42 h. ago RFK's claims about people with autism offer a sinister insight into how Trumpism sees us all | John Harris

The war on science being waged by the US health secretary and the White House is bound to spread. We must be on our guardIn the recent past, Robert F Kennedy Jr has said that Donald Trump is “a terrible human being” and “probably a sociopath”. But in the US’s new age of irrationalism and chaos, these two men are now of one voice, pursuing a strand of Trumpist politics that sometimes feels strangely overlooked. With Trump once again in the White House and Kennedy ensconced as his health and human services secretary, what they are jointly leading is becoming clearer by the day: a war on science and knowledge that aims to replace them with the modern superstitions of conspiracy theory.Nearly 2,000 members of the US’s National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have warned of “slashing funding for scientific agencies, terminating grants to scientists, defunding their laboratories, and hampering international scientific collaboration”. Even work on cancer is now under threa...

Politics

42 h. ago RFK’s statements prove autistic people and their families everywhere should fear Trump and his allies | John Harris

The idea that autism is some aberration that can be cured is typical of a movement that celebrates simplistic thinking and loathes human differenceIn the recent past, Robert F Kennedy Jr has said that Donald Trump is “a terrible human being” and “probably a sociopath”. But in the US’s new age of irrationalism and chaos, these two men are now of one voice, pursuing a strand of Trumpist politics that sometimes feels strangely overlooked. With Trump once again in the White House and Kennedy ensconced as his health and human services secretary, what they are jointly leading is becoming clearer by the day: a war on science and knowledge that aims to replace them with the modern superstitions of conspiracy theory.Nearly 2,000 members of the US’s National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have warned of “slashing funding for scientific agencies, terminating grants to scientists, defunding their laboratories, and hampering international scientific collaboration”. Even work on...

Politics

2 w. ago Riddle of daughter who went to buy milk and then washed up dead on Gone Girls beach

When a woman's body was found washed up on Gilgo Beach in 2013, police were quick to rule out any connection to the notorious serial killer case. But not everyone is convinced.

Events

3 w. ago ‘Their voices had been overlooked for so long’: the shocking hunt for the Gilgo Beach killer

The long and often shocking journey to finding the alleged killer of young women in Long Island is brought to a wider audience in a damning new Netflix seriesThe film-maker Liz Garbus was on vacation in July 2023 when she got the call that an arrest had finally been made in the case of the Long Island serial killer. Since 2010, when the bodies of four women were found along an isolated stretch of highway near Gilgo Beach, authorities had looked for a presumed serial killer with little progress and plenty of consternation. Garbus was one of the most prominent chroniclers of the grassroots effort to force authorities into action; her 2020 feature film Lost Girls, an adaptation of Robert Kolker’s book of the same name, depicted the fight by a group of working-class women to figure out what happened to their loved ones – all women who participated in sex work on Craigslist – with or largely without police help.It was the star of that film, Amy Ryan, who alerted Garbus to the arrest of R...

Events

3 w. ago Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect's wife makes shock appearance at DNA hearing hours after finalizing divorce

Despite their marriage now being over, Rex Heuermann's wife Asa Ellerup and daughter Victoria appeared in court in Riverhead, Long Island, Friday for a hearing about key DNA evidence.

Events

3 w. ago Suspected Gilgo Beach serial killer and wife reach divorce settlement amid court hearing on DNA evidence

Rex Heuermann, 61, is charged with the murders of seven women on Long Island

Events

3 w. ago Should DNA evidence be admissible in the trial of the Gilgo Beach serial killings suspect?

The question of whether DNA evidence can be used in the upcoming trial of a Manhattan architect charged in a string of deaths known as the Gilgo Beach killings is the focus of a court hearing

Events