After former President Donald Trump’s very weird week, more than 400 doctors and health professionals are questioning his mental and physical fitness to serve, and calling for him to release his medical records.
The development—which Mother Jones is the first to report—comes about a week after the group Doctors for Harris first released the letter, with a little more than half the 448 signatures it has now. Since then, another 200-plus medical professionals have signed on, following a slate of unhinged episodes and nonsensical—even profane—comments from Trump over the past week. As I reported yesterday, highlights included swaying on stage for a half-hour to “Ave Maria,” “Hallelujah,” and “YMCA”; calling himself the “father of IVF”; falsely claiming “nobody died” on January 6 other than Ashli Babbittand that “there were no guns” among the insurrectionists; and making lewd comments about both his opponent and the late golfer Arnold Palmer’s genitalia.
It’s no wonder, then, that as of Monday afternoon, 448 health professionals have voicedconcerns about his fitness for office. “With no recent disclosure of health information from Donald Trump, we are left to extrapolate from public appearances,” their letter states. “And on that front, Trump is falling concerningly short of any standard of fitness for office and displaying alarming characteristics of declining acuity.”
As the letter points out, Trump is 78 years old—though it’s unclear if he realizes that, given that he said he’s “not that close to 80” during a town hall Sunday. His age, the writers argue, makes it all the more necessary he come clean about his state of health. (Biden, after all, is 81.) Trump said in August he would “gladly” release his records, but has yet to do so. The most recent insight we have is a three-paragraph letter he posted to Truth Social in which his personal physician claimed he had lost weight and was in “excellent health.”
“While many older adults are highly functional, age can also come with cognitive changes that affect our ability to function well in complex settings,” the letter says. “We are seeing that from Trump, as he uses his rallies and appearances to ramble, meander, and crudely lash out at his many perceived grievances. He also is notably refusing to give the public the ability to properly vet or scrutinize his capacities.” Earlier this month, Trump dropped out of a scheduled 60 Minutes interview. He has also refused to debate Vice President Kamala Harris a second time.
The doctors portray him as akin to a disgruntled grandpa who says things that embarrass his relatives and needs a check-up: “As we saw in the first presidential debate, Trump is displaying irrationality and irritability. Notably, he ranted about migrants eating people’s cats and dogs. This was widely debunked as untrue.”
“Given his advancing age—if elected again, he would be the oldest president in history by the end of his term—his refusal to disclose even basic health information is a disservice to the American people,” the letter concludes.
Spokespeople for the Trump campaign and Doctors for Harris did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Vice President Kamala Harris released her medical records earlier this month, as my colleague Abby Vesoulis covered. The results were “unremarkable,” the physician said—which is to say, normal. Trump cannot relate.
Two weeks from Tuesday, millions of voters across the country will fan out to polling places.
And when they do, there will reportedly be a GOP-backed, 200,000-strong army of volunteers watching them. Their task? “Establish the battlefield” to challenge the results of the election, should former president Donald Trump lose.
That’s according to a new report in the New Yorker that sheds light on the inner workings of the Republican National Committee’s plan—led by Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara and Michael Whatley, its co-chairs—to use a giant grassroots group of Trump worshippers to question the integrity of the election.
In June, the RNC announced that the so-called “Protect the Vote” tour would make a series of stops in swing states to “train volunteers to ensure it is easy to vote and hard to cheat this November.” (Never mind that research shows voter fraud is quite rare; that Republican-led gerrymandering has helped enshrine minority rule, as my colleague Ari Berman has covered; and that Trump still refuses to admit he lost the 2020 election—despite more than 60 failed legal challenges affirming that he did.)
According to the New Yorker, much of the RNC’s strategy relies on indulging supporters’ paranoia over conspiracy theories about a Democrat-coordinated campaign to steal the election—via the usual suspects, undocumented immigrants and dead people—and training volunteers to be “the eyes and the ears of the Trump campaign,” as far-right Internet personality Jack Posobiec put it. If they suspect fraud, the volunteers are told, they should call the RNC’s “election integrity hotline,” which a team of volunteer attorneys will apparently answer.
The irony is that poll watching has, historically, been an important safeguard of democracy. Poll watchers helped implement the Voting Rights Act, for example, ensuring election workers were actually allowing Black people to vote. But experts also say that without clear guidelines—and under Trump’s GOP—the practice can help foment Election Day discord.
Recent history offers proof: In 2020, mostly white Republican poll watchers—including five activists linked to the Trump campaign—heckled mostly Black election workers in Detroit and spread disproven rumors of fraud, chanting “stop the count,” as NBC News recently investigated. A recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute found that more than a quarter of Republicans—compared with 14 percent of independents and 12 percent of Democrats—believe poll watchers should be armed. And nearly a fifth of Republicans surveyed said that if Trump loses, he should contest the results and do “whatever it takes” to assume the presidency—compared with 12 percent of Democrats saying the same of Harris.
The GOP is not waiting until Election Day to stoke doubt, though: The RNC has already filed dozens of “election integrity” lawsuits across the country, which challenge absentee and mail-in ballots and try to make it easier to purge voter rolls and allow local officials to refuse to certify elections, as my colleague Pema Levy recently wrote. As one expert told her, their forethought should be a warning to the rest of us:
“In 2020, the attempt to undermine election results by the Trump campaign [was] more of an afterthought,” says Sylvia Albert, who runs voting and election projects at Common Cause, a pro-democracy nonprofit. “Now it looks like a cohesive party strategy nationwide, and it’s not an afterthought. The lesson we’ve taken is to prepare for it.”
After Elon Muskunveiled a scheme to pay $100 to registered Pennsylvania voters who sign a pro-Trump petition, Democratic officials—and legal experts—are sounding the alarm.
As my colleague Arianna Coghill reported yesterday, Musk made the announcement to his 202 million X followers on Thursday, telling them the offer was valid through midnight on Monday. On top of that, Musk also says he is giving away $1 million a day, every day until the election, to petition signers in swing states. The funds appear to come from the billionaire’s America PAC, which he founded in support of Trump—and reportedly pumped with $75 million.
While the petition does not explicitly mention Trump, its support for his ticket over Vice President Kamala Harris is clear. It tells signatories they are signaling their “support of the Constitution, especially freedom of speech and the right to bear arms.”
Unsurprisingly, officials have concerns.
Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-Pa.) told Kristen Welker of NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, “there are real questions with how he is spending money in this race,” adding, “I think it’s something that law enforcement could take a look at.” (The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Mother Jones.)
WATCH: Every day until Election Day, Elon Musk says he’ll give $1M to a voter who has signed his super PAC’s petition “in favor of free speech and the right to bear arms.”@JoshShapiroPA: “That is deeply concerning. … It's something that law enforcement could take a look at." pic.twitter.com/2mZY1b5YaL
Meanwhile, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) told the New York Post in an interview that “Musk is a concern,” adding, “not even just that he has endorsed [Trump], but the fact that now he’s becoming an active participant and showing up and doing rallies and things like that.”
Legal experts went further. Rick Hasen, professor of political science and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law, wrote that Musk’s promises are “clearly illegal,” citing federal election law that prohibits paying for voting or registering to vote, including via lottery. Adav Noti, executive director of the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center, told ABC News that the giveaway’s requirement that petition signers be registered voters “violates the federal ban on paying people to register to vote.” (The Department of Justice declined to comment.) Musk does not appear to have publicly replied to the critiques, and X no longer responds to journalists under his ownership.
This is far from the first time that Musk has wielded his absurd levels of wealth and power to try to sway the election in Trump’s favor: As I have reported, research has found that Musk’s sharing of election disinformation racked up billions of views on X.
Update, Oct. 21: This post was updated with a response from the Department of Justice.
With just over two weeks until Election Day, both candidates are plunging into nonstop rallies and interviews in a bid to get in front of as many voters as possible. (Though notably, Trump has backed out of several recent high profile media appearances, including a sit-down with 60 Minutes.)
Vice President Kamala Harris sat for a contentious exchange with Fox News host Bret Baier this week, and headlinedrallies in the swing states of Wisconsin, Georgia, and Michigan. Former President Donald Trump, for his part, sank to new lows during a suite of appearances—lobbing crude insults at his opponents and rambling incoherently. Let’s review Trump’s very weird week, which, even by Trumpian standards of shock, veered into increasingly alarming territory. Let’s go day-by-day:
Monday
At a Pennsylvania town hall Monday night, Trump ranted about Hannibal Lecter, renewed his longstanding attacks on the “fake news,” and then abandoned answering questions entirely to listen to “Ave Maria,” “Hallelujah,” and “YMCA” for a half hour as he swayed on stage.
"Turn it up louder!" — Trump calls for Ave Maria to be played again while his favorite chart is displayed, which he says "I sleep with every night. I kiss it." pic.twitter.com/bLCOBNuCjI
At an interview with Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Micklethwait on immigration and economic policy, Trump took a question about inflation as an opportunity to bash Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), an architect of the Green New Deal: “She never even studied the environment in college. She went to a nice college. She came out. She just said—the Green New Scam. She just named all these things.” (Ocasio-Cortez studied international relations and economics at Boston University.)
