- The Dept of Education’s proposed 2026 budget released. The proposed DoEd budget was released this week, confirming a shift from IDEA formula grants (calculated by state need, with specific requirements to be used for special ed.) to block grant format. States would no longer be required to use the money for special ed.
Proposed program cuts for 2026: Preschool grants, State Personnel Development, Technical Assistance teams, SpEd. Personnel Preparation Program, Parent Information Centers, Educational Technology Media and Materials program, Client Assistant State Grants, several training and Supported Employment state grant programs, the Protection and Advocacy of Individual Rights, Adult Education State grants. These are only the special ed programs cut. Many more have also been defunded.
Bright spots: Funding for the Special Olympics, as well as the American Printing House for the Blind, NTID, Gallaudet University, Helen Keller National Center for DeafBlind, and Independent Living Services for Older Blind Individuals has been slated at the same rate for 2026. This is good news, and a departure from stated plans in Project 2025, which proposed defunding these programs.
The budget also proposes slight increases in funding to both the overall special education and Vocational Rehabilitation budgets. However, these increases will not be enough to offset the programs in and outside of special ed. departments that have been defunded.
The full DoED 2026 budget proposal is available here. - HHS Budget Proposal Released: The proposed HHS budget continues ahead with plans for deep cuts across the department, especially in the NIH, CDC and Administration for Children Families and Communities. HHS department cuts sought total over $32 billion.
Specific to the disability community, the ACL’s University Centers for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities, Chronic Disease Self-Management Education, Limb Loss and Paralysis Resource Centers, Voting Access for People with Disabilities, and the White House Conference on Aging are all proposed cuts.
Bright spots: The new proposal walks back some of the proposed Administration for Community Living (ACL) eliminations. These programs remain funded in the current proposal: Councils on Developmental Disabilities, Protection and Advocacy systems, the Long-term care ombudsman program, National Institute on Disability Independent Living and Rehabilitative Research (NIDILRR), Lifespan Respite Care Program, and State Health Insurance Program (SHIP), among others.
Instead of splitting the ACL’s programs across three different agencies as originally be proposed, the programs will move to the Administration for Children, Families and Communities. (This is good news, but remember deep budget cuts to the ACFC are also proposed)
The Dept of Health and Human Services proposed 2026 budget is available in full here. - MAHA Commission Report Cites Sources that Don’t exist: Last week, the commission released a report declaring a childhood “chronic disease crisis” in the US, identifying poor diet, chemicals, chronic stress, lack of physical activity, and “overmedicalization” as driving causes. The report also questioned vaccine safety.
In the days since, it’s become clear that many of the sources cited do not exist.
In addition to making the Commission’s work untrustworthy due to lack of peer-reviewed evidence, fake sources are hallmark of AI chatbots like ChatGPT, who “hallucinate” sources by putting words and names together that sound true, but aren’t real. - CDC Defies RFK, Keeping covid vaccinations on childhood schedule: Last week, The FDA announced a plan to limit access to COVID boosters, restricting them to people over 65 or with underlying health conditions only. RFK also asked specifically that covid vaccines be left off the childhood vaccine schedule. Considering RFK Jr’s profitable ties to antivax organizations, many see this as the first step in limiting overall access to vaccines.
This week, the CDC went against RFK’s statement, releasing its vaccine schedule including recommendations for covid vaccination for all children. - Deaf schools under threat as state budgets compensate for DoEd cuts: Bracing for a federal budget that eliminates nearly $300 billion in education funding, some states are taking advantage of their expected freedom under the block grant system and cutting deaf school budgets.
The New Jersey School for the Deaf (MKSD) saw their residential program completely removed from the governor’s proposed 2026 budget.
Indiana School for the Deaf and California School for the Deaf–Fremont are also experiencing budgetary issues. Indiana seeks to reallocate money previously for ISD toward general public education, while CSD Fremont struggles to maintain appropriate funding for cost-of-living in a gentrified Silicon Valley area. - NAD Sues White House to return ASL interpreters to press briefings: In keeping with eugenic rhetoric, various GOP influencers have shown particular hostility toward ASL interpreters in recent months, ever since Charlie Kirk and Chris Rufo attacked their existence at emergency briefings for the LA Fires, with Rufo calling them “wild human gesticulators”.
