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      Trump officials unveil highly contentious conclusions on autism

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      The Trump administration unveiled highly contentious conclusions about the causes of autism, together with a push for research purporting to find a possible “cure” for the condition on Monday.After months of widely trumpeted investigations spearheaded by the health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump announced that pregnant women should limit their use of acetaminophen, usually branded as Tylenol in the US, which he claimed heightens the risk of autism when it used by pregnant women, an assertion hotly contested by scientists internationally and contradicted by studies.Speaking from the White House, flanked by Kennedy, the president said he had “waited for 20 years for this meeting … and added: “It’s not that everything’s 100% understood or known, but I think we’ve made a lot of strides.”But he declared: “Taking Tylenol is not good … All pregnant women should talk to their doctors about limiting the use of this medication while pregnant.”Kennedy followed, announcing that the health department and US Food and Drug Administration would work to change the label on acetaminophen risks.He also spoke about upcoming recommendations that the hepatitis B shot, currently given to newborns as part of the national vaccine standards, should be given in a delayed manner or in smaller doses, despite limited evidence of the impacts.The announcements were made by Trump amid a blaze of fanfare at the White House, in a ceremony attended by other senior administration figures.Trump, who has frequently voiced his concern over autism and said, along with Kennedy, that the US is suffering from an “epidemic”, flagged up a major initiative on Sunday at Charlie Kirk’s memorial in Arizona.“Tomorrow we’re going to have one of the biggest announcement[s] … medically, I think, in the history of our country,” he said. “I think you’re going to find it to be amazing. I think we found an answer to autism.”One in 31 children aged eight had a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) – a condition denoting communication and social difficulties, along with repetitive behaviors – in the US in 2022, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That compares to about one in 150 in 2000.Kennedy, who previously peddled the theory that the condition is caused by vaccinations, has attributed the rise to “environmental toxins”.However, specialists say the increase is mainly due to increased screening, combined with evolving definitions of the disorder. They have also said the causes are predominantly dictated by genetics.Scientists in the US and UK reacted to the Tylenol link sceptically, with British physicians denouncing it as “fearmongering” that risked stigmatising parents of children with autism.Speaking on a call organized by Defend America Action, a campaign group, Debra Houry, a former chief medical officer and deputy director at the CDC, told journalists: “As of three weeks ago, we hadn’t seen evidence that acetaminophen was linked with autism, so it’s curious to know how quickly that was developed.”“There are many studies which refute a link, but the most important was a Swedish study of 2.4m births published in 2024 which used actual sibling data and found no relationship between exposure to paracetamol [known in the US as acetaminophen] in utero and subsequent autism, ADHD or intellectual disability,” said Dr Monique Botha, associate professor in social and developmental psychology at Durham University“The fearmongering will prevent women from accessing the appropriate care during pregnancy.US medical practitioners also cast doubt on the putative link with acetaminophen.Dan Jernigan, another former CDC career scientist and former director of the national center for emerging and zoonotic infectious diseases, criticised Kennedy’s efforts to study autism.“We were all asked to be a part of autism studies and to put together [an autism plan],” he said. We helped develop some of that. But then over time, what we saw was [Kennedy] having an increasingly top down approach, essentially ‘my way or the highway,’ with no regard again for the scientific processes.”Some researchers have also pleaded caution on hopes for leucovorin, which has been reportedly shown in some tests to trigger marked improvements in the speaking and understanding ability of some people with autism.Irva Hertz-Picciotto, an epidemiologist and autism specialist at the University of California, Davis, told the Washington Post that unrealistic expectations could lead to a loss of trust.“I worry that it feels like everything is now tainted that comes out of the current administration,” she said.Bruce Mirken, communications co-chair of Defend Public Health, poured cold water on the announcements in advance. “While we don’t know what he will claim today, we do know that Kennedy has a history of false statements related to autism and that the scientific evidence shows there is no ‘autism epidemic’,” he said.Additional reporting by Melody Schreiber and agencies More

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      Supreme court lets Trump fire FTC commissioner for now and will hear arguments later

