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      RFK Jr says they are poisoning us, influencers call them unnatural – but what is the truth about seed oils?

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      It’s curious that something so bland could cause so much controversy. Most of us have a bottle of seed oil, normally called vegetable oil in the UK, in our kitchens – a nearly tasteless but very useful fat that has been a commonplace cooking ingredient for decades.And yet this previously unremarkable golden liquid has sparked online furore and vicious debate. Nutrition influencers on social media have described it as “toxic”, “inflammatory”, “unnatural” and the root cause of the obesity epidemic.The US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, who has caused controversy with his views on subjects from vaccines to fluoride in drinking water, has said the population is being “unknowingly poisoned” by seed oils and urged people to revert to “traditional” fats such as butter, lard and beef dripping for better health.Last month the Wall Street Journal reported that fast food chains were promoting their shift away from seed oils after Kennedy’s criticisms. He even made a televised visit to a branch of Steak ’n Shake to praise its decision to cook fries in beef tallow instead.So should we really be ditching our bottles of vegetable and sunflower oils and covering everything in lard?Seed oils have been in widespread use since about the 1950s and, as well as being used for home cooking, are also in many ultra-processed foods. They include rapeseed (known as canola in the US and generally labelled as vegetable oil in the UK), sunflower, soya bean, corn, grapeseed, rice bran, sesame and safflower. While you can buy cold-pressed seed oils, the most common production method involves using a solvent (normally hexane) to extract the oil from the plant. It is correct that hexane is a toxic substance, but it is almost entirely removed from the final product by the refining process – the EU allows a maximum residual limit of 1mg per kilo.The refining process includes bleaching and deodorising, both of which critics have jumped on to claim that seed oil is “unnatural” and therefore “bad”.Tom Sanders, emeritus professor of nutrition and dietetics at King’s College London, who has spent his career researching dietary fat and health, explains: “The processing actually takes out potentially toxic material.”Sarah Berry, professor of nutritional sciences at King’s, agrees: “The end product, in my opinion, is very safe to eat.”The next allegation against seed oils is that they are “inflammatory”. This assumption is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the science, says Berry.View image in fullscreenSeed oil critics claim that the type of omega-6 fatty acid present in them (called linoleic acid) can be inflammatory, whereas omega-3 – the other essential polyunsaturated fatty acid, found in foodstuffs such as oily fish, flaxseed and chia seeds – can reduce inflammation.“Because the enzymes used to convert omega-3 into anti-inflammatory chemicals are the same ones used to convert omega- 6, their argument is that having too much seed oil will mean the enzymes are stolen away from the omega-3,” says Berry.“This isn’t true. It’s true from a theoretical biochemical pathway. It’s true in mice upon unrealistic stimuli. But it is absolutely not true in humans.” In fact, randomised, controlled trials show that linoleic acid has either a neutral or, in most studies, an anti-inflammatory effect in humans.“The idea that linoleic acid is some sort of toxic thing is absolute nonsense,” says Sanders. “It’s an essential nutrient. Of the essential fatty acids it’s the most important one. If you’re deficient, it impairs immune function and platelet function doesn’t work.”It also has a potent cholesterol-lowering effect, says Berry, who is chief scientist at nutrition company Zoe. “It has been shown to reduce blood cholesterol significantly. Because of this and based on the current evidence I would say that not only are seed oils not bad for us, they are a healthy part of our diet.”Sanders attributes much of the decline in cardiovascular disease we’ve seen in the past 50 years to our increased consumption of seed oils. A few weeks ago, a study that followed 200,000 adults over 33 years found that those who replaced a tablespoon of butter a day with the same amount of plant-based oil such as soya bean or rapeseed had a 17% reduction in risk of death from all causes. The study, which was published in JAMA Internal Medicine also found a 17% reduction in risk of death from cancer.“Our study found that higher butter intake was associated with increased deaths from all causes and cancer, while higher intake of plant-based oils was associated with lower deaths from all causes, cancer and cardiovascular disease,” said lead study author Yu Zhang, a graduate student at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.Priya Tew, from Dietitian UK, says some of the confusion might have come from a 1960s study: “It showed men with heart disease had a higher intake of seed oils. But this was through margarines that also contain trans fats, which we know increase the risk of heart disease.”A similar logic applies to the argument that, as our intake of seed oils has risen – which it has more than 200-fold over the past 50 to 70 years – so too have our rates of chronic disease.“Association does not mean causality,” says Berry. “Think what else has changed; our food landscape is almost unrecognisable compared with 70 years ago. It’s estimated 60% of the seed oils we consume come from ultra-processed food which has many other chemicals that are unhealthy for us and processes that affect the healthfulness of the food.”In other words, it’s not the seed oil that’s the problem.Berry’s recent statements about seed oils have landed her in hot water. After appearing on a podcast explaining that seed oils are healthy, she received relentless hate mail, including being told she’s “the most hated scientist in America”.“It nearly got to the point where I was going to stop speaking out on the topic so I didn’t have to be subjected to such horrible comments and meanness. But then I thought, that’s exactly what they want. They want to shut down the real evidence, so it just galvanised me to speak out about it even more.”As always, with nutrition, it’s better to consider overall diet than to hyper-fixate on one ingredient. But these kind of messages don’t tend to get as much traction. “Human nature is such that we are more susceptible to risk and scare headlines,” Berry says. “They’re going to get more clicks than a balanced, boring nutrition scientist like myself saying seed oils are fine as part of a balanced diet.”Sanders says you don’t have to ditch your seed oils and you shouldn’t swap them for butter or lard. “The seed oil scare is all just gossip. It’s not based on any good science at all.” More

