In greening Arctic, caribou and muskoxen play key role

Study highlights importance of large grazing wildlife to Arctic ecosystem

University of California - Davis

 

image: 

A group of muskoxen gather on the Arctic tundra near Kangerlussuaq, Greenland.

view more 

Credit: Jeff Kerby

The story of Arctic greening has overlooked some main characters. At center stage are climate change and warming temperatures. Meanwhile, large grazing wildlife, such as caribou and muskoxen, also play a key role in the timing and abundance of Arctic plants, according to a study from the University of California, Davis.

The study, published today in the journal PNAS Nexus, highlights the importance of large herbivores to the Arctic ecosystem, linking grazing with plant phenology and abundance in the Arctic tundra.

Phenology is the study of the timing and cyclical patterns in nature, such as when birds migrate, or when a plant first sprouts or blooms. Understanding such patterns is critically important in the Arctic, which is warming faster than anywhere on Earth.

“Caribou and muskoxen play a key role in how soon plants emerge and this translates to how abundant they become,” said lead author Eric Post, a professor and arctic ecologist in the UC Davis Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology. “This is an important, and overlooked, factor we need to consider as we seek to more fully understand climate change impacts on tundra vegetation in the Arctic.”

Exclusion experiment

The research was conducted at a long-term study site near Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, where Post has been studying plant and animal interactions for 22 years. To understand how herbivores affect the timing of plant growth and abundance, the scientists excluded caribou and muskoxen from some study areas. From 2009 to 2017, they compared the timing of spring green-up of nine plant species with and without the grazing animals. 

In general, plants where caribou or muskoxen were present experienced earlier green-up and greater abundance later in the growing season. About two-thirds of plants greened up earlier, and three-quarters were more abundant later in the season compared to plots without grazing. These include arctic draba and gray willow.

Some species, including dwarf birch and harebell, emerged later with grazers present.  Dwarf birch was the only species studied that did not increase in abundance under grazing. In all cases, the presence or absence of large grazing wildlife influenced how the plants responded.

Grazing awareness

Post said it is not yet clear why the plants respond in this way, but it is important to understand that there is a connection. 

“We’re used to thinking of the timing of plant availability as impacting the productivity of grazing animals, but not the reverse,” Post said. “The absence or presence of herbivores can also impact the timing of plant growth and their productivity.”

This is especially important considering that many caribou populations in the Arctic are in decline. Migratory tundra caribou (Rangifer tarandus) are listed as vulnerable by the IUCN Red List and have lost more than half of their total abundance since the 1990s.

A separate study coauthored by Post and published Nov. 7, noted that supporting sustainable populations of herbivores in the Arctic could be a more effective nature-based solution to climate change in the region than planting trees there.

Co-authors for the PNAS Nexus study include UC Davis alum Conor Higgins of the Yolo County Resource Conservation District, Pernille Bøving of UC Davis, Christian John of UC Santa Barbara, Mason Post of the University of Washington, and Jeffrey Kerby of the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge University. The authors give special thanks to the late Mads Forchhammer for his critical input and inspiring the study. 

The study was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, National Geographic Society, European Union’s Horizon 2020 research program, and Aarhus University Research Foundation.

A caribou grazes grass and flowers in Greenland.

Credit

Eric Post, UC Davis)

---

Journal

PNAS Nexus

DOI

10.1093/PNASNEXUS-2024-00279RR 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Article Title

Large herbivores link plant phenology and abundance in arctic tundra

Article Publication Date

12-Nov-2024

Article Publication Date

12-Nov-2024

Plant green-up and herbivory in Greenland

PNAS Nexus

 

image: 

Male muskoxen near Kangerlussuaq, Greenland

view more 

Credit: Eric Post

A study links herbivory to phenology in the Arctic. Phenology is the study of the timing of events in the natural world. In recent decades, researchers have investigated how climate change is shifting many natural events. Eric Post and colleagues wanted to understand how a different variable—the presence or absence of herbivores—affects the timing of spring plant growth, or green-up, in Greenland. In an experiment lasting nine years, the authors excluded musk oxen and caribou from some areas, then compared the timing of the spring green-up of 9 tundra plant species in the areas with and without herbivores. Of the plants that showed altered green-up between the conditions, about two-thirds showed earlier green-up in plots with grazing than in plots without, including Draba nivalis, yellow arctic draba, and Salix glauca, gray willow. A few plants, including Betula nana, the dwarf birch, and Campanula Gieseckiana, harebell, showed later green-up under herbivory than under herbivore exclusion.  The team also measured plant abundance. Of the plants that showed a response to grazing, 75% were more abundant in the plots with herbivores. In general, early green-up under herbivory led to high abundance later in the growing season. The only plant that did not see increased abundance in plots with herbivores as compared to plots without herbivores was dwarf birch, which was also the most common species on the study plots. According to the authors, herbivory that reduced birch cover likely also reduced shade on other species, hastening and boosting their growth.

Arctic harebell near Kangerlussuaq, Greenland

Male caribou near Kangerlussuaq, Greenland.

Female muskoxen and calves near Kangerlussuaq, Greenlan

Credit

Eric Post

Journal

PNAS Nexus

Article Title

Large herbivores link plant phenology and abundance in Arctic tundra

OPINION

Meet Jack D. Ripper: the new h​ealth czar

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. speaking with supporters at a campaign rally at the Fox Tucson Theatre in Tucson, Arizona. Image via Gage Skidmore.

