(NEW YORK) — First the Choco Taco, now the Good Humor Toasted Almond Ice Cream Bar?!
It’s officially peak ice cream season with summer in full swing, but there will be one less nostalgic treat at grocery stores after Good Humor confirmed this week that its iconic cake crumb-coated Toasted Almond Ice Cream Bars have been discontinued.
The ice cream brand, owned by Unilever, confirmed this week that its longtime offering, which debuted over 60 years ago, has officially been removed from production.
Fans of the nostalgic flavor have taken to Twitter and even Change.org to petition to keep the toasted almond flavor around.
“While we don’t have plans on bringing them back, we’ll let our team know you’d like to see them return,” a representative for the brand wrote on Twitter in response to a disappointed consumer.
The almond flavor was removed from the Good Humor lineup as of June 2022, around the same time Klondike announced it stopped making the Choco Taco, which took over headlines and social media feeds, even inspiring homemade copy cat recipes.
(EAST PALESTINE, Ohio) — The National Transportation Safety Board will start taking sworn testimony Thursday as part of its probe into the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
The agency is holding an investigative hearing on Thursday and Friday in East Palestine, where a Norfolk Southern Railway train carrying toxic chemicals derailed on Feb. 3, resulting in the release of hazardous materials into the air, soil and creeks in the area.
A preliminary NTSB report released in the weeks following the incident found that a wheel bearing failed moments before 38 cars derailed in the incident — including 11 tank cars carrying hazardous materials that subsequently ignited.
Five of the tank cars contained 115,580 gallons of vinyl chloride, a highly volatile colorless gas produced for commercial uses. Responders subsequently conducted an hourslong controlled release and burn of the vinyl chloride, causing a large ball of fire and sending a plume of black smoke filled with contaminants into the air.
The two-day hearing, described as a “fact-finding step” in the NTSB’s safety investigation, is expected to focus on the communications and preparedness for the initial emergency response, what led to the decision to vent and burn the vinyl chloride tank cars, and the freight car bearing failure modes and wayside detection systems, among other topics.
Witnesses, who will testify under oath, will include representatives of Norfolk Southern, the Federal Railroad Administration, the Ohio National Guard and several local fire and police departments, the NTSB said. A detailed list of the witnesses will become available at the start of the hearing.
Those able to ask witnesses questions include NTSB’s board members and investigative staff and designated parties, including the Norfolk Southern Corporation, Federal Railroad Administration, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and Village of East Palestine.
The NTSB will use the information gathered during the hearing to “complete the investigation, determine probable cause, and make recommendations to improve transportation safety,” the agency said. Its full investigation could take up to 18 months from the date of the accident to complete, it said.
“The communities most affected by this tragedy deserve as much insight as possible into our investigation, which is why we’re holding an investigative hearing in East Palestine,” NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said in a statement. “While we unfortunately cannot change what happened that day, our entire agency is committed to carrying out our mission, which doesn’t end when we get to the bottom of what happened and why it happened — we’ll also work vigorously to prevent it from ever happening again.”
The hearing is scheduled to occur Thursday from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. ET and Friday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET. at East Palestine High School and will be streamed live on the NTSB’s YouTube channel.
Homendy had previously called the derailment “100% preventable.”
“We call things ‘accidents.’ There is no accident. Every single event that we investigate is preventable,” she said upon the release of the NTSB’s preliminary report in February.
There were no reported fatalities or injuries in the derailment.
First responders implemented a 1-mile evacuation zone surrounding the derailment site, impacting up to 2,000 residents. The mandatory evacuation order was lifted on Feb. 8 after air and water samples taken the day before were deemed safe, officials said.
Health and safety concerns have lingered in the aftermath of the incident, and several residents filed a class-action lawsuit against Norfolk Southern, seeking punitive damages as well as a fund for medical monitoring and testing, among other relief.
