Antivaxxer Gets CDC Post

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.

He has now hijacked the CDC website -- and the CDC itself.

Lena H. Sun at WP:

A Louisiana health official who ordered his health department to stop promoting mass vaccinations this past winter during a surge in influenza cases has been tapped to serve as the new No. 2 leader at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Ralph Abraham, who is Louisiana’s surgeon general, has been hired to be the principal deputy director at the CDC, according to a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, who confirmed the appointment. It is not clear when Abraham begins in the position. He is listed in the CDC’s internal directory as principal deputy director; a CDC email listed for him does not work.

The nation’s top public health agency currently has no permanent director, and Abraham would essentially be running the agency. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ousted CDC Director Susan Monarez this summer after she resisted his requests to agree to vaccine recommendations he wanted an influential CDC advisory committee to make. HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill is serving as acting CDC director.

Abraham adds to the vaccine critics working at the CDC under Kennedy, a prominent anti-vaccine activist before becoming the country’s top health official. Kennedy fired all of the CDC’s federal vaccine advisers and replaced them with people who have criticized coronavirus and other shots.

...

Abraham drew intense criticism in office for instructing health officials to stop promoting vaccines including flu shots and instead emphasize personal choice and consulting with doctors. During a legislative hearing in December, Abraham said he regularly sees patients injured by coronavirus vaccines and alleged adverse reactions were being covered up, NPR reported. He has also supported research into an extensively debunked connection between vaccines and autism.

Kennedy's Argumentum Ad Ignoratiam

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.

He has now hijacked the CDC website.

Michael Scherer at The Atlantic:

Inevitably, though, we were soon back where we’d left off. Kennedy suggested that my story conclude by looking at a statement published on the CDC website—“Vaccines do not cause autism.” During the confirmation process, Bill Cassidy had made him promise not to remove the phrase in exchange for his vote. But Kennedy had a work-around. On November 19, he updated the page and put an asterisk next to the phrase, adding language stating that “studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines contribute to the development of autism.” Although the MMR vaccine and thimerosal have shown no ties to autism, Kennedy says he has not been able to find any studies of possible autism risk from various other childhood vaccines. This absence of research, he believes, undercuts the validity of the CDC website’s claim.

...

I had spoken with others about this point. They agreed with Kennedy that not every vaccine had been studied for its effect on autism rates. But they argued that doing so was not urgent, because the existing high-quality evidence around vaccines showed no connection. Joshua Gordon, who as the director of the National Institute of Mental Health helped oversee federal autism research, told me that the recent increase in autism rates could mostly be explained by broadened criteria for diagnosis and by the advancing average age of parents at the time of conception.

...

What if you are wrong about vaccines? I asked. Six former surgeons general, most vaccine experts, and almost the entire scientific establishment believes he is. What if, over time, the evidence shows that his actions lowered vaccination rates with no reduction in chronic diseases, but with an increase in suffering and death from viruses and bacteria? How would he respond?

“I mean, we would listen,” Kennedy said. It was the answer I wanted to hear. But then he listed, once again, the reasons he would not be wrong: He spoke about the chronic diseases that appear as potential adverse reactions on the manufacturers’ label for vaccines; the evidence that death rates from the diseases that vaccines inoculate against were already declining before the vaccines materialized; and America’s poor policy decisions and high mortality rates during the COVID years. “You know, we have all kinds of interventions,” he said. “Good health does not just come in a syringe.” The trial lawyer was still laboring to connect the dots that led to his preferred verdict, the orphaned child of American royalty, back from hell, still fighting to fulfill his birthright.

As G.K. Chesterton said of the madman: "He is in the clean and well-lit prison of one idea: he is sharpened to one painful point. "

Moving IDEA Out of the Education Department Would Harm Kids with Disabilities

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. 

