On Thursday, the federal Department of Health and Human Services moved, through a department-wide restructuring order, to eliminate the Administration for Community Living (ACL), a subsidiary established in 2012 to support disabled and aging people—part of a broader series of cuts that will see the firing of some 10,000 HHS staff. HHS’ press release on the restructuring claims that ACL’s responsibilities will be redesignated elsewhere within the department, which has yet to issue further details or clarify its plans. An unknown number of the administration’s workers will also be laid off. Jill Jacobs, a Biden-era commissioner of ACL’s Administration on Disabilities, was shocked to hear the news. “It’s not something that’s been on anyone’s radar, not a conversation that anyone’s been having,” said Jacobs, who is now the executive director of the National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities. > “Where exactly are they going to go? Who is going to implement [it]? Is this > the first step in cutting further programs?” Mia Ives-Rublee, senior director of the Disability Justice Initiative at the nonpartisan Center for American Progress, believes that the move “shows that this administration is not committed to community living and the Americans with Disabilities Act.” The decision by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s HHS is only the latest Trump administration action to bring harm to disabled people. Disability experts I spoke to expressed that the decision reflected a lack of awareness of the Administration for Community Living’s crucial role for disabled and aging Americans. That may not be surprising given the department’s current leadership; Kennedy mainly talks about disability in the context of conspiracy theories that vaccines cause autism in children. Now, disabled people worried about cuts to their Medicaid coverage will also have to worry whether the assistance they receive through independent living centers will continue. “There’s nothing in here that explains how they are going to continue implementing these programs,” said Alison Barkoff, ACL’s acting administrator and assistant secretary for aging for most of the Biden administration. “Where exactly are they going to go? Who is the staff that’s going to implement them? Is this the first step in cutting further programs?” A central part of ACL’s purpose has been oversight of state protection and advocacy agencies for disabled people, providing grants for approved independent living centers, support for employment programs for disabled people, and assistance with adult protective services—all with the goal of helping disabled and aging people live successfully within their communities, rather than in institutions. “The real concern,” Barkoff says, “is that if ACL and its programs are spread across the [HHS] department, we will see more people forced into institutional settings, out of their own homes, out of their own communities.” A letter from the co-chairs of the Disability and Aging Collaborative, which consists of 62 member organizations that focus at least in part on disability and aging, cautions that the changes could result in “homelessness and long-lasting economic impacts.” The Administration for Community Living was designed for “bringing programs together to make sure that there were efficiencies and synergies between aging and disability networks,” said Barkoff, now director of George Washington University’s health law and policy program. To do so, ACL coordinates with other HHS agencies like the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in areas like Home and Community-Based Services, and externally, with agencies like the Department of Transportation. ACL’s own workforce, Jacobs said, “is comprised of people with disabilities and older Americans.” The ACL had not been a notable target of the Republicans before Thursday. On Wednesday, Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) even cosponsored a bipartisan bill aiming to require ACL “to provide peer support services for children, grandparents, and caregivers impacted by the opioid crisis.” > There are “very economically sound reasons for ACL to continue to exist.” Even Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s roadmap for an arch-conservative remaking of the federal government—which the Trump administration has consistently followed—counted on ACL to remain in place: it proposes distributing funds provided by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act through the agency. Now that President Donald Trump has started hollowing out the federal Department of Education with an eye to its abolition, Ives-Rublee and Jacobs want to know how the federal government will continue to serve disabled students. “How are they going to do that,” Ives-Rublee said, “when they basically destroyed ACL?” But Ives-Rublee isn’t convinced that the Trump administration can necessarily make good on its plan. “It’s going to be very, very important for community members to come together and start filing lawsuits,” she said, “because this is incredibly illegal—to be reducing staff and reducing the ability for individuals with disabilities to receive services.” While the HHS cuts, and the Trump administration’s wider slashing of federal agencies and services, are nominally about saving money, Jacobs doesn’t believe that eliminating the Administration for Community Living—which helps keep people out of nursing homes—will do so. “Community living costs our taxpayers a third of what it costs for people to live in institutional settings,” Jacobs said. “There are very economically sound reasons for ACL to continue to exist.”