Ohio also filed a lawsuit against Norfolk Southern in March, alleging the railway operator violated various federal and state environmental laws and Ohio Common Law, “recklessly endangering” the health of residents and Ohio’s natural resources, the state district attorney’s office said.
After the lawsuit was announced, Norfolk Southern said that it is “listening closely to concerns from the community about whether there could be long-term impacts from the derailment.”
“We are making progress every day cleaning the site safely and thoroughly, providing financial assistance to residents and businesses that have been affected, and investing to help East Palestine and the communities around it thrive,” Norfolk Southern said in a statement.
Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw testified before the Senate in March, as Washington lawmakers held their first hearing on railroad safety about a month after the derailment. During his opening statement, Shaw said he was “determined to make this right,” and that Norfolk Southern will clean the site “safely, thoroughly and with urgency.”
On the eve of his Senate testimony, Shaw said his company was committed to improving rail safety in a Washington Post op-ed.
Contaminated soil and waste continue to be removed from the derailment site for off-site treatment and disposal. Air monitoring and soil and drinking water sampling are also ongoing, which have not detected concerning levels of any contaminants, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Norfolk Southern will be required to continue cleaning up the contaminated soil and water and transport it safely; reimburse the EPA for cleaning services; and attend public meetings at the EPA’s request and share information, U.S. EPA Administrator Michael Regan announced on Feb. 21. If Norfolk Southern does not comply, the company will be ordered to pay triple the cost.
As of March 16, Norfolk Southern said it had committed approximately $24 million to the community of East Palestine “with more to come.”
(NEW YORK) — As Texas continues to experience record-high temperatures, a postal worker died on Tuesday while working his route in a Dallas neighborhood, according to USPS.
“The Postal Service is deeply saddened by the loss of life suffered yesterday involving a Lakewood Post Office Letter Carrier,” the USPS told ABC News in a statement. “Our thoughts are with his family, friends and colleagues at this time.”
USPS said it’s implemented its Heat Illness Prevention Program for employees, and gives mandatory heat-related and safety training to all its employees.
“Our carriers deliver the mail throughout the year during varying temperatures and climatic conditions. This includes during the summer months when the temperatures rise throughout the country. The safety of our employees is a top priority, and the Postal Service has implemented a national Heat Illness Prevention Program (HIPP) for all employees, USPS said in a statement.
New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana are under heat alerts Wednesday with the heat index — what the temperature feels like with humidity — expected to reach as high as 122 degrees in some areas.
Temperatures hit records on Tuesday and more are possible across Texas on Wednesday, including in Houston, where it could be up to 99 degrees; San Angelo, where it could be up to 110 degrees; Midland, where it could be up to 108 degrees; and Laredo, where it could be up to 113 degrees.
Temperatures in San Angelo and Del Rio, Texas, hit all-time record highs on Tuesday, reaching 114 degrees and 113 degrees, respectively.
The hottest place in the country Tuesday was Rio Grande Village, Texas, where temperatures reached 118 degrees. Record highs were reported all the way to North Dakota. Grand Forks hit 100 degrees, while Fargo reached 98 degrees and Jamestown hit 99.
Also, a new round of severe weather is expected Wednesday in the western Plains from South Dakota to western Texas, with the biggest threat being damaging winds and large hail.
Temperatures will cool slightly after Wednesday with thunderstorms rolling through, but temperatures are still expected to be above seasonal norms. Extreme heat will be back by next week.
Six states from Florida to Virginia are under flood alerts for more heavy rain over the next 48 to 72 hours.
Some areas could see additional 5 to 7 inches of rain and more flooding is expected.
(WASHINGTON) — In a a rare move, the House passed a censure resolution along party lines on Wednesday night against Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. — punishing one of the chamber’s own members and inflaming rhetoric on both sides of the aisle.
The vote was 213-209, with Republicans voting yes, Democrats voting no and six GOP lawmakers voting present.
Schiff, a former intel committee chair, was censured over comments he made years ago during investigations into former President Donald Trump and the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, which interfered in the 2016 election to aid Trump, special counsel Robert Mueller found.
