Today was the day of nation-wide protests, the rally of the No Kings movement. It was also my first time going to a protest, like, at all. Though I’m disappointed I’ve never been to one before, I figured there was no better time to start than now. And I was joined by over a hundred people in front of the Troy courthouse to show that Miami County isn’t all red, and some of us actually do oppose fascism.
I was nervous to go to a protest, and that fear is what has been holding me back from going to any for literal years. But I convinced myself it would be fine since it was Troy and I doubted there’d be any flashbangs or rubber bullets happening. As expected, everything turned out completely fine. It was a totally peaceful protest, and only lasted an hour. It was organized well, concise, and full of a feeling of community.
It was so amazing to see older folks and younger people alike coming together, and I saw a friend there who gave me a sign, so I was thankful for that. It was such a great feeling to look around and see everyone coming together for the same cause, to speak up against the tyranny and tell the world (or at least Miami County) “this is not okay.”
I’m glad I went. Sometimes it can feel like it doesn’t make a difference if you’re there or not, or that nothing will change just because of some protests, but it’s better than doing nothing. Silence is complicity, and I don’t want to be compicit. Silence only helps the oppressor. So even if my voice is only one of a million, at least I know it’s in there somewhere.
Make sure you use yours, too. We’re in this together.
It’s easy to forget that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s assault on vaccines—including, most recently, his gutting of the expert committee that guides American vaccine policy—might have been avoided. Four months ago, his nomination for health secretary was in serious jeopardy. The deciding vote seemed to be in the hands of one Republican senator: Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. A physician who gained prominence by vaccinating low-income kids in his home state, Cassidy was wary of the longtime vaccine conspiracist. “I have been struggling with your nomination,” he told Kennedy during his confirmation hearings in January.
Then Cassidy caved.
In the speech he gave on the Senate floor explaining his decision, Cassidy said that he’d vote to confirm Kennedy only because he had extracted a number of concessions from the nominee—chief among them that he would preserve, “without changes,” the very CDC committee Kennedy overhauled this week. Since then, Cassidy has continued to give Kennedy the benefit of the doubt. On Monday, after Kennedy dismissed all 17 members of the vaccine advisory committee, Cassidy posted on X that he was working with Kennedy to prevent the open roles from being filled with “people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion.”
The senator has failed, undeniably and spectacularly. One new appointee, Robert Malone, has repeatedly spread misinformation (or what he prefers to call “scientific dissent”) about vaccines. Another appointee, Vicky Pebsworth, is on the board of an anti-vax nonprofit, the National Vaccine Information Center. Cassidy may keep insisting that he is doing all he can to stand up for vaccines. But he already had his big chance to do so, and he blew it. Now, with the rest of America, he’s watching the nation’s vaccine future take a nosedive.
So far, the senator hasn’t appeared interested in any kind of mea culpa for his faith in Kennedy’s promises. On Thursday, I caught Cassidy as he hurried out of a congressional hearing room. He was still reviewing the appointees, he told me and several other reporters who gathered around him. When I chased after him down the hallway to ask more questions, he told me, “I’ll be putting out statements, and I’ll let those statements stand for themselves.” A member of his staff dismissed me with a curt “Thank you, sir.” Cassidy’s staff has declined repeated requests for an interview with the senator since the confirmation vote in January.
With the exception of Mitch McConnell, every GOP senator voted to confirm Kennedy. They all have to own the health secretary’s actions. But Cassidy seemed to be the Republican most concerned about Kennedy’s nomination, and there was a good reason to think that the doctor would vote his conscience. In 2021, Cassidy was one of seven Senate Republicans who voted to convict Donald Trump on an impeachment charge after the insurrection at the Capitol. But this time, the senator—who is up for reelection next year, facing a more MAGA-friendly challenger—ultimately fell in line.
