Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature approved bills on Thursday aimed at reducing unauthorized immigration and allowing families to use public funds for private school tuition, mirroring the policy agenda of the new Trump administration. Legislative leaders left little room for debate, pushing through millions of dollars and sprawling policy changes in a special session that lasted just four days. One bill creates a new state immigration office that will work directly with the federal government to enforce immigration law. Another expands the state’s school voucher program, which currently operates only in Tennessee’s largest school districts. President Trump’s explicit support and a full-throated pressure campaign was enough to help overcome resistance within the Republican supermajority over the school bill. Expanding the voucher program has also been a top priority of Gov. Bill Lee’s, and it narrowly passed with 54 votes in the House and 20 in the Senate. “Now, we stand ready to assist the president in his further agenda for public safety for our state,” Mr. Lee, a Republican, said in a statement after the special session ended Thursday afternoon. “And finally, thanks to the General Assembly and thousands of Tennesseans who have worked so hard, universal school choice is now a reality for Tennessee families.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The only provision that won bipartisan support allotted millions of dollars in aid for communities in East Tennessee, which were devastated last year by flooding from Hurricane Helene. Some Democrats voted against part of it, though, because the funding was wrapped into the same spending bill that would pay for the voucher expansion.“In reality, it’s about control — certainly about control over taxpayer dollars,” said State Senator Heidi Campbell, a Democrat. Lawmakers had expected Mr. Lee to push for the multimillion-dollar voucher plan, which failed to receive enough support last year, along with the hurricane aid. But after Mr. Trump signed a series of executive orders toughening federal immigration law, Mr. Lee added a nearly $6 million immigration bill to be considered in the special session.At least one aspect of the bill caused consternation among both Democrats and Republicans: making it a felony for any local official to vote in support of a “sanctuary city” policy for unauthorized immigrants. Such policies are already illegal under state law, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee said it would file a legal challenge. “If we set a precedent for penalizing any elected official for voting their conscience, whether it’s good or bad, then we set a dangerous precedent for the issue,” said State Senator Todd Gardenhire, a Republican from Chattanooga. He cited as an example a conservative lawmaker being punished for supporting Democratic priorities such as abortion rights or gun control.The expanded vouchers remained the most divisive issue for Democrats and Republicans alike, especially those worried about siphoning money away from rural schools. The program is estimated to cost about $350 million over the next school year, and will cost millions more in the coming years as it is opened up to more students. Some school districts have adopted resolutions opposing the expansion. As part of the measure, about 20,000 students will be eligible for about $7,000 each to use at private or charter schools in the next school year, with the number of eligible students increasing each year after that. Half of the students must be from low-income families, or have disabilities. Republicans framed the voucher plan as a way to empower parents and allow them access to more schools. Democrats questioned whether private schools receiving the money would be held to the same educational standards as public schools. They also questioned whether private schools might rebuff certain students who wanted to use the voucher money to attend. “When we start to take from public schools, we’re hurting our kids, we’re hurting our lower-income kids,” said State Representative Ronnie Glynn, a Democrat from Clarksville. He added that “many of your kids in rural Tennessee will never see the inside of a private institution.” Some lawmakers also bristled at an amendment that would award one-time bonuses of $2,000 to public schoolteachers only if their school districts passed a resolution “affirming” participation in the voucher program.But Republicans were quick to highlight the support of Mr. Trump, who preemptively congratulated lawmakers on social media for their work on the bill. The Tennessee chapter of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative advocacy group, hailed that “as of today, parents, not government bureaucrats, are finally in control” on education. Tennessee lawmakers will return next month for the regular legislative session.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed into law the Laken Riley Act, which is designed to cede some federal immigration enforcement power to the states and usher in a harsher new era of immigration detention. Trump's signing comes after the House gave the measure final approval on Wednesday with support from 217 Republicans and 46 Democrats. It previously drew bipartisan support in the Republican-controlled Senate, with 12 Democratic Senators voting yes on Monday. Senators John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona, both Democrats, co-sponsored the Senate version. The measure’s lead provisions would force immigration officers to arrest and detain immigrants in the country unlawfully who were arrested or admitted to minor theft of $100 or more, assaulting a police officer, or “any crime that results in death or serious bodily injury.” The bill would also greatly expand the power that state attorney generals have over federal immigration policy, allowing state officials to sue the federal government to have specific immigrants detained and force the State Department to block visas from countries that won’t take back individuals being deported. The 8-page bill is named for Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student who was murdered last year in Athens, Georgia by Jose Ibarra, a Venezuelan immigrant who was in the country unlawfully and had been previously apprehended by Border Patrol and released. Ibarra was sentenced in November to life in prison without parole for Riley’s killing. Mandatory custody for immigrants suspected of theft The Laken Riley Act into law changes how the federal government handles immigrants who are in the country unlawfully and suspected of stealing something worth $100 or more, a relatively minor infraction that would include cases of shoplifting. The bill requires the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security “to take into custody aliens who have been charged in the United States with theft, and for other purposes,” meaning immigration officers would be required to arrest and detain those people. Currently, immigration officials use their discretion to first detain people with violent criminal records. But the law would override that discretion. “This bill hinders the work ICE does day to day,” said Jason Houser, who was chief of staff for Immigration and Customs Enforcement from 2021 to 2023. The federal government has enough funding to pay for housing about 41,000 people in immigration