On Thursday, the federal Department of Health and Human Services moved, through a department-wide restructuring order, to eliminate the Administration for Community Living (ACL), a subsidiary established in 2012 to support disabled and aging people—part of a broader series of cuts that will see the firing of some 10,000 HHS staff. HHS’ press release on the restructuring claims that ACL’s responsibilities will be redesignated elsewhere within the department, which has yet to issue further details or clarify its plans. An unknown number of the administration’s workers will also be laid off.
Jill Jacobs, a Biden-era commissioner of ACL’s Administration on Disabilities, was shocked to hear the news. “It’s not something that’s been on anyone’s radar, not a conversation that anyone’s been having,” said Jacobs, who is now the executive director of the National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities.
“Where exactly are they going to go? Who is going to implement [it]? Is this the first step in cutting further programs?”
Mia Ives-Rublee, senior director of the Disability Justice Initiative at the nonpartisan Center for American Progress, believes that the move “shows that this administration is not committed to community living and the Americans with Disabilities Act.”
The decision by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s HHS is only the latest Trump administration action to bring harm to disabled people. Disability experts I spoke to expressed that the decision reflected a lack of awareness of the Administration for Community Living’s crucial role for disabled and aging Americans. That may not be surprising given the department’s current leadership; Kennedy mainly talks about disability in the context of conspiracy theories that vaccines cause autism in children. Now, disabled people worried about cuts to their Medicaid coverage will also have to worry whether the assistance they receive through independent living centers will continue.
“There’s nothing in here that explains how they are going to continue implementing these programs,” said Alison Barkoff, ACL’s acting administrator and assistant secretary for aging for most of the Biden administration. “Where exactly are they going to go? Who is the staff that’s going to implement them? Is this the first step in cutting further programs?”
A central part of ACL’s purpose has been oversight of state protection and advocacy agencies for disabled people, providing grants for approved independent living centers, support for employment programs for disabled people, and assistance with adult protective services—all with the goal of helping disabled and aging people live successfully within their communities, rather than in institutions.
“The real concern,” Barkoff says, “is that if ACL and its programs are spread across the [HHS] department, we will see more people forced into institutional settings, out of their own homes, out of their own communities.” A letter from the co-chairs of the Disability and Aging Collaborative, which consists of 62 member organizations that focus at least in part on disability and aging, cautions that the changes could result in “homelessness and long-lasting economic impacts.”
The Administration for Community Living was designed for “bringing programs together to make sure that there were efficiencies and synergies between aging and disability networks,” said Barkoff, now director of George Washington University’s health law and policy program. To do so, ACL coordinates with other HHS agencies like the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in areas like Home and Community-Based Services, and externally, with agencies like the Department of Transportation. ACL’s own workforce, Jacobs said, “is comprised of people with disabilities and older Americans.”
The ACL had not been a notable target of the Republicans before Thursday. On Wednesday, Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) even cosponsored a bipartisan bill aiming to require ACL “to provide peer support services for children, grandparents, and caregivers impacted by the opioid crisis.”
There are “very economically sound reasons for ACL to continue to exist.”
Even Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s roadmap for an arch-conservative remaking of the federal government—which the Trump administration has consistently followed—counted on ACL to remain in place: it proposes distributing funds provided by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act through the agency. Now that President Donald Trump has started hollowing out the federal Department of Education with an eye to its abolition, Ives-Rublee and Jacobs want to know how the federal government will continue to serve disabled students. “How are they going to do that,” Ives-Rublee said, “when they basically destroyed ACL?”
But Ives-Rublee isn’t convinced that the Trump administration can necessarily make good on its plan. “It’s going to be very, very important for community members to come together and start filing lawsuits,” she said, “because this is incredibly illegal—to be reducing staff and reducing the ability for individuals with disabilities to receive services.”
While the HHS cuts, and the Trump administration’s wider slashing of federal agencies and services, are nominally about saving money, Jacobs doesn’t believe that eliminating the Administration for Community Living—which helps keep people out of nursing homes—will do so. “Community living costs our taxpayers a third of what it costs for people to live in institutional settings,” Jacobs said. “There are very economically sound reasons for ACL to continue to exist.”