Cassidy tried to have it both ways: elevating Kennedy to his job while also vowing to constrain him. In casting his confirmation vote, Cassidy implied that the two would be in close communication, and that Kennedy had asked for his input on hiring decisions. The two reportedly had breakfast in March to discuss the health secretary’s plan to dramatically reshape the department. “Senator Cassidy speaks regularly with secretary Kennedy and believes those conversations are much more productive when they’re held in private, not through press headlines,” a spokesperson for Cassidy wrote in an email. (A spokesperson for HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
At times, it has appeared as though Cassidy’s approach has had some effect on the health secretary. Amid the measles outbreak in Texas earlier this year, Kennedy baselessly questioned the safety of the MMR vaccine. In April, after two unvaccinated children died, Cassidy posted on X: “Everyone should be vaccinated! There is no treatment for measles. No benefit to getting measles. Top health officials should say so unequivocally b/4 another child dies.” Cassidy didn’t call out Kennedy by name, but the health secretary appeared to get the message. Later that day, Kennedy posted that the measles vaccine was the most effective way to stave off illness. (“Completely agree,” Cassidy responded.)
All things considered, that’s a small victory. Despite Kennedy’s claims that he is not an anti-vaxxer, he has enacted a plainly anti-vaccine agenda. Since being confirmed, he has pushed out the FDA’s top vaccine regulator, hired a fellow vaccine skeptic to investigate the purported link between autism and shots, and questioned the safety of childhood vaccinations currently recommended by the CDC. As my colleague Katherine J. Wu wrote this week, “Whether he will admit to it or not, he is serving the most core goal of the anti-vaccine movement—eroding access to, and trust in, immunization.”
The reality is that back channels can be only so effective. Cassidy’s main power is to call Kennedy before the Senate health committee, which he chairs, and demand an explanation for Kennedy’s new appointees to the CDC’s vaccine-advisory committee. Cassidy might very well do that. In February, he said that Kennedy would “come before the committee on a quarterly basis, if requested.” Kennedy did appear before Cassidy’s committee last month to answer questions about his efforts to institute mass layoffs at his agency. Some Republicans (and many Democrats) pressed the secretary on those efforts, while others praised them. Cassidy, for his part, expressed concerns about Kennedy’s indiscriminate cutting of research programs, but still, he was largely deferential. “I agree with Secretary Kennedy that HHS needs reform,” Cassidy said.
Even if he had disagreed, an angry exchange between a health secretary and a Senate committee doesn’t guarantee any policy changes. Lawmakers may try to act like government bureaucrats report to them, but they have limited power once a nominee is already in their job. Technically, lawmakers can impeach Cabinet members, but in American history, a sitting Cabinet member has never been impeached and subsequently removed from office. The long and arduous confirmation process is supposed to be the bulwark against potentially dangerous nominees being put in positions of power. Cassidy and most of his Republican colleagues have already decided not to stop Kennedy from overseeing the largest department in the federal government by budget. Now Kennedy is free to do whatever he wants—senators be damned.
okay so. This one confused me. like. what is she saying? Is Old New Jean saying that she somehow steals Scott away from Emma? they already kinda toed the line with this
And I was like Jfc she is what, 14? 15? And he’s like 40?
I just want someone else’s opinion on this lol
She’s seventeen, per some line of dialogue in All-New X-Men, and I believe the official stance for Scott’s age is that he’s perpetually twenty-eight. They have a thing about not letting him hit thirty, I guess. (Probably because he’s supposed to be a direct contemporary of Peter Parker, who’s also not allowed to ever be thirty.) It makes no sense, of course, but that’s comics for you.
I think technically, thanks to the rolling timeline, he’s retconned to twenty-five there. Since officially he’s still twenty-eight and Krakoa ran for about three years real time.
Personally I always thought the “old young Jean” line there was meant to be a direct attack on Emma rather than a reflection of the true dynamics. Adult Scott had a certain wistfulness when he first met Jean but never showed any sign of inappropriate behavior and even when they are on the same team there’s very little interaction beyond that one scene.
