Robert F Kennedy Jr

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      Did RFK Jr really drink fish medicine? He definitely has weird ideas about ‘making America healthy again’ | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr is many things, but he is not a tropical fish. Someone should probably tell him this because he appears to be guzzling fish medicine. Last week, a video of RFK sitting on a plane and putting a strange blue liquid into his glass of water went viral. It’s not clear what he was taking, but online sleuths are convinced it was methylene blue, which is used to treat parasites in fish as well as aquatic ailments such as swim bladder disease.To be fair, methylene blue does have human uses – in the US, it is FDA-approved to treat a rare blood disorder. Over the last few years, however, it has been touted as a miracle drug in wellness circles and people have been using it off-label in the hopes of staving off everything from jet lag to ageing. “Looks like RFK Jr is in on one of the best-kept secrets in biohacking – methylene blue,” wrote one prominent wellness influencer after the viral video. “When used correctly, it’s a gamechanger for mental clarity and longevity.”That’s a stretch. While some studies show methylene blue may help with those things, self-medicating is a bad idea. Too much of the stuff can turn your urine blue, for one thing. More importantly, it can interact with certain medications, which can have serious consequences.We don’t know for sure that it was methylene blue. But we do know that Kennedy, who is a prominent anti-vaxxer, has a lot of strange – and arguably very dangerous – ideas about medicine. These may stem from some of his own health problems, including one issue he memorably said “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died”. According to the New York Times, the worm may have actually been a “pork tapeworm larva”. Tapeworms aside, Kennedy’s wellness opinions would be entirely his business were it not for the fact that he is closing in on the role of secretary of health and human services and is poised to inflict his ideas on the rest of us, all in the name of a movement he has termed “Make America Healthy Again” (Maha). Like every Maga movement, this one is being aggressively monetised: Kennedy has applied to trademark Maha for use in marketing potential products including food supplements, vitamins and (oddly) vaccines.Some people are aghast at his ideas; others are ecstatic about the prospect of him upending the US’s approach to food and healthcare. There has been a lot of coverage about the “crunchy moms” who are quite justifiably horrified about all the rubbish that is in processed foods and are thrilled by the Maha agenda.It’s interesting, however, to see just how much of the discourse around Maha seems to focus on woo-woo-women and their silly little wellness ideas, because – as Kennedy demonstrates – it’s men who are increasingly dominating the alternative health (if you’re being diplomatic) or pseudoscientific quackery (if you’re not) space. That’s partly because Silicon Valley has rebranded being obsessed with your health as “biohacking”. Men who are into biohacking and longevity don’t casually take vitamin pills like the rest of us. No, no, they build supplementation protocols and personalised “supplement stacks”. Supplementing appears to have become an extreme sport among a certain type of wellness bro: the more pills you swallow, the more macho you are. Bahram Akradi, the 63-year-old CEO of a gym chain, for example, recently said he’s been taking “about 45 to 50” pills every morning for years. Meanwhile, Bryan Johnson, the 47-year-old tech entrepreneur who is spending millions of dollars trying to de-age himself, takes more than 100 pills a day. According to one interview, he wakes up at 4.30am and takes 57 pills, does some ab stimulation, then takes 34 more.Spending a fortune on experimental pills, and not even the fun kind, is about as stupid as it sounds. I don’t know what Akradi has been taking, but for about five years Johnson was downing a pill called rapamycin that had been found to extend the lifespan of mice. But Johnson is not a mouse and he recently quit taking it because another study found it might increase ageing in humans. I think Alanis Morissette would call this ironic, don’t you think?Anyway, the upshot of all this is that the takeover of the US government by weirdos with dangerous ideas continues apace. Meanwhile, remember that you are not a mouse or a fish, and design your “supplementation protocol” accordingly. More

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      ‘I’m picturing my death’: alarm as RFK Jr closes in on health secretary role

