11/6/26 - Midterm followup

Good afternoon!

So, I took a second day off from the newsletter. Somehow, skipping the first day unbalanced my schedule in a way that made doing a post for Thursday feel impossible. Friday is usually a video day. But I wanted to catch up a bit on midterm election stuff before the weekend, so we've got links instead.

How Americans voted in the midterms, by demographic group and in key states

Scott Clement, John Muyskens and Junne Joaquin Alcantara, Washington Post - November 4, 2026

"See how different groups voted for the U.S. House and Senate in the 2026 midterm elections, according to preliminary results from the NORC Civic Health & Elections Project survey, which was sponsored by The Washington Post and other organizations. The survey interviewed more than 90,000 U.S. voters nationally in the week leading up to Election Day."

One of my long-term disability politics obsessions is that we need political opinion polling to regularly include questions about voters' disabilities, so we can tell how people with disabilities vote and why. Every election of my adult life, I've craved that kind of insight. How can we get the pollsters to start adding us to the mix?

Josh Turek Flips Iowa Senate Seat

Julia Métraux, Mother Jones - November 3, 2026

"Not that Turek’s campaign was unfailingly inclusive: The day Turek won his primary against his progressive opponent, fellow state legislator Zach Wahls, Hinson ran an advertisement claiming that Turek supported “sex changes for children” without their parents’ consent ... Turek hadn’t—but he responded in part by attacking trans girls’ participation in sports, more recently adding that he wouldn’t support government coverage of gender-affirming care, which has drawn criticism from some Democrats within the state."

Criticism from some disability activists and organizations seems even more interesting than from "some Democrats." But, my sense is that disability community criticism didn't really appear until just a day or two before Election Day, and mostly after this article was written.

When “No Discrimination” Comes With an Asterisk

Grace Dow, Grace Dow Writes - November 5, 2026

"That is why I keep returning to Turek’s words. No Iowan should face discrimination. I believe that. The child being bullied because he uses a wheelchair belongs inside that promise. The disabled adult entering a restroom with a caregiver belongs inside it. Transgender Iowans belong inside it, too ... Disabled people have spent too much of our history discovering the fine print in other people’s promises of equality. I do not want us writing the fine print for someone else."

I've had a lot of thoughts about the Josh Turek of it all in these otherwise encouraging, (for me at least), midterm election results. As I often do in this newsletter, I think at this point I just need to do a bit of a brain dump – to add some of my own thoughts to Julia's reporting and Grace's perceptive analysis.

• I understand why Turek may have thought he had to "throw trans people under the bus" in order to win. Trans rights issues have become both a moral panic and a rhetorical death trap that is genuinely difficult to escape, particularly for people who support trans people's rights. The fact that the trap has been deliberately and cynically set to cause problems like this doesn't make it less difficult to get out of.
• I think there probably are ways to escape the trans issues trap and support trans people's rights – if you actually want to. For the last several days, in fact, I have found myself drafting possible alternative statements in my head that Turek could have made. This has been both reassuring and humbling. I find I have what seem like good ideas. But, at the same time I have to acknowledge that they probably aren't either very original or effective. Handling the issue better than Turek did is probably possible, but legitimately hard.
• I do think it's substantially worse for a disabled candidate to make anti-trans rights statements than it is for other candidates. Having disabilities absolutely should give one a more close appreciation for the kind of discrimination, scrutiny, and contempt trans people endure. This is not an abstract, ideological thing. It's as physical and immediate as our own bodies and minds – and how both are looked at, judged, and literally regulated by a society and government that usually don't understand them. If a disabled person can't relate to that, there is something really wrong about the way they are thinking.
• To hit this point again – disabled people have also, historically, been told to be patient, that people aren't ready or knowledgeable enough yet to fully accommodate us, that we should delay our aspirations for equality until we can get through some emergency situation, or achieve a more friendly political environment. And even when it might have been politically wise to do so, it has always hurt, a lot, and made us feel like the only ones who are always asked to compromise our rights for the sake of others'.
• To be even more specific – banning trans people from high school sports feels a lot like the kind of adolescent stigma, bullying, and exclusion so many young disabled people experience in high school. And cutting off Medicaid funding for gender-affirming treatments is like a close cousin to insurance companies refusing to cover medications, surgeries, or treatments we know will help us manage our disability conditions – thereby sentencing us to further unnecessary suffering. It's all so concrete and relatable!
• Entirely aside from this particular candidate and issue, I definitely think that disability activists need to come up with some kind of intellectual and rhetorical formula for processing situations like this. We need clearer ways to talk about the inherent value of disabled people winning political office, and the obvious limits of that value if they don't actually offer anything to disabled and other underrepresented people. We can't continue to behave like we are shocked and terminally outraged when disabled politicians fail us. We are right to be angry. But too often our rage makes us sound more naive than we actually are.
• It's hard to imagine how it's possible for disability activists to praise the election of Josh Turek without at least adding a caveat of caution, specifically mentioning his anti-trans ad. To be clear, I am saying it might be okay to be excited about Turek's election. I'm happier that he won than I would be if he'd lost. But to ignore his anti-trans position in order to avoid spoiling the good vibes just seems wrong – unless of course you actually agree with what he said. That would be another discussion.

Have a good weekend everyone!

Disability Thinking Weekday is a Monday-Friday newsletter with links and commentary on disability-related articles and other content. You can help promote Disability Thinking Weekday by forwarding it by email or posting on your social media. You can also send comments by email to: apulrang@icloud.com. Collected comments are shared around the start of each month. A free subscription sends a newsletter to your email each weekday. Benefits of a paid subscription also include:

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