The Trump administration has canceled orders for truckloads of food — including cases of milk, eggs, cheese, chicken and fruit — that had been slated for Missouri and Kansas food pantries and hunger outreach groups beginning in April.

As part of an ongoing campaign to slash the federal budget, the U.S. Department of Agriculture pulled the plug on $500 million worth of government commodities designated for food banks nationwide.

Caught in the fray were scheduled deliveries to Harvesters, the food bank that serves the Kansas City area and helps supply food to area food pantries, community kitchens and shelters. The organization got word on March 25 that orders coming to both Kansas and Missouri had been called off. 

For Kansas, Harvesters said canceled commodity orders included 4,176 cases of foods like canned vegetables and soup, along with 11,736 packages of items like containers of eggs, packages of cheese and cartons of milk. The organization had not learned details about what orders to its Missouri service area had been called off, but officials said the entire state is destined to lose 45 truckloads of shelf-stable and perishable commodity food.

Karen Siebert, public policy and advocacy adviser at Harvesters, said no explanation came with word of the canceled shipments, which had been slated to arrive between April and August. It’s possible some of the food was already en route, she said. 

Siebert hopes the orders can be reinstated if they are shifted to a different federal funding source — one that hasn’t been slashed by the Trump administration. But any shipments that are lost, she said, will be a blow to people who rely on food pantries.

The high-protein staples that come from the U.S. government aren’t easily replaced by donations or other sources.

“It’s some of the best food that we receive,” Siebert said. “I heard someone here call it ‘center of the plate food.’ … It’s a really healthy, important resource for families.”

The canceled shipments represent only a portion of the food Harvesters is expecting from the federal government. And Harvesters is less dependent on government shipments than food banks in other parts of the country. About $7.6 million of its $27.3 million in 2024 revenue came from government programs. Meanwhile, $18.6 million came from private support.

But at a time when the cost of food and other basic needs continues to increase, any loss of government support will be felt. News of the canceled deliveries comes as Congress seems poised to cut safety-net programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which gives low-income Americans money to buy food.

Harvesters distributed 60 million pounds of food in 2024, down from the 77 million pounds it distributed in 2021 during the height of COVID-19, but still more than the 53 million pounds it distributed in 2019, the year before the pandemic. 

The food bank operates in 27 Missouri and Kansas counties, working with 489 food pantries, 69 school pantries, 54 community kitchens and dozens of other programs that connect those in need with food.

Epidemic of food insecurity

Food insecurity is a growing issue nationally.

Feeding America, an organization that focuses on hunger, estimates that in 2023 more than 47 million Americans, including one in five children, were experiencing food insecurity, meaning that they didn’t have the money or other resources necessary to get enough food. That was a 38% jump from 2021.

Organizations that work to mitigate hunger said the problem is only growing. Even before federal aid cuts, food banks and other hunger organizations were struggling to keep up, Siebert said.

“It’s not like it’s easy now,” she said. “We are just nervous about what’s coming down the pike.”

The cuts affecting Harvesters, involving commodities purchased through a program overseen by the secretary of agriculture, come on top of $1 billion in cuts the Trump administration made to federal funding that was designated to help schools and food banks buy fresh food and meat from local farmers. 

Thomas Smith, chief business officer with The Kansas City Food Hub, a cooperative association of small urban farmers, said many of his organization’s members increased production based on a belief that those federal programs would provide a reliable market. One farmer sold meat to school districts in Kansas, for example, while others sold produce to food banks. 

The programs, set up by the Biden administration to help bolster local food production markets during the COVID pandemic, supported farmers and brought a nutritious food source to hunger outreach programs. Eliminating the programs, Smith said, will be devastating.

“We’re going to lose some of the few small farmers we have,” he said.

A Kansas program modeled after the federal farm-to-food-bank program has also been eliminated, Siebert said. During recent budget negotiations, state legislators eliminated $900,000 that would have funded the program next year.

Other Kansas City-area hunger outreach groups are also seeing federal funding go away.

Double Up Food Bucks, a program administered by the Mid-America Regional Council, hasn’t lost federal funding yet, but two grants that were up for renewal have been put on hold. Donna Martin, the program’s director, said most of the program’s budget is at stake, but the government isn’t explaining anything, including whether funding will return.

The program, which reached about 180,000 people in 2023, gives people in Missouri and Kansas who receive SNAP benefits matching funds to spend on fresh produce at farmers markets or grocery stores. Like many food assistance programs, Double Up Food Bucks doesn’t just support people in need of food. It also puts money in the pockets of local farmers and grocers.

Cultivate KC, which promotes urban farming and runs a program to help immigrants become farmers, has already seen several of its 14 federal grants frozen, said Brien Darby, the organization’s executive director. 

Federal grants provide three-quarters of Cultivate KC’s funding, but right now the organization is sitting on $80,000 in bills that haven’t been reimbursed under those federal grants. Darby said the organization has enough funding to make it until June. After that there will have to be changes if federal dollars aren’t restored.

Darby is trying to remain hopeful. Cultivate KC has joined other farming organizations in a lawsuit filed last week against the Trump administration.

“It feels like we’re in a time right now where that’s the best way to keep the government accountable,” Darby said.

The post Trump administration’s cuts cancel food deliveries to Harvesters appeared first on The Beacon.

Wyoming’s lone congressional Rep. Harriet Hageman will no longer appear at town halls set for later this week in Cheyenne and Torrington, opting instead for virtual events, she announced Tuesday.

Her office blamed the change on “public events, credible threats to Hageman, and the related national outbursts of politically motivated violence and attempts at intimidation,” according to a statement posted to the congresswoman’s website. 

In response, Wyoming Democrats said Hageman and other conservatives were seeking to distract from widespread frustration with President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s dismantling of some federal agencies. 

“I don’t think she expected the pushback that she received,” Democratic Party Chairman Joe Barbuto said. “In every community of every size that she visited, there were people of all political stripes there to say ‘hey, we’re really concerned.’”

Hageman had scheduled events in Cheyenne on Friday and Torrington on Saturday. Her decision to move them to a virtual format comes six days after a raucous crowd of more than 500 jeered the congresswoman during a tense town hall in Laramie. Though people in the crowd booed and cursed Hageman, no one was asked to leave or escorted out amid a heavy law enforcement presence, a Laramie police officer told WyoFile that night. No arrests were reported.

At one point during the back-and-forth, Hageman told her constituents that “it’s so bizarre to me how obsessed you are with the federal government. You guys are going to have a heart attack if you don’t calm down,” she said. “I’m sorry, you’re hysterical.”

Hageman cites other incidents 

More than 20 law enforcement officers were assigned to a town hall the following night in Wheatland, the statement from Hageman’s office said. “Despite the law enforcement presence, an attendee followed Hageman leaving the venue and initiated a physical confrontation with staff, into which local police were forced to intervene,” the statement reads. 

WyoFile has reached out to the Wheatland Police Department and is awaiting more information on the events described by Hageman. 

“I thank our wonderful law enforcement community for their willingness to support the public and myself while participating in our government process,” Hageman said in a statement. “It has become apparent, however, that the continuation of in-person town halls will be a drain on our local resources due to safety concerns for attendees.”

The congresswoman further alleged that her office received a number of credible threatening calls and emails, which are now the subject of a law enforcement investigation.

The Wyoming Democratic Party “certainly does not condone any kinds of violence or threats or harassment of any kind,” Barbuto said. Both elected officials and their staff in both political parties should be able to operate free from fears for their physical safety, he said.

“But at the same time, we have a fundamental right to protest,” he said. “The idea that protest is the same as chaos and using that to justify cancelling these public events is a disservice.” 

Hageman said she’s held 75 in-person town halls since running for Congress, with events in all 23 of Wyoming’s counties. All but the most recent two were held without incident, she said. 

The move to a virtual format for future events will continue “at least in the short-term,” her office said.

“It’s no secret that I am willing to engage with citizens on any topic, in any place. But I draw the line when organized protestors intentionally create confrontation and chaos, escalating tensions to a point where violence seems inevitable,” Hageman said in a statement.

Lawmakers often host town hall events in their communities during congressional downtime. In a conservative state like Wyoming, those gatherings often draw many supporters of the state’s all-Republican congressional delegation. 

