Senator Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM) took Thursday’s Senate Finance Committee hearing in a bizarre direction when he claimed that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was not “worthy” of a starfish pin he claimed he’d received from someone in his home state. Lujan claimed that he’d been given the pin at a town hall in New Mexico, and said that it was supposed to stand for the idea that even the smallest thing – or the smallest action — could make a difference in the world. Kennedy, he then argued, was not “worthy” of wearing such a symbol. WATCH: “I’m sorry you are not worthy of this nice little pin.” “I was going to give it to you today, but I don’t think you deserve it.” Senator Ben Ray Luján makes a fool of himself in bizarre moment with starfish pin during hearing. Not sure how RFK Jr. will survive this. pic.twitter.com/iMXdKR153O — Thomas Hern (@ThomasMHern) September 4, 2025 “Look, two young ladies in Las Cruces, New Mexico, at a town hall recently gave me this starfish pin,” he said, removing it from his lapel and holding it up. “I was going to give it to you today, but after your questioning today, I don’t think you deserve it.” “Because what this represents is to remember that every one of us can make a difference, sir,” Lujan continued. “Something as small as a starfish on a beach that maybe got washed up, you throw it back in the ocean. You might not save them all, but you can save one.” “I’m sorry that you’re not worthy of this nice little pin, sir, as a nice reminder,” he added. “I’m going to pray for you, Secretary Kennedy, I hope we do better. I want you to do better. But today was a failure for you, man.” Kennedy spent the majority of Thursday’s hearing listening as the committee’s Democrats testified in his place, asking only a few contentious questions before talking over him and refusing to let him answer.

We’ve known for a very long time in this country that if you said the wrong thing about the trans issue, you could be canceled. But now, finally, there are people — heretofore on the Left — who are acknowledging that the threat of cancellation has been real. This is just one of the beautiful flowering fruits of the Trump administration: people are now free to say things they weren’t allowed to say before. It’s not clear whether people are deciding that they want to say what is currently more popular or if they genuinely repent having been bullied into acceptance of the trans agenda. On Wednesday, Malcolm Gladwell, a famous bestselling author, explained his amended point of view on transgender athletes, meaning men playing against women in sports. He was speaking specifically about a 2022 appearance at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, where he moderated a panel discussion in which they talked about the path forward for the inclusion of trans athletes in sports, meaning men competing against women. On Wednesday, Gladwell stated to 2022 panel co-host Ross Tucker, “I’m ashamed of my performance at that panel because I share your position 100%, and I was cowed. The idea of saying anything on this issue — I was, I believe in retrospect — in a dishonest way, I was objective in a dishonest way.” That is honest. Many people were so scared of saying what was obviously true that they didn’t say it. This happens all the time in politics. It happened in Great Britain during the Rotherham grooming scandal, when members of the media specifically decided not to cover the fact that there were Muslim grooming gangs, Muslim men, who were grooming underage white girls for sex and then passing them around. People in the media knew about this, and they decided not to say anything, because to say something would have resulted in censure and public opprobrium as well as people in power suggesting that you were somehow in league with the Right. And for a very long time in this country and the UK, being in league with the Right was code for being thrown out of public life. WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show I don’t believe that every view is equivalent. I’m not a moral relativist. I don’t believe that we should take every view with equal seriousness. I do think that there is an Overton window, meaning the arena of valuable discussion. The problem is that the Left shut the Overton window so much that if you disagreed with the Left and fundamentally true principles such as “men are not women,” they would throw you out. So, for many members of the Right, the question becomes: what do you do when Malcolm Gladwell says something like this? What do you do? The answer is you probably should offer forgiveness. You probably should offer some form of generosity. While you can make the argument that what Gladwell did was cowardly, it’s more about the insane echo chamber that exists in so many of our elite spaces. The reality is, if you said what Malcolm Gladwell now says in 85% of the country, you’d be totally fine; it is the mainstream view. But if you were in the elite circles in which Malcolm Gladwell travels, you would have lost your social standing. You might have lost your job; people would stop reviewing your books. There was a real risk attached. It is a credit to President Trump and the American people that the Overton window has been opened again. The American people didn’t want to do this anymore. They were done. That’s not true in Great Britain, where cancel culture has been enshrined in government policy. What prevents that from happening in the United States is not our magical adherence to First Amendment principles as a people. Unfortunately, there are many, many people in the United States who — if they had the opportunity —would vote to curb free speech. If you look at the polls of young people, young people overwhelmingly believe that hate speech should trump free speech. According to many polls, young people believe there should be legal limits on the kinds of speech one should be allowed to say out loud. What protects us is the structure of the Constitution. It is the fact that the Constitution bars Congress from doing what the British government is doing in Great Britain. And the Supreme Court has made very clear that in deference to the Constitution, free speech must be protected at the highest possible level. The Founders knew what they were doing. And President Trump, by opening the Overton window and making it possible for those on the Right to be heard and not canceled, is paying tribute to the Founders in the best possible way.

As bad as Cracker Barrel?

'It gives me great pride'

'Unstable and unwell'

'RFK Jr. is not a drag on President Trump'

TCU is pushing the limits

The potential 2028 Democratic presidential nominee calmly asked questions

'The important lifesaving coordination and training... has really paid off'

'Obviously deceased'