West Virginia declines to join nationwide lawsuit over cancellation of AmeriCorps
FAIRMONT, W.Va. (WBOY) — In West Virginia, 250 AmeriCorps members lost their jobs over the weekend due to cuts from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), yet the state has declined to join a lawsuit against the Trump Administration over the cancellation of that funding.
The Tygart Valley United Way said earlier this week that DOGE's budget cuts would have a direct effect on its AmeriCorps members, as 80% of its Flipside Afterschool Program was employed by AmeriCorps members.
The Flipside Afterschool Program provides one-on-one interventions, support, and tutoring for fifth through eighth-grade students at four middle schools in Marion County. Staff of the program were notified of these cuts only 4 weeks before the end of the school year.
12 News spoke with Shannon Yost, Flipside Afterschool Director at the United Way, on how these cuts will impact students of the program.
'That puts not only an undue hardship on our Afterschool Program and us having to scramble and figure out what the next four weeks are going to look like because we don't want service to be interrupted for these students who need help Afterschool, who need a safe place to go after school. We don't want this to affect them; however, that's a majority of our staffing is AmeriCorps,' said Yost.
DOGE cuts AmeriCorps programs across West Virginia
Thirteen members of AmeriCorps worked with Tygart Valley United Way directly and immediately lost their contracts as the cuts hit.
'There are six key areas of AmeriCorps service, from environmental stewardship to financial stability, to education, to veteran and military families, so not only is our program being affected by these cuts, but 32,000 individuals have suddenly lost their positions. Americorps members are not considered employees of the organizations with which they served, so they are not eligible for any sort of unemployment compensation,' Yost said.
Most states lost the entirety of their AmeriCorps programs, though Yost said that West Virginia was 'fortunate enough' to keep a few. Nationally, 1,000 programs were terminated due to DOGE's cuts.
'This is not an abuse of funding, these are members who are working for very low wages. They are just making enough to get by, and who are the people that go into southern West Virginia when it floods and help with cleanup efforts? They are working with veterans and their families to make sure that they have all of the resources they need. They are answering the phones at our United Way when people call the 211 line and need resources to pay their bills,' said Yost.
Yost is encouraging the public to contact Congress and local legislators to help in pursuing change for the fate of AmeriCorps.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
San Francisco Chronicle
2 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
A record number of people are claiming Social Security — but what's really the best age to start?
Elon Musk may have made a recent dramatic exit from DOGE, but the impact of his cost-cutting crusade in the federal government is still being felt widely — including among Social Security recipients. DOGE cuts to Social Security staff, closures of field offices and restrictions on filing by phone caused confusion and fear among recipients and applicants. The uproar was so great that the agency walked back many of the changes. But rising concerns about the future of the program may be driving many people to apply for their Social Security benefits earlier than they otherwise would have — and that can have permanent, long-term consequences for their financial well-being, according to experts. More Americans than ever filed for Social Security benefits in the first half of the fiscal year. According to Social Security data, the Urban Institute found 267,000 more claims filed from October to April than in that time period in the previous year, and found more seniors were claiming it early — before the full retirement age of 67. That amounts to a 13% year-over-year increase in claims. Over the decade before that, claims typically only grew by 3% a year. While the institute said an increase in eligible recipients from the baby boomer population and new notification requirements were likely factors, those did not fully explain the recent surge in early filing. The acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration said fear and confusion over DOGE cuts were at play, with calls to the SSA and visits to field offices also on the rise. Laura Quinby, who studies Social Security and other topics as the associate director of research for the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, said if people think the program isn't going to exist or is going to be cut in the near future, it makes them want to pull money out of it while they still can. In 2021, she co-authored a report showing that anxiety about the future of Social Security as perceived through headlines drove people to say they'd claim their benefits earlier than they would have otherwise. A reader named Marie wrote to me to say the election had influenced her decision to go ahead and apply for her benefits. Though she'd initially planned to wait until she turned 70 in 2026 to claim Social Security, 'with Trump being elected it seemed like the difference between collecting this year versus next year wasn't worth it.' She said she started taking it in February. But claiming early — even by one year — comes with a downside: Though you're eligible to claim Social Security benefits as early as 62, you get an 8% increase in benefits for every year you wait, up to age 70, when the maximum benefit kicks in. The maximum monthly benefit if you start claiming at age 62 in 2025 is $2,831. If you waited until age 70 to start claiming this year, your monthly benefit could be as high as $5,108. 'Fear has really started to set in among seniors who are jumping on to Social Security at the age of 62 in record numbers because they feel like, 'I've got to get on this thing because it might be gone,' and people weren't thinking that way until this year,' said Chris Orestis, the president and founder of Retirement Genius. 