That exchange was indicative of the interview at large: While Micklethwait repeatedly pressed Trump on the specifics of his economic policies and their potential impacts—higher prices due to tariffs, the loss of immigrant labor due to his proposed mass deportation plan—the former president went on tangent after tangent. When Micklethwait asked him if Google should be broken up, for example, Trump responded with a grievance about voting in Virginia. When the host called him out for his meandering, Trump offered his now-common but unsatisfying explanation: “It’s called the weave.” Other highlights: Trump called Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) “Newscum” and claimed the insurrection represented “a peaceful transfer of power.”
Trump: New scum I call him
Micklethwait: There are CEOs out here if they said that sort of thing about a rival CEO they would be sacked.
And at an all-women’s town hall hosted by Fox News host Harris Faulkner taped Tuesday, Trump called himself “the father of IVF”… despite the fact that the Dobbs decision—which he made possible by appointing three of the five Supreme Court justices who overruled Roe v. Wade—has undermined IVF access and Senate Republicans twice blocked a vote on a Democrat-led bill to protect the fertility treatment.
Trump: “I’m the father of IVF”
FACT CHECK: IVF is under threat across the country because Trump ended Roe v. Wade and his Project 2025 plan could effectively ban IVF altogether. pic.twitter.com/tEOUiufDjO
His campaign dismissed the bizarre remark as a joke. But as former President Barack Obama said at a rally for Harris in Arizona Friday night: “I do not know what that means. You do not either.”
Wednesday
At a town hall for Latino voters hosted by Univision, Trump called Jan. 6, 2021—the day he unleashed a mob on the Capitol in an attempt to overthrow the 2020 election—”a day of love.” He also falsely claimed “nobody died” other than Ashli Babbitt,and “there were no guns.” January 6, as my colleague Mark Follman has covered extensively, was in fact a heavily armed insurrection.
He also doubled down on the racist lies his campaign helpedspread about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio eating house pets, claiming without evidence they are “eating other things, too, that they’re not supposed to be.”
Question: Do you really believe that these people are eating people’s pets?
Trump: I was just saying what was reported. And eating other things too that they’re not supposed to. pic.twitter.com/GAXezwPkqe
During a sit-down with Fox and Friends, Trump took viewers’ questions… including softballs from children who asked about his favorite animal and favorite former president. We’ll just leave one of his responses here:
A six-year-old asks Donald Trump what his favorite farm animal is:
"I love cows. But if we go with Kamala you won't have any cows anymore. I don't want to ruin this kid's day. I love cows, I think they're so cute and so beautiful."pic.twitter.com/qNxVPQ2suQ
To cap it all off, at a rally in Pennsylvania, Trump called Harris a “shit vice president” and spoke about the penis size of golfer Arnold Palmer. Yes… really.
Trump 10 minutes into his Arnold Palmer story: But when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there. They said, oh my God. That's unbelievable. pic.twitter.com/kRLKWixpT8
All this makes it no wonder, then, that Harris is drawing voters’ attention to Trump’s rambling incoherency and insults. “He has called it the weave,” she said at a rally in Detroit Saturday. “I think we here will call it nonsense.”
Correction, Oct. 20: An earlier version of this story mistakenly referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as the former VP.
After former President Donald Trump’s very weird week, more than 400 doctors and health professionals are questioning his mental and physical fitness to serve, and calling for him to release his medical records.
The development—which Mother Jones is the first to report—comes about a week after the group Doctors for Harris first released the letter, with a little more than half the 448 signatures it has now. Since then, another 200-plus medical professionals have signed on, following a slate of unhinged episodes and nonsensical—even profane—comments from Trump over the past week. As I reported yesterday, highlights included swaying on stage for a half-hour to “Ave Maria,” “Hallelujah,” and “YMCA”; calling himself the “father of IVF”; falsely claiming “nobody died” on January 6 other than Ashli Babbittand that “there were no guns” among the insurrectionists; and making lewd comments about both his opponent and the late golfer Arnold Palmer’s genitalia.
It’s no wonder, then, that as of Monday afternoon, 448 health professionals have voicedconcerns about his fitness for office. “With no recent disclosure of health information from Donald Trump, we are left to extrapolate from public appearances,” their letter states. “And on that front, Trump is falling concerningly short of any standard of fitness for office and displaying alarming characteristics of declining acuity.”
As the letter points out, Trump is 78 years old—though it’s unclear if he realizes that, given that he said he’s “not that close to 80” during a town hall Sunday. His age, the writers argue, makes it all the more necessary he come clean about his state of health. (Biden, after all, is 81.) Trump said in August he would “gladly” release his records, but has yet to do so. The most recent insight we have is a three-paragraph letter he posted to Truth Social in which his personal physician claimed he had lost weight and was in “excellent health.”
“While many older adults are highly functional, age can also come with cognitive changes that affect our ability to function well in complex settings,” the letter says. “We are seeing that from Trump, as he uses his rallies and appearances to ramble, meander, and crudely lash out at his many perceived grievances. He also is notably refusing to give the public the ability to properly vet or scrutinize his capacities.” Earlier this month, Trump dropped out of a scheduled 60 Minutes interview. He has also refused to debate Vice President Kamala Harris a second time.
The doctors portray him as akin to a disgruntled grandpa who says things that embarrass his relatives and needs a check-up: “As we saw in the first presidential debate, Trump is displaying irrationality and irritability. Notably, he ranted about migrants eating people’s cats and dogs. This was widely debunked as untrue.”
“Given his advancing age—if elected again, he would be the oldest president in history by the end of his term—his refusal to disclose even basic health information is a disservice to the American people,” the letter concludes.
Spokespeople for the Trump campaign and Doctors for Harris did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Vice President Kamala Harris released her medical records earlier this month, as my colleague Abby Vesoulis covered. The results were “unremarkable,” the physician said—which is to say, normal. Trump cannot relate.
Two weeks from Tuesday, millions of voters across the country will fan out to polling places.
And when they do, there will reportedly be a GOP-backed, 200,000-strong army of volunteers watching them. Their task? “Establish the battlefield” to challenge the results of the election, should former president Donald Trump lose.
That’s according to a new report in the New Yorker that sheds light on the inner workings of the Republican National Committee’s plan—led by Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara and Michael Whatley, its co-chairs—to use a giant grassroots group of Trump worshippers to question the integrity of the election.
In June, the RNC announced that the so-called “Protect the Vote” tour would make a series of stops in swing states to “train volunteers to ensure it is easy to vote and hard to cheat this November.” (Never mind that research shows voter fraud is quite rare; that Republican-led gerrymandering has helped enshrine minority rule, as my colleague Ari Berman has covered; and that Trump still refuses to admit he lost the 2020 election—despite more than 60 failed legal challenges affirming that he did.)
According to the New Yorker, much of the RNC’s strategy relies on indulging supporters’ paranoia over conspiracy theories about a Democrat-coordinated campaign to steal the election—via the usual suspects, undocumented immigrants and dead people—and training volunteers to be “the eyes and the ears of the Trump campaign,” as far-right Internet personality Jack Posobiec put it. If they suspect fraud, the volunteers are told, they should call the RNC’s “election integrity hotline,” which a team of volunteer attorneys will apparently answer.
The irony is that poll watching has, historically, been an important safeguard of democracy. Poll watchers helped implement the Voting Rights Act, for example, ensuring election workers were actually allowing Black people to vote. But experts also say that without clear guidelines—and under Trump’s GOP—the practice can help foment Election Day discord.
Recent history offers proof: In 2020, mostly white Republican poll watchers—including five activists linked to the Trump campaign—heckled mostly Black election workers in Detroit and spread disproven rumors of fraud, chanting “stop the count,” as NBC News recently investigated. A recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute found that more than a quarter of Republicans—compared with 14 percent of independents and 12 percent of Democrats—believe poll watchers should be armed. And nearly a fifth of Republicans surveyed said that if Trump loses, he should contest the results and do “whatever it takes” to assume the presidency—compared with 12 percent of Democrats saying the same of Harris.
The GOP is not waiting until Election Day to stoke doubt, though: The RNC has already filed dozens of “election integrity” lawsuits across the country, which challenge absentee and mail-in ballots and try to make it easier to purge voter rolls and allow local officials to refuse to certify elections, as my colleague Pema Levy recently wrote. As one expert told her, their forethought should be a warning to the rest of us:
“In 2020, the attempt to undermine election results by the Trump campaign [was] more of an afterthought,” says Sylvia Albert, who runs voting and election projects at Common Cause, a pro-democracy nonprofit. “Now it looks like a cohesive party strategy nationwide, and it’s not an afterthought. The lesson we’ve taken is to prepare for it.”
After Elon Muskunveiled a scheme to pay $100 to registered Pennsylvania voters who sign a pro-Trump petition, Democratic officials—and legal experts—are sounding the alarm.
As my colleague Arianna Coghill reported yesterday, Musk made the announcement to his 202 million X followers on Thursday, telling them the offer was valid through midnight on Monday. On top of that, Musk also says he is giving away $1 million a day, every day until the election, to petition signers in swing states. The funds appear to come from the billionaire’s America PAC, which he founded in support of Trump—and reportedly pumped with $75 million.
While the petition does not explicitly mention Trump, its support for his ticket over Vice President Kamala Harris is clear. It tells signatories they are signaling their “support of the Constitution, especially freedom of speech and the right to bear arms.”
Unsurprisingly, officials have concerns.
Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-Pa.) told Kristen Welker of NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, “there are real questions with how he is spending money in this race,” adding, “I think it’s something that law enforcement could take a look at.” (The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Mother Jones.)
