nonprofit

A federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration Thursday to find the money to fully fund SNAP benefits for November.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell Jr. gave President Trump’s administration until Friday to make the payments through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, though it’s unlikely the 42 million Americans — about 1 in 8, most of them in poverty — will see the money on the debit cards they use for groceries nearly that quickly.

The order was in response to a challenge from cities and nonprofits complaining that the administration was only offering to cover 65% of the maximum benefit, a decision that would have left some recipients getting nothing for this month.

“The defendants failed to consider the practical consequences associated with this decision to only partially fund SNAP,” McConnell said in a ruling from the bench after a brief hearing. “They knew that there would be a long delay in paying partial SNAP payments and failed to consider the harms individuals who rely on those benefits would suffer.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

McConnell was one of two judges who ruled last week that the administration could not skip November’s benefits entirely because of the federal shutdown.

The Trump administration chose partial payments this week

Last month, the administration said that it would halt SNAP payments for November if the government shutdown wasn’t resolved.

A coalition of cities and nonprofits sued in federal court in Rhode Island and Democratic state officials from across the country did so in Massachusetts.

The judges in both cases ordered the government to use one emergency reserve fund containing more than $4.6 billion to pay for SNAP for November but gave it leeway to tap other money to make the full payments, which cost between $8.5 billion and $9 billion each month.

On Monday, the administration said it would not use additional money, saying it was up to Congress to appropriate the funds for the program and that the other money was needed to shore up other child hunger programs.

The partial funding brought on complications

McConnell harshly criticized the Trump administration for making that choice.

“Without SNAP funding for the month of November, 16 million children are immediately at risk of going hungry,” he said. “This should never happen in America. In fact, it’s likely that SNAP recipients are hungry as we sit here.”

Tyler Becker, the attorney for the government, unsuccessfully argued that the Trump administration had followed the court’s order in issuing the partial payments. “This all comes down to Congress not having appropriated funds because of the government shutdown,” he said.

Kristin Bateman, a lawyer for the coalition of cities and nonprofit organizations, told the judge the administration had other reasons for not fully funding the benefits.

“What defendants are really trying to do is to leverage people’s hunger to gain partisan political advantage in the shutdown fight,” Bateman told the court.

McConnell said last week’s order required that those payments be made “expeditiously” and “efficiently” — and by Wednesday — or a full payment would be required. “Nothing was done consistent with the court’s order to clear the way to expeditiously resolve it,” McConnell said.

There were other twists and turns this week

The administration said in a court filing on Monday that it could take weeks or even months for some states to make calculations and system changes to load the debit cards used in the SNAP program. At the time, it said it would fund 50% of the maximum benefits.

The next day, Trump appeared to threaten not to pay the benefits at all unless Democrats in Congress agreed to reopen the government. His press secretary later said that the partial benefits were being paid for November — and that it is future payments that are at risk if the shutdown continues.

And Wednesday night, it recalculated, telling states that there was enough money to pay for 65% of the maximum benefits.

Under a decades-old formula in federal regulations, everyone who received less than the maximum benefit would get a larger percentage reduction. Some families would have received nothing and some single people and two-person households could have gotten as little as $16.

Carmel Scaife, a former day care owner in Milwaukee who hasn’t been able to work since receiving multiple severe injuries in a car accident seven years ago, said she normally receives $130 a month from SNAP. She said that despite bargain hunting, that is not nearly enough for a month’s worth of groceries.

Scaife, 56, said that any cuts to her benefit will mean she will need to further tap her Social Security income for groceries. “That’ll take away from the bills that I pay,” she said. “But that’s the only way I can survive.”

The next legal step is unclear

This type of order is usually not subject to an appeal, but the Trump administration has challenged other rulings like it before.

An organization whose lawyers filed the challenge signaled it would continue the battle if needed.

“We shouldn’t have to force the President to care for his citizens,” Democracy Forward President and CEO Skye Perryman said in a statement, “but we will do whatever is necessary to protect people and communities.”

It often takes SNAP benefits a week or more to be loaded onto debit cards once states initiate the process.

Mulvihill and Casey write for the Associated Press. AP writers Sara Cline in Baton Rouge, La.; Susan Haigh in Hartford, Conn.; and Gary Robertson in Raleigh, N.C., contributed to this report.

California’s tech companies, the epicenter of the state’s economy, sent politicians a loud message this year: Back down from restrictive artificial intelligence regulation or they’ll leave.

The tactic appeared to have worked, activists said, because some politicians weakened or scrapped guardrails to mitigate AI’s biggest risks.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom rejected a bill aimed at making companion chatbots safer for children after the tech industry fought it. In his veto message, the governor raised concerns about placing broad limits on AI, which has sparked a massive investment spree and created new billionaires overnight around the San Francisco Bay Area.

Assembly Bill 1064 would have barred companion chatbot operators from making these AI systems available to minors unless the chatbots weren’t “foreseeably capable” of certain conduct, including encouraging a child to engage in self-harm. Newsom said he supported the goal, but feared it would unintentionally bar minors from using AI tools and learning how to use technology safely.

“We cannot prepare our youth for a future where AI is ubiquitous by preventing their use of these tools altogether,” he wrote in his veto message.

The bill’s veto was a blow to child safety advocates who had pushed it through the state Legislature and a win for tech industry groups that fought it. In social media ads, groups such as TechNet had urged the public to tell the governor to veto the bill because it would harm innovation and lead to students falling behind in school.

Organizations trying to rein in the world’s largest tech companies as they advance the powerful technology say the tech industry has become more empowered at the national and state levels.

Meta, Google, OpenAI, Apple and other major tech companies have strengthened their relationships with the Trump administration. Companies are funding new organizations and political action committees to push back against state AI policy while pouring money into lobbying.