EMMA on the other hand tends to have a certain inappropriate jealousy/antagonism toward Jean during this time period (and we probably shouldn’t get into that very unfortunate X-Men Blue plot with young Scott…). So it makes some sense that “old young Jean” would use that to target her.
Hey, you know what happens next week? Krissy and I celebrate 30 years of being married. She and I are taking a little vacation to enjoy it together. You may not see me for, uhhhhhhh, a while. If I do show up, it will be pretty brief. Don’t worry, Athena will be around for you, and we have a lot of Big Ideas for you next week too. It’ll be fun. Just mostly without me.
The cherry blossoms are blooming outside of my balcony, Just like they did for my mother and my grandmother, Just like they have for me — and today home is the sound Of the bath running, the pitter patter of my cat’s paws on The parquet, the spotted calathea growing new leaves.
Today home is my lilac grey lived in sofa swallowing my Lean body, my tired hands searching for the TV remote amidst The checkered blanket, the patterned PJs hanging on the Drying rack, the soft blue light from the kitchen pouring Into the hallway.
Little scoop of green tea ice cream melting on my tongue, While I remembered how I so dreamed of something like A home, when I used to lug my tired body to Corinne’s office, My therapist in Canterbury to whom I left a red ink portrait When I graduated.
I don’t know why people want to move around so much When the freedom I’ve found has been in the stillness, the Clicking of these keys typing, being able to wake up and know I’ll be cherished and comforted, to know my street and its Archways, the petals blowing on the tram tracks.
I can dream and create and even have a proper sorrow, when I wake up in a bed I’ve made a week ago, when the light comes Through the blinds at 6h50 in the spring and I can make Tea without asking.
“All people are born… well, let’s call it a soul. Mediums are born empty. Therefore, anything can come in, anything can come out. And usually it’s not the most pleasant things.”
Robert Malone has a history of arguing against the data. He has called for an end to the use of mRNA vaccines for COVID despite the well-established fact that they reduce mortality and severe illness. He has promoted discredited COVID treatments such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, dismissing studies that show they are ineffective against the coronavirus. Recently, he called reports about two girls in West Texas dying from the measles “misinformation,” even though the doctors who treated the girls were unequivocal in their conclusion.
Now Malone will have a leading role in shaping America’s vaccine policy. He is one of eight new members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, replacing the 17 former members whom Robert F. Kennedy Jr. relieved of their duties on Monday. The re-formed committee will be responsible for guiding the CDC’s vaccine policy, recommending when and by whom vaccines should be used. The doctors and researchers who make up the new ACIP are all, to some degree, ideological allies of Kennedy, who has spent decades undermining public confidence in vaccines. And Malone arguably has the most extreme views of the group.
Malone, a physician and an infectious-disease researcher, readily acknowledges that he defies mainstream scientific consensus. Just this week, he wrote in his popular Substack newsletter that readers should embrace the anti-vax label, as he has done, and oppose “the madness of the vaccine mania that has swept public health and government.” (This was only a day before Kennedy pledged that the new ACIP members would not be “ideological anti-vaxxers.”)
He is also openly conspiratorial. In his best-selling book, Lies My Gov’t Told Me: And the Better Future Coming, Malone alleges that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s grants to news publications (including The Atlantic) were payments “to smear” vaccine critics, and accuses Anthony Fauci of fearmongering to amass power. Last fall, Malone and his wife, Jill, released a follow-up, PsyWar, making the case that the U.S. government is engaged in a vague but diabolical program of psychological warfare against its own citizens. According to the Malones, the CIA, FBI, and Defense Department, along with a “censorship-industrial complex,” have granted the U.S. government “reality-bending information control capabilities.” (They also claim that “sexual favors are routinely exchanged to seal short-term alliances, both within agencies and between contractors and ‘Govies.’”) They envision this corruption spawning a postapocalyptic future in which guns, ammo, horses, and “a well-developed network of like-minded friends” might be necessary for survival. Malone, who lives on a horse farm in Virginia, appears to be already well prepared.
