Kaiser Health News

RFK Jr.’s Campaign of Conspiracy Theories Is PolitiFact’s 2023 Lie of the Year

Published

2 years ago

December 27, 2023

Madison Czopek, PolitiFact and Katie Sanders, PolitiFact
Wed, 27 Dec 2023 10:00:00 +0000

As pundits and politicos spar over whether Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign will factor into the outcome of the 2024 election, one thing is clear: Kennedy’s political following is built on a movement that seeks to legitimize conspiracy theories.

His claims decrying vaccines have roiled scientists and medical experts and stoked anger over whether his work harms children. He has made suggestions about the cause of covid-19 that he acknowledges sound racist and antisemitic.

Bolstered by his famous name and family’s legacy, his campaign of conspiracy theories has gained an electoral and financial foothold. He is running as an independent — having abandoned his pursuit of the Democratic Party nomination — and raised more than $15 million. A political action committee pledged to spend between $10 million and $15 million to get his name on the ballot in 10 states.

Even though he spent the past two decades as a prominent leader of the anti-vaccine movement, Kennedy rejects a blanket “anti-vax” label that he told Fox News in July makes him “look crazy, like a conspiracy theorist.”

But Kennedy draws bogus conclusions from scientific work. He employs “circumstantial evidence” as if it is proof. In TV, podcast, and political appearances for his campaign in 2023, Kennedy steadfastly maintained:

Vaccines cause autism.
No childhood vaccines “have ever been tested in a safety study pre-licensing.”
There is “tremendous circumstantial evidence” that psychiatric drugs cause mass shootings, and the National Institutes of Health refuses to research the link out of deference to pharmaceutical companies.
Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were discredited as covid-19 treatments so covid vaccines could be granted emergency use authorization, a win for Big Pharma.
Exposure to the pesticide atrazine contributes to gender dysphoria in children.
Covid-19 is “targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”

For Kennedy, the conspiracies aren’t limited to public health. He claims “members of the CIA” were involved in the assassination of his uncle, John F. Kennedy. He doesn’t “believe that (Sirhan) Sirhan’s bullets ever hit my father,” former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. He insists the 2004 presidential election was stolen from Democratic candidate John Kerry.

News organizations, including PolitiFact, have documented why those claims, and many others, are false, speculative, or conspiracy-minded.

Kennedy has sat for numerous interviews and dismissed the critics, not with the grievance and bluster of former President Donald Trump, but with a calm demeanor. He amplifies the alleged plot and repeats dubious scientific evidence and historical detail.

Will his approach translate to votes? In polls since November of a three-way matchup between President Joe Biden, Trump, and Kennedy, Kennedy pulled 16% to 22% of respondents.

Kennedy’s movement exemplifies the resonance of conspiratorial views. Misinformers with organized efforts are rewarded with money and loyalty. But that doesn’t make the claims true.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign based on false theories is PolitiFact’s 2023 Lie of the Year.

How an Environmental Fighter Took Up Vaccines

Kennedy, the third of 11 children, was 9 when he was picked up on Nov. 22, 1963, from Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., because Lee Harvey Oswald had shot and killed Uncle Jack. He was 14 when he learned that his father had been shot by Sirhan Sirhan following a victory speech after the California Democratic presidential primary.

RFK Jr., who turns 70 in January, wouldn’t begin to publicly doubt the government’s findings about the assassinations until later in his adulthood.

As a teenager, he used drugs. He was expelled from two boarding schools and arrested at 16 for marijuana possession. None of that slowed an elite path through higher education, including Harvard University for his bachelor’s degree and the University of Virginia for his law degree.

He was hired as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan in 1982 but failed the bar exam and resigned the next year. Two months later, he was arrested for heroin possession after falling ill on a flight. His guilty plea involved a drug treatment program, a year of probation, and volunteer work with a local anglers’ association that patrolled the Hudson River for evidence of pollution that could lead to lawsuits.

Kennedy’s involvement with Hudson Riverkeeper and the Natural Resources Defense Council ushered in a long chapter of environmental litigation and advocacy.

An outdoorsman and falconer, Kennedy sued companies and government agencies over pollution in the Hudson River and its watershed. (He joined the New York bar in 1985.) He earned a master’s degree in environmental law at Pace University, where he started a law clinic to primarily assist Riverkeeper’s legal work. He helped negotiate a 1997 agreement that protected upstate New York reservoirs supplying New York City’s drinking water.

In 1999, Kennedy founded the Waterkeeper Alliance, an international group of local river and bay-keeper organizations that act as their “community’s coast guard,” he told Vanity Fair in 2016. He stayed with the group until 2020, when he left “to devote himself, full-time, to other issues.”

On Joe Rogan’s podcast in June, Kennedy said that virtually all of his litigation involved “some scientific controversy. And so, I’m comfortable with reading science and I know how to read it critically.”

PolitiFact did not receive a response from Kennedy’s campaign for this story.

