Polly Tribble, executive director of Disability Rights Mississippi, keeps a list of victories, large and small, close at hand. Most recently, it was the story of a wheelchair-bound child in a Mississippi Delta school whom administrators had forced out of regular classes and left to simply watch TV. The child had no apparent learning disabilities, no challenges with taking on regular coursework. But the child’s physical disability had convinced an incurious administration to shuffle the child out of sight to languish.
“Now, because of our intervention, they have been in regular classes, and they’re set to graduate in May,” Tribble told the Mississippi Free Press on May 9. “And without that intervention, they’d probably still be there, watching TV.”
The help offered to that rural student is just one example of DRMS’s role as Mississippi’s sole protection and advocacy agency for Mississippians with disabilities. Federal law mandates that each state must have its own independent entity licensed to intervene on behalf of disabled residents in potential cases of mistreatment or abuse.
For two weeks, the Trump administration continued its wide-reaching, frenzied efforts to restructure and downsize the federal government. Funding delays forced the agency to stop taking new clients, leaving children and adults in educational and care institutions across the state at risk of abuse.
On Wednesday morning, more than half a million dollars in delayed funds finally arrived, ending the immediate crisis for Mississippi’s primary disability rights watchdog.
But the freeze may ultimately be a vision of a much more difficult future. On the horizon, proposals to slash federal funds could permanently derail the agency’s ability to intervene on behalf of some of the most vulnerable residents of the state.
“This is the cause of 100% of the problems we have right now,” Tribble told the Mississippi Free Press. “We’ve averted this crisis for this year, but we’re staring at significant cuts for next year. If the president’s budget goes through, that will force us to drastically cut services.”
‘It’s The Epitome of Waste’
Through the first half of May, Disability Rights Mississippi had not received federal funding for five of its eight programs, causing the organization to pause its intake of cases at the beginning of the month.
“This is a threat to the rights of one in three Mississippi adults who live with a disability,” Scott Crawford, an advocate for people with disabilities, said while speaking to a crowd of protesters at a rally outside the Mississippi Capitol on May 1. “Yes, you heard me right: One in three Mississippian adults live with an access and functional needs.”
DRMS was supposed to receive about $1.3 million from the federal government, but is missing $582,000 for the 2025 fiscal year, which started in October 2024, DRMS Communications Director Jane Carroll told the Mississippi Free Press in an interview on May 2.
“It seems like everyone’s kind of finding out about these cuts and changes at the same time as we are, so we really don’t have anywhere to turn,” Carroll said.
The federal government and the State of Mississippi financially support Disability Rights Mississippi’s work. Then-Gov. William Winter formally licensed it in 1982, after former Gov. Cliff Finch ordered its creation in 1977 under the Protection & Advocacy for Individuals with Mental Illness Act, or PAIMI. This federal law mandates the existence of an agency such as DRMS: independent from the state, with the authority to enter personal care facilities and other public and private institutions to ensure safety and accessibility for disabled people.
With that mandate comes federal funds to perform these functions. The U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, oversees the PAIMI program.
While the federal government’s new fiscal years always start in October, sometimes DRMS would see a delay in funding for one of its programs in the past, but the organization always got its money by mid-May, Carroll said. By February or March, she said, the missing funds raised red flags for DRMS leadership. The organization contacted the Administration on Community Living, whose leaders told DRMS that funding would arrive in about six weeks. That time passed, and still no money came in.
“It’s the epitome of waste. All this elimination of waste and here we are sitting on our thumbs, not able to do our jobs because we’re trying to be fiscally conservative to last as long as we can,” DRMS Litigation Director Greta Kemp Martin told the Mississippi Free Press on May 6.
National Disability Rights Network Public Policy Director Eric Buehlmann said many other states had not received all of their PAIMI funding for the 2025 fiscal year. Typically, Congress will drop down all of the funding for protection and advocacy agencies at one time, he said.
Some agencies are having trouble fulfilling their clients’ needs because of the lack of funding, he added. Buelhmann said some employees also worry about job security and potential layoffs due to not having enough money, since a large percentage of the protection and advocacy agencies’ budget goes to payroll.
“It probably affects the smaller states, smaller agencies more because they may not have as many outside resources as some of the other bigger states may have, so they tend to run a tighter budget. … Because they don’t get as much money, they don’t get as much wiggle room when the funding comes in,” he told the Mississippi Free Press on May 9.
‘It’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the People at HHS’
While the delayed funds created weeks of uncertainty and a gap in protection for disabled Mississippians, the temporary crisis of fiscal year 2025 is only the tip of the iceberg. Even more concerning for advocates are the Trump White House’s proposed cuts in the fiscal-year 2026 budget to programs overseen by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The developmental disabilities program and the voter access program are both at risk of losing funding under Trump’s 2026 fiscal year proposed budget. The federal government could cut the funding for the PAIMI program alone by 65% under the plan, catastrophically reducing the functionality of independent advocates for disabled people across the country.
