- RFK Jr. and Trump deliver multiple anti-scientific rants about Tylenol and vaccines in connection to autism. After promising to find the “cause” for autism by September, HHS’s RFK Jr. delivered a series of unhinged press conferences about the dangers of Tylenol. He cited a small and since debunked study that found a slight correlation between Tylenol-use during pregnancy and autism rates of children.
The study was later thrown out— doctors noted an already known risk factor to fetal development is the activation of the maternal immune system. Given that pregnant women’s Tylenol use would overlap with illness, it would be difficult to parse these variables. Later, a much larger sibling study found no correlation between Tylenol use and autism rates.
The latest rants are dangerous and cruel, given that Tylenol is one of the only approved medications for pain and fever relief during pregnancy. Fever during pregnancy is another risk factor for birth defects and other fetal harm. They’re also a grift– one supposed “cure” for the reversal of autism RFK suggests is a B vitamin-derivative supplement, a popular version that comes from a competitor to Tylenol’s parent company, iHerb, of which Dr. Oz is an investor. Oz had previously said he would divest from the company when appointed to his Medicare position, but whether he did is unclear. The FDA reasserted on Twitter/X that only a prescription form of the product is recommended for certain patients following a blood test, but that hasn’t stopped the explosion of promotion and sales across MAHA platforms.
Trump and MAHA also took aim at the administration of Hepatitis B shots, as well as Vitamin K shots, to infants, suggesting the former should be held off until tweendom due to the sexually transmitted nature of the disease. However, victims of permanent liver damage from Hepatitis B are overwhelmingly infants, and Vitamin K prevents brain hemorrhage and death in newborns. Vitamin K does not cross the placenta or into breastmilk efficiently; death from Vitamin K deficiency bleeding is 81 times less likely in those infants who receive the shot. - Republicans leave DC to avoid negotiation on healthcare subsidies, triggering government shutdown. Congress was set to negotiate on a budget bill, but Speaker Johnson sent the Republicans home instead. Democrats had said they would not pass the bill as is, requesting that healthcare subsidies be extended to offset rising costs. Healthcare subsidies not only help people to purchase insurance in the marketplace, but this infusion of money into the system protects everyone from the closure of clinics and hospitals who rely on Medicaid/care and insurance dollars.
The shutdown furloughs many government workers, with others performing essential functions without pay. Experts worry that a prolonged shutdown could also harm the distribution of life-saving services like WIC supplemental nutrition. The last government shutdown was in 2018, also under Trump. - Despite ACIP’s recommendations, several states are still blocking access to covid vaccines without a prescription. Missouri, Georgia, and Louisiana are still preventing people from getting covid vaccines without a prescription, despite recommendations out of the CDC’s immunization committee.
Experts speculate this is because no CDC director has signed off on the recommendations, since Trump fired the CDC director. However, none of the state laws stipulate a CDC signature must be in place for the recommendations to be adopted. - Congress fails to pass extensions–Medicare’s coverage for telehealth speech therapy and audiology services has ended. These services were essential for families especially in rural areas where they may otherwise face multi-hour drives and long waitlists.
- The First Circuit Court of Appeals rules that the Department of Education is allowed to fire half its’ Civil Rights Department staff. The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) inside DoED exists specifically to protect students facing discrimination or those who have experienced sexual assault, and the process of filing a complaint can, in many places, already take years.
Halving the staff essentially removes consequences for perpetrators of racism, ableism, sexism, sexual abuse, and the intersections thereof, and will be devastating to the equitable education and safety of marginalized students. - Department of Education partners with Turning Point, Moms for Liberty to create new “patriotic” history and civics curriculum.
DoEd announced an initiative to create a new history and civics curriculum lead by far-right extremist organizations. The curriculum will likely continue propagate racist erasures of US history and anti-DEIA book bans, two pet projects of the involved groups.
Previously, DoEd was not involved in creating specific curriculum–this decision was left up to individual states and districts.
Public comment on the initiative is now open until October 17. - Good News: Some mental health grants for schools have been restored. McMahon’s Department of Education had previously cut a billion dollars worth of grants geared toward student mental health, but, due to backlash, recently restored $270 million. The restored grants focus on school psychologists, only, and leave out counselors and social workers, but they do serve as proof that backlash and public comment can still be effective.