But amid Trump and Musk’s dramatic cuts to federal programs and mass layoffs of government workers, upset constituents have been appearing in growing numbers at town halls across the country to demand answers from lawmakers. Republican leaders in Congress urged members to stop hosting town halls to avoid confrontations with angry constituents going viral. 

History of protests

After the Laramie event, some conservative politicians and pundits, citing the raucous nature of the event in a conservative state, suggested that the protesters weren’t legitimate constituents. But Laramie, one of the few blue-leaning communities in deeply red Wyoming, has a history of civil disobedience for left-leaning causes. During the summer and fall of 2020, for instance, hundreds of people marched through downtown to protest police brutality and the police shooting of local resident Robbie Ramirez.

One of the city’s House representatives, Karlee Provenza, described those making assertions about protesters flocking into town from other places as ignorant to Laramie’s civic nature. 

“Welcome to House District 45,” she said, “where we think a little different than the people who are sent to Washington D.C. on our behalf.”

In Laramie, Provenza continued, “people have continued to show up for things that matter to them. And they are fed up and they’re your constituents. And instead of acknowledging their concerns you [Hageman] were dismissive, so of course they were upset.”

To Provenza, the overarching message of Hageman’s tour through Wyoming, and the pushback she has seen in various towns and cities, is not that the state’s few Democrats are somehow unruly or dangerous. It is instead that certain actions of the Trump administration, and Elon Musk’s DOGE cost-cutting initiative in particular, are upsetting people, she said.

“Quite frankly, I think it’s lazy to say that their anger and suffering is not valid and has no place here,” she said of Hageman’s characterization of the reaction seen on her tour. “That’s what someone says who doesn’t have to work for their vote.” 

The post Hageman cancels in-person town halls, opts for virtual events citing safety concerns appeared first on WyoFile .

Trump administration funding terminations, freezes and layoffs are keeping some North Dakota farmers and rural nonprofits from continuing USDA and other federally funded projects.

In some cases, projects long in the making were terminated or thrown into uncertainty, washing away months and even years of work.

In others, promised funds haven’t been released, leaving some footing the bill for equipment purchased and work half completed. 

Nonprofit groups that work with local farmers across the state, like the Foundation for Agricultural and Rural Resource Management and Sustainability (FARRMS), are also losing their ability to deliver on projects. 

For FARRMS executive director Stephanie Blumhagen, one frustration has been a lack of information, particularly since funding can go through multiple layers of entities. 

The situation also causes issues where contracts were already agreed upon, meaning work must continue on projects that may not be funded. 

FARRMS, almost entirely funded by USDA grants, had three programs frozen and one large project terminated – unless funding eventually comes through. 

It was also involved in the North Central Regional Food Business Center, a project promoting partnerships with farmers and local economic development commissions and other stakeholders to build stronger local food systems. The project had already been active for two years and involved 35 partner organizations in North Dakota, Minnesota and South Dakota.

This included regranting of $205,000 by the Region Five Development Commission to five farms and local food businesses in North Dakota to build out the program last year. FARRMS had to dissolve all contracts related to the program because of funding uncertainty.

“Not only does that represent a financial loss to all of these organizations who had restructured their budgets, (but) we were gearing up to do this work of providing technical assistance to local businesses in their communities,” Blumhagen said. “We’ve lost all this momentum, and potentially, partnerships.” 

Blumhagen said funding to programs like these run by small rural nonprofits are a “percentage of a percent” of the USDA budget. 

“We’re really efficient. We leverage other resources, we work together, we network. So this funding freeze is creating roadblocks and inefficiencies,” Blumhagen said. “It’s making us spend time restructuring. It’s the opposite of creating efficiency.” 

Program terminations 

So far, federal and USDA program terminations include three in North Dakota. 

Two of those are the USDA’s Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) program and the Local Food for Schools and Child Care (LFSCC) program. 

Great Plains Food Bank was a participant in the LFPA, using the funding to purchase food from local farmers, growers and ranchers to support children, families and seniors suffering from food insecurity, according to Darby Njos, communications manager at the organization. 

“Unfortunately, with these cuts now in place, we had to have difficult conversations with farmers expecting to participate in the program,” Njos said. “While this does impact us as a food bank, it more significantly affects our local farmers, growers, and ranchers who were relying on these funds.”

For the LFSCC program targeting schools and childcare facilities, the state would have been awarded $1.8 million to help cover purchases of locally produced food for schools and around $870,000 for purchases for childcare facilities. 

The state applied for the funds but was never approved for the final award since it overlapped with the incoming administration and intensive budget cuts. 

Another termination is the Working Lands Conservation Corps, which supported conservation and agricultural resilience projects by training youth in careers related to climate-smart agriculture and conservation. 

For North Dakota, that means the loss of an internship at the U.S. Geological Survey office in Jamestown under the National Ecological Observatory Network for ecological field data collection.

Dakota Angus, a beef producer near Drake, had been awarded nearly $500,000 under a separate Local Food Promotion Program (LFPP), which was reportedly frozen in some states. 

Ashley Bruner, a member of the family operating the ranch who manages the grant, said the full amount was awarded and the ranch hasn’t been impacted by any freeze.

Reflecting some of the confusion others feel about a lack of information, however, ranch owner Blaine Bruner said it was uncertain if future funding would come through the program.

“Nobody knows,” he said. “Whether it’s markets or whatever, the whole damn country doesn’t know what’s going on. That’s the problem we got.” 

Attempts to get clarity from the USDA office in Bismarck about what programs have been impacted were routed to a national USDA spokesperson. 

The spokesperson said U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins is carefully reviewing all Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) implemented during the Biden administration and will continue providing updates on what funding is going forward. 

Funding freezes, layoff disruptions 

Funds for the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities Program and the Rural Energy Assistance Program (REAP) are frozen, according to people impacted by those freezes and federal data available about ongoing awards. 

Other programs, such as the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) and Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) were reviewed and approved by Rollins and are going forward. 

“In terms of CSP and EQIP, we are still accepting applications and fulfilling contracts,” Anna Bahnson, outreach coordinator for the USDA National Resources Conservation Service in North Dakota, said. 

“There was a pause initially, and often in any transition there is a pause, but that’s no longer the case,” Bahnson said. 

For those involved in the Climate-Smart and REAP programs, it is uncertain if those funds will be unfrozen. 

Impacted by the freeze of the Climate-Smart program is a $5.75 million cost-share project involving between 150-200 farmers in northeastern North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota, according to Walsh County district conservation manager Josh Anderson, who was instrumental in securing the grant. 

This project would have incentivized farmers to plant multispecies cover crops and incorporate livestock grazing on cropland to improve soil health, as well as promote locally raised, grass-fed livestock. 

Parts of the state have lost up to 50% of their rich topsoil over the past century, and programs like this are meant to help restore some of that loss or reduce further erosion. 

Funding was frozen just weeks before the first batch was expected to roll in, Anderson said. 

While not yet terminated, a delay means waiting a full growing season if the funds eventually materialize – also still uncertain – setting the project back by a year. 

The proposal was accepted a year ago after several solid months of planning.

“It was locally designed, it would have had a lot of input from farmers and ranchers and conservation districts all pulling together, working together,” Anderson said. “There’s a lot of folks here that were really interested and excited about the prospect of being able to convert some of their acres to this kind of model, which would promote soil health.” 

Brian Mothershead, a farmer and soil conservation board member in Rolette County, is also impacted by the freeze to the Climate-Smart funding. 

He’d been selected for a grant under the program to promote no-till farming and rotational grazing of cattle. Because of this, he purchased a used no-till air seeder, intending to use the funding to help pay for it. 

With the final $8,000 he was owed now frozen, however, he’s stuck with equipment he might not use. 

“I’m unsure whether the program grant has been eliminated or just suspended,” he said. “The only real effect it has on me is this air seeder payment, which I will either figure out a different way to pay for, or sell it.” 

A freeze on $410 million in REAP payments impacts farmers across the country and in North Dakota. The majority had already started implementing energy efficiency and renewable energy projects with expectations the funding would come through. 

REAP was created in the 2008 Farm Bill and absorbed a similar program included in the 2002 Farm Bill. 

NDNC called or left messages with around a dozen farmers who still have unprocessed payouts, but did not get anyone on the phone or receive call backs. 

Several farms in the state are owed between $250,000 to $500,000 in unprocessed REAP payments, according to federal data.

Another area of impact is the on and off again firings or layoffs of federal workers. 

