- 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 The last of those laws wasn’t repealed until the 1970s.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.
Tag: ICE
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Week 27 Update
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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.