Donald Trump and maga Republicans are causing harm to people with disabilities by changing their rights to education

Just a harshly cruel reminder about how the Nazis also targeted people with special needs. 

Echo Letters to the Editor: 'Trump's policies strip disabled Americans of their rights' Los Angeles Times Opinion

It's been said that you measure the degree of civilization of a society by how it treats its most vulnerable members. Using this standard, how will America be judged❓

Donald Trump recently moved the education of disabled Americans from the Department of Education to the Department of Health and Human Services ("Trump's actions signal a move toward institutionalizing people with disabilities, advocates warn," July 2). This threatens the rights of the disabled by promoting a "medical model" of disability and reducing government obligations to provide community-based services.*

Moving education of the disabled to a health agency frames disabilities as medical defects to be "cured" or "treated," rather than acknowledging the "social model," in which differences are accommodated and students learn alongside their peers in the least restrictive environment. 

This move would isolate disabled students, separate them from mainstream classrooms and result in less tailored educational goals. Further, a recent Justice Department memo questioned decades of civil rights protections under the Supreme Court's Olmstead vs. L.C. decision, suggesting states are not required to provide the home- and community-based services that keep disabled Americans out of institutions.

Trump's policies strip disabled Americans of their rights. Los Angeles public schools provide excellent education for disabled children and those with special needs in the community. 

Do not let America be judged as a people who stripped the most vulnerable among us of their rights.

From Thomas Keens, in La Cañada Flintridge

*Nazis targeted people with disabilities for forced sterilization and mass murder, deeming them a financial burden and genetic threat. Beginning in 1939 with a secret operation called Aktion T4, at least 250,000 individuals with mental or physical disabilities were murdered in specialized killing centers and asylums using gas chambers and lethal injections