Todd Leake, who farms near Emerado, was concerned after catching wind in recent weeks that several researchers at the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service based at universities in the region had lost their positions in Trump administration government efficiency orders. 

This included researchers critical to monitoring ever-evolving wheat and sugar beet diseases. Most have been hired back, he said, but there’s still uncertainty about some of the positions. 

While firings like this might not have had a direct near-term impact, they do have long-term consequences, he said. 

“These researchers are at the forefront of cereal wheat diseases and make it so we can overcome these constant barrages of wheat disease,” Leake said. “It’s extremely important.”

The North Dakota News Cooperative is a nonprofit news organization providing reliable and independent reporting on issues and events that impact the lives of North Dakotans. The organization increases the public’s access to quality journalism and advances news literacy across the state. For more information about NDNC or to make a charitable contribution, please visit newscoopnd.org. Send comments, suggestions or tips to michael@newscoopnd.org. Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NDNewsCoop.

Environmental justice efforts at the ten U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regional offices have stopped and employees have been placed on administrative leave, per an announcement from EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin earlier this month. Former EPA employees involved with environmental justice work across the country say rural communities will suffer as a result. 

Before being shuttered in early March, the EPA’s environmental justice arm was aimed at making sure communities were being treated fairly and receiving their due protection under the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. Zealan Hoover, former senior advisor to the EPA administrator under the Biden administration, told the Daily Yonder that this work had big implications for rural places since there are pollution concerns in rural areas across the country. 

“EPA was very focused on making sure that not just on the regulatory side, but also on the investment side, we were pushing resources into rural communities,” said Hoover. 

According to Hoover, most of the pollution challenges the U.S. faces are not new. He said that the employees—now on leave—who staffed the EPA’s regional environmental justice offices were deeply knowledgeable on the issues affecting communities in their regions; issues which can go on for decades. Hoover said he worries about recent changes to the agency under the Trump administration, which also include a series of deregulatory actions and a proposed 65% budget cut. 

“I trust that the great folks at EPA who remain will still try valiantly to fill those gaps, but the reality is that this administration is pushing to cut EPA’s budget, pushing employees to leave, and that’s going to restrict EPA’s ability to help rural communities tackle their most significant pollution challenges,” Hoover said. 

One rural community that has faced years of environmental challenges is where Sherri White-Williamson lives in rural Sampson County, North Carolina. In 2021, the county’s landfill ranked second on the list of highest methane emitters in the U.S. The county is also the second-largest producer of hogs nationwide, and in 2022, it accounted for nearly three percent of all U.S. hog sales. 

The hog industry is known for its pollution from open waste storage pits that emit toxic chemicals into nearby neighborhoods. For years, concerns about North Carolina’s hog industry have centered on the disproportionate harm that its pollution does to low-income communities and communities of color since hog farms frequently locate their operations adjacent to such communities in rural counties. 

White-Williamson is also an EPA veteran. She worked on environmental justice initiatives at the agency’s Washington, D.C. office for over a decade before moving back home to southeastern North Carolina. She is now the executive director of the Environmental Justice Community Action Network, or EJCAN, which she founded in Sampson County in 2020 to empower her neighbors amidst environmental challenges like those wrought by the hog farms and the landfill.

In her early work with EJCAN, White-Williamson said she noticed that conversations about environmental justice often centered on urban areas. Since then, White-Williamson said she has focused on educating the public about what environmental justice looks like in rural communities. 

“A lot of our issues have to do with what the cities don’t want or dispose of will end up in our communities,” said White-Williamson. “The pollution, the pesticides, the remnants of the food processing all ends up or stays here while all of the nice, clean, freshly prepared product ends up in a local urban grocery store somewhere.”

Another misconception about environmental justice, according to White-Williamson, is that it exists exclusively to serve communities of color. During her time at the EPA, White-Williamson said she spent time in communities with all kinds of racial demographics while working on environmental justice initiatives.

“I spent a lot of time in places like West Virginia and Kentucky, and places where the populations aren’t necessarily of color, but they are poor-income or low-income places where folks do not have access to the levers of power,” White-Williamson said. 

When pollution impacts local health in communities without access to such “levers of power,” the EPA’s regional environmental justice offices were a resource—and a form of accountability. Without those offices, it will be more difficult for rural communities to get the services they need to address health concerns, said Dr. Margot Brown, senior vice president of justice and equity at the Environmental Defense Fund. 

“They’re dismantling the ecosystem of health protections for rural Americans, and by dismantling them, they’ll make them more susceptible to future hazards,” Brown said of the Trump administration’s decisions at the EPA. “It will impair health and well-being for generations to come.”

Brown worked at the EPA for nearly ten years under President Obama and then under President Trump during his first administration. Her time there included a stint as Deputy Director of the Office of Children’s Health Protection. She, along with Hoover and White-Williamson, said that community members will likely need to turn to their state governments or departments of environmental quality in the absence of the regional environmental justice offices.

But White-Williamson noted that state governments, too, receive federal funding. Frozen funds across federal agencies and cuts to healthcare programs, including Medicaid, could wind up compounding challenges for rural communities trying to mitigate environmental health impacts. 

“The communities that most need the assistance and guidance will again find themselves on the short end of the stick and end up being the ones that are suffering more than anybody else,” White-Williamson said. 

Hoover described it as a “one-two punch” for rural communities. On the one hand, he said, rural places are losing access to healthcare facilities because of budget cuts.

“And on the other hand, they are also sicker because the government is no longer stopping polluters from polluting their air and their water.”

The post Closures of EPA’s Regional Environmental Justice Offices Will Hurt Rural America appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

Jason Myers-Benner wants answers. Most of the time, the Virginia farmer feels “unsettled” by the lack of communication and clarity surrounding the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s funding freeze. During the quieter moments he’s spent staring at an empty inbox, awaiting word about his pending grant, he’s felt “disgusted” by how the government has treated him and many of his peers.

“It’s a sort of powerlessness, that it doesn’t feel like there’s anything that I can do about it,” said Myers-Benner. “Like, can you count on these systems or not?” 

Myers-Benner owns a family-run six acre farm in Keezletown, Virginia. Last spring, the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture awarded him a little more than $18,000 to support the farm’s work breeding winter peas that could increase soil’s ability to trap carbon. The grant is through the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program, or SARE, which has supported farmer-led research initiatives nationwide for decades. The money represented an opportunity to expand work he and his family have been bootstrapping for years, growing crops that help feed lower-income, rural communities like his while preserving the planet.

Then, in late January, the Trump administration began freezing funds for programs across a broad swath of the government. Shortly after, his SARE representative at the University of Georgia fell silent. That’s when he started to worry: Without the grant, which reimburses expenses already incurred, he would need to line up part-time work to pay the bills. “There’s just a deflated feeling of ‘Okay. We were just about getting this rolling,’” he said. “And then … one change at the top has the potential to just completely wipe that out. And so we’ll have to pick up and hard-scrabble our way through it.” 

Myers-Benner finally got an answer on Monday, though one riddled in ambiguity. “You may continue your research or you are welcome to put your research on hold given the uncertainty of the situation, and once we learn more we can communicate that to you,” he was told by email, which he shared with Grist. “If this situation delays your research and outreach per your grant timeline we can offer a no-cost extension if you still have monies left in your budget. Feel free to reach out with any questions. If you decide to hold your project let us know so we can note that in your files. That’s about the best information we can provide at this time while we wait to receive further guidance from USDA.”

The USDA administers SARE through four regional offices hosted in universities. Daramonifah Cooper, a spokesperson for Southern SARE at the University of Georgia, which oversees Myers-Benner’s grant, told Grist it is holding all calls for proposals until it hears from its federal funding source. When asked, Cooper could not clarify the funding status for grants already awarded.

Since late January, the USDA has frozen, rescinded, or cancelled funding supporting everything from donations to food banks to climate-smart agricultural practices. The move aligns with the administration’s goal of rolling back diversity, equity, and inclusion mandates and climate benchmarks. These steps prompted the termination of thousands of federal employees before courts intervened, pressuring the USDA to reinstate many of them, albeit temporarily, and federal judges have repeatedly ordered the administration to release gridlocked funds. Such abrupt and sweeping moves by the agency, and wider administration, have thrown the world of publicly-funded agricultural research into a tailspin. 

