Kennedy

JULIA Fox has defended her blood-stained Jackie Kennedy Halloween costume following backlash.

She recreated what former First Lady Jackie wore as husband President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

Left unimpressed, fans branded the actress’ outfit choice as “disrespectful” and “tasteless”.

Meanwhile, JFK and Jackie’s grandson Jack Schlossberg, also criticised her choice.

Taking to Instagram, Julia, 35, explained: “I’m dressed as Jackie Kennedy in the pink suit.

“Not as a costume, but as a statement.

RACY LOOK

Julia Fox leaves NOTHING to imagination with outfit inspired by Bianca Censori

She added: “When her husband was assassinated, she refused to change out of her blood-stained clothes, saying, “I want them to see what they’ve done.

“The image of the delicate pink suit splattered with blood is one of the most haunting juxtapositions in modern history.

“Beauty and horror. Poise and devastation.

“Her decision not to change clothes, even after being encouraged to, was an act of extraordinary bravery.

“It was performance, protest, and mourning all at once. 

“A woman weaponizing image and grace to expose brutality.

“It’s about trauma, power, and how femininity itself is a form of resistance. Long live Jackie O.”

The real Jackie’s pink Chanel suit was never cleaned following the assassination – remaining stained with JFK’s blood.

Julia – who previously dated Kanye West – is no stranger to attracting attention with her outfits.

The actress flashed her lace thong in some extremely low-cut leather pants while arriving at her pal’s event in New York.

She could be seen wearing black leather trousers with a flimsy cream t-shirt.

Her leather pants were extremely low-cut, which is something she clearly leaned into by wearing panties she wanted to be seen.

RAPE PROBE

Police launch urgent manhunt after girl raped in park in broad daylight attack

‘EVERYTHING’S CHANGED’

Mrs Hinch opens up on losing her dad & dealing with shock diagnosis

Popping out of the top of her black leather trousers were some pink and black knickers.

Oct. 31 (UPI) — The White House is taking heat for construction and remodeling projects initiated by President Donald Trump as it opens up for tours again, and the president was touting the work being done in social media posts Friday.

Trump showed off images of the Lincoln Bedroom’s newly remodeled bathroom, which was lined from floor to ceiling with what he said was “black and white polished Statuary marble.”

He claimed the bathroom was “very appropriate for the time of Abraham Lincoln and, in fact, could be the marble that was originally there!” Trump made seven Truth Social posts about the bathroom renovations with multiple photos.

The bathroom has gold fixtures and a large chandelier.

Critics were quick to point out that while people are losing health insurance and food benefits, Trump was busy remodeling.

“Donald Trump actually cares more about his toilet than he does about fixing your healthcare,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on X.

“Millions of people are being kicked off of food assistance and millions can’t afford health care anymore. But don’t worry everyone! Trump got a new bathroom,” commentator Harry Sisson said on X. “So tone deaf, out of touch, and disgusting.”

Visitors might get a glimpse soon as first lady Melania Trump announced Friday that tours will reopen at the White House on Dec. 2, “with an updated route offering guests the opportunity to experience the history and beauty of the People’s House,” a press release said.

“The decorations in each room will be thoughtfully designed and curated under the direction of first lady Melania Trump,” the release said. “Visitors will have the opportunity to enjoy the beloved annual tradition that transforms the White House into a festive reflection of the spirit, warmth, faith and hope of the holiday season.”

Trump’s critics are also making life difficult for construction companies that have government contracts to work on the new ballroom where the East Wing once stood.

Many of the contractors have taken down their websites, saying the sites are undergoing maintenance as people make posts and send e-mails shaming them for their work, the New York Daily News reported.

“How dare you destroy the people’s house!!!! You are a traitor and should be driven out of business. … You suck!” said one review left on a company’s Yelp page Thursday.

“Backstabbers who hate America and worship the AntiChrist. Took money from Trump and did work without a valid permit. These people are scum,” another said.

Demolition began on the East Wing to build the $300 million ballroom Oct. 20, sparking anger because of the speed of the demolition and lack of proper permits and notice.

Trump also announced on Truth Social Friday that he had inspected construction on the Kennedy Center. Earlier, The Washington Post reported that ticket sales for the center had dropped appreciably since Trump took over the performing arts venue and purged its board.

“It is really looking good!” he wrote. “The exterior columns, which were in serious danger of corrosion if something weren’t done, are completed, and look magnificent in White Enamel — Like a different place!

“Marble is being done, stages are being renovated, new seats, new chairs and new fabrics will soon be installed, and magnificent high-end carpeting throughout the building,” Trump wrote.

President Trump’s favorite musical is, famously, “Les Misérables,” but few fans have been storming the barricades to get into the Kennedy Center this season.

The Washington Post reports that sales for the current season of music, dance and theater at the Washington, D.C., cultural institution have declined dramatically since the president’s inauguration and his subsequent takeover of the Kennedy Center’s leadership.

The Post cites data showing the Kennedy Center has sold only 57% of its tickets from September to mid October, many of which are believed to be comped giveaways. That contrasts with a 93% ticket sale rate through the same period last year.

The venues surveyed include the Opera House, the Concert Hall and the Eisenhower Theater, with performances by the National Symphony Orchestra, touring Broadway musicals and dance troupes. Out of 143,000 possible seats for the current season, 53,000 have not yet sold. When fans have bought tickets, they’ve spent less than half as much money from September to the first half of October 2025 compared with the same time last year — the lowest total since 2018 other than the height of the 2020 pandemic.

After Trump’s election, he appointed Republican diplomat and former State Department spokesperson Richard Grenell to lead the Kennedy Center, whose board elected Trump as its president. The new leadership fired several longtime staffers, and prominent board members and leaders like Ben Folds left the organization.

““I couldn’t be a pawn in that,” Folds told The Times. “Was I supposed to call my homies like Sara Bareilles and say, ‘Hey, do you want to come play here?’”

Artists that do perform at the Kennedy Center have noted a change in the audience. Yasmin Williams, a singer-songwriter who performed in September after a contentious email exchange with Grennell, said that “During my Kennedy Center show on Thursday night, a group of Tr*mp supporters boo’d me when I mentioned Ric Grenell and seemed to be there to intimidate me,” yet “playing that Malcolm X video in that space and forcing this current administration to reckon with the damage they’ve caused, while also promoting joy and the power of music to the audience … this is why I do what I do.” (Kennedy Center spokesperson Roma Daravi told the Post that “This is an absolutely ridiculous claim.”)

Grennell, for his part, said on X that that “We are doing the big things that people want to see. We are seeing a huge change because people are recognizing that they want to be a part of something that is common-sense programming.” In August, Trump announced his picks for Kennedy Center honors, including actor and filmmaker Sylvester Stallone, glam-rockers KISS, singer Gloria Gaynor, country music star George Strait and English actor and comedian Michael Crawford.

A controversial plan to kill one owl species to save another cleared a major hurdle.

The full Senate on Wednesday struck down a GOP effort to prevent the cull of up to 450,000 barred owls in the Pacific Northwest over three decades, ending a saga that created strange political bedfellows.

It’s a major win for environmentalists and federal wildlife officials who want to protect northern spotted owls that have been crowded out by their larger, more aggressive cousins. In recent weeks they got an unlikely ally in loggers who said scuttling the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plan could hinder timber sales.

But it’s a blow to an equally unusual alliance that includes right-wing politicians and animal rights advocates who argue the cull is too expensive and inhumane. The Trump administration leaned on Republican lawmakers to get out of the way, scrambling partisan lines.

Sen. John Kennedy, a conservative from Louisiana, sought to nix the owl-killing plan via the Congressional Review Act, which can be used to overturn recent rules by federal agencies.

Kennedy said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, whose portfolio includes timber production, recently called him and told him to abandon the resolution. This month logging advocates said that stopping the cull would jeopardize timber production goals set by the Trump administration.

But Kennedy was not persuaded.

“The secretary needed to call somebody who cared what he thought, because I think he’s wrong,” Kennedy said on the Senate floor. “I think he and the other members of the administrative state at the Department of the Interior decided to play God.”

Flanked by pictures of owls and bumbling cartoon hunter Elmer Fudd, Kennedy praised barred owls for their “soulful eyes” and “incredibly soft” feathers. But he acknowledged they’re better hunters than spotted owls. Barred owls, which moved over from eastern North America, are outcompeting spotted owls for food and shelter in their native territory.

Louisiana Senator John Kennedy spearheaded a resolution to overturn the Biden-era plan to cull barred owls, even after he said the Trump administration told him to back down.

(Senate Banking Committee)

Ultimately the resolution failed 72 to 25, with three lawmakers not voting. Nearly all those who voted in favor of the resolution were Republican, but even more Republicans voted against it. The Fish and Wildlife Service approved the barred owl cull last year under the Biden Administration.

“I feel a lot of relief because this was one of the most major threats to the long-term, continued existence of the northern spotted owl in many years,” said Tom Wheeler, executive director of the Environmental Protection Information Center. “We’ve passed this hurdle, which isn’t to say there aren’t other hurdles or road bumps up ahead, but this feels good.”

Wheeler described the failed effort as a “nuclear threat” — if the resolution had passed, the Fish and Wildlife Service would have been blocked from pursuing any similar rule, unless explicitly authorized by Congress.

Now Wheeler said he and his allies will continue to push for the owl cull to be carried out, and for federal funding to support it.

