The Trump administration has a new stealth approach to kicking people off disability

  Even though I’m a lawyer, receiving a letter in the mail from the Social Security Administration still triggers a panic attack. My heart races, I get nauseous, and my hands shake.

  Lately it’s gotten worse. A letter last month made me feel suddenly lightheaded as my vision started to fade. As I sat on the floor, my mind raced through all of the potential bad news the envelope could contain for a disabled Supplemental Security Income recipient like myself.

DeVos’ formula for success: Trash public schools and push privatization

  When U.S Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos discussed the results from the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress, she described them as “devastating” and part of a worsening crisis in education.

  The results showed a slight decline in reading scores and a flattening in math scores.

  She noted that two out of three of the nation’s children aren’t proficient in reading. She also decried as ineffective the US$1 trillion in federal spending on education over the past 40 years, saying it has done nothing to stop the widening gap between the highest- and lowest-performing students.

Trump’s border wall is an expensive, ineffective application of eminent domain

  The Trump administration has made building a wall along the southwest border a cornerstone of its overall agenda. The proposed wall has generated intense debate, and Congress—even while under unified Republican control—has repeatedly refused to appropriate the amount of money demanded by President Donald Trump to fund the project. At the end of 2018, the standoff resulted in the longest government shutdown in American history.

  As President Trump continues to blatantly misappropriate government funds—including $3.6 billion in money allocated for military construction—to build the wall, he has ignored an equally important element: land. Building the wall will require the seizure of thousands of acres of privately owned land along the border. Existing laws, namely the Fifth Amendment and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) of 1996, allow the government to seize land for public use—specifically, the IIRIRA allows the government to construct border fencing. However, while Trump has referred to eminent domain as “a wonderful thing,” past experiences with the 2006 Secure Fence Act prove that massive government land takings generally are neither well-received nor easy.

Trump is rewriting our immigration law to come after families like mine

  Late last month, the Trump administration released a draft rule that would change the way immigration works in the United States. Under the proposal, immigration officials will try to predict whether a person applying for a green card might receive government assistance, like Medicaid or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistant Program, at any point during their future life in the United States. If it seems possible — because the applicant isn’t wealthy or has a disability — then the green card will be denied, even if the applicant has met all of the other criteria.

Five ways EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is saying one thing and doing the other

  This month marks one year for Scott Pruitt as administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). While Pruitt and his team have maintained that he is “solely focused on implementing President Donald Trump’s agenda to protect the environment,” his actions contradict these words.

  Rather than upholding the mission of the EPA, Pruitt has continued the pattern he established as the attorney general for Oklahoma, where he sued the EPA 14 times and worked “arm and arm” with the fossil fuel industry. As Politico reported in a review of his actions last year, “Pruitt has rolled back or stalled environmental protections, given the fossil fuel and chemistry industries more sway over public health decisions and taken steps that critics fear will undermine work on pollution cleanups.”