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2026-02-26 07:17:44

The Trump administration is considering an executive order that would compel banks to collect citizenship information from customers, new and existing, who want to maintain service in the United States, according to new reporting from the Wall Street Journal.

This potential escalation in the administration’s campaign against non-US citizens would also add more hurdles for victims of domestic abuse who are trying to leave their unsafe circumstances—whether they’re citizens or not. 

While banks are required to collect some personal information to protect themselves from fraud, “banks don’t routinely share that information with the government,” and there “is no prohibition on banks opening accounts for noncitizens,” per the Journal. 

White House spokesman Kush Desai told the Journal that “Any reporting about potential policymaking that has not been officially announced by the White House is baseless speculation.” But banks, the paper reports, are “alarmed.”

It’s unclear what exactly the administration would demand from banks and their users, though the action could impact those who are in the country legally but aren’t citizens and those without access to key documentation that could prove citizenship—a category that includes many survivors of intimate partner violence, up to 99 percent of whom also experience some kind of financial abuse. Teal Inzunza, associate vice president of justice initiatives at the Urban Resource Institute in New York, works with survivors of domestic violence. Financial abuse, she told me, can look like “withholding documentation.”

“An abusive partner will hold somebody’s ID, their passport, their immigration information, as a form of power and control in an abusive relationship,” she said. If the Trump administration were to require banks to confirm citizenship, Inzunza continued, it would “add another layer of difficulty for survivors and immigrants to access a necessary part of our economy” and “will make getting a bank account nearly impossible for many of them.”

Having access to an independent bank account for those experiencing financial and domestic abuse can be paramount for making a plan to leave. Proof of income is often required to secure housing; courts discerning custody agreements want parents to illustrate that they can financially support children; employers might ask for a direct deposit form or banking information; getting access to a vehicle may require a bank account or credit information. It’s also safer for survivors to siphon money away into a bank account than to depend on hoarding cash in the same home as their abuser. 

Even if President Donald Trump doesn’t move forward with an executive order, others in the GOP may take up the cause. After the Journal’s initial reporting on Tuesday, Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas was quick to show his support for the potential bank requirement. “I strongly support President Trump taking action to prevent illegal migrants from accessing our banking system,” he wrote on X, adding that he “will be introducing legislation on this issue shortly.” Cotton also shared a letter that he wrote to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in October of last year, urging the department head to “undertake a comprehensive review” to prevent “illegal aliens” from accessing US banks. The senator wrote that “we are permitting illegal aliens to establish financial roots and integrate economically.” 

As Trump and his administration continue to detain tens of thousands of non-US citizens, an already complicated reality for immigrant survivors of abuse has become even more fearful. 

In January of 2025, the Department of Homeland Security announced it was rescinding protections for “sensitive zones,” which can include domestic violence shelters. In the spring of 2025, The Alliance for Immigrant Survivors surveyed over 170 advocates and attorneys nationwide. When asked, more than three in four advocates reported that the immigrant survivors they work with have concerns about contacting the police. As The Marshall Project noted, several victims of domestic violence were killed by their abusers last summer after reportedly not reaching out to law enforcement because they feared deportation.

Because of the imminent fear of violence, victims often need to flee quickly—sometimes bringing very little with them. Needing those documents to prove legal status, should the banking rules change, could mean trying to get an abuser to hand them over or paying large sums to have them replaced. Gaining access to documents can be complicated and dangerous, especially, Inzunza said, if “your abusive partner is holding those hostage.”

2026-02-26 06:55:04

On Tuesday evening, Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a Blind, seriously ill Rohingya refugee from Burma who does not speak English, was found dead in Buffalo—five days after Border Patrol dropped him off on a street corner without notifying his family, who had moved away from the area. He was 56.

The story of Shah Alam’s arrest in February of last year, as reported by the Investigative Post, reads as a situation all too familiar for disabled people who interact with the police—particularly disabled people of color. His original violent arrest, by police who apparently saw his walking stick as a weapon—and who, like the Border Patrol officers who dumped him, apparently made no attempt to reckon with his disability, his inability to speak English, or his mental state—set off a chain of events that ended in his death.