The censure resolution rebukes Schiff for what it calls his “misleading the American public and for conduct unbecoming of an elected Member of the House of Representatives.”
Schiff previously called the criticism “nonsense.”
The resolution also directed the House Ethics Committee to investigate Schiff’s actions.
After the vote on Wednesday, members could be heard chanting as Schiff moved toward the well, where he stood as Speaker Kevin McCarthy read the adopted resolution aloud.
The heckling included shouts of “shame! shame!” while McCarthy repeatedly paused until there was quiet, at one point saying he had time to be there all night.
As the speaker read the censure resolution on the floor, the banging of his gavel could barely be heard over Democrats yelling that the move was a “disgrace” and more.
As the vote was called, Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., said, “It’s pathetic you’re doing this. Pathetic.”
“The House is in disorder,” Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., shouted.
Schiff was surrounded by fellow Democrats in the chamber, many of whom high-fived and embraced him as he walked towards the well. Multiple Democrats said “what about Santos?” — referring to the New York Republican Rep. George Santos who is under criminal and ethics investigation and denies wrongdoing.
From the Republican side, one member yelled out “jacka—-,” referring to his Democratic colleagues.
The House has censured only two other members in the 21st century: former Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., and Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz.
The vote on Schiff’s censure drew impassioned speeches from both sides before the vote.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., who introduced the resolution, painted the measure as a “clear vote between right and wrong.”
“This is not a partisan act. This is not a conservative-versus-liberal vote. This is a clear vote between right and wrong, and I urge you to do the right thing,” she said.
Luna said “run[ning] away from this opportunity to hold this man accountable” would “betray the people who trusted us and sent us here [to Congress] to do the right thing.”
Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., who earlier this week brought forward a resolution that would impeach President Joe Biden, said Schiff was a “crook” who “represents the worst of permanent Washington, using his position of trust to lie to the American people.”
“If Adam Schiff has a shred of human decency left, he would resign from Congress in disgrace. His tombstone should … be one word: ‘Liar,'” she said.
But Schiff shot back that what he called the “false and defamatory resolution” amounted to “petty political payback” in an effort to “censure or fine Trump’s opposition into submission.”
“But I will not yield, not one inch,” Schiff pledged.
He turned the tables on Republicans, arguing they were the ones who deserved to be censured.
“My colleagues, if there is cause for censure in this House — and there is — it should be directed at those in this body who sought to overturn a free and fair election,” he said.
“The question, my Republican colleagues, is not why am I the subject of this false resolution for doing my constitutional duty, but why are you not? Why are you not standing beside me, the subject of a similar rebuke for speaking the truth? Why did you not stand up to Donald Trump? … Will it be said of you that you lacked the courage to stand up to the most immoral, unlawful and unethical president in history, but consoled yourselves by attacking those who did?” he continued.
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries denounced what he called a “fake, phony and fraudulent” censure resolution, arguing the rebuke was borne out of Republicans’ lack of policy vision.
“This is a do-nothing Republican-controlled Congress,” he said. “That is why this censure resolution is on the floor today.”
Jeffries, who insisted that Schiff has done nothing wrong, suggested that former President Donald Trump, whom he called the “extreme puppet master,” directed the censure vote.
“When he says, ‘Bend the knee,’ extreme MAGA Republicans say, ‘How high?'” he said.
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi echoed Jeffries’ rhetoric, calling the proceedings a “puppet show.”
“The other side has turned this chamber … into a puppet show. And you know what? The puppeteer, Donald Trump, is shining a light on the strings. You look miserable. You look miserable,” she said, addressing Republicans.
The fiery Wednesday afternoon debate follows a similar censure motion failing last week when 20 Republicans joined Democrats in voting to table the resolution. But most of the defecting Republicans flipped to support Luna’s re-introduced resolution on Wednesday after she stripped it of a provision that would have fined Schiff $16 million, a fact that Schiff noted in his floor remarks.
