SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
ableism
War Zones In Nigeria Leave Disabled People Behind; In the US, We’re Doing It Too
The system that has failed Disabled people during Nigeria's security crisis is the same system that fails us here in not just natural disasters like hurricanes or wildfires, but active shooter situations, and immigration detention as well.
Aug 09, 2026
Hurricane season is upon us, and for many Disabled people across the US, it means a renewed sense of insecurity and uncertainty around their well-being. So often, Disabled folks are too often left behind in emergency preparedness and response efforts, and are ultimately treated as afterthoughts. With the 21st anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaching and a continued climate crisis with no end in sight, this glaring oversight is ever present in the minds of Disabled people nationwide.
This isn’t an issue that’s unique to the US, however. It’s something that Disabled communities face on a global scale, and it’s time we took a hard look at what countries across the world can do to center Disabled people in ensuring the safety and security of their citizens.
Take Nigeria, for example. A new investigation from Deaf Nigerian filmmaker and journalist Alexander Ogheneruemu, "Forgotten People," tells, in part, the story of Ayoade Beyioku-Alase, a Deaf man who was nearly killed as a child in Kano because the violence closing in on his house came with no siren, no interpreter, no warning he could access. "A Deaf person can walk right into the middle of danger," he says in the piece.
It’s easy for those of us in the US to read a story like this and feel far away from it. It’s easy to think, ,“This isn’t us.” The truth is that, whether we want to accept it or not, it is us. It just looks a little different.
Disabled people in the United States are two to four times more likely to die or be critically injured in a disaster than nondisabled people.
As a Disabled person who has worked in this space for many years, I can tell you that the system that has failed Disabled people during Nigeria's security crisis is the same system that fails us here in not just natural disasters like hurricanes or wildfires, but active shooter situations, and immigration detention as well. The threat might be different, but we have more in common with these failings than you’d be led to believe.
The alarm itself is the most direct parallel. Federal guidance from the Department of Justice acknowledges that most emergency warning systems in this country were built for people who can hear and see. Sirens, radio, television, flashing lights are all assumed to be visible to everyone. Tornado sirens across the Midwest and South are audio only, offering nothing to a Deaf person indoors when weather becomes a threat. The National Association of the Deaf has told emergency management agencies for years that mass notification systems don’t reach people who rely on video instead of standard calls. This is a serious and blatant example of ableism, where Disabled people are treated as an afterthought in emergency planning.
In Ogheneruemu’s "Forgotten People,” produced by the Disability Justice Project, the journalist says that 4,654 lives were lost in Nigeria's insecurity crisis last year. Our own numbers are just as alarming. Research compiled by the Center for American Progress and the Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies puts it bluntly: Disabled people in the United States are two to four times more likely to die or be critically injured in a disaster than nondisabled people.
During Hurricane Katrina, people over 60 years old, who included many Disabled folks, made up 73% of storm-related deaths in Louisiana. According to the National Council on Disability, 68 of those victims died in nursing homes, some abandoned by staff who left rather than arrange evacuation. Twenty years later, not much has changed. When the Eaton Fire tore through Los Angeles in January of 2025, at least 3 of the 27 people killed were Disabled, and NBC News reported that Disabled people displaced by disaster are almost twice as likely not to return home.
Then there's our own man-made violence. Nigeria's crisis comes from armed conflict, and ours also often comes from gun violence. More than 100 US school shootings have happened since Sandy Hook in 2012, and the response drilled into an entire generation of children is to run and hide. Inherently, this completely excludes Disabled kids. The Washington Post and The Mighty have both documented children left alone in hallways, forgotten in therapy rooms, and locked out of safe zones during lockdowns because there wasn’t a plan that accounted for them. New Jersey only recently passed legislation forcing districts to build disability-specific evacuation plans after families spoke out. The message we’re sending to Disabled kids here is that they’re on their own.
The Disability Justice Project's own reporting has already shown us what this looks like at our own border: a Deaf asylum-seeker was held for five months in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention without a sign language interpreter, ultimately unable to explain to anyone why he was afraid to go home. If disability access can vanish inside a US federal detention facility, we have no standing to act shocked that it vanishes during a flood or a fire.
This isn’t the kind of thing that’s unknowable, either. The data is out there, and the stories are plentiful. It’s simply not prioritized by those in power, and more often than not it’s unfunded. Disability still makes up just 2% of philanthropy, despite Disabled people comprising about 25% of the US population. Every dollar that goes toward disaster response, school safety, or immigration oversight without disability at the center is putting more Disabled folks in harm’s way. And even if that isn’t you, it could be your mother, father, child, friend, or neighbor. That’s why funding disability is more important than ever. We don't need another report to tell donors and policymakers that Disabled people die preventable deaths in emergencies.
Instead, we need them to stop treating that fact as new information every single time it happens. Funders, just like lawmakers and others in positions of power, need to wake up and see for themselves just what the disability community is up against.
If we can learn one thing from the security crisis in Nigeria, it’s that Disabled people deserve the same protections and safeguards that nondisabled people have in dangerous and precarious situations. It’s already too late, but in the US, in Nigeria, and in countless other countries, there’s still time to save many more Disabled lives.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Climate Change Education Must Be Disability Inclusive
Safeguarding the rights of people with disabilities should be a priority for both the scientific and educational communities, and they need to partner with disabled students to get the job done right.
Jan 04, 2026
Let’s face it, whether you are a parent or teacher, a school principal or college president, if you care about students with disabilities under your care, then logic dictates you should care about climate change and its impacts on the most vulnerable among us.
In 2025 alone, major climate tragedies, such as Hurricane Melissa’s destruction in Jamaica and Cuba, extreme heatwaves across Europe, and floods in Southeast Asia, demonstrated a new reality for today’s college and K-12 students: We are seeing more extreme weather, and the most vulnerable among us, along with the elderly, are college and K-12 students.
Consider the fact that nearly 240 million children globally manage life with a disability, making them more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change than the general population. They are among the most affected by sudden floods or mudslides; they cannot physically escape without help; they are most harmed by incapacitated roadways and shut-down transportation; and they are most vulnerable when it comes to diminished or defunded healthcare.
As a former public school teacher and a professor, I have witnessed firsthand the inadequacies of our disaster drills for students with disabilities. Some of the daunting questions that flashed through my mind during these drills were: Are school and university emergency shelters accessible to students in wheelchairs? Many communication systems and warning alerts depend on visual and auditory cues. What if a student is deaf and vision impaired?
The need for K-12 climate change education to be disability inclusive runs against the Trump administration’s attempts at dismantling special education.
As an author of two books on climate change and environmental justice education, when our policies and programs do not include disability access, I know we are failing to keep all children and students safe.
The need to provide accessible climate education is especially urgent in light of the recent 50th anniversary of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). For five decades, IDEA has guaranteed every child in the United States a “Free and Appropriate Public Education.” Still, Congress’ promises remain largely unfulfilled, and schools struggle to fund services because they don’t receive adequate federal support.