In need of a walking stick, he managed to find his way down the block to a shop that sold curtain rods, where he purchased one. Curtain rod in hand, Shah Alam strolled his Black Rock neighborhood until the weather turned colder, [his attorney Benjamin] Macaluso said. He attempted to walk home, but, confused, ended up at a stranger’s house instead.

He found himself on a woman’s porch just as she was letting her dog out, Macaluso said.

“He comes from a place where people don’t keep dogs,” Macaluso said. “The dog’s freaking out. He’s freaking out. She calls the police and says there’s an unidentified Black man in my driveway.”

When Buffalo police arrived, Macaluso said, they ordered him to drop his curtain rod. But Shah Alam was not able to understand them—or even see them clearly. After not complying with repeated orders, the two officers Tasered him, tackled and beat him, Macaluso said.

Shah Alam took a plea deal earlier this month, which led to his release. His attorney Macaluso and his family, newly back in town, spent Friday through Sunday looking for Shah Alam. “He cannot use a phone,” Macaluso told Investigative Post. “He doesn’t know his address, he doesn’t know phone numbers, he can’t communicate, he can’t see. And they just left him.”

A missing persons case was opened by the Buffalo Police Department on Sunday, but the Buffalo Police Department closed it the following day, operating on the incorrect assumption that Shah Alam was in ICE detention.

House Rep. Tim Kennedy (D-N.Y.) has called for an investigation into Shah Alam’s death. “Mr. Alam should be alive and with his loved ones today. Instead, after days of fear and uncertainty, his family is now grieving an unimaginable loss,” Kennedy said, according to news station WIVB. “There must be a full and transparent investigation at the local, state, and federal levels. The public and Mr. Alam’s family deserve answers immediately.” 

2026-02-26 05:05:44

President Donald Trump’s pick for surgeon general, wellness influencer Casey Means, parroted various MAHA talking points throughout a Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday, while deflecting on key issues such as vaccines and birth control. Some of Means’ responses even appeared to contradict previous public health-related statements she’s made in order to fall in line with the administration.

The MAHA talking points included a push for “informed consent” where “patients [or parents] need to have a conversation with their doctor” to ensure “faith in public health.” Then, “I don’t think it’s responsible to make a blanket statement for all Americans” when discussing the safety of vaccines and birth control pills. Instead, Means claimed, that public health officials should “focus on the root causes of why we are sick.”

Her remarks on vaccines and birth control pills were particularly troubling. She largely disregarded decades of overwhelming scientific evidence that vaccines do not cause autism, insisting that “we should not leave any stone unturned” to promote further investigation. Means also backed her previous claim that birth control represents a “disrespect for life” and carries “horrifying health risks” for women, telling senators Wednesday that “all medications have risks and benefits” and provided the example of “blood clots and stroke risk in women who have clotting disorders, who are smokers, who have obesity.”

In a telling exchange, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) cited a newsletter from August 2024, in which Means pointed to the World Health Organization’s warning against glyphosate and argued that people should avoid conventionally grown foods that hurt, among several other reasons, “your cellular health.” But when asked about Trump’s executive order last week that sought to ensure “an adequate supply” of glyphosate-based herbicides, such as Roundup, Means appeared to deflect. Instead, Means backed her previous claims on removing toxic chemicals from food but refused to note the difference in the Trump administration’s position. 

“I’m just trying to help you to agree with yourself,” Markey said.

“We are in a very complicated moment for agriculture and food,” Means responded. “We cannot overturn the entire agriculture system overnight.” 

As my colleagues Kiera Butler and Anna Merlan wrote last May after Means’ nomination, the wellness influencer was a campaign adviser during now-Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 2024 presidential bid and a key promoter of his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. 

Means has even appeared to alarm some of Kennedy’s allies, who have criticized her as “sinister [functionary] of Big Pharma, Big Food, or something much worse.” At Wednesday’s hearing, Democrats pointed to Means’ history of promoting products while rarely disclosing that she was earning financial compensation from their developers.

