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      Outrage mounts as Republicans in Congress move to protect pesticide makers from lawsuits

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      It’s been seven years since Germany’s Bayer bought US agrochemical giant Monsanto, inheriting not only the company’s vast portfolio of seeds and pesticide products, but also more than 100,000 lawsuits alleging Monsanto’s popular Roundup herbicide causes cancer. Bayer, which has so far paid out billions of dollars in settlements and jury verdicts to cancer victims, has been working – so far in vain – to put an end to the litigation and to block any future such cases.Now Bayer appears closer than ever to success, as many Republican congressional leaders push for measures that would effectively block lawsuits against pesticide makers around the country.A group founded by Bayer called the Modern Ag Alliance is the face of the legislative push, advocating for liability shields they say are necessary to allow companies to continue to sell chemicals that farmers use to kill weeds and bugs in their fields.“Without legislative action, a potential catastrophe is on the horizon that could result in many farmers going out of business and food prices rising even further,” the alliance, which represents more than 100 agricultural organizations, including farmers who grow wheat, corn, soybeans and other key food crops, warns on its website.The alliance has been lobbying for the passage of state laws blocking such lawsuits. They’ve succeeded thus far in two states – Georgia and North Dakota – and continue to lobby for such laws in all 50 states.But the immediate battleground is in the halls of Congress, where a provision tucked into a congressional appropriations bill is outraging consumer advocates, including those affiliated with the influential Make American Healthy Again (Maha) movement. Similar protective language for pesticide makers is expected to be included in the new farm bill as well.“The audacity of elected officials voting for legislation to fully strip our legal rights away when injured by chemicals is stunning,” said Kelly Ryerson, a leading Maha advocate who has been lobbying lawmakers and her 84,000 social media followers to oppose pesticide company protections. “Especially in this age of Maha when an unprecedented number of Americans are rallying against toxins in food and the environment.”‘Important investments’Bayer has made it clear that changing laws in its favor is a priority. The company states on its website that without “legislative certainty”, lawsuits over its glyphosate-based Roundup herbicide and other weed killers can affect its research and product development and other “important investments”.The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should be the ultimate arbiter of product safety and what warnings should be required on product labels, Bayer says. The company also says if the EPA approves a product label, consumers should not be able to sue companies for failing to warn of perceived risks.In a statement to the Guardian, Bayer said federal legislation is “needed to ensure that states and courts do not take a position or action regarding product labels at odds with congressional intent, federal law and established scientific research and federal authority”.Bayer has already removed glyphosate, classified as “probably” carcinogenic to humans by World Health Organization cancer experts, from consumer herbicide products. And the company has threatened to stop selling it to farmers if the litigation is not brought to an end.The company disputes, however, that the appropriations bill will provide that certainty, saying in its statement that the language doesn’t prevent lawsuits and asserting it does is a “distortion of reality”.The relevant section of the House version of the appropriations bill – section 453 – does not mention litigation or pesticide company liability. Section 453 simply says that no funds can be used to “issue or adopt any guidance or any policy, take any regulatory action, or approve any labeling or change to such labeling” inconsistent with the conclusion of an EPA human health assessment.But critics say the language effectively would impede states and local governments from warning about risks of pesticides even in the face of new scientific findings about health harms if such warnings are not consistent with outdated EPA assessments. The EPA itself would not be able to update warnings without finalizing a new assessment, the critics say.Due to the limits on warnings, consumers would find it nearly impossible to sue pesticide makers for failing to warn them of health risks if the EPA assessments do not support such warnings.The language is “by design sneaky and complicated and hard to explain”, said Daniel Hinkle, senior state affairs counsel for the American Association for Justice, who has been lobbying against the action.“Nobody thinks that a giant chemical company should be able to lie about the risks of using their product and get away with it. It’s just making sure that people understand that is what is at stake,” Hinkle said.‘Very worried’Representative Chellie Pingree, a Democrat from Maine who tried but failed to overturn the language in a July appropriations committee hearing, said she is “very worried” about the “outrageous” efforts to protect pesticide companies from litigation.“We’re talking about chemicals here that are already prone to health risks,” Pingree said. “And the chemical industry is trying to keep that information from consumers … and then to have immunity from being responsible if you get cancer from being in the presence of these chemicals.”The language is not currently included in the short-term government spending package being debated ahead of a looming government shutdown that would occur at the end of the month in the absence of continued spending authorization.But it is expected to see support in both House and Senate appropriations bill versions once the short-term budget is resolved. The new farm bill is also expected to include language limiting or preventing pesticide injury lawsuits, with strong signals from Glenn Thompson, chair of the House committee on agriculture, favoring such protections.Previously, Thompson has weighed in on the side of Bayer amid its ongoing efforts to get the supreme court to weigh in on federal “preemption” over pesticide regulation.The involvement and influence of the Maha movement, made up of voters from both parties, is adding a bipartisan element to what otherwise might be a highly partisan fight.Max Lugavere, a health journalist, author and podcaster who posted a photo of a Maha-related visit to the White House to his 1.1 million Instagram followers, said pushing lawmakers is important, but “awareness among everyday people is the first domino”.Citing “growing evidence linking pesticides to health risks”, Lugavere said: “Stripping away legal recourse in these cases wouldn’t just be wrong, it would be [a] tragedy.”For California lawyer Brent Wisner, who helped lead the early Roundup litigation against Bayer, the efforts by lawmakers to protect the company against future litigation is un-American and potentially unconstitutional.“I don’t care what party you are in, if you get poisoned by a pesticide manufacturer you want to be able to sue. You need to be able to sue,” he said. “Bayer is paying millions of dollars to get these laws passed because it’s cheaper than it is to pay people they’ve given cancer to.”This story is co-published with the New Lede, a journalism project of the Environmental Working Group More

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      Democrats race to embrace swearing and angry comebacks – but will it work?

