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After a tragedy, a mother wants to soften the rooms where police interview victims
Project Beloved created one of its soft interview rooms at Missouri’s Kansas City Police Department for investigators to interview victims of sexual assault.
Kansas City Police Department
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Kansas City Police Department
Tracy Matheson’s mission for the past several years grew out of a parent’s worst nightmare.
Molly Jane, Matheson’s 22-year-old daughter, was raped and murdered in her Fort Worth, Texas-area apartment on April 10, 2017. Her killer, Reginald Kimbro, went on to murder a second woman, Megan Getrum, 36, just days later.
Kimbro was sentenced to multiple life sentences for those murders and additional sexual assaults in 2022.
Since her daughter’s death, Matheson has channeled her pain into her nonprofit, Project Beloved: The Molly Jane Mission, an organization dedicated to advocating for sexual assault victims. The group’s name was inspired by Molly Jane Matheson’s wrist tattoo that said “Beloved.”
Tracy Matheson said justice was eventually done in her daughter’s case, but she was left feeling like there was more to do. “I have to do something. I can’t stay quiet,” she said.
Tracy Matheson and her daughter Molly Jane Matheson (right) in a November 2016 photo. Matheson founded Project Beloved: The Molly Jane Mission in her daughter’s memory.
Project Beloved: The Molly Jane Mission Facebook
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Project Beloved: The Molly Jane Mission Facebook
She immersed herself in books and studies to learn about sexual assault, how it’s addressed in the criminal justice system and the emotional and physical impact of trauma tied to an assault.
Using this knowledge, Project Beloved developed one of its biggest initiatives: renovating police interview rooms from their harshly lit, cold atmosphere to become as comfortable and stress-free as possible.
It’s a way for investigators to become trauma-informed — acting in a way that anticipates how trauma survivors might respond differently after an assault, for example, and to prevent acting in a way that could re-harm them.
Project Beloved has now worked with more than 100 law enforcement agencies in big cities and small rural towns across the nation to create soft interview rooms. The rooms are to be used to interview victims of sexual assault or other forms of trauma and are renovated to create a comfortable, safe environment as victims retell their harrowing experiences to investigators.
The renovation costs, which are around $2,500 to $3,000, are covered by Project Beloved thanks to donations to the organization and the work can take just a couple of hours to complete.
Since the organization started this initiative momentum continues to grow, with a waiting list now stretching into 2025, Matheson says.
“This needs to happen in Kansas City”
Last month, Missouri’s Kansas City Police Department became the state’s first agency to remodel a formerly stiff and uninviting room (used for both victims and suspects) into a soft interview room to solely serve victims of sexual assault.
The department’s Sgt. Tiffany Davis came across Matheson’s story and her efforts with Project Beloved on a Dateline episode. She and another officer decided: “This needs to happen in Kansas City.”
The room now has blankets, lamps, a nice rug and three chairs — a conscious decision by investigators.
“He or she can choose whatever chair they want. Whatever one’s gonna make them comfortable,” Davis said. “And that’s kind of the beginning of allowing them to have their power back.”
On the walls of each room renovated by the project are framed pictures of nature scenes taken by Getrum, who was an amateur photographer, Matheson said.
“We put three of her photographs up in each of our rooms,” she said. “It’s a way to weave Megan’s story with ours and make sure that people know these rooms come at a very high cost.”
The rooms go beyond providing comfortable chairs and soft lighting. They can make a big difference in victims being able to provide potentially crucial information to police during an investigation, said Matheson and Cortney Fisher, a lecturer at the University of Maryland, College Park focusing on trauma and victimology.
“It’s very difficult for a survivor of trauma to recount coherently and consistently a chronological account of what happened. What they smelled, what they heard, what they tasted, what they felt. And it’s not super accessible, particularly as they are under stress,” Fisher said.
These rooms ideally give victims a space that reduces stress so they can better recount the events and details to investigators in a way that will help police and lead to a prosecution, she said.
The Kansas City Police Department used to interview victims as well as suspects in the same room.
Kansas City Police Department
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Kansas City Police Department
How does trauma impact victims?
Trauma “doesn’t look the same from one person to the next,” Matheson said. ”For so long, we have misunderstood and made the wrong conclusion about victims of sexual assault. And we’ve said, ‘Oh, they’re lying. It didn’t happen, because they’re not acting in a way that we think that they should.’ When in fact, we don’t understand trauma.”
This is something she feels very deeply. Before Kimbro was caught, he had been reported by multiple women for assault and yet remained free, Matheson said.
“He had been investigated multiple times for raping and strangling women in Texas. But the system failed,” she said.
Tracy Matheson says the work of Project Beloved to renovate law enforcement interview rooms has a waiting list stretching into 2025.