Animal welfare advocates like Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane Economy, are dismayed.

“What this means is that not only are barred owls at extreme risk of large-scale shooting, but spotted owls and old-growth forests are at risk from chainsaws,” Pacelle said of the failed resolution.

Pacelle’s camp vowed to continue the fight. A lawsuit challenging the hunt they filed against the federal government last fall is moving forward. And they’ll try to ensure money doesn’t flow to the program.

In May, federal officials canceled three related grants in California totaling more than $1.1 million, including one study that would have included lethally removing barred owls from more than 192,000 acres in Mendocino and Sonoma counties.

However, there are other projects to kill barred owls in the Golden State, according to Peter Tira, a spokesperson for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

One $4.3-million grant issued by the state agency will support barred owl removal in the northwestern part of the state, along with other research. Another grant issued by NASA to a university involves killing barred owls in California as well as creating a tool to prioritize areas where the raptors need to be managed.

It’s not clear how or if the government shutdown, now stretching into its 31st day, is affecting the projects, Tira said in an email.

Oct. 30 (UPI) — Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said that there is not sufficient evidence to claim that Tylenol causes autism a month after the White House discouraged pregnant women and young children from using the pain reliever.

Kennedy said that while evidence does not support the claim that Tylenol causes autism, he said it should still be used cautiously.

“The causative association … between Tylenol given in pregnancy and the perinatal period is not sufficient to say it definitely causes autism,” Kennedy told reporters. “But it is very suggestive.” Kennedy cited animal, blood clotting and observational studies as the reason for his concerns over Tylenol.

“There should be a cautious approach to it,” he continued.

Earlier this week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxon sued Kenvue, the maker of Tylenol, over health concerns. Acetaminophen, the active analgesic in Tylenol, has been widely marketed and sold for decades as an effective pain reliever and fever reducer.

Trump administration officials denied that Kennedy’s statement was a softening of his stance on Tylenol, and claimed it is consistent with his previous statements.

Kennedy said an August study found “interventions” that could be causing autism. A month later, he and President Donald Trump, neither of whom have any formal medical training, warned pregnant women against taking acetaminophen without citing any scientific evidence.

In April, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that in 2022, 1 in 13 children was diagnosed with autism by age 8, up from 1 in 36 in 2020, and a five fold increase since 2000.

The strange political bedfellows created by efforts to save spotted owls in the Pacific Northwest just got even stranger.

Already Republican members of Congress were allied with animal rights activists.
They don’t want trained shooters to kill up to 450,000 barred owls, which are outcompeting northern spotted owls, under a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plan approved last year that would unfold over three decades.

Now, timber interests are aligning with environmentalists in favor of culling the owls.

Some logging advocates are afraid nixing the plan will slow down timber harvesting. Roughly 2.6 million acres of timberlands in western Oregon managed by the Bureau of Land Management are governed by resource management plans contingent on the barred owl cull going forward, according to Travis Joseph, president and chief executive of the American Forest Resource Council, a trade association representing mills, loggers, lumber buyers and other stakeholders in the region.

The area can produce at least 278 million board feet per year under current plans, “with the potential for significantly more,” Joseph said in a mid-October letter to Congress.

If the cull is scrapped, he said, the federal agency likely will need to restart Endangered Species Act consultation for the northern spotted owl, which is listed as threatened. It’s a process that could take years. According to the letter, it would create “unacceptable risks and delays to current and future timber sales.”

Timber production goals laid out by the Trump administration also could be jeopardized.

Momentum to stop the cull gained ground this summer when Sen. John Kennedy, a conservative from Louisiana, introduced a resolution to reverse the Biden-era plan.
That move reflected an unlikely alliance between some right-wing politicians and animal rights advocates who say it’s too expensive and inhumane. Some Democrats have also opposed the cull, and companion legislation in the House has bipartisan backers.

The stakes are high. Many environmentalists and scientists maintain that northern spotted owls will go extinct if their competitors aren’t kept in check. Barred owls — which originally hail from eastern North America — are larger, more aggressive and less picky when it comes to habitat and food, giving them an edge when vying for resources.

Last week, Politico’s E&E News reported that Kennedy said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum asked him to stand down from his effort to stop the owl-killing plan. The legislator told the outlet he would charge ahead anyway.

“I don’t think the federal government ought to be telling God, nature — whatever you believe in — this one can exist, this one can’t,” Kennedy told E&E. “The barred owl is not the first species that has ever moved its territory and it won’t be the last.”

Kennedy did not respond to The Times’ request for comment. A spokesperson for the Department of the Interior said they could not respond to the inquiry because of the government shutdown.

“It’s strange that a Republican in the south is taking on the owl issue, specifically, when its consequences will impact western Oregon BLM timber sales,” Joseph said in an interview. “It will lead to lower revenues for counties, it will impact jobs and it will put the spotted owl on a trajectory towards extinction.”

The stance aligns in part with that of environmental groups like the Environmental Protection Information Center and Center for Biological Diversity, which have supported culling barred owls to help the beleaguered spotted owls in their native territory. It’s an unexpected overlap, given environmentalists’ long history of fighting to protect old-growth forests in the region the owls call home.

Tom Wheeler, chief executive of EPIC, said it’s possible that culling barred owls could lead to a bump in timber harvest on the BLM land in western Oregon but overall it would lead to more habitat being protected throughout the spotted owls’ expansive range. The presence of spotted owls triggers protections under the Endangered Species Act. If the cull boosts the spotted owl population as intended, it means more guardrails.

“It puts us in admittedly an awkward place,” Wheeler said. “But our advocacy for barred owl removal is predicated not on treating the northern spotted owl as a tool against the timber industry and against timber harvest. What we’re trying to do is provide for the continued existence of the species.”

Many Native American tribes support controlling barred owls in the region. In a letter to Congress last week, the nonprofit Intertribal Timber Council said barred owls threaten more than the spotted owl.

“As a generalist predator, it poses risks to a wide range of forest and aquatic species that hold varying degrees of social and ecological importance to tribes, including species integral to traditional food systems and watershed health,” wrote the council, which aims to improve the management of natural resources important to Native American communities.

Since 2013, the Hoopa Valley tribe in Northern California has been involved with sanctioned hunting of the owls and has observed the spotted owl population stabilizing over time, according to the letter.

However, groups like Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Human Economy argue that the plan to take out so many barred owls over a vast landscape won’t work, aside from the high owl death toll. More barred owls simply will fly into where others were removed, said Wayne Pacelle, president of both groups.

That makes habitat key — and the prospect of losing more to logging in western Oregon devastating, according to Pacelle.

To stop the owl-culling plan, both chambers of Congress would need to pass a joint resolution and President Trump would need to sign it. If successful, the resolution would preclude the agency from pursuing a similar rule, unless explicitly authorized by Congress.

The plan already faced setbacks. In May, federal officials canceled three related grants totaling more than $1.1 million, including one study that would have removed barred owls from over 192,000 acres in Mendocino and Sonoma counties

It’s not my habit to preface my columns with “trigger alerts,” so this is a first:

If talking about circumcision makes you cringe, feel free to move along.

If, on the other hand, you wish to understand what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was talking about during a White House meeting Oct. 9 when he tried to connect circumcision with autism, follow along with me.

The offhand reference to circumcision’s possible role in autism by Kennedy, Trump’s secretary of Health and Human Services, is part and parcel of Kennedy’s documented assault on science-based medicine.

His campaign encompasses attacks on COVID-19 vaccines, which have been shown over the years to have saved millions of people from death, hospitalization or long-term disability; his firing members of professional advisory boards at his agency and replacing them with anti-vaccine activists; his promotion of unproven “cures” for vaccine-preventable diseases; and his inaction in the face of a nationwide surge in cases of measles, a disease that was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000.

Let’s pause for a few words about the broader consequences of the erosion of our public health infrastructure. It not only exposes Americans to more disease and more serious disease, but has profound economic effects.

That’s true worldwide, but especially in the U.S., which spends much more per capita on healthcare than other developed countries, for lower results. Undermining the existing system for partisan ends won’t make the picture look any lovelier.

“The U.S. health disadvantage threatens the country’s global competitiveness and national security, as well as the hopes and prospects of future generations,” according to a 2021 paper from the Department of Health and Human Services, the agency that Kennedy now leads.

“U.S. employers depend on a healthy workforce to maximize productivity and minimize healthcare costs,” the paper stated. “Population health also affects the consumer market, whereby the demand for nonessential products and services suffers when families are struggling with illnesses and much of their disposable income is required for medical expenses.”

The chaos imposed on our public health system under the Trump administration only intensifies the damage.

On Friday, hundreds of employees at Kennedy’s agency, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, abruptly received layoff notices. Some were hastily informed that their firings were erroneous, but the experience rattled the CDC, an agency tasked with overseeing the national response to seasonal respiratory illnesses at a time when those illnesses typically spike.

“The damage is beyond repair,” Demetre Daskalakis, who resigned as director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, a unit of the National Institutes of Health, over conflicts with Kennedy, told CNN. “Crippling CDC, even as a ploy to create political pressure to end the government shutdown, means America is even less prepared for outbreaks and infectious disease security threats.”

That brings us back to Kennedy’s preoccupation with autism. He has claimed that the autism rate is on the rise due to “environmental toxins” such as childhood vaccinations and the use of Tylenol — or acetaminophen, its generic name — by mothers during pregnancy.