Malone’s rise to contrarian glory began in the summer of 2021, when public-health officials were urging hesitant Americans to roll up their sleeves for the new, mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines. Back in the 1980s, Malone had conducted research on delivering RNA and DNA into cells, which, he and his co-authors suggested in a 1990 paper, “may provide alternative approaches to vaccine development.” That early work lent credibility to his dire warnings that the COVID shots hadn’t been adequately tested, as perhaps did his grandfatherly beard and professorial demeanor. His popularity grew with appearances on Tucker Carlson’s and Glenn Beck’s shows, where he questioned the safety and effectiveness of the mRNA vaccines while touting—and, critics said, overstating—his own role in the development of the underlying technology. It was Malone’s conspiratorial musings on The Joe Rogan Experience that prompted several famous musicians, including Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, to pull their music from Spotify in protest of the platform’s contract with Rogan. Today, Malone’s newsletter, where he shares his anti-vaccine claims and often praises Kennedy, has more than 350,000 subscribers.
Kennedy and Malone have long been intertwined. Kennedy wrote the foreword to Lies My Gov’t Told Me and wrote an endorsement for PsyWar, alleging that the same techniques that the Malones described shaped public reaction to the assassinations of his father and uncle. Kennedy’s 2021 book, The Real Anthony Fauci—which alleges that the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases spread corruption and fraud—is dedicated to Malone, among others. Since Kennedy was appointed as Health and Human Services secretary, many of his allies in the anti-vaccine world have accused him of moderating his views to be more palatable to lawmakers. But among anti-vaccine activists, Malone’s appointment to the advisory board was taken as evidence that Kennedy remains on their side.
Public-health experts, by contrast, are horrified. “I think that the scientific and medical community won’t trust this committee, and for good reason,” Paul Offit, a pediatrician and former member of the advisory group, told me. He’s heard from fellow public-health experts who are considering forming their own committees to weigh the evidence, “because they won’t trust the conclusions of these people.” Sean O’Leary, the American Academy of Pediatrics’ liaison to ACIP, told me he was “deeply concerned” with RFK’s decision to entirely remake the committee. “This maneuver really endangers public health. It endangers children,” he said. He worries that it will lead to disease, suffering, and death among adults and children alike. (Neither Malone nor HHS responded to requests for comment. On X, Malone promised to “do my best to serve with unbiased objectivity and rigor.”)
Malone’s appointment is perhaps the strongest sign yet of Kennedy’s willingness to appoint ideological crusaders into powerful government roles. ACIP’s recommendations are nonbinding, but historically, the CDC has almost always hewn to them. The committee’s verdicts will help determine which vaccines insurance companies and the federal government pay for, decisions that will inevitably shape countless Americans’ immunization habits. Malone’s new role requires in-depth, good-faith examinations of scientific evidence. But he has already earned a reputation for rejecting it.
love getting the ‘your brake pads are getting low; they don’t need to be replaced yet, but you have 6-15k miles before they do’ notification at my annual car inspection :////
I love that Tim’s a car guy because Jack was always so down with him doing traditionally masculine things like football and cars are considered to be pretty masculine but I know in my heart Jack himself knew nothing about them and I find that so funny
Jack: football
Tim: not my thing
Jack: fishing?
Tim: I like going with you I just don’t like getting up early….what about tennis?
Jack: I like watching but in terms of playing I’m more of a golf man
Tim: oh I know we could go to a car show!
Jack: that sounds great son! We could see some sports cars
Tim: what kind did you want to see?
Jack:
Jack: what kind?
there is one masculine thing tim likes that Jack would probably not be a fan of
Tim, working under the hood: dad can you pass me the socket wrench please?
Jack: I umm…
Tim:
Jack: trowels are more my tools
Tim: …why don’t you hold the light instead?