detention. Houser estimates that the bill would add another 20,000 people to immigration detention and would require federal agencies to divert manpower from finding the most violent and dangerous offenders. “If passed, you will see less individuals in detention who are violent convicted criminals than you see today.” The bill also impacts legal immigration. The legislation instructs Customs and Border Protection officers to consider a person “inadmissible” to the U.S. if they are arrested for, or admit to, committing acts that constitute theft or shoplifting. That would mean someone with a valid visa to be in the U.S. could be removed before they had a chance to defend themselves from such charges in front of a judge. State attorneys general could sue to have immigrants detained The law gives state attorneys general the power to sue the federal government over its handling of undocumented people in its custody. The state officials would be able to demand a court instruct immigration agents to track down and arrest people it had released from immigration detention. “It allows state attorneys general to sue the Secretary of Homeland Security for injunctive relief if immigration actions such as parole, violation of detention requirements, or other policy failures harm that state or its citizens,” said Rep. Mike Collins, the Republican congressman from Georgia who introduced the bill in the House. For most of U.S. history, courts have given the President and the federal government broad authority over immigration decisions. This law reverses that, giving state attorneys general the ability to override immigration decisions made by federal officials. Critics of the Laken Riley Act argue that some of its supporters haven’t properly considered the sweeping ramifications of that change. “We don’t think it makes sense to invert our system of federal supremacy and give state attorneys general the power to superintend the decisions of individual line officers working at ICE and CBP and decisions all the way up to the Secretary of State,” says Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. State officials could demand the State Department stop issuing visas from countries that don’t accept people being deported The law also gives states power to insert themselves into U.S. foreign policy. One reason immigrants found in the country illegally aren’t deported is because their home country won’t accept them. Nicaragua, Honduras, Brazil, India, Russia, and Democratic Republic of the Congo are among the countries currently unwilling to accept people being deported from the U.S. Supporters of the bill want state attorneys general to be able to sue the State Department to require no U.S. visas be issued for any country refusing to accept the deportation of their nationals. “You’re putting the immigration process, the visa process in the hands of the courts and the states,” Reichlin-Melnick said. Who supported the bill in Congress? The bill ultimately passed the House with unanimous support from Republicans, and the backing of 46 of 215 Democrats. In the Senate, 12 Democrats joined all Senate Republicans to move the bill forward. In addition to Senators Fetterman and Gallego co-sponsoring the bill, other Democratic Senators supported the bill, including Senators Mark Kelly of Arizona, Gary Peters of Michigan, Jacky Rosen of Nevada, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, and both of Georgia's Senators, Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff. The Senate passed the bill with a few changes that expanded the crimes that would require a person to be detained by immigration authorities to include assaulting a police officer, or “any crime that results in death or serious bodily injury.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of the most famous vaccine skeptics in the U.S., tried to distance himself from his decades of anti-vaccine sentiment during his Jan. 29 hearing to be confirmed as secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). If confirmed, Kennedy would oversee agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the National Institutes of Health. “News reports have claimed that I am anti-vaccine or anti-industry. I am neither. I am pro-safety," Kennedy said in his opening statement before the Senate Committee on Finance, prompting a protester to shout, “He lies!” Kennedy added that all of his children are vaccinated—a decision he has previously said he regrets—and said vaccines “play a critical role in health care.” Some Republican senators accepted Kennedy's pro-vaccine comments at the hearing. But many senators—including Oregon’s Ron Wyden, a Democrat—pressed Kennedy on discrepancies between his past public statements—in which he has repeatedly questioned the safety and necessity of vaccines and said they are linked to autism and chronic diseases—and his sanitized comments during the hearing. “Mr. Kennedy, all of these things cannot be true,” Wyden said. “So are you lying to Congress today when you say you are pro-vaccine, or did you lie on all those podcasts?” Here’s what to know about Kennedy’s history on vaccines. Holiday inbound tourism thrives Branded Content Holiday inbound tourism thrives By China Daily What RFK has said in the past about vaccines Despite Kennedy’s efforts to distance himself from the anti-vaccine movement during the hearing, he has “made a career” out of “planting seeds of doubt about vaccines,” says James Hodge, director of the Center for Public Health Law and Policy at Arizona State University. Kennedy has for years questioned vaccines and spread misinformation about them, ignoring broad scientific consensus about their safety and efficacy to argue that they have not been adequately studied. He has also perpetuated the thoroughly disproven idea that vaccines cause autism. “I do believe that autism does come from vaccines,” Kennedy said in a 2023 interview with Fox News. Kennedy repeated that view in private emails recently published by STAT, along with other false claims—including that one COVID-19 vaccine had a “100% injury rate” in early clinical trials. Read More: The Origins of the Anti-Vaccination Movement He “has a series of beliefs that are not supported by science,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, in a November interview with TIME. Kennedy’s views are amplified by Children’s Health Defense (CHD), a nonprofit he founded and recently resigned from as he’s considered for HHS secretary. CHD’s website implies, without qualitative evidence, that vaccines are to blame for rising rates of autism and chronic disease in the U.S. The organization has also brought legal challenges against COVID-19 vaccine mandates and laws that allow minors to be vaccinated without parental consent. What happened with the measles outbreak in Samoa Kennedy and CHD have reportedly exploited tragedy to spread anti-vaccine sentiment. In 2018, two babies in Samoa died after they received improperly prepared measles, mumps, and rubella shots, leading to a temporary pause on vaccine distribution. Even after regular vaccination resumed, some parents were afraid to have their children vaccinated, worsening a dramatic drop in the small South Pacific nation’s vaccination rates. In the aftermath of the incident, Kennedy traveled to Samoa and met with numerous health officials, apparently to perpetuate anti-vaccine ideas. (Kennedy