Politics
This Tiny Fish’s Mistaken Identity Halted a Dam’s Construction
For such a tiny fish, the snail darter has haunted Tennessee. It was the endangered species that swam its way to the Supreme Court in a vitriolic battle during the 1970s that temporarily blocked the construction of a dam.
On Friday, a team of researchers argued that the fish was a phantom all along.
“There is, technically, no snail darter,” said Thomas Near, curator of ichthyology at the Yale Peabody Museum.
Dr. Near, also a professor who leads a fish biology lab at Yale, and his colleagues report in the journal Current Biology that the snail darter, Percina tanasi, is neither a distinct species nor a subspecies. Rather, it is an eastern population of Percina uranidea, known also as the stargazing darter, which is not considered endangered.
Dr. Near contends that early researchers “squinted their eyes a bit” when describing the fish, because it represented a way to fight the Tennessee Valley Authority’s plan to build the Tellico Dam on the Little Tennessee River, about 20 miles southwest of Knoxville.
“I feel it was the first and probably the most famous example of what I would call the ‘conservation species concept,’ where people are going to decide a species should be distinct because it will have a downstream conservation implication,” Dr. Near said.
The T.V.A. began building the Tellico Dam in 1967. Environmentalists, lawyers, farmers and the Cherokee, whose archaeological sites faced flooding, were eager to halt the project. In August 1973, they stumbled upon a solution.
David Etnier, a dam opponent and a zoologist at the University of Tennessee, went snorkeling with students in the Little Tennessee River at Coytee Spring, not far from Tellico. There, they found a fish on the river bottom that Dr. Etnier said he had never seen before, and he named it the snail darter.
The fish became a “David” to pit against “Goliath” — because if it were to be protected under the Endangered Species Act, the dam’s construction would be blocked.
“Here’s a little fish that might save your farm,” Dr. Etnier told a local farmer, according to the book “The Snail Darter and the Dam,” by Zygmunt Plater, an emeritus law professor at Boston College.
Elected officials were eager to finish the dam, and grew increasingly frustrated.
“This two-inch fish, which surely kept the lowest profile of all God’s creatures until a few years ago, has been the bane of my existence and the nemesis of what I fondly hoped would be my golden years,” Senator Howard H. Baker Jr., of Tennessee said about the snail darter in 1979.
That year, Representative John Duncan Sr., a Tennessee Republican, also described the snail darter as a “worthless, unsightly, minute, inedible minnow.”
After the Supreme Court upheld the protection of the snail darter, President Jimmy Carter signed a bill that exempted the Tellico Dam from the Endangered Species Act. The dam began operating in 1979.
Jeffrey Simmons, an author of the study who formerly worked as a biologist at the T.V.A., discovered what appeared to be snail darters in 2015 on the border of Alabama and Mississippi, far from the Tellico Dam.
“Holy crap, do you know what this is?” Mr. Simmons said to a colleague in the creek that day.
Mr. Simmons knew it shouldn’t be there if it were truly a snail darter.
Ava Ghezelayagh, now at the University of Chicago, and colleagues conducted analysis of the fish’s DNA and compared snail darter physical traits with other fish. That led to confirmation that it was a match with the stargazing darter.
Dr. Plater, who also argued successfully for the fish in the Supreme Court case, took issue with the Yale study. He said the approach favored by Dr. Near and colleagues makes them genetic “lumpers” instead of “splitters,” meaning they reduce species instead of making more. He believes the findings also lean too heavily on genetics.
“Whether he intends it or not, lumping is a great way to cut back on the Endangered Species Act,” Dr. Plater said of Dr. Near.
Dr. Near said being described as a “lumper” was a pejorative in his world, and he added that most of the research he and colleagues had performed had resulted in speciation splits, including a 2022 study.
“The work strengthens the Endangered Species Act, because it shows how science can be revised with additional information and newer perspectives,” he said. “The methods we use in this study are leading to the discovery of scores of new species, many of which are more endangered.”
Decades after the Tellico Dam battle, the fish formerly known as the snail darter is thriving. It left the endangered species list in 2020.
“This is still a success story,” Mr. Simmons said. “Its listing under the Endangered Species Act worked, regardless of what you call this fish.”
While Mr. Duncan died in 1988, his son, former Representative John J. Duncan Jr., known as Jimmy, said his father would have felt vindicated.
“He felt the project should have never been stopped by that little snail darter,” he said.
Government drones, errant weather balloons, experimental spy planes, rocket launches and exhaust plumes are just some of the aerial phenomena that have generated U.F.O. sightings.
Whatever the source, there is no end to the public’s fascination with mysterious objects darting across the sky.
In recent years, the government has sought to disclose more of the information — including videos, historical documents and grainy images — that it has collected on what it calls unidentified anomalous phenomena. Congress has held hearings in its own search for answers.
