Trump wants women to suffer in pain.

He told them to only take Tylenol “if you can’t tough it out.” He said to “fight like hell not to take it.”

That wasn’t a doctor speaking. That wasn’t science. That was the president of the United States practicing medicine without a license.

He stood at a podium and told millions of women that the safest over-the-counter medication in pregnancy is dangerous. He declared it the cause of autism. He turned his ignorance into a command and handed mothers the weight of guilt for something they did not cause.

I know what it’s like to be pregnant and in pain. I know what it’s like to have surgery while carrying a child, to spend months on bedrest, to need relief but not want anything too strong, to protect the baby. And the one option I had, the one every doctor told me was safe, was Tylenol. Because that’s what the science has shown for decades.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists still recommends it. The Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine still calls it safe. A Swedish study that followed 2,480,797 children born between 1995 and 2019 compared siblings and found no link between prenatal Tylenol use and autism, ADHD, or intellectual disability. About 7.5% of those children were exposed in utero. In the raw data, there were small associations, but once siblings were compared, one exposed, one not, the risks disappeared.

That’s what science is. Messy. Complicated. It questions. It evolves. But it does not give you neat villains wrapped in a bow.

Trump does.

And here’s the real danger. When pregnant women hear these lies and stop taking Tylenol, it isn’t autism they avoid. It’s relief from fever and pain. And untreated fevers in pregnancy carry real risks: birth defects, preterm labor, even miscarriage. That’s what happens when leaders turn complexity into scapegoats. They don’t solve problems. They create new ones.

But he doesn’t care. Because this was never about truth. It was about power.

It was also about RFK Jr. and his crusade to drag us back into the dark ages of medicine. He has built his career on blaming vaccines, sowing doubt, and selling fear. Now he hands Trump the next scapegoat, Tylenol, because Trump demanded an answer, any answer, to the mystery of autism. RFK Jr. gave him one. Not science. Not fact.

Just another simple solution to a complex problem. A chapter out of the dictator’s playbook. And Trump ran with it.

But Trump doesn’t come up with these stories on his own. He borrows them, repeats them, then hands them off to the man who knows how to weaponize them.

Behind the curtain, the one shaping the message, the one turning scapegoats into strategy, is Stephen Miller.

Hitler had Joseph Goebbels. Trump has Stephen Miller.

Goebbels took the Reichstag fire, a confusing, chaotic blaze with no clear culprit, and sold it as proof of a communist plot. That lie gave Hitler cover to suspend freedoms, crush opposition, and cement his grip on power. Goebbels understood the math of propaganda: the simpler the story, the more powerful it became.

And Miller understands it too.

Both men began as speechwriters. Both learned early how to bend words into weapons. And both discovered that a single phrase, sharpened the right way, could change the course of history.

Miller knows that math. He might have started as a speechwriter, but his venom carried him further. He co-wrote Trump’s “American Carnage” inaugural address. He shaped the immigration bans. He pushed the lines about “invasion” and “poisoning the blood.” He took fear and turned it into slogans. He built ads through his group America First Legal that echoed replacement theory, pushing the lie that immigrants are stealing America from white families. He pressured the Justice Department to frame stories of crime and violence as immigrant-driven, no matter the facts.

Like Goebbels, Miller finds a tragedy or a fear and spins it until people believe it’s destiny.

And the irony is unbearable. Miller is Jewish. His family fled persecution in Eastern Europe, from the very kind of hate propaganda he now deploys. The town his ancestors came from was nearly wiped out in the Holocaust. He is a descendant of people who survived only because they escaped, people who were targets of Goebbels’ lies. And yet he has chosen to embrace the same playbook. To become the same weapon.

This is why I call him one of the most dangerous men in America, maybe the most dangerous one. Because he doesn’t just whisper in Trump’s ear. He gives Trump the script. And Trump repeats it until people think it’s truth.

And those lies spread everywhere.

Trump says tariffs will fix the economy. That’s his one-word cure. Tariffs.

South Korea’s president is now warning that Trump’s reckless tariff demands could spark a global financial crisis. Because tariffs don’t exist in a vacuum. They invite retaliation. They raise the cost of food, fuel, medicine. They hit families first. They destabilize alliances and shake the global economy.

But none of that fits on a bumper sticker. So Trump offers the simple story. “Tariffs make us rich.” The reality is the opposite.

The same with energy. America’s greatest challenge is transitioning from fossil fuels to renewables while keeping power reliable and affordable.

Trump’s answer? Kill renewables. Burn more coal. Pump more oil. And make sure his friends cash in. Now the CEO of Vistra, one of the companies fattened by Trump’s rollback, is walking away with a $340 million payout, almost all from stock-based compensation tied to a 450% jump in Vistra’s share price since early 2024. Families get nothing. Communities breathe dirtier air. The planet grows hotter. But Trump gets to say he “fixed” energy. And his donors get rich.

That’s not policy. That’s what a government does when it’s ruled by a dictator.

And it doesn’t stop there.

