“Diarra From Detroit” presents this as the schoolteacher-turned-detective’s greatest asset and her biggest flaw. If it weren’t for her stubborn insistence on finding out why a great guy, Chris (Shannon Wallace), ghosted her after an incredible first date, she might be happier. Then again, nobody would have noticed that Chris had been kidnapped.
But Diarra’s tendency to fixate on small details and slights eventually cracked the case. They also brought to light a broader conspiracy, starting with the twist that this wasn’t Chris’ first kidnapping.
As Season 2 begins, Chris and Diarra have settled into coupledom, which is precisely what Diarra thought she wanted, but nothing like she pictured it would be. Chris is a mess. Diarra would love to dump him, but her nearest and dearest friends Aja (DomiNque Perry) and Tea (Bryan Terrell Clark) warn her that would damage her reputation. The single bright spot and mixed blessing to come out of all this is that her neighbors see Diarra as the go-to person for fixing lost causes and finding lost people. Hence her latest caper, which begins with a mission to track down a vintage desk and turns on a dime into a heist tied to a cache of gold.
But wait, as our hard-boiled citizen investigator is fond of saying. I should go back. You see, these latest episodes of “Diarra From Detroit,” created by its star, Diarra Kilpatrick, have been cooking for more than two years. Three, if you count the series’ debut at the 2023 Tribeca Festival before its 2024 premiere on BET+. From there, it sat in limbo until Paramount renewed it in 2025.
But limbo is better than canceled, which is more likely to happen if the proposed merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery goes through.
Like Diarra and Chris’ relationship status, the case of Paramount’s proposed marriage to Warner Bros. is complicated. Hollywood all but accepted that the merger was a done deal until mid-July, when a dozen state attorneys general and along with the Writers Guild of America West and East filed a lawsuit to stop the merger and California U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín issued a restraining order to temporarily halt the proceedings. (Salon’s unionized employees are represented by the WGA East.)
On July 24, Paramount’s legal team agreed to postpone the merger pending the outcome of the states’ antitrust case. That could potentially delay the transaction for more than a year, since the opposing sides can’t agree on when they want the trial to begin. The states would prefer a 2027 start while Paramount wants to kick it off this fall. If the AGs win, Paramount’s inevitable appeal could keep the $110 billion deal backburnered well into late 2027.
The states argue that this merger would leave consumers paying more for less diverse news and entertainment options if finalized.
The continued existence of shows like “Diarra From Detroit” — shows by female, non-white creators about a place and people rarely depicted in the fullness of their humanity on television — is a miracle under normal circumstances.
What this means is that as tough as it already was for a TV series created by a Black woman to be picked up by a major platform, it could be nearly impossible in a universe in which Paramount has swallowed HBO, CNN and other prime Warner Bros. channels. Even in a scenario where BET+ still existed — it officially shut down on July 22 — making original stories like “Diarra” requires resources and a level of corporate will that a megacorporation’s smaller brands don’t tend to be afforded. In a contracted media landscape with fewer places to pitch, its odds of landing in front of audiences on a major platform decline even further. And they weren’t all that high to begin with.
Meanwhile, Paramount is urging us to pay no attention to the Ellisons behind the curtain. “This merger is lawful, pro-competitive, and will benefit consumers, creators, workers, and the entertainment industry,” a Paramount spokesperson said in a statement.
Many maintain the opposite is true, especially with regard to inclusive content. Included in that crowd are scholars working with the University of California San Diego’s Media and Consolidation Research Organization (MACRO) Lab.
“All four categories of diversity—ownership, representation, viewpoint, and outlet—are threatened by this merger, reducing the forms of diversity the public depends upon in cinemas, over the airwaves, and across online platforms,” they warn in a recently published paper. Previous findings by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative back this conclusion.
Our Summer sale is on!
Among those paying attention to The Mystery of the Media Merger, the survival of TV’s Diarra Bricklands is not the top concern. All eyes are on CNN, as Sharon Waxman, the founder and editor-in-chief of The Wrap, explained in a recent New York Times column.
If what’s happening to CBS News under editor-in-chief Bari Weiss is a sign of things to come, that’s another assault on our already besieged democracy. A greater one, even, since CNN is a global news brand.