On Friday, the Pentagon released what it called “new, never-before-seen” files related to unidentified flying objects on a webpage with fonts and graphics reminiscent of a 1990s sci-fi thriller.
President Trump described it as a promise fulfilled.
“Whereas previous Administrations have failed to be transparent on this subject, with these new Documents and Videos, the people can decide for themselves, ‘WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?’” he wrote on Truth Social.
The Pentagon said more records would be released on a rolling basis.
Some of the initial files include documents from the 1960s space race between the United States and the Soviet Union, when both countries were pushing beyond Earth’s limits.
One of the documents — which has been previously cited in books — was a 1969 technical debriefing of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, the three American astronauts on the Apollo 11 moon mission.
In it, Mr. Aldrin recalls that when he was trying to sleep during the mission, “I observed what I thought were little flashes inside the cabin, spaced a couple of minutes apart.”
Mr. Aldrin also recounts seeing “what appeared to be a fairly bright light source, which we tentatively ascribed to a possible laser.”
A 1963 government memorandum reflects concerns within the Kennedy administration that the United States was not preparing for the possibility, however remote, of humans encountering aliens.
In it, Maxwell W. Hunter II, a prominent aerospace engineer, warned that, without some planning, “our policy will be determined in the traditional manner of grand panic.”
Here’s a look at some key events in the recent push for information about U.F.O.s.
May 2019
A New York Times report detailed strange aerial phenomena witnessed by Navy pilots, including flying objects that they said had no visible engines or infrared exhaust plumes, but could reach 30,000 feet and hypersonic speeds.
June 2021
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report cataloging 143 unexplained aerial phenomena dating to 2004. The report did not draw conclusions or offer explanations for most of the events.
November 2021
The Pentagon announced a new group to investigate reports of unidentified aerial phenomena in sensitive areas, work that would be overseen by both military and intelligence agencies.
May 2022
Pentagon officials, testifying at the first congressional hearing on military reports of U.F.O.s in more than a half-century, showed a previously classified video of a reflective spherical object speeding past a military jet. It remains unexplained. Officials testified that the government had not collected material from any aliens.
June 2022
NASA announced a new study of unidentified aerial phenomena. An agency official described it as “high-risk, high-impact kind of research” that could uncover some new scientific phenomenon — or nothing at all.
December 2022
President Biden signed an $858 billion military spending bill that included a requirement for the Pentagon to review historical documents related to U.F.O.s dating to 1945. That was the year that, according to one account, a large, avocado-shaped object struck a communication tower in a patch of New Mexico desert now known as the Trinity Site, where the world’s first atomic bomb was detonated.
September 2023
NASA appointed its first director of research on unidentified anomalous phenomena. The position was recommended by an independent study team that called for the agency to play a bigger role in examining U.F.O.s.
March 2024
A Pentagon report found no evidence that the government covered up knowledge of extraterrestrials and no evidence that any U.F.O. sightings actually were aliens visiting Earth. The 63-page report was a sweeping rebuttal to claims that the government had secretly harbored alien spacecraft or alien technology.
February 2026
Former President Barack Obama tells a YouTuber that aliens are “real, but I haven’t seen them and they’re not being kept in Area 51.” The clip ricocheted across the internet, stirring wild speculation. Mr. Obama later clarified that he believed extraterrestrials likely exist in the universe, but “I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!”
February 2026
Mr. Trump directed his administration to begin releasing files related to aliens, extraterrestrial life and unidentified flying objects. He also attacked Mr. Obama for his comments about aliens in the YouTube interview, insisting he “gave classified information; he’s not supposed to be doing that.”
May 2026
Days before the Trump administration released the latest files, Mr. Obama said in an interview with Stephen Colbert that the government was not hiding aliens. “For those of you who still think we’ve got little green men underground somewhere: One of the things you learn as president is the government is terrible at keeping secrets,” Mr. Obama said.
Politics
Newsom’s ‘Golden State Start’ promises 400 free diapers per baby as California grapples with budget woes
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Gov. Gavin Newsom is rolling out a taxpayer-backed freebie for new parents, promising hundreds of diapers for every baby born in California under a new statewide program.
The Democrat announced Friday that the state will partner with nonprofit Baby2Baby to hand out 400 free diapers to families leaving participating hospitals, starting this summer. The initiative, dubbed “Golden State Start,” is being billed as a first-in-the-nation effort to ease the high cost of raising a child.
“Every baby born in California deserves a healthy start in life,” Newsom said in a statement, touting the plan as part of his broader push to tackle affordability.
CALIFORNIA IS BROKE, BUT IT’S NOT TOO LATE FOR THE REST OF US
Calif. Governor Gavin Newsom announced on May 8 that the state is partnering with Baby2Baby, a leading national nonprofit organization headquartered in California, to launch a first-in-the-nation program to provide free diapers to all new babies born in California. (Governor Gavin Newsom)
Under the program, hospitals will distribute the diapers directly to parents upon discharge. Officials said early rollout will prioritize facilities serving low-income patients on Medi-Cal, with plans to expand statewide.