WATCH: Every day until Election Day, Elon Musk says he’ll give $1M to a voter who has signed his super PAC’s petition “in favor of free speech and the right to bear arms.”@JoshShapiroPA: “That is deeply concerning. … It's something that law enforcement could take a look at." pic.twitter.com/2mZY1b5YaL
Meanwhile, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) told the New York Post in an interview that “Musk is a concern,” adding, “not even just that he has endorsed [Trump], but the fact that now he’s becoming an active participant and showing up and doing rallies and things like that.”
Legal experts went further. Rick Hasen, professor of political science and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law, wrote that Musk’s promises are “clearly illegal,” citing federal election law that prohibits paying for voting or registering to vote, including via lottery. Adav Noti, executive director of the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center, told ABC News that the giveaway’s requirement that petition signers be registered voters “violates the federal ban on paying people to register to vote.” (The Department of Justice declined to comment.) Musk does not appear to have publicly replied to the critiques, and X no longer responds to journalists under his ownership.
This is far from the first time that Musk has wielded his absurd levels of wealth and power to try to sway the election in Trump’s favor: As I have reported, research has found that Musk’s sharing of election disinformation racked up billions of views on X.
Update, Oct. 21: This post was updated with a response from the Department of Justice.
With just over two weeks until Election Day, both candidates are plunging into nonstop rallies and interviews in a bid to get in front of as many voters as possible. (Though notably, Trump has backed out of several recent high profile media appearances, including a sit-down with 60 Minutes.)
Vice President Kamala Harris sat for a contentious exchange with Fox News host Bret Baier this week, and headlinedrallies in the swing states of Wisconsin, Georgia, and Michigan. Former President Donald Trump, for his part, sank to new lows during a suite of appearances—lobbing crude insults at his opponents and rambling incoherently. Let’s review Trump’s very weird week, which, even by Trumpian standards of shock, veered into increasingly alarming territory. Let’s go day-by-day:
Monday
At a Pennsylvania town hall Monday night, Trump ranted about Hannibal Lecter, renewed his longstanding attacks on the “fake news,” and then abandoned answering questions entirely to listen to “Ave Maria,” “Hallelujah,” and “YMCA” for a half hour as he swayed on stage.
"Turn it up louder!" — Trump calls for Ave Maria to be played again while his favorite chart is displayed, which he says "I sleep with every night. I kiss it." pic.twitter.com/bLCOBNuCjI
At an interview with Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Micklethwait on immigration and economic policy, Trump took a question about inflation as an opportunity to bash Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), an architect of the Green New Deal: “She never even studied the environment in college. She went to a nice college. She came out. She just said—the Green New Scam. She just named all these things.” (Ocasio-Cortez studied international relations and economics at Boston University.)
That exchange was indicative of the interview at large: While Micklethwait repeatedly pressed Trump on the specifics of his economic policies and their potential impacts—higher prices due to tariffs, the loss of immigrant labor due to his proposed mass deportation plan—the former president went on tangent after tangent. When Micklethwait asked him if Google should be broken up, for example, Trump responded with a grievance about voting in Virginia. When the host called him out for his meandering, Trump offered his now-common but unsatisfying explanation: “It’s called the weave.” Other highlights: Trump called Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) “Newscum” and claimed the insurrection represented “a peaceful transfer of power.”
Trump: New scum I call him
Micklethwait: There are CEOs out here if they said that sort of thing about a rival CEO they would be sacked.
And at an all-women’s town hall hosted by Fox News host Harris Faulkner taped Tuesday, Trump called himself “the father of IVF”… despite the fact that the Dobbs decision—which he made possible by appointing three of the five Supreme Court justices who overruled Roe v. Wade—has undermined IVF access and Senate Republicans twice blocked a vote on a Democrat-led bill to protect the fertility treatment.
Trump: “I’m the father of IVF”
FACT CHECK: IVF is under threat across the country because Trump ended Roe v. Wade and his Project 2025 plan could effectively ban IVF altogether. pic.twitter.com/tEOUiufDjO
His campaign dismissed the bizarre remark as a joke. But as former President Barack Obama said at a rally for Harris in Arizona Friday night: “I do not know what that means. You do not either.”
Wednesday
At a town hall for Latino voters hosted by Univision, Trump called Jan. 6, 2021—the day he unleashed a mob on the Capitol in an attempt to overthrow the 2020 election—”a day of love.” He also falsely claimed “nobody died” other than Ashli Babbitt,and “there were no guns.” January 6, as my colleague Mark Follman has covered extensively, was in fact a heavily armed insurrection.
He also doubled down on the racist lies his campaign helpedspread about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio eating house pets, claiming without evidence they are “eating other things, too, that they’re not supposed to be.”
Question: Do you really believe that these people are eating people’s pets?
Trump: I was just saying what was reported. And eating other things too that they’re not supposed to. pic.twitter.com/GAXezwPkqe
During a sit-down with Fox and Friends, Trump took viewers’ questions… including softballs from children who asked about his favorite animal and favorite former president. We’ll just leave one of his responses here:
A six-year-old asks Donald Trump what his favorite farm animal is:
"I love cows. But if we go with Kamala you won't have any cows anymore. I don't want to ruin this kid's day. I love cows, I think they're so cute and so beautiful."pic.twitter.com/qNxVPQ2suQ
To cap it all off, at a rally in Pennsylvania, Trump called Harris a “shit vice president” and spoke about the penis size of golfer Arnold Palmer. Yes… really.
Trump 10 minutes into his Arnold Palmer story: But when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there. They said, oh my God. That's unbelievable. pic.twitter.com/kRLKWixpT8
All this makes it no wonder, then, that Harris is drawing voters’ attention to Trump’s rambling incoherency and insults. “He has called it the weave,” she said at a rally in Detroit Saturday. “I think we here will call it nonsense.”
Correction, Oct. 20: An earlier version of this story mistakenly referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as the former VP.
Paris Alexander had been in a destructive relationship for over a decade, learning to tolerate the intolerable even as the abuse progressed—first mental and emotional torment, then physical and sexual torture. Like many survivors, Alexander, who is nonbinary, stayed in the relationship hoping that it would improve. “We stick it out,” they said, “because we think that they’re going to change and come to their senses.”
Then, one day in September 2020, Alexander’s male partner beat them up and dragged them outside their Providence, Rhode Island, home by their hair. Wandering their neighborhood, covered in blood and desperate to flee, Alexander felt haunted by the years of forced isolation: “I had nowhere to go, no one to turn to,” they recall. A Google search on their phone led them to Sojourner House, which runs the state’s only shelter specifically for LGBTQ victims of intimate partner violence. Almost miraculously, there was some space. Finally, Alexander had caught a break.
At the shelter, known as RISE, Alexander focused on taking “baby steps” toward independence. They got a library card. They started individual therapy. They joined a weekly virtual LGBTQ support group, where they heard terms like “nonbinary,” “gender-queer,” and “gender fluid” for the first time. Back then, Alexander identified as a transgender woman and felt pressured to “look female as much as possible.” The support group taught them, “You don’t have to be [male or female]—you can just simply be who you are, and that’s okay.”
RISE is one of three shelters operated by Sojourner House, named for the 19th-century slave-turned-abolitionist Sojourner Truth, who was also an ardent advocate for women’s rights. Since its foundingin 1976,the organization has served more than 60,000 people—1,800 last year alone. A small but critical part ofthis past year’s $7.4 million budget comes from the federal Crime Victims Fund, a pot of money created by the 1984 Victims of Crime Act, also known as VOCA. Across the country, VOCA helps pay for the hotlines survivors call in crisis, the shelters they flee to, and the advocates who accompany them to court and help them heal.
VOCA-supported programs helped almost 8 million people in fiscal year 2022–2023, funding nearly 3 million shelter beds and 2.3 million crisis-hotline calls, according to the Department of Justice. Those services have become more critical since the pandemic, as rates of intimate partner violence have soared, a housing crisis has made it even harder for survivors to flee, and the overturning of Roe v. Wade has given abusers another way to threaten pregnant survivors. But even as the need is growing, VOCA funding has been plummeting—and Congress has failed to act on what many advocates say may be the best hope for a legislative fix.
The current funding crisis is rooted in changes in DOJ policy that date back years. The Crime Victims Fund gets most of its money from financial penalties levied in corporate criminal cases, according to the department. Those fees and fines have been falling as federal prosecutors have pursued more deferred and non-prosecution agreements, which allow defendantsmore time to pay up or avoid charges entirely if they cooperate with the government. As a result, deposits into the pot shrank from a high of $6.6 billion in 2017 to $1.39 billion in fiscal year 2023. (Because of congressional caps, the actual amount of money disbursed is even lower.) These declines have trickled down to state agencies—which receive VOCA funds based on their state’s population size—and then to eligible programs. Rhode Island, which has one of the smallest populations, has seen a 54 percent drop in VOCA funds since 2017, to $2.9 million in the last fiscal year. California, the most populous state, went from receiving $218.9 million in VOCA funds in 2017 to $87 million over the same period.
Most states, including California, have managed to come up with some funding to offset the federal cuts, but the money is mostly temporary—lasting a year or two max. Fourteen states, including Rhode Island, did not appropriate any money in their most recent budgets to offset the VOCA cuts, I found in my reporting. This past spring, Rhode Island lawmakers proposed $2 million in supplemental funding, but the bill died in committee.