Consider that only days ago, “60 Minutes” announced that former New York Times Opinion columnist Ross Douthat is joining its ranks. Douthat, if you’ve forgotten, is the guy who proposed in a 2018 column that the solution to placating incel violence may be between the legs of hypothetical charitable women who feel sorry for them. Or sexbots.
Corporate media traded insightful journalism for ragebait like this years ago, which is what makes figures like Diarra Brickland and her creator ever more valuable. They’re Black women excelling in roles not often associated with (or awarded to) people of color.
And to specifically bring it back to Douthat’s dubious query, Diarra — either of them — is precisely the kind of woman who puts the lie to fantasies about female submissiveness. Season 2 starts with her realizing she’s probably better off free of her mystery prize.
But for now, Chris and Diarra are in counseling. Part of their unofficial relationship homework involves field missions that spark heated conversations about masculine insecurity and Diarra’s conflicted desires about motherhood.
One topic she’s absolutely clear about, however, is being in control of every aspect of her life — including but not limited to Chris’ access to the part of her body she describes as “the Cadillac of the human anatomy: Gorgeous interior, impeccable design, not to mention the portal for all of humanity.”
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Writing like this ensures that “Diarra From Detroit” remains nimble from start to finish of each episode. That alone isn’t why this show and others like it need to be championed and protected. Television history is littered with the bodies of terrific shows denied more than a few seasons, or even a full order of one.
Citizen detectives like Diarra Brickland, who arranges her messy life around ensuring that the people and prizes typically overlooked or quietly erased by the mainstream keep being seen, are even less common. The continued existence of shows like “Diarra From Detroit” — shows by female, non-white creators about a place and people rarely depicted in the fullness of their humanity on television — is a miracle under normal circumstances. With that in mind, both the show and the merger are cases worth tracking right now and in the months to come, as if the quality of our lives depends on it.
New episodes of “Diarra From Detroit” stream Wednesdays through Sept. 9 on Paramount +.
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]]>Sadly, it seems we are destined to live in that damned year until the end of our days.
The year ended on a high note. Biden was elected president, the new Covid-19 vaccines were about to become available and we felt we could look forward to a day in the not-so-distant future when going to the grocery store didn’t come with a potential death sentence. Many people were back at work in one way or another, and the government had managed to get the American people through the crisis without suffering economic ruin. But it soon became clear Trump was unable to admit he had lost his reelection bid, and by January he and his army of surrogates and influencers had worked his MAGA followers into such a frenzy that they stormed the Capitol to stop certification of the election results.
At the same time, the MAGA faithful at home, which had, with the president’s help, pushed snake oil cures and conspiracy theories about the virus for months, were unwilling to move on from their various obsessions. They were set to turn the anti-vaccine movement into a juggernaut that would be ready to take on the entire American public health system and challenge medical science in general. The “do-your-own-research” crowd had felt their power, and they liked it.
Still, most of the country eventually moved on. Things had changed in some ways. Working from home is now a regular feature of the work world, Zoom calls are an everyday thing, and digital learning and telehealth have become mainstream.
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Imagine my surprise, then, to awaken on Wednesday to a Senate hearing featuring Dr. Anthony Fauci in which he was being asked about hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin. I had to check to make sure I wasn’t accidentally watching a documentary about the pandemic. But no: Rand Paul, Kentucky’s GOP senator had decided to scrape off the scab yet again by calling Fauci to face a grilling by Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Fauci looked the same. Paul looked the same. The daft conspiracy theories sounded the same. It was as if the last six years never happened. Déjà vu all over again.
Before leaving office, Biden preemptively pardoned Fauci — and for good reason. The doctor had become the whipping boy of the MAGA right, commonly accused of personally creating Covid-19 (in cahoots with Chinese communists, naturally) and then making a vaccine that they insist killed more people than the virus. It’s all nonsense, of course. There are still debates about the origins of the virus, but the idea that Fauci created or enabled it in some way is ridiculous. The hearing, ostensibly called to get to the bottom of all this, is actually just the latest step in Rand Paul’s petty vendetta against Fauci that began when they sparred in a series of confrontations during the crisis.