denied that characterization during the hearing, saying that his trip had “nothing to do with vaccines.”) CHD also used the situation as fodder for social media posts questioning vaccines, as NBC News recently reported. Read More: Trump’s Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Health Agenda Is a Wake-Up Call for Cities and States Not long after Kennedy’s visit, a measles outbreak killed 83 people—most of them children—in Samoa. While Kennedy has repeatedly denied responsibility for the outbreak, many scientific experts disagree. Offit said in November that there is “no better example” of the real-world consequences of vaccine skepticism. Kennedy again denied blame during the hearing. "You cannot find a single Samoan who will say, 'I didn't get a vaccine because of Bobby Kennedy,’” he said. Kennedy’s stance on banning vaccines During the hearing, Kennedy said he will “do nothing, as HHS secretary, that makes it difficult or discourages people from taking” vaccines, saying specifically that he supports the polio and measles vaccines. But his past actions—and ongoing alliances—make experts and lawmakers doubt those assurances. In 2021, on behalf of CHD, Kennedy unsuccessfully petitioned the FDA to reverse its emergency authorization of COVID-19 vaccines and refrain from fully approving any COVID-19 shots in the future, according to the New York Times. The following year, Aaron Siri, a lawyer working closely with Kennedy, petitioned the FDA to revoke approval of the polio vaccine, the Times reported in December. (The petition is reportedly still under review.) And, as of 2024, Kennedy had ongoing financial relationships with law firms suing vaccine manufacturers. Read More: RFK Jr.’s Confirmation Hearings Could Be Banner Moment For Anti-Vax Movement Kennedy tried to walk back some of his most blatantly anti-vaccine statements during the hearing, sparking anger from several lawmakers. "There is no reason that any of us should believe that you have reversed the anti-vaccine views that you have promoted for 25 years," said New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan, a Democrat. How Kennedy could shape vaccine policy as HHS secretary HHS wouldn’t need to ban or rescind approvals of vaccines to affect U.S. health policy, Hodge says. His research has outlined numerous ways that a Kennedy-led HHS could erode current vaccine standards, from adding additional warning labels to vaccine packaging to refusing to stock the Strategic National Stockpile with shots needed for emergencies. Kennedy outlined some similar possibilities in his 2023 book Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, listed others during the hearing, including making it easier for people to sue vaccine makers based on "junk science" or seek compensation for allegedly vaccine-related health issues. "No one should be fooled," Warren said. If confirmed, "Kennedy will have the power to undercut vaccines and vaccine manufacturing across our country." Even seemingly small changes, Hodge says, have the potential to chip away at the confidence Americans have in vaccines, thereby reducing vaccination rates and increasing the chances of disease outbreaks. Hodge also points to three major pathways by which Kennedy could act. First, he could influence people who hold key roles at the FDA and CDC as well as on those agencies’ vaccine advisory committees, potentially slow-walking the approval of new vaccines and influencing guidance about which already-approved shots should be recommended for the general public and covered by insurance. Second, his HHS could attach strings to federal funding for vaccines. While states set their own vaccine policies, including which are required for children entering school, the CDC provides much of the funding states use to carry out their vaccination programs. The federal government could require states to comply with certain policies set by Kennedy’s HHS if they want to continue to receive that money, Hodge says. Third, and perhaps most importantly, Kennedy would have a major and official platform from which to spread vaccine skepticism. “The anti-public-health impact of that, from a pure influencer perspective, is profound—even though it doesn’t require any legal action,” Hodge says. “It would be damaging beyond all control.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump's pick to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has been tough to tie down to one stance on abortion. For most of his career, he has supported it—in stark contrast to the views of many prominent figures in the current Administration. But in a Senate confirmation hearing on Jan. 29, Kennedy clarified his position on abortion. “I serve at the pleasure of the President," he said in response to a question about his abortion beliefs. "I’m going to implement his policies.” The following day, Kennedy further cemented his new position when asked if he was hiring people who are pro-life for his department. "Yes, I am," he said. Here's what to know about Kennedy's past and current stance on abortion. Branded Content XPRIZE at the 2025 TIME100 Summit: Making the Impossible, Possible By XPRIZE What Kennedy has said in the past about abortion Kennedy, a former Democrat, has long advocated for women's reproductive rights and supported a woman's right to choose whether or not she gets an abortion. As a presidential candidate in May 2024, Kennedy described every abortion as a “tragedy” but said the decision should be left up to women, going as far as to say this freedom to choose should extend to full-term pregnancies. Shortly after, in a long post on X, he clarified his statement but essentially continued to back abortion. “I support the emerging consensus that abortion should be unrestricted up until a certain point. I believe that point should be when the baby is viable outside the womb. Therefore I would allow appropriate restrictions on abortion in the final months of pregnancy, just as Roe v. Wade did." Read More: RFK Jr. Denied He Is Anti-Vaccine During His Confirmation Hearing. Here’s His Record In a video he posted to Facebook in June, he further explained that his stance on late-term abortion, in particular, had evolved. He initially believed that the only reason a woman would get an abortion in the third trimester is if the pregnancy put her life at risk or the baby had a fatal condition. “I don’t think a bureaucrat or a judge is better equipped than the baby’s own mother to decide what to do in those circumstances,” he said. "I had been assuming that virtually all late-term abortions were such cases, but I’ve learned that my assumption was wrong," he wrote on X. "Sometimes, women abort healthy, viable late-term fetuses. These cases of purely 'elective' late-term abortion are very upsetting. Once the baby is viable outside the womb, it should have rights and it deserves society’s protection." His position on abortion now At the Jan. 29 confirmation hearing, Kennedy stuck to a different refrain: "I agree with President Trump that every abortion is a tragedy," he said several times. “I agree with him that we cannot be a moral nation if there are 1.2 million abortions a year," he also said. "I agree with him that states should control abortion.” The statements reflect Kennedy's changing position as he attempts to appease Trump's conservative anti-abortion supporters. Read More: The Origins of the