GBONEWS: Trump Moves to Slash Programs, Makes Global Hotel Deals; Reclaiming Journalism; Books on Homelessness, Alzheimer’s Fraud; 119th Congress on Aging, Senate Senior Wellness Hearing; & MORE
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations.
January 30, 2024 — Volume 32, Number 2
EDITOR’S NOTE: GBONews, e-news of the Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), publishes alerts for journalists, producers and authors covering generational issues. If you have difficulty getting to the full issue of GBONews with the links provided below, simply go to www.gbonews.org to read the latest or past editions. Send your news of stories or books (by you and others), fellowships, awards or pertinent kvetches to GBO News Editor Paul Kleyman. [pfkleyman@gmail.com]. To subscribe to GBONews.org at no charge, simply send a request to Paul with your name, address, phone number and editorial affiliation or note that you freelance. For each issue, we’ll email the table of contents and links to the full issue at www.gbonews.org. GBONews does not provide its list to other entities.
In This Issue: Shock and Awe, Shuck and Jive.
1. THE WASHINGTON SPLEEN: The New Administration’s Razzle Hustle
* “Key Players and Health Policy Insights for 119th Congress,” by Catherine Murphy, Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO);
* From KFF Health — “What To Know About Trump’s Executive Orders on US Health Care,” 7 quick slides by Tarena Lofton; “KFF Health Tracking Poll: Public Weighs Health Care Spending and Other Priorities for Incoming Administration.”
* “Trump’s Early Health Moves Signal Intent To Erase Biden’s Legacy. What’s Next Is Unclear,” by Julie Appleby and Stephanie Armour.
* “Improving Wellness Among Seniors: Setting a Standard for the American Dream,” U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, hearing on Jan. 15, 2025.
* MEANWHILE – What’s all the fuss hiding–in plain sight?” “New Luxury Hotel in Serbia Will Be a Trump-Kushner Joint Project,” by Eric Lipton, NY Times.
2. INFLUENCERS? HOW ABOUT JOURNALISTS
*** “In Journalism We Trust,” To The Best Of Our Knowledge, Wisconsin Public Radio/NPR: “Reclaiming journalism in a fast-changing media landscape,” insightful interview with Undark magazine publisher and MIT Knight Science Journalism Program Director Deborah Blum (15 mins);
* Plus The podcast includes “How a hyperlocal newsletter is redefining the ‘news’,” with journalist Robert Gurwitt, of the daily newsletter Daybreak (Vermont and New Hampshire, 14 mins.), and an interview with NYT’s Ezra Klein (19 mins).
3. THE BOOKMOBILE: *** The Lost and the Found: A True Story of Homelessness, Found Family, and Second Chances, by Kevin Fagan; *** Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer’s by Charles Piller.
4. GEN BEATLES NEWS: *** Stop the Presses! Gen-Beat Columnist Judith Graham retires from KFF News;
*** Mark Taylor’s Hospital, Heal Thyself (Wiley), wins Chicago Writers Association’s Book of the Year Award;
*** Jeanette Leardi’s Aging Sideways draws author interviews at Forbes and Fortune.
*** Ambika Kandasamy honored by San Francisco Press Club for “Protecting Chinatown’s Older Adults From Climate Disasters Requires More Funding, Nonprofits Say,” in San Francisco Public Press.
*** “Aging in America” series at UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program refunded by SCAN Foundation.
1. THE WASHINGTON SPLEEN
*** The New Administration’s Razzle-Hustle from the funding freeze to inspector general firings is predictably overwhelming much of the underlying news around federal programs and actions affecting older Americans. Who will lead programs, such as the Administration on Aging within the Administration for Community Living won’t be announced until a Secretary of Health and Human Services is confirmed. (Oh, yeah, that guy.) GBONews.org plans to report on the telling minutia and other important developments as they emerge.
Meanwhile, one handy sources is “Key Players and Health Policy Insights for 119th Congress,” an overview of health-related committees and primary members by Catherine Murphy at the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) website.