However, in times of extreme weather, we must ask ourselves whether we are creating curriculum and safety plans that provide information needed to survive a sudden flood or severe heatwave. And we must consider whether our actions meet the letter of the law. A non-inclusive climate education is not just a curriculum gap; it is a violation of civil rights. We must treat students with disabilities as experts who can contribute to climate change action and activism, not just view them as people who need to be saved.
This means co-designing climate change studies with disabled students. A partnership. Co-designing (or redesigning) climate change curriculum offers teachers an excellent opportunity to tackle and overcome building design challenges. For example, students can design and engineer prototypes of multimodal emergency alert systems that can deliver warnings through sound, tactile vibration, and accessible text (such as large fonts or braille). Being intentional and thinking about accessibility throughout the design process benefits all students.
In addition, students can solve problems using a multidisciplinary approach across all subjects.
Students with disabilities can create and engineer prototypes of multimodal emergency alert systems that can deliver warnings through sound, tactile vibration, and accessible text, such as large fonts or braille—designs innovated via students’ life experiences and challenges. When working within the realm of visual color-coded maps meant to indicate levels of pollution or heat, students with eyesight challenges can create tactile, three-dimensional maps in clay or papier-mâché and attach braille labels. Other design solutions needed by disabled students during a climate event include supplying emergency electrical power for medical devices and refrigeration for certain medications, as well as access to emergency evacuation routes.
Furthermore, students with disabilities working on design and safety projects will be in a position to present their findings and projects to the city council, school board, and school PTA to advocate for increased accessibility at their school and in their community.
Researchers have also called on scientists to consider physical and mental ability when developing adaptations and responses to climate change. This provides students with an opportunity to glean from established scientific work to build their own solutions. Safeguarding the rights of people with disabilities should be a priority for both the scientific and educational communities, and they need to partner with disabled students to get the job done right.
The need for K-12 climate change education to be disability inclusive runs against the Trump administration’s attempts at dismantling special education. In fact, Trump’s administration has launched a war on disability, which has included removing the accessibility page and American Sign Language content from the White House website, removing interpreters from across multiple federal agencies, and openly using ableist slurs.
Urge your senators and representatives to support the IDEA Full Funding Act (S. 1277/H.R. 2598), co-sponsored by US Representative Jared Huffman, who represents California’s District 2.
The bill will ensure that Congress funds IDEA at the full 40%. And that means student designers will create a world accessible to everyone.
Keep ReadingShow Less
The Fight for Adult Autistic Self-Empowerment in a MAGA World
My situation is emblematic of a broader problem faced by Autistic people: There is so much public misunderstanding of our condition and, in spite of some progress, nowhere near enough ways for us to advocate for ourselves.
Oct 12, 2025
Recently there has been highly welcome indignation and pushback against the quackish treatments and attitude of stigmatization advocated by President Donald Trump against Autistic people during his infamous September 22 press conference. Some of the most forceful criticisms have been made by Autistic individuals and Autistic-led organizations. It has also been satisfying to see a major political figure like Illinois’s Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker offer enlightened rhetoric on the subject. In an executive order in May designed to protect Illinois’s Autistic persons’ privacy from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s proposal to create a nationwide registry of Autistic persons, Pritzker stressed that “autism is a neurological difference–not a disease or an epidemic.”
In recent years activists and writers like Eric Garcia Jr., Temple Grandin, and the late Steve Silberman have pushed back against the stigmas attached to Autism by Trump and RFK Jr.: that Autistic people represent a diseased, anti-social segment of the population that are in need of a “cure” for their condition. Silberman’s best selling 2015 book NeuroTribes was a particularly notable contribution to the public discourse, describing Autism not as a mental illness but a normal and healthy variation of human neurological development. Writers like Silberman have stressed that Autistic people have the potential to use their unique intellectual and emotional gifts to make valuable contributions to the broader society—if that society is willing and able to offer accommodations to allow Autistic people to thrive.
Unfortunately, while the relatively enlightened approach toward Autism outlined above has made some progress in positively impacting public understanding, that progress has also been relatively limited. That limitation is illustrated perfectly by the Trump administration’s focus on finding a “cure” and other aspects of its harmful, reactionary approach to Autism. The Trump administration’s approach to Autism is part and parcel of its punitive and uncaring approach to underprivileged Americans in general, as demonstrated by its draconian gutting of an already devastated American welfare state.
Adult Autistic Employment: A Personal Story
Some of the most serious problems in Autistic policy in the United States run much deeper than Trump’s cruelty and ignorance or the medical quackery promoted by RFK Jr. One of the most deep-seated problems relates to Autistic adults in the job market. The unemployment rate for Autistic adults in the United States is extremely high—85% according to one estimate.
I have direct experience with the subject of Autistic adult employment. As an adult in my early 30s—in 2012—I received my first official medical diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder: I was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. This diagnosis was supposed to help me receive disability accommodations in future employment after I received my master’s degree. After all, according to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, employers are supposed to provide “reasonable accommodations” to persons with documented disabilities in order to help them overcome barriers to performing a job.
Over the past 15 years, I have had about seven employers—all low wage jobs—and have mostly gone without disability accommodations—not because I don’t need them but because I’ve found it impossible in most cases to obtain them. In most of these jobs, it was a psychologically shattering strain for me to try to succeed at them and try to compensate for my learning disabilities and moderate verbal communication impairment.
As far as I can tell, one of the reasons for my difficulties in obtaining employment accommodations is that, looking at me on the surface, I appear “high functioning.” As a job counselor with my state government’s Department of Vocational Rehabilitation (DVR) said to me 15 years ago, “You have a master’s degree, you shouldn’t be working at McDonalds,” when I suggested the latter as a possible employment route. When I had my first meeting with a supervisor at a job with a medical company in 2021, she remarked—thinking she was giving me a compliment—that I “didn’t look” like I had Asperger’s Syndrome. According to her I appeared “well put together” and well spoken. However, before long, previously invisible manifestations of my disabilities became apparent to her; I quit the job after four months as the supervisor made clear she was preparing to write me up for ineptitude.
The Trump administration’s approach to Autism is part and parcel of its punitive and uncaring approach to underprivileged Americans in general, as demonstrated by its draconian gutting of an already devastated American welfare state.
Although at one point the supervisor suggested she would be willing to give me disability accommodations, the company’s corporate office refused, saying that I would have to go through the costly and lengthy process of getting a new diagnosis of Autism before they would consider granting accommodations. The corporate HR official said that my 2012 Aspergers diagnosis was obsolete because of new diagnostic criteria for Autism embodied in the 2013 publication of the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
However, perhaps the most important reason for my frequent failure to secure disability accommodations is that, in many cases, the willingness of employers to provide accommodations often comes into conflict with the need to maximize worker productivity in the interests of profit. Even when accommodations are officially provided, they can easily become reduced to irrelevance as supervisors feel the pressure to maximize efficiency and productivity and lash out at employees. I myself have been bullied at a previous job for aspects of my personality related to my Autism—in spite of this job being one of the few instances where I was provided with formal disability accommodations—and have seen other Autistic coworkers similarly treated.
