RFK Jr. doesn't deny sexual assault claim | The Excerpt

On Thursday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. didn't deny a sexual assault allegation. President Joe Biden tells his campaign he won't withdraw from the race, while calls continue for him to bow out following his struggles in last week's debate. USA TODAY National Correspondent Will Carless discusses how a website profiled students and accused them of 'hatred' amid Gaza War protests. Millions of hungry kids are being denied access to summer EBT funds. USA TODAY Health Reporter Karen Weintraub talks about a procedure that allows patients with an amputated leg to walk naturally. Happy 4th of July! One small Rhode Island town is home to one of the country's oldest Independence Day celebrations.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it.  This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Thursday, July 4th, 2024. This is The Excerpt.

Today, RFK Jr. won't deny a sexual assault allegation. Plus, the latest on calls for Biden to bow out of the race. And how a website profiled students and accused them of hatred amid Gaza War protests.

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Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. did not deny a sexual assault allegation in an interview this week. He was asked about an allegation reported by Vanity Fair that he sexually assaulted his family's then 23-year-old nanny in 1998, speaking on the Breaking Points podcast, Tuesday. He dismissed the assault allegation as part of his rambunctious youth and said, "I have said this from the beginning. I am not a church boy. I have so many skeletons in my closet that if they could all vote, I could run for king of the world." Kennedy initially launched his bid for the presidency as a Democrat, but switched to running an independent campaign in October last year. He said he would consider running for the nomination at the Democratic National Convention if that was an option, saying that the clearest path for him to the White House is through the Democratic Party.

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Congressman Raul Grjalva, a long serving Arizona Democrat, yesterday, became the second House representative to call on President Joe Biden to end his candidacy for reelection. His announcement followed Congressman Lloyd Doggett of Texas, who, on Tuesday, became the first sitting lawmaker to urge Biden to step down. A growing number of major Democratic donors and activists are uneasy at the prospect of President Biden continuing his campaign after his disastrous debate performance last week.

Several major donors, who have pumped thousands into the Biden campaign, told USA TODAY that they were not given satisfactory answers as to what caused the poor performance. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the president had a cold, but was not on cold medication during a press briefing with reporters on Tuesday. Biden has said he was feeling the effects of jet lag after extensive travel. Still, many donors want Democrats to consider alternatives. But Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris joined an all staff campaign call, and pushed back at mounting pressure for him to bow out. And Biden made it clear that he's not withdrawing, saying, "No one's pushing me out." Meanwhile, 24 Democratic governors met with Biden and Harris yesterday, seeking assurance that he can survive the fallout from his debate performance. You can read more with a link in today's show notes.

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Amid Gaza War protests, a website called Canary Mission profiled students and accused them of hatred. My colleague, Sarah Ganam, spoke with USA TODAY national correspondent, Will Carless, to learn more.

Sara Ganim:

Will, thank you so much for joining me today.

Will Carless:

Thanks for having me.

Sara Ganim:

Let's jump right in. What is Canary Mission?

Will Carless:

Canary Mission is essentially a website that contains thousands and thousands of pages of profiles of mainly students, professors, but also professionals, who, according to the website, have engaged in protests or demonstrations that exhibit some sort of hatred towards Israel or the United States. That's their definition. It's also quite a shady website and nobody knows who's behind it. It's registered to a charity in Israel that it is itself registered to what appears to be an abandoned building in a town west of Jerusalem. So we don't know much about the inner workings of it.

Sara Ganim:

You report that the website says that the Mission is about combating hatred. What do the longstanding groups that we know traditionally exist to combat hatred say about their methodology, their anonymity, how they work?

Will Carless:

When the ADL, the Anti-Defamation League, for example, decides to call a certain group a hate group, Oren Segel or Jonathan Greenblatt from the ADL will stand up and will be grilled by people like me, by reporters, also by politicians, everything else. They can also be challenged by the individuals who can say, "Look, this is not fair. You're calling us hateful, but we're really not." With Canary Mission, there's no such process for that because we don't know who's behind it. So they can essentially just name and shame whomever they want. For a lot of these young people, particularly students, that becomes indelibly on their record. So that if you Google a lot of these people, the top result, or the top three results, is their Canary Mission profile, calling them an anti-Semite and a hater and all the rest of it.