I’ve spent four months trying to understand how these extreme VOCA cuts are affecting domestic violence programs across the United States, doing more than two dozen interviews and tracking down budget data from every state. The picture that has emerged is deeply troubling: Lifesaving services for survivors are struggling to stay afloat, and experts fear what might happen if a long-term funding solution isn’t found.
Law enforcement groups are equally worried.“Without Congressional action, victim service providers will be forced to cut critical services, and many will be forced to close,” more than 700 prosecutors wrote in an open letter to lawmakers in February. “Millions of victims, including abused children and battered women, will be left without access to safety, justice and healing.” But with the November elections looming, Congress’ attention has been focused elsewhere.
The VOCA Fix Act, which President Biden signed into law in 2021,diverted revenue from deferred and non-prosecution agreements to the Crime Victims Fund—but this turned out to beinadequate. This term, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) have proposed a bill to supplement VOCA with funds collected through the False Claims Act, which penalizes defrauding of the government. The legislation has attracted 170 bipartisan co-sponsors in the House but languished in the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Durbin chairs. A spokesperson for Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the committee’s highest-ranking Republican, did not respond to questions about whether the bill willget a hearing. Congress has also punted onBiden’s proposal for a $7.3 billion infusion into the Crime Victims Fund for next year. (The White House did not respond to repeated requests for comment.)
“Victims of crime, and specifically, victims of domestic and sexual violence, just are not priorities.”
At a virtual event this week commemorating the 40th anniversary of VOCA, the mood was less than celebratory. “I’m hearing about programs shutting down, positions being cut, victim services being impacted,” ClairePonder Selib, executive director of the National Organization for Victim Advocacy, told more than 250 attendees. To Vanessa Volz, Sojourner House’s president and CEO, the funding crisis illuminates a harsh reality: “Victims of crime, and specifically, victims of domestic and sexual violence, just are not priorities.”
Domestic violence hotlines like theone that led Paris Alexander to Sojourner House are among the most critical services that VOCA funds. Because hotlines are the point of entry to a support system that can mean the difference between life and death, slashed budgets can be especially disastrous. Rhode Island’s statewide 24/7 helpline has historically relied almost entirely on VOCA funding—about $118,000 last year, less than half what it received in 2019. More cuts would likely hit the helpline’s overnight shifts hardest. For people who are abused in the dead of night, or who have a small window to seek help while their abusers are sleeping or working, this could be catastrophic.
The Rhode Island helpline routinely gets calls from people in Massachusetts and Connecticut who can’t access services in their own areas—even though both of those states, unlike Rhode Island, have appropriated supplemental funds to offset VOCA cuts. Connecticut’s additional money came from the pandemic-era American Rescue Plan Act, which disappears at the end of this year. Without a new infusion of money, the statewide domestic violence hotline, Safe Connect—which is 100 percent funded by VOCA—will have to drastically cut services, lay off advocates, or even shut down, says Meghan Scanlon, president and CEO of the Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence, which staffs the hotline. “The reality is, as much as we are advocates who don’t want to say ‘no,’ at some point, we’re gonna have to,” she laments. “And that doesn’t feel great.”
Some of the greatest effects are likely to be felt in programs that serve transgender clients and undocumented immigrants, such as Sojourner House’s RISE shelter and THEIA Project, which supports victims of human trafficking. Hot-button politics around LGBTQ+ and immigrant clienteles make such programs especially difficult to fundraise for, Volz says.
Yet as Alexander’s story shows, immigrantsurvivors are particularly vulnerable to abuse from partners who exploit their status as another form of control. Despite their strong New England accent that makes them sound as if they had been born and raised in Boston, Alexander originally hails from São Miguel, a lush island in the Azores archipelago of Portugal. When they were 5 years old, they arrived in New Bedford, Massachusetts, with their parents—but without documentation. Their mother secured US citizenship when Alexander was a teenager—a process that automatically made them a citizen, too. But after getting kicked out of the house at 16, and no parental contact over the years, Alexander lacked both identification and proof of their citizenship status. “I became like a ghost,” they recall. In their 20s, they told me, essentially undocumented, they dropped out of cosmetology school and the regular labor force and drifted into sex work.
Sojourner House didn’t just get Alexander out of an abusive relationship. Its VOCA-funded team of immigration advocates helped Alexander secure identification, represented them in immigration proceedings, and prepped them for their citizenship test—a process that took over a year; in March 2022, Alexander was officially sworn in as a US citizen. “We’re really at risk of not being able to continue providing these services at the same level,” Volz notes.
In some places, cuts affecting VOCA-funded legal advocacy services have already been devastating. Judge Shelley Santry, a family court judge in Louisville, Kentucky, used to have advocates in her courtroom every Tuesday, the day she hears domestic violence cases involving people seeking emergency protective orders against their abusers. The advocates—employed by the statewide Center for Women and Families—would bring survivors into a private room after their hearing and explain a new set of risks: “Once the order is entered, it’s really the most dangerous time,” Santry told me. “The perpetrator is losing that control, and that’s when the lethality red flags are elevated.” Recently in Hardin County, 60 miles from Louisville, a man fatally shot his ex-girlfriend and her mother near the courthouse where they had a hearing about an emergency protective order against him. (He also killed himself.)
In Santry’s courtroom, the advocates would help survivors come up with practical strategies to safeguard themselves and their families: keep gas in their cars, charge up their phones, pack emergency bags in case they had to flee. Their in-person presence was essential, says Elizabeth Martin, the center’s president and CEO: “If you aren’t where people are, they’re not necessarily going to reach out to you.”
But over time, the number of advocates in Santry’s courtroom dwindled, and since August 2021, they’ve been completely gone. With VOCA funding for the center plummeting more than 60 percent since 2019, to just over $437,000 last year, Martin was forced to cut her domestic violence staff in half and remove advocates from courtrooms. Now, a court staffer hands out pamphlets and business cards to survivors bearing the center’s name, website, and phone number. Martin only sends an advocate if a survivor asks for one. “They don’t know what they don’t know,” Martin says. “The contact, that personal touch, that involvement has been watered down significantly.”
Lawmakers “need to understand this isn’t a personal problem, this isn’t a family problem—this is all of our problems, and we’ve got to work to eradicate it.”
Domestic violence groups were grateful when Kentucky legislators allocated $7.1 million in their latest budget to offset VOCA cuts, but say the one-time grant isn’t enough. Without advocates to provide support, “the consequence may be death,” Santry says. In 2020, Kentucky ranked 10th in the nation for domestic violence homicides, according to the Violence Policy Center, with men murdering 46 women across the state. Lawmakers “need to understand this isn’t a personal problem,” Martin says, “this isn’t a family problem—this is all of our problems, and we’ve got to work to eradicate it.”
California is anotherstate where advocates say lawmakers haven’t done enough to address a steep decline in VOCA funds—down 60 percent since fiscal year 2017. Now domestic violence organizations there are facing a new crisis as they grapple with the repercussions of this summer’s decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson, in which the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority essentially greenlit the criminalization of homelessness.
After a months-long advocacy campaign that drew the support of actress Angelina Jolie, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office scrounged up $103 million inJune to supplement the $87 million in federal VOCA funds. That one-year reprieve helped to avert what could have been a catastrophe for VOCA-funded organizations. But then in July, Newsom ordered state agencies to clear out homeless encampments following the Grants Pass ruling. Advocates warned that the decision could be devastating for survivors of intimate partner violence, who struggle to access shelter and housing nationwide—and especially in California, which has the largest population of unhoused people in the United States.
“The reality before [Newsom’s] executive order was that there were not enough DV-specific shelter beds, and just in general, there’s not enough emergency shelter beds,” says Jennifer Willover, housing policy analyst at the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence. Since Newsom’s mandate, Willover adds, domestic violence programs across the state have reported increased calls to their hotlines requesting shelter. In some parts of the state, advocates report that they are spending more time visiting encampments and informing unhoused people of domestic violence-specific services they offer, Willover says. (Newsom’s Office of Emergency Services did not respond to requests for comment.)
Experts see the situation there as a harbinger of what’s to come nationwide: As the National Network to End Domestic Violence and other advocacy groups said after the Grants Pass ruling, “Gender-based violence is a cause and consequence of homelessness, and this ruling will further trap people who are homeless, including survivors, in cycles of poverty and housing insecurity.”
In a report about homelessness in the state published in January by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, nearly one-fifth of cisgender women surveyed said they had experienced intimate partner violence in the six months prior to homelessness, and 40 percent said violence was a reason for leaving their last housing. Many were homeless because of the far-reaching effects of domestic abuse: living in isolation from family and friends and unable to work, their financial resources controlled by their abusers, resulted in intractable poor credit and records of eviction. “There’s a lack of awareness, still, of the fact that there is that intersection of domestic violence and homelessness,” says Leticia Campos, chief programs officer at the Marjaree Mason Center, which serves victims of domestic violence in Fresno County, where the population tops 1 million and the poverty rate is well over the national average.