Meanwhile, I can report that I have been employed in a full time job for the last four years with the same company, currently making per hour approximately $3.49 more than my state’s minimum wage. I work with no disability accommodations at this job and have only told one coworker that I am Autistic. Within the last year, the company has assigned me a more public-facing role in tasks especially incompatible with my Autism-related disabilities. I’m highly tempted to ask HR for accommodations—to at least minimize my work in the public-facing role—but fear rejection and unduly antagonizing my supervisor who has long faced a staffing shortage in the public-facing role.
I think my situation is emblematic of a broader problem faced by Autistic people: There is so much public misunderstanding of our condition and, in spite of some progress, nowhere near enough ways for us to advocate for the manner in which society can respect our needs.
Keep ReadingShow Less
It Cannot Be Denied: Israel Is Starving Children to Death on Purpose
Starvation of civilians is not an accident of war, it is a deliberate policy.
Aug 22, 2025
In July, major news organizations published the image of 18-month-old Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq, a Palestinian child so emaciated that his bones protruded through his back, while his mom cradled him in her arms. Instead of a diaper, he wore a black plastic bag.
Some online commentators have sought to downplay the image’s power by pointing to a preexisting medical condition. But Muhammad is starving as the result of Israel’s use of starvation of civilians as a weapon of war. This is a war crime that is affecting the entire population and, based on my research, is inflicting particularly profound suffering on children with disabilities like Muhammad.
Humanitarian workers told me that restrictions on aid prevent them from bringing in special food that some children with disabilities or medical conditions need, while medical workers warned that children with disabilities are less likely to get care due to the Israeli government’s systematic assault on Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure.
In mid-August, in Geneva, I joined the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities for its session focused on the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, governments are required to protect people with disabilities in situations of risks, including armed conflicts. The message from disability groups was clear: Governments need to press Israeli authorities to allow unimpeded, disability-inclusive humanitarian access and not leave children like Muhammad to suffer the consequences of intentional starvation.
Muhammad’s image should move world leaders to use all their leverage with Israel, including an arms embargo and targeted sanctions, to stop Israeli authorities’ mass starvation policy.
There are countless examples of Palestinian children with disabilities thriving with adequate nutrition and healthcare. In just one example, 6-year-old Fadi al-Zant, who has cystic fibrosis and was severely malnourished, was evacuated to the United States from Gaza last year and survived. Osman Shahin, a 16-year-old boy with cerebral palsy who had lost 7 kilograms, regained weight after his family left Gaza for Bosnia.
But Muhammed and other children in Gaza do not have that chance. Between April and mid-July alone, more than 20,000 children in Gaza were hospitalized for acute malnourishment, 3,000 of them severely. Starvation of civilians is not an accident of war, it is a deliberate policy.
Muhammad’s image should move world leaders to use all their leverage with Israel, including an arms embargo and targeted sanctions, to stop Israeli authorities’ mass starvation policy. Muhammad’s disability does not make his starvation less cruel or unlawful; it makes it all the more urgent for countries to act now.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Bobby Kennedy Jr. Makes Eugenics Great Again at Health and Human Services
RFK Jr. has embarked on policies that frighteningly resemble those of eugenicists: They seek to identify and disempower the underprivileged, they serve anti-immigrant and racist sentiment, and they embrace pseudoscience.
May 17, 2025
Charles Fremont Dight has been reincarnated in the worm-gnawed brain of Bobby Kennedy, Jr. A medical professor at the University of Minnesota, Dight hoped to rid society of its unfit members. Dight, an eccentric who lived for a time in a treehouse, wrote about these unfit people in such publications as "Increase of the Unfit, A Social Menace," and "A Proper Function of Society is to Control Reproduction." Like other eugenicists, Dight believed in stronger immigration laws to keep the unfit aliens, but emphatically not people of Anglo-Saxon "stock," out of the country. In 1933, Dight wrote a letter to Adolf Hitler praising the Fuhrer's efforts to "stamp out mental inferiority."
Eugenics, a mainstream science in the early 20th century, sought restrictive marriage laws, isolation of the "unfit" in special colonies for the "feeble minded," and forced sterilization to shield society from the cost of caring for its most vulnerable citizens. Recent immigrants with poor English, children who had what are now recognized as learning disabilities, Down syndrome Americans, and many others were at risk of being paraded before eugenics courts for summary judgment and sent off to isolation colonies. Once removed from society, the eugenicists claimed, those with better bloodlines would be freed of their burden to care for them.
A Registry of Eugenic Discrimination
Bobby Kennedy, Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has embarked on policies that frighteningly resemble those of eugenicists: They seek to identify and disempower the underprivileged, they serve anti-immigrant and racist sentiment, and they embrace pseudoscience. Bobby Jr. wants to identify citizens with autism and place them in some kind of registry. He ordered the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to build "a real-world data platform enabling advanced research across claims data, electronic medical records, and consumer wearables," to determine the root causes of autism spectrum disorder, and to give Bobby and his team of autism falsifiers data drawn from public and private sources in violation of federal privacy and security rules. (Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker recently signed an executive order to block the federal government from collecting these data related to autism and to protect "dignity, privacy, and the freedom to live without fear of surveillance or discrimination" of Illinois residents.
Bobby's eugenics registry will succeed in stigmatizing people, especially young people, the way that eugenics surveyors stigmatized the "feeble-minded."
The HSS database, like those of the eugenicists, will be subjective and impressionistic. U.S. eugenicists built a registry for the unfit at the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) in Cold Spring Harbor, New York under director Harry Laughlin. Laughlin and his poorly trained minions assembled index cards about American families, often from a cursory glance at a person's face and carriage, to create genetic family trees. The ERO believed they had proved a huge number of people carrying hereditary disease who could be identified to be isolated or sterilized; 80,000 Americans were sterilized.
Racism and Pseudoscience in HHS
Bobby Jr. shares the eccentricities and racism of the eugenists. He cut up whale skull found on the beach near the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port, apparently because he likes to study animal skulls and skeletons, tied it to the roof of the family car, and drove it back to New York, while the rank "whale juice" poured into the car and onto his children. Bobby's interest in skulls may have been kindled by the work of craniologist Samuel Morton (1799-1851). In his Crania Americana Morton set forth a hierarchy of intelligence with Native Americans and Blacks at the bottom to justify their enslavement, removal, and other disturbing acts of violence against them.
Building on Morton's thesis, racist scientists and eugenicists documented lack of mental acuity among African Americans. They assigned Blacks special diseases and susceptibilities, one of which, drapetomania, led slaves to run away from cruel owners; another ordained syphilis as a "Negro disease." These racists believed that Blacks have a higher pain tolerance and weaker lungs that could be strengthened through hard labor (slavery). Bobby Jr. claims that Black people have a stronger immune system than white people and thus should receive vaccines on a different schedule. He observed that "to particular antigens, Blacks have a much stronger reaction." Bobby Jr. has said that African AIDS is an entirely different disease from Western AIDS, and he reiterates the fiction that HIV does not cause AIDS.