What to Do:
Get your vaccinations up to date as soon as possible, and ask your state to join a state-level public health collaborative if they haven’t yet.
Hit the streets if you are able. March, attend a town hall, school board meeting, or other local action. Go, but don’t RSVP, to a protest! Consider purchasing a reusable respirator (gas mask) if attending a mass protest, due to recent escalations in use of tear gas and other “less lethal” force at actions.
Protect your neighbors. Warn and record in the presence of ICE. Push your local officials not to collaborate. Write to Apple to tell them their blocking of the ICE Block app is unacceptable capitulation.
Call your representatives and especially your local officials to ensure special education gaps are being filled in your district.
Leave a public comment saying no to forced Turning Point history curriculum in public schools.
Donate to your local food pantry, library, clinics, cash bail funds, or other mutual aid if you can. Or volunteer your time.
Make a plan to vote in upcoming local elections, in person when possible. Down ballot elections matter more than ever.
Move to (more) secure encrypted apps when possible. Think about ways to spread information offline. Make flyers and stickers. Make art.
Tag: ICE
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Week 36 + 37 Updates
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Weeks 34+35
- Brian Kilmeade of Fox & Friends calls for the mass murder of unhoused people. The discussion, about how to handle growing populations of unhoused people, especially those who are mentally ill, Kilmeade said we should “just kill them” using “involuntary lethal injection.” Unhoused people often have a disability or mental illness, and Kilmeade spoke emphatically about his idea to kill them all in the context of discussion about a murder committed by an unhoused man in North Carolina.
He later apologized, but kept his job.
(In contrast, Karen Attiah of the Washington Post was fired for her social media comments on the rhetoric of the late Charlie Kirk, and Jimmy Kimmel was removed from the air “indefinitely” for criticizing MAGA response to Kirk’s death. In the latter, the head of the FCC got directly involved by pressuring the network to remove Kimmel, then attempting to extort a “meaningful personal donation” to far-right organizations should he seek to return on-air. ) - The Trump administration continues to push arguments that IUDs and birth control pills are actually abortions. The administration used the argument as a pretext to cancel a USAID family planning program and destroy millions in birth control, and has floated attempts to employ reasoning domestically. Pro-choice advocates have warned about this as an an administrative goal since the overturn of Roe v. Wade.
- The last of the NIH’s communications and policy specialists are being eliminated. These are the experts who take highly scientific and technical knowledge and make sure it is transparent and understandable for healthcare workers and the general public. Without access to the NIH’s vast work in medical research, RFK Jr. and other anti-science leaders will be able to more easily make and spread false claims, and subsequent policy changes.
- The Department of Ed makes millions in Special Ed cuts, citing anti-DEIA. The Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) pulled 25 grants from IDEA-related programs worth nearly $15 million. The Rehabilitation Services Office also canceled 9 disability related grants. The grants supported special ed teacher training, community parent resource centers, brail and interpreter training, and services for DeafBlind children and adults.
Programs across 16 states will be impacted, and the cuts begin October 1st. In a letter sent to the affected programs, the administration said the cuts were made with an anti-DEIA motivation, because the programs don’t “align with Administration’s policy of prioritizing merit, fairness, and excellence in education.” - Covid vaccines live to see another year based on Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)’s latest vote. Though RFK had attempted to fill the committee with antivaxxers and covid deniers, the group ultimately voted 7-6 to allow people to make their own choices with their physicians about whether they would like the the covid vaccine. Due to these recommendations, vaccines should be available without a prescription in all 50 states.
The ACIP still needs to weigh in on other concerning vaccine related topics, specifically an attempt to delay the administration of the MMRV and Hepatitis B vaccines to babies. Hepatitis B had previously been considered eradicated in child populations thanks to wide vaccine uptake. - States form their own health coalitions, creative workarounds, in light of anti-scientific recommendations from HHS. As the HHS under RFK continues to create barriers to access for vaccines and other preventative care, states who previously relied on CDC recommendations, many of whom had laws tethering state guidance to the CDC, have taken matters into their own hands.
