{"id":158733,"date":"2025-09-25T02:53:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T02:53:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/158733\/"},"modified":"2025-09-25T02:53:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T02:53:08","slug":"trump-faces-republican-backlash-over-kennedys-autism-and-vaccine-claims-donald-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/158733\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump faces Republican backlash over Kennedy\u2019s autism and vaccine claims | Donald Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump<\/a> is facing a simmering Republican backlash over the policies of Robert F Kennedy Jr<\/a>, the health secretary, amid unease over the administration\u2019s pronouncements on the causes of autism<\/a> and changes to children\u2019s vaccine policy.<\/p>\n

Republicans in Congress are threatening to \u201cbreak ranks\u201d after this week\u2019s White House announcement by Trump \u2013 flanked by Kennedy \u2013 claiming a link between autism and Tylenol, an over-the-counter medication, also known as paracetamol, that is widely used to relieve pain experienced by pregnant women.<\/p>\n

Medical experts and autism specialists say there is no scientific evidence to support the claim.<\/p>\n

Leading the rebellion is Bill Cassidy, a Republican senator for Louisiana and chair of the Senate health committee, who previously voted to confirm Kennedy to become secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), despite having voiced misgivings about his anti-vaccine views.<\/p>\n

\u201cHHS should release the new data that it has to support this claim,\u201d Cassidy, a medical doctor, wrote on social media. \u201cThe preponderance of evidence shows that this is not the case. The concern is that women will be left with no options to manage pain in pregnancy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cassidy, who is up for re-election to the Senate next year, expanded on his comments in an interview with the Hill<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re going to change a medical guideline without science?\u201d he told the site, referring to last week\u2019s Senate testimony by Susan Monarez<\/a>. She said during a hearing that she was sacked as head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after Kennedy pressed her to approve new childhood vaccination recommendations regardless of scientific data.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, you\u2019re going to build a bridge without physics? You\u2019re going to fly a plane without engineering?\u201d<\/p>\n

Other Republicans supported Cassidy\u2019s critique, including Susan Collins, a senator for Maine.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt appears that [Monarez] was under a lot of pressure to approve recommendations that may come from the [vaccine advisory] committee that may lack scientific basis, so that is disturbing and would undermine our public health efforts,\u201d Collins told the Hill.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very pleased that Chairman Cassidy is having these hearings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lisa Murkowski, a senator for Alaska, called Monarez\u2019s description of the workings of Kennedy\u2019s vaccine policy committee \u201cvery unsettling and very concerning\u201d.<\/p>\n

Others said Kennedy threatened to become a political liability for Trump.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou see a lot of Republicans starting to break ranks here, and there\u2019s a lot of noise. I think it will come down to Trump and what his tolerance level is for all this noise around [Kennedy],\u201d one unnamed senator told the Hill.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think he likes all the noise. He hasn\u2019t liked that previously. He has a really low tolerance level for that, but Bobby Kennedy is different. He\u2019s not like anyone else in the cabinet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Medical bodies including the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have endorsed the use of acetaminophen<\/a> \u2013 a principal ingredient of Tylenol \u2013 as a treatment for fever and pain during pregnancy after Trump advised women during Monday\u2019s press conference to avoid taking the drug and instead \u201ctough it out\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump is facing a simmering Republican backlash over the policies of Robert F Kennedy Jr, the health…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":158734,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-158733","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}