Another leg in the eugenicists' program was anti-immigration laws. ERO director Laughlin testified before the U.S. Congress in support of the Immigration Act of 1924 and its restrictions on admission to the U.S. of "races" considered inferior to the Anglo stock. On the basis of flawed data, Laughlin told Congress that recent immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe were "socially inadequate," and tended to "degeneracy, shiftlessness, alcoholism, and insubordination," all of which were supposedly genetic traits. The 1924 act was easily passed signed into law by President Calvin Coolidge who believed that "America must be kept American" and that "biological laws show that Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races."
No wonder Donald Trump selected Bobby Jr. to head HHS. Trump began his first presidential campaign commenting with conviction that Mexican immigrants were drug dealers and rapists. Trump draws on the work of criminal anthropologist Cesare Lombroso and the racial hygienists of Nazi Germany where a person's genes or bloodline determine his or her capacity for success or violence. Trump said, "You know, now, a murderer, I believe this, it's in their genes." But the Trump family has good genes, although his convictions for sex and financial crimes might offer counter evidence: "We're smart people… We're like racehorses." During his ongoing campaign against undocumented aliens and citizens with foreign-sounding names, Trump ordered white South Africans to be given asylum in the U.S., but pointedly not Afghans who fought for freedom against the Taliban, Mexicans, or any other "races."
The Pseudoscience of Mercury-Caused Autism
The entire premise of Bobby's registry is the fully discredited assertion that vaccinations cause autism which is based on a retracted and discredited 1998 study by Andrew Wakefield that linked the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism. Wakefield combed his data, weeded out some children who didn't fit, and carefully included others. Further, his research was funded by lawyers acting for parents who were involved in lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers.
Like Dight, Laughlin, and other eugenicists, Bobby lies and misinterprets data to fit his predetermined and erroneous conclusions that vaccines cause autism. In one article Bobby "claimed that the amount of ethyl mercury in vaccines was 187 times greater than the recommended limit, when it was only 1.4 times greater." He cited one study to contend that tuna sandwiches laced with mercury being fed to two-month-old babies. There is nothing of the sort in the study.
Eugenics and the Decline of Public Health
Bobby's strange mix of false science will exacerbate such public health crises as the ongoing measles epidemic as confused parents deny their children life-saving vaccinations. Bobby Jr. hates vaccines. He referred to the Covid-19 vaccine as "the deadliest vaccine ever made." The vaccine saved perhaps as many as 20 million lives. Kennedy has said that he only drinks raw milk. Doing so puts people at risk of foodborne illness, since pasteurization kills off pathogens. Drinking it may increase the risk of the spread of bird flu. Bobby wants to remove fluoride from drinking water and claims bone cancer, IQ loss, thyroid disease, and other things may result from its use. This is untrue. Fluoride prevents cavities.
Kennedy's fabrications about autism, mercury, and other topics recall the misguided work of eugenicist Henry Goddard. Goodard was the director of research at New Jersey's Vineland Training School for Feeble-Minded Girls and Boys. He opened an early clinical laboratory to study intellectual disabilities. Tracing the lineage of one of his young patients and building her family tree back to the Revolutionary War, Goddard concluded that intelligence, sanity, and morality were hereditary, and every effort should be undertaken to keep the "feeble-minded" from procreating to eliminate them from the breeding pool. His study on the "Kallikaks" (1912) used touched-up photos to show the Kallikaks as inferior creatures.
Always lurking in the minds of this MAGA government are racist scientific ideas about breeding and innate intelligence; about the evils of immigrants; and about the need to revitalize science away from rigorous hypothesis and testing toward conspiracy, pseudoscience, and eugenics. Bobby's eugenics registry will succeed in stigmatizing people, especially young people, the way that eugenics surveyors stigmatized the "feeble-minded." Perhaps the registry will confirm what is well known: that increasing numbers of people identified with autism is largely to do with increased screening for and greater identification of people with autism. There is no epidemic. But, like a good eugenicist, he has determined his conclusions before the study begins.
Happy measles, everyone! Or, as Donald Trump says, he only hires the best people.
Keep ReadingShow Less
The Lessons of Covid-19 and Its Long Haul: We Need Community Care
As Trump further weakens public health infrastructure, let us renew our attention to keeping each other safe, supporting the most vulnerable among us, and preventing more mass disablement.
Apr 10, 2025
The Trump administration’s decision to close the Heath and Human Services Office of Long COVID Research and Practice deals yet another blow to our already embattled public health system. This initiative, like the recently terminated Advisory Committee on Long COVID, had signaled much-needed attention to infection-associated chronic diseases, largely overlooked by the U.S. medical establishment.
An estimated 7.5% of adults in the United States suffer from Long Covid, which can affect multiple organ systems with over 200 symptoms from brain fog and sleep problems to joint pain and bedridden fatigue. A diagnosis of Long Covid describes symptoms that continue at least three months after contracting Covid-19. For some, symptoms eventually go away. But for others, symptoms get worse and, frighteningly, new symptoms appear—with no end in sight. Long Covid is variable and unpredictable. I know this because it happened to me.
Covid-19 laid bare our fragile health systems and the necessity of caring for one another.
After escaping Covid-19 for over three years, I developed a moderate case, with fever, cough, body ache, and fatigue. Four months later, when I had almost complete recovered, I suddenly took a turn for the worse. Over the past 15 months I have steadily improved, yet my life remains significantly changed. Aches and pains, post-exertional malaise, and a weakened immune system circumscribe my daily activities. Alongside the challenges of navigating the health conditions themselves is my limited ability to keep Covid-safe amid waning attention to Covid-19—as our government and institutions have abandoned Covid precautions. This puts us all at higher risk of Covid-19 infection, and for those of us with Long Covid this risk is exacerbated—each additional reinfection with Covid exposes us to further complications with Long Covid.
In such a climate of pandemic abandonment, punctuated as early as 2022 when then-President Joe Biden issued his dangerously delusional statement that we were post-pandemic, we can rely even less than before on our government and institutions to save us from either Covid-19 or Long Covid. We must prioritize cultivating our own spaces of care—focusing on prevention, mutual aid, and accommodations for the sick and disabled.
We Need to Cultivate Spaces of Collective Care
The earliest lessons of the pandemic remain true today—we can lower transmission rates through masking, physical distancing, and meeting online, among other precautions. While workplaces, businesses, and public spaces have varied in their implementation of Covid-19 safety, social justice groups, led by disability justice, have led the way from the start.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, my racial justice collective applied our principles of care and justice to Covid-19 safety. We pivoted meetings and gatherings online to Zoom, made use of its breakout rooms for one-on-one debriefs, the chat box for running insights and snark, and the emoji feature for added interpersonal expressiveness. As we learned new ways to build community, it made us more inclusive: Folks who otherwise had barriers to attending in-person—whether that be due to illness and disability or just being out-of-town—could now attend remotely. When gatherings needed to be in-person, like the summer 2020 protests for George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, we still prioritized Covid-19 precautions. Actions either followed traditional modes of large gatherings but required (and provided) masks, or were smaller so that activists could maintain physical distance. For those who couldn’t participate safely due to Covid-19 or physical disability, remote action was possible, such as handling back-end prep work or coordinating check-ins.
These community care practices remain important even during periods of low community transmission—they make spaces accessible to all.
