THIS WEEK IN…

GUTTING GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS

Eight months into the second Trump administration, the federal government’s ability to serve the public has been steadily hollowed out despite many aspects of daily life seemingly continuing as usual. Through sweeping budget cuts and mass layoffs, the erosion of the administrative state has started to impact the delivery and scope of services relied on by millions of Americans. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) operates with reduced readiness, national parks face staffing shortages, people lose their healthcare and food assistance benefits run out.

Michael Sainato looks at how food banks all over the country brace for the impact of the largest cuts to the government’s food assistance program for low-income people in US history . Leah Douglas and Nathan Frandino examine what essential programs States are forced to cut. In addition, rising food prices due to recently imposed tariffs are making life harder for everyone from teachers to gig workers and small business owners.

Significant budget and staffing cuts to FEMA have led to the cancellation or reduction of several services. Scott Petersen and Tarini Parti report from St. Louis, where residents are still waiting for help from FEMA after a tornado struck the city back in the spring: FEMA Is Paralyzed. Disaster-Torn Communities Are Paying the Price. Jennifer Berry Hawes and Ren Larson report on how lower-income residents who lost their homes during Hurricane Helene are struggling to receive help: Arduous and Unequal: The Fight to Get FEMA Housing Assistance After Helene.

Due to cuts in federal health spending by hundreds of billions of dollars, Rural health clinics are closing as David Wright and Eva McKend write. One California county is losing its only hospital. Ana B. Ibarra examines the impact on the residents who are being left without local emergency care. 

More than 24 million Americans receive subsidized health insurance and will see their premiums jump by the end of the year unless Republicans agree to a deal proposed by the Democrats. Couples are even considering divorce to keep their insurance premiums somewhat affordable, reports Sarah D. Wire in her article These people have found their health care at the center of a shutdown showdown. “Small business owners, self-employed people and early retirees are among the 4 million Americans who could lose the tax credit – and maybe their health insurance.”

The National Park system is struggling to keep the gigantic land areas clean, protected and its visitors safe.  With more than 25% of the workforce gone, essential climate, wildlife and ecology research can no longer be conducted and that “the real crisis is happening behind the scenes”. Kylie Mohr argues that Trump is setting the National Parks up to fail,in her story for The Atlantic.

Some 300,000 federal workers have lost or left their jobs, one in eight employees. WIRED “spoke with more than 200 federal workers in dozens of agencies to learn what happened as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) tore through their offices.”  The Story of DOGE is a distressing investigation into how the callous and indiscriminate job cuts affected people in dozens of agencies.

DOGE was only the beginning, as the Project 2025 tracker shows, many of the objectives have not yet been achieved.

…IN OTHER NEWS

On Tuesday, Ronald Reagan–appointed U.S. District Judge William Young ruled that the Trump administration unlawfully targeted students for their pro-Palestinian activism. In a blistering opinion, unusual in its style and substance, he calls out the administration’s “full-throated assault on the First Amendment” and discusses the state of the country. “It’s a sign of the times that a federal judge would write an opinion like this,” Steve Vladeck, Supreme Court analyst and Georgetown Law professor. “Judge Young is committing to writing what so many of us are thinking.” Judge Young also writes: “ICE goes masked for a single reason — to terrorize Americans into quiescence… To us, masks are associated with cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan. In all our history we have never tolerated an armed, masked secret police.”

Meanwhile, ICE agents have become even more violent, using excessive force and no longer targeting only minorities. At Federal Plaza immigration court in New York City, a reporter was assaulted and another journalist seriously injured, report Robert Pozarycki and Adam Daly.

Journalist Raven Geary was shot in the face with a pepper ball by federal officers while reporting on protests outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview, Illinois where Federal ICE Agents even tear gassed local police and first responders