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      Democrats want your attention, and they’re done asking politely.Several months into Donald Trump’s second term, presidential aspirants, members of Congress and party officials are abandoning carefully calibrated messaging in favor of gut-level rhetoric that is angrier, rawer and unapologetically more profane.“Things are really fucked up right now,” Democratic congressman Robert Garcia said in a TikTok video with the influencer known as the Regina George liberal, who has built a following demanding Democrats get meaner.With party approval ratings at decade-lows and their base increasingly alarmed by what they fear is America’s authoritarian slide, Democrats are racing to revamp how they talk – and how they resist.Democrats’ wider embrace of swearing, trolling and scorched-earth comebacks is part of a broader mission to sound more like “normal people” and less like a party of poll-tested talking points and white papers. From campaign rallies to TikTok vent seshes, the characteristically buttoned-up Democrats are taking more risks – and punching back harder at Trump and his administration.“This is not the Democratic party of your grandfather,” Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), declared earlier this year. “This is a new Democratic party. We’re bringing a knife to a knife fight.”There is widespread agreement among soul-searching Democrats that they have an authenticity problem.View image in fullscreen“We are tired of being seen as weak and out of touch, and are really trying to make the point that it’s some bullshit that the Republican party and all the big corporations that support them continue to try to frame us as [such],” said Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic party and head of the DNC’s association of state Democratic parties.The party has hemorrhaged rural and working-class voters for years. But in 2024, Democrats also saw worrying drops in support among Black and Latino voters as well as young people – becoming a party increasingly confined to the coasts, major metros and college towns.After losing to Trump, again, fundraising has slumped and Democrats now lag far behind Republicans in voter registration. Since November, several leading Democrats, including California governor Gavin Newsom, have described the party’s brand as “toxic”.Democrats have many theories as to how it got so bad – but they keep circling back to the most basic political skill: communication.Critics say risk-averse party elders – valued more for their fundraising prowess than their digital fluency – failed to adapt to the tectonic shifts in media consumption. Democrats anodyne messaging, they argue, might have made the evening news, but it was too easily drowned out by the right’s online surround sound, turbocharged to amplify Trump and his Magaworld allies.“A message that nobody hears cannot persuade them,” Anat Shenker-Osorio, veteran Democratic strategist and communications researcher who has convened hundreds of focus groups with American voters. “If you keep producing blandly unobjectionable 100-word statements … then it truly does not matter what you are saying because literally no one’s gonna hear it.”The bigger challenge, Shenker-Osorio notes, is that Democrats aren’t just competing for eyeballs with Republicans — they’re up against an algorithm that prizes outrage and emotion, whether it’s Maga memes or Taylor and Travis engagement headlines.Months into Trump’s second term, buoyed by a string of off-cycle election wins and a revved up base, Democrats are experimenting more. More members of Congress are on TikTok and heeding advice to adopt platforms like Twitch and Snapchat. They’ve jumped on viral trends and livestreamed hot takes stepping off the chamber floor. They’re also venturing into less friendly terrain, yakking it up on “manosphere” podcasts or launching their own.Pete Buttigieg, the former transportation secretary and a possible 2028 presidential contender, was an early evangelist of the go-everywhere style. He appeared on Fox News when many Democrats refused to sit down with Trump’s favorite network hosts. In April, he sat for a nearly three-hour interview on the podcast Flagrant, covering everything from White Lotus to “Trump Tariffs, Taxing Billionaires, and Republican Gays”.View image in fullscreenThe push for a more free-wheeling style hasn’t slowed the circulation of polling memos and strategy briefs coaching Democrats on how to be more free-wheeling. There has been reams of guidance on what to say (Trump’s takeover of DC is a “distraction” from his market-rattling tariffs and Medicaid cuts, for example) and also what not to say (words like birthing person, BIPOC).Republicans have sneered at Democrats’ newfound brashness, deriding the effort as “desperate” and “Maga cosplay”. Comparatively, the White House’s social media strategy seems designed to shock. In a July post on X, its official account wrote: “Nowhere in the Constitution does it say we can’t post banger memes.”Democrats accept that some attempts will be cringe. In February, an unfortunate turn-of-phrase at a rally alongside federal workers became a cautionary tale.“I don’t swear in public very well,” first-term congresswoman Maxine Dexter of Oregon warned before throwing caution to the wind and declaring: “We have to fuck Trump!”The crowd cheered. “You said it!” an audience member shouted encouragingly. But the remark was dragged online, with Politico observing that it “landed less like a diss and more like a proposition”.View image in fullscreenBut the stakes have grown far more serious.In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination this month, Trump’s White House has led a clampdown on political speech, threatening to punish left-leaning figures and groups it accuses of spreading hateful rhetoric.At a rally in North Carolina this week, vice president JD Vance, who once feared Trump could be “America’s Hitler,” urged Americans to abandon such rhetoric: “If you want stop political violence, stop telling your supporters that everybody who disagrees with you is a Nazi.”Elected Democrats were near-universal in their condemnation of political violence, which has targeted officials in both parties. But that hasn’t stopped Trump and other prominent Republicans from casting blame on the left. “I hate my opponent,” Trump said, speaking at Kirk’s memorial.In a widely circulated exchange, a reporter asked progressive Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren for her response to calls on Democrats to “lower the temperature”.“Oh, please,” Warren replied. “Why don’t you start with the president of the United States?”For years, Democrats took Michelle Obama’s “go high” mantra as gospel.In 2018, when Barack Obama’s former attorney general Eric Holder reinterpreted the refrain, suggesting that “when they go low, we kick them,” he was rebuked by Michelle Obama herself and also by Trump – despite his own long record of disparaging and even threatening language. Earlier that year, Trump asked lawmakers why the US should accept immigrants from “shithole countries” in Africa rather than from places like Norway.Seven years later, Trump is still heaving expletives and insults from the bully pulpit. But this time, Democrats are far less reticent to respond.“If we’re serious that Trump is a threat to the fundamental values of our country and a threat to democracy, then we have to use these tactics and be real fighters,” Kleeb said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionYet, as Democrats fight to break through Trump’s unfiltered media dominance, there is deep frustration among their base that the party’s leadership is not doing enough to stop him – no matter how tough they talk. In Washington, out-of-power Democrats are under pressure to use the little leverage they have in a looming government shutdown showdown with Republicans.Meanwhile, some of the fiercest resistance is coming from the states. In August, Texas Democrats fled the state to deny Republicans a quorum needed to vote on a brazen, Trump-sought plan to redraw its political maps in the middle of the decade. Though Republicans ultimately approved a new map carved up in their favor, the Democrats’ quorum-breaking gambit helped trigger a response from governors like Newsom in California, whose Trump 2.0-era mantra now is: “fight fire with fire.”In recent months, Newsom has matched his combative posture with a pugnacious social media persona, a mimicry of Trump’s all-caps bombast. The governor’s team now regularly trolls the president, posting with a cadence that mirrors the right-wing outrage machine they mock, blasting out lengthy rants, AI-generated taunts, even the occasional Spanish-language vulgarity.“I’m sick of being weak,” Newsom said on a podcast in August, adding: “We’re going to punch these sons of bitches in the mouth.”View image in fullscreenIn a full-circle moment, Holder, a longtime champion of clean maps, threw his support behind California’sretaliatory gerrymander.Lorena Gonzalez, the salty-tongued leader of the influential California Labor Federation, said the appetite for a no-holds-barred approach is strong.“People are frustrated. We’re frustrated,” she said. “So we’re fighting back – and the language, I think, mirrors the frustration and the urgency.”At a rally launching California’s redistricting campaign, Gonzalez rendered a blunt verdict on Trump’s presidency: “We tell our members who believed him, it’s okay. He fucking lied.” The crowd roared, and she repeated the bit. Handing the mic to the next speaker, Gonzalez grinned: “I’ve exceeded my number of fucks today.”More and more Democrats argue that the real divide in their party isn’t between the ideological left and center, but between the fighters and the so-called “folders”. And the so-called fighters tend to be the angriest.Among the most prolific Democratic swearers were Representatives Eric Swalwell of California, Maxwell Frost of Florida and Jasmine Crockett or Texas, all younger progressives, according to a Washington Post analysis of social media posts, podcasts and other public statements by politicians. Among party officials, Kleeb topped the list. Overall, it found that Democrats cursed far more frequently than Republicans in the months following Trump’s return to the White House.“I do cuss but I’m just passionate,” Crockett said in an interview last month. “I don’t imagine myself saying, ‘Trump is trying to be a dictator,’ and then sitting quietly. No. If I say it, I mean it.”A former trial attorney, Crockett said language can help build trust. “I never had the benefit of putting on a facade,” she said. “You’ve got to build a rapport quickly, and the best way to do that is to be authentically who you are.”View image in fullscreenResearch suggests that swearing can make a speaker seem more honest and sincere –though voters are quick to detect a false note.“Swearing as a tactic is dumb,” said Lis Smith, a veteran Democratic strategist known for her bluntness. Her advice: “Just be normal. Don’t use weird lefty academic jargon. Don’t dismiss people’s real concerns about things like crime by citing stats and data. And don’t think that the key to coming across as authentic is dropping four letter words that you don’t use normally.”As younger Democrats rise through the ranks, an “extremely online” vernacular has crept into the party’s messaging – snarky, irreverent and tailor-made to go viral.Earlier this year, Garcia brought a poster of Elon Musk to a Congressional hearing in a stunt he called a “dick pic”. In June, House Democrats elected Garcia to serve as ranking member on the influential House oversight committee – the first time in 100 years a second-term congressman was elevated to the role.The DNC has also sharpened its trolling game, with edgy posts, including one suggesting the Secretary of Defense was “tweeting while drunk” and another taunting White House aide Stephen Miller with a crude “cuck-chair” meme. They’ve also seized on right-wing anger over the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein case, breathlessly boosting calls for Republicans to “release the files”.View image in fullscreenAt the party’s summer meeting, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, the former vice-presidential nominee with a “Midwest nice” reputation, took a juvenile jab at Trump’s chronic venous insufficiency, mocking his “fat ankles”.“Petty as hell,” Walz admitted, as the room erupted in cheers.Yet for those who fear authoritarian drift, trolls and clap backs can seem woefully insufficient in the face of Trump’s mass deportation campaign or his deployment of federal troops to American cities.Ridicule, Shenker-Osorio argues, can be a powerful tactic, but only as part of a broader resistance. “Taking the piss out of the strongman is a really critical part of fighting authoritarianism,” she said.Still, she cautioned: “Rhetoric without action is nothing. If anything, it just makes voters more frustrated.”David Smith contributed to this story from Washington More

