In The Politics of Autism, I write about social services, special education, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
Project 2025 proposed to turn IDEA into a "no strings" block grant, effectively gutting the law and destroying protections that disability families have long relied upon. During the 2024 race, Trump denied any connection to the project, but now he proclaims it, praising OMB director Russ Vought "of Project 2025 fame."
Trump and Vought are now accomplishing their goal of ravaging the law. Instead of shifting it to a block grant, they have tried firing most of the staff who enforce it, as well as those who enforce civil rights law.
The Trump administration fired hundreds of employees at the Education Dept's Office for Civil Rights. Cory Turner at NPR:
That left 299 OCR employees, roughly half of its staff, in legal and professional limbo – because the department elected to place them on paid administrative leave while the legal battle plays out rather than allow them to work. Court records show 52 have since chosen to leave.On Friday, an unknown number of the remaining 247 staffers received an email from the department. That email, which was shared with NPR by two people who received it, says that, while the Trump administration will continue its legal battle to downsize the department, "utilizing all OCR employees, including those currently on administrative leave, will bolster and refocus efforts on enforcement activities in a way that serves and benefits parents, students, and families."
...
"By blocking OCR staff from doing their jobs, Department leadership allowed a massive backlog of civil rights complaints to grow, and now expects these same employees to clean up a crisis entirely of the Department's own making," said Rachel Gittleman, president of AFGE Local 252, a union that represents many Education Department employees. "Students, families, and schools have paid the price for this chaos."
The department did not respond to a request to share the current size of OCR's complaint backlog, but one department source who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by the Trump administration, told NPR that OCR now has about 25,000 pending complaints, including roughly 7,000 open investigations.
