Senator Darline Graham

 In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the congressional role in the issue.

Sara Luterman at The 19th:

Unlike her late brother Lindsey, whose political career spanned 33 years, Darline Graham has never run for or held elected office — until she was appointed to serve the remainder of the U.S. senator’s term this week. Instead, she has worked in vocational rehabilitation, publicly funded programs that help people with disabilities overcome barriers to employment.

Due to her lack of political experience, it is difficult to know what her priorities will be between now and January 2027, when Lindsey Graham’s term ends. But to former colleagues and the disability advocates who have worked with her, there is little doubt in Darline Graham’s capabilities. They describe the 62-year-old as a dedicated civil servant who is uninterested in the spotlight and deeply knowledgeable about issues facing the disability community. And they are optimistic she will bring that experience to Capitol Hill.

Terry Collins; Bella Carpentier, and Thao Nguyen at USA TODAY:

She earned a bachelor's degree in sociology from the College of Charleston, a master's degree in rehabilitation counseling and holds certification as a public manager, according to a biography provided to The Greenville News, part of the USA TODAY Network.

For nearly seven years, she has served as a commissioner of the South Carolina Commission for the Blind, where she focused on helping blind and low-vision people achieve employment, independence and economic self-sufficiency, the biography states.

Graham Nordone began her career as a certified optician, working directly with people on eye-care needs before moving into state government. She later held positions at Clemson University and with the state employment department before joining the South Carolina Vocational Rehabilitation Department.

During 12 years with the Vocational Rehabilitation Department, Graham Nordone served as the business services director and communications director, according to the biography. She currently serves on the South Carolina State Workforce Development Board and is president-elect of the National Council of State Agencies for the Blind.

Autism, Drowning, and the Need for Swim Lessons

The Politics of Autism discusses the dangers facing autistic people, including wandering and drowning.

Tana Carson and Tania Santiago Perez at The Conversation:

Many autistic children tend to wander, which can lead them away from safe, supervised areas into unprotected, unsupervised settings – and potentially toward hazards like open water. This puts these children at increased risk for drowning, particularly if they do not know how to swim.

Swimming lessons can help reduce drowning risk, but changes to traditional classes may be required in order to meet the unique needs of autistic learners.

Autistic children communicate in a wide variety of ways, ranging from nonspeaking to highly talkative. The environment of a busy pool may trigger sensory overload and distress, causing children to cry or want to leave. Overload can also lead to difficulty following instructors’ directions. They may need extra time and assistance for emotional regulation, or need encouragement and motivation to stay engaged. Some may not want to be touched and prefer visual examples for learning new skills in the water.

For the average swim instructor, who may be teaching up to 10 children at a time and may not have training in supporting autistic children, figuring out how to meet individual needs can be a challenge.

Adaptive swim lessons, which are provided by instructors experienced at meeting autistic children’s unique learning and behavior needs, may better set them up for success. These lessons tend to have fewer participants, or even offer one-on-one instruction, allowing for plenty of individual attention. The instructor may use tools and strategies such as play-based approaches, visual schedules, sensory strategies or a consistent routine to help the child feel comfortable and successful.

State Policies on Private Equity and Autism Treatment

 The Politics of Autism includes an extensive discussion of autism service providers.  Private equity firms now own many of them.   Insurance mandates and Medicaid spending have contributed to the growth trend.

Ryan Leitner at the Private Equity Stakeholder Project:

States may want to consider policies that help address some of the specific concerns surrounding private equity ownership of ABA providers. A May 2026 article in Health Affairs both describes those specific issues and proposes regulations that could help improve oversight of ABA services and private equity’s role.

Yashaswini Singh, Corrie Mook, Jared Perkins, Nathan Hostert, and Daniel R. Arnold, the authors of the Health Affairs article,noted that, in general, private equity investment “alters workforce composition and clinician turnover,” and that the rapid growth of private equity-owned ABA services can lead to higher costs and limit access to care. The authors found that in Colorado, “PE-backed centers accounted for half of the increase in billable hours in 2024, prompting concerns over unnecessarily intense treatments that lack clinical benefit.”

