A white Ford pickup truck broke through a thick curtain of fog one morning in February, winding its way down a muddy farm road in California’s Central Valley. From it emerged a 64-year-old dairyman, burly and tan, who left the engine running as he lumbered toward me with open arms. 

“You must be Mark,” I said, warning him I wasn’t one for hugging. 

“I’m a hugger,” he said, pulling me in anyway. “I feel like I’ve known you for a lifetime.”

I had spent the past couple of weeks corresponding with Raw Farm founder Mark McAfee, who’d filled my inbox with messages and PowerPoints extolling the virtues of his most important, and controversial, product:

It is delicious.

It makes you feel good (the gut-brain serotonin and dopamine cycle).

It’s great for asthma and literally saves lives.

He was talking about raw milk, which, if you trust 150 years of bedrock science, offers little reason to consume. By definition, it has not been pasteurized, the simple process of heating milk to kill off harmful bacteria. Before the practice was widely adopted a century ago, thousands of babies died each year from illnesses linked to contaminated dairy. Today, most scientists and health experts agree that raw milk has no significant, proven nutritional benefits over its sanitized counterpart, cannot treat or cure disease and subjects its consumers to over 100 times the risk of foodborne illness, which can be especially dangerous for young children.

And yet, McAfee’s farm, the largest raw-milk dairy in the country, is pulling in about $30 million a year, meeting a growing demand from customers who say they want food that hasn’t been robbed of health benefits by industrial processing. Once drawing a fringe crowd, raw milk has been thrust into the mainstream in recent years by a potent mix of politics, wellness culture and a wave of suspicion that health institutions have been compromised by Big Pharma and Big Food. Its proponents have turned it into a symbol of freedom and defiance. More than 10 million Americans now drink it; national weekly sales rose by 65% from 2023 to 2024 alone.

Raw milk’s success confounded me: How had it gained such a foothold in this country, despite regular outbreaks of salmonella and E. coli, and even the discovery of bird flu in Raw Farm’s milk? More pressing still, what was the government doing to protect the public amid demands for products that scientists warn are risky, even deadly? Speaking with McAfee seemed like a good place to start; federal and state regulators had linked his business to more than a dozen recalls and outbreaks that had left hundreds of people ill.

“I’ve put a couple kids in the hospital, and they have been sick, but they recovered,” McAfee acknowledged before my visit. “But here’s the thing: I’m a pioneer. And I’m going against the grain here. I’m climbing a mountain they say you can’t climb.”

McAfee isn’t any ordinary farmer. He is a raw-milk zealot who has escaped serious sanctions despite two decades of skirmishes with the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Justice, which have repeatedly accused him of breaking federal laws and regulations. The Biden administration was on the verge of a crackdown against his farm when President Donald Trump assumed office and turned over leadership of the nation’s health agencies to one of McAfee’s most notable customers. 

The year before he was confirmed as the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ran for president, using his campaign platform to decry the government’s “aggressive suppression” of raw milk. In his new role, he said he was “advocating” for it and celebrated the release of a federal report to Make America Healthy Again with a toast of raw-milk shooters in the White House.

For his part, McAfee isn’t just selling Kennedy’s favored milk. He is selling the notion that his dairy products are safe and healthy — for you, your kids, your grandparents — because his farm thoroughly screens its milk for bacteria. 

“They think we’re some kind of a fringe, weird trend, and we are dead serious here,” McAfee said after he greeted me at his farm, which he runs with his adult son and daughter, 20 miles southwest of Fresno. “And you’ll see that in what we’re doing today.”

He led me into a cream-colored bungalow he called his pathogen laboratory, where two workers in lab coats prepared milk samples.

The farm screens each batch for four types of bacteria: salmonella, E. coli, campylobacter and listeria, all of which thrive in the intestines of cattle and can contaminate milk through microscopic flecks of infected feces. The microbes can cause a constellation of symptoms in humans, from vomiting and diarrhea to sepsis, kidney failure and even death.

“We catch these things and divert the milk immediately,” McAfee said of the pathogens. 

I assumed that after diverting batches, the farm discarded them. 

Later that day, I learned otherwise.

“We have a red-flag system here, where if there’s anything that gets really out of whack, they can immediately tag the milk, and it doesn’t go to anything but cheese,” McAfee told me. “Because, you know, cheese is resistant to pathogens.”

Research has shown that raw cheese is not, in fact, resistant to pathogens; while aging can mitigate some risk, harmful bacteria can still survive the usual 60-day maturation process. 

Hearing about the practice took me by surprise — the farm did what with that milk? — so I asked about it again.

McAfee confirmed that milk with pathogens was used to make cheese, except for batches with salmonella, which he said were dumped or sent out for pasteurization. (I later learned the FDA knew he was doing this and had told him to stop two years ago. But no one had alerted the public.) 

“Our cheese is just wildly successful across America,” McAfee said, noting it was sold in hundreds of stores from natural food shops to chains like Sprouts Farmers Market. “H-E-B down in Texas sells 50,000 bucks a week.”

I wondered how long it might take for the cheese to be linked to another outbreak. 

Unbeknownst to me, one was already underway.

Chapter 1: The Pioneer

In the early 2000s, McAfee was producing pasteurized milk for the dairy group Organic Valley when a raw-milk enthusiast named James Stewart made an unusual request. 

Stewart had founded a private food club in Venice, Los Angeles. Its members included movie stars, “crystal worshippers” and other “fanatical people,” McAfee recalled. They were looking for a steady source of raw milk at a time when consumers were waking up to the risks of food contaminated by additives, fertilizers and pesticides.

“How fast can you drive down here with as much milk as you can?” McAfee recalled Stewart asking.

McAfee, not fully grasping why people would want to drink milk that was unpasteurized, nonetheless went to his silo, filled half-gallon containers and packed them in ice chests. Then, with his wife, he made the long drive south to the L.A. coast.

Dozens of people were waiting for them, McAfee said, launching into a scene that unfolded with a Hollywood sheen. “I couldn’t even get out of the car,” he said. “They’re beating on the windows and opening up the back. … Just mayhem, cheering, excitement, crying.” 

As their $20 bills started flying at him, so did their stories, about how raw milk had healed their health issues, including asthma. The moment transformed him, he said: He realized that he was selling more than just milk — it was “food as medicine.”

Twenty-odd years later, Stewart, too, recalls the moment. “I saw the light go off in his head,” Stewart told me. “He was looking for a way to expand what he was doing and not just be a commercial, pasteurized, homogenized milk provider.” 

McAfee, a third-generation California farmer, was born into a family that had charted an unconventional course. His father, whom McAfee described as both a humanitarian and a rebel, founded multiple farm cooperatives and made national news in 1972, when he helped post bail for activist Angela Davis by putting his land up as collateral. 

McAfee didn’t initially follow in his father’s footsteps. He worked for 16 years as a paramedic before taking the helm of family farmland that his grandparents left behind. The farm grew apples, almonds and alfalfa, and, by 2001, McAfee had expanded into commercial dairy. But his days of producing milk for pasteurization were short-lived; within a few months of meeting Stewart, McAfee converted his dairy to sell only raw milk.

He entered a market on the verge of extraordinary growth. 

California had always permitted raw milk to be sold in stores, but Los Angeles County’s more stringent rules had, in effect, curbed its retail sales. In 2001, food-freedom advocates, including Stewart, successfully petitioned the county to weaken regulations, providing McAfee access to a new pool of customers. That would happen again and again, in state and local governments across America, as the internet, and then social media influencers, drew exponentially more people to the cause. 

Around the time McAfee converted his dairy to raw milk, only 27 states allowed its sale. 

In one way or another, nearly all of them ultimately would.

One thing stood between McAfee and all of that business: a federal regulation restricting the sale of raw milk from one state to another. The 1987 ban had the effect of keeping outbreaks contained, making it easier for local officials to address them. 

