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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.    Under Bobby, measles outbreaks have increased.

From what's left of CDC:

As of October 14, 2025, a total of 1,596 confirmed* measles cases were reported in the United States. Among these, 1,573 measles cases were reported by 42 jurisdictions: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York City, New York State, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. A total of 23 measles cases were reported among international visitors to the U.S.

There have been 44 outbreaks** reported in 2025, and 86% of confirmed cases (1,380 of 1,596) are outbreak-associated. For comparison, 16 outbreaks were reported during 2024 and 69% of cases (198 of 285) were outbreak-associated.

*CDC is aware of probable measles cases being reported by jurisdictions. However, the data on this page only includes confirmed cases jurisdictions have notified to CDC.

**CDC reports the cumulative number of measles outbreaks (defined as 3 or more related cases) that have occurred this year in the U.S.; states have the most up-to-date information about cases and outbreaks in their jurisdictions

.

Slashing the Special Ed Office: Long-Term Impact

 In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the issue's role in presidential politics. Many posts have discussed Trump's bad record on disability issues. As his words and actions have shown, he despises Americans with disabilities. He told his nephew Fred that severely disabled people -- such as Fred's son -- should "just die."

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 are firing most of the staff who enforce it.  A judge has temporarily paused the attack, but the administration will likely find ways to ignore or circumvent the order.

Linda Jacobson at The 74:

Officials often “moved slowly and allowed noncompliance to continue for too long,” said Callie Oettinger, an advocate in Virginia. There are some parents, she said, who have no problem with federal employees losing their jobs.

“At the same time, they’re terrified because, as problematic as some staff members were, they did more than the states,” she said. “It’s a case of be careful of what you ask for.”

It took federal officials, she said, to force Texas in 2017 to lift an arbitrary cap on the number of students receiving special education services. The limit meant that schools often denied special education services to students with autism, ADHD and epilepsy or offered cheaper accommodations. Gov. Greg Abbott blamed teachers, while educators insisted they were following the Texas Education Agency’s instructions to identify fewer students for special instruction.

“Can you imagine Texas without OSEP’s monitoring?” Oettinger asked. “Not even major investigations by the Houston Chronicle and others, which made the noncompliance public, resulted in the state making its own changes.”

The special education office often works hand-in-hand with the Office for Civil Rights when schools violate student rights. In fact, despite the investigations that make the news, nearly 70% of the complaints OCR handles are related to disability, said Beth Gellman-Beer, co-founder of Evergreen Education Solutions, a consulting firm, and a former regional director for OCR’s Philadelphia office.

One OCR attorney who received a layoff notice said she’s “deeply concerned” about how the potential layoffs could affect students.

“The mass elimination of OCR offices that have over 25,000 open cases leaves those complainants without any recourse, let alone answers as to if their case will move forward,” she said. She asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “States are not prepared to handle these concerns.”

Judge Pauses the Attack on Special Ed

 In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the issue's role in presidential politics. Many posts have discussed Trump's bad record on disability issues. As his words and actions have shown, he despises Americans with disabilities. He told his nephew Fred that severely disabled people -- such as Fred's son -- should "just die."

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 are firing most of the staff who enforce it.

 Zachary Schermele at USA Today:

A federal judge on Wednesday, Oct. 15, temporarily paused the U.S. Department of Education's decision to lay off nearly everyone in its special education division.

Judge Susan Illston in the Northern District of California issued the ruling, which applies to both the Education Department firings as well as thousands of others that swept through the federal workforce over the weekend.

In a court hearing, Illston blasted the White House, accusing President Donald Trump of using the government shutdown for political reasons.

"It's very much ready, fire, aim on most of these programs," she said. "It's a human cost that cannot be tolerated."

...

[Secretary of Education Linda McMahon] suggested that no education funding, including money for special education programs, will be impacted by the new layoffs. Yet nearly every person in charge of administering billions of dollars through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act was fired, a staffer previously told USA TODAY.

Before the temporary restraining order was issued Wednesday, the Education Department firings weren't scheduled to fully take effect for about two months.

Trump's Attack on Special Ed

 In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the issue's role in presidential politics. Many posts have discussed Trump's bad record on disability issues. As his words and actions have shown, he despises Americans with disabilities. He told his nephew Fred that severely disabled people -- such as Fred's son -- should "just die."

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 are firing most of the staff who enforce it.