Jacqueline Rodriguez is the CEO of the National Center for Learning Disabilities. Chad Rummel is the executive director of the Council for Exceptional Children.  They write at USA Today:

Some have suggested shifting IDEA to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Nearly every major disability organization rejects this proposal:

• The HHS lacks the statutory authority, expertise and infrastructure to oversee IDEA effectively.
• Families rely on Parent Training and Information Centers funded by the Department of Education – supports that HHS is not equipped to maintain.
• Civil rights enforcement would be weakened at the exact moment students are still recovering from disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Moving special education to a health agency risks reverting to a medical model that isolates, segregates and stigmatizes students with disabilities.

This move is not only harmful; it is unlawful. Relocating the Office of Special Education Programs without congressional action violates the Department of Education Organization Act and IDEA.

Students with disabilities and other learning and developmental differences depend on the Department of Education's expertise. Nearly 1 million students with autism rely on IDEA’s requirements for individualized supports.

...

Private lawsuits can take years and require financial resources that most families cannot afford. A child denied special education services cannot wait that long. Federal investigation, oversight and technical assistance happen earlier, cost families nothing and can resolve issues before irreparable harm is done.

It is also important to remember that support for special education is not a partisan issue. For nearly 50 years, IDEA has been championed by Republicans, Democrats, independents and families who don’t follow politics at all. All parents, regardless of their political beliefs, care about their children’s future. That shared commitment is exactly why dismantling the federal role would carry consequences far beyond Washington.

Rural Youths on Medicaid Get Fewer ABA Hours

 The Politics of Autism includes an extensive discussion of insurance and Medicaid services for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Straiton-Webster, D., & Ingersoll, B. (2025). Short report: Disparities in hours of applied behavior analysis services for Medicaid-enrolled autistic youth. Autism, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613251392495

Abstract

To date, no studies have investigated whether disparities in hours of applied behavior analysis (ABA) exist in the Medicaid system. We used multilevel modeling to analyze Medicaid billing claims for 1,028 autistic youth under the age of 21 years to examine the extent to which there were disparities in hours of ABA services for Medicaid-enrolled youth based on race/ethnicity and rurality. Although younger children received more hours of ABA, F(1, 964.63) = 118.28, p < .001, there were no statistically significant differences in hours of ABA based on minoritized race/ethnicity status or sex. On average, youth served in rural areas received significantly less hours of ABA per month than those in non-rural areas, F(1, 122.13) = 7.89, p = .006; youth in rural areas received 10.86 less hours per month than those in non-rural areas. Results suggest that publicly funded service systems like Medicaid may reduce ABA service disparities by race/ethnicity. Policymakers should focus on improving service provision for youth in rural areas.

From the article:

We found robust evidence of treatment disparities based on rurality; youth served in rural areas received 10.86 hr less of ABA per month compared to those in non-rural areas. Rural areas experience greater geographic barriers, which affect access to both center-based services (e.g., family’s ability to commute to an agency) and home-based services (e.g., provider’s ability to commute to a family's home). Indeed, a recent study found that providers in this system reported difficulty accessing families in rural areas as a significant barrier to the delivery of ABA services (Straiton et al., 2021). These geographic barriers could lead to a higher number of unscheduled or canceled sessions. Furthermore, based on the uneven geographic distribution of autism services, providers in rural areas may need to serve more youth than those in urban and suburban areas (Drahota et al., 2020; Yingling et al., 2022), which limits the number of treatment hours that can be scheduled per child. To improve access to services in rural areas, policymakers and agency leaders should consider targeted recruitment methods and incentive structures for recent graduates to practice in rural locations, provision of flexible supervision models for new graduates, increased use of telehealth service models, and remote consultation services for complex cases (Albright & Williams, 2021; Dew et al., 2013; Mazurek et al., 2017).

 

RFK Jr Admits He Ordered CDC to Change Language on Vaccines and Autism

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.

He has now hijacked the CDC website.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg at NYT:

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in an interview that he personally instructed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to abandon its longstanding position that vaccines do not cause autism — a move that underscores his determination to challenge scientific orthodoxy and bend the health department to his will.

