This week at Unbreaking, July 31
This week, we’ve added a timeline to our Equality at Work explainer to make it easier to understand the depth of the issue. And in case you missed it, this blog post breaks down what we’re seeing as we dive into Medicaid cuts and figure out who is among the millions of people likely to lose their healthcare.
Below, find updates on Equality at Work, Medicaid, Transgender Healthcare, Data Security, Medical Research Funding, and Food Safety.
Equality at Work
The administration continues to cut staff across the federal government, including at the EPA, where hundreds of scientists have been laid off from the agency’s vital independent research arm. Meanwhile, after kicking 25,000 workers out of the IRS, the Trump administration has asked for a 31% funding increase to prevent significant customer service problems that will “negatively impact taxpayers’ abilities to voluntarily comply with tax laws.” Federal workers report that it’s been an “emotional rollercoaster,” with many fired, rehired, then fired again. All of this makes federal employment a much less attractive career path for the next generation of workers, undermines the government’s role as a powerful force for workplace equality, and will diminish government services for many years to come. We have the full story in our explainer.
Medicaid
The recently passed budget reconciliation bill included a provision to cut off Medicaid payments to Planned Parenthood, effectively eliminating Planned Parenthood as a care provider for millions of people who need low-cost or free reproductive care, including prenatal care, birth control, vaccinations, STI screening, and fertility treatment. A July 21 limited injunction preserved payments to some clinics, and on July 28, a federal judge in Boston issued a preliminary injunction that keeps Medicaid reimbursements flowing to Planned Parenthood nationwide. We’ve covered all of the cuts in the bill (and when they take effect) in our explainer.
Meanwhile, the administration is attempting to characterize millions of people at risk of losing Medicaid as healthy young men who just don’t want to work. It turns out that every part of this claim is false. We walk through what’s actually going on with “able-bodied” adults on Medicaid in a new blog post.
Transgender Healthcare
The past few weeks have shown one thing: threats work. Despite judges blocking most of Trump’s executive orders around transgender identity and care, several hospitals have voluntarily decided to stop providing care to trans youth. Recently, providers in California, Connecticut, Illinois, Virginia, and Washington, DC, have all announced that they will stop offering some forms of gender-affirming care for youth. In many cases, hospitals specifically cited threats by the Trump administration as the reason for their decision.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also continues to try to build a case that healthcare for trans people is somehow fraud — this time by opening up a public comment period asking consumers to share their experience with gender affirming care. The call for comments is open to anyone, and advocates are suggesting that those in support of this care should make their voices heard.
You can find the full explainer here.
Data Security
This week saw both legal actions and refusals to comply with the administration’s efforts to consolidate data across agencies and use it for immigration enforcement. A coalition of Attorneys General for 22 states sued the USDA, challenging its plans to require states to disclose personal information about SNAP recipients. American Oversight also filed multiple lawsuits against various federal agencies in an attempt to identify DOGE staffers who have gained access to sensitive systems.
And in our favorite event of the week, Maine’s Secretary of State held a press conference in which she told the Department of Justice to “go jump in the Gulf of Maine” (video), in response to a request to submit the state’s voter registration list. The DOJ made similar requests of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego counties, seeking personal information of non-citizens on state voter rolls. This comes in the wake of reports that the DOJ is conducting a state-by-state review of how voter rolls are managed, with several states rejecting requests for voter information.
We’re continuing to update our timeline, with more analysis coming soon.
Medical Research Funding
Medical research funding continues to experience rapid, large-scale upheaval. A new change to bookkeeping procedure is anticipated to sharply decrease the number of total grant awards the NIH can make each year. The controversial change, known as “forward funding,” requires the NIH to transfer the entire amount of a multi-year R01 grant when it is first awarded, instead of paying it out in yearly installments. Employees of the federal science agencies and some Republican senators are now publicly opposing the financial maneuvers that are interrupting research programs. For example, pressure from patient advocacy groups and members of Congress helped to immediately reverse a July 29 White House memo that would have cancelled $15 billion in previously-committed NIH external grant funding. In order to restore its frozen research funding, Columbia University agreed to a $221 million settlement with the administration. This sets a troubling precedent, as the administration continues to expand the list of research funds frozen at other universities.
Read the full story here in our explainer.
Food Safety
Across the federal government, thousands of employees working on food safety have been fired as a result of two executive orders directing agencies to conduct cost-cutting layoffs, and the impact of these cuts is still unfolding. Following a Supreme Court decision allowing mass layoffs to proceed without congressional authorization, HHS has begun finalizing layoffs announced in April. At the FDA, low staff morale due to the layoffs has led to resignations, compounding the problem. Responding to this growing crisis, the Senate Appropriations Committee, in its discretionary budget bill for 2025–2026, directed the FDA to ignore a federal hiring freeze in order to hire scientists, product reviewers, and inspectors. We will continue to keep an eye on this countermove as the discretionary budget winds its way through the House and the Senate.
This week, we also continued to see diminished transparency and oversight affecting federal food safety systems. In the same discretionary budget bill, Senate legislators criticized the FDA for holding closed advisory panels on infant formula, which took place just as the Trump administration was dismantling key food safety advisory committees at the USDA. And the FDA has begun using a large language model, Elsa, to assist in decision-making for tasks like food labeling review and inspection prioritization. The rollout of Elsa across the agency has prompted concern from staffers about inaccurate information and from industry experts and regulators about reduced transparency of decision-making.
Read the full story in our explainer.
Sharing resources
We’ve been keeping a list of other tracking projects for our internal reference, and it’s now posted publicly as a Google Sheet. We’ll keep updating it as we find and use more trackers, and we may even organize it in the future, but we see value in sharing it in even an informal and slightly messy format.
How to help
Unbreaking is run in the spirit of a mutual aid cooperative, with researchers, writers, editors, and community organizers working collaboratively to create and maintain our timelines and explainers. We welcome both experts in government as well as curious and interested observers. Learn more about our work or apply to join us.