“Try as you might to expel me from Congress or silence me with a $16 million fine, you will not succeed. You might as well make it $160 million,” he said Wednesday afternoon. “You will never deter me from doing my duty.”
Censure “registers the House’s deep disapproval of Member misconduct that, nevertheless, does not meet the threshold for expulsion,” according to the House’s website.
(PARIS) — Dozens of people were injured and hundreds were sent running for safety in central Paris after an explosion caused by a suspected gas leak rocked the city Wednesday afternoon, according to police and firefighters.
The incident took place around 4:55 p.m. local time at the Paris American Academy on Rue Saint-Jacques, officials said. As of Wednesday night, four people were listed in critical condition, 33 victims were in serious condition and two were unaccounted for, according to French Interior Minister Gérard Darmanin.
“It is possible that we will find bodies or people who are still alive tonight,” he said at a news conference.
The explosion shattered nearby windows and sent thick smoke into the air throughout the afternoon.
Hundreds of firefighters and police raced to the scene as civilians ran for safety. The facade of the building completely collapsed.
Fire department crews were able to contain the fire and search and rescue teams were going through the rubble.
The Paris prosecutor told to ABC News that nearby buildings in the area have been evacuated due to concerns about their structural integrity following the explosion. Police officials told reporters that a preliminary investigation appears to show a suspected gas leak may have been the cause, but the probe is ongoing.
The U.S. Embassy said it was not aware of any Americans involved in the incident.
The school was founded in 1965 and offers teaching in fashion design, interior design, fine arts and creative writing, the Associated Press reported.
(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services issued an advisory Wednesday warning about identifying mental health symptoms and conditions linked to long COVID.
Long COVID occurs when people recover from the virus but experience ongoing symptoms lasting three months or longer, such as coughing, headaches, fatigue, sleep disturbances and cognitive impairment.
According to the HHS, about 10% of all people who have previously contracted COVID-19 have experienced at least one symptom of long COVID.
Having to battle these physical symptoms for weeks or months on end “can take a toll on a person’s mental health,” HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement.
“It can be very challenging for a person, whether they are impacted themselves, or they are a caregiver for someone who is affected,” Becerra continued. “This advisory helps to raise awareness, especially among primary care practitioners and clinicians who are often the ones treating patients with long COVID.”
The advisory found mental health symptoms and conditions linked to COVID include anxiety, depression, psychosis, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Research has shown that social isolation — due to lockdowns, school closures and stay-at-home orders — increases the risks of anxiety, depression and loneliness, especially for older adults.
Additionally, unemployment and insecure employment increase the risk of depression and anxiety, studies have found, with more vulnerable groups such as Hispanic and Black people, women, young adults aged 18 to 29 years and those without a college degree.
The patient may not be the only person who suffers from poor mental health but also family members caring for them, the advisory stated.
Several factors may exacerbate mental health conditions including chronic physical and/or mental illness both physical and mental, social isolation, financial insecurity, caregiver burnout, and grief.
“We know that people living with long COVID need help today, and providers need help understanding what long COVID is and how to treat it,” said Admiral Rachel Levine, assistant secretary for Health, said in a statement.
This advisory helps bridge that gap for the behavioral health impacts of long COVID. This is one component of a government-wide response that continues to research long COVID and provide supports and services to those in need,” she added.
Dr. Joshua Morganstein, chair of the American Psychiatric Association’s committee on the psychiatric dimensions of disaster, told ABC News it’s important to have long-term surveillance when it comes to mental health and long COVID to recognize the long-term trends.
Morganstein added, although not everyone may have access to the same resources, it’s important to try and recognize mental health symptoms and to seek help if possible.
(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision later this month on a case that would decide the future of race-based affirmative action in high education across the country.
The nation’s highest court heard two major cases in October 2022 on affirmative action, one on race-conscious admissions policies at Harvard University, the nation’s oldest private college, and one from the University of North Carolina, the nation’s oldest public university.
