RFK Jr. Takes on Autism & Fed Fight | 4.21.25

Summary

Morning Wire Podcast Summary: RFK Jr. Takes on Autism & Fed Fight | April 21, 2025

In this episode of Morning Wire, hosted by John Bickley and Georgia Howe, the conversation centers around two pivotal topics: Senator Chris Van Hollen's controversial trip to El Salvador and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s groundbreaking studies on autism. Additionally, the episode delves into the escalating tension between President Donald Trump and the Federal Reserve regarding interest rates. The discussion is enriched with insightful quotes and detailed analysis, providing listeners with a comprehensive understanding of these critical issues.

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1. Senator Chris Van Hollen's El Salvador Trip and Immigration Battle

Escalating Political Tensions

The episode begins with the escalating political and legal battle over the deportation of suspected violent gang members to El Salvador. Senator Chris Van Hollen's recent trip to El Salvador to meet with MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia has sparked significant controversy.

• Purpose of the Trip: Van Hollen's visit appears to be more symbolic than substantive. Reporter Tim Piercey explains, "[02:06] A photo op, essentially. The Maryland Democrat was able to finally meet with suspected MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia last week."

• Van Hollen's Statement: At an ABC's This Week, Van Hollen stated, "[02:21] My goal was to meet with him... and make sure I could tell his wife and family he was okay. And I achieved that goal."

• Republican Criticism: Border czar Tom Homan criticizes Van Hollen's actions, highlighting the lack of tangible outcomes from his trip. "[04:40] Van Holland never went to the border the last four years on Joe Biden when he had a 600% increase in sex trafficking, women and children..."

Legal Implications and Supreme Court Ruling

A recent Supreme Court decision has further complicated the situation by freezing deportations under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act due to due process violations. This ruling aligns with the ACLU's stance, arguing that proper legal procedures were not followed.

• White House Response: White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller attributed the initial deportation mistake to a "DOJ saboteur who has since been fired."

• Senator Van Hollen's Defense: When pressed about Garcia's gang affiliations, Van Hollen admitted, "[03:27] I didn't ask him that because I know what his answer is... he's being denied his due process rights."

• Government Accountability: The White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt criticized the ACLU lawsuit, labeling it "an onslaught of meritless litigation brought by radical activists who care more about the rights of these terrorist aliens than those of the American people" ([05:31]).

Political Ramifications

Republicans focus on the optics of Van Hollen's trip, arguing it portrays a sympathetic view of a suspected gang member without addressing broader immigration and public safety concerns.

• Tom Homan's Critique: "[04:40] ...a 600% increase in sex trafficking... how many angel moms and dads has he met in the state of Maryland?"

This segment underscores the deep political divide over immigration policies and the balance between compassionate diplomacy and national security.

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2. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Groundbreaking Studies on Autism

Autism Epidemic and Environmental Factors

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has launched an ambitious series of studies aimed at uncovering the environmental causes of autism, challenging the predominant genetic explanations.

• Alarming Statistics: At a press conference, Kennedy revealed, "[07:33] 25% of the kids who are diagnosed with autism are non-verbal, non-toilet trained and have other stereotypical features."

• Environmental Hypothesis: Kennedy attributes the rising autism rates to environmental factors such as mold, pesticides, chemicals, and medications. "[09:46] If you accept the epidemic deniers narrative... the epidemic is real."

• Government Commitment: Kennedy announced that his department will involve hundreds of scientists to identify and eliminate the causes of autism by September. "[08:51] By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic and we'll be able to eliminate those exposures."

Counterarguments and Support

While Kennedy asserts that environmental factors are the primary cause, organizations like Autism Speaks argue that improved screening and diagnosis account for the increased rates.

• Autism Speaks' Perspective: They suggest that better understanding and diagnostic processes have led to higher diagnosis rates, with genetic and environmental factors playing a smaller role.

• Dr. Walter Zorodny's Insight: "[08:24] ...a real thing that we don't understand... we've collected data but not made real progress in understanding what causes autism or how to effectively prevent it or treat it effectively."

Public and Scientific Reaction

Kennedy's stance has sparked both support and criticism, with some praising his proactive approach and others questioning the validity of environmental links to autism.

• Kennedy's Challenge: "[09:46] ...epidemic deniers narrative... the epidemic is real."

This discussion highlights the ongoing debate within the scientific and medical communities regarding the root causes of autism and the urgent need for comprehensive research.

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3. President Trump's Conflict with the Federal Reserve Over Interest Rates

Democratic Accusations and Fed Independence

The episode shifts focus to the tense relationship between President Trump and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Democrats accuse Trump of pressuring Powell to lower interest rates, thereby undermining the Federal Reserve's independence.

