Physicians Are Poorly Trained to Deal with Autism

The Politics of Autism discusses health care, and explains that autism services can be complicated, creating difficulties for autistic people and their families.  Sometimes medical professionals lack sufficient training in ASD.

Cassie Shortsleeve at Medscape:

Despite the need for specialized training, no accreditation standards currently mandate autism education in medical school curricula. A small survey published last year found that only 16% of medical students had received formal training in neurodivergence; 97% expressed a desire for more.Maura Sullivan

Too often, medical students graduate with little education and understanding of proper care for people with autism, explains Maura Sullivan, CEO of The Arc of Massachusetts; it’s a gap that contributes to medical access issues for patients with autism, an increase in health disparities, and more.

...“A little over half of schools have at least some elements of disability education, but it’s not necessarily autism education,” [Dr. Dorothy] Tolchin said....
...
Research in BMJ Open found that only 25% of primary healthcare providers reported high confidence in communicating with adult patients with autism or identifying and making necessary accommodations.


When physicians in training don’t receive adequate education about caring for patients with autism, there’s a wide range of consequences.

For one, there are access issues for patients. In a survey of 714 US physicians, only 40% felt equipped to treat patients with autism and intellectual and developmental disabilities. “Because physicians don’t feel competent, they are not willing to treat,” Sullivan said. “These attitudes can lead to fear or concerns around providing care for these patients.”

Autism, Vaccines, and State Legislatures

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.

Peter Hotez, " It won’t end with COVID: Countering the next phase of American antivaccine activism 2025–2029," PLOS Global Public Health

Antivaccine sentiments have been expressed throughout American history. However, in this century, the antivaccine movement gained momentum around false claims that vaccines cause autism in the 2000s, followed by “health freedom” protests versus childhood immunization mandates in schools in the 2010s [1]. Starting in 2020 with the introduction of COVID-19 vaccines, health freedom extended to adult immunizations and became a signature feature of political activism on the far-right. This politically charged movement organized and convinced countless Americans to shun COVID-19 immunizations in 2021–22 resulting in an estimated 200,000 deaths from COVID-19 among the unvaccinated U.S. population. Antivaccine activism became a major lethal force in America.
...
In the U.S. most childhood immunization policies are set by state legislatures, with a primary goal to maintain high levels of coverage (90–95%) in schools and prevent breakthrough outbreaks [15]. There are fears that particularly in states where partisan leanings are strong and COVID-19 immunization rates are inadequate, there will be continued declines in childhood immunizations. Therefore, statewide vaccine coalitions and partnerships urgently need help to prevent the passage of onerous legislation that could for example ban pediatric COVID-19 immunizations, require pediatricians to read the full list of excipients in vaccines prior to parental informed consent signatures, stop disease data collection, halt school vaccine mandates, or encourage alternative or unproven immunization schedules. Without question, our system of childhood immunization has been highly successful at eliminating dangerous childhood infections [9]. However, that system now faces an unprecedented political assault that could reverse many of those public health gains. Urgent action is needed to forestall the return of diseases once believed to be consigned to history.

NCSL:

All 50 states and Washington D.C. have laws requiring certain vaccines for students to attend school. Many states align their vaccine requirements with recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. All states allow exemptions from school immunization requirements for children who are unable to receive vaccines for medical reasons. State laws vary regarding non-medical exemptions, for religious or personal reasons. Personal exemptions are also referred to as "philosophical exemptions" by some states.

Thirty states and Washington D.C. allow exemptions for people who have religious objections to immunizations. Thirteen states allow exemptions for either religious or personal reasons. Two states, Louisiana and Minnesota, do not specify whether the non-medical exemption must be for religious or personal reasons. Five states do not allow any type of non-medical exemption.

 

Measles Cases Keep Spreading. Heckuva Job, Bobby.

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 presidential candidate 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.  Trump has directed him to investigate autism.

Sheryl Gay StolbergTeddy Rosenbluth and Apoorva Mandavilli at NYT:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary, on Saturday instructed leaders of the nonprofit he founded to take down a web page that mimicked the design of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s site but laid out a case that vaccines cause autism.

The page had been published on a site apparently registered to the nonprofit, the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense. Mr. Kennedy’s action came after The New York Times inquired about the page and after news of it ricocheted across social media.

The page was taken offline Saturday evening.