Team Trump says RFK Jr's conservative star rise is 'concerning and beyond logic': report
Joe Conason

November 10, 2024

Over the few days since Donald Trump's election victory, America has gotten a foretaste of the wreckage likely to ensue when he returns to the White House. His promise to endow Robert F. Kennedy Jr. with plenary authority over health and food regulation -- and to let him "go wild" -- shows once more how little Trump really cares about anyone or anything but himself.

As Trump and his associates surely know, Bobby has no qualifications whatsoever to direct or oversee any federal health office, no matter how small, let alone a major agency like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the Food and Drug Administration. Their corrupt deal with the anti-vaccine activist -- who has made millions from his attacks on public health -- was premised solely on his sycophantic endorsement of Trump and his perceived influence on the crackpot segment of the American electorate

So confident is Kennedy of Trump's unconditional support that he has already announced his first policy directive, effective on Jan. 21, 2025: an attempt to curtail the municipal fluoridation of American water that has been in continuous effect in most places for decades. Cities and counties dose their water with tiny amounts of fluoride, a naturally occurring substance, because study after study has proved that it prevents dental decay in children, who are saved from the grave health impacts not only of rotting teeth but the infections and disabilities that can follow.

Yet Kennedy somehow has come to believe fluoride is a poison that must be removed from water systems immediately. Perhaps he was influenced the John Birch Society, which has promoted the idea that fluoridation is part of a left-wing plot against Americans since the '50s. (Stanley Kubrick satirized this nonsense in his 1964 film "Dr. Strangelove," which featured a rant by the fanatical right-wing Gen. Jack D. Ripper, justifying a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union that will end the world: "Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face?")

Although it's true that excessive consumption of fluoride can lead to ill effects, the levels of fluoridation in U.S. water systems are nowhere near such levels. That's why the American Dental Association and every other health authority have long supported fluoridation policy.

Whatever the source of his bizarre misapprehensions, Kennedy will sooner or later have to confront the simple fact that the scientific evidence shatters his baseless speculations, as it has on so many occasions. The most recent study of fluoridation's impact on human beings, and especially young children, comes from the University of Alberta in Canada. It was produced in the context of a decade-long debate in Calgary, that province's largest city, over whether to restore fluoride to its water supply after removing the chemical in 2011.

Published in the Canadian Journal of Public Health last February, the study of thousands of children in the cities of Calgary (with non-fluoridated water) and Edmonton (where water is fluoridated) showed that lack of fluoride had serious adverse effects on children's health. It had led to thousands of children suffering tooth decay so severe that they needed surgical care under general anesthesia, which is perilous for young kids and led to lasting impact on their health, schooling and emotional well-being.

Of course, the likeliest victims of Kennedy's conspiracy-mongering are the poor -- including many lower-income Americans who voted for Trump at his urging. Should he succeed in outlawing fluoridation in water systems, it is poor children whose teeth will rot and whose lives will be blighted. More affluent and educated families will be able to provide fluoride treatment for their kids to save them from Bobby's destructive obsession.

The idea that such a radical scheme would go into effect on the first day of a new administration, without due process or reasoned consideration, is exactly the kind of dictatorial maladministration we can expect from Trump. We've seen it before, after all.

But before any such anti-fluoridation scheme proceeds, perhaps someone should demand that Kennedy uphold his recent vow to restore our public health agencies to "their rich tradition of gold-standard, evidence-based science" instead of allowing him to impose his wacky suppositions about fluoride on the entire country, without any study or evaluation.

Naming a health czar who parrots the superstitions of Jack D. Ripper is a bad omen of Trump's intentions. We're about to find out how far the new administration will veer into chaos, how much human misery this president will cause on a whim. The prospects are not reassuring.

TRUMP'S  HEALTH CZAR

MSNBC's Vaughn Hillyard gets in RFK Jr.'s face over vaccine plans

BE AFRAID, VERY AFRAID

Sarah K. Burris

RAW STORY
November 6, 2024 

FILE PHOTO: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump greet each other at a campaign event sponsored by conservative group Turning Point USA, in Duluth, Georgia, U.S., October 23, 2024. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo

MSNBC's political reporter Vaughn Hillyard challenged Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Tuesday after he claimed that he didn't want to eliminate vaccines.

Kennedy has spent years opposing vaccines, according to many reports. But when he spoke to Hillyard, he promised to ensure they were accessible to anyone who wanted them.

As FactCheck.org wrote, "Kennedy insists he’s not ‘anti-vaccine,’ but many of his debunked arguments are straight from the anti-vaccine playbook, which he and his nonprofit have helped write.”

Trump announced during a Nevada rally last week that Kennedy was "going to work on health and women's health."

Also Read: RFK Jr. earns millions from conservative and anti-vax companies: disclosure

"Would that include COVID vaccines that are currently on the market?" asked the reporter.

Kenndy hedged, saying he wanted the "best science" for vaccines, and Hillyard seized on the moment.

"As part of that, during the pandemic, the height of the pandemic, you were questioning the FDA and calling them out for approving the emergency authorization of the COVID vaccines. If you had been in charge of the FDA at that time, would you have blocked the authorization of the COVID vaccines?"

Kennedy claimed that he argued that vaccines wouldn't stop transmission.


"They were saying you need to take this vaccine in order to protect. I knew in May 2020 that the vaccines were not going to protect against transmission. I was reading the studies," Kennedy said.

