On September 23, Jesse Fairbanks was a panelist at the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s Summer of IDEAS series event titled, “From Foster Care to Homelessness: A Film & Conversation on the Fight for Stability,”
By Wendy Chun-Hoon
Excerpt from op-ed:
Earlier this month, the U.S. Census Bureau released its annual report on the nation’s poverty rate. At first glance, the announcement tells a rosy story: Real median household income is up, and the official poverty rate fell a half a percentage point. What the 2025 numbers reflect, however, is the status quo ante before President Donald Trump re-entered the White House. What the “official” numbers omit are the catastrophic impacts of his administration’s policies on low-income families, and immigrant households in particular.
Wendy Chun-Hoon appeared on MomsRising Radio to discuss the affordability crisis. She used the 2025 poverty data from the U.S. Census Bureau to describe how bad public policy decisions created this crisis — and how good decisions could address it.
Listen to her appearance here:
By Kaelin Rapport, Ph.D. and Elyse Shaw
Note: this post originally appeared on Medium.
In mid-June, the Department of Justice (DOJ) released a memo calling for states to ignore the integration mandates embedded in Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Olmstead case. These policies and cases are bound together by a desire to end the history of discrimination experienced by individuals with disabilities because of their condition and to provide access to in-home and community-based health services and educational accommodations. However, the crux of the DOJ’s memo is an attempt to undermine the needs of individuals with disabilities by reinterpreting the responsibilities of federal and local governments when administering accessible services in an ‘integrated’ setting.
Wide adoption of the memo’s provisions would be especially devastating for students with disabilities. Elyse Shaw’s experiences accessing and maintaining care for her child demonstrates how the system in place already fails to meet the needs of many students and their families.
The millions of children who qualify for and receive accommodations through section 504, from kindergarten to grade 12, are entitled to a “504 plan,” which includes accommodations such as extra time for testing and assignments, and access to sensory breaks and fidgets. Through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, students may also qualify for anindividual education program, or IEP, which has additional accommodations like one-on-one support or an aide, and comes with more stringent reporting requirements for schools. Both plans are tailored around an individual’s unique needs and ensure integration in the school and curriculum. But 504 and IEP plans are often aspirational. The shortfalls are generally not the fault of the teachers and staff who work tirelessly to provide these services, but the result of administrative obstacles and public school budget cuts that result in staffing shortages and reduced oversight on plan implementation.
When she tried to get an assessment for her child through the public school system, Elyse was told to expect a six- to eight-month wait. She could get a private assessment sooner, but that would cost more than $3,000 out-of-pocket if her health insurance plan didn’t cover the cost. Even with health insurance and private assessments, it still took a year and half to get an accurate diagnosis, which was just the first step in getting a 504 plan.
Even with a 504 plan in place, Elyse still spends countless hours on emails and meetings every year to make certain her child is getting the services she needs.
The accommodations her child receives, even with the system’s flaws, enable her to continue learning and progressing at grade level alongside her peers. The plan ensures that there is at least one paid professional at the school — even though it is understaffed and under-resourced — who works alongside parents to make sure children’s accommodations change and grow with them.
Without the 504 plan and a job with the flexibility to take time to address these care needs, it’s likely that Elyse’s child would be in a specialized school, segregated and isolated, with no accountability measures to make sure she is protected, safe, and given the same rights as her non-disabled peers.
Creating the Conditions for Re-Institutionalization
Many are not so lucky. Almost half of the students with disabilities that require accommodations go without, and a significant portion of those students feel that they need more support.
Without the assistance needed to thrive, they are punished more consistently than their peers. Children with disabilities comprise roughly a quarter of the children given an out-of-school suspension. The consequences of this access gap are further accelerated by race; non-white students, and Black students in particular, suffer harsh disciplinary actions in schools at disproportionate rates and are more likely to have their 504 or IEP accommodations mishandled.
At best, the DOJ’s move to reduce states’ responsibility to facilitate integration for individuals with disabilities could lay the groundwork for school segregation. At worst, the reinterpretation of the integration mandate will channel students with disabilities into the school-to-prison pipeline. The majority of children already swept into the juvenile detention system have disabilities that make them eligible for special education services, and yet only 37 percent received those services while in school.
To understand the Trump Administration’s likely solution to the integration problem, we can look to the proposed plan of building a forced treatment camp in Utah for individuals dealing with mental health challenges. Rather than provide services for individuals with disabilities in a home or community-based setting, they could be forced to go without their accessibility and health care needs met or isolate themselves within a presumably better resourced institution–if they can afford transportation and tuition.
What Is to Be Done?
Weaponizing the ambiguity surrounding state responsibility to accommodate the needs of people with disabilities is the latest in a series of attacks launched by the administration to shrink the federal government’s social safety net. This time, the consequences facilitate the conditions for segregation and mass institutionalization.
To protect children and students with disabilities, we must intentionally reckon with the past in ways that put students with disabilities first and include them in decision-making processes. That will require the commitment of states and education systems to building the infrastructure necessary for resourced, community-based care systems. We also need these systems to holistically define and expand the integration mandate.
