President Donald Trump is enacting a vast project to shrink the size of the federal government. Fiscal conservatives have said for decades this is critical for the financial stability of the country. The cuts will affect every American. Some already have. Others will trickle down over the coming months and even years. We look around the North Country at the cuts to the arts and education that are already hitting the region. That's today's story of the day.
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Hey, I'm David Sommerstein. It's Wednesday, May 14th. First up, the Trump administration has made big cuts to the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA, among other things, monitors the safety of the nation's food supply. Some state lawmakers say New York may have to step in to enforce food regulations. The New York Public News Network's Jimmy Veilkind report. At the Saturday morning farmer's market in Troy, New York, there's a steady stream of customers at the Love and Mama stand.
Owner Corrine Hatch says people seek out their flowers and organic greens. Our lettuce is like buttery. Which is not on the farm. Hatch pushes for a state bill that would increase transparency on what comes in packaged food. I really want to see a world where we prioritize healthy food getting into the hands of everybody. Hanch is part of a broad coalition pushing for New York State to step up where the Federal Food and Drug Administration has it.
Advocates say the GRASS loophole, which stands for generally recognized as safe, lets companies put additives in packaged foods without giving the FDA a chance to review them. State Senator Brian Kavanaugh is a Democrat from Manhattan. He's sponsoring a bill that would make companies disclose what they're doing.
I think it is a shock to most Americans that food producers can add new obscure chemicals to your food without even telling anyone. On this issue, Kavanaugh is singing the same tune as the Trump administration. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy has ordered the FDA to take a look at the loophole.
His Make America Healthy Again movement, or MAHA, helped Trump win the election. This issue isn't going away. Moms aren't going to return to wanting chemicals in our food that are banned in other developed countries. Associations representing the food industry say additives help bolster nutrition and keep food from spoiling.
John Hewitt of the Consumer Brands Association, which includes packaged product makers, opposes Kavanaugh's bill. Those food additives and those grass ingredients all go through a scientific review process. And we've committed as an association and as an industry of working with the FDA to revise and improve the grass process at the federal level. He says the FDA should be the single regulator for products sold nationwide. In Albany, I'm Jimmy Velkine for the New York Public News Network.
Funding cuts have been a top priority for President Donald Trump. He's slashed support for schools, for scientific research, for arts and libraries. He's also laid off more than 120,000 federal workers. And some of those cuts are unfolding here in the North Country. Emily Russell reports. Jerry Huntley tried for years to get a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities
Huntley is the president of Our Story Bridge. It's a storytelling project she started out of the Keene Public Library. Then last fall, she got the news. The NEH had awarded her a $35,000 grant. We were so excited. We are a small non-profit. And to get a direct NEH grant was amazing. The money would pay for a panel of experts, many from upstate New York. They'd listen to about 1,200 recorded stories and then write a strategic plan for how to get those stories into schools.
In late March, Huntley issued a press release announcing the federal funding. Then, just 10 days after the press release had been picked up, we got the termination letter. That letter says Huntley's project is no longer in line with the NEH. Quote, your grant's immediate termination is necessary to safeguard the interests of the federal government, including its fiscal priorities, unquote.
At a speech to Congress in early March, President Donald Trump laid out his priorities to pull back federal funding and weed out alleged fraud. The Government Accountability Office, Federal Government Office, has estimated annual fraud of over $500 billion in our nation. and we are working very hard to stop it. We're going to.
Overseen by Elon Musk, the Department of Government Efficiency claims it's cut $150 billion so far. The New York Times has found those receipts to be full of errors and inflated successes. Jerry Huntley says she knows there's some wasteful spending and she believes it should be dealt with in a thoughtful and thorough way. But making cuts so that there are headlines about making cuts. is damaging our country, especially our children.
Other arts and education centers around the North Country are also seeing cuts. The ADKX Museum on Blue Mountain Lake is set to lose about $100,000. The Norwood Village Green Concert Series in St. Lawrence County expects to lose a $3,500 federal grant. And the Wild Center in Tupper Lake lost funding for all eight of its AmeriCorps positions.
Hillary Logan-DeShane is the Wild Center's deputy director. It wasn't you have two weeks or you have a month to wind down, figure this out. It's no, as of today, everything's done. No more money, no more health insurance. Honestly, there was some tears, myself included. Those eight AmeriCorps members got laid off immediately, though they all volunteered to keep working. They had already worked more than 8,000 hours at the Wild Center and around the Tupper Lake Schools and Public Library.
the wild center is now trying to raise about seventy thousand dollars to bring them back on payroll logan de shane says the layoffs cut into the broader impact the wild center has in the adirondack We're an economic driver for the region. We bring millions of dollars to this region in economic activity.
We're proud of that. That is one of the reasons that we're here. Another main target for the Trump administration's budget cuts is public education. Earlier this month, it announced plans to cut a billion dollars in federal funding for mental health services. That would impact schools like Saranac Lake, which is already in a tight budget bind.
Superintendent Diane Fox says lately she's tried not to check the news so much because of the stress it's causing. All I can control is my little piece of the world here, and I can't fully control that either, but I am trying to... tell the staff that we're going to be okay, that this is rocky times, the boat is rocking a little bit, we need to just hang on. The farming community is also trying to hang on while facing cuts and uncertainty.
Earlier this spring, the Trump administration froze billions of dollars in USDA grants. Funding for some Adirondack farms has been restored, but Elizabeth Lee from the Cornell Cooperative Extension for Essex County says the stakes are high in an agricultural region like the North Country. No farms, no food. That's really our food system is really fragile and important.
And the big problem is the destabilization of the organizations that support farmers. One organization that supports farmers by helping them sell their products is the Essex Food Hub in Westport. Last year, it bought $500,000 worth of food from nearly 40 local farmers. Lindsay Willemain is the executive director of the Hub. because about 40% of her budget comes from federal USDA grants,
Willemaine is now scrambling to diversify her funding, but so are a lot of other local organizations, which is putting more pressure and reliance on private funding. Because everybody in the nonprofit sector is experiencing this. whether they're a food hub or a health center, there's a lot more competition for grants from private foundations and private donations. So much of this moment is still unfolding. Some federal grants have been restored in recent weeks.
Other cuts are being challenged in court. Meanwhile, Trump's proposed budget would slash funding for rural airports, heating assistance, and health care services in the North Country. So more cuts could be coming in the months and years ahead. Emily Russell, North Country Public Radio. We have more news all the time on our website, ncpr.org. Music today by Christopher Watts of Canton and Gretchen Kohler and Daniel Kelly in Potsdam. I'm David Summerstein, North Country Public Radio.