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civil rights
Trump Accused of 'Abandoning Kids With Disabilities' in New Assault on Education Department
"By moving special education from the Department of Education to the Department of Health and Human Services, the administration is taking us back to a dark period in American history."
Jun 17, 2026
The Trump administration accelerated its assault on the US Education Department on Tuesday by announcing that the agency's work defending civil rights and students with disabilities will be placed under the authority of other federal departments, a move that teachers, Democratic lawmakers, and advocacy organizations condemned as illegal and disastrous for vulnerable children.
Linda McMahon, the billionaire education secretary who has enthusiastically advanced the destruction of her own agency, announced the transfer of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services—which oversees the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)—to the US Department of Health and Human Services, headed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Additionally, the Justice Department will oversee the work of the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights, McMahon said, claiming the changes would "break down the bureaucratic barriers and strengthen the coordination of resources to improve programs that serve infants, toddlers, children, and adults."
Critics argued the moves would do the opposite, scattering crucial programs across departments that lack the expertise and resources to fulfill the education offices' mandates, ultimately depriving children and their families of support.
“Moving IDEA out of the Department of Education is not an administrative adjustment—it is an attack on the educational and civil rights foundation of the law," said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association. "It would drag us backward by treating disability as a medical issue instead of an educational right and by unraveling decades of progress. The Department of Education is the only federal agency with the expertise, infrastructure, and specialists needed to protect students’ rights and ensure they receive the services they are guaranteed."
"Relocating the Office for Civil Rights to the Department of Justice as part of this scheme would further erode federal oversight and endanger disability-rights enforcement nationwide," Pringle added.
The Arc of the United States, a nonprofit that advocates for the rights of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, said that "moving special education to HHS and civil rights enforcement to DOJ would split apart the offices responsible for making disability rights real in schools, leaving families chasing answers across the federal government instead of getting accountability from one education agency."
"Moving IDEA oversight into HHS pushes students with disabilities toward a medical model, where disability is treated as a diagnosis to manage instead of a natural part of human life," said Katy Neas, the group's CEO. "When that mindset drives education decisions, students are more likely to be segregated, underestimated, or treated as separate from the school community."
"It’s an outrageous betrayal that undoes decades of hard-won progress for students."
The changes that McMahon announced Tuesday are part of the Trump administration's effort to completely dismantle the Education Department, which cannot be legally abolished without congressional approval. The Washington Post noted that the newly targeted offices were among the last Education Department segments to "outsource major functions," underscoring that the administration's assault "has advanced far more than most observers predicted would be possible."
In addition to displacing agency functions, the Trump administration has gutted the Education Department's staff, firing nearly half of its workers in what opponents say is an obvious effort to decimate public education.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said the transfer of critical functions out of the Education Department is unlawful, "usurping the power of the purse while the Republican majority stands idly by, forfeiting their authority as a co-equal branch of government." DeLauro pointed to language in a 2026 appropriations measure enacted earlier this year that prohibits the Education Department from transferring responsibilities to other federal agencies without congressional approval.
“This is a disgraceful violation of the law," DeLauro said Tuesday. "By moving special education from the Department of Education to the Department of Health and Human Services, the administration is taking us back to a dark period in American history. One where individuals with disabilities were viewed not as whole persons deserving of an education, but as medical patients whose education is not a priority."
The top Democratic appropriator in the Senate, Patty Murray of Washington, warned that "the Trump administration is abandoning kids with disabilities and its most basic legal responsibility to protect the rights of every student in the classroom."
"Instead of helping kids get a great education, this administration is spending its time, energy, and taxpayer resources fixated on where employees sit and illegally trying to shutter the Department of Education," said Murray. "It’s an outrageous betrayal that undoes decades of hard-won progress for students."
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'Lawyers Have Been Disbarred for Less': Ethics Complaint Skewers Former Trump AG Pam Bondi
“The attorney general has the awesome responsibility to set a national example of ethical behavior... From her first day as attorney general, Bondi did just the opposite."