...

Publication of the page was first reported on Substack by E. Rosalie Li, founder of the Information Epidemiology Lab. The nonprofit did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Kennedy has for years maintained that there is a link between vaccines and autism. He held to that stance during his Senate confirmation hearings, despite extensive research debunking the theory.

Melody Schreiber at The Guardian:

More US states are reporting measles cases as the Texas outbreak expands, surpassing last year’s total, amid vaccine misinformation and hesitancy.

The Texas outbreak could take a year to get under control, one health official said – during which time it may spread to more states. Yet the parents of the six-year-old girl who died of measles in Texas have spoken against measles vaccination as misinformation continues to proliferate, including from figures such as the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.

“I never thought in 2025, we would be looking at this resurgence of measles,” said Katherine Wells, director of Lubbock Public Health. “And I didn’t know it’d be in my backyard, either.”

On Thursday, several other states reported updates on measles. Ohio reported its first case of 2025 and Maryland announced two new cases. Both states have linked the cases to international travel. Alabama also announced that an unvaccinated child with measles traveled through the state, while Kansas has confirmed eight cases of measles among children this month.

Measles cases have also been confirmed in Alaska, California, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.

...

There were 285 cases of measles reported in the US last year. So far, there have been 378 confirmed cases in the first few months of 2025.

Illegal and Foolish: Moving Special Ed to HHS

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

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 7.5 million children 3 to 21 years old received services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in AY 2022-23.

About 980,000 of them were autistic, up from 498,000 in 2012-13.  Trump is trying to close the Department of Education.

Kalyn Belshaand and Erica Meltzer at Chalkbeat:

President Donald Trump made a brief announcement Friday morning of a policy that could upend how the nation serves its 7.5 million students with disabilities.

Offering virtually no details, Trump said he’d decided that the Department of Health and Human Services would handle students’ “special needs” instead of the Education Department.

“Rather complex,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “I think that will work out very well.”

But many legal experts and advocates for children with disabilities say the president does not have the authority to move funding or oversight of special education to another agency. That would require an act of Congress, they say.

Many educators, parents, and disability rights advocates worry that the president will try to move forward anyway, and that this plan could end up stripping children with disabilities of legally required educational support and services — and sideline them in an agency that doesn’t have the expertise, staff, or training to properly serve them

...

 Multiple laws say the Education Department is responsible for overseeing and funding the education of children with disabilities.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act established the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services within the Education Department and said that it must include an Office of Special Education Programs, “which shall be the principal agency in the Department for administering and carrying out” IDEA, along with “other programs and activities concerning the education of children with disabilities.”

The law that created the Department of Education said the department must include an Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services.

IDEA also says the education secretary is responsible for administering IDEA grants. The most recent budget laws give control of IDEA funds to the Department of Education and say those funds can’t just be transferred to another agency.

Kayla Jimenez at USA Today:

Many states, tight on cash, are in need of the federal money that the Department of Education allocates to students with disabilities, said Daniel Pearson, executive director of a teacher-led nonprofit organization Educators for Excellence.

If funding remains the same, Pearson said he'll be watching to see if it comes with the same stipulations to spend on students with disabilities.

"There could be a world where funding is not decreased, but it could go to states as block funding so states can allocate how the money is spent," he said. "The problem is that the accountability measures are built in through the federal department."

I WARNED ABOUT THAT DANGER LAST YEAR. 

 

Disability Groups React to Trump's EO

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

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 7.5 million children 3 to 21 years old received services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in AY 2022-23.

About 980,000 of them were autistic, up from 498,000 in 2012-13.  Trump is trying to close the Department of Education.

ASAN:

On March 20th, the Trump administration released an executive order calling on the Secretary of Education to take steps to close the Department of Education. The executive order further directs the Secretary to withhold federal funding from schools that support diversity, equity or inclusion efforts. This is an incredibly disturbing idea for the administration to put forward. ASAN condemns this executive order, as well as any further attempts to defund or dismantle the Department of Education.

The Arc:

Statement from our CEO Katy Neas on the Executive Order to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. To learn more, read Katy’s op-ed in Newsweek.“Dismantling the U.S. Department of Education is more than a policy shift—it will reverse five decades of progress for students with disabilities. While the right to a free appropriate public education for children with disabilities will remain under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, states will struggle to deliver on its promise without federal technical assistance, oversight, and enforcement. Children with disabilities who do not receive appropriate education services will face greater isolation, unemployment, and poverty. We cannot afford to undo the hard-won gains of the past—we must protect the future of every student, because the strength of our society depends on it.