In little over a year, Kennedy has proven that, in the Trump administration, what is said during one’s confirmation hearing testimony can’t exactly be relied upon. The secretary hasn’t followed through with many of the promises he made last year, including supporting childhood vaccines and not scaling back vaccine funding. Taken together, there might be little to believe when Means claims that she will protect things like birth control or that “anti-vaccine rhetoric has never been a part of [her] message.”

2026-02-26 03:38:56

It all started when Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker tweeted that “Gregory Bovino has to go.” Bovino—the erstwhile roving warlord atop President Donald Trump’s Border Patrol junta—had other ideas. And those ideas involved armed federal agents. And pie.

“Nah, gubner, too busy leading agents to arrest illegal aliens,” Bovino responded. “Besides, Chicago may need another double digit drop in a whole smorgasbord of violent crime, compliments of the Green Machine. Perhaps we could meet for a sugar-free slice of heirloom apple pie -on me!”

Bovino’s threat to launch a renewed Border Patrol occupation of Chicago, apparently as retribution for a politician criticizing him, was certainly news. And journalist Amanda Moore—who has spent months covering Bovino and federal law enforcement for Mother Jones and other outlets—quickly pointed that out.

What happened next was bizarre—and a bit creepy.

“Perhaps you could make the pie for us,” Bovino tweeted at Moore.

“Commander it would be my honor, just tell me where to go,” Moore responded.

“Most excellent,” Bovino wrote. “I’ll let the gubner know you’ll be taking care of his appetite, in a healthy way.”

Things got even weirder from there, with Bovino at one point writing, “I’d love to see you bustling around the gubner’s kitchen fixing us a pie.”

Moore asked for an interview. “Would love to also talk about all your accomplishments!!!” she wrote.

This time, Bovino didn’t respond.

2026-02-25 22:24:50

Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump shared a lot of things, especially chasing women through New York City high society of the 1990s and early 2000s. But this detail caught my eye in the Epstein files. They also shared, in two different cities and times, the name for their respective command centers: the “Oval Office.” 

One is the very real seat of American presidential power currently occupied by Trump. The other was the nickname for Epstein World’s operations hub—the study in his infamous Upper East Side townhouse, through which his every bidding was executed by longtime assistant Lesley Groff. 

Like a lot of journalists, I’ve found myself scouring the Epstein files—3.5 million poorly organized pages cataloging cloying elites and the misdeeds of the deceased financier. The disclosures have already claimed a Rolodex of executives and politicians, and led to the first arrest of a British Royal since Charles I in 1647. They’ve also become a near-hourly drumbeat of scandal encircling the real Oval Office, the one with the president who is named “more than a million times” times (according to Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who’s seen more of them than most.) 

As I built timelines and pried open money trails for a separate investigation I’m working on, this phrase kept reappearing: “Oval Office.” At first, I was stunned that Epstein was talking about carpets in the real Oval with such familiarity. Then it clicked: Was this a nickname for something else? I used the AI tool Claude to sweep the trove for the term and its variants, narrowing findings down to 5,162 pages worthy of deeper analysis. Plenty referenced the actual Oval Office. But mixed in—plain as day—was Epstein’s own pet name for the beating heart of his global operation.

Once I realized this detail, it was a key to unlock a newly intimate, and oftentimes banal, view of everyday life at the gargantuan French neoclassical townhouse at 9 East 71st Street. Track the phrase through the documents and it begins to map the contours of Epstein’s influence network: how it worked, what it procured, and which men came through his “Oval.” Daily reports, scheduling, and household management all routed through the “Oval.” It’s where Epstein kept his passport in an unmarked hanging folder and his credit card details, and once stashed the key to the office of Martin Nowak, a professor whom Harvard sanctioned for his Epstein ties. (Nowak didn’t comment on the arrangement.) The Oval was also where Epstein’s “girls” slung purses and prepped for trips to Little St. James, a.k.a. Epstein Island, and where the bold-faced names of Epstein’s circle lounged underneath standup comic Bobby Slayton’s mounted guitar. (Slayton said he gifted Epstein a guitar decorated to honor his birthplace, Coney Island, as thanks for the use of an apartment between gigs. “I’m only guilty of being friends with that idiot,” he told me, calling Epstein “repulsive.”)

