If you were looking for a reason to keep a flamethrower around the house, you may have just found one.
This week, the Los Angeles County health department reported that two people were infected with a raccoon parasite that causes severe, frequently fatal, infections of the eyes, organs, and central nervous system. Those who survive are often left with severe neurological outcomes, including blindness, paralysis, loss of coordination, seizures, cognitive impairments, and brain atrophy.
The parasitic roundworm behind the infection, called Baylisascaris procyonis, spreads via eggs in raccoons feces. Adult worms live in the intestines of the masked trash scavengers, and each female worm can produce nearly 200,000 eggs per day. Once in the environment, those eggs can remain infectious for years. They can survive drying out as well as most chemical treatments and disinfectants, including bleach.
After 50 days, Gaza European Hospital, one of the few trauma centers serving the Gaza strip, reopened, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The hospital has been a vital part of the crumbling medical infrastructure in the region. It reopened earlier this month.
In August, I told the story of two medical students who worked at Gaza European Hospital before it was shuttered and forcibly evacuated on July 1st. The medical center remained closed amid bombardment in the area for over a month. Each student told me harrowing stories of their time suddenly propelled to the job of full-time doctors amid the devastation of the medical system in Gaza.
Now, the students are back to work. Hasan Ali Abu Ghalyoon, a dental student I interviewed via WhatsApp in August, returned to European Hospital on September 9th. He said things are different there now.
Before the July evacuation, he slept at the hospital. Now, he commutes back and forth from his family’s tent in Deir al-Balah, a trip that takes him three or four hours a day. It is only about a seven-mile journey. But in Gaza, it can be treacherous.
Normally, he takes a hospital-provided bus to work. Last Friday, though, “I was a little late for the bus and I was forced to go by car,” he said. On his journey, he passed a destroyed World Health Organization warehouse, a torched mosque, and innumerable teetering husks of buildings and dust-covered tents. “I took three cars on my way to get from my tent to the hospital and I walked through many destroyed streets on foot.”
In some areas of eastern Gaza, there are no cars at all. The trip, he said, cost him 25 shekels, or about eight dollars, thanks to the lack of fuel entering Gaza. Before the war, transportation wouldn’t cost a thing.
Nermeen Ziyad Abo Mostafa, another student volunteer, hears the zanana—Gazan slang for the incessant buzzing of drones overhead—on her way to the hospital. “It was not easy to reopen it, because all the hospital’s property was stolen,” she said. The hospital is still not fully equipped, she explained, but medical teams are doing their best to work with what they have.
Once the students arrive, they see “mostly burns and fractures,” Abu Ghalyoon said. Every day, there are patients requiring skin grafts.
Another change: there are now fewer international delegations than before. The flow of international medics into the Gaza strip has slowed to a trickle. The Israeli military has hit international aid workers like those from World Central Kitchen, after a vehicle from the group was bombed in April, and UN workers, like those from the World Food Program, whose vehicles were struck in August. Supply shortages are ongoing. As Abu Ghalyoon put it: “There is a very, very severe shortage of all medicines. The medical equipment is old and sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t.”
On September 12th, the World Health Organization released a report estimating that over 22,500 people in Gaza have suffered “life-changing injuries” since Israel’s offensive in Gaza began. Most of these injuries—about 13,000 to 17,000—are what the WHO report calls “severe limb injuries,” and at least 3,000 are amputations.
“The huge surge in rehabilitation needs occurs in parallel with the ongoing decimation of the health system,” said Dr. Richard Peeperkorn, WHO Representative in the occupied Palestinian territory. “Patients can’t get the care they need. Acute rehabilitation services are severely disrupted and specialized care for complex injuries is not available, placing patients’ lives at risk. Immediate and long-term support is urgently needed to address the enormous rehabilitation needs.”
Drug overdose deaths have been on the rise for years, devastating communities nationwide. But as National Public Radio reported on Wednesday, that trend may be changing—so much so, said one expert who spoke to NPR, Dr. Nabarun Dasgupta of the University of North Carolina, that he anticipates as many as 20,000 fewer annual overdose deaths in coming years. Overall, in the twelve months beginning April 2023, the United States saw a decrease in drug overdose deaths of more than 12 percent—marking the first year since 2020 that overdose deaths have fallen.
The exact causes of the decrease are not yet completely clear to experts. Dr. Nora Volkow of the National Institute on Drug Abuse said that “expansion of naloxone,” which is used to quickly reverse the respiratory depression associated with opioid overdoses, and other opioid medications, are among the strategies that have worked.
Previous data from the National Institute on Drug Abuse has shown that, since 2015, more people have died from opioid overdoses than from any other drugs. Research shows that making Narcan—naloxone’s trade name—available at syringe sites reduces deaths by around 65 percent.
The fall in overdose deaths does vary by state. For example, according to the CDC, North Carolina saw a 40 percent decrease in drug overdose deaths—but others, such as Alaska, saw an equal increase. Alaska’s case is particularly alarming, as the state has the highest proportion of Indigenous people in the county, whom CDC data shows are more likely to die from drug overdoses.
Even in areas where drug overdose deaths are increasing, as the NPR report highlights, investigating which strategies work should lead to more effective measures throughout the country. "If interventions are what's driving this decline," Dasgupta said, "then let's double down on those interventions."
Drug overdose deaths have been on the rise for years, devastating communities nationwide. But as National Public Radio reported on Wednesday, that trend may be changing—so much so, said one expert who spoke to NPR, Dr. Nabarun Dasgupta of the University of North Carolina, that he anticipates as many as 20,000 fewer annual overdose deaths in coming years. Overall, in the twelve months beginning April 2023, the United States saw a decrease in drug overdose deaths of more than 12 percent—marking the first year since 2020 that overdose deaths have fallen.
