Supporters of the National Park Service say the agency has lost nearly a quarter of its permanent staff across the nation since President Donald Trump took office in January.
The National Parks Conservation Association says it conducted an analysis of Park Service staffing and found a 24% loss in the agency’s permanent employees this year.
"Those are going to be folks who were terminated or laid off for various indiscriminate reasons. And it includes people who opted to take early retirement," said Cassidy Jones with the organization.
"So it’s all of these things that the administration has placed in front of National Park Service and other federal employees to reduce the federal workforce," she said.
Seasonal employees, who perform many of the base visitor services like search and rescue and interpretation, are reduced by nearly half this year. Normally, there’d be 8,000. Jones says now it’s 4,500.
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That's especially true in the Mountain West. In most states, if one delivery unit shuts down, the next closest one is more than an hour away. -
More than 30,000 refugees, asylees and other legally present immigrants in Arizona could lose health coverage in a few weeks as new Medicaid eligibility rules take effect. -
Under the proposed changes, there’d be a cap on how much money Head Start centers could spend on administrative overhead; there would also be a reduction in the number of regulations governing the program, among other changes. -
Right now, nearly Arizona 300 schools qualify for a federal program that allows schools that serve low income households to give free lunches to every student — without making them apply for it. -
It's also unclear how many have lost coverage because some state agencies that run the programs are overwhelmed trying to keep up with changes. That was the case in Arizona, which saw the nation's largest enrollment drop.