Much is already known about what could be found inside Epstein’s mansion: the sculpture of a bride clinging to a rope above the grand stairway; the life-sized stuffed tiger on a rug in what Vanity Fair described in 2003 as “an enormous gallery spanning the width of the house”—Epstein’s opulent personal office stuffed with rococo collectibles. A sideboard displayed a first edition of Lolita and a framed photograph with Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. But this exploration of the files placed me deep inside the Oval, the lesser-known but perhaps most functionally critical of all the mansion’s 40 rooms.

Epstein and his staff referred to this study variously as the “Oval Office,” the “Oval Room,” and simply “the Oval,” so much so that the name appears to have been adopted in redesign proposals for the townhouse (“Oval Study Room”)—according to a 2014 rendering included in the trove as part of a proposal by AC Atelier, a Chicago-based interior design firm. (When called, the firm declined to comment on confidential client work.) Was it, in fact, ovoid? Yes, an FBI warrant in July 2019 described it as so.

The nickname appears in some of the earliest documents in the trove: a Skype call was arranged for Lord Peter Mandelson to take from the “Oval Office” in June 2009, when he was Britain’s First Secretary of State to Prime Minister Gordon Brown. In September 2025, Mandelson was dismissed as Britain’s ambassador to the US. He is accused, among other things, of sharing government secrets with Epstein, and was arrested on Monday by British police “on suspicion of misconduct in public office.”

But the Oval Office was also the heart of the humdrum home office needs. Take this request from one aide, familiar to office-goers everywhere: “Do you know if we have any toner anywhere for the printer in oval office?”

By 2010, the term was completely routine: Epstein discussed wallpaper choices “for the oval office” and pressed the staff about the whereabouts of his new oval office lamp (“The tall, thin, clear acrylic thing??” an apparently freaked-out assistant asked Groff). In Epstein’s personal digital address book, his own contact entry included a dedicated line labeled “Oval.” An Office Depot invoice—for a dozen Sharpies, a duster, and a box of bubble wrap, among other stationery—was shipped directly to “OVAL OFFICE” at the mansion’s street address. In a separate email, Epstein instructed staff that “phones need to be programmed to call oval office,” as part of a punch list of home renovation tasks that also included changing the carpet in the elevator.

The Oval was the operations center for Epstein’s wide network of granting favors—and gifts—to the rich and powerful. An email dated May 13, 2012, instructed household staff that “There is a package in the oval office on the coffee table marked for Ehud Barak,” the former Israeli Prime Minister. Someone was to “put it in a shopping bag and label the bag for ‘Judith Tiomkin’ and drop the bag off at 880 Fifth Ave.” In other correspondence, Barak’s wife, Nili Priel, organized to pick it up from the intermediary. (This mysterious Tiomkin could not be reached for comment.)

In October 2016, staff were dispatched by Groff to the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue to pick up a Hermès-branded Apple Watch (2016 starting retail price, $1,149) for Soon-Yi Previn, Woody Allen’s wife. Emails note that the watch was to be gift-wrapped with a watch band found in the Oval’s desk drawer and delivered to Previn for her birthday. Two years earlier, Groff told Karyna Shuliak, Epstein’s last known girlfriend, to pick up “2 bags in the Oval Office both labeled for Soon Yi,” insisting they “need to go on the helicopter tomorrow!” In follow-up logistics, Groff outlined an East Side helipad departure to “Woody’s house,” noting that “Woody’s shoot is at Salve Regina College”—a Newport, Rhode Island, location Allen used for Irrational Man (2015), starring Emma Stone and Joaquin Phoenix. (I asked Previn if she’d received the watch but I didn’t hear back.)