The exact causes of the decrease are not yet completely clear to experts. Dr. Nora Volkow of the National Institute on Drug Abuse said that “expansion of naloxone,” which is used to quickly reverse the respiratory depression associated with opioid overdoses, and other opioid medications, are among the strategies that have worked.
Previous data from the National Institute on Drug Abuse has shown that, since 2015, more people have died from opioid overdoses than from any other drugs. Research shows that making Narcan—naloxone’s trade name—available at syringe sites reduces deaths by around 65 percent.
The fall in overdose deaths does vary by state. For example, according to the CDC, North Carolina saw a 40 percent decrease in drug overdose deaths—but others, such as Alaska, saw an equal increase. Alaska’s case is particularly alarming, as the state has the highest proportion of Indigenous people in the county, whom CDC data shows are more likely to die from drug overdoses.
Even in areas where drug overdose deaths are increasing, as the NPR report highlights, investigating which strategies work should lead to more effective measures throughout the country. "If interventions are what's driving this decline," Dasgupta said, "then let's double down on those interventions."
Enlarge/ The Kalalau Valley between sheer cliffs in the Na Pali Coast State Park on the western shore of the island of Kauai in Hawaii, United States. This view is from the Pihea Trail in the Kokee State Park. (credit: Getty | Jon G. Fuller)
The Hawaiian island of Kauai may not have any spewing lava, but hikers along the magnificent Napali coast have brought their own volcanic action recently, violently hollowing their innards amid the gushing waterfalls and deeply carved valleys.
Between August and early September, at least 50 hikers fell ill with norovirus along the famed Kalalau Trail, which has been closed since September 4 for a deep cleaning. The rugged 11-mile trail runs along the northwest coast of the island, giving adventurers breathtaking views of stunning sea cliffs and Kauai's lush valleys. It's situated just north of Waimea Canyon State Park, also known as the Grand Canyon of the Pacific.
"It’s one of the most beautiful places in the world. I feel really fortunate to be able to be there, and appreciate and respect that land,” one hiker who fell ill in late August told The Washington Post. "My guts exploding all over that land was not what I wanted to do at all."
Enlarge/ A recall notice is posted next to Boar's Head meats that are displayed at a Safeway store on July 31, 2024, in San Rafael, California. (credit: Getty | Justin Sullivan)
The Boar's Head deli-meat plant at the epicenter of a nationwide Listeria outbreak that killed nine people so far harbored the deadly germ in a common area of the facility deemed "low risk" for Listeria. Further, it had no written plans to prevent cross-contamination of the dangerous bacteria to other products and areas. That's according to a federal document newly released by Boar's Head.
On Friday, the company announced that it is indefinitely closing that Jarratt, Virginia-based plant and will never again produce liverwurst—the product that Maryland health investigators first identified as the source of the outbreak strain of Listeria monocytogenes. The finding led to the recall of more than 7 million pounds of Boar's Head meat. The Jarratt plant, where the company's liverwurst is made, has been shuttered since late July amid the investigation into how the outbreak occurred.
In the September 13 update, Boar's Head explained that "our investigation has identified the root cause of the contamination as a specific production process that only existed at the Jarratt facility and was used only for liverwurst. With this discovery, we have decided to permanently discontinue liverwurst."
Exercise is a critical component of overall health and wellness, offering numerous physical and mental benefits. From improving cardiovascular health and building muscle strength to boosting mood and energy levels, a well-structured exercise routine can help individuals achieve and maintain a healthier lifestyle. However, with so many different workout plans available, finding the right routine…
Consumer Reports on Thursday reported the concentration of lead it found in 36 ground cinnamon products, leading to a round of startling headlines. The testing is particularly nerve-racking given that it closely follows the tragic poisoning of at least 519 US children, who were exposed to extremely high levels of lead from purposefully tainted cinnamon in applesauce snack pouches.
With that horrifying event in mind, parents are likely primed to be alarmed by any other lead findings in cinnamon. So, how concerning were the concentrations Consumer Reports found? And does one need to strictly adhere to the limits the organization recommends? By my calculations, not very and probably not. It's really not an alarming report.
Similar to the outlet's chocolate testing before it, the lead concentrations found in cinnamons were largely within standard ranges. In all, the report is more of a reminder that trace amounts of heavy metals are present in various common foods. And such watchdog testing can play a crucial role in keeping consumers safe, especially with underfunded and underpowered regulators.
Even though Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ended his presidential bid in August, he appears to be as busy as ever—but now, on the campaign trail for former President Donald Trump, where he’s modified the MAGA slogan to MAHA: Make America Healthy Again. Trump has picked up some of Kennedy’s favorite lines, as well: At a recent event, where Kennedy was a featured speaker, Trump bemoaned the epidemic of chronic illness in the United States, which Kennedy long has said he believes is caused by vaccines, toxins in food, and overreliance on medication. Kennedy would be included in a presidential panel, Trump promised supporters, that would focus on “the decades-long increase in chronic health problems, including autoimmune disorders, autism, obesity, infertility and many more.”
By adopting these talking points and embracing the failed third-party candidate, Trump is making a bid for a much-coveted group of crossover voters. Over his years as an environmental activist and then an anti-vaccine crusader, Kennedy has built up a vast network of allies in the political gray zone where far-left natural health enthusiasts meet libertarian-leaning independents and Republicans who rail against government overreach. In a race that is predicted to be won on razor-thin margins, Trump needs all the voters from that left-meets-right zone that he can get. Kennedy is expected to woo a small but meaningful number of them to team Trump—especially if he succeeds in getting his name removed from the ballots in the two swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin.
