They’re Not After Autism — They’re After Autonomy
RFK Jr. is using pseudoscience to police thought.
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Donald Trump is obsessed with genetics, though not in the way a geneticist might be. More in the way a horse breeder eyes a prize stud.
According to Trump’s disturbingly eugenic-lite musings, some people just can’t “genetically handle pressure,” whereas he, the genetic colossus, possesses the “winning gene” and, lest we forget, “German blood.”
But he didn’t stop there, because he never does.
In one interview, he added this xenophobic gem: “We got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.” Trump believes these genetically inferior immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” (For those not fluent in dog whistles, that’s Trumpese for “immigrants are ruining my Aryan purity fantasy.”)
Of course, your first instinct might be to accuse Trump of cosplaying Hitler, or maybe dabbling in Stalin’s greatest hits. But to really understand the depth of this ideological rot, you have to accept a more uncomfortable truth.
Eugenics isn’t a Nazi original. It’s Made in America.
Let’s rewind to the early twentieth century, long before swastikas and jackboots, to a humid summer afternoon at an American state fair. Families stroll past livestock judging and popcorn carts with caramel sticking to their molars, only to find themselves lured toward something much stranger than the bearded lady — the “Better Baby” contest.
Here, under a striped tent flapping in the breeze, babies are lined up like prized hogs, measured for head circumference, reflex speed, and how little they cry. Mothers clutch blue ribbons with the same pride you’d expect at a butter sculpture competition.
Next door, you might find the “Fitter Family” exhibit, where a panel of white-coated scientists poke, prod, and psychoanalyze multiple generations like they are vetting livestock for sale. Each family presents their “Abridged Record of Family Traits” and is graded on their eugenic fitness.
The family with the best genetic GPA walks away with a silver trophy. Everyone else? Just the quiet shame of not being biologically sparkly enough for a ribbon.
And while improving families might feel as wholesome as apple pie, behind the cherubic smiles were charts on racial purity, IQ tests scored with a smirk, and the quiet hum of scientists deciding which children were too “feeble-minded” to exist.
Psychologist Henry H. Goddard popularized the term “feeble-minded” — a catch-all for anyone who couldn’t pass his arbitrary IQ test. To push his agenda, Goddard published The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness (1912), a book that was part science, part fiction, and entirely damaging.
Goddard claimed to trace two branches of a man’s descendants — one from a “feeble-minded” barmaid and the other from a “respectable” woman — and concluded that bad breeding produced criminals, drunks, and, horrifyingly, “the morally degenerate.” It read like a cautionary fairy tale, except instead of a moral, you got state-mandated sterilization.
And he wasn’t alone. “Feeble-mindedness” became the buzzword of the day — a vague, slippery diagnosis that conveniently covered everything from neurodivergent thinking to intellectual disabilities. It also described promiscuous women, poor people, or those deemed simply inconvenient. Most importantly, it allowed lawmakers to draw a sharp, confident line between who should reproduce and who should not.
That line was carved into legal stone with the 1927 Supreme Court case, Buck v. Bell, which ruled that sterilizing a young woman named Carrie Buck, along with her mother and daughter, was perfectly constitutional given their feeble-mindedness.
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. coolly declared, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Never mind that the so-called “imbeciles” might have been undiagnosed autistics, dyslexics, or simply poor. They didn’t fit the mold. That was enough.
It didn’t help matters that eugenics had its celebrity influencers— John D. Rockefeller, Winston Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt, Alexander Graham Bell, and Margaret Sanger. Even blind and deaf Helen Keller had some whacked ideas on how to eliminate what she called the “multiplication of the unfit.” Keller’s solution? Have a panel of expert doctors determine which disabled babies should be euthanized. I guess we always hate what we see in ourselves.
And just like that, reproductive rights became a state project. Not in secret labs in Nazi Germany, but in courtrooms and clinics across the America. Long before the Nazis clipboards, the government sterilized more than 60,000 US eugenics victims. The last large wave of sterilization occurred in California in 1979, with the forced sterilization of 20,000 people.
Today, the Trump regime’s condemnation of autistic people is casting shadows from America’s dark past. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has done everything short of renting a skywriter to push the idea that autistic people should be put down like lame race horses. In a recent press conference, Kennedy painted a grim picture of autism.
“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.”
I don’t know if he’s describing a root vegetable or just someone with brainworms, but he clearly has not met many autistic folks. (Or watched Love on the Spectrum.) Autism exists on such a broad spectrum that these generalizations are not only hurtful, but also show Kennedy’s ignorance.
However, arguably the most telling accusation in Kennedy’s litany of never ever(s) was, “these are kids who will never pay taxes.” People who don’t pay taxes? Shudders. I guess Kennedy thinks all autistic kids grow up to be billionaires.