In an interview on Thursday explaining why the C.D.C. website now says the claim that vaccines do not cause autism is not “evidence-based,” Mr. Kennedy acknowledged that large-scale epidemiological studies of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine had found no link to autism, and that studies of the mercury-based preservative thimerosal had also shown no link.

But he cited gaps in vaccine safety science. He said he ordered the C.D.C. to change its guidance in part because high-quality large studies had not been conducted to examine a potential link between autism and other shots given in the first year of life. Those include the hepatitis B vaccine and a combination shot that protects against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, commonly known as whooping cough.

In his view, sweeping statements like “vaccines don’t cause autism” are unproven, and have been deployed by public health leaders who want to ease parents’ fears. He said he is not saying vaccines cause autism; he is simply saying there is no proof that they don’t.

Jessica McDonald and Kate Yandell at FactCheck.org:

“This is absolute insanity and a bizarre moving of the goalposts,” David S. Mandell, a psychiatry professor at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and director of the Penn Center for Mental Health, told us via email. “As any scientist knows, you can’t ‘prove’ the lack of association. You conduct related studies, over and over, until the bulk of evidence finds no association.”

He added: The “CDC page is the equivalent of ‘you haven’t proven that ghosts don’t exist’ or perhaps more to the point, ‘you haven’t proven that driving during pregnancy doesn’t cause autism, so pregnant women should stop driving.’”

As Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia pediatrician and vaccine expert Dr. Paul Offit told us in a phone interview and has explained in a Substack post, scientists can’t ever prove a negative. In this way, he said, the webpage is taking advantage of a technicality of the scientific method, even though overwhelming evidence shows no link between vaccines and autism.

 

Autism and Health Organizations Denounce the Lies on the CDC Website

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.

He has now hijacked the CDC website.

Autistic Self Advocacy Network:

Yesterday, the Centers for Disease Control radically rewrote a website addressing false claims linking vaccines to autism. Previously, the CDC had correctly stated that a strong scientific consensus has concluded that vaccines are not associated with autism. The website now falsely claims that this statement is “not evidence-based” and that “studies supporting a link between vaccines and autism have been ignored by health authorities”. These are lies.

A statement from the American Public Health Association and other groups, including the Autism Society:

Our organizations, representing autistic individuals, their families, medical professionals and public health workers, are alarmed that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is promoting the outdated, disproven idea that vaccines cause autism.

Medical researchers across the globe have spent more than 25 years thoroughly studying this claim. All have come to the same conclusion: Vaccines are not linked to autism.

This false rumor distracts from pressing, urgent issues in children’s health. Amplifying this claim and encouraging unnecessary investigations only worsens parents’ fears; it will not lead to better therapies, improved support for caregiving families, or changes in health care, education, and society in ways that would help children with autism thrive. Rather than devoting needed resources right now to support people with autism and their families in every community, our taxpayer-funded health agencies are using public resources to spread harmful rumors. Autistic people are valued members of society and, like all of us, deserve research that helps health care and other systems address genuine needs. 

Today, our organizations reject this latest attempt to create fear around routine childhood immunizations. Vaccines rank among our greatest medical success stories. Thanks to vaccines, serious diseases that once made thousands sick every year and caused life-long health issues have become rare. We cannot risk losing this progress. Together, we call on the CDC to return to its long history of promoting evidence-based information in the service of protecting the health and well-being of all Americans

 Autism Speaks:

As an organization long invested in rigorous autism research and in supporting autistic people and their families, we believe this change undermines decades of clear scientific consensus. More than 20 years of high-quality research involving millions of children has demonstrated no causal link between vaccines and autism. The few studies that have implied otherwise are extremely limited, methodologically flawed, and have not been reproducible.

Two of the changes are especially concerning:

• It dismisses robust, established evidence. The updated CDC page elevates weak, outdated studies, such as a 20-year-old parent survey of 77 respondents. These highlighted studies do not meaningfully challenge the overwhelming body of research on autism.
• It relies on long-discredited correlations.
The page repeats the claim that autism prevalence “correlates” with the rise in childhood vaccines. This does not mean causation, and this argument has been repeatedly debunked.

