Trump’s budget cuts ALL Federal funding for ALL of the programs below:

• The 21st Century Community Learning Centers program, which supports before- and after-school programs and summer programs—this is the funding that provides after-school programs for tens of millions of children. This is inconceivable. In my work I have evaluated these programs for 2 decades. They have immense impact on communities, schools, families, children. And unlike some of the programs below, Federal funding represents a huge proportion of the funding supporting these programs.
• Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy, which funds research including clean energy. We should expect an anti-science, anti-renewable administration to reduce funding for research into clean energy, but cutting all of its funding? It’s one thing to advance drilling, but to deny any merit for seeking energy sources that are clean seems to equate ‘clean’ with wasteful.
• African Development Foundation; Can’t be surprised Trump has no interest in this.
• Appalachian Regional Commission.  ARC funds countless programs that serve 25 million Americans in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. Nine Red States, and Mitch McConnell is not happy about this, not happy at all. In a speech to the Fifth District Lincoln Club Saturday in Corbin, McConnell said “We are not going to allow any cuts to the Appalachian Regional Commission. It is very important to Eastern Kentucky.”
• Chemical Safety Board — Who needs it, given how carefully the chemical industry regulates itself?
• Community Development Block Grant, which in part funds Meals on Wheels and scores of other local programs like Boys & Girls Clubs, Senior Centers, and an array of local employment and economic stimulus projects;
• Community Services Block Grant, under HHS…bye-bye senior services, early childhood, family supports. Remember Gandhi’s quote: measure a society by how it treats its weakest. This is a key fund serving our weakest. .
• Corporation for National and Community Service, Americorps Gone Entirely
• Corporation for Public Broadcasting — No more federal funds for NPR or CPB, and the irony here is that NPR gets only 1% of its funds from the Feds and CPB 7%. The rural public communication systems will be hit hardest — they serve the heart of Trump support, and they rely on these funds for up to 50% of their budgets;
• Delta Regional Authority: I understand why he’d want to cut PBS and NPR, but this program serves 8 states, 7 of them deep Red states — Arkansas, Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee — by creating jobs, building communities, and improving the lives of the 10 million people who reside in the 252 counties and parishes of the eight-state Delta region.
• Denali Commission–infrastructure in another historically Red state–Alaska.
• Essential Air Service program—subsidizes rural airports, i.e. the heart of Trumpland can say goodbye to their airports;
• Global Climate Change Initiative — No surprise here.;
• Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, Chesapeake Bay funding, and other regional programs under EPA.
• HOME Investment Partnerships Program, Choice Neighborhoods, and the Self-help Homeownership Opportunity Program, all under HUD, a lifeline for those struggling to get a toe-hold in this brutal economy.
• Institute of Museum and Library Services. This is a relatively small amount of funding for an essential cultural lifeline;
• Legal Services Corporation — In a nation predicated on justice, we will deny representation to those without the means to pay for it. That is not justice.  
• Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program—anything with the words “Low-Income” is gone, but for low-income seniors suffering extreme heat and extreme cold, this is a life-saving subsidy. Is this what we mean by “our huddled masses,” our grandparents who can’t afford heat, huddling to stave off freezing after working a lifetime?
• Minority Business Development Agency, under Commerce….no surprise here.
• National Endowment for the Arts…. Arts?  
• National Endowment for the Humanities…. Humanities? No surprise.
• NASA’s Office of Education–Funds science education and we know what this administration thinks of science
• Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation–a tremendous program that leverages state, federal, local, and private investment to create jobs in low-income communities, including rural communities;
• Northern Border Regional Commission — another jobs program in rural Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York, communities that voted heavily for Trump.
• State Energy Program — tremendous program that supports sustainable energy projects. Trump claims that his cuts are getting rid of programs that can’t demonstrate success, click here for about 35 specific examples of successful SEP programs.
• Supporting Effective Instruction State Grants program, the second-largest program feds have used to influence local education
• TIGER transportation grants, another federal transportation infrastructure program with staggering examples of success, click here for more.This is the infrastructure Trump promised to rebuild, the infrastructure that agricultural, trucking, and the poor use to cross the country or their rural roads.
• United States Institute of Peace — clearly not a priority.
• United States Interagency Council on Homelessness — Gandhi’s quote comes to mind again. You don’t get more vulnerable than homeless and here we propose to eliminate funding to support services to this population.
• Weatherization Assistance Program — with the Low-Income Home Energy program (above) an absolutely vital lifeline to low-income families living in harsh summer and winter climates;
• Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

Over the next several weeks, Retake will take deeper dives into many of the programs above, highlighting the tremendous contributions they have made to our nation. The assertion has been made by the Trump administration that they are simply no longer going to fund programs that don’t work. It is incumbent upon us to fight these false assertions or we are accepting them as truths. The programs above have been serving this nation and some of its most vulnerable populations for decades, and we will tell their stories. For example: Meals on Wheels.  “We serve more than 2.4 million seniors from 60 to 100+ years old each year,” the organization writes. “They are primarily older than 60 and because of physical limitations or financial reasons, have difficulty shopping for or preparing meals for themselves.”  If that doesn’t clear the bar for “results,” as Mulvaney put it, there’s also been a fair amount of peer-reviewed research on the efficacy of the program.  A 2013 review of studies, for instance, found that home-delivered meal programs for seniors “significantly improve diet quality, increase nutrient intakes, and reduce food insecurity and nutritional risk among participants. Other beneficial outcomes include increased socialization opportunities, improvement in dietary adherence, and higher quality of life.”

Put in dollars and cents:  “The average cost of a one-month nursing home stay is equivalent to providing home-delivered meals five days a week for approximately seven years,” one of the studies in the analysis found. How’s that for “results”?

But for now, ponder the list above and what is to be cut. And realize what we are becoming as a nation and as a people. There is only appropriate response to these budgetary offenses: activism. Your activism. See below for opportunities to become more involved.