A USDA employee, whom Grist granted anonymity to protect them from retaliation, said “basically all” of the agency’s programs that fund agricultural research, including SARE grants, have been put on standstill due to the freeze. This person called the environment within the agency “a shitshow” and said, “It’s all really unknown right now. Even internally.” 

“We know that, yeah, things have been paused. Some political appointee at some level is reviewing our calls for proposals” this person added. “We know that DOGE is in the system, reviewing, doing searches of our databases, but we don’t know like … are they going to massively cut things right now? Things are on hold. But is the shoe gonna drop, and is lots of stuff getting canceled?” 

“Trump doesn’t really care about farmers or delivering services or efficiency or cost-savings. This is all politics. And we’re caught in the middle of it.”

At least 19 university labs have ceased agricultural research work because the Department of Government Efficiency dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development in February, a move one federal judge said may be unconstitutional. These decisions by the administration have impacted research programs nationwide. 

Kansas State University shut down two labs that were developing drought-resilient varieties of wheat and sorghum crops and pest-resistant plants. Johns Hopkins, the largest university recipient of federal research funding, cut roughly 2,200 jobs. USDA staffing cuts forced a federal project in Maryland investigating unprecedented managed honeybee losses to ask others to carry on its work. Seed and crop research being conducted across the nation’s network of gene banks have also been hobbled by layoffs and grant application suspensions, and grape breeding programs and work on crops affected by wildfire smoke in California have reported disruptions. The administration then announced an abrupt withdrawal of millions in federal funds for multiple universities, triggering a new round of layoffs, lab closures, and project suspensions across the country.

The federal government provides roughly 64 percent of the country’s public agricultural research and development funding. “With federal funding, especially research dollars, being on the chopping board for the current administration, the consequences of that, coupled with layoffs … means that at a time when we need innovation the most to deal with climate change, to make our food systems more resilient, that capacity is going to be lost,” said soil scientist Omanjana Goswami of the nonprofit the Union of Concerned Scientists. 

There will likely be economic fallout, too. A study published March 11 finds that the compounding effects of climate change and lagging investment in research and development has U.S. agriculture facing its first productivity slowdown in decades. 

The researchers modelled the eroding effects of climate change on American agriculture and the decades-long stagnation of spending for publicly funded research and development, using the estimates to quantify the research investment necessary to avoid agricultural productivity declining through 2050. To offset an imminent climate-induced productivity slowdown, federal agricultural research spending, which includes expenditures from every USDA agency except the U.S. Forest Service, and state agricultural experiment stations and schools, must replicate the unprecedented boom in public spending that followed both world wars. The government currently allocates approximately $5 billion annually to ag research and development, a figure that grew less than 1 percent annually from 1970 to 2000 before leveling off. Adding at least $2.2 billion per year to that tally would offset the climate-induced slowdown, the paper found.

If the current investment trend doesn’t change, the costly impacts of warming, including higher inputs, reduced yields, and supply chain shocks, will result in lower productivity, leading to more government bailouts and increased U.S. reliance on other countries for food, said Cornell University climate and agricultural economist Ariel Ortiz-Bobea. Without action, agricultural productivity is estimated to drop up to 12 percent with each passing year by 2050. This will cost the U.S. economy billions annually. American farms contributed roughly $222.3 billion to the economy in 2023 alone. 

“This is like a double whammy. They’re both human-caused, inflicted wounds. One because we’re failing to invest in R&D, the other because we’re emitting so much that it is actually slowing down productivity itself. So it’s like it’s being compressed from both sides,” said Ortiz-Bobea, who led the new study. 

Experts worry that the Trump administration is heading in the wrong direction with its layoffs, funding freezes, and efforts to roll back scientific initiatives. House Republicans, for example, have been pushing to cut some $230 billion in agriculture spending over 10 years. Millions of dollars in reductions to the USDA’s research, inspection, and natural resources arms were included in the funding stopgap bill Trump signed March 15. 

Most of the foundational agricultural research that happens in the United States is through some kind of USDA funding mechanism. The USDA is made up of multiple agencies and offices with their own research pipelines that support universities, nonprofits, businesses, farmers, ranchers, and foresters, among others. SARE grants are one of the ways the wider agency has funneled money into agricultural research conducted on farms nationwide, awarding nearly $406 million across 8,791 initiatives from its inception.

Jon Kasza runs an organic vegetable farm in New York’s Hudson Valley and relies on SARE funds to conduct his agricultural research. He doesn’t understand why the agency is still freezing that funding, given all of the administration’s promises to put farmers first. “I can’t say enough about how fragile it all looks to me,” said Kasza. He’s thinking about the excessively volatile bouts of rain that battered his fields in summer of 2023, followed by a smattering of dry periods last year that dried his soil so much he couldn’t plant his cover crops on-time in the fall. That’s where research grants like SARE, which he said allow farmers to bypass the typically “sluggish” timelines of conventional scientific trials to develop things like drought-resistant crop varieties, are critical. 

In November, he submitted his first SARE grant proposal of nearly $30,000 to grow multiple varieties of rice on hillsides in raised beds with biodegradable plastic mulch to conserve water and expand where the crop can be produced. Earlier this year, he was notified by a regional representative that the grant had been approved. “We’re moving forward as if some of the funding is going to be there, but we know that that’s uncertain,” said Kasza, who called the messaging surrounding the freeze a “rollercoaster” of confusion. A local land conservation group has promised to step in to save about 20 percent of the project if federal funding falls through. Still, that is “not nearly enough” to complete the work, he said.

“It’s already hard enough just to have an agricultural business, but then to have climate change as a factor on top of that, and then have this administration who’s wreaking havoc?” he said. “Cutting research, particularly our farmer-driven research, off at the knees, just seems like such a silly and short-sighted thing to do.”

On the Hawaiian island of Kauai, another SARE grant recipient has also been stuck in limbo. Rancher Don Heacock spent decades working as an aquatic biologist for the Hawaii Division of Aquatic Resources before retiring and launching his nearly 40-acre farm in the late 1980s. Ever since, he’s raised a herd of water buffalo, grown crops like taro, and cultivated ponds of tilapia. He does it all with local food systems, soil health, and water conservation at the forefront, maximizing crop diversity, maintaining living roots in the ground year round, and integrating livestock farming. 

Up until now, Heacock had heard nothing about his pending SARE grant, a $59,000 funding proposal submitted last year to expand his farm’s agrotourism education, buffalo raising, and soil conservation work. Then, suddenly, late last week, he was told the proposal was denied. He believes that rejection is linked to the federal funding freeze.

After reaching out to SARE representatives for all four regions and the national arm of the program, Grist has learned that the USDA-NIFA has frozen funding for all pending grant applications this fiscal year, which began in October. When asked, a national spokesperson confirmed those funds were still “under review” while regional representatives told Grist that all new calls for proposals have been paused as a result. None of the representatives specified a timeline for when those funds were disbursed nor whether already-awarded grant funding will be released. 

For farmers like Heacock, the stakes of the administration grounding agricultural research initiatives like his is far bigger than the work happening on one lone project or farm. “Trump has got it all wrong. Climate is a real issue and it’s hitting us right in the face,” he said. “If we don’t become sustainable real quick, we’re dead in the water.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Farmers are reeling from Trump’s attacks on agricultural research on Mar 25, 2025.

Libby Lindsay spent 21 years working underground as a miner for Bethlehem Steel in West Virginia. She saw many safety improvements over the years, and always felt grateful that she could call the local Mine Safety and Health Administration office whenever she wondered whether a rule was being followed. She joined the safety committees launched by the local chapter of the United Mine Workers, which collaborated with the agency to watchdog coal companies. She understood the price that had been paid for the regulations it enforced. “Every law was written in blood,” she said. “It’s there because somebody was injured or killed.”

Still, she and others who work the nation’s mines worry President Trump is about to limit the agency’s local reach. As his administration targets federal buildings for closure and sale, 35 of its offices are on the list. Fifteen are in Appalachian coalfields, with seven in eastern Kentucky alone and the others concentrated in southern West Virginia and southeastern Pennsylvania. Of the remaining 20 offices, many are in the West, in remote corners of Wyoming, Nevada, and Colorado. Miners’ advocates worry these closures could reduce the capacity of an agency that’s vastly improved mining safety over the past 50 years or so and could play a vital role as the Trump administration promotes fossil fuels like coal, and as decarbonization efforts increase the need for lithium and other metals.