One emissary from this political gray area is Zen Honeycutt, the founder and executive director of the anti-GMO organization Moms Across America. In a wide-ranging conversation with Mother Jones this week, Honeycutt described her years ofwork with Kennedy, and what she sees as a sea change in the political leanings of her group’s core followers in the 13 years since she founded Moms Across America. A decade ago, the group attracted a predominantly left-leaning audience who were concerned mostly about toxins in food and what they saw as the dangerous unknowns of genetically modified organisms. But now, the group appeals to many Independents and Republicans who worry more about government overreach.
Honeycutt is the only full-time employee of Moms Across America, and she’s joined by three part-time staffers. The group’s budget is tiny; in 2022, the last year for which financial information was available, it was around $238,000. But, the group has a robust presence on social media. Over the past seven years, she says, its posts, on subjects ranging from traces of weedkiller in pasta to Honeycutt’s recent meet-and-greet with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, have received 87 million impressions. But more important than her budget is access; Honeycutt has worked closely with Kennedy and continues to do so, and he serves as an advisor of her organization. She is well-positioned to influence policies and programs that he’d champion should he be given the cabinet position Trump has suggested might be a good fit. “A dream come true,” Honeycutt says, “for most of the moms I know out there, a lot of the parents and people who just care about their health.”
Those moms are one group that Benji Backer, a climate activist who founded the right-of-center environmental advocacy group American Conservation Coalition, has run into recently. Backer, who is currently on tour with his new book, The Conservative Environmentalist: Common Sense Solutions for a Sustainable Future, said that at his book-signing events, he has encountered “a surprising amount of these kind of RFK Jr.-supporting previously-liberal, now-voting-for-Trump people in the audience.” Those people used to be just “a different wing of the left-wing,” he said. “And they’re almost all shifting to the right now.”
Those people used to be just “a different wing of the left wing, and they’re almost all shifting to the right now.”
Honeycutt founded Moms Across America in 2011 as a group to oppose genetically modified ingredients in food, which she considered to be potentially dangerous to both human health and the environment. But in the years since, she has weighed in on myriad other health issues, such as staunchly opposing childhood vaccine requirements. She believes, that the shot that protects against measles, mumps, and rubella contains GMOs and traces of pesticides, and that it causes autism. (The theory that vaccines cause autism has been widely debunked.)
On its website, Moms Across America says that exposure to 5G cell phone radiation can cause “learning and behavioral issues, fertility impairment, and cancer;” Honeycutt called 5G cell radiation “the ultimate violation of human rights.” In a video posted on YouTube in June, she warned viewers that lab-grown milk was a harbinger of a plot to replace mothers with baby-growing labs. “They’re going to be developing that, so when you grow a baby in a pod and not in a human mom,” she said, “you’re not going to need breast milk for them.”
The root causes of violent behavior are also within Honeycutt’s range of interests. She referred to a scientist who had supposedly found that what “serial killers and parolees and criminals had in common” was “they just bragged that they lived on junk food.” In a 2023 video for Children’s Health Defense— the anti-vaccine advocacy group that Kennedy helms—Honeycutt told the story of the mother of a child who threatened to “blow up the school with a bomb.” His mother’s response, Honeycutt said, was to put him on a diet of organic food. “She knew that her son would have been one of those kids that would go out and buy a gun and shoot the kids at his school because of his mental health issues,” Honeycutt said. “That’s a very hard thing for a mother to admit. And she said, ‘But he’s not going to do that because—he’s 17 now—he’s been eating organic.’” Honeycutt has also blamed antidepressants for “suicidal and homicidal ideation and increased suicide rates.” Kennedy, too, is critical of antidepressants; in a recent video uncovered by Mother Jones, he talked about his plan to send people who were addicted to antidepressants to government-sponsored wellness farms.
Honeycutt’s work with Kennedy long predates his run for president: Children’s Health Defense lists Moms Across America as a partner organization and has helped fund Moms Across America’s testing of school lunches and fast food for traces of pesticides. Kennedy penned a blurb for Honeycutt’s 2019 book Unstoppable: Transforming Sickness and Struggle into Triumph, Empowerment and a Celebration of Community, describing her as “a modern-day Rachel Carson.” Honeycutt included Kennedy in her 2019 list of men who“are our new dream boats” because of their environmental activism.
Kennedy’s close alliance with Honeycutt continued as he launched his campaign. During a May rally that Honeycutt attended, he introduced her as “a friend for I don’t know how many decades, but a long, long time.” According to Federal Election Commission filings, the Kennedy campaign paid Honeycutt $7,000 for campaign consulting. Another Moms Across America staffer received $1,750 from the campaign for “design services.” Honeycutt donated $996.15 to Kennedy, and severalMoms Across Americaboardmembers made contributions totaling upwards of $10,000. Honeycutt told Mother Jones she “was able to advise [Kennedy] just before he would go on TV, sometimes about [the weedkiller] glyphosate,” she recalled. “He would message me to give an update on glyphosate, because I’ve been focused on it for so long.”
As with so many of the voters whose concerns about health and government overreach are moving them to support Republicans, Honeycutt herself used to be a staunch Democrat. From her home in California, “I marched in the parade for gays to be able to get married,” she recalled. But she became disillusioned with what she saw as government overreach around school vaccine requirements. Mostly for that reason, she, her husband, and their three sons relocated a few years ago to a farm in North Carolina. Since then, she said, she has heard from “thousands and thousands” of other parents who had become disillusioned with what she described as “the fascism of the Democratic party,” such as “mandatory vaccines or maybe medication down the road.” she said. “We already have mandatory chemotherapy that kids have to get—you can get your kid taken away from you if you don’t give them chemo if they have cancer.” For these reasons, many former Democrats she has talked to “have found in the Independent party or the Republican party a home they can connect with around their personal health freedoms.”
