Politics
Ethel Kennedy, widow of Robert Kennedy lived much of her life in his shadow, has died
For years, the enduring public image of Ethel Kennedy was as the stoic widow of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, who marked the passing years kneeling with their many children at her husband’s grave in Arlington National Cemetery, near that of his brother, President John F. Kennedy.
She was pregnant with their 11th child when the senator was shot June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles moments after declaring victory in the California presidential Democratic primary. It was Ethel who calmly pushed back the surging crowd to give her dying husband air.
With her husband’s brother, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Ethel helped establish the advocacy organization now known as Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, in 1968. Its mission grew from finding creative solutions to poverty and political disenfranchisement in the U.S. to funding humanitarian and human rights projects around the world.
Kennedy, who lived much of her life in her husband’s shadow, died Thursday, her family said, according to the Associated Press. She was 96.
Kennedy had been hospitalized after suffering a stroke in her sleep on Oct. 3.
“It is with our hearts full of love that we announce the passing of our amazing grandmother,” Joe Kennedy III posted on X. “She died this morning from complications related to a stroke suffered last week.”
The burden of loss she shouldered was enormous. Her parents and a brother were killed in separate plane crashes and, decades later, two of her sons died early deaths — one from a drug overdose, another in a freak skiing accident.
But a Catholic faith so strong that she once seriously contemplated becoming a nun helped sustain her. When her future husband heard of her quandary, he is said to have quipped, “I’ll compete with anyone, but how can I compete with God?”
Because of her religious beliefs, she never considered remarrying, according to friends.
“How could I possibly do that with Bobby looking down from heaven? That would be adultery,” Ethel told friends who suggested she marry again, People magazine reported in 1991.
Her husband’s sister, the late Eunice Kennedy Shriver, and others gave another reason.
“I don’t believe,” Shriver told People in 1998, “she ever thought any other man was as good as Bobby,” whom Ethel had married in 1950.
Friends said Ethel was more Kennedy than many born with the name — she truly loved politics and campaigning and, when her husband was assassinated, she presented a gallantly brave face to the world, much as President Kennedy’s widow Jackie had.
Privately, Ethel was overwhelmed with grief after her husband’s death and retreated to Hickory Hill, the McLean, Va., estate once owned by President Kennedy.
Ethel Kennedy, wife of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, arrives at Holy Trinity Church.
(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)
By most accounts, she struggled to raise so many children by herself. More than 17 years separated her eldest child, Kathleen, and her youngest, Rory, born about six months after her father died. Ethel’s enduring grief only intensified the task.
Her mood “swept from deep private despair to manic irritability to frenetic highs of ceaseless activity,” Laurence Leamer wrote in the 1994 biography “The Kennedy Women.”
The household in the 1970s was routinely described as a three-ring circus filled with rowdy kids, lost pets and haggard servants who often quit in frustration, saying Ethel was difficult to work for. Barbara Gibson, longtime secretary of Ethel’s mother-in-law, Rose Kennedy, once said the children “ran rampant.” Several struggled with substance abuse.
The three eldest boys — Joseph, Robert Jr. and David — bore the brunt of their mother’s “capricious temperament,” Leamer wrote. Her handling of the rebellious teenagers had an angry quality, as if their behavior were an insult to their father’s memory, friends later said.
Her ninth child, Max, said his mother meted out discipline in her own way, through healthy competition.
“If we were out sailing, we’d have more fun than anyone else in the harbor,” Max told People in 1998. “If we were memorizing a poem, we’d try to memorize as best as we possibly could.”
Ethel Skakel was born April 11, 1928, in Chicago into a family not unlike the Kennedys — big, boisterous, Catholic and rich. She was the sixth of seven children of George Skakel and his cheerful wife, Ann.
Her father owned the Great Lakes Carbon Corp., a coal brokerage that became one of the largest privately held corporations in America. Growing up, she mainly lived on a large estate in Greenwich, Conn.
At what was then Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart, a school for women in New York, she roomed in 1945 with Jean Kennedy, who soon introduced her brother Robert to Ethel during a ski trip. He casually dated her bookish sister, Pat, before he turned to the outgoing Ethel.
After graduating with a degree in history in 1949, 22-year-old Ethel married Robert, then 24 and a law student at the University of Virginia.
With Ethel at his side, the sensitive Robert “blossomed,” his sister Eunice later said.
In “Robert Kennedy and His Times” (1978), historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. said the marriage “was the best thing that could have happened” for Robert.