The West Coast Health Alliance (Washington, California, Oregon, and Hawaii) and the Northeast Public Health Collaborative (Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, Rhode Island, Maryland and Vermont) have been formed to issue evidence-based public health recommendations, remove barriers to vaccine access, and collaborate on emergency preparedness in the absence of organizations like FEMA.
Meanwhile, Michigan public health officials had floated declaring “not having the latest covid booster” an underlying health condition, in order to make it easier for all those who want it to obtain the vaccine.
Large groups of insurance companies have also already committed to continuing to pay for vaccination regardless of current HHS recommendations. - Access to speech and hearing services via telehealth to end this month under Medicare. Under current Medicare provisions, access to speech therapy and audiology services via telehealth will end on September 30th, unless Congress acts to extend them. HR 5081 and 1614 are two possible bills that could extend the services.
Telehealth speech therapy and audiology services are especially important for early intervention in rural areas that wouldn’t otherwise have access to specialists. - Administration declares “Antifa” and trans people terror threats. Trump took to social media this week to announce that he was labeling antifa a “major terrorist organization,” while the FBI declared trans people a “nihilistic violent extremist” threat group.
Antifa, an abbreviation for anti-fascist, is a general ideology, and has no official organization or hierarchy. Further, the president does not have legal authority to designate terror groups.
Trans people are a very small percentage of the population and there is no evidence to suggest they are more violent than cis people; however, they are statistically much more likely to be victims of violent crime.
The move by the administration to label those they disagree with as “terrorists” should concern everyone interested in free speech and bodily autonomy, especially in the wake of a recent attempt by the GOP to allow Rubio’s State Department the ability to strip passports from citizens belonging to “terror” groups. (The bill has been pulled for now after backlash.) - US democratic status in peril as state media censorship and ICE-related deaths spike. We highly recommend this breakdown of the ten steps required to transfer from a democratic to authoritarian form of government (2 min video.)
What to do:
Get your vaccinations up to date as soon as possible, and ask your state to join a state-level public health collaborative if they haven’t yet. If you live in Florida, contact your state representatives and tell them not to remove vaccine guidelines for schoolchildren. Despite rhetoric, state law about this is still in effect.Hit the streets if you are able. March, attend a town hall, school board meeting, or other local action. Don’t RSVP to a protest! Consider purchasing a reusable respirator (gas mask) if attending a mass protest, due to recent escalations in use of tear gas and other “less lethal” force at actions.
Protect your neighbors. Warn and record in the presence of ICE. Push your local officials not to collaborate.
Call your representatives, but also your local officials to ensure special education gaps are being filled in your district.Donate to your local food pantry, library, clinics, cash bail funds, or other mutual aid if you can. Or volunteer your time.
Move to (more) secure encrypted apps when possible. Think about ways to spread information offline. Make flyers and stickers. Make art.
- Brian Kilmeade of Fox & Friends calls for the mass murder of unhoused people. The discussion, about how to handle growing populations of unhoused people, especially those who are mentally ill, Kilmeade said we should “just kill them” using “involuntary lethal injection.” Unhoused people often have a disability or mental illness, and Kilmeade spoke emphatically about his idea to kill them all in the context of discussion about a murder committed by an unhoused man in North Carolina.
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Week 33 Updates
- Chaos hits pharmacies as CDC’s delayed approval of covid vax causes confusion, barriers to access. Covid surged to the highest levels in the US since the 2021 Delta variant–in response, CDC stopped tracking the data.
Meanwhile, vaccine rollout was stymied as many states have regulations requiring CDC approval for a vaccine before it can be administered by a pharmacist. The board, now populated with antivaxxer friends of RFK, is expected to meet later in the month.
At first, the vaccine was completely unavailable in at least 16 states, with others requiring a prescription. Several states have since revised regulations, allowing other the recommendations of other medical bodies to serve in place of the largely absent CDC. As of Sunday, vaccine access is legally as follows, though individual access may be stricter due to confusion and/or ideological refusals.
