2,170 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 2, 2026, 2,170 confirmed* measles cases were reported in the United States in 2026. Among these, 2,158 measles cases were reported by 41 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, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. A total of 12 measles cases were reported among international visitors to the United States.

There have been 31 new outbreaks** reported in 2026, and 93% of confirmed cases (2,019 of 2,170) are outbreak-associated (659 from outbreaks starting in 2026 and 1,360 from outbreaks that started in 2025).

For the full year of 2025, a total of 2,289 confirmed* measles cases were reported in the United States.

Alllie Yang at NY Post:

Measles only needs a small opening — and it got one.

For the second year in a row, cases of measles — known as the world’s most infectious disease — will hit record highs, and 2026 is on track to be substantially worse than 2025.

In a matter of weeks, we’re likely to blow past last year’s total, hitting the highest number of cases in 35 years.

“This is a major public health warning sign,” epidemiologist Dr. Syra Madad told The Post. “The US is already close to last year’s total with about half the year still ahead.”

...

“Unless we interrupt transmission quickly, 2026 is likely to surpass 2025 and could do so substantially,” Madad warned.

“We should be cautious about making exact projections because outbreaks can slow when vaccination campaigns, isolation, contact tracing and community engagement are effective. But the current pattern is deeply concerning.

Trump and Institutions

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss court cases involving the civil rights of people with autism and other disabilities. 

For decades, people with autism and other developmental disabilities languished in large institutions, many of which were snake pits.  

Annie Ma at AP:

Last month, the Education Department announced it would offload oversight of special education to the Department of Health and Human Services, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose comments on the limits of disabilities such as autism have drawn sharp rebukes from advocates and lawmakers.

Meanwhile, following a White House push to police homelessness, the Department of Justice released guidance that lowered the barrier to institutionalizing any person with a disability.

Taken together, the actions signal a worrying return to a reality where people with disabilities are pushed to the margins of society, advocates said.

Trump has long called for bringing back the mental institutions.

February 22, 2018:

So we're going to be talking seriously about opening mental health institutions again, in some cases, reopening. I can tell you, in New York, the Governors in New York did a very, very bad thing when they closed our mental institutions, so many of them. You have these people living on the streets. And I can say that, in many cases throughout the country, they're very dangerous. They shouldn't be there. So we're going to be talking about mental institutions. And when you have some person like this, you can bring them into a mental institution, and they can see what they can do. But we've got to get them out of our communities.

February 26, 2018:

But, in the old days, you would put him into a mental institution. And we had them in New York, and our government started closing them because of cost. And we're going to have to start talking about mental institutions, because a lot of the folks in this room closed their mental institutions also.

 August 14, 2019:

And we're looking at mental institutions, which we used to have. Like, as an example, where I come from in New York, they closed up almost all of their mental institutions—or many of them—and those people just went onto the streets. And they did it for budgetary reasons. Well, New York is not unique; they've done that in many places.

January 20, 2026:

Signed an Executive order to bring back mental institutions and insane asylums. We're going to have to bring them back. Hate to build those suckers, but you've got to get the people off the streets.

You know, we used to have—when I was growing up, we had, in my area in Queens—I grew up in Queens. We had a place called Creedmoor. Creedmoor. Did anybody know that? Creedmoor. It was a big—I said, "Mom, why are those bars on the building?"

I used to play Little League Baseball there, at a place called Cunningham Park. I was quite the baseball player. You wouldn't believe it. But I said to my mother, "Mom"—she would be there. Always there for me. She said, "Son, you could be a professional baseball player." I said, "Thanks, Mom."

I said, "Why are those bars on the windows?" Big building. Big, powerful building. It loomed over the park, actually. It was pretty—she said, "Well, people that are very sick are in that building." I said, "Boy." I used to always look at that building, and I'd see this big building—big, tall building. It loomed over the park. It was sort of—now that I think, it was a pretty unfriendly sight.

But I'll never forget. I don't know if it's still there, because they got rid of most of them. You know, they—the Democrats in New York, they took them down, and the people live on the streets now. That's why you have a lot of the people in California and other places, they live on the streets. They took the mental institutions down. They're expensive.

