Reward! $11,000 For Proof Of Bachmann’s HPV-Caused “Mental Retardation” Claim
Bioethicists have joined together to offer a reward of $11,000 to anyone who can prove the child Michele Bachmann mentioned repeatedly on television this week actually became “mentally retarded” from the HPV vaccine. One of the scientists is from Bachmann’s home state of Minnesota.
The Minnesota Star Tribune reports:
Steven Miles, a U of M bioethics professor, said that he’ll give $1,000 if the medical records of the woman from Bachmann’s story are released and can be viewed by a medical professional.
His offer was upped by his former boss from the University of Minnesota, Art Caplan, who is now director of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics. Caplan said he would match Miles’ challenge and offered $10,000 for proof of the HPV vaccine victim.
“These types of messages in this climate have the capacity to do enormous public health harm,†Miles said of why he made the offer. “The woman, assuming she exists, put this claim into the public domain and it’s an extremely serious claim and it deserves to be analyzed.â€
After attacking Texas Gov. Rick Perry over his vaccination executive order at Monday’s debate — which scored Bachmann points from debate pundits — the Minnesota Republican said a woman had told her that the HPV vaccine had caused her daughter’s mental retardation. Bachmann repeated the story on NBC’s “Today†the next morning.
“There’s a woman that came up crying to me tonight after the debate,†Bachman told Fox News. “She said her daughter was given that vaccine. She said her daughter suffered mental retardation as a result of that vaccine.â€
The comment has sparked widespread criticism from the medical community, which has said Bachmann was stoking unfounded fears similar to claims made about vaccines and Autism. The Centers for Disease Control website makes no mention of mental illness in its “adverse events†report on the HPV vaccine.
Bachmann somewhat walked back her comments Tuesday on Sean Hannity’s radio show, where she said she had “no idea†if the HPV vaccine was linked to mental illness. “I’m not a doctor, I’m not a scientist, I’m not a physician,†Bachmann said. “All I was doing is reporting what this woman told me last night at the debate.â€
Last night, Anderson Cooper called Bachmann’s claims “incredibly irresponsible,” and said, “Bachmann is spreading an all-​out falsehood here.â€
Crooks And Liars offers this sobering thought:
Bachmann has an imaginary friend. The Iowa Straw Poll winner has a made-up crying mother straw man. I think Bachmann actually meant to say “autism” and instead said mental retardation (not the same thing). There’s been an autism-is-caused-by-vaccines myth for a decade. The “doctor” who did that debunked and bogus study has since lost his license. While last year 10 infants in California have since lost their lives in a whooping cough epidemic as a result of his “work.”
Words are powerful, and when irresponsible politicians, especially ones like Michele Bachmann — who has time and time again positioned herself as a professional mother — lie, or merely repeat something they heard that turnd out to be false, they literally end up contributing to the deaths of children.
Via The New York Times in June:
“We had our five biological children that God gave to us, and then he called us to take foster children into our home,†Mrs. Bachmann told a Christian audience in 2006. “We thought we were going to take unwed mothers in,†she continued, adding, “We took 23 foster children into our home, and raised them, and launched them off into the world.”
…
The Bachmanns were licensed by the state from 1992 to 2000 to handle up to three foster children at a time; the last child arrived in 1998. They began by offering short-term care for girls with eating disorders who were treated through a program at the University of Minnesota, said George Hendrickson, the chief executive of PATH Minnesota, the private agency that handled the placements.
Yes, professional mom Michele Bachmann, whose husband, Dr. Marcus Bachmann is a medical professional, thinks it’s OK to blindly repeat stories some unknown woman supposedly told her, and scare parents all across America. Excellent example of Christian love at work.
Gail Collins in yesterday’s New York Times wrote,
About the vaccine. It’s been proved to be effective in reducing cervical cancer in sexually active women, and it apparently works best if you begin the shots around age 12. The intense opposition from the social right appears to be based on the idea that once the kids had the shots they’d be more likely to have sex. Or, in the convoluted and creepy words of Rick Santorum: “Unless Texas has a very progressive way of communicating diseases in their school by way of their curriculum, then there is no government purpose served for having little girls inoculated at the force and compulsion of the government.â€
Then, Bachmann tossed in another argument: vaccines are dangerous. “I had a mother last night come up to me … she told me her little daughter took that vaccine, that injection and she suffered from mental retardation thereafter,†Bachmann told one TV interviewer after another.
O.K., hold the phone.
Let’s presume that Bachmann is being accurate, and that the woman in question was not someone she heard about from a friend of a friend’s cousin in Xenia, Ohio. What would you expect a candidate for president of the United States to do after such an encounter? Take a name? Investigate the case? Would a contender for the White House — or even the Zoning Board of Appeals — just blurt out something they heard from a stranger that could discourage parents from accepting vaccinations that could save their children’s lives?
The Bachmann campaign did not respond to my questions about who the woman was or what the candidate did to check out the information. So I guess maybe, yeah.
Joe.My.God. says, “We’re guessing this prize will go unclaimed.”
I guess maybe, yeah.
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U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ) is accusing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents of pepper-spraying her in her face while she was at a local Tucson, Arizona restaurant.
Rep. Grijalva in a video on social media said she saw about 40 mostly-masked ICE agents at a restaurant she frequents weekly.
The agents were “in several vehicles that the community had stopped right here, right in the middle of the street, because they were afraid that they were taking people without due process, without any kind of notice.”
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She said that the community was “protecting their people” when she was “sprayed in the face by a very aggressive agent,” and “pushed around by others when I literally was not being aggressive.”
