Boys and their 1990s allowance-spending shift from music to video games spawned the rise of female artists such as Taylor Swift, who then “ruined music,” at least according to 1970s rocker Todd Rundgren.
“To me, Taylor Swift is the apotheosis of mediocrity,” the Utopia frontman told Vulture in a new interview ahead of his upcoming West Coast “Damned If I Do Tour,” adding, “There’s an argument to be made that she ruined music.”
Rundgren went on to say “It’s the era of the female artists,” and blamed the rise of video games for the music industry’s focus on music by and for women.
It all started when “boys stopped spending money on music and started spending it on video games,” which sent music marketers looking elsewhere for revenue, the “Hello It’s Me” and “I Saw the Light” singer explained. They then realized “there’s all these young girls and they’ve got their allowances, too,” he added.
Todd Rundgren is a pig and always has been. For over a decade throughout the 70s he praised Laura Nyro as an artist and a genius and then she wanted him to work on an album with her and he couldn't handle it and trashed her. That's how he is with women.
Taylor Swift may or may not be your cup of tea. But she didn't destroy music. And he's an idiot to claim that she did. He's also an idiot to claim that this happened in the 90s -- uh, Taylor wasn't recording in the 90s, Todd.
He's just an old man who needs to sit down and shut up already. And he needs to also grasp that he's not all that.
Stevie Wonder is celebrating the 50th anniversary of his landmark 1976 18th studio album, Songs in the Key of Life, with a world tour on which he will play the entire LP. And now, he's released a four-track addendum to the double-album which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart and spun off two Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 singles in "I Wish" and "Sir Duke," as well as winning Album of the Year at the 1977 Grammy Awards.
On Monday (Sept. 28), Wonder dropped the EP featuring a quartet of classic-sounding previously unreleased tracks from the session personally curated by the singer and newly mixed by the album's original recording and mixing engineers, John Fischback and Gary O Adante (credited on the original as Gary Olazabal).
"We've lived with Songs in the Key of Life for fifty years, but there's still more to hear," said Wonder, 76, in a statement. "We didn't add these songs to the album, but they were part of what I was feeling and discovering as we made it. They bring me back to that time in my life, and now they get to become part of yours."
SONGS IN THE KEY OF LIFE is a classic album. On my list of Stevie Wonder classic albums it's number two, right behind TALKING BOOK. Daniel Rugunya (THE BLAST) adds:
On September 28, the music legend released “Songs in the Key of Life 50: The EP,” featuring four previously unheard tracks recorded during the sessions for his landmark 1976 album. The songs are “It’s Easier,” “My Life Story of Love,” “I Can See the Sun in Late December,” and “I’m Into Livin’.” All four were ultimately left off the original release.
“We’ve lived with “Songs in the Key of Life” for 50 years, but there’s still more to hear,” Wonder said, per Rolling Stone. He explained that although the tracks did not make the album, they captured what he was “feeling and discovering” while making it.
The release came exactly 50 years after the diamond-certified album dropped on September 28, 1976. Wonder made the timing even more precise by releasing the EP at 4:54 a.m. PDT, when the original recording sessions reportedly wrapped.
Wonder’s fingerprints are all over the newly unearthed material, and not just as its lead vocalist.
The singer plays most of the instruments heard across the four tracks, including drums, electric bass, Fender Rhodes, and his GX-1 Dream Machine. He also wrote and produced all four songs, with Susaye Greene sharing a writing credit on “My Life Story of Love.”
That hands-on approach was hardly unusual for Wonder. On the original “Songs in the Key of Life,” he also took on multiple instrumental, songwriting, arranging, and production duties.
While most performers would chalk up a rejected film audition as simply “the one that got away,” Isaac Hayes created something for Shaft perhaps even more iconic than the lead character.
“Theme from Shaft,” the theme song for the 1971 blaxploitation film of the same name, saw the late musician receive perhaps the greatest counter-offer in cinematic history. “I wanted to try out for the lead role, but they said I had to do the music, but I could try out. I went back home bragging about it,” Hayes recalled in a 2000 interview (archived via Blogspot).
“They would say, ‘Hey Isaac, you got the call yet?’ I would say, ‘No.’ So I went and called and they told me they had cast this guy named Richard Roundtree in the leading role, but they reminded me that I had to do the music,” Hayes continued.
The late musician may not have won the role, but like Roundtree, he understood the character of John Shaft on a spiritual and creative level, which helped certify Shaft as a towering figure of the blaxploitation era, one that transcended the height of the genre’s popularity in the mid 1970’s, lasting to this day.
“They told me that this guy Shaft, I needed to zero in on his personality,” Hayes added. “He’s a roving type character; he’s relentless; he doesn’t let up. The music has to denote that type to attitude.”
If audiences are any guide, Hayes managed exactly that. “Theme from Shaft” was a critical and commercial smash. Released on September 30, 1971, the single topped the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks before winning the coveted Academy Award for Best Original Song. Hayes was the first black artist to win in this category, and was the third African-American Oscar winner in a competitive category overall, preceded by Hattie McDaniel in 1940 and Sidney Poitier in 1964.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026. Senate Republicans embarrass themselves with their own stupidity, is the stock market going to tank under Chump, Ka$h Patel rigs the numbers, Markwayne Mullin has a loud explosion, Epstein's back in the news, and much more.
It was meant to be a dramatic confrontation, a public accusation of perjury against Jack Smith, the special counsel who investigated Donald J. Trump. Instead, Senator Eric Schmitt’s amateur sleuthing into basketball led him to the wrong game, league and state.
During a four-hour Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Mr. Schmitt, a Republican from Missouri, struck a conspiratorial tone and asked Mr. Smith if he had attended an Atlanta Hawks home game in February 2024.
Mr. Schmitt focused on the basketball game in the hopes that he could show Mr. Smith had perjured himself and was involved in a conspiracy with local Atlanta prosecutors to ensnare Mr. Trump. In a hearing where Republicans repeatedly accused Mr. Smith of lying, what Mr. Schmitt first presented as smoking-gun evidence against Mr. Smith turned out to be a misfire.
During his testimony, Mr. Smith appeared deeply confused by Mr. Schmitt’s question. “I definitely did not go to a Hawks game,” he said. “I’m sure of that.”
Mr. Schmitt seemed confident he had just caught Mr. Smith in a lie. It was part of a broader effort by Mr. Trump’s Republican allies to characterize Mr. Smith as politically partisan, a man with an ax to grind not just against a former president, but also the Republican establishment. Mr. Smith has already defended his work before Congress, and Republicans have claimed that his past testimony included perjury.
On Tuesday, Mr. Schmitt argued that Mr. Smith had lied again, this time about a basketball game. If the prosecutor was in Atlanta, Mr. Schmitt suggested, he might have met with the local district attorney, Fani Willis, who also pursued a criminal case against Mr. Trump.
