Britney Spears shared how she unwinds from the stress of her ongoing conservatorship battle: by painting.
In a new video posted to Instagram on Tuesday, the singer explained in the caption, “As you guys know there’s a lot of change going on in my life at the moment and today I was feeling overwhelmed so I went to Michael’s [craft store] and got white paper and paint !!!!”
“I wanted to see color and this is me messing around,” she continued. “Ok so I’m not a professional painter but I certainly felt like I was !!!”
In the sped-up video, Spears, who’s dressed in an oversized white tee-shirt and blue tennis shoes, rolls out a gigantic sheet of white paper and walks around as she starts painting streaks of green, purple, yellow, red and blue. When her masterpiece is complete, she takes a moment to bust a quick move in celebration before shutting off the camera.
Britney, 39, explained that the painting allowed her to release some of her pent-up emotions and convey what she’s currently feeling.
“This is an expression of how I’m feeling at the moment … rebellious… colorful…bright…bold …spontaneous…magical…so obviously showing my true colors,” she described before challenging fans to find a special surprise in her work of art. “If you look closely you can see find a fish in there somewhere.”
Britney’s burst of creativity comes on the heels of her attorney, Mathew Rosengart, filing legal documents asking to officially remove her father, Jamie Spears, from her 13-year conservatorship.
Rosengart requested Monday that Jason Rubin, a California-based certified public accountant, be put in charge of the singer’s finances, and called her current legal arrangement a “Kafkaesque nightmare” that has “grown increasingly toxic and is simply no longer tenable.”
Ruby Rose is “sending around love” after her recent hospitalization.
Taking to Instagram Stories on Tuesday, the former Batwoman star revealed that she had to be hospitalized after suffering complications following surgery.
“I did have a procedure and I had to have surgery, but it was fine and the surgery went well,” she began. “But then I had a few complications and I had to go to the emergency room to go to the hospital.”
The Australian actress then recalled having trouble being admitted.
“We called an ambulance and it took hours to find a hospital that would be able to take me or anyone,” she recalled as her eyes began to well with tears. Rose said even though her case was “quite serious,” hospitals were rejecting people but she was able to finally get a room “after a bit of a standoff.”
The 35-year-old actress then thanked the healthcare team, raving, that they were “amazing, all the front-liners are amazing.”
Rose attributed the difficulty for her to get admitted into a hospital to to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and urged her followers to protect themselves.
“Please stay safe, try to keep everyone safe. Get vaccinated if you can, please,” she said. “It’s just…it doesn’t need to be this hard for everyone and I just can’t imagine all the other people that are having way more, way, way more serious situations happening right now.”
“I’m just sending around love…love you all are care of yourselves,” she concluded.
(SALINA, Kan.) — NASA recently began new research to investigate how extreme summer weather may be affecting the upper layers of earth’s atmosphere.
Kenneth Bowman, Ph.D., the principal investigator for the Dynamics and Chemistry of the Summer Stratosphere (DCOTSS) research project, spoke to reporters about the project during a press briefing on Tuesday. He said their goal is to understand how intense summer thunderstorms over the U.S. affect the stratosphere — the second layer of earth’s atmosphere as you move toward space — especially as climate change causes severe thunderstorms to occur more often.
“Most thunderstorms occur in the lower layer of the atmosphere, which we call the troposphere. But when we get particularly intense thunderstorms, the updrafts — the rising air in the storm — can actually overshoot into the layer above, which is the stratosphere,” Bowman said.
He said that when this happens, the air in the troposphere can rise up to the stratosphere in as little as 20 to 30 minutes. Those updrafts can transport pollutants and water that might not normally reach this level of the atmosphere in such a short amount of time.
The stratosphere is usually dry, according to the project’s website, and the water and pollutants may “have a significant impact on radiative and chemical processes” in the atmospheric layer.
David Wilmouth, Ph.D., a scientist at Harvard University who is working on the project, said the updrafts could potentially “change the chemical composition of the stratosphere, a process that would not otherwise happen.” Their work will determine if that’s the case.
