Disability / Civil Rights News August 23, 2025
Editor's Note: The disability community is increasingly preferring to use identity-first language (disabled person) in place of person-first language (person with a disability). This is because many in the community view disability as being a core component of identity, much like race and gender. Some members of the community, such as people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, still prefer person-first language. Both should be considered valid. Articles shared in this newsletter may contain one or the other (or both) depending on the author's preference, and if they themselves have a disability.
Trump’s Promise to End Vote-by-Mail Is Yet Another Attack on Disabled Voters by Julia Métraux on August 18, 2025 at Mother Jones
"Anything that adds more steps, logistical hurdles, or time constraints to the voting process makes it exponentially harder for disabled people to vote. For people with disabilities, it's not just a little harder, but a lot harder when more barriers, restrictions, and requirements are added. All but eliminating an entire option for voting does the same."
Trump’s Agenda Is a Direct Threat to the Black Middle Class by William Roberts and Mariam Rashid on August 18, 2025 at the Center for American Progress
"Trump’s team suggested that his actual policies would focus on important issues for Black families such as tackling inflation and strengthening job security. However, more than halfway through the first year of his second term in office, the picture of Trump’s policy impact on middle-class Black Americans can be drawn in stark relief, and his agenda poses a serious threat to the Black middle class."
Opinion | Concentration camps are not just part of our past, but our present and future by David M. Perry on August 22, 2025 at The Minnesota Star Tribune
"Someday, I hope, we’re going to have a reckoning over the horrors of this moment, but I don’t think we can do it without a clearer understanding of how this fits into U.S. history. There’s a tendency to say, “This isn’t who we are,” and I get the impulse, but history is never that simple."
Ugly Laws: The Blueprint For Trump’s Anti-Homeless Crusade by Julia Métraux on August 22, 2025 at Mother Jones
"Sparked in part by an influx of disabled Civil War veterans, ugly laws fined poor, disabled people for begging, or just existing, on city streets—often followed by institutionalization in brutal 19th-century facilities that offered little or nothing in the way of treatment.
"Ugly laws quickly spread across the country, and never entirely went away. Pushes to police, incarcerate, or drive out unhoused and disabled people have been a constant in American life—and hardly just a Republican thing, with high-profile Democratic politicians like California Gov. Gavin Newsom or New York Mayor Eric Adams prominently endorsing encampment sweeps and forced institutionalization."
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