Marjaree Mason’s drop-in center in Fresno, California, provides counseling and legal advocacy services to survivors in need.Courtesy Marjaree Mason
Marjaree Mason—established in 1979 and named after a 36-year-old woman murdered by her ex-boyfriend, a sheriff’s deputy with the county—offers a case study of the problems facing VOCA-funded organizations in California post–Grants Pass. Fresno County has the highest number of calls to law enforcement for domestic violence per capita in California, and Marjaree Mason is the county’s only 24/7 domestic violence shelter and service provider. The Fresno City Council allocated $300,000 earlier this year to help the organization fend off the impacts of the years-long decline in VOCA funds, but staff members say they still struggle to meet the needs of survivors.
In June, I visited the VOCA-funded emergency shelter, which can accommodate 140 people. The rooms have bunk beds with colorful, patterned bedspreads, and televisions mounted on the walls, and outside there’s a playground shaded by palm trees. But even before the Supreme Court ruling, getting a bed there wasn’t easy. Empty beds are often filled within hours, Campos says; when I visited, the shelter had been at capacity for three weeks. Survivors who are turned away often have no choice but to return to their abusers. A spokesperson told me that last year, 80 percent of the organization’s clients had no income of their own, and of the ones who did, two-thirds made under $15,000.
After Newsom issued his executive order, the Fresno County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved an ordinance making “unlawful camping” a misdemeanor punishable by a $500 fine and up to six months in jail. The city of Fresno passed a ban that was even more aggressive: a $1,000 fine and a year behind bars, which took effect in late September. The mayor has said that arrests will be limited to “habitual offenders” and that people will first be offered supportive services, though it’s unclear whether those include referrals for domestic violence treatment.
Staff at Marjaree Mason saw an impact withindays of Newsom’s executive order, when the sheriff’s office dropped off an unhoused woman and two children at the drop-in center in the middle of the night after clearing an encampment, according to Joseph Hickman, the center’s interim crisis response manager. “It was very eye-opening to see that it happened that quickly,” Hickman says. “It definitely kind of lit a fire under us.”
At Marjaree Mason’s emergency shelter, families get their own room. Free beds tend to fill up within hours. Courtesy Marjaree Mason
The problem, as Campos says, is this: “What should we do when we’re at capacity? Where should we send victims of domestic violence?” Laura Moreno, program manager at the Fresno County Department of Social Services, says those questions point to a broader, county-wide issue. “We don’t have enough shelter beds, period, for the number of people we have on the streets,” she told me. A federally mandated one-day census in Fresno and neighboring Madera counties in January 2023 found nearly 4,500 unhoused people, up 7 percent from the year before. A county spokesperson said outreach teams provide homeless people with relevant resources, including information about Marjaree Mason’s services.
Helping survivors find assistance elsewhere when the shelter is full is a task left to Diana Hernandez, a former 911 dispatcher who joined Marjaree Mason’s staff in September 2021. In her previous job, she told me, she hated having to hang up on callers who were clearly in need but not in the throes of an emergency. Now, as a client navigator, she can talk to survivors who call the hotline for as long as they want, providing them with emotional support and resources. But she can’t always give them what they need most, which is usually a bed.
While we were chatting in her cubicle in June, she received a hotline call from a woman who said she’d been physically assaulted by her boyfriend. She had been living in a car, and needed a safe place to stay. Marjaree Mason’s shelter was full, so Hernandez offered to call homeless shelters in the area to see if they had room. But she also cautioned that those shelters wouldn’t offer advocacy support and legal services specifically for domestic violence victims. Nor would their locations be confidential, like domestic violence shelters’ are. Add to that, most likely they would require residents to leave during the day; Marjaree Mason lets them stay.
Hernandez gave the woman phone numbers for other local organizations that could provide services, and suggested that she change her passwords on her email and social media accounts, make sure her phone’s location-sharing feature was turned off, and call back on the hotline at any time if she wanted to talk. In such instances, “I try to exhaust my resources,” Hernandez told me after the call ended, “so I know I did everything I could.”
After seven months at RISE, Sojourner House’s LGBTQ shelter, Paris Alexander might have ended up like so many other survivors of intimate partner violence: homeless and back on the street. But because Alexander had been a victim of sex trafficking, they were eligible for assistance through another Sojourner House program offering transitional housing for survivors of human trafficking. The program paid the rent and utilities on a third-floor apartment where Alexander lived while they were sorting through their citizenship problems and unable to work. Without a Social Security number, they couldn’t apply for food stamps or government assistance. Every few weeks, Alexander recalls, a Sojourner House advocate showed up with some food—bread, peanut butter, canned beans. “And that was pretty much what I had to live off of.”
Robin Greene, an advocate who works with human trafficking survivors at Sojourner House, helped Alexander get their own apartment and heal. Jarod Lew
Alexander finally secured their citizenship in March 2022 and was able to begin searching for permanent housing. Once more, Sojourner House provided vital support. Robin Greene, an advocate who had once been unhoused, also works with trafficking survivors through the organization’s THEIA Project, which includes a VOCA-funded shelter. Greene helped Alexander find an apartment and even convinced the landlord to renovate the space by replacing the floors and covering up cracks and holes in the walls.
For Greene, ensuring her clients live in comfort is key to helping them stay on the road to recovery. Greene recalls spending time in homeless shelters that were “gross,” “vermin-ridden,” “humiliating,” and “degrading.” At the shelter for trafficking victims, she painted the walls and floors with pops of green, yellow, and purple and adorned the office space with house plants. She mows the front lawn herself. “I want it to look not like a shelter,” she told me when I visited. “I want it to look like a home.”
Two years after Alexander moved in, their apartment—the same one that Greene helped secure—has become their “sanctuary,” where they live with their two cats, Bast and Isis. They painted the walls yellow, green, and blue; hung up their own artwork; and put some of the house plants Greene brought to life in front of the bay windows in their living room, a daily reminder of someone who helped transform their life.
According to Greene, Alexander represents “the epitome” of what Sojourner House and domestic violence organizations like it can do, if they have the vision, the people—and the funding to support survivors. “Paris was determined to just sit in their little apartment and never come out with their cats,” Greene told me, “but not now.”
Today, Alexander lives on their own and volunteers with Sojourner House and as a mentor to trans youth.Jarod Lew
Today, Alexander volunteers with Sojourner House and spreads word of its services within the community. They also volunteer with a trans youth mentorship program, through which they meet weekly with a younger trans mentee, and they host events—including a recent makeup workshop, drawing on their cosmetology background—for trans and nonbinary young people.In November, they’ll host a virtual Friendsgiving hangout—meant to be “a safe and loving space during Thanksgiving,” they said, adding, “the holidays can be a tough time of the year for queer folks.”
Alexander knows firsthand the negative thoughts that can run rampant through survivors’ minds: “We feel like we’re not worthy. We feel like no one cares. We feel like no one understands. You don’t trust that there’s genuine empathy out there.” Empathy, though, tends to be abundant among people who support survivors of domestic violence; what’s in short supply is cash. This is partly why Alexander was eager to tell their story: They want lawmakers to know that VOCA funds have “the power and the ability” to save lives.“I wouldn’t be here today,” they told me, “if it weren’t for the Sojourner House program.”
If you or someone you care about is experiencing or at risk of domestic violence, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline by texting “start” to 88788 or calling 800-799-SAFE (7233) or going to thehotline.org.The Department of Health and Human Services has also compiled a list of organizations by state.
This article was produced with the support of the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2024 Domestic Violence Impact Reporting Fund.
Former President DonaldTrump on Tuesday greeted what may have been his dream audience: a roomful of seemingly adoring women.
The squeals and claps seem confounding when you consider Trump’s history with—and impacts on—women: He has been found liable of sexual assault against a woman; he was found guilty of 34 felony counts related to buying a porn star’s silence, after he allegedly cheated on his wife with her; and he appointed three of the five Supreme Court justices who overruledRoe v. Wade, which has subsequently created a health care apocalypse and endangered vulnerable women.
But his presence at the all-women Georgia town hall, hosted by Fox News’ Harris Faulkner, makes sense when you recognize that Trump (understandably) has a major problem with women voters: A national poll from NBC News released this weekend found that Harris has a 14 point lead among them. (Trump seems to be aware of the problem; see, for example, a late-night, all-caps meltdown he had on Truth Social last month, in which he essentially—and implausibly—promised to make women great again if reelected.)
As attendees to the Georgia town hall, which was taped Tuesday, made clear, Trump’s women problem has a lot to do with his role in restricting abortion access nationwide, and the ripple effects that have flowed from that—including threats to accessing IVF, which often involves the discarding of embryos.
As audience members confronted him over these impacts—which became clear in Alabama earlier this year—Trump reiterated his usual spiel of reproductive rights-related falsehoods, which included claiming that “every legal scholar” wanted Roe overruled (easilydebunked) and that Republicans are “the party of IVF”—despite the fact that Republicans have twice blocked a vote on a bill that would protect IVF access nationwide, as I have covered. (The GOP said that it supports IVF and that the bill was unnecessary.)
But Trump also debuted a new lie at the town hall: He claimed he’s the “father of IVF.”
“I want to talk about IVF,” Trump said in the lead-up to a question about how abortion bans could impact fertility treatments. “I’m the father of IVF, so I want to hear this question.”(He then proceeded to call Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.)—who he said taught him what IVF is—”fantastically attractive.”)
"We really are the Party of IVF."