Autism Science Foundation:

We are appalled to find that the content on the CDC webpage “Autism and Vaccines” has been changed and distorted, and is now filled with anti-vaccine rhetoric and outright lies about vaccines and autism. The CDC’s previous science and evidence-based website has been replaced with misinformation and now actually contradicts the best available science. The new statement on the site that says ““vaccines do not cause autism” is not an evidence-based claim” shows a lack of understanding of the term “evidence”.

CDC Website Now Includes Lies About Vaccines

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.

RFK Jr had committed to Bill Cassidy, as a condition to win his vote, that he would keep website language.

Cassidy in February: “If confirmed… CDC will not remove statements on their website pointing out that vaccines do not cause autism.”

Note the language in second photo. https://t.co/DPuToMMO2q pic.twitter.com/FQTY4GaecD

— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) November 20, 2025

Brenda Goodman at CNN:

Scientific information on the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website was replaced on Wednesday with anti-vaccine talking points that don’t rule out a link between vaccines and autism, despite an abundance of evidence that there’s no connection.

Bullet points on the top of the page now state 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. However, the preponderance of scientific evidence shows this is not true, according to a position statement from the Autism Science Foundation.

“The science is clear that vaccines do not cause autism. No environmental factor has been better studied as a potential cause of autism than vaccines. This includes vaccine ingredients as well as the body’s response to vaccines,” the Autism Science Foundation said in a statement on Thursday.

Other CDC bullets say studies supporting a link between vaccines and autism have been ignored by health authorities. This, too, is not true. Studies showing a connection between vaccines and autism have proven to be fraudulent or have been poorly done or biased. There are many well done, credible studies that find no such relationship.

The page also says HHS has launched a comprehensive assessment of the causes of autism, including investigations on plausible biologic mechanisms and potential causal links.

The main heading on the page states “Vaccines do not cause Autism,” but now has an asterisk that directs readers to a footnote: “The header “Vaccines do not cause autism” has not been removed due to an agreement with the chair of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that it would remain on the CDC website.”

The footnote seems to refer to a commitment by US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician and Republican from Louisiana, during his confirmation process that language on the CDC website “pointing out that vaccines do not cause autism” would not be removed. Cassidy described the promise in a speech in which he explained his support for Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist.

HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said Thursday, “We are updating the CDC’s website to reflect gold standard, evidence-based science.”

In a post on social media late Wednesday night, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who recently resigned as director of the CDC’s National Center on Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, called the changes “a national embarrassment.”

Gutting OCR Will Worsen Inequality

In The Politics of Autism, I write about social services, special education and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.  Inequality is a big part of the story. 

Lauren Coffey at EdSurge:

“Parents, educators and state administrators rely on ED [the Education Department] for a lot of help and technical assistance in making special education work,” she says. At the state level, “a lot are saying, ‘Where do we get the guidance to follow the law?’ [ED officials] have institutional knowledge you can't read from a textbook.”

With that confusion comes more complaints filed. Often, families file complaints within the school district or the state, before going to the federal Office for Civil Rights. They typically stem from violations of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which guarantees individuals with disabilities have equal opportunities and rights, and the IDEA Act, which guarantees a “free appropriate public education to eligible children with disabilities.” A complaint could cover anything from a school not having wheelchair accessibility to a teacher not giving a student extra time to take an exam.

According to data from the Department of Education , over one-third of the complaints OCR handles are related to disabilities. That office was largely gutted in February and again in October. Hill, an attorney, expects parents will begin turning toward private lawyers as OCR will be unable to keep up with the deluge of complaints.

“I think there will be more problems; there just won't be anywhere to go with them,” Hill, a partner at law firm Brown, Goldstein and Levy, says. “Parents and kids will have complaints they need to file, but nowhere to file them. So, they'll go to private lawyers. But there are not enough of us, so people will end up having their educational rights taken away.”

Hiring private lawyers also requires time and money many do not have.

