Disability Rights Now: Inside the Fight for Accessibility, Inclusion, and Independent Living
Disability Rights Now: Inside the Fight for Accessibility, Inclusion, and Independent Living
Podcast Description
Disability Rights Now brings you frontline conversations with the advocates, leaders, and changemakers shaping the future of disability rights. Produced by Disability Rights Podcasts, each episode features direct voices from the independent living movement working to protect and advance the civil rights of people with disabilities. If your organization wants to amplify your mission and share your stories, visit DisabilityRightsPodcasts.org or email [email protected] for more info about how we create a custom podcast for your cause.
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast focuses on civil rights for people with disabilities, intersectional leadership, and the role of technology in facilitating inclusion, with episodes exploring topics like race and disability, inclusive hiring practices, and the political landscape affecting disability rights.
Right now, decisions are being made in Washington and in every statehouse that will determine whether people with disabilities live in their own communities or get pushed into institutions. Most Americans have no idea it’s happening. Disability and Power is here to change that.
Each episode, host Matt Shedd sits down with Theo Braddy, Executive Director of the National Council on Independent Living and a veteran of five decades in the disability rights movement, to take on one legislative fight or real-world obstacle facing people with disabilities: Medicaid cuts, the attendant care crisis, a
Medicaid home and community-based services (HCBS) are being taken apart slowly enough that most people will not notice until the services are gone, says Executive Director of the National Council on Independent Living Theo Braddy. He and Matt Shedd walk through what that erosion looks like day to day: bowel routines that go undone, mornings spent stuck in bed, pressure sores that turn into hospital stays, housing lost during those stays, and more than 600,000 people sitting on state waiting lists for home care. Braddy traces it to the executive orders, the state lawsuit calling Section 504 unconstitutional, and the Department of Justice opinion telling states the Olmstead integration mandate will not be enforced, and to his own experience during COVID, when ventilator rationing guidance and mass deaths inside nursing homes made institutionalization feel one hospital visit away. His warning is that a person can be approved for eight hours of attendant care a day, receive two, and still count as fully served in the state's numbers, because federal enforcement of the grievance system that would catch the gap has been pushed to the end of 2027. Watch the full conversation and share it with someone heading into a state budget meeting this session.
Hosts: Theo Braddy, National Council on Independent Living, and Matt Shedd, Disability Rights Podcasts.
THE OVERVIEW
0:00 The Overview: How a Movement Loses Ground Little by Little
0:43 Executive Orders, Lawsuits, and the Olmstead Opinion
3:47 What Happens When Medicaid Money Reaches the States
4:55 Missed Routines and the Path to a Nursing Home
THE MISCONCEPTIONS
6:41 The Misconceptions: Living at Home and Still in Crisis
8:41 Administrative Violence and Re-Proving Eligibility
10:34 Theo on Facing Institutionalization During COVID
11:00 Ventilator Rationing and Deaths in Nursing Homes
THE REAL STORY
12:35 The Real Story: The Grievance System Nobody Will Enforce
13:42 Eight Hours Authorized, Two Hours Delivered
15:07 Quiet Non-Enforcement, the Same Playbook as Section 504
17:35 The Myth That People With Disabilities Drain the Economy
WHAT YOU CAN DO
19:52 What You Can Do: Bring Stories to State Budget Meetings
22:25 Hold Legislators to Olmstead and Title II of the ADA
23:25 Organize Through Your Center for Independent Living
24:07 Educating Decision Makers About Attendant Care Wages
LINKS
Waiting lists for Medicaid home and community-based services, 2016 to 2025 (KFF): https://www.kff.org/medicaid/a-look-at-waiting-lists-for-medicaid-home-and-community-based-services-from-2016-to-2025/
CMS guidance delaying enforcement of the HCBS grievance requirements to December 2027: https://www.medicaid.gov/federal-policy-guidance/downloads/cib02262026.pdf
Department of Justice clarification on the Olmstead integration mandate guidance: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/07/20/2026-14566/clarification-on-department-of-justice-guidance-titled-statement-of-the-department-of-justice-on
Previous episode, Section 504 Is Under Attack. Here's What People With Disabilities Lose: https://youtu.be/_Sfs4TCPfSM
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