Despite being a doctor, Paul has always had, shall we say, an eccentric view of medical science, and he could never get the better of Fauci in their meetings. But the senator wanted the last word, and he got it.
Despite being a doctor, Paul has always had, shall we say, an eccentric view of medical science, and he could never get the better of Fauci in their meetings. But the senator wanted the last word, and he got it. Ignoring Biden’s pardon, Paul threatened Fauci with perjury if he “lied” during this latest hearing, a charge he claimed would not be covered by the pardon. In fact, the whole hearing was obviously a perjury trap.
Paul had released Fauci’s 1,000-page private pandemic diaries — helpfully provided to him by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — which had been stored on government servers. The senator knew there would likely be inconsistencies between Fauci’s memory and what he wrote at the time. Fauci’s attorney wisely told him to assert his Fifth Amendment rights, which he did. Paul threw that attorney out of the hearing for attempting to explain why.
The senator’s Republican colleagues piled on in their questioning of Fauci. Ohio’s Bernie Moreno was especially grotesque, bellowing “Who the f**k do you think you were?” at the 85-year-old scientist. Even Trump was less harsh in his commentary about the hearing, merely saying that he stopped listening to Fauci after a while.
But the hearing wasn’t the only recent time warp. Trump has spent the last six years attempting to rewrite the 2020 election, and apparently it’s not enough that he made one of the greatest political comebacks in history. He needs to erase the fact that he ever lost in the first place, so he has deployed the intelligence community to find proof that he didn’t. and decided to give a primetime presidential address on July 16 to reveal the findings.
Our Summer sale is on!
To no one’s surprise, it was a dud. The information he presented was mostly old news, and he failed to provide any proof that domestic or foreign actors had any impact on the election that year — because they didn’t. Even his MAGA media ecosystem was left unimpressed.
But Trump remains undaunted. He’s been willing to completely blow up the legislative session going into November’s midterms unless he gets his way with the SAVE America Act, legislation designed to suppress the vote, which Senate Republicans have so far refused to pass. (It will suppress their own voters too.)
For Trump and Republicans, the worst year in living memory will never end, and it’s easy to see why. Like the devil in that famous ad, it’s their idea of a good time.
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]]>“I hope you understand how important this is,” Hegseth told the room. “What we pour into the next generation will determine whether we keep our republic or not.”
FLAG’s founder, Nick Adams, had spent nearly a decade building toward this moment. An Australian-born conservative commentator and MAGA influencer, Adams had created the nonprofit, raised $7.7 million for it over 10 years, and garnered repeated praise from President Donald Trump. In March, Trump appointed Adams as the special presidential envoy for American tourism, exceptionalism and values — a position created for him after his nomination as ambassador to Malaysia stalled the previous year.
But a review of FLAG’s finances, donor operations and online donation network reveals a less celebratory picture. There is little evidence that the nonprofit has provided the civics education it claims. And Adams and his nonprofit have engaged in a pattern of questionable financial arrangements, including paying Adams and his mother more than half its recent annual revenue, while raising much of its money through a sweepstakes operation that has promised donors a chance to win $1,000,000 — a prize FLAG’s records show no evidence of ever paying.
Adams moved to the United States from Australia in 2012 and has since become an outspoken champion of the American political and economic system. Now 41, he has built a following as a conservative commentator and self-described “alpha male” influencer, making frequent media appearances and amassing roughly 2.1 million followers on Facebook and 640,000 followers on X on his personal pages. Adams authored books including “Retaking America: Crushing Political Correctness” and “Trump and Churchill: Defenders of Western Civilization.”
In 2016, Adams founded FLAG, registering it as a nonprofit with the mission to bring high-quality civics education to K-12 students across America. FLAG has produced civics materials like the Student’s Constitution, the Student’s Declaration of Independence and the Student’s Federalist Papers — kid-friendly editions of the country’s founding documents. By 2023, FLAG was reporting annual revenue of nearly $1.5 million, consisting of donations and merchandise sales. “Thanks to the support of 40,000+ grassroots patriots,” the organization’s website states, “over 1 million FLAG resources have been distributed in classrooms all across America.”