ID: map of the US with states in green (available) green stripe (newly available due to regulations circumventing CDC) yellow (need RX) and purple (unavailable)
Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/DORYoaUjhBM/
2. RFK revives bogus claim that Tylenol in pregnancy is linked to autism. After receiving blowback for causing vaccine-related turmoil and a conspiracy-addled testimony before Congress that had many leaders and his own family calling for his resignation, RFK Jr. is returning his attention to attacking autistic folks and their families, now through the reintroduction of a fake link between Tylenol consumption during pregnancy to autism rates.
RFK and HHS had previously said they would announce the “cause” of autism in September, and sources at the HHS say the announcement will involve Tylenol.
The vast majority of studies have shown no link between Tylenol consumption with autism diagnoses. One study the administration is focusing on showed a very small increase in incidences; however, that study later overturned its findings using sibling analysis, finding no link.
In addition to being false, the accusation places blame and will likely cause undue fear on pregnant people who use the only pregnancy-approved medication for pain. Multiple evidence-based scientific studies have determined that autism is overwhelmingly genetic.3. Florida Surgeon General announces plans to end all vaccine mandates for schoolchildren, as cases of whooping cough and measles rise. Harvard-educated Dr. Ladapo said that the move was “not actually a scientific debate” but an ideological one aimed at appealing to “parent’s interest”.
Ladopo, a longtime antivaxxer, went on to compare vaccine mandates to slavery. Ladopo doesn’t have unilateral control over the mandates, so it will be on state legislature to fully eradicate them.Multiple cases of tuberculosis surface in and around Portland, Maine, as well as in several other states. RFK Jr. ordered CDC officials to hide the data. 28 cases have been reported in Maine since July, stemming from multiple sources. Some are believed to be linked to the consumption of raw milk, while other cases have person-to-person or unknown origin.
Known as the world’s deadliest respiratory disease, tuberculosis can be latent for years before becoming active, so the uptick in cases is generally considered a marker of the declining health of a population weakened by other conditions (covid, inconsistent access to healthcare, decreased vaccine uptake).
DOGE’s decision to end USAID will likely have huge long-term effects on tuberculosis cases in the US, and a 28-32% uptick of the disease globally, as people visit or immigrate from other countries with higher infection rates (many asymptomatic at the time or not knowing they are infected at all). Previously, USAID programs helped with cost and distribution of the months’ long antibiotic regimen required to cure the disease.
Trump attempts to rename the Department of Defense and announces he will send troops to Chicago via ill-conceived Vietnam War movie meme. This week Trump announced that he will rename the Department of Defense to “The Department of War” (a move he is legally not allowed to make unilaterally), then immediately released meme misinterpreting the Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now to announce the impending deployment of troops to the city of Chicago (a move he is legally not allowed to make unilaterally). He also mentioned Baltimore and New Orleans as future targets.
As in DC, a deployment of the National Guard or other military occupation against civilians is dangerous for people, particularly the unhoused, immigrants, disabled people, and people of color. It also functions as a superspreading event, sending covid infection rates surging.
The Governor of IL and mayor of Chicago have repeatedly said troops are not necessary or welcome in the city, which is experiencing lower than average crime rates at this time.
What to do:Get vaccinated if you can, as soon as possible!
If you live in Florida, contact your state representatives and tell them not to remove vaccine guidelines for schoolchildren.
Call your state officials and ask them how they can facilitate access to covid vaccines in lieu of federal leadership, especially if the CDC refuses to approve the vaccine.Hit the streets if you are able. March, attend a town hall, school board meeting, or other local action.
Protect your neighbors. Warn and record in the presence of ICE. Push your local officials not to collaborate.
Donate to your local food pantry, library, clinics, cash bail funds, or other mutual aid if you can. Or volunteer your time.
Think about ways to spread information offline. Make flyers and stickers. Make art.
- Chaos hits pharmacies as CDC’s delayed approval of covid vax causes confusion, barriers to access. Covid surged to the highest levels in the US since the 2021 Delta variant–in response, CDC stopped tracking the data.
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Week 31 Updates
1. Starting tonight, the National Guard in DC will be armed, as Trump plans a deployment in 19 more states. As other states’ National Guard and federal DHS agents stage a hostile takeover of Washington DC, it’s common to see five or more soldiers taking down just one person–now they will have guns.
