James' World 2

Hmmmm… Poor and young MAGA people have been Bamboozled by the current administration!

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According to Martin Makary, head of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the drug leucovorin will help “hundreds of thousands of kids” with autism. But a day after Makary praised leucovorin’s powers at a White House event, some specialists are warning that the science to warrant Makary’s enthusiasm is far from solid.

Those researchers say that the drug’s efficacy has not been established, that scientists don’t know how much of the drug to give or how people should take it, and that safety data in children are lacking. According to the FDA’s current plans, leucovorin will be available to only a minority of autistic people.

All of this has led to widespread confusion, say clinicians, who also worry about the expectations created by Makary and other officials in the administration of US president Donald Trump.

“I’ve heard from a lot of families,” says psychologist Catherine Lord at the University of California, Los Angeles. “The major thing they say is, ‘What is this? What do we do?’”

“I don’t want to get everyone’s hopes up that this is a magic cure,” says Rebecca Schmidt, a molecular epidemiologist at the University of California, Davis. “It’s not for everybody.”

Vitamin in the spotlight

At an announcement on 22 September, Makary announced the upcoming approval of leucovorin, a form of the vitamin folate, by saying it would “open the door to the first FDA-recognized treatment pathway for autism”. People with low levels of folate in the protective fluid surrounding the brain and spine can sometimes exhibit traits associated with autism, including challenges in social communication. This condition, called cerebral folate deficiency, could be due to rogue antibodies that attack the body’s own proteins – in this case, proteins that ensure import of folate into the brain.

There have been clinical trials of leucovorin, also called folinic acid, in autism, but the studies to date have been small. For example, one recent clinical trial enrolled about 80 children aged 2 to 10, and provided folinic acid supplements to about half of the participants. Neither the participants nor their physicians knew who received the supplement and who received a placebo. Participants who received the supplement reported greater improvements in social interactions and language skills than those who received the placebo.

After the trial was published, some researchers subsequently raised concerns that the assessment of those improvements was subjective, and that the study was too small to detect subtle differences in response.

Call for bigger trials

But size is not the only thing that matters in clinical trials, says Dan Rossignol, a family physician in Aliso Viejo, California, who has studied the data on leucovorin and sometimes prescribes it to autistic children. The effect of leucovorin in the trials has been large enough to be apparent even with small numbers of participants, he says. Specifically, Rossignol points to an early leucovorin clinical study, in which only 48 children participated but some experienced marked improvements in a standardized assessment of speech.

“But it would be great if more studies were done with more kids,” he says. “Then w

e could tease out which kids respond better.” Typically, studies submitted for FDA approval of a drug for autism might have data from hundreds of children, he says, but it has been difficult to raise the money for bigger trials. Rossignol says that he and a colleague have been in discussions with US President Donald Trump’s administration to make the case for leucovorin.On Monday, the Trump administration said the US National Institutes of Health plans to monitor the effects of the FDA’s anticipated approval and to study possible broader benefits of leucovorin in autistic people. No details have been released as to how such studies will be designed.

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I used to make good money. In fact, when I got engaged to my now ex-husband, I was making more than he was. Yes, he was a hard worker, but I was a few years older than him, had been in the workforce longer, and had been on my own for a while. We still split everything down the middle when we moved in, and he never complained or told me I should contribute more because I made more.

Then, after we got married and had babies right away, we decided together that I’d stay home with the kids. It was something we both wanted and were equally excited about. He started a company and did really well. He made more than enough to support our family, and we were both smart with our money. No credit card debt, didn’t live above our means, and neither of us were really extravagant.

But even in that situation, we still fought about money. I was used to contributing and going shopping to get a new outfit when I wanted. I also love going out to eat, and we did that regularly when we had two incomes. After we had a baby, though, and I went out to eat, my ex would make a comment about how it wasn’t really necessary and we should save as much as possible.

I agreed with the saving thing, but I didn’t want to stop living my life. We weren’t going out and doing things as much. I only shopped during sales, and as much as I wanted a new car, I didn’t push it because the one I had was fine.

