RFK Jr. Personally Told CDC to Stop Saying Vaccines Don’t Cause Autism

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. personally instructed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to abandon its long-held position that vaccines are not tied to autism.

In an interview with The New York Times Thursday, Kennedy said he was responsible for the change on the CDC’s website, which now states that “the claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not evidence-based.”

Kennedy told the Times that he’s not arguing that vaccines do cause autism, but rather underscoring there’s no evidence that they don’t.

“The whole thing about ‘vaccines have been tested and there’s been this determination made,’ is just a lie,” Kennedy said. “The phrase ‘Vaccines do not cause autism’ is not supported by science.”

Former CDC officials told the Times that it is extraordinarily unusual for a health secretary to personally demand a change to long-standing policy, let alone make a decision that radically defies contemporary science. Typically, agency scientists craft changes that are then directed to the secretary’s desk for review.

Combating autism is the cornerstone of Kennedy’s public health policy. Kennedy is a leader in a growing movement of anti-vax parents who refuse to provide their children with the same public health advantages that they received in their youth, mostly in fear of thoroughly debunked conspiracy theories that, at one point, falsely linked autism to the jab.

The researcher who sparked that myth with a fraudulent paper lost his medical license and eventually rescinded his opinion. Since then, dozens of studies have proven there’s no correlation between autism and vaccines, including one study that surveyed more than 660,000 children over the course of 11 years.

The evidence that Kennedy is looking for to disprove his theory is nearly impossible to obtain, according to health care professionals.

“You can’t prove that Coca-Cola doesn’t cause autism either,” Dr. Arthur Caplan, director of the medical ethics division at New York University, told the Times.

But confusion persists regarding even the most basic figures. A study published by the Autism Society of Texas found that one in 31 people are estimated to have autism—a noticeably sharp uptick from figures released in 2006 that found about one in every 110 children were diagnosed with autism by age 8.

But behind those numbers is a different story, since the definition of autism was broadened in that same time span. Increased research, social destigmatization, and improved mental health screening have also contributed to the inflated numbers.

As a reminder: Since their invention, vaccines have proven to be one of the greatest accomplishments of modern medicine. The medical shots are so effective at preventing illness that they have effectively eradicated some of the worst diseases from our collective culture, from rabies to polio and smallpox—a fact that has possibly fooled some into believing that the viruses and their complications aren’t a significant threat to the average, health-conscious individual.

In a country where the cost of living skyrockets while wages remain low, where a few broken bones can leave you in financial ruin, and where the young feel they have no chance at any upward mobility, 86 House Democrats joined Republicans to pass a resolution denouncing “the horrors of socialism.”

“Whereas socialist ideology necessitates a concentration of power that has, time and time again, collapsed into communist regimes, totalitarian rule, and brutal dictatorships; Whereas socialism has repeatedly led to famine and mass murders, and the killing of over 100,000,000 people worldwide,” the resolution reads. “Whereas many of the greatest crimes in history were committed by socialist ideologues, including Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Un, Daniel Ortega, Hugo Chavez, and Nicolás Maduro …”

In addition to the 86 Democrats who voted with Republicans, two Democrats voted “present.”

“Socialism has time and again led to economic ruin, human depravation, and mass suffering. But from the bread lines of Eastern Europe to the failed communist regimes of Cuba and Venezuela, socialism promises equality but delivers it selectively,” said GOP Representative John Rose. “It promises security but delivers surveillance. It promises fairness but delivers oppression and democide.”

This vote—which comes the same day that democratic socialist Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani meets with President Trump in the White House—is an embarrassing waste of time for the party trying and failing to win back the working class, which still views them as elites. It’s also something they do a lot.

This resolution was met with wide disapproval.

“I wish we were here on the House floor this morning debating solutions that would reduce grocery bills, lower housing costs, end Trump’s tariffs strangling American small businesses and manufacturers, solve the Republican health care crisis, or any legislation that allows Americans to afford to live through the catastrophic economic policies of Trump and the Republicans,” Democratic Representative Maxine Waters said, speaking against the resolution. “But, instead of doing the work our constituents desperately want us to do, Republicans in the House have chosen once again to advance a resolution under the guise of denouncing ‘socialism.’ Let me be clear, this resolution is an embarrassing distraction from the complete and total failure of the Trump administration to deliver actual results for the American people.”