But there was a loophole: Raw milk could be sold across state lines if labeled as pet food. 

McAfee saw an opportunity, and he wasn’t subtle about it on the website for his farm, which at the time was called Organic Pastures. The farm “creatively labeled its products for sale outside of California in such a way that it is not illegal,” the site said, and it assured people they could still consume them. Justifying the strategy to an Oregon newspaper, McAfee said in 2005, “I am a revolutionist in this, and I won’t overlook any loophole that will get the milk out there.”

As his raw dairy grew, McAfee portrayed himself as an underdog waging a war against industrialized food. “The giants of the marketplace have processed our food to death to extend shelf life and expand distribution,” he said in a 2006 interview. “The raw milk revolution grows right out of this disorder.” 

Two decades later, he still talks about raw milk with the passion of a convert. He answered even simple questions with lengthy explanations, speaking in a quick, torrential style and snapping his fingers or pinching the air for emphasis. Only later did I realize that much of what sounded spontaneous was a pitch he had been refining in years of promotional interviews and farm tours.

McAfee has professed the benefits of unpasteurized milk in public libraries and chiropractor offices. Raw dairy, his farm has claimed, could cure, treat or prevent myriad diseases and ailments, from diabetes and ear infections to allergies, eczema and arthritis. The farm developed the website icanbreathe.org to promote the so-called Milk Cure for asthma. “Only raw milk works in this natural treatment,” the dairy stated. “Pasteurizing milk kills or changes the natural enzymes, antibodies, and fatty acids that are critical to the physiology of how this works in your body.”

McAfee founded a nonprofit, Raw Milk Institute, in 2011, broadcasting similar claims alongside studies he said support them. While a few European studies he cited observed a correlation between drinking raw milk and lower rates of asthma and allergies, they did not prove raw milk directly led to reduced illness, nor did they recommend its consumption due to pathogenic risk. Experts have suggested the association could likely be explained by the “farm effect,” in which children growing up around animals and agriculture have been shown to have stronger immune systems.

Exhaustive reviews of the published science on raw milk have broadly been unable to substantiate claims of its benefits, and most experts agree that it is neither healthy nor safe to consume. But McAfee said his customers know better. To him, the stories of families who believe raw milk has transformed their health are their own form of evidence, revealing truths that institutions have failed to capture. “If raw milk was a fad or a lie, then why would people repeatedly buy raw milk and then tell the world how they love it,” he said. “Our consumers read their gut and watch their kids thrive.”

He also said the government hasn’t invested enough in research to assess its benefits.

“I’m begging you to say: ‘This is not anti-science, this is extremely pro-science,’” he told me. “It’s using science that is not conveniently accepted yet.”

And for many health-conscious people, this possibility that raw milk may help them — or their loved ones — is often enough for them to try it.

Chapter 2: The First

Mary McGonigle-Martin was shopping in a Southern California grocery store in 2006 when she spotted ads suggesting McAfee’s milk could treat allergies and digestive problems. She thought of her 7-year-old son, Chris, who she suspected was dealing with dairy sensitivity, and later visited McAfee’s website to learn more. She knew the risks of forgoing pasteurization, but the site eased her concerns: It said the farm tested its milk and had never found a single pathogen. 

So she started buying it, and her son started drinking it. And about a month later, he fell gravely ill. What began as a trip to the nearest hospital for bloody diarrhea turned into a race to save his life as his kidneys started to fail. Airlifted to a children’s hospital in Loma Linda, Chris was put in a medically induced coma. He spent nine days on a ventilator and 18 days on dialysis, during which time doctors gave him blood, platelet and plasma transfusions. “He was on the verge of death,” Martin told me. “I had flashes of him being in a casket and being at his funeral.”

Chris had a dangerous strain of E. coli, known as O157:H7, which led to hemolytic uremic syndrome. This rare condition, which mostly impacts children, occurs when bacterial toxins spread throughout the body and damage red blood cells, causing clots in the organs, primarily the kidneys. With quick intervention, most people survive. But it can cause lifelong complications.

While sitting in the intensive care unit, Martin overheard another mother mention her daughter had the same condition. It turned out the young girl had also drank milk from McAfee’s farm. Hoping to intervene before others got sick, the families reported the illnesses to the dairy and the state, which quickly issued a recall and quarantine order, suspending distribution of the farm’s products.

McAfee told me that when he learned of the two sick children, he “wanted to know the truth.” So he took his wife’s Volvo and drove four hours to the hospital. Then, somehow, he found a way into the ICU. “I knew how to get back past security,” he said. “A paramedic can get anywhere, and I sucked up to the nurses.”

Martin told me she was surprised when McAfee introduced himself in the waiting area, but nonetheless she shared details of her son’s ordeal. “I listened to her as compassionately as I could,” McAfee told me. But in his recollection, he observed that Martin’s son was not as critically ill as he’d been led to believe. “He’s eating McDonald’s, watching cartoons, doing just great, and they’re telling the story to the world that he’s ready to die,” claimed McAfee. “I was really upset about that.”

McAfee’s version of events was impossible, Martin told me: When he appeared at the hospital, Chris had just been taken off the ventilator and still struggled to breathe on his own; reams of her contemporaneous notes confirm this. Even after being extubated, he couldn’t have solid food for weeks due to severe pancreatitis. “I was so hungry,” Chris told me. “I started crying because I couldn’t eat.”

When I asked Martin why she thought McAfee gave such a different account of their meeting, her response was simple: “Mark is the master of spin.” (McAfee maintained that his recollection was accurate: “This is not spinning; this is simple truth.”)

Six people contracted E. coli during the first outbreak connected to McAfee’s farm, according to federal regulators; their median age was 8. While the outbreak’s specific strain of E. coli was not found in the products, some samples taken by investigators had high bacterial counts, indicating contamination. 

Chris suffered permanent kidney damage. Now 27, he can’t drink alcohol and will spend the rest of his life under a nephrologist’s care because of his elevated risk of chronic kidney disease. 

The illness lingered in other ways, too. “I would have random flashbacks and panic attacks from anything,” he told me. The smell of hospital soap. The sticky feeling of Band-Aids or tape on his skin. His mother found him a trauma counselor, which was “life-changing,” he said, except he still held onto a knot of resentment. Not toward his parents; he views them as victims like him. “Just so much anger towards Mark,” he recently told me. When he later saw McAfee’s milk being sold at a Sprouts, “I wanted to take a bat and smash the entire aisle.”

Martin couldn’t let go either. She hired Bill Marler, a Seattle attorney who specializes in food safety litigation. Alongside the family she met in the hospital, she sued McAfee’s farm in 2008, and the dairy settled for an undisclosed sum. “They couldn’t find the pathogen in our milk,” McAfee told me. “She claims she had it in her milk with her child, and that’s what the insurance company took to settle, and we weren’t going to litigate it.”

Emboldened, Martin, who was a high school guidance counselor, found her second calling as a food safety advocate, testifying against raw-milk-access bills across the country.

Following the settlement, McAfee wrote to Martin to apologize, but also begged her to move on. 

“Mary, please appreciate that so many children thrive and grow very strong on raw milk,” he wrote. “The very remote theoretical risk of illness from tested, retail, approved raw milk is far outweighed by the health and recovery from the illness that children that drink raw milk enjoy.”

Martin appreciated the note, but recognized that even in his seemingly heartfelt apology, McAfee could not adapt his belief system to fit her experience. “He really believed this was like a fluke. It’s not going to happen again,” she said.

Chapter 3: The Pathogens

Eager to keep showing me his farm’s serious approach to pathogens, McAfee ushered me into his truck to see the milking of his cows. Raw Farm keeps about 1,400 of them, which produce up to 8,000 gallons a day, each priced at $19. The smell of sweet milk hung in the air, mixed with the earthy musk of manure. 

“We’ll see what kind of music they’re playing this morning up in the milk barn,” he mused. 

“You play music for the milking?” I asked. 