I was surprised to learn there was a regifting operation, too. To thank a photographer, staff were instructed to strip any indication that a case of wine came from a Rothschild family member and to create a new “from” card, this time from Epstein, using Oval Office stationery.

As is the case for its namesake, security for the Epstein version of the Oval Office was top of mind. Instructions went out in January 2014 to lock the Oval Office door every night, along with other heightened security procedures. The household memo said those measures were meant to keep out Steven Hoffenberg, Epstein’s former business mentor and an imprisoned fraudster, who was found dead in Hoffenberg’s apartment eight years later. “He is crazy and is NOT to be let into the house under any circumstance,” Groff wrote.

It wouldn’t be an office of any shape without a passive aggressive note being sent around about general tidiness. “Hi girls,” wrote Groff in 2014. “It has been brought to my attention we need to be careful how we keep the Oval Office.” She goes on to instruct the recipients to “keep purses, computers, clothes, extra shoes, bags, etc off of the furniture in the Oval Office. We need to keep the sofa and chair available for guests to sit on…” 

“Please pick up after yourselves when it comes to coffee cups, plates, etc,” the memo went on. “Take them to the kitchen and put them in the dishwasher.”

“Jeffrey is also requesting to please keep the noise down in the kitchen… conversations, laughter, etc can get very loud and distracting…” she added.

The Oval was also a site for meetings with Epstein’s business partner, the French modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, who, like Epstein, took his own life while awaiting trial for sex crimes in France in 2022. Four years after Epstein was released after serving 13 months of an 18-month sentence in a county jail in Florida for soliciting a minor, Brunel being in the Oval was treated by staff as an urgent notification. On September 27, 2013, a staff member emailed Epstein with the subject line “Jean Luc is in the house!! in oval office.” A contemporaneous email to another staffer, Mark Tollison, bore the subject: “i told JE that Jean Luc is in the Oval Office!”

Calendars were also littered with references to the Oval Office. Epstein was scheduled to be the interviewer of a candidate for investor Leon Black’s family office in April 2014, and the woman’s résumé was waiting for Epstein in the Oval. Black was scheduled for lunch with Epstein hours later. His spokesman, Whit Clay, told me Black had no record or recollection of these events. “It’s well acknowledged that Epstein played a role in providing tax and estate planning to Mr. Black’s family office,” Clay said. “He would also embellish his roles and responsibilities and be disruptive, and that, along with his requests for more and more money, is the reason why Mr. Black ultimately fired him.”

Epstein also used the “Oval” to dangle his abilities to arrange visas; Groff invited one person to bring her “documents” so she could see “whether the work authorization would be possible.” The entire trove contains similar references to Epstein’s circle arranging visas for young women, including models linked to Brunel’s Epstein-backed agency, MC2.

During the 2019 FBI raid of the mansion, the Oval was an obvious target—and agents weren’t there for any gift-wrapping operation. They seized three Seagate external hard drives from a compartment inside a bookshelf cabinet. Their broader haul included erotic sculptures, sex toys, a massage table, and more than 1 million images and videos extracted from Epstein’s devices.

Was the “Oval Office” moniker just an in-joke? Elsewhere in the Epstein Files, documents suggest the real Oval Office was never far from Epstein’s mind—or his reach. Epstein personally emailed Soon-Yi Previn offering tours of the actual White House: “do you want the east wing state rooms or west wing.. oval office cabiet room situraion room?” (Spellings, his.) Earlier that year, Epstein had leveraged his friendship with Kathryn Ruemmler, who served as White House counsel under former President Barack Obama, to arrange a DC trip. (Allen and Previn ultimately visited the White House in December. Ruemmler had earlier deemed Epstein too “politically sensitive” for his own tour, according to emails cited by CBS.)

Previn replied to Epstein’s question playfully: “I guess we should see the Oval Office to make sure that it’s really oval.”