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      Americans suspicious of modern medicine and the status quo are watching Robert F Kennedy Jr’s nomination to secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) with a mixture of glee, astonishment and skepticism.Last week, Kennedy used his confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee to demonstrate how fully his wellness agenda, Make America Healthy Again, and Trumpism had fused – often to the delight of supporters.“I leaned conservative anyway, but when Kennedy came on – it was the icing on the cake,” said Hilda Labrada Gore, a 63-year-old mother of four, fitness coach and purveyor of wellness advice who attended Kennedy’s hearing – she was all smiles afterward. In business, she goes by Holistic Hilda. She said she does not have health insurance.“We are looking to pills and prescriptions, programs and physicians for good health, when actually it can be found through much simpler ancestral health ways.”Culturally a world away from Washington, Amy Fewell spoke from her homestead, Refuge of Liberty. A mother of three expecting a fourth, she lives in rural Virginia, home-schools her children and runs Homesteaders of America.“Most of our family hasn’t seen a doctor in over a decade, because we just don’t have to – we’re healthy people,” said Fewell. To her, the most concerning thing about the confirmation hearing was Kennedy distancing himself from anti-vaccine views.“One of the things that I feel like the libertarian Christian moms are concerned about is hearing Robert F Kennedy say, ‘Well, if the science shows that vaccines are safe, then, yes, we should be fine with it.’ Just because the science says it’s OK – I still want the option to say no to it … We just don’t believe that’s God’s design for our life.”Kennedy has long held support among naturopaths, the supplement industry, homesteaders and the Christian back-to-the-land movement – many of whom distrust not only vaccines but modern medicine.“This is our shot,” Karen Howard said she kept thinking about Kennedy’s nomination. She is executive director of the Organic and Natural Health Association, a trade group for the “nutraceuticals” and supplement industry. The group endorsed Kennedy in late January.“No administration has ever publicly supported what we do – ever,” said Howard. She said she “never” envisioned an administration like Trump’s putting up a nominee friendly to her businesses, and that she feels being “neither” Republican nor Democrat “benefits the work I do”.Labrada Gore, Fewell and Howard illustrate a potent new mix of wellness and conservatism – people who have adopted the alternative lifestyles once associated with the left, politically support the right, and advocate for a mix of the unobjectionable and potentially harmful.“It used to be seen as the whole hippie, left-leaning movement from the 60s, which is funny, because homesteading doesn’t have anything to do with politics – until it does,” Fewell said.Howard also recognized that “we definitely are on the fringe on this” in endorsing Kennedy. “We are not mainstream even amongst our own peer organizations.”Influencers such Labrada Gore push for less screen time, more exercise, and fewer chemicals, dyes and preservatives in the food supply. Other favored causes are implacably resistant to evidence of potential harm – such as unregulated supplements, raw milk and vaccine refusal.Like a growing minority of Republicans – about 20%, according to Gallup – Labrada Gore now believes vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases they are designed to prevent.“They’re more dangerous,” she said, acknowledging this is a “spicy” perspective – the overwhelming majority of Americans still support childhood vaccinations.Her theory is that vaccines go “directly into your bloodstream” and “giving it an easy path to bypass the body’s defenses”. She then espoused what many researchers regard as a fraught misunderstanding of the danger of measles, a disease rarely encountered now by Americans. Measles was declared eliminated from the US in 2000, but has since made a resurgence amid vaccine hesitancy.“Some diseases like measles – they are kind of natural rites of passage, I would say, for children to develop naturally. It’s like a hurdle, and when they do they are stronger afterward,” said Labrada Gore.Today, the CDC estimates measles kills between 1-2 people per 1,000 sickened – though mortality varies by country. That is higher than historical rates, which are generally considered an underestimation. By contrast, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates the risk of adverse reaction from the measles vaccine at about one in a million. It is widely accepted that measles vaccines have saved millions of lives globally.According to a large systematic review, the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (MMR) is not associated with brain swelling, autism spectrum disorders, “cognitive delay, type 1 diabetes, asthma, dermatitis/eczema, hay fever, leukaemia, multiple sclerosis, gait disturbance, and bacterial or viral infections”.Notably, many of Kennedy’s supporters aren’t fazed by conflicts and suggestions that left Democrats aghast. For example, Kennedy trademarked Maha for use in the supplement industry. Howard said she was “a bit surprised” but that “from a business perspective, it certainly makes sense”.Orn his suggestions that he might cut Medicaid, Labrada Gore said: “I don’t know many people on Medicaid, so I don’t really have a reference point.”If Kennedy is confirmed to lead HHS – an agency with a $1.8tn budget and a remit across health health insurance, biomedical research and the investigation and containment of infectious disease outbreaks – it would take place in spite of fevered opposition.“My perspective is, and I happen to be a Christian in the south … It is my duty to get vaccinated because I should be helping those who can’t help themselves – those with compromised immune systems or who don’t have the resources to get vaccinated,” said Kristin Matthews, a fellow at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Her recent report documented bills to limit vaccine access supported by state Republicans.“You can’t be a good Christian and then want to skip out on all vaccines for no reason – if you have as medical reason I completely support it.”Public health researchers, clinicians and even his own cousins have worked to stop the nomination. Their sentiments are summed up by a statement by consumer advocate and Public Citizen co-president Rob Weissman: “There is not one senator who believes Robert F Kennedy is qualified to be secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services and no senator should vote for his confirmation.”The confirmation may also come amid the noted silence of some of Washington’s most powerful groups, such as the American Medical Association and PhRMA. In 2024, pharmaceutical companies and their trade groups spent $293m lobbying Congress – more than any industry by a long shot.Few Republican doubters remain. Those that do, such as polio survivor and Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell, may not do enough to stop Kennedy’s confirmation.Olga Irwin, a 57-year-old Aids patient and activist from Youngstown, Ohio, also attended Kennedy’s hearing. Irwin, who uses a wheelchair, has lived with HIV for 25 years. Like most people, she has spent little time dwelling on her own demise.That changed last week, after she attended Kennedy’s confirmation hearing.She fears the nominee’s history of HIV-denialism and suggestions of cutting Medicaid, the public health insurance program for the low-income that she and 79 million other Americans rely on. Without it, her prescriptions would cost roughly $7,000 per month.She called her husband after the hearing and said: “‘Sam, I’m gonna fucking die.’ Not because I’m not taking my meds – I’m not going to have access to them. I’m picturing my death.” More