I felt like I was making adjustments, but we still had arguments about spending. My ex was not a controlling man by any means, but he only enjoyed spending money on certain things. He didn’t care as much about going out to eat or staying up on the latest fashion trends. But those were two things that made me so happy. And frankly, they made me feel alive. We all need an outlet, something to look forward to, and those were my things.

In a way, I felt like he was trying to take that away from me, and I would not let that happen.

I started asking him for permission to spend money to avoid fighting about it. That didn’t work, as he’d say we should use any extra money to save for college funds or retirement. Even if I really wanted something, he’d come back with “You don’t need that.”I’d usually reply with something akin to “Just because you don’t care about how you dress doesn’t mean I have to live that way,” or “you get to leave the house every day and go to work, so going out to eat is something I really look forward to. I don’t want to make all the meals, and it’s not like you help.”

Needless to say, it brought out an ugly side in both of us. We had previously made such a great team, so I never expected for that to happen. Neither of us were right, of course. But there was a shift, a change. We both had to make sacrifices, and that’s hard. No one wants someone to tell them what they can’t and can’t do with money. My husband was under a lot of pressure, starting a business and going from supporting himself to supporting me and a child. I didn’t have enough empathy then, and he didn’t have empathy for the fact that I had lost some identity and freedom.

Yes, this was a sacrifice we both agreed to make, not knowing how hard it was going to be.

I had always worked, knew my budget, and treating myself to things was how I loved myself. And I felt like that was being threatened.

You may roll your eyes, or you may completely understand. All I know is that I’ve never talked to a couple that didn’t go through growing pains over money after they had a baby. Every situation is unique, is hard, and requires some tough talks and sacrifices.

It took a bit, but my ex and I finally got on the same page. It required both of us to make some changes because ultimately, the most important thing to us was for me to stay at home with the kids.

If you’re going through this with your partner, be gentle on yourself but also gentle on them. It’s likely that neither of you have been through this before, and there’s a learning curve.

Nobody really talks about the money fights you’ll have after the baby comes. Be prepared, and more importantly, remember that the faster you come to a comfortable place for both of you, the faster you can enjoy this new life. You’re allowed to change your mind about working. You’re allowed to get another job, or a different job. And letting go of some luxuries can actually be freeing.

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I had always worked, knew my budget, and treating myself to things was how I loved myself. And I felt like that was being threatened.

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The White House declined to comment. Multiple attempts to reach Mr. Mellon and representatives for him were unsuccessful.

It remains unclear how far the donation will go toward covering the salaries of the more than 1.3 million troops who make up the active-duty military. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Trump administration’s 2025 budget requested about $600 billion in total military compensation. A $130 million donation would equal about $100 a service member.

Mr. Mellon, a wealthy banking heir and railroad magnate, is a longtime backer of Mr. Trump and gave tens of millions of dollars to groups supporting the president’s campaign. Last year, he made a $50 million donation to a super PAC supporting Mr. Trump, which was one of the largest single contributions ever disclosed.

A grandson of former Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon, Mr. Mellon was not a prominent Republican donor until Mr. Trump was elected. But in recent years, he has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into supporting Mr. Trump and the Republican Party.

Mr. Mellon, who lives primarily in Wyoming, keeps a low profile despite his prolific political spending. He is also a significant supporter of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who also ran for president last year. Mr. Mellon donated millions to Mr. Kennedy’s presidential campaign and has also given money to his anti-vaccine group, Children’s Health Defense.

The Pentagon said it accepted the donation under the “general gift acceptance authority.”

“The donation was made on the condition that it be used to offset the cost of service members’ salaries and benefits,” Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, said in a statement.

Still, the donation appears to be a potential violation of the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits federal agencies from spending money in excess of congressional appropriations or from accepting voluntary services.

More than three weeks into the government shutdown, the Trump administration has taken a series of unorthodox steps to redirect funds to pay certain government workers.

Mr. Trump has vowed to pay military members, immigration agents, and law enforcement officials even though lawmakers have not approved the money for their wages. Workers in those categories are considered essential and must continue working during the shutdown, although they are entitled to back pay under a 2019 law.

