RFK Jr. Claims You’re More Likely to Be Autistic if You’re Circumcised

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. added to his repertoire of controversial, unsubstantiated claims about causes of autism at a Thursday Cabinet meeting, where the health secretary linked circumcision to autism.

President Donald Trump was repeating his administration’s hotly contested claim that Tylenol during pregnancy increases the risk of autism when Kennedy cut in to offer an example of “confirmation studies” to that effect.

“There’s two studies that show children who are circumcised early have double the rate of autism,” he said. “It’s highly likely because they’re given Tylenol. So, you know, none of this is dispositive, but all of it is stuff that we should be paying attention to.”

Kennedy did not specify the research he was citing, but one high-profile study that matches his description is a heavily criticized 2015 study that found, in a subgroup of a larger cohort of Danish children, “risk of infantile autism in circumcised boys was twice that of intact boys.” Notably, experts have warned against drawing sweeping conclusions from that study, which was “observational,” not “causal,” and did not account for myriad possible “confounding variables,” such as “cultural or social factors affecting the likelihood of an (early) autism diagnosis.”

It also did not investigate the use of acetaminophen.

Kennedy’s remark came just after he flipped the scientific method on its head by announcing his effort to “make the proof” for the administration’s unproven Tylenol-autism connection.

A federal judge in Illinois has ordered the Trump administration to stop beating, shooting at, and generally using violence against journalists and peaceful protesters.

The Thursday ruling comes as ICE and the National Guard tear through the streets of Chicago, shooting at and arresting journalists, protesters, and immigrants alike.

Judge Sara Ellis, the Obama appointee overseeing this case, has suspended federal agents from “using riot control weapons,” “firing [tear gas] cannisters,” “using force, such as pulling or shoving a person to the ground, tackling, or body slamming an individual,” “striking any person with a vehicle,” and more abuses of power. The order applies to all agents from the Department of Homeland Security, including ICE and Border Patrol.

Federal agents have done all of that in recent weeks. In September, an ICE agent shot a pepper ball inside CBS News Chicago reporter Asal Rezaei’s car completely unprompted, in just one of many recent attacks on journalists. Also last month, ICE shot Reverend David Black in the head with a pepper ball while he was praying outside of an ICE facility in Broadview. In yet another incident caught on camera, a CBP agent shot a woman five times, and then arrested her.

“Federal agents have responded with a pattern of extreme brutality in a concerted and ongoing effort to silence the press and civilians. Dressed in full combat gear, often masked, carrying weapons, bearing flash grenades and tear gas canisters, and marching in formation, federal agents have repeatedly advanced upon those present at the scene who posed no imminent threat to law enforcement. Snipers with guns loaded with pepper balls, paintballs, and rubber bullets are stationed on the roof of the Broadview ICE facility with their weapons trained on the press and civilians,” read the original complaint, made on behalf of the Chicago Headline Club, Block Club Chicago, and Chicago Newspaper Guild Local 34071, among other local media organizations.

Judge Ellis also noted that federal agents “must have visible identification (for which a unique recognizable alphanumeric identifier sequence will suffice) affixed to their uniforms or helmets and prominently displayed, including when wearing riot gear,” although she did not say they couldn’t still wear masks.

The Temporary Restraining Order will last for 14 days, after which the case will move forward.

The Internal Revenue Service is walking back an earlier promise to provide its furloughed workers backpay.

The tax agency had notified its employees on Wednesday that they would be “compensated on the earliest date possible after the lapse ends” in accordance with the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019. But that was apparently an overstep: The IRS corrected itself the following day, stating that it would defer to the direction of Russel Vought’s Office of Management and Budget.

“An earlier memo circulated on furlough guidance incorrectly stated the nature of the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019 as it relates to compensation for non-pay and non-duty status,” the IRS posted on its X account Thursday. “OMB will provide further guidance on this issue, you will be updated accordingly.”

An IRS employee that spoke with Federal News Network said that the initial email was automatically deleted from staff email inboxes by Thursday.

Backpay for furloughed workers has been a point of contention throughout the eight-day government shutdown, despite the fact that it’s legally mandated. Donald Trump himself signed the bipartisan-supported law after the last government shutdown, which lasted a record 35 days from 2018 into 2019.