To allow for greater oversight of private equity-backed ABA providers, the authors recommend:

• Generating higher quality Medicaid data with more details, including state identifiers;
• Requiring ownership transparency for provider organizations; and
• Enforcing existing anti-kickback statutes, including to investor-backed management companies.

The authors also suggest that policymakers engage with patient advocacy groups and community organizations to provide insight into how to refine reforms more quickly to avoid unintended consequences.

Measles Cases

 In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.    Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.  A top antivaxxer is HHS Secretary RFK Jr. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

From CDC:

As of July 16, 2026, 2,260 confirmed* measles cases were reported in the United States in 2026. Among these, 2,245 measles cases were reported by 44 jurisdictions: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York City, New York State, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. A total of 15 measles cases were reported among international visitors to the United States.

There have been 34 new outbreaks** reported in 2026, and 93% of confirmed cases (2,108 of 2,260) are outbreak-associated (741 from outbreaks starting in 2026 and 1,367 from outbreaks that started in 2025).

In just a week or two, we are very likely to top last year's total of 2,289, for the greatest number of annual cases in 35 years. 

At MedPage Today, Terrence Rudd reports:

[S]tudies on South Carolina and Utah's large outbreaks showed cases of encephalitis and sepsis among the hospitalized patients.

In both states, hypoxemia and pneumonia were the most common conditions leading to hospitalization for measles, with some admissions driven by electrolyte abnormalities, sepsis, and shock.

Two of 13 patients hospitalized in South Carolina developed measles encephalitis, which led to prolonged hospitalization for both and discharge to an inpatient rehabilitation facility for one patient, according to Katherine Richardson, MD, and colleagues from Prisma Health Greenville Memorial Hospital in South Carolina, writing in the New England Journal of Medicine.

RFK Jr. v. Public Health

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.    Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.  A top antivaxxer is HHS Secretary RFK Jr. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

Yasmeen Abutaleb, Dan Levine and Bo Erickson at Reuters:

Early this year, Kennedy went to his director of the NIH, Jay Bhattacharya, with a costly proposal, according to two officials familiar with the request: The research agency should spend $5 billion studying the link between vaccines and autism. That would have dedicated more than a tenth of the NIH’s annual budget to investigating a hypothesis already refuted by scientists worldwide.

Kennedy ultimately dropped the plan, which likely would have required congressional approval, after Bhattacharya convinced him the agency had dedicated enough resources to researching autism's causes, including a $50 million effort launched in September, the officials said.

...

The health secretary has rejected studies involving millions of people over the past two decades which have concluded there is no credible link. Leading medical organizations including the American Academy of Pediatrics and American Medical Association say Kennedy’s refusal to accept such findings both increases vaccine hesitancy and devalues more evidence-based efforts to help families struggling with autism.

In November, Kennedy ordered the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to be updated to say the claim that vaccines do not cause autism is "not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.” For years previously, it had said that “studies have shown there is no link between receiving vaccines and developing autism,” citing a 2012 National Academy of Medicine review of scientific papers and a 2013 CDC study.

The CDC didn’t respond to a request for comment for this article.

The health secretary has tasked Stefanie Spear, his closest adviser, with leading his department's efforts to unearth any evidence of a link, including launching a series of studies into vaccine-related injuries. The pair go back many years, having partnered together on an environmental website called EcoWatch in 2011. Spear then joined Kennedy at Children's Health Defense, the anti-vaccine organization he founded, in 2020, and served as press secretary during his 2024 presidential campaign. Kennedy, Children's Health Defense, and others have sued several news outlets, including Reuters, alleging the media organizations colluded to exclude and censor them because of their posts on COVID- and vaccine-related topics. A motion to dismiss the lawsuit is pending in D.C. federal court.

Spear has no scientific or public health background, according to her bio. Before joining Kennedy at Children’s Health Defense, she was a longtime environmental activist and communications professional.