Eric Garcia at MSNBC:

Over the weekend, the Trump administration fired almost all employees in the Department of Education’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services. The mass dismissals were part of President Donald Trump and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought’s attempts to pressure Democrats to cave to their demands, as the government shutdown continues. The firings also fit neatly with Trump’s track record on these issues. Throughout his career, Trump has shown little regard for people with disabilities. As president, he has sought to abolish the Department of Education and tapped Linda McMahon, a former WWE executive with scant experience in education, to neuter the department.

The administration’s decision to remove almost all personnel for the special education office is not just a betrayal of students with disabilities. It also is the final nail in the coffin for Republican support of the idea that people with disabilities can and should access public education so that they can empower themselves and live a fulfilling life.

From the Autism Society:

A broad coalition of national, state, and local disability, civil rights, and education organizations is sounding the alarm over sweeping layoffs at the U.S. Department of Education. These cuts have gutted key offices—including the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), the Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA), the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), and the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE)—threatening decades of progress in protecting students with disabilities.

These wholesale terminations place fundamental education laws in peril and place millions of children with disabilities at risk who receive services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and Title IV of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. These layoffs circumvent the will of Congress and dismantle 50 years of precedent upholding rights for students with disabilities. Without personnel to oversee these laws, the Department cannot provide essential leadership, oversight, guidance, or support to states and schools—jeopardizing students’ access to a free, appropriate public education and hampering the ability of states and localities to serve all students. In addition, the terminations also threaten the vocational rehabilitation system that helps youth and adults with disabilities become employed.

Gutting the Special Ed Office

 In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the issue's role in presidential politics. Many posts have discussed Trump's bad record on disability issues. As his words and actions have shown, he despises Americans with disabilities. He told his nephew Fred that severely disabled people -- such as Fred's son -- should "just die."

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 are firing most of the staff who enforce it.

Cory Turner at NPR:

According to sources, all staff in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS), with the exception of a handful of top officials and support staff, were cut in Friday's RIF. The office is the central nervous system for programs that support students with disabilities, not only offering guidance to families but providing monitoring and oversight of states to make sure they're complying with the landmark Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

Lisa Lightner:

What does this mean? 

• Staff responsible for IDEA oversight, state guidance, and enforcement are gone.
• Many of the technical assistance centers and discretionary grant programs OSEP manages are now unfunded or leaderless.
• Parent centers and state agencies that rely on OSEP for compliance answers? Emails are bouncing and phones are ringing to no one. (I too, tried emailing some contacts there and it bounced back)The message is clear: OSEP wasn’t restructured. It was erased.

Without OSEP, there’s no one left at the federal level to ensure your school is following the law. No one to oversee FAPE. No one to push back when a district cuts services. And no, this isn’t a drill. It’s happening now.

What This Means for Parents and Teachers — TODAY

You know all those rights you’ve read about in IDEA?

There’s no one left to enforce them.

Fewer protections for your child’s IEP

OSEP was the agency that:

• Issued guidance letters explaining your rights
• Clarified gray areas in IDEA
• Investigated when states or districts broke the law

Now? That accountability structure is collapsing. If your school refuses services or ignores an IEP… there’s no one federally overseeing that anymore.

 

Measles, Fall 2025

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.

At CNN, Deidre McPhillips reports that measles outbreaks continue:

A deadly measles outbreak in Texas ended in August, but outbreaks in other parts of the United States continue to add hundreds of new measles cases to this year’s record national total.

There have been an average of 27 new measles cases reported each week since the end of August, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The annual total – now up to 1,563 cases since January – is the highest by a significant margin since measles was declared eliminated in the US a quarter-century ago.

There’s a new outbreak in Ohio, a recent surge in cases in Minnesota and more than 150 unvaccinated schoolchildren in South Carolina are in quarantine because of an ongoing outbreak there.

Before this year, the US had recorded only 10 large measles outbreaks – defined by the CDC as more than 50 related cases – since reaching elimination status in 2000. But an ongoing outbreak along the border between Arizona and Utah is already the third large outbreak this year.

At NPR,   Maria Godoy writes:

But the true total could be even higher, says Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

"If you talk to people on the ground, including not only in Texas, but other states, they all say the same thing, which is that the numbers are much worse than that. Probably closer to 5,000 cases," Offit says. "And it's not done."

...

The disease was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000. To protect communities against outbreaks, they need a vaccination rate of 95%, according to the CDC.

