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It has been a chaotic start to the new year. There is a lot of very overwhelming news. We’re here to explain some of what’s happened the past few months. We’ll share actions you can take to help autistic people & the disability community. One of the big things that happened recently is that the government replaced the public members of the IACC. IACC stands for “Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee”. The IACC’s job is to give advice about how the government spends money on autism research. The government picked all new members for the IACC. Most of the people on the IACC now are anti-vaccine, or support dangerous fake autism “treatments.” None of the new members have been on the committee before. No one who used to be on the committee was put back on the committee this year. Many of the old members asked to stay on the IACC, but didn’t get to stay. ASAN made a statement talking about why we do not trust the new IACC here. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) also put out a new children’s vaccine schedule that is worse than before. A vaccine schedule says when kids should get specific vaccines. The choices that HHS made mean that children do not have to get certain vaccines on time. That means kids might get sick with the illnesses that vaccines could have stopped. This month there is also more news coming out about ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) hurting or killing people. Autistic people get hurt or killed by ICE. Disability organizations are worried about how ICE hurts disabled people, and especially disabled kids. We shared an article that talks about this. It shows what ICE is doing in Minnesota. It says that children with disabilities are in a lot of danger from ICE. The National Immigration Law Center has an explainer breaking down how ICE hurts people. This resource also has information about how to tell Congress: No more money for ICE! If you are looking for more ways to support people harmed by ICE, this page has mutual aid donation information from organizers in Minnesota. One more important thing happened this month. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report. The report is about the huge number of firings in the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) in the Department of Education. A big reason OCR is important is that they make sure disabled students’ rights are protected in school. In March of 2025, half of OCR staff was fired. The Department of Education tried to say this did not change how well OCR works. The GAO report found that this is false. Since the firings, OCR got 9,000 complaints and did not do anything for 7,000 of them. We know that most of the complaints OCR gets are about disability discrimination. These firings made things worse for disabled students. Disabled people deserve to go to school and not be discriminated against or bullied. When OCR gets rid of complaints, that means disabled students’ rights are not being protected. The Department of Education is supposed to protect disabled students, and they are not doing their job. We know that the news right now is scary. Some of us are having physical and mental health problems because of how much is going on. If you are in crisis and need help, please reach out to someone you trust. You can also ask for help using these hotlines.
Autistic Self Advocacy Network PO Box 66122
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