The Trump Administration’s battle with science continues at a feverish pace. Most people see Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as the leader of the assault. He has promoted unscientific treatments for measles while casting doubt on the proven efficacy of measles vaccines. He cut funding for mRNA vaccine research even though mRNA vaccines were critical during the COVID-19 pandemic and the underlying research behind them earned the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2023. In June, RFK fired every member of a 17-member Advisory Panel on Immunization Practices so he could replace them with people critical of vaccines. That panel recently voted to limit access to Covid vaccines, prompting a doctor who previously served on the CDC’s working group on Covid vaccines to bemoan that “having people without vaccine and clinical expertise having the power to harm so much of the public is unbearable.” Kennedy fired the Center of Disease Control Director, Susan Monarez, who testified that she was removed because she refused to fire career scientists at the agency and to agree to vaccine recommendations without regard to scientific evidence. Several senior CDC officials resigned in protest after Monarez was fired, including the Chief Medical Officer and Director of the National Center for Immunizations and Respiratory Diseases. Kennedy has refused to accept the reams of scientific studies that disprove a link between vaccines and autism. Most recently, he joined President Trump at a press conference to support an unproven theory that Tylenol use during pregnancy causes autism and urged pregnant women not to take it. He also touted the chemotherapy drug leucovorin as a treatment for autism even though there is a lack of scientific evidence it works on autism. 

Last week, Kennedy and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary sent a letter to Republican attorneys general agreeing to their request to review the safety of mifepristone. Kennedy and Makary told the AGs that “the concerns you have raised in your letter merit close examination.” In fact, the AGs’ only basis for seeking review of mifepristone was a study conducted by the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think-tank run by someone who previously worked at the Heritage Foundation, the publisher of Project 2025. The study was not subject to peer review nor was it published in a scientific journal. Instead, it was posted on the Ethics and Public Policy Center’s website. The study claimed 11% of women experienced a “serious adverse advent” from using abortion pills. Clinical studies, however, find a .5% rate of adverse events. Mifepristone has been used for more than 20 years by more than five million people and is deemed safer than Tylenol and Viagra. Medicated abortion is used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions today, and in states that have banned abortions, it is the primary way that women continue to be able to obtain an abortion, receiving the pills by mail. The review thus appears to be grounded in anti-abortion ideology and not science. 

There was yet another recent example of the Administration’s rejection of science, though this one may appear less obviously about science at first blush than the others.  The Trump Administration has urged Congress to overrule legislation passed in the District of Columbia regarding the charging and sentencing of juvenile offenders. The District’s Youth Rehabilitation Act, passed in 2018, allows judges to sentence individuals who are under the age of 25 to a sentence other than an applicable mandatory minimum for crimes other than murder, terrorism, and sexual abuse offenses. The District also requires individuals to be at least 16 years old to be tried as adults in most cases, though prosecutors can petition a judge to allow a 15-year-old to be tried as an adult if there are not “reasonable prospects for rehabilitation” in the juvenile system.  

Trump wants those laws changed. He posted on Truth Social in August that “Local ‘youths’ and gang members, some only 14, 15, and 16-years-old, are randomly attacking, mugging, maiming, and shooting innocent Citizens, at the same time knowing that they will be almost immediately released.” He argued the law should be “changed to prosecute these ‘minors’ as adults, and lock them up for a long time, starting at age 14.” Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, echoed Trump’s views, stating, “I know evil when I see it, no matter the age,” and arguing that the Youth Rehabilitation Act must be overhauled. The Republican-led House, always eager to do Trump’s bidding, passed legislation on September 16 that would allow children as young as 14 to be tried as adults in D.C., reduce the maximum age of a youth offender from 24 to 18 years old, and require judges to apply mandatory minimums for youth offenders. Several Democrats joined House Republicans in passing the bill.