- Simplistic wrong thinking about autism;
- Heather Cox Richardson on Trump’s speech;
- And The Bulwark’s take on that speech;
- And of course the Rapture didn’t happen.
The autism issue is just another example of how conservatives flatten the world into simplistic categories of good and bad.
First, an essay from today’s NYT op-ed page.
NY Times, Maia Szalavitz, 22 Sept 2025: What the Government Autism Announcement Got So Wrong [gift link]
The writer begins by recalling how discussion of “Asperger’s syndrome” in 2004 included symptoms that she recognized in herself.
I realized I wasn’t the only one whose life had been molded by this collection of seemingly disparate traits. Many others were on the same journey: The more we learn about autism, the more prevalent it seems to be. Recent statistics show that autism rates have risen from 0.7 percent of 8-year-olds in 2000 to 3 percent in 2022.
Experts disagree on the causes of that increase, but for President Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., it’s a clear sign that autism has become a “crisis” that must be eradicated.
Then recounting recent claims about Tylenol and leucovorin. Then:
The whole initiative is the latest troubling sign that the administration misunderstands what autistic people and our families need. Unfortunately, the Trump administration seems to see autistic people as a burden on society that should be eliminated, not as citizens who are valuable.
Mr. Kennedy has said that “autism destroys families” and called it “cataclysmic” during the press conference. But there is much more to autism than this bleak view suggests. Like many brain differences, autism isn’t just an affliction.
Autism can cause profound disability, which is true in 10 to 27 percent of cases. Such cases are rising at a much lower rate than those on the milder end of the spectrum, who, like me, may become aware of what their traits signify only because of greater media attention to the diagnosis. Even the apparent rise in severe cases may be a classification issue: Many intellectually disabled children who once would have been given other labels are now identified as autistic; this may account for two-thirds of the increase in these cases.
It’s only the suffering that must be reduced, not autism itself.
If we try to eliminate autism, we’re likely also to lose a great deal of mathematical, scientific, linguistic, artistic, musical and humanitarian genius. And critically, regardless of abilities, all people have intrinsic value.
These subtleties are beyond the comprehension of conservatives, apparently. The writer describes the genetic evidence. And there’s this, which I hadn’t realized:
It may also be the case that we’re seeing more of what scientists call assortative mating — where like attracts like. The internet has made it far easier for those with similar interests to find one another and have children together, and that might include autistic people. Research increasingly supports this theory.
Concluding,
Moreover, autistic folks tend to love stability and routine, and to struggle mightily with chaos. To see the nation’s scientific agencies following Mr. Kennedy’s lead and promoting pseudoscience is shattering. Many of our greatest scientists, musicians and mathematicians have high levels of autistic traits or actually meet criteria for autism; if we want to benefit from more of their insights or just be better people, we need to target autism-associated disabilities, not autism.
What we need is understanding, accommodation and resources. Instead, the signal we’re getting is that autism shouldn’t exist.
Further reading: NeuroTribes, by Steven Silberman, and the chapter about autism in Andrew Solomon’s Far from the Tree, which I reviewed here.
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Another from NYT, which from the format and length I’m guessing will appear in next weekend’s Sunday Magazine. Another reason autism rates have “increased.” We learn more; categories change.
NY Times, Roy Richard Grinker, 24 Sept 2025: Autism Has Always Existed. We Haven’t Always Called It Autism.
In a widely anticipated news conference on Monday, President Trump declared that there was “nothing more important” in his presidency than reducing the prevalence of autism. He claimed that his administration would virtually eliminate the condition, which he called a “horrible crisis” and which a top federal health official suggested might be “entirely preventable.”
The administration’s project is built on the premise that an autism diagnosis is a terrible tragedy and that scientists and doctors have failed to prevent what Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called an “epidemic.”
But science has not failed. One reason we have so many questions about autism today is that we’ve learned so much about it and how to address it. Thousands of highly trained researchers and clinicians have generated an extraordinary amount of information about autism’s genetics and neurobiology, developed reliable early detection methods, expanded special education and improved behavioral and medical therapies. To think otherwise reveals a deep and willful ignorance of the history of autism and its present-day complexity.
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The thing about his reducing the prevalence of autism is, that if it’s due to mothers taking Tylenol during pregnancy, and stopping them from doing it now, we wouldn’t see any effect for 10 or 20 years. Conveniently. Note they’re very concerned about autism as a scourge, far less about particular autistic people.
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Whereas,
Media Matters, 24 Sept 2025: Newsmax host: “Libs are now pro-autism”
As I’ve been saying. Simplistic thinking, and obviously not true.
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Heather Cox Richardson, cagily, begins her post by discussing someone at the UN General Assembly who is not Trump. There are traditions at that General Assembly.
In New York City this morning, the United Nations opened its General Assembly, marking the 80th anniversary of the establishment of the United Nations itself. The day began with a General Debate, the meeting in which heads of state and government outline their positions and priorities in an era of changing and complex global challenges.
Secretary-General of the United Nations António Guterres opened the debate, reminding the audience that leaders who had lived through the horrors of World War II had created the organization to prevent another such conflagration by establishing “cooperation over chaos, law over lawlessness, peace over conflict.” It was, he said, “a practical strategy for the survival of humanity.”
“Eighty years on,” he said, “we confront again the question our founders faced—only more urgent, more intertwined, more unforgiving: What kind of world do we choose to build together?”
Of course these issues are of no interest to Trump or MAGA. Heather eventually gets to that Trump speech.
President Donald J. Trump also addressed the gathered world leaders, guests of the United States.
He began by complaining that the teleprompter wasn’t working, and also mentioned that an escalator on which he and First Lady Melania Trump had been riding had stopped shortly after they stepped onto it.
Trump’s speech went on to depict a fantasy world in which he had single-handedly saved the world. He claimed to have forged peace on two continents during his first term but said that “era of calm and stability gave way to one of the great crises of our time.” He then turned to the United States, claiming that “four years of weakness, lawlessness, and radicalism under the last administration delivered our nation into a repeated set of disasters. One year ago,” he said, “our country was in deep trouble, but today, just eight months into my administration, we are the hottest country anywhere in the world and there is no other country even close. America is blessed with the strongest economy, the strongest borders, the strongest military, the strongest friendships, and the strongest spirit of any nation on the face of the earth.”
And that was the frame for the next hour of rambling boasts and insults.
With details. And this:
“A senior foreign diplomat posted at the U.N. texts me,” Tharoor wrote, “‘This man is stark, raving mad. Do Americans not see how embarrassing this is?’”
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And this great headline:
The Bulwark, 24 Sept 2025: The World’s Brittlest Ego Meets the Globe’s Biggest Stage, subtitled “When are all you U.N. jerks going to start appreciating everything the American emperor does for you?”
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The Rapture didn’t happen. Of course.