The government had claimed that the vaccine would lessen the severity of the illness if transmitted and reduce the number of people dying in hospitals.

Hillyard challenged whether RFK would have allowed the vaccine, and Kenndy dodged again, saying he would have been "honest."

"You wouldn't have blocked it?" Hillyard hammered.

"I wouldn't directly block it," Kennedy said. "I would have made sure we had the best science. There was no effort to do that at that time."

So Hillyard asked why the American people should have confidence that he would ensure a vaccine was available in the future in a similar situation. He also grilled Kennedy on which agencies he would eliminate, a question that comes from the politician's campaign pledge to close down the Food and Drug Administration and Center for Disease Control.

Watch the interview below or at the link here.

Potential Trump cabinet member gives first insights into his health priorities

Brad Reed

RAW STORY
November 6, 2024 

Sick child with the measles (Shutterstock)

Former left-wing conspiracy theorist turned Trump ally Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has big plans now that the twice-impeached former president is now heading back to the White House.

NPR's Steve Inskeep reports that Kennedy told him during an interview on Wednesday that the new Trump administration "will recommend getting fluoride out of drinking water" and will also provide consumers with more "information" about vaccines.

Kennedy has for decades pushed baseless theories linking vaccines to autism, despite the fact that multiple studies have found no such link.

According to the Mayo Clinic, "a small study in 1998 suggested a link between vaccinations and autism spectrum disorder," although "the study was reviewed further and retracted" and "the author's medical license was revoked due to falsified information."

Additionally, fluoridation of water has been credited with vastly reducing cavities in children.

Kennedy was long a fringe figure in Democratic politics who pushed false conspiracy theories about former President George W. Bush stealing the 2004 election from rival John Kerry.

RFK Jr. discusses fluoride, vaccines as he says he's ready to take role with Trump administration

By Mike Heuer

Nov. 6, 2024 /

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies during a House Judiciary hearing on the federal government on July 20, 2023, in Washington, D.C., and on Wednesday said he will join President-elect Donald Trump's team in some capacity and focus on health issues. File Photo by Jemal Countess/UPI | License Photo

Nov. 6 (UPI) -- Former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is expected to have a role within President-elect Donald Trump's administration and says fluoridated water and vaccines are priorities.

"President Trump has given me three instructions," Kennedy told NPR host Steve Inskeep during a phone interview on Wednesday.

"He wants the corruption and conflicts out of the regulatory agencies," Kennedy said. "He wants to return the agencies to the gold standard [of] empirically based, evidence-based science and medicine that they were once famous for.

"And he wants to end the chronic disease epidemic with measurable impacts on a diminishment of chronic disease within two years."

Related

Trump names Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr. to presidential transition team
RFK Jr. suspends presidential campaign, endorses GOP nominee Donald Trump

Kennedy said Trump's new administration immediately will recommend state and local governments cease adding fluoride to local water supplies.

He said a federal judge appointed by former President Barack Obama on Oct. 4 ruled the Environmental Protection Agency hasn't done health and safety studies regarding the effects of fluoride in public water supplies.

"One of the findings ... was that at this level, fluoride is almost certainly causing neurological development," Kennedy said, "and loss of IQ in our children as well as arthritis, bone breakage, thyroid problems, bone cancer and a number of other diseases."

He said adding fluoride to water "made sense in the 1940s" but no longer does because it's added to toothpaste.

Kennedy cited Austria and Germany removing fluoride from their respective water supplies and said both nations have about the same or lower cavity rates than the United States.

Kennedy also said he will "immediately" begin work to ensure proper research is done on vaccines to better ensure "vaccine safety."

"We're not going to take vaccines away from anybody," Kennedy said. "We are going to make sure that Americans have good information right now."

He said the "science on vaccine safety" is lacking and it's important to ensure "scientific studies are done to enable people to make informed decisions regarding vaccinations for themselves and their children."

Inskeep asked Kennedy about his famous family's liberal ties and his former status as a Democrat, which Kennedy renounced and became a Republican earlier this year.

"You're now joining an administration that appears to be dominated by a handful of billionaires -- Elon Musk, John Paulson [and] Trump himself," Inskeep said. "How do you view what somebody might see as an extreme concentration of wealth and power that's coming here?"

"The Republican Party now only controls 30% of the wealth in our country," Kennedy responded. "The Democratic Party controls 70%, and this is really a metamorphosis that took place because of Donald Trump."

Trump chased billionaires out of the GOP and the Republican Party "now is the party of labor unions [and] and the party of working people," Kennedy said.

The GOP "is the party of the American poor," he added. "And those are the people who voted for Donald Trump. Those are the people that he's going to keep those promises to."

Kennedy said every presidential administration, including the Biden administration, has billionaires funding it, which is why the Biden and Harris campaigns outraised Trump by a two-to-one margin.

"If you want to worry about billionaires in government,you should have been asking that questions for the past four years," Kennedy said. "That is something that I've been concerned about my whole life."

JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY 1959

RFK Jr. says a Trump White House would immediately push to remove fluoride from water

JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY DREAM SINCE 1959

Megan Lebowitz and Erika Edwards and Jason Kane and Erin McLaughlin
Sat, November 2, 2024 


WASHINGTON — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Saturday that a Trump administration would, on its first day, "advise all U.S​. water systems to remove fluoride from public water."

Kennedy cited linked fluoride to various illnesses, despite major medical associations supporting water fluoridation, which they say is safe and a benefit to public health.