Several committees in the House of Representatives focus on different retirement-related issues. A primary one to mention is the Social Security subcommittee of the powerful Ways and Means Committee. The new chair is Ron Estes, R-KS, with ranking member, John Larson, D-CT. See the full list of subcommittee members at the linked page by scrolling down. Do you know where your representative is aging?
Although efforts to revive the House Select Committee on Aging, abolished by Democrats in 1993, aren’t apt to get traction in the next few years, the Senate Special Committee on Aging has already been busy under Chairman Rick Scott, R-FL, and Ranking Member Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY.
On Jan. 15, the Senate committee got busy with a hearing titled, “Improving Wellness Among Seniors: Setting a Standard for the American Dream.” This link will take you to video of the hearing, 2:07 hours, also with written testimony by such witnesses as María Alvarez, executive director, New York StateWide Senior Action Council, and Susan Hughes, PhD, Founding Director, Center for Research on Health and Aging, University of Illinois Chicago. The committee’s official page includes information on upcoming meetings and the roster of the new committee members.
Regarding health issues, Sen. Scott is a cofounder of Columbia/Hospital Corporation of American (HCA), the largest for-profit health care provider in the nation. (Wikipedia notes, “During his tenure as chief executive, [until 1997], the company defrauded Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal programs.”)
Sen. Gillibrand’s Wikipedia page reports that earlier in her law career, she represented tobacco giant Philip Morris in civil and criminal cases. The firm’s campaign donations to her did become an issue. In her defense she stressed that she’d voted in favor of anti-tobacco bills.”
To follow age-related White House developments on health care and aging, our last issue suggested tracking Kaiser Foundation’s KFF Health News and the Commonwealth Fund. Since then, KFF published several helpful pieces about the new regime in Washington..
* For example, “What To Know About Trump’s Executive Orders on US Health Care,” by Tarena Lofton (Jan. 22, 2025) consists of a quick-take slide presentation that they did for Instagram. The seven slides, for instance, confirms: “Trump also halted some efforts to limit prescription drug spending by Medicare and Medicaid, as the second round of Medicare price negotiations with drug makers is slated for this year.”
Also, they put out “KFF Health Tracking Poll: Public Weighs Health Care Spending and Other Priorities for Incoming Administration.” It shows that “both Medicare and Medicaid continue to be viewed favorably across party lines, including by majorities of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. Half of respondents in the nationally representative survey say the federal government spends ‘not enough’ on Medicare (51%) or Medicaid (46%). In comparison, only 15% say that the government is spending ‘too much’ on these programs. Over 60% of adults hold a favorable view of the Affordable Care Act.”
The poll found, “There is also broad public agreement on bolstering health care access and affordability. More than half of respondents said that more closely regulating the process that insurance companies use when they approve or deny care or prescription drugs should be a ‘top priority’ for the administration and Congress, and expanding the number of prescription drugs that the federal government negotiates the Medicare price on is also ranked as a ‘top priority’ by a majority of the public including two-thirds of Democrats, 54% of independents, 48% of Republicans and three-fourths of people who are currently enrolled in Medicare.”
Also, from KFF Health News — “Trump’s Early Health Moves Signal Intent To Erase Biden’s Legacy. What’s Next Is Unclear,” by Julie Appleby and Stephanie Armour (Jan. 24, 2025): The Crux: “The directives, while less expansive than orders he issued at the beginning of his first term, provide a possible road map that health researchers say could increase the number of uninsured Americans and weaken safety-net protections for low-income people.” KFF may seem like an obvious go-to, but watch for bylines of their veteran reporters, such as these two. Their reporting offers important insights and clues to which policy rocks need lifting to expose key public health effects.