'You had skepticism, but you didn't have fear.' Fear is rarely a good reason to make a decision as life-altering as when you claim Social Security. So how should seniors be thinking about this choice? Here's what experts say. Should people be worried about the future of Social Security? People are concerned about the future of the program, one of the bedrocks of retirement in America since it began in 1935. Quinby was specifically studying how people responded to headlines about the potential future insolvency of the program as it is structured now. The most recent report from the Social Security Trustees, issued in May, indicated that the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund 'will be able to pay 100 percent of total scheduled benefits until 2033.' But that doesn't mean Social Security is doomed to disappear in eight years. If the program kept running as it does now with no changes, the report said Social Security would still be able to pay out 79% of current benefits starting in 2033. And there are many tools at the government's disposal to tweak Social Security and bolster that trust fund or otherwise augment the program, said Christine Benz, director of personal finance and retirement planning for Morningstar and author of the book 'How to Retire: 20 Lessons for a Happy, Successful and Wealthy Retirement.' Those could include lifting the current cap on income that's taxed for Social Security, adding means testing for recipients, increasing the payroll tax, upping the age you can claim, or a variety of other instruments. Benz said she sometimes hears from young people who tell her they just assume they'll never get a dime from Social Security. She said she doesn't think that's true. The program will have to be changed to maintain the current level of benefits, but it's highly improbable that it will go away in any of our lifetimes. She said for people who are currently age 55 or older, she wouldn't anticipate any changes to benefit amounts. 'The idea that there would be meaningful changes to their promised benefits seems to me incredibly unlikely,' she said. 'I think Congress would open every cupboard and turn over every drawer before upending people's promised benefits.' It makes sense that the recent headlines have made people nervous, Orestis said. Currently, $700 billion in cuts to Medicaid and SNAP are on the table in the 'Big Beautiful Bill,' Trump's spending and tax package working its way through Congress. But unlike those programs, he said, Social Security and Medicare are supported by armies of lobbyists, activists, advocacy organizations and a committed voting base of senior citizens. Simply put: These programs are popular, and most politicians — who, unlike Musk, all need to be reelected at some point — won't want to risk the backlash to any serious cuts. While we should take Musk and his DOGE cohort at their word that they're looking to root out waste and fraud, Orestis said he thinks they're unlikely to find much in Social Security. The changes made by DOGE so far have faced immense pushback, and some, like cuts to phone service, have already been undone. And though the Trump administration and DOGE seem to be running the show now, Orestis said that insolvency date eight years from now is 'an eternity' in the world of politics. What's the best age to claim Social Security? When you choose to take Social Security, you're locking yourself in at that amount of monthly benefits. Apart from the yearly cost of living adjustment, there's no way to go back or 'pause' receiving benefits to take advantage of a later retirement age. For 40% of retirees, Social Security makes up more than half their income; for about a third, it makes up all of it. Therefore, it is generally to your benefit to delay taking it as long as possible, so that you maximize your monthly fixed income. Of course, what's broadly right for a lot of people isn't necessarily right for you. If you are unable to work and have no other means of income, then you need to claim Social Security. And if you have a family history of shorter lifespans, it could make more financial sense to claim earlier. Social Security distributes benefits with the assumption that the average person will have an average lifespan, currently 84 for men and 87 for women; up until that age, the total lifetime amount you collect from Social Security would be about the same whether you claimed at 62 or 70. If people in your family generally don't live that long, collecting on the earlier side could mean you bring in more income from Social Security overall than you would have if you'd waited longer, though you'd have less monthly income at your disposal in your later years. It's also OK to take your anxiety about the news into account as you make your decision, said Hal Hershfield, a professor at the UCLA Anderson School of Management who studies behavioral decision-making. 'If you feel like you're someone that will get value out of dialing down the uncertainty by taking the money now, but knowing full well that if you had waited, you might have actually worked out to have more money later, then maybe in that case it makes sense to claim earlier,' he said. So the 'best' age, according to financial experts, is likely still 'as late as you possibly can.' But personal finance is always personal. For people looking to delay taking Social Security but off-ramp from full-time work, there are options. Quinby said the Center for Retirement Research has looked at the so-called 'bridge option,' where people spend down their 401(k) or other savings in their 60s to facilitate delaying guaranteed inflation-protected Social Security income. Hershfield of UCLA said his parents opted to work part time. (If you continue working while claiming benefits, especially if you haven't reached full retirement age, your benefits will be reduced if you earn above a certain income level.) Orestis of Retirement Genius said even if you go on Social Security at 62, you aren't eligible for Medicare until 65. He tells people to do whatever they can to at least stretch their working years with employer-sponsored health insurance until they can access those government-provided medical benefits. He also recommended something everyone can do right now to protect their benefits: Log on to and create your account. From there, you can see your lifetime earnings from your very first paycheck. You can (and should) download those records so you have a hard copy in case anything ever happens to the federal government's database.