To give FLAG credibility in conservative circles, Adams assembled an advisory council of movement leaders including Hegseth, then a Fox News host; the late Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA; the late Edwin J. Feulner, founder of the Heritage Foundation; and Dennis Prager, the conservative radio host and co-founder of PragerU, a nonprofit that produces conservative educational materials. (The council has since been replaced with a board of directors.)
Adams did not respond to a detailed list of questions about FLAG’s financial practices, sweepstakes operation and educational programming. A Pentagon spokesperson declined to respond to questions but reiterated Hegseth’s support for FLAG.
Civics education has become a rallying cause across the Make America Great Again movement, whose slogan invokes a return to a specific vision of the country’s founding principles. PragerU is an approved curriculum provider in at least eight states. Turning Point USA pursued a similar goal through Turning Point Academy, a network of private schools. Along with those organizations, FLAG is now part of the America 250 Civics Education Coalition, a partnership of the U.S. Department of Education formed with over 40 conservative groups.
Trump’s return to office has been a boon for Adams. The president has called Adams one of his favorite authors, and a foreword in Adams’ 2024 book, “Alpha Kings,” credited to Trump calls Adams someone whose “work ethic equals his moral responsibility and faith in God.” Although Trump wasn’t able to attend FLAG’s 2023 annual gala, he sent a video praising the nonprofit and Adams, telling attendees that “tens of thousands of teachers are being trained and hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents are now standing up for our kids.”
“It takes Nick from Australia to come and teach us about American greatness and to help us fight for our country,” Trump added. “He’s an American now, and we’re very lucky to have him.”
The White House press office declined to comment.
FLAG’s website invites teachers to request free classroom presentations, delivered by “certified FLAG Ambassadors,” including Adams himself, alongside guest speakers described as entrepreneurs, business leaders and immigrants. In 2016 and early 2017, FLAG regularly posted photos documenting visits to schools. After that period, however, ProPublica could not find similar documentation of FLAG representatives visiting schools.
Since 2016, as FLAG’s annual revenues grew from $68,000 to $1.1 million in 2024, there is almost no indication in the organization’s annual federal tax filings that it was spending money on its stated mission. No line item in FLAG’s federal tax filing identifies a payment to a school, a teacher or an educational distributor. Only two lines, in a 2017 federal filing, indicate $26,925 for “Student’s Constitutions, Printing” and $5,670 for “Book Donations, Shipping & Supplies.” In the last six years, while FLAG operated under Adams, the only documented instance of FLAG activity that appears to fit the definition of “educational” is a 2020 video showing Adams speaking at what is described as a teachers’ conference.
But the nonprofit has been lucrative for the Adams family. In 2024, Adams, who was born Nicholas Adamopoulos, and his mother, Angelika Adamopoulos, collected a combined $587,279 in compensation and benefits from FLAG — 53% of the organization’s revenue that year, according to the nonprofit’s federal filing.
Adamopoulos was paid $201,861, including benefits, as FLAG’s secretary. In the same filing, FLAG answered no when asked by the IRS whether any officer or director shared a family relationship with another director or officer. Adamopoulos did not respond to requests for comment.
Experts were troubled that the organization spent so much on Adams and his mother. “The amount being paid, both in absolute dollar terms and as a percentage of the organization’s revenues and expenses, is very high,” said Lloyd Mayer, a nonprofit law professor at Notre Dame Law School and a leading authority on tax-exempt organizations.
Mayer said Adams’ salary increases since FLAG’s founding are more of “a yellow flag,” than a clear violation. For FLAG’s first three years, Adams received no salary. He first took compensation in 2019 of just $20,400. Then his annual pay rose steadily to reach $411,209, or about 30% of the group’s total revenue, in 2023. Adamopoulos was the first employee outside of Adams to be paid a significant salary, in 2024. No other employee was paid more than $5,000 from 2016 to 2024, according to FLAG’s federal filings, obtained through ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer.
The legal test, Mayer said, is whether the board was clear that it was making up for early years of low or no pay: “Were they explicit in saying, ‘We’re not just paying you for this year; we’re paying you for your past service, which you were not fairly compensated for’?”