He became concerned about mercury pollution from coal-burning power plants; methylmercury can build up in fish, posing a risk to humans and wildlife. As he traveled around the country, he said, women started appearing in the front rows of his mercury lectures.

“They would say to me in kind of a respectful but vaguely scolding way, ‘If you’re really interested in mercury contamination exposure to children, you need to look at the vaccines,’” Kennedy told Rogan, whose show averages 11 million listeners an episode.

Kennedy said the women sounded “rational” as they explained a link between their children’s autism and vaccines. “They weren’t excitable,” he said. “And they had done their research, and I was like, ‘I should be listening to these people, even if they’re wrong.’”

He did more than listen. In June 2005, Rolling Stone and Salon co-published Kennedy’s article “Deadly Immunity.” Kennedy told an alarming story about a study that revealed a mercury-based additive once used in vaccines, thimerosal, “may have caused autism in thousands of kids.” Kennedy alleged that preeminent health agencies — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the World Health Organization — had colluded with vaccine manufacturers “to conceal the data.”

Kennedy’s premise was decried as inaccurate and missing context. He left out the ultimate conclusion of the 2003 study, by Thomas Verstraeten, which said “no consistent significant associations were found between [thimerosal-containing vaccines] and neurodevelopmental outcomes.”

Kennedy didn’t clearly state that, as a precaution, thimerosal was not being used in childhood vaccines when his article was published. He also misrepresented the comments of health agency leaders at a June 2000 meeting, pulling certain portions of a 286-page transcript that appeared to support Kennedy’s collusion narrative.

Scientists who have studied thimerosal have found no evidence that the additive, used to prevent germ growth, causes harm, according to a CDC FAQ about thimerosal. Unlike the mercury in some fish, the CDC says, thimerosal “doesn’t stay in the body, and is unlikely to make us sick.” Continued research has not established a link between thimerosal and autism.

By the end of July 2005, Kennedy’s Salon article had been appended with five correction notes. In 2011, Salon retracted the article. It disappeared from Rolling Stone.

Salon’s retraction was part of a broader conspiracy of caving “under pressure from the pharmaceutical industry,” Kennedy told Rogan. The then-Salon editor rejected this, saying they “caved to pressure from the incontrovertible truth and our journalistic consciences.”

Kennedy has not wavered in his belief: “Well, I do believe that autism does come from vaccines,” he told Fox News’ Jesse Watters in July.

David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, interviewed Kennedy for a July story. Noting that Kennedy was focusing more on vaccine testing rather than outright opposition, Remnick asked him whether he was having second thoughts.

“I’ve read the science on autism and I can tell you, if you want to know,” Kennedy said. “David, you’ve got to answer this question: If it didn’t come from the vaccines, then where is it coming from?”

How Covid-19 Helped RFK Jr.’s Vaccine-Skeptical Crusade

In 2016, Kennedy launched the World Mercury Project to address mercury in fish, medicines, and vaccines. In 2018, he created Children’s Health Defense, a legal advocacy group that works “aggressively to eliminate harmful exposures,” its website says.

Since at least 2019, Children’s Health Defense has supported and filed lawsuits challenging vaccination requirements, mask mandates, and social media companies’ misinformation policies (including a related lawsuit against Facebook and The Poynter Institute, which owns PolitiFact).

From the beginning, the group has solicited stories about children “injured” by environmental toxins or vaccines. This year, it launched a national bus tour to collect testimonials. The organization also produces documentary-style films and books, including Kennedy’s “The Wuhan Cover-Up and the Terrifying Bioweapons Arms Race” and “The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health.”

In 2020, Children’s Health Defense and the anti-vaccine movement turned attention to the emerging public health crisis.

Kolina Koltai, a senior researcher at Bellingcat, an investigative journalism group, had seen anti-vaccine groups try to seize on Zika and Ebola outbreaks, with little success. But the covid-19 pandemic provided “the exact scenario” needed to create mass dissent: widespread fear and an information vacuum.

Children’s Health Defense published articles in March and April 2020 claiming the “viral terror” was an attempt to enact the “global immunization agenda” and a “dream come true” for dictators. The group echoed these points in ads and social media posts and grew its audience, including in Europe.

On X, then known as Twitter, Children’s Health Defense outperformed news outlets that met NewsGuard’s criteria for trustworthiness from the third quarter of 2020 to the fourth quarter of 2021, according to a report by the German Marshall Fund think tank, even as Children’s Health Defense published debunked information about covid-19 and vaccines.

In 2019, Children’s Health Defense reported it had $2.94 million in revenue, and paid Kennedy a $255,000 salary. Its revenue grew 440% through 2021, according to IRS filings, hitting $15.99 million. Kennedy’s salary increased to $497,013. (Its 2022 form 990 for tax disclosure is not yet public. Kennedy has been on leave from the organization since he entered the presidential race in April.)

