The Dictatorship
My son is a disabled adult. The Trump White House has him in its sights.
ByDavid M. Perry
I have been writing about the politics and policies around disability in the United States for almost 20 years. My wife is the board chair for a Minnesota disability nonprofit organization. So when it comes to disability policy, I usually feel like I know what’s going on — in the abstract, that is.
And yet, when it comes to my son, a disabled adult, I often feel at sea. I never really know what he should apply for, what the process will be like or whether he’s likely to get the support he needs without a fight. And here’s the bigger problem: You’re not supposed to know what you or your loved ones qualify for. Otherwise, you might get what you are actually owed.
Complicated administrative systems, by their very complexity, do the work of shrinking social programs and promoting an anti-safety-net agenda.
On Tuesday, ProPublica revealed that the Trump White House is about to make this terrible system even worse, “according to four federal officials, internal emails and a federal regulatory listing.” More specifically, the administration is trying to shrink supplementary security income payments by changing two rules that benefit disabled adults who live with their families. My son lives with his family, i.e. me, my wife and his brother, and despite all the qualifications we bring to table, I really can’t say what these changes would mean for us. But I can say this: The confusion is a feature, not a bug.
Nico, my son, is autistic and has Down syndrome. He’s “functionally non-verbal,” which means that although he talks all the time, he does not communicate in a way that lends itself to truly independent living or working. He has considerable agency in his life, but he is vulnerable and always needs a responsible adult nearby. Not so long ago, government support for him likely would have required placing him in a large residential facility. But recent decades have brought landmark disability civil rights lawsregulations and court decisions. We entered an era where, for a minute, there was a pretty broad bipartisan consensus around providing resources to adults like Nico that allowed them to choose where to livewho to live with and find the support they needed.
But to Republicans today, that seems intolerable.
Here’s what the administration is proposing (or at least what I think it is proposing): First, the value of disabled people’s bedrooms will now be deducted from the monthly payments under SSI. So if I let my son live in his bedroom for free, that will now be considered an asset that reduces his SSI payment. It’s possible that I can charge him rent to avoid this, but the whole goal of SSI (for me) is to give him a small steady income that lets him be independent. And to figure it out how to comply with this change, I can hire a lawyer, but most people don’t have those means. It’s not the first time some new disability services rule was designed to most impact people who can’t afford lawyers.
The second rule involves SNAP. Basically, if your family went through the process of qualifying for food assistance, then the federal government would also assume your family could not provide meaningful support to a disabled adult, thus ensuring they received the full possible SSI payment. The Trump administration is proposing changing this, making it harder for a household to qualify for aid, in the name of what the program listing calls “program integrity.” (A spokesperson for the Office of Management and Budget told ProPublica that its report was “false because it speculates about policies that have not yet been decided.”)
All of this falls under the rubric of what scholars Pamela Herd and Donald Moynihan long ago coined as “administrative burdens.” Complicated administrative systems, by their very complexity, do the work of shrinking social programs and promoting an anti-safety-net agenda, while avoiding the politically unpopular route of telling Americans that their benefits are being cut.
I should be able to reliably predict what my son’s financial, medical, housing, educational, employment and social opportunities will look like in the next phase of our lives.
At times, Democrats have created administrative burdens out of a misguided sense of fairness (such as means-tested benefits). But what’s coming from Republicans right now is much more cynical — cut programs in the name of “integrity.” By this, the administration means the change is being done to protect against unspecified fraud — a favorite tactic of this White House. It’s possible the administration will reverse course now that this proposal has been noticed, just as happened last fall with planned changes for aging workers’ disability benefits. But the confusion has already been sown, leaving families such as mine scrambling to figure out what’s actually happening.
We applied for SSI for our son about a year ago, not long after he turned 18. As chance would have it, the day I started drafting this essay, we got a call from the Minnesota Department of Human Services. The department said a decision had been reached and we would be contacted soon. I don’t know what that decision was. I do know that I should be able to reliably predict what my son’s financial, medical, housing, educational, employment and social opportunities will look like in the next phase of our lives. I want to be able to plan. Instead, I just wait for the next bad news to come from the White House.
David M. Perry
David M. Perry is a journalist and historian and the co-author of “Oathbreakers:The War of Brothers That Shattered an Empire and Made Medieval Europe.” His newsletter is Modern Medieval. Follow him on Threads.
FBI agents on Thursday raided the Cleveland offices of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a pro-democracy organization that helps register voters in that state, according to three people briefed on the search.
Agents also fanned out across the state, showing up at the homes of the group’s leaders and staff members, carrying some subpoenas and seeking information and electronic devices, according to the people, two of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive ongoing investigation. Members of the group had made contact with lawyers on Thursday to determine their legal options, the people said.