The IRS asks nonprofits whether their executive compensation was reviewed by independent people and if they used comparisons to other similar organizations — a standard safeguard against self-dealing. In all filings from 2017 to 2024, FLAG answered no to both questions.
Philip Hackney, a nonprofit law professor at the University of Pittsburgh and former IRS official, said the absence of an independent review creates its own legal exposure. “Technically, that can be an excess benefit transaction on its own,” Hackney said, referring to the IRS category that triggers taxes on compensation paid to nonprofit insiders above fair market value.
FLAG claims that 66% of revenue goes toward program service expenses, according to a separate financial report filed with the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services in Florida, where the organization is now based. But the salaries of Adams and his mother, social media spending and travel expenses account for $755,541, or 86%, of the $878,208 allocated to program services.
Mayer said the classification is not automatically improper under federal law. “Education as a charitable purpose is a very broad category,” he said. “Spending money on staff, online communications and even fundraising appeals that have informational content can all be considered programmatic.”
“What [the IRS is] looking for is not inflated spending,” Mayer said. “They’re looking for disguised personal spending.”
In Australia, Adams was accused of spending taxpayer dollars on personal expenses. In 2006, when Adams was 22 years old, he served as a councillor in Ashfield, Australia. He was formally condemned by fellow councillors for running up thousands of dollars in phone calls and taxi charges for personal use while claiming them as council expenses. He repaid the charges after a formal investigation, according to a 2006 article in the Inner-West Weekly, an Australian newspaper.
FLAG’s online store sells Adams’ personal books — including “Alpha Kings” and “From Mar-a-Lago to Mars,” several marketed as signed copies for as much as $40 — alongside its own educational materials. One of Adams’ personal books, “Trump and Churchill,” is on the front page of FLAG’s online store, accompanied with language that says, “Proceeds from all sales go directly to promoting our mission and providing students and teachers with high-quality educational resources.” It is the only book with language that distinguishes which purchases fund FLAG’s mission or pay Adams directly.
In September, FLAG posted a photo from a conservative women’s convention showing Adams standing behind a table stacked with copies of his personal books displayed alongside FLAG-branded resources with the organization’s banner behind him. Adams’ books have also been advertised for sale on FLAG’s Facebook page, with links going directly to Adams’ personal website for the books rather than FLAG’s shopify page.
“He’s free to market his books,” Mayer said, “but if he has a charity do it, that means it’s not really a charity anymore, in that respect. It’s not about public benefit — the private benefit to him overrides the public benefit.”
In addition to the disclosure discrepancies, FLAG appears to have violated rules for conducting sweepstakes. Nearly all of FLAG’s revenue originates from individual donors, and most of that money is raised through a direct-mail sweepstakes operation that offers the chance to win prizes, in one case $1,000,000.
For years, FLAG has run a direct-mail sweepstakes campaign under names like “Payout Decision” and “Winner Search Swps.” Sweepstakes are regulated primarily at the state level, and organizations that run them are often required to register and report to state officials. Not every state requires this, but Florida, where FLAG is registered as a charity, does. FLAG does not disclose a sweepstakes program in its federal filings, and ProPublica could not locate any official sweepstakes registration for the organization in any state.
Nine years of FLAG’s federal filings contain no transaction consistent with a $1,000,000 payment. Hackney said any such payout would be expected to appear on the organization’s tax filings. “It should be an amount paid out at some point, and that would show up in a 990,” he said, referencing the name of the tax return filed by nonprofits, which is public. At its financial peak in 2023, FLAG held roughly $512,000 in total assets — about half the value of the prize it has offered to donors.
Mayer said the absence of a documented prize payment raises further legal questions. “If the promise is that someone will win $1,000,000 and no one ever does, that’s fraud,” he said. “That’s lying to induce people to support you.”
Internal records from a mailing list exchange database, which details how often and for what purpose organizations use mailing lists of potential donors, shows a shift in FLAG’s emphasis. Notes in FLAG’s record state that as of July 2020, FLAG was “not mailing much” through conventional fundraising channels and was “focusing on the sweeps side.”