In HHS leadership meetings, Spear often speaks for Kennedy even when he is present, three people familiar with the matter said. Kennedy has told his top officials to seek Spear's approval for their new initiatives, three people said. In staff meetings, Kennedy has directed officials to “run everything” through Spear, according to two people who have heard the directive.

Victims of the Fraud Crackdown

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the day-to-day challenges facing autistic people and their families.   Scams plague the world of autism. Some involve shady or abusive providers.

The Minnesota investigations started under the Biden administration.  

Amanda Chu and Robert King at POLITICO:

A series of high-profile scandals made Minnesota the center of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration and alleged fraud in Medicaid, the government health insurance program for low-income individuals and people with disabilities. To avert $2 billion in cuts, the state paused Medicaid reimbursements to thousands of providers like Wright in December while it implemented new anti-fraud measures.

...

While providers and patients acknowledged the need for safeguards, they say the state’s response undermines programs that made Minnesota a leader in autism therapy and assisted living services. They also warn that anti-fraud measures could deter workers from entering the care economy and increase government spending as patients without services turn to emergency rooms or require more intensive care later.

“To think that this is going to somehow create savings is a complete illusion,” said Ed Funk, a resident of Golden Valley, a Minneapolis suburb. Funk retired in February to help his wife care for their 30-year-old daughter Sophie, who has autism and a history of digestive and developmental issues. Sophie, who is slated for surgery to remove her colon, relies on the state’s night supervision and home support programs, Medicaid services deemed high risk for fraud. She needs 24-hour care from Learnability, but the state legislature recently enacted measures to cut down home support to no more than six hours a day.

Early results of the anti-fraud crackdown have left some providers and patients questioning whether the payoff was worth the disruption. Of the 2 million claims suspended for review between January and mid-May, only 0.06 percent were denied, according to state data. Its revalidation process did not reveal cases of fraud, but the Minnesota health agency flagged 59 providers — about 1 percent of those it had to revalidate — for further review.
...

“There’s a disconnect between policy decisions and how they impact communities they serve,” said Maren Christenson Hofer, executive director of the Multicultural Autism Action Network and mother to a 15-year-old child with autism. Some of the families her nonprofit served had to quit their jobs to care for their children when providers cut services during the payment freeze.

“The fraud prevention is causing so much more harm than fraud ever did,” Hofer said. “You took a financial problem and you turned it into a problem of survival.”

Appeals Court Revives Tylenol Suits

 A number of posts have discussed Trump's support for discredited notions about autism The Sept 22 White House news conference was a firehose of lies. The next month, he posted an unfounded warning about Tylenol.  RFK then tiptoed away from the idea that it definitely causes autism.  A BMJ lit review debunked the idea. A Lancet review did likewise.

Jonathan Stempel at Reuters:

A federal appeals court on Monday revived more than 500 private lawsuits against Tylenol maker Kenvue (KVUE.N), opens new tab over ‌the painkiller's alleged link to autism.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said a district court judge improperly excluded expert testimony from three doctors offered by parents and guardians who tied Tylenol use during pregnancy to autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children.

There is no firm scientific ​evidence of such a link. The issue drew greater attention after President Donald Trump and top U.S. health officials in ​September suggested a link to autism.

In a 64-page decision for a three-judge panel, Circuit Judge Guido Calabresi ⁠said the testimony from the three doctors, including the dean of Harvard University's School of Public Health, reflected methodologies used by ​other scientists, and "constitute acceptable interpretations of scientific evidence where scientists may, and in fact do, disagree."

Calabresi stressed that the appeals court ​was not deciding whether using acetaminophen causes autism or ADHD, or whether elected officials should do more to protect public health.

 

Kaine Proposal to Block the Special Education Shift

 In The Politics of Autism, I write about social services, special education, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. 

Project 2025 proposed to turn IDEA into a "no strings" block grant, effectively gutting the law and destroying protections that disability families have long relied upon. During the 2024 race, Trump denied any connection to the project, but now he proclaims it, praising OMB director Russ Vought "of Project 2025 fame."