Since its inception in 1977, the agency has operated under the auspices of the Department of Labor to reduce the risks of what has always been one of the world’s most dangerous jobs. Before Congress created the agency, known as MSHA, hundreds of miners died each year, in explosions, tunnel collapses, and equipment malfunctions. (The number was far higher through the 1940s, often reaching into the thousands.) Last year, 31 people died in mining accidents, according to the agency’s data. Even after accounting for coal’s steady decline, that tally, while still tragic, reflects major strides in safety.

“Coal mining is a tough business. It’s a very competitive business. There’s always a temptation to compete on safety, to cut corners on safety, to make that your competitive advantage as a mine operator,” Christopher Mark, a government mine safety specialist who has spent decades making the job safer, told Grist. “And it’s our job to make sure that nobody can do that.”

Trump’s pick to lead MSHA, Wayne Palmer, who is awaiting confirmation, previously was vice president of the Essential Minerals Association, a trade association representing extraction companies. The Department of Labor declined to comment on the proposed lease terminations. A representative of the U.S. General Services Administration, which manages federal offices, told Grist that any locations being considered for closure have been made aware of that, and some lease terminations may be rescinded or not issued at all. 

Many of the country’s remaining underground coal mines – the most dangerous kind – are located in Appalachia. MSHA has historically placed its field offices in mining communities. Although the number of coal mines has declined by more than half since 2008, tens of thousands of miners still work the coalfields. Many of them still venture underground.

The dwindling number of fatalities comes even as the MSHA has been plagued by continued staffing and funding shortfalls, with the federal Office of the Inspector General repeatedly admonishing the agency for falling below its own annual inspection targets. It also has recommended more frequent sampling to ensure mine operators protect workers from toxic coal and silica dust. After decades of work, federal regulators finally tightened silica exposure rules, but miners and their advocates worry too little staffing and too few inspections could hamper enforcement. 

“There are going to be fewer inspections, which means that operators that are not following the rules are going to get away with not following the rules for longer than they would have,” said Chelsea Barnes, the director of government affairs and strategy at environmental justice nonprofit Appalachian Voices. The organization has worked with union members and advocates for those with black lung disease to lobby for stricter silica dust exposure limits.

Last month, the United Mine Workers’ Association denounced the proposed office closures. As demand for coal continues to decline, it worries that companies could pinch pennies to maximize profits — or avoid bankruptcy. ​​”Companies are completely dependent upon the price of coal,” said Phil Smith, executive assistant to union president Cecil Roberts. ”[If] it’s bad enough, they think, ‘Well, we can cut a corner here. We can pick a penny there.’”

The Biden administration made an effort to staff the agency. In the waning days of Biden’s term, Chris Williamson, who led the agency at the time, told Grist he was “very proud of rebuilding our team” because “you can’t go out and enforce the silica standard or enforce other things if you don’t have the people in place to do it.” The union worries that the Trump administration, which has pursued sweeping layoffs throughout the government, will target MSHA, where many of the Biden hires remain probationary employees. Despite the previous administration’s attempts to bolster the agency, it still missed inspections due to understaffing.

Anyone who isn’t terminated will have to relocate to larger offices if Trump shutters local outposts, placing them further from the mines they keep tabs on. In addition to inspecting underground mines at least quarterly and surface mines biannually, inspectors make more frequent checks of operations where toxic gases are present. They also respond to complaints. Work now done by people in the offices throughout eastern Kentucky likely would be consolidated in Lexington, Kentucky, or Wise County, Virginia, which are 200 miles apart. 

Field offices have been consolidated before, and mining experts acknowledged there may be a time and a place for such things, but it’s highly unusual to close so many without due process. In early March, the House Committee on Education and Workforce submitted a letter to Vince Micone, the acting secretary of labor, requesting documents and information on the closures and expressing concern that as many as 90 mine inspection job offers may have been rescinded. Their letter specifically referred to the agency’s history of understaffing that led to catastrophes like the Upper Big Branch mine explosion that killed 29 people in 2010, the nation’s worst mining accident in four decades.

“One of the lessons of the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster, according to MSHA’s own internal investigation, is that staffing disruptions at the managerial level resulted in MSHA’s inspectors failing to adequately address smaller-scale methane explosions in the months leading up the massive explosion that killed 29 miners fifteen years ago this April,” read the letter, which was signed by Democratic representatives Bobby Scott of Virginia and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

The impact of potential cuts stretches far beyond coal, into the mines that will extract the lithium and other metals needed for clean energy and other industries. As of last year, the nation employed almost 256,000 metal and nonmetal miners who pull copper, zinc, and other things from the earth. “It’s an agency that matters, regardless of how we’re producing our energy,” said Chelsea Barnes of Appalachian Voices.

After spending so much time in the mines, Lindsay is concerned by the direction the Trump administration is heading, even as lawmakers in states like West Virginia and Kentucky have in recent years attempted to roll back regulations. “That’s going to be the future of MSHA,” she said. “They’re going to be in name only. Miners are going to die. And nobody but their families are going to care.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump administration moves to shutter mine safety offices in coal country on Mar 25, 2025.

News by Scott France

Jefferson County farms, food banks, and school districts are scrambling to plug holes created by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) termination of funding for two programs that provided more than $1.1 billion for schools and food banks to purchase food from local farmers and producers in the U.S. 

“This was an 100% gut punch for agencies like ours around the county,” said Patricia Hennessy, Executive Director of the Jefferson County Food Bank Association (JCFBA). The four food banks and one mobile unit operated by the JCFBA serve an average of 3,400 households per month. The number of households served rose 24% in 2024, according to Hennessy. “We might not find funding to replace the sudden shortfall,” Hennessy said. “Our largest line item is for food, and we need money to pay our staff and bills.”

The purpose of the programs was to maintain and improve food and agricultural supply chain resiliency. The food served feeding programs, including food banks and organizations that reach underserved communities. In addition to increasing local food consumption, the funds help build and expand economic opportunities for local and underserved producers.

The elimination of the two programs will affect local organizations in different ways.

Kai Wallin, Community Liaison with the Port Townsend School District, said that the District received funding from both programs, the Local Food for Schools (LFS)  and the Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA). “We will still buy locally what we can, but without this matching grant from the USDA helping us purchase local ingredients, our dollars won’t go as far, and we may need to buy more conventional, non-local ingredients to fill the gap,” she said.

“People have come to rely on this funding for meeting the demands for healthy food”

Other school districts in Jefferson County might not be as adversely affected by the cuts as the Port Townsend school district. Neither the Quilcene School District nor the Brinnon School District received any funding from either of the two programs, according to Ron Moag and Trish Beathard, superintendents of those respective school districts.

The Chimacum School District receives USDA funding through the Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI), and is uncertain of the eventual effect on its funding pending finalization of  OSPI’s budget, said Kelly Liske, Executive Director of Business and Finance at the District. 

The Olympic Peninsula Community Action Program (Olycap) had an LFPA grant that served nine sites in Jefferson and Clallam counties. Between August 2023 and December, 2024, LFPA funded food purchases from farms in Jefferson and Clallam counties and distributed 135,875 pounds of produce to these nine sites.

Jefferson County food banks, local farmers and school districts with whom we talked say that the USDA’s decision is likely to increase food insecurity among vulnerable populations and create economic hardships for these farmers who previously supplied local produce to schools and food banks.​

“People have come to rely on this funding for meeting the demands for healthy food,” said Sallie Constant, Farm to Community Coordinator with Washington State University Extension for Clallam and Jefferson counties.

LFS was a cooperative agreement between the federal government and state entities (OSPI in WA) to identify producers of Washington-grown products and make those products available for free or at a subsidized cost for schools. For the 2025-2026 school year, $660 million was going to go towards purchasing regional foods such as salmon, berries, lentils, tortillas and squash and providing those foods to schools at half market price. The contract for this coming school year was canceled, so while these products will still be available, they will no longer be subsidized by the USDA, according to Danielle Williams with the WSU Clallam County Extension.

”The people who grow our food contribute to our local economy and food systems,” Hennessey said. Karyn Williams, owner of Red Dog Farm, said that the farm fills one order per week from Olycap, totaling approximately $50,000 annually, all of which will be eliminated. “I feel for people receiving this food, as well as my crew who get great satisfaction that the food they are growing feeds less advantaged people,” Williams said.

