I am the daughter of a therapist and a teacher, so I was raised to believe that the world needs all kinds of minds. When I was young, I assumed that was obvious to everyone. I naively believed that everyone saw the value of people different from themselves. I was wrong.
Now, as I work toward becoming an occupational therapist and spend more than 30 hours a week working as a direct support professional, it is abundantly clear that many people don’t share my views. Under the administration of Donald Trump, we are witnessing an active war on the systems that protect people with disabilities. This is a national crisis, but also a deeply personal topic for me.
I spend most of my evenings with a young man who is profoundly autistic. I help him with activities of daily living, self-regulation and help him navigate a world that simply wasn’t built for him. Throughout the past two years I have spent with him, we have cultivated a strong bond based on mutual trust, and I am all but certain he has taught me more than I could ever teach him. He has taught me that connection doesn’t need to look conventional and that a meaningful life doesn’t have to fit anyone else’s definition.
He shows me every day, in his own way, that I matter to him. I work hard to show him the same, because he deserves to understand how much brighter my life is with him in it. The world needs him exactly as he is. So why are we building a system that treats people like him as expendable?
Hours into his second term, Trump signed an executive order that mandated the elimination of all diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility programs throughout the federal government and federally funded programs. This order did not simply outlaw DEI training modules; it eliminated entire DEI offices and revoked decades-old equal opportunity requirements for federal contractors.
The lines of Executive Order 13950 are intentionally blurry, hiding truly discriminatory legislation behind vague language and dog whistles. The administration is warring specifically on equity, more than any other facet of DEI.
Equity specifically recognizes that people don’t always start from the same place due to historical and systemic barriers. Instead of ensuring everyone is treated the same, it ensures that everyone is given the opportunity to succeed based on their needs. To achieve equity, organizations may need to offer different support to marginalized groups to ensure the best possible outcomes for everyone. This is what the Trump admin is truly against; it believes there should be no correction for historical or systemic imbalances in any federal administration or adjunct.
Executive Order 13950 outlined nine, very vague, “divisive concepts” that are to be prohibited from any training for federal employees, contractors or grant recipients. These concepts lacked clear legal definitions, scaring many organizations into temporarily stopping or completely shutting down their DEI trainings and initiatives for fear of noncompliance. This affected government employees, the military, universities and healthcare systems.
Why does this really matter for people with disabilities? DEI initiatives have been a way to ensure equal opportunity employment for those with physical and mental disabilities up until this point. They implement checks and balances against bias in hiring, promotion and workplace conduct.
Removing this safety net will inevitably cause difficulties in fighting bias and punishing unseemly workplace conduct towards people with disabilities. Many also argue that on a broader social level, scaling back DEI efforts will serve as a gateway to scaling back other programs aiming to support vulnerable communities. Many programs that support people with disabilities, as well as veterans and unhoused people, are designed using an equity-based approach. An attack on DEI based on the foundational ideology of equity has the potential to detrimentally affect these programs.
The man I take care of went to school with an Individualized Education Plan, designed to help him receive different supports so he could progress to graduation alongside his classmates, according to his abilities. Without the equity that his IEP provided, he may not have had access to a meaningful education. An attack on equity and equity-based programs is an attack on disability rights.
Beyond the attack on equity, Trump’s executive order also gave the U.S Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) the ability to implement reductions in force, mainly prioritizing a reduction in DEI-related roles. DOGE used layoffs or reassignments to all but eliminate multiple civil rights offices that support people with disabilities. Just one example includes the complete eradication of the Social Security Administration’s Office of Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity.
This office mainly dealt with processing Equal Employment Opportunity complaints and reasonable accommodation requests. While the SSA claims that these responsibilities will be transferred to other offices within the administration, it is still unclear how they plan to move forward with their protection of disability rights. Combined with the liquidation of other civil rights offices, there is very little staff to process civil rights cases; thousands have been dismissed or stalled.
“Most of the protections for disabled people come from passive enforcement, requiring disabled people to file complaints and push cases along to completion. Gutting civil rights offices makes it even more difficult for disabled people to obtain relief after experiencing discrimination.”
(Doherty and Ives-Rublee, 2025).
Further, the Trump administration is angling to eliminate the Department of Education. This puts disabled students at a huge risk of losing protections given to them by the Rehabilitation Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. IDEA is why the man I take care of was able to learn with an IEP, and without it, public schools stand to lose funding for special education programs altogether. This administration isn’t just attacking people with disabilities’ right to an education; it is also attacking their right to live in their community.
In April 2025, Secretary Kennedy laid off half of the staff at the Administration for Community Living (ACL), which was the main supporting force in the deinstitutionalization of people with disabilities. It was only in 1999 that the Supreme Court determined that people with disabilities had the right to live and receive services in their community rather than in nursing homes or group homes. Just 27 years later, we are already moving backwards. With an understaffed ACL, community living protections will suffer, and it doesn’t seem so far-fetched to me that they will be dismantled altogether.
My job exists because of those protections; the person I support lives in his home because of those protections. His other caregivers, some of whom have been in his life for over a decade, are with him because of those protections. Without them, he doesn’t just lose services, he also loses stability, his sense of independence and his sense of community, all in one fell swoop.
That is what these policy changes look like in real life. It is easy, from the outside, to dismiss those changes as abstract or bureaucratic, but they aren’t. They attack real people, and they shape who gets support and who falls through the cracks.
I wish I could say I’ve covered everything here, but I’ve only scratched the surface. There are more dangerous policies, more budget cuts, more staffing shortages; it truly seems never-ending. The fact of the matter is, if we continue down this path, America officially stops being “the melting pot,” stops being “the land of the free” and instead takes the firm stance that some lives are worth less than others.
Sources:
The Trump Administration’s War on Disability – Center for American Progress
Trump on DEI: A Policy Revolution | GovFacts
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) | U.S. Department of Education