Good morning. The day is September 23rd. The hour is a little past 10 on a humid morning in New York City as a bunch of trend-chasing heretics sit around ignoring Matthew 25:13 and preparing in vain for the spuriously prophesied event of the rapture to carry them away. The rest of us should be so lucky. But we're all just stuck with the regular everyday tribulations. If you're looking for intimations of the end times, just watch that thermometer creeping up into the 80s as it's forecast to do here on the first full day of fall. This is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

Apparently, late night talk show audiences have more self-respect and fighting spirit than about having their options dictated by Donald Trump than Columbia University or major law firms did. And so after furious audience backlash, ABC announced yesterday that it's reinstating Jimmy Kimmel's talk show after pulling it under pressure from the Trump administration, ostensibly for a barbed and somewhat inaccurately framed joke Kimmel had made about the opportunistic right-wing response to the killing of Charlie Kirk. Since Donald Trump had demanded Kimmel's show be canceled back when Charlie Kirk was still alive, the whole thing itself was more shameless opportunism. And in a head-to-head test of Donald Trump's popularity against Jimmy Kimmel's popularity, the president lost. For a large swath of the country, that doesn't necessarily mean Kimmel will be back on the air. The Sinclair Broadcast Group, the nationwide local TV conglomerate, controlled by a far-right family, announced that it intends to continue forbidding its 38 ABC stations from carrying the show. 

The New York Times this morning published online a long investigation into decades worth of intra-familial sexual abuse allegations against Errol Musk, the father of Elon Musk. The story describes Elon Musk taking the side of the alleged victims and trying with mixed success to keep them away from the family patriarch. Errol Musk is currently married to his own former stepdaughter, who the story says, he was accused of abusing when she was a child. 

Business Insider, meanwhile, is reporting that Elon Musk's demands to make Grok, his AI chatbot, more transgressive and sexy have meant that in Business Insider's conversations with the workers who train the chatbot, the story says, “12 told Business Insider they encountered sexually explicit material, including instances of user requests for AI-generated child sexual abuse content.” The story says Business Insider verified the existence of multiple written requests for such material, including requests for short stories that depicted minors in sexually explicit situations and requests for pornographic images involving children. In some cases, Grok had produced an image or written story containing the material. 

On the front of this morning's print New York Times, where Trump's defeat on the Jimmy Kimmel show was relegated to the business section, the UN General Assembly gets the top photo and the lead news column. “AT U.N., LEADERS PUSH TO SALVAGE 2-STATE SOLUTION / FOCUS ON PALESTINIANS / Israel Is Vehement in Its Opposition, Backed by White House.”

Dateline “United Nations, leaders from across the globe convened in New York on Monday to support Palestinian statehood over opposition from Israel and the United States as the Gaza Strip neared the two-year mark of a war that has brought mass death, destruction, and hunger. A summit meeting organized by France and Saudi Arabia ahead of the annual United Nations General Assembly was portrayed as an urgent effort to salvage the long-deferred vision of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But as Israel continues its offensive in Gaza City against Hamas and rapidly expands its settlements in the West Bank, the notion seems more distant than ever.” The story continues, ‘“we must pave the way for peace,’ President Emmanuel Macron of France said to applause from those at the meeting and a standing ovation from the Palestinian delegation. ‘Today, France recognizes the state of Palestine’ He noted recent statements of recognition, some not yet formalized, by Britain, Canada, Australia, Portugal, Belgium and several others. The Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, told reporters, ‘We will take action in response to the announcements.’ He declined to say if that would mean, as some Israeli officials have suggested, expanded settlements or outright annexations in the territory that has been envisioned as a Palestinian state. Israel's response, he said, will be announced by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is to address the United Nations gathering and meet with President Trump this week.” 

On the left-hand side of the top of the page, the Times attempts to edit the shock and horror of its reporters live blog of the media event Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. held on the subject of autism yesterday into a story that fits the Times's idea of what the Times should sound like. “Trump Asserts
Link of Autism To a Painkiller / No Proven Connection to Tylenol Ingredient,” is the headline package. The story begins “President Trump and top federal health officials on Monday launched a broad offensive against the mainstream understanding of autism, claiming, without new evidence, acetaminophen, the active ingredient in the common pain reliever Tylenol, was a cause of the disorder.” 