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      ‘Dangerous abuse of power’: lawmakers sound alarm over Comey indictment

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      For Donald Trump, the indictment of former FBI director and longtime foe James Comey was,“justice in America”. Legal observers and lawmakers see something far more troubling.A former Republican appointed to lead the bureau by Barack Obama and kept on by Trump until he fired him in 2017, Comey was indicted Thursday on charges related to allegedly lying to Congress five years ago during a hearing on the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election.The charges were filed in the eastern district of Virginia only after Erik Siebert was forced out as US attorney for reportedly finding no grounds to indict Comey. The justice department replaced him with a Trump loyalist with little prosecutorial experience, Lindsey Halligan, and shortly after, a grand jury indicted Comey on one count of making a false statement to Congress and one count of obstruction of a congressional proceeding.The indictment is the latest sign that the president is making good on his promise “to turn our justice system into a weapon for punishing and silencing his critics”, said Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee.“This kind of interference is a dangerous abuse of power. Our system depends on prosecutors making decisions based on evidence and the law, not on the personal grudges of a politician determined to settle scores,” Warner said.Adam Schiff, the Democratic senator and a former federal prosecutor who played a lead role in Trump’s first impeachment, said on X he had “never witnessed such a blatant abuse of the” justice department, calling it “little more than an arm of the president’s retribution campaign”.In a letter to Pam Bondi, the attorney general, Democrats on the Senate judiciary committee described Siebert’s firing and Comey’s indictment as “the latest steps in President Trump’s efforts to reshape the nation’s leading law enforcement agency into a weapon focused on punishing his enemies”.Top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries said it was “crazy to me” that Trump was pursuing a “malicious prosecution” against Comey, given that the FBI chief’s public revival of an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email use days before the 2016 election is seen as playing a role in Trump’s victory.“These charges are going to be dismissed. James Comey will win in court. But what it reflects is a broader attack on the rule of law that should frighten every single American, whether you’re a Democrat, an independent or a Republican,” he said at the Capitol.Mike Zamore, national director of policy and government affairs at the American Civil Liberties Union, said Trump “has yet again proven his disdain for the principles that have actually made America great”.“By undermining the rule of law at each and every turn, threatening individuals who speak out against him, and arresting, investigating, and prosecuting elected officials of the opposition party and others who displease him, the president and his administration have corrupted our system of justice to turn his campaign of retribution into reality,” he said, adding that Trump’s public push to indict Comey amounts to “a grotesque abuse of presidential power”.Eric Swalwell, the Democratic congressman and member of the House judiciary committee, told CNN: “I promise you, when Democrats are in the majority, we are going to look at all of this, and there will be accountability, and bar licenses will be at stake in your local jurisdiction if you are corruptly indicting people where you cannot prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt on.”Norm Eisen, executive chair of pro-democracy group Democracy Defenders Fund, warned the indictment puts “the safety of every American and our national security itself in danger. This indictment has all the hallmarks of a vindictive and meritless prosecution, worthy only of the totalitarian states the United States used to oppose”.“This matters far beyond James Comey. It’s about every citizen’s right to live free from persecution by their own leaders. Criticizing our leaders is a fundamental right, regardless of how much our leaders don’t like it,” he said.Trump has spent the hours since Comey’s indictment was announced insulting him on Truth Social, calling him “One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to” on Thursday night and “A DIRTY COP” on Friday morning.His allies have taken up his argument, if not his tone.“Comey demonstrated complete arrogance and unwillingness to comply with the law,” said Ted Cruz, the Republican senator whose exchange with the former FBI director at a 2020 hearing is the subject of the allegations.Chuck Grassley, the Republican chair of the Senate judiciary committee, said: “If the facts and the evidence support the finding that Comey lied to Congress and obstructed our work, he ought to be held accountable.”“Say it with me, Democrats: nobody is above the law,” said Mike Davis, a prominent Trump legal defender, echoing a phrase often used by Democrats when Trump and his allies were facing prosecutions before his election victory last year.“We are just getting started today with this indictment,” Davis said. “It’s going to get much worse for the Democrats.” More

