Politics
J. Bennett Johnston, Who Helped Shape U.S. Energy Policy, Dies at 92
J. Bennett Johnston Jr., a Louisiana Democrat and four-term United States senator who helped shape America’s energy and science policies in an era of rising concerns over the perils of nuclear power and the nation’s dependence on foreign oil, died on Tuesday in Arlington, Va. He was 92.
His death was confirmed by his son J. Bennett Johnston III.
One of a new breed of polished Southern Democrats that included Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, Mr. Johnston served in the Senate from 1972 to 1997, a tenure that included Middle East conflicts that threatened American oil imports, and nuclear licensing and safety changes in the aftermath of the nation’s worst nuclear accident, the partial reactor meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979.
A target of environmentalists’ wrath, he favored more nuclear power plants, although public safety concerns limited new construction for decades. But he won fights to sharply expand oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, the major offshore petroleum-producing area for the United States, and sponsored laws to let coastal states share federal revenue from offshore drilling.
As chairman or a ranking member of the energy and natural resources committee from 1973 to 1996, he was involved in virtually all Senate energy legislation, from rewriting the nuclear licensing provisions of federal law to developing synthetic fuels and deregulating oil and natural gas prices to spur production. It was a delicate balancing act for a senator from a state with ferociously competing energy interests.
In a state also renowned for flamboyant politicians like Huey and Earl Long and corrupt rogues like former Gov. Edwin W. Edwards, Mr. Johnston was a notable exception — a quiet intellectual with finely honed political judgments who grasped the technical intricacies of energy exploration and production and could also lucidly discuss astrophysics, subatomic particles and tennis serves.
A trim, athletic man with receding hair, Mr. Johnston — an inveterate apple muncher who was said to be the Senate’s most avid tennis player in his 50s — was an approachable, friendly man, responsive to questions and easy to talk to or negotiate with.
His voting was not based on loyalties. Colleagues said he switched sides according to his views on the merits of proposed legislation. He advocated higher gas-mileage standards for auto manufacturers, but opposed President Ronald Reagan’s strategic defense initiative — a plan to use weapons in space to protect America from nuclear attack — calling it ill-conceived and too costly.
On international policy, he often sided with liberals in support of the United Nations and foreign aid. But he joined conservatives in opposing abortion and most gun-control measures, and championed a 1981 bill to limit busing for racial integration in public schools to five miles or 15 minutes. The measure died in the House of Representatives.
In Senate fights over candidates for the Supreme Court, Mr. Johnston helped lead a 1987 rejection of Robert H. Bork as President Reagan’s nominee, but broke with his party in 1991 to support confirmation of President George H.W. Bush’s nominee, Clarence Thomas.
In 1988, with Democrats in control of the Senate and Robert F. Byrd of West Virginia stepping down as their leader after a decade, Mr. Johnston and Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii ran for majority leader, the Senate’s most powerful post. Both lost to Senator George J. Mitchell of Maine.
Mr. Johnston’s support for higher education landed $110 million for five national research centers at universities in Louisiana. He crusaded for years for billions for the Superconducting Super Collider, a pure research particle accelerator, in Texas, to search for fleeting subatomic structures. “It was lynched by the know-nothings,” he said when the project was canceled in 1993.
“I’m interested in understanding where the universe came from and where it’s going,” Mr. Johnston told Physics Today magazine in 1996. “I’m interested in the Higgs boson, which high-energy physicists hope to find if it exists at all, and, like them, I also hope the search produces surprises.” (In 2012, scientists announced that they had discovered a new subatomic particle that appeared to be the Higgs boson.)
John Bennett Johnston Jr., who rarely used his first name, was born in Shreveport, La., on June 10, 1932, to John Bennett Johnston Sr., a lawyer, and the former Wilma Lyon. He graduated from Shreveport schools and attended the United States Military Academy at West Point and Washington and Lee University before graduating from law school at Louisiana State University in 1956.
He married Mary Gunn the same year. They had four children: J. Bennett Johnston III, Hunter Johnston, Mary Johnston Norriss and Sally Roemer.