We Must Hold Ourselves Accountable
Five years into the pandemic, even progressive activist groups have moved away from these lessons. Many no longer require masks at meetings and gatherings, or prioritize online options. This leaves each of us to fend for ourselves individually, abandoning the principles of collective care and disability justice—from access intimacy to “we keep us safe”—that had made such in-roads in our communities. If we cannot collectively learn from this “mass disabling event” of our lifetime, when will we? And if progressive activist groups whose common mission it is to make a world free from oppression—where caring for one another is the dominant ethos—ditch pandemic precautions, what hope is there?
To be sure, we still need to push institutions at the local and federal levels to make available personal protective equipment and resources for frontline workers, better access to healthcare, more research on Long Covid and other underfunded chronic conditions such as myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). These actions would certainly help support the many biomedical doctors who toil tirelessly for treatments despite biomedicine’s limited approaches to chronic illness, as well as the Chinese medicine and other non-biomedicine doctors, not to mention the patient advocacy groups, who have arguably carried the bulk of the care and treatment for Long Covid sufferers.
I believe we have the most control over our small communities of care. Covid-19 laid bare our fragile health systems and the necessity of caring for one another—and for a time many of us heeded that call. Let us renew our attention to keeping each other safe, supporting the most vulnerable among us, and preventing more mass disablement. And for us activists who say we want to create better worlds, let’s model for everyone else how it’s done.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Our Covid Reichstag Moment: How Eugenic Interpretations Fuel Authoritarianism
The retroactive calculus of whose lives are worth sacrificing for economic metrics is eerily reminiscent of early 20th-century eugenic practices that sorted humans into categories of "fit" and "unfit," determining whose lives were expendable.
Mar 21, 2025
In a recent episode of The New York Times' "The Daily" podcast, host Michael Barbaro interviewed two Princeton political scientists about their new book examining Covid-19 policy failures. Instead of contextualizing the pandemic response within our current democratic crisis, the episode introduced a troubling revisionist narrative: that public health officials who prioritized saving lives were somehow wrong.
Shrouded under the protective guise of political scientist academics presenting "objective" analysis, a politically biased argument was offered as necessary news for the day—an editorial choice made even more striking given the sheer volume of immediate, existential threats to our democracy that warranted urgent coverage instead. This was the necessary deep dive audience needed to know according to The New York Times to better understand the news of the day on the exact same day when U.S. President Donald Trump was expected to announce the closure of the Department of Education and days after Chief Justice Roberts issued a rare public rebuke of Trump for threatening to impeach a federal judge over a migration ruling. While our judiciary's independence was under direct assault and educational access for millions of Americans hung in the balance, The "Daily" chose to relitigate pandemic policies through the lens of economic grievance—a choice that speaks volumes about which narratives powerful media institutions consider worthy of amplification.
Public health officials who refused to accept this calculus—who insisted that every life deserved protection—were vilified by those who preferred simpler narratives about individual freedom over collective responsibility.
This shift in narrative about Covid-19 and the deliberately limiting analysis of this complex issue is not just provocative but dangerous given the coordinated assault on public health happening across the country. As multiple Republican-led states advance legislation to ban masks—tools proven to save lives and reduce symptom severity—and as the Trump administration threatens academic freedom by pressuring Columbia University to comply with a list of harrowing demands including criminalizing masking on campus, major media platforms are inexplicably amplifying critiques of the very experts who risked their careers and safety to protect the public during a deeply uncertain time. These public health officials have already endured death threats and targeted harassment campaigns from right-wing extremists, including Elon Musk who tweeted one early Sunday morning in 2022 "My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci." Now, The New York Times lends its institutional credibility to the same dangerous narratives, effectively mainstreaming the delegitimization of scientific expertise—a classic precursor to authoritarian control.
What's most striking about this conversation isn't just its timing, but what it omits. Throughout history, crises have been exploited by authoritarian forces to dismantle democratic institutions and consolidate power. Covid-19 represents our generation's Reichstag fire moment—a crisis that has been weaponized to erode democratic norms worldwide.
Crisis as Opportunity for Authoritarianism
The historical pattern is clear. After the 1933 Reichstag fire, Hitler immediately blamed communists, enacted emergency powers, suspended civil liberties, and used propaganda to create fear among the German population. Similarly, Russian President Vladimir Putin exploited the 1999 Russian apartment bombings to blame Chechen separatists, launch military campaigns, restrict civil liberties, control media, and crack down on political opposition.
Covid-19 has followed the same authoritarian playbook globally. Governments worldwide enacted emergency powers, increased surveillance, eroded democratic norms, and exploited societal fears. Myanmar's military used the pandemic to justify their 2021 coup. Right-wing extremist groups weaponized misinformation to promote xenophobic rhetoric.
But what's uniquely dangerous about The New York Times' framing is how it subtly reinforces the authoritarian narrative by questioning the very public health experts who refused to calculate human life against economic metrics. When the voices of Dr. Anthony Fauci and others are played alongside criticism from political scientists—not public health experts—who make clear that they measure success beyond the saving of lives, we're witnessing the normalization of disposability. This calculus of whose lives are worth sacrificing for economic metrics is eerily reminiscent of early 20th-century eugenic practices that sorted humans into categories of "fit" and "unfit," determining whose lives were expendable—a ideology that was once condemned by civilized society but now finds subtle—rolling back Medicaid and cutting special education impact disabled people the most—and terribly overt resurrection in our public sphere.
The Real Covid-19 Story Is About Who We Choose to Save
The pandemic revealed which communities our society deemed worthy of protection and which were considered sacrificial for economic priorities. Public health officials who refused to accept this calculus—who insisted that every life deserved protection—were vilified by those who preferred simpler narratives about individual freedom over collective responsibility.
We cannot separate our understanding of the pandemic from the broader context of growing authoritarianism. The forces threatening democracy today are not single-issue problems but interconnected crises: white supremacy, media fragmentation as social media algorithms feed us visions of worlds comprised of binaries instead of nuances, attacks on gender and racial equity, and ludicrously widening wealth inequality. The rich are getting richer while essential workers—disproportionately the economically marginalized and people of color—were sacrificed during the pandemic. And we have lost our shared reality as social media oligarchs make billions from our mistrust of one another—the same oligarchs who now fund the politicians seeking to rewrite pandemic history, who now have metaphorically repaved the front lawn of the White House as a used car lot. These aren't coincidences but a coherent authoritarian strategy: fragment the population, erase collective memory, pit communities against each other, and dismantle faith in expertise and shared facts. And, as The New York Times demonstrated on March 20, you can do this all under the guise of objective reporting.
Covid-19 was successfully exploited by authoritarian leaders worldwide precisely because they offered simple explanations where reality required nuance. They promised quick returns to normalcy when responsible leadership demanded difficult truths. They divided communities into the essential and non-essential, the worthy and unworthy.
Responsible Media Must Connect the Dots
When major media outlets like The New York Times allow political scientists to critique public health experts without this broader context, they become unwitting accomplices in the authoritarian project. By focusing narrowly on whether lockdowns were "effective" without examining how authoritarians exploited both the crisis and the response, they miss the forest for the trees. They become complicit in emboldening authoritarians.