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      Trump celebrates James Comey indictment as ex-FBI director says ‘I’m innocent: let’s have a trial’ – as it happened

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      This brings our live coverage of the second Trump administration to a close for the day. We will return on Friday morning. Here are the latest developments:

      Donald Trump’s long public campaign to get someone to bring criminal charges against James Comey, the former FBI director he fired in 2017, finally succeeded on Thursday, as the White House aide he installed as a prosecutor this week indicted the man Trump holds largely responsible for the Russia investigation.

      Trump celebrated the indictment of “One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to”, in a social media post that could be used as evidence that the prosecution is politically motivated.

      “I’m not afraid, and I hope you’re not either,” Comey said in an Instagram video statement. “My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system and I’m innocent, so let’s have a trial.”

      Maurene Comey, the former FBI director’s daughter, who led the federal prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell and was fired this summer without explanation, cited Trump’s hatred of her father in a wrongful termination lawsuit filed this month.

      Ilhan Omar, the Somali-born congresswoman from Minnesota, accused Trump of inventing a story he told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, about having supposedly asked Somalia’s president if he would “take her back.”

      Trump signed a presidential memorandum directing the justice department and the FBI’s joint terrorism taskforce to investigate what he claimed is an organized campaign of political violence and domestic terrorism funded by Democrats.

      The House Democratic campaign arm believes their lawmakers have the advantage in the tense battle over government funding, after last week refusing to back a Republican plan to prevent a shutdown unless their demands on healthcare and other issues are met.