Many former Democrats she has talked to “have found in the Independent party or the Republican party a home they can connect with around their personal health freedoms.”
In a follow-up email to Mother Jones, she shared more of her theories about why formerly left-leaning voters were now tacking right. “The right cares about the ability to reproduce and procreate,” she wrote. “These chemicals are causing a reproductive health crisis.” Parents, she said, were concerned that “masking, schools becoming vaccine administration centers, and WiFi access points (close and constant radiation)” were “causing our children to be depressed, violent, and suicidal are all factors of why more and more parents” were leaving the Democratic party.
But other forces influenced these formerly left-leaning families, Honeycutt said. Parents also didn’t want their children to be “indoctrinated with education from public schools that influence their sexual identity,” she wrote. “There has been a massive uptick in homeschooling, and most cite the information being taught (the inclusion of sexual information in grade school) to students as a main factor.”
Honeycutt told Mother Jonesthat she was grateful to the Biden administration for its advocacy around organic foods and funding school lunches. Yet, she said that on the issues Moms Across America cares about, Harris has remained largely silent. “I have not heard her speak about pesticides or regenerative organic agriculture or children’s chronic illness,” she said. The Democrats’ focus on climate change is an unfortunate distraction. “There’s a lot of funding that’s going towards climate change issues that is questionable, and it could be simply going towards making these corporations wealthier,” she said.
Backer, the conservative environmental activist, said that he had noticed this wariness of climate initiatives among some Kennedy fans he had met at his book signing events. “A couple of them were kind of like, ‘well, I used to believe in climate change, but now I’m kind of skeptical of the science,’” he said. Kennedy’s message of environmentalism without climate change resonates with some conservatives whose environmental priorities are “largely based on a connection to nature, a connection to the land, the connection to food, like something personally related to the environment, rather than parts per million in the atmosphere. And RFK has tapped into that in an interesting way.”
Kennedy himself has dichotomized the issues clearly: Climate is a concern of the left, and the right is worried about environmental contamination. “The Democrats obsess about counting CO2, while neglecting urgent issues such as the chemicals in our food, soil, and water,” he posted on X last month. “I have found to my surprise that many people on the Trump team, including President Trump himself, care about the same environmental issues I do.” Ditto for Moms Across America’s supporters: “They’re like, ‘Oh, climate change,’” Honeycutt said. “’Well, what about stop poisoning us?’”
Trump’s actual record on removing toxins from the environment is dubious. Among the more than 100 environmental rules that his administration rolled back, his Environmental Protection Agency took away California’s ability to set strict emission standards, lifted rules that limited mercury emissions from power plants, and allowed more toxic waste from power plants in waterways. Whether the next Trump administration will prioritize vanquishing GMOs and pesticides remains to be seen.
But for Honeycutt, Trump’s alliance with Kennedy is an encouraging sign. “I’m very hopeful that if Kennedy gets any type of position in the future administration, that he will actually make changes,” she said. One could be on regulations around vaccines. “Kennedy is one of the only ones who has brought it to the forefront,” she said. “The fact that Trump is willing to listen to him about that makes a huge difference for a lot of voters.”
Even though Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ended his presidential bid in August, he appears to be as busy as ever—but now, on the campaign trail for former President Donald Trump, where he’s modified the MAGA slogan to MAHA: Make America Healthy Again. Trump has picked up some of Kennedy’s favorite lines, as well: At a recent event, where Kennedy was a featured speaker, Trump bemoaned the epidemic of chronic illness in the United States, which Kennedy long has said he believes is caused by vaccines, toxins in food, and overreliance on medication. Kennedy would be included in a presidential panel, Trump promised supporters, that would focus on “the decades-long increase in chronic health problems, including autoimmune disorders, autism, obesity, infertility and many more.”
By adopting these talking points and embracing the failed third-party candidate, Trump is making a bid for a much-coveted group of crossover voters. Over his years as an environmental activist and then an anti-vaccine crusader, Kennedy has built up a vast network of allies in the political gray zone where far-left natural health enthusiasts meet libertarian-leaning independents and Republicans who rail against government overreach. In a race that is predicted to be won on razor-thin margins, Trump needs all the voters from that left-meets-right zone that he can get. Kennedy is expected to woo a small but meaningful number of them to team Trump—especially if he succeeds in getting his name removed from the ballots in the two swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin.
One emissary from this political gray area is Zen Honeycutt, the founder and executive director of the anti-GMO organization Moms Across America. In a wide-ranging conversation with Mother Jones this week, Honeycutt described her years ofwork with Kennedy, and what she sees as a sea change in the political leanings of her group’s core followers in the 13 years since she founded Moms Across America. A decade ago, the group attracted a predominantly left-leaning audience who were concerned mostly about toxins in food and what they saw as the dangerous unknowns of genetically modified organisms. But now, the group appeals to many Independents and Republicans who worry more about government overreach.
Honeycutt is the only full-time employee of Moms Across America, and she’s joined by three part-time staffers. The group’s budget is tiny; in 2022, the last year for which financial information was available, it was around $238,000. But, the group has a robust presence on social media. Over the past seven years, she says, its posts, on subjects ranging from traces of weedkiller in pasta to Honeycutt’s recent meet-and-greet with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, have received 87 million impressions. But more important than her budget is access; Honeycutt has worked closely with Kennedy and continues to do so, and he serves as an advisor of her organization. She is well-positioned to influence policies and programs that he’d champion should he be given the cabinet position Trump has suggested might be a good fit. “A dream come true,” Honeycutt says, “for most of the moms I know out there, a lot of the parents and people who just care about their health.”
