1/30/25 - Still More Trump Stuff

Trump White House reverses course, rescinds freeze on federal grants

Jeff Stein and Tony Romm, Washington Post - January 29, 2025

"The Trump administration withdrew the order a day after a federal judge in Washington temporarily halted its implementation until Feb. 3, allowing public health advocates, nonprofits and businesses — represented by the left-leaning group Democracy Forward — more time to challenge the directive’s legality. Separately, roughly two dozen state attorneys general filed their own lawsuit against the administration Tuesday, arguing that the pause in federal spending has harmed their residents. That suit continued Wednesday despite the order’s recission."

It seems like there's a question people are going to be asking a lot during the second Trump administration. How much of the freeze and unfreeze was an actual mistake and retreat, and how much of it was on some level on purpose? Were they just testing the boundaries of executive power? Was it a trial balloon to see how the prospect of sudden, drastic cuts or spending freezes would be received? Did they figure it was something easy to retreat from, to seem reasonable, making it easier to do other, more serious and lasting things? It's hard to say. But keep in mind that most of the executive orders issued over the last several days are in the Heritage Foundation's "Project 2025," and those are clearly plans the Trump administration believes in and want to be implemented, not just strategic fake-outs or chess moves.

Trump's DEI orders may halt progress for disabled workers

Emily Peck, Axios - January 24, 2025

"One executive order rolling back DEI protections, issued Tuesday night, explicitly notes these changes are not meant to impact veterans, but it makes no such note about people with disabilities ... 'It does leave you wondering if that was just careless drafting, failure to think about it, or if it really is sending a message,' said David Goldstein, an employment lawyer at Littler Mendelson."

Employment rates for people with disabilities in the U.S. have always been low. They are still low overall compared to employment rates for people without disabiltieis. But during the COVID era of the last few years, they have gone up a little bit and for the most part stayed there. The crackdown on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts will have scores of ripple effects for all kinds of marginalized people, including people with disabilities. One of the most concrete might be a hit to employment. Along with the effort to eliminate work at home for federal workers, ending long-standing efforts to increase hiring of disabled people will almost certainly have a dampening effect.

Trump White House takes down website pages about disabilities

Valerie Strauss, Washington Post - January 20, 2025

"Archiving website pages from past administrations is common practice, and restructuring websites from administration to administration is, too. What is interesting here is that the website team didn’t find the time to make sure there were replacements for the disabilities information they were taking down before Inauguration Day."

This is something that generated a lot of angst at the start of the first Trump administration, specifically for disability-related resources on the Department of Education website. It turned out to be part of a sloppy but fairly standard rebrand of government websites to reflect the new administration, rather than a deeply sinister effort to deceive disabled people. It did however prompt disability activists to keep close tabs on the new websites' content. Hopefully we will be doing that this time around too. It's bad enough to banish efforts towards diversity, equity, inclusion, or accessibility. It's arguably a step even further to roll back efforts to directly serve and provide specialized information to individuals with disabilities.

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