Of course, life in a wheelchair comes with its challenges, but I don’t see my wheelchair as a problem. Disabled people are the largest minority in the United States and also the one that any person can become a part of at any point. The issue is not being disabled, but that the United States is not set up for disabled people to thrive.

Disabled rights have an extremely long way to come, but that is not to say that strides have not been made. The Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA, was passed in 1990 thanks to relentless efforts by thousands of disabled activists. This is one of the most famous – and one of very few – measures that the U.S. government has taken to protect the rights of its disabled citizens. As stated by the federal government, “The ADA guarantees that people with disabilities have the same opportunities as everyone else to enjoy employment opportunities, purchase goods and services, and participate in state and local government programs.”

This change is obviously not one that can happen overnight – and no one expects it to. However, it has now been over 30 years since the ADA was passed and disabled individuals still face significant barriers that prevent access to opportunities that the rest of the population is able to take advantage of. Examples of this exist in every sector that the ADA claims to address, but the most impactful in my life has been that of public transportation. There are elevators that don’t work and bus drivers who refuse to let wheelchairs on their bus, but that is to be expected. These are not things that can be completely eradicated and are just part of the disabled experience. 

However, the country’s most applauded public transportation system was not something that I expected to be so much of an issue. Visiting New York City for the first time as a full-time wheelchair user made me realize just how behind the city is regarding accessibility. Despite being the most popular transit system in the country, the New York subway is only 30% accessible and does not expect to reach 95% accessibility until 2055. The work to make the subway accessible began in the 1980s, yet within the subway system’s 472 stations, only roughly 150 are currently ADA-compliant.

Full accessibility requires time and money, but it also needs advocates. The simple fact is that disabled people are frequently ignored and their needs are seen as less important, if considered at all. However, the fight for accessibility cannot be one that is put on the back burner, and systems such as the New York subway must make this a priority rather than just a passive project that will happen eventually.

A Trump presidency, and the rise of anti-DEI rhetoric that has come with it, is deeply concerning in relation to the ADA and the general issue of disabled rights. Trump and the GOP have been framing DEI as a new concept and an unreasonable and pointless waste of resources. Trump’s executive order ending government DEI programs lists them as discriminatory efforts that lead to unfairness and inequality. The inclusion of DEIA (diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility) in this executive order points out an intent to end equitable disability policy as well. Many anti-DEI voices claim that the elimination of these programs will not hurt disabled populations and that disabled rights will not be encroached upon. However, this is simply untrue. 

Accessibility and the ADA exemplify the principles of DEI, most prominently that of equity. The existence of a ramp into a building is equity – equality would mean leaving a set of stairs and leaving those with mobility issues to fend for themselves. This is equal, of course, but that does not make it fair. Many opponents of DEI argue that these policies provide unfair advantage to minority groups and give unqualified individuals opportunities that they do not deserve. However, systemic barriers exist and remain a problem for many people in the United States. 

Redlining was not ended in the United States until the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, the gay panic defense is still permitted in 30 states and historical buildings do not face the same scrutiny from the ADA that others do. The United States presents itself as a progressive nation in many ways and one that has moved past its dark history of civil rights infringements. However, these sorts of things are not nearly as far in the past as we think. Brown v. Board of Education was passed in 1954 and integration remained a contentious issue for the decades following. Frankly, it is ridiculous to believe that wrongs like these could have been entirely fixed in less than a century. Hopefully, the United States will reach a point where DEI is unnecessary. This has not happened yet, though.

In the realm of accessibility, the United States continues to fail its disabled citizens. Although the ADA does exist, that does not mean that it is followed. Personally, I have been rejected from jobs purely because I am in a wheelchair. When I have reported this issue, the most that has happened is that the employer gets reprimanded, if anything at all. I have been turned away from classes I paid for because of an inaccessible environment and refused a refund. These are only some of the barriers faced by disabled people, and other marginalized groups, in the United States. Under Trump, I can only expect for these disparities to worsen. 

Trump’s disdain for disabled communities came into conversation in 2015 after he mocked a disabled reporter during a campaign rally. This has continued and on Mar. 20, 2025, Trump issued an Executive Order to abolish the Department of Education. Special education is guided by the DoE and countless protections for disabled students exist because of the DoE. With his long standing dispute against the DoE, Trump continues to present an air of indifference towards the ability of disabled people to succeed. 

