The political and legal battle escalates over an alleged member of a violent gang deported to El Salvador. RFK Jr. launches a series of studies into the causes of autism, prompting both condemnation and praise. And, Democrats take aim at President Donald Trump over his call for the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates, while Trump touts key economic wins.

It’s Monday, April 21, and this is the news you need to know to start your day. If you’d rather listen to your news, today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below:

Deportation Debate Continues

Topline: Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) is back stateside after visiting suspected gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador.

Van Hollen returned from El Salvador over the weekend after meeting with suspected MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador last week. Garcia was detained and deported to a megaprison there along with more than 200 other suspected gang members last month. Critics have argued that Garcia’s due process rights were violated, and a federal judge has ordered that he be brought back to the United States immediately. The Trump administration has insisted that the matter is out of its hands – and that, gang member or not, Garcia is an illegal alien and should have been deported anyway.

“My goal was to meet with [Abrego Garcia] and make sure I could tell his wife and family he was OK,” Van Hollen told ABC.

When questioned about Garcia’s alleged connection to MS-13, Van Hollen deflected.

“What Donald Trump is trying to do here is change the subject,” Van Hollen said. “The subject at hand is that he and his administration are defying a court order to give Abrego Garcia his due process rights. They are trying to litigate on social media what they should be doing in the courts… What [Garcia] told me was he was sad and traumatized that he was being imprisoned because he has committed no crimes, and that goes to the heart of this issue.”

RFK Commissions New Studies of Autism ‘Epidemic’ 

(Photo by Nora Carol Photography via Getty Images)

Topline: HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is commissioning a series of studies to investigate potential environmental factors that might contribute to autism.

RFK Jr. commissioned the new studies shortly after previous data were released indicating a surge in autism diagnoses in recent years.

“The autism epidemic is running rampant,” Kennedy said.  “One in 31 American children born in 2014 are disabled by autism. That’s up significantly from two years earlier and nearly five times higher than when the CDC first started running autism surveys in children born in 1992.. Prevalence for boys is an astounding 1 in 20 and in California it’s 1 in 12.5.”

“President Trump has tasked me with identifying the root causes of the childhood chronic disease epidemic — including autism,” Secretary Kennedy continued. “We are assembling teams of world-class scientists to focus research on the origins of the epidemic, and we expect to begin to have answers by September.”

The Autism Society of America actually condemned Kennedy for those remarks, calling them “harmful, misleading, and unrealistic.” The organization said that autism is a “complex developmental disability” and it’s “neither a chronic illness nor a contagion, that qualifies harmful language like ‘epidemic.’”

Another autism organization, Autism Speaks, has suggested that the rise in autism cases is largely due to better screening, better understanding of the disorder, and therefore a higher diagnosis rate. The organization said that other genetic and environmental factors are still being studied, but they likely account for only a small part of the increase. Kennedy believes that’s flipped, and that only a small portion of the increase can be attributed to a better diagnostic process.

Economic Update

Topline: Democrats are up in arms about President Trump’s latest economic moves, but Team Trump says he’s doing exactly what Americans elected him to do.

Democrats are accusing Trump of crossing the line by pressuring the Fed Chair, Jerome Powell, to lower interest rates. Powell appears to be digging in, while the president is now openly saying his termination can’t come soon enough.  Powell’s term is scheduled to end May 15, 2026. Trump’s team is reportedly looking into whether there are ways to remove Powell early. Democrats argue that this is an unprecedented violation of the balance of powers.

“There’s a reason we have an independent Fed,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) told CNN. “It has served us well through many crises, through downturns, through depressions, through the pandemic. They’re able to respond and stabilize things. And what Jerome Powell is doing right now is warning that these tariffs are having a huge destabilizing effect on our economy and hurting everyday people. And that’s going to affect decisions that the Fed makes. That’s his job and he’s doing it.”

Meanwhile: Trump is maintaining his pause of higher tariffs for most countries – except China – for 90 days, and he’s set a 10% baseline tariff on imports to encourage negotiations. The Trump administration says at least 75 countries have reached out to negotiate at this point. As we’ve reported, the major outlier is China, which has escalated tariffs in response. A few days ago, Trump indicated an openness to making a deal to protect consumers, but no talks with Xi Jinping have been confirmed yet. 

Japanese negotiators met with U.S. officials recently, with Trump citing “big progress.” Toyota is considering shifting RAV4 production to the United States to mitigate the impact of tariffs. Likewise, Trump reported a “great call” with South Korea focusing on steel and automobiles. Vietnam has also offered to remove all tariffs on U.S. goods. Discussions with India are also in progress, with India angling for a bilateral trade agreement to boost trade to $500 billion by 2030.

The European Union has paused retaliatory tariffs on the U.S. and is advocating for a zero-tariff agreement. As for the UK, talks with Prime Minister Keir Starmer are ongoing, with Vice President JD Vance expressing optimism that any deal they reach will be mutually beneficial.