Trump and Vought are now accomplishing their goal of ravaging the law. Instead of turning it into a block grant, they have tried firing most of the staff who enforce it.   More recently, they have shifted  OSERS to HHS and OCR to the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, headed by a political hack who uses the r-word as a slur.

Zachary Schermele at  USA TODAY:

As Education Department officials work to quell fears about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s agency having a new role in special education, the Senate is eyeing a bipartisan reproach of the move.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, told USA TODAY he's confident that a measure being voted on this month to block the change will pass out of the Senate's education committee with at least some Republican support.

While the exact details of the legislation aren't definitive yet, he said the plan is to advance an amendment that would shield the Education Department's special ed programs from shifting to the Health and Human Services Department. HHS is led by Kennedy, whose controversial past comments have left the disability rights community on edge since the so-called "interagency agreement" was announced in June. He said during a press conference last year, for instance, that autism "destroys families."

Lilla Ross at SmartBrief:

 “These are not just bureaucratic moves,” said Andrew Marcum, academic director of Disability Studies Programs at the CUNY School of Professional Studies, in an interview. “There are reasons why we have special education within a department of education, and it has to do with many decades of organizing and activism.”

...

“The reason that we stopped having the health department oversee education for disabled students is because of the recognition that it’s not a health issue, it’s an educational issue,” Marcum said. “It’s how do we make our classrooms accessible? How do we make our curriculum accessible? How do we make the teaching accessible?”

The concern is not only symbolic. The Education Department’s special education office monitors state compliance with IDEA and helps guide how schools serve students with disabilities. Its civil rights office handles discrimination complaints, including those involving disability access. Moving or splitting that work, advocates say, could make an already difficult system harder for families to navigate.

Marcum said the key questions are practical: who will have the expertise to oversee schools, how states will be held accountable and what happens to families seeking help when services are denied.

Moving Special Ed: Failure of Reassurance

 In The Politics of Autism, I write about social services, special education, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. 

Project 2025 proposed to turn IDEA into a "no strings" block grant, effectively gutting the law and destroying protections that disability families have long relied upon. During the 2024 race, Trump denied any connection to the project, but now he proclaims it, praising OMB director Russ Vought "of Project 2025 fame."

Trump and Vought are now accomplishing their goal of ravaging the law. Instead of turning it into a block grant, they have tried firing most of the staff who enforce it.   More recently, they have shifted  OSERS to HHS and OCR to the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, headed by a political hack who uses the r-word as a slur.

Jonaki Mehta at NPR:

In a call with disability rights advocates Thursday, officials from the U.S. Department of Education tried to ease concerns about plans to move the agency's special education offices to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

"Today's briefing left more questions than answers for parents and educators," says Chad Rummel, who leads the Council for Exceptional Children, and was one of many disability advocates who attended the call. "Today we heard that there is no clear and transparent plan around the move to HHS."

According to a recording of the call obtained by NPR, the acting assistant secretary overseeing special education, Kelly Rogers, said she wanted to reassure advocates that the move would not harm federal protections for students with disabilities. "The U.S. Health and Human Services is not taking over IDEA. Period." Rogers was referring to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, a federal law that guarantees students with disabilities a quality public education alongside their nondisabled peers.

Yet Rogers also said in the same breath that staff at the Office for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) — many of the people actually responsible for supporting states and schools in implementing IDEA — would be moving to HHS. She said she would continue to oversee that staff from her perch at the Education Department "with additional support by HHS."

While department officials have been pitching this move as a way to streamline federal bureaucracy in education, advocates think it is doing the opposite. "This proposal appears to add another layer of bureaucracy while creating additional confusion and uncertainty for families, educators, and state agencies," says Denise Marshall, CEO of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA).
...

"The administration acknowledged today what the law has always required: The Department of Education and the secretary of education remain legally responsible for administering and enforcing IDEA. This reorganization neither advances the stated goal of closing the department nor transfers new authority to the states," says Marshall of COPAA. She called on Congress to step in and stop this move — a federal agency can only be completely dissolved by an act of Congress.