ALT
omg he would, he’d defo bring it back to Redbird as well
not enough in comics or in fan spaces about how damian is going to be crack cocaine to all of the little protogoths in middle and high school. theyre going to be hanging off of him. they’re going to be obsessed. think about it. hes catnip. hes not even goth but he kind of seems like a vampire. hes their boytoy wednesday addams. manic pixie dream boy. and nobody is talking about how it’s kind of dick’s worst nightmare.
i know these little baby goths i do. they’re all trying to one up each other. damian has like 5 different peoples wisdom teeth and a bunch of necklaces that are just little vials of blood. talia is also shriveling a little because her beautiful little boy (who is borne of her, a well dressed woman, and her beloved, a well dressed man) had some sticky goth teenagers get their fingers into his closet and now he’s wearing ankle length jean skirts. habibi i am glad you have clothes you enjoy but could they perhaps be silk or velvet or at least not demin?
hes a little brown edward cullen to them. they think hes maybe a vampire i’m being very serious about that. he’s just a rich ESL student but they don’t know that. “he’s so mysterious” you are just twelve and he is not american. he’s catnip. he’s a quiet artist type and he was raised by Talia al Ghul. he’s memorized Shakespeare. hes designed to trap goth people. hes not even goth. but like you look at him and youre like He could be goth. I could goth that. He could goth. they’re fighting over him but also they’re all just his friends he’s been absorbed into the goths.
i think they make him do theatre. he’s not interested at first (and he is not built to do anything contemporary.) but one day one of them is like begging him and he’s like. “No Mariposa And You Should Cease Asking. Theatre Does Not Align With My Interests.” and shes like okay well whatever I’m going to go learn swordfighting for Romeo and Juliet and damian is like. “Lead the way to the theatre.” he’s off book by day 2 and the teacher has to be like. very impressive but please pretend. everyone else is feeling bad. he gets to be hamlet in hamlet.
he ends up getting his little goth club into exercising regularly because half of them follow him everywhere and the other half follows the first half and then suddenly there’s a goth army learning ballroom dance. Imagine walking into a high school dance class/club and there’s like 10 goths clustered in a corner in full corpsepaint in leotards and little ballet shoes. this would be the best day of my life.
it keeps dick up at night. hes not ready to become a grandpa at 29. alfred tries to comfort him by showing him young posergoth bruce (who got ZERO pussy) and dick is like. alfred. thank you i will treasure this forever. but this is not a comfort. he’s laying awake in bed at night like The only way this doesn’t end with me being alfred in a talia and bruce situation is if jon kent swoops in and saves the day. which will then make me the alfred in a bruce and clark situation. my life is a nightmare.
the only thing keeping him from the worst case scenario (being the alfred in a bruce and khoa situation) is that jon snapped up the best friend slot so early that damian doesn’t have the time or space to ever collect another best friend to become psychosexually obsessed with. dick is so acutely aware of this. more than once he has thanked jon to his face excruciatingly sincerely to his face for no reason. he’s like Jon. Thank you. I genuinely cannot thank you enough. and jons like. i just got you some water but youre welcome. jon thinks he is so weird but like well. people have been weirder so it’s probably fine
and bruce is no help. Dick is like barging into his office to be like “Damian is dating a new girl at school” and bruce is like Please don’t talk to me about this dick my head already hurts. and dick is like “you need to be informed about the social life of Your child. She’s given him a vial of her blood on a necklace.” bruce voice richard PLEASE.
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At the core of every joke about Baby Boomers lies a seed of jealousy. Unlike younger generations, they have largely been able to walk a straightforward path toward prosperity, security, and power. They were born in an era of unprecedented economic growth and stability. College was affordable, and they graduated in a thriving job market. They were the first generation to reap the full benefits of a golden age of medical innovations: birth control, robotic surgery, the mapping of the human genome, effective cancer treatments, Ozempic.
But recent policy changes are poised to make life significantly harder for Baby Boomers. “If you’re in your 60s or 70s, what the Trump administration has done means more insecurity for your assets in your 401(k), more insecurity about sources of long-term care, and, for the first time, insecurity about your Social Security benefits,” Teresa Ghilarducci, a labor economist at the New School, told me. “It’s a triple threat.” After more than half a century of aging into political and economic trends that worked to their benefit, the generation has become particularly vulnerable at exactly the wrong moment in history.