President Trump pledges FULL SUPPORT for fertility treatments at a town hall in Georgia. pic.twitter.com/swgf7bUUsx
If you are wondering what on Earth he could have possibly meant, you are not alone. Trump is certainly not the creator of the reproductive technology (that was a British doctor, named Robert Edwards, in 1978). And Trump has never suggested any of his five children were born through IVF. In a statement provided to Mother Jones, Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary for the Trump campaign, dismissed the comment as “a joke President Trump made in jest when he was enthusiastically answering a question about IVF as he strongly supports widespread access to fertility treatments for women and families.” She did not respond to questions about whether Trump supported the Democratic-led bill on IVF that Republicans twice blocked, or how his proposal to force the government or private insurance companies to fund IVF would actually work (estimates say it could cost around $8 billion).
Harris promptly clapped back, telling reporters Trump’s comments were “quite bizarre,” adding, “if what he meant is taking responsibility, then yeah, he should take responsibility for the fact that one in three women in America lives in a Trump abortion ban state.”
Jenny Lawson, executive director of Planned Parenthood Votes, said in a statement that Trump’s claim was “disturbing,” adding, “He can try pandering (or whatever that was) to women on issues like IVF but he only cares about himself.” Women voters, on the other hand, care a lot about reproductive rights: While the NBC poll found Trump and Harris in a dead heat overall, polling at 48 percent each, voters said abortion was a top motivator for them—and that they prefer Harris to Trump on the issue, 53 percent to 34 percent.
But Trump seems to be living in an alternate reality—one in which he is the best candidate for reproductive rights. “We want fertilization, and it’s all the way, and the Democrats tried to attack us on it and we’re out there on IVF even more than them,” he said at the town hall. “So we’re totally in favor of it.”
Dozens of countries are condemning Israel’s attacks on United Nations peacekeepers in Lebanon.
Israeli forces reportedly struck the UN mission in Lebanon—known as UNIFIL—in recent days, injuring multiple peacekeepers, according to the mission. As UNIFIL points out, deliberate attacks on peacekeepers violate international law.
A joint statement by 34 UNIFIL-contributing countries, initiated by , urges to protect @UNIFIL_ peacekeepers. We condemn recent incidents, call to respect UNIFIL's mission & ensure the safety of its personnel. pic.twitter.com/66q46Pu1RR
Human rights groups including Human Rights Watch have condemned the reported attacks and called for UN investigations. In a statement posted on X on Saturday by the Polish Mission to the United Nations, a joint group of signatories said that they “condemn recent incidents, call to respect [the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon’s] mission & ensure the safety of its personnel.”
Netanyahu’s unwillingness to call for a full-scale stop of IDF interactions with UNIFIL has drawn scorn. The prime minister of Ireland—one of the signatories of the letter which the BBC reports has more than 370 troops in Lebanon as part of the peacekeeping mission—said during a visit to Washington, DC this week that the attacks were an “extraordinarily concerning development.” Spain, France, and Italy have also condemned the attacks in a joint statement, calling them “unjustifiable.” And President Biden on Friday said Israel should “absolutely” stop striking the UN peacekeepers.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said the country “condemns Netanyahu’s position and the Israeli aggression against UNIFIL, renews its commitment to international legitimacy.”
The Israeli Defense Forces have claimed that Hezbollah “operates from within and near civilian areas in southern Lebanon, including areas near UNIFIL posts.” On Friday, the IDF acknowledged that two UNIFIL personnel were reportedly injured in a strike on a post near an unnamed “threat,” adding that the Israeli military had instructed UNIFIL personnel to shelter in protected spaces while the attack was unfolding. The IDF also said that on Yom Kippur, which fell on Saturday and marks the holiest day of the Jewish year, Hezbollah fired more than 300 projectiles “towards Israeli civilians.”
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the IDF regrets the harm done to UNIFIL personnel but said they should withdraw from the area, alleging that Hezbollah was endangering them by being stationed nearby. A spokesperson for UNIFIL told AFP Saturday that the peacekeepers will not withdraw: “There was a unanimous decision to stay because it’s important for the UN flag to still fly high in this region, and to be able to report to the Security Council,” Andrea Tenenti told the French news agency.
On Sunday, former President Donald Trump posted on X a video he had debuted a few days earlier at a rally: A montage decrying the “woke” military, showing clips of Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket—a film, famously, about the dark cost to the human soul of creating a war machine—as an example of the halcyon days of a battle-hardened Army to which we must return.
“WE WILL NOT HAVE A WOKE MILITARY!” Trump wrote. His post was accompanied by a 94-second edited video alternating clips of a screaming general from the film Full Metal Jacket with shots of Assistant Secretary for Health for the Department of Health and Human Services Rachel Levine—the first openly transgender Senate-confirmed federal official—and TikTok videos of people changing from military garb into drag queen ensembles.
The clips from Full Metal Jacket are labeled “President Trump,” while those featuring LGBTQ people are labeled “Comrade Kamala.” The video ends with a Trumpian exhortation: “LET’S MAKE OUR MILITARY GREAT AGAIN.”
“Absolutely,” Elon Musk, right-wing owner of X, replied to Trump’s post. “The military’s job is to defend America, not engage in social activism.”
The clip is not just absurd. Beneath it is a real aim. The Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that created Project 2025hasdecried “the rise of wokeness in the military.” And as my colleague Noah Lanard wrote back in 2022, the former president has made clear to his inner circle that going after “woke” generals would be a priority if he’s reelected.
What, exactly, would this look like? I’m not sure if Trump knows. But Project 2025 offers some clues, stating that “those with gender dysphoria should be expelled from military service” and “physical fitness requirements should be based on the occupational field without consideration of gender, race, ethnicity, or orientation.” The Heritage Foundation, in its critiques on “wokeness in the military” attacks the familiar suspects: DEI initiatives, critical race theory, LGBTQ people.
With Trump and Harris now tied in a dead heat just three weeks out from the election, according to a new NBC News national poll, it’s also worth remembering Trump has reportedly flirted with a return to mandatory military service.
Dozens of countries are condemning Israel’s attacks on United Nations peacekeepers in Lebanon.
Israeli forces reportedly struck the UN mission in Lebanon—known as UNIFIL—in recent days, injuring multiple peacekeepers, according to the mission. As UNIFIL points out, deliberate attacks on peacekeepers violate international law.
A joint statement by 34 UNIFIL-contributing countries, initiated by , urges to protect @UNIFIL_ peacekeepers. We condemn recent incidents, call to respect UNIFIL's mission & ensure the safety of its personnel. pic.twitter.com/66q46Pu1RR
Human rights groups including Human Rights Watch have condemned the reported attacks and called for UN investigations. In a statement posted on X on Saturday by the Polish Mission to the United Nations, a joint group of signatories said that they “condemn recent incidents, call to respect [the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon’s] mission & ensure the safety of its personnel.”
Netanyahu’s unwillingness to call for a full-scale stop of IDF interactions with UNIFIL has drawn scorn. The prime minister of Ireland—one of the signatories of the letter which the BBC reports has more than 370 troops in Lebanon as part of the peacekeeping mission—said during a visit to Washington, DC this week that the attacks were an “extraordinarily concerning development.” Spain, France, and Italy have also condemned the attacks in a joint statement, calling them “unjustifiable.” And President Biden on Friday said Israel should “absolutely” stop striking the UN peacekeepers.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said the country “condemns Netanyahu’s position and the Israeli aggression against UNIFIL, renews its commitment to international legitimacy.”
The Israeli Defense Forces have claimed that Hezbollah “operates from within and near civilian areas in southern Lebanon, including areas near UNIFIL posts.” On Friday, the IDF acknowledged that two UNIFIL personnel were reportedly injured in a strike on a post near an unnamed “threat,” adding that the Israeli military had instructed UNIFIL personnel to shelter in protected spaces while the attack was unfolding. The IDF also said that on Yom Kippur, which fell on Saturday and marks the holiest day of the Jewish year, Hezbollah fired more than 300 projectiles “towards Israeli civilians.”
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the IDF regrets the harm done to UNIFIL personnel but said they should withdraw from the area, alleging that Hezbollah was endangering them by being stationed nearby. A spokesperson for UNIFIL told AFP Saturday that the peacekeepers will not withdraw: “There was a unanimous decision to stay because it’s important for the UN flag to still fly high in this region, and to be able to report to the Security Council,” Andrea Tenenti told the French news agency.
On Sunday, former President Donald Trump posted on X a video he had debuted a few days earlier at a rally: A montage decrying the “woke” military, showing clips of Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket—a film, famously, about the dark cost to the human soul of creating a war machine—as an example of the halcyon days of a battle-hardened Army to which we must return.
“WE WILL NOT HAVE A WOKE MILITARY!” Trump wrote. His post was accompanied by a 94-second edited video alternating clips of a screaming general from the film Full Metal Jacket with shots of Assistant Secretary for Health for the Department of Health and Human Services Rachel Levine—the first openly transgender Senate-confirmed federal official—and TikTok videos of people changing from military garb into drag queen ensembles.
The clips from Full Metal Jacket are labeled “President Trump,” while those featuring LGBTQ people are labeled “Comrade Kamala.” The video ends with a Trumpian exhortation: “LET’S MAKE OUR MILITARY GREAT AGAIN.”
“Absolutely,” Elon Musk, right-wing owner of X, replied to Trump’s post. “The military’s job is to defend America, not engage in social activism.”
