Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has already ignited a firestorm of controversy by pushing his anti-vaccine conspiracy theories into public policy, including his alleged mismanagement of a measles outbreak. But another fast-growing controversy concerns his influence over how neurodivergent kids are treated in special education, Slate reported.
President Donald Trump is mounting a likely-illegal move to dismantle the Department of Education, a long-running dream of far right activists who oppose its role in enforcing civil rights in schools at the state level. This move would put Kennedy in charge of special education oversight — and for many parents, that's a huge problem.
"Underlying the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again campaign, and most particularly a February executive order calling out ADHD medications and other commonly prescribed drugs for children as potential 'threats,' is the anti-science implication that neurodivergence is a fiction, curable, as suggested in the executive order, with a well-balanced diet and regular exercise," wrote Sarah Carr. The order, she continued, echoes "recent declarations from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., offering another piece of evidence — as if his persistent illusions of a link between vaccines and autism weren’t enough — that the secretary of health and human services believes that scientists and doctors are hurting rather than helping neurodivergent children."
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"It’s only in recent decades that it’s been widely understood how rooted the most common neurodivergent conditions like ADHD, autism, and dyslexia are in differences in brain structure or function, or both — and how treatable ADHD, in particular, can be with medications that alter that functioning," Carr continued — and Trump and Kennedy's attack on this medication could set special education back years.
One parent in Oklahoma, identified as "Grace," told the story of how her daughter had impulsive behaviors in the classroom, getting in trouble for walking around and touching students, embarrassed at her behavior but struggling to control it, until her diagnosis and medication allowed her to thrive. Trump's executive order is a huge problem for her family.
“It makes me kind of rage honestly,” Grace told Slate. “If it was that simple to fix without meds, we would have done it. Suggesting that ADHD is a parenting failure rather than a neurological difference is all kinds of messed up.”
The issue goes beyond medicine, as Slate noted in its report: behavioral and occupational therapy access in schools has grown in recent decades, providing help to millions of families.
With Trump trying to demolish the Department of Education, "availability of those therapies and supports — like occupational therapy and staff in schools trained in working with children with disabilities, including neurodivergence — could also become even more restricted. Public school districts across the country already were facing severe budget cuts with the disappearance of pandemic relief funds." The ensuing further cuts could impact children "with more mild to moderate disabilities, including many with ADHD."