“Her enthusiasm and spontaneity delighted him. Her jokes diverted him. Her social gifts offset his abiding shyness. … Her passion moved him. Her devotion offered him reassurance and security,” Schlesinger wrote.
As a Washington hostess, the spirited Ethel was known for her pranks, especially pool dunkings of well-heeled guests. Her collection of animals could outnumber her children and included a wandering armadillo that broke up tea parties and a pet hawk that once landed on the wig of a politician’s wife.
During the devastating aftermath of President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, she later recalled that she and her husband never really considered pulling out of politics. Robert successfully ran for the U.S. Senate from New York in 1964, and Ethel strongly urged him to run for president.
In the midst of tense talks on the subject, she and their children rolled down a banner from the upstairs window that read “Kennedy for President” and played “The Impossible Dream” on the record player. The song became the campaign’s theme.
Even as a young widow — she was 40 when Robert died — Ethel vowed to spend the rest of her life honoring her husband’s memory, according to “The Kennedy Women,” and to keep living at Hickory Hill. When she put the estate on the market in 2003, Frank Mankiewicz, who was Robert Kennedy’s press secretary, compared it to “selling Mount Vernon.” It sold for more than $8 million in 2010.
At Hickory Hill, her children’s days had brimmed with well-planned activities, Brad Blank, a close friend of her children, told Vanity Fair in 1997. There was tennis at 9 a.m., sailing at 11 a.m., a full baseball game with 18 players at 3 p.m. every day.
“Dinner was promptly at 7,” Blank said. “Ethel would sit at the head of the table, and Joe, or whoever the eldest one was, would sit at the other. There was lots of conversation, and no lack of attention from their mother.”
Yet calamity and heartbreak often seemed to be around the corner.
In 1973, son Joseph, then 20, was charged with reckless driving when his Jeep overturned, severely crippling a passenger. Eleven years later, David — the child who seemed most haunted by his father’s death and had battled drugs for years — was found dead of a drug overdose in a Florida motel room.
Her son Michael, who ran the nonprofit Citizens Energy Corp. and had been in the news for having an affair with his children’s teenage baby sitter, was killed in 1997 during a dangerous game of touch football, played while skiing down an Aspen slope. He was 39.
Nephew John F. Kennedy Jr. died, with his wife and sister-in-law, when the plane he was flying crashed in 1999 in the Atlantic Ocean. They were en route to her daughter Rory’s wedding.
Granddaughter Saoirse Kennedy Hill — daughter of Courtney Kennedy Hill — was found dead of an accidental overdose in August 2019 at the Kennedy family compound in Hyannis Port, Mass. She was 22. Less than a year later, another granddaughter, Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean, and her 8-year-old son drowned in a canoeing accident in the Chesapeake Bay.
Another nephew, Michael Skakel, was convicted in 2002 of the 1975 murder of Martha Moxley, a 15-year-old neighbor, and served 11 years in prison before his conviction was overturned in 2013 and later vacated.
In the wake of grief or catastrophe, Kennedy relied on her faith to hold herself together, those close to her said. She attended Mass daily and typically tried to stay active — swimming, playing golf or engaging in charity work.
Many of her children committed themselves to public service.
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend served as lieutenant governor of Maryland from 1995 to 2003. Joseph Kennedy II spent a dozen years in the U.S. Congress. Kennedy Hill became a human rights activist. Kerry Kennedy is a lawyer and president of the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights.
Son Christopher Kennedy helped run the Merchandise Mart, the downtown Chicago trade center started by his paternal grandfather. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. became a lawyer and noted environmentalist who also promoted anti-vaccine propaganda during the pandemic, while Max, also a lawyer, co-founded the Urban Ecology Institute in Boston.
Her 10th child, Douglas, became a broadcast journalist and her youngest, Rory, a documentary filmmaker whose 2012 project, “Ethel,” focused on her parents’ relationship. In the film, her children laughingly remember their mother as a force of nature who made them aware of the needs of the broader world when their father was no longer there.
Ethel’s good works included the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Project in New York City that had been important to her husband. She also raised money for Earth Conservation Corps, which sponsors environmental cleanup programs; co-chaired the Coalition of Gun Control; worked with various human rights organizations; and hosted fundraisers for political and other causes. In 2014, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama.
In her daughter’s documentary, Ethel conceded that she had endured “a lot of loss” but added: “Nobody gets a free ride. … So you have your wits about you and dig in and do what you can.”