By abolishing the DoE, Trump is effectively removing safeguards to ensure that disabled students have equal access to education. And, by removing all DEIA policies, he doubles down on this. First, the Trump administration is adding barriers to education. Then, the administration is making it harder for disabled people to find jobs. It is already legal to pay disabled workers a subminimum wage and, in 2022, the median annual salary for disabled workers was $46,877 while the median salary for non-disabled workers was $55,208. Even with DEIA policies, there remains a stark difference in the benefits that disabled employees receive. There is already a shocking number of barriers to employment access for disabled people and, by removing governmental support for these communities, Trump is making it even more difficult to succeed in a society that is not set up for disabled communities. The United States is not so far from its horrific past and the country has yet to right all past wrongs. DEIA makes this a possibility and gives hope to the millions of Americans who continue to face discrimination in the workplace.

The views expressed in opinion pieces do not represent the views of Glimpse from the Globe.

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Trump’s position to swiftly end the war does not come as a surprise. He has said on multiple occasions during his campaign trail that it would be one of his top priorities if reelected. However, despite Trump’s ambiguity and unspecificity on how he would end the conflict, the international community has drawn on statements from the former President to infer how the war will end if his administration takes office: the United States will simply stop funding the Ukrainian War effort. 

Trump’s conservative view on foreign aid toward Ukraine has been expressed numerous times to both the general public and world leaders. In March of this year, when Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban visited Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, Orban sat down with ABC News and said that he was assured that Trump would not give Ukraine “a penny” if elected. 

Following the Russian invasion in 2022, Ukraine has become one of the top recipients of US foreign aid, something not seen in Europe since the Harry Truman administration created the Marshall Plan after World War II. Sitting at 41%, the United States is the second largest contributor to Ukraine’s foreign aid behind the European Union. Foreign aid has largely been allocated toward military operations, law enforcement, communication departments and humanitarian efforts. 

Yet, even under the Biden Administration, it has been increasingly difficult in recent months for the United States to get bi-partisan support for funding efforts towards Ukraine. Much of foreign security discourse has shifted to the Israel-Hamas war, and Ukraine is not getting the media coverage that it once relied on for international support. Additionally, domestic chaos has fostered turbulence in Congress, with bi-partisan negotiations taking months. In Dec 2023, Zelensky’s appeal to Congress for funding was unsuccessful, as many GOP members cited domestic security issues like illegal immigration as a bigger priority. The shift of the Republican Party becoming increasingly neo-isolationist has created additional struggles for the Biden administration in terms of foreign policy, as many senators have said that their support remains contingent on stricter immigration policies along the Mexican border. 

On Tuesday, Apr 23, the foreign aid package that took months of deliberation finally passed through Congress, allocating $60.8 billion for the Ukrainian War effort. The majority of House Republicans opposed the effort, but the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, managed to structure the bill in ways that separated large groups of opposition, preventing a congressional gridlock. However, despite this win for Congress and the Biden Administration to uphold their support for the war effort, Ukraine said that the delay in US aid has already had a direct impact on the ground. Hal Brands, a US foreign policy expert and a professor of global affairs at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said recently in an interview with The Hub that “the cost of this delay can be measured in Ukrainian lives and territory lost”. He cites that these losses, including the loss of the influential fortress city, Avdiivka, are a direct result of the dire need for artillery ammunition, which US aid helps to supply. 

Recognizing the US’ fundamental contribution to the war effort, for months now US allies in Europe have been trying to “Trump-proof” the conflict’s security, fearing the implications of Trump’s potential return to office. The two nuclear powers of Europe, the UK and France, can hardly compare to the US military arsenal, as they are but a small fraction of the size and have failed in test launches. 

Reflecting on this threatening potential reality, Norbert Röttgen, a veteran German lawmaker and ex-chair of the Bundestag’s foreign affairs committee, commented it would mark a big change for Europe.  

“Europe would have to stand up for its own security in an unprecedented way,” Röttgen said. 

Similarly, Valérie Hayer, who leads the Renew Europe group, and is French President Emmanuel Macron’s top lawmaker in Brussels, claims now is the perfect opportunity for Europe to start becoming more independent. 

“Europe has relied on the U.S. to provide its security for too long,” Hayer said.  “It’s high time for Europe to improve its own deterrence capacities and take its security into its own hands.” 

Restructuring trans-Atlantic relations would include multiple components, but the overarching theme centers around diverting economic reliance. Europe must look to other regional and global partners to ensure stability. This effort has already been seen in the geopolitically chaotic, yet productive, move to wean off of Russian oil exports.

Trump has said on multiple occasions, both in interviews and on his Truth social network, that the 2021 Russian invasion of Ukraine would never have happened if he had been in office. He even claimed that he delayed the invasion for years, citing his close-knit relationship and ability to influence Putin. However, Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, has claimed that it would not make a difference if Trump was in power, because the mutual trust between the United States and Russia was tarnished when President George W. Bush Jr. pulled the United States out of the anti-ballistic missile treaties, which many international relations scholars believe escalated a new arms race in the Post-Cold war era. Nevertheless, Trump has continued to double down on his claims on his ability to influence Russian foreign policy. 

