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Court reverses DOGE cuts, restoring funding to Iowa City nonprofit

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July 14th, 2025 by Ric Hanson

(Radio Iowa) – AmeriCorps funding for a conservation nonprofit in eastern Iowa is being restored, after the Trump administration cut 230-thousand dollars from the Bur Oak Land Trust in Iowa City this spring. A federal judge in Maryland ruled the money needed to be reinstated as grant recipients didn’t get the proper warning. Trust director Jason Taylor says it will be hard to rehire the workers who left their posts.  “When they were told in April that they no longer had positions with us, they had the ability to go out and find full-time employment, they had to,” Taylor says, “their livelihood was taken away from them.”

While the funding was restored, Taylor says rebuilding will be difficult since so many former staffers have scattered to find work elsewhere. “What we’re doing is trying to figure out the best kind of avenue to really focus on, what is going to make it right on their side,” Taylor says. “A lot of it is going to be making sure that they get paid what they had originally been contracted to be paid.” The land trust is one of a handful of AmeriCorps grant recipients represented by the group Democracy Defenders in the lawsuit.

It marks the second ruling by a federal judge against the Trump administration’s move to cut 400-million dollars in AmeriCorps grants nationwide.