The at-times deafening din coming from various departments of our still-new federal administration can make it difficult to isolate the relevant and the urgent. 

The Trumpian “flood the zone” approach has the effect of overwhelming the critical faculties of political analysts and members of the public alike. Now and then, though, comes an idea so alarming in its scope, so prejudiced and misguided, that it dwarfs those around it.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s push to create a national registry for people with autism, by rounding up private medical records from federal and commercial databases, is one of those appalling ideas, and Maine’s disability advocates deserve public support in opposing its establishment. 

This invasive, stigmatizing proposal provides a solid example of the “unprecedented government overreach and political interference” criticized last week in a letter by more than 230 college and university presidents, including the leaders at Bates College, Bowdoin College, Colby College and the University of New England.

Those signatories were referring specifically to what they perceive as attacks on higher education. The overreach being attempted by Secretary Kennedy in this case is an attack on people’s expectation of privacy and an effort to manipulate public opinion. It attempts to formalize one man’s deep misunderstanding of what autism is and how it presents in people, families and communities. Experts say there is more than enough information already out there, more than enough clinical research being responsibly and carefully conducted.

Recall that Kennedy, a Cabinet official who is a lawyer with a passion for conspiracy theories and neither a scientist nor a medic of any kind, earlier this month pledged that a round of new studies would find the “cause” of autism “by September,” all the while disagreeing with what are now his own agencies’ findings and conclusions on the subject.

Kennedy’s vow had cold water thrown over it by the head of the National Institutes of Health last Tuesday, who said instead that “updates” would come within a year and used the word “enthusiasm” to explain the health secretary’s empty promise. The proposal for the registry should be similarly walked back, and soon.

“Respectfully, this man does not speak for me or my lived experiences as a man who lives with autism,” Marco Orlando, a resident of Brewer and the vice chairman of a self-advocacy organization, Speaking Up for Us, told this newspaper last week.

“I don’t need to be tracked that bad. I just want to be left alone.”