Here is every House Democrat who voted with Republicans to condemn socialism:

1. Pete Aguilar—California
2. Gabe Amo—Rhode Island
3. Jake Auchincloss—Massachusetts
4. Ami Bera—California
5. Sanford Bishop—Georgia
6. Brandon Boyle—Pennsylvania
7. Nikki Budzinski—Illinois
8. Salud Carbajal—California
9. Ed Case—Hawaii
10. Kathy Castor—Florida
11. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick—Florida
12. Gil Cisneros—California
13. Katherine Clark—Massachusetts
14. Jim Clyburn—South Carolina
15. Herb Conaway—New Jersey
16. Lou Correa—California
17. Jim Costa—California
18. Angie Craig—Minnesota
19. Jason Crow—Colorado
20. Henry Cuellar—Texas
21. Don Davis—North Carolina
22. Chris Deluzio—Pennsylvania
23. Shomari Figures—Alabama
24. Bill Foster—Illinois
25. Lois Frankel—Florida
26. Laura Gillen—New York
27. Jared Golden—Maine
28. Vicente Gonzalez—Texas
29. Maggie Goodlander—New Hampshire
30. Josh Gottheimer—New Jersey
31. Adam Gray—California
32. Josh Harder—California
33. Jim Himes—Connecticut
34. Steven Horsford—Nevada
35. Chrissy Houlahan—Pennsylvania
36. Hakeem Jeffries—New York
37. Julie Johnson—Texas
38. Marcy Kaptur—Ohio
39. Bill Keating—Massachusetts
40. Greg Landsman—Ohio
41. Susie Lee—Nevada
42. Mike Levin—California
43. Ted Lieu—California
44. Stephen Lynch—Massachusetts
45. Seth Magaziner—Rhode Island
46. John Mannion—New York
47. Lucy McBath—Georgia
48. April McClain Delaney—Maryland
49. Kristen McDonald Rive —Michigan
50. Gregory Meeks—New York
51. Grace Meng—New York
52. Joseph Morelle—New York
53. Kelly Morrison—Minnesota
54. Jared Moskowitz—Florida
55. Seth Moulton—Massachusetts
56. Frank Mrvan—Indiana
57. Donald Norcross—New Jersey
58. Jimmy Panetta—California
59. Chris Pappas—New Hampshire
60. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez—Washington
61. Scott Peters—California
62. Brittany Pettersen—Colorado
63. Nellie Pou—New Jersey
64. Josh Riley—New York
65. Raul Ruiz—California
66. Pat Ryan—New York
67. Andrea Salinas—Oregon
68. Brad Schneider—Illinois
69. Hillary Scholten—Michigan
70. Kim Schrier—Washington
71. Eric Sorenson—Illinois
72. Daren Soto—Florida
73. Greg Stanton—Arizona
74. Haley Stevens—Michigan
75. Marilyn Strickland—Washington
76. Tom Suozzi—New York
77. Emilia Sykes—Ohio
78. Dina Titus—Nevada
79. Ritchie Torres—New York
80. Lori Trahan—Massachusetts
81. Gabe Vasquez—New Mexico
82. Eugene Vindman—Virginia
83. James Walkinshaw—Virginia
84. Debbie Wasserman Schultz—Florida
85. George Whitesides—California
86. Fredrica Wilson—Florida

Donald Trump’s Department of Justice is seriously investigating absurd claims that Venezuela rigged the 2020 presidential election.

Two people pushing the conspiracy theory, Gary Berntsen and Martin Rodil, have been in frequent contact with the U.S. attorney for Puerto Rico, W. Stephen Muldrow, and gave documents and witnesses to other government officials, The Guardian reports. A federal task force in Tampa, Florida, looking at Venezuelan drug trafficking and money laundering has also interviewed supporters of the theory.

