WHAT WE’RE READING ELSEWHERE
The Trump administration is canceling billions of dollars in public health programs and plans to cut hundreds of environmental-protection grants. The funds address a huge variety of issues, including childhood asthma, Texas’s measles outbreak, wildfire preparedness, suicide prevention, and clean drinking water. State health departments began receiving notices this week that the public health grants, totaling more than $12 billion, were terminated immediately. That money was originally allocated to fight the pandemic. A Department of Health and Human Services spokesman said the department “will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a nonexistent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago.” Democrats are protesting that cancellation of the environmental grants — which fund what the Environmental Protection Agency now deems “unnecessary programs” — violates both contractual obligations and court orders. (New York Times and Los Angeles Times)
The Trump administration plans to cut $1 billion in funding for Gavi, the global vaccine initiative, as part of its massive downsizing of the U.S. Agency for International Development. The United States is the third-biggest contributor to Gavi, behind the United Kingdom and the Gates Foundation. The organization’s CEO said she had not been notified of the cuts, which she warned could lead to the deaths of more than 1 million children over five years. The State Department refused to discuss specific cuts to foreign aid but said in a statement that it has not cut programs that “advance the core national interests of the United States.” (Washington Post)
President Trump’s attempts to squash diversity, equity, and inclusion programs has focused attention on a nonprofit that has worked to increase diversity on Wall Street for decades. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has asked more than 20 major companies about their ties to Sponsors for Educational Opportunity, a nonprofit that helps place entry-level talent in law offices and Wall Street firms. The organization has a track record of attracting diverse professionals early in their careers who then move into senior leadership, said Porter Braswell, founder of 2045 Studio, a membership network for professionals of color. But according to the EEOC, training awarded to people because of their race could be considered unlawful discrimination (New York Times)
The nonprofit Internet Archive, whose Wayback Machine has catalogued nearly three decades of web history, is working overtime these days to store pages being purged by the Trump administration. In their zeal to stamp out traces of diversity, equity, and inclusion work, federal officials have wiped thousands of datasets, most in scientific and environmental fields. With a staff of about 120 and a budget of about $28 million, the Internet Archive has cataloged some 73,000 web pages that existed on U.S. government websites that were expunged after Trump’s inauguration, Wayback Machine director Mark Graham said. (NPR)
The Trump administration plans to freeze $27.5 million in grants to family planning organizations while it ensures that none of the money is going to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. The freeze would hit Planned Parenthood affiliates, which were to receive about $120 million this year, about half of the total funding from a program administered by the Department of Health and Human Services. An HHS spokesman said the department sought to ensure grant recipients were complying with the president’s executive orders and “federal law.” Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said the administration “wants to shut down Planned Parenthood health centers by any means necessary.” (Wall Street Journal — subscription)
The nonprofit producer of “Sesame Street” faces serious financial woes. Sesame Workshop laid off about 20 percent of its staff, or 200 people this month, in part because it is losing a contract from HBO which paid it at least $30 million a year in distribution rights. What’s more, as the Trump administration attempts to dismantle foreign assistance programs, the organization has lost government grants that pay for global distribution. Congress is poised to further cut its federal support in the months to come. (New York Times)
A landmark climate case, in which young activists sued the federal government over its policies on fossil fuels, ended after 10 years on Monday, when the Supreme Court refused to take it up. That decision left intact an appeals court ruling that the issue was a matter for elected officials and not judges. The court case started in 2015, when 21 young people represented by Our Children’s Trust, a nonprofit law firm in Oregon, sued the Obama administration. The young people argued that policies promoting the use of fossil fuels violated their constitutional rights, and the case has served as a template for more successful litigation in Hawaii and Montana. (New York Times)
Researchers at Columbia University are waiting to see if their federal funds will be restored after university administrators bowed to nearly all of the Trump administration’s demands for measures to prevent the kind of protests over Gaza that roiled the school last year. Among the work in the balance is research on brain cancer, water quality, and babies born to mothers who had contracted Covid. The Department of Education has not said yet whether the $400 million in grants will be restored. As they await word, some researchers are angry that the government drew their work into the fight with Columbia. (Associated Press)
