I’ve hosted Yale CEO Summits before– but few have taken place in such fraught circumstances as our most recent 150th Yale CEO Summit this week or with such remarkable results.
The day after Luigi Mangione was indicted for murder, 200 top American CEOs came together, under heavily armed protection, in a bold statement of defiance of the populist fringes, not frightened away or intimidated for standing up for leadership and American character. They gathered at the Ziegfield Ballroom in New York, 32 steps away from where UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson was murdered in broad daylight by Mangione.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Despite warnings from their boards and from their own security teams not to attend public CEO gatherings right now, they came. Not even far-left protesters chanting for their assassination outside our venue could keep these CEOs away, nor could the “wanted” posters or the “playing cards” with their faces on them circulating on social media.
But even beyond the symbolism of CEOs coming together steps away from where Thompson was murdered, this CEO Summit took place against the backdrop of President-elect Trump’s return to office. Most CEOs of the nation’s largest companies did not support Trump’s candidacy, with only one Fortune 100 CEO having donated to Trump; nevertheless, CEOs rightly understand that the election is over—and that it is time to unify and come together, because it is in the interests of the American public as well as their own shareholders and stakeholders, to help President Trump be as successful as he can be.
Despite criticisms from the far left, CEOs, including those from positions across the ideological spectrum, view it as their patriotic duty to meet with Trump now, engage constructively, and help steer presidential policies in useful directions, especially given their own mixed reaction to some of Trump’s policy proposals.
In particular, following a spirited discussion with including some who had just met Trump at Mar-a-Lago, 69% of these CEOs surveyed believe that Trump’s nomination of RFK Jr. to oversee Health & Human Services could pose a threat to public health and the pharmaceutical business, and expressed a desire to help inform the president-elect about how the pharma industry has improved public health and extended the average lifespan of American citizens to record levels.
At the same time, 56% of CEOs surveyed believe that Trump’s proposed tax cut from 21% to 15% will encourage greater reshoring and domestic manufacturing activity, and 53% of CEOs surveyed expressed support for Trump’s use of tariffs as a bargaining chip.
Paradoxically, though 53% of CEOs support Trump’s tariff threats, few CEOs are excited about the potential impact of Trump’s proposed tariffs on their own companies. Fifty-five percent of respondents answered that they are worried about the impact of Trump’s tariffs on their own company, compared to only 12% who answered that they are excited about the impact of tariffs on their company, and 34% who were indifferent. But at the same time, CEOs don’t seem to believe Trump will actually follow through on all his tariffs threats, as 64% of CEOs responded that they are not shifting supply chains yet in anticipation of any potential tariffs.
We were surprised by the number of issues which the group generally agreed on and the spirit of constructive candor and engagement embodied by the group and near-unanimous optimism for moving forward. Virtually all participants agreed on the continuing strength of the American economy, one of the best economies anyone has seen in their lifetimes—with 77% of CEOs answering that they believe America’s best days are ahead of us. They also agreed that the CEOs visiting Mar-a-Lago are being responsible in pursuing the best interests of not only their own shareholders and the nation at large.
CEOs largely did the same in 2016: though many did not support Trump in that campaign either, they were eager to help him, and the nation, as the incoming president. Many participants expressed the hope that Trump does not relapse into the divide-and-conquer bullying that drove business leaders away. The genuine leadership modeled by these CEOs, and the spirit of constructive, collaborative engagement across divisions captured at our recent Yale CEO Summit, reflects why American business leaders are still some of the most admired leaders across American society, no matter what extremist fringes may say. At a time when business leaders are increasingly under attack, CEOs, and American capitalism provide a compass of centrist, reasonable, genuine leadership, which ought to be a source of celebration and inspiration.
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday said it will hear arguments next month over the constitutionality of the federal law that could ban TikTok in the United States if its Chinese parent company doesn’t sell it.
The justices will hear arguments Jan. 10 about whether the law impermissibly restricts speech in violation of the First Amendment.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The law, enacted in April, set a Jan. 19 deadline for TikTok to be sold or else face a ban in the United States. The popular social media platform has more than 170 million users in the U.S.
It’s unclear how quickly the high court might issue a decision.
Lawyers for the company and China-based ByteDance had urged the justices to step in before Jan. 19. The high court also will hear arguments from content creators who rely on the platform for income and some TikTok users.
Read More: As a Potential TikTok Ban Looms, Creators Worry About More Than Just Their Bottom Lines
The timing of the arguments means that the outgoing Biden administration’s Justice Department will make the case in defense of the law that passed Congress with bipartisan support and was signed by Democratic President Joe Biden in April.
The incoming Republican administration might not have the same view of the law.
President-elect Donald Trump, who once supported a ban but then pledged during the campaign to “save TikTok,” has said his administration would take a look at the situation. Trump met with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida on Monday.
The companies have said that a shutdown lasting just a month would cause TikTok to lose about one-third of its daily users in the U.S. and significant advertising revenue.
The case pits free speech rights against the government’s stated aims of protecting national security, while raising novel issues about social media platforms.
A panel of federal judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously upheld the law on Dec. 6, then denied an emergency plea to delay the law’s implementation.
Without court action, the law would take effect Jan. 19 and expose app stores that offer TikTok and internet hosting services that support it to potential fines.
It would be up to the Justice Department to enforce the law, investigating possible violations and seeking sanctions. But lawyers for TikTok and ByteDance have argued that Trump’s Justice Department might pause enforcement or otherwise seek to mitigate the law’s most severe consequences. Trump takes office a day after the law is supposed to go into effect.
The killing of a senior Russian general in a bombing outside his apartment building in Moscow was the boldest assassination yet of a top military officer and again brought the war in Ukraine to the streets of the capital.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Some things to know about the attack and who is suspected of being behind it:
Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov was killed Tuesday morning by a bomb hidden on an electric scooter parked near the entrance of his apartment block in southeastern Moscow as he left for his office. Kirillov’s assistant also died in the attack.
The bomb was triggered remotely, according to Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB. The explosion was caught on video from a camera mounted inside a car, showing the men walking out of the building and the fiery blast.
Kirillov, 54, was the chief of Russia’s Radiation, Biological and Chemical Protection Forces. These special troops are tasked with protecting the military from the enemy’s use of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and ensuring operations in a contaminated environment.
He was under sanctions from several countries, including the U.K. and Canada, for his actions in Moscow’s war in Ukraine. On Monday, Ukraine’s Security Service, or SBU, opened a criminal investigation against him, accusing Kirillov of directing the use of banned chemical weapons.
Russia has denied using any chemical weapons in Ukraine and has accused Kyiv of using them.
