Speaker 1: The following message is brought to you by Mark Riccobono, president, National Federation of the Blind. Live the life you want.
Mark Riccobono: Greetings fellow Federationists. Today is Wednesday, April 2, 2025, and this is presidential release number 548. As I was coming to record this release for our chapters, I thought that the most important thing for me to share with you was about our vigorous advocacy work, especially over the last month. I covered that extensively in the presidential release live yesterday, so I thought I would just share with you that recording because I think it covers the topics quite well.
Before I share that with you, let me remind all members of the Federation that this is our organization, especially our new members, and it's really important to ask questions and recognize that if you don't ask questions about why we do what we do, you may be operating on misinformation. And I find that I often come across members of ours who have operated on an assumption or what maybe someone told them, someone who wasn't well-informed about the Federation and why we do what we do.
So I want to encourage all of our members to ask those critical questions to really understand why we do what we do. You can of course talk to folks in your chapter and affiliate about that, but you can also reach out to the team at our national office, our membership committee, myself, for clarity on anything you're wondering about. One great way to do that is to send your questions to [email protected], and I know our membership committee will be pleased to get back with you and help you get to the resources you need.
Another great way to keep up on all that the Federation is doing of course, is to read what we publish in our Braille Monitor and other places because when we published it, we try to make it clear what our position is on the various things that we are doing. This is our organization. We should be engaged with it. We should be asking the questions and we should continue to learn so that we all can be good ambassadors of what we're doing.
And as long as we're talking membership, I want to thank those affiliates who have onboarded new members here in the first quarter of the year. I think maybe in May we'll review those stats. Please continue to reach out and onboard new members to the Federation so we can keep building on the great foundation that we have here. Now, I want to share with you from last night's presidential release live, our advocacy work that we've been doing over the last little while, and I also want to call out that it was a historic presidential release live number 50, our first being five years ago. So I would encourage you to listen to it. It's an entertaining release, but here is the advocacy section from last night's release.
Now let me talk to you about the tremendous amount of work we've been doing on the advocacy side of our work during the last month, and there is a lot of it. So to start off, at the last presidential release, we discussed the fact that the Medicare telehealth provisions were set to expire at the end of March. And we discussed that on March 5, we sent a letter to all members of Congress urging that they prioritize making sure that telehealth benefits were extended. We called on Federation members to get the word out to Congress, and you did that. When Congress passed the most recent continuing resolution last month, the Medicare telehealth benefits were included in the bill. Now, unfortunately, they were only made permanent through the end of the federal fiscal year, so through the end of September 2025.
We did in our letter urge that they be made permanent without having to be revisited. So your calls, your advocacy did make a difference, but we need you to continue to reach out to members of Congress and to advocate that these provisions be made permanent in a real way so that they don't have to be revisited on a regular basis. We will continue to monitor this, continue to press Congress from our national office, but we need you to do the same. Telehealth has been a great benefit to many people and of course certainly to blind people who face issues around transportation. We will continue to work on this, but I urge you to continue to press members of Congress on this.
On another front on March 14, the White House issued an executive order eliminating the Institute for Museum and Library Services. On March 19, we sent a letter to the chairs of the ranking members of the House and Senate Appropriation Committees to educate them on the important function that the IMLS has, especially as it relates to providing funding for libraries for the blind. In many states, the Regional Library for the Blind program is funded 100% because of federal funds that come from the IMLS program at the federal level, and so many Regional Libraries for the Blind are facing very dramatic shutdown.
We continue to monitor this and are concerned about it. We have been talking to the National Library Service, which of course is under the Library of Congress, and that service at the moment seems to be okay, but we're really worried about what's going to happen in many states where state funding is not used or is only partially used to support the Library for the Blind program.
So we urge all members to reach out to your members of Congress to continue to talk with your regional library to understand what the impact is and to help advocate for the continuation of those programs at the local level. Now, as of today, we've learned that most of the staff at IMLS has been placed on administrative leave, and so the funding is uncertain at this time, but we know that the staff is on administrative leave and that is being reviewed, so very concerned about that. We're going to have to continue to monitor that on a daily basis.
