TYLENOL’S REDEMPTION
Fish your Tylenol out of the trash! R.F.K. Jr. admitted this week that he does not have “sufficient” evidence to prove the household pain reliever causes autism. The health secretary’s reversal leaves Texas attorney general Ken Paxton in an awkward place, given he’s just launched a lawsuit accusing Johnson & Johnson, the drug’s manufacturer, of deceptive practices in marketing itself as the only safe pain reliever for pregnant women. Indeed, just earlier this month, R.F.K. Jr. was calling pregnant women who elected to take the drug “irresponsible.” Coincidentally, “irresponsible” is exactly the word we’d use to describe the health secretary’s reckless fearmongering, which, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, presents a much more real threat to pregnant women than an imagined tie to autism.
GONE WITH THE WIND
First it was Tylenol, then it was beets. Now R.F.K. Jr. is targeting wind farms. This week, he directed the C.D.C. to study their alleged harms. While we suspect he gets the ideas for most of his crusades by closing his eyes and pulling a random noun from a hat labeled “Witch Trials,” this one seems to come straight from the horse’s mouth—“They’re a joke! They don’t work,” Trump declared of wind turbines at the United Nations General Assembly in September. Trump’s vendetta against wind energy dates back to 2012, when he tried to block construction of 11 turbines near his Aberdeenshire golf course because he considered them an eyesore. “Those big windmills”—he calls them “windmills,” like the medieval contraptions used to grind grain and pump water—“are so pathetic and so bad and so expensive to operate.… And most of them are built in China!” Experts, meanwhile, remind us that wind turbines provide clean, renewable power—and remain the most cost-effective source of energy on the planet.
LIKE A PHOENIX RISING FROM THE ASHES
In a new teaser, Simon & Schuster described Olivia Nuzzi’s upcoming memoir as “a mesmerizing firsthand account of the warping of American reality over the past decade as Donald Trump has risen to dominance—from a participatory witness who got so far inside the distortion field that it swallowed her whole.” Where to start! “Participatory witness” is a fun bit of wordplay. (Monica Lewinsky probably wishes she’d thought of it 25 years ago.) As for “mesmerizing,” well, we can’t imagine descriptions of sexting R.F.K. Jr. would be anything but! American Canto—“artful,” “astonishingly clear-eyed,” and “more interesting” than a memoir or tell-all, according to the publisher—will cover Nuzzi’s childhood, the R.F.K. scandal, and “her self-imposed exile at the edge of the country” (Los Angeles, where she has been spotted multiple times at the exclusive West Hollywood club San Vicente Bungalows. They just don’t make shameful exile like they used to!).
BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS
While on Katie Miller’s podcast this week promoting her new memoir, R.F.K. Jr.’s wife, Cheryl Hines, revealed her beloved husband’s morning routine: “At 6:30 a.m., he’s cooking a steak and eating sauerkraut when I’m just trying to have my latte.” Oh, mein Gott! But it doesn’t stop there. Apparently, R.F.K. Jr. likes sauerkraut so much he takes it on the go—often asking his wife to carry a doggy bag of the stuff in her clutch. “When I walk in, people will say, ‘Ew, what’s that smell?,’” Hines said. “‘Don’t worry about it—it’s my husband’s dinner.’”
A CASEY IN POINT
The Senate confirmation hearing for surgeon-general nominee Casey Means—a staunch MAHA ally—was scheduled for Thursday. “Was” being the operative word, as the hearing was postponed after a very pregnant Means went into labor that morning. Evidently, she took R.F.K. Jr.’s warnings about America’s declining fertility rates to heart—so much so, she decided to address the problem on what would have been her first day on the job.
Carolina de Armas and Paulina Prosnitz are Junior Editors at Air Mail