Those moms are one group that Benji Backer, a climate activist who founded the right-of-center environmental advocacy group American Conservation Coalition, has run into recently. Backer, who is currently on tour with his new book, The Conservative Environmentalist: Common Sense Solutions for a Sustainable Future, said that at his book-signing events, he has encountered “a surprising amount of these kind of RFK Jr.-supporting previously-liberal, now-voting-for-Trump people in the audience.” Those people used to be just “a different wing of the left-wing,” he said. “And they’re almost all shifting to the right now.”
Those people used to be just “a different wing of the left wing, and they’re almost all shifting to the right now.”
Honeycutt founded Moms Across America in 2011 as a group to oppose genetically modified ingredients in food, which she considered to be potentially dangerous to both human health and the environment. But in the years since, she has weighed in on myriad other health issues, such as staunchly opposing childhood vaccine requirements. She believes, that the shot that protects against measles, mumps, and rubella contains GMOs and traces of pesticides, and that it causes autism. (The theory that vaccines cause autism has been widely debunked.)
On its website, Moms Across America says that exposure to 5G cell phone radiation can cause “learning and behavioral issues, fertility impairment, and cancer;” Honeycutt called 5G cell radiation “the ultimate violation of human rights.” In a video posted on YouTube in June, she warned viewers that lab-grown milk was a harbinger of a plot to replace mothers with baby-growing labs. “They’re going to be developing that, so when you grow a baby in a pod and not in a human mom,” she said, “you’re not going to need breast milk for them.”
The root causes of violent behavior are also within Honeycutt’s range of interests. She referred to a scientist who had supposedly found that what “serial killers and parolees and criminals had in common” was “they just bragged that they lived on junk food.” In a 2023 video for Children’s Health Defense— the anti-vaccine advocacy group that Kennedy helms—Honeycutt told the story of the mother of a child who threatened to “blow up the school with a bomb.” His mother’s response, Honeycutt said, was to put him on a diet of organic food. “She knew that her son would have been one of those kids that would go out and buy a gun and shoot the kids at his school because of his mental health issues,” Honeycutt said. “That’s a very hard thing for a mother to admit. And she said, ‘But he’s not going to do that because—he’s 17 now—he’s been eating organic.’” Honeycutt has also blamed antidepressants for “suicidal and homicidal ideation and increased suicide rates.” Kennedy, too, is critical of antidepressants; in a recent video uncovered by Mother Jones, he talked about his plan to send people who were addicted to antidepressants to government-sponsored wellness farms.
Honeycutt’s work with Kennedy long predates his run for president: Children’s Health Defense lists Moms Across America as a partner organization and has helped fund Moms Across America’s testing of school lunches and fast food for traces of pesticides. Kennedy penned a blurb for Honeycutt’s 2019 book Unstoppable: Transforming Sickness and Struggle into Triumph, Empowerment and a Celebration of Community, describing her as “a modern-day Rachel Carson.” Honeycutt included Kennedy in her 2019 list of men who“are our new dream boats” because of their environmental activism.
Kennedy’s close alliance with Honeycutt continued as he launched his campaign. During a May rally that Honeycutt attended, he introduced her as “a friend for I don’t know how many decades, but a long, long time.” According to Federal Election Commission filings, the Kennedy campaign paid Honeycutt $7,000 for campaign consulting. Another Moms Across America staffer received $1,750 from the campaign for “design services.” Honeycutt donated $996.15 to Kennedy, and severalMoms Across Americaboardmembers made contributions totaling upwards of $10,000. Honeycutt told Mother Jones she “was able to advise [Kennedy] just before he would go on TV, sometimes about [the weedkiller] glyphosate,” she recalled. “He would message me to give an update on glyphosate, because I’ve been focused on it for so long.”
As with so many of the voters whose concerns about health and government overreach are moving them to support Republicans, Honeycutt herself used to be a staunch Democrat. From her home in California, “I marched in the parade for gays to be able to get married,” she recalled. But she became disillusioned with what she saw as government overreach around school vaccine requirements. Mostly for that reason, she, her husband, and their three sons relocated a few years ago to a farm in North Carolina. Since then, she said, she has heard from “thousands and thousands” of other parents who had become disillusioned with what she described as “the fascism of the Democratic party,” such as “mandatory vaccines or maybe medication down the road.” she said. “We already have mandatory chemotherapy that kids have to get—you can get your kid taken away from you if you don’t give them chemo if they have cancer.” For these reasons, many former Democrats she has talked to “have found in the Independent party or the Republican party a home they can connect with around their personal health freedoms.”
Many former Democrats she has talked to “have found in the Independent party or the Republican party a home they can connect with around their personal health freedoms.”
In a follow-up email to Mother Jones, she shared more of her theories about why formerly left-leaning voters were now tacking right. “The right cares about the ability to reproduce and procreate,” she wrote. “These chemicals are causing a reproductive health crisis.” Parents, she said, were concerned that “masking, schools becoming vaccine administration centers, and WiFi access points (close and constant radiation)” were “causing our children to be depressed, violent, and suicidal are all factors of why more and more parents” were leaving the Democratic party.
But other forces influenced these formerly left-leaning families, Honeycutt said. Parents also didn’t want their children to be “indoctrinated with education from public schools that influence their sexual identity,” she wrote. “There has been a massive uptick in homeschooling, and most cite the information being taught (the inclusion of sexual information in grade school) to students as a main factor.”
Honeycutt told Mother Jonesthat she was grateful to the Biden administration for its advocacy around organic foods and funding school lunches. Yet, she said that on the issues Moms Across America cares about, Harris has remained largely silent. “I have not heard her speak about pesticides or regenerative organic agriculture or children’s chronic illness,” she said. The Democrats’ focus on climate change is an unfortunate distraction. “There’s a lot of funding that’s going towards climate change issues that is questionable, and it could be simply going towards making these corporations wealthier,” she said.