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      When the physicists need burner phones, that’s when you know America’s changed | John Naughton

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      At international academic conferences recently, one sees an interesting trend. Some American participants are travelling with “burner” phones or have minimalist laptops running browsers and not much else. In other words, they are equipped with the same kind of kit that security-conscious people used to bring 15 years ago when travelling to China.So what’s up? Well, these academics have a finger on the pulse of Trump’s America, and are concerned about what might happen when they return home. They’ve read on Robert Reich’s Substack about the French scientist who was prevented from entering the country because US Border Patrol agents had found messages from him in which he had expressed his “personal opinion” to colleagues and friends about Trump’s science policies.Or they’ve heard about Dr Rasha Alawieh, a kidney transplant specialist and professor at Brown University who was trying to return to the US after visiting relatives in Lebanon. She was deported, reports Reich, “despite having a valid visa and a court order” blocking her removal. “Federal authorities alleged that they found ‘sympathetic photos and videos of prominent Hezbollah figures’ in her phone and that she attended the funeral for the leader of Hezbollah in February.”And they also know about Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate, whom – though he is a legal permanent resident of the US and has not been charged with a crime – the government is trying to deport because he had participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia.Those pro-Gaza demonstrations so irked the Trump regime that it demanded the return of $400m of federal research funding. When Columbia sought a meeting to discuss the matter, it received a letter setting out the conditions that it would have to accept before the government would deign to talk. These included a stipulation that Columbia must “begin the process of placing the Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies Department under academic receivership for a minimum of five years”.The bullying of Columbia is the canary in the coalmine which reveals the Trump-Musk junta has it in for American universities. There are two reasons for their hostility. The first is that, as elite institutions devoted to freedom of inquiry and the telling of uncomfortable truths, they are anathema to the new autocrats in Washington. The second is that some of them (the so-called Ivy League) are fabulously wealthy, being for the most part hedge funds with nice universities attached. And if there’s one thing that Donald Trump cannot abide, it is large pots of money that he and his ghastly tribe can smell but not touch. So if the aloof trustees of Harvard, Princeton, Yale et al think that their august institutions lie beyond his reach, perhaps they should understand that Trump looks on them much as Henry VIII looked on the rich monasteries of his heyday.Many teachers and researchers in US universities are now fearful of what lies ahead. No line of inquiry is safe from the raging firestorm of Maga intolerance. Many of the most vulnerable areas of inquiry lie in the health sector – LGBTQ+ medicine, epidemiology, infectious diseases, immunology, and so on. But there’s also endangered research on environmental issues and the climate crisis, socioeconomic inequality, plus the humanities, social science and astrophysics.The looming crisis in the US is beginning to remind people in Europe of the 1930s, when the UK and the US began to realise that Jewish scientists needed to be rescued from the Nazis. About 2,000 scientists and academics fled the fascist countries between 1933 and 1941, fearing for themselves or Jewish family members. Then, universities in the US and the UK made space for and welcomed a whole generation of geniuses – Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard, Hans Bethe, Max Born, Rudolf Peierls, Francis Simon, to name just a few. Likewise, members of the Frankfurt School were rescued and installed in New York, where they became mightily critical of American capitalism but at least lived to tell their particular tale. As did Thomas Mann.Now, in a different age, there are stirrings in Europe to provide safe places for American researchers. In France, Aix-Marseille University is welcoming American scientists whose work has become untenable after the Trump administration’s cuts in certain academic sectors. The Free University of Brussels (VUB) is opening 12 postdoctoral positions for international researchers, which are open to American researchers working in socially relevant fields. The fellowships come with substantial funding (€2.5m) as part of the European Marie Skłodowska-Curie programme. It’s also aiming to attract American professors looking to relocate. VUB, with its Francophone sister university ULB, is providing 18 apartments for international researchers seeking temporary residence at the Brussels Institute for Advanced Studies.This is the beginning of something hopeful. But it also raises the question of what UK institutions are doing to meet the coming challenge. The answer, at the moment, seems to be nothing much. Perhaps that’s because most of British academia still can’t get its head around the idea that the US is now an enemy, not an ally, and that the “special relationship” is yesterday’s story.What I’ve been readingHow I accidentally got sent Trump’s Yemen textsJeffrey Goldberg’s astonishing story about the White House security leak in the Atlantic.Philosophy and fatherhoodA curious tendency among western philosophers explored in an intriguing post by Doug Muir.AI has learned to reason … … or has it? A lovely explainer by Melanie Mitchell.

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      ‘Detention Alley’: inside the Ice centres in the US south where foreign students and undocumented migrants languish