Boston Globe
5 hours ago
- Boston Globe
DOGE gets failing grade
1: The DOGE numbers don't add up. Calculating how much DOGE has saved is difficult, but it's not at all hard to see that it didn't deliver what was promised. After Musk revised down his own early projection of DOGE savings from $2 trillion to $1 trillion, the department's website now estimates it has found more than $170 billion in taxpayer savings — Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up But even that figure should be taken with a grain of salt, given that past examinations of DOGE's ' Advertisement DOGE moved to correct the error, as well as change the website to make such errors harder to find. But a Advertisement And though it may seem counterintuitive, cutting jobs doesn't actually translate to savings if it results in less productivity — if fewer IRS workers means less tax revenue is collected, for instance. An And even some Republican lawmakers have expressed unease with backing many DOGE-recommended cuts in a $9.4 billion legislative 'rescissions' package to claw back previously approved funding. House lawmakers 2: DOGE has roiled the job market. According to the latest jobs numbers, DOGE cuts contributed to a 50 percent spike in layoffs in May over the same period last year, Exacerbating the damage the firings alone have created is the chaotic way in which they were implemented. Federal agencies like the State Department, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Food and Drug Administration, National Weather Service, and the IRS are among those rushing to rehire terminated employees. That's because many of the estimated 135,000 DOGE-axed positions are for critical functions, like approving drugs and forecasting weather disasters. The layoffs' often-disorganized manner has confused dismissed workers and overtaxed remaining ones, many of whom have been asked to work overtime, volunteer to take on additional roles, or be pushed into new positions, Advertisement One former FDA worker That's not to mention the blow to communities in states where the largest percentages of federal workers are located, as well as government contractors that face secondhand profit and job losses due to the cuts. Outside of the greater Washington, D.C. region, which includes Virginia and Maryland, the hardest-hit states when it comes to canceled government contracts based on anti-DEI initiatives alone include Texas, California, North Carolina, Georgia, and Colorado — affecting politically red communities as well as blue. DOGE's harms know no partisanship. 3: The incalculable costs. On Monday a 'This was a breach of law and of trust,' wrote Judge Denise Cote in issuing the temporary injunction. 'Tens of millions of Americans depend on the Government to safeguard records that reveal their most private and sensitive affairs.' Whether some or all of DOGE's efforts to gain access to Americans' most sensitive information through agency databases will be declared unlawful is still uncertain. Challenges are still being litigated, and in a lawsuit involving DOGE access to Social Security data, the Advertisement According to Some DOGE staff have been granted temporary 'edit-access' to data, which means the information can be altered or deleted entirely within the federal system. That says nothing of the broader global impact, particularly through the dismantling of agencies like the United States Agency for International Development, which once provided critical life-saving humanitarian aid across the world. DOGE has The government claims that shuttering the agency saved Americans nearly $60 billion, or less than 1 percent of the federal budget. According to Advertisement Musk is already back to playing with his cars and rocket ships as the federal government picks up the pieces from his DOGE tantrum. But the global ripple effect is a reminder that some of the damage can't be undone. Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us
Chicago Tribune
17 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Thousands take to the streets Saturday to protest Trump at Naperville's ‘No Kings' rally