Sara Ganim:

Is there anything that these students, or anyone else who's named on this site, can do?

Will Carless:

Yes, there is one way to get taken off Canary Mission, and that is essentially to go groveling to Canary Mission and apologize, and write them a letter saying, "I renounce all of my beliefs and all of my ideas. And I was wrong." And then they say they will take you off the site. And they claim that they've taken dozens of people off the site by doing that. But that appears to be really the only way.

Sara Ganim:

And what has the result been for people who don't write that letter? Have there been documented consequences?

Will Carless:

I spent a month and a half just calling people on this list, and asking them about their experience. And I heard some real horror stories. And it should be noted that Canary Mission also will post on X about a profile. They'll post on Instagram. They do a lot of promotion of these profiles as they go up. And people received death threats, harassment, rape threats. It was really horrible stuff. Now, it's the internet. So luckily for most of these people, that goes away after a couple of days. But what doesn't go away is, like I said earlier, this is the principal thing that you find when you search for these people online. So you have really young people who are in their late teens or early twenties, who have the rest of their lives before them, and any prospective employer, any prospective educational institution that is backgrounding these people, this is literally the top thing that comes up for them.

Sara Ganim:

You write about a Columbia student named Layla Saliba. Can you tell us her story?

Will Carless:

Yes. So I spoke with Layla a couple of times. She says that something like 13 members of her family were killed in a horrific incident in the bombing of a Greek Orthodox church in Gaza City. And she said that really spurred her into action. But as she says, she's doing what she would call educational activism. Does she support the Palestinian people? Absolutely, that's her family, that's her background. But she says she's very careful not to express hatred towards Jewish people or to the State of Israel. She's not happy with what the current government of Israel is doing, but she says it's not about hating Jewish people. Indeed, she said that what's made that particularly difficult is that some of the people who've really helped her through her trauma over the last few months have actually been her Jewish friends. She's, again, also concerned about her future now that this is out there.

Sara Ganim:

So, more broadly, what do folks say about the bigger implications of something like this? Will it stop future protests?

Will Carless:

That's an undersung point of this, I think, is that, in addition to the thousands of people that they've profiles up about who may be suffering negative consequences, a few of the students said, "Look, you get warned about Canary Mission when you show up for a protest." And that there are undoubtedly hundreds, if not thousands, if not tens of thousands of people, who have been put off going out there and protesting because of this website. And they'll be put on this blacklist and that that'll affect their future. It's really having, I think, a significant chilling effect on the First Amendment rights of students, of professors, and of anybody who wants to get involved with these protests.

Sara Ganim:

Will is a national correspondent covering extremism and emerging issues for USA TODAY. Will, thank you so much for this reporting.

Will Carless:

Thank you, Sara.

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Taylor Wilson:

Money for food is especially tight for families in a dozen states where Republican officials declined to participate in a new Federal Food Assistance Program meant to curb the needs of school families this summer. Summer EBT, or electronic benefits transfer, is the first new Federal Food Assistance Program in nearly half a century. The SUN Bucks program grants $120 per eligible child to be used during the summer months, leveraging existing programs, including pandemic era funding. Kids are eligible if they qualify for free or reduced meals during the school year. Families can use the money in addition to other government food benefits.

The governors of a dozen states, ranging from Alaska to Alabama to Florida, opted out of the program, leaving nearly 10 million students without the aid this summer, according to the US Department of Agriculture. All of these states are led by republicans who have said they oppose welfare or administrative burden of overseeing food benefits, and what they call overreach by the Federal Government. All but two of the six states with the highest rates of food insecurity opted out of the benefits. The two exceptions, whose Republican governors accepted EBT, are Arkansas and Louisiana. You can read more with a link in today's show notes.

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New research shows how the combination of a novel surgical approach and a bionic prosthetic allows patients with an amputated leg to walk naturally. I spoke with USA TODAY health reporter, Karen Weintraub, for more.