Kirillov, who took his post in 2017, was one of the highest profile figures to level those accusations. He held numerous briefings to accuse the Ukrainian military of using toxic agents and planning to launch attacks with radioactive substances — claims Kyiv and its Western allies rejected as propaganda.
His assistant, Ilya Polikarpov, was also killed in the attack.
An SBU official said Tuesday that the agency was behind the attack. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information, described Kirillov as a “war criminal and an entirely legitimate target.”
The SBU official provided the video of the bombing.
The FSB said Wednesday it detained a suspect, described as a citizen of the Central Asian nation of Uzbekistan who was born in 1995. The Tass and RIA-Novosti news agencies identified him as Akhmad Kurbanov.
According to the FSB, the suspect said he was recruited by Ukrainian special services. The Associated Press could not confirm the conditions under which the suspect made the statement to the security services.
The FSB said the suspect said he had been promised $100,000 and resettlement to a European Union country in exchange for killing Kirillov.
The agency said that acting on instructions from Ukraine, the suspect traveled to Moscow, where he obtained a homemade bomb, placed it on an e-scooter and parked it at the entrance to Kirillov’s apartment building.
The suspect rented a car to monitor the location and set up a camera that livestreamed the scene to his handlers in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, detonating the bomb when Kirillov left the building, the FSB said.
The suspect faces a sentence of up to life imprisonment, the FSB said.
Russian media reports said the FSB tracked the suspect by studying video from surveillance cameras and cellphone calls.
The FSB has not said how the suspect was recruited. He was detained in a village in the Moscow region, Interior Ministry official Irina Volk told Tass.
It is not known where he is being held or when he will appear in court. That is expected in the coming days, to hear the terms of his pre-trial detention. Under Russian law, a person may only be remanded in custody for 48 hours before a court order is made.
Russian officials have described the bombing as a “terrorist act.”
The Kremlin said Wednesday it was “obvious” that Ukraine was behind Kirillov’s killing, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying Kyiv “does not shy away from terrorist methods.”
While President Vladimir Putin has not publicly spoken about the attack, Peskov said he expressed his condolences on Kirillov’s death.
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, described the attack as an attempt by Kyiv to distract public attention from its military failures and vowed that its “senior military-political leadership will face inevitable retribution.”
Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the lower house of parliament, called Kirillov “a professional military man, an intellectual, a Russian patriot.”
He “did a lot to increase the effectiveness of the radiation, chemical and biological defense forces, to ensure the security and sovereignty of our country,” Volodin said.
— Illia Novikov in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed.
OMAHA, Neb. — A tornado near a mall in central California swept up cars, uprooted trees and sent several people to the hospital. In San Francisco, authorities issued the first-ever tornado warning.
Elsewhere, inclement weather plagued areas of the U.S., with dangerous conditions including heavy snow in upstate New York, a major ice storm in Midwest states and severe weather warnings around Lake Tahoe.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The ice storm beginning Friday evening created treacherous driving conditions across Iowa and eastern Nebraska Friday and into Saturday and prompted temporary closures of Interstate 80 after numerous cars and trucks slid off the road. In upstate New York, more than 33 inches (84 centimeters) was reported near Orchard Park, which is often a landing point for lake-effect snow.
On Saturday, a tornado touched down near a shopping mall in Scotts Valley, California, about 70 miles (110 kilometers) south of San Francisco, around 1:40 p.m. The tornado overturned cars and toppled trees and utility poles, the National Weather Service said. The Scotts Valley Police Department said several people were injured and taken to hospitals.
Some trees toppled onto cars and streets and damaged roofs in San Francisco. The damage was being assessed to determine if the city was indeed hit by a tornado, which had not occurred since 2005, according to the weather service.
Roger Gass, a meteorologist in the weather service’s office in Monterey, California, said the warning of a possible tornado in San Francisco was a first for the city, noting an advanced alert did not go out before the last tornado struck nearly 20 years ago.
“I would guess there wasn’t a clear signature on radar for a warning in 2005,” said Gass, who was not there at the time.
The fast-moving storm prompted warnings for residents to take shelter, but few people have basements in the area.
“The biggest thing that we tell people in the city is to put as many walls between you and the outside as possible,” Meteorologist Dalton Behringer said.
More than a foot (30 centimeters) of snow fell at some Lake Tahoe ski resorts, and a 112-mph (181-kph) gust of wind was recorded at the Mammoth Mountain resort south of Yosemite National Park, according to the weather service’s office in Reno, Nevada. Up to 3 feet (91 centimeters) of snow was forecast for Sierra Nevada mountaintops.
The Tahoe Live music festival at Palisades Tahoe ski resort in California was expected to go ahead as planned Saturday and Sunday in spite of a winter storm warning for the area. Lil Wayne was scheduled to perform Saturday night, with Diplo as the headliner on Sunday, the festival’s website said.
A winter storm warning was set to expire at 10 p.m. Saturday, but an avalanche warning remained in effect into the following night for elevations above 8,000 feet (about 2,400 meters) around Tahoe.
Interstate 80 was closed along an 80-mile (130-kilometer) stretch from Applegate, California, to the Nevada line just west of Reno on Saturday. The California Highway Patrol reopened the road in the afternoon for passenger vehicles with chains or four-wheel drive and snow tires.
The severe weather in the Midwest resulted in at least one death. The Washington County Sheriff’s office in Nebraska said a 57-year-old woman died after she lost control of her pickup on Highway 30 near Arlington and hit an oncoming truck. The other driver sustained minor injuries.
Businesses announced plans to open late Saturday as temperatures rose high enough in the afternoon to melt the ice in most places.
“Luckily some warmer air is moving in behind this to make it temporary,” said Dave Cousins, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s office in Davenport, Iowa.
Tens of thousands of people in western Washington state lost electricity Saturday as the system delivered rain and gusty winds, local news outlets reported.
AQABA, Jordan — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Saturday that American officials have been in direct contact with the Syrian rebel group that spearheaded the overthrow of President Bashar Assad’s government but is designated a foreign terrorist organization by the United States and others.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Blinken is the first U.S. official to publicly confirm contacts between the Biden administration and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, which led a coalition of armed opposition groups that ousted Assad from power last Sunday.
Speaking at a news conference in Aqaba, Jordan, Blinken would not discuss details of the contacts but said it was important for the U.S. to convey messages to the group about its conduct and how it intends to govern in a transition period.
“Yes, we have been in contact with HTS and with other parties,” Blinken said. He added that “our message to the Syrian people is this: We want them to succeed and we’re prepared to help them do so.”
HTS, which was once an affiliate of al-Qaida, has been designed as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department since 2018. That designation carries with it severe sanctions, including a ban on the provision of any “material support” to the group or its members. The sanctions do not, however, legally bar U.S. officials from communicating with designated groups.