In Sacramento, AI companies have lobbied behind the scenes for more freedom. California’s massive pool of engineering talent, tech investors and companies make it an attractive place for the tech industry, but companies are letting policymakers know that other states are also interested in attracting those investments and jobs. Big Tech is particularly sensitive to regulations in the Golden State because so many companies are headquartered there and must abide by its rules.

“We believe California can strike a better balance between protecting consumers and enabling responsible technological growth,” Robert Boykin, TechNet’s executive director for California and the Southwest, said in a statement.

Common Sense Media founder and Chief Executive Jim Steyer said tech lobbyists put tremendous pressure on Newsom to veto AB 1064. Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that rates and reviews technology and entertainment for families, sponsored the bill.

“They threaten to hurt the economy of California,” he said. “That’s the basic message from the tech companies.”

Advertising is among the tactics tech companies with deep pockets use to convince politicians to kill or weaken legislation. Even if the governor signs a bill, companies have at times sued to block new laws from taking effect.

“If you’re really trying to do something bold with tech policy, you have to jump over a lot of hurdles,” said David Evan Harris, senior policy advisor at the California Initiative for Technology and Democracy, which supported AB 1064. The group focuses on finding state-level solutions to threats that AI, disinformation and emerging technologies pose to democracy.

Tech companies have threatened to move their headquarters and jobs to other states or countries, a risk looming over politicians and regulators.

The California Chamber of Commerce, a broad-based business advocacy group that includes tech giants, launched a campaign this year that warned over-regulation could stifle innovation and hinder California.

“Making competition harder could cause California companies to expand elsewhere, costing the state’s economy billions,” the group said on its website.

From January to September, the California Chamber of Commerce spent $11.48 million lobbying California lawmakers and regulators on a variety of bills, filings to the California secretary of state show. During that period, Meta spent $4.13 million. A lobbying disclosure report shows that Meta paid the California Chamber of Commerce $3.1 million, making up the bulk of their spending. Google, which also paid TechNet and the California Chamber of Commerce, spent $2.39 million.

Amazon, Uber, DoorDash and other tech companies spent more than $1 million each. TechNet spent around $800,000.

The threat that California companies could move away has caught the attention of some politicians.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, who has investigated tech companies over child safety concerns, indicated that despite initial concern, his office wouldn’t oppose ChatGPT maker OpenAI’s restructuring plans. The new structure gives OpenAI’s nonprofit parent a stake in its for-profit public benefit corporation and clears the way for OpenAI to list its shares.

Bonta blessed the restructuring partly because of OpenAI’s pledge to stay in the state.

“Safety will be prioritized, as well as a commitment that OpenAI will remain right here in California,” he said in a statement last week. The AG’s office, which supervises charitable trusts and ensures these assets are used for public benefit, had been investigating OpenAI’s restructuring plan over the last year and a half.

OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman said he’s glad to stay in California.

“California is my home, and I love it here, and when I talked to Attorney General Bonta two weeks ago I made clear that we were not going to do what those other companies do and threaten to leave if sued,” he posted on X.

Critics — which included some tech leaders such as Elon Musk, Meta and former OpenAI executives as well as nonprofits and foundations — have raised concerns about OpenAI’s restructuring plan. Some warned it would allow startups to exploit charitable tax exemptions and let OpenAI prioritize financial gain over public good.

Lawmakers and advocacy groups say it’s been a mixed year for tech regulation. The governor signed Assembly Bill 56, which requires platforms to display labels for minors that warn about social media’s mental health harms. Another piece of signed legislation, Senate Bill 53, aims to make AI developers more transparent about safety risks and offers more whistleblower protections.

The governor also signed a bill that requires chatbot operators to have procedures to prevent the production of suicide or self-harm content. But advocacy groups, including Common Sense Media, removed their support for Senate Bill 243 because they said the tech industry pushed for changes that weakened its protections.

Newsom vetoed other legislation that the tech industry opposed, including Senate Bill 7, which requires employers to notify workers before deploying an “automated decision system” in hiring, promotions and other employment decisions.

Called the “No Robo Bosses Act,” the legislation didn’t clear the governor, who thought it was too broad.

“A lot of nuance was demonstrated in the lawmaking process about the balance between ensuring meaningful protections while also encouraging innovation,” said Julia Powles, a professor and executive director of the UCLA Institute for Technology, Law & Policy.

The battle over AI safety is far from over. Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan (D-Orinda), who co-wrote AB 1064, said she plans to revive the legislation.

Child safety is an issue that both Democrats and Republicans are examining after parents sued AI companies such as OpenAI and Character.AI for allegedly contributing to their children’s suicides.

“The harm that these chatbots are causing feels so fast and furious, public and real that I thought we would have a different outcome,” Bauer-Kahan said. “It’s always fascinating to me when the outcome of policy feels to be disconnected from what I believe the public wants.”

Steyer from Common Sense Media said a new ballot initiative includes the AI safety protections that Newsom vetoed.

“That was a setback, but not an overall defeat,” he said about the veto of AB 1064. “This is a David and Goliath situation, and we are David.”

Longtime FilmLA executive Denise Gutches has been named the nonprofit’s new chief executive.

Gutches, who has served as FilmLA’s chief financial and operating officer since 2011, will assume her new role on Jan. 1. FilmLA President Paul Audley will retire at the end of December after a 17-year tenure with the organization, which announced the change Wednesday morning.

“We have a lot to do in this creative economy,” Gutches said in an interview. “I am definitely up for this challenge.”

The leadership transition comes as Hollywood tries to lure back film and television production that has relocated to other states and countries in search of lower costs and more generous tax incentives. Earlier this year, California increased the annual amount allocated to its own film and TV tax credit program and expanded the eligibility criteria in hopes of jump-starting production in the Golden State.

In the most recent application period, 22 TV series were awarded tax credits amid heightened interest in the program. Eighteen of those series will film largely in the Los Angeles area.