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      The US supreme court on Monday let Donald Trump fire a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission, for now, while agreeing to hear arguments in the case in December, setting up a major test of presidential power over government agencies designed by Congress to be independent.The court granted a justice department request to block a judge’s order that had shielded Rebecca Slaughter, who sued to challenge Trump’s action, from being dismissed from the consumer protection and antitrust agency before her term expires in 2029.The supreme court said it will hear arguments in the case, which could lead to the justices overruling a landmark 90-year-old precedent upholding job protections put in place by Congress to give the heads of certain federal agencies a degree of independence from presidential control.The court has a 6-3 conservative majority. Its three liberal justices dissented from Monday’s order letting Trump remove Slaughter for now.John Roberts, the chief justice, on 8 September had paused an order from Loren AliKhan, a Washington-based US district judge – – a move that allowed Trump to keep Slaughter out of her post – to give the court more time to consider how to respond to the justice department’s request.Federal law permits a president to remove FTC commissioners only for cause – such as inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office – but not for policy differences. Similar protections cover officials at other independent agencies, including the National Labor Relations Board and Merit Systems Protection Board.Slaughter was one of two Democratic commissioners who Trump moved to fire in March. The firings drew sharp criticism from Democratic senators and antimonopoly groups concerned that the move was designed to eliminate opposition within the agency to big corporations.AliKhan in July blocked Trump’s firing of Slaughter, rejecting the Trump administration’s argument that the tenure protections unlawfully encroach on presidential power. The US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit on 2 September in a 2-1 decision kept the judge’s ruling in place.The supreme court did not set a precise date for the arguments scheduled for December.The lower courts ruled that the statutory protections shielding FTC members from being removed without cause conform with the US constitution in light of a 1935 supreme court precedent in a case called Humphrey’s Executor v United States. In that case, the court ruled that a president lacks unfettered power to remove FTC commissioners, faulting Franklin Roosevelt’s firing of an FTC commissioner for policy differences.The Trump administration in its supreme court filing in Slaughter’s case argued that “the modern FTC exercises far more substantial powers than the 1935 FTC”, and thus its members can be fired at will by the president.Lawyers for Slaughter in court papers pushed back against that contention, arguing that the FTC’s development over the decades is “a story of continuity, not transformation”. More

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      Democrats urge Trump border czar investigation over bribery allegation

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      Democrats have urged treasury watchdogs to investigate reports that Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan accepted a $50,000 bag of cash from an undercover FBI agent in return for political favours.In the alleged scheme, Homan promised immigration-related government contracts when he joined the Trump administration in exchange for the money, according to unnamed sources quoted by multiple media outlets. The justice department subsequently shut down a bribery investigation.On Monday, Congressman Dave Min of California, a member of the House of Representatives oversight committee, wrote to treasury inspector general Russell George and treasury inspector general for tax administration Russell Martin to call for scrutiny of whether Homan reported the payment and whether it was connected to his private consulting firm.“History suggests that we should follow the money – especially if it went unreported to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS),” wrote Min, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s Fighting Corruption Taskforce. “Under federal law, all income, legal or illegal, must be reported to the IRS, including payments stemming from bribery.“Knowingly failing to report this income would likely violate federal tax law. Accordingly, I request that your offices investigate whether Mr Homan properly reported this payment on his 2024 federal tax return.”Homan oversees the Trump administration’s campaign of mass deportations of people in the country illegally. An unapologetic immigration hardliner, he explained a decision to defy a court order that barred the deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members by stating: “I don’t care what the judges think.”Homan was previously an official at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) under Barack Obama and its acting director in Trump’s first term. During Trump’s four years out of power, he ran a consulting business to help companies obtain immigration-related government contracts.In the recorded sting operation, Homan accepted a $50,000 bribe contained in a bag from the restaurant chain Cava, claiming he would keep the money in a trust until he had completed his service in the Trump administration, a source told the Reuters news agency.Homan was then investigated for bribery and other crimes but this was shut down after Trump took office, reportedly because he did not hold a government position at the time and because of the difficulty of proving that he had agreed to carry out any specific acts in exchange for the money.At a press briefing on Monday, the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt denied that Homan had accepted such a payment. “Mr Homan never took the $50,000 you’re referring to, so you should get your facts straight,” she told one reporter.“The White House and the president stand by Tom Homan 100% because he did absolutely nothing wrong,” Leavitt added. She insisted that FBI agents and prosecutors found no evidence of illegal activity or criminal wrongdoing by the border czar.But Carol Leonnig, one of the MSNBC journalists who broke the story, responded on social media: “White House spokesperson says that Homan never took $50,000; we reviewed internal document saying Homan accepted the cash payment from undercover FBI agents in September 2024.”Political pressure on Homan is mounting. On Sunday Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic senator for Massachusetts, posted on the X platform: “The act was caught on camera. The administration must turn over the tapes to Congress. Every decision made by Homan must be scrutinized for possible corruption.”Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut added on Monday: “$50,000 cash in a bag – clearly Border Czar Tom Homan isn’t afraid to solicit personal payments in exchange for government favors. Trump leaders aren’t serving the country – they’re failing it, putting personal profit first. Another example of rampant corruption in this admin.”Congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon of Pennsylvania wrote on X: “White House knew Homan had accepted $50K to influence contracts. They appointed him anyways. Then they disbanded the DOJ’s Public Integrity unit and quashed the Homan investigation. There’s no end to the corruption in Trump’s White House.” More