The question isn't whether public health officials made perfect decisions with imperfect information during an unprecedented global emergency. The question is: Who benefits from undermining trust in the institutions and experts who tried to save as many lives as possible, regardless of economic cost? The answer should trouble us: the same authoritarian forces that have weaponized every crisis throughout history to dismantle democratic institutions and consolidate power.
As we approach the fifth anniversary of the Covid-19 crisis, we will inevitably see more attempts to understand and reframe that era—but these analyses must be conducted responsibly.
As we reflect on Covid-19's impact, responsible journalism must place these conversations within our broader democratic crisis. The political scientists at Princeton should know better. The New York Times should know better. And those of us who lived through the pandemic—who witnessed firsthand how extremist politicians like Trump weaponized confusion and suffering to stoke fear, cultivate rage, and deepen divisions—we certainly do know better. We watched as misinformation about masks, vaccines, and public health measures was deliberately spread to fracture communities and undermine institutions. We saw how this manufactured outrage directly fueled the violence at the Capitol and created the fertile ground for today's authoritarian resurgence. Our lived experience of this cynical exploitation demands more from our media than revisionist narratives that conveniently forget this deliberate destabilization.
We must ask ourselves why certain narratives are amplified at specific moments in our national conversation. As we approach the fifth anniversary of the Covid-19 crisis, we will inevitably see more attempts to understand and reframe that era—but these analyses must be conducted responsibly, with full awareness of how limiting narratives can embolden authoritarians and reinforce eugenic hierarchies. The New York Times chose to revisit Covid-19 policies on the same day the Department of Education faced potential elimination—yet they failed to connect how disabled students, already disproportionately harmed during the pandemic, would lose critical protections and supports if this department disappeared. This is not coincidental. It is part of a pattern where eugenic ideology infiltrates mainstream discourse precisely when vulnerable communities need protection most. Media institutions that claim to help us make sense of the world instead reinforce the disposability of certain lives—whether by advocating economic metrics over human survival, by giving platforms to those who see the disabled as acceptable collateral damage, or by simply choosing which crises deserve attention and which can be ignored.
Our responsibility is clear: We must identify these eugenic patterns whenever they appear, name them for what they are, and refuse to accept any worldview that sorts human beings into categories of those worth saving and those not worth saving. When media fails in this moral obligation, we must hold them accountable—not just for the stories they choose to tell, but for the future they help create through those choices. The lessons of history demand nothing less.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Students Like Grace Pay the Price If Trump Dismantles the Education Department
Stripping federal oversight will abandon the students who need it most.
Mar 13, 2025
For decades, the federal government has played a crucial role in ensuring that every child—regardless of disability, income, or background—has access to a quality education. That role isn’t just administrative; it’s a safeguard against discrimination, neglect, and the systemic failures that have historically left the most vulnerable students behind. Now, with the recent push to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, that safeguard is under attack.
As an education attorney, I’ve seen firsthand what happens when schools fail to meet their legal obligations—and who suffers most when oversight disappears. No group stands to lose more than the 7.3 million children with disabilities who depend on the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) for basic educational access. Without federal enforcement, that right isn’t just at risk—it could vanish overnight.
And the harm won’t stop there. Weakening the Department of Education means weakening the very mechanisms designed to prevent discrimination and protect students from systemic inequities. It means fewer safeguards, fewer resources, and fewer options for the millions of students who already face the greatest barriers to educational opportunity. The brunt of these cuts will fall hardest on Black and brown students, students with disabilities, English learners, LGBTQIA+ students, and low-income families—communities that have long relied on federal oversight as a necessary check against discrimination and neglect.
Without federal enforcement of the IDEA’s key provisions, Grace’s school district may well elect to discontinue her therapy sessions with impunity, leaving her unable to make progress much like her typically achieving peers.
The numbers tell the story. In Fiscal Year 2024, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) received a record-breaking 22,687 complaints—an 18% increase from the previous high of 19,201 complaints in FY 2023. The vast majority, year after year, involve allegations of disability discrimination. If anything, this surge in complaints underscores the urgent need for stronger civil rights enforcement in schools—not a retreat from it. Stripping away the department’s oversight would not only silence these complaints, but leave the most vulnerable students with nowhere to turn.
Consider Grace (a pseudonym), a bright, eight-year-old girl living in a small Massachusetts farming town. Born with cerebral palsy, Grace depends on physical therapy to navigate her school environment, and occupational therapy to master everyday tasks, like writing and eating independently. Through the provisions set forth in the IDEA, Grace’s family secured access to these vital services at her local public school—services they, like most families, would otherwise be unable to afford out of pocket.
Without federal enforcement of the IDEA’s key provisions, Grace’s school district may well elect to discontinue her therapy sessions with impunity, leaving her unable to make progress much like her typically achieving peers. Her parents, already stretched thin, would have no recourse. For Grace, and for millions of families across the country, what’s at stake isn’t just a matter of policy—it’s the ability to build a future on fair and equal ground for all.
The Lessons of History: Why Federal Oversight Matters
To grasp the significance of the U.S. Department of Education, we need only look to the past. Its oversight, enforcement, and technical assistance functions are not bureaucratic formalities—they are the guardrails that ensure students’ rights are more than just words on paper. Well before the enactment of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), students with disabilities faced not only educational exclusion, but also deep-seated social marginalization.
As I’ve written elsewhere, throughout the 19th century, children with disabilities were largely seen as a private concern—a “private trouble” rather than a public responsibility. But as the early 20th century ushered in compulsory school attendance laws, this exclusionary paradigm began to shift. For the first time, children who had long been dismissed as “seemingly uneducable” were legally required to enroll in public schools, disrupting the longstanding pattern of social and educational isolation.
Yet, attendance did not guarantee access to meaningful education. From the 1950s through the early 1970s, the neglect and ableist hostility that had defined the prior century took on new forms within the nation’s public schools. Rather than providing necessary supports, many schools systematically segregated students with disabilities into poorly resourced and stigmatized classrooms.
The White House Committee on Special Classes condemned these environments as little more than dumping grounds for students with specialized needs. In response, parents and community advocates “lobbied aggressively to root out [the] entrenched discrimination” pervading public schools. Still, by the 1971-72 school year—just three years before IDEA’s passage—the scale of educational exclusion remained staggering: Seven states were educating fewer than 20% of their known children with disabilities, and in 19 states, fewer than a third. Only 17 states had even reached the halfway mark.
Without federal protections guaranteeing a right to education, disability rights activists fought to bring students with disabilities into standard educational environments. Drawing inspiration from Brown v. Board of Education, they argued that segregated special education classrooms, much like racially segregated schools, resulted in unequal and inferior educational experiences. Their efforts helped lay the groundwork for constitutional protections that, particularly at the district court level, affirmed the right of students with disabilities to receive a public education.
This federal intervention wasn’t about bureaucracy—it was about necessity. And yet, today, some lawmakers are pushing to strip away the very enforcement and oversight protections that helped bring an end to that era of exclusion and ableism.