      We leave you with video of Hillary Clinton saying in a 2016 debate: “It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country.” He replied: “Because you’d be in jail.”
      Maurene Comey, the former FBI director’s daughter, who led the prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell and was fired this summer without explanation, cited Donald Trump’s hatred of her father in a wrongful termination lawsuit filed this month in federal court.The suit explains that Maurene Comey was “abruptly fired” on 16 July 16 from her job as an assistant US attorney in Manhattan despite an “outstanding” performance review just months earlier.The suit, which names the office of the president and the attorney general as defendants, says that they “fired Ms. Comey solely or substantially because her father is former FBI Director James B. Comey, or because of her perceived political affiliation and beliefs, or both.”It goes on to allege that Trump’s hatred of her father, and the antipathy of Trump’s outside adviser Laura Loomer, were major factors in her wrongful termination.According to the suit:
      James Comey served as the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 2013 until President Trump fired him in 2017. For the past nine years, President Trump has publicly criticized Mr. Comey for his actions while serving as FBI Director, and because after he was fired, Mr. Comey (i) wrote a memoir critical of President Trump, (ii) continued to publicly criticize President Trump and his Administration, and (iii) in May 2025 posted a message on social media that President Trump and others in the Trump Administration claimed to perceive as threatening.
      Following Mr. Comey’s May 2025 social media post and other critical statements, President Trump’s supporters called for Ms. Comey’s firing. Notable among those supporters is Laura Loomer, a social media influencer who, on information and belief, has political influence in the Trump Administration, including influence over the termination of federal employees. President Trump has publicly stated: “If you’re Loomered you’re in deep trouble. That’s the end of your career in a sense.” On May 18, 2025, Ms. Loomer called for Mr. Comey’s “liberal daughter” and her “Democrat husband” to be “FIRED from the DOJ immediately” “for being a national security risk via their proximity to a criminal [i.e., Mr. Comey] who just committed a felony by threatening to assassinate the President.” Ms. Loomer also declared that, “under [Attorney General Pamela] Blondi [sic], every Deep State Operator is being emboldened,” and she “question[ed] the impartiality of Maurene and Lucas [Maurene’s husband] in their prosecutorial roles, especially in high-profile cases, due to the undeniable bias and influence stemming from James Comey’s public criticism of Trump and the ongoing investigation into his Instagram post.”
      James Comey’s son-in-law resigned as a federal prosecutor minutes after the former FBI director was indicted Thursday.Troy Edwards wrote in an email to Lindsey Halligan, the former White House aide with no prosecutorial experience parachuted into the job as US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia this week that he was resigning “To uphold my oath to the Constitution and the country”.Edwards , who helped prosecute pro-Trump January 6 rioters later pardoned by Trump, was deputy chief of the national security section, which covers the Pentagon and CIA headquarters, and handles some of the highest-profile espionage cases.James Comey, the former FBI director, professed his innocence in a video statement posted on Instagram on Thursday after he was indicted by the former White House aide Donald Trump appointed US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia this week.“My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump,” Comey said. “But we couldn’t imagine ourselves living any other way. We will not live on our knees, and you shouldn’t either.”“I’m not afraid, and I hope you’re not either. I hope instead you are engaged, you are paying attention and you will vote like your beloved country depends upon it, which it does,” he added.“My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system and I’m innocent, so let’s have a trial. And keep the faith,” he concluded.Donald Trump’s long public campaign to get someone in his administration to bring criminal charges against James Comey, the former FBI director he fired in 2017, finally succeeded on Thursday, but the president has been so public about his loathing of the indicted man, and his desire to see him jailed, that it might be hard for prosecutors to convince a jury that the case was not brought for political reasons.Comey was fired by Trump in 2017 after he reportedly refused a request to pledge his loyalty to the newly elected president, and then publicly confirmed to Congress that the FBI was conducting a counterintelligence investigation of Russian efforts to get Trump elected president in 2016.Trump’s firing of Comey backfired, however, because it helped convince then deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein to appoint a special counsel, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, to, in his words “oversee the previously confirmed FBI investigation of Russian government efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election and related matters”.Although Mueller’s report, issued in 2019, concluded that his team “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities”, the investigation unearthed plenty of evidence that the Russian effort did take place and, in Mueller’s words, “established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome”.Mueller added that the Trump campaign “expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts”.While Mueller ultimately elected not to charge Trump’s son, Don Jr, with violating campaign finance laws by soliciting derogatory information about Hillary Clinton from the Russian government in a meeting with a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign, the investigation made it plain that the Trump campaign had been open to help from Russia.When a publicist for the Russian oligarch who paid Trump to stage his Miss Universe pageant in Moscow in 2013 wrote to tell Don Jr that a Russian prosecutor wanted to offer the Trump campaign “official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia, calling it “part of Russia and its government’s support to Mr Trump”, Trump’s son replied, “If it’s what you say, I love it,” and got Trump’s campaign chair Paul Manafort and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to attend the meeting.The indictment of Comey comes as Trump seeks to use the power of the justice department to punish a man he sees as a central figure in the Russia investigation he has continually described as “a witch-hunt” and “a hoax”.One of the ironies of the situation is that Comey, who cast himself as a rigidly non-partisan law enforcement official, played an outsized role in helping Trump to get elected in the first place.It was Comey who, as FBI director in the summer of 2016, decided not to recommend criminal charges against Hillary Clinton over her use of a private email server to conduct official business while secretary of state, but took it upon himself to hold a press conference to explain his decision.In that public forum, Comey said that while Clinton and her staff had been “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information” and there was “evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information,” he had concluded, as a former prosecutor himself, that “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case”.That news conference offered Trump, who was then running against Clinton, ammunition to describe her use of a personal email server as reckless. Trump embraced that line of attack with glee, particularly after WikiLeaks published emails from Clinton campaign aides that had been stolen by Russian government hackers.Then, days before the November election, Comey suddenly announced that the FBI had reopened its investigation of Clinton’s own emails, after copies of some mail was found on the laptop of the disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner, who was then married to Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin.Although Comey then announced, before election day, that the review of the additional emails had found nothing of substance, Clinton dropped in the polls in the closing days of the campaign, and narrowly lost to Trump.Another irony is that Comey, who has now been indicted by the new US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, is himself a former federal prosecutor in that office, who went on to serve as the US attorney for the southern district of New York, and deputy attorney general under George W Bush before later being appointed FBI director by Barack Obama in 2013.Donald Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, and FBI director, Kash Patel, welcomed the indictment of James Comey, who served as deputy attorney general during the George W Bush administration and was fired as FBI director by Donald Trump in 2017 after he told Congress that the FBI was conducting a counterintelligence investigation of Russian interference in the election of Trump as president in 2016.A justice department press release sent to reporters on Thursday began:
      Today, a federal grand jury has charged former FBI Director James Comey with serious crimes related to the disclosure of sensitive information. The indictment alleges that Comey obstructed a congressional investigation into the disclosure of sensitive information in violation of 18 USC 1505.
      The indictment also alleges that Comey made a false statement in violation of 18 USC 1001. Comey stated that he did not authorize someone at the FBI to be an anonymous source. According to the indictment that statement was false.
      The statement was followed by a quote from Bondi, which was posted on her official X account earlier. “No one is above the law,” the attorney general said. “Today’s indictment reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people. We will follow the facts in this case.”“Today, your FBI took another step in its promise of full accountability,” Patel added. “For far too long, previous corrupt leadership and their enablers weaponized federal law enforcement, damaging once proud institutions and severely eroding public trust. Every day, we continue the fight to earn that trust back, and under my leadership, this FBI will confront the problem head-on.“Nowhere was this politicization of law enforcement more blatant than during the Russiagate hoax, a disgraceful chapter in history we continue to investigate and expose. Everyone, especially those in positions of power, will be held to account – no matter their perch. No one is above the law.”Despite the intensity of those accusations from the most senior officials in the justice department, the statement included the following disclaimer, written in italics at the bottom of the page:“An indictment is merely an allegation. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.”In a sharp departure from the tradition that presidents should not comment on criminal cases, Donald Trump just celebrated the indictment of the former FBI director James Comey, in terms that could make it even easier for Comey’s lawyers to argue that he is the victim of selective prosecution.The indictment came days after Trump forced out a career prosecutor in the eastern district of Virginia who had determined that there was insufficient evidence to charge Comey, and posted a public instruction to Bondi to replace him with a White House aide, Lindsey Halligan, who could be trusted to prosecute Comey and other officials Trump holds a grudge against.“JUSTICE IN AMERICA!” Trump wrote on his social media platform. “One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to is James Comey, the former Corrupt Head of the FBI. Today he was indicted by a Grand Jury on two felony counts for various illegal and unlawful acts. He has been so bad for our Country, for so long, and is now at the beginning of being held responsible for his crimes against our Nation,” the president added.He then signed off with his political slogan: “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”As the legality of Donald Trump’s tariffs remains in doubt, the president announced three more on Thursday.Writing on his social media platform, Trump said: “I will be imposing, as of October 1st, 2025, a 25% Tariff on all “Heavy (Big!) Trucks” made in other parts of the World. Therefore, our Great Large Truck Company Manufacturers, such as Peterbilt, Kenworth, Freightliner, Mack Trucks, and others, will be protected.”In a separate post, he added: “We will be imposing a 50% Tariff on all Kitchen Cabinets, Bathroom Vanities, and associated products, starting October 1st, 2025. Additionally, we will be charging a 30% Tariff on Upholstered Furniture.”Ilhan Omar, the Somali-born congresswoman from Minnesota, accused Donald Trump of inventing a story he told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, about having supposedly asked Somalia’s president if he would “take her back.”Omar is a naturalized US citizen who was born in Somalia and raised in a refugee camp in Kenya, but Trump has frequently treated her criticism of him as an affront to the United States from someone he still regards as a foreigner.Trump brought up Omar on Thursday in the course of a rambling answer to a question about Jasmine Crockett, a fellow Democratic congresswoman. When Trump was asked by a conservative reporter if Crockett should face “consequences” for saying, “When I see Ice, I see slave patrols,” the president repeated the racist claim he frequently makes about Black leaders who challenge him: “she is a very low IQ person.”He then brought up Omar, whose name he mispronounced, unprompted.“This is a low IQ person, who I can’t I can’t believe is a congressperson, between her and Ilman Omar,” Trump said. “I met the head of Somalia,” he continued, “And I suggested that maybe he’d like to take her back, and he didn’t want her.”As Trump’s vice-president, JD Vance, doubled over in laughter, and other members of his cabinet chuckled, the president said again: “He said, ‘I don’t want her.’”The White House was so proud of this quip that Trump’s special assistant, Margo Martin, posted video of it on an official government social media account.Omar responded by suggesting the president, who said last week he was not sure if Somalia even has a president, had made the whole thing up. “From denying Somalia had a president to making up a story, President Trump is a lying buffoon. No one should take this embarrassing fool seriously,” she wrote on X.Somalia’s president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, was in New York this week to address the United Nations, but he the US official he met with was not the president, but his advisor on African affairs, Massad Boulos, whose son is married to Trump’s daughter Tiffany.James Comey, the former FBI director and one of Donald Trump’s most frequent targets, was indicted on Thursday on one count of making a false statement to Congress and one count of obstruction of justice, according to a person familiar with the matter, in the latest move in the president’s expansive retribution campaign against his political adversaries.“No one is above the law. Today’s indictment reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people. We will follow the facts in this case,” Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, tweeted on Thursday.The indictment came shortly after Trump instructed Bondi to “move now” to prosecute Comey and other officials he considers political foes, in an extraordinarily direct social media post trampling on the justice department’s tradition of independence.Lindsey Halligan, the president’s former lawyer who was recently sworn in as the US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, asked a grand jury to indict Comey for allegedly lying to Congress in testimony on 30 September 2020 before the five-year statute of limitations expires in the coming days. Comey’s testimony before the Senate judiciary committee was related to his handling of the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election.Halligan, who has no prosecutorial experience, was elevated to the post after Erik Siebert was forced out of the job for failing to bring indictments against Comey and Letitia James, the New York attorney general. More