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      Sold-out farm shops, smuggled deliveries and safety warnings: US battle over raw milk grows

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      It’s 8am, and Redmond, an 11-year-old Brown Swiss dairy cow and designated matriarch of the Churchtown Dairy herd, has been milked in her designated stall. She is concentrating on munching hay; her seventh calf is hovering nearby.The herd’s production of milk, sold unpasteurised in half-gallon and quart glass bottles in an adjacent farm store, sells out each week. It has become so popular that the store has had to limit sales.Redmond and her resplendent bovine sisters, wintering in a Shaker-style barn in upstate New York, appear unaware of the cultural-political storm gathering around them – an issue that is focusing minds far from farmyard aromas of mud and straw.The production and state-restricted distribution of raw milk, considered by some to boost health and by ­others to be a major risk to it, has become a perplexing political touchstone on what is termed the “Woo-to-Q pipeline”, along which yoga, wellness and new age spirituality adherents can drift into QAnon conspiracy beliefs.Robert F Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump’s pick to run the US Department of Health, is an advocate. He has made unpasteurised milk part of his Make America Healthy Again movement and recently tweeted that government regulations on raw milk were part of a wider “war on public health”.View image in fullscreenRepublican congresswoman and conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene has posted “Raw Milk does a body good”. But the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says that “raw milk can carry dangerous germs such as salmonella, E coli, listeria, campylobacter and others that cause foodborne illness”.Last week, the US Department of Agriculture issued an order to broaden tests for H5N1 – bird flu – in milk at dairy processing ­facilities, over fears that the virus could become the next Covid-19 if it spreads through US dairy herds and jumps to humans. Since March, more than 700 dairy herds across the US have tested ­positive for bird flu, mostly in California. But the new testing strategy does not cover farms that directly process and sell their own raw milk.At the same time, another dairy product has become the subject of conspiracy theories after misinformation spread about the use of Bovaer in cow feed in the UK. Arla Foods, the Danish-Swedish company behind Lurpak, announced trials of the additive, designed to cut cow methane emissions, at 30 of its farms. Some social media users raised concerns over the additive’s safety and threatened a boycott, despite Bovaer being approved by regulators.In the US, raw milk is seen as anti-government by the right, anti-corporate by the left, and amid the fracturing political delineations, lies a middle ground unmoved by either ideology.“Food production has always been political,” says Churchtown Dairy owner and land reclamation pioneer, Abby Rockefeller.Churchtown manager Eric Vinson laments raw milk has been lumped in with QAnon and wellness communities. “There’s an idea around that ­people who want to take ownership of their health have started to become conspiratorial,” he says. “It’s unfortunate. Raw milk may be a political issue but it’s not a right-left issue.”Iowa, Montana, North Dakota, Alaska, Georgia, and Wyoming have passed laws or changed rules to allow the sale at farms or shops since 2020. In New York, sales are legal at farms with permits, although supplies are smuggled into the city marked “for cats and dogs”. There is no suggestion Churchtown is involved in that.Amish communities abandoned a non-political stance in the national elections in November and voted Republican, in part over the raw milk issue. An Amish organic farm was raided by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture in January.There are also the health-aware “farmers’ market mums”, who say they are looking to raw milk for an immunity boost, and who harbour latent anger over the government pandemic response and vaccine mandates.View image in fullscreenRachel, a Manhattan mother of a three-year-old, who declined to be fully identified, citing potential social judgment, said: “After Covid, more of us started thinking about our bodies and health because of scepticism around doctors, hospitals and a corrupted health care system.” But like many people, she said, she felt she’d been “caught in the middle” of a political battle.Sales of raw milk are up between 21% and 65% compared with a year ago, according to the market research firm NielsenIQ. Mark McAfee, California raw milk advocate and owner of Raw Farm USA in Fresno, says production and supply across the state is growing at 50% a year. But the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention call raw milk one of the “riskiest” foods people can consume. Experts say they are “horrified” by a trend they consider a roll-back of Louis Pasteur’s 19th-century invention of pasteurisation.Vinson disagrees with the idea that raw milk is “inherently dangerous” and argues, because conventional dairies rely on pasteurisation, “they don’t have to worry about sanitation around the milking practices – they can cut corners”. “You have to be more careful producing raw milk but it brings a higher price,” he adds.View image in fullscreenSince the pandemic, visitors to Churchtown have increased.Earlier this month, McAfee’s Raw Farm was hit by a notice from the California Department of Health warning that H5 virus, better known as bird flu, had been detected in a batch of cream-top whole raw milk.It’s not yet known if the virus can be transmitted to people who consume infected milk but the CDC officials warn that people who drink raw milk could theoretically become infected.Back at Churchtown Dairy, Vinson is tending the herd. A huge Jersey cow shadows her four-day old calf. At weekends, he offers tours of the barn to raw milk-curious visitors. “One of my main jobs is informing the public about farming and agricultural issues,” he says. That includes being receptive to changes. “It is important to say we don’t know everything and keep an eye open.” More