Nearly 1000 people have been arrested in the district in the last week, many of whom were unhoused, disabled, immigrants, or at the intersection thereof–ICE is also present.
The administration announced additional deployments to at least 19 more states, often at the protest of local officials in targeted areas, who say there are no emergencies warranting the takeovers. Deploying the National Guard as a precursor to a declaration of martial law was a key desire expressed in Project 2025.2. Supreme Court votes to OK Trump’s NIH funding cuts. In a 5-4 ruling, SCOTUS ruled that Trump and RFK Jr. can remove $800 billion in funding from the NIH, a move that had previously been blocked by a lower court injunction. The NIH funding in question was labeled “woke” or “DEI” by the administration, but was actually for work in Alzheimer’s, cancer, HIV, youth suicide, climate-driven health crises, and other lifesaving biomedical research.
3. Trump’s Department of Justice subpoenas children’s hospitals in an attempt to get privileged medical information about children receiving gender-affirming care. Multiple hospitals including the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia have reported the request and are pushing back. Gender-affirming care is a safe and evidence-based way to support children and teens experiencing gender dysphoria, and hormone therapy is also often used for children experiencing various other medical conditions unrelated to gender expression.
About 30-40% of trans people are also disabled; however, this invasion of medical privacy should be of concern to all people, especially in the hands of an administration that has been vocal about its eugenic policy.
4. Local: Texas HB2, 6 a mixed bag for state education. A series of education-based law changes are going into effect this back-to-school, with some high and lowlights on the scene. Pay raises for teachers, more teacher input into state testing, and raising the baseline funding available for special education students are some positives.
The forcible inclusion of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms (currently blocked by a judge), increased book banning, and broader use of suspensions and out placements to deal with behavior issues are some concerns.
5. Local: Florida HB1105 removes high school certificates of completion for disabled students. Previously, if a student with significant disabilities could not meet the requirements for a standard high school diploma (ex: students in lifeskills-based programs not eligible for taking high-school level content exams) they were issued an alternative diploma or Certificate of Completion marking their attendance of four years of high school and the completion of their special education programming.
Florida will now no longer issue the certificates, meaning disabled students will leave high school with nothing, making it difficult for them to find employment, take vocational or college courses, and more. Advocates say this is a backdoor way to avoid funding for special education, forcing disabled students to leave school entirely.What to Do:
Please find a way to share this information in addition to social media. As you may have seen, we have been shadowbanned and have taken several weeks off of posting in hopes of resetting the cache and developing new workarounds to combat the algorithm. But this is only the beginning–the more robust our information networks the easier it will be to communicate as censorship ramps up.
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Week 29 Update
- Executive Order: Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking. Trump signed an executive order this week that gives the executive branch approval control over research grants disbursed by the NHS, NIH, and other agencies.
This will add an unnecessary extra layer of bureaucracy and censorship, in which scientists will have to defend their projects to people have no scientific knowledge, rather than a peer-review process by fellow experts.
The order also puts grants that work in fields that focus on or support marginalized populations at risk due to the administration’s anti-DEIA rhetoric–research that mentions disability, examines race or ethnicity-based prevalence of specific diseases or conditions, highlights race, gender, or class disparities or other biases, will be eliminated on the basis of ideological warfare rather than scientific value. - RFK Jr. cancels 22 programs, $500 million in vaccine funding. RFK Jr. announced the revoking of $500 million dollars in funding, specifically for mRNA projects. RFK has spoken about his distrust for mRNA technology re: the covid vaccine, but the methodology is actually the latest frontier in a wide variety of vaccine and medical tech, including in customizable cancer treatments.
In the same week, the FDA also floated plans not to renew approval for the Pfizer pediatric 0-5 covid vaccine, the only one for this age group.
Misinformation kills in more than one way: Shortly after RFK’s anti-mRNA speech, Patrick White opened fired on CDC headquarters in Atlanta, believing himself to be injured by a covid vaccine. White and a police officer were killed. - Good news: Deaf Mongolian Man Released from ICE Detention. Avirmed, a Deaf immigrant who turned himself in at the California-Mexican border to seek asylum, had been detained by ICE for months, after DHS failed to process his written request for asylum, perform the credible fear screening, or provide him a Mongolian Sign Language interpreter. At one point they attempted to communicate via Google Translate, getting basic case facts wrong. He also had no accessible way to contact his sister, who is a resident of Virginia.