On social media, the message had limits. Meta removed Kennedy’s personal Instagram account in February 2021 for spreading false claims about covid-19 and vaccines, the company said, but left his Facebook account active. A year and a half later, Meta banned Children’s Health Defense’s main Facebook and Instagram accounts for “repeatedly” violating its medical misinformation policies. Several state chapters still have accounts.

As the group’s face, Kennedy became a leader of a movement opposed to masks and stay-at-home orders, said David H. Gorski, managing editor of Science-Based Medicine and a professor of surgery and oncology at the Wayne State University School of Medicine.

“The pandemic produced a new generation of anti-vaxxers who had either not been prominent before or who were not really anti-vax before,” Gorski said. “But none of them had the same cultural cachet that comes with being a Kennedy that RFK Jr. has.”

Rallying a crowd before the Lincoln Memorial on Jan. 23, 2022, Kennedy protested covid-19 countermeasures alongside commentator Lara Logan and anti-vaccine activist Robert Malone. The crowd held signs reading “Nuremberg Trials 2.0” and “free choice, no masks, no tests, no vax.” When Kennedy took the stage, mention of his role with Children’s Health Defense prompted an exuberant cheer.

In his speech, Kennedy invoked the Holocaust to denounce the “turnkey totalitarianism” of a society that requires vaccinations to travel, uses digital currency and 5G, and is monitored by Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates’ satellites: “Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.”

Days later, facing criticism from his wife, the actor Cheryl Hines, Jewish advocacy groups, and Holocaust memorial organizations, Kennedy issued a rare apology for his comments.

Asked about his wife’s comment on Dec. 15 on CNN, he said his remarks were taken out of context but that he had to apologize because of his family.

Recycle. Repeat. Repeat.

When he’s asked about his views, Kennedy calmly searches his rhetorical laboratory for recycled talking points, selective research findings, the impression of voluminous valid studies, speculation, and inarguable authority from his experience. He refers to institutions, researchers, and reports, by name, in quick succession, shifting points before interviewers can note what was misleading or cherry-picked.

There is power in repetition. Take his persistent claim that vaccines are not safety-tested.

In July, he told “Fox & Friends,” “Vaccines are the only medical product that is not safety-tested prior to licensure.”
On Nov. 7 on PBS NewsHour, Kennedy said vaccines are “the only medical product or medical device that is allowed to get a license without engaging in safety tests.”
On Dec. 15, he told CNN’s Kasie Hunt that no childhood vaccines have “ever been tested in a safety study pre-licensing.”

This is false. Vaccines, including the covid-19 vaccines, are tested for safety and effectiveness before they are licensed. Researchers gather initial safety data and information about side effects during phase 1 clinical trials on groups of 20 to 100 people. If no safety concerns are identified, subsequent phases rely on studies of larger numbers of volunteers to evaluate a vaccine’s effectiveness and monitor side effects.

Kennedy sometimes says that some vaccines weren’t tested against inactive injections or placebos. That has an element of truth: If using a placebo would disadvantage or potentially endanger a patient, researchers might test new vaccines against older versions with known side effects.

But vaccines are among “the most tested and vetted” pharmaceutical products given to children, said Patricia Stinchfield, a pediatric nurse practitioner and the president of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.

Kennedy encourages parents to research questions on their own, saying doctors and other experts are invariably compromised.

“They are taking as gospel what the CDC tells them,” Kennedy said on Bari Weiss’ “Honestly” podcast in June.

Public health agencies have been “serving the mercantile interests of the pharmaceutical companies, and you cannot believe anything that they say,” Kennedy said.

Experts fret that the Kennedy name carries weight.

“When he steps forward and he says the government’s lying to you, the FDA is lying to you, the CDC is lying to you, he has credence, because he’s seen as someone who is a product of the government,” said Paul Offit, a pediatrics professor in the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s infectious diseases division and the director of the hospital’s Vaccine Education Center. “He’s like a whistleblower in that sense. He’s been behind the scenes, so he knows what it looks like, and he’s telling you that you’re being lied to.”

Kennedy name-drops studies that don’t support his commentary. When speaking with Rogan, Kennedy encouraged the podcaster’s staff to show a particular 2010 study that found that exposure to the herbicide atrazine caused some male frogs to develop female sex organs and become infertile.

Kennedy has repeatedly invoked that frog study to support his position that “we should all be looking at” atrazine and its impact on human beings. The researcher behind the study told PolitiFact in June that Kennedy’s atrazine claims were “speculation” given the vast differences between humans and amphibians. No scientific studies in humans link atrazine exposure to gender dysphoria.

In July, Kennedy floated the idea that covid-19 could have been “ethnically targeted” to “attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.” The claim was ridiculously wrong, but Kennedy insisted that it was backed by a July 2020 study by Chinese researchers. That study didn’t find that Chinese people were less affected by the virus. It said one of the virus’s receptors seemed to be absent in the Amish and in Ashkenazi Jews and theorized that genetic factors might increase covid-19 severity.

Five months later, Kennedy invoked the study and insisted he was right: “I can understand why people were disturbed by those remarks. They certainly weren’t antisemitic. … I was talking about a true study, an NIH-funded study.”

“I wish I hadn’t said them, but, you know, what I said was true.”

Kennedy answered using scientific terms (“furin cleave,” “ACE2 receptor”), but he ignored explanations found in the study. He didn’t account for how the original virus has evolved since 2020, or how the study emphasized these potential mutations were rare and would have little to no public health impact.

Public health experts say that racial disparities in covid-19 infection and mortality — in the U.S., Black and Hispanic people often faced more severe covid-19 outcomes — resulted from social and economic inequities, not genetics.

Kennedy says “circumstantial evidence” is enough.

Antidepressants are linked to school shootings, he told listeners on a livestream hosted by Elon Musk. The government should have begun studying the issue years ago, he said, because “there’s tremendous circumstantial evidence that those, like SSRIs and benzos and other drugs, are doing this.”

Experts in psychiatry have told PolitiFact and other fact-checkers that there is no causal relationship between antidepressants and shootings. With 13% of the adult population using antidepressants, experts say that if the link were true they would expect higher rates of violence. Also, the available data on U.S. school shootings shows most shooters were not using psychiatric medicines, which have an anti-violence effect.

Conspiracy Theories, Consequences, and a Presidential Campaign

The anti-censorship candidate frames his first bid for public office as a response to “18 years” of being shunned for his views — partly by the government, but also by private companies.

“You’re protected so much from censorship if you’re running for president,” Kennedy told conservative Canadian podcaster and psychologist Jordan Peterson in June.

In June, Kennedy’s Instagram account was reinstated — with a verified badge noting he is a public figure. Meta’s rules on misinformation do not apply to active political candidates. (PolitiFact is a partner of Meta’s Third Party Fact-Checking Program, which seeks to reduce false content on the platform.)

In July, he was invited to testify before the Republican-led House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. He repeated that he had “never been anti-vax,” and railed against the Biden White House for asking Twitter to remove his January 2021 tweet that said Baseball Hall of Famer Hank Aaron’s death was “part of a wave of suspicious deaths among elderly,” weeks after Aaron, 86, received a covid-19 vaccine. The medical examiner’s office said Aaron died from unrelated natural causes.

Throughout 2023, alternative media has embraced Kennedy. He has regularly appeared on podcasts such as Peterson’s, and has also participated in profiles by mainstream TV, online, and print sources.

“You’re like, ‘But you’re talking right now. I’m listening to you. I hear your words. You’re not being censored,’” said Whitney Phillips, an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon who researches how news media covers conspiracy theories and their proponents. “But a person can believe they’re being censored because they’ve internalized that they’re going to be,” or they know making the claim will land with their audience.

Time will tell whether his message resonates with voters.

Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said Kennedy may be a “placeholder” for voters who are dissatisfied with Trump and Biden and will take a third option when offered by pollsters.

The only 2024 candidate whose favorability ratings are more positive than negative? It’s Kennedy, according to FiveThirtyEight. However, a much higher percentage of voters are unfamiliar with him than they are with Trump or Biden — about a quarter — and Kennedy’s favorability edge has decreased as his campaign has gone on.

Nevertheless, third-party candidates historically finish with a fraction of their polling, Kondik said, and voters will likely have more names and parties on their fall ballots, including philosopher Cornel West, physician Jill Stein, and a potential slate from the No Labels movement.

Kennedy was popular with conservative commentators before he became an independent, and he has avoided pointedly criticizing Trump, except on covid-19 lockdowns. When NBC News asked Kennedy in August what he thought of Trump’s 2020 election lies, Kennedy said he believed Trump lost, but that, in general, people who believe elections were stolen “should be listened to.” Kennedy is one of them. He still says that the 2004 presidential election was “stolen” from Kerry in favor of Republican George W. Bush, though it wasn’t.

American Values 2024 will spend up to $15 million to get Kennedy’s name on the ballot in 10 states including Arizona, California, Indiana, New York, and Texas. Those are five of the toughest states for ballot access, said Richard Winger, co-editor of Ballot Access News.

Four of Kennedy’s siblings called Kennedy’s decision to run as an independent “dangerous” and “perilous” to the nation. “Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision or judgment,” the group wrote in a joint statement.

Kennedy brushes it off when asked, saying he has a large family and some members support him.

On her podcast, Weiss asked whether Kennedy worried his position on autism and vaccines would cloud his other positions and cost him votes. His answer ignored his history.

“Show me where I got it wrong,” he said, “and I’ll change.”

In a campaign constructed by lies, that might be the biggest one.

PolitiFact researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

PolitiFact’s source list can be found here.