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      Mitch McConnell condemns petition to revoke approval of polio vaccine by RFK Jr adviser

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      US Senate minority leader and polio survivor Mitch McConnell has condemned attempts to undermine the polio vaccine after reports that a lawyer affiliated with Robert F Kennedy Jr – the health secretary pick for Donald Trump’s second presidency – petitioned for the Food and Drug Administration to revoke its approval of the vaccine.In a statement reported by numerous outlets on Friday, McConnell, who contracted the disease as a child in 1944 – 11 years before the licensing of the world’s first polio vaccine – said: “The polio vaccine has saved millions of lives and held out the promise of eradicating a terrible disease. Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed – they’re dangerous.”The 82-year-old went on to add: “Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts.”McConnell’s latest comment comes after the New York Times first reported that Aaron Siri, a lawyer helping Kennedy select incoming health officials for Trump’s second White House term, filed a petition in 2022 in which he called on the FDA to revoke its polio vaccine approval. Trump has nominated Kennedy, an avowed vaccine skeptic, as health secretary for his incoming administration – a move widely criticized by health experts.According to the New York Times, Siri filed the petition on behalf of the Informed Consent Action Network, a major anti-vaccination organization in the US. Siri has also asked federal regulators to withdraw or suspend vaccines for hepatitis B and 13 other vaccines, the outlet reported.Kennedy’s anti-vaccination beliefs have been widely debunked, including the unsupported link between vaccines and autism.Polio, also known as poliomyelitis, is a highly infectious viral disease that mostly affects children under five years old. Transmitted through contaminated water, food or contact with an infected person, the poliovirus destroys nerve cells in the spinal cord, in turn causing muscle wasting and paralysis.Since 1988, polio cases have decreased by more than 99% across the world, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated on its website, adding that polio vaccines have prevented approximately 20m cases of paralysis in children since then.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn response to the reports, a Trump spokesperson for Kennedy Jr told the Washington Post that Siri “has never had a conversation about these petitions with Mr Kennedy or any of the [health and human services] nominees at any point”.Among other things, the spokesperson added that the vaccine “should be investigated and studied appropriately”, which it already has been. More