On Tuesday, OMB tested the waters with potentially flouting the law, circulating a draft legal opinion indicating that furloughed federal workers would no longer be guaranteed backpay. Instead, the agency announced that members of Congress would need to specifically address the backpay provisions in a stopgap spending bill.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, who voted in favor of the 2019 law, told reporters Wednesday that it was his “understanding that the law is that they would be paid.”

“There is some other legal analysis that’s floating around. I haven’t yet had time to dig into and read that. But it has always been the case—that is, tradition and I think statutory law—that federal employees be paid,” Johnson said in a news conference.  “And that’s my position. I think they should be. They should not be subjected to harm and financial dire straits.”

The White House is using footage from Florida to make propaganda about the supposed “chaos” in Chicago, Illinois.

As the National Guard troops have entered Chicago to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, the Trump administration posted a video on X Wednesday to hype up its federal law enforcement operations in Chicago. “An incompetent Mayor. A delusional Governor. Chicago is in chaos, and the American people are paying the price,” the post read. “Chicago doesn’t need political spin—it needs HELP.”

But spin was all that the White House had to offer—because the video contained some footage that had nothing to do with Chicago at all.

The promotional video devolved into an onslaught of chaotic arrest footage, showing officers clad in tactical gear moving through the night to kick down doors and drag people out of their cars as Chicago Pastor Corey Brooks’s voice urged the city to welcome Trump’s advances.

But The Daily Beast reported Wednesday that some of the footage was actually from Operation Tidal Wave, a state-wide operation in Florida that led to the arrests of 1,120 people, only 63 percent of whom had a criminal record.

In fact, one shot that was used twice in the video about Chicago could be spotted in footage the DHS published in May of their work in the Sunshine State. Palm trees were visible in some of the shots included in the new video, clearly demonstrating that the footage was not all from the Windy City.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker’s spokesperson slammed the White House for their fake video. “We are proud that Chicago was just ranked the best big city in the United States. We are proud of its beautiful beaches, booming businesses, and decent people. However, we cannot claim credit for many palm trees here,” spokesperson Matt Hill told the Beast.

“We know the lies don’t just come out of their mouth. So it’s not surprising that the Trump team spends more time producing videos purporting images of Florida as Illinois—rather than spending any time to lower prices or protect healthcare for hardworking Americans,” Hill added.

The video also included footage of the Chicago skyline and streets from above, and images of Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson. Earlier this week, Trump claimed the two Democratic officials ought to be imprisoned.

Clearly, Trump’s attempt to wage war on American cities requires a subsequent disinformation campaign. Earlier this week, the Oregon Republican Party shared a graphic about dangerous riots in Portland—but the images weren’t from that city either.

The Trump administration has also used its excessive federal law enforcement response to make content that pushes the narrative that the United States has descended into chaos at the hands of Democratic leaders. Earlier this month, DHS used footage from a horrific raid on a Chicago apartment building where ICE officers dragged young children from their homes in zip-ties to make another promotional video.

Norway is bracing for Donald Trump’s reaction should he not be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Norway simply hosts the prestigious award ceremony—its government has no involvement in deciding who wins. But with hours on the clock before the Nobel Peace Prize recipient is named, Norway’s politicians are sweating that Trump may not know the difference.

Kirsti Bergstø, the leader of Norway’s Socialist Left Party, told The Guardian that Oslo must be “prepared for anything.”

“Donald Trump is taking the U.S. in an extreme direction, attacking freedom of speech, having masked secret police kidnapping people in broad daylight and cracking down on institutions and the courts. When the president is this volatile and authoritarian, of course we have to be prepared for anything,” Bergstø told the international newspaper.

“The Nobel Committee is an independent body and the Norwegian government has no involvement in determining the prizes,” she continued. “But I’m not sure Trump knows that. We have to be prepared for anything from him.”

The Nobel Prize Committee announced Thursday that it had decided the prize winner at the beginning of the week, before the Trump administration brokered a ceasefire arrangement between Israel and Gaza. Timeframe considered, “most Nobel experts and Norwegian observers believe it is highly unlikely that Trump will be awarded the prize,” The Guardian reported.

It’s no secret that Trump has pined for the international honor: The U.S. president phoned Norway’s Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg “out of the blue” back in July to inquire about the possibility of acquiring the prize, using tariffs as a cover for their discussion.

Trump has complained for years that his name has not yet been added to the ranks of prize recipients, who span some of the greatest figures of the last century, including Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Theresa, and Malala Yousafzai.

