Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Ronald F. Kennedy Jr. pledged to find the ‘cause’ of autism. On Monday, September 22, 2025, the administration announced a link between autism and the use of the pain reliever acetaminophen during pregnancy.
“Don’t take Tylenol,” the president said at a press conference at the White House, claiming that “there is no downside.”
This claim follows Trump and RFK Jr. ‘s long espoused idea that an artificial external factor, such as vaccines or the environment, is responsible for increasing autism diagnoses. Researchers and medical evidence do not back these theories.
The Independent’s Washington Bureau Chief Eric Garcia, who was diagnosed with autism in the 1990s and has been travelling around the country for years interviewing autistic people about their experiences, held a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” forum to answer your questions about autism and the administration’s fear-mongering:
Q: Simple question… I know I’m not the first to think of it… Did autism exist before tylenol? Just checking.
EG: Yes. The first major study on autism in the US came out in 1944 by a researcher named Leo Kanner, years before Tylenol came out on the market. Autism has likely been with us as long as there have been human beings. Some people suspect that people like Lord Cavendish might have been. Others say Mozart or Jefferson. I’ve never been in the business of speculating who is autistic and who isn’t (though in my day job, I often suspect certain elected officials or members of presidential administrations are). But the point is, autism has always been with us.
Q: What are your thoughts about the fact that neurodivergent people are more often chronically in pain, therefore they take Tylenol more often, and then have children and pass on those genetics, through no fault of Tylenol.
EG: This is actually a great question. One of my close friends, who is autistic and is a mom, dealt with hypermobility, and she mentioned how Tylenol can be one of the few sources of pain relief. Hypermobility has a hormonal component, and stigmatizing acetaminophen might make matters worse.
Q: As a journalist, what aspects of the job are hardest for you as an autistic person? Which aspects are naturally stronger for you?
EG: The hardest one is that I struggle with social cues and interactions. So I know I will probably never be good at talking to sources on deep background or anything. I also don’t drive because of sensory overload. However, I am a sucker for going down a document rabbit hole. I love going through campaign finance documents or court rulings. And I am also good at being a jerk in a press gaggle or press conference and asking a really blunt question and not caring about the social ramifications.
Q: Hi. I’m an autistic woman and find this political climate very hostile. When Trump/RFK Jr talk about autism, do you think they are referring to the entire spectrum? Is their issue with the support needs of disabled people, the suffering of the people themselves, or the actual autistic traits?
EG: A lot of it is a willful misreading of the data. Even the CDC, which is under Kennedy’s purview, released its biennial report saying improved screening and diagnoses led to increased cases. A lot of it generally goes to fearmongering and conspiracy theories. Trump came to it the same way he’s come to many of his other conspiracy theories. RFK Jr. came to it through his environmental activism. The problem is that they now have access to all of these incredible scientists and continue to disregard the facts. The unfortunate thing is that Trump and Kennedy both have incredible megaphones, and they have diehard followers who would be receptive to whatever they say. We’ve seen how Republicans changed their views on the economy and foreign policy to go with whatever Trump said. The same could be true if he followed the science on autism and vaccines. Ironically, by nominating Kennedy, Trump has undermined the biggest accomplishment during his first presidency: The rapid rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine.
Q: I wanted to get your perspective on whether or not autism will remain conceptualized in the DSM as a broad spectrum or if we will return to narrower diagnoses.
EG: Great question. It’s important to remember that the government doesn’t create these labels but rather the American Psychiatric Association. There is a lot of push to relabel autistic people who were once known as having “classic autism” or “low-functioning autism” as having “profound autism” and returning the label of “Asperger’s syndrome” (despite Hans Asperger’s collaboration with the Nazi regime in Austria). I tend to worry about separating them because calling something “profound” tends to set low expectations or adds more stigma that autism is a disease or that they can never accomplish much. But autistic people with high support needs still have incredible value as human beings. In addition, many people we consider “profoundly autistic” can and have gone to college, write and publish poetry or make art. I fear calling them “profound” or “severely” autistic will automatically stick people with how we perceive them rather than what they need to thrive. And this is not to diminish their needs. To the contrary. Having those labels like “high support needs” or “autistic person with intellectual disabilities” helps us determine what supports would best help someone.
Q: Genuine question: If Biden were the POTUS and had said the same thing about Tylenol and autism, would you have slammed him just as hard, or praised him?
EG: No question! I wrote plenty of negative stories about the Biden administration and its mismanagement of Covid, such as when his CDC director Rochelle Walensky said that Covid-19 deaths among people who were vaccinated were “people who were unwell to begin with.” I gave the Biden team hell for saying inflation was “transitory” when it was clear prices were going up. I also wrote about how Biden’s age was going to be an issue in the 2024 election before the debate, and his campaign needed to be upfront about it and not cavalier. I criticized Biden in my book for not releasing a disability policy in the 2020 campaign until he won the Democratic nomination for president (fun fact: Kamala Harris released the first disability policy in that primary, and I criticized her too).
Q: I have two young kids with ASD diagnoses, and I am deeply disturbed and scared, and trying to figure out how to navigate this environment. What are your thoughts on supporting children in this moment?
EG: I’ll say what I’ve always said, which is that autistic people need your love, especially now more than ever. That love will power you to build a better world and fight for accommodations, and make it easier for the next people who come after you. Love and acceptance are contagious, and they set an example.
Q: How are you taking care of yourself as an autistic man covering all this nonsense?
EG: Ha! I talked about this with my mom on Sunday before all this, and I said that covering this actually gives me a sense of purpose. When I am covering the normal politics of the day, I am chasing the same stories everyone else is. But when I cover autism, I have been writing about it for a decade and focused on including autistic voices, so it gives me a strong sense of direction I probably otherwise wouldn’t have amid the Trump chaos.