But I'd say: "Why does that building have those bars? Boy." It didn't—it wasn't normal. You know, you're used to looking at, like, a window. But this, when you look at it, all the steel—vicious steel, tiny windows, bars all over the place. Nobody was getting out. It's called a mental institution. That was an insane asylum.

 

Vaccine Myths and the Malleable Middle

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.

Alex Montero et al. at KFF: 

With childhood vaccination rates in the U.S. continuing to decline as measles cases rise across the U.S., KFF’s latest Tracking Poll on Health Information and Trust shows that several commonly circulated vaccine myths remain pervasive among the public. Many adults say they have heard false claims about the measles and COVID-19 vaccines, including that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccines have been proven to cause autism in children (66%), that more people have died from the COVID-19 vaccines than the virus (46%), that mRNA vaccines can alter DNA (36%), or that measles vaccines are more dangerous than measles itself (29%).

...

When looking at patterns of belief across the four false vaccine claims, a new analysis shows that some adults are consistent or leaned myth believers (8% who say all four claims are either “probably” or “definitely true”), or myth deniers (55% who deny all four claims, saying they are either “probably” or “definitely false”). At the same time, about three in ten (31%) fall in a “mixed middle” group, providing a range of true and false answers across the four vaccine myths and lacking certainty on at least half of the false claims. This group may be an important focus for those looking to counter vaccine misinformation and dispel confusion. Black adults, Hispanic adults, Republicans, younger adults, and those without a college degree are all more likely than their counterparts to fall into this “mixed middle” group, as are individuals who go to social media or AI for health information. Notably, nearly half of parents who report skipping or delaying recommended vaccines for their children fall in the “mixed middle,” indicating that these parents’ decisions may be driven, at least in part, by uncertainty and confusion.

HHS, DOJ, and IDEA

 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.

Jerell Hill, dean of student services at Los Angeles City College, at Education Week:

On June 16, the U.S. Department of Education announced agreements moving special education oversight to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and shifting civil rights enforcement to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Education Department officials moved quickly to reassure families: The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act still stands. Individualized education programs will continue. The right to a free, appropriate public education remains intact.

I spent years as a regional director of special education. I know what oversight actually does and I know why “nothing will change” is the wrong thing to celebrate.

Oversight is the bridge between a right written on paper and a child’s ordinary Tuesday. The monitoring visits, the annual performance determinations, the technical assistance, the accountability no parent ever sees: That machinery is how a federal guarantee first enshrined in 1975 becomes an education for a real student today. When it works, a family never has to think about it. When it fails, a child loses a year they do not get back.

So, the question is not whether the law survives this reorganization. The question is what happens to the meaning underneath the law when the file moves between federal agencies and the complaint routes through a courtroom.

Here is my worry, and it is not a partisan one. Housing special education inside HHS invites a subtle reframing. It nudges us toward seeing a child as a diagnosis to manage rather than a learner whose potential the system exists to develop. Special education was won as an educational right. We can’t allow it to be redefined as a medical service.

Bianca Quilantan at POLITICO:

“The DOJ Civil Rights Division’s [Educational Opportunities] Section has lost most of its attorneys under this administration because the department made it clear that it was not interested in doing the traditional work the section had done combating discrimination in education,” said Stacey Young, a former DOJ Civil Division senior attorney who leads Justice Connection, a group of former department employees advocating against the Trump administration’s changes to the agency.

...

Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights, has said her agency will no longer be just the endpoint for the process.

“We’re taking it all in-house for the Department of Education, and doing that work for them, from soup to nuts,” she told “The Glenn Beck Program.”“Of course, they have the ultimate authority at the end of the day by statute, but 99 percent of the work is going to be done here.”

But advocates have expressed concerns that the DOJ has typically been very selective about what cases it takes up and that many complaints could fall through the cracks.

“OCR receives thousands of complaints of discrimination a year and they have the resources to better handle that volume of incoming complaints,” Young said. “DOJ just doesn’t have the same capacity. They don’t have enough lawyers and investigators, and that’s not what the lawyers and investigators they do have are trained to do.”

 

How Many Autistic College Students?

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the growing number of college students on the spectrum.  