Politics
DHS defends McLaughlin against allegations husband’s company profited millions from ad contracts: ‘Baseless’
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EXCLUSIVE: Newly obtained financial statements shed light on claims that former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin’s husband’s company made millions from a DHS advertising campaign.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem faced intense questioning during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, and Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., specifically called out the agency for contracting a public relations firm headed by McLaughlin’s husband, Benjamin Yoho.
“I have personally reviewed the allegations against Ms. McLaughlin, and I find them to be baseless,” DHS General Counsel James Percival told Fox News Digital. “Nothing illegal or unethical occurred with respect to these contracts. Ms. McLaughlin was not involved in selecting any subcontractors.
“She is, however, a superstar in the public affairs world, so I am not surprised that she married a successful businessman whose services were attractive to these outside firms.”
Newly obtained financial statements address allegations that former Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin’s husband’s firm improperly profited from a multimillion-dollar DHS ad campaign. Lawmakers pressed Secretary Kristi Noem over the contracts during a heated Senate hearing. (Jack Gruber/USA Today)
Kennedy alleged that Yoho’s firm, The Strategy Group, “got most of the money” out of what the Louisiana Republican senator says was $220 million in “television advertisements that feature [Noem] prominently.”
“I’m sorry,” Kennedy said. “Safe America Media was a company formed 11 days before you picked them. And that the Strategy Group got most of the money. And the head of that is married to your former spokesperson.”
“It’s just hard for me to believe knowing the president as I do, that you said, ‘Mr. President, here’s some ads I’ve cut, and I’m going to spend $220 million running them,’ that he would have agreed to that,” Kennedy explained. “I don’t think Russ Vought at OMB [Office of Management and Budget] would have agreed to that.”
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Senate scrutiny intensified over a DHS advertising campaign after Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., questioned whether a firm linked to McLaughlin’s husband benefited unfairly. DHS officials and the company deny any wrongdoing or multimillion-dollar profits. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The Strategy Group is a conservative advertising agency for which Yoho serves as CEO.
Figures obtained by Fox News Digital show a slightly lesser total advertising expenditure of approximately $185 million, with a total of roughly $146.5 million going to a campaign called “Save America.”
However, of the total that went to “Save America,” roughly $348,000 went to production costs, while the remaining $142 million went to “media buys.”
Sources at DHS say that media buys are the cost of actually buying the ads themselves, whether purchased from social media or for a TV ad.
Kennedy also alleged that the bidding process for the contracts never took place and that Safe America Media’s recent founding was a cause for concern and collusion between McLaughlin and her husband’s business.
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Debate over DHS’ “Save America” ad campaign intensified as senators challenged its costs and contractor ties, even as agency officials touted the initiative as a historic success in promoting self-deportation. (Graeme Sloan/Getty Images)
“Yes they did,” Noem responded during the hearing. “They went out to a competitive bid, and career officials at the department chose who would do those advertising commercials.”
The Strategy Group posted to X Tuesday that it never had a contract with the department. While it did receive several hundred thousand dollars for production costs associated with the advertising campaigns, The Strategy Group never made millions.
“The Strategy Group has never had a contract with DHS,” the post said. “We had a subcontract with Safe America [Media] for limited production services. Safe America paid us $226,137.17 total for 5 film shoots, 45 produced video advertisements and 6 produced radio advertisements.
DHS SPOKESWOMAN TRICIA MCLAUGHLIN TO LEAVE TRUMP ADMIN, SOURCE CONFIRMS
Critics raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest in a high-dollar DHS advertising effort, but department representatives say McLaughlin recused herself and that subcontracting decisions were made independently. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
“If you’re going to try to question our integrity, bring actual evidence — we did,” the post concluded.
Because these ads were purchased using public funds, all contract totals are publicly available.
Lauren Bis, who took up the role of assistant secretary once McLaughlin left office, told Fox News Digital Tuesday that scrutiny from Republicans and Democrats over the advertising spending was unjustified because the campaigns resulted in “the most successful ad campaign in U.S. history.”
“Sanctuary politicians are attacking this ad campaign because it has been successful in CLOSING our borders and getting more than 2.2 million illegal aliens to LEAVE the U.S.,” Bis said.
“The DHS domestic and international ad campaign was the most successful ad campaign in U.S. history. The results speak for themselves: 2.2 million illegal aliens self-deported, and we now have the most secure border in American history.”
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The Trump administration reaffirmed that all illegal immigrants are eligible for deportations as they focus on arresting violent criminals first. (Raquel Natalicchio/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images)
Bis also compared the cost of arresting and deporting an illegal migrant to that of the minimal cost of an illegal migrant self-deporting. The department says the advertising campaign played a key role in marketing self-deportation.
