Let’s Go Fishing Chairman Joe Oprosko said time on the water can ease loneliness, spark memories, and bring joy to people who may otherwise feel isolated.
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Former AmeriCorps service member Daniel Zare, 27, visits Project Change at Sligo Middle School on Monday, Aug. 11, 2025 in Silver Spring, Maryland, where he mentored students before federal government cuts in April. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)
SILVER SPRING, Md. — Daniel Zare worked one-on-one as an AmeriCorps member with students going through rough times in school, lightening teachers’ workload in the classroom.
At AmeriCorps Project CHANGE, based in Silver Spring’s Sligo Middle School, Zare was one of several in his group who tracked adolescents’ emotional and social wellbeing over months using a system dubbed “My Score.” They then helped support the kids who were struggling the most.
In April, though, the program screeched to a halt. That’s when the Trump administration abruptly canceled nearly $400 million in active AmeriCorps grants across the United States that fund volunteers who embed in communities, in exchange for a small stipend and education award.
“All the work that we had culminating toward the end of the year, the relationships that we built with teachers and students and officials, it just completely went kaput because we were told we weren’t allowed to go to work at all,” Zare, 27, told States Newsroom.
Like so many longstanding federal programs and institutions severely reduced or dismantled as part of President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency project, AmeriCorps — and its nonprofit partners — are now assessing the damage and seeking a way forward.
AmeriCorps programs that survived last spring’s DOGE cuts are slowly beginning a new year of service amid major uncertainty over whether they will be able to continue their work in classrooms, food banks, senior centers and other community hubs.
AmeriCorps, a federal agency signed into law in 1993 by former President Bill Clinton, places roughly 200,000 members across the United States at 35,000 service locations, according to current agency data.
Members serve in schools, local governments and with a wide range of nonprofits that focus on health, disaster relief, environmental stewardship, workforce development and veterans.
The staffers, who pledge to “get things done for America,” are paid a modest living allowance that hovers around the poverty line. Some, but not all, can get health insurance while in the program.
Members who complete their service term, which usually lasts from 10 to 12 months, receive an education award that can be used to pursue a degree, earn a trade certificate or pay student loans.
AmeriCorps federal dollars reach programs via a couple routes. In many cases, grants flow from AmeriCorps to governor-led state and territorial commissions that divvy them up according to local priorities. In other cases, federal dollars flow straight to a program via a competitive grant process.
Kaira Esgate, CEO of America’s Service Commissions, said when the Trump administration ordered the cuts in April, some states lost large portions of their AmeriCorps portfolio, while other states fared better.
“There were no real clear trend lines around what or who got terminated and why,” said Esgate, whose member organization represents all 49 state commissions (South Dakota doesn’t have one) and the commissions for the District of Columbia, Guam and Puerto Rico.
Abby Andre, executive director of The Impact Project, an initiative of Public Service Ventures Ltd., a private corporation that launches and scales solutions to strengthen public service and communities., has been collecting data and plotting on an interactive map where AmeriCorps programs have been canceled. Andre, a former Department of Justice litigator, has also worked with her team to build other maps showing where federal workforce cuts have been felt across the country.
“AmeriCorps is a really great example of the federal dollars being kind of invisible in communities. Communities often don’t know that a local food bank or a senior center are supported by AmeriCorps volunteers and AmeriCorps money,” said Andre, who taught administrative law at the Vermont Law School after working under President Barack Obama and in Trump’s first administration.
Andre said communities with a lack of social services, including in rural areas, will likely feel the biggest losses without an AmeriCorps presence because the agency “facilitates pennies-on-the-dollar type services through volunteer work.”
“It’s not as though if these community services folded, those communities would have the money to fund equal or better services through the private market,” she said.
The Maryland Governor’s Office on Service and Volunteerism gave the green light to Project CHANGE to keep its program, which serves Montgomery County in suburban Washington, D.C., running through the upcoming school year.
Paul Costello, director of Project CHANGE, is now scrambling to launch a new AmeriCorps cohort after receiving the news on July 22 that the initiative had been funded. He estimates members won’t be able to begin until almost a month into the school year.
“Sadly, AmeriCorps, as a brand name, is badly damaged, I think. I mean, I’ve got a meeting on Wednesday with a major partner who told us two weeks ago ‘We thought you were dead,’” Costello told States Newsroom in an Aug. 11 interview.
