In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the issue's role in campaign politics. In the 2016 campaign, a number of posts discussed Trump's bad record on disability issues more generally. As his words and actions have shown, he despises Americans with disabilities.
To lead a "study" of autism causation, RFK Jr. has named an antivaxxer who is neither a scientist nor a physician. Meanwhile, the administration is slashing actual autism research.
“Funding for autism research is actually disappearing at a time when we see the director of HHS talking a lot about autism as though they think it is important,” says Micheal Paige Sandbank, an autism researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Behind the scenes, they are taking a hammer to the whole apparatus for autism research.”
...
A big funder of autism research has historically been the DOE’s Institute of Education Sciences, says Sandbank. But the institute, which has a budget of $800 million, was gutted in the Trump Administration’s layoffs, with only a skeleton staff remaining. Autism research at the institute focused on developing and evaluating school-based interventions to improve outcomes for students with autism.
...
Another canceled grant from the NSF funded autism programs in schools and universities. The Frist Center for Autism and Innovation at Vanderbilt University lost $7.7 million in funding because its grant application, which was initially approved, included the terms “inclusion” and “accessibility,” according to Jessica Schonhut-Stasik, who runs communications for the Frist Center and was also a student in the program. The program offered grants for neurodivergent students or people studying neurodivergent students, says Schonhut-Stasik. The grant also sponsored a summer summit for autistic students, says Schonhut-Stasik, who is herself autistic. “This is just so deeply sad,” she says. “To be given this money, to be told, ‘Here is the money to pursue your dreams,’ is just so big for any autistic person,” she says.
...DOD also funded a lot of autism research, Sandbank says, but a reorganization there has left future projects in jeopardy. The DOD funding was through something called Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs. In each of the last five years, the Autism Research Program under that bucket has received $15 million dollars, according to DOD press releases. The DOD studies autism in part because it affects children of military families.
In 2025, though, a number of the same research programs received funding as they had in the past, including breast cancer research. But autism was not among the programs listed to receive funding in 2025 announcements. Because autism is not included, Sandbank, who was going to submit a grant for this funding, no longer plans to, she says.
...
NIH is also a huge funder of autism research. But shifting priorities there have ended or delayed some of these projects, says David Mandell, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania who studies autism. The Trump Administration has begun to review and cancel grants that have what it deems diversity, equity, or inclusion terms in them because of a Trump executive order seeking to end what it called “radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing.” Grant applicants are being told, Mandell says, that their research no longer meets “agency priorities.” One public HHS document shows at least two autism grants canceled in the sweep: a project looking at biomarkers of late autism diagnosis in female and gender-diverse people, and one preventing suicide among autistic adults.