Perhaps the biggest threat to Boomers in the second Trump administration is an overhaul of Social Security, which provides benefits to nearly nine out of 10 Americans ages 65 and older. In an emailed statement, Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano wrote, “I am fully committed to upholding President Trump’s promise to protect and strengthen Social Security. Beneficiaries can be confident that their benefits are secure.” But in February, DOGE announced plans to cut Social Security staff by about 12 percent and close six of its 10 regional offices; a quarter of the agency’s IT staff has quit or been fired. Social Security’s long-term outlook was already troubled before Trump, and these drastic reductions make the understaffed agency even less equipped to support those who rely on it. Shutting down field offices means seniors can’t get help in person; less staffing means longer wait times when they call and more frequent website crashes. “When you add hurdles, or cause a slowdown in terms of processing claims, you see losses in terms of benefits,” Monique Morrissey, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, told me. In fact, shutdowns of field offices during the first two years of the coronavirus pandemic corresponded with decreased enrollment in both Social Security and Social Security Disability Insurance, which is available to Americans under 65 who can no longer work for physical or mental reasons.
Social Security cuts will most hurt low-income Boomers, who are the likeliest to rely on benefits to cover their whole cost of living. But even those with more financial assets may depend on Social Security as a safety net. “It’s important to understand that many seniors, even upper-income seniors, are just one shock away from falling into poverty,” says Nancy J. Altman, the president of Social Security Works, an organization that advocates for expanding the program. As a whole, seniors have more medical needs and less income than the general population, so they’re much more financially vulnerable. If you’re comfortably middle-class in your early 60s, at the height of your earning potential, that’s no guarantee that you’ll remain comfortably middle-class into your 70s. In the next few years, Boomers who face more medical bills as they stop working might find, for the first time in their life, that they can’t easily afford them.
Middle-income seniors are also likely to feel the impact of a volatile market. “They tend to have modest investments and fixed incomes rather than equities, so the type of wealth that will erode over a high-inflation period,” Laura D. Quinby, who studies benefits and labor markets at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, told me. After Trump announced 10 percent tariffs on all imported goods in April, the three major stock indexes dropped 4 percent or more. They’ve since recovered, but the erratic market—whipped around by Trump’s shifting proclamations about tariffs—scares many middle-class Boomers, who are watching their retirement savings shrink.
In the near future, older Americans might find themselves paying more for medical care too. Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” which has passed in the House but awaits a vote in the Senate, would substantially limit Medicare access for many documented immigrants, including seniors who have paid taxes in the United States for years. The bill would also reduce Medicaid enrollment by about 10.3 million people. Although Medicaid is for people with limited incomes of all ages, it supports many older Americans and pays for more than half of long-term care in the U.S. Most seniors require some sort of nursing home or at-home medical care; one study found that 70 percent of adults who live to 65 will require long-term services and support.
That support may soon be not only more expensive, but harder to come by. The long-term-care workforce is disproportionately made up of immigrants, so the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown is likely to reduce the number of people available to take care of seniors—and increase how much it costs to hire them. “If you have no money, you’ll be on Medicaid in a nursing home, and that’s that. But if you’re trying to avoid that fate, you’re now going to run through your money more quickly and be more vulnerable,” Morrissey said.
Seniors with some financial security are more likely to live long enough to contend with the diseases of old age, such as Alzheimer’s and dementia. The Trump administration has cut funding for promising research on these diseases. “Going forward, you’ll find less treatments reaching fruition,” Thomas Grabowski, who directs the Memory and Brain Wellness Center at the University of Washington, told me. For now, the UW Memory and Brain Wellness Center, where Grabowski works on therapies for Alzheimer’s, has stopped bringing in new participants; as time goes on, he said, they’ll have to tighten more. (Kush Desai, a White House spokesperson, told me in an email that the cuts to research funded by the National Institutes of Health are “better positioning” the agency “to deliver on medical breakthroughs that actually improve Americans’ health and wellbeing.”)
