Overview

• At a cabinet meeting, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told President Trump he will announce in September the “interventions” he says are “almost certainly” causing autism and how he plans to address them.
• Kennedy reiterated his focus on environmental factors, including vaccines, though major studies and leading scientific organizations reject a vaccine–autism link.
• The CDC reports autism prevalence at about 1 in 31 children by age 8 in 2022 and roughly 1 in 45 adults, up from about 1 in 150 a few decades ago.
• Researchers and advocates attribute much of the increase to expanded diagnostic criteria and better detection, including more identification of children without intellectual disability.
• Trump called autism “a tremendous horror show” as Kennedy reaffirmed the September timeline first set in April for results from his HHS initiative.