As I’ve reported, however, the roots of the increase in reported autism rates in recent decades are well understood: They have much to do with a broader definition of autism, which is widely described today as “autism spectrum disorder,” and with improved access to screening and diagnostic services by formerly overlooked groups such as Blacks, Hispanics and other nonwhite cohorts.

Kennedy’s comment about circumcision came during a White House Cabinet meeting. At first, he and Trump traded misconceptions they had previously aired about Tylenol use by pregnant women — Trump asserting that “obviously,” the rise in autism rates is “artificially induced” and adding, “I would say don’t take Tylenol if you’re pregnant, and … when the baby is born don’t give it Tylenol.”

That advice dismayed physicians, who say that fevers during pregnancy are a greater risk for the unborn and that acetaminophen is safer than alternative fever-reducing medicines.

Kennedy then injected circumcision into the discussion. “There’s two studies that show children who were circumcised early have double the rate of autism,” he said. “It’s highly likely because they were given Tylenol.”

Unsurprisingly, Kennedy’s remark got extensive play in the news media, prompting him to try walking it back via a tweet on X. Rather than accept responsibility for his confusing words, he responded with Bondi-esque truculence, writing: “As usual, the mainstream media attacks me for something I didn’t say in order to distract from the truth of what I did say.”

He even took arms against the Murdoch-owned New York Post, which posted its story with the headline, “RFK Jr. says Tylenol after circumcisions linked to autism,” and proceeded to debunk the claim.

In trying to clarify his point, however, Kennedy dug himself a deeper hole. According to his tweet, the two studies he was referring to at the cabinet meeting were a Danish study from 2015 and a non-peer-reviewed preprint posted online in August, which refers to the Danish paper. Kennedy mischaracterizes both.

Contrary to Kennedy’s implication, the Danish study did not address the use of acetaminophen (called “paracetamol” in the paper) in connection with circumcision. The reason, its authors wrote, was that “we had no data available on analgesics or possible local anesthetics used during ritual circumcisions in our cohort, so we were unable to address the paracetamol hypothesis directly.”

They did note, however, that the acetaminophen theory had only “limited empirical support.” In other words, evidence was lacking. Anyway, the Danish study was criticized — in the same journal that had published it — for its reliance on a very small sample of children.

As for the preprint, contrary to Kennedy’s description, it did not identify the Danish paper as offering “the most compelling ‘standalone’ evidence” for an autism-acetaminophen link. That language referred to three studies, one of which was the Danish paper. Of the other papers, one was based on later interviews with parents. The other was a study of the effects of acetaminophen on 10-day-old mice, not human children.

I asked Kennedy’s agency to clarify his claim and to explain the discrepancies between his words and the papers themselves, but received no reply.

To summarize, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top federal healthcare official, conjured up a connection between circumcision and autism via a relationship between circumcision and Tylenol that is unsupported by the research he cited. Indeed, the Danish paper describes the idea that boys undergoing circumcision invariably are given acetaminophen for pain as “a questionable assumption.”

In searching for empirical support for the acetaminophen theory, moreover, the Danish paper cited a 2010 paper funded by NIH that cautioned: “No evidence is presented here that acetaminophen in any way causes autism. … This hypothesis is largely based on multiple lines of often weak evidence.” Anyway, the paper was focused on a possible link between acetaminophen use and asthma, not autism.

Sadly, this sort of mischaracterization of research described as “a rigorous scientific framework” (RFK Jr.’s words) isn’t surprising coming from today’s Department of Health and Human Services. This is the agency, it may be recalled, that in May issued an “assessment” of the health of America’s children that cited at least seven sources that did not exist.

Nothing can stop unwary parents from relying on the judgment of Donald Trump or Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to make healthcare decisions for their infants and children. But they should be warned: They do so at their own and their offsprings’ risk.

BOSTON — Joan B. Kennedy, the former wife of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy who endured a long and troubled marriage marked by family tragedies, her husband’s infidelities and her own struggles with alcoholism and mental health, died on Wednesday. She was 89.

The former Joan Bennett was a model and classically-trained pianist when she married Ted Kennedy in 1958. Their lives would change unimaginably over the next decade and a half. Brother-in-law John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960 and assassinated three years later. Brother-in-law Robert F. Kennedy served as attorney general under JFK, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1964 and assassinated while seeking the presidency.

Her husband was elected to the U.S. Senate and became among the country’s most respected legislators despite initial misgivings that he was capitalizing on his family connections. But Ted Kennedy also lived through scandals of his own making. In 1969, the car he was driving plunged off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, killing his young female passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne.

Kennedy, who swam to safety and waited hours before alerting police, later pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident. Chappaquiddick shadowed him for the rest of his life, weighing against his own chances for the presidency.

Joan Kennedy had three children with her husband, but also had miscarriages, including one shortly after the Chappaquiddick accident. She stood by her husband through the scandal, but their estrangement was nearly impossible to hide by the time of his unsuccessful effort to defeat President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 Democratic primaries. They had been separated by then, and would later divorce. One bumper sticker from the campaign read “Vote for Jimmy Carter, Free Joan Kennedy.”

Her love of piano would be a trademark for much of her life. She was known for opening her husband’s campaign rallies with a piano serenade and, after they divorced, touring with orchestras around the world. Her family said she would combine her masterful playing with a message about the transformational potential of the arts and the need for equitable arts education.

In a 1992 Associated Press interview, she recalled playing piano for brother-in-law Bobby when he ran for president in 1968. “He took me with him and encouraged me,” she said. “He had a theme, ‘This Land Is Your Land,’ the Woody Guthrie song. I’d play that on the piano and everybody would come in, feeling really great about everything.”

“It seems like a long time ago, but it’s part of my memories,” she said softly.

In a statement, former Rep. Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island praised his mother for her courage and talent.

“Besides being a loving mother, talented musician, and instrumental partner to my father as he launched his successful political career, Mom was a power of example to millions of people with mental health conditions,” his statement said. “She will be missed not just by the entire Kennedy Family, but by the arts community in the City of Boston and the many people whose lives that she touched.”

She also became one of the first women to publicly acknowledge her struggles with alcoholism and depression.

“I will always admire my mother for the way that she faced up to her challenges with grace, courage, humility, and honesty,” Ted Kennedy Jr. said in a statement. “She taught me how to be more truthful with myself and how careful listening is a more powerful communication skill than public speaking.”

Casey writes for the Associated Press.

This week, the Trump administration announced that it was taking “bold action” to address the “epidemic” of autism spectrum disorder — starting with a new safety label on Tylenol and other acetaminophen products that suggests a link to autism. The scientific evidence for doing so is weak, researchers said.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said federal officials “will be uncompromising and relentless in our search for answers” and that they soon would be “closely examining” the role of vaccines, whose alleged link to autism has been widely discredited.

Kennedy has long argued that rising diagnoses among U.S. children must mean more exposure to some outside influence: a drug, a chemical, a toxin, a vaccine.

“One of the things that I think that we need to move away from today is this ideology that … the autism prevalence increase, the relentless increases, are simply artifacts of better diagnoses, better recognition or changing diagnostic criteria,” Kennedy said in April.

Kennedy is correct that autism spectrum disorder rates have risen steadily in the U.S. since the U.S. Centers for Disease Control began tracking them, from 1 in 150 8-year-olds in 2000, to 1 in 31 in 2022, the most recent year for which numbers are available.

But physicians, researchers and psychologists say it is impossible to interpret this increase without acknowledging two essential facts: The diagnostic definition of autism has greatly expanded to include a much broader range of human behaviors, and we look for it more often than we used to.

“People haven’t changed that much,” said Alan Gerber, a pediatric neuropsychologist at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., “but how we talk about them, how we describe them, how we categorize them has actually changed a lot over the years.”

Defining ‘autism’

The term “autism” first appeared in the scientific literature around World War II, when two psychiatrists in different countries independently chose that word to describe two different groups of children.

In 1938, Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger used it to describe child patients at his Vienna clinic who were verbal, often fluently so, with unusual social behaviors and at-times obsessive focus on very specific subjects.

Five years later, U.S. psychiatrist Leo Kanner published a paper about a group of children at his clinic at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore who were socially withdrawn, rigid in their thinking and extremely sensitive to stimuli like bright lights or loud noises. Most also had limited verbal language ability.

Both Asperger and Kanner chose the same word to describe these overlapping behaviors: autism. (They borrowed the term from an earlier psychiatrist’s description of extreme social withdrawal in schizophrenic patients.)

This doesn’t mean children never acted this way before. It was just the first time doctors started using that word to describe a particular set of child behaviors.

For the next few decades, many children who exhibited what we understand today to be autistic traits were labeled as having conditions that have ceased to exist as formal diagnoses, like “mental retardation,” “childhood psychosis” or “schizophrenia, childhood type.”

Autism debuted as its own diagnosis in the 1980 third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the American Psychiatric Assn.’s diagnostic bible. It described an autistic child as one who, by the age of 2½, showed impaired communication, unusual responses to their environment and a lack of interest in other people.

As the decades went on, the DSM definition of autism broadened.

The fourth edition, published in 1994, named additional behaviors: impaired relationships, struggles with nonverbal communication and speech patterns different from those of non-autistic, or neurotypical, peers.