In April 2024, someone filed a Better Business Bureau complaint against FLAG, alleging that its sweepstakes drawing deadlines had been repeatedly postponed — along with those of more than a dozen other charities the complainant said used the same practice. In a follow-up filing, the complainant cited FLAG’s timeline: a drawing originally set to run from January 2022 through December 2024 that had, by then, been pushed to run from December 2023 through January 2025.
“I just want them to pay me back my hard earned money,” the complainant wrote, “since I am a retired senior citizen who happened to love this country.”
FLAG told the BBB on May 6, 2024, that it had responded to the complainant.
FLAG marks its 10th anniversary on Wednesday, and is throwing itself a gala with tickets for the occasion priced at $1,000; $5,000; and $10,000. Adams is still listed on the website as FLAG’s founder but ceded the role of CEO in March to Cooper Rodenburg, a recent graduate of Stetson University, around the time he accepted his State Department role to promote tourism to the United States.
Reached by phone, Rodenburg requested that questions be sent by email but did not respond to them.
Rodenburg has since increased FLAG’s public activity, launching a TikTok account and a Substack newsletter, meeting with educational representatives and speaking to groups like the Shelby County Republican Women’s Club in Tennessee. A Substack post in April described FLAG, represented by Rodenburg and Adamopoulos, delivering founding documents to schools in Mississippi. This was one of the only specific program activities the organization has documented in recent years.
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The Health Resources and Services Administration is again pushing to include rebates in the drug discount program after a failed attempt earlier this year. Hospitals railed against the announcement, saying it would burden already strapped providers.
]]>While attending a vampire-themed party at castmate Brittany Cartwright’s house, Booko goes to work on making damn sure he ends the season in the cringiest way possible — having spent the previous episodes speaking down to his wife, Nia Sanchez, making women on the show uncomfortable and frat-boy screaming ‘Let’s Go,’ constantly — adapting a pickle-tongued “Bookula” voice upon entry and not dropping it until he gets too drunk to bother and, later, has a plastic cup bonked off his head by Janet Caperna. (And here I will go on record to say: TEAM JANET!)
Roughly 15 years or so, I twice attended an immersive fright house called “Blackout” in New York that was really nothing more than a cheaper way to have a date with a dominatrix. During these occasions, myself and other paying attendees entered a pitch-black warehouse, one by one, and were made to do such things as dance with short naked men, spit in strangers’ hands so another person could slurp it up and be chased until our only option was to fall over the back of a couch. These experiences came to mind while hearing Danny take on a yet-to-be-previously attempted vampire voice as he dodged dirty looks and jettisoned drinkware.
Danny, my love (said in Nia voice), you sucked the most this season, and that’s for sure.
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]]>Adeyemi’s novels, inspired by West African mythology, follow the adventures of Zélie, played by Thuso Mbedu, on her quest to restore magic to the kingdom of Orïsha. “Children of Blood and Bone” reteams Mbedu with “The Woman King” co-stars Lashana Lynch and Viola Davis, and also features Cynthia Erivo, Regina King, Amandla Stenberg and Idris Elba.
Adeyemi co-wrote the script with director Gina Prince-Bythewood and shared in an Instagram reel posted on Wednesday that she worked on the film “to make it a little better for us to be alive.” She also described the experience as “the worst thing I have ever had to live through.”
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“Even though it feels awful to share this, it’s better to share it and have it known and understood before I see a bunch of you for this new book,” Adeyemi said, referring to her upcoming tour for “The Siren,” which releases in September. “I never want to hear about this project again.”
When authors divorce themselves from film versions of their work, it’s usually a matter of creative disagreement. But Adeyemi describes suffering somatic pain and panic attacks, alleging she is still being antagonized behind the scenes.
To echo what former Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah said in a Substack post, an “Odyssey”-obsessed moment rife with cultural erasure demands to be countered by popular culture built on the civilizational myths, heroes and heroines of the Black diaspora. “Children of Blood and Bone” is one way of doing that. How unnerving that its creation scarred its creator.
“Children of Blood and Bone” debuts in theaters on Jan. 15, 2027.
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A federal judge this week said he wasn’t convinced that regulation detailing work requirements would cause irreparable harm to states. Still, the court will continue to hear the case.