Nationwide, measles vaccination rates have been slipping for years — they're currently at 92.5%. The trend predates the current administration, but Dr. Adam Ratner, a pediatric infectious disease specialist in New York City, says it doesn't help that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a long history of criticizing vaccines. Ratner notes that acting CDC Director Jim O'Neill has suggested breaking up the standard measles, mumps and rubella vaccine into three separate shots, which Ratner says is neither feasible nor is it backed by data.

The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to NPR's request for comment on Sunday.

"It's no wonder that parents are, you know, confused and frightened," says Ratner, the author of Booster Shots, a history of the fight against measles and its recent resurgence.

Trump's Attack on People with Disabilities

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the issue's role in presidential politics. Many posts have discussed Trump's bad record on disability issues. As his words and actions have shown, he despises Americans with disabilities. He told his nephew Fred that severely disabled people -- such as Fred's son -- should "just die."

Arthur Jones II at ABC:

The nation's special education services have been significantly impacted after Friday's mass layoffs within the Department of Education and it could have an immediate impact on children with disabilities, education department sources told ABC News.

"Do people realize that this is happening to this population of vulnerable students?" one education department leader told ABC News.

"[If] there's no staff, who the heck is going to administer this program? That's the absurdity of this," the source, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution, added.

The department leader stressed that several employees within the offices of Special Education Programs and the Rehabilitative Services Administration -- the two divisions that make up the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) -- were cut over the weekend.

The agency enforces the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the law creating a free and appropriate education for children with disabilities, and funds special education services to the tune of around $15 billion.

...

Rachel Gittleman, the president of AFGE Local 252, believes all remaining offices in OSERS below the senior executive services level were RIFed Friday.

“The RIF of OSERS and OESE doubles down on the harm to K-12 students and schools across the country, which are already feeling the impacts of a hamstring Office for Civil Rights (OCR) from the March RIF,” she said.

 

 

Kennedy v. People Who Know What They Are Talking About

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 number of posts discussed Trump's support for the discredited notion.

 Another leading anti-vaxxer is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  He has repeatedly compared vaccine mandates to the Holocaust.  Rolling Stone and Salon retracted an RFK article linking vaccines to autism.  He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

He is now Trump's Secretary of HHS. 

He connected circumcision to autism on the grounds that parents often give their kids Tylenol after the bris.  He was talking nonsense, as Ariana Eunjung Cha explains at WP:

The first, which came out in 2013 in Environmental Health, claimed a strong correlation between autism prevalence in males in eight countries and circumcision rates. The authors said the purpose of their study was to look at newborn exposure to paracetamol (another name for acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol) which they said was widely prescribed since the mid-1990s for male circumcision.

One of the paper’s authors, Ann Bauer, also co-authored a 2025 analysis that linked Tylenol use during pregnancy to an increased risk of autism in children — a paper that officials from the Trump administration cited when issuing a related warning last month. Bauer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Helen Tager-Flusberg, a professor emerita at Boston University, called the 2013 study “quite abysmal.”

She questioned the study’s methodology, saying it did not look at key variables related to autism diagnosis such as the average age of parents having children or increased awareness of autism leading to more diagnoses. She said the study did not have enough data to establish a correlation between autism, much less a causal relationship. And she questioned the basic premise of the research in the first place.

...A second peer-reviewed study based on Danish national health system data was published in 2015 in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, a British publication. It claimed that circumcised boys had a 46 to 62 percentage increase in risk of autism spectrum disorder in the first 10 years of life likely than non-circumcised boys. Their explanation for the possible link focused more on pain.

“While no firm conclusions should be drawn at this point, several lines of evidence are compatible with a possible causal role of circumcision trauma in some cases,” the authors wrote. That study called the previous paper’s assumption that boys undergoing circumcision always get paracetamol as a pain medication “questionable” but said they had no data to address the hypothesis.

Mary Kekatos at ABC:

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) hit back at an op-ed written by the most recent six surgeons general, who said they wanted to warn the U.S. about the dangers of Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The op-ed, published in The Washington Post on Tuesday, called the health secretary’s policies and positions an "immediate and unprecedented" threat to the nation’s health.

In a statement to ABC News, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said the doctors are the same officials "who presided over the decline in America's public health."...In the op-ed, the surgeons general referenced views held by Kennedy, including repeating the false claim that childhood vaccines cause autism and misrepresenting risks of COVID-19 vaccines, 
despite studies that found the shots prevented millions of hospitalizations and deaths.