In the Army from 1956 to 1959, he became a first lieutenant with the Judge Advocate General’s Corps in Germany. After practicing law in Shreveport for several years, he began his political career in 1964 with election to the Louisiana House of Representatives. In 1968 he won a four-year term in the State Senate.
In a state dominated by Democrats, with nominations tantamount to election, Mr. Johnston in 1971 ran for governor, but narrowly lost the nomination to Representative Edwin Edwards, who then won the first of his four terms as governor. Mr. Edwards later went to jail for eight years for bribery and extortion. In 1972, Mr. Johnston contested the renomination of United States Senator Allen J. Ellender, who had held his seat since 1936 as a protégé of the assassinated Senator Huey P. Long.
But Mr. Ellender died during the campaign. Mr. Edwards named his own wife to the seat pending a special election, and Mr. Johnston won the nomination and the general election. He was re-elected in 1978 and again in 1984 against token opposition, despite a landslide for President Reagan that hurt other Democrats.
Mr. Johnston’s last campaign, in 1990, was his toughest — against David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader who had become a popular state legislator. Even by Louisiana’s baroque political standards, the race was strange: a powerful three-term Democratic incumbent overshadowed by a political neophyte who had not sponsored a single bill in the Louisiana Legislature.
Mr. Duke dominated the campaign with appeals to white resentment over affirmative action and welfare programs, and allusions to his racially charged agenda. But his candidacy and his past associations with white supremacy groups were widely condemned, and Mr. Johnston won a fourth term.
When that term ended in January 1997, Mr. Johnston, who lived in McLean, Va., retired from politics and founded Johnston & Associates, a Washington a lobbying firm that later went out of business.
Mr. Johnston’s son said that he is survived by his wife, his four children and 10 grandchildren.
Yan Zhuang contributed reporting.
Politics
Nearly 20 states sue HHS over declaration to restrict gender transition treatment for minors
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A group of 19 Democrat-led states and Washington, D.C., filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over a declaration that aims to restrict gender transition treatment for minors.
The lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; its secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; and its inspector general comes after the declaration issued last week described treatments such as puberty blockers, hormone therapy and gender surgeries as unsafe and ineffective for children experiencing gender dysphoria.
The declaration also warned doctors they could be excluded from federal health programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, if they provide these treatments to minors.
The move seeks to build on President Donald Trump’s executive order in January calling on HHS to protect children from “chemical and surgical mutilation.”
HHS UNLEASHES SWEEPING CRACKDOWN ON CHILD ‘SEX-REJECTING PROCEDURES,’ THREATENS HOSPITAL, MEDICAID FUNDING
The lawsuit was filed against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; its secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; and its inspector general. (Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters)
“We are taking six decisive actions guided by gold standard science and the week one executive order from President Trump to protect children from chemical and surgical mutilation,” Kennedy said during a press conference last week.
HHS has also proposed new rules designed to further block gender transition treatment for minors, although the lawsuit does not address the rules, which have yet to be finalized.
The states’ lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Eugene, Oregon, argues that the declaration is inaccurate and unlawful and urges the court to prevent it from being enforced.
“Secretary Kennedy cannot unilaterally change medical standards by posting a document online, and no one should lose access to medically necessary health care because their federal government tried to interfere in decisions that belong in doctors’ offices,” New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led the lawsuit, said in a statement.
The lawsuit claims the declaration attempts to pressure providers into ending gender transition treatment for young people and circumvent legal requirements for policy changes. The complaint said federal law requires the public be given notice and an opportunity to comment before substantively amending health policy and that neither of these were done before the declaration was released.
HHS’ move seeks to build on President Donald Trump’s executive order in January calling on HHS to protect children from “chemical and surgical mutilation.” (Tom Brenner for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
The declaration based its conclusions on a peer-reviewed report that the department conducted earlier this year that called for more reliance on behavioral therapy rather than broad gender transition treatment for minors with gender dysphoria.
The report raised questions about standards for the treatment of transgender children issued by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and brought concerns that youths may be too young to give consent to life-changing treatments that could result in future infertility.
Major medical groups and physicians who treat transgender children have criticized the report as inaccurate.