In an interview Saturday on Syrian television, the group’s leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani, did not address any direct contact with the United States, but said the new authorities in Damascus, the capital, are in touch with Western embassies.
HTS has worked to establish security and start a political transition after seizing Damascus and has tried to reassure a public both stunned by Assad’s fall and concerned about extremist jihadis among the rebels. Insurgent leaders say the group has broken with its extremist past.
Al-Sharaa appeared in a video message Friday congratulating “the great Syrian people for the victory of the blessed revolution.”
U.S. officials say al-Sharaa has been making welcome comments about protecting minority and women’s rights but remain skeptical that he will follow through on them in the long run.
On Friday, the rebels and Syria’s unarmed opposition worked to safely turn over to U.S. officials an American man who had been imprisoned by Assad.
U.S. officials are continuing their search for Austin Tice, an American journalist who disappeared 12 years ago near Damascus.
“We have impressed upon everyone we’ve been in contact with the importance of helping find Austin Tice and bringing him home,” Blinken said.
If you’re thinking about going to therapy for the first time, you might feel a mix of emotions: excitement to get a professional’s take on issues that are bothering you, anxiety and awkwardness about opening up.
All of those feelings are valid (which is something you’re about to start hearing a lot). “It’s natural to feel nervous—you’re challenging societal norms that encourage you to stay quiet, endure, and push through,” says Amie Grant, the owner of Take Up Space Therapy Services in Cleveland. But in therapy you can reject those expectations and honor your voice, your needs, and your truth, she says.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Krista Jordan, a clinical psychologist in Austin, reiterates that going to therapy for the first time can feel even more stressful if you don’t know what to expect. To quell your nerves, it can be helpful to keep in mind that therapists are just people, and that as a part of their training, most have been in therapy themselves, “so we know what it’s like to sit on the couch side of the room.”
Here’s exactly what to expect at your first therapy appointment, and how to set yourself up for success.
Many therapists offer a 10-20 minute complimentary consultation call to see if you feel it’s a good fit before booking a formal session. If you decide to move forward, they will likely have you fill out paperwork covering insurance information, basic medical history, what you hope to achieve in therapy, and any medications you take. Some practitioners try to screen for certain conditions like depression or anxiety in advance of your first session, so you may fill out one or more of these mental-health questionnaires before your appointment, then review the results in your first session, says Jordan.
“When I’m as prepared as possible in any situation, I’m less nervous,” says Sheri Langston, a licensed professional counselor and director of Rocky Mountain Therapy Group in Denver. Therapy is no exception.
Read More: Is Intermittent Fasting Good or Bad for You?
Most appointments are between 45 and 55 minutes, though some forms of therapy may last up to two hours. All therapists conduct their sessions differently depending on factors like what kind of therapy they practice, their personality, and how they prefer to structure meetings.
But all therapy modalities share one commonality: You’ll be talking about your feelings. (No getting around that part.)
You’ll likely sit facing your therapist, says Jordan, since therapists are trained to read facial expressions and body language. Seeing your therapist’s face and body while you talk to them can also assuage some of your fears, says Jordan. “For example, if you are worried that you are saying something that makes you look like a loser, but you see that your therapist has a warm look of compassion on their face, it can help you to believe that maybe people don’t see you as a loser,” she says. “Seeing your therapist’s reactions to what you say can actually be part of the growth process.”
However, lots of people are uncomfortable with prolonged eye contact, so know that it’s OK not to stare at the therapist every second. If your session is in-person, the therapist will often deliberately have art or knickknacks around the room that you can look at when you need a break from looking directly at them, she says.
Similarly, if you’re in a virtual therapy session, feel free to look away from the screen periodically to give yourself a break.
The one exception to these face-to-face set-ups is for psychoanalysis, which is conducted with the client lying down and looking away from the analyst, but “most therapies no longer do that arrangement,” says Jordan.
Not sure where to sit? “If there is a sofa or cushy chair, that is for you,” Langston says. “The biggest clue is: look for the box of tissues and sit there.”
So once the session begins, should you break out a pen and notepad? Grab the tissues? Start talking or let the therapist steer the show?
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The truth is, most new therapy patients are anxious before their first session, and therapists know this and will do their best to put you at ease. “Walking into your first session—whether virtually or in person—can feel like stepping into unfamiliar territory, but know this: you belong here,” says Grant.
She always starts sessions for new patients by explaining her approach to therapy. She also urges patients to release their pressure to perform: “You don’t need a detailed life story or perfect answers. The fact that you showed up is enough,” Grant says. And remember: “You’re in control of how much you share.”
Many people don’t realize that the first therapy session—often called an “intake”—isn’t about going deep, Jordan says. A good therapist will take time to get to know you, she says, and doesn’t need you to divulge all the most painful things you’ve experienced on day one.
“Therapists are actually trained not to let you talk about all the gory details of trauma in the first session,” says Jordan. “Even if you eventually get around to talking about really difficult memories, we are trained to do it in small pieces so that you don’t fall apart and can’t function the rest of the day.”
Instead, focus on things like what’s been bothering you in the past week, stress about an upcoming event, or a work incident that rubbed you the wrong way. Jordan says you can also discuss goals that you would like to pursue, like learning to be more assertive or better at identifying your emotions.
It can also reduce your pre-session anxiety to have a short version of what you hope to accomplish in therapy ready, such as “I’d like to work on self-esteem” or “I want to stop repeating negative partner choices,” says Jordan. If the conversation stalls or you’re not sure what to say next, it’s OK to ask the therapist, “Can you help me understand what would be useful to talk about?” she adds.
It’s the therapist’s job to be flexible. “I’ve had clients who prefer to share as little as possible until they get to know me better,” Langston says. “Sometimes a client will say, ‘I’d rather talk about that in a later session’ or ‘I’m not ready to talk about this yet.’ Any compassionate, person-centered therapist not only understands, but will appreciate your honesty and will honor your words.”
As you build a foundation with your therapist, remember that the first session (or even the first few sessions) are just as much about them getting to know you as you getting to know them and determine if they are a good fit for you.
Read More: The Surprising Benefits of Talking Out Loud to Yourself
Things might feel a little awkward during those early sessions, and that’s normal, says Grant. After introductions in an intake meeting, Grant asks about the person’s goals, challenges they’re facing, and what support looks like to them.
People shouldn’t expect to “feel better” after the initial session, Langston adds. Initial sessions are about information gathering, so expect a lot of questions as your therapist gets to know you and your needs. “All of this is to build a treatment plan that’s personalized for you,” says Langston.
Some therapists may devote the last few minutes of an intake session for you to ask questions, recap what you’ve discussed, and determine action plans; they may even give you a “homework” assignment to try before your next meeting. Before your session ends, Langston recommends patients ask two questions:
As for actually remembering—and putting into practice—key takeaways from your session? During therapy, some people might find it useful to jot down important advice and next steps by hand or on their phone, while others prefer to partake in the session without any note-taking (you could also ask your therapist to share their personal notes with you after your meeting).