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      Zohran Mamdani withdraws from ABC town hall in Kimmel protest

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      Zohran Mamdani, the New York Democratic mayoral candidate, has announced he is withdrawing from a televised town hall hosted by a local ABC station in protest of the network’s suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s talkshow.ABC indefinitely pulled Kimmel’s late-night show off air on 17 September after the chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) threatened to pull ABC affiliate broadcast licenses if the network did not act against Kimmel. Kimmel had criticized the Trump administration’s reaction to the killing of rightwing youth organizer Charlie Kirk.The suspension sparked backlash from politicians, media figures and free-speech organizations, and it has prompted boycotts and protests against both ABC and its parent company, Disney.Mamdani, who was set to participate in a town hall event with New York’s WABC on Thursday, said he would no longer take part.“I am withdrawing not as an indictment of the local affiliate or the hard-working journalists, but rather in response to the corporate leaders who have put their bottom line ahead of their responsibility in upholding the freedom of the press,” Mamdani said on Monday during a news conference.“We cannot understand this moment of authoritarianism as solely coming from the White House, when it is also characterized by the cowardice of those in response to it.”He also mentioned his opponents in the mayoral race, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo and incumbent Eric Adams. The Trump administration has reportedly explored offering Adams a position in exchange for the incumbent’s dropping out of the race, with polling suggesting the contest would tighten in favor of Cuomo, whom the president prefers to Mamdani.Mamdani said: “I am running to be the next mayor of the city to finally make clear what it looks like to stand up, not just for this city, but also for the constitution.“We have to understand who suffers in these moments. It’s not just a question of Jimmy Kimmel himself, it’s also a question of the engineers, the writers, the musicians who are feeling this attack on the very city they call home. The message that it sends to each and every American across this country is a message that [free speech] is no longer a right that can be counted on, but rather that it is the government which will determine what should and should not be discussed, what can and cannot be spoken.”Disney did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Guardian.On Friday, Variety reported that Disney and Kimmel were working on a compromise that would bring his talkshow back on air.Meanwhile, a report from Front Office Sports explored some potential complications to such a compromise. The outlet reported that Disney could be facing a choice between putting Kimmel back on air and completing a multibillion-dollar deal with the National Football League to swap the NFL Network, RedZone brand, NFL Fantasy Football and other media assets for a 10% stake in Disney-owned sportscaster ESPN.Mamdani, a state assembly member from Queens, won the Democratic nomination in June, defeating Cuomo. With less than two months until the 4 November general election, Mamdani has continued to hold a commanding lead in the polls.A recent poll showed Mamdani with 43% support among registered New York City voters. Cuomo, who is now running as an independent, received 28% support in the poll.Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa polled at 10% support, and Adams, also running as an independent, polled at 8%. Nine percent of respondents said they were still undecided.Kathy Hochul, the Democratic New York governor, has endorsed Mamdani in his race to become the next mayor of one of the world’s most prominent cities. More

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      The Guardian view on Donald Trump’s hate for opponents: practising politics the wrong way | Editorial