The National Institutes of Health, the federal government’s leading medical research agency, came under attack by Project 2025 well before its architect, Russell Vought, was confirmed to Donald Trump’s second-term cabinet as head of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought’s pet project—the playbook for the Trump presidency—asserts that “funding for scientific research should not be controlled by a small group of highly paid and unaccountable insiders” and encourages “more modest federal funding through” NIH. Last Friday, NIH announced that it would cap grants for “indirect” research costs—such as building-related and equipment expenses—at 15 percent, from a current average of around 30 percent. It’s far from the only health-related harm the Trump administration has brought about in less than a month: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., poised to take over the Department of Health and Human Services, is, of course, infamous for spreading vaccine disinformation, and cuts to the US Agency for International Development led to abrupt, damaging pauses in both HIV/AIDS research and medication distribution. But some of the called insiders funded research that helped scientists better understand cystic fibrosis—research which led to Vertex Pharmaceuticals developing a cutting-edge treatment that Vought’s daughter Porter benefited from. In a 2021 Instagram post, Vought’s then-wife shared that the couple’s daughter had started Trikafta, a drug that has shown great promise in managing pulmonary issues associated with cystic fibrosis, which affects some 40,000 Americans. Cystic fibrosis can lead to respiratory issues, including worsening lung function, even with the best non-experimental care. Trikafta is currently the focus of a study—backed by a $2.9 million grant from NIH—which seeks to understand what makes the drug so effective in some patients. NIH also funds other cystic fibrosis-related research, laying out $84 million annually to support research related to the disease. “We’re extremely grateful to live in a nation that leads the way on medical innovation,” Mary Vought wrote in her 2021 post. Screenshot by Julia Métraux “We sympathize greatly with those that can’t afford or struggle to pay for basic medical needs,” Vought and his wife wrote for an anti-abortion website after their daughter was born. “Our hearts break for sick children and their families in a new way.” But Vought appears to be shutting that door firmly behind him, helping to mount a dizzying range of attacks on lifesaving medical research at (and beyond) NIH. Funding cuts to NIH across 28 states—such cuts are temporarily blocked in 22 others that sued over the move—means that research into rare diseases, already inadequate, may slow down. 95 percent of rare diseases, unlike cystic fibrosis, have no treatment, according to the National Organization for Rare Disorders, and most organizations lack the budget to fund drug research in partnership with pharmaceutical companies. Neena Nizar, executive director and founder of Jansen’s Foundation, which pushes for treatment of Jansen’s metaphyseal chondrodysplasia, sees the Trump administration’s new cap on indirect costs “as a double-edged sword.” More money should go directly into research, Nizar said; but “indirect costs,” she continued, “are essential for keeping research labs running.” For families of children with ultra-rare conditions, such as Jansen’s disease—which fewer than 30 people live with worldwide—NIH-led research could be the only path to care. One such project is the NIH-funded Rare Diseases Clinical Research Network, which has studied over 200 rare diseases since it was founded in 2003. Its exact impact is difficult to measure, but the network has clinical research sites in states where the Trump administration’s overhead budget cuts have not been blocked. “As a community, we need to push for a system that sustains research, protects under-resourced institutions,” Nizar said, “and ensures that groundbreaking work—especially in rare diseases—continues without disruption.”

In August 1981, then-President Ronald Reagan signed a bill into law that allowed the development of state-level programs to help disabled people live outside institutions like nursing homes. Known as Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS) waivers, the programs—now in their fourth decade—are funded by Medicaid and run by each individual state. With potential cuts to Medicaid a priority for the Trump administration, the future of HCBS remains in limbo. Donald Trump’s recently confirmed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has refused to directly answer questions about whether he’d fall in line with attacks fielded by Republican politicians and Project 2025 by offering a recommendation to cut Medicaid. Reagan couldn’t be described as an advocate for disabled people’s rights—just over a year into his first term, 130,500 people had already been dropped from Social Security Disability Insurance, then and now a lifeline for millions. Like Donald Trump, Reagan wanted to slash government spending at the expense of Americans’ wellbeing. But while the politics of the time forced Reagan’s GOP to field a compromise with some benefits for disabled people—which yielded HCBS—the Trump White House hopes to gut even that, leaving hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, without the option of community care. > 4.5 million people rely on Medicaid HCBS to avoid institutionalization. Today, roughly 4.5 million people use Medicaid-funded HCBS as an alternative to institutionalization; the waivers help pay for home healthcare workers, durable medical equipment, career coaching, case management and other services. No one claims that the program is perfect—but most criticism has come on the basis of shortfalls, not overspending. More than half a million disabled people remain on waitlists for HCBS, often waiting years for a waiver, and inconsistent requirements across states can make the process confusing and challenging. “It’s a bit of a mix between racism and ableism that believes that certain types of people are undeserving of assistance,” said Mia Ives-Rublee, senior director of the Center for American Progress’ disability justice initiatives, of ongoing attacks on Medicaid. Ives-Rublee said that Project 2025 includes a push to end Medicaid exception waivers—programs that allow states to modify and add to standard Medicaid services, which “specifically implies HCBS funding”—on the grounds that the government is spending too much money on them. About half of disabled children in the United States currently rely on Medicaid, says Jenny McLelland, director of HCBS policy for Little Lobbyists, an organization that advocates for kids with complex health needs. That includes McLelland’s son James, who spent the first year of his life in an institution; the private insurance McLelland’s family then had, like many plans, did not cover long-term home-based care. Only a Medicaid waiver allowed him to go home. McLelland’s HCBS waiver “pays for a nurse who manages his ventilator and breathing while he’s asleep or while we are away from the house to work,” she said. “Medicaid home and community-based services make it possible for my son to have an integrated, joyful life,” taking part in school theater and bringing home straight-A grades. > Cuts will “result in more people either ending up in institutions or ending up > dead,” one expert says. Advocates are worried about the fate of HCBS, which would be relatively easy for states to abandon under the new administration—and which helps millions of people stay out of hospitals, nursing homes, and group homes, which McLelland says frequently deliver “lower-quality care, often at a higher cost.” The GOP has put forth several proposals promoting Medicaid per-capita spending, which would change current spending practices by limiting funds through a formula that doesn’t take into consideration the needs of disabled people. Nicole Jorwic, Caring Across Generations‘ chief of advocacy and campaigns, said that what such changes “would ultimately do is cut the amount of money that the federal government is sending to states per person…just on the consumer price index.” Changes to Medicaid per-capita spending, Jorwic says, “means waiting lists would grow” and that “the types of services being offered are going to narrow” as funding is reduced or withdrawn. Given that federal Medicaid funds already make up, on average, one-third of state budgets, Jorwic believes that state governments coughing up the extra cost “is never going to happen.” She notes that health funding is a popular target even in blue states like Maryland, where a $3 billion state funding shortfall has put hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for its human services department funds—where Medicaid is housed—on the chopping block. Another attack on Medicaid incorporated into Project 2025 has involved lifetime caps on the support of people on Medicaid—caps that many disabled people may hit at a young age. “A state will have to take up the rest of that spending,” said Ives-Rublee, “or they will reduce the coverage of an individual, either by saying we won’t cover these services or by saying we won’t cover you at all.” McLelland is also concerned that attacks on the Affordable Care Act could lead to further damage: disabled people who qualify for Medicaid only due to ACA expansions could be kicked off HCBS as a result. There’s “no ethical way” to deprive people of Medicaid, McLelland says. An ulterior motivation for Republicans’ push to cut Medicaid, Jorwic says, is the Trump administration’s need to cut costs in order to finance an extension—or expansion—of Trump’s first-term tax cuts for the richest Americans and corporations, which Jorwic finds “even more upsetting and ableist.” Ives-Rublee also foresees bleak outcomes if HCBS waivers are defunded or dropped: “That’s going to result in more people either ending up in institutions or ending up dead.”