Backer, the conservative environmental activist, said that he had noticed this wariness of climate initiatives among some Kennedy fans he had met at his book signing events. “A couple of them were kind of like, ‘well, I used to believe in climate change, but now I’m kind of skeptical of the science,’” he said. Kennedy’s message of environmentalism without climate change resonates with some conservatives whose environmental priorities are “largely based on a connection to nature, a connection to the land, the connection to food, like something personally related to the environment, rather than parts per million in the atmosphere. And RFK has tapped into that in an interesting way.”
Kennedy himself has dichotomized the issues clearly: Climate is a concern of the left, and the right is worried about environmental contamination. “The Democrats obsess about counting CO2, while neglecting urgent issues such as the chemicals in our food, soil, and water,” he posted on X last month. “I have found to my surprise that many people on the Trump team, including President Trump himself, care about the same environmental issues I do.” Ditto for Moms Across America’s supporters: “They’re like, ‘Oh, climate change,’” Honeycutt said. “’Well, what about stop poisoning us?’”
Trump’s actual record on removing toxins from the environment is dubious. Among the more than 100 environmental rules that his administration rolled back, his Environmental Protection Agency took away California’s ability to set strict emission standards, lifted rules that limited mercury emissions from power plants, and allowed more toxic waste from power plants in waterways. Whether the next Trump administration will prioritize vanquishing GMOs and pesticides remains to be seen.
But for Honeycutt, Trump’s alliance with Kennedy is an encouraging sign. “I’m very hopeful that if Kennedy gets any type of position in the future administration, that he will actually make changes,” she said. One could be on regulations around vaccines. “Kennedy is one of the only ones who has brought it to the forefront,” she said. “The fact that Trump is willing to listen to him about that makes a huge difference for a lot of voters.”
Enlarge/ A woman holds a placard saying "No Forced Births" as abortion rights activists gather at the Monroe County Courthouse for a protest vigil a few hours before Indianas near total abortion ban goes into effect on September 15, 2022. (credit: Getty | Jeremy Hogan)
The more abortion access is jeopardized, the more women turn to sterilization, according to a new report in JAMA that drew on health insurance claims of nearly 4.8 million women in the US.
In states that enacted total or near-total abortion bans following the US Supreme Court's Dobbs decision in June 2022, the rate of sterilizations among reproductive-age women that July spiked 19 percent. A similar initial spike was seen across the nation, with states that either limited or protected access to abortions seeing a 17 percent increase.
But, after that, states with bans saw a divergent trend. The states that limited or protected abortion access saw sterilization procedures largely level off after July 2022. In contrast, states with bans continued to see increases. From July 2022 to December 2022, use of sterilization procedures increased by 3 percent each month.
The human body is full of marvels, some even bordering on miraculous. That includes the limited ability for nerves to regenerate after injuries, allowing people to regain some function and feeling. But that wonder can turn, well, unnerving when those regenerated wires end up in a jumble.
Such is the case for a rare neurological condition called gustatory hyperhidrosis, also known as Frey's syndrome. In this disorder, nerves regenerate after damage to either of the large saliva glands that sit on either side of the face, just in front of the ears, called the parotid glands. But that nerve regrowth goes awry due to a quirk of anatomy that allows the nerves that control saliva production for eating to get tangled with those that control sweating for temperature control.
In this week's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, doctors in Taiwan report an unusual presentation of the disorder in a 76-year-old woman. She told doctors that, for two years, every time she ate, her face would begin profusely sweating. In the clinic, the doctors observed the phenomenon themselves. They watched as she took a bite of pork jerky and began chewing.
The Florida government seems to be doing everything it can—including potentially breaking the law—to prevent voters from approving an abortion rights ballot measure in November.
On Thursday, the state’s health department debuted a webpage spreading misinformation about Amendment 4, a ballot measure appearing in November seeking to override the state’s six-week abortion ban that the Florida Supreme Court approved in April. If it receives the required 60 percent of votes to pass, the amendment would guarantee the right to abortion before the point of so-called fetal viability, which is generally understood to be around 24 weeks gestation. But the state’s new webpage—which DeSantis has since defended as a “public service announcement”—attacks the initiative with a litany of false claims, including that it “threatens women’s safety,” would “eliminate parental consent” for minors seeking abortions, and could “lead to unregulated and unsafe abortions” by allowing people without healthcare expertise to perform the procedure.
Those claims, though, are easily debunked by taking a look at the actual text of the amendment, which explicitly states that a patient’s healthcare provider is responsible for determining when an abortion after viability is necessary to protect a patient’s health. It also says that passage of the amendment would not override the authority of the legislature to require that a minor’s parent or guardian is notified before they obtain an abortion.
But the state’s campaign against the amendment doesn’t stop there. On the same day of the site’s launch, the Tampa Bay Times reported that the Florida Department of State was looking for evidence of fraud in the more than 30,000 citizen signatures used to get the amendment on the November ballot. Two election supervisors told the paper that the move was “highly unusual” given that the signatures had already been approved by local supervisors. The Tampa Bay Times also reported Friday that police had visited the homes of at least two voters who had signed the petition supporting Amendment 4 seeking to verify their signatures.
The anti-abortion efforts are the latest in Gov. Ron DeSantis‘ ongoing fight to defeat Amendment 4 after launching a political spending committee aimed at doing just that in May. (It has raised $3.7 million to date.) Now abortion rights advocates say DeSantis’ government is hoping to scare voters into voting against the amendment. “To our knowledge, it is unprecedented for the State to expressly advocate against a citizen-led initiative,” Bacardi Jackson, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, said Thursday. “This kind of propaganda issued by the state, using taxpayer money and operating outside of the political process sets a dangerous precedent.”