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      At Sunday’s memorial for the rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump paid a peculiar tribute. Having quoted Mr Kirk’s words of forgiveness, he put aside the script. “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie,” he said. “I hate my opponents, and I don’t want the best for them.” It was a stark and clarifying admission. Mr Trump does not seek to criminalise hate speech so much as to criminalise speech he hates.The US is being dragged into a state of emergency. Speech is framed as terrorism. Satire is rebranded as enemy propaganda. Employers punish workers for personal posts. The predictable result is a chilling climate of surveillance and reprisal, in which citizens learn to keep quiet. The assassination is not just being used to police manners; it is being used to reconstruct the public square so that dissent equals disloyalty, and disloyalty is treated as a security threat.Hannah Arendt warned of the existential peril in blurring the line between truth and lies: then truth doesn’t stand; it becomes optional. Mr Trump’s reported falsehoods about paracetamol and autism will harm mothers, stigmatise families and erode trust in medicine. But in Trumpland such costs are outweighed by the political payoff of pitting supporters against the scientific “establishment”.His assault is twofold. First, speech is being weaponised through partisan media, online influencers and harassment networks that seek to capture attention while corroding the conditions for open dialogue. Second, state power is weaponised by cowing social media platforms, threatening network licences and politicising information. Handing TikTok to rightwing billionaires is a morbid symptom of democratic decline.“Authority is to be controlled by public opinion, not public opinion by authority,” said the US supreme court. That defines the first amendment: citizens, not the state, decide which ideas survive, with narrow limits like fraud or defamation. By presuming to define “truth”, Mr Trump subverts self-government. Hate rallies thrive in Trump’s America because, since 1969, speech is unprotected only if intended and likely to incite “imminent lawless action”.The US is a free-speech outlier. Other democracies accept broader, more collective trade‑offs to protect vulnerable groups, maintain public order and prevent incitement and harassment. Each country is different but the bargain is similar. Speech is presumptively free, yet words are considered acts with foreseeable harms. Words can mobilise mobs, direct harassment and orchestrate violence. The point isn’t to shield anyone’s feelings, it’s to make coexistence possible.Mr Trump has inverted the American model. Rather than robust exchanges under neutral rules, he selectively rewards allies while degrading the conditions of honest debate. All this while the infosphere is saturated with viral lies, making it easier to justify punitive state action “to keep order”. That is how an emergency becomes a system.The answer is not the censor’s pen nor a free-for-all. It requires resilient democratic plumbing; social media platforms made accountable for publishing harms; and properly defining dangerous conduct. The aim – particularly in the US – must be to preserve free expression as the bedrock of self-government while dismantling the machinery that warps attention toward outrage and partisan mobilisation. Mr Trump’s speech was disgraceful. When power learns to hate its opponents, democracy will fail. More

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      Donald Trump and Elon Musk meet and shake hands months after messy split

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      Donald Trump met with billionaire Elon Musk, his once trusted adviser with whom the president had a spectacular public falling out, at a memorial event for right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, raising speculation that the two could be reconciling.Trump shook hands with and chatted to Musk, who once led the president’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which took a hatchet to the US federal workforce and agencies in the early months of Trump’s second administration.The pair sat in the stands of a stadium in Glendale, Arizona, where tens of thousands had gathered to pay tribute to Kirk, who was shot dead on 10 September at a Utah university campus.Video of the two was shared by the official White House account on social media platform X, which Musk owns.Musk donated more than $270m to Trump’s presidential campaign, barnstorming key battleground states for the Republican.After the election, he oversaw the launch of the DOGE, a controversial initiative that eliminated thousands of government jobs deemed by the agency to be part of a pattern of waste, fraud and abuse.But Musk broke with Trump over the White House’s flagship tax and spending bill, which Musk called “utterly insane and destructive.” The extraordinary feud, which largely played out over social media, saw Musk accuse Trump of being named in the so-called “Epstein files” – documents related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In July, Trump said he would “take a look” at the idea of deporting Musk.After the falling out, Musk went as far as to announce he was launching his own “America First” party, but little has materialised so far. Musk on his X account posted an image of him and Trump sitting together at the memorial, captioning it: “For Charlie.”It is not known whether Sunday’s meeting was the first between the pair since their falling out.With Agence France-Presse More

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      Trump news at a glance: president calls Charlie Kirk a ‘martyr’ at memorial