Mr. Schmitt’s Republican colleague from Louisiana, John Kennedy, stood next to him helping hold up a poster board showing text messages among members of Mr. Smith’s special counsel team from Feb. 3, 2024, discussing seats at a basketball game.
“I don’t think you know we have this stuff, so I’ll give you a second to process it so you don’t perjure yourself,” Mr. Schmitt said, even as the poster board was swiftly taken down, too quickly for most in the room to read it.
When the former special counsel insisted he had not gone to see the Atlanta Hawks play in that time period, Mr. Schmitt declared, “I think you’ve already perjured yourself,” and called Mr. Smith a “dirtbag.”
The accusation appeared to unravel almost immediately.
Invited to respond by Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, Mr. Smith said he had, in fact, attended a basketball game on that day, but it was to see the Iowa Hawkeyes at the University of Maryland. That night, Caitlin Clark, the star point guard who now plays in the W.N.B.A., scored 38 points and had 12 assists.
Ms. Klobuchar suggested that Mr. Schmitt’s accusation was rooted in the senator’s confusion between the “Hawks” of Atlanta and the “Hawkeyes” of Iowa.
The dirt bags were the Republicans on the Committee who were trying hard to attack the investigations of Convicted Felon Chump.
It was nonsense and meant to get MAGA charged up. But it didn't put food on the table and it didn't bring down gas prices or food prices. Yet again, the GOP in Congress wasted a day playing with themselves instead of addressing the concerns of the American people.
Will Ebiefung (THE MOTLEY FOOL) ponders whether or not Chump will crash the stock market noting, "Despite his frequent attempts to talk down inflation, Trump's actual policies have increased it. Aggressive tariffs raise the cost of imported finished goods and components, while the war in Iran has triggered bottlenecks in the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb, which are key to the global oil and gas trade. The result is that Brent crude is up 70% since the start of the year, and the Federal Reserve has been forced to raise its benchmark interest rate to 3.75% to 4.00% to try to keep prices under control." This comes as Jing Pan (MONEYWISE) speaks with economist Peter Schiff who has concerns about the stock market:
But Schiff argues the rally is being built on shaky ground. “In the long run, the fundamentals are going to ultimately bring the market back down,” he said.
And he isn’t warning about a garden-variety correction.
“Even if everything was good, the U.S. market is expensive,” Schiff said. “But it’s not — it’s a ticking time bomb.”
In his view, investors are looking past too many warning signs. “The markets, I think, are really looking past a lot of problems and pricing stocks based on hope and not reality,” he said.
The last time Americans felt this bad about the economy and their own finances, Donald Trump was best known as the host of The Apprentice.
The index of Consumer Confidence fell for a third month to its lowest since 2014 in September, the Conference Board, an economics think tank, said Tuesday.
Back in 2014, the index, which is based on a survey of U.S. adults about financial topics, was on an upward trajectory as the economy healed from the Great Recession.
These days, it’s moving in the opposite direction amid high fuel prices due to the Iran war and overall pessimism about the job market. And for the first time since 2022, more people in the survey said their own family’s financial situation was “bad” than “good.” The confidence index reading of 81.9 was lower than its August level of 88.6 and below the 89 that forecasters had expected, according to a survey of economists by Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday, for a second time, removed obstacles to the Trump administration deporting certain immigrants to “third countries” to which they have no previous connection.
The justices, with the court’s three liberals dissenting, granted an emergency request filed by the government seeking to block an appeals court ruling that said the current process is unlawful because the affected people are not given a proper chance to raise concerns about safety risks in violation of federal immigration law.
In the brief unsigned order, the court also said it would hear oral arguments in December and issue a definitive ruling on the legal questions raised in the litigation.
And this apparently includes countries that will knowingly be hostile to those being sent.
Chump's not worried about LGBTQ+ people at all. You can be an idiot like Caitlyn Jenner and be in it for your own good but most LGBTQ+ people are aware that Chump is a danger to them. John Fritze (CNN) reports:
President Donald Trump’s administration urged the Supreme Court on Monday to allow federal prison officials to deny certain types of medical care for transgender inmates, such as surgeries – putting another culture war issue on the high court’s burgeoning fast-track docket.
The Bureau of Prisons policy that began early in Trump’s second term – and that was modified after an early round of court battles – permits psychotherapy and psychiatry services for inmates with gender dysphoria, but not hormone therapies, surgeries or “social accommodations.”
The appeal reached the 6-3 conservative Supreme Court at a time when LGBTQ Americans have faced a series of legal setbacks, including back-to-back decisions in recent years that have allowed states to ban transgender care for minors and permitted states to prohibit transgender athletes from playing on girls’ sports teams in school.
Ariana Baio (GUARDIAN) notes Chump issued an "executive order from January 2025 that directed the Bureau of Prisons to 'ensure that no Federal funds are expended for any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex'. The order prohibited trans inmates from receiving certain gender transition medical care and ordered trans women inmates to be housed in men’s facilities. Trans inmates sued the administration over the policy and, so far, two lower courts have blocked officials from implementing the order as the larger lawsuit over the executive order continues." Joe Fisher (UPI) adds:
Attorneys representing the inmates said in a statement on Monday that they will continue to fight against the Trump administration policy.
"The lower courts have consistently found the administration's policy is a direct threat to the well-being of transgender people in federal custody and an open violation of their fundamental rights," the statement reads. "The withholding of medically necessary health care, including gender-affirming health care, from people in prison violates their Constitutional right to serve their sentence free of cruel and unusual punishment. We will continue to defend the rights of our clients and all incarcerated people."
The Kennedy Center? Created as a memorial to our slain president John F. Kennedy. And yet Chump continues to demand his name be put on the center. As Chump tries to destroy it, some are fighting to preserve it, some are working to destroy it. Add Utah's Mike Lee to the list of cry babies trying to destroy it. Joseph Gedeon (GUARDIAN) reports:
A Republican senator has blocked a bipartisan bill that would have prevented Donald Trump from demolishing the Kennedy Center without the approval of Congress.
Mike Lee, of Utah, objected on Monday night when the Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley asked the Senate to pass the Protecting Presidential Memorials Act by unanimous consent. The bill, co-written with the Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski, would have banned the demolition of any presidential memorial designated by Congress, including the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials, unless lawmakers explicitly approved it.
[. . .]
Lee has been closely aligned with Trump since 2020, and supported his efforts to overturn that year’s election result. More recently, he has repeatedly brought the Trump-backed Save act, which would impose voter ID and citizenship-proof requirements, to the Senate floor, and in April urged Trump to force lawmakers back to Washington to end a partial shutdown and pass it.
President Donald Trump’s administration told a federal appeals court that barring him from adding his name to the Kennedy Center would be an "existential" threat to the building because only he has the expertise and fundraising potential to save the venue.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ordered the removal of Trump’s name from the façade in May because the congressionally-approved statute that created the memorial designated it the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in recognition of the slain president.