Since the Marshall Plan, a bilateral transatlantic security relationship has been fostered between the U.S. and most of Western Europe, materialized in NATO. However, Trump has been a vocal critic of NATO for years, claiming that other states have been freeriding on the US economic and security contributions to the organization. In fact, foreign policy expert and widely-regarded author Anne Applebaum believes that there is a considerable chance that Trump would pull the U.S. out of NATO entirely. 

However, regardless of his win in the election in November, it is clear that an emerging fundamental shift in transatlantic security relations seems imminent. As the war continues on to its third year, US foreign aid is a rising contentious topic among Americans, and Europe will have to adjust accordingly.

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“Hi! This is Uzi Garcia,” the caller said. 

I was taken aback first by the caller’s distinctively young voice and then by their off-putting tone. As an intern on Capitol Hill, I routinely take calls from constituents and knew there was something different about this caller. Although I could tell there was something off about his voice, I could not pinpoint exactly what was wrong.

Then I heard him say, “I am a fourth grader at Robb Elementary School in Texas. Or at least I was until a man with an AR-15 killed 18 of my classmates, two teachers and me.” 

In February 2024, the parents of 6 victims of gun violence initiated “Shotline,” a campaign using artificial intelligence to recreate their children’s voices in calls to Congress. With the click of a button, users can send one of the six AI-generated calls to a congressional office of their choice. All calls start the same: the AI voice introduces themselves, explains their personality, describes the details of their death and then calls for stricter gun laws that may have prevented their deaths. As of Oct 28, 2024, 170,547 calls have been submitted to Congress. 

According to an interview with one of the six victims’ parents, the process for obtaining life-like audio of their deceased children was relatively easy. All it took was uploading one short audio clip of their children’s voices to the platform, Eleven Labs, an AI voice generator that supports 29 languages and accents. From there, parents typed in their messages and an AI-generated version of their child repeated it back to them. While the voices sound similar to the real kids’ voices, there is something distinctly unsettling about hearing a dead person talk to you — especially a child who was murdered in such a horrific manner. 

Extreme and powerful gun-violence advocacy campaigns are not uncommon — people still remember the “Evan” TV ad where seemingly ordinary scenes in a school setting subtly revealed signs of potential violence among students. However, Shotline crosses a new threshold as one of the first campaigns to use artificial intelligence in this way. Speaking as someone who listened to these calls and heard the voices’ disturbing and inhuman cadences, the impact of their messages cannot be understated. 

This intensity and shock have sparked debate on the use of artificial intelligence, especially to replicate those who have died. Proponents of the campaign say that advocating to Congress in conventional ways has gone nowhere. The father of Joaquin Oliver, a 17-year-old victim of the Majorie Stoneman Douglass High shooting, believes that if lawmakers won’t listen to him, maybe hearing from his son will have an impact. In his opinion, the campaign is supposed to disturb people. “Like, if you find this uncomfortable, … I think that you don’t know what uncomfortable means. I can tell you about feeling uncomfortable. When they let you know that your son, your loved one, was shot and you won’t be able to see him anymore.” 

The general public has had mixed views of the situation as well. In the comment section of one of Shotline’s posts, one user says, “What if everybody did this? It will break avenues to contact representatives when everyone does this.” Others see the Shotline project as exploiting the dead. “What you’re doing is disgusting and shameful. Putting words in dead people’s mouths, literally in their voices. Exploitation.” 

Other people are praising Shotline’s leaders for their courage and savvy in using this new tool to spur controversy and dialogue. One proponent states, “This is an amazing tool, and I’m so proud to have seen you guys here in Tulsa. You are doing great things in the name of love.” 

Along with the ethical debates, another possible ramification that is widely overlooked involves how this type of advocacy could change how congressional offices take calls. Currently, there are thousands of Congressional staff fielding constituent messages. While how many calls an office receives per day can change, my personal experience leads me to believe that offices can get up to hundreds of calls a day. Additionally, messages are only taken from real-life constituents; automated messages are rare and ignored. If AI-generated calls to Congress become more prevalent and the technology improves so that voices are indistinguishable from reality, how will Congressional staff be able to tell the difference? Petitioning your representatives is integral to political engagement, but these calls have the potential to complicate constituent engagement and representation.

AI-driven advocacy campaigns such as Shotline are a fascinating intersection of technology, ethics and activism. The chilling effect of hearing the simulated voices of deceased victims pleading for legislative action not only challenges conventional advocacy tactics but also calls into question the broader implications of AI in influencing public discourse and policymaking. As technology continues to advance, the ethical considerations surrounding its use in all areas of life will become increasingly complex. As we grapple with these dilemmas, it becomes imperative to navigate the intersection of technology and activism with sensitivity, transparency and a steadfast commitment to ethical principles.

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