By Natalie Eilbert
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Key Points
- Wisconsin disability rights groups are concerned about potential funding cuts in the 2026 federal budget.
- Disability Rights Wisconsin may lose funding for programs related to voting rights, employment, and education accommodations for people with disabilities.
- Advocates worry that funding cuts will negatively impact the lives of people with disabilities and limit their access to essential services.
As a librarian shelver at Cudahy Family Library, Erin Miller works hard to promote activities that people with disabilities can enjoy. She invites them to trivia nights, encourages them to march in local Fourth of July parades and hosts educational visits from places like the Wehr Nature Center.
Everyone, regardless of their ability, is encouraged to engage.
Miller co-chairs the Constituent Advisory Committee of the University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities at the Waisman Center in Madison. As a person with autism, she knows how important it is for people with disabilities to be involved in their communities — and how far we’ve come from past treatment.
“We’re having a richer life from just sitting around in a big room staring at the wall,” said Miller. “If we never get a chance to get out and do anything, how do they expect us to build skills?”
For the last 35 years, federal funding in support of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act has helped quell distressing questions like this. But with the 2026 federal budget still being hammered out in Washington, D.C., and the Trump administration’s approach to shrinking government showing no signs of slowing down, Wisconsin disability groups are bracing themselves.
Zeroed-out funds and funding setbacks anticipated
Disability Rights Wisconsin is the mandated agency to protect and advocate for the civil rights of people with disabilities. If the budget holds, Disability Rights Wisconsin will not receive any funding in 2026 for three of its nine programs related to its core service, Protection and Advocacy. Those zeroed-out funds include:
- Ensuring people with disabilities know their voting rights and can get to the polls. In 2025, U.S. Health and Human Services provided more than $140,000.
- Ensuring people with disabilities are able to access employment opportunities and employment integration services. In 2025, the U.S. Department of Education provided more than $192,000.
- Ensuring people with disabilities are granted the accommodations they need to succeed in school and the workplace. In 2025, the Department of Education provided nearly $295,000.
Further, Disability Rights Wisconsin would lose 62% of its funding for preserving the rights of people with mental illness and investigating abuse, neglect and rights violations across the state’s in-patient facilities. At $542,894 in 2025, this has been the agency’s second-largest federal grant.
Given that the agency already has been flat-funded for years, Jill Jacklitz, its executive director, said the prospects are crushing.
“We already are not able to serve everyone who needs help,” Jacklitz said. “Now, the whole infrastructure is crumbling.”
In addition to the civil rights work of Disability Rights Wisconsin, the University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities is federally designated to facilitate the flow of disability-related information from communities to the university. That information bolsters medical research, treatment services and training opportunities that benefit the lives of people with disabilities.
For every federal dollar it receives, the organization brings in about $11, said Dr. Leann DaWalt, its executive director.
“That 10% is really important, because that’s how we’re able to address the needs of our state and carry out our work,” DaWalt said. “That’s our base.”
Disability rights centers don’t know what’s ahead
Jacklitz has described the federal budget process as a roller coaster. With less than two months before the fiscal year begins Oct. 1, neither Jacklitz nor DaWalt can anticipate what their budgets for 2026 will look like.
“I’m already thinking of the next hill and the next — and we have no control over it,” she said.
The University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities focuses on treating people with developmental disabilities while researching and advancing medical breakthroughs. Last year, the agency trained more than 5,550 people across every Wisconsin county to help care workers, child care professionals, teachers and physicians better support people with developmental disabilities, DaWalt said.
Last year, the agency also helped keep 4,500 people with developmental disabilities supported and cared for in their communities and families.
Without people to uphold civil rights, guardrails to prevent abuse, researchers to advance breakthroughs, and trainers to keep everyone across the state on the same page, the concern is that people like Erin Miller increasingly will be on their own.
‘Education about disabilities needs to continue’
Abigail Tessmann lives with cerebral palsy. It takes a far greater amount of her energy to eat, travel, work and make medical arrangements on her own. She works as hard as she can to access basic needs, but she worries that federal funding decisions will only make things harder.
Alongside Miller, she co-chairs the University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities’ Constituent Advisory Committee, and brings her daily encounters and conversations with others to the agency for discussion. She wants the Wisconsin Legislature to understand that, while every disability looks different, everyone wants to be treated with respect, dignity and equity.
“It’s like a math equation. The variables may change but the sum is basically the same,” Tessmann said. “That’s something I wish people in leadership understood.”
For those variables to add up, different services are necessary. At her church, the pastor knows to hand Tessmann the common cup a certain way because she has hand tremors, a symptom of cerebral palsy. Other people in her circle understand she needs certain accommodations, as well.
But that knowledge doesn’t come out of nowhere.
“Education about disabilities needs to continue, and, honestly, it’s barely begun,” Tessmann said. “It really wasn’t until the 1990s that people really started this broader educating.”
Against the backdrop of tens of thousands of Wisconsinites losing Medicaid and the complications that will arise from new work requirements in the coming years, the threat of cuts will have very real consequences for Tessmann, Miller and others in the disability community.
The legislation requires “able-bodied” Medicaid recipients ― those not medically certified as physically or mentally unfit for employment ― to work 80 hours a month or else qualify for an exemption, such as being a student, caregiver or having a disability.
Health policy experts have warned more frequent eligibility checks and red tape will pile on administrative costs and cut off people who qualify but fall through the cracks or inadvertently get cut from an overtaxed system.
“People are going to die,” Miller said.
Trump budget adviser continues to cut funding
The Trump administration’s Office of Management and Budget didn’t respond to emails from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about these criticisms, but Russell Vought, its director, has repeatedly called for vast spending reductions to the federal government, describing the bureaucracy under the Biden administration as “bloated and corrupt.”
Tax dollars, Vought said in a March 2025 memo to agencies and executive departments, have been “siphoned off to fund unproductive and unnecessary programs that benefit radical interest groups while hurting hardworking American citizens.”
In March, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced that divisions like the Administration for Community Living would be dissolved and reabsorbed into other HHS agencies as part of the Make America Healthy Again overhaul. By April, the health secretary laid off nearly half of the staff at the Administration for Community Living, the division that provides funding to protect and advocate for the civil rights of people with disabilities.
“We are a tiny, tiny bit of funding in the budget, but we do mighty important work,” Jacklitz said. “We are doing everything to make our voices heard.”
Natalie Eilbert covers mental health issues for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She welcomes story tips and feedback. You can reach her at neilbert@gannett.com or view her X (Twitter) profile at @natalie_eilbert.