But Trump has argued the building will fall into disrepair and could eventually be demolished unless he oversees the renovation and raises hundreds of millions of dollars to endow it. Congress has approved $257 million for the project.
The building will be just fine without Chump's name on it. And certainly not having his name on it doesn't mean Chump can't try to fundraise. As for his expertise? Putting plastic buckets in the hallways of his 'resorts' to catch rain water did not demonstrate expertise.
Former DHS secretary, known as "ICE Barbie," Kristi Noem officially filed for divorce from her husband, Bryon Noem, months after he admitted to his "bimbofication" fetish.
Rumors that Noem was preparing to divorce her husband, Bryon, began in July, but recent reports show she has moved forward with the process. South Dakota court records accessed by Newsweek show, she has filed the paperwork for divorce.
In March, during a tense House hearing during which lawmakers questioned her ability to lead the department and its aggressive immigration enforcement actions, Kristi was asked outright about a long-rumored affair between her and Trump ally Corey Lewandowski, whom she had made an unpaid adviser at DHS.
Both she and Lewandowski, who is also married with children, have denied reports of an extramarital romantic relationship.
But Kristi is in the news for much more serious topics as well. Alia Shoaib (NEWSWEEK) reports, "A federal appeals court is set to consider on Tuesday whether a criminal contempt inquiry into the Trump administration can proceed over the deportation of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador. Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is at the center of the dispute, after the government identified her as the official responsible for the decision to allow Venezuelan detainees to be transferred to El Salvador’s CECOT prison in March 2025, despite a judge’s order blocking their removal."
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin's “temperament” came under scrutiny Monday after The Oklahoman published audio of his “shouting match” with a former mayor — an exchange one Democratic operative described as a “meltdown.”
“The Oklahoman obtained audio of meltdown Markwayne,” wrote Danny Dabbs, a Democratic operative with American Bridge 21st Century PAC.
Speaking at an Edmond Chamber of Commerce meeting Monday, Mullin was asked by former Edmond Mayor Randel Shadid how he reconciled his Christian faith with mass deportations and the alleged physical abuse of migrants by agencies within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), according to The Oklahoman.
Mullin responded by shouting.
“You're not going to throw out Christian scripture to me and sit there and say that Jesus didn't say we should obey the nation's laws,” Mullin shouted.
A Minneapolis special education assistant has filed a federal claim against the U.S. government, alleging that Border Patrol agents assaulted and wrongfully detained him outside his school before the Trump administration publicly accused him of attacking federal officers in a criminal case that was later dismissed.
Quentin Williams, who works at Roosevelt High School, alleges that federal agents shoved him, pulled his hair, tackled him to the ground and pressed on his neck and back during an immigration enforcement operation outside the Minneapolis school on January 7, 2026. Williams says he did not threaten, attack or resist the officers.
The allegations are detailed in a Federal Tort Claims Act claim, a filing used to seek compensation from the federal government. The document represents Williams’ account of what happened and does not constitute a court finding that his allegations are true.
“My life completely changed when federal agents invaded my school community, attacked and falsely arrested me,” Williams told Newsweek. “Every day, I look forward to going to school to be with my kids at Roosevelt. Some days are harder than others, but I am trying my hardest to heal.”
Federal prosecutors have charged the Austin man an ICE agent shot earlier this month with a single count of resisting and assaulting a federal officer, according to court documents.
Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, a Venezuelan national, was shot by an ICE officer in Austin on Sept. 20. He was taken to Dell Seton Medical Center, where he was released and taken into ICE custody three hours later with the bullet remaining in his back. He has since remained at a detention center in Pearsall.
They shoot someone and then they claim that they were assaulted. That has been the playbook and it's not worked in court. The country has turned against the gestapos. Mateo Moreno (LATIN TIMES) reports:
Amnesty International is calling on the United States to shut down Immigration and Customs Enforcement, arguing that abuses documented during city-wide enforcement surges point to a flawed institution rather than a handful of rogue officers. The group laid out its case in "We Had Whistles, They Had Guns," a 168-page report released on Thursday, Sept. 24.
Amy Fischer, who leads Amnesty's refugee and migrant rights work, said the organization has never before pressed for any country's government agency to be dissolved, MPR News reported. She described the violence and discrimination in the findings as built into how ICE operates, not flaws that better training or revised policies could repair.
Markwayne's not the only embarrassment in this administration. There's also Ka$h Patel and Pete Hegseth dealing with hacking. Sean Lyngaas and Evan Perez (CNN) report:
A week after a cybercriminal group claimed to steal sensitive personal data on thousands of current and former FBI employees, the bureau is still assessing the extent of the damage while facing internal criticism about the agency’s handling of the incident.
It’s one of the most serious breaches of agency data in years, but some FBI employees have felt left in the dark about whether they’re affected and underwhelmed by the security resources being offered to victims, according to current and former officials.
“Management is lost,” one ex-FBI agent in touch with their former colleagues told CNN. “They’re not providing any clear advice to agents.”
The issue began a week ago, when hackers broke into an online portal hosting information on FBI job applicants. Social Security numbers, emergency contact information and personal addresses were in the stolen data.
This is such an embarrassment for Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Ka$h Patel. And it comes as Ka$h's inability to be a leader and/or get along with others is being noted. Steve Benen (MS NOW) notes:
Under normal circumstances, the FBI has a director and a deputy director, with the latter helping to oversee day-to-day operations at the bureau. The Trump administration, however, isn’t normal at all, which helps explain why, last summer, the FBI decided it needed two deputy directors: Dan Bongino, a right-wing provocateur and podcast personality, and Andrew Bailey, who had served as state attorney general in Missouri. Neither had any experience at the FBI.
FBI Co-Deputy Director and former Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is leaving his post to spend more time with his family.
According to two people familiar with his departure, Bailey … was frustrated at not being named FBI director, a proposal once floated to him after Kash Patel had made numerous missteps and generated headlines that were unfavorable to the administration.
A related New York Times report added, “Mr. Patel and Mr. Bailey did not get along, and often went long stretches without speaking to each other, according to multiple people familiar with their interactions who spoke on the condition of anonymity.”
Kash Patel’s FBI has been fudging the numbers to boost the agency’s success rate on apprehending fugitives from its Top 10 Most Wanted List.
Patel announced the addition of a new name to the agency’s Top 10 Most Wanted List on Tuesday, and bragged about the agency’s rate of successful captures under his leadership.
“This FBI has had historic success manhunting Ten Most Wanted fugitives—since the start of the Trump administration, we’ve captured TEN of the Top Ten Most Wanted, 2.5 times the number of TMW fugitives captured during the previous four years combined,” Patel wrote on X.
However, Patel’s FBI has imposed new policies that manipulate that data, by adding the names of fugitives who are expected to be imminently captured, according to MS NOW.
Read on to find out how Patel is claiming "FBI arrests" for Homeland Security arrests and local and state police arrests and any arrest at all. Remember that as we note Mike Corder's report for THE INDEPENDENT:
Dutch police have arrested a suspected member of the ShinyHunters hacker group and accused the man of trying to arrange two murders.