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The deal to provide a range of imaging and therapeutic technologies to Cleveland Clinic extends the partners’ longtime relationship and follows a recent 10-year pact between Siemens Healthineers and Mayo Clinic.
]]>Firefighters face repeated smoke and chemical exposures, cardiovascular strain, disrupted sleep, extreme heat, heavy exertion, injury, and traumatic events. Occupational exposure as a firefighter is classified as carcinogenic to humans, and research by Horan and colleagues, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, and others also documents cardiovascular, sleep, and behavioral health concerns. These risks can be compounded by a culture that prizes toughness, reliability, and self-reliance and may make help-seeking more difficult.
When a firefighter delays care for hypertension, chest discomfort, depression, a changing skin lesion, or symptoms of sleep apnea, the consequences can extend to the family, crew, department, and public. Illness and injury may contribute to disability, staffing shortages, overtime, higher costs, and reduced operational readiness. Protecting firefighter health is therefore a form of community protection.
Nurses combine clinical knowledge with prevention, education, care coordination, relationship-building, systems thinking, and advocacy. We also understand that identifying risk is not enough. People need a trusted pathway to understand results, obtain appropriate care, overcome barriers, and remain engaged. The fire station is a natural setting for this work, especially in rural and underserved communities where the fire service may be among the most visible and dependable public-safety resources.
A successful partnership begins with listening, not with a predetermined screening event or lecture. Nurses can ask firefighters, chiefs, union or association representatives, peer-support members, safety officers, and retirees which health concerns matter most, which services they trust, and what prevents follow-through. Volunteer and career departments may have very different needs and resources.
Trust is itself a nursing intervention. Before collecting health information, nurses can clearly explain who can see individual results, how records will be protected, what may be reported to leadership, and how clinical care differs from research, program evaluation, occupational screening, and fitness-for-duty examinations. Aggregate findings can guide department planning without exposing individual participants. Consistency also matters: nurses can return results, answer questions, and help address the barriers the partnership identifies.
Schools of nursing can contribute expertise in primary care, public health, mental health, occupational health, education, data analysis, and implementation science. Under supervision, students can support needs assessments, evidence reviews, education, resource mapping, and quality improvement. Firefighters must be partners—not simply research participants—and should help shape questions, recruitment, interpretation, interventions, and dissemination.
Families also matter. With firefighters’ support, nurses can help family members recognize warning signs, understand confidentiality, locate resources, and encourage care without making them responsible for diagnosis or treatment. Nurses also can convene health systems, public health agencies, community groups, municipal leaders, and philanthropic partners so that separate resources become one coordinated pathway.
A nurse doesn’t need a large grant or formal occupational health program to begin. Start with one fire department, one trusted relationship, and one achievable priority. Listen. Clarify confidentiality. Build a practical pathway. Measure what changes. Return the findings to firefighters, then expand based on what the partnership learns.
A healthier firefighter is better prepared to respond, recover, and remain in service. A resilient fire department strengthens the resilience of the entire community. That’s nursing’s power beyond the clinic: seeing the connection between individual health and community well-being—and acting on it.
Julian L. Gallegos, PhD, MBA, FNP-BC, NREMT, FAUNA, FADLN is Assistant Professor/Assistant Head for Graduate Programs at Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN.
Horan KA, Marks M, Ruiz J, Bowers C, Cunningham A. Here for my peer: The future of first responder mental health. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021;18(21):11097. doi:10.3390/ijerph182111097
International Agency for Research on Cancer. Occupational Exposure as a Firefighter. IARC Monographs on the Identification of Carcinogenic Hazards to Humans. 2023;132. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK597253/
Jeung DY, Hyun DS, Kim I, Chang SJ. Effects of emergency duties on cardiovascular diseases in firefighters: A 13-year retrospective cohort study. J Occup Environ Med. 2022;64(6):510-4. doi:10.1097/JOM.0000000000002490
Khoshakhlagh AH, Al Sulaie S, Yazdanirad S, Orr RM, Dehdarirad H, Milajerdi A. Global prevalence and associated factors of sleep disorders and poor sleep quality among firefighters: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Heliyon. 2023;9(2):e13250. doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e13250
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