Washington Bureau Chief and Senior Washington Correspondent at the Independent, Eric Garcia examines the latest polling data and what he’s learned and heard from the voters and the candidates from his reporting on the campaign trail.

Roughly 1 in 44 children have Autism Spectrum Disorder. But for decades, autism has been subject to multiple myths, half truths, urban legends and moral panics. But many of these ideas--from the mistaken belief that unloving parents caused autism to the oft-repeated and just-as-frequently-debunked lie that vaccines caused autism--are rooted in fear. As a result, much of public policy and culture around autism is rooted in the idea that educators, parents and autistic people themselves should fear autism. This mindset has oriented much of the policies meant to address autism. Eric Garcia, a respected political journalist who is autistic himself, speaks about how these harmful ideas led to negative policy outcomes for autistic people and how society should move from attempting to cure autism to focusing more on changing society to accommodate autistic people. He describes how during his time covering politics in Washington, he realized the chasm between the way politicians discussed autism from the genuine needs of autistic people in their daily lives. A politics junkie from birth and policy obsessive by trade who was born and came of age just as the public began to increasingly turn its gaze toward autism, Garcia discusses how he realized the effects of the politics of autism panics and outdated ideas surrounded him and shaped his path to adulthood. In turn, he chronicles how he hit the road across America to learn how these poorly-formed ideas shaped autistic people's lives to this day, who they leave out and how to build a better world for autistic people today. In turn, he also argues that the only way to create a more accepting society for autistic people is to let them have a say in every policy about autistic people, borrowing from the classic phrase in disability rights "nothing about us without us." Garcia also discusses how his own "Spectrum Generation" of autistic people are shaping politics today and how the generations that have followed him are furthering this conversation.

By the time many autistic people enter higher education, they have run the gauntlet of dealing with accommodations through their K-12 education. It often turns them off of asking for accommodations, or they still deal with lingering internalized ableism, thinking that by virtue of them heading to college, they somehow "overcame" their autism or, more insidiously, they fear asking for accommodations. Conversely, many academic administrators, professors and others involved in higher education believe the term "autistic person" and "college student" are mutually exclusive since they believe autistic people are "too disabled" to enter higher learning or do not take autistic people's needs seriously enough when they say they need accommodations. This leads to mutual misunderstanding that does not serve either students or those in charge of their education. Eric Garcia, a graduate and journalist who himself went through the process of asking for accommodations, discusses how to ameliorate these understandings. He discusses why autistic people can and should advocate for themselves to ensure they get the best education possible and encourages those working in higher education to take accommodations seriously, particularly as more autistic people will enter higher education in the near future. Drawing on research, interviews with autistic students themselves, and his own life experience, he talks about how the trouble with accommodations is they put the onus on students and how to improve accommodations to make life better for autistic students.

America’s current era of political extremism has a pedigree filled with many distinguished and dubious ancestors. But the Covid-19 pandemic revealed one culprit that many have overlooked: The panic around autism from the 1990s and the 2000s. From Dan Burton, the chairman of the former House Oversight Committee who pursued the Clintons and vaccines for causing his grandchild’s autism with equal vigor, to figures like Robert Kennedy Jr., who went from an environmental lawyer worried about the link between vaccines and autism to America's top public health official; to Oprah Winfrey, who gave a platform to autism quacks like Jenny McCarthy; to Bob Wright, the former NBC Universal executive who put The Apprentice on air and paved a path for Donald Trump to enter the White House while also co-founding Autism Speaks, we live in a world shaped by fear of autism. Today, many conservative Republicans spread fear about transgender identity by saying autistic kids are being fooled into transitioning their gender. All of these ideas are rooted in the idea that autism is something to be feared. Eric Garcia, a seasoned political reporter who is autistic himself, discusses how we got here and how autism acceptance can lead to a less vitriolic style of politics.

Donald Trump is back in office after being impeached twice. Republicans control Congress by thin margins and the Democrats are in their worst position in 20 years. Washington rewards posturing more than policymaking. Eric Garcia breaks down Washington today, the big crises Congress must tackle, who has the power and why it isn’t who you might always think. In addition, Garcia breaks down what exactly happened in the 2024 election, how Democrats lost the Latino vote, why young Black voters stayed home, how JD Vance's message won over young men, why the GOP fell back in love with Trump and what it means for the next four years.