WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Under the Radar - Episode 17

Episode Date: September 27, 2025

This week on “Under the Radar,” hear about the President’s campaign against Tylenol and misleading drug advertising, a Supreme Court case challenging certain police uses of drug-detection dogs, an executive order designating Antifa as a domestic terrorist group, and more.

This is Under the Radar on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Now, here's your host, Luke Miller. This week on Under the Radar, hear about the president's campaign against Tylenol and misleading drug advertising, a Supreme Court case challenging certain police uses of drug detection dogs, an executive order designating Antifa as a domestic terrorist group, and more. I'm your host, Luke Miller, and on this show, we'll cover the news you didn't catch this week from the mainstream media. Well, they're covering the president's latest tweets,

here you can hear about the new legislation, executive orders, and Supreme Court decisions that affect you. Welcome to Under the Radar. The first piece of news I have for you this week is about a presidential memorandum from which this campaign against Tylenol has stemmed. The memorandum is called the Memorandum for the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Commissioner of Food and Drugs, with a subject of addressing misleading direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertisements.

A real quick summary of the presidential memorandum, it starts by noting that in 1962, Congress vested in the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, the authority to regulate prescription drug advertising. And the main point of the memorandum is that it hasn't been doing a good job of that. It's saying that these prescription drug companies spend more for direct-to-consumer advertising than any other industry in the United States. They spent over $10 billion in this kind of advertising in 2024 through TV and radio and

social media, things like that, in a way that the memorandum states can mislead the public about the risks and benefits, encourage medications over lifestyle changes, inappropriately intervene in the physician-patient relationship and advantage expensive drugs over cheaper generics. It states that the FDA's requirements have loosened over time, allowing these drug companies to put less information in their advertising about the risks of their drugs. And the main example that the administration has been using to prove this is Tylenol. The administration is claiming, based on some recent studies, that Tylenol has a risk to pregnant women of increasing the chance that their child develops autism. And the claim is that they haven't been entirely honest in their advertising about that risk. Here's what President Trump had to say to pregnant women about Tylenol.

But with Tylenol, don't take it. Don't take it. And if you can't live, if your fever is so bad, you have to take one because there's no alternative to that. Sadly, what can you take instead? It's actually there's not an alternative to that. And as you know, other of the medicines are absolutely proven bad. I mean, they've been proven bad with the aspirins and the Advils and others, right? And they've been proven bad.

So here's President Trump claiming, based on his memorandum that he issued, that Tylenol, among other prescription drugs, has not been entirely honest about the risks associated with taking the drug. Now, he chose Tylenol in particular because of a recent study that came from Harvard in a statement from Andrea Bacarelli, who is the dean of the faculty at Harvard School of Public Health. They were given a grant by the NIH to do the study of potential risks of acetaminophen, which is the active ingredient in Tylenol, in use during pregnancy. They reviewed 46 previously published human studies worldwide, and they said, quote, we found evidence of an association between exposure to acinaminephine during pregnancy

and increased incidence of neurodevelopmental disorders in children. They also stated that animal studies have independently suggested that prenatal exposure to acetamenefin can adversely affect the developing brain. It's a federally funded study that seems to show that there are some risks associated with, these kind of prescription drugs that aren't widely known about, that aren't relayed during advertisement. And that's what the memorandum aims to fix. It's, it orders the FDA to tighten up their restrictions about what these prescription drug companies can put in their advertising. Now, the fact that the president came out and stated directly that people should not take Tylenol has caused quite a buzz. It's caused some chaos, especially in the social media world.

And I think it's an important litmus test to the necessity of the memorandum, whether there actually is a problem with Tylenol's advertising or not, because that's the one that they chose as an example of the problems with prescription drug advertising. And so there's been a lot of information put out there on both sides. First and maybe most importantly, you can look at Tylenol, the brand's Twitter account in March 2017, posted, quote, we actually don't recommend using any of our products while pregnant. They later in 2019 said that they had not tested Tylenol to be used during pregnancy. And that's why they wouldn't recommend people using it because they hadn't conducted sufficient testing about it yet. Now, they had to put this on their social media and on their websites because over the last 30 years,