Upon taking office, the Trump administration quickly removed the WH accessibility page and all ASL content, and fired the WH ASL interpreter, as part of other “anti-DEIA” initiatives.
The NAD is now suing for the return of an interpreter to WH press briefings. The organization filed and won a similar suit during Trump 1.0, in order to access the emergency covid-related briefings. - Musk out, Project 2025 Writer up: Elon Musk made an exit from the White House this week after a tanking Tesla stock, reports of heavy illegal drug use, and economic models showing that tens of thousands of people, most of them children, have been killed by his pet project–the illegal closure of USAID. Most of the deaths have resulted from malnutrition and lack of oral-rehydration medication for patients with diarrhea, two program areas hit quickest by the loss of funds.
Russel Vought, a self-proclaimed “Christian Nationalist” and head writer for Project 2025, is poised to take over Musk’s work. It’s likely that he’ll be less flashy, and more effective, than Elon in the position. - Hickson v. St. David’s Healthcare Partnership poses new threat to ADA/504: Michael Hickson, a 46-year-old disabled Black man died in Texas in June 2020 after contracting Covid and being denied ventilator care and other ICU services. At the time, Texas and 24 other states had policies about rationing care that explicitly discriminated against disabled people. This is one of the things Final Rule updates seek to rectify.
The case is currently before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, a conservative court. If they rule in favor of the hospital, it would set a precedent that guts disabled people’s ability to file medical facility-related discrimination claims under the ADA or Section 504.
Action items:
Share this info! Disability is often lost in mainstream coverage.
Call your Senator and tell them to vote NO on this dangerous budget. Choose 1 or 2 programs important to you–Medicaid, gender-affirming care, SNAP, IDEA, etc.–and mention them by name.
Call your state representative and tell them to include deaf schools in their budgets. You can text NJ Governor Phil Murphy at 732-605-5455
If your state is involved, ask your Attorney General to withdraw from Texas v. Kennedy. If able, donate to organizations like DREDF, ACLU, and NAD who are fighting various legal challenges.
Contact medical providers requesting they do not share yours or your child’s autism diagnosis or records with the government registry. Letter template available here.
Consider how to move toward creative acts of mutual aid, and protest, including offline materials. Make flyers! Call out misinformation. Warn your neighbors in the presence of ICE. If able march, boycott, donate and/or volunteer with your local food pantry or library.
Category: Gallaudet
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Week 19 Updates
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Week 15 Update
1. White House releases harrowing budget requests. On Friday, the White House released their budget request to Congress. The 46 pg document seeks massive cuts for almost all social and educational programs domestically and internationally, cuts totaling $163 billion.
Departments of Defense and Homeland Security are two of the handful of that see increased spending in order to better fund police militarization and the deportation of immigrants and kidnapping of US citizens by ICE.
This week’s post will examine some key budget asks affecting the disability community. This is not a complete list, but a link to the full document is available here. Items 1-4 on this post are pulled directly from that spreadsheet. It’s important to note that these are *nonbinding requests* from the President. It will be up to Congress to write and pass specific legislation. Call them.
2. WH Budget Requests: Dept. of Education
$60 million increase in funding for charter schools
$4.5 billion in cuts for K-12 education / Title I programming for underfunded schools
$49 million in cuts for DoED’s Office of Civil Rights
A vague category of “Special Education” is listed to “remain at 2025 levels. it mentions IDEA by name, but it’s unclear to what extent programs and sub-departments will be included. The explanation also appears to employ Project 2025’s block grant distribution, meaning it’s suggested the money be used for special ed, but with limited oversight.
Many other DoED programs receive explicit cuts. There is no mention of special institutions, like Gallaudet, NTID, Printing House for the Blind, etc. in the document.
3. WH Budget Request, HHS
$500 million increase to “MAHA” a slush fund for RFK Jr’s antivax and “overreliance on medication” initiatives
$4 billion in cuts to LIHEAP the program that provides heat and AC assistance for low-income families.
$1.9 billion in cuts for services for refugee and unaccompanied minors
$315 million cuts to Preschool Development Grants
$1.7 billion cuts to HRSA, $3. 5 billion cuts to the CDC
$17.9 billion cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH)$1 billion cuts to Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)
$180 million in cuts to STI and teen pregnancy prevention programs
$674 billion in cuts to Medicaid and Medicare Service
4. WH Budget Request, HUD:
$26 billion cut from rental assistance state block grants, money sent to states to support rental housing for the elderly, disabled, and those aging out of foster care.
