NOVEMBER 7, 2025 | OPINION | By Kole Petersen
2024 was largely a positive year for disabled Americans. The 34th year of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) marked widespread enforcement, litigation and expansion of its contents, including beneficial changes to medical diagnostic equipment and digital accessibility standards.
The Paris Paralympics provided an unprecedentedly visible platform for many forms of disability. Personally, my coverage of the Disability Equality Index reached an audience I never could have expected and connected me with many amazing people in the disability community.
So why, when disability legislation, education and visibility have been mainly improving, have I spent this year debunking and condemning ableism from our nation’s capital? Why do our nation’s leaders seek to decimate resources for disabled Americans?
Everywhere I look in the news, headlines relay the Trump administration’s many ableist acts. From Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s comments lambasting the existence of autistic people to the gutting of the Department of Education office responsible for special education, disabled Americans have seen no shortage of disdain from those who are supposed to protect and support them. Disabled people, who already experience intense societal subjugation and heightened mental distress compared to able-bodied people, have been subject to blatant discrimination from the most influential people in our country.
But why specifically have disabled people been a subject of the Trump administration? Cost-cutting excuses are baseless, as the programs that have recently been decimated constitute such a small percentage of the federal budget, and the government has added $1 trillion to our national debt in record time.
No, factors beyond political speech, specific characteristics of the man in the Oval Office, are motivating contemporary federal ableism. Personally, I believe that Trump’s desire to relive and soar beyond his favorite moments in American history has largely contributed to the present ‘renaissance’ of ableist government decisions.
Disabled people have had to fight for the right to exist for centuries. In the 19th century, disabled people were considered mainly unfit to participate in society outside of being a circus act. Those who escaped a life of freak shows were pushed into institutions and asylums, overcrowded facilities that saw extensive psychological torment, physical abuse and neglect. The removal of chains and shackles was considered a monumental victory in the 1840s, and it took technological advances and government assistance in the 1930s to facilitate disabled Americans’ self-sufficiency. The signing of the ADA in 1990 resulted in significant improvements to disabled Americans’ lives, but movement toward equality has been gradual and steady, which makes this year’s 180-degree switch especially alarming, especially when putting Trump’s love of American history into context.
Trump highly values his placement in American history and frequently compares his ‘presidential’ actions to those of the predecessors he admires. He has emphasized his desire to be known as the best U.S. president, even displaying anger that he was rated as ‘only’ the third best behind George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. While it is valuable to critique this stroke of ego, to find clues as to why his administration has been so intentional in its attack against disabled people, it is more important to recognize when and why he compares his present actions to those of America’s past.
For instance, Trump has a portrait of Jackson prominently displayed in the Oval Office. While praising Jackson’s “true leadership,” Trump has also drawn parallels between his “America first” slogan and Jackson’s approach to the presidency. Furthermore, Trump has a nostalgia for the Gilded Age, admiring President William McKinley’s protective tariffs and appreciating the country’s wealth. However, he also compared his personal wealth to that of the Rockefellers. Trump has also praised the first U.S. president, honoring his bravery during the country’s infancy and his devotion to freedom. Nonetheless, he claimed that Washington would have voted for him due to their ‘shared’ belief in prioritizing America, and also claimed that the first month of his presidency surpassed Washington’s as the most successful in American history.
Using what Trump has publicly said about these historical figures, it is easy to see why he loves them so deeply and how they have informed his treatment of disabled people.
Andrew Jackson was notoriously intolerant of Indigenous peoples; he pursued the Indian Removal Act for 30 years and forced the relocation of tens of thousands of Natives along the Trail of Tears. He was even quoted as saying that Natives had “neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvement which are essential to any favorable change in their condition.”
Donald Trump is notoriously intolerant of disabled people in shockingly similar manners. In 2025, when disability rights are a hot progressive movement, Trump signed an executive order reaffirming systemic housing barriers for disabled people. This order came 52 years after Trump was sued for systemic racial housing discrimination, soon after the Civil Rights movement. After Trump mocked Serge Kovaleski, a disabled New York Times reporter, at a South Carolina rally in 2015, Kovaleski confirmed that the two had met multiple times since the 1980s, reflecting Trump’s longstanding ableist undertones. In a conversation regarding his nephew’s disabled son in 2020, Trump was even quoted as saying that “Those people… The shape they’re in, all the expenses, maybe those kinds of people should just die.”
After the Spanish-American War, William McKinley annexed the Philippines rather than granting them independence, feeling a sense of ownership of the nation since he deployed so many troops during the war. Additionally, the McKinley Tariff of 1890 raised protective tariff rates on most imported manufactured goods to about 50%. While intended to protect American industry, this tariff further worsened the average American’s financial position during the especially trepidatious Gilded Age. Other than the obvious connections to Trump’s ongoing trade war, Trump has perpetuated McKinley’s attitudes of ownership and financial disregard for the average (disabled) American. Pointedly, the language Trump uses to describe autistic people shows that he views them as helpless and incapable of operating in society, implying that he feels a sense of superiority over mentally disabled people. Additionally, Trump’s policies impacting Social Security and disability employment highlight his prioritization of the needs of the able-bodied over those of the disabled.
George Washington, while still widely thought the second-best president in American history, had a controversial history regarding slavery. Historian Philip Morgan wrote that a young Washington viewed blackness as synonymous with uncivilized behavior. Although Washington’s attitudes about slavery and African Americans did evolve over his life, he remained a pragmatic, separatist slaveholder until his death. Because of this, he never took advantage of the opportune moments he had to bring an end to slavery.
Trump’s treatment of disabled people only differs from Washington’s beliefs on slavery through the former’s braggadocio. Trump’s speeches commonly consist of him boasting about his own accomplishments while using ableist language to degrade his political opponents. Critically, his September 2024 degradation of Kamala Harris as being “mentally disabled” shows that he considers being disabled as interchangeable with being subordinate. While Trump was able to hide his ableism from the public until the 2015 Kovaleski incident, his legacy will not be one of silence; his administration’s policies express that disabled people are separate and inferior to able-bodied people.
However, one integral similarity between Trump and Washington is their supporters. The Miller Center of Public Affairs, a nonpartisan affiliate of the University of Virginia specializing in presidential scholarship, states that Washington was the only American in 1789 with the national platform to not only represent the nation but also be widely trusted by the populace. While Trump is not nearly as popular nationwide as Washington, his supporters are just as, if not more, unwaveringly loyal as Washington’s. These devoted followers who blindly accept Trump’s words are exactly who he wants under his control; they allow him to reach toward his goal of living through and surpassing history.
Disabled people continue to be seen as lesser than able-bodied people, and any actions reaffirming that disabled people are inferior buy into Trump’s primary mantra. The “Make America Great Again” motto not only represents the primary goals of Trump’s presidency, but also reinforces the idea that the United States and its people were greater in the past. While much of the American public has criticized the Trump administration for accomplishing the opposite of their intended mission, MAGA Republicans keep cheering on their leader, especially when he perpetuates the erasure and stigmatization of disabled people.
Trump’s ableist policies, then, are simply a manner by which he appeals to the nostalgia felt by both himself and his supporters of a time long since past. Trump finds it not only acceptable but necessary to plague disabled Americans because he learned from a history populated only by those he respects and seeks to emulate. Just as Washington owned slaves, McKinley degraded the lower class and Jackson tortured Indigenous peoples, Trump is plaguing disabled people.