Doing this will require states and school districts to hire more specialized staff for all schools, especially staff with the training and expertise to provide assessments, diagnosis, and tailored social, emotional, and academic support. Additional training for all teachers on how to properly adhere to and implement 504s and IEPs is also needed.
Finally, we recommend that codes of conduct and training be developed and disseminated for the implementation of 504 and IEP plans that acknowledge racial stereotypes and their impact on how individual school administrators, teachers, and support staff interact with and discipline students. Without these provisions, the most vulnerable of our students will be shut out or left behind, just like their predecessors.
Washington, D.C., September 15, 2026—Today’s release of the U.S. Census Bureau’s national Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance data for 2025 may be the last year of positive impact, as the prior administration’s policy choices taper off. Despite this, enormous income inequality persists.
In 2025, median household income increased 2.6 percent, to $87,460. Median earnings for women also increased by 3.2 percent; they now make 84 percent of what their male counterparts are paid. And 92.1 percent of the U.S. population had health insurance for at least some part of last year.
While these numbers may not seem concerning, a closer look reveals troubling trends and worrying indicators for future years. The median income didn’t rise enough to cover today’s inflation; indeed, when accounting for the effect of inflation in 2026, median income only rose less than one percentage point.
When income doesn’t keep up with inflation, the individuals and families most affected are those earning the least amount of money. This demographic is also disproportionately affected by the many provisions in H.R.1, which passed in July 2025, and that will further jeopardize economic security. We will not see the true impact of these provisions until next year’s numbers are released and as elements of these policies take full effect, but an estimated 4.5 million people lost SNAP coverage between July 2025 and May 2026, including approximately 1.5 million children.
Today’s data also showed that nearly eight million people were pushed into poverty due to health expenses. With millions more expected to lose Medicaid coverage because of H.R.1, the number of people who enter poverty due to higher out-of-pocket health care costs will also increase in the coming years.
“Many of the policies enacted in July 2025 through H.R.1 are on a long fuse, with just some of the massive cuts taking effect last year and many more on tap in the coming years. This means that the numbers we see today will only get worse in the future, including for children, women, immigrants, and people of color. We’re especially concerned about immigrants whose ability to work and access care without fear of immigration enforcement has already severely impacted their daily lives and economic security,” said Wendy Chun-Hoon, executive director of the Center for Law and Social Policy.
The persistent gender wage gap is also a nagging indicator. While that gap narrowed in 2025, likely due to the beneficial polices of the previous administration, women’s wages only moved closer to men’s by three cents. Such a slight increase will not move the needle on income inequality.
Overall, today’s data can be seen as setting the baseline for the harmful policies hardwired to play out in the coming years. And even at this baseline, we can see that people are not moving out of poverty—they are holding steady. While we are relieved that the news is not worse, we recognize that the affordability crisis and impending cuts to programs families rely on will increase income inequality, widen the wealth and gender wage gaps, and push more Americans into economic precarity and poverty.
“As the affordability crisis deepens, so does the country’s wealth gap. H.R.1’s tax cuts for the wealthy were largely funded by draconian cuts to programs that support people with lower incomes. As a result, we expect to see income inequality rise even more in the coming years, as income soars for the wealthy while working families will see lower incomes and continued challenges with affording the groceries, rent, and other things they need for to survive—and thrive,” said Chun-Hoon.
By Elizabeth Lower-Basch
CLASP’s new working paper examines 30 years of TANF and finds that the program now reaches far fewer families while providing substantially less cash assistance. It finds limited evidence that TANF’s work requirements produced lasting employment or earnings gains and argues that declining caseloads should not be treated as a measure of success. The paper cautions against applying TANF-style work requirements and administrative barriers to programs like SNAP and Medicaid.
By Elizabeth Lower-Basch and Ashley Burnside
Updated August 2026
This brief, part of the TANF 101 series, explains the fixed block grant awarded to states under Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).
Updated August 2026
By Ashley Burnside and Elizabeth Lower-Basch
This brief, part of the TANF 101 series, describes the work participation rate which serves as the only measure of performance under Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).
The Ideas Factory in The New Republic featured a new CLASP report on August 27:
The Center for Law and Social Policy is out with a new report, “Access Denied: The Public Health Costs of Restricting Immigrant Benefits,” exploring how President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill has cut or restricted benefits to 1.4 million lawful immigrants, while his deportation machine has created an “increasingly hostile environment” that scares immigrants from seeking the benefits that are still rightfully theirs. The report shows how this not only harms health and economic outcomes in immigrant communities across the country but affects everyone in myriad ways—weakening herd immunity, reducing SNAP dollars, increasing demands on medical providers and food banks, and so on.
Excerpt:
Governments have a legitimate interest in protecting public programs, but fraud prevention is not the same as a license to repurpose benefit data. Identity theft, duplicate payments and administrative errors cost taxpayers money and undermine confidence in programs on which millions of people rely. Proposed safeguards shouldn’t make catching actual fraud harder. A 2022 Center for Law and Social Policy analysis by Parker Gilkesson, a former SNAP caseworker, found that intentional SNAP fraud is rare. It accounts for 0.1% of SNAP issuances, and the total overpayment rate is 0.9%. Infrastructure designed to prevent fraud has grown much larger than originally intended.