But no worries. Kennedy believes he will find the “cause” of autism by “September.” Never mind that 20 years of research has found multiple causes for higher rates of autism — genetics, earlier diagnosis, and environmental factors, most likely during pregnancy. But sure, Kennedy thinks he will find some smoking gun by September. (read: vaccines.) More alarmingly, he discredited improved diagnostic tools for higher rates of autism cases and instead blamed a shadowy environmental force (read: vaccines).
Newsflash: in case you can’t follow Kennedy’s anti-vax money trail: Autism is not caused by vaccines.
Following Kennedy’s statements, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released a press release calling autism “preventable.”
The Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) responded to Kennedy’s misguided comments with horror, pointing out that he cherry-picked data and misrepresented basic science. (Which, to be fair, is how Kennedy made his millions — fear-based wellness attacking vaccines starring big Pharma as the boogeyman.)
But here’s the kicker. While Kennedy dismisses improved diagnostics as irrelevant, he’s also called on the NIH to create an Orwellian autism database. The NIH has been tracking autism for the last decade, but this database will use more than medical records. Kennedy wants data from smartwatches, ancestry DNA tests, fitness devices, and even pharmacy purchases.
So which is it? On one side of his mouth, Kennedy claims that better diagnostic tools are not leading to higher autism rates. On the other side of his mouth…we need more autism data. So, do we need better tools to diagnose autism, or better tools for the government to surveil autism?
In other words, is the Trump regime trying to diagnose autistic people, or track them?
Because when you match this new database with Kennedy’s anti-science past and the data-mining fervor of Silicon Valley, it starts to look less like a wellness crusade and more like a Minority Report for neurodivergence.
Let’s be clear: this isn’t completely about disabilities. Sure, there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that the Trump regime is expanding its discrimination against DEI to DEIA. The administration has already proposed an $880 billion cut to Medicaid funding that could jeopardize long-term care services for over six million Americans with disabilities and cut $113 million from the Department of Education’s budget for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
However, the attack on people in the functioning end of the autistic spectrum, known as neurodivergence, is something different.
It’s about autonomy.
This latest war on autism is a war on minds they can’t predict, can’t control, and sure as hell can’t imitate. Divergent intelligence scares the khakis off authoritarian minds. Always has.
Sir Isaac Newton probably couldn’t make small talk to save his powdered wig, but he invented calculus. Emily Dickinson barely left her bedroom, yet she gave us poetry that still makes grown academics weep. Darwin spent years staring at barnacles and recharted our origin story.
These were not “normal” people. Thank God.
The Trump regime’s problem with divergent thinkers isn’t factual — it’s emotional. It’s envy dressed up as outrage. They are toddlers jealous of the kid who can solve a Rubik’s cube in 30 seconds while humming Beethoven backwards. So they want to “fix” autistic people, or better yet, normalize them out of existence.
But here’s the truth: the Trump regime fears anyone who thinks differently — anyone with a different accent, melanin, tattoo, culture, or cognition. When they encounter a brain that doesn’t obey the usual traffic signals, their gut response is to call it a violation. But the bullying is just camouflage. Deep down, they know they can’t compete.
Let’s pretend, for a moment, that all this data-collecting and bloodline panic is for the noble purpose of better diagnoses. Then explain this: HHS Autism Surveillance Report found that overall prevalence for autism among Black, Asian, and Hispanic was 3.5%, 3.11%, and 3.82%, respectively, compared to 2.04% among white children.
At first blush, it might seem like autism in white children is less prevalent. But when researchers correct for socioeconomic status, the difference in age at diagnosis between white and minority kids vanishes.
Autism isn’t an epidemic. Misdiagnosis is. And that’s not a genetic issue. That’s a class issue, a race issue, a power issue.
If Kennedy truly wants to help autistic kids, he could fund early intervention programs and stop trying to annihilate the Department of Education. Or he could fund equitable healthcare that would detect autism in children from impoverished backgrounds. And if Kennedy wants more efficient diagnosis of autism, he should start with the people who don’t own smartwatches.
Don’t build a database. Build support systems.
Because we’ve seen what happens when we let men obsessed with heredity and control set the rules. It doesn’t lead to cures. It leads to cages or far worse.
“More people die of unenlightened self-interest than of any other disease.” — Octavia Butler
Carlyn Beccia is an award-winning author and illustrator of 13 books. Subscribe to Conversations with Carlyn for free content every Wednesday, or become a paid subscriber to get the juicy stuff on Sundays.
A very clear explanation of Trump’s plan for creating a super race, eliminating “misfits!” How fascist ‼️
The book is Eugenics and Sex Harmony Herman Rubin, MD 1949. I think I read in this years ago that he said that it was OK for whites and blacks to inter breed because the white race was so strong that it would eventually eliminate the black race. Would send pics but don’t know how.