Cox BE, Stockwell KM, Kepple CR, Francis CB. The Prevalence of Autistic College Students in the United States. Autism in Adulthood. 2026;0(0). doi:10.1177/25739581251405705

Abstract

How many autistic college students are in the United States? Research to date has not specifically addressed this seemingly straightforward question. Yet, an answer may be critical to the advancement of research, policy, and practice related to autistic students in higher education. This article addresses three related but distinct questions about autistic students’ college enrollment within the United States: (1) What percentage of autistic high school students go on to college? (2) What percentage of students registered with their postsecondary institutions’ Disability Services Offices are autistic? and (3) What percentage of enrolled undergraduates are autistic? To answer these questions, we examined 731 publications, reviewed 16 common survey instruments used at postsecondary institutions, and inspected codebooks from 6 federal datasets. Rather than employing traditional systematic review techniques, we used an iterative, consensus-driven assessment process to ultimately synthesize relevant data from 14 prior publications and 3 original author-generated statistical summaries drawn from a total of 13 distinct sources of underlying data. We conclude that the best available evidence suggests 42.9%–47.0% of autistic high school students continue on to college, 2.8%–4.0% of college students registered with their schools’ Disability Service Offices are autistic, and 0.3%–4.7% of all undergraduates are autistic. Ultimately, our calculations suggest that there are likely between 135,400 and 286,254 autistic undergraduates currently attending college in the United States. These estimates can be used by researchers, policymakers, and educators to highlight the importance of attending to the interests, needs, experiences, and outcomes for autistic students.

Undiagnosed and Older

In The Politics of Autism, I write about the everyday struggles facing autistic people and their families.

Rhiannon Evans at The Guardian:

There has been a huge shift in awareness around neurodiversity recently, with improved provision for children in schools and increased middle-age diagnosis and detection in women. Still, one group has remained underserved when it comes to support; adults over 60. A recent study estimated that 89-97% of autistic people over 60 are undiagnosed, leading experts in the field, such as Dr Louise Rutter (who last year co-authored a report on the subject for the British Psychological Society) to brand them a “neglected generation”.

The figures are for the UK, but it is likely that the American figures are similar.

First posted here in September: 

Gavin R. Stewart1 and Francesca Happé, "Aging Across the Autism Spectrum," Annual Review of Developmental Psychology  Vol. 7:461-484 (Volume publication date December 2025) https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-devpsych-111323-090813.

Abstract:

Aging in autistic populations is a historically neglected but now rapidly advancing area of research. This narrative review provides a broad overview of the current state of the field of aging on the autism spectrum by synthesizing and critically appraising findings from across a range of research priorities identified by autistic people and other stakeholder groups. These include (a) the trajectory of core autistic features; (b) health profiles, biological aging, and mortality; (c) influential life experiences and life outcomes (including transition periods such as retirement and menopause and events such as trauma and periods of crisis); (d) cognitive function, aging, and dementia; and (e) quality of life and social support. Where possible, empirical research focusing on diagnosed autistic people is presented, but due to very high rates of underdiagnosis of autism in this demographic, trait-based research is also considered. Research specifically focusing on midlife (i.e., 40–64 years) and older age (i.e., 65 years and older) is presented where available, but due to a dearth of such research, lifespan studies (i.e., samples including middle-aged and older people, but not differentiating them) are also discussed. This review concludes by identifying future research priorities, as well as key conceptual issues that researchers interested in the intersection of aging and autism should consider for this emerging and rapidly advancing area of research.

TRICARE and ABA

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the day-to-day challenges facing autistic people and their families.  As many posts have discussed, the challenges are especially great for military families.

 Berkeley Lovelace Jr., Jason Kane and Erin McLaughlin at NBC:

ABA helps children with autism to develop important life skills, said Alycia Halladay, chief science officer at the Autism Science Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy group.

“It’s all about breaking things down into smaller steps, and then also providing the appropriate reinforcement for things,” Halladay said.

“This is how we all learn, by the way,” she added. “We all learn to go to the potty by somebody reinforcing us by going to the bathroom on the potty. We learned to be on time by people reinforcing us and giving us positive accolades for being on time. Kids with autism, they get it more intensely and they get it more directed based on the skill they need help with.”

Most states have mandates requiring private insurers to cover ABA or other behavioral interventions for children with autism, Halladay said.

Those mandates, however, don’t apply to the federal government, including federal programs such as TRICARE, she said. (Some federal programs do cover the therapy for children, including Medicaid and the Federal Employees Health Benefit, the government’s health insurance program for federal employees, retirees and their families.)