As part of that promise, the president signed an executive order this month directing the Pentagon to use unspent research and development funds to cover troops’ salaries. But congressional leaders have warned that moving funds around is only a temporary fix.

Thousands of federal workers missed their first paycheck this week. About 670,000 workers have been furloughed, according to a tally by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington-based think tank. An additional 730,000 or so are working without pay.

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CNN pundit Van Jones said the “Make America Great Again” movement has been “bamboozled” over the Trump administration’s handling of records relating to disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

“Look, MAGA has been took, had, bamboozled. I don’t know, like — look, you have everything that you just said, every Republican was saying, and now ‘nothing to see here,’” Jones, an ex-adviser to former President Obama, said Monday night on CNN’s “OutFront.”

“So Hakeem Jeffries is 100 percent correct. Either they were lying the whole time, saying they had all the goods on all these rich people, or they’re lying now and covering it up. Either way, if I were in MAGA, I might think to myself, what else are they being dishonest about? Somebody is tricking somebody,” the CNN political commentator told host Erin Burnett. 

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said earlier Monday that the administration should release all of the files related to Epstein. The Democratic leader pointed to two possible scenarios of why the documents related to the case are not public. 

“Option 1: They lied for years. Option 2: They’re engaging in a cover-up. At this point. it seems reasonable that it can only be one of the two things,” Jeffries told reporters at the Capitol. “And so it’s Congress’s responsibility, in a bipartisan way, to ask the questions and try to get answers on behalf of the American people.”

Many MAGA supporters have been outraged over the administration’s posture around the Epstein case, particularly after the FBI and DOJ published a memo earlier this month stating there’s no evidence Epstein had a “client list” and reaffirming that he died by suicide in a jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges. 

Attorney General Pam Bondi has faced strong blowback from the MAGA base. She said during a February Fox News interview that she had the Epstein client list on her desk, comments she clarified earlier this month, saying she meant she had the Epstein case file. Trump has stood by Bondi’s side, praising her on Saturday for doing a “FANTASTIC JOB” and told his backers to move on. 

Jones on Monday used the controversy to knock the Trump administration’s policies.

“Are they being dishonest when they say that there are tens of millions of violent immigrants, and therefore we should have people snatched off the streets? What else should you start asking questions about? Because obviously the people in charge of the Republican Party and the people in the White House are not being honest with you about this,” Jones said.

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The Hill

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I have been with Ayo Edebiri for 15 minutes, tops, and already I’m getting her Pacino.

“What have I been listening to? I’ve been listening to, honestly, the Sonny Boy audiobook,” she tells me, unprompted, after we’ve ducked into her compact car. “You’re literally like, Wait, how is this a book? The way he delivers lines? It’s really shocking. Every actor should listen to that book. He goes—my impression of him is if RFK was raised in the Trump household. It’s like: ‘I had no idea! My mutha…gave me away…for six months…because my fatha’ ”—she takes on here the affect of a very sad clown—“ ‘wasawayinthewar.’ I’m actually going to pull it up.”

The plan for our morning is almost satirically LA: After meeting at 8 a.m. at a matcha place in Highland Park, she’s to drive us to a hiking trail in Angeles National Forest. (She’s an early riser, something that she attributes, in part, to being a former New Yorker: “No matter how early you get up in New York, there’s always somebody who’s either earlier or their day hasn’t finished. But in LA, it’s office hours.”) Dressed in a baseball tee emblazoned with the NBC logo, track pants, a printed headscarf—not unlike the ones she wears as Sydney Adamu, the hyper-competent, superdriven, rather anxious young sous-chef on The Bear, in fact—and Prada sunglasses, she certainly looks the part of a 20-something somebody in the industry, taking the air before she tootles down to Studio City for “meetings,” or whatever actors do. (In reality, Edebiri is due on Hollywood Boulevard later that day for an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!.)

She’s been out here for five or six years—moving from Brooklyn, where she put down roots after attending NYU, when she began writing for television. But it took quite some time for Los Angeles to feel like home. “I don’t really think I started to enjoy living here until last year,” Edebiri says, swirling her iced latte. “I liked it, but I don’t think it really meant anything to me. And I missed a lot of my friends on the East Coast.”