From immigrant and reproductive rights to DOGE accessing personal data, Sharon Pfister keeps a list of her grievances with President Donald Trump's administration on her phone so she can regularly refer back to them. One of her latest concerns was the Saturday military parade in Washington, D.C., to recognize the U.S. Army's 250th birthday, which was being held at the same time that veterans benefits are being cut, said Pfister, a Woodridge resident. The military parade also coincides with Trump's 79th birthday. Despite growing up during the Vietnam War era, Pfister said she had never been to a protest or rally before Trump was elected. But they're more important now than ever, she said Saturday while attending the 'No Kings' rally in downtown Naperville. 'I am afraid of our democracy being disembodied little by little,' she said. A Naperville police officer monitoring the scene estimated a few thousand demonstrators participated in the gathering, which started at the Naperville Municipal Center and proceeded through the downtown streets as people carried homemade signs and chanted and drivers passing by honked their car horns. 'I feel to stay silent is to be complicit,' Mary Sunderland, a Woodridge resident, said. 'Every day is a new horror.' Among the most recent was the attack Thursday on U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, D-California, who tried to ask a question at a news conference being held by U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and was removed from the room by security officers, taken to the ground and handcuffed. 'If they do that to a senator, what are they doing to a poor migrant?' Sunderland said. Immigrant rights was one of many concerns protesters voiced via signs with messages readying, 'Due process for immigrants,' 'Immigrants aren't enemies' and 'No human is illegal.' 'The way they are treating immigrants is horrendous,' said Hugh Flanders, of Aurora, a retired social studies teacher. 'How are we standing still and watching people being hunted because their skin color is wrong,' said Violet Lekic, of Romeoville. 'What is being done in Washington in America's name is not American.' Suzanne Akhras, a Syrian-American humanitarian activist, spoke of growing up in Syria when Hafez al-Assad came into power after a bloody coup. 'History has shown us repeatedly that dictatorships undermine the very principles of liberty and justice that we all enjoy,' said Akhras, who immigrated to the United States when she was 10. 'Dictatorships concentrate power only in a few of the elite that cozy up to that dictator, and it creates corruption and unfair systems for everyone. They suppress free thought and free speech and violate our basic human rights.' Akhras said the world is watching the United States. 'The right to protest is more than just an American privilege. It's a responsibility,' she said. '… Let's not squander this moment.' About 2,000 rallies took place nationwide as the 'No Kings' movement marked a nationwide day of defiance to denounce the Trump administration. 'We don't want kings. We don't want oligarchs,' Nancy Turner, co-leader of Indivisible Naperville, said. U.S. Rep. Bill Foster, D-Naperville, addressed the Naperville crowd, saying he was trying to attend seven similar protests. 'You are not alone,' Foster said. '… Our democracy has been sucker-punched here.' Several attendees said they felt they needed to stand up for democracy. 'The change of government from democracy to fascism is my main concern,' said Shelley Gale, of Willowbrook. It took Gale two weeks to narrow down what she wanted to include on her protest sign, but ultimately decided on 'A con man is stealing your government' for the front and 'A draft dodger is firing veterans' on the back. 'I don't think Trump cares about anything but stealing our government,' she said. 'He's causing chaos and havoc. There's no due process and he's getting away with it.' Jim and Terri Simak, of Naperville, said they believe the country is going backwards. 'What is happening these days is beyond reasonable understanding,' Terri Simak said. 'It's wrong and it's dangerous. Trump feels he is above the law and that's not what we believe in.' The Rev. Sharon Rice, deacon of discipleship with the Community United Methodist Church in Naperville, said that as a person of faith she was concerned about the rise of Christian nationalism, people suffering, cuts to Medicaid and cruelty towards others. Rice said she hopes the rallies across the country send a powerful message. 'There are people who do care about their neighbors,' she said. 'They care about the cuts to social services that the vulnerable rely on. They are tired of this cruelty. There's a positive message to our young people and the country they will inherit: There is hope down the road.'