“Mexican music,” he said, as he got behind the wheel. “It’s very Pavlovian. … You start seeing milk coming out of their teats.”

In the open-sided barn, workers sprayed a small herd of cows with a fire hose, removing flies and flecks of manure from their bellies, which were then inspected, coated with iodine and wiped with a towel. The steady pulsing of milking machines mingled with a thumping musical beat as McAfee marched down the rows, pointing to their light pink udders. “Super clean,” he said with pride. 

Hygiene appeared to be a clear priority everywhere we went, from the thick binders of safety plans — “not one of those documents collects dust,” he told me — to the sterile, full-body moon suits workers wear to package milk. 

McAfee said the 2006 outbreak opened his eyes to the risk of his product and was part of the reason he developed standards for unpasteurized dairies. 

But more awareness and better practices didn’t stop McAfee’s customers from continuing to get sick — in 2007, and 2011, and 2012, and 2016 — and the farm had to issue recalls more than half a dozen times after pathogens were found in its products.

And then between 2023 and 2024, regulators linked the farm to one of the largest publicly known raw-dairy outbreaks in decades, with more than 170 people falling ill from salmonella. McAfee disputed his farm’s connection to many of the outbreaks, including this one.

“I call complete crap,” McAfee said, claiming that his farm was not responsible for all the cases. “It was 25, maybe 30.” He also disagreed that the majority of patients were children, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had detailed in a report published last year. “I challenge that data at the fundamental level.”

It was a typical McAfee defense. Throughout our conversation, he never lost his composure, even when discussing outbreaks. Instead, he calmly dismissed the government’s methodology, explaining that it was counting cases of “standard diarrhea,” which he said have “no claims for illness,” as they could be managed with “good hydration and plenty of good bone broths and electrolytes and stuff.” 

He also seized on instances when the government could not identify an outbreak strain in his products, but instead found it in samples of farm water and cow feces or drew ties to his farm using genetic sequencing or interviews with patients — practices epidemiologists routinely rely upon. McAfee held that none of this was smoking-gun proof that his farm directly caused outbreaks. Instead, such episodes seemed to reinforce his perception that he was climbing a mountain alone, battling institutions that were already biased against raw milk before hearing his case.

When mandated quarantines ended, he would declare victory.

After his dairy reopened following an outbreak that sickened five children in 2011, he revealed how much people were suffering without his product in a celebratory video. McAfee shook the hand of a young man who was wearing a sideways cap. “This guy came all the way from Alaska to get raw milk!” McAfee said. The young man described a kind of withdrawal: “My immune system broke down. I lost a lot of lean body mass.” When a gray-haired woman said she was driving four half-gallons to her grandbabies in Texas — “that’s how desperate I am for them to be healthy” — McAfee kissed her on the head and called her a “raw-milk freedom rider.”

At least 233 people have been sickened in eight outbreaks that federal and state regulators have connected to McAfee’s farm since 2006, and at least 40 of them have been hospitalized. 

The tally is almost certainly an undercount, experts and regulators told me. Many recover at home from foodborne illness and do not seek out testing.

The outbreaks raised an obvious question: Why hadn’t regulators shut down the farm? America’s food safety system aims to balance public health with people’s freedom to eat foods that can harm them, like raw oysters and sushi. Regulators expect some will inevitably get sick, and so they focus on ensuring consumers, at the very least, are aware of the risk.  

State regulators are responsible for overseeing raw milk sold legally within their borders. In California, they require it to be sampled and tested monthly for pathogens. Raw Farm is in good standing, according to the Department of Food and Agriculture, consistently meeting standards for sanitation and cow health. But spokespeople for that agency and the state Department of Public Health emphasized that the best way to prevent illness is to drink milk that has been pasteurized. Otherwise, they wrote in an email, “there will always be some risk of contamination.” 

Many people who turn to raw milk don’t have a full understanding of that risk, John Lucey told me. A professor of food science who directs the Center for Dairy Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Lucey grew up on a farm and has studied dairy products for three decades. “Cows poop all the time,” he said. “Farms are just a reservoir of bacteria: The soil has got bacteria, the walls have got bacteria, the cows are carrying bacteria.”

One of the draws of raw milk is a deeper connection to its source; by knowing a farmer personally, people assume their food will be more safe, Lucey said. But what raw-milk consumers often don’t realize is that many dairy farmers are in a relentless battle to produce clean milk.

“Sometimes you lose because the cow kicked off the milking machine. Something just happens,” he said. “Farmers do the best they can and they are super hardworking people, but just because Daisy is a nice cow and the farmer is a nice guy doesn’t guarantee that things are sanitary and that they can prevent things 100% of the time.”

Over the past two years alone, nine states have experienced outbreaks that regulators linked to raw dairy, not including those connected to McAfee’s farm. In Washington state, about 10 people fell ill with E. coli connected to raw-cheese consumption, and in Florida, where raw milk can be sold only as pet food, about 20 people got sick. Among them was a pregnant mother whose toddler was hospitalized; she said she caught his bacterial infection and had a miscarriage at 20 weeks. (The Florida farm said its products had not tested positive for pathogens and that it informed customers its raw milk was not for human consumption; the Washington creamery voluntarily recalled its cheese.)

Just last week, Idaho’s health officials announced that nearly 60 people had become ill after consuming raw milk.

Discussing the risk of raw milk with McAfee was a challenge. 

As we rode in his truck to the next stop on the tour, I brought up the prevalence of pathogens, as well as his farm’s pattern of outbreaks. He acknowledged that some risk exists, but stressed that it was “very, very, very small” and was “fantastically” outweighed by raw milk’s therapeutic value. And then, he insisted one should disentangle the benefits from the risk, as if that’s even possible.

“Show me the criticism of raw milk if it’s safe,” he told me, one hand on the wheel, the other punctuating his points in the air. “None.”

“Well, the critics would argue that there’s risk—”

“No, if it’s safe,” he said, cutting me off. “If it’s safe, how could you criticize it?”

“But they would argue that it’s not safe,” I said.

“Show me the risk,” he repeated. “I’ve yet to see it. We found it. We immediately diverted it.”

Chapter 4: The Art of War

We’d seen nearly every stage of production — from “grass to glass,” as McAfee called it — when he parked his truck next to the hangar that houses his Cessna 210 Centurion propeller plane. Next to it, steps from his hacienda-style home, is a bungalow he uses as an office. 

He showed me his replica medieval broadsword, his podcasting setup and one of his favored books, Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War.” He said the ancient Chinese military treatise had informed his longstanding feud with the federal government. 

Two decades ago, his use of the pet food loophole to ship across state lines attracted scrutiny almost immediately. In 2005, an undercover investigator from the FDA called the farm and was told the milk was safe for human consumption. Two years later, according to court records, the farm sent an email to consumers saying, “Raw milk can be shipped via UPS to all US states,” and “Tell everyone who has asthma that they will be cured by raw milk.” 

In 2008, the DOJ pursued criminal charges and a civil suit. McAfee resolved the charges, promising that the farm wouldn’t sell raw milk across state lines again. But prosecutors wanted a court order that would force McAfee and the farm to comply, citing their “unabashed efforts to manipulate the law.” 

To illustrate McAfee’s ongoing defiance, the government pointed to statements he had made online that year and the next. In one post on a blog, he said, “If we ever get raided it will be grand theater. … There will probably be some riots.” In another, he said he would not use guns “until the tipping point” and mentioned “another Wounded Knee, Ruby Ridge or Waco.” Prosecutors argued his conduct demonstrated a “cognizable danger” that he would violate the law again.

In 2010, the judge granted a permanent injunction, requiring, among other things, that the farm stop selling raw milk beyond California and take down any statements promoting its health benefits. McAfee told me the directive was an attack on his right to free speech. “I deeply and passionately believe in the truth, and they were telling me I could not speak the truth,” he said. “I’ve had to have therapy over that, you know. I didn’t want to do something stupid.”