Another option is to write down notes immediately after a session while your thoughts are fresh. Some people also like to record their therapy sessions to review later; just ask your therapist if this is okay with them.
Take a deep breath and give yourself some time to reflect after a therapy session. For those conducting their session virtually, you may want to take a walk around your block to clear your head and mark a transition between activities, rather than hopping right back into your inbox, checking the stock market, or cooking dinner.
“You don’t need to decide right away whether this therapist is ‘the one,’” says Grant. She suggests asking yourself questions like “Did I feel comfortable?” and “Could I see myself opening up to this person over time?” Still, she says, if the answer is uncertain, that’s normal, so you may have to give yourself more time or more sessions to decide.
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If you realize a therapist isn’t the right fit right away, however, Grant says you should have no qualms about not scheduling any further sessions with them. “If you feel comfortable, you can let them know directly. A simple statement like, ‘I don’t feel this is the right match for me, but I appreciate your time,’ can help you close that chapter,” she says.
In some situations, you may feel a therapist is a good match but have feedback for them. This kind of constructive feedback can take several forms, Grant says:
Since your therapist is there to support you, a negative or dismissive response to you voicing your opinion may be a sign to part ways with a practitioner, says Grant.
In general, therapists have thicker skin than you might think, and all good therapists want what’s best for the patient, so they won’t take things personally if you decide to part ways.
“It’s OK to shop around for a therapist that meets your needs. Try to determine the criteria that are important to you,” says Langston. She often ends initial sessions by telling clients that if she’s not a good fit for them, they shouldn’t feel obligated to continue. “I want my clients to feel comfortable—it’s their time and their therapy,” she says. “If you are with a therapist that isn’t a good fit, it will hinder the therapeutic process.”
“There have been 50 years of research on what makes therapy work,” Jordan says. “The only thing all of these studies agree on is that you have to feel that you have a good fit with your therapist.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is commuting the sentences of roughly 1,500 people who were released from prison and placed on home confinement during the coronavirus pandemic and is pardoning 39 Americans convicted of nonviolent crimes. It’s the largest single-day act of clemency in modern history.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The commutations announced Thursday are for people who have served out home confinement sentences for at least one year after they were released. Prisons were uniquely bad for spreading the virus and some inmates were released in part to stop the spread. At one point, 1 in 5 prisoners had COVID-19, according to a tally kept by The Associated Press.
Biden said he would be taking more steps in the weeks ahead and would continue to review clemency petitions. The second largest single-day act of clemency was by Barack Obama, with 330, shortly before leaving office in 2017.
“America was built on the promise of possibility and second chances,” Biden said in a statement. “As president, I have the great privilege of extending mercy to people who have demonstrated remorse and rehabilitation, restoring opportunity for Americans to participate in daily life and contribute to their communities, and taking steps to remove sentencing disparities for non-violent offenders, especially those convicted of drug offenses.”
The clemency follows a broad pardon for his son Hunter, who was prosecuted for gun and tax crimes. Biden is under pressure from advocacy groups to pardon broad swaths of people, including those on federal death row, before the Trump administration takes over in January. He’s also weighing whether to issue preemptive pardons to those who investigated Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and are facing possible retribution when he takes office.
Read More: 6 Reasons Why Joe Biden Pardoned Hunter Biden
Clemency is the term for the power the president has to pardon, in which a person is relieved of guilt and punishment, or to commute a sentence, which reduces or eliminates the punishment but doesn’t exonerate the wrongdoing. It’s customary for a president to grant mercy at the end of his term, using the power of the office to wipe away records or end prison terms.
Those pardoned Thursday had been convicted of nonviolent crimes such as drug offenses and turned their lives around, White House lawyers said. They include a woman who led emergency response teams during natural disasters; a church deacon who has worked as an addiction counselor and youth counselor; a doctoral student in molecular biosciences; and a decorated military veteran.
The president had previously issued 122 commutations and 21 other pardons. He’s also broadly pardoned those convicted of use and simple possession of marijuana on federal lands and in the District of Columbia, and pardoned former U.S. service members convicted of violating a now-repealed military ban on consensual gay sex.
Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., and 34 other lawmakers are urging the president to pardon environmental and human rights lawyer Steven Donziger, who was imprisoned or under house arrest for three years because of a contempt of court charge related to his work representing Indigenous farmers in a lawsuit against Chevron.
Others are advocating for Biden to commute the sentences of federal death row prisoners. His attorney general, Merrick Garland, paused federal executions. Biden had said on the campaign trail in 2020 that he wanted to end the death penalty but he never did, and now, with Trump coming back into office, it’s likely executions will resume. During his first term, Trump presided over an unprecedented number of federal executions, carried out during the height of the pandemic.
More clemency grants are coming before Biden leaves office on Jan. 20, but it’s not clear whether he’ll take action to guard against possible prosecution by Trump, an untested use of the power. The president has been taking the idea seriously and has been thinking about it for as much as six months — before the presidential election — but has been concerned about the precedent it would set, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss internal discussions.
But those who received the pardons would have to accept them. New California Sen. Adam Schiff, who was a part of the House committee that investigated the violent Jan. 6 insurrection, said such a pardon from Biden would be “unnecessary,” and that the president shouldn’t be spending his waning days in office worrying about this.
For Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., another target of Trump’s threats, said in a statement this week that his suggestion that she and others be jailed for the investigations “is a continuation of his assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic.”
Before pardoning his son, Biden had repeatedly pledged not to do so. He said in a statement explaining his reversal that the prosecution had been poisoned by politics. The decision prompted criminal justice advocates and lawmakers to put additional public pressure on the administration to use that same power for everyday Americans. It wasn’t a very popular move; only about 2 in 10 Americans approved of his decision, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
The political stakes in purple states — those with small electoral margins that can swing back and forth between the two major parties — are enormous. Unlike bright blue and red states, where one party perpetually dominates all branches of government, the party in power in the small handful of competitive states is constantly worried about losing control. That creates a temptation and an incentive for the majority in the state legislature to try to alter governmental institutions to benefit their side politically.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Nowhere is this clearer than in North Carolina. On Wednesday, the Republican supermajority in the state house will try to override the veto of Democratic Governor Roy Cooper on a bill that threatens to reduce the power of incoming Democratic officials and fundamentally shift who controls parts of the state government. This is nothing new in the Tar Heel State, and the history of these power grabs reveals that closely contested elections often lead to the rawest and most brazen form of partisanship.