May 27, 2026
The former chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court filed an ethics complaint against former US Attorney General Pam Bondi on Wednesday, accusing her of fostering an "environment of lawlessness" inside the Department of Justice.
The 23-page complaint, submitted to the Florida Bar, accuses Bondi, who was fired in April by President Donald Trump, of having "engaged in what appears to be serious professional misconduct" and violating her professional responsibilities during her time leading the DOJ.
The complaint was filed by Peggy Quince, who retired from the bench in 2019 after serving on the state's high court for two decades. She was joined by a group of legal ethics organizations, including the group Lawyers Defending American Democracy (LDAD), where she now sits on the board. The complaint is also backed by over 100 legal scholars and retired judges.
"As the former chief justice of this state's highest court, there are key principles that we must protect," Quince said. "First, whatever legal position you have achieved, you are still bound to follow the Rules of Professional Conduct. All lawyers are alike in that regard, and no one lawyer is above the law. Second, the Florida Bar and the Florida Supreme Court have a duty to ensure that lawyers adhere to all applicable rules. That should be the baseline minimum for this profession."
“The attorney general has the awesome responsibility to set a national example of ethical behavior—and to ensure that DOJ lawyers live up to that standard,” said James W. Conrad, Jr., an LDAD volunteer and a principal author of the complaint. “From her first day as attorney general, Bondi did just the opposite, personally and repeatedly violating ethical standards and coercing Department lawyers into violating their own professional responsibilities if they wanted to keep their jobs.”
Citing a memo she signed on her first day on the job directing DOJ employees to engage in "zealous advocacy" for the policy set by the "chief executive," the complaint accuses Bondi of having fostered a “fall-in-line-or-be-gone” attitude within the department that measured success only by serving the interests of Trump.
As a result, it said employees "were induced to engage in acts they were ethically forbidden from doing, under threat of suspension or termination—or were fired for not doing so."
The complaint highlights the DOJ's "blatant violations" of the Epstein Files Transparency Act by failing to release large numbers of files, and overredacting ones that referenced powerful individuals—including Trump—while exposing sensitive information about more than 100 alleged survivors of the sex offender's abuse, including nude photos of some.
Under Bondi's watch, the complaint also says DOJ lawyers violated an “unprecedented number” of binding court orders, particularly in cases related to the unlawful detention of immigrants.
It cites a list created by Patrick J. Schiltz, the Chief Judge of the US District Court for Minnesota, which found that during US Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) "Operation Metro Surge," the agency had violated 96 orders in a single month. A tally from another judge in New Jersey found between 52 and 72 violations within just two months.
In these cases, where ICE ignored orders to provide legal hearings, release detainees, or not remove them from the district, the complaint said Bondi took “no apparent action” to make the agency obey the law.
The complaint also accuses Bondi of directing employees to bring cases against Trump's political and personal enemies without probable cause, in direct response to the president's political pressure.
It cites Bondi's appointment of the inexperienced prosecutor Lindsey Halligan as US attorney to go after figures hated by Trump, like New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey, after previous prosecutors balked at bringing charges due to lack of evidence. After Halligan's appointment was ruled to be improper, a judge threw out the indictments, though the DOJ has attempted to bring new charges.
A grand jury also declined the DOJ's attempts to bring felony charges against six Democratic congresspeople who made a video reminding members of the military that they could disobey unlawful orders issued by the president.
It also accuses Bondi's DOJ of attempting to hit anti-ICE protesters with vague and flimsy charges, like the man who was charged with felony assault for throwing a sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection Officer and was ultimately acquitted.
“Bondi repeatedly ignored her ethical obligations,” said Virginia Canter, chief counsel and director of anti-corruption and ethics at Democracy Defenders Fund, another group backing the complaint. “She was responsible for releasing sensitive information about Epstein victims, shielding documents in the Epstein files from the American public, violating court orders, and charging citizens for crimes without probable cause. This warrants an investigation and action—lawyers have been disbarred for less.”