Project Beloved: The Molly Jane Mission’s Facebook
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Project Beloved: The Molly Jane Mission’s Facebook
New research in the past 10 years has shown how trauma affects victims’ brains, Fisher said. That impact can include even how a victim remembers details up to weeks after the traumatic event.
Any effort by police, like these soft interview rooms, “that takes the victim’s trauma into account is a great step,” Fisher said.
She says that while the rooms address the physical space, training police not to re-traumatize victims during the interviews is even more important.
Davis, the police sergeant, said Kansas City’s effort to be more thoughtful toward victims experiencing trauma goes beyond these rooms.
“Being trauma-informed, especially when it comes to survivors of sexual assault is so important,” she said. “We have to, as a law enforcement entity, realize that it’s a different kind of victim.”
One observer of the current Senate race in Louisiana noted that Sen. Bill Cassidy could lose his reelection bid.
Annie Flanagan for NPR
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Annie Flanagan for NPR
Sen. Bill Cassidy lost Saturday’s Louisiana Republican primary according to a race call by the Associated Press.
Cassidy, who served two terms in the Senate, was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict President Trump after the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol. That vote put him at odds with Trump and his MAGA coalition, ultimately leading Trump to push Rep. Julia Letlow to run against Cassidy.
Cassidy’s bid for a third term was viewed as a test of Trump’s grip on the party–and of what voters want from their representatives in Washington. The primary pitted Cassidy, a veteran lawmaker, former physician and chair of the powerful Senate health committee, against Letlow, a political newcomer and a millennial MAGA loyalist.
A detailed view of a hat that reads, Run Julia Run, is seen at a campaign event for Rep. Julia Letlow (R-LA) on May 6, 2026 in Franklinton, Louisiana.
Tyler Kaufman/Getty Images
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Tyler Kaufman/Getty Images
A former college administrator, Letlow won a special election in 2021 for the House seat her late husband, Luke, was set to assume before he died from COVID in 2020.
In Congress, Letlow sponsored a bill to collect oral histories from the pandemic and has focused on education and children. She introduced the “Parents Bill of Rights Act,” which would allow parents to review classroom materials like library books and require schools to notify parents if their child requests different pronouns, locker rooms or sports teams.
She also serves on the powerful appropriations committee and has embraced Trump’s agenda.
Letlow, who came first in Saturday’s primary, will face Louisiana state Treasurer John Fleming in the runoff on June 27. Cassidy came in third.
The election result is a victory for President Trump who has put Republican loyalty to the test on the ballot so far this year in Indiana state senate primaries and in Cassidy’s race.
Another major test of Trump’s influence comes in Kentucky’s primary on Tuesday when Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, who has found himself at odds with the president, faces a challenger endorsed by Trump.
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Brass bands in Beijing make way for sticker shock at home as Trump returns to escalating inflation
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump returned from the spectacle of a Chinese state visit to a less than welcoming U.S. economy — with the military band and garden tour in Beijing giving way to pressure over how to fix America’s escalating inflation rate.
Consumer inflation in the United States increased to 3.8% annually in April, higher than what he inherited as the Iran war and the Republican president’s own tariffs have pushed up prices. Inflation is now outpacing wage gains and effectively making workers poorer. The Cleveland Federal Reserve estimates that annual inflation could reach 4.2% in May as the war has kept oil and gasoline prices high.
Trump’s time with Chinese leader Xi Jinping appears unlikely to help the U.S. economy much, despite Trump’s claims of coming trade deals. The trip occurred as many people are voting in primaries leading into the November general election while having to absorb the rising costs of gasoline, groceries, utility bills, jewelry, women’s clothing, airplane tickets and delivery services. Democrats see the moment as a political opportunity.
“He’s returning to a dumpster fire,” said Lindsay Owens, executive director of Groundwork Collaborative, a liberal think tank focused on economic issues. “The president will not have the faith and confidence of the American people — the economy is their top issue and the president is saying, ‘You’re on your own.’”
The president’s trip to Beijing and his recent comments that indicated a tone-deafness to voters’ concerns about rising prices have suggested his focus is not on the American public and have undermined Republicans who had intended to campaign on last year’s tax cuts as helping families.
Trump described the trip as a victory, saying on social media that Xi “congratulated me on so many tremendous successes,” as the U.S. president has praised their relationship.
Trump told reporters that Boeing would be selling 200 aircraft — and maybe even 750 “if they do a good job” — to the Chinese. He said American farmers would be “very happy” because China would be “buying billions of dollars of soybeans.”
“We had an amazing time,” Trump said as he flew home on Air Force One, and told Fox News’ Bret Baier in an interview that gasoline prices were just some “short-term pain” and would “drop like a rock” once the war ends.
Inflationary pain is not a factor in how Trump handles Iran
Trump departed from the White House for China by saying the negotiations over the Iran war depended on stopping Tehran from developing nuclear weapons. “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said.