On July 9, a judge ordered that he be provided with an interpreter. Once communication was established, he was able to present his case and has since been released. He is currently living with his sister. Avirmed is just another of many disabled people held illegally by ICE in squalid conditions without accommodations or information. - Big Pharma joins race to profit off measles as cases surge to 33-year high. With cases at a 33-year high, pharmaceutical companies are hoping for “investor interest” on a potential measles cure. Previously broad uptake of the vaccine had eradicated the disease in the US.
Several pharmaceutical companies are working on synthetic monoclonal antibodies that could be used to treat the infected, who are mostly unvaccinated. (In contrast, a vaccine teaches the body to make its own antibodies upon contact with the disease so the person can avoid serious illness).
In the Wellness arena, grifters continue to make money on the outbreak, though with no guardrails–one popular recommendation of large doses of vitamin A left several poisoned and hospitalized with overdoses.
The original anti-MMR rhetoric was also a grift–Wakefield wrote a fraudulent paper linking MMR and autism so he could sell his own version of the vaccine. Subsequent studies with sample sizes totaling more than half a million children worldwide have disproven any link between vaccines and autism, a developmental difference present from birth and believed to be largely genetic. - They’re messing with the elections, continued. The Texas legislature continues its pursuit of illegal redistricting after Trump asked the state to find him five more red seats. Texas Dems fled the state to break quorum and are now threatened with arrest and bomb threats. (If you have a Democratic rep. or Senator, tell them to support their Texas colleagues!)
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has taken up Callais v. Landry, a Louisiana-based redistricting case that is poised to destroy Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
Trump also asked for a new mid-season census in order to remove noncitizens from the data. Legal precedent has already decided that noncitizens should be counted during census-taking, which is about overall resource distribution per capita, not citizenship status. Voting rights advocates worry this is an attempt to take up large scale redistricting efforts. - Administration tightens grip on public information via censorship. The Library of Congress was caught deleting portions of the online copy of the U.S. Constitution, specifically protections against detention without due process. When called out, they blamed a “coding error,” though computer scientists broadly agree this is unlikely.
Meanwhile, a Paramount/Skydance merger has resulted in new levels of capitulation, including the placement of a government-sanctioned “truth arbiter” to oversee journalism at CBS. The FCC commissioner (a Dem), slammed the deal, saying it allows for. “never-before-seen forms of government control over newsroom decisions and editorial judgment-actions that violate both the First Amendment and the law.”
Removing access to news and civic info, especially via low-cost access points like local news or government websites, is a key tenet of authoritarianism.
Action Items:
Share this info! Disability is often lost in mainstream coverage.
Hit the streets if you are able, for ex: look out for ICE detention center protests, a We are America march, town halls, or other local actions. If you can’t attend in person, you can donate to carpool or bus ticket funds for larger marches.
Protect your neighbors. Warn and record in the presence of ICE. Push your local officials not to collaborate.
Donate to your local food pantry, library, clinics, cash bail funds, or other mutual aid if you can. Or volunteer your time.
Call your Senators: YES to the Appropriations Committee’s push back on budget cuts. NO to illegal redistricting and RFK’s vaccine cuts.
Make sure you’re up to date on your vaccines. Ditch the wearable tech if possible.
Think about ways to spread information offline. Make flyers and stickers. Make art.
- Executive Order: Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking. Trump signed an executive order this week that gives the executive branch approval control over research grants disbursed by the NHS, NIH, and other agencies.
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Week 27 Update
- 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.
- 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.
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Week 25 Updates
1. FEMA ends door to door assistance, leaving elderly and disabled stranded. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has been a target of the Trump administration, with DOGE cutting 20% of its employees and attempting to freeze funds, and Trump repeatedly pushing for disaster response to be a state-level problem.
Experts say a diminished FEMA and National Weather Service made warning and rescue response times slower, leading to more deaths in disasters like the recent Texas floods, which killed over 120.
