Despite the ongoing massive cuts, we saw some wins for research at major universities in this update for our Medical Research Funding page: unbreaking.org/issues/medic...

In Data Security, we continue to see the Trump administration attempt to acquire & weaponize ever-larger swathes of personal data, including voting & medical records, financial data, & detailed information on benefits recipients. But states & judges are pushing back. unbreaking.org/issues/data-...

Many of the Trump administration’s immigration actions this summer fell into three connected categories: 1) They are making hundreds of thousands of lawfully present immigrants “illegal” and therefore deportable: www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/report/mass-...

At USDA, attacks on workers’ rights are threatening food safety. The USDA has canceled inspectors’ union contracts, which is likely to lead to more attrition, increase workloads, and compromise inspectors’ ability to raise food safety concerns. www.wpr.org/news/food-sa...

The realities of the budget reconciliation bill’s Medicaid work requirements are coming into view. More than half of states already struggle with Medicaid administration and many will likely fail to set up effective work-reporting systems by the bill’s deadline: ccf.georgetown.edu/2025/09/04/a...

While we continue to track the administration’s attacks on the federal workforce, one thing is becoming clear: federal spending is up while the government’s ability to deliver on basic services is declining. unbreaking.org/issues/equal...

This week in Immigration, legal rulings re-enabled several Trump administration actions previously blocked by lower courts. First up—racial profiling in California immigration raids is fine with the Supreme Court: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Recent turmoil at the CDC has been affecting food safety. Last week, a top food safety official at CDC resigned in response to the Trump administration’s firing of CDC director Susan Monarez. civileats.com/2025/08/28/c...

This past week, a whistleblower exposed DOGE’s insecure storage of 300 million Americans’ personal data, an event that may lead to every single Social Security Number needing to be changed. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/u...

We updated our immigration timeline with a dramatic middle-of-the-night legal challenge to the expulsion of unaccompanied Guatemalan children, plus the latest changes in other cases and administration actions. unbreaking.org/issues/immig...

In Jan, the Office of Personnel Management told providers to stop covering gender-affirming care for federal employees & dependents under 19 in 2026. This loss in coverage is now expanded to all ages & will affect ~17,000 transgender employees, plus an unknown number of dependents.

The Unbreaking team is taking next week off for some well-earned rest. We’ll be back with our regular updates after Labor Day. 👋

We have a new issue page up today, looking at the multi-pronged assault on both immigrants to the United States and the immigration system itself: unbreaking.org/issues/immig...

In late July, the USDA announced plans to transfer over half its DC-based staff, around 2,600 people, to five field offices around the country. apnews.com/article/agri...

Created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the mission of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was to protect Americans from “unfair, deceptive, and abusive financial practices.” www.consumerfinance.gov/data-researc...

As we build out our explainer on the ways the administration is undermining data security, we’ve collected some great coverage of government surveillance tech and privacy law. Here are some highlights:

Unfortunately, our public tracker was taken down by Google for an unspecified terms of service violation. We're working to get it back up.

We’re continuing to build out our explainer about how the administration is undermining data security. Last week, the IRS moved to share taxpayer data with DHS, despite the outgoing commissioner’s previous refusal to do so. www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

In addition to cutting hundreds of thousands of jobs, the administration is threatening the job security of remaining federal workers: last week, the admin stripped over 400K workers at the VA of their collective bargaining rights. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/u...

At Unbreaking, we’re continually reminded of how difficult it is for a single group to keep track of all of the changes made by the Trump administration. We’re very grateful to the people behind the 70+ trackers we use to do our work. Now, we’re sharing that list: unbreaking.org/blog/documen...

Brown University has joined Columbia in paying large settlements to regain federal research funding, and Cornell and Harvard may be next. www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-a...

The reconciliation bill’s work requirements—more stringent than ones previously considered by Congress or enacted by states—will cut Medicaid by $326B over the next decade. See what else we learned from a new @kff.org analysis in this week’s Medicaid update: unbreaking.org/issues/medic...

Last week a coalition of 17 states filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its efforts to destroy access to gender-affirming care for youth, calling these attacks “cruel and irresponsible.” www.latimes.com/politics/sto...

Last week’s jobs report dominated the news, and for good reason: driven by cuts in the federal government, job losses this year are the highest since 2020. www.challengergray.com/blog/summer-...

An appeals court blocked a lower court’s order that federal agencies release their re-org plans so the legality of proposed layoffs could be determined. Agencies can now proceed with layoffs without informing either the public or the court. federalnewsnetwork.com/litigation/2...

The administration is continuing its efforts to grab data wherever it can, but not everyone is game to comply. A group of states sued the USDA this week, challenging its plans to require states to disclose personal information about SNAP recipients. www.npr.org/2025/07/28/n...

In a bit of good news, a judge has blocked the funding ban on Planned Parenthood nationwide. The ban would have cut off millions of people from low-cost prenatal care, birth control, vaccinations, STI screenings, and fertility treatments. Medicaid payments will continue while the suit proceeds.

Something new: We have an internal list of nearly 80 other trackers from newsrooms, organizations, and independent researchers. It’s still messy, but we’re sharing it anyway in case it’s useful to others. docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

The past few weeks have shown one thing: threats work. Despite judges blocking most of Trump’s executive orders around transgender identity and care, several hospitals have voluntarily decided to stop providing care to trans youth. unbreaking.org/issues/trans...

Some officials and commentators have claimed that millions of “able-bodied” young men in the US are sitting around collecting Medicaid because they don’t want to work. The Medicaid research we’ve compiled says otherwise. unbreaking.org/blog/medicai...

We continue to follow news of the administration disclosing civilian data to law enforcement. ICE has signed an information sharing agreement with the IRS that allows “unprecedented” and “on-demand” access to taxpayer information. www.propublica.org/article/trum...

While the Supreme Court cleared the way for large-scale federal layoffs to proceed, the case is ongoing: a federal union is pressing agencies to release their reorganization plans, and a judge has ordered the government to comply. federalnewsnetwork.com/litigation/2...

In a bit of good news, medical research grants on vaccine hesitancy, diversity, and other topics are being reinstated, following court rulings. www.science.org/content/arti...

We’ve noted before that much of the $5B cut from medical research funding appears to be blatantly ideological: the result of searches for flagged keywords like “women,” “trans,” “nonbinary,” “diversity,” or “COVID.” www.statnews.com/2025/02/13/t...

Since Trump took office, thousands of food safety workers have been fired, but the legality of these layoffs was in limbo until a July 8 Supreme Court decision allowed them to proceed. This week, HHS finalized firings of food safety workers announced in April. federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/20...

Last week, we noted that the Supreme Court issued a stay of a lower court ruling that had halted many of the federal workforce reductions, clearing the way for large-scale layoffs to continue. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/08/u...

Since day one, the Trump administration has recklessly exploited Americans’ sensitive data in efforts to deport immigrants, restrict access to critical benefits and services, and gut the federal workforce. Here’s what we’ve learned so far: unbreaking.org/issues/data-...

The reconciliation bill Congress passed last week cut a trillion dollars from Medicaid, which covers 1 in 5 people in the US. With other Trump administration policy changes, the bill’s cuts are expected to push 17 million people out of healthcare coverage. unbreaking.org/issues/medic...

The GOP budget bill that passed the Senate is expected to push 17 million people out of health coverage: unbreaking.org/issues/medic...

The @unbreaking.org team just launched its blog, and this post from Sydette is really something special. “Nothing ever comes back exactly the same. But if we know what has changed, what is being destroyed—but also what can be saved—then we can hope that something even better can be rebuilt.”

Excellent, lucid explainer on the—very much in flux—state of gender-affirming care as an essential health benefit in ACA plans from @gracesdeng.bsky.social www.snopes.com/news/2025/07...

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the GOP budget reconciliation bill will push ~12M people in the US out of healthcare coverage—a million more people than our last update, a few days ago. The bill cuts $1.1 trillion from healthcare—$1T to Medicaid alone. unbreaking.org/issues/medic...

This week, we have some actually encouraging news to share: many of the cruelest provisions in the administration’s budget megabill have been ruled out by the Senate parliamentarian. www.budget.senate.gov/ranking-memb...

Medicaid provides healthcare and/or long-term-care coverage for 1 in 5 people in the US. It’s under attack on several fronts, but the biggest is the budget bill now with the Senate. The bill is expected to push 7.8 million people out of Medicaid. unbreaking.org/issues/medic...

We’ve updated our page on trans healthcare from endangered to critically endangered, based on two potentially very impactful attacks underway: unbreaking.org/issues/trans...

Hi! We just released three new pages. First up, we break down the devastating defunding of medical research in the US, including grant terminations and delays representing nearly $5B in funding losses, cuts to future funding, and attacks on training programs: unbreaking.org/issues/medic...

👋 Hi, we’re Unbreaking, a volunteer-run collective working to document our current moment of institutional collapse and its human costs—as well as the pushback and resilience work already underway. We believe this is critical work for building and retaining political agency.