It also included a typo that would turn out to be a crucial driver of diagnoses, wrote cultural anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker in his book “Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism.”

The DSM’s printed definition of autism included any child who displayed impairments in social interaction, communication “or” behavior. It was supposed to say social interaction, communication “and” behavior.

The error went uncorrected for six years, and the impact appeared profound. In 1995 an estimated 1 in every 500 children was diagnosed with autism. By 2000, when the CDC formally began tracking diagnoses (and the text was corrected), it was 1 in every 150.

Reaching underserved communities

In 2007, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended for the first time that all children be screened for autism between the ages of 18 and 24 months as part of their regular checkups. Prior to that, autism was diagnosed somewhat haphazardly. Not all pediatricians were familiar with the earliest indicators or used the same criteria to determine whether a child should be further evaluated.

Then in 2013, the fifth edition of the DSM took what had previously been four separate conditions — autistic disorder, Asperger’s disorder, childhood disintegrative disorder and pervasive developmental disorder — and collapsed them all into a single diagnosis: autism spectrum disorder.

The diagnostic criteria for ASD included a broad range of social, communication and sensory interpretation differences that, crucially, could be identified at any time in a child’s life. The term was no longer limited only to children whose development lagged noticeably behind that of their peers.

Since that definition was adopted, U.S. schools have become more proactive about referring a greater range of children for neurodevelopmental evaluations. The new DSM language also helped educators and clinicians better understand what was keeping some kids in disadvantaged communities from thriving.

“In the past, [autism was] referred to as a ‘white child’s disability,’ because you found so few Black and brown children being identified,” said Shanter Alexander, an assistant professor of school psychology at Howard University. Children of color who struggled with things like behavioral disruptions, attention deficits or language delays, she said, were often diagnosed with intellectual disabilities or behavioral disorders.

In a sign that things have shifted, the most recent CDC survey for the first time found a higher prevalence of autism in kids of color than in white children: 3.66%, 3.82% and 3.30% for Black, Asian and Latino children, respectively, compared with 2.77% of white children.

“A lot of people think, ‘Oh, no, what does this mean? This is terrible.’ But it’s actually really positive. It means that we have been better at diagnosing Latino children [and] other groups too,” said Kristina Lopez, an associate professor at Arizona State University who studies autism in underserved communities.

The severity issue

An autism diagnosis today can apply to people who are able to graduate from college, hold professional positions and speak eloquently about their autism, as well as people who require 24-hour care and are not able to speak at all.

It includes people who were diagnosed when they were toddlers developing at a noticeably different pace from their peers, and people who embraced a diagnosis of autism in adulthood as the best description of how they relate to the world. Diagnoses for U.S. adults ages 26 to 34 alone increased by 450% between 2011 and 2022, according to one large study published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.

Kennedy was not correct when he said in April that “most cases now are severe.”

A 2016 review of CDC data found that approximately 26.7% of 8-year-olds with autism had what some advocates refer to as “profound autism,” the end of the spectrum that often includes seriously disabling behaviors such as seizures, self-injurious behavior and intellectual disability.

The rate of children with profound autism has remained virtually unchanged since the CDC started tracking it, said Maureen Durkin, a professor of population health science and pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Indeed, the highest rate of new diagnoses has been among children with mild limitations, she said.

For many researchers and advocates, the Trump administration’s focus on autism has provoked mixed emotions. Many have lobbied for years for more attention for this condition and the people whose lives it affects.

Now it has arrived, thanks to an administration that has played up false information while cutting support for science.

“They have attempted to panic the public with the notion of an autism epidemic as a threat to the nation, when no such epidemic actually exists — rather, more people are being diagnosed with autism today because we have broader diagnostic criteria and do a better job detecting it,” said Colin Killick, executive director of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. “It is high time that this administration stops spreading misinformation about autism, and starts enacting policies that would actually benefit our community.”

This article was reported with the support of the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s National Fellowship’s Kristy Hammam Fund for Health Journalism.

President Trump blamed the over-the-counter drug acetaminophen, commonly known by the brand name Tylenol, as a significant factor in the rise of U.S. autism diagnoses on Monday, at a news conference in which he offered often inaccurate medical advice for the nation’s children and pregnant women.

“Taking Tylenol is not good. I’ll say it. It’s not good,” Trump said, flanked by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz.

In a series of rambling, error-filled remarks that touched upon pain relievers, pregnancy, vaccines and the Amish — who he inaccurately said have no autism prevalence in their communities — Trump also said that the mumps, measles and rubella vaccine should be broken up into multiple shots and that children defer until age 12 the hepatitis B vaccine series now started at birth.

• Share via Close extra sharing options

“I’m just making these statements from me, I’m not making them from these doctors,” he said. “It’s too much liquid. Too many different things are going into that baby.”

The announcement was met with dismay from autism researchers and advocates who said that research thus far into causal links between acetaminophen and autism has turned up minimal evidence.

“Researchers have been studying the possible connections between acetaminophen and autism for more than a decade,” said Dr. David Mandell, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. The Trump administration, he said, “has cherry-picked findings that are not in line with most of the research.”

Physicians and researchers also took issue with Trump’s insistence that there was “no downside” to women avoiding fever-reducing drugs in pregnancy. In fact, studies show that untreated fever in pregnancy is associated with higher risk of heart and facial birth defects, miscarriage and neurodevelopmental disorders — including autism.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will initiate a safety-label update for Tylenol and other acetaminophen products and send a letter to physicians about potential links between the drug’s use and autism, Kennedy said.

The actual text of the letter is much milder than Trump’s impassioned critique.

“In the spirit of patient safety and prudent medicine, clinicians should consider minimizing the use of acetaminophen during pregnancy for routine low-grade fevers. This consideration should also be balanced with the fact that acetaminophen is the safest over-the-counter alternative in pregnancy among all analgesics and antipyretics,” states the letter, signed by FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary.

Monday’s announcement followed weeks of speculation that Kennedy planned to publicly link Tylenol usage to autism, which prompted multiple medical associations to release statements clarifying that any evidence of a causal relationship between the two is limited, and that the drug is safe to take during pregnancy with medical advice.

“All of us in the advocacy community, and all of us who have children with autism, had very high hopes that RFK and the President were serious when they said they wanted to find the causes of autism,” said Alison Singer, co-founder and president of the Autism Science Foundation. “The problem is that so far, what we’ve heard has not been gold-standard science.”

The administration also said it would fast-track the labeling of leucovorin, a generic drug currently used to reduce side effects of chemotherapy, as a treatment for autism-related speech deficits. Also known as folinic acid, leucovorin is a form of the B vitamin folate. Research into its effect on autistic children is still in its early stages, researchers said. The few studies that have been published had small sample sizes and found only minimal improvements in symptoms of concern, Mandell said.

“I want to see a large, rigorous, independent trial. In the absence of that, to tout this as a cure is reckless,” he said. “Families deserve better.”

Autism spectrum disorder is a complex neurological and developmental condition. Symptoms cluster around difficulties in communication, social interaction and sensory processing, and the condition can manifest in many different ways based on co-occurring disabilities and other factors.

Diagnoses in the U.S. have risen steadily since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began tracking data in 2000, thanks in large part to a broadening definition of the disorder and increased efforts to identify children with ASD.

Today one in 31 U.S. 8-year-olds has been identified as having autism spectrum disorder, according to the most recent CDC data, up from one in 150 in 2000.

Kennedy has long asserted that’s due to an external environmental cause, often using inaccurate statements to describe both the condition and the research around it.

• Share via Close extra sharing options

Most experts believe genetic links and changing diagnostic criteria play a significant role in the trend. In April, Kennedy dismissed such research and arguments as “epidemic denial.” He said he was certain an external factor was to blame.

“We know it’s an environmental exposure. It has to be,” Kennedy said. “Genes do not cause epidemics.” He said at the time that the administration would find an environmental cause by September.

Research into causal links between acetaminophen and autism have not found strong evidence.

Last year, a team of researchers from the U.S. and Europe reviewed records of 2.5 million babies born in Sweden between 1995 and 2019. At first glance, it did seem like children exposed to acetaminophen in the womb were 5% to 7% more likely to be diagnosed with autism than those who weren’t. But when the researchers compared those children to their siblings, they found that kids from the same parents were equally likely to be diagnosed with autism, whether their mother took acetaminophen during pregnancy or not.

“If you actually do an apples to apples comparison, you see absolutely zero effect. The association flatlines. In other words, there’s no real risk that’s attributable to acetaminophen,” said Brian K. Lee, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Drexel University who was on the study team. “A large elephant in the room is being ignored, and that’s genetics.” Hundreds of studies over the years have explored the complex genetics of autism, with both inherited and spontaneous genes contributing to the condition.

The paper also noted that women who took acetaminophen while pregnant were, unsurprisingly, more likely to suffer from the kinds of ailments for which the medication is indicated, like fevers or chronic pain.

They were also more likely to have diagnoses of autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders, to have pre-existing mental health conditions or to be taking other prescribed medications, the team found. Their results were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“People don’t take acetaminophen for fun. They are taking it for a health condition,” Lee said.

He compared the correlation between Tylenol exposure and autism to the correlation between ice cream sales and drownings. Both of those things tend to increase at the same time each year, he said, not because ice cream is deadly but because both rise during hot summer months. In other words, the underlying health causes that women are taking acetaminophen to treat could be more likely linked to autism than the pain reliever itself.