Tylenol and its parent company has been involved in billions of dollars of lawsuits, with people suing over fetal abnormality, liver failure, neurological defects in their unborn children, etc. The National Institute of Health says that over 50% of annual liver failures have a direct link to Tylenol, but they don't have to disclose all that information to you. All they have to do is put up some kind of thing like that on their social media and on their website to say, we don't recommend taking while pregnant. Or side effects may include liver problems, something like that. There is also a very important study from the British Journal Nature in 2020, which cautioned pregnant women about taking acetaminophen,

which again is the active ingredient in Tylenol, because it might alter fetal development. Johns Hopkins University in 2019, taking Tylenol during pregnancy is associated with elevated risks for autism and ADHD. So it's worth noting that most of this information isn't necessarily new. 2017, 2019, 2020, there are studies coming out about this. And yet people don't know about it. Tylenol is one of the most taken prescription drugs in the United States. It's taken to treat fever. And like President Trump said in the quote that I played earlier, there's not a whole lot of

alternatives for treating fever. And so the administration is arguing that people are taking it to treat fever, particularly pregnant women, are taking this to treat fever without knowing the full risks associated with taking the product. Now, on the other side of the issue, there are plenty of sources also saying that there's no problem with taking Tylenol. If you look at Politifact, which is one of the primary fact-checking institutions in the United States these days, they took Donald Trump's statement, don't take Tylenol, there's no downside. Don't take it if you're pregnant. They rated this, quote-unquote, pants on fire.

It's the worst lie that you can say. They say acetaminophen reduces fever and fever during pregnancy has been linked to birth defects and other health problems. They cite the doctors have also said that abstaining from needed medication could leave pregnant. women in negative, emotional, and mental state, and worsen underlying conditions. Which does draw an important point. I think it's a weak argument to say it's a lie because it might be necessary. That doesn't mean that there aren't risks associated with Tylenol. What they're saying is that it might still be necessary. So Trump telling people not to take it could be irresponsible. And there's something to that. Tylenol is necessary for fever and fever is a

problem for pregnant women if it goes untreated, clearly. Politifax cites plenty of studies showing that fever during pregnancy has been linked to birth defects and other health problems as well. So it's a difficult situation as to whether or not pregnant women should be taking Tylenol. But that prompted a particular group of crazies in the social media world to take a lot of Tylenol while pregnant to show President Trump that it's not going to give their baby autism. Here's a video posted by a clearly pregnant woman to TikTok talking about why she's still taking Tylenol. About to take Tylenol for my headache while pregnant because I don't take my medical advice from a man who doesn't have a date. degree in science, healthcare, or medicine, and who had a parasitic brain infection, and was addicted to heroin for 14 years. Yeah, I'll trust my doctors who have their degree.

So I point out this example to show that the trust the science, not Trump crowd, is taking Tylenol, while there might be risks associated with it, as an NIH-funded study from Harvard's Public School of Health has shown, because they fully believe that those risks aren't real, They fully believe that this potentially major side effect of taking Tylenol while pregnant doesn't exist. And that's not to say that it's verifiably true or false. At this point, I would say it's not conclusive at best, and there are plenty of studies showing that there might actually be risks. And so that brings me to my point, which is people should at least know about potential risks

associated with taking prescription drugs, particularly risks that could affect their children and affect their children's brain development and well-being. And that's what the memorandum is trying to do. trying to tell the FDA to tighten up its restrictions, to tell these restrictions and drug companies which spend $10 billion a year on direct-to-consumer advertising, that they need to be more upfront with the potential risks associated with taking their products, which can help people have a more full understanding of what they're putting in their bodies and what effect that might have on them. The next piece of news I have for you this week is an emergency petition being reviewed by the Supreme

Court entitled Mumford v. Iowa. The case is an examination of search and seizure policy for police dogs. And it's a really interesting case. It started with this woman named Ashley Mumford, who was pulled over for having a dirty license plate in March of 2022. The police officer just pulled her over because he couldn't make out a couple of the numbers on her plate. And obviously you can't drive like that. So the police officer pulled her over to make sure everything was in order. Once the police officer stopped Mumford's car, he brought in the police department's canine handler and had the drug detection dog circle the vehicle. They walked around the vehicle for about 15 to 20 seconds And this is what happened next, according to the state of Iowa.

Along the passenger side, Orozco, which is the name of the police dog, briefly rose on his hind legs, put his paws on the passenger door, and his nose momentarily, almost imperceptibly crossed the plane of the open window. The dog then alerted the police officers to the presence of drugs in the vehicle, which gave them the probable cause to search the vehicle. When they searched the vehicle, they very quickly found that this woman was in possession of methamphetamine, marijuana and drug paraphernalia. She was then later convicted of marijuana and drug paraphernalia possession, but acquitted of methamphetamine possession. So this woman, Ashley Mumford,

was suing the state of Iowa. This petition has now gone up to the Supreme Court for saying that they violated her Fourth Amendment rights, her search and seizure rights by searching the car without probable cause. Now, in the last 20 years, there have been three major Supreme Court cases about these drug detection dogs and the Fourth Amendment and how those two relate to each other. In those cases, it's held every time that police officers can use drug detection dogs during traffic stops, even if they don't have reasonable suspicion that drugs are present, so long as the drug detection dog does not enter the vehicle. So when Mumford brought this petition to the state of Iowa, she contended that when the drug dog's nose entered the vehicle through the open