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      Donald Trump gave a rambling, freewheeling address at the Charlie Kirk memorial in Arizona on Sunday, taking aim at Joe Biden and trailing a major announcement on autism as well as praising Kirk, who was shot dead on 10 September.In front of a crowd of tens of thousands, Trump said Kirk was a “great American hero” and “martyr” for freedom. During the event he sat side-by-side with billionaire Elon Musk, a once trusted adviser with whom the US president had a spectacular public falling out.He frequently veered into topics entirely unrelated to Kirk, discussing his use of federal forces to police cities and taking a moment to promote an announcement at the White House on Monday.Here are the key stories at a glance.Trump says ‘I hate my opponents’ at Kirk memorial Trump’s remarks were an awkward mix of eulogy and campaign speech, during which he frequently veered away from reading somber remarks about Kirk’s life and violent death to make offhand comments and jokes.“He did not hate his opponents, he wanted the best for them,” Trump said, before breaking from his prepared remarks to add: “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponents, and I don’t want the best for them, I’m sorry.”Read the full storyErika Kirk says she forgives shooter During an emotional address at his public memorial in Glendale, Arizona, the widow of rightwing youth organizer Charlie Kirk said she forgives the man charged with killing her husband.“My husband, he wanted to save young men, just like the one who took his life,” Erika Kirk said, before an at-capacity crowd. “That man, that young man – I forgive him. I forgive him because it was what Christ did, and it is what Charlie would do.”Those in the stadium rose to their feet in applause.Read the full storyKirk memorial mixes rally and revival as mourners vow to spread Maga messageLauren Gambino was at the memorial and writes: The memorial was part spiritual revival and part political rally … Mourners obliged the red, white and blue “Sunday best” dress code, filling the at-capacity venue with stars, stripes and Maga hats …As the afternoon wore on, the speeches became sharper and more political – a battle cry that implored the government officials present to be aggressive in “wielding the sword against evil”. There were only a handful of explicit references to Democrats and the left – but many speeches mixed personal remembrances of Kirk with a searing vilification of his ideological opponents.Read the full storyAnalysis – Vance speech at Kirk memorial has an eye on 2028 David Smith writes that JD Vance’s appearance at the event comes as he methodically builds a profile that blends Trump’s populist bombast with a sharper focus on economic nationalism and cultural warfare.Smith writes: Vance’s presidential campaign for 2028 is already said to be in “soft launch” mode as he positions himself as the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. He has reportedly expressed a desire for Susie Wiles, the White House of chief staff, to manage his potential campaign.His most overt move came in March, when he was appointed finance chair of the Republican National Committee – a role unprecedented for a sitting vice-president. It positions him at the nexus of Republican money, allowing frequent interactions with mega-donors.Read the full storyTrump officials reportedly set to tie Tylenol to autism riskDonald Trump’s administration is on Monday expected to tie pregnant women’s use of the popular medicine Tylenol – known as paracetamol elsewhere in the world – to a risk of autism, contrary to medical guidelines, the Washington Post has reported.Trump officials are also expected to announce an effort to explore how the drug leucovorin could purportedly and potentially treat autism, according to the Post report published Sunday, which cited four sources with knowledge of the plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the announcement had not been made.Read the full storyTrump says Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch likely part of US TikTok dealRupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan Murdoch will probably be involved in the effort to buy TikTok in the US, Donald Trump said in an interview on Sunday.The president was asked about the status of the sale of the app during an interview with Peter Doocy on The Sunday Briefing on Fox News. Trump administration officials have signaled that a deal for the Chinese-owned social media platform was imminent, though there has been some confusion about the status of the agreement.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Donald Trump said he was appointing his former lawyer Lindsey Halligan to be US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia after an extraordinary outburst in which he overtly put pressure on his attorney general to more aggressively pursue senior public officials he regards as his political enemies.

      Nineteen people detained at an immigration detention center that the Trump administration opened within Louisiana’s infamous Angola prison were entering their fifth day on hunger strike on Sunday, according to advocacy groups.

      Seven US states and the nation’s largest city announced this week that they have formed the Northeast Public Health Collaborative, in an effort to strengthen the region’s health guidance as the national health landscape fractures. Maryland announced they would join the alliance on Friday.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 20 September. This article was amended on 22 September 2025 to clarify the Charlie Kirk memorial was held in Arizona, not Alabama. More