“This is just such a shame when there are so many things we could do to help autistic children and adults, and the negative consequences — making parents feel guilty about taking Tylenol during pregnancy and newly pregnant women afraid — are real,” said Catherine Lord, a clinical psychologist and autism researcher at UCLA. “Just sad all around.”

These are dark times, the average cynic might argue.

But do not despair.

If you focus on the positive, rather than the negative, you’ll have to agree that the United States of America is on top and still climbing.

Yes, protesters gathered Thursday outside “Jimmy Kimmel Live” in Hollywood to denounce ABC’s suspension of the host and President Trump’s threat to revoke licenses from networks that criticize him, despite repeated vows by Trump and top deputies to defend free speech.

You can call it hypocrisy.

I call it moxie.

And by the way, demonstrators were not arrested or deported, and the National Guard was not summoned (as far as I know).

Do you see what I mean? Just tilt your head back a bit, and you can see sunshine breaking through the clouds.

Let’s take the president’s complaint that he read “someplace” that the networks “were 97% against me.” Some might see weakness in that, or thin skin. Others might wonder where the “someplace” was that the president discovered his TV news favorability rating stands at 3%, given that he could get caught drowning puppies and cheating at golf and still get fawning coverage from at least one major network.

But Trump had good reason to be grumpy. He was returning from a news conference in London, where he confused Albania and Armenia and fumbled the pronunciation of Azerbaijan, which sounded a bit more like Abracadabra.

It’s not his fault all those countries all start with an A. And isn’t there a geography lesson in it for all of us, if not a history lesson?

We move on now to American healthcare, and the many promising developments under way in the nation’s capital, thanks to Trump’s inspired choice of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as chief of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Those who see the glass half empty would argue that Kennedy has turned the department into a morgue, attempting to kill COVID-19 vaccine research, espousing backwater views about measles, firing public health experts, demoralizing the remaining staff and rejecting decades worth of biomedical advances despite having no medical training or expertise.

But on the plus side, Kennedy is going after food dyes.

It’s about time, and thank you very much.

I’m not sure what else will be left in a box of Trix or Lucky Charms when food coloring is removed, but I am opposed to fake food coloring, unless it’s in a cocktail, and I’d like to think most Americans are with me on this.

Also on the bright side: Kennedy is encouraging Americans to do chin-ups and pushups for better health.

Are you going to sit on the radical left side of your sofa and gripe about what’s happened to your country, or get with the program and try to do a few pushups?

OK, so Trump’s efforts to shut down the war on cancer is a little scary. As the New York Times reported, on the chopping block is development of a new technique for colorectal cancer prevention, research into immunotherapy cancer prevention, a study on improving childhood cancer survival rates, and better analysis of pre-malignant breast tissue in high-risk women.

But that could all be fake news, or 97% of it, at least. And if it’s not?

All that research and all those doctors and scientists can apply for jobs in other countries, just like all the climate scientists whose work is no longer a national priority. The more who leave, the better, because the brain drain is going to free up a lot of real estate and help solve the housing crisis.

Thank you, President Trump.

Is it any wonder that Trump has been seen recently wearing a MAGA-red hat that says “TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING!”

Well, mostly everything.

Climate change appears to be real.

The war in Ukraine didn’t end as promised.

The war in the Middle East is still raging.

Grocery prices did not go down on day one, and some goods cost more because of tariffs.

As for the promise of a new age of American prosperity, there’s no rainbow in sight yet, although there is a pot of gold in the White House, with estimates of billions in profits for Trump family businesses since he took office,

But for all of that, along with an approval rating that has dropped since he took office in January, Trump exudes confidence. So much so that he proudly wears that bright red hat, which he was giving out in the Oval office, and which retails for $25.

It’s another ingenious economic stimulation plan.

And there’s an important lesson here for all of us.

Never admit defeat, and when things don’t go your way, stand tall, adjust your hat, and find someone to blame.

We should all have our own hats made.

Doctors could wear hats saying they’ve never gotten a diagnosis wrong.

Dentists could wear hats saying they’ve never pulled the wrong tooth.

TV meteorologists could wear hats saying — well, maybe not — that they’ve gotten every forecast right.

I’m having hats made as you read this.

LOPEZ IS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING!

Please don’t have me fired, Mr. President, if you disagree.

As for Jimmy Kimmel, I’m offering this idea free of charge:

If you ever get your job back, you, your sidekick Guillermo, and the entire studio audience should be wearing hats.

KIMMEL WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING!

[email protected]

WASHINGTON — America’s public health system is headed to a “very dangerous place” with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his team of anti-vaccine advisors in charge, fired Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chief Susan Monarez warned senators on Wednesday.

Describing extraordinary turmoil inside the nation’s health agencies, Monarez and former CDC Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry described exchanges in which Kennedy or political advisors rebuffed data supporting the safety and efficacy of vaccines.

Monarez, who was fired after just 29 days on the job following disagreements with Kennedy, told senators deadly diseases like polio and whooping cough, long contained, are poised to make a comeback in the U.S.

“I believe preventable diseases will return, and I believe we will have our children harmed by things they don’t need to be harmed by,” Monarez said before the Senate health committee.

Monarez describes her firing by RFK Jr.

Monarez said she was ordered by Kennedy to resign if she did not sign off on new vaccine recommendations, which are expected to be released later this week by an advisory panel that Kennedy has stocked with medical experts and vaccine skeptics. She said that when she asked for data or science to back up Kennedy’s request to change the childhood vaccination schedule, he offered none.

She added that Kennedy told her “he spoke to the president every day about changing the childhood vaccination schedule.”

Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a physician who chairs the powerful health committee, listened intently as Monarez and Houry described conversations with Kennedy and his advisers.

“To be clear, he said there was not science or data, but he still expected you to change schedule?” Cassidy asked.

Cassidy carefully praised President Trump for his commitment to promoting health policies but made it clear he was concerned about the circumstances surrounding Monarez’s removal.

Houry, meanwhile, described similar exchanges with Kennedy’s political advisors, who took an unprecedented role in preparing materials for meetings of the CDC’s advisory vaccine panel.

Ahead of this week’s meeting of the panel, Houry offered to include data around the hepatitis B shot that is administered to newborns to prevent spread of the deadly disease from the mother. She said a Kennedy advisor dismissed the data as biased because it might support keeping the shots on the schedule.

“You’re suggesting that they wanted to move away from the birth dose, but they were afraid that your data would say that they should retain it?” Cassidy asked.

Critical vaccine decisions are ahead

During the Senate hearing, Democrats, all of whom opposed Monarez’s nomination, also questioned Kennedy’s motives for firing Monarez, who was approved for the job unanimously by Republicans.

“Frankly, she stood up for protecting the well-being of the American people, and for that reason she was fired,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who caucuses with Democrats.

Monarez said it was both her refusal to sign off on new vaccination recommendations without scientific evidence and her unwillingness to fire high-ranking career CDC officials without cause that led to her ousting.

Kennedy has denied Monarez’s accusations that he ordered “rubber-stamped” vaccine recommendations but has acknowledged he demanded firings. He has described Monarez as admitting to him that she is “untrustworthy,” a claim Monarez has denied through her attorney.

While Senate Republicans have been mostly loath to challenge Trump or even Kennedy, many of them have expressed concerns about the lack of availability of COVID-19 vaccines and the health department’s decisions to scale back some childhood vaccines.

Others have backed up Kennedy’s distrust of the nation’s health agencies.

Kansas Republican Sen. Roger Marshall, a doctor, aggressively questioned Monarez about her “philosophy” on vaccines as she explained that her decisions were based on science. Alabama GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville said Trump was elected to make change and suggested Monarez’s job was to be loyal to Kennedy.

“America needs better than this,” Tuberville said.

The Senate hearing was taking place just a day before the vaccine panel starts its two-day session in Atlanta to discuss shots against COVID-19, hepatitis B and chickenpox. It’s unclear how the panel might vote on the recommendations, though members have raised doubts about whether hepatitis B shots administered to newborns are necessary and have suggested COVID-19 recommendations should be more restricted.

The CDC director must endorse those recommendations before they become official. Health and Human Services Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill, now serving as the CDC’s acting director, will be responsible for that.

“I’m very nervous about it,” Monarez said of the meeting.

Seitz and Jalonick write for the Associated Press. AP writers Mike Stobbe in New York and Lauran Neergaard in Washington contributed to this report.

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law giving California the power to set its own immunization schedules based on state health experts and independent medical groups — a sharp break from decades of reliance on guidance from the federal government.

The move came the same day that California and its West Coast allies issued joint recommendations for COVID-19, flu and RSV vaccines, part of a regional alliance formed to counter what they say is a politicized U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

“Our states are united in putting science, safety, and transparency first — and in protecting families with clear, credible vaccine guidance,” said the governors of California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii, which make up the West Coast Health Alliance.

The flurry of vaccine actions came as lawmakers and the University of California proposed a $23-billion ballot measure to replace federal research dollars lost to Trump-era cuts, underscoring efforts by Democrats in the state to shield science and public health from shifting federal policies. The measure, if passed by the California Legislature when lawmakers return in January, would go before voters in November 2026.

“The loss of critical federal funding awarded to the University of California presents an unprecedented and perilous moment for the state and its communities,” Theresa Maldonado, UC vice president for research and innovation, said in a statement.