But Eric Buehlmann warned that the coming cuts would significantly harm numerous other programs that benefit and protect vulnerable populations.
“ (It would) definitely get rid of the developmental disability program,” he told the Mississippi Free Press on May 9. “This is a program out there primarily helping families and their children with disabilities get access to the education system.”
Much of DRMS’s work in Mississippi is not merely voluntary activism or a charitable contribution to an overburdened mental health system. Federal law is clear: Protection and advocacy are mandatory for all states and territories of the United States. Without DRMS or another licensed and funded agency capable of taking on its work, disabled Mississippians’ legal rights to oversight and protection from abuse would be violated.
“We have eight different programs from eight different funding streams,” Polly Tribble said. “Five of those are under HHS. Those are the programs at risk of being either eliminated or drastically cut.”
But a difficult question emerges in the absence of funding for such a critical service: Who is responsible? Federal law requires that protection and advocacy work must be done, but without the money, what entity or agency is responsible for the harm that results?
The Mississippi Free Press first contacted the Mississippi Department of Mental Health while the funding was still frozen. Adam Moore, director of planning and communications, responded that DMH “could not speak to” the absence of protection and advocacy for disabled Mississippians in the wake of DRMS’ case freeze.
“The governor’s office designates the protection and advocacy organization, so I’d have to refer you there for this info or further details,” he said on May 6.
The Mississippi Free Press then reached out to the Office of the Governor to ask what, if any, actions the State would take in the wake of the freeze and ahead of what may be massive cuts to the funding structure for Mississippi’s PAIMI enforcer. Gov. Tate Reeves’ office did not respond. Nor did the offices of U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Mississippi, or U.S. House Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Mississippi.
But what is a right if there is no one to defend it? For whatever responsibility Mississippi’s state and congressional representatives have to disabled residents across the state, it was not their decision to slow-roll the release of critical mental health funding, nor to propose a permanent two-thirds cut for years to come.
That distinction, Tribble said, falls on the federal government. “It’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the people at HHS that made these cuts.” And clarity on how or why these cuts will happen is difficult in the chaos of Trump’s second administration. “ The liaisons in all of the programs that we have don’t know either,” Tribble admitted. “The contacts we have at HHS are either gone because they were fired, or they don’t know what’s going on.”
The Mississippi Free Press asked the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services about the plans. An HHS spokesperson declined to comment on the proposed cuts to mental health care programs in the FY 2026 budget, but provided a statement attributed to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration stating that the funding for PAIMI was coming “according to statutory timelines.”
“The distribution of PAIMI funds follows a formula based on each state’s population and relative per capita income,” the statement said. “For Fiscal Year 2025, Mississippi’s total PAIMI allotment is $473,700. Of that amount, $332,563 has already been disbursed, and the third-quarter payment was issued on Friday, May 2, 2025. All grant payments are administered in accordance with federal funding procedures and statutory timelines. SAMHSA remains committed to supporting our grantees and will continue working closely with Disability Rights Mississippi to ensure the availability of essential protection and advocacy services for individuals with mental illness across the state.”
That promise of funds to come proved accurate in the days following HHS’s response. But legal services providers like DRMS couldn’t gamble on funds that hadn’t arrived.
“(For PAIMI), what they’ve done is they’ve only made basically 75% of the funding available. And so if you happen to have been running more mental health cases or something like that, over the course of your fiscal year, now you don’t have access to the rest of the funds,” Buehlmann said.
Legal Questions Arise Over Missing Funding
Jordyn Zimmerman received an autism diagnosis at a young age and was nonverbal. Many other children at school treated her as an outcast.
When she was 18, Disability Rights Ohio gave her an augmentative and alternative communication device that she can type on that reads aloud what she wrote. Now, Zimmerman, 30, is the board chair of nonprofit CommunicationFIRST, an Apple Distinguished Educator, and is a two-time appointee on The U.S. President’s Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities.
She provides consultation services for schools, educators and families to help schools provide inclusive education for all students. Zimmerman graduated with her bachelor’s degree in education policy from Ohio University, obtained a Master of Education degree at Boston College and earned her Master of Business Administration degree at Quantic School of Business and Technology.
“A lot of work that our members do is sort of that individual, small group thing. That’s where you’re getting all of these massive impacts,” National Disability Rights Network Public Policy Director Eric Buehlmann told the Mississippi Free Press on May 9.
ABC News Investigative Reporter Geraldo Rivera exposed the Willowbrook State Developmental Center in New York in 1972 for treating patients unethically and inhumanely. His exposé of assisted-care facilities inspired Congress to establish protections and advocacy agencies in 1975 by passing the Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act.