In 2021, Kristi Cabiao started a nonprofit called Mission Alpha aimed at pressuring both TRICARE and members of Congress to restore broad coverage of ABA. She lobbied Congress for an independent study reviewing the effectiveness of the therapy, which was launched that same year and conducted by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Last September, the group published a 336-page report affirming that ABA should be included as a basic benefit under TRICARE, without the excessive administrative barriers that have disrupted treatment for children in military families.

The report stated the evidence to support ABA therapy “is robust” and meets “the Department of Defense’s own criteria of reliable evidence.”

Measles, Vaccines, and RFK Jr.

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 June 25, 2026, 2,134 confirmed* measles cases were reported in the United States in 2026. Among these, 2,122 measles cases were reported by 41 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, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. A total of 12 measles cases were reported among international visitors to the United States.

There have been 30 new outbreaks** reported in 2026, and 93% of confirmed cases (1,982 of 2,134) are outbreak-associated (629 from outbreaks starting in 2026 and 1,353 from outbreaks that started in 2025).

 For the full year of 2025, a total of 2,288 confirmed* measles cases were reported in the United States. 

Sheryl Gay Stolberg at NYT: 

[E]xchanges over the flu vaccine campaign are in a cache of internal C.D.C. emails obtained last week by The New York Times, and published online this week. The messages provide a detailed look at a period of transition in which the leaders of the nation’s public health agency frequently found themselves buffeted and dismayed by the agenda imposed by Mr. Kennedy and the new Trump administration.

...

The emails begin in January, before Mr. Kennedy was confirmed, and end in mid-August, about a week before the White House fired Dr. Monarez as C.D.C. director at the secretary’s request, just 29 days after her Senate confirmation. While Mr. Kennedy’s fraught relationship with the health agency is well known, the messages, coupled with interviews, shed light on how C.D.C. employees scrambled to meet his demands — often on matters regarding vaccines and autism — as the administration gutted the agency’s ranks.

...

C.D.C. political leaders went to great lengths to install Mr. Kennedy’s allies in key positions, even if they did not have crucial professional qualifications for the job, the documents show. The agency tried to use Title 42, a federal code that permits scientific experts to be hired without going through the regular civil service process, to put a businessman who was a longtime activist on behalf of parents of children with autism in charge of its National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities.

The activist, Mark Blaxill, a Harvard Business School graduate and founder of the group SafeMinds, has written books and medical journal articles on autism; one was retracted in 2023. C.D.C. human resources officials concluded that he lacked the scientific qualifications to be considered a “distinguished consultant” under the law. He now works at the agency in another capacity, and does not run the birth defects center.

The emails confirm, as The Times has previously reported, that Mr. Kennedy was deeply involved in efforts to gain control over the Vaccine Safety Datalink, or VSD, a database of millions of confidential medical records that, he believes, has the potential to prove a link between vaccines and autism, a theory that has been debunked in numerous studies. His own top aides were under pressure, too.

 ... 

While the secretary steered clear of most career scientists, at least in his early days in office, he was giving direct instructions to one of them, William Thompson, who has challenged a 2004 C.D.C. study that concluded the measles vaccine was not linked to autism, and works under government whistle-blower protections.

 Dr. Thompson was working to compile data sources for future autism studies; he called it a “high priority for Secretary Kennedy.” A note from the secretary appears just once in the email collection. He weighed in with a one-sentence message during a conversation with Dr. Thompson about a two-decade old data set used by a former C.D.C. researcher, Thomas Verstraeten.

“Bill. I’m assuming this is the verstratten original data,” Mr. Kennedy wrote.

SEE THE HELP COMMITTEE SUMMARY OF THE EMAILS.

Stephen Miller Behind the Snake Pit Memo

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss court cases involving the civil rights of people with autism and other disabilities. 

Last week, the Department of Justice quietly released a memo pertaining to the landmark 1999 disability civil rights case Olmstead v. L.C.  That precedent, the  memo claimed without evidence, increases homelessness.

Ben Penn and Celine Castronuovo at Bloomberg Law:

White House adviser Stephen Miller was the driving force behind the Justice Department’s recent memo authorizing states to institutionalize people with disabilities rather than fund community-based care, said people briefed on the situation.