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Trump and the Supreme Court Try to Return the US to the 19th Century
With the Supreme Court’s rulings against the Voting Rights Act and the Trump administration’s refusal to enforce the Civil Rights Act, they are trying to repeal the legacy of the civil rights movement.
May 26, 2026
On December 18 1865, Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, Republican from Pennsylvania, during debate on how to treat the traitorous Confederate states and on support for newly freed people who had been enslaved in the United States and in British North America for almost 250 years, warned, “If we fail in this great duty now, when we have the power, we shall deserve and receive the execration of history and of all future ages." The United States failed to rectify injustice in the past, and it is failing once again.
Nikole Hannah-Jones, a key contributor to The New York Times’ award winning The 1619 Project, recently wrote that “The Civil Rights Era Is Collapsing Before Our Eyes.” In Tennessee, the white-dominated Republican controlled state legislature eliminated the state’s only Black majority congressional district after the MAGA-dominated Supreme Court ruled that congressional maps that ensured political representation for African Americans and other racial minorities now violated the Constitution. Other white-dominated, Republican-controlled states are racing to make similar changes. It is as if the Republican Party, with the aid of the Supreme Court, is trying to return the United States to the level of racism that dominated the country in the 19th and first half of the 20th century.
After the Civil War, Congress passed and the states ratified the 13th, 14th, and 15th Reconstruction Amendments to the United States Constitution. The 13th Amendment ended chattel slavery in the United States. The 14th Amendment defined citizenship to include people born in the United States with very limited exceptions and ensured that all persons, whether citizens or not, were entitled to legal due process. The 15th Amendment prevented states and localities from denying Black men the right to vote. Each amendment included a clause that “Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.” Rebelling Confederate states were required to approve the 14th and 15th Amendments to fully reenter the Union.
A right-wing dominated Supreme Court then proceeded to systematically emasculate the amendments and supporting legislation including the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Reconstruction Acts of 1867, the Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875. The first Civil Rights Act enforced the 13th Amendment after a number of Southern states passed "Black Codes" to limit the rights of freedmen, and the Reconstruction Acts required the former Confederate states to accept the 14th Amendment. The Enforcement Acts provided federal protection for voting rights that were being interfered with by organizations like the Ku Klux Klan. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 targeted racial segregation and guaranteed African Americans equal treatment in public accommodations including hotels and theaters and transportation and prohibited attempts to exclude them from juries. To put teeth in enforcement, violations were tried in federal, not state courts.
The Trump administration has launched a systematic campaign to undermine civil rights protections passed into law and approved by the Supreme Court in the 1950s and I960s.
In 1873, in the Slaughter-House Cases, the Supreme Court limited the ability of African Americans to sue in federal courts against discriminatory state laws. In 1876, in the United States v. Cruikshank, the court ruled that the 14th Amendment did not apply to private acts of violence, preventing federal authorities from prosecuting hate crimes, and in the 1883 United States v. Harris case the Court threw out the Enforcement Acts because Congress did not have the authority to punish private groups like the Ku Klux Klan for conspiring to violate the civil rights of African Americans.
The most damaging court decision was in a consolidated case known as the Civil Rights Cases. In 1883, by an 8-to-1 majority, the Supreme Court declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional. The majority ruled that the 14th Amendment only applied to discrimination by state or local governments and did not permit the federal government to prohibit discrimination by private individuals. The only dissenting justice was John Harlan, who argued that government and individual actions often overlapped and the court was interpreting the 14th Amendment too narrowly. Harlan was also the only justice to vote against the majority decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) that established that the Constitution permitted racially segregated “separate-but-equal” facilities.
