
FILE - President Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One en route from Miami to Joint Base Andrews, Md., Jan. 27, 2025, as White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt listens. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
FILE - President Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One en route from Miami to Joint Base Andrews, Md., Jan. 27, 2025, as White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt listens. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
FILE - President Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One en route from Miami to Joint Base Andrews, Md., Jan. 27, 2025, as White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt listens. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
State and local elected officials were left scrambling Tuesday to measure the impact of the broad executive order issued by President Donald Trump Monday evening to freeze the distribution of all federal grant money.
Though the White House said Social Security and Medicare payments are not covered by the freeze, the status of federal programs that deliver millions of dollars to organizations, families and individuals in Lancaster County were unclear for much of the day.
Hours before a federal judge issued a ruling at 5 p.m. to delay the Trump order from taking effect until next Monday, the White House issued an updated memo, according to The Washington Post, that clarified the freeze is not aimed at programs that benefit individuals, such as food stamps.
The original communication from the White House specifically mentioned the president’s intent to stop federal support for “Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies.”
The confusion over the order resulted in problems for Pennsylvania agencies charged with managing federally funded programs. Gov. Josh Shapiro said government portals to access some programs – including Medicaid, Careerlink and Head Start – were down as of Tuesday afternoon.
“We literally can’t access the payment systems and the computer systems that are used to run these programs every single day,” Shapiro said.
Pennsylvania’s Democratic U.S. Sen. John Fetterman issued a statement calling for Trump to “immediately restore access” to Medicaid.
The status of other programs was unclear. Programs that may fall under the order include money for foster care and adoption assistance, opioid crisis grants, highway funding, homeless services, child support enforcement, senior centers, commodity program payments to some farmers and even some grants for law enforcement agencies.
Many of Lancaster County’s delegation in the General Assembly said they simply did not know enough about the scope of Trump’s order and therefore could not comment on the extent of its impact on their districts.
Among them was state Sen. Scott Martin, a Republican from Martic Township who serves as chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee. His spokesman, Jason Thompson, said Martin’s office would “await further clarity as the Trump administration takes a closer look at how federal resources are allocated.”
Democratic state Rep. Izzy Smith-Wade-El, of Lancaster city, said although he, too, was unsure about the impact of the order, he believes it left people in his district with a sense of “chaos and uncertainty.”
Smith-Wade-El said he’s been asked by multiple constituents via emails and phone calls to his office whether their jobs or benefits are at risk because of the order.
Lancaster County Congressman Lloyd Smucker, a Republican, expressed support for the Trump order on Tuesday. “I applaud the administration for their aggressive pursuit of savings for the taxpayers,” he said. “With a $36 trillion and growing federal debt, we must evaluate every government program to find savings, efficiencies, and root out waste. It is critical we change our nation’s fiscal trajectory.”
A Smucker spokesperson said any organization concerned about the status of their federal funding should contact the office for assistance.
U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick, a Republican, did not respond to a request for comment.
Republican Lancaster County Commissioners Josh Parsons and Ray D’Agostino said in Tuesday’s county work session that they were not certain what impact Trump’s order could have on county government.
But Parsons, who is running in a special election for northern Lancaster County’s 36th Senate District seat, said the county is aligned with the Trump administration’s policy.
Democratic Commissioner Alice Yoder said she hadn’t heard from any county departments about the freeze or that county services have adjusted in any way.
Yoder said she learned last week the U.S. Department of Justice canceled two competitive grants the county was interested in applying for to help pay for reentry programming at the Lancaster County Prison, and one that officials at the county Youth Intervention Center were looking at to help fund trauma-informed training initiatives
“I was discouraged by finding out that we could no longer access those funds,” Yoder said.
Parsons, in response, said Yoder was “talking about a possible grant that we could apply for, and there’s some federal grants we sometimes apply for, but we’re not federally funded, largely.”
Municipal government officials said they will largely be untouched by the pause, as very few receive any federal dollars to fund local services.
