Agriculture
The Trump administration cut funding for schools and food banks and their partnerships with local farmers, leaving all three groups with budget shortfalls across Florida. From Jacksonville, to Tampa, and all the down to Miami, Florida schools, farmers and food banks are going without the help they need from the government to make it through the year.
Education
The Trump administration laid off almost half of the Department of Education, threatening school funding in Florida, especially for low-income school districts or children with special needs. One Florida parent with a special needs child described it as a “perfect storm” of “desperate worry for parents.”
Environment
The Trump administration fired employees working on restoration projects in the Florida Everglades, endangering a national park with around 1 million annual visitors contributing to Florida’s $128 billion tourism industry.
Health Care
The Trump administration cut 90 percent of funding to a program that helped Tampa Bay residents get health insurance. While Florida has led the nation in Affordable Care Act enrollments for the last few years, residents will now have to navigate health insurance enrollment without the assistance they need from the federal government.
Public Safety
The Trump administration fired NOAA workers in Florida, including weather forecasters and at least one hurricane hunter. During this year’s hurricane season, Florida residents may have less accurate predictions, endangering lives and property as fewer meteorologists struggle to work with less accurate data.
Veterans
The Trump administration has fired U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs employees as well as veterans themselves across Florida. A former Navy pilot was fired from her role as flight director for NOAA’s hurricane hunters, while a disabled veteran was fired from his role making hiring practices more efficient in the VA system in Florida.
March 2025: Trump Administration Cut Federal Programs That Provided $65 Million For Florida Schools And Food Banks To Purchase Produce From Local Farmers. According to the Pensacola News Journal, "President Donald Trump’s efforts to curb federal spending have hit the Department of Agriculture, which has cut over $1 billion in funding aimed at helping schools and food banks purchase from local farmers. States recently learned about the cuts, which will cut funding for the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program (LFS) and the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program (LFPA) in 2025, the organization School Nutrition Association said in a news release. Florida school partners were slated to receive an estimated $42,583,882 in 2025 from the LFS program. Meanwhile, the state was expecting to receive a combined total of $22,439,038 from the LFPA programs, according to the USDA website." [Pensacola News Journal, 3/11/25]
March 2025: Trump Administration Layoffs At Department Of Education Sent “Shockwaves” Through South Florida, Especially Parents Of Children With Disabilities. According to WTVJ, "President Trump campaigned on shutting down the Department of Education. However, seeing it happen, with the department laying off about half of its workforce, sends shockwaves through the local education community and through many families. The DOE provides about a billion dollars combined to the Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade, and Monroe County school districts. Much of that money goes to support Title One schools, which are schools where at least 40% of the students are from low-income families. Another major chunk of funding provides resources for children who have disabilities. 'I think parents of students with disabilities are absolutely on the edge right now,' said Jacqui Luscombe, who is one of those parents. She chairs Broward’s ESE Advisory Council, and Luscombe is extremely concerned about where the cuts to the DOE might lead. 'When your child’s education and rights and future are at stake it all combines into this perfect storm of just desperate worry for parents,' Luscombe said. " [WTVJ, 3/12/25]
February 2025: Trump Administration Fired Employees Working On Florida Everglades Restoration Project. According to the Miami Herald, "At the research center at Everglades National Park, one of handful of such centers around the country, half the team working on Everglades restoration efforts is leaving, two sources said. Three staffers were cut and three took early retirement, they said. 'We’re worried about them going in and deleting everything,' said one scientists who is leaving and worries that valuable information will be lost. The cuts come at a critical time for the center, with Everglades restoration work speeding up under record spending. Among the center’s missions is to ensure that changes outside the park don’t harm the wildlife and sawgrasses marshes, seagrass meadows and other habitat inside the park." [Miami Herald, 2/26/25]
March 2025: Fired NOAA Flight Director Warned Trump Layoffs Could Lead To Less Accurate Hurricane Evacuation Warnings. According to Spectrum News 13, "However, Englert said it hurts even more because she believes the public will be impacted, too. 'NOAA — we collect data,' she said. 'We are the keepers of a lot of that data. However, it is open sourced. It’s available to the public. This is everything from fishery, ocean, everything from your atmospheric daily weather to severe storms. 'So, it’s really to the benefit of the public as far as really understanding the environment you’re in and how NOAA affects you on a day-to-day basis, really.' Now, with more than 800 job cuts at NOAA nationwide, including in Lakeland, Englert said she’s concerned about the upcoming hurricane season. The Aircraft Operations Center houses NOAA’s planes, which provide live data during storms. 'Ultimately, because of the layoffs and the cuts, you’re potentially looking at not being able to complete all of the mission objectives — or even the missions themselves — as far as the required flights that we’ve had in order to incorporate this data into the models,' Englert said. This, she said, could lead to inaccurate information. 'It’s going to result in more uncertainty as well as downstream effects such as greater areas of evacuations, greater areas of emergency response and planning, as well as greater rebuild,' she said. " [Spectrum News 13, 3/10/25]
February 2025: Trump Administration Cut Funding To Program That Helped Tampa Bay Residents Get Health Insurance. According to the Tampa Bay Times, "It will be tougher for more families to get help beginning in August when the Trump administration’s decision to slash funding for the navigator program by 90% takes effect, Roders Turner said. Funding for the national program, which pays for trained workers to assist people find insurance plans, will be cut from $97 million to $10 million. The cuts could hit hardest in Florida and Tampa Bay. The state has led the nation in enrollment in the Affordable Care Act for the past few years. A record 4.7 million residents signed up for health insurance plans through the federal market place this year. That was a source of pride for Covering Kids and Families, a nonprofit based at the University of South Florida. It received roughly $13 million, the largest navigator award in the nation, to help residents across the state find affordable health care. " [Tampa Bay Times, 2/19/25]
February 2025: Trump Administration Fired Miami Scientist Responsible For Making Storm Forecasts Accurate. According to NBC 6 South Florida, "Andy Hazelton is one of the DOGE victims. He isn’t the guy you see on television telling you where the hurricane’s going, he’s one of the NWS employees who work on making the forecast models as accurate as they can be. Now he’s gone. 'It kinda hit me very heavily, I mean I think we all thought it was possible,' Hazelton said. Possible, they thought, but not likely, because their work is vital for public safety. Hazelton was at the National Hurricane Center, working on improving the GFS storm tracking model, when the email came in. He was fired after working more than eight years with NOAA, as a contract employee and recently as a federal staffer, still in his probationary period. " [NBC 6 South Florida, 2/28/25]
February 2025: Miami, FL Residents Were Laid-Off As Part Of Trump Administration’s NOAA Firings. According to the Miami Herald, "Hurricane and climate researchers in Miami were hit in the latest wave of cuts from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. The mass layoffs from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — more than 600, according to the former agency head — include at least one high-profile meteorologist in Miami and another charged with integrating artificial intelligence into climate and weather predictions." [Miami Herald, 2/28/25]
February 2025: Trump Administration Fired Hurricane Hunter. According to NBC 6 South Florida, "Kerri Englert is featured in a video on the NOAA website. She is, or was, a hurricane hunter, the crew member who gathers data during those daring flights into the eye of the storm, until she got the pink slip yesterday. 'I think that I was initially in a state of shock, as well as perhaps a bit of denial, I think I still am to some extent,' Englert said. " [NBC 6 South Florida, 2/28/25]
March 2025: Trump Administration Fired Lakeland Navy Vet Who Directed NOAA Weather Collection Flights. According to Spectrum News 13, "Like many who have had the chance to fly into the heart of a storm, Kerri Englert says being a flight director for NOAA was a dream come true. 'It was 10 years in the making for me to get to that position,' she said. 'I left the active-duty Navy to go back to school to get meteorology credentials so I could pair up what I did in the Navy as a mission commander in an aircraft and my meteorology passion as well.' The Navy veteran began working at Lakeland’s NOAA Aircraft Operations Center in 2023. Over the past few months, she heard rumors about the possibility of federal layoffs but didn’t believe it would happen. It wasn’t until she received a termination letter that reality began to set in." [Spectrum News 13, 3/10/25]
February 2025: Local Union Leader Pleaded With President Trump To Visit Tampa VA And See Benefit Workers Provide.
February 2025: South Florida-Based Disabled Veteran Was Fired By Trump Administration From Role In VA Working To Make Agency More Efficient. According to WPTV, "From medals, to photographs, to commemorative plaques, David Pasquino's office is full of reminders of nearly two decades of service to the United States. Pasquino traveled the world during his 18 years in the Army, which included two combat tours. 'I made some of the best friendships, I had some of the greatest experiences of my life. Some not so great — yeah, and I wouldn't trade a day of it,' Pasquino said. [...] Now, Hobe Sound is home. It's where Pasquino spent about 11 months working remotely in human resources for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. 'Working at the Department of Veterans Affairs was the perfect opportunity for me to give back to veterans and continue to serve,' Pasquino said. [...] His team's role was to make hiring more efficient at the agency, after the government ended its contract with a private vendor. 'We were able to clear a two-year backlog in about three months,' Pasquino said. 'We reduced the time to hire from approximately 130 days down to about 62 days in an 11-month period.' On Thursday evening, Pasquino described an 'itch' he had to check his work email. His employment was terminated, effective immediately. The firing came despite positive performance evaluations, which Pasquino shared with WPTV. 'It feels like we don't matter,' Pasquino said. 'Our lives, our service — you know, I'm a 100% disabled combat veteran, and the sacrifices that I made don't matter, because it's just, I'm an arbitrary number.'" [WPTV, 2/17/25]
February 2025: Trump Administration Laid Off Three Workers At Tampa Bay, FL VA Center. According to WTSP, "From mass layoffs to deferred resignations, the federal workforce has been reduced by nearly 90,000 employees, since President Trump took office almost a month ago. That includes at least three in Tampa Bay who were probationary employees for Veterans Affairs, including workers at James A. Haley Veterans’ Hospital in Tampa, according to Christopher Young, the American Federation of Government Employees Local 547 acting president " [WTSP, 2/18/25]