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      New Jersey governor asks Biden for federal help on unexplained drones – as it happened

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      Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic former speaker of the House of Representatives, sustained an injury while on an official visit to Luxembourg and was hospitalized, her office announced.“While traveling with a bipartisan Congressional delegation in Luxembourg to mark the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi sustained an injury during an official engagement and was admitted to the hospital for evaluation,” spokesperson Ian Krager said.“Speaker Emerita Pelosi is currently receiving excellent treatment from doctors and medical professionals. She continues to work and regrets that she is unable to attend the remainder of the CODEL engagements to honor the courage of our servicemembers during one of the greatest acts of American heroism in our nation’s history.”He added that the 84-year-old, who just won another term representing her district that centers on San Francisco, “looks forward to returning home to the US soon”.More signs have emerged of how Donald Trump will make good on his pledge to transform the US government, once he is inaugurated president. The New York Times has reported that Aaron Siri, a lawyer who has challenged the approval of vaccines for polio, hepatitis B and other preventable diseases, is sitting in on interviews for job candidates conducted by Robert F Kennedy Jr. Separately, the Wall Street Journal says that Trump’s transition team is exploring ways to downsize or get rid of banking regulators that were created in the wake of the Great Depression, and which have repeatedly stepping in to stabilize the US economy in the decades since.Here’s what else happened today:

      Phil Murphy, New Jersey’s Democratic governor, has asked Joe Biden for federal help to learn more about the unexplained drones flying over his state.

      Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic former House speaker, has been hospitalized after fracturing her hip in Luxembourg, during a trip to commemorate the Battle of the Bulge.

      Daniel Penny, who was acquitted earlier this week on charges related to the chokehold death of an unhoused man on a New York City subway, will attend the US army-navy football game with JD Vance.

      Anita Dunn, a former Biden White House adviser, criticized the pardon of Hunter Biden.

