Alexis Ratcliff is 19 and she’s lived, since she was 13, in a hospital in North Carolina. This week, the disabled woman moved to her own apartment. When she saw the spacious, renovated place for the first time, she celebrated. “Oh, it’s beautiful,” she said, her voice quiet and awed, as she maneuvered her power wheelchair down the wide and newly built wood ramp.
The Trump administration celebrated, too, and put out a press release to mark its role in helping the state get Ratcliff home. But the release from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services left out one detail: The Trump administration, in its budget request for the next fiscal year, zeroed out the money for the program that helped Ratcliff move.