Trump is handing TikTok to an investor group that includes the Murdochs. The same family that turned Fox News into a weapon. The same family that poisoned our parents and grandparents with lies about immigrants, about vaccines, about elections. They radicalized Boomers and older Gen X. Now they will have influence over the platform where our kids live.

First television. Then Facebook. Now TikTok. Different generation, same poison.

Think about what that means. Algorithms decide what stories trend. What protests go viral. Which news sources are buried. Which voices rise and which vanish. Having the Murdochs involved is like letting state propaganda feed directly into the veins of Gen Z.

It is no longer about safety concerns with the Chinese government. It is about controlling what our children see and feel.

And while he builds this propaganda machine at home, he rewards his allies abroad.

The U.S. just sanctioned the wife of Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. Not because she was accused of corruption. Not because she broke laws. But because her husband defended democracy and stood up to Bolsonaro’s coup.

That is not policy. That is intimidation. It is Trump sending a message: if you stand against authoritarian power, your family will pay.

And it fits a broader pattern. Cozying up to strongmen. Protecting allies who trample democracy. Weakening the judges and journalists who resist. It happened with Bolsonaro. It happened with Orbán. It happened with Putin. Now it’s happening in plain sight with Brazil.

Authoritarianism does not stop at borders. When one regime rewards another, it emboldens the whole network. And the cost is paid by ordinary people, in Brazil, in Hungary, in Ukraine, in the United States.

And here at home, the walls are closing in faster.

Trump signed an executive order declaring Antifa a domestic terrorist organization.

Antifa. Anti-fascist. Which means anyone who resists him.

At first, he’ll try to use it against Charlie Kirk’s murderer, twisting the charge so he can say it wasn’t just murder, it was terrorism. He wants the headline, the precedent, the spectacle of locking someone away as a “domestic terrorist.”

But it won’t stop there. Next, it will be people arrested at protests. Then it will be journalists who cover them. Then teachers who inspire them. Then anyone who dares to disagree.

This is how dictatorships work: shrink the definition of freedom, expand the definition of crime, until resistance itself is terrorism.

And Trump knows these orders aren’t law. But he also knows the chaos they unleash. He floods the system with executive orders, forcing courts to clean up the mess. And while they fight, he acts like it’s binding.

And here’s the cruel irony. When the January 6th insurrection happened, Trump said it wasn’t his people. He said it was Antifa. That they were the ones to blame. That the MAGA cult had nothing to do with it. He spent months pointing the finger at Antifa.

And then, the moment he took back power, he pardoned every single one of those people who stormed the Capitol. The same people he told us were Antifa. He pardoned the Antifa that he swore had attacked our democracy.

It’s a lie stacked on top of a lie. And he must think we’re too stupid to see it.

And now the Supreme Court is helping him.

The Court has agreed to hear his bid to fire a Democratic commissioner from the International Trade Commission. On paper, it looks small. Just one commissioner. Just one agency most people don’t think about.

But underneath, it’s enormous. Because it challenges Humphrey’s Executor, a Supreme Court case from 1935 that has protected the independence of regulators from overreaching executive power for nearly ninety years.

Here’s what that case was about. Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to fire a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission, William Humphrey, simply because he didn’t like his politics. The Court ruled against him. They said no: commissioners at independent agencies can’t just be fired on a whim. They can only be removed “for cause,” like neglect of duty or misconduct. That ruling created the guardrails that have kept presidents from turning independent watchdogs into political puppets.

Humphrey’s Executor has stood as one of the cornerstones of checks and balances. It’s why agencies like the FTC, FCC, and ITC can operate with a degree of independence. They are supposed to protect the public interest, not serve at the pleasure of one president.

Now Trump is asking the Court to erase that precedent. To give him the power to fire any commissioner who doesn’t fall in line. Which means agencies that regulate trade, protect consumers, oversee elections, or police corporations could be gutted with the stroke of his pen.

This isn’t about one commissioner. It’s about whether any presiden, but especially one with authoritarian instincts, gets to tear down the wall between independent governance and raw executive power.

If Trump wins, he can fire independent commissioners at will. No cause needed. No checks. No balances.

Pair that with the Antifa order and you see the full picture. He is criminalizing dissent with one hand and stripping away the institutions that could stop him with the other.

And all of it is sold as simple solutions.

Easy answers to complex problems. Convenient villains. Catchy slogans. Lies dressed up as truth.

But here’s the truth. We have no proof that autism is caused by a pill. Trade is not fixed by tariffs. Energy is not secured by fossil fuels. Democracy is not protected by propaganda. Freedom is not preserved by silencing dissent.

These are complex problems. They need complex solutions.

That means trusting science. Funding research. Protecting independent agencies. Supporting real journalism. Building alliances. Backing renewables. Treating autistic people with dignity and giving families real support.

It means hard work. Progress that is slow. Debates that are messy. Solutions that are complicated.

And that is what makes them real.

Because the moment we trade truth for simplicity, we trade freedom for lies.

And if we let that happen, we lose everything.

And we are not going to let that happen. The America we know and love is not going down like that. We have seen dark days before, and we rose to the challenge. We will this time too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather