Interpreters have been noticeably absent from Trump administration press briefings, advocacy groups say. Gone, too, are the American Sign Language interpretations that used to appear on the White House’s YouTube channel. A White House webpage on accessibility, whitehouse.gov/accessibility, has also ceased working.
From halting diversity programs that benefit people with disabilities to staffing cuts at the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Trump administration has taken a slew of actions that harm those with impairments or chronic health conditions. Decades of hard-fought gains risk being undone by cuts to federal programs, freezes on research funding, and a White House ban on practices that support diversity.
Advocacy groups are pushing back, setting the stage for years of lawsuits and pitched health policy battles. Some leaders at organizations that serve disabled people are loath to publicly criticize the White House actions because of concerns their groups could become targeted by the administration, especially if they rely on federal funding or grants.
“The silencing of opposition is quite chilling,” said Michael Rembis, director of the Center for Disability Studies at State University of New York-Buffalo. “The denial of disabled people’s humanity and their voice, as well as the actions against disabled people in terms of the removal or evisceration of core infrastructure, are directly related to the ableist language being used by the administration. It is all part of a larger fear and loathing of people who are unlike themselves.”
The White House position is that the Trump-Vance administration values the contributions of government employees with disabilities and believes they should be recognized and rewarded based on the merit of their work. The White House did not provide on-the-record comments or details about its current views on government employees with disabilities.
During Trump’s first term, according to a Health and Human Services fact sheet, he supported people with disabilities by investing millions in home- and community-based services and launching a government-wide task force focused on expanding employment for Americans with disabilities. He also issued an executive order eliminating federal student loan debt owed by American veterans who are completely and permanently disabled.
But Trump 2.0 seems to be a different story.
The administration’s March 27 restructuring announcement for HHS, which includes a significant downsizing of the workforce, would dismantle the Administration for Community Living and integrate its services into other parts of the agency. Within a week, when HHS staff cuts were announced, that federal office took a mortal hit. The community living administration has focused on ensuring that seniors and people with disabilities can stay in their homes and communities as they age, and it has given $85 million to centers that help people live independently, among other investments. The funding, which came from stimulus legislation that Trump signed into law in 2020, enabled the centers to provide individuals with prepared meals, personal care items, and help with housing.
This development has left the disability community reeling.
“What America needs now is a coordinated federal effort to make it easier for families to care for older adults and combat chronic disease,” Sarita A. Mohanty, president and chief executive of the Scan Foundation, a senior advocacy group, said in a statement. “HHS’s Administration for Community Living is the only dedicated government agency that helps older adults age in their home and in their community, which is what people say they want.”
Canceling the Culture of DEI
From the get-go, Trump signed an executive order that directed the erasure of diversity, equity, and inclusion, which dealt a major setback to the disabled rights movement.
The ramifications have been sweeping. Some federal webpages that provided information on HIV vanished, and the administration cut grants related to HIV and AIDS. Staffers at HHS’ U.S. Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy also lost their jobs.
The Social Security Administration ceased funding the Retirement and Disability Research Consortium, which conducted research addressing DEI in Social Security, retirement, and disability policies. Funding had supported such work as a study on transportation as a barrier to finding work for this population and helping disabled children who receive Social Security transition to adulthood.
The crackdown on DEI also halted or endangered disability-related research at the National Institutes of Health. That, on top of a proposed cap on related research costs that would slash $5.5 billion annually in NIH funding, has imperiled the work. A judge issued a nationwide preliminary injunction blocking the proposed cuts.
Research at risk includes work on treatments for children with intellectual challenges and a study of muscular development that aims to help people with muscular dystrophy.
SAGE, which aims to improve the lives of older LGBTQ+ people, is among the disability-aid organizations that have had federal funding cut or halted or are worried their grants could be revoked. About a third of SAGE’s funding comes from the federal government.
Donna Sue Johnson, a licensed clinical social worker with post-traumatic stress disorder in New Rochelle, New York, says she relies on SAGE’s socialization services. The 68-year-old said she’s concerned by the DEI executive order and the discontinuation of grants, and she’s also worried cuts to veterans’ services and to Medicaid will harm the disabled community.
“This administration is very myopic,” said Johnson, a former U.S. Army officer. “My rights are being jeopardized as a veteran, a lesbian, and being disabled. They want to make you invisible.”
As another matter of concern, she pointed to Trump’s signaled support for the House-passed GOP budget measure that would likely lead to billions of dollars in cuts from Medicaid, a federal-state health program for people with disabilities and low incomes.
Messaging From the Top
These policy and programmatic decisions reflect a bias that starts with Trump, according to some disability rights groups. They say the president has a history of public, derogatory comments about the people for whom they advocate.
As evidence, they point to an episode in 2015 when Trump appeared to mock a disabled New York Times reporter at a rally. Then-candidate Trump flailed his hands around in an apparent imitation of the reporter’s physical movements. Trump later said he was not mocking the reporter. He is also reported to have said “no one wants to see that” when referring to disabled veterans appearing at his events.
More recently, Trump suggested a January midair collision between an American Airlines jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter outside Washington, D.C., could be partially attributed to an alleged Biden-era focus on DEI in hiring at the Federal Aviation Administration.
There is no evidence a focus on diversity in hiring was related to the accident that killed all 67 people on both aircraft.
The administration’s creation of a commission to focus on issues such as the role of antidepressants and nutrition on autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and other chronic diseases also sends a troubling message, some advocates say.
“The memo establishing the Make America Healthy Again commission sees people with disabilities and other chronic illnesses as a danger to the American way of life,” said Maria Town, president and chief executive of the American Association of People with Disabilities, describing what disability rights advocates consider to be the White House’s prevailing view.
Rollbacks to programs that help people with disabilities aren’t occurring only as new policies. The administration is also taking direct actions at specific agencies.
Trump fired two of the three Democratic commissioners who serve on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a five-member panel that acts on violations of federal laws that ban disability bias and other types of discrimination in the workplace. Now, without a quorum, the commission can’t approve certain cases or issue new guidance.
The hobbling of the commission comes amid an increase in disability claims filed with the EEOC. The 88,531 new such cases in fiscal 2024 reflected a 9% jump from fiscal 2023.
Efforts to downsize the federal government are also having a disproportionate impact. The federal government has long enjoyed a strong reputation for hiring and accommodating people with disabilities, and nearly 1 in 10 federal workers are disabled compared with about 7% of workers in the U.S. overall.
In addition, people with disabilities can be appointed to federal jobs under a program that streamlines their hiring. It comes with a probationary status of up to two years compared with one year for most other federal employees. In cutting staff, the administration has targeted federal employees on probation, which disproportionately hurts the disabled because they’re more likely to have longer probationary periods.
Some advocacy groups are calling on the administration to restore services for disabled people.
The National Association for the Deaf, for example, called for a return of the White House press conference interpreters. Hundreds of people took to social media outlets such as Facebook to post about the lack of interpreters, commenting, for example, that “we don’t matter and never will” and “I hope accessibility returns.”
Excerpts or more from this article, originally published on KFF Health News appear in this post. Republished, with permission, under a Creative Commons License.
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