Costello’s program not only places service members in Montgomery County Public Schools, where Zare served, but also with partners including Community Bridges, Montgomery Housing Partnership and Family Learning Solutions.
The nonprofits respectively focus on helping adolescent girls from diverse backgrounds, children whose families live in community-developed affordable housing units and teens eyeing college and career paths.
The county’s school system is the largest in the state and serves a highly diverse population. About 44% of the system’s 160,000 students qualify for free and reduced meals, and close to 20% are learning English while continuing to speak another language at home.
Costello’s 18 cohort members embedded in those schools and nonprofits this past academic year were suddenly yanked in April when the government cut his grant. The partners, which had planned and budgeted to have the members through June, were thrown into “total chaos,” Costello said.
“So some of them are so desperate, they rely on their members. They had to dig into their pockets to keep them on as staff. And then we go back to them this year and say, ‘You want members this year?’ AmeriCorps has made no attempt to make them whole. So they’ve been screwed,” Costello said.
AmeriCorps did not respond to States Newsroom’s questions about nonprofits losing money.
The federal courts granted some relief to members and organizations who abruptly lost living allowances and contractually obligated funding.
A Maryland federal district judge ordered in June that funding and positions be restored in 24 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia that sued the agency.
Another district judge in the state also handed a win to more than a dozen nonprofits from across the country that sued to recover funding they were owed.
But for many it was too late, and AmeriCorps’ future still feels shaky.
After suddenly losing his living allowance in April, Zare had to leave Silver Spring.
“I was renting a room off of Georgia (Avenue), and I was not able to pay rent there anymore, so I actually moved back to my mom’s in Germantown for the time being,” he told States Newsroom in August, referring to another Maryland suburb.
Hillary Kane, director of the Philadelphia Higher Education Network for Neighborhood Development, said by the time the court orders were issued, many of her AmeriCorps members had already found other positions and she had completely let go of one of her full-time staffers.
While the court injunctions were “welcome news,” reinstating the programs remained “questionable,” Kane wrote in a July 21 update for Nonprofit Quarterly.
Kane’s organization is a member of the National College Attainment Network, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that was among the successful plaintiffs.
Other organizations that joined the lawsuit are based in California, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Virginia.
The Democratic-led states that won reinstatement for AmeriCorps members include Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin.
Kane got news on July 10 that PennSERVE, Pennsylvania’s state service commission, reinstated funding for her AmeriCorps program that places members in four West Philadelphia high schools to mentor students on their post-graduation plans.
The late notice meant Kane could only begin recruiting new members in mid-July.
“And so our start date has to be a bit fluid,” Kane told States Newsroom during a July 22 interview. “We have to essentially recruit people into this one-year cohort position, and say, ‘We’re hoping to start September 2, but we’re not 100% sure. Can you kind of just roll with it?’ It’s an awkward position to have to be in.”
Other AmeriCorps programs have not fared so well, as the Trump administration’s Office of Management and Budget continues to withhold funds that were appropriated by Congress for the ongoing fiscal year.
Trump signed legislation in March that extended the $1.26 billion for AmeriCorps for the full 2025 fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30.
Kane said the most “insidious” part of the recent AmeriCorps storyline is that programs that receive grants directly from the federal agency are being strung along by OMB.
“So there are agencies who have been theoretically awarded money, but they’re like, ‘Is it actually going to happen? Should I spend all this money and then not be able to bill the federal government to reimburse me if OMB is going to hold it hostage?’”
Programs at risk include 130 recently expired contracts for AmeriCorps Foster Grandparent and Senior Companions programs that support roughly 6,000 senior citizen volunteers across 35 states. The programs are eligible for just over $50 million for the new service year, which should be off to a start.
A bipartisan group of U.S. senators pressed the executive branch agency on Aug. 1 to release the funds.
“Further delays in grantmaking will have immediate and irreversible consequences for programs, AmeriCorps members, and communities,” the senators wrote in a letter to OMB Director Russ Vought.
Republican Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Thom Tillis of North Carolina joined Democratic Sens. Chris Coons of Delaware, Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York in signing the letter. All are members of the Senate National Service Caucus.
