{"id":840,"date":"2026-08-13T09:07:34","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T09:07:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=840"},"modified":"2026-08-13T09:07:34","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T09:07:34","slug":"trump-is-writing-off-kids-with-disabilities-but-we-shouldnt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=840","title":{"rendered":"Trump Is Writing Off Kids With Disabilities, but We Shouldn\u2019t\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In June, the Trump administration announced plans to effectively transfer two core functions of the Department of Education to other agencies, putting Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in charge of special-education services and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche in charge of the DOE\u2019s civil-rights arm. Advocates had anticipated the moves after Trump signed a 2025 executive order calling for the elimination of the DOE, a goal of Project 2025, but that didn\u2019t make the news any less disturbing, particularly in light of Kennedy\u2019s previous comments about autistic people. At a news conference in April 2025, the health secretary declared autism an \u201cepidemic,\u201d stating that autistic people will \u201cnever pay taxes. They\u2019ll never hold a job. They\u2019ll never play baseball. They\u2019ll never write a poem. They\u2019ll never go out on a date.\u201d Doubling down on his fearmongering rhetoric, he promised to find an environmental cause for the rise in autism diagnoses\u2014although years of research have already concluded that there are multiple causes for the increase. Kennedy\u2019s HHS counts among its contractors David Geier, an anti-vaccine activist who was brought on to investigate a link between vaccines and autism\u2014a theory that has been disproven. Geier is known for having created, with his father, a hormone-blocking regimen that would allegedly cure autism, a treatment that has been debunked as junk science.<\/p>\n

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Yet Education Secretary Linda McMahon has asked Kennedy to administer the DOE\u2019s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS), which supports programs for people with disabilities of all ages. \u201cThis is someone who has an idea that disabilities are so disastrous, life-ending, that someone with a disability like autism may as well be written off completely. That\u2019s not really someone we want in charge of special education,\u201d Zoe Gross, of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, told The Nation<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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