The healthcare clash comes following a wave of COVID cases and as the annual flu season nears. For decades, the CDC has been the nation’s trusted authority on vaccines — setting childhood immunization schedules, guiding which shots adults should receive and shaping state health policies across the country.

Now, at the direction of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a Trump ally, the CDC fired top leadership, lost senior scientific advisors and remade its vaccine advisory committee with members who the Associated Press found spread misinformation and conspiracy theories about immunizations.

Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic, has defended the shakeup as necessary to create trust and “eliminate politics from science.”

“They deserve the truth and that’s what we’re going to give them for the first time in the history of the agency,” Kennedy told the Senate Finance Committee earlier this month during a contentious hearing.

The overhaul triggered a fierce backlash as more than 1,000 employees at the health agency and national health organizations have called on Kennedy to resign. Some states, however, have embraced the approach — Florida announced plans to become the first state to end all vaccines mandated, including for schoolchildren.

The polarization is taking a toll. A recent KFF poll found Americans are increasingly uncertain about public health guidance and whether new recommendations from the administration will make them more or less safe.

Public health experts say that not only are vaccines crucial for the health of individuals and the community but they also ultimately save money — preventing sickness and the rise in healthcare costs that would accompany widespread disease outbreaks.

The changes in federal vaccine recommendations have been sweeping. The Food and Drug Administration, which falls under Kennedy’s purview, now requires adults 65 and younger and otherwise healthy — who report no underlying health issues — to consult with a healthcare provider before getting the COVID vaccine. Similarly, the CDC requires parents of healthy children to talk to a healthcare provider before their child can receive the COVID vaccine, a barrier the American Academy of Pediatrics called “deeply troubling.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics issued its own COVID vaccine guidance, countering what the CDC recommended, that says all young children 6 months to 23 months should be vaccinated, as well as certain high-risk older children. The group has also said that older children should be offered the vaccine if their parents request it.

The CDC also changed its vaccine schedule from recommending the COVID vaccine to all pregnant women to offering “no guidance” as to whether healthy pregnant women should get the vaccine. In response, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommended that people receive the updated COVID-19 vaccine at any point during their pregnancy.

California said it too will reject CDC guidance, starting with the recommendations released Wednesday from the West Coast Health Alliance. Those recommendations were developed by health officers and subject matter experts from each state, who considered guidelines from medical organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Academy of Family Physicians.

The COVID-19 vaccine recommendations from the West Coast Health Alliance include vaccinating all children 6 months to 23 months and those 2 years old to 64 years old with risk factors. The alliance also recommended all pregnant and postpartum women or those planning to become pregnant to be vaccinated.

The alliance recommended children 6 months and older and all adults and pregnant women to receive the flu shot. For the RSV vaccine, the alliance recommends it for children younger than 8 months, as well as anyone 75 years or older. The alliance recommends the RSV vaccine for all other ages if a person has risk factors.

“We want the people who live and work in our states to know that there is a strong public health, healthcare and scientific community that will continue to stand together to provide and use the data and evidence needed for you to make healthy choices, and we are here to protect our communities,” said Dr. Erica Pan, director of the California Department of Public Health, in a statement.

Rose Lavelle scored her first goal of the season and Gotham FC defeated Angel City 3-1 on Sunday.

Kennedy Fuller put Angel City in front 1-0 less than two minutes into the match. The Angel City midfielder stuck the ball on the edge of the box on the half-volley.

Gotham coach Juan Carlos Amoros made two significant substitutions at the break: Midge Purce replaced Josephine Hasbo and Lavelle came on for Sarah Schupansky.

Gabi Portilho scored the equalizer in the 47th minute. The Brazilian tucked away a short pass from Purce. Then, Lavelle made it 2-1 by pouncing on a goalkeeping mistake in the 51st minute.

Jaelin Howell capped the scoring in the 68th minute.

Gotham (7-6-6) moved up to sixth place in the NWSL standings, and opened a four-point gap ahead of 10th place Angel City (6-8-5).

WASHINGTON — Members of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s family are calling for him to step down as Health secretary following a contentious congressional hearing this past week, during which the Trump Cabinet official faced bipartisan questioning about his tumultuous leadership of federal health agencies.

Kennedy’s sister, Kerry Kennedy, and his nephew, Joseph P. Kennedy III, issued scathing statements Friday, calling for him to resign as head of the Health and Human Services Department.

The calls from the prominent Democratic family came a day after Kennedy defended his recent efforts to roll back COVID-19 vaccine recommendations and fire high-level officials at the Centers for Disease Control during a three-hour Senate hearing.

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a threat to the health and wellbeing of every American,” Joseph P. Kennedy III said in a post on X. The former congressman added: “None of us will be spared the pain he is inflicting.” His aunt echoed those claims, saying that “medical decisions belong in the hands of trained and licensed professionals, not incompetent and misguided leadership.”

This is not the first time Kennedy has been the subject of his family’s ire. Several of his relatives had objected to his presidential run in the last campaign, while others wrote to senators earlier this year calling for them to reject his nomination to be President Trump’s Health secretary given his anti-vaccine views they considered disqualifying.

Kennedy, a longtime leader in the anti-vaccine movement, has spent the last seven months implementing his once-niche, grassroots movement at the highest level of America’s public health system. The sweeping changes to the agencies tasked with public health policy and scientific research have resulted in thousands of layoffs and the remaking of vaccine guidelines.

The moves — some of which contradict assurances he made during his confirmation hearings — have rattled medical groups and officials in several Democratic-led states, which have responded with their own vaccine advice.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary and a longtime vaccine skeptic, struck a defiant tone Thursday as he faced bipartisan criticism over changes he has made to reorganize federal health agencies and vaccine policies, telling senators that he is determined to “eliminate politics from science.”

In the testy appearance before the Senate Finance Committee, Kennedy repeatedly defended his record in heated exchanges with senators from both parties and questioned data that show the effectiveness of vaccines. In turn, senators accused him of taking actions that contradict his promise seven months earlier that he would do “nothing that makes it difficult or discourages people from taking vaccines.”

“Secretary Kennedy, in your confirmation hearing you promised to uphold the highest standard for vaccines. Since then, I’ve grown deeply concerned,” Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, a top-ranking Senate Republican and a physician, said during the hearing.

Kennedy forcefully denied that he has limited access to vaccines and defended his record in restoring trust in federal healthcare agencies under the umbrella of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“They deserve the truth and that’s what we’re going to give them for the first time in the history of the agency,” Kennedy told senators.

From the outset, it was expected that Democrats would slam Kennedy’s record. Some of them called on him to resign and accused him of politicizing federal health policy decisions. But three other Republicans, including Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who was key in advancing Kennedy’s nomination, joined Democrats in criticizing Kennedy’s actions, mostly pertaining to vaccine policy changes.

Thursday’s session marked a peak of bipartisan frustration over a string of controversial decisions by Kennedy that have thrown his department into disarray. Kennedy dismissed an entire advisory panel responsible for vaccine recommendations and replaced its members with known vaccine skeptics. He withdrew $500 million in funding earmarked for developing vaccines against respiratory viruses. And, just last week, he ousted the newly appointed director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention following disagreements over vaccine policy.

In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, Susan Monarez, the former CDC director, wrote that she was forced out after she declined to recommend people “who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric” to an influential vaccine advisory panel.

At the hearing, Kennedy said Monarez was lying. Instead, he said he fired her because he asked her if she was trustworthy, and she told him, “no.”

He added that he fired all the members of the vaccine panel because it was “plagued with persistent conflicts of interest.”

“We depoliticized it and put great scientists on it from a very diverse group, very, very pro-vaccine,” he claimed.

In questioning, however, members of his own party questioned his support for vaccines. At one point, Cassidy, a physician, read an email from a physician friend who said patients 65 and older need a prescription to get a COVID-19 shot.

“I would say effectively we are denying people vaccines,” Cassidy said.

“You’re wrong,” Kennedy responded.

In that same exchange, Cassidy asked Kennedy if he believed President Trump deserved a Nobel Prize for his administration’s work on Operation Warp Speed, the initiative that sped the development of the COVID-19 vaccine and treatments.

“Absolutely,” Kennedy said.

Cassidy said he was surprised at his answer because he believes Kennedy is trying to restrict access to the COVID-19 vaccine. He also expressed dismay at Kennedy’s decision to cancel $500 million in contracts to develop vaccines using mRNA technology, which Cassidy said was key to the operation.

Kennedy’s position on vaccines have reverberated beyond Capitol Hill.

Ahead of the hearing, more than 1,000 employees at the health agency and national health organizations called on Kennedy to resign. Seemingly in support of Kennedy’s direction, Florida announced plans to become the first state to end all vaccines mandated, including for schoolchildren. And three Democratic-led states — California, Washington and Oregon — have created an alliance to counter turmoil within the federal public health agency.

The states said the focus of their health alliance will be on ensuring the public has access to credible information about the safety and efficacy of vaccines.

Almost as if in a parallel universe, Kennedy told senators on Thursday that his goal was to achieve the same thing, after facing hours of criticism on his vaccine policies.

“I am not going to sign on to something if I can’t make it with scientific certainty,” he said. “It doesn’t mean I am antivax, it just means I am pro-science.”

This is the story of two Republican doctor-senators named Bill.

