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 turning it into a block grant, they have tried firing most of the staff who enforce it. More recently, they have shifted OSERS to HHS and OCR to the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, headed by a political hack who uses the r-word as a slur.
Zachary Schermele at USA TODAY:
As Education Department officials work to quell fears about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s agency having a new role in special education, the Senate is eyeing a bipartisan reproach of the move.
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, told USA TODAY he's confident that a measure being voted on this month to block the change will pass out of the Senate's education committee with at least some Republican support.
While the exact details of the legislation aren't definitive yet, he said the plan is to advance an amendment that would shield the Education Department's special ed programs from shifting to the Health and Human Services Department. HHS is led by Kennedy, whose controversial past comments have left the disability rights community on edge since the so-called "interagency agreement" was announced in June. He said during a press conference last year, for instance, that autism "destroys families."
“These are not just bureaucratic moves,” said Andrew Marcum, academic director of Disability Studies Programs at the CUNY School of Professional Studies, in an interview. “There are reasons why we have special education within a department of education, and it has to do with many decades of organizing and activism.”
...
“The reason that we stopped having the health department oversee education for disabled students is because of the recognition that it’s not a health issue, it’s an educational issue,” Marcum said. “It’s how do we make our classrooms accessible? How do we make our curriculum accessible? How do we make the teaching accessible?”
The concern is not only symbolic. The Education Department’s special education office monitors state compliance with IDEA and helps guide how schools serve students with disabilities. Its civil rights office handles discrimination complaints, including those involving disability access. Moving or splitting that work, advocates say, could make an already difficult system harder for families to navigate.
Marcum said the key questions are practical: who will have the expertise to oversee schools, how states will be held accountable and what happens to families seeking help when services are denied.
