Tracker: How the White House and DOGE are Cutting Kentucky Jobs and Services 

The Trump administration, with the help of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is cutting federal grants, programs and employment across the nation. These reductions are already affecting public services and programs Kentuckians rely on and are eliminating jobs in the state, but the speed and range of the cuts can make it hard to see a full picture of the impacts. 

In a few cases, the administration is eliminating or severely curtailing entire programs. It is also cancelling contracts and grants to universities and other institutions, nonprofits and private businesses. These cuts are eliminating Kentucky jobs, as are direct buyouts of federal workers, layoffs of probationary employees and other firings and reductions in agency staffing levels. 

The legality of many of these decisions is in doubt and court challenges are under way.  Public controversy and resulting judicial rulings have also led to some cuts being rolled back, increasing the difficulty in understanding their effects. 

This tracker identifies impacts in Kentucky. The list is not comprehensive but attempts to capture many of the largest cuts and will be updated as new information becomes available.  If you are aware of a cut missing from this list and what it means for Kentucky, please let us know at patience@kypolicy.org.

Disaster Relief and Protection   

• Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program halted.  This program, which helped communities reduce the impact of climate-related disasters and better prepare for such events, was terminated in April.  Cuts to BRIC will impact more than $9 million in grants already made to Kentucky, along with applications for $23 million more that will no longer be considered. 
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) cuts. A $100 million budget cut was made from the procurement, acquisition and construction budget through failure to designate emergency funding provided in the fiscal year 2025 continuing resolution.  Kentucky’s National Weather Service field offices currently have a vacancy rate of over 35%, which has hindered the ability of those offices to perform their assigned functions.  
• Forest service layoffs. The forest service has seen staff reductions of more than 10%. Kentucky’s Daniel Boone National Forest covers 21 counties in eastern Kentucky and totals over 700,000 acres; at least nine national forest employees have been laid off in that region.  
• The Wildfire Hazardous Fuels Management program. $214 million in funding for this program has been frozen. Its purpose is to reduce wildfire risk by removing flammable vegetation from the ground.  Kentucky receives funds from this program specifically for the Firewise Community Grant Program through the Kentucky Division of Forestry. 

Education

• Layoffs at the Office for Civil Rights (OCR). Seven of the 12 regional offices of the Education Department’s OCR have been closed, including the Philadelphia office that served Kentucky. Nearly half of OCR’s 550 employees have also been laid off, making it virtually impossible to resolve the growing number of civil rights complaints from students and their families. As of January 14, there were 116 open cases in Kentucky secondary and postsecondary schools. 
• Institute of Education Sciences (IES) cuts and layoffs. Nearly $900 million in contracts have been cut and approximately 90% of staff have been laid off from IES. These workers conducted studies to identify why, when and under what conditions students are able to perform well in school. Just three out of around a hundred employees remain at IES’s National Center for Education Statistics, which determines school district eligibility for federal funding programs such as Title 1, the grant program for high-poverty school districts that provided $274 million across 70% of the Kentucky’s public schools in 2025. 
• Funding for the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) halted. ERIC is an open access resource for education research utilized by policymakers, researchers, teachers and parents that includes materials going back to the 1960s. 
• $56 million in Kentucky federal COVID education grants cancelled. School districts had until March 2026 to spend these COVID-related grants, which were being allocated for construction and for new school buses in Kentucky. The administration has now said it won’t honor that promise. Letcher County schools had used $3 million of this funding to purchase 25 new buses after flooding had destroyed buses in 2022.
• Cuts to the Office of Federal Student Aid (OFSA). The OFSA’s staffing has been halved through a combination of 400 layoffs and 200 buyouts and early retirements. OFSA handles complaints about student loans and ensures schools are following rules to protect students. More than 600,000 Kentuckians owe a total of $20.3 billion in student loans. 
• Entire staff for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) put on administrative leave. The IMLS administers $160 million in grants annually to museums and many of the 125,000 libraries nationwide, including $4.3 million in Kentucky in 2024. All 75 staff have been placed on administrative leave, and if the agency is ultimately dismantled, poor and rural communities will be harmed the most. 
• State humanities council grants eliminated. Over 70% of Kentucky Humanities’ annual budget has been eliminated due to these cuts. This funding has helped the organization support 2,500 arts and cultural activities across Kentucky in the past four years. 
• Nearly half of Americorps grant funding eliminated. These $400 million in national cuts eliminate approximately 41% of grant funding from Americorps, which creates service employment at nonprofits and agencies across the country, including 700 sites and 5,200 members and volunteers in Kentucky in 2024. These jobs provide homeless services, support education, promote public health and the arts, and the cuts harm programs like those at Kentucky’s Hindman Settlement School that serve nearly 1,000 kids with learning differences from 25 schools located in five counties, fund a dyslexia summer school, support 47 tutor positions, and more. 
• Halted funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. An executive order “ceases federal funding” for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service to the extent the law allows. Kentucky Educational Television (KET) receives 14% of its funding from federal dollars, while WUKY receives 15% and is one of 14 public radio stations across the state.