Anti-Vaccination Movement Numerous Democratic senators pointed out his past pro-choice position in the hearing. "I have never seen any major politician flip on that issue quite as quickly as you did when Trump asked you to become HHS Secretary," said Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat from Nevada, asked if a pregnant woman with a life-threatening bleed should be able to get an emergency abortion even if her state bans them. "You would agree, also as an attorney, that federal law protects her right to that emergency care. Correct?” Kennedy responded after a long pause, “I don’t know.” A clash with conservatives and changing stances Kennedy's views on abortion have put him at odds with more conservative Republicans, who have successfully instituted abortion bans in 13 states. The anti-abortion agenda outlined in Project 2025—from which President Trump has already drawn for many of actions early in his second term—calls for an end to abortion medications, which is how most women in the U.S. get abortions. Concerned that new policies could restrict or remove that access, some providers have reported spikes in these requests after Trump was elected President in November. But Kennedy made it clear that on abortion medication, too, he would defer to Trump to inform his new stance. "President Trump has asked me to study the safety of mifepristone," Kennedy said during the Jan. 29 hearing—despite the fact that the medication has already been reviewed and approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as safe and effective. "He has not yet taken a stand on how to regulate it. Whatever he does, I will implement those policies, and I will work with this committee make those policies make sense.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., President Trump’s nominee to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, speaks with a raspy quiver in his voice. That’s because he has spasmodic dysphonia, a rare neurological condition that causes the muscles affecting the vocal cords to spasm. Kennedy has previously spoken about the way the condition affects his life. He “can’t stand” his voice, he told the Los Angeles Times last year. “I feel sorry for the people who have to listen to me,” he said in a phone interview with the outlet. “My voice doesn’t really get tired. It just sounds terrible. But the injury is neurological, so actually the more I use the voice the stronger it tends to get.” Here’s what to know about how common spasmodic dysphonia is, what causes it, and how it’s treated. What is spasmodic dysphonia? Spasmodic dysphonia (SD) is a rare disorder that causes involuntary movements of the voice box, says Saul Frankford, an assistant professor in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas who has researched the condition. About 1 in 100,000 people worldwide have it. Grottoes bear the enduring touch of Tang Branded Content Grottoes bear the enduring touch of Tang By China Daily There are two main types of SD. Adductor spasmodic dysphonia, which is the kind Kennedy has, means “the vocal folds press too tightly together during speech,” Frankford says. “That causes this raspy or creaky kind of voice, often with voice breaks, as well.” Abductor spasmodic dysphonia, which is less common, causes the vocal cords to suddenly open. “That leads to a breathier kind of voice,” he says. Read More: 11 Ways to Respond When Someone Insults a Loved One’s Disability SD is sometimes referred to as laryngeal dystonia. Other types of dystonia include writer’s cramp and neck dystonia, and both occur during active movements, Frankford says, like knee-jerk contractions in the fingers, hand, or forearm. What causes spasmodic dysphonia? People usually develop SD in their 40s or 50s—Kennedy was diagnosed in 1996, at age 42—and scientists aren’t exactly sure what causes it. “It does essentially come out of nowhere,” Frankford says. Some research suggests that people with the condition report having upper respiratory infections or acute periods of stress and anxiety, both of which could play a role in triggering it, he adds. There’s also a genetic component. The exact percentage of cases in which genetics play a role is unclear, though Frankford estimates around 10% to 20% of people with the condition have family members who have it, too. Does it affect all kinds of vocal activities? Spasmodic dysphonia is considered a task-specific type of dystonia, which means it affects regular speech. It’s less likely to impact other types of vocal activities, Frankford says, including laughing, crying, whispering, and sometimes even singing. How is spasmodic dysphonia diagnosed? SD is difficult to diagnose. Because it’s so rare, not every doctor knows about it, Frankford says. Research suggests it takes an average of four to five years for patients to get an accurate diagnosis. “There’s a real problem with getting an accurate diagnosis, especially because it both overlaps with and resembles some other more common voice disorders, like muscle tension dysphonia,” he says. Read More: What to Do If Your Doctor Doesn’t Take Your Symptoms Seriously Part of the issue is that there’s nothing physically wrong with the voice muscles. “It’s a neurological disorder, but it’s not something you can see on an MRI scan,” Frankford says. “It’s not like there’s a tumor or stroke or something.” According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, speech-language pathologists often test voice production and quality, and a doctor might check the vocal folds by passing a small tube through the nose and into the voice box. Is there a cure for spasmodic dysphonia? SD is a lifelong condition that never goes away. “But it does vary depending on how stressed or tired someone is,” Frankford says. Are there treatments? The typical treatment for SD is Botox injections into the larynx muscles. “You inject the muscles of the larynx with Botox, around the vocal folds, and it weakens the muscles,” Frankford says. There are some short-term side effects, like breathiness, but over time, “it actually leads to a more typical voice.” Since Botox wears off after a couple months, however, people typically need to get it done again every two to five months. “You’d have to do this constantly, for as long as it works,” he says. According to NPR, Kennedy said on The Diane Rehm Show in 2005 that he received Botox injections every four months. Read More: Botox: The Drug That’s Treating Everything Meanwhile, researchers are exploring potential drug options, and there are some surgeries that cut the nerve that controls the movement of the larynx. But they're not always successful, making surgery a less-than-ideal option. Some people with SD choose to go to vocal therapy, which can help, Frankford says, but “it doesn't get rid of it.” Voice therapy tends to be more effective for people with muscle tension dysphonia, like teachers who talk all day and then lose their voice. What is it like to live with spasmodic dysphonia? Living with SD can be stressful. In studies, up to 62% of people with the condition have been found to have anxiety and depression. And there’s some evidence that there’s an increased risk of suicide in this population. “Communicating is an important part of the human condition,” Frankford says. “When you’re not able to communicate effectively, or when it’s more challenging, it’s definitely going to take a psychological toll. You don't want to interact with other people if you don't think your voice sounds the way you want it to.” Unfortunately, people with SD are often mocked about the way their voice sounds. Frankford stresses that it’s a neurological condition, which means it’s not anybody’s fault that they have it. Plus, it doesn’t reflect any sort of cognitive or psychological issues. “It’s not like an indication of someone’s cognitive abilities, or their abilities to think and interact with other people,” he says.