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  "description": "Departed Texas-based disability justice activist Bob Kafka had words for this moment: ‘Don’t Mourn. Organize.’",
  "path": "/war-on-disabled-people-ice-medicaid-aliya-rahman/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-02-18T20:32:12.000Z",
  "site": "https://deceleration.news",
  "tags": [
    "_on the way to her doctor_",
    "_Rahman’s testimony_",
    "_cuts over $1 trillion from Medicaid_",
    "_an 18.2 percent cut_",
    "_passed away in December_",
    "_warned_",
    "__Mujeres de Aztlan: Mujeres de Fuerza/Women of Strength__",
    "_being cut under anti-DEI initiatives_",
    "_deafblind_",
    "_was also terminated_",
    "_more than doubled premium payments_",
    "_rolling back Fair Labor Standards Act coverage_",
    "_gutting of Veteran’s Affairs medical staff_",
    "block a memorial service",
    "_for more than 40 years_",
    "_expanding detention infrastructure_"
  ],
  "textContent": "Aliya Rahman, an autistic U.S. citizen, recovering from a traumatic brain injury _on the way to her doctor_, was dragged from her vehicle by ICE agents.\n\nWatching the video and _Rahman’s testimony_, I felt my stomach twist in knots as white-hot rage rose in my chest. My legs were both heavy and numb. I kept thinking:_this could be me._\n\nThen I tried to read the comments. Some were most likely bots: no photos; almost no followers. Others were unfortunately real.\n\n> _She’s an agitator._\n\n> _She should have complied._\n\n> _Officers ran out of patience._\n\n> _She could have moved._\n\n> _She’s a paid protestor._\n\n> _If she were actually disabled, she wouldn’t be protesting._\n\nLike many people, I have watched these kinds of violations for years, the violence against disabled people, against autistic people, against people of color, and queer and trans communities. None of this is new.\n\nBut this felt different. Rahman and I share neurological differences, being autistic, and physical vulnerabilities. There is something profoundly unsettling about seeing yourself reflected in the mirror of harm done to another.\n\nI looked down at my hands and thought of hers.\n\nWhat happened to Rahman is not an isolated incident. It sits within a broader pattern, one rooted in a long history of eugenics, ableism, racism, and systemic violence. A pattern that makes clear: This is a war on disabled people.\n\nThat war is being carried out not only through state violence, intimidation, and terror sweeping through our cities and communities. It is also trauma engineered by policy and cuts to our most vital services and infrastructure:\n\n> The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB), signed into law on July 4, 2025, _cuts over $1 trillion from Medicaid_ and the Children’s Health Insurance Program by 2034.\n\nHospital funding is expected to be reduced by nearly $665 billion— _an 18.2 percent cut_. An estimated 8.7 million people are projected to lose Medicaid coverage over the next decade.\n\nMedicaid is often dismissed as “low-income” insurance. It is not. It is the infrastructure that allows disabled people to live in their homes, access equipment, receive care, and survive.\n\nAs Texas-based disability rights activist Bob Kafka, who _passed away in December_, _warned_:\n\n> “They always say they’re not going to cut defense, Medicare, Social Security. What you don’t hear then is that Medicaid is on the table, and Medicaid is what provides the vast majority of home- and community-based services, durable medical equipment, all types of things for people.”\n\n* * *\n\n __“Good Trouble: Aliya Rahman.” Mixed Media: Acrylic Marker, Pen and Ink, and Watercolor Drawing, 12x16 inches, on watercolor paper, 2026. To be exhibited for the first time March 6, 2026, for National Women's Month at__ __Mujeres de Aztlan: Mujeres de Fuerza/Women of Strength__ __exhibit at Centro Cultural Aztlan.__\n\n* * *\n\nIt also allows disabled children to receive care.\n\nNew requirements will force enrollees to prove eligibility every six months, alongside mandates to work, attend school, or volunteer for 80 hours per month.\n\nSNAP benefits could be reduced by an average of nearly $1,600 annually.\n\nRural hospitals and clinics are already closing. Healthcare access is narrowing. The forcing of more people into emergency rooms will only increase. As higher ed is further hollowed out, creating a “brain drain,” will affect healthcare in multiple other ways—not only for those working in healthcare and science, but through programs that support disabled people in daily life.