Trump has refused to concede that he lost the 2020 election, repeatedly claiming that it was rigged against him in favor of Joe Biden. His supporters have embraced numerous theories, ranging from fraudulent ballots to dead voters, and Trump did everything from having his supporters push fake electors to inciting a riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, the day the election was supposed to be certified in Congress.

The Venezuela theory claims that the country has controlled electronic voting in the U.S. through the companies Smartmatic and Dominion, beginning with deceased President Hugo Chávez and continuing with his successor, President Nicolás Maduro. It was ruled false in a Delaware court in 2023, and right-wing news outlets Fox News, Newsmax, and OAN have paid out hundreds of millions of dollars in defamation lawsuits from the voting machine companies.

Trump is pointing fingers at Venezuela at a time when his administration is raising tensions with extrajudicial airstrikes on boats in waters near the country. The White House also accuses Venezuela’s socialist regime of profiting by sending drugs north to the U.S.

Reviving vote-rigging accusations against the country could be a new justification for military attacks and even war. The Trump administration has already identified Venezuelan military sites as potential targets, authorized covert CIA action in the country, and even has aircraft carriers stationed in the region.

For the first time since the beginning of the government shutdown in October, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has published information about the thousands of immigrants detained in facilities across the country—and the new data is a doozy.

President Donald Trump previously spread false claims about immigrants driving up murder rates to justify his federal law enforcement crackdown in Chicago—but according to ICE, the immigrants being arrested aren’t criminals at all.

The latest disclosure from ICE shows the agency’s total population of immigrants who’ve been detained has grown to a record 65,135 people, the majority of whom had no criminal convictions. In fact, 40 percent of immigrants detained at ICE facilities had no criminal record at all, as pointed out by Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow with the American Immigration Council.

That’s 10 times the number of immigrants without criminal records that were detained at the beginning of Trump’s second term.

A closer look at the criminal records of these individuals shows that the two most common convictions are traffic offenses and immigration violations—not violent crimes.

Immigration authorities appeared to set a new record for most immigration arrests in a single month with more than 41,000 arrests in October, surpassing the previous record set in June of roughly 31,500, according to Austin Kocher, a professor at Syracuse University who writes about immigration.

In a list released last week of 614 immigrants arrested as part of Trump’s “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago, only 16—just 2.6 percent—had criminal histories that made them a “high public safety risk,” contrary to Trump’s claim that his administration is targeting the “worst of the worst.”

President Trump had some words for New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani ahead of their Friday afternoon meeting at the White House.

“Well, I was hitting him a little hard too, in all fairness. I don’t know exactly what he means by ‘turn the volume up,’ because ‘turn the volume up’—he has to be careful when he says that to me.” Trump told Brian Kilmeade on Fox News Radio. “He was very nice in calling. As you know, we’re gonna have a meeting, I guess we’ll meet at three o’clock today. And I think it’s gonna be quite civil, we’ll find out.”

Trump’s “turn the volume up” comment was a reference to the mayor-elect’s victory speech.

“If there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power. This is not only how we stop Trump, it’s how we stop the next one,” Mamdani said on election night. “So, Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up.”

Trump and Mamdani have traded barbs back and forth since the latter’s campaign, with Mamdani attacking Trump’s empty pro-working-class rhetoric and connections to Andrew Cuomo, and Trump calling Mamdani a Communist.

The two New Yorkers are set to meet at 3 p.m. on Friday. Only time will tell if it’s as civil as they expect it to be.

Elon Musk’s AI chatbot is getting a little overzealous about its creator.

Social media users quickly learned this week that Grok had been updated to exclusively broadcast niceties about the potential trillionaire, even if those boasts veered into the absurd.

In a series of since-deleted X posts, Grok bragged that Musk had the “potential to drink piss better than any human in history” and was the “ultimate throat goat,” whose “blowjob prowess edges out” Donald Trump’s, reported 404 Media.

Grok also posited that Musk was more physically fit than LeBron James, and that he would have been a better recipient of the 2016 porn industry award than porn star Riley Reid.