• Senator Amy Klobuchar's Statement: "[11:19] There's a reason we have an independent Fed and it has served us well... They're able to respond and stabilize things."

• President Trump's Stance: Despite Democratic criticism, Trump remains steadfast, pausing higher tariffs for most countries except China and setting a low 10% baseline tariff to encourage negotiations.

Trade Negotiations and Economic Impacts

Trump reports significant progress in trade negotiations with multiple countries, excluding China, which remains a major obstacle.

• Negotiation Successes:

  • Japan: Toyota considers shifting RAV4 production to the U.S. to mitigate tariff impacts.
  • South Korea: Focus on steel and automobile sectors.
  • Vietnam and India: Vietnam offers to remove all tariffs on U.S. goods, and discussions with India aim to boost trade to $500 billion by 2030.
  • European Union and UK: Efforts toward zero-tariff agreements with the EU and ongoing talks with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

• China's Resistance: China continues to escalate tariffs in response, maintaining a stalemate in trade discussions.

Public Sentiment and Economic Performance

Public opinion on Trump's economic policies is mixed, with approval ratings around 47% and disapproval at 51%, according to RealClearPolitics (RCP). While Republicans largely support Trump, disapproval is growing among blue-collar workers due to economic challenges.

• Virginia Cruda's Analysis: "[13:35] ...trends seem to show him losing some ground on his handling of the economy."

• CNBC's Report: Blue-collar workers remain positive towards Trump, though disapproval has increased since his first term.

Quotes:

• Virginia Cruda [10:48]: "Democrats are accusing Trump of crossing the line by pressuring Fed Chair Jerome Powell to lower the interest rate."

• Chris Van Hollen [11:19]: "There's a reason we have an independent Fed... they're able to respond and stabilize things."

This segment underscores the delicate balance between presidential influence and institutional autonomy, highlighting the broader implications for U.S. economic policy and international trade relations.

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Conclusion

This episode of Morning Wire provides a deep dive into critical issues shaping the current political and economic landscape. From the contentious immigration policies and RFK Jr.'s pioneering research on autism to the high-stakes negotiations and presidential conflicts, listeners gain a nuanced perspective on events influencing the nation. The inclusion of direct quotes and expert analysis ensures that the discussion is both informative and engaging, catering to those seeking a thorough understanding of these complex topics.

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Transcript

[John Bickley]

The political and legal battle escalates over an alleged member of a violent gang deported to El Salvador.

[Tom Homan]

What bothers me more than that is the U.S. senator traveled El Salvador on a taxpayer dime to meet with an MS.13 gang member. Public safety threat Terrorists.

[Georgia Howe]

How does a new Supreme Court ruling impact Trump's immigration plans?

[John Bickley]

I'm Daily Wire editor in chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Monday, April 21st, and this is Morning Wire. RFK Jr launches a series of studies into the causes of autism, prompting both condemnation and praise.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Autism destroys families. More importantly, it destroys our greatest resource, which is our children.

[Georgia Howe]

And Democrats take aim at the president over his call for the Fed to lower rates while Trump touts key economic wins.

[John Bickley]

Thanks for waking up with Morning Wires. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.

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[Georgia Howe]

Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen is back stateside after visiting suspected gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador. And the Supreme Court has stepped in to make similar deportations harder.

[John Bickley]

Here to talk about Van Hollen and the latest news on President Trump's immigration agenda is Daily Wire reporter Tim Piercey. Tim, so Van Hollen returned from El Salvador over the weekend and has been making the media rounds. What did he actually accomplish there?

[Tim Piercey]

A photo op, essentially. The Maryland Democrat was able to finally meet with suspected MS.13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia last week. He then, like you noted, went on a media tour on ABC's this Week on Sunday. He said he achieved his goal.

[Chris Van Hollen]

My goal was to meet with him.

[Tim Piercey]

Yeah.

[Chris Van Hollen]

And make sure I could tell his wife and family he was okay. And I achieved that goal.

[Tim Piercey]

The optics here are messy. On the one hand, a federal judge has said Abrego Garcia's due process was violated. But on the other, he's a suspected gang member and trafficker. And in 2021, his wife filed a protective order petition against him. She said he had beaten her multiple times. She decided not to follow up on the petition after she said they worked out things between them. Van Hollen was asked about Abrego Garcia's alleged gang ties on CNN and admitted that he actually didn't even ask him about it.

[Dan]

Can you say with absolute certainty that he is not, nor has he ever been a member of the Ms. 13 gang? And did you ask him point blank?