A violation of the order could have led to an enforcement action, but in the years that followed, officials pulled their punches. (McAfee insisted they had no punches to throw.)

The FDA and the DOJ kept finding evidence of violations, in 2016, and 2019, and 2021, according to court records. Though federal prosecutors initially pushed for strong penalties, including holding Raw Farm and McAfee in contempt, they agreed to a consent decree in 2023, which required the farm to undergo independent audits to ensure it was complying with the law.

Then, in early 2024, FDA inspectors discovered the farm had a “standard practice” of producing cheese from milk suspected or known to contain pathogens, according to court documents; lab records showed its cheese had also tested positive even after the mandated aging period. 

That February, federal regulators publicly linked Raw Farm’s cheese to a monthslong E. coli outbreak. Nearly a dozen people across five states fell ill. 

Among them was Paul Panelli, who went to his grocery store in Newport Beach, California, looking for Tillamook cheese to make tacos. Finding it was sold out, he reached for Raw Farm’s cheddar, drawn in by packaging that made it seem organic and all-natural. He told me he didn’t realize the cheese was made with unpasteurized milk.

Both Panelli and his wife, Julie, came down with food poisoning. She was diagnosed with an E. coli infection that left her needing several kidney surgeries. “She literally is afraid to eat things,” her husband told me. The family’s lawsuit against Raw Farm is ongoing; in court records, the farm denied responsibility for their illnesses.

Raw Farm pushed back against the government, maintaining that it followed federal regulations by aging its cheese and claiming to have tested all of it before sale, so no contaminated product reached the market, according to court records. Federal law allows the interstate sale of unpasteurized cheese as long as it’s aged for at least 60 days, though this doesn’t fully eliminate the risk — or account for a farm using pathogenic milk to make it. The FDA told the farm to destroy any cheese made with contaminated milk, arguing that it was violating the law, according to court documents. The farm’s lawyer said it was in compliance, and insisted there was no “bad cheese” to throw out.

To force the farm to follow the government’s orders, it needed a judge’s ruling, but a backlog in the under-resourced Eastern District of California left the case on pause well into 2025. The arrival of the Trump administration that year created a political opening for McAfee.

By the time Kennedy took the helm of the health department, McAfee had already developed close ties to his inner circle. “I go way back with him,” McAfee told me. Kennedy’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, had made a stop at Raw Farm during his presidential campaign, creating multiple videos featuring McAfee. (She did not respond to my emailed questions.) He was even asked to become an adviser to the FDA, McAfee told me. The position never materialized, but McAfee still benefited from the change in administration. 

Without publicly stating a reason, this past January the government dropped its efforts to take action against the farm. A former federal employee with knowledge of the suit told me that cases involving raw milk were deprioritized in the new administration because of Kennedy’s stance on it. 

Natalie Baldassarre, a DOJ spokesperson, didn’t respond to my questions about the decision, but said in an email that the administration will “always be concerned about risks to public health and will continue to take enforcement action as appropriate to protect American consumers.” The health department and the FDA did not respond to my attempts to seek comment. Kennedy, through his department, also did not respond to my questions.

McAfee called the withdrawal a “big win.” Drawing on Sun Tzu’s teachings, he told me that he had learned not to engage in “their war,” but his own. 

“You win the war they don’t expect you to fight,” he said. While officials were gathering evidence, he was focused on the “education” of consumers. He once delivered his message to dozens at a time. Now online influencers spread it to audiences of millions. “They have the guns and the money,” he said of the government. “I got the truth and the moms.”

His work could soon pay off. A month after I shook McAfee’s hand and left his farm, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, reintroduced the Interstate Milk Freedom Act, which would prohibit “federal interference” with the interstate sale of raw dairy in states where raw milk is already legal. 

Massie, who served raw milk at his recent wedding, has a farm with 50 cattle, and Pingree, a former dairy farmer and the only Democratic sponsor of the bill, raises her own grass-fed beef. “The Interstate Milk Freedom Act would make it easier for families to buy the milk of their choice,” Massie said when he announced the bill, “by reversing the criminalization of specific dairy farmers.”

When asked if she was concerned the bill may increase access to a product that puts people at risk, Pingree told me that the bill was not about marketing raw milk or making any health claims. “I trust state departments of agriculture and health to monitor compliance, assess health risks, and enforce the rules in place to protect consumers,” she said in an emailed statement. Massie did not respond to my questions.

Chapter 5: The Devoted

Six weeks after I left Raw Farm, it happened. 

On March 15, federal regulators publicly linked its cheese to yet another E. coli outbreak. 

Nine people were infected across three states; more than half were younger than 5. Of the three people who had to be hospitalized, according to regulators, one developed the same severe kidney condition that Martin’s son had battled two decades earlier. 

Initially, federal health agencies didn’t urge the public to avoid the cheese or throw it away, as they had under previous administrations. Instead, a CDC notice said consumers should “consider” not eating it; the FDA gave no consumption guidance at all. Three federal health employees later told me political appointees had watered down the original language. (The agencies’ advisories have since been updated. Neither the CDC nor the FDA responded to my questions.)

The fact that the agency was under Kennedy’s leadership didn’t make Raw Farm any more compliant when regulators asked it to recall its products. It refused. “If there was ever a question about whether there was a pathogen in our products,” McAfee later told me, “I’d be the first one to recall immediately, voluntarily.”

He said he texted Kennedy to “call off the dogs,” but got no response. 

When FDA inspectors showed up unannounced at the farm, it complied with an investigation. And when the agency threatened to force a recall, the company reluctantly issued its own, 18 days after the outbreak was announced. 

The farm appended several unusual statements to its April 2 advisory: 

This Voluntary Recall is being performed under protest.

This Voluntary Recall is performed as a path forward.

The farm retracted those statements five days later, but continued to dispute the cause of the outbreak and contest the agency’s findings. It had tested its products, found no pathogens and wasn’t at fault, McAfee said.

However, during its investigation, the FDA also sampled and tested the company’s cheese. While it didn’t find the recent outbreak strain, one sample tested positive for E. coli. In their inspection, agency officials also found the farm’s cheese had recently tested presumptively positive for pathogens even after 60 days, showing the limitations of its aging process. The farm destroyed these contaminated batches. 

I reached out to McAfee and asked him whether the illnesses might be connected to his practice of using problematic milk to make cheese. But now, he told a different story. 

“We would in the past divert to cheesemaking,” he told me. “We no longer do.” He didn’t pinpoint exactly when the farm made the change, throwing out dates from two years ago to last summer. “It’s been quite some time.”

I brought up the fact that he’d made similar disclosures in podcasts in the last year and to me just weeks earlier. But he doubled down. 

“I think you have caught me in something where there’s an issue between practice and what I’m saying,” he said. “If I said it, I believed that at the time to be true, but I do know that now we do not use any questionable milk.” 

In almost the same breath, McAfee noted that his farm would not have violated any laws if it had done so. “It’s not illegal,” he said. “That’s why the FDA dropped their thing.” (California regulators told me such a practice was “concerning.” The FDA refused to respond to questions about it.)

Speaking to a congressional subcommittee on April 16 about the outbreak, Kennedy noted that companies usually comply with recalls right away. “But there was foot-dragging,” he said. “This company was intransigent.” 

U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., asked Kennedy whether in the face of these new, serious illnesses, it wasn’t time for a shift in his messaging: “You are the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Is there not some moral responsibility or compunction to say, ‘Don’t drink raw milk’?”

“Every product can contain contaminants,” Kennedy replied. “What we do is inform the public, and we let people make the choice.” 

On April 30, the FDA closed its investigation without taking any enforcement action. McAfee told me his raw-cheese products were back in stores. Sprouts and H-E-B, two major retail chains that have carried his cheese, did not respond to my emailed questions about the outbreak.

“We don’t feel bad at all,” McAfee told me about the entire episode. “Our sales are highest they’ve ever been, and feedback online with influencers is: If the FDA says something, do the opposite. It’s safer. They don’t trust them at all.” 