"President ​@realDonaldTrump and First Lady @MELANIATRUMP want to Make America Healthy Again," the former Democratic presidential hopeful wrote in a post to X, tagging Michael Connett, an attorney who has led litigation that opposed the fluoridation of public drinking water.

Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic who has a history of pushing conspiracy theories, is primed to play a key role in a future Trump administration's health policy. Since dropping out of the presidential race and endorsing Trump, Kennedy has frequently appeared on the campaign trail stumping for the former president, and Trump said at a rally this week that if he is elected, Kennedy is “going to work on health and women’s health.”

Trump has embraced Kennedy. In an event in Arizona earlier this week, the former president said that Kennedy "can do anything he wants" in a potential Trump administration.

“He really wants to with the pesticides and the, you know, all the different things. I said, 'He can do it. He can do anything he wants.' He wants to look at the vaccines. He wants —everything. I think it’s great. I think it’s great," Trump had said.

In late October, Trump said that having Kennedy as an ally "is such a great honor," adding that he would let Kennedy "go wild on health."

"I'm going to let him go wild on health. I'm going to let him go wild on the food. I'm going to let him go wild on medicines," Trump had said.

Kennedy, a former independent presidential candidate, has touted widely debunked theories linking vaccines and autism. He also previously said that he would support a national ban on abortion after three months of pregnancy, before quickly walking back his comments.

When reached for comment on Kennedy's proposal, Trump campaign senior adviser Danielle Alvarez did not commit to backing the plan.

"While President Trump has received a variety of policy ideas, he is focused on Tuesday’s election," Alvarez said in a statement.

Major public health groups such as the American Dental Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention support water fluoridation, citing studies showing that the mineral helps fight cavities. Health groups also emphasize that the practice is safe.

"Water fluoridation is an equitable and inexpensive way to ensure that prevention of dental disease reaches everyone in a community," the American Academy of Pediatrics' website says.

The academy's Campaign for Dental Health also says on its website that "there is no scientifically valid evidence to show that fluoride causes cancer, kidney disease, or other disorders."

Fluoride helps make teeth “stronger and more resistant to decay,” according to the CDC’s website, and drinking fluoridated water “reduces cavities by about 25% in children and adults.”

"Documented risks of community water fluoridation are limited to dental fluorosis, a change in dental enamel that is cosmetic in its most common form. Changes range from barely visible lacy white markings in milder cases to pitting of the teeth in the rare, severe form," the CDC's website says, noting that most dental fluorosis seen in the U.S. today is "of the mildest form."

Similarly, the American Dental Association says on its website that water fluoridation is "safe and effective."

"Throughout more than 70 years of research and practical experience, the overwhelming weight of credible scientific evidence has consistently indicated that fluoridation of community water supplies is safe," says a fact sheet on the association's website.

Water fluoridation is not ubiquitous, and the CDC does not mandate fluoridation programs. Some cities have worked to end public water fluoridation programs as groups argue that it should be up to them to decide whether they want fluoride in public water supplies.

Opinion

Trump Reaches Next Level of Deranged With Proposed New Gig for RFK Jr.

Hafiz Rashid
Fri, November 1, 2024

At a rally Thursday night in Nevada, Donald Trump pledged to put Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in charge of “women’s health” if he’s elected president.

“He’s going to work on health, and women’s health, and all of the different reasons ‘cause we’re not really a wealthy or healthy country,” Trump told a crowd of supporters.

Kamala Harris had a one-word response.

Kennedy, formerly an independent candidate for president, dropped out of the race in August and endorsed Trump, likely in exchange for a prominent role in a potential second Trump term. Some reports suggest that Kennedy could get a Cabinet position, such as secretary of Health and Human Services, or have a hand in choosing appointees. In fact, Kennedy has already recommended a prominent vaccine skeptic for HHS.

Kennedy heading up women’s health would be a disaster. Kennedy has a long history of opposing vaccines, and his anti-vax conspiracies even helped spread a measles outbreak in Samoa that killed 83 people, most of them children. Kennedy also supports restrictions on abortion, and blames the rise in mass shootings on antidepressants and video games.

Kennedy has co-opted Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan into his own initiative, “Make America Healthy Again.” But his own health hasn’t been as impeccable as he claims, admitting that a doctor once suspected a worm ate part of his brain and then died inside his head.

His record with women’s issues apart from health isn’t good, either: He has a reputation as a compulsive womanizer, which may have been a contributing factor in the 2012 suicide of his second wife, Mary Richardson. If more recent allegations are to be believed, Kennedy also carried on an affair with journalist Olivia Nuzzi, leading to her losing her job with New York magazine.

Kennedy’s reputation should be toxic enough for the Trump administration in any role, let alone one connected to public health and women. The question is whether this would help Trump attract any voters on the fence, or remind them that the former president’s reputation on public health isn’t so great either.

RFK Jr. Says Trump Administration Would Advise Against Fluoride In Drinking Water

Liz Skalka
Sat, November 2, 2024

Since dropping his own presidential bid, Kennedy has become a top surrogate for Trump. via Associated Press

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a possible candidate for a role in Donald Trump’s cabinet, should Trump retake the White House — claims that a new Trump administration would immediately advise against the use of fluoride in U.S. public water systems.

Kennedy, a former presidential candidate who has endorsed Trump and a prominent vaccine skeptic, suggested this would happen on the first day of a new Trump administration.