The legal battle over factoring race into admissions in higher education has been ongoing for decades.
The Supreme Court could decide to overrule a 2003 ruling and more than 40 years of precedent upholding affirmative action in higher education, reshaping the college admissions process.
Colleges and universities often want prospective students to submit high school transcripts, standardized test scores, letters of recommendation, personal essays and a list of extracurricular activities when considering admissions, but can have their own application requirements in place.
“Every college and university can have their own application, meaning their own questions, data, fields, etcetera, and then their own process whereby they review application,” Priscilla Rodriguez, the senior vice president of College Board, told ABC News. “So, it is race, ethnicity, that’s also socioeconomic status.”
Harvard, UNC and other schools have considered race as a factor in their admission processes, and that it’s an indispensable tool for creating a diverse campus.
“It’s diversity in every way possible that really does benefit students and create the rich learning environment that colleges really want to be,” Rodriguez said.
Black, Native American, Hispanic and Asian American student enrollment has surged since 1976, according to Department of Education data. Despite the gains, however, students of color remain underrepresented on campuses nationwide.
“If the court rules that race must be taken out of the consideration process, I worry that it will remove a valuable way that students who come from underrepresented, or I’ll call it, nontraditional backgrounds, are able to show or let colleges know that there’s a history and a background that they bring to college that may be different than other students,” Rodriguez said.
(NEW YORK) — Nautical experts, the U.S. and Canadian navies and the U.S. Coast Guard are scrambling to get the necessary equipment and personnel to help locate the five people in the tour submersible that left Sunday to view the wreckage of the Titanic.
But even with their specialized tech, search and rescue teams are facing major obstacles that could make saving the people onboard extremely difficult, according to a former Navy submarine commander.
Retired Capt. David Marquet told ABC News on Monday that this type of rescue operation is complicated because there are no U.S. or Canadian underwater vessels nearby that can go as deep as the Titanic wreckage, which sits 13,000 feet below the ocean’s surface. The ocean is also pitch-black at that depth, creating another major problem, he said.
“The odds are against them,” Marquet said. “There’s a ship in Boston that has this ability to either lower cable and connect to it or have a claw. It’s still a thousand miles away.”
However, on Wednesday a U.S. Navy official told ABC News it had sent a portable crane system that can reach 20,000 feet deep to St. John’s, Newfoundland, so it can be welded onto a ship to take it to the search area for the missing submersible.
It could be days before the crane can be used because the Navy has not yet contracted a ship for use with the FADOSS system.
“Our estimate is (an) approximately 24 hours around the clock operation to weld it and secure it to the deck of the vessel prior to getting underway,” the official said.
The submersible vessel is designed to hold 96 hours of oxygen, Rear Adm. John Mauger, commander of the U.S. Coast Guard First District, told reporters Monday. The air is predicted to run out Thursday morning, according to the Coast Guard.
On Monday, the Coast Guard said it had conducted a search of the surface of the water for the missing submersible in conjunction with the Canadian Coast Guard and Canadian Armed Forces.
The Bahamian research vessel Deep Energy, which specializes in pipe-laying and has remotely operated vehicle capabilities, arrived on Tuesday morning to help with the search.
The Pentagon said Tuesday that three U.S. Air Force C-17 cargo aircraft were transporting commercial equipment from Buffalo, New York, to St. John’s, Newfoundland, to aid the rescue efforts.
Additionally, the Navy announced it was sending experts and a Flyaway Deep Ocean Salvage System, or FADOSS, which it described as a “motion compensated lift system designed to provide reliable deep ocean lifting capacity for the recovery of large, bulky, and heavy undersea objects such as aircraft or small vessels.”
The New York Air National Guard’s 106 Rescue Wing out of Westhampton, which flies out a version of the C130 that specializes in search and rescue, was deployed to help with the search, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said Tuesday.