 American Association of People with Disabilities:

AAPD is gravely concerned about the Executive Order, severe staff cuts, and calls to reassign civil rights enforcement functions to other federal agencies that lack the personnel and expertise to take over the enforcement and oversight of vital education laws and programs.

Oversight and Enforcement:

The Department of Education has a key job in managing programs created by IDEA. This law helps about 7.5 million students with disabilities, about 15 percent of all students. The Trump administration cannot end IDEA or its funding without approval from Congress, but it could try to move the management of IDEA to a different agency. This change would drastically impact students with disabilities. No other federal agency has the knowledge needed to oversee special education and protect students’ rights to free and appropriate public education. Students with disabilities rely on federal laws daily to receive support that helps them feel safe and succeed in their education.

The Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which enforces IDEA and Section 504, has already lost nearly 50% of its staff. Shutting down or even reducing OCR’s staff will harm disabled students disproportionately by limiting their access to complaint investigations and enforcement litigation. OCR is one of the main paths through which disabled students can get the learning environment they deserve, and it is already backlogged with disability discrimination cases.

Trump's War on Americans with Disabilities

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

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 7.5 million children 3 to 21 years old received services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in AY 2022-23.

About 980,000 of them were autistic, up from 498,000 in 2012-13

Trump is going to sign an executive order to begin closing the Department of Education.  Shakti Belway at Teen Vogue:

Decades ago, schools legally turned away children with disabilities. Those who were admitted were often relegated to inferior classrooms. It was not until the passage of the law now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1975 that educational rights were federally protected for children with disabilities. Today, IDEA guarantees every child with disabilities the right to free, appropriate public education and 7.5 million students relied on IDEA-mandated services including speech therapy, individualized instruction, and classroom aides during the 2022–23 school year, the most recent year for which data is available. But these mandates don’t enforce or fund themselves. They require a federal backstop, an entity capable of ensuring that the thousands of school districts across the country comply. That entity is the Department of Education because even with protections like IDEA in place, students with disabilities often do not experience the educational equity many of their peers enjoy.

Trump has a bad record on disability more generally. 

Lauren Aratani at The Guardian:

The Department of Justice removed 11 guidelines for US businesses on compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), including some that deal with Covid-19 and masking and accessibility.

The ADA was signed into law in 1990 and is the key civil rights law that protects Americans with disabilities from discrimination.

Updates have already been made to the ADA.gov website to reflect the removal of the guidances. Multiple pages were removed from the ADA’s archive website, including one page that explained how retail businesses are required to have accessible features and another on customer service practices for hotel and lodging guests with disabilities.

In a webpage titled “Covid-19 and the Americans with Disabilities Act”, the justice department removed five out of seven questions that were listed on the page as recently as recently as early March

 

Report on Private Equity

The Politics of Autism includes an extensive discussion of autism service providers.  Private equity firms now own many of them.   After its purchase by Blackstone, the Center for Autism and Related Disorders went bankrupt.

Private Equity Stakeholder Project, "Private Equity in Intellectual and Developmental Disability Services."  Executive Summary:

Private equity firms have been acquiring companies providing services for people with intellectual or development disabilities (IDD). This includes residential facilities, home health and personal care, supported and independent living services, and others. These services were historically provided primarily by non-profits and religious organizations. Through recent buyouts and consolidation, several large private equity owned companies have emerged with tens of thousands of employees at numerous locations across the United States. In some cases, these companies have achieved regional market concentration obscured by complex ownership structures and disparate branding. Case studies in this report illustrate the risks that the private equity business model poses to IDD providers and the people they serve, including:

• Sevita (Centerbridge Partners, Vistria Group)
• Help at Home (Centerbridge Partners, Vistria Group) \
• Broadstep Behavioral Health (Bain Capital)
• Texas Medicaid HCBS provider landscape 
• Advoserv/Bellwether Behavioral Health (GI Partners, Wellspring Capital)

...

