Keeping Up with What’s Happening Now

Policy Changes

Presidential Actions:

Every night the White House posts the executive orders and proclamations signed that day. See list here.

Project 2025:

Project 2025 is a conservative blueprint by the Heritage Foundation and other organizations that outlines a policy playbook for the Trump administration. Many of the authors of the playbook were nominated for or currently hold Cabinet and sub-cabinet level positions in the presidential administration description. Many of the executive orders issued in these first 100 days were previewed in the blueprint. Read the full Project 2025 report here.

Policy Changes Impact

Words disappearing from Government websites:

Read this NY Times article showing how federal websites are being changed to remove certain words. See Penn America’s growing list of words the federal government has banned

Project 2025 Tracker:

The Project 2025 tracker shows the administration’s progress in implementing their playbook. Follow the Tracker here.

The Impact Project:

The Impact Project provides objective, transparent, and open-source data to help explain how federal policies, funding, and workforce changes affect our communities.

Research and Funding:

Within the first 30 days of new federal administration, 780 active NIH Grants were terminated. This TAGGS spreadsheet is an ongoing list of HHS grants that have received stop work orders. Many of these grants focused on HIV/Infectious disease research, LGBTQ+ health, reproductive health, vaccination, and race and disparities research. Most were terminated because they no longer aligned with HHS priorities. Other independent trackers are easier to search but focus solely on lost N.I.H. grants or N.S.F. awards.

The U.S. Congressional Appropriations Committee Democrats are tracking the amount of federal funding the Committee believes the administration is currently freezing, cancelling, or fighting in court to block the distribution of.

Eliminating Employees, Programs, and Agencies

Federal Employee Layoffs:

This is a crowd sourced document that translates the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) 10,000+ federal employee reduction in force (RIF) into offices, programs, and functions that no longer exist because the entire staff was laid off.

This NYT tracker examines overall federal workforce cuts by cabinet level departments.

Agency Eliminations:

In March 2025, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced restructuring plans and the creation of a new agency – the Administration for a Healthy America (AHA). In a recently leaked copy of the FY26 federal budget drafted by the executive several exiting divisions, programs, and agencies of HHS will be eliminated and what remains consolidated into AHA. While this reorganization and elimination of agencies requires congressional approval, many of these programs were essentially eliminated through the reductions in workforce described above. For more information about cancelled programs including in the reorganization, read this Washington Post article or see this chart from the leaked budget proposal.

In the Courts

Legal Challenges:

Coalitions of Attorneys General from across the United States, as well the American Public Health Association, National Council of Nonprofits, and many others have filed lawsuits against policy changes and funding cuts. The New York Times has created a lawsuit tracker here.