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump’s pick to head the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), was grilled by Democratic senators during his confirmation hearing on Jan. 29 and Jan. 30, who confronted him with conspiratorial and conflicting statements he has made about COVID-19. Attempting to understand how Kennedy would square his past questioning of the safety of vaccines, Sen. Bernie Sanders asked him if he believed that the COVID-19 vaccine was successful in saving millions of lives. "I don't know," Kennedy said. "We don't have a good surveillance system." In reality, both the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have several systems to collect and track side effects and adverse events of vaccines. And many studies have consistently shown that COVID-19 vaccines dramatically reduce people's risk of hospitalization and death from the disease. Enterprises eye China’s huge consumer market Branded Content Enterprises eye China’s huge consumer market By China Daily Here's what to know about Kennedy's positions on COVID-19, and why some experts and lawmakers are concerned about him leading the U.S.'s response to a next potential pandemic. Kennedy's racial and ethnic claims about COVID-19 Kennedy has held some controversial and unsubstantiated views on COVID-19 and ethnicity. According to a 2023 video shared by the New York Post, when Kennedy was a presidential candidate, he said at a private dinner in New York City, “There is an argument that [COVID-19] is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately. COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.” After being accused of being anti-Semitic, Kennedy wrote on X that the Post story was "mistaken," and that “I have never, ever suggested that the COVID-19 virus was targeted to spare Jews. I do not believe and never implied that the ethnic effect was deliberately engineered.” Senators brought up the statement at the hearing. "I didn't say it was deliberately targeted," Kennedy said again. What science says about COVID-19 and race Government health data on hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 indicate that at times during the pandemic, the virus affected Blacks and Hispanics disproportionately. But that data also showed that the reason for the imbalance was not due to any biologic factors related to race, but to a slew of social factors. During the pandemic, people in these demographic groups tended to have a higher risk of exposure to the virus because they were more likely to work essential jobs that could not be done at home, a greater likelihood of living in larger households where infections can spread quickly, more limited access to health care and vaccines, and higher rates of underlying chronic conditions such as asthma, diabetes and heart disease, which can make them more vulnerable to serious illness from COVID-19. Read More: What to Know About Spasmodic Dysphonia, the Condition That Affects RFK Jr.’s Voice Much of the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 “reflect inequities that arise due to structural racism and not race,” says Samantha Artiga, vice president and director of the racial equity and health policy program at KFF who has published an analysis of COVID-19 trends by race and ethnicity. “The idea of biological differences by race has been disproven," she says. "Historically, it’s been used for an array of abuses and mistreatment of people of color.” Kennedy’s 2023 comments about COVID-19 “capitalize on confusion and mistrust in the public to push his own agenda of natural medicine and demonizing the medical industry,” says Dr. Eric Burnett, assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University. “He just wants to burn everything down and then not provide real solutions for how to fix the problems he talks about.” RFK Jr.'s opposition to COVID-19 vaccines Kennedy, who is known for his anti-vaccine views, has been a vocal critic of the government’s response to COVID-19, including the lockdowns and vaccine and mask mandates, which he once compared to Nazi practices in concentration camps. “Even in Hitler Germany, you could…cross the Alps into Switzerland. You could hide in an attic, like Anne Frank did,” he said at a rally protesting vaccine mandates in Washington, DC in 2022. (After his remarks were widely condemned, Kennedy apologized.) His opposition to the vaccine also came up in the hearing several times, including when he said that "COVID vaccines are inappropriate for six year old children who basically have a zero risk COVID." That's not supported by data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which show that young children can and do develop infections. Read More: RFK Jr. Says He’ll Follow Trump’s Lead on Abortion Kennedy has called himself an advocate for “medical freedom” and “bodily autonomy,” supporting the idea that people should be able to chose for themselves whether they get vaccinated, based on having informed data. But the evidence he espouses is “his evidence, evidence that supports whatever his current theory is,” says Dr. Gregory Poland, president of Atria Research Institute, which provides personalized health care. “Part of the problem is that these are appalling errors in communication and result from not being a scientist and not being trained scientifically. You use words and phrases that sound right, like evidence-based medicine, but evidence-based medicine is completely based on the scientific method which he evidently rejects.” As head of HHS, Kennedy would also have considerable power to influence vaccine policy in innumerable ways, including through CDC committees that recommend vaccine policy for everything from childhood vaccinations to the yearly flu and COVID-19 shots, and at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which reviews and approves vaccines as safe and efficacious. Concern over how Kennedy would lead during another pandemic Senators pressed Kennedy on his past statements about COVID-19 as a window into how an HHS under his leadership would respond to a new pandemic—a thought that troubles Burnett. "The guardrails are gone" in President Trump's second term, he says. "Medical experts, people who are familiar with pandemics and have worked on them before: they just aren’t going to be there. I think it will be more difficult for the American people to weather that storm.” The concern isn't purely hypothetical; as cases of bird flu continue to rise among farm animals, public health experts are carefully monitoring the virus’ potential shift to spreading among people. "I intend to devote the appropriate resources to preventing pandemics," Kennedy said during the hearing when questioned about bird flu. "That's a central part of my job." Read More: RFK Jr. Denied He Is Anti-Vaccine During His Confirmation Hearing. Here’s His Record Yet the Trump Administration has already taken steps to weaken the government's ability to respond to a pandemic. Just days after taking office, Trump signed an executive order withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization (WHO); days later, public health officials were told to immediately cease working with the WHO. The Administration also froze federal health communications until further notice—including stopping publication of the CDC’s weekly MMWR report, which details the latest outbreaks of diseases like bird flu and keeps physicians and public-health experts informed about emerging threats. “You and I as private citizens have no way to gather, collate, and synthesize data from across the U.S., much less from across the world,” says Poland. “We are dependent on the government to do that for us. But what happens when that government won’t, or can’t, or manipulates that kind of information? That’s a world of hurt.”