[. . .]
ShinyHunters claimed last week to have breached the FBI’s jobs website. The hacker group said it had stolen “very sensitive data” belonging to thousands of agents and applicants and that it had compromised the bureau’s jobs website.
FBI Director Kash Patel took to X to highlight the arrest in the Netherlands.
“This morning @FBI and our partners the Dutch National Police are announcing the arrest of one of the alleged leaders of ShinyHunters - a global cybercrime and threat actor group linked to cyberattacks in the United States, the Netherlands, and around the world,” he said.
“In coordination with FBI investigators the Dutch High-Tech Crime Unit arrested the suspect under Dutch law,” he added. "As we speak FBI teams are actively working with partners to obtain and execute more leads in the ongoing investigation based on this arrest.”
The Dutch police statement announcing the arrest did not mention the FBI hack or coordination with American law enforcement.
It didn't? Looks like Ka$h is again grabbing credit he didn't earn.
Jeffrey Epstein? Dead since 2019. But prior to that, he was Chump's roll dog for decades. Decades. Plural. Chump hung with the pedophile and sex trafficker. Ryan Mancini (THE HILL) reports:
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said Monday the government's files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein should be one of the "highest priorities" for Democrats if they retake control of Congress after the November midterm elections.
"This is not about politics," Khanna told CNN's Kasie Hunt on "The Arena." "This is about survivors who have been denied justice for decades. And this is about a group of wealthy and powerful men who either raped or trafficked or abused young girls and have not paid the price, have not had any consequence."
Khanna said he and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), with whom he authored and led the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act last November before President Trump signed it into law, "have an Epstein 2.0 bill" that they expect will get passed.
"We already have 218 signatures, and we need to empower the attorney generals to be able to prosecute," the California Democrat told Hunt. "And we need to demand the Department of Justice begin prosecutions."
Speaking with Jennifer Welch of “I’ve Had It” podcast, Khanna stressed the importance of getting the rest of the files to the public.
“What do you have to say about Todd Blanche running cover for this,” Welch asked Khanna, “and the fact that the sitting President of the United States has claims of a 14-year-old girl against him?”
“We still don’t have those documents,” Khanna says. “We’ve had millions of files released, but those documents need to be released under the Epstein Transparency Act Massie and I passed.”
The bigger bombshell here is that Blanche apparently isn’t running cover for Tr*mp anymore. Over the weekend, Blanche quietly handed over those infamous handwritten FBI notes at the center of journalist Katie Phang’s lawsuit against the DOJ. These are the notes detailing the 14-year-old victim’s abuse at the hands of the president. The best part? Blanche allegedly did not tell Tr*mp about this piece of cooperation.
Now, these notes are in the hands of Judge Sullivan, who will “review both redacted and unredacted versions and determine whether the Trump regime’s proposed redactions are justified before the records are released publicly.”
We don’t know what the outcome will be, but we can venture a guess. From the very start, citizens and congresspeople have called BS on the heavily-redacted form in which the files came to us. These redactions have been proven by Phang’s suit to be not in the interest of protecting victims, but in the interest of keeping the names of powerful men protected.
That era may just have come to an end, and it’s a heartening sign for a country on the verge of one of the most meaningful elections before the next regime change. For queer people, victims of sexual abuse, and other marginalized people, the Epstein files have come to represent something bigger than a cover-up. They’re a blatant reminder of how easy it is for abuse and oppression to thrive unchecked in politics, business, and finance without a shred of justice for the women and girls subjected to this all too common form of violence.
Jeffrey Epstein refused to release his photos of President Donald Trump with young women at his home because he feared for his own life, an author claims.
Trump biographer Michael Wolff made the claim on Tuesday's episode of "Inside Trump's Head," where he and co-host Joanna Coles went back over a column Wolff recently wrote on Substack about Epstein's fears.
Coles read aloud a passage in which Wolff recounted pressing Epstein to go public about his "great friend."
Wolff wrote, "I tried to encourage and then to push Epstein to talk publicly about Trump, including to release photographs he had of Trump with the young women in constant attendance at Epstein's house."
Epstein's answer was blunt.
"I may be a pedophile, but I don't have a death wish," Epstein said, according to the column, which described him as "cavalier about his situation and yet seemingly also clear-eyed."
Let's wind down with this from Senator Patty Murray's office:
Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray, Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, delivered the following remarks at the Senate Democratic leadership press conference, calling out Republican inaction to prevent President Trump’s illegal attempt to cut funding for lifesaving health research, education programs, and more through a “pocket rescission.”
Senator Murray’s remarks, as delivered, are below:
“If Republicans are ready to grow a spine and help us rein in Trump on pocket rescissions—great, it’s way past time. I am not holding my breath.
“Even though I’ve heard what some Republicans said recently about opposing Trump’s move to steal taxpayer dollars, I’ve also seen what they did about this threat over the past two years, which is nothing.
“When Russ Vought made it plain-as-day he would try illegal pocket recissions, every Senate Republican voted to confirm him. When his nominee for deputy director said pocket rescissions were still on the table—many months after Trump issued one—every Senate Republican voted to confirm him.
“And when Democrats fought for language time and again to stop this exact thing—including in the recent CR negotiations, weeks ago—Republicans said no.
“First, Republicans voted to confirm the arsonist—a man openly hostile to Congress and our power of the purse. Then, they refused to take away his matches. And now, they are surprised the house is burning? You know what? You don’t get to be surprised when the arsonist you confirmed to run America’s budget starts fires.
“Especially when we keep seeing this kind of push from Trump to give him more power and rip up our bipartisan agreements with partisan rescissions. It seems like every time Trump says ‘stoop,’ the only response most Republicans can muster is: ‘How low?’
“Trump uses tariffs to slap one of the largest tax increases on Americans ever—and Republicans do nothing. Trump calls for the largest health care cuts in our history—and Republicans move heaven and earth to get it done. Trump nominates an anti-vaxxer to lead the health department—and even Republican lawmakers who are doctors are afraid to step out of line to stop him.Trump starts a war with Iran—something he literally campaigned against—and Republicans champion his one-and-a-half trillion-dollar war budget.
“Maybe Republicans are confused—but when we talk about checks and balances, it is not about blank checks for Trump’s wars, it is not about balancing his tax cuts for billionaires with health care cuts on families. It is about stopping a president who is out-of-control—and sorely out-of-touch with the American people.
“And I really can’t drive that part home enough, because Trump proves just how out-of-touch he is every time he opens his mouth.
“Trump says groceries are ‘old fashioned,’ and affordability is a ‘scam.’ Trump says his favorite word is ‘tariffs,’ and that he loves inflation. Trump says families can spend less on dolls, and more on gas. Trump says we can’t afford child care, but wars can be fought forever. He says he doesn’t think about Americans’ financial situation at all.