On a sunny weekend in early May, hundreds congregated at Raw Farm for its annual Camping With the Cows event. Blue skies extended to the horizon, and a small colony of tents, camper vans and motorhomes sprawled out across the lush alfalfa fields. Influencers in cowboy hats chugged cartons of milk. Matt James, the leading man on Season 25 of “The Bachelor,” ambled around with his mother in a T-shirt that read, “Raw Milk Club.”

Many attendees were unbothered by the recent illnesses. They said they consumed raw dairy because they wanted to reduce their inflammation, and avoid additives, and prevent lactose intolerance, and clear their skin, and bring their hormones into balance. They wanted nutrients that didn’t exist in “boiled to death” milk. They wanted to drink it “the natural way.” 

Alyssa Wolfer, a 42-year-old mother of two from Bakersfield, viewed raw milk as a symbol of “true American freedom,” she said. “I very much lean on the side of freedom of people to choose what they consume and less regulation.”

“I’m seven months pregnant, and I drink raw milk because that’s how God has created it to be,” said Lindsay Espinoza, 34, reclining on a bale of hay with her husband and young son. “There’s so much fear behind raw milk, but it makes sense to us.”

Some, like 58-year-old Melanie Copeland from Huntington Beach, questioned whether the outbreak had occurred at all. “The odds of it being true are slim to none,” she said, “and people need to do their research.”

McAfee mingled among his flock. Some stopped him for pictures as he beamed down the camera and flashed a thumbs-up.

The post He Profits Off Raw Milk That’s Making People Sick. The Government Isn’t Stopping Him. appeared first on ProPublica.

Il nuovo assetto geopolitico mondiale ha messo a nudo una serie di problematiche che sono state trascurate troppo a lungo. In pratica, quello che per anni abbiamo visto accadere nel software, ovvero l’entusiasmo per le nuove feature che andava a coprire la necessità di rendere sicuro il loro utilizzo, si è applicato anche in mille […]

L'articolo Infrastrutture Critiche e Geopolitica: è l’Era dell’Antifragilità proviene da Securityinfo.it.

In late November in Jamnagar, India, the scions of two of the most powerful families in the world stood face-to-face. On one side was 30-year-old Anant Ambani, son of one of the richest men in Asia. On the other was Donald Trump Jr. For months, the Trump administration had been on the offensive against the sprawling Ambani energy empire, placing it at the center of an escalating tariff campaign against India. But after Trump Jr. touched down, the two men toured the Ambanis’ private zoo, and at night they performed a Gujarati folk dance, grinning as they moved together to the music.

Four months later, an obscure Texas startup called America First Refining announced that it had received a nine-figure investment from the Ambanis’ company. The deal puzzled numerous energy investors familiar with the project, which aims to build the first major new oil refinery in the U.S. in about 50 years. The company is run by a serial entrepreneur with a history of bankruptcy and lawsuits alleging fraud. After more than a decade of failed attempts to raise money, blown deadlines and rebrands, it had been floundering.

America First Refining’s unexpected breakthrough came after it forged a previously unreported relationship with Trump Jr., who secretly acquired a stake in the startup, according to records and seven people familiar with the company. The new details reveal the role the president’s son has played in a theme of Trump’s second term: overseas investors with interests before the administration putting money into the Trump family’s business interests.

Over the past year and a half, Trump Jr. has amassed a fortune from stakes in companies ranging from crypto startups to a drone business to a firearms retailer. Some firms tied to the president’s son have received contracts or other support from the federal government, part of what critics describe as a run of Trump family self-dealing. In December, Forbes estimated that Trump Jr.’s net worth had rocketed from roughly $50 million to $300 million since the election. But the Forbes figures were based on the investments that have been publicly disclosed. The America First Refining episode suggests there is much about the family business that remains secret.

The size of Trump Jr.’s stake in America First Refining and what he paid for it remain unclear. Top executives at the startup have also said that they speak regularly with Trump Jr., according to a person close to the company. And after the Ambani investment was announced, Trump Jr.’s personal lawyer took credit on social media for playing a part in the deal.

America First Refining has flexed its Trump Jr. connections during pitch meetings with foreign officials. Early last year, Trump Jr. joined the company’s leadership for a meeting in South Florida with potential investors from Saudi Arabia, according to two people familiar with the matter. Another foreign government official pitched on the project told ProPublica that the company’s team emphasized they had backing from the Trump family and suggested that an investment would help with White House access.

The Ambanis’ investment coincided with the family’s securing major U.S. policy wins that their company, Reliance Industries, had been lobbying for. “Reliance Goes From Trump Foe to Friend With Refinery Pledge,” ran the Bloomberg headline after the deal was announced. Reliance’s intent with the deal was to “smooth out” tensions between the U.S. and India, the outlet reported.

A Trump Jr. spokesperson said that Trump Jr. “has no operational involvement in AFR and is simply a passive minority investor in an American company that aligns with his worldview.” 

“The entire premise of this story relating to Don is false,” the spokesperson said, adding, “Don does not interface with the Federal Government on behalf of any company that he invests in or advises.” ProPublica did not find evidence Trump Jr. was aware of refinery executives’ suggesting that an investment would help with White House access. 

In response to detailed questions, a spokesperson for America First Refining said, “The claims in this story are false,” but declined to specify what they were referring to. The company’s CEO previously denied wrongdoing in the lawsuits against him reviewed by ProPublica, and the suits were either settled or dropped.

The Ambani family had long been cultivating its relationship with the Trumps. Reliance paid $10 million to the Trump Organization in 2024 as a “development fee” for a project in Mumbai, according to the president’s financial disclosure. (Despite the payment, Reliance has not yet announced a Trump project. Reliance told ProPublica that “the real estate project is real” and “remains under development.”) Ivanka Trump attended Anant Ambani’s wedding party in India that year, where guests were treated to a Rihanna concert. Anant’s father, Mukesh — who is worth an estimated $90 billion and lives in a 27-story home — came to Washington, D.C., for Trump’s second inauguration, posing with the president at a private reception.

At the Private Reception in Washington, Mrs. Nita and Mr. Mukesh Ambani extended their congratulations to President-Elect Mr. Donald Trump ahead of his inauguration.

With a shared optimism for deeper India-US relations, they wished him a transformative term of leadership, paving… pic.twitter.com/XXm2Sj74vX

— Reliance Industries Limited (@RIL_Updates) January 19, 2025

But by the summer of 2025, the family was under attack from the White House. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Reliance had reportedly made billions in profits by purchasing vast quantities of Russian oil at a discount. In August, as Trump grew frustrated with his administration’s struggles to bring the war to an end, the president doubled his tariffs on India to 50%. The move was explicitly designed to force companies like Reliance to stop buying Russian oil. White House trade adviser Peter Navarro publicly assailed “India’s politically connected energy titans” for “funding Putin’s war machine,” widely read as a reference to the Ambanis.

Amid this tension, Trump Jr. visited Anant Ambani on his November trip to India. At the end of the trip, Trump Jr.’s personal lawyer commented at a business conference in Miami: “I had a nice closing this morning with Don Trump Jr., who’s flying back from India today.” (The following week, the Texas startup — then called Element Fuels — filed paperwork to create America First Refining LLC. In an email, the attorney, John Willding, told ProPublica that there was “no transaction in India or with an Indian company that I was ever involved with.”) 

Anant Ambani, who helps run Reliance’s energy business, personally worked on the Texas refinery deal for months before it was announced, a major Indian newspaper later reported.

As the Ambanis quietly finalized their deal with America First Refining, U.S.-Indian relations appeared to warm. In February, the Trump administration struck a trade deal with India, dramatically lowering tariffs, and also reportedly gave Reliance a license to buy Venezuelan oil. When the Iran war broke out and rocked global energy markets, the U.S. gave India a sanctions waiver to buy Russian crude. (The waiver was later expanded to all countries.) 