Energy and Environment   

• Cuts and layoffs at the Department of Energy (DoE). The Trump administration cut $77.1 million for programs within the DoE paired with a 13% reduction in its workforce, leaving millions of Americans at risk of power outages and rising energy costs.  
• Freeze on electric vehicle infrastructure creation. Roughly $2.8 million in funding that had been allocated for National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program has been indefinitely frozen, disabling states from moving forward with plans and projects to deploy electric charging infrastructure. 
• Cuts at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). $25.6 billion in funding for the EPA has been terminated or frozen, and executive orders have halted enforcements of certain state environmental protection policies and taken away the EPA’s ability to regulate specific dangerous pollutants.

Food and Agriculture  

• Cuts and layoffs at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). An estimated 170 staff critical to food and drug safety has been terminated from the FDA’s  Office of Inspections and Investigations. The cuts have taken a toll on ongoing inspections, worsening a backlog created during the pandemic. Rising concerns led to the reinstatement of about two dozen staffers to assist with delays and new cumbersome administrative processes. 
• Cuts to school feeding programs. The U.S. Department for Agriculture is ending the Patrick Leahy Local Food for Schools, which helps schools procure food for kids from local farms. The Kentucky Department of Agriculture (KDA) has also lost $3.2 million for a program that connected over 130 farmers and National School Lunch Program participating schools. 
• The Local Food Purchasing Assistance Cooperative Agreement canceled. This program provided $11 million to KDA to help buy food from local farmers for food banks, frozen meals, and food box programs given to people with low incomes.
• Elimination of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) programs. An agency-wide halt to programs within USAID means the elimination of Food for Peace, a program providing international food assistance from U.S. farmers. The pushback from American farmers has resulted in proposals to move the program to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

Health

• Restructuring at the Department for Health and Human Services (HHS). Recent restructuring at HHS has led to the elimination of certain offices like the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), which provides Kentucky with critical grant funding to address the overdose crisis. For example, at least 96,768 Narcan units were distributed in Kentucky in 2023, support that was made possible by a SAMHSA grant.
• Mass layoffs at HHS. HHS announced 10,000 staff layoffs in addition to the 10,000 employees who voluntarily left, leaving HHS with a 25% reduced workforce since inauguration. All divisions within the department are impacted by the layoffs, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) which among other roles helps fund the work of Kentucky health departments. 
• CDC grant suspensions. Over $11 billion in CDC federal grants were suspended by the Trump administration in March, but that move was later halted by an emergency restraining order. However, some nonprofits say they have received notice of suspended funding. These grants include funds allocated during the COVID-19 pandemic to state and local health departments to track, prevent and control infectious diseases. Kentucky is projected to lose $149 million in public health funds due to these grant suspensions.
• National Institutes for Health (NIH) grant caps. Beginning in February, the Trump Administration ordered an across the board 15% cap to the indirect cost rate for health research grants administered by the NIH. The cap, which has been temporarily blocked by a court, is below what research institutions need to pay for equipment, facilities, research assistants and other costs. If implemented, the cap would deny the University of Kentucky $40 million over the next year for health research funding. 
• NIH grant terminations. Millions in NIH grants have been cancelled around the country, including a $3.38 million grant to University of Kentucky for a wastewater COVID-19 surveillance study and another for HIV/AIDS prevention and research. A total of 23 universities and other research organizations in Kentucky receive NIH grant funds. 
• USAID infections disease prevention and treatment programs elimination. In March, the elimination of USAID ended funding for infectious disease (HIV/AIDS, measles, malaria, tuberculosis, etc.) vaccinations, treatment and mitigation in other countries. In addition to resulting in preventable deaths, this cut poses expanded threats to global and U.S. public health as microbes don’t adhere to state lines or national borders.
• New individual marketplace restrictions. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed a new rule that would undermine the individual health insurance marketplace by reducing the amount of time open enrollment takes place each year, eliminating the option for low-wage-earning households to sign up outside of open enrollment, and no longer covering DACA recipients. Kentucky’s enrollment was up this past year 17%, covering nearly 100,000 people, partly due to these flexibilities. While Kentucky would be able to set its own open enrollment window (the state has its own health insurance marketplace), it would still be subject to the other changes. 