*** MEANWHILE – Beneath all the shock and awe of the new administration’s first weeks, journalists would do the populace well by continuing to ask, “What are those in power hiding, especially in plain sight?” For instance:
* “New Luxury Hotel in Serbia Will Be a Trump-Kushner Joint Project,” by Eric Lipton, NY Times (Jan. 24, 2025): In a Nutshell — “More than a decade after Donald J. Trump first floated the idea of developing a Trump hotel on a government-owned site in Serbia, his family is now close to securing that dream in a complicated deal that also involves a real estate magnate from Abu Dhabi and Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law. The plan illustrates the continued ambitions of Mr. Trump’s family to forge new international deals, even as he has returned to the White House. It also reflects a diminished focus, compared with that of his first term, on avoiding the appearance of a conflict of interest associated with the overseas projects.”
Most of the funding, says the story, comes from the $4.6 Billion Kushner largely collected for his venture capital fund from Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries. What did the U.S. Constitution say about “emoluments,” again? (Article I, Section 9, Clause 8).
2. INFLUENCERS? HOW ABOUT JOURNALISTS
*** “In Journalism We Trust,” To The Best Of Our Knowledge, Wisconsin Public Radio/NPR (Jan, 26, 2025, 51 mins.): This program, first aired last June, includes three segments, beginning with a somewhat interesting 19-minute interview with New York Times podcaster Ezra Klein by the program’s Steve Paulson.
But GBONews’ editor was especially taken with “Reclaiming journalism in a fast-changing media landscape,” an illuminating back-to-basics (15-minute) discussion and professional tutorial on the elements of journalism, during this fraught era, with Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist Deborah Blum.
In this interview by program producer Shannon Henry Kleiber, Blum, reminds that “both reporters and news consumers have a responsibility to try to understand the truth.” As the director of the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT and publisher of the program’s fine Undark magazine, she discusses the fundamental processes and tasks of reporting, and the need for more public education about what we do.
Blum’s observations held my attention, particularly because I found myself caught off-guard recently when I guest-lectured for an undergraduate journalism class. Among their terrific questions – so sharp, so bright – were requests for recommended good sources on issues in aging. After I mentioned several, one student asked if I could recommend “influencers.” I found myself embarrassed to be blindsided.
Of course, Gen Zers are notably following all manner of social media now, and I should have been ready at least to discuss the need to choose any source well, and according to journalistic standards. We all know what those are, right? But, ah, sputter, sputter. What’s unique about good journalism? Blum offers incisive and succinct language about the evaluative power of our much-challenged but vital profession.
* Also well worth it’s 14 minutes of listening on this program is Paulson’s closing piece, “How a hyperlocal newsletter is redefining the ‘news’,” journalist Robert Gurwitt, who writes the daily newsletter Daybreak, serving the Upper Valley in Vermont and New Hampshire.
Gurwitt discusses the editorial and financial challenges of establishing an independent online local news source. Gurwitt’s daily offers a quick read of everything from school board meetings to nature photos to local bear sightings. He’s been a journalist for four decades, writing for such outlets as AARP, Columbia Journalism Review, LA Times and New York Times.
3. THE BOOKMOBILE
*** The Lost and the Found: A True Story of Homelessness, Found Family, and Second Chances, by Kevin Fagan, One Signal/Atria-Simon & Schuster: “What a whirlwind this past few weeks has been,” posted San Francisco Chronicle veteran Kevin Fagan on Facebook earlier this month. He continued that now-former Mayor London Breed had proclaimed Jan. 8, 2025, as Kevin Fagan Day, also the day of his retirements from the newsroom.
In his reverie of departure, he went on, he was “writing goodbye essays about my walk with [Mayor Breed] to assess homelessness, and on covering the Zodiac Killer for 28 years, playing our annual holiday gig with the Irish Newsboys in Union Square, and now, after 47 years as a working daily journalist, I am ‘retired’ as of Jan. 8.”
Fagan added, “I take that term lightly though, because One Signal/Simon & Schuster will keep me very busy once my book comes out on Feb. 11.” (Well, that’s between stints as a singer-songwriter.)
Having covered homelessness for most of his 32 years at the Chronicle, arguably for as long and deeply as any reporter in the nation, Fagan has concentrated his insights about the reasons for and persistence of unhoused Americans in his book’s story of two lives: Rita, the “surfer girl,” who would age into her 70s on the street, and Tyson, “cool and smart and spiraling” into addiction and despair, despite having been nurtured in privilege.
