They’re Coming for Disability Services—Here’s How We Stop Them
Substack subscribers: Today I’m cross-posting another piece from my LinkedIn newsletter, Progressive Strategy Now.
They’re not just going to gut disability services. They’re going to erase the evidence that proves we need them—and which ones work best.
That’s not an accident. It’s the plan.
No data means no proof of harm.
No proof means no public outrage.
No outrage means no resistance.
This isn’t just about disability policy. It’s part of a broader strategy to dismantle public protections while keeping the harm invisible. The same playbook is being used to gut education, destroy public health systems, suppress voting rights, and strip away labor protections. When the infrastructure of accountability is dismantled, those in power can act without consequence.
They’re betting we’ll be too distracted to see the connections, too divided to fight back. They’re counting on us forgetting that every disability right we have today was won through organizing, agitation, and direct action.
The only way to stop this is to build power together—just like we’ve done before.
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Why They’re Dismantling Disability Rights: The Larger Playbook for Authoritarian Control
This isn’t just a budget fight. It’s a coordinated rollback of hard-won rights, using the same authoritarian tactics seen in other countries experiencing democratic decline. People with disabilities, women, minorities, and LGBTQ communities are among the first targets—not just out of bigotry, but because these groups have led some of the most effective democratic grassroots resistance movements in history. From legal battles to direct action, they have fought and won before.
If the goal is to dismantle democracy, then neutralizing its strongest defenders is a logical first move. Recognizing this strategy positions us to disrupt it.
1. Erase the Evidence
No data on unmet needs, no proof of harm caused by radical cuts. Disability research is being defunded at NIH. Disparities research is being silenced. Public-use datasets are vanishing. Oversight agencies are being gutted. Without evidence, there’s no accountability, and without accountability, they can dismantle protections without public backlash.
2. Dismantle the Infrastructure
Disability protections don’t exist in isolation—they’re part of a broader system of civil rights enforcement for many groups historically victimized by systemic discrimination. Gutting special education funding isn’t just about money; it weakens the legal foundation of IDEA. Cutting Medicaid home and community-based services isn’t just a budget decision; it weakens the role of the federal government in ensuring support for those with high needs. The goal isn’t just budget reduction—it’s the systematic weakening of federal protections, making it harder to enforce rights and easier to eliminate them in the future.
3. Overwhelm and Divide
Disability policy isn’t being attacked in isolation. The same administration eager to dismantle Medicaid and IDEA is also gutting women’s health programs, voting rights, labor protections, and civil rights enforcement. The strategy is to spread opposition too thin to be effective while encouraging different groups to compete for survival instead of organizing together.
The Bigger Picture: Connecting the Dots
Tracking every rollback, fact-checking every lie, and documenting every cut is important—but it’s not enough. These cuts aren’t happening in isolation. Defunding disability services, dismantling civil rights enforcement, and gutting public education are all part of a coordinated effort to consolidate autocratic power and strip away public protections. If we fail to recognize that pattern, we are playing into their hands.
This isn’t just another partisan budget fight or policy shift. We are dealing with an administration that openly muses about a third term and jokes about ruling as a monarchy. That’s not just bluster—it’s a warning.
Trump is running the same fraud pretext playbook he’s used before—spreading baseless lies to justify gutting public programs. Just as he manufactured false claims about immigrant crime to push brutal policies, he and Musk are now fabricating lies about Social Security fraud to lay the groundwork for benefit cuts. Disability benefits will be next.
The goal isn’t efficiency. It’s eroding public trust so programs can be dismantled, defunded, and trillions redirected toward billionaire tax breaks. If we treat this as just another policy fight instead of what it really is—a coordinated attack on public protections and democracy itself—we’ve already lost.
Yes, we need to track the details, but we also need to understand the scope and scale of what’s happening. These aren’t routine budget cuts. They are part of a broader power grab designed to dismantle democratic accountability and consolidate control. Recognizing that reality is the first step toward an effective response.
What’s Being Dismantled Right Now
These cuts aren’t theoretical. They are being discussed or enacted now.
Medicaid & Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS): Funding reductions will force more disabled people into institutions or leave them reliant on unpaid family caregivers.
Special Education & IDEA Protections: Underfunding enforcement weakens students' rights, making it easier for schools to deny accommodations.
DEIA Rollbacks: Eliminating accessibility and disability hiring initiatives limits economic opportunities for disabled workers.
Research & Data Collection: Defunding disability-related research erases our ability to measure disparities, track progress, and prove what works.
Civil Rights Enforcement: Without funding for ADA compliance, accessibility rights become meaningless.
Taken together, these cuts are designed to make rebuilding nearly impossible. The goal is not just to shrink government—it’s to remove any check on local control, which has historically enabled segregation, discrimination, and systemic neglect.
