by Mick Rhodes | editor@claremont-courier.com

President Trump’s wide-ranging, largely incoherent attack on the federal government has hit home.

On April 16 Trump’s pretend federal agency the “department of government efficiency” or “DOGE” notified AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps via email that it was pulling the plug on nearly all funding and grant money for the independent agency long known for its youth-driven community service, effective immediately.

Since its founding in 1993, AmeriCorps NCCC has delivered much-needed assistance to nonprofits across the country via thousands volunteers between 18 and 26 who have provided eight million service hours on nearly 3,400 disaster projects, helping seniors, schools, veterans, children, the poor, and countless nonprofits.

Y’know, just the kind of do-gooders Trump loves to hate.

The abrupt cut affected more than 2,000 AmeriCorps NCCC volunteers across the country, including Claremont’s Cooper Sutherland.

Sutherland wasn’t quite ready to commit the next four or five years to college after graduating from Claremont High in June 2024. He’d heard about friends’ experiences working with AmeriCorps NCCC. It sounded like a great way to spend a gap year.

“I thought that helping people for a few months and just getting some travel experience and some life experience sounded fantastic,” Sutherland said.

Last October Sutherland gathered with hundreds of other young people at AmeriCorps NCCC southwest region hub in Aurora, Colorado. After two weeks of training, he was teamed up with nine others and dispatched to Taos, New Mexico.

“We were working on a farm mostly, but also helping do some renovations for a group called Veterans Off Grid, and working at a local food bank,” Sutherland said. “And then between January and early April I was in Arkansas doing tax preparation through the VITA program.”

He and his team had discussed the possibility of DOGE’s big, dumb chain saw impacting AmeriCorps NCCC back in January and early February, but by mid-April the talk had died down.

On April 16, he and his team were back Aurora, training for their next deployment to Arizona. But soon after breaking for lunch they were summoned back to campus.

“Then the staff walked in and said, ‘Hey, so we just got a phone call that our program’s been shut down and you’re all going home tonight.’ And I was on a plane four hours later,” Sutherland said.

AmeriCorps NCCC’s 2024 budget was $37.7 million. The federal government spent $6.78 trillion that same year. So the tech bro brain trust at DOGE cut the feet off the youth volunteer branch of a 32-year-old agency that does unquantifiable good for some of the most needy Americans, and provides training — and valuable life experience — for young people across the country, all to save an amount equal to 0.000556047198% of the federal budget.

Good work, DOGE. Who’s next, Santa?

AmeriCorps, “… just exposes you to, I guess you could say, struggle in ways that some of us might not have seen before,” said Evan Brandt, who served for a year after graduating from CHS is 2022. “So, I guess it, for one, allows you to realize that you take a lot of things for granted. And for me, I think it made me realize the importance of community service and just helpfulness in general, is something that I carry with me since my involvement in the program.”

Yeah, who needs that stuff?

On April 16, Cooper Sutherland’s position at AmeriCorps was suddenly eliminated by “DOGE.” Since then the 2024 Claremont High graduate has taken a job as a parking lot attending at the LA County Fair in Pomona. Courier photo/Andrew Alonzo

Reuters estimates DOGE has fired some 260,000 people since January 20 in its war on “fraud, waste, and abuse.” I wonder how AmeriCorps NCCC fits into that bin?

“If you’re talking cost benefit, it’s ridiculous,” Sutherland said. “We do 10 months of hard labor for $140 a week, and that includes meals and gas. We have a $6-a-day budget to eat off of and a $98-a-week stipend. And it was a great program. It helped tons of people in all kinds of ways.”

Had he completed his 1,700 hour service term, Sutherland would have earned about $7,300 for future educational expenses from the federal government. That’s $4.29-an-hour.

Such waste!

Shortly before April 16, his mother, Stephani Sutherland, “got the best phone call a mom could ever get.”

“My son called and said, ‘Mom, this is the greatest experience. I’m so glad I did this. This is the best thing I could have done with this year between high school and college,’” she said. “And he just was loving it. I could tell he was happy. He was feeling of service, which is really important to my son and always has been. I really am proud of him for that.”

More than just a mama bear defending her cub, Stephani Sutherland has unique insight into the situation: DOGE recently abruptly eliminated her job as a scientific writer for the National Institutes of Health in the area of pain research, as well.

“So literally right now I’m working on a letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee about the budget that is under consideration right now, which will destroy NIH funding, not only for pain research, but really it’s a threat to the existence of biomedical research in the U.S.,” she said.

It’s plain DOGE’s oft-repeated mission to root out “fraud, waste, and abuse” also comes with a dose of something the Trump administration seems to relish in: cruelty.

“I think that’s right: cruelty is the point,” said Stephani Sutherland. “And, again, to put out the misinformation and the lie that this is saving any kind of money for taxpayers is just laughable,  because the people that benefited from these programs and from AmeriCorps across the country are underserved people.”

Thankfully, ol’ sieg heil Elon appears to have lost interest (and billions of dollars) while cosplaying in his pretend job, and is MIA of late. But the damage is done.

“I think in terms of the policy, the idea that cutting AmeriCorps is preventing any kind of waste, fraud, or abuse is, quite frankly, a lie,” Stephani Sutherland said. “Because the cost of the program is so low and the return on the investment in dollars, as well as in all kinds of dividends for Americans across the country, are huge.”

Were huge. They sure were.

Good vibes, and tunes, coming to Folk Music Center

Our venerable Folk Music Center continues its 60-plus year history of bringing great live original music to Claremont with a 7 p.m. Saturday, May 31 performance from I See Hawks in L.A., Rick Shea, and Tony Gilkyson.

I See Hawks in L.A. Photo/by Michael Doherty

“There were the Byrds, then the Flying Burritos, and a few other notable bands from Los Angeles in the 1960s into the 1970s, and then I See Hawks in L.A. picked up the thread,” reads the group’s bio. “Their sound might be embedded in the Hollywood Freeway, but underneath it’s really torqued by the Mojave Desert. Listen and hear not only what has come before, but what is also right around the next bend.”

Shea and Gilkyson, each master guitarists, songwriters, and stirring vocalists in their own right, have also played, toured, and recorded with the likes of Bob Dylan, X, Tom Waits, Lone Justice, REM, Dave Alvin, and Wanda Jackson.

It’s going to be a great night of American music at the Folk.

Tickets are $20 at the store, 220 Yale Ave., or the door. More info is available at folkmusiccenter.com or by calling (909) 624-2928.