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WASHINGTON — More than three weeks have passed since the deadline for extending or revoking temporary protections against deportation for around 170,000 immigrants from El Salvador.

The Trump administration still hasn’t reached a decision, plunging the Salvadoran community into uncertainty and raising questions about what has prompted the delay.

The deportation reprieve is known as Temporary Protected Status. About 1.3 million people from 17 countries had TPS when President Trump returned to office last year, and Salvadorans make up the largest group of remaining beneficiaries.

When the TPS expiration deadlines approached for other groups, the administration reached a decision within days of a deadline. Haitians lost their TPS protections and were encouraged to leave the country. Some have been deported.

For now, Salvadoran immigrants are stuck. Many have been able to keep their jobs, though others were laid off in the absence of an official work permit extension.

Last month, administration officials said an announcement on TPS for Salvadorans would come “at the appropriate time” and that they would retain work authorization in the meantime. Asked for updated guidance Friday, a Homeland Security spokesperson provided the same statement.

The Department of Homeland Security had been prepared to end TPS protections for Salvadorans but was stopped from doing so by the White House, Politico reported.

So what’s causing the limbo?

One theory focuses on political considerations — that extending the deportation reprieve could have made the administration appear weak on immigration to its conservative base, just ahead of next month’s consequential midterm election.

Another theory holds that ending TPS would shock El Salvador’s economy, which is heavily reliant on remittances from Salvadorans in the U.S. President Nayib Bukele, a Trump ally, advocated for more time, according to Politico.

In addition, the White House was warned that canceling TPS for Salvadorans would disrupt construction projects in Washington, D.C., the New Yorker reported and a source with knowledge of the warnings confirmed they had occurred.

A White House official, in a statement, said that “any assertion Washington D.C. construction projects had anything to do with a decision about El Salvador TPS are false.”

The Washington region has the second-largest Salvadoran population in the U.S., after Los Angeles, and the construction industry relies significantly on workers with TPS.

Trump is overseeing a sweeping aesthetic makeover of the nation’s capital, including his controversial 90,000-square-foot, $600-million ballroom complex at the White House. The president also ordered a facelift for the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, renovations at Lafayette Square, a public park across from the White House and the application of 23.75 karat gold leaf to four bronze and granite statues.

Contracts at sensitive locations such as the White House typically include requirements that workers be U.S. citizens. A White House official said there is no one with TPS status working on the East Wing Modernization construction project.

Asked about those working on the president’s other projects around the district, a Department of Interior spokesperson said contractors are obligated to ensure everyone working on any project is legally permitted to work in the U.S.

“The Department has not had any conversations about TPS or how it relates to construction projects around the city,” the spokesperson wrote in a statement.

People with TPS do work in other federal facilities.

Lauren Truslow is chief executive of 3D Enviro, a Virginia company that does hazardous materials abatement with a handful of workers affected by the TPS expiration for El Salvador. She said that after her employees’ federal badges expired last month, they were eventually reinstated until Oct. 9 — but not before missing several days of work.

TPS allows immigrants to obtain work permits and other documents. The uncertain status of TPS has led to sometime conflicting actions by government agencies or employers.

Advocates for TPS holders said some states have refused to renew their driver’s licenses, while others renewed licenses for different lengths of time. Truslow said some of her employees were only able to get federally noncompliant driver’s licenses, which they can’t use to get into federal facilities.

“At least they’re here in this community and they weren’t forced to leave,” she said. “I don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I think there were ramifications with the decision and still there’s uncertainty.”

Truslow said the government agency her company works with is unrolling a new process. After next week, her workers on that project can seek an approval extension for their badges that would last until March.

For construction companies, getting rid of TPS “would be a disaster,” said Arnoldo Diaz, co-coordinator of the National TPS Alliance, an advocacy group. “D.C. can’t function without TPS.”

Rebecca Shi, executive director of the American Business Immigration Coalition, has had ongoing conversations with Homeland Security and White House leaders about TPS. What sets Salvadorans apart, she said, is the decades of experience many bring to the construction industry, which would be impossible to quickly replace.

“Many are managers and business owners themselves, running large projects,” she said. “It’s a level of skill set and longtime loyalty that cannot be replaced overnight. Because the president has been in this industry for five decades, he instinctively knows that.”

That economic consideration, coupled with polls showing that Latino voters think Trump has gone too far with immigration enforcement, “are the much larger considerations than the president’s own pet projects,” Shi said.

Roxy Mejia, political director of a local painters union in Washingon, said 67% of the 1,500 members are Latino and many of them Salvadoran TPS holders.

Mejia said she and her father immigrated to the U.S. from El Salvador in 1985, before TPS existed. He worked on the Pentagon renovation after 9/11.

Under this administration, some Salvadorans with TPS have been declining government contract jobs out of fear of being detained, she said.

“Even the contractors have lobbied with us to keep TPS extending, because they would lose a lot of manpower in this area,” she said.

WASHINGTON — About half of rural voters identify with Make America Healthy Again, a sprawling political movement championed by the Trump administration, but most said President Trump’s healthcare policies have not benefited their communities, according to a new poll from The Associated Press in partnership with KFF.

About 8 in 10 rural voters — an important voting bloc for Trump and fellow Republicans — said the Trump administration’s policies have had a negative effect or no impact on the health of people where they live. Most MAHA supporters, 68%, also feel this way, according to the national survey of more than 2,000 rural registered voters.

The findings signal an apparent disconnect between the Trump administration’s MAHA-branded policy priorities and rural America’s perception of their reach and effectiveness.