The Biggest Lie: That We Are Powerless to Stop This
If this feels overwhelming, that’s the point. They want people to believe the system is too broken to fix, that resistance is futile.
That’s a lie.
Every disability right we have today—special education, accessible transportation, Medicaid-funded home care, workplace accommodations—was won through organizing, agitation, and direct action. Nothing was freely given.
In 1975, parents of disabled children fought to pass IDEA, forcing public schools to serve students with disabilities.
In 1990, activists crawled up the Capitol steps to pass the ADA, ensuring public spaces became accessible.
In 2017, disabled activists occupied Senate offices and stopped Medicaid cuts that would have devastated home-based services.
Resistance works. Numbers matter. The only time we lose is when we stop fighting—or when we fail to build broad, diverse coalitions.
A Cautionary Note: United We Stand, Divided We Fall
Now is not the time for advocacy groups to cut side deals, hoping to protect their own funding while others are gutted. That strategy has failed before, and it will fail again.
Those who negotiate carve-outs will find themselves isolated when their programs inevitably come under attack next. Appeasement doesn’t work. Keeping a low profile won’t keep anyone safe.
The only way forward is collective action. This is not just about protecting individual programs—it’s about resisting a coordinated effort to dismantle public protections. Any organization or leader that prioritizes short-term survival over building a united front is playing into their hands.
Strategic Opportunities for Building Power
For those looking for leverage points, here’s where to focus.
Expose and Track the Harm
If they are erasing data, we must document it ourselves. That means independent tracking of service cuts, using alternative data sources like 211 crisis calls, emergency room visits, and school absentee rates. It means amplifying harm reports and refusing to let suffering be swept under the rug.
Leverage Institutional Power
Community organizations, universities, hospitals, and advocacy groups have the infrastructure to track harm even when official data sources disappear. These institutions must take a more active role in monitoring and exposing the fallout.
Build Broad, Unexpected Coalitions
Disability advocates cannot fight this alone. Labor unions, public health professionals, and civil rights organizations all have a stake in stopping these rollbacks. The only way to win is by building a movement too large to ignore.
Challenge Their Narratives
This isn’t just about disability services—it’s about defending the basic idea that government should serve the public good. That message resonates far beyond the disability community and is key to mobilizing broader support.
Use Disruption Strategically
The disability rights movement has never won by waiting for permission. It has won by making the cost of inaction too high—by occupying Senate offices, crawling up Capitol steps, and forcing the issues into the national conversation. This is not the time for polite lobbying alone.
The moment demands more than documentation and outrage—it demands coordinated, collective resistance. The only way to win is together.
Conclusion: The Work Ahead
Disability policy backsliding isn’t just a crisis for disabled people. It’s a test of how much harm society will tolerate before resisting. When they succeed in dismantling these protections, they push further—seeing just how far they can go.
The time to act is now. Join forces. Build alliances. Track the harm. Expose the truth. Fight like hell. Because if we don’t, the next attack will be more brazen, and the next cuts will be deeper.
This is about more than reacting to immediate threats. It’s about strategy, power, and the future of advocacy itself. Here are the questions leaders should be asking:
What if we stopped treating these cuts as isolated policy changes and started treating them as part of a broader attack on democratic institutions? How would that change our strategy?
How might we build coalitions beyond the disability space, aligning with labor, voting rights, and education movements to create a force too large to ignore?
What if our greatest strength isn’t policy expertise, but our ability to disrupt? How might we use strategic disruption—not just lobbying—to force attention and action?
How might we track and document the harm from these rollbacks in a way that not only proves impact but also builds public urgency and political leverage?
Where are we unintentionally reinforcing the divide-and-conquer strategy they are using against us?
Imagine it’s five years from now, and we’ve successfully fought back. What did we do differently to win? What new strategies or partnerships made the difference?
The rights and services we rely on exist because people before us fought for them. Now it’s our turn.
No single group can stop this alone, but together, we can build the power to push back. We’ve done it before, and we’ll do it again.
Let’s turn crisis into momentum, isolation into connection, and attacks into opportunities to build something stronger.
Together, we can do what none of us could do alone.
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Martin Niemoller's famous poem is worth remembering at this time. Engraving at the New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston, Massachusetts.
If this post resonates with you, let’s connect. I’m building a network of people who refuse to let harm go unmeasured and unseen. Whether you’re tracking data, organizing locally, or just starting to figure out how to help, let’s get connected.
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From Progressive Strategy Now, a publication of Paul T Shattuck LLC.
***The views expressed here reflect my personal analysis as a researcher and consultant, and do not represent the positions of any employer, clients, or affiliated organizations.