CaliToday (31/12/2025): Tatiana Schlossberg, an acclaimed environmental journalist and the granddaughter of President John F. Kennedy, passed away on Tuesday morning, just one month after publicly revealing her diagnosis with terminal cancer. She was 35.
Her family confirmed the death in a statement signed by her husband, George Moran, her parents, Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg, and her siblings.
"Our beautiful Tatiana left us this morning," the statement read. "She will remain in our hearts forever."
A Final, Public Struggle Schlossberg’s death comes shortly after she penned a searingly honest essay for The New Yorker last month, published on the anniversary of her grandfather’s assassination. In the piece, she disclosed that she had been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in May 2024. She described the condition as a rare genetic mutation typically found in elderly patients.
Despite undergoing clinical trials, she wrote that doctors had given her, at most, a year to live. Her writing revealed the heavy emotional burden of her illness on her mother, Caroline Kennedy, the sole surviving child of JFK.
"Throughout my life, I have tried to be good... and protect my mother, never making her sad or angry," Schlossberg wrote. "Now, I have added a new tragedy to her life, to our family’s life, and there is nothing I can do to stop it."
A Parting Defense of Science Beyond her personal grief, Schlossberg used her final platform to issue a sharp rebuke of the health policies championed by her cousin, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
She criticized the slashing of billions in funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and cuts to mRNA vaccine research—technologies she noted were vital for treating cancers like hers.
"I worry for the leukemia research and bone marrow transplant funding... I worry for the trials that are my only chance for remission," she wrote.
Addressing her cousin’s vaccine skepticism, she contrasted his views with the lived experience of her father, Edwin Schlossberg. "Bobby probably doesn't remember the millions paralyzed or killed by polio," she noted. "My father... does remember. He said the feeling of getting that vaccine was like freedom."
A Legacy of Observation Schlossberg leaves behind her husband, three children, and a family deeply entrenched in public service, including her brother, Jack Schlossberg, who is currently running for Congress in New York.
In her final public words, she reflected on the fleeting nature of life and memory. "I sometimes fool myself that I will remember this forever... Obviously, I won't," she wrote. "But because I don't know what death is like... I will keep pretending. I will keep trying to remember."