Iowa pastor Mike Jager, 58, is a registered Republican and considers himself part of the MAHA movement. The Trump administration’s health policies have had “minimal” impact on the health of his community, Jager said, but he added that Trump’s health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is moving the needle “in the right direction.”

“It’s a beginning,” Jager said. “It’s a big ship to try and turn around and course-correct.”

Kennedy has used the MAHA label to support various agendas, including abandoning long-standing vaccine guidance, researching ultraprocessed foods and investing in regenerative agriculture.

Jager lives in Sumner, Iowa, “less than a quarter mile from where the corn ends and the city begins.” He’s seen family members and neighbors develop diseases that he believes resulted in part from exposure to agricultural chemicals and consumption of unhealthy, processed foods.

In the June Republican primary for governor, Jager voted for Zach Lahn, a businessman and farmer who ran on a MAHA platform and beat out Trump-backed U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra. He plans to vote for him again in November.

Many rural voters are prioritizing health issues

About two-thirds of rural voters who support MAHA said it’s “extremely” or “very” important to them to vote for a candidate who does, too, while only 4 in 10 rural voters overall said the same.

Trump sought to seize on MAHA support during his campaign for another term two years ago. Now, amid tight midterm races, Kennedy has campaigned to galvanize the movement’s support. In May, he attended a MAHA bill signing with Iowa Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, and in August, he went fishing with Lahn, posting about it on social media.

Yet the survey indicates voters are noticing “this weird split in the Trump administration” between what Kennedy messages and what Trump says and does, said David Peterson, a political science professor at Iowa State University.

In Iowa, concerns about what’s causing rising cancer rates are “a big deal,” he said. For many people who identify with MAHA, being healthy includes taking on corporate agriculture and pharmaceutical companies that they think cause cancer, he added.

In the poll, views on healthcare access and costs largely diverged along party lines. Most Democratic and independent voters said the Trump administration’s healthcare policies have had a negative impact on their healthcare costs and the health and well-being of people in their communities. Republicans were likelier to say there hasn’t been an impact.

Talking on the phone from her 200-acre farm in Carroll County, Iowa, 71-year-old Donna Klocke said that her husband had died from cancer and that she has neighbors who also have cancer.

“It’s just very prevalent,” Klocke said. “We’re in a farming community. We use chemicals and pesticides and all kinds of things that aren’t necessarily good for us.”

Klocke, a Democrat, said the MAHA movement is a good idea because she cares about being healthy, but she does not consider herself part of it and will not be voting for a candidate who represents the movement.

Kennedy, who was an anti-vaccine activist before entering politics and has sent mixed messages to Americans about getting the measles vaccine, scares her.

“Measles are coming back and polio,” Klocke said. “It’s the measles that really gets me. It’s like, do you not understand how dangerous it is?”

Survey reflects angst over healthcare

Nearly half of rural voters said their communities don’t have enough doctors or other healthcare providers, and even more said there aren’t enough mental health workers specifically. The share of rural voters who said their community does not have enough hospitals increased to 35% from 21% in a similar question asked in a KFF-Washington Post survey in 2017.

And as with the general population, healthcare, gas and grocery costs are top pain points. At least 6 in 10 rural voters said they were worried about healthcare costs.

The level of worry varied based on coverage, with rural voters enrolled in employer plans or Medicare less likely to be worried. The survey found that 80% of working-age rural voters on Medicaid were very or somewhat worried about healthcare costs. Last year, Republicans passed a tax and spending bill that cut over $900 billion in projected Medicaid spending over a decade and mandated new eligibility requirements.

In the tiny community of Lipan, Texas, west of Dallas, Kim Solis and her husband have a handyman-and-home-remodel business and get their insurance on the marketplace. Since Trump returned to office, their premium payment jumped from zero to $166 a month. Their copays went up, and their deductibles each increased by $2,000.

Solis, 62, said she worries what will happen if they get a big medical bill.

“Certainly, we’d be in a world of hurt trying to take money out of savings or getting it out of our 401(k) just to be able to do something about it,” she said.

Most MAHA voters are also MAGA — but not all

Like the general population, rural voters said they trust their own doctors and healthcare providers for health information over government agencies or officials, according to the poll.

Trust in Kennedy and Trump fell largely along partisan lines. About 10% of rural Democratic voters reported having a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in Kennedy, compared with 74% of rural Republican voters. About 5% of rural Democrats and 69% of rural Republicans said they trust Trump a “great deal” or “fair amount” for reliable health information.

While Make America Great Again and MAHA identities are “linked in a lot of ways,” the rising costs of healthcare and groceries pose a challenge for those committed to the MAHA principles that Kennedy promotes, said Peterson, the Iowa State professor.

Buying healthy food “becomes, ‘I can’t afford to do that because of Trump’s policies,’” he said.

In Stamping Ground, Kentucky, Alma Johnson, 65, works night security at a horse farm.

Johnson voted for Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024 and said she “pretty much” likes how Trump is running the country. But she said she is not a MAGA devotee, preferring to “think for myself.”

MAHA, however, is an easy sell for Johnson because, she said, she doesn’t think people should be able to buy junk food in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

Still, she said she hasn’t seen much impact from the Trump administration’s healthcare policies, including the new food pyramid.

“It takes a long time to change people, their habits, their thoughts or the things they do,” Johnson said.

Swenson, Tribble and Sanders write for the Associated Press.

The poll of 2,241 U.S. adults registered to vote in rural areas of the country was conducted Aug. 12-24, 2026, using a sample drawn from the probability-based SSRS Opinion Panel. The margin of sampling error for the full sample is plus or minus 3 percentage points. In collaboration with AP, KFF researchers worked to design the survey sample and questionnaire, analyze and report findings. This report is a collaboration between the Associated Press and KFF Health News. KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.