The 106th flies fixed-wing search and rescue aircraft and rescue helicopters and has a unit of pararescue jumpers who are trained to rescue people on sea and land, according to the governor’s office.
Early morning on Wednesday, Canadian aircraft with sonar capabilities detected “underwater noises” in the search area. Coast Guard crews said they did not know what was causing the noise.
If the search parties can locate the submersible and lower a cable, it will be extremely difficult to safely navigate the waters and attach it, Marquet said.
“You’ve got to get it exactly right. It’s sort of like … getting one of those toys out of those arcade machines. In general, you miss,” he said.
Rescuers do have one advantage, Marquet said, as weather conditions off the coast of Newfoundland are not rough and will not disturb any boat or vessel there.
The 21-foot submersible lost communication with the mainland 1 hour and 45 minutes after it embarked on its tour of the Titanic wreckage on Sunday.
In ABC News’ interview with Marquet earlier this week, he said if the five people are still alive, their best course of action would be to sleep to conserve their oxygen.
“We would put the vast majority of the crew to sleep because that’s when you’re using the least amount of oxygen and you’re expelling the least amount of carbon dioxide,” he said.
ABC News’ Luis Martinez and Aaron Katersky contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, on Tuesday night in what his campaign billed as a major foreign policy address for the long shot Democratic presidential candidate.
He told the crowd that he believes the U.S. government bears some responsibility for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — a view rejected by America and many Western countries — and said that the “danger of reckless escalation and nuclear brinksmanship” was “real and present.”
The son of former New York senator and U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and scion of one of the country’s most famous political families, the younger Kennedy has garnered widespread attention in recent months because of his bid to beat President Joe Biden in the Democratic Party’s 2024 primary.
In addition to a string of high-profile media appearances, Kennedy has also registered some support in early polls so far: One survey from Quinnipiac University this month showed him at 17% versus Biden at 70%.
Tuesday’s speech adds to Kennedy’s array of policy positions and beliefs.
While his economic and environmental platform broadly align with other Democrats, some of his other views put him at odds with the party and, in the case of his criticism of vaccines, a majority of the scientific and medical community.
Foreign policy
On Tuesday night, Kennedy took direct aim at U.S. foreign policy while laying out his own global vision, calling the war in Ukraine a “creation of a relentless mentality of foreign domination” on the part of the United States and accusing the West — without evidence — of intentionally sabotaging peace talks in the spring of 2022 and, more specifically, claiming the U.S. wants to remove Russia’s authoritarian president, Vladimir Putin.
“I abhor Russia’s brutal and bloody invasion of that nation,” Kennedy told the crowd. “But we must understand that our government has also contributed to its circumstances through repeated deliberate provocations of Russia going back to the 1990s.”
At times, he leaned heavily on the foreign policy legacy of former President John F. Kennedy, telling attendees that nuclear tensions are on the rise today as in the time of his uncle, but that there is an opportunity “to take a radically different path, a path towards peace.”
Kennedy has been a frequent critic of America’s involvement in supporting Ukraine from Russia’s invasion, which he has repeatedly referred to as a “proxy war” that he claims, as he wrote on Twitter this week, is being fought “all for the sake of U.S. (imagined) geopolitical interests.”
“They wanted war as part of their strategic grand plan to destroy any country such as Russia that resists American imperial expansion,” Kennedy tweeted in May, launching into a critique of the Biden administration. “They only pretend to think it was unprovoked. They are lying to us, manufacturing consent for war.”
That view has been broadly rejected by leading politicians on both sides of the aisle as well as America’s military leaders.
“The United States continues to stand with the people of Ukraine, whose enduring courage and solidarity inspires the world,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement last week, adding, “Russia could end [the war] at any time by withdrawing its forces from Ukraine and stopping its brutal attacks against Ukraine’s cities and people.”
The economy
In a June interview on the “Breaking Points” podcast, Kennedy said that his “primary platform” on the economy would be cutting military spending and reinvesting that money into domestic spending and development.