 PE Cost-Cutting Tactics & Impacts 

• Reducing staffing 
• Failing to provide adequate training 
• Underpaying employees, resulting in high-turnover and understaffing 
• Failing to hire employees with adequate licensing (which can be more costly) 
• Cutting services (e.g., therapy or educational services) 
• Failing to maintain facilities, leading to unsafe or unsanitary living conditions

Report on the Need for Police Training

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss interactions between police and autistic people.  When cops encounter autistic people, they may not respond in the same way as NT people, and things can get out of hand. Among other things, they may misinterpret autistic behavior as aggressive or defiant. Training could help.

At the PBS NewsHour, Judy Woodruff reports on why police still lack training to effectively respond to people with disabilities.  The report starts with the story of Eric Parsa, an autistic youth died in 2020 at the hands of sheriff’s deputies in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana.

 

Full transcript here.

California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training has a publication titled A FIRST RESPONDER’S GUIDEvFOR PERSONS WITH MENTAL ILLNESSvOR DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITY

Research and Opportunity Cost

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 presidential candidate 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.  Trump has directed him to investigate autism.

An editorial in Chemical and Engineering News:

There are serious concerns with hoping this study will resolve issues with vaccine hesitancy. Some may argue that having a perceived vaccine skeptic at the helm of the HHS gives the study a perverse credibility, but this is far from clear. Ironically, the NIH, an agency within the HHS, said recently it is terminating dozens of grants for studies on vaccine hesitancy and strategies that increase vaccination rates. Moreover, the CDC’s study could cause more unnecessary alarm among guardians of children who could benefit from MMR vaccines.

The agency’s decision also looks hypocritical to scientists. The US administration has cut the NIH’s budget, saying that the money is being wasted on what Republican senator Rand Paul called “frivolous” science at the nomination hearing for Bhattacharya. It is easy to make fun of studies exploring the propensity of lonely rats to use cocaine. But scientific research advances by slowly chipping away at uncertainty. So, effectively using funds may mean starting with a specific question on responses in rats and then progressing to human treatment trials.

A sound funding policy also requires an understanding of when replicability is a problem and when it is not. Bill Cassidy, a Republican senator, told his fellow lawmakers at Bhattacharya’s hearing that the issue of whether vaccines are linked to autism has been studied exhaustively, and the science is conclusive. There is no link.

By contrast, where public health agencies need help is understanding how to effectively reach people hesitant to get vaccines and address inaccurate but persistent narratives. In the midst of an outbreak in which lives are at stake, the opportunity costs of studying the wrong question are heartbreakingly high.

RFK Endangers Children

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 presidential candidate 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.  Trump has directed him to investigate autism.

Teddy Rosenbluth at NYT:

Struggling to contain a raging measles epidemic in West Texas, public health officials increasingly worry that residents are relying on unproven remedies endorsed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, and postponing doctor visits until the illness has worsened.

Hospitals and officials sounded an alarm this week, issuing a notice explaining which measles symptoms warranted immediate medical attention and stressing the importance of timely treatment.

“I’m worried we have kids and parents that are taking all of these other medications and then delaying care,” said Katherine Wells, director of public health in Lubbock, Texas, where many of the sickest children in this outbreak have been hospitalized.

Some seriously ill children had been given alternative remedies like cod liver oil, she added. 

“If they’re so, so sick and have low oxygen levels, they should have been in the hospital a day or two earlier,” she said.
...

In his first public statements about the outbreak, Mr. Kennedy faced intense backlash for minimizing the situation, saying it was “not unusual” and falsely claiming that many people hospitalized were there “mainly for quarantine.”

In the following weeks, Mr. Kennedy altered his approach, offering a muted recommendation of vaccines for people in West Texas while also promoting unproven treatments like cod liver oil, which has vitamin A, and touting “almost miraculous and instantaneous” recoveries with steroids or antibiotics.

And in a scene out of Contagion:

In the last few weeks, drugstores in West Texas have struggled to keep bottles of vitamin A pills and cod liver oil supplements on their shelves.

Mid-March Measles

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 presidential candidate 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.  Trump has directed him to investigate autism.

Aria Bendix and Randi Richardson at NBC:

Less than three months into 2025, measles cases in the United States have already surpassed last year’s total as the outbreak in West Texas continues to spread.

As of Friday, 320 cases had been reported across 16 states, according to NBC News’ tally of state health department data. That’s compared to 285 cases confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year, which was the highest total since 2019.