Now, on March 20, the White House issued an executive order to begin efforts to close the Department of Education. This was not a surprise, but we swung into action and on March 25, we sent a letter to the Secretary of Education asking for clarification and urging her to maintain a transition of critical programs for people with disabilities, especially blind people and enforcement of those programs in federal law.
We are going to continue to monitor this. These programs, of course, that are housed in the Department of Education currently include all services related to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and those protections, the Federal Quota system operated by the American Printing House for the Blind, Vocational Rehabilitation, of course under RSA and the Randolph Shepherd Program, which creates business opportunities for blind people, and finally, the Independent Living Services Program for older adults who are blind. These programs, we're not sure what the plan is.
We are continuing to reach out and get information about that, but again, we need to work to make sure members of Congress know that the blind of America want these programs protected and they do make a great difference. The Federation has not taken a formal position on the Department of Education itself, not our lane exactly. We want to protect these programs, and as long as they're well protected and the funding's protected, it's up to the administration and Congress to decide the best structure for that.
We simply want the programs to be preserved. Now, let's move to Social Security because I'm sure you have heard a lot about this in the news and the Federation has been very active since late February and into March as the Social Security Administration announced a number of new policies and administrative, drastic administrative cuts that are going to have an impact on blind people and are already having an impact on blind people. These include a reduction of a number of personnel, significant number of personnel and offices, and changes to the identification procedures and requirements that will require more beneficiaries to show up in person at offices, which creates an additional burden and the reinstatement of over-aggressive repayment collection procedures under the Social Security Administration.
These are all things directly impacting blind people. Already today, we have many examples of members who have been waiting already too long to hear about their benefits or their case, and this is only going to make the problem worse.
We know that these cuts will disproportionately harm people with disabilities. On March 26, we sent a letter to the Acting Commissioner of Social Security. We're continuing to do advocacy work with Congress and anywhere else we can find to raise this concern. If you find opportunities to do so, we would ask you to carry this message forward as well. We do expect to be taking additional action in this area, which I'm not at liberty to talk about this evening, but please stay tuned for that. All of these letters, in fact, all of our policy letters can be found on the NFB website in our policies section. We post all of our letters to Congress and to the departments in the executive branch so that our members are aware of them. Keep up the advocacy work. There's going to be a lot more to do to protect the programs that we have helped to establish in the federal government to support the independence of blind people.
Let me talk specifically now about our work in Congress because we have been creating great momentum there since our Washington seminar, and specifically I want to talk to you about the Access Technology Affordability Act, our momentum on this bill, and as a reminder, that's HR 1529 is really tremendous. In the last month, we have picked up 14 new co-sponsors bringing our total to 15 co-sponsors. We need to continue to build our co-sponsors for this legislation quite urgently because the greater number of co-sponsors we have, the greater shot that we have to get this bill incorporated into any tax bill reform that is going to be considered by Congress. We do know that there will be a tax package. We want the Access Technology Affordability Act to be included, so please very urgently contact your members of Congress, get their commitment and get them to sign on to be a co-sponsor of this bill in the house.
Now also over the last month or so, we have been talking about the lawsuit known now as Texas versus Kennedy. As a reminder, this suit threatens to eliminate our protections under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. Last month, I told you about the case and urged our members in the 17 states that have participated in bringing this lawsuit to urge the governor, the attorney general in those states to withdraw their participation in the case. We sent a letter to all 17 state's attorneys general and governors on March 4.
We've also been encouraging members to reach out if you aren't in those states, and feel free to put the pressure on those states to get out of this case, but of course, if you live in the state, you're going to have a lot more impact. We've also distributed a draft resolution that affiliates can pass that calls on the governor and attorney general to withdraw from this case and this attack on the Rehabilitation Act. So far, four of our 17 affiliates have passed that resolution either at a convention or through their board of directors.
