The DOGE Impact Tracker

Disability Rights New Jersey, a legal advocacy group that serves people with mental illness and developmental disabilities, is suspending most of its work for the next two weeks as it grapples with how to handle a funding freeze from the Trump administration.

Per NJ.com:

The federal government has released just $1.6 million of the $3.1 million that Disability Rights counts on to represent people facing hardship in state-run institutions and state licensed nursing homes and group homes. They also fight for people at risk of losing Medicaid coverage for their health care and housing, said the organization’s executive director, Gwen Orlowski.

The nonprofit is down five attorneys and cannot replace them with the uncertainty around its finances, Orlowski said. Money has flowed in fits and starts since January when President [Donald] Trump was sworn in. Orlowski said late last year [that] senior leadership held off on raises anticipating the worst. Some attorneys left as a result, she said.

Shutting down until May 5 will allow leadership to reassess its priorities, Orlowski said. It’s possible the organization won’t be able to make payroll next month if the Trump Administration does not release more money, she said.

“We are fighting for our very survival,” Orlowski said.

The DOGE budget cuts and policies are having a major impact in the Kansas City metropolitan area, reports ABC News:

Money once promised to the region for public health, environmental, diversity, food aid and an array of other programs has been axed, and thousands of local jobs are in jeopardy.

With nearly 30,000 workers, the federal government is the largest employer in the region. One longtime Kansas City economic researcher said he believes the region could lose 6,000 good-paying federal jobs, which in turn would wipe out thousands of others in service industries…

A U.S. Department of Agriculture grant revocation disrupted a historically Black neighborhood’s plan to expand its program growing fresh produce in a food desert. A nearby pantry reduced its monthly grocery allotment for those in need after federal cuts left food banks shorthanded…

The withdrawal of federal funding for new lab equipment and vaccines means the city may be less prepared for the next pandemic.

Health officials in Nashville, Tennessee are warning about the impact of Health & Human Services cuts to their share of the $11 billion in grant funding, reports The Tennessean:

“The health of Tennesseans matters. Without these funds, the health of Tennesseans is going to suffer,” said D’Yuanna Allen-Robb, Nashville’s Maternal Child and Adolescent Health Division Director.

In Nashville, an evidence-based pregnancy support program Allen-Robb oversees could be decimated by the cuts.

Nashville Strong Babies was first developed in 2019 to provide intervention services in seven neighborhoods in the city identified as the highest risk for things like infant mortality, low birth rate and maternal health complications.

The program was initially funded through a longstanding federal infant mortality intervention fund, Allen-Robb said. The initiative began serving nearly 500 families and flourished, with 92% of the babies born full-term and 96% born at a healthy birth rate in the Strong Babies program, outpacing the average rates for Nashville as a whole.

A recovery program for college students at the University of North Carolina Wilmington could lose thousands of dollars in grant funding, reports StarNews Online:

The program supports students in recovery from substance abuse, students seeking recovery and those affected by someone else’s addiction, [communications manager Krissy] Vick said. It is one of 14 recovery programs in the University of North Carolina school system…

More than $230 million in healthcare funding is at risk in North Carolina alone, according to a statement from the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services.

“The federal grant funding impacts a number of areas of work including immunization efforts, funding for the new N.C. Immunization Registry, infectious disease monitoring and response, behavioral health, substance use disorder services and more,” the department stated. “We are currently working to determine the depth of impact, but we are certain this will result in the loss of more than 80 jobs and at least $100 million for the department with more than $230 million in funding at risk that directly contributes to the health, safety and wellbeing of the people we serve.”

A health officer for the Mobile County Health Department in Alabama says that funding cuts will impact the agency’s infrastructure upgrades and renovations, reports Fox 10 News:

Health Officer Dr. Kevin Michaels said the department has received roughly $23 million over the last few years, and it was expecting that money to be phased out over the next year and a half. Now that it’s come to a sudden stop, he says one of the biggest impacts will be to some ongoing infrastructure upgrades and renovations.

“Majority of the work was completed, but there’s a tail end that won’t be covered so we’ll have to come up with the money to finish out the contracting,” said Dr. Michaels.

Dr. Michaels says the department was able to move some employees around while others were let go once the funding stopped. One of the bigger programs that took a hit was the health equity program, which established relationships with people who didn’t get important information that they needed.