Warren, MA Delegation Sound Alarm on Trump Cuts to Grants that Provide Funding for Massachusetts Anti-Poverty Programs
Grant provided a total of $804 million for crucial services low-income families rely on in FY2025 and has bipartisan support in Congress, reflecting the importance of the services it provides.
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) led Massachusetts’ Congressional delegation in pressing Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr., raising their concerns about the Trump Administration’s efforts to eliminate the Community Service Block Grant (CSBG), a critical source of funding for anti-poverty programs nationwide.
The letter was signed by U.S. Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.), along with Representatives Richard Neal (D-Mass.), Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), Lori Trahan (D-Mass.), Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.), Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), and Bill Keating (D-Mass.).
Community action agencies provide crucial services to low-income families across the country, including home energy assistance, child care and early education assistance, food assistance, and help filing taxes. One critical funding source for these agencies is the CSBG, administered by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Community Services (OCS). Nationwide, the CSBG provided a total of $804 million for these programs in FY 2025. CSBG has bipartisan support in Congress, reflecting the importance of the services it provides.
“Eliminating [Community Service Block Grant] funding—either directly or by gutting the team responsible for administering it—would have devastating effects on [community action agencies] that low-income families across the country rely on,” wrote the lawmakers.
Despite the critical work that CSBG enables, the Trump Administration has attacked the program. After asking Congress to eliminate CSBG funds entirely, the administration sought to hollow out the CSBG program by firing most of the OCS staff, leaving community action agencies reliant on CSBG funds unsure as to how and if they would receive their funds. Community action agencies have not been told who—if anyone—is continuing to work on CSBG or other programs that the OCS administers, like the Low-Income Energy Assistance program. The programs distribute millions of dollars in benefits to American families and communities and cannot be effectively managed by a skeletal staff.
President Trump’s government shutdown revealed how the loss of federal funding would impact community action agencies’ programs. Many community action agencies quickly drained the funding they received from other sources, like state governments, and were forced to minimize operations. A permanent loss of federal funding would shutter these programs entirely, leaving some of the country’s most vulnerable without resources and services they need to get by.
The lawmakers asked Secretary Kennedy to answer their questions by December 17, 2025, including how many staff are currently working at OCS and to provide a list of staff members who were fired from OCS, before or during the government shutdown, along with the reasoning for each firing; if there will be additional RIFs at OCS; how OCS plans to distribute CSBG funds; and whether the Administration plans to impose further cuts in CSBG funds.
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