Prentiss Haney, a board member for Ohio Organizing Collaborative, told MS NOW Thursday night that agents approached people with connections to Ohio Organizing Collaborative, including some who had performed basic canvassing and volunteer work for the group, and began pressing them for information.
Agents were “basically trying to fish for information,” said Haney.
“They had agents all across the state going to civil rights leaders and community leaders’ doors intimidating them, coming and demanding that they talk about literally anything they would ask,” Haney said, adding that agents “asked them if they’re committing voter fraud, just on their doors, in front of their houses with their children, and just following them to work and school.”
Haney said some of the people said the agents approached without warrants.
“Just straight-up intimidation tactics,” he said.
Spokespeople for the FBI and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment late Thursday night.
Those sources familiar with the investigation said they are concerned this new effort in Ohio is part of the Trump administration’s efforts to sow doubt and distrust in voting integrity in key swing states ahead of the midterm elections.
Federal agents have in recent months launched inquiries and investigations into voting protocols in Georgia and Wisconsin, have subpoenaed voting records in Arizona and sought reviews of voting machines in Puerto Rico.
According to its website, the Ohio Organizing Collaborative facilitates statewide voter registration through grassroots, community-led programs, including its “Democracy Builders” initiative. This collaborative works in Ohio’s major metropolitan areas, such as Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, to help underrepresented communities register to vote and provides other support.
The group has also joined lawsuits challenging redistricting efforts that it argues reduce Black voters of representation. These lawsuits also “stand your ground” laws that allow a person to shoot someone if they feel threatened.
Haney said the Cleveland raid and harassment of staff are unjustified and that investigators lack any evidence of wrongdoing.
“How can they distract and intimidate civil rights leaders and voters and community leaders who are helping people get registered to vote and create a national spectacle about it?” he said.
“That is the only reason why they would choose to do that, do it now, in the middle of a contested political election in the state. There’s no other reason. They have no evidence of that.”
Carol Leonnig is a senior investigative reporter with MS NOW.
Will McDuffie is a reporter for MS NOW.
Alex Tabet is a reporter for MS NOW.
Laura Barrón-López covers the White House for MS NOW.
The Supreme Court rejected Alabama’s attempt to execute Jeffery Lee with nitrogen gas after lower courts stopped the state from executing him with that method.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch voted to side with the state, according to the court’s unexplained order on Thursday night denying the state’s emergency application.
On Tuesday, a Trump-appointed judge in Alabama blocked the state from executing Lee under its nitrogen-hypoxia protocol. U.S. District Judge Emily Marks found that Lee proved the state’s method violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
She emphasized that although she was issuing a permanent injunction against the nitrogen method, she wasn’t banning the state from executing Lee. She said the record showed his alternative proposal of the firing squad “significantly reduces a substantial risk of severe pain as compared to nitrogen-hypoxia.”
Under precedent adopted by the Supreme Court’s GOP-appointed majority, an inmate who challenges an execution method as unconstitutional must propose an alternative method that is feasible, readily implemented and significantly reduces a substantial risk of severe pain.
Having scheduled Lee’s execution for Thursday, Alabama officials moved to lift Marks’ injunction in an effort to proceed as planned. Procedurally, they first had to ask Marks herself for relief. In their motion to the judge, they said she downplayed the risks of the firing squad, as well as the state’s concern about finding willing and able executioners for the shooting method.
State officials further said the fact that they scheduled Lee’s execution for Thursday “should have sunk his claim.” They said that “however easy or hard it would be to implement a firing squad in the abstract, there’s no support for the view that it could be done two days from the Court’s decision that it satisfies the Eighth Amendment test.”
Marks rejected the motion to lift her injunction, noting that the state’s urgent motion did “little more than repeat the arguments it made previously,” which she also had rejected. She added that the state had no right to complain about the timing because it was the state that set Lee’s execution while litigation was pending.
A divided three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit declined to disturb Marks’ ruling. The panel’s majority recounted that a judge’s permanent injunction like the one Marks issued is entitled to deference and can be overturned only if the judge abused her discretion. With that in mind, the majority said her findings were “amply supported by the evidence presented.”
And noting that courts reviewing motions for urgent relief consider the “irreparable harm” at stake, the majority observed: “It goes without saying that Mr. Lee would suffer irreparable harm if he were executed pursuant to a method that the district court has found unconstitutional.”
On the other hand, the majority said the state’s preferred Thursday execution timing “is not a magical date” and that “the injury to the State caused by a delay would not be irreparable because the district court’s injunction allows it to execute Mr. Lee by any other authorized method (including lethal injection or the electric chair).”