      Trump said Republicans should repeal daylight savings time.
      Texas has launched a legal challenge to laws enacted by Democratic states to shield doctors who prescribe abortion pills, the Associated Press reports.The lawsuit by the Republican-led state against a New York doctor who prescribed abortion pills to a Texas woman could spark a fight over how abortion pills, which are the most common way the procedure is accessed, are prescribed. Here’s more, from the AP:
      Texas has sued a New York doctor for prescribing abortion pills to a woman near Dallas, launching one of the first challenges in the U.S. to shield laws that Democrat-controlled states passed to protect physicians after Roe v. Wade was overturned.
      Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed the lawsuit on Thursday in Collin County, and it was announced Friday.
      Such prescriptions, made online and over the phone, are a key reason that the number of abortions has increased across the U.S. even since state bans started taking effect. Most abortions in the U.S. involve pills rather than procedures.
      Mary Ruth Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, School of Law, said a challenge to shield laws, which blue states started adopting in 2023, has been anticipated.
      And it could have a chilling effect on prescriptions.
      “Will doctors be more afraid to mail pills into Texas, even if they might be protected by shield laws because they don’t know if they’re protected by shield laws?” she said in an interview Friday.
      The lawsuit accuses New York Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter of violating Texas law by providing the drugs to a Texas patient and seeks up to $250,000. No criminal charges are involved.
      In yet more Donald Trump policy news, the president-elect just weighed in on daylight saving time, saying on Truth Social he will support undoing it:
      The Republican Party will use its best efforts to eliminate Daylight Saving Time, which has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn’t! Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation.
      He’s not the only one in the GOP who’d like to see the seasonal time change – in which Americans set their clocks back an hour in the fall, and forward an hour in the spring – go away:The New York Times reports that Nancy Pelosi fell and broke her hip during her trip to Luxembourg.Citing unnamed people close to the Democratic former House speaker, they said doctors were confident they could repair the damage in a “routine operation”, but it was not yet known if that would be done in Luxembourg or the United States.New Jersey’s recently elected Democratic senator Andy Kim said he went out last night with a police officer to Round Valley reservoir in the state, where he could see the unexplained drones flying over.“The officer pointed to lights moving low over the tree line. Sometimes they were solid white light, others flashed of red and green,” Kim wrote on X.He continued:
      We oriented ourselves with a flight tracker app to help us distinguish from airplanes. We often saw about 5-7 lights at a time that were low and not associated with aircraft we could see on the tracker app. Some hovered while others moved across the horizon.
      We saw a few that looked like they were moving in small clusters of 2-4. We clearly saw several that would move horizontally and then immediately switch back in the opposite direction in maneuvers that plane can’t do.
      The police officer said they see them out every night. They only seem to start when it gets dark and they disappear before dawn. They get reports that they sometimes fly low over homes, especially up in the hills.
      The officer said they’ve tried to get closer with use of a helicopter but that the drones would turn off the lights and go dark if approached.
      New Jersey’s Democratic governor Phil Murphy is asking Joe Biden for more help from the federal government in determining the cause of a series of mysterious drones seen flying over the state.In a letter sent to Biden today, Murphy wrote:
      While I am sincerely grateful for your administration’s leadership in addressing this concerning issue, it has become apparent that more resources are needed to understand what is behind this activity. This week, the FBI testified in a joint subcommittee hearing before Congress that the federal government alone cannot address UAS [unmanned aircraft systems]. New Jersey residents deserve more concrete information about these UAS sightings and what is causing them.
      Here’s more on the unknown drones and Murphy’s request to the president:Progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has picked up the support of two congressional caucuses in her bid to be named the top Democrat on the prominent oversight committee.The Congressional Progressive Caucus announced its endorsement of Ocasio-Cortez, writing on X:
      AOC’s fearless advocacy leading the Oversight Committee will help ensure Democrats retake the House in 2026. Our Caucus is proud to support her candidacy.
      The Congressional Hispanic Caucus’s incoming leadership committee is also backing her, saying:
      With her strong national profile and media presence, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez is critical in combating misinformation and ensuring the truth reaches the American people.
      Travis Timmerman, an American imprisoned in Syria for seven months, has been flown out of the country, the US military told AP.A US official said Timmerman was flown out on a US military helicopter. The 29-year-old said he had gone to Syria on a Christian pilgrimage and was not ill-treated while in Palestine Branch, a notorious detention facility operated by Syrian intelligence.He said he was freed by “the liberators who came into the prison and knocked the door down (of his cell) with a hammer”.Timmerman said he was released Monday morning alongside a young Syrian man and 70 female prisoners, some of whom had their children with them.He had been held separately from Syrian and other Arab prisoners and said he didn’t know of any other Americans held in the facility.Annoyance has been growing among politicians and law enforcement in New Jersey following proliferating reports of drone flights in recent weeks, including almost 50 on Sunday night alone. The Guardian’s Richard Luscombe has this report on the growing demand for answers:The governor of New Jersey has demanded that Joe Biden take control of an investigation into mysterious and more frequent appearances of multiple large drones flying over his state amid mounting frustration that federal officials are downplaying the incidents.Democrat Phil Murphy released on Friday a letter he wrote to the White House to express his “growing concern” after representatives from the Pentagon and FBI ruled out involvement by the US military, or hostile foreign actors, in numerous sightings of unexplained flying objects above about a dozen counties since the middle of November.“It has become apparent that more resources are needed to fully understand what is behind this activity,” he wrote in the letter, published the same day that reports emerged of multiple drones breaching airspace at Naval Weapons Station Earle in Monmouth county.“I respectfully urge you to continue to direct the federal agencies involved to work together until they uncover answers as to what is behind the UAS [unmanned aircraft systems] sightings.”Tens of millions of Americans cast ballots in the November election that sent Donald Trump back to the White House – and tens of millions of other did not bother. The Guardian’s Jedidajah Otte spoke to some of those in the latter group to learn why:The 2024 US presidential election had been widely characterized as one of the most consequential political contests in recent US history. Although turnout was high for a presidential election – almost matching the levels of 2020 – it is estimated that close to 90 million Americans, roughly 36% of the eligible voting age population, did not vote. This number is greater than the number of people who voted for either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris.More than a month on from polling day, eligible US voters from across the country as well as other parts of the world got in touch with the Guardian to share why they did not vote.Scores of people said they had not turned out as they felt their vote would not matter because of the electoral college system, since they lived in a safely blue or red state. This included a number of people who nonetheless had voted in the 2020 and 2016 elections.While various previous Democratic voters said they had abstained this time due to the Harris campaign’s stance on Israel or for other policy reasons, a number of people in this camp said they would have voted for the vice-president had they lived in a swing state.“I’m not in a swing state, and because of the electoral college my vote doesn’t count. I could have voted 500,000 times and it would not have changed the outcome,” said one such voter, a 60-year-old software developer with Latino heritage from Boston.Donald Trump has made clear that ordering a draconian crackdown on undocumented immigrants will be one of the first things he does, once he becomes president. The Guardian’s Adrian Carrasquillo reports that migrant rights groups are preparing to fight back:With Donald Trump ready to unleash his mass deportation policy in January, many local and national immigrant rights, legal aid and civil rights organizations are preparing for the unexpected.During his campaign, Trump often spoke of launching – on day one – “the largest deportation program of criminals in the history of America”. Now that he has been elected, various rights groups are preparing for the uncertainty of how quickly and to what extent Trump will be able to execute his plans.After his inauguration, these groups expect a flurry of executive orders around rescinding Joe Biden’s orders on immigration and facilitating efforts to deport people. Trump is likely to rescind old rules on who is a priority for deportation, making it clear that authorities will deport anyone at any time. NBC News reported there could be five executive orders on immigration.Also expected is an immediate focus on criminals and work-site raids, which the former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) director and incoming “border czar” Tom Homan has confirmed.“Trump’s going to try to go big and portray his effort as focused on criminals,” said Vanessa Cardenas, the executive director of America’s Voice. “But of course, they’re blurring the lines on who is considered a criminal.”More signs have emerged of how Donald Trump will make good on his pledge to transform the US government, once he is inaugurated president. The New York Times has reported that Aaron Siri, a lawyer who has challenged the approval of vaccines for polio, hepatitis B and other preventable diseases, is sitting in on interviews for job candidates conducted by Robert F Kennedy Jr. Separately, the Wall Street Journal says that Trump’s transition team is exploring ways to downsize or get rid of banking regulators that were created in the wake of the Great Depression, and which have repeatedly stepping in to stabilize the US economy in the decades since.Here’s what else has happened today so far:

      Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic former House speaker, has been hospitalized after sustaining an injury in Luxembourg, during a trip to commemorate the Battle of the Bulge.

      Daniel Penny, who was acquitted earlier this week on charges related to the chokehold death of an unhoused man on a New York City subway, will attend the US army-navy football game with JD Vance.

      Anita Dunn, a former White House adviser to Joe Biden, criticized the pardon of Hunter Biden.
      Remember Herschel Walker?The former NFL player was a Republican candidate for Senate in Georgia two years ago, but lost to Democrat Raphael Warnock after allegations of a variety of problematic conduct by Walker emerged.Walker has not been heard from much since then, and Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Patricia Murphy has revealed the reason why: he went back to school to get a degree he set aside to pursue a career in football.Here’s more:
      It’s not often that a story in politics makes you smile, especially these days. But that’s exactly what’s happening with the news that Herschel Walker, the former University of Georgia star running back, is graduating this week with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Georgia at the age of 62.
      Like a lot of people, Walker had planned to get his degree long ago, but, as he explained, “life and football got in the way.” In his case, “life” meant a lot – starting with getting married and signing a multimillion-dollar contract to play for Donald Trump’s New Jersey Generals in the short-lived USFL. From there, he moved to Texas to play for the Dallas Cowboys before becoming a sort of journeyman – playing for three more NFL teams and eventually returning to Dallas to play for the Cowboys once again.
      …
      Despite Washington Republicans’ most aggressive defense during the campaign’s frenzied final weeks, Walker lost to Warnock in a runoff and quickly disappeared from public view. He put his house in Atlanta on the market, cut off contact from most of his political staff and, for all anybody knew, returned to Dallas where he’d started out.
      But then, more than a year after the campaign ended, came a picture. It was Walker, tucked into a tight desk-and-chair combo, snapped in a classroom during summer school classes on UGA’s main campus in Athens. A call to the registrar’s office confirmed that he had quietly reenrolled as an undergraduate at UGA’s College of Family and Consumer Sciences where he began more than 40 years earlier. Yes, at the age of 62, Walker was a college student again.
      It’s important here to say that this was no publicity stunt. There were no press releases to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution nor quiet tipoffs from Walker or his team. He simply seemed to be back in Athens to take care of long unfinished business. More