window, so the dog was on the outside, put its paws up on the window, its nose briefly entered through the window, and then it alerted the police officers that there were drugs in there. And Mumford is stating that it was an illegal search, according to the Fourth Amendment, when the dog's nose crossed through the open window. Because she hadn't consented to the search of the inside of her vehicle, so she decided to sue, claiming that they did not rightfully search her car, and so none of the evidence they found during that search and seizure should be counted against her in the court case. It is worth noting that in some states, Iowa included, these canine dogs are allowed to make what they call instinctual entries, as long as they're not ordered or encouraged by officers to enter a vehicle if they detect something. thing from the outside and that's clear and they go to investigate it themselves without being prompted by an officer, they're allowed to do that. But there's some other states where you're not allowed to do that, Idaho being the example that's brought up in the case. In Idaho, that would have been extremely illegal.

The dog is not allowed to act on its own to go and search inside the car. Now, there are so many rules about lawful search and seizure that it gets really cloudy. There's a whole lot of gray area as to what police officers are allowed to do, what counts as reasonable suspicion that would give them the right to search the vehicle or search a house or something like that, it's an issue that's brought before the court all the time. And we've developed a pretty standard set of rules for what police officers are allowed to do. But with the emergence of canine detection units, there's a lot of new rules and a lot of nuance that goes along with that. So we'll see what the Supreme Court has to say. Did this drug detection dog violate this woman's Fourth Amendment rights? We'll see what the

Supreme Court has to say about it. They're hearing this petition this week. You're listening to Under the Radar with Luke Miller on Radio Free Hillsdale. 101.7 FM. The next piece of news I have for you this week is an executive order signed by the president September 22nd entitled Designating Antifa as a Domestic Terrorist Organization. The executive order states, Antifa is a militarist anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law.

It uses illegal means to organize and execute a campaign of violence and terrorism nationwide to accomplish these goals. The order particularly cites different incidents of obstruction of federal laws or federal law enforcement. standoff with ICE and other law enforcement agents, doxing and threats, death threats and violent threats against political figures and activists, and more. And it says that because of the aforementioned pattern of political violence designed to suppress lawful political activity and obstruct the rule of law, a hereby designated Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. It directs all relevant executive

departments to investigate, disrupt, and dismantle any and all illegal operations as particularly terrorist actions conducted by Antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of Antifa. And that's the most important part right there. Because the thing that makes Antifa a tricky thing to deal with is that its structure makes it very difficult to call it an actual organization. There's no leaders, it's more like a movement. They have local leaders, of course, but they have no national leaders, no national structure of an organization, even though it operates like one on the grassroots level. And so to entitle a movement as a terrorist organization is difficult unless you add that stipulation, which is if there are groups of people who claim to be operating under the banner of Antifa to

do illegal or violent things, then that is characterized as domestic terror. And that's what the executive order does. Many mainstream media outlets and even President Joe Biden claimed that Antifa is an idea. It's not really an organization. There's not Antifa cells or groups. To some extent, this is obviously untrue. There is a way that Antifa communicates with each other, that members communicate with each other to organize protests, which end up being very large protests most of the time, particularly over the 2020 summer, Antifa was a huge presence in the Black Lives Matter riots and others that went on during the 2020 summer. They took credit for setting fire to police precincts and more recently bomb threats on ice field offices, ambushing and shooting ice facility officers.

There were huge presence in the anti-ice riots of this summer in Los Angeles, where they also burned down police precincts, attacked ice officers, etc. So Antifa has a constituency. It has a member base. There might not be a leadership organization. It might not be structured that way. But there certainly is a way for Antifa members to meet up with each other, to organize and structure these protests that they go about, which end up turning to violence a lot more often than a normal political organization should.

So that's why President Trump has signed this executive order designating Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. The goal will be to crack down on people who operate under the banner of Antifa and not on particular leadership structures because, again, it doesn't have that. But Antifa themselves will be the first to tell you that they've had connections to violent riots from 2017 when they rioted at the Capitol when President Trump was first inaugurated. Over 200 people were arrested for violent protests that day. And they tried to attack the White House too. That's a story that many people have conveniently forgotten about.

