Services for disabled children at high risk in 2026

California is home to nearly 1 million children with physical, developmental or cognitive disabilities — most of whom receive at least some services through Medicaid. But cuts from President Donald Trump’s sweeping budget bill have put those crucial services at risk — leaving California parents worried about their children’s futures.

As CalMatters’ Carolyn Jones explains, the $1-trillion cuts to Medicaid over 10 years help fund a broad range of services to disabled children, including speech and physical therapy, wheelchairs and in-home aides. They can receive therapy through regional centers, which seek to help people with disabilities live as independently as possible. California’s regional centers work through a network of 21 nonprofits — a third of which are funded by Medicaid.

Medicaid also pays for therapists, equipment, vision and hearing tests and other services for schools, which are accessible to all students, not just those with disabilities. 

But because of the federal budget’s funding cuts — which were made to help offset the cost of extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthy — money for the regional centers will run out by the end of January, and it’s unclear what services will be on the chopping block.

• Kristin Wright, executive director of inclusive practices and systems at the Sacramento County Office of Education: “We have a delicate web of services that, combined, support a whole child, a whole family. So when the basic foundational structure is upended, like Medicaid, for example, it’s not just one cut from a knife. It’s multiple.”

The cuts are raising alarm among some California families, such as Los Angeles resident Lelah Coppedge. She and her husband have a 16-year-old son with cerebral palsy. Though both parents work and have private health insurance, they could not afford their son’s care — which includes a nurse who comes four days a week to help him with basic activities — without government help.

• Coppedge: “I go down this rabbit hole of worst-case scenarios. Before this happened, I felt there was a clear path for my son. Now that path is going away, and it’s terrifying.”

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For making what he views as concessions to the Trump administration, Gov. Gavin Newsom has been quick to admonish some industries and institutions — like when he slammed law firms for “selling out” to the administration’s demands this year, and threatened to pull state funding from California universities that made certain agreements with Trump.

But when it comes to Big Tech, the governor takes a more forgiving approach, writes CalMatters’ Jeanne Kuang. 

At The New York Times’ finance summit Wednesday, Newsom characterized tech leaders’ efforts to court Trump’s favor as “situational” and that he doesn’t see their apparent shift to the right “as big a shift as perhaps others do.”

• Newsom: “I think it’s a little bit more, I don’t want to say the word transactional, but it’s fiduciary.”

As a former mayor of San Francisco, Newsom has had a long relationship with tech executives. California relies on the industry’s gains to help balance its budget, and if Newsom decides to run for president in 2028, he could find Silicon Valley’s wealthy donors valuable.

• Peter Leroe-Muñoz, a senior vice president at the Bay Area Council: “At the end of the day the governor recognizes that we all have a stake in the success of California and so not cutting off ties or undermining those industry players is in the long term success of the Golden State.”

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A new poll examining California voters’ opinion of the Trump administration’s campaign to rein in immigrants, including those with criminal convictions, shows waning support for the administration’s policies — even among a slim majority of Republicans, reports CalMatters’ Wendy Fry.

Commissioned by pro-immigrant organizations, the poll by Goodwin Simon Strategic Research surveyed 1,200 self-identified voters. It found that 84% of Democrats, 61% of independents and 54% of Republicans agreed that “even if someone does have a record, they deserve due process … before being deported.”

On the topic of California’s sanctuary laws, 61% said they want California prisons to stop directly handing immigrants over to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation. 

The new poll is consistent with other recent surveys that found voters disapprove Trump’s immigration tactics. Last week, a UC Berkeley poll found that one-third of Latino voters who supported Trump now regret their decision, and the Public Policy Institute of California reported 71% of Californians surveyed disapproved of the job ICE is doing.

Read more here.