- Executive Order: Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets. Trump signed an executive order this week telling cities to remove unhoused people from the streets as a way to “reduce crime”. While an EO is not a law, it makes it easier for city officials to remove unhoused people and to involuntarily commit them, because it instructs Attorney General Bondi to reverse other federal and state regulations that previously limited this authority.
The EO is reminiscent of the Ugly Laws, a series of local laws that prohibited unhoused and disabled people from being in public places that were in place across the US from the turn of the 20th century. The last of those laws wasn’t repealed until the 1970s. A SCOTUS decision okaying the forcible sterilization of disabled people in state custody has never been overturned. - Department of Education releases withheld funds. DoEd had previously been illegally withholding over five billion dollars from K-12 schools. Districts had been expecting the funds on July 1st , and were already depending on them to provide staff and resources for the Fall.
The funds were largely earmarked for teacher training and before and after school care programs as well as summer programs already in swing. Several states had filed suit to pressure DoEd to release the money. - Deaf Californian kidnapped by ICE. 32-year-old Javier Diaz Santana, a Deaf resident of LA, was detained when an ICE raid came to the car wash where he worked. Though he is a legal resident with a Real ID, agents confiscated his wallet and arrested him anyway.
Santana is a DACA recipient who came to the US with his family when he was five years old. While in detention, Santana was denied an interpreter and given materials to read and sign in Spanish, a language he doesn’t know. DHS denies these claims and says they provided him with a “communication board.”
Santana is just another of many disabled people kidnapped by ICE and held in squalid conditions without accommodations or information. - Department of Education watchdog fired. Earlier in the year the Trump administration fired 17 Inspectors General. This month, the administration removed the Inspector in charge of serving as watchdog for the Department of Education.
The watchdog was demoted and replaced for investigating the illegal withholding of education funds that began on July 1st. Removing oversight that asks questions or critiques (illegal) activity to replace them with party loyalists is a concerning move common to authoritarian governments. - Local: Tennessee school district will no longer accept doctors’ notes for absences. One Tennessee school district has changed their policy for the new school year and will no longer allow excused absences, even with a doctor’s note.
The district instructs families to send their children to school sick. If the nurse deems them ill enough to go home, they will be marked as “tardy.” Students who miss more than eight days of school per year will be sent to juvenile court.
This eugenic policy is obviously discriminatory toward disabled and chronically ill children, both those who may be absent from school more than 8 days, and those while will suffer catching increased sickness from ill peers. Disabled and immunocompromised teachers are also at risk. The district has said exceptions may be made for “verified chronic conditions” but did not elaborate.
Action items: Share this info! Disability is often lost in mainstream coverage.
Hit the streets if you are able. It’s past due.
Protect your neighbors. Warn and record in the presence of ICE. Push your local officials not to collaborate.
Boycott businesses supporting these policies. Donate to your local food pantry, library, clinics, cash bail funds, or other mutual aid if you can. Or volunteer your time.
Contact your local officials and congresspeople and ask them to protect election integrity.
Make sure you’re up to date on your vaccines. Ditch the wearable tech.
Consider running for local office or getting involved to support a local candidate through organizing or phone banking–especially progressive primary challengers.
Think about ways to spread information offline. Make flyers and stickers. Make art.