A spokesperson at DHS also told Fox News Digital that contractors decide who they hire, fulfilling the terms of a contract, not the department itself.
“By law, DHS cannot and does not determine, control or weigh in on who contractors hire or use to fulfill the terms of the contract,” a DHS spokesperson told Fox. “Those decisions are made by the contractor alone. We have only become aware of these companies because of this inquiry and did not hire those companies.”
The spokesperson also noted that McLaughlin “recused herself” from interactions with subcontractors to avoid “any perceived appearance of impropriety.”
“Upon hearing who the subcontractors were for production of the ad, Ms. McLaughlin recused herself from any interaction or engagement with any subcontractors to avoid any perceived appearance of impropriety,” the spokesperson continued. “DHS Office of Public Affairs is the program officer. Ms. McLaughlin oversees the DHS Office of Public Affairs, which is simply the vehicle for this contract.”
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem takes her seat as she arrives to testify during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
McLaughlin told Fox News Digital the criticism of her and her family by senators at the hearing is a matter of public manipulation.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
“This is yet another example of politicians intentionally trying to dupe and manipulate the public to try to manufacture division and anger,” McLaughlin told Fox News Digital. “The ad spend and contracts are a matter of public record, and the process was done by the book.
“These politicians would rather smear private citizens and American small businesses than do any basic research.”
Fox News Digital’s Alexandra Koch contributed to this report.
Related Article
WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans blocked a war powers resolution Wednesday designed to withdraw U.S. forces from hostilities in Iran, as the Trump administration accelerates its military campaign in a conflict that has killed hundreds, including at least six American service members.
The motion failed in a vote of 47-53.
In addition to pulling out military resources from the Middle East, the measure — introduced by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) — would have required Congress’ explicit approval before future engagement with Iran, a power granted to the legislative branch in the Constitution.
The House, where Republicans also hold an advantage, is scheduled to weigh in on a similar measure Thursday. Even if both Democratic-led measures were to succeed, President Trump was widely expected to veto the legislation.
“We are doing very well on the war front, to put it mildly,” President Trump said at a White House event on Wednesday afternoon. The president, who has come under scrutiny for offering shifting explanations on the war’s endgame, said that if he was asked to scale the American military operation from one to 10, he would rate it a 15.
Democrats dispute that Trump possesses the authority to wage the ongoing operation in Iran without explicit congressional approval.
Acknowledging the measure was unlikely to succeed, they framed the vote as a strategy to force lawmakers to put their support for or opposition to the war on record.
“Today every senator — every single one — will pick a side,” Schumer said. “Do you stand with the American people who are exhausted with forever wars in the Middle East, or stand with Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth as they bumble us headfirst into another war?”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and most of his Republican colleagues have maintained that the president carried out a “pre-emptive” and “defensive” strike in Iran, giving him full authority to continue unilateral military operations.
Republicans saw the vote as the “last roadblock” stopping Trump from carrying out his mission against the Islamic Republic.
“I think the president has the authority that he needs to conduct the activities and operations that are currently underway there. There are a lot of controversy and questions around the war powers act, but I think the president is acting in the best interest of the nation and our national security interests,” Thune said at a news conference.
Senators largely held to party loyalties, with the exception of Kentucky Republican Rand Paul, who broke ranks to support the measure, and Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman, who opposed it.
The vote comes as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday that the war against Iran is “accelerating,” with American and Israeli forces expanding air operations into Iranian territory. He pointed to evidence released by U.S. Central Command of a submarine strike on an Iranian warship, and also lauded other strikes throughout the region as civilian casualties in Iran surpassed 1,000 on the fourth day of the conflict, according to rights groups.
“We’re going to continue to do well,” Trump said Wednesday. “We have the greatest military in the world by far and that was a tremendous threat to us for many years. Forty-seven years they’ve been killing our people and killing people all over the world, and we have great support.”
Republicans blocked a similar war powers vote in January after the president ordered U.S. special forces to capture and extradite Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in Caracas on drug trafficking charges.
GOP leaders argued that the outcome of that mission equated to a quick success in the Middle East, despite an uncertain timeline from the Department of Defense.
In the House, lawmakers will vote on a separate war powers effort Thursday. That bill is led by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), the two lawmakers who authored the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
“Instead of sending billions overseas, we need to invest in jobs, healthcare, and education here,” Khanna said on X.
In addition to that proposal, moderate Democrats in the House have introduced a separate resolution that would give the administration a 30-day window to justify continued hostilities in the Middle East before requiring a formal declaration of war or authorization from Congress.
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