On Friday, the Florida Democratic Party said in a statement that it had submitted a public records request seeking information on when the agency started working on the webpage and who was involved. “Ron [DeSantis] and his buddies know they’re losing, and they’re willing to do anything—including breaking the law—to rig the results in their favor,”Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried said in a statement, adding that the party is also pursuing legal action to try to have the page taken down. State Senate Democratic Leader Lauren Book also said her office was investigating legal action in response to the webpage.
The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration did not respond to questions from Mother Jones about how much the web page cost to establish and maintain, who demanded its creation, why it includes false and misleading information, and how officials respond to criticism about the site. Instead, the agency provided the following statement: “Part of the Agency’s mission is to provide information and transparency to Floridians on the quality of care they receive. Our new transparency page serves to educate Floridians on the state’s current abortion laws and provide information on a proposed policy change that would impact care across the state.”
Now some have warned that the DeSantis administration’s use of government resources for political purposes could be illegal. Meanwhile, polling suggests the majority of Florida voters support the amendment.
The Florida government seems to be doing everything it can—including potentially breaking the law—to prevent voters from approving an abortion rights ballot measure in November.
On Thursday, the state’s health department debuted a webpage spreading misinformation about Amendment 4, a ballot measure appearing in November seeking to override the state’s six-week abortion ban that the Florida Supreme Court approved in April. If it receives the required 60 percent of votes to pass, the amendment would guarantee the right to abortion before the point of so-called fetal viability, which is generally understood to be around 24 weeks gestation. But the state’s new webpage—which DeSantis has since defended as a “public service announcement”—attacks the initiative with a litany of false claims, including that it “threatens women’s safety,” would “eliminate parental consent” for minors seeking abortions, and could “lead to unregulated and unsafe abortions” by allowing people without healthcare expertise to perform the procedure.
Those claims, though, are easily debunked by taking a look at the actual text of the amendment, which explicitly states that a patient’s healthcare provider is responsible for determining when an abortion after viability is necessary to protect a patient’s health. It also says that passage of the amendment would not override the authority of the legislature to require that a minor’s parent or guardian is notified before they obtain an abortion.
But the state’s campaign against the amendment doesn’t stop there. On the same day of the site’s launch, the Tampa Bay Times reported that the Florida Department of State was looking for evidence of fraud in the more than 30,000 citizen signatures used to get the amendment on the November ballot. Two election supervisors told the paper that the move was “highly unusual” given that the signatures had already been approved by local supervisors. The Tampa Bay Times also reported Friday that police had visited the homes of at least two voters who had signed the petition supporting Amendment 4 seeking to verify their signatures.
The anti-abortion efforts are the latest in Gov. Ron DeSantis‘ ongoing fight to defeat Amendment 4 after launching a political spending committee aimed at doing just that in May. (It has raised $3.7 million to date.) Now abortion rights advocates say DeSantis’ government is hoping to scare voters into voting against the amendment. “To our knowledge, it is unprecedented for the State to expressly advocate against a citizen-led initiative,” Bacardi Jackson, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, said Thursday. “This kind of propaganda issued by the state, using taxpayer money and operating outside of the political process sets a dangerous precedent.”
On Friday, the Florida Democratic Party said in a statement that it had submitted a public records request seeking information on when the agency started working on the webpage and who was involved. “Ron [DeSantis] and his buddies know they’re losing, and they’re willing to do anything—including breaking the law—to rig the results in their favor,”Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried said in a statement, adding that the party is also pursuing legal action to try to have the page taken down. State Senate Democratic Leader Lauren Book also said her office was investigating legal action in response to the webpage.
The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration did not respond to questions from Mother Jones about how much the web page cost to establish and maintain, who demanded its creation, why it includes false and misleading information, and how officials respond to criticism about the site. Instead, the agency provided the following statement: “Part of the Agency’s mission is to provide information and transparency to Floridians on the quality of care they receive. Our new transparency page serves to educate Floridians on the state’s current abortion laws and provide information on a proposed policy change that would impact care across the state.”
Now some have warned that the DeSantis administration’s use of government resources for political purposes could be illegal. Meanwhile, polling suggests the majority of Florida voters support the amendment.
Cameras will begin to roll this week on Rosie O’Donnell’s new documentary, “Unleashing Hope: The Power of Service Dogs for Autism.” The film, co-directed by award-winning filmmakers Zeberiah Newman and Michiel Thomas and produced by O’Donnell and NY27 Productions‘ Hilary Estey Mcloughlin and Terence Noonan, will tell the story of Guide Dogs of America’s program […]
Enlarge/ The influenza virus from an image produced with transmission electron microscopy. Viral diameter ranges from around 80 to 120 nm. (credit: Getty | BSIP)
MDHSS reported that the person, who has underlying medical conditions, was hospitalized on August 22 and tested positive for an influenza A virus. Further testing at the state's public health laboratory indicated that the influenza A virus was an H5-type bird flu. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has now confirmed that finding and is carrying out further testing to determine if it is the H5N1 strain currently causing a widespread outbreak among US dairy cows.
It remains unclear if the person's bird flu infection was the cause of the hospitalization or if the infection was discovered incidentally. The person has since recovered and was discharged from the hospital. In its announcement, MDHSS said no other information about the patient will be released to protect the person's privacy.
While supplies of Adderall and its generic versions are finally recovering after a yearslong shortage, the Drug Enforcement Administration is now working to curb the short supply of another drug for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: Vyvanse (lisdexamfetamine) and its generic versions.
"These adjustments are necessary to ensure that the United States has an adequate and uninterrupted supply of lisdexamfetamine to meet legitimate patient needs both domestically and globally," the DEA said.