“I’m not worried about that in the least bit,” Manor Township Manager Ryan Strohecker said.
In 2019, before townships and boroughs each received thousands in federal pandemic recovery money, roughly $3.4 million was distributed to governments across the county. Most of that money went to Lancaster city, with $2.7 million, which was put toward costs like lead remediation and infrastructure projects.
Amber Strazzo Righter, the city’s communications manager, on Tuesday afternoon said officials weren’t sure what the full impact of the pause would be on services but were assessing the situation.
Capital projects, like roadwork, are a main target of federal funding at the municipal level. West Lampeter Township Manager Rebecca Denlinger said the township won’t be affected by the pause right now, but officials expect to begin a capital planning process next month to create a 10-year projection on major costs they will face. Denlinger said projections allow the township to submit applications for federal grants years in advance because of how long the process can take.
“We absolutely want to know those funds are going to be there,” Denlinger said.
School districts contacted on Tuesday – including Hempfield, Solanco and Octorara – said they were waiting for additional details as they tried to assess the potential impact of Trump’s order.
Adam Aurand of the School District of Lancaster said the district does receive federal Title I funds and other federal grants, and reimbursements from the National School Lunch Program are paid monthly based on the number of lunches served. “The pause could have an impact, depending on how long it goes on,” Aurand said.
The School District of Lancaster received the most yearly federal funding of any of the 17 school districts in Lancaster County – $27.73 million, or 10% of its budget.
Chris Lilienthal of the Pennsylvania State Education Association also said the biggest short-term impact is on nutrition programs. “We do not want to see kids go hungry if funding for school meals is impacted for any amount of time,” he said.
“While there are still a lot of unanswered questions,” Lilienthal said, “we are talking about real people who will be impacted by this.”
Of the 2 million Pennsylvanian students, Lilienthal expects low-income and the most vulnerable students are most likely to experience negative outcomes from the pause to funding. Title I federal funding, for example, is financial assistance specifically targeted to improving educational opportunities for educationally deprived children.
“What we’re seeing here is really setting the stage for a great deal of chaos,” said Lilienthal.
Lancaster County colleges are similarly awaiting more details and clarity on the order.
Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology said it is operating with the same information available to the public and doesn’t have further details regarding impacted grants and loans..
Kevin Hensil, spokesperson for the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education which oversees Millersville and nine other state-owned universities, said the system is awaiting more guidance from the U.S. Department of Education.
Students and families are equally impacted as a pause in funding could cause disruption to childcare and early education services like Head Start, too.
The Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit 13 receives federal funds for many of the services it provides in the neighboring counties, spokesperson Shannan Guthrie said in an email Tuesday.
“We are aware of the announcement of a temporary pause on federal funding, and we are gathering information to determine its potential impact, if any,” Guthrie wrote in an email. “We will continue to closely monitor future announcements and work with our federal and state partners to navigate next steps.”
Erik Yabor, spokesman for the Lancaster County District Attorney’s Office, said the largest federal grant the office has is about $520,000 through the Victims of Crime Act, which helps cover salaries of victim and witness services staff.
“We have not received any official communication that this allocated money will be paused,” Yabor said. The DA’s office also doesn’t have any pending federal grant applications.
Brian Wiczkowski is West Lampeter Township’s police chief and president of the Lancaster County Chiefs of Police Association, said his department doesn’t get any federal grants, but polled some other departments.
Several get funding for equipment such as body-worn cameras and ballistic vests.
“Of the agencies who responded, they are either unaffected or haven’t heard that they were going to be affected,” he said.
Bob May, executive director of Lancaster EMS, the county’s largest emergency medical services provider, said most of its grants are from the state. Though there is an “Assistance to Firefighters Grant” available through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, May said his agency has only gotten funding through it twice in the past 28 years.
Duane Hagelgans is emergency management coordinator for Millersville and Manor Township, the fire commissioner for Blue Rock Fire Rescue and professor of emergency management at Millersville University.