HHS also announced last week two proposed federal rules — one to cut off federal Medicaid and Medicare funding from hospitals that offer gender transition treatment to children and another to block federal Medicaid money from being used for these procedures.
HOUSE APPROVES MTG-SPONSORED BILL TO CRIMINALIZE GENDER TRANSITION TREATMENT FOR MINORS
New York Attorney General Letitia James led the lawsuit against the Trump administration. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
The proposals have not yet been made final and are not legally binding because they must go through a lengthy rulemaking process and public comment before they can be enforced.
Several major medical providers have already pulled back on gender transition treatment for youths since Trump returned to office, even those in Democrat-led states where the procedures are legal under state law.
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Medicaid programs in just under half of states currently cover gender transition treatment. At least 27 states have adopted laws restricting or banning the treatment, and the Supreme Court’s decision this year upholding Tennessee’s ban likely means other state laws will remain in place.
Democrat attorneys general from California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin, Washington state and Washington, D.C., as well as Pennsylvania’s Democrat governor, joined James in the lawsuit.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — Tips provided to federal investigators about Donald Trump’s alleged involvement in Jeffrey Epstein’s schemes with young women and girls are “sensationalist” and “untrue,” the Justice Department said on Tuesday, after a new tranche of files released from the probe featured multiple references to the president.
The documents include a limousine driver reportedly overhearing Trump discussing a man named Jeffrey “abusing” a girl, and an alleged victim accusing Trump and Epstein of rape. It is unclear whether the FBI followed up on the tips. The alleged rape victim died from a gunshot wound to the head after reporting the incident.
Nowhere in the newly released files do federal law enforcement agents or prosecutors indicate that Trump was suspected of wrongdoing, or that Trump — whose friendship with Epstein lasted through the mid-2000s — was investigated himself.
But one unidentified federal prosecutor noted in a 2020 email that Trump had flown on Epstein’s private jet “many more times than previously has been reported,” including over a time period when Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s top confidante who would ultimately be convicted on five federal counts of sex trafficking and abuse, was being investigated for criminal activity.
The Justice Department released an unusual statement unequivocally defending the president.
“Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election,” the Justice Department statement read. “To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already.”
“Nevertheless, out of our commitment to the law and transparency, the DOJ is releasing these documents with the legally required protections for Epstein’s victims,” the department added.
The Justice Department files were released with heavy redactions after bipartisan lawmakers in Congress passed a new law compelling it to do so, despite Trump lobbying Republicans aggressively over the summer and fall to oppose the bill. The president ultimately signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act into law after the legislation passed with veto-proof majorities in both chambers.
One newly released file containing a letter purportedly from Epstein — a notorious child sex offender who died in jail while awaiting federal trial on sex-trafficking charges — drew widespread attention online, but was held up by the Justice Department as an example of faulty or misleading information contained in the files.
The letter appeared to be sent by Epstein to Larry Nassar, another convicted sex offender, shortly before Epstein’s death. The letter’s author suggested that Nassar would learn after receiving the note that Epstein had “taken the ‘short route’ home,” possibly referring to his suicide. It was postmarked from Virginia on Aug. 13, 2019, despite Epstein’s death in a Manhattan jail three days prior.
“Our president shares our love of young, nubile girls,” the letter reads. “When a young beauty walked by he loved to ‘grab snatch,’ whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system. Life is unfair.”
The Justice Department said that the FBI had confirmed that the letter is “FAKE” after it made the rounds on Tuesday.
“This fake letter serves as a reminder that just because a document is released by the Department of Justice does not make the allegations or claims within the document factual,” the department posted on social media. “Nevertheless, the DOJ will continue to release all material required by law.”
The department has faced bipartisan scrutiny since failing to release all of the Epstein files in its possession by Dec. 19, the legal deadline for it to do so, and for redacting material on the vast majority of the documents.
Justice Department officials said they were following the law by protecting victims with the redactions. The Epstein Files Transparency Act also directs the department not to redact images or references to prominent or political figures, and to provide an explanation for each and every redaction in writing.
The latest release, just days before the Christmas holiday, includes roughly 30,000 documents, the department said. Hundreds of thousands more are expected to be released in the coming weeks.