“Well, yeah. No kidding. Now if you are Trump’s family—or one of his billionaire buddies who are cashing in on the corruption—Trump’s economy is probably working great.
“But working families are hurting today, and they are sick of waiting for Republicans to take their heads out of the sand and notice.
“So let me ask, how does Trump stealing taxpayer dollars for life-saving health care, research, or housing, help make life more affordable? It does not.”
The rock legend, 81, has announced new concert dates that he says will be his "last tour ever."
"Ladies and gentlemen, after much deliberation and sadness, I have to announce, next year will be my last tour ever, ever," he said in an Instagram video on Monday, Sept. 28. "I'm not retiring, but this will be the last rock and roll tour. So I want to thank you for everything you've given me, and hopefully I've given you something in return."
[. . .]
Stewart had postponed a Cincinnati concert in August hours before show time "due to an unforeseen but minor medical procedure that required prompt attention." Days later, his team announced he would be canceling the remainder of his Las Vegas residency and 2026 One Last Time farewell tour dates after undergoing a "routine coronary stent procedure."
"Doctors are pleased with his recovery, and Rod is doing very well and has returned to his normal daily activities," his representatives said in a statement to USA TODAY on Aug. 11. "On the advice of his doctors, he will take the next four weeks to recuperate and regain full fitness before returning to the stage. Unfortunately, this means he will be unable to continue his current tour dates."
So let's all pull for Rod. My top ten favorite Rod tracks:
Richie, 77, will be returning to the American Idol judging panel for the singing competition show's 25th season alongside Carrie Underwood, 43, and Luke Bryan, 50.
"Hello Nashville! Look at this beautiful crowd," Richie said via a video projected on the stage. The footage of the concert announcement was posted on American Idol's Instagram.
"Now, let me tell you something. Some of my greatest friendships have started right here in Nashville, Tennessee," the Hello singer continued. "That includes you, Carrie and Luke. Do you want to share our secret?"
"Well, I'm so surprised that I've been able to keep this a secret," Bryan said. "Are you ready, Carrie?"
"I'm ready," Underwood replied. "We're coming back for the 25th season of American Idol, ladies and gentlemen," Bryan announced.
Ryan Seacrest will also be returning, and Bryan detailed that the upcoming season will premiere in spring 2027. Both Bryan and Richie have been judges on American Idol since Season 16, and Underwood joined in Season 23.
Tuesday, September 29, 2026. Farmers feel the sting from Chump's choices, Senator Elizabeth Warren calls out Secretary of Health and Human Services Junior on his inability to keep his word, Pete Hegseth and Chump sneak out the news that a September 14th attack not noted previously left 8 Marines injured, Bill Clinton serves up some First Amendment truths, and much more.
President Trump’s approval rating has fallen to a record low in Wall Street Journal polling for a president only a few weeks out from the midterms.
In the new poll from the Journal, Trump’s approval rating sat at 37 percent, the lowest of a president shortly before a midterm in the outlet's polling going back to former President George H.W. Bush.
The closest presidential job approval to Trump’s shortly before the midterms was that of former President George W. Bush, at 39 percent in his second term.
The poll comes only about a month from this year’s midterms, with the president and his party dealing with a challenging electoral environment.
There are 35 days until the midterms with early voting already started in some states. It's a little late now to be worried about polling and trying to turn things around. Simon Marks (THE i PAPER) reports:
If there is one state in the US that Republicans had thought was entirely safe terrain for them in November’s midterm elections, it was the Sunshine State of Florida. At the start of this year, Democrats gave no thought to the possibility of flipping the state and turning it blue. After all, their Republican opponents currently control 20 of Florida’s 28 seats in the House of Representatives, both seats in the US Senate, and the Governor’s Mansion. Democratic Party grandees had sensibly written it off. But suddenly, such is the American public’s disquiet over Donald Trump’s stewardship of the nation and the economic crisis that his war on Iran has ignited that even Florida is in play.
With fewer than 40 days left in the midterm campaign, last week Byron Donalds, the Republican Party’s candidate to succeed Ron DeSantis as Florida’s governor, suddenly removed virtually every reference to Trump from his campaign website. Donalds, a former congressman who is so close to Trump that in November 2023 he was considered one of the top candidates to serve as vice president in a second administration, is now running from his political mentor as fast as his legs can carry him. Endorsed by Trump, Donalds had proudly emblazoned the President’s backing of him on all his campaign communications for months. Now, voters visiting Donalds’ website are hard-pressed to find the candidate making any mention of the President at all. The Miami Herald found that at least eight references to the President were removed from the site, including one that said Donald’s first priority as governor would be to “Enact the Trump Agenda”. Instead, he is now vowing to take on the issue of “affordability”, a word that Trump claims that Democrats have concocted to describe economic travails that he insists do not exist.
Chump's planning to return to Texas -- as Ruth noted last week, he was there for two months earlier this month -- and to go to Alabama, Ohio and other states. It all seems too little too late. Frank Yemi notes, "CNN said on Monday that members of the Trump team have admitted privately that the party is in a tough situation, one of them stating, “It’s obviously going to be f—— rough.” The president’s staff are preparing an intensive campaign timetable for October featuring Trump and Vice President JD Vance, with appearances scheduled for battleground states and areas that are Republican-leaning since the advisers think they can boost voter turnout." Lee Moran (HUFFINGTON POST) notes Republican and former US House Rep Barbara Comstock spoke on MS NOW on Sunday:
“I think elections are won in the summer. And we’re now here in late September,” said Comstock, who left Congress in 2019. “Donald Trump did everything he could to help Republicans lose over the summer,” she continued, citing his unpopular Iran war, the resultant soaring gas prices and rising interest rates.
Comstock recalled a remark she said an unnamed GOP operative made after Senate Majority Leader John Thune campaigned in Georgia with Republican Senate candidate Mike Collins, who, in polling, she noted “is double digits behind” Democratic incumbent Jon Ossoff.
“We’re trying to make the patient comfortable,” the operative said, according to Comstock, who suggested Trump’s planned Alabama rally reflected the same mindset.
“I think we’re trying to make the patient comfortable by sending Donald Trump to Alabama,” she added.
With just five weeks to go until the midterm elections, a key analyst is warning Republicans that their fate is likely already sealed ― and it’s all because of President Donald Trump.
“There’s not a lot you can do,” Charlie Cook, founder of the Cook Political Report, told ABC’s Martha Raddatz on “This Week” on Sunday.
Voters are angry over rising prices ― especially fuel ― and the impact of Trump’s tariffs.
“All these things came together at the same time, right as voters start paying attention,” Cook said. “It was almost like the bottom fell out suddenly.”
He said what’s coming in November isn’t a “blue wave” so much as a “red undertow.”