\n\n> As disability rights advocates have warned: These attacks do not only worsen medical outcomes and increase the social, emotional, and economic toll of caregiving—which primarily falls to women—but also strip away avenues for maintaining and enforcing the civil rights of disabled people.\n\nPrograms supporting disabled students are _being cut under anti-DEI initiatives_. Students like Annie Garner who is _deafblind_, have lost essential support systems.\n\nA five-year, $918,000 program in Wisconsin that supports Garner and other students like her was cut in September of 2025. A $10.5 million grant to aid in the recruitment and retention of the state’s special education teachers _was also terminated_, part of a broader pattern documented in reporting on students with disabilities.\n\nApproximately 10,000 children in the United States are deafblind.\n\nThe Department of Education and the Office for Civil Rights have been weakened, putting 7.5 million children who rely on special education services at risk.\n\nHealth insurance premiums are another area under attack. Government shutdowns and political battles over whether to extend premium tax credits from the Obama administration have already _more than doubled premium payments_ as tax credits expire.\n\nCare work, the labor that makes living in community possible for many disabled and elderly people, and often a part of health insurance struggles, is also under attack.\n\nThe Trump administration is proposing rescinding wage protections for more than three million in-home care workers by _rolling back Fair Labor Standards Act coverage_.\n\nThese protections guarantee minimum wage and overtime pay. Without them, the floor drops out.\n\nThe caregiving workforce is already in crisis, with an annual turnover rate of 80 percent. Eighty-five percent of caregivers are women. Two-thirds are people of color.\n\nBob Kafka, ADAPT, and the Personal Attendants’ Coalition of Texas fought for $20 an hour.\n\nIn a sign of incremental progress, the Texas Legislature raised caregiver pay to $13 an hour in the 2026–2027 General Appropriations Act. But the difference between $13 and $20 is the difference between greater stability or more precarity, for both caregivers and those who rely on them. So the fight for a living wage and better protections for caregivers, disabled people, and their families continues.\n\nIn thinking back to Rahman’s testimony, I also think of how often women, BIPOC people, disabled and autistic people, are discredited.\n\nI saw her praised for her bravery and simultaneously subjected to the familiar Catch-22 of being “too articulate” to be believed as disabled.\n\nThe same qualities used to validate her experience are weaponized to dismiss it. Disabled people know that ableism is real and harmful. It is also an ever present weapon being used in this war against us. One that we must continually fight in all its guises and dimensions.\n\nWhen the most vulnerable people among us are targeted, they are also often the ones expected to take the greatest risks.\n\nTo protest.\n\nTo endure.\n\nTo be visible.\n\nTo become symbols.\n\n> Visibility does not guarantee safety, as we’ve learned from recent _gutting of Veteran’s Affairs medical staff_. Recognition does not undo harm. Although being disabled, being a part of marginalized groups does not exempt one from this fight; survival should not be predicated on martyrdom.\n\nThe ICE murder of VA intensive care nurse Alex Pretti illustrates this point, as VA officials attempted to block a memorial service in his memory.\n\nI wondered what kinds of support Rahman would have after the passing of the news cycle. What infrastructure exists for those who survive ICE encounters with injuries that may never fully heal?\n\nSince the passing of disability rights activist Bob Kafka in December 2025, the conditions he spent decades fighting against have intensified.\n\nKafka organized with ADAPT _for more than 40 years_. He understood that policy is never neutral; that politics are personal: as they either reflect our values and commitment to human life, or seek to deny our common humanity and agency.\n\nHe understood that disability rights are inseparable from healthcare, housing, and labor protections. That disability rights are civil rights.\n\nWhat happened to Aliya Rahman is not an exception.\n\nIt is a direction; one given not only through tyranny, but also reversed through the fight against oppression.\n\nAs ICE continues _expanding detention infrastructure_ through new detention centers and converted warehouses, the most vulnerable remain the proverbial canary in the coal mine.\n\nBob Kafka’s encouragement continue to challenge us since his passing:\n\n> “Don’t mourn, organize.”",
  "title": "MAGA's War on Disabled People Visible in ICE Attacks and Gutting of Medicaid",
  "updatedAt": "2026-02-18T20:32:12.000Z"
}