“Parents are taking out second mortgages on their homes just to get the rights for the child, but they can also take off from work to prep for the hearing and attend the hearing,” says David Bateman, a special education consultant and retired professor of special education at Shippensburg University. “Most don't have the money, nor flexibility.”

AI and IEP

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

Ariana Aboulafia at the Center for Democracy and Technology:

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in schools is becoming more commonplace, including the use of generative AI models to develop individualized education programs (IEPs) for disabled students. A recent poll from the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) found that 57% of teachers reported using AI to develop an IEP or 504 plan during the 2024-2025 school year — an 18 point increase from the previous school year. But there are legal concerns with using these tools, including compliance with student privacy laws (like the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)) and disability rights laws (like the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)).

This brief provides background information on how AI plays a role in IEP development, highlighting the importance of ensuring that IEPs are properly individualized and accurate for disabled students. It analyzes the benefits and legal risks of using AI in IEP development, and discusses other concerns including accuracy and bias. Finally, it provides recommendations for teachers, school and education administrators, disabled community members, and tool developers, notably:

• Teachers should be mindful of whether their school has an agreement with a particular AI tool vendor — if not, teachers should not input any personally identifiable information into AI tools, and should exercise caution around use in general.
• Schools and school districts should engage in proactive communication to students and parents regarding use of AI tools in IEP development; provide trainings to teachers; create policies for the use of AI tools in IEP development that includes a requirement for human oversight; and consult compliance offices regarding any legal risks of using AI in the IEP development process, including risks under IDEA and FERPA.
• Disability community members should raise awareness to others in the community on the use of AI tools in the IEP development process, educate themselves and others on their rights under statutes like IDEA and FERPA, and take advantage of opportunities to voice concerns over the uses of these tools, including at school board meetings.
• Developers should conduct pre-and-post deployment audits of their tools, prioritize privacy, create policies that prohibit their models from soliciting personally identifiable information from users, ensure disabled people are included in their development process, and be transparent about their data practices.

By incorporating these recommendations, stakeholders can work together to ensure that any use of AI tools in the IEP development process is done in ways that are legally compliant, privacy protective, and respectful of the rights and needs of disabled students.

Read the full report.

Early Start in Jeopardy

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss services for people with disabilities.

Kelly Keck at CalMatters:

This summer, Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill, extending tax cuts but slashing billions from Medicaid. In California, federal Medicaid funds sustain the regional centers that coordinate Early Start services for infants and toddlers with — or at risk for — developmental delays.

With California facing a multibillion-dollar deficit, the future of such early interventions looks precarious. Losing federal support means the state must fill the funding gap or scale back, thus putting therapy, progress and hope at risk for countless children and families.

I’ve witnessed what happens when families lose access to care. When speech therapy disappears, a baby’s first words vanish into silence. When physical therapy stops, a toddler’s first steps may never come.

Early Start is not a luxury; it’s a bridge from surviving to thriving. When that connection is frayed, a child’s trajectory is altered, sometimes irreversibly.

The Department of Developmental Services has already warned that its caseloads are surging as staffing shortages worsen. Federal cuts will only amplify this with fewer therapists, longer waitlists and children stranded during the most critical period of their brain development.

Every week’s delay, every family told to “wait and see,” means consequences that may never be undone, developmental windows that will not reopen.

Measles November

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.

Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the U of Minnesota:

The number of measles cases nationwide has risen by 42 the in past week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported today in its latest update. There are now 1,723 confirmed measles cases this year, reported by 43 jurisdictions.

Eighty-seven percent of measles cases are outbreak-associated, and there have been 45 US outbreaks in 2025. Among measles patients, 92% have been unvaccinated or had an unknown vaccine status. Only 4% have received both doses of measles-containing vaccine.

Last year the United States had 285 measles cases. US measles activity is the highest it has been since measles was declared eliminated in the country in 2000.

Children's Health Defense's Wacko Conference

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 The Atlantic, Tom Bartlett reports on the annual conference of Children’s Health Defense, RFK Jr's antivax organization.

