Breaking: Leaked HHS budget cuts target autism
Despite RFK Jr.'s claims, the Trump admin is not prioritizing autism research funding
Some in the autism community were warmly receptive of RFK Jr.’s promise to find the “cause” for autism by September. But, there are reasons to be cautious.
This month, the Trump admin proposed to cut the Dept. of Health & Human Services’ discretionary 2026 budget by 30%.
We now have details as to how that cut might be spread across existing programs.
According to an internal proposal for how to cut the Biden admin’s “wasteful spending”:
The AHA Maternal and Child Health Program - Autism and Other Disorders will be eliminated. This would wipe out the CDC’s dedicated autism public health programming as we know.
The proposed allocation for the CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities (NCBDDD) autism research and prevention efforts is $23.1 million, which is a nearly 20% reduction from 2024 funding. I can’t find data on 2025.
Other related eliminations include funding for ADHD, Fragile X, and early hearing detection, which are typically bundled with autism support.
Numerous program-level cuts under the AHA Environmental Health Program, which calls into question RFK Jr.’s commitment to finding an environmental cause for autism.
The document refers to targeted eliminations of funding streams within the reorganized Administration for a Healthy America (AHA) framework.
Importantly, this new framework transfers autism oversight and funding from the CDC, which has overseen autism research for decades, into the new AHA organization.
It’s not clear whether existing CDC staff will be retained by AHA or laid off. The staff includes career scientists, clinicians, statisticians, and policy advisors with specialized expertise.
These staff are associated with the CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network and its National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities (NCBDDD), which have spearheaded autism work in the U.S.
Already, 2,400 CDC employees have been laid off as part of the broader HHS restructuring.