But as Marshall and other advocates pointed out, administration officials seem keenly aware of this fact, which may be why the Education Department is keeping some staff, including Rogers, at the Education Department.

Marshall called the strategy "a sham."

Imported Measles Cases

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.    Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.  A top antivaxxer is HHS Secretary RFK Jr. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

Some social media commenters blame the increased invidence of meassles in the United States on undocumented immigrants.  There are a couple of problems with this notion.  First, ever since President Biden finally clamped down in early 2024, border crossings have declined greatly.  Second, most "imported" cases come from US residents returning from trips abroad.

Mathis AD, Raines K, Filardo TD, et al. Measles Update — United States, January 1–April 17, 2025. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2025;74:232–238. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm7414a1.

A multistate measles outbreak, predominantly affecting members of close-knit communities with low measles vaccination coverage in New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas began in January 2025. As of April 17, a total of 800 cases have been reported in the United States in 2025; 654 (82%) cases in New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas have been associated with the ongoing outbreak. These cases represent an approximately 180% increase over the 285 measles cases reported in the United States during all of 2024, and the second highest annual case count in the United States in 25 years. Overall, 771 (96%) patients have been unvaccinated or had unknown vaccination status (77% were unvaccinated, and 14% had unknown vaccination status when excluding 590 cases reported by Texas, which requires explicit consent by law [i.e., opt-in] to enroll in the Texas Immunization Registry), 85 (11%) patients have been hospitalized, and three patients have died. Among 48 (6%) internationally imported cases, 44 (92%) occurred among U.S. residents. 

 Lee AD, Clemmons NS, Patel M, Gastañaduy PA. International Importations of Measles Virus into the United States During the Postelimination Era, 2001-2016. J Infect Dis. 2019 Apr 19;219(10):1616-1623. doi: 10.1093/infdis/jiy701. PMID: 30535027; PMCID: PMC6474820.

Background

Although measles was declared eliminated from the United States in 2000, measles cases and outbreaks continue to occur, resulting from importations of the disease from countries where it remains endemic.
Methods

We describe the epidemiology of international importations of measles virus into the United States during the post-elimination era.
Results

From 2001 to 2016, 553 imported measles cases were reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A median of 28 importations occurred each year (range: 18–80). The median age of imported case-patients was 18 years (range: three months–75 years); 87% were unvaccinated or had an unknown vaccination status. U.S. residents (as opposed to foreign visitors) accounted for 62% of imported measles cases. Overall, 62% of all imported case-patients reported travel to countries in the Western Pacific and European Regions of the World Health Organization during their exposure periods. The number of measles importations from specific countries was related to the incidence of measles in and the volume of travel to and from the source country.
Conclusions

Our findings emphasize the importance of measles vaccination of U.S. residents aged ≥6 months before international travel according to Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommendations and supporting global measles elimination efforts

2,231 Measles Cases

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.    Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.  A top antivaxxer is HHS Secretary RFK Jr. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

From CDC:

As of July 9, 2026, 2,231 confirmed* measles cases were reported in the United States in 2026. Among these, 2,218 measles cases were reported by 42 jurisdictions: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York City, New York State, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. A total of 13 measles cases were reported among international visitors to the United States.

There have been 32 new outbreaks** reported in 2026, and 93% of confirmed cases (2,082 of 2,231) are outbreak-associated (717 from outbreaks starting in 2026 and 1,365 from outbreaks that started in 2025).

In just a week or two, we are very likely to top last year's total of 2,289, for the greatest number of annual cases in 35 years.

Lena H. Sun at WP:

When South Carolina was battling an outbreak that ultimately sickened 997 people, most of them this year, the health department had lost dozens of epidemiologists, infection preventionists and other public health staff as a result of federal funding cuts, said Linda Bell, who recently retired as state epidemiologist.

“That was just very taxing for the remaining staff,” Bell said in an interview.

South Carolina scrambled to hire temporary staff, but Bell said the reinforcements couldn’t replace the expertise that had been lost and officials ultimately shifted from containment to mitigation.