What changed things was hanging out with people like Lionel Boyce, one of her costars on The Bear, and his former Odd Future bandmates Tyler, the Creator, and Travis Bennett—native Angelenos all—who helped her find her footing in the city’s sprawl. (Asked what they like to do when they see each other, Tyler makes his and Edebiri’s milieu sound more like suburban teenagers than very famous adults. “We loiter,” he says. “We’ll sit in the parking lot. We’ll go to someone’s house and play Uno. We’ll eat. It’s just the most normal shit you could think of.”)The strangeness of life in LA this year has also done its part to affirm her sense of community: In January, Edebiri was one of the hundreds of thousands evacuated during the wildfires (her home was ultimately unharmed, but she has friends and colleagues who weren’t so lucky), and at the time of our first interview, downtown LA had recently been under curfew due to the anti-ICE and “No Kings” protests of the days prior.

Edebiri had been out marching over the weekend; the sign she carried—now in her car’s backseat next to Gromit, her dozing Chihuahua mix—reads “Don’t tread on us,” a riff on the Gadsden flag from the Revolutionary War. (Very Boston-native of her, really.)

“It was actually amazing,” she says. “We’re in such a weird empathy drought, which it’s hard not to be—you want to save your own skin. But it’s like, If we’re supposed to be evolved people, we extend care to each other.” And then, in the very same breath: “Do you want sunscreen?”

Raised in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Edebiri is the only child of a Nigerian father and a strictly Pentecostal Barbadian mother. She’s said there was a time when her greatest aspiration was to be a pastor’s wife, but then she got into improv and theater at her public school and started recording episodes of 30 Rock and Conan at home. In college, Edebiri veered from majoring in education to studying dramatic writing at Tisch, meeting, along the way, friends and collaborators like Rachel Sennott, her costar in the 2023 film Bottoms (directed by Emma Seligman, another NYU alum); and Tyler Mitchell, who has now photographed her for this magazine twice. (“We met at a Halloween party,” Edebiri recalls of Mitchell. “I was dressed as Solange on the cover of A Seat at the Table, and he was dressed as Young Frankenstein. And we looked at each other and we said, ‘We are friends.’ ”)

Well-placed writing- and production-assistant jobs, paired with a growing profile in New York’s stand-up comedy scene, led eventually to Edebiri’s first writing credits—on series like the short-lived NBC sitcom Sunnyside, Apple TV+’s Dickinson, Netflix’s Big Mouth, and FX’s What We Do in the Shadows—as well as some supporting and voice-acting roles. But it was appearing on The Bear, which premiered in 2022, that made Edebiri suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, a proper star.

Critics have jabbed at The Bear for competing for awards as a comedy series, when really it walks and talks like a lightly comic drama. Whatever it is, an upshot of its tonal ambiguity has been getting to see someone as obviously, instinctively funny as Edebiri play in every kind of key: delivering punch lines and making wry asides, sure, but anchoring surreal dream sequences and executing sobbing monologues too. “She’s very smart but also silly,” says the actor, writer, and director Will Sharpe, with whom Edebiri will soon star in the Apple TV+ show Prodigies. “She has the ability to be a serious, sophisticated, dramatic actor, but also has funny bones.”

The performance as Sydney has won Edebiri an Emmy, a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a Critics’ Choice Award, among other prizes. So, too, did The Bear—and the deft work of Danielle Goldberg, Edebiri’s stylist and good friend, on all those important red carpets—launch her into the fashion firmament: Suddenly, Edebiri was flitting freely between high-femme silhouettes and looks drawn from menswear, whether in a red satin column from Prada for the 2024 Golden Globes or a floor-length shirtdress and leather tailcoat from Ferragamo for May’s Met Gala. And then, this fall, in a true cool-girl coup, she was named a brand ambassador for Matthieu Blazy’s new Chanel.

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Edebiri wears a Chanel top, necklace, and earring. Fashion Editor: Alex Harrington.Photographed by Tyler Mitchell. Vogue, November 2025.

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