Trump Administration Cuts Funding for Autism Research—Even As It Aims to Find the Cause

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has shone a spotlight on autism, pledging in a recent press conference to figure out the “cause” of autism and calling the increased incidence of the disorder a “tragedy.”

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

But he and other members of the Trump Administration have also reduced funding available for autism research, imperiling key projects—some of which were midway through completion, according to scientists in the field. 

“Funding for autism research is actually disappearing at a time when we see the director of HHS talking a lot about autism as though they think it is important,” says Micheal Paige Sandbank, an autism researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Behind the scenes, they are taking a hammer to the whole apparatus for autism research.”

The cuts come at a time when the incidence of autism is up; a study published April 17 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that one in 31 children studied had been diagnosed with autism, up from one in 150 in 2000. 

The Department of Education (DOE) slashed autism funding

One of the biggest places where cuts have occurred is at the DOE, which the Trump Administration has vowed to close. 

A big funder of autism research has historically been the DOE’s Institute of Education Sciences, says Sandbank. But the institute, which has a budget of $800 million, was gutted in the Trump Administration’s layoffs, with only a skeleton staff remaining. Autism research at the institute focused on developing and evaluating school-based interventions to improve outcomes for students with autism. 

Many U.S. researchers who focus on autism and other disabilities—including Sandbank and Kristen Bottema-Beutel, a professor of special education at Boston College—had their doctoral studies funded by a development program within the DOE. The idea behind the grant is to train the next generation of special education teachers, speech language pathologists, and occupational therapists to work with autistic students in the classroom, as well as the professors teaching those therapists. The program was called the Personnel Development to Improve Services and Results for Children with Disabilities—Preparation of Special Education, Early Intervention, and Related Services Leadership Personnel.

Read More: Food Safety Was Slipping in the U.S. Then Came Mass Layoffs

But Bottema-Beutel, who applied for the grant in November, said she received an email on April 2 that the DOE would not fund the grant this year in order to ensure that the department’s 2025 grant competitions “align with the objectives established by the Trump Administration.” Bottema-Beutel and colleagues had wanted to fund 12 doctoral students with disability-related interests in a collaboration between Boston College, Boston University, and the University of Massachusetts Boston. Now, those positions won’t be funded, she says. 

The grant application took months to complete, and Bottema-Beutel says she’s hesitant to apply for more grants in her speciality, autism research. “It seems like a big risk to take at the time because it’s unclear if it’s going to be funded,” she says. 

Charting My Path for Future Success, a DOE program, lost funding because of government cuts. It helped students with disabilities, including those with autism, transition from high school into college or work. A DOE spokesperson told NPR in April that Charting My Path had “questionable implementation” and that too much of the $43 million in funding was going to contractors, but some students were extremely upset that the program had disappeared, NPR reported, because it matched them with trained instructors who checked in with them and their families to assist in the transition from high school. 

The DOE did not provide a comment by publication time. But American Institute for Research, which oversaw Charting My Path for Future Success, confirmed that the program was “canceled for convenience by the federal government” on Feb. 10. “It was one of dozens of contracts that were canceled that day,” said spokesperson Dana Tofig in an email.

A gutted program at the National Science Foundation (NSF)

Another canceled grant from the NSF funded autism programs in schools and universities. The Frist Center for Autism and Innovation at Vanderbilt University lost $7.7 million in funding because its grant application, which was initially approved, included the terms “inclusion” and “accessibility,” according to Jessica Schonhut-Stasik, who runs communications for the Frist Center and was also a student in the program. The program offered grants for neurodivergent students or people studying neurodivergent students, says Schonhut-Stasik. The grant also sponsored a summer summit for autistic students, says Schonhut-Stasik, who is herself autistic. “This is just so deeply sad,” she says. “To be given this money, to be told, ‘Here is the money to pursue your dreams,’ is just so big for any autistic person,” she says.

NSF declined comment for this story.

The Department of Defense (DOD) cut autism funding

DOD also funded a lot of autism research, Sandbank says, but a reorganization there has left future projects in jeopardy. The DOD funding was through something called Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs. In each of the last five years, the Autism Research Program under that bucket has received $15 million dollars, according to DOD press releases. The DOD studies autism in part because it affects children of military families.  

In 2025, though, a number of the same research programs received funding as they had in the past, including breast cancer research. But autism was not among the programs listed to receive funding in 2025 announcements. Because autism is not included, Sandbank, who was going to submit a grant for this funding, no longer plans to, she says.

Read More: How Having a Baby Is Changing Under Trump

A spokesperson for the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs confirmed that autism is not one of the 12 research programs funded this year, but said that autism is included as a “topic area” for a separate bucket of funding, the Peer Reviewed Medical Research Program. There are more than 50 topics listed in that funding area, including autism. 

An abrupt halt at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) 

NIH is also a huge funder of autism research. But shifting priorities there have ended or delayed some of these projects, says David Mandell, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania who studies autism. The Trump Administration has begun to review and cancel grants that have what it deems diversity, equity, or inclusion terms in them because of a Trump executive order seeking to end what it called “radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing.” Grant applicants are being told, Mandell says, that their research no longer meets “agency priorities.” One public HHS document shows at least two autism grants canceled in the sweep: a project looking at biomarkers of late autism diagnosis in female and gender-diverse people, and one preventing suicide among autistic adults. 

There’s a problem with stopping researchers from looking at autism in trans adults, says Bottema-Beutel: they are overrepresented in the autistic population. “If you’re recruiting autistic people” for a study, she says, “there’s a large chance they’re also going to be trans people.”

Read More: The New CDC Study on Vaccines and Autism Should Take a Radical Approach

Projects funded by the NIH have also been delayed because the Trump Administration temporarily stopped travel, meetings, communication, and hiring at the NIH. Scholars meet on federal advisory committees to approve funding NIH research, but those meetings were paused in the early days of the Trump Administration. Though the meetings resumed in April, the delay has caused some universities to cancel positions for doctoral students this year because schools can’t guarantee them funding, says Mandell, of Penn. He had a grant that was supposed to be reviewed in February that is now being reviewed in April.

“We are destroying a generation of researchers and clinicians, by either not accepting them or not having opportunities for them to pursue this kind of research,” he says. 

There’s also a huge backlog of meetings because they have to be posted in the Federal Register in advance, Mandell says, and new postings in the Federal Register were frozen by the Trump Administration since mid-January. Even though meetings can now resume, many haven’t been scheduled yet or have been pushed back months, he says. 

Other personnel cuts to departments like the National Institute of Mental Health, part of NIH, are slowing down the process of getting grants approved, Mandell says, because staff are overworked and unable to process the grants as quickly as usual. Overall, the slowdowns and changes are making it difficult for researchers like Mandell, to propose studies or plan at all.

“Right now, there is no system in place—everything is in a constant state of flux,” he says. “I can’t plan a study if I have no idea if it will be consistent with the Administration’s priorities a month from now. It has a huge chilling effect.”

HHS which oversees NIH, did not return a request for comment.

He and other autism researchers say they worry about the effects of further Trump Administration cuts in their area. People with autism rely heavily on both special education and Medicaid, but the Trump Administration has vowed to get rid of the DOE, and Congress may have to consider cutting Medicaid funding to pay for tax cuts. 

“On the one hand, you are saying we want to help families of autistic kids,” Mandell says. “And on the other hand, you are taking away exactly the supports that these families most rely on.