Gutches said she is hopeful the sweetened incentives will provide a boost to the Greater L.A. area, which has seen a sharp decline in production since the pandemic, dual writers’ and actors strikes and a pullback in spending from the studios.

FilmLA — which handles film permits for the city of Los Angeles and unincorporated areas of the county — is also working with government partners to smooth the process of filming in L.A., she said.

“We think that that’s highly critical to ensure that we can make the Los Angeles region more attractive with the new film and television tax credit,” she said. “Our mission is to keep filming here and streamlining it, and that’s really what we’re going to focus on.”

The transition to Gutches’ leadership began months ago when Audley asked the nonprofit’s board not to renew his contract.

His decision came after the group’s staff was cut to 74 employees from 117, reflecting industry changes and a slowdown in local production activity.

“It’s really about right-sizing the executive level staff of an organization of this size,” Audley said. “It just makes good business sense.”

Heather Colley and her two children moved four times over five years as they fled high rents in eastern Tennessee, which, like much of rural America, hasn’t been spared from soaring housing costs.

A family gift in 2021 of a small plot of land offered a shot at homeownership, but building a house was beyond reach for the 45-year-old single mother and manicurist making $18.50 an hour.

That changed when she qualified for a $272,000 grant from a nonprofit to build a three-bedroom home because of a program that has helped make affordable housing possible in rural areas for decades. She and her family moved in in June.

“Every time I pull into my garage, I pinch myself,” Colley said.

Now, President Trump wants to eliminate that grant, the HOME Investment Partnerships Program, and House Republicans overseeing federal budget negotiations did not include funding for it in their budget proposal. Experts and state housing agencies say that would set back tens of thousands of future affordable housing developments nationwide, particularly hurting Appalachian towns and rural counties where government aid is sparse and investors are few.

The program has helped build or repair more than 1.3 million affordable homes in the last three decades, of which at least 540,000 were in congressional districts that are rural or significantly rural, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal data.

“Maybe they don’t realize how far-reaching these programs are,” said Colley, who voted for Trump in 2024. Among those half a million homes that HOME helped build, 84% were in districts that voted for him last year, the AP analysis found.

“I understand we don’t want excessive spending and wasting taxpayer dollars,” Colley said, “but these proposed budget cuts across the board make me rethink the next time I go to the polls.”

The HOME program, started under President George H.W. Bush in the 1990s, survived years of budget battles but has been stretched thin by years of rising construction costs and stagnant funding. That’s meant fewer units, including in some rural areas where home prices have grown faster than in cities.

The program has spent more than $38 billion nationwide since it began filling in funding gaps and attracting more investment to acquire, build and repair affordable homes, federal Department of Housing and Urban Development data show. Additional funding has gone toward rental assistance and projects that have yet to be finished.

Political limbo

To account for the gap left by the proposed cuts, House Republicans want to draw on nearly $5 billion from a related pandemic-era fund that gave states until 2030 to spend on projects supporting people who are unhoused or facing homelessness.

That $5 billion, however, may be far less, since many projects haven’t yet been logged into HUD’s tracking system, according to state housing agencies and associations representing them.

A spokesperson for HUD, which administers the program, said HOME isn’t as effective as other programs where the money would be better spent.

In opposition to Trump, Senate Republicans have still included funding for HOME in their draft budget. In the coming negotiations, both chambers may compromise and reduce but not terminate HOME’s funding, or extend last year’s overall budget.

White House spokesperson Davis Ingle didn’t respond to specific questions from the AP. Instead, Ingle said that Trump’s commitment to cutting red tape is making housing more affordable.

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers is working to reduce HOME’s notorious red tape that even proponents say slows construction.

Some rural areas more dependent on HOME

In Owsley County — one of the nation’s poorest, in the rural Kentucky hills — residents struggle in an economy blighted by coal mine closures and declining tobacco crop revenues.

Affordable homes are needed there, but tough to build in a region that doesn’t attract larger-scale rental developments that federal dollars typically go toward.

That’s where HOME comes in, said Cassie Hudson, who runs Partnership Housing in Owsley, which has relied on the program to build the majority of its affordable homes for at least a dozen years.

A lack of additional funding for HOME has already made it hard to keep up with construction costs, Hudson said, and the organization builds a quarter of the single-family homes it used to.

“Particularly for deeply rural places and persistent poverty counties, local housing developers are the only way homes and new rental housing gets built,” said Joshua Stewart of Fahe, a coalition of Appalachian nonprofits.

That’s in part because investment is scant and HOME steps in when construction costs exceed what a home can be sold for — a common barrier in poor areas of Appalachia. Some developers use the profits to build more affordable units. Its loss would erode those nonprofits’ ability to build affordable homes in years to come, Stewart said.

One of those nonprofits, Housing Development Alliance, helped Tiffany Mullins in Hazard, Ky., which was ravaged by floods. Mullins, a single mother of four who makes $14.30 an hour at Walmart, bought a house there thanks to HOME funding and moved in in August.

Mullins sees the program as preserving a rural way of life, recalling when folks owned homes and land with gardens — “we had chickens, cows. Now you don’t see much of that.”

A long-term effect

In congressional budget negotiations, HOME is an easier target than programs such as vouchers because most people would not immediately lose their housing, said Tess Hembree, executive director of the Council of State Community Development Agencies.

The effect of any reduction would instead be felt in a fizzling of new affordable housing supply. When HOME funding was temporarily reduced to $900 million in 2015, “10 to 15 years later, we’re seeing the ramifications,” Hembree said.

That includes affordable units built in cities. The biggest program that funds affordable rental housing nationwide, the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, uses HOME grants for 12% of units, totaling 324,000 current individual units, according to soon-to-be-published Urban Institute research.

Trump’s spending bill that Republicans passed this summer increased that program, but experts say further reducing or cutting HOME would make those credits less usable.

“It’s LIHTC plus HOME, usually,” said Tim Thrasher, chief executive of Community Action Partnership of North Alabama, which builds affordable apartments for some of the nation’s poorest.

In the lush mountains of eastern West Virginia, Woodlands Development Group relies on HOME for its smaller rural projects. Because it helps people with a wider range of incomes, HOME is “one of the only programs available to us that allows us to develop true workforce housing,” said Executive Director Dave Clark.

It’s those workers — nurses, first responders, teachers — that nonprofits like east Tennessee’s Creative Compassion use HOME to build for. With the program in jeopardy, grant administrator Sarah Halcott said she fears for her clients battling rising housing costs.

“This is just another nail in the coffin for rural areas,” Halcott said.

Kramon, Bedayn, Herbst and Kessler write for the Associated Press. Kramon reported from Atlanta, Bedayn from Denver, Herbst from New York City and Kessler from Washington.

NEW YORK — On a sweltering summer day, children leap between rocks along the Bronx River while cyclists pedal on newly paved paths. Kayaks rest on what was once an industrial dumping ground, now transformed into a bustling promenade along the city’s only freshwater river.

The Bronx River Greenway, a series of stitched-together waterfront parks built atop once largely abandoned and polluted wasteland, is a hard-fought victory for the country’s poorest congressional district — one that locals call a “beacon of environmental justice” built by federal dollars and water-pollution settlements from the borough’s wealthier neighbors.

Now, like thousands of nonprofits around the country, this organization’s future is in jeopardy. The Trump administration’s sweeping federal grant cuts have left nonprofits nationwide and the communities they serve in precarious straits. But few places face as stark a reckoning as the Bronx, where federal funding has proved indispensable for revitalizing green spaces, protecting survivors of domestic violence, and preventing youth violence.

Over 84% of the 342 nonprofits based in the Bronx rely on federal grants now at risk, according to an analysis by the Urban Institute. It’s a significant increase from the 70% of groups vulnerable to government defunding statewide.

In all but two of the country’s 437 congressional districts, the typical nonprofit could not cover its expenses without government grants. Nonprofits have increasingly served as contractors for government services — like operating homeless shelters — since the 1960s.

In the Bronx, if such grants were to disappear entirely, the borough’s nonprofits could face a collective deficit of nearly 30% — cuts that have begun to force layoffs and austerity on dozens of groups connecting Bronxites to low-cost health care, food assistance, and preschool slots.

“When America sneezes, the Bronx gets the flu,” said U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres, the Democrat who represents the district. “I think we in the Bronx feel we have been and will continue to be the hardest hit by the impact of a Trump presidency.”

From revival to reversal

Nestled in a corner of parkland atop the site of an abandoned amusement park, the headquarters of the Bronx River Alliance is among the borough’s greenest buildings, boasting nature classrooms, samples of the river’s flora and fauna, and a storage space teeming with kayaks and canoes.

In March, the group received formal notice that it would lose $1.5 million in federal grants promised under the Inflation Reduction Act last year for improving water quality and climate-resilience projects. After years of rising momentum, cubicles now sit empty. Leaders held off on hiring in anticipation of cuts, and now they don’t know if they’ll be able to fill those roles.

“I’ve met some of the folks who were pulling cars out of the river in the ’70s and ’80s,” said Daniel Ranells, the group’s deputy director of programs. Back then, the area was a “dumping ground” so inundated with industrial waste, tires, abandoned cars, ovens, and microwaves that “folks didn’t really understand there was a river there.”

That has shifted dramatically in recent years thanks in part to decades of federal investment. Just south of its headquarters, the organization restored salt marshes along the riverbanks of a shuttered concrete plant.

In 2007, the first beaver appeared on the Bronx River in over 200 years — named “José the Beaver” in honor of former Congressman José E. Serrano, who helped direct millions in federal funds to groups dedicated to the river’s restoration.

“The Bronx River is a shining light of environmental justice,” Ranells said, and millions in federal funding over the years has helped “make it a destination” after years of neglect.

Progress frozen

Now staffers at the Bronx River Alliance describe a sense of “whiplash” in seeing hard-fought funds dry up and grant language scrubbed of any allusions to racial or environmental justice.

The Bronx River Alliance has joined other nonprofits in suing the Trump administration to unfreeze funds, but the uncertainty has already disrupted years of planning, a reality that has rippled across the neighborhood, leaving few organizations untouched.

Up the street from the Alliance, the office of the Osborne Association, a group that has worked to prevent youth violence for nearly a century, has grown quieter. In April, an email from the Bureau of Justice Assistance stated the remaining $666,000 of a $2 million grant “no longer effectuates department priorities.”

The cut thrust the nonprofit into “triage mode,” said Osborne president Jonathan Monsalve, who was forced to lay off three staffers and reduce the number of participants in a diversion program offering young adults facing gun charges an alternative to jail time.

“It’s a lifeline for young people, and it’s no longer there for 25 more of them,” Monsalve said. “Without another alternative, it’s 25 young people that will see prison or jail time, and that’s incredibly frustrating.”

Why the Bronx bears the brunt

The Department of Justice has canceled over $810 million in similar grants to nonprofits working in violence prevention. The Environmental Protection Agency attempted to cancel $2 billion in grants for environmental justice work.

Nonprofit leaders say the cuts hit hardest in the places that can afford them the least. In the Bronx, almost 30 percent of residents live in poverty, the vast majority of whom are Black or Latino, and nearly one in six schoolchildren experience homelessness every year.

“We’ve had decades of disinvestment in these communities, and we had been starting to see some meaningful investment and community-based solutions that were actually working,” said Monsalve. “And then all of a sudden that support just gets yanked away.”