Nationally, 53 percent of voters chose Democrats on the generic congressional ballot, compared with 41 percent for Republicans, in recent PBS/NPR/Marist polling. A recent Emerson survey showed a virtually identical 12-point Democratic advantage. Just as important, independents are breaking decisively toward Democrats, favoring them by 29 points in Emerson's survey and 25 points in the Marist poll.
Across all polls, Democrats hold a 9-point lead on the generic congressional ballot, according to RealClearPolitics.
Looking back at 2018, the last Democratic “blue wave,” the final generic congressional polling average gave Democrats a 7-point advantage. To be sure, a repeat of their 41-seat gain is unlikely because two more rounds of partisan gerrymandering and redistricting have sharply reduced the number of competitive House districts.
Even so, Democrats appear well positioned to capture the handful of seats they need for a majority.
There is a phrase in Trumpist newspeak used to indicate that the president of the United States is on top of matters — “maintains laser focus.” The problem, just a little over a month before the midterms, is that polls show voters are not satisfied with the issues Trump is pointing that laser at.
The obsessions that drive him these days include, among others: the architectural projects he has undertaken or wants to carry out at the White House and in Washington; attacks on three media outlets whose coverage he dislikes; promoting fear of communism; his and his family’s personal enrichment; and promoting (and renaming) artificial intelligence (AI), which he has been trying to relabel — without much success, but with great determination — as “superintelligence.”
Voters and Republican candidates in the most competitive districts would prefer his priorities to be different: lowering the cost of living; reducing the price of gasoline and diesel (which this past week hit a historic record, with inflationary carryover); cutting back somewhat on corruption; ending the war with Iran. They would also prefer he take the threat from AI seriously, given that its experts openly describe it as potentially catastrophic for humanity, and that he rein in data centers — now an electoral white unicorn, one of those rare issues that unites the left and the right.
Chump has grossly underestimated both affordability and the public's ability to see through his lies (including call affordability "a hoax). Chris Isidore and Tami Luhby (CNN) report:
John Yeley has spent the last 26 years working on his farm, which his family has owned since 1852.
Yeley is the seventh generation to run his farm in Illinois, just over the state line from Indiana. Although he plans to keep doing so, he’s not sure he wants his 16-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter to take over because the current economics are so rough.
“Right now, the way all of this is now, no, I wouldn’t wish it on them,” he said about farming.
Farmers like Yeley as well as agriculture experts agree that the farming sector is in a painful recession. Farms are dealing with record-high diesel prices, a fuel that is critical to their equipment. Trade disputes have cut off access to vital markets. Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have sent fertilizer costs soaring, just as farmers pay higher interest rates on the loans needed to get from planting to harvest season.
Yeley is not sure he’ll earn a profit this season, even with prices up for for his corn and soybeans.
“We’re not a big county, but we’ve had three farmers go under this year,” said Yeley. “I know that’s on the minds of everybody, is it really worth it to keep going on? The stress level is pretty high.”
Currently, the price of diesel is the most pressing problem for farmers.
Diesel is a workhouse fuel that powers farming equipment, like tractors and combines. The national average for diesel has accelerated faster than the price of gasoline and is now near its recent an all-time high of $6.53. In many states in the Midwest farm belt, the cost is even greater: The average price in Illinois, for example, was $6.82 as of Friday.
The American people are suffering. And it doesn't help Chump when he and his cronies have excessive celebrations. Nick Hilden reports:
On Monday, a prominent GOP insider declared that the Trump administration is having a “Marie Antoinette” moment as it pushes “tone-deaf” messaging that clashes with the economic pain felt by its voters. This is according to longtime conservative political commentator Charlie Sykes, who noted that even MAGA was put off by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino’s weekend post of an AI-generated video showing him along with Eric and Laura Trump popping bottles of champagne and celebrating as golden confetti rained from above.
“Marie Antoinette, who lost her head over this sort of thing, would have blushed,” writes Sykes. “Even right-wing influencers were gobsmacked by the crassness of the thing. ‘You really have no shame, do you?,’ Conservative activist Carrie Prejean Boller wrote. ‘Many Americans can’t afford groceries, gas or their mortgage payment, and you post a tone-deaf AI video of you and your buddies partying at the People’s House.’” Another self-proclaimed Trump voter account expressed similar sentiments, musing, “Wow... This is really going to resonate with everyday Americans. They are so out of touch. It’s astonishing.”
According to Sykes, this is part of a wider trend in which the Republican Party abandons all sense of “shame” and “virtue” under the influence of President Donald Trump. Sykes points to other examples, like Trump’s use of taxpayer dollars to pay for an “unhinged new MAGA ad,” a Trump loyalist-turned-ambassador to Greece boasting about the engineered collapse of another government and a MAGA lawmaker taking to the Senate floor to freak out over “furries.” All of this, argues Sykes, is part of the GOP’s abandonment of “morality” the framers of the Constitution asserted was at its core.
Sarah K. Burris quotes THE BULLWORK's Sarah Longwell (who is also a pollster) stating, "The thing that I'm hearing over and over again from Republicans and focus groups is they are so mad about the war. They are so mad -- and it's not that they're like nonplussed. They're mad about the war, and they're mad about gas prices. So, to turn out for a Republican -- and this is this is the analogy I'm trying to make -- is that a lot of times when people talk about a wave, what they think is like an overwhelming force of sort of liberals rising up or Democrats rising up and some swing voters rising up to put a check on Trump. But it will have as much to do with a depression of enthusiasm among Republicans who are just not turning out."
U.S. President Donald Trump’s approval rating remains at uncomfortable lows just five weeks before the midterm elections.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released last week found that the President’s approval rating stood at just 32% — the lowest of his political career under any Reuters/Ipsos survey.
Chump and the White House struggle to deal with that reality. No one wants to break it to Chump just how unpopular he is. So one toady says it's "fake news" and Chump's convinced all is well. Former President Bill Clinton spoke last week at The Clinton Global Initiative and noted that as president you take your press lumps.
Bill Clinton: I got news for the people who work in the White House today. There were lots of times when I wanted to ban the White House press corps. And there’s a reason we have a constitution. Because none of us are immune from being pissed off. But I’m glad I never did, and I’m glad I couldn’t. And these people shouldn’t. The law should be what it is.
MEIDASTOUCH noted the remarks in the video below on Saturday.
If you don't like bad press, don't court it by lying. And that's what Chump does. He lies non-stop. Daniel Dale (CNN) points out:
Facing abysmal poll numbers on inflation as the midterm elections approach, President Donald Trump is sticking to the communications strategy he tried in the summer: lie.
Trump has tried for months to concoct an alternate reality in which the country has experienced broad deflation during this presidency, with prices for groceries and other items down big and still falling. He falsely told reporters Sunday: “The prices for groceries have come way down from Biden. Almost every price has come way down.”
It wasn’t clear whether the second sentence was about groceries in particular or about products of all kinds, but it was inaccurate regardless. Then, speaking to reporters again later in the day, he falsely said, “With the exception of oil, everything is going down.”