...

In the op-ed, the surgeons general referenced views held by Kennedy, including repeating the false claim that childhood vaccines cause autism and misrepresenting risks of COVID-19 vaccines, despite studies that found the shots prevented millions of hospitalizations and deaths.

...

The op-ed comes about a month after seven former directors and two former acting directors of the CDC wrote an op-ed for The New York Times, accusing Kennedy of endangering the health of Americans.

 

RFK Jr. v ... Circumcision?

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 number of posts discussed Trump's support for the discredited notion.

 Another leading anti-vaxxer is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  He has repeatedly compared vaccine mandates to the Holocaust.  Rolling Stone and Salon retracted an RFK article linking vaccines to autism.  He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

He is now Trump's Secretary of HHS. 

Allison Parshall at Scientific American:

Today, in a cabinet meeting, U.S. secretary of health and human services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., claimed that there is a link between autism and circumcision. “There’s two studies that show children who are circumcised early have double the rate of autism. It’s highly likely because they are given Tylenol,” he stated, without citing the studies.

Kennedy was probably referring to a 2013 study of eight countries and a 2015 study from Denmark, both of which claimed to show a link between circumcision and autism rates. Helen Tager-Flusberg, an autism researcher and a professor emerita at Boston University, calls the methods used in those studies “appalling.” Tager-Flusberg leads the Coalition of Autism Scientists, a group that advocates for high-quality autism research.

Neither study shows a causal link between circumcision—or the pain relief medications that are often prescribed along with the procedure—and higher rates of autism. In the decade-plus since each was published, autism researchers have heavily criticized these studies. And after reviewing both studies, scientists last year found no evidence supporting the claim that circumcision leads to autism or any other adverse psychological effects.

There is also very little evidence that giving acetaminophen (sold under the brand name Tylenol) to babies or children increases their risk of being diagnosed with autism. There is also very little evidence, as the secretary of health and human services recently suggested, that acetaminophen taken during pregnancy increases a baby’s risk of developing autism.

Charlotte Causit at AFP:

As for the circumcision theory, the most widely cited paper, published by Danish researchers in 2015, was "riddled with flaws" that were pointed out by other scientists at the time, David Mandell, a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine, told AFP.

Specifically, he said, the study relied on a tiny sample of Muslim boys circumcised in hospitals rather than at home -- the dominant cultural practice.

Because those children were hospitalized, Mandell said, it was likely they were "otherwise medically compromised," which could explain higher rates of neurodevelopmental disorders.

 

KFF Poll on Tylenol and Autism

A number of posts discussed Trump's support for discredited notions about autism The Sept 22 White House news conference was a firehose of lies.

KFF:

KFF’s latest Tracking Poll on Health Information and Trust, fielded a day after the Trump administration warned that taking Tylenol during pregnancy can cause autism in children despite no evidence of a causal relationship, finds that three-quarters (77%) of the public report having heard this claim, and many are unsure whether it is true. Overall, just 4% of adults say it is “definitely true” that taking Tylenol during pregnancy increases the risk of the child developing autism, while a much larger share (35%) say the claim is “definitely false.” Most adults – including majorities across many demographics – express uncertainty, saying the unproven claim is either “probably true” or “probably false.” Belief in this claim is closely tied to partisanship, with most Republicans, including over half of Republican women, saying it is either “probably” or “definitely true.”

 

TIkTok, Instagram, Stigma, and Misinformation

 In The Politics of Autism, I examine the role of social media in the development of the issue. 

Ononuju, U.A., Ujari, C.A. Stigma and Misinformation About Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) on Tiktok and Instagram: Content Analysis Using #ASD, #Autism and #ASDinfo. J Autism Dev Disord (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-025-07057-7.  Abstractzzzzzzz;

Background

This study investigates the prevalence, nature, and impact of misinformation, stigma, and general information about autism spectrum disorder (ASD) on TikTok and Instagram.
Objective

The aim of this research was to analyze the content related to ASD on TikTok and Instagram to understand the nature of misinformation, stigma, and their influence on public perceptions of ASD.
Methods

A TypeScript-based scraper was used to extract posts from TikTok and Instagram, focusing on the hashtags #ASD, #Autism, and #ASDinfo. Data was collected over a five-year period from January 2018 to January 2024.