For decades, U.S. health regulators have recommended adding a small amount of fluoride to drinking water supplies to prevent tooth decay. Fluoride at such a low dose is generally considered both safe and effective to protect oral health.

“On January 20, the Trump White House will advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water. Fluoride is an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease,” Kennedy posted Saturday on X, formerly Twitter.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Kennedy’s remarks.

Trump and Kennedy, an environmental lawyer who tried to walk back his criticism of the COVID vaccine during his presidential campaign, have both floated a health-focused role for him — possibly a post commanding health agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

At his rally last weekend at Madison Square Garden, Trump said he would let Kennedy “go wild on health, ... go wild on the medicines.” On Friday in Nevada, Trump said Kennedy would also be “in charge of women’s health.”



Kennedy, according to a video obtained by CNN, told supporters he might be given control of more than one health-focused agency.

“President Trump has promised me ... control of the public health agencies, which are [the Health and Human Services Department] and its sub-agencies ... and then also the [Department of Agriculture], which is key to making America healthy. Because we’ve got to get off of seed oils, and we’ve got to get off of pesticide-intensive agriculture,” Kennedy reportedly said.


Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says Donald Trump would push to remove fluoride from drinking water

JONATHAN J. COOPER
Sat, November 2, 2024 

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump shakes hands with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., at a Turning Point Action campaign rally, Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024, in Duluth, Ga. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., walks on the tarmac as Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump arrives at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, Friday, Nov. 1, 2024, in Romulus, Mich.

 (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

PHOENIX (AP) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent proponent of debunked public health claims whom Donald Trump has promised to put in charge of health initiatives, said Saturday that Trump would push to remove fluoride from drinking water on his first day in office.

Fluoride strengthens teeth and reduces cavities by replacing minerals lost during normal wear and tear, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The addition of low levels of fluoride to drinking water has long been considered one of the greatest public health achievements of the last century.

Kennedy made the declaration on the social media platform X alongside a variety of claims about the heath effects of fluoride.

“On January 20, the Trump White House will advise all U.S​. water systems to remove fluoride from public water,” Kennedy wrote. Trump and his wife, Melania Trump, “want to Make America Healthy Again,” he added, repeating a phrase Trump often uses and links to Kennedy.

It was not clear if Kennedy discussed Saturday’s post with Trump or his aides. The Trump campaign did not answer directly, and a spokesperson for Kennedy did not respond when asked.

“While President Trump has received a variety of policy ideas, he is focused on Tuesday’s election," Danielle Alvarez, Trump campaign senior advisor, said.

But the sudden and unexpected weekend social media post evoked the chaotic policymaking that defined Trump’s White House tenure, when he would issue policy declarations on Twitter at virtually all hours. It also underscored the concerns many experts have about Kennedy, who has long promoted debunked theories about vaccine safety, having influence over U.S. public health.



In 1950, federal officials endorsed water fluoridation to prevent tooth decay, and continued to promote it even after fluoride toothpaste brands hit the market several years later. Though fluoride can come from a number of sources, drinking water is the main source for Americans, researchers say.

Officials lowered their recommendation for drinking water fluoride levels in 2015 to address a tooth condition called fluorosis, that can cause splotches on teeth and was becoming more common in U.S. kids.

In August, a federal agency determined “with moderate confidence” that there is a link between higher levels of fluoride exposure and lower IQ in kids. The National Toxicology Program based its conclusion on studies involving fluoride levels at about twice the recommended limit for drinking water.

A federal judge later cited that study in ordering the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to further regulate fluoride in drinking water. U.S. District Judge Edward Chen cautioned that it’s not certain that the amount of fluoride typically added to water is causing lower IQ in kids, but he concluded that mounting research points to an unreasonable risk that it could be. He ordered the EPA to take steps to lower that risk, but didn’t say what those measures should be.

In his X post Saturday, Kennedy tagged Michael Connett, the lead attorney representing the plaintiff in that lawsuit, the environmental advocacy group Food & Water Watch.

Kennedy’s anti-vaccine organization has a lawsuit pending against news organizations including The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy is on leave from the group but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.

What role Kennedy might hold if Trump wins on Tuesday remains unclear. Kennedy recently told NewsNation that Trump asked him to “reorganize” agencies including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and some agencies under the Department of Agriculture.

But for now, the former independent presidential candidate has become one of Trump's top surrogates. Trump frequently mentions having the support of Kennedy, a scion of a Democratic dynasty and the son of former Attorney General Robert Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy.

Kennedy traveled with Trump Friday and spoke at his rallies in Michigan and Wisconsin.

Trump said Saturday that he told Kennedy: “You can work on food, you can work on anything you want" except oil policy.

Fighting demons: The New Apostolic Reformation is waging a holy war against democracy

Paul Rosenberg

SALON
Sun, October 20, 2024 

Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump pray outside the U.S. Capitol January 06, 2021 in Washington, DC. Win McNamee/Getty Images

“You do not attack the enemy — you attack the enemy’s strategy,” and the strategy of the Christian right “has always been to master the tools of electoral democracy in order to erode and to end it.” That advice, quoting Sun Tzu, came from Frederick Clarkson, a senior researcher at Political Research Associates (and Salon contributor), in a recent webinar, "The New Apostolic Reformation and the Threat to Democracy In Pennsylvania."