Bowman explained that the stratosphere is important because it contains the Earth’s ozone layer, which protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation that comes from the sun. About 90% of the world’s ozone layer exists within the stratosphere, according to Wilmouth.
Wilmouth said the ozone layer is “critical” for protecting life on earth. If its protective shield was to weaken, humans would be more susceptible to skin cancer, cataracts disease and an impaired immune system, according to NASA.
Dan Csziczo, Ph.D., a professor and head of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at Purdue University, said during the briefing that their goal is specifically to understand the composition and size of the particles that make their way up to the stratosphere, and how they might influence the earth’s climate. Csziczo said the research would also help scientists understand the process of cloud formation and subsequent precipitation.
Understanding the relationship between climate change and particulate matter in the air is critical because, ultimately, each of them might exacerbate the impact of the other on humans’ health and way of life.
For the project, NASA is working with several universities across the country, as well as the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The mission consists of three eight-week-long deployments over the course of the 2021 and 2022 summer seasons. The DCOTSS will be using NASA’s ER-2 high-altitude research aircraft for the mission.
DCOTSS will be operated out of Salina, Kansas, a site chosen by the researchers due to its central location within the U.S. It’s also a region of the country that’s particularly prone to severe and intense thunderstorms during the summer.
The ER-2 aircraft is equipped with fully robotic, pre-programmed instruments that can measure the gases and particles that come out of the overshooting tops of the thunderstorms, as well as meteorological information, such as water vapor, Wilmouth said.
The aircraft can only transport its pilot, who must wear a pressurized suit to withstand the high altitudes, which can go as high as 70,000 feet — about twice the altitude of typical commercial airlines, according to the project’s website.
(PORTLAND, Ore.) — After a full school year during the COVID-19 pandemic, elementary and middle school students are heading into the fall with lower rates of achievement gains in reading and math than they would have during a typical school year, new research shows.
The researchers say the results were worse in high-poverty areas and could have been even worse overall had thousands of students “missing” from school systems been counted. Separately, they say that it would take “unprecedented” levels of growth to make up for the past school year.
NWEA, a Portland-Oregon-based education research organization that develops pre-K-12 assessments, expedited research on test scores from the 2020-21 school year to help spotlight student needs ahead of the fall.
Researchers compared gains in student achievement in grades 3-8 across the school year to pre-pandemic levels — specifically, the 2018-19 school year — based on the average results of its MAP Growth assessments in reading and math.
They found that, looking at the results of 5.5 million test-takers, students did make modest progress overall over the course of the school year — but not as much as during a typical year. Compared to 2018-19, average achievement gains declined 3 to 6 percentile points in reading depending on the grade level. There was an even steeper decline in math, between 8 and 12 percentile points.
Unexpectedly, the gains in math and reading decelerated between winter and spring relative to a typical school year, researchers found.
“I think many of us expected to maybe start to see some signs of hope closer to the spring, when more kids were returning to the classroom,” Karyn Lewis, a senior research scientist with NWEA, told ABC News. “So that that’s when learning really stalled more was surprising to me.”
Lewis pointed to “pandemic fatigue” as possibly being behind the unanticipated results.
“When I think back and reflect on my own experiences in the winter, that’s I think when pandemic fatigue really started to set in,” she said. “I think that it’s starting to show in these data that kids were also affected.”
When they dug deeper into the data, researchers found that there were even greater declines in math and reading progress for disadvantaged students. Those attending high-poverty schools showed more than double the declines of students attending low-poverty schools for many grades. This was especially pronounced at the elementary level: Third graders in high-poverty schools showed 11-percentile-point declines in reading and 17 percentile-point-declines in math, the report found.
“We know that the pandemic was not an even crisis across families in our country, and families in high-poverty situations were impacted in different ways,” Lewis said. “Parents were less likely to be able to stay home and support virtual learning opportunities because of the way their jobs were structured. These homes may have had less reliable internet access or less reliable access to a dedicated computer. … It’s just layer upon layer of different factors that I think are probably attributing to this.”