They want Kennedy to investigate their belief that the government supposedly colluded with Big Pharma to hide the harms of vaccination. In a session on Saturday afternoon, former Republican Representative Dave Weldon, whose nomination to become CDC director was withdrawn in March amid outcry over his criticism of immunizations, called for the creation of an independent body to investigate vaccine-safety data and report only to Kennedy and President Donald Trump. “If it’s in the hands of the CDC, you’ll never get the answers you need,” he told the crowd. During a session titled “The Enduring Nightmare of COVID mRNA Technology,” Sherri Tenpenny, a veteran anti-vaccine activist who once said that one goal of COVID vaccination was to turn people into “transhumanist cyborgs,” called for the mRNA-based vaccines to be taken off the market: “It’s just the next level of atrocity of how they want to damage us and make us customers for life.” Mark Gorton, the founder of LimeWire who is now president of the MAHA Institute, a think tank, favors stopping routine shots altogether until they’ve undergone further testing. “The medical establishment will scream that plagues will sweep across the land,” he said from the stage. “We need to counter that their plague of vaccine poisoning is already amongst us.”

As noted before, the antivax movment overlaps with right-wing conspiracy theory.

The forces aligned against Kennedy, everyone at the conference seemed to agree, are formidable. Leslie Manookian, the president of the Health Freedom Defense Fund and the author of a recently passed Idaho law that makes vaccine mandates illegal, railed against the “pit of vipers” that Kennedy must deal with in Washington. In a session titled “Sustaining the Promise of Freedom Through Action,” the crowd applauded when Joseph Ladapo, Florida’s surgeon general, announced that the reporters from The Atlantic and The Washington Post in the room “represent forces who are working toward the enslavement of humanity”—though he allowed that he had “nothing against them.” (As The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, told the Post, “In fact, The Atlantic is not working towards the enslavement of humanity, but I appreciate his concern.”) Ladapo spent most of his speech expounding on his experience with psychotherapy and his relationship with his wife. The day after Brand declined to speak with me and called me a Nazi, Alex Jones posted a two-hour interview in which a bathrobe-clad Brand dismissed the allegations against him as a “governmental and media operation.”

Some Education Staffers Are Back. Don't Get Your Hopes Up.

 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 tried firing most of the staff who enforce it. 

Cory Turner at NPR:

The deal Congress reached to re-open the federal government requires the Trump administration to reinstate federal workers who were fired in October, including those charged with overseeing the nation's special education laws. But it's not clear how long they'll be back.

As NPR has reported, the Office for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) inside the U.S. Department of Education is the central nervous system for programs that support students with disabilities. It not only offers guidance to families but also oversees state compliance with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

OSERS can't do its job without staff, and, according to a new Education Department filing, the office lost 121 of its 135 employees in the October reduction-in-force. That matters because, while Wednesday's funding agreement will return those workers to "employment status" as of Sept. 30, there appears to be little protecting them after Jan. 30, when that provision expires.

 "We are concerned special education will cease to exist," says Jacqueline Rodriguez, CEO of the National Center for Learning Disabilities. ... If OSERS stays a shadow of its former self, Rodriguez says, "the only conclusion that we can draw is that it is an intentional dismantling of the entire system of special education."

The Office for Civil Rights has also taken a big hit.

OCR lost 299 staffers after the March reduction-in-force but, because of a lawsuit, most (247) remain on temporary, paid administrative leave. Another 137 were cut in the October reduction-in-force, which has been paused by a federal judge. Under the new government funding agreement, those 137 staffers should be reinstated, at least until Jan. 30.

By the department's own numbers, that means just 62 staffers of OCR's current 446 employees have not received RIF notices. That's roughly 10% of the office's 600-plus headcount in January, when the second Trump administration began.

OCR and OSERS are both mandated by federal law.

"I've got to say, I'm just shocked that they can destroy an entire unit of an organization that's created by statute," said R. Shep Melnick, a professor of American politics at Boston College who has been writing about OCR for decades.