Hennessey is concerned about the consequences for seniors, houseless, domestic violence victims, and veterans, many of whom don’t have the capacity to shop in grocery stores if they can even afford to buy food. “Our mission is to “provide food to people in need,” Hennessey said. “They pulled the rug out from under us.”

Addendum:

The Beacon has learned that food bank officials in six states are reporting that up to $500 million dollars in funding for food banks through the USDA emergency food assistance program has been frozen. The New York Times reports that USDA representatives cannot be reached for comment. The Times reports that Vince Hall, the Director of Government Relations for Feeding America, a nationwide network of over 60,000 food, pantries and distributors, said that rural communities are likely to be most deeply affected. Emergency food assistance programs like this are “the food lifeline for rural America” because they come with funding to improve food storage and distribution, which can be more challenging in rural areas.

Anyone interested in supporting local purchasing for food access they can donate to the WSU Extension Olympic Peninsula Farm to Food Bank Fund or donate to their local food bank- JCFBA donations.

By Grace Vitaglione

This article was written with the support of a journalism fellowship from The Gerontological Society of America, The Journalists Network on Generations and The Silver Century Foundation.

Kristin Goforth and Lauren Cox, twin sisters aged 49, moved their father into a Piedmont Triad-area assisted living facility on March 13, 2021. Rick Goforth, then 75, was in good health; he was an avid walker who enjoyed being outside. But he was exhibiting signs of dementia — he had wandered off twice — so they decided a facility specializing in memory care would be safest.

He entered the facility at the lowest level of care available, passing all the assessments for activities of daily living such as independent bathing and eating.

Two months later, Rick was dead.

The sisters said they watched their father undergo a “drastic” decline in the facility; days after his arrival, he fell and broke his wrist. It turns out facility staff were giving Rick medicines the family hadn’t known about, including administering his usual dose of Xanax three times a day instead of his prior regimen of only once a day. Plus, he was getting extra “as-needed” doses. 

Because of the broken wrist, he lost the ability to use a knife and fork, nonetheless the staff didn’t cut up his food for him, Kristin said. 

Rick started falling repeatedly and staff put him in a wheelchair against a wall, with a table blocking him from moving.

Near the end of April, the family took him to the hospital – he was severely dehydrated, malnourished and in acute renal failure — “basically hospice-ready,” Cox said. 

Rick died a couple weeks later.

The sisters had difficulty finding justice for their father’s death. First, the family called the county department of social services, which said they didn’t find anything wrong at the facility. Then they complained to the state, which found the facility had violated regulations resulting in death or serious physical harm, abuse, neglect or exploitation of a resident. Eventually, the state fined the facility $19,000.

Cox called that “a slap on the wrist.” The family sued the facility and came to a settlement subject to a confidentiality agreement that limits Cox from being able to say more. 

Advocates say Goforth’s story is an example of how the regulations overseeing assisted living facilities in North Carolina can be out of date, and public officials’ enforcement of those regulations can vary from county to county.  

When officials do fine facilities for violations, facilities have the ability to negotiate those penalties down to very little, advocates said. A NC Health News analysis found that fewer than half of penalties levied in the last three years were paid in full by facilities. 

Assisted living over time

In North Carolina, assisted living facilities are referred to as “adult care homes” or “family care homes.” There are more than 1,200 of these facilities in the state, according to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, and they can range in size from family care homes — licensed to have two to six residents — to larger adult care homes licensed to have more, with some housing more than 100 residents. 

Residents of these homes may need help with activities of daily living, such as eating, dressing and bathing. They may require 24-hour supervision, but they don’t need regular nursing care. These residents are supposed to have less-complex health needs than those in skilled nursing facilities, or nursing homes, where residents’ needs require regular medical intervention.

The severity of patients’ conditions in adult care homes has become more profound over the years, said Mary Bethel, board chair of the NC Coalition on Aging. People who in the past would have been placed in a nursing home now live in adult care homes, she said.

In recent decades, adult care homes were also the destination for many former psychiatric hospital patients when the state undertook a process of deinstitutionalization for people living in them, said Hillary Kaylor, an ombudsman who advocates for residents in long-term care in Mecklenburg and eight surrounding counties.

Many of the facilities weren’t prepared to take on that mental health population and weren’t given support to do so, she said.

“We over-built [the industry], we under-supported, and then we expected a lot,” she said.

Eventually, North Carolina’s overreliance on adult care homes to house psychiatric patients led to a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice over improper institutionalization of mental health patients in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the subsequent Supreme Court Olmstead decision. 

‘Working with an old book’

Adult care homes are regulated primarily at the state and county level, whereas most nursing homes, which can receive Medicare payments, have to follow federal rules as well.

Kaylor said oftentimes, the rules for care in an adult care home are set by a contract between family members and/or residents and the facility, so the levels of care can vary. Some facilities may have a registered nurse there eight hours a day, and some may have one that only visits twice a week, for example, she said.

But as patients’ conditions in adult care homes become more severe, Kaylor said that might call for updated regulations to accommodate those changes.

“Sometimes we’re working with an old book,” she said.

There is an enhanced license associated with having a special care unit, or a secure wing specifically for dementia patients, said Elizabeth Todd, lawyer for the Goforth family. Her practice focuses on nursing home and assisted living negligence. 

Facilities must apply for the enhanced license, which comes with higher staffing and training requirements. But some facilities can get around those rules by calling their dementia wing a “memory care unit” and just locking the door, she said. 

In adult care homes, most of the regulations are pretty generic, Todd said.

In contrast, “there’s a regulation for everything in a skilled nursing facility,” she said. “I don’t want to call it the wild west in adult care homes, but it’s not far off.”

The rules governing adult care homes have to be “readopted” every 10 years; the most recent round was completed in 2025, according to a NC DHHS spokesperson. Many areas were strengthened in the last few years, including infection prevention and control, emergency preparedness, administrator and management requirements, and resident discharge requirements.

Jeff Horton, executive director of the NC Senior Living Association, an advocacy organization for adult and care homes, said regulations have become much more stringent over the last couple decades to keep up with acuity levels.

For instance, positions such as medication aides and personal care aides have to undergo a certain amount of training, he said.

If the state were to increase requirements, such as requiring adult care homes to have registered nurses on staff, then the state should also increase reimbursements to facilities that receive public funds, Horton said.

Vacancies and turnover at the state level

Adult care homes are monitored by county departments of social services and the NC Division of Health Service Regulation through complaint investigations and annual surveys.

The state regulatory division had a 25 percent vacancy rate in March 2025 and a turnover rate of 11 percent in 2024, according to a NC DHHS spokesperson. In the past two years, that turnover rate was even higher.

Former Gov. Roy Cooper’s last four recommended budgets included additional positions for adult care surveyor positions, but the NC General Assembly didn’t put funds for additional inspectors into any of their final budgets.

Complaints to the state about adult care homes and family care homes have also increased, the spokesperson said. From 2020 to 2024, complaints rose over 22 percent.

At the county level, regulation can vary depending on resources, Kaylor said. For example, Mecklenburg County has staffers focused solely on adult care homes, but in more rural counties, social services staffers end up stretched thin.

Adult care homes in the eastern part of the state have complained they face stricter enforcement than those in the west, according to Horton. County social services staff in the east tend to be more aggressive and levy fines more readily, association members have told him.

New Hanover County Social Services Director Tonya Jackson said in a statement over email that the team works with staff from the state Division of Health Service Regulation to make sure all complaints are investigated and addressed promptly.

“Additionally, county staff participates in standardized state training each year to ensure a full understanding of rules and regulations,” she said.

The state division gives the same training to all county social services staffers who monitor adult care homes, said a DHHS spokesperson, and the state can provide technical assistance as needed. Situations can vary in each facility, so enforcement happens differently according to each specific place, the spokesperson said.

Inconsistent enforcement

Bill Lamb, a longtime advocate for seniors, sits on the board of directors of the advocacy nonprofit Friends of Residents in Long Term Care. He said the wide variation in penalties and citations across the state shows that enforcement is inconsistent. 

Lawsuits like the one pursued by the Goforth family are sometimes the only way to hold a facility accountable, Lamb said.

Yet even then, some facilities have clauses in their contracts that require residents or family members to agree to settling disputes through arbitration rather than in court. When a consumer signs admission papers for themselves or a loved one into a facility home, these clauses are often tucked among the dozens of pages of legalese in the contract. 

Such provisions eliminate the opportunity for a consumer who ends up in conflict with a nursing home to go to court. Plaintiffs often win less money in these types of cases, Todd said.

