Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz ripped into Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s comments about autism and warned that the Trump administration’s cuts to the Department of Education posed a risk to students with disabilities.
Walz, the 2024 Democratic nominee for vice president alongside Kamala Harris, spoke to The Independent about the Trump administration, last year’s presidential election and the way forward for Democrats.
Walz said that he worried about the stigma that Kennedy’s words would spread about people with disabilities.
“First of all, you know, basically stigmatizing these kids and basically saying, you know, they’re not going to pay taxes, they’re not going to contribute, or whatever, which is is just so blatantly false and, quite honestly, just evil in its intent and all the work we’ve done.”
During the 2024 election, Walz disclosed that his son Gus, who went viral during the Democratic National Convention for his show of emotion, has a nonverbal learning disorder, as well as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and an anxiety disorder.
Last month, Kennedy spoke about the latest autism prevalence report from the Centers for Disease Control that showed that 1 in 31 children have autism spectrum disorder. During that time, Kennedy said that “autism destroys families.”
“And these are kids who will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem,” the son of Bobby Kennedy said. “They’ll never go out on a date.”
At the time, Walz’s wife, Gwen, called Kennedy’s words “deeply upsetting, especially coming from our nation’s highest-ranking health official.”
The governor also said he worried about the Department of Health and Human Services’ plans to gather data on autistic people. Kennedy, who has long espoused the debunked idea that vaccines cause autism, has said that he wants to study the autism “epidemic” and announce results by September.
“You know, this has been studied, forever, been studied by folks at the Mayo Clinic and others,” RFK Jr. said. “And quite honestly, these fringe, basically lunatic ideas, are super dangerous, operationally, super dangerous, culturally.”
Specifically, Walz spoke about the risks to the Department of Education. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to “eliminate” the department, which is not legal because abolishing a government department would require an act of Congress.
Walz, a former geography teacher, specifically mentioned how Education Secretary Linda McMahon, the former executive for WWE pro wrestling, did not seem to know what the Individuals with Disabilities Act was.
“I think the large number of Americans don’t really understand the Department of Education being there is basically a civil rights protection with the passage of IDEA,” he said. “That’s the law, and operationally, that’s what made sure that my son and millions of others like him across the country got Individual Education Plans that helped them succeed.”
The IDEA, passed in 1990, guarantees students the right to a free appropriate public education, which includes resources like individualized education plans.
“This isn’t like nice to have stuff or they’re getting special treatment, it’s that we’ve decided that everybody matters, and that what we’ve learned and what the science shows us, is we can make a difference,” Walz said.
“So when they undermine the Department of Education, when they undermine the laws, when you have a secretary of education that doesn’t even know what idea is, when that is the core foundation principle in quality education, I am deeply worried.”
Walz mentioned how as a teacher, IDEA helped him offer accommodations for his students.
“It might have been just as simple as recording my lectures or providing the notes ahead of time so they could be translated into Braille for my students,” he said. “It was, it was just things that accommodated and made it better so that this child could succeed and learn geography in my class.”
In recent months, the Department of Education has canceled research grants meant to find the most effective tools to help students with disabilities transition to adulthood.
