11 Ways Trump’s Policies Savage People with Disabilities

In November, 2015, President Donald Trump was speaking at a rally in South Carolina when he began to criticize a New York Times journalist, Serge Kovaleski, who has arthrogryposis, a congenital condition affecting his joints. Trump’s beef was that the man had allegedly disclaimed having reported that Muslims in New Jersey celebrated the 911 attacks shortly after the onslaught occurred. Trump said, ”now the poor guy, you ought to see this guy: ‘I don’t know what I said. I don’t remember.” He’s going like ‘I don’t remember.”’ It wasn’t what Trump said, but how he said it that revealed something savage about his attitude about people with disabilities. For all intents and purposes, he looked like a fourth grade boy making fun of someone with cerebral palsy, brutally mocking him with wildly flailing arms.

This isn’t the only time Trump has done or said something suggesting that his attitude toward disability borders on the vicious. Last year, Fred C. Trump III, a nephew of the president, wrote a memoir entitled, All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way, recounting how his uncle once told him that disabled Americans — including Fred III’s own son [who has complex developmental and intellectual disabilities]— “should just die” due to “expenses” and “the shape they’re in.”

In 2019, Trump reportedly told General Mark Milley, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that “no one wants to see” wounded soldiers after he met Luis Avila, an Army captain who “completed five combat tours, had lost a leg in an IED attack in Afghanistan and had suffered two heart attacks, two strokes, and brain damage as a result of his injuries.” Trump told the general to never again let Avila appear in public. Similarly, after a trip to France in 2017, Trump told his chief of staff, retired General John F. Kelly, “Look, I don’t want any wounded guys in the parade [a parade that was to be held in his honor]. This doesn’t look good for me,”

Finally, after the tragic January, 2025 crash of a military helicopter and a commercial airliner at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport that killed 67 people, Trump appeared to blame the hiring practices of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), for opening up jobs in air traffic control to people with disabilities and those in minority communities.

These incidents reveal something deeply troubling about Trump’s total lack of empathy or caring for disabled Americans. If they had just remained isolated incidents revealing Trump’s twisted frame of mind, they could have simply been added to his ever-expanding list of undesireable qualities. But these attitudes are now informing the emergence of a brutal policy toward the disabled as the second Trump administration shifts into full gear. Here are only some of the changes he has wrought in recent months to make the lives of disabled children, teens, and adults more difficult:

An executive order dated January 20, 2025, effectively eliminated diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) ”mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government, under whatever name they appear.” The order referred to these initiatives as ”forced illegal and immoral discrimination programs.” These programs help people in underserved minority communities, and are important in safeguarding the rights of disabled people to have their dignity and integrity respected. Inclusion is a key aspect of disability rights that is essential in countering the exclusion that disabled people have been subjected to for decades. Accessibility options allow people with disabilities to fully participate in American life. Without the protections that DEIA programs afford, individuals with disabilities will be exposed to greater levels of stigma, institutionalization, bias, exclusion, and other forms of discrimination that will damage their ability to realize a decent life.
The Trump administration is currently in the process of removing many fundamental words and key terms related to people with disabilities from federal websites and programs . Some of the words that have been eliminated or are in the process of being eliminated include: accessible, advocacy, affirming care, at risk, disabilities, disability, diverse, diverse backgrounds, diverse communities, diverse community, diverse group, diverse groups, diversified, diversify, diversifying, diversity, enhance the diversity, enhancing diversity, equity, inclusion, inclusivity, increase diversity, promote diversity, promoting diversity. These words are the stock in trade of professionals who go about the work of meeting the needs of disabled individuals (and those in other underserved communities). This process of seeking control over the English language can only serve to undermine the ability of federal employees to help disabled individuals. The British writer George Orwell has written about the power of words to control others and to add or detract from an individual’s sense of agency. By removing an entire vocabulary of terms designed to meet the needs of those who have traditionally been stigmatized and excluded from social institutions, Trump is making sure that few significant actions will take place to further the educational, financial, emotional, and social needs of people with disabilities.
The $1 trillion spending cut in Medicaid approved by Congress and signed into law by Trump on July 4, 2025 will have a profound affect on the lives of people with disabilities. Along with its ”safety net” provisions for low-income individuals, the federal program also serves people with disabilities (a sizeable proportion of whom are also low-income earners). For many, the kind of home- and community-based care that Medicaid provided in the past is all the difference between living a life comparable to peers who don’t have a disability, on the one hand, or becoming institutionalized, on the other.
The president is in the process of eliminating the Department of Education (ED), which has been responsible for the implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). ED is charged with the task of meeting the educational needs of kids in special education programs in America’s public schools. Trump has indicated that he plans to rely more on the states (and even local districts) to comply with federal laws, and to provide more ”flexibility” in how federal funds are disbursed to local and state agencies (including the use of ”block grants” rather than funds more specifically targeted for special services). This raises the distinct possibility that funds will be diverted to other purposes, that oversight regarding compliance with IDEA will be spotty, and that these kids will be robbed of their legal right to have an appropriate education in the least restrictive educational environment.
Trump has indicated that he’s planning to shift the responsibility for providing services for kids with disabilities to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). This plan runs the danger of ”medicalizing” disabilities rather than recognizing the real need to protect kids from ”disabling” environmental barriers, and the imperative to provide sound educational, social, and psychological interventions in the family, the school, and the broader culture. The secretary of HHS, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, has already talked about an ”epidemic” of autism in the country and how its rise can be tied to controversial and largely discredited theories about environmental exposure, as if it were akin to lung cancer, polio, or malaria. In addition, an executive order from the president addressing health concerns included references to autism spectrum disorder and ADD/ADHD as “health burdens” that “pose a dire threat to the American people and our way of life.”
President Donald Trump’s administration withdrew eleven pieces of guidance in March, 2025 related to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) that assisted stores, hotels and other businesses in understanding their obligation to the law. The guidance included tips on talking to hotel guests about accessible features, and how to create accessible parking, rest rooms, elevators, and fitting rooms. Disability rights advocates suggest that this could represent a signal that the federal government may be less likely to enforce the ADA and will leave it up to businesses on how (or even whether) to comply.
Federal officials are giving employers the green light to continue paying many workers with disabilities less than minimum wage. The Trump administration is withdrawing a proposed rule that would phase out what’s become known as ”subminimum wage employment.” Under current laws, employers can apply for special 14(c) certificates from the U.S. Department of Labor allowing them to pay workers with disabilities less than the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour. A proposal put forth by the Biden administration late last year called for the Labor Department to stop issuing new 14(c) certificates and to phase out existing ones within three years, but Trump appears ready to drop this proposal. Employers, such as owners of ”sheltered workshops,” where people with intellectual disabilities perform menial tasks like assembling cardboard boxes or sorting mail, are jubilant at the prospect of not having to pay a full minimum wage to their employees. In the U.S., as of 2022, 24.9% of working-age adults with disabilities lived below the poverty line compared to 10.1% of working-age adults without disabilities.
In early March, 2025, mass layoffs at the U.S. Department of Education (ED) significantly reduced its internal Office of Civil Rights’ (OCR) ability to enforce protections for students with disabilities. The government closed down seven of the twelve regional branches of the OCR, thus making it more difficult for students with disabilities to seek redress for such injustices as denial of essential services, chronic bullying, racial discrimination, problems with access to school grounds, the use of restraints, and other indignities.
Trump’s ”Big Beautiful Bill,” eliminates funding for programs such as the University Centers for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities (UCEDDs), which have existed in every state for more than 60 years. According to the Association of University Centers on Disabilities, “UCEDDs evaluate children with autism, run early intervention programs, train community professionals to work with people with developmental disabilities, provide training and disseminate information to families and self-advocates — all to increase the independence and self-sufficiency of individuals with disabilities.”
The Social Security Administration has ceased funding the Retirement and Disability Research Consortium (RDRC), which conducted research addressing DEIA in Social Security, retirement, and disability policies. Funding had supported such work as a study on transportation as a barrier to finding work for this population and helping disabled children who receive Social Security transition to adulthood. The crackdown on DEIA also halted or endangered disability-related research at the National Institutes of Health.
An executive order dated July 24, 2025, has directed federal agencies to find ways to make it easier to forcibly hospitalize homeless people with mental illness and addiction for longer periods of time. This raises the spectre of heavily medicated patients wasting away in punitive and confining state hospitals or for-profit so-called ”rehabilitation” facilities, while their real needs for housing, addiction counseling, and other services go unaddressed.

