News Items - July 26, 2026
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.
This is an older article but important and relevant to the current political climate: Ableism Enables All Forms of Inequity and Hampers All Liberation Efforts by George Yancy & Talila A. Lewis on January 3, 2023 at Truthout
"In truth, disability is one of the most fluid and complex marginalized identities; and ableism the oldest, most radical, and one of the least understood systemic oppressions. Since we live under racial capitalism, settler colonialism and white supremacy, ableism in the united states has never solely been about disability. Ableism here has always been about at least race, gender, labor/productivity/capital, and dis/ability. In fact, ableism has been used for generations to degrade, oppress, control, and disappear disabled and non-disabled people alike — especially those who are Black/Indigenous (e.g., scientific racism)."
HUD’s efforts to end housing support for mixed-status families will ruin lives by David Arias on July 6, 2026 at PRISM
"In February, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) proposed a rule that would shatter the stability that federal housing assistance has long provided to mixed-status families. The rule would ban mixed-status families from accessing public and subsidized housing, and require all family members to verify their citizenship or legal immigration status in order to receive housing. This would force households to choose between separating from each other or losing access to housing assistance altogether."
"The Trump administration has framed the proposal as an effort to strip housing from immigrants, though, according to HUD’s own analyses, fewer than 1% of all households receiving federal rental aid are mixed-status families. The real goal, it seems, is to scare mixed-status families with the message that lawfully accessing public assistance is a risk."
White House admits it used keywords to kill billions worth of California research grants by Mikhail Zinshteyn at CalMatters on July 22, 2026 at AP
"It’s an admission that lawyers for the research professors say is proof that the agencies illegally cancelled nearly $2 billion in grants. And that’s a major development in a lawsuit filed by UC researchers against the Trump administration to permanently get their grants back. The researchers’ legal team is now asking the judge in the case to skip a trial and formally declare that the White House repeatedly violated the constitution, including the First Amendment. A court hearing on whether that’ll happen is scheduled for Oct. 20."
The Architecture of Resistance: America’s Year of Taking On ICE by Daniella Jiménez, Renée Bartlett-Webber, and Ellie Prickett-Morgan on July 23, 2026 at Mother Jones
"We spoke to dozens of people in communities facing down ICE—in Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and the San Francisco Bay Area—to ask what motivated them to resist and how they became part of an ongoing movement of unprecedented size and scope, tracing the architecture of resistance: the invisible mesh that drew neighbors into encrypted chats and pre-dawn meetings in abandoned lots. It’s the story of how ordinary people inherited that playbook, adapted it to a new machinery of enforcement, and, at times, rebuilt their lives around it."
Powerful Democratic think tank's reset on transgender rights alarms advocates by Christopher Wiggins July 23, 2026 at the Advocate
"A leading Democratic-aligned think tank [the Center for American Progress] is urging political leaders to defend transgender people from discrimination while accepting that restrictions on their participation in sports “may be appropriate under some circumstances,” a proposed political reset that is already drawing criticism from within the LGBTQ+ community."
The State’s War on the Left Didn’t Begin With Trump — But He’s Escalating It by Chip Gibbons on July 24, 2026 at Truthout
"Trump officials repeatedly claim that prior to this point, the supposed threat of the left had been ignored or downplayed. This narrative is false. Domestic political surveillance, especially when carried out by the FBI, has always disproportionately targeted the left. And much of the language employed by Trump about left-wing “terrorists” has been in consistent usage for decades by the FBI."
Newsletters I follow:
Organizations