Part of the contention could be that Trump’s supposed political nemesis, former President Barack Obama, received the award in 2009 for “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” Three other U.S. presidents have also won a Nobel Peace Prize.

“They gave it to Obama for absolutely destroying our country,” Trump said, during an Oval Office meeting with Finnish President Alexander Stubb Thursday. “My election was much more important.”

Trump’s obsession with obtaining the prize has led to some odd boasts over the last several months, including that he has resolved eight wars around the globe in his second term alone. Trump has so far claimed responsibility for peace between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of Rwanda, between Cambodia and Thailand, between Israel and Iran, between India and Pakistan, between Serbia and Kosovo, between Egypt and Ethiopia, between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and for “doing the Abraham Accords,” all while complaining about a lack of recognition by the Norway-based judges’ panel.

As Zeteo’s Mehdi Hasan pointed out last month, all of Trump’s war-solving braggadocio is “demonstrably untrue,” to the extent that several of the listed examples were never even at war.

“Nobody in history has solved eight wars in a period of nine months. And I’ve stopped eight wars, so that’s never happened before. But they’ll have to do what they do. Whatever they do is fine. I know this: I didn’t do it for that, I did it because I saved a lot of lives,” Trump said Thursday while answering a barrage of questions about the prize. “But nobody’s done eight wars.”

President Trump’s Gaza ceasefire deal seems to be more geared toward preparing the region to be his “Riviera of the Middle East” than offering self-determination to Palestinians.  

“Can you promise Palestinians they will be able to stay?” a reporter asked Trump at his Thursday Cabinet meeting, just a day after he announced the ceasefire deal. 

“Well, they know exactly what we’re doing. We’re gonna create something where people can live, you can’t live right now in Gaza,” Trump replied. “It’s a horrible situation, nobody has ever seen anything like it. So yeah, we’re gonna create better conditions for people.” 

A deal that forces Palestinians out of their homes and puts redevelopment into the hands of the U.S., Israel, and Tony Blair isn’t a deal—it’s ethnic cleansing. This deal is also contingent upon Israel lifting the aid blockade and ending its genocidal attacks once the hostages are returned, but even that is not a guarantee. 

“Looking ahead, what guarantees Hamas disarms, and that Israel doesn’t resume bombing once the hostages are released?” another reporter asked. 

“Well the first thing we’re doing is getting our hostages back, OK? And that’s what people wanted more than anything else, they wanted these hostages back that have lived in hell like nobody has ever even dreamt possible,” Trump said. “After that, we’ll see. But they’ve agreed to things, and I think it’s gonna move along pretty well.” 

Israel “agreed to things” in the short-lived ceasefire of November 2023, which it broke on the very first day when the IDF opened fire on Gazans returning to their homes. When asked how this time would be any different, all the president could say was, “We’ll see.” 

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has drawn widespread criticism for manipulating science to fit his agenda, admitted that he is working to “make the proof” to support his controversial claim that the use of acetaminophen, or Tylenol, during pregnancy causes autism.

Kennedy mentioned Tylenol at a Thursday Cabinet meeting because, he said, he’d been disturbed by a social media video: “Somebody showed me a TikTok video of a pregnant woman at eight months pregnant—she’s an associate professor at the Columbia Medical School—and she is saying ‘F Trump’ and gobbling Tylenol with her baby in her placenta,” he recalled. It is not immediately clear what video he was referring to, and babies are not in the placenta, but attached to it, in pregnancy.

The health secretary went on to cite a number of studies that allegedly support his Tylenol suspicions. Then he made an eyebrow-raising statement about the existing evidence: “It is not proof,” Kennedy said. “We’re doing the studies to make the proof.”

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics and American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, it is safe for women to use acetaminophen occasionally “as directed for fever and pain relief during pregnancy,” and patients should talk with their obstetrician about pain relief, as with all medications, during pregnancy.

RFK Jr.’s stated plan to invent evidence to back up his controversial claim to the contrary has already drawn ridicule online. “Ah yes,” wrote Dr. Michelle Au, a physician, public health advocate, and Democratic state legislator in Georgia, “the scientific method famously instructs us to predetermine a conclusion and then do studies to ‘make the proof.’”