“My primary platform is to cut the costs on the military,” Kennedy said on the show. “Again, what we were told was a peace dividend after the collapse of the Soviet Union. … We were going to cut our military budget from about $600 billion a year to $200 billion a year.”
On his website, Kennedy lists rebuilding industrial infrastructure “ruined by forty years of off-shoring” among his top priorities, alongside “government assistance to the nation’s most vulnerable.”
He expressed hesitation, though, when asked if he would support a federal jobs guarantee or a universal basic income.
“I need to look at those things, you know, and see, and I need to talk to a lot of economists and talk about the ups and downs of those issues,” he said. “You know, I can see a lot of problems with those issues, which I think are obvious to anybody. And it’s a real departure from American free market capitalism. I’d like to try to give this system a chance to work.”
On raising the federal minimum wage, Kennedy said he did not have a specific number in mind but that “people should have a living wage in this country.”
“Thirty-five percent of Americans … are not making enough money to pay for basic human needs, and that means food, transportation and housing,” Kennedy said on the podcast. “And that means those Americans are sitting on the precipice of a cliff, that they’re inches away from, or on top of, becoming homeless.”
He has also expressed support for bolstering unions: “We need to build rebuild unions in this country, because it’s one of the key ways we can counterbalance … the domination of our government by corporate power.”
The environment
An environmental lawyer by trade, Kennedy has positioned environmental policy as a centerpiece of his presidential bid.
“In 100% of the situations, good environmental policy is identical to good economic policy,” Kennedy told a crowd of supporters when announcing his presidential run in April. “If we want to measure our economy, this is how we ought to be measuring — based upon how it produces jobs and the dignity of jobs over the generations and how it preserves the value of the assets of our community.”
Kennedy has also promised, if elected, to protect wild lands by curbing logging, oil drilling and mining and containing suburban sprawl.
“We will become a global advocate for rainforest preservation and marine restoration,” his campaign website states. “We will rethink development policies that promised economic growth while ignoring ecological sustainability, and ended up delivering neither.”
Vaccines
In 2005, in a since-debunked story in Rolling Stone and Salon called “Deadly Immunity,” Kennedy falsely asserted a link between childhood vaccines and autism via a mercury-based compound called thimerosal, which the Food and Drug Administration phased out of nearly all vaccines in 2001. The article was amended with five separate corrections before being fully retracted.
Research has repeatedly shown that vaccines and their ingredients, including thimerosal, do not cause autism. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nine CDC-funded or conducted studies have “found no link between thimerosal-containing vaccines” since 2003.
Six years later, Kennedy founded the Children’s Health Defense, a prominent anti-vaccine nonprofit that has campaigned against immunizations and other public health measures like water fluoridation.
After the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the group held rallies to protest temporary restrictions aimed at stemming the spread of the virus.
It was at one of those events where Kennedy, appearing alongside vaccine opponents and others in front of the Lincoln Memorial, compared the restrictions — like those on travel — to Nazi Germany: “Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.”
He later apologized for the remark, saying, “My intention was to use examples of past barbarism to show the perils from new technologies of control. To the extent my remarks caused hurt, I am truly and deeply sorry.”His anti-vaccine views gained traction with some during the pandemic. Filings with charity regulators show Children’s Health Defense saw revenues double to $6.8 million in 2020.
Kennedy has also attracted a growing base of support among far-right figures like InfoWars host Alex Jones and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who have spread falsehoods about the COVID-19 pandemic or the 2020 election.
So far, the 69-year-old environmental lawyer has shown no sign of softening his views on the issue, often reposting articles from his nonprofit on Twitter and appearing as a guest on podcasts like “The Joe Rogan Experience,” where last week he falsely claimed that ivermectin, a de-worming drug, was suppressed by the FDA so that specialized COVID-19 vaccines could receive emergency use authorization.