Trump’s insensitive and disastrous policies toward the disabled promise to turn back the clock decades to the days when people with disabilities were hidden away in bedlam-ridden hospitals, laughed at (Trump’s Mini-Me, Elon Musk, has brought back the word ”retarded,” which was officially changed to ”intellectual disabilities” during the Obama administration). And this comes just as a new consciousness is emerging for people with neurologically-based disabilities that focus on their strengths, not just their difficulties. The emerging term neurodiversity suggests that we celebrate differences in brains in the same way that we honor diversity in plants, animals, and cultures. The movement is only twenty five years old, but it has grown exponentially over the past fifteen years, as mental health professionals, teachers, parents, and employers seek to empower individuals with autism, ADHD, dyslexia, intellectual disabilities, bipolar disorder, and other neurodiversities to reach for the stars through a wide range of strength-based strategies that include:

emphasizing strength awareness (many people with autism are detail-oriented, those with ADHD are novelty-seekers, dyslexics are big picture thinkers, individuals with Down syndrome have warm and winning personalities);
highlighting neurodivergent superstars like Simone Biles (ADHD), Temple Grandin (autism), John Irving (dyslexia), and Robert Downey Jr. (bipolar disorder);
using assistive technologies to help neurodivergent people ”work around” obstacles (such as speech-to-text software for dyslexics, time management tools for those with ADHD, and mood trackers for bipolar individuals);
focusing on careers that match job requirements to the strengths of those with disabilities (e.g. firefighting or an EMT career for ADHD, architecture for dyslexics, information technology for many on the autism spectrum);
forging soul-restoring social relationships and weakening spirit-depleting connections in the lives of people with disabilities (anti-bullying programs to protect kids in special education, Best Buddies programs for kids with Down syndrome, yoga classes and psychotherapy for those with PTSD).

Trump’s trashing of the federal programs described above threaten to nip these hopeful approaches in the bud. One of neurodiversity’s heroes is John Elder Robison, whose best-selling memoir, Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger’s, introduced hundreds of thousands of readers to a more humanistic and personal approach to the world of people with autism. He has served as a scholar-in-residence to the College of William & Mary’s Neurodiversity Initiative, and is an advisor to The Center for Neurodiversity at Landmark College, a post-secondary school for students with learning differences such as dyslexia. The impact of Trump’s disastrous policies toward the disabled comes across starkly in this Facebook entry Robison wrote on June 6, 2025:

‘’I awoke this morning to the discovery that all the government agencies I have served for the past 18 years have removed all mention of me, videos of me, and mentions of neurodiversity. It is as if, in the US government, neurodiversity and I never existed. With all the effort I put in over the years, it makes me very sad and disappointed.’’

We musn’t let Trump’s heavy hand of ignorance structure the lives of millions of disabled individuals. Each one has gifts and abilities that can only add to the collective richness of American culture. As with so many other policies that Trump is inflicting on America, we have to stand firm and just say no to him, and yes to disability, diversity, and life.

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For further reading on neurodiversity, see my books:

The Power of Neurodiversity: Unleashing the Advantages of Your Neurodivergent Brain (Completely Revised and Updated Second Edition)

Neurodiversity in the Classroom: Strength-Based Strategies to Help Students with Special Needs Succeed in School and Life