Unlike earlier incarnations of the Christian right, the explicit goal of the widely-discussed but little-understood NAR is to install theocracy with a democratic facade, approximately on the Iranian model. They call it “theonomy.” The movement is led by mutually recognized “apostles” and “prophets” who purport to receive direct guidance from God and see themselves engaged in spiritual warfare — literally, as in fighting actual demons — to gain dominion over the “seven mountains of culture”: family, religion, education, media, arts and entertainment, business and government. As in Iran, they wouldn’t just control government but every aspect of society, but would still call it democracy and claim, in the face of America’s "Godless Constitution," that this was what the founders wanted all along. It’s gaslighting in the name of God.

Understanding the NAR’s goals and strategy is crucial in exposing what the movement really wants, most of which is broadly unpopular. And how they want to get there — boosting turnout among a minority base by demonizing their fellow citizens — is highly corrosive to democracy itself. “The left is loaded with demons,” NAR apostle Lance Wallnau has said (according to Clarkson). “I don’t think it’s people anymore; I think you’re dealing with demons talking through people.”


Pennsylvania plays a key role in the NAR’s plans, and reinventing the state’s eponymous founder, William Penn, as a like-minded forebear — rather than the champion of religious diversity and secular government he actually was — is a core part of their strategy, as advanced by NAR apostle Abby Abildness.

The webinar came three days after Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance appeared at an NAR-sponsored event in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, where he stood the biblical teaching to love the stranger on its head, without even trying to quote scripture. That event was part of the Courage Tour, targeting 19 counties in seven swing states “where demonic strongholds have corrupt control over the voting," according to Wallnau, who has recently described Kamala Harris as "the spirit of Jezebel" and "the devil's choice."

Wallnau’s partner in planning his tour is the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-aligned think tank. Vance’s appearance was perfectly in keeping with a whole web of NAR-GOP collaboration, high-level examples of which were provided by researcher Peter Montgomery of People for the American Way during the webinar.

The event kicked off with two presentations on how best to understand the NAR, from former PRA researcher Rachel Tabachnick and religion scholar Julie Ingersoll, author of “Building God’s Kingdom” (Salon author interview here), a study of Christian Reconstruction, which informs most of NAR’s theology.

“This movement has been building in Pennsylvania for more than 20 years,” Tabachnick said. “There is the belief that Pennsylvania is key to taking the rest of the country, a theme that has been repeated in campaigns and media for more than a decade.”

Two Pennsylvania researchers provided research under pseudonyms, focusing first on six key NAR figures explaining the state’s significance, and then on NAR power and influence in Lancaster Country, which has seen a dramatic shift away from its historical Anabaptist tradition.

Collectively, these presentations delivered a chilling portrait of a potent but under-recognized threat to democracy that’s MAGA-affiliated but operates on a much longer timeline, and demands a thoughtful strategic response, as outlined by Clarkson in his closing remarks.
Tearing down the religious establishment

The NAR “predates Trump and it will outlast him,” Tabachnick said. It’s a movement dedicated to “tearing down the establishment, not just in D.C., not just in Harrisburg, but also, and perhaps most importantly … tearing down the traditional religious establishment…. This is not just a religious versus secular movement,” she continued, and should not be framed that way. “This is a movement about reorganizing Christendom under their dominance.”

This entails conflict not just with liberal or moderate Christians, but also with evangelicals, Pentecostals and charismatic Christians who do not share the NAR's theology or worldview. In fact, both the NAR and its predecessor fringe movements going back to the 1940s have been formally denounced by other Christians, along lines that echo Paul’s denunciation of the Colossian heresies: “Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you. Such a person also goes into great detail about what they have seen; they are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind.”

For many Christians, the NAR’s focus on fighting demons is inherently heretical, since it implies that salvation through Christ is insufficient. Indeed, orthodox critics have accused the NAR and its predecessors of practicing the same sort of pagan ritual magic they claim to be fighting against.

For example, NAR father figure C. Peter Wagner, who first named the movement and did more than anyone to give it coherence, specifically developed and promoted forms of “spiritual warfare,” that have little if any Christian precedent. This began with “spiritual mapping” to identify “demonic strongholds,” which has more in common with the practices of various pagan traditions than anything adjacent to mainstream Christianity.

“This is the same movement that led many of the Jericho Marches around the [state] Capitol building in Harrisburg and other states around the country, and organized and led many of the events in D.C. and on the U.S. Capitol grounds in December 2020 and on Jan. 6,” Tabachnick said, events at least arguably informed by the practice of spiritual mapping.

It’s good to keep this context in mind when confronted with the NAR’s claims to speak for all Christians, much less to have a personal download from God. But while it’s easy to dismiss a movement that blows shofars and talks about spiritual warfare, Tabachnick noted, the NAR “is simultaneously mastering the mundane nuts and bolts work of legislative work,” and as head of the state prayer caucus, Abby Abildness has worked with legislators for years, drawing on the Project Blitz playbook that was exposed by Clarkson and reported here in 2018. It starts out with benign-sounding bills and then works up to attacking reproductive freedom, LGBTQ equality and more.

As with Project 2025, “we have playbooks and we need to expose them,” Tabachnick said. NAR strategy is “not meant for public consumption,” she continued, “and a little sunshine goes a very long way. The American people don't want this.”

The outraged nationwide response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade is a striking example, but far from the only one. The NAR has long been interested in denying women the vote, as Ingersoll has tracked for more than a decade.

