Project 2025 seeks to destroy the basic human rights and decades of progress that disabled people occupied a federal building and threw down their mobility aids to crawl up the Capitol steps for. These policies will have a detrimental impact on the disability community by removing our hard-fought most basic civil rights, making it significantly harder to receive necessary resources and providing the legal foundation for discrimination and inaccessibility in all levels of government. According to the CDC and the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 1 in 4 adults in the United States have a disability, with 13.4 percent of the total U.S. population being disabled. Project 2025 lays the framework for lack of access and discrimination in healthcare and insurance, housing and transportation, education, government and society as a whole, impacting the well-being of over 44 million people.
Medicaid ensures more than 10 million people with disabilities receive the necessary care to live independently and participate in society. It provides essential health coverage, including access to preventative and specialty care, personal care assistance, medications and medical equipment. Disabled individuals often face higher healthcare costs and are less likely to have employer-sponsored insurance or the financial means to afford private insurance. However, proposed changes to Medicaid in Project 2025, such as time limits and unreasonable work requirements, could take away much of our independence due to increasing costs and inaccessibility. Project 2025 also wishes to make changes to the Affordable Care Act that would leave disabled individuals’ rights up to insurance companies, limit access to care and provide a basis for discrimination. Currently, the ACA prohibits insurance companies from denying coverage or charging more based on pre-existing conditions, a protection these policies also wish to dismantle.
These inequities in disability health insurance also bleed into health care access. Project 2025 also hopes to change access to reproductive healthcare, disproportionately impacting disabled people, who are 11 times more likely to die during childbirth. Access to reproductive healthcare through mail and telehealth could also be removed, even though it allows for greater accessibility. Transgender disabled individuals would have even more healthcare limits due to proposed bans on gender-affirming care. Disabled people have been systemically, institutionally, and historically denied the right to speak for ourselves and make our own decisions about our bodies and healthcare. Project 2025 is the pinnacle of this ableist ideology.
Other basic needs, such as housing will also be impacted. Proposed changes target federal housing regulations, including imposing work requirements and time limits on federally funded affordable housing. Project 2025 seeks to end “Housing First” programs and eliminate the requirement to address disability discrimination as outlined in the Fair Housing Act. These changes disproportionately affect individuals with disabilities who rely on accessible housing for independent living and societal participation.
Access to education is the foundation for democracy and societal engagement. Project 2025 further pushes disabled children out of education and society. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act fall under the Department of Education, which Project 2025 seeks to dismantle. Free public education in an accessible environment, 504, and Individualized Education Plans, would be threatened without federal protection. Project 2025 is pushing an increase in private schools that do not have to follow the ADA and can legally discriminate against disabled kids.
This is a real possibility, not just some far-fetched fear. In the first Trump administration, the Heritage Foundation released a conservative policy guideline called the “Mandate for Leadership,” which outlined various policy recommendations, 64% of which the administration implemented. Of the contributors to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, 78% were members of Trump’s previous administration, with many current cabinet picks also involved.
The push for these patriarchal, heteronormative, and ableist policies in Project 2025 poses a direct threat to the lives of disabled people. It effectively reaches across numerous areas of life—health insurance and health care, housing and education—and undermines our fundamental right to exist in society. Today, check on your disabled friends and family, listen to the disability community, and follow our lead. Tomorrow, call your representatives with your disabled loved ones and demand protections in solidarity with our community. Nothing about us without us.
Be First to Comment