The recent findings don’t show the complete picture, Lewis said, due to a higher attrition rate than normal — and so-called “missing” students likely adding to the lower achievers. The overall attrition rate for the 2020-21 school year was about 20%, researchers said — meaning 1 in 5 students who tested the prior year did not test this year. For 2018-19, the overall attrition rate was 13%.
“The kids that went missing are not the random sample of students but are more likely to be in schools that serve a high proportion of kids in poverty, that were lower achieving in prior years and that were from communities of color,” Lewis said. “This may actually be kind of the best-case scenario because we are missing the voices of many of the students in these groups that were most impacted.”
Researchers also emphasized that their work didn’t specifically address the impact of remote learning on performance.
“This national data is fantastic for giving us the lay of the broad landscape, but we really need as districts and schools come back to lean into the local context and look at our own data and see how that compares with the trends that we’re seeing nationally,” Brooke Mabry, strategic content design manager for NWEA’s Professional Learning Design team, told ABC News.
With students going into the fall with, on average, lower gains in math and reading, there would need to be “unprecedented” levels of growth to catch up, Lewis said. The delta variant may also throw a “big curveball” for schools this fall, as COVID-19 cases rise across the country. But there are signs of hope, researchers said.
“We do know that what we learned from what happened with kids over the summer months, when they are out of school altogether, the kids that seem to lose the most across the summer period are also those that tend to rebound the quickest when they’re back in the classroom,” Lewis said.
Kelly Clarkson has to shell out some major cash to her ex-husband, Brandon Blackstock. Major cash to the tune of almost $200,000 dollars a month.
Legal papers, obtained by ABC News, reveal that the 39-year-old singer, talk show host and The Voice coach has been ordered to pay her former spouse $150,000 per month in spousal support, as well as, $45,601 per month in child support for their children — River Rose Blackstock, 7, and Remington Alexander Blackstock, 5.
In addition to the support, Clarkson was also ordered to pay $1,250,000 toward Blackstock’s legal fees.
Blackstock was ordered to maintain the financial responsibility of $81,000 for the Montana Ranch he and Kelly once shared. His request to have the spousal support made retroactive to the date of the divorce filing on June 1, 2020 was denied.
(NEW YORK) — Vaccine lotteries and other incentives designed to encourage COVID-19 vaccination after the rate steeply declined didn’t consistently raise numbers as many public health officials had hoped.
Now, officials are turning to community partnerships and other means of engagement to drive vaccinations — and the personal approach appears promising.
Vaccinations peaked at over 4 million per day in early April before dropping down to an average of about 429,000 per day by early July. Despite at least 30 states and territories implementing vaccine incentives such as cash lotteries, free food and free entrance to local attractions, the weekly moving average still hovers close to 470,000.
Experts caution not to say that vaccine incentives didn’t work. States such as Ohio and Missouri saw a temporary but meaningful bump in vaccinations in the week after the lotteries were announced.
“I think vaccine incentives have worked better than we think,” said Dr. Stacy Wood, professor of marketing at North Carolina State University. “When any given incentive didn’t work, it was because it didn’t match the hurdle that a particular person was facing for vaccination. … There’s no one-size-fits-all incentive.”
But for some, the vaccine incentives themselves are a turn off. “It actually makes me a little more leery,” said Camille Holmes, a school-based speech therapist from Westchester County, New York.
Holmes said she routinely gets vaccines for herself and her family but right now is “indifferent” about the COVID-19 vaccine.
“I think as time progressed, my answer went from ‘absolutely not,’ to ‘I don’t know,’ to ‘I’m not ready,’ to ‘I probably am going to get it when I’m forced to do so.'”
So what is the key to encouraging vaccinations? For some, it might be a mandate from their employer. For others, it might be about renewed fear as the more contagious delta variant spreads. Now that cases are rising due to the delta variant, there has been a gradual increase in vaccinations, up 14% last week, according to the White House.