During the program’s first year, it will be offered at about 65 to 75 hospitals that handle about a quarter of births in the state and largely serve low-income patients, Newsom’s office said, according to the Associated Press.
The move is the latest in a string of family-focused spending initiatives from the Newsom administration, which already includes free school meals and universal preschool for 4-year-olds.
Critics are likely to challenge the program’s price tag, particularly as California navigates a tightening fiscal environment. Fox News Digital has reached out to the governor’s office regarding the costs of the program.
According to the Associated Press, the state has allocated $7.4 million in last year’s budget to launch the free diaper initiative, and Governor Newsom’s latest proposal seeks an additional $12.5 million for implementation through the fiscal year ending in June 2027.
However, these spending goals collide with a sobering economic reality.
In its January budget overview, the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) noted that while the administration officially projected a $2.9 billion deficit for 2026-27, the long-term outlook is far more dire. The LAO warned that the state faces structural deficits ranging from $20 billion to $35 billion annually over the coming years
The state has partnered with nonprofit Baby2Baby to manufacture the diapers under the label “Golden State Start.” (Governor Gavin Newsom)
State officials said that they are also looking at ways to take on major diaper brands and drive down prices.
Baby2Baby, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that distributes supplies to children in need, will handle manufacturing and logistics for the program. The group says diaper need is widespread, with as many as one in two families struggling to afford them.
CALIFORNIA SCHOOL DISTRICT INFORMS PARENTS PERIOD PRODUCTS ARE IN BATHROOMS FOR ‘ANY STUDENT WHO MENSTRUATES’
Co-CEOs Norah Weinstein and Kelly Sawyer Patricof praised the partnership as “historic,” saying it will help families during one of their most financially vulnerable moments.
“We are incredibly grateful to Governor Newsom for his ongoing commitment to combating diaper needs in California and could not be prouder to partner on this historic initiative that will support moms and babies at their most vulnerable time,” Weinstein and Patricof said in a joint statement.
During the program’s first year, it will be offered at about 65 to 75 hospitals that handle about a quarter of births in the state and largely serve low-income patients, Newsom’s office said. (Governor Gavin Newsom)
The announcement comes two years after Tennessee and Delaware became the first U.S. states to offer free diapers to families enrolled in their Medicaid programs, which provide healthcare to low-income families.
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Tennessee families can go to pharmacies to pick up 100 diapers per month for children under two. The Delaware program, which began as a pilot before the state extended it in 2024, provides individuals with up to 80 diapers and up to one pack of baby wipes per week in the first 12 weeks.
Fox News Digital’s Michael Dorgan and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Politics
California hospitals will soon provide free diapers to newborns thanks to new state program
SACRAMENTO — Newborns won’t be leaving the hospital empty-handed in California.
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Friday that the state is partnering with Baby2Baby to provide 400 free diapers to every newborn. Baby2Baby is a national nonprofit based in California that provides clothing and other basic necessities to children.
The governor said it would help families with the rising cost of living.
“Since the pandemic, we have seen the cost of diapers go up by 45%,” said Newsom, speaking at a press conference in San Francisco. “One out of four families skip meals to pay for diapers.”
Engage with our community-funded journalism as we delve into child care, transitional kindergarten, health and other issues affecting children from birth through age 5.
The new program, dubbed the Golden State Start, will launch this summer. Participating hospitals will distribute the diapers to families at the time of discharge. Forty million diapers will be distributed during the program’s first year, with a goal of later expanding the program to provide 160 million.
Newsom said the state will prioritize hospitals that serve large numbers of parents enrolled in Medi-Cal, California’s version of the federal Medicaid program providing healthcare coverage to low-income Americans. The state plans to later expand to additional hospitals and birthing centers.
The governor described the program as the first of its kind in the nation.
“We are not imitating; we are a model to others,” he said.
Baby2Baby Co-CEOs Norah Weinstein and Kelly Sawyer Patricof said they were proud to partner with California.
“Diapers are at the core of our mission at Baby2Baby as a shocking one in two families in this country struggles to afford them,” they wrote in a joint statement.
Kim Johnson, secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency, said the initiative would help families enjoy their first few weeks at home with a new baby.
“The first days at home with a newborn should be focused on the love, connection, and joy of an expanded family, not stress about affording diapers,” Johnson said in a statement. “This program helps ensure families can begin that journey with greater stability and peace of mind.”
The National Diaper Bank Network, a national nonprofit that tracks diaper insecurity, found about 60% of low-income families nationwide struggle with the cost of diapers and rely on less-frequent changes to get by. The organization said dirty diapers leave babies at risk of developing rashes or urinary tract infections.
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