There’s certainly nothing living on the asteroid Bennu, an airless, 1,614-ft. rubble pile orbiting the sun about 40.2 million miles from Earth. But that doesn’t mean that Bennu hasn’t all at once become one of the most biologically interesting objects in the solar system. Samples of Bennu were brought back to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft in 2023. Now, a pair of newly published papers reveal that the samples contain precursors to life that formed in a watery environment—a watery environment very similar to the one that prevailed on Earth before life emerged up to four billion years ago. One of the papers, published in the journal Nature, found traces of brine that were likely left behind when salty water that could have given rise to organic compounds evaporated. The traces are chemically similar to the makeup of Searles Lake, an ancient, dry lake bed in the Mojave Desert in California. The other paper, in the journal Nature Astronomy, was even more tantalizing, reporting the discovery of all five nucleobases that make up DNA and RNA—adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine, and uracil—in the Bennu samples. The findings suggest either that the chemistry emerged de novo on both the asteroid and on Earth, or that other, similar asteroids may have brought us the raw ingredients of life when they bombarded our planet billions of years ago. “This all supports the theory that asteroids like Bennu were among the sources that delivered water and chemical building blocks for life to Earth before life started here,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, at a press conference just after both papers were released. “So this really is a groundbreaking scientific discovery.” “We now know from Bennu that the raw ingredients for life were combining in really interesting and complex ways on Bennu’s parent body,” said Tim McCoy, the curator of meteorites at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and the lead author of the Nature paper, in a statement that accompanied the release of the study. “We have discovered that next step on a pathway to life.” Bennu is both an old and a new asteroid. Like all of the millions of other objects in the asteroid belt, it formed 4.5 billion years ago when our solar system was just accreting. But its loose, rubble-rich structure suggests that it was once part of a much larger body, breaking away from it as a result of an impact with another object a few tens of millions of years ago. Bennu was attractive as a sample return target for a number of reasons. First, its close proximity to Earth made it relatively easy to reach. Its slow rotation meant that it wouldn’t have flung off the loose surface material that the spacecraft would be trying to collect. And its carbon-rich composition meant the possibility of discovering organics. After launching in 2016, OSIRIS-REx reached Bennu in 2020, gathered up 121.6 grams (4.3 oz.) of material—about the weight of a bar of soap—and carried it back to Earth, where it parachuted through the atmosphere and was collected after it landed in the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range southwest of Salt Lake City. From the desert, the samples were transferred to NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston where they are stored and studied in airtight glove boxes filled with inert nitrogen, to prevent their contamination with Earthly atmosphere or water. JSC, in turn, loaned some of the samples to the Smithsonian, where they were studied by the authors of the Nature paper under similar conditions with a scanning electron microscope, which was able to discriminate bits of asteroid less than a micron across—or one hundredth the width of a human hair. It was that analysis that revealed the chemical richness of the Bennu material. Most significantly, the researchers discovered sodium carbonate, which is often found in dry, salty lake beds on Earth. In addition, they found sodium-rich phosphates, sulfides, chlorides, and fluorides, which are also common in evaporated terrestrial lakes. Bennu’s parent body would not have been large enough to hang onto an atmosphere and thus would not have had surface lakes. But that doesn’t mean it could not have harbored bodies of water. “On this ancestral asteroid, four and a half billion years ago, there was something like a muddy surface that had pockets of fluid or veins of fluid, perhaps only a few feet wide, under the surface,” said McCoy at the press conference. “It was within those cracks that the evaporation occurred. Water was lost to the surface and these minerals were left behind.” What’s happening on Bennu is likely happening elsewhere. The largest object in the asteroid belt, the dwarf planet Ceres, is an icy body that measures 592 miles across. About 25% of its mass, NASA estimates, is made up of water. Saturn’s moon Enceladus, with a 313-mile diameter, regularly emits icy geysers, produced when oceans beneath its crust are squeezed by Saturn’s gravity. The Cassini spacecraft, which orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017, conducted chemical analyses of the plumes and detected sodium carbonate in them as well. “So we know this mineral occurs not just in the ancient history of Bennu’s parent body,” said McCoy. “The same minerals are forming today on icy moons of the outer solar system.” The findings in the Nature Astronomy paper were significant not just for the discovery of the five RNA and DNA precursors, but for the presence of abundant levels of ammonia, which is a key chemical building block for life. “The surprising thing was the high concentrations of ammonia that we found, about 230 parts per million,” said NASA’s Daniel Glavin, a co-investigator on the OSIRIS-REx team. “To put that in perspective, this is about 100 times more than the natural levels of ammonia that you find in soils on the Earth. The high levels of ammonia suggest that this stuff formed in the colder regions of the solar system, far from the sun, since ammonia is volatile. So we had to really have formed this stuff in a cold environment where the ammonia ice would have been stable.” That, in turn, suggests that the RNA and DNA cycle could be playing out on a wide range of other icy bodies far from Earth. One question left unanswered by the new studies is why life pulled up short on Bennu and its parent body—why it stopped at precursors. Was it the temperature, the absence of atmosphere, the lack of other essential chemical components? The two new papers don’t—and can’t—yet say. “We can ask ourselves: if Bennu was such a [hospitable] environment, with rich alkaline mineral [and] brine, why didn't life form on Bennu?” said NASA’s Jason Dworkin, project scientist for OSIRIS-REx. “What did Bennu not have that the Earth did have? This is a future area of study for astrobiologists to ponder.” Those future astrobiologists will get that opportunity. Just 25% of the Bennu sample was used in the current research. The remainder, like the half-century old Apollo lunar samples, will be preserved in their pristine state for further investigation. “Perhaps scientists not yet born using methods not yet invented can make discoveries we haven't imagined,” said Dworkin. “Sample return is a gift that keeps on giving.”