The White House and AmeriCorps did not respond for comment.
The Republican-led Senate Committee on Appropriations voted on July 31 to preserve $1.25 billion in AmeriCorps funding for fiscal year 2026. Collins chairs the committee.
U.S. House appropriators, which for the last two years under Republican leadership have sought to cut AmeriCorps funding, are expected to debate its budget in September. But it’s almost certain Congress will have to pass a stopgap spending bill when the end of the fiscal year arrives to stave off a partial government shutdown, so a final decision on funding may not come for months.
Zare never did have a chance to say goodbye to all his students in April.
And even though the option was on the table, he did not sign up to serve a third year with AmeriCorps.
Before he applied and earned a spot with Project CHANGE, Zare was working odd jobs, including as a utilities contractor for Comcast. He had also earned his associate’s degree.
“I don’t think there’s any other program to take someone like me who was working a couple of different jobs and put them in an environment like this, to see firsthand as an American citizen how our classrooms operate and what position I would need to be in to actually be of benefit,” Zare told States Newsroom.
Zare is now freelancing and debating his next move, whether that’s a new job or further higher education.
“AmeriCorps is something that I’m always going to cherish because a lot of the people there still help me,” he said.
Editor’s note: D.C. Bureau Senior Reporter Ashley Murray served in AmeriCorps in 2009-2010.
Darryl Chavis, 62, served in the U.S. Army for two years as a watercraft operator. He stands outside the Borden Avenue Veterans Residence, a short-term housing facility in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens, N.Y., where he lives. Chavis relies on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and is worried about new work requirements for the program, commonly known as food stamps. (Photo by Shalina Chatlani/Stateline)
NEW YORK — After a year in the U.S. Navy, Loceny Kamara said he was discharged in 2023, because while on base he had developed mental health issues, including severe anxiety and nightmares, and had fallen into alcoholism.
Kamara, 23, went to rehab and managed to get sober for some time while living with family in the Bronx, he said. But after he lost his job as a security guard in December, Kamara was kicked out of his home. Now he lives at a veterans homeless shelter in Long Island City, a neighborhood in Queens, New York, and he relies on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — commonly known as food stamps — and odd jobs to make ends meet.
Each month, nearly 42 million people receive SNAP benefits to help supplement their grocery budgets. Able-bodied SNAP recipients who are between 18 and 54 and don’t have children have always been required to work. Veterans, however, have been exempt from those rules — but that’s about to change.
The giant domestic policy measure that President Donald Trump signed on July 4 eliminates that exemption. Beginning in 2026, veterans will have to prove they are working, volunteering, participating in job training, or looking for work for at least 80 hours a month to keep their food stamps beyond three months, unless they qualify for another exemption, such as having certain disabilities.
Republicans in Congress and conservatives who helped formulate the law say these eligibility changes are necessary to stop people who could be working from abusing the system. But critics say the change fails to take into account the barriers many veterans face, and that the new work rules will cause thousands of veterans to go hungry.
“I’m pissed. I mean, I cannot get a job. Nowhere to live,” said Kamara. As he spoke, Kamara pointed to his collared shirt, noting that he had just dressed up to interview for a job as a security guard. He learned that morning he hadn’t gotten the job.
“I’ve been out of work for eight months,” Kamara told Stateline. “It’s hard to get a job right now for everybody.”
Nationally, around 1.2 million veterans with lower incomes, or about 8% of the total veteran population of 16.2 million, rely on food stamps for themselves and their families, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning research group.
An analysis by the group found veterans tend to have lower rates of employment because they are more likely to have health conditions, such as traumatic brain injuries, that make it difficult for them to work. They also tend to have less formal education, though many have specialized skills from their time in the military.
There has been a work requirement for most SNAP recipients since 1996. But Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, said the rules have “never really been enforced.” Rector argued that able-bodied people who have been exempt from the work requirement, such as veterans and homeless people, create an unnecessary burden on the system if they are capable of working but don’t.
“Most of the people that are in this category live in households with other people that have incomes, and so there really isn’t a chronic food shortage here,” Rector said in an interview. “We have tens of thousands of free food banks that people can go to. So it’s just a requirement to nudge these people in the proper direction, and it should no longer go unenforced.”