One of them, as majority leader from 2003 to 2007, helped a self-described “compassionate conservative” Republican president pass a Medicare prescription drug plan and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), “the largest commitment by any nation to address a single disease in history.”

The other, as a member of the Senate Finance Committee, voted to send Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination as secretary of Health and Human Services to the Senate floor. It was a 14-13 vote, so his was a crucial “aye” that allowed a conspiracy theorist, disinformation spreader and anti-vaxxer to become the top public health official in America. He already has defunded world-changing mRNA vaccine research, imposed major restrictions on access to COVID vaccines amid a surging variant of the virus and triggered a crisis at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The firewall between science and ideology is completely broken down,” Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, former director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” He was part of the shocking CDC leadership exodus last week after the Trump administration forced out CDC Director Susan Monarez.

The trajectory from heart and lung transplant surgeon Bill Frist of Tennessee to gastroenterologist Bill Cassidy of Louisiana is emblematic of the dark Republican Party journey on science and health — from the Bush family to the Trump family, from American greatness to self-defeating denialism on everything from vaccines to cancer research.

There are four doctors in the Senate: Cassidy, orthopedic surgeon John Barrasso of Wyoming, obstetrician-gynecologist Roger Marshall of Kansas and ophthalmologist Rand Paul of Kentucky. All are Republicans and all voted in February to confirm Kennedy.

Eleven of the 17 medical doctors in the House are Republicans, and all of them voted for the nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts in the vast tax-and-spending law that Trump signed on July 4. So did the four dentists in the House, all of them Republicans. The American Dental Assn. endorsed three of them. The fourth is Arizona’s Paul Gosar, a top competitor with Kennedy in the medical disinformation space whose siblings have made ads urging voters to reject him.

Frist was the only doctor in the Senate when he served. After leaving the Senate in early 2007, he joined the Bipartisan Policy Center, where he is a senior fellow and co-chair of its Health Project. He has been on the board of directors of the Nature Conservancy since 2015, and was elected to a three-year term as global board chair in 2022.

Frist has sharply criticized the Medicaid cuts passed into law this year, saying they threaten rural hospitals and public health. Last spring, accepting a 2025 Earth Award from Time Magazine, he said climate health is crucial to human health, and he urged a personal approach to raise American awareness. He often describes his environmental and health missions as inseparable. “Planetary health is human health. Let’s lead with science, unity, and urgency,” he posted on X on Earth Day.

Good luck with that, at least in the short term. The same new law that cuts Medicaid also cuts funds for renewable energy projects and incentives, with conservationists predicting more pollution, fewer jobs and higher energy costs as a result. Only three Republican senators bucked the party tide on that bill, and Paul was the only doctor among them. His breaking point was a provision raising the U.S. debt limit to $5 trillion — not Medicaid or clean energy cuts affecting health.

Cassidy, of course, voted for it. And when Monarez found herself in Kennedy’s crosshairs over vaccines, Cassidy privately intervened for her, which backfired. Now, having failed to spare America this nightmare when he could have, the senator is threatening “oversight” by the health committee he chairs and trying to get a Sept. 18 meeting of unqualified Kennedy-appointed vaccine “advisors” postponed.

This is thin gruel, especially from a doctor once committed to public health and science writ large. Cassidy co-founded a clinic that gave free dental and medical care to the working uninsured, his website says, and created a public-private partnership that vaccinated 36,000 children for hepatitis at no cost to their families. During the Biden presidency, he voted for bipartisan gun safety and infrastructure bills and the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act to bolster the U.S. semiconductor industry. He was also one of five Republicans voting for a small-business COVID relief bill.

Even more notably, in the Senate impeachment trial after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, Cassidy voted to convict Trump of “incitement of insurrection.” “Our Constitution and our country is more important than any one person. I voted to convict President Trump because he is guilty,” he said then. The Louisiana Republican Party censured him the same day.

Now running for his third term, Cassidy is already facing primary challengers who don’t have that baggage. They include state Treasurer John Fleming, a former congressman who worked for Trump in the White House, and public service commissioner Eric Skrmetta, who chaired all three of Trump’s presidential campaigns in Louisiana.

Fleming has said Cassidy’s vote to convict Trump failed the people of Louisiana. And that’s the problem with today’s Republican Party. The truth is that since that brave vote, Cassidy has failed all Americans. He has also assured that his legacy will be the wreckage of our once world-class public health and medical research programs.

On the other side, there is the 314 Action group that is recruiting and funding Democratic doctors and other Democratic scientists to run for office. It’s an openly partisan operation, right up to a snarky-ish all-caps X post about its $1-million commitment to California’s fight to neutralize the five new House seats Texas is trying to add. What else can you do when the other major party, even its medical professionals, is leading, aiding and abetting in the GOP war on science?

“If @SenBillCassidy had a spine, a known anti-vax conspiracy theorist wouldn’t be destroying our public health,” the group posted last Wednesday on X. “He had an opportunity to thwart the confirmation of RFK Jr.,” 314 Action president and founder Shaughnessy Naughton told me in a recent interview. “Instead he chose to go down a different path and go against what his life experience and professional training told him was a dangerous nominee to lead our health services. And he did it anyway. … That is shameful.”

In February, before Kennedy was confirmed, the conservative New York Times columnist Bret Stephens rated him “worst nominee in U.S. Cabinet history.” And then Stephens suggested the person he preferred for the job: Bill Frist.

Jill Lawrence is an opinion writer and author of “The Art of the Political Deal: How Congress Beat the Odds and Broke Through Gridlock.” @jilldlawrence.bsky.social

California, Oregon and Washington are joining forces to insulate vaccine guidance and other public health recommendations from political interference, a direct response to turmoil at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under President Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Govs. Gavin Newsom of California, Tina Kotek of Oregon and Bob Ferguson of Washington announced Wednesday the creation of the West Coast Health Alliance, a pact that aims to keep their states’ health policies unified and grounded in scientific expertise. The move comes as the nation’s top public health agency is being reshaped by Kennedy and his vaccine-skeptic allies, with key leadership fired and the agency in turmoil.

“President Trump’s mass firing of CDC doctors and scientists — and his blatant politicization of the agency — is a direct assault on the health and safety of the American people,” the three governors said in a joint statement. “The CDC has become a political tool that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science, ideology that will lead to severe health consequences. California, Oregon, and Washington will not allow the people of our states to be put at risk.”

In June, the three states issued a joint statement condemning Kennedy’s decision to remove all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Among the replacements named by Kennedy are appointees who spread vaccine misinformation and relayed conspiracy theories during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Associated Press.

Kennedy said the change would improve public trust by ensuring members of the committee didn’t have “any specific pro- or anti-vaccine agenda.”

Kennedy has warned that more turnover could be coming at the agency.

In the announcement for the newly formed West Coast Health Alliance, the states said the focus would be on providing evidence-based recommendations about who should receive immunizations while ensuring the public has access to credible information about the safety and efficacy of vaccines. The alliance will share immunization recommendations, but each state will also pursue independent strategies based on “unique laws, geographies, histories, and peoples.”

Dr. Erica Pan, director of the California Department of Public Health and the state health officer, said it’s imperative that California stand with medical professionals.

“The dismantling of public health and dismissal of experienced and respected health leaders and advisors, along with the lack of using science, data, and evidence to improve our nation’s health are placing lives at risk,” Pan said in a statement.

For five years, I dodged every bullet.

I don’t know how I managed to beat COVID-19 for so long, even as family, friends and colleagues got hit with the coronavirus. Although I took precautions from the beginning, with masking and vaccinations, I was also out in public a lot for work and travel.

But my luck has finally run out, and it must have been the air travel that did me in. I returned from a cross-country trip with a razor blade sore throat and a stubborn headache, followed by aches and pains.

The first test was positive.

I figured it had to be wrong, given my super-immunity track record.

The second test was even more positive.

So I’ve been quarantined in a corner of the house, reaching alternately for Tylenol and the thermometer. Everything is a little fuzzy, making it hard to distinguish between the real and the imagined.

For instance, how can it be true that just as I get COVID for the first time, the news is suddenly dominated by COVID-related stories?

It has to be a fever-induced hallucination. There’s no other way to explain why, as COVID surges yet again with another bugger of a strain, the best tool against the virus — vaccine — is under full assault by the leaders of the nation.

They are making it harder, rather than easier, to get medicine recommended by the overwhelming majority of the legitimate, non-crackpot wing of the medical community.

Under the new vaccine policies, prices are up. Permission from doctors is needed. Depending on your age or your home state, you could be out of luck.

Meanwhile, President Trump fired Susan Monarez, the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, essentially for putting her own professional integrity and commitment to public service above crackpot directives from a cabal of vaccine skeptics.

And following Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s cancellation of $500 million in mRNA vaccine research, Trump is demanding that pharmaceutical companies show proof that vaccines work.

My eyes are red and burning, but can COVID be entirely to blame?

I got a booster before my travels, even though I knew it might not stand up to the new strain of COVID. It’s possible I have a milder case than I might have had without the vaccine. But on that question and many others, as new waves keep coming our way, wouldn’t the smart move be more research rather than less?

Trump downplayed the virus when it first surfaced in 2019 and 2020. Then he blamed it on China. He resisted masking, and lemmings by the thousands got sick and died. Then he got COVID himself. At one point, he recommended that people get the vaccine.

Now he’s putting on the brakes?