But for many, it’s about meeting people where they are — literally. According to research by Wood, “small incentives combined with that immediacy” tailored to a specific population works well.
This might be especially true for younger people, who aren’t necessarily opposed to getting a vaccine but don’t feel as deeply concerned they’ll become very sick or die without it.
St. Louis County, Missouri, recently announced a new initiative called Sleeves Up STL that will enlist local barbershops and beauty salons to provide information to their customers about getting the vaccine.
Randy Barnes, the owner of R & R Style Shop in Florissant, Missouri, plans to participate in this initiative because COVID-19 has been rising in his community.
“I’m thinking because of the barber and the beauty shops, people trust us. If the information is there, if the education is there, people maybe would be more apt to [get vaccinated],” Barnes said. “Those that were skeptical, given the right information, maybe would go ahead and get themselves vaccinated and even convince other people.”
There is already evidence that getting information from trusted friends, family members and community leaders spurs vaccination. Since Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson began traveling the state and having community conversations, the rate of vaccinations in the state has increased 40%, he told NPR.
Research has shown, and Barnes and Wood believe, that hearing from those who’ve had COVID-19 or lost someone due to the disease would be helpful. Barnes lost his brother to COVID-19 last April.
In addition to discussing vaccination with people, having vaccines immediately available at places where people commonly go, such as subway stations or museums can be helpful.
Whether it’s a lottery ticket, free meal, a conversation with a survivor or a trusted person or convenience, Barnes said he hopes one of these measures motivates people.
Adjoa Smalls-Mantey, M.D., D.Phil., trained in immunology and a psychiatrist in New York City, is a contributor to the ABC News Medical Unit.
It takes less than ever to find partisan grooves these days — and the fact that they’ve been etched deeper out of the fallout from Jan. 6 serves as a case in point.
That’s the reality that confronts President Joe Biden with this next uncertain phase of combatting the pandemic. New federal guidance on mask mandates and the consideration of a vaccine requirement for federal workers run into longstanding political arguments about individual liberties and personal accountability.
The push for vaccinations has become less partisan of late, with prominent Republicans adding new emphasis — and giving special credit to the previous administration — to make the case.
Yet mask-wearing and vaccine requirements have long since taken on cultural as well as political significance, and the fallout of Biden’s latest comments offer just a taste. Former President Donald Trump is offering strong pushback to mandates, and consider as well how readily some Republicans are using Dr. Anthony Fauci as a foil — raising money off the mention of his name, and even threatening legal action against him.
Biden indicated that he will outline next steps in the push to vaccinate the country on Thursday, as some statistics showing rates going up of late. The president on Tuesday also served up a reminder that as a candidate he “promised to be straight with you about COVID — good news or bad.”
Another reminder: 11 months ago, Biden said he wouldn’t hesitate to order another shutdown if that’s what his advisers recommended.
“I would shut it down; I would listen to the scientists,” he told ABC “World News Tonight” Anchor David Muir last August.
The campaign was quick to clarify that comment at the time. Biden’s statement Tuesday about masks and vaccines framed them as a way “to avoid the kind of lockdowns, shutdowns, school closures and disruptions we faced in 2020.”
“We are not going back to that,” the president said.
The RUNDOWN with Averi Harper
The testimony of Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn underscored the additional layer of trauma Black law enforcement officers experienced on Jan. 6.
Dunn’s heartbreaking testimony chronicled the racial slurs he endured as he tried to defend the seat of our nation’s democracy.
Among the insurrectionists were attackers who carried Confederate flags, donned shirts with anti-Semitic messages and freely hurled the n-word at Black officers.
“No one had ever, ever called me a n***** while wearing the uniform of a Capitol Police officer,” said Dunn.
He also brought with him the stories of other Black officers, later adding, “Another Black officer later told me he had been confronted by insurrectionists in the Capitol who told him, put your gun down and we’ll show you what kind of n***** you really are.”