State lawmakers have also enacted a cap on noneconomic damages, such as compensation for pain and suffering, for medical malpractice in North Carolina. Those are usually the primary type of damages in a case against an assisted living facility, Todd said. 

That cap can make it harder for plaintiffs to find a lawyer who will take the case, which can take months or even years to pursue. Lawyers often are paid a percentage of the damages as payment, she said.

“The caps on damages is unjust primarily because there is absolutely no limit to the amount of damage these facilities can do, but there is a limit to what they have to pay for having killed people,” Todd said.

‘A leaky bucket’

When state or county inspectors find that an adult care home violated a regulation, they can levy a penalty. If facility administrators disagree with that finding, they can appeal through an Informal Dispute Resolution or go to the state Office of Administrative Hearings. 

Fewer than half of the penalties levied against adult care homes in the past three years were paid in full, according to records from the N.C. Division of Health Service Regulation analyzed by NC Health News. Around 26 percent of the penalties were settled with the state, 11 percent were not paid and referred to the Office of the Controller, 13 percent were in the appeal process and 4 percent were blank.

Lamb said those numbers showed a lack of full accountability.

“That’s a pretty leaky bucket if you ask me,” he said.

Wealthier chains of adult care homes can “lawyer up” and drag out the appeal process, Lamb said, sometimes for years.

Using penalties effectively 

The maximum penalty for a violation resulting in death or serious physical harm, abuse, neglect, or exploitation to a resident is $20,000 for an adult care home, licensed for seven or more residents. The facility can then be fined up to $1,000 each day the violation remains unaddressed.

“That’s what a life is worth in our state,” Lamb said. 

Horton was previously a nursing home regulator, and he said there are times when regulators get things wrong — that’s why it’s important to have an appeals system. A settlement isn’t always bad, either, he said, as sometimes that means the penalty is waived in lieu of extra staff training.

Training can make more of a difference towards improving outcomes than a penalty, Horton said. Penalty dollars don’t flow back into any part of the long-term care system, though. They are designated — by law — to support the local school district.

While penalties can be a deterrent for breaking the rules, Horton said it’s important to look at the end goal of what they achieve in terms of improving care.

If the facility demonstrates a pattern of breaking the rules, state surveyors can suspend admissions, as well as downgrade, revoke or suspend their license, according to NC DHHS. If the facility has outstanding unpaid fees, the department will not issue them a new license or renew their license.

Despite her family’s settlement with her father’s facility, Kristin Goforth said she still doesn’t feel good about the situation — there should be better protections for older people. Lauren Cox said there should be more accountability for facilities overall.

“This can’t be the way we treat people who have spent their entire life contributing to society…they work, they pay their taxes, they do everything right, and then at their end of life, we do this?” Cox said.

The post ‘A slap on the wrist’: families and advocates call for increased accountability from assisted living facilities  appeared first on North Carolina Health News.

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Amy Cronin DiCaprio’s son, now 14, was born with congenital heart and lung defects. He underwent major surgeries in infancy, including one to remove a lobe of his lung, and open heart surgery just two weeks later. She said he suffers from significant behavioral health challenges as well and is on several prescription medications.

For health insurance, Cronin DiCaprio, a mother of two, relies on MassHealth — Massachusetts’ program that administers both Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP. For her and her family, those programs are the only way they can receive health care.

“If we lost MassHealth, we just wouldn’t be able to do that anymore,” she recently told The Shoestring, warily twisting a ring on her finger. “We would just… there’s no way we could afford it.”

Those are very real fears for Cronin DiCaprio and millions of others across the country.

President Donald Trump and Republicans are currently preparing a budget that seems certain to contain significant cuts to Medicaid and CHIP, which some 2 million Massachusetts residents rely on through MassHealth. Nationwide, another 72 million Americans receive coverage through Medicaid.

These programs provide critical health services for individuals and families like Cronin DiCaprio’s. Currently unemployed after working in the non-profit public health sector, she said her home is in preforeclosure and the prospects of her family losing health coverage at this time is “terrifying.”

“Masshealth has been amazing in terms of being able to see specialists,” Cronin DiCaprio said. Her eldest son relies on continuous follow-up care including annual heart screenings, visits with pediatric pulmonology specialists, behavioral health specialists, and prescription medications.

Now, state and national lawmakers, human rights groups, and ordinary people are raising serious concerns about the future of these programs under the current presidential administration.

“The threats are real, and I don’t want to minimize the threats and the amount of money on the table,” Massachusetts State Sen. Jo Comerford, D-Northampton, told The Shoestring in a phone interview. “It is a hole that is unfillable by the state when we look at all of the other major holes that have emerged from reckless and dangerous Trump administration actions.

Comerford said she “can’t minimize the devastation” of Trump and Republicans’ massive cuts to federal programs.

“We’re seeing rollbacks across every agency we care about,” she said.

***

During the first week of his presidential term, Trump caused far-reaching confusion, outrage, and fear with a slew of executive orders and an Office of Management and Budget memo that froze federal funds. The wording of the memo said that agencies whose work was in any way contradictory to the new ideology, outlined in the president’s executive orders, would need to find and assess those contradictions so the presidential administration could then decide the best uses for the funding “consistent with the law and the President’s priorities.”

Following the OMB memo, states reported being “cut off” from access to Medicaid systems. States regained access shortly afterward and the federal government has claimed that was caused by a technical “outage.”

Just a few days later, Trump’s billionaire buddy and the country’s biggest campaign donor to Trump and Republicans, Elon Musk, and his band of teenage and early 20’s tech bros who constitute the so-called Department of Government Efficiency were given access to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services. They reportedly accessed key payment and contracting systems. This further compounded public and legislative fears that Medicaid and Medicare programs would be targeted for significant cuts.

The OMB memo has since been rescinded, but challenges in accessing federal funding have continued for many of its recipients.

In the weeks following, Republican lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives voted to advance a budget proposal that directs the Energy and Commerce Committee, which has authority over Medicaid, to find $880 billion in cuts.

Some Republican lawmakers, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, have since claimed these proposed federal funding cuts will not affect Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security because the budget plan passed on Feb. 25 does not specifically contain the words “Medicare,” “Medicaid,” or “Social Security.”

Many experts have said this is misdirection, noting that it would be a near financial impossibility to make the proposed cuts without taking from at least one of those programs.

“Both Speaker Johnson, other House Republican leaders and President Trump have said that they do not want to cut Medicare,” Georgetown University health policy expert Edwin Park recently told NPR. “So if you take Medicare off the table, Medicaid constitutes 93% of all mandatory spending that remains under the jurisdiction of the Energy and Commerce Committee.”

This conclusion from Park is also supported by a Congressional Budget Office report from March 5.

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The Shoestring relies on reader support to make independent news for western Massachusetts possible. You can support this kind of labor-intensive reporting by visiting our donate page.

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When asked for an interview about the House budget in early March, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey told The Shoestring in a statement that the “budget resolution threatens the health care of 2 million Massachusetts residents.”

“It would nearly double health care costs for hundreds of thousands of Massachusetts residents who rely on the Affordable Care Act and increase grocery bills for more than a million children and their families by gutting food assistance,” the statement said. “The Senate needs to reject this shameful attack on the health and wellbeing of children and families in Massachusetts and across our country.”

Healey’s response outlined the categories of people receiving coverage under Medicaid programs who were vulnerable to losing health services and coverage, which included people with disabilities, pregnant people, and newborns. Healey said one in four Massachusetts residents received some form of Medicaid coverage.

While the proposal has been met with nationwide disapproval from constituents across political parties, lawmakers passed another Republican-led stop-gap spending bill on March 14 — together with support from Democrats led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — that will fund the government through September.

Johnson and other lawmakers have defended the cuts, saying that the money will come from the elimination of “waste and fraud,” without citing any specific evidence. Musk, meanwhile, has seemingly referred to people receiving services through federal programs as “the parasite class.” Last month, he reposted a meme on social media that referred to “watching Trump slash federal programs knowing it doesn’t affect you because you’re not a member of the Parasite Class.”

***

With strict eligibility guidelines, it is hard to imagine where $880 billion worth of fraud might be in the Medicaid system.

Cronin DiCaprio and her family briefly lost coverage this past July due to missing a letter from MassHealth requiring her to update her household information and income — one of a list of annual requirements for maintaining coverage under the program.