Changes at the UW Memory and Brain Wellness Center could have dramatic effects on current patients, including Bob Pringle, a 76-year-old who lives in Woodinville, Washington. In April, he started getting infusions of donanemab, an anti-amyloid medication approved by the FDA last year. The drug doesn’t cure Alzheimer’s; it’s designed to slow the disease’s progression, though the utility of donanemab and other Alzheimer’s drugs remains controversial among experts. Pringle, for one, has found donanemab helpful. “With the medication, my decline is a gentle slope, rather than a rapid decline,” says Pringle, whose mother died of Alzheimer’s and whose sister lives in a memory-care facility. “You’re always hopeful that somebody with a bigger brain than you have is working on a cure, and the medication gives us some time until then,” Bob’s wife and caretaker, Tina Pringle, told me. “But right now, because of the funding cuts, our outlook is grim.”
The unknowability of the future has always been a scary part of getting older. The enormous upheaval that the Trump administration has created will only magnify that uncertainty for Boomers. After a historical arc of good fortune, their golden generation has to contend with bad timing.
Younger generations, including my own, shouldn’t gloat, though: Cuts to Social Security and a halt to medical research could well worsen the experience of aging for generations to come. Younger Americans will likely grow old under challenging conditions too. Unlike the Boomers, we’ll have plenty of time to get used to the idea.
after some research to clarify statutes, here’s where I generally fall on each of the Wayne kids’ adoption status from a story perspective (note that this is not about their canon status, but what reasonably would happen given their individual situations):
Dick: Realistically, in the modern era Dick would be adopted basically immediately given his legal situation and Bruce’s canonical willingness to adopt; the only reason he historically wasn’t adopted was becasue single men weren’t legally allowed to adopt minors (which is no longer the case). However, there are theoretically a few ways an author can justify Dick being permanently fostered and adopted as an adult instead, like Dick asking Bruce to not adopt him because he didn’t want to feel like he was replacing his parents in Batman: Year Three.
Jason: Jason is definitely adopted prior to his death, idk what 2011-2021 DC tries to say. There’s no reasonable outcome for Jason’s situation that isn’t adoption even if (like in the post-Flashpoint universe prior to Jason’s post-Crisis backstory being re-canonized in “Cheer”) Willis was alive and didn’t want to give up parental rights, since Jason was 11-ish and Willis’s sentence was canonically ‘twenty to life.’ At absolute minimum 2011-2021!Bruce was Jason’s permanent foster father and/or legal guardian with physical custody, with Willis retaining limited parental rights. However, the court wouldn’t have protested Bruce’s adoption application after Willis’s apparent death, especially if Jason voiced a desire to be adopted.
Tim: Tim’s adoption process should have been fairly smooth given that Tim was 16 at the time and very much able to voice his own opinions on his living situation and desired legal status to the court. There’s also very little incentive for Tim to opt for foster care over adoption under the circumstances, though Bruce and Tim could likely easily arrange a kinship care situation with Bruce classified as fictive kin if for some reason adoption wasn’t in the cards.
Cass: Cass is a legal grey area in general since she was already 17 when she met Bruce, has no birth certificate, and her parents were never legally established as being her biological parents, but there’s no reason either legally or practically for her status to be anything other than adopted…especially since it was 100% certainly an adult adoption regardless of universe. There’s no existing parental rights to consider or terminate from the court’s perspective.
Damian is obviously Bruce’s biological child, but given the circumstances of his birth and early childhood it’s not only possible but highly probable that he doesn’t have a legally recognized birth certificate when he comes to live with Bruce. While this is obviously forgable via Babs or Bruce himself, the more likely situation is that someone (probably Bruce’s lawyers at Bruce’s request) went to the State Department and registered Damian as a foreign birth abroad using Damian’s positive paternity results as an identification method, providing him with a Consular Report of Birth Abroad to prove his American citizenship.