“This is a media-savvy movement, filling the airwaves with claims that those opposed to them are cutural Marxists, communists and, in the words of Wallnau, demons that have to be removed from the high places of culture and society,” Tabachnick said. While it’s impossible to say how many deep NAR support runs, she said research indicates that about 30 percent of adult Christians support the “seven-mountain mandate.”

NAR is one of “two significant sources of dominionism,” having cross-pollinated with Christian reconstructionism, whose founders “produced thousands upon thousands of pages of blueprints for reconstructing the U.S. in accordance with biblical law,” Tabachnick continued. This “Project 2025 for dominion theology” is against taxation, regulation and labor unions, and its theorists “were fellow travelers with states’ righters, the John Birch Society and, later, the Tea Party movement.”

From its neo-Pentecostal roots, the NAR inherits “a strong supernatural component,” including the “belief that individuals receive supernatural gifts, that these apostles and prophets are given direction from God and have been chosen to be God’s government on earth in all the seven mountains.”

While Doug Mastriano’s losing gubernatorial campaign in Pennsylvania in 2022 brought the movement to the surface, Tabachnick said, he wasn’t the first NAR-associated political candidate, only “the first to launch it with blowing a shofar” — a Jewish ritual ram’s horn that Christian Zionist groups have appropriated. It’s an example of how NAR readily gobbles up elements of other faiths. For the NAR, she concluded, Mastriano’s campaign was a major step forward in mastering the tools of electoral democracy than an electoral defeat.
The NAR's widening influence and long-term goals

Ingersoll’s presentation was largely about understanding the NAR and cutting through the confusion around it. Asking if someone is a member is “actually the wrong question,” she said, “based on a misunderstanding about how ideas and social movements work. The NAR is incredibly diffuse by design.”

In part, that’s because of a problem mentioned above: From a traditional Christian point of view, the NAR and its leaders are ungodly. “There are massive egos involved that don't want to be in coordination, let alone under the authority of other people,” Ingersoll explained. But they also fail a basic test of democratic leadership: “They like to preserve a level of deniability. They want to be able to make outrageous claims in some contexts, but not be held accountable for them in other contexts,” she said. Some people who clearly fit in with the NAR will “deny the label, because they don't want to carry around some of the baggage.”

Abstract questions about membership don’t much matter, Ingersoll stressed. What’s important is what people actually do. “People don't live articulated theological systems,” she said. “They assemble components of the systems that work for them in any given context. … Dominionism in the NAR is a fluid assemblage of ideas, traditions and practices that are invoked as they seem applicable.”

For example, the movement simultaneously embraces two incompatible eschatologies, to use the theological term. On one hand, there’s the pre-millennial interpretation of the Book of Revelation shared by most evangelical Christians: The world gets worse and worse until the day of Rapture and the last judgment. On the other is the Christian Reconstructionist post-millennial interpretation: “The kingdom of God was actually reestablished at the resurrection [of Christ], and it’s the job of Christians to build it.” (Hence the title of Ingersoll’s book.) Logically, you can’t believe both at once, but situationally, Christians of the NAR variety choose to believe whichever one seems to fit the moment.

One result is NAR’s long time-horizon. “They think in a thousand years,” Ingersoll said. One home-school movement has developed a package for families to build “a 200-year plan for family dominion.” When she began writing about the push to roll back women’s right to vote about 15 years ago, “People would say, ‘That's crazy. That could never happen.’ I don't know that it can't happen, and among Christian nationalists there is a big discussion now about whether or not it's biblical for women to have the right to vote. If we don't think in the long term, we miss where they're going with all these things.

“When we’re thinking in terms of the election or a current crisis or one particular leader, we are missing the long-term horizon with which these these efforts are made,” she continued. One way to shift focus, Ingersoll argues, is to track the use of terms that circulate in NAR circles, many of which (thanks to her) appeared in the glossary Salon published in May. These include “dominion,” ”biblical worldview,” “patriarchy” (as a positive), “government schools” instead of public schools, “civil government” instead of just government, “lesser magistrates,” “biblical spheres of authority” and “covenant marriage.”

Another complementary focus is to track known pro-NAR individuals and their associates, as Peter Montgomery did in his presentation. He began with high-level examples such as House Speaker Mike Johnson “and a couple dozen members of Congress” who have “gathered with NAR leaders for prayer and spiritual warfare.” His second example cited this year’s Republican convention in Milwaukee, where “spiritual warfare rhetoric was everywhere,” specifically “the idea that the American political scene is not about right or left … but an actual spiritual battle between good and evil, between the forces of God and the agents of Satan.”
The NAR's reinvention of William Penn

“Each state has a specific NAR name and NAR purpose,” explained the researcher introduced under the pseudonym Kira Resistance. “Pennsylvania is not only ‘seed of a nation’ state, but it's also the ‘government-shift state.’” NAR leaders see Pennsylvania as “the holy seed of a government,” not just for the United States but “a holy governmental example to the entire world,” which is one reason, Kira said, why she avoids the term "Christian nationalism."

Kira discussed six key Pennsylvania figures, beginning not with Doug Mastriano but Abby Abildness, who has been a leader in developing, articulating and spreading the vision of Pennsylvania’s special role, with a reverse-engineered, NAR-friendly version of William Penn at its core. To carry out the vision of this imaginary Penn, “You have to elect righteous leaders,” which of course means those who share NAR’s vision.

