The CDC Declares War on the Disabled—In the Name of Order

RFK Jr Is At It Again: Taking Away Healthcare from Americans Who Need it Most

Ladies and gentlemen, gather ‘round and behold the latest masterstroke from our ever-wise Trump administration custodians of public health.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a federal colossus once tasked with shielding the citizenry from pestilence and plague, has now found a new threat to neutralize. It comes on the form of disabled workers with internet access.

Yes, in a bold act of bureaucratic bravado, the Trump/RFK jr. CDC has decided that telework—the lifeline, liberty, and legal right for the medically infirm—is simply no longer “reasonable.”

The pandemic is over, don’t you know?

Never mind your chronic illness, your immune deficiency, your PTSD from a shooting in the very workplace they now demand you return to. It’s back to the cubicle you go, peasant, lest the sanctity of the in-person meeting be forever defiled evermore.

What’s that, you say? The Americans with Disabilities Act? The Rehabilitation Act? Mere trifles.

Those are ancient parchments, suitable for framing, not following. The CDC, in its Olympian wisdom, has declared it will no longer entertain any more of this “case-by-case” nonsense.

Individual assessments are messy. Compassion is inefficient. Equity is inconvenient. And the law?

The law is for the little people, not the Trump administration.

The savage poetry is breathtaking. The agency that once pleaded with the masses to stay home, mask up, and save lives now shoves the disabled and immunocompromised back into the office like some Dickensian factory foreman with a federal budget.

The CDC has gone from Florence Nightingale to Ebenezer Scrooge in a lab coat, muttering “no exceptions” as it slams the door on anyone asking for mercy.

According to recent reports, this policy change began on August 13th. An unlucky date, indeed, for anyone naïve enough to believe that public service should include serving the public.

Or that the government might obey its own laws. Or that working while sick or disabled—and still being productive —might be preferable to turning the workplace into a petri dish and therapy trigger.

But no. The gods of MAGA bureaucracy have spoken. Telework is dead.

Not because it doesn’t work (it does), or because it’s unlawful (it’s not). But because it offends the Trumpian managerial class, those brave souls whose only purpose is to peer over your shoulder to ensure you look busy.

It’s a tree falling in the forest, Trump version. If they can’t see you suffer, how do they know you’re working?

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) may still mouth quaint little phrases about “reasonable accommodation,” but don’t be fooled. The real rule is this: uniformity above humanity, compliance above compassion.

And when that fails, gaslight, ignore, and hope that the CDC workers just quit.

Let us not dress this up as policy. It is cowardice hiding in the shadow of courage, cruelty sold as efficiency. It is the full might of a federal agency brought to bear on the weak, the vulnerable, and the quietly competent.

Those who dared to believe their rights were more than a slogan. Or a punchline.

The CDC, once a bulwark against contagion, has become the contagion.

A festering culture of institutional Trump arrogance that sees laws as optional and disabled Americans as disposable. And in this latest act of petty tyranny, it reminds us that while diseases may fade, the disease of unchecked power is always with us.