Miller, the president’s powerful deputy chief of staff, was frustrated that the department’s Civil Rights Division was still reaching settlements compelling states to transfer those experiencing mental illness out of institutions, added the individuals, who spoke anonymously out of fear of retaliation.

They said Miller felt DOJ’s agreements—including one reached with South Carolina in December—would increase homelessness and didn’t adhere to President Donald Trump’s July executive order pressuring cities and states to move homeless people into treatment centers.

The June 18 DOJ Office of Legal Counsel opinion concluded states may disregard decades of Supreme Court precedent and ensuing regulations mandating integration of individuals with disabilities into home or community settings.

Spokespeople for both the White House and DOJ denied Miller played a role in the memo.
...
There is no evidence cited in the opinion demonstrating the rise in homelessness was caused by the Supreme Court’s 1999 decision in Olmstead v. L.C. holding that the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits unjustified segregation of individuals with disabilities. In a recent case study, Brandeis University researchers highlighted how states have used their Olmstead settlements to reduce housing costs for low-income people with disabilities.

RFK: Still Antivax

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.

Washington Post editorial:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his allies at the Department of Health and Human Services have quieted their efforts to restrict access to immunizations after realizing they were politically disastrous. But that doesn’t mean they stopped trying to undermine these lifesaving tools.

 In April, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention halted the publication of a study showing that last year’s covid-19 shot cut the risk of emergency department visits and hospitalizations in half among healthy adults, even though the findings cleared the agency’s scientific review process. That’s because Jay Bhattacharya, the agency’s interim director, objected to the study’s methodology, which he called “crap” and “logistically ridiculous.”

One of the nation’s top medical journals disagrees with his assessment. This week, JAMA Network Open published the rejected study, which was peer-reviewed. The journal also published commentary by Natalie Dean, a public health professor at Emory University, who explained that the study’s design, which involved comparing the test results of vaccinated and unvaccinated people who seek medical care at hospitals, had been used for decades to measure the effectiveness of shots.

The point here is not that the methodology is flawless; Dean and other vaccine researchers readily admit that it’s imperfect. The problem is that the administration tried to bury scientific evidence that contradicted Kennedy’s criticisms of covid vaccines.

The drama is playing out just as Kennedy is actively defending anti-vaccine research that was retracted in April over concerns of “serious methodological flaws.” The paper, published in Toxicology Reports, purported to find that 75 percent of sudden infant death syndrome cases occurred within seven days of vaccination, but critics found potential research errors and argued that its author misused data to suggest causality, leading its publisher to take it down.

Last week, Kennedy sent a letter to the journal’s editor in chief, demanding a “full explanation” for that retraction. This, Kennedy claimed in a social media post, would help “restore trust in public health by insisting on transparency, accountability, and open scientific inquiry — not by asking the public to accept decisions behind closed doors.”

That’s ironic, given that Kennedy and his underlings are attempting to reshape federal vaccine guidelines behind the scenes. The Post’s Rachel Roubein and Lena H. Sun report that researchers at the National Institutes of Health are being pushed to conduct research on vaccine injuries and alternative vaccine schedules, as well as toying with a plan to create a new science office at the CDC that would report to political staff.

Despite these efforts, most Americans remain solidly in favor of vaccines. But the growing case numbers of vaccine-preventable diseases show it doesn’t take many skeptics to weaken their effectiveness

Joshua Alerts in Ohio

 The Politics of Autism discusses the problems of wandering and day-to-day safety.

Kevin Accettulla at WCMH-TV:

Gov. Mike DeWine signed a bill that will create an alert system for missing children with autism.

House Bill 359 was sponsored by Rep. Cecil Thomas (D-Cincinnati) and Rep. Jennifer Gross (R-West Chester). The bill creates the Joshua Alert for cases of missing children who have autism or other developmental disabilities. Watch previous coverage in the player above.

The alert is named after Joshua Al-Lateef, a 6-year-old boy with autism who went missing in 2024 in West Chester, a suburb of Cincinnati. When his mother, Jonisa Cook, called 911, she was told there was no immediate alert that could be sent out to the community.

Hours later, Joshua was found dead in a nearby pond.

...

 Kyle Erdeljac, who testified in favor of the bill on behalf of the Ohio Fraternal Order of Police, said the bill addresses a problem for law enforcement.