Due to cuts, FEMA has now stopped door-to-door work in disaster zones, focusing instead on shelters only. However, this potentially leaves the elderly, disabled, and those without transportation stranded.2. Disabled veteran and US Citizen George Reddis detained by ICE, now missing. The 25 year old disabled US Army veteran was working as a security guard on a farm in Camarillo, CA. (video contains auto-captions)Though he is a US citizen, he was taken by ICE.
His family saw news footage of the raid in which agents broke his truck window, pepper sprayed him, pulled him from the vehicle and threw him to the ground before arresting him.
Family haven’t heard from him since the kidnapping, and can’t find where he is being detained. In addition to contacting law enforcement, they are seeking any tips from the public who may have seen where he was taken.
He’s not the first US citizen kidnapped by ICE, and he won’t be the last.3. Concern for disabled immigrant detainees in the face of NQRP, oversight cuts. Funding for the National Qualified Representation program (NQRP), which provides legal aid for immigrants with cognitive disabilities or mental illness was cut in April. Now, as ICE ups indiscriminate arrests, more disabled people are caught in raids with no recourse.
This comes as Homeland Security has gutted other oversight mechanisms, including the Office of Civil Rights and Civil liberties and the ombudsman within the department.
Deaths and reports of injury, assault and neglect within ICE facilities have surged in recent weeks.
More than half of ICE detainees have committed no crimes. Less than 10% have ever been convicted of a violent offense.4. SCOTUS ruling paves the way for more governmental restructuring and layoffs. SCOTUS released a ruling related to the layoffs (RIFs) of multiple agencies, paving the way for more authoritarian governance.
While SCOTUS didn’t comment on the legality of the layoffs specifically, they allowed for restructuring and consolidation of certain powers by the executive branch, which previously required Congressional approval.
The ruling suggests RIF legality can be decided by lower courts, though it’s unclear how this will mesh with the previous ruling that lower courts can’t issue national injunctions, (except in class-actions).
This ruling doesn’t affect the Dept. of Ed. which is a separate case currently waiting on the emergency docket.5. State Dept lays off 1300+ people. The move comes days after SCOTUS’s previously stated ruling, about the consolidation of power within the executive branch.
Experts warn that removing diplomatic expertise at a tense time in international relations can have dangerous national security consequences.
In general, the shrinking of the Department of State’s civil and diplomatic service consolidates power under fewer people, and party loyalists.
The entire DOS accommodations team was among the layoffs.6. HHS blocks access to key services for undocumented immigrants. The Department of Health and Human Services recently reclassified a series of public programs in keeping with Trump’s February Executive Order, an effort to make sure that undocumented immigrants or their families cannot access social services.
These programs include Community Behavioral Health Clinics and Mental Health Services grants, Mental Health and Substance Abuse Disorder Treatment, the Educational and Training Voucher Program, Family Planning programs, Kinship Guardianship Programming, Transition from Homelessness program, and more.
It also includes Head Start –which provides early education, health screenings, and food–to young children.
7. Most people affected by Medicaid cuts don’t know it’s coming. Trump previously said his budget bill wouldn’t cut Medicaid, but deep cuts were passed last week. They don’t go into effect until 2026, and due to local naming conventions, many people don’t even know they will be at risk.
Here is what Medicaid is called in each state, listed alphabetically by state.8. 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.
Join Project Mail Storm by writing and sending paper letters to government. More info on our site.
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.
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Week 23 Updates
SCOTUS Decision Day:
❌ Limited power of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions, consolidating power under executive branch (limits ability to stop Trump EOs, etc.) Only SCOTUS or class-action suits remain as judicial checks.
❌ Opened door to unconstitutional revoking of birthright citizenship. Removal of birthright citizenship in Germany is widely recognized by historians as the country’s transition from democracy to dictatorship in the 1930s.
❌ States can restrict Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood.
❌Parents can opt their students out of “exposure” to LGBTQ+ books in public school due to “religious burden” opening door for sweeping book and curriculum bans.
❌No DoEd decision. Employees continue to be paid but are not allowed to work.
✅ Protected the provision of Obamacare/ACA that keeps preventative care covered by insurance companies at no cost to patients. This includes things like wellness checkups, HIV testing and PrEP, blood pressure medication and other maintenance medications and tests.
