RFK Jr. Admits He Can’t Actually Tie Tylenol to Autism

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. admitted Wednesday that he doesn’t have “sufficient” evidence that pregnant people’s use of Tylenol can cause autism in their children.

While speaking about President Donald Trump’s controversial TrumpRx program, Kennedy made a crucial clarification about the administration’s recent claims linking autism to Tylenol, the number one drug prescribed to pregnant patients for pain relief and fever reduction.

“The causative association between Tylenol given in pregnancy and perinatal periods is not sufficient to say it definitely causes autism, but it is very suggestive,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy’s comment came just one day after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against Kenvue, Tylenol’s parent company, alleging that it failed to alert consumers that using its product during pregnancy posed a “significantly increased risk of autism” and ADHD. But that claim isn’t true by Kennedy’s own admission.

Several large studies have found “associations” between substantial use of acetaminophen during pregnancy and higher rates of neurodevelopmental disorders in children, but experts have stressed that these studies are not conclusive. During a Cabinet meeting earlier this month, Kennedy cited a number of studies that allegedly support his suspicions about Tylenol but said the existing evidence was “not proof.”

“We’re doing the studies to make the proof,” he admitted—which made the whole thing sound more like a hunch than anything else.

Speaking on Wednesday, Kennedy suggested that pregnant women should consult with their doctors before taking Tylenol, but generally, the Trump administration hasn’t been quite that diplomatic with its recommendations.

In September, Trump seemed to suggest that all Americans should stop taking acetaminophen (though he could hardly pronounce it), especially pregnant women and young children.

“You’ll take a Tylenol, but it’ll be very sparingly. Can be something that’s very dangerous to the woman’s health, in other words a fever that’s very, very dangerous and ideally a doctor’s decision because I think you shouldn’t take it,” he said.

And as recently as Sunday, Trump was still urging people, “DON’T USE TYLENOL UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY.

“DON’T GIVE TYLENOL TO YOUR YOUNG CHILD FOR VIRTUALLY ANY REASON,” the president, who has no medical training, wrote on Truth Social.

Toyota has denied President Trump’s recent claim that the company recently pledged to invest $10 billion in the United States.

Trump bragged about the $10 billion figure at least twice during his trip to Asia this week, visiting an American naval base in Yokosuka, Japan, and meeting with the country’s newly minted right-wing Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi on Tuesday.

“Yesterday I was with Mr. Toyoda in Japan, and he’s just announced he’s gonna spend, uh, they’re gonna spend $10 billion, and they’re gonna build new car plants,” Trump said Tuesday, referring to the company’s CEO, Akio Toyoda. “And they’re gonna build ’em in numerous states, about six or seven different states.”

No such deal has been made, as Toyota made sure to clarify. On Wednesday, company executive Hiroyuki Ueda basically confirmed that Trump was either making it up or mixing it up with a deal from his first term nearly eight years ago.

“During the first Trump administration, I think the figure was roughly around $10 billion, so while we didn’t say the same scale, we did explain that we’ll keep investing and providing employment as before,” Ueda told reporters. “So, probably because of that context, the figure of about $10 billion came up. Therefore, we didn’t specifically say that we’ll invest $10 billion over the next few years.”

It seems that acting U.S. Attorney Bilal “Bill” Essayli couldn’t care less whether he was illegally appointed by President Donald Trump—or maybe he just didn’t read a judge’s order closely enough.   

U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright ruled Tuesday night that Essayli had been “unlawfully serving” as the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California and was “disqualified” from serving in that role. Essayli was, however, properly appointed as a special attorney and could serve as “First Assistant United States Attorney.”

Essayli took to X soon after to assure his followers that everything would remain the same. 

“For those who didn’t read the entire order, nothing is changing. I continue serving as the top federal prosecutor in the Central District of California. It’s an honor and privilege to serve President Trump and Attorney General Bondi, and I look forward to advancing their agenda for the American People,” he wrote on X, posting a screenshot of the judge’s order. 

Incidentally, the excerpt he shared relayed that he was “never lawfully serving as Acting United States Attorney.”

Journalist Adam Klasfield pointed out the admission on X, adding: “If he’s claiming First Assistant US Attorney is the same thing (it isn’t), he shouldn’t mind identifying himself accurately.”

While the positions are functionally similar, some requests require the signature of the U.S. attorney specifically. 