The virus surged through dozens of schools in Spartanburg County, the outbreak epicenter, which long had lower childhood vaccination rates than much of the state. Students were sent into quarantine multiple times before the outbreak was declared over in April. Schools that required multiple rounds of quarantine had average vaccination rates of 77 percent, according to a recent study by Cornell University researchers.

Researchers said South Carolina’s outbreak reflected a pattern seen repeatedly in the U.S., in which faith communities with shared views on vaccination sustain and amplify transmission. Twenty-nine cases were linked to one church.

“I think that we transitioned from containment to mitigation because we saw ongoing spread for weeks and weeks,” said Bell, who retired in April.

...

Messages from elected and appointed leaders who reject evidence-based public health recommendations have undermined outbreak responses, said Bell, who did not identify officials by name. Since taking office, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has questioned vaccine safety, reshaped federal vaccine policy and criticized long-standing vaccination recommendations.

“In the past ... we were battling the diseases,” Bell said. “We were not battling this misinformation that is now coming from an entirely different stream that is within the federal government.”

 

Falling Short on IDEA Part B

 In The Politics of Autism, I write about social services, special education and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. 

 Kara Arundel at K-12 Dive:

• More than half of U.S. states and territories did not meet annual targets for implementing federal special education services for students with disabilities ages 3-21, according to a summary of the state determinations issued June 18 by the U.S. Department of Education.
• The latest annual state determinations for implementing the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act also found that only 22 states meet the law’s implementation requirements and improvement efforts for early intervention services to infants and toddlers with disabilities and developmental delays.
• As schools experience both an uptick in the number of students with disabilities qualifying for special education services and a special educator shortage, the IDEA state and district accountability system play an important role in ensuring schools are meeting students’ needs.

From the departmental summary:

MEETS REQUIREMENTS Alabama Massachusetts Rhode Island Connecticut Missouri Republic of Marshall Islands Florida Nebraska South Dakota Illinois New Hampshire Texas Indiana New Jersey Virginia Kansas Ohio Wisconsin Kentucky Pennsylvania Wyoming 

NEEDS ASSISTANCE (one year) Maryland Minnesota North Dakota 

NEEDS ASSISTANCE (two or more consecutive years) Alaska Georgia Oklahoma American Samoa Guam Oregon Arkansas Hawaii Republic of Palau Arizona Idaho Puerto Rico California Iowa South Carolina Colorado Louisiana Tennessee Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands Michigan Utah Mississippi Virgin Islands Delaware Montana Washington Federated States of Micronesia Nevada West Virginia North Carolina

NEEDS INTERVENTION Bureau of Indian Education New Mexico New York District of Columbia Vermont Maine

Autism Journalism

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss coverage of autism in the mass media.

Kristen Hwang at the Association of Health Care Journalists:

In the face of government-sanctioned misinformation campaigns about autism, journalists must do more to include autistic voices in stories and recognize the nuance in each person’s disability experience, panelists at Health Journalism 2026 said.

Autism and other forms of neurodiversity are normal variations in brain function and should not be framed as a condition that needs to be “cured,” Milena Bates, speaker and co-founder of the Minnesota Autistic Alliance, said during the session.

“Neurodiversity is just a fact, same as diversity in general,” Bates said.

That means a universal autistic experience doesn’t exist and that reporters should seek out a variety of perspectives for their stories. People require varying levels of interventions and support, and a therapy that is helpful for one person may be harmful for another. Without neurodiverse voices, stories about the community are often “wrong about a lot of things,” Bates said.

Speaking with autistic people is particularly important, argued Bates and Julia Métraux, disability reporter for Mother Jones, at a time when Trump administration officials have pushed a narrative that erases the dignity of people with disabilities.

In 2025, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declared the country would “eliminate” the “autism epidemic” within five months. Kennedy has supported policies casting doubt on vaccine safety and insisted, despite decades of evidence to the contrary, that vaccines cause autism.

The over-medicalization of autism, the implication that it is a disease that can spread, and the suggestion that autistic people need to change is harmful, disability advocates say.