Trump-appointed Judge Robert Luck was the panel dissenter. He began by recalling that Lee was sentenced to die for robbing and murdering Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson 26 years ago. “Unlike his victims, Lee was allowed to choose his method of execution,” he added, referring to Lee’s initial choice of nitrogen hypoxia as an alternative to lethal injection during a previous round of litigation.
“For as long as we’ve had an Eighth Amendment, the Supreme Court has never held that a state’s method of execution qualifies as cruel and unusual under the Eighth Amendment,” Luck wrote. “Because we shouldn’t do so here, I would grant the state’s motion to stay the injunction.”
Lee’s jury had recommended a life sentence, but the judge sentenced him to death under Alabama’s “judicial override” option, which has since been abolished.
The state cited Luck’s dissent in seeking emergency relief from the Supreme Court on Thursday. Officials told the high court that if the lower court ruling in Lee’s favor stands, it would be “unprecedented in American history.” The state said it would not only “portend the first-ever permanent ban on a legislatively enacted method” but would also “expand the concept of cruelty well beyond the bounds of the Eighth Amendment.”
Georgetown University law professor Steve Vladeck, an expert on the Supreme Court’s so-called shadow docketsubmitted an amicus brief opposing the state. He said Alabama was trying to do something procedurally that it shouldn’t be allowed to do. He explained that unlike in other emergency challenges that states have brought to the justices, Alabama wasn’t challenging a temporary execution stay issued by a lower court, but rather a permanent injunction.
“After all,” Vladeck said in the brief, “allowing Alabama to execute Mr. Lee through a grant of emergency relief would necessarily frustrate this Court’s ability to conduct plenary review of the district court’s final, permanent injunction.”
Highlighting that point, Lee’s lawyers told the justices that the case was “in a procedural posture unlike every previous method of execution challenge that this Court has considered.” They noted that unlike other emergency litigation in capital cases, “this case comes to the Court following a full three-day bench trial on the merits — the first such trial anywhere on the constitutionality of nitrogen asphyxiation.”
They said Lee wasn’t challenging his death sentence or the state’s ability to execute him but rather “only the method that Alabama intends to employ.” They said the state wanted to make the case moot by executing Lee “using an unconstitutional and permanently enjoined method,” but that the state hadn’t “cited a single case in which this Court has intervened in a capital case in such an extraordinary way.”
Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro,” a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
The Dictatorship
Kennedy Center board seeks delay of ruling on removal of Trump’s name by Friday deadline
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’shandpicked board at the Kennedy Center is mounting a last-minute effort to keep his name on the facade of the iconic performing arts facility before a court-ordered deadline to remove it by Friday.
The board voted on Thursday to seek a stay of U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper’s May 29 ruling that said Trump’s name was illegally added to the Kennedy Center, according to a person familiar with the move who requested anonymity to discuss a private meeting. The formal stay will be filed on Friday, the person said.
Cooper ruled that only Congress could institute a change to the Kennedy Center’s name and ordered references to Trump be removed by Friday. He also blocked the administration from closing the cultural and arts venue for major renovations that had been planned to start in July and last for two years.
The board move marks a shiftfrom a June 4 memo to staff from the Kennedy Center’s Office of General Counsel saying email signatures, letterhead and other documents must reflect the name as “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts” or “Kennedy Center.”
The Kennedy Center’s website has dropped the president’s name. And an email earlier this week sent to membersoffering ticket packages for the June 28 Mark Twain Award for American Humor ceremony came from the Kennedy Center without including Trump’s name.
After ignoring the Kennedy Center for much of his first term, Trump has wielded tremendous influence over the venue during his return to office. Just a month into his second term, he oustedthe center’s previous leadership and replaced it with a hand-picked board of trustees that named him chairman. He brought in Richard Grenell to serve as president, a position he held until March when Matt Floca assumed the role.
The center’s lineup has included more Trump-friendly programming, serving as the venue for events such as the premiere of first lady Melania Trump’s documentary, “Melania.”
The board also announced it had renamed the facility the Trump Kennedy Center, a change scholars and lawmakers say must be initiated by Congress, and physically added the president’s name to the building’s facade.
The fallout from the arts community was swift and intense. Actor Daddy Rae,musician Bela Fleck and author Louise Penny were among the numerous artists who withdrew from appearances, while consultants such as musician Ben Folds and singer Renée Fleming resigned. Earlier this month, the executive director of the National Symphony Orchestra, Jean Davidson, left to head the Los Angeles-based Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts.
In addition to voting on the stay on Thursday, the board backed a resolution recognizing Trump’s “commitment to uphold this cherished American institution.”
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