Fagan writes in the book’s introduction about his own youthful aimlessness, including a period of homelessness. That would intensify his personal quest of his storytelling about hard-scrapple street life with often premature aging for over three decades.
Fagan’s pursuit of the unhoused experience brought him, often with overnight stays, to locations like “Homeless Island,” a wedge of concrete at a heavily-trafficked, panhandle-ready, junction near the city’s center. There, his easy manner and the boyish charm he also brings to his avocation as a local folk singer, endeared him to enough citizens of the curb to enable Fagan to plumb their lives over time for answers. There, but for fortune – and for better, more compassionate public policy solutions – go the rest of us.
Street Sagas of Rita and Tyson
In telling the life sagas of Rita and Tyson, Fagan peels back not only the struggles of real lives, but also of the societal decisions the infest communities with homelessness. That’s regardless of clear and proven solutions he explores that have been revealed in some communities.
Yet, in San Francisco and so many other communities unwilling to commit to ending the cruelties along the pavement, the homelessness issue has persisted, much as the pigeon mites that would infect Fagan’s blanket when he’d spend nights on the Island, causing him to awaken itching and, on returning home, compelling his wife to sometimes burn his clothes. Others there who had no homes were susceptible to chronic and sometimes fatal infections.
By the book’s end, although its long since he camped out with the street colony, Fagan concludes about the unrelenting itch of homelessness in the United States.
Fagan writes, “As a journalist who’s worked in Britain and Australia, I’ll tell you that they and other developed countries like them think we’re insane. They have national health systems, we don’t. They have guaranteed housing for the poor, we don’t. They have mostly free college education and living-wage rules, we don’t. . . . America operates under a different mindset. A more callous one.”
He adds, “I feel two things when I’m squatting down on a sidewalk to talk with someone who’s living hard time outside, often drug addicted . . . First, I may be a newspaper reporter, but in that moment I am also a counselor of sorts, acutely aware that what I say, write, and do will possibly have a huge effect on people who unveil a piece of their soul to me and maybe help them understand themselves better. I have a responsibility to be kind. Helpful, empathetic, accurate … The other thing I feel is misery. And a form of simpatico. After decades of writing about street life and death along with the other hard subjects of a news reporter, I have scars cut deep from immersing in this ocean.”
Fagan concludes, “I always also had the wider context in mind. Writers like me put a spotlight on the miserable, the needy, and the broken, with the aim of helping readers, politicians and other decision-makers to better understand those who are mired at the bottom of society, and how they can be helped, rescued, restored, given dignity. If we do it right, maybe we inspire someone to push for transformative policies, funding, or programming. Maybe readers can have a bit more understanding and care for the next panhandler they meet.”
For a review copy of The Lost and the Found, contact Debbie Norflus
(973) 747-5074; debbie.norflus@simonandschuster.com.
*** Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer’s by Charles Piller is also hot off the press from One Signal/Atria-Simon & Schuster.
A veteran investigative reporter for Science Magazine, Piller spent years exposing that hundreds of Alzheimer’s research papers were based on falsified data and manipulated brain imaging, including by distinguished senior scientists. Standing against a tsunami of grant money and institutional powers, was a small group of honest scientists, who blew their whistles.
GBONews.org readers can see an excerpt of Doctored published as the cover article in the New York Times Sunday Opinion section (Jan. 26, 2025) Headlined, “The Devastating Legacy of Lies in Alzheimer’s Science,” Piller concludes with this ominous update on the book:
“Hubris and lassitude about misconduct — shared by other funders and regulators, journals and universities — has to change. Alzheimer’s research must start self-policing effectively. . . . If the field’s institutional authorities fail to act, skeptics of science itself, most likely including those inside the Trump administration, surely will. Almost certainly, an ensuing overkill would describe ambiguity or innocent human error as fraud and eschew the thoughtful respect and due process needed to preserve what remains vital and true in neuroscience. That would enforce a new calamity on everyone who plans to grow old.”