It was not until the 1950s and 1960s, in what has been called the Second Reconstruction, that Supreme Court decisions and federal legislation, under intense pressure from the African-American civil rights movement, restored civil rights for African Americans stolen by a conservative Supreme Court in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s. The best known Supreme Court decision was in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in 1954. Brown combined five cases challenging the legality of school segregation pursued by the NAACP and the legal team headed by Thurgood Marshall. In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court under the leadership of Chief Justice Earl Warren ruled that segregated schools established a racial caste system and violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. In other decisions, the Warren Court ruled that Mexican Americans and all other racial groups had equal protection under the 14th Amendment (Hernandez v.Texas, 1954); that segregation in facilities serving interstate transport was illegal (Boynton v. Virginia, 1960); that election districts intended to prevent the election of Black representatives violated the 15th Amendment by disenfranchising Black voters (Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 1960); against segregation in public accommodations overturning the 1883 Civil Rights Cases decision (Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, 1964); the federal government had the authority to abolish discriminatory literacy testing for voter registration (South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 1966); state laws banning interracial marriages were unconstitutional (Loving v. Virginia, 1967); and that the Fair Housing Act of 1968 banning discrimination in the sale of rent of housing was constitutional (Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., 1968).
Federal civil rights legislation passed in the Second Reconstruction included the Civil Rights Act of 1957. It was the first federal civil rights law passed by Congress since 1875. This law established the United States Commission on Civil Rights and a Justice Department Civil Rights division to investigate charges of racial discrimination. A 1960 law established federal penalties for interfering with someone’s ability to vote. Federal courts were authorized to appoint officials to assist African Americans in registering to vote in states and localities with a documented history of discrimination, and the 24th Amendment, ratified in 1964, outlawed poll taxes.
The two most important pieces of federal legislation during this period were the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Civil Rights Act outlawed segregation in public accommodations including hotels, restaurants, and theaters; ended discrimination in employment based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; and created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to enforce these regulations. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act established the “disparate impact” legal standard which was upheld by the Supreme Court in Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971). The disparate impact standard prohibits policies that disproportionately impact protected groups and does not require proof of discriminatory intent. It was later codified in the Civil Rights Act of 1991.
The Voting Rights Act included a number of key provisions. It allowed people to sue to overturn discriminatory laws and voter registration and candidate nomination procedures and provided for federal legal assistance. It also required states and localities with histories of discrimination to obtain prior approval from the Department of Justice or a federal court before changing voting rules. As a result of the Voting Rights Act, the racial disparity in voting registration rates declined from about 30% to 8% 10 years later. As a result of the Voting Right Acts, In addition, the number of Blacks serving in Congress increased from four in 1960 to 62 in 2023. In 2006, the Voting Rights Act was reauthorized by Congress with wide bipartisan support.
However, since 2013, the Supreme Court has whittled away at voter protection for minority groups. In a 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, the court eliminated the pre-clearance requirement of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In 2021 the Supreme Court made it more difficult to bring lawsuits challenging discriminatory voting rules, and in 2026, in Louisiana v. Callais, the court further gutted the Voting Rights Act, allowing state governments to redraw election districts dividing up Black communities so it would be more difficult to elect Black officials.
The Trump administration has launched a systematic campaign to undermine civil rights protections passed into law and approved by the Supreme Court in the 1950s and I960s. In an attack on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, President Donald Trump issued an executive order in April 2025 ordering federal agencies not to support or enforce disparate impact claims, arguing that it was discrimination against white people and violated its interpretation of the equal protection of the law. The administration has cut funding for enforcement of fair housing laws, equal employment opportunities, and environmental justice for minority communities disprotortionately impacted by climate change and pollution.
With the Supreme Court’s rulings against the Voting Rights Act and the Trump administration’s refusal to enforce the Civil Rights Act, they are trying to repeal the legacy of the Second Reconstruction and return the United States to the era of Jim Crow segregation and racism institutionalized in the 19th century.
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