In the aftermath of the bloodshed on Wednesday at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, state authorities arrested Colin Gray, whose 14-year-old son, Colt Gray, allegedly shot four people to death and injured nine others before surrendering to police. The father is charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, eight counts of cruelty to children—and, most significantly, two counts of second-degree murder.
The murder charges are unprecedented, the most severe ever filed against the parent of a school shooter. Late Thursday, the director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said at a news conference that the charges against Colin Gray are “directly connected with the actions of his son” and that the father “knowingly allowed him to possess the weapon.”
Authorities have not provided further details about evidence they may have, but according to news reports, Colin Gray owned the type of AR-15 that his son allegedly used in the attack. And Colt Gray had been “begging for months” for mental health help but had received none, according to an aunt of his who spoke to the Washington Post. (Colt Gray has been charged with four counts of murder and will be tried as an adult, authorities said.)
For more than a decade, I’ve studied and reported on the American epidemic of mass shootings. Over the past several years, and particularly since early 2024, a dramatic shift has taken shape: a reckoning for the parents of school shooters. Today, with more than 400 million guns and a lack of political will to regulate them more effectively nationwide, it may be that America has begun to find another route—a legal end-run of sorts—to bring accountability for these events of catastrophic gun violence.
The arrest of the school shooter’s father in Georgia comes just seven months after James and Jennifer Crumbley, the parents of a 15-year-old school shooter in Michigan, were convicted of involuntary manslaughter—also a first. What is publicly alleged so far about the role of Colin Gray appears to echo the case of the Crumbleys, who were found to have ignored their son’s mental health crisis and supplied him with the gun he used to commit his attack at Oxford High School, where four died and seven were injured.
The prevailing theme has long been that no one can see the violence coming, the parents included. But that theme no longer holds.
It is a near certainty that in the days and weeks ahead, more details will emerge about warning signs given off by the school shooter in Georgia, one of 20 states now requiring plans for violence prevention in public schools. School shootings are almost alwayspreceded by such warning signs. Significant questions also loom about what may have been done regarding concerns about Colt Gray by law enforcement or the school district, after anonymous tips about threats posted online put him on the radar of the FBI and local authorities in 2023.
Another parental role—starkly different—came into public view this spring, when we published my two-year investigation, “Lessons From a Mass Shooter’s Mother,” in Mother Jones and aired a companion audio investigation on our radio show Reveal. These chronicle the experience of Chin Rodger, whose son Elliot Rodger committed mass murder in the California college town of Isla Vista in 2014. Chin Rodger hadn’t been able to recognize her deeply troubled son’s suicidal and homicidal warning behaviors, but she had gone to great lengths to get him help and care before his attack. Years later she began working with violence prevention experts at the FBI and beyond, sharing myriad details about her son’s life with them—and eventually with the public—in hopes of raising awareness about warning signs and helping avert future violence.
As I wrote in the story: “The public rarely hears from parents of mass shooters apart from brief statements of sorrow in the aftermath. The prevailing theme has long been that no one can see the violence coming, the parents included. But that theme no longer holds, especially in light of a recent tragedy that could remake the legal landscape.”
There I was referring to the new criminal precedent established with the Crumbleys—one with the potential to expand, it now appears, with the case in Georgia. The recurring mass murder of school kids and their teachers drives intense public calls for finding culpability among parents (and others), which may well be warranted in some cases. But this nascent trend of criminalizing parents is not without possible pitfalls, including, legal experts have said, for mothers and fathers of minority children exposed disproportionately to gun violence.
Another notable development in the past several years has been a trend of civil liability for gun manufacturers who market their AR-15s and other firearms aggressively to America’s youth. In early 2022, Remington, the company that made the AR-15 used in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre, agreed to a landmark $73 million civil settlement with victims’ families. In late 2022, the family of a 10-year-old victim in Uvalde, Texas, filed suit against Daniel Defense, the maker of the AR-15 used in the massacre at Robb Elementary School, accusing the company of using militaristic marketing appeals to target “young male consumers.”
The devastation in Georgia this week is far from the first to involve a shockingly young perpetrator. The shooter at Oxford High School in 2021 was only one year older, just 15 at the time. Other cases going back in time, documented in our mass shootings database and in my book on prevention, Trigger Points, have involved shooters as young as 13 and 11 years old.
In January 2023, a 6-year-old child brought a pistol to school in Virginia and shot his first grade teacher—a case in which the mother was later imprisoned for gun-related federal crimes. (The child used the mother’s unsecured firearm; her prosecution involved drug use and lying related to the gun purchase.)
What happened in Georgia this week serves as a particularly stark reminder: In America, a teenager can easily get his hands on a military-grade rifle and use it to gun down his classmates and teachers. Why we have this problem—and tens of millions of AR-15s in civilian hands—is complicated and arises from a recent history that many Americans know relatively little about.
Another reminder about this problem worth repeating is that, despite popular opinion, it is not an unsolvable one. Now, deterrence for gun-owning parents may be a growing part of a broader solution.
Enlarge/ Herpes simplex virus, (HSV). Image taken with transmission electron microscopy. (credit: Getty | BSIP)
As the US Surgeon General recently highlighted, parenting is stressful. From navigating social media to facing a youth mental health crisis, challenges abound. But, for one father in Spain, even the simple, loving, everyday act of giving your child a peck on the cheek has turned to nightmare fuel.
According to a case report in the New England Journal of Medicine, the man's 9-year-old daughter developed a fever along with a crusty, blistering lesion on her left cheek. Doctors initially diagnosed the blotch as impetigo, a bacterial infection on the skin's surface layers that is fairly common in children. It's often caused by Staphylococcus aureus or Streptococcus bacteria and is generally easily treated with antibiotics.
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