Journalists may request a review copy of Doctored and press kit from Joanna Pinsker, Joanna.Pinsker@simonandschuster.com.
4. GEN BEATLES NEWS
*** Stop the Presses! Veteran Gen-Beat Columnist Judith Graham announced her retirement in her Jan. 15, 2025, KFF News farewell, “I’m Moving Forward and Facing the Uncertainty of Aging”. On LinkedIn she wrote colleagues,” I’m retiring after 41 years as a journalist, a job I’ve loved. Though I remain passionately interested in the health care system and aging, it’s time to move on.”
Graham linked to her final “Navigating Aging” column, in which she observes, “Time and again, people have described what it’s like to let go of certainties they once lived with and adjust to new circumstances. . . . For me, 2025 is a turning point. I’m retiring after four decades as a journalist. . . . In some ways, I’m ready for the challenges that lie ahead. In many ways, I’m not.”
She confided, “The biggest unknown is what will happen to my vision. I have moderate macular degeneration in both eyes. Last year, I lost central vision in my right eye. How long will my left eye pick up the slack? . . . Like many people, I’m hoping scientific advances outpace the progression of my condition. But I’m not counting on it. Realistically, I have to plan for a future in which I might become partially blind. It’ll take courage to deal with that.”
What’s next? For 33 of those years, Graham and her husband have lived in a four-story home in Denver. She continued, “So my husband and I are taking a leap into the unknown. We’re renovating the house, installing an elevator, and inviting our son, daughter-in-law, and grandson to move in with us. Going intergenerational. Giving up privacy. In exchange, we hope our home will be full of mutual assistance and love. There are no guarantees this will work. But we’re giving it a shot.”
*** Mark Taylor’s new book, Hospital, Heal Thyself (Wiley), “seven years in the making,” won the Book of the Year award from the Chicago Writers Association.
*** Aging Sideways, self-published last year by social gerontologist and columnist Jeanette Leardi, is getting national notice. In one article Forbes (Jan. 14, 2025) contributor
Dan Pontefract wrote, “Leardi takes a bold stance against the multi-billion-dollar anti-aging industry. “What message are we sending when even preteens are buying anti-aging creams? Aging isn’t a problem. It’s a reality—and a privilege. . . . She dismantles the ‘silver tsunami’ myth, a term often used to describe the aging population as an impending burden. . . . She counters. ‘We’re a silver reservoir. When you open the gates of a reservoir, it flows into the culture with skills, wisdom, and experience.” Pontefract also did a podcast with her (36 minutes).
And Fortune’s Margie Zable Fisher interviewed Leadri (Jan. 27, 2025) in “4 expert-backed strategies that will help you age gracefully.”
*** Ambika Kandasamy picked up the second place award from the San Francisco Press Club for environmental reporting for “Protecting Chinatown’s Older Adults From Climate Disasters Requires More Funding, Nonprofits Say,”San Francisco Public Press (Dec. 8, 2023). Her in-depth report in English is also translated into Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese, with those links shown in Chinese at the top of the story. She wrote the article with support from the Journalists in Aging Fellows Program, a collaboration between GBONews publisher, the Journalists Network on Generations, and The Gerontological Society of America, with support from the Archstone Foundation.
*** Good News for the “Aging in America” series at University of California, Berkley’s Investigative Reporting Program in the Graduate School of Journalism. The SCAN Foundation renewed its grant. Christine Schiavo, the program’s local news editor, emailed GBONews, “Our journalism students will be writing aging stories for another two years.”
The grad students, many pursuing a masters after posting numerous professional articles, had developed in-depth stories for the UC Berkeley program that have appeared in national and local media, such as CNN and the New York Times, as well as San Francisco’s KQED public radio and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Check the out at the “Aging in America” link above.
The Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), founded in 1993, publishes Generations Beat Online News (GBONews.org). JNG provides information and networking opportunities for journalists covering generational issues, but not those representing services, products or lobbying agendas. Copyright 2025 Paul Kleyman. For more information contact GBO Editor Paul Kleyman.
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