If the convention is not meeting this spring, I urge you to do that if you're in one of those 17 states, and we've even had a couple of affiliates that aren't in the 17 states that have passed the resolution, so thank you for that support. We are trying to keep all the pressure on the right places and we will continue to monitor this. There is a hearing coming up on April 21 that will give us a lot more information about where we need to go in our advocacy efforts, so please stay tuned. But for now, especially if you're in one of those 17 states, please take efforts to urge the leadership in your state to withdraw from this case, which would have really damaging impacts on our protections as blind people in this country.
In addition to that message, I want to reiterate our work to reach out to former federal employees. As a matter of fact, yesterday a number of blind people were let go from the federal government. We're working with blind employees who have been let go from the federal government. We want to hear from them, so if you know of people, please encourage them to fill out our form. Also, want to let you know that we did not say this because it was not public, but it is today that the National Federation of the Blind has joined with other disability organizations to sue the Social Security Administration over the reductions in service that are going to have a harmful impact on blind people, so watch for more information about that. We are doing all that we can to protect the benefits that we have fought so hard for blind people and others to have from the federal government so we can go out and live the lives we want.
Our convention in New Orleans will be a key place to discuss this work and the work that will be upcoming in the next few months, so please plan to be with us in New Orleans at our convention in July. Now, I do have a few Federation family notes here on this release for you, and I'm going to go through those quickly from Virginia. Tracy Soforenko says that he's saddened to share the passing of Holly Frisch on February 3. Holly was a longtime leader in the Virginia affiliate and served as chapter president for the Fredericksburg chapter. It is notable that Holly also spent time serving as president in our affiliate in the District of Columbia from Pennsylvania. Harriet Go reports the passing of longtime member of the Keystone Chapter of the NFB of Pennsylvania, Pat Grebloski on February 18, 2025. She says that Pat was a longtime member and an unforgettable spirit in the chapter. Pat served in many capacities in the chapter going back to its founding in 1990, and most recently, she served as the chapter treasurer.
From West Virginia, Sherri Cook shares with us that member and friend of the blind of West Virginia, Bruce Higgs has transitioned. He was always with the members at conventions with his camera, and with a smile and ready to do what was needed. From Maryland, Ronza Othman reports the passing of Ray Branch, who was a longtime member of the Greater Baltimore chapter, a driver for the NFB of Maryland, and of course, he served for many, many years as an employee of the National Federation of the Blind. He passed away on February 14 of this year.
She says that Mr. Branch's voice is very recognizable from his time working the NFB switchboard, and she urges that we keep his family in our thoughts and prayers from Rhode Island. We received the news from Grace Pires that our dear friend and longtime member Cathy Gaffney recently passed away. Despite her prolonged illness, she continued to participate actively in Federation meetings right up through February. She was a strong mentor in the Federation, and of course, she also was married to Richard Gaffney, who was the previous president of the NFB of Rhode Island.
From Ohio, we've received the sad news from the Capital chapter of the affiliate of the passing of their treasurer, John Diaco Giorgio, I hope I pronounced the name right, who passed away on January 2. Sorry, the news didn't get to us earlier. John was a very active member of the chapter there, and he will be missed. I would encourage you to keep all of these people, their friends, family, and of course our members who loved and interacted with them in your thoughts and prayers.
That does bring me to the end of this release. I hope that you will continue to stay engaged with our advocacy efforts and as spring blooms across the country, I encourage you to get out and share the word of the National Federation of the Blind. Before we conclude, we do have some of the customary endings I wanted to share with you.
The first is, why did the sausage quit playing baseball? Well, because he was the worst on the team. And why did Cinderella get kicked off the baseball team? Well, it's because she always ran away from the ball. And because I'm off to the NFB of Wisconsin convention tomorrow, what do you call cheese that is not yours? Well, that would be nacho cheese of course. Let's go build the National Federation of the Blind.
Speaker 1: The preceding message was brought to you by Mark Riccobono, president, National Federation of the Blind, 410-659-9314. [email protected]. Follow President Riccobono on Mastodon. Just search for @[email protected]. Let's go build the National Federation of the Blind.