For the first three quarters of the 20th century, North Carolina — like the entire South — was rock-ribbed Democratic territory. The party controlled the General Assembly and all of the statewide Council of State offices from 1901-1972.
In 1972, voters sent shockwaves throughout the state by electing Republican Jim Holshouser governor on the coattails of Richard Nixon’s landslide reelection (in which the incumbent president won a whopping 49 states).
The arrival of North Carolina as a competitive state created the ideal conditions for power grabs. Late in 1973, Holshouser made what News and Observer columnist Martin Donsky described as “massive personnel changes in at least two agencies.” The governor dispatched surrogates by helicopter to deliver news to some Democrats that their services were no longer needed.
Not surprisingly, Democrats in the General Assembly responded by clipping Holshouser’s wings. As columnist Paul O’Connor later noted, “the Democrats stripped him of many of his powers and tried to ignore his proposals. The feuding started slowly and got progressively worse.”
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And, with that, North Carolinians had a taste for how competition could breed animus.
In 1976, the partisan pendulum swung back. After a robust victory, Democratic Governor-elect Jim Hunt acted quickly, firing so many Republican executive branch officials during the Yuletide season that it became known as the “Christmas massacre.” Although Republicans were taken aback at what they viewed as a power grab, they had little power in the legislative branch, which left them unable to respond with anything other than bitterness.
During Hunt’s tenure as governor, patterns emerged in North Carolina politics that would persist for decades. Republicans began to dominate presidential and U.S. Senate races, even as Democrats more than held their own in state and local contests.
Ronald Reagan was a key catalyst in this shift. As he swept to reelection in 1984, Republican Jim Martin captured the North Carolina governorship, replacing the term limited Hunt.
In April 1985, three months into Martin’s term, Democrats in the General Assembly capped the number of gubernatorial appointments at 325 and constrained Martin’s freedom to nominate election board members as he wished. Instead, they required that he follow lists given to him by the two major political parties.
One Republican senator was so fed up with the changes that he proposed an amendment dripping with sarcasm. It would have kept the executive director of the State Board of Elections, Alex Brock — a Democratic appointee — “or his heirs” in office “in perpetuity,” adding that “registration as a Republican shall be grounds for removal for cause.” As the amendment exposed, Republicans stewed over the changes, but, other than a sarcastic shot across the bow, their minority status gave them little power to respond.
Their predicament remained the same in 1989, when Jim Gardner became the first Republican Lt. Governor elected in the 20th century, and the Democratic majority promptly stripped the office of virtually all power over shepherding legislation through the state Senate. There was simply little Republicans could do about it.
Instead, they had to wait decades for a chance for revenge.
The combination of a good political environment for Republicans in the 2010 midterm elections and the Redistricting Majority Project (REDMAP) — undertaken by GOP strategists to flip state legislatures across the country in time for the 2011 redistricting cycle — catapulted Republicans to majority control of both chambers of the North Carolina General Assembly for the first time in 100 years.
Soon after they were elected, the Republican majority fulfilled the promise of Project REDMAP by drawing, well…red maps. These maps would secure Republican dominance for the next decade. When Democrats complained, Republicans pointed towards the sordid history of Democratic gerrymandering in North Carolina and argued, essentially, that turnabout was fair play.
Then, after the 2016 election, when Republican Governor Pat McCrory lost to Democrat Roy Cooper, the Republican-controlled General Assembly did something more drastic.
Returning for a lame duck session after the election, the General Assembly cut the number of gubernatorial appointments from more than 1500 to 300, removed the governor’s appointment power over University of North Carolina trustees, and required legislative confirmation of a number of key appointments.
When Democrats howled, Republicans reminded them of their own long history of power grabs. North Carolina GOP chair Dallas Woodhouse retorted, “How about when Jim Hunt tried to fire all the Republicans in the ‘Christmas massacre’?… And what about the Democrats stripping the Republican lieutenant governor of all his power? Was that right? Or stripping Gov. Jim Martin of his hiring authority?”
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Unlike the previous power plays, however, this particular move garnered national media attention. Tara Golshan at Vox called it a “shocking Republican power grab” and in the New York Times, historian Karen Cox described the state of North Carolina politics as “a situation that looks akin to the South of the 1890s.”
In the context of this history, legislative Republicans’ current maneuvering isn’t surprising. The 2024 election delivered Democratic victories for half of the council of state offices — including Governor, Lt. Governor, Attorney General, and Superintendent of Public Instruction — and broke the GOP’s legislative supermajority by one seat.
In response, as in 2016, GOP leaders brought the legislature back into session. They took a bill that was initially designed to streamline licensing for dentists who do research at medical schools, turned it into one that would provide relief for Western North Carolina counties affected by Hurricane Helene—and then added more than 120 additional pages of changes that removed power from positions held by incoming Democratic officials and gave it to ones held by Republicans.
Under this bill, appointment power over the chair of the state’s 101 boards of elections would move from the governor to the state auditor. It also would eliminate the power of the attorney general (a Democrat) to take action counter to the expressed interest of the General Assembly, while reducing the already minimal power of the newly elected Democratic lieutenant governor by taking away the office’s representation on various boards and commissions. Finally, the bill stripped the newly elected Democratic Superintendent of Public Instruction of some oversight authority over charter schools and the Center for Safer Schools.
Outgoing Governor Cooper vetoed the legislation, proclaiming it “a sham.”
Republicans in the state senate quickly voted to override the veto, but the prospects of the override attempt in the state house are murkier. On Wednesday, the GOP majority is expected to attempt to override Cooper’s veto, but there is some doubt as to whether they have the votes because three Republican members from Western North Carolina voted against the bill initially. Should they vote no again, Cooper’s veto will stand and the power grab will fail.
While the fate of this case remains uncertain, it is clear is that rather than delivering moderation and bipartisanship, electoral uncertainty in North Carolina has created the most aggressive form of raw partisanship. For decades, both parties have refused to accept losses without trying to neuter the newly elected opposition. Given the purple nature of North Carolina’s politics, the prospects of this pattern changing anytime soon are slim, and it serves as a reminder that close margins for the major parties don’t necessarily produce politicians running toward the middle.
Christopher Cooper is Madison distinguished professor and director of the Haire Institute for Public Policy at Western Carolina University. His book, Anatomy of a Purple State: A North Carolina Politics Primer, is available now from the University of North Carolina Press.
Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.
We’ve had so many post-mortems on the election that a wave of post-mortems on the post-mortems is now coming in. But if we zoom out—way out—and look at the larger picture, what we most urgently need to examine is not only why we are so polarized and divided, but also why we are so lacking in compassion, empathy, and understanding for those we disagree with.