During this gap in health coverage, Cronin DiCaprio said she ran out of prescription medications for herself and her older son, medications that cannot be stopped immediately and must be slowly tapered off. This gap came at a time during which the Fourth of July holiday closed and delayed many state and local offices.

“I was in the drive-thru pharmacy line at CVS in tears,” she said. An “incredibly kind” and “resourceful” pharmacist researched brand options and located every coupon and savings option that he could, but in the end she said she still ended up paying more than $2,000 for about two weeks of medication.

“I’m literally sitting in our house like a hysterical chemist, you know, trying to figure out how to taper him down on the antipsychotic meds that we had left so that he wouldn’t run out completely,” she said.

“It just feels like such an immovable obstacle, the cost associated with all elements of healthcare are really shocking,” she added.

Cronin DiCaprio also acknowledged a certain amount of privilege and agency due to her education — she has two master’s degrees — and her work-from-home job that allowed her to access and navigate the complex and time-consuming Medicaid system and ultimately regain health coverage for her family. Her job allowed her the flexibility to leave her phone on hold with the MassHealth system waiting to reach the relevant department staff for hours at a time on her desk while she did her regular work.

These hours-long wait times exist at current staffing and funding levels for the Medicaid program.

In addition to long wait times and complex paperwork, there are other barriers to coverage in the Medicaid system. The writer of this article, for example, receives Medicaid coverage based on disability status. This type of coverage, called CommonHealth, is re-evaluated annually, in some cases every two years. In addition to financial and residency verification requirements, Medicaid recipients of this designation must complete “disability supplement” paperwork rehashing their entire health history and seeing a state-selected provider for “evaluation.” For this writer, that is decades of health history spanning dozens of providers.

That system of “means testing” — and threats of getting kicked off disability insurance — simply doesn’t exist in the many countries worldwide that provide universal health care.

This eligibility process is not easy to navigate while living with, or caring for someone with, significant health issues. Challenges aside, if this Medicaid coverage disappeared, there is not currently an affordable health care alternative available for this writer.

While lawmakers continue to clash on spending packages, individuals and families across Massachusetts and the nation are waiting with worry and fear for their loved ones and community members.

”Even if we had to pay anything towards it, you know, we would just skip it, which is horrible to say, but that’s the position that we’re in,” Cronin DiCaprio said. “We would need to prioritize his prescriptions, you know, and he’s relatively stable in terms of his cardiac health, we would just, I don’t know, we would need to prioritize.”

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It isn’t just patients who will suffer from cuts to Medicaid funding. Health clinics in rural Minnesota have reportedly already seen a bit of the impacts that would result from the funding cuts. During the federal funding freeze earlier this year triggered by the OMB memo, some clinics reported difficulty making payroll with some having to furlough staff.

These clinics, called community health centers, typically receive a significant portion of their operating costs from federal funding through Medicaid payments and federal grants. There are 15 community health centers here in the Connecticut River Valley, according to the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers website, and many more across the state.

Federally qualified health centers, like CHC’s, play a critical role in providing health services, accepting patients regardless of their health insurance status, and providing services ranging from dental care to pediatric care and senior care. These centers also offer other social services like connections to food banks and housing services, which are also funded through federal grant support and contribute to community health and wellbeing. Funding cutbacks put all of these things at risk.

The loss of these centers will further burden the for-profit medical system as well. A 2020 study focused on Massachusetts concluded that federally qualified health centers, like CHC’s, increased access to health care in underserved areas and reduced spending on visits to emergency departments for non-emergency health needs.

Individual health providers will not be immune to these cuts either.

Cronin DiCaprio’s son has been seen by the same cardiologist since his open heart surgery in his first year of life. The family has been able to follow this doctor through his transition to private practice because of the MassHealth coverage at its current funding levels. Many providers will be forced to choose between keeping patients and being financially viable if cuts are made to the program.

When asked specifically what these funding cuts might look like locally, Sen. Comerford said she couldn’t speculate.

“We can certainly understand individual circumstances, but I don’t know what the systemic circumstances would be because you’d have to understand the scope from the federal government and then the state’s response,” Comerford said. Things are changing rapidly and people, families, workers, and businesses will be hurt by these actions, she added.

State Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa, D-Northampton, similarly did not have a specific answer for what the local impacts of the cuts might look like.

“It’s not looking good,” she told The Shoestring in a March 14 interview.

Sabadosa said a lot will depend on the magnitude of the cuts.

“In broad strokes, we’re talking about people losing their health insurance if the cuts are as they have indicated they may be,” she said. “Western Massachusetts has a large number of residents who are on Medicaid.”

Sabadosa was certain that Massachusetts hospitals and community health centers would feel the impacts of these cuts with many of their patients’ payments coming from Medicaid coverage.

“We won’t be able to make up for all of these losses and so we’ll have to figure out a way to try to mitigate the situation to the greatest extent possible, and it’s going to be extremely challenging,” she said.

The cuts proposed in the House budget “would likely translate to billions of dollars of revenue cuts from MassHealth per year,” a statement by Healey’s office said.

In addition to potential loss of individual health care and overall state budget impacts, Healey’s statement said “ripple effects” will include losses of jobs at hospitals and other health care positions, negative impacts on caregivers relying on long-term care services for loved ones receiving Medicaid coverage, and mounting pressure on an “already fragile health care system” potentially impacting health care access for all residents across the state.

Public outrage at lawmakers’ town halls nationwide has been so widespread it prompted Johnson, the Republican House speaker, to advise GOP lawmakers not to attend their own town halls.

When asked what was being done by elected officials in Massachusetts to evaluate and mitigate these cuts, Sabadosa said Massachusetts was “leading” in bringing lawsuits against the federal government and Trump administration in court. She also said public pressure does seem to be having some impact, and possibly stalled or reversed some actions taken by the Trump administration so far. She said people should continue to contact their federal representatives and show up to their town halls.

“Unfortunately, our federal government is not a reliable partner at the moment,” she said. “In fact, I would argue that they are abandoning the states. And because that is happening, we need more people to step up locally, however that may be, to support each other.”

Comerford had a similar response to those questions, saying Massachusetts was quickly challenging federal actions in the courts, and encouraged constituents to continue to contact her office.

“We’re fighting like hell every day to protect our people,” she said. “That is my job. 
I’m gonna keep resisting and fighting and backing,” Comerford said. “We believe the state can, and should, be a line of defense and we will keep pushing.”

The owner of the Kemmerer coal mine laid off 28 workers on Friday, according to a Kemmerer Operations, LLC press statement. The job losses, which amount to roughly 13% of the mine’s workforce, followed months of rumors of possible cuts in the southwest Wyoming energy town.

“The workforce reduction is part of its ongoing efforts to align operations with current coal market conditions, including those caused by the pending natural gas conversions of several coal-fired power plants in the region,” according to the statement. “[Kemmerer Operations] appreciates the contributions and hard work of the impacted employees, and values its long-standing partnership with the United Mine Workers of America.”

In an email to WyoFile that included the press statement, Kemmerer Operations President and General Manager Don Crank said, “No further comments will be provided.”

Employees who received pink slips will work until sometime in April, according to Lincoln County Commission Chairman Kent Connelly, who said he received a call from Crank regarding the layoffs.

“Everybody’s been watching what they’re going to do, so I can’t say that it was a surprise,” Connelly told WyoFile by phone, noting that rumors of layoffs have been circulating in the community. “They finally admitted it,” he added.

The company also announced Friday it was moving from three shifts to two shifts, which means the mine will no longer be a 24-hour operation, according to Connelly.

The commissioner said he doesn’t know who in particular is being laid off. Though the job losses are sure to hit hard in the small towns of Kemmerer and Diamondville, many workers at the mine commute from all over the southwest region, including from Evanston, Mountain View, Lyman and even towns in Utah and Idaho.

Multiple new construction and industrial projects are planned or already underway in the region, Connelly noted, including TerraPower’s Natrium nuclear power plant and a major trona mine expansion outside Green River.

“I hope they will get on with these other new places that will be hiring staff,” Connelly said.

The mine produced 2.4 million tons of coal in 2024 and employed 215 workers, according to federal data. It produced more than 4.2 million tons in 2017 and employed 279 workers in the fourth quarter of that year.

News of the layoffs comes in the same week that President Donal Trump renewed promises to bring back “clean, beautiful coal.”

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