As with just about everyone else, he was trying to figure out the impact, but said it could affect Blue Rock.
“I’ve not had a chance to dive in (but) from the emergency management standpoint, our regional nine county emergency management task force is 100% funded by the federal government. So there’s some people that that’s their livelihood — that’s where they get their salaries,” Hagelgans said. “All of our training, our exercises, a bunch of our equipment — that is 100% funded by the federal government.”.
Blue Rock recently applied for $300,000 in federal funding to upgrade alarms and install sprinklers at two stations where volunteers live. That’s on hold, Hagelgans said.
“It may sound strange, but firehouses burn down sometimes. And with the fact that we have people living in these fire houses, we want to make sure that we have the latest alarm system technology, and also obviously the sprinkler system that will help us protect the building,” he said.
Blue Rock also has $300,000 in federal funding to help with recruitment and retention of volunteers — an ongoing challenge in the field.
Federal money trickles down to the local level through a large number of programs. Union Community Care, a community health care organization, gets about 10% of its annual funding from the federal government, spokesperson Nicole Specht, said.
For now, she said, Union Community Care is “able to continue providing our current services to patients for several weeks with no negative impact. However, patient care will be negatively impacted long term via services we are able to provide.”
Meals on Wheels Executive Director Feleen Nancarvis said her organization likely will be largely unaffected because it doesn’t rely on a lot of federal funding.
Kristy Aurand, chief development officer for Community Action Partnership of Lancaster County, said the organization is “working to understand the scope of the impact and committed to doing everything we can to continue to support our community and our team.”
CAP of Lancaster County has an annual budget of about $48 million, with $16 million of that coming from federal grants in the last fiscal year. Much of that money, Auraud said, comes via contracts that aren’t considered federal awards.
The organization provides a suite of services, such as early childhood education, food assistance, and domestic violence prevention.
Trump’s order immediately raised questions from constitutional law scholars about whether the president holds the legal authority to halt funding via executive order given the U.S. Constitution grants Congress the sole power to appropriate funds.
The broadness of the order could invite court challenges, according to Stan Brand, senior counsel in Akin Gump’s law firm in Washington, D.C.
“Those are, in a sense, government contracts,” Brand said. “People may have rights under those contracts to sue to enforce them.”
Brand added that he has many questions about the order that warrant an answer from the White House: “How does this get extended and to whom? Is it temporary or is it really a first step?”
Stephen Medvic, director of Franklin and Marshall College’s Center for Politics and Public Affairs, said Trump’s order was “an abuse of executive power” and that he views it as an illegal subversion of Congress’ power to allocate federal spending.
“(Presidents) can delay spending, briefly, but only if they go to Congress to explain the delays,” Medvic said via text message. “They haven’t done that so this is not a legal order as I understand it.”
A group of state attorneys general from New York, California, Illinois, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Massachusetts will file a lawsuit Tuesday to challenge the order, according to Senate Democratic Party Leader Chuck Schumer of New York.
Brett Hambright, a spokesman for Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday, said his office is “reviewing the announcement and assessing the potential impact.”
Ron Hetrick, president and CEO of Pennon, which operates LNP | LancasterOnline and WITF, said that its national public media partners were evaluating the impact of the executive order on federal funds received by all public media stations, and the immediate impact is unknown. “The federal grant funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting supports our key public broadcasting services in the region including childhood education, public safety and creating community content and connection,” Hetrick said. For fiscal year 2024, Pennon received about $1.34 million in federal grants, which accounted for about 8% of its public media budget. The federal funds are restricted to public broadcasting-related services, Hetrick said.
Temporary Pause of Agency Grant, Loan, and Other Financial Assistance Programs by longjeremym on Scribd
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A collection of interviews, photos, and music videos, featuring local musicians who have stopped by the WITF performance studio to share a little discussion and sound. Produced by WITF’s Joe Ulrich.