The vast majority of this year’s cases, 259, have been in Texas, with another 35 reported in bordering New Mexico. All but four of those cases across the two states were in unvaccinated people or those with an unknown vaccination status.

An unvaccinated, school-aged child in Texas died of measles last month, and an unvaccinated adult who died in New Mexico also tested positive, but the cause of death is still under investigation. Prior to those deaths, the U.S. had not seen a measles fatality in a decade, and a child had not died of measles since 2003.

Measles has been considered eliminated in the U.S. since 2000, meaning it is not continuously spreading, though there are occasional outbreaks. But the country came close to losing that status in 2019, when 1,274 cases were recorded, most of which were associated with outbreaks in Orthodox Jewish communities in New York.

Good News: Weldon is Out. Bad News: RFK Is Not

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.

Good News:

Lena H. Sun, Dan Diamond, Rachel Roubein and Fenit Nirappil

The White House abruptly abandoned the nomination of Dave Weldon, the former Florida congressman who questioned vaccine safety, to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday amid concerns he could not be confirmed by the Senate.

The move leaves the Trump administration in search of a leader for the agency — which formulates vaccine policy recommendations — as a growing measles outbreak highlights criticism of the administration’s public health response.

...

Weldon, a 71-year-old doctor who left Congress in 2009, drew scrutiny for his longtime promotion of the false claim that vaccines can cause autism.

In a four-page statement released Thursday, Weldon said a White House assistant called him Wednesday night to inform him his nomination was being withdrawn because he lacked the votes to be confirmed. Weldon, who again raised concerns about routine vaccines in his statement, said Republican senators concerned about his vaccine views doomed his nomination and that he suspected the pharmaceutical industry also played a role.

...

He also extensively defended Andrew Wakefield, who ignited the modern anti-vaccine movement with a retracted 1998 study linking the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to autism.

Bad News: 

 Mary Kekatos at ABC:

Measles is continuing to spread across the United States, as outbreaks grow in western Texas and New Mexico.

Between the two states, 256 cases have been confirmed as of Thursday, mostly in those who are unvaccinated or with unknown vaccination status, according to state health officials. At least one unvaccinated school-aged child in Texas has died and another suspected death is being investigated in New Mexico in an unvaccinated adult. At least 10 other states have also confirmed cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As health care professionals work to care for patients, they are also attempting to combat the proliferation of misinformation about how to prevent and treat the disease, some tell ABC News.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been one of the prominent voices on measles, making comments that public health experts say are not accurate.

In multiple interviews, Kennedy has claimed that vitamin A and cod liver oil are effective treatments for measles. He also said that poor diet contributes to severe cases of measles and that -- while vaccines prevent illness -- they also cause severe illnesses and even death.

The Shame of the Department of Education

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

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 7.5 million children 3 to 21 years old received services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in AY 2022-23.

About 980,000 of them were autistic, up from 498,000 in 2012-13.

The Trump administration is halving the staff of the Department of Education.

Tyler Kingkade and Adam Edelman at NBC:

Massive layoffs initiated this week at the Education Department could hamstring the federal government’s efforts to assist students with disabilities, former officials and education experts said, citing blows to the agency’s civil rights and research divisions.

On Tuesday, the department began laying off around 1,300 employees, cutting nearly half the staff in its Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and over 100 from the Institute of Education Sciences, according to information released by American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, the union for department staff members.

The cuts in those two divisions mean there will be far fewer staff members to finish the 12,000 pending federal investigations into allegations of civil rights violations at schools — roughly half of which involve disability issues — and fewer employees to review and distribute government-funded research into effective ways to educate children with autism or severe intellectual disabilities.

Marco Margaritoff at Huffpost:

Education Secretary Linda McMahon is fumbling key acronyms on national television.

The former professional wrestling promoter sat down Tuesday with Fox News to defend her department’s massive staff cuts of some 1,300 employees, which were announced earlier that day, only to unwittingly prove just how essential education really is.

McMahon explained on “The Ingraham Angle” that Congress appropriates money through the department’s expenditures and programs including the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, which provides children with disabilities free public education.

When asked what “IDEA” stood for, however, the 76-year-old couldn’t accurately answer — and told host Laura Ingraham, “Well, do you know what? I’m not sure I can tell you exactly what it stands for, except that it’s the programs for disabled and needs [students]