“I was asking for clarification, which is my right as a member of Congress,” she continued. “So, once I introduced myself, once I did, I assumed that it would be a little calmer, but there was literally only one person that was trying to speak to me in any kind of civil tone, and everyone else was being rude and disrespectful, and I just can only imagine if they’re going to treat me like that, how they’re treating everybody else.”
Congresswoman Grijalva said she saw “people directly sprayed,” including “members of our press” and staff members.
She blasted President Donald Trump, saying that he “has no regard for any due process, the rule of law, the Constitution — they’re literally disappearing people from the streets.”
Critics slammed the agents’ action.
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U.S. Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) wrote that Rep. Grijalva “was doing her job, standing up for her community.”
“Pepper-spraying a sitting member of Congress is disgraceful, unacceptable, and absolutely not what we voted for. Period,” he added.
“This is unacceptable and outrageous,” observed Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes. “Enforcing the rule [of] law does not mean pepper spraying a member of Congress for simply asking questions. Effective law enforcement requires restraint and accountability, not unchecked aggression.”
The Bulwark’s Sam Stein noted, “quite the beginning for Grijalva, who wasn’t seated for weeks, [cast] the decisive vote to get the Epstein files, and now has apparently been pepper sprayed in the face by immigration agents.”
Also calling the action “outrageous,” U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) wrote: “We are Members of Congress with oversight authority of ICE. Rep Grijalva was completely within her rights to stand up for her constituents. ICE is completely lawless.”
“First they tackle a sitting Senator,” noted U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY). “Now they’re pepper spraying a Representative. It’s clear ICE is spinning out of control. We will hold the agency accountable.”
ICE just conducted a raid by Taco Giro in Tucson – a small mom-and-pop restaurant that has served our community for years.
When I presented myself as a Member of Congress asking for more information, I was pushed-aside and pepper sprayed. pic.twitter.com/gPx0p3IXP2
— Rep. Adelita Grijalva (@Rep_Grijalva) December 5, 2025
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Image via Reuters
A well-known conservative commentator has a warning for the Republican Party: take action now or face a repeat of the 2018 midterms when the GOP lost 41 House seats in a landslide. And this time, he says, the Senate could go to the Democrats as well.
Award-winning writer and journalist Bernard Goldberg reminded readers at The Hill that in 2018, during President Donald Trump’s first term, “Republicans got walloped … and a good chunk of that had President Trump’s name written all over it.”
Trump’s “approval ratings were in the low 40s, and independents — the folks who usually decide elections — had seen enough. They broke hard for the Democrats,” Goldberg noted. “Now here we are, staring down 2026, and you can almost hear history clearing its throat, getting ready to repeat itself.”
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Goldberg noted that Trump’s approval rating is currently the lowest it’s been this term.
“Among Republicans, his support dropped from 91 percent right after the 2024 election to 84 percent last month. Among independents, it cratered — from 42 percent to just 25 percent.”
“If the trend continues,” he warned, “Republicans could be headed for another blue wave — and this time, it could wash away not just the House majority, but control of the Senate too.”
Why?
“It’s the economy — still,” he wrote.
“Trump is out there saying the economy is humming. Biden said the same thing before him. But voters didn’t buy it then, and they’re not buying it now. Why? Because it’s not GDP numbers that matter. It’s affordability,” Goldberg noted.
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That’s a word that President Trump continues to call a “con job,” while his own administration tries to claim he is focused on.
He pointed to a Karl Rove Wall Street Journal column and wrote: “The Republicans may have ‘avoided disaster’ in Tennessee, but the result should be a wake-up call for Republicans. He’s right.”
Goldberg asked: “will anyone in the Republican Party actually pick up the phone?”
“Because if Republicans don’t wake up — and fast — they’re going to find out the hard way what happens when you keep rerunning the same movie and expecting a different ending. To lose in 2026, all they have to do is nothing. And right now, that’s pretty much what they’re doing.”
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President Donald Trump is claiming that the top priority of Democrats is the “total obliteration” of the U.S. Supreme Court. His remarks came just hours after SCOTUS gave Republicans a 6-3 win along partisan lines, in the form of approving Texas’s redrawn mid-decade congressional maps that could help add five GOP-held seats to the U.S. House of Representatives. A lower court had ruled the redrawn Texas maps were likely racially biased.
Although there are different ways to measure, one study by Court Accountability this fall found that the Supreme Court has ruled in Trump’s favor 90% of the time.
“Most of these wins for the president came from the court’s ‘shadow docket’ slate of opinions — where the court has typically, in the past, only ruled on administrative measures,” according to Truthout. “However, in recent years, the Supreme Court has been making announcements on cases, issuing injunctions or allowances of actions to remain in place, that have the same effect, essentially, as a final decision.”
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On Friday, the president declared that the “Democrats number one policy push is the complete and total OBLITERATION of our great United States Supreme Court.”
“They will do this on their very first day in office, through the simple Termination of the Filibuster, SHOULD THEY WIN THE UPCOMING ELECTIONS,” he wrote.
Trump has strongly advocated for Republicans to eliminate the Senate filibuster.
“The Radical Left Democrats are looking at 21 Justices, with immediate ascension,” he wrote, claiming that Democrats would more than double the current size of the court.
“This would be terrible for our Country. Fear not, however, Republicans will not let it, or any of their other catastrophic policies, happen. Our Country is now in very good hands. MAGA!!!”
Some court reform advocates have suggested the Supreme Court be expanded to 13 justices, one for each of the thirteen U.S. Courts of Appeals.
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Image via Reuters
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