The federal government, he said, is essentially telling these communities: “You aren’t a priority anymore. You don’t fit the plan.”

For decades, a million-dollar federal grant allowed the victim-service organization Safe Horizon to operate a program that stationed domestic violence advocates in the borough’s criminal court.

When the grant came up for renewal this year, it came with new restrictions that CEO Liz Roberts described as “so extreme, so broad, so radical” that the organization chose to walk away rather than accept conditions which would have prohibited supporting transgender survivors or treating domestic violence as a systemic issue.

It was an agonizing decision given the volume of domestic violence in the Bronx, Roberts said.

It means that hundreds of survivors “may not have the opportunity to talk to an advocate about their options, about their rights, or about their safety,” she said.

Filling the void

Roberts said she’s bracing for more cuts — federal funds make up about 24% of the group’s budget — that could force the closure of shelters or reductions to a citywide hotline.

As nonprofits nationwide grapple with similar losses, Roberts said private philanthropy and local governments will need to “make some smart and thoughtful and principled decisions about where they can help to fill those gaps.”

In places like the Bronx, finding alternative funding is especially challenging. “The not-for-profit sector is often fragile, and nowhere more so than the Bronx,” Torres said of the district he represents, where organizations tend to be more dependent on government funding than wealthier enclaves.

“Organizations spent hundreds of thousands of dollars simply to apply for a contract and hired staff and made all these plans only to see the written contract disappear,” Torres said. “It’s deeply destabilizing.”

Sara Herschander is a senior reporter at the Chronicle of Philanthropy. This article was provided to the Associated Press by the Chronicle of Philanthropy as part of a partnership to cover philanthropy and nonprofits supported by the Lilly Endowment. The Chronicle is solely responsible for the content.

The Corp. for Public Broadcasting said Friday it was shutting down, about one week after President Trump signed legislation stripping its funding.

The group, which administers funds for PBS TV affiliates and NPR radio stations, said it would “begin an orderly wind-down of its operations.” A majority of staff positions will be cut Sept. 30, when the group’s fiscal year ends.

“A small transition team will remain through January 2026 to ensure a responsible and orderly closeout of operations,” the nonprofit said in a statement. “This team will focus on compliance, final distributions, and resolution of long-term financial obligations, including ensuring continuity for music rights and royalties that remain essential to the public media system.”

Since returning to office, Trump has made a priority of yanking federal funding for public broadcasters as part of a wider campaign against media outlets that he dislikes. The president derided PBS and NPR as government-funded “left-wing propaganda.” Congress fell into line.

It passed a measure in mid-July that clawed back $1.1 billion that previously had been allocated for public broadcasting for two years.

Separately, lawmakers introduced a Senate appropriations bill for 2026 that excludes funding for the Corp. for Public Broadcasting for the first time in more than 50 years. Conservatives have long wanted to strip funding from public media because of its perceived liberal bias.

The actions left the group without a steady source of operating money — and little hope that more would be on the way.

“Despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called, wrote, and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB, we now face the difficult reality of closing our operations,” Corp. for Public Broadcasting Chief Executive Patricia Harrison said in a statement.

The organization dates back nearly 60 years and has helped nurture such notable programs as “Sesame Street,” “PBS NewsHour,” “NOVA,” numerous Ken Burns documentaries and “Antiques Roadshow.” Through its partnerships with local stations and producers, the nonprofit made a mission of supporting educational and cultural programming, local journalism and emergency communications.

The move could cripple smaller public stations, including those in rural areas that struggle to mount high-dollar local membership campaigns. The Corp. for Public Broadcasting helps support more than 1,500 local public television and radio stations nationwide.

PBS SoCal, which operates member stations KOCE and KCET in Orange and Los Angeles counties, respectively, was set to lose more than $4 million in federal funding, Andy Russell, president and chief executive of the stations, previously told The Times.

NPR has two large affiliates serving Los Angeles: KCRW-FM (89.9) and LAist/KPCC-FM (89.3).

LAist, based in Pasadena, will lose about 4% of its annual budget — $1.7 million. Alejandra Santamaria, the station’s chief executive, told The Times last month that funding helped pay for 13 journalist positions in its newsroom.

KCRW in Santa Monica had been expecting $1.3 million from the Corp. for Public Broadcasting.

The stations have asked listeners to donate in order to compensate for the shortfall.

“Public media has been one of the most trusted institutions in American life, providing educational opportunity, emergency alerts, civil discourse, and cultural connection to every corner of the country,” Harrison said in the statement. “We are deeply grateful to our partners across the system for their resilience, leadership, and unwavering dedication to serving the American people.”

CONCORD, Calif. — On Saturday, on the streets of Washington, Donald Trump will throw himself a costly and ostentatious military parade, a gaudy display of waste and vainglory staged solely to inflate the president’s dirigible-sized ego.

The estimated price tag: As much as $45 million.

That same day, the volunteers and staff of White Pony Express will do what they’ve done for nearly a dozen years, taking perfectly good food that would otherwise be tossed out and using it to feed hungry and needy people living in one of the most comfortable and affluent regions of California.

Since its founding, White Pony has processed and passed along more than 26 million pounds of food — the equivalent of about 22 million meals — thanks to such Bay Area benefactors as Whole Foods, Starbucks and Trader Joe’s. That’s 13,000 tons of food that would have otherwise gone to landfills, rotting and emitting 31,000 tons of CO2 emissions into our overheated atmosphere.

It’s such a righteous thing, you can practically hear the angels sing.

“Our mission is to connect abundance and need,” said Eve Birge, White Pony’s chief executive officer, who said the nonprofit’s guiding principle is the notion “we are one human family and when one of us moves up, we all move up.”

That mission has become more difficult of late as the Trump administration takes a scythe to the nation’s social safety net.