In response to ProPublica’s questions, the White House said that “there are no conflicts of interest.” Reliance did not answer ProPublica’s questions about Trump Jr.’s and Anant Ambani’s roles in the investment deal, but said in a statement that the company did not receive “any unique or preferential treatment” from the U.S. government. 

“There is no connection between Reliance’s investment in AFR and any unique measures associated with general U.S. trade, tariff, sanctions or licensing outcomes,” Reliance said. “The investment was evaluated and approved on its commercial merits, strategic fit and long-term value creation potential.”

In March, President Trump personally announced Reliance’s deal with the Texas startup on Truth Social, thanking the Ambani company for its “tremendous Investment.”  

After the announcement, Willding, the Trump Jr. lawyer, shared the news on LinkedIn: “Just so proud to have been part of this one.”

Willding rowed back his claim in an email to ProPublica. “I have never worked for or advised AFR and had zero involvement in their deal with Reliance Energy,” he said. “I simply saw the press release and was excited for them.” America First Refining’s spokesperson called Willding’s comment “moronic and false.”

In June 2025, Willding registered a new entity in Wyoming called TX Fuels, LLC, listing the company’s address as Trump Jr.’s mansion in Jupiter, Florida. In his email, Willding said his “only involvement in AFR was handling the legal paperwork” for the Trump Jr. LLC’s investment in the startup.

Trump Jr. first hired Willding in May 2021, according to interviews the lawyer has given. A corporate deal lawyer in Dallas, Willding has referred to himself as “outside business counsel to the Trump family” and has said he talks to Trump Jr. or Eric Trump almost daily. A former Bill Clinton and Barack Obama voter who fell hard for MAGA, the attorney has installed a portrait of President Trump over the mantel in his living room.

Willding’s practice has boomed during the second Trump administration, bringing the lawyer to Argentina, Saudi Arabia and South Korea. “Everybody in the world wants to do business with the United States right now,” Willding said at a conference in June 2025. “Every company wants to do business with the Trump family.”

There are other fingerprints of the Trump world on the refinery deal. 

Howard Lutnick’s firm Cantor Fitzgerald — which his sons took over when Lutnick became Trump’s commerce secretary — is working as the financial adviser to America First Refining, including on the Ambani investment deal, Cantor Fitzgerald announced. (Cantor Fitzgerald declined to comment.)

And the Trump administration played a direct role helping America First Refining find potential foreign investors, according to public comments from the company’s CEO, John Calce. “We have received support from the White House,” he told a local news outlet. The National Energy Dominance Council, led by the interior and energy secretaries, has “helped us with, candidly, introducing us and helping us meet some of these people overseas,” Calce said on an industry podcast. 

America First Refining has recently explored going public, according to three people close to the company. That could allow its current investors to start cashing out even if the refinery never gets built — a milestone many energy industry insiders still view as a long shot. Reliance made its investment in the startup at a valuation of at least $1 billion, according to America First Refining’s announcement.

Building a refinery at the Port of Brownsville on the Gulf Coast has been Calce’s mission for a decade. A former Yale offensive lineman, he started his career as a high school football coach after an unsuccessful attempt to make the NFL and now describes himself as a “lifelong entrepreneur.” 

The project has been serially delayed, out of money, rebranded and trailed by angry former business partners. At one point, Calce’s companies were being sued simultaneously by eight other firms. In 2022, during bankruptcy proceedings for an earlier iteration of the project, the trustee appointed to impartially oversee the case sued Calce too. The trustee alleged that Calce and other insiders had improperly siphoned away cash and other assets. (Calce denied wrongdoing. The case was ultimately settled.)

During the Biden administration, as the company sought financial support from the Department of Energy, it pitched itself as a climate-friendly green project that would also help “people of underrepresented social demographics” in Brownsville, according to records from that period. The company failed to get enough money from outside investors, and the planned construction was delayed. 

By the company’s own estimate, building the refinery will take years and cost $3 billion to $4 billion. Even if it’s built, profitability could be hard to achieve. Many energy investors told ProPublica there’s a reason the U.S. hasn’t seen a major new refinery in decades. “Refineries cost a lot of money and essentially make pennies on the dollar,” said Ed Hirs, an energy economist in Houston. “Wall Street is not going to finance a new refinery.”

Even after the start of the second Trump administration, the company was in jeopardy, according to interviews and documents. It laid off workers last year, and, by late 2025, with delays continuing to plague the refinery, officials at the Port of Brownsville believed the project looked to be dead, according to records reviewed by ProPublica.

That has not stopped Calce and his team from making grandiose claims to the public. Earlier this year, a website went live for another Calce company called Brownsville Energy Storage Terminals. It claims to have a far-flung network of oil storage terminals in places like the Netherlands and Singapore, more than 850 employees and a C-suite of experienced energy executives. But ProPublica could find no evidence that the executives are real people or that the storage terminals actually exist. The phone numbers on the website are also currently listed online as the contacts for a Houston baklava caterer, a Dallas-area taxi service and an OB-GYN office. The numbers are dead.

America First Refining’s political ties, though, may have boosted its standing with Texas state regulators. In February, shortly before the Ambani investment became public, the company sought an extension on its permit from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. 

Inside the state agency, emails obtained by ProPublica show, officials scrambled to approve the request.

“Need to get this one logged and processed asap,” wrote one official.

“You are going to have to do this one. I will explain why in person in a few,” wrote another. “You can guess if you check out the name.”

America First Refining got its approval the next day. A spokesperson for the Texas agency did not address questions about the emails. “This request was processed quickly due to the quality of information provided,” the spokesperson said.

The post An Indian Billionaire Was Targeted by Trump. Then He Poured Money Into a Startup Secretly Backed by Donald Trump Jr. appeared first on ProPublica.

A little over a year ago, Sen. Tim Sheehy floated an audacious proposal to reshape the way the federal government fights wildfires. It called for expanding the use of private planes and helicopters to quickly attack blazes while also eliminating the U.S. Forest Service’s rigorous airworthiness inspections for those aircraft.

The idea stood to benefit Sheehy, a Montana Republican, personally. Before running for Congress, he founded and ran an aerial firefighting company called Bridger Aerospace, which is known for its scoopers, aircraft built to retrieve water from lakes or oceans and drop it onto fires. Since 2021, the Forest Service has paid Bridger more than $235 million for use of its scoopers, according to public records.

Sheehy’s ownership of Bridger is well known, but what hasn’t been reported is that the same month the proposal leaked, a Forest Service inspector had discovered a crack in a wing of an aircraft Bridger had presented as ready for service. The scooper had failed the very inspection Sheehy sought to eliminate. 

Forest Service inspectors have flagged problems with Bridger’s scoopers for years, according to sources and documents obtained by ProPublica under the Freedom of Information Act. The records were heavily redacted by the agency, including the problem that the inspector discovered last April. But a former government official with direct knowledge of the inspection told ProPublica it had revealed a crack in a wing. “It was a big crack,” the official said. Other experts said that kind of finding is rare and could have proved catastrophic.

“Very seldom do you find a crack in a major component,” said Paul Markowitz, a former national aviation maintenance manager for the Forest Service. Detecting such problems is the reason the Forest Service operates an airworthiness program, he added: “It’s to keep people alive.”

Veteran fire officials noted that Sheehy’s proposals would eliminate costly oversight of the company he founded and others like it while increasing spending on aerial firefighting. At the time the document leaked, he owned Bridger stock worth between $13 million and $15 million.

Within the Forest Service, the company was known to resist oversight, officials told ProPublica. Five current and former Forest Service officials say Bridger Aerospace has chafed at the agency’s rigorous inspections, even as records and sources indicate the company has presented aircraft in need of maintenance and repairs as ready to fight fires. The sources asked not to be named for fear of reprisal.