Income Security

• Revoked basic cash assistance pilot project. In 2024, the Cabinet for Health and Human Services (HHS) awarded Kentucky one of five pilot opportunities to improve its basic cash assistance program through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) grant and reduce the reporting burden on participants. But in March of 2025, HHS rescinded the approval and announced it would change the parameters of the grant and resubmit a request for proposals. Nearly 40,000 Kentuckians participate in the TANF basic cash assistance program each month. 
• Cuts and layoffs at the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB). Between 2012 and 2024, the CFPB returned nearly $20 billion to 195 million Americans from illegal and predatory financial practices, and investigated nearly 22,000 complaints from Kentuckians on issues ranging from incorrect credit scores, attempts by debt collectors to collect on debt the consumer didn’t owe, and unfair or illegal fees. The Trump administration has twice attempted to gut the agency, firing 1,500 of the 1,700 employees – both attempts have been temporarily paused by federal courts, with some exceptions.  
• Social Security Administration layoffs and office closures. In 2023, just over 1 million Kentuckians were receiving social security payments due to retirement or disability. But the Trump administration has laid off 7,000 of the 57,000 Social Security Administration employees, plans to lay off many more, and will likely close at least one Social Security office in Kentucky (the Hazard location). 
• Layoffs at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The IRS processes millions of Kentuckians’ tax returns each year, and many receive important refundable credits like the EITC, which provided 352,000 Kentucky filers with $967 million in 2023. The Trump administration has reduced the IRS workforce by at least 22,000, however, and has plans to further reduce it by another 60,000 to 70,000. This not only puts the processing of important low-income tax credits at risk, but could significantly reduce federal tax revenues, putting additional pressure on important programs that Kentuckians use every day. 
• Layoffs and office closures at the Department for Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Over half of Kentucky renters spend 30% or more of their incomes on rent, which contributes to an increasing likelihood of homelessness (nearly 5,000 Kentuckians were officially homeless in 2023, an undercount that misses many of those without stable housing). So far, 23% of HUD’s staff have been laid off or pressured to resign, and whole offices such as the Community Development Financial Institution Fund and the Interagency on Homelessness have been disbanded. Additionally, the administration is in the process of closing over 110 field offices.    

Immigrants and Refugees 

• Funding cuts and frozen grants for programs that serve vulnerable immigrants. The administration terminated $370 million funding for Legal Services for Unaccompanied Children and froze $200 million of funding for Refugee and Entrant Assistance. The Office of Refugee Resettlement also shortened the Refugee Cash Assistance and Refugee Medical Assistance eligibility period from 12 months to four months. 
• Help for immigrants navigating immigration court cut off. $54 million in funding for the Citizenship and Integration Program and the Legal Orientation Program was terminated. These programs help noncitizens understand how US immigration courts work as they seek status changes or naturalization.  

Veterans

• Terminated contracts for services to Veterans Affairs (VA).  In March, the administration terminated $1.8 billion in funding for 585 contract services, including contracts with service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses in Kentucky. 

Worker Rights and Safety   

• Mass layoffs at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Approximately 873 of 1,000 employees at NIOSH were laid off. The institute’s mission is to research and issue recommendations to address worker-related injuries and illnesses. NIOSH’s work includes the Coal Workers’ Health Surveillance Program that provides screenings and training to help assess exposure to coal and silica dust, the cause of rising black lung disease cases in Kentucky. 
• Mine Safety Health and Administration (MSHA) programs and offices slated for cuts and closures. Coal miners diagnosed with black lung disease and can use programs that find alternative employment at the same pay through the MSHA. But in April, the administration put nearly half of MSHA offices under review to have leases ended, raising questions about enforcement of safety regulations which the administration has also delayed. A total of seven Kentucky MSHA offices are targeted for possible closure, which would leave just two such facilities in the state. 
• Reduced wages for federal workers. An executive order requiring a minimum wage for federal contractors of $17.75-an-hour was rescinded. The rule was previously estimated to increase wages for 390,000 low wage workers an average of $3,100 a year. Kentucky receives $12.5 million in federal contracts as of 2023. 
• Chair of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) fired. This firing prevents the board from moving forward on unfair labor practices or union representation elections. Kentucky workers have cases in front of the NLRB regularly, including the United Auto Workers who have filed for union representation at the Ford Blue Oval SK battery plants in Hardin County. The chair has been reinstated by court order pending further litigation.