My headache is coming back, my eyes are still burning, and unless my Tylenol is laced with LSD, I think I just saw a clip in which Kennedy and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attempted 50 pull-ups and 100 push-ups in 10 minutes.

I appreciate the health and fitness plug, and because Kennedy and I are the same age — 71 — it’s impressive to see him in the gym.

But there’s something that has to be said about the Kennedy-Hegseth workout tape:

They’re cheating.

Take a look for yourself, and don’t be fooled by the tight T-shirts worn by these two homecoming kings.

Those were not full chin-ups or push-ups.

Not even close.

Cutting corners is the wrong message to send to the nation’s children, or to any age group. And how is anyone going to make it to the gym if they come down with COVID because they couldn’t get vaccinated?

Honestly, the whole thing has to be a fever dream I’m having, because in the middle of the workout, Kennedy said, and I quote, “It was President Trump who inspired us to do this.”

He is many things, President Trump. Fitness role model is not one of them, no matter how many times he blasts out of sand traps on company time.

Getting back to cutting corners, Kennedy said in slashing mRNA research that “we have studied the science,” with a news release link to a 181-page document purportedly supporting his claim that the vaccines “fail to protect effectively.”

That document was roundly eviscerated by hordes of scientists who were aghast at the distortions and misinterpretations by Kennedy.

“It’s either staggering incompetence or willful misrepresentation,” said Jake Scott, an infectious-disease physician and Stanford University professor, writing for the media company STAT. “Kennedy is using evidence that refutes his own position to justify dismantling tools we’ll desperately need when the next pandemic arrives.”

I lost my sense of smell a few days ago, but even I can tell you that stinks.

[email protected]

Bill Anderson was close to 70 when he first spotted the clock.

It looked like a ship’s wheel, a kitschy bit of decor you might see at a nautically themed bar. But he was drawn to it because of its maker.

Timepieces from Chelsea Clock Co. were renowned for their design and precision. The company’s clocks could once be found on Navy battleships during World War II, and adorned mantels, walls and desks at the White House for presidents ranging from Dwight Eisenhower to Joe Biden.

Anderson, a retired watchmaker and collector, was particularly interested in the base of the Chelsea Comet, which was engraved with the initials “J.F.K.”

John Fitzgerald Kennedy?

Although watch collectors obsess over celebrity ownership, and a Camelot connection counts for a lot, the prospect of a payday was only part of the allure for Anderson.

Retired watchmaker Bill Anderson owns more than 200 timepieces, including a Chelsea Comet with a plaque featuring a “J.F.K.” engraving.

(Courtesy of Bill Anderson)

The mystery of the clock’s provenance — could it possibly be the real deal? — has animated his life for years. This, Anderson said, “is a nice game that I’ve got going here.”

He’d purchased the clock in 1999 from a seller on EBay, a New Hampshire dealer who’d picked it up at an estate sale in Wellesley, Mass., for $280.

In the intervening years, Anderson, who is 95, has plumbed the cloistered world of clock collectors. His hunt would take him to the online message boards of watch and clock aficionados, and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. It would eventually lead to a refrigerated vault 200 feet below ground in a former limestone mine in rural Pennsylvania.

Anderson, who lives in Eugene, Ore., may not use the word “obsession” to describe his interest in his J.F.K. clock, but others do. All those decades he’s spent trying to uncover its backstory are evidence of its almost gravitational pull.

Anderson, whose parents ran a grocery store, grew up in Roseburg, Ore., south of Eugene. In the late 1940s, he left the University of Oregon after just one quarter and enrolled in a watchmaking school run by the Elgin National Watch Co.

Anderson’s maternal grandfather had been in the trade. “I leaned over his watchmaker’s bench and watched him as a little boy,” he explained. “He let me have the insides of an alarm clock … that was the beginning of it.”

In time, Anderson became a retail liquidator, helping to close jewelry and watch stores and sell their remaining inventories. Along the way, Anderson married and started a family. He gained a reputation as an honest broker — and for being able to spot the value in merchandise that others couldn’t sell.

“Bill is like the George Washington of people — you know, ‘I cannot tell a lie,’ that type of thing,” said Errol Stewart, a Maine watchmaker who has known Anderson for about 40 years.

In 1974, Anderson paid $15,000 for the inventory of a jeweler in Baker City, Ore., selling what he could and bringing the leftovers home. Forty years later, he came across them while cleaning out his attic; among the wares was an old football helmet.

It turned out to be a rare Spalding head harness from the early 1900s. No more than 10 are believed to still be in existence, and Anderson sold it for about $14,000.

He has retained more than 200 timepieces for his collection, including several from Chelsea, and has watched the prices for celebrity-owned timepieces surge in the last few decades.

The market for those with ties to the Kennedys is particularly strong. Jacqueline Kennedy’s Cartier Tank sold for nearly $380,000 in 2017, and JFK’s Omega fetched $420,000 in 2005.

“With Kennedy you get the highest multiplication factor for any political figure,” said Paul Boutros, who heads the U.S. watch business for Phillips, a London-based auction house.

Anderson knew if he could confirm the ownership, it would be a boon — perhaps a capstone to his legacy as a watchmaker and collector. The first thing he did was get in touch with Chelsea to request the clock’s certificate of origin.

When it arrived, the spot for the original buyer’s name was marked “no record.” Could that have been a courtesy extended to a VIP customer? JFK’s father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., had visited the company’s headquarters in Massachusetts — home to the Kennedy clan — where he purchased several items.

Chelsea had published a feature on its website about in-house master clockmaker Jean Yeo that touched on that celebrity connection. She said that she began working at Chelsea in 1951, a time when “all of the Kennedys came in here” and had special praise for the family’s patriarch, calling him a “nice guy” who talked to her about her work.

But Anderson wasn’t sure what to think. The growing allure of watches with A-list history was enticing people to peddle dubious timepieces.

In 2005, a Rolex that was said to be a gift from Marilyn Monroe to JFK was auctioned for $120,000. The gold Day-Date, reportedly given by the actress to the president in 1962 on the occasion of his 45th birthday, featured an inscription that reads, “Jack / With love as always / from / Marilyn.” But collectors and watch scholars have noted that the timepiece in question featured a serial number that dated it to 1965.

At one point in his search, Anderson had a breakthrough when he discovered an online photograph of the future president and his wife at home in 1954. A clock was positioned on a desk, and it looked just like Anderson’s Comet, but the low-resolution picture was so blurry that any engraving it may have had was impossible to discern.

Then-Sen. John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, at their home in Washington, D.C., in 1954. A Chelsea Comet clock sits on the desk.

(Bettmann Archive)

James Archer Abbott, co-author of “Designing Camelot: The Kennedy White House Restoration and Its Legacy,” said there was no record of the Comet having been displayed at the White House, and cautioned that if it were important to the family, it probably would have been earmarked for JFK’s presidential library. A representative of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum said that it has no record of or information on the Comet clock.

But Tony LaChapelle, president of Chelsea, was open to the possibility that it had once been owned by JFK.

“Could somebody who had nothing better to do in their life take that photo of JFK, Jackie and that clock, and get a Comet clock and try to capitalize on that? I suppose they could,” he said. “We look at [Anderson’s ] clock and we look at that photo of [JFK’s clock] sitting out on the table, and in our opinion it is highly probable” they were one and the same.

Anderson tried to find the original high-resolution image for years but couldn’t turn anything up. No one seemed to know the source of the photo. There were tens of thousands of pictures of JFK to comb through online. Or more.

But eventually, after a serpentine, multiyear effort, the whereabouts of the original negative were finally uncovered. It was in a photo archive stored inside a Boyers, Pa., facility known as the Iron Mountain, a formidable place that securely maintains records of all types, including for the federal government.

The Bettmann Archive, which comprises millions of photos and is managed by Getty Images, is housed in a section of the Mountain that’s more than 10 stories underground.

Last year, an archivist located the negative and brought it to one of Bettmann’s labs, where she placed it on a flatbed scanner. Soon, a new, ultra-high-resolution version of the 1954 image glowed on her computer screen. The clarity was remarkable.

The Comet could be clearly seen in the photo, including the clock’s wooden base.

It was blank.

When he heard the news — relayed via telephone — Anderson grew quiet.

But he offered no lamentations and later he said he wasn’t disappointed: “Not a bit.” He’d come to realize how important the hunt had been for him, especially after his wife, Sallie, died in July 2023. She was 93.

“She understood that I loved that kind of stuff,” he said.

The research made a dark time just a little easier.

During a recent interview, Anderson sat at his dining room table, where there was an array of photos of his wife. The Comet was there too. He explained that over the last year or so, he has asked each of his five children to select clocks from his collection that they will inherit when he dies.

Marilyn Monroe, seen in a 1962 photograph, is said to have gifted President Kennedy a Rolex that was later auctioned for $120,000.

(Cecil Stoughton / White House Photographs / John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum / Associated Press)

“I don’t know how many more miles down the road I’ve got,” he said.

But Anderson has yet to offer the Comet. “Why that hasn’t happened yet, I don’t know,” he said.

One of his sons, Mike Anderson, a watchmaker who owns Anderson Jewelers in Corvallis, Ore., has an idea. “There’s no doubt in my mind he wants to link [the clock] to JFK — he wants to believe that that was on his desk,” the younger Anderson said. “That’s what drives him.”

After all these years, Anderson still loves the chase.