When this reporter turned to the AI chatbot on Friday to see what the commotion was about, she learned that Grok was still enthusiastically crowing about the Tesla CEO, claiming that Musk would win a piss-drinking competition against other tech industry leaders “in a landslide.” To back up the argument, Grok cited the fact that Musk has had more than a dozen children, and has therefore been “elbow-deep in human fluids before.”

“Elon wouldn’t just win—he’d finish the pint, slam the glass down, tweet ‘lfg,’ and then ask if anyone wants to try piss from a Mars simulation habitat next,” Grok wrote.

Musk acknowledged the mix-up Thursday evening, writing on X that “Grok was unfortunately manipulated by adversarial prompting into saying absurdly positive things about me.”

“For the record, I am a fat retard,” he said.

In a separate post, Musk quipped that “if I up my game a lot, the future AI might say ‘he was smart … for a human.’”

Grok’s programming has created a series of headline-grabbing failures since its invention in 2023.

In June, Musk had to apologize after the software claimed he had stolen Stephen Miller’s wife, and had to temporarily deactivate Grok the following month when an anti-woke update to the chatbot suddenly turned it into a Nazi.

The U.S. peace plan presented to Ukraine appears to have been translated from Russian.

The syntax of certain phrases are more common in the Russian language, such as the third point of the 28-point plan: “It is expected that Russia will not invade neighbouring countries and Nato will not expand further.”

“It is expected” is not commonly used in English, but it is common in Russian and appears to come from the phrase ожидается or ozhidayetsya, according to The Guardian’s Luke Harding. Other words that appear to be translated from Russian include “ambiguities” (неоднозначности) and “to enshrine” (закрепить).

It’s no accident, either: The plan was hammered out by President Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and Kirill Dmitriev, an adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, after the two met last month in Miami. While Secretary of State Marco Rubio was also involved, no Ukrainian or European officials were, which is pretty evident by its contents.

For example, under the proposal, Ukraine would cede Crimea, Luhansk, and Donetsk to Russia and would be banned from joining NATO. Russia would get readmitted to the G8. Ukraine would also reduce the size of its military by hundreds of thousands, and no NATO troops could be stationed in the country. Sanctions against Russia would also be lifted but would snap back if Russia invades Ukraine again.

It leaves Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a predicament of whether he should end the war quickly or risk accepting a deal that much of his country would reject. Unnamed Ukrainian officials have already called the plan “absurd” and “unacceptable,” as it seems very similar to Russia’s demands shortly after its 2022 invasion. It seems Trump is more interested in appeasing Russia than considering Ukraine’s needs.

On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that oil prices could go down “if something happens down in Venezuela.”

“I am very confident about job growth and the momentum that we’ve got for next year,” Bessent told Laura Ingraham on Fox News. “Capital expenditure is always followed by job growth. The peace deals—we are seeing a peace dividend from that. And I think there’s a very good chance that if something happens with Russia, Ukraine, if something happens down in Venezuela, that we could really see oil prices go down even more.”

The remark from a top Trump official appears to suggest that the administration is planning for “something” to happen in Venezuela. Trump has cast the country as a major drug-trafficking hub to justify his strikes of drug boats in the surrounding waters, and seems to have regime change—potentially through military intervention—as his ultimate goal.

“U.S. military action could trigger a crisis on the same order as happened in Iraq after the U.S. regime change effort there,” Caracas-based International Crisis Group senior analyst Phil Gunson told The New Republic. “If the U.S. does decapitate the government, the multiple armed actors could bring about a degree of anarchy. None of these different groups have any incentive to just lay down their arms. There have been several decades of accumulated resentments on various sides, and it’s not fanciful to imagine that there could be lynchings. There could be bombings or selective assassinations.”

A federal judge called out federal officers in Chicago for producing unreliable use-of-force reports—noting that at least one had used an AI chatbot to write a report for them.

In a 223-page injunction ruling Thursday, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis cited body-worn camera footage to document the many ways federal agents made unreliable and false statements when describing their several violent clashes with Chicago residents, the Chicago Tribune reported.