The Bipartisan Stakes of Dismantling the Department of Education
Disability knows no boundaries. It cuts across race, class, geography, and political affiliation. It is an equalizer in its unpredictability, shaping lives in urban centers, suburban neighborhoods, and rural farming towns alike. Yet in the very communities where support for President Donald Trump was strongest, families may not realize how deeply this proposal could undermine their children’s futures.
Rural schools already operate under immense strain—stretched budgets, fewer specialized teachers, and the challenges of geographic isolation. For students with disabilities, these hurdles are even higher. Federal funding under the IDEA is a lifeline, covering nearly 15% of special education costs nationwide, amounting to billions in critical federal aid.
Dismantling the Department of Education isn’t just a bureaucratic maneuver—it’s a fundamental betrayal of the promise that every child deserves a fair chance at an education.
States like Nebraska, Indiana, and South Dakota—all of which invest disproportionately less in their rural school districts—depend on these federal dollars to meet even the most basic obligations to students like Grace. Yet in Nebraska, where the funding gap between rural and urban schools is widest, Trump won approximately 60% of the vote in the last presidential election.
For many rural families, these stakes aren’t theoretical. Losing federal protections could mean losing access to the nearest specialist—often hours away—or having nowhere at all to turn when their child needs critical services.
Block Grants: A Recipe for Inequity
As the push to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education gains momentum, leaders in Republican-led states are renewing calls to shift federal education funding to block grants—a move that would only deepen the crisis. While touted as a way to give states more flexibility, block grants come with fewer guardrails, making it easier for states to divert funds away from the students who need them most.
If enacted, this shift would further weaken federal oversight, making it far more difficult to enforce “maintenance of effort” (MOE) provisions, which ensure states uphold their own education spending. In a more decentralized system, the risk isn’t just mismanagement—it’s an abdication of responsibility, leaving vulnerable students at the mercy of shifting political priorities and budget shortfalls.
Consider Medicaid block grants as an analog and cautionary tale. States that received Medicaid waivers under block grant-style flexibility often shifted funds away from vulnerable populations to cover budget deficits. For example, in Tennessee, the state redirected Medicaid dollars meant for underserved communities to plug holes in unrelated health system budgets. Without federal oversight, similar reallocations of special education funding are not only possible, but likely.
Without these safeguards, history could repeat itself—not as a distant memory, but as a lived reality for millions of students. The lack of federal accountability would make it nearly impossible for families to challenge these decisions, leaving rural families, already underserved, at an even greater disadvantage.
A Call to Action: Protecting the Future for All Children
Dismantling the Department of Education isn’t just a bureaucratic maneuver—it’s a fundamental betrayal of the promise that every child deserves a fair chance at an education. The impact won’t be abstract. It will be felt in classrooms and kitchen-table conversations, in the quiet struggles of families left without recourse, and in the futures of children who will be denied the support they need to thrive.
This isn’t about politics; it’s about priorities. Federal oversight exists because history has shown what happens when states are left to decide, on their own, whose education matters. Without these protections, vulnerable students will once again be pushed to the margins, their futures dictated not by potential but by geography, circumstance, and political whim.
The question before us is simple: Do we honor our commitment to all children, or do we turn back the clock on decades of progress? For Grace, for her classmates, and for the generations to come, the answer must be clear. We must act—not out of partisanship, but out of principle. The future of our children, and of our country, depends on it.
Keep ReadingShow Less
As Trump and Musk Flood the Zone, Solidarity Is Our Life Raft
When they manufacture chaos to divide us, we must recognize it as a desperate attempt to prevent us from building the collective power they fear.
Feb 07, 2025
These first 100 days in any presidency is a statement. A statement made for one's supporters who then cheer in response. U.S. President Donald Trump made a clear statement when he pardoned everyone involved in the assault on the capitol on January 6, 2021. Many have become concerned the message is that political violence on behalf of Trump will be forgiven, condoned, and even encouraged. No doubt his most fervent supporters are receiving the message and have already vowed revenge.
During these first 100 days the messages are also for those who did not vote for the president. Past administrations have often gone to extremes to find a way to include someone in their cabinet from the opposite party, an expression of a political olive branch, a promise to work together, across differences in priorities and ideologies. Here, Trump is sending the message that anyone who has ever even as much as thought in ways that were not in favor of him are in danger, in danger of losing their jobs, and even in physical danger as he prioritized removing security clearances from Gen. Mark Milley and Dr. Anthony Fauci.
We are receiving statements, and many of us are left with a set of chaotic destructions to try to untangle and make sense of. The shock and awe, the flooding of the zone that Steve Bannon and others have articulated is playing out. We know their playbook, yet we find our emotions played with regardless. As an already exhausted Stephen Colbert noted on his show on January 30, this isn't our first rodeo. We know how they will push us around with the 24-hour disorienting news cycle, yet somehow we're still receiving a concussion. Even when we can anticipate trauma, it doesn't negate the impact on our bodies—individual and collective.
Trump's entertaining charades, his absurdly chaotic and nonsensical yet mesmerizing performance, leaves us breathless and tells us a lie about our neighbors being our enemies rather than our greatest assets.
On January 29, we saw 67 bodies, 67 lives become extinguished in a tragic crash where an army helicopter crashed into plane landing from Wichita, Kansas in D.C. The country grieved the unimaginable. The first major airline incident since 2009. I know most of us held each other extra close at the news, and our hearts broke for all those whose future would never be the same, who are enduring the unimaginable grief of losing someone who is everything to them.
Yet before families could even begin to process their losses, with a racist and ableist fervor, Trump seized this tragedy as another opportunity to divide us. Without evidence, he blamed diversity initiatives and disabled people—a claim that is unabashedly in opposition of reality. The New York Times reported that staffing shortages are the more pressing concern, with federal agencies struggling for years to fill key positions at the Federal Aviation Administration. The type of staffing that had one air traffic control worker managing both helicopters and planes is reportedly not uncommon, pointing to systemic issues rather than Trump's manufactured and dangerous crisis about diversity in the workplace.
This administration's strategy is clear: Create chaos, place blame on marginalized communities, and hope we're too exhausted to see through the smoke and mirrors. Meanwhile, federal workers are being pressured—by Elon Musk's DOGE initiative no less—to accept questionable "Fork in the Road" resignation offers, further destabilizing our institutions and the people who keep them running. Ironically these resignations are being forced as a way to save money while Elon Musk's company Tesla paid $0 in taxes in 2024.
The cruel irony is that diversity actually strengthens teams and improves performance—this isn't just rhetoric, it's backed by extensive research. Recent McKinsey studies show companies committed to diversity demonstrate a 39% increased likelihood of outperformance. Diverse teams bring unique perspectives that unlock innovation, enhance problem-solving, and create environments where everyone feels empowered to contribute their full expertise. When we artificially limit who can participate, we all lose.
But this administration isn't interested in evidence-based policy. If they were, we would see very different approaches across the board. Take trans healthcare, for example. The American Medical Association has explicitly stated that gender-affirming care is medically necessary, warning that "forgoing gender-affirming care can have tragic consequences." They've urged governors to oppose legislation prohibiting such care for minor patients, calling it "a dangerous intrusion into the practice of medicine." Yet instead of following medical expertise, we see continued demonization of trans youth and their families. This assault on evidence extends further—a harrowing war on science has been unleashed, with Trump officials now targeting even basic terms like "gender" and "disability" through the National Science Foundation.