The seeds of this decline were sown long before the 2024 campaign. Decades ago, as our mainstream culture began rejecting organized religion, with all its flaws, we also began rejecting life’s spiritual dimension along with it. We threw out the baby with the bathwater. And we’ve filled the vacuum with deeply inadequate substitutes—first and foremost among them being politics.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Politics is certainly important. People’s livelihoods, rights, and freedom to live their lives in a way that allows them to thrive are in the balance. Political engagement is critical, especially when it comes to protecting the most vulnerable. But as the saying goes, everything is political but politics isn’t everything. And we can only maximize our effectiveness by not asking something of politics that politics can’t give us.
The consequences of elevating politics to a religion are all around us. A central element to all fundamentalist religions is dogma. The point of dogma is to define and defend the borders of acceptable opinion, and brand anyone who goes outside them as quite simply a heretic. And heretics, even if they’re not burned at the stake, are dehumanized, ostracized and denied any empathy and understanding. This is the poisonous fruit of asking politics to be the central or only source of meaning in our lives—the answer to our fundamental need to connect to something larger than ourselves.
As Jungian psychoanalyst Marion Woodman wrote, “Without an understanding of myth or religion… the individual suffers the mysteries of life as meaningless mayhem alone.” That’s a good description of our current moment—the result of turning politics into our lives’ only organizing force.
It’s terrible both for the body politic and for our actual bodies. Studies have shown that politics can take a serious toll, making us more stressed, costing us sleep, and damaging our mental and physical health. “There is a considerable and growing amount of evidence that politics is having a negative effect on a broad range of health outcomes,” said Kevin B. Smith, a political science professor at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. “This is coming from different scholars using different data, approaches and measures, and it all triangulates on the same inference: Politics isn’t very good for us.”
In fact, one 2019 study found that political events can increase the emotional reactivity of daily stressors, which is the exact opposite of spiritual practices that help us become less reactive to daily stressors.
The other costly stand-in for our neglected spiritual dimension is “scientism.” Which is not to be confused with science. Scientism, or scientific materialism, is the dogmatic belief that science and its methods for gathering information are the only valid sources for true knowledge.
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Of course, science is critical and the invaluable primary driver of material progress. What separates scientism from science is the dogmatic certainty that science can provide all encompassing answers to every question that matters on every aspect of life and that there is only one answer to all of these questions. In his prescient 1992 book Technopoly, Neil Postman writes about scientism as “the desperate hope, and wish, and ultimately the illusory belief” that science can answer questions like “What is life, and when, and why?” “Why is death, and suffering?” “What is right and wrong to do?” “What are good and evil ends?” “How ought we to think and feel and behave?”
And there are plenty of critics of scientism to be found among scientists. In his book Monopolizing Knowledge, Ian Hutchinson, a professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT, makes the case for the limits of scientism. “There are many other important beliefs, secular as well as religious, which are justified and rational, but not scientific, and therefore marginalized by scientism,” Hutchinson writes, “and if that is so, then scientism is a ghastly intellectual mistake.” And many experiences—like “the beauty of a sunset” or “the drama of a play”—are outside the realm of science. As Lawrence Principe, a professor of chemistry and the history of science at Johns Hopkins, notes, scientism could “be turned against the insights that are offered and expressed by poetry, by art, by music, by aesthetics.” And no amount of randomized, double-blind trials can prove the ultimate importance of love, compassion, and forgiveness. Those are spiritual tenets, not scientific ones.
Scientism, Postman writes, involves “the misapplication of techniques such as quantification to questions where numbers have nothing to say.” The famous adage that you can’t manage what you can’t measure is useful in business. But it’s less useful for other key aspects of our lives. Quantification is good for sales but irrelevant for souls, which can be explored but neither managed nor measured.
In a recent paper in The Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, C. Thi Nguyen, a philosophy professor at the University of Utah, wrote about the concept of “value capture” — replacing our deepest goals with measurable ones, which technology makes so easy to do. Many aspects of our physical health can be measured and tracked, for example, but our spiritual health can’t be put into a daily number.
Since the Enlightenment, science has often been seen as being in a fundamental conflict with religion and spirituality. But many of our greatest scientists bluntly rejected this simplistic conflict. “I believe in Spinoza’s God,” said Albert Einstein, referring to the 17th century philosopher who believed that God reveals himself in the orderly harmony of nature. And Einstein uttered the ultimate rebuke of scientism: “The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe.”
When we stop thinking of them as two opponents in a zero-sum contest, science and spirituality—“the twin offspring of human yearning for answers,” as Hutchinson describes them—can co-exist in harmony, each giving us their unique benefits. The celebrated biologist Stephen Jay Gould described this beautifully as part of his concept of NOMA (Non-Overlapping Magisteria): “Science tries to document the factual character of the natural world, and to develop theories that coordinate and explain these facts. Religion, on the other hand, operates in the equally important, but utterly different, realm of human purposes, meanings and values—subjects that the factual domain of science might illuminate, but can never resolve.”
It’s the dogmatists on both sides that drive the conflict. The growth of fundamentalism in science has taken place at the same time as the growth of fundamentalism in politics and religion. And as with so many other conflicts, the extremes—ostensibly in opposition—feed off each other. The loser is always the public good, as we saw in the ostracizing of scientists and experts who questioned the extent or duration of the lockdowns, or in the squelching of any debate about whether the COVID-19 virus may have originated in a lab. And on the other side, many public health officials urging people to take the COVID-19 vaccine were targeted with personal threats.
It’s no surprise that this scientific fundamentalism substitutes technology for religion. In his book, Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World’s Most Powerful Religion, Greg Epstein argues that technology has rituals and rites that we all devoutly perform every day. It connects us with a community of like-minded people, it has its own priestly class, it can be transformative, and we have faith it will lead to a happier future. Some even think it might bestow immortality. “In other words,” writes Epstein, “technology has become religion.”
In an interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin at the DealBook Summit, Sam Altman used the word “magic” to describe AI. He corrected himself by adding, “not magic,” but rather “an incredible piece of science.” But in fact, Altman was right. AI does seem like magic. And even the tech leaders creating it, aren’t entirely sure how it works. But it’s worth pointing out that while we regularly talk about technology as magic, we balk at the idea of exploring the magic of our humanity. We look at technological innovations with awe and wonder but neglect the mysteries that are neither created nor explained by technology.
When we close off our spiritual selves, when we treat those who we disagree with as heretics, we also close off pathways for forgiveness, grace, and redemption — all in short supply in our culture today. And yet we all need the forgiveness and understanding that we often find it hard to grant to others.
So, yes, we should engage in politics. We should celebrate scientific discoveries and new technologies. But we should also remember to render unto Caesar the things—and only the things—that are Caesar’s.