Karen, thanks for making the time.

Karen Weintraub:

Thanks for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

So, Karen, what is this new surgical approach to amputations that involves bionics?

Karen Weintraub:

The surgery, basically, instead of just chopping off the limb, I'm oversimplifying obviously, but connects two muscles that are involved in moving the ankle in different ways. Actually, two sets of muscles. One is your ankle moves backward and forward and also side to side. And those muscles are linked during the surgery so that they're connected to each other. And that way, the ankle can move in a more natural position. And, also, the body can then feel where the ankle is in space, as it is in typical prosthetics, apparently you can't feel what your ankle is doing because you don't have that connection to the muscles. And, also, the ankle is powered itself, so you are not powering it. It is electronically powered. Whereas, this one is powered by the person's own muscles and so they feel more in control. It's more their own, rather than a devices, that's moving them.

Taylor Wilson:

And, really, how does this compare to past procedures? I know you write in this piece, Karen, that leg amputations really haven't changed much over the years, correct?

Karen Weintraub:

Apparently, that's a joke in the field that they're still doing amputations the way they did them 2,000 years ago. The researcher I talked to said that, basically, if you look up an amputation in a Civil War era textbook, that it would look fairly similar to the way they're done today. But there are some people who are working on trying to improve things, and this is one of the major steps forward, as it were, that they've been working on.

Taylor Wilson:

And how are the few patients who went through this procedure recovering?

Karen Weintraub:

Yeah, so about 60 patients have had this surgical procedure. In this study, there were seven people who had the surgery, and then this bionic device used with it. And, apparently, it's the combination that's incredibly powerful. So the surgery means that they are able to take advantage of whatever technology is available. And, as somebody put it to me, that they don't need $1 million piece of technology. That it's really just almost anything that can take advantage of this extra muscle control will be helpful for them. And they really were able to move much more naturally. They don't have to adapt to the machine, the machine works with them and with their body in a way that the current systems do not.

Taylor Wilson:

And so, going forward, should we expect this to be the future of leg amputations, or do other barriers remain here?

Karen Weintraub:

So the surgery is starting to become standard in a number of places. It's been done about 60 times worldwide. It's now the standard at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, which is where it was pioneered, and is being done in more and more places. Doesn't take special surgical equipment, or even a special surgical unit. It has not been done in the field, in a battlefield situation. But other than that, in any modern hospital, it should be doable. It does take longer. So somebody who is fragile, or who is not a good candidate for surgery in the first place, might not be able to handle it. But, in general, the hope is that it will become more or less the standard procedure. The bionics, the specific device, probably will be about five years before it's approved and reaches the market, but the pieces of it have already been more or less approved independently. So together, it shouldn't be more than five years before it reaches the market, according to the researcher who's developing it, and also another researcher I spoke with.

Taylor Wilson:

Exciting stuff. Karen Weintraub covers health for USA TODAY. Thank you, Karen.

Karen Weintraub:

Thank you.

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Taylor Wilson:

As communities around the country celebrate Independence Day today, a Rhode Island town is home to one of the oldest celebrations. Celebrating in Bristol, Rhode Island, started in 1785, when Revolutionary War veteran, Reverend Henry Wight, conducted the first of what's known as the patriotic exercises, an event honoring military veterans, according to the town's website. Bristol's parade is believed to have begun in the early 1800s. Some Americans began celebrating July 4th in 1777, the year after the Declaration of Independence was signed. But the holiday did not become more widely observed until after the war of 1812. By the 1870s, Independence Day had become the most important non-religious holiday for many Americans. However you're celebrating today, we wish you a very happy 4th from The Excerpt.

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That clicking noise you hear is the sound of sperm whales communicating, but what exactly are they saying? Tune into The Excerpt later today, beginning at 4:00 PM Eastern Time, when we will re-air, one of our favorite episodes of the year with David Gruber, founder and president of Project CETI, a nonprofit working to translate whale speak. You can find the episode right here on this feed.

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And thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio. And if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson. Back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: RFK Jr. doesn't deny sexual assault claim | The Excerpt