I don’t think Dick not being adopted immediately is unrealistic to the modern day, and I’m a little unclear on where this idea comes from, or why it’s so popular? There are plenty of reasons he might not have been; there’s the Year Three explanation you mentioned which has come up in comics outside of that one, there’s also Bruce’s reasoning in Pre Crisis that he was too young and felt unready to make that kind of decision at the time - and besides those canon reasons there’s things like not wanting to create a legal tangle if unknown relatives appeared later for Dick, or personal sensitivity to the fact that Dick comes from a culture with a lot of trauma surrounding children being adopted out (which is a topic that has at least come up in comics a couple of times, first with Yoska in Gotham Knights and then with Raptor in Nightwing). I really don’t mean this to be combative and I hope it doesn’t come across that way, I just personally find Dick’s situation in Pre/Post Crisis pretty relatable, and I don’t understand why exactly it keeps getting called unrealistic?
Don’t worry, I get what you’re asking and I’m more than happy to spend some time explaining all of this!
The first thing you have to understand is that historically, Dick not being adopted had nothing to do with 1) Bruce not being willing to adopt Dick or 2) Dick not agreeing to the adoption, and instead had everything to do with the fact that Bruce was an unmarried, single man in a time when unmarried men largely weren’t allowed to adopt children, especially non-relative ones.
I’ve talked about this before (see here), but the pre-Crisis status quo was not actually that Bruce 'felt too young’ to adopt Dick or whatever; Marv Wolfman just made that up in the mid-80s to milk the Batfamily drama happening over in the Bat books re: Bruce’s fraught legal custody battle over Jason with Natalia Knight. For most of the pre-Crisis era, the status quo was that Dick wasn’t adopted because the court explicitly denied Bruce’s adoption petition due to him being an unmarried bachelor:
“I can’t let you adopt the boy, Mr. Wayne, because you’re a bachelor! But since you’ve obtained the consent of his nearest relatives, I hereby appoint you his legal guardian!” -Batman #213 (1969)
[same quote as above], from The Untold Legend of the Batman #2 (1980)
Largely, pre-Crisis!Dick (who was a minor until the 1970s) wasn’t adopted was because it wasn’t legally feasible for Bruce to do so, and by the time we’d gotten to a point in the timeline where it was (the 1980s, after a set of huge child welfare reforms), lots of people had actually kind of forgotten he wasn’t adopted, much less that he technically had living relatives like Uncle George and Aunt Harriet…including multiple professional comic book writers:
“Sando the Strongman? Why…I used to know him before you adopted me, Batman—when I worked in a circus act with my parents!” -80 Page Giant #8 (1965), “Secret Origins”
“He took me in…adopted me in his identity of Bruce Wayne, and trusted me with his innermost secrets…” -Detective Comics #484 (1979)
That is, until Marv Wolfman decided to inject Adoption Angst into the situation out of nowhere at Donna’s wedding:
“Why didn’t you ever try to adopt me?” “I’ve been thinking about that and all I can say is I was probably too young and too obsessed in beginning my career as the Batman. I guess I never gave it much thought back then. And then, before I knew it, the Boy Wonder became a man and I realized how much time had slipped by me. But believe me, I couldn’t have loved any son more. I know I haven’t said it much, but I’m proud of you.” -Tales of the Teen Titans #50 (1985)
And off to the races we went, with Bruce and Dick’s adoption angst carrying over into the post-Crisis universe and eventually culminating in Devin Grayson’s Gotham Knights adoption arc in 2001.
Now, as for the rest of your questions (and why I personally think Dick would and should be adopted outright in a modern context), my answer got pretty long because I went into a bit of detail about how the child welfare system works post-1997, so that’s under the cut:
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notbecauseofvictorie_feed) wrote2025-06-14 02:30 pm
ALT
