Some prominent supporters of President Trump have been making disturbing statements about children with learning disabilities. In a recent interview with New York Times, the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen said, “Students in schools now are basically using fake diagnoses of mental illness in order to get drugs and in order to get extra time on tests.”

Last month, in a hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) said, “Attention deficit when you and I were growing up, our parents didn’t use a drug, they used a belt and whipped our butt, and you know, told us to sit down.”

We can certainly have a debate about the best way to treat attention deficit issues, but suggesting that parents are faking the diagnoses or that disabled children should be beaten up is sick.

The truth is, parents already have to fight too hard for their disabled children. 

Jolene Osborne from Dover, NH has a 17-year-old son who was diagnosed with autism, ADHD and OCD. In spite of all the learning disabilities, he was able to learn with an Individualized Education Plan (IEP). He loved school and made friends, until the COVID-19 pandemic. When the classroom support that came with his IEP degraded due to the pandemic, his education was terribly disrupted. His learning progress was completely stagnant, and his undesirable behavior significantly increased during that period of time. It took him several years to restore his learning after the pandemic. Osborne can’t imagine what will happen to her son if the Trump administration takes away the program again. “I’m so scared,” she said.

Adrienne Burns from New Orleans, LA has a three-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter, both have speech delay and were diagnosed with autism. Luckily, with the EarlySteps program provided by their local public school district, her son was able to get speech therapy through an IEP and finally learned to speak at age three. “It was a life saver,” Burns said. Now she worries that her daughter won’t be able to get the same therapy should the Trump administration cut the funding that supports the program.

There are children who have all different kinds of real disabilities, from mild to severe, and those children are legally entitled to various kinds of educational support and funding from public schools because of the 50-year-old Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). 

Some older politicians—including President Trump and Senator Tuberville—thought that students with learning disabilities were “not real” because they didn’t see any when they were in school fifty years ago. “That’s because many children with disabilities were not in school—they were discriminated against and had to stay at home,” said Jennifer Cardenas, a school psychologist from Tucson, AZ. “We cannot slash the funding and roll back to fifty years ago.”

Amber Serrano-Wiley from Waterloo, NE has a nine-year-old son with sensory processing disorder and ADHD. When her son started elementary school three years ago, there was no therapy available throughout the school district. Serrano-Wiley organized parents of disabled children in her community and lobbied local governments, finally getting a sensory room and an occupational therapist for her son’s school. She said that children with learning disabilities are able to stay in the classroom and learn with other kids as long as they are equipped with proper tools; taking those tools away will result in learning difficulties in these children and disruption in the classroom, and further burdening the already exhausted public school teachers. “Cutting related education funding will only lead to a lose-lose situation,” Serrano-Wiley said.

As I’m writing this article, the Trump administration is firing 50% of the Department of Education staff. According to The Washington Post, President Trump is “preparing an executive order aimed at eventually closing the Education Department and, in the short term, dismantling it from within.” Because one of the big things that the Department of Education does is enforce and partially fund IDEA, getting rid of the Department of Education is a direct attack on disabled children. This is horrifying. 

With support, children with learning disabilities can learn and can grow up to be contributing citizens. Josie Garcia from eastern Washington state has three children; her oldest son was diagnosed with ADHD while the two younger ones were diagnosed with autism. The oldest son was able to get a high school diploma with an IEP, and now paints airplanes at Boeing, making $35 per hour. “My son is the living proof that even children with learning disabilities can learn and live to their full potential,” Garcia said. “And I believe every kid deserves this kind of support.”