✅ Upheld the FCC’s Universal Service Fund. The money supports the expansion of telephone and broadband service, especially in rural areas. It also subsidizes internet access at schools, libraries and low-income households.
2. Senate moves closer to vote on budget bill; McConnell Says of People Losing Medicaid “They’ll Get Over it”. The Senate continues to rework the “big beautiful” budget bill that will gut Medicaid, SNAP and other services to provide tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy. They are expected to vote soon.
A provision preventing Medicaid from paying for trans folks’ healthcare was removed, (good news, though it can still be added back in on the floor).
Wheelchair-using protesters were again arrested at the capitol protesting Medicaid cuts.
McConnell urged his colleagues to go through with the vote, acknowledging that constituents were calling in worried about Medicaid, but that “they’ll get over it.”
3. Beyond Medicaid Patients: Everyone’s Care at Risk Under New Budget. The Center for American Progress estimates the proposed budget bill will increase cost of health insurance for everyone, including those who buy plans on the marketplace or through work. Depending on family size and age, costs could increase from about $1000 to $15,000 annually.Since 49% of American children are on Medicaid, Medicaid funds large swaths of pediatric hospitals. Medicaid cuts mean less money and resources for children’s hospitals, and fewer beds for all (including those with private insurance).
Medicaid also pays for some related services at public schools like Physical, Occupational, and Speech Therapy. These cuts in addition to DoEd cuts will decimate already underfunded special education programming.
4. RFK’s new Antivaxx Committee Meets; AAP says they’ll Ignore any changes: The CDC’s vaccine advisory committee, recently repopulated by antivaxxers and COVID-deniers, has begun meeting to plan new recommendations for vaccine schedules and availability. This is important because it will affect whether offices and pharmacies receive, and insurance companies will cover, vaccines even if people ask for them.The American Association of Pediatrics released a statement that they will continue to recommend the evidence-based childhood vaccine schedule independent of any of RFK’s new recommendations. Advocates hope the AAP’s stance will pressure insurance companies into continuing vaccine coverage.
5. Deaf Man in ICE Prison for Over 80 Days without due process, interpreter: Family of a Deaf Mongolian man say he has been held in an ICE detention center for over 80 days without access to due process, or anyone who knows Mongolian Sign Language.The man, who committed no crime, had entered the country and immediately turned himself in to Border Patrol so he could ask for asylum. He brought with him a written letter detailing the reasons why he feared for his life and return to Mongolia, but agents refused to look at it.
He was denied the “credible fear screening” used to determine whether one has a case for asylum, and all other due process procedures.
6. 911 Calls from ICE Detention flood in, but many are ignored.
A report from WIRED analyzed the content of hundreds of calls from inside ICE centers from both workers and prisoners detailing a variety of horrors, including sexual assault, medical neglect, pregnancy complications, mental health crises, and deaths by suicide.People previously detained in ICE centers have spoken of being denied access to medication for chronic health conditions, a situation worsened by overcrowding, understaffing, inadequate staff training and accountability, and a general culture of cruelty surrounding the detentions.
7. Several states turn over medical data to DHS; RFK proposes more surveillance via wearables. Several states who provide healthcare coverage to noncitizens recently turned over their Medicaid data to the Department of Homeland Security, including California, Washington, Illinois and DC.The data surrender is an invasion of privacy and concerning in the hands of RFK’s HHS, who have vowed to create a “registry” of autistic people.
Advocates are also concerned this will prevent immigrants from seeking healthcare or early intervention services.
RFK praised health surveillance on Americans, saying he wanted everyone in the country to be using a wearable within four years.
Action items:
at to Do: 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.
Calling is also important if you buy your own health insurance or get it through work. This bill affects your premiums and access to hospitals, too.
Join Project Mail Storm by writing and sending paper letters to representatives and the White House. Each is required to be opened and logged.
Make sure you’re up to date on your vaccines. Ditch the wearable tech.
Protect your neighbors.
Consider how to move toward creative acts of mutual aid, and protest, including offline materials. Make flyers and stickers. Warn (and record) in the presence of ICE. If able march, boycott, donate and/or volunteer with your local food pantry or library.