The clip is not just absurd. Beneath it is a real aim. The Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that created Project 2025hasdecried “the rise of wokeness in the military.” And as my colleague Noah Lanard wrote back in 2022, the former president has made clear to his inner circle that going after “woke” generals would be a priority if he’s reelected.
What, exactly, would this look like? I’m not sure if Trump knows. But Project 2025 offers some clues, stating that “those with gender dysphoria should be expelled from military service” and “physical fitness requirements should be based on the occupational field without consideration of gender, race, ethnicity, or orientation.” The Heritage Foundation, in its critiques on “wokeness in the military” attacks the familiar suspects: DEI initiatives, critical race theory, LGBTQ people.
With Trump and Harris now tied in a dead heat just three weeks out from the election, according to a new NBC News national poll, it’s also worth remembering Trump has reportedly flirted with a return to mandatory military service.
When Dr. Veronica Gillispie-Bell, a board-certified OB-GYN based in New Orleans, walks into a hospital room to deliver a baby, one of the first things she does is ask the nurse on duty, “Do we have our hemorrhage meds?”
Postpartum hemorrhage, or severe bleeding afterchildbirth, is a leading—but preventable—cause ofmaternaldeath in the US and around the world. It occurs in an estimated 1 to 5 percent of pregnancies. For doctors like Gillispie-Bell, who has testified before Congress about the Black maternal mortality crisis, having medications on hand to treat patients immediately is critical to saving lives. Until last week, thosedrugsincluded misoprostol, which also happens to be one of the two pills used in medication abortion.
But obtaining access to the drug has suddenly become far more complicated. On October 1, Louisiana—which has a near-total ban on abortion—became the first state to officially begin classifyingmisoprostol and mifepristone, the other drug in the standard abortion pill regimen, as schedule IVcontrolled substances. The new law threatens anyone who possesses the medications without a prescription—except for pregnant women themselves—with up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.
To say that this designation—the same one applied to opioids and other addictive drugs—is without scientific or medical merit is an understatement. More than 100 studies have found that mifepristone and misoprostol offer a safe and effective way to terminate a pregnancy. As I reported earlier this year, that includes a study showing that abortion pills are just as safe and effective when prescribed via telemedicine and mailed to patients as when prescribed and dispensed in person. In a letter to state Sen. Thomas Pressly, the Republican behind the new law, hundreds of doctors—including Gillispie-Bell—pointed out that mifepristone and misoprostol don’t have addictive potential or high rates of negative side effects, but do have important medical benefits, including managing miscarriages, preventing ulcers, and inducing labor.
But abortion opponents have shown time and time again that they are impervious to scientific and medical expertise. Pressly, for example, has publicly attacked journalists who have reported critically on the law and blamed the deaths of two Georgiawomen on abortion pills rather than the actual cause, a draconian abortion law that prevented them from obtaining emergency care. The anti-abortion group Louisiana Right to Life reportedly requested that the now-law be added as an amendment to legislation Pressly originally introduced to criminalizeso-called coerced abortion, after his estranged brother-in-law spiked Pressly’s sister’s water with misoprostol when she was pregnant in 2022. The baby survived but was reportedly born prematurely with developmental delays. (In February, the husband was sentenced to 180 days in jail and 10 years’ probation.)
Now, mifepristone and misoprostol will have to be kept locked away inside hospitals along with other narcotics, the Louisiana Department of Health told health care providers last month. Staff at some hospitals have been bracing for the worst: running timed drills and sprinting through hallways to determine how long it would take to reach the locked cabinets where the drugs are now stored. Meanwhile, Republican state Attorney General Liz Murrill has accused the press and abortion rights activists of “disinformation and fear-mongering” about the new law.
Gillispie-Bell says she worries about what the delays will mean in emergencies, when minutes can mean the difference between life and death.“The last thing I want in the middle of a hemorrhage is for my nurse—who needs to be monitoring patients’ vital signs and doing other things—to have to leave the room to go get something,” she told me the day after the law took effect. “We want them at the bedside.” Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Since abortion is already almost entirely banned in Louisiana, what impacts do you expect this new law will have?
Most of the impact—at least from my perspective—will be the ability to access the medications for non-abortion–related care. In recent years, we have seen improvement in severe maternal morbidity related to postpartum hemorrhage, and one of the reasons is because we have quick access to medication that can treat hemorrhage.
Misoprostol is not the first medication we go to for patients who are bleeding—Pitocin is—but it is one of the medications that we use with low cost and little side effects. I’m very concerned about the abilityfor medical staff to access those medications in hospitals. I’m also concerned for our patients to be able to access the medication in the outpatient setting—again, for indications that don’t have anything to do with abortion. Now that it’sbeen labeled as a schedule IV medication, I think there is [worry] that pharmacists are going to have concern about filling a prescription and whether it’s being used appropriately.
What are some other common situations in which mifepristone and/or misoprostol might be used?
I use misoprostol for patients when I’m going to place an intrauterine device, to soften the cervix and make it easierto place the IUD. We use it for induction of labor as well. We use it for patients that need to have an endometrial biopsy, typically for patients who are having post-menopausal bleeding, to make sure they don’t have endometrial cancer. One of the things that happens in menopause is the cervix gets really tight. And so we’ll use that medication to help open the cervix to facilitate being able to do the endometrial biopsy.
How do you think that mifepristone and misoprostol being classified as equivalent to narcotics will affect perceptions of these drugs and abortion stigma? Are you worried that these kinds of laws will spread to other states?
I do worry about the stigma that’s going to be associated with the medications because of this new law. And I am worried about this happening in other states. It’s really a dangerous slippery slope when we have legislation that interferes with what we know to be evidence-based medicine.
How did it feel for legislators to ignore the combined medical expertise of you and hundreds of other doctors when you asked them not to pass this bill?
It was disappointing but not surprising.We’ve seen something similar happen with so-called “abortion pill reversal” bills. Several states have enacted legislation thatsays if a doctor prescribes mifepristone for an abortion, the doctor has to tell the patient that if she changes her mind,she could take progesterone to reverse that abortion. That is absolutely not true. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has a statement that says there’s no evidence to support the claim that abortion pill reversal works. But that’s something that, in these states, as a provider, you have to do.
The lawmaker who introduced this bill said his sister was given these pills without her knowledge in an attempt to end her pregnancy. This was an argument that abortion opponents also brought to the Supreme Court last term in the case that tried to restrict mifepristone—they alleged that abortion pills can facilitate reproductive coercion and abuse, even though there’s no evidence that this is a widespread problem. What is your response to this?
It’s incredibly unfortunate that this happened to the legislator’s sister. But that is the only such case that I have any knowledge of. And so, while I understand his argument, it’s a very slippery-slope argument, because thatlogic can be applied to anything. If you take too much Tylenol, that can cause liver failure. If you take too much ibuprofen, that can cause kidney failure. Everything has a potential side effect and a potential risk. The US Drug Enforcement Administration defines a controlled substance as something that has addictive properties, andmisoprostol and mifepristone just do not meet that criteria.
Courtesy of Dr. Veronica Gillispie-Bell
I know it’s early, but have you had to use these drugs yet to stop a patient from bleeding out?
Not yet. Hemorrhages are not something that happen every single day, so it’s going to be some time, I think, before we see the realimpact.
Given that postpartum hemorrhage is one of the leading causes of maternal mortality nationwide, do you think this law will increase maternal deaths in Louisiana? Do you think we’re going to hear stories similar to the ones about the women who died in Georgia?
As physicians and health care providers, I believewe are going to do whatever we need to do to make sure our patients are taken care of. So I really don’t think we’re going to see an increase in maternal deaths. I think we may see an increase in maternal morbidity. We may see an increase in blood transfusions, for example, because we’re not able to control hemorrhages as quickly. But I don’t think that we will necessarily see an increase in deaths.
But it definitely is going to be a stress on the system. It’s one more thing we have to do, and that one more thing takes time. And when we’re talking about a hemorrhage, time matters.
Do you worry about the impacts the new law will have on recruiting OB-GYNs to Louisiana? And have you already seen impacts to recruitment from the abortion ban?
Yes. The Association of American Medical Colleges recently published a study that shows that since the Dobbs decision, the states with the strictest abortion bans have had a decrease in medical students applying for residency in any specialty, not just OB-GYN care. As we continue to passmore restrictions, I think that’s only going to make that problem worse.
Vice President KamalaHarris on Tuesday unveiled a new plan to offer a Medicare benefit to help pay for at-home, long-term care for senior citizens and people with disabilities. In announcing the plan on ABC’s daytime talk show The View, Harris said the plan could ease the caregiving burdens of the so-called “sandwich generation“—which constitutes nearly a quarter of Americans overall—as well as help people avoid the exorbitant costs of nursing homes and assisted living.
“There are so many people in our country who are right in the middle: They’re taking care of their kids and they’re taking care of their aging parents, and it’s just almost impossible to do it all, especially if they work,” Harris said. “We’re finding that so many are then having to leave their job, which means losing a source of income, not to mention the emotional stress.” According to the Harris campaign, more than 67 million people are covered by Medicare and about 4 million enroll annually; 105 million Americans act as caregivers for loved ones.
If realized, Harris’ plan could be particularly revolutionary for women, who research has repeatedly shown take on the bulk of caregiving duties at home. A report published by the Commonwealth Fund earlier this year, for example, found that in 2020, women made up more than 60 percent of caregivers to an adult or child with disabilities; That report also found that 26 percent of American women said they acted as a caregiver to a family member, compared with 22 percent of American men.