“A broad offensive against the mainstream understanding.” That is certainly one way of putting it. “The officials, including health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Marty McCary, announced a federal endorsement of a B-vitamin-based drug, leucovorin, to treat autism. It has been studied in only dozens of research participants. And they announced new research to investigate the root causes of autism, committing millions of federal dollars to study environmental factors, including a long-debunked theory that blames vaccines. Together, the announcements marked a new step toward reframing autism as a neglected epidemic with environmental causes, to which politicized researchers have long been blind. Most scientists believe that the neurological disorder results from a complex interplay of genetic and environmental factors.” 

In the abstract, in principle, this isn't a terrible way for a mainstream publication to express skepticism toward official claims, but to politely and firmly rebut the claims put forward yesterday, to rationalize them into a new step toward reframing autism, is to miss the entire tenor of the thing. The story then tries to dig in. “The briefing at the White House,” the Times continues, “featured often unsubstantiated medical advice from Mr. reminiscent of his first term when he encouraged Americans to try unproven treatments for COVID. The president on Monday repeatedly issued strong warnings that flew in the face of the recommendations of leading medical groups. ‘Don't take Tylenol. Don't take it. Fight like hell not to take it.’ He urged pregnant women to ‘tough it out’ when in pain, except in rare instances such as a dangerously high fever.” After the jump, the story also says “Mr. Trump mentioned that he and Mr. Kennedy had long discussed the possibility of a vaccine link to autism. He also amplified Mr. Kennedy's views, saying that the childhood immunization schedule loads up children with too many vaccines. The president said without evidence that babies are given as many as 80 shots at once.” Writing “the president said without evidence that babies are being given as many as 80 shots at once,” sounds like you are really holding the president's feet to the fire. But the words that came out of the mouth of the president of the United States on this subject, or at least some of the words, were actually, “it's too much liquid. Too many different things are going into that baby at too big a number. The size of this thing when you look at it. It's like 80 different vaccines and beyond vaccines. 80. You give that to a little kid.” 

The president of the United States also said, “I think it's very bad. They're pumping. It looks like they're pumping into a horse. You have a little child, a little fragile child, and you get a vat of 80 different vaccines, I guess. 80 different blends. And they pump it in.” 

The reason that Trump kept hammering away at Tylenol specifically by brand name was that at one point he tried to say acetaminophen and repeatedly fumbled it. He also skated away from the word “rubella” when he tried to talk about the individual components of the MMR vaccine to engage with this on policy terms to advance as the time story does into a discussion of exactly what the research into a possible correlation between acetaminophen use and autism may be, is to wave away the actual import of the press conference, which is that federal policy on pediatric medicine is now subject to the beliefs of a liar and conspiracy theorist as refracted through a catastrophically ignorant and visibly addled president. 

The jump page on the story, A-17, is also where the Times stashed yesterday's Supreme Court news, which is that the right-wing majority on the court advanced in yet another unsigned opinion from effectively defying the 90-year-old unanimous precedent of Humphrey's executor by allowing Donald Trump to fire the heads of independent agencies while their cases are pending, to flatly unambiguously permitting Trump to do the precise thing that Humphrey's executor said the president couldn't do and firing members of the Federal Trade Commission. It's no longer the case that the Supreme Court is just running wild in overturning its own precedents. With yesterday's order, the court is rejecting the idea that precedent can be binding at all. They didn't write a decision yet to say that Humphrey's executor is no longer the law. They just voided it so that the president doesn't have to wait for them to go to the trouble of granting him permission. 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. The Indignity Morning Podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. Given this brand new microphone that arrived at the Indignity Morning Podcast studio yesterday from Baltimore. I may have to upgrade that to a Steve Albini-style engineering credit on this episode.

The theme song is composed and performed by Mack Scocca-Ho. You, the listeners, keep us going through your paid subscriptions to Indignity and your tips. Keep sending those along if you are able, and if nothing unexpected gets in the way, we will talk again tomorrow.