——————————
By: Madison Czopek, PolitiFact and Katie Sanders, PolitiFact
Title: RFK Jr.’s Campaign of Conspiracy Theories Is PolitiFact’s 2023 Lie of the Year
Sourced From: kffhealthnews.org/news/article/rfk-kennedy-politifact-lie-of-year-2023-autism-vaccines/
Published Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2023 10:00:00 +0000

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Dual Threats From Trump and GOP Imperil Nursing Homes and Their Foreign-Born Workers

Published

5 days ago

June 26, 2025

Staff Editor

kffhealthnews.org – Jordan Rau, KFF Health News – 2025-06-26 04:00:00

Jordan Rau, KFF Health News

June 26, 2025

In a top-rated nursing home in Alexandria, Virginia, the Rev. Donald Goodness is cared for by nurses and aides from various parts of Africa. One of them, Jackline Conteh, a naturalized citizen and nurse assistant from Sierra Leone, bathes and helps dress him most days and vigilantly intercepts any meal headed his way that contains gluten, as Goodness has celiac disease.

“We are full of people who come from other countries,” Goodness, 92, said about Goodwin House Alexandria’s staff. Without them, the retired Episcopal priest said, “I would be, and my building would be, desolate.”

The long-term health care industry is facing a double whammy from President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants and the GOP’s proposals to reduce Medicaid spending. The industry is highly dependent on foreign workers: More than 800,000 immigrants and naturalized citizens comprise 28% of direct care employees at home care agencies, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and other long-term care companies.

But in January, the Trump administration rescinded former President Joe Biden’s 2021 policy that protected health care facilities from Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. The administration’s broad immigration crackdown threatens to drastically reduce the number of current and future workers for the industry. “People may be here on a green card, and they are afraid ICE is going to show up,” said Katie Smith Sloan, president of LeadingAge, an association of nonprofits that care for older adults.

Existing staffing shortages and quality-of-care problems would be compounded by other policies pushed by Trump and the Republican-led Congress, according to nursing home officials, resident advocates, and academic experts. Federal spending cuts under negotiation may strip nursing homes of some of their largest revenue sources by limiting ways states leverage Medicaid money and making it harder for new nursing home residents to retroactively qualify for Medicaid. Care for 6 in 10 residents is paid for by Medicaid, the state-federal health program for poor or disabled Americans.

“We are facing the collision of two policies here that could further erode staffing in nursing homes and present health outcome challenges,” said Eric Roberts, an associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

The industry hasn’t recovered from covid-19, which killed more than 200,000 long-term care facility residents and workers and led to massive staff attrition and turnover. Nursing homes have struggled to replace licensed nurses, who can find better-paying jobs at hospitals and doctors’ offices, as well as nursing assistants, who can earn more working at big-box stores or fast-food joints. Quality issues that preceded the pandemic have expanded: The percentage of nursing homes that federal health inspectors cited for putting residents in jeopardy of immediate harm or death has risen alarmingly from 17% in 2015 to 28% in 2024.

In addition to seeking to reduce Medicaid spending, congressional Republicans have proposed shelving the biggest nursing home reform in decades: a Biden-era rule mandating minimum staffing levels that would require most of the nation’s nearly 15,000 nursing homes to hire more workers.

The long-term care industry expects demand for direct care workers to burgeon with an influx of aging baby boomers needing professional care. The Census Bureau has projected the number of people 65 and older would grow from 63 million this year to 82 million in 2050.

In an email, Vianca Rodriguez Feliciano, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, said the agency “is committed to supporting a strong, stable long-term care workforce” and “continues to work with states and providers to ensure quality care for older adults and individuals with disabilities.” In a separate email, Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, said foreigners wanting to work as caregivers “need to do that by coming here the legal way” but did not address the effect on the long-term care workforce of deportations of classes of authorized immigrants.

Goodwin Living, a faith-based nonprofit, runs three retirement communities in northern Virginia for people who live independently, need a little assistance each day, have memory issues, or require the availability of around-the-clock nurses. It also operates a retirement community in Washington, D.C. Medicare rates Goodwin House Alexandria as one of the best-staffed nursing homes in the country. Forty percent of the organization’s 1,450 employees are foreign-born and are either seeking citizenship or are already naturalized, according to Lindsay Hutter, a Goodwin spokesperson.

“As an employer, we see they stay on with us, they have longer tenure, they are more committed to the organization,” said Rob Liebreich, Goodwin’s president and CEO.

Jackline Conteh spent much of her youth shuttling between Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Ghana to avoid wars and tribal conflicts. Her mother was killed by a stray bullet in her home country of Liberia, Conteh said. “She was sitting outside,” Conteh, 56, recalled in an interview.

Conteh was working as a nurse in a hospital in Sierra Leone in 2009 when she learned of a lottery for visas to come to the United States. She won, though she couldn’t afford to bring her husband and two children along at the time. After she got a nursing assistant certification, Goodwin hired her in 2012.

Conteh said taking care of elders is embedded in the culture of African families. When she was 9, she helped feed and dress her grandmother, a job that rotated among her and her sisters. She washed her father when he was dying of prostate cancer. Her husband joined her in the United States in 2017; she cares for him because he has heart failure.