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      Behind the reinforced doors of courtroom number two, at a remote detention centre in central Louisiana, Lu Xianying sat alone before an immigration judge unable to communicate.Dressed in a blue jumpsuit that drooped from his slight frame, he waited as court staff called three different translation services, unable to find an interpreter proficient in his native Gan Chinese.Like almost all of the 17 detainees appearing before Judge Kandra Robbins during removal proceedings on Tuesday morning, Lu had no attorney because there is no right to legal representation in US immigration proceedings. He sat silently, evidently confused. A substitute interpreter was eventually found, and began translating the judge’s questions into Mandarin.“I am afraid to return to China,” he told the court, as he described how he had already filed an asylum application after crossing the border into Texas in March 2024. Lu said he was worried a lawyer had stolen his money and not submitted his asylum claim. Lu, who had only recently been detained, struggled to understand, as the judge asked him to list his country of return should he be deported.“Right now my order is to be removed?” He asked. “Or should I go to court?”The judge explained that he was present in court, and provided him another asylum application form. His next hearing was scheduled for April.The LaSalle immigration court, inside a sprawling Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention centre in rural Jena, Louisiana, has been thrust into the spotlight in recent weeks after the former Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil was transferred here earlier this month. His case has drawn international attention as the Trump administration attempts to deport the pro-Palestinian activist under rarely used executive provisions of US immigration law. The government is fighting vigorously to keep Khalil’s case in Louisiana and he is due to appear again at the LaSalle court for removal proceedings on 8 April.View image in fullscreenBut it has also renewed focus on the network of remote immigration detention centres that stretch between Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, known as “Detention Alley” – where 14 of the country’s 20 largest detention centres are clustered. And now where other students have since been sent after being arrested thousands of miles away.Badar Khan Suri, a research student at Georgetown University, was arrested in Virginia last week and sent to a detention centre in Alexandria, Louisiana, and then on to another site, Prairieland in eastern Texas. This week, Rumeysa Ozturk, a doctoral student at Tufts University, was arrested in Massachusetts and sent to the South Louisiana Ice processing centre in the swamplands of Evangeline parish.These distant detention facilities and court systems have long been associated with rights violations, poor medical treatment and due process concerns, which advocates argue are only likely to intensify during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and promise to carry out mass deportations that has already led to a surge in the detention population. But rarely do cases within these centres attract much public attention or individual scrutiny.“Most of the folks in detention in Louisiana aren’t the ones making the news,” said Andrew Perry, an immigrant rights attorney at the ACLU of Louisiana. “But they are experiencing similar, if not the same, treatment as those who are.”To observe a snapshot of the more than 1,100 other detainees confined at the facility also holding Khalil, the Guardian travelled to Jena and witnessed a full day inside the LaSalle court, which is rarely visited by journalists. Dozens lined up for their short appearances before a judge and were sworn in en masse. Some expressed severe health concerns, others frustration over a lack of legal representation. Many had been transferred to the centre from states hundreds of miles away.Earlier in the morning Wilfredo Espinoza, a migrant from Honduras, appeared before Judge Robbins for a procedural update on his asylum case that was due for a full hearing in May. Espinoza, who coughed throughout his appearance and had a small bandage on his face, had no lawyer and informed the court he wished to abandon his asylum application “because of my health”. The circumstances of his detention and timing and location of his arrest by Ice were not made clear in court.He suffered from hypertension and fatty liver disease, he said through a Spanish translator. “I’ve had three issues with my heart here,” he said. “I don’t want to be here any more. I can’t be locked up for this long. I want to leave.”The judge asked him repeatedly if he was entering his decision of his own free will. “Yes,” he said. “I just want to leave here as quickly as possible.”The judge ordered his removal from the US.Substantiated allegations of medical neglect have plagued the Jena facility for years. In 2018, the civil rights division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) examined the circumstances of four fatalities at the facility, which is operated by the Geo Group, a private corrections company. All four deaths occurred between January 2016 and March 2017 and the DHS identified a pattern of delay in medical care, citing “failure of nursing staff to report abnormal vital signs”.At the South Louisiana Ice processing centre, an all-female facility that is also operated by the Geo Group and where Ozturk is now being held, the ACLU of Louisiana recently filed a complaint to the DHS’s civil rights division alleging an array of rights violations. These included inadequate access to medical care, with the complaint stating: “Guards left detained people suffering from severe conditions like external bleeding, tremors, and sprained limbs unattended to, refusing them access to diagnostic care”.The complaint was filed in December 2024, before the Trump administration moved to gut the DHS’s civil rights division earlier this month.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA spokesperson for the Geo Group said the company “strongly disagrees with the allegations that have been made regarding services we provide at Geo-contracted Ice processing centres” including the facility in Jena.“In all instances, our contracted services are monitored by the federal government to ensure strict compliance with applicable federal standards,” the spokesperson said, pointing to Ice’s performance-based national detention standards that the company’s contracts are governed by.The spokesperson added: “These allegations are part of a longstanding, politically motivated, and radical campaign to abolish Ice and end federal immigration detention by attacking the federal government’s immigration facility contracts.”The DHS did not respond to multiple requests for comment.Louisiana experienced a surge in immigration detention during the first Trump administration. At the end of 2016, the state had capacity for a little more than 2,000 immigrant detainees, which more than doubled within two years. A wave of new Ice detention centres opened in remote, rural locations often at facilities previously used as private prisons. The state now holds the second largest number of detained immigrants, behind only Texas. Almost 7,000 people were held as of February 2025 at nine facilities in Louisiana, all operated by private companies.“It is this warehousing of immigrants in rural, isolated, ‘out of sight, of mind’ locations,” said Homero López, the legal director of Immigration Services and Legal Advocacy in Louisiana and a former appellate immigration judge. “It’s difficult on attorneys, on family members, on community support systems to even get to folks. And therefore it’s a lot easier on government to present their case. They can just bulldoze people through the process.”At the LaSalle court this week, the Guardian observed detainees transferred from states as far away as Arizona, Florida and Tennessee. In an afternoon hearing, where 15 detainees made an application for bond, which would release them from custody and transfer their case to a court closer to home, only two were granted.Cases heard from detention are far less likely to result in relief. At LaSalle, 78.6% of asylum cases are rejected, compared with the national average of 57.7%, according to the Trac immigration data project. In Judge Robbins’s court, 52% of asylum applicants appear without an attorney.In the afternoon session, the court heard from Fernando Altamarino, a Mexican national, who was transferred to Jena from Panama City, Florida, more than 500 miles away. Altamarino had no criminal record, like almost 50% of immigrants currently detained by Ice. He had been arrested by agents about a month ago, after he received a traffic ticket following a minor car accident.He tried to resolve the matter at his local courthouse, and was instead detained by immigration authorities. Via his lawyer, the court heard his application for release. A letter from a leader in his local church described his role as a stalwart member of the congregation and “a man who truly embodies faith”.But a prosecutor for the DHS, who opposed all but one bond application that afternoon, argued that Altamarino, who had lived in the country for more than a decade, presented a flight risk due to his “very limited to non-existent family ties to the US”.The judge concurred, as Altamarino sat upright and listened through a translator. Despite acknowledging he was “not a danger to community”, she sided with the government and denied bond.Altamarino thanked the judge as he left the room, under watch of a guard. The heavy door closed behind him as he headed back into the void of America’s vast detention system. More