White Pony receives most of its support from corporations, foundations, community organizations and individual donors. But a sizable chunk comes from the federal government; the nonprofit could lose up to a third of its $3-million annual budget due to cuts by the Trump administration.

“We serve 130,000 people each year,” Birge said. “That puts in jeopardy one-third of the people we’re serving, because if I don’t find another way to raise that money, then we’ll have to scale back programs. I’ll have to consider letting go staff.” (White Pony has 17 employees and about 1,200 active volunteers.)

“We’re a seven-day-a-week operation, because people are hungry seven days a week,” Birge said. “We’ve talked about having to pull back to five or six days.”

She had no comment on Trump’s big, braggadocious celebration of self, a Soviet-style display of military hardware — tanks, horses, mules, parachute jumpers, thousands of marching troops — celebrating the Army’s 250th anniversary and, oh yes, the president’s 79th birthday.

Marivel Mendoza wasn’t so reticent.

“All of the programs that are being gutted and we’re using taxpayer dollars to pay for a parade?” she asked after a White Pony delivery truck pulled up with several pallets of fruit, veggies and other groceries.

Mendoza’s organization, which operates from a small office center in Brentwood, serves more than 500 migrant farmworkers and their families in the far eastern reaches of the Bay Area. “We’re going to see people starving at some point,” Mendoza said. “It’s unethical and immoral. I don’t know how [Trump] sleeps at night.”

Certainly not lightheaded, or with his empty belly growling from hunger.

All the food processed at White Pony Express, including these bell peppers, is checked for quality and freshness before distribution.

(Mark Z. Barabak / Los Angeles Times)

Those who work at White Pony speak of it with a spiritual reverence.

Paula Keeler, 74, took a break from her recent shift inspecting produce to discuss the organization’s beneficence. (Every bit of food that comes through the door is checked for quality and freshness before being trucked from White Pony’s Concord warehouse and headquarters to one of more than 100 community nonprofits.)

Keeler retired about a decade ago from a number-crunching job with a Bay Area school district. She’s volunteered at White Pony for the last nine years, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

“It’s become my church, my gym and my therapist,” she said, as pulsing rhythm and blues played from a portable speaker inside the large sorting room. “Tuesdays, I deliver to two senior homes. They’re mostly little women and they can go to bed at night knowing their refrigerator is full tomorrow, and that’s what touches my heart.”

Keeler hadn’t heard about Trump’s parade. “I don’t watch the news because it makes me want to throw up,” she said. Told of the spectacle and its cost, she responded with equanimity.

“It’s kind of like the Serenity Prayer,” Keeler said. “What can you do and what can’t you do? I try to stick with what I can do.”

It’s not much in vogue these days to quote Joe Biden, but the former president used to say something worth recollecting. “Don’t tell me what you value,” he often stated. “Show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.”

Trump’s priorities — I, me, mine — are the same as they’ve ever been. But there’s something particularly stomach-turning about squandering tens of millions of dollars on a vanity parade while slashing funds that could help feed those in need.

Michael Bagby has been volunteering at White Pony for three years, delivering food and training others to drive the nonprofit’s fleet of trucks.

(Mark Z. Barabak / Los Angeles Times)

Michael Bagby, 66, works part time at White Pony. He retired after a career piloting big rigs and started making deliveries and training White Pony drivers about three years ago. His passion is fishing — Bagby dreams of reeling in a deep-sea marlin — but no hobby can nourish his soul as much as helping others.

He was aware of Trump’s pretentious pageant and its heedless price tag.

“Nothing I say is going to make a difference whether the parade goes on or not,” Bagby said, settling into the cab of a 26-foot refrigerated box truck. “But it would be better to show an interest in the true needs of the country rather than a parade.”

His route that day called for stops at a middle school and a church in working-class Antioch, then Mendoza’s nonprofit in neighboring Brentwood.

As Bagby pulled up to the church, the pastor and several volunteers were waiting outside. The modest white stucco building was fringed with dead grass. Traffic from nearby Highway 4 produced an insistent, thrumming soundtrack.

“There are a lot of people in need. A lot,” said Tania Hernandez, 45, who runs the church’s food pantry. Eighty percent of the food it provides comes from White Pony, helping feed around 100 families a week. “If it wasn’t for them,” Hernandez said, “we wouldn’t be able to do it.”

With help, Bagby dropped off several pallets. He raised the tailgate, battened down the latches and headed for the cab. A church member walked up and stuck out his hand. “God bless you,” he said.

Then it was off to the next stop.

In the latest twist in the legal saga between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, Lively is dropping two claims against Baldoni of emotional distress.

As if the drama couldn’t get any messier, the accusations continue to fly. Baldoni’s lawyer filed a letter requesting that the judge in the case compel Lively to “identify her medical and mental health care providers” — signing a HIPAA release to open up access to her therapy notes and pertinent medical info, as People reported.

Rather than do so, the letter says, Lively requested to withdraw her claims of emotional distress, but maybe just for now. Baldoni’s attorney Kevin Fritz said the actor wanted to keep the right to re-file those emotional distress claims at a later time — but Lively “can’t have it both ways.”

Lively’s lawyers take another view.

Esra Hudson and Mike Gottlieb accused Baldoni’s legal counsel of a “press stunt,” saying they are simply “preparing our case for trial by streamlining and focusing it,” as per Deadline’s reporting.

U.S. District Court Judge Lewis J. Liman had this to say on Tuesday: The two parties must decide “whether the dismissal is with or without prejudice” before proceeding further — the claims are either to be dismissed forever or possibly pursued again, but there is no in-between.

Representatives of Baldoni and Lively did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment on Tuesday.

The order comes as the latest event in the lawsuit, with a trial set to begin in March 2026. Lively initially filed a sexual harassment and retaliation complaint in September.

She accused Baldoni, along with his team, of orchestrating a smear campaign against her after she reported on-set sexual harassment, as first reported by the New York Times.