“Nearly every one of us from Africa, we know how to care for older adults,” she said.

Her daughter is now in the United States, while her son is still in Africa. Conteh said she sends money to him, her mother-in-law, and one of her sisters.

In the nursing home where Goodness and 89 other residents live, Conteh helps with daily tasks like dressing and eating, checks residents’ skin for signs of swelling or sores, and tries to help them avoid falling or getting disoriented. Of 102 employees in the building, broken up into eight residential wings called “small houses” and a wing for memory care, at least 72 were born abroad, Hutter said.

Donald Goodness grew up in Rochester, New York, and spent 25 years as rector of The Church of the Ascension in New York City, retiring in 1997. He and his late wife moved to Alexandria to be closer to their daughter, and in 2011 they moved into independent living at the Goodwin House. In 2023 he moved into one of the skilled nursing small houses, where Conteh started caring for him.

“I have a bad leg and I can’t stand on it very much, or I’d fall over,” he said. “She’s in there at 7:30 in the morning, and she helps me bathe.” Goodness said Conteh is exacting about cleanliness and will tell the housekeepers if his room is not kept properly.

Conteh said Goodness was withdrawn when he first arrived. “He don’t want to come out, he want to eat in his room,” she said. “He don’t want to be with the other people in the dining room, so I start making friends with him.”

She showed him a photo of Sierra Leone on her phone and told him of the weather there. He told her about his work at the church and how his wife did laundry for the choir. The breakthrough, she said, came one day when he agreed to lunch with her in the dining room. Long out of his shell, Goodness now sits on the community’s resident council and enjoys distributing the mail to other residents on his floor.

“The people that work in my building become so important to us,” Goodness said.

While Trump’s 2024 election campaign focused on foreigners here without authorization, his administration has broadened to target those legally here, including refugees who fled countries beset by wars or natural disasters. This month, the Department of Homeland Security revoked the work permits for migrants and refugees from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela who arrived under a Biden-era program.

“I’ve just spent my morning firing good, honest people because the federal government told us that we had to,” Rachel Blumberg, president of the Toby & Leon Cooperman Sinai Residences of Boca Raton, a Florida retirement community, said in a video posted on LinkedIn. “I am so sick of people saying that we are deporting people because they are criminals. Let me tell you, they are not all criminals.”

At Goodwin House, Conteh is fearful for her fellow immigrants. Foreign workers at Goodwin rarely talk about their backgrounds. “They’re scared,” she said. “Nobody trusts anybody.” Her neighbors in her apartment complex fled the U.S. in December and returned to Sierra Leone after Trump won the election, leaving their children with relatives.

“If all these people leave the United States, they go back to Africa or to their various countries, what will become of our residents?” Conteh asked. “What will become of our old people that we’re taking care of?”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The post Dual Threats From Trump and GOP Imperil Nursing Homes and Their Foreign-Born Workers appeared first on kffhealthnews.org

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

This content primarily highlights concerns about the impact of restrictive immigration policies and Medicaid spending cuts proposed by the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers on the long-term care industry. It emphasizes the importance of immigrant workers in healthcare, the challenges that staffing shortages pose to patient care, and the potential negative effects of GOP policy proposals. The tone is critical of these policies while sympathetic toward immigrant workers and advocates for maintaining or increasing government support for healthcare funding. The framing aligns with a center-left perspective, focusing on social welfare, immigrant rights, and concern about the consequences of conservative economic and immigration policies without descending into partisan rhetoric.

Kaiser Health News

California’s Much-Touted IVF Law May Be Delayed Until 2026, Leaving Many in the Lurch

Published

6 days ago

June 25, 2025

Staff Editor

kffhealthnews.org – Sarah Kwon – 2025-06-25 04:00:00

Sarah Kwon

June 25, 2025

California lawmakers are poised to delay the state’s much-ballyhooed new law mandating in vitro fertilization insurance coverage for millions, set to take effect July 1. Gov. Gavin Newsom has asked lawmakers to push the implementation date to January 2026, leaving patients, insurers, and employers in limbo.

The law, SB 729, requires state-regulated health plans offered by large employers to cover infertility diagnosis and treatment, including IVF. Nine million people will qualify for coverage under the law. Advocates have praised the law as “a major win for Californians,” especially in making same-sex couples and aspiring single parents eligible, though cost concerns limited the mandate’s breadth.

People who had been planning fertility care based on the original timeline are now “left in a holding pattern facing more uncertainty, financial strain, and emotional distress,” Alise Powell, a director at Resolve: The National Infertility Association, said in a statement.

During IVF, a patient’s eggs are retrieved, combined with sperm in a lab, and then transferred to a person’s uterus. A single cycle can total around $25,000, out of reach for many. The California law requires insurers to cover up to three egg retrievals and an unlimited number of embryo transfers.