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released a statement in response to the Tuesday release accusing the Justice Department of a “cover-up,” writing on social media, “the new DOJ documents raise serious questions about the relationship between Epstein and Donald Trump.”
Documents from Epstein’s private estate released by the oversight committee earlier this fall had already cast a spotlight on that relationship, revealing Epstein had written in emails to associates that Trump “knew about the girls.”
The latest documents release also includes an email from an individual identified as “A,” claiming to stay at Balmoral Castle, a royal residence in Scotland, asking Maxwell if she had found him “some new inappropriate friends.” Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, has come under intense scrutiny over his ties to Epstein in recent years.
Speaking at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Monday, Trump said the continuing Epstein scandal amounts to a “distraction” from Republican successes, and expressed disapproval over the release of images in the files that reveal associates of Epstein.
“I believe they gave over 100,000 pages of documents, and there’s tremendous backlash,” Trump told reporters. “It’s an interesting question, because a lot of people are very angry that pictures are being released of other people that really had nothing to do with Epstein. But they’re in a picture with him because he was at a party, and you ruin a reputation of somebody. So a lot of people are very angry that this continues.”
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White nationalist Nick Fuentes vowed to campaign against Vivek Ramaswamy in a slur-laced rant denouncing the Republican’s Ohio governor bid.
The declaration came just days after Ramaswamy called out Fuentes during a speech at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest conference in which he criticized Fuentes over some of his inflammatory remarks.
“I think I’m going to go to Ohio and the word that we are looking for is denial. We have to deny Vivek Ramaswamy the governorship. This is the only race I care about in ‘26. It’s the only one I care about,” Fuentes said during a Tuesday livestream. He also used a slur to describe Ramaswamy and said he does not care if a Democrat defeats him in the governor’s race.
When asked by Fox News Digital for a response, a spokesperson for Ramaswamy’s campaign said on Wednesday, “We’re focused on the issues that matter most to Ohioans, not fringe voices that prefer a far-left Democrat to the Trump-endorsed conservative.”
VIVEK RAMASWAMY TURNS TO CONSERVATIVE YOUTH TO SHAPE THE MOVEMENT’S NEXT PHASE, ANALYZES 2026 RACES
Vivek Ramaswamy speaks during Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest conference on Friday, Dec. 19, 2025. At right is White nationalist Nick Fuentes outside a Turning Point event on June 15, 2024, in Detroit. (Cheney Orr/Reuters; Dominic Gwinn/Getty Images)
Ramaswamy laid out his vision for what it means to be an American during remarks Friday at AmericaFest.
“What does it mean to be an American in the year 2026? It means we believe in those ideals of 1776,” he said at the Turning Point USA event. “It means we believe in merit, that the best person gets the job regardless of their skin color.”
“It means we believe in free speech and open debate,” he added. “Even for those who disagree with us, from Nick Fuentes to Jimmy Kimmel, you get to speak your mind in the open without the government censoring you.”
RAMASWAMY REVEALS MAIN LESSON LEARNED BY REPUBLICANS AFTER DEMOCRATS’ BIG WINS ON ELECTION DAY
Vivek Ramaswamy speaks during Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest 2025, on Friday, Dec. 19, 2025, in Phoenix. (Jon Cherry/AP)
Ramaswamy then said, “If you believe in normalizing hatred toward any ethnic group, toward Whites, toward Blacks, toward Hispanics, toward Jews, toward Indians, you have no place in the future of the conservative movement, period.”
“And I will not apologize for that. I will not hedge when I say it,” Ramaswamy continued. “If you believe, and you will forgive me for giving you an exact quote from our online commentator, Nick Fuentes. If you believe that Hitler was pretty f—— cool, you have no place in the future of the conservative movement. You can debate foreign aid, Israel all you want. That’s fine. That’s fair. But you have no place with that level of hatred.”
Ramaswamy declared his candidacy for the Ohio governorship in late February.
Ramaswamy is running to replace Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, shown here in the Old Senate Chamber in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 21, 2025. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
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Current Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, who is also a Republican, is term-limited and will be departing office in January 2027.
Fox News Digital’s David Rutz contributed to this report.
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