Bridger did not answer questions about the failed inspection but said in a statement, “Safety is the bedrock of our company, and we spare no expense.” It added, “Our investment in maintenance and training runs into the tens of millions annually and reflects the high safety standard we believe this work demands.”

Bridger’s aircraft have never been involved in a crash, according to records maintained by the National Transportation Safety Board. 

Sheehy’s office did not respond to interview requests. But he has been open about his frustration with the Forest Service’s inspections and contended that Bridger’s scoopers, because they are built to fight fire, require less oversight than other firefighting aircraft that were originally designed for other purposes. 

In response to detailed questions about Sheehy’s role in reshaping the fire service, a spokesperson for the senator said he stands by his efforts to eliminate Forest Service inspections. The process is “a relic of a bygone era and has become an unnecessary barrier to asset availability,” the spokesperson said in an email. The spokesperson also said that Sheehy has no conflict of interest because he has since moved his assets into blind trusts, adding, “The senator will continue to be adversarial toward anyone protecting a broken status quo that has allowed cities to burn to the ground.”

Former Forest Service officials say it’s common for companies to complain about inspections. What sets Bridger apart is its connection to a senator who is seeking to change how wildfire aviation is managed. A spokesperson for the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service, did not answer questions about Sheehy’s relationship with the agency.

Last June, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing agencies to consolidate their wildland fire programs, an idea Sheehy and others have long favored. The order left Forest Service inspections in place. But as fire officials discuss consolidation, an influential industry group that Sheehy helped shape is advocating for ending them.

The United Aerial Firefighters Association was launched in 2022, with Sheehy serving as a founding board member. The group now wants to allow contractors to develop their own inspection standards.

“Industry inspects itself all the time. Industry inspects automobiles. Industry inspects baby formula,” said Tiffany Taylor, UAFA’s senior policy director. “Why can’t we be inspecting ourselves?”

---

Contractors like Bridger own the vast majority of aircraft that the federal government uses to fight wildfires. In 2022, the last year for which data is available, only 5% of the Forest Service’s flight hours for firefighting came from aircraft it owns. Regardless of their ownership, aircraft must be inspected before flying. That job falls to about 25 aviation safety inspectors, most of whom work for the Forest Service. 

The Federal Aviation Administration certifies aircraft but does not conduct regular inspections. The agency instead relies on companies to ensure their planes and helicopters are airworthy. Even when the FAA performs inspections, fire officials and contractors say, they do not account for the stresses inflicted by steering aircraft through wildfires. “The Forest Service is way more in-depth,” said Britt Coulson, president of Coulson Aviation, a prominent air tanker contractor.

Forest Service officials often say the agency’s rules governing aviation are written in blood. A pair of shocking crashes in 2002 ignited the push for more rigorous inspections. That June, an air tanker was dropping retardant in California when its wings folded upward, like a bird in flight, and detached. The plane burst into flames and fell to the ground. The harrowing moment was caught on video. Three people onboard were killed, and the NTSB later attributed the accident to undetected cracks in one of the plane’s wings. One month later, in Colorado, another tanker contracted by the Forest Service crashed after a wing separated from the fuselage. Two pilots were killed. Once again, the NTSB said the accident was caused by unidentified wing cracking.

Since 2010, when the Forest Service implemented its current airworthiness program, the accident rate for aircraft it owns or contracts has plummeted. Between 1993 and 2010, it reported 85 accidents that killed 63 people — an average of nearly four deaths per year. Between 2011 and 2023, the last year for which data is available, the agency reported just 17 accidents and seven fatalities.

Inspectors examine everything from the fuselage to the altimeter. When they find problems, they require the contractor to make changes before they issue a certifying document known as a card. In a separate procedure, inspectors issue cards to contractors’ pilots.

By 2018, Bridger had a modest fleet of surveillance aircraft, but Sheehy had bigger ambitions. According to Sheehy’s 2023 book, “Mudslingers: A True Story of Aerial Firefighting,” his brother, Matt, a Bridger co-founder, helped connect the company to the Blackstone Group, which invested a reported $150 million. Bridger used the funds to buy six scoopers from Viking Air. Sheehy wrote that the day of the first aircraft’s arrival in 2020 was “among the proudest of my life.”

In his book, he described that aircraft as a “brand new” model CL-415 but according to FAA records and aviation experts, this was inaccurate. The records show Bridger’s first scooper was built in 1985 and that it is in fact a precursor to the CL-415 model. Viking Air is now part of a larger company called De Havilland Aircraft of Canada Limited. A De Havilland spokesperson declined to comment about the aircraft’s age.

Records also show that Bridger’s first scooper had undergone extensive repairs before the company bought it. The skin of the fuselage had cracked from stress, and both wings had been repaired. One repair, done in 2012, fixed a crack in the left spar — a load-bearing beam extending outward from the fuselage. Experts say any repair to a wing spar is significant. “A spar is what’s holding the damn thing together,” said Markowitz. 

According to Sheehy’s account, in 2020, the Forest Service’s airworthiness chief at the time, John Nelson, insisted that Bridger’s scoopers meet an updated standard of maintenance and inspection. Sheehy was extremely upset. “Unfortunately, the relationship between industry and the USFS Airworthiness Branch is at an all-time low,” he wrote in his book. (Nelson did not respond to questions about Sheehy’s characterization.)

The next year, Bridger’s first scoopers received cards, allowing the government to pay for their use.

By 2023, the company had six contracted scoopers. Inspectors soon found more problems with the aircraft, according to the records. In January 2024, Bridger presented its first scooper as ready for service, only to have a Forest Service inspector find issues with the engine and electronics. The problems and reasons for the failed inspection were redacted in documents obtained by ProPublica. The scooper received its card the next month.

According to experts who examined the Bridger inspection records at ProPublica’s request, these issues are common in the aerial firefighting fleet. But they said it’s extraordinary for inspectors to find a problem like the one identified last spring.

In early April 2025, Bridger presented two scoopers for carding, saying they were ready for service. During one of these assessments, a Forest Service inspector found a crack in a wing.

The Forest Service records show that Bridger completed a repair in Montana by April 18. Within a week, both aircraft had been cleared for flight.

Bridger did not answer specific questions about the repair. In a statement, the company said, “For a 30,000-pound aircraft that skims bodies of water repeatedly at 100 mph to scoop 11,700 pounds of water in 12 seconds, regular maintenance and periodic repairs are an inherent part of the job.” The company added, “We welcome the rigorous certification process.”

But the relatively quick repair was not a reflection of the severity of the issue. Gil Elmy, a former Forest Service official who wrote the agency’s aircraft inspector guide, said such a finding “should not happen.” Markowitz said the finding evoked an uncomfortable historical echo. The 2002 crash, which was caught on camera and precipitated the Forest Service’s reckoning and its modern airworthiness program, was caused by unidentified wing cracking.

As Bridger’s scooper was being repaired, officials in the wildland fire community were responding to a proposal from the senator’s office that would have ended the airworthiness program. In March 2025, Sheehy asked Brooke Rollins, the secretary of the Department of Agriculture, to stop the inspections, and in mid-April, a draft executive order that proposed eliminating them leaked from his Senate office. Metadata showed the draft had been edited by one of Sheehy’s policy advisers at the time as well as a lobbyist for Bridger. The United Aerial Firefighting Association also shaped the draft.

“Senator Sheehy’s office circulated a living, breathing document to members of congress, outside policy experts, and industry stakeholders on ways to improve the way we fight fire in this country,” wrote Sheehy’s spokesperson.

---

When Sheehy resigned from Bridger in July 2024 to run for the Senate, he owned 21% of the company, making him its largest individual shareholder. Four months after taking office, in May 2025, he moved most of his stock into two revocable blind trusts, claiming they eliminated any conflict of interest he might have.