The summer of 2020 with the BLM riots to 2025 with the anti-ice riots. They've had a big presence and all of that. they would be the first to tell you that. They're not ashamed of their methods. And so this executive order is a disincentive to people to operate under the banner of Antifa and allows the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, the other relevant agencies to deal with Antifa members a little bit more strictly than they would otherwise be able to. The next piece of news I have for you this week is another Supreme Court case. This one, a follow-up to a case that I've already talked about on this show, the one where the Trump administration was challenging a U.S. District Court judge ruling that requires, them to fulfill USAID contracts and spending that were made under the Biden administration. So very early on in 25, President Trump issued an executive order directing that no further United States foreign assistance shall be dispersed in a manner that is not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the President of the United States. And that executive order resulted in a Supreme Court case because there were a lot of

non-governmental organizations, NGOs, which were being funded through contracts that were made under the Biden administration. They were promised that money by the former administration. And then the Trump administration was saying this does not align with our foreign policy, allowed the Secretary of State Marco Rubio to make that call. And so he froze a lot of money that was to be spent through the U.S. Agency for International Development, through non-governmental organizations for humanitarian purposes or foreign aid purposes. A U.S. District Court judge ruled with the non-governmental organizations and said that the Trump administration was, in fact, required to fulfill the contracts and was required to spend that money about $4 billion, which is no small amount of money, even for the

the United States federal government. It's still a significant amount of money, especially given the kinds of things that they're spending it on in foreign aid. The U.S. District Court Judge actually put in his statement that the Trump administration likely has the ability and has the constitutional power to change the contract to spend that money somewhere else. Because in the first place, that money was appropriated by Congress for foreign aid. It was just that the Biden administration had decided how that foreign aid money was going to be spent. And so the Trump administration said, We don't want to spend that money. We don't want to spend the money in that way.

And so they froze the spending altogether. And the district court judge is saying, you can't just freeze the spending altogether. You might be able to change the contract, change who you're spending the money with, which NGO you're dealing with. But you still have to spend the money. The first time this made it up to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled five to four with the district court judge to say that, yes, the Trump administration did have to comply with the order and spend the money. However, the Trump administration is using a law called the impoundment control act, which allows the president. to send a proposal to Congress to withdraw the spending, and when that proposal is sent,

the funds can be frozen for up to 45 days to give Congress time to consider the president's proposal. And the president has now submitted that proposal, so the administration is arguing that they're unable to comply with the district court judge's order to spend the money by the end of the fiscal year, which is September 30th. And with that argument, the Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration and is allowing them to withhold the $4 billion in foreign aid spending. It delays it for at least 45 days, which puts us into the next fiscal year, which means that the money is not going to be spent on foreign aid in the fiscal year that it was assigned for. Plus, a Republican Congress is likely to accept the president's proposal to withdraw the $4 billion because the president doesn't want to spend it with those particular NGOs, which was the whole goal of the Trump administration and the executive order that they passed in the first place, so that they're not required to spend the way the Biden administration wanted that money to be spent or the way that a particular judge would require it to be spent. And the Supreme Court has sided with them, so it seems like they're finally going to get their way here.

The last piece of news I have for you this week is another presidential memoranda issued September 25th, 2025, entitled, Enforcing the Death Penalies Laws in the District of Columbia to deter and punish the most heinous crimes. The memorandum states federal law provides for the death penalty for criminals found guilty of especially aggravated crimes. Capital punishment is an essential part of how our justice system deters and punishes the most irreprehensible crimes that often involve grotesque and lethal violence against innocent Americans. The federal death penalty statute applies to cases of capital murder, acts of terrorism, espionage, certain drug trafficking offenses that result in death, and then the murder of federal officials or during certain federal crimes. And that seems to be the main point of this executive order because it's talking specifically about the District of Columbia, Washington, D.C.

So attacks on federal law enforcement officials, on ICE officials, on Congress people, on Supreme Court justices, et cetera. You know, the kind of people who live and work in Washington, D.C. is all punishable by death. And what this executive order is doing is extending the federal rules for the death penalty over the District of Columbia, which again, it has the right to do. It is given the right by Congress to govern the District of Columbia, especially when it's in times of emergency, which President Trump has repeatedly declared that it is and has used that pretense to establish a lot of laws in which the federal government can crack down on crime in Washington, D.C. This one in particular seems aimed

at people who attack law enforcement officials, ICE officials, police officers, members of the government, etc. We've had a lot of threats of that kind of stuff happening and this is another deterrent because a lot of those people are living in Washington, D.C. And so this is a fantastic deterrent for people who may be tempted to try to assassinate somebody in Washington, D.C., commit political violence in Washington, D.C., acts of terrorism, etc. This executive order is aimed at deterring that and extending the federal government's most severe punishment for. these kinds of particularly heinous crimes. So to recap this week, we had three executive orders, one prompting the FDA to tighten

advertising restrictions for products like Tylenol, one designating Antifa as a domestic terrorism organization, and another which extends federal death penalty laws over Washington, D.C. And we had two Supreme Court cases, one about how search and seizure applies to drug detection dogs, and another which allows the federal government to go on withholding billions in USAID funding. Tune in next week for more. Well, that's all I have for you today on Under the Radar. I'm your host, Luke Miller, and I want to thank you for listening and encourage you to tune back in next time for more coverage of the news that fell under the radar. You're listening to Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Thanks for listening to Under the Radar with Luke Miller, here on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM.