By John L. Micek | jmicek@masslive.com
A coalition of Massachusetts politicians, led by Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, is calling on the nation’s top public health official to stop an attack on a key building block for anti-poverty efforts.
The White House has proposed eliminating the Community Service Block Grant program in its 2026 budget plan, arguing that it’s padded with “equity-building and green energy initiatives,” Daily Yonder, which covers issues important to rural Americans, reported.
But the program, administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, helps pay for “crucial services” to low-income families, Warren and her colleagues argued in a Tuesday letter to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Those services include home energy assistance, child care and early education efforts, job training and even assistance in filing taxes, Warren and her colleagues argued in the letter shared exclusively with MassLive.
Getting rid of it “would have devastating effects” on the local community action agencies that benefit from the funding and provide those services, Warren and her colleagues told Kennedy.
Warren was joined on the letter by U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and all nine members of the state’s all-Democrat U.S. House delegation.
“Despite the critical work that CSBG enables, the Trump administration has attacked the program at every turn,” the lawmakers asserted in their letter to Kennedy.
After asking the Republican-controlled Congress to eliminate funding for the program, the White House also sought to “hollow out” the program by firing the staff at the agency’s Office of Community Services, which runs the grant program for the government, they said.
That left local agencies “unsure as to how and if they will receive their funds,” Warren and her fellow lawmakers wrote. It’s also not clear how many HHS staffers got the axe, leaving their local counterparts “wondering if anyone is still working on CSBG or other programs.”
All told, Massachusetts received $75 million from the program, according to an analysis provided by Warren’s office.
Warren and her colleagues asked Kennedy to answer several questions, including whether the agency plans to distribute grant funding that was held up by the marathon federal government shutdown and how it plans to maintain the “full operability” of the Low Income Heating Assistance Program, which is a key lifeline in the colder months.
At a news conference last month, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat, called on the Trump administration to speed the release of LIHEAP funding that had been delayed by the shutdown.
In a statement, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said that “Warren continues to blame the Trump administration for the delay [in distributing LIHEAP funding], rather than acknowledging her own responsibility in this, when she and her party members held the federal government hostage during the longest shutdown in American history.”
“Despite these setbacks, the Administration for Children and Families is moving swiftly to distribute annual awards and restore essential services that were stalled when the Democrat-led shutdown obstructed the department’s ability to serve the nation’s most vulnerable families,” Nixon continued. “Senator Warren should apologize to her constituents for shutting down the government and delaying LIHEAP aid to the American people during winter.”