2026-02-25 20:30:00

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

For those coaxing thirsty crops like alfalfa from the parched fields and withered pasturelands in Eloy, Arizona, water is as good as gold—and just as scarce. “We’ve had nothing from the Colorado River for the last two or three years. I mean, we’ve had to cut back the volumes to the growers and have had to reduce acres and stuff to make it work,” said Ron McEachern, former general manager of the Central Arizona Irrigation and Drainage District, which serves the Eloy area.

The agricultural hub draws from the Colorado River basin through a vast canal network, but drought, overexploitation, and aging irrigation equipment are draining what little remains. “We got gates that are leaking and leaking downstream,” McEachern said. “The water spills and it spills, and nobody’s getting any use out of it.”

Nearly two years ago, the irrigation district was invited to apply to a new non-competitive grant program that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) under the Biden administration was launching to help farmers in areas grappling with devastating droughts. McEachern collaborated with the federal agency to identify what his team would do with the grant: replace and upgrade the 35-year-old deteriorating radial arm gates in their local canal system. The district needed the components to more precisely regulate water levels in the canals, but they are much too expensive for them to buy and install on their own.

Then, in late 2024, they got the break they’d been hoping for. The Central Arizona operation was one of 18 irrigation districts spread across 12 western states initially selected to receive up to $15 million each from the USDA. The agency’s Water-Saving Commodities program also earmarked grants for three tribal communities and two state associations of conservation districts. In total, the USDA planned to spend a $400 million pool of funds on the initiative. 

Gloria Montaño Greene, who served during the Biden administration as Deputy Under Secretary for USDA’s Farm Production and Conservation, told Grist that the idea for the program started back in 2021, as severe drought conditions enveloped agricultural powerhouse states across the country. The $400 million, according to Montaño Greene, was set to be distributed through the Commodity Credit Corporation, a financial institution used to implement specific agricultural programs established by the federal government. By the close of 2024, she said the Biden administration had entered final agreements with selected recipients and notified Congress of how they intended to use the money. 

“When we left the administration, we already had the signed agreements and the commitments that were going to be going through with the process,” said Montaño Greene. Based on those final agreements, the money, which was structured to be either reimbursement-based or in the form of advance payments—or both, depending on the agreement—should have started flowing last year, as part of a five-year payment plan. “Everything was done, vetted, and reviewed,” she said. But because this money wasn’t voted on by Congress, the USDA may have the authority to backtrack on its commitments under an earlier administration.

Another former top USDA official familiar with the program, who requested anonymity, confirmed that the agreements were “100 percent” finalized before the end of 2024—with the expectation that the incoming administration would need to honor them. “I can speak to the assumptions and guidance that we were working on from legal counsel at that time, which was by entering into these agreements with the districts and other partners, we’re committing those dollars to this purpose,” the former official added. “From our perspective, we were operating under a framework and counsel that we were committing those funds to the USDA partners.” 

Beginning last January, the Trump administration threw that into a tailspin. Federal monies were frozen, grant programs culled, and an unprecedented number of federal staffers were forced out of work. Many operations at USDA have since resumed to some semblance of normalcy. But the $400 million promised to the irrigation districts, associations, and tribes in 2024 remains unaccounted for, and the grant recipients have received no indication of whether the program would start or the money would be paid out. 

In fact, McEachern no longer even knew whom at the USDA to ask for help. The last he heard from the agency about the water-saving grant was an email from his former point of contact to let him know they were leaving the USDA. That was over a year ago. 

“I think some of the people that were involved are probably no longer there, and nobody was really kind of pushing to get this off the ground,” said McEachern. “One thing is, they haven’t swept the money. So the money is there. It’s just getting them to release it.” 

Dan Crabtree, superintendent of Palisade Irrigation District, based in Colorado, one of the other 18 irrigation districts, has had much the same experience. “Since the election, we have not heard anything from USDA, other than to say they were evaluating the program and the application,” said Crabtree. Another recipient—Greybull Valley Irrigation District in Wyoming—told Grist in an email that it also knew nothing about the program’s status. 