The 2025 Super Bowl will be one to remember as fans watch a rematch between 2023 Super Bowl finalists the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs on Feb. 9. But despite excitement about one of the biggest annual U.S. sporting events, ticket pricing for the Super Bowl has decreased by about 14% when compared to the 2024 resale price of a Super Bowl ticket, according to Seat Geek data reviewed by TIME. The average price for a 2025 Super Bowl resale ticket stands at about $10,417 as of Wednesday, compared to the 2024 resale price of $12,128, the same number of days before the event. “The Super Bowl is always one of the most in-demand events in all of sports, and this year’s rematch between the Eagles and Chiefs adds an extra layer of intrigue. Right now, we’re seeing strong early demand, particularly from Eagles fans, who are leading ticket sales,” said Chris Leyden, Seat Geek director of growth marketing. “While prices are currently trending lower than last year at this stage, we know that Super Bowl ticket prices can be dynamic, and we’ll be watching closely to see how the market evolves as game day approaches." The decrease in pricing might be due to this year’s location, hosted in New Orleans at the Caesars Superdome. Last year’s game was held in Las Vegas— a much bigger market—at Allegiant Stadium. As of Wednesday afternoon, the cheapest price to nab a seat at the big game, including fees, was $5,705 on Seat Geek, whereas the most expensive ticket stands at $20,674. Pricing is fairly similar on Ticketmaster’s site, with the lowest ticket priced at $4,750 and the most expensive at $17,842, not including fees. Prices are expected to fall as game day approaches. The Kansas City Chiefs have the opportunity to take home the Super Bowl trophy for the third year in a row. The last time they played against the Eagles was in a Super Bowl final in February 2023, beating the Philly-based team by three points. If the Eagles take home the win this year, it would be the second time they earn the championship in franchise history, with their first Super Bowl win in 2018 against the New England Patriots.
Winter mornings begin at David Sibley’s Deerfield, Mass., household as they do at my similarly rural place 90-something miles to the west and south, across the New York line: with filling the bird feeders. “Baby, it’s cold outside” takes on a new meaning when many in your customer base weigh barely as much as a few pieces of pocket change. The sunflower hearts — shelled sunflower seeds — that we both offer are happily devoured, but they are not the key ingredient in the birds’ survival. What the American goldfinches, white-breasted nuthatches, house finches and the rest cannot live without in these coldest months is a suite of physical and behavioral survival strategies hard-earned over millions of years of evolution. These tactics, and the birds themselves, are the subject of “The Courage of Birds: And the Often Surprising Ways They Survive Winter,” the recent book by Pete Dunne, a prolific author about all things bird and former director of the Cape May Bird Observatory in New Jersey. It was illustrated by Mr. Sibley, a naturalist, author and illustrator perhaps best known for “The Sibley Guide to Birds.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “Welcome to winter, nature’s proving ground,” Mr. Dunne writes, “where there is no prize for second place during these four months. Across the Northern Hemisphere, it’s ‘survivor take all.’”“Just walking through the woods this time of year,” Mr. Sibley said, “you can walk for an hour and not see a bird.” Many colorful species are absent or in dulled-down winter plumage (yes, blue jays and male northern cardinals, we see your defiant exceptions). Song, too, is at a minimum now. But in each sign of bird life out there, we onlookers are treated to a vivid display of resilience. Get out your binoculars and really watch. The birds are “meeting the season beak-on,” Mr. Dunne writes, and take note: A bird’s bill is not insulated. Nor are its legs and feet. So all those vulnerability points tend to be smaller in species that winter in cold zones — scaled down as a result of the natural selection process across countless generations.Mr. Dunne calls the feathers on these miniature, modern-day dinosaurs “the evolutionary edge.” Feathers are the first line of defense against weather, Mr. Sibley said in a recent conversation, and besides enabling flight, “they’re streamlining, waterproofing, windproofing, coloration — all those things.” And down feathers, the soft, fluffy kind closest to the bird’s body, he added, are “the most effective insulation known.” Using tiny muscles where their feathers attach to skin, birds can raise and lower them, thickening the insulating layer around their bodies, he said, “like putting on an extra jacket or getting into a sleeping bag.”Also thanks to feathers, a bird can tuck in its most vulnerable body parts, particularly overnight. Heads are turned so beaks can be buried into the shoulder-like scapular feathers atop a wing “to reduce heat loss and recycle warmth in the same way people do when breathing into cupped hands,” Mr. Dunne writes. By perching on one leg, the bird can pull the other up into safety, conserving more heat. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Watch for other protective behaviors: as birds turn their backs to the sun to soak in maximum warmth, for instance, or as they cuddle, clustering together to share warmth. Overnight, many birds roost in tree cavities, nest boxes or dense vegetation, sometimes together. Certain species, including the black-capped chickadee — a familiar bird in roughly the northern half of the country and in portions of Canada and Alaska — may get through a cold night by lowering their metabolism, respiration and heart rates, as well as their body temperature, even down to 50 degrees, to induce a hibernation-like state of torpor. Another cold-defying strategy of birds is shivering on demand to raise their body heat — that’s what chickadees do to emerge from torpor.Whoever came up with the expression “eats like a bird” really wasn’t watching. Oh, do they feed — especially in anticipation of nightfall or an approaching storm. Anyone with a wintertime feeder has seen birds swarming it in the hours before dusk or severe weather. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “They fuel up and then they can go find a nice, sheltered spot out of the wind and precipitation,” Mr. Sibley said, “and hunker down and maybe stay a day or two if they have to, just living off of the extra food that they took in.” Small birds lose about 10 percent of their body weight each night year-round while at rest, he writes in his 2020 book, “What It’s Like to Be a Bird: From Flying to Nesting, Eating to Singing — What Birds Are Doing, and Why.” Half is from burning fat and evaporating water, the other half from defecating. For perspective, Mr. Sibley cites one of the tiniest North American species, the golden-crowned kinglet, who despite weighing barely as much as a nickel can withstand temperatures down to minus 40 Fahrenheit.Its cold-season daily requirement of about eight calories? That would be like 67,000 for a 100-pound human, Mr. Sibley writes, or about 27 large pizzas or 26 pounds of peanuts, to get through a day. “Most of the day — up to 85 percent of daylight hours — is devoted to searching for food,” he adds. To his mind, one bird takes stocking up to an exceptionally impressive extreme. The Canada jay does not visit us; its year-round range is in the forests of northern North America, even into Alaska. “One of their tactics for surviving the winter is to spend all summer gathering food and hiding it,” he said, “thousands and thousands of hidden bits stuck in bark crevices and clusters of spruce needles. They hide food, and then go back and consume it during the winter.” The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s All About Birds website says that this food storage behavior — caching future provisions high enough in trees to be above the eventual snow line — may be what allows the jay to survive winters so far north. The species nests as early as February, which is exceptional in such a cold environment but means fledglings will be ready to forage independently by summertime. “They get pushed out of the adult’s territory in April, May, to find their own territory,” Mr. Sibley said, “but it also gives them the entire summer to gather and store food for the winter.”
In the latest release of federal test scores, educators had hoped to see widespread recovery from the learning loss incurred during the Covid-19 pandemic. Instead, the results, from last year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress, tell a grim tale, especially in reading: The slide in achievement has only continued. The percentage of eighth graders who have “below basic” reading skills according to NAEP was the largest it has been in the exam’s three-decade history — 33 percent. The percentage of fourth graders at “below basic” was the largest in 20 years, at 40 percent. There was progress in math, but not enough to offset the losses of the pandemic. Recent reading declines have cut across lines of race and class. And while students at the top end of the academic distribution are performing similarly to students prepandemic, the drops remain pronounced for struggling students, despite a robust, bipartisan movement in recent years to improve foundational literacy skills.“Our lowest performing students are reading at historically low levels,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which gives the NAEP exam. “We need to stay focused in order to right this ship.”But the tumult of the new presidential administration may threaten that focus. The federal test scores began to circulate on the same day that many educators across the country fell into panic as they tried to discern how a White House freeze on some federal funding would affect local schools. On a Tuesday phone call with reporters, Dr. Carr did not directly address President Trump’s campaign promise to shut down or severely reduce the federal Department of Education, the agency for which she works. But she did mention that education data collection could change because of changes to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, including a change allowing greater flexibility in how racial and ethnic groups are categorized. (The agency later clarified that the change happened in 2024.) The NAEP exam is considered more challenging than many state-level standardized tests. Still, the poor scores indicate a lack of skills that are necessary for school and work. In fourth-grade reading, students who score below the basic level on NAEP cannot sequence events from a story or describe the effects of a character’s actions. In eighth grade, students who score below basic cannot determine the main idea of a text or identify differing sides of an argument. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Dr. Carr did point to Louisiana fourth graders as a rare bright spot. Though their overall reading achievement was in line with the national average, a broad swath of students had matched or exceeded prepandemic achievement levels. Louisiana has focused on adopting the science of reading, a set of strategies to align early literacy teaching with cognitive science research. The resulting instruction typically includes a strong focus on structured phonics and vocabulary building. That approach has become widespread over the past five years, but does not seem to have led to national learning gains — at least not yet. Experts have no clear explanation for the dismal reading results. While school closures and other stresses associated with the Covid-19 pandemic deepened learning loss, reading scores began declining several years before the virus emerged. In a new paper, Nat Malkus, an education researcher at the American Enterprise Institute, points out that declines in American children’s performance are echoed in tests of adults’ skills over the same time period. So while we often look to classrooms to understand why students are not learning more, some of the causes may be attributed to screen time, cellphones and social media, he argues. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Children and adults both watch more video on their phones, meaning “there is a displacement of reading text, which is probably increasing over time in degree and severity,” he said. “The phone’s ability to make our attention spans shorter and give kids less ability to stay focused is quite likely to come home to roost.” In math, higher-achieving fourth graders — those performing at the 75th percentile and above — are doing as well as similar fourth graders were in 2019. But fourth graders performing below average in math had not made up the lost ground. In eighth-grade math, only higher-achieving students showed improvements, but they remained below prepandemic levels. “It’s great that more kids are getting to basic, but that’s a midpoint. We need to be thinking hard about getting more kids to proficiency,” said Bob Hughes, director of K-12 education at the Gates Foundation, a philanthropy that has recently focused on improving math education. “Higher-level math, beginning in middle school, is mission critical.” A student survey distributed alongside NAEP found that 30 percent of eighth graders were enrolled in algebra, down from 32 percent in 2019. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Student absenteeism has improved since 2022 in both fourth and eighth grade, with about 30 percent of students reporting missing three or more days of school in the previous month. But at both grade levels, absence rates remain significantly higher than they were prepandemic. Dr. Carr said she had an important message for parents: If they want their children to excel academically, they must attend school regularly.