U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks during a news conference at the Department of Health and Human Service. Photo by Getty Images

My son loves Tchaikovsky. He quotes blocks of dialogue from Shakespeare plays as well as from Marx Brothers movies. He has a college degree, a job, friends and an enriching life. He is on the autism spectrum. You can tell he’s a little different. And it makes me shudder to think what would have been his fate during the Third Reich, when up to 300,000 disabled people were murdered under the Nazis’ “Aktion T4” euthanasia program.

Doctors in Nazi Germany were involved in collecting medical data about the disabled, including people who in our time would be on the autism spectrum, and busing them to six specially designated psychiatric hospitals. Mass sterilizations were carried out at these centers, as was mass murder. The victims included children who were judged to be “marginal human beings” and “unworthy of living.”

So it was only natural that expressions of deep concern were voiced when word got out in April that the Trump administration was planning an “autism registry.”

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Of course, no one thought that autistic Americans were going to be rounded up and sent to their doom. But Trump has shown so little empathy for vulnerable populations, and has become so brazen about acting on his authoritarian inclinations, that advocates for the disabled are demanding that people on the autism spectrum be protected.

This all started with an April 16 press conference by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to present the latest data on autism compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Kennedy hyperventilated about findings showing that 1 in 31 8-year-olds had been identified with autism as of 2022.

“Shocking,” Kennedy told reporters. “The prevalence two years ago was one in 36.”

Actually, the increase is not shocking at all. The CDC has been tracking the rise in reported autism cases for more than two decades, and has not kept the public in the dark about its findings. Health experts say the rise is largely due to better diagnostic tools, increased awareness, and expanded criteria for identifying autism, and they reject Trump’s and Kennedy’s insistence there’s an autism epidemic.

At his press conference, Kennedy employed rhetoric that to many had echoes of eugenic theories of the past, theories used by the Nazis to justify mass murder but have also been used in other countries, including the United States, to justify forced sterilizations of people deemed “undesirable.”

“Autism destroys families,” Kennedy told reporters. “These are kids who will never pay taxes. They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.”

After an uproar over his comments, Kennedy said he was only talking about people with “severe autism.“ But the damage has been done. Kennedy’s critics say his words seem to suggest a belief that people with autism have less value to society, or that he fails to understand that people on the autism spectrum possess qualities that can enrich their own lives and the lives of others.

Many on the autism spectrum, including my son, take pride in the characteristics that make them different, embracing them as core to their identity.

“He (Kennedy) set up this litmus test of what it is to be a person and have a valuable life,” Zoe Gross, director of advocacy at the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN), told CNN. “It’s not acceptable to talk that way anymore because of the work that we’ve done.”

Soon after Kennedy’s April 16 press conference, 50 organizations that advocate for the disabled issued a communique demanding protections for the estimated 7 million autistic Americans.  They announced their alignment on these core principles: Scientific research has shown no causal link between vaccines and autism, autistic individuals deserve respect and support, and policies must be “grounded in science and responsive to community needs.”

“We are deeply concerned by growing public rhetoric and policy decisions that challenge these shared principles,” the communique said.

While Kennedy’s rhetoric has been worrisome, probably the gravest concern is over an “autism registry,” as it was referred to when word about the plan first emerged. The Trump administration tried to clean that up by saying there would be no “autism registry.” What federal health officials have in mind, they said, is linking already existing government and private databases to create a platform that would be used by government researchers to look for a “cure” for autism.

Federal health officials have issued promises that such a platform would be used only as a research tool. This is hardly a comfort to the autistic community, who are suspicious that the Trump administration could use the data for purposes that are not in their best interests.

On April 23, the ASAN issued a communique saying “there is no indication at this point that this database is going to be used to target individual autistic people or ‘round up’ members of our community.”

Nonetheless, the organization said it was “gravely concerned” by the Trump administration’s plans for the medical database. ASAN pointed to new guidance by Kennedy’s department that allows health care workers to file complaints against providers offering gender-affirming care.

“This administration has already demonstrated that it does not prioritize the privacy of vulnerable communities,” ASAN said.

Given the Trump administration’s “deplorable, eugenic rhetoric about autism” and its “demonstrated disregard for basic standards of scientific evidence, there is every reason to believe that this data will be misused in troubling and dangerous ways,” ASAN said.

Worries about Trump’s motives are multiplied by the authoritarian streak he has shown – his defiance of court orders, assaults on the press, his shakedown of elite universities and prestigious law firms, and his retribution against those who have offended him.

Would Trump use the “autism registry” to identify undocumented residents who are receiving care paid for by federal funds, shut down autism programs deemed as “woke,” or deny benefits for people who for one reason or another do not fit in with his worldview? These might seem like farfetched scenarios. But Trump has repeatedly displayed glee in throwing hand grenades at longstanding American standards and norms.

It seems unlikely that America’s disabled can hope for much empathy from the 47th president of the United States.

Fred C. Trump III, the president’s nephew, tells a story in his book All in The Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way about a meeting he had with his uncle in the Oval Office during Trump’s first term, where the two talked about the disabled.

According to the younger Trump, his uncle said to him: “Those people… The shape they’re in, all the expenses, maybe those kinds of people should just die.”

A spokesman for the president has rejected the nephew’s allegations as “total fake news of the highest order,” but Fred Trump has stood by them.

Tremendous progress has been made in overcoming stigmas attached to autism, which has helped people like my son thrive and explore their potential. I’m not alone in fearing that this progress is now under threat because of Trump’s authoritarian ways.

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