On November 3, voters reshaped the American government. Control of both chambers of Congress changed hands. Across the country, voters elected leaders who broke barriers that had stood for generations. Disabled voters helped make that happen. One in four adults in the United States has a disability, and we turned out because the stakes for our community have rarely been higher.
The question now is what these newly elected leaders will do with the responsibility voters have given them.
Historic Firsts, Unfinished Work
This election made history in both parties. Georgia elected Keisha Lance Bottoms, the first Black woman elected governor of any state. New Mexico elected Deb Haaland, the first Native American woman to win a governorship. Byron Donalds and David Crowley will be the first Black governors of Florida and Wisconsin. Gina Hinojosa will be Texas’s first Latina governor, and Xavier Becerra will be California’s first elected Latino governor. Ohio, Tennessee, Minnesota and the Virgin Islands elected their first women governors: Amy Acton, Marsha Blackburn, Amy Klobuchar and Stacey Plaskett.
The Senate made history too. Peggy Flanagan of Minnesota is the first Native American woman elected to the chamber. Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan is its first Muslim member, and Chris Pappas of New Hampshire is its first openly gay man. Annie Andrews is South Carolina’s first woman senator, and Julia Letlow is Louisiana’s first Republican woman senator. Juliana Stratton joins Tammy Duckworth, a disabled veteran, to make Illinois the first state represented by two women of color at once.
In the House, Melat Kiros becomes Colorado’s first Black congresswoman and the first Gen Z woman in Congress. Hakeem Jeffries is in line to become the first Black Speaker of the House.[1]
These firsts matter. Lawmakers’ lived experiences shape the questions they ask, the priorities they set, and the policies they advance. A senator who has fought an insurer for a wheelchair brings that fight into every hearing. A governor who has raised a disabled child brings that experience into every budget. Each first broadens the circle of people whose experiences inform public policy. Disabled people must be part of that circle — not only as constituents, but as legislators, staff members, appointees, and judges.
These historic milestones are worth celebrating, but we must also be clear about what they do, and do not, represent. Candidates in both major parties campaigned using anti-trans messaging. Republicans spent an estimated $183 million on TV ads attacking trans people, and some Democrats echoed those attacks rather than challenging them. Anti-trans measures also appeared on the ballot in several states, including Washington. These developments make clear that anti-trans bigotry is deeply entrenched, and this election did not change that.
We recognize that these attacks on transgender people are part of a broader pattern of denying people control over their own lives. Disabled people have long fought against policies and practices that limit our authority, deny our dignity, and exclude us from decisions about our bodies, health care, and communities. We know these struggles are connected. We cannot defend disability rights while remaining silent about attacks on transgender people. Disability justice demands collective liberation; none of us is free until all of us are free.
A Defining Moment for Disability Rights & What We Need from the 120th Congress
The new leaders take office at a critical moment. Disabled people face one of the most sustained rollbacks of our rights, services, and civil rights protections in a generation.
The 2025 budget law cut federal Medicaid funding and imposed work and reporting requirements that take effect by January 1, 2027. Medicaid pays for the home and community-based services that let millions of disabled people live outside institutions and in their communities. New administrative and paperwork barriers threaten to strip eligible disabled people of the coverage and supports they need to live independently.
In June 2026, the Department of Education moved oversight of special education and vocational rehabilitation to the Department of Health and Human Services. More than seven million disabled students depend on federal oversight to protect their educational rights. That same month, the Office for Civil Rights moved to the Department of Justice, which had already stepped back from enforcing essential disability protections.
In Texas v. Kennedy, the federal government stopped defending the Section 504 integration mandate. In September, it joined the remaining state plaintiffs in asking a court to strike the mandate from federal regulations, and the court ultimately did so. That mandate is a legal foundation of Olmstead v. Lois Curtis and of our right to live at home rather than be unnecessarily institutionalized.
Through the budget law and new rules, disabled immigrants and their families have faced additional barriers to access to healthcare, services and supports, housing, detention and deportations of themselves, their families and caregivers.
Most of these changes did not come through new laws. They were the result of executive and agency actions, while Congress failed to use its existing oversight and spending powers to intervene. The new Congress has both the authority and the responsibility to act.
We call on every member of the new Congress to work together to advance disability and civil rights and bring disabled people to the table when working on the issues that most impact us. Restore and protect Medicaid and home and community-based services, keep special education where it belongs, restore and strengthen civil rights enforcement, stop the attacks on Black, brown, transgender and immigrant communities that impact disabled people and our communities, and codify the integration mandate so that the right to live in the community is protected.
The Work Ahead
DREDF will continue to bring legal analysis and community stories to lawmakers ready to act. We will keep going to court to enforce the ADA, Section 504, IDEA, and fair housing law. As federal enforcement weakens, the role of states becomes increasingly important. In California, we will keep working with legal services partners, advocates, and state leaders to protect and strengthen disability rights.
We will also take action to help disabled people maintain their Medicaid coverage as new work and reporting requirements take effect. And we will center the fight against anti-transgender, anti-immigrant, and anti-Black bigotry throughout this work. Our rights, safety, and dignity are inseparable from one another.
Next April marks 50 years since disabled activists occupied a federal building in San Francisco for nearly a month, demanding the regulations needed to enforce Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. They did not wait for permission. They did not ask which political party was in power. They demanded the rights the law had promised. Fifty years later, that fight continues.
The disability rights movement has never depended on who holds political power. Our rights are not partisan, our dignity is not negotiable, and our freedom cannot depend on the priorities of any administration. We must continue to undo the damage, advance disability rights, and confront the biases and discrimination that remain embedded in our institutions and society.
This moment demands bold action, sustained advocacy, and the leadership of disabled people themselves. It will take all of us.
[1] Recognizing these historic achievements does not mean DREDF endorses any candidate or political party.