Abildness once said that God had told her that he wanted to claim the state capital of Harrisburg, Kira recounted, after which Abildness released a video “showing dozens of people on a hill right before the Harrisburg Capitol, bending the knee.”

This kind of ritual performance is typical of the ways NAR seeks to rewrite history and redraw boundaries to suit its vision, sweeping aside inconvenient facts or counter-arguments. In terms of actual history, William Penn’s vision was almost exactly the opposite of the NAR fantasy. As noted on the website of Penn’s country estate, his “belief that ‘Religion and Policy … are two distinct things, have two different ends, and may be fully prosecuted without respect one to the other’ took hold and became one of America’s most important ideals.” In that sense, Penn’s vision really can be seen as the “seed of a nation” in which religious diversity, rather than unanimity, was a hallmark from the beginning.

Like many early colonial leaders and many of America’s founders, Penn was a slaveowner, a fact that has led liberal Quakers to expunge him “from our Friendly pantheon,” as Quaker activist Chuck Fager wrote in 2022. But as he continued, if liberal Quakers didn’t want Penn anymore, Doug Mastriano and his allies surely did:



[I]n Penn there are 340 years worth of — in plain worldly language — overwhelmingly positive branding for Quakers and the liberating aspects of our testimonies.

Christian nationalists now want to turn him and them into their opposite….

Penn had his faults; but a theocrat he never ever was.

Doug Mastriano and his wife, Rebbe, are often referred to as “spiritual parents of the state” in NAR-world, Kira continued. At Mastriano's 2022 campaign kickoff, Abildness said “that Penn's heart was bringing forth the godly foundation to our nation” and that “Mastriano's heart is like Penn's heart.”

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Rebbe Mastriano stirred up the faithful with fighting words: "When the Israelites came into their promised land, they didn't just march in and take it. God had to move in mighty ways to remove their enemies. Our promised land is Pennsylvania, and we're taking it back."

After Mastriano’s defeat, Kira noted, he literally compared himself to Abraham Lincoln, saying, “We are in it for the long haul. We often hear about Lincoln losing important races in his time. In the end God gave him the great victory because of perseverance. This movement is going to stay influential in this state.”
Lancaster County: Microcosm, harbinger or bellwether?

The next pseudonymous presenter, who called himself the Lancaster Examiner, took a hyper-local focus on how NAR power gets built from the ground up. First, the apostolic networks are present in the county, then they attract “big-name visitors” for special events, and then “the local growth of these communities and networks” begins to impact local politics.

At least five or six apostolic networks have been active in Lancaster County and devoted to the mission of “taking over churches,” mostly within “historically Anabaptist communities” such as the Mennonites, the Amish, the Brethren, the Hutterites and similar Christian traditions.

In a follow-up email, the Examiner explained that as with “the NAR's retelling of the William Penn narrative, local Anabaptist-turned-NAR churches have massaged their own history,” citing one sermon in which a local pastor “twists the narrative a quarter-turn or so to frame south central Pennsylvania's NAR community as uniquely called by God for such a time as this.”

It’s quite a historical twist, since “religious freedom is absolutely a core value of Anabaptists,” the Examiner wrote. “But as you've seen, the NAR and similar charismatic evangelical movements engage in the language of diversity and ‘come as you are,’ but all of that is in dissonance with what comes next in their agenda.”

For several decades, he continued, “Local leaders have cultivated communities that are involved in dominionist activities and behavior, knowingly and not. What’s noteworthy is arguably not that it’s happened but that such incredible growth has gone unnoticed. So while Mastriano lost, this movement predates him and will outlive his moment in the spotlight.”

Lancaster County should be seen as a harbinger of sorts, he suggested. "The number of networks that have emerged here feels atypical and significant to me in comparison to other parts of the state," the Examiner said, adding that "Lancastrians have a penchant for reinventing the wheel — or even inventing the same wheel by different people at the same time."

Lancaster County is "different from the rest of the country only in degree," Ingersoll added. "Dominionist Christians have worked for decades to establish a beachhead in culture, whether you're thinking in terms of reconstructionists or the NAR. In some places they've been more successful than others, and they have particularly targeted Pennsylvania because it's such a key state in the election.”
Fighting back: "A quiet call to action"

In the final presentation, Clarkson laid out a broad overview of one key aspect of the NAR strategy “to master the tools of electoral democracy in order to erode and to end it.” The group seeks to “embolden reluctant conservative evangelicals in blue suburbs and make them feel part of a religious and political cause far greater than themselves,” he said.

“Beyond their efforts at electoral mobilization and possible monkey-wrenching is something far more concerning,” Clarkson continued. “NAR leaders are increasingly teaching that normal religious, political and gender differences are to be seen as supernatural evil, as demonic.” Such demonization, as we should know by now, can readily lead to violence.

Clarkson ended with what he called “a quiet call to action,” but “not a call to do things we have done before that haven’t worked, but this time with more energy.” Instead, activists who hope to battle the NAR’s political influence “need to know more than we do now about who they are and what they are about. If knowledge is power, we need more knowledge — and we need to spread it more widely.”

Along with that, Clarkson concluded, NAR opponents “need some agreed-upon vocabulary in order to be able to discuss the knowledge we acquire. This is how good strategy is made. We also need to deepen our knowledge of the rules and practices of electoral democracy. We should not be content to leave these things to political professionals. Democracy belongs to all of us, and we need to act like it.” That was what the real William Penn, flaws and all, actually believed. He wasn’t interested in fighting demons.