🍂 ASAN September Update 🍂

September 30, 2025

ASAN September Newsletter

Dear friend,

As the autumn days get cooler, our advocacy work is heating up. We’re been hard at work alongside our community this month. Take a look at what we’ve been up to!

Our Back to School Learning Sessions were a huge success, thanks to our incredible presenters and to all of you! Your support lets us keep fighting for our rights, making accessible resources, and responding to attacks against us quickly, while making sure our community knows what is happening. Though the presentations are over, we appreciate your support all year round! You can keep learning with our toolkits, action alerts, monthly webinars, and more.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) put out a plan called the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Strategy this month. The MAHA Strategy is a plan based on the MAHA Report. The MAHA Report is something that HHS wrote before. The report is about childhood health problems in America. It talks about HHS’s ideas to fix them. ASAN disagrees with a lot of these ideas. You can read our thoughts about the report here. The MAHA Strategy says what some people in the U.S. government think needs to happen for children in America to get healthier. We wrote an explainer that talks about what is in the MAHA Strategy. It explains the problems in the plan, and why they matter. You can read it here.

Last week, the President and officials from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had a press conference about autism. During the press conference, they made false claims about autism, acetaminophen (Tylenol), and vaccines. We know that it is safe to use Tylenol during pregnancy. We know that vaccines are safe. But President Trump, Secretary Kennedy, and other HHS officials spread misinformation that will put public health in danger. Trump and other politicians also used the press conference to call for “ending autism” — an endorsement of eugenics that shows no regard or understanding for the autistic community. The Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) calls for a respectful, fact-based approach to autism. Unscientific claims about autism’s cause will only cause distress to autistic people, our family members, and pregnant people in general.

This month we were excited to share a blog post from Marcy Waring. You can read “LGBTQ and Disabled Communities: Social Struggles We Share” here.

As we move through this month, we recognize and honor the holidays, celebrations, and important events that hold meaning for our community and beyond.

Autumn Equinox
Rosh Hashanah
Sharada Navaratri

It has been a difficult year for our community and many more. It is hard to know how to fight back when the fights seem never ending, but we know that we keep each other safe. We push back on attacks against trans people, immigrants, disabled people, and other marginalized people. We oppose misinformation and disinformation aimed at harming and dividing autistic people. We fight against attacks on any of us, because we know they hurt all of us. Everything we do, we do together.

With warm wishes,

The Team at ASAN

ASAN submitted public comments opposing the proposed rule, “Application of the Fair Labor Standards Act to Domestic Service.” If the NPRM is finalized, domestic workers would not earn enough to adequately attend to the health and safety of their disabled and elderly clients, which heightens the risk of institutionalization.
We signed onto a letter from the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) urging the Office of Management and Budget and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development to protect a regulation that prohibits “disparate impact’ discrimination. The regulation makes sure landlords, lenders, and others use the fairest policy available to provide housing and lending opportunities for all.
ASAN, alongside dozens of organizations, signed onto a letter from Public Citizen calling on President Trump to fire Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from serving as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) immediately.
We signed onto a letter opposing the decision from Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to make harmful changes to the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS).
As part of the Disability and Aging Collaborative (DAC) and Consortium for Constituents with Disabilities (CCD), we signed joined a letter urging the passage of Protecting Healthcare and Lowering Costs Act of 2025, which would repeal all of the health care provisions in H.R. 1.
ASAN signed onto a letter urging the Department of Education to maintain all current grants under Part D of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). These grants function as the framework for implementation of the IDEA, daily providing close to 8 million children and youth with disabilities a free appropriate public education in the least restrictive educational environments.
We signed onto a letter from the Food Research & Action Center (FRAC) and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) calling for the repeal of the SNAP cuts through the co-sponsorship of the Restoring Food Security for American Families and Farmers Act of 2025.
ASAN signed onto a statement from Public Citizen, Democracy Defenders Action, And Ngo Solidarity Network opposing the escalating administration threats to target progressive nonprofits and funders.
We signed onto a letter in support of Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) and opposed the threats against it.
ASAN opposed the “Request for Public Comment Regarding Gender-Affirming Care for Minors.” We urge the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to abandon its dangerous and pseudo-investigatory Request for Information (RFI).