For many, listening to Dunn recount the epithets stung as they were broadcast uncensored. The attack at the Capitol is often referred to as one of our nation’s darkest days, it’s particularly poignant that racism crept its way into the ugliness of it all, too.
It’s a vile reminder that racism in America, even in its most blatant forms, still exists.
The TIP with Alisa Wiersema
Republicans in Washington have one more representative joining their ranks — but the victory serves as an upset to Trump, despite his looming influence over the Republican Party on a national scale.
Nearly three months after the May 1 special election, State Rep. Jake Ellzey came out on top in Tuesday’s runoff election for Texas’ 6th Congressional District. Ellzey faced off with fellow Republican, Susan Wright, who had Trump’s backing going into the contest due to the political legacy of her late husband, Rep. Ron Wright, who died in February from COVID and complications with cancer.
The conclusion of the race is the latest indicator of the former president’s looming influence over his party in a state that is increasingly becoming ground zero for intra-party battles.
On Monday, Trump waded into another high-profile Texan battle by endorsing incumbent Attorney General Ken Paxton for another term. The move served a devastating — and complicated — blow to Land Commissioner George P. Bush, who was the only member of his storied political family to publicly back Trump, despite the former president launching repeated attacks against his father, Jeb Bush.
(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department declined a request from Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., Tuesday night to intervene for him in a lawsuit brought by a Democratic lawmaker suing him for his role in allegedly inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
In a new filing, the DOJ said it has determined it does not believe Brooks was acting within the scope of the duties of his office when he spoke in front of a pro-Trump rally just before rioters stormed the building, telling the crowd, “today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking a**.”
Brooks had asked for the Justice Department to replace him as a defendant in a lawsuit brought by Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., providing him legal immunity under a law known as the Westfall Act that former President Donald Trump similarly has sought to use to shield him from an effort by columnist E. Jean Carroll to sue him for defamation over his denial of her rape allegation.
“We appreciate the thoughtful analysis by the Committee on House Administration and the Department of Justice and could not agree more with their conclusion,” Rep. Swalwell’s attorney Philip Andonian said in a statement Tuesday night. “This conduct manifestly is outside the scope of Brooks’s employment as a member of Congress and the House and DOJ made the right call in requiring him to answer directly for his actions. This is a great step toward justice.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland faced a barrage of criticism last month when the department said it would continue to seek to substitute itself for Trump in the lawsuit, arguing that the law did apply to Trump even if they believed his statements were “crude” and “disrespectful.”
“The essence of the rule of law is that like cases be treated alike,” Garland said in defense of the move in testimony before a Senate panel. “That there not be one rule for Democrats and another for Republicans. That there not be one rule for friends and another for foes.”
Brooks similarly argued that by speaking to the rally and repeating Trump’s false claims of a stolen election that he was performing an official act of his office by representing the interests of his constituents.
Brooks has not responded to ABC News’ request for comment following the DOJ’s decision Tuesday.
But the chair of the House Administration Committee, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., disputed that assertion in a July 23 letter to the Justice Department, saying that Brooks’ conduct was “in furtherance of political campaigns” and thus should be deemed outside the scope of his office.
“Essentially, in deflecting the allegation that his speech was an incitement to violence, Representative Brooks has sworn under oath to the court that his conduct was instead in furtherance of political campaigns,” Lofgren wrote. “As noted, standards of conduct that apply to Members and precedents of the House are clear that campaign activity is outside the scope of official duties and not a permissible use of official resources.”
The Justice Department in its late filing Tuesday night largely backed Lofgren’s position, saying, “Brooks’s appearance at the Jan. 6 rally was campaign activity, and it is no part of the business of the United States to pick sides among candidates in federal elections. … Indeed, although the scope of employment related to the duties of a Member of Congress is undoubtedly broad and there are some activities that cannot be neatly cleaved into official and personal categories, Brooks’s request for certification and substitution of the United States for campaign-related conduct appears to be unprecedented.”