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      in US Politics

      White House tells agencies to prepare for firings if government shuts down

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      The White House is telling federal agencies to prepare large-scale firings of workers if the government shuts down next week in a partisan fight over spending plans – prompting the Democrats to accuse Donald Trump of intimidation tactics.In a memo released on Wednesday night, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said agencies should consider a reduction in force for federal programs whose funding would lapse next week, is not otherwise funded and is “not consistent with the president’s priorities”.That would be a much more aggressive step than in previous shutdowns, when federal workers not deemed essential were furloughed but returned to their jobs once the US Congress approved a new financial plan.A mass firing would eliminate employees positions, which would trigger yet another massive upheaval in a federal workforce that has already faced major rounds of cuts this year, leading with the dramatic intervention by Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) early in the second Trump administration.When asked by reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday afternoon about the possibility of a government shutdown, Trump said: “Could be, yeah, because the Democrats are crazed. They don’t know what they’re doing.”Asked whether he would agree to a request from Democrats for an extension of subsidies for the costs of healthcare plans under the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, on which millions of Americans depend for health insurance – which has become the sticking point in negotiations over the government funding bill – Trump simply repeated his false claim that Democrats are insisting on funding “to give the money to illegal aliens”.Once any potential government shutdown ends, agencies are asked to revise their reduction in force plans “as needed to retain the minimal number of employees necessary to carry out statutory functions”, according to the memo, which was first reported by Politico.This move from the OMB significantly increases the consequences of a potential government shutdown next week and escalates pressure on the US Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, and the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, both New York Democrats.The two leaders have kept nearly all of their Democratic lawmakers united against a clean funding bill pushed by the US president and congressional Republicans that would keep the federal government operating for seven more weeks, demanding immediate improvements to health care in exchange for their votes to approve the short term plan, known as a continuing resolution (CR).“We will not be intimidated by your threat to engage in mass firings,” Jeffries wrote in a post on X shortly after the OMB memo was released. “Get lost.”Jeffries called Russ Vought, the head of the OMB, a “malignant political hack”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSchumer said in a statement that the OMB memo is an “attempt at intimidation” and predicted the “unnecessary firings will either be overturned in court or the administration will end up hiring the workers back.”“It has never been more important for the administration to be prepared for a shutdown if the Democrats choose to pursue one,” the memo reads, which also notes that the GOP’s signature law, a major tax and anti-immigration spending package, gives “ample resources to ensure that many core Trump Administration priorities will continue uninterrupted.” OMB noted that it had asked all agencies to submit their plans in case of a government shutdown by 1 August.Meanwhile, hundreds of federal employees who were fired in Musk’s cost-cutting blitz are being asked to return to work.The General Services Administration ( GSA) has given the employees – who managed government workspaces – until the end of the week to decide, according to an internal memo obtained by the Associated Press. Those who accept must report to work on 6 October after what amounts to a seven-month paid vacation.“Ultimately, the outcome was the agency was left broken and understaffed,” said Chad Becker, a former GSA real estate official. “They didn’t have the people they needed to carry out basic functions.” More

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      in US Politics

      Texas Ice facility shooting: Republicans blame ‘radical left’ as Democrats focus on victims and gun control