[Chris Van Hollen]

Well, Dan, what Donald Trump is trying to do here is change the subject. The subject at hand is that he and his administration are defying a court order to give Abrego Garcia his due process rights. They are trying to litigate on social media what they should be doing in the courts.

[Dan]

But since you were the one person to have met with him and since this is a thing you say on social media, it's what we hear from Donald Trump and Republicans every day, all day long. You didn't ask him?

[Chris Van Hollen]

I didn't ask him that because I know what his answer is. What he told me was he was sad and traumatized that he was being in prison because he has committed no crimes. And that goes to the heart of this issue because he's being denied his due process rights. And Donald Trump is trying to change.

[Tim Piercey]

The subject so the senator won't deny that Abrego Garcia could be a member of a brutally violent gang. He also confirmed on Fox News that his trip was indeed paid for by.

[Virginia Cruda]

Taxpayers who did pay for this trip.

[Chris Van Hollen]

This was an officially cleared, you know, congressional trip. Clear basis. Yes. Like every other trip.

[Tim Piercey]

So it's a weird look for Van Holland to try to turn Abrego Garcia into a sympathetic figure.

[John Bickley]

It seems like a tough sell to the American people. So there's the legal side of this and the political side, of course. What are Republicans focusing on?

[Tim Piercey]

There's been a lot of focus on Van Hollen's trip because Abrego Garcia has such a checkered history. Here's border czar Tom Homan on ABC News on Sunday.

[Tom Homan]

Van Holland never went to the border the last four years on Joe Biden when he had a 600% increase in sex trafficking, women and children. You have a record number of no inspected terrorists crossing that border. You had a quarter million Americans die from fentanyl overdose. Open border. You got over 4,000 illegal aliens died making that journey, which is a historic record. I met with hundreds of angel moms and dads who buried their children that were murdered by illegal alien how many angel moms and dads has he met in the state of Maryland?

[Tim Piercey]

On the legal side, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller last week blamed the initial admission of a mistake in Abrego Garcia's deportation on a DOJ saboteur who has since been fired.

[John Bickley]

So in the Supreme Court over the weekend, the justices have frozen deportations under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act. That follows the court giving the administration a green light just a couple of weeks ago. What happened there?

[Tim Piercey]

Yeah, the court hasn't stopped deportations entirely, but it did rule that the administration hadn't followed due process for a group of suspected Trinid Aragua members. The majority sided with the aclu, which argued that one illegal immigrant couldn't read his notice written in English and that dozens of others were not told they could challenge their deportations. White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt pushed back on Saturday. She said the ACLU lawsuit is part of an onslaught of meritless litigation brought by radical activists who care more about the rights of these terrorist aliens than those of the American people.

[John Bickley]

Pretty strong words against the ACLU from the White House. Tim, thanks so much for joining us.

[Tim Piercey]

It's good to be on.

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[John Bickley]

Series of studies to investigate potential environmental causes for autism.

[Georgia Howe]

Here to discuss is Daily Wire reporter Amanda Presto Giacomo. So Amanda Kennedy had a press conference this week. What did he say?

[Dan]

Yeah, well, Kennedy first announced the results of a CDC study on autism. He said that autism now affects 1 in 31 children in the US and that's nearly five times higher than when the CDC first started these surveys back in 1992. Just two years ago, the prevalence was 1 in 36 children. RFK broke down those findings even further. He said that boys were far more at risk, with one in 20 chances of having autism. And in California, it was even higher. One in 12.5 boys were diagnosed. Obviously very alarming findings. And even more troubling, Kennedy said that a lot of these cases are now severe.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

25% of the kids who are diagnosed with autism are non verbal, non toilet trained and have other stereotypical features. Headbanging, tactile and light sensitivities, stimming, toe walking, et cetera.

[Dan]

RFK also asserted that the increasing rate of autism can be attributed in large part to environmental factors. He specifically cited mold, pesticides, other food, chemicals and medications as potentially being linked. Kennedy really stressed that he believes the increased rate of autism is an epidemic. Now, that's significant because critics have said that autism is mostly genetic. RFK called such critics epidemic deniers. He also had Dr. Walter Zorodny touch on this issue at the conference. He's a long term autism researcher and he's an associate professor at the Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Whether we call it an epidemic, a.

[Commercial Announcer]

Tsunami, or a surge of autism is.

[Chris Van Hollen]

A real thing that we don't understand. For the last 20 years, we've collected data but not made real progress in understanding what causes autism or how to effectively prevent it or treat it effectively.

[Dan]

Kennedy announced earlier this month that his department will find the cause of autism in a matter of months. Here he is speaking to President Trump.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

The autism rates have gone from our most recent numbers we think are going to be about 1 in 31 from 1 in 10,000 when I was a kid. And at your direction, we've launched a massive testing and research effort that's going to involve hundreds of scientists from around the world. By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic and we'll be able to eliminate those exposures.