President-elect Donald Trump may be famously inconsistent on abortion rights, but his picks to run federal departments and agencies haven’t been. They have defended anti-abortion laws in court, spread disinformation about the procedure, and openly celebrated the Dobbs decision. Some nominees you’ve likely heard of because their troubling reputations preceded them; others are lesser-known. Abortion restrictions are often viewed as being enacted through the judicial or legislative processes, through federal and state laws and court cases. But the heads of federal government agencies also wield immense power: They can quietly implement policies throughout their departments that can help chip away at abortion rights nationwide. Many of the dozens of anti-abortion recommendations in Project 2025—the 900-plus-page extremist guidebook to a second Trump term—deputize future agency heads to do exactly that.  Here’s a look at the individuals on Trump’s team who, if confirmed, are poised to enact an anti-abortion agenda through multiple levels of the federal government. Pam Bondi as Attorney General The next head of the Justice Department—leading a staff of more than 115,000 people—will have the authority to criminalize abortion, should they choose to do so. “Across the DOJ, various offices have responsibility for enforcing—or not enforcing—federal laws that have direct bearing on reproductive and other civil rights,” says Shaina Goodman, director for reproductive health and rights at the National Partnership for Women and Families. The Attorney General will decide whether or not to enforce the 19th-century Comstock Act to criminalize the distribution of abortion pills, as Project 2025 recommends. (Democrats have tried to repeal that part of the law, but their efforts have stalled.) Biden’s DOJ issued a December 2022 memo stating that Comstock could not be marshaled to restrict the mailing of the pills, but abortion rights advocates worry that Bondi—an election denier with extensive ties to Trump and the first woman to serve as Florida’s attorney general—may reverse that interpretation. As Florida’s AG, Bondi established her anti-abortion record by defending state laws that mandated anti-abortion counseling and a 24-hour waiting period before getting an abortion. It’s no wonder, then, that the anti-abortion advocacy group Students for Life Action greeted the news of Bondi’s nomination saying, “There’s a great deal for pro-life organizations…to be excited about.” > “There’s a great deal for pro-life organizations…to be excited about.” Current Attorney General Merrick Garland has also defended the Food and Drug Administration’s decades-long approval of abortion pills as safe and effective in the face of a Supreme Court case—FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine—seeking to reverse that judgment. (While the Supreme Court ruled last June that the anti-abortion doctors who brought the case lacked standing to do so, conservative attorneys general in Missouri, Idaho, and Kansas filed a revised version of the lawsuit on the matter in the fall—which could eventually wind up back at the Supreme Court.) Democrats did not specifically ask Bondi if she would enforce the Comstock Act at her confirmation hearing, but when Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) asked her if she would continue the DOJ’s policy of defending the FDA’s judgment in the legal battles around access to mifepristone, the first of two pills used in a medication abortion, she assured him, “I will not let my personal beliefs affect how I carry out the law.”  > Sen. Cory Booker asks Pam Bondi if the Justice Department, under her > leadership, would defend access to medication abortion. > > "I have always been pro-life, but I will look at that policy," Bondi says. "I > will not not let my personal beliefs affect how I carry out the law." > pic.twitter.com/7FJfIlo5Cz > > — PBS News (@NewsHour) January 15, 2025 Other Department of Justice officials The Solicitor General acts as the government’s lawyer in cases that go before the Supreme Court. Trump’s pick for the position is Dean John Sauer, who, as the Center for Reproductive Rights notes, defended various anti-abortion positions in court as Solicitor General of Missouri. (He also argued on Trump’s behalf in both the presidential immunity case that went before the Supreme Court and in a New York Appeals Court seeking to overturn the judgment in the civil fraud case state Attorney General Letitia James brought against him.) If confirmed, Goodman says, Sauer could ultimately “define our legal rights and protections for a generation”—including by potentially arguing in court for the FDA to roll back its approval of abortion pills, as Project 2025 recommends. Sauer also likely would end the government’s challenge to Idaho’s anti-abortion law in Idaho v. United States, the case centered around the interpretation of a federal law known as EMTALA and, specifically, whether emergency rooms must provide abortions to save the life or health of a pregnant person, even in red states. (The Supreme Court sent the case back to lower courts earlier this year.) And if the legal challenge Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has brought against a New York-based abortion pill provider in an attempt to challenge shield laws—which provide legal protection for doctors who virtually prescribe and mail abortion pills to patients in red states—eventually winds up before the Supreme Court, Sauer would be arguing against those laws on the government’s behalf. Then there is anti-abortion attorney and Republican party official Harmeet Dhillon, who has been nominated to be assistant attorney general for civil rights, a post charged with leading the National Task Force on Violence Against Reproductive Health Care Providers, which oversees the prosecutions of the FACE Act. This federal law prohibits blocking the entrances to reproductive health clinics—and that includes anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs)—or threatening those who use them. While violence against abortion providers has been on the upswing since the Dobbs decision, Project 2025 alleges that the FACE Act has been misapplied to prosecute anti-abortion extremists rather than abortion rights supporters who impede access to CPCs. Anna Bernstein, principal federal policy adviser at the Guttmacher Institute, said, “It’s concerning to think about how [Dhillon] could misuse some of DOJ’s enforcement of what should be civil rights protections and twist that for anti-abortion purposes.” Dhillon has publicly expressed her support for Dobbs and her opposition to shield laws. She also defended anti-abortion activist David Daleiden in a years-long, unsuccessful lawsuit against Planned Parenthood that the reproductive health organization won in 2019. > “It’s concerning to think about how [Dhillon] could misuse some of DOJ’s > enforcement of what should be civil rights protections and twist that for > anti-abortion purposes.” Advocates also plan to keep an eye on Aaron Reitz, Trump’s nominee to run the DOJ’s Office of Legal Policy, which implements departmental policies and advises the attorney general. Reitz currently works as chief of staff to the anti-abortion stalwart Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and previously worked for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who credited Reitz with leading his office’s offensive against the Biden administration. Among his efforts were attempts to block pharmacies’ implementation of a new FDA rule allowing them to directly dispense mifepristone for use in medication abortions. Reitz was so proud of this work that he acknowledged it in his resignation letter to Paxton before departing for Cruz’s office, writing, “Together we’ve protected precious unborn children by defending Texas’s pro-life laws and blocking the Biden Administration’s attempts to undermine the US Supreme Court’s historic Dobbs decision.” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services Secretary The Department of Health and Human Services—the government agency that employs more than 80,000 people and oversees the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health, among other offices—has “the most opportunities to enact anti-abortion policies,” according to Katie O’Connor, director of federal abortion policy at the National Women’s Law Center. (If you have any doubts, consider that Project 2025 recommends it be rebranded as the “Department of Life.”) One of Trump’s most controversial picks is avowed anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead HHS. Kennedy’s nomination has proven to be so contentious that experts on both the left and the right—including Trump’s own former surgeon general—have sounded the alarm. Like Trump, Kennedy has been inconsistent on his abortion stances. In 2023, for example, he said he backed a 15-week national abortion ban before subsequently walking that back. His campaign told the Washington Post in November 2023 that he supported codifying Roe v. Wade and maintaining the FDA’s approval of mifepristone—but these were positions he held before Trump named him as his HHS nominee. Since then, abortion opponents have reportedly asked that Kennedy appoint a high-ranking anti-abortion stalwart to HHS and publicly commit during his confirmation hearings to restoring anti-abortion policies within HHS from Trump’s first administration, such as preventing abortion pills from being mailed or distributed at pharmacies and rescinding a Biden-era rule that stipulated HIPAA privacy protections should apply to abortions. (In December, anti-abortion Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) claimed in a post on X that during a private meeting with him, RFK Jr. had committed to those measures and others.) Project 2025 also makes a litany of anti-abortion recommendations for the HHS secretary, including issuing guidance that states can defund Planned Parenthood in their state Medicaid plans. But it’s unclear if Kennedy has adequately proven his anti-abortion bona fides to secure confirmation. The Daily Wire first reported on Tuesday that former Vice President Mike Pence’s organization is calling for senators to vote against the RFK Jr. confirmation based on his inconsistent record on the issue. Still, no matter what the final outcome, HHS will be stacked with other leaders who have been far more consistent in their opposition to abortion rights and would likely carry out the long list of Project 2025’s anti-abortion recommendations. Martin Markary as Food and Drug Administration Commissioner The head of the FDA, housed within HHS, could lead the agency’s efforts to re-instate the in-person requirement to access abortion pills—which would prevent them from being legally mailed to patients, creating a massive blow to access—and in the longer term revoke FDA approval of the drugs entirely, as Project 2025 recommends. Markary, a surgeon and professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, has been open about his anti-abortion views. After Dobbs was handed down, Markary joined ex-Fox host Tucker Carlson on-air and described false information about fetuses’ abilities to feel pain in utero, as the Center for Reproductive Rights points out. All this makes it clear why the conservative political advocacy group CatholicVote celebrated Makary as a pro-life pick who could reverse FDA approval of the pills. Reproductive Freedom for All, an abortion rights advocacy group, on the other hand, called Makary “a known anti-abortion extremist” after Trump announced his nomination. It’s worth noting, though, that if Markary did try to roll back the agency’s approval of abortion pills, he would face an immediate legal challenge under the Administrative Procedure Act, which prevents agencies from acting in ways that are “arbitrary or capricious,” according to Rachel Rebouché, reproductive law scholar and dean of Temple Law School. (A spokesperson for the FDA said the agency would not comment on pending litigation or hypotheticals.) Dave Weldon as Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Project 2025 calls for the CDC, also housed within HHS, to require states that receive Medicaid funding to hand over detailed data on how many abortions have been provided, by what method, at what point in pregnancy, and for what reason, along with the pregnant person’s state of residence. Sharing abortion data is currently voluntary for states, but Project 2025 recommends cutting funding to states that refuse to comply. Advocates fear that in Weldon’s hands, the data could be misused to penalize or surveil people who get abortions or doctors who provide them. “The concern here is data being weaponized,” said Karen Stone, vice president of public policy and government relations at Planned Parenthood Action Fund. As I have written, Weldon has had an openly anti-abortion (and anti-vaccine) record. A former Florida congressman, he’s perhaps best known for an eponymous federal law that prohibits HHS from funding entities that “discriminate” against health care providers, hospitals, or insurance plans that opt out of providing abortion care, which the National Women’s Law Center says the Trump administration used “to penalize state actors that protect abortion access and to deny patients access to critical care” during his first term. Weldon also co-sponsored anti-abortion legislation during his more than a dozen years in Congress, including one bill in 2007—sponsored by then-Indiana Rep. Mike Pence—that sought to bar HHS from providing any Title X family planning funding to entities that provide abortions. (Trump ultimately enacted it during his first term, when Pence was vice president.) A few years earlier, in 2004, Weldon had also supported a bill that proposed $3 million annually to study unsubstantiated links between abortion and depression and psychosis. He has also promoted unsubstantiated links between abortion and breast cancer—views that could affect the research and funding agendas he sets for the CDC. Mehmet Oz as Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Among other things, CMS, which is an office within HHS, investigates EMTALA complaints that emergency rooms at hospitals that receive Medicare funding in states with abortion restrictions deny abortions to those who need them to stabilize their lives or health. During his failed 2022 Pennsylvania senate campaign against Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.), Oz, a surgeon by training, said that he thinks “local political leaders” should have a say in peoples’ abortion decisions. Project 2025 asserts that “EMTALA requires no abortions” and that HHS should stop investigating hospitals that have failed to comply with the Biden administration’s interpretation of the law. Therefore, it seems unlikely that Oz will prioritize investigating the well-documented tragedies that unfold when people are denied emergency abortion care. Russell Vought as Director of the Office of Management and Budget The Director of OMB leads the implementation of the president’s policies, regulations, and funding decisions across the federal government. Trump’s pick for the role is Russell Vought, a Christian nationalist and one of the authors of Project 2025, which is full of anti-abortion recommendations. Vought headed the OMB during Trump’s first term. If he’s confirmed, Vought’s power will be vast—and he has made it clear he would wield it to “eliminate [the] central promotion of abortion” across government, which he has called “the most important issue to me.” As my colleague Isabela Dias wrote in a profile of Vought last year, his ambition seems to be to bring his ideology to every nook and cranny of the federal government: > For Vought, politics is downstream from religion. He sees a strong presidency > as a way to bring forth a Christian nation. Vought opposes abortion and > has referred to transgender identity as a “contagion.” He > has suggested migration policy should be rooted in Judeo-Christian principles, > with immigrants tested on their readiness to “assimilate.” If Trump wins, > Vought wants to infuse the next conservative administration with the values of > Christian nationalism—the conviction that the United States is bound to the > teachings of Christ, from which all else follows. > > > “The president’s a pro-life president. I think the country has a good sense > > of where he is on the issues.” At Vought’s confirmation hearing, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) asked him a series of questions on abortion: If he would ensure the Hyde Amendment, which blocks most federal funding for abortion, is applied (it has been for nearly 50 years); if he would support restricting Title X funding for abortion providers, as Trump did in his first term; if he supports federal funding for anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers; and if he supports restricting federal funding for global health organizations from being used to refer or advocate for abortions, as Trump also did in his first term. Vought mostly declined to provide specifics, saying he would not get ahead of the president and that he would follow his lead. But he was clear about the direction he believes Trump will go: “The president’s a pro-life president,” Vought said. “I think the country has a good sense of where he is on the issues.” Marco Rubio as Secretary of State The Secretary of State, as the Center for Reproductive Rights notes, plays an important role in implementing the Global Gag rule, also known as the Mexico City policy, which restricts global health organizations that receive US family planning funding from referring or advocating for abortions. On his fourth day in office during his first term, Trump reinstated and drastically expanded the directive so it applied to all of the government’s global health assistance funding, including money that went towards fighting malaria, tuberculosis, and other infectious diseases, according to the Guttmacher Institute.  Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) introduced a bill in 2021, and again in 2023, that would repeal the Global Gag Rule, but Florida Sen. Marco Rubio did not support either measure. Project 2025 recommends that Trump issue executive orders reinstating that rule and blocking funding to the United Nations Population Fund, for which Trump cut funding in his first term, alleging that the entity supported coerced abortions in China. (The UNFPA denied this.) Based on Rubio’s history, it is likely he will be quick to order the implementation of those executive orders once Trump signs them. (Rubio did not appear to be asked about this at his confirmation hearing this week.) Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Department of Defense In the fall of 2022, following the Dobbs decision, the Department of Defense announced that it would fund travel costs for service members and their dependents who need to travel for abortion care and in vitro fertilization. Last March, Sabrina Singh, the department’s press secretary, told reporters that the policy was used a dozen times in the last six months of 2023 and that the total cost to the department had been just over $44,700. (It’s not clear how many of those trips or funds were for abortions specifically, or how many service members took the trips, because service members could use the policy more than once, Singh said at the time.) Trump’s nominee, Pete Hegseth—the ex-Fox host who has been accused of a drinking problem, sexual impropriety, and financial misconduct—openly supported the Dobbs decision. During his confirmation hearing this week, when Sen. Mazie Hirano (D-Hawaii) asked if he would maintain the travel policy, he replied, “I don’t believe the federal government should be funding travel for abortion.” > NOTABLE — Hegseth leaves the door wide open to banning DoD reimbursements for > abortion healthcare and says, "I don't believe the federal government should > be funding travel for abotion" pic.twitter.com/PZMLehKIQC > > — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 14, 2025 Doug Collins as Secretary of Veterans Affairs Also in the fall of 2022, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced that it would allow its benefits to cover abortion counseling and abortions when the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest or the life or health of the pregnant person is at stake for veterans and their dependents. Advocates praised the new rule when it was finalized last year, noting that as of June 2023, research showed more than half of women veterans of reproductive age lived in states that have banned abortion or were likely to. But if Collins, a former Georgia congressman who served as a chaplain in the Navy Reserve and Air Force, is confirmed as Secretary of the VA, he will likely rescind this policy, as Project 2025 recommends. Collins has been vocal about his anti-abortion views and has an A+ rating from the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America group for supporting various anti-abortion bills in Congress.