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      ‘It’s a scary time’: artists react to White House’s recent targeting of Smithsonian Institution

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      Artists, academics and politicians have shared their outrage in reaction to the Trump administration’s latest executive order targeting the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum network.Late on Thursday, Trump announced that his administration had ordered a large reshaping of the Smithsonian in an attempt to eliminate what he described as “improper, divisive or anti-American ideology”.“Once widely respected as a symbol of American excellence and a global icon of cultural achievement, the Smithsonian Institution has, in recent years, come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology,” read the order.Trump’s order specifically criticized the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Saam) exhibit The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture. The exhibit features 82 sculptures from more than 70 artists to “[examine] the role of sculpture in understanding and constructing the concept of race in the United States”, according to the museum’s website.The artist Roberto Lugo, who is featured in the Shape of Power exhibit, said it felt “scary” to watch the Trump administration attempt to censure his and others’ work.“The idea of something that I’ve made being in such an important exhibition, and being targeted by people who run the entire country,” Lugo said. “It’s a scary time because you just don’t know if your work is going to be used to help people understand one another or if it’s going to be used as a tool to further divide people,” he added.To create his featured sculpture, DNA Study Revisited, Lugo had to physically encase his entire body in plaster and rubber for hours at a time. It then took more than a month to create the finished piece.The creation of art, Lugo said, allows him to “process experiences”.“I have faced violence in my life because of racism,” Lugo, who is Afro-Latino, said. “As a child, I was assaulted with a baseball bat for trying to play in the wrong neighborhood.” He added: “This was a very therapeutic experience to feel like my DNA is represented in such an important exhibition.”Trump also condemned the widely lauded National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). The museum, which formally opened in 2016 at a ceremony with then president Barack Obama, has been celebrated for its thorough curation process of Black American history.As a part of the “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” executive order, Trump has ordered his vice-president, JD Vance, to “remove improper ideology” from the Smithsonian’s museums, educational centers and more.Trump’s executive order has already sent shocks through the art and museum spaces, as officials weigh how to continue their work with an administration focused on limiting truth.Texas congresswoman Jasmine Crockett shared her frustration at Trump’s order and broader opposition to diversity and inclusion on social media.“First Trump removes any reference of diversity from the present – now he’s trying to remove it from our history. Let me be PERFECTLY clear – you cannot erase our past and you cannot stop us from fulfilling our future,” she said in a post on X.US representative Steven Horsford accused the Trump administration of “trying to erase Black history and silence conversations about systemic injustice” with this latest executive order. “By defunding institutions and banning critical conversations, they’re rewriting the narrative,” he said in a statement on X.The attorney and civil rights lawyer Ben Crump emphasized how Trump had specifically called out the NMAAHC, despite its historical archival work that benefits the national as a whole.“The National Museum of African American History and Culture reveals the truth about our nation’s past. Yet a new executive order calls for removing “divisive ideology” from the Smithsonian Institution and singled out the NMAAHC,” he said on X.Educators have also voiced their dismay at Trump’s attempts to attack the work of reporting on American history.Eddie S Glaude Jr, a professor of African American studies at Princeton University, wrote on X, “And they said it was about eggs … ,” referring to Republicans’ purported focus on inflation and egg prices.In comments to the Washington Post, Chandra Manning, a professor of American history at Georgetown University, said: “It seems to suggest that if we allow anyone to hear the whole story of challenges that Americans have overcome, our nation will shatter. The American people are not so fragile as all that.”Of his Saam exhibit, Lugo said it is an opportunity for selected artists and the communities they represent to have a chance to share their own experiences.“The exhibition is really about telling people’s stories, just as human beings. For some of us, how we appear on the outside has driven people to act a certain way towards us and stereotype us,” said Lugo. He added: “My work is really about harmony and showing people how we’re alike and how we should celebrate each other’s histories. A blanket overall statement that anything regarding race is divisive is really misunderstanding the role of the artists and what it is that we’re trying to achieve with our work.”How and when Trump’s executive orders will take place remain unclear. The Smithsonian has not released a statement on the orders or how it plans to address ongoing attempts at the federal level to shape its content. More

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      My child has autism. Trump and RFK Jr linking it to vaccines scares parents like me