But “make the proof” is a fitting credo for a man reshaping the public health system as Kennedy is now. The health secretary in June dismissed the CDC’s entire Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices; installed his own hand-picked members, including vaccine skeptics; and fired Susan Monarez, the former director of the CDC, for refusing to “commit in advance to approving every ACIP recommendation, regardless of the scientific evidence,” as Monarez testified last month.

Homeland Security Secretary Krisit Noem accused local leaders in Portland, Oregon, of “lying” because they wouldn’t back up her baseless claims that the streets were overrun with terrorists.

Speaking at a Cabinet meeting Thursday, Noem excoriated Portland Mayor Keith Wilson, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek, and Portland Police Chief Bob Day, after her surprise visit to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in the South Portland neighborhood earlier this week.

“I … met with the governor, met with the mayor, met with the chief of police, and the superintendent of the highway patrol. They’re all lying, and disingenuous, and dishonest people,” she said. “Because as soon as you leave the room, then they make the exact opposite response.

“So, we’re looking at new facilities to purchase there in Portland too. And we’re gonna double down. And I told them if they didn’t meet our demands for safety and security on the streets then we’re going to bring in more federal law enforcement,” she added.

But Noem’s trip Tuesday revealed that Portland isn’t the war zone the president claims.

Local officials have continued to undermine the Trump administration’s outlandish claims about Portland. Kotek, who got wind of Noem’s visit, reportedly met her at the airport, where the governor said she “reiterated again that there is no insurrection in Oregon.”

Outside the facility Noem visited, there were no hardened terrorists, only a handful of reporters and a guy in a chicken costume. By midday, there were about two dozen protesters, but they were still outnumbered by reporters, according to Oregon Live. And across the city, organizers threw a puppy parade to tell ICE to get its paws off Portland. Still, appearing on Fox News later, Noem called local leaders “a bunch of pansies” and said she wanted even more security at the ICE facility.

Wilson said that the quiet day Noem witnessed was proof that “Portland continues to manage public safety professionally and responsibly, irrespective of the claims of out-of-state social media influencers.”

It seems that Noem now hopes to punish Portland officials for their repeated assertions that they were doing a fine job of managing public safety on their own.

On Wednesday, during a roundtable of right-wing influencers talking about anti-fascist resistance to the president, Noem accused Wilson and Kotek of “covering up the terrorism that is hitting their streets.”

Noem also claimed that Portland police officers were “cheering” on protesters that were saying slogans such as “kill ICE agents” and “Molotov cocktails melt ICE.”

Day told KGW8 that Noem’s claim was an “abhorrent allegation.”

“Since the secretary had several people documenting her movements, we urge her to provide video evidence to support this claim,” he said. “Such inflammatory rhetoric undermines trust and distracts from our goal to ensure safety in the South Waterfront area. Our officers remain professional, dedicated, and committed to serving the people of Portland with integrity.”

Donald Trump could not be more plain: He is planning to use the government shutdown to take revenge against Democrats.

During a Cabinet meeting Thursday, the president announced that the White House would be cutting congressionally approved programs during the government closure—but only those supported by America’s liberal party.

“We’ll be making cuts that will be permanent, and we’re only going to cut Democrat programs, I hate to tell you,” Trump said. “I guess that makes sense, but we’re only cutting Democrat programs.

“We’ll be cutting some very popular Democrat programs that aren’t popular with Republicans, frankly, that’s the way it works,” he continued. “They wanted to do this, so we’ll give them a little taste of their own medicine.”

For the record, that’s not how the government is supposed to work. The Impoundment Control Act was passed in 1974 for exactly this purpose: to prevent the executive branch from withholding funds in a way that would undermine Congress’s “power of the purse.” Regardless of Trump’s bravado, a government shutdown doesn’t suddenly suspend the law.

It’s not the only law that the Trump administration has decided could be flouted. So far, the shutdown has furloughed more than half a million federal employees, according to a New York Times monitor. That includes 89 percent of the Environmental Protection Agency, 87 percent of the Education Department, and 71 percent of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Forty-five percent of the civilian workforce of the Defense Department has also been temporarily let go.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has insinuated that not every furloughed federal worker will be eligible for back pay, despite a bipartisan-supported 2019 law that mandates they are.

In other seismic executive oversteps, the White House has promised to target liberals in a forthcoming mass firing and, last week, issued ideological messaging via executive agency heads to thousands of federal employees, in potential violation of the Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch and the Hatch Act.