Most recently, Lively sought to dismiss a defamation countersuit from Baldoni. The motion, filed in March, cites a California law that prohibits “weaponizing defamation lawsuits” against those who have filed suit or “spoken out about sexual harassment and retaliation.”

Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freedman later called the motion “one of the most abhorrent examples of abusing our legal system.”

But Lively’s motion only picked up steam as it drew widespread support from advocacy groups. Equal Rights Advocates, a gender equity and workplace protection-oriented nonprofit based in San Francisco, urged a federal judge to support the motion and uphold the aforementioned law.

Jessica Schidlow, legal director at Child USA, a nonprofit that pushes for more legal protection of abuse victims, told The Times in May that if the law were to be struck down, it would “essentially do away with the protections for all survivors.”

“It would be a devastating setback and completely undermine the purpose of the law, which was to make it easier for victims to come forward and to speak their truth without fear of retaliation,” she added.

PORTLAND, Ore. — One program distributes laptops in rural Iowa. Another helped people get back online after Hurricane Helene washed away computers and phones in western North Carolina. Programs in Oregon and rural Alabama teach older people, including some who have never touched a computer, how to navigate in an increasingly digital world.

It all came crashing down this month when President Trump — on his own digital platform, Truth Social — announced his intention to end the Digital Equity Act, a federal grant program meant to help bridge the digital divide. He branded it as “RACIST and ILLEGAL” and said it amounts to “woke handouts based on race.” He said it was an “ILLEGAL $2.5 BILLION DOLLAR giveaway.” The program was funded with $2.75 billion.

The name seemed innocuous enough when the program was approved by Congress in 2021 as part of a $65-billion investment meant to bring internet access to every home and business in the United States. The broadband program was a key component of the $1-trillion infrastructure law enacted under the Biden administration.

The Digital Equity Act was intended to fill gaps and cover unmet needs that surfaced during the massive broadband rollout. It gave states and tribes flexibility to deliver high-speed internet access to families that could not afford it, computers to kids who did not have them, telehealth access to older adults in rural areas, and training and job skills to veterans.

Whether Trump has the legal authority to end the program remains unknown. But for now the Republican administration can simply stop spending the money.

“I just felt my heart break for what we were finally, finally in this country, going to address, the digital divide,” said Angela Siefer, executive director of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, a nonprofit that was awarded — but has not received — a $25.7-million grant to work with groups across the country to help provide access to technology. “The digital divide is not just physical access to the internet, it is being able to use that to do what you need to do.”

The word ‘equity’

While the name of the program probably got it targeted — the Trump administration has been aggressively scrubbing the government of programs that promote diversity, equity or inclusion — the Digital Equity Act was supposed to be broader in scope.

Though Trump called it racist, the words “race” or “racial” appear just twice in the law’s text: once, alongside “color, religion, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, or disability,” in a passage stating that no groups should be excluded from funding; and later, in a list of covered populations, along with older adults, veterans, people with disabilities, English learners, people with low literacy levels and rural Americans.

“Digital Equity passed with overwhelming bipartisan support,” Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the act’s chief proponent, noted in a statement. “And that’s because my Republican colleagues have heard the same stories as I have — like kids in rural communities forced to drive to McDonalds parking lots for Wi-Fi to do their homework.

“It is insane — absolutely nuts — that Trump is blocking resources to help make sure kids in rural school districts can get hot spots or laptops, all because he doesn’t like the word equity!”

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which administers the program, declined to comment. It’s not clear how much of the $2.75 billion has been awarded, though in March 2024 the NTIA announced the allocation of $811 million to states, territories and tribes.

‘More confident’

On a recent morning in Portland, Ore., Brandon Dorn was among those taking a keyboard basics class offered by Free Geek, a nonprofit that provides free courses to help people learn to use computers. The class was offered at a low-income housing building to make it accessible for residents.

Dorn and the others were given laptops and shown the different functions of keys: control, shift and caps lock, how to copy and paste. They played a typing game that taught finger and key placement on a color-coded keyboard.

Dorn, 63, said the classes helped because “in this day and age, everything has to go through the computer.” He said it helped him feel more confident and less dependent on his children or grandchildren to do things such as making appointments online.

“Folks my age, we didn’t get this luxury because we were too busy working, raising the family,” he said. “So this is a great way to help us help ourselves.”

Juan Muro, Free Geek’s executive director, said participants get the tools and skills they need to access things like online banking, job applications, online education programs and telehealth. He said Trump’s move to end funding has put nonprofits such as Free Geek in a precarious position, forcing them to make up the difference through fundraising and “beg for money to just provide individuals with essential stuff.”

Sara Nichols works for the Land of Sky Regional Council, a multi-county planning and development organization in western North Carolina. On the Friday before Trump’s inauguration in January, the organization received notice that it was approved for a grant. But like other groups the Associated Press contacted, it has not seen any money.

Land of Sky had spent a lot of resources helping people recover from last year’s storms. The award notice, Nichols said, came as “incredible news.”

“But between this and the state losing, getting their letters terminated, we feel just, like, stuck. What are we going to do? How are we going to move forward? How are we going to let our communities continue to fall behind?”

Filling unmet needs

More than one-fifth of Americans do not have broadband internet access at home, according to the Pew Research Center. In rural communities, the number jumps to 27%.

Beyond giving people access to technology and fast internet, many programs funded by the Digital Equity Act sought to provide “digital navigators” — human helpers to guide people new to the online world.

“In the United States we do not have a consistent source of funding to help individuals get online, understand how to be safe online and how to use that technology to accomplish all the things that are required now as part of life that are online,” said Siefer of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance. This includes providing families with internet hot spots so they can get online at home and helping seniors avoid online scams, she said.

