The Kennedys

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    Caroline Kennedy reportedly in line to be next US ambassador to Australia

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    Caroline Kennedy, the only surviving child of President John F Kennedy, is reportedly in line to be announced as the next US ambassador to Australia.US-based news website Axios, citing “people familiar with the matter” reported: “Caroline Kennedy is in line to be US ambassador to Australia”, while the AP said the US president, Joe Biden, was “giving serious consideration” to nominating Kennedy to a high-profile ambassadorial role in Asia.Kennedy was formerly the US ambassador to Japan during the Obama administration.The White House declined to comment.Kennedy, a scion of one of America’s most high-profile political families, threw her support behind Biden relatively early in the crowded 2020 Democratic primary process.Along with her uncle, senator Ted Kennedy, she also offered a critical early endorsement to Obama in his 2008 run for the White House.Caroline, born in 1957, is the only surviving child of the former president Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline. She was only five when her father was assassinated in Dallas in November 1963.It was the first of a series of tragedies for the privileged but ill-fated US family. A brother, Patrick, died in infancy in 1963. Her uncle Robert Kennedy was assassinated in 1968, and another brother, John, died in a plane crash in 1999.Axios has reported that Biden was considering another Kennedy, Ted Kennedy’s widow, Vicki, for an ambassadorial posting in western Europe.Australia’s previous ambassador to Australia, Arthur Culvahouse Jr, finished his appointment with the end of the Trump presidency in January this year.Before his appointment, the post was vacant for nearly two and a half years after Obama appointee John Berry departed.The US mission to Australia is currently headed by chargé d’affaires Michael Goldman.Biden is expected to soon announce his first major tranche of political ambassadorial nominations, according to White House officials.The AP has previously reported he is expected to nominate former senior state department official Nicholas Burns to serve in China, Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti in India, former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel in Japan, and former deputy secretary of state Tom Nides to Israel.Ken Salazar, a former colleague of Biden’s in the Senate and Obama-era interior department secretary, is a candidate for the Mexico ambassadorship.Cindy McCain, the widow of Republican senator John McCain and a longtime friend of the president and first lady, Jill Biden, is under consideration for an ambassadorial position, including leading the UN World Food Program.With AP More

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      Restorationists urge Jill Biden to erase Melania Trump’s Rose Garden makeover

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      Efforts to erase the Trump family legacy have reached the White House potting sheds and nurseries with Jill Biden being urged to restore the mansion’s garden to a state that predates ex-First Lady Melania Trump’s 2019 makeover.An online petition calling on the first lady to return the Rose Garden to its “former glory” has been signed by more than 54,000 people. The petition says Biden’s predecessor “had the cherry trees, a gift from Japan, removed as well as the rest of the foliage and replaced with a boring tribute to herself”.Restorationists urge that the garden be returned to a state that was created in the early 1960s by Jacqueline Kennedy with the help of famed designer Bunny Mellon.“Jackie’s legacy was ripped away from Americans who remembered all that the Kennedys meant to us,” the petition reads, and notes that her husband, the president, had said that “the White House had no garden equal in quality or attractiveness to the gardens that he had seen and in which he had been entertained in Europe.”In July 2020, as her husband fought for re-election and the coronavirus pandemic raged, Trump announced that her renovation project, which included electrical upgrades for television appearances, a new walkway and new flowers and shrubs, would be an “act of expressing hope and optimism for the future”.The changes to the garden were the first since Michelle Obama initiated a project in 2009 to dig up an 1,100 square foot plot on the South Lawn adjacent to the tennis courts for a vegetable garden.The plan included replacing crab apple trees, introducing a new assortment of white “JFK” and pale pink “peace” roses, and a new drainage system. “In a way, the metaphor of openness and improved access became our overall plan concept,” wrote Perry Guillot, the landscape architect overseeing the project.But the renovation met with criticism focused on Trump’s decision to go ahead with her project during the Covid-19 pandemic. There is no indication, as yet, that Jill Biden plans to act on the petition’s recommendations.On Thursday, her husband was spotted by the White House press corps picking a dandelion for his wife from the White House lawn before they boarded a helicopter.A day later, on Friday, the first lady commemorated Arbor Day by planting a linden tree on the north lawn of the White House. Her press office said it was to replace one removed last month that was deemed a risk and had not been planted by a historical figure.“Who doesn’t plant trees in high heels?” she said. More

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      Edward Markey defeats Joe Kennedy in Massachusetts Democratic primary

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      Senator Edward Markey has defeated representative Joe Kennedy III in Tuesday’s Democratic primary, harnessing support from progressive leaders to overcome a challenge from a younger rival who is a member of America’s most famous political family.Markey appealed to voters in the deeply Democratic state by positioning himself as aligned with the liberal wing of the party. He teamed up with New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the Green New Deal, and at one point labeled Kennedy “a progressive in name only”.That helped Markey overcome the enduring power of the Kennedy name in Massachusetts. The 39-year-old congressman sought to cast the 74-year-old Markey as out of touch after spending decades in Congress, first in the House before moving to the Senate.In the waning weeks of the campaign, Kennedy leaned into his family’s long political legacy in Massachusetts. His pedigree includes former president John F Kennedy; former US Senator and US Attorney General Robert F Kennedy, his grandfather; and former US senator Edward Kennedy, who held a Senate seat in Massachusetts for nearly half a century until his death in 2009.Markey countered by playing up his own family story – growing up in the working class city of Malden with a father who drove a truck for the Hood Milk company. In one campaign video, Markey also paraphrased a famous JFK quote, saying, “We asked what we could do for our country. We went out, we did it. With all due respect, it’s time to start asking what your country can do for you.”Markey also found himself on the defense at times during the campaign, with Kennedy repeatedly trying to portray him as insensitive on issues of racial inequality. Kennedy faulted Markey for his initial opposition to the effort to desegregate the Boston Public Schools beginning in the 1970s.Markey countered by noting that he changed his views on the contentious issue that tore at the fabric of the city. Late in the race, Kennedy also landed a major endorsement when Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic House speaker, formally backed his candidacy. More

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      Body recovered in search for Kennedy family members lost in canoe accident

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      Maryland authorities recover body of Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean but search for her eight-year-old son continues Maeve Kennedy Townsend with her family, including her son Gideon Joseph Kennedy McKean, bottom right. Photograph: AP Authorities in Maryland said on Monday that they had recovered the body of the daughter of the former lieutenant governor Kathleen Kennedy […] More