Not everyone’s coverage would be affected by the delay. Even if the law took effect July 1, it wouldn’t require IVF coverage to start until the month an employer’s contract renews with its insurer. Rachel Arrezola, a spokesperson for the California Department of Managed Health Care, said most of the employers subject to the law renew their contracts in January, so their employees would not be affected by a delay.

She declined to provide data on the percentage of eligible contracts that renew in July or later, which would mean those enrollees wouldn’t get IVF coverage until at least a full year from now, in July 2026 or later.

The proposed new implementation date comes amid heightened national attention on fertility coverage. California is now one of 15 states with an IVF mandate, and in February, President Donald Trump signed an executive order seeking policy recommendations to expand IVF access.

It’s the second time Newsom has asked lawmakers to delay the law. When the Democratic governor signed the bill in September, he asked the legislature to consider delaying implementation by six months. The reason, Newsom said then, was to allow time to reconcile differences between the bill and a broader effort by state regulators to include IVF and other fertility services as an essential health benefit, which would require the marketplace and other individual and small-group plans to provide the coverage.

Newsom spokesperson Elana Ross said the state needs more time to provide guidance to insurers on specific services not addressed in the law to ensure adequate and uniform coverage. Arrezola said embryo storage and donor eggs and sperm were examples of services requiring more guidance.

State Sen. Caroline Menjivar, a Democrat who authored the original IVF mandate, acknowledged a delay could frustrate people yearning to expand their families, but requested patience “a little longer so we can roll this out right.”

Sean Tipton, a lobbyist for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, contended that the few remaining questions on the mandate did not warrant a long delay.

Lawmakers appear poised to advance the delay to a vote by both houses of the legislature, likely before the end of June. If a delay is approved and signed by the governor, the law would immediately be paused. If this does not happen before July 1, Arrezola said, the Department of Managed Health Care would enforce the mandate as it exists. All plans were required to submit compliance filings to the agency by March. Arrezola was unable to explain what would happen to IVF patients whose coverage had already begun if the delay passes after July 1.

The California Association of Health Plans, which opposed the mandate, declined to comment on where implementation efforts stand, although the group agrees that insurers need more guidance, spokesperson Mary Ellen Grant said.

Kaiser Permanente, the state’s largest insurer, has already sent employers information they can provide to their employees about the new benefit, company spokesperson Kathleen Chambers said. She added that eligible members whose plans renew on or after July 1 would have IVF coverage if implementation of the law is not delayed.

Employers and some fertility care providers appear to be grappling over the uncertainty of the law’s start date. Amy Donovan, a lawyer at insurance brokerage and consulting firm Keenan & Associates, said the firm has fielded many questions from employers about the possibility of delay. Reproductive Science Center and Shady Grove Fertility, major clinics serving different areas of California, posted on their websites that the IVF mandate had been delayed until January 2026, which is not yet the case. They did not respond to requests for comment.

Some infertility patients confused over whether and when they will be covered have run out of patience. Ana Rios and her wife, who live in the Central Valley, had been trying to have a baby for six years, dipping into savings for each failed treatment. Although she was “freaking thrilled” to learn about the new law last fall, Rios could not get clarity from her employer or health plan on whether she was eligible for the coverage and when it would go into effect, she said. The couple decided to go to Mexico to pursue cheaper treatment options.

“You think you finally have a helping hand,” Rios said of learning about the law and then, later, the requested delay. “You reach out, and they take it back.”

This article was produced by KFF Health News, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.

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The post California’s Much-Touted IVF Law May Be Delayed Until 2026, Leaving Many in the Lurch appeared first on kffhealthnews.org

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

This content is presented in a factual, balanced manner typical of center-left public policy reporting. It focuses on a progressive healthcare issue (mandated IVF insurance coverage) favorably highlighting benefits for diverse family structures and individuals, including same-sex couples and single parents, which often aligns with center-left values. At the same time, it includes perspectives from government officials, industry representatives, opponents, and patients, offering a nuanced view without overt ideological framing or partisan rhetoric. The emphasis on healthcare access, social equity, and patient impact situates the coverage within a center-left orientation.

Kaiser Health News

Push To Move OB-GYN Exam Out of Texas Is Piece of AGs’ Broader Reproductive Rights Campaign

Published

1 week ago

June 24, 2025

Staff Editor

kffhealthnews.org – Annie Sciacca – 2025-06-24 04:00:00

Annie Sciacca

June 24, 2025

Democratic state attorneys general led by those from California, New York, and Massachusetts are pressuring medical professional groups to defend reproductive rights, including medication abortion, emergency abortions, and travel between states for health care in response to recent increases in the number of abortion bans.

The American Medical Association adopted a formal position June 9 recommending that medical certification exams be moved out of states with restrictive abortion policies or made virtual, after 20 attorneys general petitioned to protect physicians who fear legal repercussions because of their work. The petition focused on the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology’s certification exams in Dallas, and the subsequent AMA recommendation was hailed as a win for Democrats trying to regain ground after the fall of Roe v. Wade.