The Trump administration has attempted to stretch the 120-day limits on interim appointments to avoid embarrassing Senate confirmation votes. Trump’s appointments of Alina Habba in New Jersey and Lindsey Halligan in Virginia have both summoned legal challenges. 

While illegally serving as acting U.S. attorney, Essayli provided cover for the Trump administration’s federal law enforcement crackdown in Los Angeles and pursued dozens of (mostly failed) cases against protesters opposing immigration raids earlier this year. Seabright declined to toss the cases Essayli had been prosecuting because they had been “lawfully signed by other attorneys,” and there was no evidence of due process violations. 

Two Department of Justice prosecutors were put on leave Wednesday for accurately describing January 6 as “thousands of people comprising a mob of rioters.”

Carlos Valdivia and Samuel White were prosecuting a separate case involving Capitol insurrectionist Taylor Taranto, who was pardoned by President Trump for his participation in the 2021 riots. Taranto faced separate convictions for being found outside former President Obama’s old home in 2023 with two guns, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and a machete.

Valdivia and White only briefly mentioned Taranto’s January 6 involvement in their sentencing memorandum:

On January 6, 2021, thousands of people comprising a mob of rioters attacked the U.S. Capitol while a joint session of Congress met to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election.… Taranto was accused of participating in the riot in Washington, D.C., by entering the U.S. Capitol Building. After the riot, Taranto returned to his home in the State of Washington, where he promoted conspiracy theories about the events of January 6, 2021.

The two prosecutors were furloughed due to the government shutdown, and told they would be placed on administrative leave when the shutdown ends. They were also locked out of their offices, making them the latest federal employees to be punished for refusing to capitulate to President Trump’s narratives surrounding January 6.

The GOP seems to be allergic to acknowledging that January 6 was as violent, if not more, than any leftist “mob” they’ve spent the last five years fearmongering about. Thousands of people broke into the Capitol building with the intention of harming elected officials so that they could wrongfully install Trump as president. Multiple people died on that day, including rioter Ashley Babbitt, and three officers died in the aftermath.

“If you work for the Trump/Bondi Justice Department and tell the truth, you will be fired,” one X user wrote Wednesday. “Federal judges should take note.”

The speaker of the House is apparently in favor of totalitarian rule, so long as Donald Trump is in charge.

The government has been shut down for more than 27 days now. But instead of working to bridge the partisan gulf and restore critical social services to millions of Americans and paychecks to thousands of federal workers, House Speaker Mike Johnson is still hyperfixated on the nationwide No Kings protest that occurred two weekends ago.

Delivering what he clearly believed was a very clever “gotcha,” Johnson told reporters Wednesday that the country would be better off if Trump were king.

“They had a rally a couple weeks ago, they tried to portray President Trump as a king. We pointed out again, the obvious truth, that if Trump was a king then the government would be open,” Johnson smirked. “He’s been trying to do that.”

Johnson then appealed to low-income Americans with his pro-monarchy pitch, arguing that if Trump had singular authority, then he would have already advanced funding for SNAP benefits, which are set to expire November 1. (A coalition of 22 states sued the Trump administration Tuesday for allegedly withholding federal funds set aside specifically to continue the program through the month of November.)

The lower chamber leader has been complaining about the No Kings protests since before they even took place on October 18, trying every which way to leverage the movement to redirect attention away from his failures at the dais. He has falsely claimed that the peaceful, anti-authoritarian protest series—which produced the largest single-day protest in U.S. history—was actually advocating for violence against political officials.

By and large, the multi-month protest series has advocated for Americans’ First Amendment rights and rejected Trump’s agenda. Signage related to the event has emphasized the fight for democracy and against dictatorships. In the same political vein, No Kings participants have used their enormous visual footprint to fight against Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s unchecked authority, turn out for universal health care, condemn the release of disgraced former Representative George Santos, and raise national awareness on the rise of American fascism.

Meanwhile, Johnson appears to be doing everything in his power to keep the government closed. Week after week, he has sent representatives home instead of bringing them in to try to come up with a solution to the shutdown. When asked Wednesday if he would bring lawmakers back to negotiate government funding past November 1, he described doing so as a “futile exercise.” He then blamed Democrats for refusing to pass a continuing resolution that would strip health care away from millions of Americans.