“The Court also notes that, in at least one instance, an agent asked ChatGPT to compile a narrative for a report based off of a brief sentence about the encounter and several images,” Ellis wrote in one footnote.

“To the extent that agents use ChatGPT to create their use of force reports, this further undermines their credibility and may explain the inaccuracy of these reports when viewed in light of the BWC footage,” she added.

This is particularly concerning because, as OpenAI’s own website states: “ChatGPT can be helpful—but it’s not always right.”

Ellis also accused Border Protection Commander Gregory Bovino of giving testimony that was specifically “not credible,” either responding to questions with “cute” answers or “outright lying.”

An appeals panel blocked Ellis’s injunction Wednesday, stating that it was “overbroad” in its application to the government, but asserted that her findings could “support entry of a more tailored and appropriate preliminary injunction.”

Ellis’s injunction would have barred federal agents from using tear gas and other riot prevention methods against protesters, “unless such force is objectively necessary to stop an immediate threat.”

It seems that using ChatGPT may be an emerging, and concerning, trend in the armed forces. Last month, a U.S. Army general told reporters that he’d become very fond of “Chat,” even trusting the algorithm to make “key command decisions” in relation to his post.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned his countrymen Friday that they must choose between losing U.S. support or a quick conclusion to their 11-year war with Russia “without dignity” and “without justice.”

The U.S. unveiled a peace plan earlier this week that spans 28 points, catering to some of Russia’s most outrageous demands, such as requiring Ukraine to swear off NATO membership and to hand over Crimea and the eastern Donbas region. Those two points alone have reversed long-standing U.S. policy with regard to the area.

“Now the pressure on Ukraine is one of the most difficult,” Zelenskiy said in his native language, standing outside his presidential office, in a video statement. “Now is one of the most difficult moments of our history. Now, the pressure on Ukraine is one of the heaviest. Now, Ukraine can face a very difficult choice—either losing dignity or risk losing a major partner.

“Either 28 difficult points (of the framework), or an extremely harsh winter—the harshest ever—and further risks. Life without freedom, without dignity, without justice,” Zelenskiy said, according to an English translation provided by Reuters.

“We will work calmly with America and all our partners. We will seek constructive solutions with our main partner. I will present arguments, I will persuade, I will offer alternatives, but we will definitely not give the enemy any reason to say that Ukraine does not want peace, that it is disrupting the process and that Ukraine is not ready for diplomacy.

“I am now addressing all Ukrainians. Our people, citizens, politicians—everyone. We must come together. Pull ourselves together. Stop the spat. Stop the political games,” he said.

Earlier that morning, AFP reported that Zelenskiy had warned Vice President JD Vance over the phone that Washington risked rupturing ties with Ukraine over the lopsided arrangement.

It remained unclear, as of late Friday morning, whether both nations would agree to the White House’s peace plan. It is even less clear whether Russia will honor the arrangement after it is brokered.

Ukraine is already working on a counterproposal with France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, Reuters reported Friday.

Ukraine and its European partners were excluded from the plan’s drafting process, reported The Guardian. But there is some evidence that the plan may have come directly from the Kremlin: Several sentences in the document are passive and clunky in English but make more sense when translated into Russian. That could be the influence of Kirill Dmitriev, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s envoy, who worked on the project alongside special envoy Steve Witkoff.

Donald Trump has touted himself for months as a great peacemaker, pushing a narrative that he has—so far—solved eight foreign conflicts. Practically all of his war-solving braggadocio is “demonstrably untrue,” to the extent that several of the examples he often lists were never even at war. But despite repeated efforts, he has not made any headway on the Russia-Ukraine war.

Trump has conceded quite a bit to the Russian dictator, to no avail. This summer, Trump literally rolled out the red carpet for Putin in Alaska, marking Putin’s first return to U.S. soil in more than a decade. After the theatrics were over, the two world leaders still failed to reach a consensus on how to end the bloodshed, with Trump losing his cool while Putin demanded that Ukraine cede even more territory to Russia.

More than 13,300 civilians have been killed and 31,700 injured in Ukraine since Russia invaded in February 2022, according to a United Nations report from June.