“These are not our typical runaway cases,” Erdeljac said. “Many children with autism are non-verbal and unable to communicate. They may not appreciate danger the same way as you or I. Tragically, some are drawn to water, and drownings happen.”

Erdeljac said children with autism need help fast and law enforcement needs a clear way to spread the word.

The bill passed both the Ohio House and Senate unanimously.

 In recent years, five states – including Florida, Maryland, Kansas, Mississippi and Connecticut – have established emergency alerts for all individuals with disabilities. 

Blue Envelopes in Florida

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss interactions between first responders and autistic people. Some jurisdictions allow autistic drivers to ask for a blue envelope to disclose the driver's diagnosis in case of an accident or traffic stop. Others have ID cards.

 Claire O'Neil at WEAR-TV:

Starting July 1, a new law will take effect in Florida. It's focused on improving communication between law enforcement and people with autism.

The bill helps officers better identify those people before situations escalate. Law enforcement officers across the state are getting new training to help them interact with people with autism.

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Senate Bill 418 this week.

"This bill is going to be great for citizens with autism in the state of Florida, in that it's a quick disclosure for the law enforcement officer to understand that they are dealing with someone with autism, which is crucial," retired Police Lt. Jimmy Donohoe, founder of First Responder Autism Training.

That quick disclosure is a blue envelope or a blue card. The envelope will hold important information, like a person's drivers license, registration and proof of insurance.
The blue color lets officers know the individual has autism.

"This is not something that is not going to stigmatize someone," said Sherry A. White, president and CEO of Capstone Adaptive Learning and Therapy Centers. "It is just moving forward with dignity, respect, safety, better solutions, and outcomes. And being in the disability field, I for one, see this as a positivity move."

Donohoe, who fathers a son with autism, says this can help those who are nonverbal or have difficulty communicating.

"People with autism often have delayed responses," Donohoe said. "And law enforcement, we are not used to delayed responses that might indicate someone is lying to us because they have a warrant, so this bill will change the officers perspective of the person they've stopped."

"And that's so that they're not digging in and getting more upset as they go along," he said. "And the blue envelope discloses right away."

Another key component of this new law required training for officers.

"De-escalation techniques and understanding what's going on with people with autism, how they think differently than we do, and so we have to adapt to them and not them adapt to us," Donohoe said.

RFK Jr. Taking Over Special Ed: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

 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 shifting it to 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.

Michael C. Bender and Sheryl Gay Stolberg at NYT:

The Trump administration’s decision this week to put Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in charge of special education programs has sparked a sharp backlash from advocates for students with disabilities, who say the move will hurt children and that his views on autism make him unfit for the job.

Mr. Kennedy said earlier this year that children with autism would never hold a job, play baseball or go on a date. He quickly walked back the remarks, saying he was only speaking about the most severe cases — only to insist the next day that special education should be moved into his department. “They’re health-related programs rather than particularly educated programs,” Mr. Kennedy said.

Advocates for students with disabilities said that Mr. Kennedy’s comments show how the change puts disabled students at risk of being viewed as medical conditions to be treated instead of as boys and girls to be educated.

“It shows a fundamental lack of understanding of who kids with disabilities are, how they can be successful in school and how their futures can be very bright,” said Katy Neas, chief executive officer of The Arc, a national support group for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

...

Edward M. Kennedy Jr., a civil rights advocate for people with disabilities and cousin of Secretary Kennedy, said in an email that he shared concerns about shifting special education programs to the Health and Human Services Department.

His biggest worry, he said, was “the policy and philosophical shift away from viewing children with disabilities as having strengths, potential and a right to be integrated into classrooms.

“This shift to HHS reverts toward an antiquated, ‘medical model’ of disability policy that views disabled children as ‘sick’ and in need of health care, not an education,” Mr. Kennedy, a health care regulatory lawyer, said.

...

 Maria Town, the president of the American Association of People With Disabilities, said Mr. Kennedy’s views on autism, ADHD and mental illness, and his embrace of unconventional treatments, worry her. Ms. Town has cerebral palsy and said she benefited from federal protections as a student.

“Are children with autism going to be forced to engage in practices that we know don’t work?” Ms. Town said. “Kids with disabilities already get medical care from their doctors and health care practitioners. They deserve a chance to be students and to engage in the classroom like any other kid.”