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      It was a moment when Donald Trump’s larger-than-life presence on the global stage became unexpectedly personal.Near the end of his one-hour, 40-minute speech to a joint session of Congress on 4 March, the US president diverted from his favoured themes of a new golden age of American greatness and grievances against his adversaries to address a more unlikely topic: autism.The president drew his audience’s attention to Robert F Kennedy Jr, his controversial, newly confirmed choice as health secretary, and charged him with one overarching responsibility.“Not long ago, you can’t even believe these numbers – one in 10,000 children had autism,” Trump intoned. “Now it’s one in 36. There’s something wrong. One in 36 think of that. So we’re going to find out what it is. And there’s nobody better than Bobby.“Good luck. It’s a very important job.”It was not the first time that Trump had waded into the controversy swirling around autism – a neurodivergent condition affecting an estimated 75 million people worldwide. Nor was it the first occasion that he had touted Kennedy’s credentials as being able to tackle it.But the high symbolism of the setting brought home to me, a watching journalist, with sobering clarity that a life-changing decision, taken for the most pressing of family reasons, had taken on unforeseen contours.Just over two years ago, my wife and I had moved to the United States so that we could better address the needs of our son, who had been diagnosed with autism just before his third birthday. We had gradually despaired of finding a practical solution in the Czech capital of Prague, where we previously lived, and where state-of-the-art therapeutic remedies were still fledgling works in progress.America, by contrast, seemed to be a land of possibility and innovative approaches and to offer a more amenable environment to our circumstances – and had the added attraction that we all held US citizenship.In the period since our arrival, we found progress uneven, but engaged an outstanding therapist who made up for our difficulties navigating the Maryland state education system. I shifted my career from one centered in Europe, to covering US politics – and the second Trump administration.Now here – in the highest shrine of US democracy – was the graphically vivid figure of Trump digressing from his usual weaving script to elevate the very topic that had brought us to America’s shores to a national priority.It was not, to put it mildly, exactly what we had envisioned.The uptick in the autism trend Trump cited was exaggerated; while the most recent US autism statistics, recorded in 2020, did indeed record one in 36 children in the US having received a diagnosis of autism, the jump was less dramatic than he described – comparing with a rate of one in 150 in 2000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).Nevertheless, the undoubted spike in instances of the condition meant that his proclaimed zeal to find a cause resonated with many, us included.The catch lay in his choice of Kennedy, who has declared that autism is caused by vaccines – a scientifically baseless theory which Trump himself has previously indulged – as the lead figure in a national crusade to discover a cause.I spoke with other parents of children with autism, who used a range of pejorative adjectives to deride this conviction; among them “dangerous”, “scary”, “batshit crazy”, “despicable” and “disgusting”.Kennedy’s views carry weight which, experts fear, will be lent still greater authority by his new health portfolio. The CDC is reportedly now planning a large study into potential connections between vaccines and autism.“Were I the father of a child with autism, I would be really angry at the anti-vaccine community for taking this story hostage and for diverting resources and attention away from the real cause, or causes, of autism,” said Paul Offit, a pediatrician specialising in immunology and author of the 2008 book Autism’s False Prophets, which rebutted the alleged links between the condition and vaccines.“There’s financial or emotional burdens that make it hard enough for parents, but to have this offered as a reason for why a child has autism is just spurious and in some ways malicious, because I think it puts the burden on the parent.”Belief in the alleged connection between vaccinations and autism gained traction after a 1998 study conducted by a British physician, Andrew Wakefield, and published in the Lancet asserted a causal link with the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. The paper ignited a firestorm of controversy in Britain, with the then prime minister, Tony Blair, pressured to say whether his baby son had been administered the MMR shot.But research underpinning the finding was later debunked as fraudulent, leading to the Lancet retracting the paper and Wakefield being struck off the UK medical register. Multiple subsequent studies have found no connection between the vaccine and autism.Despite the countervailing evidence, suspicions persisted – fuelled in no small part by Kennedy himself, who has shown himself unmoved in the face of challenge.My personal interest in Kennedy and his views on vaccines was piqued after hearing a 2023 podcast interview with the New Yorker. He was adamant under questioning from the magazine’s editor-in-chief, David Remnick, who – disclosing himself as the parent of a child with “quite severe” autism – asked if he had second thoughts about “slinging around theories … that don’t have any great credibility among scientists”.“I’ve read the science on autism and I can tell you … If it didn’t come from the vaccines, then where is it coming from?” Kennedy responded.Scientists say there are multiple potential answers to that question, including genetics, drugs taken during pregnancy, age of conception – albeit none giving a definitive explanation.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“When you hear about autism and its causes, the first thing people think is vaccines, which is the one thing you can say it’s not,” Offit said.Caught in the crossfire of this conflict between science and dogma are parents struggling to cope with a condition whose manifestations can be maddening, challenging and bewildering.Autism is a wide spectrum condition and children with it come in a surprising variety of types. Some – like my son – are functional, verbal and teachable, with aspects of high intelligence; others are non-verbal and may have severe intellectual disabilities; many others may fall somewhere in between.“If you’ve met one child with autism, you’ve met one child with autism,” goes the refrain among many specialists.Common to all, however, are atypical behaviours that for the parents, are life-changing and force them to make painful adaptations, sometimes at high financial cost.A complaint frequently heard about Kennedy’s views is that they heap stigmatisation on their children and unwarranted blame on the parents.“It puts a stigma on our children that their parents did something wrong when they were pregnant with them, and thus it’s the parents fault,” said Davina Kleid, 38, an executive assistant in a real estate development company in Maryland, whose nine-year-old daughter has autism.Kleid feared Kennedy’s views have the potential to unleash an eventual crackdown conjuring scenes resembling The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood’s novel dystopian novel depicting a bleak patriarchal future and female subjugation.“Who knows? Maybe I could be arrested for having a child on the spectrum, because they’re going to say that I did something to purposely cause her to have this condition,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with my child. It’s how she was born. I’m not ashamed of it, and I don’t think anyone should be ashamed of it.”Madeline, a publisher from Maryland who requested that her real name not be disclosed, said Kennedy’s views amounted to a disparagement of her 24-year-old son, who was born at the height of the MMR controversy arising from the Wakefield paper but who showed signs of developmental delay before being vaccinated.“It is just insulting that people would think that it would be better to get measles or mumps or pertussis or whooping cough than to have autism,” she said. “And RFK Jr has said as much. It’s like this is worse than getting these terrible, life-threatening diseases.”Lux Blakthorne, 33, a professional gardener living in Chester county, Pennsylvania, said fears for the future over her non-verbal, nine-year-old autistic son, Kai, had prompted her to make plans to emigrate to Germany, the country of her ex-husband’s birth and where she said provisions for autism had made great strides.The breaking point, she said, would be cuts to Medicaid, the public healthcare system that Kennedy oversees and which pays for Kai’s daily needs including education at a special private facility.An added factor is a recent White House executive order banning puberty blocking medication for those under 18, a measure aimed at stymying gender-affirming care for transgender youth but which, Blakthorne says, would prevent her trying to mitigate harmful autism-related behaviour that is likely to be exacerbated by the onset of puberty.“I think RFK sees disabilities as a problem that needs to be fixed,” said Blakthorne. “He has a dangerous belief system, and it’s not science- or fact-based.”Yet amid the negativity, the Autism Science Foundation, a research group, says Kennedy has a unique opportunity to discover its causes.“Many of us in the autism community give RFK credit for wanting to study the causes of autism,” said Alison Singer, the foundation’s president and the mother of a daughter with autism.“What would be very positive is if as health secretary, he can declare profound autism as a national public health emergency,” she said.“That would open up a variety of actions he could take, like making additional grants, entering into new contracts [and] really focusing funding on investigating the causes of autism, treatments and prevention.” More