“Health, workforce, education, jobs, everything, right?” Siefer said. “This law was going to be the start for the U.S. to figure out this issue. It’s a new issue in the big scheme of things, because now technology is no longer a nice-to-have. You have to have the internet and you have to know how to use the technology just to survive, let alone to thrive today.”

Siefer said the word “equity” in the name probably prompted Trump to target the program for elimination.

“But it means that he didn’t actually look at what this program does,” she said. “Because who doesn’t want Grandma to be safe online? Who doesn’t want a veteran to be able to talk to their doctor rather than get in a car and drive two hours? Who doesn’t want students to be able to do their homework?”

Ortutay and Rush write for the Associated Press and reported from San Francisco and Portland, Ore., respectively.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — A video showing dozens of people marching toward the office of Haiti’s prime minister elicited gasps from some viewers as it circulated recently on social media. The protesters, who are HIV-positive, did not conceal their faces — a rare occurrence in a country where the virus is still heavily stigmatized.

“Call the minister of health! We are dying!” the group chanted.

The protesters risked being shunned by society to warn that Haiti is running out of HIV medication just months after the Trump administration slashed more than 90% of the United States Agency for International Development’s foreign aid contracts and $60 billion in overall aid across the globe.

At a hospital near the northern city of Cap-Haitien, Dr. Eugene Maklin said he struggles to share that reality with his more than 550 HIV patients.

“It’s hard to explain to them, to tell them that they’re not going to find medication,” he said. “It’s like a suicide.”

‘We can’t stay silent’

More than 150,000 people in Haiti have HIV or AIDS, according to official estimates, although nonprofits believe the number is much higher.

David Jeune, a 46-year-old hospital community worker, is among them. He became infected 19 years ago after having unprotected sex.

“I was scared to let people know because they would point their finger at you, saying you are infecting others with AIDS,” he said.

His fear was so great that he didn’t tell anyone, not even his mother. But that fear dissipated with the support Jeune said he received from nonprofit groups. His confidence grew to the point where he participated in last week’s protest.

“I hope Trump will change his mind,” he said, noting that his medication will run out in November. “Let the poor people get the medication they need.”

Patrick Jean Noel, a representative of Haiti’s Federation of Assns. of HIV, said that at least five clinics, including one that served 2,500 patients, were forced to close after the USAID funding cuts.

“We can’t stay silent,” he said. “More people need to come out.”

But most people with HIV in Haiti are reluctant to do so, said Dr. Sabine Lustin, executive director of the Haiti-based nonprofit Promoters of Zero AIDS Goal.

The stigma is so strong that many patients are reluctant to pick up their medication in person. Instead, it is sent in packages wrapped as gifts so as to not arouse suspicion, she said.

Lustin’s organization, which helps some 2,000 people across Haiti, receives funding from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Though its funding hasn’t been cut, she said that shortly after President Trump took office in January, the agency banned HIV prevention activities because they targeted a group that is not a priority — which she understood to be referring to gay men.

That means the organization can no longer distribute up to 200,000 free condoms a year or educate people about the disease.

“You risk an increase in infections,” she said. “You have a young population who is sexually active who can’t receive the prevention message and don’t have access to condoms.”

‘That can’t be silenced’

On the sunny morning of May 19, a chorus of voices drowned out the din of traffic in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, growing louder as protesters with HIV marched defiantly toward the prime minister’s office.

“We are here to tell the government that we exist, and we are people like any other person,” one woman told reporters.

Another marching alongside her said, “Without medication, we are dying. This needs to change.”

Three days after the protest, the leader of Haiti’s transitional presidential council, Louis Gérald Gilles, announced that he had met with activists and would try to secure funding.

Meanwhile, nonprofit organizations across Haiti are fretting.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” said Marie Denis-Luque, founder and executive director of CHOAIDS, a nonprofit that cares for Haitian orphans with HIV/AIDS. “We only have medication until July.”

Her voice broke as she described her frantic search for donations for the orphans, who are cared for by HIV-positive women in Cap-Haitien after gang violence forced them to leave Port-au-Prince.

Denis-Luque said she has long advocated for the orphans’ visibility.

“We can’t keep hiding these children. They are part of society,” she said, adding that she smiled when she saw the video of last week’s protest. “I was like, whoa, things have changed tremendously. The stigma is real, but I think what I saw … was very encouraging to me. They can’t be silenced.”

A dangerous combination

Experts say Haiti could see a rise in HIV infections because medications are dwindling at a time that gang violence and poverty are surging.

Dr. Alain Casseus, infectious-disease division chief at Zanmi Lasante, the largest nongovernmental healthcare provider in Haiti, said he expected to see a surge in patients given the funding cuts, but that hasn’t happened because traveling by land in Haiti is dangerous since violent gangs control main roads and randomly open fire on vehicles.

He warned that abruptly stopping medication is dangerous, especially because many Haitians do not have access or cannot afford nutritious food to strengthen their immune system.

“It wouldn’t take long, especially given the situation in Haiti, to enter a very bad phase,” he said of HIV infections. And even if some funding becomes available, a lapse in medication could cause resistance to it, he said.

Casseus said gang violence also could accelerate the rates of infection by rapes or other physical violence as medication runs out.

At the New Hope Hospital run by Maklin in Haiti’s northern region, shelves are running empty. He used to receive more than $165,000 a year to help HIV/AIDS patients. But that funding has dried up.

“Those people are going to die,” he said. “We don’t know how or where we’re going to get more medication.”

The medication controls the infection and allows many to have an average life expectancy. Without it, the virus attacks a person’s immune system and they develop AIDS, the late stage of an HIV infection.

Reaction is swift when Maklin tells his patients that in two months, the hospital won’t have any HIV medication left.

“They say, ‘No, no, no, no!’” he said. “They want to keep living.”

Coto and Sanon write for the Associated Press and reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Port-au-Prince, respectively.