A federal appeals court panel on Friday upheld a law that could lead to a ban on TikTok in a few short months, handing a resounding defeat to the popular social media platform as it fights for its survival in the U.S.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the law, which requires TikTok to break ties with its China-based parent company ByteDance or be banned by mid-January, is constitutional, rebuffing TikTok’s challenge that the statute ran afoul of the First Amendment and unfairly targeted the platform.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]“The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States,” said the court’s opinion. “Here the Government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States.”
TikTok and ByteDance — another plaintiff in the lawsuit — are expected to appeal to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump, who tried to ban TikTok during his first term and whose Justice Department would have to enforce the law, said during the presidential campaign that he is now against a TikTok ban and would work to “save” the social media platform.
The law, signed by President Joe Biden in April, was the culmination of a years-long saga in Washington over the short-form video-sharing app, which the government sees as a national security threat due to its connections to China.
The U.S. has said it’s concerned about TikTok collecting vast swaths of user data, including sensitive information on viewing habits, that could fall into the hands of the Chinese government through coercion. Officials have also warned the proprietary algorithm that fuels what users see on the app is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, who can use it to shape content on the platform in a way that’s difficult to detect.
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However, a significant portion of the government’s information in the case has been redacted and hidden from the public as well as the two companies.
TikTok, which sued the government over the law in May, has long denied it could be used by Beijing to spy on or manipulate Americans. Its attorneys have accurately pointed out that the U.S. hasn’t provided evidence to show that the company handed over user data to the Chinese government, or manipulated content for Beijing’s benefit in the U.S. They have also argued the law is predicated on future risks, which the Department of Justice has emphasized pointing in part to unspecified action it claims the two companies have taken in the past due to demands from the Chinese government.
Friday’s ruling came after the appeals court panel heard oral arguments in September.
Some legal experts said at the time that it was challenging to read the tea leaves on how the judges would rule.
In a court hearing that lasted more than two hours, the panel – composed of two Republican and one Democrat appointed judges – appeared to grapple with how TikTok’s foreign ownership affects its rights under the Constitution and how far the government could go to curtail potential influence from abroad on a foreign-owned platform.
The judges pressed Daniel Tenny, a Department of Justice attorney, on the implications the case could have on the First Amendment. But they also expressed some skepticism at TikTok’s arguments, challenging the company’s attorney – Andrew Pincus – on whether any First Amendment rights preclude the government from curtailing a powerful company subject to the laws and influence of a foreign adversary.
In parts of their questions about TikTok’s ownership, the judges cited wartime precedent that allows the U.S. to restrict foreign ownership of broadcast licenses and asked if the arguments presented by TikTok would apply if the U.S. was engaged in war.
To assuage concerns about the company’s owners, TikTok says it has invested more than $2 billion to bolster protections around U.S. user data.
The company also argues the government’s broader concerns could have been resolved in a draft agreement it provided the Biden administration more than two years ago during talks between the two sides. It has blamed the government for walking away from further negotiations on the agreement, which the Justice Department argues is insufficient.
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Attorneys for the two companies have claimed it’s impossible to divest the platform commercially and technologically. They also say any sale of TikTok without the coveted algorithm – the platform’s secret sauce that Chinese authorities would likely block under any divesture plan – would turn the U.S. version of TikTok into an island disconnected from other global content.
Still, some investors, including Trump’s former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and billionaire Frank McCourt, have expressed interest in purchasing the platform. Both men said earlier this year that they were launching a consortium to purchase TikTok’s U.S. business.
This week, a spokesperson for McCourt’s Project Liberty initiative, which aims to protect online privacy, said unnamed participants in their bid have made informal commitments of more than $20 billion in capital.
TikTok’s lawsuit was consolidated with a second legal challenge brought by several content creators – for which the company is covering legal costs – as well as a third one filed on behalf of conservative creators who work with a nonprofit called BASED Politics Inc.
If TikTok appeals and the courts continue to uphold the law, it would fall on Trump’s Justice Department to enforce it and punish any potential violations with fines. The penalties would apply to app stores that would be prohibited from offering TikTok, and internet hosting services that would be barred from supporting it.
When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sits for his confirmation hearing to potentially become the head of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), he will face scrutiny over his vaccine skepticism and unorthodox views on medicine. But there’s one area Kennedy may be able to find bipartisan support: food policy.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Kennedy has spoken out against the dangers of ultra-processed foods, additives, and the influence of large corporations on food production. While his anti-vaccine views have drawn widespread criticism, his stance on combating chronic disease by ridding the nation’s food supply of harmful chemicals and ingredients broadly aligns with efforts from both sides of the political aisle and has been praised by leading public health experts.
Kennedy’s nomination to run HHS would put him in a position to directly influence policies around food regulation, nutrition standards, and federal dietary guidelines. Jerold Mande, a former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) senior adviser and deputy undersecretary for food safety at the Department of Agriculture under two Democratic presidents, says there’s “remarkable, strong bipartisan concern about ultra-processed food.”
As HHS Secretary, Kennedy would oversee the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which has the authority to regulate food safety and nutrition labels. One of the most significant tools Kennedy would have at his disposal, according to Mande, is HHS’ involvement in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, a document that shapes federal nutrition advice. The guidelines, updated every five years, inform public health messaging as well as food assistance programs and government food purchasing. The process is political, with each administration shaping the guidelines according to its priorities. “It’s like the phases of the moon,” Mande says of the HHS role. “It’s at its peak in terms of power right now. It’s highly unusual that dietary guidelines would straddle two administrations like this where work would begin in one but be completed in the other.”
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For Kennedy, overseeing the Dietary Guidelines process could provide a platform to push for stronger recommendations against ultra-processed foods—particularly those laden with sugar, fat, and harmful additives. He has pledged to immediately remove processed foods from school cafeterias and to strengthen efforts to combat food-related chronic diseases, an issue he believes has been neglected by both major parties. Additionally, Kennedy has been outspoken about restricting the use of pesticides and limiting seed oils like canola and sunflower, which he argues contribute to the growing health problems in America. He has also called for a ban on artificial food dyes, such as those used in Froot Loops, which he claims have adverse effects on children’s health. “We need to stop feeding our children poison and start feeding them real, wholesome food again,” Kennedy posted on X on Nov. 2.
Kennedy has criticized the FDA for being overly lenient on food additives and processing standards. If confirmed, he would likely press for stricter regulations, clearer food labeling, and increased transparency on harmful additives. President-elect Donald Trump, who nominated Kennedy for the position, said he would allow Kennedy to “go wild on the food” after Kennedy dropped his own independent presidential bid and endorsed him.
At a Senate hearing on Thursday, FDA officials were asked about the agency’s repeated delays in implementing a proposed rule to place health labels on the front of food and drink packages, which would flag high levels of sodium, saturated fat, or added sugars amid rising obesity rates. “How long does it take to put a bloody label on a product?” asked Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont and chair of the Senate Health Committee. FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf said the delay was necessary to ensure that any proposed rule would withstand potential legal challenges, citing recent Supreme Court rulings that have curtailed the power of federal agencies.