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      This op-ed could lead to me being deported from America | Berna León

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      When I moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, less than a year ago, I could never have imagined that writing a critical piece about the US government could put me at risk of deportation, threatening the life and career I’ve built here. But today, that threat is very real.Just this week, Rümeysa Öztürk, a doctoral student at Tufts University, was arrested mere blocks from where I live after publishing an op-ed in her university newspaper describing Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as genocide. That was the full extent of her activism, yet despite having all her documentation in order, she was taken abruptly and transported to Louisiana, more than 1,000 miles (1,609km) from her home.At the university where I work, many colleagues and students are foreign nationals, and recent conversations have revolved around how to navigate this chilling new reality. A Middle Eastern friend who attended protests recently told me she’s started altering her daily route to and from campus – knowing Ice typically conducts arrests in public spaces.Another international couple told me they’ve exchanged social media passwords to alert each other immediately if something happens, and created an emergency protocol in case one of them suddenly disappears. As I wrote this column, another colleague emailed a Spanish newspaper asking them to erase her previously published opinion pieces out of fear of retaliation. Several German colleagues, similarly cautious, have begun regularly deleting WhatsApp conversations after a French scientist was turned away at the US border for private text messages criticizing Donald Trump.Whether or not these specific individuals face imminent deportation is beside the point. The real danger lies in the chilling effect: the Trump administration’s policies deliberately target not only undocumented immigrants – as seen during Trump’s first term – but also perfectly legal immigrants. It is no coincidence that only those who publicly criticize the administration or its allies find themselves under threat. This represents a calculated strategy to silence dissent.Mark Twain once observed that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. And the rhyme with the US’s darker chapters is undeniable here. The current use of state security apparatuses to suppress activism resembles tactics employed during the 1960s and 1970s, when US intelligence agencies infiltrated student, leftwing and anti-racist movements. Back then, the strategy was to sow distrust and dismantle resistance through systematic infiltration. Today, it involves silencing voices of opposition by arbitrarily detaining students for peacefully exercising their right to dissent. The abuses of J Edgar Hoover and James Jesus Angleton were only exposed through the courageous efforts of activists and the Church and Pike committees, awakening the US’s collective conscience. Today, such repression occurs openly in broad daylight, exemplified by the sight of six men arresting a doctoral student without a judicial warrant – and thus without the need for probable cause – for the simple act of writing an opinion article.Democratic backsliding is gradual; authoritarian regimes always begin by targeting the most vulnerable. A few years ago, it was undocumented immigrants; today, it’s lawful residents speaking out against Trump. Americans who oppose the values espoused by this administration should harbor no illusions: if this arbitrary repression goes unchallenged, they will certainly become the next targets.

      Berna León is a visiting fellow at Harvard University, where he teaches political theory. His doctoral dissertation investigated the democratic oversight of intelligence services in the US and UK More

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      The Signal chat exposes the administration’s incompetence – and its pecking order | Sidney Blumenthal