The protection and advocacy agencies from each state are part of the National Disability Rights Network. Disability Rights Mississippi began serving the people of Mississippi in 1982. Over the years, protection and advocacy agencies grew to include other programs alongside the developmental disabilities program.
DRMS Keeps Eyes Out for Accessibility
Gaps in funding, and the risk of defunding in the future, threatened the following programs: Protection and Advocacy of Individuals with Mental Illness; Protection and Advocacy of Individuals with Developmental Disabilities; Protection and Advocacy for Assistive Technology; Protection and Advocacy for Traumatic Brain Injury; and Protection and Advocacy for Voting Accessibility (ACL).
All of these programs are housed under the Administration on Community Living, except the Protection and Advocacy of Individuals with Mental Illness, which is under the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services provides the federal funding.
“Even if these cuts or delays are in the name of ‘efficiency’ and things like that, we are helping people stay out of institutions, which are actually much more expensive on taxpayers,” Jane Carroll said.
When a person brings forth an issue that occurred that they think happened because of their disability, DRMS uses the disability to determine which program and funding category the case falls under.
Some of the work DRMS does through the developmental disabilities program includes helping public-school students get disability accommodations and watching out for people with developmental disabilities who live in institutions, residential facilities or group homes.
Part of DRMS’s work in the voting accessibility realm includes monitoring voting machines at polling places to make sure they’re working and making sure people with disabilities can physically access their precinct. However, without federal funding, Greta Kemp Martin said DRMS would not have been able to have a physical presence at voting precincts during the municipal general elections across Mississippi towns and cities in June, like it usually does. DRMS will have a hotline that voters can call with accessibility concerns.
“We will be limited on what advocacy steps we can take with any complaint,” Martin said on May 6, while the funding was still being withheld. “So, a lot of what we’ll be doing with hotlines is referring people (and) whatever we can do over the phone to get people what they need. Whereas in the past, when we would get complaints throughout the day, we would send a team out to those precincts to kind of help remedy the problem as immediately as we could.” Now, that functionality has been restored—though perhaps only for a time.
Another stream of funding for voter accessibility comes from the Protection and Advocacy for Voters Access program delegated through the Help America Vote Act, which Martin said could be “next on the cutting block.”
“We had to pull back, not just on taking new cases, but we also, in an effort to be fiscally responsible, we pulled back on things like travel and reimbursement for expenses that people would normally incur when they go out and do our polling accessibility work,” Martin said.
In the assistive technology area, DRMS ensures people know what resources are available to them and gives them access to technology “that can help them work or live more independently,” Carroll said.
Through its work in its mental illness program, DRMS investigates personal care homes and monitors the living conditions of people who stay in institutions, residential facilities or group homes.
“We’ve actually filed more than 20 lawsuits in the last probably year and a half against personal care homes and thus far have been totally successful in having them shut down or having them get the appropriate licensure to make sure they’re being monitored,” Carroll said.
Ultimately, funding protection and advocacy agencies to assist people with disabilities is cheaper than placing disabled people in personal-care facilities, so a lack of funding for the agencies would mean an uptick in institutional admissions, Buehlmann said.
What’s Next?
DRMS received funding for its Protection and Advocacy for Individual Rights and the Protection and Advocacy for Beneficiaries of Social Security programs the morning of May 14.
DRMS staff members first contacted the governor and other lawmakers to ask for help. The national Disability Rights Network out of Washington, D.C., is looking at other protection and advocacy agencies nationwide to have a “united front” to approach the next steps of the legal process, Greta Kemp Martin said.
“It’s all been so disheartening, and the idea that we have to pick up the phone and tell people we can’t help them, it just does something to you,” she said on May 6.
DRMS will continue monitoring institutions as long as it can fund the work, but Tribble said the organization could be forced to lay off workers if it does not get funding from the federal government.
The chaos in the federal government made seeking precise answers on why the funding had been held and when it might arrive incredibly difficult.
“The liaisons in all of the programs that we have, they don’t know (about the funding) either. So, the contacts we have at HHS are either gone because they were fired or they don’t know what’s going on,” Tribble said.
Helping students with disabilities gain accommodations at school makes up the majority of the work that the developmental disabilities program conducts, Eric Buehlmann said.
Jane Carroll emphasized the necessity of DRMS’s work.
“We do not want to go back to those days when there was no one looking in on these facilities or places where vulnerable people live,” she said. “Our work is so important and unique because our congressional mandate gives us this access authority to go into facilities. We can show up unannounced and look at records and interview people and make sure people are being protected. Nobody else has that authority for attorneys on staff to investigate these matters.”