Darryl Chavis, 62, said that view ignores the difficulties that many veterans face. When Chavis left the U.S. Army at 21 after two years of service, he said, he was “severely depressed.”
“Nobody even came to help me,” said Chavis, who served as a watercraft operator, responsible for operating and maintaining tugboats, barges and other landing craft.
Chavis said he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, which has made it difficult for him to keep a job. He just moved back to New York from Virginia after leaving a relationship. He’s been at the housing shelter in Long Island City since January.
“What I’m trying to do is get settled in to, you know, stabilize into an apartment. I have the credentials to get a job. So it’s not like I’m not gonna look for a job. I have to work. I’m in transition, and the obstacles don’t make it easy,” Chavis said.
The new SNAP work rules apply to all able-bodied adults between 55 and 64 who don’t have dependents, and parents with children above the age of 14. Some groups, such as asylum-seekers and refugees, are no longer eligible for the program.
Barbara Guinn, commissioner of the New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, estimates that around 300,000 New Yorkers could lose SNAP benefits due to work requirements. Of those, around 22,000 are veterans, homeless or aging out of foster care, she said. Almost 3 million New Yorkers relied on SNAP as of March 2025.
Veterans in other states are in a similar situation. In California, an estimated 115,000 veterans receive SNAP benefits, according to a study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The number is nearly 100,000 in Florida and Texas, and 49,000 in Georgia.
Between 2015 and 2019 about 11% of veterans between the ages of 18 and 64 lived in food insecure households, meaning they had limited or uncertain access to food, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees SNAP.
“We know that SNAP is the best way to help address hunger. It gets benefits directly to individuals,” Guinn said. “There are other ways that people can get assistance if they need it, through food banks or other charitable organizations, but we do not think that those organizations will have the capacity to pick up the needs.”
In addition to the work rule changes, the new law reduces federal funding for SNAP by about $186 billion through 2034 — a cut of roughly 20%, according to the Congressional Budget Office, an independent research arm of Congress. The federal government expects the new work requirements to reduce SNAP spending by $69 billion as people who don’t comply are dropped from the rolls.
SNAP has historically been funded by the federal government, with states picking up part of the cost of administering the program. Under the new law, states will have to cover between 5% and 15% of SNAP costs starting in fiscal year 2028, depending on how accurately they distribute benefits to people who are eligible for the program.
This has been a strategic agenda to dismantle SNAP and to blame states for doing so.
– Gina Plata-Nino, SNAP deputy director at the Food Research & Action Center
“This has been a strategic agenda to dismantle SNAP and to blame states for doing so, because they knew they are making it so incredibly burdensome to run and operate and unaffordable,” said Gina Plata-Nino, SNAP deputy director at the Food Research & Action Center, a poverty and hunger advocacy group.
“States are going to have to cut something, because there’s no surplus. There are no unlimited resources that states may have in order to be able to offset the harm.”
Guinn said New York expects to see a new cost burden of at least $1.4 billion each year. In California, new state costs could total as much as $3.7 billion annually, according to the California Department of Social Services.
Kaitlynne Yancy, director of membership programs at Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said many veterans with disabilities will not be able to fulfill the work requirements or find resources elsewhere. And it’s unclear whether states will be able to provide their own relief to people who are no longer exempted from work requirements or will be excluded from the program.
“It is a frustrating thing to see, especially for those that have been willing to put everything on the line and sacrifice everything for this country if their country called them to do so,” she said.
Yancy, 35, served in the U.S. Navy from 2010 to 2014. She began to use food stamps and the Medicaid program, the public health insurance program for people with lower incomes, as she navigated life’s challenges. They included going back to school to pursue her bachelor’s degree, becoming a single mother, and a leukemia diagnosis for one of her children. Frequent trips to the hospital made it hard for her to work steadily or attend school for 20 hours each week, she said.
Guinn said the new rules will create significant administrative challenges, too; even SNAP recipients who are working will struggle to prove it.
“Maybe they’re working one month, they have a job, and then their employer cuts their hours the next month,” Guinn told Stateline. “There are mechanisms for people to upload documentation as needed to demonstrate compliance with the program, but from an administrative standpoint, right now, we don’t have any super-high-tech automated way of doing this.”
Stateline reporter Shalina Chatlani can be reached at schatlani@stateline.org.
Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.
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