How the Trump Administration Abandoned Plans for a Major Cut in Disability Benefits for Older Workers

On Nov. 13, a small team of advocates for people with disabilities stepped through White House security and into the narrow, bustling corridors of the West Wing, unsure what to expect. They’d managed to get a short meeting with James Blair, who is one of President Donald Trump’s deputy chiefs of staff, in the hopes of preventing a planned policy change. In recent weeks, ProPublica and The Washington Post had reported that officials at the Social Security Administration were working on a proposed regulation that could result in at least 830,000 mostly older blue-collar workers being denied disability benefits.

The advocates, led by Jason Turkish, co-founder of the Social Security disability rights group Alliance for America’s Promise, had sent the White House team ProPublica’s Oct. 31 article and other materials. The reporting showed that if the Trump administration enacted this regulation, the harm would disproportionately fall on some of the president’s most loyal supporters: 50- to 60-year-old coal miners, factory workers and other manual laborers, especially in West Virginia, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi and Alabama. The administration’s logic for cutting these workers’ eligibility was that even if they have a severe physical disability, they should be able, in the modern economy, to find a more sedentary job at a computer or perhaps driving for Uber or DoorDash. Disability advocates countered that people who’ve worked in grueling fields for decades, some of whom don’t have a high school education — and who grew up before the digital age — would face severe obstacles to such a career change, including age discrimination in the hiring process, the lack of desk jobs in rural areas and the difficulty of mastering unfamiliar skills at this point in their lives.

A few doors down from the Oval Office, Turkish and his colleagues turned a corner into Blair’s office. Sitting across from him was a second person, one the advocates hadn’t expected to encounter: Russell Vought, the powerful White House budget director. He looked displeased.

After several minutes of dialogue about the disability regulation, according to Turkish and another person present, Vought said, “I know that this is being written about.” But, he added, the rule change “isn’t going to be happening.”

It was a startling announcement from an often uncompromising senior official in an administration with little history of changing its mind in response to journalistic scrutiny and pressure from advocates for the vulnerable. But that’s what Turkish and three other sources say has happened: The Trump administration has decided not to pursue the disability cuts that it has been working on all year — and in fact since at least 2019, when officials during Trump’s first term were close to finalizing a similar regulation.

Turkish, who is also president and managing partner of one of the nation’s largest law firms that represents disability claimants and beneficiaries, said in an interview that Vought and Blair seemed to have absorbed the recent reporting on the issue. He said they acknowledged the anxiety that disabled workers were experiencing — people like Christopher Tincher, a former coal miner who lost his leg on the job at a wastewater treatment facility in Arkansas and was featured in ProPublica’s story. Both officials were unambiguous, Turkish and another person present confirmed, that the regulation would not proceed in any form.

Turkish’s takeaway is that in the West Wing, vulnerable Americans with disabilities like Tincher don’t get talked about enough. “To have his story read by senior White House staffers, to remember what this program is, to remember that Social Security disability is not partisan,” was crucial, Turkish said.

Afterward, they walked out together, back through the corridors, and Vought was walking in the same direction. He didn’t say another word the whole way, according to one of the people present.

Spokespeople for the Social Security Administration and the White House Office of Management and Budget did not respond to questions from ProPublica, including whether they would contest the advocates’ assertion that the planned regulation has been nixed. A top Social Security Administration official confirmed in a meeting yesterday that the regulation has indeed been called off, according to a person present. It’s not clear why officials have said this in meetings, including with advocates, but haven’t made any public announcement.

At the White House meeting, according to two participants, Blair told Turkish to go to Frank Bisignano, the commissioner of the Social Security Administration, and “ask him point blank” if the regulation is in fact no longer being pursued.

On Tuesday, Turkish said, he did just that and met with Bisignano. Also present at this second meeting were the longtime lobbyist Andrew Woods as well as Mark Steffensen, the Social Security Administration’s general counsel. Bisignano, according to both Turkish and Woods, asked them what the White House had said about the disability issue — and he, too, “decisively” confirmed that the regulation would not proceed.

The commissioner, they said, made clear that his focus is on modernizing the Social Security Administration, not cutting disability benefits. “I take him at face value,” Turkish said, adding that Bisignano may not have been actively involved in crafting or discussing the regulation and decided against pursuing it when it “reached his level.”

Turkish and Woods say Bisignano told them to convey to the disability advocacy community that “there is no daylight between this office and the White House with respect to us not moving forward” with the regulation. On Monday, Bisignano should be able to tell them that himself: He’s considering participating in a town hall with advocates and people with disabilities.

Turkish has told other advocates in a group email that his organization will “remain vigilant to ensure these assurances are honored.”

The regulation that the Trump administration had been drafting — which remains listed on a federal bulletin with a scheduled publication date in December — would have made two major changes to the Social Security Administration’s disability system, according to four officials from the agency who had knowledge of the plans. First, it would’ve modernized the job listings that Social Security’s disability adjudicators use to decide if there’s work available in the U.S. economy that a manual laborer could still do despite physical impairments. This proposed change, which would’ve updated severely outdated jobs data, arose from a bipartisan effort that’s been in the works since the Obama administration.

The second provision was the controversial one. It would’ve almost entirely removed age as a criterion in these decisions, making a disabled 50-plus-year-old no more eligible for assistance than a 20-something. This would have had collateral effects: Losing eligibility for disability would block such workers’ access to Medicare, which they’re currently eligible for at an earlier age precisely because they’re disabled. And if workers were to be increasingly denied benefits in their 50s, many would be forced to draw down any savings they have, which could lead them to apply for Social Security’s retirement benefits early, in turn diminishing their and their spouses’ benefits until they die.

New polling by a Trump-aligned firm has suggested that older Trump voters would overwhelmingly oppose such changes to disability eligibility. In the wake of Democrats’ strong showing in recent elections, two people with knowledge of the situation said that the administration may have been particularly sensitive to these views. As one lobbyist put it, it’s all about the “elevation of an issue, and getting it on the right desks.”

Eli Hager is a ProPublica reporter who writes about issues affecting poor and working-class people across the country.