“It seems incremental, but there are so many things that go into expanding and maintaining access to care,” said Arneta Rogers, executive director of the Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice at the University of California-Berkeley’s law school. “We see AGs banding together, governors banding together, as advocates work on the ground. That feels somewhat more hopeful — that people are thinking about a coordinated strategy.”

Since the Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion in 2022, 16 states, including Texas, have implemented laws banning abortion almost entirely, and many of them impose criminal penalties on providers as well as options to sue doctors. More than 25 states restrict access to gender-affirming care for trans people, and six of them make it a felony to provide such care to youth.

That’s raised concern among some physicians who fear being charged if they go to those states, even if their home state offers protection to provide reproductive and gender-affirming health care.

Pointing to the recent fining and indictment of a physician in New York who allegedly provided abortion pills to a woman in Texas and a teen in Louisiana, a coalition of physicians wrote in a letter to the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology that “the limits of shield laws are tenuous” and that “Texas laws can affect physicians practicing outside of the state as well.”

The campaign was launched by several Democratic attorneys general, including Rob Bonta of California, Andrea Joy Campbell of Massachusetts, and Letitia James of New York, who each have established a reproductive rights unit as a bulwark for their state following the Dobbs decision.

“Reproductive health care and gender-affirming care providers should not have to risk their safety or freedom just to advance in their medical careers,” James said in a statement. “Forcing providers to travel to states that have declared war on reproductive freedom and LGBTQ+ rights is as unnecessary as it is dangerous.”

In their petition, the attorneys general included a letter from Joseph Ottolenghi, medical director at Choices Women’s Medical Center in New York City, who was denied his request to take the test remotely or outside of Texas. To be certified by the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology, physicians need to take the in-person exam at its testing facility in Dallas. The board completed construction of its new testing facility last year.

“As a New York practitioner, I have made every effort not to violate any other state’s laws, but the outer contours of these draconian laws have not been tested or clarified by the courts,” Ottolenghi wrote.

Rachel Rebouché, the dean of Temple University’s law school and a reproductive law scholar, said “putting the heft” of the attorneys general behind this effort helps build awareness and a “public reckoning” on behalf of providers. Separately, some doctors have urged medical conferences to boycott states with abortion bans.

Anti-abortion groups, however, see the campaign as forcing providers to conform to abortion-rights views. Donna Harrison, an OB-GYN and the director of research at the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, described the petition as an “attack not only on pro-life states but also on life-affirming medical professionals.”

Harrison said the “OB-GYN community consists of physicians with values that are as diverse as our nation’s state abortion laws,” and that this diversity “fosters a medical environment of debate and rigorous thought leading to advancements that ultimately serve our patients.”

The AMA’s new policy urges specialty medical boards to host exams in states without restrictive abortion laws, offer the tests remotely, or provide exemptions for physicians. However, the decision to implement any changes to the administration of these exams is up to those boards. There is no deadline for a decision to be made.

The OB-GYN board did not respond to requests for comment, but after the public petition from the attorneys general criticizing it for refusing exam accommodations, the board said that in-person exams conducted at its national center in Dallas “provide the most equitable, fair, secure, and standardized assessment.”

The OB-GYN board emphasized that Texas’ laws apply to doctors licensed in Texas and to medical care within Texas, specifically. And it noted that its exam dates are kept under wraps, and that there have been “no incidents of harm to candidates or examiners across thousands of in-person examinations.”

Democratic state prosecutors, however, warned in their petition that the “web of confusing and punitive state-based restrictions creates a legal minefield for medical providers.” Texas is among the states that have banned doctors from providing gender-affirming care to transgender youth, and it has reportedly made efforts to get records from medical facilities and professionals in other states who may have provided that type of care to Texans.

The Texas attorney general’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

States such as California and New York have laws to block doctors from being extradited under other states’ laws and to prevent sharing evidence against them. But instances that require leveraging these laws could still mean lengthy legal proceedings.

“We live in a moment where we’ve seen actions by executive bodies that don’t necessarily square with what we thought the rules provided,” Rebouché said.

This article was produced by KFF Health News, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.

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This story can be republished for free (details).

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This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The post Push To Move OB-GYN Exam Out of Texas Is Piece of AGs’ Broader Reproductive Rights Campaign appeared first on kffhealthnews.org

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

The article presents a viewpoint largely aligned with progressive and Democratic positions on reproductive rights and gender-affirming care. It highlights efforts led by Democratic attorneys general and the American Medical Association to protect abortion access and transgender healthcare amid restrictive state laws, portraying these actions positively. While it includes perspectives from anti-abortion advocates, their views are presented briefly and framed as opposition to the broader pro-choice initiatives. The overall tone and framing emphasize support for reproductive freedom and healthcare protections, reflecting a center-left leaning stance typical of mainstream health policy reporting sympathetic to Democratic policy goals.