But the trusts appear to be managed by executives at Tallgrass, an energy infrastructure company that until March was run by Sheehy’s brother, Matt, who was also a significant early investor in Bridger. Neither Matt Sheehy nor representatives for Tallgrass responded to questions about the trusts. In an email, a spokesperson for the senator did not dispute the Tallgrass executives’ stewardship but pointed out that the Senate Select Committee on Ethics had vetted the trusts. The spokesperson wrote, “Senator Sheehy’s blind trusts are completely independent — he has no control over them.”

According to Cynthia Brown, senior ethics counsel at the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a decision to entrust stock to such close associates undermines the purpose of a blind trust, which is to ensure that a lawmaker’s investments are independently managed. In an email, Brown said, “Selecting a family member’s company appears to do that exact thing that the rules mean to prohibit.”

Since last spring, Sheehy has said little about airworthiness inspections. But he has pushed other policies that would increase business opportunities for aviation companies, such as requiring a response within 30 minutes to all wildfires on federal land. At the same time, he has driven an agenda that could debilitate his longtime foe, the Forest Service.

In statements, on podcasts and in the New York Times opinion section, he has advocated for a single national fire service. And at almost every turn — including in proposed legislation — he has insisted that the Forest Service’s vast wildfire apparatus be moved within the Department of the Interior’s smaller operation. It would hollow out the Forest Service, which draws more than half its budget from fire operations. “It would be a fatal wound,” said Doug Crandall, the agency’s former legislative affairs director.

There are inefficiencies in a fire aviation system spread between agencies. The rush for a couple dozen inspectors to certify hundreds of planes and helicopters before wildfire season can cause delays, temporarily grounding aircraft and cutting into contractors’ revenues. And the agencies have sometimes required duplicative inspections. 

But even officials and firefighting labor advocates who support consolidation, which requires congressional approval, have questioned why Interior should absorb the Forest Service’s fire program. Some liken it to forcing a minnow to swallow a whale. The Forest Service employs about twice as many full-time wildland firefighters as the Interior Department, and it spends at least three times more on aviation contracting. It is also responsible for the vast majority of inspections. According to a recent organizational chart reviewed by ProPublica, only five aviation safety inspectors currently work for the Interior Department.

Bridger carries significant debt and in 2024 warned shareholders that it had “substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern.” But last year, the company reported a profit for the first time since going public. It also purchased two more scoopers and predicted that efforts to unify fire agencies “could increase contracting opportunities for private aerial providers.” In another recent filing, Bridger said, “the legislative and policy environment has never been more aligned with our mission.”

Last year, six Forest Service aviation safety inspectors resigned or retired, according to the agency. The recent organizational chart reviewed by ProPublica shows the same number of positions remain unfilled, representing more than 20% of Forest Service aviation safety inspector jobs. It’s unclear what would happen to the rest of the inspectors if the Interior Department were to absorb the Forest Service’s fire operations. In an emailed statement, Adam Mendonca, the Forest Service’s deputy director of fire and aviation management, said the agency “has no intention to change our aircraft inspection standards,” adding that it was “working closely with the Department of the Interior to streamline aviation operations.”

In late March, the Forest Service announced a dramatic reorganization that will move its headquarters to Salt Lake City. The Department of Agriculture reiterated the administration’s desire to fold the Forest Service’s fire operations into the Interior Department.

By that point, blazes had ignited in the Midwest. With the arrival of fire season, the Forest Service’s airworthiness inspectors performed their close examinations. At hangars across the country, they looked for cracks.

The post A U.S. Senator Pushed to Cut Firefighting Aircraft Inspections the Same Month His Former Company Failed One appeared first on ProPublica.

Por Alfredo Jalife Rahme

El ex analista de la CIA Larry Johnson –íntimo del ejército de EEUU– y el geopolítico brasileño Pepe Escobar –cercano al Kremlin– adujeron en varias entrevistas que Irán dispondría de un dispositivo nuclear que podría detonar para disuadir la prosecución de la guerra de Israel/EEUU.

Johnson adujo con el juez Napolitano (https://bit.ly/43c4eKZ) que el viernes 29 de mayo, el canciller paquistaní, Ishaq Dar, transmitió al polémico Marco Rubio el mensaje de que Irán estaría dispuesto a realizar una prueba nuclear en caso de que no exista acuerdo: “Irán haría una demostración con una bomba nuclear de su propia fabricación o que le fue entregada por, digamos, Pakistán o Norcorea” (minuto 13:23). Un día después, LJ pregunta en su portal Sonar21: “¿Posee Irán una bomba atómica? Una fuente de alto nivel contesta: sí” (https://bit.ly/4fj4IGx).

En su video (https://bit.ly/4uP7kAT), el cotizado Escobar explayó que el presidente iraní, Masoud Pezeshkian, explicó al canciller paquistaní la nueva postura nuclear de Irán.

En medio del tsunami (des)informativo, las mismas fuentes aviesas y traviesas de costumbre engañaron con la falsa “renuncia” del presidente iraní Pezeshkian: difundida, entre otros, por el ex teniente coronel Douglas Macgregor, quien fuera cercano a Trump 1.0 (https://bit.ly/437lAbY).

El mismo viernes de marras, mientras Trump se reunía en el “cuarto de crisis” ( situation room), durante la entrevista que me realizó Sergio Fernández de Negocios TV, señalé que se me hacía extraña la ausencia del secretario de Estado, Marco Rubio, quien justamente se encontraba negociando con su homólogo paquistaní (https://bit.ly/4ui1lDv).

Mis fuentes mediorientales, usualmente bien informadas, reportan que el presidente iraní formuló al primer ministro paquistaní, Shehbaz Sharif, tres puntos de su postura definitiva en caso de perpetuación de los ataques estadunidenses y del falso cese al fuego israelí debido a su masiva carnicería de civiles en el sur de Líbano:

1) Retiro inmediato de las negociaciones sobre el contencioso nuclear iraní con EEUU; 2) abandono del formato de un arreglo nuclear que esta(ba) esbozando la cantidad límite de enriquecimiento de uranio y su entrega a uno de los siguientes cuatro países: Rusia, China, Kazajistán o Pakistán, y 3) ¡la detonación de un dispositivo nuclear en el suelo iraní como demostración de su soberana capacidad tecnológica!

Muchas cosas han sucedido en los pasados cinco días, entre las que destaca la carnicería israelí contra los civiles en el sur del Líbano –cuando el ministro de defensa Israel Katz, en connivencia con los ministros talmúdicos Ben Gvir, de Seguridad; Bezalel Smotrich (Finanzas), y el “desquiciado” (Trump dixit) primer ministro Netanyahu, buscan emular su indeleble genocidio en Gaza–, que sacudió la emotividad del chiísmo de la república islámica, que exigió el respeto al cese el fuego por Israel, cuya abusiva negativa obligaría a represalias masivas de Irán en el norte de Israel (https://bit.ly/4eiiM1P).

En forma sincrónica a los dramáticos eventos de estos días pasados, se gestó la ya famosa llamada telefónica de un “furioso” Trump, quien despotricó contra Netanyahu para impedir su programado ataque multitudinario a la indefensa capital libanesa, lo cual fue reportado por el ex agente israelí de la unidad 8200 Barak Ravid, quien desinforma desde el desacreditado portal Axios (https://bit.ly/4vqZLjH).

No se puede soslayar la ominosa frase del viceinspector general brigadier Mohammad Jafar Asadi, quien aseveró en el contexto de la conjetura nuclear persa que “Irán no ha revelado aún todas sus ‘cartas triunfales’, en medio de las escaladas de EEUU e Israel” (https://bit.ly/3PABGry). ¿Cuáles serán tales “cartas triunfales”?

¿El Cierre del estrecho de Bab al Mandeb, susceptible de propinar un golpe de gracia a las valetudinarias geofinanzas globales de Israel/EEUU/Occidente? ¿O la defensiva detonación de una bomba nuclear iraní, propia o “prestada”, que colocaría la guerra en una nueva fase escalatoria? (https://bit.ly/4dUfUac)

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