Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attracted attention for his hilariously fitting ringtone while speaking in Minnesota on Friday about a new National Autism Missing and Endangered Person Alert Initiative.
The new federal initiative, led by HHS in partnership with the Justice Department and FEMA, is intended to improve the response when autistic children or adults go missing. The program will build on existing missing-person procedures and FEMA’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) to develop a national framework for autism-related cases.
Kennedy said the nationwide alert capability is not yet active. Federal officials are still developing guidance, training protocols and autism-specific alert templates with state and local partners, with the goal of creating a faster, more coordinated response.
At one point, he spoke about deaths stemming from “wandering incidents”:
“Drowning is the leading cause of death associated with wandering — children with autism are 100 times more likely to drown than neurotypical children. We have a responsibility to do better. When an autistic—”
Kennedy was interrupted by his own phone's duck quack ringtone. He said, "Sorry about that" and shut off his ringer before remarking that "when an autistic person goes missing, responders need to move immediately."
You can watch what happened in the video below.
It was a ringtone fitting for a quack with no background in public health.
Autism advocacy groups have criticized Kennedy for exploiting their community and reinforcing damaging stereotypes through his longstanding anti-vaccine rhetoric. Their concerns come amid growing alarm that the Trump administration may cut services essential to helping individuals with autism achieve greater independence and quality of life.
Kennedy also had The National Institutes of Health (NIH) gather private medical records from various federal and commercial databases to study autism more comprehensively. In a development that has many advocates concerned and outraged, a new national disease registry is being launched to track Americans diagnosed with autism, and it will be integrated into this broader data collection effort.
It was another surreal moment starring one of the weirdest and most dangerously incompetent members of the Trump administration—and people had thoughts.
Even the writers of Veep would raise their eyebrows at the zaniness of the Trump administration.
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