Project 2025’s stance on the Department of Education is clear: “Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated.”  Donald Trump’s imminent presidency has raised concerns among disabled advocates, kids, their parents, and others about the federal government’s role in making sure disabled students get an equitable education. Not that it’s clear how a Trump DOE would dismantle itself, or whether enough Republicans in Congress would agree to risk their seats over such a proposal. “There is a growing concern within the education field,” says Fred Buglione of All In for Inclusive Education, which helps train districts and provides individual consultations on how to support disabled students, of “how deep the cuts might be, what that means for the field, and at the end of the day, what that means for children”—even if the Trump administration, Buglione says, seems to only have “concepts of a plan” of how that would happen. Equitable education for disabled people is inherently part of the current of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts that Trump and allies like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who himself has a disability, seem to oppose. (This past October, Texas cut $600 million in Medicaid funding for disability education services.) The federal Department of Education regularly gives important guidance to state departments of education, says Michael Gilberg, an autistic attorney who focuses on special education law. “States have a patchwork of laws, and things are enforced differently,” Gillberg said. “You need the federal government to oversee and make sure all the states are doing the same”—in other words, to ensure through funding and oversight that disabled kids in Massachusetts and Oklahoma receive the same access to education. > “If you take away those federal funds, you’re taking away qualified > teachers…it would be a domino effect.” The Department currently funds, supports, or regulates countless aspects of disabled kids’ education in public schools, particularly those who receive accommodations under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Those acts protect all students’ right to disability accommodations known as 504 plans and Individualized Education Plans, respectively—a right 8.4 million students count on—and, in the case of the IDEA Act, fund up to 40 percent of the costs. “If you take away those federal funds, you’re taking away qualified teachers,” said Kyla Bishop, an attorney with Disability Rights Arkansas. “It would be a domino effect.” In rural areas of the state, Bishop said, meeting the needs of students with disabilities is already a challenge—some districts can already only afford a four-day school week, and face shortages of staff like occupational therapists and mental health providers. During his previous administration, Trump and then–Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos touted school vouchers, which transfer funding from public to private schools. Voucher programs, which do not have any formal federal oversight, are perhaps a key example of the costs and dangers of leaving disability education to the states. They may seem promising to parents, but parents who use vouchers to attend private schools forfeit their kids’ right to an IEP, which also protects students’ rights to be educated in the least restrictive environment. A child who is autistic can be isolated in a classroom, alone, if a private school decides that is what it wants to do; a private school doesn’t have to provide speech therapy if it doesn’t want to, or could keep kids from participating in gym class because the school doesn’t want to modify activities to be accessible. The list goes on. “When a voucher is used for a school that does not provide sufficient services, parents have no recourse,” states a 2018 report from the National Council on Disability. “If a private school fails to meet a student’s needs, the student will not be entitled to compensatory services.” Cheryl Theis, of the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, said that many families who choose school vouchers for their kids with disabilities are encouraged to believe it will help them succeed. “It has backfired for so many families who feel like they were promised something better and different, only to realize that their children have essentially been dumped in cottage industries.” Bishop, of Disability Rights Arkansas, is critical of her state’s school voucher law, which she says pulls money from public schools that are under law required to meet the needs of students with disabilities. “You can’t keep taking money away and then expect a better result,” Bishop said. “That doesn’t make sense.” For Elena Hung, the executive director of Little Lobbyists, which advocates for children who have complex medical needs, her 10-year-old daughter Xiomara’s individualized education plan is the only way she can attend school at all: it allows Xiomara, who has had a tracheostomy and requires a feeding tube, to have a nurse with her on the school bus and in the classroom. “Not just for my daughter, but for many children with medical needs, if they don’t have a dedicated nurse who’s trained in their care, then they can’t go to school, because it’s just not safe,” Hung said. Hung is concerned that a gutted DOE may lead to more kids with complex medical needs being institutionalized, as many working parents cannot afford around-the-clock care. Gillberg, the special education attorney, says that “getting rid of the federal Department of Education will really curb IDEA and 504 enforcement, which ultimately leads to more litigation, which ultimately [would lead to] clogging of the courts.” An increased reliance on litigation would also drive inequities: many parents cannot afford a lawyer, or may not know where to turn to pursue lawsuits. Nationwide, close to 100 Parent Training and Information Centers, which can help parents understand the rights their children with disabilities have in public schools, are also funded through the Department of Education; with the DOE dismantled, many would likely cease to exist if funding falls by the wayside. Project 2025 does not directly attack federal funding for students with disabilities, as it does with abortion rights. Instead, it suggests that IDEA funds “should be converted into a no-strings formula block grant targeted at students with disabilities and distributed directly to local education agencies.” To Tammy Kolbe, a principal investigator at the American Institutes for Research, that claim is incredibly vague. “It remains uncertain what they might do with respect to both the level of appropriations for IDEA and the formula that they might use to distribute those funds to states and districts,” Kolbe said. IDEA funding is already unequal; one report Kolbe worked on highlighted differences in funding for students receiving disability education services via its