$479 million in cuts from Native American and Hawaiian housing block grants
$532 million cut from Homeless Assistance Program
$296 million cut from Surplus Lead Hazard Reduction and Healthy Homes Funding
Additional cuts to other self-sufficiency, fair housing, and community grant programs
5. WH Budget Requests, our liberation is intertwined: Deep cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Parks System, the Department of the Interior (including significant reductions in funding for Native American reservation-based social services and education), aid-based programming within the DHS, FEMA and other disaster-relief funding, Department of Labor job skills programs, funding for libraries, HBCUs, PBS and NPR, programs to combat misinformation, and more have all been explicitly named and targeted for cuts at the President’s request.
These cuts will hurt everyone, and particularly those living at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities.
7. Gallaudet suspends enrollment of several majors as budget cuts loom. A list from Provost Rashid said admissions to the following programs will be suspended:
Secondary Education programs, including the BA and MA in Secondary Education in Biology, Chemistry, English, General Sciences, Mathematics, and Social Studies, Undergraduate Teacher Preparation, Programs in Early Childhood and Elementary EducationThe announcement comes as deaf studies and education programs shutter at universities across the country.
GU leadership continues to be nontransparent about the future of the university without its DoED Liaison, who previously disbursed funding and advocated on behalf of deaf education. The University has gone so far as to say that the liaison has been reinstated, which is untrue.
The only liberal arts university for the deaf in the world faces an uncertain future without mention in Trump’s budget request (yes, that would be illegal).
8. Texas v Beccera lawsuit continues
Despite recent “clarifications” from HHS about the how mention of gender dysphoria in Final Rule’s preamble is not legally binding, involved parties have not revoked their original filing, which explicitly asks for 504 to be declared unconstitutional (p 37-42).504 protects disabled people’s rights in all spaces that receive federal funding, and would have major implications in conjunction with rescinding of ADA guidance, the uncertain future of DoEd, and a separate suit going before SCOTUS next week.
A stay has been issued, and parties are now required to update every other month, with the next due June 21st.
9. RFK makes wild vaccine claims on air as HHS floats dangerous clinical trials.
Speaking live on News Nation Wednesday, RFK Jr. repeatedly claimed the MMR vaccine contains “aborted fetus debris.”IT SUPER DOESN’T! The MMR vaccine, like most vaccines, was cultured within (sterile) fetal cells, one of two lines from the 1960s. It does not contain fetal cells or human DNA because the virus kills the cell. The vaccine virus is also purified before it is made into a replicable vaccine.
HHS also said they want to conduct placebo trials on existing vaccines, raising ethical concerns with public health experts. Not giving available effective and thoroughly-tested vaccines to trial participants and infecting them with, and allowing them to die from preventable disease is cruel, and in violation of the Hippocratic Oath.
10. HHS releases harmful anti-trans report, highlights willingness to distribute misinformation. On Thursday, HHS released a “report” seeking to disparage gender-affirming care for trans youth, care that is already known to be safe and effective as backed by decades of peer-reviewed research.
The report’s authors are anonymous, and it is not peer-reviewed. No trans people are consulted in the report, though anti-trans extremists are cited.
Every human deserves access to healthcare. The disability community stands with trans youth.
Multiple studies also estimate that 27-50% of trans people are disabled, too. (1, 2, 3)
The report also demonstrates a willingness to publish blatant disinformation to support the administration’s various eugenic vendettas. This won’t be the last.
Take Action:
What to do: Share this info. Disability is often lost in mainstream coverage.
Call your Representative and tell them not to accept the White House’s requested budget cuts. Choose 1 or 2 programs important to you personally and mention them by name when you call.
Call your Senator and tell them to take meaningful action against illegal deportations and ideological-based arrests.
Contact the Gallaudet Board of Trustees and urge transparency in communication with the community, and action to protect the university.
If your state is involved, contact your Attorney General and ask them to withdraw from Texas v. Beccera. Tell them you stand in solidarity with disabled people, and trans folks.
Consider how to move toward creative acts of mutual aid, and protest, including offline materials. Make flyers! Call out misinformation. Warn your neighbors in the presence of ICE. If able march, boycott, donate and/or volunteer with your local food pantry or library.