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      A deadly shooting at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) field office in Dallas has been met with markedly different reactions from the political right and left.The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed shortly after the news broke that detainees were the victims of the sniper attack on the facility and that no federal agents had been injured. The president and his allies, however, were quick to frame the shooting as an attack on Ice and place blame on the “radical left”.The department previously said two detainees were killed, but later issued a clarifying statement saying the shooting killed one detainee. It said two other detainees were shot and are in critical condition.Official statements have lacked focus on the victims having been detainees, and at a press conference officials said the identities of the victims would not be released at this time. Figures on the left have centered on the victims’ families, pushed for greater gun control and urged a rejection of anti-immigrant sentiment.Donald Trump rushed to politicize the incident, blaming the violence squarely on “Radical Left Terrorists” and the Democratic party. “This violence is the result of the Radical Left Democrats constantly demonizing Law Enforcement, calling for ICE to be demolished, and comparing ICE Officers to “Nazis,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.JD Vance called the shooting an “obsessive attack on law enforcement” that “must stop”. The vice-president claimed it was carried out by “a violent left-wing extremist” who was “politically motivated to go after law enforcement”.Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem also said: “This shooting must serve as a wake-up call to the far-left that their rhetoric about Ice has consequences. Comparing Ice Day-in and day-out to the Nazi Gestapo, the Secret Police, and slave patrols has consequences.”The FBI said authorities recovered shell casings with “anti-Ice messaging” near the shooter, but officials said the investigation was continuing and have neither confirmed the motive behind the attack, nor corroborated claims about the shooter’s ideological background.The FBI is investigating the incident as an act of targeted violence. The DHS said the shooter “fired indiscriminately” at the Ice facility, “including at a van in the sallyport where the victims were shot”. The attacker died from a self-inflicted gun wound.Greg Abbott, the Republican Texas governor and staunch Trump ally, called the attack an “assassination” and said that “Texas supports Ice”. He wrote on X: “This assassination will NOT slow our arrest, detention, & deportation of illegal immigrants. We will work with ICE & the Dallas Police Dept. to get to the bottom of the assassin’s motive.”Texas senator Ted Cruz also invoked the killing of rightwing commentator Charlie Kirk as he told reporters that political violence “must stop” and rebuked politicians who have been critical of Ice. “Your political opponents are not Nazis,” Cruz raged at Democrats, who he accused of “demonizing” Ice. “This has very real consequences,” he said.Later, after a reporter brought up reports that the victims were detainees, Cruz acknowledged that the motive of the shooter was not known.The attack comes amid fears the Trump administration plans a crackdown on leftwing organizations and amid the censorship of critical or nuanced commentary in the aftermath of Kirk’s killing, targeting people from visa holders to late-night talkshow host Jimmy Kimmel.Marc Veasey, a Democratic representative for Texas who represents the area where the shooting took place, told the Notus website that political “gamesmanship” was spiraling out of control, and said he was “sickened” by officials’ focus on law enforcement and lack of acknowledgement that the victims were detainees.He added that he lacked trust in the FBI, which had become “overly political” under Trump, and said smears against Democrats were not helpful, citing that the GOP also routinely call colleagues on the left “Marxists”.“We have to start condemning this rhetoric from both sides,” Veasey said. “I was hoping that after the assassination of Charlie Kirk that we would have learned lessons and that we realize that this is not about gamesmanship. This is not about one-upsmanship … This is about public safety.”Former Arizona congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who leads the gun violence prevention group Giffords, said her heart broke for the victims’ families and urged leaders to take action against the “gun crime crisis” gripping the country.Congresswoman Summer Lee of Pennsylvania, wrote on X: “Leave it to this administration to use a shooting against immigrant detainees to score political points and further provoke violence. We have to get guns off our streets and reject xenophobic and anti-immigrant sentiment that makes all of us less safe.”Pennsylvania state representative Malcolm Kenyatta said: “Kristi Noem couldn’t get to Twitter fast enough to use the Dallas Ice shooting for political points. But local news now says it was detainees who were shot – not Ice agents.” More

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      in Elections

      Georgia governor’s race heats up with entrance of two skeptics of Trump’s 2020 election claims

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      The entrance into the Georgia governor’s race of two prominent figures on the right who stood up to Donald Trump’s effort to steal the 2020 election shows how the election interference crisis continues to reverberate in the state’s politics.On Wednesday, Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, announced his candidacy. Raffensperger was the recipient of the “perfect phone call” by Trump in 2020 in the wake of his electoral loss in Georgia, pressuring Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” and overturn the results.The recording of that phone call led to investigations in Georgia and Washington. Raffensperger’s rejection of stolen election claims and his unwillingness to subvert Georgia election law for partisan purposes landed him near the top of Trump’s enemies list.At a rally in Atlanta during the campaign, Trump called Raffensperger and the outgoing Republican governor, Brian Kemp, “disloyal” and said “they’re doing everything possible to make 2024 difficult for Republicans to win”. Kemp is term-limited and cannot run again in 2026.In his announcement address, Raffensperger said: “I’m a conservative Republican, and I’m prepared to make the tough decisions. I follow the law and the constitution, and I’ll always do the right thing for Georgia no matter what.”Raffensperger pledged to work toward capping seniors’ property taxes, banning puberty-blocking drugs from minors and eliminating the state income tax.And last Tuesday, former lieutenant governor and erstwhile Republican Geoff Duncan announced his candidacy for governor. Duncan was elected lieutenant governor in 2018 as a Republican, forgoing re-election in 2022 after drawing heated reaction from Trump supporters after repudiating stolen election claims. Duncan testified before the special purpose grand jury in Fulton county examining election-interference claims.Duncan published a book about reforming the Republican party in 2021, and briefly considered running for president under the No Labels brand as an independent in 2024. Presenting himself as a political iconoclast, Duncan announced last month that he had formally switched parties.In the absence of the election-interference case that followed Trump’s efforts in 2020, both Duncan and Raffensperger would have been considered orthodox conservative Republicans by Georgia political standards.But Georgia’s Republican party can no longer be described as orthodox, except in its loyalty to Trump. Delegates to the Georgia GOP convention in January overwhelmingly voted to bar Raffensperger from qualifying as a Republican candidate while they expelled Duncan entirely, citing his appearance at the Democratic National Convention endorsing Kamala Harris in the presidential election.The move was largely symbolic; state law provides for no mechanism for a political party to bar a candidate. Nonetheless, the animus from the 2020 election persists.In dueling open letters last year, the Georgia GOP chair, Josh McKoon, described Duncan as “prostituting” himself to CNN as a Trump critic.“[Y]our desperate and ridiculous endorsements of Joe Biden and now Kamala Harris for president, coupled with your inexplicable opposition in 2022 to [Republican Senate candidates] Burt Jones and Herschel Walker, not to mention your comical attempt to run for president as an independent candidate, are violations of the oaths of loyalty you repeatedly swore when you qualified as a Republican candidate for office,” McKoon wrote.Duncan legislated as a “100% pro-life” lawmaker, and supported a 2019 state law banning most abortions – a position he is now repudiating as a Democratic candidate, along with prior positions on gun control and Medicaid expansion. His argument to voters is that cross-party appeal is necessary to beat a Republican in the general election.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I’ve never wavered on taking on Trump,” Duncan said in his announcement video. “I’m running for governor to put Georgians in the best position to once again love their neighbors and to make Georgia the frontline of democracy and a backstop against extremism.”Duncan enters a Democratic race that grows increasingly crowded. He faces the state senator Jason Esteves, an Atlanta-area legislator and former Atlanta school board chairperson, as well as former labor commissioner and DeKalb county CEO Michael Thurmond and former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. Other candidates are expected to announce their bids in coming weeks.Among Republicans, Georgia’s attorney general, Chris Carr, and lieutenant governor, Burt Jones, have already declared their candidacies for governor. Carr stepped down from chairing the Republican Attorneys General Association after learning it had paid for a robocall urging supporters to come to Washington DC and “stop the steal” on 6 January 2021. Carr and Kemp are political allies.Jones is favored by Trump and was a mainstay on the 2024 campaign trail.“Chris Carr and Brad Raffensperger have one thing in common: They are both Never Trumpers,” Jones wrote on Instagram following Raffensperger’s announcement. “There is only one candidate in this race that’s always supported and has the full and complete endorsement of [Trump].”Jones, a Republican state senator in 2020, served as one of the 16 fake electors for Trump – all of whom signed a document, submitted to the National Archives, claiming Trump won Georgia.Fulton county’s district attorney, Fani Willis, had considered charging Jones in the election-interference case, but a Fulton county judge barred her in 2022 from investigating the lieutenant governor after she appeared at a fundraiser for Jones’s opponent. An outside prosecutor determined Jones’s actions as a state senator did not merit “further investigation or further actions” and considered the case closed. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump claims with little evidence that use of Tylenol, or acetaminophen, in pregnancy is linked to autism – US politics live