Randall Winston, general manager of Hidalgo & Cameron Counties Irrigation District 9, in Texas, another of the USDA’s selected recipients, said that while they’ve been waiting, the severe drought in the Rio Grande Valley has only gotten worse. As a result, they have been forced to dramatically reduce how much agricultural land the district is able to irrigate—last year, they supplied water for roughly 8,000 acres, when on a typical year they irrigate 120,000.

“Every drop of water, we’re trying to maximize that and save as much as we can,” said Winston. Prices for the equipment they need to manage the water they do have have also continued to climb, according to Winston, further setting them back. “We are concerned because we need to know the direction to take…We’re not mad at USDA, we just need to find out where we’re at with this,” he said.

Exactly why the administration has kept the funding locked without any communication to grantees for over a year is difficult to discern, according to Food & Water Watch research director Amanda Starbuck. “Is this specifically because it’s intended to help farmers adapt to climate change, and climate change is a bad word in the administration, or it’s simply just trying to cut corners wherever they can?” said Starbuck. 

The USDA did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

During one former USDA staffer’s last few months working at the Farm Service Agency, they claim they were forced to partake in information “gatekeeping” as it related to the water-saving program. According to the staffer, who left their role in 2025 and asked to remain anonymous, “I was getting a lot of questions about, like, ‘Can we start or not?’ and I didn’t know the answer. I couldn’t get an answer. I really wasn’t allowed to communicate with them directly. Like, I couldn’t tell them ‘Your grant is frozen. Don’t spend any money because the money may never come to you.’ It was just ‘Tell them it’s under administrative review’…And then I couldn’t get a clear answer out of my leadership, or my direct manager, or my manager’s manager, about where the program was in the review process.” 

As for the suspicion that the program may have been targeted in the way that other Biden-era programs geared toward mitigating climate change have been, the former staffer isn’t convinced. “To me, it does seem pretty neutral from a climate perspective, because a lot of the states that have water problems are not necessarily blue states,” they said. “So I don’t think it was something that someone, like a high level official, would come in and say, ‘That’s the program I want to gut.’”

Although they can’t be certain, the former staffer believes the explanation is actually quite simple: There are no employees left to distribute the money. 

Within the first five months of the Trump administration, the Farm Service Agency lost around 24 percent of its federal workforce. “It’s very possible it’s frozen because no one who works there that interacted with the program, like all of the people who know anything about the program, have now left the agency,” they said. The former staffer also said they have “a sinking suspicion” that the internal organizational disarray at USDAmay have led the agency to forget about the program, which they described as having “a pretty small footprint” when compared to other initiatives that were dismantled in the last year. “I just don’t understand why we couldn’t be more transparent. … I don’t believe that that is the role that public servants, broadly speaking, both politically appointed and career, should play.”

As the planet continues to heat up, rainfall is becoming increasingly erratic — ushering in longer dry spells punctuated by intense, sudden downpours that can overwhelm the land’s ability to absorb too much water. The resulting whiplash between periods of drought and flood can disrupt farming operations for multiple seasons. Extreme weather fueled by warming already costs the nation’s agricultural industry billions in lost crops and rangeland every year.

Agriculture is not only a victim of this vicious cycle, but one of its drivers. In the U.S., the sector is responsible for at least 80 percentof all water consumed. Crop irrigation, which is often done inefficiently, makes up the single largest share of freshwater withdrawals nationwide. Take alfalfa. The crop used an estimated 2.15 trillion gallons of wateracross the seven states in the Colorado River basin in 2024 — most of it grown to feed cattle and dairy herds.

“At USDA, we need to do more to also shift production systems to really be lined up with the climate reality,” said Starbuck, who argues that the burden of adaptation shouldn’t fall on individual farmers, or the irrigation districts that support them, but rather to federal regulators.

Yet even as demand for water grows, the policies intended to protect remaining supplies are being systematically dismantled. Over the last year, the administration has aggressively rolled back climate and environmental safeguards — revoking the government’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, proposing the removal of federal protections from the vast majority of the nation’s wetlands, and holding up billions in conservation efforts.

Together, says Starbuck, these actions are putting at risk the very water supplies that American agriculture depends on.