For good measure, Trump then made two more false claims in one sentence: “We inherited the worst inflation in the history of our country, and it’s going really down.”
Use the link for the walk through that Dale provides. But, again, you lie, you're a liar. And if you're lying, the press is going to focus on your lies. Especially if you are an elected official. People in the White House may kiss your butt and just nod along blindly with your lies but that's not how the press or the electorate should treat you. You shame yourself when you lie.
And let's be clear that omissions are lies as well. You are commander in chief. That means you are honest with the American people when bad things happen. Not that you lie and pretend tragedies didn't happen. If an attack left eight Marines injured, you announce that immediately. You don't wait several days to make the announcement. Emily Blumenthal (THE TELEGRAPH OF LONDON) reports:
An Iranian cruise missile struck a ship carrying US forces in the Strait of Hormuz, American officials have admitted.
Eight marines suffered concussion and smoke inhalation in the incident earlier this month. They belonged to a battalion landing team, but the purpose of their mission in the strait was not clear.
At the time of the attack on Sep 14, the marines were not on a US navy ship. Sources speaking to US media referred only to a “maritime vessel”.
All eight of them – seven enlisted troops and one officer – returned to duty shortly after the attack, NBC News reported.
A group of eight Marines was injured when an Iranian missile struck a ship they were operating on in the Strait of Hormuz, it has been revealed.
Details of the Sept. 14 attack have not been publicly disclosed by the U.S. government, with the eight injuries not appearing on the Pentagon’s public database for several days.
Officials have now told NBC News that the Marines were not seriously hurt in the attack but did suffer smoke inhalation and displayed symptoms of concussions, such as headaches, suggesting possible traumatic head injuries. The Pentagon itself has not commented.
Chump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth are not doing their jobs by concealing strikes that leave service members injured. They are lying to the American people when they hide these attacks and hide the number of service members injured. It is outrageous. And it goes to how little respect that Chump and Hegseth actually have for the military. Jon Michael Raasch (DAILY MAIL) notes:
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is being accused of covering up injuries to eight US service members that occurred in a previously unannounced mission aboard a ship in the Strait of Hormuz.
An Iranian cruise missile struck a 'maritime vessel' with at least eight soldiers onboard, seven enlisted and one officer, during a September 14 operation, three anonymous American officials told NBC News.
[. . .]
Multiple Democratic lawmakers have accused Hegseth of covering up the total number of casualties, including Congressman Pat Ryan of New York, who has said the delay in DCAS reports represents a 'blatant, unprecedented cover-up.'
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee sent a letter to Hegseth accusing the Pentagon of obfuscating the number of casualties linked to the Iran war.
The article provoked rage among some former Trump allies who have turned on the President over the conflict.
'If this report is true, it means we are using US troops to escort oil tankers through the SOH, where oil had been flowing freely before we started this disastrous war of choice at the behest of the Israelis,' said Joe Kent, a former intelligence official who resigned from the Trump administration in protest of the conflict.
'This is a reckless and frivolous gamble with American lives, which we are foolishly opting to put at risk - not to thwart active terrorist threats to the homeland, but as an attempt to mitigate the damage we inflicted on ourselves and the global economy.'
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's personal choice to run the Army is running into a wall of his own making — and a little-known Pentagon budget official is emerging as the beneficiary.
Sean Parnell, Hegseth's chief spokesman and senior adviser, has been the administration's presumed favorite to replace Dan Driscoll as Army secretary. But Senate Republicans are making clear he doesn't have the votes, according to The Hill.
"His record, particularly the spousal abuse stuff, is just a bridge too far for the vast majority of people," Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) told reporters. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) said he'd vote no outright, citing Parnell's press restrictions at the Pentagon."If you're proud of your work product, you want press to ask you the tough questions," he said.
A GOP Senate aide put it more bluntly: "Everyone knows the backing just isn't there."
Pete Hegseth has made religion a highly visible part of his leadership at the Pentagon.
Now a seemingly bureaucratic change to military personnel records has opened another front in the argument over faith in the armed forces.
Airmen are complaining after discovering that atheism is no longer available as a specific option under the Defense Department’s dramatically shortened list of religious affiliations. One service member says the change effectively prevents them from identifying in military records the same way they have for years.
Critics have gone further, accusing the Pentagon of creating an environment that increasingly favors Christianity.
The Air Force rejects the suggestion that religious freedom is being weakened and describes the new system as an administrative change designed to standardize records and help chaplains allocate resources.
He brought it all on himself. He was handed a recovering economy. In his first four year term, Chump presided over 8% inflation. Then came the pandemic and Joe Biden was elected. Joe got the economy under control. We were the envy of the world as 2024 drew to a close for our economic recovery. Then Chump came in with his tariffs. Tariffs are a tax. A tax on the one purchasing. Chump wanted to lie about this. It's a basic, it's a fundamental. Lawrence O'Donnell and Stephanie Ruhle explained this over and over on what is now MS NOW ahead of the election and after. But Chump's an idiot. The tariffs immediately screwed up the economy. His war on immigrants screwed up the economy as well. Some don't understand that. Eateries targeted for their customer base are impacted. Any place that deals in customer service was impacted because some employees did not want to go to work because it wasn't safe for them. The housing industry? Construction sites depend upon workers. Texas isn't the only state that workers weren't showing in because they were worried they'd be hauled off. Immigrants make up as much as 35% of housing construction workers in the US. Chump's programs have resulted in increases in the prices of homes. In addition, his war on immigrants has given the US a black eye on the global stage and people aren't coming to the US as part of the tourism industry in the numbers that they were before Chump got back in office. Las Vegas, for example, saw a 7.5% drop in tourism. Tourism is airlines, it's rent a cars, it's restaurants, it's hotels and motels, it's gift shops. It is huge and some cities economies depend a great deal upon tourism -- foreign travelers coming to the US. Chump's war on immigrants is ugly and vile and people don't want to deal with it so they're choosing to go places other than the US. And then there's the third big factor in Chump's destruction of the economy: His war of choice with Iran.
Chump will be remembered for destroying this economy.
An angry e-mail came in saying I couldn't just say that but I had said it without backing it up because it can't be backed up.
It's backed up. It's certainly backed up here since we've been covering this topic regularly since March of last year. It's not my job to spoon feed you. But for those who need a source talking about this, yesterday, Martha McHardy (DAILY BEAST) reported:
America’s closest allies are increasingly looking elsewhere for their vacations.
Despite hosting the World Cup this year, the U.S. has suffered through a slump in international tourism.
Visitors from Canada are down 23 percent over the past two years, while travel from Germany and France has dropped 16 percent and 15 percent year-to-date, respectively.
Overall, the country is on pace to welcome 2 million fewer international visitors than last year, when approximately 68 million tourists came to the U.S.
That would put overseas visits roughly 20 percent below the 2019 peak of 79 million visitors.