Last week, he tweeted that as president he would “hold the agencies and individuals responsible, and we will compensate the vaccine injured.”
Some experts have expressed concern about Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism and misleading claims about COVID-19.
Dr. Nick Sawyer, an emergency medicine physician in Sacramento who founded No License for Disinformation, a group of doctors who came together during the pandemic to call on state medical boards to take disciplinary measures against doctors spreading misinformation, previously told ABC News that Kennedy represents “a huge threat.”
“He’s lying to people about critical things that have to do with our nation’s children’s health,” Sawyer said. “The health effects are incredibly dangerous and have already shown to be incredibly damaging.”
Meanwhile, Kennedy has largely shied away from addressing the issue of vaccines on the campaign trail. In his nearly two-hour-long campaign announcement, he made no explicit mention of them and told NBC News in a recent interview that while he’s not leading with the issue, “If anybody wants to talk to me about vaccines, I’ll talk to them.”
The border
On Twitter, Kennedy has billed himself as both in favor of immigration and “closing the border.”
Visiting Yuma, Arizona, in early June, Kennedy called the rate of unauthorized migration “not a good thing for our country” and said it was “unsustainable.”
“This is a humanitarian crisis because of the understanding across the globe that we now have an open border here,” he said in a video. “There are people being drawn here. They’re being abused. There’s all kinds of horrific, terrible, terrible stories.”
At the same time as Kennedy’s visit, the Department of Homeland Security reported on June 6 that unlawful entries along the southern border had decreased 70% from their record highs since the end of Title 42 on May 11.
“America should be a haven of freedom and prosperity, open to law-abiding migrants who will contribute to our society,” Kennedy said in May. “However, immigration must proceed in an orderly, lawful manner.”
(WASHINGTON) — A newly implemented Biden administration policy is significantly reducing the number of migrants at the southern border who can successfully seek asylum, a Department of Homeland Security official said in a recent court filing.
The policy established a higher standard for asylum eligibility and presumes, with some exceptions, that those who cross the southern border illegally are ineligible if they come from another country without first applying for legal entry there.
DHS officials say the rule is essential for managing the large number of people who might come to the U.S.
From mid-May to mid-June, the number of single adult migrants who passed an initial screening interview for asylum at the border declined from an average of 83% as recently as 2019 to 46% under the new policy, according to the court document, which was first reported by The Los Angeles Times.
The vast majority of those migrants interviewed for asylum since May 12 — 88% — were presumed ineligible for asylum while 3% were able to qualify for an exception to the rule and another 8% were able to show that they hadn’t broke any of its requirements.
The tightened restriction was implemented immediately followed the end of fast-track border expulsion protocols under Title 42 of the U.S. code last month.
“I would attribute the lower pass rate to the higher bar set by the rule,” Migration Policy Institute analyst Kathleen Bush-Joseph told ABC News.
Advocates have sharply criticized the change, likening it to policies under former President Donald Trump that sought to cut back on the number of asylum claims. The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups are trying to block the restrictions in court.
The comments from Assistant Secretary for Border and Immigration Policy Blas Nuñez-Neto were filed Friday as part of a lawsuit against the Biden administration over the asylum rule change.
The plaintiffs argue it would “effectively eliminate asylum for nearly all non-Mexican asylum seekers” and would “bar vulnerable people from asylum for reasons wholly unrelated to the strength or urgency of their need for protection under our laws.”
Government officials have pushed back.
“The decline in encounters at the U.S. border … show that the application of consequences as a result of the rule’s implementation is disincentivizing noncitizens from pursuing irregular migration and incentivizing them to use safe and orderly pathways,” Nuñez-Neto wrote in the filing.
Some migrants will be able to challenge the rule and those who are rejected can apply for a lesser form of relief or seek to appeal the decision with an immigration judge, said Bush-Joseph with the Migration Policy Institute.
“There are thousands of people who have likely not received interviews because the administration doesn’t have the capacity to do the interviews for everyone,” she said.