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      On 13 March, Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Waltz, who was the policy director for two secretaries of defense and was a member of the House intelligence committee, sent a message on the commercial Signal app: “Team – establishing a principles group for coordination on Houthis, particularly for over the next 72 hours.” “The Houthis PC small group” would oversee a US air attack on the Houthis in Yemen.Despite Waltz’s extensive professional background, he misspelled “principals” as “principles” – perhaps an ordinary typo, but symptomatic of the shambles to come. Although the secretaries of defense, state and treasury, the director of national intelligence, the CIA director, the vice-president, and the president’s chief of staff were among the 18 people included, neither the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, who is a statutory member of the principals committee of the National Security Council, nor any military designee was invited into this group. Instead, the editor of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, was sent a link. Waltz noted: “Joint Staff is sending this am a more specific sequence of events in the coming days.”The Atlantic’s publication of Goldberg’s article about the Signal group’s exchanges was followed by a spray of attempts to cover it up. Trump and the rest of his administration simply denied that anything classified had been released; there were no “war plans”, it was a “hoax”, Goldberg was “scum”, “a loser” and “discredited”, and what about Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton? Which prompted Goldberg to publish the detailed war plans he had withheld in his first article. He was the only responsible person involved in the incident.Quite apart from the glaring incompetence and illegality of the whole affair – Goldberg’s careless inclusion, the fact that a provision of the Espionage Act (18 USC § 793) criminalizes “gross negligence” for mishandling classified national security material, and that operating on Signal with timed deletion of messages violates the preservation of records for the National Archives – the conversation pulled back the curtain on the White House.The transcript exposed the internal pecking order of the Trump administration and its actual chain of command, if it could be called anything that regular. In the end, the final decision-maker within the group to whom the others deferred was not any cabinet secretary or the chief of staff. They turned to “SM” – Stephen Miller – the deputy chief of staff who is Trump’s zealous enforcer. The chief of staff, Susie Wiles, came across as a cheerleader. Miller was the one who gave the stamp of approval. He conveyed Trump’s word. For all intents and purposes, Stephen Miller acted as the de facto president.The desultory discussion on Signal also highlighted the juvenile towel-snapping bro culture at the top of the administration. The Fox News personalities in the cabinet and the others who have habituated themselves to blathering forceful opinions appeared in the leaked transcript to have seamlessly carried over their habits of loud and thoughtless talk. Above all, they don’t know when not to speak; nor do they know what they reveal about themselves when they do. They don’t know how to conduct themselves as serious people in the room. Their incompetence comes naturally.About the military plan on the eve of being executed, JD Vance opined: “I think we are making a mistake.” By venturing his view at this advanced point in the operation, he showed that he had been out of the loop. Vice-presidents since Walter Mondale, under President Jimmy Carter, have been made indispensable figures in important decisions, especially involving national security. But Vance sounded like an outsider, a guest on a podcast.He went on about how the Houthis menacing the trade in the Hormuz Strait affected Europe more than the United States. “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now,” he said. Vance felt that it was Trump who was out of the loop or assumed Trump’s ignorance. If only Trump understood his own contradictions.But Vance conceded: “I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself.” Where did he think he would voice his dissent, Joe Rogan’s show? He did not know Goldberg was already listening in. Then Vance suggested: “But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.”“There is nothing time sensitive driving the time line,” piped up Joe Kent, the head of the National Counterterrorism Center, lending support to Vance. Kent has been an overlooked figure in the scandal. He has an extensive history of associations with extremist domestic terrorist organizations. As a Republican congressional candidate, he paid a consulting fee to a member of the Proud Boys; he has also been close to the Christian nationalist Patriot Prayer group involved in violent street brawls in Portland; defended the white supremacist Nick Fuentes; and stated: “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with there being a white people special interest group,” during an interview with a group called the American Populist Union. In 2022, after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Kent called him “very reasonable”. When Kent ran for the House that year, after his ties to the far right were exposed, he claimed he had distanced himself from such groups. Kent was the deputy of the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, on the Signal group.Waltz joined in the Europe-bashing with talking points to buttress Trump’s zero-sum mercantilist view of the world, explaining: “Per the president’s request we are working with DOD and State to determine how to compile the cost associated and levy them on the Europeans.”Vance broke in to say that if Hegseth wanted “to do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.”Hegseth agreed: “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.” He added: “Question is timing.”Enter Stephen Miller. “As I heard it,” he said, “the president was clear: green light, but we soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return. We also need to figure out how to enforce such a requirement. EG, if Europe doesn’t remunerate, then what? If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return.”“As I heard it …” Miller spoke as if he were the only one to hear Trump. No one else said they had. Miller was definitive. He was more than the Trump whisperer. He was the voice of Trump.Miller also chimed in on the chorus of contempt for Europe. It was as though Europe was the enemy. The allies are not really allies; they are renters, and the rent should be raised.On 15 March, Hegseth returned with an “update” of precise details of the attack. “I will say a prayer for victory,” he wrote. It was a go. As it proceeded, Waltz chronicled the targets hit on Signal.Susie Wiles weighed in: “Kudos to all – most particularly those in theater and CENTCOM! Really great. God bless.”Waltz posted three emojis – a fist, a flag and a fire.“Great work all. Powerful start,” said Miller. He was the one to give the praise. He apparently had the authority.In Russia, Steve Witkoff, Trump’s envoy, responded with two prayer emojis, a flexed muscle emoji and two American flag emojis.Afterward, Witkoff, a former New York real estate operator and Trump golfing partner, gave an interview to Tucker Carlson, the far-right podcaster who is highly influential with JD Vance and Hegseth, in which Witkoff said he “liked” Vladimir Putin, who was not “a bad guy”, “straight up”, and had presented him with a portrait of Trump to take home – “such a gracious moment”.Proclaimed a “success”, the operation itself will do little to quell the Iran-backed Houthis, who resumed their missile attacks on shipping in the Hormuz Strait after Benjamin Netanyahu, seeking to maintain his fragile grasp on power, abandoned the ceasefire in Gaza, which Trump declared he “fully supports” after doing nothing to sustain it. Instead, Trump proposed turning the ravaged Palestinian territory into a beachfront property, a “riviera of the Middle East”. Trump shared an AI-generated video of himself and Netanyahu lolling on the beach with dollars raining down and half-naked dancing women. Trump’s policy, of which the Houthi strike supposedly demonstrates “success”, has further entangled the US in cycles of violence without any clear path forward.As soon as Goldberg’s article appeared, the cover-up effort began. “I don’t know anything about it. I’m not a big fan of the Atlantic; to me it’s a magazine that is going out of business,” Trump said. “I know nothing about it. You’re saying that they had what?”Republicans in the Congress stammered or were silent. At last, the senator Roger Wicker, of Mississippi, chair of the Senate intelligence committee, called for an expedited report from the Pentagon’s inspector general. Unfortunately, there is no such inspector general – at least not a permanent one. Trump fired him on 27 January along with 16 others across federal agencies and departments, without reason, contrary to the Inspector General Act of 1978, tightened in 2022. “I don’t know [the fired inspectors general],” Trump said, “but some people thought that some were unfair or were not doing the job.” For now, there is an acting inspector general.The scandal might have been avoided if Hegseth could have consulted with the Pentagon’s legal authorities, the judge advocate generals. But he fired the top Jag officers of the army, navy and air force three weeks before the Signal group was formed.Nor did Hegseth, or anyone else, apparently think to include the joint chiefs of staff, who just might have objected to the obvious sloppiness and illegality of the Signal setup. But on 21 February, Trump fired the chair of the joint chiefs, the four-star general CQ Brown Jr, the chief of naval operations and the air force vice-chief of staff. He had already removed the chief of the US Coast Guard.Brown, the former air force chief, was the first Black person to head a branch of the armed forces. “Was it because of his skin color? Or his skill? We’ll never know, but always doubt,” said Hegseth in dismissing Brown. Adm Christopher Grady, serving as the acting chair of the joint chiefs, was not sent the invitation for the Signal group that Goldberg received.To replace Brown, Trump has nominated a retired three-star general, Dan Caine, whom Trump insists on calling “Razin’ Caine”. But no one raised Caine to participate in the chat.He might be grateful to have been ignored. Instead of the three-star general, Waltz mobilized three emojis.

      Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth More

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      What is the Smithsonian Institution and why is it important?

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      On Thursday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order targeting the Smithsonian Institution, a behemoth of a research and museum organization that operates more than 20 museum and research centers and is visited by millions of people each year, mainly in Washington DC and New York City. The museums include the National Museum of African Art, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Museum of the American Indian and the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), which Trump name-checked in his executive order. Trump’s executive order instructs Vice-President JD Vance to “eliminate improper, divisive or anti-American ideology” from the Smithsonian’s museums.The Smithsonian has already come under scrutiny by Trump and his allies. Earlier this year, the institution was forced to close its diversity office and froze all federal hiring.But what is the Smithsonian Institute, and why is it important?What is the Smithsonian Institution? Envisioned in the 19th century by James Smithson, a British scientist who bequeathed his estate in hopes of establishing an institution to “the increase and diffusion of knowledge”, the Smithsonian Institution had a budget last year that exceeded $1bn. Per its website, it is the “world’s largest museum, education, and research complex”. The Smithsonian Institution’s collection holds more than 150m items, including historical artefacts, scientific specimens, fossil flora and fauna, art and other objects and materials.The institution is not a government agency, but a “trust instrumentality” of the United States, which means that it was created by Congress. It is overseen by a board of regents that includes the chief justice of the supreme court, the vice-president, three members of each house of Congress and nine appointed citizens. The order seeks to appoint new “citizen members” to the board, who are “committed to advancing the policy of this order”.What is included in the Smithsonian collection?The Smithsonian Institution’s collection is vast – less than 1% of the collection is on display at any given time, and some parts of it are available online. The Smithsonian Institution’s total collection includes works of art spanning 6,000 years and across different cultures; an oral history collection; sculptures; historical artefacts; full-size planes, missiles and spacecraft; algae, flowering plants and microscopic plants; marine animals; mammals; fossils and much more. Many of the collections are utilized solely for research purposes.Are specific Smithsonian museums under attack?Trump’s executive order specifically targets the American Women’s History Museum, which currently exists only as an online exhibition, with plans for a physical museum in the future. The order criticized the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM), for its exhibit The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture, which “examines for the first time the ways in which sculpture has shaped and reflected attitudes and understandings about race in the United States”. The order also targets the NMAAHC, which opened in 2016 under the leadership of the historian Lonnie G Bunch III, the Smithsonian’s first Black American secretary.In 2017, Trump toured the NMAAHC and celebrated its existence.“I’m deeply proud that we now have a museum that honors the millions of African American men and women who built our national heritage, especially when it comes to faith, culture and the unbreakable American spirit,” he said. “I know President [Barack] Obama was here for the museum’s opening last fall. And I’m honored to be the second sitting president to visit this great museum.”Earlier this year, Bunch spoke about America’s upcoming 250th anniversary, and the then-upcoming Trump administration.“It’s really clear that the Smithsonian, by its very nature … is always driven by the best scholarship. But it’s important to recognize that if you explore art, history, culture, science – by definition, you’re going to deal with controversy. By definition, you’re going to deal with multiple points of view. The goal here is never, ever to create a sense of self-censorship in the Smithsonian, but to recognize that the Smithsonian has to educate a whole lot of people, some who believe exactly in the interpretations you do, others who are diametrically opposed, and you’ve got to be able to serve both.”Has the Smithsonian Institution faced censorship attempts before?In 2010, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery pulled a video called A Fire in My Belly, which was produced at the height of the Aids epidemic, after the Catholic League and some members of the House of Representatives, including John Boehner and Eric Cantor, spoke out against its inclusion.Last year, LGBTQ+ employees at the Smithsonian Institution said that the organization had canceled multiple previously planned drag shows, following a House of Representatives oversight hearing. More