--:-- Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Friday, November 15th.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Here's what we're covering. I've been in Washington for nearly 30 years covering both public health and politics and I don't think we've ever seen a figure quite like Robert F. Kennedy nominated for a high-ranking health position.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: My colleague Cheryl Gay Stolberg is covering Donald Trump's latest cabinet pick, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Secretary of Health and Human Services.
--:-- Cheryl Gay Stolberg: Kennedy is an environmental lawyer with no formal training in medicine or public health, but he's crafted his public image sharing unorthodox views on the topics.
--:-- Cheryl Gay Stolberg: He's been angling for this position since he ended his own presidential campaign and endorsed Trump. On the campaign trail, Trump promised he would let Kennedy, quote, go wild on health.
--:-- Cheryl Gay Stolberg: Some of what Kennedy wants to do is relatively standard, like focusing on the effects of ultra-processed foods. But he's also spread false claims that vaccines cause autism, spoken out against fluoride in drinking water, which prevents tooth decay, and contradicted other advice from health experts.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: If he becomes health secretary, Kennedy would have control over a sprawling department with 80,000 employees and broad control over Americans' daily life, everything from regulating food and medicine to whether Medicare will pay for your drugs and hospital treatments.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And because of this sweeping control and because of his unorthodox views, his nomination is generating a lot of alarm.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Kennedy has told the FDA to preserve your records and pack your bags. He said he wants to fire 600 people at the National Institutes of Health. He wants to cut the NIH budget and reduce its focus on infectious disease.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In recent memory, at least, we haven't had a secretary who's come in wanting to rip up the very agencies that are responsible for enhancing the public health. That is new. And that is sending shockwaves of fear throughout the medical and public health community in this country.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Meanwhile, in Florida last night...
--:-- [Sound of music or celebration in the background]
--:-- Tracy Mumford: When they built Mar-a-Lago many years ago, the Roaring Twenties, it was a Roaring Twenties, and we're hotter right now than they ever were in the Roaring Twenties, I believe. We're going to be a lot hotter.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Trump took a victory lap with a celebratory gala at his private club filled with donors and Republican lawmakers.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In a 20-minute speech, he praised some of his recent administration picks and announced a new one from the stage.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And we're going to do things with energy and with land, interior, that is going to be incredible.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Trump said he wants North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum to be Secretary of the Interior, the department that oversees public lands and coastal waters.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Burgum will lead the Trump administration's plans to open that land and water to oil and gas drilling. He has deep ties to fossil fuel companies.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Separate from his cabinet picks, Trump's also been elevating his personal legal team to new positions in his administration.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He said he'd name Todd Blanche, his defense attorney, to be deputy attorney general and D. John Sauer to be solicitor general.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Sauer represented Trump in front of the Supreme Court in the presidential immunity case.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: One of Trump's biggest backers, Elon Musk, has quickly established himself as one of the most influential figures in Trump's transition.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He's been sitting in on nearly every job interview as Trump builds out his new administration.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He's supposed to help lead a new government efficiency agency. And he seems to be getting involved in foreign policy.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Last week, Trump handed the phone to Musk during a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and the Times has learned that this week, Musk met with Iran's ambassador to the United Nations for over an hour.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That meeting is particularly notable because of Iran's bad blood with Trump. American officials say that Iran tried to assassinate Trump earlier this year in retaliation for the killing of a top Iranian general when Trump was in office.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But Iranian officials described the meeting with Musk as, quote, positive, and that they talked about how to diffuse tensions between the two countries.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The U and Iran have had no diplomatic relations since the 1970s so the meeting with Musk was a kind of workaround since he's not an American official at least for the time being.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: A major new study has found that nearly three out of every four Americans are overweight or obese.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It's a sharp increase from a few decades ago. In 1990, just over half of Americans fell into those categories.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The researchers who published their findings in the journal The Lancet say the country is facing an epidemic of obesity and that they're especially worried about how quickly the rate of childhood obesity has been climbing.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: A third of American kids are now overweight or obese. Both conditions can lead to serious health problems, ranging from diabetes to heart disease, and can shorten a person's lifespan.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Researchers say that the surge is driven by factors that are often discussed, like exercise habits and a lack of access to quality food, but also by genetics and other causes that aren't fully understood yet.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: They also say there is no magic bullet to reverse the trend. On an individual level, people can consider changing their lifestyle or taking medication or pursuing surgery.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But they say there also needs to be structural changes, like taxes on sugary drinks or stricter regulations on marketing unhealthy foods.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Onion could be about to own Infowars. No, that is not one of the site's fake headlines.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Yesterday, the satirical newspaper said it won a bankruptcy auction to buy the website founded by the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The deal, which is now being reviewed by a judge, is the latest twist in an ongoing legal battle between Jones and the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In 2022, they won a $1.4 billion defamation suit against Jones for spreading baseless claims that the school shooting was a hoax.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Ever since, they've been trying to collect that penalty and undercut his media empire.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Jones has filed for bankruptcy, and as part of that, Infowars went up for auction.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Onion said the families gave it the green light to go ahead with the purchase.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It says it'll relaunch Infowars as a parody of itself, mocking outlandish internet personalities like Jones, while also running sponsored content from the nonprofit Every Town for Gun Safety that was founded after the Sandy Hook attack.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: For many of the Sandy Hook families this is not only a way to call for stricter gun laws and to sabotage the infamous InfoWars brand.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It's also just a chance to irritate Jones and get back at the man himself.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And finally. Introducing first to the scales, he's the problem child, Jake L. Guile Paul!
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Tonight, a truly bizarre face-off is going down in Texas.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Ladies and gentlemen, Iron Mike Tyson! Former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson will fight social media star-turned-boxer Jake Paul.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Tyson's 58, Paul is 27.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The whole thing is going to be streamed on Netflix, part of the platform's aggressive push into streaming live sporting events.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: They don't want to just bring you rom-coms and documentaries anymore. They want in on games and matches, too.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Millions of people are expected to watch.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: As for why Paul wants to risk going up against Tyson's fists, or why Tyson wants to risk his reputation potentially being beaten on a very public stage, Paul said a vision of fighting Tyson came to him while doing the psychedelic ayahuasca.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Tyson said he got the idea for his comeback while hallucinating after smoking toad venom.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: So the whole night could be very inspired.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those are the headlines.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Today on The Daily. So you're in a fighting mood.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Oh, absolutely. I think right now this is a pivotal moment in American history. And the next year or two will determine what happens in this country for decades, in my view.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Michael Barbaro talks with Senator Bernie Sanders about why he thinks Trump won the White House and what Democrats need to do to win back the American people.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That's next in the New York Times audio app, or you can listen wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: This show is made by Robert Jemison, Jessica Metzger, Jan Stewart, and me, Tracy Mumford, with help from Isabella Anderson.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Original theme by Dan Powell. Special thanks to Larissa Anderson, Jake Lucas, Doug Mills, Zoe Murphy, and Paula Schumann.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The headlines will be back on Monday.
