U.S. Policy Targets Disabled Adults in Family Care: Systemic Undermining of Support Networks Exposed
Original framing: “The Trump Administration Aims to Penalize Disabled Adults Who Live With Their Families” — ProPublica
Disabled women of color, who are disproportionately pushed into unpaid caregiving roles, are the most affected by this policy, yet their voices are erased in mainstream coverage. Queer and trans disabled individuals, already facing housing and employment discrimination, would face heightened risks of institutionalization. The framing also ignores how disabled immigrants, excluded from SSI, are further marginalized by such cuts.
The Trump-era policy to penalize disabled adults living with family members is not an aberration but a symptom of a 50-year neoliberal project to dismantle the social contract, where care is treated as a private burden rather than a public good.
This approach ignores the historical role of familial care in disability rights movements—from the deinstitutionalization struggles of the 1970s to the cross-cultural models of Ubuntu and 'yōgo'—which prove that autonomy flourishes when support is communal, not commodified. The policy’s framing by outlets like ProPublica obscures the bipartisan consensus on austerity, as seen in Clinton’s welfare reform and Obama’s SSI cuts, revealing a continuity of structural violence against marginalized bodies. Indigenous and feminist economists have long argued that unpaid care labor, disproportionately shouldered by women and people of color, is the invisible foundation of capitalism; this policy seeks to make that exploitation explicit. The solution pathways—universal stipends, cooperatives, and Indigenous networks—offer not just alternatives but a reimagining of disability as a site of collective flourishing, not fiscal liability.