grants. In 2020, the formulas used to calculate funding meant that Wyoming received about $2,826 in IDEA funds per student, whereas Nevada received $1,384 per student—less than half. The Department of Education is also a crucial source of data about education and disability, including how disabled students of color are treated—data used, for example, to order districts to take action if Black disabled youth are suspended much more often than white ones. When such figures “are significantly disproportionate for three years or more, then [districts] have to dedicate 15 percent of their funds to a corrective action–type program to address those issues and investigate why it’s happening,” said Theis. > “We need to prepare state elected [officials] for the fights that are going to > be ahead.” A lack of federal data would prevent that kind of corrective action, even if the funds remain. Even if the collection of data persists, Project 2025’s dictates against “critical race theory” in civil rights enforcement, including in education, indicate that the Trump Department of Education may not take action against the discrimination that students of color, particularly disabled ones, face. New Disabled South CEO Dom Kelly, who lives with cerebral palsy, says that data from the Department of Education leads to more innovation, which helps disabled kids succeed. “I also worry that lack of data collection will impact federal grants that fund research that directly impacts some disabled students,” Kelly said, including research on “assistive technologies in the classroom.” While the possibility of the Department of Education dissipating is worrisome, it will not happen overnight, and it’s not guaranteed to fall. “Anything that happens in the federal government takes time, planning and strategy,” said Jill Jacobs, the executive director of the National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities. Before coming to NACDD, Jacobs was a commissioner in the Department of Health and Human Services. Kelly also says organizers need to turn to state-level officials to work together, if, as many expect, Trump’s education department leaves key issues to states. “We need to prepare state elected [officials] for the fights that are going to be ahead with [Georgia] Gov. Brian Kemp or Greg Abbott, or whoever, to be able to make sure that there’s oversight [and] that there’s funding,” Kelly said. Hung, of Little Lobbyists, encourages parents to form a united front with the teachers and other school staff who already help guard kids’ access to education. “I would advise families to work closely with their schools. There is a partnership there that should be leveraged,” Hung said. “Schools should be just as concerned about this as families are.”

Continuing the string of MAGA loyalist picks to serve in his administration, President-elect Donald Trump on Friday evening tapped Russell Vought to serve as director of the Office of Management and Budget—again. Vought, a self-avowed Christian Nationalist and key contributor to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 agenda for a conservative presidency, led OMB during Trump’s first term, transforming the powerful agency—charged with developing and executing the federal budget, and reviewing executive branch regulations—into a vehicle to deliver on the president’s wildest dreams. In a recent appearance on Tucker Carlson’s show on X, in which the former Fox News host said he was “very likely to run OMB again,” Vought described the agency as the “nerve center of the federal government, particularly the executive branch.” He recounted having provided Trump with a plan to divert funding from the Department of Defense to fund his border wall without congressional approval, a move disavowed by the White House counsel and later ruled illegal. “Presidents use OMB to tame the bureaucracy, the administrative state,” Vought said, characterizing it as “the president’s most important tool to deal with the bureaucracy.” Vought described what kind of person would be best suited to wield the power of this agency on behalf of President Trump. “What you need is people who are able to absorb political heat,” he told Carlson. “They don’t have a fear of conflict. They can execute under withering enemy fire. They are up to speed and they are no-nonsense in their own ability to know what must be done. And they’re unbelievably committed to the president and his agenda.” Vought also advocated for doing away with the notion of independent agencies, singling out the Department of Justice as a target. Vought most recently led the conservative Center for Renewing America, which he has described as a “shadow” OMB outside the government. He is a big proponent of reviving an executive order from the final days of the first Trump administration that would upend the federal workforce in service of Trump’s goals. Known as Schedule F, the order would reclassify potentially thousands of career civil servants working in policy-related positions as at-will employees and strip them of job protections, making it easier for political appointees to fire them and fill the openings with candidates hand-picked to support MAGA priorities. At OMB, Vought tried to reclassify almost 90 percent of the agency’s workforce as at-will employees, hoping to set an example for other government heads. As a former OMB worker and author of Trump and the Bureaucrats: The Fate of Neutral Competence put it to me, Vought’s first round leading the agency was nothing short of “traumatic.” > Inside the Trump administration, Vought came across as fiercely dedicated to > the America First cause, even if it meant a colossal increase in the federal > debt. Trump was prone to outbursts, but to Vought that aggression equaled > power. Vought made it his mission to weaponize OMB on behalf of the president, > who had long perceived the civil service bureaucracy as an obstacle to his > haphazard rule. “We view ourselves as the president’s Swiss Army Knife,” he > once said. “How do you come up with options that work and then talk through > the pros and cons?” Vought interpreted his job as being inside Trump’s head—a > “keeper of ‘commander’s intent.’” And that appears to be the same approach Vought plans to take when restored to his old job next year. In previously undisclosed videos of 2023 and 2024 private speeches obtained by ProPublica, Vought talked about wanting the “bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” adding they should “not want to go to work” when waking up in the morning. “We want to put them in trauma.” He also suggested creating a “shadow Office of Legal Counsel” to enable a crackdown on anti-Trump dissent. “We want to be able to shut down the riots and not have the legal community or the defense community come in and say, ‘That’s an inappropriate use of what you’re trying to do.” A new Trump administration,” Vought declared, “must move quickly and decisively.”