“Members of Congress are subject to a host of restrictions that carefully distinguish between their official functions, on the one hand, and campaign functions, on the other,” the department said. “The conduct at issue here thus is not the kind a Member of Congress holds office to perform, or substantially within the authorized time and space limits, as required by governing law,” the DOJ wrote.
The DOJ also notes that “if proven” the conduct Brooks is alleged by Swalwell to have engaged in “would plainly fall outside the scope of employment for an officer or employee of the United States.” “… conspiring to prevent the lawful certification of the 2020 election and to injure Members of Congress and inciting the riot at the Capitol.”
“Alleged action to attack Congress and disrupt its official functions is not conduct a Member of Congress is employed to perform and is not “actuated . . . by a purpose to serve” the employer, as required by District of Columbia law to fall within the scope of employment,” the department wrote in its filing.
Legal experts have been closely watching what the DOJ would ultimately decide in Brooks’ case, believing it could have a significant impact on other cases brought against allies of former President Trump being sued for encouraging or inciting the pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.
It is still unclear, however, whether the judge overseeing the case will decide to grant Brooks’ request to substitute the DOJ for himself despite DOJ’s stated opposition Tuesday evening.
(TOKYO) — Each day, ABC News will give you a roundup of key Olympic moments from the day’s events in Tokyo, happening 13 hours ahead of U.S. Eastern Standard Time. After a 12-month delay, the unprecedented 2020 Summer Olympics is taking place without fans or spectators and under a state of emergency due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Simone Biles withdraws from individual all-around
American gymnastics superstar Simone Biles has decided not to compete in Thursday’s final individual all-around competition at the Tokyo Olympics so that she can “focus on her mental health,” USA Gymnastics said in a statement Wednesday.
“Simone will continue to be evaluated daily to determine whether or not to participate in next week’s individual event finals,” the sport’s national governing body added. “We wholeheartedly support Simone’s decision and applaud her bravery in prioritizing her well-being. Her courage shows, yet again, why she is a role model for so many.”
Jade Carey, who had the ninth-highest score in qualifications, will compete in Biles’ place in the all-around, according to USA Gymnastics. The decision follows Biles’ early exit from the team final on Tuesday.
Katie Ledecky takes gold in first-ever women’s 1500 freestyle
Only an hour after she failed to place in the 200-meter freestyle, Team USA’s swimming star Katie Ledecky was back in the pool racing for gold and Olympic history.
Ledecky easily beat her competition, winning by more than four seconds in the 30 lap-race and becoming the first woman to win a gold medal in a 1,500-meter freestyle. Her teammate Erica Sullivan won silver.
Athletes grapple with heat and humidity as Tropical Storm Nepartak makes landfall
The suffocating heat wave in Tokyo was so unbearable during the men’s tennis singles final that Russian player Daniil Medvedev reportedly told the umpire: “I can finish the match, but I can die … If I die, are you going to be responsible?”
Temperatures in the Olympic host city were at around 88 degrees Fahrenheit, but the humidity from recent rain showers moved the heat index up to 99.
Tropical Storm Nepartak ultimately spared the Games and made landfall on Wednesday morning in Japan’s Miyagi prefecture, some 250 miles north of Tokyo.
COVID-19 cases at Tokyo Olympics rise to 174
There were 14 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 among people at the Tokyo Olympics on Wednesday, including contractors, media members and Games-concerned personnel. The total now stands at 174, according to data released by the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee.
The surrounding city of Tokyo reported 3,177 new cases on Wednesday, a 7-day average increase of 153%, according to data released by the Tokyo metropolitan government.
After losing their first game since 2004 on Sunday to France, the U.S. men’s basketball team easily beat Iran 120-66. Players Damian Lillard and Devin Booker helped lead Team USA to victory with 21 and 16 points, respectively.
Team USA has one more game in the group round on Saturday against Czech Republic.
Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic defeated Spain’s Alejandro Davidovich Fokina 6-3, 6-1 in the third round match of the men’s singles.
Djokovic is now three games away from achieving a Golden Slam, which is when a tennis player wins all four Grand Slam tournaments as well as a gold medal at the Summer Olympics in a single calendar year. Steffi Graf of Germany is the only player to accomplish such a feat.
(NEW YORK) — Prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump has filed a lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson, alleging the pharmaceutical giant marketed talcum-based baby powder specifically to Black women despite links to ovarian cancers.
Johnson & Johnson has denied the allegations, saying its marketing campaigns are “multicultural and inclusive.” The company also denies that its products cause cancer, despite a Missouri appellate court last year ruling in favor of ovarian cancer victims suing the company as part of a separate lawsuit, claiming their condition was caused by asbestos in its baby powder and other talc products.
Crump, perhaps best known for representing the family of George Floyd after his murder by Derek Chauvin, filed the suit Tuesday in New Jersey with his legal partner Paul Napoli on behalf of members of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW). The council, founded in 1935, is a nonprofit that advocates for and empowers women of African descent and their families.
“I would be remiss if I did not say exactly what this lawsuit is about. It is about the lives of our grandmothers, our mothers, our sisters, our daughters, our nieces, and our wives, and how they were sinisterly targeted by Johnson and Johnson,” Crump said at a news conference Tuesday announcing the suit. “This multi-billion-dollar corporation, their corporate executives know about the link between talcum powder and ovarian cancer.”
“Black women have always been the backbone of this country, standing up for everyone, but receiving the least amount of respect,” he added. “Well, it is time that we stand up for Black women.”
At the news conference, victims who lost family members to ovarian cancer tearfully spoke out about the impact these deaths have had on their lives.
Lydia Huston said her mother died of ovarian cancer in 2014. She remembers the mother of two and grandmother of eight as a “phenomenal cook” who “loved to take care of the people that she loved.”
“We had a routine and it involves hygiene, a very clean home and a very clean body,” she said. “And just like deodorant, soap, lotion, and toothpaste, talcum powder was a part of the daily routine that she had for over 35 years.”
“I miss her dearly, and I want justice for her,” Huston said.
Janice Mathis, the executive director of the NCNW, added in a separate statement that “generations of Black women” used Johnson & Johnson products as part of their daily routines.
“This company, through its words and images, told Black women that we were offensive in our natural state and needed to use their products to stay fresh,” she said. “Generations of Black women believed them and made it our daily practice to use their products in ways that put us at risk of cancer — and we taught our daughters to do the same.”
Johnson & Johnson has denied that its baby powder products cause cancer, but has previously said that it is facing more than 20,000 lawsuits over its talcum products. Despite assurances it is safe, the company stopped selling talc-based baby powder in 2020 in the U.S., citing reduced demand due to misinformation and litigation advertising.
In June 2020, an appellate court in Missouri upheld more than $2 billion in damages against Johnson & Johnson, saying the company knew there was asbestos in its baby powder. In June of this year, the Supreme Court declined to hear the company’s appeal of the Missouri verdict.
The company told ABC News in a statement that independent scientific testing has proved its products do not cause cancer. A Journal of the American Medical Association report released last year found “no statistically significant link” between use of powder in the genital area and risk of ovarian cancer.
“We empathize with anyone suffering from cancer and understand that people are looking for answers. We believe those answers can be better understood through science — and decades of independent scientific testing by medical experts around the world has confirmed that our products are safe, do not contain asbestos, and do not cause cancer,” Johnson & Johnson told ABC News in a statement Tuesday.
“The accusations being made against our company are false, and the idea that our Company would purposefully and systematically target a community with bad intentions is unreasonable and absurd,” the statement added. “Johnson’s Baby Powder is safe, and our campaigns are multicultural and inclusive.”
“We firmly stand behind the safety of our product and the ways in which we communicate with our customers,” the company said, noting that more information can be found at www.FactsAboutTalc.com.