“We’re the only major country in the world losing visitation,” Geoff Freeman, president and CEO of the U.S. Travel Association, told Axios. “It’s mind-boggling.”
Let's wind down with this from Senator Elizabeth Warren's office:
Senators: “Your decision to withhold this information from Congress and apparent failure to report this change to agency ethics officials is deeply alarming.”
“This amounts to non-disclosure to Congress and an apparent failure to adhere to reporting through required ethics channels.”
Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) released a response from Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.), revealing that RFK Jr. secretly deviated from his ethics agreement. Given this news, the senators are pushing the Secretary for answers about the credibility of his previous ethics commitments.
The letter builds on an investigation by Senators Warren, Blumenthal, Alsobrooks, and Andy Kim (D-N.J.) into whether RFK Jr.’s family may have benefited financially from a $50 million settlement, while he pushed an anti-vaccine agenda as HHS Secretary.
Prior to his confirmation as HHS Secretary, RFK Jr. helped spearhead a lawsuit against the vaccine manufacturer Merck & Co. (“Merck”) and the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, Gardasil. RFK Jr.’s initial ethics agreement allowed him to retain a 10% contingency fee in cases that he had referred to his former law firm, Wisner Baum. After warnings from Senator Warren about this conflict of interest, RFK Jr. agreed to amend his ethics agreement to “divest (his) interest in any such litigation (related to Gardasil) via an assignment to (his) non-dependent, adult son.” RFK Jr. also signed an ethics agreement compliance certification in which he indicated that he had “completed all of the divestitures indicated in (his) ethics agreement.”
However, in a new response, RFK Jr. revealed that he did not adhere to his ethics agreement, in that he did not transfer his right to receive 10 percent of fees awarded in contingency fee cases to his adult son. Instead, he referred those fees to his former law firm, Wisner Baum.
“You appear to have secretly revoked your commitment to ‘irrevocably’ assign your Gardasil stake to your adult son,” wrote the senators.
According to the response, RFK Jr. made this change on February 11, 2025, prior to a vote by the full Senate on February 13. Congress was not notified of this change in his divestiture process at the time, even though his nomination was under consideration by the Senate – a break from the Office of Government Ethics’ policy.
“Your decision to withhold this information from Congress and apparent failure to report this change to agency ethics officials is deeply alarming,” wrote the senators. “There is no indication that your ethics agreement was updated to reflect this change, and you have provided no explanation for why the change was not publicly disclosed.”
The modification also raises questions about the conditions and circumstances under which RFK Jr. decided to relinquish the stakes back to Wisner Baum.
“(I)f the agreement involves any kind of implicit or explicit agreement with Wisner Baum about future payments or other future rewards in exchange for your Gardasil stake, it would prompt concerns about your ongoing conflicts of interest with the firm, and about the integrity of your decisions at the Department of Health and Human Services,” wrote the senators.
In the intervening year and a half since Secretary Kennedy failed to notify Congress of this change, HHS has made significant changes to HPV vaccine policy and public health guidance while sidelining experts on the issue. These major changes raise additional concerns about the lack of disclosure to Congress and, seemingly, to ethics officials about the disposition of RFK Jr.’s interest in the HPV litigation.
The senators are pushing RFK Jr. to answer questions about the terms of his agreement with Wisner Baum and the circumstances in which his ethics agreement was changed.
The timeline of these events are as follow:
January 21, 2025: RFK Jr. discloses he intends to keep a 10% stake in the Gardasil lawsuit in his ethics agreement.
January 29, 2025: At a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Warren (D-Mass.) questioned RKF Jr., then-nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), about his dangerous conflicts of interest and record of profiting from anti-vaccine conspiracies.
February 1, 2025: In response to concerns raised by Senator Warren and her colleagues, RFK Jr. amends his ethics agreement and affirms that he will divest the Gardasil stake to an adult family member, which was confirmed to be his son.
February 11, 2025: RFK Jr. secretly opts to transfer the stake to his former employer Wisner Baum, a party to the Gardasil litigation, and not to his son. There is no public record of any amendment to his ethics agreement or disclosure of this change to Congress for 18 months.
February 13, 2025: The full Senate votes to confirm RFK Jr. as Secretary of HHS.
May 12, 2025: Secretary Kennedy signs a certification of compliance with his February 1 ethics agreement. This certification makes no mention of the change in divestiture.
May 14, 2025: The HHS Designated Agency Ethics Official affirms to the Senate Finance Committee and the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions that RFK Jr. is in compliance with his Feb. 1 ethics agreement. In this certification, Secretary Kennedy makes no mention of the material change in divestiture of his Gardasil stake.
June 4, 2026: Bloomberg reports that Merck agrees to a $50 million settlement in the Gardasil lawsuit.
July 29, 2026: U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), and Andy Kim (D-N.J.) opened a new investigation to understand whether Secretary Kennedy’s family may be financially benefiting from the $50 million anti-vaccine settlement that his actions as Secretary could have influenced.
The senators pushed RFK Jr. to disclose whether he or his son received any portion of the multi-million dollar payout.
August 1, 2026: RFK Jr. posts on X that, “Before taking office, I relinquished any interest in potential Gardasil fees back to the Wisner Baum law firm.”
August 24, 2026: Sens. Warren, Alsobrooks, Blumenthal and Wyden press RFK Jr. over his social media post in which he disclosed that he opted to transfer the stake to Wisner Baum instead of to his son. The Senators ask whether he has changed his ethics agreement and, if so, how and when any changes were made.
August 26, 2026: In response to the Senators’ investigation, HHS discloses that RFK Jr. secretly opted to divest the stake to Wisner Baum on February 11, 2025, and not to his son.
Senator Warren has led Senate oversight on RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine agenda and conflicts of interest as HHS Secretary:
In August 2026, Senator Warren, Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote to RFK Jr. asking whether he has changed his ethics agreement, and if so, how and when any changes were made.
In July 2026, U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), and Andy Kim (D-N.J.) opened a new investigation into whether Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ‘s (RFK Jr.) family may be financially benefiting from a $50 million anti-vaccine settlement that his actions as Secretary could have influenced.
In January 2026, Senators Warren (D-Mass.), Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Markey (D-Mass.), and Alsobrooks (D-Md.) pressed RFK Jr. on his proposed overhaul of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, which could threaten the domestic vaccine supply, undermine public health, and potentially enrich Secretary Kennedy’s family and close allies.
In June 2025, Senator Warren (D-Mass.), on the eve of a key committee meeting, slammed RFK Jr. for his “reckless” and “shortsighted” decision to fire all 17 independent members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and replace them with eight members who appear to be hand-picked to advance RFK Jr.’s own anti-vaccine agenda.
February 1, 2025: Mr. Kennedy amends his ethics agreement and affirms that he will divest the Gardasil stake to his son.
In January 2025, at a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Warren (D-Mass.) questioned RKF Jr., then-nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), about his dangerous conflicts of interest and record of profiting from anti-vaccine conspiracies.