Some of the nation’s legendary “great men”—leaders like George Marshall and Clark Clifford—have served the country as defense secretary. President-elect Donald Trump has tapped a Fox News host for the job. Pete Hegseth is a veteran of wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, but he stands out as being uniquely unqualified among his predecessors to oversee an agency with nearly 3 million employees. If you understand what Trump wants him to do, however, he’s probably the perfect man for the job. Several former Trump administration officials, in conjunction with the conservative Heritage Foundation, created a blueprint for a second Trump term known as Project 2025. Much of the new defense secretary’s likely agenda is spelled out in it. And while it makes a few nods to transparency, calls for better contracting procedures, and, of course, big budget increases, much of the document is simply a roadmap for a culture war. Christopher Miller, who served 72 days as acting defense secretary during the first Trump administration, is the author of the Project 2025 section on the Defense Department. He starts by suggesting that the Pentagon has emphasized “leftist politics” over military readiness. To combat this problem, Miller lays out a host of priorities for a new Trump administration. Among those are ridding the active military of transgender people and their health care, along with ending abortion access. As Miller explains: > “Exceptions for individuals who are already predisposed to require medical > treatment (for example, HIV positive or suffering from gender dysphoria) > should be removed, and those with gender dysphoria should be expelled from > military service. Gender dysphoria is incompatible with the demands of > military service, and the use of public monies for transgender surgeries or to > facilitate abortion for servicemembers should be ended.” Miller seems to believe that the military is full of “Marxists” looking to carry out social justice experiments while indoctrinating the ranks. He urges the next defense secretary to make sure senior military officers “understand their primary duty to be ensuring the readiness of the armed forces, not pursuing a social engineering agenda.” To that end, he calls for axing diversity and equality programs and rooting out Marxist professors in the military academies—where tenure should be abolished. In addition, the new administration should audit the curriculum and health policies of schools on military bases so that they can be cleansed of “inappropriate” content. Everything on this conservative wish list dovetails nicely with Hegseth’s rhetoric on Fox News. He has railed against “woke” policies that he claims have hurt military recruitment and has decried the Pentagon’s “social justice” messages. “The Pentagon likes to say ‘our diversity is our strength.’ What a bunch of garbage,” he said on Fox. “In the military, our diversity is not our strength, our unity is our strength.” On a podcast hosted by conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt, Hegseth once said, “There are not enough lesbians in San Francisco, Hugh, to man the 82nd Airborne. You’re going to need to go to guys in Kentucky and Colorado and Ohio, who love the country.” > “There are not enough lesbians in San Francisco, Hugh, to man the 82nd > Airborne. You’re going to need to go to guys in Kentucky and Colorado and > Ohio, who love the country.” Hegseth’s televised attacks on “wokism” in the military helped kill a Pentagon initiative to crack down on extensive white supremacism and extremism within the armed forces. In 2021, Hegseth devoted a segment on Fox News Primetime to attacking a Black combat veteran named Bishop Garrison, whom Biden had tapped to oversee a new Countering Extremism Working Group. The working group was tasked with figuring out how to identify people like Jack Teixera, the Massachusetts Air National Guardsman with a history of violent, racist behavior who leaked a trove of classified documents on Discord in 2021. This week, Teixera was sentenced to 15 years in prison. But Hegseth reframed the anti-extremism effort as just another liberal attempt to impose woke policies on the federal government.  He described Garrison’s assignment as “a purge, a purge of the Defense Department led by a new, and now powerful, radical leftist, a 1619 Project activist, a hardcore social justice Democrat, a man who believes all Trump supporters are racist and extremists.” Biden’s appointment of Garrison, he told viewers, was “the equivalent of Ibram X. Kendi, the author of How to Be an Antiracist, in charge of vetting the entire US military, past, present, and future.” His attack ultimately generated enough political pressure from Republicans that the working group disappeared in less than a year without having had much of an impact. During the last Trump administration, there were no fewer than six defense secretaries—seven if you count Mark Esper’s two separate stints in the job. (By comparison, there has been just one during the Biden administration, Lloyd Austin.) Only two of Trump’s defense secretaries were ever confirmed by the Senate. Given that track record, the odds are high that Hegseth will be back at Fox News soon enough. But even a short tenure could give him enough time to check off some items on Project 2025’s to-do list.

On Wednesday morning, some of Trump’s favorite fans finally felt comfortable joking about what the next president has long denied: Project 2025 has always been the plan for a second Trump term. “Now that the election is over I think we can finally say that yeah actually Project 2025 is the agenda. Lol,” right-wing podcast host Matt Walsh wrote in a post on X of the 900-plus-page extremist guidebook. Walsh’s message soon got picked up and promoted by Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist who was recently released from prison, where he landed after ignoring a subpoena from the House January 6 Committee. “Fabulous,” Bannon said, chuckling, after reading Walsh’s post out loud on his War Room podcast today. “We might have to put that everywhere.” Benny Johnson, a conservative YouTuber with 2.59 million followers who has called affirmative action “Nazi-level thinking” and said Trump should prosecute Biden for human trafficking of immigrants, also chimed in: “It is my honor to inform you all that Project 2025 was real the whole time,” he posted on X. Bo French, a local Texas GOP official who recently came under fire for using slurs about gay people and people with disabilities on social media, wrote: “Can we admit now that we are going to implement Project 2025?” Walsh, Bannon, and the others are not the only people in Trump’s orbit who have made these promises. While Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, there is a long list of his connections to it, which include many people who have similarly said that Trump plans to enact the policies if reelected. Russell Vought, a potential next chief of staff profiled by my colleague Isabela Dias, said in a secretly recorded meeting that Project 2025 is the real Trump plan and the distancing tactic was just campaign necessity. Spokespeople for the Trump campaign, the RNC, and the Heritage Foundation—the right-wing think tank behind the plan—did not respond to repeated requests for comment from Mother Jones. If these claims are true, then Trump could potentially see an erosion of support from his base. As I reported in September, an NBC News poll found that only 7 percent of GOP voters had positive views of Project 2025, while 33 percent held negative views. That is not entirely surprising when you consider the drastic ways it could radically reshape American life if enacted, It calls for banning abortion pills nationwide; using big tech to surveil abortion access; rolling back climate policies; enabling workplace discrimination; and worsening wealth inequality.