Sanders further said he agreed with some of Kennedy’s positions on food policy, particularly his criticism of how the food industry prioritizes profits over public health, after the hearing. “I think what he’s saying about the food industry is exactly correct,” he told CBS News. “You have a food industry concerned about their profits, could care less about the health of the American people. I think they have to be taken on.”
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Any regulatory actions, however, would likely clash with the agricultural industry and large food conglomerates, which have a history of lobbying against changes they deem harmful to their bottom line. The food lobby—which includes companies in processed foods, agriculture, and biotechnology—has long fought efforts to tighten regulations on ingredients, labeling, and food production practices. Kennedy’s call for stricter regulations on pesticides and agricultural chemicals could also alienate some Republicans, who have traditionally opposed government regulation, particularly when it impacts businesses’ ability to operate freely.
Beyond industry pushback, Kennedy could also face practical challenges in funding his initiatives. The FDA’s food division operates on a tight budget, relying on congressional appropriations rather than the self-sustaining user fees that fund the agency’s drug division. Mande notes that fiscal constraints have hindered past efforts to implement major food reforms, and Kennedy could face similar difficulties. “They have less than $25 million to do their nutrition work,” Mande says of the FDA’s budget. “They aren’t able to make an impact in this space because Congress doesn’t fund them.”
Still, even some of Kennedy’s positions on food and nutrition are controversial. His proposed overhaul of the FDA’s food division also includes his desire to fire nutritionists at the agency because they are “not doing their job,” a stance that has raised concerns from some public health experts. Such a drastic move could further complicate his confirmation, particularly among Democrats and public health advocates who are already wary of his broader views. Kennedy has accused the FDA of “aggressive suppression” of various products, including raw milk and hydroxychloroquine. He has previously promoted the consumption of raw milk, claiming that it “advances human health,” even though both the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have warned that drinking raw milk can expose people to dangerous bacteria, such as E. coli and listeria. Kennedy also opposes adding fluoride in drinking water, a practice that boosts oral health and has been a cornerstone of U.S. public health policy for decades, citing studies that suggest a link between high levels of fluoride in drinking water and neurobehavioral problems.
The Senate confirmation process will also scrutinize Kennedy’s views on vaccines. Public health officials are deeply concerned about the possibility of placing one of the country’s leading anti-vaccine advocates at the helm of HHS, an agency responsible for overseeing the safety of vaccines. “Some would say what he says on diet and [the] importance of healthy foods is reasonable,” Sen. Edward Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, said on Thursday during the Senate Health Committee hearing with FDA officials. “However, one reasonable opinion does not qualify someone to run the United States Department of Health and Human Services.”
Kash Patel wasn’t always a firebrand. Early in his career, as a federal prosecutor and national security lawyer at the Justice Department, Donald Trump’s current pick to head the FBI was thoughtful and level headed, according to a senior national security official who knew him during those years. It was only after Patel began digging into the FBI’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election that “it all changed,” the official says.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Initially, Patel didn’t even want the job that would change his view of the nation’s storied law enforcement agency. A friend had introduced him to Republican congressman Devin Nunes not long after Trump won the 2016 election under a cloud of Russian interference. Nunes, as chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, was gearing up to look at how the FBI had handled the politically sensitive investigation of Moscow’s 2016 meddling.
After hearing about Patel’s work on terrorism prosecutions and as a legal liaison to Joint Special Operations Command, Nunes offered him a staff job on the Russia probe. At first, Patel said, ‘No.’ What Patel really wanted, he wrote in his memoir “Government Gangsters,” was to work at the National Security Council. But Nunes was persuasive, and later promised that if Patel did the grunt work for the investigation, he would “do everything he could” to get him a job in Trump’s White House.
Patel started working for Nunes, and in less than a year, Patel and South Carolina Congressman Rep. Trey Gowdy wrote what came to be known as the “Nunes memo,” detailing the thin and circular justifications the FBI had used to get a secret warrant to surveil Carter Page, a minor foreign policy advisor to Trump’s 2016 campaign, over concerns he had ties to Russian spy services.
When Patel first started digging, he said he had expected to find thorough and damaging information on Page in the FBI’s warrant applications. But instead, he found an over-reliance on salacious opposition research memos about Trump that had been paid for by allies of Hillary Clinton and written by former British MI6 spy Christopher Steele.
Patel was not alone in drawing damning conclusions about the FBI’s behavior in the Page investigation. In a December 2019 report, the Department of Justice’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, detailed 17 instances in which the FBI abused the warrant process, finding “serious performance failures” by the FBI agents and supervisors involved.
Horowitz found no political bias in the FBI’s misbehavior, but Patel decided there were darker forces at work. He became convinced that the “Russia Gate scandal” offered a “glimpse into how the government gangsters in the FBI operate, using methods of entrapment and extortion that would make the mafia proud,” he wrote. And in finding a dark conspiracy, he also got closer to Trump.
After the report came out Nunes made good on his promise and Patel was hired at Trump’s National Security Council, eventually rising to his dream job as senior director for counterterrorism. Patel wrote in his book that he barely remembers his first meetings with Trump in the Oval Office because he was “starstruck” but that “soon I had an extraordinary relationship with the president far beyond what would be expected.” The senior official recalls that Patel developed a reputation for going around the usual chain of command at the White House because he had developed “a direct line” to Trump.
That direct line may be the point for Trump. If Patel is confirmed by the Senate, the man who wrote an entire book about his concerns about political interference at the FBI could end up ushering in a new era of politically-motivated revenge. Trump has threatened to use the Department of Justice to prosecute his political adversaries. Patel wants to fire the top ranks of the FBI and has proposed shuttering FBI headquarters and moving it outside Washington. He has said he would “come after” reporters.
Patel’s confirmation is not a done deal. First, the current FBI director, Christopher Wray, who Trump appointed in 2017, still has nearly three years in his 10 year term, and would have to resign or be fired for Patel to take the job.
And there’s skepticism in the Senate over the 44-year-old Patel taking control of 10,000 special agents at the FBI with sweeping responsibility to protect the public from terrorism, organized crime, political corruption, and the threat posed by foreign adversaries like China. Trump’s former Defense Secretary Mark Esper wrote in his memoir that Patel had endangered a SEAL Team Six operation to rescue an American held hostage in Nigeria by making up an approval from the Nigerian government before it had been granted. When Trump wanted to place Patel as deputy FBI director during his first term, then-Attorney General Bill Barr said “over my dead body.” Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine says she wants to see him in a public hearing before making a decision—and review Patel’s FBI background check.