That remark prompted blowback because it suggested to some that Trump cared more about challenging Iran than fighting inflation at home. Trump defended his words, telling Fox News: “That’s a perfect statement. I’d make it again.”
The White House has since stressed that Trump is focused on inflation.
Asked later about the president’s words, Vice President JD Vance said there had been a “misrepresentation” of the remarks. White House spokesman Kush Desai said the “administration remains laser-focused on delivering growth and affordability on the homefront” while indicating actions would be taken on grocery prices.
But as Trump appeared alongside Xi, new reports back home showed inflation rising for businesses and interest rates climbing on U.S. government debt.
His comments that Boeing would sell 200 jets to China caused the company’s stock price to fall because investors had expected a larger number. There was little concrete information offered about any trade agreements reached during the summit, including Chinese purchases of U.S. exports such as liquefied natural gas and beef.
“Foreign policy wins can matter politically, but only if voters feel stability and affordability in their daily lives,” said Brittany Martinez, a former Republican congressional aide who is the executive director of Principles First, a center-right advocacy group focused on democracy issues.
“Midterms are almost always a referendum on cost of living and public frustration, and Republicans are not immune from the same inflation and affordability pressures that hurt Democrats in recent cycles,” she added.
Democrats see Trump as vulnerable
Democratic lawmakers are seizing on Trump’s comments before his trip as proof of his indifference to lowering costs. There is potential staying power of his remarks as Americans head into Memorial Day weekend facing rising prices for the hamburgers and hot dogs to be grilled.
“What Americans do not see is any sympathy, any support, or any plan from Trump and congressional Republicans to lower costs – in fact, they see the opposite,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Thursday.
Vance faulted the Biden administration for the inflation problem even though the inflation rate is now higher than it was when Trump returned to the White House in January 2025 with a specific mandate to fix it.
“The inflation number last month was not great,” Vance said Wednesday, but he then stressed, “We’re not seeing anything like what we saw under the Biden administration.”
Inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022 under Biden, a Democrat. By the time Trump took the oath of office, it was a far more modest 3%.
Trump’s inflation challenge could get harder
The data tells a different story as higher inflation is spreading into the cost of servicing the national debt.
Over the past week, the interest rate charged on 10-year U.S. government debt jumped from 4.36% to 4.6%, an increase that implies higher costs for auto loans and mortgages.
“My fear is that the layers of supply shocks that are affecting the U.S. economy will only further feed into inflationary pressures,” said Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon.
Daco noted that last year’s tariff increases were now translating into higher clothing prices. With the Supreme Court ruling against Trump’s ability to impose tariffs by declaring an economic emergency, his administration is preparing a new set of import taxes for this summer.
Daco stressed that there have been a series of supply shocks. First, tariffs cut into the supply of imports. In addition, Trump’s immigration crackdown cut into the supply of foreign-born workers. Now, the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has cut off the vital waterway used to ship 20% of global oil supplies.
“We’re seeing an erosion of growth,” Daco said.
Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, the Food and Drug Administration’s top drug regulator, said she was fired from the agency Friday after she declined to resign.
She said she did not know who had ordered her firing or why, nor whether Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. knew of her fate. The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The departure reflected the upheaval at the F.D.A., days after the resignation of Dr. Marty Makary, the agency commissioner. Dr. Makary had become a lightning rod for critics of the agency’s decisions to reject applications for rare disease drugs and to delay a report meant to supply damaging evidence about the abortion drug mifepristone. He also spent months before his departure pushing back on the White House’s requests for him to approve more flavored vapes, the reason he ultimately cited for leaving.
Dr. Hoeg’s hiring had startled public health leaders who were familiar with her track record as a vaccine skeptic, and she played a leading role in some of the agency’s most divisive efforts during her tenure. She worked on a report that purportedly linked the deaths of children and young adults to Covid vaccines, a dossier the agency has not released publicly. She was also the co-author of a document describing Mr. Kennedy’s decision to pare the recommendations for 17 childhood vaccines down to 11.
But in an interview on Friday, Dr. Hoeg said she “stuck with the science.”
“I am incredibly proud of the work we were doing,” Dr. Hoeg said, adding, “I’m glad that we didn’t give in to any pressures to approve drugs when it wasn’t appropriate.”
As the director of the agency’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, she was a political appointee in a role that had been previously occupied by career officials. An epidemiologist who was trained in the United States and Denmark, she worked on efforts to analyze drug safety and on a panel to discuss the use of serotonin reuptake inhibitors, the most widely prescribed class of antidepressants, during pregnancy. She also worked on efforts to reduce animal testing and was the agency’s liaison to an influential vaccine committee.
She made sure that her teams approved drugs only when the risk-benefit balance was favorable, she said.
The firing worsens the leadership vacuum at the F.D.A. and other agencies, with temporary leaders filling the role of commissioner, food chief and the head of the biologics center, which oversees vaccines and gene therapies. The roles of surgeon general and director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are also unfilled.
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