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      “Effective immediately the FDA will be notifying doctors that the use of acetaminophen,” Trump struggled to pronounce the drug name, “or Tylenol, can be associated with a very increased risk of autism,” Trump said.“So taking Tylenol is not good.”“For this reason, they are strongly recommending that women limit Tylenol use during pregnancy unless medically necessary,” he added.Donald Trump has responded to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists statement on Tylenol announcement, following a reporter’s question.“That’s the establishment. They’re funded by lots of different groups. And you know what, maybe they’re right,” he said. “But here’s the thing, there’s no downside to doing this.”Trump has returned to the podium, sharing a range of stories and his opinions on vaccines and medications.“Don’t take Tylenol,” he said emphatically. “There’s no downside.”According to the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine untreated fever during pregnancy does carry significant risks to moms and babies, such as miscarriage and birth defects.The manufacturer of Tylenol, Kenvue Inc, has released a statement in response to the president’s announcement, saying it “strongly disagrees” with the suggestion that the medication may cause autism.“Sound science clearly shows that taking acetaminophen does not cause autism,” the statement says.The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the nation’s leading organization for obstetricians and gynecologists, says Donald Trump’s announcement regarding Tylenol use in pregnancy is “irresponsible when considering the harmful and confusing message they send to pregnant patients.”“Today’s announcement by HHS is not backed by the full body of scientific evidence and dangerously simplifies the many and complex causes of neurologic challenges in children,” the organization’s president, Dr. Steven Fleischman, said in a statement.“It is highly unsettling that our federal health agencies are willing to make an announcement that will affect the health and well-being of millions of people without the backing of reliable data.”Ahead of the president’s announcement, the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine said Tylenol is “an appropriate medication to treat pain and fever during pregnancy.” It added that untreated fever during pregnancy carries significant risks to moms and babies, such as miscarriage and birth defects.The two mothers speaking at Donald Trump’s press conference have shared the experiences of their two children, both of whom have autism, and expressed gratitude to the Trump administration for prioritizing research into autism.Dorothy Fink, who served as acting health secretary pending Robert F Kennedy Jr’s confirmation and is now currently the acting assistant secretary for health, has introduced two mothers, introduced only as Jackie and Amanda.Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, says more than half of children in the United States, who are insured under Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (Chip), will be able to access leucovorin due to the FDA’s label change. He said he hopes private insurers will follow suit.He said the agency will also collect data on the effectiveness of leucovorin.Makary has also announced the FDA’s decision to make leucovorin available as a treatment for autism.“Hundreds of thousands of kids will benefit,” he said.“Today the FDA is taking action to update the label on acetaminophen,” says FDA commissioner Marty Makary. He added his agency is sending a letter to all physicians explaining the update.Makary has also cited medical research on the link between Tylenol and autism.Here’s a helpful guide to that research from my colleagues:The National Institutes of Health has launched an Autism Data Science Initiative, says agency director Jay Bhattacharya.The initiative directs $50m to the study of autism, and will fund 13 research projects.“The NIH has invested a lot of money to study autism over the years, but the research has not produced the answers that families and parents of autistic children, and autistic children themselves deserve,” he said. “For too long it’s been taboo to ask some questions for fear the scientific work might reveal a politically incorrect answer.”Kennedy says that the FDA has announced a new treatment for autism: leucovorin, a form of folic acid.The FDA published a notice in the Federal Register announcing the treatment, it cited “patient-level data on over 40 patients, including both adults and pediatric patients” to support the finding that the drug can improve symptoms from cerebral folate deficiency, which it says has been reported in some patients.Health and Human Services will announce a nationwide public service campaign to spread knowledge about the agency’s Tylenol announcement, Kennedy said.Robert F Kennedy Jr is speaking now at the president’s White House press conference. He’s begun by describing changes at US health agencies.”We are now replacing the institutional culture of politicized science and corruption with evidence-based medicine,” Kennedy said. “NIH research teams are now testing multiple hypotheses with no area off limits.”Trump has also announced that the National Institutes of Health will be announcing 13 major grant awards from the autism data science initiatives.“Nothing bad can happen, only good can happen,” he said. More