Harris did not provide specifics or an estimated cost for the plan. But speaking on The View, Harris said the plan would be financed by allowing Medicare “to continue to negotiate drug prices against these big pharmaceutical companies,” meaning that money saved from the Biden administration’s landmark deal would go toward funding senior care.A senior campaign official said the plan would also be financed by increasing discounts drug manufacturers cover for certain brand-name drugs in Medicare, cracking down on hidden costs from pharmacy benefit managers, and other measures. A recent analysis from the nonpartisan Brookings Institution found that such a plan would cost an estimated $40 billion a year.
On the campaign trail, Harris hasspoken about taking care of her mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, after she was diagnosed with cancer (she died in 2009), a point the vice president repeated during her appearance on The View.
“I know caregiving is about dignity,” Harrissaid on Tuesday.
Vice Pres. Kamala Harris explains her proposal for Medicare to cover in-home health care for seniors: "It's about independence for that individual." pic.twitter.com/09Lkz9DXQl
The appearanceis part of a weeklong media blitz for Harris, which started with a 60 Minutesinterview that aired on CBS Monday night as well as an appearance on the podcast Call Her Daddy. The Democratic presidential nominee will also appear on The Howard Stern Show and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
The contrast with her opponent is stark: Trump, on the other hand, bailed on his 60 Minutes invite and ranted about Harris’ interview on Truth Social. Oh, and he has repeatedly discussed cutting Medicare, which Project 2025—the extremist guidebook to a second Trump term—also recommends.
Update, October 8: This post was updated with statistics about the role American women play in caregiving.
Vice President KamalaHarris on Tuesday unveiled a new plan to offer a Medicare benefit to help pay for at-home, long-term care for senior citizens and people with disabilities. In announcing the plan on ABC’s daytime talk show The View, Harris said the plan could ease the caregiving burdens of the so-called “sandwich generation“—which constitutes nearly a quarter of Americans overall—as well as help people avoid the exorbitant costs of nursing homes and assisted living.
“There are so many people in our country who are right in the middle: They’re taking care of their kids and they’re taking care of their aging parents, and it’s just almost impossible to do it all, especially if they work,” Harris said. “We’re finding that so many are then having to leave their job, which means losing a source of income, not to mention the emotional stress.” According to the Harris campaign, more than 67 million people are covered by Medicare and about 4 million enroll annually; 105 million Americans act as caregivers for loved ones.
If realized, Harris’ plan could be particularly revolutionary for women, who research has repeatedly shown take on the bulk of caregiving duties at home. A report published by the Commonwealth Fund earlier this year, for example, found that in 2020, women made up more than 60 percent of caregivers to an adult or child with disabilities; That report also found that 26 percent of American women said they acted as a caregiver to a family member, compared with 22 percent of American men.
Harris did not provide specifics or an estimated cost for the plan. But speaking on The View, Harris said the plan would be financed by allowing Medicare “to continue to negotiate drug prices against these big pharmaceutical companies,” meaning that money saved from the Biden administration’s landmark deal would go toward funding senior care.A senior campaign official said the plan would also be financed by increasing discounts drug manufacturers cover for certain brand-name drugs in Medicare, cracking down on hidden costs from pharmacy benefit managers, and other measures. A recent analysis from the nonpartisan Brookings Institution found that such a plan would cost an estimated $40 billion a year.
On the campaign trail, Harris hasspoken about taking care of her mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, after she was diagnosed with cancer (she died in 2009), a point the vice president repeated during her appearance on The View.
“I know caregiving is about dignity,” Harrissaid on Tuesday.
Vice Pres. Kamala Harris explains her proposal for Medicare to cover in-home health care for seniors: "It's about independence for that individual." pic.twitter.com/09Lkz9DXQl
The appearanceis part of a weeklong media blitz for Harris, which started with a 60 Minutesinterview that aired on CBS Monday night as well as an appearance on the podcast Call Her Daddy. The Democratic presidential nominee will also appear on The Howard Stern Show and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
The contrast with her opponent is stark: Trump, on the other hand, bailed on his 60 Minutes invite and ranted about Harris’ interview on Truth Social. Oh, and he has repeatedly discussed cutting Medicare, which Project 2025—the extremist guidebook to a second Trump term—also recommends.
Update, October 8: This post was updated with statistics about the role American women play in caregiving.
Forecasters predict Hurricane Milton—now a Category 5 storm—will “remain an extremely dangerous hurricane through landfall in Florida,” according to the National Hurricane Center, a division of the federally-funded National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. As of Monday afternoon, Hurricane Milton was about 700 miles southwest of Tampa, with maximum sustained winds of 175 miles per hour. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has since directed millions of residents to evacuate. All of this comes as the state is still recoveringfrom the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene.
It’s against this increasingly alarming situation that there’s growing awareness of the right’s long-held desires to gut NOAA, the very agency that has been so critical to helping residents and authoritiesbrace for storms like hurricanes Helene and Milton, as well as understand the realities of climate change. But with a second Trump term a very real possibility, threats to NOAA carry new significance. That’s because Project 2025, the right-wing extremist guidebook to a second Trump term, explicitly calls for NOAA’s break-up. That plan can be found on page 674, which describes NOAA as “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.”
“It should be broken up and downsized,” Project 2025 says of the agency, adding that its functions “could be provided commercially, likely at lower cost and higher quality.” The document then acknowledges the important work of the National Hurricane Center but asserts that it should nonetheless be reviewed.
As The Atlanticpointed out in a piece this summer, privatizing the work of NOAA could make weather forecasts less accessible and undermine American scientists’ ability to collaborate with international colleagues. But even if NOAA was not fully eliminated, experts sayProject 2025’s other proposals could significantly harm the agency. “There are lots of ways they go after an agency without calling for its immediate elimination, and I think they are hiding behind the fact that they haven’t explicitly called for elimination,” Rachel Cleetus, policy director of the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told the nonpartisan FactCheck.org. “These different offices are working together very closely to provide…both short-term as well as long-range information to help inform weather and climate predictions,” Cleetus added. “So the idea that you would dismantle it and it would still continue to be able to provide the service, that’s just not accurate.”
This makes investing in NOAA—not dismantling it—crucial. Last week, the Biden administration announced $22.78 million to support research on water-driven climate impacts.
But confronting the realities of climate change—and supporting officials who do—does not seem like a priority for those in Trump’s orbit. Consider my colleague Jackie Flynn Mogensen’s recent dispatch from a New York Times climate event at which Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, dismissed the realities of climate science.“I enjoy my high-carbon lifestyle,” Roberts told the audience.
In the meantime, continue following NOAA’s updates to ensure you stay safe if you are in Hurricane Milton’s path. While agency officials track the storm, Trump is, again, ranting on Truth Social.
Forecasters predict Hurricane Milton—now a Category 5 storm—will “remain an extremely dangerous hurricane through landfall in Florida,” according to the National Hurricane Center, a division of the federally-funded National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. As of Monday afternoon, Hurricane Milton was about 700 miles southwest of Tampa, with maximum sustained winds of 175 miles per hour. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has since directed millions of residents to evacuate. All of this comes as the state is still recoveringfrom the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene.
It’s against this increasingly alarming situation that there’s growing awareness of the right’s long-held desires to gut NOAA, the very agency that has been so critical to helping residents and authoritiesbrace for storms like hurricanes Helene and Milton, as well as understand the realities of climate change. But with a second Trump term a very real possibility, threats to NOAA carry new significance. That’s because Project 2025, the right-wing extremist guidebook to a second Trump term, explicitly calls for NOAA’s break-up. That plan can be found on page 674, which describes NOAA as “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.”
“It should be broken up and downsized,” Project 2025 says of the agency, adding that its functions “could be provided commercially, likely at lower cost and higher quality.” The document then acknowledges the important work of the National Hurricane Center but asserts that it should nonetheless be reviewed.
As The Atlanticpointed out in a piece this summer, privatizing the work of NOAA could make weather forecasts less accessible and undermine American scientists’ ability to collaborate with international colleagues. But even if NOAA was not fully eliminated, experts sayProject 2025’s other proposals could significantly harm the agency. “There are lots of ways they go after an agency without calling for its immediate elimination, and I think they are hiding behind the fact that they haven’t explicitly called for elimination,” Rachel Cleetus, policy director of the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told the nonpartisan FactCheck.org. “These different offices are working together very closely to provide…both short-term as well as long-range information to help inform weather and climate predictions,” Cleetus added. “So the idea that you would dismantle it and it would still continue to be able to provide the service, that’s just not accurate.”
This makes investing in NOAA—not dismantling it—crucial. Last week, the Biden administration announced $22.78 million to support research on water-driven climate impacts.
But confronting the realities of climate change—and supporting officials who do—does not seem like a priority for those in Trump’s orbit. Consider my colleague Jackie Flynn Mogensen’s recent dispatch from a New York Times climate event at which Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, dismissed the realities of climate science.“I enjoy my high-carbon lifestyle,” Roberts told the audience.
In the meantime, continue following NOAA’s updates to ensure you stay safe if you are in Hurricane Milton’s path. While agency officials track the storm, Trump is, again, ranting on Truth Social.
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