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.
Mark Lieberman at Education Week:
The U.S. Department of Education has begun outsourcing responsibility for overseeing the nation’s sprawling special education system and enforcing civil rights law in schools to other federal agencies, after months of previewing dramatic efforts to restructure both core functions.In January, Dan Barry and Sonia A. Rao reported at NYT:
Department officials announced the moves—made possible by four new interagency agreements—on Tuesday morning to advocacy group representatives, and on Tuesday afternoon to reporters and the general public.
The Education Department office that oversees special education and employment programs for adults with disabilities will move to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The U.S. Department of Justice will take on the Education Department’s office for civil rights, student privacy enforcement, and a quartet of equity assistance centers that help K-12 schools with desegregation efforts.
Department officials have teased many of these moves for more than a year. The conservative policy agenda Project 2025, which has guided many Trump administration actions, recommended moving both special education and civil rights enforcement to their respective new agencies....
The Education Department’s office for civil rights will move to the Justice Department’s civil rights division, currently led by Trump appointee Harmeet Dhillon, who has upended the agency’s approach to anti-discrimination enforcement.
During a call with reporters on Tuesday afternoon, senior Education Department officials said the agency hasn’t yet determined whether current Department of Justice staffers will work on Education Department civil right cases.
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During Trump’s second administration, the Education Department has closed more than half of OCR’s regional offices and attempted to lay off more than half its staff, only to be thwarted by courts and forced to keep more than 200 OCR staffers on paid administrative leave for much of last year.
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The Department of Education’s office of special education programs and its Rehabilitation Services Administration, which funds services to help adults with disabilities transition to the workforce, will move to the Administration on Disabilities, a sub-agency of HHS.
The AOD is currently led by Rebecca Hines, a former associate professor of special education at the University of Central Florida. Hines’ sister, Cheryl Hines, is married to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Hines’ second-in-command at AOD is Principal Deputy Commissioner Diana Diaz-Harrison, who joined in January after serving as Trump’s appointee overseeing special education and RSA in the Education Department. Diaz-Harrison previously founded a system of Arizona charter schools for students with autism; HHS in February named her the Trump administration’s National Autism Coordinator.
Advocates for students with disabilities have been decrying the prospect of the HHS move ever since McMahon floated it during her Senate confirmation hearing in February 2025.
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“IDEA is fundamentally an education law—not a healthcare law—and should continue to be administered by education policy experts who understand schools, teaching, learning, and accountability,” Phyllis Wolfram, executive director for the Council of Special Education Administrators (CASE), wrote in a statement on Tuesday.
Late last month, a woman posted a photograph on social media of a purple hat she had knitted, while a black-and-white dog lounged on the carpet a few feet away. The cozy scene was accompanied by a single sentence: “This hat is an hour behind schedule thanks to influencer retards.”
The proud knitter, Harmeet K. Dhillon, is also the assistant attorney general overseeing the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Her purview includes protecting the rights of people with intellectual disabilities by ensuring compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act.
For decades now, the “R-word” has been regarded as a slur against people with intellectual disabilities — a word to be avoided. Yet it has had a striking resurgence, in part because people in high-profile positions of power and influence have chosen to resurrect it, often with an air of defiance.
“The word ‘retarded’ is back,” the popular podcaster Joe Rogan declared in April, describing its return as “one of the great culture victories.” He did not respond to requests for elaboration, but there is abundant evidence to support his muscular declaration.