Results

The analysis found that misleading statistics (MIS3) were the most common form of misinformation, accounting for 52.5% of all misinformation. Instagram had a higher prevalence of misinformation (85%) compared to TikTok (74%). In terms of stigma, negative stereotypes (STIG1) were most prominent, with TikTok showing a higher frequency of stigma (88.5%) than Instagram (80%). Supportive community posts (INFO2) made up 48.5% of the posts, with Instagram again leading (65%) over TikTok (63.5%), although TikTok had more interactive engagement. Chi-square tests indicated statistical significance for derogatory language (p = 0.049) and personal stories (p = 0.038), both of which were more prevalent on TikTok. No significant differences were found in other categories.

Conclusions

This study highlights the distinct dynamics of misinformation and stigma across social media platforms, with TikTok showing greater negativity and interactive content, while Instagram provided more supportive community posts. The findings emphasize the need for targeted interventions to address the spread of misinformation and harmful stereotypes about ASD on these platforms.

Environmental Exposures

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 number of posts discussed Trump's support for the discredited notion.

 Another leading anti-vaxxer is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  He has repeatedly compared vaccine mandates to the Holocaust.  Rolling Stone and Salon retracted an RFK article linking vaccines to autism.  He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

He is now Trump's Secretary of HHS. 

Katie Suleta at the American Council on Science and Health:

In April 2025, RFK Jr. held a press conference during which he made several unsubstantiated claims. Most relevant to the new Autism Data Science Initiative:  “We know it’s an environmental exposure. It has to be. Genes do not cause epidemics.”

He also called studying genetic causes a “dead end.” These statements certainly imply that RFK Jr. believes he knows the causes of ASD, which leads to the second point regarding the motivation behind this initiative. The projects seem to have a theme. See if you can spot it.

“Research supported by NIH and others has shown a strong genetic component to autism risk. However, nongenetic factors—such as environmental exposures and maternal health conditions—are less well understood. Projects will investigate a wide range of influences, including environmental contaminants such as pesticides and air pollutants, maternal nutrition and diet, perinatal complications, psychosocial stress, and immune responses during pregnancy and early development.”

- NIH Press Release on Autism Data Science Initiative

While the press release pays lip service to genetic components in ASD, the projects are very much geared towards environmental factors, RFK Jr.’s belief. To be clear, I'm not saying that we shouldn't study the environmental contributions to ASD further. The problem is that most researchers believe the cause is largely genetic, with some environmental factors contributing to it. However, for RFK Jr., this nuance appears to be absent.

I do not wish to discredit the scientists working on the thirteen funded projects. Quite the opposite. Thankfully, they are largely respected career scientists in the field of ASD research. They come from reputable institutions. These are the people who are better suited than most to quickly pivot to the administration's changing whims and expectations, ensuring that their work can continue. If anyone is up to the challenge, it’s them. My gripe is with the underlying motivations and understandings of the initiative.

RFK and the 2026 Midterms

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 number of posts discussed Trump's support for the discredited notion.

 Another leading anti-vaxxer is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  He has repeatedly compared vaccine mandates to the Holocaust.  Rolling Stone and Salon retracted an RFK article linking vaccines to autism.  He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

He is now Trump's Secretary of HHS. 

Tina Reid at Axios:

The autism message will dovetail with broader MAHA efforts to mobilize voters ahead of the midterm elections, including multimillion-dollar ad buys and deploying Kennedy across the country to sell his agenda.But it's not without risk, because tying autism to vaccination has its limits, said Gordon Hensley, a former HHS senior adviser in the first Trump Administration and a GOP campaign strategist. Hensley believes White House staffers are "likely a lot happier seeing Secretary Kennedy talking about the fundamental MAHA precepts of chronic disease prevention, reforming the food supply and the like, as opposed to fomenting CDC infighting and vaccination chaos."

A Quinnipiac University poll late last month showed Kennedy's approval ratings are dwindling, with 33% saying they approve of the way Kennedy is handling the job, compared with 38% when they polled voters in June. A majority of voters (57%) said they don't have confidence in the medical information Kennedy cites, the poll found. Kennedy's contentious testimony in front of Congress and upheaval at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "may have struck a nerve with voters who were less familiar with where he stood on the issues," Quinnipiac polling analyst Tim Malloy said. Republicans in Congress have responded to the autism messaging with caution. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) warned against weakly supported health claims, and Senate health committee chair Bill Cassidy (R-La.) criticized the claims.