[Chris Van Hollen]

So big.

[Dan]

An autism organization, Autism Speaks, suggested that the rise in autism cases is largely due to better screening, better understanding of the disorder and therefore a higher diagnosis rate. The organization said other genetic and environmental factors are still being studied, but that only likely accounts for a small part of the increase. Kennedy believes that's flipped, that only a small portion of the increase can be attributed to a better diagnostic process.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

If you accept the epidemic deniers narrative, you have to believe that researchers in North Dakota missed 98.8% of the children with autism, that thousands of profoundly disabled children were somehow invisible to doctors, teachers, parents, and even their own study. Doctors and therapists in the past were not stupid. They weren't missing all these cases. The epidemic is real.

[Georgia Howe]

Well, it would be a major breakthrough if these studies find something. Amanda, thanks for reporting.

[Dan]

You're welcome.

[Georgia Howe]

Democrats are up in arms about the president's latest economic moves. But Team Trump says he's doing exactly what Americans elected him to do.

[John Bickley]

Joining us to discuss the latest on the economy and Trump's handling of it is Daily Wire senior editor Virginia Cruda. Hey, Virginia. So things have settled down a little bit since the first turbulent week of the initial tariffs, but Democrats are now sounding the alarm over Trump's moves related to the Fed. What's going on here?

[Virginia Cruda]

Well, Democrats are accusing Trump of crossing the line by pressuring Fed Chair Jerome Powell to lower the interest rate. Trump has been leaning on Powell to take action and that's turned into the rhetoric from both sides really heating up. Powell appears to be digging in, while the president's team is reportedly even looking into whether or not there are ways to remove Powell early. His term is scheduled to end May 15th of 2026. But Democrats are now painting this as an unprecedented violation of the balance of powers. Here's Senator Amy Klobuchar making that case on cnn.

[Chris Van Hollen]

There's a reason we have an independent Fed and it has served us well through many crises, through downturns, through depressions, through the pandemic. They're able to respond and stabilize things. And what Jerome Powell is doing right now is warning that these tariffs are having a huge destabilizing effect on and hurting everyday people. And that's going to affect decisions that the Fed makes. That's his job and he's doing it.

[Virginia Cruda]

She also said that the chair of the Fed can't be fired unless it's for malfeasance or criminality. To that point, the chair is appointed by the president for a four year term, but it's considered an independent role. So traditionally the chair is allowed to complete that four year run. And we should note that Democrats, including Senator Klobuchar, have previously pressured the Fed to lower interest rates, just as Trump is doing now.

[John Bickley]

Right now. This all comes obviously amid the ongoing trade negotiations. We've been tracking those pretty closely. Where do those stand now?

[Virginia Cruda]

Well, Trump is maintaining his pause of the higher tariffs for most countries except China for 90 days. And he set a low 10% baseline tariff on imports to encourage negotiations. At least 75 countries have reached out to negotiate at this point. As we've reported, the major outlier is still China, who has escalated tariffs in response. A few days ago, Trump did indicate an openness to making a deal to protect consumers, but no talks with Xi Jinping have been confirmed yet. We do know that Japanese negotiators met with U.S. officials recently with Trump citing big progress Toyota is considering shifting RAV4 production to the US to mitigate tariff impacts. Likewise, Trump reported a great call with South Korea focusing on steel and automobiles. Vietnam has also offered to remove all tariffs on US Goods, and discussions with India are also in progress, with India angling for a bilateral trade agreement to boost trade to 500 billion by 2030. The EU has paused retaliatory tariffs on the US and is advocating for a zero tariff agreement. As for the uk, talks with Prime Minister Keir Starmer are ongoing, and Vice President J.D. vance has expressed optimism that any deal they reach will be mutually beneficial.

[John Bickley]

A final question on the mood of the country where is the public sentiment at now when it comes to Trump's economic policies?

[Virginia Cruda]

The trends seem to show him losing some ground on his handling of the economy. His average approval is hovering around 47%, with disapproval a few points higher around 51%, according to RCP. But he does still have solid support among Republicans, and CNBC notes that blue collar workers still remain in the positive for Trump, although disapproval has increased with that group since his first term. Like we've highlighted on this show, though, Trump is not afraid to course correct if he's seeing negative fallout from his policies. So we'll see how this approach evolves.

[John Bickley]

It's been fascinating to watch all this play out so far, and the White House remains bullish that they're working out better deals for Americans in the long run. Virginia, thanks so much for reporting.

[Virginia Cruda]

Thank you for having me.

[Georgia Howe]

Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know.

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