls in order to have a realistic chance of winning the election. He feels they’ve “got a shot” to pull off a historic upset.
“I think it’s very important that Bobby a year from now be polling at the very least in the mid-to-high 30s in order to be seen as viable as anyone,” Gorton told CNN. “We need to be getting 1%, 1.5% of the electorate each month, but that’s a doable task.”
Kennedy’s campaign as an independent could further complicate a general election race that’s already expected to be closely contested. A Reuters/Ipsos poll of a hypothetical three-way race between Biden, Trump and Kennedy conducted last week among likely voters found 14% of voters supported Kennedy, with 40% supporting Trump and 38% supporting Biden. With over a year until the general election, it’s unclear whether the Kennedy campaign can translate that level of support into votes in November 2024. Kennedy said he hopes to win the election by pulling in both Biden and Trump supporters.
“They say my impact is only going to draw votes from the other candidates. The Democrats are frightened that I’m gonna spoil the election for President Biden, and the Republicans are frightened that I’m gonna spoil it for President Trump,” he said. “The truth is, they’re both right. My intention is to spoil it for both of them.”
“Voters should not be deceived by anyone who pretends to have conservative values. The fact is that RFK has a disturbing background steeped in radical, liberal positions,” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement that criticized Kennedy over his positions on China, guns, the environment and abortion. “… A RFK candidacy is nothing more than a vanity project for a liberal Kennedy looking to cash in on his family’s name.”
Trump’s allies and advisers have been building opposition research against Kennedy, intending to go on the offensive and paint Kennedy as a “liberal parading in conservative’s clothing,” one adviser told CNN, pointing to his past record as an environmental activist.
Kennedy first launched his campaign to defeat Biden in the Democratic primary in April and frequently visited early primary states like New Hampshire and South Carolina. But his efforts did little to sway Democratic primary voters, with just 9% of likely Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire expressing support for Kennedy in a CNN/University of New Hampshire poll released in September.
The Republican National Committee issued a statement just prior to Kennedy’s announcement, characterizing him as “just another radical, far-left Democrat.”
Kennedy is the son of former US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of former President John F. Kennedy. Some of his siblings issued a joint statement on Monday, calling his decision to run against Biden in a general election “dangerous to our country.”
“Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision or judgment. Today’s announcement is deeply saddening for us. We denounce his candidacy and believe it to be perilous for our country, ” Rory Kennedy, Kerry Kennedy, Joseph P Kennedy II and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend said in a statement.
A lifelong Democrat prior to announcing his run as an independent, Kennedy acknowledged his and his family’s long history with the Democratic Party and called the decision to disavow the party “very painful.” But he said he wants to fight against the two-party system, which he says has failed to provide Americans with viable options for the presidency. He criticized Biden’s age and competency as well as Trump’s ongoing legal troubles as a symptom of a corrupt political process.
“That’s what two-party politics has given us, and that’s why we need to pry loose from the hammerlock of the corrupt powers in Washington, DC, and make this nation ours again.”
The crowd of supporters in Philadelphia received Kennedy warmly, particularly when he discussed his plans to create a “tamper-proof election system” while expanding voting rights and called for the US “to pull our nation back from the brink of war with Russia.” A staunch anti-war advocate, Kennedy notably did not address the outbreak of violence between Israel and Hamas over the weekend. Prior to Kennedy’s remarks, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a friend and informal adviser to Kennedy, spoke about the war and called for a moment of silence for victims in Israel.
When asked by CNN following the event about Kennedy not mentioning Israel and Hamas in his remarks, Boteach dismissed the oversight and said his involvement in the event spoke loudly about Kennedy’s stance toward Israel.
“I think that was very brave of him and showed tremendous solidarity that he asked a rabbi who’s his close friend. You know, he moved away from the political figures who could have introduced him and endorsed him,” Boteach said. “The fact that I’m the one that introduced him, I think said it all.”
Kennedy’s lack of mention of Israel’s war with Hamas comes after he received criticism from Jewish groups in July after he falsely claimed during a dinner in New York City that “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese” people are “most immune” to Covid-19. Kennedy strongly pushed back against the accusations of antisemitism from those groups.
Kennedy has never held public office but has inspired a small contingent of supporters drawn to his advocacy against public health mandates and the influence of money on decisions made by government and private corporations. Kennedy founded Children’s Health Defense, an organization that regularly spreads anti-vaccine misinformation, and has promoted anti-vaccine conspiracy theories at campaign events.
Attendees at Monday’s event spanned the ideological spectrum, with conservatives, liberals and independents all gathering in Philadelphia for the announcement.
Walter Rodriguez, a teacher from New Jersey who identifies as an independent, said he plans to support Kennedy if he’s on the ballot in his home state. Otherwise, he said, he doesn’t plan to vote at all.
“I’m excited about the energy they bring to the table as a candidate, and I think some of the things that he’s talking about are things that I identify with,” Rodriguez said. “Not relying so much on central control of everything, pharmaceuticals, politics. So the fact that he’s declaring himself as independent today, that is the right way to go.”
Karl Hagstrom came to Philadelphia from Westchester County, New York. He said he supported Trump in 2016 and 2020, but said he plans to support Kennedy in 2024. He said he’s drawn to Kennedy because he feels the political outsider can bring unity to the country, unlike Trump, who he said has been too divisive.
“Just the constant insanity, the tweeting, the negativity, the just out-of-left field reactions to things. It’s not sustainable, it’s not something that can bring people together,” Hagstrom said.
Sarah Shulman drove to the event with a group of supporters from the Boston area. A practicing pediatrician, Shulman attended Kennedy’s Democratic campaign launch event in Boston in April and said Kennedy’s anti-corruption message and his position on vaccines inspired her to support him. She said she voted for Biden in 2020 and has never considered supporting a Republican but has felt disconnected from Biden’s message since he took office.
“He’s speaking our language,” Shulman said of Kennedy. “A Democrat, somebody in the liberal mind that’s compassionate, caring, who also is making sense.”
This story has been updated with additional reporting.