As this administration wages war on scientific language and evidence-based policy, there is much chaos to weed through, and it is hard to know what to pay attention to. So much of these performances are really designed to exhaust us. To leave us feeling defeated. There are lots of questions about what resistance looks like at a time like this. Even questions as to whether resistance is possible.
My answer to these questions is: Of course there is resistance. In fact, there is what indigenous scholar Gerald Vizenor termed survivance. Right now, surviving IS resistance. When so many of our neighbors are directly threatened, their joy and their existence IS resistance.
These tactics from Trump and Musk are pointing toward how we need to strategize as a response. We need a politics of solidarity. Solidarity means seeing that for most of us who hold complex identities, we are seeing our rights be whittled away. This administration is deploying transparent strategies to turn us against one another even as we see the way elite billionaires—the same ones standing behind him during the inauguration, obstructing the view of his future cabinet—are the only ones likely to thrive. The price of eggs is not going down. Tariffs on our closest neighbors, and our greatest allies, have been put on a pause after another frantic performance that ate up airwaves, yet they loom—leaving the possibility of, in the near future, increasing prices on basic necessities in the United States due to these tariffs. Most of us who are not elite billionaires are unlikely to see our quality of life improve.
Yet, Trump's entertaining charades, his absurdly chaotic and nonsensical yet mesmerizing performance, leaves us breathless and tells us a lie about our neighbors being our enemies rather than our greatest assets. He wants us to forget that we need each other—that our strength lies in our connections, our differences, our willingness to stand together.
There is a lesson here, an insight into what we need to survive, what we need to ensure everyone in our community is safe, and also an insight into what one strategy of dehumanization is for this administration. When they blame disabled people for an awful tragedy like the plane crash on January 29, we must recognize disabled people as vital assets to our communities. When they deny healthcare to trans youth, we must loudly and actively speak out in support of our trans friends, neighbors, and family members. When they vilify immigrants, we must remember that we are—as the poet Gwendolyn Brooks wrote—each other's harvest.
But let's be clear: The road ahead will be brutal. As more of us face direct threats to our lives and livelihoods, things will likely get worse before they get even worse. Many of us—disabled people, trans youth, people of color, immigrants, women, educators, dedicated federal workers, and others targeted by this administration—are not safe, and that's not hyperbole. That's precisely why solidarity isn't just a nice ideal—it's a survival strategy. When they manufacture chaos to divide us, we must recognize it as a desperate attempt to prevent us from building the collective power they fear. When they try to exhaust us, we must lean on each other. When they push policies that threaten our very existence, we must hold onto each other tighter.
Our solidarity is not based on naive optimism but on the clear-eyed understanding that we cannot survive alone. In these dangerous times, coming together isn't just an option—it's our only path forward. They want us isolated, exhausted, and afraid. Instead, we choose each other. We choose to recognize that our disabled neighbors make our communities stronger. We choose to stand with trans youth and their families. We choose to see immigrants as vital to our collective future. This is not the easy path—it's the necessary one. And while solidarity alone cannot guarantee our safety, it remains our best defense against those who would rather see us divided and conquered.
Keep ReadingShow Less
We Must Resist Trump’s Attack on DEI
Trump is, in effect, attempting with the stroke of a pen to undo over 60 years of hard-won progress in overcoming racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry.
Jan 25, 2025
This year, the presidential inauguration took place on the federal holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. President Donald Trump fully exploited the opportunity, hijacking King’s memory to advance his agenda. In his inaugural address, Trump took immediate aim at diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI. The bigotry embedded in Trump’s plans to “Make America Great Again” is stark—purging people of color and LGBTQIA people, not only from employment in the federal government, but from public life. But people have fought for too long, and too many have died, in the fight for equality.
“Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” refers to a system of policies and practices that promote fair treatment, full participation, and full access to employment and opportunities for all, especially for people from historically marginalized communities. Trump is, in effect, attempting with the stroke of a pen to undo over 60 years of hard-won progress in overcoming racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry.
“Today is Martin Luther King Day,” Trump said in his inaugural speech in the Capitol Rotunda, one of the only factually accurate statements he made. He went on, “In his honor, we will strive together to make his dream a reality. We will make his dream come true.”
Moments later, though, he pledged,
“This week, I will also end the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life. We will forge a society that is colorblind and merit-based.”
Following the speech, Trump issued a flurry of executive orders. Within hours, a form letter was emailed to federal departments, ordering the suspension, by end of day Wednesday, of any staff working on DEI initiatives, and giving remaining staff 10 days to report any ongoing “disguised” DEI activity, ie, to rat out colleagues.
While Trump spoke at his inauguration, a different gathering was taking place just a few blocks from the White House. Hundreds packed into the historic Metropolitan AME Church, the storied Black church that abolitionist Frederick Douglass attended, and where his funeral took place. In 2005, after Rosa Parks lay in state in the Capitol, her casket was moved to Metropolitan AME, for a memorial service.
Civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton was speaking at the same moment as Trump. Hearing that Trump had invoked King’s name in his speech, Sharpton responded:
Donald Trump just said that he is going to end DEI this week, he’s gonna put out his executive orders. You have all these corporations that are saying they’re gonna back off DEI. Why do we have DEI? We have DEI because you denied us diversity, you denied us equity, you denied us inclusion. DEI was a remedy to the racial institutional bigotry practiced in academia and in these corporations. Now you want to put us back in the back of the bus? We’re going to do the Dr. King/Rosa Parks on you. We will call you out one by one, and we will shut you down.
Later on King Day, Trump held a rally where he signed the first stack of executive orders, including a blanket rescission of many of former President Joe Biden’s executive orders, including at least 15 that advanced diversity, equity, and inclusion. Later, Trump signed a much broader order calling for the termination of all “illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government,” and to “terminate, to the maximum extent allowed by law, all DEI, DEIA, and ‘environmental justice’ offices and positions.”
The “A” in DEIA stands for “accessible,” thus extending Trump’s war on fellow citizens to include the disabled.
Sharpton and other speakers invoked not only Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, but the whole sweep of history, from the first arrival of enslaved Africans in 1619, to Frederick Douglass, to the role of freed slaves fighting in the Civil War, through the protests in 2020 following the police killing of George Floyd.
Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League, convened an emergency “Demand Diversity” roundtable in Washington D.C. on Wednesday. While Trump was inaugurated on King Day, Morial pointed out that Trump is no king:
These executive orders are unlawful, they are unconstitutional, and they seek to do what we always suspected. This is not a monarchy. You can’t rule by decree or edict. This is a constitutional democracy… we have to remember this as we go into this very important battle.
Participants in the roundtable, representing over 20 national civil rights and human rights organizations, form the core of a coalition committed to fighting Trump’s agenda. The coalition is guided and inspired by the memory and the lessons of Martin Luther King Jr. Organize, boycott, resist. These are the struggles, ultimately, that history will remember as great.
Keep ReadingShow Less
See More
Most Popular
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy